That "bangy Russian thing" whipped her blood and sent strange pictures flying through her head. For the moment it loosed the cords that seemed to bind her to a stake. The heat and smell and twaddling voices of the hotel dining-room faded away. And in its place the divine music filled her soul, transforming her from a weak and doubting woman, who floated helplessly in her petty world of comforts, into some more active, striving creature,—a maker and moulder of life!
Jackson had lately bought a couple of hunters, and Sundays, when it was good weather, Helen and he often went over to the club stables to see the horses and the hounds. It was a pleasant spot of a fine summer morning. The close-cropped turf rolled gently westward from the brow of the hill on which the club-house stood to a large horizon of fields, where a few isolated trees, branching loftily, rose against a clear sky. The stables were hidden in a little hollow some distance from the house, and beyond them was a paddock where a yelping pack of hounds was kennelled. Close at hand some captive foxes crouched in their pen, listening sharp-eyed and fearful to the noisy chorus of their enemies.
No sports of any kind were allowed on Sundays, for the community was severely orthodox in regard to the observance of Sunday, as in other merely moral matters. But when the weather was good there were usually to be found about the stables a number of young men and women, preparing for tête-à-tête rides over the country roads or practising jumps at the stone wall beside the paddock. Later in the morning they would stroll back to the club veranda for a cool drink, and gossip until the church-going members returned from service, and it was time to dress for luncheon.
Of the younger set Venetia Phillips was most often to be found down by the stone wall on a Sunday morning. She had come home from Europe this last time handsome, tall, and fearless, thirsty for excitement of all sorts, and had made much talk in the soberer circles of suburban society. She was a great lover of dogs and horses, and went about followed by a troop of lolloping dogs—an immense bull presented by an English admirer, and a wolf hound specially imported, being the leaders of the pack. She was one of the young women who still played golf now that it was no longer fashionable, and on hot days she might be seen on the links, her brown arms bare to the shoulders, and her blue black hair hanging down her back in a flood. She rode to all the hunts, not excepting the early morning meets late in the season. It was said, also, that she drank too much champagne at the hunt dinners, and occasionally allowed a degree of familiarity to her admirers that shocked public opinion in a respectable and censorious society which had found it hard to tolerate the mother.
Indeed, Mrs. Phillips could do nothing with her; she even confided her troubles to Helen. "My dear, the girl has had every chance over there abroad;—we had the very best introductions. She spoiled it all by her idiocy. Stanwood is making a fool of himself with a woman, too. Enjoy your children now, while you can spank them when they are naughty."
And Helen, although she had scant sympathy with the domestic tribulations of the rich, was puzzled by the girl. The friendship between them, which had begun so prosperously over Pete's sick-bed, had largely faded away. The winter after their visits to Dr. Coburn's laboratory Venetia had spent in a famous Eastern school, where Western girls of her class were sent to acquire that finish of manner which is still supposed to be the peculiar property of the older communities. On her return she was no longer the impulsive girl that stared wide-eyed at the eccentric doctor's opinions; there were reticencies in her which the married woman could not overcome. Since then their paths had crossed more rarely, and when they met there was a certain teasing bravado in Venetia's attitude which prevented intimacy.
Mrs. Buchanan's pungent gossip about the girl, and the widow's bitter complaint of her daughter, rose to Helen's mind one Sunday as they stood together at the stone wall by the club stables, watching Lane, who was trying a new hunter. Lane's temper was notoriously bad; the Kentucky horse was raw and nervous; he refused the jump, almost throwing his rider. Lane, too conscious of the spectators, his vanity touched, beat the horse savagely on the head.
"Low!" Venetia grumbled audibly, turning her back on the scene. "Come!" she said to Helen, seizing her arm. "Haven't you had enough of brutes for one morning? Come up to the club and have a talk. That's the man madam my mother would like to have me marry! Do you suppose he'd use the whip on his wife?"
"He has his good side, even if his temper is short," Helen objected, as they strolled across the links toward the club-house. "You might do worse, Venetia."
"Quite the picture of a young girl's fancy! Forty-eight, and he's asked every eligible girl in the city to marry him, and they have all shied. So do I, though I wasn't in the running over there in London—in spite of all the fuss the Chicago papers made about me, I wasn't—you know Mrs. Phillips runs a regular press bureau! But I am not quite down to him yet."
They had the club veranda to themselves at that mid-morning hour. Venetia flung herself into a chair and flicked the tips of her boots with her whip. The small Francis, who had followed his mother, tumbled on the grass with the terrier Pete. Now and then Pete, who was privileged on Sundays, would hobble to the veranda and look at his mistress.
"You wouldn't marry a man like that, now would you? Well? You want to say something disagreeable, don't you! You have had it on your conscience for weeks. I could see it in your eye the other afternoon when you were with Mrs. Freddie Stewart—that nice little cat. Come, spit it out, as the boys say."
"Yes, I have had something on my mind."
"You don't like me now that I have grown up?"
"I thought we should be so much better friends," Helen admitted frankly.
"I am not the nice little girl you used to know when the doctor entertained us and Pete with scientific conversation mixed with social philosophy—that's what troubles you?"
"Why—why are you so different?"
"You mean, why do I smoke? drink champagne? and let men kiss me?"
She laughed at the look of consternation on Helen's face.
"That's what you mean, isn't it? My sporting around generally, and drinking too much wine at that dinner last fall, and supplying these veranda tabbies with so much food for thought? Why can't I be the nice, sweet young woman you were before you were married? A comfort to Mrs. Phillips and an ornament to Forest Manor!"
"You needn't be all that, and yet strike a pleasanter note," the older woman laughed back.
"My dear gray mouse, I'm lots worse than that. Do you know where I was the other night when mamma was in such a temper because I hadn't come home, and telephoned all around to the neighbors?"
"At the Bascoms'?"
"Of course, all sweetly tucked up in bed. Not a bit of it! A lot of us had dinner and went to see a show—that was all on the square. But afterward Teddy Stearns and I did the Clark Street levee, at one in the morning, and quite by ourselves. We saw heaps and heaps—it was very informing—I could tell you such stories! And it went all right until Teddy, like a little fool, got into trouble at one of the places. Some one said something to me not quite refined, and Ted was just enough elated to be on his dignity. If we hadn't had an awful piece of luck, there would have been a little paragraph in the papers the next morning. Wouldn't that have made a noise?"
"You little fool!" groaned Helen.
"Oh! I don't know," Venetia continued imperturbably. "Let me tell you about it. Just as I had hold of Ted and was trying to calm him down, somebody hit him, and there was a general scrap. Ted isn't so much of a fool when he is all sober. Just then a man grabbed me, and I found myself on the street. It was— Well, no matter just now who it was. Then the man went back for Ted, and after a time he got him, rather the worse for his experience. We had to send him to a hotel, and then my rescuer saw me home to the Bascoms'. My, what a talking he put up to me on the way to the North Side!"
She waited to see what effect she had produced, but as Helen said nothing she continued with a laugh:—
"I suppose you are thinking I am a regular little red devil. But you don't know what girls do. I've seen a lot of girls all over. And most of 'em, if they travel in a certain class, do just as fool things as that. On the quiet, you understand, and most of them don't get into trouble, either. They marry all right in the end, and become quiet little mammas like you, dear. Sometimes, when they are silly, or weak, or have bad luck, there's trouble. Now, I am not talking loose, as Ted would say. I've known Baltimore girls, and New York girls, and Philadelphia girls, and Boston girls,—and the Boston ones are the worst ever!
"Why should the women be so different from the men, anyway? They are the same flesh and blood as their fathers and brothers, and other girls' fathers and brothers, too.... Don't make that face at me! I'm nice enough, too, at least a little nice. Didn't you ever sit here evenings, or over at the Eversley Club, and watch the nice little girls? But perhaps you couldn't tell what it means when they do things and say things. You ought to get a few points from me or some other girl who is next them. We could tell you what they've been up to ever since they left school, day by day."
The small Francis was rolling over and over on the green turf, rejoicing in the freedom of soiling his white suit. Beyond the polo field a couple on horseback were passing slowly along the curving road into the woods. The cicadas sang their piercing August song among the shrubs. It was a drowsy, decorous scene.
"It isn't all like that," the older woman protested, looking out on the pleasant landscape. "You can choose what you will have."
"Do you think I should do any better if I chose your kind, my dear?" Venetia asked quietly. "Or my mother's? Is Maida Rainbow's conversation an improvement on Ted's? It isn't any more grammatical. And Mrs. Ollie Buchanan's talk is worse than mine. Come now, dear lady, tell me the truth! After several winters by the suburban fireside do you still find your heart beating warmly when hubbie plods up the street at eve in his new auto? Do you advise me to marry Mr. Stephen Lane and transfer my activities to Breathett Lodge,—join the tabby chorus, just to keep the tabbies quiet? Is the married state of all these people you and I know out here to be so much desired?"
"Most of the men and women you know here in Chicago are not bad."
"Oh, no! They're good out here, most of 'em, and dull, damn dull. They're afraid to take off their gloves for fear it isn't the correct thing. A lot of 'em aren't used to good clothes, like that Mrs. Rainbow. As uncle says, 'Our best people are religious and moral.' But there's more going on than you dream of, gray mouse."
"You are too wise, Venetia."
"I'll tell you the reason why we sport. We're dull, and we are looking for some fun. The men get all the excitement they need scrambling for money. Girls want to be sports, too, and they can't do the money act. So they sport—otherwise. That's the why."
She rapped the floor with her whip, and laughed at Helen's perplexity.
"I want to be a real sport, and know what men are like, really, when they are off parade, as you nice women don't know 'em."
"Well, what are they like?"
"Some beasts, some cads, some good fellows," Venetia pronounced definitively. "Do you know why I let men kiss me sometimes? To see if they will, if that sort of thing is all they want of me. And most of 'em do want just that, married or single. When a man has the chance, why, he goes back to the ape mighty quick."
She nodded sagely when Helen laughed at her air of wisdom, and she continued undisturbed:—
"There are some of them now, coming up from the paddock. They have had their little Sunday stroll, and now they want a drink to make them feel cool and comfy, and some conversation with the ladies. We must trot out our prettiest smiles and smoothest talk while they sit tight and are amused."
"And so you think this is all, just these women and men you see here and in other places like this? And the millions and millions of others who are trying to live decent lives, who work and struggle?"
"I talk of those I know, dearie. What are the rest to me? Just dull, ordinary people you never meet except on the street or in the train. We are the top of it all.... I don't care for books and all that sort of thing, or for slumming and playing with the poor. If you knew them, too, I guess you'd find much the same little game going on down there."
"What a horrid world!"
"It is a bit empty," the girl yawned. "I suppose the only thing, after you have had your run, is to marry the decentest man you can find, who won't get drunk, or spend your money, or beat you, and have a lot of children. Yours are awfully nice! I'd like to have the kids without the husband—only that would make such a row!"
"That would please your mother, to have you married."
"Oh, mother! I suppose it would please her to have me marry Mr. Stephen Lane," Venetia answered coldly. "One doesn't talk about one's mother, or I'd like to tell you a thing or two on that head. She needn't worry over me. She's had her fun, and is taking what she can get now."
The group of men and women drew near the club-house. Jackson stopped to speak to a man who had just driven up. Venetia pointed to him derisively.
"There! See Jackie, your good man? He's buzzing old Pemberton, that crusty pillar of society, because he's got a little game to play with him. He's after old Pemby's vote for that school house. You mustn't look so haughty, dear wife. It's your business, too, to be nice to dear Mr. Pemberton. I shall leave you when he comes up, so that you can beguile him with your sweet ways. It's money in thy husband's purse, mouse, and hence in thy children's mouths. Now if we women could scramble for the dollars,—why, we shouldn't want other kinds of mischief. I'd like to be a big broker, like Rainbow, and handle deals, and make the other fellows pay, pay, pay!"
She swung the small Francis over her head and tumbled him in the grass, to the delight of Pete, who hobbled about his mistress, yelping with joy.
There was something hard and final in the girl's summary of her experience. And yet in spite of the obvious injustice of her accusations, Helen felt startled and ashamed before her railing. After all, was there such an infinite distance between the decent lives of herself, her husband, and their friends and the heedless career of this undisciplined girl? Were they governed by finer ends than hers? Vigorous, hot-blooded, and daring, Venetia would have battled among men as an equal, and got from the fight for existence health, and sanity, and joy. As it was, she was rich enough to be protected in the struggle for existence, and was tied down by the prejudices of her class. She was bottled passion!
The architect still held Pemberton in conversation on the drive, and Venetia presently returned to Helen, smiling slyly into her face.
"That doctor man was an amusing chap, wasn't he? I mean Dr. Coburn, the one who mended up Pete when I was a young miss, and outraged mamma by sending her a receipted bill for two hundred and fifty dollars. He asks about you still. Why did you drop him? I always thought that was a bit queer in you, you know. You liked him, but he wasn't your kind, and you dropped him."
"Where have you seen him?" Helen asked evasively.
"Oh, here and there. He writes me pretty often, too. Why not? He was the man who helped me out of that scrape with Teddy. Wouldn't Jackie let you have anything to do with him? Jack is an awful snob, you know."
"Francis didn't like him," Helen admitted a little sadly. "I am afraid I didn't make much of an effort either with him or with that poor Mr. Hussey. It's so hard to do some things, to know people you like when they're out of your path."
Venetia scrutinized the older woman's face and laughed.
"Just so! What did I tell you?"
"How is he?"
"Just as always,—poor, down at the heel and all over, an out-and-out crank."
"How do you meet him?" Helen asked pointedly.
"Sometimes at his hang-out, as he calls it. I've had supper there once or twice with Molly Bascom. You needn't be alarmed. We talk science, and he abuses doctors. He trundled off to Paris or Vienna with that queer machine of his, and got some encouragement over there. You should hear him talk about Europe! Now he's crazy over some new bugs he's found. He may not make good from Jack's point of view. But you see that doesn't prevent me from liking him. He has a great time thinking all by himself. He'd starve himself to death if he had to, to do what he's after. That's the real thing. I offered him money once to help him out."
"Venetia, not that!"
"Yes. I said, 'See here, my friend, I've more of this than I want,' which was a lie. But I was willing to sell a horse or two. 'Help yourself,' I said, 'and when I want it I'll ask you.' I put a cardcase I had with me on the table, stuffed of course. He took it up, took out what was in it, handed the money back, and dropped the case in a drawer. 'None of that,' he said. 'I don't take money from a woman.' I was glad afterward that he didn't take it, though I don't know why—he looked specially hard up. I suppose I might have done it a nicer way, but I thought he would understand and treat me like a little girl, as he always has.... Well, here comes Jack at last."
She gave the architect a hand, which he shook with mock impressiveness.
"How do, Jackie! I've been teaching your domestic angel a thing or two."
"I guess you can't corrupt her."
It was evident that she and Jackson understood each other very well.
Season shifted into season, and meanwhile an impalpable veil of difference was falling between the architect and his wife. The peaceful days of winter, early spring, and late autumn were precious to the woman—days when the silent processes of nature touched her senses softly, and she could live undisturbed by calls and dinners with their array of familiar faces. Then she heard the birds in the trees behind the house, and listened to the rustling of the tall poplars beneath her windows, and watched the vivid colors of the lake. This harmony of nature, this great enveloping organism of peace, she was beginning to feel, was all that life held for her,—nature and her children, whose wants she fulfilled. Yet ever in the background, not far away, there hung in the horizon that black cloud above the city, which could not wholly be shut out in any revery of country peace. For with it she and her children were linked by all the cords of modern life.
She had felt the sly reproach in Venetia's references to Dr. Coburn. The seedy doctor had drawn her strongly, and yet in the face of her husband's contemptuous indifference to him she had made but one or two feeble attempts to reach him. A few times, also, she had visited the bookbinder's sickly wife, and after the birth of little Francis had revived the class in bookbinding. Jackson had fitted up a studio for the class out of an old teahouse on the bluff, where during mild weather they received their friends in æsthetic informality. But the class had soon dwindled, the young married women of whom it was composed flitting to other pursuits, and the taciturn bookbinder taking offence at a fancied slight suddenly ceased his visits. Some weeks later when Helen called at the Husseys' rooms to see the wife, she found that they had moved away, and having written Dr. Coburn for their address without success, she had made no further attempt to find them.
Thus ended her efforts to reach that world which lay outside her own circle. More and more, as her married life went on, she had succumbed to themilieuthat her husband had chosen. As his struggle for success grew hotter, she, too, in her way, had been absorbed into it, and had become the domestic and social satellite which he needed in his relations with rich clients. And so Venetia's careless defence of herself pricked her. Was there, after all, anything more admirable in the decent life that she and her husband led with its little circle of selfish activities than in the crude outbreaks of Venetia Phillips which had caused so much perturbation in Forest Park? They were not vicious to be sure,—the people she lived with; they were merely dull and negative.
One of these brooding days shortly after the talk on the club veranda, Helen set forth to a neighbor's with a bundle of books and some flowers for Mrs. Buchanan, who was giving a dinner that evening. She had reached the point in the winding road where a long bridge crossed a deep ravine on the level with the topmost branches of lofty trees. At the other end of the bridge a man was standing looking down into the green depths below. He was so much absorbed in the ravine that he did not hear the woman's steps as she drew near. When she passed behind him, he glanced up with a startled look in his black eyes, and grasping the bicycle by his side was moving off.
"Don't you remember me, Mr. Hussey?" Helen asked, holding out her hand. "How are you? I am so glad to see you again. Did you ride out all the way from the city? We don't see many bicycles these days."
She poured forth her little flood of amiable sentences, while the bookbinder stood quietly holding his wheel.
"Yes," he answered slowly, when she paused. "I rode out on my wheel. I wanted to see how the country looked."
He paused and then continued: "Yes, I've been out of the city considerable after my wife died. I went West, to Kansas City. But I came back. I'm used to this place. My woman died here, and the child, too."
"I tried to find you after the class broke up," Helen explained. "I wanted to get your wife to come out here and visit me."
"That was nice and kind of you," he answered dryly.
"I have an errand a little way from here. Won't you go with me and then come back to the house?" she persisted, piqued by his tone.
"Thank you, I don't believe I will. It's time I was starting back to the city."
"You had better rest awhile first."
"I ain't particularly tired. You are very good. What do you want me to come for?" he asked abruptly, and then continued to speak as if he were talking to himself: "You and I ain't the same kind of folks. We are placed different on this earth, and there's no getting away from the fact. It's best for us both to keep where we belong."
"Nonsense!" she retorted.
"As I have looked about among folks," he went on calmly, "I've seen that's the best way, in the long run—for the rich and the poor to keep to themselves. That's why you didn't see nothing of me after the ladies got tired of binding books. Not that I've got anything against those better fortuned than me. It's just the way things are made to run. So long as the present order lasts, man is divided from man—and that's all there is to it. The only use the poor man has for the rich man is to get work from him and some pay for it. The only use the rich man has for the poor man is to get his work done. And they'd better do their business apart, as far apart as they can."
"My husband isn't rich. We have to struggle, too."
Hussey smiled sceptically.
"I had all I could do when the woman was living to keep a decent room or two, and find enough to eat. There's some difference between us, ain't there? And I don't speak like you, and maybe I eat different at the table."
"That's all very important," Helen laughed.
"It's the little things that separate, not the big ones. You look around your own kind of folks and see if that's not so. It's just the silly scraps of ways that keep man from man."
"Well, it's too good a day to quarrel about that. At least, you and I can both enjoy those trees down there."
A victoria came toward them at a lively trot, making the wooden planking resound. The lady in the carriage leaned forward and bowed to Helen, and then cast a second, longer glance at her companion.
"She's wanting to know who that man is you're talking to," Hussey remarked ironically. "No, them trees and the country in general ain't the same to me and you. You folks squat right out here and buy up all the land you can lay your hands on, at least all that can be got at easily from the city. Perhaps, though, some day it will be different, and the beautiful parts of the country will be kept for all to have."
They began to cross the bridge, and Helen holding the man in talk wiled him as far as her own gate, with an unreasoning determination to make him come into her house.
"I suppose I ought to take that bundle there," Hussey observed as they walked, pointing to the parcel that Helen held in her hand.
"It's nothing."
"I notice that don't make any difference among your kind. Your men folks may let their women suffer in other ways, but they fetch and carry for you in public."
"Yes—that's so," Helen laughed.
"That bundle ain't nothing for you to carry. You wouldn't have started out with it if it had been. It's the same way about giving a woman a seat in a car. If she looks as if she needed it, why a humane man would give her his seat the same as he would to a tired man. But most times the man needs it more."
"You wouldn't have wanted your wife to stand?"
"Well, she weren't never real well, not after the child came."
He spoke more gently, and added without any polite delicacy, "There must have been something wrong happened then, for she got up weak, and couldn't bear children no more."
"You miss her!"
"Yes, sometimes, when work's plenty, and I feel strong, and there's something for her to live for. Most times I think it's just as well she's gone. And the child, too," he added softly. "You see it ain't as it is with you, with a working-man and his wife. They don't have so much love and notions, maybe. That don't stand long after the first weeks. The man's got to work and the woman, too. If she's a pretty-looking girl when he marries her, sweet and fresh, them looks don't last long. It's like anything you use all the time. There's no chance to lay it by and let it freshen up. Now you and my wife were about of an age, I judge. But she looked to be the mother of you, before she died. You are as pretty as you ever was or more so, and men would court you to-day if you were single. It wasn't so with my woman, and I did the best I could for her, too. Don't you suppose a working-man hates to see his wife grow old, through hard work and no chance to freshen up? He mayn't be as nice in his tastes as your sort, but he don't like to see his wife wear out."
Romantic love, so he seemed to hold, was one of the luxuries of the expensive classes. While he was talking they passed into the driveway and came to the house. Hussey finally got to the veranda, where he sat stiffly on the edge of a large steamer chair, holding his derby hat in his two hands. After a time he deposited the hat on the floor and gradually slipped into the comfortable depths of the chair and talked on more freely.
There was nothing new or wise in the bookbinder's talk. Yet certain things that he said, furtive, flame-like words of revolt which contained half truths, sank into Helen's receptive mind: "Man pays pretty high for his civilization, as he calls it, and what does he get for it? The police station and the fire department." "The Bible says that man must be born again. Yes—that's so! With a new kind of belly that knows when it's had enough." "The labor question always comes down to cutting the pie: because a man with one kind of a brain can think faster than his neighbor, ought he to get a bigger slice? Does he need it to make him think?"
There was a vein of character in the man himself, a passionate faith in a vision of society other than that which holds to-day. His talk was not vindictive, or greedy, or envious, but he assumed calmly that the present state of society was wasteful and unjust, and that already, here and there, men and women were beginning to wake from the individualistic nightmare and were ready to try an altogether new manner of living together.
"I get tired," he said in answer to a platitude that Helen made, "hearing what some folks are kind enough to do for society—how necessary they are to make it run. Don't you believe it, not for one second! If we could take account of stock in some way, and find out just what mere brains are good for and how much they do in gettin' food and clothes and shelter, I guess we'd put brains lower down. And what's more, if the only way you can get the best work out of smart men is to let them hog it, then human nature must be a pretty poor sort of outfit, and we'd better all starve. But the best workmen I've known didn't work because they had to: it was in 'em from the beginning of time to work better than the others."
The boys came home presently from a children's party at a neighbor's. They were dressed very prettily in white, with large collars of absurd shape and size. They wore neat little leather yachting caps with the names of men-of-war gaudily embossed in gold cord about the rims.
"They're healthy-looking chaps," Hussey observed as each one politely gave him a hand. "That's what rich folks can do for their children, if they've got good blood in 'em to start with. You can buy them the proper food and put them in cool, big rooms, and plant 'em out here in the country."
"Yes, I am on a committee of women that has charge of a country home," Helen answered idly.
"Charity?" He pronounced the word ironically. "Well, I must be starting. It will be dark before I get halfway to the city."
He rose and took a long look at the blue lake.
"This'll have to last me some time. It's been mighty pleasant sitting here on your piazza and jawing away about these big things, Mrs. Hart."
"You'd better come again, then."
"Well, maybe I'll be riding out this way sometime. But you remember what I said about mixing! You stick to your side of the fence, and I'll try to stick to mine."
"Suppose I'm not altogether content with my side?"
"I guess you'll have to grin and bear it. I don't reckon to spend much time pitying you. It looks to me rather pretty on your side."
As they were shaking hands, the chug of an automobile could be heard in the roadway.
"That must be my husband!" Helen exclaimed. "Won't you wait a minute and see him?"
The heavy, lumbering machine with its ugly fat wheels rolled up the driveway, and after a final heave and sigh came to a stand before the veranda. The driver leaped down and opened the little door in the rear for his master to descend. The architect was smoking a cigar and carried in his arms a heavy bag of papers and books.
"Hello, Nell!" he called cheerily, and then looked inquiringly at the man beside her.
"Francis, this is Mr. Hussey. You remember Mr. Hussey who gave us lessons in bookbinding?"
"How do you do?" The architect greeted Hussey with a pleasant nod. "Very glad to see you again."
He held out his free hand in the simple, cordial fashion that made him popular in his office and with the foremen on his buildings. He always made a point of being genial with working people. He got more out of them that way and often avoided friction. He usually carried about with him a handful of black and strong cigars, which he dealt out on the slightest occasion.
"Sit down again, won't you?" he remarked. "Have a cigar?"
He pulled out one of the proper variety from his inner pocket.
"I don't smoke," the bookbinder replied shortly.
He made no further remark, and the architect, also, found himself at the end of his cordiality. Helen realized that the two men had nothing whatsoever to talk about. Jackson could have discussed bindings in a dilettante fashion, meaning certain rich and costly specimens of the art that wealthy amateurs bought and locked up in cabinets, but he knew nothing about the ordinary trade.
"Mr. Hussey rode out from the city on a bicycle," Helen explained. "I met him on the bridge and induced him to come up here and rest for a little while."
"Yes, it's hot," Jackson answered. "Fearfully hot on the train from Indianapolis this morning. I haven't been cool all day until Fred let out the machine coming over from the station."
Hussey looked at the lumbering automobile sighing to itself below the veranda, and then at the chauffeur, who was waiting for orders.
"Good day," he said abruptly. "It's some longer to the city on a wheel than in one of them affairs."
Helen walked down the steps with her guest in a vague desire to be cordial. He mounted his wheel, and bending his little body over the frame, pedalled swiftly out of the driveway. Helen watched him for a moment, feeling that he would not call again, as she hoped he might. He had merely wandered their way this bright summer day like a chance stranger from some vast outer world,—a world that perpetually teased her spirit.
"What is he, Nell? Socialist or anarchist?" Jackson called out good-humoredly, when his wife returned to the veranda.
It was one of his jokes that his wife dabbled in socialism.
"I wish he would have stayed to dinner."
"But we're going out."
"Yes, I know. But he wouldn't have stayed anyway."
Her husband looked at her inquiringly, yet he was not sufficiently interested in Mr. Hussey to frame a question. He poured himself a glass of water, drank it, and when he set the glass down, the bookbinder had been washed into complete oblivion.
"Come! It must be time to dress," he said briskly.
The Harts were to dine at the Elisha Stewarts' that evening, and the architect had considered this engagement of sufficient importance to bring him back to Chicago all the way from Indianapolis. Elisha Stewart had made his money many years ago, when he commanded a vessel on the lakes, by getting control of valuable ore properties. The Elisha Stewarts had lived in Shoreham for nearly a generation, and were much considered,—very good people, indeed. Their rambling, old-fashioned white house, with a square cupola projecting from the roof, was one of the village landmarks. The place was surrounded by a grove of firs set out by Elisha himself when he built the house.
It was a large dinner, and most of the guests, who were of the older set, were already assembled in the long drawing-room when Helen and Jackson arrived. The people in the room were all talking very earnestly about a common topic.
"It's the Crawfords," Mrs. Stewart murmured asthmatically into Helen's ear. "You know they find his affairs in such a frightful tangle. They say there won't be much left."
"Indeed!" Jackson exclaimed sympathetically.
"Anthony wasn't all right, not fit for business for more than a year before he died," Colonel Raymond was saying to the group. "And he snarled things up pretty well by what I hear."
"That slide in copper last March must have squeezed him."
"Squeezed? I should say it did."
"It wasn't only copper."
"No, no, it wasn't only copper," assented several men.
Among the women, the more personal application of the fact was openly made.
"Poor old Anthony! It must have troubled him to know there wasn't one of his family who could look out for himself. Morris was a pleasant fellow, but after he got out of Harvard he never seemed to do much. It will come hard on Linda."
"What has the youngest boy been up to lately?"
"The same thing, I guess."
"I heard he'd been doing better since he went on the ranch."
"He couldn't get into much trouble out there."
"Isn't there anything left?"
"Oh, the widow will have a little. But the in-laws will have to hunt jobs. One is out in California, isn't he?"
The company did not seem able to get away from the topic. Even after they went out to dinner, it echoed to and fro around the table.
"I say it's a shame, a crime!" Mr. Buchanan pronounced with confident earnestness. "A man with that sort of family has no right to engage in speculative enterprises without settling a proper sum on his family first. There's his eldest daughter married to an invalid, his youngest daughter engaged to be married to a parson, and neither of his sons showing any business ability."
"That's a fact, Oliver," Mr. Stewart nodded. "But you know Anthony always loved deep water."
"And now it's his family who have got to swim in it."
"He was a most generous man," Pemberton remarked in a milder tone. "I hardly know of a man who's done more first and last for this town, and no one ever had to ask twice for his help in any public enterprise."
"Seems to have looked after other people's affairs better'n his own. It's a pity now the boys weren't brought up to business."
"That isn't the way nowadays. He was always ready for a gamble, and she didn't want her sons in the business."
From time to time there were feeble efforts to move the talk out of the rut in which it had become fixed. But the minds of most of those about the table were fascinated by the spectacle of ruin so closely presented to them. The picture of a solid, worldly estate crumbling before their eyes stirred their deepest emotions. For the moment it crowded out that other great topic of the new strike in the building trades. Every one at the table held substantially the same views on both these matters, but the ruin of the Crawford fortune was more immediately dramatic than the evils of unionism.
"When are you fellows going to start that school, Pemberton?" some one asked at last.
"Not until these strikes let up, and there's no telling when that will be. If these labor unions only keep on long enough, they will succeed in killing every sort of enterprise."
"Yes, they're ruining business."
Then Pemberton, who was seated next to Helen, remarked to her:—
"You will be glad to know, Mrs. Hart, that the trustees have decided not to hand the work over to any institution, at least for the present."
"I am so glad of that," she replied.
"That's about as far as we have got."
Sensitively alive to her former blunder in expressing her wish that her husband might draw the plans for the school, she took this as a hint, and dropped the subject altogether, although she had a dozen questions on the tip of her tongue.
She noticed that Jackson, who was seated between Mrs. Stewart and Mrs. Phillips, was drinking a good deal of champagne. She thought that he was finding the dinner as intolerably dull as she found it, for he rarely drank champagne. When the women gathered in the drawing-room for coffee, the topic of the Crawfords' disaster had reached the anecdotal stage.
"Poor Linda! Do you remember how she hated Chicago? She's been living at Cannes this season, hasn't she? I suppose she'll come straight home now. Does she own that place in the Berkshires?"
"No, everything was in his name."
"He was one of the kind who would keep everything in his own hands."
"Even that ranch doesn't belong to Ted, I hear."
"My, what a tragedy it is!"
There seemed to be no end to the talk about the lost money. Helen sat limply in her chair. The leaden dulness of the dinner-talk, the dead propriety and conventionality of the service, the dishes, the guests, had never before so whelmed her spirit as they did to-night. These good people were stung into unusual animation because a man had died leaving his family not poor, but within sight of poverty. For poverty is the deadliest spectre to haunt the merchant class at their lying down and at their uprising.
When the men came in, murmuring among themselves fragments of the same topic, Helen felt as though she might shriek out or laugh hysterically, and as soon as she could she clutched her husband, just as he was sitting down beside Mrs. Pemberton.
"Take me away, Francis. It's awful," she whispered.
"What's the matter?" he asked in quick concern. "Don't you feel well?"
"Yes, yes, I am all right. No, I am tired. My head aches. Can't we leave? I shall do something silly—come!"
As they got into their carriage, he demanded, "What was the matter?"
"Nothing,—just the awful dulness of it,—such people,—such talk, talk, talk about poor Mr. Crawford's money!"
"I thought the crowd was all right," he grumbled. "The best out here—what was the matter? Your nerves must be wrong."
"Yes, my nerves are wrong," she assented.
Then they were silent, and from the heat, fatigue, and champagne he relapsed into a doze on the way home. But when they reached the house he woke up briskly enough and began to talk of the dinner again:—
"Nell, Mrs. Phillips was speaking to me to-night about Venetia. She's worried to death over the girl. The men say pretty rough things about her, you know. Little fool! She'd better marry Lane if he wants her still, and keep quiet."
"Like mother, like daughter," Helen replied dryly. "And of the two I prefer the daughter."
"What makes you say that? Louise is all right; just likes to have her hand squeezed now and then."
"Phew!" Helen exclaimed impatiently.
There was something so short and hard in his wife's voice that Jackson looked at her in surprise. They went to their dressing-room; now that he had got his eyes open once more he made no haste to go to bed. There was something he wanted to say to his wife which needed delicate phrasing. He lit a cigarette and leaned back against the open window, through which the night air was drawing gently. After a little time he remarked:—
"The judge was talking some about the school. They are getting ready to build as soon as the strikes are settled. Has Everett said anything to you about it?"
"Not lately. I haven't seen him since we were at the Buchanans'. Why?"
"Why! I am counting on Everett, and the last time I saw him he seemed to me to be side-stepping. I've seen Pemberton once or twice, but he always avoids the subject. I asked him point-blank to-night what their plans were, and he said the papers had everything that had been settled. He's a stiff one! I saw you were talking to him. Did he say anything about the school?"
Helen, who had been moving about the room here and there, preparing to undress, suddenly stood quite still. The memory of her remark to Pemberton that morning on the train swept over her again, coloring her cheeks. She answered the question after a moment of hesitation:—
"Yes, he spoke about their not giving the money to the university, but that was all. And I didn't like to ask questions."
"Oh!" Jackson murmured in a disappointed tone. "You might have drawn him out. He's likely to have a good deal to say about what is done. The judge is down on me, never liked me since I built for Louise—thinks I stuck her, I suppose. Wasn't his money, though. Hollister is on the fence; he'll do what Everett tells him. It rests with Pemberton, mostly."
Helen turned toward where he was standing and asked swiftly, "Why do you want them to give it to you so much?"
"Why?" The architect opened his mouth in astonishment. "Don't you know the size of the thing? They're going to spend a million or more on the school, put up one large building or several smaller ones. It's a chance that doesn't come every week to do a great public building."
She had begun to unhook her dress, and her nervous fingers tangled the lace about the hooks. Jackson, seeing her predicament, put down his cigarette and stepped forward to help her. But she swerved away from him unconsciously, tugging at the lace until it broke loose from the hook.
"Francis!" she exclaimed, with a kind of solemnity. "You would not do it for money, just like any ordinary building?"
"And why not?" he asked, puzzled. "Am I drawing plans for fun these days? I'll tell you what, Nell, I need the money, and I need it badly. Something must turn up, and right away. Since the strikes began there hasn't been much new business coming into the office, of course, and it costs us a lot to live as we do. That's plain enough."
"We can live differently. I've often thought it would be better if we did, too."
"But I don't want to live differently. That's nonsense!"
They were silent for a little while before their unfinished thoughts. He broke the silence first:—
"Perhaps I ought to tell you that I've been caught in an—investment, some stocks I bought. A friend of mine advised me, a broker who is in with Rainbow. But the thing went wrong. I don't believe those fellows know as much as the man outside. Well, instead of making a good thing by it, I must find ten or twelve thousand dollars, and find it mighty quick. Now if I get this commission, I can borrow the money all right. I know who will let me have it. And then by the end of the year it will straighten out. And the next time I go to buy stocks, well—"
"But that building—the school?" Helen interrupted. She pulled a thin dressing-sack over her shoulders and sat down on the edge of the bed, looking breathlessly into his face. What he had said about his losses in the stock market had made no impression on her. "That work is uncle Powers's gift, his legacy to the people. You can't do it just to make money out of it!"
"Why not?" he demanded shortly, and then added, with a dry little laugh: "I should say that building rather than any other. I'd like to pick up a few crumbs from the old man's cake. It's only common justice, seeing he did me out of all the rest."
She stared at him with bewildered eyes. Perhaps she was not a very quick woman, if after five years of daily contact with her husband she did not know his nature. But the conceptions she had cherished of him were too deep to be effaced at once. She could not even yet understand what he meant.
"'Did you out of all the rest'?" she queried in a low voice.
"Yes!" he exclaimed hardily. "And I think the trustees should take it into consideration that I didn't contest the will when I had the best kind of case and could have given them no end of trouble. I was a fool to knuckle under so quickly. I might at least have had an agreement with them about this matter."
"So," she said, "you want to build the school to make up what you think uncle should have given you?"
"You needn't put it just like that. But I need every cent I can make. The bigger the building, the better for me. And I can do it as well for them as anybody. They're probably thinking of having a competition, and asking in a lot of fellows from New York and Boston. They ought to keep it in this city, anyway, and then the only man I'd hate to run up against would be Wright. He's got some mighty clever new men in his office."
He talked on as he stripped off his coat and waistcoat and hung them neatly on the clothes-tree, permitting her to see all the consideration he had given to his chances for securing this big commission. Evidently he had been turning it over and over in his mind, and he was desperately nervous lest he might lose what he had counted on having all along ever since his marriage. He refrained from telling his wife that he felt she had seconded him feebly in this matter; for she knew the judge, and Pemberton, and Everett, too, a great deal better than he did. They had always paid her rather marked attention.
Helen said nothing. There was nothing in her surprised and grieved heart to be said. For the first time she saw clearly what manner of man her husband was. She knew how he felt about his uncle. He was vindictive about him, and seemed to welcome this job as a chance to get even with the old man for slighting him in his will. For some reason unknown to her he had not tried at the time of his death to break his will and show his ingratitude, and now he regretted that he had displayed so much forbearance.
This sudden sight of the nakedness of the man she loved dulled her heart so that she could not view the thing simply. It was impossible for her to see that there was nothing very dreadful in her husband's attitude, nothing more than a little ordinary human selfishness, sharpened by that admirable system of civilized self-interest which our philosophers and statesmen so delight to praise. She had been dreaming that her husband might have the honor to design this great building as a testimonial, a monument of gratitude, to the man who had succored his youth, who had given him his education! Her sentiment turned rancid in her heart.
"Now if Everett or the judge should say anything to you, give you a chance, you know what it means to me," Jackson remarked finally, as he put his boots outside the door for the man to get in the morning. He had meant to say more than this, to point out to her in detail the service she could do them both. Something in her manner, however, restrained him, and he contented himself with this final hint.
But Helen had stepped back into the dressing-room and did not hear him. When she returned her husband was already in bed, and his eyelids were closed in sleep. She placed herself beside him and turned out the light.
She lay there a long, long time, her open eyes staring upward into the darkness, her arms stretched straight beside her, as she used to lie when she was a little child, and her nurse had told her to be good and not to stir. Something strange had happened that day, something impalpable, unnamable, yet true, and of enormous importance to the woman. The man who lay there beside her, her husband, the indivisible part of her, had been suddenly cut from her soul, and was once more his own flesh—some alien piece of clay, and ever so to be.
She did not cry or moan. She was too much stunned. All the little petty manifestations of character, unobserved through those five years of marriage, were suddenly numbered and revealed to her. It was not a question of blame. They declared themselves to her as finalities, just as if she had suddenly discovered that her husband had four toes instead of five. He was of his kind, and she was of her kind. Being what she was, she could no longer worship him, being what he was. And her nature craved the privilege of worship. That thin, colorless protestantism of her fathers had faded into a nameless moralism. She had no Christ before whom she could pour her adoration and love. Instead, she had taken to herself a man; and now the clay of his being was crumbling in her hands....
Outside the room the lake began to clamor on the sands beneath the bluff. It called her by its insistent moan. She rose from the bed and stepped out upon the little balcony that looked eastward from their room. The warm night was filled with a damp mist that swathed the tree trunks to their branches and covered the slow-moving waves of the lake. Through this earth fog there was moving a current from some distant point, touching the sleeping town.
All the unquiet feelings that latterly had been rising in her soul—Venetia's bold challenge, Hussey's harsh words, her own dissatisfaction with the empty life of getting and spending—now hardened into judgment. The poor bookbinder was right: it was useless, perhaps, to mix the two orders of life,—those that labor for mere living and those that labor for luxury. But here in the superb indifference of nature she knew herself to be kin with him, the man of the people, the common man, whose lot it was to labor for his scanty bread. Surely a new order of the world was to be born, wherein the glory of life should not be for the ferocious self-seekers, wherein all that was fine in man should not be tainted with greed!
She held her arms out to the mist, vaguely, blindly, demanding some compensation for living, some justification that she knew not of. And there in the vigil of the misty night the woman was born. From a soft, yielding, dreaming, feminine thing, there was born a new soul—definite, hard, and precise in its judgment of men and life....
In the house behind her slept her husband and her two boys,—her children and his. But only in the words of the sentimentalists are children a sufficient joy to woman's heart. Loving as she was by nature, nevertheless she asked more of God than her two boys, whose little lives no longer clung to hers by the bonds of extreme infancy. They were growing to become men; they, too, like her husband, would descend into the market for the game which all men play. The fear of it gripped her heart.
And at last she wept, miserably, for the forlorn wreck of her worship, longing for the glorious man she had once adored.
The next morning she said to her husband:—
"Francis, I want to go back to the city this winter."
"Well—there's time to think of it—you may change your mind by the fall."
She said no more, but the first step in her new life had been taken.
Everett Wheeler could hardly be reckoned as a man of sentiment. Yet in the matter of selecting an architect for the new school he stood out persistently against the wishes of Pemberton and Judge Phillips, with but one sentimental argument,—the Powers Jackson trustees must give the commission for building the great school to the nephew of the founder, without holding a competitive trial of any sort.
"It's only square," he insisted. "Jackson was disappointed about the will. He had some grounds for feeling badly used, too. He might have made us a good deal of trouble at the time, and he didn't."
"Powers would think it queer to pass him by," Hollister urged also, "seeing he gave the boy a first-class education to be an architect. And he's a hustling, progressive fellow from all I hear. I must say I admire the way he's settled into the collar since his uncle died. Why shouldn't we give him this boost?"
These remarks were made at one of the many informal meetings of the trustees, which were held almost daily now that the plans for the school were shaping themselves toward action. Pemberton, with whom the others happened to be taking their luncheon, glanced sharply at Wheeler. Although not given to suspecting his neighbors of indirect motives, Pemberton understood Wheeler well enough to know that when the lawyer fell back upon sentiment there must be another motive in the background. The close relationship between the men was not sufficient to account wholly for the cold lawyer's unexpected zeal in behalf of the young architect. Everett Wheeler was not one to be moved by family ties. Pemberton had not forgotten Mrs. Hart's sudden interest in this commission, which he had attributed to an unwise eagerness for her husband's profit. It occurred to him now that he had once heard in past years of Everett Wheeler's devotion to Nellie Spellman.
"I can't see that it follows that we should put this plum into his mouth," the judge remarked testily. "If Powers had wanted to give the chap any more money, he would have left it to him. You must excuse me, Everett, for speaking my mind about your cousin; but, frankly, I don't altogether like the fellow. He's too smooth, too easy with all the world."
"That's all right, judge. I'm not urging him because he's my cousin. But we know why you are down on him," Wheeler answered, with a smile. "He did let your sister-in-law in for a good deal."
"Well, it isn't just that. Of course he was beginning then, and wanted to make his first job as big as possible—that's natural enough. And I guess Louise— Well, it's her affair. She manages her own property, and I wouldn't let her spend any of the children's money. But I don't like Hart's methods. Raymond was telling me the other day how he worked him for that railroad job—through—through a woman. I suppose it's all right; the man must get business where he can. It's hard for youngsters to make a living these days. But to get a woman to pull off a thing like that for you! And Raymond told me they had to drop him, too—he didn't do the work economically, or something of the sort."
"I guess there's another story to that, perhaps," Wheeler answered patiently. "Jack wasn't willing to let Bushfield make all he wanted to off the contracts. I happen to know that. And I don't see why you should have it in for him because he got a lady to say a good word for him with Raymond. You know well enough that pretty nearly all the big commissions for public buildings in this city have gone by favor,—family or social or political pull. It's got to be so. You're bound to think that the man you know is bigger than the other fellow you don't know."
"That is not a good reason, Mr. Wheeler, why we should do the same thing in this case," Pemberton objected stiffly. "It would have been well for American architecture if it had happened less often. The proper way in the case of all public buildings is to hold an open competition."
"Well, we won't argue that question. But this is a special case. Here is a man who happens to be a nephew of the founder, who knows more of our plans than any other architect, naturally, and can give us pretty much all his attention. He'll push the work faster."
"We can wait," Pemberton still demurred. "There is no need for undue haste."
"No, no, John," Judge Phillips protested. "I am getting to be an old man. I want to see the school started and feel that my duty's done. We've thrashed this out long enough. Let us try Hart and be done with it."
Pemberton had been added to their number at the suggestion of the judge, because of his well-known public spirit and his interest in educational and philanthropic enterprises. He had undertaken his duties with his accustomed energy and conscientiousness, and at times wearied even the judge with his scruples. The others had rather hazy ideas as to the exact form, educationally, that the large fund in their charge should assume. Wheeler concerned himself mainly with the financial side of the trust. Hollister, who had got his education in a country school, and Judge Phillips, who was a graduate of a small college, merely insisted that the school should be "practical," with "no nonsense." After they had rejected the plan of handing over the bequest to a university, Pemberton had formed the idea of founding a technological school, modelled closely after certain famous Eastern institutions. This conception Helen had somewhat disturbed by her talk with him, in which she had vigorously presented the founder's democratic ideas on education. Her views had set him to thinking on the problem once more, and he had discussed the matter with the intimate friends of the founder, seeking to discover the old man's real purpose in his benefaction.
In his perplexity Pemberton had gone East to see the president of a university, of which he was one of the trustees, and there he had met a professor in the scientific department, one Dr. Everest, a clever organizer of educational enterprises. Dr. Everest did not find it difficult to convince the puzzled trustee that his dilemma was an imaginary one, that all warring ideals of education might be easily "harmonized" by a little judicious "adjustment." There should be some domestic science for the girls, manual training combined with technical and commercial courses for the boys, and all would be right, especially if the proper man were employed to mix these ingredients. In brief, the doctor came to Chicago at the invitation of the trustees, looked over the ground, and spoke at several public dinners on the "ideals of modern education." His eloquent denunciation of a "mediæval" education, his plea for a business education for a business people, and especially his alert air and urbane manners convinced the trustees that they had found a treasure. Dr. Everest was invited to become the head of the new school, which was to be called the JACKSON INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTE.
Hart attended one of the dinners where the new director spoke, and afterward engaged Dr. Everest in a long conversation about the new school. They found themselves agreed that it ought to be housed "monumentally," whatever happened. Later, Dr. Everest spoke warmly to Pemberton of the intelligent young architect, whom he understood might be asked to design the building. His views, he said, were "progressive" and "inspiring," and Jackson praised the director warmly to his wife; but Helen, who had read all his utterances in the papers, felt that the clever doctor, however much of an "educator" he might be, knew absolutely nothing about the one class in the community he had been engaged to work for. His ideas about education were strictly those of the merchant class, the only class in America that the "higher education" concerned itself with.
However all that might be, Dr. Everest's good word, more than Wheeler's persistency, prevailed against Pemberton's prejudices. The architect was in a fair way of winning the long-coveted prize.
When Everett Wheeler had finally obtained the consent of his associates to ask the architect to meet the trustees and the new director and discuss plans for the building, the lawyer was so pleased that he broke an engagement for dinner, and took the train to Forest Park instead. He might have telephoned the architect at his office, but, sluggish as he was temperamentally, he had long promised himself the pleasure of telling Helen personally the good news. Of late she had not seemed wholly happy, and he supposed that there were money troubles in the household which would now be relieved.
He found a number of people in the studio on the bluff, and sat down patiently to wait. It had been a warm day, and the men and women were lounging comfortably on the grass mats, gossiping and enjoying the cool air from the lake. Jackson was in high spirits, telling Irish stories, a social gift which he had recently cultivated. Wheeler found himself near Venetia Phillips, who was nursing a sprained elbow, the result of being pitched against a fence by a vicious horse.
"Why don't you go over there and try your charms on Helen?" she asked Wheeler peevishly. "She's been out of sorts all this summer. When you see the solemn way good married women take their happiness, it doesn't encourage you to try your luck and be good. I wonder if she and Jackie scrap? She looks as if she had a very dull life."
"Are you thinking of trying your chances?" the lawyer asked with a heavy attempt at the flippant tone. "You ought to have let me know."
"Do you mean that as an offer? Does it lead up to anything?"
"I'll put it in legal form, if you will give me the chance."
"Should I consent to be bored with one Everett Wheeler, a lawyer, specially successful in making bad corporations, something of a politician, not yet fifty, no known vices, easy with women? Is that the question?"
"You flatter me."
"Wait a moment. I want a good man—a blue-ribbon, high-geared saint; or something equally clever of the other kind. Are you good enough?"
"Well, I guess I could pass with the rest."
"That's the trouble. You are just about up to the average of the crowd. You wouldn't steal, and you wouldn't run away with any one's wife. You're too knowing; it wouldn't pay."
"You're right there!"
"And if I get into trouble any time, you're just the man I'd go to. You wouldn't make remarks of a moral nature, and you would know how to squeeze me through a little hole. But you wouldn't do to marry."
"Oh, I don't know—I'd be easy."
"Too tolerant—that's the trouble."
"You are a wise young woman."
"Yes, I'm very wise about men. I'm going to write a book about men I have known well. It will be read, too. Do you want to go in?"
"Well, let's drop me. What about Helen and Jack? What's the matter?"
"I can't make out exactly. Unsatisfied aspirations, or something of the sort. I should guess that our Jackson doesn't come up to specifications. She sighs for the larger world. Did you ever meet a chap who used to give lessons in binding paper books? That was some years ago, when earnest ladies were all trying to do something with their hands to revive the arts and crafts. His name was Hussey. He was a poor, thin little man, with a wife dying from consumption or something of the sort. I have always thought Helen wanted to run away with Mr. Hussey, but couldn't get up her courage. They used to talk socialism and anarchy and strikes until the air was red, so Maida told me. It was sport to see him and Jackson get together. Jack would offer him a cigar,—the bad kind he keeps for the men on his buildings. Hussey would turn him down, and then Helen would ask the bookbinder to luncheon or dinner, and that would give Jack a fit. But Hussey wouldn't stay. He had ideas about the masses not mixing with the classes until the millennium comes. Helen would argue with him, but it was no use. He thought nothing was on the square. Well, one day he got huffy about something Jack said, so Maida says, and went off and never turned up again at the class. Helen tried to find him; I don't think she ever got over it. And only the other day she ran across him again, Jack told me. I believe that Hussey was the man for her. She is another unsatisfied soul. I am going now, and you had better try to cheer her up."
It was beyond the lawyer's power, however, to penetrate Helen's mood. She seemed curiously removed from the scene. The banter and talk of the people on the veranda passed over her unheeded; while her eyes rested dreamily on the trees, among which the summer twilight was stealing. To rouse her attention, Wheeler brought forth his news.
"I came out here to tell you something, Nell," he said.
"What is it?" she asked indifferently.
"Jack is going to build the school. It has just been decided to-day."
She gave a little start, as though his words brought her back to the present, but she said nothing.
"The trustees have come around to it at last. You know Pemberton and the judge wanted a public competition, or something of the kind."
"Why don't they have a competition?" she asked quickly. And aroused suddenly, with nervous animation, as if she resented the suggestion of a special favor, she continued, "It would be much fairer to have an open competition!"
"Why should we? Isn't Jack the old man's nephew?"
She made no reply, and he said nothing more, dampened by the way she took his splendid news. In a little while the others left and they had dinner. Wheeler expected Helen would tell her husband of the decision, but she seemed to have forgotten it. So, finally, he was forced to repeat his announcement. He dropped it casually and coldly:—
"Well, Jack, we're getting that school business cleared up. Can you meet the trustees and the doctor at my office some day this week?"
Jackson bubbled over with glee.
"Hoorah!" he shouted. "Good for you, Everett! We must have up some champagne."
The lawyer, watching Helen's impassive face, felt inclined to moderate Jackson's enthusiasm.
"Of course, nothing's settled as to the commission. You'll be asked to prepare sketches after you have consulted with Dr. Everest. That's all."
That was enough for the architect. He thought that he could satisfy the director, and if he succeeded with him, the rest of the way was clear. When the champagne came, he pressed his thanks on his cousin.
"It's awfully good of you, Everett. I know all the trouble you have taken for me in this matter. You'll have to let me build that camp in the Adirondacks this fall. My heavens!" he went on, too excited to be cautious, "you don't know what a load it takes off my shoulders! I can feel myself free once more. It's a big thing, the first big thing that's come my way since I began. How much do the trustees mean to put into the building?"