MISS BARHYTE AGREES TO CHANGE HER NAME.
A day or two after Mrs. Bachelor’s reception, Mr. Incoul walked down
Madison avenue, turned into one of the adjacent streets and rang the
bell of a private boarding-house.
As he stood on the steps waiting for the door to be opened, a
butcher-boy passed, whistling shrilly. Across the way a nurse-maid
was idling with a perambulator, a slim-figured girl hurried by, a
well-dressed woman descended from a carriage and a young man with
a flower in his button-hole issued from a neighboring house. The
nurse-maid stayed the perambulator and scrutinized the folds of the
woman’s gown; the young man eyed the hurrying girl; from the end of the
street came the whistle of the retreating butcher, and as it fused into
the rumble of Fifth avenue, Mr. Incoul heard the door opening behind
him.
“Is Miss Barhyte at home?” he asked.
The servant, a negro, answered that she was.
“Then be good enough,” said Mr. Incoul, “to take her this card.”
The drawing-room, long and narrow, as is usual in many New York houses,
was furnished in that fashion which is suggestive of a sheriff’s sale,
and best calculated to jar the nerves. Mr. Incoul did not wince. He
gave the appointments one cursory, reluctant glance, and then went to
the window. Across the way the nurse-maid still idled, the young man
with a flower was drawing on a red glove, stitched with black, and as
he looked out at them he heard a rustle, and turning, saw Miss Barhyte.
“I have come for an answer,” he said simply.
“I am glad to see you,” she answered, “very glad; I have thought much
about what you said.”
“Favorably, I hope.”
“That must depend on you.” She went to a bell and touched it.
“Archibald,” she said, when the negro appeared, “I am out. If any
visitors come take them into the other room. Should any one want to
come in here before I ring, say the parlor is being swept.”
The man bowed and withdrew. He would have stood on his head for her.
There were few servants that she did not affect in much the same
manner. She seemed to win willingness naturally.
She seated herself on a sofa, and opposite to her Mr. Incoul found a
chair. Her dress he noticed was of some dark material, tailor-made,
and unrelieved save by a high white collar and the momentary glisten
of a button. The cut and sobriety of her costume made her look like a
handsome boy, a young Olympian as it were, one who had strayed from the
games and been arrayed in modern guise. Indeed, her features suggested
that combination of beauty and sensitiveness which was peculiar to the
Greek lad, but her eyes were not dark--they were the blue victorious
eyes of the Norseman--and her hair was red, the red of old gold, that
red which partakes both of orange and of flame.
“I hope--” Mr. Incoul began, but she interrupted him.
“Wait,” she said, “I have much to tell you of which the telling is
difficult. Will you bear with me a moment?”
“Surely,” he answered.
“It is this: It is needless for me to say I esteem you; it is
unnecessary for me to say that I respect you, but it is because I do
both that I feel I may speak frankly. My mother wishes me to marry you,
but I do not. Let me tell you, first, that when my father died he left
very little, but the little that he left seems to have disappeared, I
do not know how or where. I know merely that we have next to nothing,
and that we are in debt beside. Something, of course, has had to be
done. I have found a position. Where do you suppose?” she asked, with a
sudden smile and a complete change of key.
But Mr. Incoul had no surmises.
“In San Francisco! The MacDermotts, you know, the Bonanza people, want
me to return with them and teach their daughter how to hold herself,
and what not to say. It has been arranged that I am to go next week.
Since the other night, however, my mother has told me to give up the
MacDermotts and accept your offer. But that, of course, I cannot do.”
“And why not?”
To this Miss Barhyte made no answer.
“You do not care for me, I know; there is slight reason why you should.
Yet, might you not, perhaps, in time?”
The girl raised her eyebrows ever so slightly. “So you see,” she
continued, “I shall have to go to San Francisco.”
Mr. Incoul remained silent a moment. “If,” he said, at last, “if you
will do me the honor to become my wife, in time you will care. It is
painful for me to think of you accepting a position which at best is
but a shade better than that of a servant, particularly so when I
am able--nay, anxious,” he added, pensively--“to surround you with
everything which can make life pleasant. I am not old,” he went on
to say, “at least not so old that a marriage between us should seem
incongruous. I find that I am sincerely attached to you--unselfishly,
perhaps, would be the better word--and, if the privilege could be mine,
the endeavor to make you happy would be to me more grateful than a
second youth. Can you not accept me?”
He had been speaking less to her than to the hat which he held in his
hand. The phrases had come from him haltingly, one by one, as though he
had sought to weigh each mentally before dowering it with the wings of
utterance, but, as he addressed this question he looked up at her. “Can
you not?” he repeated.
Miss Barhyte raised a handkerchief to her lips and bit the shred of
cambric with the _disinvoltura_ of an heiress.
“Why is it,” she queried, “why is it that marriage ever was invented?
Why cannot a girl accept help from a man without becoming his wife?”
Mr. Incoul was about to reply that many do, but he felt that such a
reply would be misplaced, and he called a platitude to his rescue.
“There are wives and wives,” he said.
“That is it,” the girl returned, the color mounting to her cheeks; “if
I could but be to you one of the latter.”
He stared at her wonderingly, almost hopefully. “What do you mean?” he
asked.
“Did you ever read ‘Eugénie Grandet’?”
“No,” he answered, “I never have.”
“Well, I read it years ago. It is, I believe, the only one of Balzac’s
novels that young girls are supposed to read. It is tiresome indeed; I
had almost forgotten it, but yesterday I remembered enough of the story
to help me to come to some decision. In thinking the matter over and
over again as I have done ever since I last saw you it has seemed that
I could not become your wife unless you were willing to make the same
agreement with me that Eugénie Grandet’s husband made with her.”
“What was the nature of that agreement?”
“It was that, though married, they were to live as though they were not
married--as might brother and sister.”
“Always?”
“Yes.”
“No,” Mr. Incoul answered, “to such an agreement I could not consent.
Did I do so, I would be untrue to myself, unmanly to you. But if you
will give me the right to aid you and yours, I will--according to my
lights--leave nothing undone to make you contented; and if I succeed in
so doing, if you are happy, then the agreement which you have suggested
would fall of itself. Would it not?” he continued. “Would it not be
baseless? See--” he added, and he made a vague gesture, but before he
could finish the phrase, the girl’s hands were before her face and he
knew that she was weeping.
Mr. Incoul was not tender-hearted. He felt toward Miss Barhyte as were
she some poem in flesh that it would be pleasant to make his own. In
her carriage as in her looks, he had seen that stamp of breeding which
is coercive even to the dissolute. In her eyes he had discerned that
promise of delight which it is said the lost goddesses could convey;
and at whose conveyance, the legend says, the minds of men were
enraptured. It was in this wise that he felt to her. Such exhilaration
as she may have brought him was of the spirit, and being cold by
nature and undemonstrative, her tears annoyed him. He would have had
her impassive, as befitted her beauty. Beside, he was annoyed at his
own attitude. Why should there be sorrow where he had sought to bring
smiles? But he had barely time to formulate his annoyance into a thing
even as volatile as thought--the girl had risen and was leaving the
room.
As she moved to the door Mr. Incoul hastened to open it for her, but
she reached it before him and passed out unassisted.
When she had gone he noticed that the sun was setting and that the
room was even more hideous than before. He went again to the window
wondering how to act. The entire scene was a surprise to him. He had
come knowing nothing of the girl’s circumstances, and suddenly he
learned that she was in indigence, unable perhaps to pay her board
bills and worried by small tradesmen. He had come prepared to be
refused and she had almost accepted him. But what an acceptance! In the
nature of it his thoughts roamed curiously: he was to be a little more
than kin, a little less than kind. She would accept him as a husband
for out-of-door purposes, for the world’s sake she would bear his
name--at arm’s length. According to the terms of her proposition were
she ever really his wife it would be tantamount to a seduction. He was
to be with her, and yet, until she so willed it, unable to call her his
own. And did he refuse these terms, she was off, no one knew whither.
But he had not refused, he told himself, he had indeed not refused, he
had merely suggested an amendment which turned an impossibility into an
allurement. What pleasanter thing could there be than the winning of
one’s own wife? The idea was so novel it delighted him. For the moment
he preferred it to any other; beside it his former experience seemed
humdrum indeed. But why had she wept? Her reasons, however, he had then
no chance to elucidate. Miss Barhyte returned as abruptly as she had
departed.
“Forgive me,” she said, advancing to where he stood, “it was stupid of
me to act as I did. I am sorry--are we still friends?” Her eyes were
clear as had she never wept, but there were circles about them, and her
face was colorless.
“Friends,” he answered, “yes, and more--” He hesitated a moment, and
then hastily added, “It is agreed, then, is it not, you will be my
wife?”
“I will be your wife?”
“As Balzac’s heroine was to her husband?”
“You have said it.”
“But not always. If there come a time when you care for me, then I may
ask you to give me your heart as to-day I have asked for your hand?”
“When that day comes, believe me,” she said, and her delicious face
took on a richer hue, “when that day comes there will be neither asking
nor giving, we shall have come into our own.”
With this assurance Mr. Incoul was fain to be content, and, after
another word or two, he took his leave.
For some time after his departure, Miss Barhyte stood thinking. It had
grown quite dark. Before the window a street lamp burned with a small,
steady flame, but beyond, the azure of the electric light pervaded the
adjacent square with a suggestion of absinthe and vice. One by one the
opposite houses took on some form of interior illumination. A newsboy
passed, hawking an extra with a noisy, aggressive ferocity as though he
were angry with the neighborhood, and dared it come out and wrestle
with him for his wares. There was a thin broken stream of shop-girls
passing eastward; at intervals, men in evening dress sauntered
leisurely to their dinners, to restaurants, or to clubland, and over
the rough pavement there was a ceaseless rattle of traps and of wagons;
the air was alive with the indefinable murmurs of a great city.
Miss Barhyte noticed none of these things. She had taken her former
seat on the sofa and sat, her elbow on her crossed knee, her chin
resting in her hand, while the fingers touched and barely separated her
lips. The light from without was just strong enough to reach her feet
and make visible the gold clock on her silk stocking, but her face was
in the shadow as were her thoughts.
Presently she rose and rang the bell. “Archibald,” she said, when the
man came, and who at once busied himself with lighting the gas, “I want
to send a note; can’t you take it? It’s only across the square.”
“I’ll have to be mighty spry about it, miss. The old lady do carry on
most unreasonable if I go for anybody but herself. She has laws that
strict they’d knock the Swedes and Prussians silly. Why, you wouldn’t
believe if I told you how--”
And Archibald ran on with an unbelievable tale of recent adventure with
the landlady. But the girl feigned no interest. She had taken a card
from her case. On it she wrote, _Viens ce soir_, and after running the
pencil through her name, she wrote on the other side, Lenox Leigh,
esq., Athenæum Club.
“There,” she said, interrupting the negro in the very climax of his
story, “it’s for Mr. Leigh; you are sure to find him, so wait for an
answer.”
A fraction of an hour later, when Miss Barhyte took her seat at the
dinner table, she found beside her plate a note that contained a single
line: “Will be with you at nine. I kiss your lips. L. L.”