"Don't consider me in your calculations, if you please!" And then with sudden suspicion: "See here—you're not here to try any of your tricks on this house, or on Mrs. De Peyster!"
"I was thinking," said he, smiling about the room, "that you might hide me here till the police become infatuated with some other party. A fashionable house closed for the summer—nothing could possibly be superior for my purposes."
"I'd never do it! Besides, Mrs. De Peyster's housekeeper will be here."
"But Mrs. De Peyster's housekeeper would never know I was here."
"I can't stand your talk another minute," she burst out. "Go!"
He did not stir; continued to smile at her pleasantly. "Oh, I'm not really asking the favor, Clara. I'm pretty safe where I'm staying."
"Go, I say! And if you don't care for your own danger, then at least consider mine."
"Yours?"
"I've told you of Mrs. De Peyster's attitude toward married—"
"Then leave her, my dear. Even though it wouldn't be safe for you to be with me till the police resume their interrupted nap—still, you can have your own flat and your own bank account. Nothing would make me happier."
"Understand this, Mr. Bradford,—I'm going to have nothing to do with you!"
For a moment he sobered. "Come, Clara: give me a chance to make good—"
"Will you turn straight?" she caught him up sharply. "And will you fix up the affair of the Jefferson letters?"
"That last is a pretty stiff proposition; I don't see how it's to be done. As to the first—but, really, Clara,"—smiling again appeasingly,—"really, you take this thing altogether too seriously."
"Too seriously!" She almost choked. "Why—why—I'm through with you! That's final! And I don't dare stay here another minute! Good-bye."
"Wait, Clara." He caught her hand as she turned to go, and spoke rapidly. "I don't think I'm so bad as you think I am—honest. You may change your mind; I hope you do, dear; and if you do, write me, 'phone me, telegraph me, cable me, wireless me. But, of course, not to me direct; the police, you know. Address me in care of the Reverend Mr. Pyecroft." Tense though the moment was to him, the young man could not restrain his odd whimsical smile. "The Reverend Mr. Pyecroft has taken an interest in me; like you he is trying to make me a better man. He'll see that I get your message. Herbert E. Pyecroft—P-y-e-c-r-o-f-t—remember his name. Here's a card of the boarding-house at which he is staying." He thrust the bit of pasteboard into her free hand. "Remember, dear, I really am your husband."
With an outraged gesture she flung the card to thefloor. "There'll be no message!" Her voice was raised; she trembled in fierce humiliation, and in scorn of him. "You ... my husband!"
"Yes, your husband!" he said firmly. "And I'm going to make you love me!"
It was at just this moment that Mrs. De Peyster, ascending from her scene with the reporters, was passing without, and it was these last words that she overheard. And it was at just this moment that her knock sounded upon the door.
"Quick, you mustn't be seen here!" breathed Miss Gardner. "The French windows there, and out the back way through the stable!"
With a cat's silent swiftness he was at the windows, Miss Gardner beside him. But in the back-yard stood William, the coachman, sunning himself. That way was closed.
"Into the study," whispered Miss Gardner, pointing at a door, "and watch your chance to get out!"
In the same instant the heavy sound-proof mahogany door closed softly behind him—leaving Miss Gardner in the middle of the room, with heightened color, breathing rapidly. Into the library swept Mrs. De Peyster, followed by Olivetta and Matilda.
There was a lofty sternness in Mrs. De Peyster's manner. "Miss Gardner, I believe I heard you speaking with a man."
"You did." Miss Gardner was stiff, proudly erect, for she sensed what might be coming.
"Where is he?"
"He went out through the window," said Miss Gardner.
"Ah, he did not want me to find out about you. But by chance I overheard him say he was your husband."
"He is." Then with an effort: "But husband or no husband, Mrs. De Peyster, I believe I would be of equal value—"
"I desire no scene, no argument," interrupted Mrs. De Peyster, dignified, not a strident note in her voice—for she never lost her self-possession or the true grand manner. "I believe you will remember, Miss Gardner, that when you applied for your present position two months ago, I told you that I made it a rule to have no servants or employees of any kind who were married. As I desired that you should understand my reasons, I informed you that I had once had a cook and a footman who were married, and who paid so much attention to one another that they had time to pay no attention to me. I then asked you if you were married. You informed me you were not."
"And I was not, at that time."
"Indeed! Then you have married since. That makes your deception all the worse. Remember, Miss Gardner, it was on the distinct understanding that you were unmarried that I employed you. I have no desire to pass judgment upon you. I try to be fair and just and generous with all my employees.If you had been what you declared yourself to be, and remained such, you could have stayed with me indefinitely. Matilda there came to me as my son's nurse over twenty years ago, and has been with me ever since—happy, as she will tell you, with no desire to change her state whatever."
"N—no—none—none at all!"
Matilda hastily dropped her eyes. Mechanically her eyes noted the rejected card Mr. Bradford had tendered Miss Gardner. Her long habit of perfect orderliness, and perhaps the impulse to hide the slight confusion that suddenly had seized upon her, prompted her to bend over and secure this bit of litter. She glanced at it, would have put it in the waste-basket had that receptacle not been across the room, then thrust it into the capacious slit-pocket of her black skirt.
Mrs. De Peyster continued in her tone of exact justice: "Miss Gardner, you have the perfect right to be married or unmarried. I have the perfect right to have the sort of employees I prefer. But since you are not what you declared yourself to be, I no longer require your service."
Miss Gardner bowed stiffly.
"Matilda, see that Miss Gardner is paid in full to the end of her month; and also pay her one month in advance. And telephone about until you can find me a maid—do not bother about the secretary part of it—a maid who isnotmarried, and who can come at once. That is all."
Matilda, still somewhat pale and agitated, started to follow out the proud Miss Gardner, who gave a swift glance at the study door—while Mrs. De Peyster looked on with her invariable calm majesty.
But at just this moment there was a smart rap at the library door, it was partly opened, and a cheery masculine voice called out:—
"May I come in, mother?"
"You, Jack. You may," was the somewhat eager response from Mrs. De Peyster.
The door swung entirely open, Miss Gardner stepped out, and there entered a young man of twenty-two or three, good-natured confidence in his manner, flawlessly dressed, with hands that were swathed in bandages. He crossed limpingly to Mrs. De Peyster, who, her affection now under control, stood regarding him with reproving and sternly questioning eyes.
"Good-morning, mother,—glad to get back," he said, imprinting an undaunted kiss upon her stately cheek.
Her reply was a continuance of her reproving look. The young man turned to Mrs. De Peyster's faithful satellite.
"Hello, Olivetta. Hands out of commission. You'll have to shake my elbow." And he held out his angled arm.
"Good-morning, Jack," responded Olivetta, intrepidation, hardly daring to be gracious where Mrs. De Peyster had been cool.
Jack slipped an arm across Matilda's shoulders. "How are you, Matilda? Glad to see you again."
"And I'm glad to see you again, Mr. Jack," returned Matilda, with a look of stealthy affection.
"Please go, Matilda," said Mrs. De Peyster crisply. "And now, Jack," she continued with frigid dignity after Matilda had withdrawn, "I trust that you will explain your absence, and your long silence."
"Certainly, mother," said Jack, pushing a slip-covered chair before the fireplace—for an open wood fire burned here as in her sitting-room above—and letting himself down into the chair slowly and with extreme care and crossing his legs. "I got a sudden invitation from Reggie Atwater to—"
"You know I do not approve of that young scape-grace!"
"I know you don't. I suppose that's one reason I didn't tell you beforehand what I was up to."
"What have you been doing?"
"Reggie asked me to go on a long trip to try out his new car. It's a hummer. Hundred-and-twenty horse-power—bloody-eyed, fire-spitting devil—"
"Such cars are dangerous," severely commented Mrs. De Peyster, who still kept to her horses and carriage as better maintaining old-family distinction.
"I know. That's another reason I didn't tell you—especially since we were planning a thousand-mile lark."
"What's the matter with your hands?" suddenly demanded Mrs. De Peyster.
Jack gazed meditatively at the bandaged members.
"You were right about that car being dangerous, mother," said he. "I'll confess the whole business. We were whizzing around a corner coming into Yonkers this morning when the machine skidded. I did a loop-the-loop and lit on my hands. But the skin of my palms—"
"Oh!" shuddered Olivetta.
"Were you much hurt?" asked Mrs. De Peyster, for a moment forgetting her reproving manner in her affectionate concern.
"Mother, with your love for old lace, you certainly would like the openwork effect of my skin. But—the patient will recover."
"I trust this experience has been a lesson to you!" said Mrs. De Peyster with returned severity.
"Oh, it has—a big lesson!" Jack heartily agreed.
"Then I trust you will do nothing of the kind again."
"I trust I won't have to!"
There was rather an odd quality in Jack's tone.
"Won't have to? What do you mean?"
"You've questioned me a lot, mother. I'd like to put a few leading questions to you. And—u'm—alone. Olivetta," he remarked pleasantly, "do you know that Sherlock Holmes found it an instructive and valuable occupation to count the stair-steps in ahouse? Suppose you run out for five minutes and count 'em. I'll bet you a box of—"
Olivetta had risen, somewhat indignantly.
"I never eat candy!"
"A box of hairpins," continued Jack, clumsily picking up one from the floor, "that there aren't more than seventy-five."
"Oh, if you want me out of the way, all right!" said Olivetta, sticking the pin into place.
"Here, is that your purse?" asked Jack, fishing an open purse from beneath the chair Olivetta had just vacated.
"Yes, I'm always dropping it. I lost two—"
"I must say, Olivetta," put in Mrs. De Peyster reprovingly, "that you really must not be so careless!"
Jack was looking at a card that had fallen from the purse.
"Hello! And a ticket to the exhibition of paintings of—"
"Give it to me!" And Olivetta, with suddenly crimson face, snatched purse and card from Jack's hands. "I'll wait up in your bedroom, Caroline, and look at your new gowns." And with a rapidity that approached instantaneity she disappeared.
"Jack," his mother demanded suspiciously, "what was that card?"
"Just an old admission ticket to varnishing day at the spring exhibit of the American Society of Painters," said Jack easily. And without giving Mrs. De Peyster an instant in which to pursue the matterfurther, he awkwardly pushed her favorite chair toward the fire to a place beside his own. "Come sit down, mother. There's a lot of things I want to tell you."
Mrs. De Peyster lowered herself into the chair. "Yes?"
Jack's eyes had meditatively followed Olivetta. "Do you know, mother, that Olivetta would really be an awfully good sort if she only had the right chance?"
"The right chance?"
"Yes. Think of her living on and on in that deadly proper little hotel—chuck full of primped and crimped and proud poor relations who don't dare draw a single full-sized breath without first considering whether such a daring act might not disturb the social standing of somebody over on Fifth Avenue or down here on Washington Square—Oh, I say, mother, five more years of that life and Olivetta will be choked—dessicated—salted away—a regular forever-and-ever-amen old maid. But if—" He hesitated.
"Yes—if?"
"If Olivetta were only to marry some one—some decent fellow—she'd blossom out, grow as young as she actually is—and, who knows, perhaps even her hairpins might stay in."
"Marry, yes. But whom?"
"I've seen a few things—there's a certain party—and—" He stumbled a bit, conscious that he wasbecoming indiscreet. "And, oh, well, just on general principles marriage is a good thing."
"That is just the opinion I have been urging upon you in regard to yourself," returned his mother in her even, confident tone.
"U'm—yes," Jack said hastily. "But that was not—not the first thing I wanted to speak about."
"I believe you did say there were several matters."
"So there are." He rubbed his face tentatively with his bandaged hand; then smiled blandly at his mother. "Yes, there are a few."
"Well?"
"Well, first of all, mother, I want to make a kick."
She frowned. "How often must I request you not to use such common expressions!"
"All right, all right," said he. "Suppose I say, then, that I'm dissatisfied."
"Dissatisfied!" She straightened up. "Dissatisfied! What about? Do I not allow you all the money you want?"
"Yes."
"And have I not practically arranged a match between you and Ethel Quintard? Ethel will have three millions some day. And there is no better family to marry into; that is, except our own."
"Yes, yes,—I know."
"And yet you say you are dissatisfied!" She stared. "What more can you want?"
"Well, for one thing, to go to school," was Jack's amiable response.
"Go to school! Why—why, you've already had the best of educations! Exeter—Yale—not to speak of private tutors!"
"And what did I learn? That is," he added, "over and above being a fairly decent half-back and learning how to spend money—u'm—pretty thoroughly."
"I trust," said Mrs. De Peyster with all her dignity, "that you learned to be a gentleman!"
"Oh, I suppose I learned that all right," Jack acquiesced. "And I've been working hard at the profession ever since—sixteen to twenty hours a day, no half-holidays and no Sundays off. I can't stand it any longer. So I've decided to go on strike."
"Strike?" exclaimed his mother, bewildered.
"Yes. For better conditions. I'm tired loafing such long hours. I'd like a little leisure in which to work."
"Work!" repeated his mother—and human voice could hardly express amazement greater than did hers. "Work! Jack—you're not in earnest?"
He held upon her a clear-eyed, humorous, but resolute face.
"Don't I look in earnest?"
He did; and his mother could only dazedly repeat, "Work! You go to work!"
"Oh, not at once. No, thank you! I want to ask you to give me a little proper education first that will equip me to do something. You've spent—how much have you spent on my education, mother?Tens and tens of thousands, I know. Pretty big investment, on the whole. Now, how large returns do you suppose I can draw on that investment?"
"I was not thinking about dividends; I was thinking about fitting you for your station," returned his mother stiffly.
"Well, as for me, I've been thinking of late about how much I could get out of that investment. I've wanted to test myself and find what I was worth—as a worker." He leaned a little closer. "I say, mother," he said confidentially, "you remember that little explanation I just gave you of my absence."
"About your trip in that high-powered automobile?"
"That was just a high-powered fib. Just a bit of diplomatic romance—for Olivetta's consumption."
"Then where have you been?" demanded Mrs. De Peyster.
"Prospecting. Prospecting to find out just how much that hundred thousand or two or three you've sunk in me is worth. And I've found out. It's present value is not quite nine a week."
"You mean?"
"I mean," he said pleasantly, "I've been at work."
"At work!"
Mrs. De Peyster slowly rose and looked down at him with staring, loose-fallen face.
"At work!" she gasped again. "At work!"
"Yes, mother. At work."
"But—but that skidding automobile? Those hands?"
"Blisters, mother dear. Most horrible blisters."
"You've worked—you've worked—at what?"
"Well, you see, mother, if I could have knocked out a home run, say a job as a railroad president, when I stepped up to the plate in the first inning, I suppose I wouldn't have backed away from the chance. But I wanted to find my real value, so I wore cheap clothes and kept clear of my friends. 'What could I do?' every one asked me. You know my answer. Andtheiranswer! I thought only sub-way guards could say, 'Step lively,' like that. Lordy, how I tramped! But finally I met a kind gentleman who gave me a chance."
"A gentleman?"
"About the size of your piano—only he had a red mustache and a red shirt and I should say his complexion needed re-decorating. Irish—foreman on a water-main trench."
"And you—you took it?"
"Took it? I grabbed it!"
"J—a—c—k D—e P—e—y—s—t—e—r!" his appalled mother slowly exclaimed—so slowly that each letter seemed to shiver out by itself in horrified disjunction. "Well, at any rate," she declared with returning vigor, "I'm glad you have had enough of it to bring you to your senses and bring you home!"
"Oh, I've had enough all right. My cubic contents of ache is—well, you wouldn't believe a man of my size could hold so much discomfort. But that isn't the only thing that brought me home. It was—er—I might say, mother, that it was suggested to me."
"Suggested? I do not understand."
"If you will permit the use of so inelegant an expression, I was 'fired.'"
"Fired?"
"Yes. The foreman intimated—I won't repeat his language, mother, but the muscles stood out on his profanity in regular knots—he intimated, in a way that left no doubt as to his meaning, that I was not quite up to the nine per week standard. I'll be honest with you and admit that I didn't lean against the pay-shed and weep. I still wanted to work, but I decided that I didn't want to start life at its pick-and-shovel end—if I could help it. So here I am, mother, asking you to give me a little real education—say as a mining engineer, or something like that."
Mrs. De Peyster was trembling with indignation.
"J—a—c—k D—e P—e—y—s—t—e—r!" again a letter at a time. "J—a—c—k D—e P—e—y—s—t—e—r! I'm astounded at you!"
"I thought you might be—a little," he admitted.
"I think you might have some consideration for me! And my position!"
"I suppose it is rather selfish of me to want to earnmy own living. But you don't know what dreary hard work being a gentleman becomes."
"I won't have it!" cried Mrs. De Peyster wrathfully. "This is what comes of your attending that Intercollegiate Socialist thing in college! I protested to the president against the college harboring such unsettling influences, and urged him to put it out."
"Well, dear old prexy did his best to comply."
"It's that Socialist thing! As for what you propose, I simply will not have it!"
"No? I could have started in up at Columbia, and kept it from you. But I wanted to be all on the level—"
"I won't have it!"
"You really mean that you are not going to add a few thousand more to my hundred thousands' worth of education?"
"I certainly shall not!"
"Then," said Jack regretfully, "I suppose after all I've got to start in at the pick-and-shovel end."
"No, you will not! I have reared you to be a gentleman! And you are going to be a gentleman!"
"Well, if that's the way you feel about it," he sighed, "we'll drop the matter—temporarily."
"We'll drop it permanently!" said Mrs. De Peyster decisively. "Besides, all this talk is utterly footless. You seem to forget that you are sailing with me to Europe to-morrow."
"That brings me to the second point. I was hoping," Jack said mildly, "that you would consent totake my regrets to Europe. Don't you think Europe might be willing to overlook my negligence—just this once?"
"Jack—I can't endure your facetiousness!"
"I'm not facetious, mother dear. I'm most confoundedly and consummately serious. I really want you to let me off on this Europe business. Won't you—there's a dear?"
"No!"
"No?"
"Why, your passage is paid for, and my plans—You know Ethel Quintard and her mother are sailing on the same boat. No, most certainly I shall not let you off!"
"Well, if that's the way you feel about it," he sighed again, "perhaps we'd better drop this matter also—temporarily."
"This matter we'll also drop permanently," his mother said, again with her calm, incontrovertible emphasis.
"Well, that brings us to the third point." He drew a copy of the "Record" from his pocket and pointed to a paragraph. "Mother, this is the second time my engagement to Ethel Quintard has been in print. I must say that I don't think it's nice of Ethel and Mrs. Quintard to let those rumors stand. I would deny them myself, only it seems rather a raw thing for a fellow to do. Mother, you must deny them."
"Jack, this marriage is bound to come!"
"Mother, you are simply hypnotizing yourself into the belief that I am going to marry Ethel Quintard. When"—he painfully recrossed his legs, and smiled pleasantly at his mother—"when, as a matter of fact, what I have been trying to lead up to is to tell you that I shall never lead Ethel's three millions to the altar."
"What's that?"
"It's all off."
"Off?"
Jack slowly nodded his head. "Yes, all off."
"And why, if you please?"
"Oh, for several reasons," he returned mildly. "But one of the reasons is, that I happen to be engaged to someone else."
"Engaged!" gasped Mrs. De Peyster, falling back. "And without my knowing it! Who is she?"
"Mary Morgan."
"Mary Morgan! I never heard of her. Who's her father?"
"First name Henry, I believe."
"I don't mean his name. But who is he—what's his family—his financial affiliations?"
"Oh, I see. Mary told me he runs a shoe store up in Buffalo."
"A shoe store! A shoe store!"
"Or perhaps," Jack corrected, "it was a grocery. I'm not certain."
"Oh!" gasped Mrs. De Peyster. "Oh! And—and this—this—Mary person—"
"She plays the piano, and is going to be a professional."
For a moment Mrs. De Peyster's horror was inarticulate. Then it began to regain its power of speech.
"What—you throw away—Ethel Quintard—for a little pianist! You compare a girl like—like that—to Ethel Quintard!"
"Compare them? Not for one little minute, mother, dear! For Mary has brains and—"
"Stop!" exploded Mrs. De Peyster, in majestic rage. "Young man, have you considered the social disgrace you are plunging us all into? But—but surely you cannot be in earnest!"
He looked imperturbably up into her face. "Not in earnest, mother? I'm as earnest as a preacher on Sunday."
"Then—then—"
She choked with her words. Before she could get them out, Jack was on his feet and had an arm around her shoulders.
"Come, mother, don't be angry—please!" he cried with warm boyish eagerness. "Before you say another word, let me bring Mary to see you. I can get her here before you go on board. The sight of her will show you how right I am. She is the dearest, sweetest—"
"Stop!" She caught his arm. "I shall not see this—this Mary person!"
"No?"
She was the perfect figure of wrath and pride andconfident power of domination. "I shall never see her! Never! And what is more," she continued, with the energy of one who believes her will to be equivalent to the accomplished fact, "you are going to give up, yes, and entirely forget, all those foolish things you have just been speaking of!"
He gazed squarely back into her flashing eyes. His face had tightened, and at that moment there was a remarkable likeness between the two faces, usually so dissimilar.
"Pardon me, mother; you are mistaken," he said quietly. "I am going to give up nothing."
"What, you defy me?" she gasped.
"I am not defying you. I tried to tell you in as pleasant a way as I could what my plans are. But everything I said, I am going to do."
"Then—then—" At first the words would not come forth; she stood trembling, clutching the back of her chair. "Then I beg to inform you," she was saying thickly in her outraged majesty, when Matilda opened the hall door and ushered in an erect, slender man of youngish middle age and with graying hair and dark mustache, and with a pleasant, distinguished face.
"I beg pardon; I fear I come inopportunely," he said, as he sighted Mrs. De Peyster's militant attitude. "But I was told to come right up. I'll just wait—"
"Do not go, Judge Harvey," Mrs. De Peyster commanded, as he started to withdraw. "On theother hand, your arrival is most opportune. Please come here."
"Good-morning, Uncle Bob," Jack said cheerfully. "Excuse me for not shaking hands. Just a little automobile accident."
"Jack, you home!" cried the Judge. "My boy, but you have given us all a scare!" And then in affectionate concern, noticing his hands: "Nothing serious, I hope?"
"Nothing serious about the accident," said Jack, glancing at his mother.
Mrs. De Peyster glared at her son, then crossed to the safe, larger and more formidable than the one above from which she had been removing her jewels, took out a document and returned to the two men. She had something of the ominous air of a tragedy queen who is foreshadowing an approaching climax.
"Judge Harvey, I do not care to go into explanations," said she. "But I desire to give you an order and to have you be a witness to my act."
"Of course, I am at your service, Caroline."
"In the first place," she said, striving to speak calmly, "I beg to request my son to move such of his things as he may wish out of this house—and within the hour."
"Certainly, mother," Jack said pleasantly.
"And to you, Judge Harvey,—I wish my son's allowance, which is paid through your office, to be discontinued from this moment."
"Why—of course—just as you say," said theastonished Judge. "But perhaps if the case were—"
"This paper is my will," interrupted Mrs. De Peyster, holding up the document she had taken from the safe. "As my man of affairs, I believe you are acquainted with its contents."
"I am."
"It gives the bulk of my fortune to my son here."
"Why, yes," admitted the Judge with increasing bewilderment.
"His share amounts to two millions, or thereabouts."
"Thereabouts."
Mrs. De Peyster took two rustling, majestic steps toward her fireplace. "Until my son gives me very definite assurance that his conduct will be more suitable to me and my position, he is no longer my son." And so saying she tossed the will upon the fire. She allowed a moment of effective silence to elapse. "That is all, Jack. You are excused."
Jack stood and watched the flaming will flicker down to a glowing ash. One bandaged hand slowly smoothed his blond hair.
"Gee! I've seen people burning up money, and I've burnt up quite a bit myself, but I never saw two millions go as quick! Well, mother," he sighed, shaking his head, "I never suspected I'd end in such a little blaze. With such a pile I could have made a bigger bonfire than that."
For several moments after Jack had withdrawn, Mrs. De Peyster stood in majestic silence beside the mantelpiece.
"We will forget this incident, Judge Harvey," she said at length. "Be seated, if you please."
Judge Harvey took a chair, as ordered. Out in the world, Judge Harvey was a disconcerting personality, though a respected one; a judge who had resigned his judgeship, with the bold announcement that law-courts were in the main theaters for farces; a thinker who rejected all labels, who was daring enough to perceive and applaud what was good even in the conventional.
"But, Caroline," he began hesitantly, "weren't you perhaps a little too stern with Jack?"
"As I said, Judge Harvey, I do not care to explain the situation."
"I understood it—a little—anyhow. See here, you don't want Jack to grow up to be a member of that geranium-cheeked, leather-chair brigade that stare out of Fifth Avenue Club windows, their heaviest labor lifting a whiskey-and-soda all the way up to their mouths?"
"I certainly do not propose to accept the alternativehe proposed!" she retorted. "I assure you, such severity as I used was necessary. Nothing will bring a young man to his senses so quickly and so surely as having his resources cut off." Her composure, her confidence in her judgment, were now fully returned. "Jack will come around all right. What I did was imperative to save myself; and certainly it was best for him."
"I trust so. But I hope you don't mind if I'm a bit sorry for the boy, for, you know,"—in a lower voice, and with a stealthy look at her,—"Jack's the nearest thing to a son I've ever had."
She did not answer. In the silence that ensued an uneasiness crept into his manner.
"Caroline," bracing himself, "there is something—something you were perhaps not expecting to hear—that I must tell you."
"I trust, Judge Harvey,"—somewhat stiffly,—"that you are not about to propose to me again."
"I am not." His face flushed; then set grimly. "But I'm going to again, sometime, and I'd do it now if I thought it would do any good."
"It will not."
"Oh, I know I wouldn't fit into your present scheme of life." Bitterness and contempt had risen like a tide in the Judge's voice. "I know I'm no social figure; at least, not up to your dimensions. I know it would be a come-down to change from Mrs. De Peyster to Mrs. Harvey. Not that I'm so infernally humble, Caroline, that I don't consider myselfa damned lot better than most of the men you might possibly think about marrying."
He rose abruptly, and with a groaning burst of impatience that had a tinge of anger: "Oh, for God's sake, Caroline, why don't you throw overboard all this fashionable business, this striving to keep an empty position, and be—and be—"
"And be what?" put in Mrs. De Peyster with glittering eye.
"And be just yourself!" he cried defiantly, squarely facing her. "There, at last I've said it! And I'm going to say the rest of it. This Mrs. De Peyster that heads everything isn't at all the simple, natural gracious Carrie De Peyster that John De Peyster and I made love to! You're not the real Mrs. De Peyster; you only think you are. This Mrs. De Peyster the world knows is something that's been built by and out of the obligation which you accepted to maintain the De Peyster dignity. She's only a surface, a shell, a mask! If your mother hadn't died, and then your mother-in-law, and thrown upon you this whole infernal family business and this infernal social leadership, why, you'd have been an entirely different person—"
"Judge Harvey!"
"You'd then have been the real Mrs. De Peyster!" he rushed hotly on. "Oh, all this show, this struggle for place, this keeping up a front, I know it's only a part of the universal comedy of our pretending to be what we're not,—every one of us is doing the same,in a big way, or a little way,—but it makes me sick! For God's sake, Caroline, chuck it—chuck it all and be just the fine human woman that there is in you!"
She was trembling with suppressed wrath. Never before—not to her face, at least—had such criticism been directed at her.
"And ultimately be Mrs. Harvey—no, thank you!" she replied, in a choking, caustic voice. "But while you are at it, have you any further suggestions for my conduct?"
"Yes," said he determinedly. "You have been spending too much money, and spending it on utterly worthless purposes. This social duel—that's just what it is—between you and Mrs. Allistair, besides being nonsense, will be absolutely ruinous if you keep it up. Mrs. Allistair is as unprincipled in a social way as her husband has been in a business way; her ambition will hesitate to use no means, you know that—and, don't forget this, she can spend fifty dollars to your one!"
"I believe," with blazing hauteur, yet still controlled, "that I possess something superior to Mrs. Allistair's dollars."
"Yes," groaned the Judge, "your confounded old-family business!"
"And speaking of money," continued Mrs. De Peyster in her cuttingest, most withering, most annihilatory grand manner, "perhaps I should have spent my money worthily, like Judge Harvey, upona gift of Thomas Jefferson letters to the American Historical Society."
The shaft of sarcasm quivered into the center of Judge Harvey's sorest spot. Those recently discovered letters of Thomas Jefferson which Judge Harvey had presented to the Historical Society, and which had been so widely discussed as throwing new light upon the beginnings of the United States Republic, had a month before been pronounced and proved to be clever but arrant forgeries. The newspaper sensation and the praise that had attended the discovery and gift—warming and exalting Judge Harvey's very human pride—had been followed by an anti-climax of gibes and jeers at his gullibility. Whenever the hoax was spoken of, Judge Harvey writhed with personal humiliation, and with anger against the person who had recalled his discomfiture, and with a desire for vengeance against the perpetrator of the swindle.
"Remember this, that the first experts pronounced those letters genuine," he retorted in a hot, trembling voice. "And I'm going to get that scoundrel—you see! Only to-day I had word from the Police Commissioner that his department at last had clues to that fellow Preston. And, besides," he ended cuttingly, "though I was deceived, I at least made an effort to spend my money upon a worthy object."
They glared into one another's eyes; old friends now thoroughly aroused against each other. They might be sarcastic or out-spoken; but their self-respect,their good-breeding, would not permit them to become vituperative, to lose themselves in outbursts of wrath—though such might have been the healthier course. They knew how to plug the volcano. So for a space, though they quivered, they were silent.
Mrs. De Peyster it was who first spoke. Her voice had recovered its most formal, frigid tone.
"Please recall, Judge Harvey, that you are here at the present moment not as a friend but as my man of affairs."
"All right," he said grimly. "But at least I've told you what I thought as a friend."
"As my man of affairs," she continued with her magnificent iciness, "you may now tell me what you have been able to do for me about a cottage in Newport."
"Very well, here goes as your man of affairs: You said you wished to be in Newport from the middle of July to early in September."
"Yes."
"The house, of those available, which I thought would come nearest suiting you is 'The Heron's Nest.'"
"You mean the cottage Mrs. Van der Grift had last season?"
"The same."
"You need not describe it then. I know it perfectly. It is exactly what I desire; elegant, but not showy. And the terms?"