He sent for Dory Hargrave's father.
Mark Hargrave was president of the Tecumseh Agricultural and Classical University, to give it its full legal entitlements. It consisted in a faculty of six, including Dr. Hargrave, and in two meager and modest, almost mean "halls," and two hundred acres of land. There were at that time just under four hundred students, all but about fifty working their way through. So poor was the college that it was kept going only by efforts, the success of which seemed miraculous interventions of Providence. They were so regarded by Dr. Hargrave, and the stubbornest infidel must have conceded that he was not unjustified.
As Hargrave, tall and spare, his strong features illumined by life-long unselfish service to his fellow-men, came into Hiram Ranger's presence, Hiram shrank and grew gray as his hair. Hargrave might have been the officer come to lead him forth to execution.
"If you had not sent for me, Mr. Ranger," he began, after the greetings, "I should have come of my own accord within a day or two. Latterly God has been strongly moving me to lay before you the claims of my boys—of the college."
This was to Hiram direct confirmation of his own convictions. He tried to force his lips to say so, but they would not move.
"You and Mrs. Ranger," Hargrave went on, "have had a long life, full of the consciousness of useful work well done. Your industry, your fitness for the just use of God's treasure, has been demonstrated, and He has made you stewards of much of it. And now approaches the final test, the greatest test, of your fitness to do His work. In His name, my old friend, what are you going to do with His treasure?"
Hiram Ranger's face lighted up. The peace that was entering his soul lay upon the tragedy of his mental and physical suffering soft and serene and sweet as moonlight beautifying a ruin. "That's why I sent for you, Mark," he said.
"Hiram, are you going to leave your wealth so that it may continue to do good in the world? Or, are you going to leave it so that it may tempt your children to vanity and selfishness, to lives of idleness and folly, to bring up their children to be even less useful to mankind than they, even more out of sympathy with the ideals which God has implanted? All of those ideals are attainable only through shoulder-to-shoulder work such as you have done all your life."
"God help me!" muttered Hiram. The sweat was beading his forehead and his hands were clasped and wrenching each at the other, typical of the two forces contending in final battle within him. "God help me!"
"Have you ever looked about you in this town and thought of the meaning of its steady decay, moral and physical? God prospered the hard-working men who founded it; but, instead of appreciating His blessings, they regarded the wealth He gave them as their own; and they left it to their children. And see how their sin is being visited upon the third and fourth generations! Industry has been slowly paralyzing. The young people, whose wealth gave them the best opportunities, are leading idle lives, are full of vanity of class and caste, are steeped in the sins that ever follow in the wake of idleness—the sins of selfishness and indulgence. Instead of being workers, leading in the march upward, instead of taking the position for which their superior opportunities should have fitted them, they set an example of idleness and indolence. They despise their ancestry of toil which should be their pride. They pride themselves upon the parasitism which is their shame. And they set before the young an example of contempt for work, of looking on it as a curse and a disgrace."
"I have been thinking of these things lately," said Hiram.
"It is the curse of the world, this inherited wealth," cried Hargrave. "Because of it humanity moves in circles instead of forward. The ground gained by the toiling generations, is lost by the inheriting generations. And this accursed inheritance tempts men ever to long for and hope for that which they have not earned. God gave man a trial of the plan of living in idleness upon that which he had not earned, and man fell. Then God established the other plan, and through it man has been rising—but rising slowly and with many a backward slip, because he has tried to thwart the Divine plan with the system of inheritance. Fortunately, the great mass of mankind has had nothing to leave to heirs, has had no hope of inheritances. Thus, new leaders have ever been developed in place of those destroyed by inherited prosperity. But, unfortunately, the law of inheritance has been able to do its devil's work upon the best element in every human society, upon those who had the most efficient and exemplary parents, and so had the best opportunity to develop into men and women of the highest efficiency. No wonder progress is slow, when the leaders of each generation have to be developed from the bottom all over again, and when the ideal of useful work is obscured by the false ideal of living without work. Waiting for dead men's shoes! Dead men's shoes instead of shoes of one's own."
"Dead men's shoes," muttered Hiram.
"The curse of unearned wealth," went on his friend. "Your life, Hiram, leaves to your children the injunction to work, to labor cheerfully and equally, honestly and helpfully, with their brothers and sisters; but your wealth—If you leave it to them, will it not give that injunction the lie, will it not invite them to violate that injunction?"
"I have been watching my children, my boy, especially," said Hiram. "I don't know about all this that you've been saying. It's a big subject; but I do know about this boy of mine. I wish I'd 'a' taken your advice, Mark, and put him in your school. But his mother was set on the East—on Harvard." Tears were in his eyes at this. He remembered how she, knowing nothing of college, but feeling it was her duty to have her children educated properly, a duty she must not put upon others, had sent for the catalogues of all the famous colleges in the country. He could see her poring over the catalogues, balancing one offering of educational advantage against another, finally deciding for Harvard, the greatest of them all. He could hear her saying: "It'll cost a great deal, Hiram. As near as I can reckon it out it'll cost about a thousand dollars a year—twelve hundred if we want to be v-e-r-y liberal, so the catalogue says. But Harvard's the biggest, and has the most teachers and scholars, and takes in all the branches. And we ought to give our Arthur the best." And now—By what bitter experience had he learned that the college is not in the catalogue, is a thing apart, unrelated and immeasurably different! His eyes were hot with anger as he thought how the boy's mother, honest, conscientious Ellen, had been betrayed.
"Look here, Mark," he blazed out, "if I leave money to your college I want to see that it can't ever be like them eastern institutions of learning." He made a gesture of disgust. "Learning!"
"If you leave us anything, Hiram, leave it so that any young man who gets its advantages must work for them."
"That's it!" exclaimed Hiram. "That's what I want. Can you draw me up that kind of plan? No boy, no matter what he has at home, can come to that there college without working his way through, without learning to work, me to provide the chance to earn the living."
"I have just such a plan," said Hargrave, drawing a paper from his pocket. "I've had it ready for years waiting for just such an opportunity."
"Read it," said Hiram, sinking deep in his big chair and closing his eyes and beginning to rub his forehead with his great hand.
And Hargrave read, forgetting his surroundings, forgetting everything in his enthusiasm for this dream of his life—a university, in fact as well as in name, which would attract the ambitious children of rich and well-to-do and poor, would teach them how to live honestly and nobly, would give them not only useful knowledge to work with but also the light to work by. "You see, Hiram, I think a child ought to begin to be a man as soon as he begins to live—a man, standing on his own feet, in his own shoes, with the courage that comes from knowing how to do well something which the world needs."
He looked at Hiram for the first time in nearly half an hour. He was alarmed by the haggard, ghastly gray of that majestic face; and his thought was not for his plan probably about to be thwarted by the man's premature death, but of his own selfishness in wearying and imperiling him by importunity at such a time. "But we'll talk of this again," he said sadly, putting the paper in his pocket and rising for instant departure.
"Give me the paper," said Hiram, putting out his trembling hand, but not lifting his heavy, blue-black lids.
Mark gave it to him hesitatingly. "You'd better put it off till you're stronger, Hiram."
"I'll see," said Hiram. "Good morning, Mark."
* * * * *
Judge Torrey was the next to get Ranger's summons; it came toward mid-afternoon of that same day. Like Hargrave, Torrey had been his life-long friend.
"Torrey," he said, "I want you to examine this plan"—and he held up the paper Hargrave had left—"and, if it is not legal, put it into legal shape, and incorporate it into my will. I feel I ain't got much time." With a far-away, listening look—"I must put my house in order—in order. Draw up a will and bring it to me before five o'clock. I want you to write it yourself—trust no one—no one!" His eyes were bright, his cheeks bluish, and he spoke in a thick, excited voice that broke and shrilled toward the end of each sentence.
"I can't do it to-day. Too much haste—"
"To-day!" commanded Hiram. "I won't rest till it's done!"
"Of course, I can—"
"Read the paper now, and give me your opinion."
Torrey put on his glasses, opened the paper. "Oh!" he exclaimed. "I remember this. It's in my partner's handwriting. Hargrave had Watson draw it up about five years ago. We were very careful in preparing it. It is legal."
"Very well," continued Hiram. "Now I'll give you the points of my will."
Torrey took notebook and pencil from his pocket.
"First," began Hiram, as if he were reciting something he had learned by heart, "to my wife, Ellen, this house and everything in it, and the grounds and all the horses and carriages and that kind of thing."
"Yes," said Torrey, looking up from his note making.
"Second, to my wife an income of seven thousand a year for life—that is what it cost her and me to live last year, and the children—except the extras. Seven thousand for life—but only for life."
"Yes," said Torrey, his glance at Hiram now uneasy and expectant.
"Third, to my daughter, Adelaide, two thousand a year for her life—to be divided among her daughters equally, if she have any; if not, to revert to my estate at her death."
"Yes," said Torrey.
"Fourth, to my son, five thousand dollars in cash."
A long pause, Torrey looking at his old friend and client as if he thought one or the other of them bereft of his senses. At last, he said, "Yes, Hiram."
"Fifth, to my brothers, Jacob and Ezra, four hundred dollars each," continued Hiram, in his same voice of repeating by rote, "and to my sister Prudence, five thousand dollars—so fixed that her husband can't touch it."
"Yes," said Torrey.
"Sixth, the rest of my estate to be made into a trust, with Charles
Whitney and Mark Hargrave and Hampden Scarborough trustees, with power to
select their successors. The trust to be administered for the benefit of
Tecumseh University under the plan you have there."
Torrey half-rose from his chair, his usually calm features reflecting his inner contention of grief, alarm, and protest. But there was in Hiram's face that which made him sink back without having spoken.
"Seventh," continued Hiram, "the mills and the cooperage to be continued as now, and not to be sold for at least fifteen years. If my son Arthur wishes to have employment in them, he is to have it at the proper wages for the work he does. If at the end of fifteen years he wishes to buy them, he to have the right to buy, that is, my controlling interest in them, provided he can make a cash payment of ten per cent of the then value; and, if he can do that, he is to have ten years in which to complete the payment—or longer, if the trustees think it wise."
A long pause; Hiram seemed slowly to relax and collapse like a man stretched on the rack, who ceases to suffer either because the torture is ended or because his nerves mercifully refuse to register any more pain. "That is all," he said wearily.
Torrey wiped his glasses, put them on, wiped them again, hung them on the hook attached to the lapel of his waistcoat, put them on, studied the paper, then said hesitatingly: "As one of your oldest friends, Hiram, and in view of the surprising nature of the—the—"
"I do not wish to discuss it," interrupted Hiram, with that gruff finality of manner which he always used to hide his softness, and which deceived everyone, often even his wife. "Come back at five o'clock with two witnesses."
Torrey rose, his body shifting with his shifting mind as he cast about for an excuse for lingering. "Very well, Hiram," he finally said. As he shook hands, he blurted out huskily, "The boy's a fine young fellow, Hi. It don't seem right to disgrace him by cutting him off this way."
Hiram winced. "Wait a minute," he said. He had been overlooking the public—how the town would gossip and insinuate. "Put in this, Torrey," he resumed after reflecting. And deliberately, with long pauses to construct the phrases, he dictated: "I make this disposal of my estate through my love for my children, and because I have firm belief in the soundness of their character and in their capacity to do and to be. I feel they will be better off without the wealth which would tempt my son to relax his efforts to make a useful man of himself and would cause my daughter to be sought for her fortune instead of for herself."
"That may quiet gossip against your children," said Torrey, when he had taken down Hiram's slowly enunciated words, "but it does not change the extraordinary character of the will."
"John," said Hiram, "can you think of a single instance in which inherited wealth has been a benefit, a single case where a man has become more of a man than he would if he hadn't had it?"
Hiram waited long. Torrey finally said: "That may be, but—" But what?
Torrey did not know, and so came to a full stop.
"I've been trying for weeks to think of one," continued Hiram, "and whenever I thought I'd found one, I'd see, on looking at all the facts, that it only seemed to be so. And I recalled nearly a hundred instances right here in Saint X where big inheritances or little had been ruinous."
"I have never thought on this aspect of the matter before," said Torrey. "But to bring children up in the expectation of wealth, and then to leave them practically nothing, looks to me like—like cheating them."
"It does, John," Hiram answered. "I've pushed my boy and my girl far along the broad way that leads to destruction. I must take the consequences. But God won't let me divide the punishment for my sins with them. I see my duty clear. I must do it. Bring the will at five o'clock."
Hiram's eyes were closed; his voice sounded to Torrey as if it were the utterance of a mind far, far away—as far away as that other world which had seemed vividly real to Hiram all his life; it seemed real and near to Torrey, looking into his old friend's face. "The power that's guiding him," Torrey said to himself, "is one I daren't dispute with." And he went away with noiseless step and with head reverently bent.
CHAPTER VI
MRS. WHITNEY NEGOTIATES
The Rangers' neighbors saw the visits of Hargrave and Torrey. Immediately a rumor of a bequest to Tecumseh was racing through the town and up the Bluffs and through the fashionable suburb. It arrived at Point Helen, the seat of the Whitneys, within an hour after Torrey left Ranger. It had accumulated confirmatory detail by that time—the bequest was large; was very large; was half his fortune—and the rest of the estate was to go to the college should Arthur and Adelaide die childless.
Mrs. Whitney lost no time. At half-past four she was seated in the same chair in which Hargrave and Torrey had sat. It was not difficult to bring up the subject of the two marriages, which were doubly to unite the houses and fortunes of Ranger and Whitney—the marriages of Arthur and Janet, of Ross and Adelaide. "And, of course," said Mrs. Whitney, "we all want the young people started right. I don't believe children ought to feel dependent on their parents. It seems to me that puts filial and parental love on a very low plane. Don't you think so?"
"Yes," said Hiram.
"The young people ought to feel that their financial position is secure. And, as you and Ellen and Charles and I have lived for our children, have toiled to raise them above the sordid cares and anxieties of life, we ought to complete our work now and make them—happy."
Hiram did not speak, though she gave him ample time.
"So," pursued Mrs. Whitney, "I thought I wouldn't put off any longer talking about what Charles and I have had in mind some months. Ross and Janet will soon be here, and I know all four of the children are anxious to have the engagements formally completed."
"Completed?" said Hiram.
"Yes," reaffirmed Matilda. "Of course they can't be completed until we parents have done our share. You and Ellen want to know that Arthur and Adelaide won't be at the mercy of any reverse in business Charles might have—or of any caprice which might influence him in making his will. And Charles and I want to feel the same way as to our Ross and Janet."
"Yes," said Hiram. "I see." A smile of stern irony roused his features from their repose into an expressiveness that made Mrs. Whitney exceedingly uncomfortable—but the more resolute.
"Charles is willing to be liberal both in immediate settlement and in binding himself in the matter of his will," she went on. "He often says, 'I don't want my children to be impatient for me to die. I want to make 'em feel they're getting, if anything, more because I'm alive.'"
A long pause, then Hiram said: "That's one way of looking at it."
"That's your way," said Matilda, as if the matter were settled. And she smiled her softest and sweetest. But Hiram saw only the glitter in her cold brown eyes, a glitter as hard as the sheen of her henna-stained hair.
"No," said he emphatically, "that's not my way. That's the broad and easy way that leads to destruction. Ellen and I," he went on, his excitement showing only in his lapses into dialect, "we hain't worked all our lives so that our children'll be shiftless idlers, settin' 'round, polishin' their fingernails, and thinkin' up foolishness and breedin' fools."
Matilda had always known that Hiram and Ellen were hopelessly vulgar; but she had thought they cherished a secret admiration for the "higher things" beyond their reach, and were resolved that their son should be a gentleman and their daughter a lady. She found in Hiram's energetic bitterness nothing to cause her to change her view. "He simply wants to hold on to his property to the last, and play the tyrant," she said to herself. "All people of property naturally feel that way." And she held steadily to her programme. "Well, Hiram," she proceeded tranquilly, "if those marriages are to take place, Charles and I will expect you to meet us halfway."
"If Ross and my Delia and Arthur and your Jane are fond of each other, let 'em marry as you and Charles, as Ellen and I married. I ain't buyin' your son, nor sellin' my daughter. That's my last word, Tillie."
On impulse, he pressed the electric button in the wall behind him. When the new upstairs girl came, he said: "Tell the children I want to see 'em."
Arthur and Adelaide presently came, flushed with the exercise of the tennis the girl had interrupted.
"Mrs. Whitney, here," said Hiram, "tells me her children won't marry without settlements, as it's called. And I've been tellin' her that my son and daughter ain't buyin' and sellin'."
Mrs. Whitney hid her fury. "Your father has a quaint way of expressing himself," she said, laughing elegantly. "I've simply been trying to persuade him to do as much toward securing the future of you two as Mr. Whitney is willing to do. Don't be absurd, Hiram. You know better than to talk that way."
Hiram looked steadily at her. "You've been travelin' about, 'Tilda," he said, "gettin' together a lot of newfangled notions. Ellen and I and our children stick to the old way." And he looked at Arthur, then at Adelaide.
Their faces gave him a twinge at the heart. "Speak up!" he said. "Do you or do you not stick to the old way?"
"I can't talk about it, father," was Adelaide's evasive answer, her face scarlet and her eyes down.
"And you, sir?" said Hiram to his son.
"You'll have to excuse me, sir," replied Arthur coldly.
Hiram winced before Mrs. Whitney's triumphant glance. He leaned forward and, looking at his daughter, said: "Del, would you marry a man who wouldn't take you unless you brought him a fortune?"
"No, father," Adelaide answered. She was meeting his gaze now. "But, at the same time, I'd rather not be dependent on my husband."
"Do you think your mother is dependent on me?"
"That's different," said Adelaide, after a pause.
"How?" asked Hiram.
Adelaide did not answer, could not answer. To answer honestly would be to confess that which had been troubling her greatly of late—the feeling that there was something profoundly unsatisfactory in the relations between Ross and herself; that what he was giving her was different not only in degree but even in kind from what she wanted, or ought to want, from what she was trying to give him, or thought she ought to try to give him.
"And you, Arthur?" asked Hiram in the same solemn, appealing tone.
"I should not ask Janet to marry me unless I was sure I could support her in the manner to which she is accustomed," said Arthur. "I certainly shouldn't wish to be dependent upon her."
"Then, your notion of marrying is that people get married for a living, for luxury. I suppose you'd expect her to leave you if you lost your money?"
"That's different," said Arthur, restraining the impulse to reason with his illogical father whose antiquated sentimentalism was as unfitted to the new conditions of American life as were his ideas about work.
"You see, Hiram," said Mrs. Whitney, good-humoredly, "your children outvote you."
The master workman brought his fist down on the arm of his chair—not a gesture of violence, but of dignity and power. "I don't stand for the notion that marriage is living in luxury and lolling in carriages and showing off before strangers. I told you what my last word was, Matilda."
Mrs. Whitney debated with herself full half a minute before she spoke. In a tone that betrayed her all but departed hope of changing him, she said: "It is a great shock to me to have you even pretend to be so heartless—to talk of breaking these young people's hearts—just for a notion."
"It's better to break their hearts before marriage," replied Hiram, "than to let them break their lives, and their hearts, too, on such marriages. The girl that wants my son only if he has money to enable her to make a fool of herself, ain't fit to be a wife—and a mother. As for Del and Ross—The man that looks at what a woman has will never look at what she is—and my daughter's well rid of him."
A painful silence, then Mrs. Whitney rose. "If I hadn't suspected, Hiram, that you intended to cheat your children out of their rights in order to get a reputation as a philanthropist, I'd not have brought this matter up at this time. I see my instincts didn't mislead me. But I don't give up hope. I've known you too many years, Hiram Ranger, not to know that your heart is in the right place. And, after you think it over, you will give up this wicked—yes, wicked—plan old Doctor Hargrave has taken advantage of your sickness to wheedle you into."
Hiram, his face and hands like yellow wax, made no answer. Arthur and Adelaide followed Mrs. Whitney from the room. "Thank you, Mrs. Whitney," said Arthur, gratefully, when they were out of his father's hearing. "I don't know what has come over him of late. He has gone back to his childhood and under the spell of the ideas that seemed, and no doubt were, right then. I believe you have set him to thinking. He's the best father in the world when he is well and can see things clearly."
Mrs. Whitney was not so sanguine, but she concealed it. She appreciated what was troubling Hiram. While she encouraged her own son, her Ross, to be a "gentleman," she had enough of the American left to see the flaws in that new ideal of hers—when looking at another woman's son. And the superciliousness which delighted her in Ross, irritated her in Arthur; for, in him, it seemed a sneering reflection upon the humble and toilsome beginnings of Charles and herself. She believed—not without reason—that, under Ross's glossy veneer of gentleman, there was a shrewd and calculating nature; it, she thought, would not permit the gentleman to make mess of those matters, which, coarse and sordid though they were, still must be looked after sharply if the gentleman was to be kept going. But she was, not unnaturally, completely taken in by Arthur's similar game, the more easily as Arthur put into it an intensity of energy which Ross had not. She therefore thought Arthur as unpractical as he so fashionably professed, thought he accepted without reservation "our set's" pretenses of aristocracy for appearance's sake. "Of course, your father'll come round," she said, friendly but not cordial. "All that's necessary is that you and Adelaide use a little tact."
And she was in her victoria and away, a very grand-looking lady, indeed, with two in spick and span summer livery on the box, with her exquisite white and gold sunshade, a huge sapphire in the end of the handle, a string of diamonds worth a small fortune round her neck, a gold bag, studded with diamonds, in her lap, and her superb figure clad in a close-fitting white cloth dress. In the gates she swept past Torrey and his two clerks accompanying him as witnesses. She understood; her face was anything but an index to her thoughts as she bowed and smiled graciously in response to the old judge's salutation.
* * * * *
Torrey read the will to Hiram slowly, pausing after each paragraph for sign of approval or criticism. But Hiram gave no more indication of his thought, by word or expression or motion, than if he had been a seated statue. The reading came to an end, but neither man spoke. The choir of birds, assembled in the great trees round the house, flooded the room with their evening melody. At last, Hiram said: "Please move that table in front of me."
Torrey put the table before him, laid the will upon it ready for the signing.
Hiram took a pen; Torrey went to the door and brought in the two clerks waiting in the hall. The three men stood watching while Hiram's eyes slowly read each word of the will. He dipped the pen and, with a hand that trembled in spite of all his obvious efforts to steady it, wrote his name on the line to which Torrey silently pointed. The clerks signed as witnesses.
"Thank you," said Hiram. "You had better take it with you, judge."
"Very well," said Torrey, tears in his eyes, a quaver in his voice.
A few seconds and Hiram was alone staring down at the surface of the table, where he could still see and read the will. His conscience told him he had "put his house in order"; but he felt as if he had set fire to it with his family locked within, and was watching it and them burn to ashes, was hearing their death cries and their curses upon him.
* * * * *
The two young people, chilled by Mrs. Whitney's manner, flawless though it was, apparently, had watched with sinking hearts the disappearance of her glittering chariot and her glistening steeds. Then they had gone into the garden before Torrey and the clerks arrived. And they sat there thinking each his own kind of melancholy thoughts.
"What did she mean by that remark about Doctor Hargrave?" asked Arthur, after some minutes of this heavy silence.
"I don't know," said Adelaide.
"We must get mother to go at father," Arthur continued.
Adelaide made no answer.
Arthur looked at her irritably. "What are you thinking about, Del?" he demanded.
"I don't like Mrs. Whitney. Do you?"
"Oh, she's a good enough imitation of the real thing," said Arthur. "You can't expect a lady in the first generation."
Adelaide's color slowly mounted. "You don't mean that," said she.
He frowned and retorted angrily: "There's a great deal of truth that we don't like. Why do you always get mad at me for saying what we both think?"
"I admit it's foolish and wrong of me," said she; "but I can't help it. And if I get half-angry with you, I get wholly angry with myself for being contemptible enough to think those things. Don't you get angry at yourself for thinking them?"
Arthur laughed mirthlessly—an admission.
"We and father can't both be right," she pursued. "I suppose we're both partly right and partly wrong—that's usually the way it is. But I can't make up my mind just where he begins to be wrong."
"Why not admit he's right through and through, and be done with it?" cried Arthur impatiently. "Why not tell him so, and square yourself with him?"
Adelaide, too hurt to venture speech, turned away. She lingered a while in the library; on her way down the hall to ascend to her own room she looked in at her father. There he sat so still that but for the regular rise and fall of his chest she would have thought him dead. "He's asleep," she murmured, the tears standing in her eyes and raining in her heart. Her mother she could judge impartially; her mother's disregard of the changes which had come to assume so much importance in her own and Arthur's lives often made her wince. But the same disregard in a man did not offend her; it had the reverse effect. It seemed to her, to the woman in her, the fitting roughness of the colossal statue. "That's a man!" she now said to herself proudly, as she gazed at him.
His eyes opened and fixed upon her in a look so agonized, that she leaned, faint, against the door jamb. "What is it, father?" she gasped.
He did not answer—did not move—sat rigidly on, with that expression unchanging, as if it had been fixed there by the sculptor who had made the statue. She tried to go to him, but at the very thought she was overwhelmed by such fear as she had not had since she, a child, lay in her little bed in the dark, too terrified by the phantoms that beset her to cry out or to move. "Father! What is it?" she repeated, then wheeled and fled along the hall crying: "Mother! Mother!"
Ellen came hurrying down the stairs.
"It's father!" cried Adelaide.
Together they went into the back parlor. He was still motionless, with that same frozen yet fiery expression. They went to him, tried to lift him. Ellen dropped the lifeless arm, turned to her daughter. And Adelaide saw into her mother's inmost heart, saw the tragic lift of one of those tremendous emotions, which, by their very coming into a human soul, give it the majesty and the mystery of the divine.
"Telephone for Dr. Schulze," she commanded; then, as Adelaide sped, she said tenderly to her husband: "Where is the pain? What can I do?"
But he did not answer. And if he could have answered, what could she have done? The pain was in his heart, was the burning agony of remorse for having done that which he still believed to be right, that which he now thought he would give his soul's salvation for the chance to undo. For, as the paralysis began to lock his body fast in its vise, the awful thought had for the first time come to him: "When my children know what I have done they will hate me! They will hate me all their lives."
Dr. Schulze examined him. "Somewhat sooner than I expected," he muttered.
"How long will it last?" said Ellen.
"Some time—several weeks—months—perhaps." He would let her learn gradually that the paralysis would not relax its grip until it had borne him into the eternal prison and had handed him over to the jailer who makes no deliveries.
CHAPTER VII
JILTED
Mrs. Ranger consented to a third girl, to do the additional heavy work; but a nurse—no! What had Hiram a wife for, and a daughter, and a son, if not to take care of him? What kind of heartlessness was this, to talk of permitting a stranger to do the most sacred offices of love? And only by being on the watch early and late did Adelaide and Arthur prevent her doing everything for him herself.
"Everybody, nowadays, has trained nurses in these cases," said Dr.
Schulze. "I don't think you ought to object to the expense."
But the crafty taunt left her as indifferent as did the argument from what "everybody does."
"I don't make rules for others," replied she. "I only say that nobody shall touch Hiram but us of his own blood. I won't hear to it, and the children won't hear to it. They're glad to have the chance to do a little something for him that has done everything for them."
The children thus had no opportunity to say whether they would "hear to it" or not. But Arthur privately suggested to Adelaide that she ought to try to persuade her mother. "It will make her ill, all this extra work," said he.
"Not so quickly as having some one about interfering with her," replied Adelaide.
"Then, too, it looks so bad—so stingy and—and—old-fashioned," he persisted.
"Not from mother's point of view," said Adelaide quietly.
Arthur flushed. "Always putting me in the wrong," he sneered. Then, instantly ashamed of this injustice, he went on in a different tone, "I suppose this sort of thing appeals to the romantic strain in you."
"And in mother," said Del.
Whereupon they both smiled. Romantic was about the last word anyone would think of in connection with frankly practical Ellen Ranger. She would have died without hesitation, or lived in torment, for those she loved; but she would have done it in the finest, most matter-of-fact way in the world, and without a gleam of self-conscious heroics, whether of boasting or of martyr-meekness or of any other device for signaling attention to oneself. Indeed, it would not have occurred to her that she was doing anything out of the ordinary. Nor, for that matter, would she have been; for, in this world the unheroic are, more often than not, heroes, and the heroic usually most unheroic. We pass heroism by to toss our silly caps at heroics.
"There are some things, Artie, our education has been taking out of us," continued Del, "that I don't believe we're the better for losing. I've been thinking of those things a good deal lately, and I've come to the conclusion that there really is a rotten streak in what we've been getting there in the East—you at Harvard, I at Mrs. Spenser's Select School for Young Ladies. There are ways in which mother and father are better educated than we."
"It does irritate me," admitted Arthur, "to find myself caring so much about the looks of things."
"Especially," said Adelaide, "when the people whose opinion we are afraid of are so contemptibly selfish and snobbish."
"Still mother and father are narrow-minded," insisted her brother.
"Isn't everybody, about people who don't think as they do?"
"I've not the remotest objection to their having their own views," said
Arthur loftily, "so long as they don't try to enforce those views on me."
"But do they? Haven't we been let do about as we please?"
Arthur shrugged his shoulders. The discussion had led up to property again—to whether or not his father had the right to do as he pleased with his own. And upon that discussion he did not wish to reenter. He had not a doubt of the justice of his own views; but, somehow, to state them made him seem sordid and mercenary, even to himself. Being really concerned for his mother's health, as well as about "looks," he strongly urged the doctor to issue orders on the subject of a nurse. "If you demand it, mother'll yield," he said.
"But I shan't, young man," replied Schulze curtly and with a conclusive squeezing together of his homely features. "Your mother is right. She gives your father what money can't buy and skill can't replace, what has often raised the as-good-as-dead. Some day, maybe, you'll find out what that is. You think you know now, but you don't." And there the matter rested.
The large room adjoining Hiram and Ellen's bedroom was made over into a sitting room. The first morning on which he could be taken from his bed and partially dressed, Mrs. Ranger called in both the children to assist her. The three tried to conceal their feelings as they, not without physical difficulty, lifted that helpless form to the invalid's chair which Ellen wheeled close to the bedside. She herself wheeled him into the adjoining room, to the window, with strands of ivy waving in and out in the gentle breeze, with the sun bright and the birds singing, and all the world warm and vivid and gay. Hiram's cheeks were wet with tears; they saw some tremendous emotion surging up in him. He looked at Arthur, at Adelaide, back to Arthur. Evidently he was trying to say something—something which he felt must be said. His right arm trembled, made several convulsive twitches, finally succeeded in lifting his right hand the few inches to the arm of the chair.
"What is it, father?" said Ellen.
"Yes—yes—yes," burst from him in thick, straining utterances.
"Yes—yes—yes."
Mrs. Ranger wiped her eyes. "He is silent for hours," she said; "then he seems to want to say something. But when he speaks, it's only as just now. He says 'Yes—yes—yes' over and over again until his strength gives out."
The bursting of the blood vessels in his brain had torn out the nerve connection between the seat of power of speech and the vocal organs. He could think clearly, could put his thoughts into the necessary words; but when his will sent what he wished to say along his nerves toward the vocal organs, it encountered that gap, and could not cross it.
What did he wish to say? What was the message that could not get through, though he was putting his whole soul into it? At first he would begin again the struggle to speak, as soon as he had recovered from the last effort and failure; then the idea came to him that if he would hoard strength, he might gather enough to force a passage for the words—for he did not realize that the connection was broken, and broken forever. So, he would wait, at first for several hours, later for several days; and, when he thought himself strong enough or could no longer refrain, he would try to burst the bonds which seemed to be holding him. With his children, or his wife and children, watching him with agonized faces, he would make a struggle so violent, so resolute, that even that dead body was galvanized into a ghastly distortion of tortured life. Always in vain; always the same collapse of despair and exhaustion; the chasm between thought and speech could not be bridged. They brought everything they could think of his possibly wanting; they brought to his room everyone with whom he had ever had any sort of more than casual relations—Torrey, among scores of others. But he viewed each object and each person with the same awful despairing look, his immobile lips giving muffled passage to that eternal "Yes! Yes! Yes!" And at last they decided they were mistaken, that it was no particular thing he wanted, but only the natural fierce desire to break through those prison walls, invisible, translucent, intangible, worse than death.
* * * * *
Sorrow and anxiety and care pressed so heavily and so unceasingly upon that household for several weeks that there was no time for, no thought of, anything but Hiram. Finally, however, the law of routine mercifully reasserted itself; their lives, in habit and in thought, readjusted, conformed to the new conditions, as human lives will, however chaotic has been the havoc that demolished the old routine. Then Adelaide took from her writing desk Ross's letters, which she had glanced at rather than read as they came; when she finished the rereading, or reading, she was not only as unsatisfied as when she began, but puzzled, to boot—and puzzled that she was puzzled. She read them again—it did not take long, for they were brief; even the first letter after he heard of her father's illness filled only the four sides of one sheet, and was written large and loose. "He has sent short letters," said she, "because he did not want to trouble me with long ones at this time." But, though this excuse was as plausible as most of those we invent to assist us to believe what we want to believe, it did not quite banish a certain hollow, hungry feeling, a sense of distaste for such food as the letters did provide. She was not experienced enough to know that the expression of the countenance of a letter is telltale beyond the expression of the countenance of its writer; that the face may be controlled to lie, but never yet were satisfying and fully deceptive lies told upon paper. Without being conscious of the action of the sly, subconscious instinct which prompted it, she began to revolve her friend, Theresa Howland, whose house party Ross was honoring with such an extraordinarily long lingering. "I hope Theresa is seeing that he has a good time," she said. "I suppose he thinks as he says—that he'd only be in the way here. That's a man's view! It's selfish, but who isn't selfish?"
Thus, without her being in the least aware of the process, her mind was preparing her for what was about to happen. It is a poor mind, or poorly served by its subconscious half, that is taken wholly by surprise by any blow. There are always forewarnings; and while the surface mind habitually refuses to note them, though they be clear as sunset silhouettes, the subconscious mind is not so stupid—so blind under the sweet spells of that arch-enchanter, vanity.
At last Ross came, but without sending Adelaide word. His telegram to his mother gave just time for a trap to meet him at the station. As he was ascending the broad, stone approaches of the main entrance to the house at Point Helen, she appeared in the doorway, her face really beautiful with mother-pride. For Janet she cared as it is the duty of parent to care for child; Ross she loved. It was not mere maternal imagination that made her so proud of him; he was a distinguished and attractive figure of the kind that dominates the crowds at football games, polo and tennis matches, summer resort dances, and all those events which gather together the youth of our prosperous classes. Of the medium height, with a strong look about the shoulders, with sufficiently, though not aggressively, positive features and a clear skin, with gray-green eyes, good teeth, and a pleasing expression, he had an excellent natural basis on which to build himself into a particularly engaging and plausible type of fashionable gentleman. He was in traveling tweeds of pronounced plaid which, however, he carried off without vulgarity. His trousers were rolled high, after the fashion of the day, to show dark red socks of the same color as his tie and of a shade harmonious to the stripe in the pattern of shirt and suit and to the stones in his cuff links. He looked clean, with the cleanness of a tree after the measureless drenching of a storm; he had a careless, easy air, which completely concealed his assiduous and self-complacent self-consciousness. He embraced his mother with enthusiasm.
"How well you look!" he exclaimed; then, with a glance round, "How well everything looks!"
His mother held tightly to his arm as they went into the house; she seemed elder sister rather than mother, and he delighted her by telling her so—omitting the qualifying adjective before the sister. "But you're not a bit glad to see me," he went on. "I believe you don't want me to come."
"I'm just a little cross with you for not answering my letters," replied she.
"How is Del?" he asked, and for an instant he looked embarrassed and curiously ashamed of himself.
"Adelaide is very well," was her reply in a constrained voice.
"I couldn't stay away any longer," said he. "It was tiresome up at
Windrift."
He saw her disappointment, and a smile flitted over his face which returned and remained when she said: "I thought you were finding Theresa Howland interesting."
"Oh, you did?" was his smiling reply. "And why?"
"Then you have come because you were bored?" she said, evading.
"And to see you and Adelaide. I must telephone her right away."
It seemed to be secretly amusing him to note how downcast she was by this enthusiasm for Adelaide. "I shouldn't be too eager," counseled she. "A man ought never to show eagerness with a woman. Let the women make the advances, Ross. They'll do it fast enough—when they find that they must."
"Not the young ones," said Ross. "Especially not those that have choice of many men."
"But no woman has choice of many men," replied she. "She wants the best, and when you're in her horizon, you're the best, always."
Ross, being in the privacy of his own family, gave himself the pleasure of showing that he rather thought so himself. But he said: "Nonsense. If I listened to your partiality, I'd be making a fearful ass of myself most of the time."
"Well—don't let Adelaide see that you're eager," persisted his mother subtly. "She's very good-looking and knows it and I'm afraid she's getting an exaggerated notion of her own value. She feels so certain of you."
"Of course she does," said Ross, and his mother saw that he was unmoved by her adroit thrust at his vanity.
"It isn't in human nature to value what one feels sure of."
"But she is sure of me," said Ross, and while he spoke with emphasis, neither his tone nor his look was quite sincere. "We're engaged, you know."
"A boy and girl affair. But nothing really settled."
"I've given my word and so has she."
Mrs. Whitney had difficulty in not looking as disapproving as she felt. A high sense of honor had been part of her wordy training of her children; but she had relied—she hoped, not in vain—upon their common sense to teach them to reconcile and adjust honor to the exigencies of practical life. "That's right, dear," said she. "A man or a woman can't be too honorable. Still, I should not wish you to make her and yourself unhappy. And I know both of you would be unhappy if, by marrying, you were to spoil each other's careers. And your father would not be able to allow or to leave you enough to maintain an establishment such as I've set my heart on seeing you have. Mr. Ranger has been acting very strange of late—almost insane, I'd say." Her tone became constrained as if she were trying to convey more than she dared put into words. "I feel even surer than when I wrote you, that he's leaving a large part of his fortune to Tecumseh College." And she related—with judicious omissions and embroideries—her last talk with Hiram, and the events that centered about it.
Ross retained the impassive expression he had been cultivating ever since he read in English "high life" novels descriptions of the bearing of men of the "haut monde." "That's of no consequence," was his comment, in a tone of indifference. "I'm not marrying Del for her money."
"Don't throw yourself away, Ross," said she, much disquieted. "I feel sure you've been brought up too sensibly to do anything reckless. At least, be careful how you commit yourself until you are sure. In our station people have to think of a great many things before they think of anything so uncertain and so more or less fanciful as love. Rest assured, Adelaide is thinking of those things. Don't be less wise than she."
He changed the subject, and would not go back to it; and after a few minutes he telephoned Adelaide, ordered a cart, and set out to take her for a drive. Mrs. Whitney watched him depart with a heavy heart and so piteous a face that Ross was moved almost to the point of confiding in her what he was pretending not to admit to himself. "Ross is sensible beyond his years," she said to herself sadly, "but youth is so romantic. It never can see beyond the marriage ceremony."
Adelaide, with as much haste as was compatible with the demands of so important an occasion, was getting into a suitable costume. Suddenly she laid aside the hat she had selected from among several that were what the Fifth Avenue milliners call the "dernier cri." "No, I'll not go!" she exclaimed.
Ever since her father was stricken she had stayed near him. Ellen had his comfort and the household to look after, and besides was not good at initiating conversation and carrying it on alone; Arthur's tongue was paralyzed in his father's presence by his being unable for an instant to forget there what had occurred between them. So Del had borne practically the whole burden of filling the dreary, dragging hours for him—who could not speak, could not even show whether he understood or not. He had never been easy to talk to; now, when she could not tell but that what she said jarred upon a sick and inflamed soul, aggravating his torture by reminding him of things he longed to know yet could not inquire about, tantalizing him with suggestions—She dared not let her thoughts go far in that direction; it would soon have been impossible to send him any message beyond despairing looks.
Sometimes she kissed him. She knew he was separated from her as by a heavy, grated prison door, and was unable to feel the electric thrill of touch; yet she thought he must get some joy out of the sight of the dumb show of caress. Again, she would give up trying to look cheerful, and would weep—and let him see her weep, having an instinct that he understood what a relief tears were to her, and that she let him see them to make him feel her loving sympathy. Again, she would be so wrought upon by the steady agony of those fixed eyes that she would leave him abruptly to hide herself and shudder, tearless, at the utter misery and hopelessness of it all. She wondered at her mother's calm until she noticed, after a few weeks, how the face was withering with that shriveling which comes from within when a living thing is dying at the core.
She read the Bible to him, selecting consolatory passage with the aid of a concordance, in the evenings after he had been lifted into bed for the night. She was filled with protest as she read; for it seemed to her that this good man, her best of fathers, thus savagely and causelessly stricken, was proof before her eyes that the sentences executed against men were not divine, but the devilish emanations of brute chance. "There may be a devil," she said to herself, frightened at her own blasphemy, "but there certainly is no God." Again, the Bible's promises, so confident, so lofty, so marvelously responsive to the longings and cravings of every kind of desolation and woe, had a soothing effect upon her; and they helped to put her in the frame of mind to find for conversation—or, rather, for her monologues to him—subjects which her instinct told her would be welcome visitors in that prison.
She talked to him of how he was loved, of how noble his influence had been in their lives. She analyzed him to himself, saying things she would never have dared say had there been the slightest chance of so much response as the flutter of an eyelid. And as, so it seemed to her, the sympathetic relations and understanding between them grew, she became franker, talked of her aspirations—new-born aspirations in harmony with his life and belief. And, explaining herself for his benefit and bringing to light her inmost being to show to him, she saw it herself. And when she one day said to him, "Your illness has made a better woman of me, father, dear father," she felt it with all her heart.
It was from this atmosphere, and enveloped in it, that she went out to greet Ross; and, as she went, she was surprised at her own calmness before the prospect of seeing him again, after six months' separation—the longest in their lives.
His expression was scrupulously correct—joy at seeing her shadowed by sympathy for her calamity. When they were safely alone, he took her hand and was about to kiss her. Her beauty was of the kind that is different from, and beyond, memory's best photograph. She never looked exactly the same twice; that morning she seemed to him far more tempting than he had been thinking, with his head for so many weeks full of worldly ideas. He was thrilled anew, and his resolve hesitated before the fine pallor of her face, the slim lines of her figure, and the glimpses of her smooth white skin through the openwork in the yoke and sleeves of her blouse. But, instead of responding she drew back, just a little. He instantly suspected her of being in the state of mind into which he had been trying to get himself. He dropped her hand. A trifling incident, but a trifle is enough to cut the communications between two human beings; it often accomplishes what the rudest shocks would not. They went to the far, secluded end of the garden, he asking and she answering questions about her father.
"What is it, Del?" he said abruptly, at length. "You act strained toward me." He did not say this until she had been oppressed almost into silence by the height and the thickness of the barrier between them.
"I guess it's because I've been shut in with father," she suggested. "I've seen no one to talk to, except the family and the doctor, for weeks." And she tried to fix her mind on how handsome and attractive he was. As a rebuke to her heart's obstinate lukewarmness she forced herself to lay her hand in his.
He held it loosely. Her making this slight overture was enough to restore his sense of superiority; his resolve grew less unsteady. "It's the first time," he went on, "that we've really had the chance to judge how we actually feel toward each other—that's what's the matter." His face—he was not looking at her—took on an expression of sad reproach. "Del, I don't believe you—care. You've found it out, and don't want to hurt my feelings by telling me." And he believed what he was saying. It might have been—well, not quite right, for him to chill toward her and contemplate breaking the engagement, but that she should have been doing the same thing—his vanity was erect to the last feather. "It's most kind of you to think so considerately of me," he said satirically.
She took her hand away. "And you?" she replied coldly. "Are your feelings changed?"
"I—oh, you know I love you," was his answer in a deliberately careless tone.
She laughed with an attempt at raillery. "You've been too long up at Windrift—you've been seeing too much of Theresa Howland," said she, merely for something to say; for Theresa was neither clever nor pretty, and Del hadn't it in her to suspect him of being mercenary.
He looked coldly at her. "I have never interfered with your many attentions from other men," said he stiffly. "On the contrary, I have encouraged you to enjoy yourself, and I thought you left me free in the same way."
The tears came to her eyes; and he saw, and proceeded to value still less highly that which was obviously so securely his.
"Whatever is the matter with you, Ross, this morning?" she cried. "Or is it I? Am I—"
"It certainly is not I," he interrupted icily. "I see you again after six months, and I find you changed completely."
A glance from her stopped him. "Oh!" she exclaimed, with a dangerous smile. "You are out of humor this morning and are seeking a quarrel."
"That would be impossible," he retorted. "I never quarrel. Evidently you have forgotten all about me."
Her pride would not let her refuse the challenge, convert in his words, frank in his eyes.
"Possibly," mocked she, forcing herself to look amusedly at him. "I don't bother much about people I don't see."
"You take a light view of our engagement," was his instant move.
"I should take a still lighter view," retorted she, "if I thought the way you're acting was a fair specimen of your real self."
This from Adelaide, who had always theretofore shared in his almost reverent respect for himself. Adelaide judging him, criticising him! All Ross's male instinct for unquestioning approval from the female was astir. "You wish to break our engagement?" he inquired, with a glance of cold anger that stiffened her pride and suppressed her impulse to try to gain time.
"You're free," said she, and her manner so piqued him, that to nerve himself to persist he had to think hard on the magnificence of Windrift and the many Howland millions and the rumored Ranger will. She, in a series of jerks and pauses, took off the ring; with an expression and a gesture that gave no further hint of how she had valued it, both for its own beauty and for what it represented, she handed it to him. "If that's all," she went on, "I'll go back to father." To perfect her pretense, she should have risen, shaken hands cheerfully with him, and sent him carelessly away. She knew it; but she could not.
He was not the man to fail to note that she made no move to rise, or to fail to read the slightly strained expression in her eyes and about the corners of her mouth. That betrayal lost Adelaide a triumph; for, seeing her again, feeling her beauty and her charm in all his senses, reminded of her superiority in brains and in taste to the women from whom he might choose, he was making a losing fight for the worldly wise course. "Anyhow, I must tame her a bit," he reflected, now that he was sure she would be his, should he find on further consideration that he wanted her rather than Theresa's fortune. He accordingly took his hat, drew himself up, bowed coldly.
"Good morning," he said. And he was off, down the drive—to the lower end where the stableboy was guarding his trap—he was seated—he was driving away—he was gone—gone!
She did not move until he was no longer in sight. Then she rushed into the house, darted up to her room, locked herself in and gave way. It was the first serious quarrel she had ever had with him; it was so little like a quarrel, so ominously like a—No; absurd! It could not be a finality. She rejected that instantly, so confident had beauty and position as a prospective heiress made her as to her powers over any man she chose to try to fascinate, so secure was she in the belief that Ross loved her and would not give her up in any circumstances. She went over their interview, recalled his every sentence and look—this with surprising coolness for a young woman as deeply in love as she fancied herself. And her anger rose against him—a curious kind of anger, to spring and flourish in a loving heart. "He has been flattered by Theresa until he has entirely lost his point of view," she decided. "I'll give him a lesson when he comes trying to make it up."
* * * * *
He drove the part of his homeward way that was through streets with his wonted attention to "smartness." True "man of the world," he never for many consecutive minutes had himself out of his mind—how he was conducting himself, what people thought of him, what impression he had made or was making or was about to make. He estimated everybody and everything instinctively and solely from the standpoint of advantage to himself. Such people, if they have the intelligence to hide themselves under a pleasing surface, and the wisdom to plan, and the energy to execute, always get just about what they want; for intelligence and energy are invincible weapons, whether the end be worthy or not. As soon, however, as he was in the road up to the Bluffs, deserted at that hour, his body relaxed, his arms and hands dropped from the correct angle for driving, the reins lay loose upon the horse's back, and he gave himself to dejection. He had thought—at Windrift—that, once he was free from the engagement which was no longer to his interest, he would feel buoyant, elated. Instead, he was mentally even more downcast a figure than his relaxed attitude and gloomy face made him physically. His mother's and his "set's" training had trimmed generous instincts close to the roots, and, also, such ideals as were not purely for material matters, especially for ostentation. But, being still a young man, those roots not only were alive, but also had an under-the-soil vigor; they even occasionally sent to the surface sprouts—that withered in the uncongenial air of his surroundings and came to nothing. Just now these sprouts were springing in the form of self-reproaches. Remembering with what thoughts he had gone to Adelaide, he felt wholly responsible for the broken engagement, felt that he had done a contemptible thing, had done it in a contemptible way; and he was almost despising himself, looking about the while for self-excuses. The longer he looked the worse off he was; for the more clearly he saw that he was what he called, and thought, in love with this fresh young beauty, so swiftly and alluringly developing. It exasperated him with the intensity of selfishness's avarice that he could not have both Theresa Howland's fortune and Adelaide. It seemed to him that he had a right to both. Not in the coldly selfish only is the fact of desire in itself the basis of right. By the time he reached home, he was angry through and through, and bent upon finding some one to be angry with. He threw the reins to a groom and, savagely sullen of face, went slowly up the terrace-like steps.
His mother, on the watch for his return, came to meet him. "How is Mr.
Ranger this morning?" she asked.
"Just the same," he answered curtly.
"And—Del?"
No answer.
They went into the library; he lit a cigarette and seated himself at the writing table. She watched him anxiously but had far too keen insight to speak and give him the excuse to explode. Not until she turned to leave the room did he break his surly silence to say: "I might as well tell you. I'm engaged to Theresa Howland."
"O Ross, I'm so glad!" she exclaimed, lighting up with pride and pleasure. Then, warned by his expression, she restrained herself. "I have felt certain for a long time that you would not throw yourself away on Adelaide. She is a nice girl—pretty, sweet, and all that. But women differ from each other only in unimportant details. A man ought to see to it that by marrying he strengthens his influence and position in the world and provides for the standing of his children. And I think Theresa has far more steadiness; and, besides, she has been about the world—she was presented at court last spring a year ago, wasn't she? She is such a lady. It will be so satisfactory to have her as the head of your establishment—probably Mr. Howland will give her Windrift. And her cousin—that Mr. Fanning she married—is connected with all the best families in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. They are at the top of our aristocracy."
This recital was not to inform, but to inspire—to remind him what a wise and brilliant move he had made in the game of life. And it had precisely the effect she intended. Had she not herself created and fostered in him the nature that would welcome such stuff as a bat welcomes night?
"I'm going back to Windrift to-morrow," he said, still sullen, but with the note of the quarrel-seeker gone from his voice.
"When do you wish me to write to her?"
"Whenever you like," he said. The defiance in his tone was for Adelaide.
"The engagement is to be announced as soon as I get back."
Mrs. Whitney was called away, and Ross tried to write to Theresa. But the words wouldn't come. He wandered restlessly about the room, ordered the electric, went to the Country Club. After an hour of bitterness, he called up his mother. "You needn't send that note we were talking about just yet," he said.
"But I've already sent it," his mother answered. In fact, the note was just then lying on the table at her elbow.
"What were you in such a devil of a hurry for?" he stormed—an unnecessary question, for he knew his mother was the sort of person that loses no time in settling an important matter beyond possibility of change.
"I'm sorry, Ross," she replied soothingly. "I thought I might as well send it, as you had told me everything was settled."
"Oh—all right—no matter." He could break with Theresa whenever he wished. Perhaps he would not wish to break with her; perhaps, after a few days he would find that his feeling for Adelaide was in reality no stronger than he had thought it at Windrift, when Theresa was tempting him with her huge fortune. There was plenty of time before it would be necessary to make final choice.
Nevertheless, he did not leave Saint X, but hung round, sour and morose, hoping for some sign from "tamed" Adelaide.
* * * * *
As soon as Theresa got Mrs. Whitney's note, she wrote to Adelaide. "I've promised not to tell," her letter began, "but I never count any promise of that kind as including you, dear, sweet Adelaide—"
Adelaide smiled as she read this; Theresa's passion for intimate confession had been the joke of the school. "Besides," Adelaide read on, "I think you'll be especially interested as Ross tells me there was some sort of a boy-and-girl flirtation between you and him. I don't see how you could get over it. Now—you've guessed. Yes—we're engaged, and will probably be married up here in the fall—Windrift is simply divine then, you know. And I want you to be my 'best man.' The others'll be Edna and Clarice and Leila and Annette and perhaps Jessie and Anita. We're to live in Chicago—father will give us a house, I'm sure. And you must come to visit us—"
It is hardly fair to eavesdrop upon a young woman in such an hour as this of Adelaide's. Only those might do so who are willing freely to concede to others that same right to be human which they themselves exercise, whether they will or no, when things happen that smash the veneer of "gentleman" or "lady" like an eggshell under a plowboy's heel, and penetrate to and roil that unlovely human nature which is in us all. Criticism is supercilious, even when it is just; so, without criticism, the fact is recorded that Adelaide paced the floor and literally raved in her fury at this double-distilled, double treachery. The sense that she had lost the man she believed she loved was drowned in the oceanic flood of infuriated vanity. She raged now against Ross and now against Theresa "She's marrying him just because she's full of envy, and can't bear to see anybody else have anything," she fumed. "Theresa couldn't love anybody but herself. And he—he's marrying her for her money. She isn't good to look at; to be in the house with her is to find out how mean and small and vain she is. It serves me right for being snob enough to have such a friend. If she hadn't been immensely rich and surrounded by such beautiful things I'd never have had anything to do with her. She's buying him; he's selling himself. How vile!"
But the reasons why they were betraying her did not change or mitigate the fact of betrayal; and that fact showed itself to proud, confident Adelaide Ranger in the form of the proposition that she had been jilted, and that all the world, all her world, would soon know it. Jilted! She—Adelaide Ranger—the all-conqueror—flung aside, flouted, jilted. She went back to that last word; it seemed to concentrate all the insult and treason and shame that were heaped upon her. And she never once thought of the wound to her heart; the fierce fire of vanity seemed to have cauterized it—if there was a wound.