During the year that preceded her marriage to Donald Rogers, Edith had
seen a great deal of Billy West, and had liked him more than anyone
except herself had realized. His was a personality, indeed, to compel
the admiration of women. Tall, good-looking, of a reckless and
laughter-loving type, he naturally appealed to that peculiar chord in
the feminine make-up which responds so readily to the Cavalier in the
opposite sex, while paying scant attention to the sturdy adherence to
duty characteristic of his Roundhead adversary. For this reason, it is
probable that, at one period of Donald's courtship, she would have
listened more kindly to the love-making of his friend, had the latter,
indeed, seen fit to make any. That he did not was due to no Quixotic
sense of friendship for Donald, but to a very real and honest belief on
his part that marriage on the slender pay of an assistant chemist was
not for one of his type, an opinion in which he was entirely correct.
Therefore he had hidden his love, which was in truth a real and lasting
one, beneath his careless laughter, and had gone to Colorado when the
occasion offered, neither heart whole nor fancy free, but just as
determined to make much money with the utmost quickness as though he and
Edith Pope had never laid eyes upon each other. After all, he and Edith
were very much alike. They belonged to that class which demands of life
its luxuries almost before its necessities, and it is a curious fact
that they nearly always get them.
After eight years of married life, Edith Rogers, busy with her child,
her household cares and the various complexities of domesticity, had
forgotten her husband's friend as completely as though he had never
come into her life at all. He, on the contrary, had thought of her
continually, for his life in the West had been too keenly devoted to
business to leave either time or opportunity for dalliance with the
opposite sex. Hence the memory of his first and last love had not been
effaced by the passage of time, but remained in his heart as a sweet and
pleasing memory, gathering increased strength from the years as they
rolled swiftly by. It should not be inferred from this, however, that
William West had the slightest thought of ever renewing his courtship of
Edith, now that she had become Donald Rogers' wife. His love for her was
like a pleasant recollection, a package of old letters, a book read and
closed forever. For all that, he was conscious of a queer feeling in the
region of his heart as he followed Donald into the tiny living-room of
the Rogers' apartment in Harlem.
Mrs. Rogers had not been apprised of her husband's intention to bring a
guest home for dinner, least of all so unexpected a one as Billy West.
The reason for this was that the Rogers' apartment boasted no telephone.
The servant problem they had solved by the simple expedient of not
keeping any. Hence it was that West's first glimpse of the Edith of his
dreams was of a tired little woman, flushed from her efforts over the
gas range, and in no sweet temper with her husband for having taken her
unawares and at such a disadvantage. It is a fact worthy of record,
however, that West found her, in this homely garb, more humanly
delightful and attractive than would have been the case had she spent
hours of preparation at her toilette table. He had been living for five
years among men who found women more attractive as helpmates than as
ornaments, and she appealed to him accordingly. As for Donald, no
thought crossed his mind that these two were, or ever had been, anything
more to each other than the best of friends.
"Billy!" Mrs. Rogers had gasped as she came into the room to greet her
husband on his arrival, and had thus, by using the old familiar title,
established a footing between them that somehow refused to return to the
more formal one of "Mrs. Rogers" and "Mr. West." After all it was of no
great importance--Billy and Edith they had always been to each other,
and Billy and Edith they remained. Donald, if he noticed it at all, was
glad of the fact that his wife and his old friend liked each other so
well. The meeting became a little reunion, in the pleasure of which Mrs.
Rogers soon forgot her plain, cheap house-gown and her flushed face, and
entered into the spirit of the occasion with an unwonted gayety. She was
a beautiful woman, in spite of her twenty-eight years; perhaps it would
be more correct to say because of them, for while at twenty she had been
exceedingly pretty, it was little more than a youthful promise of what
she had now become.
Her grandmother had been a Southern woman, and a noted beauty in those
much talked of days "before the war," and whether this lady's beauty
had, as time passed, taken on added glory, like most other things of
that hallowed period, certain it is that Edith Rogers had received from
some source a priceless inheritance as far as the perfection of her
figure or the beauty of her coloring was concerned. Perhaps it was some
forgotten strain of Irish blood that was responsible for her deep violet
eyes and her dark chestnut hair, although her dusky complexion belied
it.
West observed the change which the years had made in her, at once, and
complimented her on it. "I have never seen you look so well," he said,
as he grasped her hand. "You were a rosebud when I went away, now you
are an American beauty." It pleased her mightily, for she felt that he
meant it, and, like most married women, she heard few compliments from
her husband. Mrs. Pope, her mother, never lost an opportunity to tell
her that with her looks she could have married any man she pleased, but
she paid no attention to remarks of this nature, knowing as she did
that her mother was only trying to hit, indirectly, at Donald, whom she
affected not to like.
She knew from West's voice that he was very glad to see her, and after
all these years, when he grasped her hand, and pressed it in his strong,
firm grip, she felt the old familiar shock, the sensation of gladness
for she knew not what, that almost took her breath away. It had always
been that way with him. He was very different from Donald in many ways,
for, while Donald was serious and earnest and very conscientious, West
was always merry and gay and careless, never seeming to worry about
money, although his income, at the time of her marriage, had been
smaller even than Donald's.
There was something about him that always attracted women. She felt this
whenever she was with him, yet it did not come from any appreciation of
his character, or his mind, for she knew very little about either. There
was some sort of psychic magnetism about the man, some vibrating sense
of physical vitality, which she felt whenever she was near him. His mere
presence made her strangely silent and in a way afraid, yet, whatever it
was that she feared, it at the same time attracted her, and made her
sorry when it had passed. She had never felt that way with Donald,
although always she had liked to be with him, for somehow she felt more
comfortable and sure, and could talk things over better, and plan out
the future. She had not thought much about the future when she was with
West--there did not seem to be any need for a future--the present had
been all she had desired, but that she had desired very much. All this
had passed, years ago, but still it came back to her, in a measure, when
she thus first met him again.
He looked at her, in that curiously intimate way he had, and even his
smile made her happy. She felt his glance sweep over her face, her whole
body, and almost embrace her in its pleasant radiance--it thrilled her,
yet she almost resented the way in which it left her helpless and
confused. In a moment he had looked beyond her, at Donald, and was
making some laughing inquiry about their boy--and then she felt sorry
and wanted him to look at her again.
Mrs. Pope had taught her daughters many things, but cooking was not one
of them. Edith had been forced, like many another married woman, to
learn it in the school of hard practical experience, and, to her credit
be it said, she had learned it surprisingly well. She excused herself
after the first greetings had been said, added an extra dish to the
partially prepared meal, and hastened to her room to change her dress.
Of West's new fortunes she as yet knew nothing; it was to the man that
she wanted to appeal, to the old friend, before whom her natural woman's
vanity made her wish to appear at her best. When she served the dinner
half an hour later, it was in a light-green pongee that seemed to West a
triumph of the dressmaker's art. As a matter of fact she had made the
dress herself, but it would have taken a far worse costume to have
spoiled the lines of her superb figure, or dulled the sparkling mobility
of her face.
Donald, with a father's pride in his boy, dug out Bobbie from the
recesses of his mother's room, and brought him to West to be admired.
He was a manly little fellow, with a large share of his mother's good
looks, and West took him upon his knee, wondering inwardly if he would
ever have a son of his own to inherit his newly acquired fortune.
To the boy he told stories about the Indians that made the youngster
open his eyes very wide indeed, and Uncle Billy, as West admonished him
to call him, became at once a very important personage in his childish
eyes.
It was when dinner had progressed to the stage of the salad that Donald
mentioned the matter of West's sudden rise to fortune. "Billy had made
a ten-strike in the West," he remarked to his wife. "Discovered a gold
mine."
"Really!" Edith laughed. "Is there any gold in it? Almost all the gold
mines I ever heard of were lacking in that important particular."
"This one wasn't." Donald looked at West and laughed. "Billy tells me
it's made him worth half a million."
Mrs. Rogers gasped, then turned to her guest. "You are not in earnest?"
she inquired wonderingly. "Half a million?"
"About that," said West, trying to look as if he were speaking of the
price of a new hat, or something equally unimportant.
"But you--you don't seem a bit excited about it, or anything." Mrs.
Rogers' own eyes were big with interest. "I should think you would
be simply overcome. I know I should. Half a million!" She glanced
unconsciously about the poorly furnished little room and sighed. Donald
noticed it; her thoughts, for the moment, had been his own.
"I was excited enough when I found it," remarked West with a chuckle.
"It came like a snowstorm in August. Last thing in the world I had
expected--at least just then."
"I suppose you just stood up and shouted," said his hostess.
"No, I didn't. I lit my pipe. I didn't want the rest of the bunch to
know about it."
"Tell us the whole story." She was as interested as a child. Half a
million dollars sounded like such a vast amount of money. All her life
she had imagined what she would do if she were only rich. She had often
thought it all out, in her day dreams--how she would give her mother so
much for the trip to Europe that she was always talking about, and her
sister so much more for the diamond necklace she wanted, and have an
automobile and a place at the seashore and many other things. She had
an exalted opinion of wealth and its possibilities; if she had known
any wealthy people she would probably have found them very much like
everyone else, complaining about the price of beef, and the difficulty
of keeping one's servants and paying one's bills. She believed that it
was not what one has, but what one has not, that counts. The sound of
West's voice interrupted her thoughts.
"There isn't much to tell. I was on my vacation at the time, and there
were about a dozen of us, camping up on the Little Ash river. There
hadn't been any gold found in that section, before that, but I was
always looking out for it--you see I had studied the formation up that
way the summer before, and I was certain the rock was there. The boys
used to make a good deal of fun of me, poking about with my geologist's
hammer, instead of fishing or the like. It was the last day of our stay,
I remember, and we had already begun to get our things together, in
readiness to break camp in the morning. I had strolled up the river a
few hundred yards, feeling a little disappointed at going back to Denver
without even a piece of iron pyrites, when I noticed a sort of whitish
streak in the rocky bank just a little above where it rose from the edge
of the river. It was mostly covered with underbrush and thick bushes,
and I wonder that I saw it at all. I climbed down and took a good look,
and then I just sat down on a rock and got out my pipe and had a good
smoke. I felt somehow as though a new life had begun for me, and I
wanted time to think things out. After a while I broke off a few samples
of the quartz--it was a beautiful outcropping, with a pay streak in it
as thick as your two fingers--and I stowed them away in my pocket and
strolled back to camp as though nothing had happened. One of the boys
said, as I came up, 'Find your gold mine yet?' and laughed. 'Yes,' I
said, 'and it's worth a million.' They all laughed, for they thought I
was joking, but I felt my bits of quartz in my pocket and said nothing.
We got back to town the next afternoon and I had made my assays before I
turned in that night."
"And then you knew?" she asked eagerly.
"Yes. I staked out my claim very quietly. Of course I gave up my
position the next day. After I had had the claim registered, I went to
see a man in Denver that I had come to know pretty well--he was the
representative of a wealthy crowd in Boston who dealt extensively in
mining properties, and I told him what I had. I won't bother you with
the details. We formed a company, and they gave me half of the stock and
made me vice-president, and then we started in to work the claim. In six
months we had got in our stamping mills and were taking out ore. The
rock got better, as we went into the hill, and we began to pay dividends
almost from the start. There isn't any of our stock for sale now. I
don't have much of anything to do with the management. It's in good
hands, and last month, when I saw that everything was working smoothly,
I made up my mind to come East, and look up some of my old friends." He
glanced at Donald as he said this, and then at Edith, and she felt
somehow, that he wanted her to feel that it was she that he meant.
She began to see, that very evening, something of what it meant to have
so much money that it was not necessary to think about how one spent it.
When West suggested, after dinner, that they all go to the theater, she
said at once that it was too late--that they would never be able to get
tickets at that hour. It was then close to eight o'clock, but West
laughed, and said he would see to the tickets, so she put on her hat
and they went.
When Donald and she went to the theater, which was not very often, they
used to think about it for days ahead and were delighted if they were
able to get good seats in the balcony at less than the prices charged
downstairs.
Their evening was a delightful one. They whirled down-town to the
theater in a taxicab, and went to supper afterwards at one of the
best-known restaurants, where Edith wondered how the countless array of
young and very beautiful women managed to get such gorgeous gowns and
such magnificent jewelry. She and Donald did not often patronize such
places.
They came home in a whirl of excitement, and Edith lay awake a long time
after she had gone to bed, wondering if after all her mother had not
been right in urging her to marry for money. She looked at Donald, who
lay at her side, and thought long, long thoughts. She was not conscious
of any disloyalty to him--she liked Donald very much--he seemed almost
like a dear friend. Presently she began to try to analyze her love for
him, her marriage, and her after life. She respected and admired his
mind, his character, but was there not, after all, something else in
life--something deeper and more vital in the marriage relationship,
something that she had missed? Why was it that Donald's presence, his
touch, his look even, gave her no such glow of happiness as she had
suddenly found with this man who had been a stranger to her for so many
years? It was wrong, she knew, but clearly there was something lacking.
Bobbie, waking fretfully, brought her to a sudden sense of the realities
of life. She got up and placed an extra cover over him, and when she had
once more succeeded in putting him to sleep her questions seemed for the
time being answered.
[Illustration: EDITH LAY AWAKE A LONG TIME AFTER SHE HAD GONE TO BED,
WONDERING IF, AFTER ALL, HER MOTHER HAD NOT BEEN RIGHT IN URGING HER TO
MARRY FOR MONEY]