Mary Burton was discovering some things about June. She had often
watched lovers leaning silently on a deck-rail, with eyes fixed on a
moonlit wake and hands that crept surreptitiously together. She had
envied the credulity of these people and turned away with an ache and
emptiness in her own heart.
Now at twenty-five she awoke each morning with a smile for the sunlight
and a proprietary joy in the blue of the skies and a delight for the
roses whose hearts were no younger than her own had become.
Bridge-tables and tennis courts saw little of her, because the woods
were waiting and Jefferson Edwardes was there to tramp and ride and fish
and be companion and guide.
It was most beautiful far back from the oiled roads and trimmed hedges,
for here were only woodland voices and languorous forest fragrances.
Here, too, hid all those wild flowers that in childhood she had known
and fancifully christened--and since forgotten, and here two people with
the lilt of this abundant June song in their hearts could leave a few of
their years by the roadside and forget them. To Mary Burton it was all a
rediscovery and a miracle. He had promised to give her back the message
of her hills. He was giving her back the joy of life.
One afternoon she and Jefferson Edwardes were tramping toward a brook
where the trout would be flashing like phantom darts, and as he led the
way along a narrow trail she followed him with a smile on her lips.
At a sheer twist around the hill's shoulder he stopped and pointed his
hand. The view from there was almost county-wide, billowing away across
heights and depths to a blue merging of hill and sky.
As she stood by his side her eyes and parted lips spoke her unworded
appreciation and the man's gaze came back from the broad picture and
dwelt upon her.
"It's strange," she said finally with a vaguely puzzled expression,
"that I who was born in just such hills as these should now be realizing
their wonder for the first time."
But her companion laughed at her seriousness. "When you knew them
first," he reminded her, "you had nothing else with which to compare
them. It is one who comes from the north who finds a marvel in the
bigness and softness of southern stars. Now you have been away--and have
come home, dearest."
She was standing very lancelike and straight by the slender bole of a
silver birch. A golden sun flooded richly through the greenery. Overhead
was a tunefully unflecked sky and into the shadows crept a richness of
furtively underlying color and echoes of color. It was all vivid and
beautiful and the girl standing there seemed to dominate its vividness
and its beauty. But her eyes were grave, even when a shaft of the
radiance struck her delicately blossoming cheeks and played upon the
escaping locks with which the breeze played, too.
"Do you know, I suppose in a way I ought to hate you?" she told the man,
and he swiftly demanded:
"Hate me? In heaven's name, why?"
"When a woman has been deluded into believing herself a bird of
paradise ... and has been content with her feathers, it doesn't precisely
help to discover that--" her voice grew self-contemptuous--"that after
all she has only lived the life of a Strassburg goose and has been fed
to death until she is no earthly good for anything except to be some
glutton's delicacy--"
"Strassburg geese don't search their consciences," he smiled. "They are
too busy being fed to death. If you had lost your soul I should help you
find it--thank God, you don't need my guidance."
"Yet your coming crystallized all the self-accusations that had begun to
stir in me. It made me feel my utter emptiness."
"Which only means realizing--that you might have become empty and have
not." He came close and bent upon her the eyes whose honesty was so
convincing and whose fealty was so clearly writ. In a voice that lost a
little of its steadiness he demanded tensely, "Do you hate me?"
Mary Burton stood motionless, almost rigid, but some heart-wave welled
up until she felt physically weak yet spiritually stronger than she had
ever felt. Her two hands clutched tautly at his shoulders and her eyes
gazed into his. Slowly they widened until they had unmasked all their
depths and shown what was in her heart. Then as the man's pulses leaped
to the elation of what he read there, he heard her shaken whisper
inviting him very softly, "Look at me--and answer for yourself. Do I
hate you?"
With sudden self-recovery, as he sought to take her in his arms, she
slipped aside and after a short space the same voice that had just now
been tense rippled into whimsical laughter. "No," she commanded. "It
mustn't become a habit." The laugh died and her words and pupils were
grave once more. "Why should I lie to you, dear? It's no use trying. I'm
absurdly mad about you--but I've doubted my power of really loving so
long that we must both be content to put it to the test of time. It's
too new to trust. I can't tell how much of it is my own heart and how
much is your hypnotism."
"I have come a long way," he said quietly. "I have waited a long while.
I can wait longer, if that's the edict, but not as he waits who fears
the issue. You are going to love me and marry me."
"I hope so. I pray so." Her answer was vibrantly eager. "I have longed
vainly for a day that should make my heart leap beyond control. You
brought the day--and if, between us, we can keep it--"
She broke off, and he took both her hands in both of his.
"You are going to marry me," he repeated. "Don't make me wait too long,
my sweetheart and comrade. Life is all too short to waste when it can be
happy."
"Are we wasting it?" she demanded; then she smiled at him and added:
"Thank you, for introducing me to the wonderful originality of being
natural. On the whole I don't think I hate you--much."
All that afternoon her eyes held a starry happiness and sometimes they
twinkled with a mischievous ripple.
Once she demanded, "Suppose Hamilton were to go broke tomorrow. Stony,
flat, hopelessly broke. Would you still want me?" And before he could
answer she broke into a merry peal of laughter. "Don't trouble to answer
that question," she commanded. "I already know--and I'm fairly
contented."
* * * * *
The Duke de Metuan had come and gone back--with his answer, and Paul,
too, had left Haverly Lodge. For Paul's return there were two reasons.
The music-room which Hamilton had built as a gift to his brother was
nearing completion, and the finishing touches demanded personal
supervision. As the heart of a high priest turns to his temple, so
turned Paul Burton's heart to this spot at this time. It was a temple,
but decidedly a pagan temple. Porphyry columns went up from a mosaic
floor to a richly encrusted ceiling, and in conception and detail it was
lavishly beautiful and perfect. Hamilton had conceived and planned the
structure with a very ferocity of tense interest: though to Hamilton a
music-room was in itself about as absorbing as a steam laundry.
In the undertaking he saw a monument to a dream and the fulfilment of a
promise that one ragged boy had made to another ragged boy standing by a
panel of broken fence. Hamilton had never forgotten that moment when
first his pent-up ambitions had broken into fiery utterance while his
little brother listened with eyes wide and wondering--yet full of faith.
Then he had promised Paul an organ in a cathedral of dreams, where the
imaginary self which was his greater self might find expression.
This was to be the worthy realization of that boast.
The second reason for the younger Burton's withdrawal from the house
party was the departure of Loraine Haswell.
Now, finding himself in town, he had accepted one of those invitations
which meant the acknowledgment of his lionizing in Fashion's world of
music. Paul had little in common with those struggling men whose passion
for violin or piano leads them through poverty and hunger in pursuit of
their bays. But to face and stir with his art's hypnosis an audience of
the smartest men and women in town, was meat and drink to his soul--was
his soul's vanity. Of all his vanities it was the least weak--because
the most sincere.
To see faces awaken from ennui and kindle into attentiveness, then
soulfulness as he swayed them with the touch of his fingers on the keys
was no mean triumph. To draw men out of lolling ease into tense and
unconsidered attitudes; to cause women's lips to part and their pupils
to grow misty as he carried them with him,
"Through the meadows of the sunset, through the poppies and the wheat,
To the land where the dead dreams go"
--these were his delights. There are meaner pleasures.
But when he had played a little while, the composite pattern of faces
always faded and darkened into a blur and he forgot them: forgot
himself, forgot everything except the instrument that had become the
mouthpiece of his soul. Then he, like his audience, was swept away into
an impalpable world where nothing remained save the marvelous cascading
and crushing tides which were the tides of golden sound. At such moments
Paul Burton was almost a master.
This evening it was a benefit recital at the Plaza. He did not recall
precisely to what worthy cause he was dedicating his gifted services,
but that did not matter. He was bowing with a winning and boyish smile
on his cameo features. Such fashionables as lingered in town so late as
June were there to do homage; and other anonymous human units drawn from
the millions followed where the fashionables led.
As Paul Burton looked out over the seated humanity, secretly searching
for Loraine Haswell, he became conscious of another face near the front.
It was that of a woman, who seemed quite alone and who was simply
dressed. Paul wondered why the features held his interest. It was not
precisely a beautiful face, but in its gray-green eyes dwelt a
distinctive quality and as some thought parted the lips in a smile there
came a sudden flooding of light which was better than ordinary beauty.
This girl was frankly looking forward to the evening, for her expression
mirrored that rapt anticipation which comes only to the eyes of the true
music-lover. The small head under its brown hair was modeled as though a
sculptor had spent loving care upon it, and Paul Burton thought that she
was inwardly purring with the expectation of pleasure. A responsive glow
at once awakened in him. He was subtly flattered because he recognized
in that attitude of mind a tribute to his art for its own sake.
Then he began, and as the tide of his emotion swelled and lifted him out
of himself, individual countenances grew misty--yet, for some reason
this face stood out clear and single for a moment or two after the rest
had faded.
Afterward he was told that even he had not played so well before.
As he turned from a congratulatory group when the recital was ended, one
of the women whom he knew only by reason of her activity in arranging
the entertainment, stopped him. "Mr. Burton," she said, "I want you to
meet Miss Terroll." It was a general form of introduction and the man
turned to bow--and recognized the face that had been the last to fade.
The girl gave him a small and well-gloved hand. She smiled, but said
nothing, and her sponsor talked on rapidly.
"I was in the midst of a heated suffrage discussion when you began," she
declared. "But of course it was forgotten--at once."
"I'm sorry," laughed Paul Burton, "if I broke up a good argument."
"Oh," she assured him with a prepared quotation, "'I can always leave
off talking, when I hear a master play.'"
When Paul Burton reached the street most of the private motors had been
summoned and dispatched by the starter. He stood for a little while
looking up at the stars and breathing deeply the grateful night air. The
moon-mist made a shadowy lacework of the trees in the park, and the dark
contours of the avenue's mansions were silhouetted beyond the lights of
the Savoy and Netherland. The expenditure of so much of his emotional
self always left him strangely restless, and made him crave a brief
aftermath of solitude. So he sent his car away and turned down the
avenue.
But at Fifty-eighth street, under one of the light-clusters, he
encountered a slender and solitary figure, and as he approached, he
recognized the girl to whom he had so recently been introduced. The
pianist had just been thinking of her, pondering why her face had stood
out in the mist, when other faces had been swallowed, and why, although
her eyes had confessed the delight of anticipation, she had later
vouchsafed no word of commendation. Surely he had not played badly
tonight and he was accustomed to ready praise. When the older woman who
had presented him had spoken of him as a master he had laughed
deprecatingly, but his eyes had gone half-questioningly to the girl, as
if seeking corroboration there, and the girl had met them with only an
impersonal and non-committal smile.
Paul had drunk enough of flattery to feel piqued at its withholding. Now
to see the figure of her who had withheld appear there quite
unaccompanied, as though rising in response to his meditations, almost
startled him. She did not see him until he reached her side and lifted
his hat; not even then, for she was looking across the avenue with
something of absorption in her manner, until he spoke her name.
Even as he murmured, "Miss Terroll," the inflection of surprise remained
in his voice. It was well after ten o'clock and in those circles of
society where he was received the system of chaperonage was rigid enough
to fail of understanding for the women who dared the streets at night
unescorted. He knew ladies who went to their several rostrums to sound
the clarion of sex equality and who went at night, but they did not go
uncavaliered. And under the lights this slim figure, with its easy,
almost boyish independence, seemed very young, almost childish.
She turned, at his greeting, and her eyes must have read his thoughts,
for once more they smiled and in the smile was an amused twinkle. This
time, though, it was also a smile of the lips, revealing a row of teeth
so small and white that they accentuated her seeming of childishness.
She must be about twenty-two or twenty-three he thought.
"Mr. Burton," she laughed, "you spoke my name then almost as though I
had astonished or startled you. I was scrutinizing the house across the
way rather intently, but honestly there was no burglary in my thoughts."
"I'm rather sorry to hear that," he countered with a simulation of
disappointment. "I've never burgled--and I had begun to hope you'd
initiate me and let me share the adventure." She said nothing for a
moment, and he bluntly demanded, "I was wondering what was in your
thoughts just then."
Miss Terroll bent forward to look up the avenue before she answered. The
'buses were not running close together at this hour and the lamps of the
nearest were still two blocks away.
"If I tell you, will you tell me why you spoke my name so chidingly?"
"It seems on its face a fair bargain." He spoke with a pretendedly grave
consideration of the subject. Then added, "Yes, I will."
"I was thinking of music."
"What music?"
"Just music as music. Music as the one art which needs no background
because every listening human being supplies one. That is where it
succeeds where sculpture, for instance, fails. Music is a sort of
panacea."
"Oh!" His monosyllable was a trifle disappointed. With such a cue she
might at least have admitted his music into the summary.
The light from the overhead lamps fell in a circle of comparative
radiance and he had time to note the charming modeling of her throat and
a certain delicate nobility in the curve of her brow, where the soft
hair merged with the dark shadowing of her hat brim.
"You haven't carried out your part of the contract yet," she reminded
him. "I've told you what, but you haven't told me why."
"I mean to. Are you waiting for some one?"
"I am waiting for a 'bus to take me home."
"Where are you going to let it take you? Where is your home, I mean?"
"The Square," she answered, "and there is the 'bus coming, to gather me
in, and you still haven't told me why I shocked your voice into that
undernote of astonishment."
Paul Burton smiled, and did not yet enlighten her. Instead he went on
stubbornly questioning. "The Square does not mean Madison or Union. I
have deductive genius enough to infer that, because they're not places
of homes. Is it Gramercy or Washington?"
The girl flashed her smile on him again and replied lightly.
"One enters my square under a marble arch and we who live there always
think of it as the Square."
"But Washington square is a long way," he remonstrated. "It's a far
journey to take alone."
The girl had stepped out beyond the curb and signaled, then as the 'bus
drew over and came to a stop, she nodded to the man as she started up
the stair to the roof. "Good-night, Mr. Burton," she called over her
shoulder. "You are a good custodian of secrets."
But the musician was climbing up after her and when she seated herself
at the front he took his place beside her. "I am going to answer all
questions put to me on the way down to the Square," he announced.
"But you have just complained that it's a far journey."
"I beg your pardon. I said it was a far journey to take alone."
She turned in her seat and looked at him. The lips and brow were
reserved, even grave, but in the green-gray eyes danced a truant
twinkle. As the heavy vehicle rumbled and lurched along the way where
the asphalt fell into shadow she became a graceful silhouette of
slenderness, but as they passed through the brighter zones about the
great opals swung from the lamp pillars, the dimpled little chin and
small nose revealed themselves in a sort of baffling warfare of
sauciness and dignity. Paul knew that there were well-held frontiers of
reserve and self-containment in this woman's nature, but that back of it
lay an alluring playground of mischief.
"And yet we are told," she was saying in a low voice, whose music
suddenly impressed the musician, "that--
'Down to Gehenna or up to the throne,
He travels the fastest, who travels alone.'"
"Just at the moment we are not bound for either of those places," he
assured her. "We are going to the Square."
"Why was it?" she demanded suddenly. For a few minutes they had been
silent, and Paul had revised his estimate. She could hardly be as old as
twenty two. Perhaps she might be twenty.
"Really you are exaggerating," he laughed. "I was neither astonished nor
shocked. I was only surprised, and when I tell you why I shall no longer
be a man of mystery, consequently I shall no longer be a man of
interest."
"But my curiosity will be satisfied. Isn't that quite as important?"
He shook his head. His own curiosity was far from satisfied. He was
still wondering why she had no kind word to say for his music.
"I was just surprised to find you there--alone," he said at last.
"Oh!"
Until the 'bus swung into view of the Metropolitan tower neither of
them spoke, and then the man turned to look at his companion and found
her smiling to herself. It struck him that if she would only laugh
aloud, it would be worth hearing. But of that, at that moment, he said
nothing.
"Won't you share the joke with me?" he smiled, and she said:
"I was just thinking of your solicitude about my being alone on Fifth
avenue, after all the formidable places where I've been alone--in
one-night stands."
"One-night stands?" he repeated vaguely after her and she replied only
with a matter-of-fact nod, then, for his further enlightenment:
"You see I am an actress and most of my work has been on the road."
Paul Burton's face did not succeed in masking his surprise at the
announcement.
"Have I shocked you again?" she demurely inquired.
"Shocked me, no." He disavowed with an almost confused haste. "I suppose
I was surprised because the few actresses I have known have all been so
unlike you."
"You mean," she amplified, "because I don't make up for the street?"
"I shouldn't have said that," he laughed, then added: "Now if you had
told me you were playing truant from a young ladies' seminary, I would
have found it quite natural. I saw you out front just before I began
playing. Somehow the simple directness of your expression--I hoped it
was anticipation--didn't seem to me characteristic of the stage. I
fancied that professional people were usually chary of enthusiasm."
"There are at least several sorts of stage people, and they're not all
gutter-children," she answered. "And then I haven't always been an
actress. It was thrust upon me--by necessity."
"When I play," the man assured her, "the faces out front always grow
vague to me. Tonight I saw yours when the others had gone. Then I lost
yours, too. I hope I didn't disappoint you."
She shook her head. "No," she said, but to the simple negative she added
nothing affirmative.
Paul Burton remained silent, half-piqued, and she, divining his thought,
smiled quietly to herself at his petulance, but finally she spoke slowly
and gravely: "You are an artist and until tonight you didn't know of my
existence. Anything I might say would mean little to you."
"Even," he impulsively demanded, "if it came from the last face that
faded?"
"If that is true," she responded, "I don't need to say anything, do I?"
To Paul's subtly attuned nature many things came in intuitive
impressions. Now he was keenly interested because this woman whom he had
met that night had told him only one thing about herself, that she
belonged to a world of which, in the personal sense, his world touched
only the least creditable segments. He felt that she would not, without
a much riper acquaintanceship, tell him anything more. Yet he felt with
conviction that her refinement was not only innate and true, but that of
an aristocrat; that her mind was not only quick, but cultivated. As
though dropping thoughtlessly into a more musical tongue he spoke next
in French, and she replied in that tongue as unconsciously as though she
had not noticed his change of language. But though he questioned
persistently and skilfully until the 'bus rolled under the arch, he
drew no further information from her as to herself, save that at present
she was unemployed, and that her days were filled with that most
cheerless of tasks, calling on managers.
He gathered that the distinguishing difference between triumph and
struggle on the stage was that the managers sent for the triumphant and
the struggling called uninvited.
As Paul helped Miss Terroll out of the 'bus and walked at her side the
short distance between the terminal of its route and the south side of
the Square he said abruptly:
"Some day I want you to do something for me."
"What?"
"To laugh aloud. I suppose you sometimes do laugh aloud, don't you?"
Her response was to break unconsciously into a peal of mirth that held
in it a tinkle of soft music and spontaneity.
"I can be provoked," she admitted and to that confession she added the
inquiry, "Why do you want to hear me laugh?"
"I did want to hear you laugh because some instinct told me there would
be music in it," he assured her. "Now I do want to hear you laugh again,
and often, because I know it."
When he had said good-night at her door and had walked across to the
Brevoort cab-stand at Eighth street, he took a taxi'. During the drive
home he thought only once of Loraine Haswell. "I must see more of Miss
Terroll," he informed himself. "She is decidedly interesting."
* * * * *
Hamilton Burton shoved back a mass of papers and smiled across his desk
at his secretary.
"Carl, do you chance to recall what General Forrest of the late
Confederate States of America had to say on the subject of strategy?"
Bristoll stretched his arms above his head and leaned back in his chair,
grateful for a moment of relaxation after two hours of application.
"I believe he reduced military science to the simple proposition of
'gettin' thar fust with the most men,' didn't he?"
"That was his correct formula--and finance has its points of
similarity."
"Is the comment general, or has it a specific bearing?"
"Quite specific. Do you remember my prophecy a short while back? I
reminded you that the coin of big business bore on one face the image
and superscription of Cæsar Augustus Malone--and on the reverse my own
poor stamp."
The secretary nodded.
"The time, dear boy, is at hand when one side or the other must be
turned down."
"What has happened?" The younger man's voice was tinged with alarm. This
child of Destiny might be immune from fear, but those who stood near his
person could not always accept without question the talisman of his
limitless self-faith. Malone's might was theoretically invincible.
Hamilton recognized the undernote of apprehension with a laugh of frank
amusement; a laugh which brought to his eyes their most winning sparkle.
"The august over-lord of all the robber barons regards our reign as
tributary to his own. He fancies that our loyal respect is thinly
spread. We make too little obeisance. Too rarely we 'crook the pregnant
hinges of the knee.' Therefore we must be crushed--if possible."
"You mean--"
"I mean that it is in the mind of this generalissimo, to call me before
his staff and 'break' me in full view of his halted ranks."
The cheerful grin on the face of the prospective victim was so
infectious and reassuring that his secretary laughed with revitalized
confidence.
"But how did you learn of this conspiracy, sir?" he demanded.
"The throne which lacks its _cabinet noir_, Carl, is a very precarious
one to sit upon." The "Great Bear" spoke casually. "Our secret service
is fairly satisfactory. Also, we have a brain which, at times,
prognosticates."
"There have been new developments, then?"
Hamilton Burton shrugged his shoulders.
"The stock-holders' meeting of Coal and Ore isn't far distant. After it
comes the annual election of officers. I fancy Malone may know of a man
who might grace the directorate with a more deferential humility than I
show--when he speaks Jove-like from the head of the table."
"To be ousted from that board would mean to wear the brand of defeat."
"If Mr. Malone wants to put some one else in my place he can do it--the
chair I occupy faces the window. Sometimes the glare hurts my eyes."
Carl Bristoll thought he knew his chief. Such docile acceptance of
reduction to the ranks astounded him and his blank amazement stamped
itself on his face. When the elder man had enjoyed it for the space of a
long silence he rose suddenly and his voice rang out like a command for
a bayonet charge:
"Yes, Malone can have my chair. I mean to take his--at the head of the
table."
The secretary started violently. He could never quite accustom himself
to the dauntless fashion with which his chief essayed the
impossible--and accomplished it. Hamilton Burton's fist came down
savagely on the mahogany. The smiling features of a moment ago had
vanished and Bristoll was looking up into eyes that rained immeasurable
wrath.
"They hate me, because they fear me!" The voice was not loud, but it was
terrific in its intensity of anger. "By the Almighty God in heaven, I
mean to give them cause to hate me. I mean to crush them to a pulp until
nothing remains except the stench of their unmourned memory!" ... Once
more the timbre changed and with startling abruptness became quietly
declarative.
"This morning, I received a confidential note from Carton."
"The secretary of Coal and Ore?"
"The same. I put him where he is--he's a valuable man--and incidentally
a member of my secret service. Malone is calling in all the proxies he
can control; he and his myrmidons. He has not taken me into his
confidence. How would you construe that?"
"As you do. He means to oust you."
Burton nodded, then a naïve smile twinkled in his eyes. "What he is now
beginning to do, I went to work on ten minutes after he left my office
last spring. Many transactions, some of them of huge proportions, which
you did not understand, have since been completed in preparation for
this moment. On the floor of the Exchange my brokers have been
ostentatiously idle, but others, not known to act for me, have been
buying Coal and Ore. They have pretty well gathered in the floating
supply."
"Hasn't that been reported to Malone?"
The financier shook his head. "Trading of that character is difficult to
trace and is usually presumed to be marginal trading. To disarm possible
suspicion my recognized brokers have sold large blocks of Coal and
Ore--to my unrecognized brokers. I seem to have been unloading--while I
was doing the reverse. When the psychological moment comes, there will
be a surprise--and a raid upon the control."
"Then you are ready for the issue."
"No, not quite." Burton rose and took a turn or two across the floor. He
stopped before a small painting and spoke irrelevantly. "I always liked
Corot. The man could paint, Carl. He understood values." After this art
criticism he returned to the desk and sat down again. "No, I'm not ready
yet. I've done all that I could do by quiet preparation. The issue now
narrows to the hair balance which makes all fights crucial--and
interesting. There's a member of the state senate who holds a block I
need, and there are two banks in town that hold others. When I have that
stock I shall be master of the situation--and of Consolidated--and
Malone must take his orders from me."
"And if you fail to get it?"
"I would still be plowing rocks and milking cows, Carl, if I
acknowledged the possibility of failing in what I resolve on."
"Yet they may refuse to sell."
Hamilton Burton smiled. "That would be regrettable," he said, and his
voice was full of sympathetic softness. "Because in that event an
elderly and respected member of the senate will have to reside for a
time at Sing Sing and a couple of widely trusted banks will go to the
wall."