"Are you?” she said, and might have added: "I have laid my life at thy feet; do as it please thee with it, for what shall please thee is sweet." But neither then nor ever was she able to put into words to him all the romance and wonder he meant to her. No doubt they would be married; she had not really thought of that, although she had often contemplated her own possible marriage before meeting him. One had to be born; one had to die; one had to be married, also; these were the inevitable triology. And since marriage was the only one of the three in which the principal actor had any say, it lent itself generously to speculation. Very erratic speculation. But the fact is that romantic love does not trouble about marriage. It can feed on moonlight, nourish itself on sonnets; so to Hope the idea of marrying Tony was quite by the way. But, of course, if he said so, they would be married—and, being married, matters would be in no whit altered.
After he had gone, however, she treasured the words, as a guarantee of the permanence of her happiness. Him, she had never doubted as loving her always, but an instinct as old as time and the changing seasons had warned her that this wonder would not last. Not any more does one expect spring to remain after its appointed period. Something, somehow, would come between them, and leave her only a memory. To this absurd tangle of "forever" and "but a little while" Tony had brought the word marriage like a sword, and the knot was cut cleanly. He had spoken; if there were any untoward circumstance, he would overcome it. He would overawe the face of Fate.
A singular quiet fell on her restless spirit. Mary noticed she no longer complained of the stagnation of life, though on the surface it was all the same. At hazard, Mary guessed correctly; being in love was itself an adventure, and all-absorbing. The impatience of her moments of waiting for Tony was not her old tugging at the leash. She even withdrew as far as possible what tentative feelers she had thrown out before. With Ned she was indifferent and distrait to the point of rudeness. He tried to sulk. She did not even notice, and he returned, after telling Lisbeth and Mary in strict confidence that she was a disagreeable little beast and that only his high regard for them made him tolerate her. She had always been high-handed with Allen Kirby, but Allen's philosophy permitted him to enjoy what he could get. He had never made any claims. He was always ready, if she had nothing better to do. And since she liked him very well, and he had accepted with equanimity his first tacit definition of their relations, she did not feel that they infringed on Tony's possession of all that was herself.
But with Edgerton she was vaguely troubled, and seemed to be in a perpetual retreat. He felt her slipping away from him, half surmised the truth, but could put no name to the cause. Of her life he knew nothing except what she told him herself. And she had the straightforward reticence of the truthful. Clumsily he tried to hold her, accepting each rebuff with a dogged one that made her feel pitiful toward him. At the same time she was at a loss to understand what he wanted. He had so much already.
ONCE she voiced the question to Mary. Edgerton had been to see her. He came but the once. The last time he had been in town she had put him off prettily, because she had an engagement with Tony. Her rudeness smote her; in answer to a note Mary tossed her, she had telephoned, told him to call. He had been strangely unwilling, though plainly he wanted to see her. But he came.
What she remembered most was the way his eyes followed her about the room, as if photographing every trivial gesture she made. When she gave him her hand he tried to take here in his arms, and she said "No, no" and avoided him. Afterward, just as the first time, she shyly gave him a cheek to kiss, as an amende. But his unease perplexed her.
"What is it?" she asked. "Aren't you comfortable? I'm going to make some coffee." It seemed he did not want coffee, and she sat pondering him. "You're different," was all she could make of it.
"No, you are," he returned bluntly, "Well, I might have known it would come. I say—"
"Yes?"
"If—if anything goes wrong— If I can help you, let me know." And he was for going. "Oh, why?" she said gently. "It's early." She held him by the lapel of his coat, looking up at him engagingly, and he would have kissed her again.
But he knew too well she had nothing for him. And after all, with a heavy heart he knew he had nothing for her.
"No, I must. I've got some things to see to—Emily—my daughter— is coming up. I want you to meet her."
"I should like to," said Hope bravely, concealing her horror and alarm at the idea of meeting a strange girl. There was a certain incredibility, too, about his having a grown daughter. Hope had been bred to the old order. A man married was married, and that was the end of him. Edgerton appearing always alone, had somehow in her mind extricated himself from that fixed position, and now it seemed she must replace him, and he really would not quite fit. He would not fit anywhere, that was the trouble. A man of his age— She had dissociated him from all that, his age, his circumstances, his very physical appearance, at last: she no longer felt inclined to giggle secretly at the spectacle of his grey hairs abasing themselves before her triumphant youth: and she would have to laboriously recreate him in her mind. Actually, she never did: she continued to feel him her equal; her rejection of him became a matter of personal choice, not of any outward disparity. It would have comforted him to know that, strangely. But he never did know it, being secretly modest.
After he had gone, she interrogated Mary, as she had been wont to question Agnes.
"He must be worried about something," she said sagely, interrupting Mary's peaceful scribbling in the bedroom. "He seemed to be on pins and needles."
"It was me," said Mary, disregarding syntax, and further replied to Hope's stare. "He wondered where I might be; he feels rather silly before me. Did he ask?"
"No. Was that it?"
Mary nodded, smiling. "Certainly. He could feel my eye gimleting through the keyhole. Wicked child, why don't you let that poor man alone?"
"I don't do anything to him," said Hope indignantly.
"Horrid little flirt,” said Mary calmly.
"I am not!"
"No? What then do you want with all those men?" Mary's voice, sweetly lazy and receptive, wooed to confidence.
"Only four," Hope protested. "I don't flirt with them. I"—she paused a long time. "Maybe you can understand. It's like this—there are so many things I'd like to do and see and feel, all at once; I should like to grow in every direction. I wish the world were an orange and I could eat it—"
"An apple, you mean," murmured Mary, "Well?"
"When I hear of a strange country, I long to be there immediately;" Hope pursued resolutely. "To read of some new discovery makes me wish I were at the inventor's elbow; to hear of a big adventure fills me with an awful longing to have experienced it. And I'd like to be a man—but I'd like to be a woman, too. Of course I simply can't have any of those things. But Ned and Allen and Con Edgerton and—all of them—" she hesitated obviously over Tony Yorke’s name—"they're my foreign countries, my other lives. I explore them and watch them; I take some of their lives from them. Because they let me see themselves. So do you; maybe Lisbeth does; but no one else. People in a crowd aren't interesting. A crowd brings out points of resemblance; in extreme cases it turns into one creature, a mob! But that wasn't what I started to say, was it?"
"No," said Mary. "Never mind, I understand. Yes 'But he who lives more lives than one, more deaths than one must die,'"
"I've died a million times here in the last two years," retorted Hope. "I think I'm getting used to it now."
"You're not such a fidget,” agreed Mary. "But is that it? Is—it—?"
There was no answer.
"Aren't you engaged to Tony Yorke?"
Hope looked up quickly, her eyes round with surprise a defensive blankness clouding them.
"Why do you ask that?" she parried.
"Because I have no manners," Mary smiled. "Now, aren't you?" But her real reason she could not tell.
"Yes," said Hope, rosily shamefaced and a little proud. "But I'll never forgive you if you tell any one. You won't, will you?"
"Not unless you say I may," Mary hesitated. "But—you ought to announce it. Did—did Tony ask you not to?"
"No, of course not," said Hope, placidly astonished. "We never spoke of it. Who cares, anyway? No one would be interested, except maybe you and Lisbeth. And I don't want to be served up with the sandwiches at every afternoon tea from now till next year. If you tell I'll hate you!"
"As you say," agreed Mary, secretly resolved to alter that decision. "When will you be married?"
"Oh, I don’t know. Sometime. As soon as we save enough money," Hope laughed happily.
"It will be never," said Mary to herself. "I wonder if I shall be able to help her at all?" But aloud she said: "I forgot to say the usual thing, my dear. But you know I hope you find the magpie's nest."
"What magpie's nest?" enquired Hope, round-eyed again,
"A facon de parler, dear; the French say happiness is to be found in a magpie's nest. Because the magpie always builds out of reach!"
Hope smiled to herself, with deep assurance.
"But I forgot to ask you," she said, "what does Mr. Edgerton want?"
Mary, in silent despair, refused to answer.
TURN ABOUT
|
Love knocked at my doot, one summer's day, |
Love sped past my door one summer's day,
—A. M. Bowers.
|
CHAPTER X.
GOSSIP that builds up slowly, like accretions to a coral reef, is more dangerous and difficult than a rumour that runs like sudden flame in dry grass. But the other remains, fetters its hapless object; unless it concerns one of unusual mental and spiritual stature, who can calmly rise clear, and use it as a footing. And that takes time.
These tiny, ever-increasing tributes of idleness and malice Mary dreaded for Hope, saw them piling about her, and was helpless. Warn her? It would not help. The girl might struggle to amend, but wanted experience to perceive her error. She would be simply overwhelmed, frightened, and sickened of the unprovoked baseness, it would seem to show her, in human nature. She had never injured any one; lacking the flavour of reprisal, the attack would seem merely wanton. Hope still had that terrible sense of justice discernible in young and unhappily inarticulate children. She would see herself punished for a fault uncommitted. She would not know how to recover herself and strike back, and the wound would be poisoned thereby.
No, there was nothing to be done. And perhaps luck would incline the other way; the situation was so singularly mixed now, no one could see the end. If there was such a thing as fool's luck—well, Hope deserved it. She was such an idiot—and she juggled her own fortunes as carelessly as though they were ivory instead of crystal.
Emily Edgerton's visit, though delayed, had materialized. She was much lunched and refreshed with vast quantities of tea by the local ladies, but Hope had met her first. Emily was just past eighteen, but tall and well-grown, attractive with health and good nature and her father's millions. She was brown, and rather pretty; brown eyes, brown hair, a few brown freckles, and a figure rounded from tennis and dancing. She was armed point de vise with that knowledge of security which is the portion of daughters of the rich. Hope wondered and envied, not perceiving the source. Mary understood, and wished Hope might have a few years of the same ease, to put her on her feet. This was at tea, and they were planning some way to pass the evening without boredom—a difficult thing in that city. Nothing offered but a second-rate theatrical performance; it would undoubtedly be second-rate, since none others came so far from the centres of civilization. But Edgerton and Emily professed themselves quite willing to take what chance there might be of a smile, and while he was thinking whom he might ask to complete the party—"I'd feel altogether too greedy with three pretty women to myself," he thought—Tony Yorke was observed on the verandah. So he was brought in, like the wedding guests who were gathered in from the hedges and byways; and the party was declared filled, for their box could not possibly hold more than five.
SO they sat very splendidly in the stage box; there were only four boxes and they were all stage boxes. One could not see all that went on on the stage, but Mary said the audience was much more amusing anyway. From the other side of the house, Mrs. Shane nodded to Mary, scrutinized Hope through an opera glass, and smiled at Tony.
Tony and Mary tossed the ball between them at first. She knew him, heart and soul, reading him, perhaps, through another she had once known. But she had grown clever now; so that he could not guess how clever she was. "A silly muddle," she was saying to herself before the evening was well begun., looking at Hope, slim and shrinking in her black gown, with drooped lids, so that Mary's eyes outshone her, and the rose in Emily Edgerton's cheek. With a little pang at heart Mary saw that Edgerton still turned to her. After all, he was twice the man Tony was; it had never been her surface that had caught him. For all his simplicity, he phrased himself very neatly, apropos of what Mary did not catch.
"I can see through a ladder when there’s a lantern on the other side."
"Well, Daddy, I always told you I wasn't a ladder,"" remarked Emily cheerfully, and pinched his arm. That was about the depth of the conversation.
"Aren't you?" murmured Hope idiotically, and they laughed until Mrs, Shane heard them.
"Are you?" asked Tony very seriously, addressing Hope.
She rallied. “Yes, I am," she declared. "Any one can see me—or put a foot on me." Her eyes acknowledged that he, at least, could.
"Your Vocation," said Mary, "is evidently marriage."
"Marriage isn't a vocation," returned Hope lightly, swimming on the tide of her own frivolity, "it's an accident. And accidents never happen to me; I'm always on the verge of them, right under the chariot wheels you may say, but some rude person always rescues me." She avoided Tony's glance as she spoke. Another woman would have looked at him with coquettish denial of her words. Mary saw Hope's attitude in advance; what hurt and shocked her despite herself was that Tony, too, looked deliberately preoccupied and gay, Ah, he should have been possessive, given himself away. He left his rightful part to Edgerton—we accepted it. It was a muddle, indeed.
"Oh you'll marry," said Edgerton, rather gloomily. She shook her head, contradicting, with a little lift of her eyelashes at him. "Why do you think so?" But he did not seem able to say. Tony had fallen into a low-toned conversation with Emily Edgerton; Mary, smiling dreamily out over the orchestra, felt like an exceedingly exclusive audience. Tony had got Emily's fan, and they retreated behind it, and Emily dimpled and smiled—she was really rather charming, and Tony's eyes had not forgotten their old trick. "The next day?" Mary heard him ask. "Perhaps," said Emily. "Shall we all go?" she looked at the others, 'If you like," said Tony, gallantly.
Well, the evening was over. In the lobby, Mrs. Shane captured them, pressed them to supper, all of them. It was Edgerton who did not want to go, and it was Mary who, having learned to read his long primer print very easily in her elbow-to-elbow working hours with him, made their excuses. It was Mary, too, who heard Tony promising that he might be there later. She grimaced, hiding it under her hood. Was a man so avid of the moment's distraction worth luring? But that was for Hope to settle, not her,
"We'll get enough of the Shanes to-morrow," said Edgerton bluntly to Mary. "We've got to dine with them." Mary nodded. Shane was involved in Edgerton's latest deal, for the power rights on the Kenatchee Falls.
Dine they did, and Tony was at that dinner too, He had been of the theatre party by accident; he was always at Mrs. Shane's dinners, and thereafter, because of the sheep instinct in people, he was everywhere asked where Emily Edgerton was asked, which was everywhere, merely because people knew of the two initial occasions.
If he had wished just such a development in the first Instance, it was by no means on account of Emily herself. He needed the financial backing of Edgerton; he had staked all his own money, and some he had got from his mother, not an enormous sum, on the Kenatchee Falls deal, and without Edgerton's help, he might just as well have set it sailing down the Bow River in paper boats. Shane's backing could do no more than get him a hearing and give him a little local prestige, for Shane, though growing rich as a small city counts riches, had many irons in the fire and needed all his loose capital for himself. But a word, a scratch of the pen, from Edgerton would unlock the vaults of any of the powerful banks; he could command money enough to dam the Bow with silver if he chose. He had more than money; he had credit, he was a man who never lost. By sheer tenacity, the ability to play a waiting game, Edgerton had recouped himself a dozen times in deals where one less long-sighted, would have given up and admitted defeat. And there were not many men in the North-West of whom so much could be said. Boom times do not breed shrewdness. Edgerton had not floated in on the tide of any boom; he had made his start a dollar at a time, and never forgot what a dollar cost in actual effort. He was the one man Tony Yorke wanted.
But it had to be soon. The franchise was already granted, passed but a few weeks before by a gratified Assembly at Edmonton. A provincial election impended within another twelvemonth, with a threat of an over-turned Government. The fear of that undesirable consummation had forced even the secret shareholders of the company, who sat in the Assembly, to assent to an obnoxious rider to the Bill calling for certain work upon the power plant to be completed within the year—expensive work There were ways, certainly, to obtain a postponement, but they were also somewhat expensive. would be doubly so with a new provincial cabinet, hungry from enforced abstinence, to appease.
"With me," Shane told Tony frankly, "it's a gamble; and I'll have to pass up the next raise. I've reached my limit. But if we can get Edgerton—why, we'll just be taking over the bank, that's all. We'll have the percentage on our side. I hope we can get him. But he's a singed cat for caution. And it's no use crowding him." That was very well for Shane; he played within his means. But Tony had put all he had in the pot; he had to win.
PENNINGTON YORKE (that was his full name, though he had nearly forgotten it himself) had begun his financial education at the wrong end; he had learned how to spend money before he knew anything about making it. In four dizzy years at college he had dispersed the nucleus of a comfortable fortune. Thereafter he had been in the position of the Chinaman who went tobogganing, as he explained once to Hope: "Whizz-z-z—go down like hellee—walk back six miles!" All his personal assets here were valueless; connections, charm, social polish, he found quite useless in a place where the social order was just emerging from a pastoral democracy. True, he had friends; and from them he got friendship of a sort—just what he gave, in fact, which was just what he did not need. At home he could, if he had chosen to be a little patient, have come into his own, but he had no patience, and the West looked to him like an industrial faro game, where everything might be won on a single turn of the wheel—and nothing lost, if one had nothing to lose.
He had, certainly, got Shane's countenance and support. But Mrs, Shane was an able woman! She was bored a good deal; she and Tony had in common a million trifles and a large Selfishness. Shane liked Tony, too, but if Cora had disliked him, she would have seen to it that her husband shared her feelings. As it was, Tony told her all his affairs, or at least, all his financial affairs, and she sympathized with him. Nothing is easier, when one docs not have to suffer through those affairs, She had even tried to help him with Edgerton; it was one of her notable failures, and it stung, rather. She did not forget it, though she had the wit to leaye alone the further conduct of the business end of matters.
Bred to the current (Continued on page 26)
