Part 6

“But,” he added, quickly; “don’t tell me anything that you might later regret telling, or anything very disagreeable if you can help it, for I confess you have been so satisfactory, so thoroughly all that I wanted my son to be, that I shrink from hearing anything to your detriment.”

“I don’t know that it is exactly to my detriment, for after all, I was thinking of a particular case to illustrate what I said a while ago, and I am pretty sure that most of the men I know wouldn’t think seriously of it for a moment; but I acknowledge that I have never felt satisfied with myself about it all.” He threw back his head and stared fixedly at the ceiling for a moment, and then burst out laughing.

“By Jove, sir! we are getting demonstrative,” he said. “Do you feel yourself equal to being a father confessor besides just an ordinary father?”

Judge Cahill smiled in a perfunctory way.

“If your conscience is in such a bad way as to need confessing, Dana, I shall be very glad to hear, although I, of course, cannot give you absolution.”

Cahill paused a moment.

“That’s so, sir,” he said, finally. “After all it is hardly worth while troubling you about such a small thing, and one that happened so long ago, and which is settled now, rightly or wrongly, forever.”

He stood up as if to say good-night, but the elder man did not rise and sat looking thoughtfully at the blaze with the uneasy, surprised look still on his face.

“It is not about business? nothing that affects your character for honesty and fair dealing?” he said at length, interrogatively.

“Oh, no!” replied Cahill, quickly.

Judge Cahill looked inexpressively relieved. He poured out a little wine and drank it off quickly, as if he had experienced some moment of sharp emotion which had left him faint. The younger man noticed the action and went on hastily.

“It was nothing--only about a girl whom you never heard of, and myself--something that happens to two-thirds of the men one meets--it is really of little consequence, though it has worried me, and since I have spoken of it at all, I may as well tell you about it, sir.”

But it was a very fragmentary story that he told and the facts, as he reviewed them hastily, seemed absurdly commonplace and inadequate to the amount of worry he had given himself.

“It was five years ago, sir, you remember, just after I left college, and went out to Nevada for the summer with Lord Deveridge and the rest of that English syndicate. It was when they bought ‘The Bish’ mine, you know. Of course we went about a great deal. They were so afraid of being swindled, and there had been such pots of money lost out there by English syndicates, that they determined to investigate fully and take every precaution. So they went around trying to sift things out, and there were a great many complications of all sorts which occasioned a great deal of delay, and there were so many conflicting rumors about the value of the mine, that I began to think they were never going to wind up things. Deveridge and I got awfully tired of pottering around after all sorts of men, meeting an expert geologist here and a committee there, and never getting at anything; so we finally decided to cut the whole thing for two weeks and go off on a little shooting expedition. Two or three others joined us, and we had magnificent sport for four days--and then I sprained my bad ankle again.” He stopped suddenly. “It is very curious how things happen,” he said at length, with a little laugh. “If it hadn’t rained the morning of the Springfield game, the ground wouldn’t have been wet and I wouldn’t have slipped in that last scrimmage, and my ankle wouldn’t have been sprained, and I wouldn’t have wrenched it on that mountain road, and I wouldn’t have been laid up two weeks in the house with her, and none of this would have happened.”

But the elder man was in no mood for trifling.

“You were saying----?” he began, anxiously.

“That I hurt my ankle and had to limp to the nearest inhabited place and stay there until it got better. Of course the others went on. They were coming back that way and stopped for me. I was all broken up at not being able to enjoy the shooting, but my ankle gave me so much trouble at first that I didn’t have a great deal of time to think about it; and then it began to dawn on me that she--the daughter I mean--was unusually pretty and refined and quite different from her parents seemingly, and--and--there was nothing else to do, sir, and I am afraid that I acted as most young men would act under similar circumstances.”

“You mean,” said his father, with an uncompromising directness which Cahill thought rather brutal and unnecessary, “you mean that you made love to the girl?”

The young man nodded.

“She was very pretty, you know, and it was only for a short time, and she must have seen--have realized--that there was a difference, that there was nothing to it. It was only the most incipient flirtation--the same thing that goes on at Bar Harbor and the Pier and Newport among a different class of people.”

Judge Cahill said nothing, rather to the young man’s discomfiture, so he ran on, hurriedly:

“They were very poor, and I paid them liberally for what they did for me. I confess I rather lost my head about the girl for a week! She was strikingly pretty, but she had only the most elementary education and was absurdly unconventional. Of course it was nothing, sir, and I don’t flatter myself that she felt any worse when I left than I did--at least she never made any sign,” he added, meditatively.

“I can see how, from your point of view, it appeared nothing, Dana,” said the elder man, gravely, at length. “But I hope this is the only episode of the kind in your life,” he continued, after a moment’s pause.

The younger man stood up with a rather relieved look on his face.

“Indeed it is, sir! and I think the fact that I have let it worry me so much is proof that I am a novice at it. The whole thing was so unimportant that I feel rather ridiculous for having spoken of it. There was never anything serious in the affair, and of course, sir, I did not dream--I knew it would be impossible to bring her here. You--my sister----” he stopped and looked around him rather helplessly.

“Of course,” assented the elder man, readily. “I am glad you got yourself so cleanly out of such an entanglement. As you say, it was commonplace and unimportant. Have you ever heard anything of her since?”

“O, no! I saw her for two weeks and then we parted with mutual regret, and that was all, sir! Your too complimentary remarks recalled the whole episode to my mind, and made me feel rather hypocritical, for I confess that I consider that sort of thing extremely caddish. There’s no excuse for it.”

“There is not, indeed,” assented the elder man, rising. “And it has further surprised me, because you have always seemed rather indifferent to women, Dana--almost too much so. Well--I am glad you told me. Your life has been clean, indeed, if you have no worse things to tell of than a two weeks’ flirtation with a little Western girl!” He laughed again--a deep, hearty laugh, with a relieved ring in it.

“Good-night!” he said. “To-morrow you will please get to the office promptly as a junior member should! ‘Cahill, Crosby, and Cahill’ sounds very imposing, doesn’t it, Dana? much more so than merely ‘Cahill and Crosby.’ I’m delighted, my boy! And it is especially good to think that you are back with me. What with your college life and travels, and law study, I have hardly seen anything of you for ten years, and at my age one cannot spare ten years--it is too big a slice out of the little cake left! Good-night!”

“Good-night, sir!” responded the young man, heartily, as he held the door open for his father to pass into the library.

And then he reseated himself before the fire and smoked another cigar and recalled a great many details that had somehow slipped his memory when talking to his father, and he felt distinctly relieved and glad to get away from his own thoughts when he remembered an engagement which took him out immediately.

* * * * *

At Easter Miss Louise Cahill left college to spend the vacation at her home in Boston. It was possibly because she was small and blond and quite irrepressible that her most intimate friend, Edith Minot, of Baltimore, whom she brought home with her, was tall and rather stately, with a dark, severe beauty quite in contrast to that of Miss Cahill. They were alike, however, in a great many ways, in their young enthusiasms and in their devotion to art--they worshipped Israels and Blommers and Herzog--and in their vast interest in electrical inventions and discoveries, and in their sympathy with whatever was weak or ill or oppressed, and in modern charities and college settlements. They had been great friends at college, where Miss Minot had taken her degree the year before, but they had seen little of each other since, Miss Cahill having returned to finish her college course and Miss Minot having been abroad until late in the fall, and having then been much taken up with the social life of Baltimore.

Miss Cahill was very much afraid that society had spoiled Miss Minot, and that she would be less interested in art for art’s sake, and in university extensions and college settlements and organized charitable work. She was therefore much delighted and very enthusiastic to find that her friend was not at all changed in the ten months of absence, but that in the midst of her travels and social pleasures she had contrived to devote a great deal of time to the things that had always interested her, and that she had studied the Guild Hall Loan Exhibit and the East End with equal enthusiasm, while in London, and was greatly interested in Nikola Tesla’s latest experiments and in college settlements. It was the college settlements that interested her most, however.

“But I think,” she explained earnestly that evening to her friend and young Cahill, after the Judge and his sister had gone into the library--“I think that although there are more interesting and dreadful things to be contended with at the Chicago Settlement, and although Rivington Street is on a much larger scale, still I think I like the Boston College Settlement the most. Perhaps it’s because I know it better, or because it is not quite in the slummiest slums, or because I’m so interested in my protégée there--at any rate, I like it best.”

Miss Cahill looked plaintively at her brother.

“Just think, Dana, when Edith was at college she used to spend her Christmas vacations in Tyler Street. Don’t you think she’s very brave and good? I’m sure I’m only too glad to give my money, and I’m greatly interested in it, and awfully pleased when the others go; but I don’t think I could possibly stay there myself! And I actually believe she came near refusing my invitation to come here, because she thought she ought to go to the settlement!”

Cahill laughed easily.

“That is hard on us, Miss Minot. Think of having to compete in attractions with the college settlement, and only just managing to come out ahead!” He was not thinking very much of what he was saying--he was looking at the sombre, beautiful eyes, with the lids slightly lowered over them, and the sensitively cut lips and air of thorough breeding of the girl before him; and he was saying to himself that he had been singularly unfortunate to have always been away in Japan, or at the law school, or in Paris, when Miss Minot had visited his sister.

A little touch of color crept into the clear pallor of the girl’s cheeks.

“How unkind of you and Louise!” she exclaimed, smiling. “You must know there could be no question of what was _nicest_ to me. I’m very sorry that I like dances and the opera and luncheons and all that so much, but it is so, and the people at the college settlement are very good to let me come in now and then, and try to help a little and ease my conscience a little for all its self-indulgence and worldly pleasures. So you must not think better of me than you should!”

“Don’t believe her, Dana!” interposed Miss Cahill, indignantly. “She does it all because she’s so awfully _good_, and she never brags about it as I would do, I’m sure, and they all adore her down there, and the little boys beg for her flowers, and the little girls have to be kissed, and the teachers are always delighted to see her,” she ran on, breathlessly and triumphantly.

Miss Minot looked up. “I do love the little children and they interest me tremendously,” she said. She leaned forward eagerly, and appealed to Cahill. “Don’t you see,” she said, “how easy it is to become interested in that sort of thing? One doesn’t have to be particularly religiously inclined or even ordinarily good--it’s just the human nature of it which touches one so. You ought to see them,” she went on, still appealing to Cahill. “They are so interested and amused in their ‘clubs,’ which meet different afternoons in the week, and they are so anxious to get in even before the others leave! I have seen them climbing up in the windows to get a look at the good times the others were having, and waiting about at the door in the cold until that ‘club’ should have gone home and left the warm rooms and the playthings, and the cheerful, bright teachers to them. It rather puts our society functions to shame, where no one goes to a reception until the receiving hours are half over, or to the opera until next to the last act.”

“And you ought to see how fond they are of her,” insisted Miss Cahill, admiringly. “She lets them get on her prettiest gowns and muss her, and she is so patient! I keep at a distance, and tell them they are very good and I hope they are having a nice time.”

Cahill laughed.

“Philanthropy made easy, is what suits you, Louise!”

“But it isn’t philanthropy at all,” objected Miss Minot, “unless it’s philanthropy to us outsiders to be allowed to go and help and share a little of the pleasure and culture of our selfish lives. Really you ought to see the children,” she went on, eagerly. “I don’t believe Palmer Cox’s brownies or ‘pigs in clover’ are such favorites anywhere else, and you wouldn’t imagine how interesting the making of a pin-cushion cover could be; and I never thought ‘Daisy Bell,’ and ‘Sweet Marie,’ and ‘Mollie and the Baby and I,’ were really pretty tunes until I heard a little girls’ club singing them in excellent tune, and with an appreciation of the sentiments quite astonishing.”

Cahill nodded a trifle absently. He decided that he had never seen any girl’s face quite as lovely or that appealed to him so as this girl’s, and that she was very different from most of his sister’s college friends, who were such serious young women and who rather over-awed him, and with whom he was never entirely at his ease.

“And then the women in the evening! They like the singing best, I think. It is wonderful to watch them when she sings for them, and I think her voice never sounds so beautiful as then.”

Cahill looked up interrogatively.

“She?” he said.

“It’s her protégée, Dana,” interposed Miss Cahill. “Edith won’t tell you the straight of it, so I shall. Edith found her already at the settlement. She was awfully poor, but she had this glorious voice and she was trying to support herself, and earn enough to have her voice trained. And she would come over Sunday evenings--she lived near the settlement--and sing for the men and women. You ought to see how they appreciate it and how they listen to her quite quietly, as if astonished and charmed into silence. She is nearly as poor as they, and it is all she can do for them, she says--I forget what she did, type-writing or something--and she was going to an awfully bad teacher and getting her voice ruined, and so Edith made friends with her in that way. She has now sent her to Alden and really supports her so she can devote herself entirely to her music.”

Miss Minot glanced quickly up in a little embarrassed way.

“Louise is terrible!” she said, laughing. “But you cannot imagine how wonderfully beautiful her voice is. It is one of those naturally perfect voices--she had always sung, but never suspected what an extraordinary gift she had until two or three years ago. It’s such a tremendous satisfaction to do something for a voice like that. One gets so tired spending on one’s self and cultivating one’s own little society voice, that can just be heard across the drawing-room if everyone keeps quite still! Alden says she will be ready for Marchesi in six months, and for the Grand Opera in a year.”

“And one of these days, when she is a great prima donna and has married a marquis, or a count at least, she will come back and patronize you and send you a box for the matinée!” remarked Cahill.

Miss Minot shook her head smilingly.

“You are very cynical and you don’t know her in the least. She is very beautiful and very fine and most grateful--absurdly grateful.”

“And she adores Edith,” put in Miss Cahill. “She has been her only friend and confidant, and she worships her and treats her as if she were a goddess, and I believe she would have her hands chopped off or her eyes burned out, or be executed quite cheerfully, to show her devotion.”

Miss Minot looked openly amused. “I don’t know about all that, I’m sure!” she said, “but I don’t think she would patronize me. Besides it would not be strange if she were cynical and hard like yourself, Mr. Cahill,” she went on smiling over at him, “for she has had a great deal of trouble already.” The girl pushed her chair back a little, and her fine, earnest face grew grave and perplexed.

Miss Cahill gave a little gasp. “I _knew_ she had a history, Edith! She looks like it. She is awfully pretty,” she went on, turning to her brother. “I have seen her several times at the settlement, but we are not friends yet--I doubt if she even knows my name. I would like to know her, though--there is something so sad about her eyes and mouth, and her voice makes one cry.”

“And Alden--you know Alden, Mr. Cahill?--well, he’s rather brutal, sometimes--thinks only of his art--and he told her one day that she was particularly fortunate to have had a great trouble in her life, and that it would do more for her voice than ten years of training. You ought to have seen how she looked at him! But men _are_ brutal; it was a man who made her suffer first. She only told me part of the story, I don’t quite understand, but I know it nearly broke her heart, young as she was, and that she will never get over it or be the same again. I am not sure,” went on the girl thoughtfully, “it was before she came to Boston, but I don’t know the details, and of course I could ask no questions. She met him quite a while ago, out West, I believe, where she lived, and she thought he loved her, he led her to believe so, and she loved him, I know. He must have been quite different from the men she had known. He had everything and she nothing. It was a sort of King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid episode, only the king was not kingly at all, and when the time came for him to go, he left her quite calmly.”

Her face was flushed now and her eyes wide open and shining with the indignation she felt. It struck Cahill again that she was the handsomest girl he had ever seen, and he liked her so--aroused and animated--even better than coldly beautiful. He was not listening very much to what she was saying, but he was watching her quietly and intently, the nobly poised head and low forehead with the hair growing so beautifully on it, and the rounded chin and firm, rather square jaw. As he looked at her the conviction was borne in upon him that she was a girl who would be capable of entire devotion or utter renunciation, and that she would be implacable if her confidence were once destroyed.

“It must be a fine thing for a man to do,” she went on, scornfully, “to make a girl love him and believe him nobler, and better, and stronger than he is, and then to undeceive her so cruelly! And a girl like this one, too! That was the worst of it. It is bad enough when the girl and the man have equal chances--when they know each other’s weapons and skill, and when they can retire gracefully and before it is too late, or when they are already so scarred up that one wound more makes no difference. But when the advantages are all on one side--when one is so much stronger than the other! It may be because I am so fond of this girl, or it may be because I am even yet unused to the world’s ways, and the four years spent in college and away from such things may have made me super-sensitive, but however it may be, it seems a despicable thing to me!” She stopped short, and the indignation and scorn in her voice rang out sharply.

Cahill moved uneasily and looked around him. He had been so absorbed in watching the girl’s face that he had hardly taken in what she had been saying, but in some vague way he felt jarred and restless.

“And then,” continued Miss Minot, “if only she did not take it as she does--if she were only angry, or indifferent, or revengeful even--but she loves him still and she would do anything for him. She would be capable to-morrow of sacrificing herself and her love if she thought it would make him happier. Such devotion is as rare as genius.”

Miss Cahill leaned far forward, tracing out the delicate inlaid pattern of the table with the point of her silver letter-opener.

“If I were engaged to a man,” she said, thoughtfully, “and were to discover that he had treated a girl so, I would give him up, no matter what it cost me.”

“And you, Miss Minot?” said Cahill, “what would you do?” He felt a sudden, sharp curiosity as to her answer, and a vague apprehension of what she would say. The girl lifted her head proudly.

“It would not be any effort for me to give such a man up,” she said, quietly.

Cahill stood up restlessly. This girl had touched upon something which he would have liked to forget. Of course it had been greatly different in his case, he assured himself, but he felt uneasy and sore. And then he smiled. There was something which struck him as pathetically amusing in the seriousness of these two girls. They were so young and untried and utterly unworldly, and they took such a tragic view of such a common-place affair, and were so ready to be sacrificed for their high ideals and principles.

“You are very severe,” he said at length, with a rather forced laugh. “If we are all to be judged like that it will go hard with us.” But he could attempt no excuse or explanation with the girl’s beautiful, indignant eyes upon him, and presently the talk drifted off in other channels.