I
Frank Rignold had never been the favoured suitor, not at least so
far as anything definite was concerned; but he had always been
welcome at the little house on Commonwealth Street, and amongst
the neighbours his name and that of Florence Fenacre were coupled
as a matter of course and every old lady within a radius of three
miles regarded the match as good as settled. It was not Frank's
fault that it was not, for he was deeply in love with the widow's
daughter and looked forward to such an end to their acquaintance
as the very dearest thing fate could give him. But in these
affairs it is necessary to carry the lady with you--and the lady,
though she had never said "no," had not yet been prevailed upon to
say "yes." In fact she preferred to leave the matter as it was,
and boldly forestalling a set proposal, had managed to convey to
Frank Rignold that it was her wish he should not make one.
"Let us be good friends," she would say, "and as for anything
else, Frank, there's plenty of time to consider that by and by.
Isn't it enough already that we like each other?"
Frank did not think it was enough, but he was not without
intuition and willing to accept the little offered him and be
grateful--rather than risk all, and almost certainly lose all, by
too exigent a suit. For Florence Fenacre was the acknowledged
beauty of the town, with a dozen eligible men at her feet, and was
more courted and sought after than any girl in the place. The
place, to give it its name, was Bridgeport, one of those dead-
alive little ports on the Atlantic seaboard, with a dozen
factories and some decaying wharves and that tranquil air of
having had a past.
The widow and her pretty daughter lived in a low-roofed, red-brick
house that faced the street and sheltered a long deep shady garden
in the rear. Land and house had been bought with whale oil. Their
little income, derived from the rent of three barren and stony
farms and amounting to not more than sixty dollars a month,
represented a capitalisation of whale oil. Even the old grey
church whither they went twice of a Sunday, was whale oil too, and
had been built in bygone days by the sturdy captains who now lay
all around it under slabs of stone. There amongst them was
Florence's father and her grandfather and her great-grandfather,
together with the Macys and the Coffins and the Cabotts with whom
they had sailed and quarrelled and loved and intermarried in the
years now gone. The wide world had not been too wide for them to
sail it round and reap the harvests of far-off seas; but in death
they lay side by side, their voyages done, their bones mingling in
the New England earth.
Frank Rignold too was a son of Bridgeport, and the sea which ran
in that blood for generations bade him in manhood to rise and
follow it. He had gone into the engine-room, and at thirty was the
chief engineer of a cargo boat running to South American ports. He
was a fine-looking man with earnest grey eyes; a reader, a
student, an observer; self-taught in Spanish, Latin, and French; a
grave, quiet gentlemanly man, whose rare smile seemed to light his
whole face, and who in his voyages South had caught something of
Spanish grace and courtliness. He returned as regularly to
Bridgeport as his ship did to New York; and when he stepped off
the train his eager steps took him first to the Fenacres' house,
his hands never empty of some little present for his sweetheart.
On the occasion of our story his step was more buoyant than ever
and his heart beat high with hope, for she had cried the last time
he went away, and though no word of love had yet been spoken
between them, he was conscious of her increasing inclination for
him and her increasing dependence. Having already won so much it
seemed as though his passionate devotion could not fail to turn
the scale and bring her to that admission he felt it was on her
lips to make. So he strode through the narrow streets, telling
himself a fairy story of how it all might be, with a little house
of their own and she waiting for him on the wharf when his ship
made fast; a story that never grew stale in the repetition, but
which, please God, would come true in the end, with Florence his
wife, and all his doubtings and heart-aches over.
Florence opened the door for him herself and gave a little cry of
surprise and welcome as they shook hands, for in all their
acquaintance there had never been a kiss between them. It was all
he could do not to catch her in his arms, for as she smiled up at
him, so radiant and beautiful and happy, it seemed as if it were
his right and that he had been a fool to have ever questioned her
love for him. He followed her into the sitting-room, laughing like
a child with pleasure and thrilled through and through with the
sound of her voice and the touch of her hand and the vague, subtle
perfume of her whole being. His laughter died away, however, as he
saw what the room contained. Over the chairs, over the sofa, over
the table, in the stacked and open pasteboard boxes on the floor,
were dresses and evening gowns outspread with the profusion of a
splendid shop, and even to his unpractised eyes, costly and
magnificent beyond anything he had ever seen before. Florence
swept an opera cloak from a chair and made him sit down, watching
him the while with a charming gaiety and excitement. At such a
moment it seemed to him positively heartless.
"Florence," he said, almost with a gasp, "does this mean that you
are going to be--" He stopped short. He could not say that word.
"I'm never going to marry anybody," she returned.
"But--" he began again.
"Then you haven't heard!" she cried, clasping her hands. "Oh,
Frank, you haven't heard!"
"I have only just got back," he said.
"I've been left heaps of money," she exclaimed, "from my uncle,
you know, the one that treated father so badly and tricked him out
of the old manor farm. I hardly knew he existed till he died. And
it's not only a lot, Frank, but it's millions!"
He repeated the word with a kind of groan.
"They are probating the will for six," she went on, not noticing
his agitation, "but I'm sure the lawyers are making it as low as
they can for the taxes. And it's the most splendid kind of
property--rows of houses in the heart of New York and big Broadway
shops and skyscrapers! Frank, do you realise I own two office
buildings twenty stories high?"
Frank tried to congratulate her on her wonderful good fortune, but
it was like a voice from the grave and he could not affect to be
glad at the death-knell of all his hopes.
"That lets me out," he said.
"My poor Frank, you never were in," she said, regarding him with
great kindness and compassion. "I know you are disappointed, but
you are too much a man to be unjust to me."
"Oh, I haven't the right to say a word!" he exclaimed quickly. "On
your side it was friends and nothing more. I always understood
that, Florence."
He was shocked at her almost imperceptible sigh of relief.
"Of course, this changes everything," she said.
"Yet it would have come if it hadn't been for this," he said. "You
were getting to like me better and better. You cried when I last
went away. Yes, it would have come, Florence," he repeated,
looking at her wistfully.
"I suppose it would, Frank," she said.
"Oh, Florence!" he exclaimed, and could not go on lest his voice
should betray him.
"And we should have lived in a poky little house," she said, "and
you would have been to sea three-quarters of the time, leaving me
to eat my heart out as mother did for father--and it would have
been a horrible, dreadful, irrevocable mistake."
"I didn't have to go to sea," he said, snatching at this crumb of
hope. "There are other jobs than ships. Why, only last trip I was
offered a refrigerating plant in Chicago!"
He did not tell her it bore a salary of four hundred dollars a
month and that he had meant to lay it at her feet that morning. In
the light of her millions that sum, so considerable an hour
before, had suddenly shrunk to nothing. How puny and pitiful it
seemed in the contrast. He had a sense that everything had shrunk
to nothing--his life, his hopes, his future.
"I know you think I am cruel," she said, in the same calm,
considerate tone she had used throughout. "But I never gave you
any encouragement, Frank--not in the way you wanted or expected.
You were the only person I knew who was the least bit cultivated
and nice and travelled and out of the commonplace. I can't tell
you how much you brightened my life here, or how glad I was when
you came or how sorry I was when you went away--but it wasn't
love, Frank--not the love you wished for or the love I feel I have
the power to give."
"Why did you let me go on then?" he broke out, "I getting deeper
and deeper into it and you knowing all the time it never could
come to anything? Just because no words were said, did that make
you blind? If you were such a friend of mine as you said you were,
wouldn't it have been kinder to have shown me the door and tell me
straight out it was hopeless and impossible? Oh, Florence, you
took my love when you wanted it, like a person getting warm at a
fire, and now when you don't need it any longer you tell me quite
unconcernedly that it is all over between us!"
"It would sound so heartless to tell you the real truth, Frank,"
she said.
"Oh, let me hear it!" he said. "I'm desperate enough for anything
--even for that, I suppose."
"I knew it would end the way you wanted it, Frank," she said. "You
were getting to mean more and more to me. I did not love you
exactly and I did not worry a particle when you were away, but I
sort of acquiesced in what seemed to be the inevitable. I know I
am horribly to blame, but I took it for granted we'd drift on and
on--and this time, if you had asked me, I had made up my mind to
say 'yes.'"
She said this last word in almost a whisper, frightened at the
sight of Frank's pale face. She ran over to him, and throwing her
arms around his neck kissed him again and again.
"We'll always be friends, Frank," she said. "Always, always!"
He made no movement to return her caresses. Her kisses humiliated
him to the quick. He pushed her away from him, and when he spoke
it was with dignity and gentleness.
"I was wrong to reproach you," he said. "I can appreciate what a
difference all this money makes to you. It has lifted you into
another world--a world where I cannot hope to follow you, but I
can be man enough to say that I understand--that I acquiesce--
without bitterness."
"I never liked you so well as I do now, Frank," she said.
"We will say nothing more about it," he said. "I couldn't blame
you because you don't love me, could I? I ought rather instead to
thank you--thank you for so much you have given me these two years
past, your friendship, your intimacy, your trust. That it all came
to nothing was neither your fault nor mine. It was your uncle's
for dying and leaving you sky-scrapers!"
They both laughed at this, and Frank, now apparently quite himself
again, brought forth his presents: a large box of candy, a
beautifully bound little volume of Pierre Loti, and a lace collar
he had picked up at Buenos Ayres. This last seemed a trifling
piece of finery in the midst of all those dresses, though he had
paid sixteen dollars for it and had counted it cheap at the price.
Florence received it with exaggerated gratitude, genuine enough in
one way, for she was touched; but, in spite of herself, her
altered fortunes and the memory of those great New York shops,
where she had ordered right and left, made the bit of lace seem
common and scarce worth possessing. Even as she thanked him she
was mentally presenting it to one of the poor Miss Browns who sang
in the church choir.
They spent an hour in talking together, eluding on either side any
further reference to the subject most in their thoughts and
finding safety in books and the little gossip of the place and the
news of the day. It might have been an ordinary call, though
Frank, as a special favour, was allowed to smoke a cigar, and
there was a strained look in Florence's face that gave the lie to
her previous professions of indifference. She knew she was
violating her own heart, but her character was already corrupting
under the breath of wealth, and her head was turned with dreams of
social conquests and of a great and splendid match in the roseate
future. She kept telling herself how lucky it was that the money
had not come too late, and wondering at the same time whether she
would ever again meet a man who had such a compelling charm for
her as Frank Rignold, and whose mellow voice could move her to the
depths. At last, after a decent interval, Frank said he would have
to leave, and she accompanied him to the door, where he begged her
to remember him to her mother and added something congratulatory
about the great good fortune that had befallen her.
"And now good-bye," he said.
"But you will come back, Frank?" she exclaimed anxiously.
"Oh, no!" he said. "I couldn't, Florence, I couldn't."
"I cannot let you go like this," she protested. "Really I can't,
Frank. I won't!"
"I don't see very well how you can help it," he said.
"Surely my wish has still some weight with you," she said.
"Florence," he returned, holding her hand very tight, "you must
not think it pique on my part or anything so petty and unworthy;
but I'd rather stop right here than endure the pain of seeing you
get more and more indifferent to me. It is bound to come, of
course, and it would be less cruel this way than the other."
"You never can have loved me!" she exclaimed. "Didn't I say I
wanted to be friends? Didn't I kiss you?"
"Yes," he said slowly, "as you might a child, to comfort him for a
broken toy. Florence," he went on, "I have wanted you for the last
two years and now I have lost you. I must face up to that. I must
meet it with what fortitude I can. But I cannot bear to feel that
every time I come you will like me less; that others will crowd me
out and take my place; that the gulf will widen and widen until at
last it is impassable. I am going while you still love me a little
and will miss me. Good-bye!"
She leaned her head on his shoulder and sobbed. She had but to say
one word to keep him, and yet she would not say it. Her heart
seemed broken in her breast, and yet she let him go, sustained in
her resolve by the thought of her great fortune and of the
wonderful days to come.
"Good-bye," she said, and stood looking after him as he walked
slowly away.
"Oh, that money, I hate it!" she exclaimed to herself as she went
in. "I wish he had never left it to me. I didn't want it or expect
it or anything, and I should have been happy, oh, so happy!" Then,
with a pang, she recalled the refrigerating plant, and the life so
quiet and poor and simple and sweet that she and Frank would have
led had not her millions come between them.
"Her millions!"
It was inspiriting to repeat those two words to herself. It
strengthened her resolve and made her feel how wise she had been
to break with Frank. Perhaps, after all, it were better for him
not to come back. He was right about the gulf between them, and
even since his departure it was widening appreciably.
Then she realised what all rich people realise sooner or later.
"I don't own all that money," she said to herself. "IT OWNS ME!"
And with that she went indoors and cried part of the forenoon and
spent the rest of it in trying on her new clothes.
Wealth, if it did not bring happiness, at least brought some
pleasant distractions.