Part 17

As Armstrong, at Fosdick's house, was waiting in a small reception room just off the front hall, he heard the old man on the stairs, storming as he descended. "It's a conspiracy," he was shouting. "You all want to kill me. You've heard the doctor say I'll die if I don't stop driving, and walk. Yet, there's that damned carriage always at the door. I can't step out that it isn't waiting for me, and you know I can't resist if I see it. It's murder, that's what it is."

"Shall I send the carriage away, sir?" Armstrong heard the butler say.

"No!" cried Fosdick, rapping the floor with his cane. "No! You know I won't send it away. I've got to get some air, and it seems to me I can't walk."

By this time he was at the door of the reception room. "Good morning, Armstrong," he said with surly politeness. "I'm sick to-day. I suppose you heard me talking to this butler here. I tell you, things to drive in are the ruin of the prosperous classes. Sell that damn motor of yours. Never take a cab, if you can help it. They're killing me with that carriage of mine. Yes--and there's that infernal cook--chef, as they call him. He's trying to earn his salary, and he's killing me doing it. I eat the poison stuff--I can't get anything else. No wonder I have indigestion and gout. No wonder my head feels as if it was on fire every morning. And my temper--I used to have a good disposition. I'm getting to be a devil. It's a conspiracy to murder me." There Fosdick noted Armstrong's expression. He dropped his private woes abruptly and said, with his wonted suavity, "But what can I do for you to-day?"

"I came to ask you to do an act of justice," replied the Westerner, looking even huger and more powerful than usual, in contrast with the other, whom age and self-indulgence were rapidly shriveling.

Armstrong's calm was aggressive, would better have become a dictator than a suitor. It was highly offensive to Fosdick, who was rapidly reaching the state of mind in which obsequiousness alone is tolerable and manliness seems insolence. But he reined in his temper and said, smoothly enough, "You can always count on me to do justice."

"I want you to give me a letter, explaining that those three hundred and fifty thousand dollars were drawn by me and paid over, at your order."

Fosdick stared blankly at him. "What three hundred and fifty thousand dollars?"

Armstrong's big hands clenched into fists and he set his teeth together sharply. Each man looked the other full in the eyes. Armstrong said, "Will you give me the letter?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," replied Fosdick steadily. "And don't explain. I can't talk business to-day."

"I've come to you, Mr. Fosdick," continued Armstrong, "not on my own account, but on yours. I ask you to give me the letter, because, if you do not, the consequences will be unfortunate--not for me, but for you."

"My dear Armstrong," said Fosdick, with wheedling familiarity of elder to younger, "I don't know what you're talking about, and I don't want to know. Look at me, and spare me. Come for a drive. I'll set you down anywhere you say. Don't be foolish, young man. Don't use language to me that suggests threats."

"That is your final answer? Is it quite useless to discuss the matter with you?"

"I'm too sick to wrangle with business to-day."

"Then you refuse to give me the letter?"

"If my doctor knew I had let anybody mention business to me, he'd desert me."

Without a further word Armstrong turned, left the room and the house. Fosdick did not follow immediately. Instead, he seated himself to puzzle at this development. "Hugo stirred him up about that, and he's simply trying to get ready for the committee," he decided. "If he knew, or even suspected, he'd act very differently. He's having his heart broken none too soon. I've never seen a worse case of swollen head. I pushed him up too fast. I'm really to blame; I'm always doing hasty, generous things, and getting myself into trouble, and those I meant to help. Poor fool. I'm sorry for him. I suppose once I get him down in his place, I'll be soft enough to relent and give him something. He's got talent. I can use him, once I have him broken to the bit."

In came Amy, the color high in her cheeks from her morning walk. She kissed him on both cheeks. "Well, well, what do _you_ want?" said he.

"How do you know I want anything?" she cried.

"In the first place, because nobody ever comes near me except to get something."

"Just as you never go near anybody except to take something," she retorted, with a pull at his mustache.

Fosdick was amused. "In the second place," he went on, "because you are affectionate--which not only means that you want something, but also that the something is a thing you feel I won't give. And you're no doubt right."

"What are you in such a good humor about?" said she. "You were cross as a bear in a swarm of bees, at breakfast."

"I'm not in a good humor," he protested. "I'm depressed. I'm looking forward to doing a very unpleasant duty to-morrow."

His daughter laughed at him. "You may be trying to persuade yourself it's unpleasant. But the truth is, you're delighted. Papa, I've been thinking about the entrance."

"Keep on thinking, but don't speak about it," retorted he, frowning.

"Really--it's an eyesore--so small, so out of proportion, so cheap----"

"Cheap!" exclaimed Fosdick. "Why, those bronze doors alone cost seventeen thousand dollars."

"Is _that_ all!" scoffed his daughter. "Trafford's cost forty thousand."

"But I'm not a thief like Trafford. And let me tell you, my child, seventeen thousand dollars at four per cent would produce each year a larger sum than the income of the average American family."

"But I've often heard you say the common people have entirely too much money, more than they know how to spend. Now--about the entrance. Alois and I----"

"When you marry Fred Roebuck, I'll let you build yourself any kind of town house you like," interrupted her father.

She perched on the arm of his chair. "Now, really, father, you know you wouldn't let me marry a man it makes me shudder to shake hands with?"

"Nonsense--a mere notion. You try to feel that way because you know you ought to marry him."

"Never--never--_never_!" cried Amy, kissing him at each "never." "Besides, he's engaged to Sylvia Barrow. He got tired of waiting for me."

Fosdick pushed away from her. "I'm bitterly disappointed in you," he said, scowling at her. "I've been assuming that you would come to your senses. What would become of you, if I had as little regard for your wishes as you have for mine?"

"Fred Roebuck was a nobody," she pleaded. "You despised him yourself. Now, papa dear, I'm thinking of marrying a somebody, a man who really amounts to something in himself."

"Who?" demanded Fosdick, bristling for battle.

"Alois Siersdorf."

Fosdick sprang up, caught her roughly by the arm. "What!" he shouted. "_What!_"

"A man you like and admire," Amy went on, getting her tears ready. "He _looks_ distinguished, and he _is_ distinguished, and is certain to be more so. Besides, what's the use of being rich, if one can't please herself when it comes to taking a husband? I want somebody I won't be ashamed of, somebody I can live near without shuddering." And the tears descended in floods.

Her father turned his rage against Alois. "The impudence of a fellow like that aspiring to a girl in your position."

"But he hasn't been impudent. He's been very humble and backward."

Josiah was busy with his own rage. "Why, he's got _nothing_!"

"Nothing but brains."

"Brains!" Fosdick snorted contemptuously. "Why, they're a drug on the market. I can buy brains by the hundred. Men with brains are falling over each other downtown, trying to sell out for a song."

"Not brains like his," she protested.

"Better--a hundred times better. Why, his brain belongs to me. I've bought it. I have it whenever and for whatever I want."

"I--I love him, father," she sobbed, hiding her face in his shoulder. "I've tried my best not to. But I can't live without him. I--I--_love_ him!"

Fosdick was profoundly moved. There were tears in his eyes, and he gently stroked her hair. She reached out for his hand, took it, kissed it, and put it under her cheek--she hated to have anyone touch her hair, which was most troublesome to arrange to her liking. "Listen to me, child," said the old man. "You remember when Armstrong was trying to impose on your tender heart? You remember what I said? Was I not right? Aren't you glad you took my advice?"

"But I never loved him--really," said Amy.

"And you don't love Alois. You couldn't love one of our dependents. You have too much pride for that. But, again I want to warn you. There's a reason--the best of reasons--why you must not be even friendly with--this young Siersdorf. I can't explain to you. He's an adventurer like Armstrong. Wait a few days--a very few days, Amy. He has been careful to let you see only the one side of him. There's another side. When you see that, you'll be ashamed you ever thought of him, even in jest. You'll see why I want you to be safely established as the wife of some substantial man."

"Tell me what it is, father."

"I tell nothing," replied Fosdick. "Wait, and you will see."

"Is it something to his discredit? If so, I can tell you right now it isn't true."

"Wait--that's all. Wait."

"But, father--after all he's done for us, isn't it only fair to warn him?"

"Warn him of what?"

"Of what you say is going to happen."

"If you want to do yourself and me the greatest possible damage, you'll hint to him what I've said. Do you understand?"

"It isn't fair not to warn him," she insisted. And she released herself from his arms and faced him defiantly. "I tell you, I love him, father!"

"Was ever parent so cursed in his children!" cried Fosdick. "I'm in the house of my enemies. I tell you, Amy, you are to keep your mouth _shut_!" He struck the floor sharply with his cane. "I will be obeyed, do you hear?"

"And I tell you, father," retorted Amy, "that I'm going to warn him. He's straight and honest, and he loves me and he has done things for me, for us, that make us his debtor."

Fosdick threw up his arms in angry impotence. "Do your damnedest!" he cried. "After all, what can you tell him? You can only throw him into a fever and put him in a worse plight. But I warn you that, if you disobey me, I'll make you pay for it. I'll cut off your allowance. I'll teach you what it means to love and respect a father." And he raged out of the house.

Even as her father went, Amy felt in the foundation of her defiance the first tremors of impending collapse. She rushed upstairs to the telephone; she would not let this impulse to do the generous, no, simply the decent, thing ooze away as her impulses of that sort usually did, if she had or took time to calculate the personal inconvenience from executing them. After a rather common and most pleasing human habit, she regarded herself as generous, and was so regarded, because she had generous impulses; to execute them was, therefore, more or less superfluous. In this particular instance, however, she felt that impulse was not enough; there must be action.

"Is it you?" came in Alois's voice, just in time to stimulate her flagging energy. "I was about to call _you_ up."

"I must see you at once," said Amy, with feverish eagerness. "I've got something very, very important to say to you." She hesitated, decided that she must commit herself beyond possibility of evasion--"something about an attempt to do you a great injury."

"Oh!" His tone was curiously constrained; it seemed to her that there was terror, guilt, in it. "Shall I come up? I've just found out I must sail for Europe at noon."

"At noon! _To-day?_"

"In about two hours. And I must say good-by to you. It's very sudden. I haven't even told my sister yet, though she's in the next room, here."

"I'll come down--that is--I'll try to." Amy felt weak, sick, sinking, suffocating in a whirl of doubts and fears. "You are going on business?"

"Yes," came the answer in a voice that rang false. "On business. I'll be away only a few weeks, I think."

"If I shouldn't be able to come--good-by," said Amy.

"But I hope-- Let me come-- Wouldn't that be better?"

Not a word about what she had said, when it ought to have put him into a quiver of anxiety; certainly, his going abroad looked like knowledge, guilt, flight. "No--no--you mustn't come," she commanded. "I'll do my best to get to you." And she added, "We might simply miss each other, if you didn't wait there."

"Please--Amy!"

She shivered. How far she had gone with him! And her father was right! "Good-by," she faltered, hastily ringing off.

If she could have seen him, her worst suspicions would have been confirmed; for his hair was mussed and damp with sweat, his skin looked as if he were in a garish light. He tried to compose himself, went in where his sister was at work--absorbed in making the drawings of a new kind of chimney-piece she had been thinking out. "Cis," he said, in an uncertain voice, "I'm off for Europe at noon."

She wheeled on him. "Fosdick?"

He nodded. "His secretary, Waller, was just here."

A few seconds during which he could feel the energy of her swift thoughts. Then, "Wait!" she commanded, and darted into her private office, closing the door.

She was gone twenty minutes. "The person I was calling up hadn't got in," she explained, when she returned. "I had to wait for him. You are to stay here--you are not to go in any circumstances."

"I must go," was his answer in a dreary tone. "I promised Fosdick, and I daren't offend him. Besides--well, it's prudent."

"'Lois," said Narcisse earnestly, "I give you my word of honor, it would be the very worst step you could take, to obey Fosdick and go. I promise you that, if you stay, all will be well. If you go, you would better throw yourself into the sea, midway, for you will ruin your reputation--ours."

He dropped into a chair. "My instinct is against going," he confessed. "I've done nothing. I haven't got a cent that doesn't belong to me honestly. But, Cis, I simply mustn't offend Fosdick."

"Because of Amy?"

"Yes."

"If you go, you'll have no more chance for her than--than a convict in a penitentiary."

"You know something you are not telling me?"

"I do. Something I can't tell you."

He supported his aching head with his hands and stared long at the floor. "I'll not go!" he exclaimed, springing to his feet suddenly. "I've done nothing wrong. I'll not run away."

Narcisse had been watching him as if she were seeing him struggling for his life in deep water before her very eyes. At his words, at his expression, like his own self, the brother she had brought up and guarded and loved with the love that is deeper than any love which passion ever kindled--at this proclamation of the victory of his better self, she burst into tears. "'Lois! 'Lois!" she sobbed. "Now I can be happy again. If you had gone it would have killed me." And the tone in which she said it made him realize that she was speaking the literal truth.

The natural color was coming back to his face. He patted her on the shoulder. "I'm not a weak, damn fool clear through, Cissy," cried he, "though, I must say, I've got a big, broad streak of it. You are sure of your ground?"

"Absolutely," she assured him, radiant now, and so beautiful that even he noted and admired. But then, he was in the mood to appreciate her. So long as the way was smooth, he could neglect her and put aside her love, as we all have the habit of neglecting and taking for granted, in fair weather, the things that are securely ours. But, let the storms come, and how quickly we show that we knew all the time, in our hearts, whom we could count on, could draw upon for strength and courage--the few, real friends--perhaps, only one--and one is quite enough, is legion, if it be the right one.

"You're not trusting to somebody else?" said he.

"Of course I am. But he's a real somebody, one I'd stake my life on. 'Lois, I know."

"That settles it," said he. "But even if you weren't sure, even if I were certain the worst would overtake me, I'd not budge out of this town. As for Amy, if she's what I think her, she'll stand the test. If not-- After all, I don't need anybody but you, Cissy."

And he embraced and kissed her, and went back to his own part of the offices, head high and step firm. He stirred round there uneasily for a while, then shut himself in with the telephone and called up Fosdick's house. "I wish to speak to Miss Fosdick," he said. Presently he heard Amy's voice. "Well, Hugo?"

"It isn't your brother," said Alois. "It's I."

"Oh!" Her tone was very different--and he did not like it, though he could not have said why. "The servant," she explained, "said she thought it was Hugo."

"I've changed my mind about going abroad. You said you wanted to see me about some matter. I think--in fact, I'm sure--I know what you mean. Don't trouble; I'll come out all right. By the way, please tell your father I'm not going, will you?"

"Father!" she exclaimed. "Did _he_ want you to go?"

"I'd rather not talk about that. It's a matter of business. Please don't give him the impression I told you anything. Really, I haven't--have I?"

"Did father want you to go abroad?" insisted Amy.

"I can't talk about it over the telephone. I'll tell you when I see you--all about it--if you think you'd be interested."

"Please answer my one question," she pleaded. "Then I'll not bother you any more."

"Then--yes." He waited for her next remark, but it did not come. "Are you still there?"

"Yes," came her answer, faint and strange.

"What is it?" he cried. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing. Good-by--and--I'm _so_ glad you're not going--oh, I can't express how glad--_Alois_!"

She did not give him the chance to reply.

*XX*

*BORIS DISCLOSES HIMSELF*

Hugo, sitting to Boris for the portrait afterward locally famous as "The Young Ass," fell into the habit of expatiating upon Armstrong. His mind was full of the big Westerner, the author of the most abject humiliation of his life, the only one he could not explain away, to his own satisfaction, as wholly some one else's fault. Boris humored him, by discreetly sympathetic response even encouraged him to talk freely; nor was Boris's sole reason the undeniable fact that when Hugo was babbling about Armstrong, his real personality disported itself unrestrained in the features the painter was striving to portray. The wisest parent never takes a just measure of his child; and, while the paternal passion is tardier in beginning than the maternal, it is full as deluding once it lays hold. Fosdick thought he regarded Hugo as a fool; also he had fresh in mind proof that Hugo was highly dangerous to any delicate enterprise. Yet he confided in him that they would both be soon signally revenged upon the impudent upstart. He did not tell how or when; but Hugo guessed that it would be at the coming "investigation."

A very few days after his father had told him, he told Boris. What possible danger could there be in telling a painter who hadn't the slightest interest in business matters, and who hadn't the intellect to understand them? For Hugo had for the intellect of the painter the measureless contempt of the contemptible. Also, Boris patterned his dress after the Continental fashions for which Hugo, severely and slavishly English in dress, had the Englishman's derisive disdain. Boris listened to Hugo's confidence with no sign, of interest or understanding, and Hugo babbled on. Soon, Boris knew more than did Hugo of the impending catastrophe to the one man in the whole world whom he did the honor of hating.

Hate is an unusual emotion in a man so tolerant, so cynical, at once superior and conscious of it. But, watching Armstrong with Neva, watching Neva when Armstrong was about, Raphael had come to feel rather than to see that there was some tie between them. He had no difficulty in imagining the nature of this tie. A man and a woman who have lived together may, often do, remain entire strangers; but however constrained and shy and unreal their intimacy may have been, still that intimacy has become an integral part of their secret selves. It is the instinctive realization of this, rather than physical jealousy, that haunts and harrows the man who knows his wife or mistress did not come to him virgin, and that does not leave him until the former husband or lover is dead. Boris did not for an instant believe Neva could by any possibility fall in love with Armstrong--what could she, the artistic and refined, have in common with Armstrong, crude, coarse, unappreciative of all that meant life to her? A man could care without mental or heart sympathy, and a certain kind of woman; but not a Neva, whose delicacy was so sensitive that he, with all his expert delicacy of touch, all his trained softness of reassuring approach, was still far from her. No, Neva could never love Armstrong. But why did she not detest him? Why did she tolerate a presence that must remind her of repulsive hours, of moments of horror too intense even to quiver? "It is the feminine, the feline in her," he reflected. "She is avenging herself in the pleasure of watching his torment."

That was logical, was consoling. However, Boris was wishing she would get her fill of vengeance and send the intruder about his stupid, vulgar business. Hugo's news thrilled him. "I hope the hulk will have to fly the country," he said to himself. He did not hope, as did Hugo, that Armstrong would have to go to the penitentiary. Such was his passion for liberty, for the free air and sunshine, that he could not think with pleasure of even an enemy's being behind bolts and bars and the dank dusk of high, thick prison walls. As several weeks passed without Armstrong's calling--he always felt it when Armstrong had been there--he became as cheerful, as gay, and confident as of old.

But he soon began to note that Neva was not up to the mark. "What is it?" he at once asked himself in alarm whose deep, hidden causes he did not suspect, so slow are men of his kind to accuse themselves of harboring so vanity-depressing a passion as jealousy. "Has he got wind of his danger? Has he been trying to work on her sympathies?" He proceeded to find out.

"What's wrong, my dear?" asked he, in his gentle, caressing, master-to-pupil way. "You aren't as interested as you were. This sunshine doesn't reflect from your face and your voice as it should."

"I've been worried about a friend of mine," confessed she. "There's no real cause for worry, but I can't shake off a foreboding."

"Tell me," urged he. "It'll do you good."

"It's nothing I can talk about. Really, I'm not so upset as you seem to imagine."

But a few moments later he heard a deep sigh. He glanced at her; she was staring into vacancy, her face sad, her eyes tragic. In one of these irresistible gusts of passion, he flung down his brushes, strode up to her. "What has that scoundrel been saying to you?" he demanded.

She startled, rose, faced him in amazement.

"Boris!" she cried breathlessly.