For Peace Hughes and her sister, the summer passed uneventfully. The
girl made up for the time she had lost earlier in the year by doing
double duty at the increased business of the publishing house. The
prosperity of _A Modern Romeo_ had itself added to her work, and the new
enterprises which its success had inspired Mr. Brandreth to consider
meant more letter-writing and more formulation of the ideas which he
struck shapelessly if boldly out. He trusted her advice as well as her
skill, and she had now become one of the regular readers for Chapley &
Co.
Ray inferred this from the number of manuscripts which he saw on her
table at home, and he could not help knowing the other things through
his own acquaintance, which was almost an intimacy, with Mr. Brandreth’s
affairs. The publisher was always praising her. “Talk about men!” he
broke out one day. “That girl has a better business head than half the
business men in New York. If she were not a woman, it would be only a
question of time when we should have to offer her a partnership, or run
the risk of losing her. But there’s only one kind of partnership you can
offer a woman.” Ray flushed, but he did not say anything, and Mr.
Brandreth asked, apparently from some association in his mind, “Do you
see much of them at their new place?”
“Yes; I go there every week or so.”
“How are they getting on?”
“Very well, I believe.” Ray mused a moment, and then he said: “If it
were not contrary to all our preconceptions of a sort of duty in people
who have been through what they have been through, I should say they
were both happier than I ever saw them before. I don’t think Mrs. Denton
cared a great deal for her children or husband, but in her father’s last
days he wouldn’t have anybody else about him. She strikes one like a
person who would get married again.”
Mr. Brandreth listened with the air of one trying to feel shocked; but
he smiled.
“I don’t blame her,” Ray continued. “Perhaps old Kane’s habit of not
blaming people is infectious. She once accounted for herself on the
ground that she didn’t make herself; I suppose it might be rather
dangerous ground if people began to take it generally. But Miss Hughes
did care for those poor little souls and for that wretched creature, and
now the care’s gone, and the relief has come. They both miss their
father; but he was doomed; he _had_ to die; and besides, his fatherhood
struck me as being rather thin, at times, from having been spread out
over a community so long. I can’t express it exactly, but it seems to me
that the children of a man who is trying to bring about a millennium of
any kind do not have a good time. Still, I suppose we must have the
millenniums.”
“You said that just like old Kane,” Mr. Brandreth observed.
“Did I? I just owned he was infectious. If I’ve caught his habit of
mind, I dare say I’ve caught his accent. I don’t particularly admire
either. But what I mean is that Miss Hughes and her sister are getting
on very comfortably and sweetly. Their place is as homelike as any I
know in New York.”
“As soon as we get back in the fall, Mrs. Brandreth is going to call on
them. Now that Mr. Chapley and Mr. Hughes are out of the way, there’s no
reason why we shouldn’t show them some attention. Miss Hughes, at least,
is a perfect lady. I’m going to see that she doesn’t overwork; the
success of _A Modern Romeo_ has killed us nearly all; I’m going to give
her a three weeks’ vacation toward the end of August.”
Ray called upon Peace one evening in the beginning of her vacation, and
found her with the manuscript of a book before her; Mrs. Denton was
sitting with the Simpsons on their front steps, and sent him on up to
Peace when he declined to join her there.
He said, “I supposed I should find you reading up the Adirondack
guide-books, or trying to decide between Newport and Saratoga. I don’t
see how your outing differs very much from your inning.”
“This was only a book I brought home because I had got interested in
it,” the girl explained in self-defence. “We’re not going away
anywhere.”
“I think I would stay myself,” said Ray, “if it were not for wanting to
see my family. My vacation begins to-morrow.”
“Does it?”
“Yes; and I should be very willing to spend my fortnight excursioning
around New York. But I’m off at once to-night; I came in to say good-by.
I hope you’ll miss me.”
“We shall miss you very much,” she said; and she added, “I suppose most
of our fashionable friends have gone out of town.”
“Have they?”
“I should think you would know. We had them at second-hand from you.”
“Oh! Those?” said Ray. “Yes. They’re gone, and I’m going. I hate to
leave you behind. Have you any message for the country?”
“Only my love.” She faced the manuscript down on the table before her,
and rocked softly to and fro a moment. “It does make me a little
homesick to think of it,” she said, with touching patience.
He felt the forlornness in her accent, and a sense of her isolation
possessed him. When Mrs. Denton should marry again, Peace would be alone
in the world. He looked at her, and she seemed very little and slight,
to make her way single-handed.
“Peace!” he said, and the intensity of his voice startled him. “There is
something I wanted to say to you--to ask you,” and he was aware of her
listening as intensely as he spoke, though no change of attitude or
demeanor betrayed the fact; he had to go on in a lighter strain if he
went on at all. “You know, I suppose, what a rich man I am going to be
when I get the copyright on my book. It’s almost incredible, but I’m
going to be worth five or six thousand dollars; to be as rich as most
millionaires. Well--I asked you to let me be your friend once, because I
didn’t think a man who was turning out a failure had the right to ask to
be more. Or, no! That _isn’t_ it!” he broke off, shocked by the false
ring of his words. “I don’t know how to say it. I was in love once--very
much in love; the kind of love that I’ve put into my book; and
this--this worship that I have for you, for I do worship you!--it isn’t
the same, Peace. It’s everything that honors you, and once it _was_ like
that; but now I’m not sure. But I couldn’t go away without offering you
my worship, for you to accept for all our lives; or reject, if it wasn’t
enough. Do you understand?”
“I do understand,” the girl returned, and she nervously pressed the hand
which she allowed to gather hers into it.
“I couldn’t leave you,” he went on, “without telling you that there is
no one in the world that I honor so much as you. I had it in my heart to
say this long ago; but it seems such a strange thing to stop with. If I
didn’t think you so wise and so good, I don’t believe I could say it to
you. I know that now whatever you decide will be right, and the best for
us both. I couldn’t bear to have you suppose I would keep coming to see
you without--I would have told you this long ago, but I always expected
to tell you more. But I’m twenty-six now, and perhaps I shall never
feel in that old way again. I _know_ our lives would be united in the
highest things; and you would save me from living for myself alone. What
do you say, Peace?”
He waited for her to break the silence which he did not know how to
interpret. At last she said “No!” and she drew back from him and took
her hand away. “It wouldn’t be right. I shouldn’t be afraid to trust
you”----
“Then why”----
“For I know how faithful you are. But I’m afraid--I _know_--I don’t love
you! And without that it would be a sacrilege. That isn’t enough of
itself, but everything else would be nothing without it.” As if she felt
the wound her words must have dealt to his self-love, she hurried on: “I
did love you once. Yes! I did. And when Mr. Brandreth wanted me to read
your book that time, I wouldn’t, because I was afraid of myself. But
afterwards it--went.”
“Was it my fault?” Ray asked.
“It wasn’t any one’s fault,” said the girl. “If I had not been so
unhappy, it might have been different.”
“Oh, Peace!”
“But I had no heart for it. And now my life must go on just as it is. I
have thought it all out. I thought that some time you might tell
me--what you have--or different--and I tried to think what I ought to
do. I shall never care for any one else; I shall never get married.
Don’t think I shall be unhappy! I can take good care of myself, and
Jenny and I will not be lonesome together. Even if we don’t always live
together--still, I can always make myself a home. I’m not afraid to be
an old maid. There is work in the world for me to do, and I can do it.
Is it so strange I should be saying this?”
“No, no. It’s right.”
“I suppose that most of the girls you know wouldn’t do it. But I have
been brought up differently. In the Family they did not think that
marriage was always the best thing; and when I saw how Jenny and
Ansel--I don’t mean that it would ever have been like that! But I don’t
wish you to think that life will be hard or unhappy for me. And you--you
will find somebody that you can feel towards as you did towards that
first girl.”
“Never! I shall never care for any one again!” he cried. At the bottom
of his heart there was a relief which he tried to ignore, though he
could not deny himself a sense of the unique literary value of the
situation. It was from a consciousness of this relief that he asked,
“And what do you think of me, Peace? Do you blame me?”
“Blame you? How? For my having changed?”
“I feel to blame,” said the young man. “How shall we do, now? Shall I
come to see you when I return?”
“Yes. But we won’t speak of this again.”
“Shall you tell Mrs. Denton?”
“Of course.”
“She will blame me.”
“She will blame _me_,” said Peace. “But--I shall not be troubled, and
you mustn’t,” she said, and she lightly touched him. “This is just as I
wish it to be. I’ve been afraid that if this ever happened, I shouldn’t
have the courage to tell you what I have. But you helped me, and I am so
glad you did! I was afraid you would say something that would blind me,
and keep me from going on in the right way; but now--Good-night.”
“Good-night,” said Ray, vaguely. “May I--dream of you, Peace?”
“If you’ll stop at daybreak.”
“Ah, then I shall begin to think of you.”