KEITH TRIES HIS FORTUNES IN ANOTHER LAND
In fact, as usual, Mrs. Nailor's statement to Lois had some foundation,
though very little. Mrs. Lancaster had gone abroad, and Keith had
followed her.
Keith, on his arrival in England, found Rhodes somewhat changed, at
least in person. Years of high living and ease had rounded him, and he
had lost something of his old spirit. At times an expression of
weariness or discontent came into his eyes.
He was as cordial as ever to Keith, and when Keith unfolded his plans he
entered into them with earnestness.
"You have come at a good time," he said. "They are beginning to think
that America is all a bonanza."
After talking over the matter, Rhodes invited Keith down to the country.
"We have taken an old place in Warwickshire for the hunting. An old
friend of yours is down there for a few days,"--his eyes twinkled,--"and
we have some good fellows there. Think you will like them--some of
them," he added.
"Who is my friend?" asked Keith.
"Her name was Alice Yorke," he replied, with his eyes on Keith's face.
At the name another face sprang to Keith's mind. The eyes were brown,
not blue, and the face was the fresh face of a young girl. Yet
Keith accepted.
Rhodes did not tell him that Mrs. Lancaster had not accepted their
invitation until after she had heard that he was to be invited. Nor did
he tell him that she had authorized him to subscribe largely to the
stock of the new syndicate.
On reaching the station they were met by a rich equipage with two
liveried servants, and, after a short drive through beautiful country,
they turned into a fine park, and presently drove up before an imposing
old country house; for "The Keep" was one of the finest mansions in all
that region. It was also one of the most expensive. It had broken its
owners to run it. But this was nothing to Creamer of Creamer, Crustback
& Company; at least, it was nothing to Mrs. Creamer, or to Mrs. Rhodes,
who was her daughter. She had plans, and money was nothing to her.
Rhodes was manifestly pleased at Keith's exclamations of appreciation as
they drove through the park with its magnificent trees, its coppices and
coverts, its stretches of emerald sward and roll of gracious hills, and
drew up at the portal of the mansion. Yet he was inclined to be a little
apologetic about it, too.
"This is rather too rich for me," he said, between a smile and a sigh.
"Somehow, I began too late."
It was a noble old hall into which he ushered Keith, the wainscoting
dark with age, and hung with trophies of many a chase and forgotten
field. A number of modern easy-chairs and great rich rugs gave it an air
of comfort, even if they were not altogether harmonious.
Keith did not see Mrs. Rhodes till the company were all assembled in the
drawing-room for dinner. She was a rather pretty woman, distinctly
American in face and voice, but in speech more English than any one
Keith had seen since landing. Her hair and speech were arranged in the
extreme London fashion. She was "awfully keen on" everything she
fancied, and found most things English "ripping." She greeted Keith with
somewhat more formality than he had expected from Grinnell Rhodes's
wife, and introduced him to Colonel Campbell, a handsome,
broad-shouldered man, as "an American," which Keith thought rather
unnecessary, since no one could have been in doubt about it.
Keith found, on his arrival in the drawing-room, that the house was full
of company, a sort of house-party assembled for the hunting.
Suddenly there was a stir, followed by a hush in the conversation, and
monocles and lorgnons went up.
"Here she comes," said a man near Keith.
"Who is she?" asked a thin woman with ugly hands, dropping her monocle
with the air of a man.
"La belle Américaine," replied the man beside her, "a friend of the
host."
"Oh! Not of the hostess?"
"Oh, I don't know. I met her last night--"
"Steepleton is ahead--wins in a walk."
"Oh, she's rich? The castle needs a new roof? Will it be in time for
next season?"
The gentleman said he knew nothing about it.
Keith turned and faced Alice Lancaster.
She was dressed in a black gown that fitted perfectly her straight,
supple figure, the soft folds clinging close enough to show the gracious
curves, and falling away behind her in a train that, as she stood with
her head uplifted, gave her an appearance almost of majesty. Her round
arms and perfect shoulders were of dazzling whiteness; her abundant
brown hair was coiled low on her snowy neck, showing the beauty of her
head; and her single ornament was one rich red rose fastened in her
bodice with a small diamond clasp. It was the little pin that Keith had
found in the Ridgely woods and returned to her so long ago; though Keith
did not recognize it. It was the only jewel about her, and was worn
simply to hold the rose, as though that were the thing she valued.
Keith's thoughts sprang to the first time he ever saw her with a red
rose near her heart--the rose he had given her, which the humming-bird
had sought as its chalice.
The other ladies were all gowned in satin and velvet of rich colors,
and were flaming in jewels, and as Mrs. Lancaster stood among them and
they fell back a little on either side to look at her, they appeared, as
it were, a setting for her.
After the others were presented, Keith stepped forward to greet her, and
her face lit up with a light that made it suddenly young.
"I am so glad to see you." She clasped his hand warmly. "It is so good
to see an old friend from our ain countree."
"I do not need to say I am glad to see you," said Keith, looking her in
the eyes. "You are my ain countree here."
At that moment the rose fell at her feet. It had slipped somehow from
the clasp that held it. A half-dozen men sprang forward to pick it up,
but Keith was ahead of them. He took it up, and, with his eyes looking
straight into hers, handed it to her.
"It is your emblem; it is what I always think of you as being." The tone
was too low for any one else to hear; but her mounting color and the
light in her eyes told that she caught it.
Still looking straight into his eyes without a word, she stuck the rose
in her bodice just over her heart.
Several women turned their gaze on Keith and scanned him with sudden
interest, and one of them, addressing her companion, a broad-shouldered
man with a pleasant, florid face, said in an undertone:
"That is the man you have to look out for, Steepleton."
"A good-looking fellow. Who is he?"
"Somebody, I fancy, or our hostess wouldn't have him here."
* * * * *
The dinner that evening was a function. Mrs. Rhodes would rather have
suffered a serious misfortune than fail in any of the social refinements
of her adopted land. Rhodes had suggested that Keith be placed next to
Mrs. Lancaster, but Mrs. Rhodes had another plan in mind. She liked
Alice Lancaster, and she was trying to do by her as she would have been
done by. She wanted her to make a brilliant match. Lord Steepleton
appeared designed by Providence for this especial purpose: the
representative of an old and distinguished house, owner of a
famous--indeed, of an historic--estate, unhappily encumbered, but not
too heavily to be relieved by a providential fortune. Hunting was his
most serious occupation. At present he was engaged in the most serious
hunt of his career: he was hunting an heiress.
Mrs. Rhodes was his friend, and as his friend she had put him next to
Mrs. Lancaster.
Ordinarily, Mrs. Lancaster would have been extremely pleased to be
placed next the lion of the occasion. But this evening she would have
liked to be near another guest. He was on the other side of the board,
and appeared to be, in the main, enjoying himself, though now and then
his eyes strayed across in her direction, and presently, as he caught
her glance, he lifted his glass and smiled. Her neighbor observed the
act, and putting up his monocle, looked across the table; then glanced
at Mrs. Lancaster, and then looked again at Keith more carefully.
"Who is your friend?" he asked.
Mrs. Lancaster smiled, with a pleasant light in her eyes.
"An old friend of mine, Mr. Keith."
"Ah! Fortunate man. Scotchman?"
"No; an American."
"Oh!--You have known him a long time?"
"Since I was a little girl."
"Oh!--What is he?"
"A gentleman."
"Yes." The Englishman took the trouble again to put up his monocle and
take a fleeting glance across the table. "He looks it," he said. "I
mean, what does he do? Is he a capitalist like--like our host? Or is he
just getting to be a capitalist?"
"I hope he is," replied Mrs. Lancaster, with a twinkle in her eyes that
showed she enjoyed the Englishman's mystification. "He is engaged
in mining."
She gave a rosy picture of the wealth in the region from which Keith
came.
"All your men do something, I believe?" said the gentleman.
"All who are worth anything," assented Mrs. Lancaster.
"No wonder you are a rich people."
Something about his use of the adjective touched her.
"Our people have a sense of duty, too, and as much courage as any
others, only they do not make any to-do about it. I have a friend--a
_gentleman_--who drove a stage-coach through the mountains for a while
rather than do nothing, and who was held up one night and jumped from
the stage on the robber, and chased him down the mountains and
disarmed him."
"Good!" exclaimed the gentleman. "Nervy thing!"
"Rather," said Mrs. Lancaster, with mantling cheeks, stirred by what she
considered a reflection on her people. And that was not all he did. "He
had charge of a mine, and one day the mine was flooded while the men
were at work, and he went in in the darkness and brought the men
out safe."
"Good!" said the gentleman. "But he had others with him? He did not go
alone?"
"He started alone, and two men volunteered to go with him. But he sent
them back with the first group they found, and then, as there were
others, he waded on by himself to where the others were, and brought
them out, bringing on his shoulder the man who had attempted his life."
"Fine!" exclaimed the gentleman. "I've been in some tight places myself;
but I don't know about that. What was his name?"
"Keith."
"Oh!"
Her eyes barely glanced his way; but the Earl of Steepleton saw in them
what he had never been able to bring there.
The Englishman put up his monocle and this time gazed long at Gordon.
"Nervy chap!" he said quietly. "Won't you present me after dinner?"
In his slow mind was dawning an idea that, perhaps, after all, this
quiet American who had driven his way forward had found a baiting-place
which he, with all his titles and long pedigrees, could not enter. His
honest, outspoken admiration had, however, done more to make him a place
in that guarded fortress than all Mrs. Rhodes's praises had effected.
A little later the guests had all departed or scattered. Those who
remained were playing cards and appeared settled for a good while.
"Keith, we are out of it. Let's have a game of billiards," said the
host, who had given his seat to a guest who had just come in after
saying good night on the stair to one of the ladies.
Keith followed him to the billiard-room, a big apartment finished in
oak, with several large tables in it, and he and Rhodes began to play.
The game, however, soon languished, for the two men had much to
talk about.
"Houghton, you may go," said Rhodes to the servant who attended to the
table. "I will ring for you when I want you to shut up."
"Thank you, sir"; and he was gone.
"Now tell me all about everything," said Rhodes. "I want to hear
everything that has happened since I came away--came into exile. I know
about the property and the town that has grown up just as I knew it
would. Tell me about the people--old Squire Rawson and Phrony, and
Wickersham, and Norman and his wife."
Keith told him about them. "Rhodes," he said, as he ended, "you started
it and you ought to have stayed with it. Old Rawson says you foretold
it all."
Suddenly Rhodes flung his cue down on the table and straightened up.
"Keith, this is killing me. Sometimes I think I can't stand it another
day. I've a mind to chuck up the whole business and cut for it."
Keith gazed at him in amazement. The clouded brow, the burning eyes, the
drawn mouth, all told how real that explosion was and from what depths
it came. Keith was quite startled.
"It all seems to me so empty, so unreal, so puerile. I am bored to death
with it. Do you think this is real?" He waved his arms impatiently about
him. "It is all a sham and a fraud. I am nothing--nobody. I am a puppet
on a hired stage, playing to amuse--not myself!--the Lord knows I am
bored enough by it!--but a lot of people who don't care any more about
me than I do about them. I can't stand this. D----n it! I don't want to
make love to any other man's wife any more than I will have any of them
making love to my wife. I think they are beginning to understand that. I
showed a little puppy the front door not long ago--an earl, too, or next
thing to it, an earl's eldest son--for doing what he would no more have
dared to do in an Englishman's house than he would have tried to burn
it. After that, I think, they began to see I might be something. Keith,
do you remember what old Rawson said to us once about marrying?"
Keith had been thinking of it all the evening.
"Keith, I was not born for this; I was born to _do_ something. But for
giving up I might have been like Stevenson or Eads or your man Maury,
whom they are all belittling because he did it all himself instead of
getting others to do it. By George! I hope to live till I build one more
big bridge or run one more long tunnel. Jove! to stand once more up on
the big girders, so high that the trees look small below you, and see
the bridge growing under your eyes where the old croakers had said
nothing would stand!"
Keith's eyes sparkled, and he reached out his hand; and the other
grasped it.
When Keith returned home, he was already in sight of victory.
The money had all been subscribed. His own interest in the venture was
enough to make him rich, and he was to be general superintendent of the
new company, with Matheson as his manager of the mines. All that was
needed now was to complete the details of the transfer of the
properties, perfect his organization, and set to work. This for a time
required his presence more or less continuously in New York, and he
opened an office in one of the office buildings down in the city, and
took an apartment in a pleasant up-town hotel.
* * * * *
When Keith returned to New York that Autumn, it was no longer as a young
man with eyes aflame with hope and expectation and face alight with
enthusiasm. The eager recruit had changed to the veteran. He had had
experience of a world where men lived and died for the most sordid of
all rewards--money, mere money.
The fight had left its mark upon him. The mouth had lost something of
the smile that once lurked about its corners, but had gained in
strength. The eyes, always direct and steady, had more depth. The
shoulders had a squarer set, as though they had been braced against
adversity. Experience of life had sobered him.
Sometimes it had come to him that he might be caught by the current and
might drift into the same spirit, but self-examination up to this time
had reassured him. He knew that he had other motives: the trust reposed
in him by his friends, the responsibility laid upon him, the resolve to
justify that confidence, were still there, beside his eager desire
for success.
He called immediately to see Norman. He was surprised to find how much
he had aged in this short time. His hair was sprinkled with gray. He had
lost all his lightness. He was distrait and almost morose.
"You men here work too hard," asserted Keith. "You ought to have run
over to England with me. You'd have learned that men can work and live
too. I spent some of the most profitable time I was over there in a
deer forest, which may have been Burnam-wood, as all the trees had
disappeared-gone somewhere, if not to Dunsinane."
Norman half smiled, but he answered wearily: "I wish I had been anywhere
else than where I was." He turned away while he was speaking and fumbled
among the papers on his desk. Keith rose, and Norman rose also.
"I will send you cards to the clubs. I shall not be in town to-night,
but to-morrow night, or the evening after, suppose you dine with me at
the University. I'll have two or three fellows to meet you--or, perhaps,
we'll dine alone. What do you say? We can talk more freely."
Keith said that this was just what he should prefer, and Norman gave him
a warm handshake and, suddenly seating himself at his desk, dived
quickly into his papers.
Keith came out mystified. There was something he could not understand.
He wondered if the trouble of which he had heard had grown.
Next morning, looking over the financial page of a paper, Keith came on
a paragraph in which Norman's name appeared. He was mentioned as one of
the directors of a company which the paper declared was among those that
had disappointed the expectations of investors. There was nothing very
tangible about the article; but the general tone was critical, and to
Keith's eye unfriendly.
When, the next afternoon, Keith rang the door-bell at Norman's house,
and asked if Mrs. Wentworth was at home, the servant who opened the door
informed him that no one of that name lived there. They used to live
there, but had moved. Mrs. Wentworth lived somewhere on Fifth Avenue
near the Park. It was a large new house near such a street, right-hand
side, second house from the corner.
Keith had a feeling of disappointment. Somehow, he had hoped to hear
something of Lois Huntington.
Keith, having resolved to devote the afternoon to the call on his
friend's wife, and partly in the hope of learning where Lois was, kept
on, and presently found himself in front of a new double house, one of
the largest on the block. Keith felt reassured.
"Well, this does not look as if Wentworth were altogether broke," he
thought.
A strange servant opened the door. Mrs. Wentworth was not at home. The
other lady was in--would the gentleman come in? There was the flutter of
a dress at the top of the stair.
Keith said no. He would call again. The servant looked puzzled, for the
lady at the top of the stair had seen Mr. Keith cross the street and had
just given orders that he should be admitted, as she would see him. Now,
as Keith walked away, Miss Lois Huntington descended the stair.
"Why didn't you let him in, Hucless?" she demanded.
"I told him you were in, Miss; but he said he would not come in."
Miss Huntington turned and walked slowly back up to her room. Her face
was very grave; she was pondering deeply.
A little later Lois Huntington put on her hat and went out.
Lois had not found her position at Mrs. Wentworth's the most agreeable
in the world. Mrs. Wentworth was moody and capricious, and at
times exacting.
She had little idea how often that quiet girl who took her complaints so
calmly was tempted to break her vow of silence, answer her upbraidings,
and return home. But her old friends were dropping away from her. And it
was on this account and for Norman's sake that Lois put up with her
capriciousness. She had promised Norman to stay with her, and she
would do it.
Mrs. Norman's quarrel with Alice Lancaster was a sore trial to Lois.
Many of her friends treated Lois as if she were a sort of upper servant,
with a mingled condescension and hauteur. Lois was rather amused at it,
except when it became too apparent, and then she would show her little
claws, which were sharp enough. But Mrs. Lancaster had always been
sweet to her, and Lois had missed her sadly. She no longer came to Mrs.
Wentworth's. Lois, however, was always urged to come and see her, and an
intimacy had sprung up between the two. Lois, with her freshness, was
like a breath of Spring to the society woman, who was a little jaded
with her experience; and the elder lady, on her part, treated the young
girl with a warmth that was half maternal, half the cordiality of an
elder sister. What part Gordon Keith played in this friendship must be
left to surmise.
It was to Mrs. Lancaster's that Lois now took her way. Her greeting was
a cordial one, and Lois was soon confiding to her her trouble; how she
had met an old friend after many years, and then how a contretemps had
occurred. She told of his writing her, and of her failure to answer his
letters, and how her aunt had refused to allow him to come to Brookford
to see them.
Mrs. Lancaster listened with interest.
"My dear, there was nothing in that. Yes, that was just one of Ferdy's
little lies," she said, in a sort of reverie.
"But it was so wicked in him to tell such falsehoods about a man,"
exclaimed Lois, her color coming and going, her eyes flashing.
Mrs. Lancaster shrugged her shoulders.
"Ferdy does not like Mr. Keith, and he does like you, and he probably
thought to prevent your liking him."
"I detest him."
The telltale color rushed up into her cheeks as Mrs. Lancaster's eyes
rested on her, and as it mounted, those blue eyes grew a little more
searching.
"I can scarcely bear to see him when he comes there," said Lois.
"Has he begun to go there again?" Mrs. Lancaster inquired, in some
surprise.
"Yes; and he pretends that he is coming to see me!" said the girl, with
a flash in her eyes. "You know that is not true?"
"Don't you believe him," said the other, gravely. Her eyes, as they
rested on the girl's face, had a very soft light in them.
"Well, we must make it up," she said presently. "You are going to Mrs.
Wickersham's?" she asked suddenly.
"Yes; Cousin Louise is going and says I must go. Mr. Wickersham will not
be there, you know."
"Yes." She drifted off into a reverie.