Hard-Pan/Chapter 4
THE colonel's visits now followed John Gault's with businesslike regularity. One week from the afternoon when the younger man had paid his last call, Colonel Reed had made his customary appearance and proffered his customary request.
With each succeeding gift of money his spirits seemed to rise, his gracious bonhomie to become more pronounced. Upon this occasion he had said cheerfully, as he dropped the pieces of gold into his old chamois-skin purse:
"It 's these unconscionable tradespeople that eat up our resources! Why can't a provident government arrange things so that we don't have to pay butchers and bakers and milkmen? Life would be so much better worth while if we could spend our money on clothes and books and entertaining our friends than in paying bills. Now, this"—jingling the gold in the purse—"goes to a son of Belial who sells us groceries on tick."
"Very kind of him, I should say," said the other. "Are n't you rather lucky to have such good credit?"
"Well, that's what I think," said the colonel, throwing back his head and laughing like an old prince in whom the joy of life and the desire of the eyes still burned strong; "but Viola thinks credit is a trap set by the king of all the devils."
"Women are apt to be cautious about that sort of thing."
"I don't know about all women, but Viola is. She is more afraid of credit than she is of smallpox. But I say to her: 'My dear, look where we would have been without it! And as long as these good, charitable souls will give us food and drink for nothing, for goodness' sake let them do it. Don't let 's try and suppress such a worthy impulse.' Not, of course," said the colonel, growing suddenly grave and squaring his shoulders, "that we don't intend to pay them. We always do. Sometimes, it is true, we 're rather slow about it; but eventually things are squared off to everybody's satisfaction. How else could we have the credit?"
He asked this question with an air of triumph that, to the listener, seemed to have something in it of conscious cunning. Gault answered with a commonplace about the advantage of inspiring so great a trust in the vulgar mind. The colonel was openly gratified.
"Oh," he said, as he moved toward the door, "there 's something in the name of Ramsay Reed yet. But not enough," he added, laughing with a mischievous appreciation of the humor of his misfortunes, "to let a grocery bill run on indefinitely. There was a day when my name was good for any length of time—but that was thirty years ago."
Then he left, smiling and happy, and on the way home bought a pot of pâté de foie gras, a bottle of claret, and a handkerchief with an embroidered edge for Viola. At the grocery store on the corner of the street where he lived he stopped and paid twenty dollars on his bill, and then fared up the street with rapid strides, all agog with pleasure at the thought of Viola's delight in his present, and the jolly little supper they would have on the end of the kitchen table.
The man who had made these innocent pleasures possible was far from enjoying those sensations of gratification said to be experienced by a cheerful giver.
He had begun to know very dark hours. His first great love, come tardily and reluctantly, at an age when the heart is almost closed to soft influences and the mind is hardened with much worldly contact, had come poisoned with torturing suspicions, with shame for his own weakness, with fears of the truth.
Had he been a stronger man he would have torn up by the roots this passion for a woman he dared not trust, have gone away and tried to forget. But the lifelong habit of self-indulgence was too powerful to be broken. He did not want to try and live without the charm and torment of Viola's presence. Had he been weaker he would have yielded to the spell, never dared to question, and gone on blindly into the purgatory of those who love and doubt. All his life he had retained an ideal of womanhood—a creature aloof from the coarseness of worldly ambition and vulgar greed. Now he found himself bound to one the breath of whose life seemed to be tainted with duplicity and sordid intrigue.
At times his state of uncertainty became intolerable. Then he resolved to go to her, take her hands in his, and looking into her eyes, ask for the truth. But the world's lessons of a conventional reserve, a well-bred reticence, asserted their claims, and he found himself contemplating, with ironical bitterness, this picture of his own simplicity. If they were deceiving him, how they would laugh—laugh together—at the folly of the pigeon they were plucking so cleverly! A life's experience, caution, cynicism, had gone down into dust before a girl's gray eyes. Could she be false and those eyes look into his so frankly and honestly? Could those lips, that folded on each other in curves so full of innocence and truth, be ready with words of hypocrisy and deceit? When he was with her such thoughts seemed madness; when he was away from her his belief seemed a miserable infatuation.
After the colonel's last appearance he again determined to try and see her alone. This, he discovered, was not as easy of accomplishment as it had been on his first attempt. Arriving at the house at four o'clock, he rang repeatedly, but was not able to gain admittance. At last a small boy, who had been studying him through the bars of the gate, volunteered the information that the lady was out.
Gault turned away, and coming down the flagged walk, asked the child if he knew what direction she had taken.
"I dunno that," said the boy, "but she went out with her basket, and when she goes with her basket she generally stays a long while."
Gault rewarded him for his information with a piece of money, and turned down the street toward the other side of town.
It was a windy afternoon. The trades were just beginning, and their clear, chill sweep had already borne away some of the evil odors which hung about the old portion of the city. Gault could feel the touch of fog in their buoyant breath, and knew that long tongues of it like white wool were stealing in through the Golden Gate. The city was putting on its summer aspect—a gray glare, softened by the mingling of dust and haze that rode the breezes. Bits of paper, rags, and straws were collected at corners in little whirling heaps. Presently the mightier winds would come, winging their way across miles of heaving seas to rush down the street in a mad carouse, carrying before them the dirt and refuse and odors and uncleanness which mark the dwelling of man.
He had walked some distance when, rounding a corner, a sharp gust seized him. In its fierce exultation it threw a whirlwind of dust into his eyes, so that, for a moment, he did not see that she was coming toward him. Then he caught a glimpse of the approaching figure and recognized it. She did not see him, but was engaged in her customary amusement of looking into the gardens. There was an air of unmistakable alertness and gaiety about her. Her hand tapped the tops of the fence-rails as she came, and she looked at the floral display behind them with happy eyes. Her scanty black skirt was sometimes whirled round her feet, showing her small ankles and narrow russet shoes. Once she had to put up her hand to her hat,—a white sailor bound with a dark ribbon,—and the frolicsome wind swept all the loosened ends of her hair forward and lashed her skirts out on either side. She had a basket on one arm, and holding this firmly, leaned back almost on the wind, laughing to herself.
At the same moment she caught sight of him. The wind dropped suddenly, as if conscious that she should not be presented in such boisterous guise to a lover's eye, and her figure seemed to fall back into lines of decorous demureness; only the color and laughter of her recent buffeting still remained in her face.
"Is it you?" she cried. "Did you see me in the wind? Is n't it fun?"
They met, and he took her hand. She was all blown about, but fresh as a flower that has shaken off the dew. The contrast between them, between what might be called their different ranks in society, was much more clearly marked in the open light of the street than in the ragged homeliness of her own parlor.
While he was essentially the man of luxurious environment and assured position, she presented the appearance of a working-girl. Even the delicacy and refinement of her face could not counteract the suggestion of her dress. Beauty when unadorned may adorn the most, but it cannot give to ill-made old clothes the effect of garments made by a French modiste. John Gault was used to women who wore this kind of clothes—so used, in fact, that he hardly knew what made Viola appear so different from the other girls of his acquaintance. The contrast in their looks seemed to mark more clearly the contrast in their positions, seemed to purposely accentuate that wide gulf set between them.
Gault took her basket from her and dropped into place at her side. The high rows of houses protected them from the wind, and only as they crossed the open spaces at the intersection of streets did it catch them, and, for a moment, play boisterously with them.
The girl seemed in excellent spirits. He had noticed this with every recurring visit. Looking back upon her as she was when he had first known her, care-worn, pale, and quiet, she seemed now like a different person. Her glance sparkled with animation, her voice was full of that thrilling quality which some women's voices acquire in moments of happiness. She was a hundred times more fatally alluring than she had been in the beginning. He knew now that while he was with her his reason would always be in abeyance to his heart.
"You seem to be in very good spirits," he said to her, not without a feeling of personal grievance that some cause of which he was ignorant should add so to her lightness of heart.
"I am," she answered. "I 'm in very good spirits. I 'm quite happy. It 's something lovely to feel so gay in your heart, is n't it?"
"I don't know; maybe I 've never felt so."
"Oh, what nonsense!" she cried, looking at him reproachfully. "You, who have always had just what you wanted! I used to be afraid of you at first. It seemed rather awful to know anybody who 'd always had things go exactly their way."
He ignored the remark and said:
"What 's making you happy? Tell it to me, and then perhaps I 'll get a little reflection of it."
"I don't know that it 's any one especial thing. Happiness comes when lots of little things fit nicely together. I never had one big thing in a lump to make me happy. I tell you what 's doing a good deal toward it. Father and I are"—she made an instant's pause and then said—"doing so much better; financially, I mean. It 's such a relief! You don't know."
He turned and looked at her and met her eyes. They looked rather abashed, and then fell away from the scrutiny of his.
"You don't think it queer of me to tell you that, do you?" she asked. "I tell you a good many things I would n't say to other people."
"I am proud that you should have such confidence in me."
"Well," she continued, with a quick sigh of relief, "we 've been lately—that is, just about when we first knew you, and before that—really quite badly off. And my father being so sanguine, and having once been so differently situated, it 's very hard on him—very hard."
She paused, and he felt that she was looking at him for confirmation of her remark.
"Very; I quite understand," he answered.
"And, really, it was dreadful. It 's trying for old people—so much anxiety. And then, just at the very worst, things suddenly brightened. Just about a month or six weeks ago the luck changed. You must have been the mascot."
This time he looked at her, but her glance was averted.
"Go on," he said, thinking that his voice sounded strange.
"Because it was after we knew you that things began to get better. I was angry with my father that first day when he asked you in, because I did n't want you to see how—how straitened we were. There 's a pride of poverty, you know; well, I suppose I must have a little bit of it. Everything was at its worst then. But now it 's all different. You 've been the mascot."
He again felt her eyes surveying him, but found it impossible to look at her. In his heart he was afraid of what he might read in her face.
"Don't you like being a mascot?" she queried, in her happy girl's voice. "You don't look as if you did."
"I 'm proud and flattered, probably too much so for speech."
"I 'm glad, because that 's what you were. There 's no getting out of it. I 'll tell you how it happened. My father used to own a great deal of stock in mines and companies and things, and when everything went down so fast, he sold almost all of it. But some he kept. He had it put away in the drawers of his desk up-stairs in his room, and about two months ago it began to go up, and now it pays dividends and we get them. Is n't that good luck?"
She was close to him, looking into his face. He turned his head this time and confronted her with a steady gaze. In the harsh afternoon light every curve and line of her countenance was revealed. Her eyes were full of light and joy. His glance met and held them for one searching moment, then turned away baffled.
"Very good luck. I congratulate you," he said.
"You may well," she answered. "I 'd given up expecting good luck ever any more in this world. I believe in it, and my father's had come and gone almost before I was born, and mine—mine has n't come yet, I suppose."
"Unless you discover some more old stock in the pigeonholes of the desk."
"Oh, I don't think that's likely. Lightning does n't strike twice in the same place."
"What was the stock? Mining stock?"
She seemed in doubt for a moment, then said:
"Yes, I think so—yes, surely, mining stock."
"Do you remember the name of the mine?"
He glanced at her as she walked beside him. She appeared to be cogitating.
"I don't believe I do," she answered at length. "To tell you the truth, I don't believe my father mentioned it to me. I 'm very stupid about business. I 've never had any necessity to know about it, and so I 've never learned."
"How long had it been lying in the desk?"
"Oh, years and years! Probably twenty. It was a relic of the days when everything was booming."
"If he's been paying assessments on it all these years, he ought certainly to be repaid now."
He was scrutinizing her sharply. Her profile was toward him, and at this remark he saw the color mount into her cheek, and that curious appearance of immobility come over her face which denotes a sudden, almost electric stoppage and then concentration of mental activity. She raised her head and said, without looking at him:
"Assessments are a yearly or semi-yearly payment, are n't they?"
"Yes, or quarterly—according to the way the stock is drawn."
"But is n't there some that is non-assessable? I 've surely heard that expression."
"In other States, but in California—well, possibly there might be."
"I 'm sure there must be. This of my father's must have been." She came quite close to him in her earnestness, and looked at him with an expression of uneasiness on her face.
"It must have been that kind," she insisted; "probably you never heard of this mine."
"Probably I never did," he answered grimly.
They walked on for a few moments in silence. There was a visible drop in her spirits. Stealing a side glance at her, he could see that she was looking down, evidently in troubled thought. Suddenly she raised her head and said:
"Well, I don't really know anything about it. Only I do hope one thing, and that is that it will go on paying."
"Don't bother about that," he said; "it will."
"What makes you think it will?"
He turned on her roughly and said:
"Don't you think it will?"
"I 'd like to think so," she answered, abashed by his unusual manner; "but I 've learned that it's foolish to hope. I try not to."
He gave a short, disagreeable laugh and said:
"Oh, not in this case. Hope as much as you like."
"You 're very cheering," she answered; "but I don't see how you can be so sure."
"It seems to me you 're very pessimistic—especially for a young woman who has just found a drawerful of paying stock."
His manner in making this remark was so impregnated with angry bitterness that Viola, chilled and repelled, made no response. In silence they walked onward till a turn in the street brought them in sight of the house.
At the gate she said rather timidly:
"Would you like to come in?"
He had been carrying the basket, and now found the depositing of it in a place of safety an excuse to enter; for even in his present state of morose ill humor he could not forego the pleasure of a few more moments of her society.
In the cold, half-furnished house their foot-steps echoed with a strangely solitary effect. She preceded him into the parlor, and moved about with the confident tread of the chatelaine, pulling up the blinds, putting the basket out of sight, and laying aside her hat and gloves. There were some thin flowered muslin curtains hanging over the bay-window, and she arranged the folds of these with deft, proprietary touches, and then stepped back and studied the effect.
After watching her for a moment the visitor said in a tone of restored amiability:
"Are n't those something new?"
She looked at him with quick, grateful recognition of his change of mood.
"Yes; do you like them? I changed my mind about a dozen times before I bought them. Even now I don't know whether I 'm entirely satisfied."
"Oh, you ought to be," he said, as he drew near and eyed the curtains with the air of a connoisseur; "I 'm sure you could n't have chosen anything prettier."
Viola's spirits rose to the level they had been at when he met her earlier in the afternoon. Her eyes brightened and her face took on its most animated expression.
"They 're another outward and visible sign of the rise in mining stock," she continued. "I 'm so glad you noticed them without my having to make you do so."
"Do you want to know why I did?"
"Because they were pretty, of course."
"Not at all. I was looking at you as you arranged them, and wondering why a pair of curtains should be so much more interesting than I was."
"What made you think they were?"
"Because you were devoting yourself to them and coldly ignoring me."
"That was because I was a little bit frightened of you. You were so cross just now, before we came in, that I did n't know what to say to you."
"I cross? What a calumny! I was in my sweetest humor."
She looked at him mischievously.
"If you call that your sweetest humor, all I can think is that you 're not as clever as you pretend to be."
"I 'm afraid I 'm not. For example, I 'm not clever enough to understand you—a little girl like you, scarcely half my age."
"Am I really such a sphinx?"
"You are to me."
"I like that," she said, smiling, and gathering up the edge of the curtain in a frill; "I don't want everybody to see through me. But you 're different."
"How am I different?"
"You 're more a friend than other people—more a friend than anybody else I know. Tell me what you don't understand about me, and I 'll explain it. I won't leave myself a single secret."
Though he was standing close to her, looking down at her, he suddenly dropped his voice to the key that was the lowest she could hear.
"If I only dared to ask, and you would only tell the truth."
"Dared to ask!" she repeated blankly, alarmed and upset by his singular change of manner.
"And you would tell the truth," he added, and heard his own voice sound suddenly husky and shaken. "Tell it to me now!"
"I always do," she stammered.
"No matter what it is," he continued, as if he had not heard her—"no matter how it may hurt me or injure you."
The color ran over her face and as quickly ebbed away, leaving her pallid. It might have been the confession of innocence or the confusion of guilt. She looked nervously from side to side, raised her eyes to his, and dropped them again.
"There are always a few things a person can't tell," she almost whispered.
He gave an ugly laugh, and put his arm half round her as if to draw her to him, then drew back as quickly, and turning away, walked to the window. Viola did not seem to have noticed the attempted caress. There was a moment of penetrating silence. He wondered if she could hear his heart beat.
Then she said:
"Why do you say such strange things? I always tell you the truth."
To his listening ear her voice sounded affectedly naïve. He answered without moving:
"Of course you do. So do all women since the days of Eve."
"But you don't seem to believe me."
"You must n't jump at such hasty conclusions."
"Have you heard anything about me that would make you think I was deceitful?"
"I have never spoken of you to any one except your father."
"I can't understand you at all to-day. You 're so changeable and moody, and sometimes so ill-humored."
"What a dreadful afternoon you 've had! I 'm sorry." Then, with an abrupt change of tone: "Who picks up the leaves of the deodar and ties them up in those neat little bundles?"
"I do—do you believe me?" She spoke with a sharpness he had never heard her use before.
He broke out into sudden laughter that this time sounded genuine. Turning from the window, he came toward her and took her hand.
"Are you angry?" he asked. "I don't wonder. Say the most disagreeable things you can think of, and they won't be more than I deserve."
For the second time this afternoon she beamed over his restoration to good humor.
"I 'm not a very good person to quarrel with," she said, looking at him with soft, forgiving eyes, "though, as you see, I 've got a temper."
He gave her hand a little pressure and relinquished it, taking up his hat.
"Accept a hundred apologies from me for my rudeness. Good-by."
"You were disagreeable," she admitted, as they went together into the hall. "You seemed as if you did n't believe half I said to you, and actually as if our good luck made you angry."
Gault had opened the door, and his face was turned from her.
"Oh, don't think that," he answered, as he stepped out on to the porch; "whatever gives you happiness adds to mine. Adios, señorita."
The door closed after him, and Viola stood alone in the hall, smiling to herself. She made as if to watch him through one of the narrow panes of glass which formed small windows on either side of the portal, then suddenly drew back and shook her head.
"That would be bad luck," she said, "and I 'm too happy to risk bad luck."
It was a few days later than this that an opera
company of some fame in southern France was
encouraged by a successful Mexican season to
run up to San Francisco. Californians are notoriously
fond of music, and the small opera companies which wander through the West,
not daring to measure their talents with the
Eastern stars, generally can count on a profitable
season by the Golden Gate. Bad scenery,
absurd costumes, and indifferent acting do not
damp the ardor of the Californian, who will go
anywhere and undergo any small discomfort
to hear passable singing.
Mrs. Gault, who went every year or two to New York and found her ideas there, as she did her hats and dresses, derided the local taste for hearing unknown prima donnas as Leonora and Gilda. But her husband and Letitia overruled her in at least this one particular, and when opera came up from Mexico or across from New Orleans, she always went with them, and tried to look as bored as her animated features and lively style would permit.
This particular season, a short one of three weeks given by an Italian company that had been touring Mexico during the winter, opened with a performance of "Rigoletto." For the first night Mortimer Gault procured one of the lower boxes, leaving it to his wife to fill it with such company as she desired, provided a seat was left for him in the background, where he could hear and would not have to talk. The party, which consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Gault, Letitia, John, Tod McCormick, and his sister Pearl, was late in arriving, and it was not until the interval between the second and third acts that they found time to look about the house. Letitia and Pearl were in the front of the box, the latter on the inner side nearest the audience, with John Gault sitting behind her in the shadow of the curtain. While Letitia looked about the house through her lorgnon she could hear the animated chatter of Pearl, interspersed with comments from Maud Gault and Tod.
"Do you see that woman in the box opposite—the pale one with the piece of blue velvet twisted in her hair? She came up with the company, and her husband is a professional gambler in Mexico and makes heaps of money. You can ask Tod if you don't believe me."
Tod said it was all true, and that she was a "peach," a form of encomium that, in his vast appreciation, he was fond of applying to every member of the other sex that came within range of his admiring eye.
"In the box above, where the two good-looking men are, that little red, squeezed-looking woman is Lady Jervis, who used to be Tiny Madison ever so long ago. She went abroad and married Sir Somebody or other Jervis, and she 's out here now with a syndicate."
"What is she doing with a syndicate?" Mrs. Gault asked. "Is she going on the stage?"
"No; they 're buying mines or railroads or something. Her husband 's in it, and all the others, they say, are English lords. That 's part of the syndicate with her now, in the box."
"What part of the syndicate?" said Tod. "The head, or the feet, or the middle?"
"Don't get gay, Tod," said his sister, severely; "I don't like small boys when they 're too funny. Down there in the audience, near the middle of the parquet, is the woman whose husband is something or other in Central America. He 's enormously rich, and she comes up here once a year and buys clothes. They say she used to be on the stage, and she looks just like it; she has such a lot of paint round her eyes and such vaudeville hair. But you ought to see her children! They 're quite black, just like little negroes. Major Conway, who lived down there a good deal, says that Central American children are all dark when they 're young, and then it wears off as they grow older."
"Do they use sapolio?" inquired Tod.
Pearl treated this inquiry with fitting scorn, and continued:
"There 's Bertha Lajaune, over there by the pillar. Do you think she 's so beautiful? I must say I don't. I heard the other day that she was a Jewess, and that her mother had one of those pawnbroking places south of Market Street, and that they 'd only just moved away a few years when she married old Marcel Lajaune."
As Pearl rattled on thus, assisted by Tod and Mrs. Gault, Letitia let her lorgnon follow on the track of their comments, idly passing from face to face as their light talk touched on it.
She looked curiously at the wife of the Mexican gambler, a romantically handsome woman, with a skin like a magnolia-petal, and a frame of ebony hair setting off a face of Madonna-like softness. The lady in the box above was not pretty at all, Letitia thought. She had a broad, good-humored red face, an impudent nose, and a frizz of blond hair crimped far down on her forehead in the English fashion. Her black evening dress showed a section of white neck, and a piece of reddened arm was visible between her short sleeves and the edge of her long gloves. Letitia had been too young to remember her as Tiny Madison, and wondered how a Californian could come to look so like a British princess.
The Central American lady was much more interesting. She was like a lily among the gipsy-looking dark women and small, beady-eyed men of her suite. She was thin, pale, and haggard, with artificially reddened hair and heavy eyelids much painted. Her eyes from under these looked out with an air of languid world-weariness. She had some immense diamonds round her throat, and the fan she lazily moved twinkled with them.
Letitia studied her for some interested minutes, then passed on to Bertha Lajaune, of whom everybody had heard and most people were talking. She was accounted by many the most beautiful woman in San Francisco, and had risen from an unpenetrated obscurity by her marriage with a rich French wine merchant. Letitia disagreed with Pearl. She thought Mme. Lajaune quite as beautiful as people said she was. To-night, in a gorgeous toilet of pale lavender with a good deal of silver and lace about it, she had the appearance of an ennuyéd princess. Her pale skin, classic features, and large light eyes, with an extraordinarily wide sweep of lid, seemed to stamp her as one designed by nature to wear a crown. Letitia was about to turn and draw John Gault's attention to her, when the lorgnon, in its transit, suddenly commanded two faces just below—Colonel Reed's and Viola's.
They were not looking her way, and Letitia riveted the glass on them. The colonel was sitting up and looking about alertly. He was instinct with life, enjoyment, and animation. With his neck craned out of his collar, he was surveying the audience, now and then turning to impart some hasty comment to Viola. He had the eager, happy air of a man who is in his element.
Viola was sitting back rather listlessly, with her hands clasped in her lap. She was dressed simply but prettily in gray, and wore no hat. The color was the one most perfectly suited to harmonize with her eyes and hair. Among the handsome and well-dressed women that surrounded her, she preserved the same suggestion of distinction and superiority that Letitia had recognized when she saw her in her own ragged drawing-room.
Holding out the glass, Letitia turned to Gault, who was sitting silent in the shelter of the curtain, and said:
"Colonel Reed 's sitting down there."
He gave the slightest possible start, and moving forward, looked in the direction she indicated.
"So he is," he said in an uninterested tone, "and with his daughter."
Unfortunately, Tod McCormick, who had drawn up as close to Letitia as his chair would permit, heard this short dialogue and pricked up his ears.
"Colonel Reed," he said vivaciously, "and his daughter? Where?"
He bent forward, his lean neck stretched out, his weazened visage full of a curiosity that was only naïvely boyish, but that on his ugly and insignificant features acquired a mean and disagreeable air.
"By gracious!" he said, after surveying the colonel with a knowing grin. "At the opera, in the best seats, dressed like the lilies of the field—oh, you old rascal!"
He wagged his head at the colonel with a look of wicked knowledge that he was extremely fond of assuming.
"What do you mean?" said Letitia, twisting round on her chair so that she could see him. "What makes you call him a rascal?"
"Oh, old rogue! old rogue!" repeated Tod, as though he had secret and masonic intelligence of serious misdeeds in the colonel's past. "And that 's his daughter? Ain't she a peach!"
John Gault moved uneasily and looked back into the shadows of the box. Letitia, feeling uncomfortable, said hurriedly:
"Yes, indeed. She's prettier than anybody here, I think."
"Except you, Tishy," said Tod, but, it must be admitted, in an absent tone. He leaned farther forward, his eyes on the girl in the seat below, the smile on his face changing from one of whimsical malice to the slow, pleased grin of affected admiration.
"Well, she can draw my salary! She can have the key of my trunk!"
"Have you ever seen her before?" asked Letitia.
"No, but I 've heard of her. Everybody 's heard of her."
"It 's very odd; I never did till the other day."
"You might n't have. The boys, I mean. All of a sudden, every feller 's begun askin' every other feller if he knows Colonel Reed's daughter. She 's sort of in the air, like microbes."
"Why should she be?"
Tod shrugged.
"Oh, a girl as pretty as that can't be expected to blush unseen down in South Park forever."
John Gault rose suddenly and went to the back of the box, where he joined his brother, who was silently digesting his pleasure in the music. Tod, quite unconscious of any offense, was glad to be left in sole possession of Letitia, and rambled on, repeating tag-ends of gossip that had lodged in his shallow brain.
"The colonel 's a great old chap. He likes the 'long green.' He once had plenty of it, and once you get the habit of having it, it 's worse than morphine to get cured of. The colonel ain't got cured."
"He has n't got a cent," said Letitia, "so I don't see but that he's got to get cured."
"There 's two good ways of getting money when you ain't got it—just two," said Tod, oracularly.
"And what are those?"
"Stealing and borrowing. And if you steal you know there 's always a risk about being an expense to your country; and no self-respecting man wants that. But borrowing! Get a good, quiet, peaceable victim,—the kind that don't make a fuss, likes to have his leg pulled, thrives on it, misses it when you leave off,—and you 're on velvet. I should judge the colonel had found just the right kind."
"What a horrid thing to say, Tod!"
"Horrid! The colonel does n't think it 's horrid. I wonder who he 's corralled. Three years ago he took hold of my father. It was great, the way he worked the old man. You know, people have n't been able to trace Jerry McCormick through life by the quarters he 's dropped. It did my heart good to see the way the colonel managed him. I guess he must have got nearly a thou' out of him before my father shut down."
"I should n't think his daughter would like that," said Letitia, feeling a chill at her heart.
Tod raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips. His faith in the pride and fine feelings of young women who were poor did not appear strong. But in spite of his assumption of a blasé cynicism, he was a kindly soul at heart.
"Oh, she might n't know," he said; "it's so easy to fool women."
Letitia was silent for a moment. Then she commented, as if speaking to herself:
"I suppose it would be easy for her father to fool her?"
"Easy as lying."
"Do you suppose he borrows that way from other men?"
Tod directed upon her an incredulous side glance. Then, meeting the anxious inquiry of her eyes, he broke into a broad smile.
"Well, I should snicker," he said, in an amused tone.
The curtain rose here, and further dialogue was cut off, for Letitia was a lover of singing, and when the music began again, sank into a rapt and immovable silence. During the other entr'actes the conversation was general, and any more confidences on the subject of Colonel Reed and his daughter were impossible.
In the foyer, on the way out, the party became scattered. Crowds surging from the main aisle pressed forward and separated Mrs. Gault, her husband, and Pearl McCormick from the other three, who had stopped in an angle of space near the stairway for Letitia to adjust her cloak. As Gault was shaking it out preparatory to laying it across her shoulders, her attention was caught by the figures of Colonel Reed and Viola, who emerged from the entrance of a side aisle just in front of them.
The colonel's eye fell on Gault, his face beamed with recognition and pleasure, and, with a word to Viola, he started forward to greet him. Viola gave a vexed exclamation and caught him by the arm, evidently with the intention of deterring him. But the old man, flushed with the excitement of once more finding himself in the familiar scenes of light and revelry, seized her hand, and, drawing her with him, came forward. Viola, thus forcibly overruled, advanced, her face full of distressed embarrassment.
Gault, who had been occupied with the cloak, had not seen this little pantomime, and the first intimation he had of the colonel's proximity was his loud and patronizing greeting. He turned quickly and saw the old man, bland and majestic as ever, and beside him Viola, pained and uncomfortable, the object of Tod's admiring stares, and only too plainly dragged forward by her ill-inspired father. His face flushed with annoyance, aroused alike by the false position in which the girl was placed, and by the revelation thus made to Letitia that he had not been frank when he had led her to believe that he did not know Colonel Reed's daughter.
His indignation found expression in his cold and almost curt reply to the colonel's greeting. There was no mistaking its import. It spoke so plainly of annoyance that even the easy affability of the old man was disturbed. He looked taken aback, and for a moment evidently did not know what to say. Tod looked from one man to the other, grinning at the embarrassment of a situation he did not understand. For a moment there was a most disagreeable pause. Letitia knew that recognition would betray the fact that she had met Viola, but the mortification of the girl's position made her bold.
"How do you do, Miss Reed?" she said; and then, as a brilliant afterthought, "Do you like music?"
"Very much," Viola managed to answer; "and it was good, was n't it?"
"It was A1," said Tod, not by any means intending to be left out; "and that prima donna, ain't she a peach?"
"Mme. Foedor is a lovely Gilda. She looks so young. Most of them are too old and matronly," continued Letitia, fastening the clasps of her cloak, and wondering if this exceedingly uncomfortable conversation was to be prolonged.
Viola's reply put an end to her uneasiness:
"Lovely! I never saw her before, or the opera, either. But we must go. Father, we 'll miss the car if we don't hurry. Good night. Good night, Mr. Gault."
She took the old man by the arm and tried to draw him toward the side entrance. But the vision of Letitia in all the glory of evening dress had been the last touch to the colonel's enjoyment on this momentous evening. He seemed to have forgotten the repulse he had just received, and hung back from his daughter's persuasive hand, looking with courtly admiration at Miss Mason. She was keen enough to see that he would again overrule his daughter and add further to the embarrassment of the meeting, and sweeping her cloak round her, she said:
"We must go too, or we 'll never find the others. Good night." And with a little smiling nod she turned with her attendant cavaliers and plunged into the crowd.
Tod, squeezing along beside her in the throng, said querulously:
"Why did n't you introduce me? I 'd have given that old man a song and dance, and he 'd have asked me down there."
But Gault, on her other side, said nothing. Once, as the crowd jostled her against him, she stole a glance in his direction, and found him looking away with frowning brows and a morose expression. She wondered if he had realized that her remarks to Viola indicated a previous acquaintance. If he had he would certainly be angry with her.
Pearl and Tod were dropped on the way back, but Gault drove home with the others. He said he had been suffering from insomnia lately, and a walk would tire him out. Once in the house, Mortimer led him back into the dining-room to try a new wine that had been made on the vineyard of a mutual friend. Letitia and Maud were left alone in the drawing-room, where the former, expressing fatigue, threw herself down in a long chair, and the latter moved about turning down lamps, and here and there arranging with a housewife's hand the disarray of tumbled cushions and carelessly disposed draperies. Finally she passed out of the room, and Letitia, still sitting where she had dropped, heard her skirts rustling softly as she ascended the stairway.
Letitia did not move. She wanted to see John before he left. If he had noticed her greeting of Viola Reed he would undoubtedly speak of it, and she would be given a chance to explain. With any other man but John it would have been nothing. But John was so peculiar, so reserved about his own affairs, so resentful, so terribly resentful, of anything like intrusion or interference. Letitia as she waited felt, much to her own surprise, that she was growing nervous, that her heart was beginning to beat uncomfortably hard and her breath to come uncomfortably short.
Suddenly she heard his voice, in the room beyond, bidding Mortimer good night. She sat up quickly, and then as quickly looked down so as to give her figure the air of repose and indifference which was so far from her state of mind. He entered the room, and seeing her, said:
"Oh, Tishy, are you still there?"
The tone of his voice struck on her ear as singularly cold and aloof. Her nervousness increased, for she sincerely feared his anger.
"Yes," she answered; "I—I—wanted to speak to you."
"What had you to say?" he asked, stopping before her, but not sitting down.
It did not occur to her, in her state of trepidation, that the obvious abstraction and coldness of his manner might be the result of causes that she did not know. She at once leaped to the conclusion that he had realized she had made Viola's acquaintance in some underhand way, and that he was now bitterly incensed with her.
"I wanted to explain to you how—how—I came to know Viola Reed."
The remark dispelled all his indifference in an instant. The sudden concentrating of his attention upon her in a piercing look and a sharp, penetrating fixity of observation added a hundredfold to Letitia's agitation.
"I—I—knew you 'd be angry and probably misunderstand. You 're always so—so reticent and queer about your own affairs. I did n't see any harm in trying to know Miss Reed. It was better, anyway, than letting Maud go, and she was so set upon it."
Letitia raised her eyes pleadingly, then dropped them quickly. His were blazing. But it was too late to go back now. He took a chair, drew it up before her, and sat down.
"Just explain to me what you mean," he said quietly. "You and Maud have been trying to make the acquaintance of Miss Reed—is that it?"
"We did more than try. We did it—I did it. I would n't let Maud. I was afraid she 'd do something. Maud sometimes has n't got as much tact—as much tact as she ought to have."
"How did you do it?"
"I just went there."
"You went there? You went into that lady's house—intruded, without invitation or acquaintance—forced your way in as if you were a peddler? I can't believe that of you, Letitia. You had some excuse for going there."
Letitia rose to her feet. She did it unconsciously.
"I did n't exactly intrude; though I 'll tell you the truth, John—I 'll not hide anything. I do think it was mean. I thought it after I got in and saw how—how poor and miserable everything was. I felt mortified at what I 'd done. I would n't have gone in the beginning if I 'd thought it was as bad as that. But I had an excuse. I bought jam and four plants. That 's one of them on the stand."
"Bought jam and plants! What are you talking about? I don't understand you."
"She sells them,—jam and plants,—and I bought three dozen pots and four plants."
"You went there and bought these things from her in her own house?"
"Yes," Letitia answered, and went on helplessly, in order to say something: "Four plants for two dollars. It was very cheap."
There was a moment's pause. Then the man said in a suppressed voice:
"You patronized her in her poverty—pried into her home, bought things from her, gave her money! Good God!"
He dropped his voice and turned away, unable to finish. Letitia came toward him. She knew that in this interview the happiness of her life was at stake, and yet that she must be true to herself.
"I did give her money, but not as you mean. I was sorry for her and wanted to help her. I would n't have hurt her any more than you would. It was because of you I went there. It was because we heard you were so interested in her. But after I got there I was ashamed and sorry, and I tried not to make her feel it."
"So you gave her two dollars for four plants! It takes a woman to know how to humiliate a woman!"
"I saw she was n't the kind of person Maud thought she was," continued Letitia, going blindly on. "I was certain they made a mistake in saying the things they did about her. Even if you were giving them money, even if you were supporting them, she was n't that kind."
"Who told you I was supporting them?"
"Oh, I don't know—people say it. And maybe I did do her an injustice in going there and spying on her, as you say. But you are the one who has done her a real injustice—the kind of injustice that hurts."
"I!" he exclaimed, too surprised to defend himself. "What have I done?"
"You 've kept it all so secret that you made people think there was something wrong about it."
"Letitia," he cried, in a tone of warning, "take care! You 've meddled enough already."
"You hid away your friendship with her as if it were shameful. You acted as if you were ashamed of her and of your knowing her—as if there was something wicked about her, so you could n't even speak of her to me or any other woman that you knew well. When I asked you about her, though you were too much of a man of honor to tell me a lie, you were not too much of a man of honor to act one. You gave her father money, but you were ashamed to acknowledge that you even knew her."
"We've had enough of this conversation," he said, now trembling with rage. "Let it end."
He turned to leave the room, but Letitia's voice arrested him, and he stood with his back to her, listening.
"You ought to have known enough to trust her," she continued desperately, for she was singing the swan-song of her hopes. "You 've only got to look into her face to see what she is. No matter what people say about her and her father, no matter what silly stories are repeated, even if there were other men who gave the colonel money—"
Letitia stopped. Gault had wheeled suddenly round upon her, and the expression of his face made the words die on her lips.
"Other men!" he repeated. "Who said that?"
"Tod," she faltered.
"Who were they?"
"I—I—don't know; he did n't tell their names."
"What did he say?"
"He said—he said—" she stammered, bewildered by her own pain and sympathy for his obvious suffering. "No, it was I. I asked him if the colonel got money from other men, and he—he did n't say much; he laughed and said, 'Well, I should snicker!'"
"Thank you," answered Gault, in a low voice. "Good night."
He turned and left the room, and a moment later the hall door closed behind him with a muffled bang.
For a space Letitia stood motionless as a statue, a tall and splendid figure in her gleaming dress, on which fine lines of interwoven silver-work caught and lost the light. Then, rousing herself, she moved about heavily but methodically, putting out the remaining lights. When they were all extinguished she crossed the hall and slowly ascended the stairway, the silken whisperings of her skirts being the only sound in the sleeping house.