XII"WE NEVER WERE"For the first time in Armstrong's career, it was imperative that he concentrate his whole mind; and, for the first time, he could not. In the midst of conferences with Trafford, with Atwater even, his attention would wander; forgetful of his surroundings, he would stare dazedly at a slim, yet not thin, figure, framed in the heavy purple and gold curtains of a doorway—the figure of his former wife, of the recreated Neva, on the threshold of Mrs. Trafford's salon. He had the habit of judging himself impartially, and this newly developed weakness of character, as strange in its way as the metamorphosis of Neva, roused angry self-contempt; but the apparition persisted, and also his inability to keep his thoughts off it.Passion he understood, but not its compulsion, still less its tyranny. Love—except love of mother and child—he regarded as a myth that foozled only the foolish. He had sometimes thought he would like a home, a family; but a glance at the surface of the lives of his associates was enough to put such sentimentalities out of his head. He saw the imbecilities of extravagance and pretense into which the wife and daughters plunged as soon as the wealth of the head of the family permitted, the follies into which they dragged the "old man"—how, in his own home, just as downtown, he was not a man but a purse. No, Armstrong had no disposition to become the drudge and dupe of a fashionable family. So, in his life he had put woman in what he regarded as her proper place of merest incident. He spent a great deal of time with women—that is, a great deal for so busy a man. He liked women better than he liked men because with them he was able to relax and lower his guard, where with men he always had the sense of the game. For intelligence in women he cared not at all. Beauty and a good disposition—those were the requirements. It was not as at a woman that he looked at this unbanishable figure—not with the longing, thought he, or even the admiration of the masculine for the feminine—simply with wonder, a stupid stare, an endless repetition of the query,Whois it?His vanity of self-poise was even more hard pressed to explain why he always saw, in sinister background to the apparition of Neva, the handsome, dandified face of Boris, strong, sensual, triumphant. He recalled what Lona Trafford had said of the painter. Yes, that explained it. Neva, guileless, inexperienced in the ways of the world, was being ensnared, all unsuspicious, by this rake. And, even though she might, probably would, have the virtuous fiber to stand out against him, still she would lose her reputation. Already people must be talking about her; so far as he could learn, no woman could associate with Raphael without it being assumed that she was not wasting his time. "The scented scoundrel!" muttered Armstrong. "Such men should be shot like mad dogs." This with perfect sincerity; with not a mocking suggestion that he himself had been as active in the same way as his time and inclination had permitted."Really, somebody ought to warn her," was naturally the next step. "What the devil do her people mean by letting her come here alone?" Yes, somebody ought to warn her. Of course, he couldn't undertake the office; his motive might be misunderstood. Still, it ought to be done. But— "Maybe, he's really in love with her—wants to marry her." This reflection so enraged him that he was in grave danger of discovering to himself the truth about his own state of mind. "Why not?" he hastily retorted upon himself. "What do I care? I must be crazy, to spend any time at all in thinking about matters that are nothing to me."And he ordered the subject out of his mind. He was not surprised to discover that it had not obeyed him. Now, hatred of Boris became a sort of obsession with him. He found in, or imagined into, his memory picture of the painter's face, many repellant evidences of bad character. Whenever he heard Raphael's name, or saw it in a newspaper, he paused irritably upon it; he was soon in the habit of thinking of him as "that damned hound." Nor did this development unsettle his confidence in his freedom from heart interest in Neva; he was sure his antipathy toward the painter was the natural feeling of the normal man toward the abnormal. "Where's the man that wouldn't despise a creature who decks himself out with jewelry and wears rolling collars because he wants to show off his throat, and scents himself like a man-chasing woman?"The longer he revolved it, the more clearly he saw the necessity that she be warned—and the certainty that his warning would be misunderstood. "I couldn't speak of him without showing my feelings, and women always misinterpret that sort of thing." He looked up her address; and, as he was walking to his hotel from the office in the late afternoon, or was strolling about after dinner, developing his vast and complex scheme to pile high the ruins of his enemies that he might rise the higher upon them, he would find himself almost or quite at the entrance to the apartment house where she lived. "I think I must be going crazy," he said to himself one night, when he had twice within two hours drawn himself from before her door. Then a brilliant idea came to him: "I'll go to see her, and end this. To put a woman out of mind, all that's necessary is to give her a thorough, impartial look-over. Also, in ten minutes' talk with her I can judge whether it would be worth while to warn her against that damned hound."And at five the very next day he sent up his card. "She'll send down word she isn't at home," he decided.He was astonished when the boy asked him into the elevator; he was confused when he faced at her door old Molly who had lived with them out in Battle Field. "Step in, sir," she said stiffly, as if he were a stranger, and an unwelcome one. He entered with his head lowered and a pink spot on either cheek. "What the devil am I doing here?" he muttered. "Yes, I'm losing my mind."He heard indistinctly a man's voice in the room shut off by the curtains at the far end of the hall—evidently she had a caller. He went in that direction. "Is this the right way?" he called, hesitating at the curtain."Yes, here," came in Neva's voice. Had he not been expecting it, he would hardly have recognized it, so vibrant now with life.He entered—found her and Boris. "I might have knownhe'dbe here," he said to himself. "No doubt he'salwayshere."He ignored Boris; Boris stared coldly at him. "You two have met before?" said Neva, with a glance from one to the other, her eyes like those of a nymph smiling from the dark, dense foliage round a forest pool. "Yes, I remember. Let me give you some tea, Horace."As she spoke that name, Boris set down his cup abruptly. He debated whether he should defy politeness and outsit the Westerner. He decided that to do so would be doubly unwise—would rouse resentment in Neva, who had had the chance to ask him to spare her being left alone with her former husband and had not; would give him an appearance of regarding the Westerner as an important, a dangerous person. With a look in his eyes that belied the smile on his lips, he shook hands with her. "Until Thursday," he said. "Don't forget you're to come half an hour earlier." And Armstrong was alone with her, was entirely free to give her the "thorough, impartial lookover."He saw his imagination had not tricked him at Trafford's—his imagination and her dress. The change in her was real, was radical, miraculous, incredible. It was, he realized, in part, in large part, a matter of dress, of tasteful details of toilet—hair and hands and skin not merely clean and neat but thoroughly cared for. This change, however, was evidently permanent, was outward sign of a new order of thought and action, and not the accident of one evening's effort as he had been telling himself. Their eyes met and his glance hastily departed upon a slow tour of the room; in what contrast was it to his own apartment, which cost so much and sheltered him so cheerlessly. "You are very comfortable here," said he. "That, and a great deal more.""The Siersdorfs built this house," replied she. "They have ideas—especially Narcisse." He thought her wonderfully, exasperatingly self-possessed; his own blood was throbbing fiercely and her physical charms gave him the delicious, terrifying tremors of a boy on the brink of his first love leap."What is it that women"—he went on, surprised by the steadiness of his voice, "somewomen—do to four walls, a floor, and ceiling, and a few pieces of furniture to get a result like this? It isn't a question of money. The more one spends in trying to get it, the worse off he is.""It seems to me," said she, "that, in arranging a place to live, the one thing to consider is that it's not for show or for company, but to live in—day and night, in all kinds of weather, and in all kinds of moods. Make it to suit yourself, and then it'll fit you and be like you—and those who care for you can't but be pleased with it.""It does resemble you—here," said he. "And it doesn't suggest a palace or an antique store or a model room in a furniture display, or an auction room.... You work hard?"His glance had come back to her, to linger on the graceful lines of her throat and slim, pallid neck, revealed by the rounding out of her tea-gown. Never before had he been drawn to note the details of a woman's costume. He would not have believed garments could be surcharged with all that is magnetic in feminine to masculine as was this dress of cream white edged with narrow bands of sable."It would be impossible not to work, with Raphael to spur one on," was her reply. Her accent in pronouncing that name gave him the desire to grind something to powder between his strong, white teeth. "The better I know him, the more wonderful he seems," continued she, a gleam in her eyes that would have made a Raphael suspect she was not unaware of the emotion Armstrong was trying to conceal. "I used to think his work was great; but now it seems a feeble expression of him—of ideas he, nor no man, could ever materialize for a coarse sense like sight.""You don't like his work, then?" said Armstrong, pleased.Neva looked indignant. "He's the best we have—one of the best that ever lived," exclaimed she. "I didn't mean his work by itself wasn't great, but that it seemed inadequate, compared with the man. When one meets most so-called great men—your great men downtown for example—one realizes that they owe almost everything to their slyness, that they steal the labor of the hands and brains of others who are superior to them in every way but craft and unscrupulousness. A truly great man, a man like Boris Raphael, dwarfs his reputation."Armstrong suspected a personal thrust, a contrast between him and Boris, and was accordingly uncomfortable. "I'd like to see some ofyourwork," said he, to shift the subject."Not to-day. I don't feel in the mood.""You mean, you think I wouldn't care about it—that I never was interested in that sort of thing.""Perhaps," she admitted.He laughed. "There's truth in that." He was about to say, "I'm still just as much of a Philistine as I used to be"; but he refrained—something in her atmosphere forbade reminiscence or hint of any connection whatever between their present and their past."You're like Boris in one respect," she went on. "Nothing interests you but what is immediately useful to you.""He's over head in love with you—isn't he?" Armstrong blurted.Her face did not change by so much as a shade. She gave not an outward hint that she knew he had rudely flung himself against the barrier between them, to enter her inmost life on his own ruthless terms of masculine intolerance of feminine equality of right. She continued to look tranquilly at him, and, as if she had not heard his question, said, "You don't go out home often?"The rebuke—the severest, the completest, a woman can give a man—flooded his face with scarlet to the line of his hair. "Not—not often," he stammered. "That is, not at all.""Father and I visit with each other every few weeks," she continued. "And I take the home paper." She nodded toward a copy of the Battle FieldBanner, conspicuous on the table beside him. "Even the advertisements interest me—'The first strawberries now on sale at Blodgett's'—you remember Blodgett, with his pale red hair and pale red eyes and pale red skin, and always in his shirt sleeves, with a tooth-brush, bristle-end up, in his vest pocket? And I read that Sam Warfield and his sister Mattie 'Sundayed' at Rabbit's Run, as if I knew and loved the Warfields."This connecting of her present self with her past had the effect of restoring him somewhat. It established the bond of fellow-townsmen between them. "I too take theBanner," said he. "It's like a visit at home. I walk the streets and shake hands with the people. I'm glad I come from there—but I'm glad I came."But he could not get his ease. It seemed incredible, not, as he would have expected, that they were such utter strangers, but that they had ever been even acquaintances. Not the present, but the past, seemed a trick of the imagination upon his sober senses. His feeling toward her reminded him of how he used to regard her when he, delivering parcels from his father's little store, came upon her, so vividly representing to him her father's power and position in the community that he could not see her as a person. While she continued to talk, pleasantly, courteously, as to an acquaintance from the same town, he tried to brace himself by recalling in intimate detail all they had been to each other; but by no stretch of fancy could he convince himself of the truth. No, it was not this woman who had been his wife, who had dressed and undressed before him in the intimacy of old-fashioned married life, who had accepted his embraces, who had borne him a child.When he rose to go, it was with obvious consciousness of his hands and feet; and he more than suspected her of deliberately preventing him from recovering himself. "She's determined I shan't fail to learn my lesson," he thought, as he stood in the outer hall, waiting for the elevator, and recovering from his awkward exit.A week, almost to the minute, and he came again. She received him exactly as before—like an old acquaintance. She had to do the talking; he could only look and listen and marvel. "I certainly wasn't so stupid," he said to himself, "that I wouldn't have noticed her if she had had eyes like these, or such teeth, or that form, or that beautiful hair." He would have suspected that she had been at work with the beauty specialists who, he had heard, were doing a smashing business among the women, had he not seen that her manners, her speech, the use of her voice, everything about her was in keeping with her new physical appearance; she had expanded as symmetrically as a well-placed sapling. The change had clearly come from within. There was a new tenant who had made over the whole house, within and without.What seemed to him miracle was, like all the miracles, mysterious only because the long chain of causes and effects between beginning and end was not visible. There probably never lived a human being to whom fate permitted a full development of all his possibilities—there never was a perfect season from seed-time to harvest. The world is one vast exhibit of imperfect developments, physical, mental, moral; and to get the standard, the perfection that might be, we have to take from a thousand specimens their best qualities and put them together into an impossible ideal—impossible as yet. For one fairly well-rounded human being, satisfying to eye and mind and heart, we find ten thousand stunted, blighted, blasted. Each of us knows that, in other, in more favorable, in less unfavorable circumstances, he would have been far more than he is or ever can be. But for Boris, Neva might have gone through life, not indeed as stunted a development as she had been under the blight of her unfortunate marriage, but far from the rounded personality, presenting all sides to the influences that make for growth and responding to them eagerly. Heart, and his younger brother, Mind, are two newcomers in a universe of force. They fare better than formerly; they will fare better hereafter; but they are still like infants exposed in the wilderness. Some fine natures have enough of the tough fiber successfully to make the fight; others, though they lack it, persist and prevail by chance—for the brute pressure of force is not malign; it crushes or spares at haphazard. Again, there are fine natures—who knows? perhaps the finest of all, the best minds, the best hearts—that either cannot or will not conform to the conditions. They wither and die—not of weakness, since in this world of the survival of the fittest, the fit are often the weak, the unfit the strong. All around us they are withering, dying, like the good seed cast on stony ground—the good minds, the good hearts, the men and women needing only love and appreciation and encouragement, to shine forth in mental, moral, and physical beauty. Of these had been Neva.Boris, with eyes that penetrated all kinds of human surfaces and revealed to him the realities, had seen at first glance what she was, what she could be, what she was longing and striving to be against the wellnigh hopeless handicaps of shyness and inexperience and solitude. For his own sybarite purposes, material and selfish, from mere wanton appetite, he set his noble genius to helping her; and the creative genius finds nothing comparable in interest to the development of the human plant, to watching it sprout and put forth leaves, blossoms, flowers, perfume, spread into an individuality.Every day there was some progress; and now and then, as in all nature, there were days when overnight a marvelous beautiful change had occurred. In scores on scores of daily conversations, between suggestions or instructions as to painting, much of the time consciously, most effectively and most often unconsciously, never with patronage or pedantry, he encouraged and trained her to learn herself, the world, the inner meaning of character and action—all that distinguishes fine senses from coarse, the living from the numb, all that most of us pass by as we pass a bank of wild flowers—with no notion of the enchanting history each petal spreads for whoever will read. Boris cleared away the weeds; he softened the soil; he gave the light and the air access. And she grew.But Armstrong had no suspicion of this. Indeed, if he had been told that Boris Raphael, cynic and rake, had been about such an apparently innocent enterprise, he would have refused to believe it; for the Raphael temperament, the temperament that is soft and savage, sympathetic to the uttermost refinement of delicacy and appreciation, and hard and cruel as death, was quite beyond his comprehension. Armstrong, looking at Neva, saw only the results, not the processes; and he could scarcely speak for marvel, as he sat, watching and listening. "May I come again?" he asked, when he felt he must stay no longer."I'm usually at home after five."Her tone was conventional—alarmingly so. With a pleading gesture of both hands outstretched and a youthful flush and frank blue eyes entreating, he burst out, "I have no friends—only people who want to get something out of me—or whom I want to get something out of. Can't you and I be friends?"She turned abruptly away to the window. It was so long before she answered that he nerved himself for an overwhelming refusal of his complete, even abject surrender with its apology for the past, the stronger and sincerer that it was implied and did not dare narrow itself to words. When she answered with a hesitating, "We might try," he felt as happy as if she had granted all he was concealing behind that request to be tolerated. He continued in the same tone of humility, "But your life is very different from mine. I feared— And you yourself— I can't believe we were ever—anything to each other."There was her opportunity; she did not let it slip. She looked straight into his eyes. "We never were," she said, and her eyes piercing him from their long, narrow lids and deep shadowing lashes forbade him ever to forget it again.He returned her gaze as if mesmerized. Finally, "No, we never were," he slowly repeated after her. And again, "We never were," as if he were learning a magic password to treasures beyond those of the Forty Thieves.He drew a long breath, bowed with formal constraint, and went; and as he walked homeward he kept repeating dazedly, "We never were—never!"XIIIOVERLOOK LODGEOverlook Lodge was Amy's first real success at amusing those interminable hours of hers that were like a nursery full of spoiled children on a rainy day. Every previous device, however well it had begun, had soon been withered and killed by boredom, nemesis of idlers. Overlook was a success that grew. It began tediously; to a person unaccustomed to fixing the mind for longer than a few minutes, the technical part of architecture comes hard. But before many months Overlook had crowded out all the routine distractions; instead of its being a mere stop-gap between them, they became an irritating interruption to its absorbing interest. It even took the sharp edge off her discomfiture with Armstrong; for interest is the mental cure-all. She dreaded a return of her former state, when an empty hour would make her walk the floor, racking her brains for something to do; she spun this occupation out and out. Narcisse Siersdorf lost all patience; the patience of feminine with feminine, or of masculine with masculine, is less than infinite. "We'll never get anywhere," she protested. "You linger over the smallest details for weeks, and you make all sorts of absurd changes that you know can't stand, when you order them."Narcisse did not comprehend the situation. Who with so much to do that the months fairly flash by, can sympathize with the piteous plight of those who have nothing to do and all the time in the world to do it? Alois was not so unsympathetic. When the Overlook plans were begun, he was away; but, soon after his return, Amy fastened upon him, and presently he had abandoned all other business of the firm to his sister, that he might devote himself to making this work "really great.""Concentration's the thing," said he to Narcisse, in excusing himself to her—and to himself. "Miss Fosdick has the true artistic spirit. She is willing to let me give full play to my imagination, and she interferes only to help and to stimulate. I feel I can afford to devote an unusual amount of time and thought. When the work is done, it'll be a monument to us."Narcisse gave him a queer glance, and her laugh was as queer as her eyes. He colored and frowned—and continued to dawdle with Amy over the plans. It was not his fault, nor hers, that the actual work finally did begin; it was the teasing of her father and Hugo about these endless elaborations of preparation. "When Overlook is begun" became the family synonym for never. She and Alois suddenly started the work, and pushed it furiously.The site selected had nothing to recommend it but a view that was far and away the most extensive and varied in that beautiful part of New Jersey—mountains, hills, plains, rivers, lakes, wildernesses, villages, farms, two cities—a vast sweep of country, like a miniature summary of the earth's whole surface. But Overlook Hill was in itself barren and shapeless. Many times, rich men in search of places where they could see and be seen had taken it under consideration; but always the natural difficulties and the expense had discouraged them. Fosdick had bought the site before investigating; he had been about to sell, when Amy took Narcisse out there. The builder instantly saw, and unfolded to Amy, a plan for making the hill as wonderful in itself as in its prospect; and that original inspiration of hers was the basis of all that was done.When Amy and Alois did set to work, they at once put into motion thousands of arms and wheels. The day came when the whole hill swarmed with men and carts, with engines and hoisting machines and steam diggers and blasting apparatus; and the quiet valley resounded with the uproar of the labor. Amy took rooms at the little hotel in the village, had them costlily refurnished, moved in with a cook and staff of servants; Alois came out every morning, even Sundays. The country people watched the performance in stupefaction; it was their first acquaintance with the audacities upon nature which modern science has made possible. And presently they saw a rugged cliff rise where there had been a commonplace steep, saw great terraces, slopes, levels, gentle grades, supersede the northern ascents of Overlook. The army of workmen laid hold of that huge upheaval of earth and rock and shaped it as if it had been a handful of potter's clay.Near the base of the cliff ran the river; barges laden with stone began to arrive—stone from Vermont and from Georgia, from Indiana, from Italy. A funicular clambered up the surface of the cliff; soon its cars were moving all day, bearing the stone to the lofty top of the hill; and there appeared the beginnings of foundations—not of a house alone, but of a dozen buildings, widely separated, and of terraces and lake bottoms and bridges—for a torrent, with several short falls and one long leap, was part of the plans. At the same time, other barges, laden with earth and with great uprooted living trees, arrived in interminable procession, and upon bare heights and slopes now began to appear patches of green, clumps of wood. And where full-grown transplanted trees were not set out, saplings were being planted by the hundreds. As the stone walls rose, sod was brought—acres of grass of various kinds; and creepers and all manner of wild growing things to produce wilderness effects in those parts of the park which were not to be constructed with all the refinements of civilization. These marvels of nature-manufacture were carried on in privacy; for the very first work had been to enclose the hill, from cliff edge round to cliff edge on the other side, with a high stone wall, pierced by only two entrances—one, the main entrance with wrought-iron gates from France, and a lodge; the other, the farm or service entrance, nearer the village and the river.Amy and Alois had begun as soon as the frost was out of the ground. By June they had almost all the trees planted. The following spring, and the transformation was complete. Overlook Hill, as it had been for ages, was gone; in its place was a graceful height, clad in a thousand shades of green and capped by a glistening white bastionlike building half hid among trees that looked as if they had been there a century at least. Indeed, except the buildings, nothing seemed new, everything seemed to belong where it was, to have been there always. The sod, the tangle of creepers and underbrush on the cliff and in the ravines, the cliff and the ravines themselves, all looked like the product of nature's slow processes. The masonry, the roads, the drives—signs of age and of long use. One would have said that the Fosdicks were building on an old place, a house better suited to modern conditions than some structure, dating from Revolutionary days at least, which must have stood in those venerable surroundings and had been torn down to make room for the new."The buildings are going to look too new," said Alois. And he proceeded to have them more artfully weather-stained.Narcisse had preached the superiority of small houses to Amy until she had convinced her. So, Overlook Lodge, while not so small as it looked, was still within the sane limits for a private house. And the interior arrangements—the distribution of large rooms and less, of sunny rooms, of windows, of stairways, of closets—were most ingenious. No space was wasted; no opportunity for good views from the windows or for agreeable lines, without or within, was neglected. Through and through it was a house to be lived in, a house whose comfort obtruded and whose luxury retired.In the woodwork, in the finishing of walls and ceilings, in the furniture, Alois followed out the general scheme of the appearance of an old-established residence, a family homestead that had sent forth many generations. Before a stone had been blasted at Overlook, the furniture and the woven stuffs were designed and manufacturing. While the outer walls of the house were finishing, the rooms were beginning to look as if they had been lived in long. There was nothing new-looking anywhere except the plumbing; nothing old-looking, either. The air was that of things created full grown, things which have not had a shiny, awkward youth and could not have a musty, rickety, rotten old age.There came a day when the last rubbish was cleared, when the last creeper was in leaf, the last flower in bloom, when the grass and the trees seemed green with their hundredth summer, when the settees and chairs and hammocks were on the verandas and porticos as if they had been there for many a year, when no odor of fresh paint or varnish or look of newness could be detected anywhere about the house—and the "work of art" was finished. Alois and Amy, in an automobile, went over every part of the grounds, examined them from without and from within; then they made a tour of the house, noting everything. Changes, improvements, could be made, would be made; but the work as a work was finished. They seated themselves on a veranda overlooking the valley, and listened to the rush of the torrent, descending through the ravines, in banks of moss and wild flowers, to spring from the edge of the cliff. Amy burst into tears."You're very tired, aren't you!" said Alois sympathetically. There were tears in his eyes."No, that isn't it," she answered, her face hidden—she knew she didn't look at all well when she was crying."I understand," said he. "There's something tragic about finishing anything. It's like bringing up a child, and having it marry and go away." He sighed. "Yes, we're done.""I feel horribly lonely," she cried. "I've lost my occupation. It's the first great real sorrow of my life. I wish we hadn't been in such a hurry! We might have made it last a year or two longer.""I wish we had!""You can't wish it as I do. You will go on and build other houses. You have a career. It seems to me thatI'vecome to the very end.""You don't realize," he said hesitatingly, "that it was the personal element in this that gave—that gives it its whole meaning, to me. I was working with you and—for you."He glanced at her eagerly, but with a certain timidity, for some sign that would encourage him. A hundred times at least, in those months when he had spent the whole of almost every day with her, he had been on the point of telling her what was in his heart, why he was so tireless and so absorbed in their task. But he had never had the courage to begin. By what he regarded as a malicious fatality, she had always shifted the conversation to something with which sentiment would not have harmonized at all. Apparently she was quite unconscious that he was a man; and how she could be, when he was so acutely alive to her as a woman, he could not understand. Sometimes he thought she was fond of him—"as fond as a nice girl is likely to be, before the man declares himself." Again, it seemed to him she cared nothing about him except as an architect. Her wealth put around her, not only physically but also mentally, a halo of superiority. He could not judge her as just a woman. He always saw in her the supernal sheen of her father's millions. He knew he had great talent; he was inordinately vain about it in a way—as talented people are apt to be, where they stop short of genius, which—usually, not always—has a true sense of proportion and gets no pleasure from contrasting itself with its inferiors. He would have been as swift as the next man to deny, with honest scorn, that he was a wealth worshiper; and as he was artist enough to worship it only where it took on graceful forms, he could have made out a plausible case for himself. Amy, for example, was not homely or vulgar—or petty. She had good ideas and good taste and concealed the ugly part of her nature as dexterously as by the arrangement of her hair she concealed the fact that it was neither very long nor very thick. Besides, in her intercourse with Alois, there was no reason why any but the best side of her should ever show.Narcisse gave over trying to make him sensible where Amy was concerned, as soon as she saw upon what he was bent. "He wouldn't think of her seriously if she weren't rich," she said to herself. "But, since he is determined to take her seriously, it's better that he should be able to delude himself into believing he loves her. And maybe he does. Isn't love always nine tenths delusion of some sort?" So, she left him free to go on with Amy, to love her, to win her love if he could. But—could he? He feared not. That so wonderful a creature, one who might marry more millions and blaze, the brightest star in the heavens of fashionable New York, should take him—it seemed unlikely. "She ought to prefer congeniality to wealth," thought he, "but"—with an unconscious inward glance—"it's not in human nature to do it."As they sat there together in the midst of their completed work, he waiting for some hopeful sign, she at least did not change the subject. "Hasn't what we've been doing had any—personal interest for you?" he urged.She nodded. "Yes, I owe my interest in it to you," she conceded. But she went on to discourage him with, "We have beensuchfriends. Usually, a young man and a young woman can't be together, as have we, without trying to marry each other.""That's true," assented he, much dejected. Then, desperately, "That's why I've put off saying what I'm going to say until the work should be done.""Oh!" she exclaimed. "Don't say it, please—not now.""But you must have known," he pleaded."I never thought of it," replied she with an air of frankness that convinced him."Well—won't you think of it—now?""Not to-day," was her answer, in the tone a woman uses when she is uncertain and wishes to convince herself that she is certain. She rose and crossed to the edge of the veranda.In such circumstances, when the woman turns her back on the man, it is usually to signify that she has a traitor within, willing to yield to a surprise that which could not be won by a direct assault; and, had Alois's love been founded in passion instead of in interest, he would not have followed her hesitatingly, doing nothing, simply saying stumblingly: "I don't wish to annoy you. But let me say one thing—Amy—I love you, and to get you means life to me, and not to get you means the death of all that is really me. I think I could make you happy—you who are so interested in what is my life work. It must be our life work.""I've thought of that," responded she softly. "But, not to-day—not to-day." A pause during which she was hoping, in spite of herself, that he would at least insist. When he remained silent and respectful, she went on: "Don't you think we may let father and Hugo come?""By all means. Everything is ready." And they went back to talking of the work—of the surprise awaiting Fosdick.Fosdick had gratified her and delighted himself by playing the fondly indulgent father throughout the building of Overlook. He had put the widest limits on expense, he had asked no questions; he had let her keep him ignorant of all that was being done. It was a remarkable and most characteristic display of generosity. When a man earns a fortune by his own efforts, by risking his own property again and again, he is rarely "princely" in his generosity. But with the men who grow rich by risking other people's money in campaigns against rival captains of finance and industry who are also submitting to the fortunes of commercial war little or nothing that is rightfully theirs, then the princely qualities come out—the generosity with which the prince wastes the substance of his subjects in luxury, in largesse, and in wars. Fosdick felt most princely in relation to the properties he controlled. Whatever he did, if it was merely eating his breakfast or consulting a physician when he was ill, he did it for the benefit of the multitude whose money was invested in his various enterprises. Thus, when he took, he could take only his own; when he gave, he was "graciously pleased" to give up his own.This simple, easy, and most natural theory reduced all divisions of profits, losses, expenses, to mere matters of bookkeeping. If his losses or expenses were heavy, the dividends to policy holders and stockholders must be small—clearly, he who had done his best and had acted only for the good of others ought not to cripple or hamper his future unselfish endeavors. If the profits were large—why dribble them out to several hundred thousand people who had done nothing to make them, who did not deserve, did not expect, and would not appreciate? No; the extra profits to the war-chest—which was naturally and of necessity and of right in the secure possession of the commander-in-chief. So, Fosdick, after the approved and customary manner of the princely industrial successors to the princely aristocratic parasites on mankind, was able to indulge himself in the luxury of generosity without inflicting any hardship upon his conscience or upon his purse.The distribution of the cost of the new house had presented many nice problems in bookkeeping. Some of the expense—for raw materials, notably—was merged into the construction accounts of the O.A.D. and two railway systems; but the largest part was covered by the results of two big bond deals and a stock manipulation. This part appeared on the records as an actual payment by Fosdick out of his own private fortune; but on the other side of the ledger stood corresponding profits from the enterprises mentioned, and these profits, on careful analysis, were seen to have come from the fact that, when profits were to be distributed, Fosdick the private person was in no way distinguishable from Fosdick the trustee of the multitude.If the old man had not had confidence in his daughter's good sense and good taste and in Siersdorf's ability, he would not have given them the absolutely free hand. It was, therefore, with the liveliest expectations that he took the train for Overlook. As he and Hugo descended at the station, they looked toward Overlook Hill, so amazingly transformed. "Well, you've certainly donesomething!" he exclaimed to Amy, as she came forward to meet him. "Why, I'd not have known the place. Splendid! Superb!" And he kissed her and shook hands warmly with Alois.On the way through the village in the auto, he gushed a stream of enthusiasm and comment. "That cliff, now—what a fine idea! And the cascade—why, you've doubled the value of real estate throughout this region. I must quietly gather in some land round here— You are in on that, Siersdorf. The railway station must be improved. I'll see Thorne—he's president of the road and a good friend of mine—he'll put up a proper building—you must draw the plans, Siersdorf. This village—it's unsightly. We must either wipe it out or make it into a model."His enthusiasm continued at the boiling point until they ascended the hill and had the first full view of the house. Then his face lengthened and he lapsed into silence. Hugo was not so considerate. "Do you mean to tell methisis the house?" demanded he of Amy. "Why, it's a cottage. How ridiculous to put such a climax to all these preparations!"Amy's eyes flashed and she tossed her head scornfully.Hugo continued to look and began to laugh. "Ridiculous!" he repeated. "Don't you think so, father?""It is hardly what I expected," confessed Fosdick. "It isn't done yet, is it, Amy?""Yes, it's done," she said angrily. "And it's the best thing about the place. I don't want you to say anything more until you've gone over it. The trouble with you and Hugo is that your taste has been corrupted by the vulgarity in New York. You don't appreciate the difference between beauty and ostentation. Mr. Siersdorf has built a house for a gentleman, not for a multimillionaire."That silenced them; and in silence she led the way into and through the house, by a route that would present all its charms and comforts in effective succession. She made no comments; she simply regulated the speed of the tour, trusting to their eyes to show them what she could not believe any eyes could fail to see. At the veranda commanding the most magnificent of the many views, she brought the tour to an end. The luncheon table was there, and she ordered the servants to bring lunch. And a delicious lunch it was, ending with wonderful English strawberries, crimson, huge, pink-white within and sweet as their own fragrance—"grown on the place," explained Amy, "and this cream is from our own dairy down there.""I take it all back," said Fosdick. "You and Siersdorf were right. Eh, Hugo?""It's better than I thought," conceded Hugo. "There certainly is a—a tone about the house that I've not often seen on this side of the water.""And there's a comfort you've never seen on the other side," said Amy. "You are satisfied, father?""Satisfied!" exclaimed Fosdick. "I'm overwhelmed."And when they had had coffee, which, Hugo said, reminded him of the Café Anglais at Paris, Siersdorf took them for a second tour of the house, pointing out the conveniences, the luxuries, the evidences of good taste, expanding upon them, eulogizing them, feeling as he talked that he had created them. "A gentleman's home!" he cried again and again. "It'll be a rebuke to all these vulgarians who are trying to show how much money they've got. Why, you never think, as you walk around here, 'How much this cost,' but only, 'How beautiful it is, and how comfortable.' A house for a gentleman. A gentleman'shome—that's what I call it."At each burst of enthusiasm from her father, Amy beamed on Alois. And Alois was dizzy with happiness and hope.XIVWOMAN'S DISTRUST—AND TRUSTHaving got what she wanted of Alois, Amy now permitted her better nature to reproach her for having absorbed him so long and so completely. She assumed Narcisse was blaming, was disliking, her for it; and, indeed, Narcisse had been watching the performance with some anger and more disgust. Before Alois came upon the scene, and while Amy was still in the first flush of enthusiasm for her new friend, Narcisse had begun to draw back. She saw that Amy, like everyone who has always had his own way and so has been made capricious, was without capacity for real friendship. If she had thought Amy worth while, she would have held her—for Narcisse was many-sided and could make herself so interesting that few indeed would not have seemed tame and dull after her. But she decided that Amy was not worth while; and to cut short Amy's constant attempts to interfere between her and her work, she emphasized her positive, even aggressive, individuality, instead of softening it. Servants, fortune-hunters, flatterers, the army of parasites that gathers to swoop upon anyone with anything to give, had made Amy intolerant of the least self-assertiveness; and to be a very porcupine of prickly points; Narcisse had only to give way to her natural bent for the candid.For example, Narcisse had common sense—like most people of good taste; for, is not sound sense the basis of sound taste, indeed the prime factor in all sound development of whatever kind? Now, there is nothing more inflammatory than steadfast good sense. It rebukes and mocks us, making us seem as stupid and as foolish as we fear we are. Narcisse would not eat things that did not agree with her; it irritated self-indulgent Amy against her, when they lunched together and she refused to eat as foolishly as did Amy. Again, Narcisse would not drive when she could walk, because driving was as bad for health and looks as walking was good for them. Amy knew that, with her tendency to fat, she ought never to drive. But she was lazy, doted on the superiority driving seemed to give, was nervous about the inferiority "the best people" attached to a woman's walking. So she persisted in driving, and ruffled at Narcisse for being equally persistent in the sensible course. It is the common conception of friendship that one's friend must do what one wishes and is no friend if he does not; Amy felt that way about it.Alois had come back from abroad just in time to save the Fosdick architectural trade to the firm. Narcisse would soon have alienated it—and would have been glad to see it go; in fact, since she had realized where the Fosdick money came from, she with the greatest difficulty restrained herself from bursting forth to Alois in "impractical sentimentalities" which she knew would move him only against herself.Amy expected Narcisse's enthusiasm toward Overlook to be very, very restrained indeed. "She must be jealous," thought Amy, "because she has had so little to do with it, and I so much." But she had to admit that she had misjudged the builder. It is not easy satisfactorily to praise to anyone a person or a thing he has in his heart; the most ardent praise is likely to seem cold, and any lapse in discrimination rouses a suspicion of insincerity. If Narcisse had not felt the beauty of what her brother and Amy had done, she could not have made Amy's enthusiasm for her flame afresh, as it did. Before Narcisse finished, Amy thought that she herself had not half appreciated how well she and Alois had wrought. "But it would never have been anything like so satisfactory," said she in a burst of impulsive generosity, "if you hadn't started it all.""I wish I could feel that I had some part in it," said Narcisse, "but I can't, in honesty."And she meant it. Those who have fertile, luxuriant minds rarely keep account of the ideas they are constantly and prodigally pouring out. Narcisse had forgotten—though Amy had not—that it was she who was inspired by that site to dream the dream that her brother and Amy had realized. It was on the tip of Amy's tongue to say this; but she decided to refrain. "I probably exaggerate the influence of what she said," she thought. "We saw it together and talked it over together, and no doubt each of us borrowed from the other"—let him who dares, criticise this, in a world that shines altogether by reflected lights.As the two young women talked on, the builder gradually returned to her constrained attitude. She saw that Amy was taking to herself the whole credit for Overlook, was looking on Alois as simply a stimulant to her own great magnetism and artistic sense, was patronizing him as a capable and satisfactory agent for transmitting them into action. And this made her angry, not with Amy but with Alois. "Amy isn't to blame," she said to herself. "It's his fault. To please her he has been exaggerating her importance to herself, and he has succeeded in convincing her. She has ended up just where people always end up, when you encourage them to give their vanity its head." She tried to devise some way of helping her brother, of reminding Amy that he was entitled to credit for some small part of the success; but she could think of nothing to say that Amy would not misinterpret into jealousy either for herself or for her brother. When she got back to the offices, she said to him:"If I were you, I'd not let a certain young woman imagine she hasallthe brains.""What do you mean?" said he, clouding at once. He showed annoyance nowadays whenever she mentioned the Fosdicks."She'll soon be thinking you couldn't get along without her to give you ideas," replied Narcisse. "It's bad all round—bad for the woman, bad for the man—when he gets her too crazy about herself. She's likely to overlook his merits entirely in her excitement about her own.""You are prejudiced against her, Narcisse," said Alois angrily. "And it isn't a bit like you to be so."Narcisse, not being an angel, flared. "I'm not half as prejudiced against her as you'd be three months after you married her," she cried. "But you'll not get her, if you keep on as you're going now. Instead of showing her how awed you are by her, you'd better be teaching her that she ought to be in awe of you, that it's whatyougive her that makes her shine so bright."And she fled to her own office, fuming against the folly of men and the silliness of women, and thoroughly miserable over the whole situation; for, at bottom she believed that such a woman as Amy must have feminine instinct enough fairly to jump at such a man as Alois, if there was a chance to attach him permanently; and, the prospect of Alois marrying a woman who could do him no good, who was all take and no give, put her into such a frame of mind that she wished she had the mean streak necessary to intriguing him and her apart.It was on one of the bluest of her blue days of forebodings about Alois and Amy that Neva came in to see her; and a glance at Neva's face was sufficient to convince her that bad news was imminent. "What is it, Neva?" she demanded. "I've felt all the morning that something rotten was on the way. Now, I know it's here. Tell me.""Do you recall Mrs. Ranier? She was at my place one afternoon——""Perfectly," interrupted Narcisse, "Amy Fosdick's sister.""She took a great fancy to you. And when she heard something she thought you ought to know, she came to me and asked me to tell you. She said she knew you'd be discreet—that you could be trusted.""I liked her, too," said Narcisse. "I think she can trust me.""It's about—about—those insurance buildings," continued Neva, painfully embarrassed. "I'm afraid I'm rather incoherent. It's the first time I ever interfered in anyone else's business.""Tell me," urged Narcisse. "I suppose it's something painful. But I'm good and tough—-speak straight out.""Mrs. Ranier's husband is in the furniture business, and through that he found out there's a scandal coming. She says those people downtown will drag you and your brother in, will probably try to hide themselves behind you. She heard last night, and came early this morning. 'Tell her,' she said, 'not to let her brother reassure her, but to look into it—clear to the bottom.'"Narcisse was motionless, her eyes strained, her face haggard."That's all," said Neva, rising. "I shouldn't have come, shouldn't have said anything to you, if I had not known that Mrs. Ranier has the best heart in the world, and isn't an alarmist."Narcisse faced Neva and pressed her hands, without looking at her."If there is anything I can do, you have only to ask," said Neva, going. She had too human an instinct to linger and offer sympathy to pride in its hour of abasement."There's one thing you can do," said Narcisse, nervous and intensely embarrassed.Neva came back. "Don't hesitate. I meant just what I said—anything."Narcisse blurted it out: "Is Horace Armstrong a man who can be trusted? Is he straight?" Then, as Neva did not answer immediately, she hastened on, "Please forget what I asked you. It really doesn't matter, and——"Neva interrupted her with a frank, friendly smile. "Don't be uneasy," she said. "He and I are excellent friends. He calls often. I don't know a thing about him in a business way. But— Well, Narcisse, I'm sure he'd not do anything small and mean.""That's all I wished to know."A few minutes after Neva left, Narcisse, white but calm, sent for her brother. "How deeply have you entangled yourself in those fraudulent vouchers?" she asked, when they were shut in together.He lifted his head haughtily. "What do you mean, Narcisse?""As we are equal partners, I have the right to know all the affairs of the firm. I want to see the accounts of those insurance buildings, at once—and to know the exact truth about them.""You left that matter entirely to me," replied he, sullen but uneasy. "I haven't time to-day to go into a mass of details. It'd be useless, anyhow. But—I do not like that word you used—fraudulent."She waved her hand impatiently. "It's the word the public will use, whatever nice, agreeable expression for it you men of affairs may have among yourselves. Have you signed vouchers, as you said you were going to do?""Certainly. And, I may add, I shall continue to sign them.""Haven't you heard that that investigation is coming?"He gave a superior, knowing smile. "Those things are always fixed up. There's a public side, but it's as unreal as a stage play. Fosdick controls this particular show.""So I hear," said she, with bitter irony. "And he purposes to throw you to the wild beasts—you and me."Siersdorf laughed indulgently. "My dear sister," he said, "don't bother your head about it." The idea seemed absurd to him: Fosdick sacrifice him, when they were such friends!—it was an insult to Fosdick to entertain the suspicion. "When the proper time comes," he continued, "I shall be away on business—and the matter will be sidetracked, and nothing more will be said about me. Trust me. I know what I am about.""Yes, you will be away," cried she, suddenly enlightened. "And the whole thing will be exposed, and they'll have their accounts so cooked that the guilt will all be on you. And before you can get back and clear yourself, you will be ruined—disgraced—dishonored."The situation she thus blackly outlined was within the possibilities; her tone of certainty had carrying power. A chill went through him. "Ridiculous!" he protested loudly."You have put your honor in another man's keeping," she went on. "And that man is a thief.""Narcisse!""A thief!" she repeated with emphasis. "They don't call each other thieves downtown. They've agreed to call themselves respectabilities and financiers and all sorts of high-flown names. But thieves they are, because they're loaded down with what don't belong to them, money they got away from other people by lying and swindling. Is your honorquitesafe in the keeping of a thief?""Narcisse!" repeated Alois, wincing again at that terse, plain word, rough and harsh, an allopathic dose of moral medicine, undiluted, uncoated."Idon't think so," she pursued. "What precautions do you purpose to take?"He looked at her helplessly. "If I say anything to Fosdick," said he, "he will be justified in getting furiously angry. He might think he had the right to act as you accuse him of plotting.""But you must do something."He shook his head. "I have trusted Fosdick," said he. "I still think it was wise. But, however that may be, the wise course now certainly is to continue to trust him.""Trust him!" exclaimed Narcisse bitterly. "I might trust a thief who wasn't a hypocrite—he might not squeal on a pal to save himself. But not a Fosdick. A respectable thief has neither the honor of honest men nor the honor of thieves.""Prejudice! Always prejudice, Narcisse.""You will do nothing?""Nothing." And he tried to look calm and firm.She went into her dressing room with the air of one bent on decisive action. He could but wait. When she came back she was dressed for the street."Where are you going?" he demanded in alarm."To save myself and—you," she replied with a certain sternness. It was unlike her to put herself first in speech—she who always considered herself last."Narcisse, I forbid you to interfere in this affair. I forbid you to go crazily on to compromising us both."She looked straight into his eyes. "The time has come when I must use my own judgment," said she.And, with that, she went; he knew her, knew when it was idle to oppose her. Besides—what if she should be right? In all their years together, as children, as youths, as workers, he had always respected her judgment, because it had always been based upon a common sense clearer than his own, freer from those passions which rise from the stronger appetites of men to befog their reason, to make what they wish to be the truth seem actually the truth."She's wrong," he said to himself. "But she'll not do anything foolish. She's the kind that can go in safety along the wrong road, because they always keep a line of retreat open." And that reflection somewhat reassured him.Narcisse went direct to Fosdick at his office. As there was only one caller ahead of her, she did not have long to wait in the anteroom guarded by Waller of the stealthy, glistening smile. "Mr. Fosdick is very busy this morning," explained he. It was the remark he always made to callers as he passed them along; it helped Fosdick to cut them short. "The big railway consolidation, you know?""No, I don't know," replied Narcisse."Oh—you artists! You live quite apart from our world of affairs. But I supposed news of a thing of such tremendous public benefit would have reached everybody."Narcisse smiled faintly. She could not imagine any of these gentlemen, roosted so high and with eyes training in every direction in search of prey, occupying themselves for one instant with a thing that was a public benefit, except in the hope of changing it into a "private snap.""It's marvelous," continued Waller, "how Fosdick and these other men of enormous wealth go on working for their fellow men when they might be taking their ease and amusing themselves.""Amusing themselves—how?" asked she."Oh—in a thousand ways.""I'm afraid they'd find it hard to pass the time, if they didn't have their work," said she. "The world isn't a very amusing place unless one happens to have work that interests him.""There's something in that—there's something in that," said Waller, in as good an imitation as he could give of his master's tone and manner. It had never before occurred to him to question the current theory that, while poor men toiled for bread and selfishness, rich men refrained from boring themselves to death in idling about, only because they passionately yearned to serve their fellow beings."Do you still teach a class in Mr. Fosdick's Sunday school?""I'm assistant superintendent now," replied he."That's good," said she, as if she really meant it. She was feeling sorry for him. He had worked so long and so hard, and had striven so diligently to please Fosdick in every way; Fosdick had got from him service that money could not have bought. And the worst of it was, Fosdick had never tried to find a money expression for it that was anything like adequate, but had ingeniously convinced poor Waller he was more than well paid in the honor of serving in such an intimate capacity such a great and generous man. The mitigating circumstance was that Fosdick firmly believed this himself—but Narcisse that day was not in the humor to see the mitigations of Fosdick.And now Fosdick himself came hurrying in, eyes alight, strong face smiling—"Miss Siersdorf—this is a surprise! I don't believe I ever before saw you downtown—though, of course, you must have come." He looked at her with an admiration that was genuine. "Excuse an old man for saying it, but you are so beautifully dressed—as always—and handsome—that goes without saying. Come right in. You can have all the time you want. I know you—know you are a business woman. Now, that man who was just with me—Bishop Knowlton—a fine, noble man, with a heart full of love for God and his fellows—but not an idea of the value of a business man's time. Finally I had to say to him, 'I'll give you what you ask—and I'll double it if you don't say another word but go at once.'"They were now in the innermost room, and Fosdick had bowed her into a chair and had seated himself. "I came to see you," said Narcisse, formal to coldness, "about the two office buildings—about the accounts our firm has been approving.""Oh, but you needn't fret about them," said Fosdick, in his bluff, hearty, offhand manner. "Your brother is looking after them.""Then they are all right?" she said, fixing her gaze on him."Why, certainly, certainly. I have absolute confidence in your brother. Have you seen Overlook? Yes—of course—my daughter told me. You delighted her by what you said. It is beautiful——""To keep to the accounts, Mr. Fosdick," Narcisse interrupted, "I am not satisfied with our firm's position in the matter.""My dear young lady, talk to your brother about that. I've a thousand and one matters. I really know nothing of details, and, as you are perhaps aware, my interest in the O.A.D. is largely philanthropic. I can give but little of my time.""I've come," said Narcisse, as he paused for breath, "to get from you a statement relieving us from all responsibility as to those accounts, and authorizing us to sign them as a mere formality, to expedite their progress."Fosdick laughed. "I'd like to do anything to oblige you," said he, "but really, I couldn't do that. You must know that I have nothing to do with the buildings—with the details of the affairs of the O.A.D.""You gave us the contracts," said Narcisse."Pardon me,Idid not give you the contracts. They were not mine to give. What you mean to say is that I used for you what influence I have. It was out of friendship for you and your brother."There he touched her. "We had every reason to believe that we got the contracts solely because our plans were the most satisfactory," said she coldly. "If we had suspected that friendship had anything to do with it, we should certainly have withdrawn. I assure you, sir, we feel under no obligation—and my present purpose is to prevent you from putting yourself under obligation to us.""I don't quite follow you," said Fosdick, most conciliatory."There has been some kind of—'bookkeeping,' I believe you call it—in connection with the payments for the work on those buildings. If we were to aid you in your—'bookkeeping,' you would certainly be under heavy obligations to us. We cannot permit that."Fosdick laughed with the utmost good nature. "I see you misunderstood some remarks I made to you and your brother one day at my house. However, anything to keep peace among friends. I'll do as you wish."His manner was so frank and so friendly, and his concession so unreserved, that Narcisse was surprised into being ashamed of her suspicions. "I believe 'Lois is right," she said to herself. "I've been led astray by my prejudice."Those shrewd old eyes of Fosdick's could not have missed an opportunity for advantage so plain as was written on her honest face. He hastened to score. "I'll dictate it to Waller," said he, rising, "when he comes in to round up the day. You'll get it in the early morning mail. Good-by. You don't come to see us up at the house nearly often enough—at least, not when I'm there." He had opened the door. "Waller, conduct Miss Siersdorf to the elevator. Good-by, again."With nods and smiles he had cleared himself of her, easily, without abruptness, rather as if she were hurrying him than he her. And Waller, quick to take his cue, had passed her into the elevator before she was quite aware what was happening. Not until she was on the ground floor and walking toward the door did her mind recover. "What have yougot?" it said, and promptly answered, "Nothing—for, what is a promise from Josiah Fosdick?" That seemed cynical, unjust; as Fosdick not only was by reputation a man of his word, but also had always kept his word with her. But she stopped short and debated; and it was impossible for her to shake her conviction that the man meant treachery. "He'll sacrifice us," she said to herself, "if it's necessary to save intact the name and fame of Josiah Fosdick—or even if he should think it would be helpful." What were two insignificant mere ordinary mortals in comparison with that name and fame, that inspiration to honesty and fidelity for the youth of the land, that bulwark of respectability and religion—for, as all the world knows, the eternal verities are kept alive solely by the hypocrites who preach and profess them; if those "shining examples" were exposed and disgraced, down would crash truth and honor. No, Josiah Fosdick was not one to hesitate before the danger of such a cataclysm. Further, she felt that he had been plotting while he and she were talking and had found some way to pinion her and her brother during the day he had gained. "To-morrow morning," she decided, "I'll not get the paper, and it'll be useless to try to get it. Something must be done, and at once."She turned back, reëntered the elevator. "To Mr. Armstrong," she said.Armstrong, whom she knew but slightly, received her with great courtesy, and an evident interest that in turn roused her curiosity. "It's as if he knew about our affairs," she thought. To him she said, "I want to see you a few minutes alone."He took her into his inner room. "Well, what is it?" he asked, with the sort of abruptness that invites confidence.She had liked what she had seen of him; her good impression was now strengthened. She thought there was courage and honesty in his face, along with that look of experience and capacity which is rarely seen in young faces, except in America with its group of young men who have already risen to positions of great responsibility. There was bigness about him, too-bigness of body and of brow and of hands, and the eyes that go with large ways of judging and acting—eyes at once keen and good-humored. A man to turn a shrewd trick, perhaps; but it would be exceedingly shrewd, and only against a foe who was using the same tactics. Half confidences are worse than none, are the undoing weakness of the timid who, though they know they must play and play desperately, yet cannot bring themselves to play in the one way that could win. Narcisse flung all her cards upon the table.
XII
"WE NEVER WERE"
For the first time in Armstrong's career, it was imperative that he concentrate his whole mind; and, for the first time, he could not. In the midst of conferences with Trafford, with Atwater even, his attention would wander; forgetful of his surroundings, he would stare dazedly at a slim, yet not thin, figure, framed in the heavy purple and gold curtains of a doorway—the figure of his former wife, of the recreated Neva, on the threshold of Mrs. Trafford's salon. He had the habit of judging himself impartially, and this newly developed weakness of character, as strange in its way as the metamorphosis of Neva, roused angry self-contempt; but the apparition persisted, and also his inability to keep his thoughts off it.
Passion he understood, but not its compulsion, still less its tyranny. Love—except love of mother and child—he regarded as a myth that foozled only the foolish. He had sometimes thought he would like a home, a family; but a glance at the surface of the lives of his associates was enough to put such sentimentalities out of his head. He saw the imbecilities of extravagance and pretense into which the wife and daughters plunged as soon as the wealth of the head of the family permitted, the follies into which they dragged the "old man"—how, in his own home, just as downtown, he was not a man but a purse. No, Armstrong had no disposition to become the drudge and dupe of a fashionable family. So, in his life he had put woman in what he regarded as her proper place of merest incident. He spent a great deal of time with women—that is, a great deal for so busy a man. He liked women better than he liked men because with them he was able to relax and lower his guard, where with men he always had the sense of the game. For intelligence in women he cared not at all. Beauty and a good disposition—those were the requirements. It was not as at a woman that he looked at this unbanishable figure—not with the longing, thought he, or even the admiration of the masculine for the feminine—simply with wonder, a stupid stare, an endless repetition of the query,Whois it?
His vanity of self-poise was even more hard pressed to explain why he always saw, in sinister background to the apparition of Neva, the handsome, dandified face of Boris, strong, sensual, triumphant. He recalled what Lona Trafford had said of the painter. Yes, that explained it. Neva, guileless, inexperienced in the ways of the world, was being ensnared, all unsuspicious, by this rake. And, even though she might, probably would, have the virtuous fiber to stand out against him, still she would lose her reputation. Already people must be talking about her; so far as he could learn, no woman could associate with Raphael without it being assumed that she was not wasting his time. "The scented scoundrel!" muttered Armstrong. "Such men should be shot like mad dogs." This with perfect sincerity; with not a mocking suggestion that he himself had been as active in the same way as his time and inclination had permitted.
"Really, somebody ought to warn her," was naturally the next step. "What the devil do her people mean by letting her come here alone?" Yes, somebody ought to warn her. Of course, he couldn't undertake the office; his motive might be misunderstood. Still, it ought to be done. But— "Maybe, he's really in love with her—wants to marry her." This reflection so enraged him that he was in grave danger of discovering to himself the truth about his own state of mind. "Why not?" he hastily retorted upon himself. "What do I care? I must be crazy, to spend any time at all in thinking about matters that are nothing to me."
And he ordered the subject out of his mind. He was not surprised to discover that it had not obeyed him. Now, hatred of Boris became a sort of obsession with him. He found in, or imagined into, his memory picture of the painter's face, many repellant evidences of bad character. Whenever he heard Raphael's name, or saw it in a newspaper, he paused irritably upon it; he was soon in the habit of thinking of him as "that damned hound." Nor did this development unsettle his confidence in his freedom from heart interest in Neva; he was sure his antipathy toward the painter was the natural feeling of the normal man toward the abnormal. "Where's the man that wouldn't despise a creature who decks himself out with jewelry and wears rolling collars because he wants to show off his throat, and scents himself like a man-chasing woman?"
The longer he revolved it, the more clearly he saw the necessity that she be warned—and the certainty that his warning would be misunderstood. "I couldn't speak of him without showing my feelings, and women always misinterpret that sort of thing." He looked up her address; and, as he was walking to his hotel from the office in the late afternoon, or was strolling about after dinner, developing his vast and complex scheme to pile high the ruins of his enemies that he might rise the higher upon them, he would find himself almost or quite at the entrance to the apartment house where she lived. "I think I must be going crazy," he said to himself one night, when he had twice within two hours drawn himself from before her door. Then a brilliant idea came to him: "I'll go to see her, and end this. To put a woman out of mind, all that's necessary is to give her a thorough, impartial look-over. Also, in ten minutes' talk with her I can judge whether it would be worth while to warn her against that damned hound."
And at five the very next day he sent up his card. "She'll send down word she isn't at home," he decided.
He was astonished when the boy asked him into the elevator; he was confused when he faced at her door old Molly who had lived with them out in Battle Field. "Step in, sir," she said stiffly, as if he were a stranger, and an unwelcome one. He entered with his head lowered and a pink spot on either cheek. "What the devil am I doing here?" he muttered. "Yes, I'm losing my mind."
He heard indistinctly a man's voice in the room shut off by the curtains at the far end of the hall—evidently she had a caller. He went in that direction. "Is this the right way?" he called, hesitating at the curtain.
"Yes, here," came in Neva's voice. Had he not been expecting it, he would hardly have recognized it, so vibrant now with life.
He entered—found her and Boris. "I might have knownhe'dbe here," he said to himself. "No doubt he'salwayshere."
He ignored Boris; Boris stared coldly at him. "You two have met before?" said Neva, with a glance from one to the other, her eyes like those of a nymph smiling from the dark, dense foliage round a forest pool. "Yes, I remember. Let me give you some tea, Horace."
As she spoke that name, Boris set down his cup abruptly. He debated whether he should defy politeness and outsit the Westerner. He decided that to do so would be doubly unwise—would rouse resentment in Neva, who had had the chance to ask him to spare her being left alone with her former husband and had not; would give him an appearance of regarding the Westerner as an important, a dangerous person. With a look in his eyes that belied the smile on his lips, he shook hands with her. "Until Thursday," he said. "Don't forget you're to come half an hour earlier." And Armstrong was alone with her, was entirely free to give her the "thorough, impartial lookover."
He saw his imagination had not tricked him at Trafford's—his imagination and her dress. The change in her was real, was radical, miraculous, incredible. It was, he realized, in part, in large part, a matter of dress, of tasteful details of toilet—hair and hands and skin not merely clean and neat but thoroughly cared for. This change, however, was evidently permanent, was outward sign of a new order of thought and action, and not the accident of one evening's effort as he had been telling himself. Their eyes met and his glance hastily departed upon a slow tour of the room; in what contrast was it to his own apartment, which cost so much and sheltered him so cheerlessly. "You are very comfortable here," said he. "That, and a great deal more."
"The Siersdorfs built this house," replied she. "They have ideas—especially Narcisse." He thought her wonderfully, exasperatingly self-possessed; his own blood was throbbing fiercely and her physical charms gave him the delicious, terrifying tremors of a boy on the brink of his first love leap.
"What is it that women"—he went on, surprised by the steadiness of his voice, "somewomen—do to four walls, a floor, and ceiling, and a few pieces of furniture to get a result like this? It isn't a question of money. The more one spends in trying to get it, the worse off he is."
"It seems to me," said she, "that, in arranging a place to live, the one thing to consider is that it's not for show or for company, but to live in—day and night, in all kinds of weather, and in all kinds of moods. Make it to suit yourself, and then it'll fit you and be like you—and those who care for you can't but be pleased with it."
"It does resemble you—here," said he. "And it doesn't suggest a palace or an antique store or a model room in a furniture display, or an auction room.... You work hard?"
His glance had come back to her, to linger on the graceful lines of her throat and slim, pallid neck, revealed by the rounding out of her tea-gown. Never before had he been drawn to note the details of a woman's costume. He would not have believed garments could be surcharged with all that is magnetic in feminine to masculine as was this dress of cream white edged with narrow bands of sable.
"It would be impossible not to work, with Raphael to spur one on," was her reply. Her accent in pronouncing that name gave him the desire to grind something to powder between his strong, white teeth. "The better I know him, the more wonderful he seems," continued she, a gleam in her eyes that would have made a Raphael suspect she was not unaware of the emotion Armstrong was trying to conceal. "I used to think his work was great; but now it seems a feeble expression of him—of ideas he, nor no man, could ever materialize for a coarse sense like sight."
"You don't like his work, then?" said Armstrong, pleased.
Neva looked indignant. "He's the best we have—one of the best that ever lived," exclaimed she. "I didn't mean his work by itself wasn't great, but that it seemed inadequate, compared with the man. When one meets most so-called great men—your great men downtown for example—one realizes that they owe almost everything to their slyness, that they steal the labor of the hands and brains of others who are superior to them in every way but craft and unscrupulousness. A truly great man, a man like Boris Raphael, dwarfs his reputation."
Armstrong suspected a personal thrust, a contrast between him and Boris, and was accordingly uncomfortable. "I'd like to see some ofyourwork," said he, to shift the subject.
"Not to-day. I don't feel in the mood."
"You mean, you think I wouldn't care about it—that I never was interested in that sort of thing."
"Perhaps," she admitted.
He laughed. "There's truth in that." He was about to say, "I'm still just as much of a Philistine as I used to be"; but he refrained—something in her atmosphere forbade reminiscence or hint of any connection whatever between their present and their past.
"You're like Boris in one respect," she went on. "Nothing interests you but what is immediately useful to you."
"He's over head in love with you—isn't he?" Armstrong blurted.
Her face did not change by so much as a shade. She gave not an outward hint that she knew he had rudely flung himself against the barrier between them, to enter her inmost life on his own ruthless terms of masculine intolerance of feminine equality of right. She continued to look tranquilly at him, and, as if she had not heard his question, said, "You don't go out home often?"
The rebuke—the severest, the completest, a woman can give a man—flooded his face with scarlet to the line of his hair. "Not—not often," he stammered. "That is, not at all."
"Father and I visit with each other every few weeks," she continued. "And I take the home paper." She nodded toward a copy of the Battle FieldBanner, conspicuous on the table beside him. "Even the advertisements interest me—'The first strawberries now on sale at Blodgett's'—you remember Blodgett, with his pale red hair and pale red eyes and pale red skin, and always in his shirt sleeves, with a tooth-brush, bristle-end up, in his vest pocket? And I read that Sam Warfield and his sister Mattie 'Sundayed' at Rabbit's Run, as if I knew and loved the Warfields."
This connecting of her present self with her past had the effect of restoring him somewhat. It established the bond of fellow-townsmen between them. "I too take theBanner," said he. "It's like a visit at home. I walk the streets and shake hands with the people. I'm glad I come from there—but I'm glad I came."
But he could not get his ease. It seemed incredible, not, as he would have expected, that they were such utter strangers, but that they had ever been even acquaintances. Not the present, but the past, seemed a trick of the imagination upon his sober senses. His feeling toward her reminded him of how he used to regard her when he, delivering parcels from his father's little store, came upon her, so vividly representing to him her father's power and position in the community that he could not see her as a person. While she continued to talk, pleasantly, courteously, as to an acquaintance from the same town, he tried to brace himself by recalling in intimate detail all they had been to each other; but by no stretch of fancy could he convince himself of the truth. No, it was not this woman who had been his wife, who had dressed and undressed before him in the intimacy of old-fashioned married life, who had accepted his embraces, who had borne him a child.
When he rose to go, it was with obvious consciousness of his hands and feet; and he more than suspected her of deliberately preventing him from recovering himself. "She's determined I shan't fail to learn my lesson," he thought, as he stood in the outer hall, waiting for the elevator, and recovering from his awkward exit.
A week, almost to the minute, and he came again. She received him exactly as before—like an old acquaintance. She had to do the talking; he could only look and listen and marvel. "I certainly wasn't so stupid," he said to himself, "that I wouldn't have noticed her if she had had eyes like these, or such teeth, or that form, or that beautiful hair." He would have suspected that she had been at work with the beauty specialists who, he had heard, were doing a smashing business among the women, had he not seen that her manners, her speech, the use of her voice, everything about her was in keeping with her new physical appearance; she had expanded as symmetrically as a well-placed sapling. The change had clearly come from within. There was a new tenant who had made over the whole house, within and without.
What seemed to him miracle was, like all the miracles, mysterious only because the long chain of causes and effects between beginning and end was not visible. There probably never lived a human being to whom fate permitted a full development of all his possibilities—there never was a perfect season from seed-time to harvest. The world is one vast exhibit of imperfect developments, physical, mental, moral; and to get the standard, the perfection that might be, we have to take from a thousand specimens their best qualities and put them together into an impossible ideal—impossible as yet. For one fairly well-rounded human being, satisfying to eye and mind and heart, we find ten thousand stunted, blighted, blasted. Each of us knows that, in other, in more favorable, in less unfavorable circumstances, he would have been far more than he is or ever can be. But for Boris, Neva might have gone through life, not indeed as stunted a development as she had been under the blight of her unfortunate marriage, but far from the rounded personality, presenting all sides to the influences that make for growth and responding to them eagerly. Heart, and his younger brother, Mind, are two newcomers in a universe of force. They fare better than formerly; they will fare better hereafter; but they are still like infants exposed in the wilderness. Some fine natures have enough of the tough fiber successfully to make the fight; others, though they lack it, persist and prevail by chance—for the brute pressure of force is not malign; it crushes or spares at haphazard. Again, there are fine natures—who knows? perhaps the finest of all, the best minds, the best hearts—that either cannot or will not conform to the conditions. They wither and die—not of weakness, since in this world of the survival of the fittest, the fit are often the weak, the unfit the strong. All around us they are withering, dying, like the good seed cast on stony ground—the good minds, the good hearts, the men and women needing only love and appreciation and encouragement, to shine forth in mental, moral, and physical beauty. Of these had been Neva.
Boris, with eyes that penetrated all kinds of human surfaces and revealed to him the realities, had seen at first glance what she was, what she could be, what she was longing and striving to be against the wellnigh hopeless handicaps of shyness and inexperience and solitude. For his own sybarite purposes, material and selfish, from mere wanton appetite, he set his noble genius to helping her; and the creative genius finds nothing comparable in interest to the development of the human plant, to watching it sprout and put forth leaves, blossoms, flowers, perfume, spread into an individuality.
Every day there was some progress; and now and then, as in all nature, there were days when overnight a marvelous beautiful change had occurred. In scores on scores of daily conversations, between suggestions or instructions as to painting, much of the time consciously, most effectively and most often unconsciously, never with patronage or pedantry, he encouraged and trained her to learn herself, the world, the inner meaning of character and action—all that distinguishes fine senses from coarse, the living from the numb, all that most of us pass by as we pass a bank of wild flowers—with no notion of the enchanting history each petal spreads for whoever will read. Boris cleared away the weeds; he softened the soil; he gave the light and the air access. And she grew.
But Armstrong had no suspicion of this. Indeed, if he had been told that Boris Raphael, cynic and rake, had been about such an apparently innocent enterprise, he would have refused to believe it; for the Raphael temperament, the temperament that is soft and savage, sympathetic to the uttermost refinement of delicacy and appreciation, and hard and cruel as death, was quite beyond his comprehension. Armstrong, looking at Neva, saw only the results, not the processes; and he could scarcely speak for marvel, as he sat, watching and listening. "May I come again?" he asked, when he felt he must stay no longer.
"I'm usually at home after five."
Her tone was conventional—alarmingly so. With a pleading gesture of both hands outstretched and a youthful flush and frank blue eyes entreating, he burst out, "I have no friends—only people who want to get something out of me—or whom I want to get something out of. Can't you and I be friends?"
She turned abruptly away to the window. It was so long before she answered that he nerved himself for an overwhelming refusal of his complete, even abject surrender with its apology for the past, the stronger and sincerer that it was implied and did not dare narrow itself to words. When she answered with a hesitating, "We might try," he felt as happy as if she had granted all he was concealing behind that request to be tolerated. He continued in the same tone of humility, "But your life is very different from mine. I feared— And you yourself— I can't believe we were ever—anything to each other."
There was her opportunity; she did not let it slip. She looked straight into his eyes. "We never were," she said, and her eyes piercing him from their long, narrow lids and deep shadowing lashes forbade him ever to forget it again.
He returned her gaze as if mesmerized. Finally, "No, we never were," he slowly repeated after her. And again, "We never were," as if he were learning a magic password to treasures beyond those of the Forty Thieves.
He drew a long breath, bowed with formal constraint, and went; and as he walked homeward he kept repeating dazedly, "We never were—never!"
XIII
OVERLOOK LODGE
Overlook Lodge was Amy's first real success at amusing those interminable hours of hers that were like a nursery full of spoiled children on a rainy day. Every previous device, however well it had begun, had soon been withered and killed by boredom, nemesis of idlers. Overlook was a success that grew. It began tediously; to a person unaccustomed to fixing the mind for longer than a few minutes, the technical part of architecture comes hard. But before many months Overlook had crowded out all the routine distractions; instead of its being a mere stop-gap between them, they became an irritating interruption to its absorbing interest. It even took the sharp edge off her discomfiture with Armstrong; for interest is the mental cure-all. She dreaded a return of her former state, when an empty hour would make her walk the floor, racking her brains for something to do; she spun this occupation out and out. Narcisse Siersdorf lost all patience; the patience of feminine with feminine, or of masculine with masculine, is less than infinite. "We'll never get anywhere," she protested. "You linger over the smallest details for weeks, and you make all sorts of absurd changes that you know can't stand, when you order them."
Narcisse did not comprehend the situation. Who with so much to do that the months fairly flash by, can sympathize with the piteous plight of those who have nothing to do and all the time in the world to do it? Alois was not so unsympathetic. When the Overlook plans were begun, he was away; but, soon after his return, Amy fastened upon him, and presently he had abandoned all other business of the firm to his sister, that he might devote himself to making this work "really great."
"Concentration's the thing," said he to Narcisse, in excusing himself to her—and to himself. "Miss Fosdick has the true artistic spirit. She is willing to let me give full play to my imagination, and she interferes only to help and to stimulate. I feel I can afford to devote an unusual amount of time and thought. When the work is done, it'll be a monument to us."
Narcisse gave him a queer glance, and her laugh was as queer as her eyes. He colored and frowned—and continued to dawdle with Amy over the plans. It was not his fault, nor hers, that the actual work finally did begin; it was the teasing of her father and Hugo about these endless elaborations of preparation. "When Overlook is begun" became the family synonym for never. She and Alois suddenly started the work, and pushed it furiously.
The site selected had nothing to recommend it but a view that was far and away the most extensive and varied in that beautiful part of New Jersey—mountains, hills, plains, rivers, lakes, wildernesses, villages, farms, two cities—a vast sweep of country, like a miniature summary of the earth's whole surface. But Overlook Hill was in itself barren and shapeless. Many times, rich men in search of places where they could see and be seen had taken it under consideration; but always the natural difficulties and the expense had discouraged them. Fosdick had bought the site before investigating; he had been about to sell, when Amy took Narcisse out there. The builder instantly saw, and unfolded to Amy, a plan for making the hill as wonderful in itself as in its prospect; and that original inspiration of hers was the basis of all that was done.
When Amy and Alois did set to work, they at once put into motion thousands of arms and wheels. The day came when the whole hill swarmed with men and carts, with engines and hoisting machines and steam diggers and blasting apparatus; and the quiet valley resounded with the uproar of the labor. Amy took rooms at the little hotel in the village, had them costlily refurnished, moved in with a cook and staff of servants; Alois came out every morning, even Sundays. The country people watched the performance in stupefaction; it was their first acquaintance with the audacities upon nature which modern science has made possible. And presently they saw a rugged cliff rise where there had been a commonplace steep, saw great terraces, slopes, levels, gentle grades, supersede the northern ascents of Overlook. The army of workmen laid hold of that huge upheaval of earth and rock and shaped it as if it had been a handful of potter's clay.
Near the base of the cliff ran the river; barges laden with stone began to arrive—stone from Vermont and from Georgia, from Indiana, from Italy. A funicular clambered up the surface of the cliff; soon its cars were moving all day, bearing the stone to the lofty top of the hill; and there appeared the beginnings of foundations—not of a house alone, but of a dozen buildings, widely separated, and of terraces and lake bottoms and bridges—for a torrent, with several short falls and one long leap, was part of the plans. At the same time, other barges, laden with earth and with great uprooted living trees, arrived in interminable procession, and upon bare heights and slopes now began to appear patches of green, clumps of wood. And where full-grown transplanted trees were not set out, saplings were being planted by the hundreds. As the stone walls rose, sod was brought—acres of grass of various kinds; and creepers and all manner of wild growing things to produce wilderness effects in those parts of the park which were not to be constructed with all the refinements of civilization. These marvels of nature-manufacture were carried on in privacy; for the very first work had been to enclose the hill, from cliff edge round to cliff edge on the other side, with a high stone wall, pierced by only two entrances—one, the main entrance with wrought-iron gates from France, and a lodge; the other, the farm or service entrance, nearer the village and the river.
Amy and Alois had begun as soon as the frost was out of the ground. By June they had almost all the trees planted. The following spring, and the transformation was complete. Overlook Hill, as it had been for ages, was gone; in its place was a graceful height, clad in a thousand shades of green and capped by a glistening white bastionlike building half hid among trees that looked as if they had been there a century at least. Indeed, except the buildings, nothing seemed new, everything seemed to belong where it was, to have been there always. The sod, the tangle of creepers and underbrush on the cliff and in the ravines, the cliff and the ravines themselves, all looked like the product of nature's slow processes. The masonry, the roads, the drives—signs of age and of long use. One would have said that the Fosdicks were building on an old place, a house better suited to modern conditions than some structure, dating from Revolutionary days at least, which must have stood in those venerable surroundings and had been torn down to make room for the new.
"The buildings are going to look too new," said Alois. And he proceeded to have them more artfully weather-stained.
Narcisse had preached the superiority of small houses to Amy until she had convinced her. So, Overlook Lodge, while not so small as it looked, was still within the sane limits for a private house. And the interior arrangements—the distribution of large rooms and less, of sunny rooms, of windows, of stairways, of closets—were most ingenious. No space was wasted; no opportunity for good views from the windows or for agreeable lines, without or within, was neglected. Through and through it was a house to be lived in, a house whose comfort obtruded and whose luxury retired.
In the woodwork, in the finishing of walls and ceilings, in the furniture, Alois followed out the general scheme of the appearance of an old-established residence, a family homestead that had sent forth many generations. Before a stone had been blasted at Overlook, the furniture and the woven stuffs were designed and manufacturing. While the outer walls of the house were finishing, the rooms were beginning to look as if they had been lived in long. There was nothing new-looking anywhere except the plumbing; nothing old-looking, either. The air was that of things created full grown, things which have not had a shiny, awkward youth and could not have a musty, rickety, rotten old age.
There came a day when the last rubbish was cleared, when the last creeper was in leaf, the last flower in bloom, when the grass and the trees seemed green with their hundredth summer, when the settees and chairs and hammocks were on the verandas and porticos as if they had been there for many a year, when no odor of fresh paint or varnish or look of newness could be detected anywhere about the house—and the "work of art" was finished. Alois and Amy, in an automobile, went over every part of the grounds, examined them from without and from within; then they made a tour of the house, noting everything. Changes, improvements, could be made, would be made; but the work as a work was finished. They seated themselves on a veranda overlooking the valley, and listened to the rush of the torrent, descending through the ravines, in banks of moss and wild flowers, to spring from the edge of the cliff. Amy burst into tears.
"You're very tired, aren't you!" said Alois sympathetically. There were tears in his eyes.
"No, that isn't it," she answered, her face hidden—she knew she didn't look at all well when she was crying.
"I understand," said he. "There's something tragic about finishing anything. It's like bringing up a child, and having it marry and go away." He sighed. "Yes, we're done."
"I feel horribly lonely," she cried. "I've lost my occupation. It's the first great real sorrow of my life. I wish we hadn't been in such a hurry! We might have made it last a year or two longer."
"I wish we had!"
"You can't wish it as I do. You will go on and build other houses. You have a career. It seems to me thatI'vecome to the very end."
"You don't realize," he said hesitatingly, "that it was the personal element in this that gave—that gives it its whole meaning, to me. I was working with you and—for you."
He glanced at her eagerly, but with a certain timidity, for some sign that would encourage him. A hundred times at least, in those months when he had spent the whole of almost every day with her, he had been on the point of telling her what was in his heart, why he was so tireless and so absorbed in their task. But he had never had the courage to begin. By what he regarded as a malicious fatality, she had always shifted the conversation to something with which sentiment would not have harmonized at all. Apparently she was quite unconscious that he was a man; and how she could be, when he was so acutely alive to her as a woman, he could not understand. Sometimes he thought she was fond of him—"as fond as a nice girl is likely to be, before the man declares himself." Again, it seemed to him she cared nothing about him except as an architect. Her wealth put around her, not only physically but also mentally, a halo of superiority. He could not judge her as just a woman. He always saw in her the supernal sheen of her father's millions. He knew he had great talent; he was inordinately vain about it in a way—as talented people are apt to be, where they stop short of genius, which—usually, not always—has a true sense of proportion and gets no pleasure from contrasting itself with its inferiors. He would have been as swift as the next man to deny, with honest scorn, that he was a wealth worshiper; and as he was artist enough to worship it only where it took on graceful forms, he could have made out a plausible case for himself. Amy, for example, was not homely or vulgar—or petty. She had good ideas and good taste and concealed the ugly part of her nature as dexterously as by the arrangement of her hair she concealed the fact that it was neither very long nor very thick. Besides, in her intercourse with Alois, there was no reason why any but the best side of her should ever show.
Narcisse gave over trying to make him sensible where Amy was concerned, as soon as she saw upon what he was bent. "He wouldn't think of her seriously if she weren't rich," she said to herself. "But, since he is determined to take her seriously, it's better that he should be able to delude himself into believing he loves her. And maybe he does. Isn't love always nine tenths delusion of some sort?" So, she left him free to go on with Amy, to love her, to win her love if he could. But—could he? He feared not. That so wonderful a creature, one who might marry more millions and blaze, the brightest star in the heavens of fashionable New York, should take him—it seemed unlikely. "She ought to prefer congeniality to wealth," thought he, "but"—with an unconscious inward glance—"it's not in human nature to do it."
As they sat there together in the midst of their completed work, he waiting for some hopeful sign, she at least did not change the subject. "Hasn't what we've been doing had any—personal interest for you?" he urged.
She nodded. "Yes, I owe my interest in it to you," she conceded. But she went on to discourage him with, "We have beensuchfriends. Usually, a young man and a young woman can't be together, as have we, without trying to marry each other."
"That's true," assented he, much dejected. Then, desperately, "That's why I've put off saying what I'm going to say until the work should be done."
"Oh!" she exclaimed. "Don't say it, please—not now."
"But you must have known," he pleaded.
"I never thought of it," replied she with an air of frankness that convinced him.
"Well—won't you think of it—now?"
"Not to-day," was her answer, in the tone a woman uses when she is uncertain and wishes to convince herself that she is certain. She rose and crossed to the edge of the veranda.
In such circumstances, when the woman turns her back on the man, it is usually to signify that she has a traitor within, willing to yield to a surprise that which could not be won by a direct assault; and, had Alois's love been founded in passion instead of in interest, he would not have followed her hesitatingly, doing nothing, simply saying stumblingly: "I don't wish to annoy you. But let me say one thing—Amy—I love you, and to get you means life to me, and not to get you means the death of all that is really me. I think I could make you happy—you who are so interested in what is my life work. It must be our life work."
"I've thought of that," responded she softly. "But, not to-day—not to-day." A pause during which she was hoping, in spite of herself, that he would at least insist. When he remained silent and respectful, she went on: "Don't you think we may let father and Hugo come?"
"By all means. Everything is ready." And they went back to talking of the work—of the surprise awaiting Fosdick.
Fosdick had gratified her and delighted himself by playing the fondly indulgent father throughout the building of Overlook. He had put the widest limits on expense, he had asked no questions; he had let her keep him ignorant of all that was being done. It was a remarkable and most characteristic display of generosity. When a man earns a fortune by his own efforts, by risking his own property again and again, he is rarely "princely" in his generosity. But with the men who grow rich by risking other people's money in campaigns against rival captains of finance and industry who are also submitting to the fortunes of commercial war little or nothing that is rightfully theirs, then the princely qualities come out—the generosity with which the prince wastes the substance of his subjects in luxury, in largesse, and in wars. Fosdick felt most princely in relation to the properties he controlled. Whatever he did, if it was merely eating his breakfast or consulting a physician when he was ill, he did it for the benefit of the multitude whose money was invested in his various enterprises. Thus, when he took, he could take only his own; when he gave, he was "graciously pleased" to give up his own.
This simple, easy, and most natural theory reduced all divisions of profits, losses, expenses, to mere matters of bookkeeping. If his losses or expenses were heavy, the dividends to policy holders and stockholders must be small—clearly, he who had done his best and had acted only for the good of others ought not to cripple or hamper his future unselfish endeavors. If the profits were large—why dribble them out to several hundred thousand people who had done nothing to make them, who did not deserve, did not expect, and would not appreciate? No; the extra profits to the war-chest—which was naturally and of necessity and of right in the secure possession of the commander-in-chief. So, Fosdick, after the approved and customary manner of the princely industrial successors to the princely aristocratic parasites on mankind, was able to indulge himself in the luxury of generosity without inflicting any hardship upon his conscience or upon his purse.
The distribution of the cost of the new house had presented many nice problems in bookkeeping. Some of the expense—for raw materials, notably—was merged into the construction accounts of the O.A.D. and two railway systems; but the largest part was covered by the results of two big bond deals and a stock manipulation. This part appeared on the records as an actual payment by Fosdick out of his own private fortune; but on the other side of the ledger stood corresponding profits from the enterprises mentioned, and these profits, on careful analysis, were seen to have come from the fact that, when profits were to be distributed, Fosdick the private person was in no way distinguishable from Fosdick the trustee of the multitude.
If the old man had not had confidence in his daughter's good sense and good taste and in Siersdorf's ability, he would not have given them the absolutely free hand. It was, therefore, with the liveliest expectations that he took the train for Overlook. As he and Hugo descended at the station, they looked toward Overlook Hill, so amazingly transformed. "Well, you've certainly donesomething!" he exclaimed to Amy, as she came forward to meet him. "Why, I'd not have known the place. Splendid! Superb!" And he kissed her and shook hands warmly with Alois.
On the way through the village in the auto, he gushed a stream of enthusiasm and comment. "That cliff, now—what a fine idea! And the cascade—why, you've doubled the value of real estate throughout this region. I must quietly gather in some land round here— You are in on that, Siersdorf. The railway station must be improved. I'll see Thorne—he's president of the road and a good friend of mine—he'll put up a proper building—you must draw the plans, Siersdorf. This village—it's unsightly. We must either wipe it out or make it into a model."
His enthusiasm continued at the boiling point until they ascended the hill and had the first full view of the house. Then his face lengthened and he lapsed into silence. Hugo was not so considerate. "Do you mean to tell methisis the house?" demanded he of Amy. "Why, it's a cottage. How ridiculous to put such a climax to all these preparations!"
Amy's eyes flashed and she tossed her head scornfully.
Hugo continued to look and began to laugh. "Ridiculous!" he repeated. "Don't you think so, father?"
"It is hardly what I expected," confessed Fosdick. "It isn't done yet, is it, Amy?"
"Yes, it's done," she said angrily. "And it's the best thing about the place. I don't want you to say anything more until you've gone over it. The trouble with you and Hugo is that your taste has been corrupted by the vulgarity in New York. You don't appreciate the difference between beauty and ostentation. Mr. Siersdorf has built a house for a gentleman, not for a multimillionaire."
That silenced them; and in silence she led the way into and through the house, by a route that would present all its charms and comforts in effective succession. She made no comments; she simply regulated the speed of the tour, trusting to their eyes to show them what she could not believe any eyes could fail to see. At the veranda commanding the most magnificent of the many views, she brought the tour to an end. The luncheon table was there, and she ordered the servants to bring lunch. And a delicious lunch it was, ending with wonderful English strawberries, crimson, huge, pink-white within and sweet as their own fragrance—"grown on the place," explained Amy, "and this cream is from our own dairy down there."
"I take it all back," said Fosdick. "You and Siersdorf were right. Eh, Hugo?"
"It's better than I thought," conceded Hugo. "There certainly is a—a tone about the house that I've not often seen on this side of the water."
"And there's a comfort you've never seen on the other side," said Amy. "You are satisfied, father?"
"Satisfied!" exclaimed Fosdick. "I'm overwhelmed."
And when they had had coffee, which, Hugo said, reminded him of the Café Anglais at Paris, Siersdorf took them for a second tour of the house, pointing out the conveniences, the luxuries, the evidences of good taste, expanding upon them, eulogizing them, feeling as he talked that he had created them. "A gentleman's home!" he cried again and again. "It'll be a rebuke to all these vulgarians who are trying to show how much money they've got. Why, you never think, as you walk around here, 'How much this cost,' but only, 'How beautiful it is, and how comfortable.' A house for a gentleman. A gentleman'shome—that's what I call it."
At each burst of enthusiasm from her father, Amy beamed on Alois. And Alois was dizzy with happiness and hope.
XIV
WOMAN'S DISTRUST—AND TRUST
Having got what she wanted of Alois, Amy now permitted her better nature to reproach her for having absorbed him so long and so completely. She assumed Narcisse was blaming, was disliking, her for it; and, indeed, Narcisse had been watching the performance with some anger and more disgust. Before Alois came upon the scene, and while Amy was still in the first flush of enthusiasm for her new friend, Narcisse had begun to draw back. She saw that Amy, like everyone who has always had his own way and so has been made capricious, was without capacity for real friendship. If she had thought Amy worth while, she would have held her—for Narcisse was many-sided and could make herself so interesting that few indeed would not have seemed tame and dull after her. But she decided that Amy was not worth while; and to cut short Amy's constant attempts to interfere between her and her work, she emphasized her positive, even aggressive, individuality, instead of softening it. Servants, fortune-hunters, flatterers, the army of parasites that gathers to swoop upon anyone with anything to give, had made Amy intolerant of the least self-assertiveness; and to be a very porcupine of prickly points; Narcisse had only to give way to her natural bent for the candid.
For example, Narcisse had common sense—like most people of good taste; for, is not sound sense the basis of sound taste, indeed the prime factor in all sound development of whatever kind? Now, there is nothing more inflammatory than steadfast good sense. It rebukes and mocks us, making us seem as stupid and as foolish as we fear we are. Narcisse would not eat things that did not agree with her; it irritated self-indulgent Amy against her, when they lunched together and she refused to eat as foolishly as did Amy. Again, Narcisse would not drive when she could walk, because driving was as bad for health and looks as walking was good for them. Amy knew that, with her tendency to fat, she ought never to drive. But she was lazy, doted on the superiority driving seemed to give, was nervous about the inferiority "the best people" attached to a woman's walking. So she persisted in driving, and ruffled at Narcisse for being equally persistent in the sensible course. It is the common conception of friendship that one's friend must do what one wishes and is no friend if he does not; Amy felt that way about it.
Alois had come back from abroad just in time to save the Fosdick architectural trade to the firm. Narcisse would soon have alienated it—and would have been glad to see it go; in fact, since she had realized where the Fosdick money came from, she with the greatest difficulty restrained herself from bursting forth to Alois in "impractical sentimentalities" which she knew would move him only against herself.
Amy expected Narcisse's enthusiasm toward Overlook to be very, very restrained indeed. "She must be jealous," thought Amy, "because she has had so little to do with it, and I so much." But she had to admit that she had misjudged the builder. It is not easy satisfactorily to praise to anyone a person or a thing he has in his heart; the most ardent praise is likely to seem cold, and any lapse in discrimination rouses a suspicion of insincerity. If Narcisse had not felt the beauty of what her brother and Amy had done, she could not have made Amy's enthusiasm for her flame afresh, as it did. Before Narcisse finished, Amy thought that she herself had not half appreciated how well she and Alois had wrought. "But it would never have been anything like so satisfactory," said she in a burst of impulsive generosity, "if you hadn't started it all."
"I wish I could feel that I had some part in it," said Narcisse, "but I can't, in honesty."
And she meant it. Those who have fertile, luxuriant minds rarely keep account of the ideas they are constantly and prodigally pouring out. Narcisse had forgotten—though Amy had not—that it was she who was inspired by that site to dream the dream that her brother and Amy had realized. It was on the tip of Amy's tongue to say this; but she decided to refrain. "I probably exaggerate the influence of what she said," she thought. "We saw it together and talked it over together, and no doubt each of us borrowed from the other"—let him who dares, criticise this, in a world that shines altogether by reflected lights.
As the two young women talked on, the builder gradually returned to her constrained attitude. She saw that Amy was taking to herself the whole credit for Overlook, was looking on Alois as simply a stimulant to her own great magnetism and artistic sense, was patronizing him as a capable and satisfactory agent for transmitting them into action. And this made her angry, not with Amy but with Alois. "Amy isn't to blame," she said to herself. "It's his fault. To please her he has been exaggerating her importance to herself, and he has succeeded in convincing her. She has ended up just where people always end up, when you encourage them to give their vanity its head." She tried to devise some way of helping her brother, of reminding Amy that he was entitled to credit for some small part of the success; but she could think of nothing to say that Amy would not misinterpret into jealousy either for herself or for her brother. When she got back to the offices, she said to him:
"If I were you, I'd not let a certain young woman imagine she hasallthe brains."
"What do you mean?" said he, clouding at once. He showed annoyance nowadays whenever she mentioned the Fosdicks.
"She'll soon be thinking you couldn't get along without her to give you ideas," replied Narcisse. "It's bad all round—bad for the woman, bad for the man—when he gets her too crazy about herself. She's likely to overlook his merits entirely in her excitement about her own."
"You are prejudiced against her, Narcisse," said Alois angrily. "And it isn't a bit like you to be so."
Narcisse, not being an angel, flared. "I'm not half as prejudiced against her as you'd be three months after you married her," she cried. "But you'll not get her, if you keep on as you're going now. Instead of showing her how awed you are by her, you'd better be teaching her that she ought to be in awe of you, that it's whatyougive her that makes her shine so bright."
And she fled to her own office, fuming against the folly of men and the silliness of women, and thoroughly miserable over the whole situation; for, at bottom she believed that such a woman as Amy must have feminine instinct enough fairly to jump at such a man as Alois, if there was a chance to attach him permanently; and, the prospect of Alois marrying a woman who could do him no good, who was all take and no give, put her into such a frame of mind that she wished she had the mean streak necessary to intriguing him and her apart.
It was on one of the bluest of her blue days of forebodings about Alois and Amy that Neva came in to see her; and a glance at Neva's face was sufficient to convince her that bad news was imminent. "What is it, Neva?" she demanded. "I've felt all the morning that something rotten was on the way. Now, I know it's here. Tell me."
"Do you recall Mrs. Ranier? She was at my place one afternoon——"
"Perfectly," interrupted Narcisse, "Amy Fosdick's sister."
"She took a great fancy to you. And when she heard something she thought you ought to know, she came to me and asked me to tell you. She said she knew you'd be discreet—that you could be trusted."
"I liked her, too," said Narcisse. "I think she can trust me."
"It's about—about—those insurance buildings," continued Neva, painfully embarrassed. "I'm afraid I'm rather incoherent. It's the first time I ever interfered in anyone else's business."
"Tell me," urged Narcisse. "I suppose it's something painful. But I'm good and tough—-speak straight out."
"Mrs. Ranier's husband is in the furniture business, and through that he found out there's a scandal coming. She says those people downtown will drag you and your brother in, will probably try to hide themselves behind you. She heard last night, and came early this morning. 'Tell her,' she said, 'not to let her brother reassure her, but to look into it—clear to the bottom.'"
Narcisse was motionless, her eyes strained, her face haggard.
"That's all," said Neva, rising. "I shouldn't have come, shouldn't have said anything to you, if I had not known that Mrs. Ranier has the best heart in the world, and isn't an alarmist."
Narcisse faced Neva and pressed her hands, without looking at her.
"If there is anything I can do, you have only to ask," said Neva, going. She had too human an instinct to linger and offer sympathy to pride in its hour of abasement.
"There's one thing you can do," said Narcisse, nervous and intensely embarrassed.
Neva came back. "Don't hesitate. I meant just what I said—anything."
Narcisse blurted it out: "Is Horace Armstrong a man who can be trusted? Is he straight?" Then, as Neva did not answer immediately, she hastened on, "Please forget what I asked you. It really doesn't matter, and——"
Neva interrupted her with a frank, friendly smile. "Don't be uneasy," she said. "He and I are excellent friends. He calls often. I don't know a thing about him in a business way. But— Well, Narcisse, I'm sure he'd not do anything small and mean."
"That's all I wished to know."
A few minutes after Neva left, Narcisse, white but calm, sent for her brother. "How deeply have you entangled yourself in those fraudulent vouchers?" she asked, when they were shut in together.
He lifted his head haughtily. "What do you mean, Narcisse?"
"As we are equal partners, I have the right to know all the affairs of the firm. I want to see the accounts of those insurance buildings, at once—and to know the exact truth about them."
"You left that matter entirely to me," replied he, sullen but uneasy. "I haven't time to-day to go into a mass of details. It'd be useless, anyhow. But—I do not like that word you used—fraudulent."
She waved her hand impatiently. "It's the word the public will use, whatever nice, agreeable expression for it you men of affairs may have among yourselves. Have you signed vouchers, as you said you were going to do?"
"Certainly. And, I may add, I shall continue to sign them."
"Haven't you heard that that investigation is coming?"
He gave a superior, knowing smile. "Those things are always fixed up. There's a public side, but it's as unreal as a stage play. Fosdick controls this particular show."
"So I hear," said she, with bitter irony. "And he purposes to throw you to the wild beasts—you and me."
Siersdorf laughed indulgently. "My dear sister," he said, "don't bother your head about it." The idea seemed absurd to him: Fosdick sacrifice him, when they were such friends!—it was an insult to Fosdick to entertain the suspicion. "When the proper time comes," he continued, "I shall be away on business—and the matter will be sidetracked, and nothing more will be said about me. Trust me. I know what I am about."
"Yes, you will be away," cried she, suddenly enlightened. "And the whole thing will be exposed, and they'll have their accounts so cooked that the guilt will all be on you. And before you can get back and clear yourself, you will be ruined—disgraced—dishonored."
The situation she thus blackly outlined was within the possibilities; her tone of certainty had carrying power. A chill went through him. "Ridiculous!" he protested loudly.
"You have put your honor in another man's keeping," she went on. "And that man is a thief."
"Narcisse!"
"A thief!" she repeated with emphasis. "They don't call each other thieves downtown. They've agreed to call themselves respectabilities and financiers and all sorts of high-flown names. But thieves they are, because they're loaded down with what don't belong to them, money they got away from other people by lying and swindling. Is your honorquitesafe in the keeping of a thief?"
"Narcisse!" repeated Alois, wincing again at that terse, plain word, rough and harsh, an allopathic dose of moral medicine, undiluted, uncoated.
"Idon't think so," she pursued. "What precautions do you purpose to take?"
He looked at her helplessly. "If I say anything to Fosdick," said he, "he will be justified in getting furiously angry. He might think he had the right to act as you accuse him of plotting."
"But you must do something."
He shook his head. "I have trusted Fosdick," said he. "I still think it was wise. But, however that may be, the wise course now certainly is to continue to trust him."
"Trust him!" exclaimed Narcisse bitterly. "I might trust a thief who wasn't a hypocrite—he might not squeal on a pal to save himself. But not a Fosdick. A respectable thief has neither the honor of honest men nor the honor of thieves."
"Prejudice! Always prejudice, Narcisse."
"You will do nothing?"
"Nothing." And he tried to look calm and firm.
She went into her dressing room with the air of one bent on decisive action. He could but wait. When she came back she was dressed for the street.
"Where are you going?" he demanded in alarm.
"To save myself and—you," she replied with a certain sternness. It was unlike her to put herself first in speech—she who always considered herself last.
"Narcisse, I forbid you to interfere in this affair. I forbid you to go crazily on to compromising us both."
She looked straight into his eyes. "The time has come when I must use my own judgment," said she.
And, with that, she went; he knew her, knew when it was idle to oppose her. Besides—what if she should be right? In all their years together, as children, as youths, as workers, he had always respected her judgment, because it had always been based upon a common sense clearer than his own, freer from those passions which rise from the stronger appetites of men to befog their reason, to make what they wish to be the truth seem actually the truth.
"She's wrong," he said to himself. "But she'll not do anything foolish. She's the kind that can go in safety along the wrong road, because they always keep a line of retreat open." And that reflection somewhat reassured him.
Narcisse went direct to Fosdick at his office. As there was only one caller ahead of her, she did not have long to wait in the anteroom guarded by Waller of the stealthy, glistening smile. "Mr. Fosdick is very busy this morning," explained he. It was the remark he always made to callers as he passed them along; it helped Fosdick to cut them short. "The big railway consolidation, you know?"
"No, I don't know," replied Narcisse.
"Oh—you artists! You live quite apart from our world of affairs. But I supposed news of a thing of such tremendous public benefit would have reached everybody."
Narcisse smiled faintly. She could not imagine any of these gentlemen, roosted so high and with eyes training in every direction in search of prey, occupying themselves for one instant with a thing that was a public benefit, except in the hope of changing it into a "private snap."
"It's marvelous," continued Waller, "how Fosdick and these other men of enormous wealth go on working for their fellow men when they might be taking their ease and amusing themselves."
"Amusing themselves—how?" asked she.
"Oh—in a thousand ways."
"I'm afraid they'd find it hard to pass the time, if they didn't have their work," said she. "The world isn't a very amusing place unless one happens to have work that interests him."
"There's something in that—there's something in that," said Waller, in as good an imitation as he could give of his master's tone and manner. It had never before occurred to him to question the current theory that, while poor men toiled for bread and selfishness, rich men refrained from boring themselves to death in idling about, only because they passionately yearned to serve their fellow beings.
"Do you still teach a class in Mr. Fosdick's Sunday school?"
"I'm assistant superintendent now," replied he.
"That's good," said she, as if she really meant it. She was feeling sorry for him. He had worked so long and so hard, and had striven so diligently to please Fosdick in every way; Fosdick had got from him service that money could not have bought. And the worst of it was, Fosdick had never tried to find a money expression for it that was anything like adequate, but had ingeniously convinced poor Waller he was more than well paid in the honor of serving in such an intimate capacity such a great and generous man. The mitigating circumstance was that Fosdick firmly believed this himself—but Narcisse that day was not in the humor to see the mitigations of Fosdick.
And now Fosdick himself came hurrying in, eyes alight, strong face smiling—"Miss Siersdorf—this is a surprise! I don't believe I ever before saw you downtown—though, of course, you must have come." He looked at her with an admiration that was genuine. "Excuse an old man for saying it, but you are so beautifully dressed—as always—and handsome—that goes without saying. Come right in. You can have all the time you want. I know you—know you are a business woman. Now, that man who was just with me—Bishop Knowlton—a fine, noble man, with a heart full of love for God and his fellows—but not an idea of the value of a business man's time. Finally I had to say to him, 'I'll give you what you ask—and I'll double it if you don't say another word but go at once.'"
They were now in the innermost room, and Fosdick had bowed her into a chair and had seated himself. "I came to see you," said Narcisse, formal to coldness, "about the two office buildings—about the accounts our firm has been approving."
"Oh, but you needn't fret about them," said Fosdick, in his bluff, hearty, offhand manner. "Your brother is looking after them."
"Then they are all right?" she said, fixing her gaze on him.
"Why, certainly, certainly. I have absolute confidence in your brother. Have you seen Overlook? Yes—of course—my daughter told me. You delighted her by what you said. It is beautiful——"
"To keep to the accounts, Mr. Fosdick," Narcisse interrupted, "I am not satisfied with our firm's position in the matter."
"My dear young lady, talk to your brother about that. I've a thousand and one matters. I really know nothing of details, and, as you are perhaps aware, my interest in the O.A.D. is largely philanthropic. I can give but little of my time."
"I've come," said Narcisse, as he paused for breath, "to get from you a statement relieving us from all responsibility as to those accounts, and authorizing us to sign them as a mere formality, to expedite their progress."
Fosdick laughed. "I'd like to do anything to oblige you," said he, "but really, I couldn't do that. You must know that I have nothing to do with the buildings—with the details of the affairs of the O.A.D."
"You gave us the contracts," said Narcisse.
"Pardon me,Idid not give you the contracts. They were not mine to give. What you mean to say is that I used for you what influence I have. It was out of friendship for you and your brother."
There he touched her. "We had every reason to believe that we got the contracts solely because our plans were the most satisfactory," said she coldly. "If we had suspected that friendship had anything to do with it, we should certainly have withdrawn. I assure you, sir, we feel under no obligation—and my present purpose is to prevent you from putting yourself under obligation to us."
"I don't quite follow you," said Fosdick, most conciliatory.
"There has been some kind of—'bookkeeping,' I believe you call it—in connection with the payments for the work on those buildings. If we were to aid you in your—'bookkeeping,' you would certainly be under heavy obligations to us. We cannot permit that."
Fosdick laughed with the utmost good nature. "I see you misunderstood some remarks I made to you and your brother one day at my house. However, anything to keep peace among friends. I'll do as you wish."
His manner was so frank and so friendly, and his concession so unreserved, that Narcisse was surprised into being ashamed of her suspicions. "I believe 'Lois is right," she said to herself. "I've been led astray by my prejudice."
Those shrewd old eyes of Fosdick's could not have missed an opportunity for advantage so plain as was written on her honest face. He hastened to score. "I'll dictate it to Waller," said he, rising, "when he comes in to round up the day. You'll get it in the early morning mail. Good-by. You don't come to see us up at the house nearly often enough—at least, not when I'm there." He had opened the door. "Waller, conduct Miss Siersdorf to the elevator. Good-by, again."
With nods and smiles he had cleared himself of her, easily, without abruptness, rather as if she were hurrying him than he her. And Waller, quick to take his cue, had passed her into the elevator before she was quite aware what was happening. Not until she was on the ground floor and walking toward the door did her mind recover. "What have yougot?" it said, and promptly answered, "Nothing—for, what is a promise from Josiah Fosdick?" That seemed cynical, unjust; as Fosdick not only was by reputation a man of his word, but also had always kept his word with her. But she stopped short and debated; and it was impossible for her to shake her conviction that the man meant treachery. "He'll sacrifice us," she said to herself, "if it's necessary to save intact the name and fame of Josiah Fosdick—or even if he should think it would be helpful." What were two insignificant mere ordinary mortals in comparison with that name and fame, that inspiration to honesty and fidelity for the youth of the land, that bulwark of respectability and religion—for, as all the world knows, the eternal verities are kept alive solely by the hypocrites who preach and profess them; if those "shining examples" were exposed and disgraced, down would crash truth and honor. No, Josiah Fosdick was not one to hesitate before the danger of such a cataclysm. Further, she felt that he had been plotting while he and she were talking and had found some way to pinion her and her brother during the day he had gained. "To-morrow morning," she decided, "I'll not get the paper, and it'll be useless to try to get it. Something must be done, and at once."
She turned back, reëntered the elevator. "To Mr. Armstrong," she said.
Armstrong, whom she knew but slightly, received her with great courtesy, and an evident interest that in turn roused her curiosity. "It's as if he knew about our affairs," she thought. To him she said, "I want to see you a few minutes alone."
He took her into his inner room. "Well, what is it?" he asked, with the sort of abruptness that invites confidence.
She had liked what she had seen of him; her good impression was now strengthened. She thought there was courage and honesty in his face, along with that look of experience and capacity which is rarely seen in young faces, except in America with its group of young men who have already risen to positions of great responsibility. There was bigness about him, too-bigness of body and of brow and of hands, and the eyes that go with large ways of judging and acting—eyes at once keen and good-humored. A man to turn a shrewd trick, perhaps; but it would be exceedingly shrewd, and only against a foe who was using the same tactics. Half confidences are worse than none, are the undoing weakness of the timid who, though they know they must play and play desperately, yet cannot bring themselves to play in the one way that could win. Narcisse flung all her cards upon the table.