Part 9

"I make plenty of failures, thank you. Please don't let this be one of them, and don't judge Jack's intensity of interest by my own. May I sit down once more?" Page knotted his brow reminiscently. "Jack outlined a plan for me. He suggested a number of arguments with which I was to lead up to the main idea, but they are pretty well muddled in my brain now." Gorham gave a short, desperate laugh. "After this confession of weakness, Mrs. Van Tassel, you will be obliged, if only out of generosity, to send me back with a 'yes.' Now, let me see; I'm confident this ought not to come first, but Jack wanted me to say that he was certain that Uncle Richard left the homestead to him instead of to you, at your own instigation."

Clover, who had not been able to imagine what was coming, acquiesced gravely. "Mr. Van Tassel would probably have acted as he did in any case, but I wanted to make certain that Jack's dear old home should be secured to him."

"It humiliates Jack to feel that you avoid the place for fear he might go there."

"This is an unpleasant errand for you, Mr. Page."

"Please don't use that tone. Jack means so well, I couldn't refuse to be the go-between. He asks, he even begs, that if you intend to remain in Chicago now, you will go back to your home. It is comfortable. All your belongings are there. His father made every arrangement for you. Jack feels sure he would be grieved to have you leave it. He himself is going back to Boston. The housekeeper is alone there and is pining for you; I forget whether that was to be an argument, but the fact remains. Jack thinks it would save a lot of talking among your friends if you were to go on in the old way. Naturally, he has no use for such a big place. It would be too lonely to endure under the circumstances, and it is hardly the thing to leave the house tenantless year after year. Of course all this is under Jack's supposition that you have no prejudice against the home as a home. If that is false"--

"No. I have a strong attachment for the locality and the house itself. Mildred has also."

"Then you will say yes; and I will promise to take my success as meekly as you could desire."

"Shall I do it, Mr. Page?" asked Clover, looking perplexed.

"By all means, if you ask me. Here is the Fair coming on, and the difficulties of suiting one's self in a home in Chicago are going to be many, I fancy."

"I don't want to think of that. We should be able to find a comfortable place."

"Then consider that suggestion unmade, and let me take your consent to Jack. Do you still hesitate?"

"Yes. I had quite made up my mind to do without Jack, and this would change all that."

"Jack does not at all wish to be dispensed with."

"I consider," said Clover with grave gentleness, "that I owe him any favor he chooses to claim; but it seems quixotic on his part to call this one."

"And yet he does. We cannot always understand the vagaries of youth, Mrs. Van Tassel."

"Jack was always willful," she returned, smiling sadly. "Tell him I thank him, Mr. Page, and that Mildred and I will talk it over."

An hour after Gorham's departure, a note was brought to Clover. It was from Jack. He said:--

I thank you for considering my proposition. I have a feeling that in the end you will not refuse me. I have suffered for every unjust word I ever said to you, Clover, and now the only peace possible for me is to be in friendly relations with those my father loved. Only when you are living again under his roof shall I feel that I have won his forgiveness as well as yours. The selfish jealousy of you which has made my heart sore has gone, and gratitude has taken its place. We have both lived long in two years, and suffered much. We can feel for each other.

Forgive your old comrade, JACK.

Clover's tears fell upon this abrupt note, and her heart went out to her friend. She did not need now to talk the matter over with Mildred. She had decided to return to the home by the lake.

Jack went back to Boston without seeing her again; for although he called, the sisters were both away.

*CHAPTER XIII.*

*MAY DAY.*

What Chicagoan will ever forget the winter of '92 and '93! It was as though the elements had joined with the majority who frowned down their city's audacious effort. The newspapers recorded the storms and their damage. What an unthinkable thing it was to undertake a World's Fair in such a climate! Certainly if one wanted an allegory of discomfort one had but to visit the Garden City at that season, and witness the teaming through torn-up streets, the building, and the elevating of railroad tracks, while the sense of shortness of time sent men to labor and often to die in exposed places when the mercury was lost below the zero mark. Roads were either iron-bound, or deep in the mud of a thaw, and blizzards descended furiously upon the glass portions of Exposition structures, destroying in an hour the work of weeks.

As the first of May approached, more stinging grew the criticisms upon the authorities who had failed to have the Columbian Exposition entirely ready to keep its engagement; but though on the great day Chicago was still in an undeniably uncomfortable condition of unfinished hotels and bad weather, the White City rose like a perfect superb lily from its defiling mud, and the great crowd that swarmed into Jackson Park on the morning of May 1st found so much to marvel at that they were good-natured and eager under a chill gray sky, and unmindful of the clinging soil into which they sank at every step.

Jack Van Tassel had arrived in town a couple of days before, and after registering at his hotel had called immediately at his old home.

The girls received him cordially, although he was unexpected. One or two letters had passed between Clover and himself during the winter, and she now asked him to leave his hotel and take possession of his old room. He declined with thanks, stating that his plans did not yet permit of a prolonged stay in the West, and that it would not be worth while to make the change.

"I am afraid he saw that I hesitated when I asked him," said Clover to her sister after the guest had departed. "I wish we had known that he was coming, then we could have thought the matter over and arrived at a decision. I really didn't know whether I was doing a proper thing or not."

Mildred, who had seen and been amused by her sister's perplexity all through the call, laughed mischievously.

"It is an odd thing if you can't invite your son to visit you," she said.

Clover regarded her helplessly, but she could not help smiling too. "I don't know whether we should be outraging conventionality or not," she repeated. "He will be coming back again in a little while. If only Jeanie hadn't deserted us. It was such an inconvenient season for her to be overwhelmed with homesickness, but she said it was the first time that she had not been really needed here."

"You remind me of Iolanthe," said Mildred wickedly. "I couldn't help thinking of it all the time Strephon was here." And then she sang:--

"'I wouldn't say a word that could be construed as injurious, But to find a mother younger than her son is very curious, And that's the sort of mother who is usually spurious; Tara diddle, tara diddle, tol lol lay.'"

The color rose under Clover's clear skin as she joined reluctantly in her sister's laugh. "Perhaps we had better procure a dragon," she suggested.

"Oh, wait a little," returned Mildred, loath to alter their present mode of life.

But Jack, before he left, had agreed to call for his friends on the morning of May 1st to take them to see the opening exercises in the new city whose completed splendor they had not before beheld.

The three walked down through the grounds in the dull gray weather, and joined the half million of souls who waited in the Court of Honor to see President Cleveland touch the electric button.

Clover gazed at the white magnificence of architecture, and felt a thrill at the solemn stillness pervading all, which the fine orchestral music only accented.

"It seems to me like the story of Galatea," she said to Jack. "We are waiting to see the breath of life breathed into the statue."

Van Tassel looked down the Grand Basin to where the heroic Republic stood veiled in white from the eyes of men. The low-hanging sky hung its pall above all.

"I think the button may start the clouds as well as the machinery," he remarked. "They look as though they were only waiting some signal to pour down."

"We shall need a shower-bath to put out the fires of our enthusiasm," exclaimed Mildred, who looked as excited as she felt. "Oh, Jack, aren't you glad you are a Chicagoan? Aren't you glad that we've gathered goldenrod right in this very spot in front of the Administration Building?"

Jack protested that he shared this subtle joy fully; and at the moment a new shiver of expectation passed through the throng. The music had ceased. The President had begun to speak. It was a solemn moment, a triumphant moment, when at last the electric button was pressed, hitherto motionless machinery suddenly throbbed, and the vast pulses of the stately, statuesque White City began to beat.

Clover and Mildred unconsciously clasped hands, and their breath came fast as they stood facing the majestic Peristyle, its marble columns surmounted by the solemn, glad, immortal declaration: "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

Jack stood beside them, his head bared before this beginning of a new era; for at the touching of the signal, down fell the veil from the golden Republic, up streamed the enormous jets of water from the fountains; color and movement thrilled along the roofs of the snowy palaces; flags of all nations unfurled gayly from myriad staffs; the boom of artillery thundered from the lake side; and as the multitude, swayed by mighty feeling, rent the air with cheers, the sun burst from a cloud and blessed the scene with new splendor. The World's Columbian Exposition had opened.

Van Tassel accepted Clover's invitation to dinner that afternoon when they reached home, chilled with much standing about in the spring wind.

The impersonal common interest of the day had done much toward reestablishing the old easy relation among the trio.

"So Jeanie felt a call to visit her own kin, did she?" said Jack as they sat at table. "She is so much a part of the house I miss her."

"Yes; she could not be tempted from her project even by the prospect of the Fair. 'What do I want with the Fair?' she asked contemptuously. 'Chicago's just got unbearable since they started it.' But she wanted me to promise to take her back when all the excitement is over and she returns to America," said Clover. "Of course we miss her very much; but at present we get on finely."

"Yes," remarked Mildred, "I don't know that Jeanie would be pleased to know how well. I believe she was right. No doubt a person of her sort would be more fatigued than interested by the Fair."

"I was wondering this morning," said Jack, "while we were waiting down there, what Aunt Love would say to it all."

Clover smiled. "I think Chicago and everything connected with it seems as far off to her as the Sandwich Islands;" but as she spoke a novel thought came into her mind, and after Jack had gone she imparted it to Mildred.

"I have had a brilliant idea," she announced.

"That is nothing new," returned her sister. "A quarter, please," holding out her hand.

Clover loftily ignored both the compliment and the request for prompt recompense.

"We can't selfishly keep this comfortable house just for our own two selves the next six months."

"I could, just as easy," returned Mildred nonchalantly, dropping into an armchair. "Aren't you glad now that we have lived a life of resorts for two years, and are not under obligations to anybody? Moreover, that we haven't had time to make any intimate friends anywhere? Why, everybody we know here has either rented his house and fled, or is wondering how servants and expenses are to be managed through the summer."

Clover looked serious. "I feel that we ought to do exactly what Mr. Van Tassel would do if he were alive."

"Yes, that is so," agreed Mildred promptly; "but I don't see how you are going to find that out."

"Why, it is perfectly plain that he would entertain his near relatives."

Mildred raised her eyebrows thoughtfully. She began to sing softly again from Sullivan's opera:

"'To say she is his mother is an utter bit of folly, Heigh-ho, our Strephon is a rogue! Perhaps his brain is addled and it's very melancholy, Taradiddle'"--

"Stop that nonsensical song."

"My dear, Gilbert never writes any nonsense. It gives me the utmost pleasure to warble his lays. He is the only librettist in the world who says just what he wants to say, and it happens to rhyme. Pardon me if I appeared to be personal. That was another happening. So you think you ought to have sonny at home. Anybody else?"

"Certainly. Mr. Page."

Mildred pursed her lips into a noiseless whistle.

"Mr. Van Tassel's sister's child," went on Clover firmly. "He has a right to expect an invitation. What is the matter? Don't you like him?"

Mildred made her favorite grimace of faint repugnance, and her head dropped to one side. "I've had a good deal of him by proxy," she answered. "I'm very much afraid he's a worthy young man."

"Well, what of it?"

"Oh, you know I can't endure worthy young men," smiled the girl provokingly.

"Jack says he is a noble fellow," declared Clover with dignity.

"Of course; but alas, if that was only one of those things that go without saying! His sister-in-law adores him madly. Well, then we are to have sterling cousin Page. Anybody else? It seems to me you are drawing about us a possibly charming, but certainly unconventional family circle."

"No, no. There are the other Pages. Of course we must ask the married brother, just as much as Gorham, and we are under obligation to Mrs. Page for kindness to you."

"So she is to be the chaperone. Is it your expectation that she will wish to stay here all summer? What a perfect goose you were, Clover, not to have your bright idea before you let Jeanie go. After you have thought up three meals a day for guests, for about three months, your opinion of the brilliance of that idea will probably decline and fall."

"Just wait," said Clover triumphantly. "You haven't even heard my bright thought yet. It is Aunt Love."

Mildred looked into her beaming eyes uncomprehendingly. "It is nothing to me," continued Clover, "whether Mrs. Page stays one week or six. I am going to ask Aunt Love to come and take Jeanie's place all summer."

"Do you suppose she will do it?"

"Yes, I do. I shall ask her, anyway, before one day more passes over my head,--that is, if you agree, Mildred."

"Oh, if I agree!" repeated the latter with light scorn. "I notice you didn't trouble yourself to consult me about Strephon and cousin Page."

"You would like to have Aunt Love, of course," persisted Clover.

"Yes; but she must be sure to bring Blitzen."

There was only one subject discussed throughout the length and breadth of Pearfield, twenty-four hours after Mrs. Van Tassel's letter reached Miss Berry.

Lovina Berry was going to the World's Fair. Pearfield would be represented, after all. It was a dangerous undertaking. Everybody felt that. The postmaster made himself quite unpopular by doubting whether Loviny ran more risk from desperate characters in Chicago than she would in any other large city; but his heretical opinion was accounted for by a well known contrariness of nature.

Many and solemn were the leave-takings and warnings bestowed upon Miss Berry at the outset of her pilgrimage. She was somewhat astonished herself at her own calmness at the prospect.

"It must be I don't sense it," she declared as she gave her lisle-thread glove a parting wave from the car window. She had planned by letter to have Gorham Page meet her in Boston, and take her to an inexpensive boarding-house where she might remain until she was fitted out for her wonderful trip.

It was a tired and harassed woman that Page met that afternoon, hugging to her, as she stepped from the car, a straining, excited, furry bundle that jumped eagerly to the end of his chain as she permitted him to leap down.

"Such a time as I've had this day," she ejaculated. "I guess I've broke most o' the laws ever made by God and man. By good luck I knew the conductor,--he came from near our place, and he, seein' that Blitzen rampaged dreadful in the baggage-car, let me hold him in my lap. I lost my temper before I'd been out o' Pearfield half an hour, and I haven't found it since. I'm just tuckered out. Miss Bryant made a great point o' my bringin' Blitzen, but law, before I'd have the care o' him from here to Chicago I'd give up the whole undertakin'." Miss Berry looked anxiously at the dog as he bobbed about at the end of his tether as though to expend the energy stored in his lively legs during hours of inaction. "I don't know how I could leave him in Boston," she added, "and yet"--

Page smiled. "You know very well if you left him he would walk on the ties to Chicago. Don't worry, Aunt Love, I'll send him safely for you. You shall not have any trouble."

Miss Berry looked half hopeful, half incredulous.

"Yes, by express. It will be all right," and Page held open the door of a cab, into which Miss Berry stepped with the nervous and astonished Blitzen again caught in her strong clasp.

"I haven't thanked you a word," she said when the horse had started, "but you can't think what a help it's been to me to have you manage about the boardin' place and all."

"Hilda wouldn't hear to your going anywhere but straight to her," returned Gorham.

"Oh, that is too much," exclaimed Miss Lovina, flushing with pleasure; and the warm welcome she received when she arrived at Mrs. Page's dainty apartment completed her relief from care and embarrassment.

"I'm sure you never counted on Blitzen," Miss Berry said anxiously, in return to her hostess's greeting.

"But I am glad to see him," responded Hilda. "It is well known that a dog who can wag his tail can knock over lots of valuables in a flat, but Blitzen is a safe and welcome guest."

"We'll let him run in the street all he wants to. Perhaps he'll get lost," said Miss Lovina, regarding the small animal darkly in spite of the confiding and questioning gaze he was bending upon her, as though begging to understand to-day's erratic movements.

"Much more likely to be stolen," remarked Gorham. "I had better send him on to Chicago very soon."

Mrs. Page proved of great assistance to Miss Berry in adding the right articles of dress to her wardrobe, and completing her preparations. It was with a light heart that Aunt Love finally shook hands with Page after he had settled her comfortably in her section of the Chicago train, and when the latter glided slowly and smoothly from the station, Miss Berry leaned back in the cushioned seat and felt happy though excited. She had never been in a sleeping-car before, and every convenience about her excited her wonder and admiration.

She was traveling at Mrs. Van Tassel's expense, and simply followed the explicit directions Page had given her; so she went into the dining-car for her meals, a proceeding which filled her with wonder. Her practical soul yearned to examine the compact kitchen arrangements.

Gorham had charged the porter to attend to her wants, accompanying the exhortation with the only sort of persuasion which appeals to the species, and innocent Aunt Love was in consequence gratefully impressed by her new friend's assiduous attentions.

There is no denying that the gentleman of color had something to endure from the time the train crossed the last state line and entered Illinois. It had been impressed upon Miss Berry that she was to alight at Hyde Park, and her porter earned the money Mr. Page had given him before that station was reached.

"You don't want to get out till you've passed the World's Fair," he said at last in desperation; and Miss Lovina clung to this definite clue with such concentration that when the usual stentorian announcement was made--"World's Fair Buildings on the right," she scarcely cast a glance toward the labyrinth of roofs and domes, but clasped the handles of her bag and shawl-strap, and sat on the extreme edge of the seat.

Soon the porter arrived, took possession of Miss Berry's belongings, and in another minute she stood on the platform, where Mrs. Van Tassel and Miss Bryant met her with open arms.

At least one of Mildred's hands was extended in welcome. The other kept firm hold of a chain to which Blitzen was attached. Instantly the little dog's leaps and grins monopolized the attention of all three. He whined, he actually howled in the fullness of his joy at finding the mistress he had despaired of seeing again.

"For gracious sake!" exclaimed Miss Berry, much embarrassed. "There, there;" she stooped and patted the terrier sparingly. "Yes, here's my trunk-check, Mrs. Van Tassel. My, but you do look well, child. For pity's sake, Miss Mildred, take the chain off'n that dog, and maybe he won't trip me up. Be still, can't you?"

Mildred laughed as she stooped and unfastened the hook from the smart new collar which had gilded Blitzen's misery since his arrival. "Yes, he will not need chains now," she answered; "but we have had to keep him a prisoner for fear he might go back to Boston. It would have been such a pity for you to cross each other on the way."

*CHAPTER XIV.*

*CLOVER'S INVITATION.*

Those who wished to continue to point out the defects in Chicago and her Fair had ample opportunity through a large part of the month of May. It was indeed Chicago's Fair then; no one else claimed it. The exhibits were not all in place, the electric effects were not complete, the weather was cold, Orientals had to wear American overcoats above their white gowns, and they sneezed lugubriously under their turbans. The pleasantest spots in the White City at that season were the open fires in the dignified or dainty club-houses known as State buildings. Only the Eskimos were really comfortable, and some of those poor women wished the incoming and outgoing visitor would not allow the northeast wind continuous entrance to their homes.

But the month was nearly out by the time Miss Berry arrived in Chicago. It was the beginning of that marvelous summer whose weather every Chicagoan will always proudly consider an exhibit worthy to be ranked with any wonder it shone upon. The natural elements, like the human ones, gradually admitted that the Columbian Exposition was not only a worthy but an overwhelming success, and in place of buffeting wind and destructive storm, sent week after week a warm blue sky and a cool east breeze to add the crowning charm to the White City's bewildering loveliness.

Had the human element been as prompt in succumbing, thousands of those who strove in the madding crowd of October might have reveled instead in the fresh beauty of June; but the general confidence had not yet been gained. The same journal which had pictured the vulgar young city vociferating for the World's Fair bouquet had not yet declared that it took off its hat to Chicago, adding that all other shows bore the relation to the Columbian Exposition which Jersey City did to Imperial Rome. A comparatively small army of explorers came from the East as yet, to spy out the land and carry back reassuring reports to their skeptical or timid friends.