A STRANGE BETROTHAL
When dinner was served at seven that Saturday evening, the banker and
his daughter faced each other in silence across the table. There was
no wife and mother in this money-king's family, for she had passed out
of life when Patricia came into the world. This, perhaps, may account
for the close intimacy that had always existed in the relations of
father and daughter, between whom there had never been any break or
shadow, until this particular Saturday afternoon.
"Old Steve," iron-faced, heavy jawed, and steady of eye, wore his
Wall-street mask at this particular dinner; and he wore it as grimly
as ever he did when encountering a financial storm or a threatened
panic. He felt that he had more to conceal, just now, than any
financial problem could ever compel him to face. He was no longer
"dad." Patricia had practically omitted the use of even the less
endearing term of father; but whether intentionally or not, even the
shrewd old banker could not determine. For years, he had forgotten
that he had a heart, save when he and his daughter were alone
together. The money whirlpool of the financial section of the city had
made him colder of aspect, harder in nature, and less considerate of
the feelings of others. It had never even remotely occurred to him
that there could be any rupture between himself and Patricia, or that
a yawning gulf, like this one was, could separate them.
But now there was one, and he recognized its breadth and its depth. He
knew that he could not cross it to her, and that it would never be
bridged, save by Patricia herself. He had offended her beyond
forgiveness, almost. He had not entirely realized that Patricia's
nature and characteristics were so like his own, save only where they
were feminine instead of masculine, that she would now adopt the
course he would have pursued under circumstances which might, by a
stretch of the imagination, be called parallel.
Patricia's face was almost as mask-like as her father's, save that her
great, dark eyes were stormy in their depths, and would have suggested
to one who had sailed the Southern seas the brooding and far away
approach of a monsoon. Her olive-tinted skin had in it a suggestion of
pallor; but only a suggestion. When she spoke at all it was to John,
the butler who served them; and then it was always in her accustomed
low, evenly modulated tone. Not perceptibly different to the butler
were her tone and manner, and yet even the servant, wise in his
generation, sensed the unsettled condition of things, and moved about
like a phantom; perhaps also he was a trifle more assiduous than usual
in his efforts at perfect service.
Patricia ate sparingly, but bravely. There was nothing of the
shrinking or pouting, or even of the petulant, in her character. Her
father ate nothing at all. He dawdled with his soup, turned his fish
over and sent it away, and sniffed contemptuously at everything else
that was placed before him. He made his dinner of coffee and cognac,
and seemed to be greatly interested while he burned the latter over
three dominoes of sugar.
When the moment came to leave the table, there had been no word
exchanged between them; but then, with an effort, the banker assumed
his brightest and most kindly tone; and he asked, cheerily:
"Well, what have you on for to-night, my dear?"
"Nothing at all," she replied, indifferently, as if the question held
no interest for her--as, indeed, it did not, for the moment; but she
followed him from the dining-room into the library, as was their
usual custom whenever they had dined alone. Now, as they entered it,
the banker, with an assumption of high spirits he did not feel,
remarked:
"If you don't object to a Saturday-night opera, Garden is singing
'Salome' at the Manhattan to-night, and I should like to hear it. Will
you go, with your old dad?"
"No, thank you," she replied, indifferently. "I shall remain at home."
She was standing at the table, turning the leaves of a magazine, and
her father glanced keenly at her across the intervening space, while
he lighted a cigar. Then, with a shrug of his shoulders, and a sigh
which could not have been seen or heard, and which only he himself
knew to have existed, he crossed the floor. As he was passing from the
room, he said, as indifferently as she had spoken:
"Then, I suppose, I will have to take it in, alone."
"You might ask Roderick to go with you," she threw at him, as he
passed into the hallway; but Langdon pretended not to hear, for he
called back at her:
"I'll get Beatrice, I think, and ask her to play daughter for me; eh?"
Patricia made no comment upon this suggestion; but having awaited,
where she was, the sound of the closing outer door, she slowly crossed
the room.
The drop-light at her favorite chair was adjusted, and she began the
reading of a new book which someone had placed on the table beside it.
She read on and on, apparently with interest, but really without
knowing at all what she did read, until more than an hour had passed;
and then a card was brought to her.
She glanced at it, although she believed she knew perfectly well what
name it bore, before she did so. Her lips tightened for an instant,
and she frowned ever so little. But she said to the footman:
"You may bring Mr. Duncan here, James."
Patricia did not rise from her chair when her caller entered the
library. Duncan moved toward her eagerly, but meeting her eyes, which
she raised quite calmly to his as he crossed the floor, he paused, and
remained at about midway of the distance.
"Good evening, Patricia," he said. "I'm awfully glad to have found you
at home. I was afraid you might go out before I could get here."
"I expected you," she told him, without returning his salute. "I have
been expecting you for an hour. In fact, I have been waiting for you."
"That is very pleasant news, indeed, Patricia." Duncan was startled
by it, however. He had not expected it, and he did not quite like the
tone in which Patricia uttered it.
"I am glad you take it so," she returned. "It was not pleasant for me
to wait for you, and it is not distinctly agreeable to me to receive
you. But I believed that you would think it necessary to call, in
order to make some effort at explaining the occurrences of this
afternoon. Let me tell you, before you begin, that there exists no
necessity for any sort of explanation. My father has fulfilled that
duty quite fully, and I listened to him, throughout. He has exonerated
you--"
Duncan took a hasty step toward her, but stopped again, even more
abruptly than before, repelled by the cold barrier that the expression
of her dark eyes built up between them. Whatever it was that he had in
mind to say remained unspoken. He turned away and sought a chair
opposite her, ten feet away, utterly repelled, for although these two
had grown to manhood and womanhood together, she had always had the
power to lift a sudden barrier between them. Though he believed he
knew every mood and characteristic of this proud young woman, just
now, for the first time within his recollection, there was a
strangeness about her that he could not fathom. Long habit had made
him almost as much at home in this house, as in his own. He had been,
ever since he could remember, considered and treated like a member of
the family. And so, now, before seating himself, he sought to put
himself more at ease by indulging in a liberty which had always been
accorded to him. He selected a cigar from Stephen Langdon's box, and
lighted it. Then, remembering that conditions were changed, he threw
it down with an angry gesture, upon a receptacle for ashes that was on
the table. Patricia watched all these proceedings, unmoved.
"Patsy!" he exclaimed, abruptly, making use of an expression of their
childhood; and he would have continued with rapid speech, had she not
made a quick gesture of aversion that interrupted him. Then, she said,
quietly:
"I would prefer, if you don't mind, that you should henceforth use my
full name in addressing me."
"Patricia, you have just told me that your father has exonerated me;
and if that is so, why do you receive me in just this manner? I need
exoneration, all right; and I deserve it, too, for honestly, dear, I
never thought of offending you. I thought, until the last moment, that
you would take it all as a huge joke. It never occurred to me that
you would be so deeply wounded. I should never have agreed to the
crazy compact that your father and I made together, if I had realized
the seriousness of it."
"No," she replied, quietly. "You should not have agreed to it. It was
the mistake of your life, and, perhaps, of mine."
"You know how I love you, dear," he began, half-starting from his
chair. But the expression of her eyes, without the slightest motion
otherwise, made him pause again, without completing what he had
started to say.
"It is best that we should be quite frank with each other," she said,
calmly. "That is why I waited so patiently for you, to-night. Please
do not interrupt me; let me say what I have in mind to say to you."
"I would like it much better if you would hit me over the head with
one of those bronze ornaments, as you would have done ten or twelve
years ago; or if you would fly into one of your tempers just as you
used to do, Patricia. I would like anything better than this cold
calmness. It makes me shudder; it freezes me; it fills me with
apprehension. I love you so, dear! and I have loved you all my life.
You know it; I don't need to tell you! And if I have made a mistake,
surely you can find it in your heart to forgive, because of my great
love? No, I will not stop," he ejaculated, when she made a gesture of
impatience. "I will finish what I have to say, even braving your anger
to do so. I would like to make you angry just now, Patricia. I would
delight to see you in one of those tantrums of fury that you used to
have when you and I were children together. Do you remember that I
bear a scar now, inflicted by a tennis-racket in your hand, when you
were ten years old? I think more of that scar than of any other
possession I have, for even you cannot take it away from me. I love
you with all the manhood there is in me, and I can't remember a time
when I did not; and I have thought that I knew, all these years, that
you loved me; I believe it now, even though the scorn in your eyes
denies it. You may have convinced yourself that you do not, but you
are working from a wrong hypothesis. I know why you have put me off,
time and again, when I have besought you to name our wedding-day. It
has been because you were not quite ready. Isn't that true, dear? You
have not denied me because you did not love me; you have put me off
only because you were not ready to become a wife. But you have loved
me; I am sure of that. You have never said that you would not be my
wife; and in fact you have often shown me that some day you would be;
you have only declined to say when. I have come to you to-night,
Patricia, to tell you that I will wait, on and on, counting only your
own pleasure in the matter, until you are willing to appoint the time,
if only you will say that you forgive me for the apparently despicable
part I have played in the tragedy of this afternoon."
"That is a very pretty speech you have just made. It sounds well, and
is quite characteristic," she replied to him, calmly. "I shall be as
frank with you in my reply."
"Well?" he said, and waited. Her tone and manner startled him. There
was a suggestion of finality in her attitude that was alarming. She
continued, speaking almost gently:
"I have believed in your love for me, as sincerely as I have believed
in my father's love for me; and I think now that you were more to me
than I realized. But, Roderick, have you ever watched a woodman in the
forest chopping down a tree? And have you ever seen that tree fall,
when its natural prop was stolen away by the sharp edge of the axe? It
may have taken that tree a hundred, or a thousand years to grow; but
when it crashes down, it is gone forever. A little, puny man has gone
into the forest with an axe upon his shoulder, and has ruthlessly
attacked one of God's greatest creations, a gorgeously abundant tree.
He had no thought of what he was doing, of what he was destroying. His
only thought was of a purpose he had in view; and it was somehow
necessary to destroy that tree in order to accomplish the purpose. The
thing that nature created, which had required years to bring to
perfection; the thing that God made beautiful was, in a few minutes,
shorn of its splendor by this little, ruthless creature, who went into
the forest with the axe on his shoulder. That is what you have done to
whatever love I may have felt for you, Roderick Duncan. It lies
prostrate now, and it has borne down with it, all the lesser verdure,
all the little trees and bushes and vines that grew about it, and has
left only a bare spot--and the wounded stump. You were the woodman
with the axe."
"My God, Patricia!" he cried out, appalled by the agony of his loss.
He understood, suddenly, that this proud young woman would have
forgiven downright disloyalty more readily than such hurt to her
pride.
She continued as if he had not spoken:
"My father informed me, this afternoon, as you are aware, of certain
financial straits in which he has suddenly become involved. I know
enough about the methods and habits of 'the street,' to realize how
impossible it was for him to betray his condition to certain forces
and powers that are exerted there, lest, despite what he could do, he
should lose the great influence he now has over all the immense wealth
of this country. While he was telling me about his condition, I
naturally thought of you; and I wondered why he had not gone to you
instantly; or, if you knew of the circumstance, I wondered the more,
why you had not as instantly gone to him, and offered the assistance
he needed. Then, little by little by little, the plot which you two
had concocted together, was unveiled to me."
"But, Patricia, dear, won't you--?"
"Let me finish, please. I have not quite done so, as yet."
"Well, dear?"
"I have agreed to the terms that were adjusted between you and my
father, respecting the loan of a certain sum of money by you to him.
Of course, you may repudiate those terms if you please, and it is a
matter of indifference to me whether you do so, or not. You may loan
the money to my father without accepting me as the collateral for it;
that also is a matter of indifference to me. But I wish to tell you,
and I wish you thoroughly to understand, that, unless you carry out
the terms of this compact precisely as it was agreed upon between you
and my father, with the added stipulations which I have requested Mr.
Melvin to draw for me, I will never under any circumstances be your
wife, or receive you again. That, I think, concludes this interview. I
shall be ready Monday morning, at ten o'clock, to fulfill my part of
the agreement. You and Stephen Langdon may do as you please. And now,
please, bid me good-night--I prefer to be alone."
Duncan started from his chair and took two steps toward her, where he
paused. His face was pale, but his finely chiseled features were set
in firm lines; and his tall, athletic figure, was drawn to its full
height, as he replied, with slow emphasis:
"In that case, Patricia, we shall carry out the compact as agreed
upon, and I shall conform to whatever stipulations you have made," he
said. "Good-night."
He turned and went swiftly from the room. He seized his coat and hat
before James, the footman, could assist him, and he went out at the
front door, with more bitterness and more anger in his soul than he
remembered ever to have felt before against any man or woman. But
just now the bitterness and the anger were directed chiefly against
himself.
For a moment, he stood on the bottom step at the entrance to the
mansion, undecided as to which way he should go or what he should do.
Then, he turned about and again rang the bell at Stephen Langdon's
door; and the instant it was opened, he brushed savagely past the
astonished James, and made his way to the library, unannounced. He
pushed the door ajar noiselessly, without intending to do so, and
halted on the threshold, amazed by what he saw there. He had not meant
to intrude in that silent fashion upon the privacy and grief of the
woman he loved, and as soon as he could master his emotions, he
stepped quickly backward into the hall, re-closing the door as softly
as he had opened it. Patricia had given way at last. She had thrown
herself upon the couch, and with her face buried among the pillows,
she was sobbing as if her heart would break. His first impulse, when
he discovered her so, was to rush to her side, to take her in his
arms, and to tell her over and over again of his love. But he knew
instinctively that Patricia would bitterly resent such an effort on
his part, that he would again offend her sense of pride if she should
know that he had found her in tears.
Outside the door, when he had closed it, he hesitated for a time;
finally he wrote rapidly on the back of one of his cards, as follows:
"There will be little time on Monday morning to inspect the papers you
mentioned. I shall be glad if you will direct Mr. Melvin to submit them
to me at my rooms, between five and six o'clock to-morrow afternoon.
R. D."
He gave this written message to James, instructing him not to
deliver it until Miss Langdon summoned him to her, or she should
leave the library. Then, he asked the footman:
"Do you happen to know where Mr. Langdon has gone, to-night, James?"
"To the opera, sir," replied the footman.
"Alone?"
"Quite so, sir, I believe."
Duncan walked the distance, which was considerable, from the Langdon
mansion to the Opera House, where he went directly to Stephen
Langdon's box, believing that he would find the banker to be it's
solitary occupant, and there were reasons why he greatly desired a
private conference with Patricia's father. He entered the box without
announcement and came to a sudden pause when he discovered that the
banker was not alone. Beside him, with her white arm resting upon the
rail at the front of the box, was seated a young woman whom Duncan
knew well; and she happened to be the one person in New York who came
nearest to being on terms of intimacy with Patricia. For Miss Langdon
was one who had never permitted herself to be intimate with anybody.
Others might be intimate with her, as Beatrice Brunswick had been, but
that close and personal relation which so often exists between two
young women, and which is so beautiful in its character, was something
Patricia Langdon had never permitted herself to know. She was not even
aware that this was so. The condition arose from no lack of sympathy
for others, and from no want of affection for her friends; it was a
characteristic reserve of manner and method, inherited from her
father, which had been cultivated by and through her association with
him, all her life long.
While Roderick Duncan halted for an instant, to consider whether, or
not, he should proceed with his original design, and while he still
stood there, holding the curtains apart and appearing much as if he
were a stealthy observer of the scene before him, the young woman
turned her head and discovered him. She smiled brightly and uttered an
exclamation of pleasure as she started to her feet and approached him
with out-stretched hand. One could have seen that the pleasure she
manifested, was very real. It was at once evident that she liked
Duncan.
"How good of you to come, and how fortunate!" she said, when he took
her hand and raised it to his lips, just as the banker turned about in
his chair, and with a grim smile also made Duncan welcome.
"Hello," he said. "Glad you came! I have been wondering all the
evening where you were. Had an idea you would show up somewhere. Sit
down and keep still until this act is finished, for I don't want to
lose it. After that, we'll chat a little. There are things I wish to
discuss with you, Roderick."
Roderick Duncan was in a mood that was strange to him. It affected him
to recklessness, though he could not have told why it was so, or in
what form of recklessness he might indulge. The discovery he had made
when he returned to the library and found Patricia in tears, was still
having its effects upon him, for he did not understand the cause for
those tears. He knew only that he had made her cry, that her
abandonment of grief was due to his acts, and her father's. By a
strange paradox, he pitied himself as deeply as he did the woman he
loved. He felt that he had been forced into a second false position
by so readily accepting the terms Patricia had insisted upon for their
betrothal. She had told him plainly that if she ever became his wife
at all, the fact could be accomplished only in the manner she
dictated; that if he repudiated it, he would not even be received at
her home. Impulsively, he had accepted her dictum, and now, at the end
of his long and solitary walk to the opera-house, he realized that the
change from frying-pan to fire was a simile true as to his present
condition. Practically, the end so long sought had been attained. In
effect, he and Patricia were betrothed--but such a betrothal! For the
moment, he regretted his ready acquiescence to Patricia's terms. He
believed that it would be better to lose her entirely than to take her
under such conditions.
The meeting with Beatrice Brunswick and her sincere welcome warmed
him, and he found a ready sympathy in her eyes and manner for his
condition of mind. He wanted company and he wanted sympathy; chiefly,
he had wished to discuss the present situation of affairs with old
Steve; but now, since his arrival at the box, he decided that it would
be a splendid opportunity to talk the matter over with Beatrice
Brunswick. She had always shown him great consideration. He had
regarded her as Patricia's dearest friend, and had ultimately placed
her in that relationship to himself, for she was one of those rare
young women whom men class as "good fellows." And Beatrice was as good
as she was beautiful. Her merry laugh and quick wit always acted upon
Duncan like a tonic. Just now, he was especially glad to find her
there, and he showed it.
Beatrice Brunswick was unmistakably red-headed. Referring to her hair
in cold-blooded terms, no other hue could have described it. It was
like that old-fashioned kind of red copper, after it has been hammered
into sheets, in the manner in which it was treated before less arduous
methods were invented. It was remarkable hair, too--there was such a
wealth of it! It had always impressed Duncan with the idea that each
individual hair was in business for itself, refusing utterly to stay
where it was put. A young woman's crowning glory, always, this
happened to be particularly true in the case of Miss Brunswick, for,
although her features and her figure and her graceful motions left
nothing to be desired, it was her wonderful hair, emphasized by the
saucy poise of her head, that became her crowning glory, indeed.
Duncan took a seat near to her, so that she was between him and the
banker; and presently Beatrice inclined her head toward him, and
whispered:
"What's the matter, Roderick? You look like a banquet of the Skull and
Bones, which my brother described to me once, when he was at Yale."
"I'll tell you about it later," was the response; and Duncan shut his
jaws, and bent his attention grimly upon the stage.
"Why not now?" She asked.
"There isn't time; and besides--"
"Have you been quarreling with our Juno? Have you two been scrapping?"
She whispered, smiling bewitchingly, and bending still nearer to him.
Miss Brunswick was sometimes given to the milder uses of slang.
Duncan nodded, without replying in words. He kept his eyes directly
toward the stage. But Miss Brunswick was insistent.
"Is Patricia on her high horse to-night?" she asked, with a light
laugh.
Duncan replied to her with another nod, and a wry smile.
"She wants to look out about that high horse of hers, Roderick, or
sometime it will hit the top rail and give her a fall that she won't
get over for a while. What our beautiful Juno needs most is what I
used to get oftenest when I was about three years old. Perhaps you can
guess what it was; if you can't, I won't tell you."
"I expect you were a regular little devil then, weren't you?" he
asked, endeavoring to assume a cheerfulness he was far from
experiencing at that moment.
"I expect I was; and the strange part of it is that there are lots and
lots of people who insist that I have never got over it. But I can
read you like a book. You and Mr. Langdon and Patricia have been
having no end of a row. He might just as well have told me that much
when he came after me and insisted that I should accompany him to the
opera to-night. He said that Patricia wouldn't, and he wanted me to
take her place. I wish you would tell me all about it." Then, with a
slight toss of her head, Beatrice added: "I suppose Patricia has
refused you again?"
"No. She has accepted me, this time," was the blunt reply.
Beatrice stared straight in front of her for a moment, and there was a
suggestion of gathering pallor in her face. Then, she drew backward,
away from her companion, and her blue eyes widened. If there was a
shock to her in the knowledge she had just received, she accepted it
with a very clever little laugh which she always had ready at hand.
"So," she said, "that is what makes you so glum, is it? Really, you
are a most amazing person. I had supposed that when Patricia accepted
you, finally, and set the day--"
"The day hasn't been set. It may be a week, a month, or a year hence,
for all I know." This was said harshly, and while Duncan's eyes were
fixed steadily upon Mary Garden, on the stage.
"How intensely interesting!" Beatrice exclaimed, under her breath. "I
shall insist upon your taking us to supper after the opera, and
telling me all about it."
The loud bars of music which announce the finale of an act and the
entrance of the chorus precluded the possibility of further
conversation just then; and as soon as the curtain was down and the
applause had ceased, Stephen Langdon left his chair and reached for
his coat and hat. Then, he addressed the two young people who were his
companions in the box.
"If you two youngsters care to see this out, I'll leave you here,
together," he said. "I have just remembered something I should have
attended to, to-night. I must see Melvin, my lawyer. You won't mind,
Beatrice, will you, if I leave you in Roderick's care? Possibly, I'll
return before the show is out."
Before either of them could answer, Langdon had passed out into the
aisle, and hurried away, leaving Duncan and Miss Brunswick alone
together in the box. If Roderick Duncan had really desired an
opportunity to confide his troubles to Beatrice, it was afforded him
then; but now that it was at hand, he felt suddenly uncertain about
the wisdom of such a proceeding.