Chapter 16

KEITH VISITS NEW YORK, AND MRS. LANCASTER SEES A GHOST

For the next year or two the tide set in very strong toward the mountains, and New Leeds advanced with giant strides. What had been a straggling village a year or two before was now a town, and was beginning to put on the airs of a city. Brick buildings quite as pretentious as the town were springing up where a year before there were unsightly frame boxes; the roads where hogs had wallowed in mire not wholly of their own kneading were becoming well-paved streets. Out on the heights, where had been a forest, were sprinkled sightly dwellings in pretty yards. The smoke of panting engines rose where but a few years back old Tim Gilsey drew rein over his steaming horses. Pretty girls and well-dressed women began to parade the sidewalks where formerly Terpsichore's skirts were the only feminine attire seen. And "Gordon Keith, civil and mining engineer," with his straight figure and tanned, manly face, was not ignored by them. But locked in his heart was the memory of the girl he had found in the Spring woods. She was forever beyond him; but he still clung to the picture he had enshrined there.

When he saw Dr. Balsam, no reference was made to the verification of the latter's prophecy; but the young man knew from the kind tone in the older man's voice that he had heard of it. Meantime Keith had not been idle. Surveys and plats had been made, and everything done to facilitate placing the Rawson properties on the market.

When old man Rawson came to New Leeds now, he made Keith's little office his headquarters, and much quaint philosophy Keith learned from him.

"I reckon it's about time to try our cattle in the New York market," he said at length to Keith. It was a joke he never gave up. "You go up there and look around, and if you have any trouble send for me."

So, taking his surveys and reports and a few letters of introduction Keith went to New York.

Only one thought marred Keith's joy: the dearest aim he had so long had in view had disappeared. The triumph of standing before Alice Yorke and offering her the reward of his endeavor was gone. All he could do was to show her what she had lost. This he would do; he would win life's highest honors. He grew grim with resolve.

Something of this triumphant feeling showed in his mien and in his face as he plunged into the crowded life of the city. From the time he passed into the throng that streamed up the long platforms of the station and poured into the wide ferry-boats, like grain pouring through a mill, he felt the thrill of the life. This was what he had striven for. He would take his place here and show what was in him.

He had forgotten how gay the city life was. Every place of public resort pleased him: theatres, hotels, beer-gardens; but best of all the streets. He took them all in with absolute freedom and delight.

Business was the watchword, the trade-mark. It buzzed everywhere, from the Battery to the Park. It thronged the streets, pulsating through the outlets and inlets at ferries and railway-stations and crossings, and through the great buildings that were already beginning to tower in the business sections. It hummed in the chief centres. And through it all and beyond it all shone opulence, opulence gilded and gleaming and dazzling in its glitter: in the big hotels; in the rich shops; in the gaudy theatres; along the fine avenues: a display of wealth to make the eyes ache; an exhibition of riches never seen before. It did Keith good at first just to stand in the street and watch the pageant as it passed like a gilded panorama. Of the inner New York he did not yet know: the New York of luxurious homes; of culture and of art; of refinement and elegance. The New York that has grown up since, with its vast wealth, its brazen glitter, its tides that roll up riches as the sea rolls up the sand, was not yet. It was still in its infancy, a chrysalis as yet sleeping within its golden cocoon.

Keith had no idea there were so many handsome and stylish young women in the world as he now saw. He had forgotten how handsome the American girl is in her best appointment. They sailed down the avenue looking as fine as young fillies at a show, or streamed through the best shopping streets as though not only the shops, but the world belonged to them, and it were no longer the meek, but the proud, that inherit the earth.

If in the throngs on the streets there were often marked contrasts, Keith was too exhilarated to remark it--at least, at first. If women with worn faces and garments unduly thin in the frosty air, carrying large bundles in their pinched hands, hurried by as though hungry, not only for food, but for time in which to earn food; if sad-eyed men with hollow cheeks, sunken chests, and threadbare clothes shambled eagerly along, he failed to note them in his first keen enjoyment of the pageant. Old clothes meant nothing where he came from; they might be the badge of perilous enterprise and well-paid industry, and food and fire were at least common to all.

Keith, indeed, moved about almost in a trance, absorbing and enjoying the sights. It was Humanity in flood; Life at full tide.

Many a woman and not a few men turned to take a second look at the tanned, eager face and straight, supple figure, as, with smiling, yet keen eyes, he stalked along with the free, swinging gait caught on the mountains, so different from the quick, short steps of the city man. Beggars, and some who from their look and apparel might not have been beggars, applied to him so often that he said to one of them, a fairly well-dressed man with a nose of a slightly red tinge:

"Well, I must have a very benevolent face or a very credulous one!"

"You have," said the man, with brazen frankness, pocketing the half-dollar given him on his tale of a picked pocket and a remittance that had gone wrong.

Keith laughed and passed on.

Meantime, Keith was making some discoveries. He did not at first call on Norman Wentworth. He had a feeling that it might appear as if he were using his friendship for a commercial purpose. He presented his business letters. His letters, however, failed to have the weight he had expected. The persons whom he had met down in New Leeds, during their brief visits there, were, somehow, very different when met in New York. Some whom he called on were civil enough to him; but as soon as he broached his business they froze up. The suggestion that he had coal-property to sell sent them down to zero. Their eyes would glint with a shrewd light and their faces harden into ice. One or two told him plainly that they had no money to embark in "wild-cat schemes."

Mr. Creamer of Creamer, Crustback & Company, Capitalists, a tall, broad-shouldered man, with a strongly cut nose and chin and keen, gray eyes, that, through long habitude, weighed chances with an infallible appraisement, to whom Keith had a letter from an acquaintance, one of those casual letters that mean anything or nothing, informed him frankly that he had "neither time nor inclination to discuss enterprises, ninety-nine out of every hundred of which were frauds, and the hundredth generally a failure."

"This is not a fraud," said Keith, hotly, rising. "I do not indorse frauds, sir." He began to draw on his gloves. "If I cannot satisfy any reasonable man of the fact I state, I am willing to fail. I ought to fail." With a bow, he turned to the door.

Something in Keith's assurance went further with the shrewd-eyed capitalist than his politeness had done. He shot a swift glance as he was retiring toward the door.

"Why didn't Wickersham make money down there?" he demanded, half in query, half in denial, gazing keenly over his gold-rimmed glasses. "He usually makes money, even if others lose it."

Mr. Creamer had his own reasons for not liking Wickersham.

Keith was standing at the door.

"For two or three reasons. One was that he underestimated the people who live down there, and thought he could force them into selling him their lands, and so lost the best properties there."

"The lands you have, I suppose?" said the banker, looking again at Keith quickly.

"Yes, the lands I have, though you don't believe it," said Keith, looking him calmly in the eyes.

The banker was gazing at the young man ironically; but, as he observed him, his credulity began to give way.

That stamp of truth which men recognize was written on him unmistakably. Mr. Creamer's mind worked quickly.

"By the way, you came from down there. Did you know a young man named Rhodes? He was an engineer. Went over the line."

Keith's eyes brightened. "He is one of my best friends. He is in Russia now."

Mr. Creamer nodded. "What do you think of him?"

"He is one of the best."

Mr. Creamer nodded. He did not think it necessary to tell Keith that Rhodes was paying his addresses to his daughter.

"You write to him," said Keith. "He will tell you just what I have. Tell him they are the Rawson lands."

Keith opened the door. "Good morning, sir."

"One moment!" Mr. Creamer leaned back in his chair. "Whom else do you know here?" he asked after a second.

Keith reflected a moment.

"I know Mr. Wentworth."

"Norman Wentworth?"

"Yes; I know him very well. He is an old friend of mine."

"Have you been to him?"

"No, sir."

"Why not?"

"Because my relations with him are entirely personal. We used to be warm friends, and I did not wish to use his friendship for me as a ground on which to approach him in a commercial enterprise."

Mr. Creamer's countenance expressed more incredulity than he intended to show.

"He might feel under obligations to do for me what he would not be inclined to do otherwise," Keith explained.

"Oh, I don't think you need have any apprehension on that score," Mr. Creamer said, with a glint of amusement in his eyes. "It is a matter of business, and I don't think you will find business men here overstepping the bounds of prudence from motives of sentiment."

"There is no man whom I would rather have go into it with me; but I shall not ask him to do it, for the reason I have given. Good morning."

The banker did not take his eyes from the door until the sound of Keith's steps had died away through his outer office. Then he reflected for a moment. Presently he touched a bell, and a clerk appeared in the door.

"Write a note to Mr. Norman Wentworth and ask him to drop in to see me--any time this afternoon."

"Yes, sir."

When Norman Wentworth called at Mr. Creamer's office he found the financier in a good humor. The market had gone well of late, and Mr. Creamer's moods were not altogether unlike the mercury. His greeting was more cordial than usual. After a brief discussion of recent events, he pushed a card across to his visitor and asked casually:

"What do you know about that man?"

"Gordon Keith!" exclaimed the younger man, in surprise. "Is he in New York, and I have not seen him! Why, I know all about him. He used to be an old friend of mine. We were boys together ever so long ago."

He went on to speak warmly of him.

"Well, that was long ago," said Mr. Creamer, doubtfully. "Many things have happened in that time. He has had time to change."

"He must have changed a good deal if he is not straight," declared Norman. "I wonder why he has not been to see me?"

"Well, I'll tell you what he said," began Mr. Creamer.

He gave Keith's explanation.

"Did he say that? Then it's true. You ought to know his father. He is a regular old Don Quixote."

"The Don was not particularly practical. He would not have done much with coal and iron lands," observed the banker. "What do you know about this man's knowledge of such things?"

Norman admitted that on this point he had no information.

"He says he knows Wickersham--your friend," said Mr. Creamer, with a sly look at Norman.

"Yes, I expect he does--if any one knows him. He used to know him. What does he say of him?"

"Oh, I think he knows him. Well, I am much obliged to you for coming around," he said in a tone of dismissal. "You are coming to dine with us soon, I believe? The Lancasters are coming, too. And we expect Rhodes home. He's due next week."

"One member of your family will be glad to see him," said Norman, smiling. "The wedding is to take place in a few weeks, I believe?"

"I hear so," said the father. "Fine young man, Rhodes? Your cousin, isn't he? Been very successful?"

"Yes."

Once, as Keith passed along down Broadway, just where some of the great shops were at that time, before the tide had rolled so far up-town, a handsome carriage and pair drew up in front of one of the big shops, and a lady stepped from it just behind him. She was a very pretty young woman, and richly dressed. A straight back and a well-set head, with a perfect toilet, gave her distinction even among the handsomely appointed women who thronged the street that sunny morning, and many a woman turned and looked at her with approval or envy.

The years, that had wrought Keith from a plain country lad into a man of affairs of such standing in New Leeds that a shrewd operator like Rawson had selected him for his representative, had also wrought a great change in Alice Lancaster. Alice had missed what she had once begun to expect, romance and all that it meant; but she had filled with dignity the place she had chosen. If Mr. Lancaster's absorption in serious concerns left her life more sombre than she had expected, at least she let no one know it. Association with a man like Mr. Lancaster had steadied and elevated her. His high-mindedness had lifted her above the level of her worldly mother and of many of those who constituted the set in which she lived.

He admired her immeasurably. He was constantly impressed by the difference between her and her shallow-minded and silly mother, or even between her and such a young woman as Mrs. Wentworth, who lived only for show and extravagance, and appeared in danger of ruining her husband and wrecking his happiness.

It was Mrs. Lancaster who descended from her carriage as Keith passed by. Just as she was about to enter the shop, a well-knit figure with square shoulders and springy step, swinging down the street, caught her eye. She glanced that way and gave an exclamation. The door was being held open for her by a blank-faced automaton in a many-buttoned uniform; so she passed in, but pausing just inside, she glanced back through the window. The next instant she left the shop and gazed down the street again. But Keith had turned a corner, and so Alice Lancaster did not see him, though she stood on tiptoe to try and distinguish him again in the crowd.

"Well, I would have sworn that that was Gordon Keith," she said to herself, as she turned away, "if he had not been so broad-shouldered and good-looking." And wherever she moved the rest of the day her eyes wandered up and down the street.

Once, as she was thus engaged, Ferdy Wickersham came up. He was dressed in the tip of the fashion and looked very handsome.

"Who is the happy man?"

The question was so in keeping with her thought that she blushed unexpectedly.

"No one."

"Ah, not me, then? But I know it was some one. No woman looks so expectant and eager for 'no one.'"

"Do you think I am like you, perambulating streets trying to make conquests?" she said, with a smile.

"You do not have to try," he answered lazily. "You do it simply by being on the street. I am playing in great luck to-day."

"Have you seen Louise this morning?" she asked.

He looked her full in the face. "I see no one but you when you are around."

She laughed lightly.

"Ferdy, you will begin to believe that after a while, if you do not stop saying it so often."

"I shall never stop saying it, because it is true," he replied imperturbably, turning his dark eyes on her, the lids a little closed.

"You have got so in the habit of saying it that you repeat it like my parrot that I taught once, when I was younger and vainer, to say, 'Pretty Alice.' He says it all the time."

"Sensible bird," said Mr. Wickersham, calmly. "Come and drive me up to the Park and let's have a stroll. I know such a beautiful walk. There are so many people out to-day. I saw the lady of the 'cat-eyes and cat-claws' go by just now, seeking some one whom she can turn again and rend." It was the name she had given Mrs. Nailor.

"I do not care who is out. Are you going to the Wentworths' this evening?" she asked irrelevantly.

"No; I rarely go there. Will you mention that to Mrs. Nailor? She apparently has not that confidence in my word that I could have expected in one so truthful as herself."

Mrs. Lancaster laughed.

"Ferdy--" she began, and then paused irresolute. "However--"

"Well, what is it? Say it."

"You ought not to go there so often as you do."

"Why?" His eyes were full of insolence.

"Good-by. Drive home," she said to the coachman, in a tone intentionally loud enough for her friend to hear.

Ferdy Wickersham strolled on down the street, and a few minutes later was leaning in at the door of Mrs. Wentworth's carriage, talking very earnestly to the lady inside.

Mr. Wickersham's attentions to Louise Wentworth had begun to be the talk of the town. Young Mrs. Wentworth was not a person to allow herself to be shelved. She did not propose that the older lady who bore that name should be known by it. She declared she would play second fiddle to no one. But she discovered that the old lady who lived in the old mansion on Washington Square was "Mrs. Wentworth," and that Mrs. Wentworth occupied a position from which she was not to be moved. After a little she herself was known as "Mrs. Norman." It was the first time Mrs. Norman had ever had command of much money. Her mother had made a good appearance and dressed her daughter handsomely, but to carry out her plans she had had to stint and scrape to make both ends meet. Mrs. Caldwell told one of her friends that her rings knew the way to the pawnbroker's so well that if she threw them in the street they would roll into his shop.

This struggle Louise had witnessed with that easy indifference which was part her nature and part her youth. She had been brought up to believe she was a beauty, and she did believe it. Now that she had the chance, she determined to make the most of her triumph. She would show people that she knew how to spend money; embellishment was the aim of her life, and she did show them. Her toilets were the richest; her equipage was the handsomest and best appointed. Her entertainments soon were among the most splendid in the city.

Those who were accustomed to wealth and to parade wondered both at Mrs. Norman's tastes and at her gratification of them.

All the town applauded. They had had no idea that the Wentworths, as rich as they knew them to be, had so much money.

"She must have Aladdin's lamp," they said. Only old Mrs. Wentworth looked grave and disapproving at the extravagance of her daughter-in-law. Still she never said a word of it, and when the grandson came she was too overjoyed to complain of anything.

It was only of late that people had begun to whisper of the frequency with which Ferdy Wickersham was seen with Mrs. Norman. Certain it was that he was with her a great deal.

That evening Alice Lancaster was dining with the Norman Wentworths. She was equally good friends with them and with their children, who on their part idolized her and considered her to be their especial property. Her appearance was always the signal for a romp. Whenever she went to the Wentworths' she always paid a visit to the nursery, from which she would return breathless and dishevelled, with an expression of mingled happiness and pain in her blue eyes. Louise Wentworth knew well why the longing look was there, and though usually cold and statuesque, she always softened to Alice Lancaster then more than she was wont to do.

"Alice pines for children," she said to Norman, who pinched her cheek and, like a man, told her she thought every one as romantic and as affectionate as herself. Had Mrs. Nailor heard this speech she would have blinked her innocent eyes and have purred with silent thoughts on the blindness of men.

This evening Mrs. Lancaster had come down from the nursery, where shouts of childish merriment had told of her romps with the ringletted young brigand who ruled there, and was sitting quite silent in the deep arm-chair in an attitude of profound reflection, her head thrown back, her white arms resting languidly on the arms of the chair, her face unusually thoughtful, her eyes on the gilded ceiling.

Mrs. Wentworth watched her for a moment silently, and then said:

"You must not let the boy tyrannize over you so."

Mrs. Lancaster's reply was complete:

"I love it; I just love it!"

Presently Mrs. Wentworth spoke again.

"What is the matter with you this evening? You seem quite distraite."

"I saw a ghost to-day." She spoke without moving.

Mrs. Wentworth's face took on more interest.

"What do you mean? Who was it?"

"I mean I saw a ghost; I might say two ghosts, for I saw in imagination also the ghost of myself as I was when a girl. I saw the man I was in love with when I was seventeen."

"I thought you were in love with Ferdy then?"

"No; never." She spoke with sudden emphasis.

"How interesting! And you congratulated yourself on your escape? We always do. I was violently in love with a little hotel clerk, with oily hair, a snub-nose, and a waxed black moustache, in the Adirondacks when I was that age."

Mrs. Lancaster made no reply to this, and her hostess looked at her keenly.

"Where was it? How long before--?" She started to ask, how long before she was married, but caught herself. "What did he look like? He must have been good-looking, or you would not be so pensive."

"He looked like--a man."

"How old was he--I mean, when he fell in love with you?" said Mrs. Wentworth, with a sort of gasp, as she recalled Mr. Lancaster's gray hair and elderly appearance.

"Rather young. He was only a few years older than I was; a young--what's his name?--Hercules, that brought me down a mountain in his arms the second time I ever saw him."

"Alice Lancaster!"

"I had broken my leg--almost I had got a bad fall from a horse and could not walk, and he happened to come along."

"Of course. How romantic! Was he a doctor? Did you do it on purpose?" Mrs. Lancaster smiled.

"No; a young schoolmaster up in the mountains. He was not handsome--not then. But he was fine-looking, eyes that looked straight at you and straight through you; the whitest teeth you ever saw; and shoulders! He could carry a sack of salt!" At the recollection a faint smile flickered about her lips.

"Why didn't you marry him?"

"He had not a cent in the world. He was a poor young school-teacher, but of a very distinguished family. However, mamma took fright, and whisked me away as if he had been a pestilence."

"Oh, naturally!"

"And he was too much in love with me. But for that I think I should not have given him up. I was dreadfully cut up for a little while. And he--" She did not finish the sentence.

On this Mrs. Wentworth made no observation, though the expression about her mouth changed.

"He made a reputation afterwards. I knew he would. He was bound to succeed. I believed in him even then. He had ideals. Why don't men have ideals now?"

"Some of them do," asserted Mrs. Wentworth.

"Yes; Norman has. I mean unmarried men. I heard he made a fortune, or was making one--or something."

"Oh!"

"He knew more than any one I ever saw--and made you want to know. All I ever read he set me to. And he is awfully good-looking. I had no idea he would be so good-looking. But I tell you this: no woman that ever saw him ever forgot him."

"Is he married?"

"I don't think so--no. If he had been I should have heard it. He really believed in me."

Mrs. Wentworth glanced at her with interest.

"Where is he staying?"

"I do not know. I saw him through a shop-window."

"What! Did you not speak to him?"

"I did not get a chance. When I came out of the shop he was gone."

"That was sad. It would have been quite romantic, would it not? But, perhaps, after all, he did not make his fortune?" Mrs. Wentworth looked complacent.

"He did if he set his mind to it," declared Mrs. Lancaster.

"How about Ferdy Wickersham?" The least little light of malevolence crept into Mrs. Wentworth's eyes.

Mrs. Lancaster gave a shrug of impatience, and pushed a photograph on a small table farther away, as if it incommoded her.

"Oh, Ferdy Wickersham! Ferdy Wickersham to that man is a heated room to the breath of hills and forests." She spoke with real warmth, and Mrs. Wentworth gazed at her curiously for a few seconds.

"Still, I rather fancy for a constancy you'd prefer the heated rooms to the coldness of the hills. Your gowns would not look so well in the forest."

It was a moment before Mrs. Lancaster's face relaxed.

"I suppose I should," she said slowly, with something very like a sigh. "He was the only man I ever knew who made me do what I did not want to do and made me wish to be something better than I was," she added absently.

Mrs. Wentworth glanced at her somewhat impatiently, but she went on:

"I was very romantic then; and you should have heard him read the 'Idylls of the King.' He had the most beautiful voice. He made you live in Arthur's court, because he lived there himself."

Mrs. Wentworth burst into laughter, but it was not very merry.

"My dear Alice, you must have been romantic. How old were you, did you say?"

"It was three years before I was married," said Mrs. Lancaster, firmly.

Her friend gazed at her with a puzzled expression on her face.

"Oh! Now, my dear Alice, don't let's have any more of this sentimentalizing. I never indulge in it; it always gives me a headache. One might think you were a school-girl."

At the word a wood in all the bravery of Spring sprang into Alice's mind. A young girl was seated on the mossy ground, and outstretched at her feet was a young man, fresh-faced and clear-eyed, quoting a poem of youth and of love.

"Heaven knows I wish I were," said Mrs. Lancaster, soberly. "I might then be something different from what I am!"

"Oh, nonsense! You do nothing of the kind. Here are you, a rich woman, young, handsome, with a great establishment; perfectly free, with no one to interfere with you in any way. Now, I--"

"That's just it," broke in Mrs. Lancaster, bitterly. "Free! Free from what my heart aches for. Free to dress in sables and diamonds and die of loneliness." She had sat up, and her eyes were glowing and her color flashing in her cheeks in her energy.

Mrs. Wentworth looked at her with a curious expression in her eyes.

"I want what you have, Louise Caldwell. In that big house with only ourselves and servants--sometimes I could wish I were dead. I envy every woman I see on the street with her children. Yes, I am free--too free! I married for respect, and I have it. But--I want devotion, sympathy. You have it. You have a husband who adores you, and children to fill your heart, cherish it." The light in her eyes was almost fierce as she leaned forward, her hands clasped so tightly that the knuckles showed white, and a strange look passed for a moment over Mrs. Wentworth's face.

"You are enough to give one the blue-devils!" she exclaimed, with impatience. "Let's have a liqueur." She touched a bell, but Mrs. Lancaster rose.

"No; I will go."

"Oh, yes; just a glass." A servant appeared like an automaton at the door.

"What will you have, Alice?" But Mrs. Lancaster was obdurate. She declined the invitation, and declared that she must go, as she was going to the opera; and the next moment the two ladies were taking leave of each other with gracious words and the formal manner that obtains in fashionable society, quite as if they had known each other just fifteen minutes.

Mrs. Lancaster drove home, leaning very far back in her brougham.

Mrs. Wentworth, too, appeared rather fatigued after her guest departed, and sat for fifteen minutes with the social column of a newspaper lying in her lap unscanned.

"I thought she and Ferdy liked each other," she said to herself; "but he must have told the truth. They cannot have cared for each other. I think she must have been in love with that man."