The large drawing-room, long, and looking longer with its wide mirrors, was even more golden than Mrs. Delmonti's. There were gold moldings about the mirrors and gold mountings to the chairs. In deserts of gold frames appeared small oases of oil-painting. Faraday, hat in hand, stood some time in wavering indecision, wondering in which of the brocaded and gilded chairs he would look least like a king in an historical play. He was about to decide in favor of a pale blue satin settee, when a rustle behind him made him turn and behold Miss. Genevieve magnificent in a trailing robe of the faintest rose-pink and pearls, with diamond ear-rings in her ears, and the powder that she had hastily rubbed on her face still lying white on her long lashes. She smiled her rare smile as she greeted him, and sitting down in one of the golden chairs, leaned her head against the back, and said, looking at him from under lowered lids:
"Well, I thought you were never coming!"
Faraday, greatly encouraged by this friendly reception, made his excuses, and set the conversation going. After the weather had been exhausted, the topic of the Californian in his social aspect came up. Faraday, with some timidity, ventured a question on the fashionable life in San Francisco. A shade passed over Miss. Ryan's open countenance.
"You know, Mr. Faraday," she said, explanatorily, "I'm not exactly in society."
"No?" murmured Faraday, mightily surprised, and wondering what she was going to say next.
"Not exactly," continued Miss. Ryan, moistening her red under lip in a pondering moment—"not exactly in fash'nable society. Of course we have our friends. But gentlemen from the East that I've met have always been so surprised when I told them that I didn't go out in the most fash'nable circles. They always thought any one with money could get right in it here."
"Yes?" said Faraday, whose part of the conversation appeared to be deteriorating into monosyllables.
"Well, you know, that's not the case at all. With all popper's money, we've never been able to get a real good footing. It seems funny to outsiders, especially as popper and mommer have never been divorced or anything. We've just lived quietly right here in the city always. But," she said, looking tentatively at Faraday to see how he was going to take the statement, "my father's a Northerner. He went back and fought in the war."
"You must be very proud of that," said Faraday, feeling that he could now hazard a remark with safety.
This simple comment, however, appeared to surprise the enigmatic Miss. Ryan.
"Proud of it?" she queried, looking in suspended doubt at Faraday. "Oh, of course I'm proud that he was brave, and didn't run away or get wounded; but if he'd been a Southerner we would have been in society now." She looked pensively at Faraday. "All the fashionable people are Southerners, you know. We would have been, too, if we'd have been Southerners. It's being Northerners that really has been such a drawback."
"But your sympathies," urged Faraday, "aren't they with the North?"
Miss. Ryan ran the pearl fringe of her tea-gown through her large, handsome hands. "I guess so," she said, indifferently, as if she was considering the subject for the first time; "but you can't expect me to have any very violent sympathies about a war that was dead and buried before I was born."
"I don't believe you're a genuine Northerner, or Southerner either," said Faraday, laughing.
"I guess not," said the young lady, with the same placid indifference. "An English gentleman whom I knew real well last year said the sympathy of the English was all with the Southerners. He said they were the most refined people in this country. He said they were thought a great deal of in England?" She again looked at Faraday with her air of deprecating query, as if she half expected him to contradict her.
"Who was this extraordinarily enlightened being?" asked Faraday.
"Mr. Harold Courtney, an elegant Englishman. They said his grandfather was a Lord—Lord Hastings—but you never can be sure about those things. I saw quite a good deal of him, and I sort of liked him, but he was rather quiet. I think if he'd been an American we would have thought him dull. Here they just said it was reserve. We all thought——"
A footstep in the hall outside arrested her recital. The door of the room was opened, and a handsome bonneted head appeared in the aperture.
"Oh, Gen," said this apparition, hastily—"excuse me; I didn't know you had your company in there?"
"Come in, mommer," said Miss. Ryan, politely; "I want to make you acquainted with Mr. Faraday. He's the gentleman I met at Madame Delmonti's the other evening."
Mrs. Ryan, accompanied by a rich rustling of silk, pushed open the door, revealing herself to Faraday's admiring eyes as a fine-looking woman, fresh in tint, still young, of a stately figure and imposing presence. She was admirably dressed in a walking costume of dark green, and wore a little black jet bonnet on her slightly waved bright brown hair. She met the visitor with an extended hand and a frank smile of open pleasure.
"Genevieve spoke to me of you, Mr. Faraday," she said, settling down into a chair and removing her gloves. "I'm very glad you managed to get around here."
Faraday expressed his joy at having been able to accomplish the visit.
"We don't have so many agreeable gentlemen callers," said Mrs. Ryan, "that we can afford to overlook a new one. If you've been in society, you've perhaps noticed, Mr. Faraday, that gentlemen are somewhat scarce."
Faraday said he had not been in society, therefore had not observed the deficiency. Mrs. Ryan, barely allowing him time to complete his sentence, continued, vivaciously:
"Well, Mr. Faraday, you'll see it later. We entertainers don't know what we are going to do for the lack of gentlemen. When we give parties we ask the young gentlemen, and they all come; but they won't dance, they won't talk, they won't do anything but eat and drink and they never think of paying their party calls. It's disgraceful, Mr. Faraday," said Mrs. Ryan, smiling brightly—"disgraceful!"
Faraday said he had heard that in the East the hostess made the same complaint. Mrs. Ryan, with brilliant fixed eyes, gave him a breathing-space to reply in, and then started off again, with a confirmatory nod of her head:
"Precisely, Mr. Faraday—just the case here. At Genevieve's début party—an elegant affair—Mrs. Peck said she'd never seen a finer entertainment in this city—canvas floors, four musicians, champagne flowing like water. My husband, Mr. Faraday believes in giving the best at his entertainments; there's not a mean bone in Barney Ryan's body. Why, the men all got into the smoking-room, lit their cigars, and smoked there, and in the ballroom were the girls sitting around the walls, and not more than half a dozen partners for them. I tell you, Mr. Ryan was mad. He just went up there, and told them to get up and dance or get up and go home——he didn't much care which. There's no fooling with Mr. Ryan when he's roused. You remember how mad popper was that night, Gen?"
Miss. Ryan nodded an assent, her eyes full of smiling reminiscence. She had listened to her mother's story with unmoved attention and evident appreciation. "Next time we have a party," she said, looking smilingly at Faraday, "Mr. Faraday can come and see for himself."
"I guess it'll be a long time before we have another like that," said Mrs. Ryan, somewhat grimly, rising as Faraday rose to take his leave. "Not but what," she added, hastily, fearing her remark had seemed ungracious, "we'll hope Mr. Faraday will come without waiting for parties."
"But we've had one since then," said Miss. Ryan, as she placed her hand in his in the pressure of farewell, "that laid all over that first one."
Having been pressed to call by both mother and daughter, and having told himself that Genevieve Ryan was "an interesting study," Faraday, after some hesitation, paid a second visit to the Ryan mansion. Upon this occasion the Chinese servant, murmuring unintelligibly, showed a rooted aversion to his entering. Faraday, greatly at sea, wondering vaguely if the terrible Barney Ryan had issued a mandate to his hireling to refuse him admittance, was about to turn and depart, when the voice of Mrs. Ryan in the hall beyond arrested him. Bidden to open the door, the Mongolian reluctantly did so and Faraday was admitted.
"Sing didn't want to let you in," said Mrs. Ryan when they had gained the long gold drawing-room, "because Genevieve was out. He never lets any gentlemen in when she's not at home. He thinks I'm too old to have them come to see me."
Then they sat down, and after a little preliminary chat on the Chinese character and the Californian climate, Mrs. Ryan launched forth into her favorite theme of discourse.
"Genevieve will be so sorry to miss you," she said; "she's always so taken by Eastern gentlemen. They admire her, too, immensely. I can't tell you of the compliments we've heard directly and indirectly that they've paid her. Of course I can see that she's an unusually fine-looking girl, and very accomplished. Mr. Ryan and I have spared nothing in her education—nothing. At Madame de Vivier's academy for young ladies—one of the most select in the State—Madame's husband's one of the French nobility, and she always had to support him—Genevieve took every extra—music, languages, and drawing. Professor Rodriguez, who taught her the guitar, said that never outside of Spain had he heard such a touch. 'Señora,' he says to me—that's his way of expressing himself, and it sounds real cute the way he says it—'Señora, is there not some Spanish blood in this child? No one without Spanish blood could touch the strings that way.' Afterwards when Demaroni taught her the mandolin, it was just the same. He could not believe she had not had teaching before. Then Madame Mezzenott gave her a term's lessons on the bandurria, and she said there never was such talent; she might have made a fortune on the concert stage."
"Yes, undoubtedly," Faraday squeezed in, as Mrs. Ryan drew a breath.
"Indeed, Mr. Faraday, everybody has remarked her talents. It isn't you alone. All the Eastern gentlemen we have met have said that the musical talents of the Californian young ladies were astonishing They all agree that Genevieve's musical genius is remarkable. Everybody declares that there is no one—not among the Spaniards themselves—who singsLa Palomaas Gen does. Professor Spighetti instructed her in that. He was a wonderful teacher. I never saw such a method. But we had to give him up because he fell in love with Gen. That's the worst of it—the teachers are always falling in love with her; and with her prospects and position we naturally expect something better. Of course it's been very hard to keep her. I say to Mr. Ryan, as each winter comes to an end, 'Well, popper, another season's over and we've still got our Gen.' We feel that we can't be selfish and hope to keep her always, and, with so many admirers, we realize that we must soon lose her, and try to get accustomed to the idea."
"Of course, of course," murmured Faraday, sympathetically, mentally picturing Mrs. Ryan keeping away the suitors as Rizpah kept the eagles and vultures off her dead sons.
"There was a Mr. Courtney who was very attentive last year. His grandfather was an English lord. We had to buy aPeerageto find out if he was genuine, and, as he was, we had him quite often to the house. He paid Genevieve a good deal of attention, but toward the end of the season he said he had to go back to England and see his grandfather—his father was dead—and left without saying anything definite. He told me though, that he was coming back. I fully expect he will, though Mr. Ryan doesn't seem to think so. Genevieve felt rather put out about it for a time. She thought he hadn't been upright to see her so constantly and not say anything definite. But she doesn't understand the subserviency of Englishmen to their elders. You know, we have none of that in this country. If my son Eddie wanted to marry a typewriter, Mr. Ryan could never prevent it. I fully expect to see Mr. Courtney again. I'd like you to meet him, Mr. Faraday. I think you'd agree very well. He's just such a quiet, reserved young man as you."
When, after this interview, Faraday descended the broad steps between the sleeping lions, he did not feel so good-tempered as he had done after his first visit. He recalled to mind having heard that Mrs. Ryan, before her marriage, had been a schoolteacher, and he said to himself that if she had no more sense then than she had now, her pupils must have received a fearful and wonderful education.
At Madame Delmonti'sconversazione, given a few evenings later, Faraday again saw Miss. Ryan. On the first of these occasions this independent young lady was dressed simply in a high-necked gown and a hat. This evening with her habitual disregard of custom and convention, some whim had caused her to array herself in full gala attire, and, habited in a gorgeous costume of white silk and yellow velvet, with a glimmer of diamonds round the low neck, she was startling in her large magnificence.
Jack Faraday approached her somewhat awe-stricken, but her gravely boyish manner immediately put him at his ease. Talking with her over commonplaces, he wondered what she would say if she knew of her mother's conversation with him. As if in answer to the unspoken thought, she suddenly said fixing him with intent eyes:
"Mommer said she told you of Mr. Courtney. Do you think he'll come back?"
Faraday, his breath taken away by the suddenness of the attack, felt the blood run to his hair, and stammered a reply.
"Well, you know," she said, leaning toward him confidentially, "Idon't. Mommer is possessed with the idea that he will. But neither popper nor I think so. I got sort of annoyed with the way he acted—hanging about for a whole winter, and then running away to see his grandfather, like a little boy ten years old! I like men that are their own masters. But I suppose I would have married him. You see, he would have been a lord when his grandfather died. It was genuine—we saw it in thePeerage."
She looked into Faraday's eyes. Her own were as clear and deep as mountain springs. Was Miss. Genevieve Ryan the most absolutely honest and outspoken young woman that had ever lived, or was she some subtle and unusual form of Pacific Slope coquette?
"Popper was quite mad about it," she continued. "He thought Mr. Courtney was an ordinary sort of person, anyway. I didn't. I just thought him dull, and I suppose he couldn't help that. Mommer wanted to go over to England last summer. She thought we might stumble on him over there. But popper wouldn't let her do it. He sent us to Alaska instead." She paused, and gave a smiling bow to an acquaintance. "Doesn't Mrs. Peck look sweet tonight?" She designated the society editress of theMorning Trumpet, whose fragile figure was encased in a pale blue Empire costume. "And that lady over by the door, with the gold crown in her hair, the stout one in red, is Mrs. Wheatley, a professional Delsarte teacher. She's a great friend of mine and gives me Delsarte twice a week."
And Miss. Genevieve Ryan nodded to the dispenser of "Delsarte," a large and florid woman, who, taking her stand under a spreading palm tree, began to declaim "The Portrait" of Owen Meredith, and in the recital of the dead lady's iniquitous conduct the conversation was brought to a close.
From its auspicious opening, Faraday's acquaintance with the Ryans ripened and developed with a speed which characterizes the growth of friendship and of fruit in the genial Californian atmosphere. Almost before he felt that he had emerged from the position of a stranger he had slipped into that of an intimate. He fell into the habit of visiting the Ryan mansion on California Street on Sunday afternoons. It became a custom for him to dine thereen familleat least once a week. The simplicity and light-hearted good-nature of these open-handed and kindly people touched and charmed him. There was not a trace of the snob in Faraday. He accepted the lavish and careless hospitality of Barney Ryan's "palatial residence," as the newspapers delighted to call it, with a spirit as frankly pleased as that in which it was offered.
He came of an older civilization than that which had given Barney Ryan's daughter her frankness and her force, and it did not cross his mind that the heiress of millions might cast tender eyes upon the penniless sons of New England farmers. He said to himself with impatient recklessness that he ought not to and would not fall in love with her. There was too great a distance between them. It would be King Cophetua and the beggar-maid reversed. Clerks at one hundred and fifty dollars a month were not supposed to aspire to only daughters of bonanza kings in the circle from which Faraday had come. So he visited the Ryans, assuring himself that he was a friend of the family, who would dance at Miss Genevieve's wedding with the lightest of hearts.
The Chinese butler had grown familiar with Faraday's attractive countenance and his unabbreviated English, when late one warm and sunny afternoon the young man pulled the bell of the great oaken door of the Ryans' lion-guarded home. In answer to his queries for the ladies, he learned that they were out; but the Mongolian functionary, after surveying him charily through the crack of the door, admitted that Mr. Ryan was within, and conducted the visitor into his presence.
Barney Ryan, suffering from a slight sprain in his ankle, sat at ease in a little sitting-room in the back of the house. Mr. Ryan, being irritable and in some pain, the women-folk had relaxed the severity of their dominion, and allowed him to sit unchecked in his favorite costume for the home circle—shirt sleeves and a tall beaver hat. Beside him on the table stood bare and undecorated array of bottles, a glass, and a silver water-pitcher.
Mr. Ryan was now some years beyond sixty, but had that tremendous vigor of frame and constitution that distinguished the pioneers—an attribute strangely lacking in their puny and degenerate sons. This short and chunky old man, with his round, thick head, bristling hair and beard, and huge red neck, had still a fiber as tough as oak. He looked coarse, uncouth, and stupid, but in his small gray eyes shone the alert and unconquerable spirit which marked the pioneers as the giants of the West, and which had carried him forward over every obstacle to the summit of his ambitions. Barney Ryan was restless in his confinement; for, despite his age and the completeness of his success, his life was still with the world of men where the bull-necked old miner was a king. At home the women rather domineered over him, and unconsciously made him feel his social deficiencies. At home, too, the sorrow and the pride of his life were always before him—his son, a weak and dissipated boy; and his daughter, who had inherited his vigor and his spirit with a beauty that had descended to her from some forgotten peasant girl of the Irish bogs.
Faraday, with his power of listening interminably, and his intelligent comments, was a favorite of old Ryan's. He greeted him with a growling welcome; and then, civilities being interchanged, called to the Chinaman for another glass. This menial, rubbing off the long mirrors that decorated the walls, would not obey the mandate till it had been roared at him by the wounded lion in a tone which made the chandelier rattle.
"I never can make those infernal idiots understand me," said old Ryan, plaintively. "They won't do a thing I tell them. It takes the old lady to manage 'em. She makes them skip."
Then after some minutes of discourse on more or less uninteresting matters, the weary old man, glad of a listener, launched forth into domestic topics.
"Gen and the old lady are out buying new togs. I got a letter here that'll astonish them when they get back. It's from that English cuss, Courtney. D'ye ever hear about him? He was hanging about Genevieve all last winter. And this letter says he's coming back, that his grandfather's dead, and he's a lord now, and he's coming back. Do you mind that now, Faraday?" he said, looking with eyes full of humor at the young man.
Faraday expressed a sharp surprise.
"You know, Jack," continued the old man, "we're trained up to having these high-priced Englishmen come out here and eat our dinners, and sleep in our spare rooms, and drink our wines and go home, and when they meet us there forget they've ever seen us before; but we ain't trained up to havin' 'em come back this way, and it's hard to get accustomed to it."
"It's not surprising," said Faraday, coldly.
"I'm not so dead sure of that. But I can tell you the old lady'll be wild about this."
"Does Mrs. Ryan like him so much?" said the visitor, still coldly.
"All women like a lord, and Mrs. Ryan ain't different from the rest of her sex. She's dead stuck on Gen marrying him. I'm not myself, Jack. I'm no Anglomaniac; an American's good enough for me. I'm not spoiling to see my money going to patch up the roof of the ancestral castle of the Courtneys, or pay their ancestral debts—not by a long chalk."
"Do you think he's coming back to borrow money from you to pay off the ancestral debts?" asked Faraday.
"Not to borrow, Jack. Oh no, not to borrow—to get it for keeps—it, and Genevieve with it. And I don't just see how I'm to prevent it. Gen don't seem to care much, but the old lady's got it on her mind that she'd like to have a lord in the family, no matter how high they come; and she can work on Gen. Last summer she wanted to go after him—wanted to track him to his lair; but I thought she might's well stop there, and put m' foot down. Gen don't seem to care about him one way or the other, but then 'Lady Genevieve' sounds pretty nice——"
Here a rustle of millinery, approaching through the drawing-room beyond, cut short old Ryan's confidences. Faraday stood up to receive the ladies, who entered jubilant and unwearied from an afternoon's shopping. Genevieve, a magnificent princess, with the air of fashion given by perfectly setting clothes, much brown fur and velvet, a touch of yellow lace, and a quantity of fresh violets pinned to her corsage, looked as if she would make a very fine Lady Genevieve.
As soon as she heard the news she demanded the letter, and perused it intently, Faraday covertly watching her. Raising her eyes, she met his and said, with a little mocking air, "Well, Mr. Faraday, and what do you think of that?"
"That your mother seems to have been right," said Faraday, steadily eyeing her. An expression of chagrin and disappointment, rapid but unmistakable, crossed her face, dimming its radiance like a breath on a mirror. She gave a little toss to her head, and turning away toward an adjacent looking-glass, took off her veil and settled her hat.
Mrs. Ryan watched her with glowing pride already seeing her in fancy a member of the British aristocracy; but old Ryan looked rather downcast, as he generally did when confronted by the triumphant gorgeousness of the feminine members of his household. Faraday, too, experienced a sudden depression of spirits so violent and so uncalled for that if he had had room for any other feeling he would have been intensely surprised. Barney Ryan, at the prospect of having to repair the breaches in the Courtney exchequer and ancestral roof-tree, may have experienced a pardonable dejection. But why should Faraday, who assured himself a dozen times a day that he merely admired Miss. Genevieve, as any man might admire a charming and handsome girl, feel so desperate a despondency?
To prove to himself that his gloom did not rise from the cause that he knew it did rise from, Faraday continued to be a constant guest at the Ryan mansion, continued to see Miss. Genevieve at Madame Delmonti's and at the other small social gatherings, where the presentable young New Englander found himself quite a lion. When Mrs. Ryan saw him alone she flattered his superior intelligence and experience of the world by asking his opinion of the approaching Lord Hastings's matrimonial plans. This frank and outspoken lady was on the thorns of uncertainty, Lord Hastings's flight on his former visit having shaken her faith in him. Quite unconsciously she impressed upon Faraday how completely both she and Genevieve had come to trust him as a tried friend.
With the exaltation of a knight of old, Faraday felt that their trust would never be misplaced. He answered Mrs. Ryan's anxious queries with all the honesty of the calmest friendship. Alone in the great gold drawing-room, he talked to Genevieve on books, on music, on fashion, on society—on all subjects but that of love. And all the while he felt like the nightingale who sings its sweetest music while pressing its breast against a thorn.
Lord Hastings seemed to have lost no time in repairing to the side of the fair lady who was supposed to be the object of his fondest devotions, and whom destiny appeared to have selected as the renovator of Courtney Manor. Four weeks from the day Faraday had heard of his intended visit, the Bostonian received a letter from Mrs. Ryan bidding him to dinner to meet the illustrious guest. It seemed to Faraday that to go to see the newcomer in converse with Genevieve, beautiful in her costliest robes, to view the approving smiles of Mrs. Ryan, and perhaps the happy blushes of Miss. Ryan, was the manly upright course for one who could never be more than the avowed friend and silent worshipper of Barney Ryan's only daughter.
Arriving ten minutes late, he found the party already at the table. It was an inflexible rule of Barney Ryan's to sit down to dinner at the stroke of half-past six, whether his guests were assembled or not—a rule which even his wife's cajoleries and commands were powerless to combat.
Tonight the iron old man might well regard with pride the luxury and splendor that crowned a turbulent career begun in nipping poverty. The round table, glowing beneath the lights of the long crystal chandeliers, sparkled with cut-glass, and shone with antique silverware, while in the center a mass of pale purple orchids spread their fragile crêpe-like petals from a fringe of fern. Opposite him, still unfaded, superbly dressed, and admirably self-possessed, was his smiling consort, toward whom, whatever his pride in her might have been, his feelings this evening were somewhat hostile, as the ambitious and determined lady had forced him to don regulation evening dress, arrayed in which Barney's peace of mind and body both fled.
On either side of the table sat his son and daughter, the latter handsomer than Faraday had ever seen her, her heavy dress of ivory-tinted silk no whiter than her neck, a diamond aigret trembling like spray in her hair. Her brother Eddie, a year and a half her senior, looked as if none of the blood of this vigorous strong-thewed, sturdy stock could run in his veins. He was a pale and sickly looking lad, with a weak, vulgar face, thin hair and red eyelids. Faraday had only seen him once or twice before, and judged from remarks made to him by acquaintances of the family that Eddie did not often honor the parental roof with his presence. Eddie's irregular career appeared to be the one subject on which the family maintained an immovable and melancholy reserve. The disappointment in his only son was the bitter drop in Barney Ryan's cup.
There were other guests at the table. Faraday received a coy bow from Mrs. Peck, who had given her hair an extra bleaching for this occasion, till her pinched and powdered little face looked out from under an orange-colored thatch; Mrs. Wheatley was there too, with a suggestion of large white shoulders shining through veilings of black gauze; and with an air of stately pride, Mrs. Ryan presented him to Lord Hastings. This young man, sitting next Genevieve, was a tall, fair, straight-featured Englishman of gravely unresponsive manners. In the severe perfection of his immaculate evening dress he looked a handsome, well-bred young fellow of twenty-five or six.
As the late guest dropped into his seat, the interrupted conversation regathered and flowed again. Barney Ryan said nothing. He never spoke while eating, and rarely talked when women were present. Genevieve too was quiet, responding with a gently absent smile, when her cavalier, turning upon her his cold and expressionless steely-blue eyes, addressed to her some short regulation remark on the weather, or the boredom of his journey across the plains. The phlegmatic calm of his demeanor remained intact even under the coquettish onslaughts of Mrs. Peck and Mrs. Wheatley, who extracted from him with wheedling perseverance his opinions on the State, the climate, and the country. Lord Hastings replied with iron-bound and unsmiling brevity, his wide cold glance resting with motionless attention upon the painted physiognomy of Mrs. Peck and the broad and buxom one of Mrs. Wheatley, and his head turning with dignified difficulty in his exceedingly high and tight collar, as one and the other assailed him with queries. Meanwhile the object of his journey, slowly moving her great fan of white ostrich feathers, looked across the table at Faraday and made a little surreptitiousmoue.
The conversation soon became absorbed by the two married ladies, Faraday, and Lord Hastings. Only the Ryans were silent, Genevieve now and then throwing a lazy sentence into the vortex of talk, and Mrs. Ryan being occupied in lending a proud ear to the coruscations of wit that sparkled around the board, or in making covert gestures to the soft-footed Mongols, who moved with deft noiselessness about the table. Eddie Ryan, like his father, rarely spoke in society. In the glare of the chandelier he sat like a strange uncomfortable guest, taking no notice of any one. Toward the end of the feast he conversed in urgent whispers with his mother—a conversation which ended in her surreptitiously giving him her keys under the edge of the table. Before coffee, Eddie left, on the plea of an important engagement, retiring through the drawing-room, softly jingling the keys.
After this dinner, when Lord Hastings's presence had banished all his doubts, when the young Englishman's attractive appearance had impressed itself upon his jealous eye, and Genevieve's gentle indifference had seemed to him but a modest form of encouragement. Faraday found but little time to pay visits to the hospitable home of Barney Ryan.
The family friend that they had all so warmly welcomed and taken to their hearts withdrew himself quietly but firmly from their cheerful circle. When, at rare intervals, he did drop in upon them, he pleaded important business engagements as the reason of his inability to accept their numerous invitations to dinners and theater parties. After these mendacious statements he would wend a gloomy way homeward to his Pine Street boarding-house, and there spend the evening pretending to read, and cursing the fate which had ever brought him within the light of Genevieve'sbeaux yeux. The fable of being the family friend was quite shattered. Faraday had capitulated.
Nearly two months after the dinner, when rumors of Genevieve Ryan's engagement to Lord Hastings were in lively circulation, Faraday called at the lion-guarded mansion on California Street, and, in answering to his regulation request for the ladies, received the usual unintelligible Chinese rejoinder, and was shown into the gold drawing-room. There, standing in front of a long mirror, looking at her skirts with an eye of pondering criticism, was Miss Genevieve, dressed to go out. She caught sight of him in the glass, turned abruptly, and came forward, a color in her face.
"Is that you?" she said, holding out her hand. "I am so glad. I thought it was somebody else." Having thus, with her customary candor, signified to Faraday that she was expecting Lord Hastings, she sat down facing him, and said, abruptly, "Why haven't you been here for so long?"
Faraday made the usual excuses, and did quail before her cold and steady eyes.
"That's rather funny," she said, as he concluded "for now you're used to your new position, and it must go more easily, and yet you have less time to see your friends than you did at first."
Faraday made more excuses, and wondered that she should take a cruel pleasure in such small teasing.
"I thought p'r'aps," she said, still regarding him with an unflinching scrutiny, her face grave and almost hard, "that you'd begun to find us too Western, that the novelty had worn off, that our ways were too—too—what shall I say?—too wild and woolly."
A flush of anger ran over Faraday's face. "Your suppositions were neither just nor true," he said, coldly.
"Oh, I don't know," she continued, with a careless movement of her head, and speaking in the high, indifferent tone that a woman adopts when she wishes to be exasperating; "you needn't get mad. Lots of Eastern people feel that way. They come out here and see us constantly, and make friends with us, and then go back and laugh at us, and tell their friends what barbarians we are. It's customary, and nothing to be ashamed of."
"Do you suppose that I am that sort of an Eastern person?" asked Faraday, quietly.
"I don't know," she said, doubtfully. "I didn't think you were at first, but now——"
"But now you do. Why?"
"Because you don't come here any more," she said, with a little air of triumph. "You're tired of us. The novelty is over and so are the visits."
Faraday arose, too bitterly annoyed for speech. Genevieve, rising too, and touching her skirts with arranging hand, continued, apparently unconscious of the storm she was rousing:
"And yet it seems odd that you should find such a difference. Lord Hastings, now, who's English, and much more conventional, thinks the people here just as refined and particular as any other Americans."
"It's evident," said Faraday, in a voice roughened with anger, "that Lord Hastings's appreciation of the refinement of the Americans is only equaled by your admiration for the talents of the English."
"I do like them," said Genevieve, dubiously, shaking her head, as if she was admitting a not entirely creditable taste, and looking away from him.
There was a moment's silence. Faraday fastened his eyes upon her in a look of passionate confession that in its powerful pleading drew her own back to his.
"You're as honest as you are cruel," he said, almost in a whisper.
She made no reply, but turned her head sharply away, as if in sudden embarrassment. Then, in answer to his conventionally murmured good-byes, she looked back, and he saw her face radiant, alight, with the most beautiful smile trembling on the lips. The splendor of this look seemed to him a mute expression of her happiness—of love reciprocated, ambition realized—and in it he read his own doom. He turned blindly round to pick up his hat; the door behind him was opened, and there, handsome, debonair, fresh as a May morning, stood Lord Hastings, hat in hand.
"I hope you're not vexed, Miss. Ryan," said this young man, "but I'm very much afraid I'm just a bit late."
After this Faraday thought it quite unnecessary to visit Barney Ryan's "palatial mansion" for some time. Genevieve's engagement would soon be announced, and then he would have to go and offer his congratulations. As to whether he would dance at her wedding with a light heart—that was another matter. He assured himself that she was making a splendid and eminently suitable marriage. With her beauty and money and true simple heart she would deck the fine position which the Englishman could give her. He wished her every happiness, but that he should stand by and watch the progress of the courtship seemed to him an unnecessary twisting of the knife in the wound. Even the endurance of New England human nature has its limits, and Faraday could stand no more. So he refused an invitation to a tea from Mrs. Ryan, and one to a dinner and another to a small musical from Miss. Ryan, and alone in his Pine Street lodgings, for the first time in his life, read the "social columns" with a throbbing heart.
One Saturday afternoon, two weeks from the day that he had last seen Genevieve, he sat in his room trying to read. He had left the office early, and though it was still some hours before dark, a heavy unremitting rain had enveloped the afternoon in a premature twilight. The perpetual run of water from a break in the gutter near his window sounded drearily through the depressing history of the woes and disappointments of David Grieve. The gloom of the book and the afternoon was settling upon Faraday with the creeping stealthiness of a chill, when a knock sounded upon his door, and one of the servants without acquainted him with the surprising piece of intelligence that a lady was waiting to see him in the sitting-room below.
As he entered the room, dim with the heavy somberness of the leaden atmosphere, he saw his visitor standing looking out of the window—a tall, broad-shouldered, small-waisted striking figure, with a neat black turban crowning her closely braided hair. At his step she turned, and revealed the gravely handsome face of Genevieve Ryan. He made no attempt to take her hand, but murmured a regulation sentence of greeting; then, looking into her eyes, saw for the first time that handsome face marked with strong emotion. Miss. Ryan was shaken from her phlegmatic calm; her hand trembled on the back of the chair before her; the little knot of violets in her dress vibrated to the beating of her heart.
"This is not a very conventional thing to do," she said, with her usual ignoring of all preamble, "but I can't help that. I had something to talk to you about, Mr. Faraday, and as you would not come to see me, I had to come to see you."
"What is it that you wanted to see me about?" asked Faraday, standing motionless, and feeling in the sense of oppression and embarrassment that seemed to weigh upon them both the premonition of an approaching crisis.
She made no answer for a moment, but stood looking down, as if in an effort to choose her words or collect her thoughts, the violets in her dress rising and falling with her quickened breathing.
"It's rather hard to know how to say—anything," she said at length.
"If I can do anything for you," said the young man, "you know it would always be a happiness to me to serve you."
"Oh, it's not a message or a favor," she said, hastily. "I only wanted to say something"—she paused in great embarrassment—"but it's even more queer more unusual, than my coming here."
Faraday made no response, and for a space both were silent. Then she said, speaking with a peculiar low distinctness:
"The last time I saw you I seemed very disagreeable. I wanted to make sure of something. I wanted to make sure that you were fond of me—to surprise it out of you. Well—I did it. You are fond of me. I made you show it to me." She raised her eyes, brilliant and dark, and looked into his. "If you were to swear to me now that I was wrong I would know you were not telling the truth," she said, with proud defiance. "You love me."
"Yes," said Faraday, slowly, "I do. What then?"
"What then?" she repeated. "Why do you go away—go away from me?"
"Because," he answered, "I am too much of a man to live within sight of the woman I love and can never hope for."
"Can never hope for?" she exclaimed, aghast. "Are you—are you married?"
The sudden horror on her face was a strange thing for Faraday to see.
"No," he said, "I am not married."
"Then, did she tell you that you never could hope for her?" said Miss. Genevieve Ryan, in a tremulous voice.
"No. It was not necessary. I knew myself."
"You did yourself a wrong, and her too," she broke out, passionately. "You should have told her, and given her a chance to say—to say what she has a right to say, without making her come to you, with her love in her hand, to offer it to you as if she was afraid you were going to throw it back in her face. It's bad enough being a woman anyway, but to have the feelings of a woman, and then have to say a thing like this—it's—it's—ghastly."
"Genevieve!" breathed Faraday.
"Why don't you understand?" she continued, desperately. "You won't see it. You make me come here and tell it to you this way. I may be badly mannered and unconventional, but I have feelings and pride like other women. But what else could I do?"
Her voice suddenly broke into soft appeal, and she held out her hands toward him with a gesture as spontaneous in its pleading tenderness as though made by a child. Faraday was human. He dashed away the chair that stood between them and clasped the trembling hands in his.
"Why is it," she asked, looking into his face with shining troubled eyes—"why is it you acted this way? Was it Lord Hastings? I refused him two weeks ago. I thought I'd marry him once, but that was before I knew you. Then I waited for you, and you didn't come, and I wrote to you, and you wouldn't come. And so I had to come and tell you myself, and it's been something dreadful."
Faraday made no response, but feeling the smooth hands curled warm inside his, he stood listening to those soft accents that issued with the sweetness that love alone lends to women's voices from lips he had thought as far beyond his reach as the key of the rainbow.
"Do you think it was awful for me to do it?" she queried, in whispering anxiety.
He shook his head.
"Well," she said, laughing a little and turning her head half away, as her former embarrassment began to reassert itself over her subsiding nervousness, "I've often wished I was a man, but if it's always as awful as that to propose to a person, I'm quite content to be a woman."
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BY
MARY HALLECK FOOTE
medallion
Written forThe Spinners' Book of Fiction
All Rights Reserved
BY A curious coincidence, whenever George Fleming was translated to a wider berth, it was my luck to succeed him in the job he had just quitted. This had happened more than once, in the chances and changes that befall the younger men in the mining profession, before we began to jolly each other about it—always at long range.
When I heard he had resigned from the Consolidated Resumption, to everybody's surprise, at a time of great prosperity to the mine, I hailed my chance and congratulated myself that I should speedily be asked to fill his place: and I was!
I wrote him on the spot a playful letter, alluding to my long, stern chase and begging him to hold on this time till I could shake him by the hand; I had come to have a personal sentiment toward him apart from the natural desire to meet face to face the author of my continued advancement. But to this letter I received no word of reply.
His silence haunted me, rather—I thought about him a good deal while I was closing up my affairs in other directions before taking over the Consolidated Resumption. Meanwhile the company's cashier, Joshua Dean, a man of trust but small initiative, was filling the interregnum.
I found him living alone in the manager's house with the Flemings' Chinese cook as man of all work. The Resumption has never tolerated a boarding-house or a village or compound within sight of its official windows. Its first manager was a son of the chief owner, who built his house in the style of a gentleman's country-seat, small but exclusive and quite apart from the work. I liked the somber seclusion of the place, planted deep with trees of about twenty years' growth, showing their delicate, changing greens against the darker belt of pines. But its aspect increased, if anything, that uneasy sensation, like a cold wind in my back, which I still had in thinking of Fleming.
I had driven out to dine with Dean on the evening of my arrival. It was the last week in January; there had been much rain already for the foot-hills. Wet sprays from the untrimmed rose hedges disputed my passage through the inner gate. Discolored pine-needles lay in sodden drifts on the neglected grass. The hydrant leaked frozen puddles down the brick-paved walk. Mounting the veranda steps I laid my hand on the knocker, when an old Chinese servant popped his head out at a side-door and violently beckoned me in that way.
Dean, as I knew, had made his home with the Flemings for some time before their departure. After a few talks with him and a survey of the house I decided we might venture to continue the arrangement without getting in each other's way. It was a house peculiarly adapted to asolitude à deux. There was no telephone nearer than the office. I argued that Fleming was a man who could protect himself from frivolous intrusions, and his wife could have had but little in common with her neighbors in the village.
He had resigned on account of her health, I was told. It must have been a hasty flitting or an inconclusive one. The odd, attractive rooms were full of their belongings still. We two casual bachelors with our circumspect habits could make no impression on the all but speaking silence of those empty rooms. They filled me at times with a curious emotion of sadness and unrest.
Joshua seldom talked of the Flemings, though I knew he received letters from them. That he was deeply attached to their memory, hoarded it and brooded over it, I could not doubt. I even suspected some jealous sentiment on his part which made it hard for him to see me using their chairs, planting myself amongst their cushions and investigating their book-shelves. I thought it strange they had left so many things behind them of a personal nature. They seemed to have ceased to care for what most of us rolling stones are wont to cling to. Their departure had something unspeakable in it—akin to sudden death, or a sickness of the heart that made life indifferent to them.
"They must have loved this room!" I said to him one evening. It was during the black rains of February—Dean and I with our chairs to the fire, waiting for the Eastern mail. The night watchman's orders were to stop for it if the trains were anywhere near on time. At this storm season the Westbound was frequently behind and the road to town a quagmire. We never looked for Fahey—he was the man I found there as night watchman—before eight o'clock. It had rained and snowed off and on since the month began. In the dark, low rooms the fire burned all day. The dining-room, which had blue-green walls in imitation of Flemish tapestry and weathered-oak furniture, was darkened still more by the pines that gave a cloistered look to the view from our back windows into a small, square court, high-walled and spread with pine-needles. The rooms we used were two small ones united, done in white and yellow and with slim curtains which we could crush back upon the rods; but even there one could not see to read by daylight. This continuous, arctic gloom added, no doubt, to the melancholy spell of the house, which nevertheless charmed me, and held me almost with a sense of impalpable presences sharing with Joshua and me our intimate, wistful seclusion. If I was happy, in a luxuriously mournful sort of way, I knew that he was not—that he grieved persistently over something that cast a greyness over his thoughts in keeping with the atmosphere. I knew that he knew without any names whom I meant whenever I spoke ofthey.
"Yes, they loved it," he said, answering my exclamation. "They made it, somehow, as character is said to shape its own set of features."
"Had they lived here long?"
"For a mine house, yes. It was, of course, a home. They had no other."
"A happy one?" I ventured.
"Can any one be called happy who has the gift of strong feeling, and two children at stake, in this world?" I had never heard him speak with such bitterness.
"But to have any one to feel for—that is life," I said. "I wish I had more of it myself."
"Life, then, is not happiness."
I left him the last word, and sitting so, both silent, we heard a screen-door at the kitchen-end blow to with a bang and a clatter of tinware that sent the blood to my face in wrath. I said something—about Jim and his fly-doors (Jim believed that flies or their ghosts besieged that house all winter)—when the old heathen himself came boiling into the room like a whole United States mail service delayed.
"Hoo! Heap bad ou'si'! Heap snow!" he panted, wiping drops from the lock of the mail-pouch with his apron.
My wrath increased, because once more Fahey had got past the front door with the mail, whereas each night I had promised myself to waylay him and change his roundabout method of delivery. "If I live till tomorrow," I said crossly, "I'll see if he can't climb those steps and hand us the bag himself."
Jim stood listening. "We might be at dinner," Joshua suggested.
"What's the matter with knocking?—what is the knocker for?" It struck me, as I spoke, that I had not heard the sound of the knocker since the day Jim stayed my own hand and shunted me in at the side; it seemed he must have practised the same vigilance with subsequent comers, for I could not recall one person who had entered the house announced by the brass lion's head on the door.
"Heno lock!" Jim planted himself in front of me; his voice quavered nervously. "All time Iun-lock! Fi' 'tlock whistle blow—I go quick! Nobody wait. I all time run."
"Why should you run? What is the knocker for?" I repeated. At this I stepped past him startling him somewhat, and hurled open the front door. I had heard our coy watchman going down the path.
"Tomorrow night, Fahey," I shouted, "you bring the bag in this way. Knock, man! There's the knocker—see?"
Jim looked at me with eyes aghast. He gathered himself for speech, breathing deeply.
"Mis' Oth' (my name is Othet), I tell you: Long time-longtime, no man knock flon' do'. In this house, no good. No good knock. Sometime some-come-you no man see!" He lowered his voice to a rapid whisper, spreading his yellow palms tremulously. "You tell man come knock flon' do'—I go 'way. Too much bad thing!"
Muttering to himself he retreated. "Now what has he got on his mind do you suppose? Could you make out what he was driving at?"
Dean smiled, a non-committal smile. "It would be rather awkward for us, wouldn't it, if Jim should leave? We are too far from the coast for city servants in winter. I doubt if any of the natives could be persuaded to stay in this house alone."
"You think Jim would leave if I made Fahey knock at that door every night?"
Joshua answered me obliquely. "If I could ever quote anything straight, I would remind you of a saying in one of George Eliot's novels that 'we've all got to take a little trouble to keep sane and call things by the same names as other people.' Perhaps Jim doesn't take quite trouble enough. I have difficulty sometimes myself to find names for things. I should like to hear you classify a certain occurrence I have in mind, not unconnected, I think, with Jim's behavior tonight. I've never discussed it, of course. In fact, I've never spoken of it before." He smiled queerly. "It's very astonishing how they know things."
"The menials?"
He nodded. "Jim was in the house at the time. No one knows that he heard it,—no one ever told him. But he is thinking of it tonight just as I am. He's never forgotten it for a moment, and never will."
Joshua dragged the charred logs forward and stooped amid their sparks to lay a fresh one with its back to the chimney. Then he rose and looked out; as he stood in the door, I could hear the hissing of fine snow turning to rain and the drenched bamboo whipping the piazza posts; over all, the larger lament of the pines, and, from the long rows of lights in the gulch, the diapason of the stamp-heads thundering on through the night.
"'Identities of sensation,'" said Joshua, quoting again as he shut the door, "are strong with persons who live in lonely places! Jim and I have lived here too long."
"Well, I hope you won't live here another moment till you have told me that story," I urged, and we drew again to the fire.
"There was a watchman here before Fahey," he began, "an old plainsman, with a Bible name, Gideon. He looked like the pictures of old Ossawattamie Brown, and he had for the Flemings a most unusual regard. It was as strong as his love for his family. It was because of what Fleming did for his son, young Gid, when they caught him stealing specimens with a gang of old offenders. Gid was nineteen, and a pretty good boy, we thought. Such things happen between men of the right sort every day, I suppose,—Fleming would say so. But it was his opportunity to do it for a man who could feel and remember, and he made a friend for life right there. It is too long a story to tell, but young Gid's all right—working in the city, married and happy,—trusted like any other man. It wasn't in the blood, you see.
"Before his boy got into trouble, Fleming used to call the old man 'Gideon,' talked to him any old way; but after his pride fell down it was always 'Mr. Gideon,' and a few words when he brought the mail, about the weather or the conduct of the trains. The old man appeared to stand taller in those moments at the door, when he brought to the house the very food of its existence. They lived upon their letters, for both the children were away. The army boy in the Philippines; it was during the Mindanao campaign; and Constance (Joshua, I noticed, took a deep breath before the name), the daughter, was at school in the East. Gideon could gauge the spirits of the two, waiting here for what he brought them. He kept tally of the soldier's letters, the thin blue ones that came strolling in by the transport lines. But hers—her letters were his pride.
"'It's there all right,' he would say—'she never misses a Monday mail, the little one!' or, as the winter months wore on—'you'll be counting the weeks now, madam. Six more letters and then the telegram from Ogden, and I hope it's my privilege to bring it, madam.' For as Fleming gave him his title, the old man passed it back with a glow of emphasis, putting devotion into the 'madam' and life service into the 'Mr. Fleming, sir.'
"Then she came home—Constance—she was no longer the little one. Taller than her mother, and rather silent, but her looks were a language, and her motions about the house—I suppose no words could measure their pride in her, or their shrinking when they thought of her in contact with the world. People laughed a little, looking at her, when her mother talked of the years they were going to have together. And she would rebuke the laugh and say, 'We do not marry early in my family, nor the Flemings either.' When the August heat came on, they thought she was too pale—they spared her for a visit to some friends who had a houseboat off Belvedere, or some such place. It was an ambush of fate. She came home, thin, brown, from living on the water,—happy! too happy for safety. She brought her fate with her, the last man you'd suppose could ever cross her path. He was from Hawaii, an Englishman—not all English, some of us thought. Handsome as a snake; a face that kept no marks. Eyes all black—nothing of the pupil showing. They say such eyes are not to be trusted. I never liked him. I'd better not try to describe him.
"It seemed madness to me, but I suppose they were no more helpless than other fathers and mothers. He had plenty to say for himself, and introductions—all sorts of credentials, except a pair of eyes. They had to let it go on; and he took her away from them six months after she saw him first. That's happiness, if you call it so!"
Again I added, "It is life."
"There was not much left of it in this house after she went," Joshua mused. "It was then they asked me to come up and stay with them. A silence of three does not press quite so close as a silence of two. And we talked sometimes. The mine had taken a great jump; it was almost a mockery the way things boomed. The letters, I noticed, were not what the schoolgirl letters had been to her mother. They came all right, they were punctual, but something I felt sure was wrong. Mrs. Fleming would not have missed a mail for anything in the world—every hour's delay wore upon her. She would play her game of solitaire, long after bedtime, at that desk by the drop-light. It seemed she could not read; nothing held her. She was irritable with Fleming, and then she would pet him piteously to make up. He was always gentle. He would watch her over his book as she walked up and down in the back room in the light between the dining-room curtains. If he saw I noticed, he'd look away and begin to talk.
"I have gone a little ahead of my story, for this was after the dark weather came on and the mails were behind; we knew there was some new strain on her spirits. You could see her face grow small and her flesh waste away.
"One night we sat here, Fleming and I, and she was pacing in her soft, weary way in the back of the room. There came a knock. It was Gideon's, yet none of us heard the gate click nor any step outside. She stood back, for she never showed any impatience—she tried to pretend that she expected nothing. Fleming opened the door; he stood there an instant looking out.
"'Didn't you hear a knock?' he asked me. Before I could answer he went outside, closing the door, and we heard him go down the steps slowly.
"When he came in he merely said, 'A jar of wind.
"'A jar of wind!' Mrs. Fleming mocked him. The knock came again as she spoke. Once, twice, then the light tap: I have described Gideon's knock. We did not pretend again it was the wind.
"'You go this time;' Fleming tried to laugh. 'See if there is anything doing.'
"There was nothing doing whatever, and nothing to be seen. I turned on the electrics outside, and Fleming, seeing the light, came out to join me. I asked him if those were his tracks—a man's footsteps could be seen printed in the fresh, light snow as far as the lowest step and back. All beyond, where the light streamed down the path to the gate, was sky-fresh snow softly laid without wind. 'Those are my tracks,' he said. 'There were no others before—sure,' he repeated, 'and there is no one down at the gate. You need not go down there. Say nothing to her,' he continued as we re-opened the door.
"She was expecting us. She was very pale but half smiling, braving it out. She fixed her eyes on Fleming and then on me. 'Did you notbothhear that knock?' As she spoke it came again. I stood nearest the door; I hurled it open. Absolutely nothing. The lights, burning in a silly way, made shadows on the steps. Not a mark, not even a leaf-track on the path we could see below.
"I went over to the telephone and called up the post-office. What happened at the house in absence I do not know. I found the drawing-room empty; Fleming joined me coming from his wife's room.
"'She is fearfully upset by that knocking,' he said. 'Can't we think up some explanation?'
"I feared he would have less courage for inventing explanations after what I had to tell him.
"I had followed the track of a horse and cart to the stable and found Gideon's old mare at her hitching-post; the cart was empty, the muddy lap-robe dragging over the wheel. At the post-office they told me Gideon had started for the mine an hour and a half ago. 'Hasn't he got out there with that telegram yet?' they added. From the telegraph office, where they knew Gideon's hours, they had sent a message across to the post-office to be carried out by him with the mail. The voice on the telephone remarked, 'I guess they ought to get that wire pretty soon. It was markedImportant.'
"Fleming was cold and shaking as he listened. 'Drive back along the road through the woods, Joshua'—he seldom called me by that name. 'I think something has happened to the old man. His knock is on duty tonight, but where is he?'
"It came again, and following it a low cry from passage behind closed doors. 'She heard it too,' said Fleming. And he went to his wife.
"I called up the landing-man to help me—Tommy Briscoe; I knew he wouldn't spread any talk about. The search was not long. A lantern burning by itself in the woods showed us where he had stopped the cart and half turned and tramped around in the snow. He'd dropped the bag out, probably, missed it and looked for it on foot, setting his lantern down. He'd gone back quite a bit along the road, and, coming back with it, the light in his eyes, he had made a misstep, and the shaft—the old Granite Hill shaft, you know—it's close to the road. We found him in the sump at the bottom. There had been too much rain, but it is a deep shaft anyway. He kept his hold on the bag, and he kept his senses long enough to hook it onto a poor little stray pine-root above the water, where he died. It was a cruel death, but his face was good to look at."
"And the telegram?" I asked.
"It was safe. He'd saved everything, except himself. They were driven over to Colfax that night, with not a moment to spare——"
"But you haven't told me what it was."
"The message? Yes, it was from her, Constance—sent from an address in the city. It said—I suppose I may repeat it. It is part of the night's work.
"'Come to me, mother,' it said. 'I am here. I need you.'"
"And they were in time?"
"To bid her good-by," said Joshua. "There was no hope for her but in death. Of course, they never explained. She simply fled from—we don't know what. As long as she could she bore it without complaint, and then she came home. She had them both with her and she knew them.
"I believe they were willing to give her up. It was the only solution left. They were very fixed in their ideas about divorce, and what comes after. They believed in staking all or nothing and abiding the result. The logic of her choice was death. They saw her free, without a stain, without an obligation in this life even to her child, for it lay dead beside her. They did grieve for that. They wanted it to live. It would have been something—yet, I believe, even that was best.
"They lived on here for a while, if you call it living; but the silence in these rooms was more than she could endure. And I need not tell you that the watchman, who was put on after Gideon, had orders to leave that knocker alone."
"And you think," I asked, "that while Gideon lay dead at the bottom of the shaft, his knock was 'marching on'?" I regretted instantly the turn of my last sentence. Joshua stiffened as he replied:
"No; I cannot assert that he was dead, but I am convinced that what was left of him, of his mortal—or immortal—consciousness, was not concerned with himself. What may happen to us at that last boundary post is one of the mysteries no man can solve till he gets there."
"Joshua," I said, "the drift of your conclusion is a tribute to Gideon's faithfulness—well deserved I have no doubt. But if you'll allow me to say so, it is not a tribute to the healthy state of your mind. I regret to say it, but I fear that I agree with you: I think you have lived in this house too long."
"If I had lived here too long for any other reason," he answered gently, "enough has been said. It is better we should understand each other. But, as to my mind—I prefer to keep it unhealthy, if by that you mean the tendency to project it a little further than reason, founded on such laws of the universe as we know, can help us. Healthy minds are such as accept things—endeavor to forget what gives immeasurable pain. I prefer the pain."
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