Chapter 15

Eudoxia Pence immediately got herself into motion. During the watches of the night she evolved plans for such a function as she thought the present situation required. Her picture gallery, re-enforced by those six or eight new masterpieces from Paris, she should throw open to the general public. She would call the thing an afternoon reception, and there would be tea. People were to be invited with some regard to form, but the opportunity would be made rather general--almost anybody might come who was willing to pay a dollar. This crush would supplement her bazar, and would be announced as for the benefit of--oh, well, of any one of the half-dozen charities that looked to her for support. She would throw open the whole house and tea should flow like water. These doings must take place within three days, at the outside. Time was precious and none of her friends would take seriously anything of hers given at so short a notice. No matter, then, who paid; no matter who poured; no matter about anything, if only her net took in all the different people she wanted to catch.

Next morning she rose for a busy day. She had brought back Gibbons, and now she must bring back Hill. Young Prochnow was off the board, but that did not put Daffingdon Dill back upon it; nor would he be there till she should have placed him there. "We _must_ have that commission," said Virgilia. "You shall, if I've got any influence," replied her aunt.

She had long foreseen that, one day or another, she must seize her Grindstone stock in her talons, beat her wings about the head of Andrew P. Hill, raise a threatening beak against his obdurate front, and ask him what he meant by behaving so.

She drove to the bank. The old office stood empty; a last load of ancient ledgers and of shabby furniture was just driving away. She ordered her coupe to go to the new building. Here she found Andrew adjusting himself to his grandiose environment, and delivered her assault.

What had he and the directors meant by such a game of fast-and-loose? Why had they treated an artist of Mr. Dill's standing with such inconsiderateness and injustice? Why had they tried to handle so important a question by themselves? Why had they not consulted the stock-holders? Why had they not consulted _her_--a stock-holder since the foundation of the bank and an amateur of approved standing? And many more interrogatories no less hard to answer.

Hill listened to her cowed, intimidated; it was one more trouble in a time of trouble. He presently found his voice--or a part of it--and explained in low, trembling tones that concerns of much greater importance had come to the front; that this entire matter of decoration must be set aside for the present, perhaps for all time; that some other----

Eudoxia threw an indignant frown upon him and drove off to see his wife.

Almira Hill was at home--in these latter days she was seldom anywhere else. Socially speaking, she had evaporated years ago; but there was no reason why she should not precipitate herself and appear once more in concrete form. Eudoxia had an intuitive sense that Almira would welcome the chance.

"Receive with us," Eudoxia urged her. What easier way for Almira to see some of her old friends? She considered. She consented.

Then Eudoxia opened against the bank. "Give me your help for my--nephew," she said to end with.

"Mr. Hill has spoken of this to me," replied the old lady slowly; "but he is so worried, so anxious, about something these days, that I hardly----"

"_We_ are worried; we are anxious, too, my dear Mrs. Hill. Figure the situation. Imagine the strain upon two young people----"

Almira had not lost all her sentiment, nor all her interest in the concerns of youth. She promised to give what help she could.

Eudoxia sped on to see Euphrosyne McNulty. She found the household in a state of suppressed tumult. The servant who opened the door was all at sea; obscure sounds of sobbing came from somewhere above; and when Euphrosyne finally washed in she was like the ocean half-subsided after a storm. She had just learned that Preciosa had refused Robin Morrell.

"Such a caller at such a time!" she had articulated over Eudoxia's card. It took away half the sweetness of the triumph. She rushed to her toilet-table, hoping, meanwhile, that Norah had not boggled with the tray and that her father-in-law had not left his pipe on top of the piano.

Eudoxia was brief. She made no vain passes of regret that Euphrosyne had not taken her place earlier on her invitation-list. She invited her, now, with all emphasis, to attend her "art reception," and hoped that she would allow her dear daughter to help pour tea. A sunburst exploded before Euphrosyne's unready eyes. She recovered herself and accepted for both.

Eudoxia drove to the office of the Pin-and-Needle Combine. Like every other moneyed person in town, she had a finger in that pie. Why shouldn't she drop in on the cooks?

Robin Morrell was not there; she was received by Richard. Richard had heard from Gibbons what was in the wind, but knew nothing as yet, of course, about his brother's rejection.

Eudoxia understood that Richard was hand and glove with Hill. She asked his influence as a matter of justice to Daffingdon Dill. Richard had been impatient and resentful to begin with; now he became dogged and surly. She had come at the wrong time and about the wrong business. Virgilia had dismissed him with no gentle hand--people had smiled over his discomfiture for a week. The memory of this still rankled. Why in the world should he exert himself for Daffingdon Dill?

Let him exert himself for his brother then. But he became more dogged and surly still. Why should his brother succeed when he himself had failed? Why should his brother need help anyway? Why must this woman come poking into a man's most private affairs? Eudoxia surmised, through the medium of his sullen mood, a house divided against itself. She left Morrell in anger and drove to her husband's office.

Every man had rebuffed her. Only the women had been complaisant--and even these she had had to pay. As she sat by her husband's desk, waiting for his attention, her wrath rose against the Grindstone and Hill, against the Morrells and their Combine.

"I'll take my Grindstone stock," she declared, "and hawk it up and down the street at eighty--half what it's worth. Let us see where Andrew Hill will be _then_!"

Pence turned on her slowly. "I doubt whether you could get eighteen for it to-day. The street is talking--talking low, but it's talking."

"Why, is anything wrong with the Grindstone?"

"Well, rather. Hill, I judge, has come as close to the edge as a man can without falling over. I'm glad your holdings are no heavier."

"Ah!" said Eudoxia; "that's why he has choked off Dill! Well," she resumed with unimpaired energy, "I'll take my Pin-and-Needle and sell it for next to nothing. I'll give it away. I'll stick it under the cracks of doors. I'll present it with every pound, or rather every cup of tea. Let us see, then, how Richard Morrell----"

"Do that," said her husband, "and half the banks in town will fail. You're not ready for such a crash as that, are you?"

"Why, what's the matter with Pin-and-Needle?" asked Eudoxia.

"It's at death's door. It's gasping. Unless something is injected, unless somebody galvanizes it----"

"Ah!" cried Eudoxia; "so that's why Orlando Gibbons gave the McNulty dinner! Oh, things must hold off a few days longer! Make them, Palmer! That girl must marry him, so that I can save my Grindstone stock and my Pin-and-Needle investments, and so that Daff can get those pictures to paint, and so that Virgilia can get him!" Oh, heavens! She had once aspired to guide the chariot of finance, yet all she had to offer against this threatening squadron of calamities was an "art reception" with tea!

XXV

"Go? Of course we'll go!" said Little O'Grady spiritedly. "Anybody may go who's able to pay a dollar and who's got a friend to name him. I hope you and I can cough up as much as that, Ignace; and then if we have to live the rest of the week on sawdust, why, we will. Go? I guess yes. If I'm ever to make the Queen's acquaintance and get her profile, this is no chance to throw away."

Prochnow was in a deplorable state and needed all the support Little O'Grady could give him. He had not seen Preciosa for several days. He had called at the house once or twice--that vast florid pile, which had always looked lackadaisical rather than cruel; but it had refused to admit him. Euphrosyne had repulsed him with the utmost contumely; even old Jeremiah (who may not have meant to be harsh, but who seemed to be acting under superior orders) told him he must not appear there again. Nothing came to console him except three or four tear-stained little scrawls from Preciosa herself. In these she vowed in simple and slightly varying phrases to be faithful; nobody should come between them, nobody should make her untrue, nobody should prevent her from keeping her promise, nobody should take her away from him, and the like.

"What does it mean, Terence?" asked Prochnow, vastly perturbed by these blind reiterations.

Little O'Grady pondered. "Her folks are against us, that's all," he replied. "They're trying to marry her to somebody else," he told himself. "Who can it be?" Then, aloud and cheerfully: "If you can't see her at one house, why, just see her at another. Come along with you."

They found the town moving on Eudoxia Pence _en masse_, with several policemen in front to keep order. On the front steps they grazed elbows with the Joyces and the Gowans; and with these and other members of the general public they swept on, joining the vast throng of those who were so eager to press the great lady's Smyrna rugs with their own feet and fumble her silk hangings with their own fingers and rap her Japanese jars with their own knuckles and smell her new paintings with their own noses and see Mrs. Palmer Pence herself with their own eyes. "Gee! ain't it swell!" whispered Little O'Grady, who could make swans out of geese or geese out of swans with equal facility.

Prochnow ignored the swells, the jars, the pictures and all the rest; he sought only Preciosa. Little O'Grady was not in a new field for nothing, and he looked at everybody. First of all, there was the great Eudoxia herself, and her profile was as lovely as ever. When, when, when should he reach the point of modelling it? She stood there with a vain pretence of receiving,--she was too conventional to dispense with the recognised forms even on the occasion of a mere popular outpouring. Little O'Grady went up to her boldly and shook hands; he was outside the general understanding that made her, in so promiscuous a function, something to be looked at rather than touched--save by a few intimates. Only let him bring her within range of his aura, he thought, and her subjugation would inevitably follow. Then he stepped back and watched her. There was still a determined cordiality in her smile, but a furtive anxiety marked the glance she sent now and then into the second or third room beyond, where a pressing crowd and a subdued glare of candle-light seemed to indicate a focus of interest hardly second to the picture gallery itself. Little O'Grady caught this anxious look. "Is she afraid for her bric-a-brac or her spoons?" he wondered. "No, it's something more than that."

Beside Eudoxia stood Almira Hill,--"a mother in Israel, if ever there was one," O'Grady commented. "And what's the matter with _her_? Shy? Awkward? No, she's too old and experienced for that. There, she's looking in the same direction. Something's up. What is it?"

It was this: Almira's husband had told her that morning how it all depended upon Preciosa McNulty.

Roscoe Orlando Gibbons came through the crowd, with a great effect of smiling joviality. But he too glanced over the press of heads toward the glare of candle-light with a strained intensity not to be concealed.

Roscoe Orlando suddenly turned aside toward an old fellow who sat on a pink brocade sofa. "See, there's her grandfather," whispered Prochnow. Old Jeremiah had instinctively taken refuge on the one piece of furniture that reminded him of home. Here he sat, awkwardly twisting his hands and blinking every now and then at the great light that shone afar off. "I could never in the world have got him to anything resembling a dinner," declared Eudoxia. "He acts like a stray cat," said Little O'Grady. "But he needn't,--there seem to be plenty of the same sort here, after all." Yes, at a second glance old Jeremiah appeared to be less the victim of society than of circumstances; and when Roscoe Orlando Gibbons bowed over him and whispered and they both looked toward the illumination while Eudoxia Pence looked at them, Little O'Grady was surer than ever that something was in the air.

He felt Prochnow suddenly slipping behind him. "Her mother!" the young fellow explained. Yes, it was Euphrosyne in full fig and in very active circulation. She rustled, she swooped, she darted, she was as if on springs. "Well, she feels her oats," commented Little O'Grady. He looked at her again. No, what moved her was not vainglory, not a restless sense of triumph. She was keyed up to the most racking pitch of anxious expectation. She looked whither Eudoxia and Roscoe Orlando and all the others had looked, but with an intensified expression, and Little O'Grady almost felt as if challenged to solve some obscure yet widely ramified enigma.

He turned round as if in search of help. In a doorway near-by he saw another familiar face. "Why, there's Daff!" he cried. "It's Dill, our hated rival," he explained to Prochnow. "And that girl with him is Miss Jeffreys, the one he's going to marry."

Prochnow looked at the tall handsome figure in the long frock-coat with the bunch of violets, and felt abashed by his own short jacket and indifferent shoes. He noted too the assumption of ease and suavity with which the other was entertaining a little knot of ladies. It was this person, then, an out-and-out man of the world, against whom he, uncouth and unpractised boy, had presumed to pit himself!

Little O'Grady was not able immediately to detach Dill's attention from his associates. Meanwhile he studied both Dill and Virgilia. The general effect was brilliant enough, yet----Yes, surely they were too loquacious, too demonstrative; they were talking against time, they were working under cover, they were kicking up a dust. And, yes--both Daff and Virgilia, in the midst of this gay chatter, shot certain furtive, sidelong glances whither so many had been sent before.

The group in the doorway showed signs of breaking up. "Daff," said Little O'Grady, "for the Lord's sake, what's on?"

"Ah, O'Grady," said Dill, in a cool, formal manner; "are you here?" Since that calamitous episode at the bank, he had cared less than ever for O'Grady: they had been quite right in throwing him out. He had found it hard to tolerate his forwardness at the beginning of the negotiations, and to carry the burden of his Bohemian eccentricity through them; and harder still to pardon the slap-dash sally that had thrown the common fat into the fire. Now up popped the fellow, knowing him as intimately and familiarly as ever.

"Oh, Daff," said Little O'Grady earnestly, and all unmindful of any possible rebuff, "what's out in that room?"

Daffingdon smiled at Virgilia. "Why don't you go and see?" he asked.

"But don't break off the match!" said Virgilia, with a nervous titter. What state of overtension could have prompted her to a piece of bravado so rash, so superfluous?

Little O'Grady gave her one look and sped away.

After pushing through two or three roomfuls of tall people, he finally reached the desired threshold. He felt a hand upon his arm and found Prochnow beside him. They both saw the same sight together.

It was a table like Dill's--only larger, with candles on it--five times as many, and flowers--ten times as handsome, and silver and glass and china--only a hundred times more brilliant, and girls seated about it--a thousand times more fetching than poor sister Judith. Among them was Preciosa, with a big feathered hat toppling on her head and the desperate look of some hunted creature on her face. Yes, they had hung her with chains and tied her to the stake. "If she is to pour here, after all," Eudoxia had said grimly, "let her pay for the privilege." And close to the girl's elbow sat the chief inquisitor, Robin Morrell, big, bold, unabashed, persevering, bringing all possible pressure to force her to recant. People about them--his unconscious familiars--sipped and chattered, and fluttered up and away, but he remained fixed throughout. He must have her, he was determined to dominate her; in the end she could not but yield. There was no other way out for her, and none for him. And that sole way must be taken at once.

Little O'Grady recognised the red face, the broad shoulders, the thick neck, the heavy hand; he still felt those fingers in his collar, that palm against his ear. "A-a-ah!" he emitted in a long sibilant cry of repressed rage.

"Stay where you are a minute," he said to Prochnow, and slipped away. Ignace stared now at his rival in love just as before he had stared at his rival in art,--yet held in check both by the intimidating splendour of the ceremonial and by his own uncertainty as to the precise significance of the situation.

O'Grady hurried back to Dill. "Daff, Daff!" he cried with wide eyes and with a tremulous finger that pointed back toward the tea-table, "is that the man?"

"What man?"

"The big brute sitting beside her."

"Robin Morrell to a 't,'" said Virgilia. "Or Richard, either."

"Are they trying to make her marry him?" demanded Little O'Grady, his gray-green eyes staring their widest.

"That is the plan, I believe," returned Dill.

"It won't come off!" cried Little O'Grady, and dashed away.

He pushed and trampled his course back to Prochnow. In the library he brushed against Medora Joyce.

"Oh, Dodie," he panted, "they're sacrificin' our little Preciosa to that big brute of a Morrell!"

"I was afraid so," said Medora, with concern. "Stop it."

"I'm going to!" said O'Grady.

As he regained Prochnow's side Preciosa was just rising from the table, and Elizabeth Gibbons was slipping into her place. Preciosa left the room by another door, and Morrell walked close beside her.

He looked about the crowded place with an air that was both determined and desperate. People here, there, everywhere; the rabble swarmed in the library, the morning-room, the den, chattering, staring, gaping, wondering. It was disgusting, it was barbarous, it made matters impossible. Every corner bespoken, every angle occupied. Nothing left save a nook under the great stairway--a nook shaded by dwarf palms, however, and not too open to the general eye. He half led, half crowded Preciosa toward it. He should speak now, a second time, and trust to bear her down.

He spoke a second time, and a second time Preciosa refused. She had but one idea,--an idea a bit obscured by Prochnow's absence,--yet she held it fast.

"You will not marry me, then?"

"No."

"You have a reason?"

"The best."

"What is it?"

"I am engaged to marry some one else."

"Who is he?"

Prochnow appeared in the hall, with Little O'Grady close behind him. Little O'Grady's mobile face was taxed to the utmost to express all that was within him, but Preciosa saw sympathy and the promise of instant help as clearly as Morrell saw detestation and mocking mischievousness. O'Grady pushed aside a palm-frond and pointed toward Prochnow. "We've come for you, darlin'," he said.

Preciosa rose; the one idea to which she had clung throughout came uppermost and crystallized before her eyes. "Who is he?" Morrell had asked. She raised her arm, pointed to Ignace like a true little heroine of the drama, and said:

"There he stands!"

She went out to meet them, and the three instinctively began to push toward the front door. She had her hat--never mind her jacket. Dill saw them moving away and bit his lip. Roscoe Orlando Gibbons grasped a door-jamb for support. A smothered scream was heard behind the palms; it was Euphrosyne McNulty, fainting away, as Preciosa, Prochnow and Little O'Grady went out through the vestibule and down the front steps together.

XXVI

The Pin-and-Needle Combine fell apart the next day. The Grindstone National Bank followed it the day after. Richard and Robin had turned the handle a little too briskly and the Grindstone had flown to pieces. Three or four other banks followed.

Little O'Grady danced with joy. His curse had told. And the great hulking bully that had dared to cuff him was flat on his back with the rest. When O'Grady fully realized what he--_he_--had done his breast heaved proudly. He ran over to see the fatal placard fastened on one of the Grindstone's great polished columns, and then tramped on down the avenue of ruin with the step and mien of a conqueror. All this devastation was due to him--whatever the foolish newspapers, groping in the dark, might say. He alone was the Thunderer; he alone wielded the lightning.

There was but one drawback; never should he get Eudoxia Pence's profile--now.

Eudoxia felt that the McNultys had disgraced her,--"as people of that sort always will if you give them a chance." Virgilia lingered in the limbo of engagement; impossible to say, now, when matrimony might ensue. The question of money was the question still. Dill was no Prochnow, to carry her off by main force, nor was she a Preciosa to permit it. She could not conceive of existence beyond the pale of society; the impulsive action of a pair of social outcasts could scarcely serve as a precedent. "I must wait," said Virgilia. Unconsciously she compared Daffingdon with Ignace Prochnow and realized how easy it would be for her to wait quite a while without discomfort, regret or protest.

Prochnow and Preciosa were married in the midst of the crash. Little O'Grady and Medora Joyce took the other two seats in their carriage and saw them through the ceremony. Preciosa knew that her mother would never forgive her, but she thought it not improbable that her grandfather might acquiesce. In any event, she would marry the man of her choice.

Little O'Grady patted Preciosa's hand patronizingly as the carriage rolled along. He, none other, was the good angel of the whole affair. "What do we care, darlin'," he said, "for the Morrell Combine?--hasn't it kept us on pins and needles long enough? What do we care for the Grindstone, either?--hasn't it ground our noses as long and hard as it could? Down wid 'em both--and let 'em stay down, too! And let anybody think twice, my children, before he tries to prick the skin or grind the nose of little Terence O'Grady!"

* * * * *

DR. GOWDY AND THE SQUASH

* * * * *

DR. GOWDY AND THE SQUASH

I

When Dr. Gowdy finally yielded to the urgings of Print, Push, and Co.--a new firm whose youthful persistency made refusal impossible--and agreed to steal from his sermon-writing the number of half-hours needed for putting together the book they would and must and did have, he certainly looked for a reward far beyond any recognisable in the liberal check that had started up his pen. For _Onward and Upward_ was to do some good in the world: the years might come and go for an indefinite period, yet throughout their long procession young men--it was for them he was writing--would rise up here, there, and everywhere and call him blessed. To scrimp his sermons in such a cause was surely justifiable; more, it was commendable. "Where it has been dozens it will now be thousands," said the good Doctor. "I will guide their feet into the right path, and the thanks of many earnest strugglers shall be my real recompense."