the Count began to come around our house--a good deal--I mean, really,
quite a good deal--you understand?" said the girl, tossing her blonde
head, "what must Pa do but go to work and hunt him up. He thinks Jim
Canter is a winner, but I tell him Jimmy's bespoke." She looked at her
hostess archly.
"What did he find out?" inquired Miss Leigh coldly, "and how did he do
it?"
"Why, he just ran him down," explained the girl easily, "just as he does
anybody he wants to know about--put a man on him, you know."
"Oh! I see." Miss Leigh froze up a little; but the other girl did not
notice it.
"Only this one was somebody on the other side, of course, and he found
out that he's all right. He's a real count. He's the third son of Count
Pushkin, who was--let me see--a counsellor of his emperor, the Emperor
of Sweden."
"I didn't know they had an emperor in Sweden. He's a new one."
"Haven't they? Oh! well, maybe it was the King of Sweden, or the Emperor
of Russia--I don't know--they are all alike to me. I never could keep
them apart, even at Miss de Pense's. I only know he's a real count, and
I won a hundred dollars from Pa on a bet that he was. And he hated to
pay it! He bet that he was a cook or a barber. And I bet he wasn't. And,
oh! you know it's an awfully good joke on him--for he was a waiter in
New York for a while."
"A what?"
"A waiter--oh, just for a little while after he came over--before his
remittances arrived. But I made Pa pay up, because he said cook or
barber. I put it in this hat, see, ain't it a wonder?" She turned
herself around before a mirror and admired her hat which was, indeed as
Miss Leigh was forced to admit, "a wonder."
"You know it's just like the hat Gabrielle Lightfoot wears in the 'Star
of the Harem' when she comes in in the balloon. I got her to let me copy
it--exactly."
"You did? How did you manage that?"
"Why, you see, Jimmy Canter knows her, and he asked Harriet and me to
supper to meet her, and I declare she nearly made me die laughing--you
know she's a real sweet girl--Jimmy says she----"
"Who chaperoned you?" asked Miss Leigh, as she began to put on her
gloves.
"Chaperon? My dear, that's where the fun came in--we didn't have any
chaperon. I pretended that Harriet and the Count were married and called
her Countess, and she was so flattered at being given the title that she
was pleased to death--though you know, she's really dead in love with
Jimmy Canter, and he hardly looks at her. If he's in love with any
one--except Mr. James Canter, Jr.--it's with some one else I know." She
nodded her head knowingly.
"I'm afraid I have to go now," said Miss Leigh, "my father expects me to
come for him," she glanced at a jewelled watch. She had stiffened up
slightly.
"Well, of course, you'll come?"
"To what?"
"To our ball--that's what it is, you know, though it's for a charity,
and we make others pay for it. Why shouldn't they? I haven't decided yet
what charity. Harriet wants it to be for a home for cats. You'd know
she'd want that now, wouldn't you? She'll be in there herself some day.
But I'm not going to let it go for anything she wants. She's claiming
now that she got it up, and I'm just going to show her who did. I'm
thinking of giving it to that young preacher you met in the country two
years ago and got so interested in 't you got Dr. Capon to bring him
here as his assistant."
"You couldn't give it to a better cause," said Miss Leigh. "I wonder how
he is coming on?"
"I guess you know all right. But Pa says," pursued Miss McSheen without
heeding further the interruption, "we are ruining the poor, and the
reason they won't work is that we are always giving them money. You know
they're striking on our lines--some of them? I haven't decided yet what
to give it to. Oh! you ought to see the Doctor. He's the gayest of the
gay. He came to see me the other day. It almost made me die laughing.
You know he's dead in love with your Aunt. I used to think it was you;
but Pa says I'm always thinking everybody is in love with you--even the
Count--but he says--However----"
"I'll tell you what!" said Miss Leigh suddenly, "I'll come to the ball
if you'll give the proceeds to Mr. Marvel for his poor people."
"Done! See there! what did I tell you! I thought you weren't so pious
for nothing all on a sudden----"
"Milly, you're a goose," said Miss Leigh, picking up her sunshade.
"I'm a wise one, though--what was it our teacher used to tell us about
the geese giving the alarm somewhere? But I don't care. I'm the
treasurer and pay the bills. Pa says the man that holds the bag gets the
swag. Bring your father. We'll get something grand out of him. He always
gives to everything. I'll call him up and tell him to be sure and come.
You know they've landed the deal. Pa says every one of them has made a
pile. Your father might have made it, too, if he'd come in, but I think
he was fighting them or something, I don't quite understand it--anyhow
it's all done now, and I'm going to hold Pa up for the pearl necklace he
promised to give me. There's a perfect beauty at Setter & Stoneberg's,
only seventeen thousand, and I believe they'll take ten if it's planked
down in cold cash. Pa says the way to get a man is to put down the cold
cash before him and let him fasten his eye on it. If he's a Jew he says
he'll never let it go. I tell him by the same token he must be a Jew
himself; because he holds on to all the money he ever lays his eye on."
"Can I take you down-town anywhere?" inquired Miss Leigh, in a rather
neutral voice.
"No, my dear, just let me fix my hat. I have to go the other way. In
fact, I told the Count that I was going up to the park for a little
spin, and he asked if he couldn't come along. I didn't want him, of
course--men are so in the way in the morning, don't you think so? Is
that quite right?" She gave her head a toss to test the steadiness of
her hat.
"Quite," said Miss Leigh.
"Well, good-by. I'll count on you then. Oh! I tell you--among the
entertainments, the Count is going to perform some wonderful
sleight-of-hand tricks with cards. My dear, he's a magician!
He can do anything with cards. Heavens! it's after one. The
Count--good-by--good-by."
And as Miss Leigh entered her victoria the young lady rushed off, up
the street, straining her eyes in the direction of the park.
That night "the ball," as Miss McSheen called it, came off and was a
huge success, as was duly chronicled in all the morning papers next day
with an elaboration of description of millinery in exact proportion to
the degree of prominence of the wearer in the particular circle in which
the editor or his reporter moved or aspired to move. Mrs. Argand stood
first in "Wine-colored velvet, priceless lace," of the sort that
reporters of the female sex deem dearest, and "diamonds and rubies" that
would have staggered Sinbad, the sailor. Miss McSheen ran her a close
second, in "rose-colored satin, and sapphires," spoken of as "priceless
heirlooms." Miss Leigh shone lower down in "chiffon, lace, and pearls of
great price." So they went columns-full, all priceless, all beautiful,
all superlative, till superlatives were exhausted, and the imagination
of the reporters ran riot in an excess of tawdry color and English.
Among the men especially lauded were, first, a certain Mr. James Canter,
son and partner of "the famous Mr. Canter, the capitalist and
financier," who gave promise of rivalling his father in his "notorious
ability," and, secondly, a Count Pushkin, the "distinguished scion of a
noble house of international reputation who was honoring the city with
his distinguished presence, and was generally credited with having led
captive the heart of one of the city's fairest and wealthiest
daughters." So ran the record. And having nothing to do, I read that
morning the account and dwelt on the only name I recognized, the young
lady of the white chiffon and pearls, and wondered who the men were
whose names stood next to hers.
XI
ELEANOR LEIGH
Miss Leigh also read the papers that morning and with much amusement
till in one of them--the most sensational of all the morning
journals--she came on an article which first made her heart stop beating
and then set it to racing with sheer anger. To think that such a slander
could be uttered! She would have liked to make mince-meat of that
editor. He was always attacking her father.
A little later she began to think of the rest of the article! What was
the truth? Did they have the right to stop the train and hold it back?
This sort of thing was what a writer whom she knew denied in a series of
papers which a friend of hers, a young clergyman who worked among the
poor, had sent her and which the press generally was denouncing.
She had for some time been reading these papers that had been appearing
in the press periodically. They were written by a person who was
generally spoken of as "a Jew," but who wrote with a pen which had the
point of a rapier, and whose sentences ate into the steely plate of
artificial convention like an acid. One of the things he had said had
stuck in her memory. "As the remains of animalculæ of past ages furnish,
when compressed in almost infinite numbers, the lime-food on which the
bone and muscle of the present race of cattle in limestone regions are
built up, so the present big-boned race of the wealthy class live on the
multitudinous class of the poor."
The summer before she had met the writer of these articles and he had
made an impression on her which had not been effaced. She had not
analyzed her feelings to ascertain how far this impression was due to
his classical face, his deep, luminous eyes, and his impassioned manner,
yet certain it is that all of these had struck her.
Perhaps, I should give just here a little more of Miss Eleanor Leigh's
history as I came to know of it later on. How I came to know of it may
or may not be divulged later. But, at least, I learned it. She was the
daughter of a gentleman who, until she came and began to tyrannize over
him, gave up all of his time and talents to building up enterprises of
magnitude and amassing a fortune. He had showed abilities and ambition
at college "back East," where he came from, and when he first struck for
the West and started out in life, it was in a region and amid
surroundings which were just becoming of more than local importance as
they a little later grew under the guidance of men of action like
himself, to be of more than sectional importance. The new West as it was
then had called to him imperiously and he had responded. Flinging
himself into the current which was just beginning to take on force, he
soon became one of the pilots of the development which, changing a vast
region where roamed Indians and buffalo into a land of cities and
railways, shortly made its mark on the Nation and, indeed, on the
world, and he was before long swept quite away by it, leaving behind all
the intellectual ambitions and dreams he had ever cherished and giving
himself up soul and body to the pleasure he got out of his success as an
organizer and administrator of large enterprises. Wealth at first was
important to him, then it became, if not unimportant, at least of
secondary importance to the power he possessed. Then it became of
importance again--indeed of supreme importance; for the power he wielded
was now dependent on wealth and great wealth. His associates were all
men of large interests, and only one with similar interests could lead
them. New conditions had come about of late and new methods which he
could neither employ nor contend against successfully.
As he looked back on it later it appeared a feverish dream through which
he had passed. Its rewards were undeniable: luxury, reputation and power
beyond anything he had ever conceived of. Yet what had he not sacrificed
for them! Everything that he had once held up before his mind as a noble
ambition: study, reading, association with the great and noble of all
time; art and love of art; appreciation of all except wealth that men
have striven for through the ages; friendship--domestic joy--everything
except riches and the power they bring. For as he thought over his past
in his growing loneliness he found himself compelled to admit that he
had sacrificed all the rest. He had married a woman he loved and
admired. He had given her wealth and luxury instead of himself, and she
had pined and died before he awakened to the tragic fact. He had
grieved for her, but he could not conceal from himself the brutal fact
that she had ceased years before to be to him as necessary as his
business. She had left him one child. Two others had died in infancy,
and he had mourned for them and sympathized with her; but he never knew
for years, and until too late, how stricken she had been over their
loss. The child she had left him had in some way taken hold on him and
had held it even against himself. She had so much of himself in her that
he himself could see the resemblance; his natural kindness, his good
impulses, his wilfulness, his resolution and ambition to lead and to
succeed in all he undertook.
Even from the earliest days when she was left to him, Mr. Leigh was made
aware by Eleanor that he had something out of the ordinary to deal with.
The arrangement by which, on the death of her mother, she was taken by
her half-aunt, Mrs. Argand, to be cared for, "because the poor child
needed a mother to look after her," fell through promptly when the
little thing who had rebelled at the plan appeared, dusty and
dishevelled but triumphant, in her father's home that first evening, as
he was preparing, after leaving his office, to go and see her. It was
doubtless an auspicious moment for the little rebel; for her father was
at the instant steeped in grief and loneliness and self-reproach. He had
worked like fury all day to try to forget his loss; but his return home
to his empty house had torn open his wounds afresh, and the echoing of
his solitary foot-fall on the stair and in the vacant rooms had almost
driven him to despair. Every spot--every turn was a red-hot brand on the
fresh wound. No man had loved his wife more; but he awoke now when too
late to the torturing fact that he had left her much alone. He had
worked for her, leaving the enjoyment to the future; and she had died
before the future came, in that desolate present which was to be linked
forever to the irretrievable past. It was at this moment that he heard a
familiar step outside his door. His heart almost stopped to listen. It
could not be Eleanor--she was safe at her Aunt's, blocks away, awaiting
the fulfilment of his promise to come to see her--and it was now dark.
Could it be a delusion? His over-wrought brain might have fancied it.
Next second the door burst open, and in rushed Eleanor with a cry--"Oh!
Papa!"
"Why, Nelly! How did you come!"
"Slipped out and ran away! You did not come and I could not stay."
When the emotion of the first greeting was over, Mr. Leigh, under the
strong sense of what he deemed his duty to the child, and also to the
dear dead--which had led him at first to make the sacrifice of yielding
to his sister-in-law's urgency, began to explain to the little girl the
impropriety of her action, and the importance of her returning to her
Aunt, when she had been so kind. But he found it a difficult task. Mr.
Leigh believed in discipline. He had been brought up in a rigid school,
and he knew it made for character; but it was uphill work with the
little girl's arms clasped about his neck and her hot, tear-streaked
little face pressed close to his as she pleaded and met his arguments
with a promptness and an aptness which astonished him. Moreover, she had
a strong advocate in his own heart, and from the first moment when she
had burst in on his heart-breaking loneliness he had felt that he could
not let her go again if she were unhappy.
"She would not go back," she asserted defiantly. "She hated her Aunt,
anyhow--she was a hateful old woman who scolded her servants; and sent
her up-stairs to her supper."
When to this her father promptly replied that she must go back, and he
would take her, she as promptly changed her note.
"Very well, she would go back; he need not come with her; but she would
die."
"Oh, no, you will not die. You will soon grow very fond of her."
"Then I shall grow very worldly, like her," said Miss Precocity.
"What makes you think that?"
"Because she is a worldly old woman--and you said so yourself."
"I said so! When?" demanded her father, with a guilty feeling of vague
recollection.
"To Mamma once--when Mamma said something against her husband, you said
that, and Mamma said you ought not to say that about her sister--and you
said she was only her half-sister, anyhow, and not a bit like her--and
now you want to send me back to her as if I were only your half-child."
The father smiled sadly enough as he drew the anxious little face close
to his own.
"Oh! no--You are all mine, and my all. I only want to do what is right."
"Mamma wants me to stay with you--so it must be right."
The present tense used by the child struck the father to the heart.
"What makes you think that?" he asked with a sigh. The little girl was
quick to catch at the new hope.
"She told me so the day before she died, when I was in the room with
her; she said you would be lonely, and I must be a comfort to you."
Mr. Leigh gave a gasp that was almost a groan, and the child flung her
arms about his neck.
"And I sha'n't leave you, my all-Papa, unless you drive me; I promised
Mamma I would stay and take care of you, and I will. And you won't make
me--will you? For I am your all-daughter--You won't, will you?"
"No, d----d if I do!" said the father, catching her to his heart, and
trying to smother the oath as it burst from his lips.
As soon as she had quieted down, he went to her Aunt's to make the
necessary explanation. He found it not the easiest task, for the good
lady had her own ideas and had formed her plans, and the change was a
blow to her _amour propre_. It was, in fact, the beginning of the breach
between Mr. Leigh and his sister-in-law which led eventually to the
antagonism between them.
"You are going to spoil that child to death!" exclaimed the affronted
lady. This Mr. Leigh denied, though in his heart he thought it possible.
It was not a pleasant interview, for Mrs. Argand was deeply offended.
But Mr. Leigh felt that it was well worth the cost when, on his return
home, he was greeted by a cry of joy from the top of the stair where the
little girl sat in her dressing gown awaiting him. And when with a cry
of joy she came rushing down, Cinderella-like, dropping her slipper in
her excitement, and flung herself into his arms, he knew that life had
begun for him anew.
Mr. Leigh was quite aware of the truth of Mrs. Argand's prophecy; but he
enjoyed the spoiling of his daughter, which she had foretold, and he
enjoyed equally the small tyrannies which the child exercised over him,
and also the development of her mind as the budding years passed.
"Papa," she said one day, when she had asked him to take her somewhere,
and he had pleaded, "business," "why do you go to the office so much?"
"I have to work to make money for my daughter," said her father, stating
the first reason that suggested itself.
"Are you not rich enough now?"
"Well, I don't know that I am, with a young lady growing up on my
hands," said her father smiling.
"Am I very expensive?" she asked with a sudden little expression of
gravity coming over her face.
"No, that you are not, my dear--and if you were, there is no pleasure on
earth to me like giving it to you. That is one of my chief reasons for
working so steadily, though there are others."
"I have plenty of money," said Eleanor.
"Then you are happier than most people, who don't know when they have
plenty."
"Yes--you see, all I have to do when I want anything is to go into a
store and ask for it, and tell them I am your daughter, and they let me
have it at once."
"Oh ho!" said her father, laughing, "so that is the way you buy things,
is it? No wonder you have plenty. Well, you'd better come to me and ask
for what you want."
"I think the other is the easier way, and as you say you like to give it
to me, I don't see that it makes any difference."
Mr. Leigh decided that he had better explain the difference.
"I hate rich people," said Eleanor suddenly. "They are so vulgar."
"For example?" enquired her father looking with some amusement at the
girl whose face had suddenly taken on an expression of severe
priggishness.
"Oh! Aunt Sophia and Milly McSheen. They are always talking about their
money."
Mr. Leigh's eyes were twinkling.
"You must not talk that way about your Aunt Sophia--she is very fond of
you."
"She is always nagging at me--correcting me."
"She wants you to grow up to be a fine woman."
"Like her?" said Miss Eleanor pertly.
Mr. Leigh felt that it was wise to check this line of criticism, and he
now spoke seriously.
"You must not be so critical of your Aunt. She is really very fond of
you--and she was your mother's half-sister. You must respect her and
love her."
"I love her, but I don't like her. She and Milly McSheen are just
alike--always boasting of what they have, and do, and running down what
others have, and do."
"Oh, well, it takes a great many people to make a world," said Mr. Leigh
indulgently. Eleanor felt a want of sympathy and made another bid for
it.
"Milly McSheen says that her father is going to be the richest man in
this town."
"Ah! who is talking about money now?" said Mr. Leigh, laughing.
"I am not--I am merely saying what she said."
"You must not tell the silly things your friends say."
"No--only to you--I thought you said I must tell you everything. But, of
course, if you don't wish me to--I won't."
Mr. Leigh laughed and took her on his knee. He was not quite sure
whether she was serious or was only laughing at him, but, as he began to
explain, she burst into a peal of merriment over her victory.
In appearance she was like her mother, only he thought her fairer--as
fair as he had thought her mother in the days of his first devotion; and
her deeper eyes and firmer features were an added beauty; the
well-rounded chin was his own. Her eyes, deep with unfathomable depths,
and mouth, firm even with its delicate beauty, had come from some
ancestor or ancestress who, in some generation past, had faced life in
its most exacting form with undaunted resolution and, haply, had faced
death with equal calm for some belief that now would scarcely have given
an hour's questioning. So, when she grew each year, developing new
powers and charm and constancy, he began to find a new interest in life,
and to make her more his companion and confidante than he had ever made
her mother. He left his business oftener to see her than he had left it
to see her mother; he took her oftener with him on his trips, and took
more trips, that he might have her company. She sat at the head of his
table, and filled her place with an ability that was at once his
astonishment and his pride.
At one time, as she changed from a mere child to a young girl, he had
thought of marrying again, rather with a view to giving her a guide and
counsellor than for any other purpose. Her storminess, however, at the
mere suggestion, and much more, her real grief, had led him to defer the
plan from time to time, until now she was a young lady, and he could see
for himself that she needed neither chaperon nor counsellor. He
sometimes smiled to think what the consequences would have been had he
taken to wife the soft, kindly, rather commonplace lady whom he had once
thought of as his daughter's guardian. A domestic fowl in the clutches
of a young eagle would have had an easier time.