The delicate ormolu clock between the Chelsea figurines chimed a sweet clear note in the silence. William Prescott actually started a little. He said, in his strange dull voice: “It is nine. I must be going.” He turned away to the sofa, picked up his greatcoat, hat and cane.
Ursula rose. “Yes,” she said, dimly, “it is nine o’clock.” Something was beating strongly in her throat. “May I ask, Mr. Prescott, what you are going to build on that land? A mill?”
He paused. He did not look at her. There was a cold brutality in his manner. “Why? Does it annoy you that I might build a mill? What have you against mills, Miss Wende?”
“I have nothing against mills!” she cried, with asperity. “Why should I? It’s your land, now. Do what you want with it.” It was stupid to be trembling like this, as if she were afraid.
“I have no objection to telling you,” he said. “I am going to build a house upon it. The biggest house in Andersburg.”
It was worse than stupid to experience such a sick shock, thought Ursula confusedly. It was surely nothing to her that he was building a house! But when one built a house, one had a wife, or intended to have one very shortly.
“Mrs. Prescott will be pleased, then,” she murmured. She rested her hand against the mantelpiece. I feel quite odd, she thought. I must have gotten a chill, standing so long in the garden.
William Prescott put on his coat before answering. Then he said, with hard denial: “There is no Mrs. Prescott. I am not married.”
“I see,” said Ursula, in the most imbecile way.
William Prescott’s loud voice filled the room: “I want the house for myself! I want room after room, storey after storey! I am going to fill every corner! I am going to have what I’ve always wanted, and be damned to everybody!”
Ursula was silent.
“If and when I marry, the woman won’t matter in the least,” said this peculiar man. He looked at her now, almost as if he hated her. “I shall marry only for children. I want to fill my house with children. A woman, to me, has no other reason for existence.”
They regarded each other in a thick silence.
“I’ll pick the best,” said William. “Nothing but the best for me. Because of the children. A lady. But I am not ready yet. I shan’t be ready until the house is built. Then I’ll do my searching.”
There was a kind of virulence in him, an alien quality which Ursula had never before encountered. She felt a blinding rage against him.
“I wish you good luck,” she said distinctly, “though I am sorry for the lady.”
Without another word, he turned away from her, and went out of the room. Ursula waited to hear him open and close the vestibule door. But the door neither opened nor shut. She felt him there, in the small closed darkness, as if he were lurking, like some great and inimical beast.
Then she heard his voice. “You don’t need to be sorry for the ‘lady’,” he was saying. “She will know why I am marrying her. She will know there is no sentiment in it.” He stopped. “I expect to marry a sensible woman.”
“Good night,” said Ursula, quietly.
He did not answer. Now he did open the door. He slammed it behind him.
The whole house shook and echoed after that enormous gesture of turbulence. Ursula stood by the fire and listened to it. Her cat came from a corner and rubbed against her skirts. She did not bend and pet it as usual. She continued to gaze at the doorway to the vestibule.
“Why, the horrible man,” she said aloud, in a sick, wondering voice. “The horrible, horrible man! He is quite insane. I do hope I’ll never see him again.”
She would notify Mr. Jenkins tomorrow to see Mr. Prescott. Let Mr. Jenkins take care of the final negotiations. Let him have his commission. It was nothing to her. She could not bear, under any circumstances, to encounter that dreadful man again. It was not to be borne.
The little exquisite house was so still all about her, as still as though a storm had passed over it and it was left alone, safe and quiet from all recent batterings. The lamplight flared; the fire muttered; the cat mewed questioningly. It was a good house, this, but something violent had assaulted it. The violence had gone, without inflicting damage. Life could go on serenely, as usual.
Serene—and empty. Empty as a skull. Full of books and quiet, and empty as death.
CHAPTER II
Mr. Albert Jenkins sat and beamed humorously at his charming visitor, Ursula Wende. He was a widower. Three years ago he had been relieved of a remarkably repulsive wife, and a year later he had proposed for his old friend’s daughter. He had considered himself a catch of no mean attributes; he was one of the richest men in Andersburg, a stockholder in three of the most prosperous mercantile establishments, not to speak of a directorship in the American Lumber Company. He was not yet forty-five, not, he thought, too old for the spinsterish twenty-eight-year-old Ursula. Nor was he physically distasteful to other spinsters, and widows—a short, lean, red-faced little man with a great reputation for amiability and shrewdness. Moreover, he had no children. He also possessed, and lived in, a very handsome home on Crescent Road, a most fashionable and exclusive street. His habits were impeccable; he neither smoked nor drank, nor was he ever heard to utter a word not entirely acceptable in mixed company. The minister of his church regarded him as a most estimable man, which no doubt he was.
Ursula did not consider him a great catch. She did not consider Mr. Jenkins at all, though there was nothing about him to repel a fastidious lady. She had refused him gently, and with a faint surprise. She rather liked him; he was courteous and friendly, and had rescued some of the old Wende fortune for August. But she could not bring herself to think of him as a husband for herself.
She knew him for an avaricious man, who could always “turn a good penny.” She did not hold this against him. After all, sensible people liked money, and wanted it; only fools professed a fine scorn for the delightful commodity. So, it was not his avarice, his shrewdness bordering on cunning, which made her refuse him. Once or twice, thinking of her own precarious state, she wondered at her lack of worldly wisdom. But the thought of sharing Mr. Jenkins’ house with him, and, candidly, his bed, bored her.
Mr. Jenkins did not become her remorseless enemy because of her lack of sense and her apparent unawareness of what it would mean to be Mrs. Jenkins. He liked Ursula very much. Even though she had refused him, he thought her a young woman of immense distinction and character and good judgment.
Now, as she sat in his office, he thought how superior she was to other ladies of his acquaintanceship. No fussing; no fripperies; no flutterings and aimlessnesses. To be sure, her costume was a little dull, but she gave refinement and gracefulness to it, and extraordinary taste. She was all in brown, from her woolen frock with the white collar, the neat plain cloak, the exquisite gloves, to the bonnet with its inner ruching of tulle, and its brown ribbons. Mr. Jenkins always declared that he disliked ladies who had a streak of the blue stocking in their characters, but, perversely, he liked to talk with Ursula, who understood everything, and never stared vacantly, or protested that all this “legal talk” was quite beyond her delicate mind. Ursula always understood very well.
Ladies of mental power were often “rebels,” Mr. Jenkins would think dolorously, licking his late wounds. Mrs. Jenkins had been a “rebel.” She had even dared assert, in open company, that women ought to have the right to vote. Only Mr. Jenkins’ unassailable position in finance had kept husband and wife on the best calling-lists after that outrage. But Ursula, though a lady of education and intelligence, had no such enormities and peculiarities of character. She never antagonized anyone.
All in all, Ursula would have been perfect as Mrs. Jenkins the second. In the meantime, it was pleasure to see her, and to talk with her. Moreover, gossip never touched her, which was a happy circumstance.
This morning, Ursula had been telling Mr. Jenkins of William Prescott’s visit. Naturally, with her customary taste and prudence, she had refrained from impart
ing all the circumstances. She had only hinted, carefully, that Mr. Prescott had revealed himself to be a most extraordinary man, hasty, savage, impulsive and without a single gentlemanly instinct. She managed to convey all this without the actual words, by a delicate amusement and a wry gesture or two.
“Well, my dear Ursula,” he said, leaning back in his chair and beaming at her, “at least you are rid of a most unprofitable piece of land. And at a very good price. You will remember I advised you to sell it for a thousand. But you have sold it for one thousand five hundred. I always considered you a very good businesswoman, you remember.”
The cold bright April sunshine struck into the handsome office, with its fire, its leather-covered desk, its good chairs, and its wall of legal books.
Mr. Jenkins surveyed his visitor admiringly. “A very good bargain,” he said. “And so Prescott wants to build a house on it, eh? Well, it is just like him, the scoundrel.” For a moment, Mr. Jenkins’ amiable countenance puckered in an ugly way. “I’m glad you sent him to me for the final details.”
“Yes, I wrote him a note, at the Imperial Hotel,” said Ursula, without much interest. “I thought the final negotiations had best be conducted by you, Albert.”
“A very good thought,” admitted Mr. Jenkins, approvingly.
Ursula looked at her gloves.
“It is just like him,” repeated Mr. Jenkins, with some sudden passion, “to rush out to you the very night he had seen the property, and demand it. None of those who know him will be in the least surprised.”
“Oh,” said Ursula, guilelessly, “then he is known in Andersburg?”
“Known!” cried Mr. Jenkins. The chair creaked loudly as he sat up. Now his face showed disgust and repulsion and a black resentment. “Do you mean to say, dear Ursula, that you never heard of him before? Why, The Clarion has written about him every week! He is notorious, the rascal!”
“I don’t read The Clarion often,” admitted Ursula. “Papa always got the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and New York newspapers, and I have kept up the habit. And none of my friends ever mentioned Mr. Prescott to me.”
“His name is not fit to be mentioned in decent company!” exclaimed Mr. Jenkins, with great excitement. His sharp red face became almost purple. “A thief and a felon like that! Surely, you can’t be unaware of what he did to Arnold, of the American Lumber Company? Why, Arnold was like a father to him. And he ruined Arnold, it is said. I don’t know all the details as yet, but The Clarion intends to publish the whole nefarious story very soon, and I assure you it will shock Andersburg to its heart.”
Mr. Jenkins knew all the details, hence his excitement and his hate-filled voice, loud and harsh in the room. “Ruined Arnold,” he repeated. “And it may have terrible consequences for the Company’s stockholders.” He paused. “Fortunately, I had some hint of this a few months ago, and I may sell out my holdings.”
“How clever of you, Albert,” murmured Ursula.
“Just a weather eye, my dear Ursula,” he said, with an air of self-deprecation. Then he became virtuous and purple again. “But there are a number of my friends who will be involved in this; it is enough to make a man ill.”
Ursula gazed at him ingenuously. “How sad that you were not—sure—Albert, a few months ago, and could not tell them what you already guessed, so that they might salvage a little from their investments.”
There was a sudden brittle silence in the office. Jenkins stared at Ursula, and his small eyes narrowed.
Ursula’s calm gaze remained very candid, and gentle, upon him. An unpleasant thought came to him. He had often remarked to acquaintances that Ursula was “smart as a whip.” Why had he said that? Was it some instinct? If she was as smart as he had thought—and he could not just now remember why he had thought it—then she was suspecting something.
He said, almost incoherently: “I—I’m not sure, my dear. It was all done so undercover by that scoundrel. A feeling, let us say. You ladies would call it intuition.” He smiled at her indulgently. She inclined her graceful bonneted head, and smiled back. He breathed easier. “Smart as a whip” some women might be, but, fundamentally, they were all fools. “One does not rush to one’s friends without proof, you see—”
Ursula still smiled. All at once, Mr. Jenkins almost disliked her.
“You did not do so badly, yourself,” he said, with a rich chuckle. “If you had got five hundred dollars for that slum, I should have congratulated you. But to have got one thousand five hundred—” he spread his hands. “My dear Ursula, you are a financial genius! If you were a man, I should ask you to be my partner, at once! How did you manage to force him to give you all that money?”
Ursula in her reflective voice replied: “Yes, it is a slum, is it not?” She waited, then added, as if making an insignificant remark: “He offered two thousand.”
He gaped at her, confounded and incredulous. He could not believe it. He spluttered: “Two thousand? You are not joking? The man must be insane!”
For a few moments Ursula did not answer. She had led a sheltered existence, but she had not been unaware of life. Villainy, through books and hearing and observing, was no new thing to her. She was not disturbed by it. She asked herself, now, very sharply, why she had not been disturbed. Why had she not been made indignant by it, and angered, if not embittered? It is, she thought, only because I have always been so supremely selfish and self-centered, so abominably egotistic.
This man before her was a villain, if only a small and a petty one. Yet she had looked at him and had felt only a faint disdainful amusement. Amusement! She had not known then, but she knew now, that such tolerance could be an evil thing.
She became aware that Albert Jenkins had been laughing incredulously, and that he had said something. She spoke quickly: “Forgive me, Albert, I am afraid my thoughts strayed for a moment. Please, what did you say?”
“I said, it seems impossible that he should have offered you two thousand dollars, and that you should have refused it.”
Ursula smiled artlessly. “But, Albert, that would have been dishonest, you see. I knew the land wasn’t worth that.”
He loved her afresh for this idiocy. “Well,” he said, magnanimously, “one thousand five hundred is one thousand too much. I have already made out the deed, after receiving your note. He is to call for it tonight. I understand that he has actually begun operations on the land. No one knew what his intention was. You tell me he wishes to build a house. Right next door to chicken coops and shacks and stony fields! Well, well!”
“I wonder why he wanted that land?” asked Ursula.
Mr. Jenkins scowled. “I’ll tell you why! Because nobody, after hearing the—rumors—and knowing what he was, would sell him a single clod of earth anywhere!”
“He tried to buy land somewhere else?”
Mr. Jenkins frowned again, and rubbed his chin. “Well, I can’t just say. Not for sure. Never heard of it.” He became thoughtful, and stared into space. “Now why should Prescott buy that particular piece of land? Very strange.”
Ursula smoothed her gloves. “Andersburg can’t move farther east, because that is the industrial section, where all those factories and mills are, and no one would care for that, and good land beyond that area is too far from the city. It can’t move north, because the hills are there, like a barrier, and most of the land is in estates. It can’t move south, because of the river, and the docks, and the farms nearby. So it seems odd to me that no one ever thought that it might move west. I suppose that is because Andersburg hasn’t grown much recently. But if it should suddenly start to grow, the west is the only place, isn’t it?”
If Ursula had been a man, Mr. Jenkins would have sworn suddenly and violently, and would have called himself an idiot, and his friends also. Of course, it was obvious! Just because Andersburg had hardly grown since the war was no reason why it shouldn’t do so now. Of course, the farmers along the river and slightly inland would eventually be induced, by high offers, to sell the land for s
uburban or city development. But the prices would indeed be high! To the west, however, the stony and undesirable land lay, cheap and unwanted, waiting only for a clever man to buy it, or a group of clever men of vision, anticipating the future. One could buy all the land one wished, from the miserable squatters and grubby truck-gardeners and artisans who lived there—
Mr. Jenkins dropped his eyelids, to conceal the sudden sharp gleam in his eye. It was an instinctive gesture, even before Ursula, who could not possibly understand such things as speculation in land. Mr. Jenkins’ heart began to beat very fast. The suburbs, the desirable ones, were already becoming crowded.
Then he had a sickening thought. Someone had already thought of all this. William Prescott. It was to be expected. William Prescott, ugly rat from Clifton Street, despoiler of better men, thief and liar and conniver and scoundrel! Mr. Jenkins stammered, watching Ursula closely:
“Did Prescott mention buying any other land in that vicinity?”
Ursula knew very well what was transpiring in Mr. Jenkins’ mind. Her old habit of faint amusement tried to assert itself. Instead, and she felt this with a kind of exhilaration, contempt came to her, clear and vivid.
She said, as if in vague wonder: “No. But then, our interview was very short, really. I found him most disagreeable. We concluded our arrangements, and he left.”
Suddenly, she remembered him beside her, at her desk. She saw the spill shaking in his hard brown hand. That hand became intensely visible to her now, in the light of the remembered sudden flare of the lamp.
She heard Mr. Jenkins sigh with relief. He had taken up a pen. He was tapping it thoughtfully against his teeth. He said, quite loudly: “It was only because he could not buy elsewhere.”
Ursula’s shoulders moved under her cloak in something like a shrug. She wanted to go. But the thing, the obscure but powerful impulse which had brought her to this office today, held her in her chair.