Chapter 13

He had settled down to a pretty steady correspondence with Kellogg, chiefly on business matters. Kellogg was investigating old Sam's burner, and seemed quite impressed with its possibilities. He had quarrelled with Roland's friend, Burnham, on Duncan's representations, and ordered him out of the offices of L. J. Bartlett & Company, it seemed. Later he opened up negotiations with a corporation known as the Modern Gas Company, I believe, a competitor of Consolidated Petroleum, and in due course representatives of both concerns came to Radville, examined the burner, and retired, non-committal. Then Bartlett sent a requisition for a model, and supplied the funds for making it--thus demonstrating his confidence. Sam never had such a good time in his life as when occupied with that model, and in his elation was inspired to invent two notable improvements on the machine--which were promptly patented. Then the model was despatched, receipt acknowledged, and nothing ensued for three or four months. Radville, which had been watching and wondering with open incredulity and dissatisfaction (this latter because neither Graham nor Duncan would talk about the matter), concluded that the whole business had gone up in smoke, said "I told ye so," and forgot it completely. Roland Barnette, I believe, drove the last nail in the coffin of our expectations that anything would ever come of it, by writing to Burnham that Duncan's negotiations had failed, and inviting him to renew his offer if he thought it worth while. Presumably he didn't, for Roland received no reply, and told the town so....

I don't remember just how soon it was, but it was shortly after the formation of the firm of Graham and Duncan that the young man received his first invitation to dinner at the Lockwoods'. He accepted, of course, whether he wanted to or not, for there could be no excuse for his refusing a Sunday bid, and the Lockwoods made quite an event of it. The Soules were invited, because they were Araminta Lockwood's brother and sister-in-law, and the Godfreys came over from Westerly to grace the board as representatives of the Lockwood strain. Also Ben Lockwood attended--Blinky's first cousin and senior.

Duncan described the function in a letter to Kellogg as the time of his young life. Undoubtedly it was in certain respects singular in his experience. The entire party walked home from church through a hot August noon, with that air of chastened joy common to a gathering of relations--an atmosphere of festive gloom and funeral baked meats painfully enlivened by exhilarating jests from old Ben, who was a connoisseur of vintages when it came to jokes. Duncan wished fervently, first that he might expire; secondly, and with greater intensity of feeling, that they all might die. Minta Lockwood, he felt, was slowly but expertly greasing him with adulation--as a python prepares its prey before dining (or is it a python?)--and he knew he was presently to be swallowed alive.

They dined protractedly. The meal, consisting of baked chicken, mashed potatoes, boiled onions with cream sauce, boiled beets and green corn, followed by rhubarb pie and ice cream, was served by an independent, bony and red-faced specimen of the "help" genus. The atmosphere was stifling, with the heat of the day thickened by the steam and odour of cooked food. Duncan was seated consciously beside Josie--a circumstance of which, in fact, everyone else seemed tolerantly aware. He writhed in impotent agony, confronted alone by the consciousness he had brought this thing upon himself: it was a part of his punishment.

At the conclusion of the meal, which endured throughout two interminable hours, the elder menfolk withdrew to the garden and the lawn, where they strolled about, sleepy eyes glistening with repletion, until finally they disappeared, to each his doze. The ladies foregathered in the parlour, conversing in undertones, with significant glances and liftings of their eyebrows. Nat was left to Josie, who conducted him to the side porch, out of sight of everybody, and planted herself in the baggy hammock there. She was gay, even brilliant within her limitations, arch, naive, coquettish, shy, petulant, by turns: animated by a sense of conquest. She supplied the major part of the conversation, chatting volubly on the thousand subjects she didn't understand, the dozen she did. In the most ingenuous manner imaginable she laid herself open to advances, not once, but a score of times; and when he failed to respond according to the code of Radville, had the wit to mask her chagrin, did she feel any: very probably she laid his lack of responsiveness at the door of his shyness (a quality he was wholly without) and liked him the better for it.

It was on this day that she extracted from him his promise to join the choir; he acceded through apathy alone.

"I don't care whether you can sing or not," she confessed, with a look. "But I do want somebody to walk home with me that ... I like."

"That's a nice way of putting it," Duncan considered without emphasis.

"Roland Barnette's always walked home with me, but I think he's just tiresome."

"Why?" inquired the young man, with some interest.

She averted her head, plucking at the strands of the hammock. "Oh, _you_ know," she said diffidently.

"Oh?" Nat was enlightened. "Then I'm sorry for Roland."

"Why?"

"I can't blame him, you know." He couldn't help this: the time, the place, the girl inspired, indeed incited, one to banality.

"Why?" she persisted.

"Oh, _you_ know." He caught the intonation of her previous words precisely.

She had the grace to blush and hang her head; but he received a thrilling sidelong glance.

"Ah... aren't you awful to talk that way, Mr. Duncan?"

"Yes," he admitted meekly.

"Then you will join the choir?" she pursued, failing to fathom the meaning of that humble acquiescence. Any other boy or man of her acquaintance would have taken her remark as openly provocative.

"Oh, yes," he agreed listlessly.

"I'm so glad..."

He thanked her, but avoided her eye.

"We might's well begin to-night," she suggested presently, with diffident, downcast eyes.

"What--the choir?" He was startled. "Oh, I couldn't without a rehearsal--"

"No, I didn't mean that..."

"No?"

"I mean about Roland." She was paying minute attention to the lace insertion of her skirt. From this circumstance he divined that he was on dangerous ground, but could not, in his stupidity, understand just what made it dangerous.

"About Roland--?"

"Yes; I mean... You know what I mean, Mr. Duncan?"

"I assure you I do not, Miss Lockwood."

"About not walking home with him any more. I don't want to. I wish you'd commence to-night, instead of choir practice night. I'd much rather walk home with you."

"After evening service, you mean?" She nodded. "It'll be a great pleasure."

"Really?" She gave him her eyes now.

"Really," he assured her.

"Ah, I don't believe you mean that!"

"But indeed I do...."

It was not until nearly five o'clock that he was given a chance to escape. He had, even then, to refuse inflexibly an invitation to stay to supper.

Minta Lockwood--an expansive woman, generously convex--almost smothered him with appreciation of his thanks. She held his hand in a large, moist palm and beamed upon him, saying: "Now't you know the way, Mr. Duncan...."

"Yes," Blinky insisted, blinking roguishly, "drop in any time. Take pot luck. We're plain people, Mr. Duncan, but allus glad to see our friends. Drop in any time."

Josie accompanied him to the front gate, where etiquette required him to linger for a parting chat....

"Good-bye." The girl gave him her hand. "I'm real glad you came--at last."

"The pleasure has been all mine," insisted the gallant bromide, fishing the trite phrase desperately from the grey vacuity of his thoughts. "You won't forget?"

"Forget what?"

"About to-night?"

"Do you imagine I could?..."

Josie returned to the family conclave, to interrupt a symposium on Duncan's qualities. He was unanimously approved, on every point. She took no part in the conversation, but listened, aglow with the pride of triumph, until old Ben chose to observe:

"He seems to've taken a right smart set for Josie."

Then she rose, blushing, and tossed her pretty, pert head. "How you all do talk!" she cried. "I'm not thinking about Mr. Duncan that way." And she left the gathering.

"You might's well begin now as later," pursued her, accompanied by chucklings; and she tossed her head, but wasn't at all displeased, be sure.

Duncan wrote to Kellogg in his room that night after church: "I don't want to sound immodest, but it looks as if you were right, old man: apparently there's nothing to it...

"Probably I should have stayed on for supper, but I couldn't; I should have choked. As it was, my soul was curdling. Another ten minutes and I should have jumped down on the lawn and run round the house on all fours, yapping and foaming at the mouth, and have wound up by biting old Blinky..

"The worst of it all is, I know I'm ungrateful: I know they mean well. But why is it that people who mean well almost invariably grate upon your sensibilities like the screeching of a slate-pencil?

"In this case, I suspect it's a case of when Snob meets Snob. A snob, I take it, is a fellow who holds himself your superior because he looks at things in a different way. That counts me a snob in my mental attitude toward the Lockwoods. I don't understand their conception of life--wasn't brought up to understand it. And yet I know they're not a bad sort, though they bore me to death what time I'm not laughing in my sleeve at them. Blinky, for instance, is an old screw, but he can't help that; he was born that way; and aside from the fact that money has made him snobbish toward his neighbours, he's a simple, honest, square-dealing (according to his lights) old Jasper. He's not snobbish toward me, because I've got something he admires but can't understand and never can acquire; but he's a snob of the first water when it comes to somebody like this old prince I'm working for--Graham--and his daughter. And so is Josie....

"But I mustn't say mean things about my future spouse, I presume.... That is the great trouble with your infernal scheme, Harry: it seems to be working like a charm, and now that I've got something to do I'm not so strong for it as I was. But I gave you my word. ... Only, mind this: if the rules prescribe a perpetual course of Sunday dinners, _en famille_, it's going to break down and turn out a natural-born flivver. There are limits to human endurance, and I'm human, whatever else I am not...."

XVI

WHERE RADVILLE FEARED TO TREAD

Summer slumbered to its close, a drowsy autumn settled upon our valley, in which its traditional peace seemed but the more profound. The skies darkened to an ineffable intensity of blue; the livery of the fields was changed, green giving place to gold; the woodlands and lower slopes of our hills flamed with the scarlet of dying sumach, with the russet and orange and crimson of a foliage making merry against its moribund to-morrows; a drought parched the land, and our little river lessened to a mere trickle of water. The daylight hours became sensibly abbreviated; while they endured they were golden and warm and hazy: faint veils of purple shrouded the distances. Twilight fell early, its air sweet with the tang of dead leaves raked into heaping bonfires by the children of the town. The nights were long and cool, with a hint of frosts to come. Day dissolved into day almost imperceptibly. ...

Josie Lockwood announced that she was going away to school in New York for the winter. Pete Willing took the pledge and kept it almost a month. Will Bigelow secured time-tables and laboriously mapped out his semi-annually contemplated trip to the East: like the others destined never to come off. Tracey Tanner went to work for Graham and Duncan. The _Citizen_ gained eighteen subscribers; four old ones paid up their accounts. Babies were born, people married and died, loved and hated, lived in striving or sloth, accomplished or failed. Roland Barnette paid ostentatious attentions to Bess Gabriel, who tolerated him simply because she didn't much like Josie; but, blighted by Josie's supreme indifference, this budding passion drooped and failed by mutual consent of both parties concerned. Angie Tuthill became more conspicuously than ever the orb of Tracey's universe. Duncan walked home with Josie on two weekday evenings and twice on Sundays, and learned how to play Halma and Parcheesi, as well as how long to linger at the front gate in the gloaming, saying good-night. Eight young women of the town set their caps for him, at one time or another and... set them back again, because he was too blind to see. As a body they united with the female element in Radville in condemning Josie for a heartless flirt, and sympathising with Nat, behind his back, for being so nice and at the same time so easily taken in. Mrs. Lockwood gave a Bridge party which failed as such because Radville knew not Bridge; but everybody went and played progressive euchre, instead. The drug-store prospered in moderation, Sothern and Lee vainly contesting its conquering campaign. And Duncan grew thoughtful.

One has more time to think unselfishly in Radville than in a great city, where there's rarely more time than enough to think of one's own concerns. And Duncan was making time to think about others--notably, Betty Graham. The girl was, as usual, shy, reticent, reserved; she kept her thoughts to herself, sharing the most intimate not even with old Sam, who _would_ talk; but Duncan divined that she was unhappy. The easier circumstances of the family had provided her with a few simple frocks, adequate clothing which she had gone without for years, and with a sufficiency of wholesome and appetising food: with these, peace of mind should likewise have come to her, and content. But Duncan thought they hadn't. Relieved, on Tracey's engagement, of any share in the store service, she had only the housework for herself and father to occupy her; her associations with the girls of her age were distant and constrained. Usage wears into tradition in the Radvilles of our land; even with the young folks this is so; and in Betty's case, the girl had for so long been "out of it," debarred by her unfortunate circumstances from participation in the pastimes, pleasures and duties of her generation, that by common consent, unspoken but none the less absolute, she remained an outsider. You might say that she relied on her father alone for companionship. Duncan she avoided, unobtrusively but with pains; he consorted with those with whom she had nothing in common, and she would not thrust herself upon him or seem to seek his notice. Her early suspicion and sullen resentment of his intrusion into their affairs had vanished; there remained only a gnawing consciousness that to him she was little or nothing, that his vision ranged above her humble head. She was not the sort to take this ill; she was reasonable enough to believe it natural. But she would not willingly intrude upon his thoughts--who little knew how much she did occupy his leisure moments.

He saw her go and come, a wistful shadow on the borders of his occupations, self-contained, a little timid, but at the same time brave in her own quiet, uncomplaining fashion. And the distant look in those soft eyes he divined to be one of longing for that which she might not possess--the advantages that other girls had, socially and educationally, the pleasures they contrived, the attentions they received, the thousand and one slight things that make existence life for a woman. He saw her drooping insensibly day by day, growing a little paler, a shade more aloof and listless. And he became infinitely concerned for her.

He told himself he had solved the problem of her disease, but its remedy remained beyond his reach. The business was doing very well indeed, but it was still young and must be subjected to as few financial drains as possible; as it ran, there was an income sufficient to board, lodge and clothe the three of them, maintain the credit of the partnership, and now and again admit of a slight but advantageous addition to the stock or fixtures. Things would certainly be better in the course of time, but... Kellogg he would not beg another dollar of, the bank was an equally impossible resource; there wasn't a chance in a hundred that Lockwood would refuse to accommodate the growing concern with money in reason, but the concern, individually and collectively, would never ask it of him. There remained--?

It came to pass that he left the store early one evening, excusing himself on the plea of some slight indisposition, and lost himself for the space of two hours. I mean to say, that no one knew where he went until long after. When he came home some time after ten he told me he had been for a walk....

He found himself shortly after eight at pause by the gate to the Bohun place. The night was dark and murmurous with a sibilant wind that sent the leaves drifting, softly clashing one with another. At the far end of the straight brick walk, up through the formal grounds, he could just see the glimmer of the stately columns, and, between them, to one side, a little twinkling light. The gate was closed, but he tried it and found it on the latch. He entered and scuffled up the walk, ankle deep in fallen leaves. His footfalls as he crossed the porch sounded startlingly loud by contrast; he even fancied a note of indignation in the cavernous echoes of the knocker on the front door. He waited with a thumping heart, aware that he was venturing where even fools would fear to tread.

An aged negro butler, one of the freed slaves brought from Virginia by the Bohuns, admitted him to the hall and took his card, smothering his own wonderment. For in those days nobody disturbed the silence and the peace of decay of the Bohun mansion save its master. And Duncan had long to wait in the wide, gloomy, musty hall before the servant returned.

"Cunnul Bohun will see yo', suh," he said, and ushered him into the library--a great, high-ceiled, shadowy room illuminated by a single lamp, tenanted by the old colonel alone.

Bohun received the young man standing: he was as courteous beneath his own roof as he was impossible away from it. A quaint old figure, with his grey hair tousled and his dressing-gown draped grotesquely from his shoulders, he stood by the fireplace, Duncan's card between his fingers, and bowed ceremoniously.

"Mr. Duncan, I believe?"

Nat returned the bow. "Yes, sir," he said. "Will you be good enough to pardon this intrusion, Colonel Bohun, and spare me five minutes of your time?"

The colonel nodded. "At your service, sir," he replied, and waited grimly--perhaps not unsuspicious of the nature of his visitor's errand, since he could not have been ignorant of his place in Radville.

Duncan had his own way of getting at things--generally more circuitous than now, though he struck on a tangent sufficiently acute momentarily to puzzle Bohun.

"May I inquire, sir, if you are acquainted with the firm of L.J. Bartlett & Company of New York?"

"I have heard of it, Mr. Duncan, through the newspapers."

"You know that it ranks pretty high, then, I presume?"

"I understand that such is the case."

"Then would you mind doing me the favour of writing to Mr. Henry Kellogg, the junior partner, and asking him about me?"

The colonel stiffened. "May I ask why I should do anything so uncalled-for?"

"Because it isn't uncalled-for, sir. I mean, you won't think so after I've explained."

Bohun inclined his head, searching Nat's face with his keen, bright eyes.

"You see, sir, it's this way: I want you to entrust me with a considerable sum of money, and naturally you wouldn't do that without knowing something about me."

"I incline very much to doubt that I should do it in any event, Mr. Duncan."

"Oh, don't say that. You don't know the circumstances, as yet." Nat jerked his head earnestly at the colonel. "You see, you're said to be one of the richest men in town, and I'm certainly one of the poorest, so of course I turn to you in a case like this."

"In a case like what, Mr. Duncan?" Something in the young man's manner seemed to tickle the colonel; Duncan could have sworn that the eyes were twinkling beneath the savagely knitted brows.

"Well, you must understand I'm in business here in Radville--a partner in a growing and prospering concern--ah--doing--very well, in point of fact."

"Yes?"

"But we haven't any spare capital; in fact, we haven't got any capital worth mentioning. But the business is entirely sound and solvent."

"I congratulate you, sir."

"Thank you very much.... Now I'm interested in a rather singular case: that of a young woman--a girl, I should say--daughter of my partner. She's a good girl and wonderfully sweet and fine, sir. She comes of one of the best families in these parts--"

"On her mother's side," suggested the colonel drily.

"So I'm told, sir. But she's been neglected. Circumstances have been against her. She hasn't had a real chance in life, but she ought to have it, and I'm going to see that she gets it, one way or another."

"You haven't finished?" said the colonel coldly, as he paused for breath and thought.

"Not quite, sir," said Duncan. "Good sign!" he told himself: "he hasn't ordered me thrown out yet." And he hurried on, speaking quickly in the semi-humorous style he had, more arresting to the attention than absolute gravity would have been.

"To come down to cases, sir, she ought to be sent to a good boarding-school for a few years. It'll make a new woman of her--a woman to be proud of. She's got that in her--it only needs to be brought out."

"And before you leave, sir," said the colonel with significant precision, "will you be so kind as to inform me why you think this should interest me?"

"No," said Duncan candidly; "I haven't got the nerve to. But what I wanted to propose was this: that you lend me five hundred dollars to cover the expense of the first year, on condition that I represent the money as coming from the profits of the business and, in short, keep the transaction between ourselves absolutely quiet. If you'll inquire of Mr. Kellogg he'll tell you I can be trusted to keep my word. Furthermore"--he galloped, suspecting that his time was perilously short and desiring to get it all out of his system--"I'll guarantee you repayment within a year, and that you shan't be annoyed this way a second time."

Bohun looked him over from head to foot, bowed in silence, and turning--both had stood throughout this passage--grasped a bell-rope by the chimney, and pulled it violently.

Duncan turned to the door, hat in hand, realising that he had his answer and was lucky to get away with one so mild. Only the emergency could have spurred him to the point of so outrageous an impertinence.

In the desolate fastnesses of that dreary house somewhere a bell tinkled discordantly. A moment later the white-headed darky butler opened the door.

"Suh?" he said.

Colonel Bohun essayed to speak, cleared his throat angrily, and indicated Duncan with a courteous gesture.

"Scipio," said he, "this gentleman will have a glass of wine with me."

"Yassuh!" stammered the negro, overcome with astonishment.

Bohun turned to his guest. "Won't you be seated, Mr. Duncan?" he said. "You have interested me considerably, sir, and I should be glad to discuss the matter with you."

Speechless, Duncan gasped incoherently and moved toward a chair as the servant reappeared with a tray on which was a decanter of sherry and two old-fashioned, thin-stemmed crystal glasses. He placed this on the library table, filled the glasses, and at a sign from Bohun retired.

"Sir," said the colonel, indicating the tray, "to you."