himself that Genevieve Ryan was "an interesting study," Faraday, after
some hesitation, paid a second visit to the Ryan mansion. Upon this
occasion the Chinese servant, murmuring unintelligibly, showed a rooted
aversion to his entering. Faraday, greatly at sea, wondering vaguely if
the terrible Barney Ryan had issued a mandate to his hireling to refuse
him admittance, was about to turn and depart, when the voice of Mrs.
Ryan in the hall beyond arrested him. Bidden to open the door, the
Mongolian reluctantly did so and Faraday was admitted.
"Sing didn't want to let you in," said Mrs. Ryan when they had gained
the long gold drawing-room, "because Genevieve was out. He never lets
any gentlemen in when she's not at home. He thinks I'm too old to have
them come to see me."
Then they sat down, and after a little preliminary chat on the Chinese
character and the Californian climate, Mrs. Ryan launched forth into her
favorite theme of discourse.
"Genevieve will be so sorry to miss you," she said; "she's always so
taken by Eastern gentlemen. They admire her, too, immensely. I can't
tell you of the compliments we've heard directly and indirectly that
they've paid her. Of course I can see that she's an unusually
fine-looking girl, and very accomplished. Mr. Ryan and I have spared
nothing in her education--nothing. At Madame de Vivier's academy for
young ladies--one of the most select in the State--Madame's husband's
one of the French nobility, and she always had to support him--Genevieve
took every extra--music, languages, and drawing. Professor Rodriguez,
who taught her the guitar, said that never outside of Spain had he heard
such a touch. 'Señora,' he says to me--that's his way of expressing
himself, and it sounds real cute the way he says it--'Señora, is there
not some Spanish blood in this child? No one without Spanish blood
could touch the strings that way.' Afterwards when Demaroni taught her
the mandolin, it was just the same. He could not believe she had not had
teaching before. Then Madame Mezzenott gave her a term's lessons on the
bandurria, and she said there never was such talent; she might have made
a fortune on the concert stage."
"Yes, undoubtedly," Faraday squeezed in, as Mrs. Ryan drew a breath.
"Indeed, Mr. Faraday, everybody has remarked her talents. It isn't you
alone. All the Eastern gentlemen we have met have said that the musical
talents of the Californian young ladies were astonishing They all agree
that Genevieve's musical genius is remarkable. Everybody declares that
there is no one--not among the Spaniards themselves--who sings _La
Paloma_ as Gen does. Professor Spighetti instructed her in that. He was
a wonderful teacher. I never saw such a method. But we had to give him
up because he fell in love with Gen. That's the worst of it--the
teachers are always falling in love with her; and with her prospects and
position we naturally expect something better. Of course it's been very
hard to keep her. I say to Mr. Ryan, as each winter comes to an end,
'Well, popper, another season's over and we've still got our Gen.' We
feel that we can't be selfish and hope to keep her always, and, with so
many admirers, we realize that we must soon lose her, and try to get
accustomed to the idea."
"Of course, of course," murmured Faraday, sympathetically, mentally
picturing Mrs. Ryan keeping away the suitors as Rizpah kept the eagles
and vultures off her dead sons.
"There was a Mr. Courtney who was very attentive last year. His
grandfather was an English lord. We had to buy a _Peerage_ to find out
if he was genuine, and, as he was, we had him quite often to the house.
He paid Genevieve a good deal of attention, but toward the end of the
season he said he had to go back to England and see his grandfather--his
father was dead--and left without saying anything definite. He told me
though, that he was coming back. I fully expect he will, though Mr. Ryan
doesn't seem to think so. Genevieve felt rather put out about it for a
time. She thought he hadn't been upright to see her so constantly and
not say anything definite. But she doesn't understand the subserviency
of Englishmen to their elders. You know, we have none of that in this
country. If my son Eddie wanted to marry a typewriter, Mr. Ryan could
never prevent it. I fully expect to see Mr. Courtney again. I'd like you
to meet him, Mr. Faraday. I think you'd agree very well. He's just such
a quiet, reserved young man as you."
When, after this interview, Faraday descended the broad steps between
the sleeping lions, he did not feel so good-tempered as he had done
after his first visit. He recalled to mind having heard that Mrs. Ryan,
before her marriage, had been a schoolteacher, and he said to himself
that if she had no more sense then than she had now, her pupils must
have received a fearful and wonderful education.
At Madame Delmonti's _conversazione_, given a few evenings later,
Faraday again saw Miss. Ryan. On the first of these occasions this
independent young lady was dressed simply in a high-necked gown and a
hat. This evening with her habitual disregard of custom and convention,
some whim had caused her to array herself in full gala attire, and,
habited in a gorgeous costume of white silk and yellow velvet, with a
glimmer of diamonds round the low neck, she was startling in her large
magnificence.
Jack Faraday approached her somewhat awe-stricken, but her gravely
boyish manner immediately put him at his ease. Talking with her over
commonplaces, he wondered what she would say if she knew of her mother's
conversation with him. As if in answer to the unspoken thought, she
suddenly said fixing him with intent eyes:
"Mommer said she told you of Mr. Courtney. Do you think he'll come
back?"
Faraday, his breath taken away by the suddenness of the attack, felt the
blood run to his hair, and stammered a reply.
"Well, you know," she said, leaning toward him confidentially, "I
_don't_. Mommer is possessed with the idea that he will. But neither
popper nor I think so. I got sort of annoyed with the way he
acted--hanging about for a whole winter, and then running away to see
his grandfather, like a little boy ten years old! I like men that are
their own masters. But I suppose I would have married him. You see, he
would have been a lord when his grandfather died. It was genuine--we saw
it in the _Peerage_."
She looked into Faraday's eyes. Her own were as clear and deep as
mountain springs. Was Miss. Genevieve Ryan the most absolutely honest
and outspoken young woman that had ever lived, or was she some subtle
and unusual form of Pacific Slope coquette?
"Popper was quite mad about it," she continued. "He thought Mr. Courtney
was an ordinary sort of person, anyway. I didn't. I just thought him
dull, and I suppose he couldn't help that. Mommer wanted to go over to
England last summer. She thought we might stumble on him over there. But
popper wouldn't let her do it. He sent us to Alaska instead." She
paused, and gave a smiling bow to an acquaintance. "Doesn't Mrs. Peck
look sweet tonight?" She designated the society editress of the _Morning
Trumpet_, whose fragile figure was encased in a pale blue Empire
costume. "And that lady over by the door, with the gold crown in her
hair, the stout one in red, is Mrs. Wheatley, a professional Delsarte
teacher. She's a great friend of mine and gives me Delsarte twice a
week."
And Miss. Genevieve Ryan nodded to the dispenser of "Delsarte," a large
and florid woman, who, taking her stand under a spreading palm tree,
began to declaim "The Portrait" of Owen Meredith, and in the recital of
the dead lady's iniquitous conduct the conversation was brought to a
close.
From its auspicious opening, Faraday's acquaintance with the Ryans
ripened and developed with a speed which characterizes the growth of
friendship and of fruit in the genial Californian atmosphere. Almost
before he felt that he had emerged from the position of a stranger he
had slipped into that of an intimate. He fell into the habit of visiting
the Ryan mansion on California Street on Sunday afternoons. It became a
custom for him to dine there _en famille_ at least once a week. The
simplicity and light-hearted good-nature of these open-handed and
kindly people touched and charmed him. There was not a trace of the snob
in Faraday. He accepted the lavish and careless hospitality of Barney
Ryan's "palatial residence," as the newspapers delighted to call it,
with a spirit as frankly pleased as that in which it was offered.
He came of an older civilization than that which had given Barney Ryan's
daughter her frankness and her force, and it did not cross his mind that
the heiress of millions might cast tender eyes upon the penniless sons
of New England farmers. He said to himself with impatient recklessness
that he ought not to and would not fall in love with her. There was too
great a distance between them. It would be King Cophetua and the
beggar-maid reversed. Clerks at one hundred and fifty dollars a month
were not supposed to aspire to only daughters of bonanza kings in the
circle from which Faraday had come. So he visited the Ryans, assuring
himself that he was a friend of the family, who would dance at Miss
Genevieve's wedding with the lightest of hearts.
The Chinese butler had grown familiar with Faraday's attractive
countenance and his unabbreviated English, when late one warm and sunny
afternoon the young man pulled the bell of the great oaken door of the
Ryans' lion-guarded home. In answer to his queries for the ladies, he
learned that they were out; but the Mongolian functionary, after
surveying him charily through the crack of the door, admitted that Mr.
Ryan was within, and conducted the visitor into his presence.
Barney Ryan, suffering from a slight sprain in his ankle, sat at ease in
a little sitting-room in the back of the house. Mr. Ryan, being
irritable and in some pain, the women-folk had relaxed the severity of
their dominion, and allowed him to sit unchecked in his favorite costume
for the home circle--shirt sleeves and a tall beaver hat. Beside him on
the table stood bare and undecorated array of bottles, a glass, and a
silver water-pitcher.
Mr. Ryan was now some years beyond sixty, but had that tremendous vigor
of frame and constitution that distinguished the pioneers--an attribute
strangely lacking in their puny and degenerate sons. This short and
chunky old man, with his round, thick head, bristling hair and beard,
and huge red neck, had still a fiber as tough as oak. He looked coarse,
uncouth, and stupid, but in his small gray eyes shone the alert and
unconquerable spirit which marked the pioneers as the giants of the
West, and which had carried him forward over every obstacle to the
summit of his ambitions. Barney Ryan was restless in his confinement;
for, despite his age and the completeness of his success, his life was
still with the world of men where the bull-necked old miner was a king.
At home the women rather domineered over him, and unconsciously made him
feel his social deficiencies. At home, too, the sorrow and the pride of
his life were always before him--his son, a weak and dissipated boy; and
his daughter, who had inherited his vigor and his spirit with a beauty
that had descended to her from some forgotten peasant girl of the Irish
bogs.
Faraday, with his power of listening interminably, and his intelligent
comments, was a favorite of old Ryan's. He greeted him with a growling
welcome; and then, civilities being interchanged, called to the
Chinaman for another glass. This menial, rubbing off the long mirrors
that decorated the walls, would not obey the mandate till it had been
roared at him by the wounded lion in a tone which made the chandelier
rattle.
"I never can make those infernal idiots understand me," said old Ryan,
plaintively. "They won't do a thing I tell them. It takes the old lady
to manage 'em. She makes them skip."
Then after some minutes of discourse on more or less uninteresting
matters, the weary old man, glad of a listener, launched forth into
domestic topics.
"Gen and the old lady are out buying new togs. I got a letter here
that'll astonish them when they get back. It's from that English cuss,
Courtney. D'ye ever hear about him? He was hanging about Genevieve all
last winter. And this letter says he's coming back, that his
grandfather's dead, and he's a lord now, and he's coming back. Do you
mind that now, Faraday?" he said, looking with eyes full of humor at the
young man.
Faraday expressed a sharp surprise.
"You know, Jack," continued the old man, "we're trained up to having
these high-priced Englishmen come out here and eat our dinners, and
sleep in our spare rooms, and drink our wines and go home, and when they
meet us there forget they've ever seen us before; but we ain't trained
up to havin' 'em come back this way, and it's hard to get accustomed to
it."
"It's not surprising," said Faraday, coldly.
"I'm not so dead sure of that. But I can tell you the old lady'll be
wild about this."
"Does Mrs. Ryan like him so much?" said the visitor, still coldly.
"All women like a lord, and Mrs. Ryan ain't different from the rest of
her sex. She's dead stuck on Gen marrying him. I'm not myself, Jack. I'm
no Anglomaniac; an American's good enough for me. I'm not spoiling to
see my money going to patch up the roof of the ancestral castle of the
Courtneys, or pay their ancestral debts--not by a long chalk."
"Do you think he's coming back to borrow money from you to pay off the
ancestral debts?" asked Faraday.
"Not to borrow, Jack. Oh no, not to borrow--to get it for keeps--it, and
Genevieve with it. And I don't just see how I'm to prevent it. Gen don't
seem to care much, but the old lady's got it on her mind that she'd like
to have a lord in the family, no matter how high they come; and she can
work on Gen. Last summer she wanted to go after him--wanted to track him
to his lair; but I thought she might's well stop there, and put m' foot
down. Gen don't seem to care about him one way or the other, but then
'Lady Genevieve' sounds pretty nice----"
Here a rustle of millinery, approaching through the drawing-room beyond,
cut short old Ryan's confidences. Faraday stood up to receive the
ladies, who entered jubilant and unwearied from an afternoon's shopping.
Genevieve, a magnificent princess, with the air of fashion given by
perfectly setting clothes, much brown fur and velvet, a touch of yellow
lace, and a quantity of fresh violets pinned to her corsage, looked as
if she would make a very fine Lady Genevieve.
As soon as she heard the news she demanded the letter, and perused it
intently, Faraday covertly watching her. Raising her eyes, she met his
and said, with a little mocking air, "Well, Mr. Faraday, and what do you
think of that?"
"That your mother seems to have been right," said Faraday, steadily
eyeing her. An expression of chagrin and disappointment, rapid but
unmistakable, crossed her face, dimming its radiance like a breath on a
mirror. She gave a little toss to her head, and turning away toward an
adjacent looking-glass, took off her veil and settled her hat.
Mrs. Ryan watched her with glowing pride already seeing her in fancy a
member of the British aristocracy; but old Ryan looked rather downcast,
as he generally did when confronted by the triumphant gorgeousness of
the feminine members of his household. Faraday, too, experienced a
sudden depression of spirits so violent and so uncalled for that if he
had had room for any other feeling he would have been intensely
surprised. Barney Ryan, at the prospect of having to repair the breaches
in the Courtney exchequer and ancestral roof-tree, may have experienced
a pardonable dejection. But why should Faraday, who assured himself a
dozen times a day that he merely admired Miss. Genevieve, as any man
might admire a charming and handsome girl, feel so desperate a
despondency?
To prove to himself that his gloom did not rise from the cause that he
knew it did rise from, Faraday continued to be a constant guest at the
Ryan mansion, continued to see Miss. Genevieve at Madame Delmonti's and
at the other small social gatherings, where the presentable young New
Englander found himself quite a lion. When Mrs. Ryan saw him alone she
flattered his superior intelligence and experience of the world by
asking his opinion of the approaching Lord Hastings's matrimonial plans.
This frank and outspoken lady was on the thorns of uncertainty, Lord
Hastings's flight on his former visit having shaken her faith in him.
Quite unconsciously she impressed upon Faraday how completely both she
and Genevieve had come to trust him as a tried friend.
With the exaltation of a knight of old, Faraday felt that their trust
would never be misplaced. He answered Mrs. Ryan's anxious queries with
all the honesty of the calmest friendship. Alone in the great gold
drawing-room, he talked to Genevieve on books, on music, on fashion, on
society--on all subjects but that of love. And all the while he felt
like the nightingale who sings its sweetest music while pressing its
breast against a thorn.
Lord Hastings seemed to have lost no time in repairing to the side of
the fair lady who was supposed to be the object of his fondest
devotions, and whom destiny appeared to have selected as the renovator
of Courtney Manor. Four weeks from the day Faraday had heard of his
intended visit, the Bostonian received a letter from Mrs. Ryan bidding
him to dinner to meet the illustrious guest. It seemed to Faraday that
to go to see the newcomer in converse with Genevieve, beautiful in her
costliest robes, to view the approving smiles of Mrs. Ryan, and perhaps
the happy blushes of Miss. Ryan, was the manly upright course for one
who could never be more than the avowed friend and silent worshipper of
Barney Ryan's only daughter.
Arriving ten minutes late, he found the party already at the table. It
was an inflexible rule of Barney Ryan's to sit down to dinner at the
stroke of half-past six, whether his guests were assembled or not--a
rule which even his wife's cajoleries and commands were powerless to
combat.
Tonight the iron old man might well regard with pride the luxury and
splendor that crowned a turbulent career begun in nipping poverty. The
round table, glowing beneath the lights of the long crystal chandeliers,
sparkled with cut-glass, and shone with antique silverware, while in the
center a mass of pale purple orchids spread their fragile crêpe-like
petals from a fringe of fern. Opposite him, still unfaded, superbly
dressed, and admirably self-possessed, was his smiling consort, toward
whom, whatever his pride in her might have been, his feelings this
evening were somewhat hostile, as the ambitious and determined lady had
forced him to don regulation evening dress, arrayed in which Barney's
peace of mind and body both fled.
On either side of the table sat his son and daughter, the latter
handsomer than Faraday had ever seen her, her heavy dress of
ivory-tinted silk no whiter than her neck, a diamond aigret trembling
like spray in her hair. Her brother Eddie, a year and a half her senior,
looked as if none of the blood of this vigorous strong-thewed, sturdy
stock could run in his veins. He was a pale and sickly looking lad, with
a weak, vulgar face, thin hair and red eyelids. Faraday had only seen
him once or twice before, and judged from remarks made to him by
acquaintances of the family that Eddie did not often honor the parental
roof with his presence. Eddie's irregular career appeared to be the one
subject on which the family maintained an immovable and melancholy
reserve. The disappointment in his only son was the bitter drop in
Barney Ryan's cup.
There were other guests at the table. Faraday received a coy bow from
Mrs. Peck, who had given her hair an extra bleaching for this occasion,
till her pinched and powdered little face looked out from under an
orange-colored thatch; Mrs. Wheatley was there too, with a suggestion of
large white shoulders shining through veilings of black gauze; and with
an air of stately pride, Mrs. Ryan presented him to Lord Hastings. This
young man, sitting next Genevieve, was a tall, fair, straight-featured
Englishman of gravely unresponsive manners. In the severe perfection of
his immaculate evening dress he looked a handsome, well-bred young
fellow of twenty-five or six.
As the late guest dropped into his seat, the interrupted conversation
regathered and flowed again. Barney Ryan said nothing. He never spoke
while eating, and rarely talked when women were present. Genevieve too
was quiet, responding with a gently absent smile, when her cavalier,
turning upon her his cold and expressionless steely-blue eyes, addressed
to her some short regulation remark on the weather, or the boredom of
his journey across the plains. The phlegmatic calm of his demeanor
remained intact even under the coquettish onslaughts of Mrs. Peck and
Mrs. Wheatley, who extracted from him with wheedling perseverance his
opinions on the State, the climate, and the country. Lord Hastings
replied with iron-bound and unsmiling brevity, his wide cold glance
resting with motionless attention upon the painted physiognomy of Mrs.
Peck and the broad and buxom one of Mrs. Wheatley, and his head turning
with dignified difficulty in his exceedingly high and tight collar, as
one and the other assailed him with queries. Meanwhile the object of his
journey, slowly moving her great fan of white ostrich feathers, looked
across the table at Faraday and made a little surreptitious _moue_.
The conversation soon became absorbed by the two married ladies,
Faraday, and Lord Hastings. Only the Ryans were silent, Genevieve now
and then throwing a lazy sentence into the vortex of talk, and Mrs. Ryan
being occupied in lending a proud ear to the coruscations of wit that
sparkled around the board, or in making covert gestures to the
soft-footed Mongols, who moved with deft noiselessness about the table.
Eddie Ryan, like his father, rarely spoke in society. In the glare of
the chandelier he sat like a strange uncomfortable guest, taking no
notice of any one. Toward the end of the feast he conversed in urgent
whispers with his mother--a conversation which ended in her
surreptitiously giving him her keys under the edge of the table. Before
coffee, Eddie left, on the plea of an important engagement, retiring
through the drawing-room, softly jingling the keys.
After this dinner, when Lord Hastings's presence had banished all his
doubts, when the young Englishman's attractive appearance had impressed
itself upon his jealous eye, and Genevieve's gentle indifference had
seemed to him but a modest form of encouragement. Faraday found but
little time to pay visits to the hospitable home of Barney Ryan.
The family friend that they had all so warmly welcomed and taken to
their hearts withdrew himself quietly but firmly from their cheerful
circle. When, at rare intervals, he did drop in upon them, he pleaded
important business engagements as the reason of his inability to accept
their numerous invitations to dinners and theater parties. After these
mendacious statements he would wend a gloomy way homeward to his Pine
Street boarding-house, and there spend the evening pretending to read,
and cursing the fate which had ever brought him within the light of
Genevieve's _beaux yeux_. The fable of being the family friend was quite
shattered. Faraday had capitulated.
Nearly two months after the dinner, when rumors of Genevieve Ryan's
engagement to Lord Hastings were in lively circulation, Faraday called
at the lion-guarded mansion on California Street, and, in answering to
his regulation request for the ladies, received the usual unintelligible
Chinese rejoinder, and was shown into the gold drawing-room. There,
standing in front of a long mirror, looking at her skirts with an eye of
pondering criticism, was Miss Genevieve, dressed to go out. She caught
sight of him in the glass, turned abruptly, and came forward, a color in
her face.
"Is that you?" she said, holding out her hand. "I am so glad. I thought
it was somebody else." Having thus, with her customary candor,
signified to Faraday that she was expecting Lord Hastings, she sat down
facing him, and said, abruptly, "Why haven't you been here for so long?"
Faraday made the usual excuses, and did quail before her cold and steady
eyes.