KEEPING THE SECRET
It took Herbert some time to reach home, the night was so fine and he
had so much to think about. The run on his father’s bank was a
mortification which, now that he had time to think, smarted more than it
had before. That his father should have been treated thus was an
outrage, and that he should have been helped by a bank so much smaller
than his own, was something of a humiliation. And still he was glad that
help had come from Mr. Grey, and at Louie’s instigation. It might make
matters easier for him when his engagement became known.
Then there crossed his mind a thought that possibly he had been rash in
proposing to Louie just as he had done; not that he did not love her,
for he did, and always should, but he had about him enough honor to feel
that it was wrong to bind her to secrecy because he feared his father’s
displeasure, and then suddenly he felt his face grow very red when the
ugly thought presented itself that in four years he might change his
mind, with all the advantages he should have of seeing the world.
“I am a villain to think that. I shall never change,” he said, as he
came in sight of the veranda on which Fred Lansing was sitting, enjoying
the moonlight and wondering why Herbert was gone so long.
At sight of him Herbert’s thought took another turn. Fred was evidently
pleased with Louie—“mashed” Herbert called it. He was going to see her
that afternoon. He was cold-blooded, it was true, but then he might warm
up under the spell of Louie’s beauty, and make things awkward by
proposing to her himself.
“I believe I’ll tell him. I can trust him,” he thought, and in response
to Fred’s “Hallo! old fellow, what have you been doing all this time?”
he went half way up the steps and seating himself on one of them,
replied, “Been offering myself to the prettiest girl in the world!”
“You have!” Fred exclaimed, his feet dropping suddenly from the railing
where they had been resting, while he straightened himself in his chair
and looked his surprise at Herbert, who answered:
“Yes, I have, and was accepted, too; but you are not to speak of it. I
shall tell no one but you. It is to be kept a secret at present.”
“Why?” Fred asked in a hard tone which roused Herbert to defend what he
had done.
“Why, you see, we are both young, I twenty and she seventeen, or
thereabouts, and we cannot think of marrying for a long time—four years
at least.”
“Well?” Fred said in the same tone, while Herbert went on:
“I must go to college and Louie must go to school and get polished up in
the ways of the world, different from Merivale—a one-horse town, you
know.”
The hardness of Fred’s voice seemed to have passed to his face, but
Herbert was not looking at him, as he continued:
“It is better to keep quiet if I want any peace. Father would row it
awfully, if he knew, and I might not be able to stand four years of
blowing.”
“Not for Louie?” Fred asked.
“Why, yes,” Herbert replied, “for her, if for anybody, but continual
dropping wears the stone and father is terrible at a nag. He has a great
antipathy to Mr. Grey, although he doesn’t know a thing against him, for
sure, except that he came here poor, and lived in the White Row, as our
tenant, and Mrs. Grey took in sewing.”
“That does not hurt Louie any,” was Fred’s prompt response.
“Certainly not,” Herbert said very cheerfully, glad that Fred saw it in
the right light. “But it hurts her with father, who might get so furious
as to disinherit me. It is in him. You don’t know father.”
“And if he did, would you give up Louie?” Fred asked, and something in
his voice made Herbert look at him quickly.
“By George!” he exclaimed, “I believe you are half in love with her,
yourself.”
The cigar Fred had been smoking when Herbert came up had gone out, and,
brushing the ashes from it, he stood up and said:
“It would be absurd to be in love with a girl to whom I never spoke
until yesterday. I think her the prettiest girl I have ever seen, and
the pluckiest; and congratulate you upon having won her. But don’t keep
it a secret. It is unjust to her and a harm to yourself. Better stand
the storm at once, if there is to be one. Good-night, or rather
morning—for see, the sky is brightening in the east.”
He walked away, while Herbert looked after him and said, “I am glad I
got ahead of him, for if he isn’t in love with her now, he soon would
be,” and that thought went a long way toward reconciling the young man
to White’s Row and the plain sewing done for his mother.
Breakfast was very late at the White house that morning, and partly for
this reason, and partly because he was still smarting under the
indignity put upon him the day before, the judge was not in the best of
humor, and did not try to conceal it. He had not slept, and he was
cross. The coffee tasted as if it were warmed over from the night
previous, and he had no doubt it was; one of his eggs was too hard, the
other too soft; his toast was cold, and his napkin— “Well, this is a
nice thing for a gentleman’s table,” he said, and he held up a small,
thin bit of linen, which had evidently seen much service.
“Can’t you do better than this?” and he turned to his wife, who replied:
“Not this morning. Every large napkin was used last night, as the
caterer did not bring enough, and I have only this half-dozen that are
fresh. I don’t know how long I have had them. Mrs. Grey hemmed them for
me, when they first came to town, or rather her daughter did. She was a
little girl then, and I remember her bringing them home and looking so
pleased as she told me she hemmed them, because her mother was ill. I
thought her very pretty in her white sun-bonnet and bib apron. She
looked pretty last night. Yes, they are very thin, and I do believe
there’s a hole in yours, Fred. Let me change with you.”
It was Mrs. White’s habit to stick to a subject when once she was upon
it, and she rambled on about the napkins Louie Grey had hemmed years
before, while Herbert’s face grew crimson, and his eyes sought those of
Fred, who looked at him with no change of expression whatever until the
judge, roused by the name of Grey, began:
“Strange how things work. The world is one big teeter; sometimes your
end of the board is up plumb, sometimes down. That’s the way with Grey.
End of the teeter was on the ground when he came here, and hadn’t
anything that anybody knew of; and now, my land! he thinks himself at
the top of the heap. Did me a good turn yesterday, to be sure; but, upon
my soul, I mistrust the man just the same. Can’t help it. There was
something behind. Girl is well enough, but is a chip of the old block,
or I am mistaken. Looks like him; has his ways, purring and soft. By the
way, Herbert, it took you a good while to walk home with her. I heard
you when you come in, and the roosters were crowing, and I b’lieve the
sun was rising. Where were you?”
Before Herbert could reply, Fred spoke for him and said:
“He sat with me on the piazza after he came back. It was late when we
came in. I hope we did not greatly disturb you.”
The judge was always suave to Fred Lansing, who represented a large
fortune and a lineage as good and long as his own.
“Oh, no,” he said, with a wave of his hand, “I couldn’t sleep, thinking
of that infernal row at the bank. I wonder I did not lose my mind with
all that howling Babel. I don’t want Herbert bamboozled by the Grey
girl. She is all right in her place, and did grand work yesterday. My
wife will write her a note of thanks, and I shall make her a present at
Christmas, if somebody will remind me of it. She sings well. How would
it do to give her one of those things, you know, that pull out with a
bellus!”
He looked at Herbert, who had gulped down his coffee and was clenching
his fists under the table. At his father’s last words he sprang up and
exclaimed:
“Oh, heavens, father! don’t insult Louie with an accordion; better give
her a jew’s-harp!” and left the room, banging the door behind him.
The judge gave a knowing nod to his wife and said:
“I told you so. He is half gone with that Grey girl. Better get him out
of town as soon as possible. Can’t you take him with you to Newport?
I’ll trust you to cure him.”
He turned to Fred, who was also leaving the table in something of a
hurry, and affected not to hear him.
“I don’t know but Bert is right. His father would make it rather hot for
him, if he knew; but it is hard on the girl. I wonder how much she
really cares for him, and if there will not come an awakening,” Fred was
thinking as he went to his room and busied himself for a time with his
portmanteau, putting something very carefully away in it. “I ought to
know all the commandments. I have said them at Sunday school often
enough, and hear them in church. One of them is, ‘Thou shalt not
steal!’” he said. “I reckon I have broken it, and the worst of it is, I
don’t care,” he continued, as he locked his valise and went downstairs
to join his mother and Blanche Percy on the piazza.
There were fresh napkins for lunch that day, but only five of the six
used at breakfast were put into the basket for soiled linen by the maid,
who, with her mind on many duties, did not notice the absence of the
sixth. Nor was it missed for a long time, and when search was made it
was not to be found. Nancy Sharp, who sometimes worked for the White
house was accredited with taking it home and forgetting to return it,
but as it was very thin, nothing was said to her about it and it was
finally forgotten.
* * * * *
“I want you at the bank to help straighten matters,” the judge said,
after lunch, to Herbert, who made a wry face, for he was intending to
call on Louie and forestall Fred, if possible, and keep him from being
alone with Louie.
But there was no help for it, and in rather a bad humor he accompanied
his father to the bank, where they found a few people re-depositing what
they had drawn out the day before, and looking ashamed as they did it.
Godfrey Sheldon was not among the number. His grievance at not having
received an invitation to the party was not at all diminished, but
rather increased by the Gibsons, who had lost no time in reporting the
grand affair to their less fortunate neighbors. “Such a perfectly lovely
time, with everybody there but you,” they said. “Strange you were not
invited. There must have been a mistake.”
The Sheldon girls knew there was no mistake, and their resentment grew
as they talked of the affair at dinner, and asked their father if he was
going to return his money to the “White Bank.
“Not if I know myself,” was his reply, as he went out to harness his
horse preparatory to driving into town, where his first call was at
Grey’s Bank. “No, sir! Not a red of my money shall ever see the inside
of White’s Bank again,” he said to Mr. Grey, who asked if he wished to
return it. “If my girls are not good enough for an invite, my money is
not good enough for his bank, and I shall leave it here. It is a big sum
not to be drawing interest, but my wife has got it into her head that
savings banks are going to burst, and if it wasn’t here she’d be hidin’
it all over the house. So I shall leave it here till I get a good
investment on bond and mortgage for part of it, anyway. She hain’t no
fear of your bank, and I hadn’t none of White’s. ’TwanO’t for that I
took it out, and I’d no idea of a run. But the old thing was game,
wasn’t it? I don’t see how it stood so square, do you?”
Mr. Grey only smiled and said he was glad it did stand, and thanked Mr.
Sheldon for his confidence and big deposit, and hoped it would be safe
with him. The story of Louie’s part in the run had not yet become known,
and Mr. Grey did not wish to be the first to tell it. He was satisfied
and pleased with the large amount of money left with him, and the trust
reposed in him, and once when alone in his rear office, he buried his
face in his hands and whispered:
“Keep me from temptation and sin!”
He had not yet seen the judge, but when a little later the latter
appeared, and with his old pomposity ascended the steps, he went to the
door with a cheery good-afternoon, which was returned civilly, but
hastily. The judge was in a hurry to know how he stood, and how many
“dumb fools” had left their money in Grey’s Bank. There were more than
he supposed, and his face grew cloudy as he said to his cashier:
“We couldn’t stand much of a run without help to-day, could we? But that
money from New York, due to come on the next train, will fix us up
straight. Here, you, Herbert, look over the books and see just how much
has gone to that man Grey.”
Herbert was not in a very good mood to look over books. He had greeted
his prospective fatherin-law very cordially, but had felt a little
twinge of conscience, knowing he ought to be honest and outspoken and
say to him: “I have asked Louie to be my wife, and she has consented.”
He was in a great hurry to get to Louie, and while looking over the
books kept wondering if Fred were there with her, or would he give up
the call after what had been told him.
Fred was there, and Blanche Percy was with him. She had signified a wish
to see Louie again, and Fred had asked her to accompany him. But for his
knowledge of the engagement he would have preferred going alone, but now
it didn’t matter; nothing mattered much, and he wondered why he felt so
dull and depressed, scarcely hearing what Blanche was saying to him as
they drove to the Grey’s, where they found Louie just as he had found
her the previous day, sitting alone on the piazza.
She had not been as happy that day as newly engaged girls are wont to
be. The secret weighed upon her, and she wondered how she could keep it
four years, and why she must keep it at all. She would do a good deal to
save Herbert from unpleasant relations with his father, but wouldn’t
they be just as unpleasant at the last, when the truth was known? Would
four years lessen them at all? She doubted it, and was sorry she had
given the promise.
Then, in spite of all she could do to prevent it, thoughts of Fred
Lansing would obtrude themselves into her mind, with a feeling that he
would never have required so hard a thing of her if a hundred fathers
had stood in the way. He had said he should call that afternoon, and it
was partly in anticipation of his call that she had taken a seat upon
the piazza, just where she had met him the day before. There was nothing
of the coquette about Louie. She had promised to be Herbert’s wife and
would be true to him as steel; but just what her feeling was with regard
to Fred Lansing, she did not know. Comparatively he was a stranger, and
yet he did not seem so. He had been so kind and thoughtful, and was so
wholly a gentleman in every act, and his voice had been so pleasant and
winsome when he spoke to her, and his eyes had looked so kindly at her
that her pulse throbbed with a delicious kind of exultation whenever she
thought of him, and she was glad he was to be her cousin. The
possibility that he might have been anything nearer to her did not enter
her mind. He was far above her and above Herbert, who was more on her
plane and suited her better. Then she wondered why Herbert had not been
to see her, and was feeling a little piqued at his neglect, when the
White carriage drew up and Miss Percy and Fred alighted.
It was scarcely possible that there should not be an air of
consciousness in Louie’s manner as she went forward to meet the people
with whom she expected to be allied. Fred saw it, and felt a little pang
he could not define as he looked at her bright face, suffused with a
flush of joy, as she greeted them. Herbert had asked if he were in love
with her, and he had not answered except to say, that it was absurd, but
the bit of linen hidden so carefully in his valise, for the sake of a
little girl in a bib apron and white sun-bonnet, seemed to tell a
different story and to prove that love is not always of slow growth.
Herbert’s announcement of his engagement had taken him by surprise, and
the secrecy attending it offended his sense of openness and honor. Then
he knew Herbert pretty well, and had detected in him a drawing away from
Louie’s father and mother, as if they were inferior to the White’s. Had
he been in Herbert’s place he would not have cared who Louie’s parents
were, or what they were. Louie was just as sweet as if she had never
lived in White’s Row, or hemmed the napkin he had purloined.
“I shouldn’t wonder if I were more than half in love,” he thought, but
there was nothing in his manner to show his real feelings, as he offered
her his hand and said laughingly that she did not look at all as if she
had danced all night till broad daylight.
“Oh, I didn’t,” Louie answered in the same strain. “You forget that I
sat through one dance, and then sang that ridiculous bird-song twice,
which nearly split my throat. It aches now.”
“And it is about that throat I have come to talk,” Miss Percy said,
entering at once upon the principal object of her call. “You have the
most wonderful voice I ever heard in one so young. You must cultivate
it. You ought to go abroad—to Marchesi, in Paris. Don’t you believe your
father would let you go with me in the autumn? I have a great desire to
see what can be made of your voice.”
Louie’s eyes were like stars as she thought of Paris, but a shadow fell
on her face when she remembered Herbert, who at that moment came bowling
up the street on his wheel, looking flushed and not altogether pleased
when he saw who Louie’s visitors were. He knew Fred was watching him,
and felt annoyed at the seeming indifference with which Louie received
him. She merely bowed to him and gave him her hand, and then kept
talking to Miss Percy as if he were not there. She was only carrying out
his instructions, he knew, but he would have liked more warmth in her
manner, and was not at all pleased when Miss Percy began to speak again
of Paris and Marchesi, and taking Louie abroad.
“Not with a view to the stage?” he said, and he laid his hand heavily on
Louie’s shoulder, as if to protect her from a threatened danger.
Miss Percy looked curiously at him, wondering why he should be so
excited, or why he should care whether Louie sang on the stage or not.
Neither could she define her own interest in a young girl she had known
so short a time. She was passionately fond of music, and Louie’s voice
had impressed her greatly. She was also rather fond of attending to
other people’s business and having her own way about it. When once her
mind was made up, she held on with a firm grip, and usually carried her
point. With nothing in particular to do and plenty of money to spend,
she would like to have a girl like Louie under her wing; it would help
to divert her mind from a horror which was ever present with her when
she was unoccupied, and she talked on of Paris and Marchesi and Europe
generally as if it were settled that Louie was to go abroad with her in
the autumn.
“Consult your father and mother. I will see them another time, and
remember, it is to be at my own expense. You will be my companion,” she
said at last, as she arose to go.
She had done the most of the talking, leaving Fred and Herbert quite out
of the question; but the latter bided his time, knowing he should have a
chance to express his opinion of Paris and Marchesi after the lady and
Fred were gone. Fred was in no hurry to leave, but as he came with Miss
Percy, he felt obliged to go when she did, and rather reluctantly said
good-by, and left the field to Herbert, who began to air his opinion of
the stage rather hotly and of Miss Percy meddling with what didn’t
concern her. Foreign travel would be a good education in many respects,
he said, and help to fit Louie for the position she would occupy as his
wife, and on that account he would like to have her go abroad with Miss
Percy, who knew a great many nice people both in London, Paris and
Geneva, but he would not have her sing in public, and it would come to
that if Miss Percy had her way. As it was, his father would be angry
enough when he heard of the engagement, and if the stage were added, it
might mean disinheritance. Then, what would they do? Stay in hum-drum
Merivale and work for a living, he a clerk in her father’s bank,
perhaps, and she on the road half the time with a troupe, leaving him to
be spoken of, if he were mentioned at all, as Mrs. White’s husband; if,
indeed, she did not take a stage name, and his identity be lost
entirely. A good deal more he said of the same nature, with sundry
suggestions with regard to Louie’s conduct as his promised wife, until
she began to think that being engaged was not the state of bliss she had
fancied it might be.
From a joking, teasing boy, Herbert seemed to have changed suddenly into
an exacting master, who was to exercise his will over all her actions,
while he was to be as free as ever. She was not to receive the
attentions of any young man, but maintain a dignified reserve towards
them all. They might think her proud, but no matter. When she was his
wife they would understand. As to Paris and Marchesi, they were not to
be thought of. She must go to some finishing school either in Boston or
New York. He would himself make some inquiries as to where it was better
for her to go.
For a time Louie listened in silence, but as Herbert’s restrictions
continued, her temper got the ascendant, and a smart quarrel ensued,
which threatened to end affairs between them. Louie said they were
ended, and she would do as she pleased. She was not a child to be
dictated to in that way. If she chose to be civil to a young man she
should do so. She should not shut herself up like a nun, while he was
having his freedom. As to the stage, she did not believe Miss Percy had
thought of such a thing in connection with her going abroad. For
herself—she certainly had no desire, but if she had, she would sing on a
hundred stages if she chose.
Then Herbert grew angry, and told her to sing and make a spectacle of
herself if she wanted to, but he hoped she would remember what she was
giving up, when she threw him over, with all he could do for her and the
position he could give her.
To this Louie retorted that she did not think him of as much consequence
as he thought himself. She considered a daughter of Thomas Grey quite as
good as a son of Robert White, and others thought so, too. He needn’t
trouble himself to look up a finishing school for her. If she cared to
go to one, her father was capable of finding it.
And so, boy- and girl-like, they quarrelled on until Herbert’s love
triumphed over every other feeling, and the quarrel was made up as such
quarrels usually are, each taking upon himself the most blame. Louie,
however, held out the longest. Her pride was sorely wounded. She
resented Herbert’s assumption of superiority over her and her family,
and refused for a long time to listen to his conciliatory words. But he
prevailed at last, and peace was restored. Herbert had called her a
little cat during the quarrel, but she was a kitten now, gentle, purring
and submissive, and he left her at last, in a very complacent state of
mind, thinking as he walked home that he had commenced right, that
though he had quarrelled, he had conquered, as he ought to do; that the
man should be the master, and if he didn’t assert himself on the start,
Louie, who was a little hot-headed, would get the upperhand, which would
never do, and he a White.
Three days after this the Lansings left Merivale, but not until Miss
Percy had seen Louie again with regard to her voice, and had also
interviewed Mr. Grey, after two or three ineffectual attempts to see
him. Evidently he tried to shun her, but she captured him at last in his
bank, when he could not get away. When he found that the ordeal must be
met, he made the best of it, and nothing could have been more polite or
courteous than his manner as he took her into his rear office, and
listened to her proposition to take his daughter abroad and give her the
benefit of a musical training in Paris or Berlin, or both.
Nothing was said of the stage as a future possibility, and it is
doubtful if Miss Percy had a thought of it. She wanted Louie, and meant
to have her, and had planned many things she would do when once the
young girl was with her.
Accustomed to have her own way, she was not prepared for Mr. Grey’s
decided refusal. He thanked her for her interest in Louie, but said he
could not part with her. Later, when she was through school, he meant to
take her abroad himself and possibly give her some instructions in
music, although he doubted if it would help her much. Her voice suited
him; training might spoil it. He was very firm, and Miss Percy left him
with a feeling that he was a very obstinate man and a very peculiar man,
whom she could not understand. He was a gentleman in every respect, but
he impressed her as being very shy for one who had seen much of the
world. Evidently he was under restraint in her presence, and was
relieved when she arose to go, after exhausting every possible argument
in favor of taking Louie with her to Europe. He was certainly standing
in his own light, or rather in Louie’s, and when she bade the latter
good-by she said to her:
“If anything ever happens and your father changes his mind, let me know
at once.”
Nothing ever could happen, Louie was sure, and, although Paris and
Marchesi seemed very alluring, she was happy to stay at home with
Herbert, who, since their first quarrel, had been very lover-like in his
attentions to her when alone with her, but quite indifferent when in
public. He did this, he said, to blind his father, who would give him
Hail Columbia if he had a suspicion of their relations to each other.
Still the secret weighed heavily on Louie, nor was it made easier
because of the exquisite diamond ring Herbert put upon her finger the
night before he started for college. She could only wear it in her room,
or when alone, and it seemed to her a mockery to call it an engagement
ring. Her nature was open as the day, and she rebelled against the
secrecy imposed upon her, and told Herbert so in every letter she wrote
him. These were not many, for here again his caution came in play. If
too many letters passed, the post-office clerks might comment, and the
gossip reach his father, of whom he seemed more in fear than when he was
a boy.
“If he knew the truth, he would either remove me from college or cut my
allowance, and I should not be pleased with either,” he wrote.
He was posing at Yale as a young man of unbounded wealth, and spending
money freely, and his father paid the bills without a protest, rather
proud than otherwise that they were so large, so long as Herbert was
involved in no disgrace. It was his son, and he was glad to have him
hand in glove with the high bucks, he said, and glad he was seeing the
world. He managed to see a good deal of it in one way and another, and
at the close of his first year came home, with a great sense of his own
importance, and a still greater sense of the dullness of Merivale.
“A one-horse town every way, and a century behind the times, with
nothing going on—nothing to interest a fellow. Everybody at work as if
his life depended upon the amount accomplished from sunrise to sunset.
Nobody with any leisure—no ball-game, no hops, no anything!” he said to
Louie, who did not think him improved by his first year in Yale, and
resented his criticisms upon the town generally and her father in
particular, because he had refused to send her to a school in New York,
where Herbert could see her often and could occasionally show her to his
classmates. All this and much more he had written to Louie, who spoke to
her father of New York, and expressed a desire to go there. After some
inquiries with regard to different schools, Mr. Grey said to her, “Which
do you care for most, a thorough education, or knowing how to walk and
stand and sit and enter a room?”
Louie laughed, and replied that she would like both—the accomplishments
and a thorough education.
“I think, then, Bryn Mawr is the place, rather than a large city, where
there are so many attractions and distractions. They turn out splendid
scholars there.”
For a moment Louie’s brow was puckered with a frown. New York
represented to her everything that was desirable. But with her usual
docility she yielded to her father’s judgment, and Bryn Mawr was decided
upon greatly to the disgust of Herbert, who said several things not very
complimentary to that institution as compared with the New York school
which he had in mind.
“Why, if you take the whole course at Bryn Mawr you will be an old maid
before you get through, with your head crammed full of musty stuff,
which, as my wife, will be of no earthly use to you,” he said.
She ought to see the girls he had met, and whose brothers were in his
class—tip-top girls, and up-to-date; wore big hats and tailor gowns and
smoked cigarettes, some of them. He didn’t quite like that, of course,
but then—well—a lot of girls did it, and one must keep in the swim. The
Merivale boys called him a snob, and he mentally called them country
clowns and kept mostly to himself so far as they were concerned. He saw
Louie often, but did not hesitate to criticise her whenever she failed
to come up to the standard of the tip-top girls with tailor gowns and
big hats. Sometimes Louie took his criticisms meekly, and sometimes
turned upon him furiously, telling him to go to his tip-top girls, who
smoked cigarettes, and leave her alone. On the whole, however, she was
very happy and very proud of him, and longed to have it known that he
belonged to her. But at any suggestion of this kind Herbert resolutely
shook his head. One year had passed quickly, he said, and three more
would pass quicker, when, if she had had enough of Bryn Mawr and Greek
and Latin, she would be his, and his arguments prevailed to quiet Louie,
if not to convince her.