Chapter 9

"I, my dear?--not the least in the world. It's all as true as the gospel according to St. Valentine. I've told you first because we're not only aunt and niece, but the very best friends possible besides, and I knew you would like to hear the news before any one else. Colonel Broadcastle is by all odds the finest man I know,--I won't even except John Barclay, much as I admire him. He has paid me a very great honor. I respect him tremendously; I trust him absolutely. These alone are good reasons; but there's a better one,--so much better that nothing else really has any bearing on the subject. Can you guess?"

"Yes," said Dorothy softly, "you just love him. Isn't that it?"

"Exactly. It's a curious thing, this love. There may be every reason why one should marry a man, his own wish included, and yet one doesn't. There may be no reason at all, so far as outsiders can see, and yet one does! I've known a woman to throw over one suitor who had everything in his favor--money, character, position--and accept another who had none of these advantages--because she liked the way he parted his hair! That's the way it goes. It's the most illogical thing in the world, if we except the stock market and other women's gowns. And then, when it's all arranged, his friends wonder what she could have seen in him, and her friends what he could have seen in her! But I'm wandering from the subject. Seriously, Dorothy dear, I love him very sincerely, and I have been more happy than I can say ever since I found out that it wasn't going to be one of those one-sided love-affairs which assure the incomes of the poets and the lawyers. And now,--confidence for confidence, Dorothy!"

"Aunt Helen! I don't know what you mean."

"Oh, Dorothy! 'I don't know what you mean' is one of those phrases like 'Not at home' and 'Yours very sincerely,' which are white lies on the face of them. I don't want to force your confidence. We all have what our friends recognize as our private affairs, with the accent--worse luck!--on the _pry_! But this is very different. I'm very fond of you, as you know, and my interest is far from being vulgar curiosity. Of a woman's five cardinal failings--inquisitiveness, extravagance, vanity, vacillation, and loquacity--I'm guiltless of all except the last and most innocent. But don't we all need to talk at times? Don't we all long for a trustworthy _confidante_? Aren't our little secrets often like precious liquors?--if we don't make use of them, share them with our friends, they either ferment and sour, or else lose all their sweetness and significance by slow evaporation."

"You would draw confidence from a stone," said Dorothy, with a little smile, "but what have I to tell you?"

"How should I know? Perhaps nothing--as yet; perhaps everything. Take your time about it, dear. I'm not trying to get you to commit yourself. I only want you to know that I'm ready to share your secret when it's ready to be shared, and to help and counsel you in any way I can. I know the main great fact already. Because, you see, Dorothy, one may conceal an infinite amount, even from one's nearest and dearest, when they don't understand--and they are so _apt_ not to understand, one's nearest and dearest! And the financier may hide his schemes from his partners, or the general his plan of campaign from his fellow-officers, or the politician his ambitions from his most ardent supporters--but I doubt, my dear, if a woman in love was ever able to hide very much from another woman in the same lamentable condition!

"If it were not," she added, taking Dorothy's hand in hers, "for the great happiness which has come into my life, do you think that I should have been able to divine that other great happiness which seems to be hovering over yours? I am the physician afflicted with the disease which it becomes his duty to study and to cure. Only, it's not a disease, Dorothy, but a great, a beautiful revelation. I should have compared myself, instead, to the prophet who is enabled to interpret the dreams of others because they are identical with his own. There's my little speech. And when you are prepared to answer it, you'll find me ready."

As she was speaking the last words, the butler flung back the curtains at the doorway of the drawing-room.

"Mr. Nisbet," he announced imperturbably.

Dorothy looked at her aunt, and then, with her frank laugh:--

"If there _is_ an answer," she said, "that's it!"

As young Nisbet entered, Mrs. Wynyard was the first to greet him.

"So," she observed, looking him over approvingly, "you've beaten your swords into walking-sticks, and your spears into top-hats, as my friend Isaiah so aptly observes! That's very commendable, but I almost think I like you better in your war-paint. Do you know, a Colonel's orderly is the spickest-and-spanest object upon which I've ever laid, or hope to lay, my eyes?"

"He just naturally has to be," said young Nisbet, with a grin. Somehow, he was always more at his ease with Mrs. Wynyard than with other women. "You see," he added, "if it wasn't that way, he wouldn't be it."

Which was as near as he had ever come to making an epigram.

"Well, I shall leave you to the tender mercies of Dorothy," said Mrs. Wynyard. "I've promised to take a walk with your--what is it you call him--instead of commanding officer, you know?"

"K. O.," said young Nisbet.

"Yes, that's it. How deplorably you militiamen spell! Well, at all events, I'm going to walk with your K. O., and it's time I was getting ready. Good-by."

"Good-by, Mrs. Wynyard."

"Day-day!" said Dorothy, from the divan.

"She's a crack-a-jack!" exclaimed young Nisbet, after she had gone.

"Mercy!" said Dorothy. "I never knew you to be so enthusiastic over any one before. If you have any intention of falling in love with Aunt Helen, I feel it to be my duty, as a friend and well-wisher, to warn you in advance that there isn't the most remote show in the world for you."

"Oh, it's not that!" protested young Nisbet with that stupendous earnestness which made people want to hug him. "Why, Mrs. Wynyard would have me talked to a standstill in two or seven minutes! Imagine me trying to make love to a dame like that! She'd lose me so quick you couldn't see me for the dust. Besides"--

"Besides what?" asked Dorothy with an elaborate air of unconcern, as he hesitated.

Young Nisbet was quite crimson now, and twitched at the creases in his trousers where they passed over his knees, and turned in his toes excessively.

"There's somebody else in the running!" he blurted out desperately.

There! It was out--a part of it, at least--not at all, to be sure, in anything even remotely resembling one of the thousand manners he had proposed to himself as effective, during long hours of wakefulness, when there was nothing in the world but his crowding thoughts and the ticking of his clock--but still, out! The ice was broken. It was impossible that she should not understand. The rest would be easier.

Alas for young Nisbet! He was, as he himself acknowledged, not "up on women!"

"Somebody else?" repeated Dorothy. "How ever did you find that out? She only told _me_ about it twenty minutes ago."

Alas, alas, for young Nisbet! He had thought his feet upon the beach at last, whereas they had but touched a sand-bar in passing over. The under-tow of embarrassment was worse than ever now, and threatened to drag him down.

"Oh, I don't mean Mrs. Wynyard. I wasn't talking of her--that is, I was, at first--but afterwards--anyhow, I'm not talking of her now! When I say there's somebody else, I mean--I mean"--

"I am going out for a moment, Dorothy--just over to the _doctor's_. _How_ de do, Mr. Nisbet? _Wretched_ weather, _isn't_ it? Natalie's with your father, my dear, and _I'll_ be back _almost_ immediately. Er--_ahem_!"

Mrs. Rathbawne went through a kind of rudimentary calisthenic exercise, which consisted of squaring her shoulders and drawing in her chin. It was accompanied by a meaning glance at her daughter, and was designed as an inconspicuous substitute for the frank injunction to "sit up straight, my dear," upon which Dorothy had finally placed a ban.

"And _won't_ you feed the gold-fish, my dear?" she added. "I've been _so_ occupied, and the poor things haven't had a _crumb_ for three days. I've just told Thomas to take a plate of bread in at _once_. I'm sure Mr. _Nisbet_ won't mind: get him to _help_ you. Er--_ahem_! And I'll be back in about fifteen minutes, or so."

For a time there was silence in the big, warm conservatory. Young Nisbet had taken the dish from Dorothy's hands, and, after seating himself on the low marble parapet surrounding the pool, devoted his energies to feeding the gold-fish. He was thinking that it was all to be done over again, and that it was harder than ever, if such a thing were possible, to do. What was there about those few words which seemed to choke him? For the moment, he took refuge in a commonplace question.

"Is it one of your duties to feed these persons?"

Dorothy laughed shortly, like a little chord of music.

"No--it's the Mater's peculiar privilege," she answered. "She adores the stupid little beasts. Don't give them such large pieces, Mr. Nisbet. She feeds them regularly herself,--or did, until Dad began to require so much of her time. But lately, the house has been so upset, and she has been doing such a lot of going out, and coming in"--

"Yes," put in young Nisbet dryly, "I've noticed the coming in part."

"So Natalie has been doing it for her," went on Dorothy, more rapidly. "I suppose Natalie herself hasn't had the time, these last three days. They _are_ hungry, aren't they? _Don't give them such large pieces, Mr. Nisbet!_ Don't you see the poor things have only button-holes for mouths?"

There was another long pause, before either spoke again.

"What defeats me about your mother," said young Nisbet slowly, "is the way she manages to come in just at the wrong moment. At interruption, she's the most star performer I've ever run up against. You don't mind my saying that, do you? I'm not throwing any asparagus. I wouldn't be disrespectful about her for the world. But really, for chopping into a conversation, she's a dazzler!"

"She _is_ a little inopportune at times," admitted Dorothy.

"Inopportune? Yes,--she's all of that. When she marches in, I feel exactly as if the boat had gybed, and the boom come over and knocked me into thirty fathoms of water. Lord!"

"Why, how ridiculous!" said Dorothy. "There's nothing about the Mater to be afraid of. She's the dearest, most innocent old thing in the world! She just blunders along like that, and nobody is less aware of her mistakes than she is. And, after all, why shouldn't she interrupt us, so long as we're not saying anything in particular? And if we _were_ saying--anything in particular, we could always pick up the conversation where we dropped it."

"That's just what I find it so hard to do!" confessed young Nisbet. "I'm a stupid sort of lout, you know, Miss Rathbawne. I've never had half a chance to practice talking to dames, and where other lads fuss like experts, I just can't make good. I foozle every stroke. I'm an ass--that's all!"

"You're nothing of the sort!" said Dorothy indignantly. "You're an extremely attractive young man!"

"As good as the average in some ways, perhaps. But--how can I explain what I mean?--there always comes a day when a chap wants to be more, wants to be the best ever, in every way! That's the proposition I'm up against now. I seem to be just a bundle of misfits, and--and--oh, shucks! my line of talk is all crooked, and I can't tell you what the trouble is, but"--

"Your liver's out of kilter," interpolated Dorothy.

"No, sir!" protested young Nisbet. "Nothing is ever out of kilter inside me! If I'm nothing else, I'm blue-ribbon boy on the health question. No, it's something I want, and that I'm pretty sure I can't get."

"I know perfectly well what it is," said Dorothy, "and you haven't even asked for it!"

Young Nisbet looked up suddenly.

"Do you mean?"--he stammered, "do you mean?"--

Outside, the front door slammed, and Mrs. Rathbawne's voice became audible, inquiring Dorothy's whereabouts of the butler. The girl laughed.

"There's the Mater back again," she said. "Oh, Mr. _Nisbet_!"

For young Nisbet had dropped dish and bread-crumbs into the pool with a great splash, electrifying the gold-fish into unheard-of activity, and had risen, at the same moment, to his feet. He stood before her, his honest face blazing, his hands outstretched.

"I love you!" he said. "Will you marry me?"

And whether or not he received an audible reply to this question he never knew,--only she was in his arms, and gold-fish might feast or starve, for all he cared about them. The wide doors of perfect bliss swung open before him, and young Nisbet passed within.

He was gazing ruefully into the water, as Mrs. Rathbawne entered. For the first time in his experience, her presence did not embarrass him.

"I've dropped a dish into your pool, Mrs. Rathbawne," he said, "and scared the gold-fish into blue conniption fits. Look how they are scurrying around. I hope I haven't done them any harm."

"Oh, no," answered Mrs. Rathbawne placidly. "They are getting _so_ fat that I should _think_ a little exercise, _now_ and again, would be _good_ for them. We _might_ drop a dish into the pool every week or so, Dorothy, just to stir them up."

"It might go for a while," said young Nisbet, "but any old football player like myself, Mrs. Rathbawne, will tell you that you can't work the same trick more than just a certain number of times."

"Interruption, for example!" added Dorothy, and laughed across at him, deliciously, with her eyes.

XII

DIOGENES

It was during the tenth week of the strike at the Rathbawne Mills that the "Kenton City Record" made its long-remembered attack upon Lieutenant-Governor Barclay. The arraignment was one unparalleled for venom, even in the columns of that most notoriously scurrilous journal in the state, and, withal, there was about it a devilish ingenuity, a distortion of facts so slight as to defy refutation, and so plausible as to carry conviction. It was the last blow in the long series of discouragements which Barclay had suffered since his inauguration, and for the moment he was completely unmanned. He was at no loss, however, to trace the source from which the ingeniously perverted facts had been obtained. Not even McGrath, with his intimate knowledge of all that went forward at the capitol, could have supplied information so detailed. The hand of Elijah Abbott was traceable in every line of the attack. Their conversation, on the afternoon when he had first spoken to Barclay of the impending strike, was reproduced almost word for word, as well as that on the occasion when McGrath had been present, and therefrom the "Record" went on to deduce that not even Peter Rathbawne, with all his obstinacy, all his blindness to the welfare of his employees, was responsible for their present destitution in the same sense as was the Lieutenant-Governor, who might have avoided the strike by a conciliatory word, and who, instead, had advised Mr. Rathbawne to fight the working-people until the last cent of their money should be exhausted and the last drop of their blood should be shed.

"Incompetency," said the article in part, "is what we long since learned to expect from John Hamilton Barclay. Gross neglect of public duty, flagrant callousness to responsibility, contemptuous indifference to the interests of the citizens whose votes placed him where he is,--all these have been part and parcel of his attitude since the unfortunate moment of his election. But even in him we had not looked for the incredible spectacle of a public official deliberately precipitating the incalculable distress which has followed in the wake of the strike at the Rathbawne Mills. Overburdened with the cares of office, in a single instance the Governor of Alleghenia turned over a question of vital significance to the lieutenant from whom he had every reason to expect compliance and support. Even so, he was careful to point out a line of action by which the impending calamity might readily have been avoided. And what was the result? Not only in total disregard of plain duty, but in direct disobedience of the orders of his superior, the Lieutenant-Governor of Alleghenia threw his influence into the scale to outweigh law and order, and brought about the deplorable destitution now facing the families of four thousand martyrs to principle. When men are driven to desperation, when women turn to shame in order to maintain life, when children are heard crying in our streets for bread, to whom shall we point as the author of it all? To Peter Rathbawne, a poor, doddering old man, barely responsible now, if rumor is to be believed, for what he does? No! To John Hamilton Barclay, Lieutenant-Governor of Alleghenia!"

This, and much more in the same strain, while passed over as sensational bombast by the better element, did not fail of its effect upon the strikers. A mass-meeting, held that morning, denounced Barclay in a set of resolutions, as a traitor to his office and as the avowed enemy of labor, and demanded his impeachment on the ground of neglect of duty. During the day, half a score of threatening letters came to his office. But what hurt him most, though he almost smiled at his own sensitiveness, was that the doormen and porters at the Capitol greeted his morning nod with a stare, and even the little office-boy, bending low over his table in the ante-room, did not look up for the customary wink. For his mother was a trimmer at the Rathbawne Mills.

Once in his office, the Lieutenant-Governor found it impossible to concentrate his mind upon the work before him. Sentence after sentence, the words of his arraignment marched through his mind, as he sat with his elbows on the desk and his chin in his doubled fists. A single reading seemed to have stamped them indelibly and forever upon his memory. Baffled by conflicting reflections he began, for the first time, to doubt whether his had been the course of conscience, or merely that of pride and perversity. Was not the "Record" right, perhaps, after all? If it was true that the strike was driving men to crime and women to the streets--and if it was not, as yet, true, it soon must be--who, indeed, was to blame if not he himself, who had said "Fight them!" when he might have kept peace by a word?

Suddenly, the Lieutenant-Governor rose, and, crossing the room to where the arms of Alleghenia hung upon the wall, took down the frame, laid it, face up, upon the table, and, bending down, studied it intently. The beautifully executed nude figures of Art and Labor stared steadfastly back at him, their muscular hands grasping the circular shield, strength and endurance in every line of their necks, shoulders, and thighs, purity and purpose in their blue eyes and square-cut jaws. He was as motionless as they for full five minutes. Presently his finger moved slowly across the frame, and he said, quite softly:

"_Justitia--Lex--Integritas._"

Then he looked up, straight before him, out of the open window, where an encircling wistaria was dotted with minute sprouts of green, and up at the clear, wide sky.

"I'm right!" he said aloud. "I'm right!"

* * * * *

At five that afternoon, Spencer Cavendish set out upon the most unpleasant assignment which had ever fallen to his lot. When Payson had told him that he was to procure an interview with Peter Rathbawne for the "Sentinel," with a special eye to the mill-owner's failing health, as reported in the morning's "Record," he had shrunk back instinctively from a task so distasteful, and was on the point of refusing. But two considerations checked this impulse. If the thing were to be done at all, he thought, surely it had better be the work of one friendly to the Rathbawnes and with their interests at heart than that of a bungling outsider, with it in his power to hurt them beyond expression. The argument was plausible, but behind its logic, at the back of Cavendish's brain, there lay another reason, without which the first had been insufficient to persuade him. He wanted to see Natalie again--to meet her under the shield of some compatible excuse, so that he should not seem to have sought her of his own will. He was thirsty for a word from her, thirsty with the pitiable thirst of the shipwrecked sailor who knows a swallow of salt water will but increase his torture, and who craves it, none the less. Long since, he had forfeited his right to her friendship--no sophistry could blind him to that. Moreover the ocean of degradation not only lay behind him; it lay in front as well. It was as he had told Barclay. He stood upon an island, not the mainland, of redemption, and another plunge was inevitable.

What he expected to gain by a word with Natalie Rathbawne, Cavendish himself could hardly have told. At most, he was conscious of a faint hope that in some turn or twist of the conversation he might have a chance of thanking her, of telling her that he rejoiced in her happiness, and of bidding her good-by. For paramount in his mind lay the thought of his approaching downfall, inevitable, utter, and final. He did not attempt to deceive himself. He knew what was coming. It had come before.

When Cavendish had sent in his card, a servant showed him through the library into the conservatory, where Peter Rathbawne was seated in a deep rattan chair watching his daughter, who stood at his side tossing bread-crumbs to the gold-fish in the circular central pool. They both turned at the sound of his footsteps, and Natalie held out her hand.

"So you've come at last!" she said. "I should think it was quite time. Dad, you remember Mr. Cavendish, don't you?"

"Yes," answered her father. "Oh, yes!"

Rathbawne's voice was without life, his face almost wholly void of expression. Though he glanced at Cavendish, it was with the blank stare of a delirious person whose attention is unconsciously caught by an unusual noise rather than with any evidence of direct interest, and he took no further part in the conversation, nor even seemed to realize that his companions were speaking. When he had answered his daughter's question and looked at Cavendish, he leaned back in his chair, and wearily closed his eyes.

"He is very much changed since you saw him," said the girl in a lower tone, turning again to the pool, "and it's all come about in the past six weeks. The strike has had a most curious, a most pathetic effect upon him. Even the doctor is at a loss to account for it. I think that I am, perhaps, the only one who really understands. He has always been so proud of his mills and of his people, so loyal to them, so like a father to them, one and all, that to have them turn against him like this, and, what is worse, get to drinking and rioting, has almost broken his heart. The doctor says only one thing can save him, and that is to see the mills going again and the people happy and prosperous, as they were before. And who knows when that will be? For, feeble and broken as he is, he will never give in to the Union. Of that I'm sure."

"I'm very sorry," said Cavendish softly. One look at Rathbawne had been enough to show him that the interview for which he had been sent was an impossibility. One look at Natalie sufficed to banish from his mind every thought save that of her pitiful pallor and the pathetic quiver of her lips.

"I had no idea it was as bad as this," he continued. "Can't anything be done? You are far from being in good shape yourself, Miss Rathbawne."