COLD WATER
June heat dropped down on Chicago promptly that year and caused the
Barrys to plan to leave town earlier than it suited the banker to go.
Indeed, no weather condition ever made Linda's father willing to leave
business.
One evening, a few days before their intended departure, Bertram King
came to the house to see his employer. The heavy door stood open after
the hot day, and with the familiarity of an intimate he stepped inside,
intending to take his way to his old friend's den, but in the hall he
met Linda: Linda, blooming, dressed in white, and altogether lovely to
look upon. Over her arm she carried a silk motor coat and a chiffon
veil.
The young man's face looked haggard by comparison with her fresh
beauty, and he smiled unconscious admiration as he greeted the
exhilaration of her breezy appearance.
"Father is out," she said, "and I'm so glad!"
"Why? Did you want to see me alone?"
"I can't see you at all. I'm going out."
"But he hasn't come yet."
"Who?"
"Your motoring friend. Why are you glad your father is out?"
"Because I think he sees enough of you in the daytime. Too much.
Father's very tired. Can't you see it? I'm going to run away with him
on Saturday."
"So I hear.--I'm somewhat seedy myself. I think I'll accept your urgent
invitation to sit down until he comes."
"He isn't coming. He'll be out all the evening."
"I'm talking about your beau." There was an empty, nerveless quality to
the visitor's voice which began to impress his companion.
"Let's set a spell, as they say in Maine," he added. "I've been
thinking about Maine to-day."
Linda followed his lead into a reception room, where they sat down.
"A pretty good place to think about, when Lake Michigan sizzles," she
replied; "but I've chosen Colorado. We're going to Estes Park."
"Yes, so Mr. Barry told me. I should like to go there too." King's tone
was wistful.
"Perish the thought!" returned Linda devoutly. "I wouldn't have you
within a thousand miles of father."
"That's what the doctor says," remarked King, his pensive gaze bent on
the ribbon bordering of Linda's thin frock.
She started and leaned toward him. "The doctor!" she repeated. "Has
Doctor Flagg been talking to you about father? Is he--is he worried
about him?"
King shook his head. "I didn't go to Doctor Flagg. I went to Doctor
Young. We've been getting some golf together lately, and he's a good
sort."
"What's the matter with _you_, Bertram?" Linda sat up again, and her
voice and manner cooled. "What do you want of a doctor?"
King shook his head. "Never in my life before: first offense.
Everything seemed to go back on me all of a sudden. Sleeping, eating,
and all the rest of it." The speaker scowled. "The mischief of it is,
Young says I've got to get away for a month at least. He says--Oh, you
don't care what he says."
Linda regarded the downcast one. He was speaking to her as to an
equal, not, as usual, with tacit rebuke for some misdemeanor. This
blunt reproach, if it were reproach, merely referred casually to her
indifference.
"I care a great deal," she returned, with spirit. "I'm sure it will
make my father very anxious to have you away at the same time he is."
King lifted his weary eyes to hers, eager and bright.
"I'm sure Doctor Flagg could give you a tonic or something to tide you
over till we return in September," she went on. "You could go then."
Her companion leaned back in his chair with a long, inaudible breath.
"We have arranged all that. Mr. Barry wants me to go."
The speaker did look rather cadaverous. Linda realized it now. It was a
strange thing to have in any degree a sense of compassion for him: this
masterful man on whom her father leaned, the man who alone in all the
world had a hundred times without a word put her in the wrong, and whom
as often she had fervently wished she might never see again. She had
chafed against that chain of her father's reliance which bound herself
as well. There was no escaping King, and when in her busy college
life she thought of him at all, it was as a presumptuous creature who
was continually making good his presumption; and what could be more
exasperating than that?
King was a self-made man, one with few connections in Chicago, one of
whom was Linda's voice teacher, Mrs. Porter. The girl never had exactly
understood this relationship, but the fact that some of Mrs. Porter's
blood ran in his veins constituted Bertram's only redeeming trait in
the eyes of that lady's adorer. Now as she regarded him, staring with
discontented eyes at the rug, a sense came over her for the first time
that King was a lonely figure. It was all very well for a man in health
to live at the University Club and have his mind and life entirely
wrapped up in business; but when eating and sleeping became difficult
and the brain was over-weary, the evenings might seem rather long to
him.
"It serves a young man right," thought Linda, "when he will bind
himself on the wheel of business and act as if there was not one thing
in the world worth having but money!" Hadn't she seen to what such a
course had brought her father? She spoke:--
"There's a lot of nonsense in all this kow-towing to business," she
said. "Why do men make such slaves of themselves?"
"So their women can have a house like this, several gowns like yours,
and a motor like the one you're going out in," responded King dully.
Linda's rosy lips curled. "Fred Whitcomb's motor is last year's model."
Her companion smiled.
"There, you see!" he remarked. "There's nothing for me to do but to
keep on hustling so you can always have the latest."
Color flashed over Linda's face, but she shrugged carelessly.
"Oh, of course," she retorted, "everything is Eve's fault."
"Pretty sure to be," returned King, nodding slowly. "_Cherchez la
femme. Toujours cherchez la femme._" He regarded her for a moment of
silence, during which she was so uncomfortable that she raised both
hands to arrange an imaginary hairpin at the back of her head.
"Where have you decided to go?" she asked at last, continually warmer
under his eyes, and wondering if Fred Whitcomb had had a puncture.
"Why, I thought it would be great to spend long Colorado days in the
saddle with you."
"Did you really?" Linda's little laugh had a most discouraging note.
"Yes, but Dr. Young jumped on that. He said I mustn't go within gunshot
of your father."
Linda shook her head. "I should advise you not to myself. I'm a pretty
good shot."
King looked up. "It would be great, though. Think of having you through
with all this college foolery, and having plenty of time to talk to
you."
The girl's eyes brightened. "Pray, did you consider Yale foolery?"
"A lot of it, yes," replied King, wearily; "but never mind, Linda,
we're through with all that. I thought of the long days out there in
Estes Park, the divine air, 'the dark pilasters of the pines,' and you,
sparkling and radiant, on a good horse, and I with time enough to tell
you how I love you!"
"Bertram!" Linda shot rather than rose to her feet, and her eyes
launched arrows.
"Sit down. Sit down. I shall have to stand if you don't, and I'm
dog-tired. Didn't you know I loved you, Linda, honest now?"
The girl sank into her chair. She was trying to think of the cruelest
way to crush him. She opened her lips once or twice to speak and closed
them again. King regarded her immovably, his worn look meeting her
vital gaze.
"Your taste in jokes is very poor," she said at last, and her tone was
icy, "and you may rest assured that no regard for you will prevent my
telling my father exactly what you have said."
"You needn't. He knows it," returned King. His voice, which had
brightened, relapsed into nervelessness.
"My father knows it!" The girl could not restrain the exclamation.
"Yes, of course. I believed you did, upon my honor. I've had so little
time, you see, and you've been so busy."
He seemed so innocent of offense that her anger gave way to the
habitual exasperation.
"Bertram King," she said,--and if there is such a thing as stormy
dignity her manner expressed it,--"I believe the grind of business
has dried up your brains. I could count on the fingers of one hand
the occasions on which you have expressed even approval of me." Her
nostrils dilated as she spoke.
Her companion's solemn visage suddenly beamed in a smile. "You remember
them, then," he returned, with a pleased naïveté which nearly wrecked
her severity; but she held her pose.
"You dared to speak to my dear father--I think you have him mesmerized,
I really do--you dared to speak to him seriously of--of--caring for me,
when you have criticized nearly every move I have made at home for four
years."
"Have I? I don't remember saying anything discourteous to you."
"You didn't need to," retorted Linda. She didn't wish to snap, she
wished to freeze, but old wounds ached. "Your actions, your looks, were
quite enough."
"My looks?" repeated King mildly. "I'm sure you exaggerate. It must
have been these glasses: the wrong shape or something." He took them
off and regarded them critically.
"I hate your jokes!" retorted the girl, hotly.
"Hate what you like so long as it isn't me!"
"It is you!" The words came with emphasis.
"Then you do like me." King nodded. "It's an admission."
"You disgust me with your silliness," she returned, turning away. "I
wonder what has become of Fred Whitcomb." She rose and swept to the bay
window.
King followed her.
"Fred's a good fellow. I always liked Whitcomb," he said.
Linda made no response to this. She scanned the road anxiously up and
down.
There was another interim of silence; then:--
"Your father would be pleased, Linda," ventured King. "He said so."
"You hypnotize him. _I_ said so. My father," she added with scorn,--"my
father like me to marry a man who always disapproved of me?"
"Is that why you try to hate me?" asked King thoughtfully. "I have
disapproved of you a good many times, but I do think that--considering
everything--you've done very well."
Linda, the all-conquering, the leader, the criterion, turned upon the
speaker a gaze of amazement; then she laughed.
"How kind! You overwhelm me."
"Yes, I do really think so. Considering your beauty, your strength,
your easy finances, your college crushes, your empress-like reign,
you've done pretty well to consider others as much as you have."
"Others?" the echo came crisply. "What others?"
"Your father mainly."
"My father!" Linda faced him now, and sparks were flying from the brown
eyes. "Bertram King, I adore my father!"
"Yes, I know,--when you have time."
"What--what is it? Would you have had me not go to college?"
"No,"--King spoke in a reasonable tone,--"you did right to go to
college."
"Thank you--a thousand times." The crisp waves of the speaker's hair
seemed to snap as on a cold night while she bowed her thanks.
King played with his glasses; and she turned quickly back to the window
in order that he should not see that sudden tears quenched the fire in
her eyes. Her father's preoccupied face rose before her. Was it true
that she had ever neglected him? A habit of sighing unconsciously had
recently grown upon him. She had noticed that, and also that in late
months new lines of harassment had come in his face. Never mind, she
was going to run away with him, devote herself to him, far from this
man who dared to comment, and to pick flaws in her behavior. He should
never see her change.
"I did want to do some riding with you, Linda. The idea comes to me
like a picture or a poem when I think of those forests:--
'--here and there in solemn lines
The dark pilasters of the pines
Bore up the high woods' somber dome;
Between their shafts, like tapestry flung,
A soft blue vapor fell and hung.'
Nice, isn't it?"
"On what bond issue did you find that?" inquired Linda, tapping the
window pane with restless fingers, and watching impatiently for her
laggard cavalier.
"I told Dr. Young I wanted to play with you and your father, but he
said Mr. Barry and I didn't know how to play."
"He was quite right."
King regarded his companion's averted, charming head with a pale smile.
"You know," he remarked after a little, "we can love people while
seeing their imperfections."
"Not I! I love only perfection."
King gave a noiseless whistle, and raised his eyebrows. "I'm so glad
I'm perfect," he said at last.
Linda looked around at him slowly. How pale he was! Ripples of the
flood of tenderness that had bathed the thought of her father flowed
grudgingly toward her companion, as he stood there in the long
twilight, regarding her with lack-lustre eyes.
"There are pines outside of Colorado," she remarked.
"That's what Mrs. Porter says."
"Mrs. Porter?" Linda echoed him with interest; "but she has left town.
I went to the studio yesterday, and she's gone; gone to Maine without
letting me know."
"You've been pretty hard to locate, remember. She told me she was
going."
Linda sighed. "If she could have gone West with Father and me, it would
have been perfect."
"I'm said to resemble Maud very strongly," suggested King.
Linda regarded him with quick appraisement. "I never thought of it."
She turned back to the window. "I can quote poetry, too, when I think
of her. The other day I found a verse that fits her:--
'He that of such a height hath built his mind,
And reared the dwelling of his thoughts so strong,
As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame
Of his resolvéd powers; nor all the wind
Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong
His settled peace, or to disturb the same:
What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may
The boundless wastes and wilds of man survey.'
A man named Daniel wrote that. Isn't it perfect?"
"H'm," agreed King. "A Daniel come to judgment. Maud likes you very
much," he added.
"She loves me, thank you," flashed Linda, against his tepid speech.
"Then it runs in the family. I've told her how I felt toward you
myself."
"And told her all my faults, I suppose." The girl bit her lip.
"Oh, I knew she could see those. Maud is very penetrating." Fire and
dew flashed at him again. "Linda," he added in a different tone,
"Whitcomb can't be much longer. Do you know I'm asking you to marry me?"
An inarticulate sound from his companion, and continued drumming on the
window pane.
"I came to your father's employ ten years ago. I climbed the ladder
slowly, but just three years and eight months ago I reached the rung
from which I could see you." A pause. "You've haunted me ever since."
"Unintentional, I assure you." But Linda, her cheeks burning, could not
look around again. In her tumult of hurt pride and indignation there
penetrated a strain of triumph.
"Certainly," returned King; "you had other things to attend to, and so
had I. You've attended to them with vast credit, and your father will
tell you that I'm not so bad. Now a new chapter begins. Probably no one
will ever love you as comprehendingly as I do."
"I shouldn't think of marrying any one who didn't consider me perfect,"
announced Linda clearly.
"Remember the chromo that goes with me--Mrs. Porter. Maud would be your
cousin." King dangled his eyeglasses as he made the suggestion, and
regarded a short curl of hair that had dropped against his companion's
white neck.
Linda was silent for a moment. "I suppose you'll poison her mind
against me now," she said.
"No. You've poured hot tea and cold water on my budding hopes, but
I'm strictly honorable; and besides, I'm going to remember that both
douches are good for plants. Ask your father if I know how to hang on
to a proposition."
Silence. Linda's strong heart beat against her ribs as the man came a
step nearer to her.
"Don't you touch me!" she exclaimed.
"I wasn't thinking of touching you, Linda. I just wanted to fix your
hair. Something has fallen down here; just wait, I see a hairpin."
The girl preserved her pose under the caressing hands for a second, but
he fumbled the soft lock, and she suspected him.
"That will do," she said, jerking her head away.
"Oh, well, I fixed it. You might thank me, going out as you are."
"I should think Fred had fallen dead!" she exclaimed.
"Yes; Maud prescribes Maine for me. She knows the lay of the land
pretty well up there. She says she has known it for thirty years. I
think that's an exaggeration, don't you?"
"I don't know how old she is, and I don't care; I only know that it
must have nearly killed her husband to die and leave her."
King rocked back and forth on his toes. "I've heard that it did,
entirely," he responded.
Linda gave her head a quick shake. "No wonder I say idiotic things!"
she exclaimed. "It's catching!--Fred! Fred!" The sudden call was a cry
of relief, and the girl quickly stepped out of an open glass door upon
the piazza, and hurried down the steps. A motor had stopped beside the
walk. King caught up his hat and followed her.
"I thought you'd never come!" cried Linda, to the joy of the distracted
chauffeur.
"Great Scott! I thought I never would either!" he responded.
"What have you been doing? Climbing trees?" asked King. "Linda and I
had nearly decided to be reckless and go to a movie."
"Nothing of the sort," averred Linda, "but I had begun to believe all
four were punctured."
"One was," admitted Whitcomb, "and I've had a dozen delays." And he
gnashed his teeth over a wasted hour of June as he handed his fair one
into the front seat.
"Whither away?" inquired King.
"To the North Shore," responded Whitcomb, with fire in his eye which
portended speeding.
"Drop me at the club, then, will you, Freddy?" And without waiting for
the assent Bertram landed in the tonneau as the car started.
In front of the University Club he descended, and stepped forward
beside Linda.
"I may not see you again," he said, standing between the wheels,
hatless, and holding her hand. "Have a good time. If you send me a
picture postal, it will be all off between us."
"What did he mean?" asked Whitcomb, as with a whirr and a jerk they
were on their way again.
"Why, I'm going to Colorado with my father; or he's going with me. He's
tired."
"Well, he has nothing on King," remarked Freddy. "Never saw any one
run down as that chap has the last month. He'd better get some smaller
collars. Don't you care, Linda! Send _me_ a picture postal, and I'll
frame it."
The look that accompanied this outburst was lost on the adored one. She
was trying to remember if Bertram King's collar had looked too large.
The University Club was a lonely place!