CHAPTER XIV

MR. PEASE INTRUDES UPON A SECRET

The summer passed; through October the city gathered its own to itself again. The stay-at-homes, such as Miss Cynthia and Mrs. Wayne, saw with relief shutters go down and blinds open, saw awnings spread over southern windows and children playing on lawns. Poor Mrs. Wayne, threatened with the loss of her treasure, could call less formally upon her daughter-in-law-to-be, yet could not quite reconcile herself with matters as they stood. But that is the way of mothers. Jim began to urge that the engagement be announced, but Beth put him off for another little while.

And now Pease found comfort in the thought of Beth's return, since it would give him his innocent pleasure without journeys or the neglect of business. His winter clothes were chosen with unusual care, nor did he this time repel the tailor's semi-annual attempt to give him a more youthful appearance. At his home Pease became a new man, and Miss Cynthia sneered as she fastened the charge upon him.

"More colour in your neckties!" she sniffed disdainfully.

He smiled, untroubled. "Yes; they tell me it's to be quite proper, this fall."

Astonishment prevented her from speaking; never before had he deserted the middle ground of fashion. Thus the lighter shade of his new overcoat was a sign, his wearing of tan shoes a portent. And his very carriage was different, as of a man who has at last found the spring of youth and drinks of it daily. His mannerisms were softening, he took more interest in social news, and an undercurrent of thought always swayed his mind in the direction where knowledge or imagination placed Beth Blanchard.

There was stupidity in Pease, for he did not find the meaning of the existence of Jim Wayne. But very slowly he discovered the reason for his own sensations. He met Beth first in April; by the middle of the summer he knew that she attracted him extremely; a month later he acknowledged that he was going to Chebasset for the sake of seeing her; upon her return to Stirling he felt continual odd thoracic sensations which seemed to make him a living compass, pointing always to Beth. After a fortnight of this sort of thing he waked one day from a reverie of her, to realise that he loved her. The discovery affected him with vertigo; he had to seek the air and think the matter over. In about a week he became familiar with the situation and accepted it. He paused one evening before his motto from Goethe, and smiled to think that he had once considered the end of happiness to be mere culture.

Loving Beth, he did not at first include her in his hopes. There was such delight in contemplating a definite image in absence, such satisfaction in watching Beth herself when present, that for some time he went no further. He made it clear to Beth that he was always willing to attempt anything she desired, and then from time to time looked in on her and adored. Yet the humanising process eventually proceeded. Gazing at his idol until its every perfection was known to him, at last there came the question: Why not possess it? And this worked on him so that in the end he became extremely determined.

So gentle was the increase of his attentions that Beth did not at first take the alarm. At home, no abstraction betrayed him to Miss Cynthia, who thought that he had resigned himself. He was more lively, normal than ever before, and only Mather suspected in him the determination to do or die. The change of the scene of operations from Chebasset to the city, however, gave Mather no chance to keep abreast of the march of events, since the manager still spent most of his days and nights at the seaside. Thus no one enlightened Pease until it became Beth's task to do so herself.

He dressed himself with unusual care one afternoon; had it been the evening Miss Cynthia would never have suspected. But his newest suit, his freshest gloves, the box of violets in his hand, and (more than all) the single pink in his lapel--all these for a moment made her suspect the truth as she watched him leave the house. "Whatever is the man----?" But he was gone, and there was nothing to be done.

He found Beth at home, and gave her the box of violets. She thanked him with such prettiness as always charmed him, such warmth as always made him glow. The poor man tried now to say words of love, he who had never practised them even to himself. It was a long way round, through the weather, the news, the latest invitation, to the deepest emotion of the human heart. But he pointed straight to it at last, and Beth understood.

So she sprang to head him off in the kindest, surest way. "I----" she hesitated with heightened colour, "I have something to tell you, Mr. Pease. Almost nobody knows it [almost everybody was nearer the truth, as Jim weekly complained], but you have been such a good friend that I think I should like you to know."

"You are very kind," he answered, much pleased, and opening his bosom to the fatal dart. "I will tell no one without your permission."

"I should like you to tell your cousin," she said. "I--I----" Her face became scarlet. "Mr. Pease, I am engaged to marry Mr. Wayne."

Down fell his house of cards; it seemed as if the chambers of his brain resounded, and for a moment his head bowed low. Then he raised it again and looked at her, and for the merest instant she saw a face of misery.

"Oh, Mr. Pease," she cried, "I am so sorry!"

There was a moment of stupid silence. "I--I regret," he said at length, "to distress you, by letting you know."

"How can I help knowing?" she answered simply. He sat dumb while she, twisting her fingers in and out, sought for further words. "If I," she said at last with tears in her eyes, "if I have hurt you, I hope that you will blame me, and forget me."

"Blame?" he cried. "And forget? No, no!" She saw his face light nobly. "Miss Blanchard, you have given me new ideals--humanised me. Blame and forget? Why, my life was small and narrow; you have led me out of myself! Everything is better through knowing you. Therefore, I may say with a cheerful heart:

"Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all!"

He sat upright and smiled, but tears stood in her eyes; she could make no response. After a moment he asked her: "You are to be married soon?"

"No," she answered, and gained command of herself. "We must wait a while--and you know it is very slow, rising in Mr. Wayne's business."

"Yes." Then he rose and held out his hand; she gave him hers at once. "I will go," he said. "Do not reproach yourself, and--God bless you always!" He bent and kissed her hand, smiled again, and then was gone.

She sat down, miserable. Not his brave cheerfulness, nor his almost comic quoting of the old-fashioned couplet, could drive from her the knowledge that his heart was bleeding. Slowly the tears welled out upon her cheeks.

Then Wayne entered joyously. "I passed old Pease on the steps, and he didn't see me. What's wrong with him?"

She ran to him. "Oh, Jim!" she cried, and clung to him, weeping.

"Oho! Indeed?" he exclaimed, and horrified her by loud laughter.

Pease had not noticed whom he passed upon the steps. For a moment after leaving the house he had stood in the vestibule, looking at the setting sun. One would have said that its splendour passed into his face and illumined it; indeed, a glory entered him at that moment, an ecstacy of self-forgetfulness. The sunset faded quickly, but the inner light still shone on his face as he went homeward.

Miss Cynthia saw it when he entered the parlour where she was sitting. Her cousin had never appeared so to her before, and for a moment she mistook. "Is it possible?" she asked herself.

"Cynthia," he said quietly, "Miss Beth Blanchard asked me to tell you that she is to marry Mr. Wayne."

"No!" she cried, angry at once, her love for her cousin blazing in her eyes. "She mustn't!" Then she was ashamed, for he answered gently:

"It seems to me a very happy fortune."

But he could say no more, for a single dry sob burst from her. Fearing to lose his own self-command, he went up to his room.

From that minute Miss Cynthia's admiration of her cousin, which for some time had been passive, recommenced to grow, expanding far beyond its former boundaries as she found what further depths there were in his character. Never, even in their early days of struggle, had he been so considerate, kind, and wise. Indeed, on the very day after his great disappointment he proved his manliness.

Pease travelled down to Chebasset and found Mather in the office as usual. The manager greeted him with an inward pity, for in the morning's mail he had received a letter from Beth, informing her dear George, whom she had always regarded as one of her best friends, that she and Mr. Wayne--etcetera, etcetera. With sorrow for Pease, therefore, Mather greeted him, to be surprised by the banker's smile. When his errand was announced Mather was surprised the more.

"You have been saying, haven't you," asked Pease, "that you must soon have an assistant here, to take charge of the mill while you are in the city."

"Yes," Mather answered. "We are running smoothly now, and my hands are more than full, taking care of both making and selling. I must be in the city all the time, so soon as I can find a capable man to take my place here."

"I have found him," announced Pease, beaming. "James Wayne!"

"I said a _capable_ man, Mr. Pease," replied Mather. "The boy is green and flighty."

"Yes, I know," said Pease. "But isn't he worth the trial?"

Mather rose and began to pace the office. Did he dare trust anything in Jim's hands? "You promised me," he reminded, "that I should have full control over the business."

"So you shall, so you shall," soothed Pease. "But a trial? Come, now!"

Between respect for his employer, affection for Beth, and interest in Wayne himself, Mather saw that he was caught. "You're too good for words!" he said, and yielded.

So the position was offered to Jim, and gave Beth a happy opening to her engagement. Amid all the presents which, according to the custom that ignores the chance of a broken betrothal, came pouring in, nothing pleased Beth so much as the fact that now it was open to her Jim to make his way in the world.