Four days of anxious meditation did not help Horace Boyce to clear his
mind, and on the fifth he determined upon a somewhat desperate step, in
the hope that its issue would assist decision.
His dilemma was simple enough in character. Two ways of acquiring a
fortune lay before him. One was to marry Kate Minster; the other was
to join the plot against her property and that of her family, which the
subtile Tenney was darkly shaping.
The misery of the situation was that he must decide at once which of
the ways he would choose. In his elation at being selected as the legal
adviser and agent of these millionnaire women, no such contingency as
this had been foreseen. He had assumed that abundant time would be at
his disposal, and he had said to himself that with time all things may
be accomplished with all women.
But this precious element of time had been harshly cut out of his plans,
here at the very start. The few days reluctantly granted him had gone
by, one by one, with cruel swiftness, and to-morrow would be Monday--and
still his mind was not made up.
If he could be assured that Miss Minster would marry him, or at least
admit him to the vantage-ground of _quasi-recognition_ as a suitor, the
difficulty would be solved at once. He would turn around and defend
her and her people against the machinations of Tenney. Just what the
machinations were he could not for the life of him puzzle out, but he
felt sure that, whatever their nature, he could defeat them, if only
he were given the right to do battle in the name of the family, as a
prospective member of it.
On the other hand, it might be that he had no present chance with Miss
Minster as an eligible husband. What would happen if he relied on a
prospect which turned out not to exist? His own opportunity to share
in the profits of Tenney’s plan would be abruptly extinguished, and his
father would be thrown upon the world as a discredited bankrupt. About
that there was no doubt.
Sometimes the distracted young man thought he caught glimpses of a safe
middle course. In these sanguine moments it seemed feasible to give in
his adhesion to Tenney’s scheme, and go along with him for a certain
time, say until the intentions of the conspirators were revealed. Then
he might suddenly revolt, throw himself into a virtuous attitude, and
win credit and gratitude at the hands of the family by protecting them
from their enemies. Then the game would be in his own hands, and no
mistake!
But there were other times when this course did not present so many
attractions to his mind--when it was borne in upon him that Tenney would
be a dangerous kind of man to betray. He had seen merciless and terrible
depths in the gray eyes of the hardware merchant--depths which somehow
suggested bones stripped clean of their flesh, sucked bare of their
marrow, at the bottom of a gloomy sea. In these seasons of doubt, which
came mostly in the early morning when he first awoke, the mere thought
of Tenney’s hatred made him shudder. It was as if Hugo’s devil-fish had
crawled into his dreams.
So Sunday afternoon came and found the young man still perplexed and
harassed. To do him justice, he had once or twice dwelt momentarily on
the plan of simply defying Tenney and doing his duty by the Minsters,
and taking his chances. But these impulses were as quickly put down. The
case was too complicated for mere honesty. The days of martyrdom were
long since past. One needed to be smarter than one’s neighbors in these
later times. To eat others was the rule now, if one would save himself
from being devoured. It was at least clear to his mind that he must be
smart, and play his hand so as to get the odd trick even if honors were
held against him.
Horace decided finally that the wisest thing he could do would be to
call upon the Minsters before nightfall, and trust to luck for some
opportunity of discovering Miss Kate’s state of mind toward him. He
was troubled more or less by fears that Sunday might not be regarded
in Thessaly as a proper day for calls, as he dressed himself for
the adventure. But when he got upon the street, the fresh air and
exhilaration oc exercise helped to reassure him. Before he reached the
Minster gate he had even grown to feel that the ladies had probably had
a dull day of it, and would welcome his advent as a diversion.
He was shown into the stately parlor to the left of the wide hall--a
room he had not seen before--and left to sit there in solitude for some
minutes. This term of waiting he employed in looking over the portraits
on the wall and the photographs on the mantels and tables. Aside from
several pictures of the dissipated Minster boy who had died, he could
see no faces of young men anywhere, and he felt this to be a good sign
as he tiptoed his way back to his seat by the window.
Fortune smiled at least upon the opening of his enterprise. It was Miss
Kate who came at last to receive him, and she came alone. The young
man’s cultured sense of beauty and breeding was caressed and captivated
as it had never been before--at least in America, he made mental
reservation--as she came across the room toward him, and held out her
hand. He felt himself unexpectedly at ease, as he returned her greeting
and looked with smiling warmth into her splendid eyes.
His talk was facile and pleasant. He touched lightly upon his doubts
as to making calls on Sunday, and how they were overborne by the
unspeakable tedium of his own rooms. Then he spoke of the way the more
unconventional circles of London utilize the day, and of the contrasting
features of the Continental Sunday. Miss Kate seemed interested, and
besides explaining that her mother was writing letters and that her
sister was not very well, bore a courteous and affable part in the
exchange of small-talk.
For a long time nothing was said which enabled Horace to feel that the
purpose of his visit had been or was likely to be served. Then, all at
once, through a most unlikely channel, the needed personal element was
introduced.
“Mamma tells me,” she said, when a moment’s pause had sufficed to
dismiss some other subject, “that she has turned over to you such of
her business as poor old Mr. Clarke used to take care of, and that your
partner, Mr. Tracy, has nothing to do with that particular branch
of your work. Isn’t that unusual? I thought partners always shared
everything.”
“Oh, not at all,” replied Horace. “Mr. Tracy, for example, has railroad
business which he keeps to himself. He is the attorney for this section
of the road, and of course that is a personal appointment. He couldn’t
share it with me, any more than the man in the story could make his wife
and children corporals because he had been made one himself. Besides,
Mr. Tracy was expressly mentioned by your mother as not to be included
in the transfer of business. It was her notion.”
“Ah, indeed!” said that young woman, with a slight instantaneous lifting
of the black brows which Horace did not catch. “Why? Isn’t he nice?”
“Well, yes; he’s an extremely good fellow, in his way,” the partner
admitted, looking down at his glossy boots in well-simulated hesitation.
“That little word ‘nice’ means so many things upon feminine lips,
you know,” he added with a smile. “Perhaps he wouldn’t answer your
definition of it all around. He’s very honest, and he is a prodigious
worker, but--well, to be frank, he’s farm bred, and I daresay your
mother suspected the existence of--what shall I say?--an uncouth side?
Really, I don’t think that there was anything more than that in it.”
“So you furnish the polish, and he the honesty and industry? Is that
it?”
The words were distinctly unpleasant, and Horace looked up swiftly to
the speaker’s face, feeling that his own was flushed. But Miss Kate was
smiling at him, with a quizzical light dancing in her eyes, and this
reassured him on the instant. Evidently she felt herself on easy terms
with him, and this was merely a bit of playful chaff.
“We don’t put it quite in that way,” he said, with an answering laugh.
“It would be rather egotistical, on both sides.”
“Nowadays everybody resents that imputation as if it were a cardinal
sin. There was a time when self-esteem was taken for granted. I suppose
it went out with chain-armor and farthingales.” She spoke in a musing
tone, and added after a tiny pause, “That must have been a happy time,
at least for those who wore the armor and the brocades.”
Horace leaped with avidity at the opening. “Those were the days of
romance,” he said, with an effort at the cooing effect in his voice.
“Perhaps they were not so altogether lovely as our fancy paints them;
but, all the same, it is very sweet to have the fancy. Whether it be
historically true or not, those who possess it are rich in their own
mind’s right. They can always escape from the grimy and commercial
conditions of this present work-a-day life. All one’s finer senses can
feed, for example, on a glowing account of an old-time tournament--with
the sun shining on the armor and burnished shields, and the waving
plumes and iron-clad horses and the heralds in tabards, and the rows of
fair ladies clustered about the throne--as it is impossible to do on the
report of a meeting of a board of directors, even when they declare you
an exceptionally large dividend.”
The young man kept a close watch upon this flow of words as it
proceeded, and felt satisfied with it. The young woman seemed to like it
too, for she had sunk back into her chair with an added air of ease, and
looked at him now with what he took to be a more sympathetic glance, as
she made answer:
“Why, you are positively romantic, Mr. Boyce!”
“Me? My dear Miss Minster, I am the most sentimental person alive,”
Horace protested gayly.
“Don’t you find that it interferes with your profession?” she asked,
with that sparkle of banter in her dark eyes which he began to find so
delicious. “I thought lawyers had to eschew sentiment. Or perhaps you
supply _that_, too, in this famous partnership of yours!”
Horace laughed with pleasure. “Would you like me the less if I admitted
it?” he queried.
“How could I?” she replied on the instant, still with the smile which
kept him from shaping a harsh interpretation of her words. “But isn’t
Thessaly a rather incongruous place for sentimental people? We have no
tourney-field--only rolling-mills and button-factories and furnaces; and
there isn’t a knight, much less a herald in a tabard, left in the whole
village. Their places have been taken by moulders and puddlers. So what
will the minstrel do then, poor thing?”
“Let him come here sometimes,” said the young man, in the gravely ardent
tone which this sort of situation demanded. “Let him come here, and
forget that this is the nineteenth century; forget time and Thessaly
altogether.”
“Oh, but mamma wouldn’t like that at all; I mean about your forgetting
so much. She expects you particularly to remember both time _and_
Thessaly. No, decidedly; that would never do!”
The smile and the glance were intoxicating. The young man made his
plunge.
“But _may_ I come?” His voice had become low and vibrant, and it went on
eagerly: “May I come if I promise to remember everything; if I swear
to remember nothing else save what you--and your mother--would have me
charge my memory with?”
“We are always glad to see our friends on Tuesdays, from two to five.”
“But I am not in the plural,” he urged, gently.
“We are,” she made answer, still watching him with a smile, from where
she half-reclined in the easy-chair. Her face was in the shadow of the
heavier under-curtains; the mellow light gave it a uniform tint of ivory
washed with rose, and enriched the wonder of her eyes, and softened into
melting witchery the lines of lips and brows and of the raven diadem of
curls upon her forehead.
“Yes; in that the graces and charms of a thousand perfect women are
centred here in one,” murmured Horace. It was in his heart as well as
his head to say more, but now she rose abruptly at this, with a laugh
which for the instant disconcerted him.
“Oh, I foresee _such_ a future for this firm of yours,” she cried, with
high merriment alike in voice and face.
As they both stood in the full light of the window, the young man
somehow seemed to miss that yielding softness in her face which had
lulled his sense and fired his senses in the misleading shadows of the
curtain. It was still a very beautiful face, but there was a great deal
of self-possession in it. Perhaps it would be as well just now to go no
further.
“We must try to live up to your good opinion, and your kindly forecast,”
he said, as he momentarily touched the hand she offered him. “You cannot
possibly imagine how glad I am to have braved the conventionalities in
calling, and to have found you at home. It has transformed the rural
Sunday from a burden into a beatitude.”
“How pretty, Mr. Boyce! Is there any message for mamma?”
“Oh, why did you say that?” He ventured upon a tone of mock vexation.
“I wanted so much to go away with the fancy that this was an enchanted
palace, and that you were shut up alone in it, waiting for--”
“Tuesdays, from two till five,” she broke in, with a bow, in the same
spirit of amiable raillery, and so he said good-by and made his way out.
Had he succeeded? Was there a promise of success? Horace took a long
walk before he finally turned his steps homeward, and pondered these
problems excitedly in his mind. On the whole, he concluded that he could
win her. That she was for herself better worth the winning than even for
her million, he said to himself over and over again with rapture.
*****
Miss Kate went up-stairs and into the sitting-room common to the
sisters, in which Ethel lay on the sofa in front of the fire-place. She
knelt beside this sofa, and held her hands over the subdued flame of the
maple sticks on the hearth.
“It is so cold down in the parlor,” she remarked, by way of explanation.
“He stayed an unconscionable while,” said Ethel. “What could he have
talked about? I had almost a mind to waive my headache and come down to
find out. It was a full hour.”
“He wouldn’t have thanked you if you had, my little girl,” replied Kate
with a smile.
“Does he dislike little girls of nineteen so much? How unique!”
“No; but he came to make love to the big girl; that is why.”
Ethel sat bolt upright. “You don’t mean it!” she said, with her hazel
eyes wide open.
“_He_ did,” was the sententious reply. Kate was busy warming the backs
of her hands now.
“Goodness me! And I lay here all the while, and never had so much as a
premonition. Oh, what was it like? Did he get on his knees? Was it very,
_very_ funny? Make haste and tell me.”
“Well, it _was_ funny, after a fashion. At least, we both laughed a good
deal.”
“How touching! Well?”
“That is all. I laughed at him, and he laughed--I suppose it must have
been at me--and he paid me some quite thrilling compliments, and
I replied, ‘Tuesdays, from two to five,’ like an educated
jackdaw--and--that was all.”
“What a romance! How could you think of such a clever answer, right on
the spur of the moment, too? But I always said you were the bright
one of the family, Kate. Perhaps one’s mind works better in the cold,
anyway. But I think he _might_ have knelt down. You should have put him
close to the register. I daresay the cold stiffened his joints.”
“Will you ever be serious, child?”
Ethel took her sister’s head in her hands and turned it gently, so that
she might look into the other’s face.
“Is it possible that _you_ are serious, Kate?” she asked, in tender
wonderment.
The elder girl laughed, and lifted herself to sit on the sofa beside
Ethel.
“No, no; of course it isn’t possible,” she said, and put her arm about
the invalid’s slender waist. “But he’s great fun to talk to. I chaffed
him to my heart’s content, and he saw what I meant, every time, and
didn’t mind in the least, and gave me as good as I sent. It’s such a
relief to find somebody you can say saucy things to, and be quite sure
they understand them. I began by disliking him--and he _is_ as conceited
as a popinjay--but then he comprehended everything so perfectly, and
talked so well, that positively I found myself enjoying it. And he knew
his own mind, too, and was resolved to say nice things to me, and said
them, whether I liked or not.”
“But _did_ you ‘like,’ Kate?”
“No-o, I think not,” the girl replied, musingly. “But, all the same,
there was a kind of satisfaction in hearing them, don’t you know.”
The younger girl drew her sister’s head down to her shoulder, and
caressed it with her thin, white fingers.
“You are not going to let your mind drift into anything foolish, Kate?”
she said, with a quaver of anxiety in her tone. “You don’t know the man.
You don’t even like him. You told me so, even from what you saw of him
on the train coming from New York. You said he patronized everybody and
everything, and didn’t have a good word to say for any one. Don’t you
know you did? And those first impressions are always nearest the truth.”
This recalled something to Kate’s mind. “You are right, puss,” she said.
“It _is_ a failing of his. He spoke to-day almost contemptuously of
his partner--that Mr. Tracy whom I met in the milliner’s shop; and that
annoyed me at the time, for I liked Mr. Tracy’s looks and talk very much
indeed, _I_ shouldn’t call him uncouth, at all.”
“That was that Boyce man’s word, was it?” commented Ethel. “Well, then,
I think that beside his partner, he is a pretentious, disagreeable
monkey--there!”
Kate smiled at her sister’s vehemence. “At least it is an unprejudiced
judgment,” she said. “You don’t know either of them.”
“But I’ve seen them both,” replied Ethel, conclusively.