the position of the major part of the audience, who are exceedingly
uneducated people. It is very hard to give an opinion, Professor. I
must say that your entertainment this evening was listened to with rapt
interest.”
The professor turned solemnly towards his daughter.
“You hear that, Beatrice?” he said severely. “You hear what Mr.
Tavernake says? 'With rapt interest!'”
“At the same time,” Tavernake went on, “without a doubt Miss Beatrice's
songs were also extremely popular. It is rather a pity that the
management could not give you a little more time.”
“Failing that, sir,” the professor declared, “my point is, as I
explained before, that Beatrice should give up one of her songs. What
you have said this evening more than ever confirms me in my view.”
Beatrice smiled thankfully at Tavernake.
“Well,” she suggested, “at any rate we will leave it for the present.
Sometimes I think, though, father, that you frighten them with some of
your work, and you must remember that they come to be amused.”
“That,” the professor admitted, “is the most sensible remark you have
made, Beatrice. There is indeed something terrifying in some of my
manifestations, terrifying even to myself, who understand so thoroughly
my subject. However, as you say, we will dismiss the matter for the
present. The thought of this supper party is a pleasant one. Do you
remember, Mr. Tavernake, the night when you and I met in the balcony at
Imano's?”
“Perfectly well,” Tavernake answered.
“Now I shall test your memory,” the professor continued, with a knowing
smile. “Can you remember, sir, the brand of champagne which I was then
drinking, and which I declared, if you recollect, was the one which best
agreed with me, the one brand worth drinking?”
“I am afraid I don't remember that,” Tavernake confessed. “Restaurant
life is a thing I know so little of, and I have only drunk champagne
once or twice in my life.”
“Dear, dear me!” the professor exclaimed. “You do astonish me, sir.
Well, that brand was Veuve Clicquot, and you may take my word for it,
Mr. Tavernake, and you may find this knowledge useful to you when you
have made a fortune in America and have become a man of pleasure; there
is no wine equal to it. Veuve Clicquot, sir, if possible of the year
1899, though the year 1900 is quite drinkable.”
“Veuve Clicquot,” Tavernake repeated. “I'll remember it for this
evening.”
The professor beamed.
“My dear,” he said to Beatrice, “Mr. Tavernake will think that I had a
purpose in testing his memory.”
Beatrice smiled.
“And hadn't you, father?” she asked.
They all laughed together.
“Well, it is pleasant,” the professor admitted, “to have one's
weaknesses ministered to, especially when one is getting on in life,”
he added, with a ponderous sigh. “Never mind, we will think only of
pleasant subjects this evening. It will be quite interesting, Mr.
Tavernake, to hear you order the supper.”
“I sha'n't attempt it,” Tavernake answered. “I shall pass it on to you.”
“This reminds me,” the professor declared, “of the old days. I feel sure
that this is going to be a thoroughly enjoyable evening. We shall think
of it often, Mr. Tavernake, when you lie sleeping under the stars. Why,
what a wonderful thing these taxicabs are! You see, we have arrived.”
They secured a small table in a corner at Imano's, and Tavernake found
himself curiously moved as he watched Beatrice take off her worn and
much mended gloves and look around uneasily at the other guests. Her
clothes were indeed shabby, and there were hollows now in her cheeks.
Again he felt that pain, a pain for which he could not account. Suddenly
America seemed so far away, the loneliness of the great continent became
an actual and appreciable thing. The professor was very much occupied
ordering the supper. Tavernake leaned across the table.
“Do you remember our first supper here, Beatrice?” he asked.
She nodded, with an attempt at brightness which was a little pitiful.
“Yes,” she replied, “I remember it quite well. And now, please, Leonard,
don't talk to me again until I have had a glass of wine. I am tired and
worn out, that is all.”
Even Tavernake knew that she was struggling against the tears which
already dimmed her eyes. He filled her glass himself. The professor set
his own down empty with the satisfied smile of a connoisseur.
“I think,” he said, “that you will agree with me about this vintage.
Beatrice, this is what will bring color into your cheeks. My little
girl,” he continued, turning to Tavernake, “will soon need a holiday. I
am hoping presently to be able to arrange a short tour by myself, and if
so, I shall send her to the seaside. Now I want you particularly to try
the fish salad--the second dish there. Beatrice, let me help you.”
Presently the orchestra began to play. The warmth of the room, the wine
and the food--Tavernake had a horrible idea once that she had eaten
nothing that day--brought back some of the color to Beatrice's cheeks
and a little of the light to her eyes. She began to talk something in
the old fashion. She avoided, however, any mention of that other supper
they had had together. As time went on, the professor, who had drunk the
best part of two bottles of wine and was talking now to a friend, became
almost negligible. Tavernake leaned across the table.
“Beatrice,” he whispered, “you are not looking well. I am afraid that
life is getting harder with you.”
She shook her head.
“I am doing what I must,” she answered. “Please don't sympathize with
me. I am hysterical, I think, tonight. It will pass off.”
“But, Beatrice,” he ventured, timidly, “could one do nothing for you?
I don't like these performances, and between you and me, we know they
won't stand your father's show much longer. It will certainly come to an
end soon. Why don't you try and get back your place at the theatre? You
could still earn enough to keep him.”
“Already I have tried,” she replied, sorrowfully. “My place is filled
up. You see,” she added, with a forced laugh, “I have lost some of
my looks, Leonard. I am thinner, too. Of course, I shall be all right
presently, but it's rather against me at these west-end places.”
Again he felt that pain at his heart. He was sure now that he was
beginning to understand!
“Beatrice,” he whispered, “give it up--marry me I will take care of
him.”
The flush of color faded from her cheeks. She shivered a little and
looked at him piteously.
“Leonard,” she pleaded, “you mustn't. I really am not very strong just
now. We have finished with all that--it distresses me.”
“But I mean it,” he begged. “Somehow, I have felt all sorts of things
since we came in here. I think of that night, and I believe--I do
believe that what came to me before was madness. It was not the same.”
She was trembling now.
“Leonard,” she implored, “if you care for me at all, be quiet. Father
will turn round directly and I can't bear it. I shall be your very
faithful friend; I shall think of you through the long days before we
meet again, but don't--don't spoil this last evening.”
The professor turned round, his face mottled, his eyes moist, a great
good-humor apparent in his tone.
“Well, I must say,” he declared, “that this has been a most delightful
evening. I feel immensely better, and you, too, I hope, Beatrice?”
She nodded, smiling.
“I trust that when Mr. Tavernake returns,” the professor continued,
“he will give us the opportunity of entertaining him in much the same
manner. It will give me very much pleasure, also Beatrice. And if, sir,”
he proceeded, “during your stay in New York you will mention my name at
the Goat's Club, or the Mosquito Club, you will, I think, find yourself
received with a hospitality which will surprise you.”
Tavernake thanked him and paid the bill. They walked slowly down the
room, and Tavernake was curiously reluctant to release the little hand
which clasped his.
“I have kept this to the last,” Beatrice said, in a low tone. “Elizabeth
is in London.”
He was curiously unmoved.
“Yes?” he murmured.
“I should like you--I think it would be well for you to go and see her,”
she went on. “You know, Leonard, you were such a strange person in those
days. You may imagine things. You may not realize where you are. I think
that you ought to go and see her now, now that you have lived through
some suffering, now that you understand things better. Will you?”
“Yes, I will go,” Tavernake promised.
Beatrice glanced round towards where her father was standing.
“I don't want him to know,” she whispered. “I don't want either him
or myself to be tempted to take any of her money. She is living at
Claridge's Hotel. Go there and see her before you leave for your new
life.”
He stood at the door and watched them go down the Strand, the professor,
flamboyant, walking erect with flying coat-tails, and his big cigar held
firmly between his teeth; Beatrice, a wan figure in her black clothes,
clinging to his arm. Tavernake watched them until they disappeared,
conscious of a curious excitement, a strange pain, a sense of
revelation. When at last they were out of sight and he turned back for
his coat and hat, his feet were suddenly leaden. The band was playing
the last selection--it was the air which Beatrice had sung only that
night at the east-end music-hall. With a sudden overpowering impulse
he turned and strode down the Strand in the direction where they had
vanished. It was too late. There was no sign of them.
CHAPTER VI. UNDERSTANDING COMES TOO LATE
Tavernake's first impression of Elizabeth was that he had never, even
in his wildest thoughts, done her justice. He had never imagined her so
wonderfully, so alluringly beautiful. She had received him, after a very
long delay, in her sitting-room at Claridge's Hotel--a large apartment
furnished more like a drawing-room. She was standing, when he entered,
almost in the center of the room, dressed in a long lace cloak and a hat
with a drooping black feather. She looked at him, as the door opened, as
though for a moment half puzzled. Then she laughed softly and held out
her hands.
“Why, of course I remember you!” she exclaimed. “And to think that when
I had your card I couldn't imagine where I had heard the name before!
You are my dear estate agent's clerk, who wouldn't take my money, and
who was so wretchedly rude to me twelve months ago.”
Tavernake was quite cool. He found himself wondering whether this was
a pose, or whether she had indeed forgotten. He decided that it was a
pose.
“I was also,” he reminded her, “one night in your rooms at the Milan
Court when your husband--”
She stopped him with an imperative gesture.
“Spare me, please,” she begged. “Those were such terrible days--so dull,
too! I remember that you were quite one of the brightest spots. You
were absolutely different from every one I had ever met before, and you
interested me immensely.”
She looked at him and slowly shook her head.
“You look very nice,” she said. “Your clothes fit you and you are most
becomingly tanned, but you don't look half so awkward and so adorable.”
“I am sorry,” he replied, shortly.
“And you came to see me!” she went on. “That was really nice of you. You
were quite fond of me, once, you know. Tell me, has it lasted?”
“That is exactly what I came to find out,” he answered deliberately. “So
far, I am inclined to think that it has not lasted.”
She made a little wry face and drew his arm through hers.
“Come and sit down and tell me why,” she insisted. “Be honest, now. Is
it because you think I am looking older?”
“I have thought of you for many hours a day for months,” Tavernake said,
slowly, “and I never imagined you so beautiful as you seem now.”
She clapped her hands.
“And you mean it, too!” she exclaimed. “There is just the same
delightfully convincing note in your tone. I am sure that you mean it.
Please go on adoring me, Mr. Tavernake. I have no one who interests me
at all just now. There is an Italian Count who wants to marry me, but he
is terribly poor; and a young Australian, who follows me everywhere, but
I am not sure about him. There is an English boy, too, who is going to
commit suicide if I don't say 'yes' to him this week. On the whole,
I think I am rather sorry that people know I am a widow. Tell me, Mr.
Tavernake, are you going to adore me, too?”
“I don't think so,” Tavernake answered. “I rather believe that I am
cured.”
She shrugged her shoulders and laughed musically.
“But you say that you still think I am beautiful,” she went on, “and I
am sure my clothes are perfect--they came straight from Paris. I hope
you appreciate this lace,” she added, drawing it through her fingers.
“My figure is just as good, too, isn't it?”
She stood up and turned slowly round. Then she sat down suddenly, taking
his hand in hers.
“Please don't say that you think I have grown less attractive,” she
begged.
“As regards your personal attractions,” Tavernake replied, “I imagine
that they are at least as great as ever. If you want the truth, I think
that the reason I do not adore you any longer is because I saw your
sister last night.”
“Saw Beatrice!” she exclaimed. “Where?”
“She was singing at a miserable east-end music-hall so that her father
might find some sort of employment,” Tavernake said. “The people only
forbore to hiss her father's turn for her sake. She goes about the
country with him. Heaven knows what they earn, but it must be little
enough! Beatrice is shabby and thin and pale. She is devoting the best
years of her life to what she imagines to be her duty.”
“And how does this affect me?” Elizabeth asked, coldly.
“Only in this way,” Tavernake answered. “You asked me how it was that I
could find you as beautiful as ever and adore you no longer. The reason
is because I know you to be wretchedly selfish. I believed in you
before. Everything that you did seemed right. That was because I was a
fool, because you had filled my brain with impossible fancies, because I
saw you and everything that you did through a distorted mirror.”
“Have you come here to be rude?” she asked him.
“Not in the least,” he replied. “I came here to see whether I was
cured.”
She began to laugh, very softly at first, but soon she threw herself
back among the cushions and laid her hand caressingly upon his shoulder.
“Oh, you are just the same!” she cried. “Just the same dear, truthful
bundle of honesty and awkwardness and ignorance. So you are going to be
victim of Beatrice's bow and spear, after all.”
“I have asked your sister to marry me,” Tavernake admitted. “She will
not.”
“She was very wise,” Elizabeth declared, wiping the tears from her eyes.
“As an experience you are delightful. As a husband you would be terribly
impossible. Are you going to stay and take me out to dinner this
evening? I'm sure you have a dress suit now.”
Tavernake shook his head.
“I am sorry,” he said. “I have already an engagement.”
She looked at him curiously. Was it really true that he had become
indifferent? She was not used to men who escaped.
“Tell me,” she asked, abruptly, “why did you come? I don't understand.
You are here, and you pass your time being rude to me. I ask you to take
me to dinner and you refuse. Do you know that scarcely a man in London
would not have jumped at such a chance?”
“Very likely,” Tavernake answered. “I have no experience in such
matters. I only know that I am going to do something else.”
“Something you want to do very much?” she whispered.
“I am going down to a little music-hall in Whitechapel,” Tavernake said,
“and I am going to meet your sister and I am going to put her in a cab
and take her to have some supper, and I am going to worry her until she
promises to be my wife.”
“You are certainly a devoted admirer of the family,” she laughed.
“Perhaps you were in love with her all the time.”
“Perhaps I was,” he admitted.
She shook her head.
“I don't believe it,” she said. “I think you were quite fond of me once.
You have such absurdly old-fashioned ideas or I think that you would be
fond of me now.”
Tavernake rose to his feet.
“I am going,” he declared. “This will be good-bye. To-morrow I am going
to British Columbia.”
The laughter faded for a moment from her face. She was suddenly serious.
“Don't go,” she begged. “Listen. I know I am not good like Beatrice, but
I do like you--I always did. I suppose it is that wonderful truthfulness
of yours. You are a different type from the men one meets. I am rather
a reckless person. It is such a comfort sometimes to meet any one like
you. You seem such an anchorage. Stay and talk to me for a little time.
Take me out to-night. You asked me to go with you once, you know, and I
would not. To-night it is I who ask you.”
He shook his head slowly.
“This is good-bye!” he said, firmly. “I suppose, after all, you were not
unkind to me in those days, but you taught me a very bitter lesson. I
came to you to-day in fear and trembling. I was afraid, perhaps, that
the worst was not over, that there was more yet to come. Now I know that
I am free.”
She stamped her foot.
“You shall not go away like that,” she declared.
He smiled.
“Do you think I do not understand?” he continued. “It is only because
I am able to go, because the touch of your fingers, that look in your
eyes, do not drive me half mad now, that you want me to stay. You would
like to try your powers once more. I think not. I am satisfied that I am
cured indeed, but perhaps it is safer to risk nothing.”
She pointed to the door.
“Very well, then,” she ordered, “you can go.”
He bowed, and already his fingers were on the handle. Suddenly she
called to him.
“Leonard! Leonard!”
He turned round. She was coming towards him with her arms outstretched,
her eyes were full of tears, there were sobs in her voice.
“I am so lonely,” she begged. “I have thought of you so much. Don't go
away unkindly. Stay with me for this evening, at any rate. You can see
Beatrice at any time. It is I who need you most now.”
He looked around at the splendid apartment; he looked at the woman whose
fingers, glittering with jewels, rested upon his shoulders. Then he
thought of Beatrice in her shabby black gown and wan little face, and
very gently he removed her hands.
“No,” he said, “I do not think that you need me any more than I need
you. This is a caprice of yours. You know it and I know it. Is it worth
while to play with one another?”
Her hands fell to her sides. She turned half away but she said
nothing. Tavernake, with a sudden impulse which had in it nothing of
passion--very little, indeed, of affection--lifted her fingers to his
lips and passed out of the room. He descended the stairs, filled with
a wonderful sense of elation, a buoyancy of spirit which he could not
understand. As he walked blithely to his hotel, however, he began to
realize how much he had dreaded this interview. He was a free man, after
all. The spell was broken. He could think of her now as she deserved to
be thought of, as a consummate woman of the world, selfish, heartless,
conscienceless. He was well out of her toils. It was nothing to him if
even he had known that at that moment she was lying upon the sofa to
which she had staggered as he left the room, weeping bitterly.
For over an hour Tavernake endured the smells and the bad atmosphere of
that miserable little music-hall, watching eagerly each time the numbers
were changed. Then at last, towards the end of the program, the manager
appeared in front.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “I regret very much to inform
you that owing to the indisposition of the young lady, Miss Beatrice
Franklin and her father are unable to appear to-night. I have pleasure
in announcing an extra turn, namely the Sisters De Vere in their
wonderful burlesque act.”
There was a murmur of disapprobation mingled with some cheering.
Tavernake left his place and walked around to the back of the hall.
Presently the manager came out to him.
“I am sorry to trouble you, sir,” Tavernake said, “but I heard your
announcement just now from the front. Can you give me the address of
Professor Franklin? I am a friend, and I should like to go and see
them.”
The manager pointed to the stage-doorkeeper.
“This man will give it you,” he announced, shortly. “It's quite close. I
shall look in myself after the show to know how the young lady is.”
Tavernake procured the address and set out in the taxicab which he had
kept waiting. The driver listened to the direction doubtfully.
“It's a poor sort of neighborhood, sir,” he remarked.
“We've got to go there,” Tavernake told him.
They reached it in a few minutes, a miserable street indeed. Tavernake
knocked at the door of the house to which he was directed, with sinking
heart. A man, collarless and half dressed, in carpet slippers, opened
the door after a few moments' waiting.
“Well, what is it?” he asked, gruffly.
“Is Professor Franklin here?” Tavernake inquired.
The man seemed as though he were about to slam the door, but thought
better of it.
“If you're a friend of the professor's, as he calls himself,” he said,
“and you've any money to shell out, why, you're welcome, but if you're
only asking out of curiosity, let me tell you that he used to lodge here
but he's gone, and if I'd had my way he'd have gone a week ago, him and
his daughter, too.”
“I don't understand,” Tavernake protested. “I thought the young lady was
ill.”
“She may be ill or she may not,” the man replied, sulkily. “All I know
is that they couldn't pay their rent, couldn't pay their food bill,
couldn't pay for the drinks the old man was always sending out for. So
tonight I spoke up and they've gone.”
“At least you know where to!” Tavernake exclaimed.
“I ain't no sort of an idea,” the man declared. “Take my word for it
straight, guvnor, I know no more about where they went to than the man
in the moon, except that I'm well shut of them, and there's a matter of
eighteen and sixpence, if you care to pay it.”
“I'll give you a sovereign,” Tavernake promised, “if you will tell me
where they are now.”
“What's the good of making silly conditions like that!” the man
grumbled. “If I knew where they were, I'd earn the quid soon enough, but
I don't, and that's the long and the short of it! And if you ain't going
to pay the eighteen and six, well, I've answered all the questions I
feel inclined to.”
“I'll make it two pounds,” Tavernake promised. “I'm going to sail for
America to-morrow morning early, and I must see them first.”
The man leaned forward.
“Look here,” he said, “if I knew where they was, a quid would be quite
good enough for me, but I don't, and that's straight. If you want to
look for them, I should try one of the doss houses. As likely there as
anywhere.”
He slammed the door and Tavernake turned away. A sudden despair had
seized him. He looked up and down the street, he looked away beyond and
thought of the miles and miles of streets, the myriads of chimneys,
the huge branches of the great city stretching far and wide. At eight
o'clock the next morning, he must leave for Southampton. Was it too
late, after all, that he had discovered the truth?
CHAPTER VII. IN A VIRGIN COUNTRY
One night Tavernake began to laugh. He had grown a long brown beard
and the hair was over his ears. He was wearing a gray flannel shirt, a
handkerchief tied around his neck, and a pair of worn riding breeches
held up by a belt. He had kicked his boots off at the end of a long day,
and was lying in the moonlight before a fire of pine logs, whose smoke
went straight to the star-hung sky. No word had been spoken for the last
hour. Tavernake's fit of mirth came with as little apparent reason as
the puffs of wind which every now and then stole down from the mountain
side and made faint music in the virgin forests.
Pritchard turned over on his side and looked at him. Cigars had for many
weeks been an unknown thing, and he was smoking a corn-cob pipe full of
coarse tobacco.
“Stumbled across a joke anywhere?” he asked.
“I'm afraid no one but myself would see the humor of it,” Tavernake
answered. “I was thinking of those days in London; I was thinking of
Beatrice's horror when she discovered that I was wearing ready-made
clothes, and the amazement of Elizabeth when she found that I hadn't a
dress suit. It's odd how cramped life gets back there.”
Pritchard nodded, pressing the tobacco down into the bowl of his pipe
with his forefinger.
“You're right, Tavernake,” he agreed. “One loses one's sense of
proportion. Men in the cities are all alike. They go about in disguise.”
“I should like,” Tavernake said, inconsequently, “to have Mr. Dowling
out here.”
“Amusing fellow?” Pritchard inquired.
Tavernake shook his head, smiling.
“Not in the least,” he answered, “only he was a very small man. Out
here it is difficult to keep small. Don't you feel it, Pritchard? These
mountains make our hills at home seem like dust-heaps. The skies seem
loftier. Look down into that valley. It's gigantic, immense.”
Pritchard yawned.
“There's a little place in the Bowery,” he began,--
“Oh, I don't want to know any more about New York,” Tavernake
interrupted. “Lean back and close your eyes, smell the cinnamon trees,
listen to that night bird calling every now and then across the ravine.
There's blackness, if you like; there's depth. It's like a cloak of
velvet to look into. But you can't see the bottom--no, not in the
daytime. Listen!”
Pritchard sat up. For a few moments neither spoke. A dozen yards or so
off, a scattered group--the rest of the party--were playing cards around
a fire. The green wood crackled, an occasional murmur of voices, a laugh
or an exclamation, came to their ears, but for the rest, an immense, a
wonderful silence, a silence which seemed to spread far away over that
weird, half-invisible world! Tavernake listened reverently.
“Isn't it marvelous!” he exclaimed. “We haven't seen a human being
except our own party, for three days. There probably isn't one within
hearing of us now. Very likely no living person has ever set foot in
this precise spot.”
“Oh, it's big,” Pritchard admitted, “it's big and it's restful, but it
isn't satisfying. It does for you for a time because you started life
wrong and you needed a reaction. But for me--ah, well!” he added, “I
hear the call right across these thousands of miles of forests and
valley and swamp. I hear the electric cars and the clash of the overhead
railway, I see the flaring lights of Broadway and I hear the babel of
tongues. I am going back to it, Tavernake. There's plenty to go on with.
We've done more than carry out our program.”
“Back to New York!” Tavernake muttered, disconsolately.
“So you're not ready yet?” Pritchard demanded.
“Heavens, no!” Tavernake answered. “Who would be? What is there in New
York to make up for this?”
Pritchard was silent for a moment.
“Well,” he said, “one of us must be getting back near civilization.
The syndicate will be expecting to hear from us. Besides, we've reports
enough already. It's time something was decided about that oil country.
We've done some grand work there, Tavernake.”
Tavernake nodded. He was lying on his side and his eyes were fixed
wistfully southward, over the glimmering moonlit valley, over the great
wilderness of virgin pine woods which hung from the mountains on the
other side, away through the cleft in the hills to the plains beyond,
chaotic, a world unseen.
“If you like to go on for a bit,” Pritchard suggested, slowly, “there's
no reason why you shouldn't take McCleod and Richardson with you, and
Pete and half the horses, and strike for the tin country on the other
side of the Yolite Hills. So long as we are here, it's quite worth it,
if you can stick it out.”
Tavernake drew a long breath.
“I'd like to go,” he admitted, simply. “I know McCleod is keen about
prospecting further south. You see, most of our finds so far have been
among the oil fields.”
“Settled,” Pritchard declared. “To-morrow, then, we part. I'm for the
valley, and I reckon I'll strike the railway to Chicago in a week. Gee
whiz! New York will seem good!”
“You think that the syndicate will be satisfied with what we have done
so far?” Tavernake asked.
His companion smiled.
“If they aren't, they'll be fools. I reckon there's enough oil fields
here for seven companies. There'll be a bit for us, too, Tavernake, I
guess. Don't you want to come back to New York and spend it?”
Tavernake laughed once more, but this time his laugh was not wholly
natural.
“Spend it!” he repeated. “What is there to spend it on? Uncomfortable
clothes, false plays, drinks that are bad for you, food that's half
poisoned, atmosphere that stifles. My God, Pritchard, is there anything
in the world like this! Stretch out your arms, man. Lie on your back,
look up at the stars, let that wind blow over your face. Listen.”
They listened, and again they heard nothing, yet again there seemed to
be that peculiar quality about the silence which spoke of the vastness
of space.
Pritchard rose to his feet.
“New York and the fleshpots for me,” he declared. “Keep in touch, and
good luck old man!”
Next day at dawn they parted, and Tavernake, with his three companions,
set his face towards an almost undiscovered tract of land. Their
progress was slow, for they were all the time in a country rich with
possibilities. For weeks they climbed, climbed till they reached the
snows and the wind stung their faces and they shivered in their rugs at
night. They came to a land of sparser vegetation, of fewer and wilder
animals, where they heard the baying of wolves at night, and saw the
eyes of strange animals glisten through the thicket as the flames of
their evening fire shot up toward the sky. Then the long descent began,
the long descent to the great plain. Now their faces were bronzed with
a sun ever hotter, ever more powerful. No longer the snow flakes
beat their cheeks. They came slowly down into a land which seemed to
Tavernake like the biblical land of Canaan. Three times in ten days they
had to halt and make a camp, while Tavernake prepared a geographical
survey of likely-looking land.
McCleod came up to Tavernake one day with a dull-looking lump in his
hand, glistening in places.
“Copper,” he announced, shortly. “It's what I've been looking for all
the time. No end to it. There's something bigger than oil here.”
They spent a month in the locality, and every day McCleod became more
enthusiastic. After that it was hard work to keep him from heading
homeward at once.
“I tell you, sir,” he explained to Tavernake, “there's millions there,
millions between those four stakes of yours. What's the good of more
prospecting? There's enough there in a square acre to pay the expenses
of our expedition a thousand times over. Let's get back and make
reports. We can strike the railway in ten days from here--perhaps
sooner.”
“You go,” Tavernake said. “Leave me Pete and two of the horses.”
The man stared at him in surprise.
“What's the good of going on alone?” he asked. “You're not a mining
expert or an oil man. You can't go prospecting by yourself.”
“I can't help it,” Tavernake answered. “It's something in my blood, I
suppose. I am going on. Think! You'll strike that railway and in a month
you will be back in New York. Don't you imagine, when you're there, when
you hear the clatter and turmoil of it, when you see the pale crowds
chivvying one another about to pick the dollars from each other's
pockets,--don't you believe you'll long for these solitudes, the big
empty places, great possibilities, the silence? Think of it, man. What
is there beyond those mountains, I wonder?”
McCleod sighed.
“You're right,” he said. “One may never get so far out again. Our
fortunes will keep, I suppose, and anyhow we ought to strike a telegraph
station in about a fortnight. We'll go right ahead, then.”
In ten days they dropped ten thousand feet. They came to a land where
their throats were always dry, where the trees and shrubs seemed like
property affairs from a theatre, where they plunged their heads into
every pool that came to wash their noses and mouths from the red dust
that seemed to choke them up. They found tin and oil and more copper.
Then, by slow stages, they passed on to a land of great grassy plains,
of blue grass, miles and miles of it, and suddenly one day they came to
the telegraph posts, rough pine trees unstripped of their bark, with
a few sagging wires. Tavernake looked at them as Robinson Crusoe might
have looked at Man Friday's footsteps. It was the first sign of human
life which they had seen for months.
“It's a real world we are in, after all!” he sighed. “Somehow or other,
I thought--I thought we'd escaped.”
CHAPTER VIII. BACK TO CIVILIZATION
Pritchard, trim and neat, a New Yorker from the careful arrangement
of his tie to the tips of his patent boots, gazed with something like
amazement at the man whom he had come to meet at the Grand Central
Station. Tavernake looked, indeed, like some splendid bushman whose life
has been spent in the kingdom of the winds and the sun and the rain.
He was inches broader round the chest, and carried himself with a new
freedom. His face was bronzed right down to the neck. His beard was
fullgrown, his clothes travel-stained and worn. He seemed like a breath
of real life in the great New York depot, surrounded by streams of
black-coated, pale-cheeked men.
Pritchard laughed softly as he passed his arm through his friend's.
“Come, my Briton,” he said, “my primitive man, I have rooms for you in
a hotel close here. A bath and a mint julep, then I'll take you to
a tailor's. What about the big country? It's better than your salt
marshes, eh? Better than your little fishing village? Better than
building boats?”
“You know it,” Tavernake answered. “I feel as though I'd been drawing
in life for month after month. Have I got to wear boots like
yours--patent?”
“Got to be done,” Pritchard declared.
“And the hat--oh, my Heavens!” Tavernake groaned. “I'll never become
civilized again.”
“We'll see,” Pritchard laughed. “Say, Tavernake, it was a great trip of
ours. Everything's turning out marvelously. The oil and the copper are
big, man--big, I tell you. I reckon your five thousand dollars will be
well on the way to half a million. I'm pretty near there myself.”
It was not until later on, when he was alone, that Tavernake realized
with how little interest he listened to his companion's talk of their
success. It was so short a time ago since the building up of a fortune
had been the one aim upon which every nerve of his body was centered.
Curiously enough, now he seemed to take it as a matter of course.
“On second thoughts, I'll send a tailor round to the hotel,” Pritchard
declared. “I've rooms myself next yours. We can go out and buy boots and
the other things afterwards.”
By nightfall, Tavernake's wardrobe was complete. Even Pritchard regarded
him with a certain surprise. He seemed, somehow, to have gained a new
dignity.
“Say, but you look great!” he exclaimed. “They won't believe it at the
meeting to-morrow that you are the man who crossed the Yolite Mountains
and swam the Peraneek River. That's a wonderful country you were in,
Tavernake, after you left the tracks.”
They were in Broadway, with the roar of the city in their ears, and
Tavernake, lifting his face starwards, suddenly seemed to feel the
silence once more, the perfume of the pine woods, the scent of nature
herself, freed through all these generations of any presence of man.
“I'll never keep away from it,” he said, softly. “I'll have to go back.”
Pritchard smiled.
“When your report's in shape and the dollars are being scooped in,
they'll send you back fast enough--that is, if you still want to go,” he
remarked. “I tell you, Leonard Tavernake, our city men here are out for
the dollars. Over on your side, a man makes a million or so and he's
had enough. One fortune here only seems to whet the appetite of a New
Yorker. By the way,” he added, after a moment's hesitation, “does it
interest you to know that an old friend of yours is in New York?”
Tavernake's head went round swiftly.
“Who is it?” he asked.
“Mrs. Wenham Gardner.”
Tavernake set his teeth.
“No,” he said, slowly, “I don't know that that interests me.”
“Glad of it,” Pritchard went on. “I can tell you I don't think things
have been going extra well with the lady. She's spent most of what she
got from the Gardner family, and she doesn't seem to have had the best
of luck with it, either. I came across her by accident. She is staying
at a flashy hotel, but it's in the wrong quarter--second-rate--quite
second-rate.”
“I wonder whether we shall see anything of her,” Tavernake remarked.
“Do you want to?” Pritchard asked. “She'll probably be at Martin's for
lunch, at the Plaza for tea, and Rector's for supper. She's not exactly
the lady to remain hidden, you know.”
“We'll avoid those places, then, if you are taking me around,” Tavernake
said.
“You're cured, are you?” Pritchard inquired.
“Yes, I am cured,” Tavernake answered, “cured of that and a great many
other things, thanks to you. You found me the right tonic.”
“Tonic,” Pritchard repeated, meditatively. “That reminds me. This way
for the best cocktail in New York.”...
The night was not to pass, however, without its own especial thrill for
Tavernake. The two men dined together at Delmonico's and went afterwards
to a roof garden, a new form of entertainment for Tavernake, and one
which interested him vastly. They secured one of the outside tables
near the parapets, and below them New York stretched, a flaming
phantasmagoria of lights and crude buildings. Down the broad avenues
with their towering blocks, their street cars striking fire all the time
like toys below, the people streamed like insects away to the Hudson,
where the great ferry boats, ablaze with lights, went screaming across
the dark waters. Tavernake leaned over and forgot. There was so much
that was amazing in this marvelous city for a man who had only just
begun to find himself.
The orchestra, stationed within a few yards of him, commenced to play
a popular waltz, and Pritchard to talk. Tavernake turned his fascinated
eyes from the prospect below.
“My young friend,” Pritchard said, “you are up against it to-night. Take
a drink of your wine and then brace yourself.”
Tavernake did as he was told.
“What is this danger?” he asked. “What's wrong, anyway?”
Pritchard had no need to answer. As Tavernake set his glass down, his
eyes fell upon the little party who had just taken the table almost next
to theirs. There were Walter Crease, Major Post, two men whom he had
never seen before in his life--heavy of cheek, both, dull-eyed, but
dressed with a rigid observance of the fashion of the city, in short
dinner coats and black ties. And between them was Elizabeth. Tavernake
gripped the sides of his chair and looked. Yes, she had altered. Her
eyebrows were a trifle made up, there was a tinge in her hair which he
did not recognize, a touch of color in her cheeks which he doubted. Yet
her figure and her wonderful presence remained, that art of wearing
her clothes as no other woman could. She was easily the most
noticeable-looking of her sex among all the people there. Tavernake
heard the sound of her voice and once more the thrill came and passed.
She was the same Elizabeth. Thank God, he thought, that he was not the
same Tavernake!
“Do you wish to go?” Pritchard asked.
Tavernake shook his head.
“Not I!” he answered. “This place is far too fascinating. Can't we have
some more wine? This is my treat. And, Pritchard, why do you look at
me like that? You are not supposing for a moment that I am capable of
making an ass of myself again?”
Pritchard smiled in a relieved fashion.
“My young friend,” he said, “I have lived in the world so long and seen
so many strange things, especially between men and women, that I am
never surprised at anything. I thought you'd shed your follies as your
grip upon life had tightened, but one is never sure.”
Tavernake sighed.
“Oh, I have shed the worst of my follies!” he answered. “I only wish--”
He never finished his sentence. Elizabeth had suddenly seen him. For a
moment she leaned forward as though to assure herself that she was not
mistaken. Then she half sprang to her feet and sat down again. Her lips
were parted--she was once more bewilderingly beautiful.
“Mr. Tavernake,” she cried, “come and speak to me at once.”
Tavernake rose without hesitation, and walked firmly across the few
yards which separated them. She held out both her hands.
“This is wonderful!” she exclaimed. “You in New York! And I have
wondered so often what became of you.”
Tavernake smiled.
“It is my first night here,” he said. “For two years I have been
prospecting in the far west.”
“Then I saw your name in the papers,” she declared. “It was for the
Manhattan Syndicate, wasn't it?”
Tavernake nodded, and one of the men of the party leaned forward with
interest.
“You're going to make millions and millions,” she assured him. “You
always knew you would, didn't you?”
“I am afraid that I was almost too confident,” he answered. “But
certainly we have been quite fortunate.”
One of Elizabeth's companions intervened--he was the one who had pricked
up his ears at the mention of the Manhattan Syndicate.
“Say, Elizabeth,” he remarked, “I'd like to meet your friend.”
Elizabeth, with a frown, performed the introduction.
“Mr. Anthony Cruxhall--Mr. Tavernake!”
Mr. Cruxhall held out a fat white hand, on the little finger of which
glittered a big diamond ring.
“Say, are you the Mr. Tavernake that was surveyor to the prospecting
party sent out by the Manhattan Syndicate?” he inquired.
“I was,” Tavernake admitted, briefly. “I still am, I hope.”
“Then you're just the man I was hoping to meet,” Mr. Cruxhall declared.
“Won't you sit down with us right here? I'd like to talk some about that
trip. I'm interested in the Syndicate.”
Tavernake shook his head.
“I've had enough of work for a time,” he said. “Besides, I couldn't talk
about it till after my report to the meeting to-morrow.”
“Just a few words,” Mr. Cruxhall persisted. “We'll have a bottle of
champagne, eh?”
“You will excuse me, I am sure,” Tavernake replied, “when I tell you
that it would not be correct on my part to discuss my trip until after I
have handed in my report to the company. I am very glad to have seen you
again, Mrs. Gardner.”
“But you are not going!” she exclaimed, in dismay.
“I have left Mr. Pritchard alone,” Tavernake answered.
Elizabeth smiled, and waved her hand to the solitary figure.
“Our friend Mr. Pritchard again,” she remarked. “Well, it is really a
curious meeting, isn't it? I wonder,”--she lifted her head to his and
her eyes called him closer to hers--“have you forgotten everything?”
He pointed over the roofs of the houses. His back was to the river and
he pointed westward.
“I have been in a country where one forgets,” he answered. “I think
that I have thrown the knapsack of my follies away. I think that it
is buried. There are some things which I do not forget, but they are
scarcely to be spoken of.”
“You are a strange young man,” she said. “Was I wrong, or were you not
once in love with me?”
“I was terribly in love with you,” Tavernake confessed.
“Yet you tore up my cheque and flung yourself away when you found out
that my standard of morals was not quite what you had expected,” she
murmured. “Haven't you got over that quixoticism a little, Leonard?”
He drew a deep sigh.
“I am thankful to say,” he declared, earnestly, “that I have not got
over it, that, if anything, my prejudices are stronger than ever.”
She sat for a moment quite still, and her face had become hard and
expressionless. She was looking past him, past the line of lights, out
into the blue darkness.
“Somehow,” she said, softly, “I always prayed that you might remember.
You were the one true thing I had ever met, you were in earnest. It is
past, then?”
“It is past,” Tavernake answered, bravely.
The music of a Hungarian waltz came floating down to them. She half
closed her eyes. Her head moved slowly with the melody. Tavernake looked
away.
“Will you come and see me just once?” she asked, suddenly. “I am staying
at the Delvedere, in Forty-Second Street.”
“Thank you very much,” Tavernake replied. “I do not know how long I
shall be in New York. If I am here for a few days, I shall take my
chance at finding you at home.”
He bowed, and returned to Pritchard, who welcomed him with a quiet
smile.
“You're wise, Tavernake,” he said, softly. “I could hear no words, but I
know that you have been wise. Between you and me,” he added, in a lower
tone, “she is going downhill. She is in with the wrong lot here. She
can't seem to keep away from them. They are on the very fringe
of Bohemia, a great deal nearer the arm of the law than makes for
respectable society. The man to whom I saw you introduced is a
millionaire one day and a thief the next. They're none of them any good.
Did you notice, too, that she is wearing sham jewelry? That always looks
bad.”
“No, I didn't notice,” Tavernake answered.
He was silent for a moment. Then he leaned a little forward.
“I wonder,” he asked, “do you know anything about her sister?”
Pritchard finished his wine and knocked the ash from his cigar.
“Not much,” he replied. “I believe she had a very hard time. She took
on the father, you know, the old professor, and did her best to keep him
straight. He died about a year ago and Miss Beatrice tried to get back
into the theatre, but she'd missed her chance. Theatrical business has
been shocking in London. I heard she'd come out here. Wherever she is,
she keeps right away from that sort of set,” he wound up, moving his
head towards Elizabeth's friends.
“I wonder if she is in New York,” Tavernake said, with a strange thrill
at his heart.
Pritchard made no reply. His eyes were fixed upon the little group at
the next table. Elizabeth was leaning back in her chair. She seemed
to have abandoned the conversation. Her eyes were always seeking
Tavernake's. Pritchard rose to his feet abruptly.
“It's time we were in bed,” he declared. “Remember the meeting
to-morrow.”
Tavernake rose to his feet. As they passed the next table, Elizabeth
leaned over to him. Her eyes pleaded with his almost passionately.
“Dear Leonard,” she whispered, “you must--you must come and see me.
I shall stay in between four and six every evening this week. The
Delvedere, remember.”
“Thank you very much,” Tavernake answered. “I shall not forget.”
CHAPTER IX. FOR ALWAYS
Once again it seemed to Beatrice that history was repeating itself.
The dingy, oblong dining-room, with its mosquito netting, stained
tablecloth, and hard cane chairs, expanded until she fancied herself
in the drawing-room of Blenheim House. Between the landladies there
was little enough to choose. Mrs. Raithby Lawrence, notwithstanding her
caustic tongue and suspicious nature, had at least made some pretense
at gentility. The woman who faced her now--hard-featured, with narrow,
suspicious eyes and a mass of florid hair--was unmistakably and brutally
vulgar.
“What's the good of your keeping on saying you hope to get an engagement
next week?” she demanded, with a sneer. “Who's likely to engage you?
Why, you've lost your color and your looks and your weight since you
came to stay here. They don't want such as you in the chorus. And for
the rest, you're too high and mighty, that's my opinion of you. Take
what you can get, and how you can get it, and be thankful,--that's my
motto. Day after day you tramp about the streets with your head in the
air, and won't take this and won't take that, and meanwhile my bill gets
bigger and bigger. Now where have you been to this morning, I should
like to know?”
Beatrice, who was faint and tired, shaking in every limb, tried to pass
out of the room, but her questioner barred the way.
“I have been up town,” she answered, nervously.
“Hear of anything?”
Beatrice shook her head.
“Not yet. Please let me go upstairs and lie down. I am tired and I need
to rest.”
“And I need my money,” Mrs. Selina P. Watkins declared, without quitting
her position, “and it's no good your going up to your room because the
door's locked.”
“What do you mean?” Beatrice faltered.
“I mean that I've done with you,” the lodging-house keeper announced.
“Your room's locked up and the key's in my pocket, and the sooner you
get out of this, the better I shall be pleased.”
“But my box--my clothes,” Beatrice cried.
“I'll keep 'em a week for you,” the woman answered. “Bring me the
money by then and you shall have them. If I don't hear anything of you,
they'll go to the auction mart.”
Something of her old spirit fired the girl for a moment. She was angry,
and she forgot that her knees were trembling with fatigue, that she was
weak and aching with hunger.
“How dare you talk like that!” she exclaimed. “You shall have your money
shortly, but I must have my clothes. I cannot go anywhere without them.”
The woman laughed harshly.
“Look here, my young lady,” she said, “you'll see your box again when
I see the color of your money, and not before. And now out you go,
please,--out you go! If you're going to make any trouble, Solly will
have to show you the way down the steps.”
The woman had opened the door, and a colored servant, half dressed, with
a broom in her hand, came slouching down the passage. Beatrice turned
and fled out of the greasy, noisome atmosphere, down the wooden, uneven
steps, out into the ugly street. She turned toward the nearest elevated
as though by instinct, but when she came to the bottom of the stairs she
stopped short with a little groan. She knew very well that she had not
a nickel to pay the fare. Her pockets were empty. All day she had eaten
nothing, and her last coin had gone for the car which had brought her
back from Broadway. And here she was on the other side of New York, in
the region of low-class lodging houses, with the Bowery between her and
Broadway. She had neither the strength nor the courage to walk. With
a half-stifled sob she took off her one remaining ornament, a cheap
enameled brooch, and entered a pawnbroker's shop close to where she had
been standing.
“Will you give me something on this, please?” she asked, desperately.
A man who seemed to be sorting a pile of ready-made coats, paused in
his task for a moment, took the ornament into his hand, and threw it
contemptuously upon the counter.
“Not worth anything,” he answered.
“But it must be worth something,” Beatrice protested. “I only want a
very little.”
Something in her voice compelled the man's attention. He looked at her
white face.
“What's the trouble?” he inquired.
“I must get up to Fifth Avenue somehow,” she declared. “I can't walk and
I haven't a nickel.”
He pushed the brooch back to her and threw a dime upon the counter.
“Well,” he said, “you don't look fit to walk, and that's a fact, but the
brooch isn't worth entering up. There's a dime for you. Now git, please,
I'm busy.”
Beatrice clutched the coin and, almost forgetting to thank him, found
her way up the iron stairs on to the platform of the elevated. Soon she
was seated in the train, rattling and shaking on its way through the
slums into the heart of the wonderful city. There was only one thing
left for her to try, a thing which she had had in her mind for days. Yet
she found herself, even now she was committed to it, thinking of
what lay before her with something like black horror. It was her last
resource, indeed. Strong though she was, she knew by many small
signs that her strength was almost at an end. The days and weeks of
disappointments, the long fruitless trudges from office to office, the
heart-sickness of constant refusals, poor food, the long fasts, had all
told their tale. She was attractive enough still. Her pallor seemed to
have given her a wonderful delicacy. The curve of her lips and the soft
light in her gray eyes, were still as potent as ever. When she thought,
though, what a poor asset her appearance had been, the color flamed in
her cheeks.
In Broadway she made her way to a very magnificent block of buildings,
and passing inside took the lift to the seventh floor. Here she got out
and knocked timidly at a glass-paneled door, on which was inscribed the
name of Mr. Anthony Cruxhall. A very superior young man bade her enter
and inquired her business.
“I wish to see Mr. Cruxhall for a moment, privately,” she said. “I
shall not detain him for more than a minute. My name is Franklin--Miss
Beatrice Franklin.”
The young man's lips seemed about to shape themselves into a whistle,
but something in the girl's face made him change his mind.
“I guess the boss is in,” he admitted. “He's just got back from a big
meeting, but I am not sure about his seeing any one to-day. However,
I'll tell him that you're here.”
He disappeared into an inner room. Presently he came out again and held
the door open.
“Will you walk right in, Miss Franklin?” he invited.
Beatrice went in bravely enough, but her knees began to tremble when
she found herself in the presence of the man she had come to visit. Mr.
Anthony Cruxhall was not a pleasant-looking person. His cheeks were fat
and puffy, he wore a diamond ring upon the finger of his too-white hand,
and a diamond pin in his somewhat flashily arranged necktie. He was
smoking a black cigar, which he omitted to remove from between his teeth
as he welcomed his visitor.
“So you've come to see me at last, little Miss Beatrice!” he said, with
a particularly unpleasant smile. “Come and sit down here by the side of
me. That's right, eh? Now what can I do for you?”
Beatrice was trembling all over. The man's eyes were hateful, his smile
was hideous.
“I have not a cent in the world, Mr. Cruxhall,” she faltered, “I cannot
get an engagement, I have been turned out of my rooms, and I am hungry.
My father always told me that you would be a friend if at any time it
happened that I needed help. I am very sorry to have to come and beg,
yet that is what I am doing. Will you lend or give me ten or twenty
dollars, so that I can go on for a little longer? Or will you help me to
get a place among some of your theatrical people?”
Mr. Cruxhall puffed steadily at his cigar for a moment, and leaning back
in his chair thrust his hand into his trousers' pocket.
“So bad as that, is it?” he remarked. “So bad as that, eh?”
“It is very bad indeed,” she answered, looking at him quietly, “or you
know that I should not have come to you.”
Mr. Cruxhall smiled.
“I remember the last time we talked together,” he said, “we didn't
get on very well. Too high and mighty in those days, weren't you,
Miss Beatrice? Wouldn't have anything to say to a bad lot like Anthony
Cruxhall. You're having to come to it, eh?”
She began to tremble again, but she held herself in.
“I must live,” she murmured. “Give me a little money and let me go
away.”
He laughed.
“Oh, I'll do better than that for you,” he answered, thrusting his hand
into his waistcoat pocket and drawing out a pile of dollar bills. “Let's
look at you. Gee whiz! Yes, you're shabby, aren't you? Take this,” he
went on, slamming some notes down before her. “Go and get yourself a
new frock and a hat fit to wear, and meet me at the Madison Square roof
garden at eight o'clock. We'll have some dinner and I guess we can fix
matters up.”
Then he smiled at her again, and Beatrice, whose hand was already upon
the bills, suddenly felt her knees shake. A great black horror was upon
her. She turned and fled out of the room, past the astonished clerk,
into the lift, and was downstairs on the main floor before she
remembered where she was, what she had done. The clerk, after gazing at
her retreating form, hurried into the inner office.
“Young woman hasn't bolted with anything, eh?” he asked.
Mr. Cruxhall smiled wickedly.
“Why, no,” he replied, “I guess she'll come back!”
Tavernake left the meeting on that same afternoon with his future
practically assured for life. He had been appointed surveyor to the
company at a salary of ten thousand dollars a year, and the mine in
which his savings were invested was likely to return him his small
capital a hundredfold. Very kind things had been said of him and to him.
Pritchard and he had left the place together. When they had reached the
street, they paused for a moment.
“I am going to make a call near here,” Pritchard said. “Don't forget
that we are dining together, unless you find something better to do,
and in the meantime”--he took a card from his pocket and handed it to
Tavernake--“I don't know whether I am a fool or not to give you this,”
he added. “However, there it is. Do as you choose about it.”
He walked away a little abruptly. Tavernake glanced at the address upon
the card: 1134, East Third Street. For a moment he was puzzled. Then the
light broke in upon him suddenly. His heart gave a leap. He turned back
into the place to ask for some directions and once more stopped short.
Down the stone corridor, like one who flies from some hideous fate, came
a slim black figure, with white face and set, horrified stare. Tavernake
held out his hands and she came to him with a great wondering sob.
“Leonard!” she cried. “Leonard!”
“There's no doubt about me,” he answered, quickly. “Am I such a very
terrifying object?”
She stood quite still and struggled hard. By and by the giddiness
passed.
“Leonard,” she murmured, “I am ill.”
Then she began to smile.
“It is too absurd,” she faltered, “but you've got to do it all over
again.”'
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Get me something to eat at once,” she begged. “I am starving. Somewhere
where it's cool. Leonard, how wonderful! I never even knew that you were
in New York.”
He called a carriage and took her off to a roof garden. There, as it was
early, they got a seat near the parapet. Tavernake talked clumsily about
himself most of the time. There was a lump in his throat. He felt all
the while that tragedy was very near. By degrees, though, as she ate and
drank, the color came back to her cheeks, the fear of a breakdown seemed
to pass away. She became even cheerful.
“We are really the most amazing people, Leonard,” she declared. “You
stumbled into my life once before when I was on the point of being
turned out of my rooms. You've come into it again and you find me once
more homeless. Don't spend too much money upon our dinner, for I warn
you that I am going to borrow from you.”
He laughed.
“That's good news,” he remarked, “but I'm not sure that I'm going to
lend anything.”
He leaned across the table. Their dinner had taken long in preparing and
the dusk was falling now. Over them were the stars, the band was playing
soft music, the hubbub of the streets lay far below. Almost they were in
a little world by themselves.
“Dear Beatrice,” he said, “three times I asked you to marry me and you
would not, and I asked you because I was a selfish brute, and because
I knew that it was good for me and that it would save me from things of
which I was afraid. And now I am asking you the same thing again, but I
have a bigger reason, Beatrice. I have been alone most of the last two
years, I have lived the sort of life which brings a man face to face
with the truth, helps him to know himself and others, and I have found
out something.”
“Yes?” she faltered. “Tell me, Leonard.”
“I found out that it was you I cared for always,” he continued, “and
that is why I am asking you to marry me now, Beatrice, only this time I
ask you because I love you, and because no one else in the world could
ever take your place or be anything at all to me.”
“Leonard!” she murmured.
“You are not sorry that I have said this?” he begged.
She opened her eyes again.
“I always prayed that I might hear you say it,” she answered, “but it
seems--oh, it seems so one-sided! Here am I starving and penniless,
and you--you, I suppose, are well on the way towards the success you
worshiped.”
“I am well on the way,” he said, earnestly, “towards something greater,
Beatrice. I am well on the way towards understanding what success
really is, what things count and what don't. I have even found out,” he
whispered, “the thing which counts for more than anything else in the
world, and now that I have found it out, I shall never let it go again.”
He pressed her hand and she looked across the table at him with swimming
eyes. The waiter, who had been approaching, turned discreetly away. The
band started to play a fresh tune. From down in the streets came the
clanging of the cars. A curious, cosmopolitan murmur of sounds, but
between those two there was the wonderful silence.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Tempting of Tavernake, by E. Phillips Oppenheim