CHAPTER IVAn Understanding
An Understanding
Mrs. Harmon was very petulant; indeed, her aspect in one of lower station would have been deemed sulky. Reviewing the afternoon, she was convinced that to have brought Ellis there was a great mistake. Why should she take up with him, anyway? He could give her nothing but—trinkets; the old acquaintance was not so close that she was bound to help him. It had been condescension on her part; she might as well stop it now; yes, she might as well.
Yet she thought with some uneasiness of those trinkets. To accept them had not bound her to him, had it? Their money value was nothing to him. She could break from him gradually—that would be simple enough—and she could make a beginning on the drive home, for silence could show her feelings.
Ellis understood her after one glance, which expressed not only his impatience with her instability, but also a sudden new repulsion. The afternoon had opened his eyes to what the finer women were. How could he have supposed that Mrs. Harmon was really in the inner circle? How she contrasted with Judith! She seemed so flat beside the girl; she was his own kind, while Judith was better. He wished that he might drop the woman and pin his hopes to the girl.
But he could not spare Mrs. Harmon, and he had no fear that she would drop him, for he knew all her weaknesses. She was ambitious to a certain degree,but after that, lazy; she was fond of comfort, fond of—trinkets, with a healthy indifference to ways and means. In fact, although Ellis did not so phrase it, there was a barbaric strain in her, a yearning for flesh-pots and show, in which her husband's tastes and means did not permit her to indulge herself. Ellis knew that he could manage her.
"Lydia," he said, "I want to thank you for the afternoon. It must have been a great bother to you. I'm afraid I spoiled your fun."
She could but respond. "Oh, not much."
"Look here," he went on. "You know me, I think; we understand each other pretty well. These people," and he waved his hand to include the whole golf club, "are not to be too much for us. Do you mind my saying a few words about myself?"
"Oh, no!" she exclaimed with involuntary interest; for he seldom spoke his thoughts.
"That girl, Miss Blanchard," he said, "was very good to me."
"She was?" Mrs. Harmon could not subdue an accent of surprise, but hastened to explain. "I've sometimes found her haughty."
"I shan't forget you introduced me to her," said Ellis. "I mean to follow up my acquaintance there."
"No girl," suggested Mrs. Harmon, "has much influence. No unmarried woman, I mean."
"But when Miss Blanchard marries she will have it then?"
"Yes," answered Mrs. Harmon thoughtfully, and then very positively: "Yes, I think she would be a leader of the younger set."
"I am sure she would." Ellis nodded confidently. Judith had faults, notably rashness, but under wise guidance she could develop masterly qualities.
"But why——" began Mrs. Harmon in some perplexity. Then she caught sight of her companion's expression. "What! you don't mean to say that you—you would?"
"Why not?" asked Ellis. "Is it so very strange?"
"You are over forty!" cried Mrs. Harmon.
"Nothing to do with the case," he replied shortly.
"N-no," agreed Mrs. Harmon slowly. "No, I believe not—not with Judith." She looked at her companion with sudden respect. "I believe you've hit upon it! I didn't know you thought of anything of the kind."
"I need you, just the same," said Ellis. "You will help me?"
"Yes, yes," she replied. She felt a nervous inclination to giggle. "It's a big affair."
"All the more credit if you engineer it," he answered, and shrewdly, for she felt stimulated. Ifshecould engineer it! Then she could plume herself in the face of Mrs. Fenno, and would always have a strong ally in Judith.
"Yes," she cried eagerly, "it will mean a great deal to—to everybody if it happens. Why, I could——"
But Ellis would not let her run on. "Do you know her well?" he interrupted.
"I will know her better soon," she stated.
"Not too quick," he warned, fearing that she might blunder. "You know yourself that she is not a girl to be hurried. Tell me, now, what men are there of her family?"
"Only her father."
"And what sort of man is he?"
Mrs. Harmon's vocabulary was not wide. "Why, spreading," she explained. "Jaunty, you know."
"And his circumstances?"
"He is well off," she answered. "Keeps a carriage and spends freely. There was money in the family, and his wife had some too. You know how those old fortunes grow."
Or disappear, thought Ellis; he had been investigating the Colonel's standing. "Miss Blanchard has no cousins?" he asked aloud. "No other men attached to her?"
"Attached in one sense," she replied, "but not connected."
"Much obliged," he said. "Now, Lydia, if we stand by each other——"
Mrs. Harmon had forgotten her earlier thoughts. "Of course!" she cried. "Oh, it will be so interesting!"
Ellis added the finishing touch, abruptly changing the subject. "You have been to Price's recently?"
Now Price was the fashionable jeweller, and few women were indifferent to his name. Mrs. Harmon, recollecting the cause of her recent visit there, saw fit to be coy.
"Oh, yes," she said, turning her head away. "He keeps asking me to come."
"He's always picking up pretty things," said Ellis approvingly. "Did he have anything special this time?"
"Something of Orsini's," replied Mrs. Harmon, struggling to appear indifferent. For they had been lovely, those baroque pearls so gracefully set in dusky gold. Price had made her try the necklace on, and she had sighed before the glass. "I wish he wouldn't pester me so," she said irritably. "He knows I can't afford them."
"He knows you have taste," Ellis said warmly. "He calls it a great pleasure to show things to you."
"I know," she replied, mollified. "I think he means to flatter me. But, Stephen, it's getting late, and I must dress for the Fennos' ball this evening."
"Then," responded Ellis, "I will stop at Price's on my way down-town."
"Naughty! naughty!" she answered, but she radiated smiles.
Ellis, after he had left Mrs. Harmon at her door, went, as he had promised, to the establishment of the pushing Mr. Price, and asked for the proprietor.
"Got anything to show me?" Ellis demanded.
From his safe the jeweller brought out a leather case, and looked at Ellis impressively before opening it.
"Pretty small," commented Ellis.
"Ah, but——" replied the other, and opened the case. "Look—Orsini's make!"
"I don't know anything about that," Ellis said as he poked the jewels with his finger. "Look strange to me. The fashion, however?"
"The very latest," Price assured him. "Trust me, Mr. Ellis."
It was one secret of Ellis's success that he knew where to trust. He had ventured twice that day, with women at that, and the thought of it was to trouble him before he slept. But he could trust Price in matters of taste, and as to secrecy, the man was bound to him. Price had been in politics at the time when Ellis was getting "influence" in the city government; for the jeweller those days were past, but this store and certain blocks of stock were the result. Besides, he was adroit. Ellis gave the chains and pendants a final push with his finger.
"Send it, then," he said. "The usual place. By the way, how much? Whew! some things come dear,don't they? But send it, just the same, and at once. She's going out to some affair."
Thus it happened that Mrs. Harmon wore "the very latest" at her throat that night.
CHAPTER VVarious Points of View
Various Points of View
The Blanchards' equipage was a perfect expression of quiet respectability, for the carriage was sober in colour, was drawn by a strong and glossy horse, and was driven by a coachman wearing a modest livery and a discontented countenance. As it drove away from the golf club the carriage held the three members of the family, in front the younger daughter, Beth, and on the rear seat the others: Judith erect and cheerful, the Colonel cheerful also, but lounging in his corner with the air of one who took the world without care. Blanchard was fifty-eight, military as to voice and hair, for his tones were sonorous and his white whiskers fierce. Yet these outward signs by no means indicated his nature, and his manner, though bluff, appertained less to military life than to the game of poker. Not that the Colonel played cards; moreover, he drank merely in moderation, swore simply to maintain his character, betrayed only by the tint of the left side of his mustache that he liked a good cigar, and was extravagant in neither dress nor table. He kept his carriage, of course, liked the best wines at home and at the club, and in a small way was a collector of curios. Yet the Blanchards, but for the brilliance of Judith, were quiet people; he was proud to be a quiet man.
Dullness is often the penalty of indolence; the Colonel was lazy and he had small wit. Perceiving that Judith came away from the tea stimulated and even excited,he rallied her about her new acquaintance. "An interesting man, hey?" he asked for the third time.
"Yes," answered Judith absently. "Father, what is there against Mr. Ellis?"
"Only that he is a pusher. He jars." Blanchard aimed to be tolerant.
"Isn't there more?" asked little Beth.
The Colonel, as always, turned his eyes on her with pleasure. She was dark and quiet and sweet, yet her brown eyes revealed a power of examining questions for their moral aspects. "Nothing much," he said indulgently. "You don't know business, Beth. He's beaten his opponents always, and the beaten always squeal, but I doubt if he's as black as he's painted."
"I'm glad to hear you stand up for him, father," said Judith.
"He'll be looking for a wife among us," went on the Colonel with vast shrewdness and considerable delicacy. "How would he suit you, Judith?"
"Oh, father!" Beth protested. But Judith, with fire in her eyes, answered: "He's at least a man. You can't say that of every one."
Her answer made him turn toward her with a soberer thought and a new interest. His manner changed from the natural to the pompous as he set forth his views. "Money is almost the best thing one can have."
"Father, dear!" protested Beth again.
"I mean," he explained, again softening his manner, "from a father's standpoint. If I could see you two girls married with plenty of money, I could die happy." But evidently the Colonel was in the best of health, so that his words lacked impressiveness. It was one of the misfortunes of their family life that Judith was able to perceive the incongruity between her father's Delphicutterances and his actual feelings, and that the Colonel knew she found him out.
"I wasn't thinking of Mr. Ellis's money," she said at this point.
"I was," retorted the Colonel. As he was struggling with a real thought, his tones became a little less sonorous and more genuine. "In sickness riches give everything. In health there are enough troubles without money cares. I mean it, Judith."
She took his hand and caressed it. "Forgive me, father!"
"My dear—my dear!" he responded cordially.
So this, the type of their little jars, the sole disturbers of family peace, passed as usual, rapidly and completely, and Ellis was spoken of no more. Beth, with customary adroitness, came in to shift the subject, and when the three descended at their door none of them shared the coachman's air of gloom.
He, however, detained the Colonel while the girls went up the steps. "Beg pardon, sir, but could you give me a little of my wages?"
"James," returned his master with his most military air, "why will you choose such inconvenient times? Here is all I have with me." He gave some money. "Twenty dollars."
"Yessir," replied the man, not overmuch relieved. "And the rest of it, sir? There's a hundred more owing."
"Not to-day," returned the Colonel with vexation. But he was an optimist. Though at the bottom of the steps he muttered to himself something about "discharge," by the time he reached the top he was absorbed in cheerful contemplation of the vast resources which, should Judith ever chance to marry Ellis, would be at her disposal.
Five minds were, that evening, dominated by the occurrences of the afternoon. One was the Colonel's, still entertaining a dream which should properly be repugnant to one of his station. This he recognised, but he reminded himself that as a parent his daughter's good should be his care. Another mind was Mather's, disturbed by the jealousy and dread which the manliest of lovers cannot master. And one was Mrs. Harmon's; she, like Ellis, had learned much that afternoon, and meant in future to apply her knowledge.
As that evening she went to the Fennos' ball Mrs. Harmon recalled the snubs of the afternoon, and saw how insecure her footing was among these people. Sometimes she had wondered if it were worth while, this struggle to be "in"; the life was dull, lacking all natural excitements; there was no friendship possible with any of the blue-bloods. Yet she hated toknuckleto them; if she could engineer this match between Judith and Ellis, then——! And Mrs. Harmon, with the hope of coming triumph, felt fully equal to meeting Mrs. Fenno on her own ground. Mrs. Harmon wore Ellis's jewels on her breast, she had his brain to back her, she believed she knew Judith's weaknesses, and she saw before her a bright future.
Judith Blanchard made at that ball a searching review of her world, dominated as she still was by the thoughts which Ellis aroused. For he, the strongest personality in the city, had done more than to excite her curiosity: with his deference to her opinion and his appeal for her help he had succeeded—as Mather never—in wakening her sympathy. Questioning why fashion should reject him, stirred to a new comparison of reality with sham, she looked keenly about her at the ball. She was in one of the inner sanctuaries, where society bowed down and worshiped itself. Judith sniffed theincense, listened to the chants, and weighed the words of officiating priests and priestesses. She found everything to delight the eye, except the idols; everything to charm the senses, except sense.
In the ball-room there was dancing, pagan rites to what purpose? This usually unrhythmic swaying, skipping, sliding, seemed a profitless way to pass the hours when workers were in bed. Girls more or less innocent danced with men more or lessroué; this procedure, indefinitely continued, gave occasion for jealousies among the girls and selfish scheming among the men. In other rooms the older people played cards, intent at bridge or whist upon their stakes. Near the buffet thronged bachelors old or young, with not a few married men, busied in acquiring an agreeable exhilaration. Their occupation was no worse than the passionate gambling of the old women. And the house in which all this went on was beautifully classic in design and furnishings. Beside that quiet elegance, how vacant was the chatter! As Judith thought thus, slowly the spirit of revolt came to her.
The master of the house approached her; he was leonine, massive, somewhat lame from rheumatism. She saw him, as he came, speaking among his guests; his smile was cynical. It lighted upon her father, and the Colonel, his character somehow exposed by that smile, seemed shallow. It turned to the men at the sideboard, and their interests seemed less than the froth in their glasses. The smile turned on Judith, and she felt called to give an account of herself.
But he merely asked her: "Where is Beth?"
"Gone with Miss Pease to a meeting of the Charity Board," Judith answered.
Mr. Fenno grunted, looking at her sidewise. "Better employed than we!"
Then he rambled away, neither knowing nor caring what encouragement he had given to her mood. He missed Beth, for his rheumatism was sharp, the company inane, and Beth was almost the only person who could make him contented with himself. But Judith felt the reflection of his cynicism and was stirred still deeper. What was there to interest her here?
Among all the women Mrs. Harmon alone was in disaccord. No dressmaker could conceal her natural style; the eye and carriage of the Judge's wife were bolder than those of the women about her. A free humour attracted some of the men; the women avoided her, the more delicate from instinct, the stronger with a frank dislike. This antipathy Judith had often felt and expressed, yet to-night she reviewed and rejected it. Mrs. Harmon belonged to the class of the rising Americans; in that class Judith felt interest, questioning if its vigour and freshness should not outweigh external faults. She went to Mrs. Harmon and began to talk with her.
She tried to find, within the exterior, the solid qualities of the middle class. But thought and purpose seemed lacking; in Mrs. Harmon the vulgarity lay deeper than the surface. She was frivolous; she liked the sparkle and the show, the wine, the dancing, and the gaiety. Promising herself an intimacy with Judith, she talked willingly, but it was only upon the subject of Ellis that she became interesting.
She told Judith much about him. He had always been persevering and ambitious; he had left his town as a boy because even then he found it too little. Ellis had begun small; now he was big. Some day, said Mrs Harmon significantly, people would recognise him.
Why not, thought Judith as she looked about her,admit Ellis here? What was an aristocracy for but to reward success? How could it remain sound but by the infusion of new blood? Ellis had proved his quality by the things he had done; he had beaten Mather; yet these halls which to Mather were open were closed to Ellis. It was unfair to refuse to recognise him! What were the abilities of these men here, compared with his?
Thus Judith, tolerant in her broad Americanism, admiring the forces which to-day are accomplishing such marvellous results, thought of her world. At the same time Ellis also was thinking of it. His was the fifth mind moved by that afternoon's occurrence, but moved the most deeply of them all. On leaving Judith first, like a man smitten by a slender blade he had spoken, acted, thought as before. Then the inward bleeding began, and the pain. He had gone away from her thinking of her as something to be won, but no more distant, no less a commodity, than a public franchise or a seat in the legislature. Thus he had discussed her with Mrs. Harmon, but before night his thought of the girl had changed. Her refinement was new to him; he recalled her in imagination and dwelt on her features and her voice. Yet, equally with her delicacy, her spirit charmed him with its frankness and its admiration of great things. There was a subtle flattery in her interest in him; he had never thought of himself as she did; he saw himself magnified in her eyes, which seemed to refine the baseness from his employments and purposes. She gave him a new idea of himself, and held before him vague new aims.
He had entertained some of his henchmen that evening at his table, had tasted while they ate, sipped while they drank, listened while they spoke of politics. He sat at the head of the table, like the Sphinx after whichhe was familiarly called, indifferent to their uncouthness and their little thoughts; then at the end he suddenly called them into executive session, asked a few keen questions, gave some brief directions, and dismissed them. Thus he had always ruled them, from outside, commanding respect by his decision, almost awe by his silence. Though his purposes were not clear, the men went to obey him, having learned to support him blindly, for he never failed. Such was Ellis among his subordinates, the "old man" of whom they never asked questions, with whom they never attempted familiarity. They praised him as they went, proud of their connection with him. But he put out the lights as soon as the men were gone, and sat at the window, looking at Fenno's house.
There was the temporary focus of social life; he saw the lights; had he opened his window he might have heard the music. Carriages drove up, people entered the house, and on the curtains of the ball-room he saw moving shadows. In that house were what he wanted—recognition, a new life, Judith. But she was guarded by the powers of a whole order, was infinitely remote.
His talk with Judith had doubled his determination to enter the upper world, and yet changed his regard for it. It became Judith's world, seeming to-night like a house which she inhabited, more precious by her presence. And because she was so much finer than he had imagined the women of her class, her sphere looked farther away, and his determination to enter it was tempered by the fear of failure.
As he took the first step in his new venture, he had been half ashamed of his desire to "better himself," quite unable to justify himself by appeal to the natural American wish to obtain the highest indorsement of his community. So long as there had been anythingleft for him to win, he had turned instinctively toward it. Now he suddenly realised that he faced his greatest fight. He had often said that he liked fighting; he had struggled for many years with all the power of nerve and mind. To-night his brain seemed weary, bruised and scarred as a body might be. Watching the house where Judith was, contemplating her image, a softness came over Ellis, new to him; resolution became a wish, and then turned to yearning. It was with difficulty that he roused himself, surprise mingling with his contempt of the unrecognised sensation. He was in for it now, he told himself almost roughly; the game was worth the candle, and he would see it through.
CHAPTER VIIntroducing an Eccentric
Introducing an Eccentric
Mr. Peveril Pease had finished his week's work, and feeling no obligation to attend the golf club tea, went home and settled himself in his snuggery among his books. When his feet were once in slippers, his velvet jacket was on, and he held a well-marked volume in his hand, he felt he had more true comfort than all the golf clubs in the world could give. So thorough was his satisfaction that rather than read he gave himself up to the enjoyment of his well-being. Gazing about the room, Mr. Pease permitted himself a brief retrospection of his career.
Few men in the town could with so much right compliment themselves. He had begun life with nothing but ancestral debts and encumbered property, and now he was nearly as rich as Ellis, who had started with the traditional dollar in his pocket. Pease's credit was firm as a rock; the stock of his bank was quoted—no, it was hoarded. The widow, the orphan, the struggling clerks who had their money in Pease's hands could sleep at ease, and the respect in which he was held by the business men of the city—but he wasn't thinking of that.
No, this little house was his thought, and this room, and that array of books. He had been thirteen years of age when his grandfather died, and within the month he had refused the trustees his permission to sell a foot of the real estate. Judge Harmon never tired of tellingof the visit of the boy, swelling with rage and resolution. "Cynthia may be willing, but grandfather never would sell, and I won't have it!" he had declared, and so strong was the lad's feeling that the trustees, divided in opinion, had yielded to him, backing the debts of the estate with their own credit. At eighteen he was practically their adviser and his own trustee; at twenty he had redeemed the homestead with his earnings; at twenty-five he had sold a single lot of the down-town property for what the entire estate would not have brought twelve years before. So much for determination and a long head.
Fifteen years more had passed, and still his life had not made him hard nor calculating. When he left his office he left his business; he went "home," to the house in which he was born. The little shingled building, so quaint, had been in the family for six generations; a Percival Pease founded it, a Pembroke Pease finished it, a Peveril Pease owned it now. It had never been rebuilt; the wainscot was still the same, the floors sagged, the stairs were queer, the ceilings low. It corresponded the least in the world with his riches and his great interests. But Pease had the heart of a boy and the affections of a woman. The house was his paradise, the room his bower, the books his especial delight. All his spare time he spent among them, giving himself to "mental improvement."
Many people thought him odd; some called him "poor Mr. Pease," with such pity as is given to the struggling artist or the ambitious novelist, for Pease had never been even to the high-school, and it seemed foolish for him to try to cultivate his mind. They did not consider that the grace of humility was not denied him, with just a touch of that saving quality, humour. He knew himself fairly well, he guarded himself successfully,only one person really knew his heart, and for the opinion of the rest he had a smile. Let them laugh or pity, they had nothing so fine as he, they were not so happy as he, and his kind of a fool was not the worst.
And so we must acknowledge that he was thoroughly complacent. None of Judith Blanchard's discontent stirred him, none of Mather's anger at the world, and none of Ellis's desire to advance. This little room gave him all that he wanted: intellectual improvement, the feeling of progress, mental satisfaction. Pease went beyond cherishing an ideal of happiness; he believed that he was happy, and that no one could take his happiness from him.
And thinking so at this minute, his eye rested fondly on a motto on the wall.
It was from Goethe; it was lettered in old German characters, framed in passe-partout, and hung above the mantel. Pease had dug it out of "Faust"; it embodied so completely his notion of existence that he resolved to keep it before him always. No mere translation could do it justice; "Gray, dear friend, is all theory, and green the golden tree of life"—that was too tame. No; the sonorous German could best express it:
"Grau, theurer Freund, ist aller Theorie,Und Gruen des Lebens goldner Baum."
"Grau, theurer Freund, ist aller Theorie,Und Gruen des Lebens goldner Baum."
Pease whispered the words to himself. Gray indeed were the lives of all others; he alone dwelt beneath life's green tree and ate its golden fruit. This house, this room, these books—ah, Paradise!
There came a knock at the door. "Peveril?"
"Yes, Cynthia."
"Don't forget, little Miss Blanchard is coming to dinner."
"No, Cynthia."
She was not requesting him to "dress." He always did. She was not asking him to be on time; he always was. Being on the safe side of the door, however, his cousin meant to remind him of her hardihood in inviting to his table some one young and pretty.
Not, Miss Cynthia sighed, that it would make any difference to him. When her visitor arrived a little early, and sat chatting in the parlour, Miss Pease reflected that Peveril, upstairs, was dressing no more carefully for this charming girl than he would have done for old Mrs. Brown. Charming—but he knew nothing of the real, the true, the living best!
Thus we may briefly record that Miss Cynthia Pease, who was the one person that understood her cousin, was not wholly in sympathy with his pursuits. Not that she would have acknowledged it to him, nor to anyone else, not even to "little Miss Blanchard," Judith's sister Beth, who was questioning her in a spirit of fun.
"I'm so afraid of dining with your cousin!" Beth exclaimed.
"No, you're not!" contradicted Miss Cynthia grimly.
"If I should make some slip in statement, or spot the table-cloth! He is so accurate, they all say."
"You may depend on him to be polite under all circumstances," responded Miss Cynthia, glaring.
"But I should know what he would think," persisted the young lady.
Miss Cynthia advanced to fury, scarcely repressed. "No, you wouldn't!" she denied emphatically. "I won't have you laugh at him."
"Why, you laugh at him yourself," said Beth. "You know you do."
"And if I do?" retorted Miss Pease. "Let me tell you he's the dearest, kindest man that ever—"
"Why, Miss Cynthia," cried the other, "don't I know?"
"Nobody knows," was the response.
Now all grades of opposition, from caustic irony to smothered denunciation, were habitual in Miss Pease's manner, but as she said "Nobody knows," lo! there were tears in her voice, if not in her eyes.
"Miss Cynthia!" cried Beth.
Miss Pease was gaunt and grewsome, so that her manner fitted her perfectly, but now as she sat winking her eyes and twisting her face she became pathetic. The girl rose quickly and came to her side.
"Have I hurt you?" she inquired anxiously.
"No, child, no," answered Miss Pease, recovering herself. "You didn't know what a sentimental old fool I am, did you? There, sit down again. You see," (she hesitated before committing herself further) "I was thinking, just before you came, of what Peveril has been to me. Your talk roused me again."
"He has done a great deal for you?" asked Beth with sympathy.
"Everything in the world!" answered Miss Cynthia warmly, not having resumed her manner. "Since our grandfather died Peveril has been my protector, though he is two years younger. You know we were very poor at first."
"Very poor?"
"We had nothing but debts," stated Miss Cynthia. "We lived in boarding-houses for seven years before Peveril could buy the homestead and get the strangers out of it. It was a proud day when he brought me here, and told me this was mine to live in until the end of my life. And yet for two years more I went daily to my work—I was in Benjamin's great dry-goods store, my dear—until when they asked me to be the head ofthe linen department Peveril said I should work no more, and insisted on my staying at home."
"I never heard of that," cried Beth. "That you were ever in Benjamin's!"
"And a very good saleswoman I was," said Miss Cynthia. "But after that the money began to come in to us, and Peveril sold the land where the Security Building now is. I have not done a piece of work since then, except for Peveril or for charity. I am a rich woman, my dear."
"But you do so much for charity!" exclaimed Beth with enthusiasm.
When it came to praise, Miss Pease became grim at once. "I've got to keep busy with something," she snapped.
"But tell me more," begged Beth.
"There is nothing more," declared Miss Cynthia. "And now I hear him coming, five minutes before the hour, just as he always does. Don't be afraid of him; he has the softest heart in the world, as you ought to discover, since you had the skill to find mine."
Beth had only the time to squeeze her friend's hand as the two stood up together. She had discovered Miss Pease's heart; it was an unconscious specialty of Beth's to find the weak points in the armour of forbidding persons, and she had on her list of friends more of the lonely and unknown than had many a worker in organised charity. She was, in fact, a worker in her own special field, the well-to-do, bringing them the sympathy and affection which they needed as much as do the poor. She had neither shrewdness nor experience; what she did was quite unconscious, but her value was unique. Mr. William Fenno, who had no love for his wife's pleasures and whose daughters took after their mother, loved to have the girl with him. Judge Harmon, notquite at home by his own gas-log, felt more comfortable if Beth were spending the evening with him—for she made no pretense of coming to see his wife. Quite unconsciously, a similar bond had been growing up between Beth and Miss Pease, and took open recognition on that day when Miss Cynthia, allowing her eyes to be pleased by the girl's freshness, blurted her feeling and said: "I like you. You are so unlike your sister."
But now Mr. Pease entered the room, and stood bowing while his cousin repeated the formula: "Peveril, here is Miss Elizabeth Blanchard. Beth, you remember my cousin, Mr. Peveril Pease?"
Beth thought he was "funny," meaning he was peculiar. He was short and rotund, he was immaculate and formal. His eyes met hers soberly, as if he had little of his cousin's wit, however much less savage. Talk opened with the golf club tea, and before the subject was exhausted he led the conversation dexterously to the weather. Dinner was announced while the beauty of the spring was yet under discussion, and at table, for a while, Beth was still repeating to herself that he was a "funny" little man.
Curiously, Pease was in an entirely new situation. Never had he been so placed that he must give an hour's undivided attention to a girl. He had never learned that girls have individuality; he avoided them as a rule, and at dinners there was always one at his left hand to relieve the other at his right, so that he never spoke to either of them long. Besides, not being regarded as a marrying man, Pease was invariably given the "sticks" to entertain. Girls had been to him, therefore, undeveloped creatures, displaying similar characteristics, being usually unacquainted with serious topics, and (quite as usually) devoid of personal attractions. Beth Blanchard, however, was something different. Withoutdwelling on her charms, it is enough to say that she was pretty; and without entering upon her mental acquirements, let us believe that she knew what was going on. She was quite used, moreover, to the society of older persons, and could meet Pease on many grounds, although it happened that the subject chosen was Europe.
"You have been there?" asked Pease quickly when Germany was mentioned.
"We spent some time there," Beth replied.
"Of course you have seen Weimar, then," Pease assumed. He happened to be right.
"Oh, yes," she answered, quite as if Weimar were still a focus of travel. "We spent a month there; mamma was quite ill. You know"—and here she addressed Miss Cynthia—"that she died over there, and then we came home."
Mr. Pease, in conjunction with his cousin, murmured his condolences, and Miss Blanchard, not to make the evening doleful, turned again to speak of Weimar.
"We lived quite near to Goethe's house," she said.
Then she beheld Mr. Pease glow with admiration. "You are very fortunate," he cried. "The inspiration must have been great."
"I am no writer, Mr. Pease," returned Beth.
"But," he explained, "it must have permanently bettered and improvedyou."
"Do you think I needed it?" she flashed.
Miss Cynthia, at her end of the table, was biting her lip. Pease, not perceiving that he was being rallied, fell to apologising. "Oh, no," he gasped. "I meant——"
She spared him. "I was not serious," she laughed. "You must pardon me." It was no new matter withher to relieve the embarrassed. Then she led him once more to the topic.
"You like Weimar, Mr. Pease?"
"Oh, I only like Goethe, you know, and Schiller. I've never been from America."
"And yet you read German?"
"Not very well. You see, I——"
And then he spoke of himself. Miss Cynthia sat amazed. Here was Peveril, who was always silent regarding his hobby, speaking from his heart. Beth coaxed a little; he hung back a bit, but he yielded. It was as if a miser were giving up his gold, yet the gold came. For all that she had invited Beth there, wishing to stir her cousin from his rut, Miss Cynthia presently became enraged. Peveril was telling more than he had ever told her. This chit of a girl, what charm had she?
But Pease himself, as he told the unaccustomed tale in halting sentences, felt comfort. It had been a long time repressed within him; he had seldom touched on it with Cynthia, and though he had not known it, the loneliness of it had been wearing on him all these years. It was sympathy that now brought it out, that quality in Beth which could pierce the armour of such a cynic as Miss Cynthia, or warm so cold a heart as William Fenno's. Pease yielded to it as frost to the sun. So he told of himself and his studies, and the impulse of all these years he confessed at the last.
"You see," he said, flushing painfully, "it's poetry that I love."
And he sat, the man of business, with his fair skin pink as a girl's. Then, lest she should mistake, he explained.
"You mustn't think," he said eagerly, "that I really suppose I understand. I know I lose much—I—I'm not very deep, you know. There are so many subtle things and such beautiful ones that pass me by. Only,you see [more hesitation], I got such pleasure from the English poets that I—tried the German. With a dictionary, you know, and a grammar. And all this is so much to me that I—I don't care for anything else. Can you understand?"
Then he was swept by doubt and fear. Would she laugh? Not she! Beth made him understand she appreciated his feelings, and presently Miss Cynthia found herself listening to a discussion of Shakespeare. Her lip curled—how foolish of Peveril! What real interest could Beth take in his ideas?
He asked himself the same question, with a sudden start, for Beth laughed merrily. What had he said that was laughable? She held up a finger. "Mr. Pease, I am going to accuse you of something. Will you promise to tell me the truth?"
This, he dimly felt, was a species of banter. "I promise," he said uncomfortably.
"Then, sir, do you memorise?"
"Why, yes," he confessed.
"I knew it!" she exclaimed. "Miss Cynthia, are you not ashamed of him? I know nobody that memorises now, Mr. Pease, except you and—me!"
He was relieved, and they fell to speaking eagerly. For the next few minutes Miss Cynthia felt the outrage of hearing poetry quoted at her table. Wordsworth, Scott, Burns, and then—for Pease was truly patriotic—Lanier and Longfellow. And so they came to discuss the meaning of a passage, and took up the subject of "Life." Next, "Happiness." At all this sentiment Miss Cynthia ground her teeth.
Beth was of the opinion that environment makes happiness. Pease maintained that we make our own environment. "Impossible!" said Beth, thinking of Mr. Fenno and the Judge.
"Easily done!" declared Pease, thinking of himself.
Then they spoke of "Ideals of Conduct"—Which of them make most for Happiness? By little and little they came to the point where Pease felt impelled to open his breast again. He spoke of his motto, quoting it clumsily with his self-taught accent, so that a smile almost came to her lips. She drew from him that he believed he knew the gray of life, and the green.
"But, Mr. Pease," Beth objected, "how can you say you know so much of life when you live so much alone?"
"We are late—we are late!" cried Miss Cynthia suddenly. "We shall miss our engagement if we sit so long here."
And so the two ladies presently went away, refusing all escort. Standing at the open door, Pease watched them with a strange regret. The thought of returning to his books was astonishingly unwelcome; they seemed to be but leather, ink, and paper. He looked up at the heavens. Something was stinging in his veins: what a lovely world! For the first time he recognised the beauty of the moon.
His thoughts were interrupted by a footstep, and there stood Mather. "Mr. Pease," said he, "this is an unusual hour for business. But the kind offer which you made me to-day——" He hesitated.
"The position had only possibilities," answered Pease. "You would be your own master, because I should leave everything to you, but it would be like beginning at the bottom again. I knew you would refuse me."
"You mistake," returned Mather with energy. "I like the chance, and will build up your venture for you. I am ready to take your instructions to-night, and go to work Monday morning."
"Come inside," said Mr. Pease.