Chapter 3

The rooms were well filled; the clatter of innumerable tongues speaking English with that resonant dryness which reminds one of nothing else so much as of the clack of a negro minstrel's clappers indefinitely reduplicated, rang in the ears with confusing steadiness. An hour was spent in fragmentary conversations, which somehow were always interrupted at the instant the interesting point was reached. The men bestirred themselves with more or less alacrity, making their way about the room with a conscientious determination to speak to everybody whom duty called upon them to address, or more selfishly devoting themselves to finding out and chatting with the pretty girls. Fenton found time for the latter method while being far too politic to neglect the former. He was chatting in a corner with Ethel Mott, when Fred Rangely, whose successful novel had made him vastly the fashion that winter, joined them.

"When wit and beauty get into a corner together," was Rangely's salutation, "there is sure to be mischief brewing."

"It isn't at all kind," Miss Mott retorted, "for you to emphasize the fact that Mr. Fenton has all the wit and I not any."

"It is as kind," Fenton said, "as his touching upon the plainness of my personal appearance."

"Your mutual modesty in appropriating wit and beauty," Rangely returned, "goes well toward balancing the account."

"One has to be modest when you appear, Mr. Rangely," Miss Mott declared, saucily, "simply to keep up the average."

"Come," Fenton said, "this will serve as an excellent beginning for a quarrel. I will leave you to carry it on by yourselves. I have got too old for that sort of amusement."

Rangely looked after the artist as the latter took himself off to join Mrs. Staggchase, who was holding court not far away.

"You may follow if you want to," Ethel said, intercepting the glance.

Rangely laughed, a trifle uneasily.

"I don't want to," he replied, "if you will be good natured."

"Good natured? I like that! I am always good natured. You had better go than to stay and abuse me. But then, as you have been at Mrs. Staggchase's all the afternoon, you ought to be pretty well talked out."

The young man turned toward her with an air of mingled surprise and impatience.

"Who said I had been there?" he demanded.

"It was in the evening papers," she returned, teasingly. "All your movements are chronicled now you have become a great man."

"Humph! I am glad you were interested in my whereabouts."

"But I wasn't in the least."

"Are you sparring as usual, Miss Mott?" asked Mr. Stewart Hubbard, joining them. "Good evening, Mr. Rangely."

"Oh, Mr. Hubbard," Miss Mott said, ignoring the question, "I want to know who is to make the statue of _America_. It is going to stand opposite our house, so that it will be the first thing I shall see when I look out of the window in the morning, and naturally I am interested."

"Mr. Herman is making a study, and Mr. Irons has been put up to asking this new woman for a model. What is her name? The one whose _Galatea_ made a stir last year."

"Mrs. Greyson," Rangely answered. "I used to know her before she went to Rome."

"Is she clever?" demanded Miss Mott, with a sort of girlish imperiousness which became her very well. "I can't have a statue put up unless it is very good indeed."

"She might take Miss Mott as a model," Mr. Hubbard suggested, smiling.

"For America? Oh, I am too little, and altogether too civilized. I'd do better for a model of Monaco, thank you."

"There is always a good deal of chance about you," Rangely said in her ear, as Mr. Staggchase spoke to Mr. Hubbard and drew his attention away.

Mr. Staggchase was a thin, wintry man, looking, as Fenton once said, like the typical Yankee spoiled by civilization. He had always in a scene of this sort the air of being somewhat out of place, but of having brought his business with him, so that he was neither idle nor bored. It was upon business that he now spoke to Hubbard.

"Did you see Lincoln to-day?" he asked. "He has got an ultimatum from those parties. They will sell all their rights for $70,000."

"For $70,000," repeated Mr. Hubbard, thoughtfully. "We can afford to give that if we are sure about the road; but I don't know that we are. If Irons gets hold of any hint of what we are doing he can upset the whole thing."

"But he won't. There is no fear of that."

A movement in the crowd brought Edith Fenton at this moment to the side of Mr. Hubbard. She was radiant to-night in her primrose gown, and the gentleman, with whom she was always a favorite, turned toward her with evident pleasure.

"Isn't it a jam," she said. "I have ceased to have any control over my movements."

"That is unkind, when I fancied you allowed yourself to give me the pleasure of seeing you," returned he with elaborate courtesy. "Let me take you in to the supper-room."

"Thank you," Edith replied, taking his arm. "I do not object to an ice, and I want to ask a favor. Haven't you some copying you can give a _protegee_ of mine? She's a lovely girl, and she really writes very nicely. I assure you she needs the work, or I wouldn't bother you."

They made their way into the hall before he answered. Then he asked, with some seriousness,--

"Are you sure she is absolutely to be trusted?"

"Trusted? Why, of course. I'd trust her as absolutely as I would myself."

"I asked because I do happen to have some copying I want done; but it is of the most serious importance that it be kept secret. It is the prospectus of a big business scheme, and if a hint of it got on the air it would all be ruined."

Edith looked up into his face and smiled.

"Her name," she said, "is Melissa Blake, and you will find her--Or, wait; what time shall I send her to your office to-morrow?"

Her companion smiled in turn. They had reached the door of the supper-room, where the clatter of dishes, the popping of champagne corks, and the rattle of silver were added to the babble of conversation which filled the whole house. About the tables was going on a struggle which, however well-bred, was at least sufficiently vigorous.

"You take a good deal for granted," he said. "However, it will do no harm for me to see the young woman. She may come at eleven. What shall I bring you?"

V

'TWAS WONDROUS PITIFUL. Othello; i.--3.

"Dear John, I will give it up any day you say, and go back to Feltonville and live on the farm; but you know"--

Melissa Blake broke off and left her chair to take a seat on the corner of that on which her betrothed, John Stanton, was sitting, a proceeding which made it necessary for him to put his arm about her trig waist to support her.

"Don't think I don't understand, dear," she said, nestling up to him, "how hard it is, and what a long drag it has been, but we should neither of us ever feel quite satisfied to give it up. We can hold on, can't we, as long as we are together."

He kissed her fondly, but with a certain air of distraction which showed how full was his mind of the matter which troubled him. Two years before, he had come to Boston, and obtained work as a carpenter, determined to pay the debts left by his dead father, before he would marry and settle down on the small farm which belonged to his betrothed, and which, while it might be made to yield a living, could by no means be looked to for more. For the sake of being near him, Melissa had given up the school teaching of which she was fond, and come to the city also, and although she had found the difficulty of earning the means of support far greater than she had anticipated, she had still clung to the fortunes of her lover, to whom her steadfastness and unfailing cheer were of a value such as men realize only when it is lost.

"I got a letter to-day," John went on, while Melissa stroked his fingers fondly, "about the meadows. The time for redeeming them is up this month, and if I try to do it I can't pay anything on the debts this winter. The truth is "--

Melissa sat up suddenly.

"John!" she exclaimed.

"Why, what--what is the matter?"

She looked at him with wide open eyes, drawing in her under lip beneath her white teeth, with the air of profound meditation. Then she freed herself abruptly from his arms and went hastily to the table upon which were her writing materials. She had been at work copying when her lover came in, and her papers lay still open, with ink scarcely dry, where she had stopped to welcome him. She took one sheet up and studied it eagerly, and then turned toward him with shining eyes, her whole face aglow.

"Oh, John!" she exclaimed.

He regarded her in puzzled silence. Then in an instant the glad light faded from her eyes, and her lips lost their smile. An expression of pain and almost of terror replaced the look of joy. There had suddenly come to Melissa a sense of what she was doing. In the paper she held was written the plan of the formation of a syndicate to purchase the very range of meadows along the river in Feltonville of which those mentioned by John formed a part. At Mrs. Fenton's direction, Melissa had gone to see Mr. Hubbard, and had by him been employed to copy these papers for use at a meeting of the proposed stockholders, which was to take place in a few days.

"Mrs. Fenton tells me," he had said, "that you are to be trusted. It is absolutely essential that you do not mention these plans to any living being. Perfect secrecy is expected from you, and it is only because Mrs. Fenton is your guarantee that I run the risk of putting them into your hands."

"I think you can trust me," she had answered; "even if," she had added, with the ghost of a smile, "there were anybody that I know who would be at all likely to be interested."

And now the temptation had come to her in a way of which she had never dreamed. She had gone on with her copying, smiling to herself at the coincidence which put into the hands of a Feltonville girl this plan for the metamorphosis of the sleepy old village into a bustling manufacturing town, but she had not considered that this scheme might have important bearing upon the fortunes of her lover. She knew that Stanton's father had owned meadows along the river where the new factories were to lie, and she knew also that when old Mr. Stanton died these had been sold with a condition of redemption, but until this moment she had not connected the facts. She did not understand business, and had been puzzling her brain as she wrote, to understand what was meant by the statement that a certain company would sell a "six months' option at seventy thousand dollars" on a water-power for two thousand dollars. She did understand now, however, that were John in possession of the secret of the syndicate's plans, he could redeem his father's meadows with the money he had saved toward the payment of the debts which had forced the old man into the bankruptcy that broke his heart, and once he owned these lands lying in the midst of the desirable tract, John could command his own price for them. She held in her hand the secret which would free her lover from the heavy burden of years, and bring quickly the wedding-day for which they had both waited and longed so patiently.

The blood bounded so hotly in Melissa's veins as she realized all this, that she could scarcely breathe; but like a lightning flash a thought followed which sent the tide surging back to her heart, and left her cold and faint. She remembered that this knowledge was a trust. That she had given her word not to betray it. With instant recoil, she leaped to the thought that advising her lover to redeem these meadows was not betraying the secret. Like a swift shuttle flew her mind between argument and defence, between temptation and resistance, between love and duty.

"Why, what is it, Milly?" John demanded, starting up and coming to her. "What in the world makes you act so funny? Are you sick? Why don't you speak?"

It is not easy to express the force of the struggle which went on in poor Milly's mind. It seemed to her at that moment as if all the hopes of her life were set against her honesty. The material issues in any conflict between principle and inclination are of less importance than the desire which they represent. The few thousand dollars involved in the redemption of the Stanton meadows was little when compared to the magnificent scheme of which this would be a mere trifling accident, but the sum represented all the desires of Milly Blake's life, while over against it stood all her faith, her honesty, and her religion.

For an instant she wavered, standing as if by some spell suddenly arrested, with arms half extended. Then she flung down the paper and threw herself upon her lover's breast with a burst of tears.

"Why, Milly," he said, soothingly. "Milly, Milly."

He was unused to feminine vagaries. His betrothed was of the outwardly quiet order of women, and an outburst like this was incomprehensible to him. He could only hold the weeping girl in his strong embrace, soothing her in helpless masculine fashion, awkward, but exactly what she needed.

"There, John," she cried at last, giving him a tumultuous hug, and looking up into his face through her tears, "I always told you you were engaged to a fool, and this is a new proof of it."

"But what in the world," Stanton asked, looking down into her eyes with mingled fondness and bewilderment, "is it all about? What is the matter?"

"It is nothing but my foolishness," she answered, leading him back to the chair from which he had risen. "I was going to show you something in a paper I am copying, and just in time I remembered that I had particularly promised not to show it to anybody."

He regarded her curiously.

"But why," he asked, with a certain deliberateness which somehow made her uneasy, "did you want to show it to me."

"Because--because--"

She could not equivocate, and her innocent soul had had little training in the arts of evasion.

"Because what?"

Stanton leaned back in his chair, holding her by the shoulders as she sat upon his knee, and searching her face with his strong brown eyes. Milly's glance drooped.

"Don't ask me, John," she responded, putting her hand against his cheek, wistfully. "Don't you see I couldn't tell you without letting you know what is in the paper, and that is precisely the thing I promised not to do."

There are few men in whom a woman's open refusal to yield a point, no matter how trifling, does not arouse a tyrannous masculine impulse to compel obedience. Stanton had really no great curiosity about the secret, whatever it might be, but he instinctively felt that it was right to demand the telling because his betrothed refused to speak. His face grew more grave. The hands upon Milly's shoulders unconsciously tightened their hold. The girl intuitively felt that a struggle was coming, although even yet the signs were hardly tangible. She grew a little paler, putting her hand beneath her lover's bearded chin, and holding his face up so that she could look straight into his fearless, honest eyes.

"Dear John," she said, wistfully, "you know I never have a secret of my own that I keep from you in all the world."

"But why," demanded he, "can it do any harm for you to give me some reason why you ever thought of telling me this; and just at a time, too, when we were talking of business."

"Because," she answered, thoughtlessly, "it was about business."

A new light came into Stanton's face. His lips subtly changed their expression.

"It must have been a chance to make some money," he said.

She grew deadly pale, but she did not answer him. He searched her face an instant, and then he lifted her in his strong arms, rising from the chair, and seating her in his place. He took a step forward, and stretched out his hand to take the paper she had thrown upon the table. With a cry of terror she sprang up and caught his arm.

"John!" she exclaimed. "Oh, for pity's sake, don't look at it."

He turned and regarded her with a more unkind glance than she had ever seen upon his face.

"Will you tell me?" he asked.

"I can't, I can't!" she answered, half sobbing.

He looked at the paper, and then at his sweetheart. Then with a rough motion he shook off her fingers from his arm, and without a word went abruptly from the room.

Milly looked toward the door which had closed after him as if she could not believe that he had really gone; then she sank down to the floor, and, leaning her head upon a chair, she sobbed as if her heart were broken.

VI

THE INLY TOUCH OF LOVE. Two Gentlemen of Verona; ii.--7.

Grant Herman looked across the breakfast table at his Italian wife thoughtfully a moment, considering, as he often did, what was likely to be the effect of something he was about to say. In six years of married life he had not learned how to adapt himself to the narrower mind and more personal views of his wife. He perhaps fell into the error, so common to strong natures, of being unable to comprehend that by far the larger part of the principles which influence broad minds do not for narrow ones exist at all. He continually tried to discover what process of reasoning led Ninitta to given results, but he was never able to appreciate the fact that often it was by no chain of logic whatever that certain conclusions had been arrived at. A mental habit of catching up opinions at haphazard, of acting simply from emotions, however transient, instead of from convictions, was wholly outside his mental experience, and equally unrealized in his comprehension.

He regarded Ninitta, whose foreign face and beautiful figure looked as much out of place behind the coffee urn as would the faun of Praxiteles at an afternoon reception, and a smothered sigh rose to his lips with the thought how utterly he was at a loss to comprehend her. It happened in the present case, as it often did, that his failure to understand arose chiefly from the fact that there was nothing in particular to understand, and, when he spoke, Ninitta received his remark quite simply.

"Mrs. Greyson is at home again," he said.

"Mrs. Greyson," she echoed, her dark eyes lighting up with genuine pleasure. "Oh, that is indeed good. Where is she? Have you seen her?"

There shot through Herman's mind the reflection that since his wife could not know that he married her out of love not for herself but for Helen Greyson, it was absurd to have fancied that Ninitta would be jealously displeased at Helen's return; and the inevitable twinge of conscience at his wife's trusting ignorance followed.

"I haven't seen her," he answered; "she only arrived yesterday. Mrs. Fenton told me when I met her at the Paint and Clay Exhibition last night."

Ninitta folded her hands on the edge of the table, with a gesture of childish pleasure.

"I wonder what she will say to Nino," she said musingly, her voice taking a new softness.

A sudden spasm contracted the sculptor's throat. His whole being was shaken by the return of the woman to whom all the passionate devotion of his manhood was given, and he never heard that soft, maternal note with which his wife spoke of his boy without emotion.

"She may say that the young rascal ought to be out of his bed in time for breakfast," he retorted with affected brusqueness. "He has all the Italian laziness in him."

He pushed back his chair as he spoke, and rose from the table. He hesitated a moment, as if some sudden thought absorbed him, then he went to his wife and kissed her forehead.

"Good-by," he said. "I sha'n't come up for lunch. Don't coddle the boy too much."

"But when," his wife persisted, as he turned away, "shall I see Mrs. Greyson? I want to show her the _bambino_."

She always spoke in Italian to her husband and her child, and indeed her English had never been of the most fluent.

"The _bambino_" the father repeated, smiling. "He will be a _bambino_ to you when he is as big as I am, I suppose. I do not know about Mrs. Greyson, but I will find out, if I can."

He left the room and went to the chamber where his swarthy boy of five lay still luxuriously in his crib, although he was fully awake. Nino gave a soft cry of joy at the sight of his father, and greeted him rapturously.

"Papa," he asked in Italian, "does the kitty know how much she hurts when she scratches? she made a long place on my arm, and it hurt like fire."

"Do you know how much you hurt her to make her do it?" his father returned, smiling fondly.

"Oh, but she is so soft and so little, of course I don't hurt her," Nino answered, with boyish logic. "Anyway, she ought not to hurt me. I don't like to be hurt."

The foolish, childish words came back to Herman's mind a couple of hours later, as he waited in the boarding-house parlor for Helen Greyson. He smiled with bitterness to think how perfectly they represented his own state of mind. He said to himself that he was tired of being hurt, and rose at the moment to take in both his hands the hands of a beautiful woman, to his eyes no older and no less fair than when he had said good-by to her on his wedding morning, six years before. He tried to speak, but tears came instead of words; choked and blinded, he turned away abruptly, struggling to regain his composure.

The meeting after long years of those who have loved and been separated, may, for the moment, carry them back to the time of their parting so completely that all that lies between seems annihilated. The old emotion reasserts itself so strongly, the past lives again so vividly, that there seems to have been no break in feeling, and they stand in relation to one another as if the parting were yet to come. When they had been together a little, the time which lay between them would once more become a reality; but at the first touch of their hands those bitter days of loneliness ceased to exist, and they seemed to stand together again, as when they were saying good-by six years before.

With her old time self-control, it was Helen who spoke first, and her words recalled him from the past and its passion, to the present and its duty.

"Tell me how Ninitta is," she said, "and the boy. I do so want to see that wonderful boy."

The sculptor commanded his voice by a powerful effort.

"They are both well," he answered. "The boy is a wonderful little fellow, although perhaps I am not an unprejudiced judge. Ninitta is crazy to show him to you. She has pretty nearly effaced herself since he came, and only lives for his benefit."

"She is a happy woman," Helen said, assuming that air of cheerfulness which is one of the first accomplishments that women are forced by life to learn. "I should know she would be devoted to her children."

There were a few moments of silence. Both cast down their eyes, and then each raised them to study whatever changes time might have made in the years that lay between them. Helen's heart was beating painfully, but she was determined not to lose her self-control. She knew of old how completely she could rule the mood of her companion, and she felt that upon her calmness depended his. She had been schooling herself for this interview from the moment she began to consider whether she might return to America, and she was therefore less unprepared than was Herman for the trying situation in which she now found herself; yet it required all her strength of mind and of will not to give way to the tide of love and emotion which surged within her breast.