Part 14

He had become very well acquainted with Lily and had called on her several times before Henry Porter knew that his daughter was receiving the footman whom he had snubbed some months before.

"Lily, who was that young man that called on you last night?"

"Mr. Hayward."

"Umhuh, I thought he was the same fellow. You'll have to drop him. I don't want you to be receivin' no footman in this house. We must draw the line somewhere."

"He's no footman, papa. He's one of Mr. Brown's friends. Mr. Brown introduced him to me himself. I think he is connected with Mr. Brown's office."

"No such thing. Hayward's footman at the White House--told me so hisself 'bout a year ago, and I saw him on the President's carriage no longer'n yesterday. Nice lie he's told you 'bout bein' in Brown's office."

"Oh, he didn't say so, papa. I supposed so because Mr. Brown said he was his friend and has introduced him to all the nice people. Surely you can't object to one of Mr. Brown's friends. Everybody likes Mr. Hayward and he is received everywhere."

"Everybody likes him, do they? Well you see to it you don't like him any too much. I can't kick him out if Brown stands for him, but you make it your business to let him down easy. Have you seen Bob Shaw lately?"

"He was here last night when Mr. Hayward came," answered Lily; and she seemed to be amused at something.

"Well, what's funny 'bout that?"

Lily knew that she must not tell her father what she was laughing at. She created a diversion.

"Mr. Shaw is so backward, and so--dark."

"Dark! He's jus' a good hones' black,--so'm I--all African and proud of it. Mebbe I'm too dark to suit yuh. Bob Shaw is not backward, miss. He's got the bes' law practice of all the niggers in the Distric', and he'll be leader of the whole crowd in a few years. He's the bes' one in the bunch of these fellers who tag after you and you better take him. My money and his brains and pull with the party 'd make a great combernation."

Lily did not commit herself. She was accustomed to her father's blunt method of indicating his wishes. She liked Shaw well enough, but old Henry's awkward interference and zeal did the lawyer's cause no good. Shaw was below the ordinary in the matter of good looks, and in his love for Lily was too submissive to her whims. He had not Hayward's easy manner, nor his assurance--for the footman was not at all abashed by Henry Porter's money nor his daughter's gentle arrogance. It is needless to say the girl preferred the serving-man to the lawyer.

After the first flush of interest in Lily and her songs had subsided Hayward made love to the pampered belle warmly or indifferently as the mood was upon him. He noted that, taking her charms in detail, they were alluring without exception; and such moments of reflective analysis were always followed by a more determined pursuit of her. Yet the careless moods came. However, he always delighted in and could be extravagant in praising her singing, even when the personal attraction was the weakest, and the general effect on the woman was a continuous tattoo of love-taps at the door of her heart.

The negro magnate's favourite, Shaw, clearly was being outdistanced, and the outraged father stamped and threatened and commanded: but to no purpose. When Hayward discovered the bitterness of the old man's opposition he chuckled.

"Here's where I get even," he said; and became more assiduous in his attentions to Lily and more aggressive in his methods.

"Your father does not appear to hold much love for me," he told Lily one evening after she had sung him into an affectionate frame of mind and the conversation had drifted along to the confidential and personal stage.

"Did I ever tell you what he did with my first request for an introduction to you?"

"No. What?"

"He stamped the feathers off of it," said Hayward, and laughingly told her the details.

"Papa thinks--everybody--should be a lawyer, or a politician with a pull," Lily commented complainingly.

The temptation to vindicate his dignity was too much for Hayward.

"I was not always a footman and do not intend always to be a footman; and yet, footman as I am, if your father values a pull with the President, perhaps, if he knew--oh, well, he might think better of me."

"Oh, you have a pull? How interesting. Do tell me about it. I have read so much about pulls that I am dying to know what one is like. How do you work it? I believe you work a pull, don't you? Or do you pull the--"

"I haven't pulled mine yet. I'm waiting," said Hayward. "But it will work when the time comes."

"And when will the time come? Tell me. I'm so anxious to see the wheels go round in a genuine political machine. How many Southern delegates can you influence in the next national convention? That's the mainspring, isn't it?"

"I'm no politician or vote vender. I've never had the pleasure of influencing my own vote yet, and won't as long as I live in the District."

"What! Without politics or votes, and yet you have a pull?"

"It is a personal matter entirely," Hayward answered carelessly, as if personal friendships with Presidents were very ordinary affairs for him. Lily Porter was a mite skeptical, but she hoped he spoke the truth, for it would more than confirm her estimate of him and would be such an effective counter to her father's nagging opposition.

"Oh, isn't that interesting! Tell me all about it!"

"Really I cannot. I have never told that, even to my mother. There is only one other person who knows of it. It is my one secret, and my life--that is, my future--depends largely upon it. There's too much at stake."

"Would you fear to trust your life--your future--in my hands?" asked the woman softly. "I could be a very good and a very faithful friend."

The lure in her voice was irresistible.

"I would trust my soul with you," he answered, and with the spoken faith the trust was perfected in his heart. "Listen."

He told her all about himself, of his name and his history, of his life and his hopes. He was modest in his recital of the creditable things he had done; but when he had told her of his claim upon the President's gratitude and the purpose toward which he would use it, and began to talk of his ambition and his dreams, his heart was fired by its own fervour, and before the very warmth of his own eloquence all obstacles and difficulties faded as mists before the sun, and he felt that he needed only to put forth his hands to grasp his heart's desires.

The girl was touched with his fire. She listened with ready sympathy to the beginning of his story, heard with quickening pulses of his rescue of Colonel Phillips, and in the telling of his hopes was caught in the current of his transporting fervency and carried along with him to realize the vision of his martial career.

"And that is the picture of your life! It is--it will be--glorious!" She rose in her enthusiasm. "Oh, that a woman might--"

"Glorious--yes," the man said; "and till to-night it had seemed perfect to me. But I have been blind to its greatest lack. You have made me conscious of it." Hayward stood up and moved toward the girl, who wavered uncertainly between reserve and complaisance.

"I would paint another figure into that picture, Lily--the figure of a woman." He put his hands out toward her, and her coldness was melting when--"Lily," said her father from the hall, "what did you do with the evenin' paper? I want to read Mr. Shaw's speech before the convention this mornin'. Mr. Brown told me that it is the greates' speech that's been made yet."

Henry Porter came into the parlour in time to catch a glimpse of confusion and unusual attitude in his daughter and Hayward. He thought best to mount guard, and decided to talk Hayward into flight. He began with a panegyric on Shaw. Hayward caught the hint and took his leave, pulling Lily to the front door by a chain of conversation.

"Now remember," he murmured tenderly, "you hold my secret; and must keep it sacredly."

"Have no fear of me. Watch your other confidante," Lily whispered, her manner full as his of tenderness.

"Oh, she is--"

"Shaw told 'em," began the persistent and suspicious parent, coming out of the parlour;--but the footman was gone down the steps.

Hayward's mood changed in a twinkling and with a jolt. He walked a hundred paces thinking confusedly.

The question slowly framed itself in his mind.... "Do I love Lily?"

But he did not answer it.

*CHAPTER XX*

The oncoming summer promised to be long and uneventful for Helen Phillips. Late in May her mother took her and her two little sisters to Stag Inlet, leaving a perspiring father to await the perverse pleasure of a stubborn Congress before beginning his vacation, and Elise to set out upon a round of visiting that would permit her to see very little of home during the hot months. To Mrs. Phillips the restfulness of "Hill-Top" was gratefully refreshing after her trying first winter in Washington. She gave herself over fully to its soothing quiet and arranged her daily programmes on the simplest lines.

Hayward, because of his versatile abilities an indispensable part of the simple Hill-Top outfit, did not have an opportunity before leaving for Stag Inlet to see Lily Porter again. Nor indeed was he regretful on that account. He was in a state of indecision and wanted time to think. He heartily wished that he had not been so free with his confidences: yet could not justify this feeling when he sought a reason for it.

After awhile he wrote Lily a letter which was a model of diplomacy--which said much and said nothing. It did not disappoint or displease her. She read between the lines an admirable modesty and restraint, complimentary to herself and true to the artistic instinct which, she had read somewhere, always saves a full confession for a personal interview. She took her own good time to answer it. She felt sure of the man's devotion, despite the fact that his other and unknown confidante was a woman other than his mother. The tenor of her reply was reserved, though not discouraging. Hayward's impatience was not excited by the delay, nor his interest quickened by the coy missive.

* * * * *

The first morning Helen was on the lake after coming to the Inlet her launch passed a small catboat commanded by Jimmie Radwine and flying a Yale pennant from her diminutive masthead. The crew, consisting of Captain Jimmie and another youngster, both younger than Helen, were yelling themselves dizzy.

"What's Jimmie Radwine saying, Helen?" asked Nell Stewart.

Jimmie had no intention of leaving them uninformed. He had put his boat about, and come up alongside.

"Hello, Helen!" he shouted, "Harvard can't play ball! Quincy can't pitch! Tom got a home run and two two-baggers off him in four times up! Rah! rah! rah! YALE!"

Helen was a famous Harvard partisan, and many a verbal tilt had she had with Jimmie, whose brother Tom was Yale's right-fielder, as to the comparative merits of the blue and the crimson in all things from scholarship to shot-putting.

"What was the score, Jimmie?" she asked him.

"Wasn't any score--for Harvard: all for Yale. Wow! Yale--Yale--Yale!" he yelled.

Helen looked a dignified reproof of his unmannerly enthusiasm, but Jimmie's youth was proof against any such mild rebuke, and her irritation only kindled his joy. She nodded to Hayward for more speed, but as Jimmie was favoured by a stiff breeze they could not shake him off. He followed them for two miles or more up the lake, volunteering much information sandwiched between cheers for Eli, which, when he had delivered it fully and in detail, he began to repeat in order to impress it upon them. Hayward cheerfully would have bumped him with the launch.

Having so thoroughly enjoyed the morning's sport, Captain Jimmie regularly afterward flew the blue pennant from his mast, and was ever on the alert to greet Helen with the Yale yell and further particulars.

* * * * *

Less than a month later the Harvard crew rowed rings around the Yale men at New London. Helen's cup was full. The next day she and Nell Stewart and Nancy Chester were sitting out on the lawn reading an account of the race when they saw Jimmie's catboat beating about the lake.

"Come, girls," exclaimed Helen, "we must carry the news to Jimmie!"

"Hayward, come here," she called to the footman, who was tinkering at a gasoline runabout a hundred yards from them. "Get the launch ready," she added when he came nearer, "we want to overtake Mr. Radwine's boat out there."

"I guess Jimmie will haul down that blue flag now," said one of the girls when they had come to the boat-house.

"Hayward," said Helen, "run up to the house and tell mamma to give you the Harvard pennant that is in my room--and hurry!"

Hayward needed no urging. Out of the chatter he had caught the news of Harvard's victory at the oars, and he was as full of excited pleasure as Helen herself. He hurried up the hill and, not finding Mrs. Phillips, rushed to his own quarters and turned out from his trunk the crimson pennant.

Helen was too intent on the chase of Jimmie Radwine to notice that the short staff of the flag Hayward brought her, and the faded and wrinkled folds of the cloth, did not belong to the crimson emblem which was part of the decoration of her dressing-table. Jimmie, already informed of Yale's bitter defeat, surmised the purpose of the Phillips launch's coming, and tried to sail away and away: but he was relentlessly pursued and overtaken, and mercilessly repaid for all of his taunts of the last fortnight. As they came up with him Helen cried out to her friends:

"Now, everybody give the Harvard yell!"

The feminine chorus was shrill, but lacked volume.

"Again! and louder!" she commanded. "You too, Hayward!"

That was the most grateful order Hayward had received since the 10th was sent into the charge at Valencia. He stood up to drive the deep-mouthed, long-drawn rah-rah-rah's from his lungs, and added a few kinks and wrinkles at the end in orthodox phrasing and intonation by way of trimming off the severely plain Harvard slogan. Helen looked at him in some surprise, and saw that he was oblivious to his situation and seemed bent on "rattling" the hostile blue skipper. He came to himself at last, and pulled himself together in some confusion to give attention solely to his duties in running the launch. Helen thought his behaviour unusual, and watched him covertly while the badgering of Jimmie Radwine was in progress.

Jimmie was far from an easy mark, however, for by his unblushing impudence and boyish pretension to vast knowledge of facts and figures he time and again crowded Helen to her defences. Hayward could hardly keep his tongue when Jimmie presumed too much on the ignorance of the young women as to the athletic history of the blue and the crimson, and Helen could see that the negro was keeping quiet with difficulty. At one of Jimmie's most reckless statements, which overwhelmed Helen, Hayward, bending over the launch's little engine, shook his head in violent dissent.

"What is it, Hayward?" his mistress called to him.

"Beg pardon, Miss Helen, but he's--he's--misstating it!" Hayward answered with vigour.

"Then tell him of it!" Helen exclaimed impulsively.

"Pardon me, but you are altogether mistaken about that, Mr. Radwine," the negro sang out to Jimmie, shoving the launch up a little nearer the boat's windward quarter.

"What do you know about it?" Jimmie demanded scornfully.

"I know all about it," retorted Hayward with rising spirit; and he went into details in a way to take Jimmie's breath. Warming up, he did not desist on finishing the matter in dispute, but challenged others of Jimmie's audacious inaccuracies and proceeded to straighten them out. Jimmie demurred and replied more recklessly, and was soon in a rough and tumble discussion covering the whole field of college excellences. He found he was no match for Hayward either in information and enthusiasm or in assurance. Before the argument was half finished the footman was talking to him in a patronizing and fatherly way that pricked him like needles. He did not relish the idea of a controversy with, much less being routed by, this serving-man, especially in the presence of the young women. He wished the girls anywhere else so that he might smother the lackey with a sulphurous blast. But he had to stand to the losing game while Helen and her friends laughed at his defeat or waved the crimson flag and cheered the Harvard hits in a shrill treble. Helen indeed felt some compunctions for having brought about the situation but was enjoying Jimmie's discomfiture too much to end it.

Hayward had forgotten he was a lackey, had forgotten he was a negro, had forgotten he was anything save a Harvard man proud of his college, proclaiming her fair record with love and joy, confident in himself as one of her sons.... "As a man thinketh. so is he." ... The occasion was trivial, but the transforming power of thought, its triumph over circumstance, was strikingly evidenced in the footman's face. Helen noted that his bearing had lost every trace of conventional or conscious servility, that he looked easily and confidently _a man_, calling no man master.

After harrying Captain Jimmie enough to pay off all old scores they gave him good-bye with a final yell for the crimson, and turned the launch for home. In the run back Helen had her first opportunity to notice the pennant. It was not hers.

"Hayward, whose flag is this?"

"Mine, Miss Helen. I could not find your mother quickly, and I brought that to save time."

She looked from the flag to the negro. A nebulous idea floated through her mind, and she tried to fix it, but it was too elusive. She put Nell and Nancy off at their landings, and tried to grasp the intangible explanation that was hovering about her brain. It was characteristic of her to prefer working out her own answers to looking at them in the back of the book. Finally, however, she decided she did not have a full statement of the problem.

"When did you go to Harvard, Hayward?" she ventured.

"Class of 191-, Miss Helen."

"191-. Then you did not finish. The battle of Valencia was--"

"No, Miss Helen, I did not finish: but I understand two others of my class who volunteered were passed on the spring term's work and graduated by a special resolution of the Overseers. I think I will apply for my diploma sometime--if I need it."

Hayward spoke lightly, but his last words brought to Helen the same question which had occurred to her so often in the last year since she had discovered in him her father's rescuer. They only made the question more insistent.

He was a Harvard man,--to Helen's mind a title of all excellence and dignity. That explained much. His intelligence, even his physical grace and soldierly courage, seemed to fit naturally into that character. But why a flunkey?--shirking higher duties and the honours that pertained to his degree, careless of the evidence of his scholarly merit, putting aside the rewards of his soldierly heroism.

"Do you care nothing for everything, Hayward?--except this flag? You seem to have valued it."

"It is the one possession dearest to my heart," he answered in simple truth, and then showed the first faint trace of embarrassment she had ever seen him exhibit.

"Yes, you have loved the Harvard pennant but concealed your Harvard lineage. You champion Harvard's name enthusiastically against Jimmie Radwine's gibes, but you affect to be careless of Harvard's diploma. You carry the Harvard culture, and yet--you choose to be a footman."

Hayward winced. Helen tempered the thrust by adding:

"You do a soldier's work, but decline a soldier's honours. You are _too_ modest. You overdo the part."

"I hope yet to do something worthy of Harvard, Miss Helen. I am not without ambition, however much you may think it. Indeed I fear I have too much ambition."

A Harvard man need set no limit to his ambition. Helen spoke with the wisdom and confidence of youth and loyalty.

The launch was at the landing. The girl climbed out and up the steep stairs. At the top she bethought herself and turned about.

"Oh, here's your 'heart's dearest possession,'" she said with a laugh, and she pitched the little crimson flag down upon Hayward, who was making the boat fast.

The man looked up to catch the flag as it fell, and memory in that instant worked the magic which brought the scene on Soldiers Field clearly before Helen's mind. She knew him in that moment. She gazed at him without speaking. She looked at the flag and then at him--once, and again. All the incidents of the driving finish of that ever memorable football game came back to her, bringing to her pulses an echoing tremor of its tense excitement and wild enthusiasm and her unstinted girlish admiration for the player who had saved his college, her Harvard, from black defeat.

At last she remembered his words about the pennant which she had quoted to him a moment since. Her cheek flushed and she was in two minds whether to be offended or amused. Graham saw her look of surprised recognition, her glances at the pennant, and read the significance of her rising colour. He felt the presumption of his very presence, and, conscious and guilty, he looked abjectly out across the lake.

The man's humility went far to mollify Helen's anger or levity; but she could not spare him entirely.

"So you prefer another name to your own," she said. "Why is that?"

"Oh, no, Miss Helen. I am not ashamed of my name. There's no reason why I should be. I--"

"Then why use another?"

"My name is John Hayward Graham. I am using my own, but not all of my own."

"But why the masquerade? It doesn't look well. What have you done to be afraid of your full name?"

"Nothing, Miss Helen, I declare upon honour. I'll tell you the whole story. You have been kind to respect my wishes not to make known my services to your father, and I'll gladly tell you all about it. But I must go now, if you will excuse me? Mrs. Phillips ordered the carriage for five o'clock and it's nearly that time now."

"I'll excuse you, Hayward," Helen answered, intending a dismissal of the subject as well as of the servant.

*CHAPTER XXI*

For a year now Helen had had an unconsciously growing regard for her footman's mental abilities and for his gift of entertaining her with his tales of battle and camp and other incidental themes of conversation which at odd times had beguiled the moments of the past summer after his identity had been revealed to her as "the trooper of the 10th" of her father's most thrilling battle story. It was but natural that conversation with a man of his cultivation of mind and wide information should dull the sense of caste and superiority and enhance a feeling of genuine respect. It was only occasionally now that she assumed an air of command:--at best it is a difficult thing to patronize intellect.

Helen did not have an opportunity to hear Hayward's proffered explanation for quite a long time, and she cared little to know anything further of it; but her attitude of mind toward him had changed. Formerly she sometimes had wondered that a footman should be so intelligent. Finding that he was a Harvard man, however, had reversed the problem. It raised him to a level of respectability above his calling, and left the fact that he was a serving-man to be accounted for as anomalous. That he was a negro counted with her, of course, for naught one way or the other. He was nothing less than a footman.