Reuben allowed his mind to drift at will in this novel, enchanted
channel for a long time, until the clients outside had taken their
departure, and his cigar had burned out, and his partner had sauntered
in to mark by some casual talk the fact that the day was done.
What this mind shaped into dreams and desires and pictures in its
musings, it would not be an easy matter to detail. The sum of the
revery--or, rather, the central goal up to which every differing train
of thought somehow managed to lead him--was that Kate Minster was the
most beautiful, the cleverest, the dearest, the loveliest, the most to
be adored and longed for, of all mortal women.
If he did not say to himself, in so many words, “I love her,” it was
because the phraseology was unfamiliar to him. That eternal triplet
of tender verb and soulful pronouns, which sings itself in our more
accustomed hearts to music set by the stress of our present senses--now
the gay carol of springtime, sure and confident; now the soft twilight
song, wherein the very weariness of bliss sighs forth a blessing;
now the vibrant, wooing ballad of a graver passion, with tears close
underlying rapture; now, alas! the dirge of hopeless loss, with wailing
chords which overwhelm like curses, smitten upon heartstrings strained
to the breaking--these three little words did not occur to him. But no
lover self-confessed could have dreamed more deliciously.
He had spoken with her twice now--once when she was wrapped in furs and
wore a bonnet, and once in her own house, where she was dressed in
a creamy white gown, with a cord and tassels about the waist. These
details were tangible possessions in the treasure-house of his memory.
The first time she had charmed and gratified his vague notions of what a
beautiful and generous woman should be; he had been unspeakably pleased
by the enthusiasm with which she threw herself into the plan for helping
the poor work-girls of the town. On this second occasion she had been
concerned only about the safety of her own money, and that of her
family, and yet his liking for her had flared up into something very
like a consuming flame. If there was a paradox here, the lawyer did not
see it.
There floated across his mind now and again stray black motes of
recollection that she had not seemed altogether pleased with him on this
later occasion, but they passed away without staining the bright colors
of his meditation. It did not matter what she had thought or said. The
fact of his having been there with her, the existence of that little
perfumed letter tenderly locked up in the desk before him, the
breathing, smiling, dark-eyed picture of her which glowed in his
brain--these were enough.
Once before--once only in his life--the personality of a woman had
seized command of his thoughts. Years ago, when he was still the
schoolteacher at the Burfield, he had felt himself in love with Annie
Fairchild, surely the sweetest flower that all the farm-lands of
Dearborn had ever produced. He had come very near revealing his
heart--doubtless the girl did know well enough of his devotion--but she
was in love with her cousin Seth, and Reuben had come to realize this,
and so had never spoken, but had gone away to New York instead.
He could remember that for a time he was unhappy, and even so late as
last autumn, after nearly four years had gone by, the mere thought
that she commended her protégée, Jessica Lawton, to his kindness, had
thrilled him with something of the old feeling. But now she seemed all
at once to have faded away into indistinct remoteness, like the figure
of some little girl he had known in his boyhood and had never seen
since.
Curiously enough, the apparition of Jessica Law-ton rose and took form
in his thoughts, as that of Annie Fairchild passed into the shadows of
long ago. She, at least, was not a schoolgirl any more, but a full-grown
woman. He could remember that the glance in her eyes when she looked at
him was maturely grave and searching. She had seemed very grateful
to him for calling upon her, and he liked to recall the delightful
expression of surprised satisfaction which lighted up her face when she
found that both Miss Minster and he would help her.
Miss Minster and himself! They two were to work together to further and
fulfil this plan of Jessica’s! Oh, the charm of the thought!
Now he came to think of it, the young lady had never said a word to-day
about Jessica and the plan--and, oddly enough, too, he had never once
remembered it either. But then Miss Minster had other matters on her
mind. She was frightened about the mortgages and the trust, and anxious
to have his help to set her fears at rest.
Reuben began to wonder once more what there was really in those fears.
As he pondered on this, all the latent distrust of his partner which
had been growing up for weeks in his mind suddenly swelled into a great
dislike. There came to him, all at once, the recollection of those
mysterious and sinister words he had overheard exchanged between his
partner and Tenney, and it dawned upon his slow-working consciousness
that that strange talk about a “game in his own hands” had never been
explained by events. Then, in an instant, he realized instinctively that
here _was_ the game.
It was at this juncture that Horace strolled into the presence of his
partner. He had his hands in his trousers pockets, and a cigar between
his teeth. This latter he now proceeded to light.
“Ferguson has been here again,” he said, nonchalantly, “and brought his
brother with him. He can’t make up his mind whether to appeal the case
or not. He’d like to try it, but the expense scares him. I told him at
last that I was tired of hearing about the thing, and didn’t give a damn
what he did, as long as he only shut up and gave me a rest.”
Reuben did not feel interested in the Fergusons. He looked his partner
keenly, almost sternly, in the eye, and said:
“You have never mentioned to me that Mrs. Minster had put her business
in your hands.”
Horace flushed a little, and returned the other’s gaze with one equally
truculent.
“It didn’t seem to be necessary,” he replied, curtly. “It is private
business.”
“Nothing was said about your having private business when the firm was
established,” commented Reuben.
“That may be,” retorted Horace. “But you have your railroad affairs--a
purely personal matter. Why shouldn’t I have an equal right?”
“I don’t say you haven’t. What I am thinking of is your secrecy in
the matter. I hate to have people act in that way, as if I couldn’t be
trusted.”
Horace had never heard Reuben speak in this tone before. The whole
Minster business had perplexed and harassed him into a state of nervous
irritability these last few weeks, and it was easy for him now to snap
at provocation.
“At least _I_ may be trusted to mind my own affairs,” he said, with
cutting niceness of enunciation and a lowering scowl of the brows.
There came a little pause, for Reuben saw himself face to face with
a quarrel, and shrank from precipitating it needlessly. Perhaps the
rupture would be necessary, but he would do nothing to hasten it out of
mere ill-temper.
“That isn’t the point,” he said at last, looking up with more calmness
into the other’s face. “I simply commented on your having taken such
pains to keep the whole thing from me. Why on earth should you have
thought that essential?”
Horace answered with a question. “Who told you about it?” he asked, in a
surly tone.
“Old ’Squire Gedney mentioned it first. Others have spoken of it
since.”
“Well, what am I to understand? Do you intend to object to my keeping
the business? I may tell you that it was by the special request of my
clients that I undertook it alone, and, as they laid so much stress on
that, it seemed to me best not to speak of it at all to you.”
“Why?”
“To be frank,” said Horace, with a cold gleam in his eye, “I didn’t
imagine that it would be particularly pleasant to you to learn that the
Minster ladies desired not to have you associated with their affairs. It
seemed one of those things best left unsaid. However, you have it now.”
Reuben felt the disagreeable intention of his partner’s words even
more than he did their bearing upon the dreams from which he had been
awakened. He had by this time perfectly made up his mind about Horace,
and realized that a break-up was inevitable. The conviction that this
young man was dishonest carried with it, however, the suggestion that it
would be wise to probe him and try to learn what he was at.
“I wish you would sit down a minute or two,” he said. “I want to talk to
you.”
Horace took a chair, and turned the cigar restlessly around in his
teeth. He was conscious that his nerves were not quite what they should
be.
“It seems to me,” pursued Reuben--“I’m speaking as an older lawyer
than you, and an older man--it seems to me that to put a four hundred
thousand dollar mortgage on the Minster property is a pretty big
undertaking for a young man to go into on his own hook, without
consulting anybody. Don’t misunderstand me. Don’t think I wish to
meddle. Only it seems to me, if I had been in your place, I should have
moved very cautiously and taken advice.
“I did take advice,” said Horace. The discovery that Reuben knew of this
mortgage filled him with uneasiness.
“Of whom? Schuyler Tenney?” asked Reuben, speaking calmly enough, but
watching with all his eyes.
The chance shot went straight to the mark. Horace visibly flushed, and
then turned pale.
“I decline to be catechised in this way,” he said, nervously shifting
his position on the chair, and then suddenly rising. “Gedney is a
damned, meddlesome, drunken old fool,” he added, with irrelevant
vehemence.
“Yes, I’m afraid ‘Cal’ does drink too much,” answered Reuben, with
perfect amiability of tone. He evinced no desire to continue the
conversation, and Horace, after standing for an uncertain moment or
two in the doorway, went out and put on his overcoat. Then he came back
again.
“Am I to take it that you object to my continuing to act as attorney for
these ladies?” he asked from the threshold of the outer room, his voice
shaking a little in spite of itself.
“I don’t think I have said that,” replied Reuben.
“No, you haven’t _said_ it,” commented the other.
“To tell the truth, I haven’t quite cleared up in my own mind just what
I do object to, or how much,” said Reuben, relighting his cigar, and
contemplating his boots crossed on the desk-top. “We’ll talk of this
again.”
“As you like,” muttered young Mr. Boyce. Then he turned, and went away
without saying good-night. The outer door slammed behind him.
Twilight began to close in upon the winter’s day, but Reuben still sat
in meditation. He had parted with his colleague in anger, and it was
evident enough that the office family was to be broken up; but he
gave scarcely a thought to these things. His mind, in fact, seemed by
preference to dwell chiefly upon the large twisted silken cord which
girdled the waist of that wonderful young woman, and the tasselled ends
of which hung against the white front of her gown like the beads of a
nun. Many variant thoughts about her affairs, about her future, rose in
his mind and pleasantly excited it, but they all in turn merged vaguely
into fancies circling around that glossy rope and weaving themselves
into its strands.
It was very near tea-time, and darkness had established itself for the
night in the offices, before Reuben’s vagrant musings prompted him to
action. Upon the spur of the moment, he all at once put down his feet,
lighted the gas over his desk, took out the perfumed letter from its
consecrated resting-place, and began hurriedly to write a reply to it.
He had suddenly realized that the memorable interview that afternoon had
been, from her point of view, inconclusive.
Five times he worked his way down nearly to the bottom of the page,
and then tore up the sheet. At first he was too expansive; then
the contrasted fault of over-reticence jarred upon him. At last he
constructed this letter, which obtained a reluctant approval from his
critical sense, though it seemed to his heart a pitifully gagged and
blindfolded missive:
Dear Miss Minster: Unfortunately, I was unable this afternoon to see my
way to helping you upon the lines which you suggested. I am afraid that
this disappointed you.
Matters have assumed a somewhat different aspect since our talk. By the
time that you have mastered the details of what you had on your mind, I
may be in a position to consult with you freely upon the whole subject.
I want you to believe that I am very anxious to be of assistance to you,
in this as in all other things.
Faithfully yours,
Reuben TRacy.
Reuben locked up the keepsake note again, fondly entertaining the idea
as he did so that soon there might be others to bear it company. Then he
closed the offices, went down upon the street, and told the first idle
boy he met that he could earn fifty cents by carrying a letter at once
to the home of the Minsters. The money would be his when he returned to
the Dearborn House.
“Will there be any answer?” asked the boy.
This opened up a new idea to the lawyer. “You might wait and see,” he
said.
But the messenger came back in a depressingly short space of time, with
the word that no answer was required.
He had hurried both ways with a stem concentration of purpose, and now
he dashed off once more in an even more strenuous face against time
with the half-dollar clutched securely inside his mitten. The Great
Occidental Minstrel Combination was in town, and the boy leaped over
snowbanks, and slid furiously across slippery places, in the earnestness
of his intention not to miss one single joke.
The big man whom he left went wearily up the stairs to his room, and
walked therein for aimless hours, and almost scowled as he shook his
head at the waitress who came up to remind him that he had had no
supper.
*****
The two Minster sisters had read Reuben’s note together, in the
seclusion of their own sitting-room. They had previously discussed
the fact of his refusal to assist them--for so it translated itself
in Kate’s account of the interview--and had viewed it with almost
displeasure.
Ethel was, however, disposed to relent when the letter came.
“At least it might be well to write him a polite note,” she said,
“thanking him, and saying that circumstances might arise under which you
would be glad to--to avail yourself, and so on.”
“I don’t think I shall write at all,” Kate replied, glancing over the
lawyer’s missive again. “He took no interest in the thing whatever.
And you see how even now he infers that ‘the lines I suggested’ were
dishonorable.”
“I didn’t see that, Kate.”
“Here it is. ‘He was unable to see his way,’ and that sort of thing. And
he _said_ himself that the business all seemed regular enough, so far
as he could see.--Say that there is no answer,” she added to the maid at
the door.
The two girls sat in silence for a moment in the soft, cosey light
between the fire-place and the lace-shaded lamp. Then Ethel spoke again:
“And you really didn’t like him, Kate? You know you were so enthusiastic
about him, that day you came back from the milliner’s shop. I never
heard you have so much to say about any other man before.”
“That was different,” mused the other. Her voice grew even less kindly,
and the words came swifter as she went on. “_Then_ it was a question of
helping the Lawton girl. He was quite excited about _that_. He didn’t
hum and haw, and talk about ‘the lines suggested’ to him, then. He could
‘see his way’ very clearly indeed. Oh, yes, with entire clearness! And
I was childish enough to be taken in by it all. I am vexed with myself
when I think of it.”
“Are you sure you are being quite fair, Kate?” pale Ethel asked, putting
her hand caressingly on the sister’s knee. “Read the letter again, dear.
He _says_ he wants to help you; and he hints, too, that something has
happened, or is going to happen, to make him free in the matter. How can
we tell what that something is, or how he felt himself bound before?
It seems to me that we oughtn’t to leap at the idea of his being
unfriendly. I am sure that you believed him to be a wholly good man
before. Why assume all at once now that he is not, just because--Men
don’t change from good to bad like that.”
“Ah, but _was_ he good before, or did we only think so?”
Ethel went on: “Surely, he knows more about business than we do. And if
he was unable to help you, it must have been for some real reason.”
“That is _it!_ I should like to be helped first, and let reasons come
afterward.” The girl’s dark eyes flashed with an imperious light. “What
kind of a hero is it who, when you cry for assistance, calmly says:
‘Upon the lines you suggest I do not see my way’? It is high time the
books about chivalry were burned, if ‘that’ is the modern man.”
“But you did not cry to a hero for assistance. You merely asked the
advice of a lawyer about a mortgage---if mamma is right about its being
a mortgage.”
“It is the same thing,” said Kate, pushing the hassock impatiently with
her foot.. “Whether the distressed maiden falls into the water or into
debt, the principle is precisely the same.”
“He couldn’t do what you asked, because it would be unfair to his
partner. Now, isn’t that it exactly? And wasn’t that honorable? Now,
_be_ frank, Kate.”
“The partner would have gone into anything headlong, asking no
questions, raising no objections, if I had so much ais lifted my finger.
He never would have given, partner a thought.”
Kate, confided this answer to the firelight. She was conscious of a
desire just now not to meet her sister’s glance.
“And you like the man without scruples better than the man with them?”
“At least, he is more interesting,” the elder girl said, still with her
eyes on the burning logs.
Ethel waited a little for some additional hint as to her sister’s state
of mind. When the silence had begun to make itself felt, she said:
“Kate Minster, you don’t mean one word of what you are saying.”
“Ah, but I do.”
“No; listen to me. You really in your heart respect Mr. Tracy very much
for his action to-day.”
“For being so much less eager to help me than he was to help the
milliner?”
“No; for not being willing to help even you by doing an unfair thing.”
“Well--if you like--respect, yes. But so one respects John Knox, and
Increase Mather, and St. Simon What’s-his-name on top of the pillar--all
the disagreeable people, in fact. But it isn’t respect that makes the
world go round. There is such a thing as caring too much for respect,
and too little for warmth of feeling, and generous impulses, and--and so
on.”
“You’re a queer girl, Kate,” was all Ethel could think to say.
This time the silence maintained itself so long that the snapping
of sparks on the hearth, and even the rushing suction of air in the
lamp-flame, grew to be obvious noises. At last Ethel slid softly from
the couch to the carpet, and nestled her head against her sister’s
waist. Kate put her arm tenderly over the girl’s shoulder, and drew
her closer to her, and the silence had become vocal with affectionate
mur-murings to them both. It was the younger sister who finally spoke:
“You _won’t_ do anything rash, Kate? Nothing without talking it over
with me?” she pleaded, almost sadly.
Kate bent over and kissed her twice, thrice, on the forehead, and
stroked the silken hair upon this forehead caressingly. Her own eyes
glistened with the beginnings of tears before she made answer, rising as
she spoke, and striving to import into her voice the accent of gayety:
“As if I ever dreamed of doing anything at all without asking you! And
please, puss, may I go to bed now?”