CHAPTER IX

NEW IDEAS

A parting shot in conversation sometimes rankles like the Parthian's arrow. So it had been with Pease. Beth had said to him: "How can you think you know life, when you live so much alone?"--words to that effect. He had had no chance to defend himself to her, and in consequence had been defending himself to himself ever since. Truly a serious mind is a heavy burden.

Finally he had come down to Chebasset to get the matter off his mind; at least, such was his real purpose. He coloured it with the intention of "looking in at the mill," and gave Mather a few words at the office. Mather had been working at his desk, as Mr. Daggett, the Harbour Commissioner, had found and left him. Orders, Mather said, were piling in too fast.

Pease smiled. "Enlarge, then."

"Delay in profits," warned Mather. "No dividend this quarter."

"Go ahead just the same," said Pease. "I hoped for this."

Mather began writing. "Come, leave work," invited Pease. "I'm going up to the Blanchards'. Come with me."

"I'm ordering coal and material," said Mather. "We have plenty of ore, but the new work must begin soon."

Pease struck his hand upon the desk. "Do you mean," he demanded, "that you are writing about the enlargements already?"

"Plans were made long ago," answered Mather.

"What do you do for exercise?" cried Pease. "How do you keep well? I'll not be responsible, mind, for your breakdown when it comes."

But he made no impression and went away alone, climbed the hill, and found the Blanchards on their piazza. Ellis was more than he had bargained for, and the Colonel had never been exactly to Pease's taste, but they departed, leaving him alone with Beth. She presently noticed the signs that he was endeavouring to bring the conversation to a particular subject, as one becomes aware of a heavy vessel trying to get under way. So she gave him the chance to speak.

"Miss Blanchard," he said, when he found that he might forge ahead, "you said something the other day--other evening--against which I must defend myself. That I live much alone."

She remembered at once, flashed back in her mind to that whole conversation, and was ready to tease him. Tease him she did as he began his explanation; she refused to be persuaded that he did not live alone. He might enumerate dinners, might point to his pursuits, might speak of the hundred people of all classes with whom he came in close daily contact: she would not acknowledge that she had been wrong.

"You are your mind," she declared, "and your mind is aloof."

He would have grieved, but that he felt again, dimly as before, that she was rallying him. And he was pleased that she did not fear him, nor call him Sir--that title which causes such a painful feeling of seniority. She gave him a feeling of confidence, of youthfulness, which had not been his even in boyhood. He had been "Old Pease" then; he was "Old Pease" to many people still. The respect in which young and old held him was a natural, if very formal atmosphere. This defiance of Beth's came upon him like a fresh breeze, bringing younger life. He threw off his earnestness at last and laughed with her at himself.

"Upon my word!" thought the Colonel, on whose ears such laughter had a new sound. He looked out of the window; Pease was actually merry. "Second childhood," grinned the Colonel, as he returned to his writing.

Beth discovered that Pease was no fossil, and began to enjoy herself less at his expense but more for other reasons. He could never lose the flavour of originality, for his odd manner's sake. Even as he sat and laughed he was upright and precise, though the twinkle was genuine and the noise was hearty. Then she rose from the tea-table, and they went to the piazza's edge together. There they discovered Judith returning with Ellis.

"Come away," said Beth quickly; "there are places where we can go. They have not seen us; take your hat."

This was wonderful, slipping with a girl away from other people, and Pease felt the delight of it. Fleeing by passages he had never seen, in a house he had never before entered, smacked of the youthful and romantic. Beth brought him out behind the house, and thirty seconds put them in shrubbery. She led the way, not suspecting that his mental vision was dazzled by new vistas.

For Pease would have faced Ellis and Judith as a duty, borne with their conversation, and returned home without a sigh for the wasted hour. Such was his conception of life--to take what was sent, nor avoid the unpleasant. It had gone so far that in some matters he did not consult his own feelings at all, but gave his time to others, recognising himself as a trustee for their benefit. The good which can be done in such a way is enormous, in business or professional matters merely; but Pease had carried the habit into his social scheme, and was therefore the sufferer from his own good nature, the victim of every bore. It was a revelation that one could exercise choice, and could flee (losing dignity, but gaining in romance) from the unpleasant. So that boyish thrill came over him, with a manly one besides as he felt the compliment Beth paid him. It put them on a closer footing when, laughing and out of breath, she sat in a garden seat and motioned him to take the place beside her.

"Do you think me foolish?" she asked.

"Not at all!" he answered eagerly.

"But perhaps you wished to stay and meet Mr. Ellis?"

"Not for anything!" he averred.

Then she looked at him soberly. "What do you think of him?" She posed him, for polite vagueness was his desire, and he could not find the words.

"He is----" he hesitated, "very--er, pleasant, of course. Not my--kind, perhaps."

"And you really do not like him," she stated, so simply and confidently that in all innocence he answered "Yes," and then could have bitten his tongue off.

"Neither do I," she acknowledged.

And so those two took the same important step which Judith and Ellis had already taken--of showing true feeling to each other, and breaking rules thereby. For Beth, while not reserved, chose her confidants carefully, after long trial; and Pease's habit had been never to acknowledge personal feeling against any one, least of all a business rival.

"Judith has encouraged him before," said Beth. "People talked of her when she met him; they will do so the more now that she has asked him here. Not that she will care for that, Mr. Pease, but I shall not enjoy it."

"Of course you will not," he agreed.

They hovered on the verge of confidences for a moment, then Beth took the plunge. She looked at Pease with a little distress in her eyes. "Judith is headstrong," she said. "She is discontented, but does not know what she wants. I have sometimes thought that George Mather, if he only knew how, might----"

"Yes," said Pease, filling the pause. "I wish he did. He is not happy himself, poor fellow. They have been intimate?"

"Till within a little while. But they are both too masterful. And yet I sometimes think she has him always in mind, but as if defying him, do you understand?"

"Indeed?" he murmured.

"I hope," said Beth, "that this acquaintance of hers with Mr. Ellis is just a phase of that. If it is not, and if she should--Judith cares so little for people's opinions, you know."

"It would be very--painful," murmured Pease. "But it has not come to anything of that sort yet?"

"No, but I know Judith so well that I don't know what she'll do." And Beth concluded her confidences in order to draw some from Pease. The sort of man Ellis was: could he be called dishonest? He was not of course a gentleman? Pease cast off restraint and answered frankly; she found he had considerable power of defining his thoughts, saying that Ellis had never been proved dishonest, but that his conscience seemed no bar to questionable actions; that he was unrefined, good-natured when he had conquered, rough in breaking his way. What his personal charms might be Pease had never had the chance to determine. Mrs. Harmon seemed to like him--but one must not judge by that, because--and silence fell for a moment, as they looked at each other with understanding.

It seems simple and so commonplace, but this was one of the talks which _accomplish_, bringing the speakers together as nothing else can do. Such talks build human ties; Pease and Beth formed one now. By the time they saw Ellis going away they had new feelings toward each other, differing in degree and result--for Beth knew friendship well, but to Pease it was altogether astonishing and momentous. When Ellis was well away Pease also took his leave and followed down the winding road.

"Tell Mr. Mather to come," were Beth's last words to him.

So Pease went again to the mill, where Mather was still in the office. Pease had little finesse, and went about his errand directly.

"Miss Jenks," he said, and the stenographer vanished.

"Anything?" asked Mather.

Pease put his hand on his shoulder. "Just a message," he answered. "Miss Elizabeth Blanchard----"

"Oh, Beth, you mean," said Mather.

"Yes," replied Pease. "She told me to tell you to come and see them."

"Indeed?" asked Mather.

"She was particular about it," Pease urged. "She meant something by it."

"Thanks," was all Mather said. "Now these enlargements, Mr. Pease. You meant what you said?"

"Yes, yes," answered Pease impatiently, and closed his hand on the other's shoulder. "And I mean this: Take Miss Blanchard's advice. Good day." He went to the door, and turned. "Ellis was up there this afternoon."

On his way home he did little thinking, but he felt. He had touched people's lives in a new way; he felt the breath of Mather's romance, and warmed at the trust which Beth reposed in him. Odd quivers ran through him, strange little impulses toward his kind, calling him to a youth which his life had earlier denied him. It was not possible for him to understand their meaning, but they were pleasurable.

In like manner Mather gave that evening to musings concerning persons rather than things. To follow his new line of conduct with Judith, or (now that Ellis had appeared again) to turn once more and earnestly pursue her--which? Clearly he saw that Judith would go her own way, would play with fire, would even burn her fingers for all that he could do. He must wait, be her friend, and having once said his say, must never again bother her with his warnings.

And Ellis, that evening, also mused upon the Blanchards, though his thoughts were very definite. On leaving the house he had borrowed the newspaper; the Colonel had asked him to post some letters in the city. When in the train, Ellis turned the newspaper to the stock-market reports and studied the Colonel's pencillings. Blanchard had underlined the names of certain stocks usually considered skittish rather than safe, and had made multiplications in the margin. When Ellis came to post the letters, very deliberately he read the addresses. Some were meaningless to him, but one bore the address of a broker whose reputation was quite as uncertain as the value of the stocks he chiefly dealt in. Ellis did not cast off thought until he reached his house.

Then he looked up at the Gothic building and scanned its various projections. "Ornate?" he murmured. "Well, wait till the inside is properly beautified!"

He spoke lightly, but when he entered the house his feeling changed. The great hall was dim and shadowy; seldom aired, it seemed cold. In front of him wound the huge staircase; to left and right were dusky apartments which echoed his steps. Since he first built the place it had satisfied him, but fresh from the influence of Judith, suddenly he saw the house as it was. Empty, gloomy, it was but a vast artificial cave, without life or warmth. For the second time a wistfulness, misunderstood, almost bewildering, came over him, and he wondered if anybody--somebody!--would ever brighten the house for him, and make it a home.