Part 21

"No." Mildred looked at him piteously. "I think I have a stone in here instead of a heart," she said, pressing her side, "but stay with me and--and keep the others away. I don't need to tell you how much I like you, Jack. If only it were safe to say what you want me to when I only like you, and value you, and respect you more than any other man"-- She paused, unable to proceed.

He turned to her, tender consideration in his tone.

"That is a great deal, Mildred. I must try not to forfeit it."

*CHAPTER XXV.*

*IN THE PERISTYLE.*

The next morning, before seven o'clock, Miss Berry, while busy arranging matters in the dining-room preparatory to breakfast, was summoned by a maid to the back door with the word that a gentleman wished to see her.

To her great surprise, it was Gorham Page who stood waiting on the path.

"Well, well, Mr. Gorham, ain't the days long enough for you?" she asked, smiling, as she came out of the door. "This is new manners for you. Go 'way, Blitzen. Look out, Mr. Gorham, his paws must be wet."

"I didn't want to disturb the house by ringing the bell," explained Page, "and I knew you would be likely to be about by this time. A very unfortunate thing has occurred;" he looked annoyed as he spoke. "I have received a sudden call to St. Louis by a client I cannot neglect, and the business requires that I should spend the whole day in town before I go. Mrs. Van Tassel has promised to go down to the Fair with me this morning on the Whaleback. I want you to explain to her how seriously I regret breaking the engagement. I am really very much put out by the necessity."

Miss Lovina smiled as she broke a twig from the maple under which they were standing. "Ain't you comin' back at all?" she asked.

"Why, certainly I am coming back," replied the other severely.

"Oh," remarked Miss Berry innocently. "I thought perhaps you wanted me to say good-by to 'em for you."

"No, indeed; nothing of that kind. I may be detained a week or ten days, but I wanted Mrs. Van Tassel to understand that no trivial circumstance would deter me from taking the boat trip with her and Miss Bryant as we planned. I would--I would give a great deal not to be obliged to leave."

"Mrs. Van Tassel won't lay it up against you," remarked Miss Berry.

"No, I dare say not," said Page abstractedly. "I mustn't wait," he exclaimed, after a moment's reverie. "Tell her, Aunt Love, how sorry I am; put it strong. I thought I would see you instead of leaving a note, for writing is so formal; and oh, by the way, tell her if she forgives me and understands the situation, how glad it would make me to receive a word from her to that effect. This is my address," thrusting a card into Miss Berry's hand.

"What's the use?" asked Miss Lovina, her shoulders shaking in a laugh. "You know you're always forgettin' girls. If you should get a letter signed Mrs. Van Tassel, you'd scratch your head and say 'Van Tassel? Van Tassel? Where have I heard that name before?'"

"This is no time to joke," he returned hurriedly. "I trust you to deliver my messages faithfully. Don't make light of the matter. Good-by;" and with a hasty bow Page moved briskly away.

Miss Berry looked after his departing figure with some exasperation.

"I hope I do him an injustice," she murmured, "but it's my opinion he hasn't found out yet that he's lovin' a woman instead o' worshipin' a saint. I don't want to be profane, but I must say I'm reminded of Ann Getchell's brother. He used to say that he liked a fool, but a darned fool he never could stand."

Clover and Miss Berry sometimes began breakfast before the other and sleepier members of the family appeared on the scene. This was one of the mornings; and while Clover poured the coffee, Aunt Love embraced her opportunity.

"You can't guess who's been here already," she began.

"No; tell me. Don't make me guess. The day is too new."

"Now you look just fresh and bright enough to guess anything." Miss Berry gazed affectionately at her as she spoke.

"I saw Mr. Page going down the street," said Clover, as she set a steaming cup on the waitress' tray. "Could it have been he?"

"Yes; but you'd never 'a' guessed him, would you? He come over to get me to tell you that he's called away on important business, and regrets very much breakin' his engagement with you this mornin' about goin' on the Christopher Columbus."

Clover's transparent skin flushed, but she looked coolly into her informant's eyes. "He does not see us again, then?"

"Law yes, in a few days he does"--

"Lena," said Clover to the maid, "please tell Katie to keep the other things hot for a while. Miss Bryant and Mr. Van Tassel are both a little late. I will ring when I want you."

The moment the door had closed behind the girl, Clover's face changed. "Tell me all about it," she said.

"Ain't it a pity that gump can't see her this minute?" thought Aunt Love. "Even if he's a darned one, I guess he'd get a glimmer o' sense."

"Why, he was the most distressed bein' you'd want to look at," she returned, "just 'cause he couldn't stay and go with you on that boat. You'd think he'd never seen a sign o' the Fair,--not that he said a word about that, he was all taken up with the disappointment o' not goin' with you." Aunt Love was determined to make the most of Gorham's behest to "put it strong."

Clover's face had quieted, and she was occupied in stirring her coffee.

"I told him I guessed you wouldn't be overly hard on him, and he told me to ask you, pervided you did forgive him, to write and tell him so to this address."

Clover looked up quickly as she accepted the card.

"How long will he be gone?"

"A week or ten days, I think he said. Law, if I've forgotten anything he told me, I shall need the prayers o' the con'regation. Strange," continued Miss Berry slyly, "that I haven't ever seen anything so severe about you that Mr. Gorham should look all beside himself at breakin' a light, triflin' promise to you through no fault or his."

"I will write in three or four days," said Clover musingly. "That will divide the time." Then she looked up, and met Aunt Love's eyes fixed on her with an expression that made her glance away.

"He's a none-such," said Miss Berry. "I guess you better let him off easy, Mrs. Van Tassel."

"Oh yes," returned Clover with some confusion. "I will ring for the breakfast now, Aunt Love. We will not wait any longer."

Gorham Page came home to his hotel in St. Louis a few days afterward, tired and enervated by the excessive heat, and requiring to remember all his philosophy not to anathematize the fate which had snatched him from the feast spread upon the shores of Lake Michigan. A little later in the season, during the Congress of Religions, the gentle Dharmapala was riding upon the lagoon one evening, where his snowy silken robes seemed more in place than the close-fitting black of his companions. Looking about him in the waning light where all was melody, harmony, and beauty, he said:--

"All the joys of heaven are in Chicago."

This sentiment of the lovable Singhalese Page would have echoed, had the anachronism been possible. A sort of chronic yearning and dissatisfaction possessed him, and the heat in St. Louis being a tangible discomfort, he dwelt to himself upon the superior vitality in the air of the lake region, and laid his discomfort at the door of the weather. It was his custom, as soon as he entered the hotel, to inquire for letters; and to-day he received one in a feminine handwriting.

The clerk noticed the expression of his face as the missive was handed him.

"That fellow can't sing 'The letter I looked for never came,'" was his comment.

Gorham's sensations, as in his room he opened the square envelope with religious care, were of a chaotic nature, which required analysis. He even went so far as to hold the folded sheet a moment and look at the opposite wall with an effort at introspection; but the insistent desire to possess himself of those written words engulfed all other considerations.

The letter was gentle and friendly like the writer herself. It compassionated him on the fact which Chicago papers reported, of a hot wave in St. Louis; and described her sight of a great Maharajah, the nabob then visiting the Fair, who, resplendent in cloth-of-gold robes and pale green turban, passed in state with his suite about the grounds. Jack had surveyed him, and with democratic audacity dubbed His Highness "that chocolate duffer."

The little letter closed with these words:--

"I am alone in the house; even the servants are away. It is rather a desolate sensation; and yet some people profess to feel more keenly the loneliness of being in a crowd of strangers, than that of being entirely by themselves. The former is your sort of loneliness at present. I wonder if you dislike it? I wonder--you always seem so sufficient unto yourself, so much more a man of intellect than of heart--I wonder if you ever feel, as I do more and more strongly every day, our dependence on each other?"

There was nothing more save the conventional ending. Page scarcely glanced at the signature. Something seemed to mount to his head, as his eyes dwelt fascinated upon the last sentence recorded. The sweetness of his instant interpretation of it so possessed and intoxicated him that no other thought could obtain entrance. All the processes of his system seemed arrested for one overwhelming moment, then the pulses, reacting, sent the blood boiling through his veins.

Mechanically he rose, and going to the bureau began throwing articles of clothing into an open valise near by.

Recollecting himself, and duties still undone, he stopped these premature preparations and, the valise happening to be the object under his vision, he gave it the most prolonged amorous gaze that ever fell to the lot of insensate leather. Then catching up the letter again, he read it over and over.

That evening a messenger boy ran up the Van Tassel steps, and five minutes afterward Clover was smiling and frowning in perplexity over a telegram addressed to her.

I shall come back at the first possible moment.

GORHAM PAGE.

Aunt Love had brought her the message, and she in her mystification read it aloud. Something in Miss Berry's glance, as she met her eyes, made her color rise finely.

"You need not speak of this to Mildred," she said after a pause, with dignity. "I--I do not quite understand it."

"I don't either," thought Miss Berry, discreetly moving away. "Either he's even more kinds of a gump than I thought, or else he's come to his senses with a crash. I always knew when Gorham Page did start out to love a woman somethin' had got to break; and it ain't goin' to be his heart now, thank the Lord. What a pair they will make! My, my!"

Page returned on the second day toward evening. He hoped fate would favor him by sending Mildred and Jack to the illumination that night. It did not occur to him that Clover might have gone too until he neared the house. Then the thought brought dismay. He had schooled himself for days to work and conquer among dry-as-dust details of his profession. Now, it seemed impossible to wait a matter of hours.

There was no one on the piazza when he ascended the steps, and the evening being fine the fact appeared sinister. Miss Berry answered his ring at the bell.

"Oh, it's you, is it?" was her greeting. "Glad to see you back, Mr. Gorham. It hasn't seemed right not to have you runnin' in every day."

"It is good to be here again; but I am afraid you are alone to-night."

"Yes, the young folks are down to the Fair, as usual." Miss Berry's keen eyes saw the disappointment in the earnest face. "I s'pose like as not you wouldn't feel like goin' down any way, wore out as you must be with all that heat."

"I would go gladly, if there were any chance of meeting them; but the people you want to meet are the ones you do not happen upon at the Fair."

Miss Lovina looked at him with a shrewd smile. "Then I guess you'll give me a good mark for once; for it happened to come over me that you might get home to-night, and I said as much to Miss Mildred. I asked her where they'd be, and she agreed to stay by one o' the big horses till the illumination was over."

"What time is it?" asked Page with sudden haste, wringing Miss Lovina's hand cordially.

"Oh, you've got time, I guess," observed Aunt Love, with a comfortable chuckle. "Now haven't I got a head for somethin' more 'n cookies, Mr. Gorham?"

"If I should stop to compliment you as you deserve, I should miss the appointment," was the hearty response, as the young man lifted his hat and hurried down the steps.

The boy in the driver's seat of the Beach wagon just passing did not bear even a faint resemblance to any conventional idea of Cupid; yet surely no power less than that of the little god could have sent that conveyance exactly at the moment it was needed. Page felicitated himself on the occurrence; and in the whole history of the Fair it is doubtful whether better time was made by a pedestrian than his record to-night between the Sixtieth Street entrance and the Court of Honor.

But for all his haste, when he reached the giant horses his friends were not there. He rushed from one to the other with frantic energy, but in vain. No familiar face and form rewarded his search.

The Grand Court was lighted. The first playing of the electric fountains was over; perhaps had been over for some time. Page was too dispirited to look at his watch. For him the surroundings were stale, flat, and unprofitable,--another proof that the Kingdom of Heaven is a condition rather than a place. He was just about moving away with a sense of disappointment which he condemned as unreasonably keen, when there loomed up before him a vision more beautiful to his eyes than the most lovely sculptured angel in the neighborhood.

"Well, Jack," he exclaimed, taking his cousin's hand, "here you are! I was just looking for you."

Van Tassel smiled at the eager reception.

"Thought we had flown, did you? So we have, a little way. The girls are sitting over yonder. Mildred has been sending me on periodical scouting expeditions, lest you might come down. Glad to see you back. Business go all right?"

"Yes, I'm all right, thanks. Didn't quite get a sunstroke."

Van Tassel was striding along to keep pace with Gorham, who had instantly started in the direction Jack indicated. The latter smiled, and did not make a further attempt at conversation until the settee was reached where Clover and Mildred were waiting.

"You did come," said the latter pleasantly. "We thought you might hunt for us."

"It was so kind of you," exclaimed Page gratefully, as he greeted them both. "Now I can draw a long breath."

The four exchanged a few commonplaces concerning his trip, and then Mildred changed the subject.

"We have cards for a reception at the Woman's Building to-night, and we have been in a dozen minds about going: but I think it would be pleasant to look in."

Gorham glanced tentatively at Clover. He had not been gazing at her this evening as was his wont, and Mildred observed the change. "It would be pleasant," he said, without enthusiasm. "Don't let me detain you, of course. I haven't been here for what seems to me a very long time, and I don't feel inclined to go indoors. Do you especially wish to attend the reception, Mrs. Van Tassel?"

"No--in fact"--

Mildred spoke quickly, for she felt her quiet sister's embarrassment. "The truth may as well be told, Mr. Page. Just previous to your appearance she had flatly refused even to approach the Woman's Building; so she cannot put on airs about relinquishing a pleasure."

"Then we might divide," suggested Page, with so much alacrity that Mildred smiled; but the smile was fleeting. She had risen, and was standing behind her sister. Now she placed a hand on her shoulder.

"Oh, my friends, look!" she cried suddenly, lifting her hand toward the east. The moon was rising behind the Peristyle. Deep in the soft sky it shone between the lofty white columns and cast a silver sheen across the summer lake.

"This is Greece, and that is the Mediterranean!" exclaimed Jack.

Mildred, after a moment of gazing, stooped and dropped a light kiss on her sister's cheek.

"Good-by, Clover." Then, with a loving pressure of the other's shoulder, she added in a jealous whisper: "My Clover."

As the other two moved away, Clover and Gorham rose simultaneously. "I believe we had the same thought," he said, looking at her with happy eyes.

"Mine was to go to the Peristyle," she answered.

"And mine."

She took his offered arm; they started down the half-deserted walk, and quickly came one of the magic changes of the place. The lights vanished, and the colossal moonlit gateway of the Peristyle gained new majesty.

"At last I can thank you for your letter," said Page.

"Were you glad to get it? I am afraid it was not much of an epistle."

"As if any word you would write could be anything but precious! It breathed of you in every line. All things are made new since I read it. My whole life, all my powers, every worthy thing I may ever attain, are yours. Is it possible that you are really going to accept them, that you can care for me, Clover?"

She felt his strong arm tremble under her hand, and it thrilled her; but she was silent, and his impetuous speech rushed on.

"I have had to hold under with an iron will all my thoughts, the contradictions, the hopes and fears, of the last few days. Last night I dreamed of this. We were walking together somewhere, and the moon shone on the water. I asked you to marry me, and you looked at me pityingly and said--No. I reminded you of your letter, but still you shook your head. Clover!"

He spoke her name with tender appeal. They drew near the Peristyle and, stepping within, walked slowly down the wondrous vista of fluted columns beneath the clusters of flower-like lights.

"My letter?" she repeated softly. "How could you value that trivial little letter so much? What was there in it? I do not even remember."

Page stood still, to look in amazement into her face; but even in his surprise it did not occur to him that she might be resorting to subterfuge.

"I have the letter here," he said simply, thrusting his hand into an inside pocket. "We will see."

Clover crimsoned to her throat. She did not wish to see the letter. She suddenly feared it. What trick had been played upon her? Could Mildred-- Oh, impossible!

Gorham unfolded the sheet before her reluctant gaze. Then with sudden haste she took it from him, opened it, and read the closing lines. Her breath came freer.

"Oh yes," she said, smiling in her relief. "I wrote that."

Gorham unconsciously received the paper into his hand. He was scrutinizing her face. "What did you mean by those words?" he asked.

"Why, nothing," she answered, surprised and affected by his agitation,--"nothing except what I said. Let me read it."

"Those last words," said Page briefly, indicating them.

Clover read obediently aloud.

"I wonder--you always seem so sufficient unto yourself, so much more a man of intellect than of heart--I wonder if you ever feel, as I do more and more strongly every day, our--dependence." The voice gradually lowered, then paused; Clover cast one beseeching, troubled glance up into her companion's face. It was as pale as hers was glowing.

"We always have been so impersonal. Of course I meant people in general," she finished, low and quickly.

Page gave her a sad smile. "We have theorized and speculated together a great deal, I know. So this was only one more speculation, was it?"

"Why, Mr. Page!" said Clover, scarcely above the breath that was failing her. "How could you think"--

"I don't know now, myself," he answered with simplicity. "I suppose I was so suffused with love of you that this one hint at reciprocation set my head aflame, and brought on an attack of emotional insanity. I ask your pardon; but all the same, Clover, I am not ashamed, and I cannot regret it. It was my good angel who held your little hand while you wrote that, for it gave me moments of such happiness as I never knew before, and perhaps never shall again."

Clover wanted to speak and could not. She thought if he would move, or take his gaze from her face, her courage might rise. She lifted her eyes, but only far enough to note that the electric fountains were flinging their jets of color aloft; the water taking new shapes each moment with bewildering grace and rapidity.

"I never thought of you before as a woman whom it would be right for a man to ask to come down beside him; I did not know that my heart was reaching out toward yours until that day of the letter. Would you mind telling me, Clover, how long you have known that I loved you?"

Clover drew a long, involuntary breath. "I did not know it," she said at last, looking up at him bravely; and when once her eyes were held in that compelling gaze, she did not wish to escape. "I only--hoped it," she finished.

The fountains fell and vanished. The dainty flame-blossoms in the remote sculptured nooks overhead still added their soft radiance to that of the moon. The lovers were alone in that colossal aisle, that pillared temple, where for one transcendent moment they stood heart to heart. It was the period of shadow in the Court. At the other end of the lagoon, far away through spaces of darkness, the gemmed dome of Administration lifted its cameos and starry crown against the heavens. From the distance of the lighted Peristyle the deep surrounding shadows gave a supernatural effect to this single lighted edifice, whose triumphant angels seemed to move in the waving illumination thrown over them from flaming torches. It was an aerial castle, with no affinity for earth; an exalting vision such as visited the prophets of old.

"Earlier in the evening," said Page, almost too deeply moved to speak, "I would willingly have turned from the Court of Honor. I could not find you, and its company of angels was incomplete. Now, heaven itself lies here. I ought to be a good man, my darling. You will help me. It is a debt I shall owe for ever more."

*CHAPTER XXVI.*

*THE NEW YEAR.*

The reception at the Woman's Building proved attractive. It was late when Mildred and Jack returned home that night. All was still about the house. They parted in the usual friendly fashion, which both sought to make easy, and each felt to be constrained.

Mildred went quietly to her sister's door and listened. All was still. "Then she has been at home some time," thought the girl. "Good! That speaks volumes. Poor fellow, I'm sorry for him." The _frou-frou_ of her dress as she turned away almost drowned the voice that spoke her name. Not quite, however. She turned the handle of the door.

"Did you call me, Clover?"

"Yes; come in."

"I didn't mean to disturb you."

"Oh, I can't go to sleep. I don't want to."

The speaker put out her hand, and drew Mildred down on the side of the bed. The latter's eyes widened in their effort to penetrate the darkness.

"Something did happen, then?"

"Yes, it is all right," answered Clover, and her soft, glad tone pierced to her sister's heart.

"What do you mean by that?"

"He does love me!" What a different voice was this from the one in which she had said the same words to Jack Van Tassel five years ago!

"Of course; but, Clover, surely you don't love him!" exclaimed the other, aghast.

For answer, Clover took the hand she held and pressed it against her breast. "With every throb," she said slowly.

Mildred stared, then threw herself face down on the pillow and wept with abandon.

"Dearest, please don't," exclaimed Clover, shocked.

"I must," sobbed the other. "Oh, why did we ever see him! You are all I have in the world. I hate anybody who takes you away from me."