He considered of that. "You mean that when I _have_ read it I may still
want to treasure it?"
She had in hand again the great fan that hung by a long fine chain from
her girdle, and, flaring it open, she rapidly closed it again, the
motion seeming to relieve her. "I mean that my father has written you at
this end of his days--and that that's all I know about it."
"You asked him no question----?"
"As to why he should write? I wouldn't," said Rosanna, "have asked him
for the world. It's many a day since we've done that, either he or I--at
least when a question could have a sense."
"Thank you then," Gray smiled, "for answering mine." He looked about him
for whatever might still help them, and of a sudden had a light. "Why
the ivory tower!" And while her eyes followed: "That beautiful old thing
on the top of the secretary--happy thought if it _is_ old!" He had seen
at a glance that this object was what they wanted, and, a nearer view
confirming the thought, had reached for it and taken it down. "There it
was waiting for you. _Isn't_ it an ivory tower, and doesn't living in an
ivory tower just mean the most distinguished retirement? I don't want
yet awhile to settle in one myself--though I've always thought it a
thing I should like to come to; but till I do make acquaintance with
what you have for me a retreat for the mystery is pleasant to think of."
Such was the fancy he developed while he delicately placed his happy
find on the closed and polished lid of the grand piano, where the rare
surface reflected the pale rich ivory and his companion could have it
well before her. The subject of this attention might indeed pass, by a
fond conceit, on its very reduced scale, for a builded white-walled
thing, very tall in proportion to the rest of its size and rearing its
head from its rounded height as if a miniature flag might have flown
there. It was a remarkable product of some eastern, probably some
Indian, patience, and of some period as well when patience in such
causes was at the greatest--thanks to which Gray, loving ancient
artistry and having all his life seen much of it, had recognised at a
glance the one piece in the room that presented an interest. It
consisted really of a cabinet, of easily moveable size, seated in a
circular socket of its own material and equipped with a bowed door,
which dividing in the middle, after a minute gold key had been turned,
showed a superposition of small drawers that went upwards diminishing in
depth, so that the topmost was of least capacity. The high curiosity of
the thing was in the fine work required for making and keeping it
perfectly circular; an effect arrived at by the fitting together,
apparently by tiny golden rivets, of numerous small curved plates of the
rare substance, each of these, including those of the two wings of the
exquisitely convex door, contributing to the artful, the total
rotundity. The series of encased drawers worked to and fro of course
with straight sides, but also with small bowed fronts, these made up of
the same adjusted plates. The whole, its infinite neatness exhibited,
proved a wonder of wasted ingenuity, and Rosanna, pronouncing herself
stupid not to have anticipated him, rendered all justice, under her
friend's admiring emphasis, to this choicest of her resources. Of how
they had come by it, either she or her sparing parent, she couldn't at
once bethink herself: on their taking the Newport house for the few
weeks her direction had been general that an assortment of odds and ends
from New York should disperse itself, for mitigation of bleakness, in as
many of the rooms as possible; and with quite different matters to
occupy her since she had taken the desired effect for granted. Her
father's condition had precluded temporary inmates, and with Gray's
arrival also in mind she had been scarce aware of minor importances. "Of
course you know--I knew you _would!_" were the words in which she
assented to his preference for the ivory tower and which settled for
him, while he made it beautifully slide, the fact that the shallowest of
the drawers would exactly serve for his putting his document to sleep.
So then he slipped it in, rejoicing in the tight fit of the drawer,
carefully making the two divisions of the protective door meet, turning
the little gold key in its lock and finally, with his friend's
permission, attaching the key to a small silver ring carried in his
pocket and serving for a cluster of others. With this question at rest
it seemed at once, and as with an effect out of proportion to the cause,
that a great space before them had been cleared: they looked at each
other over it as if they had become more intimate, and as if now, in the
free air, the enormities already named loomed up again. All of which was
expressed in Gray's next words.
"May I ask you, in reference to something you just now said, whether my
uncle took action for leaving me money before our meeting could be in
question? Because if he did, you know, I understand less than ever. That
he should want to see me if he was thinking of me, that of course I can
conceive; but that he shouldn't wait till he had seen me is what I find
extraordinary."
If she gave him the impression of keeping her answer back a little, it
wasn't, he was next to see, that she was not fully sure of it. "He _had_
seen you."
"You mean as a small boy?"
"No--at this distance of time that didn't count." She had another wait,
but also another assurance. "He had seen you in the great fact about
you."
"And what in the world do you call that?"
"Why, that you are more out of it all, out of the air he has breathed
all his life and that in these last years has more and more sickened
him, than anyone else in the least belonging to him, that he could
possibly put his hand on."
He stood before her with his hands in his pockets--he could study her
now quite as she had studied himself. "The extent, Rosanna, to which you
must have answered for me!"
She met his scrutiny from between more narrowed lids. "I did put it all
to him--I spoke for you as earnestly as one can ever speak for another.
But you're not to gather from it," she thus a trifle awkwardly smiled,
"that I have let you in for twenty millions, or for anything
approaching. He will have left you, by my conviction, all he has; but he
has nothing at all like that. That's all I'm sure of--of no details
what--ever. Even my father doesn't know," she added; "in spite of its
having been for a long time the thing he has most wanted to, most sat
here, these weeks, on some chance of his learning. The truth, I mean, of
Mr. Betterman's affairs."
Gray felt a degree of relief at the restrictive note on his expectations
which might fairly have been taken, by its signs, for a betrayed joy in
their extent. The air had really, under Rosanna's touch, darkened itself
with numbers; but what she had just admitted was a rift of light. In
this light, which was at the same time that of her allusion to Mr. Gaw's
unappeased appetite, his vision of that gentleman at the other house
came back to him, and he said in a moment: "I see, I see. He tried to
get some notion out of me."
"Poor father!" she answered to this--but without time for more
questions, as at the moment she spoke the door of the room opened and
Doctor Hatch appeared. He paused, softly portentous, where he stood, and
so he met Rosanna's eyes. He held them a few seconds, and the effect was
to press in her, to all appearance, the same spring our young man had
just touched. "Poor, poor, poor father!" she repeated, but as if brought
back to him from far away. She took in what had happened, but not at
once nor without an effort what it called on her for; so that "Won't you
come up?" her informant had next to ask.
To this, while Gray watched her, she rallied--"If you'll stay here."
With which, looking at neither of them again, as the Doctor kept the
door open, she passed out, he then closing it on her and transferring
his eyes to Gray--who hadn't to put a question, so sharply did the
raised and dropped hands signify that all was over. The fact, in spite
of everything, startled our young man, who had with his companion a
moment's mute exchange.
"He has died while I've kept her here?"
Doctor Hatch just demurred. "You kept her through her having sent for
you to talk to you."
"Yes, I know. But it's very extraordinary!"
"You seem to _make_ people extraordinary. You've made your uncle, you
know----!"
"Yes indeed--but haven't I made _him_ better?" Gray asked.
The Doctor again for a moment hesitated. "Yes--in the sense that he must
be now at last really resting. But I go back to him."
"I'll go with you of course," said Gray, looking about for his hat. As
he found it he oddly remembered. "Why she asked me to dinner!"