That same afternoon the banker passed through the polished steel
grille of his new home by means of a flat key attached to a plain gold
chain.
The house, like its owner, had a certain personality of its own,
although it lacked his simplicity; its square mass being so richly
carved that it seemed as if the faintest stroke of the architect's
soft pencil had made a dollar mark. So vast, too, was its baronial
hall and sweeping stairway in pale rose marble, that its owner might
have entered it unnoticed, had not Blakeman, the butler, busying
himself with the final touches to a dinner table of twenty covers,
heard his master's alert step in the hall and hurried to relieve him
of his coat and hat. Before, however, the man could reach him, Thayor
had thrown both aside, and had stepped to a carved oak table on which
were carefully arranged ten miniature envelopes. He bent over them for
a moment and then turning to the butler asked in an impatient tone:
"How many people are coming to dinner, Blakeman?"
"Twenty, sir," answered Blakeman, his face preserving its habitual
Sphinx-like immobility.
"Um!" muttered Thayor.
"Can, I get you anything, sir?"
"No, thank you, Blakeman. I have just left the Club."
"A dinner of twenty, eh?" continued Thayor, as Blakeman disappeared
with his coat and hat--"our fourth dinner party this week, and Alice
never said a word to me about it." Again he glanced at the names
of the men upon the ten diminutive envelopes, written in an angular
feminine hand; most of them those of men he rarely saw save at his own
dinners. Suddenly his eye caught the name upon the third envelope from
the end of the orderly row.
"Dr. Sperry again!" he exclaimed, half aloud. He opened it and his
lips closed tight. The crested card bore the name of his wife. As he
dropped it back in its place his ear caught the sound of a familiar
figure descending the stairway--the figure of a woman of perhaps
thirty-five, thoroughly conscious of her beauty, whose white arms
flashed as she moved from beneath the flowing sleeves of a silk
tea-gown that reached to her tiny satin slippers.
She had gained the hall now, and noticing her husband came slowly
toward him.
"Where's Margaret?" Thayor asked, after a short pause during which
neither had spoken.
The shoulders beneath the rose tea-gown shrugged with a gesture of
impatience.
"In the library, I suppose," she returned. Then, with a woman's
intuition, she noticed that the third envelope had been touched. Her
lips tightened. "Get dressed, Sam, or you will be late, as usual."
Thayor raised his head and looked at her.
"You never told me, Alice, that you were giving a dinner to-night--I
never knew, in fact, until I found these."
"And having found them you pawed them over." There was a subtle,
almost malicious defiance in her tone. "Go on--what else? Come--be
quick! I must look at my table." One of her hands, glittering with the
rings he had given her, was now on the portiere, screening the dining
room from out which came faintly the clink of silver. She stopped,
her slippered foot tapping the marble floor impatiently. "Well!" she
demanded, her impatience increasing, "what is it?"
"Nothing," he replied slowly--"nothing that you can understand," and
he strode past her up the sweeping stairs.
Margaret was in the biggest chair in the long library, sitting curled
up between its generous arms when he entered. At the moment she was
absorbed in following a hero through the pages of a small volume bound
in red morocco. Thayor watched her for a moment, all his love for her
in his eyes.
"Oh, daddy!" she cried. Her arms were about his neck now, the brown
eyes looking into his own. "Oh, daddy! Oh! I'm so glad you've come.
I've had such a dandy ride to-day!" She paused, and taking his two
hands into her own looked up at him saucily. "You know you promised me
a new pony. I really must have one. Ethel says my Brandy is really out
of fashion, and I've seen such a beauty with four ducky little white
feet."
"Where, Puss?" He stroked her soft hair as he spoke, his fingers
lingering among the tresses.
"Oh, at the new stable. Ethel and I have been looking him over; she
says he's cheap at seven hundred. May I have him daddy? It looks so
poverty-stricken to be dependent on one mount."
Suddenly she stopped. "Why, daddy! What's the matter? You look half
ill," she said faintly.
Thayor caught his breath and straightened.
"Nothing, Puss," he answered, regaining for the moment something of
his jaunty manner. "Nothing, dearie. I must go and dress, or I shall
be late for our guests."
"But my pony, daddy?" pleaded Margaret.
Thayor bent and kissed her fresh cheek.
"There--I knew you would!" she cried, clapping her hands in sheer
delight.
Half an hour later, when the two walked down the sweeping stairs, her
soft hand about his neck, the other firmly in his own, they found
the mother, now radiant in white lace and jewels, standing before the
white chimney piece, one slippered foot resting upon the low brass
fender. Only when the muffled slam of a coupe door awoke her to
consciousness did she turn and speak to them, and only then with one
of those perfunctory remarks indulged in by some hostesses when their
guests are within ear-shot.
In the midst of the comedy, to which neither made reply, the heavy
portieres were suddenly drawn aside and Blakeman's trained voice rang
out:
"Dr. Sperry!"
A tall, wiry man with a dark complexion, alluring black eyes and black
moustache curled up at the ends, entered hastily, tucking the third
envelope in the pocket of his pique waistcoat.
A peculiar expression flashed subtly from Alice's dark eyes as she
smiled and put forth her hand. "I'm so glad you could come," she
murmured. "I was afraid you would be sent for by somebody at the last
moment."
"And I am more than happy, I assure you, dear lady," he laughed back,
as he bent and kissed the tips of her fingers.
"And yet I feel so guilty--so very guilty, when there is so much
sickness about town this wretched weather," she continued.
Again he smiled--this time in his best professional manner, in the
midst of which he shook hands with Margaret and Thayor. Then he added
in a voice as if he had not slept for months--
"Yes, there is a lot of grippe about."
Thayor looked at him from under lowered lids.
"I wonder you could have left these poor people," he said
sententiously.
Alice, scenting danger, stretched forth one white hand and touched the
doctor's wrist.
"You came because I couldn't do without you, didn't you, dear doctor?"
Again the portiere opened.
"Mr. and Mrs. Reginald Van Rock--Mr. Kennedy Jones--Miss Trevor,"
announced Blakeman successively.
Mrs. Thayor's fourth dinner party that week had begun.
* * * * *
As the door closed at midnight upon the last guest, Margaret kissed
her father and mother good-night and hurried to her room, leaving the
two alone. The dinner had been an ordeal to her--never before had she
seen her father so absorbed.
"You were very brilliant to-night, were you not?" exclaimed Alice as
soon as she and Thayor were alone.
Thayor continued silent, gazing into the library fire, his hands
clenched deep in his trousers pockets, his shoulders squared.
"A beautiful dinner," she continued, her voice rising--"the best I
have had this season, and yet you sat there like a log."
The man turned sharply--so sharply that the woman at his side gave a
start.
"Sit down!" he commanded--"over there where I can see you. I have
something to say."
She looked at him in amazement. The determined ring in his voice made
her half afraid. What had he to say?
"What do you mean?" she retorted.
"Just what I said. Sit down!"
The fair shoulders shrugged. She was accustomed to these outbursts,
but not to this ring in his voice.
"Go on--what is it?"
Thayor crossed the room, shut the door and turned the key in the lock.
She watched him in silence as he switched off the electric lights
along the bookcases, until naught illumined the still library but the
soft glow of the lamp and the desultory flare from the hearth.
Still he did not speak. Finally the storm broke.
"What I have to say to you is this: I'm sick of this wholesale giving
of dinners."
Alice let go her breath. After all, it was not what was uppermost in
her mind.
"Ah! So that's it," she returned.
"That's a part of it," he cried, "but not all."
"And the other part?" she asked, her nervousness returning.
"I'll come to that later," said her husband, with an accent on the
last word. "It is necessary that I should begin at the beginning."
"Go on," she murmured nervously, gazing absently into the fire, her
mind at work, her fears suddenly aroused. For the first time its
wavering light seemed restful. "Go on--I'm listening."
"The first part is that I'm sick of these dinners. I've told you so
before, and yet you had the impertinence to-night to give another and
not say a word to me about it." The voice had a cold, incisive note in
it--the touch of steel to warm flesh.
"Impertinence! Your ideas of hospitality, Sam, are peculiar." Any
topic was better than the one she feared.
"Hospitality!" he retorted hotly. "Do you call it hospitality to
squander my money on the cheap spongers you are continually inviting
here? Do you call it hospitable to force me to sit up and entertain
this riff-raff night after night, and then be dragged off to the opera
or theatre when I am played out after a hard day's work down town for
the money you spend? And just look at Margaret! Do you suppose that
these people, this sort of life you daily surround her with, is a sane
atmosphere in which to bring up our daughter? That's the first thing
I've got to say to you, and I want to tell you right here that it's
got to stop."
She looked up at him in a half frightened way, wondering whether there
was not something back of this sudden tirade, something she could not
fathom--something she feared to fathom.
"The second thing that I have to tell you is this: I am at the end
of my rope, or will be if I keep on. A man can't keep up month in
and month out, living my life, and not break down. I saw Leveridge
yesterday and he wishes me to get some relief at once. Young Holcomb,
who did me a service once at Long Lake, is here, and I am going back
home with him. I intend to take a rest for a fortnight--possibly three
weeks--in camp."
For an instant she could not speak--so quick came the joyful rebound.
Then there rushed over her what his absence might, or might not, mean
to her.
"When do you start?" she asked with assumed condescension--her old way
of concealing her thoughts.
"Saturday night."
"But Saturday night we are giving a dinner," she rejoined in a
positive tone. This was one at which she wanted him present.
"You can give it, but without me," he replied doggedly.
"I tell you you'll do nothing of the sort, Sam. I'm not going to
abide by the advice of that quack, Leveridge, nor shall you!" The old
dominating tone reasserted itself now that she had read his mind to
the bottom.
"Quack or not, you would not be alive to-day but for him, and it is
disgraceful for you to talk this way behind his back. And now I am
going to bed." With this he turned off the remaining light, leaving
only the flicker of the firelight behind, shot back the bolt and
strode from the room.
As he passed Margaret's door there came softly:
"Is that you, daddy?"
"Yes, dear."
"Come in, daddy, dear." Her clear young voice was confident and
tender.
He stopped, pushed back the door and entered her dainty room. She lay
propped up among the snowy whiteness of the pillows, smiling at him.
Like her mother, Margaret in her womanhood--she was eighteen--was well
made; her figure being as firm and well knit as that of a boy. For an
instant his eyes wandered over her simple gown of white mull, tied at
the throat with the daintiest of pink ribbons, her well shaped ears
and the wealth of auburn hair that sprang from the nape of her shapely
neck and lay in an undulating mass of gold all over her pretty head.
Whatever sorrows life had for him were nothing compared to the joy of
this daughter.
All his anger was gone in an instant.
"Little girl, you know it's against orders, this reading in bed," he
said in his kindly tone. Never in all her life had he spoken a cross
word to her. "You'll ruin your eyes and you must be tired."
She closed her book. "Tired--yes, I am tired. Mother's dinners are
such dreadfully long ones, and, then, daddy, to-night I've been
worrying about you. You seemed so silent at dinner--it made my heart
ache. Are you ill, daddy? or has something happened? I tried to
sleep, but I couldn't. I've been waiting for you. Tell me what has
happened--you will tell me, won't you, daddy?" Her smooth, young arms
were about his neck now. "Tell me," she pleaded in his ear.
"There's nothing to tell, little girl," he said. "I'm tired too, I
suppose; that's all. Come--you must go to sleep. Pouf!" and he blew
out the flame of the reading candle at her bedside.
* * * * *
For a long time that night Thayor sat staring into the fire in his
room, his mind going over the events of the day--the luncheon--the
talk of those around the table--the tones of Holcomb's voice as
he said, "It was about his wife," and then the added refrain: "He
couldn't get away; his little girl fell ill." How did his case differ?
Suddenly he roused himself and sprang to his feet. No! he was wrong;
there was nothing in it. Couldn't be anything in it. Alice
was foolish--vain--illogical--but there was Margaret! Nothing
would--nothing could go wrong as long as she lived.
With these new thoughts filling his mind, his face brightened. Turning
up the reading lamp on his desk he opened his portfolio, covered half
a page and slipped it into an envelope.
This he addressed to Mr. William Holcomb, ready for Blakeman's hand in
the morning.