live over every moment of her acquaintance with him--to recall all he
had said and done and looked, all his little peculiarities of gesture
and accent; to analyze his fascination for her--why she loved him--the
thousand and one reasons in addition to the real reason--which,
of course, was that he was Chang, the biggest and straightest and
honestest man she had ever known, not even self-conscious enough to
be modest. The moon crossed the skylight; the room faded into half
darkness; the moon reappeared at the west window, high up in the wall.
She dreamed on and on--the dreams with which she filled most of her
waking moments when she was alone. When she remembered to look at her
watch it was five minutes after three!
She sprang up, took the note from her bosom, thrust it three quarters
through the crack between the closet door and its frame, just above
the lock. Would he get it that morning? Or, would it be several days
before he came there? “I’ll go to the cascade two nights,” said she.
“Then, if he doesn’t come, I’ll try some other way.”
When she reached the top of Red Hill it was day, though the sun was
not yet above the horizon. She circled round until she was opposite
the main entrance, but well concealed. She had come down early so
often that she knew the routine through which the servants would go.
Just as the first rays of the sun lit upon the topmost of the pointed
roofs, Tom, the indoors watchman, appeared in the main entrance. The
alarms were off. She circled back to the west and, by way of the dense
shrubbery that would hide her from any chance gazer from windows, she
gained the veranda--the unlocked window of the gray salon. Her heart
stood still while she was raising that window. When no sound of bells
banging and clanging came she drew a long breath, stepped weakly
through, lowered and locked the window. The rest of the journey was
comparatively free from danger.
When her maid came in at nine o’clock she was sleeping soundly; and
all traces of her expedition had been removed by her own unaccustomed
hands from skirt and leggings and shoes. The old pipe in its newspaper
wrappings was hidden deep in a drawer of lingerie odorous of delicate
sachet--a drawer of which she had the only key.
* * * * *
Getting away from the house the next night was not so easy.
Several guests came from town in the afternoon. She was obliged to
stay down until the last, had difficulty in preventing Josephine
Burroughs from following her into her room to chatter for an hour or
longer. All evening, as her father lingered in the drawing-room, she
had forced herself to act in her gayest, most unconcerned manner. Her
nerves were on edge and she had a fever. She knew the servants were
closing the house in mad haste. There was no time to change dress or
even shoes; there was just time to send her maid away, to catch up a
long wrap, turn out her lights and dart downstairs. Probably no one was
yet in bed, but she must take the chance of some accidental late call
upon her. As she raised the window in the gray salon she confidently
expected to hear the bells, to be dazzled by sudden flash of lights.
She did not breathe until she had it lowered.
It was after midnight. She congratulated herself on having fixed one
o’clock as the hour for the meeting. She would have just time to reach
the little cataract. She had not gone far before her slippers were in
a dreadful state and her legs wet to the knees. “The excitement’s
the only thing that can save me from the cold of my life,” thought
she. Colds were serious matters with her--disfiguring, desperately
uncomfortable, slow to take leave. Long before she reached the lower
end of the lake she could feel that her dress was a bedraggled wreck,
high though she had held it. As she went along the rough shore path she
glanced from time to time at the meeting place on the opposite side.
The moon made everything distinct; he was not there. Had it taken her
longer to come than she thought, and had he gone? Or had he disregarded
her note? Or had he not yet got it? “I don’t believe I’ll dare come
again,” she said to herself despondently. But she knew that she would.
She crossed the brook on the stones that fretted it. She reached the
place where she could see the grass worn by his working at his easel,
the mud of the lake’s brim creased by the keel of her canoe. She looked
all round, straining her eyes into the dimness under the trees.
“Chang!” she called.
She gazed, listened, waited. “Chang!” she called again, a sob in her
voice.
From the deep shadow of the maple tree immediately in front of her came
Roger’s voice: “Some one is coming toward us in a boat.”
“Don’t move!” she exclaimed in an undertone. “No matter what happens,
don’t show yourself. I must speak quickly,” she hurried on. “That money
you said you had--you must sell out whatever it’s invested in and put
it in Government bonds--right away. Will you? Promise me!”
“I can’t,” replied he. “It’s in bonds of the Wauchong Railroad, that’s
just gone into the hands of a receiver.”
Beatrice gasped. “Oh!” she cried. But she must not delay. “My father
did it,” she hurried on, “because he wants to ruin you and drive you
out of the country.”
Roger laughed quietly. “Don’t worry, Rix. I’m all right.”
“I’ve got so much to say. I must see you again----”
“No. This is good-by. I read about your engagement, and I was glad
you had made up your mind to do the sensible thing. I hope you’ll be
happy--and you will be. I’ll send you the picture as a wedding present.”
“Chang--don’t believe that,” cried she imploringly. “I _must_ see you.
As soon as I can I’ll let you know. I’m watched. But I’ll give them the
slip and----”
“You’ll do nothing stealthy--not with my help,” answered he. “I’ll not
come again----”
The clash of oar in lock struck both silent. A rowboat glided from the
shadows, thrust its nose far up the muddy shore. Beatrice immediately
recognized her father the only occupant. He stood up, looking round.
He said in a voice of suspiciously pleasant intonation, “I see Wade
hasn’t come yet. Well, I’ll wait and take you back. The walking’s
bad--especially in that kind of dress.”
Each could see the other’s face plainly in that bright moonlight. She
showed no more sign of agitation than he, and he was suave. Beatrice
spoke. “Yes, I’ve ruined my dress. And the slippers--they’re pulp.” She
glanced round. “What time is it?”
“Half past one,” he announced, as the result of a look at his watch.
“It’s later than I thought. I’m ready to go home now.”
“I’ve plenty of time,” protested Richmond.
“No. Let’s go. There’s nothing to stay for.”
And she stepped into the boat, steadying herself with a hand on his
shoulder as she passed him on her way to sit in the stern. It had
been almost necessary that she steady herself somehow in passing him
in that rather narrow rowboat. She was hardly conscious that she had
touched him; he was touching her as a matter of course, and also his
own guiding and steadying hand was on her arm. Yet the incident,
apparently trifling, was in fact most significant in itself and fraught
with highly important consequences. In the first place it showed that,
though father and daughter fancied they were hating each other to the
uttermost, they in reality were still father and daughter, with at
least one strong, uncleft bond of sympathy through the recognition
by each in the other of qualities both intensely admired--for two
people who deeply hate do not touch each other except in anger. Also,
it altered their immediate relationship; it softened the animosities
that were raging for utterance in each, and made it impossible for the
quarrel that was bound to come to be of exactly the same complexion--of
the same peculiar character it would have taken had they not touched
each other.
When she was seated he pushed off and disposed himself at the oars. He
kept to the middle of the lake, where the light was clear and strong.
They had not gone many yards on that water journey of three miles
before her father said:
“You wanted to tell him what I warned you I would do?”
“Yes.”
“And then you intended to break your promise to me?”
“No. I made no promise--not in so many words. But I was going to stand
by the engagement. Peter has become repulsive to me, but--any man would
be equally so. And I might as well marry and have done with.”
“A few years from now,” said her father, “you will thank me for having
saved you from your folly.”
She dropped her hand into the water. The moon-beams glistened on her
yellow hair, on her smooth, young face and neck.
“You ought to have known,” pursued her father, “that I would not have
told you I would ruin Wade unless it was impossible for him to escape.
I have put his investments in such a position that I can wipe them
out or not. What I’ll do will depend on whether you are foolish or
sensible.”
She glanced up for an instant. Then he was not so guilty as she had
thought--that is, _perhaps_ he was not.
“You say you didn’t intend to break the engagement,” he went on. “Why,
then, did you come here to-night?”
“Because you had made it impossible for me to let him know in any other
way.”
“You could have written,” rejoined he; the familiar note of suspicion,
of the keen mind on the scent for the hidden truth was strong in his
voice. “I’ve no control over the mails.”
“I didn’t want to put on paper--such a thing--about--my father.”
Richmond rowed in silence perhaps ten minutes. Then he said, and the
note of affection was fully as strong in his voice as the note of
suspicion had been before:
“Was that your only reason?”
“I thought so,” replied she. “I realize now that I also wanted to see
him--to see if there was any hope.”
“You’d feel fine--wouldn’t you--if you made a fool of yourself with
this man and then found out that he was already married?”
The change in her expression was apparent even in that misleading
light. During the long silence he saw that she was revolving his
sinister suggestion. He took his time before going on in a calm,
deliberate tone: “We know nothing about him--except that he is a man
you, in your right senses, would never think of marrying.”
“That is true,” replied she, “if you mean by right senses the sort of
girl I was brought up to be.”
“The sort of girl you _are_,” said he with gentle emphasis. The Daniel
Richmond of rage and threat was engulfed in the wise and skillful man
of affairs.
She looked at him with her old-time, gay mockery. “You’ve decided to
take a different tack with me, I see.”
Richmond met smile with smile--and it was from him that she had got the
peculiar charm of her smile. “I admit I’ve been blundering,” said he.
“My eagerness to have you do what was best for you blinded my judgment.
And it was very exasperating to see you rushing headlong into a folly
you’d repent all your life. It’s hard for an older person to remember
how inexperienced youth is, and to be patient. But I’ll try to do
better.... I sent your mother to see whether you were in your room.
I don’t know why I did it. I’ve got instincts that have saved me in
tight places many a time. She went, came back--said you were there. But
she can’t deceive me face to face. She has learned that I scent a lie
like a terrier a rat. So, I went myself. When I saw you were gone it
sobered me.” He said these things in a thoroughly human way, sincerely,
simply--himself as he was for the daughter he loved.
“I’d like to be able to--to do as you wish, father,” said she with
gentleness. “But when I told you----”
“Let’s not discuss that now,” he interrupted. “To-morrow, perhaps. Not
now.”
Another silence, with the girl rapidly softening toward her father--her
always-indulgent father, and she, the recently worldly, could
appreciate his point of view--why, at times, her own new point of view
seemed an aberration in a dream.
She said: “Have you reason to think he is--is married?”
“So have you.”
“He never told me--never hinted such a thing.”
“Did he ever tell you he was not married?”
“Certainly not.” Beatrice laughed aloud. “I never told him I was not
married.”
“You say you asked him to marry you?”
“Yes--I did.”
“And you say he refused?”
“He refused absolutely. He laughed at the idea that I really cared for
him. If you could have heard, father! That’s why it’d be unjust for you
to blame him. It was every bit my fault.”
“Why did he refuse to marry you?” her father asked calmly.
“Because he did not care, I suppose--care enough.”
“What reason did he give?”
“He didn’t think it would be good for his career. He-- Oh, he had a lot
of reasons. They didn’t seem to me to amount to much, for, of course,
everybody wants to get married, and expects to, some time. That was why
I--hoped.”
“Don’t you think he may have been evading--didn’t want to tell you the
real reason?”
Her father’s calm, searching insistence, free from anger or malice,
friendly toward her, not unjust to Roger--it began to agitate her, to
fill her with vague doubts and fears. “But if he had that reason,”
urged she, “he could have ended everything at once by telling me.”
“Unless he had a reason for silence,” replied Richmond. And with quiet
acuteness he explained: “Maybe he’s planning to get rid of his wife so
that he’ll be free to accept you--and the fortune he thinks goes with
you.”
“You’re trying to prejudice me against him!” cried the girl, all in
a turmoil over this subtle attack, which seemed to come as much from
within as from without.
But her father was equal to this emergency. “If you intend to keep your
engagement,” said he, “if you have no hope of being accepted by this
young man you know nothing about--you wish to be prejudiced against
him--don’t you, Beatrice?”
There seemed to be no effective answer to this shrewdness.
“Yes, I do want to prejudice you against him,” continued Richmond.
“I want you to wake up to the fact that you’ve been doing all these
foolish, compromising things for a man about whom you know absolutely
nothing.”
“I’m _sure_ he’s not married!” exclaimed Beatrice with overemphasis.
“Maybe not,” was her father’s unruffled reply. “But it does look
exceedingly strange--doesn’t it?--that a girl like you should be
refused by a poor nobody--for no reason.”
“He is honest and independent,” replied Beatrice strongly--but not so
strongly as she wished. “He wouldn’t marry me unless he loved me.”
“But I should think,” subtly suggested Richmond, “it would be--well,
not so very hard for a man to fall in love with a girl who had so many
advantages.”
Beatrice’s vanity lined up strongly behind her worldly common sense in
conceding plausibility--and more--to this suggestion. She laughed, but
she was impressed.
When they were near the house her father said good-humoredly: “Will you
take me in the way you came out? I’ve told Pinney not to turn on the
alarms until I come out of my study--where he thinks I am.”
So, father and daughter reëntered Red Hill by stealth, getting a lot
of fun out of the adventure--and separating at her door with a good,
old-fashioned, old-time hug and kiss.
XIII
PETER’S BAD QUARTER HOUR
The bill for that excursion in flimsy dress and slippers through the
wet, cold woods was promptly presented; and, after the rude manner
of all such bills, it had to be met on sight. As has been hinted,
Beatrice did not have those refined, ladylike colds which enable
heroines of fiction to continue in undiminished loveliness. She had
the plain, human cold that reduces its victim to a wheezing, sneezing,
snuffling hunk of misery, swollen of eyes and nose, laden with pocket
handkerchiefs. She let no one but the family see her at such times--and
was just as well pleased if they kept away.
Thus, she now had five days for uninterrupted reflection, in a
humble, most penitential frame of mind. Her father did not disturb
her, flattered her with attentions of specially selected flowers, of
solicitous inquiries twice a day, not through secretary or butler or
valet, but personally seeking her own maid.
The third day her mother came with glowing accounts of what he purposed
doing for her in commemoration of the marriage. The chief items were
magnificent jewels and the Red Hill estate. As the jewels would be
too dear, to her who loved jewels, for her ever to think of realizing
on them, and as the Red Hill estate would call for a huge annual
appropriation from her father’s bounty for maintenance, it must be said
that Richmond, resolved to keep his children dependent, had chosen not
uncannily. But Beatrice was in no mood to tear his acts into shreds
in search for the slyly concealed motive. Since he had reversed her
expectations by dealing gently with her when he caught her at the
cascade, she had almost restored him to favor in her thoughts. Nor
did the fact that gentle dealing was absolutely the only course left
open to him affect her generous judgment. This news of the gifts, the
excited talk of her maid, on her own behalf and also in repeating
what was being said below stairs, the journalistic comments on the
approaching “alliance”--all these things tended to put marrying
Peter before her in a less unfavorable light. And she was not seeing
Peter--nor Roger.
Abased by her cold, she took a low view of her goings-on with Roger.
She succeeded in shaming her skulking pride into the open, where it
made earnest efforts to reproach her for having thrown herself at a
man who had promptly and decisively repulsed her. No matter what his
reason. He had shown her that he did not love her--and did not want
her love. The older people grow, the less nervous they are about being
sillily romantic; they glory in the divine follies of love. Young heart
being all they have left of youth’s fair, fleeting riches, they try to
enjoy it to the uttermost. But young people, if at all sophisticated,
shy from extravagant romance; they fear to be convicted of the horrible
crime of being young and green; they dread falling victim to the
humiliating swindle of loving more than they are loved, of giving more
than they get. Until Beatrice met Roger she had prided herself on the
control of her mind over her heart, on being “woman of the world.” She
now began to smile--faintly, but with attempt at mockery--upon her
delirium of love. She did not regret it, did not repent it. But she
thought of it as a thing of the past.
Her father dropped in on her for a little talk before dressing for
dinner. He had never been so attentive--and no man could be more
fascinating than Richmond, when he wished. “I’ve got to make a tour of
the Northwest,” said he. “I must start not later than the twenty-second
of May--and be gone a month. I wish you’d either put off the wedding
till I get back or have it before I go. When Peter comes down to-morrow
you and he can talk it over. You know I’d rather you married before
I go. I’m not as young as I once was, and there’s an element of
uncertainty in these journeys. But it shall be just as you say.”
“It’ll have to be put off,” said Beatrice.
“Don’t forget that Peter has made arrangements for you to be presented
at court the tenth of June.”
“I simply can’t get ready.”
“Your mother thinks you can,” said Richmond, showing his keen
disappointment, but altogether in regret, not at all in anger or
reproach. “Still, do the best you can. Think it over. Talk with Peter.”
“I’ll do the best I can,” said Beatrice. She had protested more
strongly to him than she had in her own heart, for she was now sunk
down into indifference. Nothing seemed to matter. The cold had left
her physically below par; her mental state was therefore blackly
pessimistic. Roger’s lack of response seemed profoundly discouraging;
she began to doubt whether she loved him--whether she ever had loved
as she had fancied. We should get very much nearer to the truth about
human adversities and disasters--the truth about their real causes--did
we but know exactly what was the state of health of the persons chiefly
concerned. Beatrice well and Beatrice ill were two absolutely different
persons.
“Yes--I know you’ll oblige me if it’s possible,” said her father.
The next day happened to be a Sunday. Richmond himself motored down to
meet Peter, who was arriving in time for lunch.
As the young man descended from the train it took no skill whatever at
reading faces to discover that he was out of humor--had been brooding
over Beatrice’s treatment of him, and in the brooding had lost nothing
of the grouch he had taken away with him. A weak man never looks
so weak as when he is out of humor; accordingly, Peter was showing
his true character, or lack of character, with a distinctness that
irritated Richmond even as he reflected how admirably it fitted in with
his plans. Peter was not to blame for his weakness. He had not had the
chance to become otherwise. He had been deprived of that hand-to-hand
strife with life which alone makes a man strong. Usually, however, the
dangerous truth as to his weakness was well hidden by the fictitious
seeming of strength which obstinacy, selfishness, and the adulation of
a swarm of sycophants and dependents combine to give a man of means
and position. Richmond, for all his reverence for Peter’s lineage and
wealth nearly two centuries old, had not for an instant been deceived
as to his personal character. One reason why he felt so satisfied with
him as a son-in-law was his belief that Beatrice could be happy only
with a man she could rule; and on this Sunday of Peter’s arrival with
his weakness stripped naked to the most casual eye by his bad humor,
Richmond was better pleased than ever with his selection for his
high-strung daughter.
“Peter,” said he sharply, when he had him in the limousine.
The young man clinched his hands in a feeble gesture of preparation for
resolute resistance.
“I’ve got to go West the middle of the month. I want you and Beatrice
to marry before I go--say, on the twentieth. You have to be in London
early in the second week in June?”
“Yes,” said Peter reluctantly--the yes of a man lacking the moral
courage to say no.
“I’ll not be in the East again before the middle of June--maybe July.”
“Can’t do it,” said Peter with a sudden scowl at the back of the
chauffeur separated from them by thick glass.
“Why not?” inquired Richmond in the animal trainer’s tone and with the
animal trainer’s eye upon the unhappy Peter. “Why not?”
“I’m not sure I shall marry at all,” said Peter, and his fright
distorted his bluff at resoluteness into a sort of nervous impudence,
like that of the schoolboy braving the teacher’s uplifted ferule
because the rest of the school is waiting with ears that long to hear
him howl and beg.
Richmond twisted his small, wiry body round in the seat that he
might bring the various batteries in and behind his face full upon
Vanderkief. “Is this a joke?” he demanded.
“I wish it were,” replied Peter diplomatically. “I’ve made some
discoveries that will compel me to--to relieve your daughter of--of the
engagement which--which is so distasteful to her.”
Richmond’s policy in dealing with his fellow-men was to strike his
heaviest blow first--that is, he blew up the intrenchments before he
charged the intrenched. He laughed in that gentle, light way which is
as the soft tap of the nettle leaf that instantly produces a swelling
and a smarting. “So, this is why you’ve been sneaking round these last
three days, trying to dispose of the stocks I let you in on.”
Peter grew sickly pale. “I’ve--I’ve been--arranging my affairs
somewhat,” mumbled he.
Richmond laughed again--cheerily, genially. “This world,” said he, “is
peopled by fools. But the biggest fool of all is the fellow who thinks
he is a little less of a fool than the others. That seems to fit you,
my boy. You must think I was whelped only yesterday. Do you suppose I
trust people because I take ’em in with me? Why, I’d have been in the
jail or the poorhouse long ago if I had. When I let you in I locked the
door behind you. I always do.”
Peter’s hands were trembling so that they shook the stick round which
he had them clasped.
“You think you’ve sold out,” continued Richmond. “Instead, you’ll find
to-morrow that you still have all you bought through me--and that
you’ve got to buy as much more.”
“But I can’t do it,” pleaded Vanderkief--and his voice was not much
better than a whine. “I’ve got no ready money. I’d have to sell real
estate that’s been in the family from the beginning.”
“I’ll take it on mortgage,” said Richmond reassuringly. “So, you
needn’t worry about that, my boy.”
“But we never _mortgage_!” cried Peter. His face became shiny with
sweat. “No, indeed--we _never_ mortgage, Mr. Richmond. I’m much
obliged, but _we_ never mortgage.”