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[Illustration: "_THE FAIR AND SOMETIMES UNCERTAIN DAUGHTER OF THE HOUSE
OF MILBREY_." (See page 182.)]




THE SPENDERS

A TALE OF THE THIRD GENERATION

BY

HARRY LEON WILSON



_Illustrated by_ O'NEILL LATHAM

1902




To L. L. J.




FOREWORD

The wanderers of earth turned to her--outcast of the older lands--
With a promise and hope in their pleading, and she reached them pitying
  hands;
And she cried to the Old-World cities that drowse by the Eastern main:
"Send me your weary, house-worn broods and I'll send you Men again!
Lo, here in my wind-swept reaches, by my marshalled peaks of snow,
Is room for a larger reaping than your o'ertilled fields can grow.
Seed of the Main Seed springing to stature and strength in my sun,
Free with a limitless freedom no battles of men have won,"
For men, like the grain of the corn fields, grow small in the huddled
  crowd,
And weak for the breath of spaces where a soul may speak aloud;
For hills, like stairways to heaven, shaming the level track,
And sick with the clang of pavements and the marts of the trafficking
  pack.
Greatness is born of greatness, and breadth of a breadth profound;
The old Antaean fable of strength renewed from the ground
Was a human truth for the ages; since the hour of the Edenbirth
That man among men was strongest who stood with his feet on the earth!

SHARLOT MABRIDTH HALL.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER

I. The Second Generation Is Removed

II. How the First Generation Once Righted Itself

III. Billy Brue Finds His Man

IV. The West Against the East

V. Over the Hills

VI. A Meeting and a Clashing

VII. The Rapid-fire Lorgnon Is Spiked

VIII. Up Skiplap Canon

IX. Three Letters, Private and Confidential

X. The Price of Averting a Scandal

XI. How Uncle Peter Bines Once Cut Loose

XII. Plans for the Journey East

XIII. The Argonauts Return to the Rising Sun

XIV. Mr. Higbee Communicates Some Valuable Information

XV. Some Light With a Few Side-lights

XVI. With the Barbaric Hosts

XVII. The Patricians Entertain

XVIII. The Course of True Love at a House Party

XIX. An Afternoon Stroll and an Evening Catastrophe

XX. Doctor Von Herslich Expounds the Hightower Hotel and Certain Allied
Phenomena

XXI. The Diversions of a Young Multi-millionaire

XXII. The Distressing Adventure of Mrs. Bines

XXIII. The Summer Campaign Is Planned

XXIV. The Sight of a New Beauty, and Some Advice from Higbee

XXV. Horace Milbrey Upholds the Dignity of His House

XXVI. A Hot Day in New York, with News of an Interesting Marriage

XXVII. A Sensational Turn in the Milbrey Fortunes

XXVIII. Uncle Peter Bines Comes to Town With His Man

XXIX. Uncle Peter Bines Threatens to Raise Something

XXX. Uncle Peter Inspires His Grandson to Worthy Ambitions

XXXI. Concerning Consolidated Copper and Peter Bines as Matchmakers

XXXII. Devotion to Business and a Chance Meeting

XXXIII. The Amateur Napoleon of Wall Street

XXXIV. How the Chinook Came to Wall Street

XXXV. The News Broken, Whereupon an Engagement is Broken

XXXVI. The God in the Machine

XXXVII. The Departure of Uncle Peter--And Some German Philosophy

XXXVIII. Some Phenomena Peculiar to Spring

XXXIX. An Unusual Plan of Action Is Matured

XL. Some Rude Behaviour, of Which Only a Western Man Could Be Guilty

XLI. The New Argonauts




ILLUSTRATIONS


"The fair and sometimes uncertain daughter of the house of Milbrey"

"'Well, Billy Brue,--what's doin'?'"

"The spell was broken"

"'Why, you'd be Lady Casselthorpe, with dukes and counts takin' off
their crowns to you'"

"'Remember that saying of your pa's, "it takes all kinds of fools to
make a world"'"

"'Say it that way--" Miss Milbrey is engaged with Mr. Bines, and can't
see you"'"




THE SPENDERS




CHAPTER I.

The Second Generation is Removed


When Daniel J. Bines died of apoplexy in his private car at Kaslo
Junction no one knew just where to reach either his old father or his
young son with the news of his death. Somewhere up the eastern slope of
the Sierras the old man would be leading, as he had long chosen to lead
each summer, the lonely life of a prospector. The young man, two years
out of Harvard, and but recently back from an extended European tour,
was at some point on the North Atlantic coast, beginning the season's
pursuit of happiness as he listed.

Only in a land so young that almost the present dwellers therein have
made it might we find individualities which so decisively failed to
blend. So little congruous was the family of Bines in root, branch, and
blossom, that it might, indeed, be taken to picture an epic of Western
life as the romancer would tell it. First of the line stands the figure
of Peter Bines, the pioneer, contemporary with the stirring days of
Frémont, of Kit Carson, of Harney, and Bridger; the fearless strivers
toward an ever-receding West, fascinating for its untried dangers as
for its fabled wealth,--the sturdy, grave men who fought and toiled and
hoped, and realised in varying measure, but who led in sober truth a
life such as the colours of no taleteller shall ever be high enough to
reproduce.

Next came Daniel J. Bines, a type of the builder and organiser who
followed the trail blazed by the earlier pioneer; the genius who,
finding the magic realm opened, forthwith became its exploiter to its
vast renown and his own large profit, coining its wealth of minerals,
lumber, cattle, and grain, and adventurously building the railroads
that must always be had to drain a new land of savagery.

Nor would there be wanting a third--a figure of this present day,
containing, in potency at least, the stanch qualities of his two rugged
forbears,--the venturesome spirit that set his restless grandsire to
roving westward, the power to group and coordinate, to "think three
moves ahead" which had made his father a man of affairs; and, further,
he had something modern of his own that neither of the others
possessed, and yet which came as the just fruit of the parent vine: a
disposition perhaps a bit less strenuous, turning back to the risen
rather than forward to the setting sun; a tendency to rest a little
from the toil and tumult; to cultivate some graces subtler than those
of adventure and commercialism; to make the most of what had been done
rather than strain to the doing of needless more; to live, in short,
like a philosopher and a gentleman who has more golden dollars a year
than either philosophers or gentlemen are wont to enjoy.

And now the central figure had gone suddenly at the age of fifty-two,
after the way of certain men who are quick, ardent, and generous in
their living. From his luxurious private car, lying on the side-track
at the dreary little station, Toler, private secretary to the
millionaire, had telegraphed to the headquarters of one important
railway company the death of its president, and to various mining,
milling, and lumbering companies the death of their president,
vice-president, or managing director as the case might be. For the
widow and only daughter word of the calamity had gone to a mountain
resort not far from the family home at Montana City.

There promised to be delay in reaching the other two. The son would
early read the news, Toler decided, unless perchance he were off at
sea, since the death of a figure like Bines would be told by every
daily newspaper in the country. He telegraphed, however, to the young
man's New York apartments and to a Newport address, on the chance of
finding him.

Locating old Peter Bines at this season of the year was a feat never
lightly to be undertaken, nor for any trivial end. It being now the
10th of June, it could be known with certainty only that in one of four
States he was prowling through some wooded canon, toiling over a windy
pass, or scaling a mountain sheerly, in his ancient and best loved
sport of prospecting. Knowing his habits, the rashest guesser would not
have attempted to say more definitely where the old man might be.

The most promising plan Toler could devise was to wire the
superintendent of the "One Girl" Mine at Skiplap. The elder Bines, he
knew, had passed through Skiplap about June 1st, and had left, perhaps,
some inkling of his proposed route; if it chanced, indeed, that he had
taken the trouble to propose one.

Pangburn, the mine superintendent, on receipt of the news, despatched
five men on the search in as many different directions. The old man was
now seventy-four, and Pangburn had noted when last they met that he
appeared to be somewhat less agile and vigorous than he had been twenty
years before; from which it was fair to reason that he might be playing
his solitary game at a leisurely pace, and would have tramped no great
distance in the ten days he had been gone. The searchers, therefore,
were directed to beat up the near-by country. To Billy Brue was
allotted the easiest as being the most probable route. He was to follow
up Paddle Creek to Four Forks, thence over the Bitter Root trail to
Eden, on to Oro Fino, and up over Little Pass to Hellandgone. He was to
proceed slowly, to be alert for signs along the way, and to make
inquiries of all he met.

"You're likely to get track of Uncle Peter," said Pangburn, "over along
the west side of Horseback Ridge, just beyond Eden. When he pulled out
he was talking about some likely float-rock he'd picked up over that
way last summer. You'd ought to make that by to-morrow, seeing you've
got a good horse and the trail's been mended this spring. Now you
spread yourself out, Billy, and when you get on to the Ridge make a
special look all around there."

Besides these directions and the telegram from Toler, Billy Brue took
with him a copy of the Skiplap _Weekly Ledge_, damp from the press and
containing the death notice of Daniel J. Bines, a notice sent out by
the News Association, which Billy Brue read with interest as he started
up the trail. The item concluded thus:

"The young and beautiful Mrs. Bines, who had been accompanying her
husband on his trip of inspection over the Sierra Northern, is
prostrated with grief at the shock of his sudden death."

Billy Brue mastered this piece of intelligence after six readings, but
he refrained from comment, beyond thanking God, in thought, that he
could mind his own business under excessive provocation to do
otherwise. He considered it no meddling, however, to remember that Mrs.
Daniel J. Bines, widow of his late employer, could appear neither young
nor beautiful to the most sanguine of newsgatherers; nor to remember
that he happened to know she had not accompanied her husband on his
last trip of inspection over the Kaslo Division of the Sierra Northern
Railway.




CHAPTER II.

How the First Generation Once Righted Itself


By some philosophers unhappiness is believed--rather than coming from
deprivation or infliction--to result from the individual's failure to
select from a number of possible occupations one that would afford him
entire satisfaction with life and himself. To this perverse blindness
they attribute the dissatisfaction with great wealth traditional of men
who have it. The fault, they contend, is not with wealth inherently.
The most they will admit against money is that the possession of much
of it tends to destroy that judicial calm necessary to a wise choice of
recreations; to incline the possessor, perhaps, toward those that are
unsalutary.

Concerning the old man that Billy Brue now sought with his news of
death, a philosopher of this school would unhesitatingly declare that
he had sounded the last note of human wisdom. Far up in some mountain
solitude old Peter Bines, multimillionaire, with a lone pack-mule to
bear his meagre outfit, picked up float-rock, tapped and scanned
ledges, and chipped at boulders with the same ardour that had fired him
in his penniless youth.

Back in 1850, a young man of twenty-four, he had joined the rush to
California, working his passage as deck-hand on a vessel that doubled
the Horn. Landing without capital at San Francisco, the little seaport
settlement among the shifting yellow sand-dunes, he had worked six
weeks along the docks as roustabout for money to take him back into the
hills whence came the big fortunes and the bigger tales of fortunes.
For six years he worked over the gravelly benches of the California
creeks for vagrant particles of gold. Then, in the late fifties, he
joined a mad stampede to the Frazer River gold-fields in British
Columbia, still wild over its first knowledge of silver sulphurets, he
was drawn back by the wonder-tales of the Comstock lode.

Joining the bedraggled caravan over the Carson trail, he continued his
course of bitter hardship in the Washoe Valley. From a patch of barren
sun-baked rock and earth, three miles long and a third of a mile wide,
high up on the eastern slope of Mount Davidson, he beheld more millions
taken out than the wildest enthusiast had ever before ventured to dream
of. But Peter Bines was a luckless unit of the majority that had
perforce to live on the hope produced by others' findings. The time for
his strike had not come.

For ten years more, half-clad in flannel shirt and overalls, he lived
in flimsy tents, tattered canvas houses, and sometimes holes in the
ground. One abode of luxury, long cherished in memory, was a
ten-by-twelve redwood shanty on Feather River. It not only boasted a
window, but there was a round hole in the "shake" roof, fastidiously
cut to fit a stove-pipe. That he never possessed a stove-pipe had made
this feature of the architecture not less sumptuous and engaging. He
lived chiefly on salt pork and beans, cooked over smoky camp-fires.

Through it all he was the determined, eager, confident prospector,
never for an instant prey to even the suggestion of a doubt that he
would not shortly be rich. Whether he washed the golden specks from the
sand of a sage-brush plain, or sought the mother-ledge of some
wandering golden child, or dug with his pick to follow a promising
surface lead, he knew it to be only the matter of time when his day
should dawn. He was of the make that wears unbending hope as its
birthright.

Some day the inexhaustible placer would be found; or, on a mountainside
where the porphyry was stained, he would carelessly chip off a fragment
of rock, turn it up to the sun, and behold it rich in ruby silver; or,
some day, the vein instead of pinching out would widen; there would be
pay ore almost from the grass-roots--rich, yellow, free-milling gold,
so that he could put up a little arastra, beat out enough in a week to
buy a small stamp-mill, and then, in six months--ten years more of this
fruitless but nourishing certainty were his,--ten years of the awful
solitudes, shared sometimes by his hardy and equally confident wife,
and, at the last, by his boy, who had become old enough to endure with
his father the snow and ice of the mountain tops and the withering heat
of the alkali wastes.

Footsore, hungry most of the time, alternately burned and frozen, he
lived the life cheerfully and tirelessly, with an enthusiasm that never
faltered.

When his day came it brought no surprise, so freshly certain had he
kept of its coming through the twenty years of search.

At his feet, one July morning in 1870, he noticed a piece of
dark-stained rock in a mass of driftstones. So small was it that to
have gone a few feet to either side would have been to miss it. He
picked it up and examined it leisurely. It was rich in silver.

Somewhere, then, between him and the mountain top was the parent stock
from which this precious fragment had been broken. The sun beat hotly
upon him as it had on other days through all the hard years when
certainty, after all, was nothing more than a temperamental faith. All
day he climbed and searched methodically, stopping at noon to eat with
an appetite unaffected by his prospect.

At sunset he would have stopped for the day, camping on the spot. He
looked above to estimate the ground he could cover on the morrow.
Almost in front of him, a few yards up the mountainside, he looked
squarely at the mother of his float: a huge boulder of projecting
silicate. It was there.

During the following week he ascertained the dimensions of his vein of
silver ore, and located two claims. He named them "The Stars and
Stripes" and "The American Boy," paying thereby what he considered
tributes, equally deserved, to his native land and to his only son,
Daniel, in whom were centred his fondest hopes.

A year of European travel had followed for the family, a year of
spending the new money lavishly for strange, long-dreamed-of
luxuries--a year in which the money was joyously proved to be real.
Then came a year of tentative residence in the East. That year was less
satisfactory. The novelty of being sufficiently fed, clad, and
sheltered was losing its fine edge.

Penniless and constrained to a life of privation, Peter Bines had been
strangely happy. Rich and of consequence in a community where the ways
were all of pleasantness and peace, Peter Bines became restless,
discontented, and, at last, unmistakably miserable.

"It can't be because I'm rich," he argued; "it's a sure thing my money
can't keep me from doin' jest what I want to do."

Then a suspicion pricked him; for he had, in his years of solitude,
formed the habit of considering, in a leisurely and hospitable manner,
even the reverse sides of propositions that are commonly accepted by
men without question.

"The money _can't_ prevent me from doin' what I jest want
to--certain--but, maybe, _don't_ it? If I didn't have it I'd fur sure
be back in the hills and happy, and so would Evalina, that ain't had
hardly what you could call a good day since we made the strike."

On this line of reasoning it took Peter Bines no long time to conclude
that he ought now to enjoy as a luxury what he had once been
constrained to as a necessity.

"Even when I was poor and had to hit the trail I jest loved them hills,
so why ain't it crafty to pike back to 'em now when I don't have to?"

His triumphant finale was:

"When you come to think about it, a rich man ain't really got any more
excuse fur bein' mis'able than a poor man has!"

Back to the big hills that called him had he gone; away from the cities
where people lived "too close together and too far apart;" back to the
green, rough earth where the air was free and quick and a man could see
a hundred miles, and the people lived far enough apart to be
neighbourly.

There content had blessed him again; content not slothful but inciting;
a content that embraced his own beloved West, fashioning first in fancy
and then by deed, its own proud future. He had never ceased to plan and
stimulate its growth. He not only became one with its manifold
interests, but proudly dedicated the young Daniel to its further
making. He became an ardent and bigoted Westerner, with a scorn for the
East so profound that no Easterner's scorn for the West hath ever by
any chance equalled it.

Prospecting with the simple outfit of old became his relaxation, his
sport, and, as he aged, his hobby. It was said that he had exalted
prospecting to the dignity of an art, and no longer hunted gold as a
pot-hunter. He was even reputed to have valuable deposits "covered,"
and certain it is that after Creede made his rich find on Mammoth
Mountain in 1890, Peter Bines met him in Denver and gave him
particulars about the vein which as yet Creede had divulged to no one.
Questioned later concerning this, Peter Bines evaded answering
directly, but suggested that a man who already had plenty of money
might have done wisely to cover up the find and be still about it; that
Nat Creede himself proved as much by going crazy over his wealth and
blowing out his brains.

To a tamely prosperous Easterner who, some years after his return to
the West, made the conventional remark, "And isn't it amazing that you
were happy through those hard years of toil when you were so poor?"
Peter Bines had replied, to his questioner's hopeless bewilderment:
"No. But it _is_ surprisin' that I kept happy after I got rich--after I
got what I wanted.

"I reckon you'll find," he added, by way of explaining, "that the
proportion of happy rich to unhappy rich is a mighty sight smaller than
the proportion of happy poor to the unhappy poor. I'm one of the former
minority, all right,--but, by cripes! it's because I know how to be
rich and still enjoy all the little comforts of poverty!"




CHAPTER III.

Billy Brue Finds His Man


Each spring the old man grew restive and raw like an unbroken colt. And
when the distant mountain peaks began to swim in their summer haze, and
the little rushing rivers sang to him, pleading that he come once more
to follow them up, he became uncontrollable. Every year at this time he
alleged, with a show of irritation, that his health was being sapped by
the pernicious indulgence of sleeping on a bed inside a house. He
alleged, further, that stocks and bonds were but shadows of wealth,
that the old mines might any day become exhausted, and that security
for the future lay only in having one member of the family, at least,
looking up new pay-rock against the ever possible time of adversity.

"They ain't got to makin' calendars yet with the rainy day marked on
'em," he would say. "A'most any one of them innocent lookin' Mondays or
Tuesdays or Wednesdays is liable to be _it_ when you get right up on to
it. I'll have to start my old bones out again, I see that. Things are
beginnin' to green up a'ready." When he did go it was always understood
to be positively for not more than two weeks. A list of his reasons for
extending the time each year to three or four months would constitute
the ideal monograph on human duplicity. When hard-pushed on his return,
he had once or twice been even brazen enough to assert that he had lost
his way in the mountain fastnesses. But, for all his protestations, no
one when he left in June expected to see him again before September at
the earliest. In these solitary tours he was busy and happy, working
and playing. "Work," he would say, "is something you want to get done;
play is something you jest like to be doin'. Snoopin' up these gulches
is both of 'em to me."

And so he loitered through the mountains, resting here, climbing there,
making always a shrewd, close reading of the rocks.

It was thus Billy Brue found him at the end of his second day's search.
A little off the trail, at the entrance to a pocket of the cañon, he
towered erect to peer down when he heard the noise of the messenger's
ascent. Standing beside a boulder of grey granite, before a background
of the gnarled dwarf-cedars, his hat off, his blue shirt open at the
neck, his bare forearms brown, hairy, and muscular, a hammer in his
right hand, his left resting lightly on his hip, he might have been the
Titan that had forged the boulder at his side, pausing now for breath
before another mighty task. Well over six feet tall, still straight as
any of the pines before him, his head and broad shoulders in the easy
poise of power, there was about him from a little distance no sign of
age. His lines were gracefully full, his bearing had still the
alertness of youth. One must have come as near as Billy Brue now came
to detect the marks of time in his face. Not of age--merely of time;
for here was no senility, no quavering or fretful lines. The grey eyes
shone bright and clear from far under the heavy, unbroken line of brow,
and the mouth was still straight and firmly held, a mouth under sure
control from corner to corner. A little had the years brought out the
rugged squareness of the chin and the deadly set of the jaws; a little
had they pressed in the cheeks to throw the high bones into broad
relief. But these were the utmost of their devastations. Otherwise
Peter Bines showed his seventy-four years only by the marks of a
well-ordered maturity. His eyes, it is true, had that look of _knowing_
which to the young seems always to betoken the futility of, and to warn
against the folly of, struggle against what must be; yet they were kind
eyes, and humourous, with many of the small lines of laughter at their
corners. Reading the eyes and mouth together one perceived gentleness
and sternness to be well matched, working to any given end in amiable
and effective compromise. "Uncle Peter" he had long been called by the
public that knew him, and his own grandchildren had come to call him by
the same term, finding him too young to meet their ideal of a
grandfather. Billy Brue, riding up the trail, halted, nodded, and was
silent. The old man returned his salutation as briefly. These things by
men who stay much alone come to be managed with verbal economy. They
would talk presently, but greetings were awkward.

Billy Brue took one foot from its stirrup and turned in his saddle,
pulling the leg up to a restful position. Then he spat, musingly, and
looked back down the cañon aimlessly, throwing his eyes from side to
side where the grey granite ledges showed through the tall spruce and
pine trees.

But the old man knew he had been sent for.

"Well, Billy Brue,--what's doin'?"

Billy Brue squirmed in the saddle, spat again, as with sudden resolve,
and said:

"Why,--uh--Dan'l J.--_he's_ dead."

The old man repeated the words, dazedly.

"Dan'l J.--_he's_ dead;--why, who else is dead, too?"

Billy Brue's emphasis, cunningly contrived by him to avoid giving
prominence to the word "dead," had suggested this inquiry in the first
moment of stupefaction.

"Nobody else dead--jest Dan'l J.--_he's_ dead."

"Jest Dan'l J.--my boy--my boy Dan'l dead!"

His mighty shape was stricken with a curious rigidity, erected there as
if it were a part of the mountain, flung up of old from the earth's
inner tragedy, confounded, desolate, ancient.

[Illustration: "'_WELL, BILLY BRUE, WHAT'S DOIN_'?'"]

Billy Brue turned from the stony interrogation of his eyes and took a
few steps away, waiting. A little wind sprang up among the higher
trees, the moments passed, and still the great figure stood transfixed
in its curious silence. The leathers creaked as the horse turned. The
messenger, with an air of surveying the canon, stole an anxious glance
at the old face. The sorrowful old eyes were fixed on things that were
not; they looked vaguely as if in search.

"Dan'l!" he said.

It was not a cry; there was nothing plaintive in it. It was only the
old man calling his son: David calling upon Absalom. Then there was a
change. He came sternly forward.

"Who killed my boy?"

"Nobody, Uncle Peter; 'twas a stroke. He was goin' over the line and
they'd laid out at Kaslo fer a day so's Dan'l J. could see about a spur
the 'Lucky Cuss' people wanted--and maybe it was the climbin' brought
it on."

The old man looked his years. As he came nearer Billy Brue saw tears
tremble in his eyes and roll unnoted down his cheeks. Yet his voice was
unbroken and he was, indeed, unconscious of the tears.

"I was afraid of that. He lived too high. He et too much and he drank
too much and was too soft--was Dan'l.--too soft--"

The old voice trembled a bit and he stopped to look aside into the
little pocket he had been exploring. Billy Brue looked back down the
canon, where the swift stream brawled itself into white foam far below.

"He wouldn't use his legs; I prodded him about it constant--"

He stopped again to brace himself against the shock. Billy Brue still
looked away.

"I told him high altitudes and high livin' would do any man--" Again he
was silent.

"But all he'd ever say was that times had changed since my day, and I
wasn't to mind him."  He had himself better in hand now.

"Why, I nursed that boy when he was a dear, funny little red baby with
big round eyes rollin' around to take notice; he took notice awful
quick--fur a baby. Oh, my! Oh, dear! Dan'l!"

Again he stopped.

"And it don't seem more'n yesterday that I was a-teachin' him to throw
the diamond hitch; he could throw the diamond hitch with his eyes shut
--I reckon by the time he was nine or ten. He had his faults, but they
didn't hurt him none; Dan'l J. was a man, now--" He halted once more.

"The dead millionaire," began Billy Brue, reading from the obituary in
the Skiplap _Weekly Ledge_, "was in his fifty-second year. Genial,
generous to a fault, quick to resent a wrong, but unfailing in his
loyalty to a friend, a man of large ideas, with a genius for large
operations, he was the type of indefatigable enterprise that has
builded this Western empire in a wilderness and given rich sustenance
and luxurious homes to millions of prosperous, happy American citizens.
Peace to his ashes! And a safe trip to his immortal soul over the
one-way trail!"

"Yes, yes--it's Dan'l J. fur sure--they got my boy Dan'l that time. Is
that all it says, Billy? Any one with him?"

"Why, this here despatch is signed by young Toler--that's his
confidential man."

"Nobody else?"

The old man was peering at him sharply from under the grey protruding
brows.

"Well, if you must know, Uncle Peter, this is what the notice says that
come by wire to the _Ledge_ office," and he read doggedly:

"The young and beautiful Mrs. Bines, who had been accompanying her
husband on his trip of inspection over the Sierra Northern, is
prostrated by the shock of his sudden death."

The old man became for the first time conscious of the tears in his
eyes, and, pulling down one of the blue woollen shirt sleeves, wiped
his wet cheeks. The slow, painful blush of age crept up across the iron
strength of his face, and passed. He looked away as he spoke.

"I knew it; I knew that. My Dan'l was like all that Frisco bunch. They
get tangled with women sooner or later. I taxed Dan'l with it. I
spleened against it and let him know it. But he was a man and his own
master--if you can rightly call a man his own master that does them
things. Do you know what-fur woman this one was, Billy?"

"Well, last time Dan'l J. was up to Skiplap, there was a swell party on
the car--kind of a coppery-lookin' blonde. Allie Ash, the brakeman on
No. 4, he tells me she used to be in Spokane, and now she'd got her
hooks on to some minin' property up in the Coeur d'Alene. Course, this
mightn't be the one."

The old man had ceased to listen. He was aroused to the need for
action.

"Get movin', Billy! We can get down to Eden to-night; we'll have the
moon fur two hours on the trail soon's the sun's gone. I can get 'em to
drive me over to Skiplap first thing to-morrow, and I can have 'em make
me up a train there fur Montana City. Was he--"

"Dan'l J. has been took home--the noozepaper says."

They turned back down the trail, the old man astride Billy Brue's
horse, followed by his pack-mule and preceded by Billy.

Already, such was his buoyance and habit of quick recovery and
readjustment under reverses, his thoughts were turning to his grandson.
Daniel's boy--there was the grandson of his grandfather--the son of his
father--fresh from college, and the instructions of European travel,
knowing many things his father had not known, ready to take up the work
of his father, and capable, perhaps, of giving it a better finish. His
beloved West had lost one of its valued builders, but another should
take his place. His boy should come to him and finish the tasks of his
father; and, in the years to come, make other mighty tasks of
empire-building for himself and the children of his children.

It did not occur to him that he and the boy might be as far apart in
sympathies and aims as at that moment they were in circumstance. For,
while the old man in the garb of a penniless prospector, toiled down
the steep mountain trail on a cheap horse, his grandson was reading the
first news of his father's death in one of the luxurious staterooms of
a large steam yacht that had just let down her anchor in Newport
Harbour. And each--but for the death--had been where most he wished to
be--one with his coarse fare and out-of-doors life, roughened and
seamed by the winds and browned by the sun to mahogany tints; aged but
playing with boyish zest at his primitive sport; the other, a
strong-limbed, well-marrowed, full-breathing youth of twenty-five, with
appetites all alert and sharpened, pink and pampered, loving luxury,
and prizing above all things else the atmosphere of wealth and its
refinements.




CHAPTER IV.

The West Against the East


Two months later a sectional war was raging in the Bines home at
Montana City. The West and the East were met in conflict,--the old and
the new, the stale and the fresh. And, if the bitterness was dissembled
by the combatants, not less keenly was it felt, nor less determined was
either faction to be relentless.

A glance about the "sitting-room" in which the opposing forces were
lined up, and into the parlour through the opened folding-doors, may
help us to a better understanding of the issue involved. Both rooms
were large and furnished in a style that had been supremely luxurious
in 1878. The house, built in that year, of Oregon pine, had been quite
the most pretentious piece of architecture in that section of the West.
It had been erected in the first days of Montana City as a convincing
testimonial from the owner to his faith in the town's future. The
plush-upholstered sofas and chairs, with their backs and legs of carved
black walnut, had come direct from New York. For pictures there were
early art-chromos, among them the once-prized companion pieces, "Wide
Awake" and "Fast Asleep." Lithography was represented by "The
Fisherman's Pride" and "The Soldier's Dream of Home." In the
handicrafts there were a photographic reproduction of the Lord's
Prayer, illustrated originally by a penman with uncommon genius for
scroll-work; a group of water-lilies in wax, floating on a mirror-lake
and protected by a glass globe; a full-rigged schooner, built cunningly
inside a bottle by a matricide serving a life-sentence in the
penitentiary at San Quinten; and a mechanical canarybird in a gilded
cage, acquired at the Philadelphia Centennial,--a bird that had
carolled its death--lay in the early winter of 1877 when it was wound
up too hard and its little insides snapped. In the parlour a few
ornamental books were grouped with rare precision on the centre-table
with its oval top of white marble. On the walls of the "sitting-room"
were a steel engraving of Abraham Lincoln striking the shackles from a
kneeling slave, and a framed cardboard rebus worked in red zephyr, the
reading of which was "No Cross, No Crown."

Thus far nothing helpful has been found.

Let us examine, then, the what-not in the "sitting-room" and the choice
Empire cabinet that faces it from the opposite wall of the parlour.

The what-not as an American institution is obsolete. Indeed, it has
been rather long since writers referred to it even in terms of
opprobrious sarcasm. The what-not, once the cherished shrine of the
American home, sheltered the smaller household gods for which no other
resting-place could be found. The Empire cabinet, with its rounding
front of glass, its painted Watteau scenes, and its mirrored back, has
come to supplant the humbler creation in the fulfilment of all its
tender or mysterious offices.

Here, perchance, may be found a clue in symbol to the family strife.

The Bines what-not in the sitting-room was grimly orthodox in its
equipment. Here was an ancient box covered with shell-work, with a wavy
little mirror in its back; a tender motto worked with the hair of the
dead; a "Rock of Ages" in a glass case, with a garland of pink chenille
around the base; two dried pine cones brightly varnished; an old
daguerreotype in an ornamental case of hard rubber; a small old album;
two small China vases of the kind that came always in pairs, standing
on mats of crocheted worsted; three sea-shells; and the cup and saucer
that belonged to grandma, which no one must touch because they'd been
broken and were held together but weakly, owing to the imperfections of
home-made cement.

The new cabinet, haughty in its varnished elegance, with its Watteau
dames and courtiers, and perhaps the knowledge that it enjoys
widespread approval among the elect,--this is a different matter. In
every American home that is a home, to-day, it demands attention. The
visitor, after eyeing it with cautious side-glances, goes jauntily up
to it, affecting to have been stirred by the mere impulse of elegant
idleness. Under the affectedly careless scrutiny of the hostess he
falls dramatically into an attitude of awed entrancement. Reverently he
gazes upon the priceless bibelots within: the mother-of-pearl fan, half
open; the tiny cup and saucer of Sèvres on their brass easel; the
miniature Cupid and Psyche in marble; the Japanese wrestlers carved in
ivory; the ballet-dancer in bisque; the coral necklace; the souvenir
spoon from the Paris Exposition; the jade bracelet; and the silver
snuff-box that grandfather carried to the day of his death. If the
gazing visitor be a person of abandoned character he makes humourous
pretence that the householder has done wisely to turn a key upon these
treasures, against the ravishings of the overwhelmed and frenzied
connoisseur. He wears the look of one who is gnawed with envy, and he
heaves the sigh of despair.

But when he notes presently that he has ceased to be observed he sneaks
cheerfully to another part of the room.

The what-not is obsolete. The Empire cabinet is regnant. Yet, though
one is the lineal descendant of the other--its sophisticated
grandchild--they are hostile and irreconcilable.

Twenty years hence the cabinet will be proscribed and its contents
catalogued in those same terms of disparagement that the what-not
became long since too dead to incur. Both will then have attained the
state of honourable extinction now enjoyed by the dodo.

The what-not had curiously survived in the Bines home--survived unto
the coming of the princely cabinet--survived to give battle if it
might.

Here, perhaps, may be found the symbolic clue to the strife's cause.

The sole non-combatant was Mrs. Bines, the widow. A neutral was this
good woman, and a well-wisher to each faction.

"I tell you it's all the same to me," she declared, "Montana City or
Fifth Avenue in New York. I guess I can do well enough in either place
so long as the rest of you are satisfied."

It had been all the same to Mrs. Bines for as many years as a woman of
fifty can remember. It was the lot of wives in her day and environment
early to learn the supreme wisdom of abolishing preferences. Riches and
poverty, ease and hardship, mountain and plain, town and wilderness,
they followed in no ascertainable sequence, and a superiority of
indifference to each was the only protection against hurts from the
unexpected.

This trained neutrality of Mrs. Bines served her finely now. She had no
leading to ally herself against her children in their wish to go East,
nor against Uncle Peter Bines in his stubborn effort to keep them West.
She folded her hands to wait on the others.

And the battle raged.

The old man, sole defender of the virtuous and stalwart West against an
East that he alleged to be effete and depraved, had now resorted to
sarcasm,--a thing that Mr. Carlyle thought was as good as the language
of the devil.

"And here, now, how about this dog-luncheon?" he continued, glancing at
a New York newspaper clutched accusingly in his hand. "It was give, I
see, by one of your Newport cronies. Now, that's healthy doin's fur a
two-fisted Christian, ain't it? I want to know. Shappyronging a select
company of lady and gentlemen dogs from soup to coffee; pressing a
little more of the dog-biscuit on this one, and seein' that the other
don't misplay its finger-bowl no way. How I would love to read of a
Bines standin' up, all in purty velvet pants, most likely, to receive
at one of them bow-wow functions;--functions, I believe, is the name of
it?" he ended in polite inquiry.

"There, there, Uncle Peter!" the young man broke in, soothingly; "you
mustn't take those Sunday newspapers as gospel truth; those stories are
printed for just such rampant old tenderfoots as you are; and even if
there is one foolish freak, he doesn't represent all society in the
better sense of the term."

"Yes, and _you_!" Uncle Peter broke out again, reminded of another
grievance. "You know well enough your true name is Peter--Pete and
Petie when you was a baby and Peter when you left for college. And
you're ashamed of what you've done, too, for you tried to hide them
callin'-cards from me the other day, only you wa'n't quick enough.
Bring 'em out! I'm bound your mother and Pish shall see 'em. Out with
'em!"

The young man, not without embarrassment, drew forth a Russia leather
card-case which the old man took from him as one having authority.

"Here you are, Marthy Bines!" he exclaimed, handing her a card; "here
you are! read it! Mr. P. Percival Bines.' _Now_ don't you feel proud of
havin' stuck out for Percival when you see it in cold print? You know
mighty well his pa and me agreed to Percival only fur a middle name,
jest to please you--and he wa'n't to be called by it;--only jest Peter
or 'Peter P.' at most; and now look at the way he's gone and garbled
his good name."

Mr. P. Percival Bines blushed furiously here, but rejoined,
nevertheless, with quiet dignity, that a man's name was something about
which he should have the ruling voice, especially where it was possible
for him to rectify or conceal the unhappy choice of his parents.

"And while we're on names," he continued, "do try to remember in case
you ever get among people, that Sis's name is Psyche and not Pish."

The blond and complacent Miss Bines here moved uneasily in her patent
blue plush rocker and spoke for the first time, with a grateful glance
at her brother.

"Yes, Uncle Peter, for mercy's sake, _do_ try! Don't make us a
laughing-stock!" "But your name is Pish. A person's name is what their
folks name 'em, ain't it? Your ma comes acrost a name in a book that
she likes the looks of, and she takes it to spell Pish, and she ups and
names you Pish, and we all calls you Pish and Pishy, and then when you
toddle off to public school and let 'em know how you spell it they tell
you it's something else--an outlandish name if spellin' means anything.
If it comes to that you ought to change the spellin' instead of the
name that your poor pa loved."

Yet the old man had come to know that he was fighting a lost
fight,--lost before it had ever begun.

"It will be a good chance," ventured Mrs. Bines, timidly, "for Pishy--I
mean Sike--Sicky--to meet the right sort of people."

"Yes, I should _say_--and the wrong sort. The ingagin' host of them
lady and gentlemen dogs, fur instance."

"But Uncle Peter," broke in the young man, "you shouldn't expect a girl
of Psyche's beauty and fortune to vegetate in Montana City all her
life. Why, any sort of brilliant marriage is possible to her if she
goes among the right people. Don't you want the family to amount to
something socially? Is our money to do us no good? And do you think I'm
going to stay here and be a moss-back and raise chin whiskers and work
myself to death the way my father did?"

"No, no," replied the old man, with a glance at the mother; "not _jest_
the way your pa did; you might do some different and some better; but
all the same, you won't do any better'n he did any way you'll learn to
live in New York. Unless you was to go broke there," he added,
thoughtfully; "in that case you got the stuff in you and it'd come out;
but you got too much money to go broke."

"And you'll see that I lead a decent enough life. Times have changed
since my father was a young man."

"Yes; that's what your pa told me,--times had changed since I was a
young man; but I could 'a' done him good if he'd 'a' listened."

"Well, we'll try it. The tide is setting that way from all over the
country. Here, listen to this editorial in the _Sun_." And he read from
his own paper:

"A GOOD PLACE TO MOVE TO.

"One of the most interesting evidences of the growth of New York is the
news that Mr. Anson Ledrick of the Consolidated Copper Company has
purchased an extensive building site on Riverside Drive and will
presently improve it with a costly residence. Mr. Ledrick's decision to
move his household effects to Manhattan Island is in accordance with a
very marked tendency of successful Americans.

"There are those who are fond of depreciating New York; of assailing it
with all sorts of cheap and sensational vituperation; of picturing it
as the one great canker spot of the Western hemisphere, as
irretrievably sunk in wickedness and shame. The fact remains, however,
that the city, as never before, is the great national centre of wealth,
culture, and distinction of every kind, and that here the citizen,
successful in art, literature, or practical achievement, instinctively
seeks his abiding-place.

"The restlessness of the average American millionaire while he remains
outside the city limits is frequently remarked upon. And even the
mighty overlords of Chicago, falling in with the prevailing fashion,
have forsaken the shores of the great inland sea and pitched their
tents with us; not to speak of the copper kings of Montana. Why is it
that these interesting men, after acquiring fortune and fame elsewhere,
are not content to remain upon the scene of their early triumphs? Why
is it that they immediately pack their carpet-bags, take the first
through train to our gates, and startle the investing public by the
manner in which they bull the price of New York building lots?"

The old man listened absently.

"And probably some day I'll read of you in that same centre of culture
and distinction as P. Percival Bines, a young man of obscure fam'ly,
that rose by his own efforts to be the dashin' young cotillion leader
and the well-known club-man, and that his pink teas fur dogs is barked
about by every fashionable canine on the island."

The young man continued to read: "These men are not vain fools; they
are shrewd, successful men of the world. They have surveyed New York
City from a distance and have discovered that, in spite of Tammany and
in spite of yellow journals, New York is a town of unequalled
attractiveness. And so they come; and their coming shows us what we
are. Not only millionaires; but also painters and novelists and men and
women of varied distinction. The city palpitates with life and ambition
and hope and promise; it attracts the great and the successful, and
those who admire greatness and success. The force of natural selection
is at work here as everywhere; and it is rapidly concentrating in our
small island whatever is finest, most progressive, and best in the
American character."

"Well, now do me a last favour before you pike off East," pleaded the
old man. "Make a trip with me over the properties. See 'em once anyway,
and see a little more of this country and these people. Mebbe they're
better'n you think. Give me about three weeks or a month, and then, by
Crimini, you can go off if you're set on it and be 'whatever is finest
and best in the American character' as that feller puts it. But some
day, son, you'll find out there's a whole lot of difference between a
great man of wealth and a man of great wealth. Them last is gettin'
terrible common."




CHAPTER V.

Over the Hills


So the old man and the young man made the round of the Bines
properties. The former nursed a forlorn little hope of exciting an
interest in the concerns most vital to him; to the latter the leisurely
tour in the private car was a sportive prelude to the serious business
of life, as it should be lived, in the East. Considering it as such he
endured it amiably, and indeed the long August days and the sharply
cool nights were not without real enjoyment for him.

To feel impartially a multitude of strong, fresh wants--the imperative
need to live life in all its fulness, this of itself makes the heart to
sing. And, above the full complement of wants, to have been dowered by
Heaven with a stanch disbelief in the unattainable,--this is a fortune
rather to be chosen than a good name or great riches; since the name
and riches and all things desired must come to the call of it.

Our Western-born youth of twenty-five had the wants and the sense of
power inherited from a line of men eager of initiative, the product of
an environment where only such could survive. Doubtless in him was the
soul and body hunger of his grandfather, cramping and denying through
hardship year after year, yet sustained by dreaming in the hardest
times of the soft material luxuries that should some day be his.
Doubtless marked in his character, too, was the slightly relaxed
tension of his father; the disposition to feast as well as the capacity
to fast; to take all, feel all, do all, with an avidity greater by
reason of the grinding abstinence and the later indulgence of his
forbears. A sage versed in the lore of heredity as modified by
environment may some day trace for us the progress across this
continent of an austere Puritan, showing how the strain emerges from
the wilderness at the Western ocean with a character so widely
differing from the one with which he began the adventurous
journey,--regarding, especially, a tolerance of the so-called good and
many of the bad things of life. Until this is done we may, perhaps,
consider the change to be without valid cause.

Young Bines, at all events, was the flower of a pioneer stock, and him
the gods of life cherished, so that all the forces of the young land
about him were as his own. Yet, though his pulses rhymed to theirs he
did not perceive his relation to them: neither he nor the land was yet
become introspective. So informed was he with the impetuous spirit of
youth that the least manifestation of life found its answering thrill
in him. And it was sufficient to feel this. There was no time barren
enough of sensation to reason about it. Uncle Peter's plan for an
inspection of the Bines properties had at first won him by touching his
sense of duty. He anticipated no interest or pleasure in the trip. Yet
from the beginning he enjoyed it to the full. Being what he was, the
constant movement pleased him, the out-of-doors life, the occasional
sorties from the railroad by horse to some remote mining camp, or to a
stock ranch or lumber-camp. He had been away for six years, and it
pleased him to note that he was treated by the people he met with a
genuine respect and liking as the son of his father. In the East he had
been accustomed to a certain deference from very uncertain people
because he was the son of a rich man. Here he had prestige because he
was the son of Daniel Bines, organiser and man of affairs. He felt
sometimes that the men at mine, mill, or ranch looked him over with
misgiving, and had their cautious liking compelled only by the
assurance that he was indeed the son of Daniel. They left him at these
times with the suspicion that this bare fact meant enough with them to
carry a man of infelicitous exterior.

He was pleased, moreover, to feel a new respect for Uncle Peter. He
observed that men of all degrees looked up to him, sought and relied
upon his judgment; the investing capitalist whom they met not less than
the mine foreman; the made man and the labourer. In the drawing-room at
home he had felt so agreeably superior to the old man; now he felt his
own inferiority in a new element, and began to view him with more
respect. He saw him to be the shrewd man of affairs, with a thorough
grasp of detail in every branch of their interests; and a deep man, as
well; a little narrow, perhaps, from his manner of life, but of
unfailing kindness, and with rather a young man's radicalism than an
old man's conservatism; one who, in an emergency, might be relied upon
to take the unexpected but effective course.

For his own part, old Peter Bines learned in the course of the trip to
understand and like his grandson better. At bottom he decided the young
man to be sound after all, and he began to make allowance for his
geographical heresies. The boy had been sent to an Eastern college;
that was clearly a mistake, putting him out of sympathy with the West;
and he had never been made to work, which was another and a graver
mistake, "but he'd do more'n his father ever did if 'twa'n't fur his
father's money," the old man concluded. For he saw in their talks that
the very Eastern experience which he derided had given the young fellow
a poise and a certain readiness to grasp details in the large that his
father had been a lifetime in acquiring.

For a month they loitered over the surrounding territory in the private
car, gliding through fertile valleys, over bleak passes, steaming up
narrow little canons along the down-rushing streams with their cool
shallow murmurs.

They would learn one day that a cross-cut was to be started on the Last
Chance, or that the concentrates of the True Grit would thereafter be
shipped to the Careless Creek smelter. Next they would learn that a new
herd of Galloways had done finely last season on the Bitter Root ranch;
that a big lot of ore was sacked at the Irish Boy, that an
eighteen-inch vein had been struck in the Old Crow; that a concentrator
was needed at Hellandgone, and that rich gold-bearing copper and sand
bearing free gold had been found over on Horseback Ridge.

Another day they would drive far into a forest of spruce and hemlock to
a camp where thousands of ties were being cut and floated down to the
line of the new railway.

Sometimes they spent a night in one of the smaller mining camps off the
railroad, whereof facetious notes would appear in the nearest weekly
paper, such as:

"The Hon. Peter Bines and his grandson, who is a chip of the old block,
spent Tuesday night at Rock Rip. Young Bines played the deal from soda
card to hock at Lem Tully's Turf Exchange, and showed Lem's dealer good
and plenty that there's no piker strain in him."

Or, it might be:

"Poker stacks continue to have a downward tendency. They were sold last
week as low as eighty chips for a dollar; It is sad to see this noble
game dragging along in the lower levels of prosperity, and we take as a
favourable omen the appearance of Uncle Peter Bines and his grandson
the other night. The prices went to par in a minute. Young Bines gave
signs of becoming as delicately intuitional in the matter of concealed
values as his father, the lamented Daniel J."

Again it was:

"Uncle Peter Bines reports from over Kettle Creek way that the
sagebrush whiskey they take a man's two bits for there would gnaw holes
in limestone. Peter is likelier to find a ledge of dollar bills than he
is good whiskey this far off the main trail. The late Daniel J. could
have told him as much, and Daniel J.'s boy, who accompanies Uncle
Peter, will know it hereafter."

The young man felt wholesomely insignificant at these and other signs
that he was taken on sufferance as a son and a grandson.

He was content that it should be so. Indeed there was little wherewith
he was not content. That he was habitually preoccupied, even when there
was most movement about them, early became apparent to Uncle Peter.
That he was constantly cheerful proved the matter of his musings to be
pleasant. That he was proner than most youths to serious meditation
Uncle Peter did not believe. Therefore he attributed the moods of
abstraction to some matter probably connected with his project of
removing the family East. It was not permitted Uncle Peter to know, nor
was his own youth recent enough for him to suspect, the truth. And the
mystery stayed inviolate until a day came and went that laid it bare
even to the old man's eyes.

They awoke one morning to find the car on a siding at the One Girl
mine. Coupled to it was another car from an Eastern road that their
train had taken on sometime in the night. Percival noted the car with
interest as he paced beside the track in the cool clear air before
breakfast. The curtains were drawn, and the only signs of life to be
observed were at the kitchen end, where the white-clad cook could be
seen astir. Grant, porter on the Bines car, told him the other car had
been taken on at Kaslo Junction, and that it belonged to Rulon Shepler,
the New York financier, who was aboard with a party of friends.

As Percival and Uncle Peter left their car for the shaft-house after
breakfast, the occupants of the other car were bestirring themselves.

From one of the open windows a low but impassioned voice was exhausting
the current idioms of damnation in sweeping dispraise of all land-areas
north and west of Fifty-ninth Street, New York.

Uncle Peter smiled grimly. Percival flushed, for the hidden protestant
had uttered what were his own sentiments a month before.

Reaching the shaft-house they chatted with Pangburn, the
superintendent, and then went to the store-room to don blouses and
overalls for a descent into the mine.

For an hour they stayed underground, traversing the various levels and
drifts, while Pangburn explained the later developments of the vein and
showed them where the new stoping had been begun.




CHAPTER VI.

A Meeting and a Clashing


As they stepped from the cage at the surface Percival became aware of a
group of strangers between him and the open door of the
shaft-house,--people displaying in dress and manner the unmistakable
stamp of New York. For part of a minute, while the pupils of his eyes
were contracting to the light, he saw them but vaguely. Then, as his
sight cleared, he beheld foremost in the group, beaming upon him with
an expression of pleased and surprised recognition, the girl whose face
and voice had for nearly half a year peopled his lover's solitude with
fair visions and made its silence to be all melody.

Had the encounter been anticipated his composure would perhaps have
failed him. Not a few of his waking dreams had sketched this, their
second meeting, and any one of the ways it had pleased him to plan it
would assuredly have found him nervously embarrassed. But so wildly
improbable was this reality that not the daringest of his imagined
happenings had approached it. His thoughts for the moment had been not
of her; then, all at once, she stood before him in the flesh, and he
was cool, almost unmoved. He suspected at once that her father was the
trim, fastidiously dressed man who looked as if he had been abducted
from a morning stroll down the avenue to his club; that the plump,
ruddy, high-bred woman, surveying the West disapprovingly through a
lorgnon, would be her mother. Shepler he knew by sight, with his big
head, massive shoulders, and curiously short, tapering body. Some other
men and a woman were scanning the hoisting machinery with superior
looks.

The girl, before starting toward him, had waited hardly longer than it
took him to eye the group. And then came an awkward two seconds upon
her whose tact in avoiding the awkward was reputed to be more than
common.

With her hand extended she had uttered, "Why, Mr.--" before it flashed
upon her that she did not know the name of the young man she was
greeting.

The "Mister" was threatening to prolong itself into an "r" of
excruciating length and disgraceful finality, an "r" that is terminated
neatly by no one but hardened hotel-clerks. Then a miner saved the day.
"Mr. Bines," he said, coming up hurriedly behind Percival with several
specimens of ore, "you forgot these."

"-r-r-r. Bines, how _do_ you do!" concluded the girl with an eye-flash
of gratitude at the humble instrument that had prevented an undue
hiatus in her salutation. They were apart from the others and for the
moment unnoticed.

The young man took the hand so cordially offered, and because of all
the things he wished and had so long waited to say, he said nothing.

"Isn't it jolly! I am Miss Milbrey," she added in a lower tone, and
then, raising her voice, "Mamma, Mr. Bines--and papa," and there
followed a hurried and but half-acknowledged introduction to the other
members of the party. And, behold! in that moment the young man had
schemed the edifice of all his formless dreams. For six months he had
known the unsurpassable luxury of wanting and of knowing what he
wanted. Now, all at once, he saw this to be a world in which dreams
come more than true.

Shepler and the party were to go through the mine as a matter of
sight-seeing. They were putting on outer clothes from the store-room to
protect them from the dirt and damp.

Presently Percival found himself again at the bottom of the shaft.
During the descent of twelve hundred feet he had reflected upon the
curious and interesting fact that her name should be Milbrey. He felt
dimly that this circumstance should be ranked among the most
interesting of natural phenomena,--that she should have a name, as the
run of mortals, and that it should be one name more than another. When
he discovered further that her Christian name was Avice the phenomenon
became stupendously bewildering. They two were in the last of the party
to descend. On reaching bottom he separated her with promptness and
guile from two solemn young men, copies of each other, and they were
presently alone. In the distance they could see the others following
ghostly lamps. From far off mysterious recesses came the muffled
musical clink of the sledges on the drills. An employee who had come
down with them started to be their guide. Percival sent him back.

"I've just been through; I can find my way again."

"Ver' well," said the man, "with the exception that it don't happen
something,--yes?" And he stayed where he was.

Down one of the cross-cuts they started, stepping aside to let a car of
ore be pushed along to the shaft.

"Do you know," began the girl, "I am so glad to be able to thank you
for what you did that night."

"I'm glad you _are_ able. I was beginning to think I should always have
those thanks owing to me."

"I might have paid them at the time, but it was all so unexpected and
so sudden,--it rattled me, quite."

"I thought you were horribly cool-headed."

"I wasn't."

"Your manner reduced me to a groom who opened your carriage door."

"But grooms don't often pick strange ladies up bodily and bear them out
of a pandemonium of waltzing cab-horses. I'd never noticed before that
cab-horses are so frivolous and hysterical."

"And grooms know where to look for their pay."

They were interrupting nervously, and bestowing furtive side-looks upon
each other.

"If I'd not seen you," said the girl, "glanced at you--before--that
evening, I shouldn't have remembered so well; doubtless I'd not have
recognised you to-day."

"I didn't know you did glance at me, and yet I watched you every moment
of the evening. You didn't know that, did you?"

She laughed.

"Of course I knew it. A woman has to note such things without letting
it be seen that she sees."

"And I'd have sworn you never once so much as looked my way."

"Don't we do it well, though?"

"And in spite of all the time I gave to a study of your face I lost the
detail of it. I could keep only the effect of its expression and the
few tones of your voice I heard. You know I took those on a record so I
could make 'em play over any time I wanted to listen. Do you know, that
has all been very sweet to me, my helping you and the memory of it,--so
vague and sweet."

"Aren't you afraid we're losing the others?"

She halted and looked back.

"No; I'm afraid we won't lose them; come on; you can't turn back now.
And you don't want to hear anything about mines; it wouldn't be at all
good for you, I'm sure. Quick, down this way, or you'll hear Pangburn
telling some one what a stope is, and think what a thing that would be
to carry in your head."

"Really, a stope sounds like something that would 'get you' in the
night! I'm afraid!"

Half in his spirit she fled with him down a dimly lighted incline where
men were working at the rocky wall with sledge and drill. There was
that in his manner which compelled her quite as literally as when at
their first meeting he had picked her up in his arms.

As they walked single-file through the narrowing of a drift, she
wondered about him. He was Western, plainly. An employee in the mine,
probably a manager or director or whatever it was they called those in
authority in mines. Plainly, too, he was a man of action and a man who
engaged all her instinctive liking. Something in him at once coerced
her friendliest confidence. These were the admissions she made to
herself. She divined him, moreover, to be a blend of boldness and
timidity. He was bold to the point of telling her things
unconventionally, of beguiling her into remote underground passages
away from the party; yet she understood; she knew at once that he was a
determined but unspoiled gentleman; that under no provocation could he
make a mistake. In any situation of loneliness she would have felt safe
with him--"as with a brother"--she thought. Then, feeling her cheeks
burn, she turned back and said:

"I must tell you he was my brother--that man--that night."

He was sorry and glad all at once. The sorrow being the lesser and more
conventional emotion, he started upon an awkward expression of it,
which she interrupted.

"Never mind saying that, thank you. Tell me something about yourself,
now. I really would like to know you. What do you see and hear and do
in this strange life?"

"There's not much variety," he answered, with a convincing droop of
depression. "For six months I've been seeing you and hearing
you--seeing you and hearing you; not much variety in that--nothing
worth telling you about."

Despite her natural caution, intensified by training, she felt herself
thrill to the very evident sincerity of his tones, so that she had to
affect mirth to seem at ease.

"Dear, dear, what painful monotony; and how many men have said it since
these rocks were made; and now you say it,--well, I admit--"

"But there's nothing new under the sun, you know."

"No; not even a new excuse for plagiarism, is there?"

"Well, you see as long as the same old thing keeps true the same old
way of telling it will be more or less depended upon. After a few
hundred years of experiment, you know, they hit on the fewest words
that tell the most, and everybody uses them because no one can improve
them. Maybe the prehistoric cave-gentleman, who proposed to his loved
one with a war club just back of her left ear, had some variation of
the formula suiting his simple needs, after he'd gotten her home and
brought her to and she said it was 'all so sudden;' and a man can work
in little variations of his own to-day. For example--"

"I'm sure we'd best be returning."

"For example, I could say, you know, that for keeping the mind active
and the heart working overtime the memory of you surpasses any tonic
advertised in the backs of the magazines. Or, that--"

"I think that's enough; I see you _could_ vary the formula, in case--"

"--_have_ varied it--but don't forget I prefer the original unvaried.
After all, there are certain things that you can't tell in too few
words. Now, you--"

"You stubborn person. Really, I know all about myself. I asked you to
tell me about yourself."

"And I began at once to tell you everything about myself--everything of
interest--which is yourself."

"I see your sense of values is gone, poor man. I shall question you.
Now you are a miner, and I like men of action, men who do things; I've
often wondered about you, and seriously, I'm glad to find you here
doing something. I remembered you kindly, with real gratitude, indeed.
You didn't seem like a New York man either, and I decided you weren't.
Honestly, I am glad to find you here at your work in your miner's
clothes. You mustn't think we forget how to value men that work."

On the point of saying thoughtlessly, "But I'm not working here--I own
the mine," he checked himself. Instead he began a defence of the man
who doesn't work, but who could if he had to. "For example," he
continued, "here we are at a place that you must be carried over;
otherwise you'd have to wade through a foot of water or go around that
long way we've come. I've rubber boots on, and so I pick you up this
way--" He held her lightly on his arm and she steadied herself with a
hand between his shoulders.

"And staggering painfully under my burden, I wade out to the middle of
this subterranean lake." He stopped.

"You see, I've learned to do things. I could pick you from that
slippery street and put you in your carriage, and I can pick you up now
without wasting words about it--"

"But you're wasting time--hurry, please--and, anyway, you're a miner
and used to such things."

He remained standing.

"But I'm _not_ wasting time, and I'm not a miner in the sense you mean.
I own this mine, and I suppose for the most part I'm the sort of man
you seem to have gotten tired of; the man who doesn't have to do
anything. Even now I'm this close to work only because my grandfather
wanted me to look over the properties my father left."

"But, hurry, please, and set me down."

"Not until I warn you that I'm just as apt to do things as the kind of
man you thought I was. This is twice I've picked you up now. Look out
for me;--next time I may not put you down at all."

She gave a low little laugh, denoting unruffled serenity. She was
glorying secretly in his strength, and she knew his boldness and
timidity were still justly balanced. And there was the rather
astonishing bit of news he had just given her. That needed a lot of
consideration.

With slow, sure-footed steps he reached the farther side of the water
and put her on her feet.

"There, I thought I'd reveal the distressing truth about myself while I
had you at my mercy."

"I might have suspected, but I gave the name no thought. Bines, to be
sure. You are the son of the Bines who died some months ago. I heard
Mr. Shepler and my father talking about some of your mining properties.
Mr. Shepler thought the 'One Girl' was such a funny name for your
father to give a mine."

Now they neared the foot of the shaft where the rest of the party
seemed to await them. As they came up Percival felt himself raked by a
broadside from the maternal lorgnon that left him all but disabled. The
father glowered at him and asked questions in the high key we are apt
to adopt in addressing foreigners, in the instinctive fallacy that any
language can be understood by any one if it be spoken loudly enough.
The mother's manner was a crushing rebuke to the young man for his
audacity. The father's manner was meant to intimate that natives of the
region in which they were then adventuring were not worthy of rebuke,
save such general rebukes as may be conveyed by displaying one's
natural superiority of manner. The other members of the party,
excepting Shepler, who talked with Pangburn at a little distance, took
cue from the Milbreys and aggressively ignored the abductor of an only
daughter. They talked over, around, and through him, as only may those
mortals whom it hath pleased heaven to have born within certain areas
on Manhattan Island.

The young man felt like a social outcast until he caught a glance from
Miss Milbrey. That young woman was still friendly, which he could
understand, and highly amused, which he could not understand. While the
temperature was at its lowest the first load ascended, including Miss
Milbrey and her parents, a chatty blonde, and an uncomfortable little
man who, despite his being twelve hundred feet toward the centre
thereof, had three times referred bitterly to the fact that he was "out
of the world." "I shall see you soon above ground, shall I not?" Miss
Milbrey had asked, at which her mother shot Percival a parting volley
from her rapid-fire lorgnon, while her father turned upon him a back
whose sidelines were really admirable, considering his age and feeding
habits. The behaviour of these people appeared to intensify the
amusement of their child. The two solemn young men who remained
continued to chat before Percival as they would have chatted before the
valet of either. He began to sound the spiritual anguish of a pariah.
Also to feel truculent and, in his own phrase, "Westy." With him
"Westy" meant that you were as good as any one else "and a shade better
than a whole lot if it came to a show-down." He was not a little
mortified to find how easy it was for him to fall back upon that old
cushion of provincial arrogance. It was all right for Uncle Peter, but
for himself,--well, it proved that he was less finely Eastern than he
had imagined.

As the cage came down for another ascent, he let the two solemn young
men go up with Shepler and Pangburn, and went to search for Uncle
Peter.

"There, thank God, is a man!" he reflected.




CHAPTER VII.

The Rapid-fire Lorgnon Is Spiked


He found Uncle Peter in the cross-cut, studying a bit of ore through a
glass, and they went back to ascend.

"Them folks," said the old man, "must be the kind that newspaper meant,
that had done something in practical achievement. I bet that girl's
mother will achieve something practical with you fur cuttin' the girl
out of the bunch; she was awful tormented; talked two or three times
about the people in the humbler walks of life bein' strangely something
or other. You ain't such a humble walker now, are you, son? But say,
that yellow-haired woman, she ain't a bit diffident, is she? She's a
very hearty lady, I _must_ say!"

"But did you see Miss Milbrey?"

"Oh, that's her name is it, the one that her mother was so worried
about and you? Yes, I saw her. Peart and cunnin', but a heap too wise
fur you, son; take my steer on that. Say, she'd have your pelt nailed
to the barn while you was wonderin' which way you'd jump."

"Oh, I know I'm only a tender, teething infant," the young man
answered, with masterly satire. "Well, now, as long's you got that bank
roll you jest look out fur cupboard love--the kind the old cat has when
she comes rubbin' up against your leg and purrin' like you was the
whole thing."

The young man smiled, as they went up, with youth's godlike faith in
its own sufficiency, albeit he smarted from the slights put upon him.

At the surface a pleasant shock was in store for him. There stood the
formidable Mrs. Milbrey beaming upon him. Behind her was Mr. Milbrey,
the pleasing model of all a city's refinements, awaiting the boon of a
hand-clasp. Behind these were the uncomfortable little man, the chatty
blonde, and the two solemn young men who had lately exhibited more
manner than manners. Percival felt they were all regarding him now with
affectionate concern. They pressed forward effusively.

"So good of you, Mr. Bines, to take an interest in us--my daughter has
been so anxious to see one of these fascinating mines." "Awfully
obliged, Mr. Bines." "Charmed, old man; deuced pally of you to stay by
us down in that hole, you know." "So clever of you to know where to
find the gold--"

He lost track of the speakers. Their speeches became one concerted
effusion of affability that was music to his ears.

Miss Milbrey was apart from the group. Having doffed the waterproofs,
she was now pluming herself with those fussy-looking but mysteriously
potent little pats which restore the attire and mind of women to their
normal perfection and serenity. Upon her face was still the amused look
Percival had noted below.

"And, Mr. Bines, do come in with that quaint old grandfather of yours
and lunch with us," urged Mrs. Milbrey, who had, as it were, spiked her
lorgnon. "Here's Mr. Shepler to second the invitation--and then we
shall chat about this very interesting West."

Miss Milbrey nodded encouragement, seeming to chuckle inwardly.

In the spacious dining compartment of the Shepler car the party was
presently at lunch.

"You seem so little like a Western man," Mrs. Milbrey confided
graciously to Percival on her right.

"We cal'late he'll fetch out all straight, though, in a year or so,"
put in Uncle Peter, from over his chop, with guileless intent to defend
his grandson from what he believed to be an attack. "Of course a young
man's bound to get some foolishness into him in an Eastern college like
this boy went to."

Percival had flushed at the compliment to himself; also at the old
man's failure to identify it as such.

Mr. Milbrey caressed his glass of claret with ardent eyes and took the
situation in hand with the easy confidence of a master.

"The West," said he, affably, "has sent us some magnificent men. In
truth, it's amazing to take count of the Western men among us in all
the professions. They are notable, perhaps I should say, less for
deliberate niceties of style than for a certain rough directness, but
so adaptable is the American character that one frequently does not
suspect their--er--humble origin."

"Meaning their Western origin?" inquired Shepler, blandly, with secret
intent to brew strife.

"Well--er--to be sure, my dear fellow, not necessarily humble,--of
course--perhaps I should have said--"

"Of course, not necessarily disgraceful, as you say, Milbrey,"
interrupted Shepler, "and they often do conceal it. Why, I know a chap
in New York who was positively never east of Kansas City until he was
twenty-five or so, and yet that fellow to-day"--he lowered his voice to
the pitch of impressiveness--"has over eighty pairs of trousers and
complains of the hardship every time he has to go to Boston."

"Fancy, now!" exclaimed Mrs. Drelmer, the blonde. Mr. Milbrey looked
slightly puzzled and Uncle Peter chuckled, affirming mentally that
Rulon Shepler must be like one of those tug-boats, with most of his
lines under the surface.

"But, I say, you know, Shepler," protested one of the solemn young men,
"he must still talk like a banjo."

"And gargle all his 'r's,'" added the other, very earnestly. "They
never get over that, you know."

"Instead of losin' 'em entirely," put in Uncle Peter, who found himself
feeling what his grandson called "Westy." "Of course, he calls it 'Ne'
Yawk,' and prob'ly he don't like it in Boston because they always call
'em 'rawroystahs.'"

"Good for the old boy!" thought Percival, and then, aloud: "It _is_
hard for the West and the East to forgive each other's dialects. The
inflated 'r' and the smothered 'r' never quite harmonise."

"Western money talks good straight New York talk," ventured Miss
Milbrey, with the air of one who had observed in her time.

Shepler grinned, and the parents of the young woman resisted with
indifferent success their twin impulses to frown.

"But the service is so wretched in the West," suggested Oldaker, the
carefully dressed little man with the tired, troubled eyes, whom the
world had been deprived of. "I fancy, now, there's not a good waiter
this side of New York."

"An American," said Percival, "never _can_ make a good waiter or a good
valet. It takes a Latin, or, still better, a Briton, to feel the
servility required for good service of that sort. An American, now,
always fails at it because he knows he is as good as you are, and he
knows that you know it, and you know that he knows you know it, and
there you are, two mirrors of American equality face to face and
reflecting each other endlessly, and neither is comfortable. The
American is as uncomfortable at having certain services performed for
him by another American as the other is in performing them. Give him a
Frenchman or an Italian or a fellow born within the sound of Bow Bells
to clean his boots and lay out his things and serve his dinner and he's
all right enough."

"Hear, hear!" cried Uncle Peter.

"Fancy, now," said Mrs. Drelmer, "a creature in a waiter's jacket
having emotions of that sort!"

"Our excellent country," said Mr. Milbrey, "is perhaps not yet what it
will be; there is undeniably a most distressing rawness where we might
expect finish. Now in Chicago," he continued in a tone suitably hushed
for the relation of occult phenomena, "we dined with a person who
served champagne with the oysters, soup, fish, and _entrée_, and for
the remainder of the dinner--you may credit me or not--he proffered a
claret of 1875--. I need hardly remind you, the most delicate vintage
of the latter half of the century--and it was served _frappé_." There
was genuine emotion in the speaker's voice.

"And papa nearly swooned when our host put cracked ice and two lumps of
sugar into his own glass--"

"_Avice, dear!_" remonstrated the father in a tone implying that some
things positively must not be mentioned at table.

"Well, you shouldn't expect too much of those self-made men in
Chicago," said Shepler.

"If they'd only make themselves as well as they make their sausages and
things," sighed Mr. Milbrey.

"And the self-made man _will_ talk shop," suggested Oldaker. "He thinks
you're dying to hear how he made the first thousand of himself."

"Still, those Chicago chaps learn quickly enough when they settle in
New York," ventured one of the young men.

"I knew a Chicago chap who lived East two years and went back not a
half bad sort," said the other. "God help him now, though; his father
made him go back to work in a butcher shop or something of the sort."

"Best thing I ever heard about Chicago," said Uncle Peter, "a man from
your town told me once he had to stay in Chicago a year, and, says he,
'I went out there a New Yorker, and I went home an American,' he says."
The old man completed this anecdote in tones that were slightly
inflamed.

"How extremely typical!" said Mrs. Milbrey. "Truly the West is the
place of unspoiled Americanism and the great unspent forces; you are
quite right, Mr. Bines."

"Think of all the unspent forces back in that silver mine," remarked
Miss Milbrey, with a patent effort to be significant.

"My perverse child delights to pose as a sordid young woman," the fond
mother explained to Percival, "yet no one can be less so, and you, Mr.
Bines, I am sure, would be the last to suspect her of it. I saw in you
at once those sterling qualities--"

"Isn't it dreadfully dark down in that sterling silver mine?" observed
Miss Milbrey, apropos of nothing, apparently, while her mother attacked
a second chop that she had meant not to touch.

"Here's hoping we'll soon be back in God's own country," said Oldaker,
raising his glass.

"Hear, hear!" cried Uncle Peter, and drained his glass eagerly as they
drank the toast. Whereat they all laughed and Mrs. Drelmer said, "What
a dear, lively wit, for an old gentleman."

"Oldaker," said Shepler, "has really been the worst sufferer. This is
his first trip West."

"Beg pardon, Shepler! I was West as far as Buffalo--let me see--in 1878
or '79."

"Dear me! is that so?" queried Uncle Peter. "I got East as fur as
Cheyenne that same year. We nearly run into each other, didn't we?"

Shepler grinned again.

"Oldaker found a man from New York on the train the other day, up in
one of the emigrant cars. He was a truck driver, and he looked it and
talked it, but Oldaker stuck by him all the afternoon."

"Well, he'd left the old town three weeks after I had, and he'd been
born there the same year I was--in the Ninth ward--and he remembered as
well as I did the day Barnum's museum burned at Broadway and Ann. I
liked to hear him talk. Why, it was a treat just to hear him say
Broadway and Twenty-third Street, or Madison Square or City Hall Park.
The poor devil had consumption, too, and probably he'll never see them
again. I don't know if I shall ever have it, but I'd never leave the
old town as he was doing."

"That's like Billy Brue," said Uncle Peter. "Billy loves faro bank jest
as this gentleman loves New York. When he gets a roll he _has_ to play.
One time he landed in Pocatello when there wa'n't but one game in town.
Billy found it and started in. A friend saw him there and called him
out. 'Billy,' says he, 'cash in and come out; that's a brace game.'
'Sure?' says Billy. 'Sure,' says the feller. 'All right,' says Billy,
'much obliged fur puttin' me on.' And he started out lookin' fur
another game. About two hours later the feller saw Billy comin' out of
the same place and Billy owned up he'd gone back there and blowed in
every cent. 'Why, you geezer,' says his friend, 'didn't I put you on
that they was dealin' brace there?' 'Sure,' says Billy, 'sure you did.
But what could I do? It was the only game in town!'"

"That New York mania is the same sort," said Shepler, laughing, while
Mrs. Drelmer requested everybody to fancy immediately.

"Your grandfather is so dear and quaint," said Mrs. Milbrey; "you must
certainly bring him to New York with you, for of course a young man of
your capacity and graces will never be satisfied out of New York."

"Young men like yourself are assuredly needed there," remarked Mr.
Milbrey, warmly.

"Surely they are," agreed Miss Milbrey, and yet with a manner that
seemed almost to annoy both parents. They were sparing no opportunity
to make the young man conscious of his real oneness with those about
him, and yet subtly to intimate that people of just the Milbreys'
perception were required to divine it at present. "These Westerners
fancy you one of themselves, I dare say," Mrs. Milbrey had said, and
the young man purred under the strokings. His fever for the East was
back upon him. His weeks with Uncle Peter going over the fields where
his father had prevailed had made him convalescent, but these New
Yorkers--the very manner and atmosphere of them--undid the work. He
envied them their easier speech, their matter-of-fact air of
omniscience, the elaborate and cultivated simplicity of their dress,
their sureness and sufficiency in all that they thought and said and
did. He was homesick again for the life he had glimpsed. The West was
rude, desolate, and depressing. Even Uncle Peter, whom he had come
warmly to admire, jarred upon him with his crudity and his Western
assertiveness.

And there was the woman of the East, whose presence had made the day to
seem dream-like; and she was kind, which was more than he would have
dared to hope, and her people, after their first curious chill of
indifference, seemed actually to be courting him. She, the fleeting and
impalpable dream-love, whom the thought of seeing ever again had been
wildly absurd, was now a human creature with a local habitation, the
most beautiful name in the world, and two parents whose complaisance
was obvious even through the lover's timidity.




CHAPTER VIII.

Up Skiplap Canon


The meal was ending in smoke, the women, excepting Miss Milbrey, having
lighted cigarettes with the men. The talk had grown less truculently
sectional. The Angstead twins told of their late fishing trip to Lake
St. John for salmon, of projected tours to British Columbia for
mountain sheep, and to Manitoba for elk and moose.

Mr. Milbrey described with minute and loving particularity the
preparation of _oeufs de Faisan, avec beurre au champagne._

Mrs. Milbrey related an anecdote of New York society, not much in
itself, but which permitted the disclosure that she habitually
addressed by their first names three of the foremost society leaders,
and that each of these personages adopted a like familiarity toward
her.

Mrs. Drelmer declared that she meant to have Uncle Peter Bines at one
of her evenings the very first time he should come to New York, and
that, if he didn't let her know of his coming, she would be offended.
Oldaker related an incident of the ball given to the Prince of Wales,
travelling as Baron Renfrew, on the evening of October 12, 1860, in
which his father had figured briefly before the royal guest to the
abiding credit of American tact and gentility.

Shepler was amused until he became sleepy, whereupon he extended the
freedom of his castle to his guests, and retired to his stateroom.

Uncle Peter took a final shot at Oldaker. He was observed to be
laughing, and inquiry brought this:

"I jest couldn't help snickerin' over his idee of God's own country. He
thinks God's own country is a little strip of an island with a row of
well-fed folks up and down the middle, and a lot of hungry folks on
each side. Mebbe he's right. I'll be bound, it needs the love of God.
But if it is His own country, it don't make Him any connysoor of
countries with me. I'll tell you that."

Oldaker smiled at this assault, the well-bred, tolerant smile that
loyal New Yorkers reserve for all such barbaric belittling of their
empire. Then he politely asked Uncle Peter to show Mrs. Drelmer and
himself through the stamp mill.

At Percival's suggestion of a walk, Miss Milbrey was delighted.

After an inspection of the Bines car, in which Oldaker declared he
would be willing to live for ever, if it could be anchored firmly in
Madison Square, the party separated. Out into the clear air, already
cooling under the slanting rays of the sun, the young man and the girl
went together. Behind them lay the one street of the little mining
camp, with its wooden shanties on either side of the railroad track.
Down this street Uncle Peter had gone, leading his charges toward the
busy ant-hill on the mountainside. Ahead the track wound up the canon,
cunningly following the tortuous course of the little river to be sure
of practicable grades. On the farther side of the river a mountain road
paralleled the railway. Up this road the two went, followed by a
playful admonition from Mrs. Milbrey: "Remember, Mr. Bines, I place my
child in your keeping."

Percival waxed conscientious about his charge and insisted at once upon
being assured that Miss Milbrey would be warm enough with the scarlet
golf-cape about her shoulders; that she was used to walking long
distances; that her boots were stoutly soled; and that she didn't mind
the sun in their faces. The girl laughed at him.

Looking up the canon with its wooded sides, cool and green, they could
see a grey, dim mountain, with patches of snow near its top, in the far
distance, and ranges of lesser eminences stepping up to it. "It's a
hundred miles away," he told her.

Down the canon the little river flickered toward them, like a billowy
silver ribbon "trimmed with white chiffon around the rocks," declared
the girl. In the blue depths of the sky, an immense height above,
lolled an eagle, lazy of wing, in lordly indolence. The suggestions to
the eye were all of spacious distances and large masses--of the room
and stuff for unbounded action.

"Your West is the breathingest place," she said, as they crossed a
foot-bridge over the noisy little stream and turned up the road. "I
don't believe I ever drew a full breath until I came to these
altitudes."

"One _has_ to breathe more air here--there's less oxygen in it, and you
must breathe more to get your share, and so after awhile one becomes
robust. Your cheeks are already glowing, and we've hardly started.
There, now, there are your colours, see--"

Along the edge of the green pines and spruce were lavender asters. A
little way in the woods they could see the blue columbines and the
mountain phlox, pink and red.

"There are your eyes and your cheeks."

"What a dangerous character you'd be if you were sent to match silks!"

On the dry barren slopes of gravel across the river, full in the sun's
glare, grew the Spanish bayonet, with its spikes of creamy white
flowers.

"There I am, more nearly," she pointed to them; "they're ever so much
nearer my disposition. But about this thin air; it must make men work
harder for what comes easier back in our country, so that they may
become able to do more--more capable. I am thinking of your
grandfather. You don't know how much I admire him. He is so stanch and
strong and fresh. There's more fire in him now than in my father or
Launton Oldaker, and I dare say he's a score of years older than either
of them. I don't think you quite appreciate what a great old fellow he
is."

"I admire Uncle Peter much more, I'm sure, than he admires me. He's
afraid I'm not strong enough to admire that Eastern climate of
yours--social and moral."

"I suppose it's natural for you to wish to go. You'd be bored here,
would you not? You couldn't stay in these mountains and be such a man
as your grandfather. And yet there ought to be so much to do here; it's
all so fresh and roomy and jolly. Really I've grown enthusiastic about
it."

"Ah, but think of what there is in the East--and you are there. To
think that for six months I've treasured every little memory of
you--such a funny little lot as they were--to think that this morning I
awoke thinking of you, yet hardly hoping ever to see you, and to think
that for half the night we had ridden so near each other in sleep, and
there was no sign or signal or good omen. And then to think you should
burst upon me like some new sunrise that the stupid astronomers hadn't
predicted.

"You see," he went on, after a moment, "I don't ask what you think of
me. You couldn't think anything much as yet, but there's something
about this whole affair, our meeting and all, that makes me think it's
going to be symmetrical in the end. I know it won't end here. I'll tell
you one way Western men learn. They learn not to be afraid to want
things out of their reach, and they believe devoutly--because they've
proved it so often--that if you want a thing hard enough and keep
wanting it, nothing can keep it away from you."

A bell had been tinkling nearer and nearer on the road ahead. Now a
heavy wagon, filled with sacks of ore, came into view, drawn by four
mules. As they stood aside to let it pass he scanned her face for any
sign it might show, but he could see no more than a look of interest
for the brawny driver of the wagon, shouting musically to his straining
team.

"You are rather inscrutable," he said, as they resumed the road.

She turned and smiled into his eyes with utter frankness.

"At least you must be sure that I like you; that I am very friendly;
that I want to know you better, and want you to know me better. You
don't know me at all, you know. You Westerners have another way, of
accepting people too readily. It may work no harm among yourselves, but
perhaps Easterners are a bit more perilous. Sometimes, now, a _very_
Eastern person doesn't even accept herself--himself--very trustingly;
she--he--finds it so hard to get acquainted with himself."

The young man provided one of those silences of which a few discerning
men are instinctively capable and for which women thank them.

"This road," she said, after a little time of rapid walking, "leads
right up to the end of the world, doesn't it? See, it ends squarely in
the sun." They stopped where the turn had opened to the west a long
vista of grey and purple hills far and high. They stood on a ridge of
broken quartz and gneiss, thrown up in a bygone age. To their left a
few dwarf Scotch firs threw shadows back toward the town. The ball of
red fire in the west was half below the rim of the distant peak.

"Stand so,"--she spoke in a slightly hushed tone that moved him a step
nearer almost to touch her arm,--"and feel the round little earth
turning with us. We always think the sun drops down away from us, but
it stays still. Now remember your astronomy and feel the earth turn.
See--you can actually _see_ it move--whirling along like a child's ball
because it can't help itself, and then there's the other motion around
the sun, and the other, the rushing of everything through space, and
who knows how many others, and yet we plan our futures and think we
shall do finely this way or that, and always forget that we're taken
along in spite of ourselves. Sometimes I think I shall give up trying;
and then I see later that even that feeling was one of the unknown
motions that I couldn't control. The only thing we know is that we are
moved in spite of ourselves, so what is the use of bothering about how
many ways, or where they shall fetch us?"

"Ah, Miss Khayyam, I've often read your father's verses."

"No relation whatever; we're the same person--he was I."

"But don't forget you can see the earth moving by a rising as well as
by a setting star, by watching a sun rise--"

"A rising star if you wish," she said, smiling once more with perfect
candour and friendliness.

They turned to go back in the quick-coming mountain dusk.

As they started downward she sang from the "Persian Garden," and he
blended his voice with hers:

  "Myself when young did eagerly frequent
  Doctor and Saint and heard great argument
  About it and about: but evermore
  Came out by the same door where in I went."

  "With them the seed of Wisdom did I sow,
  And with my own hand wrought to make it grow;
  And this was all the Harvest that I reaped--'
  I came like Water and like Wind I go.'"

"I shall look forward to seeing you--and your mother and sister?--in
New York," she said, when they parted, "and I am sure I shall have more
to say when we're better known to each other."

"If you were the one woman before, if the thought of you was more than
the substance of any other to me,--you must know how it will be now,
when the dream has come true. It's no small thing for your best dream
to come true."

"Dear me! haven't we been sentimental and philosophic? I'm never like
this at home, I assure you. I've really been thoughtful."

From up the cañon came the sound of a puffing locomotive that presently
steamed by them with its three dingy little coaches, and, after a stop
for water and the throwing of a switch, pushed back to connect with the
Shepler car.

The others of the party crowded out on to the rear platform as Percival
helped Miss Milbrey up the steps. Uncle Peter had evidently been
chatting with Shepler, for as they came out the old man was saying,
"'Get action' is my motto. Do things. Don't fritter. Be something and
be it good and hard. Get action early and often."

Shepler nodded. "But men like us are apt to be unreasonable with the
young. We expect them to have their own vigour and our wisdom, and the
infirmities of neither."

The good-byes were hastily said, and the little train rattled down the
cañon. Miss Milbrey stood in the door of the car, and Percival watched
her while the glistening rails that seemed to be pushing her away
narrowed in perspective. She stood motionless and inscrutable to the
last, but still looking steadily toward him--almost wistfully, it
seemed to him once.

"Well," he said cheerfully to Uncle Peter.

"You know, son, I don't like to cuss, but except one or two of them
folks I'd sooner live in the middle kittle of hell than in the place
that turns 'em out. They rile me--that talk about 'people in the
humbler walks of life.' Of course I _am_ humble, but then, son, if you
come right down to it, as the feller said, I ain't so _damned_ humble!"




CHAPTER IX.

Three Letters, Private and Confidential


From Mr. Percival Bines to Miss Psyche Bines, Montana City.

On car at Skiplap, Tuesday Night.

Dear Sis:--When you kept nagging me about "Who is the girl?" and I said
you could search me, you wouldn't have it that way. But, honestly,
until this morning I didn't know her myself. Now that I can put you
next, here goes.

One night last March, after I'd come back from the other side, I
happened into a little theatre on Broadway where a burlesque was
running. It's a rowdy little place--a music hall--but nice people go
there because, though it's stuffy, it's kept decent.

_She_ was in a box with two men--one old and one young--and an older
woman. As soon as I saw her she had me lashed to the mast in a high
sea, with the great salt waves dashing over me. I never took much stock
in the tales about its happening at first sight, but they're as
matter-of-fact as market reports. Soon as I looked at her it seemed to
me I'd known her always. I was sure we knew each other better than any
two people between the Battery and Yonkers, and that I wasn't acting
sociable to sit down there away from her and pretend we were Strangers
Yet. Actually, it rattled me so I had to take the full count. If I
hadn't been wedged in between a couple of people that filled all the
space, and then some, it isn't any twenty to one that I wouldn't have
gone right up to her and asked her what she meant by cutting me. I was
udgy enough for it. But I kept looking and after awhile I was able to
sit up and ask what hit me.

She was dressed in something black and kind of shiny and wore a big
black hat fussed up with little red roses, and her face did more things
to me in a minute than all the rest I've ever seen. It was _full_ of
little kissy places. Her lips were very red and her teeth were very
white, and I couldn't tell about her eyes. But she was bred up to the
last notch, I could see that.

Well, I watched her through the tobacco smoke until the last curtain
fell. They were putting on wraps for a minute or so, and I noticed that
the young fellow in the party, who'd been drinking all through the
show, wasn't a bit too steady to do an act on the high-wire. They left
the box and came down the stairs and I bunched into the crowd and let
myself ooze out with them, wondering if I'd ever see her again.

I fetched up at an exit on the side street, and there they were
directly in front of me. I just naturally drifted to one side and
continued my little private corner in crude rubber. It was drizzling in
a beastly way, the street was full of carriages, numbers were being
called, cab-drivers were insulting each other hoarsely, people dashing
out to see if their carriages weren't coming--everything in a whirl of
drizzle and dark and yells, with the horses' hoofs on the pavement
sounding like castanets. The two older people got into a carriage and
were driven off, while she and the young fellow waited for theirs. I
could see then that he was good and soused. He was the same lad they
throw on the screen when the "Old Homestead" Quartet sings "Where Is My
Wandering Boy To-night?" I could see she was annoyed and a little
worried, because he was past taking notice.

The man kept yelling the number of their carriage from time to time,
while the others he'd called were driving up--it was 249 if any one
ever tries to worm it out of you--and then I saw from her face that 249
had wriggled pretty near to the curb, but was still kept away by
another carriage. She said something to the drunken cub and started to
reach the carriage by going out into the street behind the one in its
way. At the same time their carriage started forward, and the
inebriate, instead of going with her, started the other way to meet it,
and so, there she was alone on the slippery pavement in this muddle of
prancing horses and yelling terriers. If you can get any bets that I
was more than two seconds getting out there to her, take them all, and
give better than track odds if necessary. Then I guess she got rattled,
for when I would have led her back to the curb she made a dash the
other way and all but slipped under a team of bays that were just
aching to claw the roses off her hat. I saw she was helpless and
"turned around," so I just naturally grabbed her and she was so
frightened by this time that she grabbed me, and the result was that I
carried her to the sidewalk and set her down. Their carriage still
stood there with little Georgie Rumlets screaming to the driver to go
on. I had her inside in a jiffy, and they were off. Not a word about
"My Preserver!" though, of course, with the fright and noise and her
mortification, that was natural.

After that, you can believe it or not, she was the girl. And I never
dreamed of seeing her any place but New York again.

Well, this morning when I came up from below at the mine _she_ was
standing there as if she had been waiting for me. She is Miss Avice
Milbrey, of New York. Her father and mother--fine people, the real
thing, I judge--were with her, members of a party Rulon Shepler has
with him on his car. They've been here all day; went through the mine;
had lunch with them, and later a walk with _her_, they leaving at 5.30
for the East. We got on fairly well, considering. She is a wonder, if
anybody cross-examines you. She is about your height, I should judge,
about five feet four, though not so plump as you; still her look of
slenderness is deceptive. She's one of the build that aren't so big as
they look, nor yet so small as they look. Thoroughbred is the word for
her, style and action, as the horse people say, perfect. The poise of
her head, her mettlesome manner, her walk, show that she's been bred up
like a Derby winner. Her face is the one all the aristocrats are copied
from, finely cut nose, chin firm but dainty, lips just delicately full
and the reddest ever, and her colour when she has any a rose-pink. I
don't know that I can give you her eyes. You only see first that
they're deep and clear, but as near as anything they are the warm
slatish lavender blue you see in the little fall asters. She has so
much hair it makes her head look small, a sort of light chestnut, with
warmish streaks in it. Transparent is another word for her. You can
look right through her--eyes and skin are so clear. Her nature too is
the frank, open kind, "step in and examine our stock; no trouble to
show goods" and all that, and she is so beautifully unconscious of her
beauty that it goes double. At times she gave me a queer little
impression of being older at the game than I am, though she can't be a
day over twenty, but I guess that's because she's been around in
society so much. Probably she'd be called the typical New York girl, if
you wanted to talk talky talk.

Now I've told you everything, except that the people all asked kindly
after you, especially her mother and a Mrs. Drelmer, who's a four-horse
team all by herself. Oh, yes! No, I can't remember very well; some kind
of a brown walking skirt, short, and high boots and one of those blue
striped shirt-waists, the squeezy looking kind, and when we went to
walk, a red plaid golf cape; and for general all-around dearness--say,
the other entries would all turn green and have to be withdrawn. If any
one thinks this thing is going to end here you make a book on it right
away; take all you can get. Little Willie Lushlets was her brother--a
lovely boy if you get to talking reckless. With love to Lady
Abercrombie, and trusting, my dear Countess, to have the pleasure of
meeting you at Henley a fortnight hence, I remain,

Most cordially yours,

E. MALVERN DEVYR ST. TREVORS,

_Bart. & Notary Public._

_From Mrs. Joseph Drelmer to the Hon. Cecil G. H. Mauburn, New York._

EN ROUTE, August 28th.

MY DEAR MAUBURN:--Ever hear of the tribe of Bines? If not, you need to.
The father, immensely wealthy, died a bit ago, leaving a widow and two
children, one of the latter being a marriageable daughter in more than
the merely technical sense. There is also a grandfather, now a little
descended into the vale of years, who, they tell me, has almost as many
dollars as you or I would know what to do with, a queer old chap who
lounges about the mountains and looks as if he might have anything but
money. We met the son and the old man at one of their mines yesterday.
They have a private car as large as Shepler's and even more sybaritic,
and they'd been making a tour of inspection over their properties. They
lunched with us. Knowing the Milbreys, you will divine the warmth of
their behaviour toward the son. It was too funny at first. Avice was
the only one to suspect at once that he was the very considerable
personage he is, and so she promptly sequestered him, with a skill born
of her long practice, in the depths of the earth, somewhere near China,
I fancy. Her dear parents were furious. Dressed as one of the miners
they took him to be an employee. The whole party, taking the cue from
outraged parenthood, treated him icily when he emerged from one of
those subterranean galleries with that tender sprig of girlishness.
That is, we were icy until, on the way up, he remaining in the depths,
Avice's dear mother began to rebuke the thoughtless minx for her
indiscretion of strolling through the earth with a working person. Then
Avice, sweet chatterbox, with joyful malice revealed that the young
man, whose name none of us had caught, was Bines, and that he owned the
mine we were in, and she didn't know how many others, nor did she
believe he knew himself. You should have felt the temperature rise. It
went up faster than we were going.

By the time we reached the surface the two Milbreys wore looks that
would have made the angel of peace and good-will look full of hatred
and distrust. Nothing would satisfy them but that we wait to thank the
young Croesus for his courtesy. I waited because I remembered the
daughter, and Oldaker and the Angstead twins waited out of decency. And
when the genius of the mine appeared from out his golden catacombs we
fell upon him in desperate kindness.

Later in the day I learned from him that he expects to bring his mother
and sister to New York this fall, and that they mean to make their home
there hereafter. Of course that means that the girl has notions of
marriage. What made me think so quickly of her is that in San
Francisco, at a theatre last winter, she was pointed out to me, and
while I do you not the injustice of supposing it would make the least
difference to you, she is rather a beauty, you'll find; figure fullish,
yellow hair, and a good-natured, well-featured, pleasing sort of face;
a bit rococo in manner, I suspect; a little too San Francisco, as so
many of these Western beauties are, but you'd not mind that, and a year
in New York will tone her down anyway.

Now if your dear uncle will only confer a lasting benefit upon the
world and his title upon you, by paying the only debt he is ever liable
to pay, I am persuaded you could be the man here. I know nothing of how
the fortune was left, nor of its extent, except that it's said to be
stiffish, and out here that means a big, round sum. The reason I write
promptly is that you may not go out of the country just now. That sweet
little Milbrey chit--really, Avice is far too old now for ingenue
parts--has not only grappled the son with hooks of steel, but from
remarks the good mother dropped concerning the fine qualities of her
son, she means to convert the daughter's _dot_ into Milbrey prestige,
also. What a glorious double stroke it would be, after all their years
of trying. However, with your title, even in prospective, Fred Milbrey
is no rival for you to fear, providing you are on the ground as soon as
he, which is why I wish you to stay in New York.

I am indeed gratified that you have broken off whatever affair there
may have been between you and that music-hall person. Really, you know,
though they talk so about us, a young man can't mess about with that
sort of thing in New York as he can in London. So I'm glad she's gone
back, and as she is in no position to harm you I should pay no
attention to her threats. What under heaven did the creature expect?
Why _should_ she have wanted to marry you?

I shall see you probably in another fortnight.

You know that Milbrey girl must get her effrontery direct from where
they make it. She pretended that at first she took young Bines for what
we all took him, an employee of the mine. You can almost catch them
winking at each other, when she tells it, and dear mamma with such
beautiful resignation, says, "My Avice is _so_ impulsively democratic."
Dear Avice, you know, is really quite as impulsive as the steel bridge
our train has just rattled over. Sincerely,

JOSEPHINE PRESTON DRELMER.

_From Miss Avice Milbrey to Mrs. Cornelia Van Geist, New York._

Mütterchen, dearest, I feel like that green hunter you had to sell last
spring--the one that would go at a fence with the most perfect display
of serious intentions, and then balk and bolt when it came to jumping.
Can it be that I, who have been trained from the cradle to the idea of
marrying for money, will bolt the gate after all the expense and pains
lavished upon my education to this end; after the years spent in
learning how to enchant, subdue, and exploit the most useful of all
animals, and the most agreeable, barring a few? And yet, right when I'm
the fittest--twenty-four years old, knowing all my good points and just
how to coerce the most admiration for each, able nicely to calculate
the exact disturbing effect of the _ensemble_ upon any poor male, and
feeling confident of my excessively eligible _parti_ when I decide for
him--in this situation, striven for so earnestly, I feel like bolting
the bars. How my trainer and jockey would weep tears of rage and
despair if they guessed it!

There, there--I know your shrewd grey eyes are crackling with curiosity
and, you want to know what it's all about, whether to scold me or
mother me, and will I please omit the _entrées_ and get to the roast
mutton. But you dear, dear old aunt, you, there is more vagueness than
detail, and I know I'll strain your patience before I've done. But, to
relieve your mind, nothing at all has really happened. After all, it's
mostly a _troublesome state of mind_, that I shall doubtless find gone
when we reach Jersey City,--and in two ways this Western trip is
responsible for it. Do you know the journey itself has been
fascinating. Too bad so many of us cross the ocean twenty times before
we know anything of this country. We loiter in Paris, do the stupid
German watering-places, the Norway fjords, down to Italy for the
museums, see the _chateaux_ of the Loire, or do the English
race-tracks, thinking we're 'mused; and all the time out here where the
sun goes down is an intensely interesting and beautiful country of our
own that we overlook. You know I'd never before been even as far as
Chicago. Now for the first time I can appreciate lots of those things
in Whitman, that--

"I think heroic deeds were all conceived in the open air, and free
poems,     also. Now I see the secret of making the best persons: It is
to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth."

I mayn't have quoted correctly, but you know the sort of thing I mean,
that sounds so _breezy_ and _stimulating_. And they've helped me
understand the immensity of the landscapes and the ideas out here, the
big, throbbing, rough young life, and under it all, as Whitman says, "a
meaning--Democracy, _American_ Democracy." Really it's been
interesting, _the jolliest time of my life,_ and it's got me all
unsettled. More than once in watching some scene typical of the region,
the plain, busy, earnest people, I've actually thrilled to think that
this was _my country_--felt that queer little tickling tingle that
locates your spine for you. I'm sure there's no _ennui_ here. Some one
said the other day, "_Ennui_ is a disease that comes from living on
other people's money." I said no, that I'd often had as fine an attack
as if I'd been left a billion, that _ennui_ is when you don't know what
to do next and wouldn't do it if you did. Well, here they always _do_
know what to do next, and as one of them told me, "_We always get up
early the day before to do it_."

Auntie, dear, the trip has made me _more restless and dissatisfied_
than ever. It makes me want to _do_ something--to _risk_ something, to
want to _want_ something more than I've ever learned to want.

That's one reason I'm acting badly. The other will interest you more.

It's no less a reason than _the athletic young Bayard_ who cheated
those cab-horses of their prey that night Fred didn't drink all the
Scotch whiskey in New York. Our meeting, and the mater's treatment of
him before she discovered who he was, are too delicious to write. I
must wait to tell you.

It is enough to say that now I heard his name it recalled nothing to
me, and I took him from his dress to be a _workingman_ in the mine we
visiting, though from his speech and manner of a gentleman, someone in
authority. Dear, he was _so_ dear and so Westernly breezy and
progressive and enterprising and so _appallingly candid_. I've been the
"one woman", the "unknown but remembered ideal" since that encounter.
Of course, that was to be said, but strangely enough he meant it. He
was actually and unaffectedly making love to me. He's not so large or
tall, but quick and springy, and muscled like a panther. He's not
beautiful either but pleasant to look at, one of those broad
high-cheeked faces one sees so much in the West, with the funniest
quick yellowish grey eyes and the most disreputable moustache I ever
saw, yellow and ragged, If he must eat it, I wish he would _eat it off
even_ clear across. And he's likely to talk the most execrable slang,
or to quote Browning. But he was making real love, and you know I'm not
used to that. I'm accustomed to go my pace before sharply calculating
eyes, to show if I'm worth the _asking price_. But here was real love
being made off down in the earth (we'd run away from the others because
I _liked him at once_). I don't mind telling you he moved me, partly
because I had wondered about him from that night, and partly because of
all I had come to feel about this new place and the new people, and
because he seemed such a fine, active specimen of Western manhood. I
won't tell you all the wild, lawless thoughts that scurried and
_sneaked_ through my mind--they don't matter now--for all at once it
came out that he was the only son of that wealthy Bines who died awhile
ago--you remember the name was mentioned that night at your house when
they were discussing the exodus of Western millionaires to New York;
some one named the father as one who liked coming to New York to
dissipate occasionally, but who was still rooted in the soil where his
millions grew.

There was the son before me, just _an ordinary man of millions_, after
all--and my little toy balloon of romance that I'd been floating so
gaily on a string of sentiment was pricked to nothing in an instant. I
felt my nostrils expand with the excitement of the chase, and
thereafter I was my _coldly professional self_. If that young man has
not now a high estimate of my charms of person and mind, then have my
ways forgot their cunning and I be no longer the daughter of Margaret
Milbrey, _née_ van Schoule.

But, Mütterchen, now comes the disgraceful part. I'm afraid of myself,
even in spite of our affairs being so bad. Dad has doubtless told you
something must be done very soon, and I seem to be the only one to do
it. And yet I am shying at the gate. This trip has unsettled me, I tell
you, letting me, among other things, see my old self. Before I always
rather liked the idea of marriage, that is, after I'd been out a couple
of years--not too well, but well enough--and now some way I rebel, not
from scruples, but from pure selfishness. I'm beginning to find that I
want to _enjoy myself_ and to find, further, that I'm not indisposed to
_take chances_--as they say out here. Will you understand, I wonder?
And do women who sell themselves ever find any real pleasure in the
bargain? The most eloquent examples, the ones that sell themselves to
_many men,_ lead wretched lives. But does the woman who sells herself
to _but one_ enjoy life any more? She's surely as bad, from any
standpoint of morals, and I imagine sometimes she is less happy. At any
rate, she has less _freedom_ and more _obligations_ under her contract.
You see I am philosophising pretty coldly. Now be _horrified_ if you
will.

I am selfish by good right, though. "Haven't we spent all our surplus
in keeping you up for a good marriage?" says the mater, meaning by a
good marriage that I shall bring enough money into the family to _"keep
up its traditions."_ I am, in other words, an investment from which
they expect large returns. I told her I hoped she could trace her
selfishness to its source as clearly as I could mine, and as for the
family traditions, Fred was preserving those in an excellent medium.
Which was very ugly in me, and I cried afterwards and told her how
sorry I was.

Are you shocked by my cold calculations? Well, I am trying to let you
understand me, and I--

"...have no time to waste In patching fig-leaves for the naked truth."

I am cursed not only with consistent feminine longings and desires,
but, in spite of my training and the examples around me, with a
disinclination to be wholly vicious. Awhile ago marriage meant only
more luxury and less worry about money. I never gave any thought to the
husband, certainly never concerned myself with any notions of duty or
obligation toward him. The girls I know are taught painstakingly how to
get a husband, but nothing of how to be a wife. The husband in my case
was to be an inconvenience, but doubtless an amusing one. For all his
oppression, if there were that, and even for _the mere offence of his
existence,_ I should wreak my spite merrily on his vulgar dollars.

But you are saying that I like the present eligible. That's the
trouble. I like him so well I haven't the heart to marry him. When I
was twenty I could have loved him devotedly, I believe. Now something
seems to be gone, some freshness or fondness. I can still love--I know
it only too well night and day--but it must be a different kind of man.
He is so very young and reverent and tender, and in a way so
unsophisticated. He is so afraid of me, for all his pretence of
boldness.

Is it because I must be taken by sheer force? I'll not be surprised if
it is. Do we not in our secret soul of souls nourish this beatitude:
"Blessed is the man who _destroys all barriers"?_ Florence Akemit said
as much one day, and Florence, poor soul, knows something of the
matter. Do we not sit defiantly behind the barriers, insolently
challenging--threatening capital punishment for any assault, relaxing
not one severity, yet falling meek and submissive and glad, to the man
who brutally and honestly beats them down, and _destroys them utterly?_
So many fail by merely beating them down. Of course if an _untidy
litter_ is left we make a row. We reconstruct the barrier and that
particular assailant is thenceforth deprived of a combatant's rights.
What a dear you are that I can say these things to you! Were girls so
frank in your time?

Well, my knight of the "golden cross" (_joke; laughter and loud
applause, and cries of "Go on!"_) has a little, much indeed, of the
impetuous in him, but, alas! not enough. He has a pretty talent for it,
but no genius. If I were married to him to-morrow, as surely as I am a
woman I should be made to inflict pain upon him the next day, with an
insane stress to show him, perhaps, I was not the ideal woman he had
thought me--perhaps out of a jealousy of that very ideal I had
inspired--rational creatures, aren't we?--beg pardon--not we, then, but
I. Now he, being a real likable man of a man, can I do that--for money?
Do I want the money _badly enough?_ Would I not even rather be
penniless with the man who coerced every great passion and littlest
impulse, body and soul--_perhaps with a very hateful insolence of power
over me?_ Do you know, I suspect sometimes that I've been trained down
too fine, as to my nerves, I mean. I doubt if it's safe to pamper and
trim and stimulate and refine a woman in that hothouse atmosphere--at
least _if she's a healthy woman_. She's too apt sometime to break her
gait, get the bit of tradition between her teeth, and then let her
impulses run away with her.

Oh, Mütterchen, I am so sick and sore, and yet filled with a strange
new zest for this old puzzle of life. Will I ever be the same again?
This man is going to ask me to marry him the moment I am ready for him
to. Shall I be kind enough to tell him no, or shall I steel myself to
go in and hurt him--_make him writhe?_

And yet do you know what he gave me while I was with him? I wonder if
women feel it commonly? It was a desire for _motherhood_--a curiously
vivid and very definite longing--entirely irrespective of him, you
understand, although he inspired it. Without loving him or being at all
moved toward him, he made me sheerly _want_ to be a mother! Or is it
only that men we don't love make us feel motherly?

Am I wholly irrational and selfish and bad, or what am I? I know you'll
love me, whatever it is, and I wish now I could snuggle on that soft,
cushiony shoulder of yours and go to sleep.

Can anything be more pitiful than "a fine old family" afflicted with
_dry-rot_ like ours? I'm always amused when I read about the suffering
in the tenements. The real anguish is up in the homes like ours. We
have _to do without so very many more things,_ and mere hunger and cold
are easy compared to the suffering we feel.

Perhaps when I'm back to that struggle for appearances, I'll relent and
"barter my charms" as the old novels used to say, sanely and decently
like a well brought-up New York girl--_with certain reservations,_ to a
man who can support the family in the style to which it wants to become
accustomed. Yet there may be a way out. There is a Bines daughter, for
example, and mamma, who never does one half where she can as well do
two, will marry her to Fred if she can. On the other hand, Joe Drelmer
was putting in words for young Mauburn, who will be Lord Casselthorpe
when his disreputable old uncle dies.

She hasn't yet spent what she got for introducing the Canovass prince
to that oldest Elarton girl, so if she secures this prize for Mauburn,
she'll be comfortable for a couple of more years. Perhaps I could turn
my hand to something like that. I know the ropes as well as she does.

There, it _is_ a punishment of a letter, isn't it, dear? But I've known
_every bad place in it,_ and I've religiously put in your "Come, come,
child!" every time it belonged, so you've not still to scold me, for
which be comforted a little; and give me only a few words of cheerful
approval if your conscience will let you. I need that, after all, more
than advice. Look for us in a week. With a bear-hug for you,

AVICE.

P.S. Is it true that Ned Ristine and his wife have fixed it up and are
together again since his return? Not that I'm interested especially,
but I chanced to hear it gossiped the other day here on the car.
Indeed, I hope you know _how thoroughly I detest that man_!




CHAPTER X.

The Price of Averting a Scandal


As the train resumed speed after stopping at a station, Grant, the
porter, came back to the observation room of the Bines car with a
telegram for Uncle Peter. The old man read it and for a time mused
himself into seeming oblivion. Across the car, near by, Percival
lounged in a wicker arm-chair and stared cheerfully out into the
gathering night. He, too, was musing, his thoughts keeping pleasantly
in time with the rhythmic click of the wheels over the rail-joints.
After a day in the open air he was growing sleepy.

Uncle Peter aroused him by making his way back to the desk, the
roll-top of which he lifted with a sudden rattle. He called to
Percival. Sitting down at the desk he read the telegram again and
handed it to the young man, who read:

"Party will try to make good; no bluff. Won't compromise inside limit
set. Have seen paper and wish another interview before following
original instructions. Party will wait forty-eight hours before acting.
Where can you be seen? Wire office to-night.

"TAFE & COPLEN."

The young man looked up with mild interest. Uncle Peter was writing on
a telegraph blank.

"TAFE & COPLEN, Butte, Montana.

"Due Butte 7.30 A.M. to-morrow. Join me on car nought sixteen, go to
Montana City.

"PETER BINES.

"D.H.F. 742."

To the porter who answered his ring he handed the message to be put off
at the first stop.

"But what's it all about?" asked Percival, seeing by Uncle Peter's
manner that he was expected to show concern.

Uncle Peter closed the desk, lighted one of his best cigars, and
dropped into a capacious chair. The young man seated himself opposite.

"Well, son, it's a matter I cal'lated first off to handle myself, but
it looks now as if you better be in on it. I don't know just how much
you knew about your pa's ways, but, anyhow, you wouldn't play him to
grade much higher above standard than the run of 'em out here that has
had things comin' too easy for 'em. He was all right, Dan'l J. was. God
knows I ain't discountin' the comfort I've always took in him. He'd
stand acid all right, at any stage of the game. Don't forget that about
your pa."

The young man reflected.

"The worst story I ever heard of pa was about the time he wanted to
draw twenty thousand dollars from the bank in Tacoma. They telegraphed
the Butte National to wire his description, and the answer was 'tall
and drunk.'"

"Well, son, his periodicals wa'n't all. Seems as if this crowd has a
way fur women, and they generally get the gaff because they're so
blamed easy. You don't hear of them Eastern big men gettin' it so
often, but I've seen enough of 'em to know it ain't because they're any
straighter. They're jest a little keener on business propositions. They
draw a fine sight when it comes to splittin' pennies, while men out
here like your pa is lavish and careless. You know about lots of the
others.

"There's Sooley Pentz, good-hearted a man as ever sacked ore, and
plenty long-headed enough for the place he's bought in the Senate, but
Sooley is restless until he's bought up one end of every town he goes
into, from Eden plumb over to Washington, D. C.,--and 'tain't ever the
Sunday-school end Sooley buys either. If he was makin' two million a
month instead of one Sooley'd grieve himself to death because they
don't make that five-dollar kind of wine fast enough.

"Then there was Seth Larby. We're jest gettin' to the details of Seth's
expense account after he found the Lucky Cuss. I see the courts have
decided against the widow and children, and so they'll have to worry
off about five or six millions for the poor lady he duped so
outrageously--with a checker on the chips.

"As fur old Nate Kranil, a lawyer from Cheyenne was tellin' me his
numerous widows by courtesy was goin' to form an association and share
his leavin's pro raty. Said they'd all got kind of acquainted and made
up their minds they was such a reg'lar band of wolves that none of 'em
was able to do any of the others in the long run, so they'd divide
even.

"Then there was Dave Kisber, and--"

"Never mind any more--" Percival broke in. "Do you mean that my father
was mixed up like those old Indians?"

"Looks now as if he was. That telegram from Coplen is concernin' of a
lady--a party that was with him when he died. The press report sent out
that the young and beautiful Mrs. Bines was with her husband, and was
prostrated with grief. Your ma and Pishy was up to Steamin' Springs at
the time, and I kep' it from them all right."

"But _how_ was he entangled?--to what extent?"

"That's what we'll get more light on in the morning. She made a play
right after the will was filed fur probate, and I told Coplen to see
jest what grounds she had, and I'd settle myself if she really had any
and wa'n't unreasonable."

"It's just a question of blackmail, isn't it? What did you offer?"

"Well, she has a slew of letters--gettin' them is a matter of sentiment
and keepin' the thing quiet. Then she claims to have a will made last
December and duly witnessed, givin' her the One Girl outright, and a
million cash. So you can see she ain't anything ordinary. I told Coplen
to offer her a million cash for everything rather'n have any fuss. I
was goin' to fix it up myself and keep quiet about it."

"And this telegram looks as if she wanted to fight."

"Well, mebbe that and mebbe it means that she knows we _don't_ want to
fight considerable more than a million dollars' worth."

"How much do you think she'll hold out for?"

"Can't tell; you don't know how big pills she's been smokin'."

"But, damn it all, that's robbery!"

"Yes--but it's her deal. You remember when Billy Brue was playin'
seven-up with a stranger in the Two-Hump saloon over to Eden, and
Chiddie Fogle the bartender called him up front and whispered that he'd
jest seen the feller turn a jack from the bottom. 'Well,' says Billie,
looking kind of reprovin' at Chiddie, 'it was _his deal,_ wa'n't it?'
Now it's sure this blond party's deal, and we better reckon ahead a
mite before we start any roughhouse with her. You're due to find out if
you hadn't better let her turn her jack and trust to gettin' even on
your deal. You got a claim staked out in New York, and a scandal like
this might handicap you in workin' it. And 'tain't as if hushin' her up
was something we couldn't well afford. And think of how it would
torment your ma to know of them doin's, and how 'twould shame Pish in
company. Of course, rob'ry is rob'ry, but mebbe it's our play to be
sporty like Billy Brue was."

"Pretty bad, isn't it? I never suspected pa was in anything of this
sort."

"Well, I knew Dan'l J. purty well, and I spleened against some of his
ways, but that's done fur. Now the folks out in this part of the
country have come to expect it from a man like him. They don't mind so
much. But them New York folks--well, I thought mebbe you'd like to take
a clean bill of health when you settle in that centre of culture and
enlightenment,--and remember your ma and Pish."

"Of course the exposure would mean a lot of cheap notoriety--"

"Well, and not so all-fired cheap at that, even if we beat. I've heard
that lawyers are threatenin' to stop this thing of workin' entirely fur
their health. There's that to weigh up."

"But I hate to be done."

"Well, wouldn't you be worse done if you let a matter of money, when
you're reekin' with it, keep you from protectin' your pa's name? Do you
want folks to snicker when they read that 'lovin' husband and father'
business on his gravestone? My! I guess that young woman and her folks
we met the other day'd be tickled to death to think they knew you after
they'd read one of them Sunday newspaper stories with pictures of us
all, and an extry fine one of the millionaire's dupe, basely enticed
from her poor but honest millinery business in Spokane."

Percival shuddered.

"Well, let's see what Coplen has to say in the morning. If it can be
settled within reason I suppose we better give up."

"That's my view now, and the estate bein' left as simply as it was, we
can make in the payments unbeknownst to the folks."

They said good-night, and Percival went off to dream that a cab-horse
of mammoth size was threatening to eat Miss Milbrey unless he drove it
to Spokane Falls and bought two million millinery shops.

When he was jolted to consciousness they were in the switching yard at
Butte, and the car was being coupled to the rear of the train made up
for Montana City. He took advantage of the stop to shave. By the time
he was dressed they were under way again, steaming out past the big
smelters that palled the sky with heavy black smoke.

At the breakfast-table he found Uncle Peter and Coplen.

"I'm inclined," said the lawyer, as Percival peeled a peach, "to agree
with your grandfather. This woman--if I may use the term--is one of the
nerviest leg-pullers you're ever likely to strike."

"Lord! I should hope so," said Percival, with hearty emphasis.

"She studied your father and she knew him better than any of us, I
judge. She certainly knew he was liable to go at any time, in exactly
the way he did go. Why, she even had a doctor down from 'Frisco to
Monterey when they were there about a year ago--introduced him as an
old friend and had him stay around three days--just to give her a
private professional opinion on his chances. As to this will, the
signature is undoubtedly genuine, but my judgment is she procured it in
some way on a blank sheet of paper and had the will written above on
sheets like it. As it conforms to the real will word for word,
excepting the bequests to her, she must have had access to that before
having this one written. Of course that helps to make it look as if the
testator had changed his mind only as to the one legatee--makes it look
plausible and genuine. The witnesses were of course parties to the
fraud, but I seriously question our ability to prove there was fraud.
We think they procured a copy of the will we kept in our safe at Butte
through the clerk that Tafe fired awhile back because of his drinking
habits and because he was generally suspicious of him. Of course that's
only surmise."

"But can't we fight it?" demanded Percival, hungrily attacking the
crisp, brown little trout.

"Well, if we allowed it to come to a contest, we might expose the whole
thing, and then again we might not. I tell you she's clever. She's
shown it at every step. Now then, if you do fight," and the lawyer
bristled, as if his fighting spirit were not too far under the control
of his experience-born caution, "why, you have litigation that's bound
to last for years, and it would be pretty expensive. I admit the case
is tempting to a lawyer, but in the end you don't know what you'll get,
especially with this woman. Why, do you know she's already, we've
found, made up to two different judges that might be interested in any
litigation she'd have, and she's cultivating others. The role of
Joseph," he continued, "has never, to the best of my belief, been
gracefully played in the world's history, and you may have noticed that
the members of the Montana judiciary seem to be particularly awkward in
their essays at it. In the end, then, you'll be out a lot of money even
if you win. On the other hand, you have a chance to settle it for good
and all, getting back everything--excepting the will, which, of course,
we couldn't touch or even concede the existence of, but which would, if
such an instrument _were_ extant, be destroyed in the presence of a
witness whose integrity I could rely upon--well--as upon my own. The
letters which she has, and which I have seen, are also such as would
tend to substantiate her claims and make the large bequests to her seem
plausible--and they're also such letters as--I should infer--the family
would rather wish not to be made public, as they would be if it came to
trial."

"Jest what I told him," remarked Uncle Peter.

"What she'll hold out for I don't know, but I'd suggest this, that I
meet her attorney and put the case exactly as I've found it out as to
the will, letting them suspect, perhaps, that we have admissions of
some sort from Hornby, the clerk, that might damage them. Then I can
put it that, while we have no doubt of our ability to dispose of the
will, we do wish to avoid the scandal that would ensue upon a
publication of the letters they hold and the exposure of her relations
with the testator, and that upon this purely sentimental ground we are
willing to be bled to a reasonable extent. The One Girl is a valuable
mine, but my opinion is she'll be glad to get two million if we seem
reluctant to pay that much."

With that gusto of breakfast-appetite which arouses the envy of persons
whose alimentation is not what it used to be, Percival had devoured
ruddy peaches and purple grapes, trout that had breasted their swift
native currents that very morning, crisp little curls of bacon, muffins
that were mere flecks of golden foam, honey with the sweetness of a
thousand fragrant blossoms, and coffee that was oily with richness. For
a time he had seemed to make no headway against his hill-born appetite.
The lawyer, who had broken his fast with a strip of dry toast and a cup
of weak tea, had watched him with unfeigned and reminiscent interest.
Grant, who stood watchful to replenish his plate, and whose pleasure it
was to see him eat, regarded him with eyes fairly dewy from sympathy.
To A. L. Jackson, the cook, on a trip for hot muffins, he observed, "He
eats jes' like th' ole man. I suttin'y do love t' see that boy behave
when he got his fresh moral appetite on him. He suttin'y do ca'y
hisse'f mighty handsome."

With Coplen's final recommendation to settle Percival concluded his
meal, and after surveying with fondly pleasant regret the devastation
he had wrought, he leaned back in his chair and lighted a cigar. He was
no longer in a mood to counsel fight, even though he disliked to
submit.

"You know," he reminded Uncle Peter, "what that editorial in the Rock
Rip _Champion_ said about me when we were over there: 'We opine that
the Junior Bines will become a warm piece of human force if he isn't
ground-sluiced too early in the game.' Well--and here I'm
ground-sluiced the first rattle out of the box."

But the lawyer went over the case again point by point, and Percival
finally authorised him to make the best settlement possible. He cared
as little for the money as Uncle Peter did, large sum though it was.
And then his mother and sister would be spared a great humiliation, and
his own standing where most he prized it would not be jeopardised.

"Settle the best you can," was his final direction to Coplen. The
lawyer left them at the next station to wait for a train back to Butte.




CHAPTER XI.

How Uncle Peter Bines Once Cut Loose


As the train moved on after leaving Coplen, Percival fell to thinking
of the type of man his father had been.

"Uncle Peter," he said, suddenly, "they don't _all_ cut loose, do they?
Now _you_ never did?"

"Yes, I did, son. I yanked away from all the hitchin' straps of decency
when I first struck it, jest like all the rest of 'em. Oh, I was an
Indian in my time--a reg'ler measly hop-pickin' Siwash at that.

"You don't know, of course, what livin' out in the open on bacon and
beans does fur a healthy man's cravin's. He gets so he has visions day
and night of high-livin'--nice broiled steaks with plenty of fat on
'em, and 'specially cake and preserves and pies like mother used to
make--fat, juicy mince pies that would assay at least eight hundred
dollars a ton in raisins alone, say nothing of the baser metals. He
sees the crimp around the edges made with a fork, and the picture of a
leaf pricked in the middle to vent the steam, and he gets to smellin'
'em when they're pulled smokin' hot out of the oven. And frosted cake,
the layer kind--about five layers, with stratas of jelly and custard
and figs and raisins and whatever it might be. I saw 'em fur years,
with a big cuttin' out to show the cross-section.

"But a man that has to work by the day fur enough to take him through
the prospectin' season can't blow any of his dust on frivolous things
like pie. The hard-workin' plain food is the kind he has to tote, and I
never heard of pie bein' in anybody's grub-stake either.

"Well, fur two or three years at a time the nearest I'd ever get to
them dainties would be a piece of sour-dough bread baked on a
stove-lid. But whenever I was in the big camps I'd always go look into
the bake-shop windows and just gloat.--'rubber' they call it now'days.
My! but they would be beautiful. Son, if I could 'a' been guaranteed
that kind of a heaven, some of them times, I'd 'a' become the hottest
kind of a Christian zealot, I'll tell you that. That spell of gloatin'
was what I always looked forward to when I was lyin' out nights.

"Well, the time before I made the strike I outfitted in Grand Bar. The
bake-joint there was jest a mortal aggravation. Sakes! but it did
torment a body so! It was kep' by a Chink, and the star play in the
window was a kind of two-story cake with frostin' all over the
place--on top and down the sides, and on the bottom fur all I knew, it
looked that rich. And it had cocoanut mixed in with it. Say, now, that
concrete looked fit to pave the streets of the New Jerusalem with--and
a hunk was cut out, jest like I'd always dream of so much--showin' a
cross-section of rich yellow cake and a fruity-lookin' fillin' that
jest made a man want to give up.

"I was there three days, and every day I'd stop in front of that window
and jest naturally hone fur a slice of that vision. The Chink was
standin' in the door the first day.

"'Six doll's,' he says, kind of enticin' me.

"He might as well 'a' said six thousand. I shook my head.

"Next day I was there again, yearnin'. The Chink see me and come out.

"'One doll' li'l piece", he says.

"I says, 'No, you slant-eyed heathen,' or some such name as that. But
when you're looking fur tests of character, son, don't let that one
hide away from you. I'd play that fur the heftiest moral courage _I've_
ever showed, anyway.

"The third day it was gone and a lemon pie was there, all with nice
kind of brownish snow on top. I was on my way out then, pushin' the
mule. I took one lingerin' last look and felt proud of myself when I
saw the hump in the pack made by my bag of beans.

"'That-like flummery food's no kind of diet to be trackin' up pay-rock
on,' I says to kind of cheer myself.

"Four weeks later I struck it. And six weeks after that I had things in
shape so't I was able to leave. I was nearer to other places 'twas
bigger, but I made fur Grand Bar, lettin' on't I wanted to see about a
claim there. I'd 'a' felt foolish to have anyone know jest why I was
makin' the trip.

"On the way I got to havin' night-mares, 'fear that Chink would be
gone. I knew if he was I'd go down to my grave with something comin' to
me because I'd never found jest that identical cake I'd been famishin'
fur.

"When I got up front of the window, you can believe it or not, but that
Chink was jest settin' down another like it. Now you know how that
Monte Cristo carried on after he'd proved up. Well, I got into his
class, all right. I walked in past a counter where the Chink had
crullers and gingerbread and a lot of low-grade stuff like that, and I
set down to a little table with this here marble oil-cloth on it.

"'Bring her back,' I says, kind of tremblin', and pointin' to the
window.

"The Chink pattered up and come back with a little slab of it on a tin
plate. I jest let it set there.

"'Bring it all,' I says; 'I want the hull ball of wax.'

"'Six doll's,' he says, kind of cautious.

"I pulled out my buckskin pouch. 'Bring her back and take it out of
that,' I says--'when I get through,' I says.

"He grinned and hurried back with it. Well, son, nothing had ever
tasted so good to me, and I ain't say'n' that wa'n't the biggest worth
of all my money't I ever got. I'd been trainin' fur that cake fur
twenty odd year, and proddin' my imagination up fur the last ten weeks.

"I et that all, and I et another one with jelly, and a bunch of little
round ones with frostin' and raisins, and a bottle of brandied peaches,
and about a dozen cream puffs, and half a lemon pie with frostin' on
top, and four or five Charlotte rushes. The Chink had learned to make
'em all in 'Frisco.

"That meal set me back $34.75. When I went out I noticed the plain
sponge cakes and fruit cakes and dried-apple pies--things that had been
out of my reach fur twenty years, and--My! but they did look common and
unappetisin'. I kind of shivered at the sight of 'em.

"I ordered another one of the big cakes and two more lemon pies fur the
next day.

"Fur four days I led a life of what they call 'unbridled
licentiousness' while that Chink pandered to me. I never was any hand
fur drink, but I cut loose in that fancy-food joint, now I tell you.

"The fifth day I begun to taper off. I begun to have a suspicion the
stuff was made of sawdust with plasty of Paris fur frostin'. The sixth
day I was sure it was sawdust, and my shameful debauch comes to an end
right there. I remembered the story about the feller that cal'lated his
chickens wouldn't tell any different, so he fed 'em sawdust instead of
corn-meal, and by-and-bye a settin' of eggs hatched out--twelve of the
chickens had wooden legs and the thirteenth was a woodpecker. Say, I
felt so much like two cords of four-foot stove wood that it made me
plumb nervous to ketch sight of a saw-buck.

"It took jest three weeks fur me to get right inside again. My, but
meat victuals and all like that did taste mighty scrumptious when I
could handle 'em again.

"After that when I'd been out in the hills fur a season I'd get that
hankerin' back, and when I come in I'd have a little frosted-cake orgy
now and then. But I kep' myself purty well in hand. I never overdone it
like that again, fur you see I'd learned something. First off, there
was the appetite. I soon see the gist of my fun had been the _wantin'_
the stuff, the appetite fur it, and if you nursed an appetite along and
deluded it with promises it would stay by you like one of them meachin'
yellow dogs. But as soon as you tried to do the good-fairy act by it,
and give it all it hankered fur, you killed it off, and then you
wouldn't be entertained by it no more, and kep' stirred up and busy.

"And so I layed out to nurse my appetite, and aggravate it by never
givin' it quite all it wanted. When I was in the hills after a day's
tramp I'd let it have its fling on such delicacies as I could turn out
of the fryin'-pan myself, but when I got in again I'd begin to act
bossy with it. It's _wantin'_ reasonably that keeps folks alive, I
reckon. The mis-a-blest folks I've ever saw was them that had killed
all their wants by overfeedin' 'em.

"Then again, son, in this world of human failin's there ain't anything
ever _can_ be as pure and blameless and satisfyin' as the stuff in a
bake-shop window looks like it is. Don't ever furget that. It's jest
too good to be true. And in the next place--pastry's good in its way,
but the best you can ever get is what's made fur you at home--I'm
talkin' about a lot of things now that you don't probably know any too
much about. Sometimes the boys out in the hills spends their time
dreamin' fur other things besides pies and cakes, but that system of
mine holds good all through the deal--you can play it from soda to hock
and not lose out. And that's why I'm outlastin' a lot of the boys and
still gettin' my fun out of the game.

"It's a good system fur you, son, while you're learnin' to use your
head. Your pa played it at first, then he cut loose. And you need it
worse'n ever he did, if I got you sized up right. He touched me on one
side, and touched you on the other. But you can last longer if you jest
keep the system in mind a little. Remember what I say about the window
stuff."

Percival had listened to the old man's story with proper amusement, and
to the didactics with that feeling inevitable to youth which says
secretly, as it affects to listen to one whom it does not wish to
wound, "Yes, yes, I know, but you were living in another day, long ago,
and you are not _me!_"

He went over to the desk and began to scribble a name on the pad of
paper.

"If a man really loves one woman he'll behave all right," he observed
to Uncle Peter.

"Oh, I ain't preachin' like some do. Havin' a good time is all right;
it's the only thing, I reckon, sometimes, that justifies the misery of
livin'. But cuttin' loose is bad jedgment. A man wakes up to find that
his natural promptin's has cold-decked him. If I smoked the best
see-gars now all the time, purty soon I'd get so't I wouldn't
appreciate 'em. That's why I always keep some of these out-door
free-burners on hand. One of them now and then makes the others taste
better."

The young man had become deaf to the musical old voice.

He was writing:

"MY DEAR MISS MILBREY:--I send you the first and only poem I ever
wrote. I may of course be a prejudiced critic, but it seems to me to
possess in abundance those graces of metre, rhyme, high thought in
poetic form, and perfection of finish which the critics unite in
demanding. To be honest with you--and why should I conceal that conceit
which every artist is said secretly to feel in his own production?--I
have encountered no other poem in our noble tongue which has so moved
and captivated me.

"It is but fair to warn you that this is only the first of a volume of
similar poems which I contemplate writing. And as the theme appears now
to be inexhaustible, I am not sure that I can see any limit to the
number of volumes I shall be compelled to issue. Pray accept this
author's copy with his best and hopefullest wishes. One other copy has
been sent to the book reviewer of the Arcady _Lyre,_ in the hope that
he, at least, will have the wit to perceive in it that ultimate and
ideal perfection for which the humbler bards have hitherto striven in
vain.

"Sincerely and seriously yours,

"P. PERCIVAL BINES"

Thus ran the exalted poem on a sheet of note-paper:

  "AVICE MILBREY.
  Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey,
  Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey,
  Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey,
  Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey,
  Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey.
  And ninety-eight thousand other verses quite like it."




CHAPTER XII.

Plans for the Journey East


Until late in the afternoon they rode through a land that was bleak and
barren of all grace or cheer. The dull browns and greys of the
landscape were unrelieved by any green or freshness save close by the
banks of an occasional stream. The vivid blue of a cloudless sky served
only to light up its desolation to greater disadvantage. It was a grim
unsmiling land, hard to like.

"This may be God's own country," said Percival once, looking out over a
stretch of grey sage-brush to a mass of red sandstone jutting up, high,
sharp, and ragged, in the distance--"but it looks to me as if He got
tired of it Himself and gave up before it was half finished."

"A man has to work here a few years to love it," said Uncle Peter,
shortly.

As they left the car at Montana City in the early dusk, that thriving
metropolis had never seemed so unattractive to Percival; so rough, new,
garish, and wanting so many of the softening charms of the East.
Through the wide, unpaved streets, lined with their low wooden
buildings, they drove to the Bines mansion, a landmark in the oldest
and most fashionable part of the town. For such distinctions are made
in Western towns as soon as the first two shanties are built. The Bines
house had been a monument to new wealth from the earliest days of the
town, which was a fairly decent antiquity for the region. But the house
and the town grated harshly now upon the young man. He burned with a
fever of haste to be off toward the East--over the far rim of hills,
and the farther higher mountain range, to a land that had warmed
genially under three hundred years of civilised occupancy--where people
had lived and fraternised long enough to create the atmosphere he
craved so ardently.

While Chinese Wung lighted the hall gas and busied himself with their
hats and bags, Psyche Bines came down the stairs to greet them. Never
had her youthful freshness so appealed to her brother. The black gown
she wore emphasised her blond beauty. As to give her the aspect of
mourning one might have tried as reasonably to hide the radiance of the
earth in springtime with that trifling pall.

Her brother kissed her with more than his usual warmth. Here was one to
feel what he felt, to sympathise warmly with all those new yearnings
that were to take him out of the crude West. She wanted, for his own
reasons, all that he wanted. She understood him; and she was his ally
against the aged and narrow man who would have held them to life in
that physical and social desert.

"Well, sis, here we are!" he began. "How fine you're looking! And how
is Mrs. Throckmorton? Give her my love and ask her if she can be ready
to start for the effete East in twenty minutes."

It was his habit to affect that he constantly forgot his mother's name.
He had discovered years before that he was sometimes able thus to
puzzle her momentarily.

"Why, Percival!" exclaimed this excellent lady, coming hurriedly from
the kitchen regions, "I haven't a thing packed. Twenty minutes!
Goodness! I do declare!"

It was an infirmity of Mrs. Bines that she was unable to take otherwise
than literally whatever might be said to her; an infirmity known and
played upon relentlessly by her son.

"Oh, well!" he exclaimed, with a show of irritation. "I suppose we'll
be delayed then. That's like a woman. Never ready on time. Probably we
can't start now till after dinner. Now hurry! You know that boat leaves
the dock for Tonsilitis at 8.23--I hope you won't be seasick."

"Boat--dock--" Mrs. Bines stopped to convince herself beyond a
certainty that no dock nor boat could be within many hundred miles of
her by any possible chance.

"Never mind," said Psyche; "give ma half an hour's notice and she can
start for any old place."

"Can't she though!" and Percival, seizing his astounded mother, waltzed
with her down the hall, leaving her at the far end with profusely
polite assurances that he would bring her immediately a lemon-ice, an
ice-pick, and a cold roast turkey with pink stockings on.

"Never mind, Mrs. Cartwright," he called back to her--"oh, beg
pardon--Bines? yes, yes, to be sure--well, never mind, Mrs. Brennings.
We'll give you time to put your gloves and a bottle of horse-radish and
a nail-file and hammer into that neat travelling-bag of yours.

"Now let me go up and get clean again. That lovely alkali dust has
worked clear into my bearings so I'm liable to have a hot box just as
we get the line open ninety miles ahead."

At dinner and afterwards the new West and the old aligned themselves
into hostile camps, as of yore. The young people chatted with lively
interest of the coming change, of the New York people who had visited
the mine, of the attractions and advantages of life in New York.

Uncle Peter, though he had long since recognised his cause as lost,
remained doggedly inimical to the migration. The home was being broken
up and he was depressed.

"Anyhow, you'll soon be back," he warned them. "You won't like it a
mite. I tried it myself thirty years ago. I'll jest camp here until you
do come back. My! but you'll be glad to get here again."

"Why not have Billy Brue come stay with you," suggested Mrs. Bines, who
was hurting herself with pictures of the old man's loneliness, "in case
you should want a plaster on your back or some nutmeg tea brewed, or
anything? That Wung is so trifling."

"Maybe I might," replied the old man, "but Billy Brue ain't exactly
broke to a shack like this. I know just what he'd do all his spare
time; he'd set down to that new-fangled horseless piano and play it to
death."

Uncle Peter meant the new automatic piano in the parlour. As far as the
new cabinet was from the what-not this modern bit of mechanism was from
the old cottage organ--the latter with its "Casket of Household
Melodies" and the former with its perforated paper repertoire of "The
World's Best Music," ranging without prejudice from Beethoven's Fifth
Symphony to "I Never Did Like a Nigger Nohow," by a composer who shall
be unnamed on this page.

"And Uncle Peter won't have any one to bother him when he makes a
litter with all those old plans and estimates and maps of his," said
Psyche; "you'll be able to do a lot more work, Uncle Peter, this
winter."

"Yes, only I ain't got any more work to do than I ever had, and I
always managed to do that, no matter how you did clean up after me and
mix up my papers. I'm like old Nigger Pomeroy. He was doin' a job of
whitewashin' one day, and he had an old whitewash brush with most of
the hair gone out of it. I says to him, 'Pomeroy, why don't you get you
a new brush? you could do twice as much work.' And Pomeroy says,
'That's right, Mr. Bines, but the trouble is I ain't got twice as much
work to do.' So don't you folks get out on _my_ account," he concluded,
politely.

"And you know we shall be in mourning," said Psyche to her brother.

"I've thought of that. We can't do any entertaining, except of the most
informal kind, and we can't go out, except very informally; but, then,
you know, there aren't many people that have us on their lists, and
while we're keeping quiet we shall have a chance to get acquainted a
little."

"I hear they do have dreadful times with help in New York," said Mrs.
Bines.

"Don't let that bother you, ma," her son reassured her. "We'll go to
the Hightower Hotel, first. You remember you and pa were there when it
first opened. It's twice as large now, and we'll take a suite, have our
meals served privately, our own servants provided by the hotel, and you
won't have a thing to worry you. We'll be snug there for the winter.
Then for the summer we'll go to Newport, and when we come back from
there we'll take a house. Meantime, after we've looked around a bit,
we'll build, maybe up on one of those fine corners east of the Park."

"I almost dread it," his mother rejoined. "I never _did_ see how they
kept track of all the help in that hotel, and if it's twice as
monstrous now, however _do_ they do it--and have the beds all made
every day and the meals always on time?"

"And you can _get_ meals there," said Percival.

"I've been needing a broiled lobster all summer--and now the oysters
will be due--fine fat Buzzard's Bays--and oyster crabs."

"He ain't been able to touch a morsel out here," observed Uncle Peter,
with a palpably false air of concern. "I got all worried up about him,
barely peckin' at a crumb or two."

"I never could learn to eat those oysters out of their shells," Mrs.
Bines confessed. "They taste so much better out of the can. Once we had
them raw and on two of mine were those horrid little green crabs,
actually squirming. I was going to send them back, but your pa laughed
and ate them himself--ate them alive and kicking."

"And terrapin!" exclaimed Percival, with anticipatory relish.

"That terrapin stew does taste kind of good," his mother admitted,
"but, land's sakes! it has so many little bits of bones in it I always
get nervous eating it. It makes me feel as if all my teeth was coming
out."

"You'll soon learn all those things, ma," said her daughter--"and not
to talk to the waiters, and everything like that. She always asks them
how much they earn, and if they have a family, and how many children,
and if any of them are sick, you know," she explained to Percival.

"And I s'pose you ain't much of a hand fur smokin' cigarettes, are you,
ma?" inquired Uncle Peter, casually.

"Me!" exclaimed Mrs. Bines, in horror; "I never smoked one of the nasty
little things in my life."

"Son," said the old man to Percival, reproachfully, "is that any way to
treat your own mother? Here she's had all this summer to learn
cigarette smokin', and you ain't put her at it--all that time wasted,
when you _know_ she's got to learn. Get her one now so she can light
up."

"Why, Uncle Peter Bines, how absurd!" exclaimed his granddaughter.

"Well, them ladies smoked the other day, and they was some of the
reg'ler original van Vanvans. You don't want your poor ma kep' out of
the game, do you? Goin' to let her set around and toy with the coppers,
or maybe keep cases now and then, are you? Or, you goin' to get her a
stack of every colour and let her play with you? Pish, now, havin' been
to a 'Frisco seminary--she can pick it up, prob'ly in no time; but ma
ought to have practice here at home, so she can find out what brand she
likes best. Now, Marthy, them Turkish cigarettes, in a nice silver box
with some naked ladies painted on the outside, and your own monogram
'M.B.' in gold letters on every cigarette--"

"Don't let him scare you, ma," Percival interrupted. "You'll get into
the game all right, and I'll see that you have a good time."

"Only I hope the First M.E. Church of Montana City never hears of her
outrageous cuttin's-up," said Uncle Peter, as if to himself. "They'd
have her up and church her, sure--smokin' cigarettes with her gold
monogram on, at _her_ age!" "And of course we must go to the Episcopal
church there," said Psyche. "I think those Episcopal ministers are just
the smartest looking men ever. So swell looking, and anyway it's the
only church the right sort of people go to. We must be awfully high
church, too. It's the very best way to know nice people."

"I s'pose if every day'd be Sunday by-and-bye, like the old song says,
it'd be easier fur you, wouldn't it?" asked the old man. "You and Petie
would be 401 and 402 in jest no time at all."

Uncle Peter continued to be perversely frivolous about the most
exclusive metropolitan society in the world. But Uncle Peter was a
crabbed old man, lingering past his generation, and the young people
made generous allowance for his infirmities.

"Only there's one thing," said his sister to Percival, when later they
were alone, "we must be careful about ma; she _will_ persist in making
such dreadful breaks, in spite of everything I can do. In San Francisco
last June, just before we went to Steaming Springs, there was one hot
day, and of course everybody was complaining. Mrs. Beale remarked that
it wasn't the heat that bothered us so, but the humidity. It was so
damp, you know. Ma spoke right up so everybody could hear her, and
said, 'Yes; isn't the humidity dreadful? Why, it's just running off me
from every pore!'"




CHAPTER XIII.

The Argonauts Return to the Rising Sun


It was mid-October. The two saddle-horses and a team for carriage use
had been shipped ahead. In the private car the little party was
beginning its own journey Eastward. From the rear platform they had
watched the tall figure of Uncle Peter Bines standing in the bright
autumn sun, aloof from the band of kerchief-waving friends, the droop
of his head and shoulders showing the dejection he felt at seeing them
go. He had resisted all entreaties to accompany them.

His last injunction to Percival had been to marry early.

"I know your stock and I know _you_" he said; "and you got no call to
be rangin' them pastures without a brand. You never was meant fur a
maverick. Only don't let the first woman that comes ridin' herd get her
iron on you. No man knows much about the critters, of course, but I've
noticed a few things in my time. You pick one that's full-chested,
that's got a fairish-sized nose, and that likes cats. The full chest
means she's healthy, the nose means she ain't finicky, and likin' cats
means she's kind and honest and unselfish. Ever notice some women when
a cat's around? They pretend to like 'em and say 'Nice kitty!' but you
can see they're viewin' 'em with bitter hate and suspicion. If they
have to stroke 'em they do it plenty gingerly and you can see 'em
shudderin' inside like. It means they're catty themselves. But when one
grabs a cat up as if she was goin' to eat it and cuddles it in her neck
and talks baby-talk to it, you play her fur bein' sound and true. Pass
up the others, son.

"And speakin' of the fair sex," he added, as he and Percival were alone
for a moment, "that enterprisin' lady we settled with is goin' to do
one thing you'll approve of.

"She's goin'," he continued, in answer to Percival's look of inquiry,
"to take her bank-roll to New York. She says it's the only place fur
folks with money, jest like you say. She tells Coplen that there wa'n't
any fit society out here at all,--no advantages fur a lady of capacity
and ambitions. I reckon she's goin' to be 403 all right."

"Seems to me she did pretty well here; I don't see any kicks due her."

"Yes, but she's like all the rest. The West was good enough to make her
money in, but the East gets her when spendin' time comes."

As the train started he swung himself off with a sad little "Be good to
yourself!"

"Thank the Lord we're under way at last!" cried Percival, fervently,
when the group at the station had been shut from view. "Isn't it just
heavenly!" exclaimed his sister.

"Think of having all of New York you want--being at home there--and not
having to look forward to this desolation of a place."

Mrs. Bines was neither depressed nor elated. She was maintaining that
calm level of submission to fate which had been her lifelong habit. The
journey and the new life were to be undertaken because they formed for
her the line of least resistance along which all energy must flow. Had
her children elected to camp for the remainder of their days in the
centre of the desert of Gobi, she would have faced that life with as
little sense of personal concern and with no more misgivings.

Down out of the maze of hills the train wound; and then by easy grades
after two days of travel down off the great plateau to where the plains
of Nebraska lay away to a far horizon in brown billows of withered
grass.

Then came the crossing of the sullen, sluggish Missouri, that highway
of an earlier day to the great Northwest; and after that the better
wooded and better settled lands of Iowa and Illinois.

"Now we're getting where Christians live," said Percival, with warm
appreciation.

"Why, Percival," exclaimed his mother, reprovingly, "do you mean to say
there aren't any Christians in Montana City? How you talk! There are
lots of good Christian people there, though I must say I have my doubts
about that new Christian Science church they started last spring." "The
term, Mrs. Thorndike, was used in its social rather than its
theological significance," replied her son, urbanely. "Far be it from
me to impugn the religion of that community of which we are ceasing to
be integers at the pleasing rate of sixty miles an hour. God knows they
need their faith in a different kind of land hereafter!"

And even Mrs. Bines was not without a sense of quiet and rest induced
by the gentler contours of the landscape through which they now sped.

"The country here does seem a lot cosier," she admitted.

The hills rolled away amiably and reassuringly; the wooded slopes in
their gay colouring of autumn invited confidence. Here were no
forbidding stretches of the grey alkali desert, no grim bare mountains,
no solitude of desolation. It was a kind land, fat with riches. The
shorn yellow fields, the capacious red barns, the well-conditioned
homes, all told eloquently of peace and plenty. So, too, did the
villages--those lively little clearing-houses for immense farming
districts. To the adventurer from New York they seem always new and
crude. To our travellers from a newer, cruder region they were actually
aesthetic in their suggestions of an old and well-established
civilisation.

In due time they were rattling over a tangled maze of switches, dodging
interminable processions of freight-cars, barely missing crowded
passenger trains whose bells struck clear and then flatted as the
trains flew by; defiling by narrow water-ways, crowded with small
shipping; winding through streets lined with high, gloomy warehouses,
amid the clang and clatter, the strangely-sounding bells and whistles
of a thousand industries, each sending up its just contribution of
black smoke to the pall that lay always spread above; and steaming at
last into a great roomy shed where all was system, and where the big
engine trembled and panted as if in relief at having run in safety a
gantlet so hazardous.

"Anyway, I'd rather live in Montana City than Chicago," ventured Mrs.
Bines.

"Whatever pride you may feel in your discernment, Mrs. Cadwallader, is
amply justified," replied her son, performing before the amazed lady a
bow that indicated the lowest depths of slavish deference.

"I am now," he continued, "going out to pace the floor of this
locomotive-boudoir for a few exhilarating breaths of smoke, and pretend
to myself that I've got to live in Chicago for ever. A little
discipline like that is salutary to keep one from forgetting the great
blessing which a merciful Providence has conferred upon one."

"I'll walk a bit with you," said his sister, donning her jacket and a
cap.

"Lest my remarks have seemed indeterminate, madam," sternly continued
Percival at the door of the car, "permit me to add that if Chicago were
heaven I should at once enter upon a life of crime. Do not affect to
misunderstand me, I beg of you. I should leave no avenue of salvation
open to my precious soul. I should incur no risk of being numbered
among the saved. I should be _b-a-d_, and I should sit up nights to
invent new ways of evil. If I had any leisure left from being as wicked
as I could be, I should devote it to teaching those I loved how to
become abandoned. I should doubtless issue a pamphlet, 'How to Merit
Perdition Without a Master. Learn to be Wicked in your Own Home in Ten
Lessons. Instructions Sent Securely Sealed from Observation. Thousands
of Testimonials from the Most Accomplished Reprobates of the Day.' I
trust Mrs. Llewellen Leffingwell-Thompson, that you will never again so
far forget yourself as to utter that word 'Chicago' in my presence. If
you feel that you must give way to the evil impulse, go off by yourself
and utter the name behind the protection of closed doors--where this
innocent girl cannot hear you. Come, sister. Otherwise I may behave in
a manner to be regretted in my calmer moments. Let us leave the woman
alone, now. Besides, I've got to go out and help the hands make up that
New York train. You never can tell. Some horrible accident might happen
to delay us here thirty minutes. Cheer up, ma; it's always darkest just
before leaving Chicago, you know."

Thus flippantly do some of the younger sons of men blaspheme this
metropolis of the mid-West--a city the creation of which is, by many
persons of discrimination, held to be the chief romance and abiding
miracle of the nineteenth century. Let us rejoice that one such
partisan was now at hand to stem the torrent of abuse. As Percival held
back the door for his sister to pass out, a stout little ruddy-faced
man with trim grey sidewhiskers came quickly up the steps and barred
their way with cheery aggressiveness.

"Ah! Mr. Higbee--well, well!" exclaimed Percival, cordially.

"Thought it might be some of you folks when I saw the car," said
Higbee, shaking hands all around.

"And Mrs. Bines, too! and the girl, looking like a Delaware peach when
the crop's 'failed.' How's everybody, and how long you going to be in
the good old town?"

"Ah! we were just speaking of Chicago as you came in," said Percival,
blandly. "_Isn't_ she a great old town, though--a wonder!"

"My boy," said Higbee, in low, solemn tones that came straight from his
heart, "she gets greater every day you live. You can see her at it,
fairly. How long since you been here?"

"I came through last June, you know, after I left your yacht at
Newport."

"Yes, yes; to be sure; so you did--poor Daniel J.--but say, you
wouldn't know the town now if you haven't seen it since then. Why, I
run over from New York every thirty days or so and she grows out of my
ken every time, like a five-year-old boy. Say, I've got Mrs. Higbee up
in the New York sleeper, but if you're going to be here a spell we'll
stop a few days longer and I'll drive you around--what say?--packing
houses--Lake Shore Drive--Lincoln Park--"

He waited, glowing confidently, as one submitting irresistible
temptations.

Percival beamed upon him with moist eyes.

"By Jove, Mr. Higbee! that's clever of you--it's royal! Sis and I would
like nothing better--but you see my poor mother here is almost down
with nervous prostration and we've got to hurry her to New York without
an hour's delay to consult a specialist. We're afraid"--he glanced
anxiously at the astounded Mrs. Bines, and lowered his voice--"we're
afraid she may not be with us long."

"Why, Percival," began Mrs. Bines, dazedly, "you was just saying--"

"Now don't fly all to pieces, ma!--take it easy--you're with friends,
be sure of that. You needn't beg us to go on. You know we wouldn't
think of stopping when it may mean life or death to you. You see just
the way she is," he continued to the sympathetic Higbee--"we're afraid
she may collapse any moment. So we must wait for another time; but I'll
tell you what you do; go get Mrs. Higbee and your traps and come let us
put you up to New York. We've got lots of room--run along now--and
we'll have some of that ham, 'the kind you have always bought,' for
lunch. A.L. Jackson is a miserable cook, too, if I don't know the
truth." Gently urging Higbee through the door, he stifled a systematic
inquiry into the details of Mrs. Bines's affliction.

"Come along quick! I'll go help you and we'll have Mrs. Higbee back
before the train starts."

"Do you know," Mrs. Bines thoughtfully observed to her daughter, "I
sometimes mistrust Percival ain't just right in his head; you remember
he did have a bad fall on it when he was two years and five months
old--two years, five months, and eighteen days. The way he carries on
right before folks' faces! That time I went through the asylum at Butte
there was a young man kept going on with the same outlandish rigmarole
just like Percival. The idea of Percival telling me to eat a lemon-ice
with an ice-pick, and 'Oh, why don't the flesh-brushes wear nice,
proper clothes-brushes!' and be sure and hammer my nails good and hard
after I get them manicured. And back home he was always wanting to know
where the meat-augers were, saying he'd just bought nine hundred new
ones and he'd have to order a ton more if they were all lost. I don't
believe there is such a thing as a meat-auger. I don't know what on
earth a body could do with one. And that other young man," she
concluded, significantly, "they had him in a little bit of a room with
an iron-barred door to it like a prison-cell."




CHAPTER XIV.

Mr. Higbee Communicates Some Valuable Information


The Higbees were presently at home in the Bines car. Mrs. Higbee was a
pleasant, bustling, plump little woman, sparkling-eyed and sprightly.
Prominent in her manner was a helpless little confession of inadequacy
to her ambitions that made her personality engaging. To be energetic
and friendly, and deeply absorbed in people who were bold and
confident, was her attitude.

She began bubbling at once to Mrs. Bines and Psyche of the latest
fashions for mourners. Crepe was more swagger than ever before, both as
trimming and for entire costumes.

"House gowns, my dear, and dinner gowns, made entirely of crepe in the
Princesse style, will exactly suit your daughter--and on the dinner
gowns she can wear a trimming of that dull jet passementerie."

From gowns she went naturally to the difficulty of knowing whom to meet
in a city like New York--and how to meet them--and the watchfulness
required to keep daughter Millie from becoming entangled with leading
theatrical gentlemen. Amid Percival's lamentations that he must so soon
leave Chicago, the train moved slowly out of the big shed to search in
the interwoven puzzle of tracks for one that led to the East.

As they left the centre of the city Higbee drew Percival to one of the
broad side windows.

"Pull up your chair and sit here a minute," he said, with a mysterious
little air of importance. "There's a thing this train's going to pass
right along here that I want you to look at. Maybe you've seen better
ones, of course--and then again--"

It proved to be a sign some twenty feet high and a whole block long.
Emblazoned upon its broad surface was "Higbee's Hams." At one end and
towering another ten feet or so above the mammoth letters was a
white-capped and aproned chef abandoning his mercurial French
temperament to an utter frenzy of delight over a "Higbee's Ham" which
had apparently just been vouchsafed to him by an invisible benefactor.

"There, now!" exclaimed Higbee; "what do you call that--I want to
know--hey?"

"Great! Magnificent!" cried Percival, with the automatic and ready
hypocrisy of a sympathetic nature. "That certainly is great."

"Notice the size of it?" queried Higbee, when they had flitted by.

"_Did_ I!" exclaimed the young man, reproachfully.

"We went by pretty fast--you couldn't see it well. I tell you the way
they're allowed to run trains so fast right here in this crowded city
is an outrage. I'm blamed if I don't have my lawyer take it up with the
Board of Aldermen--slaughtering people on their tracks right and
left--you'd think these railroad companies owned the earth--But that
sign, now. Did you notice you could read every letter in the label on
that ham? You wouldn't think it was a hundred yards back from the
track, would you? Why, that label by actual measure is six feet, four
inches across--and yet it looks as small--and everything all in the
right proportion, it's wonderful. It's what I call art," he concluded,
in a slightly dogmatic tone.

"Of course it's art," Percival agreed; "er--all--hand-painted, I
suppose?"

"Sure! that painting alone, letters and all, cost four hundred and
fifty dollars. I've just had it put up. I've been after that place for
years, but it was held on a long lease by Max, the Square Tailor--you
know. You probably remember the sign he had there--'Peerless Pants Worn
by Chicago's Best Dressers' with a man in his shirt sleeves looking at
a new pair. Well, finally, I got a chance to buy those two back lots,
and that give me the site, and there she is, all finished and up.
That's partly what I come on this time to see about. How'd you like the
wording of that sign?"

"Fine--simple and effective," replied Percival.

"That's it--simple and effective. It goes right to the point and it
don't slop over beyond any, after it gets there. We studied a good deal
over that sign. The other man, the tailor, had too many words for the
board space. My advertisin' man wanted it to be, first, 'Higbee's Hams,
That's All.' But, I don't know--for so big a space that seemed to me
kind of--well--kind of flippant and undignified. Then I got it down to
'Eat Higbee's Hams.' That seemed short enough--but after studying it, I
says, What's the use of saying 'eat'? No one would think, I says, that
a ham is to paper the walls with or to stuff sofa-cushions with--so off
comes 'eat' as being superfluous, and leaving it simple and
dignified--'Higbee's Hams.'"

"By the way," said Percival, when they were sitting together again,
later in the day, "where is Henry, now?"

Higbee chuckled.

"That's the other thing took me back this time--the new sign and
getting Hank started. Henry is now working ten hours a day out to the
packinghouse. After a year of that, he'll be taken into the office and
his hours will be cut down to eight. Eight hours a day will seem like
sinful idleness to Henry by that time."

Percival whistled in amazement.

"I thought you'd be surprised. But the short of it is, Henry found
himself facing work or starvation. He didn't want to starve a little
bit, and he finally concluded he'd rather work for his dad than any one
else.

"You see Henry was doing the Rake's Progress act there in New
York--being a gilded youth and such like. Now being a gilded youth and
'a well-known man about town' is something that wants to be done in
moderation, and Henry didn't seem to know the meaning of the word. I
put up something like a hundred and eighty thousand dollars for Hank's
gilding last year. Not that I grudged him the money, but it wasn't
doing him any good. He was making a monkey of himself with it, Henry
was. A good bit of that hundred and eighty went into a comic opera
company that was one of the worst I ever _did_ see. Henry had no
judgment. He was _too_ easy. Well, along this summer he was on the
point of making a break that would--well, I says to him, says I, 'Hank,
I'm no penny-squeezer; I like good stretchy legs myself,' I says; 'I
like to see them elastic so they'll give a plenty when they're pulled;
but,' I says, 'if you take that step,' I says, 'if you declare
yourself, then the rubber in your legs,' I says, 'will just naturally
snap; you'll find you've overplayed the tension,' I says, 'and there
won't be any more stretch left in them.'

"The secret is, Hank was being chased by a whole family of
wolves--that's the gist of it--fortune-hunters--with tushes like the
ravening lion in Afric's gloomy jungle. They were not only cold, stone
broke, mind you, but hyenas into the bargain--the father and the mother
and the girl, too.

"They'd got their minds made up to marry the girl to a good wad of
money--and they'll do it, too, sooner or later, because she's a corker
for looks, all right--and they'd all made a dead set for Hank; so,
quick as I saw how it was, I says, 'Here,' I says, 'is where I save my
son and heir from a passel of butchers,' I says, 'before they have him
scalded and dressed and hung up outside the shop for the holiday
trade,' I says, 'with the red paper rosettes stuck in Henry's chest,' I
says."

"Are the New York girls so designing?" asked Percival.

"Is Higbee's ham good to eat?" replied Higbee, oracularly.

"So," he continued, "when I made up my mind to put my foot down I just
casually mentioned to the old lady--say, she's got an eye that would
make liquid air shiver--that cold blue like an army overcoat--well, I
mentioned to her that Henry was a spendthrift and that he wasn't ever
going to get another cent from me that he didn't earn just the same as
if he wasn't any relation of mine. I made it plain, you bet; she found
just where little Henry-boy stood with his kind-hearted, liberal old
father.

"Say, maybe Henry wasn't in cold storage with the whole family from
that moment. I see those fellows in the laboratories are puttering
around just now trying to get the absolute zero of temperature--say,
Henry got it, and he don't know a thing about chemistry.

"Then I jounced Hank. I proceeded to let him know he was up against
it--right close up against it, so you couldn't see daylight between
'em. 'You're twenty-five,' I says, 'and you play the best game of pool,
I'm told, of any of the chappies in that Father-Made-the-Money club you
got into,' I says; 'but I've looked it up,' I says, 'and there ain't
really what you could call any great future for a pool champion,' I
says, 'and if you're ever going to learn anything else, it's time you
was at it,' I says. 'Now you go back home and tell the manager to set
you to work,' I says, 'and your wages won't be big enough to make you
interesting to any skirt-dancer, either,' I says. 'And you make a study
of the hog from the ground up. Exhaust his possibilities just like your
father done, and make a man of yourself, and then sometime,' I says,
'you'll be able to give good medicine to a cub of your own when he
needs it.'"

"And how did poor Henry take all that?"

"Well, Hank squealed at first like he was getting the knife; but
finally when he see he was up against it, and especially when he see
how this girl and her family throwed him down the elevator-shaft from
the tenth story, why, he come around beautifully. He's really got
sense, though he doesn't look it--Henry has--though Lord knows I didn't
pull him up a bit too quick. But he come out and went to work like I
told him. It's the greatest thing ever happened to him. He ain't so
fat-headed as he was, already. Henry'll be a man before his dad's
through with him."

"But weren't the young people disappointed?" asked Percival; "weren't
they in love with each other?"

"In _love?_" In an effort to express scorn adequately Mr. Higbee came
perilously near to snorting. "What do you suppose a girl like that
cares for love? She was dead in love with the nice long yellow-backs
that I've piled up because the public knows good ham when they taste
it. As for being in love with Henry or with any man--say, young fellow,
you've got something to learn about those New York girls. And this one,
especially. Why, it's been known for the three years we've been there
that she's simply hunting night and day for a rich husband. She tries
for 'em all as fast as they get in line."

"Henry was unlucky in finding that kind. They're not all like
that--those New York girls are not," and he had the air of being able
if he chose to name one or two luminous exceptions.

"Silas," called Mrs. Higbee, "are you telling Mr. Bines about our Henry
and that Milbrey girl?"

"Yep," answered Higbee, "I told him."

"About what girl?--what was her name?" asked Percival, in a lower tone.

"Milbrey's that family's name--Horace Milbrey--"

"Why," Percival interrupted, somewhat awkwardly, "I know the
family--the young lady--we met the family out in Montana a few weeks
ago."

"Sure enough--they were in Chicago and had dinner with us on their way
out." "I remember Mr. Milbrey spoke of what fine claret you gave him."

"Yes, and I wasn't stingy with ice, either, the way those New York
people always are. Why, at that fellow's house he gives you that claret
wine as warm as soup.

"But as for that girl," he added, "say, she'd marry me in a minute if I
wasn't tied up with the little lady over there. Of course she'd rather
marry a sub-treasury; she's got about that much heart in
her--cold-blooded as a German carp. She'd marry me--she'd marry _you_,
if you was the best thing in sight. But say, if you was broke, she'd
have about as much use for you as Chicago's got for St. Louis."




CHAPTER XV.

Some Light With a Few Side-lights


The real spring in New York comes when blundering nature has painted
the outer wilderness for autumn. What is called "spring" in the city by
unreflecting users of the word is a tame, insipid season yawning into
not more than half-wakefulness at best. The trees in the gas-poisoned
soil are slow in their greening, the grass has but a pallid city
vitality, and the rows of gaudy tulips set out primly about the
fountains in the squares are palpably forced and alien.

For the sumptuous blending and flaunt of colour, the spontaneous
awakening of warm, throbbing new life, and all those inspiring miracles
of regeneration which are performed elsewhere in April and May, the
city-pent must wait until mid-October.

This is the spring of the city's year. There be those to hint
captiously that they find it an affair of false seeming; that the
gorgeous colouring is a mere trick of shop-window cunning; that the
time is juiceless and devoid of all but the specious delights of
surface. Yet these, perhaps, are unduly imaginative for a world where
any satisfaction is held by a tenure precarious at best. And even these
carpers, be they never so analytical, can at least find no lack of
springtime fervour in the eager throngs that pass entranced before the
window show. They, the free-swinging, quick-moving men and women--the
best dressed of all throngs in this young world--sun-browned,
sun-enlivened, recreated to a fine mettle for enjoyment by their months
of mountain or ocean sport--these are, indeed, the ones for whom this
afterspring is made to bloom. And, since they find it to be a shifting
miracle of perfections, how are they to be quarrelled with?

In the big polished windows waxen effigies of fine ladies, gracefully
patient, display the latest dinner-gown from Paris, or the creamiest of
be-ribboned tea-gowns. Or they pose in attitudes of polite adieux and
greeting, all but smothered in a king's ransom of sable and ermine. Or,
to the other extreme, they complacently permit themselves to be
observed in the intimate revelations of Parisian lingerie, with its
misty froth of embroideries, its fine-spun webs of foamy lace.

In another window, behold a sprightly and enlivening ballet of shapely
silken hosiery, fitting its sculptured models to perfection, ranging in
tints from the first tender green of spring foliage to the rose-pink of
the spring sun's after-glow.

A few steps beyond we may study a window where the waxen ladies have
been dismembered. Yet a second glance shows the retained portions to be
all that woman herself considers important when she tries on the
bird-toque or the picture hat, or the gauze confection for afternoons.
The satisfied smiles of these waxen counterfeits show them to have been
amply recompensed, with the headgear, for their physical
incompleteness.

But if these terraces of colour and grace that line the sides of this
narrow spring valley be said to contain only the dry husks of
adornment, surely there may be found others more technically
springlike.

Here in this broad window, foregathered in a congress of colours
designed to appetise, are the ripe fruits of every clime and every
season: the Southern pomegranate beside the hardy Northern apple,
scarlet and yellow; the early strawberry and the late ruddy peach; figs
from the Orient and pines from the Antilles; dates from Tunis and tawny
persimmons from Japan; misty sea-green grapes and those from the
hothouse--tasteless, it is true, but so lordly in their girth, and
royal purple; portly golden oranges and fat plums; pears of mellow
blondness and pink-skinned apricots. Here at least is the veritable
stuff and essence of spring with all its attending aromas--of more
integrity, perhaps, than the same colourings simulated by the
confectioner's craft, in the near-by window-display of impossible
sweets.

And still more of this belated spring will gladden the eye in the
florist's window. In June the florist's shop is a poor place,
sedulously to be shunned. Nothing of note blooms there then. The
florist himself is patently ashamed of himself. The burden of
sustaining his traditions he puts upon a few dejected shrubs called
"hardy perennials" that have to labour the year around. All summer it
is as if the place feared to compete with nature when colour and grace
flower so cheaply on every southern hillside. But now its glories bloom
anew, and its superiority over nature becomes again manifest. Now it
assembles the blossoms of a whole long year to bewilder and allure. Its
windows are shaded glens, vine-embowered, where spring, summer, and
autumn blend in all their regal and diverse abundance; and the closing
door of the shop fans out odours as from a thousand Persian gardens.

But spring is not all of life, nor what at once chiefly concerns us.
There are people to be noted: a little series of more or less related
phenomena to be observed.

One of the people, a young man, stands conveniently before this same
florist's window, at that hour when the sun briefly flushes this narrow
canon of Broadway from wall to wall.

He had loitered along the lively highway an hour or more, his nerves
tingling responsively to all its stimuli. And now he mused as he stared
at the tangled tracery of ferns against the high bank of wine-red
autumn foliage, the royal cluster of white chrysanthemums and the big
jar of American Beauties.

He had looked forward to this moment, too--when he should enter that
same door and order at least an armful of those same haughty roses sent
to an address his memory cherished. Yet now, the time having come, the
zest for the feat was gone. It would be done; it were ungraceful not to
do it, after certain expressions; but it would be done with no heart
because of the certain knowledge that no one--at least no one to be
desired--could possibly care for him, or consider him even with
interest for anything but his money--the same kind of money Higbee made
by purveying hams--"and she wouldn't care in the least whether it was
mine or Higbee's, so there was a lot of it."

Yet he stepped in and ordered the roses, nor did the florist once
suspect that so lavish a buyer of flowers could be a prey to emotions
of corroding cynicism toward the person for whom they were meant.

From the florist's he returned directly to the hotel to find his mother
and Psyche making homelike the suite to which they had been assigned. A
maid was unpacking trunks under his sister's supervision. Mrs. Bines
was in converse with a person of authoritative manner regarding the
service to be supplied them. Two maids would be required, and madame
would of course wish a butler--

Mrs. Bines looked helplessly at her son who had just entered.

"I think--we've--we've always did our own buttling," she faltered.

The person was politely interested.

"I'll attend to these things, ma," said Percival, rather suddenly.
"Yes, we'll want a butler and the two maids, and see that the butler
knows his business, please, and--here--take this, and see that we're
properly looked after, will you?"

As the bill bore a large "C" on its face, and the person was rather a
gentleman anyway, this unfortunate essay at irregular conjugation never
fell into a certain class of anecdotes which Mrs. Bines's best friends
could now and then bring themselves to relate of her.

But other matters are forward. We may next overtake two people who
loiter on this bracing October day down a leaf-strewn aisle in Central
Park.

"You," said the girl of the pair, "least of all men can accuse me of
lacking heart."

"You are cold to me now."

"But look, think--what did I offer--you've had my trust,--everything I
could bring myself to give you. Look what I would have sacrificed at
your call. Think how I waited and longed for that call."

"You know how helpless I was."

"Yes, if you wanted more than my bare self. I should have been
helpless, too, if I had wanted more than--than you."

"It would have been folly--madness--that way."

"Folly--madness? Do you remember the 'Sonnet of Revolt' you sent me?
Sit on this bench; I wish to say it over to you, very slowly; I want
you to hear it while you keep your later attitude in mind.

"Life--what is life? To do without avail The decent ordered tasks of
every day: Talk with the sober: join the solemn play: Tell for the
hundredth time the self-same tale Told by our grandsires in the
self-same vale Where the sun sets with even, level ray, And nights,
eternally the same, make way For hueless dawns, intolerably pale--'"

"But I know the verse."

"No; hear it out;--hear what you sent me:

  "'And this is life? Nay, I would rather see
  The man who sells his soul in some wild cause:
  The fool who spurns, for momentary bliss,
  All that he was and all he thought to be:
  The rebel stark against his country's laws:
  God's own mad lover, dying on a kiss.'"

She had completed the verse with the hint of a sneer in her tones.

"Yes, truly, I remember it; but some day you'll thank me for saving
you; of course it would have been regular in a way, but people here
never really forget those things--and we'd have been helpless--some day
you'll thank me for thinking for you."

"Why do you believe I'm not thanking you already?"

"Hang it all! that's what you made me think yesterday when I met you."
"And so you called me heartless? Now tell me just what you expect a
woman in my position to do. I offered to go to you when you were ready.
Surely that showed my spirit--and you haven't known me these years
without knowing it would have to be that or nothing."

"Well, hang it, it wasn't like the last time, and you know it; you're
not kind any longer. You can be kind, can't you?"

Her lip showed faintly the curl of scorn.

"No, I can't be kind any longer. Oh, I see you've known your own mind
so little; there's been so little depth to it all; you couldn't dare.
It was foolish to think I could show you my mind."

"But you still care for me?"

"No; no, I don't. You should have no reason to think so if I did. When
I heard you'd made it up I hated you, and I think I hate you now. Let
us go back. No, no, please don't touch me--ever again."

Farther down-town in the cosy drawing-room of a house in a side street
east of the Avenue, two other persons were talking. A florid and
profusely freckled young Englishman spoke protestingly from the
hearth-rug to a woman who had the air of knowing emphatically better.

"But, my dear Mrs. Drelmer, you know, really, I can't take a curate
with me, you know, and send up word won't she be good enough to come
downstairs and marry me directly--not when I've not seen her, you
know!"  "Nonsense!" replied the lady, unimpressed. "You can do it
nearly that way, if you'll listen to me. Those Westerners perform quite
in that manner, I assure you. They call it 'hustling.'"

"_Dear_ me!"

"Yes, indeed, 'dear you.' And another thing, I want you to forestall
that Milbrey youth, and you may be sure he's no farther away than
Tuxedo or Meadowbrook. Now, they arrived yesterday; they'll be
unpacking to-day and settling to-morrow; I'll call the day after, and
you shall be with me."

"And you forget that--that devil--suppose she's as good as her threat?"

"Absurd! how could she be?"

"You don't know her, you know, nor the old beggar either, by Jove!"

"All the more reason for haste. We'll call to-morrow. Wait. Better
still, perhaps I can enlist the Gwilt-Athelston; I'm to meet her
to-morrow. I'll let you know. Now I must get into my teaharness, so run
along."

We are next constrained to glance at a strong man bowed in the hurt of
a great grief. Horace Milbrey sits alone in his gloomy, high-ceilinged
library. His attire is immaculate. His slender, delicate hands are
beautifully white. The sensitive lines of his fine face tell of the
strain under which he labours. What dire tragedies are those we must
face wholly alone--where we must hide the wound, perforce, because no
comprehending sympathy flows out to us; because instinct warns that no
help may come save from the soul's own well of divine fortitude. Some
hope, tenderly, almost fearfully, held and guarded, had perished on the
day that should have seen its triumphant fruition. He raised his
handsome head from the antique, claw-footed desk, sat up in his chair,
and stared tensely before him. His emotion was not to be suppressed. Do
tears tremble in the eyes of the strong man? Let us not inquire too
curiously. If they tremble down the fine-skinned cheek, let us avert
our gaze. For grief in men is no thing to make a show of.

A servant passed the open door bearing an immense pasteboard box with
one end cut out to accommodate the long stems of many roses.

"Jarvis!"

"Yes, sir!"

"What is it?"

"Flowers, sir, for Miss Avice."

"Let me see--and the card?"

He took the card from the florist's envelope and glanced at the name.

"Take them away."

The stricken man was once more alone; yet now it was as if the tender
beauty of the flowers had balmed his hurt--taught him to hope anew. Let
us in all sympathy and hope retire.

For cheerfuller sights we might observe Launton Oldaker in a musty
curio-shop, delighted over a pair of silver candlesticks with square
bases and fluted columns, fabricated in the reign of that fortuitous
monarch, Charles the Second; or we might glance in upon the Higbees in
their section of a French chateau, reproduced up on the stately
Riverside Drive, where they complete the details of a dinner to be
given on the morrow.

Or perhaps it were better to be concerned with a matter more weighty
than dinners and antique candlesticks. The search need never be vain,
even in this world of persistent frivolity. As, for example:

"Tell Mrs. Van Geist if she can't come down, I'll run up to her."

"Yes, Miss Milbrey."

Mrs. Van Geist entered a moment later.

"Why, Avice, child, you're glowing, aren't you?"

"I must be, I suppose--I've just walked down from 59th Street, and
before that I walked in the Park. Feel how cold my cheeks
are,--Mütterchen."

"It's good for you. Now we shall have some tea, and talk."

"Yes--I'm hungry for both, and some of those funny little cakes."

"Come back where the fire is, dear; the tea has just been brought.
There, take the big chair."

"It always feels like you--like your arms, Mütterchen--and I am tired."

"And throw off that coat. There's the lemon, if you're afraid of
cream."

"I wish I weren't afraid of anything but cream."

"You told me you weren't afraid of that--that cad--any more."

"I'm not--I just told him so. But I'm afraid of it all; I'm tired
trying not to drift--tired trying not to try, and tired trying to
try--Oh, dear--sounds like a nonsense verse, doesn't it? Have you any
one to-night? No? I think I must stay with you till morning. Send some
one home to say I'll be here. I can always think so much better
here--and you, dear old thing, to mother me!"

"Do, child; I'll send Sandon directly."

"He will go to the house of mourning."

"What's the latest?"

"Papa was on the verge of collapse this morning, and yet he was
striving so bravely and nobly to bear up. No one knows what that man
suffers; it makes him gloomy all the time about everything. Just before
I left, he was saying that, when one considers the number of American
homes in which a green salad is never served, one must be appalled. Are
you appalled, auntie? But that isn't it."

"Nothing has happened?"

"Well, there'll be no sensation about it in the papers to-morrow, but a
very dreadful thing has happened. Papa has suffered one of the
cruellest blows of his life. I fancy he didn't sleep at all last night,
and he looked thoroughly bowled over this morning."

"But what is it?"

"Well--oh, it's awful!--first of all there were six dozen of
early-bottled, 1875 Château Lafitte--that was the bitterest--but he had
to see the rest go, too--Château Margeaux of '80--some terribly ancient
port and Madeira--the dryest kind of sherry--a lot of fine, full
clarets of '77 and '78--oh, you can't know how agonising it was to
him--I've heard them so often I know them all myself."

"But what on earth about them?"

"Nothing, only the Cosmopolitan Club's wine cellar--auctioned off, you
know. For over a year papa has looked forward to it. He knew every
bottle of wine in it. He could recite the list without looking at it.
Sometimes he sounded like a French lesson--and he's been under a
fearful strain ever since the announcement was made. Well, the great
day came yesterday, and poor pater simply couldn't bid in a single
drop. It needed ready money, you know. And he had hoped so cheerfully
all the time to do something. It broke his heart, I'm sure, to see that
Château Lafitte go--and only imagine, it was bid in by the butler of
that odious Higbee. You should have heard papa rail about the vulgar
_nouveaux riches_ when he came home--he talked quite like an anarchist.
But by to-night he'll be blaming me for his misfortunes. That's why I
chose to stay here with you."

"Poor Horace. Whatever are you going to do?"

"Well, dearie, as for me, it doesn't look as if I could do anything but
one thing. And here is my ardent young Croesus coming out of the West."

"You called him your 'athletic Bayard' once."

"The other's more to the point at present. And what else can I do? Oh,
if some one would just be brave enough to live the raw, quivering life
with me, I could do it, I give you my word. I could let everything go
by the board--but I am so alone and so helpless and no man is equal to
it, nowadays. All of us here seem to be content to order a 'half
portion' of life."

"Child, those dreams are beautiful, but they're like those
flying-machines that are constantly being tested by the credulous
inventors. A wheel or a pinion goes wrong and down the silly things
come tumbling."

"Very well; then I shall be wise--I suppose I shall be--and I'll do it
quickly. This fortune of good gold shall propose marriage to me at
once, and be accepted--so that I shall be able to look my dear old
father in the face again--and then, after I'm married--well, don't
blame me for anything that happens."

"I'm sure you'll be happy with him--it's only your silly notions. He's
in love with you."

"That makes me hesitate. He really is a man--I like him--see this
letter--a long review from the Arcady _Lyre_ of the 'poem' he wrote, a
poem consisting of 'Avice Milbrey.' The reviewer has been quite
enthusiastic over it, too,--written from some awful place in Montana."

"What more could you ask? He'll be kind."

"You don't understand, Mütterchen. He seems too decent to marry that
way--and yet it's the only way I could marry him. And after he found me
out--oh, think of what marriage _is_--he'd _have_ to find it out--I
couldn't _act_ long--doubtless he wouldn't even be kind to me then."

"You are morbid, child."

"But I will do it; I shall; I will be a credit to my training--and I
shall learn to hate him and he will have to learn--well, a great deal
that he doesn't know about women."

She stared into the fire and added, after a moment's silence:

"Oh, if a man only _could_ live up to the verses he cuts out of
magazines!"




CHAPTER XVI.

With the Barbaric Hosts


History repeats itself so cleverly, with a variance of stage-settings
and accessories so cunning, that the repetition seldom bores, and is,
indeed, frequently undetected. Thus, the descent of the Barbarians upon
a decadent people is a little _tour de force_ that has been performed
again and again since the oldest day. But because the assault nowadays
is made not with force of arms we are prone to believe it is no longer
made at all;--as if human ways had changed a bit since those ugly,
hairy tribes from the Northern forests descended upon the Roman empire.
And yet the mere difference that the assault is now made with force of
money in no way alters the process nor does it permit the result to
vary. On the surface all is cordiality and peaceful negotiation.
Beneath is the same immemorial strife, the life-and-death
struggle,--pitiless, inexorable.

What would have been a hostile bivouac within the city's gates, but for
the matter of a few centuries, is now, to select an example which
remotely concerns us, a noble structure on Riverside Drive, facing the
lordly Hudson and the majestic Palisades that form its farther wall.
And, for the horde of Goths and Visigoths, Huns and Vandals, drunkenly
reeling in the fitful light of camp-fires, chanting weird battle-runes,
fighting for captive vestals, and bickering in uncouth tongues over the
golden spoils, what have we now to make the parallel convince? Why, the
same Barbarians, actually; the same hairy rudeness, the same unrefined,
all-conquering, animal force; a red-faced, big-handed lot, imbued with
hearty good nature and an easy tolerance for the ways of those upon
whom they have descended.

Here are chiefs of renown from the farthest fastnesses; they and their
curious households: the ironmonger from Pittsburg, the gold-miner from
Dawson, the copper chief from Butte, the silver chief from Denver, the
cattle chief from Oklahoma, lord of three hundred thousand good acres
and thirty thousand cattle, the lumber prince from Michigan, the
founder of a later dynasty in oil, from Texas. And, for the unaesthetic
but effective Attila, an able fashioner of pork products from Chicago.

Here they make festival, carelessly, unafraid, unmolested. For, in the
lapse of time, the older peoples have learned not only the folly of
resisting inevitables, but that the huge and hairy invaders may be
treated and bartered with not unprofitably. Doubtless it often results
from this amity that the patrician strain is corrupted by the alien
admixture,--but business has been business since as many as two persons
met on the face of the new earth.

For example, this particular shelter is builded upon land which one of
the patrician families had held for a century solely because it could
not be disposed of. Yet the tribesmen came, clamouring for palaces, and
now this same land, with some adjoining areas of trifling extent,
produces an income that will suffice to maintain that family almost in
its ancient and befitting estate.

In this mammoth pile, for the petty rental of ten or fifteen thousand
dollars a year, many tribes of the invaders have found shelter and
entertainment in apartments of many rooms. Outwardly, in details of
ornamentation, the building is said to duplicate the Chateaux Blois,
those splendid palaces of Francis I. Inside are all the line and colour
and device of elegant opulence, modern to the last note.

To this palace of an October evening comes the tribe of Bines, and many
another such, for a triumphal feast in the abode of Barbarian Silas
Higbee. The carriages pass through a pair of lordly iron gates, swung
from massive stone pillars, under an arch of wrought iron with its
antique lamp, and into the echoing courtyard flanked by trim hedges of
box.

Alighting, the barbaric guests of Higbee are ushered through a
marble-walled vestibule, from which a wrought-iron and bronze screen
gives way to the main entrance-hall. The ceiling here reproduces that
of a feudal castle in Rouen, with some trifling and effective touches
of decoration in blue, scarlet, and gold. The walls are of white Caen
stone, with ornate windows and balconies jutting out above. In one
corner is a stately stone mantel with richly carved hood, bearing in
its central panel the escutcheon of the gallant French monarch. Up a
little flight of marble steps, guarded by its hand-rail of heavy metal,
shod with crimson velvet, one reaches the elevator. This pretty
enclosure of iron and glass, of classic detail in the period of Henry
II., of Circassian walnut trim, with crotch panels, has more the aspect
of boudoir than elevator. The deep seat is of walnut, upholstered with
fat cushions of crimson velvet edged in dull gold galloon. Over the
seat is a mirror cut into small squares by wooden muntins. At each side
are electric candles softened by red silk shades. One's last view
before the door closes noiselessly is of a bay-window opposite, set
with cathedral glass casement-lights, which sheds soft colours upon the
hall-bench of carven stone and upon the tessellated floor.

The door to the Higbee domain is of polished mahogany, set between
lights of antique verte Italian glass, and bearing an ancient brass
knocker. From the reception-room, with its walls of green empire silk,
one passes through a foyer hall, of Cordova leather hangings, to the
drawing-room with its three broad windows. Opposite the entrance to
this superb room is a mantel of carved Caen stone, faced with golden
Pavanazza marble, with old Roman andirons of gold ending in the
fleur-de-lis. The walls are hung with blue Florentine silk, embossed in
silver. Beyond a bronze grill is the music-room, a library done in
Austrian oak with stained burlap panelled by dull-forged nails, a
conservatory, a billiard-room, a smoking-room. This latter has walls of
red damask and a mantel with "_Post Tenebras Lux_" cut into one of its
marble panels,--a legend at which the worthy lessee of all this
splendour is wont often to glance with respectful interest.

The admirable host--if one be broad-minded--is now in the drawing-room,
seconding his worthy wife and pretty daughter who welcome the
dinner-guests.

For a man who has a fad for ham and doesn't care who knows it, his
bearing is all we have a right to expect that it should be. Among the
group of arrivals, men of his own sort, he is speaking of the
ever-shifting fashion in beards, to the evangel of a Texas oil-field
who flaunts to the world one of those heavy moustaches spuriously
extended below the corners of the mouth by means of the chin-growth of
hair. Another, a worthy tribesman from Snohomish, Washington, wears a
beard which, for a score of years, has been let to be its own true
self; to express, fearlessly, its own unique capacity for variation
from type. These two have rallied their host upon his modishly trimmed
side-whiskers.

"You're right," says Mr. Higbee, amiably, "I ain't stuck any myself on
this way of trimming up a man's face, but the madam will have it this
way--says it looks more refined and New Yorky. And now, do you know,
ever since I've wore 'em this way--ever since I had 'em scraped from
around under my neck here--I have to go to Florida every winter. Come
January or February, I get bronchitis every blamed year!"

Two of the guests only are alien to the barbaric throng.

There is the noble Baron Ronault de Palliac, decorated, reserved,
observant,--almost wistful. For the moment he is picturing dutifully
the luxuries a certain marriage would enable him to procure for his
noble father and his aged mother, who eagerly await the news of his
quest for the golden fleece. For the baron contemplates, after the
fashion of many conscientious explorers, a marriage with a native
woman; though he permits himself to cherish the hope that it may not be
conditioned upon his adopting the manners and customs of the particular
tribe that he means to honour. Monsieur the Baron has long since been
obliged to confess that a suitable _mesalliance_ is none too easy of
achievement, and, in testimony of his vicissitudes, he has written for
a Paris comic paper a series of grimly satiric essays upon New York
society. Recently, moreover, he has been upon the verge of accepting
employment in the candy factory of a bourgeois compatriot. But hope has
a little revived in the noble breast since chance brought him and his
title under the scrutiny of the bewitching Miss Millicent Higbee and
her appreciative mother.

And to-night there is not only the pretty Miss Higbee, but the winning
Miss Bines, whose _dot_, the baron has been led to understand, would
permit his beloved father unlimited piquet at his club, to say nothing
of regenerating the family chateau. Yet these are hardly matters to be
gossiped of. It is enough to know that the Baron Ronault de Palliac
when he discovers himself at table between Miss Bines and the adorable
Miss Higbee, becomes less saturnine than has for some time been his
wont. He does not forget previous disappointments, but desperately
snaps his swarthy jaws in commendable superiority to any adverse fate.

"_Je ne donne pas un damn_," he says to himself, and translates, as was
his practice, to better his English--"I do not present a damn. I shall
take what it is that it may be."

The noble Baron de Palliac at this feast of the tribesmen was like the
captive patrician of old led in chains that galled. The other alien,
Launton Oldaker, was present under terms of honourable truce, willingly
and without ulterior motive saving--as he confessed to himself--a
consuming desire to see "how the other half lives." He was no longer
the hunted and dismayed being Percival had met in that far-off and
impossible Montana; but was now untroubled, remembering, it is true,
that this "slumming expedition," as he termed it, had taken him beyond
the recognised bounds of his beloved New York, but serene in the
consciousness that half an hour's drive would land him safely back at
his club.

Oldaker observed Miss Psyche Bines approvingly.

"We are so glad to be in New York!" she had confided to him, sitting at
her right.

"My dear young woman," he warned her, "you haven't reached New York
yet." The talk being general and loud, he ventured further.

"This is Pittsburg, Chicago, Kansas City, Denver--almost anything but
New York."

"Of course I know these are not the swell old families."

Oldaker sipped his glass of old Oloroso sherry and discoursed.

"And our prominent families, the ones whose names you read, are not New
York any more, either. They are rather London and Paris. Their
furniture, clothing, plate, pictures, and servants come from one or the
other. Yes, and their manners, too, their interests and sympathies and
concerns, their fashions--and--sometimes, their--er--morals. They are
assuredly not New York any more than Gobelin tapestries and Fortuny
pictures and Louis Seize chairs are New York."

"How queerly you talk. Where is New York, then?"

Oldaker sighed thoughtfully between two spoonfuls of _tortue verte,
claire_.

"Well, I suppose the truth is that there isn't much of New York left in
New York. As a matter of fact I think it died with the old Volunteer
Fire Department. Anyway the surviving remnant is coy. Real old New
Yorkers like myself--neither poor nor rich--are swamped in these days
like those prehistoric animals whose bones we find. There comes a time
when we can't live, and deposits form over us and we're lost even to
memory."

But this talk was even harder for Miss Bines to understand than the
English speech of the Baron Ronault de Palliac, and she turned to that
noble gentleman as the turbot with sauce Corail was served.

The dining-room, its wall wainscotted from floor to ceiling in Spanish
oak, was flooded with soft light from the red silk dome that depended
from its crown of gold above the table. The laughter and talk were as
little subdued as the scheme of the rooms. It was an atmosphere of
prodigal and confident opulence. From the music-room near by came the
soft strains of a Haydn quartet, exquisitely performed by finished and
expensive artists.

"Say, Higbee!" it was the oil chief from Texas, "see if them fiddlers
of yours can't play 'Ma Honolulu Lulu!'"

Oldaker, wincing and turning to Miss Bines for sympathy, heard her say:

"Yes, do, Mr. Higbee! I do love those ragtime songs--and then have them
play 'Tell Me, Pretty Maiden,' and the 'Intermezzo.'"

He groaned in anguish.

The talk ran mostly on practical affairs: the current values of the
great staple commodities; why the corn crop had been light; what wheat
promised to bring; how young Burman of the Chicago Board of Trade had
been pinched in his own wheat corner for four millions--"put up" by his
admiring father; what beef on the hoof commanded; how the Federal Oil
Company would presently own the State of Texas.

Almost every Barbarian at the table had made his own fortune. Hardly
one but could recall early days when he toiled on farm or in shop or
forest, herded cattle, prospected, sought adventure in remote and
hazardous wilds.

"'Tain't much like them old days, eh, Higbee?" queried the Crown Prince
of Cripple Creek--"when you and me had to walk from Chicago to Green
Bay, Wisconsin, because we didn't have enough shillings for
stage-fare?" He gazed about him suggestively.

"Corn-beef and cabbage was pretty good then, eh?" and with sure,
vigorous strokes he fell to demolishing his _filet de dinde a la
Perigueux_, while a butler refilled his glass with Chateau Malescot,
1878.

"Well, it does beat the two rooms the madam and me started to keep
house in when we was married," admitted the host. "That was on the
banks of the Chicago River, and now we got the Hudson flowin' right
through the front yard, you might say, right past our own
yacht-landing."

From old days of work and hardship they came to discuss the present and
their immediate surroundings, social and financial.

Their daughters, it appeared, were being sought in marriage by the sons
of those among whom they sojourned.

"Oh, they're a nice band of hand-shakers, all right, all right,"
asserted the gentleman from Kansas City. "One of 'em tried to keep
company with our Caroline, but I wouldn't stand for it. He was a
crackin' good shinny player, and he could lead them cotillion-dances
blowin' a whistle and callin', 'All right, Up!' or something, like a
car-starter,--but, 'Tell me something good about him,' I says to an old
friend of his family. Well, he hemmed and hawed--he was a New York
gentleman, and says he, 'I don't know whether I could make you
understand or not,' he says, 'but he's got Family,' jest like that,
bearin' down hard on 'Family'--'and you've got money,' he says, 'and
Money and Family need each other badly in this town,' he says. 'Yes,'
says I, 'I met up with a number of people here,' I says, 'but I ain't
met none yet that you'd have to blindfold and back into a lot of
money,' I says, 'family or no family,' I says. 'And that young man,' he
says, 'is a pleasant, charming fellow; why,' he says, 'he's the
best-coated man in New York.' Well, I looked at him and I says, 'Well,'
says I, 'he may be the best-coated man in New York, but he'll be the
best-booted man in New York, too,' I says, 'if he comes around trying
to spark Caroline any more,--or would be if I had my way. His chin's
pushed too far back under his face,' I says, 'and besides,' I says,
'Caroline is being waited on by a young hardware drummer, a good steady
young fellow travelling out of little old K.C.,' I says, 'and while he
ain't much for fam'ly,' I says, he'll have one of his own before he
gets through,' I says; 'we start fam'lies where I come from,' I says."

"Good boy! Good for you," cheered the self-made Barbarians, and drank
success to the absent disseminator of hardware.

With much loud talk of this unedifying character the dinner progressed
to an end; through _selle d'agneau_, floated in '84 champagne, terrapin
convoyed by a special Madeira of 1850, and canvas-back duck with
_Romanee Conti_, 1865, to a triumphant finale of Turkish coffee and
1811 brandy.

After dinner the ladies gossiped of New York society, while the
barbaric males smoked their big oily cigars and bandied reminiscences.
Higbee showed them through every one of the apartment's twenty-two
rooms, from reception-hall to laundry, manipulating the electric lights
with the skill of a stage-manager.

The evening ended with a cake-walk, for the musical artists had by rare
wines been mellowed from their classic reserve into a mood of ragtime
abandon. And if Monsieur the Baron with his ceremonious grace was less
exuberant than the Crown Prince of Cripple Creek, who sang as he
stepped the sensuous measure, his pleasure was not less. He joyed to
observe that these men of incredible millions had no hauteur.

"I do not," wrote the baron to his noble father the marquis, that
night, "yet understand their joke; why should it be droll to wish that
the man whose coat is of the best should also wear boots of the best?
but as for what they call _une promenade de gateau_, I find it very
enjoyable. I have met a Mlle. Bines to whom I shall at once pay my
addresses. Unlike Mlle. Higbee, she has not the father from Chicago nor
elsewhere. _Quel diable d'homme!_"




CHAPTER XVII.

The Patricians Entertain


To reward the enduring who read politely through the garish revel of
the preceding chapter, covers for fourteen are now laid with correct
and tasteful quietness at the sophisticated board of that fine old New
York family, the Milbreys. Shaded candles leave all but the glowing
table in a gloom discreetly pleasant. One need not look so high as the
old-fashioned stuccoed ceiling. The family portraits tone agreeably
into the halflight of the walls; the huge old-fashioned walnut
sideboard, soberly ornate with its mirrors, its white marble top and
its wood-carved fruit, towers majestically aloft in proud scorn of the
frivolous Chippendale fad.

Jarvis, the accomplished and incomparable butler, would be subdued and
scholarly looking but for the flagrant scandal of his port-wine nose.
He gives finishing little fillips to the white chrysanthemums massed in
the central epergne on the long silver plateau, and bestows a last
cautious survey upon the cut-glass and silver radiating over the dull
white damask. Finding the table and its appointments faultless, he
assures himself once more that the sherry will come on irreproachably
at a temperature of 60 degrees; that the Burgundy will not fall below
65 nor mount above 70; for Jarvis wots of a palate so acutely sensitive
that it never fails to record a variation of so much as one degree from
the approved standard of temperature.

How restful this quiet and reserve after the colour and line tumult of
the Higbee apartment. There the flush and bloom of newness were
oppressive to the right-minded. All smelt of the shop. Here the dull
tones and decorous lines caress and soothe instead of overwhelming the
imagination with effects too grossly literal. Here is the veritable
spirit of good form.

Throughout the house this contrast might be noted. It is the
brown-stone, high-stoop house, guarded by a cast-iron fence, built in
vast numbers when the world of fashion moved North to Murray Hill and
Fifth Avenue a generation ago. One of these houses was like all the
others inside and out, built of unimaginative "builder's architecture."
The hall, the long parlour, the back parlour or library, the high
stuccoed ceilings--not only were these alike in all the houses, but the
furnishings, too, were apt to be of a sameness in them all, rather
heavy and tasteless, but serving the ends that such things should be
meant to serve, and never flamboyant. Of these relics of a simpler day
not many survive to us, save in the shameful degeneracy of
boarding-houses. But in such as are left, we may confidently expect to
find the traditions of that more dignified time kept unsullied;--to
find, indeed, as we find in the house of Milbrey, a settled air of
gloom that suggests insolvent but stubbornly determined exclusiveness.

Something of this air, too, may be noticed in the surviving tenants of
these austere relics. Yet it would hardly be observed in this house on
this night, for not only do arriving guests bring the aroma of a later
prosperity, but the hearts of our host and hostess beat high with a new
hope. For the fair and sometimes uncertain daughter of the house of
Milbrey, after many ominous mutterings, delays, and frank rebellions,
has declared at last her readiness to be a credit to her training by
conferring her family prestige, distinction of manner and charms of
person upon one equipped for their suitable maintenance.

Already her imaginative father is ravishing in fancy the mouldiest
wine-cellars of Continental Europe. Already the fond mother has
idealised a house in "Millionaire's Row" east of the Park, where there
shall be twenty servants instead of three, and there shall cease that
gnawing worry lest the treacherous north-setting current sweep them
west of the Park into one of those hideously new apartment houses,
where the halls are done in marble that seems to have been sliced from
a huge Roquefort cheese, and where one must vie, perhaps, with a
shop-keeper for the favours of an irreverent and materialistic janitor.

The young woman herself entertains privately a state of mind which she
has no intention of making public. It is enough, she reasons, that her
action should outwardly accord with the best traditions of her class;
and indeed, her family would never dream of demanding more.

Her gown to-night is of orchard green, trimmed with apple-blossoms, a
single pink spray of them caught in her hair. The rounding, satin grace
of her slender arms, sloping to the opal-tipped fingers, the exquisite
line from ear to shoulder strap, the melting ripeness of her chin and
throat, the tender pink and white of her fine skin, the capricious,
inciting tilt of her small head, the dainty lift of her short
nose,--these allurements she has inventoried with a calculating and
satisfied eye. She is glad to believe that there is every reason why it
will soon be over.

And, since the whole loaf is notoriously better than a half, here is
the engaging son of the house, also firmly bent upon the high emprise
of matrimony; handsome, with the chin, it may be, slightly receding;
but an unexcelled leader of cotillions, a surpassing polo-player,
clever, winning, and dressed with an effect that has long made him
remarked in polite circles, which no mere money can achieve. Money,
indeed, if certain ill-natured gossip of tradesmen be true, has been an
inconsiderable factor in the encompassment of this sartorial
distinction. He waits now, eager for a first glimpse of the young woman
whose charms, even by report, have already won the best devotion he has
to give. A grievous error it is to suppose that Cupid's artillery is
limited to bow and arrows.

And now, instead of the rude commercial horde that laughed loudly and
ate uncouthly at the board of the Barbarian, we shall sit at table with
people born to the only manner said to be worth possessing;--if we
except, indeed, the visiting tribe of Bines, who may be relied upon,
however, to behave at least unobtrusively.

As a contrast to the oppressively Western matron from Kansas City, here
is Mistress Fidelia Oldaker on the arm of her attentive son. She would
be very old but for the circumstance that she began early in life to be
a belle, and age cannot stale such women. Brought up with board at her
back, books on her head, to guard her complexion as if it were her fair
name, to be diligent at harp practice and conscientious with the
dancing-master, she is almost the last of a school that nursed but the
single aim of subjugating man. To-night, at seventy-something, she is a
bit of pink bisque fragility, bubbling tirelessly with reminiscence,
her vivacity unimpaired, her energy amazing, and her coquetry
faultless. From which we should learn, and be grateful therefor, that
when a girl is brought up in the way she ought to go she will never be
able to depart from it.

Here also is Cornelia Van Geist, sister of our admirable
hostess--relict of a gentleman who had been first or second cousin to
half the people in society it were really desirable to know, and whose
taste in wines, dinners, and sports had been widely praised at his
death by those who had had the fortune to be numbered among his
friends. Mrs. Van Geist has a kind, shrewd face, and her hair, which
turned prematurely grey while she was yet a wife, gives her a look of
age that her actual years belie.

Here, too, is Rulon Shepler, the money-god, his large, round head
turning upon his immense shoulders without the aid of a
neck--sharp-eyed, grizzled, fifty, short of stature, and with as few
illusions concerning life as the New York financier is apt to retain at
his age.

If we be forced to wait for another guest of note, it is hardly more
than her due; for Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan is truly a personage, and the
best people on more than one continent do not become unduly provoked at
being made to wait for her. Those less than the very best frankly
esteem it a privilege. Yet the great lady is not careless of
engagements, and the wait is never prolonged. Mrs. Milbrey has time to
say to her sister, "Yes, we think it's going; and really, it will do
very well, you know. The girl has had some nonsense in her mind for a
year past--none of us can tell what--but now she seems actually
sensible, and she's promised to accept when the chap proposes." But
there is time for no more gossip.

The belated guest arrives, enveloped in a vast cloak, and accompanied
by her two nephews, whom Percival Bines recognises for the solemn and
taciturn young men he had met in Shepler's party at the mine.

Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan, albeit a decorative personality, is constructed
on the same broad and generously graceful lines as her own victoria.
The great lady has not only two chins, but what any fair-minded
observer would accept as sufficient promise of a good third. Yet hardly
could a slighter person display to advantage the famous Gwilt-Athelstan
jewels. The rope of pierced diamonds with pigeon-blood rubies strung
between them, which she wears wound over her corsage, would assuredly
overweight the frail Fidelia Oldaker; the tiara of emeralds and
diamonds was never meant for a brow less majestic; nor would the
stomacher of lustrous grey pearls and glinting diamonds ever have
clasped becomingly a figure that was _svelte_--or "skinny," as the
great lady herself is frank enough to term all persons even remotely
inclined to be _svelte_.

But let us sit and enliven a proper dinner with talk upon topics of
legitimate interest and genuine propriety.

Here will be no discussion of the vulgar matter of markets, staples,
and prices, such as we perforce endured through the overwined and
too-abundant repast of Higbee. Instead of learning what beef on the
hoof brings per hundred-weight, f.o.b. at Cheyenne, we shall here glean
at once the invaluable fact that while good society in London used to
be limited to those who had been presented at court, the presentations
have now become so numerous that the limitation has lost its
significance. Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan thus discloses, as if it were a
trifle, something we should never learn at the table of Higbee though
we ate his heavy dinners to the day of ultimate chaos. And while we
learned at that distressingly new table that one should keep one's
heifers and sell off one's steer calves, we never should have been
informed there that Dinard had just enjoyed the gayest season of its
history under the patronage of this enterprising American; nor that
Lady de Muzzy had opened a tea-room in Grafton Street, and Cynthia,
Marchioness of Angleberry, a beauty-improvement parlour on the Strand
"because she needs the money."

"Lots of 'em takin' to trade nowadays; it's a smart sayin' there now
that all the peers are marryin' actresses and all the peeresses goin'
into business." Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan nodded little shocks of brilliance
from her tiara and hungrily speared another oyster.

"Only trouble is, it's such rotten hard work collectin' bills from
their intimate friends; they simply _won't_ pay."

Nor at the barbaric Higbee's should we have been vouchsafed, to
treasure for our own, the knowledge that Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan had
merely run over for the cup-fortnight, meaning to return directly to
her daughter, Katharine, Duchess of Blanchmere, in time for the Melton
Mowbray hunting-season; nor that she had been rather taken by the new
way of country life among us, and so tempted to protract her gracious
sojourn.

"Really," she admits, "we're comin' to do the right thing over here; a
few years were all we needed. Hardly a town-house to be opened before
Thanksgivin', I understand; and down at the Hills some of the houses
will stay open all winter. It's coachin', ridin', and golf and
auto-racin' and polo and squash; really the young folks don't go in at
all except to dance and eat; and it's quite right, you know. It's quite
decently English, now. Why, at Morris Park the other day, the crowd on
the lawn looked quite like Ascot, actually."

Nor could we have learned in the hostile camp the current gossip of
Tuxedo, Meadowbrook, Lenox, Morristown, and Ardsley; of the mishap to
Mrs. "Jimmie" Whettin, twice unseated at a recent meet; of the woman's
championship tournament at Chatsworth; or the good points of the new
runner-up at Baltusrol, daily to be seen on the links. Where we might
incur knowledge of Beaumont "gusher" or Pittsburg mill we should never
have discovered that teas and receptions are really falling into
disrepute; that a series of dinner-dances will be organised by the
mothers of debutantes to bring them forward; and that big subscription
balls are in disfavour, since they benefit no one but the caterers who
serve poor suppers and bad champagne.

Mrs. takes only Scotch whiskey and soda.

"But I'm glad," she confides to Horace Milbrey on her left, "that you
haven't got to followin' this fad of havin' one wine at dinner; I know
it's English, but it's downright shoddy."

Her host's eyes swam with gratitude for this appreciation.

"I stick to my peg," she continued; "but I like to see a Chablis with
the oysters and good dry sherry with the soup, and a Moselle with the
fish, and then you're ready to be livened with a bit of champagne for
the roast, and steadied a bit by Burgundy with the game. Phim sticks to
it, too; tells me my peg is downright encouragement to the bacteria.
But I tell him I've no quarrel with _my_ bacteria. 'Live and let live'
is my motto, I tell him,--and if the microbes and I both like Scotch
and soda, why, what harm. I'm forty-two and not so much of a fool that
I ain't a little bit of a physician. I know my stomach, I tell him."

"What about these Western people?" she asked Oldaker at her other side,
after a little.

"Decent, unpretentious folks, somewhat new, but with loads of money."

"I've heard how the breed's stormin' New York in droves; but they tell
me some of us need the money."

"I dined with one last night, a sugar-cured ham magnate from Chicago."

"_Dear_ me! how shockin'!"

"But they're good, whole-souled people."

"And well-_heeled_--and that's what we need, it seems. Some of us been
so busy bein' well-familied that we've forgot to make money."

"It's a good thing, too. Nature has her own building laws about
fortunes. When they get too sky-scrapy she topples them over. These
people with their thrifty habits would have _all_ the money in time if
their sons and daughters didn't marry aristocrats with expensive tastes
who know how to be spenders. Nature keeps things fairly even, one way
or another."

"You're thinkin' about Kitty and the duke."

"No, not then I wasn't, though that's one of the class I mean. I was
thinking especially about these Westerners."

"Well, my grandfather made the best barrels in New York, and I'm
mother-in-law of a chap whose ancestors for three hundred and fifty
years haven't done a stroke of work; but he's the Duke of Blanchmere,
and I hope our friends here will come as near gettin' the worth of
their money as we did. And if that chap"--she glanced at
Percival--"marries a certain young woman, he'll never have a dull
moment. I'd vouch for that. I'm quite sure she's the devil in her."

"And if the yellow-haired girl marries the fellow next her--"

"He might do worse."

"Yes, but might _she_? He's already doing worse, and he'll keep on
doing it, even if he does marry her."

"Nonsense--about that, you know; all rot! What can you expect of these
chaps? So does the duke do worse, but you'll never hear Kitty complain
so long as he lets her alone and she can wear the strawberry leaves. I
fancy I'll have those young ones down to the Hills for Hallowe'en and
the week-end. Might as well help 'em along."

At the other end of the table, the fine old ivory of her cheeks gently
suffused with pink until they looked like slightly crumpled leaves of a
la France rose, Mrs. Oldaker was flirting brazenly with Shepler, and
prattling impartially to him and to one of the twin nephews of old days
in social New York; of a time when the world of fashion occupied a
little space at the Battery and along Broadway; of its migration to the
far north of Great Jones Street, St. Mark's Place, and Second Avenue.
In Waverly Place had been the flowering of her belle-hood, and the day
when her set moved on to Murray Hill was to her still recent and
revolutionary.

Between the solemn Angstead twins, Mrs. Bines had sat in silence until
by some happy chance it transpired that "horse" was the word to unlock
their lips. As Mrs. Bines knew all about horses the twins at once
became voluble, showing her marked attention. The twins were notably
devoid of prejudice if your sympathies happened to run with theirs.

Miss Bines and young Milbrey were already on excellent terms. Percival
and Miss Milbrey, on the other hand, were doing badly. Some disturbing
element seemed to have put them aloof. Miss Milbrey wondered somewhat;
but her mind was easy, for her resolution had been taken.

Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan extended her invitation to the young people, who
accepted joyfully.

"Come down and camp with us, and help Phim keep the batteries of his
autos run out. You know they deteriorate when they're left
half-charged, and it's one of the cares of his life to see to the whole
six of 'em when they come in. He gets in one and the men get in the
others, and he leads a solemn parade around the stables until they've
been run out. Tell me the leisure class isn't a hard-workin' class,
now."

Over coffee and chartreuse in the drawing-room there was more general
talk of money and marriage, and of one for the other.

"And so he married money," concluded Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan of one they
had discussed.

"Happy marriage!" Shepler called out.

"No; money talks! and this time, on my word, now, it made you want to
put on those thick sealskin ear-muffs. Poor chap, and he'd been talkin'
to me about the monotony of married life. 'Monotony, my boy,' I said to
him, 'you don't _know_ lovely woman!' and now he wishes jolly well that
he'd not done it, you know."

Here, too, was earned by Mrs. Bines a reputation for wit that she was
never able quite to destroy. There had been talk of a banquet to a
visiting celebrity the night before, for which the _menu_ was one of
unusual costliness. Mr. Milbrey had dwelt with feeling upon certain of
its eminent excellences, such as loin of young bear, a la Granville,
and the boned quail, stuffed with goose-livers.

"Really," he concluded, "from an artistic standpoint, although large
dinners are apt to be slurred and slighted, it was a creation of
undoubted worth."

"And the orchestra," spoke up Mrs. Bines, who had read of the banquet,
"played 'Hail to the _Chef!_'"

The laughter at this sally was all it should have been, even the host
joining in it. Only two of those present knew that the good woman had
been warned not to call "chef" "chief," as Silas Higbee did. The fact
that neither should "chief" be called "chef" was impressed upon her
later, in a way to make her resolve ever again to eschew both of the
troublesome words.

When the guests had gone Miss Milbrey received the praise of both
parents for her blameless attitude toward young Bines.

"It will be fixed when we come back from Wheatly," said that knowing
young woman, "and now don't worry any more about it."

"And, Fred," said the mother, "do keep straight down there. She's a
commonplace girl, with lots of mannerisms to unlearn, but she's pretty
and sweet and teachable."

"And she'll learn a lot from Fred that she doesn't know now," finished
that young man's sister from the foot of the stairway.

Back at their hotel Psyche Bines was saying:

"Isn't it queer about Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan? We've read so much about
her in the papers. I thought she must be some one awful to meet--I was
that scared--and instead, she's like any one, and real chummy besides;
and, actually, ma, don't you think her dress was dowdy--all except the
diamonds? I suppose that comes from living in England so much. And
hasn't Mrs. Milbrey twice as grand a manner, and the son--he's a
precious--he knows everything and everybody; I shall like him."

Her brother, who had flung himself into a cushioned corner, spoke with
the air of one who had reluctantly consented to be interviewed and who
was anxious to be quoted correctly:

"Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan is all right. She reminds me of what Uncle Peter
writes about that new herd of short-horns: 'This breed has a mild
disposition, is a good feeder, and produces a fine quality of flesh.'
But I'll tell you one thing, sis," he concluded with sudden emphasis,
"with all this talk about marrying for money I'm beginning to feel as
if you and I were a couple of white rabbits out in the open with all
the game laws off!"




CHAPTER XVIII.

The Course of True Love at a House Party


Among sundry maxims and observations of King Solomon, collated by the
discerning men of Hezekiah, it will be recalled that the way of a man
with a maid is held up to wonder. "There be," says the wise king, who
composed a little in the crisp manner of Mr. Kipling, "three things
which are too wonderful for me; yea, four which I know not: the way of
an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a
ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid." Why he
neglected to include the way of a maid with a man is not at once
apparent. His unusual facilities for observation must seemingly have
inspired him to wonder at the maid's way even more than at the man's;
and wise men later than he have not hesitated to confess their entire
lack of understanding in the matter. But if Solomon included this item
in his summary, the men of Hezekiah omitted to report the fact, and by
their chronicles we learn only that the woman "eateth and wipeth her
mouth and saith 'I have done no wickedness.'" Perhaps it was Solomon's
mischance to observe phenomena of this character too much in the mass.

Miss Milbrey's way, at any rate, with the man she had decided to marry,
would undoubtedly have made more work for the unnamed Boswells of the
king, could it have been brought to his notice.

For, as she journeyed to the meeting-place on a bright October
afternoon, she confessed to herself that it was of a depth beyond her
own fathoming. Lolling easily back in the wicker chair of the car that
bore her, and gazing idly out over the brown fields and yellow forests
of Long Island as they swirled by her, she found herself wishing once
that her eyes were made like those of a doll. She had lately discovered
of one that when it appeared to fall asleep, it merely turned its eyes
around to look into its own head. With any lesser opportunity for
introspection she felt that certain doubts as to her own motives and
processes would remain for ever unresolved. It was not that she could
not say "I have done no wickedness;" let us place this heroine in no
false light. She was little concerned with the morality of her course
as others might appraise it. The fault, if fault it be, is neither ours
nor hers, and Mr. Darwin wrote a big book chiefly to prove that it
isn't. From the force of her environment and heredity Miss Milbrey had
debated almost exclusively her own chances of happiness under given
conditions; and if she had, for a time, questioned the wisdom of the
obvious course, entirely from her own selfish standpoint, it is all
that, and perhaps more than, we were justified in expecting from her.
Let her, then, cheat the reader of no sympathy that might flow to a
heroine struggling for a high moral ideal. Merely is she clear-headed
enough to have discovered that selfishness is not the thing of easy
bonds it is reputed to be; that its delights are not certain; that one
does not unerringly achieve happiness by the bare circumstance of being
uniformly selfish. Yet even this is a discovery not often made, nor one
to be lightly esteemed; for have not the wise ones of Church and State
ever implied that the way of selfishness is a way of sure delight, to
be shunned only because its joys endure not? So it may be, after all,
no small merit we claim for this girl in that, trained to selfishness
and a certain course, she yet had the wit to suspect that its joys have
been overvalued even by its professional enemies. It is no small merit,
perhaps, even though, after due and selfish reflection, she determined
upon the obvious course.

If sometimes her heart was sick with the hunger to love and be loved by
the one she loved, so that there were times when she would have
bartered the world for its plenary feeding, it is all that, we insist,
and more, than could be expected of this sort of heroine.

And so she had resolved upon surrender--upon an outward surrender.
Inwardly she knew it to be not more than a capitulation under duress,
whose terms would remain for ever secret except to those clever at
induction. And now, as the train took her swiftly to her fate, she made
the best of it.

There would be a town-house fit for her; a country-house at Tuxedo or
Lenox or Westbury, a thousand good acres with greeneries, a game
preserve, trout pond, and race-course; a cottage at Newport; a place in
Scotland; a house in London, perhaps. Then there would be jewels such
as she had longed for, a portrait by Chartran, she thought. And there
was the dazzling thought of going to Felix or Doucet with credit
unlimited.

And he--would the thought of him as it had always come to her keep on
hurting with a hurt she could neither explain nor appease? Would he
annoy her, enrage her perhaps, or even worse, tire her? He would be
very much in earnest, of course, and so few men could be in earnest
gracefully. But would he be stupid enough to stay so? And if not, would
he become brutal? She suspected he might have capacities for that.
Would she be able to hide all but her pleasant emotions from him,--hide
that want, the great want, to which she would once have done sacrifice?

Well, it was easier to try than not to try, and the sacrifice--one
could always sacrifice if the need became imperative.

"And I'm making much of nothing," she concluded. "No other girl I know
would do it. And papa shall 'give me away.' What a pretty euphemism
that is, to be sure!"

But her troubled musings ended with her time alone. From a whirl over
the crisp, firm macadam, tucked into one of Phimister Gwilt-Athelstan's
automobiles with four other guests, with no less a person than her
genial host for chauffeur, she was presently ushered into the great
hall where a huge log-fire crackled welcome, and where blew a lively
little gale of tea-chatter from a dozen people.

Tea Miss Milbrey justly reckoned among the little sanities of life. Her
wrap doffed and her veil pushed up, she was in a moment restored to her
normal ease, a part of the group, and making her part of the talk that
touched the latest news from town, the flower show, automobile show,
Irving and Terry, the morning's meet, the weekly musicale and
dinner-dance at the club; and at length upon certain matters of
marriage and divorce.

"Ladies, ladies--this is degenerating into a mere hammer-fest." Thus
spoke a male wit who had listened. "Give over, and be nice to the
absent."

"The end of the fairy story was," continued the previous speaker,
unheeding, "and so they were divorced and lived happily ever after."

"I think she took the Chicago motto, 'Marry early and often,'" said
another, "but here she comes."

And as blond and fluffy little Mrs. Akemit, a late divorcee, joined the
group the talk ranged back to the flourishing new hunt at Goshen, the
driving over of Tuxedo people for the meet, the nasty accident to
Warner Ridgeway when his blue-ribbon winner Musette fell upon him in
taking a double-jump.

Miss Milbrey had taken stock of her fellow guests. Especially was she
interested to note the presence of Mrs. Drelmer and her protege,
Mauburn. It meant, she was sure, that her brother's wooing of Miss
Bines would not be uncontested.

Another load of guests from a later train bustled in, the Bineses among
them, and there was more tea and fresher gossip, while the butler
circulated again with his tray for the trunk-keys.

The breezy hostess now took pains to impress upon all that only by
doing exactly as they pleased, as to going and coming, could they hope
to please her. Had she not, by this policy, conquered the cold,
Scottish exclusiveness of Inverness-shire, so that the right sort of
people fought to be at her house-parties during the shooting, even
though she would persist in travelling back and forth to London in
gowns that would be conspicuously elaborate at an afternoon reception,
and even though, in any condition of dress, she never left quite enough
of her jewels in their strong-box?

During the hour of dressing-sacque and slippers, while maids fluttered
through the long corridors on hair-tending and dress-hooking
expeditions, Mrs. Drelmer favoured her hostess with a confidential chat
in that lady's boudoir, and, over Scotch and soda and a cigarette,
suggested that Mr. Mauburn, in a house where he could really do as he
pleased, would assuredly take Miss Bines out to dinner.

Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan was instantly sympathetic.

"Only I can't take sides, you know, my dear, and young Milbrey will
think me shabby if he doesn't have first go; but I'll be impartial;
Milbrey shall take her in, and Mauburn shall be at her other side, and
may God have mercy on her soul! These people have so much money, I
hear, it amounts to financial embarrassment, but with those two chaps
for the girl, and Avice Milbrey for that decent young chap, I fancy
they'll be disembarrassed, in a measure. But I mustn't 'play
favourites,' as those slangy nephews of mine put it."

And so it befell at dinner in the tapestried dining-room that Psyche
Bines received assiduous attention from two gentlemen whom she
considered equally and superlatively fascinating. While she looked at
one, she listened to the other, and her neck grew tired with turning.
Of anything, save the talk, her mind was afterward a blank; but why is
not that the ideal dinner for any but mere feeders?

Nor was the dazzled girl conscious of others at the table,--of Florence
Akemit, the babyish blond, listening with feverish attention to the
German savant, Doctor von Herzlich, who had translated Goethe's
"Iphigenie in Tauris" into Greek merely as recreation, and who was now
justifying his choice of certain words and phrases by citing passages
from various Greek authors; a choice which the sympathetic listener,
after discreet intervals for reflection, invariably commended.

"Oh, you wonderful, wonderful man, you!" she exclaimed, resolving to
sit by some one less wonderful another time.

Or there was Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan, like a motherly Venus rising from a
sea of pink velvet and white silk lace, asserting that some one or
other would never get within sniffing-distance of the Sandringham set.

Or her husband, whose face, when he settled it in his collar, made the
lines of a perfect lyre, and of whom it would presently become
inaccurate to say that he was getting bald. He was insisting that "too
many houses spoil the home," and that, with six establishments, he was
without a place to lay his head, that is, with any satisfaction.

Or there was pale, thin, ascetic Winnie Wilberforce, who, as a
theosophist, is understood to believe that, in a former incarnation, he
came near to having an affair with a danseuse; he was expounding the
esoterics of his cult to a high-coloured brunette with many turquoises,
who, in turn, was rather inclined to the horse-talk of one of the
nephews.

Or there were Miss Milbrey and Percival Bines, of whom the former had
noted with some surprise that the latter was studying her with the eyes
of rather cold calculation, something she had never before detected in
him.

After dinner there were bridge and music from the big pipe-organ in the
music-room, and billiards and some dancing.

The rival cavaliers of Miss Bines, perceiving simultaneously that
neither would have the delicacy to withdraw from the field, cunningly
inveigled each other into the billiard-room, where they watchfully
consumed whiskey and soda together with the design of making each other
drunk. This resulted in the two nephews, who invariably hunted as a
pair, capturing Miss Bines to see if she could talk horse as ably as
her mother, and, when they found that she could, planning a coaching
trip for the morrow.

It also resulted in Miss Bines seeing no more of either cavalier that
night, since they abandoned their contest only after every one but a
sleepy butler had retired, and at a time when it became necessary for
the Englishman to assist the American up the stairs, though the latter
was moved to protest, as a matter of cheerful generality, that he was
"aw ri'--entirely cap'le." At parting he repeatedly urged Mauburn, with
tears in his eyes, to point out one single instance in which he had
ever proved false to a friend.

To herself, when the pink rose came out of her hair that night, Miss
Milbrey admitted that it wasn't going to be so bad, after all.

She had feared he might rush his proposal through that night; he had
been so much in earnest. But he had not done so, and she was glad he
could be restrained and deliberate in that "breedy" sort of way. It
promised well, that he could wait until the morrow.




CHAPTER XIX.

An Afternoon Stroll and an Evening Catastrophe


Miss Milbrey, the next morning, faced with becoming resignation what
she felt would be her last day of entire freedom. She was down and out
philosophically to play nine holes with her host before breakfast.

Her brother, awakening less happily, made a series of discoveries
regarding his bodily sensations that caused him to view life with
disaffection. Noting that the hour was early, however, he took cheer,
and after a long, strong, cold drink, which he rang for, and a pricking
icy shower, which he nerved himself to, he was ready to ignore his
aching head and get the start of Mauburn.

The Englishman, he seemed to recall, had drunk even more than he, and,
as it was barely eight o'clock, would probably not come to life for a
couple of hours yet. He made his way to the breakfast-room. The thought
of food was not pleasant, but another brandy and soda, beading
vivaciously in its tall glass, would enable him to watch with fortitude
the spectacle of others who might chance to be eating. And he would
have at least two hours of Miss Bines before Mauburn's head should ache
him back to consciousness.

He opened the door of the spacious breakfast-room. Through the broad
windows from the south-east came the glorious shine of the morning sun
to make him blink; and seated where it flooded him as a calcium was
Mauburn, resplendent in his myriad freckles, trim, alive, and obviously
hungry. Around his plate were cold mutton, a game pie, eggs, bacon,
tarts, toast, and sodden-looking marmalade. Mauburn was eating of these
with a voracity that published his singleness of mind to all who might
observe.

Milbrey steadied himself with one hand upon the door-post, and with the
other he sought to brush this monstrous illusion from his fickle eyes.
But Mauburn and the details of his deadly British breakfast became only
more distinct. The appalled observer groaned and rushed for the
sideboard, whence a decanter, a bowl of cracked ice, and a siphon
beckoned.

Between two gulps of coffee Mauburn grinned affably.

"Mornin', old chap! Feelin' a bit seedy? By Jove! I don't wonder. I'm
not so fit myself. I fancy, you know, it must have been that beastly
anchovy paste we had on the biscuits."

Milbrey's burning eyes beheld him reach out for another slice of the
cold, terrible mutton.

"Life," said Milbrey, as he inflated his brandy from the siphon, "is an
empty dream this morning."

"Wake up then, old chap!" Mauburn cordially urged, engaging the game
pie in deadly conflict; "try a rasher; nothing like it; better'n
peggin' it so early. Never drink till dinner-time, old chap, and you'll
be able to eat in the morning like--like a blooming baby." And he
proceeded to crown this notion of infancy's breakfast with a jam tart
of majestic proportions.

"Where are the people?" inquired Milbrey, eking out his own moist
breakfast with a cigarette.

"All down and out except some of the women. Miss Bines just drove off a
four-in-hand with the two Angsteads--held the reins like an old whip,
too, by Jove; but they'll be back for luncheon;--and directly after
luncheon she's promised to ride with me. I fancy we'll have a little
practice over the sticks."

"And I fancy I'm going straight back to bed,--that is, if it's all
right to fancy a thing you're certain about."

Outside most of the others had scattered for life in the open, each to
his taste. Some were on the links. Some had gone with the coach. A few
had ridden early to the meet of the Essex hounds near Easthampton,
where a stiff run was expected. Others had gone to follow the hunt in
traps. A lively group came back now to read the morning papers by the
log-fire in the big cheery hall. Among these were Percival and Miss
Milbrey. When they had dawdled over the papers for an hour Miss Milbrey
grew slightly restive.

"Why doesn't he have it over?" she asked herself, with some impatience.
And she delicately gave Percival, not an opportunity, but opportunities
to make an opportunity, which is a vastly different form of procedure.

But the luncheon hour came and people straggled back, and the afternoon
began, and the request for Miss Milbrey's heart and hand was still
unaccountably deferred. Nor could she feel any of those subtle
premonitions that usually warn a woman when the event is preparing in a
lover's secret heart.

Reminding herself of his letters, she began to suspect that, while he
could write unreservedly, he might be shy and reluctant of speech; and
that shyness now deterred him. So much being clear, she determined to
force the issue and end the strain for both.

Percival had shown not a little interest in pretty Mrs. Akemit, and was
now talking with that fascinating creature as she lolled on a low seat
before the fire in her lacy blue house-gown. At the moment she was
adroitly posing one foot and then the other before the warmth of the
grate. It may be disclosed without damage to this tale that the feet of
Mrs. Akemit were not cold; but that they were trifles most daintily
shod, and, as her slender silken ankles curved them toward the blaze
from her froth of a petticoat, they were worth looking at.

Miss Milbrey disunited the chatting couple with swiftness and aplomb.

"Come, Mr. Bines, if I'm to take that tramp you made me promise you,
it's time we were off."

Outside she laughed deliciously. "You know you did make me promise it
mentally, because I knew you'd want to come and want me to come, but I
was afraid Mrs. Akemit mightn't understand about telepathy, so I
pretended we'd arranged it all in words."

"Of course! Great joke, wasn't it?" assented the young man, rather
awkwardly.

Down the broad sweep of roadway, running between its granite coping,
they strode at a smart pace.

"You know you complimented my walking powers on that other walk we
took, away off there where the sun goes down."

"Yes, of course," he replied absently.

"Now, he's beginning," she said to herself, noting his absent and
somewhat embarrassed manner.

In reality he was thinking how few were the days ago he would have held
this the dearest of all privileges, and how strange that he should now
prize it so lightly, almost prefer, indeed, not to have it; that he
should regard her, of all women, "the fairest of all flesh on earth"
with nervous distrust.

She was dressed in tan corduroy; elation was in her face; her waist, as
she stepped, showed supple as a willow; her suede-gloved little hands
were compact and tempting to his grasp. His senses breathed the air of
her perfect and compelling femininity. But sharper than all these
impressions rang the words of the worldly-wise Higbee: _"She's hunting
night and day for a rich husband; she tries for them as fast as they
come; she'd rather marry a sub-treasury--she'd marry me in a
minute--she'd marry_ YOU; _but if you were broke she'd have about as
much use for you...."_

Her glance was frank, friendly, and encouraging. Her deep eyes were
clear as a trout-brook. He thought he saw in them once almost a
tenderness for him.

She thought, "He _does_ love me!"

Outside the grounds they turned down a bridle-path that led off through
the woods--off through the golden sun-wine of an October day. The air
bore a clean autumn spice, and a faint salty scent blended with it from
the distant Sound. The autumn silence, which is the only perfect
silence in all the world, was restful, yet full of significance,
suggestion, provocation. From the spongy lowland back of them came the
pleading sweetness of a meadow-lark's cry. Nearer they could even hear
an occasional leaf flutter and waver down. The quick thud of a falling
nut was almost loud enough to earn its echo. Now and then they saw a
lightning flash of vivid turquoise and heard a jay's harsh scream.

In this stillness their voices instinctively lowered, while their eyes
did homage to the wondrous play of colour about them. Over a yielding
brown carpet they went among maple and chestnut and oak, with their
bewildering changes through crimson, russet, and amber to pale yellow;
under the deep-stained leaves of the sweet-gum they went, and past the
dogwood with scarlet berries gemming the clusters of its dim red
leaves.

But through all this waiting, inciting silence Miss Milbrey listened in
vain for the words she had felt so certain would come.

Sometimes her companion was voluble; again he was taciturn--and through
it all he was doggedly aloof.

Miss Milbrey had put herself bravely in the path of Destiny. Destiny
had turned aside. She had turned to meet it, and now it frankly fled.
Destiny, as she had construed it, was turned a fugitive. She was
bruised, puzzled, and not a little piqued. During the walk back, when
this much had been made clear, the silence was intolerably oppressive.
Without knowing why, they understood perfectly now that neither had
been ingenuous.

"She would love the money and play me for a fool," he thought, under
the surface talk. Youth is prone to endow its opinions with all the
dignity of certain knowledge.

"Yet I am certain he loves me," thought she. On the other hand, youth
is often gifted with a credulity divine and unerring.

At the door as they came up the roadway a trap was depositing a man
whom Miss Milbrey greeted with evident surprise and some restraint. He
was slight, dark, and quick of movement, with finely cut nostrils that
expanded and quivered nervously like those of a high-bred horse in
tight check.

Miss Milbrey introduced him to Percival as Mr. Ristine.

"I didn't know you were hereabouts," she said.

"I've run over from the Bloynes to dine and do Hallowe'en with you," he
answered, flashing his dark eyes quickly over Percival and again
lighting the girl with them.

"Surprises never come singly," she returned, and Percival noted a
curious little air of defiance in her glance and manner.

Now it is possible that Solomon's implied distinction as to the man's
way with a maid was not, after all, so ill advised.

For young Bines, after dinner, fell in love with Miss Milbrey all over
again. The normal human mind going to one extreme will inevitably
gravitate to its opposite if given time. Having put her away in the
conviction that she was heartless and mercenary--having fasted in the
desert of doubt--he now found himself detecting in her an unmistakable
appeal for sympathy, for human kindness, perhaps for love. He forgot
the words of Higbee and became again the confident, unquestioning
lover. He noted her rather subdued and reserved demeanour, and the
suggestions of weariness about her eyes. They drew him. He resolved at
once to seek her and give his love freedom to tell itself. He would no
longer meanly restrain it. He would even tell her all his distrust. Now
that they had gone she should know every ignoble suspicion; and,
whether she cared for him or not, she would comfort him for the hurt
they had been to him.

The Hallowe'en frolic was on. Through the long hall, lighted to
pleasant dusk by real Jack-o'-lanterns, stray couples strolled, with
subdued murmurs and soft laughter. In the big white and gold parlour,
in the dining-room, billiard-room, and in the tropic jungle of the
immense palm-garden the party had bestowed itself in congenial groups,
ever intersecting and forming anew. Little flutters of high laughter
now and then told of tests that were being made with roasting
chestnuts, apple-parings, the white of an egg dropped into water, or
the lighted candle before an open window.

Percival watched for the chance to find Miss Milbrey alone. His sister
had just ventured alone with a candle into the library to study the
face of her future husband in a mirror. The result had been, in a
sense, unsatisfactory. She had beheld looking over her shoulder the
faces of Mauburn, Fred Milbrey, and the Angstead twins, and had
declared herself unnerved by the weird prophecy.

Before the fire in the hall Percival stood while Mrs. Akemit reclined
picturesquely near by, and Doctor von Herzlich explained, with
excessive care as to his enunciation, that protoplasm can be analysed
but cannot be reconstructed; following this with his own view as to why
the synthesis does not produce life.

"You wonderful man!" from Mrs. Akemit; "I fairly tremble when I think
of all you know. Oh, what a delight science must be to her votaries!"

The Angstead twins joined the group, attracted by Mrs. Akemit's inquiry
of the savant if he did not consider civilisation a failure. The twins
did. They considered civilisation a failure because it was killing off
all the big game. There was none to speak of left now except in Africa;
and they were pessimistic about Africa.

Percival listened absently to the talk and watched Miss Milbrey, now
one of the group in the dining-room. Presently he saw her take a
lighted candle from one of the laughing girls and go toward the
library.

His heart-beats quickened. Now she should know his love and it would be
well. He walked down the hall leisurely, turned into the big parlour,
momentarily deserted, walked quickly but softly over its polished floor
to a door that gave into the library, pushed the heavy portiere aside
and stepped noiselessly in.

The large room was lighted dimly by two immense yellow pumpkins, their
sides cut into faces of grinning grotesqueness. At the far side of the
room Miss Milbrey had that instant arrived before an antique oval
mirror whose gilded carvings reflected the light of the candle. She
held it above her head with one rounded arm. He stood in deep shadow
and the girl had been too absorbed in the play to note his coming. He
took one noiseless step toward her, but then through the curtained
doorway by which she had come he saw a man enter swiftly and furtively.

Trembling on the verge of laughing speech, something held him back,
some unexplainable instinct, making itself known in a thrill that went
from his feet to his head; he could feel the roots of his hair tingle.
The newcomer went quickly, with catlike tread, toward the girl.
Fascinated he stood, wanting to speak, to laugh, yet powerless from the
very swiftness of what followed.

In the mirror under the candle-light he saw the man's dark face come
beside the other, heard a little cry from the girl as she half-turned;
then he saw the man take her in his arms, saw her head fall on to his
shoulder, and her face turn to his kiss.

He tried to stop breathing, fearful of discovery, grasping with one
hand the heavy fold of the curtain back of him to steady himself.

There was the space of two long, trembling breaths; then he heard her
say, in a low, tense voice, as she drew away:

"Oh, you are my bad angel--why?--why?"

She fled toward the door to the hall.

"Don't come this way," she called back, in quick, low tones of caution.

The man turned toward the door where Percival stood, and in the
darkness stumbled over a hassock. Instantly Percival was on the other
side of the portiere, and, before the other had groped his way to the
dark corner where the door was, had recrossed the empty parlour and was
safely in the hall.

He made his way to the dining-room, where supper was under way.

"Mr. Bines has seen a ghost," said the sharp-eyed Mrs. Drelmer.

"Poor chap's only starved to death," said Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan. "Eat
something, Mr. Bines; this supper is go-as-you-please. Nobody's to wait
for anybody."

Strung loosely about the big table a dozen people were eating hot
scones and bannocks with clotted cream and marmalade, and drinking
mulled cider.

"And there's cold fowl and baked beans and doughnuts and all, for those
who can't eat with a Scotch accent," said the host, cheerfully.

Percival dropped into one of the chairs.

"I'm Scotch enough to want a Scotch high-ball."

"And you're getting it so high it's top-heavy," cautioned Mrs. Drelmer.

Above the chatter of the table could be heard the voices of men and the
musical laughter of women from the other rooms.

"I simply can't get 'em together," said the hostess.

"It's nice to have 'em all over the place," said her husband, "fair
women and brave men, you know."

"The men _have_ to be brave," she answered, shortly, with a glance at
little Mrs. Akemit, who had permitted Percival to seat her at his side,
and was now pleading with him to agree that simple ways of life are
requisite to the needed measure of spirituality.

Then came strains of music from the rich-toned organ.

"Oh, that dear Ned Ristine is playing," cried one; and several of the
group sauntered toward the music-room.

The music flooded the hall and the room, so that the talk died low.

"He's improvising," exclaimed Mrs. Akemit. "How splendid! He seems to
be breathing a paean of triumph, some high, exalted spiritual triumph,
as if his soul had risen above us--how precious!"

When the deep swell had subsided to silvery ripples and the last
cadence had fainted, she looked at Percival with moistened parted lips
and eyes half-shielded, as if her full gaze would betray too much of
her quivering soul.

Then Percival heard the turquoised brunette say: "What a pity his wife
is such an unsympathetic creature!"

"But Mr. Ristine is unmarried, is he not?" he asked, quickly.

There was a little laugh from Mrs. Drelmer.

"Not yet--not that I've heard of."

"I beg pardon!"

"There have been rumours lots of times that he was going to be
_unmarried_, but they always seem to adjust their little difficulties.
He and his wife are now staying over at the Bloynes."

"Oh! I see," answered Percival; "you're a jester, Mrs. Drelmer."

"Ristine," observed the theosophic Wilberforce, in the manner of a
hired oracle, "is, in his present incarnation, imperfectly monogamous."

Some people came from the music-room.

"Miss Milbrey has stayed by the organist," said one; "and she's
promised to make him play one more. Isn't he divine?"

The music came again.

"Oh!" from Mrs. Akemit, again in an ecstasy, '"' he's playing that
heavenly stuff from the second act of 'Tristan and Isolde'--the one
triumphant, perfect love-poem of all music."

"That Scotch whiskey is good in some of the lesser emergencies,"
remarked Percival, turning to her; "but it has its limitations. Let's
you and me trifle with a nice cold quart of champagne!"




CHAPTER XX.

Doctor Von Herzlich Expounds the Hightower Hotel and Certain Allied
Phenomena


The Hightower Hotel is by many observers held to be an instructive
microcosm of New York, more especially of upper Broadway, with correct
proportions of the native and the visiting provincial. With correct
proportions, again, of the money-making native and the money-spending
native, male and female. A splendid place is this New York; splendid
but terrible. London for the stranger has a steady-going, hearty
hospitality. Paris on short notice will be cosily and coaxingly
intimate. New York is never either. It overwhelms with its lavish
display of wealth, it stuns with its tireless, battering energy. But it
stays always aloof, indifferent if it be loved or hated; if it crush or
sustain.

The ground floor of the Hightower Hotel reproduces this magnificent,
brutal indifference. One might live years in its mile or so of stately
corridors and its acre or so of resplendent cafes, parlours,
reception-rooms, and restaurants, elbowed by thousands, suffocated by
that dense air of human crowdedness, that miasma of brain emanations,
and still remain in splendid isolation, as had he worn the magic ring
of Gyges. Here is every species of visitor: the money-burdened who
"stop" here and cultivate an air of being blase to the wealth of
polished splendours; and the less opulent who "stop" cheaply elsewhere
and venture in to tread the corridors timidly, to stare with honest,
drooping-jawed wonder at its marvels of architecture and decoration,
and to gaze with becoming reverence at those persons whom they shrewdly
conceive to be social celebrities.

This mixture of many and strange elements is never at rest. Its units
wait expectantly, chat, drink, eat, or stroll with varying airs through
reception-room, corridor, and office. It is an endless function,
attended by all of Broadway, with entertainment diversely contrived for
every taste by a catholic-minded host with a sincere desire to please
the paying public.

"Isn't it a huge bear-garden, though?" asks Launton Oldaker of the
estimable Doctor von Herzlich, after the two had observed the scene in
silence for a time.

The wise German dropped an olive into his Rhine wine, and gazed
reflectively about the room. Men and women sat at tables drinking.
Beyond the tables at the farther side of the room, other men were
playing billiards. It was four o'clock and the tide was high.

"It is yet more," answered the doctor. "In my prolonged studies of
natural phenomena this is the most valuable of all which I have been
privileged to observe."

He called them "brifiletched" and "awbsairf" with great nicety. Perhaps
his discernment was less at fault.

"Having," continued the doctor, "granted myself some respite from toil
in the laboratory at Marburg, I chose to pleasure voyage, to study yet
more the social conditions in this loveworthy land. I suspected that
much tiredness of travel would be involved. Yet here I find all
conditions whatsoever--here in that which you denominate 'bear-garden'.
They have been reduced here for my edification, yes? But your term is a
term of inadequate comprehensiveness. It is to me more what you call a
'beast-garden,' to include all species of fauna. Are there not here
moths and human flames? are there not cunning serpents crawling with
apples of knowledge to unreluctant, idling Eves, yes? Do we not hear
the amazing converse of parrots and note the pea-fowl negotiating
admiration from observers? Mark at that yet farther table also the
swine and the song-bird; again, mark our draught-horses who have
achieved a competence, yes? You note also the presence of wolves and
lambs. And, endly, mark our tailed arborean ancestors, trained to the
wearing of garments and a single eye-glass. May I ask, have you
bestowed upon this diversity your completest high attention? _Hanh_!"

This explosion of the doctor's meant that he invited and awaited some
contradiction. As none ensued, he went on:

"For wolf and lamb I direct your attention to the group at yonder
table. I notice that you greeted the young man as he entered--a common
friend to us then--Mr. Bines, with financial resources incredibly
unlimited? Also he is possessed of an unexperienced freedom from
suspectedness-of-ulterior-motive-in-others--one may not in English as
in German make the word to fit his need of the moment--that
unsuspectedness, I repeat, which has ever characterised the lamb about
to be converted into nutrition. You note the large, loose gentleman
with wide-brimmed hat and beard after my own, somewhat, yes? He would
dispose of some valuable oil-wells which he shall discover at Texas the
moment he shall have sufficiently disposed of them. A wolf he is, yes?
The more correctly attired person at his right, with the beak of a hawk
and lips so thin that his big white teeth gleam through them when they
are yet shut, he is what he calls himself a promoter. He has made
sundry efforts to promote myself. I conclude 'promoter' is one other
fashion of wolf-saying. The yet littler and yet younger man at his left
of our friend, the one of soft voice and insinuating manner, much
resembling a stray scion of aristocracy, discloses to those with whom
he affably acquaints himself the location of a luxurious gaming house
not far off; he will even consent to accompany one to its tables; and
still yet he has but yesterday evening invited me the all-town to see.

"As a scientist, I remind you, I permit myself no prejudices. I observe
the workings of unemotional law and sometimes record them. You have a
saying here that there are three generations between shirt-sleeves and
shirt-sleeves. I observe the process of the progress. It is benign as
are all processes. I have lately observed it in England. There, by
their law of entail, the same process is unswifter,--yet does it
unvary. The poor aristocrats, almost back to shirt-sleeves, with their
taxes and entailed lands, seek for the money in shops of dress and
bonnet and ale, and graciously rent their castles to the
but-newly-opulent in American oil or the diamonds of South Africa. Here
the posterity of your Mynherr Knickerbocker do likewise. The ancestor
they boast was a toiler, a market-gardener, a fur-trader, a boatman,
hardworking, simple-wayed, unspending. The woman ancestor
kitchen-gardened, spun, wove, and nourished the poultry. Their
descendants upon the savings of these labours have forgotten how to
labour themselves. They could not yet produce should they even
relinquish the illusion that to produce is of a baseness, that only to
consume is noble. I gather reports that a few retain enough of the
ancient strain to become sturdy tradesmen and gardeners once more.
Others seek out and assimilate this new-richness, which, in its turn,
will become impoverished and helpless. Ah, what beautiful showing of
Evolution!

"See the pendulum swing from useful penury to useless opulence. Why
does it not halt midway, you inquire? Because the race is so young.
Ach! a mere two hundred and forty million years from our
grandfather-grandmother amoeba in the ancestral morass! What can one be
expecting? Certain faculties develop in response to the pressure of
environment. Omit the pressure and the faculties no longer ensue. Yes?
Withdraw the pressure, and the faculties decay. Sightless moles, their
environment demands not the sight; nor of the fishes that inhabit the
streams of your Mammoth Cave. Your aristocrats between the
sleeve-of-the-shirt periods likewise degenerate. There is no need to
work, they lose the power. No need to sustain themselves, they become
helpless. They are as animals grown in an environment that demands no
struggle of them. Yet their environment is artificial. They live on
stored energy, stored by another. It is exhausted, they perish. All but
the few that can modify to correspond with the changed environment, as
when your social celebrities venture into trade, and the also few that
in their life of idleness have acquired graces of person and manner to
let them find pleasure in the eyes of marryers among the but-now-rich."

The learned doctor submitted to have his glass refilled from the cooler
at his side, dropped another olive into the wine, and resumed before
Oldaker could manage an escape.

"And how long, you ask, shall the cosmic pendulum swing between these
extremes of penurious industry and opulent idleness?"

Oldaker had not asked it. But he tried politely to appear as if he had
meant to. He had really meant to ask the doctor what time it was and
then pretend to recall an engagement for which he would be already
late.

"It will so continue," the doctor placidly resumed, "until the race
achieves a different ideal. Now you will say, but there can be no ideal
so long as there is no imagination; and as I have directly--a
moment-soon--said, the race is too young to have achieved imagination.
The highest felicity which we are yet able to imagine is a felicity
based upon much money; our highest pleasures the material pleasures
which money buys, yes? We strive for it, developing the money-getting
faculty at the expense of all others; and when the money is obtained we
cannot enjoy it. We can imagine to do with it only delicate-eating and
drinking and dressing for show-to-others and building houses immense
and splendidly uncalculated for homes of rational dwelling. Art,
science, music, literature, sociology, the great study and play of our
humanity, they are shut to us.

"Our young friend Bines is a specimen. It is as if he were a child,
having received from another a laboratory full of the most beautiful
instruments of science. They are valuable, but he can do but common
things with them because he knows not their possibilities. Or, we may
call it stored energy he has; for such is money, the finest, subtlest,
most potent form of stored energy; it may command the highest fruits of
genius, the lowest fruits of animality; it is also volatile, elusive.
Our young friend has many powerful batteries of it. But he is no
electrician. Some he will happily waste without harm to himself. Much
of it, apparently, he will convert into that champagne he now drinks.
For a week since I had the pleasure of becoming known to him he has
drunk it here each day, copiously. He cannot imagine a more salutary
mode of exhausting his force. I am told he comes of a father who died
at fifty, and who did in many ways like that. This one, at the rate I
have observed, will not last so long. He will not so long correspond
with an environment even so unexacting as this. And his son, perhaps
his grandson, will become what you call broke; will from lack of
pressure to learn some useful art, and from spending only, become
useless and helpless. For besides drink, there is gambling. He plays
what you say, the game of poker, this Bines. You see the gentleman,
rounded gracefully in front, who has much the air of seeming to stand
behind himself,--he drinks whiskey at my far right, yes? He is of a
rich trust, the magnate-director as you say, and plays at cards nightly
with our young friend. He jested with him in my presence before you
entered, saying, 'I will make you look like'--I forget it now, but his
humourous threat was to reduce our young friend to the aspect of some
inconsiderable sum in the money of your country. I cannot recall the
precise amount, but it was not so much as what you call one dollar.
Strange, is it not, that the rich who have too much money gamble as
feverishly as the poor who have none, and therefore have an excuse? And
the love of display-for-display. If one were not a scientist one might
be tempted to say there is no progress. The Peruvian grandee shod his
mules with pure gold, albeit that metal makes but inferior shodding for
beasts of burden. The London factory girl hires the dyed feathers of
the ostrich to make her bonnet gay; and your money people are as
display-loving. Lucullus and your latest millionaire joy in the same
emotion of pleasure at making a show. Ach! we are truly in the race's
childhood yet. The way of evolution is so unfast, yes? Ah! you will go
now, Mr. Oldaker. I shall hope to enjoy you more again. Your
observations have interested me deeply; they shall have my most high
attention. Another time you shall discuss with me how it must be that
the cosmic process shall produce a happy mean between stoic and
epicure, by learning the valuable arts of compromise, yes? How Zeno
with his bread and dates shall learn not to despise a few luxuries, and
Vitellius shall learn that the mind may sometimes feast to advantage
while the body fasts."

Through the marbled corridors and regal parlours, down long
perspectives of Persian rugs and onyx pillars, the function raged.

The group at Percival's table broke up. He had an appointment to meet
Colonel Poindexter the next morning to consummate the purchase of some
oil stock certain to appreciate fabulously in value. He had promised to
listen further to Mr. Isidore Lewis regarding a plan for obtaining
control of a certain line of one of the metal stocks. And he had
signified his desire to make one of a party the affable younger man
would guide later in the evening to a sumptuous temple of chance, to
which, by good luck, he had gained the entree. The three gentlemen
parted most cordially from him after he had paid the check.

To Mr. Lewis, when Colonel Poindexter had also left, the young man with
a taste for gaming remarked, ingenuously:

"Say, Izzy, on the level, there's the readiest money that ever
registered at this joint. You don't have to be Mr. William Wisenham to
do business with him. You can have all you want of that at track odds."

"I'm making book that way myself," responded the cheerful Mr. Lewis;
"fifty'll get you a thousand any time, my lad. It's a lead-pipe at
twenty to one. But say, with all these Petroleum Pete oil-stock
grafters and Dawson City Daves with frozen feet and mining-stock in
their mitts, a man's got to play them close in to his bosom to win out
anything. Competition is killing this place, my boy."

In the Turkish room Percival found Mrs. Akemit, gowned to perfection,
glowing, and wearing a bunch of violets bigger than her pretty head.

"I've just sent cards to your mother and sister," she explained, as she
made room for him upon the divan.

To them came presently Mrs. Drelmer, well-groomed and aggressively
cheerful.

"How de do! Just been down to Wall Street seeing how my other half
lives, and now I'm famished for tea and things. Ah! here are your
mother and our proud Western beauty!" And she went forward to greet
them.

"It's more than _her_ other half knows about her," was Mrs. Akemit's
observation to the violets on her breast.

"Come sit with me here in this corner, dear," said Mrs. Drelmer to
Psyche, while Mrs. Bines joined her son and Mrs. Akemit. "I've so much
to tell you. And that poor little Florence Akemit, isn't it too bad
about her. You know one of those bright French women said it's so
inconvenient to be a widow because it's necessary to resume the modesty
of a young girl without being able to feign her ignorance. No wonder
Florence has a hard time of it; but isn't it wretched of me to gossip?
And I wanted to tell you especially about Mr. Mauburn. You know of
course he'll be Lord Casselthorpe when the present Lord Casselthorpe
dies; a splendid title, really quite one of the best in all England;
and, my dear, he's out-and-out smitten with you; there's no use in
denying it; you should hear him rave to me about you; really these
young men in love are so inconsiderate of us old women. Ah! here is
that Mrs. Errol who does those fascinating miniatures of all the smart
people. Excuse me one moment, my dear; I want her to meet your mother."

The fashionable miniature artist was presently arranging with the dazed
Mrs. Bines for miniatures of herself and Psyche. Mrs. Drelmer,
beholding the pair with the satisfied glance of one who has performed a
kindly action, resumed her _tete-a-tete_ with Psyche.

Percival, across the room, listened to Mrs. Akemit's artless disclosure
that she found life too complex--far too hazardous, indeed, for a poor
little creature in her unfortunate position, so liable to cruel
misjudgment for thoughtless, harmless acts, the result of a young zest
for life. She had often thought most seriously of a convent, indeed she
had--"and, really, Mr. Bines, I'm amazed that I talk this way--so
freely to you--you know, when I've known you so short a time; but
something in you compels my confidences, poor little me! and my poor
little confidences! One so seldom meets a man nowadays with whom one
can venture to talk about any of the _real_ things!"

A little later, as Mrs. Drelmer was leaving, the majestic figure of the
Baron Ronault de Palliac framed itself in the handsome doorway. He
sauntered in, as if to give the picture tone, and then with purposeful
air took the seat Mrs. Drelmer had just vacated. Miss Bines had been
entertained by involuntary visions of herself as Lady Casselthorpe. She
now became in fancy the noble Baroness de Palliac, speaking faultless
French and consorting with the rare old families of the Faubourg St.
Germain. For, despite his artistic indirection, the baron's manner was
conclusive, his intentions unmistakable.

And this day was much like many days in the life of the Bines and in
the life of the Hightower Hotel. The scene from parlour to cafe was
surveyed at intervals by a quiet-mannered person with watchful eyes,
who appeared to enjoy it as one upon whom it conferred benefits. Now he
washed his hands in the invisible sweet waters of satisfaction, and
murmured softly to himself, "Setters and Buyers!" Perhaps the term fits
the family of Bines as well as might many another coined especially for
it.

When the three groups in the Turkish room dissolved, Percival with his
mother and sister went to their suite on the fourth floor.

"Think of a real live French nobleman!" cried Psyche, with enthusiasm,
"and French must be such a funny language--he talks such funny English.
I wish now I'd learned more of it at the Sem, and talked more with that
French Delpasse girl that was always toasting marshmallows on a
hat-pin."

"That lady Mrs. Drelmer introduced me to," said Mrs. Bines, "is an
artist, miniature artist, hand-painted you know, and she's going to
paint our miniatures for a thousand dollars each because we're friends
of Mrs. Drelmer."

"Oh, yes," exclaimed Psyche, with new enthusiasm, "and Mrs. Drelmer has
promised to teach me bridge whist if I'll go to her house to-morrow.
Isn't she kind? Really, every one must play bridge now, she tells me."

"Well, ladies," said the son and brother, "I'm glad to see you both
getting some of the white meat. I guess we'll do well here. I'm going
into oil stock and lead, myself."

"How girlish your little friend Mrs. Akemit is!" said his mother. "How
did she come to lose her husband?"

"Lost him in South Dakota," replied her son, shortly.

"Divorced, ma," explained Psyche, "and Mrs. Drelmer says her family's
good, but she's too gay."

"Ah!" exclaimed Percival, "Mrs. Drelmer's hammer must be one of those
cute little gold ones, all set with precious stones. As a matter of
fact, she's anything but gay. She's sad. She couldn't get along with
her husband because he had no dignity of soul."

He became conscious of sympathising generously with all men not thus
equipped.




CHAPTER XXI.

The Diversions of a Young Multi-millionaire


To be idle and lavish of money, twenty-five years old, with the
appetites keen and the need for action always pressing; then to have
loved a girl with quick, strong, youthful ardour, and to have had the
ideal smirched by gossip, then shattered before his amazed eyes,--this
is a situation in which the male animal is apt to behave inequably. In
the language of the estimable Herr Doctor von Herzlich, he will seek
those avenues of modification in which the least struggle is required.
In the simpler phrasing of Uncle Peter Bines, he will "cut loose."

During the winter that now followed Percival Bines behaved according to
either formula, as the reader may prefer. He early ascertained his
limitations with respect to New York and its people.

"Say, old man," he asked Herbert Delancey Livingston one night, across
the table at their college club, "are all the people in New York
society impecunious?"

Livingston had been with him at Harvard, and Livingston's family was so
notoriously not impecunious that the question was devoid of any
personal element. Livingston, moreover, had dined just unwisely enough
to be truthful.

"Well, to be candid with you, Bines," the young man had replied, in a
burst of alcoholic confidence, "about all that you are likely to meet
are broke--else you wouldn't meet 'em, you know," he explained
cheerfully. "You know, old chap, a few of you Western people have got
into the right set here; there's the Nesbits, for instance. On my word
the good wife and mother hasn't the kinks out of her fingers yet, nor
the callouses from her hands, by Jove! She worked so hard cooking and
washing woollen shirts for miners before Nesbit made his strike. As for
him--well caviare, I'm afraid, will always be caviare to Jimmy Nesbit.
And now the son's married a girl that had everything but money--my boy,
Nellie Wemple has fairly got that family of Nesbits awestricken since
she married into it, just by the way she can spend money--but what was
I saying, old chap? Oh, yes, about getting in--it takes time, you know;
on my word, I think they were as much as eight years, and had to start
in abroad at that. At first, you know, you can only expect to meet a
crowd that can't afford to be exclusive any longer."

From which friendly counsel, and from certain confirming observations
of his own, Percival had concluded that his lot in New York was to
spend money. This he began to do with a large Western carelessness that
speedily earned him fame of a sort. Along upper Broadway, his advent
was a golden joy. Tradesmen learned to love him; florists, jewelers,
and tailors hailed his coming with honest fervour; waiters told moving
tales of his tips; cabmen fought for the privilege of transporting him;
and the hangers-on of rich young men picked pieces of lint assiduously
and solicitously from his coat.

One of his favourite resorts was the sumptuous gambling-house in
Forty-fourth Street. The man who slides back the panel of the stout
oaken door early learned to welcome him through the slit, barred by its
grill of wrought iron. The attendant who took his coat and hat, the
waiter who took his order for food, and the croupier who took his
money, were all gladdened by his coming; for his gratuities were as
large when he lost as when he won Even the reserved proprietor,
accustomed as he was to a wealthy and careless clientele, treated
Percival with marked consideration after a night when the young man
persuaded him to withdraw the limit at roulette, and spent a large sum
in testing a system for breaking the wheel, given to him by a friend
lately returned from Monte Carlo.

"I think, really the fellow who gave me that system is an ass," he
said, lighting a cigarette when the play was done. "Now I'm going down
and demolish eight dollars' worth of food and drink--you won't be all
to the good on that, you know."

His host decided that a young man who was hungry, after losing a
hundred thousand dollars in five hours' play, was a person to be not
lightly considered.

And, though he loved the rhythmic whir and the ensuing rattle of the
little ivory ball at the roulette wheel, he did not disdain the quieter
faro, playing that dignified game exclusively with the chocolate-coloured
chips, which cost a thousand dollars a stack. Sometimes he won; but not
often enough to disturb his host's belief that there is less of chance in
his business than in any other known to the captains of industry.

There were, too, sociable games of poker, played with Garmer, of the
Lead Trust, Burman, the intrepid young wheat operator from Chicago, and
half a dozen other well-moneyed spirits; games in which the limit, to
use the Chicagoan's phrase, was "the beautiful but lofty North Star."
At these games he lost even more regularly than at those where, with
the exception of a trifling percentage, he was solely at the mercy of
chance. But he was a joyous loser, endearing himself to the other
players; to Garmer, whom Burman habitually accused of being "closer
than a warm night," as well as to the open-handed son of the
chewing-gum magnate, who had been raised abroad and who protested
nightly that there was an element of beastly American commercialism in the
game. When Percival was by some chance absent from a sitting, the others
calculated the precise sum he probably would have lost and humourously
acquainted him with the amount by telegraph next morning,--it was apt to
be nine hundred and some odd dollars,--requesting that he cover by check
at his early convenience.

Yet the diversion was not all gambling. There were Jong sessions at
all-night restaurants where the element of chance in his favour,
inconspicuous elsewhere, was wholly eliminated; suppers for hungry
Thespians and thirsty parasites, protracted with song and talk until
the gas-flames grew pale yellow, and the cabmen, when the party went
out into the wan light, would be low-voiced, confidential, and
suggestive in their approaches.

Broadway would be weirdly quiet at such times, save for the occasional
frenzied clatter of a hurrying milk-wagon. Even the cars seemed to move
with less sound than by day, and the early-rising workers inside,
holding dinner-pails and lunch-baskets, were subdued and silent, yet
strangely observing, as if the hour were one in which the vision was
made clear to appraise the values of life justly. To the north, whence
the cars bulked silently, would be an awakening sky of such tender
beauty that the revellers often paid it the tribute of a moment's
notice.

"Pure turquoise," one would declare.

"With just a dash of orange bitters in it," another might add.

And then perhaps they burst into song under the spell, blending their
voices into what the professional gentlemen termed "barber-shop
harmonies," until a policeman would saunter across the street,
pretending, however, that he was not aware of them.

Then perhaps a ride toward the beautiful northern sky would be
proposed, whereupon three or four hansom or coupe loads would begin a
journey that wound up through Central Park toward the northern light,
but which never attained a point remoter than some suburban road-house,
where sleepy cooks and bartenders would have to be routed out to
collaborate toward breakfast.

Oftener the party fell away into straggling groups with notions for
sleep, chanting at last, perhaps:

"While beer brings gladness, don't forget That water only makes you
wet!"

Percival would walk to the hotel, sobered and perhaps made a little
reflective by the unwonted quiet. But they were pleasant, careless
folk, he concluded always. They permitted him to spend his money, but
he was quite sure they would spend it as freely as he if they had it.
More than one appreciative soubrette, met under such circumstances, was
subsequently enabled to laud the sureness of his taste in jewels,--he
cared little for anything but large diamonds, it transpired. It was a
feeling tribute paid to his munificence by one of these in converse
with a sister artist, who had yet to meet him:

"Say, Myrtle, on the dead, he spends money just like a young Jew trying
to be white!"

Under this more or less happy surface of diversion, however, was an
experience decidedly less felicitous. He knew he should not, must not,
hold Avice Milbrey in his mind; yet when he tried to put her out it
hurt him.

At first he had plumed himself upon his lucky escape that night, when
he would have declared his love to her. To have married a girl who
cared only for his money; that would have been dire enough. But to
marry a girl like _that!_ He had been lucky indeed!

Yet, as the weeks went by the shock of the scene wore off. The scene
itself remained clear, with the grinning grotesquerie of the
Jack-o'-lanterns lighting it and mocking his simplicity. But the first
sharp physical hurt had healed. He was forced to admit that the girl
still had power to trouble him. At times his strained nerves would
relax to no other device than the picturing of her as his own. Exactly
in the measure that he indulged this would his pride smart. With a
budding gift for negation he could imagine her caring for nothing but
his money; and there was that other picture, swift and awful, a
pantomime in shadow, with the leering yellow faces above it.

In the far night, when he awoke to sudden and hungry aloneness, he
would let his arms feel their hunger for her. The vision of her would
be flowers and music and sunlight and time and all things perfect to
mystify and delight, to satisfy and--greatest of all boons--to
unsatisfy. The thought of her became a rest-house for all weariness; a
haven where he was free to choose his nook and lie down away from all
that was not her, which was all that was not beautiful. He would go
back to seek the lost sweetness of their first meeting; to mount the
poor dead belief that she would care for him--that he could make her
care for him--and endow the thing with artificial life, trying to
capture the faint breath of it; but the memory was always fleeting,
attenuated, like the spirit of the memory of a perfume that had been
elusive at best. And always, to banish what joy even this poor device
might bring, came the more vivid vision of the brutal, sordid facts. He
forced himself to face them regularly as a penance and a corrective.

They came before him with especial clearness when he met her from time
to time during the winter. He watched her in talk with others, noting
the contradiction in her that she would at one moment appear knowing
and masterful, with depths of reserve that the other people neither
fathomed nor knew of; and at another moment frankly girlish, with an
appealing feminine helplessness which is woman's greatest strength,
coercing every strong masculine instinct.

When the reserve showed in her, he became afraid. What was she not
capable of? In the other mood, frankly appealing, she drew him
mightily, so that he abandoned himself for the moment, responding to
her fresh exulting youth, longing to take her, to give her things, to
make her laugh, to enfold and protect her, to tell her secrets, to
feather her cheek with the softest kiss, to be the child-mate of her.

Toward him, directly, when they met she would sometimes be glacial and
forbidding, sometimes uninterestedly frank, as if they were but the
best of commonplace friends. Yet sometimes she made him feel that she,
too, threw herself heartily to rest in the thought of their loving, and
cheated herself, as he did, with dreams of comradeship. She left him at
these times with the feeling that they were deaf, dumb, and blind to
each other; that if some means of communication could be devised,
something surer than the invisible play of secret longings, all might
yet be well. They talked as the people about them talked, words that
meant nothing to either, and if there were mute questionings, naked
appeals, unuttered declarations, they were only such as language serves
to divert attention from. Speech, doubtless, has its uses as well as
its abuses. Politics, for example, would be less entertaining without
it. But in matters of the heart, certain it is that there would be
fewer misunderstandings if it were forbidden between the couple under
the penalty of immediate separation. In this affair real meanings are
rarely conveyed except by silences. Words are not more than tasteless
drapery to obscure their lines. The silence of lovers is the plainest
of all speech, warning, disconcerting indeed, by its very bluntness,
any but the truly mated. An hour's silence with these two people by
themselves might have worked wonders.

Another diversion of Percival's during this somewhat feverish winter
was Mrs. Akemit. Not only was she a woman of finished and expert
daintiness in dress and manner and surroundings, but she soothed,
flattered, and stimulated him. With the wisdom of her thirty-two years,
devoted chiefly to a study of his species, she took care never to be
exigent. She had the way of referring to herself as "poor little me,"
yet she never made demands or allowed him to feel that she expected
anything from him in the way of allegiance.

Mrs. Akemit was not only like St. Paul, "all things to all men," but
she had gone a step beyond that excellent theologue. She could be all
things to one man. She was light-heartedly frivolous, soberly
reflective, shallow, profound, cynical or naive, ingenuous, or
inscrutable. She prized dearly the ecclesiastical background provided
by her uncle, the bishop, and had him to dine with the same unerring
sense of artistry that led her to select swiftly the becoming shade of
sofa-cushion to put her blond head back upon.

The good bishop believed she had jeopardised her soul with divorce. He
feared now she meant to lose it irrevocably through remarriage. As a
foil to his austerity, therefore, she would be audaciously gay in his
presence.

"Hell," she said to him one evening, "is given up _so_ reluctantly by
those who don't expect to go there." And while the bishop frowned into
his salad she invited Percival to drink with her in the manner of a
woman who is mad to invite perdition. If the good man could have beheld
her before a background of frivolity he might have suffered less
anxiety. For there her sense of contrast-values led her to be grave and
deep, to express distaste for society with its hollowness, and to
expose timidly the cruel scars on a soul meant for higher things.

Many afternoons Percival drank tea with her in the little red
drawing-room of her dainty apartment up the avenue. Here in the half
light which she had preferred since thirty, in a soft corner with which
she harmonised faultlessly, and where the blaze from the open fire
coloured her animated face just enough, she talked him usually into the
glow of a high conceit with himself. When she dwelt upon the
shortcomings of man, she did it with the air of frankly presuming him
to be different from all others, one who could sympathise with her
through knowing the frailties of his sex, yet one immeasurably superior
to them. When he was led to talk of himself--of whom, it seemed, she
could never learn enough--he at once came to take high views of
himself: to gaze, through her tactful prompting, with a gentle, purring
appreciation upon the manifest spectacle of his own worth.

Sometimes, away from her, he wondered how she did it. Sometimes, in her
very presence, his sense of humour became alert and suspicious. Part of
the time he decided her to be a charming woman, with a depth and
quality of sweetness unguessed by the world. The rest of the time he
remembered a saying about alfalfa made by Uncle Peter: "It's an
innocent lookin', triflin' vegetable, but its roots go right down into
the ground a hundred feet."

"My dear," Mrs. Akemit had once confided to an intimate in an hour of
_negligee_, "to meet a man, any man, from a red-cheeked butcher boy to
a bloodless monk, and not make him feel something new for
you--something he never before felt for any other woman--really it's as
criminal as a wrinkled stocking, or for blondes to wear shiny things.
Every woman can do it, if she'll study a little how to reduce them to
their least common denominator--how to make them primitive."

Of another member of Mrs. Akemit's household Percival acknowledged the
sway with never a misgiving. He had been the devoted lover of Baby
Akemit from the afternoon when he had first cajoled her into
autobiography--a vivid, fire-tipped little thing with her mother's
piquancy. He gleaned that day that she was "a quarter to four years
old;" that she was mamma's girl, but papa was a friend of Santa Claus;
that she went to "ball-dances" every day clad in "dest a stirt 'cause
big ladies don't ever wear waist-es at night;" that she had once ridden
in a merry-go-round and it made her "all homesick right here," patting
her stomach; and that "elephants are horrid, but you mustn't be cruel
to them and cut their eyes out. Oh, no!"

Her Percival courted with results that left nothing to be desired. She
fell to the floor in helpless, shrieking laughter when he came. In his
honour she composed and sang songs to an improvised and spirited
accompaniment upon her toy piano. His favourites among these were
"'Cause Why I Love You" and "Darling, Ask Myself to Come to You." She
rendered them with much feeling. If he were present when her bed-time
came she refused to sleep until he had consented to an interview.

Avice Milbrey had the fortune to witness one of these bed-time
_causeries_. One late afternoon the young man's summons came while he
was one of a group that lingered late about Mrs. Akemit's little
tea-table, Miss Milbrey being of the number.

He followed the maid dutifully out through the hall to the door of the
bedroom, and entered on all-fours with what they two had agreed was the
growl of a famished bear.

The familiar performance was viewed by the mother and by Miss Milbrey,
whom the mother had urged to follow. Baby Akemit in her crib, modestly
arrayed in blue pajamas, after simulating the extreme terror required
by the situation, fell to chatting, while her mother and Miss Milbrey
looked on from the doorway.

Miss Akemit had once been out in the woods, it appeared, and a
"biting-wolf" chased her, and she ran and ran until she came to a river
all full of pigs and fishes and berries, so she jumped in and had
supper, and it wasn't a "biting-wolf" at all--and then--

But the narrative was cut short by her mother.

"Come, Pet! Mr. Bines wishes to go now."

Miss Akemit, it appeared, was bent upon relating the adventures of
Goldie Locks, subsequent to her leap from the window of the bears'
house. She had, it seemed, been compelled to ride nine-twenty miles on
a trolley, and, reaching home too late for luncheon, had been obliged
to eat in the kitchen with the cook.

"Mr. Bines can't stay, darling!"

Baby Akemit calculated briefly, and consented to his departure if Mr.
Bines would bring her something next time.

Mr. Bines promised, and moved away after the customary embrace, but she
was not through:

"Oh! oh! go out like a bear! dere's a bear come in here!"

And so, having brought the bear in, he was forced to drop again and
growl the beast out, whereupon, appeased by this strict observance of
the unities, the child sat up and demanded:

"You sure you'll bring me somefin next time?"

"Yes, sure, Lady Grenville St. Clare."  "Well, you sure you're _comin'_
next time?"

Being reassured on this point, and satisfied that no more bears were at
large, she lay down once more while Percival and the two observers
returned to the drawing-room.

"You love children so!" Miss Milbrey said. And never had she been so
girlishly appealing to all that was strong in him as a man. The frolic
with the child seemed to have blown away a fog from between them. Yet
never had the other scene been more vivid to him, and never had the
pain of her heartlessness been more poignant.

When he "played" with Baby Akemit thereafter, the pretence was not all
with the child. For while she might "play" at giving a vexatiously
large dinner, for which she was obliged to do the cooking because she
had discharged all the servants, or when they "played" that the big
couch was a splendid ferry-boat in which they were sailing to Chicago
where Uncle David lived--with many stern threats to tell the janitor of
the boat if the captain didn't behave himself and sail faster--Percival
"played" that his companion's name was Baby Bines, and that her mother,
who watched them with loving eyes, was a sweet and gracious young woman
named Avice. And when he told Baby Akemit that she was "the only
original sweetheart" he meant it of some one else than her.

When the play was over he always conducted himself back to sane reality
by viewing this some one else in the cold light of truth.




CHAPTER XXII.

The Distressing Adventure of Mrs. Bines


The fame of the Bines family for despising money was not fed wholly by
Percival's unremitting activities. Miss Psyche Bines, during the
winter, achieved wide and enviable renown as a player of bridge whist.
Not for the excellence of her play; rather for the inveteracy and size
of her losses and the unconcerned cheerfulness with which she defrayed
them. She paid the considerable sums with an air of gratitude for
having been permitted to lose them. Especially did she seem grateful
for the zealous tutelage and chaperonage of Mrs. Drelmer.

"Everybody in New York plays bridge, my dear, and of course you must
learn," that capable lady had said in the beginning.

"But I never was bright at cards," the girl confessed, "and I'm afraid
I couldn't learn bridge well enough to interest you good players."

"Nonsense!" was Mrs. Drelmer's assurance. "Bridge is easy to learn and
easy to play. I'll teach you, and I promise you the people you play
with shall never complain."

Mrs. Drelmer, it soon appeared, knew what she was talking about.

Indeed, that well-informed woman was always likely to. Her husband was
an intellectual delinquent whom she spoke of largely as being "in Wall
Street," and in that feat of jugglery known as "keeping up
appearances," his wife had long been the more dexterous performer.

She was apt not only to know what she talked about, but she was a woman
of resource, unafraid of action. She drilled Miss Bines in the
rudiments of bridge. If the teacher became subsequently much the
largest winner of the pupil's losings, it was, perhaps, not more than
her fit recompense. For Miss Bines enjoyed not only the sport of the
game, but her manner of playing it, combined with the social prestige
of her amiable sponsor, procured her a circle of acquaintances that
would otherwise have remained considerably narrower. An enthusiastic
player of bridge, of passable exterior, mediocre skill, and unlimited
resources, need never want in New York for very excellent society. Not
only was the Western girl received by Mrs. Drelmer's immediate circle,
but more than one member of what the lady called "that snubby set"
would now and then make a place for her at the card-table. A few of
Mrs. Drelmer's intimates were so wanting in good taste as to intimate
that she exploited Miss Bines even to the degree of an understanding
expressed in bald percentage, with certain of those to whom she secured
the girl's society at cards. Whether this ill-natured gossip was true
or false, it is certain that the exigencies of life on next to nothing
a year, with a husband who could boast of next to nothing but Family,
had developed an unerring business sense in Mrs. Drelmer; and certain
it also is that this winter was one when the appearances with which she
had to strive were unwontedly buoyant.

Miss Bines tirelessly memorised rules. She would disclose to her placid
mother that the lead of a trump to the third hand's go-over of hearts
is of doubtful expediency; or that one must "follow suit with the
smallest, except when you have only two, neither of them better than
the Jack. Then play the higher first, so that when the lower falls your
partner may know you are out of the suit, and ruff it."

Mrs. Bines declared that it did seem to her very much like out-and-out
gambling. But Percival, looking over the stubs of his sister's
check-book, warmly protested her innocence of this charge.

"Heaven knows sis has her shortcomings," he observed, patronisingly, in
that young woman's presence, "but she's no gambler; don't say it, ma, I
beg of you! She only knows five rules of the game, and I judge it's
cost her about three thousand dollars each to learn those. And the only
one she never forgets is, 'When in doubt, lead your highest check.' But
don't ever accuse her of gambling. Poor girl, if she keeps on playing
bridge she'll have writer's cramp; that's all I'm afraid of. I see
there's a new rapid-fire check-book on the market, and an improved
fountain pen that doesn't slobber. I'll have to get her one of each."

Yet Psyche Bines's experience, like her brother's, was not without a
proper leaven of sentiment. There was Fred Milbrey, handsome, clever,
amusing, knowing every one, and giving her a pleasant sense of intimacy
with all that was worth while in New York. Him she felt very friendly
to.

Then there was Mauburn, presently to be Lord Casselthorpe, with his
lazy, high-pitched drawl; good-natured, frank, carrying an atmosphere
of high-class British worldliness, and delicately awakening within her
while she was with him a sense of her own latent superiority to the
institutions of her native land. She liked Mauburn, too.

More impressive than either of these, however, was the Baron Ronault de
Palliac. Tall, swarthy, saturnine, a polished man of all the world, of
manners finished, elaborate, and ceremonious, she found herself feeling
foreign and distinguished in his presence, quite as if she were the
heroine of a romantic novel, and might at any instant be called upon to
assist in royalist intrigues. The baron, to her intuition, nursed
secret sorrows. For these she secretly worshipped him. It is true that
when he dined with her and her mother, which he was frequently gracious
enough to do, he ate with a heartiness that belied this secret sorrow
she had imagined. But he was fascinating at all times, with a grace at
table not less finished than that with which he bowed at their meetings
and partings. It was not unpleasant to think of basking daily in the
shine of that grand manner, even if she did feel friendlier with
Milbrey, and more at ease with Mauburn.

If the truth must be told, Miss Bines was less impressionable than
either of the three would have wished. Her heart seemed not easy to
reach; her impulses were not inflammable. Young Milbrey early confided
to his family a suspicion that she was singularly hard-headed, and the
definite information that she had "a hob-nailed Western way" of
treating her admirers.

Mauburn, too, was shrewd enough to see that, while she frankly liked
him, he was for some reason less a favourite than the Baron de Palliac.

"It'll be no easy matter marrying that girl," he told Mrs. Drelmer.
"She's really a dear, and awfully good fun, but she's not a bit silly,
and I dare say she'll marry some chap because she likes him, and not
because he's anybody, you know."

"Make her like you," insisted his adviser.

"On my word, I wish she did. And I'm not so sure, you know, she doesn't
fancy that Frenchman, or even young Milbrey."

"I'll keep you before her," promised Mrs. Drelmer, "and I wish you'd
not think you can't win her. 'Tisn't like you."

Miss Bines accordingly heard that it was such a pity young Milbrey
drank so, because his only salvation lay in making a rich marriage, and
a young man, nowadays, had to keep fairly sober to accomplish that.
Really, Mrs. Drelmer felt sorry for the poor weak fellow. "Good-hearted
chap, but he has no character, my dear, so I'm afraid there's no hope
for him. He has the soul of a merchant tailor, actually, but not the
tailor's manhood. Otherwise he'd be above marrying some unsuspecting
girl for her money and breaking her heart after marriage. Now, Mauburn
is a type so different; honest, unaffected, healthy, really he's a man
for any girl to be proud of, even if he were not heir to a title--one
of the best in all England, and an ornament of the most exclusively
correct set; of a line, my dear, that is truly great--not like that
shoddy French nobility, discredited in France, that sends so many of
its comic-opera barons here looking for large dowries to pay their
gambling debts and put furniture in their rattle-trap old chateaux, and
keep them in absinthe and their other peculiar diversions. And Mauburn,
you lucky minx, simply adores you--he's quite mad about you, really!"

In spite of Mrs. Drelmer's two-edged sword, Miss Bines continued rather
more favourable to the line of De Palliac. The baron was so splendid,
so gloomy, so deferential. He had the air of laying at her feet, as a
rug, the whole glorious history of France. And he appeared so well in
the victoria when they drove in the park.

It is true that the heart of Miss Bines was as yet quite untouched; and
it was not more than a cool, dim, aesthetic light in which she surveyed
the three suitors impartially, to behold the impressive figure of the
baron towering above the others. Had the baron proposed for her hand,
it is not impossible that, facing the question directly, she would have
parried or evaded.

But certain events befell unpropitiously at a time when the baron was
most certain of his conquest; at the very time, indeed, when he had
determined to open his suit definitely by extending a proposal to the
young lady through the orthodox medium of her nearest male relative.

"I admit," wrote the baron to his expectant father, "that it is what
one calls '_very chances_' in the English, but one must venture in this
country, and your son is not without much hope. And if not, there is
still Mlle. Higbee."

The baron shuddered as he wrote it. He preferred not to recognise even
the existence of this alternative, for the reason that the father of
Mlle. Higbee distressed him by an incompleteness of suavity.

"He conducts himself like a pork," the baron would declare to himself,
by way of perfecting his English.

The secret cause of his subsequent determination not to propose for the
hand of Miss Bines lay in the hopelessly middle-class leanings of the
lady who might have incurred the supreme honour of becoming his
mother-in-law. Had Mrs. Bines been above talking to low people, a
catastrophe might have been averted. But Mrs. Bines was not above it.
She was quite unable to repress a vulgar interest in the menials that
served her.

She knew the butler's life history two days after she had ceased to be
afraid of him. She knew the distressing family affairs of the maids;
how many were the ignoble progeny of the elevator-man, and what his
plebeian wife did for their croup; how much rent the hall-boy's
low-born father paid for his mean two-story dwelling in Jersey City;
and how many hours a day or night the debased scrub-women devoted to
their unrefining toil.

Brazenly, too, she held converse with Philippe, the active and voluble
Alsatian who served her when she chose to dine in the public restaurant
instead of at her own private table. Philippe acquainted her with the
joys and griefs of his difficult profession. There were fourteen
thousand waiters in New York, if, by waiters, you meant any one. Of
course there were not so many like Philippe, men of the world who had
served their time as assistants and their three years as sub-waiters;
men who spoke English, French, and German, who knew something of
cooking, how to dress a salad, and how to carve. Only such, it
appeared, could be members of the exclusive Geneva Club that procured a
place for you when you were idle, and paid you eight dollars a week
when you were sick.

Having the qualifications, one could earn twenty-five dollars a month
in salary and three or four times as much in gratuities. Philippe's
income was never less than one hundred and twenty dollars a month; for
was he not one who had come from Europe as a master, after two seasons
at Paris where a man acquires his polish--his perfection of manner, his
finish, his grace? Philippe could never enough prize that post-graduate
course at the _Maison d'Or_, where he had personally known--madame
might not believe it--the incomparable Casmir, a _chef_ who served two
generations of epicures, princes, kings, statesmen, travelling
Americans,--all the truly great.

With his own lips Casmir had told him, Philippe, of the occasion when
Dumas, _pere_, had invited him to dinner that they might discuss the
esoterics of salad dressing and sauces; also of the time when the
Marquis de St. Georges embraced Casmir for inventing the precious soup
that afterwards became famous as _Potage Germine_. And now the skilled
and puissant Casmir had retired. It was a calamity. The _Maison
d'Or_--Paris--would no longer be what they had been.

For that matter, since one must live, Philippe preferred it to be in
America, for in no other country could an adept acquire so much money.
And Philippe knew the whole dining world. With Celine and the baby,
Paul, Philippe dwelt in an apartment that would really amaze madame by
its appointments of luxury, in East 38th Street, and only the four
flights to climb. And Paul was three, the largest for his age, quite
the largest, that either Philippe or Celine had ever beheld. Even the
brother of Celine and his wife, who had a restaurant of their
own--serving the _table d'hote_ at two and one-half francs the plate,
with wine--even these swore they had never seen an infant so big, for
his years, as Paul.

And so Mrs. Bines grew actually to feel an interest in the creature and
his wretched affairs, and even fell into the deplorable habit of
saying, "I must come to see you and your wife and Paul some pleasant
day, Philippe," and Philippe, being a man of the world, thought none
the less of her for believing that she did not mean it.

Yet it befell on an afternoon that Mrs. Bines found herself in a
populous side-street, driving home from a visit to the rheumatic
scrub-woman who had now to be supported by the papers her miserable
offspring sold. Mrs. Bines had never seen so many children as flooded
this street. She wondered if an orphan asylum were in the
neighbourhood. And though the day was pleasantly warm, she decided that
there were about her at least a thousand cases of incipient pneumonia,
for not one child in five had on a hat. They raged and dashed and
rippled from curb to curb so that they might have made her think of a
swift mountain torrent at the bottom of a gloomy canyon, but that the
worthy woman was too literal-minded for such fancies. She only warned
the man to drive slowly.

And then by a street sign she saw that she was near the home of
Philippe. It was three o'clock, and he would be resting from his work.
The man found the number. The waves parted and piled themselves on
either side in hushed wonder as she entered the hallway and searched
for the name on the little cards under the bells. She had never known
the surname, and on two of the cards "Ph." appeared. She rang one of
the bells, the door mysteriously opened with a repeated double click,
and she began the toilsome climb. The waves of children fell together
behind her in turbulent play again.

At the top she breathed a moment and then knocked at a door before her.
A voice within called:

"_Entres!_" and Mrs. Bines opened the door.

It was the tiny kitchen of Philippe. Philippe, himself, in
shirt-sleeves, sat in a chair tilted back close to the gas-range, the
_Courier des Etats Unis_ in his hands and Paul on his lap. Celine
ironed the bosom of a gentleman's white shirt on an ironing board
supported by the backs of two chairs.

Hemmed in the corner by this board and by the gas-range, seated at a
table covered by the oilcloth that simulates the marble of Italy's most
famous quarry, sat, undoubtedly, the Baron Ronault de Palliac. A
steaming plate of spaghetti _a la Italien_ was before him, to his left
a large bowl of salad, to his right a bottle of red wine.

For a space of three seconds the entire party behaved as if it were
being photographed under time-exposure. Philippe and the baby stared,
motionless. Celine stared, resting no slight weight on the hot
flat-iron. The Baron Ronault de Palliac stared, his fork poised in
mid-air and festooned with gay little streamers of spaghetti.

Then came smoke, the smell of scorching linen, and a cry of horror from
Celine.

"_Ah, la seule chemise blanche de Monsieur le Baron!_"

The spell was broken. Philippe was on his feet, bowing effusively.

"Ah! it is Madame Bines. _Je suis tres honore_--I am very honoured to
welcome you, madame. It is madame, _ma femme_, Celine,--and--Monsieur
le Baron de Palliac--"

Philippe had turned with evident distress toward the latter. But
Philippe was only a waiter, and had not behind him the centuries of
schooling that enable a gentleman to remain a gentleman under adverse
conditions.

The Baron Ronault de Palliac arose with unruffled aplomb and favoured
the caller with his stateliest bow. He was at the moment a graceful and
silencing rebuke to those who aver that manner and attire be
interdependent. The baron's manner was ideal, undiminished in volume,
faultless as to decorative qualities. One fitted to savour its
exquisite finish would scarce have noted that above his waist the noble
gentleman was clad in a single woollen undergarment of revolutionary
red.

Or, if such a one had observed this trifling circumstance, he would,
assuredly, have treated it as of no value to the moment; something to
note, perhaps, and then gracefully to forget.

The baron's own behaviour would have served as a model. One swift
glance had shown him there was no way of instant retreat. That being
impossible, none other was graceful; hence none other was to be
considered. He permitted himself not even a glance at the shirt upon
whose fair, defenceless bosom the iron of the overcome Celine had
burned its cruel brown imprimature. Mrs. Bines had greeted him as he
would have wished, unconscious, apparently, that there could be cause
for embarrassment.

[Illustration: "THE SPELL WAS BROKEN."]

"Ah! madame," he said, handsomely, "you see me, I unfast with the fork.
You see me here, I have envy of the simple life. I am content of to do
it--_comme ca_--as that, see you," waving in the direction of his
unfinished repast. "All that magnificence of your grand hotel, there is
not the why of it, the most big of the world, and suchly stupefying,
with its 'infernil rackit' as you say. And of more--what droll of idea,
enough curious, by example! to dwell with the good Philippe and his
_femme aimable_. Their hotel is of the most littles, but I rest here
very volunteerly since longtime. Is it that one can to comprehend
liking the vast hotel American?"

"Monsieur le Baron lodges with us; we have so much of the chambers,"
ventured Celine.

"Monsieur le Baron wishes to retire to his apartment," said Philippe,
raising the ironing-board. "Will madame be so good to enter our _petit
salon_ at the front, _n'est-ce-pas?_"

The baron stepped forth from his corner and bowed himself graciously
out.

"Madame, my compliments--and to the adorable Mademoiselle Bines! _Au
revoir_, madame--to the soontime--_avant peu_--before little!"

On the farther side of his closed door the Baron Ronault de Palliac
swore--once. But the oath was one of the most awful that a Frenchman
may utter in his native tongue: "Sacred Name of a Name!"

"But the baron wasn't done eating," protested Mrs. Bines.

"Ah, yes, madame!" replied Philippe. "Monsieur le Baron has consumed
enough for now. _Paul, mon enfant, ne touche pas la robe de madame!_ He
is large, is he not, madame, as I have told you? A monster, yes?"

Mrs. Bines, stooping, took the limp and wide-eyed Paul up in her arms.
Whereupon he began to talk so fast to her in French that she set him
quickly down again, with the slightly helpless air of one who has
picked up an innocent-looking clock only to have the clanging alarm go
suddenly off.

"Madame will honour our little salon," urged Philippe, opening the door
and bowing low.

"_Quel dommage!_" sighed Celine, moving after them; "_la seule chemise
blanche de Monsieur le Baron. Eh bien! il faut lui en acheter une
autre!_"

At dinner that evening Mrs. Bines related her adventure, to the
unfeigned delight of her graceless son, and to the somewhat troubled
amazement of her daughter.

"And, do you know," she ventured, "maybe he isn't a regular baron,
after all!"

"Oh, I guess he's a regular one all right," said Percival; "only
perhaps he hasn't worked at it much lately."

"But his sitting there eating in that--that shirt--" said his sister.

"My dear young woman, even the nobility are prey to climatic rigours;
they are obliged, like the wretched low-born such as ourselves, to
wear--pardon me--undergarments. Again, I understand from Mrs.
Cadwallader here that the article in question was satisfactory and
fit--red, I believe you say, Mrs. Terwilliger?"

"Awful red!" replied his mother--"and they call their parlour a
saloon."

"And of necessity, even the noble have their moments of _deshabille_."

"They needn't eat their lunch that way," declared his sister.

"Is _deshabille_ French for underclothes?" asked Mrs. Bines, struck by
the word.

"Partly," answered her son.

"And the way that child of Philippe's jabbered French! It's wonderful
how they can learn so young."

"They begin early, you know," Percival explained. "And as to our friend
the baron, I'm ready to make book that sis doesn't see him again,
except at a distance."

Sometime afterwards he computed the round sum he might have won if any
such bets had been made; for his sister's list of suitors, to adopt his
own lucent phrase, was thereafter "shy a baron."




CHAPTER XXIII.

The Summer Campaign Is Planned


Winter waned and spring charmed the land into blossom. The city-pent,
as we have intimated, must take this season largely on faith. If one
can find a patch of ground naked of stone or asphalt one may feel the
heart of the earth beat. But even now the shop-windows are more
inspiring. At least they copy the outer show. Tender-hued shirt-waists
first push up their sprouts of arms through the winter furs and
woollens, quite as the first violets out in the woodland thrust
themselves up through the brown carpet of leaves. Then every window
becomes a summery glade of lawn, tulle, and chiffon, more lavish of
tints, shades, and combinations, indeed, than ever nature dared to be.

Outside, where the unspoiled earth begins, the blossoms are clouding
the trees with a mist of pink and white, and the city-dweller knows it
from the bloom and foliage of these same windows.

Then it is that the spring "get away" urge is felt by each prisoner, by
those able to obey it, and by those, alike, who must wear it down in
the groomed and sophisticated wildness of the city parks.

On a morning late in May Mrs. Bines and her daughter were at breakfast.

"Isn't Percival coming?" asked his mother. "Everything will be cold."

"Can't say," Psyche answered. "I don't even know if he came in last
night. But don't worry about cold things. You can't get them too cold
for Perce at breakfast, nowadays. He takes a lot of ice-water and a
little something out of the decanter, and maybe some black coffee."

"Yes, and I'm sure it's bad for him. He doesn't look a bit healthy and
hasn't since he quit eating breakfast. He used to be such a hearty
eater at breakfast, steaks and bacon and chops and eggs and waffles. It
was a sight to see him eat; and since he's quit taking anything but
that cold stuff he's lost his colour and his eyes don't look right. I
know what he's got hold of--it's that 'no-breakfast' fad. I heard about
it from Mrs. Balldridge when we came here last fall. I never did
believe in it, either."

The object of her solicitude entered in dressing-gown and slippers.

"I'm just telling Psyche that this no-breakfast fad is hurting your
health, my son. Now do come and eat like you used to. You began to look
bad as soon as you left off your breakfast. It's a silly fad, that's
what it is. You can't tell _me!_"

The young man stared at his mother until he had mastered her meaning.
Then he put both hands to his head and turned to the sideboard as if to
conceal his emotion.

"That's it," he said, as he busied himself with a tall glass and the
cracked ice. "It's that 'no-breakfast' fad. I didn't think you knew
about it. The fact is," he continued, pouring out a measure of brandy,
and directing the butler to open a bottle of soda, "we all eat too
much. After a night of sound sleep we awaken refreshed and buoyant, all
our forces replenished; thirsty, of course, but not hungry"--he sat
down to the table and placed both hands again to his head--"and we have
no need of food. Yet such is the force of custom that we deaden
ourselves for the day by tanking up on coarse, loathsome stuff like
bacon. Ugh! Any one would think, the way you two eat so early in the
day, that you were a couple of cave-dwellers,--the kind that always
loaded up when they had a chance because it might be a week before they
got another."

He drained his glass and brightened visibly.

"Now, why not be reasonable?" he continued, pleadingly. "You know there
is plenty of food. I have observed it being brought into town in huge
wagon-loads in the early morning on many occasions. Why do you want to
eat it all at one sitting? No one's going to starve you. Why stupefy
yourselves when, by a little nervy self-denial, you can remain as fresh
and bright and clear-headed as I am at this moment? Why doesn't a fire
make its own escape, Mrs. Carstep-Jamwuddle?"

"I don't believe you feel right, either. I just know you've got an
awful headache right now. Do let the man give you a nice piece of this
steak."

"Don't, I beg of you, Lady Ashmorton! The suggestion is extremely
repugnant to me. Besides, I'm behaving this way because I arose with
the purely humourous fancy that my head was a fine large accordeon, and
that some meddler had drawn it out too far. I'm sportively pretending
that I can press it back into shape. Now you and sis never get up with
any such light poetic notion as that. You know you don't--don't attempt
to deceive me." He glanced over the table with swift disapproval.

"Strawberries, oatmeal, rolls, steak three inches thick, bacon,
omelette--oh, that I should live to see this day! It's disgraceful! And
at your age--before your own innocent woman-child, and leading her into
the same excesses. Do you know what that breakfast is? No; I'll tell
you. That breakfast is No. 78 in that book of Mrs. Rorer's, and she
expressly warns everybody that it can be eaten safely only by
steeple-climbers, piano-movers, and sea-captains. Really, Mrs.
Wrangleberry, I blush for you."

"I don't care how you go on. You ain't looked well for months."

"But think of my great big heart--a heart like an ox,"--he seemed on
the verge of tears--"and to think that you, a woman I have never
treated with anything but respect since we met in Honduras in the fall
of '93--to think _you_ should throw it up to my own face that I'm not
beautiful. Others there are, thank God, who can look into a man's heart
and prize him for what he is--not condemn him for his mere superficial
blemishes."

"And I just know you've got in with a fast set. I met Mr. Milbrey
yesterday in the corridor--"

"Did he tell you how to make a lovely asparagus short-cake or
something?"

"He told me those men you go with so much are dreadful gamblers, and
that when you all went to Palm Beach last February you played poker for
money night and day, and you told me you went for your health!"

"Oh, he did, did he? Well, I didn't get anything else. He's a dear old
soul, if you've got the copper handy. If that man was a woman he'd be a
warm neighbourhood gossip. He'd be the nice kind old lady that _starts_
things, that's what Hoddy Milbrey would be."

"And you said yourself you played poker most of the time when you went
to Aiken on the car last month."

"To be honest with you, ma, we did play poker. Say, they took it off of
me so fast I could feel myself catching cold."

"There, you see--and you really ought to wear one of those chamois-skin
chest protectors in this damp climate."

"Well, we'll see. If I can find one that an ace-full won't go through
I'll snatch it so quick the man'll think he's being robbed. Now I'll
join you ladies to the extent of some coffee, and then I want to know
what you two would rather do this summer _than_."

"Of course," said Psyche, "no one stays in town in summer."

"Exactly. And I've chartered a steam yacht as big as this hotel--all
but--But what I want to know is whether you two care to bunk on it or
whether you'd rather stay quietly at some place, Newport perhaps, and
maybe take a cruise with me now and then."

"Oh, that would be good fun. But here's ma getting so I can't do a
thing with her, on account of all those beggars and horrid people down
in the slums."

Mrs. Bines looked guilty and feebly deprecating. It was quite true that
in her own way she had achieved a reputation for prodigality not
inferior to that acquired by her children in ways of their own.

"You know it's so, ma," the daughter went on, accusingly. "One night
last winter when you were away we dined at the Balldridge's, in
Eighty-sixth Street, and the pavements were so sleety the horses
couldn't stand, so Colonel Balldridge brought us home in the Elevated,
about eleven o'clock. Well, at one of the stations a big policeman got
on with a little baby all wrapped up in red flannel. He'd found it in
an area-way, nearly covered with snow--where some one had left it, and
he was taking it down to police-headquarters, he said. Well, ma went
crazy right away. She made him undo it, and then she insisted on
holding it all the way down to Thirty-third Street. One man said it
might be President of the United States, some day; and Colonel
Balldridge said, 'Yes, it has unknown possibilities--it may even be a
President's wife'--just like that. But I thought ma would be demented.
It was all fat and so warm and sleepy it could hardly hold its eyes
open, and I believe she'd have kept it then and there if the policeman
would have let her. She made him promise to get it a bottle of warm
milk the first thing, and borrowed twenty dollars of the colonel to
give to the policeman to get it things with, and then all the way down
she talked against the authorities for allowing such things--as if they
could help it--and when we got home she cried--you _know_ you did,
ma--and you pretended it was toothache--and ever since then she's been
perfectly daft about babies. Why, whenever she sees a woman going along
with one she thinks the poor thing is going to leave it some place; and
now she's in with those charity workers and says she won't leave New
York at all this summer."

"I don't care," protested the guilty mother, "it would have frozen to
death in just a little while, and it's done so often. Why, up at the
Catholic Protectory they put out a basket at the side door, so a body
can leave their baby in it and ring the bell and run away; and they get
one twice a week sometimes; and this was such a sweet, fat little baby
with big blue eyes, and its forehead wrinkled, and it was all puckered
up around its little nose--"

"And that isn't the worst of it," the relentless daughter broke in.
"She gets begging letters by the score and gives money to all sorts of
people, and a man from the Charities Organisation, who had heard about
it, came and warned her that they were impostors--only she doesn't
care. Do you know, there was a poor old blind woman with a dismal,
wheezy organ down at Broadway and Twenty-third Street--the organ would
hardly play at all, and just one wretched tune--only the woman wasn't
blind at all we found out--and ma bought her a nice new organ that cost
seventy-five dollars and had it taken up to her. Well, she found out
through this man from the Organisation that the woman had pawned the
new organ for twenty dollars and was still playing on the old one. She
didn't want a new one because it was too cheerful; it didn't make
people sad when they heard it, like her old one did. And yesterday ma
bought an Indian--"

"A what?" asked her brother, in amazement.

"An Indian--a tobacco sign."

"You don't mean it? One of those lads that stand out in front and peer
under their hands to see what palefaces are moving into the house
across the street? Say, ma, what you going to do with him? There isn't
much room here, you know."

"I didn't buy him for myself," replied Mrs. Bines, with dignity; "I
wouldn't want such an object."

"She bought it," explained his sister, "for an Italian woman who keeps
a little tobacco-shop down in Rivington Street. A man goes around to
repaint them, you know, but hers was so battered that this man told her
it wasn't worth painting again, and she'd better get another, and the
woman said she didn't know what to do because they cost twenty-five
dollars and one doesn't last very long. The bad boys whittle him and
throw him down, and the people going along the street put their shoes
up to tie them and step on his feet, and they scratch matches on his
face, and when she goes out and says that isn't right they tell her
she's too fresh. And so ma gave her twenty-five dollars for a new one."

"But she has to support five children, and her husband hasn't been able
to work for three years, since he fell through a fire-escape where he
was sleeping one hot night," pleaded Mrs. Bines, "and I think I'd
rather stay here this summer. Just think of all those poor babies when
the weather gets hot. I never thought there were so many babies in the
world."

"Well, have your own way," said her son. "If you've started out to look
after all the babies in New York you won't have any time left to play
the races, I'll promise you that."

"Why, my son, I never--"

"But sis here would probably rather do other things."

"I think," said Psyche, "I'd like Newport--Mrs. Drelmer says I
shouldn't think of going any place else. Only, of course, I can't go
there alone. She says she would be glad to chaperone me, but her
husband hasn't had a very good year in Wall Street, and she's afraid
she won't be able to go herself."

"Maybe," began Mrs. Bines, "if you'd offer--"

"Oh! she'd be offended," exclaimed Psyche.

"I'm not so sure of that," said her brother, "not if you suggest it in
the right way--put it on the ground that you'll be quite helpless
without her, and that she'd oblige you world without end and all that.
The more I see of people here the more I think they're quite reasonable
in little matters like that. They look at them in the right light. Just
lead up to it delicately with Mrs. Drelmer and see. Then if she's
willing to go with you, your summer will be provided for; except that
we shall both have to look in upon Mrs. Juzzlebraggin here now and then
to see that she doesn't overplay the game and get sick herself, and
make sure that they don't get her vaccination mark away from her. And,
ma, you'll have to come off on the yacht once or twice, just to give it
tone."

It appeared that Percival had been right in supposing that Mrs. Drelmer
might be led to regard Psyche's proposal in a light entirely rational.
She was reluctant, at first, it is true.

"It's awfully dear of you to ask me, child, but really, I'm afraid it
will be quite impossible. Oh!--for reasons which you, of course, with
your endless bank-account, cannot at all comprehend. You see we old New
York families have a secure position _here_ by right of birth; and even
when we are forced to practice little economies in dress and household
management it doesn't count against us--so long as we _stay_ here. Now,
Newport is different. One cannot economise gracefully there--not even
one of _us_. There are quiet and very decent places for those of us
that must. But at Newport one must not fall behind in display. A sense
of loyalty to the others, a _noblesse oblige_, compels one to be as
lavish as those flamboyant outsiders who go there. One doesn't want
them to report, you know, that such and such families of our smart set
are falling behind for lack of means. So, while we of the real stock
are chummy enough here, where there is only _us_ in a position to
observe ourselves, there is a sort of tacit agreement that only those
shall go to Newport who are able to keep up the pace. One need not, for
one season or so, be a cottager; but, for example, in the matter of
dress, one must be sinfully lavish. Really, child, I could spend three
months in the Engadine for the price of one decent month at Newport;
the parasols, gloves, fans, shoes, 'frillies'--enough to stock the Rue
de la Paix, to say nothing of gowns--but why do I run on? Here am I
with a few little simple summer things, fit enough indeed for the quiet
place we shall reach for July and August, but ab-so-lute-ly impossible
for Newport--so say no more about it, dear. You're a sweet--but it's
madness to think of it."

"And I had," reported Psyche to her mother that night, "such a time
getting her to agree. At first she wouldn't listen at all. Then, after
I'd just fairly begged her, she admitted she might because she's taken
such a fancy to me and hates to leave me--but she was sensitive about
what people might say. I told her they'd never have a chance to say a
word; and she was anxious Perce shouldn't know, because she says he's
so cynical about New York people since that Milbrey girl made such a
set for him; and at last she called me a dear and consented, though
she'd been looking forward to a quiet summer. To-morrow early we start
out for the shops."

So it came that the three members of the Bines family pursued during
the summer their respective careers of diversion under conditions most
satisfactory to each.

The steam yacht _Viluca_, chartered by Percival, was put into
commission early in June. Her first cruise of ten days was a signal
triumph. His eight guests were the men with whom he had played poker so
tirelessly during the winter. Perhaps the most illuminating log of that
cruise may be found in the reply of one of them whom Percival invited
for another early in July.

"Much obliged, old man, but I haven't touched a drop now in over three
weeks. My doctor says I must let it be for at least two months, and I
mean to stick by him. Awfully kind of you, though!"




CHAPTER XXIV.

The Sight of a New Beauty, and Some Advice from Higbee


From the landing on a still morning in late July, Mrs. Drelmer surveyed
the fleet of sailing and steam yachts at anchor in Newport harbour. She
was beautifully and expensively gowned in nun's grey chiffon; her toque
was of chiffon and lace, and she held a pale grey parasol, its ivory
handle studded with sapphires. She fixed a glass upon one of the white,
sharp-nosed steam yachts that rode in the distance near Goat Island.
"Can you tell me if that's the _Viluca?_" she asked a sailor landing
from a dinghy, "that boat just astern of the big schooner?"

"No ma'am; that's the _Alta_, Commodore Weckford."

"Looking for some one?" inquired a voice, and she turned to greet Fred
Milbrey descending the steps.

"Oh! Good-morning! yes; but they've not come in, evidently. It's the
_Viluca_--Mr. Bines, you know; he's bringing his sister back to me. And
you?"

"I'm expecting the folks on Shepler's craft. Been out two weeks now,
and were to have come down from New London last night. They're not in
sight either. Perhaps the gale last night kept them back."

Mrs. Drelmer glanced above to where some one seemed to be waiting for
him.

"Who's your perfectly gorgeous companion? You've been so devoted to her
for three days that you've hardly bowed to old friends. Don't you want
her to know any one?"

The young man laughed with an air of great shrewdness.

"Come, now, Mrs. Drelmer, you're too good a friend of Mauburn's--about
his marrying, I mean. You fixed him to tackle me low the very first
half of one game we know about, right when I was making a fine run down
the field, too. I'm going to have better interference this time."

"Silly! Your chances are quite as good as his there this moment."

"You may think so; I know better."

"And of course, in any other affair, I'd never think of--"

"P'r'aps so; but I'd rather not chance it just yet."

"But who is she? What a magnificent mop of hair. It's like that rich
piece of ore Mr. Bines showed us, with copper and gold in it."

"Well, I don't mind telling you she's the widow of a Southern
gentleman, Colonel Brench Wybert."

"Ah, indeed! I did notice that two-inch band of black at the bottom of
her accordeon-plaited petticoat. I'll wager that's a _Rue de la Paix_
idea of mourning for one's dead husband. And she confides her grief to
the world with such charming discretion. Half the New York women can't
hold their skirts up as daintily as she does it. I dare say, now, her
tears could be dried?--by the right comforter?"

Milbrey looked important.

"And I don't mind telling you the late Colonel Brench Wybert left her a
fortune made in Montana copper. Can't say how much, but two weeks ago
she asked the governor's advice about where to put a spare million and
a half in cash. Not so bad, eh?"

"Oh, this new plutocracy! Where _do_ they get it?"

"How old, now, should you say she was?"

Mrs. Drelmer glanced up again at the colour-scheme of heliotrope seated
in a victoria upholstered in tan brocade.

"Thirty-five, I should say--about."

"Just twenty-eight."

"Just about what I should say--she'd say."

"Come now, you women can't help it, can you? But you can't deny she's
stunning?"

"Indeed I can't! She's a beauty--and, good luck to you. Is that the
_Viluca_ coming in? No; it has two stacks; and it's not your people
because the _Lotus_ is black. I shall go back to the hotel. Bertie
Trafford brought me over on the trolley. I must find him first and do
an errand in Thames Street."

At the head of the stairs they parted, Milbrey joining the lady who had
waited for him.

Hers was a person to gladden the eye. Her figure, tall and full, was of
a graceful and abundant perfection of contours; her face, precisely
carved and showing the faintly generous rounding of maturity, was warm
in colouring, with dark eyes, well shaded and languorous; her full lips
betrayed their beauty in a ready and fascinating laugh; her voice was a
rich, warm contralto; and her speech bore just a hint of the soft
r-less drawl of the South.

She had blazed into young Milbrey's darkness one night in the palm-room
of the Hightower Hotel, escorted by a pleased and beefy youth of his
acquaintance, who later told him of their meeting at the American
Embassy in Paris, and who unsuspectingly presented him. Since their
meeting the young man had been her abject cavalier. The elder Milbrey,
too, had met her at his son's suggestion. He had been as deeply
impressed by her helplessness in the matter of a million and a half
dollars of idle funds as she had been by his aristocratic bearing and
enviable position in New York society.

"Sorry to have kept you waiting. The _Lotus_ hasn't come in sight yet.
Let's loaf over to the beach and have some tall, cold ones."

"Who was your elderly friend?" she asked, as they were driven slowly up
the old-fashioned street.

"Oh! that's Joe Drelmer. She's not so old, you know; not a day over
forty, Joe can't be; fine old stock; she was a Leydenbroek and her
husband's family is one of the very oldest in New York. Awfully
exclusive. Down to meet friends, but they'd not shown up, either. That
reminds me; they're friends of ours, too, and I must have you meet
them. They're from your part of the country--the Bines."

"The--ah--"

"Bines; family from Montana; decent enough sort; didn't know but you
might have heard of them, being from your part of the country."

"Ah, I never think of that vulgar West as 'my part of the country' at
all. _My_ part is dear old Virginia, where my father, General Tulver,
and his father and his father's father all lived the lives of country
gentlemen, after the family came here from Devonshire. It was there
Colonel Wybert wooed me, though we later removed to New Orleans." Mrs.
Wybert called it "New _Aw_-leens."

"But it was not until my husband became interested in Montana mines
that we ventured into that horrid West. So _do_ remember not to
confound me with your Western--ah--Bones,--was it not?"

"No, Bines; they'll be here presently, and you can meet them, anyway."

"Is there an old fellow--a queer old character, with them?"

"No, only a son and daughter and the mother."

"Of course I sha'n't mind meeting any friends of yours," she said, with
charming graciousness, "but, really, I always understood that you
Knickerbockers were so vastly more exclusive. I do recall this name
now. I remember hearing tales of the family in Spokane. They're a type,
you know. One sees many of the sort there. They make a strike in the
mines and set up ridiculous establishments regardless of expense. You
see them riding in their carriages with two men in the box--red-handed,
grizzled old vulgarians who've roughed it in the mountains for twenty
years with a pack-mule and a ham and a pick-axe--with their jug of
whiskey--and their frowsy red-faced wives decked out in impossible
finery. Yes, I do recall this family. There is a daughter, you say?"

"Yes; Miss Psyche Bines."

"Psyche; ah, yes; it's the same family. I recollect perfectly now. You
know they tell the funniest tales of them out there. Her mother found
the name 'Psyche' in a book, and liked it, but she pronounced it
'Pishy,' and so the girl was called until she became old enough to go
to school and learned better."

"Dear me; fancy now!"

"And there are countless tales of the mother's queer sayings. Once a
gentleman whom they were visiting in San Francisco was showing her a
cabinet of curios. 'Now, don't you find the Pompeiian figurines
exquisite?' he asked her. The poor creature, after looking around her
helplessly, declared that she _did_ like them; but that she liked the
California nectarines better--they were so much juicier."

"You don't tell me; gad! that was a good one. Oh, well, she's a meek,
harmless old soul, and really, my family's not the snobbish sort, you
know."

In from the shining sea late that afternoon steamed the _Viluca_. As
her chain was rattling through the hawse-hole, Percival, with his
sister and Mauburn, came on deck.

"Why, there's the _Chicago_--Higbee's yacht."

"That's the boat," said Mauburn, "that's been piling the white water up
in front of her all afternoon trying to overhaul us."

"There's Millie Higbee and old Silas, now."

"And, as I live," exclaimed Psyche, "there's the Baron de Palliac
between them!"

"Sure enough," said her brother. "We must call ma up to see him dressed
in those sweet, pretty yachting flannels. Oh, there you are!" as Mrs.
Bines joined them. "Just take this glass and treat yourself to a look
at your old friend, the baron. You'll notice he has one
on--see--they're waving to us."

"Doesn't the baron look just too distinguished beside Mr. Higbee?" said
Psyche, watching them.

"And doesn't Higbee look just too Chicago beside the baron?" replied
her brother.

The Higbee craft cut her way gracefully up to an anchorage near the
_Viluca_, and launches from both yachts now prepared to land their
people. At the landing Percival telephoned for a carriage. While they
were waiting the Higbee party came ashore.

"Hello!" said Higbee; "if I'd known that was you we was chasing I'd
have put on steam and left you out of sight."

"It's much better you didn't recognise us; these boiler explosions are
so messy."

"Know the baron here?"

"Of course we know the baron. Ah, baron!"

"Ah, ha! very charmed, Mr. Bines and Miss Bines; it is of a long time
that we are not encountered."

He was radiant; they had never before seen him thus. Mrs. Higbee
hovered near him with an air of proud ownership. Pretty Millie Higbee
posed gracefully at her side.

"This your carriage?" asked Higbee; "I must telephone for one myself.
Going to the Mayson? So are we. See you again to-night. We're off for
Bar Harbour early to-morrow."

"Looks as if there were something doing there," said Percival, as they
drove off the wharf.

"Of course, stupid!" said his sister; "that's plain; only it isn't
doing, it's already done. Isn't it funny, ma?"

"For a French person," observed Mrs. Bines, guardedly, "I always liked
the baron."

"Of course," said her son, to Mauburn's mystification, "and the noblest
men on this earth have to wear 'em."

The surmise regarding the Baron de Palliac and Millie Higbee proved to
be correct. Percival came upon Higbee in the meditative enjoyment of
his after-dinner cigar, out on the broad piazza.

"I s'pose you're on," he began; "the girl's engaged to that Frenchy."

"I congratulate him," said Percival, heartily.

"A real baron," continued Higbee. "I looked him up and made sure of
that; title's good as wheat. God knows that never would 'a' got me, but
the madam was set on it, and the girl too, and I had to give in. It
seemed to be a question of him or some actor. The madam said I'd had my
way about Hank, puttin' his poor stubby nose to the grindstone out
there in Chicago, and makin' a plain insignificant business man out of
him, and I'd ought to let her have her way with the girl, being that I
couldn't expect her to go to work too. So Mil will work the society
end. I says to the madam, I says, 'All right, have your own way; and
we'll see whether you make more out of the girl than I make out of the
boy,' I says. But it ain't going to be _all_ digging up. I've made the
baron promise to go into business with me, and though I ain't told him
yet, I'm going to put out a line of Higbee's thin-sliced ham and bacon
in glass jars with his crest on 'em for the French trade. This baron'll
cost me more'n that sign I showed you coming out of the old town, and
he won't give any such returns, but the crest on them jars, printed in
three colours and gold, will be a bully ad; and it kept the women
quiet," he concluded, apologetically.

"The baron's a good fellow," said Percival.

"Sure," replied Higbee. "They're all good fellows. Hank had the makin's
of a good fellow in him. And say, young man, that reminds me; I hear
all kinds of reports about your getting to be one yourself. Now I knew
your father, Daniel J. Bines, and I liked him, and I like you; and I
hope you won't get huffy, but from what they tell me you ain't doing
yourself a bit of good."

"Don't believe all you hear," laughed Percival.

"Well, I'll tell you one thing plain, if you was my son, you'd fade
right back to the packing-house along with Henry-boy. It's a pity you
ain't got some one to shut down on you that way. They tell me you got
your father's capacity for carrying liquor, and I hear you're known
from one end of Broadway to the other as the easiest mark that ever
came to town. They say you couldn't walk in your sleep without spending
money. Now, excuse my plain speaking, but them are two reputations that
are mighty hard to live up to beyond a certain limit. They've put lots
of good weight-carriers off the track before they was due to go. I hear
you got pinched in that wheat deal of Burman's?"

"Oh, only for a few hundred thousand. The reports of our losses were
exaggerated. And we stood to win over--"

"Yes--you stood to win, and then you went 'way back and set down,' as
the saying is. But it ain't the money. You've got too much of that,
anyway, Lord knows. It's this everlasting hullabaloo and the drink that
goes with it, and the general trifling sort of a dub it makes out of a
young fellow. It's a pity you ain't my son; that's all I got to say. I
want to see you again along in September after I get back from San
Francisco; I'm going to try to get you interested in some business.
That'd be good for you."

"You're kind, Mr. Higbee, and really I appreciate all you say; but
you'll see me settle down pretty soon, quick as I get my bearings, and
be a credit to the State of Montana."

"I say," said Mauburn, coming up, "do you see that angel of the flaming
hair with that young Milbrey chap?"

The two men gazed where he was indicating.

"By Jove! she _is_ a stunner, isn't she?" exclaimed Percival.

"Might be one of Shepler's party," suggested Higbee. "He has the
Milbrey family out with him, and I see they landed awhile ago. You can
bet that party's got more than her good looks, if the Milbreys are
taking any interest in her. Well, I've got to take the madam and the
young folks over to the Casino. So long!"

Fred Milbrey came up.

"Hello, you fellows!"

"Who is she?" asked the two in faultless chorus.

"We're going over to hear the music awhile. Come along and I'll present
you."

"Rot the luck!" said Mauburn; "I'm slated to take Mrs. Drelmer and Miss
Bines to a musicale at the Van Lorrecks, where I'm certain to fall
asleep trying to look as if I quite liked it, you know."

"You come," Milbrey urged Percival. "My sister's there and the governor
and mother."

But for the moment Percival was reflecting, going over in his mind the
recent homily of Higbee. Higbee's opinion of the Milbreys also came
back to him.

"Sorry, old man, but I've a headache, so you must excuse me for
to-night. But I'll tell you, we'll all come over in the morning and go
for a dip with you."

"Good! Stop for us at the Laurels, about eleven, or p'r'aps I'll stroll
over and get you. I'm expecting some mail to be forwarded to this
hotel."

He rejoined his companion, who had been chatting with a group of women
near the door, and they walked away.

"_Isn't_ she a stunner!" exclaimed Mauburn.

"She is a _peach!_" replied Percival, in tones of deliberate and
intense conviction. "Whoever she is, I'll meet her to-morrow and ask
her what she means by pretending to see anything in Milbrey. This thing
has gone too far!"

Mauburn looked wistful but said nothing. After he had gone away with
Mrs. Drelmer and Psyche, who soon came for him, Percival still sat
revolving the paternal warnings of Higbee. He considered them
seriously. He decided he ought to think more about what he was doing
and what he should do. He decided, too, that he could think better with
something mechanical to occupy his hands. He took a cab and was driven
to the local branch of his favourite temple of chance. His host
welcomed him at the door.

"Ah, Mr. Bines, a little recreation, eh? Your favourite dealer, Dutson,
is here to-night, if you prefer bank."

Passing through the crowded, brightly-lighted rooms to one of the faro
tables, where his host promptly secured a seat for him, he played
meditatively until one o'clock; adding materially to his host's reasons
for believing he had done wisely to follow his New York clients to
their summer annex.




CHAPTER XXV.

Horace Milbrey Upholds the Dignity of His House


In the shade of the piazza at the Hotel Mayson next morning there was a
sorting out of the mail that had been forwarded from the hotel in New
York. The mail of Mrs. Bines was a joy to her son. There were three
conventional begging letters, heart-breaking in their pathos, and
composed with no mean literary skill. There was a letter from one of
the maids at the Hightower for whose mother Mrs. Bines had secured
employment in the family of a friend; a position, complained the
daughter, "in which she finds constant hard labour caused by the
quantity expected of her to attend to." There was also a letter from
the lady's employer, saying she would not so much mind her laziness if
she did not aggravate it by drink. Mrs. Bines sighed despairingly for
the recalcitrant.

"And who's this wants more help until her husband's profession picks up
again?" asked Percival.

"Oh, that's a poor little woman I helped. They call her husband 'the
Terrible Iceman.'"

"But this is just the season for icemen!"

"Well," confessed his mother, with manifest reluctance, "he's a
prize-fighter or something."

Percival gasped.

"--and he had a chance to make some money, only the man he fought
against had some of his friends drug this poor fellow before
their--their meeting--and so of course he lost. If he hadn't been
drugged he would have won the money, and now there's a law passed
against it, and of course it isn't a very nice trade, but I think the
law ought to be changed. He's got to live."

"I don't see why; not if he's the man I saw box one night last winter.
He didn't have a single excuse for living. And what are these
tickets,--'Grand Annual Outing and Games of the Egg-Candlers & Butter
Drivers' Association at Sulzer's Harlem River Park. Ticket Admitting
Lady and Gent, One dollar.' Heavens! What is it?"

"I promised to take ten tickets," said Mrs. Bines. "I must send them a
check."

"But what are they?" her son insisted; "egg-candlers may be all right,
but what are butter-drivers? Are you quite sure it's respectable? Why,
I ask you, should an honest man wish to drive butter? That shows you
what life in a great city does for the morally weak. Look out you don't
get mixed up in it yourself, that's all I ask. They'll have you driving
butter first thing you know. Thank heaven! thus far no Bines has ever
candled an egg--and as for driving butter--" he stopped, with a shudder
of extreme repugnance.

"And here's a notice about the excursions of the St. John's Guild. I've
been on four already, and I want you to get me back to New York right
away for the others. If you could only see all those babies we take out
on the floating hospital, with two men in little boats behind to pick
up those that fall overboard--and really it's a wonder any of them live
through the summer in that cruel city. Down in Hester Street the other
day four of them had a slice of watermelon from Mr. Slivinsky's stand
on the corner, and when I saw them they were actually eating the hard,
green rind. It was enough to kill a horse."

"Well, have your own fun," said her son, cheerfully. "Here's a letter
from Uncle Peter I must read."

He drew his chair aside and began the letter:

"MONTANA CITY, July 21st, 1900.

"DEAR PETE:--Your letter and Martha's rec'd, and glad to hear from you.
I leave latter part of this week for the mtns. Late setting out this
season acct. rhumatiz caught last winter that laid me up all spring. It
was so mortal dull here with you folks gone that I went out with a
locating party to get the M. P. branch located ahead of the Short Line
folks. So while you were having your fun there I was having mine here,
and I had it good and plenty.

"The worst weather I ever did see, and I have seen some bad. Snow six
to eight feet on a level and the mercury down as low as 62 with an
ornery fierce wind. We lost four horses froze to death, and all but two
of the men got froze up bad. We reached the head of Madison Valley Feb.
19, north of Red Bank Canyon, but it wasn't as easy as it sounds.

"Jan. 8, after getting out of supplies, we abandoned our camp at
Riverside and moved 10 m. down the river carrying what we could on our
backs. Met pack train with a few supplies that night, and next day I
took part of the force in boat to meet over-due load of supplies. We
got froze in the ice. Left party to break through and took Billy Brue
and went ahead to hunt team. Billy and me lived four days on one lb.
bacon. The second day Billy took some sickness so he could not eat
hardly any food; the next day he was worse, and the last day he was so
bad he said the bare sight of food made him gag. I think he was a liar,
because he wasn't troubled none after we got to supplies again, but I
couldn't do anything with him, and so I lived high and come out slick
and fat. Finally we found the team coming in. They had got stuck in the
river and we had to carry out the load on our backs, waist-deep in
running water. I see some man in the East has a fad for breaking the
ice in the river and going swimming. I would not do it for any fad.
Slept in snow-drift that night in wet clothes, mercury 40 below. Was 18
days going 33 miles. Broke wagon twice, then broke sled and crippled
one horse. Packed the other five and went on till snow was too deep.
Left the horses where four out of five died and carried supplies the
rest of the way on our backs. Moved camp again on our backs and got
caught in a blizzard and nearly all of us got our last freezeup that
time. Finally a Chinook opened the river and I took a boat up to get
the abandoned camp. Got froze in harder than ever and had to walk out.
Most of the men quit on account of frozen feet, etc., etc. They are a
getting to be a sissy lot these days, rather lie around a hot stove all
winter.

"I had to pull chain, cut brush, and shovel snow after the 1st Feb. Our
last stage was from Fire Hole Basin to Madison Valley, 45 m. It was
hell. Didn't see the sun but once after Feb. 1, and it stormed
insessant, making short sights necessary, and with each one we would
have to dig a hole to the ground and often a ditch or a tunnel through
the snow to look through. The snow was soft to the bottom and an
instrument would sink through."

"Here's a fine letter to read on a hot day," called Percival. "I'm
catching cold." He continued.

"We have a very good line, better than from Beaver Canon, our maps
filed and construction under way; all grading done and some track laid.
That's what you call hustling. The main drawback is that Red Bank
Canon. It's a regular avalanche for eight miles. The snow slides just
fill the river. One just above our camp filled it for 1/4 mile and 40
feet deep and cut down 3 ft. trees like a razor shaves your face. I had
to run to get out of the way. Reached Madison Valley with one tent and
it looked more like mosquito bar than canvas. The old cloth wouldn't
hardly hold the patches together. I slept out doors for six weeks. I
got frost-bit considerable and the rhumatiz. I tell you, at 75 I ain't
the man I used to be. I find I need a stout tent and a good warm
sleeping bag for them kind of doings nowdays.

"Well, this Western country would be pretty dull for you I suppose
going to balls and parties every night with the Astors and Vanderbilts.
I hope you ain't cut loose none.

"By the way, that party that ground-sluiced us, Coplen he met a party
in Spokane the other day that seen her in Paris last spring. She was
laying in a stock of duds and the party gethered that she was going
back to New York--"

The Milbreys, father and son, came up and greeted the group on the
piazza.

"I've just frozen both ears reading a letter from my grandfather," said
Percival. "Excuse me one moment and I'll be done."

"All right, old chap. I'll see if there's some mail for me. Dad can
chat with the ladies. Ah, here's Mrs. Drelmer. Mornin'!"

Percival resumed his letter:

"--going back to New York and make the society bluff. They say she's
got the face to do it all right. Coplen learned she come out here with
a gambler from New Orleans and she was dealing bank herself up to
Wallace for a spell while he was broke. This gambler he was the
slickest short-card player ever struck hereabouts. He was too good. He
was so good they shot him all up one night last fall over to Wardner.
She hadn't lived with him for some time then, though Coplen says they
was lawful man and wife, so I guess maybe she was glad when he got it
good in the chest-place--"

Fred Milbrey came out of the hotel office.

"No mail," he said. "Come, let's be getting along. Finish your letter
on the way, Bines."

"I've just finished," said Percival, glancing down the last sheet.

"--Coplen says she is now calling herself Mrs. Brench Wybert or some
such name. I just thought I'd tell you in case you might run acrost her
and--"

"Come along, old chap," urged Milbrey; "Mrs. Wybert will be waiting."
His father had started off with Psyche. Mrs. Bines and Mrs. Drelmer
were preparing to follow.

"I beg your pardon," said Percival, "I didn't quite catch the name."

"I say Mrs. Wybert and mother will be waiting--come along!"

"What name?"

"Wybert--Mrs. Brench Wybert--my friend--what's the matter?"

"We can't go;--that is--we can't meet her. Sis, come back a moment," he
called to Psyche, and then:

"I want a word with you and your father, Milbrey."

The two joined the elder Milbrey and the three strolled out to the
flower-bordered walk, while Psyche Bines went, wondering, back to her
mother.

"What's all the row?" inquired Fred Milbrey.

"You've been imposed upon. This woman--this Mrs. Brench Wybert--there
can be no mistake; you are sure that's the name?"

"Of course I'm sure; she's the widow of a Southern gentleman, Colonel
Brench Wybert, from New Orleans."

"Yes, the same woman. There is no doubt that you have been imposed
upon. The thing to do is to drop her quick--she isn't right."

"In what way has my family been imposed upon, Mr. Bines?" asked the
elder Milbrey, somewhat perturbed; "Mrs. Wybert is a lady of family and
large means--"

"Yes, I know, she has, or did have a while ago, two million dollars in
cold cash."

"Well, Mr. Bines--?"

"Can't you take my word for it, that she's not right--not the woman for
your wife and daughter to meet?"

"Look here, Bines," the younger Milbrey spluttered, "this won't do, you
know. If you've anything to say against Mrs. Wybert, you'll have to say
it out and you'll have to be responsible to me, sir."

"Take my word that you've been imposed upon; she's not--not the kind of
person you would care to know, to be thrown--"

"I and my family have found her quite acceptable, Mr. Bines,"
interposed the father, stiffly. "Her deportment is scrupulously
correct, and I am in her confidence regarding certain very extensive
investments--she cannot be an impostor, sir!"

"But I tell you she isn't right," insisted Percival, warmly.

"Oh, I see," said the younger Milbrey--his face clearing all at once.
"It's all right, dad, come on!"

"If you insist," said Percival, "but none of us can meet her."

"It's all right, dad--I understand--"

"Nor can we know any one who receives her."

"Really, sir," began the elder Milbrey, "your effrontery in assuming to
dictate the visiting list of my family is overwhelming."

"If you won't take my word I shall have to dictate so far as I have any
personal control over it."

"Don't mind him, dad--I know all about it, I tell you--I'll explain
later to you."

"Why," exclaimed Percival, stung to the revelation, "that woman, this
woman now waiting with your wife and daughter, was my--"

"Stop, Mr. Bines--not another word, if you please!" The father raised
his hand in graceful dismissal. "Let this terminate the acquaintance
between our families! No more, sir!" and he turned away, followed by
his son. As they walked out through the grounds and turned up the
street the young man spoke excitedly, while his father slightly bent
his head to listen, with an air of distant dignity.

"What's the trouble, Perce?" asked his sister, as he joined the group
on the piazza.

"The trouble is that we've just had to cut that fine old New York
family off our list."

"What, not the Milbreys!" exclaimed Mrs. Drelmer.

"The same. Now mind, sis, and you, ma--you're not to know them
again--and mind this--if any one else wants to present you to a Mrs.
Wybert--a Mrs. Brench Wybert--don't you let them. Understand?"

"I thought as much," said Mrs. Drelmer; "she acted just the least
little bit _too_ right."

"Well, I haven't my hammer with me--but remember, now, sis, it's for
something else than because her father's cravats were the ready-to-wear
kind, or because her worthy old grandfather inhaled his soup. Don't
forget that."

"As there isn't anything else to do," he suggested, a few moments
later, "why not get under way and take a run up the coast?"

"But I must get back to my babies," said Mrs. Bines, plaintively. "Here
I've been away four days."

"All right, ma, I suppose we shall have to take you there, only let's
get out of here right away. We can bring sis and you back, Mrs.
Drelmer, when those people we don't know get off again. There's
Mauburn; I'll tell him."

"I'll have my dunnage down directly," said Mauburn.

Up the street driving a pony-cart came Avice Milbrey. Obeying a quick
impulse, Percival stepped to the curb as she came opposite to him. She
pulled over. She was radiant in the fluffs of summer white, her hat and
gown touched with bits of the same vivid blue that shone in her eyes.
The impulse that had prompted him to hail her now prompted wild words.
His long habit of thought concerning her enabled him to master this
foolishness. But at least he could give her a friendly word of warning.
She greeted him with the pretty reserve in her manner that had long
marked her bearing toward him.

"Good-morning! I've borrowed this cart of Elsie Vainer to drive down to
the yacht station for lost mail. Isn't the day perfect--and isn't this
the dearest fat, sleepy pony, with his hair in his eyes?"

"Miss Milbrey, there's a woman who seems to be a friend of your
family--a Mrs.--"

"Mrs. Wybert; yes, you know her?"

"No, I'd never seen her until last night, nor heard that name until
this morning; but I know of her."

"Yes?"

"It became necessary just now--really, it is not fair of me to speak to
you at all--"

"Why, pray?--not fair?"

"I had to tell your father and brother that we could not meet Mrs.
Wybert, and couldn't know any one who received her."

"There! I knew the woman wasn't right directly I heard her speak.
Surely a word to my father was enough."

"But it wasn't, I'm sorry to say. Neither he nor your brother would
take my word, and when I started to give my reasons--something it would
have been very painful for me to do--your father refused to listen, and
declared the acquaintance between our families at an end."

"Oh!"

"It hurt me in a way I can't tell you, and now, even this talk with you
is off-side play. Miss Milbrey!"

"Mr. Bines!"

"I wouldn't have said what I did to your father and brother without
good reason."

"I am sure of that, Mr. Bines."

"Without reasons I was sure of, you know, so there could be no chance
of any mistake."

"Your word is enough for me, Mr. Bines."

"Miss Milbrey--you and I--there's always been something between
us--something different from what is between most people. We've never
talked straight out since I came to New York--I'll be sorry, perhaps,
for saying as much as I am saying, after awhile--but we may not talk
again at all--I'm afraid you may misunderstand me--but I must say it--I
should like to go away knowing you would have no friendship,--no
intimacy whatever with that woman."

"I promise you I shall not, Mr. Bines; they can row if they like."

"And yet it doesn't seem fair to have you promise as if it were a
consideration for _me_, because I've no right to ask it. But if I felt
sure that you took my word quite as if I were a stranger, and relied
upon it enough to have no communication or intercourse of any sort
whatsoever with her, it would be a great satisfaction to me."

"I shall not meet her again. And--thank you!" There was a slight
unsteadiness once in her voice, and he could almost have sworn her eyes
showed that old brave wistfulness.

"--and quite as if you were a stranger."

"Thank you! and, Miss Milbrey?"

"Yes?"

"Your brother may become entangled in some way with this woman."

"It's entirely possible."

Her voice was cool and even again.

"He might even marry her."

"She has money, I believe; he might indeed."

"Always money!" he thought; then aloud:

"If you find he means to, Miss Milbrey, do anything you can to prevent
it. It wouldn't do at all, you know."

"Thank you, Mr. Bines; I shall remember."

"I--I think that's all--and I'm sorry we're not--our families are not
to be friends any more."

She smiled rather painfully, with an obvious effort to be conventional.

"_So_ sorry! Good-bye!"

He looked after her as she drove off. She sat erect, her head straight
to the front, her trim shoulders erect, and the whip grasped firmly. He
stood motionless until the fat pony had jolted sleepily around the
corner.

"Bines, old boy!" he said to himself, "you nearly _made_ one of
yourself there. I didn't know you had such ready capabilities for being
an ass."




CHAPTER XXVI.

A Hot Day in New York, with News of an Interesting Marriage


At five o'clock that day the prow of the _Viluca_ cut the waters of
Newport harbour around Goat Island, and pointed for New York.

"Now is your time," said Mrs. Drelmer to Mauburn. "I'm sure the girl
likes you, and this row with the Milbreys has cut off any chance that
cub had. Why not propose to her to-night?"

"I _have_ seemed to be getting on," answered Mauburn. "But wait a bit.
There's that confounded girl over there. No telling what she'll do. She
might knock things on the head any moment."

"All the more reason for prompt action, and there couldn't very well be
anything to hurt you."

"By Jove! that's so; there couldn't, very well, could there? I'll take
your advice."

And so it befell that Mauburn and Miss Bines sat late on deck that
night, and under the witchery of a moon that must long since have
become hardened to the spectacle, the old, old story was told, to the
accompaniment of the engine's muffled throb, and the soft purring of
the silver waters as they slipped by the boat and blended with the
creamy track astern. So little variation was there in the time-worn
tale, and in the maid's reception of it, that neither need here be told
of in detail.

Nor were the proceedings next morning less tamely orthodox. Mrs. Bines
managed to forget her relationship of elder sister to the poor long
enough to behave as a mother ought when the heart of her daughter has
been given into a true-love's keeping. Percival deported himself
cordially.

"I'm really glad to hear it," he said to Mauburn. "I'm sure you'll make
sis as good a husband as she'll make you a wife; and that's very good,
indeed. Let's fracture a cold quart to the future Lady Casselthorpe."

"And to the future Lord Casselthorpe!" added Mrs. Drelmer, who was
warmly enthusiastic.

"Such a brilliant match," she murmured to Percival, when they had
touched glasses in the after-cabin. "I know more than one New York girl
who'd have jumped at the chance."

"We'll try to bear our honours modestly," he answered her.

The yacht lay at her anchorage in the East River. Percival made
preparations to go ashore with his mother.

"Stay here with the turtle-doves," he said to Mrs. Drelmer, "far enough
off, of course, to let them coo, and I'll be back with any people I can
pick up for a cruise."

"Trust me to contract the visual and aural infirmities of the ideal
chaperone," was Mrs. Drelmer's cheerful response. "And if you should
run across that poor dear of a husband of mine, tell him not to slave
himself to death for his thoughtless butterfly of a wife, who toils
not, neither does she spin. Tell him," she added, "that I'm playing
dragon to this engaged couple. It will cheer up the poor dear."

The city was a fiery furnace. But its prisoners were not exempt from
its heat, like certain holy ones of old. On the dock where Percival and
his mother landed was a listless throng of them, gasping for the faint
little breezes that now and then blew in from the water. A worn woman
with unkempt hair, her waist flung open at the neck, sat in a spot of
shade, and soothed a baby already grown too weak to be fretful. Mrs.
Bines spoke to her, while Percival bought a morning paper from a tiny
newsboy, who held his complete attire under one arm, his papers under
the other, and his pennies in his mouth, keeping meantime a shifty
side-glance on the policeman a block away, who might be expected to
interfere with his contemplated plunge.

"That poor soul's been there all night," said Mrs. Bines. "She's afraid
her baby's going to die; and yet she was so cheerful and polite about
it, and when I gave her some money the poor thing blushed. I told her
to bring the baby down to the floating hospital to-morrow, but I
mistrust it won't be alive, and--oh, there's an ambulance backed up to
the sidewalk; see what the matter is."

As Percival pushed through the outer edge of the crowd, a battered
wreck of a man past middle age was being lifted into the ambulance. His
eyes were closed, his face a dead, chalky white, and his body hung
limp.

"Sunstroke?" asked Percival.

The overworked ambulance surgeon, who seemed himself to be in need of
help, looked up.

"Nope; this is a case of plain starvation. I'm nearer sunstroke myself
than he is--not a wink of sleep for two nights now. Fifty-two runs
since yesterday at this time, and the bell still ringing. Gee! but it's
hot. This lad won't ever care about the weather again, though," he
concluded, jumping on to the rear step and grasping the rails on either
side while the driver clanged his gong and started off.

"Was it sunstroke?" asked Mrs. Bines.

"Man with stomach trouble," answered her son, shortly.

"They're so careless about what they eat this hot weather," Mrs. Bines
began, as they walked toward a carriage; "all sorts of heavy foods and
green fruit--"

"Well, if you must know, this one had been careless enough not to eat
anything at all. He was starved."

"Oh, dear! What a place! here people are starving, and look at us! Why,
we wasted enough from breakfast to feed a small family. It isn't right.
They never would allow such a thing in Montana City."

They entered the carriage and were driven slowly up a side street where
slovenly women idled in windows and doorways and half-naked children
chased excitedly after the ice-wagons.

"I used to think it wasn't right myself until I learned not to question
the ways of Providence."

"Providence, your grandmother! Look at those poor little mites fighting
for that ice!"

"We have to accept it. It seems to be proof of the Creator's
versatility. It isn't every one who would be nervy enough and original
enough to make a world where people starve to death right beside those
who have too much."

"That's rubbish!"

"You're blasphemous! and you're overwrought about the few cases of need
here. Think of those two million people that have just starved to death
in India."

"That wasn't my fault."

"Exactly; if you'd been there the list might have been cut down four or
five thousand; not more. It was the fault of whoever makes the weather.
It didn't rain and their curry crop failed--or whatever they raise--and
there you are; and we couldn't help matters any by starving ourselves
to death."

"Well, I know of a few matters here I can help. And just look at all
those empty houses boarded up!" she cried later, as they crossed
Madison Avenue. "Those poor things bake themselves to death down in
their little ovens, and these great cool places are all shut up. Why,
that poor little baby's hands were just like bird's claws."

"Well, don't take your sociology too seriously," Percival warned her,
as they reached the hotel. "Being philanthropic is obeying an instinct
just as selfish as any of the others. A little of it is all right--but
don't be a slave to your passions. And be careful of your health."

In his mail at the Hightower was a note from Mrs. Akemit:

"NEW LONDON, July 29th.

"You DEAR THOUGHTFUL MAN: I'll be delighted, and the aunt, a worthy
sister of the dear bishop, has consented. She is an acidulous maiden
person with ultra-ritualistic tendencies. At present she is strong on
the reunion of Christendom, and holds that the Anglican must be the
unifying medium of the two religious extremes. So don't say I didn't
warn you fairly. She will, however, impart an air of Episcopalian
propriety to that naughty yacht of yours--something sadly needed if I
am to believe the tales I hear about its little voyages to nowhere in
particular.

"Babe sends her love, and says to tell 'Uncle Percibal' that the ocean
tastes 'all nassy.' She stood upon the beach yesterday after making
this discovery involuntarily, and proscribed it with one magnificent
wave of her hand and a brief exclamation of disgust--turned her back
disrespectfully upon a body of water that is said to cover
two-thirds--or is it three-fourths?--of the earth's surface. Think of
it! She seemed to suspect she had been imposed upon in the matter of
its taste, and is going to tell the janitor directly we get home, in
order that the guilty ones may be seen to. Her little gesture of
dismissal was superbly contemptuous. I wish you had been with me to
watch her. Yes, the bathing-suit does have little touches of red, and
red--but this will never do. Give us a day's notice, and believe me,

"Sincerely,

"FLORENCE VERDON AKEMIT.

"P.S. Babe is on the back of my chair, cuddling down in my neck, and
says, 'Send him your love, too, Mommie. Now don't you forget.'"

He telegraphed Mrs. Akemit: "Will reach New London to-morrow. Assure
your aunt of my delight at her acceptance. I have long held that the
reunion must come as she thinks it will."

Then he ventured into the heat and glare of Broadway where humanity
stewed and wilted. At Thirty-second Street he ran into Burman, with
whom he had all but cornered wheat.

"You're the man I wanted to see," said Percival.

"Hurry and look! I'm melting fast."

"Come off on the yacht."

"My preserver! I was just going down to the Oriental, but your dug-out
wins me hands down. Come into this poor-man's club. I must have a cold
drink taller than a church steeple."

"Anybody else in town we can take?"

"There's Billy Yelverton--our chewing-gum friend; just off the
_Lucania_ last night; and Eddie Arledge and his wife. They're in town
because Eddie was up in supplementary or something--some low, coarse
brute of a tradesman wanted his old bill paid, and wouldn't believe
Eddie when he said he couldn't spare the money. Eddie is about as
lively as a dish of cold breakfast food, but his wife is all right, all
right. Retiring from the footlights' glare didn't spoil Mrs. E.
Wadsworth Arledge,--not so you could notice it."

"Well, see Eddie if you can, and I'll find Yelverton; he's probably at
the hotel yet; and meet me there by five, so we can get out of this
little amateur hell."

"And quit trying to save that collar," urged Burman, as they parted;
"you look foolisher than a horse in a straw hat with it on anyway. Let
it go and tuck in your handkerchief like the rest of us. See you at
five!"

At the hour named the party had gathered. Percival, Arledge and his
lively wife, Yelverton, who enjoyed the rare distinction of having lost
money to Percival, and Burman. East they drove through the street where
less fortunate mortals panted in the dead afternoon shade, and out on
to the dock, whence the _Viluca's_ naphtha launch presently put them
aboard that sumptuous craft. A little breeze there made the heat less
oppressive.

"We'll be under way as soon as they fetch that luggage out," Percival
assured his guests.

"It's been frightfully oppressive all day, even out here," said Mrs.
Drelmer, "but the engaged ones haven't lost their tempers once, even if
the day was trying. And really they're the most unemotional and
matter-of-fact couple I ever saw. Oh! do give me that stack of papers
until I catch up with the news again."

Percival relinquished to her the evening papers he had bought before
leaving the hotel, and Mrs. Drelmer in the awninged shade at the stern
of the boat was soon running through them.

The others had gone below, where Percival was allotting staterooms, and
urging every one to "order whatever cold stuff you like and get into as
few things as the law allows. For my part, I'd like to wear nothing but
a cold bath."

Mrs. Drelmer suddenly betrayed signs of excitement. She sat up straight
in the wicker deck-chair, glanced down a column of her newspaper, and
then looked up.

Mauburn's head appeared out of the cabin's gloom. He was still speaking
to some one below. Mrs. Drelmer rattled the paper and waved it at him.
He came up the stairs.

"What's the row?"

"Read it!"

He took the paper and glanced at the headlines. "I knew she'd do it. A
chap always comes up with something of that sort, and I was beginning
to feel so chippy!" He read:

"London, July 30th.--Lord Casselthorpe to-day wed Miss 'Connie' Burke,
the music-hall singer who has been appearing at the Alhambra. The
marriage was performed, by special license, at St. Michael's Church,
Chester Square, London, the Rev. Canon Mecklin, sub-dean of the Chapel
Royal, officiating. The honeymoon will be spent at the town-house of
the groom, in York Terrace. Lord Casselthorpe has long been known as
the blackest sheep of the British Peerage, being called the 'Coster
Peer' on account of his unconventional language, his coarse manner, and
slovenly attire. Two years ago he was warned off Newmarket Heath and
the British turf by the Jockey Club. He is eighty-eight years old. The
bride, like some other lights of the music-hall who have become the
consorts of Britain's hereditary legislators, has enjoyed considerable
ante-nuptial celebrity among the gilded youth of the metropolis, and is
said to have been especially admired at one time by the next in line of
this illustrious family, the Hon. Cecil G.H. Mauburn.

"The Hon. Cecil G. H. Mauburn, mentioned in the above cable despatch,
has been rather well-known in New York society for two years past. His
engagement to the daughter of a Montana mining magnate, not long
deceased, has been persistently rumoured."

Mauburn was pale under his freckles.

"Have they seen it yet?"

"I don't think so," she answered. "We might drop these papers over the
rail here."

"That's rot, Mrs. Drelmer; it's sure to be talked of, and anyway I
don't want to be sneaky, you know."

Percival came up from the cabin with a paper in his hand.

"I see you have it, too," he said, smiling. "Burman just handed me
this."

"Isn't it perfectly disreputable!" exclaimed Mrs. Drelmer.

"Why? I only hope I'll have as much interest in life by the time I'm
that age."

"But how will your sister take it?" asked Mauburn; "she may be afraid
this will knock my title on the head, you know."

"Oh, I see," said Percival; "I hadn't thought of that."

"Only it can't," continued Mauburn. "Hang it all, that blasted old
beggar will be eighty-nine, you know, in a fortnight. There simply
can't be any issue of the marriage, and that--that blasted--"

"Better not try to describe her--while I'm by, you know," said Mrs.
Drelmer, sympathetically.

"Well--his wife--you know, will simply worry him into the grave a bit
sooner, I fancy--that's all can possibly come of it."

"Well, old man," said Percival, "I don't pretend to know the workings
of my sister's mind, but you ought to be able to win a girl on your own
merits, title or no title."

"Awfully good of you, old chap. I'm sure she does care for me."

"But of course it will be only fair to sis to lay the matter before her
just as it is."

"To be sure!" Mauburn assented.

"And now, thank the Lord, we're under way. Doesn't that breeze save
your life, though? We'll eat here on deck."

The _Viluca_ swung into mid-stream, and was soon racing to the north
with a crowded Fall River boat.

"But anyway," concluded Percival, after he had explained Mauburn's
position to his sister, "he's a good fellow, and if you suit each other
even the unexpected wouldn't make any difference."

"Of course not," she assented, "'the rank is but the guinea's stamp,' I
know--but I wasn't meaning to be married for quite a time yet,
anyway,--it's such fun just being engaged."

"A mint julep?" Mauburn was inquiring of one who had proposed it. "Does
it have whiskey in it?"

"It does," replied Percival, overhearing the question; "whiskey may be
said to pervade, even to infest it. Try five or six, old man; that many
make a great one-night trouble cure. And I can't have any one with
troubles on this Cunarder--not for the next thirty days. I need
cheerfulness and rest for a long time after this day in town. Ah!
General Hemingway says that dinner is served; let's be at it before the
things get all hot!"




CHAPTER XXVII.

A Sensational Turn in the Milbrey Fortunes


It was a morning early in November. In the sedate Milbrey dining-room a
brisk wood-fire dulled the edge of the first autumn chill. At the
breakfast-table, comfortably near the hearth, sat Horace Milbrey. With
pointed spoon he had daintily scooped the golden pulp from a Florida
orange, touched the tips of his slender white fingers to the surface of
the water in the bowl, and was now glancing leisurely at the headlines
of his paper, while his breakfast appetite gained agreeable zest from
the acid fruit.

On the second page of the paper the names in a brief item arrested his
errant glance. It disclosed that Mr. Percival Bines had left New York
the day before with a party of guests on his special car, to shoot
quail in North Carolina. Mr. Milbrey glanced at the two shells of the
orange which the butler was then removing.

"What a hopeless brute that fellow was!" he reflected.. He was
recalling a dictum once pronounced by Mr. Bines. "Oranges should never
be eaten in public," he had said with that lordly air of dogmatism
characteristic of him. "The only right way to eat a juicy orange is to
disrobe, grasp the fruit firmly in both hands and climb into a bath-tub
half full of water."

The finished epicure shuddered at the recollection, poignantly, quite
as if a saw were being filed in the next room.

The disagreeable emotion was allayed, however, by the sight of his next
course--_oeufs aux saucissons_. Tender, poetic memories stirred within
him. The little truffled French sausages aroused his better nature. Two
of them reposed luxuriously upon an egg-divan in the dainty French
baking-dish of dull green. Over them--a fitting baptism, was the rich
wine sauce of golden brown--a sauce that might have been the tears of
envious angels, wept over a mortal creation so faultlessly precious.

Mrs. Milbrey entered, news of importance visibly animating her. Her
husband arose mechanically, placed the chair for her, and resumed his
fork in an ecstasy of concentration. Yet, though Mrs. Milbrey was full
of talk, like a charged siphon, needing but a slight pressure to pour
forth matters of grave moment, she observed the engrossment of her
husband, and began on the half of an orange. She knew from experience
that he would be deaf, for the moment, to anything less than an alarm
of fire.

When he had lovingly consumed the last morsel he awoke to her presence
and smiled benignantly.

"My dear, don't fail to try them, they're exquisitely perfect!"

"You really _must_ talk to Avice," his wife replied.

Mr. Milbrey sighed, deprecatingly. He could remember no time within
five years when that necessity had not weighed upon his father's sense
of duty like a vast boulder of granite. He turned to welcome the
diversion provided by the _rognons sautees_ which Jarvis at that moment
uncovered before him with a discreet flourish.

"Now you really must," continued his wife, "and you'll agree with me
when I tell you why."

"But, my dear, I've already talked to the girl exhaustively. I've
pointed out that her treatment of Mrs. Wybert--her perverse refusal to
meet the lady at all, is quite as absurd as it is rude, and that if
Fred chooses to marry Mrs. Wybert it is her duty to act the part of a
sister even if she cannot bring herself to feel it. I've assured her
that Mrs. Wybert's antecedents are all they should be; not illustrious,
perhaps, but eminently respectable. Indeed, I quite approve of the
Southern aristocracy. But she constantly recalls what that snobbish
Bines was unfair enough to tell her. I've done my utmost to convince
her that Bines spoke in the way he did about Mrs. Wybert because he
knew she was aware of those ridiculous tales of his mother's
illiteracy. But Avice is--er--my dear, she is like her mother in more
ways than one. Assuredly she doesn't take it from me."

He became interested in the kidneys. "If Marie had been a man," he
remarked, feelingly, "I often suspect that her fame as a _chef_ would
have been second to none. Really, the suavity of her sauces is a
never-ending delight to me."

"I haven't told you yet the reason--a new reason--why you must talk to
Avice."

"The money--yes, yes, my dear, I know, we all know. Indeed, I've put it
to her plainly. She knows how sorely Fred needs it. She knows how that
beast of a tailor is threatening to be nasty--and I've explained how
invaluable Mrs. Wybert would be, reminding her of that lady's generous
hint about the rise in Federal Steel, which enabled me to net the neat
little profit of ten thousand dollars a month ago, and how, but for
that, we might have been acutely distressed. Yet she stubbornly clings
to the notion that this marriage would be a _mesalliance_ for the
Milbreys."

"I agree with her," replied his wife, tersely.

Mr. Milbrey looked perplexed but polite.

"I quite agree with Avice," continued the lady. "That woman hasn't been
right, Horace, and she isn't right. Young Bines knew what he was
talking about. I haven't lived my years without being able to tell that
after five minutes with her, clever as she is. I can read her. Like so
many of those women, she has an intense passion to be thought
respectable, and she's come into money enough--God only knows how--to
gratify it. I could tell it, if nothing else showed it, by the way in
which she overdoes respectability. She has the thousand and one
artificial little rules for propriety that one never does have when one
has been bred to it. That kind of woman is certain to lapse sooner or
later. She would marry Fred because of his standing, because he's a
favourite with the smart people she thinks she'd like to be pally with.
Then, after a little she'd run off with a German-dialect comedian or
something, like that appalling person Normie Whitmund married."

"But the desire to be respectable, my dear--and you say this woman has
it--is a mighty lever. I'm no cynic about your sex, but I shudder to
think of their--ah--eccentricities if it should cease to be a factor in
the feminine equation."

"It's nothing more than a passing fad with this person--besides, that's
not what I've to tell you."

"But you, yourself, were not averse to Fred's marrying her, in spite of
these opinions you must secretly have held."

"Not while it seemed absolutely necessary--not while the case was so
brutally desperate, when we were actually pressed--"

"Remember, my dear, there's nothing magic in those ten thousand
dollars. They're winged dollars like all their mates, and most of them,
I'm sorry to say, have already flown to places where they'd long been
expected."

Mrs. Milbrey's sensation was no longer to be repressed. She had toyed
with the situation sufficiently. Her husband was now skilfully
dissecting the devilled thighs of an immature chicken.

"Horace," said his wife, impressively, "Avice has had an offer of
marriage--from--"

He looked up with new interest.

"From Rulon Shepler."

He dropped knife and fork. Shepler, the man of mighty millions! The
undisputed monarch of finance! The cold-blooded, calculating sybarite
in his lighter moments, but a man whose values as a son-in-law were so
ideally superb that the Milbrey ambition had never vaulted high enough
even to overlook them for one daring moment! Shepler, whom he had known
so long and so intimately, with never the audacious thought of a union
so stupendously glorious!

"Margaret, you're jesting!"

Mrs. Milbrey scorned to be dazzled by her triumph.

"Nonsense! Shepler asked her last night to marry him."

"It's bewildering! I never dreamed--"

"I've expected it for months. I could tell you the very moment when the
idea first seized the man--on the yacht last summer. I was sure she
interested him, even before his wife died two years ago."

"Margaret, it's too good to be true!"

"If you think it is I'll tell you something that isn't: Avice
practically refused him."

Her husband pushed away his plate; the omission of even one regretful
glance at its treasures betrayed the strong emotion under which he
laboured.

"This is serious," he said, quietly. "Let us get at it. Tell me if you
please!"

"She came to me and cried half the night. She refused him definitely at
first, but he begged her to consider, to take a month to think it
over--"

Milbrey gasped. Shepler, who commanded markets to rise and they rose,
or to fall and they fell--Shepler begging, entreating a child of his!
Despite the soul-sickening tragedy of it, the situation was not without
its element of sublimity.

"She will consider; she _will_ reflect?"

"You're guessing now, and you're as keen at that as I. Avice is not
only amazingly self-willed, as you intimated a moment since, but she is
intensely secretive. When she left me I could get nothing from her
whatever. She was wretchedly sullen and taciturn."

"But why _should_ she hesitate? Shepler--Rulon Shepler! My God! is the
girl crazy? The very idea of hesitation is preposterous!"

"I can't divine her. You know she has acted perversely in the past. I
used to think she might have some affair of which we knew
nothing--something silly and romantic. But if she had any such thing
I'm sure it was ended, and she'd have jumped at this chance a year ago.
You know yourself she was ready to marry young Bines, and was really
disappointed when he didn't propose."

"But this is too serious." He tinkled the little silver bell.

"Find out if Miss Avice will be down to breakfast."

"Yes, sir."

"If she's not coming down I shall go up," declared Mr. Milbrey when the
man had gone.

"She's stubborn," cautioned his wife.

"Gad! don't I know it?"

Jarvis returned.

"Miss Avice won't be down, sir, and I'm to fetch her up a pot of
coffee, sir."

"Take it at once, and tell her I shall be up to see her presently."
Jarvis vanished.

"I think I see a way to put pressure on her, that is if the morning
hasn't already brought her back to her senses."

At four o'clock that afternoon, Avice Milbrey's ring brought Mrs. Van
Geist's butler to the door.

"Sandon, is Aunt Cornelia at home?"

"Yes, Miss Milbrey, she's confined to her room h'account h'of a cold,
miss."

"Thank heaven!"

"Yes, miss--certainly! will you go h'up to her?"

"And Mutterchen, dear, it was a regular bombshell," she concluded after
she had fluttered some of the November freshness into Mrs. Van Geist's
room, and breathlessly related the facts.

"You demented creature! I should say it must have been."

"Now, don't lecture!"

"But Shepler is one of the richest men in New York."

"Dad already suspects as much."

"And he's kind, he's a big-hearted chap, a man of the world,
generous--a--"

"'A woman fancier,' Fidelia Oldaker calls him."

"My dear, if he fancies you--"

"There, you old conservative, I've heard all his good points, and my
duty has been written before me in letters of fire. Dad devoted three
hours to writing it this morning, so don't, please, say over any of the
moral maxims I'm likely to have heard."

"But why are you unwilling?"

"Because--because I'm wild, I fancy--just because I don't like the idea
of marrying that man. He's such a big, funny, round head, and
positively no neck--his head just rolls around on his big, pillowy
shoulders--and then he gets little right at once, tapers right off to a
point with those tiny feet."

"It isn't easy to have everything."

"It wouldn't be easy to have him, either."

Mrs. Van Geist fixed her niece with a sudden look of suspicion.

"Has--has that man anything to do with your refusal?"

"No--not a thing--I give you my word, auntie. If he had been what I
once dreamed he was no one would be asking me to marry him now, but--do
you know what I've decided? Why, that he is a joke--that's all--just a
joke. You needn't think of him, Mutterchen--I don't, except to think it
was funny that he should have impressed me so--he's simply a joke."

"I could have told you as much long ago."

"Tell me something now. Suppose Fred marries that Wybert woman."

"It will be a sorry day for Fred."

"Of course! Now see how I'm pinned. Dad and the mater both say the same
now--they're more severe than I was. Only we were never in such straits
for money. It must be had. So this is the gist of it: I ought to marry
Rulon Shepler in order to save Fred from a marriage that might get us
into all sorts of scandal."

"Well?"

"Well, I would do a lot for Fred. He has faults, but he's always been
good to me."

"And so?"

"And so it's a question whether he marries a very certain kind of woman
or whether I marry a very different kind of man."

"How do you feel?"

"For one thing Fred sha'n't get into that kind of muss if I can save
him from it."

"Then you'll marry Shepler?"

"I'm still uncertain about Mr. Shepler."

"But you say--"

"Yes, I know, but I've reasons for being uncertain. If I told you you'd
say they're like the most of a woman's reasons, mere fond, foolish
hopes, so I won't tell you."

"Well, dear, work it out by your lonely if you must. I believe you'll
do what's best for everybody in the end. And I am glad that your father
and Margaret take your view of that woman."

"I was sure she wasn't right--and I knew Mr. Bines was too much of a
man to speak of her as he did without positive knowledge. Now please
give me some tea and funny little cakes; I'm famished."

"Speaking of Mr. Bines," said Mrs. Van Geist, when the tea had been
brought by Sandon, "I read in the paper this morning that he'd taken a
party to North Carolina for the quail shooting, Eddie Arledge and his
wife and that Mr. and Mrs. Garmer, and of course Florence Akemit.
Should you have thought she'd marry so soon after her divorce? They say
Bishop Doolittle is frightfully vexed with her."

"Really I hadn't heard. Whom is Florence to marry?"

"Mr. Bines, to be sure! Where have you been? You know she was on his
yacht a whole month last summer--the bishop's sister was with her--
highly scandalised all the time by the drinking and gaiety, and now
every one's looking for the engagement to be announced. Here, what did
I do with that _Town Topics_ Cousin Clint left? There it is on the
tabouret. Read the paragraph at the top of the page." Avice read:

"An engagement that is rumoured with uncommon persistence will put
society on the _qui vive_ when it is definitely announced. The man in
the case is the young son of a mining Croesus from Montana, who has
inherited the major portion of his father's millions and who began to
dazzle upper Broadway about a year since by the reckless prodigality of
his ways. His blond _innamorata_ is a recent _divorcee_ of high social
standing, noted for her sparkling wit and an unflagging exuberance of
spirits. The interest of the gossips, however, centres chiefly in the
uncle of the lady, a Right Reverend presiding over a bishopric not a
thousand miles from New York, and in the attitude he will assume toward
her contemplated remarriage. At the last Episcopal convention this
godly and well-learned gentleman was a vehement supporter of the
proposed canon to prohibit absolutely the marriage of divorced persons;
and though he stoutly championed his bewitching niece through the
infelicities that eventuated in South Dakota, _on dit_ that he is
highly wrought up over her present intentions, and has signified
unmistakably his severest disapproval. However, _nous verrons ce que
nous verrons."_

"But, Mutterchen, that's only one of those absurd, vulgar things that
wretched paper is always printing. I could write dozens of them myself.
Tom Banning says they keep one man writing them all the time, out of
his own imagination, and then they put them in like raisins in a cake."

"But, my dear, I'm quite sure this is authentic. I know from Fidelia
Oldaker that the bishop began to cut up about it to Florence, and
Florence defied him. That ancient theory that most gossip is without
truth was exploded long ago. As a matter of fact most gossip, at least
about the people we know, doesn't do half justice to the facts. But,
really, I can't see why he fancied Florence Akemit. I should have
thought he'd want some one a bit less fluttery."

"I dare say you're right, about the gossip, I mean--" Miss Milbrey
remarked when she had finished her tea, and refused the cakes. "I
remember, now, one day when we met at her place, and he seemed so much
at home there. Of course, it must be so. How stupid of me to doubt it!
Now I must run. Good-bye, you old dear, and be good to the cold."

"Let me know what you do."

"Indeed I shall; you shall be the first one to know. My mind is really,
you know, _almost_ made up."

A week later Mr. and Mrs. Horace Milbrey announced in the public prints
the engagement of their daughter Avice to Mr. Rulon Shepler.




CHAPTER XXVIII.

Uncle Peter Bines Comes to Town With His Man


One day in December Peter Bines of Montana City dropped in on the
family,--came with his gaunt length of limb, his kind, brown old face
with eyes sparkling shrewdly far back under his grizzled brows, with
his rough, resonant, musical voice, the spring of youth in his step,
and the fresh, confident strength of the big hills in his bearing.

He brought Billy Brue with him, a person whose exact social status some
of Percival's friends were never able to fix with any desirable
certainty. Thus, Percival had presented the old man, the morning after
his arrival, to no less a person than Herbert Delancey Livingston, with
whom he had smoked a cigar of unusual excellence in the _cafe_ of the
Hightower Hotel.

"If you fancy that weed, Mr. Bines," said Livingston, graciously, to
the old man, "I've a spare couple of hundred I'd like to let you have.
The things were sent me, but I find them rather stiffish. If your man's
about the hotel I'll give him a card to my man, and let him fetch
them."

"My man?" queried Uncle Peter, and, sighting Billy Brue at that moment,
"why, yes, here's my man, now. Mr. Brue, shake hands with Mr.
Livingston. Billy, go up to the address he gives you, and get some of
these se-gars. You'll relish 'em as much as I do. Now don't talk to any
strangers, don't get run over, and don't lose yourself."

Livingston had surrendered a wavering and uncertain hand to the warm,
reassuring clasp of Mr. Brue.

"He ain't much fur style, Billy ain't," Uncle Peter explained when that
person had gone upon his errand, "he ain't a mite gaudy, but he's got
friendly feelings."

The dazed scion of the Livingstons had thereupon made a conscientious
tour of his clubs in a public hansom, solely for the purpose of
relating this curious adventure to those best qualified to marvel at
it.

The old man's arrival had been quite unexpected. Not only had he sent
no word of his coming, but he seemed, indeed, not to know what his
reasons had been for doing a thing so unusual.

"Thought I'd just drop in on your all and say 'howdy,'" had been his
first avowal, which was lucid as far as it went. Later he involved
himself in explanations that were both obscure and conflicting. Once it
was that he had felt a sudden great longing for the life of a gay city.
Then it was that he would have been content in Montana City, but that
he had undertaken the winter in New York out of consideration for Billy
Brue.

"Just think of it," he said to Percival, "that poor fellow ain't ever
been east of Denver before now. It wa'n't good for him to be holed up
out there in them hills all his life. He hadn't got any chance to
improve his mind."

"He'd better improve his whiskers first thing he does," suggested
Percival. "He'll be gold-bricked if he wears 'em scrambled that way
around this place."

But in neither of these explanations did the curious old man impress
Percival as being wholly ingenuous.

Then he remarked casually one day that he had lately met Higbee, who
was on his way to San Francisco.

"I only had a few minutes with him while they changed engines at Green
River, but he told me all about you folks--what a fine time you was
havin', yachts and card-parties, and all like that. Higbee said a man
had ought to come to New York every now and then, jest to keep from
gettin' rusty."

Back of this Percival imagined for a time that he had discovered Uncle
Peter's true reason for descending upon them. Higbee would have regaled
him with wild tales of the New York dissipations, and Uncle Peter had
come promptly on to pull him up. Percival could hear the story as
Higbee would word it, with the improving moral incident of his own son
snatched as a brand from the "Tenderloin," to live a life of
impecunious usefulness in far Chicago. But, when he tried to hold this
belief, and to prove it from his observations, he was bound to admit
its falsity. For Uncle Peter had shown no inclination to act the part
of an evangel from the virtuous West. He had delivered no homilies, no
warnings as to the fate of people who incontinently "cut loose." He had
evinced not the least sign of any disposition even to criticise.

On the contrary, indeed, he appeared to joy immensely in Percival's way
of life. He manifested a willingness and a capacity for unbending in
boon companionship that were, both of them, quite amazing to his
accomplished grandson. By degrees, and by virtue of being never at all
censorious, he familiarised himself with the young man's habits and
diversions. He listened delightedly to the tales of his large gambling
losses, of the bouts at poker, the fruitless venture in Texas Oil land,
the disastrous corner in wheat, engineered by Burman, and the uniformly
unsuccessful efforts to "break the bank" in Forty-fourth Street. He
never tired of hearing whatever adventures Percival chose to relate;
and, finding that he really enjoyed them, the young man came to confide
freely in him, and to associate with him without restraint.

Uncle Peter begged to be introduced at the temple of chance, and spent
a number of late evenings there with his popular grandson. He also
frequently made himself one of the poker coterie, and relished keenly
the stock jokes as to his grandson's proneness to lose.

"Your pa," he would say, "never _could_ learn to stay out of a Jack-pot
unless he had Jacks or better; he'd come in and draw four cards to an
ace any time, and then call it 'hard luck' when he didn't draw out. And
he just loved straights open in the middle; said anybody could fill
them that's open at both ends; but, after all, I guess that's the only
way to have fun at the game. If a man ain't got the sperrit to overplay
aces-up when he gets 'em, he might as well be clerkin' in a bank for
all the fun he'll have out of the game."

The old man's endurance of late suppers and later hours, and his
unsuspected disposition to "cut loose," became twin marvels to
Percival. He could not avoid contrasting this behaviour with his past
preaching. After a few weeks he was forced to the charitable conclusion
that Uncle Peter's faculties were failing. The exposure and hardships
of the winter before had undoubtedly impaired his mental powers.

"I can't make him out," he confided to his mother. "He never wants to
go home nights; he can drink more than I can without batting an eye,
and show up fresher in the morning, and he behaves like a young fellow
just out of college. I don't know where he would bring up if he didn't
have me to watch over him."

"I think it's just awful--at his time of life, too," said Mrs. Bines.

"I think that's it. He's getting old, and he's come along into his
second childhood. A couple of more months at this rate, and I'm afraid
I'll have to ring up one of those nice shiny black wagons to take him
off to the foolish-house."

"Can't you talk to him, and tell him better?"

"I could. I know it all by heart--all the things to say to a man on the
downward path. Heaven knows I've heard them often enough, but I'd feel
ashamed to talk that way to Uncle Peter. If he were my son, now, I'd
cut off his allowance and send him back to make something of himself,
like Sile Higbee with little Hennery; but I'm afraid all I can do is to
watch him and see that he doesn't marry one of those little pink-silk
chorus girls, or lick a policeman, or anything."

"You're carryin' on the same way yourself," ventured his mother.

"That's different," replied her perspicacious son.

Uncle Peter had refused to live at the Hightower after three days in
that splendid and populous caravansary.

"It suits me well enough," he explained to Percival, "but I have to
look after Billy Brue, and this ain't any place for Billy. You see
Billy ain't city broke yet. Look at him now over there, the way he goes
around butting into strangers. He does that way because he's all the
time looking down at his new patent-leather shoes--first pair he ever
had. He'll be plumb stoop-shouldered if he don't hurry up and get the
new kicked off of 'em. I'll have to get him a nice warm box-stall in
some place that ain't so much on the band-wagon as this one. The
ceilings here are too high fur Billy. And I found him shootin' craps
with the bell-boy this mornin'. The boy thinks Billy, bein' from the
West, is a stage robber, or somethin' like he reads about in the Cap'
Collier libr'ies, and follows him around every chance he gets. And
Billy laps up too many of them little striped drinks; and them
French-cooked dishes ain't so good fur him, either. He caught on to the
bill-of-fare right away. Now he won't order anything but them
allas--them dishes that has 'a la' something or other after 'em," he
explained, when Percival looked puzzled. "He knows they'll always be
something all fussed up with red, white, and blue gravy, and a little
paper bouquet stuck into 'em. I never knew Billy was such a fancy eater
before."

So Uncle Peter and his charge had established themselves in an
old-fashioned but very comfortable hotel down on one of the squares, a
dingy monument to the time when life had been less hurried. Uncle Peter
had stayed there thirty years before, and he found the place unchanged.
The carpets and hangings were a bit faded, but the rooms were
generously broad, the chairs, as the old man remarked, were "made to
sit in," and the _cuisine_ was held, by a few knowing old epicures who
still frequented the place, to be superior even to that of the more
pretentious Hightower. The service, it is true, was apt to be slow.
Strangers who chanced in to order a meal not infrequently became
enraged, and left before their food came, trailing plain short words of
extreme dissatisfaction behind them as they went. But the elect knew
that these delays betokened the presence of an artistic conscience in
the kitchen, and that the food was worth tarrying for. "They know how
to make you come back hungry for some more the next day," said Uncle
Peter Bines.

From this headquarters the old man went forth to join in the diversions
of his grandson. And here he kept a watchful eye upon the uncertain
Billy Brue; at least approximately. Between them, his days and nights
were occupied to crowding. But Uncle Peter had already put in some hard
winters, and was not wanting in fortitude.

Billy Brue was a sore trouble to the old man. "I jest can't keep him
off the streets nights," was his chief complaint. By day Billy Brue
walked the streets in a decent, orderly trance of bewilderment. He was
properly puzzled and amazed by many strange matters. He never could
find out what was "going on" to bring so many folks into town. They all
hurried somewhere constantly, but he was never able to reach the centre
of excitement. Nor did he ever learn how any one could reach those high
clothes-lines, strung forty feet above ground between the backs of
houses; nor how there could be "so many shows in town, all on one
night;" nor why you should get so many good things to eat by merely
buying a "slug of whiskey;" nor why a thousand people weren't run over
in Broadway each twenty-four hours.

At night, Billy Brue ceased to be the astounded alien, and, as Percival
said Dr. Von Herzlich would say, "began to mingle and cooperate with
his environment." In the course of this process he fell into
adventures, some of them, perhaps, unedifying. But it may be told that
his silver watch with the braided leather fob was stolen from him the
second night out; also that the following week, in a Twenty-ninth
Street saloon, he accepted the hospitality of an affable stranger, who
had often been in Montana City. His explanation of subsequent events
was entirely satisfactory, at least, from the time that he returned to
consciousness of them.

"I only had about thirty dollars in my clothes," he told Percival, "but
what made me so darned hot, he took my breastpin, too, made out of the
first nugget ever found in the Early Bird mine over Silver Bow way.
Gee! when I woke up I couldn't tell where I was. This cop that found me
in a hallway, he says I must have been give a dose of Peter. I says,
'All right--I'm here to go against all the games,' I says, 'but pass me
when the Peter comes around again,' I says. And he says Peter was
knockout drops. Say, honestly, I didn't know my own name till I had a
chanst to look me over. The clothes and my hands looked like I'd seen
'em before, somehow--and then I come to myself."

After this adventure, Uncle Peter would caution him of an evening:

"Now, Billy, don't stay out late. If you ain't been gone through by
eleven, just hand what you got on you over to the first man you
meet--none of 'em'll ask any questions--and then pike fur home. The
later at night it gets in New York the harder it is fur strangers to
stay alive. You're all right in Wardner or Hellandgone, Billy, but in
this here camp you're jest a tender little bed of pansies by the
wayside, and these New Yorkers are terrible careless where they step
after dark."

Notwithstanding which, Mr. Brue continued to behave uniformly in a
manner to make all judicious persons grieve. His place of supreme
delight was the Hightower. Its marble splendours, its myriad lights,
the throngs of men and women in evening dress, made for him a scene of
unfailing fascination. The evenings when he was invited to sit in the
_cafe_ with Uncle Peter and Percival made memories long to be
cherished.

He spent such an evening there at the end of their first month in New
York. Half a dozen of Percival's friends sat at the table with them
from time to time. There had been young Beverly Van Arsdel, who,
Percival disclosed, was heir to all the Van Arsdel millions, and no end
of a swell. And there was big, handsome, Eddie Arledge, whose father
had treated him shabbily. These two young gentlemen spoke freely about
the inferiority of many things "on this side"--as they denominated this
glorious Land of Freedom--of many things from horses to wine. The
country was rapidly becoming, they agreed, no place for a gentleman to
live. Eddie Arledge confessed that, from motives of economy, he had
been beguiled into purchasing an American claret.

"I fancied, you know," he explained to Uncle Peter, "that it might do
for an ordinary luncheon claret, but on my sacred honour, the stuff is
villainous. Now you'll agree with me, Mr. Bines, I dare say, that a
Bordeaux of even recent vintage is vastly superior to the very best
so-called American claret."

Whereupon Beverly Van Arsdel having said, "To be sure--fancy an
American Burgundy, now! or a Chablis!" Uncle Peter betrayed the first
sign of irritation Percival had detected since his coming.

"Well, you see, young men, we're not much on vintages in Montana.
Whiskey is mostly our drink--whiskey and spring water--and if our
whiskey is strong, it's good enough. When we want to test a new barrel,
we inject three drops of it into a jack-rabbit, and if he doesn't lick
a bull clog in six seconds, we turn down the goods. That's as far's our
education has ever gone in vintages."

It sounded like the old Uncle Peter, but he was afterward so
good-natured that Percival concluded the irritation could have been but
momentary.




CHAPTER XXIX.

Uncle Peter Bines Threatens to Raise Something


Uncle Peter and Billy Brue left the Hightower at midnight. Billy Brue
wanted to walk down to their hotel, on the plea that they might see a
fight or a fire "or something." He never ceased to feel cheated when he
was obliged to ride in New York. But Uncle Peter insisted on the cab.

"Say, Uncle Peter," he said, as they rode down, "I got a good notion to
get me one of them first-part suits--like the minstrels wear in the
grand first part, you know--only I'd never be able to git on to the
track right without a hostler to harness me and see to all the buckles
and cinch the straps right. They're mighty fine, though."

Finding Uncle Peter uncommunicative, he mused during the remainder of
the ride, envying the careless ease with which Percival and his
friends, and even Uncle Peter, wore the prescribed evening regalia of
gentlemen, and yearning for the distinguished effect of its black and
white elegance upon himself.

They went to their connecting rooms, and Billy Brue regretfully sought
his bed, marvelling how free people in a town like New York could ever
bring themselves to waste time in sleep. As he dozed off, he could hear
the slow, measured tread of Uncle Peter pacing the floor in the next
room.

He was awakened by hearing his name called. Uncle Peter stood in a
flood of light at the door of his room. He was fully dressed.

"Awake, Billy?"

"Is it gittin'-up time?"

The old man came into the room and lighted a gas-jet. He looked at his
watch.

"No; only a quarter to four. I ain't been to bed yet."

Billy Brue sat up and rubbed his eyes.

"Rheumatiz again, Uncle Peter?"

"No; I been thinkin', Billy. How do you like the game?"

He began to pace the floor again from one room to the other.

"What game?'! Billy Brue had encountered a number in New York.

"This whole game--livin' in New York."

Mr. Brue became judicial.

"It's a good game as long as you got money to buy chips. I'd hate like
darnation to go broke here. All the pay-claims have been located, I
guess."

"I doubt it's bein' a good game any time, Billy. I been actin' as kind
of a lookout now fur about forty days and forty nights, and the chances
is all in favour of the house. You don't even get half your money on
the high card when the splits come."

Billy Brue pondered this sentiment. It was not his own.

"The United States of America is all right, Billy."

This was safe ground.

"Sure!" His mind reverted to the evening just past. "Of course there
was a couple of Clarences in high collars there to-night that made out
like they was throwin' it down; but they ain't the whole thing, not by
a long shot."

"Yes, and that young shrimp that was talkin' about 'vintages' and
'trouserings.'" The old man paused in his walk.

"What _are_ 'trouserings,' Billy?"

Mr. Brue had not looked into shop windows day after day without
enlarging his knowledge.

"Trouserings," he proclaimed, rather importantly, "is the cloth they
make pants out of."

"Oh! is that all? I didn't know but it might be some new kind of duds.
And that fellow don't ever get up till eleven o'clock A.M. I don't
reckon I would myself if I didn't have anything but trouserings and
vintages to worry about. And that Van Arsdel boy!"

"Say!" said Billy, with enthusiasm, "I never thought I'd be even in the
same room with one of that family, 'less I prized open the door with a
jimmy."

"Well, who's _he?_ My father knew his grandfather when he kep' tavern
over on the Raritan River, and his grandmother!--this shrimp's
grandmother!--she tended bar."

"Gee!"

"Yes, they kep' tavern, and the old lady passed the rum bottle over the
bar, and took in the greasy money. This here fellow, now, couldn't make
an honest livin' like that, I bet you. He's like a dogbreeder would
say--got the pedigree, but not the points."

Mr. Brue emitted a high, throaty giggle.

"But they ain't all like that here, Uncle Peter. Say, you come out with
me some night jest in your workin' clothes. I can show you people all
right that won't ask to see your union card. Say, on the dead, Uncle
Peter, I wish you'd come. There's a lady perfessor in a dime museum
right down here on Fourteenth Street that eats fire and juggles the big
snakes;--say, she's got a complexion--"

"There's enough like that kind, though," interrupted Uncle Peter. "I
could take a double-barrel shotgun up to that hotel and get nine with
each barrel around in them hallways; the shot wouldn't have to be
rammed, either; 'twouldn't have to scatter so blamed much."

"Oh, well, them society sports--there's got to be some of _them_--"

"Yes, and the way they make 'em reminds me of what Dal Mutzig tells
about the time they started Pasco. 'What you fellows makin' a town here
fur?' Dal says he asked 'em, and he says they says, 'Well, why not? The
land ain't good fur anything else, is it?' they says. That's the way
with these shrimps; they ain't good fur anything else. There's that
Arledge, the lad that keeps his mouth hangin' open all the time he's
lookin' at you--he'll catch cold in his works, first thing _he_
knows--with his gold monogram on his cigarettes."

"He said he was poor," urged Billy, who had been rather taken with the
ease of Arledge's manner.

"Fine, big, handsome fellow, ain't he? Strong as an ox, active, and
perfectly healthy, ain't he? Well, he's a _pill_! But _his_ old man
must 'a' been on to him. Here, here's a piece in the paper about that
fine big strappin' giant--it's partly what got me to thinkin' to-night,
so I couldn't sleep. Just listen to this," and Uncle Peter read:

"E. Wadsworth Arledge, son of the late James Townsend Arledge, of the
dry-goods firm of Arledge & Jackson, presented a long affidavit to
Justice Dutcher, of the Supreme Court, yesterday, to show why his
income of six thousand dollars a year from his father's estate should
not be abridged to pay a debt of $489.32. Henry T. Gotleib, a grocer,
who obtained a judgment for that amount against him in 1895, and has
been unable to collect, asked the Court to enjoin Judge Henley P.
Manderson, and the Union Fidelity Trust Company, as executors of the
Arledge estate, from paying Mr. Arledge his full income until the debt
has been discharged. Gotleib contended that Arledge could sustain the
reduction required.

"James T. Arledge died about two years ago, leaving an estate of about
$3,000,000. He had disapproved of the marriage of his son and evinced
his displeasure in his will. The son had married Flora Florenza, an
actress. To the son was given an income of $6,000 a year for life. The
rest of the estate went to the testator's widow for life, and then to
charity.

"Here is the affidavit of E. Wadsworth Arledge:

"'I have been brought up in idleness, under the idea that I was to
inherit a large estate. I have never acquired any business habits so as
to fit me to acquire property, or to make me take care of it.

"'I have never been in business, except many years ago, when I was a
boy, when I was for a short time employed in one of the stores owned by
my father. For many years prior to my father's death I was not
employed, but lived on a liberal allowance made to me by him. I am a
married man, and in addition to my wife have a family of two children
to support from my income.

"'All our friends are persons of wealth and of high social standing,
and we are compelled to spend money in entertaining the many friends
who entertain us. I am a member of many expensive clubs. I have
absolutely no income except the allowance I receive from my father's
estate, and the same is barely sufficient to support my family.

"'I have received no technical or scientific education, fitting me for
any business or profession, and should I be deprived of any portion of
my income, I will be plunged in debt anew.'

"The Court reserved decision."

"You hear that, Billy? The Court reserved decision. Mr. Arledge has to
buy so many gold cigarettes and vintages and trouserings, and belong to
so many clubs, that he wants the Court to help him chouse a poor grocer
out of his money. Say, Billy, that judge could fine me for contempt of
court, right now, fur reservin' his decision. You bet Mr. Arledge would
'a' got my decision right hot off the griddle. I'd 'a' told him,
'You're the meanest kind of a crook I ever heard of fur wantin' to lie
down on your fat back and whine out of payin' fur the grub you put in
your big gander paunch,' I'd tell him, 'and now you march to the
lock-up till you can look honest folks in the face,' I'd tell him. Say,
Billy, some crooks are worse than others. Take Nate Leverson out there.
Nate set up night and day for six years inventin' a process fur
sweatin' gold into ore; finally he gets it; how he does it, nobody
knows, but he sweat gold eighteen inches into the solid rock. The first
few holes he salted he gets rid of all right, then of course they catch
him, and Nate's doin' time now. But say, I got respect fur Nate since
readin' that piece. There's a good deal of a man about him, or about
any common burglar or sneak thief, compared to this duck. They take
chances, say nothin' of the hard work they do. This fellow won't take a
chance and won't work a day. Billy, that's the meanest specimen of
crook I ever run against, bar none, and that crook is produced and
tolerated in a place that's said to be the centre of 'culture and
refinement and practical achievement.' Billy, he's a pill!"

"That's right," said Billy Brue, promptly throwing the recalcitrant
Arledge overboard.

"But it ain't none of my business. What I do spleen again, is havin' a
grandson of mine livin' in a community where a man that'll act like
that is actually let in their houses by honest folks. Think of a son of
Daniel J. Bines treatin' folks like that as if they was his equals.
Say, Dan'l had a line of faults, all right--but, by God! he'd a trammed
ore fur two twenty-five a day any time in his life rather'n not pay a
dollar he owed. And think of this lad making his bed in this kind of a
place where men are brought up to them ways; and that name; think of a
husky, two-fisted boy like him lettin' himself be called by a measly
little gum-drop name like Percival, when he's got a right to be called
Pete. And he's right in with 'em. He'd be jest as bad--give him a
little time; and Pishy engaged to a damned fortune-hunting Englishman
into the bargain. It's all Higbee said it was, only it goes double.
Say, Billy, I been thinkin' this over all night."

"'Tis mighty worryin', ain't it, Uncle Peter?"

"And I got it thought out."

"Sure, you must 'a' got it down to cases."

"Billy,' listen now. There's a fellow down in Wall Street. His name is
Shepler, Rulon Shepler. He's most the biggest man down there."

"Sure! I heard of him."

"Listen! I'm goin' to bed now. I can sleep since I got my mind made up.
But I want to see Shepler in private to-morrow. Don't wake me up in the
morning. But get up yourself, and go find his office--look in a
directory, then ask a policeman. Shepler's a busy man. You tell the
clerk or whoever holds you up that Mr. Peter Bines wants an appointment
with Mr. Shepler as soon as he can make it--Mr. Peter Bines, of
Montana City. Be there by 9.30 so's to get him soon as he comes. He
knows me; tell him I want to see him on business soon as possible, and
find out when he can give me time. And don't you say to any one else
that I ever seen him or sent you there. Understand? Don't ever say a
word to any one. Remember, now, be there at 9.30, and don't let any
clerk put you off, and ask him what hour'll be convenient for him. Now
get what sleep's comin' to you. It's five o'clock."

At noon Billy Brue returned to the hotel to find Uncle Peter finishing
a hearty breakfast.

"I found him all right, Uncle Peter. The lookout acted suspicious, but
I saw the main guy himself come out of a door--like I'd seen his
picture in the papers, so I just called to him, and said, 'Mr. Peter
Bines wants to see you,' like that. He took me right into his office,
and I told him what you said, and he'll be ready for you at two
o'clock. He knows mines, all right, out our way, don't he?--and he
crowded a handful of these tin-foil cigars on to me, and acted real
sociable. Told me to drop in any time. Say, he'd run purty high in the
yellow stuff all right."

"At two o'clock, you say?"

"Yes."

"And what's his number?"

"Gee, I forgot; I can tell you, though. You go down Broadway to that
old church--say, Uncle Peter, there's folks in that buryin'-ground
been dead over two hundred years, if you can go by their gravestones.
Gee! I didn't s'pose _anybody'd_ been dead that long--then you turn
down the gulch right opposite, until you come to the Vandevere
Building, a few rods down on the left. Shepler's there. Git into the
bucket and go up to the second level, and you'll find him in the
left-hand back stope--his name's on the door in gold letters."

"All right. And look here, Billy, keep your head shut about all I said
last night about anything. Don't you ever let on to a soul that I ain't
stuck on this place and its people--no matter what I do."

"Sure not! What _are_ you going to do, Uncle Peter?"

The old man's jaws were set for some seconds in a way to make Billy
Brue suspect he might be suffering from cramp. It seemed, however, that
he had merely been thinking intently. Presently he said:

"I'm goin' to raise hell, Billy."

"Sure!" said Mr. Brue--approvingly on general principles. "Sure! Why
not?"




CHAPTER XXX.

Uncle Peter Inspires His Grandson to Worthy Ambitions


On three successive days the old man held lengthy interviews with
Shepler in the latter's private office. At the close of the third day's
interview, Shepler sent for Relpin, of the brokerage firm of Relpin and
Hendricks. A few days after this Uncle Peter said to Percival one
morning:

"I want to have a talk with you, son."

"All right, Uncle Peter," was the cheerful answer. He suspected the old
man might at last be going to preach a bit, since for a week past he
had been rather less expansive. He resolved to listen with good grace
to any homilies that might issue. He took his suspicion to be confirmed
when Uncle Peter began:

"You folks been cuttin' a pretty wide swath here in New York."

"That's so, Uncle Peter,--wider than we could have cut in Montana
City."

"Been spendin' money purty free for a year."

"Yes; you need money here."

"I reckon you can't say about how much, now?"

"Oh, I shouldn't wonder," Percival answered, going over to the
escritoire, and taking out some folded sheets and several check-books.
"Of course, I haven't it all here, but I have the bulk of it. Let me
figure a little."

He began to work with a pencil on a sheet of paper. He was busy almost
half an hour, while Uncle Peter smoked in silence.

"It struck me the other night we might have been getting a little near
to the limit, so I figured a bit then, too, and I guess this will give
you some idea of it. Of course this isn't all mine; it includes ma's
and Psyche's. Sis has been a mark for every bridge-player between the
Battery and the Bronx, and the way ma has been plunging on her indigent
poor is a caution,--she certainly does hold the large golden medal for
amateur cross-country philanthropy. Now here's a rough expense
account--of course only approximate, except some of the items I
happened to have." Uncle Peter took the statement, and studied it
carefully.

Paid Hightower Hotel................ $ 42,983.75

Keep of horses, and extra horse and  carriage
hire.......................   5,628.50

Chartering steam-yacht _Viluca_ three
months..............................  24,000.00

Expenses running yacht..............   46,850.28

W. U. Telegraph Company.............       32.65

Incidentals.........................  882,763.90

Total                              $1,002,259.08

His sharp old eyes ran up and down the column of figures. Something
among the items seemed to annoy him.

"Looking at those 'incidentals'? I took those from the check-books.
They are pretty heavy."

"It's an outrage!" exclaimed the old man, indignantly, "that there
$32.50 to the telegraph company. How's it come you didn't have a
Western Union frank this year? I s'posed you had one. They sent me
mine."

"Oh, well, they didn't send me one, and I didn't bother to ask for it,"
the young man answered in a tone of relief. "Of course the expenses
have been pretty heavy, coming here strangers as we did. Now, another
year--"

"Oh, that ain't anything. Of course you got to spend money. I see one
of them high-toned gents that died the other day said a gentleman
couldn't possibly get along on less'n two thousand dollars a day and
expenses. I'm glad to see you ain't cut under the limit none--you got
right into his class jest like you'd always lived here, didn't you?
But, now, I been kind of lookin' over the ground since I come here, and
it's struck me you ain't been gettin' enough for your money. You've
spent free, but the goods ain't been delivered. I'm talkin' about
yourself. Both your ma and Pishy has got more out of it than you have.
Why, your ma gets her name in the papers as a philanthropist along with
that--how do the papers call her?--'the well-known club woman'--that
Mrs. Helen Wyot Lamson that always has her name spelled out in full?
Your ma is getting public recognition fur her money, and look at Pishy.
What's she gone and done while you been laxin' about? Why, she's got
engaged to a lord, or just as good. Look at the prospects she's got!
She'll enter the aristocracy of England and have a title. But look at
you! Really, son, I'm ashamed of you. People over there'll be sayin'
'Lady What's-her-name? Oh, yes! She _has_ got a brother, but he don't
amount to shucks--he ain't much more'n a three-spot. He can't do
anything but play bank and drink like a fish. He's throwed away his
opportunities'--that's what them dukes and counts will be sayin' about
you behind your back."

"I understood you didn't think much of sis's choice."

"Well, of course, he wouldn't be much in Montana City, but he's all
right in his place, and he seems to be healthy. What knocks _me_ is how
he ever got all them freckles. He never come by 'em honestly, I bet. He
must 'a' got caught in an explosion of freckles sometime. But that
ain't neither here nor there. He has the goods and Pish'll get 'em
delivered. She's got something to show fur her dust. But what _you_ got
to show? Not a blamed thing but a lot of stubs in a check-book, and a
little fat. Now I ain't makin' any kick. I got no right to; but I do
hate to see you leadin' this life of idleness and dissipation when you
might be makin' something of yourself. Your pa was quite a man. He left
his mark out there in that Western country. Now you're here settled in
the East among big people, with a barrel of money and fine chances to
do something, and you're jest layin' down on the family name. You
wouldn't think near so much of your pa if he'd laid down before his
time; and your own children will always have to say 'Poor pa--he had a
good heart, but he never could amount to anything more'n a threespot;
he didn't have any stuff in him,' they'll be sayin'. Now, on the level,
you don't want to go through life bein' just known as a good thing and
easy money, do you?"

"Why, of course not, Uncle Peter; only I had to look around some at
first,--for a year or so."

"Well, if you need to look any more, then your eyes ain't right. That's
my say. I ain't askin' you to go West. I don't expect that!"

Percival brightened.

"But I am tryin' to nag you into doin' something here. People can say
what they want to about you," he continued, stubbornly, as one who
confesses the most arrant bigotry, "but I know you _have_ got some
brains, some ability--I really believe you got a whole lot--and you got
the means to take your place right at the top. You can head 'em all in
this country or any other. Now what you ought to do, you ought to take
your place in the world of finance--put your mind on it night and
day--swing out--get action--and set the ball to rolling. Your pa was a
big man in the West, and there ain't any reason as I can see of why you
can't be just as big a man in proportion here. People can talk all they
want to about your bein' just a dub--I won't believe 'em. And there's
London. You ain't been ambitious enough. Get a down-hill pull on New
York, and then branch out. Be a man of affairs like your pa, and like
that fellow Shepler. Let's _be_ somebody. If Montana City was too small
fur us, that's no reason why New York should be too big."

Percival had walked the floor in deep attention to the old man's words.

"You've got me right, Uncle Peter," he said at last. "And you're right
about what I ought to do. I've often thought I'd go into some of these
big operations here. But for one thing I was afraid of what you'd say.
And then, I didn't know the game very well. But I see I ought to do
something. You're dead right."

"And we need more money, too," urged the old man. "I was reading a
piece the other day about the big fortunes in New York. Why, we ain't
one, two, three, with the dinky little twelve or thirteen millions we
could swing. You don't want to be a piker, do you? If you go in the
game at all, play her open and high. Make 'em take the ceiling off. You
can just as well get into the hundred million class as not, and I know
it. They needn't talk to _me_--I know you _have_ got some brains. If
you was to go in now it would keep you straight and busy, and take you
out of this pin-head class that only spends their pa's money."

"You're all right, Uncle Peter! I certainly did need you to come along
right now and set me straight. You founded the fortune, pa trebled it,
and now I'll get to work and roll it up like a big snowball."

"That's the talk. Get into the hundred million class, and show these
wise folks you got something in you besides hot air, like the sayin'
is. _Then_ they won't always be askin' who your pa was--they'll be
wantin' to know who you are, by Gripes! Then you can have the biggest
steam yacht afloat, two or three of 'em, and the best house in New
York, and palaces over in England; and Pish'll be able to hold up her
head in company over there. You can finance _that_ proposition right up
to the nines."

"By Jove! but you're right. You're a wonder, Uncle Peter. And that
reminds me--"

He stopped in his walk.

"I gave it hardly any thought at the time, but now it looks bigger than
a mountain. I know just the things to start in on systematically. Now
don't breathe a word of this, but there's a big deal on in Consolidated
Copper. I happened on to the fact in a queer way the other night.
There's a broker I've known down-town--fellow by the name of Relpin.
Met him last summer. He does most of Shepler's business; he's supposed
to be closer to Shepler and know more about the inside of his deals
than any man in the Street. Well, I ran across Relpin down in the cafe
the other night and he was wearing one of those gents' nobby
three-button souses. Nothing would do but I should dine with him, so I
did. It was the night you and the folks went to the opera with the
Oldakers. Relpin was full of lovely talk and dark hints about a rise in
copper stock, and another rise in Western Trolley, and a bigger rise
than either of them in Union Cordage. How that fellow can do Shepler's
business and drink the stuff that makes you talk I don't see. Anyway he
said--and you can bet what he says goes--that the Consolidated is going
to control the world's supply of copper inside of three months, and the
stock is bound to kite, and so are these other two stocks; Shepler's
back of all three. The insiders are buying up now, slowly and
cautiously, so as not to start any boom prematurely. Consolidated is no
now, and it'll be up to 150 by April at the latest. The others may go
beyond that. I wasn't looking for the game at the time, so I didn't
give it any thought, but now, you see, there's our chance. We'll plunge
in those three lines before they start to rise, and be in on the ground
floor." "Now don't you be rash! That Shepler's old enough to suck eggs
and hide the shells. I heard a man say the other day copper was none
too good at no."

"Exactly. You can hear anything you're looking to hear, down there. But
I tell you this was straight. Don't you suppose Shepler knows what he's
about?--there's a boy that won't be peddling shoe-laces and gum-drops
off one of these neat little bosom-trays--not for eighty-five or
ninety-thousand years yet--and Relpin, even if he was drunk, knows
Shepler's deals like you know Skiplap. They'll bear the stocks all they
can while they're buying up. I wouldn't be surprised if the next
Consolidated dividend was reduced. That would send her down a few
points, and throw more stock on the market. Meantime, they're quietly
workin' to get control of the European mines--and as to Western Trolley
and Union Cordage--say, Relpin actually got to crying--they're so
good--he had one of those loving ones, the kind where you want to be
good to every one in the world. I'm surprised he didn't get into a
sandwich sign and patrol Broadway, giving those tips to everybody.".

"Course, we're on a proposition now that you know more about it than I
do; you certainly do take right hold at once--that was your pa's way,
too. Daniel J. could look farther ahead in a minute than most men could
in a year. I got to trust you wholly in these matters, and I know I can
do it, too. I got confidence in you, no matter _what_ other people say.
They don't know you like I do. And if there's any other things you know
about fur sure--"

"Well, there's Burman. He's plunging in corn now. His father has staked
him, and he swears he can't lose. He was after me to put aside a
million. Of course if he does win out it would be big money."

"Well, son, I can't advise you none--except I know you have got a head
on you, no matter how people talk. You know about this end of the game,
and I'll have to be led entirely by you. If you think Burman's got a
good proposition, why, there ain't anything like gettin' action all
along the layout, from ace down to seven-spot and back to the king
card."

"That's the talk. I'll see Relpin to-day or to-morrow. I'll bet he
tries to hedge on what he said. But I got him too straight--let a
drunken man alone for telling the truth when he's got it in him. We'll
start in buying at once."

"It does sound good. I must say you take hold of it considerable like
Dan'l J. would 'a' done--and use my money jest like your own. I do want
to see you takin' your place where you belong. This life of idleness
you been leadin'--one continual potlatch the whole time--it wa'n't
doin' you a bit of good."

"We'll get action, don't you worry. Now let's have lunch down-stairs,
and then go for a drive. It's too fine a day to stay in. I'll order the
cart around and show you that blue-ribbon cob I bought at the horse
show. I just want you to see his action. He's a beaut, all right. He's
been worked a half in 1.17, and he can go to his speed in ten lengths,
any time."

In the afternoon they fell into the procession of carriages streaming
toward the park. The day was pleasantly sharp, the clear sunshine
enlivening, and the cob was one with the spirit of the occasion,
alertly active, from his rubber-shod, varnished hoofs to the tips of
his sensitive ears.

"Central Park," said Uncle Peter, "always seems to me just like a tidy
little parlour, livin' around in them hills the way I have."

He watched the glinting of varnished spokes, and listened absently to
the rhythmic "click-clump" of trotting horses, with its accompanying
jingle of silver harness trappings.

"These people must have lots of money," he observed. "But you'll go in
and outdo 'em all."

"That's what! Uncle Peter."

Toward the upper end of the East Drive they passed a victoria in which
were Miss Milbrey and her mother with Rulon Shepler. The men raised
their hats. Miss Milbrey flashed the blue of her eyes to them and
pointed down her chin in the least bit of a bow. Mrs. Milbrey stared.

"Wa'n't that Shepler?"

"Yes, Shepler and the Milbreys. That woman certainly has the haughtiest
lorgnon ever built."

"She didn't speak to us. Is her eyes bad?"

"Yes, ever since that time at Newport. None of them has spoken to me
but the girl--she's engaged to Shepler."

"She's a right nice lookin' little lady. I thought you was kind of
taken there."

"She would have married me for my roll. I got far enough along to tell
that. But that was before Shepler proposed. I'd give long odds she
wouldn't consider me now. I haven't enough for her with him in the
game."

"Well, you go in and make her wish she'd waited for you."

"I'll do that; I'll make Shepler look like a well-to-do business man
from Pontiac, Michigan."

"Is that brother of hers you told me about still makin' up to that
party?"

"Can't say. I suppose he'll be a little more fastidious, as the
brother-in-law of Shepler. In fact I heard that the family had shut
down on any talk of his marrying her."

"Still, she ought to be able to do well here. Any man that would marry
a woman fur money wouldn't object to her. One of these fortune-hunting
Englishmen, now, would snap her up."

"She hasn't quite enough for that. Two millions isn't so much here, you
know, and she must have spent a lot of hers. I hear she has a very
expensive suite back there at the Arlingham, and lives high. I did
hear, too, that she takes a flyer in the Street now and then. She'll be
broke soon if she keeps that up."

"Too bad she ain't got a few more millions," said Uncle Peter,
ruminantly. "Take one of these titled Englishmen looking for an heiress
to keep 'em--she'd make just the kind of a wife he'd ought to get. She
certainly ought to have a few more millions. If she had, now, she might
cure some decent girl of her infatuation. Where'd you say she was
stoppin'?"

"Arlingham--that big private hotel I showed you back there."

Percival confessed to his mother that night that he had wronged Uncle
Peter.

"That old boy is all right yet," he said, with deep conviction. "Don't
make any mistake there. He has bigger ideas than I gave him credit for.
I suggested branching out here in a business way, to-day, and the old
fellow got right in line. If anybody tells you that old Petie Bines
hasn't got the leaves of his little calendar torn off right up to date
you just feel wise inside, and see what odds are posted on it!"




CHAPTER XXXI.

Concerning Consolidated Copper and Peter Bines as Matchmakers


Consolidated copper at 110. The day after his talk with Uncle Peter,
Percival through three different brokers gave orders to buy ten
thousand shares.

"I tried to give Relpin an order for five thousand shares over the
telephone," he said to Uncle Peter; "but they're used to those fifty
and a hundred thousand dollar pikers down in that neighbourhood. He
seemed to think I was joshing him. When I told him I meant it and was
ready to take practically all he could buy for the next few weeks or
so, I think he fell over in the booth and had to be helped out."

Orders for twenty thousand more shares in thousand share lots during
the next three weeks sent the stock to 115. Yet wise men in the Street
seemed to fear the stock. They were waiting cautiously for more
definite leadings. The plunging of Bines made rather a sensation, and
when it became known that his holdings were large and growing almost
daily larger, the waning confidence of a speculator here and there
would be revived.

At 115 the stock rested again, with few sales recorded. A certain few
of the elect regarded this calm as ominous. It was half believed by
others that the manipulations of the inner ring would presently advance
the stock to a sensational figure, and that the reckless young man from
Montana might be acting upon information of a definite character. But
among the veteran speculators the feeling was conservative. Before
buying they preferred to await some sign that the advance had actually
begun. The conservatives were mostly the bald old fellows. Among the
illusions that rarely survive a man's hair in Wall Street is the one
that "sure things" are necessarily sure.

Percival watched Consolidated Copper go back to 110, and bought
again--ten thousand shares. The price went up two points the day after
his orders were placed, and two days later dropped back to 110. The
conservatives began to agree with the younger set of speculators, in so
far as both now believed that the stock was behaving in an unnatural
manner, indicating that "something was doing"--that manipulation behind
the scenes was under way to a definite end. The conservatives and the
radicals differed as to what this end was. But then, Wall Street is
nourished almost exclusively upon differences of opinion.

Percival now had accounts with five firms of brokers.

"Relpin," he explained to Uncle Peter, "is a foxy boy. He's foxier than
a fox. He not only tried to hedge on what he told me,--said he'd been
drinking absinthe _frappé_ that day, and it always gets him
dreamy,--but he actually had the nerve to give me the opposite steer.
Of course he knows the deal clear to the centre, and Shepler knows that
he knows, and he must have been afraid Shepler would suspect he'd been
talking. So I only traded a few thousand shares with him. I didn't want
to embarrass him. Funny about him, too. I never heard before of his
drinking anything to speak of. And there isn't a man in the Street
comes so near to knowing what the big boys are up to. But we're on the
winning cards all right. I get exactly the same information from a
dozen confidential sources; some of it I can trace to Relpin, and some
of it right to Shepler himself." "Course I'm leavin' it all to you,"
answered Uncle Peter; "and I must say I do admire the way you take hold
and get things on the move. You don't let any grass grow under _your_
heels. You got a good head fur them things. I can tell by the way you
start out--just like your pa fur all the world. I'll feel safe enough
about my money as long as you keep your health. If only you got the
nerve. I've known men would play a big proposition half-through and
then get scared and pull out. Your pa wa'n't that way. He could get a
proposition right by its handle every time, and they never come any too
big fur him; the bigger they was, better he liked 'em. That's the kind
of genius I think you got. You ain't afraid to take a chance."

Percival beamed modestly under praise of this sort which now came to
him daily.

"It's good discipline for me, too, Uncle Peter. It's what I needed,
something to put my mind on. I needed a new interest in life. You had
me down right. I wasn't doing myself a bit of good with nothing to
occupy my mind."

"Well, I'm mighty glad you thought up this stock deal. It'll give you
good business habits and experience, say nothing of doubling your
capital."

"And I've gone in with Burman on his corn deal. He's begun to buy, and
he has it cinched this time. He'll be the corn king all right by June
1st; don't make any mistake on that. I thought as long as we were
plunging so heavy in Western Trolley and Union Cordage, along with the
copper, we might as well take the side line of corn. Then we won't have
our eggs all in one basket."

"All right, son, all right! I'm trustin' you. A corner in corn is
better'n a corner in wild-oats any day; anything to keep you straight,
and doin' something. I don't care _how_ many millions you pile up! I
hear the Federal Oil people's back of the copper deal."

"That's right; the oil crowd and Shepler. I had it straight from Relpin
that night. They're negotiating now with the Rothschilds to limit the
output of the Rio Tinto mines. They'll end by controlling them, and
then--well, we'll have a roll of the yellow boys--say, we'll have to
lay quiet for a year just to count it."

"Do it good while you're doin' it," urged Uncle Peter, cheerfully. "I
rely so much on your judgment, I want you to get action on my stuff,
too. I got a couple millions that ought to be workin' harder than they
are."

"Good; I didn't think you had so much gambler in you."

"It's fur a worthy purpose, son. And it seems too bad that Pishy can't
pull out something with her bit, when it's to be had so easy. From what
that spangle-faced beau of hers tells me there's got to be some
expensive plumbing done in that castle he gets sawed off on to him."

"We'll let sis in, too," exclaimed her brother, generously, "and ma
could use a little more in her business. She's sitting up nights to
corner all the Amalgamated Hard-luck on the island. We'll pool issue,
and say, we'll make those Federal Oil pikers think we've gnawed a
corner off the subtreasury. I'll put an order in for twenty thousand
more shares to-morrow--among the three stocks. And then we'll have to
see about getting all our capital here. We'll need every cent of it
that's loose; and maybe we better sell off some of those dead-wood
stocks."

The twenty thousand shares were bought by the following week, five
thousand of them being Consolidated Copper, ten thousand Western
Trolley, and five thousand Union Cordage. Consolidated Copper fell off
two points, upon rumours, traceable to no source, that the company had
on hand a large secret supply of copper, and was producing largely in
excess of the demand every month.

Percival told Uncle Peter of these rumours, and chuckled with the easy
confidence of a man who knows secrets.

"You see, it's coming the way Relpin said. The insiders are hammering
down the stock with those reports, hammering with one hand, and buying
up small lots quietly with the other. But you'll notice the price of
copper doesn't go down any. They keep it at seventeen cents all right.
Now, the moment they get control of the European supply they'll hold
the stuff, force up the selling price to awful figures, and squeeze out
dividends that will make you wear blue glasses to look at them."

"You certainly do know your business, son," said Uncle Peter,
fervently. "You certainly got your pa's head on you. You remind me more
and more of Dan'l J. Bines every day. I'd rather trust your judgment
now than lots of older men down there. You know their tricks all right.
Get in good and hard so long as you got a sure thing. I'd hate to have
you come meachin' around after that stock has kited, and be kickin'
because you hadn't bet what your hand was worth."

"Trust me for that, Uncle Peter. Garmer tried to steer me off this line
of stocks the other night. He'd heard these rumours about a slump, and
he's fifty years old at that. I thanked him for his tip and coppered it
with another thousand shares all around next day. The way Garmer can
tell when you're playing a busted flush makes you nervous, but I
haven't looked over his license to know everything down in the Street
yet."

The moral gain to Percival from his new devotion to the stock market
was commented upon approvingly both by Uncle Peter and by his mother.
It was quite as tangible as his money profits promised to be. He ceased
to frequent the temple of chance in Forty-fourth Street, to the
proprietor's genuine regret. The poker-games at the hotel he abandoned
as being trivial. And the cabmen along upper Broadway had seldom now
the opportunity to compete for his early morning patronage. He began to
keep early hours and to do less casual drinking during the day. After
three weeks of this comparatively regular living his mother rejoiced to
note signs that his breakfast-appetite was returning.

"You see," he explained earnestly to Uncle Peter, "a man to make
anything at this game must keep his head clear, and he must have good
health to do that. I meet a lot of those fellows down there that queer
themselves by drink. It doesn't do so much hurt when a man isn't
needing his brains,--but no more of it for me just now!"

"That's right, son. I knew I could make something more than a polite
sosh out of you. I knew you'd pull up if you got into business like you
been doin'."

"Come down-town with me this afternoon, and see me make a play, Uncle
Peter. I think I'll begin now to buy on a margin. The rise can't hold
off much longer."

"I'd like to, son, but I'd laid out to take a walk up to the park this
afternoon, and look in at the monkeys awhile. I need the out-doors, and
anyway you don't need me down there. You know _your_ part all right.
My! but I'd begin to feel nervous with all that money up, if it was
anybody but you, now."

In pursuance of his pronounced plan, Uncle Peter walked up Fifth Avenue
that afternoon. But he stopped short of the park. At the imposing
entrance of the Arlingham he turned in. At the desk he asked for Mrs.
Wybert.

"I'll see if Mrs. Wybert is in," said the clerk, handing him a blank
card; "your name, please!"

The old man wrote, "Mr. Peter Bines of Montana City would like a few
minutes' talk with Mrs. Wybert."

The boy was gone so long that Uncle Peter, waiting, began to suspect he
would not be received. He returned at length with the message, "The
lady says will you please step up-stairs."

Going up in the elevator, the old man was ushered by a maid into a
violet-scented little nest whose pale green walls were touched
discreetly with hangings of heliotrope. An artist, in Uncle Peter's
place, might have fancied that the colour scheme of the apartment cried
out for a bit of warmth. A glowing, warm-haired woman was needed to
set the walls afire; and the need was met when Mrs. Wybert entered.

She wore a long coat of seal trimmed with chinchilla, and had been,
apparently, about to go out.

Uncle Peter rose and bowed. Mrs. Wybert nodded rather uncertainly.

"You wished to see me, Mr. Bines?"

"I did want to have a little talk with you, Mrs. Wybert, but you're
goin' out, and I won't keep you. I know how pressed you New York
society ladies are with your engagements."

Mrs. Wybert had seemed to be puzzled. She was still puzzled but
unmistakably pleased. The old man was looking at her with frank and
friendly apology for his intrusion. Plainly she had nothing to fear
from him. She became gracious.

"It was only a little shopping tour, Mr. Bines, that and a call at the
hospital, where they have one of my maids who slipped on the avenue
yesterday and fractured one of her--er--limbs. Do sit down."

Mrs. Wybert said "limb" for leg with the rather conscious air of
escaping from an awkward situation only by the subtlest finesse.

She seated herself before a green and heliotrope background that
instantly took warmth from her colour. Uncle Peter still hesitated.

"You see, I wanted kind of a long chat with you, Mrs. Wybert--a
friendly chat if you didn't mind, and I'd feel a mite nervous if you're
bundled up that way."

"I shall be delighted, Mr. Bines, to have a long, friendly chat. I'll
send my cloak back, and you take your own time. There now, do be right
comfortable!"

The old man settled himself and bestowed upon his hostess a long look
of approval.

"The reports never done you justice, Mrs. Wybert, and they was very
glowin' reports, too."

"You're very kind, Mr. Bines, awfully good of you!"

"I'm goin' to be more, Mrs. Wybert. I'm goin' to be a little bit
confidential--right out in the straight open with you."

"I am sure of that."

"And if you want to, you can be the same with me. I ain't ever held
anything against you, and maybe now I can do you a favour."

"It's right good of you to say so."

"Now, look here, ma'am, lets you and me get right down to cases about
this society game here in New York."

Mrs. Wybert laughed charmingly and relaxed in manner.

"I'm with you, Mr. Bines. What about it, now?"

"Now don't get suspicious, and tell me to mind my own business when I
ask you questions."

"I couldn't be suspicious of you--really I feel as if I'd have to tell
you everything you asked me, some way."

"Well, there's been some talk of your marrying that young Milbrey. Now
tell me the inside of it."

She looked at the old man closely. Her intuition confirmed his own
protestations of friendliness.

"I don't mind telling you in strict confidence, there _was_ talk of
marriage, and his people, all but the sister, encouraged it. Then after
she was engaged to Shepler they talked him out of it. Now that's the
whole God's truth, if it does you any good."

"If you had married him you'd 'a' had a position, like they say here,
right away."

"Oh, dear, yes! awfully swagger people--dead swell, every one of them.
There's no doubt about that."

"Exactly; and there ain't really any reason why you can't be somebody
here."

"Well, between you and I, Mr. Bines, I can play the part as well as a
whole lot of these women here. I don't want to talk, of course,
but--well!"

"Exactly, you can give half of 'em cards and spades and both casinos,
Mrs. Wybert."

"And I'll do it yet. I'm not through by any means. They're not the only
perfectly elegant people in this town!"

"Of course you'll do it, and you could do it better if you had three or
four times the stake you got."

"Dollars are worth more apiece in New York than any town I've ever been
in."

"Mrs. Wybert, I can put you right square into a good thing, and I'm
going to do it. Heard anything about Consolidated Copper?"

"I've heard something big was doing in it; but nobody seems to know for
certain. My broker is afraid of it."

"Very well. Now you do as I tell you, and you can clean up a big lot
inside of the next two months. If you do as I tell you, mind, no matter
_what_ you hear, and if you don't talk."

Mrs. Wybert meditated.

"Mr. Bines, I'm--it's natural that I'm a little uneasy. Why should you
want to see me do well, after our little affair? Now, out with it! What
are you trying to do with me? What do you expect me to do for you? Get
down to cases yourself, Mr. Bines!"

"I will, ma'am, in a few words. My granddaughter, you may have heard,
is engaged to an Englishman. He's next thing to broke, but he's got a
title coming. Naturally he's looking fur money. Naturally he don't care
fur the girl. But I'm afraid she's infatuated with him. Now then, if he
had a chance at some one with more money than she's got, why, naturally
he'd jump at it."

"Aren't you a little bit wild?"

"Not a little bit. He saw you at Newport last summer, and he's seen you
here. He was tearing the adjectives up telling me about you the other
night, not knowing, you understand, that I'd ever heard tell of you
before. You could marry him in a jiffy if you follow my directions."

"But your granddaughter has a fortune."

"You'll have as much if you play this the way I tell you. And--you
never can tell in these times--she might lose a good bit of hers."

"It's very peculiar, Mr. Bines--your proposition."

[Illustration: "'_WHY, YOU'D BE LADY CASSELTHORPE, WITH DUKES AND
COUNTS TAKIN' OFF THEIR CROWNS TO YOU_.'"]

"Look at what a brilliant match it would be fur you. Why, you'd be
Lady Casselthorpe, with dukes and counts takin' off their crowns to
you. And that other one--that Milbrey--from all I hear he's lighter'n
cork--cut his galluses and he'd float right up into the sky. He ain't
got anything but his good family and a thirst."

"I see. This Mauburn isn't good enough for your family, but you reckon
he's good enough for me? Is that it, now?"

"Come, Mrs. Wybert, let's be broad. That's the game you like, and I
don't criticise you fur it. It's a good game if that's the kind of a
game you're huntin' fur. And you can play it better'n my granddaughter.
She wa'n't meant fur it--and I'd rather have her marry an American,
anyhow. Now you like it, and you got beauty--only you need more money.
I'll put you in the way of it, and you can cut out my granddaughter."

"I must think about it. Suppose I plunge in copper, and your tip isn't
straight. I've seen hard times, Mr. Bines, in my life. I haven't always
wore sealskin and diamonds."

"Mrs. Wybert, you was in Montana long enough to know how I stand
there?"

"I know you're A1, and your word's as good as another man's money. I
don't question your good intentions."

"It's my judgment, hey? Now, look here, I won't tell you what I know
and how I know it, but you can take my word that I know I do know. You
plunge in copper right off, without saying a word to anybody or makin'
any splurge, and here--"

From the little table at his elbow he picked up the card that had
announced him and drew out his pencil.

"You said my word was as good as another man's money. Now I'm going to
write on this card just what you have to do, and you're to follow
directions, no matter what you hear about other people doing. There'll
be all sorts of reports about that stock, but you follow my
directions."

He wrote on the back of the card with his pencil.

"Consolidated Copper, remember--and now I'm a-goin' to write something
else under them directions.

"'Do this up to the limit of your capital and I will make good anything
you lose.' There, Mrs. Wybert, I've signed that 'Peter Bines.' That
card wouldn't be worth a red apple in a court of law, but you know me,
and you know it's good fur every penny you lose."

"Really, Mr. Bines, you half-way persuade me. I'll certainly try the
copper play--and about the other--well,--we'll see; I don't promise,
mind you!"

"You think over it. I'm sure you'll like the idea--think of bein' in
that great nobility, and bein' around them palaces with their dukes and
counts. Think how these same New York women will meach to you then!"

The old man rose.

"And mind, follow them directions and no other--makes no difference
what you hear, or I won't be responsible. And I'll rely on you, ma'am,
never to let anyone know about my visit, and to send me back that
little document after you've cashed in."

He left her studying the card with a curious little flash of surprise.




CHAPTER XXXII.

Devotion to Business and a Chance Meeting


In the weeks that now followed, Percival became a model of sobriety and
patient, unremitting industry, according to his own ideas of industry.
He visited the offices of his various brokers daily, reading the tape
with the single-hearted devotion of a veteran speculator. He acquired a
general knowledge of the ebb and flow of popular stocks. He frequently
saw opportunities for quick profit in other stocks than the three he
was dealing in, but he would not let himself be diverted.

"I'm centering on those three," he told Uncle Peter. "When they win out
we'll take up some other lines. I could have cleared a quarter of a
million in that Northern Pacific deal last week, as easy as not. I saw
just what was being done by that Ledrick combine. But we've got
something better, and I don't want to take chances on tying up some
ready money we might need in a hurry. If a man gets started on those
little side issues he's too apt to lose his head. He jumps in one day,
and out the next, and gets to be what they call a 'kangaroo,' down in
the Street. It's all right for amusement, but the big money is in
cinching one deal and pushing hard. It's a bull market now, too; buy
A.O.T. is the good word--Any Old Thing--but I'm going to stay right by
my little line."

"You certainly have a genius fur finance," declared Uncle Peter, with
fervent admiration. "This going into business will be the makin' of
you. You'll be good fur something else besides holdin' one of them
dinky little teacups, and talking about 'trouserings'--no matter _what_
people say. Let 'em _talk_ about you--sayin' you'll never be anything
like the man your pa was--_you'll_ show 'em."

And Percival, important with his secret knowledge of the great _coup_,
went back to the ticker, and laughed inwardly at the seasoned experts
who frankly admitted their bewilderment as to what was "doing" in
copper and Western Trolley.

"When it's all over," he confided gaily to the old man, "we ought to
pinch off about ten per cent of the winnings, and put up a monument to
absinthe _frappé_--the stuff Relpin had been drinking that day.
They'll give us a fine public square for it in Paris if they won't here
in New York. And it wouldn't do any good to give it to Relpin, who's
really earned it--he'd only lush himself into one of those drunkard's
graves--I understand there's a few left yet."

Early in March, Coplen, the lawyer, was sent for, and with him Percival
spent two laborious weeks, going over inventories of the properties,
securities, and moneys of the estate. The major portion of the latter
was now invested in the three stocks, and the remainder was at hand
where it could be conveniently reached.

Percival informed himself minutely as to the values of the different
mining properties, railroad and other securities. A group of the
lesser-paying mines was disposed of to an English syndicate, the
proceeds being retained for the stock deal. All but the best paying of
the railroad, smelting, and land-improvement securities were also
thrown on the market.

The experience was a valuable one to the young man, enlarging greatly
his knowledge of affairs, and giving him a needed insight into the
methods by which the fortune had been accumulated.

"That was a slow, clumsy, old-fashioned way to make money," he declared
to Coplen. "Nowadays it's done quicker."

His grasp of details delighted Uncle Peter and surprised Coplen.

"I didn't know but he might be getting plucked," said Coplen to the old
man, "with all that money being drawn out so fast. If I hadn't known
you were with him, I'd have taken it on myself to find out something
about his operations. But he's all right, apparently. He had a scent
like a hound for those dead-wood properties--got rid of them while we
would have been making up our minds to. That boy will make his way
unless I'm mistaken. He has a head for detail."


"I'll make him a bigger man than his pa was yet," declared Uncle Peter.
"But I wouldn't want to let on that I'd had anything to do with it.
He'll think he's done it all himself, and it's right he should. It
stimulates 'em. Boys of his age need just about so much conceit, and it
don't do to take it out of 'em."

Reports of the most encouraging character came from Burman. The deal in
corn was being engineered with a riper caution than had been displayed
in the ill-fated wheat deal of the spring before.

"Burman's drawn close up to a million already," said Percival to Uncle
Peter, "and now he wants me to stand ready for another million."

"Is Burman," asked Uncle Peter, "that young fellow that had a habit of
standin' pat on a pair of Jacks, and then bettin' everybody off the
board?"

"Yes, that was Burman."

"Well, I liked his ways. I should say he could do you a whole lot of
good in a corn deal."

"It certainly does look good--and Burman has learned the ropes and
spars. They're already calling him the 'corn-king' out on the Chicago
Board of Trade."

"Use your own judgment," Uncle Peter urged him. "You're the one that
knows all about these things. My Lord! how you ever _do_ manage to keep
things runnin' in your head gets me. If you got confidence in Burman,
all I can say is--well, your pa was a fine judge of men, and I don't
see why you shouldn't have the gift."


"Between you and me, Uncle Peter, I _am_ a good judge of human nature,
and I know this much about Burman: when he does win out he'll win big.
And I think he's going to whipsaw the market to a standstill this time,
for sure. Here's a little item from this morning's paper that sounds
right, all along the line."

"COPPER, CORN, AND CORDAGE.

"There are just now three great movements in the market, Copper Trust
stock, corn, and cordage stock. The upward movement in corn seems to be
in the main not speculative but natural--the result of a short supply
and a long demand. The movements in Copper and Cordage Trust stocks are
purely speculative. The copper movement is based on this proposition:
Can the Copper Trust maintain the price for standard copper at
seventeen cents a pound, in face of enormously increased supply and the
rapidly decreasing demand, notably in Germany? The bears think not. The
bulls, contrarily, persist in behaving as if they had inside
information of a superior value. Just possibly a simultaneous rise in
corn, copper, and cordage will be the next sensation in the trading
world."

"You see?" said Percival. "They're beginning to wake up, down
there--beginning to turn over in their sleep and mutter. Pretty soon
they'll begin to stretch lazily; when they finally hear something drop
and jump out of bed it will be too late. The bulls will be counting
their chips to cash in, and the man waiting around to put out the
lights. And I don't see why Burman isn't as safe as I am." "I don't,
either," said Uncle Peter.

"'A short supply and a long demand,'--it would be a sin to let any one
else in. I'll just wire him we're on, and that we need all of that good
thing ourselves."

In the flush of his great plans and great expectations came a chance
meeting with Miss Milbrey. He had seen her only at a distance since
their talk at Newport. Yet the thought of her had persisted as a
plaintive undertone through all the days after. Only the sharp hurt to
his sensitive pride--from the conviction that she had found him
tolerable solely because of the money--had saved him from the willing
admission to himself that he had carried off too much of her ever to
forget. In his quiet moments, the tones of her clear, low voice came
movingly to his ears, and his eyes conjured involuntarily her girlish
animation, her rounded young form, her colour and fire--the choked,
smouldering fire of opals. He saw the curve of her wrist, the confident
swing of her walk, the easy poise of her head, her bearing, at once
girlish and womanly, the little air, half of wistful appeal, and half
of self-reliant assertion. Yet he failed not to regard these
indulgences as utter folly. It had been folly enough while he believed
that she stood ready to accept him and his wealth. It was more
flagrant, now that her quest for a husband with millions had been so
handsomely rewarded.

But again, the fact that she was now clearly impossible for him, so
that even a degrading submission on his part could no longer secure
her, served only to bring her attractiveness into greater relief. With
the fear gone that a sudden impulse to possess her might lead him to
stultify himself, he could see more clearly than ever why she was and
promised always to be to him the very dearest woman in the
world--dearest in spite of all he could reason about so lucidly. He
felt, then, a little shock of unreasoning joy to find one night that
they were dining together at the Oldakers'.

At four o'clock he had received a hasty note signed "Fidelia Oldaker,"
penned in the fine, precise script of some young ladies' finishing
school--perhaps extinct now for fifty years--imploring him, if aught of
chivalry survived within his breast, to fetch his young grandfather and
dine with her that evening. Two men had inconsiderately succumbed, at
this eleventh hour, to the prevailing grip-epidemic, and the lady
threw herself confidently on the well-known generosity of the Bines
male--"like one of the big, stout nets those acrobatic people fall into
from their high bars," she concluded.

Uncle Peter was more than willing. He liked the Oldakers.

"They're the only sane folks I've met among your friends," he had told
his grandson. He had dined there frequently during the winter, and
professed to be enamoured of the hostess. That fragile but sprightly
bit of antiquity professed in turn to find Uncle Peter a very dangerous
man among the ladies. They flirted outrageously at every opportunity,
and Uncle Peter sent her more violets than many a popular _débutante_
received that winter.

Percival, with his new air of Wall Street operator, was inclined to
hesitate.

"You know I'm up early now, Uncle Peter, to get the day's run of the
markets before I go downtown, and a man can't do much in the way of
dinners when his mind is working all day. Perhaps Mauburn will go."

But Mauburn was taking Psyche and Mrs. Drelmer to the first night of a
play, and Percival was finally persuaded by the old man to relax, for
one evening, the austerity of his _régime_.

"But how your pa would love to see you so conscientious," he said, "and
you with Wall Street, or a good part of it, right under your heel, just
like _that_," and the old man ground his heel viciously into the
carpet.

When Percival found Shepler with Mrs. Van Geist and Miss Milbrey among
the Oldakers' guests, he rejoiced. Now he would talk to her without any
of that old awkward self-consciousness. He was even audacious enough to
insist that Mrs. Oldaker direct him to take Miss Milbrey out to dinner.

"I claim it as the price of coming, you know, when I was only an
afterthought."

"You shall be paid, sir," his hostess declared, "if you consider it pay
to sit beside an engaged girl whose mind is full of her _trousseau_.
And here's this captivating young scapegrace relative of yours. What
price does he demand for coming?" and she glanced up at Uncle Peter
with arch liberality in her bright eyes.

That gentleman bowed low--a bow that had been the admiration of the
smartest society in Marietta County, Ohio, fifty years and more ago.

"I'm paid fur coming by coming," he replied, urbanely.

"There, now!" cried his hostess, "that's pretty, and means something.
You shall take me in for that."

"I'll have to give you a credit-slip, ma'am. You've overpaid me." And
Mrs. Oldaker, with a coy fillip of her fan, called him a naughty boy.

"Here, Rulon," she called to Shepler, "are two young daredevils who've
been good enough to save me as many empty chairs. Now you shall take
out Cornelia, and this juvenile sprig shall relieve you of Avice
Milbrey. It's a providence. You engaged couples are always so dull when
you're banished from your own _ciel à deux_."

Shepler bowed and greeted the two men. Percival sought Miss Milbrey,
who was with her aunt at the other side of the old-fashioned room, a
room whose brocade hangings had been imported from England in the days
of the Georges, and whose furniture was fabricated in the time when
France was suffering its last kings.

He no longer felt the presence of anything overt between them. The girl
herself seemed to have regained the charming frankness of her first
manner with him. Their relationship was defined irrevocably. No
uncertainty of doubt or false seeming lurked now under the surface to
perplex and embarrass. The relief was felt at once by each.

"I'm to have the pleasure of taking you in, Miss Milbrey--hostess
issues special commands to that effect."

"Isn't that jolly! We've not met for an age."

"And I've such an appetite for talk with you, I fear I won't eat a
thing. If I'd known you were to be here I'd have taken the forethought
to eat a gored ox, or something--what is the proverb, 'better a dinner
of stalled ox where--'"

"'Where talk is,'" suggested Miss Milbrey, quickly.

"Oh, yes--.' than to have your own ox gored without a word of talk.' I
remember it perfectly now. And--there--we're moving on to this feast of
reason--"

"And the flow of something superior to reason," finished Shepler, who
had come over for Mrs. Van Geist. "Oldaker has some port that lay in
the wood in his cellar for forty years--and went around the world
between keel and canvas."

"That sounds good," said Percival, and then to Miss Milbrey, "But come,
let us reason together." His next sentiment, unuttered, was that the
soft touch of her hand under his arm was headier than any drink, how
ancient soever.

Throughout the dinner their entire absorption in each other was all but
unbroken. Percival never could remember who had sat at his left; and
Miss Milbrey's right-hand neighbour saw more than the winning line of
her profile but twice. Percival began--

"Do you know, I've never been able to classify you at all. I never
could tell how to take you."

"I'll tell you a secret, Mr. Bines; I think I'm not to be taken at all.
I've begun to suspect that I'm like one of those words that haven't any
rhyme--like 'orange' and 'month,' you know."

"But you find poetry in life? I do."

"Plenty of verse--not much poetry."

"How would you order life now, if the little old wishing-lady came to
your door and knocked?"

And they plunged forthwith, buoyed by youth's divine effrontery, into
mysteries that have vexed diners, not less than hermit sages, since
"the fog of old time" first obscured truth. Of life and death--the
ugliness of life, and the beauty of death--

"... even as death might smile, Petting the plumes of some surprised
soul,"

quoted the girl. Of loving and hating, they talked; of trying and
failing--of the implacable urge under which men must strive in the face
of certain defeat--of the probability that men are purposely born
fools, since, if they were born wise they would refuse to strive;
whereupon life and death would merge, and naught would prevail but a
vast indifference. In fact, they were very deep, and affected to
consider these grave matters seriously. They affected that they never
habitually thought of lesser concerns. And they had the air of
listening to each other as if they were weighing the words judicially,
and were quite above any mere sensuous considerations of personality.

Once they emerged long enough to hear the hostess speaking, as it were
of yesterday, of a day when the new "German cotillion" was introduced,
to make a sensation in New York; of a time when the best ballrooms were
heated with wood stoves and lighted with lamps; and of a later but
apparently still remote time when the Assemblies were "really, quite
the smartest function of the season."

In another pause, they caught the kernel of a story being told by Uncle
Peter:

"The girl was a half-breed, but had a fair skin and the biggest shock
of hair you ever saw--bright yellow hair. She was awful proud of her
hair. So when her husband, Clem Dewler, went to this priest, Father
McNally, and complained that she _would_ run away from the shack and
hang around the dance-halls down at this mining-camp, Father McNally
made up his mind to learn her a lesson. Well, he goes down and finds
her jest comin' out of Tim Healy's place with two other women. He
rushes up to her, catches hold of this big shock of hair that was
trailin' behind her, and before she knew what was comin' he whipped out
a big pair of sharp, shiny shears, and made as if he was going to give
her a hair-cut. At that she begins to scream, but the priest he
wouldn't let go. 'I'll cut it off,' he says, 'close,' he says, 'if you
don't swear on this crucifix to be a good squaw to Clem Dewler, and
never set so much as one of your little feet in these places again.'
She could feel the shears against her hair, and she was so scared she
swore like he told her. And so she was that afraid of losin' her fine
yellow hair afterward, knowin' Father McNally was a man that didn't
make no idle threats, that she kept prim and proper--fur a half-breed."

"That poor creature had countless sisters," was Miss Milbrey's comment
to Percival. And they fell together once more in deciding whether,
after all, the brightest women ever cease to believe that men are
influenced most by surface beauties. They fired each other's enthusiasm
for expressing opinions, and they took the opinions very seriously. Yet
of their meeting, to an observer, their talk would have seemed the part
least worth recording.

Twice Percival caught Shepler's regard bent upon them. It amused him to
think he detected signs of uneasiness back of the survey, cool,
friendly, and guarded as it was on the surface.

At parting, later, Percival spoke for the first time to Miss Milbrey of
her engagement.

"You must know that I wish you all the happiness you hope for yourself;
and if I were as lucky in love as Mr. Shepler has been, I surely would
never dare to gamble in anything else--you know the saying."

"And you, Mr. Bines. I've been hearing so much of your marriage. I hope
the rumour I heard to-day is true, that your engagement has been
announced."

He laughed.

"Come, now! That's all gossip, you know; not a word of truth in it, and
it's been very annoying to us both. Please demolish that rumour on my
authority next time you hear it, thoroughly, so they can make nothing
out of the pieces."

Miss Milbrey showed genuine disappointment.

"I had thought, naturally--"

"The only member of that household I could marry is not suited to my
age."

Miss Milbrey was puzzled.

"But, really, she's not so old."

"No, not so very old. Still, she's going on five, and you know how time
flies--and so much disparity in our ages--twenty-one years or so; no,
she was no wife for me, although I don't mind confessing that there has
been an affair between us, but--really you can't imagine what a
frivolous and trifling creature she is."

Miss Milbrey laughed now, rather painfully he fancied.

"You mean the baby? Isn't she a little dear?"

"I'll tell you something, just between us--the baby's mother is--well,
I like her--but she's a joke. That's all, a joke."

"I beg your pardon for talking of it. It had seemed so definite.
They're waiting for me--good night--_so_ glad to have seen you--and,
nevertheless, she's a very _practical_ joke!"

He watched her with frank, utter longing, as she moved over to Mrs.
Oldaker, tender, girlish, appealing, with the old air of timid
wistfulness, kept guard over by her woman's knowledge. His fingers
still curved, as if they were loth to forget the clasp of her warm,
firm little hand. She was gowned in white fleece, and she wore one pink
rose where she could bend her blue eyes down upon it.

And she was going to marry Shepler for his millions. She might even yet
regret that she had not waited for him, when his own name had been
written up as the wizard of markets, and the master of millions. Since
money was all she loved, he would show her that even in that he was
pre-eminent; though he would still have none of her. And as for
Shepler--he wondered if Shepler knew just what risks he might be taking
on.

"Oh, Mütterchen! Wasn't it the jolliest evening?"

They were in the carriage.

"Did you and Mr. Bines enjoy yourselves as much as you seemed to?"

"And isn't his grandfather an old dear? What an interesting little
story about that woman. I know just how she felt. You see, sir," she
turned to Shepler, "there is always a way to manage a woman--you must
find her weakness."

"He's a very unusual old chap," said Shepler. "I had occasion not long
since to tell him that a certain business plan he proposed was entirely
without precedent. His answer was characteristic. He said, 'We _make_
precedents in the West when we can't find one to suit us.' It seemed so
typical of the people to me. You never can tell what they may do. You
see they were started out of old ruts by some form of necessity, almost
every one of them, when they went West, and as necessity stimulates
only the brightest people to action, those Westerners are apt to be of
a pretty keen, active, and sturdy mental type. As this old chap says,
they never hang back for lack of precedents; they go ahead and make
them. They're not afraid to take sudden queer steps. But, really, I
like them both."

"So do I," said his betrothed.




CHAPTER XXXIII.

The Amateur Napoleon of Wall Street


At the beginning of April, the situation in the three stocks Percival
had bought so heavily grew undeniably tense. Consolidated Copper went
from 109 to 103 in a week. But Percival's enthusiasm suffered little
abatement from the drop. "You see," he reminded Uncle Peter, "it isn't
exactly what I expected, but it's right in line with it, so it doesn't
alarm me. I knew those fellows inside were bound to hammer it down if
they could. It wouldn't phase me a bit if it sagged to 95."

"My! My!" Uncle Peter exclaimed, with warm approval, "the way you
master this business certainly does win _me_. I tell you, it's a mighty
good thing we got your brains to depend on. I'm all right the other
side of Council Bluffs, but I'm a tenderfoot here, sure, where
everybody's tryin' to get the best of you. You see, out there,
everybody tries to make the best of it. But here they try to get the
best of it. I told that to one of them smarties last night. But you'll
put them in their place all right. You know both ends of the game and
the middle. We certainly got a right to be proud of you, son. Dan'l J.
liked big propositions himself--but, well, I'd just like to have him
see the nerve you've showed, that's all."

Uncle Peter's professions of confidence were unfailing, and Percival
took new hope and faith in his judgment from them daily.

Nevertheless, as the weeks passed, and the mysterious insiders
succeeded in their design of keeping the stock from rising, he came to
feel a touch of anxiety. More, indeed, than he was able to communicate
to Uncle Peter, without confessing outright that he had lost faith in
himself. That he was unable to do, even if it were true, which he
doubted. The Bines fortune was now hanging, as to all but some of the
Western properties, on the turning of the three stocks. Yet the old
man's confidence in the young man's acumen was invulnerable. No shaft
that Percival was able to fashion had point enough to pierce it. And he
was both to batter it down, for he still had the gambler's faith in his
luck.

"You got your father's head in business matters," was Uncle Peter's
invariable response to any suggestion of failure. "I know that
much--spite of what all these gossips say--and that's all I _want_ to
know. And of course you can't ever be no Shepler 'less you take your
share of chances. Only don't ask _my_ advice. You're master of the
game, and we're all layin' right smack down on your genius fur it."

Whereupon the young man, with confidence in himself newly inflated,
would hurry off to the stock tickers. He had ceased to buy the stocks
outright, and for several weeks had bought only on margins.

"There was one rule in poker your pa had," said Uncle Peter. "If a hand
is worth calling on, it's worth raising on. He jest never _would_ call.
If he didn't think a hand was worth raising, he'd bunch it in with the
discards, and wait fur another deal. I don't know much about the game,
but _he_ said it was a sound rule, and if it was sound in poker, why
it's got to be sound in this game. That's all I can tell you. You know
what you hold, and if 'tain't a hand to lay down, it must be a hand to
raise on. Of course, if you'd been brash and ignorant in your first
calculations--if you'd made a fool of yourself at the start--but
shucks! you're the son of Daniel J. Bines, ain't you?"

The rule and the clever provocation had their effect.

"I'll raise as long as I have a chip left, Uncle Peter. Why, only
to-day I had a tip that came straight from Shepler, though he never
dreamed it would reach me. That Pacific Cable bill is going to be
rushed through at this session of Congress, sure, and that means enough
increased demand to send Consolidated back where it was. And then, when
it comes out that they've got those Rio Tinto mines by the throat,
well, this anvil chorus will have to stop, and those Federal Oil sharks
and Shepler will be wondering how I had the face to stay in."

The published rumours regarding Consolidated began to conflict very
sharply. Percival read them all hungrily, disregarding those that did
not confirm his own opinions. He called them irresponsible newspaper
gossip, or believed them to be inspired by the clique for its own ends.

He studied the history of copper until he knew all its ups and downs
since the great electrical development began in 1887. When Fouts, the
broker he traded most heavily with, suggested that the Consolidated
Company was skating on thin ice, that it might, indeed, be going
through the same experience that shattered the famous Secretan corner a
dozen years before, Percival pointed out unerringly the vital
difference in the circumstances. The Consolidated had reduced the
production of its controlled mines, and the price was bound to be
maintained. When his adviser suggested that the companies not in the
combine might cut the price, he brought up the very lively rumours of a
"gentlemen's agreement" with the "non-combine" producers.

"Of course, there's Calumet and Hecla. I know that couldn't be gunned
into the combination. They could pay dividends with copper at ten cents
a pound. But the other independents know which side of their stock is
spread with dividends, all right."

When it was further suggested that the Rio Tinto mines had sold ahead
for a year, with the result that European imports from the United
States had fallen off, and that the Consolidated could not go on for
ever holding up the price, Percival said nothing.

The answer to that was the secret negotiations for control of the
European output, which would make the Consolidated master of the copper
world. Instead of disclosing this, he pretended craftily to be
encouraged by the mere generally hopeful outlook in all lines. Western
Trolley, too, might be overcapitalised, and Union Cordage might also be
in the hands of a piratical clique; but the demand for trolley lines
was growing every day, and cordage products were not going out of
fashion by any means.

"You see," he said to his adviser, "here's what the most conservative
man in the Street says in this afternoon's paper. 'That copper must
necessarily break badly, and the whole boom collapse I do not believe.
There is enough prosperity to maintain a strong demand for the metal
through another year at least. As to Western Trolley and Union Cordage,
the two other stocks about which doubt is now being so widely expressed
in the Street, I am persuaded that they are both due to rise, not
sensationally, but at a healthy upward rate that makes them sound
investments!'

"There," said Percival, "there's the judgment of a man that knows the
game, but doesn't happen to have a dollar in either stock, and he
doesn't know one or two things that I know, either. Just hypothecate
ten thousand of those Union Cordage shares and five thousand Western
Trolley, and buy Consolidated on a twenty per cent margin. I want to
get bigger action. There's a good rule in poker: if your hand is worth
calling, it's worth raising."

"I like your nerve," said the broker.

"Well, I know some one who has a sleeve with something up it, that's
all."

By the third week in April, it was believed that his holdings of
Consolidated were the largest in the Street, excepting those of the
Federal Oil people. Uncle Peter was delighted by the magnitude of his
operations, and by his newly formed habits of industry.

"It'll be the makings of the boy," he said to Mrs. Bines in her son's
presence. "Not that I care so much myself about all the millions he'll
pile up, but it gives him a business training, and takes him out of the
pin-head class. I bet Shepler himself will be takin' off his silk hat
to your son, jest as soon as he's made this turn in copper--if he has
enough of Dan'l J.'s grit to hang on--and I think he has."

"They needn't wait another day for me," Percival told him later. "The
family treasure is about all in now, except ma's amethyst earrings, and
the hair watch-chain Grandpa Cummings had. Of course I'm holding what
I promised for Burman. But that rise can't hold off much longer, and
the only thing I'll do, from now on, is to hock a few blocks of the
stock I bought outright, and buy on margins, so's to get bigger
action."

"My! My! you jest do fairly dazzle me," exclaimed the old man,
delightedly. "Oh, I guess your pa wouldn't be at all proud of you if he
could see it. I tell you, this family's all right while you keep
hearty."

"Well, I'm not pushing my chest out any," said the young man, with
becoming modesty, "but I don't mind telling you it will be the biggest
thing ever pulled off down there by any one man."

"That's the true Western spirit," declared Uncle Peter, beside himself
with enthusiasm. "We do things big when we bother with 'em at all. We
ain't afraid of any pikers like Shepler, with his little two and five
thousand lots. Oh! I can jest hear 'em callin' you hard names down in
that Wall Street--Napoleon of Finance and Copper King and all like
that--in about thirty days!"

He accepted Percival's invitation that afternoon to go down into the
Street with him. They stopped for a moment in the visitors' gallery of
the Stock Exchange and looked down into the mob of writhing,
dishevelled, shouting brokers. In and out, the throng swirled upon
itself, while above its muddy depths surged a froth of hands in
frenzied gesticulation. The frantic movement and din of shrieks
disturbed Uncle Peter.

"Faro is such a lot quieter game," was his comment; "so much more ca'm
and restful. What a pity, now, 'tain't as Christian!"

Then they made the rounds of the brokers' offices in New, Broad, and
Wall Streets.

They reached the office of Fouts, in the, latter street, just as the
Exchange had closed. In the outer trading-room groups of men were still
about the tickers, rather excitedly discussing the last quotations.
Percival made his way toward one of them with a dim notion that he
might be concerned. He was relieved when he saw Gordon Blythe, suave
and smiling, in the midst of the group, still regarding the tape he
held in his hands. Blythe, too, had plunged in copper. He had been one
of the few as sanguine as Percival--and Blythe's manner now reassured
him. Copper had obviously not gone wrong.

"Ah, Blythe, how did we close? Mr. Blythe, my grandfather, Mr. Bines."

Blythe was the model of easy, indolent, happy middle-age. His tall hat,
frock coat with a carnation in the lapel, the precise crease of his
trousers, the spickness of his patent-leathers and his graceful
confidence of manner, proclaimed his mind to be free from all but the
pleasant things of life. He greeted Uncle Peter airily.

"Come down to see how we do it, eh, Mr. Bines? It's vastly engrossing,
on my word. Here's copper just closed at 93, after opening strong this
morning at 105. I hardly fancied, you know, it could fall off so many
of those wretched little points. Rumours that the Consolidated has made
large sales of the stuff in London at sixteen, I believe. One never can
be quite aware of what really governs these absurd fluctuations."

Percival was staring at Blythe in unconcealed amazement. He turned,
leaving Uncle Peter still chatting with him, and sought Fouts in the
inner office. When he came out ten minutes later Uncle Peter was
waiting for him alone.

"Your friend Mr. Blythe is a clever sort of man, jolly and
light-hearted as a boy."

"Let's go out and have a drink, before we go up-town."

In the _café_ of the Savarin, to which he led Uncle Peter, they saw
Blythe again. He was seated at one of the tables with a younger man.
Uncle Peter and Percival sat down at a table near by.

Blythe was having trouble about his wine.

"Now, George," he was saying, "give us a real _lively_ pint of wine.
You see, yourself, that cork isn't fresh; show it to Frank there, and
look at the wine itself--come now, George! Hardly a bubble in it! Tell
Frank I'll leave it to him, by Gad! if this bottle is right."

The waiter left with the rejected wine, and they heard Blythe resume to
his companion, with the relish of a connoisseur:

"It's simply a matter of genius, old chap--you understand?--to tell
good wine--that is really to discriminate finely. If a chap's not born
with the gift he's an ass to think he can acquire it. Sometime you've a
setter pup that looks fit--head good, nose all right--all the
markings--but you try him out and you know in half an hour he'll never
do in the world. Then it's better to take him out back of the barn and
shoot him, by Gad! Rather than have his strain corrupt the rest of the
kennel. He can't acquire the gift, and no more can a chap acquire this
gift. Ah! I was right, was I, George? Look how different that cork is."

He sipped the bubbling amber wine with cautious and exacting
appreciation. As the waiter would have refilled the glasses, Blythe
stopped him.

"Now, George, let me tell you something. You're serving at this moment
the only gentleman's drink. Do it right, George. Listen! Never refill a
gentleman's glass until it's quite empty. Do you know why? Think,
George! You pour fresh wine into stale wine and what have
you?--neither. I've taught you something, George. Never fill a glass
till it's empty."

"It beats me," said Uncle Peter, when Blythe and his companion had
gone, "how easy them rich codgers get along. That fellow must 'a' made
a study of wines, and nothing worse ever bothers him than a waiter
fillin' his glass wrong."

"You'll be beat more," answered Percival, "when I tell you this slump
in copper has just ruined him--wiped out every cent he had. He'd just
taken it off the ticker when we found him in Fouts's place there. He's
lost a million and a half, every cent he had in the world, and he has a
wife and two grown daughters."

"Shoo! you don't say! And I'd have sworn he didn't care a row of pins
whether copper went up or down. He was a lot more worried about that
champagne. Well, well! he certainly is a game loser. I got more respect
fur him now. This town does produce thoroughbreds, you can't deny
that."

"Uncle Peter, she's down to 93, and I've had to margin up a good bit. I
didn't think it could get below 95 at the worst."

"Oh, I can't bother about them things. Just think of when she booms."

"I do--but say--do you think we better pinch our bets?"

Uncle Peter finished his glass of beer.

"Lord! don't ask _me_," he replied, with the unconcern of perfect
trust. "Of course if you've lost your nerve, or if you think all these
things you been tellin' me was jest some one foolin' you--"

"No, I know better than that, and I haven't lost my nerve. After all,
it only means that the crowd is looking for a bigger rake-off."

"Your pa always kept _his_ nerve," said Uncle Peter. "I've known him to
make big money by keepin' it when other men lost theirs. Of course he
had genius fur it, and you're purty young yet--"

"I only thought of it for a minute. I didn't really mean it."

They read the next afternoon that Gordon Blythe had been found dead of
asphyxiation in a little down-town hotel under circumstances that left
no doubt of his suicide.

"That man wa'n't so game as we thought," said Uncle Peter. "He's left
his family to starve. Now your pa was a game loser fur fair. Dan'l J.
would'a' called fur another deck."

"And copper's up two points to-day," said Percival, cheerfully. He had
begun to be depressed with forebodings of disaster, and this slight
recovery was cheering.

"By the way," he continued, "there may be another gas-jet blown out in
a few days. That party, you know, our friend from Montana, has been
selling Consolidated right and left. Where do you suppose she got any
such tip as that? Well, I'm buying and she's selling, and we'll have
that money back. She'll be wiped off the board when Consolidated
soars."




CHAPTER XXXIV.

How the Chinook Came to Wall Street


The loss of much money is commonly a subject to be managed with brevity
and aversion by one who sits down with the right reverence for sheets
of clean paper. To bewail is painful. To affect lightness, on the other
hand, would, in this age, savour of insincerity, if not of downright
blasphemy. More than a bare recital of the wretched facts, therefore,
is not seemly.

The Bines fortune disappeared much as a heavy fall of snow melts under
the Chinook wind.

That phenomenon is not uninteresting. We may picture a far-reaching
waste of snow, wind-furrowed until it resembles a billowy white sea
frozen motionless. The wind blows half a gale and the air is full of
fine ice-crystals that sting the face viciously. The sun, lying low on
the southern horizon, seems a mere frozen globe, with lustrous pink
crescents encircling it.

One day the wind backs and shifts. A change portends. Even the herds of
half-frozen range cattle sense it by some subtle beast-knowledge. They
are no longer afraid to lie down as they may have been for a week. The
danger of freezing has passed. The temperature has been at fifty
degrees below zero. Now, suddenly it begins to rise. The air is
scarcely in motion, but occasionally it descends as out of a
blast-furnace from overhead. To the southeast is a mass of dull black
clouds. Their face is unbroken. But the upper edges are ragged, torn by
a wind not yet felt below. Two hours later its warmth comes. In ten
minutes the mercury goes up thirty-five degrees. The wind comes at a
thirty-mile velocity. It increases in strength and warmth, blowing with
a mighty roar.

Twelve hours afterward the snow, three feet deep on a level, has
melted. There are bald, brown hills everywhere to the horizon, and the
plains are flooded with water. The Chinook has come and gone. In this
manner suddenly went the Bines fortune.

April 30th, Consolidated Copper closed at 91. Two days later, May 2d,
the same ill-fated stock closed at 5l--a drop of forty points. Roughly
the decline meant the loss of a hundred million dollars to the fifteen
thousand share-holders. From every city of importance in the country
came tales more or less tragic of holdings wiped out, of ruined
families, of defalcations and suicides. The losses in New York City
alone were said to be fifty millions. A few large holders, reputed to
enjoy inside information, were said to have put their stock aside and
"sold short" in the knowledge of what was coming. Such tales are always
popular in the Street.

Others not less popular had to do with the reasons for the slump. Many
were plausible. A deal with the Rothschilds for control of the Spanish
mines had fallen through. Or, again, the slaughter was due to the
Shepler group of Federal Oil operators, who were bent on forcing some
one to unload a great quantity of the stock so that they might absorb
it. The immediate causes were less recondite. The Consolidated Company,
so far from controlling the output, was suddenly shown to control
actually less than fifty per cent of it. Its efforts to amend or repeal
the hardy old law of Supply and Demand had simply met with the
indifferent success that has marked all such efforts since the first
attempted corner in stone hatchets, or mastodon tusks, or whatever it
may have been. In the language of one of its newspaper critics, the
"Trust" had been "founded on misconception and prompted along lines of
self-destruction. Its fundamental principles were the restriction of
product, the increase of price, and the throttling of competition, a
trinity that would wreck any combination, business, political, or
social."

With this generalisation we have no concern. As to the copper
situation, the comment was pat. It had been suddenly disclosed, not
only that no combination could be made to include the European mines,
but that the Consolidated Company had an unsold surplus of 150,000,000
pounds of copper; that it was producing 20,000,000 pounds a month more
than could be sold, and that it had made large secret sales abroad at
from two to three cents below the market price.

As if fearing that these adverse conditions did not sufficiently ensure
the stock's downfall, the Shepler group of Federal Oil operators beat
it down further with what was veritably a golden sledge. That is, they
exported gold at a loss. At a time when obligations could have been met
more cheaply with bought bills they sent out many golden cargoes at an
actual loss of three hundred dollars on the half million. As money was
already dear, and thus became dearer, the temptation and the means to
hold copper stock, in spite of all discouragements, were removed from
the paths of hundreds of the harried holders.

Incidentally, Western Trolley had gone into the hands of a receiver, a
failure involving another hundred million dollars, and Union Cordage
had fallen thirty-five points through sensational disclosures as to
its overcapitalisation.

Into this maelstrom of a panic market the Bines fortune had been sucked
with a swiftness so terrible that the family's chief advising member
was left dazed and incredulous.

For two days he clung to the ticker tape as to a life line. He had
committed the millions of the family as lightly as ever he had staked a
hundred dollars on the turn of a card or left ten on the change-tray
for his waiter.

Then he had seen his cunningly built foundations, rested upon with
hopes so high for three months, melt away like snow when the blistering
Chinook comes.

It has been thought wise to adopt two somewhat differing similes in the
foregoing, in order that the direness of the tragedy may be
sufficiently apprehended.

The morning of the first of the two last awful days, he was called to
the office of Fouts and Hendricks by telephone.

"Something going to happen in Consolidated to-day."

He had hurried down-town, flushed with confidence. He knew there was
but one thing _could_ happen. He had reached the office at ten and
heard the first vicious little click of the ticker--that beating heart
of the Stock Exchange--as it began the unemotional story of what men
bought and sold over on the floor. Its inventor died in the poorhouse,
but Capital would fare badly without his machine. Consolidated was down
three points. The crowd about the ticker grew absorbed at once. Reports
came in over the telephone. The bears had made a set for the stock. It
began to slump rapidly. As the stock was goaded down, point by point,
the crowd of traders waxed more excited.

As the stock fell, the banks requested the brokers to margin up their
loans, and the brokers, in turn, requested Percival to margin up his
trades. The shares he had bought outright went to cover the shortage in
those he had bought on a twenty per cent margin. Loans were called
later, and marginal accounts wiped out with appalling informality.

Yet when Consolidated suddenly rallied three points just at the close
of the day's trading, he took much comfort in it as an omen of the
morrow. That night, however, he took but little satisfaction in Uncle
Peter's renewed assurances of trust in his acumen. Uncle Peter, he
decided all at once, was a fatuous, doddering old man, unable to
realise that the whole fortune was gravely endangered. And with the
gambler's inveterate hope that luck must change he forbore to undeceive
the old man.

Uncle Peter went with him to the office next morning, serenely
interested in the prospects.

"You got your pa's way of taking hold of big propositions. That's all I
need to know," he reassured the young man, cheerfully.

Consolidated Copper opened that day at 78, and went by two o'clock to
51.

Percival watched the decline with a conviction that he was dreaming. He
laughed to think of his relief when he should awaken. The crowd surged
about the ticker, and their voices came as from afar. Their acts all
had the weird inconsequence of the people we see in dreams. Yet
presently it had gone too far to be amusing. He must arouse himself and
turn over on his side. In five minutes, according to the dream, he had
lost five million dollars as nearly as he could calculate. Losing a
million a minute, even in sleep, he thought, was disquieting.

Then upon the tape he read another chapter of disaster. Western Trolley
had gone into the hands of a receiver,--a fine, fat, promising stock
ruined without a word of warning; and while he tried to master this
news the horrible clicking thing declared that Union Cordage was
selling down to 58,--a drop of exactly 35 points since morning.

Fouts, with a slip of paper in his hand, beckoned him from the door of
his private office. He went dazedly in to him,--and was awakened from
the dream that he had been losing a fortune in his sleep.

Coming out after a few moments, he went up to Uncle Peter, who had been
sitting, watchful but unconcerned, in one of the armchairs along the
wall. The old man looked up inquiringly.

"Come inside, Uncle Peter!"

They went into the private office of Fouts. Percival shut the door, and
they were alone.

"Uncle Peter, Burman's been suspended on the Board of Trade; Fouts just
had this over his private wire. Corn broke to-day."

"That so? Oh, well, maybe it was worth a couple of million to find out
Burman plays corn like he plays poker; 'twas if you couldn't get it fur
any less."

"Uncle Peter, we're wiped out."

"How, wiped out? What do you mean, son?"

"We're done, I tell you. We needn't care a damn now where copper goes
to. We're out of it--and--Uncle Peter, we're broke."

"Out of copper? Broke? But you said--" He seemed to be making an effort
to comprehend. His lack of grasp was pitiful.

"Out of copper, but there's Western Trolley and that Cordage stock--"

"Everything wiped out, I tell you--Union Cordage gone down thirty-five
points, somebody let out the inside secrets--and God only knows how far
Western Trolley's gone down."

"Are you all in?"

"Every dollar--you knew that. But say," he brightened out of his
despair, "there's the One Girl--a good producer--Shepler knows the
property--Shepler's in this block--" and he was gone.

The old man strolled out into the trading-room again. A curious grim
smile softened his square jaw for a moment. He resumed his comfortable
chair and took up a newspaper, glancing incidentally at the crowd of
excited men about the tickers. He had about him that air of repose
which comes to big men who have stayed much in big out-of-door
solitudes.

"Ain't he a nervy old guy?" said a crisp little money-broker to Fouts.
"They're wiped out, but you wouldn't think he cared any more about it
than Mike the porter with his brass polish out there."

The old man held his paper up, but did not read.

Percival rushed in by him, beckoning him to the inner room.

"Shepler's all right about the One Girl. He'll take a mortgage on it
for two hundred thousand if you'll recommend it--only he can't get the
money before to-morrow. There's bound to be a rally in this stock, and
we'll go right back for some of the hair of the--why,--what's the
matter--Uncle Peter!"

The old man had reeled, and then weakly caught at the top of the desk
with both hands for support.

"Ruined!" he cried, hoarsely, as if the extent of the calamity had just
borne in upon him. "My God! Ruined, and at my time of life!" He seemed
about to collapse. Percíval quickly helped him into a chair, where he
became limp.

"There, I'm all right. Oh, it's terrible! and we all trusted you so. I
thought you had your pa's brains. I'd 'a' trusted you soon's I would
Shepler, and now look what you led us into--fortune gone--broke--and
all your fault!"

"Don't, Uncle Peter--don't, for God's sake--not when I'm down! I can't
stand it!"

"Gamble away your own money--no, that wa'n't enough--take your poor
ma's share and your sister's, and take what little I had to keep me in
my old age--robbed us all--that's what comes of thinkin' a damned
tea-drinkin' fop could have a thimble-full of brains!"

"Don't, please,--not just now--give it to me good later--to-morrow--all
you want to!"

"And here I'm come to want in my last days when I'm too feeble to work.
I'll die in bitter privation because I was an old fool, and trusted a
young one."

"Please don't, Uncle Peter!"

"You led us in--robbed your poor ma and your sister. I told you I
didn't know anything about it and you talked me into trusting you--I
might 'a' known better."

"Can't you stop awhile--just a moment?"

"Of course I don't matter. Maybe I can hold a drill, or tram ore, or
something, but I can't support your ma and Pishy like they ought to be,
with my rheumatiz comin' on again, too. And your ma'll have to take in
boarders, and do washin' like as not, and think of poor Pishy--prob'ly
she'll have to teach school or clerk in a store--poor Pish--she'll be
lucky now if she can marry some common scrub American out in them
hills--like as not one of them shoe-clerks in the Boston Cash Store at
Montana City! And jest when I was lookin' forward to luxury and palaces
in England, and everything so grand! How much you lost?" "That's right,
no use whining! Nearly as I can get the round figures of it, about
twelve million."

"Awful--awful! By Cripes! that man Blythe that done himself up the
other night had the right of it. What's the use of living if you got to
go to the poorhouse?"

"Come, come!" said Percival, alarm over Uncle Peter crowding out his
other emotions. "Be a game loser, just as you said pa would be. Sit up
straight and make 'em bring on another deck."

He slapped the old man on the back with simulated cheerfulness; but the
despairing one only cowered weakly under the blow.

"We can't--we ain't got the stake for a new deck. Oh, dear! think of
your ma and me not knowin' where to turn fur a meal of victuals at our
time of life."

Percival was being forced to cheerfulness in spite of himself.

"Come, it isn't as bad as that, Uncle Peter. We've got properties left,
and good ones, too."

Uncle Peter weakly waved the hand of finished discouragement. "Hush,
don't speak of that. Them properties need a manager to make 'em pay--a
plain business man--a man to stay on the ground and watch 'em and develop
'em with his brains--a young man with his health! What good am I--a poor,
broken-down old cuss, bent double with rheumatiz--almost--I'm ashamed of
you fur suggesting such a thing!"

"I'll do it myself--I never thought of asking you."

Uncle Peter emitted a nasal gasp of disgust.

"You--you--you'd make a purty manager of anything, wouldn't you! As if
you could be trusted with anything again that needs a schoolboy's
intelligence. Even if you had the brains, you ain't got the taste nor
the sperrit in you. You're too lazy--too triflin'. _You_, a-goin' back
there, developin' mines, and gettin' out ties, and lumber, and breeding
shorthorns, and improvin' some of the finest land God ever made--_you_
bein' sober and industrious, and smart, like a business man has got to
be out there nowadays. That ain't any bonanza country any more; 1901
ain't like 1870; don't figure on that. You got to work the low-grade
ore now for a few dollars a ton, and you got to work it with brains.
No, sir, that country ain't what it used to be. There might 'a' been a
time when you'd made your board and clothes out there when things come
easier. Now it's full of men that hustle and keep their mind on their
work, and ain't runnin' off to pink teas in New York. It takes a man
with some of the brains your pa had to make the game pay now. But
_you_--don't let me hear any more of _that_ nonsense!"

Percival had entered the room pale. He was now red. The old man's
bitter contempt had flushed him into momentary forgetfulness of the
disaster.

"Look here, Uncle Peter, you've been telling me right along I _did_
have my father's head and my father's ways and his nerve, and God knows
what I _didn't_ have that he had!"

"I was fooled,--I can't deny it. What's the use of tryin' to crawl out
of it? You did fool me, and I own up to it; I thought you had some
sense, some capacity; but you was only like him on the surface; you
jest got one or two little ways like his, that's all--Dan'l J. now was
good stuff all the way through. He might 'a' guessed wrong on copper,
but he'd 'a' saved a get-away stake or borrowed one, and he'd 'a' piked
back fur Montana to make his pile right over--and he'd 'a' _made_ it,
too--that was the kind of man your pa was--he'd 'a' made it!"

"I _have_ saved a get-away stake."

"Your pa had the head, I tell you--and the spirit--"

"And, by God, I'll show you I've got the head. You think because I wanted
to live here, and because I made this wrong play that I'm like all these
pinheads you've seen around here. I'll show you different!--I'll fool
you."

"Now don't explode!" said the old man, wearily. "You meant well, poor
fellow--I'll say that fur you; you got a good heart. But there's lots
of good men that ain't good fur anything in particular. You've got a
good heart--yes--you're all right from the neck down."

"See here," said Percival, more calmly, "listen: I've got you all into
this thing, and played you broke against copper; and I'm going to get
you out--understand that?"

The old man looked at him pityingly.

"I tell you I'm going to get you out. I'm going back there, and get
things in action, and I'm going to stay by them. I've got a good idea
of these properties--and you hear me, now--I'll finish with a
bank-roll that'll choke Red Bank Cañon."

Fouts knocked and came in.

"Now you go along up-town, Uncle Peter. I want a few minutes with Mr.
Fouts, and I'll come to your place at seven."

The old man arose dejectedly.

"Don't let me interfere a minute with your financial operations. I'm
too old a man to be around in folks' way."

He slouched out with his head bent.

A moment later Percival remembered his last words, also his reference
to Blythe. He was seized with fear for what he might do in his despair.
Uncle Peter would act quickly if his mind had been made up.

He ran out into Wall Street, and hurried up to Broadway. A block off on
that crowded thoroughfare he saw the tall figure of Uncle Peter turning
into the door of a saloon. He might have bought poison. He ran the
length of the block and turned in.

Uncle Peter stood at one end of the bar with a glass of creamy beer in
front of him. At the moment Percival entered he was enclosing a large
slab of Swiss cheese between two slices of rye bread.

He turned and faced Percival, looking from him to his sandwich with
vacant eyes.

"I'm that wrought up and distressed, son, I hardly know what I'm doin'!
Look at me now with this stuff in my hands."

"I just wanted to be sure you were all right," said Percival, greatly
relieved.

"All right," the old man repeated. "All right? My God,--ruined! There's
nothin' left to do now."

He looked absently at the sandwich, and bit a generous semicircle into
it.

"I don't see how you can eat, Uncle Peter. It's so horrible!"

"I don't myself; it ain't a healthy appetite--can't be--must be some kind
of a fever inside of me--I s'pose--from all this trouble. And now I've
come to poverty and want in my old age. Say, son, I believe there's jest
one thing you can do to keep me from goin' crazy."

"Name it, Uncle Peter. You bet I'll do it!"

"Well, it ain't much--of course I wouldn't expect you to do all them
things you was jest braggin' about back there--about goin' to work the
properties and all that--you would do it if you could, I know--but it
ain't that. All I ask is, don't play this Wall Street game any more. If
we can save out enough by good luck to keep us decently, so your ma
won't have to take boarders, why, don't you go and lose that, too.
Don't mortgage the One Girl. I may be sort of superstitious, but
somehow, I don't believe Wall Street is your game. Course, I don't say
you ain't got a game--of some kind--but I got one of them presentiments
that it ain't Wall Street." "I don't believe it is, Uncle Peter--I
won't touch another share, and I won't go near Shepler again. We'll
keep the One Girl."

He called a cab for the old man, and saw him started safely off
up-town.

At the hotel Uncle Peter met Billy Brue flourishing an evening paper
that flared with exclamatory headlines.

"It's all in the papers, Uncle Peter!"

"Dead broke! Ain't it awful, Billy!"

"Say, Uncle Peter, you said you'd raise hell, and you done it. You done
it good, didn't you?"




CHAPTER XXXV.

The News Broken, Whereupon an Engagement is Broken


At seven Percival found Uncle Peter at his hotel, still in abysmal
depths of woe. Together they went to break the awful news to the
unsuspecting Mrs. Bines and Psyche.

"If you'd only learned something useful while you had the chance,"
began Uncle Peter, dismally, as they were driven to the Hightower, "how
to do tricks with cards, or how to sing funny songs, like that little
friend of yours from Baltimore you was tellin' me about. Look at him,
now. He didn't have anything but his own ability. He could tell you
every time what card you was thinkin' about, and do a skirt dance and
give comic recitations and imitate a dog fight out in the back yard,
and now he's married to one of the richest ladies in New York. Why
couldn't you 'a' been learnin' some of them clever things, so you could
'a' married some good-hearted woman with lots of money--but no--" Uncle
Peter's tones were bitter to excess--"you was a rich man's son and
raised in idleness--and now, when the rainy day's come, you can't even
take a white rabbit out of a stove-pipe hat!"


To these senile maunderings Percival paid no attention. When they came
into the crowd and lights of the Hightower, he sent the old man up
alone.

"You go, please, and break it to them, Uncle Peter. I'd rather not be
there just at first. I'll come along in a little bit."

So Uncle Peter went, protesting that he was a broken old man and a
cumberer of God's green earth.

Mrs. Bines and Psyche had that moment sat down to dinner. Uncle Peter's
manner at once alarmed them.

"It's all over," he said, sinking into a chair.

"Why, what's the matter, Uncle Peter?"

"Percival has--"

Mrs. Bines arose quickly, trembling.

"There--I just knew it--it's all over?--he's been struck by one of
those terrible automobiles--Oh, take me to where he is!"

"He ain't been run over--he's gone broke-lost all our money; every last
cent."

"He hasn't been run over and killed?"

"He's ruined us, I tell you, Marthy,--lost every cent of our money in
Wall Street."

"Hasn't he been hurt at all?--not even his leg broke or a big gash in
his head and knocked senseless?"

"That boy never had any sense. I tell you he's lost all our money."

"And he ain't a bit hurt--nothing the matter with him?"

"Ain't any more hurt than you or me this minute."

"You're not fooling his mother, Uncle Peter?"

"I tell you he's alive and well, only he's lost your money and Pish's
and mine and his own."

Mrs. Bines breathed a long, trembling sigh of relief, and sat down to
the table again.

"Well, no need to scare a body out of their wits--scaring his mother to
death won't bring his money back, will it? If it's gone it's gone."

"But ma, it _is_ awful!" cried Psyche. "Listen to what Uncle Peter
says. We're poor! Don't you understand? Perce has lost all our money."

Mrs. Bines was eating her soup defiantly.

"Long's he's got his health," she began.

"And me windin' up in the poorhouse," whined Uncle Peter.

"Think of it, ma! Oh, what shall we do?"

Percival entered. Uncle Peter did not raise his head. Psyche stared at
him. His mother ran to him, satisfied herself that he was sound in wind
and limb, that he had not treacherously donned his summer underwear,
and that his feet were not wet. Then she led him to the table.

"Now you sit right down here and take some food. If you're all right,
everything is all right."

With a weak attempt at his old gaiety he began: "Really, Mrs.
Crackenthorpe--" but he caught Psyche's look and had to stop.

"I'm sorry, sis, clear into my bones. I made an ass of myself--a
regular fool right from the factory."


"Never mind, my son; eat your soup," said his mother. And then, with
honest intent to comfort him, "Remember that saying of your pa's, 'it
takes all kinds of fools to make a world.'"

"But there ain't any fool like a damn fool!" said Uncle Peter, shortly.
"I been a-tellin' him."

"Well, you just let him alone; you'll spoil his appetite, first thing
you know. My son, eat your soup, now before it gets cold."

"If I only hadn't gone in so heavy," groaned Percival. "Or, if I'd only
got tied up in some way for a few weeks--something I could tide over."

"Yes," said Uncle Peter, with a cheerful effort at sarcasm, "it's
always easy to think up a lot of holes you _could_ get out of--some
different kind of a hole besides the one you're in. That's all some
folks can do when they get in one hole, they say, 'Oh, if I was only in
that other one, now, how slick I could climb out!' I ain't ever met a
person yet was satisfied with the hole they was in. Always some
complaint to make about 'em."

"And I had a chance to get out a week ago."

"Yes, and you wouldn't take it, of course--you knew too much--swellin'
around here about bein' a Napoleon of finance--and a Shepler and a
Wizard of Wall Street, and all that kind of guff--and you wouldn't take
your chance, and old Mr. Chance went right off and left you, that's
what. I tell you, what some folks need is a breed of chances that'll
stand without hitchin'."

Percival braced himself and began on his soup.

[Illustration: _"'REMEMBER THAT SAYING OF YOUR PA'S--IT TAKES ALL KINDS
OF FOOLS TO MAKE A WORLD.'"_]

"Never you mind, Uncle Peter. You remember what I told you."

"That takes a different man from what you are. If your pa was alive
now--"

"But what are we going to do?" cried Psyche.

"First thing you'll do," said Uncle Peter, promptly, "you go write a
letter to that beau of your'n, tellin' him it's all off. You don't want
to let him be the one to break it because you lost your money, do you?
You go sign his release right this minute."

"Yes--you're right, Uncle Peter--I suppose it must be done--but the
poor fellow really cares for me."

"Oh, of course," answered the old man, "it'll fairly break his heart.
You do it just the same!"

She withdrew, and presently came back with a note which she despatched
to Mauburn.

Percival and his mother had continued their dinner, the former shaking
his head between the intervals of the old man's lashings, and appearing
to hold silent converse with himself.

This was an encouraging sign. It is a curious fact that people never
talk to themselves except triumphantly. In moments of real despair we
are inwardly dumb. But observe the holders of imaginary conversations.
They are conquerors to the last one. They administer stinging rebukes
that leave the adversary writhing. They rise to Alpine heights of pure
wisdom and power, leaving him to flounder ignobly in the mire of his
own fatuity.

They achieve repartee the brilliance of which dazzles him to
contemptible silence. If statistics were at hand we should doubtless
learn that no man has ever talked to himself save by way of
demonstrating his own godlike superiority, and the tawdry impotence of
all obstacles and opponents. Percival talked to himself and mentally
lived the next five years in a style that reduced Uncle Peter to
grudging but imperative awe for his superb gifts of administration. He
bathed in this imaginary future as in the waters of omnipotence. As
time went on he foresaw the shafts of Uncle Peter being turned back
upon him with such deadliness that, by the time the roast came, his
breast was swelling with pity for that senile scoffer.

Uncle Peter had first declared that the thought of food sickened him.
Prevailed upon at last by Mrs. Bines to taste the soup, he was soon
eating as those present had of late rarely seen him eat.

"'Tain't a natural appetite, though," he warned them. "It's a kind of a
mania before I go all to pieces, I s'pose."

"Nonsense! We'll have you all right in a week," said Percival. "Just
remember that I'm going to take care of you."

"My son can do anything he makes up his mind to," declared Mrs.
Bines--"just anything he lays out to do."

They talked until late into the night of what he should "lay out" to
do.

Meantime the stronghold of Mauburn's optimism was being desperately
stormed.

In an evening paper he had read of Percival's losses. The afternoon
press of New York is not apt to understate the facts of a given case.
The account Mauburn read stated that the young Western millionaire had
beggared his family.

Mauburn had gone to his room to be alone with this bitter news. He had
begun to face it when Psyche's note of release came. While he was
adjusting this development, another knock came on his door. It was the
same maid who had brought Psyche's note. This time she brought what he
saw to be a cablegram.

"Excuse me, Mr. Mauburn,--now this came early to-day and you wasn't in
your room, and when you came in Mrs. Ferguson forgot it till just now."

He tore open the envelope and read:

"Male twins born to Lady Casselthorpe. Mother and sons doing finely.

"HINKIE."

Mauburn felt the rock foundations of Manhattan Island to be crumbling
to dust. For an hour he sat staring at the message. He did not talk to
himself once.

Then he hurriedly dressed, took the note and the cablegram, and sought
Mrs. Drelmer.

He found that capable lady gowned for the opera. She received his bits
of news with the aplomb of a resourceful commander.

"Now, don't go seedy all at once--you've a chance."

"Hang it all, Mrs. Drelmer, I've not. Life isn't worth living--"

"Tut, tut! Death isn't, either!"

"But we'd have been so nicely set up, even without the title, and now
Bines, the clumsy ass, has come this infernal cropper, and knocked
everything on the head. I say, you know, it's beastly!"

"Hush, and let me think!"

He paced the floor while his matrimonial adviser tapped a white kidded
foot on the floor, and appeared to read plans of new battle in a
mother-of-pearl paper-knife which she held between the tips of her
fingers.

"I have it--and we'll do it quickly!--Mrs. Wybert!"

Mauburn's eyes opened widely.

"That absurd old Peter Bines has spoken to me of her three times
lately. She's made a lot more money than she had in this same copper
deal, and she'd a lot to begin with. I wondered why he spoke so
enthusiastically of her, and I don't see now, but--"

"Well?"

"She'll take you, and you'll be as well set up as you were before.
Listen. I met her last week at the Critchleys. She spoke of having seen
you. I could see she was dead set to make a good marriage. You know she
wanted to marry Fred Milbrey, but Horace and his mother wouldn't hear
of it after Avice became engaged to Rulon Shepler. I'm in the
Critchleys' box to-night and I understand she's to be there. Leave it
to me. Now it's after nine, so run along."

"But, Mrs. Drelmer, there's that poor girl--she cares for me, and I
like her immensely, you know--truly I do--and she's a trump--see where
she says here she couldn't possibly leave her people now they've come
down--even if matters were not otherwise impossible."

"Well, you see they're not only otherwise impossible, but every wise
impossible. What could you do? Go to Montana with them and learn to be
an Indian? Don't for heaven's sake sentimentalise! Go home and sleep
like a rational creature. Come in by eleven to-morrow. Even without the
title you'll be a splendid match for Mrs. Wybert, and she must have a
tidy lot of millions after this deal."

Sorely distressed, he walked back to his lodgings in Thirty-second
Street. Wild, Quixotic notions of sacrifice flooded his mood of
dejection. If the worst came, he could go West with the family and
learn how to do something. And yet--Mrs. Wybert. Of course it must be
that. The other idea was absurd--too wild for serious consideration. He
was thirty years old, and there was only one way for an English
gentleman to live--even if it must break the heart of a poor girl who
had loved him devotedly, and for whom he had felt a steady and genuine
affection. He passed a troubled night.

Down at the hotel of Peter Bines was an intimation from Mrs. Wybert
herself, bearing upon this same fortuity. When Uncle Peter reached
there at 2 A.M., he found in his box a small scented envelope which he
opened with wonder.

Two enclosures fell out. One was a clipping from an evening paper,
announcing the birth of twin sons to Lord Casselthorpe. The other was
the card he had left with Mrs. Wybert on the day of his call; his name
on one side, announcing him; on the other the words he had written:

"Sell Consolidated Copper all you can until it goes down to 65. Do this
up to the limit of your capital and I will make good anything you lose.

"PETER BINES."

He read the note:

"ARLINGHAM HOTEL--7.30.

"MR. PETER BINES:

"_Dear Sir_:--You funny old man, you. I don't pretend to understand
your game, but you may rely on my secrecy. I am more grateful to you
than words can utter--and I will always be glad to do anything for
you.

"_Yours very truly_,

"BLANCHE CATHERTON WYBERT.

"P. S. About that other matter--him you know--you will see from this
notice I cut from the paper that the party won't get any title at all
now, so a dead swell New York man is in every way more eligible. In
fact the other party is not to be thought of for one moment, as I am
positive you would agree with me."

      *       *       *       *       *

He tore the note and the card to fine bits.

"It does beat all," he complained later to Billy Brue. "Put a beggar on
horseback and they begin right away to fuss around because the bridle
ain't set with diamonds--give 'em a little, and they want the whole
ball of wax!"

"That's right," said Billy Brue, with the quick sympathy of the
experienced. "That guy that doped me, he wa'n't satisfied with my good
thirty-dollar wad. Not by no means! He had to go take my breast-pin
nugget from the Early Bird."

At eleven o'clock the next morning Mauburn waited in Mrs. Drelmer's
drawing-room for the news she might have.

When that competent person sailed in, he saw temporary defeat written
on her brow. His heart sank to its low level of the night before.

"Well, I saw the creature," she began, "and it required no time at all
to reach a very definite understanding with her. I had feared it might
be rather a delicate matter, talking to her at once, you know--and we
needed to hurry--but she's a woman one can talk to. She's made heaps of
money, and the poor thing is society-mad--_so_ afraid the modish world
won't take her at her true value--but she talked very frankly about
marriage--really she's cool-headed for all the fire she seems to
have--and the short of it is that she's determined to marry some one of
the smart men here in New York. The creature's fascinated by the very
idea."

"Did you mention me?"

"You may be sure I did, but she'd read the papers, and, like so many of
these people, she has no use at all for an Englishman without a title.
Of course I couldn't be too definite with her, but she understood
perfectly, and she let me see she wouldn't hear of it at all. So she's
off the list. But don't give up. Now, there's--"

But Mauburn was determinedly downcast.

"It's uncommon handsome of you, Mrs. Drelmer, really, but we'll have to
leave off that, you know. If a chap isn't heir to a peerage or a city
fortune there's no getting on that way."

"Why, the man is actually discouraged. Now you need some American
pluck, old chap. An American of your age wouldn't give up."

"But, hang it all! an American knows how to do things, you know, and
like as not he'd nothing to begin with, by Jove! Now I'd a lot to begin
with, and here it's all taken away."

"Look at young Bines. He's had a lot taken away, but I'll wager he
makes it all back again and more too before he's forty."

"He might in this country; he'd never do it at home, you know."

"This country is for you as much as for him. Now, there's Augusta
Hartong--those mixed-pickle millionaires, you know. I was chatting with
Augusta's mother only the other day, and if I'd only suspected this--"

"Awfully kind of you, Mrs. Drelmer, but it's no use. I'm fairly played
out. I shall go to see Miss Bines, and have a chat with her people, you
know."

"Now, for heaven's sake, don't make a silly of yourself, whatever you
do! Mind, the girl released you of her own accord!"

"Awfully obliged. I'll think about it jolly well, first. See you soon.
Good-bye!" And Mauburn was off.

He was reproaching himself. "That poor girl has been eating her heart
out for a word of love from me. I'm a brute!"




CHAPTER XXXVI.

The God in the Machine


Uncle Peter next morning was up to a late breakfast with the stricken
family. Percival found him a trifle less bitter, but not less convinced
in his despair. The young man himself had recovered his spirits
wonderfully. The utter collapse of the old man, always so reliant
before, had served to fire all his latent energy. He was now voluble
with plans for the future; not only determined to reassure Uncle Peter
that the family would be provided for, but not a little anxious to
justify the old man's earlier praise, and refute his calumnies of the
night before.

Mrs. Bines, so complacent overnight, was the most disconsolate one of
the group. With her low tastes she was now regarding the loss of the
fortune as a calamity to the worthy infants of her own chosen field.

"And there, I'd promised to give five thousand dollars to the new home
for crippled children, and five thousand to St. John's Guild for the
floating hospitals this summer--just yesterday--and I do declare, I
just couldn't stay in New York without money, and see those poor babies
suffer."

"You couldn't stay in New York without money. Mrs. Good-thing," said
her son,--"not even if you couldn't see a thing; but don't you welsh
on any of your plays--we'll make that ten thousand good if I have to
get a sand-bag, and lay out a few of these lads around here some dark
night."

"But anyway you can't do much to relieve them. I don't know but what
it's honester to be poor while the authorities allow such goings on."

"You have the makings of a very dangerous anarchist in you, ma. I've
seen that for some time. But we're an honest family all right now, with
the exception of a few properties that I'll have to sit up with
nights--sit right by their sick-beds and wake them up to take their
meddy every half hour--"

"Now, my son, don't you get to going without your sleep," began his
mother.

"And wasn't it lucky about my sending that note to George!" said
Psyche. "Here in this morning's paper we find he isn't going to be Lord
Casselthorpe, after all. What _could_ I have done if we hadn't lost the
money?" From which it might be inferred that certain people who had
declared Miss Bines to be very hard-headed were not so far wrong as
the notorious "casual observer" is very apt to be.

"Never you mind, sis," said her brother, cheerfully, "we'll be all
right yet. You wait a little, and hear Uncle Peter take back what he's
said about me. Uncle Peter, I'll have you taking off that hat of yours
every time you get sight of me, in about a year."

He went again over the plans. The income from the One Girl was to be
used in developing the other properties: the stock ranch up on the
Bitter Root, the other mines that had been worked but little and with
crude appliances; the irrigation and land-improvement enterprises, and
the big timber tracts.

"I got something of an idea of it when Uncle Peter took me around
summer before last, and I learned a lot more getting the stuff together
with Coplen. Now, I'm ready to buckle down to it." He looked at Uncle
Peter, hungry for a word of encouragement to soothe the hurts the old
man had put upon him.

But all Uncle Peter would say was, "That _sounds_ very well,"
compelling the inference that he regarded sound and substance as
phenomena not necessarily related.

"But give me a chance, Uncle Peter. Just don't jump on me too hard for
a year!"

"Well, I know that country. There's big chances for a young man with
brains--understand?--that has got all the high-living nonsense blasted
out of his upper levels--but it takes work. You _may_ do
something--there _are_ white blackbirds--but you're on a nasty piece
of road-bed--curves all down on the outside--wheels flatted under every
truck, and you've had her down in the corner so long I doubt if you can
even slow up, say nothin' of reversin'. And think of me gettin' fooled
that way at _my_ time of life," he continued, as if in confidence to
himself. "But then, I always was a terrible poor judge of human
nature."

"Well, have your own way; but I'll fool you again, while you're
coppering me. You watch, that's all I ask. Just sit around and talk
wise about me all you want to, but watch. Now, I must go down and get
to work with Fouts. Thank the Lord, we didn't have to welsh either, any
more than Mrs. Give-up there did."

"You won't touch any more stock; you won't get that money from
Shepler?"

"I won't; I won't go near Shepler, I promise you. Now you'll believe me
in one thing, I know you will, Uncle Peter." He went over to the old
man.

"I want to thank you for pulling me up on that play as you did last
night. You saved me, and I'm more grateful to you than I can say. But
for you I'd have gone in and dug the hole deeper." He made the old man
shake hands with him--though Uncle Peter's hand remained limp and
cheerless. "You can shake on that, at least. You saved me, and I thank
you for it."

"Well, I'm glad you got _some_ sense," answered the old man,
grudgingly. "It's always the way in that stock game. There's always
goin' to be a big killing made in Wall Street to-morrow, only to-morrow
never comes. Reminds me of Hollings's old turtle out at
Spokane--Hollings that keeps the Little Gem restaurant. He's got an
enormous big turtle in his cellar that he's kept to my knowledge fur
fifteen years. Every time he gets a little turtle from the coast he
takes a can of red paint down cellar, and touches up the sign on old
Ben's back--they call the turtle Ben, after Hollings's father-in-law
that won't do a thing but lay around the house all the time, and kick
about the meals. Well, the sign on Ben's back is, 'Green Turtle Soup
To-morrow,' and Ben is drug up to the sidewalk in front of the Little
Gem. And Hollings does have turtle-soup next day, but it's always the
little turtles that's killed, and old Ben is hiked back to his boudoir
until another killing comes off. It's a good deal like that in Wall
Street; there's killings made, but the big fellers with the signs on
their back don't worry none."

"You're right, Uncle Peter. It certainly wasn't my game. Will you come
down with me?"

"Me? Shucks, no! I'm jest a poor, broken old man, now. I'm goin' down
to the square if I can walk that fur, and set on a bench in the sun."

Uncle Peter did succeed in walking as far as Madison Square. He walked,
indeed, with a step of amazing springiness for a man of his years. But
there, instead of reposing in the sun, he entered a cab and was driven
to the Vandevere Building, where he sent in his name to Rulon Shepler.

He was ushered into Shepler's office after a little delay. The two men
shook hands warmly. Uncle Peter was grinning now with rare
enjoyment--he who had in the presence of the family shown naught but
broken age and utter despondency.

"You rough-housed the boy considerable yesterday."

"I never believed the fellow would hold on," said Shepler. "I'm sure
you're right in a way about the West. There isn't another man in this
section who'd have plunged as he did. Really, Mr. Bines, the Street's
never known anything like it. Here are those matters."

He handed the old man a dozen or so certified checks on as many
different banks. Each check had many figures on it. Uncle Peter placed
them in his old leather wallet.

"I knew he'd plunge," he said, taking the chair proffered him, near
Shepler's desk. "I knew he was a natural born plunger, and I knew that
once he gets an idea in his head you can't blast it out; makes no
difference what he starts on he'll play the string out. His pa was jest
that way. Then of course he wa'n't used to money, and he was ignorant
of this game, and he didn't realise what he was doin'. He sort of
distrusted himself along toward the last--but I kept him swelled up
good and plenty."

"Well, I'm glad it's over, Mr. Bines. Of course I concede the relative
insignificance of money to a young man of his qualities--"

"Not its relative insignificance, Mr. Shepler--it's plain damned
insignificance, if you'll excuse the word. If that boy'd gone on he'd
'a' been one of what Billy Brue calls them high-collared Clarences--no
good fur anything but to spend money, and get apoplexy or worse by
forty. As it is now, he'll be a man. He's got his health turned on like
a steam radiator, he's full of responsibility, and he's really
long-headed."

"How did he take the loss?"

"He acted jest like a healthy baby does when you take one toy away from
him. He cries a minute, then forgets all about it, and grabs up
something else to play with. His other toy was bad. What he's playin'
with now will do him a lot of good."

"He's not discouraged, then--he's really hopeful?"

"That ain't any name fur it. Why, he's actin' this mornin' jest like
the world's his oyster--and every month had an 'r' in it at that."

"I'm delighted to hear it. I've always been taken with the chap; and
I'm very glad you read him correctly. It seemed to me you were taking a
risk. It would have broken the spirit of most men."

"Well, you see I knew the stock. It's pushin', fightin' stock. My
grandfather fought his way west to Pennsylvania when that country was
wilder'n Africa, and my father fought his way to Ohio when that was the
frontier. I seen some hard times myself, and this boy's father was a
fighter, too. So I knew the boy had it in him, all right. He's got his
faults, but they don't hurt him none."

"Will he return West?"

"He will that--and the West is the only place fur him. He was gettin'
bad notions about his own country here from them folks that's always
crackin' up the 'other side' 'sif there wa'n't any 'this side,' worth
speakin' of in company. This was no place fur him. Mr. Shepler, this
whole country is God's country. I don't talk much about them things,
but I believe in God--a man has to if he lives so much alone in them
wild places as I have--and I believe this country is His favourite. I
believe He set it apart fur great works. The history of the United
States bears me out so fur. And I didn't want any of my stock growin'
up without feelin' that he had the best native land on earth, and
without bein' ready to fight fur it at the drop of the hat. And jest
between you and me, I believe we can raise that kind in the West
better'n you can here in New York. You got a fine handsome town here,
it's a corkin' good place to see--and get out of--but it ain't any
breedin' place--there ain't the room to grow. Now we produce everything
in the West, includin' men. Here you don't do anything but
consume--includin' men. If the West stopped producin' men fur you,
you'd be as bad off as if it stopped producin' food. You can't grow a
big man on this island any more than you can grow wheat out there on
Broadway. You're all right. You folks have your uses. I ain't like one
of these crazy Populists that thinks you're rascals and all like that;
but my point is that you don't get the fun out of life. You don't get
the big feelin's. Out in the West they're the flesh and blood and bone;
and you people here, meanin' no disrespect--you're the dimples and
wrinkles and--the warts. You spend and gamble back and forth with that
money we raise and dig out of the ground, and you think you're gettin'
the best end of it, but you ain't. I found that out thirty-two years
ago this spring. I had a crazy fool notion then to go back there even
when I hadn't gone broke--and I done well to go. And that's why I
wanted that boy back there. And that's why I'm mighty proud of him, to
see he's so hot to go and take hold, like I knew he would be."

"That's excellent. Now, Mr. Bines, I like him and I dare say you've
done the best thing for him, unusual as it was. But don't grind him.
Might it not be well to ease up a little after he's out there? You
might let it be understood that I am willing to finance any of those
propositions there liberally--"

"No, no--that ain't the way to handle him. Say, I don't expect to quit
cussin' him fur another thirty days yet. I want him to think he ain't
got a friend on earth but himself. Why, I'd have made this play just as
I have done, Mr. Shepler, if there hadn't been a chance to get back a
cent of it--if we'd had to go plumb broke--back to the West in an
emigrant car, with bologna and crackers to eat, that's what I'd have
done. No, sir, no help fur him!"

"Aren't you a little hard on him?"

"Not a bit; don't I know the stock, and know just what he needs? Most
men you couldn't treat as I'm treatin' him; but with him, the harder
you bear down on him the more you'll get out of him. That was the way
with his pa--he was a different man after things got to comin' too easy
fur him. This fellow, the way I'm treatin' him, will keep his head even
after he gets things comin' easy again, or I miss my guess. He thinks I
despise him now. If you told him I was proud of him, I almost believe
you could get a bet out of him, sick as he is of gamblin'."

"Has he suspected anything?"

"Sure, not! Why, he just thanked me about an hour ago fur savin'
him--made me shake hands with him--and I could see the tears back in
his eyes."

The old man chuckled.

"It was like Len Carey's Nigger Jim. Len had Jim set apart on the
plantation fur his own nigger. They fished and went huntin' and
swimmin' together. One day they'd been swimmin', and was lyin' up on
the bank. Len got thinkin' he'd never seen any one drown. He knew Jim
couldn't swim a lick, so he thought he'd have Jim go drown. He says to
him, 'Jim, go jump off that rock there!' That was where the deep hole
was. Jim was scar't, but he had to go. After he'd gone down once, Len
says to him, 'Drown, now, you damn nigger!' and Jim come up and went
down twice more. Then Len begun to think Jim was worth a good bit of
money, and mebbe he'd be almighty walloped if the truth come out, so he
dives in after Jim and gets him shore, and after while he brought him
to. Anyway, he said, Jim had already sure-enough drowned as fur as
there was any fun in it. Well, Len Carey is an old man now, and Jim is
an old white-headed nigger still hangin' around the old place, and when
Len goes back there to visit his relatives, old Nigger Jim hunts him up
with tears in his eyes, and thanks Mister Leonard fur savin' his life
that time. Say, I felt this mornin' like Len Carey must feel them times
when Jim's thankin' him."

Shepler laughed.

"You're a rare man, Mr. Bines. I'll hope to have your cheerful, easy
views of life if I ever lose my hold here in the Street. I hope I'll
have the old Bines philosophy and the young Bines spirit. That reminds
me," he continued as Uncle Peter rose to go, "we've been pretty
confidential, Mr. Bines, and I don't mind telling you I was a bit
afraid of that young man until yesterday. Oh, not on the stock
proposition. On another matter. You may have noticed that night at the
Oldakers'--well, women, Mr. Bines, are uncertain. I know something
about markets and the ways of a dollar, but all I know about women is
that they're good to have. You can't know any more about them, because
they don't know any more themselves. Just between us, now, I never felt
any too sure of a certain young woman's state of mind until copper
reached 51 and Union Cordage had been blown up from inside."

They parted with warm expressions of good-will, and Uncle Peter, in
high spirits at the success of his machinations, had himself driven
up-town.

The only point where his plans had failed was in Mrs. Wybert's refusal
to consider Mauburn after the birth of the Casselthorpe twins. Yet he
felt that matters, in spite of this happening, must go as he wished
them to. The Englishman-Uncle Peter cherished the strong anti-British
sentiment peculiar to his generation--would surely never marry a girl
who was all but penniless, and the consideration of an alliance with
Mrs. Wybert, when the fortune should be lost, had, after all, been an
incident--a means of showing the girl, if she should prove to be too
deeply infatuated with Mauburn for her own peace of mind--how unworthy
and mercenary he was; for he had meant, in that event, to disillusion
her by disclosing something of Mrs. Wybert's history--the woman Mauburn
should prefer to her. He still counted confidently on the loss of the
fortune sufficing to break the match.

When he reached the Hightower that night for dinner, he found Percival
down-stairs in great glee over what he conceived to be a funny
situation.

"Don't ask me, Uncle Peter. I couldn't get it straight; but as near as
I could make out, Mauburn came up here afraid the blow of losing him
was going to kill sis with a broken heart, and sis was afraid the blow
was going to kill Mauburn, because she wouldn't have married him
anyway, rich or poor, after he'd lost the title. They found each other
out some way, and then Mauburn accused her of being heartless, of
caring only for his title, and she accused him of caring only for her
money, and he insisted she ought to marry him anyway, but she wouldn't
have it because of the twins--"

Uncle Peter rubbed his big brown hands with the first signs of
cheerfulness he had permitted Percival to detect in him.

"Good fur Pish--that's the way to take down them conceited
Britishers--"

"But then they went at matters again from a new standpoint, and the
result is they've made it up."

"What? Has them precious twin Casselthorpes perished?"

"Not at all, both doing finely--haven't even had colic--growing
fast--probably learned to say 'fancy, now,' by this time. But Mauburn's
going West with us if we'll take him."

"Get out!"

"Fact! Say, it must have been an awful blow to him when he found sis
wouldn't think of him at all without his title, even if she was broke.
They had a stormy time of it from all I can hear. He said he was strong
enough to work and all that, and since he'd cared for her, and not for
her money, it was low down of her to throw him over; then she said she
wouldn't leave her mother and us, now that we might need her, not for
him or any other man--and he said that only made him love her all the
more, and then he got chesty, and said he was just as good as any
American, even if he never would have a title; so pretty soon they got
kind of interested in each other again, and by the time I came home it
was all over. They ratified the preliminary agreement for a merger."

"Well, I snum!"

"That's right, go ahead and snum. I'd snum myself if I knew how--it
knocked me. Better come up-stairs and congratulate the happy couple."

"Shoo, now! I certainly am mighty disappointed in that fellow. Still he
_is_ well spotted, and them freckles mean iron in the blood. Maybe we
can develop him along with the other properties."

They found Psyche already radiant, though showing about her eyes traces
of the storm's devastations. Mauburn was looking happy; also defiant
and stubborn.

"Mr. Bines," he said to Uncle Peter, "I hope you'll side with me. I
know something about horses, and I've nearly a thousand pounds that
I'll be glad to put in with you out there if you can make a place for
me."

The old man looked him over quizzically. Psyche put her arm through
Mauburn's.

"I'd _have_ to marry some one, you know, Uncle Peter!"

"Don't apologise, Pish. There's room for men that can work out there,
Mr. Mauburn, but there ain't any vintages or trouserings to speak of,
and the hours is long."

"Try me, Mr. Bines!"

"Well, come on! If you can't skin yourself you can hold a leg while
somebody else skins. But you ain't met my expectations, I'll say that."
And he shook hands cordially with the Englishman.

"I say, you know," said Mauburn later to Psyche, "why _should_ I skin
myself? Why should I be skinned at all, you know?"

"You shouldn't," she reassured him. "That's only Uncle Peter's way of
saying you can help the others, even if you can't do much yourself at
first. And won't Mrs. Drelmer be delighted to know it's all settled?"

"Well," said Uncle Peter to Percival, later in the evening, "Pish has
done better than you have here. It's a pity you didn't pick out some
good sensible girl, and marry her in the midst of your other doings."

"I couldn't find one that liked cats. I saw a lot that suited every
other way but I always said to myself, 'Remember Uncle Peter's
warning!' so I'd go to an animal store and get a basket of kittens and
take them around, and not one of the dozen stood your test. Of course
I'd never disregard your advice."

"Hum," remarked Uncle Peter, in a tone to be noticed for its extreme
dryness. "Too bad, though--you certainly need a wife to take the
conceit out of you."

"I lost that in the Street, along with the rest."

"Well, son, I ain't no ways alarmed but what you'll soon be on your
feet again in that respect--say by next Tuesday or Wednesday. I wish
the money was comin' back as easy."

"Well, there are girls in Montana City."

"You could do worse. That reminds me--I happened to meet Shepler to-day
and he got kind of confidential,--talkin' over matters. He said he'd
never really felt sure about the affections of a certain young woman,
especially after that night at the Oldakers'--he'd never felt dead sure
of her until you went broke. He said you never could know anything
about a woman--not really."

"He knows something about that one, all right, if he knows she wouldn't
have any use for me now. Shepler's coming on with the ladies. I feel
quite hopeful about him."




CHAPTER XXXVII.

The Departure of Uncle Peter--And Some German Philosophy


The Bineses, with the exception of Psyche, were at breakfast a week
later. Miss Bines had been missing since the day that Mr. and Mrs.
Cecil G. H. Mauburn had left for Montana City to put the Bines home in
order.

Uncle Peter and Mrs. Bines had now determined to go, leaving Percival
to follow when he had closed his business affairs.

"It's like starting West again to make our fortune," said Uncle Peter.
He had suffered himself to regain something of his old cheerfulness of
manner.

"I wish you two would wait until they can get the car here, and go back
with me," said Percival. "We can go back in style even if we didn't
save much more than a get-away stake."

But his persuasions were unavailing.

"I can't stand it another day," said Mrs. Bines, "and those letters
keep coming in from poor suffering people that haven't heard the news."

"I'm too restless to stay," declared Uncle Peter. "I declare, with
spring all greenin' up this way I'd be found campin' up in Central Park
some night and took off to the calaboose. I just got to get out again
where you can feel the wind blow and see a hundred miles and don't have
to dodge horseless horse-cars every minute. It's a wonder one of 'em
ain't got me in this town. You come on in the car, and do the style fur
the family. One of them common Pullmans is good enough fur Marthy and
me. And besides, I got to get Billy Brue back. He's goin' plumb daft
lookin' night and day fur that man that got his thirty dollars and his
breastpin. He says there'll be an ambulance backed up at the spot where
he meets him--makes no difference if it's right on Fifth Avenue.
Billy's kind of nearsighted at that, so I'm mortal afraid he'll make a
mistake one of these nights and take some honest man's money and
trinkets away from him."

"Well, here's a _Sun_ editorial to take back with us," said Percival;
"you remember we came East on one." He read aloud:

"The great fall in the price of copper, Western Trolley, and cordage
stocks has ruined thousands of people all over this country. These
losses are doubtless irreparable so far as the stocks in question are
concerned. The losers will have to look elsewhere for recovery. That
they will do so with good courage is not to be doubted. It might be
argued with reasonable plausibility that Americans are the greatest
fatalists in the world; the readiest to take chances and the least
given to whining when the cards go against them.

"A case in point is that of a certain Western family whose fortune has
been swept away by the recent financial hurricane. If ever a man liked
to match with Destiny, not 'for the beers,' but for big stakes, the
young head of the family in question appears to have been that man. He
persisted in believing that the power and desire of the rich men
controlling these three stocks were great enough to hold their
securities at a point far above their actual value. In this persistence
he displayed courage worthy of a better reward. A courage, moreover
--the gambler's courage--that is typically American. Now he has had a
plenty of that pleasure of losing which, in Mr. Fox's estimation, comes
next to the pleasure of winning.

"From the point of view of the political economist or the moralist,
thrift, saving, and contentment with a modest competence are to be
encouraged, and the propensity to gamble is to be condemned. We stand
by the copy-book precepts. Yet it is only honest to confess that there
is something of this young American's love for chances in most of us.
American life is still so fluid, the range of opportunity so great, the
national temperament so buoyant, daring, and hopeful, that it is easier
for an American to try his luck again than to sit down snugly and enjoy
what he has. The fun and the excitement of the game are more than the
game. There are Americans and plenty of them who will lose all they
have in some magnificent scheme, and make much less fuss about it than
a Paris shopkeeper would over a bad twenty-franc piece.

"Our disabled young Croesus from the West is a luminous specimen of the
type. The country would be less interesting without his kind, and, on
the whole, less healthy--for they provide one of the needed ferments.
May the young man make another fortune in his own far West--and come
once more to rattle the dry bones of our Bourse!"

"He'll be too much stuck on Montana by the time he gets that fortune,"
observed Uncle Peter.

"I will _that,_ Uncle Peter. Still it's pleasant to know we've won
their good opinion."

"Excuse me fur swearin', Marthy," said Uncle Peter, turning to Mrs.
Bines, "but he can win a better opinion than that in Montana fur a damn
sight less money."

"That editor is right," said Mrs. Bines, "what he says about American
life being 'fluid.' There's altogether too much drinking goes on here,
and I'm glad my son quit it."

Percival saw them to the train.

"Take care of yourself," said Uncle Peter at parting. "You know I ain't
any good any more, and you got a whole family, includin' an Englishman,
dependin' on you--we'll throw him on the town, though, if he don't
take out his first papers the minute I get there."

His last shot from the rear platform was:

"Change your name back to 'Pete,' son, when you get west of Chicago.
'Tain't anything fancy, but it's a crackin' good business name fur a
hustler!"

"All right, Uncle Peter,--and I hope I'll have a grandson that thinks
as much of it as I do of yours."

When they had gone, he went back to the work of final adjustment. He
had the help of Coplen, whom they had sent for. With him he was busy
for a week. By lucky sales of some of the securities that had been
hypothecated they managed to save a little; but, on the whole, it was
what Percival described it, "a lovely autopsy."

At last the vexatious work was finished, and he was free again. At the
end of the final day's work he left the office of Fouts in Wall Street,
and walked up Broadway. He went slowly, enjoying the freedom from care.
It was the afternoon of a day when the first summer heat had been felt,
and as he loitered before shop windows or walked slowly through that
street where all move quickly and most very hurriedly, a welcome little
breeze came up from the bay to fan him and encourage his spirit of
leisure.

At Union Square, when he would have taken a car to go the remainder of
the distance, he saw Shepler, accompanied by Mrs. Van Geist and Miss
Milbrey, alight from a victoria and enter a jeweller's.

He would have passed on, but Miss Milbrey had seen him, and stood
waiting in the doorway while Shepler and Mrs. Van Geist went on into
the store.

"Mr. Bines--I'm _so_ glad!"

She stood, flushed with pleasure, radiant in stuff of filmy pink, with
little flecks at her throat and waist of the first tender green of new
leaves. She was unaffectedly delighted to see him.

"You are Miss Spring?" he said when she had given him her hand--"and
you've come into all your mother had that was worth inheriting, haven't
you?"

"Mr. Bines, shall we not see you now? I wanted so much to talk with you
when I heard everything. Would it be impertinent to say I sympathised
with you?"

He looked over her shoulder, in where Shepler and Mrs. Van Geist were
inspecting a tray of jewels.

"Of course not impertinent--very kind--only I'm really not in need of
any sympathy at all. You won't understand it; but we don't care so much
for money in the West--for the loss of it--not so much as you New
Yorkers would. Besides we can always make a plenty more."

The situation was, emphatically, not as he had so often dreamed it when
she should marvel, perhaps regretfully, over his superiority to her
husband as a money-maker. His only relief was to belittle the
importance of his loss.

"Of course we've lost everything, almost--but I've not been a bit
downcast about it. There's more where it came from, and no end of fun
going after it. I'm looking forward to the adventures, I can tell you.
And every one will be glad to see me there; they won't think the less
of me, I assure you, because I've made a fluke here!"

"Surely, Mr. Bines, no one here could think less of you. Indeed, I
think more of you. I think it's fine and big to go back with such
courage. Do you know, I wish I were a man--I'd show them!"

"Really, Miss Milbrey--"

He looked over her shoulder again, and saw that Shepler was waiting for
her.

"I think your friends are impatient."

"They can wait. Mr. Bines, I wonder if you have quite a correct idea of
all New York people."

"Probably not; I've met so few, you know."

"Well, of course,--but of those you've met?"

"You can't know what my ideas are."

"I wish we might have talked more--I'm sure--when are you leaving?"

"I shall leave to-morrow."

"And we're leaving for the country ourselves. Papa and mamma go
to-morrow--and, Mr. Bines, I _should_ have liked another talk with
you--I wish we were dining at the Oldakers' again."

He observed Shepler strolling toward them.

"I shall be staying with Aunt Cornelia a few days after to-morrow."

Shepler came up.

"And I shall be leaving to-morrow, Miss Milbrey."

"Ah, Bines, glad to see you!"

The accepted lover looked Miss Milbrey over with rather a complacent
air--with the unruffled confidence of assured possession. Percival
fancied there was a look almost of regret in the girl's eyes.

"I'm afraid," said Shepler, "your aunt doesn't want to be kept waiting.
And she's already in a fever for fear you won't prefer the necklace she
insists you ought to prefer."

"Tell Aunt Cornelia, please, that I shall be along in just a moment."
"She's quite impatient, you know," urged Shepler.

Percival extended his hand.

"Good-bye, Miss Milbrey. Don't let me detain you. Sorry I shall not see
you again."

She gave him her hand uncertainly, as if she had still something to
say, but could find no words for it.

"Good-bye, Mr. Bines."

"Good-bye, young man," Shepler shook hands with him cordially, "and the
best of luck to you out there. I shall hope to hear good reports from
you. And mind, you're to look us up when you're in town again. We shall
always be glad to see you. Good-bye!"

He led the girl back to the case where the largest diamonds reposed
chastely on their couches of royal velvet.

Percival smiled as he resumed his walk--smiled with all that bitter
cynicism which only youth may feel to its full poignance. Yet,
heartless as she was, he recalled that while she talked to him he had
imprinted an imaginary kiss deliberately upon her full scarlet lips.
And now, too, he was forced to confess that, in spite of his very
certain knowledge about her, he would actually prefer to have
communicated it through the recognised physical media. He laughed
again, more cheerfully.

"The spring has gotten a strangle-hold on my judgment," he said to
himself.

At dinner that night he had the company of that estimable German
savant, the Herr Doctor von Herzlich. He did not seek to incur the
experience, but the amiable doctor was so effusive and interested that
he saw no way of avoiding it gracefully. Returned from his
archaeological expedition to Central America, the doctor was now on his
way back to Marburg.

"I pleasure much in your news," said the cheerful man over his first
glass of Rhine wine with the olive in it. "You shall now, if I have
misapprehended you not, develop a new strongness of the character."

Percival resigned himself to listen. He was not unfamiliar with the lot
of one who dines with the learned Von Herzlich.

"Now he's off," he said to himself.

"Ach! It is but now that you shall begin to live. Is it not that while
you planned the money-amassing you were deferring to live--ah,
yes--until some day when you had so much more? Yes? A common
thought-failure it is--a common failure of the to-take-thoughtedness of
life--its capacities and the intentions of the scheme under which we
survive. Ach! So few humans learn that this invitation to live
specifies not the hours, like a five-o'clock. It says--so well as
Father-Mother Nature has learned to write the words to our unseeing
eyes--'at once,' but we ever put off the living we are invited to at
once--until to-morrow-next day, next year--until this or that be done
or won. So now you will find this out. Before, you would have waited
for a time that never came--no matter the all-money you gathered.

"Nor yet, my young friend, shall you take this matter to be of a
seriousness, to be sorrow-worthy. If you take of the courage, you shall
find the world to smile to your face, and father-mother you. You recall
what the English Huxley says--Ah! what fine, dear man, the good Huxley--he
says, yes, in the 'Genealogy of the Beasts,' 'It is a probable hypothesis
that what the world is to organisms in general, each organism is to the
molecules of which it is composed.' So you laugh at the world, the world
it laugh back 'ha! ha! ha!'--then--soly--all your little molecules
obediently respond--you thrill with the happiness--with the power--the
desire--the capacity--you out-go and achieve. Yes? So fret not. Ach! we
fret so much of what it shall be unwise to fret of. It is funny to fret.
Why? Why fret? Yet but the month last, they have excavated at Nippur, from
the pre-Sargonic strata, a lady and a gentleman of the House of Ptah. What
you say in New York--'a damned fine old family,' yes, is it not? I am read
their description, and seen of the photographs.

"They have now the expressions of indifference--of disinterest--without
the prejudice--as if they say, 'Ach! those troubles of ours, three
thousand eight hundred years in the B.C.--nearly come to six thousand
years before now--Ach! those troubles,' say this philosophic-now lady
and gentleman, of the House of Ptah of Babylonia--'such a
silliness--those troubles and frets; it was not the while-worth that we
should ever have sorrowed, because the scheme of time and creation is
suchly big; had we grasped but its bigness, and the littleness of our
span, should we have felt griefs? Nay, nay--_nit_,' like the
street-youths say--would say the lady and gentleman now so passionless
as to have philosophers become. And you, it should mean to you much.
Humans are funniest when they weep and tremble before, like you say,
'the facts in the case.' Ha! I laugh to myself at them often when I
observe. Their funniness of the beards and eyebrows, the bald head, of
the dress, the solemnities of manner, as it were they were persons of
weight. Ah, they are of their insignificance so loftily unconscious.
Was it not great skill--to compel the admiration of the love-worthiest
scientist--to create a unit of a numberless mass of units and then to
enable it to feel each one the importance of the whole, as if each part
were big as the whole? So you shall not fret I say.

"If the fret invade you, you shall do well to lie out in the friendly
space, and look at this small topspinning of a world through the glass
that reduces.

"Yes? You had thought it of such bigness--its concerns of a sublime
tragicness? Yet see now, these funny little animals on the surface of
the spinning-ball. How frantic, as if all things were about to
eventuate, remembering not that nothing ends. So? Observe the marks of
their silliness, their unworthiness. You have reduced the ball to so
big as a melon, yes? Watch the insects run about in the craziness,
laughing, crying, loving their loves, hating their hates, fearing,
fretting--killing one the other in such funny little clothes, made for
such funny little purpose precisely--falling sick over the
money-losings--and the ball so small, but one of such many--as many
stars under the earth, remember, as above it.

"So! you are back to earth; you are a human like the rest, so foolish,
so funny as any--so you say, 'Well, I shall not be more troubled again
yet. I play the same game, but it is only a game, a little game to last
an afternoon--I play my part--yes--the laughing part, crying
part--loving, hating, killing part--what matter if I say it is good?'
If the Maker there be to look down, what joys him most--the coward who
fears and frets, and the whine makes for his soul or body? Ach! no, it
is the one who say, it is _good_--I could not better have done
myself--a great game, yes--'let her rip,' like you West-people
remark--'let her rip--you cannot lose _me_,' like you say also. Ach,
so! And then he say, the great Planner of it,' Ach! I am understood at
last--good!--bright man that,' like you say, also--'bright man that--it
is of a pleasure to see him do well!'

"So, my young friend, you shall pleasure yourself still much yet. It is
of an excellence to pleasure one's self judiciously. The lotus is a
leguminous plant--so excellent for the salad--not for the roast. You
have of the salad overeaten--you shall learn of your successful
capacity for it--you shall do well, then. You have been of the reckless
deportment--you may still be of it. That is not the matter. You shall
be reckless as you like--but without your stored energy surplus to harm
you. Your environment from the now demands of you the faculties you
will most pleasure yourself in developing. You shall produce what you
consume. The gods love such. Ach, yes!"




CHAPTER XXXVIII.

Some Phenomena Peculiar to Spring


He awoke early, refreshed and intensely alive. With the work done he
became conscious of a feeling of disassociation from the surroundings
in which he had so long been at home. Many words of the talkative
German were running in his mind from the night before. He was glad the
business was off his mind. He would now go the pleasant journey, and
think on the way.

His trunks were ready for the car; and before he went down-stairs his
hand-bag was packed, and the preparations for the start completed.
When, after his breakfast, he read the telegram announcing that the car
had been delayed twenty-four hours in Chicago, he was bored by the
thought that he must pass another day in New York. He was eager now to
be off, and the time would hang heavily.

He tried to recall some forgotten detail of the business that might
serve to occupy him. But the finishing had been thorough.

He ran over in his mind the friends with whom he could spend the time
agreeably. He could recall no one he cared to see. He had no longer an
interest in the town or its people.

He went aimlessly out on to Broadway in the full flood of a spring
morning, breathing the fresh air hungrily. It turned his thought to
places out of the grime and clamour of the city; to woods and fields
where he might rest and feel the stimulus of his new plans. He felt
aloof and sufficient unto himself.

He swung on to an open car bound north, and watched without interest
the early quick-moving workers thronging south on the street, and
crowding the cars that passed him. At Forty-second Street, he changed
to a Boulevard car that took him to the Fort Lee Ferry at One Hundred
and Twenty-fifth Street.

Out on the shining blue river he expanded his lungs to the clean, sweet
air. Excursion boats, fluttering gay streamers, worked sturdily up the
stream. Little yachts, in fresh-laundered suits of canvas, darted
across their bows or slanted in their wakes, looking like white
butterflies. The vivid blue of the sky was flecked with bits of broken
fleece, scurrying like the yachts below. Across the river was a
high-towering bank of green inviting him over its summit to the
languorous freshness beyond.

He walked off the boat on the farther side and climbed a series of
steep wooden stairways, past a tiny cataract that foamed its way down
to the river. When he reached the top he walked through a stretch of
woods and turned off to the right, down a cool shaded road that wound
away to the north through the fresh greens of oak and chestnut.

He was entranced at once by the royal abandon of spring, this wondrous
time of secret beginnings made visible. The old earth was become as a
young wife from the arms of an ardent spouse, blushing into new life
and beauty for the very joy of love. He breathed the dewy freshness,
and presently he whistled the "Spring Song" of Mendelssohn, that
bubbling, half-joyous, half-plaintive little prayer in melody.

He was well into the spirit of the time and place. His soul sang. The
rested muscles of his body and mind craved the resistance of obstacles.
He rejoiced. He had been wise to leave the city for the fresh,
unspoiled country--the city with all its mean little fears, its petty
immoralities, and its very trifling great concerns. He did not analyse,
more than to remember, once, that the not reticent German would approve
his mood. He had sought the soothing quiet with the unfailing instinct
of the wounded animal.

The mysterious green life in the woods at either side allured him with
its furtive pulsing. But he kept to the road and passed on. He was not
yet far enough from the town.

Some words from a little song ran in his mind as he walked:

  "The naked boughs into green leaves slipped,
  The longing buds into flowers tripped,
  The little hills smiled as if they were glad,
  The little rills ran as if they were mad.

  "There was green on the earth and blue in the sky,
  The chrysalis changed to a butterfly,
  And our lovers, the honey-bees, all a-hum,
  To hunt for our hearts began to come."

When he came to a village with an electric car clanging through it, he
skirted its borders, and struck off through a woodland toward the
river. Even the village was too human, too modern, for his early-pagan
mood.

In the woods he felt that curious thrill of stealth, that impulse to
cautious concealment, which survives in man from the remote days when
enemies beset his forest ways. On a southern hillside he found a
dogwood-tree with its blossomed firmament of white stars. In low, moist
places the violets had sprung through the thatch of leaves and were
singing their purple beauties all unheard. Birds were nesting, and
squirrels chattered and scolded.

Under these more obvious signs and sounds went the steady undertone of
life in root and branch and unfurling leaf--provoking, inciting, making
lawless whomsoever it thrilled.

He came out of the wood on to another road that ran not far from the
river, and set off again to the north along the beaten track.

In an old-fashioned garden in front of a small house a girl bent over a
flower bed, working with a trowel.

He stopped and looked at her over the palings. She was freshly pretty,
with yellow hair blown about her face under the pushed back sunbonnet
of blue. The look in her blue eyes was the look of one who had heard
echoes; who had awakened with the spring to new life and longings,
mysterious and unwelcome, but compelling.

She stood up when he spoke; her sleeves were turned prettily back upon
her fair round arms.

"Yes, the road turns to the left, a bit ahead."

She was blushing.

"You are planting flower seeds."

"Yes; so many flowers were killed by the cold last winter."

"I see; there must a lot of them have died here, but their souls didn't
go far, did they now?"

She went to digging again in the black moist earth. He lingered. The
girl worked on, and her blush deepened. He felt a lawless impulse to
vault the palings, and carry her off to be a flower for ever in some
wooded glade near by. He dismissed it as impracticable. His intentions
would probably be misconstrued.

"I hope your garden will thrive. It has a pretty pattern to follow."

"Thank you!"

He raised his hat and passed on, thinking; thinking of all the old dead
flowers, and their pretty souls that had gone to bloom in the heaven of
the maid's face.

Before the road turned to the left he found a path leading over to the
top of the palisade. There on a little rocky shelf, hundreds of feet
above the river, he lay a long time in the spring sun, looking over to
the farther shore, where the city crept to the south, and lost its
sharp lines in the smoky distance. There he smoked and gave himself up
to the moment. He was glad to be out of that rush. He could see matters
more clearly now--appraise values more justly. He was glad of
everything that had come. Above all, glad to go back and carry on that
big work of his father's--his father who had done so much to redeem the
wilderness--and incidentally he would redeem his own manhood.

It will be recalled that the young man frequently expressed himself
with regrettable inelegance; that he habitually availed himself,
indeed, of a most infelicitous species of metaphor. It must not be
supposed that this spring day in the spring places had reformed his
manner of delivery. When he chose to word his emotions it was still
done in a manner to make the right-spoken grieve. Thus, going back
toward the road, after reviewing his great plans for the future, he
spoke aloud: "I believe it's going to be a good game."

When he became hungry he thought with relief that he would not be
compelled to seek one of those "hurry-up" lunch places with its clamour
and crowd. What was the use of all that noise and crowding and piggish
hurry? A remark of the German's recurred to him:

"It is a happy man who has divined the leisure of eternity, so he feels
it, like what you say, 'in his bones.'"

When he came out on the road again he thought regretfully of the pretty
girl and her flower bed. He would have liked to go back and suggest
that she sing to the seeds as she put them to sleep in their earth
cradle, to make their awakening more beautiful.

But he turned down the road that led away from the girl, and when he
came to a "wheelman's rest," he ate many sandwiches and drank much
milk.

The face of the maid that served him had been no heaven for the souls
of dead flowers. Still she was a girl; and no girl could be wholly
without importance on such a day. So he thought the things he would
have said to her if matters had been different.

When he had eaten, he loafed off again down the road. Through the long
afternoon he walked and lazed, turning into strange lanes and by-roads,
resting on grassy banks, and looking far up. He followed Doctor von
Herzlich's directions, and, going off into space, reduced the earth,
watching its little continents and oceans roll toward him, and viewing
the antics of its queer inhabitants in fancy as he had often in fact
viewed a populous little ant-hill, with its busy, serious citizens.
Then he would venture still farther--away out into timeless space,
beyond even the starry refuse of creation, and insolently regard the
universe as a tiny cloud of dust.

When the shadows stretched in the dusky languor of the spring evening,
he began to take his bearings for the return. He heard the hum and
clang of an electric car off through a chestnut grove.

The sound disturbed him, bringing premonitions of the city's unrest. He
determined to stay out for the night. It was restful--his car would not
arrive until late the next afternoon--there was no reason why he should
not. He found a little wayside hotel whose weather-beaten sign was
ancient enough to promise "entertainment for man and beast."

"Just what I want," he declared. "I'm both of them--man and beast."

Together they ate tirelessly of young chickens broiled, and a green
salad, and a wonderful pie, with a bottle of claret that had stood back
of the dingy little bar so long that it had attained, at least as to
its label, a very fair antiquity.

This time the girl was pretty again, and, he at once discovered, not
indisposed to light conversation. Yet she was a shallow creature, with
little mind for the subtler things of life and the springtime. He
decided she was much better to look at than to talk to. With a just
appreciation of her own charms she appeared to pose perpetually before
an imaginary mirror, regaling him and herself with new postures,
tossing her brown head, curving her supple waist, exploiting her
thousand coquetries. He was pained to note, moreover, that she was more
than conscious of the red-cheeked youth who came in from the carriage
shed, whistling.

When the man and the beast had been appeased they sat out under a
blossomed apple-tree and smoked together in a fine spirit of amity.

He was not amazed when, in the gloom, he saw the red-cheeked youth with
both arms about the girl--nor was he shocked at detecting instantly
that her struggles were meant to be futile against her assailant's
might. The birds were mating, life was forward, and Nature loves to be
democratically lavish with her choicest secrets. Why not, then, the
blooming, full curved kitchen-maid and the red-cheeked boy-of-all-work?

He smoked and saw the night fall. The dulled bronze jangle of cow-bells
came soothingly to him. An owl called a little way off. Swallows
flashed by in long graceful flights. A bat circled near, indecisively,
as if with a message it hesitated to give. Once he heard the flute-like
warble of a skylark.

He was under the clean, sharp stars of a moonless night. His keen
senses tasted the pungent smoke and the softer feminine fragrance of
the apple-blossoms. His nerves were stilled to pleasant ease, except
when the laugh of the girl floated to him from the grape-arbour back of
the house. That disturbed him to fierce longings--the clear, high
measure of a woman's laugh floating to him in the night. And once she
sang--some song common to her class. It moved him as her laugh did,
making him vibrate to her, as when a practised hand flutters the
strings of a harp. He was glad without knowing why when she stopped.

At ten o'clock he went in from under the peering little stars and fell
asleep in an ancient four-poster. He dreamed that he had the world, a
foot-ball, clasped to his breast, and was running down the field for a
gain of a hundred yards. Then, suddenly, in place of the world, it was
Avice Milbrey in his grasp, struggling frantically to be free; and
instead of behaving like a gentleman he flung both arms around her and
kissed her despite her struggles; kissed her time after time, until she
ceased to strive against him, and lay panting and helpless in his arms.




CHAPTER XXXIX.

An Unusual Plan of Action Is Matured


He was awakened by the unaccustomed silence. As he lay with his eyes
open, his first thought was that all things had stopped--the world had
come to its end. Then remembrance came, and he stretched in lazy
enjoyment of the stillness and the soft feather bed upon which he had
slept. Finding himself too wide awake for more sleep, he went over to
the little gable window and looked out. The unfermented wine of another
spring day came to his eager nostrils. The little ball had made another
turn. Its cheek was coming once more into the light. Already the east
was flushing with a wondrous vague pink. The little animals in the city
over there, he thought, would soon be tumbling out of their beds to
begin another of their funny, serious days of trial and failure; to
make ready for another night of forgetfulness, when their absurd little
ant-hill should turn again away from the big blazing star. He sat a
long time at the window, looking out to the east, where the light was
showing; meditating on many idle, little matters, but conscious all the
time of great power within himself.

He felt ready now for any conflict. The need for some great immediate
action pressed upon him. He did not identify it. Something he must
do--he must have action--and that at once. He was glad to think how
Uncle Peter would begin to rejoice in him--secretly at first, and then
to praise him. He was equal to any work. He could not begin it quickly
enough. That queer need to do something at once was still pressing,
still unidentified.

By five he was down-stairs. The girl, fresh as a dew-sprayed rose in
the garden outside, brought him breakfast of fruit, bacon and eggs,
coffee and waffles. He ate with relish, delighting meantime in the
girl's florid freshness, and even in the assertive, triumphant whistle
of the youth busy at his tasks outside.

When he set out he meant to reach the car and go back to town at once.
Yet when he came to the road over which he had loitered the day before,
he turned off upon it with slower steps. There was a confusing whirl of
ideas in his brain, a chaos that required all his energy to feed it, so
that the spring went from his step.

Then all at once, a new-born world cohered out of the nebula, and the
sight of its measured, orderly whirling dazed him. He had been seized
with a wish--almost an intention, so stunning in its audacity that he
all but reeled under the shock. It seemed to him that the thing must
have been germinated in his mind without his knowledge; it had lain
there, gathering force while he rested, now to burst forth and dazzle
him with its shine. All that undimmed freshness of longing he had felt
the day before-all the unnamed, unidentified, nameless desires--had
flooded back upon him, but now no longer aimless. They were acutely
definite. He wanted Avice Milbrey,--wanted her with an intensity as
unreasoning as it was resistless. This was the new world he had watched
swimming out of the chaos in his mind, taking its allotted orbit in a
planetary system of possible, rational, matter-of-course proceedings.

And Avice Milbrey was to marry Shepler, the triumphant money-king.

He sat down by the roadside, well-nigh helpless, surrendering all his
forces to the want.

Then there came upon him to reinforce this want a burning sense of
defeat. He remembered Uncle Peter's first warnings in the mine about
"cupboard love;" the gossip of Higbee: "If you were broke, she'd have
about as much use for you--" all the talk he had listened to so long
about marriage for money; and, at the last, Shepler's words to Uncle
Peter: "I was uncertain until copper went to 51." Those were three wise
old men who had talked, men who knew something of women and much of the
world. And they were so irritating in their certainty. What a fine play
to fool them all!

The sense of defeat burned into him more deeply. He had been vanquished,
cheated, scorned, shamefully flouted. The money was gone--all of Uncle
Peter's complaints and biting sarcasms came back to him with renewed
bitterness; but his revenge on Uncle Peter would be in showing him a big
man at work, with no nonsense about him. But Shepler, who was now certain,
and Higbee, who had always been certain,--especially Shepler, with his
easy sense of superiority with a woman over any poor man. That was a
different matter. There was a thing to think about. And he wanted Avice
Milbrey. He could not, he decided, go back without her.

Something of the old lawless spirit of adventure that had spurred on
his reckless forbears urged him to carry the girl back with him. She
didn't love him. He would take her in spite of that; overpower her;
force her to go. It was a revenge of superb audacity. Shepler had not
been sure of her until now. Well, Shepler might be hurled from that
certainty by one hour of determined action.

The great wild wish narrowed itself into a definite plan. He recalled
the story Uncle Peter had told at the Oldakers' about the woman and her
hair. A woman could be coerced if a man knew her weakness. He could
coerce her. He knew it instinctively; and the instinctive belief
rallied to its support a thousand little looks from her, little
intonations of her voice, little turnings of her head when they had
been together. In spite of her calculations, in spite of her love of
money, he could make her feel her weakness. He was a man with the
power.

It was heady wine for the morning. He described himself briefly as a
lunatic, and walked on again. But the crazy notion would not be gone.
The day before he had been passive. Now he was active, acutely aware of
himself and all his wants. He walked a mile trying to dismiss the idea.
He sat down again, and it flooded back upon him with new force.

Her people were gone. She had even intimated a wish to talk with him
again. It could be done quickly. He knew. He felt the primitive
superiority of man's mere brute force over woman. He gloried in his
knotted muscles and the crushing power of his desires.

Afterward, she would reproach him bitterly. They would both be unhappy.
It was no matter. It was the present, the time when he should be
living. He would have her, and Shepler--Shepler might have had the One
Girl mine--but this girl, never!

Again he tried faithfully to walk off the obsession. Again were his
essays at sober reason unavailing.

His mind was set as it had been when he bought the stocks day after day
against the advice of the best judges in the Street. He could not turn
himself back. There must be success. There could not be a giving
up--and there must not be failure.

Hour after hour he alternately walked and rested, combating and
favouring the mad project. It was a foolish little world, and people
were always waiting for another time to begin the living of life. The
German had quoted Martial: "To-morrow I will live, the fool says;
to-day itself's too late. The wise lived yesterday."

If he did go away alone he knew he would always regret it. If he
carried her triumphantly off, doubtless his regret for that would
eventually be as great. The first regret was certain. The latter was
equally plausible; but, if it came, would it not be preferable to the
other? To have held her once--to have taken her away, to have triumphed
over her own calculations, and, best of all, to have triumphed over the
money-king resting fatuously confident behind his wealth, dignifying no
man as rival who was not rich. The present, so, was more than any
possible future, how dire soever it might be.

He was mad to prove to her--and to Shepler--that she was more a woman
than either had supposed,--a woman in spite of herself, weak,
unreasoning; to prove to them both that a determined man has a vital
power to coerce which no money may ever equal.

Not until five o'clock had he by turns urged and fought himself to the
ferry. By that time he had given up arguing. He was dwelling entirely
upon his plan of action. Strive and grope as he would, the thing had
driven him on relentlessly. His reason could not take him beyond the
reach of its goad. Far as he went he loved her even farther. She
belonged to him. He would have her. He seemed to have been storing, the
day before, a vast quantity of energy that he was now drawing lavishly
upon. For the time, he was pure, raw force, needing, to be resistless,
only the guidance of a definite purpose.

He crossed the ferry and went to the hotel, where he shaved and
freshened himself. He found Grant, the porter, waiting for him when he
went downstairs, and gave him written directions to the railroad people
to have the car attached to the Chicago Express leaving at eight the
next morning; also instructions about his baggage.

"I expect there will be two of us, Grant; see that the car is well
stocked; and here, take this; go to a florist's and get about four
dozen pink roses--_la France_--can you remember?--pink--don't take any
other colour, and be sure they're fresh. Have breakfast ready by the
time the train starts."

"Yes, Mistah Puhs'val!" said Grant, and added to himself, "Yo' suttiny
do ca'y yo'se'f mighty han'some, Mistah Man!"

Going out of the hotel, he met Launton Oldaker, with whom he chatted a
few moments, and then bade good-bye.

Oldaker, with a sensitive regard for the decencies, refrained from
expressing the hearty sympathy he felt for a man who would henceforth
be compelled to live out of the world.

Percival walked out to Broadway, revolving his plan. He saw it was but
six o'clock. He could do nothing for at least an hour. When he noted
this he became conscious of his hunger. He had eaten nothing since
morning. He turned into a restaurant on Madison Square and ordered
dinner. When he had eaten, he sat with his coffee for a final smoke of
deliberation. He went over once more the day's arguments for and
against the novel emprise. He had become insensible, however, to all
the dissenting ones. As a last rally, he tried to picture the
difficulties he might encounter. He faced all he could imagine.

"By God, I'll do it!"

"_Oui, monsieur!_" said the waiter, who had been standing dreamily
near, startled into attention by the spoken words.

"That's all--give me the check."

As he went out the door, a young woman passed him, looking him straight
in the eyes. From her light swishing skirts came the faint perfume of
the violet. It chilled the steel of his resolution.

He entered a carriage. It was a hot, humid night. Already the mist was
making grey softness of the air, dulling the street lights to ruddy
orange. Northward, over the breast of Murray Hill a few late carriages
trickled down toward him. Their wheels, when they passed, made swift
reflections in the damp glare of the asphalt.

He was pent force waiting to be translated into action.

He drove first to the Milbrey house, on the chance that she might be at
home. Jarvis answered his ring.

"Miss Milbrey is with Mrs. Van Geist, sir."

Jarvis spoke regretfully. Pie had reasons of his own for believing that
the severance of the Milbrey relationship with Mr. Bines had been
nothing short of calamitous.

He rang Mrs. Van Geist's bell, five minutes later.

"The ladies haven't come back, sir. I don't know where they might be.
Perhaps at the Valners', in Fifty-second Street, sir."

He rang the Valners' bell.

"Mrs. Van Geist and Miss Milbrey? They left at least half an hour ago,
sir."

"Go down the avenue slowly, driver!"

At Fortieth Street he looked down to the middle of the block.

Mrs. Van Geist, alone, was just alighting from her coupé.

He signalled the driver.

"Go to the other address again, in Thirty-seventh Street."

Jarvis opened the door.

"Yes, sir--thank you, sir--Miss Milbrey is in, sir. I'll see, sir."

He crossed the Rubicon of a door-mat and stood in the unlighted hall.
At the far end he saw light coming from a door that he knew opened into
the library.

Jarvis came into the light. Behind him appeared Miss Milbrey in the
doorway.

"Miss Milbrey says will you enter the library, Mr. Bines?"




CHAPTER XL.

Some Rude Behaviour, of Which Only a Western Man Could Be Guilty


He walked quickly back. At the doorway she gave him her hand, which he
took in silence. "Why--Mr. Bines!--you wouldn't have surprised me last
night. To-night I pictured you on your way West."

Her gown was of dull blue dimity. She still wore her hat, an arch of
straw over her face, with ripe red cherries nodding upon it as she
moved. He closed the door behind him.

"Do come in. I've been having a solitary rummage among old things. It
is my last night here. We're leaving for the country to-morrow, you
know."

She stood by the table, the light from a shaded lamp making her colour
glow.

Now she noted that he had not spoken. She turned quickly to him as if
to question.

He took a swift little step toward her, still without speaking. She
stepped back with a sudden instinct of fright.

He took two quick steps forward and grasped one of her wrists. He spoke
in cool, even tones, but the words came fast:

"I've come to marry you to-night; to take you away with me to that
Western country. You may not like the life. You may grieve to death for
all I know--but you're going. I won't plead, I won't beg, but I am
going to take you."

She had begun to pull away in alarm when he seized her wrist. His grasp
did not bruise, it did not seem to be tight; but the hand that held it
was immovable.

"Mr. Bines, you forget yourself. Really, this is--"

"Don't waste time. You can say all that needs to be said--I'll give you
time for that before we start--but don't waste the time saying all
those useless things. Don't waste time telling me I'm crazy. Perhaps I
am. We can settle that later."

"Mr. Bines--how absurd! Oh! let me go! You're hurting my wrist!
Oh!--don't--don't--don't! Oh!"

When he felt the slender wrist trying to writhe from his grasp he had
closed upon it more tightly, and thrusting his other arm quickly behind
her, had drawn her closely to him. Her cries and pleadings were being
smothered down on his breast. Her struggles met only the unbending,
pitiless resistance of steel.

"Don't waste time, I tell you--can't you understand? Be sensible,--talk
if you must--only talk sense."

"Let me go at once--I demand it--quick--oh!"

"Take this hat off!"

He forced the wrist he had been holding down between them, so that she
could not free the hand, and, with his own hand thus freed, he drew out
the two long hat-pins and flung the hat with its storm-tossed cherries
across the room. Still holding her tightly, he put the free hand on her
brow and thrust her head back, so that she was forced to look up at
him.

"Let me see you--I want to see your eyes--they're my eyes now."

Her head strained against his hand to be down again, and all her
strength was exerted to be away. She found she could not move in any
direction.

"Oh, you're hurting my neck. What _shall_ I do? I can't scream--think
what it would mean!--you're hurting my neck!"

"You are hurting your _own_ neck--stop it!"

He kissed her face, softly, her cheeks, her eyes, her chin.

"I've loved you so--don't--what's the use? Be sensible. My arms have
starved for you so--do you think they're going to loosen now? Avice
Milbrey--Avice Milbrey--Avice Milbrey!"

His arms tightened about her as he said the name over and over.

"That's poetry--it's all the poetry there is in the world. It's a verse
I say over in the night. You can't understand it yet--it's too deep for
you. It means I must have you--and the next verse means that you must
have me--a poor man--be a poor man's wife--and all the other
verses--millions of them--mean that I'll never give you up--and there's
a lot more verses for you to write, when you understand--meaning that
you'll never give _me_ up--and there's one in the beginning means I'm
going to carry you out and marry you to-night--_now_, do you
understand?--right off--this very night!"

"Oh! Oh! this is so terrible! Oh, it's _so_ awful!"

Her voice broke, and he felt her body quiver with sobs. Her face was
pitifully convulsed, and tears welled in her eyes.

"Let me _go_--let--me--_go_!"

He released her head, but still held her closely to him. Her sobs had
become uncontrollable.

"Here--" he reached for the little lace-edged handkerchief that lay
beside her long gloves and her purse, on the table.

She took it mechanically.

"Please--oh, _please_ let me go--I beg you." She managed it with
difficulty between the convulsions that were rending her.

He put his lips down upon the soft hair.

"I _won't_--do you understand that? Stop talking nonsense."

He thought there would be no end to the sobs.

"Have it out, dear--there's plenty of time."

Once she seemed to have stopped the tears. He turned her face up to his
own again, and softly kissed her wet eyes. Her full lips were parted
before him, but he did not kiss them. The sobs came again.

"There--there!--it will soon be over."

At last she ceased to cry from sheer exhaustion, and when, with his
hand under her chin, he forced up her head again, she looked at him a
full minute and then closed her eyes.

He kissed their lids.

There came from time to time the involuntary quick little indrawings of
breath,--the aftermath of her weeping.

He held her so for a time, while neither spoke. She had become too weak
to struggle.

"My arms have starved for you so," he murmured. She gave no sign.

"Come over here." He led her, unresisting, around to the couch at the
other side of the table.

"Sit here, and we'll talk it over sensibly, before you get ready."

When he released her, she started quickly up toward the door that led
into the hall.

"_Don't_ do that--please don't be foolish."

He locked the door, and put the key in his pocket. Then he went over to
the big folding-doors, and satisfied himself they were locked from the
other side. He went back and stood in front of her. She had watched him
with dumb terror in her face.

"Now we can talk--but there isn't much to be said. How soon can you be
ready?"

"You _are_ crazy!"

"Possibly--believe what you like."

"How did you ever _dare?_ Oh, how _awful!_"

"If you haven't passed that stage, I'll hold you again."

"No, no--_please_ don't--please stand up again. Sit over there,--I can
think better."

"Think quickly. This is Saturday, and to-morrow is their busy day. They
may not sit up late to-night."

She arose with a little shrug of desperation that proclaimed her to be
in the power of a mad man. She looked at her face in the oval mirror,
wiping her eyes and making little passes and pats at her disordered
hair. He went over to her.

"No, no--please go over there again. Sit down a moment--let me think.
I'll talk to you presently."

There was silence for five minutes. He watched her, while she narrowed
her eyes in deep thought.

Then he looked at his watch.

"I can give you an hour, if you've anything to say before it's
done--not longer."

She drew a long breath.

"Mr. Bines, are you mad? Can't you be rational?"

"I haven't been irrational, I give you my word, not once since I came
here."

He looked at her steadily. All at once he saw her face go crimson. She
turned her eyes from his with an effort.

"I'm going back to Montana in the morning. I want you to marry me
to-night--I won't even wait one more day--one more hour. I know it's a
thing you never dreamt of--marrying a poor man. You'll look at it as
the most disgraceful act of folly you could possibly commit, and so
will every one else here--but you'll _do_ it. To-morrow at this time
you'll be half-way to Chicago with me."

"Mr. Bines,--I'm perfectly reasonable and serious--I mean it--are you
quite sure you didn't lose your wits when you lost your money?"

"It _may_ be considered a witless thing to marry a girl who would marry
for money--but never mind _that_--I'm used to taking chances."

She glanced up at him, curiously.

"You know I'm to marry Mr. Shepler the tenth of next month."

"Your grammar is faulty--tense is wrong--You should say 'I _was_ to
have married Mr. Shepler.' I'm fastidious about those little things, I
confess."

"How can you jest?"

"I can't. Don't think this is any joke. _He'll_ find out."

"Who will find out,--what, pray?"

"He will. He's already said he was afraid there might have been some
nonsense between you and me, because we talked that evening at the
Oldakers'. He told my grandfather he wasn't at all sure of you until
that day I lost my money."

"Oh, I see--and of course you'd like your revenge--carrying me off from
him just to hurt him."

"If you say that I'll hold you in my arms again." He started toward
her. "I've loved you _so_, I tell you--all the time--all the time."

"Or perhaps it's a brutal revenge on me,--after thinking I'd only marry
for money."

"I've loved you always, I tell you."

He came up to her, more gently now, and took up her hand to kiss it. He
saw the ring.

"Take his ring off!"

She looked up at him with an amused little smile, but did not move. He
reached for the hand, and she put it behind her.

"Take it off," he said, harshly.

He forced her hand out, took off the ring with its gleaming stone, none
too gently, and laid it on the table behind him. Then he covered the
hand with kisses.

"Now it's my hand. Perhaps there was a little of both those feelings
you accuse me of--perhaps I _did_ want to triumph over both you and
Shepler--and the other people who said you'd never marry for anything
but money--but do you think I'd have had either one of those desires if
I hadn't loved you? Do you think I'd have cared how many Sheplers you
married if I hadn't loved you so, night and day?--always turning to you
in spite of everything,--loving you always, under everything--always, I
tell you."

"Under what--what 'everything'?"

"When I was sure you had no heart--that you couldn't care for any man
except a rich man--that you would marry only for money."

"You thought that?"

"Of course I thought it."

"What has changed you?"

"Nothing. I'm going to change it now by proving differently. I shall
take you against your will--but I shall make you love me--in the end. I
know you--you're a woman, in spite of yourself!"

"You were entirely right about me. I would even have married you
because of the money--"

"Tell me what it is you're holding back--don't wait."

"Let me think--don't talk, please!"

She sat a long time silent, motionless, her eyes fixed ahead. At length
she stirred herself to speak.

"You were right about me, partly--and partly wrong. I don't think I can
make you understand. I've always wanted so much from life--so much more
than it seemed possible to have. The only thing for a girl in my
position and circumstances was to make what is called a good marriage.
I wanted what that would bring, too. I was torn between the desires--or
rather the natural instincts and the trained desires. I had ideals
about loving and being loved, and I had the material ideals of my
experience in this world out here.

"I was untrue to each by turns. Here--I want to show you something."

She took up a book with closely written pages.

"I came here to-night--I won't conceal from you that I thought of you
when I came. It was my last time here, and you had gone, I supposed.
Among other things I had out this old diary to burn, and I had found
this, written on my eighteenth birthday, when I came out--the fond,
romantic, secret ideal of a foolish girl--listen:

"The Soul of Love wed the Soul of Truth and their daughter, Joy, was
born: who was immortal and in whom they lived for ever!'

"You see--that was the sort of moonshine I started in to live. Two or
three times I was a grievous disappointment to my people, and once or
twice, perhaps, I was disappointed myself. I was never quite sure what
I wanted. But if you think I was consistently mercenary you are
mistaken. I shall tell you something more--something no one knows.
There was a man I met while that ideal was still strong and beautiful
to me--but after I'd come to see that here, in this life, it was not
easily to be kept. He was older than I, experienced with women--a lover
of women, I came to understand in time. I was a novelty to him, a fresh
recreation--he enjoyed all those romantic ideals of mine. I thought
then he loved me, and I worshipped him. He was married, but constantly
said he was about to leave his wife, so she would divorce him. I
promised to come to him when it was done. He had married for money and
he would have been poor again. I didn't mind in the least. I tell you
this to show you that I could have loved a poor man, not only well
enough to marry him, but to break with the traditions, and brave the
scandal of going to him in that common way. With all I felt for him I
should have been more than satisfied. But I came in time to see that he
was not as earnest as I had been. He wasn't capable of feeling what I
felt. He was more cowardly than I--or rather, I was more reckless than
he. I suspected it a long time; I became convinced of it a year ago and
a little over. He became hateful to me. I had wasted my love. Then he
became funny. But--you see--I am not altogether what you believed me.
Wait a bit longer, please.

"Then I gave up, almost--and later, I gave up entirely. And when my
brother was about to marry that woman, and Mr. Shepler asked me to
marry him, I consented. It seemed an easy way to end it all. I'd quit
fondling ideals. And you had told me I must do anything I could to keep
Fred from marrying that woman--my people came to say the same
thing--and so--"

"If he had married her--if they were married now--then you would feel
free to marry me?"

"You would still be the absurdest man in New York--but we can't discuss
that. He isn't going to marry her."

"But he _has_ married her--"

"What do you mean?"

"I supposed you knew--Oldaker told me as I left the hotel. He and your
father were witnesses. The marriage took place this afternoon at the
Arlingham."

"You're not deceiving me?"

"Come, come!--_girl!_"

"Oh, _pardon_ me! please! Of course I didn't mean it--but you stunned
me. And papa said nothing to me about it before he left. The money must
have been too great a temptation to him and to Fred. She has just made
some enormous amount in copper stock or something."

"I know, she had better advice than I had. I'd like to reward the man
who gave it to her."

"And I was sure you were going to marry that other woman."

"How could you think so?"

"Of course I'm not the least bit jealous--it isn't my disposition; but
I _did_ think Florence Akemit wasn't the woman to make you happy--of
course I liked her immensely--and there were reports going
about--everybody seemed so sure--and you were with her so much. Oh, how
I did _hate_ her!"

"I tell you she is a joke and always was."

"It's funny--that's exactly what I told Aunt Cornelia about that--that
man."

"Let's stop joking, then."

"How absurd you are--with my plans all made and the day set--"

There was a knock at the door. He went over and unlocked it. Jarvis was
there.

"Mr. Shepler, Miss Avice."

They looked at each other.

"Jarvis, shut that door and wait outside."

"Yes, Mr. Bines."

"You can't see him."

"But I must,--we're engaged, don't you understand?--of course I must!"

"I tell you I won't let you. Can't you understand that I'm not talking
idly?"

She tried to evade him and reach the door, but she was caught again in
his arms--held close to him.

"If you like he shall come in now. But he's not going to take you away
from me, as he did in that jeweller's the other night--and you can't
see him at all except as you are now."

She struggled to be free.

"Oh, you're so _brutal_!"

"I haven't begun yet--"

He drew her toward the door.

"Oh, not that--don't open it--I'll tell him--yes, I will!"

"I'm taking no more chances, and the time is short."

Still holding her closely with one arm, he opened the door. The man
stared impassively above their heads--a graven image of
unconsciousness.

"Jarvis."

"Yes, sir."

"Miss Milbrey wishes you to say to Mr. Shepler that she is engaged--"

"That I'm ill," she interrupted, still making little struggles to twist
from his grasp, her head still bent down.

"That she is engaged with Mr. Bines, Jarvis, and can't see him. Say it
that way--'Miss Milbrey is engaged with Mr. Bines, and can't see
you.'".


[Illustration: "'SAY IT THAT WAY--MISS MILBREY IS ENGAGED WITH MR. BINES
AND CAN'T SEE YOU.'"]


"Yes, sir!"

He remained standing motionless, as he had been, his eyes still fixed
above them. But the eyes of Jarvis, from long training, did hot require
to be bent upon those things they needed to observe. They saw something
now that was at least two feet below their range.

The girl made a little move with her right arm, which was imprisoned
fast between them, and which some intuition led her captor not to
restrain. The firm little hand worked its way slowly up, went
creepingly over his shoulder and bent tightly about his neck.

"Yes, sir," repeated Jarvis, without the quiver of an eyelid, and went.

He closed the door with his free hand, and they stood as they were
until they heard the noise of the front door closing and the soft
retreating footsteps of the butler.

"Oh, you were mean--_mean_--to shame me so," and floods of tears came
again.

"I hated to do it, but I _had_ to; it was a critical moment. And you
couldn't have made up your mind without it."

She sobbed weakly in his arms, but her own arm was still tight about
his neck. He felt it for the first time.

"But I _had_ made up my mind--I did make it up while we talked."

They were back on the couch. He held her close and she no longer
resisted, but nestled in his arms with quick little sighs, as if
relieved from a great strain. He kissed her forehead and hair as she
dried her eyes.

"Now, rest a little. Then we shall go."

"I've so much to tell you. That day at the jeweller's--well, what could
I do but take one poor last little look of you--to keep?"

"Tell me if you care for me."

"Oh, I do, I do, I do care for you. I _have_--ever since that day we
walked in the woods. I do, I _do_!"

She threw her head back and gave him her lips.

She was crying again and trying to talk.

"I did care for you, and that day I thought you were going to say
something, but you didn't--you were so distant and troubled, and seemed
not even to like me--though I felt sure you loved me. I had thought
you were going to tell me, and I'd have accepted--yes, for the
money--though I liked you so much. Why, when I first met you in that
mine and thought you were a workman, I'm not sure I wouldn't have
married you if you had asked me. But it was different again when I
found out about you. And that day in the woods I thought something had
come between us. Only after dinner you seemed kinder, and I knew at
once you thought better of me, and might even seek me--I knew it in the
way a woman knows things she doesn't know at all. I went into the
library with a candle to look into the mirror, almost sure you were
going to come. Then I heard your steps and I was so glad--but it wasn't
you-I'd been mistaken again-you still disliked me. I was so
disappointed and hurt and heartsick, and he kissed me and soothed me.
And after that directly I saw through him, and I knew I truly did love
you just as I'd wanted to love the man who would be my husband--only
all that nonsense about money that had been dinned into me so long kept
me from seeing it at first. But I was sure you didn't care for me when
they talked so about you, and that--you never _did_ care for her, did
you--you _couldn't_ have cared for her, could you?--and yet, after that
night, I'd such a queer little feeling as if you _had_ come for me, and
had seen--"

"Surely a gentleman never sees anything he wasn't meant to see."

"I'm so glad--I should have been _so_ ashamed--"

They were still a moment, while he stroked her hair.

"They'll be turning in early to-night, having to get up to-morrow and
preach sermons--what a dreary place heaven must be compared with this!"

She sat up quickly.

"Oh, I'd forgotten. How awful it is. _Isn't_ it awful?"

"It will soon be over."

"But think of my people, and what's expected of me--think of Mr.
Shepler."

"Shepler's doing some hard thinking for himself by this time."

"Really, you're a dreadful person--"

There was a knock.

"The cabman outside, sir, says how long is he to wait, sir?"

"Tell him to wait all night if I don't come; tell him if he moves off
that spot I'll have his license taken away. Tell him I'm the mayor's
brother."

"Yes, sir."

"And, Jarvis, who's in the house besides you?"

"Miss Briggs, the maid, sir--but she's just ready to go out, sir."

"Stop her--say Miss Milbrey wishes to ask a favour of her; and Jarvis."

"Yes, sir!"

"Go put on that neat black street coat of yours that fits you so
beautifully in the back, and a purple cravat, and your shiny hat, and
wait for us with Briggs. We shall want you in a moment."

"Yes, Mr. Bines."

She looked at him wonderingly.

"We need two witnesses, you know. I learned that from Oldaker just
now."

"But do give me a _moment_, everything is all so whirling and hazy."

"Yes, I know--like the solar system in its nebulous state. Well, hurry
and make those worlds take shape. I can give you sixty seconds to find
that I'm the North Star. Ach! I have the Doctor von Herzlich been
ge-speaking with--come, come! What's the use of any more delay? I've
wasted nearly three hours here now, dilly-dallying along. But then, a
woman never does know her own mind.

"Put a thing before her--all as plain as the multiplication table--and
she must use up just so much good time telling a man that he's
crazy--and shedding tears because he won't admit that two times two are
thirty-seven." She was silent and motionless for another five minutes,
thinking intently. "Come, time's up."

She arose.

"I'm ready. I shall marry you, if you think I'm the woman to help you
in that big, new life of yours. They meant me not to know about Fred's
marriage until afterward."

He kissed her.

"I feel so rested and quiet now, as if I'd taken down a big old gate
and let the peace rush in on me. I'm sure it's right. I'm sure I can
help you."

She picked up her hat and gloves.

"Now I'll go bathe my eyes and fix my hair."

"I can't let you out of my sight, yet. I'm incredulous. Perhaps in
seventy-five or eighty years--"

"I thought you were so sure."

"While I can reach you, yes."

She gave a low, delicious little laugh. She reached both arms up around
him, pulled down his head and kissed him.

"There--_boy!_"

She took up the hat again.

"I'll be down in a moment."

"I'll be up in three, if you're not."

When she had gone he picked up an envelope and put a bill inside.

"Jarvis," he called.

The butler came up from below, dressed for the street.

"Jarvis, put this envelope in the inside of that excellent black coat
of yours and hand it--afterward--to the gentleman we're going to do
business with."

"Yes, Mr. Bines."

"And put your cravat down in the back, Jarvis--it makes you look
excited the way it is now."

"Yes, sir; thank you, sir!"

"Is Briggs ready?"  "She's waiting, sir."

"Go out and get in the carriage, both of you."

"Yes, sir!"

He stood in the hallway waiting for her. It was a quarter-past ten. In
another moment she rustled softly down to him.

"I'm trusting so much to you, and you're trusting so much to me. It's
_such_ a rash step!"

"Must I--"

"No, I'm going. Couldn't we stop and take Aunt Cornelia?"

"Aunt Cornelia won't have a chance to worry about this until it's all
over. We'll stop there then, if you like."

"We'll try Doctor Prendle, then. He's almost sure to be in."

"It won't make any difference if he isn't. We'll find one. Those horses
are rested. They can go all night if they must."

"I have Grandmother Loekermann's wedding-ring--of course you didn't
fetch one. Trust a man to forget anything of importance."

His grasp of her hand during the ride did not relax.




CHAPTER XLI.

The New Argonauts


Mrs. van Geist came flustering out to the carriage.

"You and Briggs may get out here, Jarvis. There, that's for you, and
that's for Briggs--and thank you both very much!"

"Child, child! what does it mean?"

"Mr. Bines is my husband, Mütterchen, and we're leaving for the West in
the morning."

The excitement did not abate for ten minutes or so.  "And do say
something cheerful, dear," pleaded Avice, at parting.

"You mad child--I was always afraid you might do something like this;
but I _will_ say I'm not altogether _sure_ you've acted foolishly."

"Thank you, you dear old Mütterchen! and you'll come to see us--you
shall see how happy I can be with this--this boy--this Lochinvar,
Junior--I'm sure Mrs. Lochinvar always lived happily ever after."

Mrs. Van Geist kissed them both.

"Back to Thirty-seventh Street, driver."

"I shall want you at seven-thirty sharp, to-morrow morning," he said,
as they alighted. "Will you be here, sure?"

"Sure, boss!"

"You'll make another one of those if you're on time."

The driver faced the bill toward the nearest street-light and scanned
it. Then he placed it tenderly in the lining of his hat, and said,
fervently:

"I'll _be_ here, gent!"

"My trunks," Avice reminded him.

"And, driver, send an express wagon at seven sharp. Do you understand,
now?"

"Sure, gent, I'll have it here at seven, and be here at seven-thirty."

They went in.

"You've sent Briggs off, and I've all that packing and unpacking to
do."

"You have a husband who is handy at those things."

They went up to her room where two trunks yawned open.

Under her directions and with her help he took out the light summer
things and replaced them with heavier gowns, stout shoes, golf-capes,
and caps.

"We'll be up on the Bitter Root ranch this summer, and you'll need
heavy things," he had told her.

Sometimes he packed clumsily, and she was obliged to do his work over.
In these intervals he studied with interest the big old room and her
quaint old sampler worked in coloured worsteds that had faded to greys
and dull browns: _"La Nuit Porte Conseil."_

"Grandma Loekermann did it at the convent, ages ago," she told him.

"What a cautious young thing she must have been!"

She leaned against his shoulder.

"But she eloped with her true love, young Annekje Van Schoule; left the
home in Hickory Street one night, and went far away, away up beyond One
Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, somewhere, and then wrote them about
it."

"And left the sampler?"

"She had her husband--she didn't need any old sampler after that--_Le
mariage porte conseil, aussi, monsieur._ And now, you've married your
wife with her wedding-ring, that came from Holland years and years
ago."

It was after midnight when they began to pack. When they finished it
was nearly four.

She had laid out a dark dress for the journey, but he insisted that she
put it in a suit-case, and wear the one she had on.

"I shouldn't know you in any other--and it's the colour of your eyes. I
want that colour all over the place."

"But we shall be travelling."

"In our own car. That car has been described in the public prints as a
'suite of palatial apartments with all modern conveniences.'"

"I forgot."

"We shall be going West like the old '49-ers, seeking adventure and
gold."

"Did they go in their private cars?"

"Some of them went in rolling six-horse Concords, and some walked, and
some of them pushed their baggage across in little hand-carts, but they
had fun at it--and we shall have to work as hard when we get there."

"Dear me! And I'm so tired already. I feel quite done up."

She threw herself on the wide divan, and he fixed pillows under her
head.

"You boy! I'm glad it's all over. Let's rest a moment."

He leaned back by her, and drew her head on to his arm.

"I'm glad, too. It's the hardest day's work I ever did. Are you
comfortable? Rest."

"It's so good," she murmured, nestling on his shoulder.

"Uncle Peter took his honeymoon in a big wagon drawn by a mule team,
two hundred miles over the 'Placerville and Red Dog Trail--over the
mountains from California to Nevada. But he says he never had so happy
a time."

"He's an old dear! I'll kiss him--how is it you say--'good and plenty.'
Did our Uncle Peter elope, too?"

He chuckled.

"Not exactly. It was more like abduction complicated with assault and
battery. Uncle Peter is pretty direct in his methods. The young lady's
family thought she could do better with a bloated capitalist who owned
three-eighths of a saw-mill. But Uncle Peter and she thought she
couldn't. So Uncle Peter had to lick her father and two brothers before
he could get her away. He would have licked the purse-proud rival, too,
but the rival ran into the saw-mill he owned the three-eighths of, and
barricaded the whole eight-eighths--the-five-eighths that didn't belong
to him at all, you understand--and then he threatened through a chink
to shoot somebody if Uncle Peter didn't go off about his business. So
Uncle Peter went, not wanting any unnecessary trouble. I've always
suspected he was a pretty ready scrapper in those days, but the poor
old fellow's getting a bit childish now, with all this trouble about
losing the money, and the hard time he had in the snow last winter. By
the way, I forgot to ask, and it's almost too late now, but do you like
cats?"

"I adore them--aren't kittens the _dearest?"_

"Well--you're healthy--and your nose doesn't really fall below the
specifications, though it doesn't promise that you're any _too_
sensible,--but if you can make up for it by your infatuation for cats,
perhaps it will be all right. Of course I couldn't keep you, you know,
if you weren't very fond of cats, because Uncle Peter'd raise a row--"

She was quite still, and he noted from the change in her soft breathing
that she slept. With his free hand he carefully shook out a folded
steamer rug and drew it over her.

For an hour he watched her, feeling the arm on which she lay growing
numb. He reviewed the day and the crowded night. He _could_ do
something after all. Among other things, now, he would drop a little
note to Higbee and add the news of his marriage as a postscript. She
was actually his wife. How quickly it had come. His heart was full of a
great love for her, but he could not quite repress the pride in his
achievement--and Shepler had not been sure until he was poor!

He lost consciousness himself for a little while.

When he awoke the cold light of the morning was stealing in. He was
painfully cramped, and chilled from the open window. From outside came
the loud chattering of sparrows, and far away he could hear wagons as
they rattled across a street of Belgian blocks from asphalt to asphalt.
The light had been late in coming, and he could see a sullen grey sky,
full of darker clouds.

Above the chiffonier he could see the ancient sampler.

_"La Nuit Porte Conseil."_ It was true.

In the cold, pitiless light of the morning a sudden sickness of
doubting seized him. She would awake and reproach him bitterly for
coercing her. She had been right, the night before,--it was madness.
They had talked afterward so feverishly, as if to forget their
situation. Now she would face it coldly after the sleep.

_"La Nuit Porte Conseil."_ Had he not been a fool? And he loved her so.
He would have her anyway--no matter what she said, now.

She stirred, and her wide-open eyes were staring up at him--staring
with hurt, troubled wonder. The amazement in them grew--she could not
understand.

He stopped breathing. His embrace of her relaxed.

And then he saw remembrance--recognition--welcome--and there blazed
into her eyes such a look of whole love as makes men thrill to all
good; such a look as makes them know they are men, and dare all great
deeds to show it. Like a sunrise, it flooded her face with dear,
wondrous beauties,--and still she looked, silent, motionless,--in an
ecstasy of pure realisation. Then her arms closed about his neck with a
swift little rushing, and he--still half-doubting, still curious--felt
himself strained to her. Still more closely she clung, putting out with
her intensity all his misgiving.

She sought his lips with her own--eager, pressing.

"Kiss me--kiss me--kiss me! Oh, it's all true--all true! My best-loved
dream has come all true! I have rested so in your arms. I never knew
rest before. I can't remember when I haven't awakened to doubt, and
worry, and heart-sickness. And now it's peace--dear, dear, dearest
dear, for ever and ever and ever."

They sat up.

"Now we shall go--get me away quickly."

It was nearly seven. Outside the sky was still all gloom.

In the rush of her reassurance he had forgotten his arm. It hung limp
from his shoulder.

"It was cramped."

"And you didn't move it?"

They beat it and kneaded it gaily together, until the fingers were full
of the rushing blood and able again to close warmly over her own little
hand.

"Now go, and let me get ready. I won't be long."

He went below to the library, and in the dim grey light picked up a
book, "The Delights of Delicate Eating." He tried another, "101
Sandwiches." The next was "Famous Epicures of the 17th Century." On the
floor was her diary. He placed it on the table. He heard her call him
from the stairs:

"Bring me up that ring from the table, please!"

He went up and handed it to her through the narrowly opened door.

As he went down the stairs he heard the bell ring somewhere below, and
went to the door.

"Baggage!"

The two trunks were down and out. "They're to go on this car, attached
to the Chicago Express." He wrote the directions on one of his cards
and paid the man.

At seven-thirty the bell rang again. The cabman was there.

"Seven-thirty, gent!"

"Avice!"

"I'm coming. And there are two bags I wish you'd get from my room." He
let her pass him and went up for them.

She went into the library and, taking up the diary, tore out a sheet,
marked heavily upon it with a pencil around the passage she had read
the evening before, and sealed it in an envelope. She addressed it to
her father, and laid it, with a paper-weight on it, upon "The Delights
of Delicate Eating," where he would be sure to find it.

The book itself she placed on the wood laid ready in the grate to
light, touched a match to the crumpled paper underneath and put up the
blower. She stood waiting to see that the fire would burn.

Over the mantel from its yellow canvas looked above her head the
humourously benignant eyes of old Annekje Van Schoule, who had once
removed from Maspeth Kill on Long Island to New Haarlem on the Island
of Manhattan, and carried there, against her father's will, the
yellow-haired girl he had loved. His face now seemed to be pretending
unconsciousness of the rashly acted scenes he had witnessed--lest, if
he betrayed his consciousness, he should be forced, in spite of
himself, to disclose his approval--a thing not fitting for an elderly,
dignified Dutch burgher to do.

"Avice!"

"Coming!"

She took up a little package she had brought with her and went out to
meet him.

"There's one errand to do," she said, as they entered the carriage,
"but it's on our way. Have him go up Madison Avenue and deliver this."

She showed him the package addressed: "Mr. Rulon Shepler, Personal."

"And this," she said, giving him an unsealed note. "Read it, please!"

He read:

"DEAR RULON SHEPLER:--I am sure you know women too well to have thought
I loved you as a wife should love her husband. And I know your bigness
too well to believe you will feel harshly toward me for deciding that I
could not marry you. I could of course consistently attribute my change
to consideration for you. I should have been very little comfort to
you. If I should tell you just the course I had mapped out for
myself--just what latitude I proposed to claim--I am certain you would
agree with me that I have done you an inestimable favour.

"Yet I have not changed because I do not love you, but because I do
love some one else with all my heart; so that I claim no credit except
for an entirely consistent selfishness. But do try to believe, at the
same time, that my own selfishness has been a kindness to you. I send
you a package with this hasty letter, and beg you to believe that I
shall remain--and am now for the first time--

"Sincerely yours,

"AVICE MILBREY BINES.

"P.S. I should have preferred to wait and acquaint you with my change
of intention before marrying, but my husband's plans were made and he
would not let me delay."

He sealed the envelope, placed it securely under the cord that bound
the package, and their driver delivered it to the man who opened
Shepler's door.  As their train emerged from the cut at Spuyten Duyvil
and sped to the north along the Hudson, the sun blazed forth.

"There, boy,--I knew the sun must shine to-day."

They had finished their breakfast. One-half of the pink roses were on
the table, and one from the other half was in her hair.

"I ordered the sun turned on at just this point," replied her husband,
with a large air. "I wanted you to see the last of that town under a
cloud, so you might not be homesick so soon."

"You don't know me. You don't know what a good wife I shall be."

"It takes nerve to reach up for a strange support and then kick your
environment out from under you--as Doctor von Herzlich would have said
if he'd happened to think of it."

"But you shall see how I'll help you with your work; I was capable of
it all the time."

"But I had to make you. I had to pick you up just as I did that first
time, and again down in the mine--and you were frightened because you
knew this time I wouldn't let you go."

"Only half-afraid you wouldn't--the other half I was afraid you would.
They got all mixed up--I don't know which was worse."

"Well, I admit I foozled my approach on that copper stock--but I won
you--really my winnings in Wall Street are pretty dazzling after all,
for a man who didn't know the ropes;--there's a mirror directly back of
you, Mrs. Bines, if you wish to look at them--with a pink rose over
that kissy place just at their temple."

She turned and looked, pretending to be quite unimpressed.

"I always was capable of it, I tell you,--boy!"

"What hurt me worst that night, it showed you could love _some_
one--you did have a heart--but you couldn't love me."

She did not seem to hear at first, nor to comprehend when she went back
over his words. Then she stared at him in sudden amazement.

He saw his blunder and looked foolish.

"I see--thank you for saying what you did last night--and you didn't
mind--you came to me anyway, in spite of _that_."

She arose, and would have gone around the table to him, but he met her
with open arms.

"Oh, you boy! you do love me,--you do!"

"I must buy you one of those nice, shiny black ear-trumpets at the
first stop. You can't have been hearing at all well.... See,
sweetheart,--out across the river. That's where our big West is, over
that way--isn't it fresh and green and beautiful?--and how fast you're
going to it--you and your husband. I believe it's going to be a good
game... for us both... my love..."

THE END.