themselves, had an immediately tranquilizing effect upon him. Not for
the first time by any means he had a chilling, queasy misgiving that
there was truth in that view of a marriage between them. After a pause
he said:
“But what will you do?”
“Blessed if I know,” replied she, as if the matter were of not the
smallest consequence.
“You’ll have no friends. Nobody’ll dare be friends with you.”
“Have I any friends now?--any worth calling my own?”
“Then, as I understand it, you haven’t got much money. About enough to
pay for dresses?”
“About.”
“Then--what will you do?” repeated he, a real, friendly solicitude in
his voice and, better still, in his eyes.
“That’s unimportant. I’m escaping worse than I could possibly be
running into.”
“Marry me, Beatrice,” cried he. “It’s not a bad bet if you lose.”
She put out her hand impulsively with a grateful smile, the sweetest
and friendliest he had ever had from her. “I like that, Hanky! And
I like you when you show what you really are. But I’m not taking
advantage of your generosity.”
“I mean it, Beatrice--in dead, sober earnest--on a cold collar.”
She shook her pretty head smilingly. “Good-by. Come to see me. If we
run across each other when father’s about scowl and look the other way.”
“What do you take me for?”
“For a person with a little sense. Keep solid with father--for Allie’s
sake.”
“But I want _you_----”
She fled, laughing as if she had not a care in the world.
She tried to make her departure unobtrusive. But her father would not
have it so. Coming toward the house with the worst of his rage about
steamed away he caught sight of her and her maid waiting while several
trunks and packages were being loaded on the roof of a touring car.
At the sight he went insane again. He rushed wildly toward them and
shouted out, heedless of the servants: “Take that car back to the
garage, Léry! Valentine, go into the house--report to Mrs. Richmond.
And you”--he glared crazily at his daughter--“if you leave here you
walk!--and you never come back!”
Beatrice took the hand bag from her maid. “Good-by, Valentine,” said
she. There was a wonderful, quiet dignity in her bearing--a delicate
correctness of attitude, neither forward nor shrinking--evident
sensibility to the situation, yet no desire to aggravate it by show of
superior breeding or by defiance. It was a situation savagely testing
character. Beatrice responded to the test in a way that augured well
for her being able to look out for herself in any circumstances. She
smiled pleasantly, yet with restraint, to the agitated servants and
started down the road.
Valentine hesitated, then set out in her wake. “Come back here!”
shouted Richmond. “You are in my employ, not my daughter’s.”
Beatrice, guessing what was occurring, paused and turned. “Do as my
father says,” she said. “I shall not be able to keep you.”
“I, too, belong to myself, mademoiselle,” replied the girl with a quiet
dignity equal to that of her mistress. “I cannot stay here. I’ll go
with you if I may. But--I’ll not stay here.”
Richmond, realizing that his rage of the impotent had once more whirled
him into an impossible situation, disappeared in the house. Before
Beatrice and Valentine reached the lodge the auto overtook them. The
chauffeur, Léry, swung the car close in to the footpath beside the
road, jumped from his seat, opened the door.
“Did my father send you?” asked she.
“Yes, mademoiselle.”
When the two women were seated--Beatrice insisted on Valentine’s
sitting by her--Beatrice said: “I don’t believe Léry.”
Valentine gave a queer, little smile.
“But,” continued Beatrice, “father will never make any inquiries.”
“Léry understands,” said Valentine.
“Understands--what?”
“That you will win. Your father adores you.”
“You don’t know,” said Beatrice, shaking her head in a decided
negative. “And I can’t tell you.”
XV
WADE’S LOST FORTUNE
Beatrice had selected Valentine as her maid after trying more than a
score of various nationalities. She had selected her because Valentine
was a lady, and she could not endure servility or veneer manners in the
close relations that must exist between mistress and maid. In calling
Valentine a lady Beatrice did not mean that she was a “high-toned”
lady, or a fine lady, or a fashionable lady, or any of the other
qualified ladies, but that she was just a lady--well mannered, with
delicate instincts, intelligent, simple and sincere. Valentine acted as
Beatrice liked to believe she herself would act if she had to work for
her living and happened to find being lady’s maid the most convenient
way to do it.
At the Wolcott Beatrice registered beneath her own name that of Miss
Valentine Clermont. When the two were in the little inside suite
Beatrice took by way of making a beginning in the direction of the
practice of economy, she said:
“For the present, at least, you are to be my companion. I can’t live
here alone or just with a maid. So, the parlor is to be changed into a
bedroom for you.”
“Very well, mademoiselle,” promptly acquiesced the intelligent
Valentine, showing how rightly Beatrice had judged her.
“Miss Richmond,” corrected Beatrice with a smile.
“Pardon--certainly,” said Valentine.
“We are rather cramped here,” Beatrice went on. “But I guess I’ll be
looking back on this as spacious luxury before long.”
Miss Clermont smiled.
“Why do you smile, Miss Clermont?”
“You do not know your father, Miss Richmond.”
“I assure you we have parted finally,” said Beatrice. “If you have any
idea that in following my fortunes you are going with a person in the
position I had until two hours ago, put it out of your mind. I can pay
your wages--beg pardon, salary it is now--through next month--perhaps
for another month after that. Then I shall be-- Well, mine is a
precious small income--and will be smaller. However, I’ll see that you
get a place soon.”
Miss Clermont smiled.
“Why do you smile, Miss Clermont? Because you don’t believe me?”
“Not at all, Miss Richmond,” protested Valentine. “If you’re right
about your situation--then I shall stay with you until you are
settled--and, possibly, I can help you. If you are wrong--then I shall
stay on as your maid until you marry. After that--Monsieur Léry and I
are engaged. When we marry we shall go into business together.”
Beatrice paused in arranging her hair, turned and, half sitting on the
low bureau, looked at her companion with the expression of one who has
just given birth to a new and fascinating idea. “Why shouldn’t _we_
go into business--you and I?” she said. “I’ll have to do something,”
she went on. “I simply can’t content myself to live on--on what I’ll
have after a few days from now. I love luxury--nice surroundings--good
things to eat--beautiful clothes. Why not dressmaking?”
“We should get rich at it,” declared Miss Clermont.
And then it came out that she and Léry had been planning a dressmaking
business. Miss Richmond was just what they needed to make it a swift
and stupendous success. They had ten thousand dollars. If Miss
Richmond could put in as much and would be a public partner attracting
fashionable trade, giving the establishment eclat by wearing beautiful
dresses in fashionable restaurants or for drives in the Avenue, and so
on--and so on. “I can put in at least ten thousand,” said Beatrice.
“And I have ideas about clothes.”
“Indeed, yes,” assented Valentine warmly. “You have a style of your
own.”
“Yes, I think you and I have got me up rather stunningly these last two
years,” said Beatrice.
The dressmaking business was as good as started before they had
dinner--at which Miss Richmond had her companion sitting opposite her.
Miss Clermont as a companion was a triumph. No one but a Frenchwoman
could have glided so easily from menial to equal. “But then, I knew she
could,” thought Beatrice, “the instant I looked at her hands, when she
came to try for the place. Hands tell more than faces--and hers are the
hands of a lady.”
At noon the next day, while Beatrice and Valentine were out walking,
Peter telephoned, leaving word that he would call at half past four. At
that hour Beatrice received him in the hotel parlor. He eyed her with
admiring wonder. He expected to find all sorts of signs of her altered
position--would not have been surprised had she already begun to look
dowdy and down at the heel. Her radiance of spirit, of body and of
toilet struck him as little less than miraculous. “You certainly are a
cool one,” said he. “Why, you don’t look a bit upset.”
“Never felt so well in my life,” declared Beatrice. “I feel
so--so--free!”
Peter shook his head warningly. “Wait till you have had a full dose.
Wait till you really find out what you’re up against.”
“What is it?”
“Oh, you’re out of your world. It’s all very well to jump into the
water and swim for a few minutes--just for the fun of the thing. But
how about going in for being a fish and _living_ in the water--eh?”
“I’d no idea you could do so well, Peter,” said Beatrice. “That’s both
wise and witty. Why didn’t you begin that sort of talk sooner?”
“Oh, I say!” protested the young man. “I’m not such a mutt as you
thought me. No one could be.”
“Better and better,” cried Beatrice. “First thing you know I’ll be
trying to steal you back from Allie.”
Peter colored consciously. He said with a foolish attempt at the
offhand: “Oh--I saw her--at lunch. She wants to come to see you, but
don’t dare. Your father’s got her father right where he can put the
screws on him.”
“She might have telephoned,” said Beatrice, and her tone even more than
her look showed how Allie’s defection had hurt, how it was rankling.
Peter looked depressed. “Yes--I suppose she might,” conceded he. “But
don’t be too hard on her, Beatrice. You know how afraid we all are of
your father.”
“_You_’re here,” said Beatrice sententiously.
“Yes.” Peter reddened. “Hang it, I can’t fake with you. Fact
is--well--while I hope I’d have come anyway, still, I’d not be so open
about it, I’m afraid, if I hadn’t your father’s consent.”
“He told you to come!”
“He hasn’t given up,” said Peter with the air of a peddler undoing his
pack. “Asked me if I knew where you were stopping. I said yes--that you
told me. He asked where. I couldn’t think of any side step, so I let
out the truth. Any harm in that?”
“Not the slightest. I’m not hiding from anybody.”
“Then he said--just as I was leaving him on the ferry this morning: ‘If
you wish to call on my daughter and try to bring her to her right mind
I’ve no objection.’”
“And I’ve no objection, either,” said the girl, “unless you try to
bring me to my right mind. That one subject is taboo. You understand?”
Peter nodded. “I knew you meant it yesterday. I’m going ahead with
Allie. You and I are such old friends that I feel I can talk things
over with you. You see, it’s this way. I want to get married and
settled. We all marry and settle young in our family. I can’t have
what I want--but I can get something mighty good. Allie’s a trump. Such
a comfortable sort.”
“You couldn’t do better,” said Beatrice with more warmth than she felt.
For she had her eyes open to Allie now--too recently open for her to be
tolerant of what were weaknesses of the same species as Beatrice’s own,
if of a different genus.
“I’m not really in love with her,” continued Peter. “But----”
“But that’s of no consequence,” said Beatrice. “You’re one of the sort
that thinks whatever belongs to them is the grandest ever. You’ll soon
be crazy about her.”
“And she’ll always look well, too. She’s the image of her mother, and
the way to test a girl’s staying quality is to see how her mother holds
together. Yes, Allie’s good for the whole run--right into the last
quarter.”
Beatrice and Peter went into the restaurant and in a quiet corner sat
down to the sociability of tea. “Hanky,” said she, “I am going to treat
you as a friend. I am going to ask you to attend to some matters for me
which you must promise me never to speak of.”
Hanky showed that he was as highly flattered as the next young man
would be by marks of intimacy and confidence from a pretty and superior
young woman. “You can count on me--for anything I feel I’ve the right
to do,” said he. “But, whether I do it or not, I’ll keep my mouth shut.”
Beatrice poured the tea in reflective silence. Not until she had tasted
her own cup did she venture to begin expressing the thoughts she had
been arranging. “Roger Wade has about forty thousand dollars invested
in the bonds of the Wauchong Railway.”
Peter leaned back and gave a low whistle. He shook his head and
repeated the whistle.
“I see you understand.”
“I begin to,” said Peter.
Looking down at her plate and speaking somewhat nervously and hurriedly
the girl went on:
“I want you--through your broker or banker or however you please--I
want you to buy those bonds at what their market price was before the
road went into the hands of a receiver. I think it will take about
fifty thousand dollars. But buy them if it costs a hundred thousand. I
can’t go higher than that.”
Hesitatingly she lifted her eyes. Peter was sitting back in his chair
regarding her with an expression it makes any human being proud to have
caused in another’s face.
A little color came into the girl’s cheeks and into her eyes a look of
gratitude for the compliment and of pleasure in it. She went on:
“You understand, no one must know--must have the ghost of a suspicion.
Especially Roger Wade. But no one--no one.”
Peter busied himself at lighting the cigarette he selected with care
from the dozen in the huge gold case he carried in the inside pocket of
his sack coat.
“Your agent,” continued the girl, as if laying before him a carefully
thought-out plan, “can say he represents some men who are getting ready
to fight to get control of the road.”
“I didn’t know you knew anything about business,” said Peter huskily,
just for something to say.
“A little,” said Beatrice, who, in fact, was her father’s own
daughter--though, of course, she was not foolish enough to have failed
to use to its uttermost value the favorite feminine pretense of being
hopelessly incapable when it came to matters like business. “Will you
do it?”
“How much’ll you have left?” said Peter.
“Plenty,” Beatrice assured him. “Plenty.”
“I know better.”
She made an impatient gesture. “I’ll have more than enough to carry out
my plans.”
“There’s no reason on earth why you should do this,” protested he.
“You----”
“Drop it, Peter,” said she with a touch of her old imperiousness--of
her father’s intolerance of objection from inferior minds. “I know what
I’m about. Roger Wade is being stripped of all he has through no fault
of his--through my folly. I got him into the scrape--a scrape he wanted
to have nothing to do with. It’s up to me to get him out.”
“He had no business to come fooling round you!”
“He didn’t, Peter,” said the girl with convincing candor. “He-- I see
I’ve got to tell you. I proposed to him, and he refused me.”
“_You_ did--_that_!”
Beatrice blushed and laughed. “Oh, I made an idiot of myself. I thought
he was hanging back because he was awed--because father was rich--and
all that.”
Peter narrowed his eyelids and screwed up his mouth in an attempt
to look acute. “He’s working some sly dodge. Mark my word, some sly
dodge.” And he wagged his head wisely.
“I wish he were!” sighed Beatrice. “Because he liked me I thought
he--cared. You see, Peter, I’m telling you everything. Will you do what
I ask?”
Peter settled deeper in his chair. “I’d like to--I want to--but--”
At the beginnings of disappointment and disdain in her expression he
straightened, flushed. “Yes, by gad, I _will_ do it!”
“Why did you hesitate?”
“I didn’t.”
Beatrice looked at him doubtfully; suddenly she realized. “You fear
father’ll find out you did it? I hadn’t thought of that. No--you
mustn’t, Hanky. I’ll get some one else.”
“You’ve got to let me do it,” insisted he. “Anyone who didn’t know all
the circumstances would make a mess of it. I want to do it. And it
isn’t much of a risk.”
The event was that she yielded. Toward noon the next day he telephoned
that he had the bonds--had paid forty-one thousand dollars for
them--exactly. “I’ve got them here at my house. I can bring them to you
this afternoon if you like.”
“Do,” said Beatrice.
And at four he came with a parcel. Her eyes brightened at sight of it.
“I, too, have a package,” said she.
“So I see. What is it?”
“Your forty-one thousand in Governments.”
“But Governments are worth more.”
The girl laughed. “Not a cent. I didn’t say forty-one thousand par. I
had the exact calculation made at the bank.”
“What an ass I am, to forget you were Daniel Richmond’s daughter.”
“Give me my railway bonds.”
The exchange was made, he pretending that he did not dare release
his hold on his package until she had given him a hold on hers. The
waiters, idle in the restaurant at that hour, grinned at the sight
of so much gayety in two such superior-looking, young people. And
it certainly did look like a love affair--an engagement. Nor is it
surprising that Peter, full of the sense of having done her quite a
favor and not without risk to himself, should have again become hopeful
that this girl--“such a stunner--and so dead square, too”--might be
thinking more favorably of him.
“Now that these things are straightened out, Beatrice,” said he, “and
as you’ve got over your notions about Wade--why not give _me_ a chance?”
She laughed. “Allie’s affianced!” mocked she.
“I’ve told you that----”
“But,” interrupted she, “I never told you that I was--was cured--of
Roger Wade.”
“But you are. And he’s off your conscience.”
Beatrice’s eyes had an expression that sent a pang--and a thrill,
too--through him. “Peter--I love him,” she said with quiet
intensity--Dan Richmond intensity. “And I think you know now what that
means with me.”
He paled, stared at his cup. “I wish to God I didn’t,” he muttered.
“Now, Peter, you don’t mean that and you know it. The only reason you
keep after me is because you’ve always been used to having your own way
and you hate to be baffled.”
“That’s all the reason you stick on after Wade,” retorted he.
She laughed. “I’ll admit that has something to do with it. But not all,
Hanky. And the other part’s the important part.”
“You must know he’s after your money,” said he, looking down sourly.
“And you?” retorted she.
“Oh, I,” said he with Vanderkief hauteur. “I fancy I’m above suspicion.”
“Father says that the people who do the queerest tricks are the ones
that’re above suspicion--and take advantage of it. My, but you’re red,
Hanky. And while we’re suspecting-- Did you get those bonds for me just
because you----”
“Don’t say that, Beatrice!” he cried. “Honest, I didn’t. I wasn’t
trying to collect.”
“I believe you,” said she. “Please don’t do anything to make me doubt.”
“I won’t. I throw up the sponge. I’ll not annoy you any more.”
“You’ll be friends?”
“I’d hate to lose _your_ friendship,” said he with his slow, heavy
earnestness. “It’s the thing I’ve got that’s most worth while.”
XVI
PETER CALLS ON ROGER
Beatrice had carefully avoided learning anything at all about the
Wauchong Railway before investing nearly half her fortune in its bonds.
She wished to spare herself the temptation to hesitate; and she was too
fond of money as a means, too alive to its value, too well trained in
the matter of foolish investments, to trust her newly developed virtue
far. But now that the thing was done she made thorough inquiry into
the affairs of the railway. It did a losing passenger business; it had
made its money--very satisfactory earnings--by reason of its northern
terminal being in a group of rich coal mines. Her father ruined the
road by so juggling traffic agreements with the coal companies that the
Wauchong’s whole paying freight business was at a stroke transferred
to another road. The bonds were next to worthless. On the face of the
facts she had spent forty-one thousand dollars for a few ounces of
waste paper.
She was glad to find, on searching her heart, that she had not the
faintest feeling of regret for her action. It gave her a gratifying
opinion of herself to discover that, on the contrary, she regarded her
investment with satisfaction and pride. But these emotions did not
clash with a strong desire to recover the lost forty-one thousand,
if that could be brought about. She gave the matter anxious and
intelligent thought. The only plan that came to her and seemed at all
practicable was to let it leak out in Wall Street that a big block of
the bonds had been taken at more than par by Daniel Richmond’s daughter
_after_ the wiping out of the road’s revenues. This news would probably
boom the bonds and stocks if sent out adroitly. But Beatrice decided
against the scheme; she could not forget the losses to the innocent it
would involve. Perhaps the time had been--and not so very long ago,
either--when this view of the affair would not have occurred to her.
But since then she had experienced, had suffered, had learned. With a
sigh she put the bundle of bonds away in her safety-deposit box and
entered their cost to profit and loss. Her total income was now reduced
to just under twenty-seven hundred a year. “And I need at least that
many thousand,” thought she. “Let us see what this dressmaking scheme
has in it.”
And she proceeded to revolve Valentine’s project with a deliberate,
pessimistic, flaw-seeing scrutiny that would have commanded the
admiration of her father and would have increased his amazement how
one so strong in the head could be so weak in the heart. She questioned
and cross-questioned Valentine, who, for all her cleverness, had far
too much of the optimist in her composition. Beatrice had learned from
her father that hope, an invaluable ally when the struggle is on, is
an enemy, the worst of enemies--a traitor and a destroyer--if admitted
to the counsels when the struggle is planning. So, she took the worst
possible view of every phase of the proposed enterprise, and insisted
that all calculation be based upon the theory that they would lose
money from the start, would lose heavily, must prepare themselves to
hold out for the longest possible period against not only bad business,
but also bad luck.
Meanwhile, Peter was engaged in strenuous combat with a generous
impulse which seemed to him as out of place in his mind as an
eaglet in the brood of a hen. But the impulse would not expel; it
lingered obstinately, fascinating him as the idea of doing something
unconventional sometimes seizes upon and obsesses a primly conventional
woman. Finally, it fairly dragged him into a kind of rake’s progress
of generosity--for good has its rapid road no less than evil. It put
him alone in his speediest auto and, in the teeth of his dread of being
seen by Richmond or by some one who would tell Richmond, drove him
along the dusty highways of Northern New Jersey until he came to Deer
Spring--to a charming old farmhouse in its farthermost outskirts.
He went up the flowery lane to the old-fashioned porch, so cool, so
quiet, so restful, behind its odorous veils of blooming creepers. A
little exercise with the big brass dragon’s head that had served as
knocker for the best part of a century, and a pleasant-looking old
woman came round the corner of the house, wiping her hands on her
kitchen apron. Said Peter:
“Is Mr. Wade at home?”
“Not just now,” replied she, her head thrown far back that she might
inspect him through the spectacles on the end of her long, thin nose.
“I reckon most likely he’s up to the studio.”
“Where is it?”
“You follow the path back of the house--through the woods and the
hollow, then up the round-top hill. You’ll have to walk. It’s a right
smart piece--about a mile and a half.”
“Is there any place where I could”--Peter stopped and blushed; he had
caught himself just in time to prevent the word “hide” from slipping
out--“where I could put my machine?”
“There’s the shed behind the house.”
“Thank you.” And he sprang away to get the auto tucked out of sight.
When this was accomplished his mind became somewhat easier and he
set out for the studio. He got on fairly well with himself--until he
stood face to face with the big artist. Wade regarded him inscrutably:
Peter regarded Wade with an expression which, in a woman, would have
betokened an impending fit of hysteria.
“You don’t remember me, Mr. Wade?” said he.
“I remember you perfectly,” Roger replied.
“I--I called on a matter of--that is, not exactly of--well--a matter.”