the dining-room,” he said; “I think it would interest some of my
boarders when they come back next winter. I could give you no end of
sittings, Miss Price——”
Elvira exhibited some hesitancy:
“Well, I might try,” she said. “But I’m not at all good at hair——”
“Shave off my mustache if you like,” said the infatuated Archibald, with
a grimace.
The ladies changed the subject decorously. It was plain that
Archibald’s little advances toward an intimacy, to be derived from
portrait-painting, were being met in rather an unencouraging spirit,
don’t you know! The next day he invited them, as an agreeable
diversion, to visit Coney Island; but Elvira made an excuse that she
had no time for “pleasuring.” They seemed, indeed, to have few
pleasures. The morning walk in Central Park was given up; Miss Perkins
spent the greater part of the time when Elvira was at the Art School
in riding to and fro, apparently, upon street-cars. One day she came
home very late to dinner, saying that she had discovered the “Belt
Line.” While waiting her return for dinner, Archibald had an agreeable
_tête-à-tête_ with Elvira.
IV.
He was growing more and more in love with this self-contained, charming,
young New Englander. It had come to a time when he felt that he must
speak. They had been at No. 41 now these four weeks, aunt and niece, and
yet they had managed to preserve their distance. He was no nearer than
the day they arrived.
He reflected that the pleasant little daily comedy which had amused him
so entirely would have to be given up the instant he made known to her
his state of feeling. But at the same time he felt he could act out the
equivocation no longer. He must, as a gentleman, make a clean breast of
his deception. Archibald had seen a great deal of women, and he believed
that he understood them pretty well. He believed he understood Miss
Price well enough to reckon upon the flattery of her sudden fascination
that first day, for him, as the cause of his deceit. He planned to
boldly tell her this, one day, while they were waiting for Miss Perkins
to revolve around the “Belt Line.” But Elvira turned the conversation
against his will. She seemed to have remarkable intuitions, this strange
creature! Perhaps she had an intuition then. At any rate, she announced
their determination to return to East Village the following Saturday.
“Father writes that his ague is no better—that I must come home,” she
said. “There are, besides, the preserves——”
Archibald expressed no surprise. “If you go,” he said, “I think I’ll
take a run up there also. I have the greatest curiosity about East
Village.”
“There is nothing—it is dreadfully—I wouldn’t have you visit East
Village for all the world!”
“Why?”
“Because—” she replied, sedately.
Recognizing this as a sufficient reply, Archibald took a seat on the
sofa near her. She was in one of her pretty, soft, white muslins, tied,
this evening, with ribbons of the very latest shade of fashionable
apple-green. He had noticed the steady growth of fashion in the girl’s
appearance, but he was not quite prepared for the dozen silver bangles,
which jingled as she raised her hand to her hair. She had a pretty arm
and hand, and were it not for the bangles, which somehow altered the
current of his thought, he had nerved himself up to the point of taking,
or trying to take, her hand in his, and telling her in a manly way his
story. The bangles, however, don’t you know, diverted him. He could not
be serious. He laughed. It was as if he had happened upon a wood nymph
in seven-button kid gloves! She misinterpreted his laughter, believing
that he intended to ridicule the pastoral delights of East Village.
“I’m not ashamed of Vermont,” she said, drawing away a little. “I can’t
bear to have it laughed at. You would laugh at East Village, Mr.
Archibald—you laugh at everything. You are not sincere. You have too
much of the city in you—too much of its glitter and—” She caught his
eyes directed laughingly upon her bangles, and blushed guiltily.
“Time works its changes, don’t you know,” he said. “Even you, Miss
Elvira, are a _little_ affected.”
“I hate myself for it,” she said; “I _do_ find myself growing to like
things I never cared for before. I think of what I have on from morning
to night,” she confessed, guiltily, with an imploring glance at her
landlord.
“Can the dead dulness of midsummer in the city have wrought so wondrous
a change?” he laughed. “How very gay, really, you will be next winter.”
“Seriously,” said Elvira, “I look forward to a visit to East Village as
a complete change and rest. When I think of the white, dead walls of our
meetinghouse, I am glad; when I think of the lack of color in everybody
up there, it makes me glad; when I think of the plainness of everything,
the simpleness, the _truth_ of everything, I’m glad to go back. But
don’t you—don’t come up to Vermont, Mr. Archibald. Really, please,
don’t.”
Again Archibald felt impelled to seize her white, pretty hand, and tell
his story. He had never come to so intimate a point before. What chance
had he ever to come so near again? All that his mother and sisters could
write would have no effect upon him now. All that his friends at the
club would say, all that his Aunt Newbold would say—his Aunt Newbold was
the formidable dragon of his family—nothing, he felt sure, would alter
his mind. He had deliberated a month, he would deliberate no more.
Besides, she was going away; perhaps if he did _not_ speak his
opportunity would never again occur. He paled a little as he was about
to open his lips.
Bother!
The chalk-faced maid entered with a card on a silver tray.
V.
Mr. Jerome Archibald had very few hatreds; people whom he disliked he
carefully avoided. Being fastidious to an extreme, he had few friends,
but he likewise had no enemies. He had, however, a certain cousin who
lived in Boston, who had in some way early offended him, and for whom he
continued to have a most inexplicable dislike. Hunnewell Hollis was a
Harvard man, who had been a great swell at college, and who was
considered “clevah.” He was a year or two older than Archibald, and he
usually presumed a little upon his age and upon his superior education.
It was Hunnewell Hollis’s card which was brought up on the silver tray.
Archibald impatiently rose and went down to the reception-room. There he
found Hollis walking up and down the room, apparently in some
excitement.
“Jerry, this won’t do, old man!—heard ladies’ voices upstairs! ’Twon’t
do! Lucky I ran down with the yacht. Now I’m going to carry you off with
me. By the way, Somers and Billy Nahant and Jack Chadwick are here, and
I took the liberty to invite them here overnight—knew you were
alone—knew you would be glad to put them up.”
“By Jove, you do me great honor! Unfortunately I haven’t room for
you—I’ve only just let the house—taken—by Jove! I must take in the
sign.”
Archibald’s face betrayed no sign of his justifiable prevarication.
“Well, then, as it is dinner-time I’ll stay to dinner with you.”
“Sorry, very sorry. But the ladies who have taken the house would think
it very odd——”
“Well, how in the devil are _you_ dining with them, Jerry?”
“They asked me, in order to discuss the terms. A few details before
signing the lease, don’t you know!”
“Well, it puts me in a rather awkward position; I’ve left the fellows
your address; they’ll be here shortly.”
“Why don’t you head ’em off?” suggested Archibald, coolly.
Mr. Hunnewell Hollis gave his cousin a glance of anger. “The whole thing
is rather fishy,” he said, suspiciously. “I trust, Jerry, for the honor
of the family——”
Archibald never quite detested his cousin so much before.
“There are a great many adventuresses about; they are on the lookout for
rich young men like you, Jerry,” and Hunnewell Hollis, giving his cousin
a rather gravely serious nod, took up his hat and cane and departed.
Archibald went directly upstairs. He heard a rustle of a dress against
the furniture. Had Elvira been listening? He hoped not.
VI.
Adventuress! How that odious word rang in his ears as he entered the
room where the sweet primrose face was still in its corner of the sofa.
He swore he would never write to, nor speak to, Hunnewell Hollis again.
He had done with him forever. Yet, had he heard the rustle of her dress?
It gave him a slightly disagreeable sensation to think that it were
possible. Elvira Price apparently had not moved from her seat. She was
in the same pretty attitude in which he had left her, leaning back,
easily, against the corner of the sofa, her hands crossed in her lap. As
he entered it seemed to him that she was studying his face.
“I was so anxious about aunt,” she said. “I went out to the stairs
thinking I heard her come in. Do you know, it isn’t the Belt Line only;
she goes to a mission—a boy’s mission. She has taken the greatest
interest in it; all the teachers have gone away for the summer. It is in
an out-of-the-way part of the city, and it worries me.”
Archibald hesitated a moment, then he said:
“Did you hear the row with my cousin? He was very impertinent; but all
Bostonians are impertinent.”
The name Bostonian seemed to give her a slight sensation.
“You have been in Boston?” he asked.
“N—yes, and I, too, found Bostonians impertinent.” She gave him an
appealing glance; then she added, after a pause, “I find New York quite
different.”
Miss Perkins came in shortly after, much fatigued, and Archibald after
dinner went over to the club, where he fell in with Hunnewell Hollis
again, in spite of the fact that he did his best to avoid him. Hunnewell
had found his yachting friends, and they had had a very good dinner.
They were all very talkative—Somers, Billy Nahant, and Jack Chadwick.
They were in flannel suits and yachting caps, and each was bronzed and
sunburned to a fine copper hue.
“What is the name of the people who have taken your house?” asked
Hunnewell, bluntly, after he had introduced Archibald to his friends.
“Miss Perkins and her niece, Miss Elvira Price,” replied Archibald,
coldly.
Instantly Billy Nahant pricked up his ears. “Why,” he said, “isn’t she
an actress? Didn’t she play in Boston last winter?”
“Who?” asked Archibald.
“Why, Elvira Price. She made quite a hit, I believe—her _début_ too—at
the Boston Theatre. She played to crowded houses exactly two weeks; at
the end of that time, to everyone’s surprise, she went home to Vermont,
whence she came, and she calmly gave up the stage forever!”
Archibald’s face was a study.
“Did you know you were letting your mother’s house to actresses?” asked
Hollis, with a sneer.
“Miss Price is probably a different person from the one to whom Mr.
Nahant has reference,” said Archibald, coldly.
“I remember the girl,” said Jack Chadwick. “She was very young and
beautiful, and fitted her part admirably. She made an excellent
_ingénue_. She held herself well—not at all gushing, don’t you know—but
poetic, _spirituelle_. She played in ‘A Scrap of Paper’—some picked-up
company with her. She carried the play very well. I have often wondered
what became of her.”
“So this is the creature who has rented your house, and whom you dined
with to-night,” sneered Hollis; “an _ingénue_, indeed!”
“Miss Price is a lady—not a ‘creature,’” said Archibald, haughtily. “As
far as I have seen, she can only honor our house by remaining under its
roof.” And Archibald bowed stiffly, and took his leave in the midst of
an embarrassed silence.
VII.
He preferred not to see Elvira again before she took her departure for
Vermont the next day. Her aunt remained in the city to look after her
“mission work.” Archibald presented her, as the gift of a rich, unknown
friend, fifty dollars—their board-money—to send some of her boys into
the country. After Elvira’s departure he became very despondent.
Elvira’s image was broken to him, and while she had not become in his
mind quite an adventuress, yet she had concealed her former life from
him. She had deceived him.
But as the days went by and he missed her, he found that he must speak
to Miss Perkins about Elvira’s acting, or go through a serious case of
nervous prostration. He said very bluntly to her, one day, at dinner:
“So I hear your niece is a great actress.”
Miss Perkins gave him a quick, sharp glance.
“She _has_ acted,” she replied. “But Elvira Price had too much
conscience to act _long_.”
He gave a sigh of relief.
“She acted in Boston, because she was bound to try it. She wanted to try
everything—everything that would keep her father out of the poor-house
and educate the family. But acting, Mr. Archibald, is a dreadful
business! As soon as Elvira saw into it a little she quit. The air
wasn’t pure enough, somehow, for her. Elvira, she needs awful pure air!”
Again Archibald felt a certain glow of satisfaction steal over him.
“Do you know,” he said, after a suitable pause, “I am more than
half-inclined to make her angry by running up to East Village.”
Miss Perkins gave a little quinzied laugh of satisfaction. She was
beginning to like Archibald very much.
“It would startle Elvira; but she’d be pleased,” ventured the thin old
maid. “She’d be pleased—in spite of everything!”
A few days later Archibald, after half a day’s journey, found himself in
Vermont. As the train drew near East Village the mountains grew higher
and the scenery wilder. He could see the great August moon roll itself
above the high crest of the mountains to the west. Though Archibald was
far from superstitious, he was pained to observe that he saw the moon
over his left shoulder.
It was late when he stumbled from the steps of the car upon the wooden
platform of the station at East Village. It was dark, also, and to him,
extraordinarily cold. He groped his way, shivering, past a blinding
reflector, where half a dozen men in cow-hide boots were examing a list
of invoices, to what he could dimly outline as the village stage. No one
spoke to him, and he found that no one seemed to care whether he, the
sole passenger, was carried. He had visions of an unpleasant nature of
being deposited inside the coach in a shed or stable to await the
morning. He felt the stage pitch and toss for twenty minutes like a bark
upon an angry sea. When all was still again he found that the driver had
drawn up before a white-pillared old-fashioned house, which stood a
little back from the street. At the side of the gate a small wooden
building bore the sign, which was illuminated by the stage lamp,
_Ephraim B. Price, Attorney at Law._
“Oh,” said Archibald, “this is Elvira’s house, and the driver is
delivering my box of flowers.”
He leaned forward, hoping to catch sight of the fair young girl when the
front-door opened to take in the box. But he was disappointed. The
impatient driver had merely left it on the steps of the high,
white-pillared portico, after giving the door-bell a vigorous pull.
Then followed a further few minutes of pitching and tossing, and the
stage drew up before the tavern-door. A row of a dozen men, whose hats
were drawn down over their eyes, and whose feet fell instantaneously
from the rail to the floor as the coach drew up, came forward, and one
of them betrayed a desire to grasp Archibald’s in his own horny hand.
“Guess ye’ll stop overnight? Th’ain’t no other place. ’Sprised to see a
stranger to-night, tew. Will you go in an’ sign—will you, sir?”
“So this uncouth ruffian,” thought Archibald, “is Elvira’s ideal
landlord! No wonder she distrusts me!”
“We’re local temp’rance,” said the landlord. “An’ no licker’s being seen
to East Village for nigh six years. Not a drop, sir, an’ it’s bustin’ my
ho-tel higher’n a kite. Yes, it is!”
Archibald expressed commiseration.
“As I tell’d Squar’ Price, ‘yeou high-toned, ’ristocratic temp’rance
folk’ll hurt East Village when ye close the hotel!’ Why, when a gent
comes up here fr’ the city, he wants to be able to call fer a glass o’
gin or a glass o’ whiskey ’s often ’s he likes.”
Archibald thought he detected the faint smell of liquor upon the
landlord’s breath as he talked, and it occurred to him that his
obtrusively free-and-easy-manner was the result of a secret violation of
the prohibitory local license law. “Bein’ fr’ the city, as you be,” said
the landlord, lowering his voice to a whisper, and placing his heavy
hand on Archibald’s shoulder familiarly, “I calc’late you’re cold an’
ready for a tidy drink. I calc’late I’m talkin’ to a gent as is used ter
lickerin’ up, even ef ’tis agin the law?” To humor him, Archibald
admitted that he had no stringent prohibitory sentiments.
“Well then, good! Jest you foller me!”
Archibald followed the landlord out into the hotel yard, where the
latter pulled up the flaps of a cellar-door. Hearing the creaking sound,
and taking it for an admonitory signal, the row of men on the hotel
piazza, who had resumed their seats, again dropped their feet on the
floor, rose, and came out into the yard in Indian file, in perfect
silence. Archibald followed his landlord down into the darkness of the
cellar, where, beneath the dim light of a solitary candle he perceived a
cask with a wooden spigot, and near it half a dozen tin cups. The men
filed down the steps behind him. “You’ve heerd o’ apple jack?” asked the
landlord, in a whisper.
Archibald nodded.
“Drink that, then!” and the landlord handed him a cupful of the
beverage. It was enough to intoxicate him. He drank but a very little;
as he saw the other men were waiting, he passed the cup on to them.
“Welcome to East Village, stranger,” said one of the men, drinking. “Be
you up ’ere a-sellin’ marchandize?”
“Oh, no!”
“Be you come to see the Squar’?”
“Well—perhaps—yes.”
“Wa’l, this is a dead give away!” and the men laughed noisily, as
rustics will. “Don’t mention this ’ere cider to Squar’ Price!”
The next morning was delicious, the air clear and smelling of the
mountains. The mist hung above the distant river, and a line of hills
showed their green wooded outline above it. As Archibald breathed the
sweet country air, he stepped more briskly, felt less of his city
malaria, drew into his lungs a long breath of the fresh, invigorating
summer wind, which seemed to come to him across the high upland, from
such a vast distance.
He came to the old colonial gate and entered. The Hon. Ephraim B. Price
was just at the moment sauntering down the gravel path from his house to
his law office. As he saw Archibald enter, he came forward somewhat more
rapidly. He was a man of large frame, gaunt rather than spare, of
prominent cheekbones, of lengthy chin-beard. His eyes were very keen,
and his entire expression was one of patient alertness—as if there was
very little to be alert over, but a deep necessity of keeping up a
reputation. Archibald learned afterward how indefatigable a partisan,
and how strenuous a believer in the Republican party the Hon. Ephraim
was.
“Sir,” he said, after greeting Archibald, and looking with a grin of
pity upon his engraved card—a grin directed chiefly to the “Mr.” before
Archibald’s name—“you are Elvira’s landlord down to New York—tell me,
how is your city and State going, do you think?”
Archibald felt taken aback. Politics were something of which he knew
nothing. He was but barely aware that it was a presidential year. In the
city he kept severely out of politics, as hardly the employment of
gentlemen.
“I—I—think it will go Democratic.”
A more violent frown than before. “If I thought so, sir; if I imagined
so; if for one instant I believed that what we fought for during the
war—Eh, Elvira? Here is Mr. Archibald!”
Then the Hon. Ephraim turned abruptly and entered his office, where, it
may be added, he sat for the next hour, his feet on the cold stove
before him, meditating where his next fee was to come from, and breaking
out with an occasional invective against the wicked democracy.
Before the old gentleman was a square window which looked out over the
town. All day long he sat before this, as upon a watch-tower—a censor of
village morals and deportment.
“Father is so interested in the election,” apologized Elvira. “But how
strange to see you here; and I told you not to!”
She held a small gray kitten in her arms, which she stroked slowly. She
was still in his favorite white muslin, and she had a gentle, sweet
flush of pleasure in her face.
“I came, Miss Price—because—don’t you know—I—aw—missed you,” and he
smiled.
“You are very good. How is Aunt Perkins? Did she bring her mission boys
to your house? She has written that a friend of yours has given fifty
dollars for the boys. Do tell me about it. Is she well? Have any more
boarders come?”
She plied him with questions as they strolled toward the white-pillared
portico. The house was old and shabby, but he did not notice it. The
place was run down and impoverished, but it seemed very beautiful to
him, for he noticed that she wore one of his roses in her lustrous hair.
Entering the hallway he met some of the younger brothers and sisters,
and felt a sudden strange affection spring up in his heart for them.
Elvira took him through into a gloomy parlor, lined with plain
hair-cloth furniture. On the walls were several portraits. “This was my
mother,” said the girl, affectionately, pointing to what Archibald felt
to be a hideous daub, a red-faced woman in black, against a green
background. It was the portrait by Mr. Raymond, whose abode was now the
poor-house. “She died only two years ago——”
“I fancy if she had lived,” said Archibald, “you would not have
tried—the stage?”
She looked at him calmly a moment.
“That Boston man has told you?”
“Yes, I learned the fact from his friends.”
“I shall never—again.” There was a despairing pathos in her voice.
“Elvira,” he said, slowly, “as I see it—I think it was very noble of you
to try.”
Then, unaccountably to him, she burst into tears.
“It is what I love—what I long for—to be an actress—a great actress,”
she sobbed. “But I can’t—I can’t! I can’t exist with those
creatures—those horrible men who hang about you! No one knows what I
endured! No one knows what, too, I gave up when I left the stage and
came home; but I _had_ to.”
He leaned forward in sympathy.
“You may say what you will, but there is no Art like acting, and nothing
so fine as applause. Oh, that I could bring myself to do it—to be strong
enough to do it—to save our fortunes—to help father. You little know how
I have suffered, Mr. Archibald.”
“By Jove—I—I quite like you for it!”
He was on his feet at her side. Impulsively he bent down and whispered
close to her ear. “Let me be your audience the rest of my life! Act for
_me_—let me applaud everything—anything you do, my darling! always!
always!”
She put him away.
“I don’t feel I have acted just right _with_ you,” she said. “I should
have told you that I was—or might be again—an actress.” She spoke
coldly. “I don’t believe you want them in your boarding-house. They are
not always desirable, I believe!” Elvira’s eyes were fastened on the
floor.
Archibald paced to and fro in the parlor. “Confound her odd New England
conscience!” he muttered to himself. Seizing her hands, he cried,
passionately, “I, too, must confess. Elvira, I loved you that first day
you came. _I loved you!_ Therefore I let you think—it _was_ a boarding
house.”
“And it isn’t—it’s your own private—Oh, Mr. Archibald!”
She sat and looked at him with a horrified stare. The full truth of his
imposition began to steal upon her gradually. Then her face fell and she
averted it, as she felt that a fatal untruth had come between them. She
rose quietly and left him standing near her. She went upstairs to her
room and threw herself upon her bed in an agony of tears.
Through it all Archibald had merely smiled!
VIII.