Part 7

"Thank you. I don't want to learn that," I said hotly, "I never saw anything so butchered. There was not the slightest foundation for all that rot--it was made up out of whole cloth." I was boiling about Miss Leigh.

"Pooh-pooh! My dear boy, you'll never make an editor. I never fake an interview," he said virtuously. "Lots of fellows do; but I don't. But if a man will give me two lines, I can give him two columns--and good ones, too. Why, we had two extras--what with that and the grand ball last night. The newsboys are crying it all over town."

"I don't care if they are. I don't want to be an editor if one has to tell such atrocious lies as that. But I don't believe editors have to do that, and I know reputable editors don't. Why, you have named a man who was a hundred miles away."

He simply laughed.

"Well, I'm quite willing to get the credit of that paper. That's business. We're trying to break down the Leigh interests, and the Argands are mixed up with 'em. Coll McSheen was in the office last night. He's counsel for the Argands, but--you don't know Coll McSheen?"

"I do not," I said shortly.

"He's deep. You know you write better than you talk," he added patronizingly. "I tell you what I'll do--if you'll write me every day on some live topic----"

"I'll never write you a line again on any topic, alive or dead, unless you die yourself, when I'll write that you are the biggest liar I ever saw except my Jeams."

I had expected he would resent my words, but he did not. He only laughed, and said, "That's a good line. Write on that."

I learned later that he had had a slight raise of salary on the paper he palmed off as his. I could only console myself with the hope that Miss Leigh would not see the article.

But Miss Leigh did see the appreciation of her father in the writing of which I had had a hand, and it cost me many a dark hour of sad repining.

X

A NEW GIRL

This is how the young lady heard of it. Miss Leigh had been at home but an hour or two and had only had time to change her travelling costume for a suit of light blue with a blue hat to match, which was very becoming to her, and order the carriage to drive down and get her father, when a visitor was announced: Miss Milly McSheen, an old schoolmate--and next moment a rather large, flamboyante girl of about Miss Leigh's own age or possibly a year or two older, bounced into the room as if she had been shot in out of one of those mediæval engines which flung men into walled towns.

She began to talk volubly even before she was actually in the room; she talked all through her energetic if hasty embrace of her friend, and all the time she was loosening the somewhat complicated fastening of a dotted veil which, while it obscured, added a certain charm to a round, florid, commonplace, but good-humored face in which smiled two round, shallow blue eyes.

"Well, my dear," she began while yet outside the door, "I thought you never were coming back! Never! And I believe if I hadn't finally made up my mind to get you back you would have stayed forever in that nasty, stuck-up city of Brotherly Love."

Miss Leigh a little airily observed that that title applied to Philadelphia, and she had only passed through Philadelphia on a train one night.

"Oh! well, it was some kind of love, I'll be bound, and some one's else brother, too, that kept you away so long."

"No, it was not--not even some one else's brother," replied Miss Leigh.

"Oh! for Heaven's sake, don't tell me that's wrong. Why, I've been practising that all summer. It sounds so grammatical--so New Yorkish."

"I can't help it. It may be New Yorkish, but it isn't grammatical," said Miss Leigh. "But I never expected to get back earlier. My Aunt had to look into some of her affairs in the East and had to settle some matters with a lawyer down South, a friend of my father's--an old gentleman who used to be one of her husband's partners and is her trustee or something, and I had to wait till they got matters settled."

"Well, I'm glad you are here in time. I was so afraid you wouldn't be, that I got Pa to telegraph and have your car put on the president's special train that was coming through and had the right-of-way. I told him that I didn't see that because your father had resigned from the directory was any reason why you shouldn't be brought on the train."

"Were we indebted to you for that attention?" Eleanor Leigh's voice had a tone of half incredulity.

"Yep--I am the power behind the throne just at present. Pa and old Mr. Canter have buried the hatchet and are as thick as thieves since their new deal, and Jim Canter told me his car was coming through on a special. Oh! you ought to hear him the way he says, _My car_, and throws his chest out! So I said I wanted him to find out where you were on the road--on what train, I mean--and pick you up, and he said he would."

"Oh! I see," said Miss Leigh, looking somewhat annoyed.

"He did, didn't he?"

"Yes."

"Well, you know Jim Canter is a very promising young man, much more so than he is a fulfiller. What are you so serious about? You look as----"

"Nothing--only I don't wish to be beholden to--I was just wondering what right we have to stop trains full of people who have paid for their tickets and----"

"What!" exclaimed the other girl in astonishment, "what right? Why, our fathers are directors, aren't they--at least, my father is--and own a block of the stock that controls----?"

"Yes; but all these people--who pay--and who had no breakfast?"

"Oh! don't you worry about them--they'll get along somehow--and if they pay they'll look out for themselves without your doing it. My way is to make all I can out of them and enjoy it while I can--that's what Pa says."

"Yes," said Miss Leigh acquiescingly, "but I'm not sure that it's right."

"You've been reading that man's articles," declared Miss McSheen. "I know--I have, too--everybody has--all the girls. I am a socialist--aren't they terribly striking! He's so good-looking. Pa says he's a Jew and an anarchist, and ought to be in jail."

"Are you speaking of Mr. Wolffert?"

"Yes, of course. Now you need not make out you don't know him; because they say----"

"Yes, I know him very well," said Miss Leigh, so stiffly that her guest paused and changed her tone.

"Well, anyhow, my dear, you are just in time. We are going to have the biggest thing we've ever had in this town. I've almost died laughing over it already."

"What is it?"

"Wait. I'm going to tell you all about it. You know it was all my idea. Harriet Minturn claims the whole credit for it now that I've made it go--says she first suggested it, and I assure you, my dear, she never opened her head about it till I had all the girls wild about it, and had arranged for the costumes and had gotten the Count to promise----"

"What is it?" interrupted her hostess again, laughing.

"Wait, my dear, I'm going to tell you all about it. The Count's a socialist, too. He says he is--but you mustn't tell that; he told me in the strictest confidence. Well, the Count's to go as courtier of the court of--what's the name of that old king or emperor, or whatever he was, that conquered that country--you know what I mean----"

"No, indeed, I do not--and I haven't the least idea what you are talking about."

"Oh! pshaw! I know perfectly well, and you do, too. The Count bet me I'd forget it and I bet him a gold cigar-holder I wouldn't--what _is_ his name? Won't the Count look handsome with lace ruffles and gold braid all over his chest and coat-tails, and a cocked hat. He's been showing me the way they dance in his country. I almost died laughing over it--only it makes me so dizzy, they never reverse--just whirl and whirl and whirl. You know he's a real count? Yes, my father's taken the trouble to hunt that up. He said he wasn't 'going to let a d----d dago come around me without anybody knowing who or what he is.' Ain't that like Pa?"

"I--I--don't think I ever met your father," said Eleanor stiffly.

"Oh! that's a fact. Well, 'tis--'tis just exactly like him. As soon as the Count began to come around our house--a good deal--I mean, really, quite a good deal--you understand?" said the girl, tossing her blonde head, "what must Pa do but go to work and hunt him up. He thinks Jim Canter is a winner, but I tell him Jimmy's bespoke." She looked at her hostess archly.

"What did he find out?" inquired Miss Leigh coldly, "and how did he do it?"

"Why, he just ran him down," explained the girl easily, "just as he does anybody he wants to know about--put a man on him, you know."

"Oh! I see." Miss Leigh froze up a little; but the other girl did not notice it.

"Only this one was somebody on the other side, of course, and he found out that he's all right. He's a real count. He's the third son of Count Pushkin, who was--let me see--a counsellor of his emperor, the Emperor of Sweden."

"I didn't know they had an emperor in Sweden. He's a new one."

"Haven't they? Oh! well, maybe it was the King of Sweden, or the Emperor of Russia--I don't know--they are all alike to me. I never could keep them apart, even at Miss de Pense's. I only know he's a real count, and I won a hundred dollars from Pa on a bet that he was. And he hated to pay it! He bet that he was a cook or a barber. And I bet he wasn't. And, oh! you know it's an awfully good joke on him--for he was a waiter in New York for a while."

"A what?"

"A waiter--oh, just for a little while after he came over--before his remittances arrived. But I made Pa pay up, because he said cook or barber. I put it in this hat, see, ain't it a wonder?" She turned herself around before a mirror and admired her hat which was, indeed as Miss Leigh was forced to admit, "a wonder."

"You know it's just like the hat Gabrielle Lightfoot wears in the 'Star of the Harem' when she comes in in the balloon. I got her to let me copy it--exactly."

"You did? How did you manage that?"

"Why, you see, Jimmy Canter knows her, and he asked Harriet and me to supper to meet her, and I declare she nearly made me die laughing--you know she's a real sweet girl--Jimmy says she----"

"Who chaperoned you?" asked Miss Leigh, as she began to put on her gloves.

"Chaperon? My dear, that's where the fun came in--we didn't have any chaperon. I pretended that Harriet and the Count were married and called her Countess, and she was so flattered at being given the title that she was pleased to death--though you know, she's really dead in love with Jimmy Canter, and he hardly looks at her. If he's in love with any one--except Mr. James Canter, Jr.--it's with some one else I know." She nodded her head knowingly.

"I'm afraid I have to go now," said Miss Leigh, "my father expects me to come for him," she glanced at a jewelled watch. She had stiffened up slightly.

"Well, of course, you'll come?"

"To what?"

"To our ball--that's what it is, you know, though it's for a charity, and we make others pay for it. Why shouldn't they? I haven't decided yet what charity. Harriet wants it to be for a home for cats. You'd know she'd want that now, wouldn't you? She'll be in there herself some day. But I'm not going to let it go for anything she wants. She's claiming now that she got it up, and I'm just going to show her who did. I'm thinking of giving it to that young preacher you met in the country two years ago and got so interested in 't you got Dr. Capon to bring him here as his assistant."

"You couldn't give it to a better cause," said Miss Leigh. "I wonder how he is coming on?"

"I guess you know all right. But Pa says," pursued Miss McSheen without heeding further the interruption, "we are ruining the poor, and the reason they won't work is that we are always giving them money. You know they're striking on our lines--some of them? I haven't decided yet what to give it to. Oh! you ought to see the Doctor. He's the gayest of the gay. He came to see me the other day. It almost made me die laughing. You know he's dead in love with your Aunt. I used to think it was you; but Pa says I'm always thinking everybody is in love with you--even the Count--but he says--However----"

"I'll tell you what!" said Miss Leigh suddenly, "I'll come to the ball if you'll give the proceeds to Mr. Marvel for his poor people."

"Done! See there! what did I tell you! I thought you weren't so pious for nothing all on a sudden----"

"Milly, you're a goose," said Miss Leigh, picking up her sunshade.

"I'm a wise one, though--what was it our teacher used to tell us about the geese giving the alarm somewhere? But I don't care. I'm the treasurer and pay the bills. Pa says the man that holds the bag gets the swag. Bring your father. We'll get something grand out of him. He always gives to everything. I'll call him up and tell him to be sure and come. You know they've landed the deal. Pa says every one of them has made a pile. Your father might have made it, too, if he'd come in, but I think he was fighting them or something, I don't quite understand it--anyhow it's all done now, and I'm going to hold Pa up for the pearl necklace he promised to give me. There's a perfect beauty at Setter & Stoneberg's, only seventeen thousand, and I believe they'll take ten if it's planked down in cold cash. Pa says the way to get a man is to put down the cold cash before him and let him fasten his eye on it. If he's a Jew he says he'll never let it go. I tell him by the same token he must be a Jew himself; because he holds on to all the money he ever lays his eye on."

"Can I take you down-town anywhere?" inquired Miss Leigh, in a rather neutral voice.

"No, my dear, just let me fix my hat. I have to go the other way. In fact, I told the Count that I was going up to the park for a little spin, and he asked if he couldn't come along. I didn't want him, of course--men are so in the way in the morning, don't you think so? Is that quite right?" She gave her head a toss to test the steadiness of her hat.

"Quite," said Miss Leigh.

"Well, good-by. I'll count on you then. Oh! I tell you--among the entertainments, the Count is going to perform some wonderful sleight-of-hand tricks with cards. My dear, he's a magician! He can do anything with cards. Heavens! it's after one. The Count--good-by--good-by."

And as Miss Leigh entered her victoria the young lady rushed off, up the street, straining her eyes in the direction of the park.

That night "the ball," as Miss McSheen called it, came off and was a huge success, as was duly chronicled in all the morning papers next day with an elaboration of description of millinery in exact proportion to the degree of prominence of the wearer in the particular circle in which the editor or his reporter moved or aspired to move. Mrs. Argand stood first in "Wine-colored velvet, priceless lace," of the sort that reporters of the female sex deem dearest, and "diamonds and rubies" that would have staggered Sinbad, the sailor. Miss McSheen ran her a close second, in "rose-colored satin, and sapphires," spoken of as "priceless heirlooms." Miss Leigh shone lower down in "chiffon, lace, and pearls of great price." So they went columns-full, all priceless, all beautiful, all superlative, till superlatives were exhausted, and the imagination of the reporters ran riot in an excess of tawdry color and English.

Among the men especially lauded were, first, a certain Mr. James Canter, son and partner of "the famous Mr. Canter, the capitalist and financier," who gave promise of rivalling his father in his "notorious ability," and, secondly, a Count Pushkin, the "distinguished scion of a noble house of international reputation who was honoring the city with his distinguished presence, and was generally credited with having led captive the heart of one of the city's fairest and wealthiest daughters." So ran the record. And having nothing to do, I read that morning the account and dwelt on the only name I recognized, the young lady of the white chiffon and pearls, and wondered who the men were whose names stood next to hers.

XI

ELEANOR LEIGH

Miss Leigh also read the papers that morning and with much amusement till in one of them--the most sensational of all the morning journals--she came on an article which first made her heart stop beating and then set it to racing with sheer anger. To think that such a slander could be uttered! She would have liked to make mince-meat of that editor. He was always attacking her father.

A little later she began to think of the rest of the article! What was the truth? Did they have the right to stop the train and hold it back? This sort of thing was what a writer whom she knew denied in a series of papers which a friend of hers, a young clergyman who worked among the poor, had sent her and which the press generally was denouncing.

She had for some time been reading these papers that had been appearing in the press periodically. They were written by a person who was generally spoken of as "a Jew," but who wrote with a pen which had the point of a rapier, and whose sentences ate into the steely plate of artificial convention like an acid. One of the things he had said had stuck in her memory. "As the remains of animalculæ of past ages furnish, when compressed in almost infinite numbers, the lime-food on which the bone and muscle of the present race of cattle in limestone regions are built up, so the present big-boned race of the wealthy class live on the multitudinous class of the poor."

The summer before she had met the writer of these articles and he had made an impression on her which had not been effaced. She had not analyzed her feelings to ascertain how far this impression was due to his classical face, his deep, luminous eyes, and his impassioned manner, yet certain it is that all of these had struck her.

Perhaps, I should give just here a little more of Miss Eleanor Leigh's history as I came to know of it later on. How I came to know of it may or may not be divulged later. But, at least, I learned it. She was the daughter of a gentleman who, until she came and began to tyrannize over him, gave up all of his time and talents to building up enterprises of magnitude and amassing a fortune. He had showed abilities and ambition at college "back East," where he came from, and when he first struck for the West and started out in life, it was in a region and amid surroundings which were just becoming of more than local importance as they a little later grew under the guidance of men of action like himself, to be of more than sectional importance. The new West as it was then had called to him imperiously and he had responded. Flinging himself into the current which was just beginning to take on force, he soon became one of the pilots of the development which, changing a vast region where roamed Indians and buffalo into a land of cities and railways, shortly made its mark on the Nation and, indeed, on the world, and he was before long swept quite away by it, leaving behind all the intellectual ambitions and dreams he had ever cherished and giving himself up soul and body to the pleasure he got out of his success as an organizer and administrator of large enterprises. Wealth at first was important to him, then it became, if not unimportant, at least of secondary importance to the power he possessed. Then it became of importance again--indeed of supreme importance; for the power he wielded was now dependent on wealth and great wealth. His associates were all men of large interests, and only one with similar interests could lead them. New conditions had come about of late and new methods which he could neither employ nor contend against successfully.

As he looked back on it later it appeared a feverish dream through which he had passed. Its rewards were undeniable: luxury, reputation and power beyond anything he had ever conceived of. Yet what had he not sacrificed for them! Everything that he had once held up before his mind as a noble ambition: study, reading, association with the great and noble of all time; art and love of art; appreciation of all except wealth that men have striven for through the ages; friendship--domestic joy--everything except riches and the power they bring. For as he thought over his past in his growing loneliness he found himself compelled to admit that he had sacrificed all the rest. He had married a woman he loved and admired. He had given her wealth and luxury instead of himself, and she had pined and died before he awakened to the tragic fact. He had grieved for her, but he could not conceal from himself the brutal fact that she had ceased years before to be to him as necessary as his business. She had left him one child. Two others had died in infancy, and he had mourned for them and sympathized with her; but he never knew for years, and until too late, how stricken she had been over their loss. The child she had left him had in some way taken hold on him and had held it even against himself. She had so much of himself in her that he himself could see the resemblance; his natural kindness, his good impulses, his wilfulness, his resolution and ambition to lead and to succeed in all he undertook.

Even from the earliest days when she was left to him, Mr. Leigh was made aware by Eleanor that he had something out of the ordinary to deal with. The arrangement by which, on the death of her mother, she was taken by her half-aunt, Mrs. Argand, to be cared for, "because the poor child needed a mother to look after her," fell through promptly when the little thing who had rebelled at the plan appeared, dusty and dishevelled but triumphant, in her father's home that first evening, as he was preparing, after leaving his office, to go and see her. It was doubtless an auspicious moment for the little rebel; for her father was at the instant steeped in grief and loneliness and self-reproach. He had worked like fury all day to try to forget his loss; but his return home to his empty house had torn open his wounds afresh, and the echoing of his solitary foot-fall on the stair and in the vacant rooms had almost driven him to despair. Every spot--every turn was a red-hot brand on the fresh wound. No man had loved his wife more; but he awoke now when too late to the torturing fact that he had left her much alone. He had worked for her, leaving the enjoyment to the future; and she had died before the future came, in that desolate present which was to be linked forever to the irretrievable past. It was at this moment that he heard a familiar step outside his door. His heart almost stopped to listen. It could not be Eleanor--she was safe at her Aunt's, blocks away, awaiting the fulfilment of his promise to come to see her--and it was now dark. Could it be a delusion? His over-wrought brain might have fancied it. Next second the door burst open, and in rushed Eleanor with a cry--"Oh! Papa!"

"Why, Nelly! How did you come!"

"Slipped out and ran away! You did not come and I could not stay."

When the emotion of the first greeting was over, Mr. Leigh, under the strong sense of what he deemed his duty to the child, and also to the dear dead--which had led him at first to make the sacrifice of yielding to his sister-in-law's urgency, began to explain to the little girl the impropriety of her action, and the importance of her returning to her Aunt, when she had been so kind. But he found it a difficult task. Mr. Leigh believed in discipline. He had been brought up in a rigid school, and he knew it made for character; but it was uphill work with the little girl's arms clasped about his neck and her hot, tear-streaked little face pressed close to his as she pleaded and met his arguments with a promptness and an aptness which astonished him. Moreover, she had a strong advocate in his own heart, and from the first moment when she had burst in on his heart-breaking loneliness he had felt that he could not let her go again if she were unhappy.