THE MAYOR’S COURTSHIP
Admiration throughout the City-State had been growing over the
administration of the Mayor, its Governor, and it had not been
confined to any class. He had exhibited exacting industry, careful
judgment and unexpectedly evinced the qualities of poise and
decision, virtues which the observant Mr. Briggs had so hugely
doubted he possessed. Nor did he appear less advantageously on the
dress occasions of the city’s public ceremonies. He had made a
really remarkable public speech in which he discussed many of the
coming questions of the day and century, emphasized the absolute
supremacy of Law and Order and, by an adroit mixture of rhetoric and
facts, succeeded in holding an audience composed of every grade and
circumstance, and which departed uttering golden opinions over his
sense and his eloquence.
He had not hesitated to explain his action in allowing a reprieve
to the convicted anarchists—an action which for a time brought down
upon his head the fulminations of the better papers, and exposed him
to the scurrilous abuse of his enemies—and defended their complete
right to obtain a new trial. Without divulging the nature of the
new evidence in their behalf, he boldly declared an injustice had
been done and that, if judgment was suspended, his course would
be universally endorsed. He talked straight to the hearts of his
hearers, in this matter, and appealed to their American sense of
fairness. He had consulted Helen Lorimer about this address, and
almost with rapture he had inserted in it many of her suggestions,
jealously preserving their exact language.
Her cheeks flushed as she recognized her own words, and she
perceptibly leaned forward a little to catch the well adjusted
sentences, joining with proud elation in the tribute of applause as
he ended.
The speech had been given in the Carnegie Hall—still after so many
years, the chosen forum for public discussions—and all through it
the young speaker turned his eyes constantly to the box in which the
Lorimers were sitting, not with too puerile an attention, but just
so much as would enable him to see the face of the lovely woman, and
catch from her approval, inspiration, for his task. His eyes were
not the only ones which sought that place, for Helen Lorimer never
seemed more beautiful. Her presence gave the occasion distinction,
though it was conjoined with the gratified recognition of the
aristocracy of Carrara. The new Mayor pleased them. He had been seen
often at the Lorimers, and the impression he made was admirable. His
intentions were suspected, and that very fact threw into his public
appearances—to them—a fresh interest. Not indeed that much was said
about it, and nothing was known.
It was understood in some indirect way, that the Mayor and Helen
Lorimer were together interested in the forthcoming trial, and
while Miss Lorimer’s social movements were rigorously watched, the
dispensations of good taste were not at any time forgotten. Her
splendid public activity belonged to the history of the times, and
the frequent presence of the Governor in her house, could be readily
explained in other obvious ways, than by the gratuitous assumption of
any more delicate relation, than the calls of the state. A group of
malcontents—those whose machinations with Longtinsky were suspected
by Helen Lorimer herself—and who belonged to the rich classes, were
very envious of the Mayor’s popularity with their own friends, and
viewed with positive hatred his assured entrance within the confines
of their social prestige and privileges.
Many men among them, and some women, convinced themselves that the
Mayor was a masked demagogue, at heart desirous of a political
revolution, that his clemency to the anarchists was a cheap trick,
and that his popularity was a menace and also his talents. To these
people Helen Lorimer, though the most distinguished member of their
order, was a dreamer and a dilletante. But some of them felt again
their own danger, from the probable exposure of their tricks and
conspiracies. The Mayor _was not_ popular with Theodore Lorimer.
Helen Lorimer sat in a box between her uncle and her mother at
the front, and a group of neighbors, in which a few handsome men
appeared, assembled behind her. Hats were not removed, and the
purple velvet Gainsborough exquisitely formed, and becoming her dark
abundant hair gave her a most charming effectiveness. As the Mayor
gazed at her from his seat on the platform, she became an Aurora,
this minute his own dawn, and the rushing years, full of work, of
usefulness, of conquests, the glorious endless day of Life. Never
before had he felt such gratitude for what powers he knew he owned,
and he fairly grew impatient to begin, that the tide of his powers
thus awakened might flow unimpeded—flow, as it were, to _her_ feet.
His heart sprang to his lips, and the words as if attuned to some
inner harmony of love, were rich with gracious melody, and strong
with manly thought. Mr. Briggs stood near the stage in a side aisle
with Tom Ratler, and it was amusing to note his slowly gathering
astonishment. His old doubts as to the character of the new Mayor
were surely giving way before the man’s manifest power, but Mr.
Briggs had still obstinately—perhaps a little vainly—clung to the
conviction, that it was he—BRIGGS—that shaped his ends, and lest
the Mayor should fail to understand this, Mr. Briggs plied him
more vigorously than ever with long winded speeches, and animated
apostrophes, and educational diversions. All of which the Mayor
with grace and good nature accepted heartily, though behind his
secretary’s back his smile prolonged itself into a wearied grimace of
forbearance.
The Mayor’s heart was not the only one stirred, not the only one
which beat with quickened pulses. Never did Helen Lorimer think so
well of him as then; she made the confession to herself, and she
made it with blushes bending, by one knows not what spell, to the
witchery and command of words—mere words—And yet—the Mayor was not
deprived of the charm of physical interest, though in his case it
was subtly wrought in with intellectual expression. His winning play
of features, the earnestness and beauty of his eyes, a peculiar and
native grace of motion in the tall lithe frame, and the constant
attractiveness of the ingratiating mouth, framed for speech, told
effectively upon his audience, and it was even fondly noted in its
details by one, whose lightest thought for him was priceless.
And in that sea of faces, on the occasion of this memorable address
of the Mayor, was a face belonging to one, who by the magic of the
destiny ruling the ways of men was drawn—not by accident, for there
are no accidents in the uses of fate—into his audience. It was Amato.
He was then still an occupant of the Anchorite, and had not yet
had the interview with the Cardinal, that we have just witnessed.
He was placed far up against the ceiling of the enclosure, having
walked through Fifty-sixth Street, and lingering for a minute on the
opposite side of the way, noticed the broad signs announcing the
speech of the Mayor. There was no room anywhere else in the packed
and eager house. Amato had heard of the new Mayor, and the fame of
his successful combination of warring policies in the last election,
winning the choice of the great city by his naïve but skillful appeal
to hostile parties. It had been commented on in the papers both of
Europe and the States. He felt curious to see this rising political
Cicero or young Alcibiades—as he musingly remarked—and so fought his
way up to the top gallery of the hall. And none listened with more
open and delighted ears than Amato.
Emancipating himself from the narrow seclusion of his student’s life,
responding intuitively to the power of personality and of talent, the
Mayor’s eloquence, the fine modulation and grasping insistency of
his voice, and the breadth and culture of his views, allied with a
certain artfulness of phrase, carried the young ascetic off his feet.
His applause was not very apparent, and one observing him might have
thought that he was not pleased, but the conclusion would have been a
stupid misunderstanding.
Amato became so interested, and so instinctively endorsed the Mayor’s
attitude that he forgot the customary tribute, and while others were
clapping, was himself revolving the Mayor’s weighty conclusions.
And it was just then, in one of the outbursts of applause, that his
wandering eye caught sight of Helen Lorimer, for she too joined in
the enthusiasm. She was far away from his lofty perch, but Amato,
awakening to the attributes of beauty, feeling the flourishing power
of his senses, and innately luxurious and tasteful, saw her, and
noted her charm. It was only after his interview with the Cardinal
that—as he arose from his slumbers the next morning—he consciously
identified the face he had seen at Carnegie Hall, with the visitor of
the Cardinal’s.
The industry of the Mayor was remarkable; he had begun a splendid
effort to reform the clerical service of the city, and to bring into
operation a new system of accounting. The enormous growth of the
city during the first half of the twentieth century had quadrupled
its debt, and made its yearly budget formidable. The outcry against
extravagance had been gaining in strength, and there seemed some
reason for it, though it was in a measure exaggerated by a popular
subserviency to the sensational mongerings of newspapers, and rabid
articles in the monthlies. The great city with its almost unexampled
generosity towards all sorts of public enterprises, its stupendous
educational system, and the vastness of its improvements, had indeed
assumed heavy burdens, reflected in a mounting tax levy. The century
had developed a strong tendency towards a hidden sort of socialism,
and while the organization of society was unchanged, heavy taxes
imposed upon the property of the rich and upon corporations, lent a
semblance of reality to the claim that the city government—and it was
symptomatic of municipal conditions throughout the world—had become
socialistic.
The Mayor confronted a discontented public when he assumed office as
the governor of the little municipal state. Capable and experienced,
and gifted with invention, inclined himself to view in a new light
the dawning tendencies of the time, which really urged a greater
participation of the many in the aggregate returns of the state, he
met upon his inauguration a double problem. He was expected to give
a business administration, curbing excess, limiting expenditures,
where they were foolish or unnecessary, diminishing waste, and also,
by some process of education, making the entire city realize that it
must succumb to the refreshing influences of an increasing desire to
advance the weal and general happiness, introducing—not recklessly or
with demagogic aims—an idealism of sympathy between all classes.
Helen Lorimer had herself engaged in the latter problem, approaching
it from the side of Class, with the strongest instincts of
Individualism, forming—if she could—an aristocracy of Worth, which
should assume a guiding hand in the control of affairs, and involve
itself in a perennial ministration of mercy and helpfulness. Unseen
to her there lay in all her thoughts the latent socialistic image; to
the Mayor that image was clearly seen, and attacking the problem more
from the side of the Commoner, he was never deceived or misled.
This community of serious interest had greatly heightened the flavor
of the Mayor’s acquaintanceship with Helen Lorimer. Their most
significant qualities of mind, had been mutually seen, and while they
very earnestly differed, there was no loss of admiration on either
side. More secretly and more profoundly they felt the collision in
themselves of two irreconcilable entities, the religious idea, and
the scientific idea. On that ground their tempers were inclined to
take fire, but the Mayor’s constraining love corrected his impulse,
and Helen’s slowly increasing surrender and engrossment oftentimes
closed her lips.
The evening of the fourteenth of July was spent by the Mayor at the
villa of the Lorimers’. The company—not a large party—ate in the
salon the reader has already visited, and perhaps for the first
time—or almost the first—some whispered conjectures were hazarded,
that the Mayor was decidedly interested in Helen Lorimer, while
eloquent glances told the same story. None of those present at the
dinner—with one exception, the count and his wife—at which Miss
Lorimer so boldly threw down the gauntlet of her convictions as to
the transplantation of the Pope, were this evening among the little
throng. It was most variously composed, though the young people
predominated; the few elders being well preserved old ladies, whose
composure it would have been dangerous for the younger set to have
disturbed by any frivolity. These old ladies were solid exemplars
of propriety, well dressed and effectively garrulous. The banquet
was an informal collation, the usual service of the young men to the
ladies prevailing, the latter sitting about the room, or, in many
cases, out of it, in such inviting nooks and retreats as offered less
surveillance for their coquetry and the interchange of vows.
In this confusion, amid the decorous collision of flying Ganymedes,
replenishing emptied plates from the overburdened table, the suave
exit and entrance of servants, the noisy expostulations of the
avid dowagers, and the murmurous tumult of comment, pleasure, and
platitudes, the Mayor and Helen talked alone at one end of the room.
Here they were soon joined by a shaking but emphatic old gentleman—a
Livingston—and a middle aged banker—a Gunther—whose cushioned
perfection of deportment, finish of address, and scrupulous attention
to the removal of crumbs from his attire, contrasted amusingly with
the older man’s carelessness, nervousness, and vituperation.
“You spoke well Mr. Mayor at Carnegie Hall,” it was the nervous old
gentleman speaking, “but you don’t use the meat axe—the meat axe—as
you should. I tell you Sir, that fine words never buttered parsnips,
and if you try pretty words on these socialistic renegades you’ll get
them back in your ears charged with curses. Hound them out—out. You
had no justification for interference. Let ’em hang!”
“But surely,” Miss Lorimer began, “Mr. Livingston you don’t wish to
be so unjust as to slay the innocent. I cannot think you aspire to
the detestable distinction of being a murderer.”
“A murderer, Miss Lorimer? The term can be given some meanings that
take away its reproach. War is not murder although we kill innocent
and guilty alike. Intimidation is worth more than just flat justice
in this matter. Besides in the case of pestilence those exposed to
the plague must be quarantined along with those who are sick. That’s
plain—very plain—and it’s furthermore plain to me that a new trial
means procrastination—compromise—escape.
“It’s futile—futile—Yes! it’s knavery to think of it!”
“Ah now,” this time the intercessory banker, “really Mr. Livingston
I think you mistake the nature of the evidence. Let us be
judicial—strictly judicial—the judicial course is the safest course.
It is sanctioned by authority and reason.”
“What! the Law’s way!” cried the irate representative of a family
which had given its members to the State and the Bench, “I tell you
Sir, the Law is the enemy of sense. It plunders our pocket-books, and
what does it give back?—demurrers and writs, and bills, and motions.
Martial Law, Sir I believe in, and martial law is the cure-all just
now. But your ordinary law, your court law—why! it’s a mouse in a
gally-pot—a buzz-fly in a pounding barrel! Surgery, _no_ medicine!”
The Mayor had not spoken; he was still seated watching with a
curious semblance of avoidance of debate, the face of Helen—he was
beginning to be audacious enough, softly to whisper to himself “his
Helen”—but now he stood, and turning to Mr. Livingston who was likely
to fly into a rage at his exasperating silence spoke, while at the
same moment Count Schinazi and his approving and inseparable wife
approached the group.
“Mr. Livingston you are afraid of the peace and permanency of our
State, because of these socialists, to whom you, on that account,
deny justice. Do you recall this fable of La Fontaine? A ruler of
a realm was told by the messenger of a hostile country that his
master could summon an army from all his dependencies whereupon a
wise courtier told the trembling monarch that it recalled to him a
vision that he had dreamt; he had seen a dragon with many heads and
only one tail on the other side of a hedge, and, thus affrighted, he
had stood dumb, and powerless with fear, when he saw that because it
had many heads it could not pierce the hedge between them; but, thus
recovered from his dread, the next instant he saw a dragon with ONE
head and MANY tails approach the hedge; this last easily passed the
hedge with all his tails, one making a path for the next. Mercy and
Justice to these misguided men Mr. Livingston will multiply the heads
of the movement, because it will certainly throw them into discord,
but Cruelty and Injustice will consolidate their councils into a
unanimity that can readily cause us apprehension. The Dragon with
many heads is harmless.”
The rejoinder was a little unexpected, and the irascible critic was
non-plussed, to recover however with the muttered ejaculation that
he knew a fable worth two of that, “the mouse who gnawed the nets of
the lion and let him loose”; at which the Mayor laughed, and Mr.
Livingston, shaking his head ominously, retired.
“Veery vell put your Honor,” it was the voice and grinning phiz of
the Count, “bit I tink de gentlemans who vas so, as you say, peevish,
might have, as you say, got you von better; vas it not a leetle like
dis, you haf de bone in de mouf like de leetle dog in de storie, and
ven you look in de vater you drop de bone to geet de shadow and you
loose bofe. Ees it not day vay?”
“I hardly think so Count Schinazi,” the mayor had made the
acquaintance of the eccentric foreigner and the two men rather liked
each other, “at any rate the bone is not yet _out_ of my mouth, and
if I am chasing shadows, we sometimes say rainbows, I am not likely
to disappoint any one but myself—or am I?” The last words were
directed to Miss Lorimer, and the smile and reproach that dawned on
her face again told the Mayor that he was something more to her than
a name and a friend simply.
Just then the voice of Theodore Lorimer was heard requesting silence;
there was an instant suppression of the social hubbub, and the same
voice told the company that if they would follow him they would be
led to the roof of the northern towers, where there would be music,
and a view of some few fireworks, and where there was also furnished,
upon one of the broader spaces a carpet covered square for the
dancers. This announcement was received with unconcealed admiration,
and the chorus of applause from the many couples, summoned hither and
thither from their coverts and hiding spots was overwhelming, causing
Mr. Lorimer to remark to a business neighbor “that Terpsichore was
probably a more popular deity than Columbia.”
The path taken by the guests led through a remarkable series of halls
and up many broad stairways graced with niches, holding bronzes and
marble figures, with walls decorated—not lavishly—with paintings, and
at the end of the ranges led into a spiral stairs, from which eyelet
windows covered the adjacent valleys. The hilarious company emerged
out upon a roof flanked by four towers, in a sort of uncovered room,
over which a trellis hung, carrying pendent vines, a summery pergola.
The towers flanking this space were pierced by doorways, and these
opened within upon narrower ascents, to the tops of the towers
themselves. In the centre of the room was the dancing carpet, and the
musicians, set to one side, already welcomed the guests with pleasant
melodies.
Almost the last to reach the outlook was Miss Lorimer and the Mayor,
and when they came, the place was in a surge of enjoyment; the
musicians breathed the enchanted measures of a Waldteufel waltz,
the dancers were noiselessly circling over the middle area, while
in all sorts of ways the rest of the group was engaged, in talking,
in rapturous comments upon the beauty of the night and the scene,
or taking restricted walks about the parapets. Helen Lorimer had
pressed forward, and, with the Mayor following, both with an unusual
eagerness, quite oblivious of the others, who for their part were
equally indifferent advanced to one of the tower doors, entered, and
disappeared.
An instant later Helen Lorimer came to the top—a round enclosure with
a low wall—and after her the Mayor. How was it that the woman put
back her hand, as if to assist him, and how was it that it was so
smoothly taken, and then—Oh you artful deities who watch such things
and watching smile—how was it that the man kissed it and kept it?
That kiss Helen felt, not alone upon her hand but very mightily upon
her heart; yes the confession rose to her, as with the sudden spring
of a concealed conviction, that, rushing in all the tides of her
being, she had hitherto shunned and repudiated.
The mounting color told the abject fact, though in the softly
illumined night, _that_ was hid from the man at her side, her
pulsating heart told the same story, though those rapid beats none
could hear but herself, certainly not he who seemed indeed dazed
with some dizzying emotion, for he left her side and gazed upward
silent. Nor was it alone the color in her cheeks, or the tumult at
her heart that thus miserably proclaimed her conquest; her limbs
proved traitorous, and the brave, strong woman sank upon a narrow
stone seating, that surrounded the wall, suffocated with her own
intolerable defeat. Defeat—yes in one way as women feel it—but after
the shock of surrender has passed, then the pent up tide inundates
the whole being,
_till strange love grown bold,
Think true love, acted, simple modesty_.
The Mayor came back to her side and standing there, leaned nearer and
whispered; “Have I offended you Helen?”
He had never spoken her name before, and the sound of it from his
lips startled her, with even a keener realization of the sudden
change in herself. And yet not sudden. The blossom that to-day
blushes on the branches of the rose bush means an inevitable process
of formation, a graduated range of growth from the tiniest bud to
its challenging beauty, the mute unfolding of an invisible yet
discreet nourishment that built up its silken petals, gave to it
its subtle fragrance, and painted it with colors blended from the
earth and sky. These steps in nature are not sudden, and yet when
the bush, that yesterday was but a wealth of buds, to-day is seen
laden with flowers, the change seems sudden—but it is SEEMS only; the
process unmarked by the eye, has taken time and if, with favoring
circumstances, with greater heat and light, it has advanced more
quickly, not a single step in its adventurous course has been missed
or skipped.
After his first declaration on the night of their conference in the
museum, the Mayor had withdrawn into a modest silence, though his
affections were clearly understood by Helen, and this diffidence
itself charmed her. His excellent mind, the powers of thought
that he showed, a peculiar earnestness, together with a reticence,
delighted her. He took pains to understand her projects and even
to criticise them. He did no longer conceal his own prejudices but
clothed in his ingenuous speech they seemed less dreadful to her. He
had a boyish way, blent with an extreme elegance of manner, a certain
distinction of address, and this favored in him a personal brightness
of appearance, hard to describe, but easily recognized. And then
their quarrels—why they so often dissolved in laughter!
It was on her side, Helen’s, a preposterous antipathy to the
scientific dryness and rigor of exact conclusions, on his, a humorous
enmity of too much belief in the unknown, a quiet skepticism that
showed itself unabashed before her intense appeals, and yet was
always unobtrusive. At times they did discover how far apart lay
their ultimate goals of tendency, and then Helen mourned that it was
so, and for that very reason loved him better. Her steadfast heart,
bathed in a deep catholic spirituality, wanted dearly to bring him
to her own standpoint of view, and in her prayers his name was not
omitted.
There were indeed moments when they rebelled against each other, when
they felt the chasm of a deep difference lying between them, and yet
why was it that even then they felt their arms stretched above it,
towards each other, as if to bridge and close it? In both there was
an inherent honesty that forbade compromise, and yet they were not
reluctant to hide their feud. Often it came to this, that the Mayor
said, he thought better now than he ever could have believed that he
would think, of religion, _because of her_ its precepts gained an
unexpected beauty. And they would both grow serious or perhaps both
smile, and in those smiles lurked the honey of an increasing love
between them.
And as for the Mayor the rich tide of life into which he entered when
with Helen Lorimer, her personal glory united with her elevation
of mind which his nature adored, her goodness, and the fine touches
of her delicate fancy almost swept him from his feet. He loved
passionately, and in spite of that he kept his footing, strained
to the last effort of exertion by his will, his dominant sense of
fitness, and by the call of his duties. He felt somehow that he even
maintained a supremacy in mind, and this helped him to abstain from
violence and entreaty. He felt too, with intoxication that the end
must come as he willed it, and as he felt that, the surges of desire
rising about him almost overwhelmed him.
They had seen a great deal of each other. There was the trial to
rehearse, upon which depended so much for the reputation of the
Mayor, and the overthrow of the enemies of order and the enemies of
justice. There were conferences with Mr. Moser the lawyer, who was to
open the new trial. There was Helen’s museum projects, and her new
plans of the Settlement House. There were broader, grander imaginings
of the Mayor himself, for the great city, to whose service he bent
all his powers, wedding it with the love that now controlled him to
the last fibres of his being. These plans were also revealed to Miss
Lorimer and discussed with her—how eloquently!—and her views sought!
And yet by the strangest of collusions there had been no gossip among
the news mongers, no whisperings in the public prints, no express
admissions in SOCIETY, nowhere any concurrent wonderings and guesses
and intimations. And all because both the Mayor and Helen had, in
their intercourse, admonished suspicion by their own discretions.
Both were eminent, and withdrawn somewhat in that fame, were less
carelessly discussed. Observation too passed beyond them to the great
trial of which now the general mind was full.
There was unrest in the city over the socialistic propaganda on the
east side, for though the office of The Beehive had been seized—Mr.
Briggs had attended to that, and Tom Ratler had been his good agent
in finding out the new location of the dangerous paper—no further
move towards its suppression had been made, and it was realized that
the turbulent organ yet maintained itself, and that an underground
circulation of its inflammatory appeals was going on, “making surer”
as Mr. Briggs said, “every day the eventual explosion and with rapine
and conflagration.”
There was some national alarm besides over threatened war, and it
seemed as if, for the last time, the convulsed earth stood on the
brink of a terrific combat, its elements shaking into compact orbs of
allies, whose circling collision would remake the civilized world.
But three persons in the huge city knew of this growing love. Helen’s
mother, Julieta, knew it and the Mayor’s mother knew it, and Tom
Ratler knew it. But not one of these could tell the others, Julieta
knew it, less by any visible witness, than by the safe conclusion
of her mother’s heart, and her woman’s instinct; the Mayor’s mother
knew it because her son had told her; and Tom Ratler knew it from the
moment he had seen the Mayor accompany Miss Lorimer down the City
Hall’s steps, and caught the Mayor’s eye following her vanishing
vehicle. With such as Tom, love is everywhere, in the daily air, in
each turn of the head, and a man not in love is a man not alive. Tom
was himself so dreadfully fettered, that his aching soul was only at
peace when he could see others in the same predicament, while his
mind, with a ferret’s ease, caught the faintest whiff, as it were, of
love stirring in the air.
And now Helen and the Mayor knew it themselves. It filled their
hearts, as a wine the chalice, but it could not stay there, for it
was a rising torrent and dauntless, sped to their lips and spoke.
“Offense? How can there be offense, if I could have wished it?” it
was Helen’s answer.
“Oh Helen, I have waited for this; I have prayed for it; it has come
to me in dreams, and when I awoke the dream, and the dear thing
I dreamt, seemed hopelessly far off and impossible. But no images
and riddles—let me tell you my whole heart, and now give to you my
life—all of it Helen; it is all yours, keep it, enrich it, make it
priceless, for with you in it, it will grow into something splendid.
“How wonderfully you have stimulated and inspired me during this last
month, I can hardly tell you. When I wrote, you were at my elbow like
a good deity, dictating, when I thought, you were before my eyes
lifting and sharpening my thoughts, giving them wings, and surely a
better grace. You know that my life has needed just this, and Oh! so
deeply!”
“Marston;” the words were softly uttered, but they were an
invitation, and the Mayor knelt quickly, caught the head of the
beautiful woman in front of him tenderly with his spread hands, and
drew it to his own, and their lips sealed again their vows, yet
unspoken, but now so acutely revealed and understood.
There was tumult enough in the Mayor’s breast, he felt delirious
with this sudden draught of joy, this burst of blazoning sunlight
amid the gray arduous fields of daily duty, and toil, and rivalry.
The poetic nature was strong within him; it had been sagaciously
apprehended by Mr. Briggs and that sage observer felt in it a danger
to the state and an inscrutable foe to his own complete possession
of his superior. In books, in stolen contemplations, the Mayor had
secretly fed his cravings, though the hard aspects of life, and
the unflinching tyranny of events had robbed poetry to him of much
of its meanings. And now like a flower revived by light, which had
been stricken into paleness and languor in gloom and neglect, this
ardent poesy raised in him its dropped head, and the new life pouring
through his veins brought to him an ecstacy that overpowered him,
like a gigantic wave of misery.
[Illustration: “HOW WONDERFULLY YOU HAVE INSPIRED ME.”
_Page 240._]
How strange it was, that here in the very garden of fruition he felt
the _darkening blight of storm_! was it his own timidity, or was
it the inversion of his own happiness, inverted by its own excess:
_dark with excessive light_?
The man seemed bewildered, and withdrew from Helen Lorimer, as if
shrinking from his own surrender or was it the doubt of his own
senses? But Helen Lorimer followed him, she put her arms about
his neck, she admitted her capitulation, and that same bright
intelligence, conjoined in her with a cheerful heartiness of
admiration, offered to him ingenuously her abounding love, for with
a nature so copious in feelings, so generous in givings, and so
spiritual, Love opened a landscape of delight:
_where the river of bliss through midst of heaven
Rolls o’er Elysian flowers her amber stream_;
and into that scene she walked, without misgivings and without
fear. “Let me confess too,” she said, “my life needs you. A woman
naturally shudders at the thought of loneliness in the world, though
I think God leaves no one quite alone, who will seek Him. But
then—ah then—it is something different; the meaning here with us is
part of the Great Plan,—and I have grown proud of you,—and—and—Oh
indeed I cannot live without you. I am yours—all yours.”
The Mayor’s arms caught her, their breaths and kisses mingled, and
amid the merriment below them, with the pulsing music keeping time
to their own heart beats, oblivious to the growing wonders of the
skies above them, they became married in thought and heart, while the
senses sent:
_A soul dissolving odour, to invite
To some more lovely mystery_.
The lights had become more numerous in the heavens, and the dancing
fires of the wavering or shooting aeronauts added a stranger splendor
to the air. And as yet no one came to interrupt them, no one indeed
missed them, so rapturous had all become over their entertainment,
while the singing violins and the sonorous cornets kept the dancers
busy. The young men were assiduous, and the ladies retentive, the
elders lost their reserve and attempted to revive their lost art of
charm and repartee, the dowagers were lenient, and in the swirling
gayety, though some anxious faces sought for Helen, none attempted
the pursuit, and the rumor gained ground that the Mayor had departed.
The Count Schinazi was in his glory. His witticisms were laughed
at, the girls declared his dancing “heavenly,” and as he glided
hither and thither, watched by his approving wife, the ripples of
enjoyment or hilarious shouts attested his success as a social card.
A sudden spit of fire above them, the swish of a rocket’s stick among
the trees below them, startled the spectators into a little cry of
alarm, and immediately the voice of the count brought them back into
composure and mirth:
“I tinks dat vas a fire-fly—von big American fire-fly. It vas as you
say, an up-to-date fire-fly, it vas a johnny-on-the-spot fire-fly—und
it vas a fine ting, ven the bugs, as you say, know their bizziness
und celebrat mit de peoples.”
An instant later a sharp crack emitted somewhere from the highest
southernward tower accompanied by a sputtering line of sparks,
surprised the gathering, and the huddled crowd watched with amazement
a shooting winding sheet of flame surround the pinnacle, rise, and
light a set piece of pyrotechnics at the top. It blazed, and the
whole pediment was brilliant with reflections while the space between
the towers became as bright as day. It banished the shades in which
the Mayor and Helen Lorimer had remained, and they were easily seen
standing together, and because higher up than the guests glaringly
lit up by the illumination.
There was no concealment now and they could even see the amusement
on the faces beneath, while to many there, and notably to Theodore
Lorimer, the picture of the two lovers standing unchanged, though a
little apart, was more interesting, more unexpected than the fizzing
showering eruptions of the _feu-de-joie_. With the safe execution of
this feature, the music was resumed and the dancers returned to their
evolutions, but something had thrown the comfortable festivity into
disarray.
There had been some fear about the fireworks, there was considerable
agitation over the discovery of the interesting relation of Helen
Lorimer and the Governor of New York. A good many “I told you soes”
cautiously gained a hearing, and some masculine hearts felt grieved
and injured. Theodore was a trifle vexed, Julieta smiled over the
accuracy of her premonitions. The night had advanced, the balloons
over the city had vanished into darkness, a storm seemed at hand,
and one by one, and in groups, the guests departed. Among them the
courteous bowing count, and his wife, and as the former pressed the
hand of Julieta his perennial grin contracted into an amusing pout,
and he said, casting a look of forlorn expostulation at Mr. Lorimer;
“Vell, vell it mek me, as you say a leetle tired; et vas most
onexpected und I tink it pit me—as you say—on de blink. I vas reddy,
ven Madame Schinazi tink she—as you say—fly de coop—to mek Mees
Lorimer veery happy meeself;” and so under a shower of reproving taps
of the countess’ fan the egregiously satisfied pair took their leave.
Long before this Helen Lorimer had descended to the roof parlor, and
with grace and confidence, though perhaps with a heightened color had
moved among the guests, while the Mayor who had descended with her
exhibited his own social skill, and though he found no Livingston or
Gunther to dispute or applaud his public actions, he found little
difficulty in securing attention, and, mastering his own impulse to
fly from the place, by pure desperation achieved wonders, engaging
old and young in animated conversation, testing his varied eloquence
to the best advantage, with much literary discretion and aptness.
To Miss Retruve, celebrated for short sonnets and addicted to
melancholy epitaphs upon her deceased pets, he pointed out the starry
firmament, where there lingered a few sky-rockets quoting:
_The skies are painted with unnumbered sparks,
They are all fire and every one doth shine_,
from Julius Caesar. To Miss Ballinger, well known for her amateur
theatricals, and a tripping desire to appear unalterably young,
and whom he found seated upon the parapet slightly above his head,
he quoted Romeo:
_for thou art
As glorious to this night, being o’er my head
As is a winged messenger of Heaven
Unto the white up-turned wond’ring eyes
Of mortal, that fall back to gaze on him,
When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds,
And sails upon the bosom of the air_.
To young Prentice, a youth who had won a Columbian medal for a
dramatic composition, he remarked, as both watched the speeding
aeronauts:
_through the purple night
I see cars drawn by rainbow-winged steeds
Which trample the dim winds: in each there stands
A wild-eyed charioteer urging their flight.
Some look behind, as fiends pursued them there,
And yet I see no shapes but the keen stars:
Others with burning eyes, lean forth, and drink
With eager lips the wind of their own speed,
As if the thing they loved fled on before,
And now, even now, they clasped it. Their bright locks
Stream like a comet’s flashing hair: they all
Sweep onward_.
And to Theodore Lorimer whom he found at the end of his touring
interviews he said, firmly gazing into his eyes equally sincere and
solemn:
“Mr. Lorimer, perhaps I owe you an apology, though, on my soul, I
cannot perceive that I have done any wrong. Miss Lorimer has given
me her troth, not I believe unadvisedly. I love her with my whole
being. All honor I have attained to, all I can gain, became immensely
enriched by her alliance. The denouement was sudden. I admit it. Am I
to blame? Do you blame me?”
Mr. Theodore Lorimer was a business man; he was also a widower, and
though no doubt he had had his love affairs, his demeanor to the
tenderness of life was a little austere and unbendingly practical.
He fully appreciated his niece’s talent and beauty; had a rather
vainglorious pride in the Lorimer family, and he estimated with the
keenest pleasure their exact wealth. His hopes with regard to Helen
were certainly indefinite, but he felt the Mayor’s humble origin, as
the phrase goes, and while he knew his ability, and his possibilities
of progression and promotion, he somehow yet stuck to that invincible
theory of caste, of class, the inbred feeling of separation. He
was loyal to American ideas, he was patriotic, but he treasured
the aristocratic formula—as indeed Helen herself did, but with a
difference—and he believed in making that aristocratic ideal a very
influential and beneficial factor in American public life, under just
those incentives reviewed in the earlier pages of this story. He was
not—to be really truthful—satisfied with the Mayor.
His family too was a Catholic one, and though creed offered no
rifts among the rich associates of Carrara it did sensibly suggest
an antagonism to a man like the Mayor, who was not of them, and
who had, in his earlier life, actually written a book upon the
needlessness of religion in the current meaning of the word. Then
he suspected the Mayor of socialism, which he thought already
tinctured unfavorably his own niece’s views, and socialism was to
Theodore Lorimer a monstrous sin. The very word brought a frown to
a face uniformly serene. He stood in a very close relation to his
niece since her father’s death, and with her mother constituted a
strict guardianship, which Helen respected, and, after the Catholic
fashion, filially honored. Besides, and in addition, he experienced
a vague resentment against the Mayor for the, to him, unnoticed
insinuation of himself in the favor of his niece. There was a
suggestion in it to Theodore Lorimer of something surreptitious
and vulgar, it contravened the dignity of the method he should
have preferred. Somehow it seemed to him that under the guise of
conferences—conferences which he had regarded askance, as in his
heart he had small sympathy with the end in view—about a public
question, the Mayor had succeeded in injecting a love mission which
was neither creditable nor desirable.
During the hour between the letting off of the _feu-de-joie_ when the
speaking isolation of the Mayor with Miss Lorimer was discovered,
and the departure of the guests, and the Mayor’s personal appeal,
Theodore had been working himself into a state of mind. This became
more bitter as he reviewed the chances—the matrimonial chances—his
niece could hope for. That extravagant and stupid idolatry, which
rich American girls suffered from, for foreign placards and names,
had greatly disappeared, at the beginning of the twentieth-first
century, although the ludicrous hunt on the part of impecunious and
wasted and morally unfit scions of noble houses for American money
still persisted. But the gloss dazzled, and the lure of name yet
exerted its malign and fallacious attractions. The malady had taken a
more aesthetic and reputable form. The offers from Europe were more
carefully scrutinized, and they were themselves less mercenary though
seldom could the taint of a money thirst be utterly excluded.
The Lorimers had been much in Europe, and Helen’s charm had gathered
about her many shining lights, handsome and striking figures in its
public and social circles, and none among these had to the observant
eyes of Julieta and Theodore seemed more acceptable than the young
Count of Monte Ferrato who had also shown his immediate interest in
Helen. Some such marriage would have frankly pleased Mr. Lorimer,
and while the matter to Julieta properly remained, as it should in
a woman’s thought, in the realm of ideation and emotion, she too
regarded the young foreign notable with partiality. As for domestic
unions, as Theodore said to Julieta, Helen “had the world to choose
from.”
The insoluble element was Helen herself; she neither leaned with
prestige or property, as might have easily been discerned. Her
Americanism was of the just type and she lived in ideals political
and religious, and the former sprang from the latter. Certainly
she had responded with appreciation perhaps to the admiration she
excited, but none of her adorers had touched these springs of feeling
which open a woman’s heart and win her. This was the bothersome part
of it to Theodore Lorimer, and while Julieta was amused, noticing
her brother-in-law’s vexation, she felt too the responsible task
of guiding Helen in her final choice, if she made it, and yet was
bewildered by the unusual nature of her daughter, which rather defied
coercion. She had endeavored in talking with Helen to get some
inkling of her feelings, but she only disconsolately admitted that
it was impossible, as Helen felt as yet no overpowering choice. With
that she dropped it, believing that Helen would take care of herself
in the great concern of her marriage, and having no inconsiderable
admixture of romantic sympathy in her own nature was content to leave
things to the God of Love, who indeed, while not infallible, does
adjust things of this sort fairly well.
So when the Mayor addressed Theodore Lorimer and corroborated the
shrewd suspicions which Lorimer had felt when he saw his niece and
the Mayor together on the tower, he simply said:
“I would like to talk this matter over with you Mr. Mayor. It is a
subject upon which I feel strongly and perhaps my views may not fully
coincide with yours. Will you please follow me to a room down stairs
where we may discuss it;” and whispering a word to his sister-in-law
left the roof followed by the Mayor, whose flushed face and bowed
head afforded some indication of his humiliation and disappointment.
While the two men, not moving together, but behind each other, thus
made their way through the scattered and departing friends, Helen had
resumed her neglected duties. She had been as active as the Mayor,
passing from person to person with greetings and caressing banter.
To Miss Retruve, whom she found in a giggling condition of pleased
vanity over the Mayor’s attention, she admitted that his Excellency
was “an admirable Crichton, really too dangerous for unprotected
hearts,” which caused that lady to contract her elongated physiognomy
into a map of smiles, and to remark, pointing her mittened finger
at Helen, “that men were deceivers ever,” which seemed to receive
Miss Lorimer’s assent, for she seized the probationary forefinger
and shook it desperately. To Miss Ballinger whose intense face was
fixed as it were, upon the upturned features of an elderly aspiring
suitor, and to whom she was recommending the Mayor’s gallantry for
his emulation, she said, while her voice shook with amusement;
_winter sunshine!
Beware of opening out thy bosom to it.
Lest thou myself, and all thy flock should catch
An after ague—fit to trembling_.
And to the dazzled Prentice who met her with adjurations as to “the
charming evening he had enjoyed, and the wonderfulness of their
Mayor, who was quite a literary paragon,” she said, passing abruptly
her handkerchief over her eyes, almost as if tired:
“Why yes—he is excellent in many ways, and I seem to be treading
his tracks among you all, reversing the old fable of The Hares and
Hounds.”
She left the budding dramatist, nursing his moustache, just as his
sapient fancy was about to remark—with bold originality—something
about the “observed of all observers,” and flew again further in the
thinning throng.
Mr. Lorimer led the Mayor to a room in the villa used by him as a
private office whose one window looked out upon the Kingsbridge road.
There was not much furniture in it, a large table littered with
papers, with a glass of roses decorating the centre, and filling the
air with fragrance, which to the Mayor seemed an imprisoned effluence
warning him. A painting covered the wall above the mantelpiece, and
this was the only important object in the place. It was a painting
of Robert Lorimer, Julieta, and the young Helen between them. The
grouping was conventional, but the art was unmistakable and the
drawing perfect. It was small wonder, thought the Mayor as his eyes
eagerly perused the big picture, that Helen was beautiful; the
ordinary course of heredity would have been strangely perverted if
from such parents beauty had not sprung.
It had been painted at the time (about the middle last of the
twentieth century) when there had been a temporary, but most
improving, return to the fashions of the beginning of the nineteenth,
when high collars with spreading tips and stocks, erect coat collars,
constricted waists, and voluminous scarfs, conferred an ancient
dignity to the imperial dudes. And with it, at least in this picture,
accorded the rich and flowing gown of the lady, like the dress of
Juliet in the play. The girl nestled upon the lap of her mother with
head pressed close to her mother’s knee, and with her face just
perceptibly turned upward. She was dressed in a light blue tunic-like
gown, and with a girl’s cap of a deeper blue in her dropped hand.
She perhaps had reached the age of thirteen, and her well moulded
features already showed a budding charm.
The eyes of the Mayor rested there a short instant only; a strange
tumult was rising in his breast; he knew that the man before him
would assail his pride, and that if a break came it would spell the
ruin of his happiness. Of that there could be no doubt, for he also
knew full well the sinewy resistance of his own nature, and how
quickly the fires of his heart kindled into resentment, when insult,
or rebuke, or any form of immoderate opposition stumbled in his path.
Not that he was unreasonable, but that he also was proud, with the
pride that was first born in him, and with some natural increase from
his life’s material success. Nor could he be altogether unconscious
that Nature had given him great gifts, that he had used them well,
and that office held its just respects.
Mr. Lorimer drew forward a chair and motioning to his visitor, sat
down himself upon the opposite side of the table which thus was
between them. The Mayor took the proffered chair slowly, and was
seated somewhat after his host. There was an awkward silence, and
then Mr. Lorimer who appeared flushed and a little disconcerted,
spoke:
“Your Honor, I think that I appreciate the compliment of your notice
of my niece, but I will bluntly say that I think that it is a matter
that should have been more deliberately planned. I knew nothing about
it until this moment and I believe that my sister, Miss Lorimer’s
Mother has not received any announcement of your intentions—or has
she?”
The Mayor answered readily and not without some sense of amusement:
“Why, no Sir—there has been none. In the nature of the case there
could hardly be any. I did indeed fall in love—as the phrase
goes—with your niece almost from the first moment I saw her, and I
confessed that feeling on the first visit I paid to this mansion—but
Sir, it has never passed my lips since, until this evening, when the
accidents which no one can surely foresee or prevent—even if it were
desirable to do so—accidents of voice, word, action—any thing—told me
that Miss Lorimer yielded to a similar feeling;” the Mayor paused,
and leaning forward continued: “Please do not mistake this for a
stupid, a ridiculous vanity; no one realized better than I do my
unworthiness of such a love, but I am not ashamed to claim it, not
afraid to assume all the responsibilities it means.”
“I fear Mr. Mayor,” returned Theodore Lorimer, who had not failed to
notice the flitting smile crossing the Mayor’s pale face, “that this
is not a subject for innuendoes, and certainly not for pleasantries.”
The Mayor felt his blood surging a little, and the evident intention
of his questioner became to his mind more clearly inquisitorial. He
looked up at the painting, and realizing the narrow formalism of the
man before him, and the wretched chances of loss now threatening his
joy, he mastered his impatience, and spoke more carefully, not indeed
without the accent of entreaty in his voice:
“I beg you, Sir, not to misunderstand or wrong me. No one could feel
more deeply than I do that innuendoes and pleasantries are out of
place in such a matter, and if you could see into my own heart, you
too would keenly feel how solemn and serious it all is to me. Before
you too hastily blame me will you not consult your niece, and learn
from her my exoneration, if you harbor any suspicion of my candor?”
Mr. Lorimer had hardly up to this moment kept his gaze fixed upon
the Mayor. He seemed to be talking to his hands, crossed on his lap,
though he did see by sidelong glances the Mayor’s expression, and it
had suddenly dawned upon him that the way to a rupture—and a rupture
was what he wanted—was through the Mayor’s pride, and he was pitiless
enough to try it.
“What do you mean, Sir, by accidents of voice, word, action; that
appears to me very much like innuendo, and if I was not mistaken the
smile on your face indicated your amusement.” As he said this he
raised his eyes and turned them unflinchingly on the Mayor.
The Mayor looked at Mr. Lorimer, and through his mind ran the
involuntary thought whether this man, who had become so closely
related to his happiness, had any humour, or experience, or poetry
in him. His scrutiny and his hesitation appeared to vex the banker,
and again he spoke with an acerbity that whipped the blood into the
cheeks of the Mayor, and brought him to his feet.
“My niece is romantic, idealistic, not, to my thinking, altogether
wise, in her plans or ambitions, and she readily can be influenced by
any suavity of word or ingenuity of speech.”
He could not go farther; the Mayor raised his hand, and with
authority interrupted him; “You wrong her, you wrong me, you wrong
yourself, you impute, at least by implication, Sir, that I have used
unmanly methods to win the good will of your niece. How unfair this
is until you know, until you have heard my story, and such tenders
of her confidence as Miss Lorimer might give you or, I think, more
naturally, her mother! There has been no trick of speech, no flattery
of voice, which is what I suppose you mean, but, what I fear is not
intelligible to you, a slow growth of affection between us, nurtured
no doubt by some identity of feeling, and common interests, as indeed
what love must not be?
“I must believe that you fail to feel that all love-making,” the
Mayor smiled perhaps bitterly, “is not the same, and that a formal
measure of the ways of love-making would make it all absurd. Pardon
me, Sir, but I believe this all should be left to Miss Lorimer.”
Mr. Lorimer resented the interruption, which began this speech, he
felt himself overruled, and he hazarded the inference that the Mayor
intended to have his own way, without much respect for him. He also
started to his feet. His voice was harsh and trembling, and a vein
in his neck, which was the danger signal of his excitement, had
seriously swollen;
“Mr. Mayor,” he said, “you are conscious that Miss Lorimer’s father
was my brother, and that he charged me at his death to watch over all
the interests of his daughter, my niece. I intend to do so, and I
have no reason to believe that Helen will care to set up her wishes
against mine. Miss Lorimer, as you too fully understand, could not
be a beggar on the matrimonial world;” the Mayor raised again his
hand, in protest, but it was not to enforce his desire to speak, but
in repugnance to the commercial words which had been used, and which
hurt him with their coarse meanings; Mr. Lorimer disregarded the
sign, wrongly thinking that the Mayor ordered him to desist; he lost
control of himself, and continued more violently, rashly, heedlessly,
cruelly:
“Please permit me to proceed; I say that Miss Lorimer has no
misgivings or need have none as to her matrimonial prospects, and
I consider it to be a duty I owe at least to her family, to tell
you that her hand has already been sought by representatives of
distinguished families abroad and in this country. Miss Lorimer’s
position is one which I think demands some consideration, and
that proposals for her hand should follow a less common, a less
precipitate course. You forget Sir that in such a case some etiquette
is imperative. Neither Mrs. Lorimer nor myself have been acquainted
with your intentions, and perhaps neither of us would altogether
approve of them. Of course—”
The Mayor’s voice broke in, he would brook no more, he was not
there to be rapped like a school boy, and that native repudiation
of ceremonial stupidity and artificial systems, the fires of his
strong radicalism, which often made him blind to the importance of
conventions, awoke in him, and put him in a rage. His voice, always
persuasive, sounded with an unusual vehemence:
“There appears to me no longer any cause for the continuance of this
conversation, as I find no excuse either in manners or reasons for
your observations. I love your niece; any and all things that a man
may or can do for a great love I am prepared to do, but Sir I am not
prepared to endure the intimations of a callous and a superfluous
Pride. Direct your servant to escort me to your entrance. I am not
likely to disturb you again. You may explain your position to Miss
Lorimer and—for my—own part—” the words fell slowly and with a deeper
hushed voice, “I will not invade her liberty, or stand in the way of
her social promotion.”
The sarcasm was not unfelt by Theodore Lorimer, and for an instant
he was irresolute. The next he recovered his calmness, and easy
politeness, and moved to the door of the room. He opened it, and
the Mayor passed through. Mr. Lorimer followed him, and the two men
without a word, threaded the stairways and corridors, from which now
the guests had departed, made their way to the entrance, and with a
still unbroken mask of toleration bowed to each other and separated.
The Mayor passed down the broad terraces of steps, and took his seat
in the automobile guided by Tom Ratler, and sped away. He never
turned his head to the stately palace from which he felt himself
driven, leaving behind him an incalculable happiness; but at length
he leaned forward on the back before him, and buried his head in his
hands, and when he reached his home he hurried to his chamber and
sank heavily on the bed. Something in him yielded and he had fainted.
The next morning Miss Lorimer received—handed into her at her
bed-room door—a letter which she quickly tore open and read; she had
begun to read standing near her mirror, and she had not read it far,
when she sank upon a couch, and even while she continued to read, the
color faded from her cheeks, and then returned with a mantling power
that made her look more beautiful. The words she read were these:
Dear Miss Lorimer:
I fear that I have made a serious mistake. I have
mistaken my own feelings. Forget everything, and let us be as
strangers. Our mutual interest in the trial will be now fully cared
for by counsel, and our further interviews become unnecessary.
Yours faithfully,
——Mayor of New York.
Miss Lorimer crushed the little paper in her clenched hands: her eyes
strayed forlornly about the large bedchamber filled with artistic
treasures and touched everywhere with feminine taste, and then she
arose. An embroidered night tunic covered her, and her unconfined
hair poured its floods over her shoulders, and it rose and fell upon
her breast with sudden quickness. Again she unfolded the disfigured
note, and reread it, and again she sat upon the couch, and her hands
dropped between her knees that pressed themselves together over them,
and the disconsolate stunned look came again, and again the color
came and went. Curiously her face turned to an etching hanging on the
wall near her, which showed the Duke Orsino of Twelfth Night, lying
on a couch, listening to a trio of musicians playing from a balcony
above him, and her lips seemed to repeat the inscription, under it:
_O spirit of love: how quick and fresh art thou,
That notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe’er
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute! so full of shapes is fancy,
That it alone is high fantastical_
A hollow smile passed over her face, and the bewildered glance at
the torn sheet told of the conflicting thoughts racing in her brain.
And then with a sigh that made her for a moment steady herself at
the side of the cheval glass, where her form and _deshabille_ made
a picture which would have charmed the brush of a Bouguereau, she
resumed her toilet, and that finished, she went to the breakfast
table. She found her mother and uncle awaiting her. As she greeted
them she suddenly recalled that the Mayor had not taken leave of
her the night before; she had seen him leave the roof and had for
the instant attributed it to some necessary despatch of business
or the confusion into which they had both fallen over their mutual
confessions. But she made no inquiry.
Mr. Lorimer also had received a letter from the Mayor. It was the
soul of brevity; it ran:
Dear Sir,
Miss Lorimer understands my disinclination to
continue my suit. There need be no reference to our late interview.
Your etc. etc.
——Mayor of New York.
Mr. Lorimer had retired after his talk with the Mayor in a very
ruffled frame of mind, and, as it made him nervous and sleepless, he
charged his disorder and discomfort upon that unfortunate official.
The waking hours of the night only fortified in him a resolve to
prevent the union of his niece and the Mayor, and he determined to
hasten—were he successful in diverting his niece from this unwelcome
infatuation—Helen’s nuptials with some one to his mind more suitable,
and more agreeable to himself. The gentleman however understood the
strength of will in his niece, though with that was conjoined, as he
also knew, a tenderness of love and obedience, that he had often put
to the test.
But he felt uneasy over any discussion of the subject with Helen, and
he too keenly realized that his own discretion in the matter needed
her mother’s assistance, and this he prepared himself to obtain.
Her mother seldom, he knew, disturbed Helen’s “visionary schemes,”
but in some ways her influence upon her daughter was decisive,
and if—working upon these ideas of caste benefit, and the public
protection of an aristocratic superiority, which she preached—her
mother could make her see the importance of her reserving the union
of her family within a class restriction, his point might be gained.
The Mayor was an excellent man (even then Mr. Lorimer made
reservations)—Yes—an able man—Yes—a man with a future—Yes—but he
was a self-made man, a man of the people, and he was _bourgeoise_,
and that to the pinched apprehension of Mr. Theodore Lorimer was an
incredible predicament. As Mr. Lorimer had known very little about
any sort of Love, that ingredient in the problem gave him no anxiety,
though as a cultivated man he recognized certain poetic obstinacies
connected with a lover’s prepossessions.
When he opened the Mayor’s letter he could not repress a motion of
gratitude towards the writer; “Amazingly sensible,” he repeated;
“I will assure him of our political support,” and with a renewed
cheerfulness in his admiration of his own astuteness, the stilted
gentleman stepped into the dining-room, and after saluting his
sister-in-law watched for Helen’s appearance with undisguised
impatience. And, when she came, she seemed the same divine and
happy being he had always known; perhaps he noticed that she ate
but little, and seemed preoccupied, but that was mere physical
weariness. Surely this calm and serene being suffered from no
insurmountable disappointment. He had noticed that a letter directed
to his niece, had come in the morning’s mail, and doubtless that was
the communication alluded to by the Mayor, and the matter was now
settled, and after a little unavoidable regret—he concurred in the
popular superstition that there might be a _little_—everything would
be as before, and lest more dangers should arise, he would actively
prosecute his matrimonial intrigues.
As the three arose from the table—Mrs. Lorimer thought it had been an
unusually quiet breakfast, and detected the unaccustomed reticence
of her daughter—a servant entered, and handed Mr. Lorimer a letter
which he took with surprise observing, “Something from the Cardinal.”
The word caught the instant attention of Miss Lorimer and her mother,
and the two women paused as they rose from the table expecting the
announcements of its contents. It came with a delightful alacrity
from Mr. Lorimer’s lips:
“Cardinal Fenton sends me a good word for a young friend of his,
whom he wishes us to know. His name is Rudolph Amato. It seems he
had hoped to make him a priest, but the young protegée changed
his mind. He comes of a good Italian stock, originally, has great
wealth, and the Cardinal has expended much attention upon his
education. He solicits our consideration for the young man.” Stopping
to read further, Mr. Lorimer looked at his niece, and said, “The
Cardinal says you know the gentleman, Helen, that you met him at
his residence, and that Mr. Amato’s enthusiasm for the Church’s
prosperity is as great as yours, and that you should both make a
splendid combination for the sublime project—now resting in the minds
of progressive Catholics—of IMPORTING—those are his very words—_the
Pope_.”
To the questioning glance of both her mother and uncle, and with a
little renewed animation Helen Lorimer said:
“Yes. I met Mr. Amato at the Cardinal’s—a very handsome young man; he
has recently come from Europe. He was there in the interests of the
IMPORTATION question, and—Ah—” she ended, and clasping her hands over
her face she sank into a chair and broke into stifling sobs.
Mr. Lorimer left the room—this nervous agitation, he said to himself,
will end it,—while Julieta with tearful sympathy embraced her child,
and kneeled at her side pressing her own loving warm cheeks against
the face of the stricken woman, and yet, with a wise sympathy, asking
no questions.