It did not occur to Stephen that there was anything incongruous in Rufus refusing to accept a house key of his own, and Rufus’s bills for himself and his daughter and his mother.
Twelve thousand dollars in cash, and six thousand dollars in bills since April! Of course, thought Stephen, rubbing his wet forehead, there was his salary. But he was committed to give twelve thousand dollars in September, November, and December to the Portersville Home for the Aged, the Portersville Home for Abandoned Children, the Retired Veterans of the Civil War, and the local hospital.
He thought: I could go to Philadelphia and borrow on my stocks and bonds. But how would I repay the loan, if things don’t improve rapidly? Besides, his fifty-one per cent was a sacred trust, and he could not convince himself that in reality it honorably belonged to him. If there was only some way I could cut down, thought Stephen desperately. He went over the list of servants, and shrank. Sophia might not contribute a penny to their pay, but she regarded the servants as almost entirely her own and herself as the head of the household. She would have a fit, thought poor Stephen, and abandoned the matter. The carriages? There were eight vehicles altogether, and a corresponding company of grooms and coachmen. They could be eliminated to a great extent, but what would the poor wretches do at a time when employment was still rapidly declining?
There was no way out, except by borrowing. For a moment Stephen thought of bringing his financial troubles to Rufus, not to ask his brother to help with expenses (that would be unthinkable under “the circumstances”), but simply for consolation and advice about the mountainous dilemma. No, it would be wrong to force Rufus to share his anxieties. He must borrow the money very soon, giving a certain amount of his stocks and bonds as collateral. He reflected that the Chicago Railroad System was costing the Interstate Railroad Company an enormous sum of money these last few years, because it, like all other railroads, was suffering from the panic.
Stephen believed that his mounting troubles were unknown to anyone but himself. But Rufus knew; the bankers in Portersville were his friends. As he had suspected, Stephen’s “weaknesses” of character were hurrying him into ruin.
It was not possible for Stephen to know that he was under any surveillance, nor would he have suspected it. He was on the best of terms with Rufus, and he constantly used the memory of Rufus’s support of him in dealings with the board of directors as consolation when his personal troubles seemed to him insurmountable. Yet, during the past two years, some sixth sense had made him uneasy. He was like a man caught in a fog in a strange and dangerous country, not knowing from whence a deadly enemy might emerge. Lately his instinct would not be quieted; he would awake in the night, trembling and undone.
Now the periods during which his logic could drive off his nameless and faceless fear became shorter and shorter. On this hot August afternoon it seized him like the teeth of a great beast, and he got to his feet, looking about him in dread. He went to the western windows of the library, which looked out upon the gardens slowly dropping in terraces over the side of the mountain. Upon the upper terraces grew tiers of mighty pines and elms, one above the other, sheltering the bluish-green grass which sloped below them. Here the shade, so clustering and cool, would permit no flower beds. But the terraces beneath exploded in scarlet, yellow, blue, white, rose, and purple, interspersed with winding stone paths, little brilliant fountains, and only an occasional tree. Three willows trailed their long green hair in the blazing wind, and caught pure glitter on their thin and delicate leaves. A group of birches turned copper under a sky of blue flame. A low white stone wall followed the garden down the mountainside, covered with interlaced rosebushes, dark green and thorny, with here and there a last late scarlet flower bursting forth from the mass like a rosette of fire. The far mountains loomed in mauve clouds in the distance, blending into the sky. Stephen, as he stood on the threshold of the windows, could feel the burning breeze on his face and could hear the raucous shrilling of the locusts. There was no other sound in the incandescent silence of the Sunday afternoon, no voice from the stables beyond the house, no movement of a servant or a member of the family through the corridors or in the rooms.
The garden usually brought a dim sense of peace to Stephen, but it brought no peace today. He stepped feebly out onto the grass, began to wander distractedly along the narrow paths between the flower beds. He came to a tiny grotto surrounded by the willows. Now the wind was cooler here, and he sat on a marble bench, hidden from the house. Bees accentuated the stillness with their busy comings and goings. He heard the prism-tinkle of a fountain, the slumbrous chant of the locusts. A squirrel ran across the hot grass near his feet. Stephen felt for his pipe and lighted it, and sighed. The willows, which he loved, bowed and lifted, but they were no longer comforters. An evil enchantment had moved over the whole illuminated scene.
Without warning, a thought came to him: It appears hostile and removed from me because I fear it is no longer mine.
Stunned and distraught, he pulled the pipe from his mouth. Who could take his home from him? Rufus!
But Rufus was his brother, his reconciled and admiring brother. How could Rufus take from him what was his? I must talk with somebody, he thought desperately, someone who will ridicule my terror. But who?
Stephen got rapidly and involuntarily to his feet, as if impelled by an irresistible urgency stronger than logic. It was then that he heard the voices of his daughter Laura, and Cornelia, and he was stopped in his flight.
Cornelia’s young voice was loud, laughing, and boisterous, but Laura’s voice was soft and slow.
“Of course Papa said I mustn’t tell anybody where we were, when we were in New York,” Cornelia was saying, and her voice came in jerks because she was jumping up and down in the excess of her ruddy energy. “Look, Laura, all those awful ants; they eat the flowers. Stamp on them. Here’s another anthill just for you.”
“No,” said Laura. “Please stop, Cornelia.”
“But they eat the flowers,” protested Cornelia. “Do you want them to eat the flowers? They’re harmful, the gardeners say.”
“Harmful to whom?” asked Laura, with real wonder. “Do you think the world was just made for us? It wasn’t; it was made for ants, too, and caterpillars, and crows and skunks and mice, and moths and butterflies and horses and trees. If any of them are harmful to us, we’re harmful to them.”
“Who cares? You’ve got only yourself to think of,” said Cornelia. “How tiresome you are, Laura. You talk like Mama, sometimes. You even look like Mama. Never mind. I was telling you about New York. It was so exciting—”
“If Uncle Rufus told you not to tell anyone where you went to in New York, then you shouldn’t,” Laura admonished with what Lydia would have thought an unnecessary righteousness.
“Phoo! I guess Papa thought it might make all of you jealous. What does it signify? You aren’t going to run and tell Uncle Steve, are you, or Grandma, or Mama?”
Stephen, halted in his rush from the grotto, sat down again. He had no desire, in his agony of mind, to encounter the two little girls hardly twenty feet from him.
“Well,” said Laura, trying not to sound too eager, “let’s sit down on the grass, and you tell me.”
“Not until I stamp on this anthill, which I saved for you,” replied Cornelia in a hurt tone. There were renewed sounds of vigorous jumping. “There. Pushed it right in. Look at the horrible little things running!” More stamping. “That will teach them not to eat our flowers, the horrid creatures.” Stephen heard Cornelia throw herself down on the grass beside her cousin. He heard her draw a husky and reminiscent breath of delight. “It was wonderful in New York. Not like this awful Portersville, where nothing happens, and people just eat big dinners and go to bed. Why, it was lit up all night. I went to the windows, over and over, and there were the gaslights, and the carriages rolling on the cobblestones, and people coming and going, and laughing, and all the ladies in their wonderful gowns. With bare shoulders! And you never saw such jewels
. And you could hear the horsecars going right up to three o’clock in the morning. I just couldn’t sleep. I didn’t sleep a wink all the time we were there, and that was nearly a week. Papa didn’t mind; he said I ought to see what would one day be my world.” The child sighed blissfully. “Of course, I love our home here, and I’ll always keep it, and never sell it, and I’ll let you and dear Uncle Steve live here all the time and come back to visit you.”
“But the house belongs to my papa,” said Laura with perplexity.
Stephen became cold and rigid in the sunlit glade.
Cornelia’s common voice was affectionate and pitying. “But it won’t be, when I grow up. Papa said so. He said it to Mr. Gunther. It’ll soon be his house, and then he’ll leave it to me. Never mind, Laura. I love you and Uncle Steve so much. You can live here all your lives, and never pay me a single cent of money, and it’ll be such fun coming home in the summer and on the holidays to see you.”
Laura was touched by this generosity, though she was still perplexed. “Is my papa going to sell our house to your papa?”
“How can you be so ridiculous, Laura? Papa told Mr. Gunther that your papa couldn’t keep the house, and so, as Papa is your papa’s brother, Papa will have it. Don’t ask me so many questions. Anyway, I wasn’t supposed to hear these things, and don’t you dare tell anybody, hear? I was listening, sitting on the marble stairway in Mr. Gunther’s house.”
“Why, didn’t you stay in the hotel in Murray Hill?” asked Laura.
“No. That’s another secret. Papa had his post sent there, and telegrams from Portersville. But we stayed with Mr. Gunther, in his wonderful house on the corner of Thirtyfourth Street and Fifth Avenue. You think our house is fine? You should see Mr. Gunther’s! It cost millions, simply millions, Papa said. It is all white marble, and it has pillars. He bought it from the Stewart family, when Mr. Stewart died. Marble bathrooms. And big marble fireplaces, though they have what they call central heating, too. And servants! Why, Mr. Gunther gave me a maid all for my own, and she combed my hair and drew me my baths, and helped me dress. Did I feel fine and royal! Like a princess. I bet Queen Victoria doesn’t live in a palace like that, and have so many servants. It was the most wonderful house, better than Mr. Astor’s and Mr. Gould’s, and even better than Mr. Vanderbilt’s. They have brownstone houses, and they’re dull and dark, though big, too. And Mr. Gunther has such extraordinary furniture. Treasures, Papa said. From all over the world. Gilded chairs and tapestries, and rich paintings, and forks and spoons of solid gold!”
“Now, Cornelia, do you expect me to believe that?” asked Laura incredulously. “Solid gold spoons and forks! How you exaggerate.”
Cornelia was outraged. “Do you think I tell lies, Laura deWitt?”
Laura’s sweet voice was tinged with amusement. “You quite often do,” she observed.
Cornelia shrieked with good-natured and wicked laughter. “Well, the truth is usually dull. But I’m telling you the truth now, you picky thing. I haven’t finished telling you about New York. We rode on the Pullman Elevated, and the floor had carpets on it, and the poor people rode in horrid coaches, and we just streamed over the city! And we went to the afternoon parade in Central Park, all down Fifth Avenue, in Mr. Gunther’s grand carriage, which had two footmen as well as a coachman, all in red and silver uniforms. I tell you, I felt like a princess, or maybe a queen. And such ladies, all in bright colors, with bonnets with big plumes on them, and parasols just like flowers, all bowing to each other and laughing, and the horses prancing on the cobblestones and the silver harness shining. Such excitement. There was a band playing in the Park, and there was a pavilion, and you could be served China tea and little sandwiches with caviar and French cakes, and people would be out on boats on the lake.
“And then we went to Coney Island. We took a steamboat at the Battery and we sailed down the harbor. It was all so splendid. And people bathing in the sea. We even went to the amusement park, though Papa laughed. You’d love New York, Laura. Maybe your papa will take you there some day, too.”
Cornelia’s voice became even more blissful. “Maybe, when I have a big house like Mr. Gunther’s in New York, you’ll visit me.”
“I like my own home best,” remarked Laura without envy. “I think I’ll stay here with Papa.”
“Well, you can, though it’ll belong to me, then. But I’ve told you I want you and Uncle Steve to live here all your lives. Of course, you’ll never marry,” Cornelia went on with pitying confidence. “You aren’t pretty, like me. Grandma calls you a mouse. You’re a very sweet mouse. But you’ll stay and take care of Uncle Steve until he’s a very old, old man. And read all the books. I—” Cornelia continued happily—“am going to marry Patrick Peale. We saw him in Philadelphia, working with his uncle, Mr. Alex Peale. You never saw such a handsome man as Patrick Peale!”
“I saw him a year ago,” said Laura with laughing tolerance. “Anyway, you’re only ten years old, and Patrick’s a grown man. I expect he’ll be marrying any day now.”
Cornelia’s voice took on shrill indignation. “That’s not so! I asked him, and he promised to wait for me, so there.” Her breath was loud in the hot silence. “And Mr. Alex Peale reminded Patrick, right there in their offices in the big bank, that he mustn’t forget he was going to marry me, maybe in about seven years.”
“There’s Aunt Lydia, looking for us,” said Laura.
Cornelia jumped to her feet. “Look at the grass on me! Remember, now, Laura, you aren’t to tell a single living soul what I’ve told you. Papa didn’t say why, but he was stern about it, and if he knew I even told you I’d never go with him to New York again. Cross your heart!”
“Very well,” said Laura patiently. “There, I’ve crossed it. But you know I never tell anyone what you say.”
Young feet pounded on the grass, away from the grotto, and Cornelia shouted, “Mama, Mama! I’ve just been telling Laura the fairy tale you told me last night!”
Stephen had not moved during this innocent recital. Now he was conscious that he was covered with cold sweat. Guy Gunther. Alex Peale. Astor, Gould, Vanderbilt. Secrecy. Rufus had returned only two days ago with Cornelia. Before leaving Portersville he had idly mentioned that he wished Cornelia to see New York, and that he might “drop in on a few old friends, if they aren’t out of town.” Nothing had been said about Philadelphia. When Rufus had returned he had remarked that New York was dull and empty. Everyone had gone to Newport. He had seen no one of importance, or interest.
Shall I confront him? Stephen asked himself in the extremity of his terror. But what shall I say? If I mention this conversation, between the children, he will laugh it off, attempt to make me see it was nothing at all. And I’ll finally believe him.
Stephen fell back on the marble bench. But what can any of them do? The fact remains that I own fifty-one per cent of the stock and the bonds, and I own this house, which my father left me.
Though the Interstate Railroad Company had passed many dividends, it was more solvent than its competitors, and no one could seize it, or force it into bankruptcy. Logic’s voice became stronger in Stephen’s mind. Now his cold trembling subsided. But though he could think more clearly now, he was aware of an overpowering sickness of both soul and body. His brother, whom he had trusted, was a sleepless plotter against him. This, finally, was the most awful thing to Stephen.
Lydia was sitting under a large elm near the house. Her light lavender silk dress, simply draped but exquisite, set off her slender figure. Her dark head and lovely strange face were bent over the two pretty little girls seated at her feet. She looked up, to see Stephen moving slowly and heavily over the grass. Cornelia uttered a scream of joy, jumped up, and raced toward her uncle. Her verve and vivacious beauty were like a sunburst in the brilliant light. Her red curls, set off with long blue ribbons, streamed behind her, and her white lawn dress, sashed in blue, fluttered in the hot wind. Scarlet mouth was open, teeth glittering, hazel eyes full of vigorous radiance. Laura,
also clad in white lawn, but with pink ribbons, came to her father more sedately, her dusky ringlets a cloud down her thin back, her small pale face smiling shyly, her remarkable gray eyes shining.
Cornelia hugged her uncle vehemently, but Laura held up her cool little cheek for his kiss. She had a cleft white chin, a white arched nose, and brows like black and tilted streaks over her eyes. Stephen, still shaking and almost mortally ill, could control himself enough to kiss Cornelia briefly, and then Laura. For the first time he saw Laura fully and completely. His daughter. His threatened child, with the elusive innocence on her face, her delicacy, her mysterious, withdrawn quality! She was his charge, he, her protector. He lifted her in his weak arms and held her to him almost passionately, while Cornelia, a trifle puzzled, watched.
Still carrying Laura, and followed by the offended Cornelia, Stephen went toward Lydia. She waited, and when he was closer, and she saw his face, she uttered an exclamation and got to her feet with a silken rustle. She rarely spoke to Stephen, but now she cried out sharply, “Stephen! What is wrong? Are you ill?”
He forgot his own knowledge that his sister-in-law despised him—for some unknown reason—and he said, “It is the heat, Lydia. I—I just came from the house, for some air.”
They stood looking at each other, and Lydia thought: He seems to be dying. He is holding Laura as if he is protecting her. Her heart began to beat with compassion and alarm. But before she could speak again he was gone from her, carrying Laura.
“You are not coming down to tea?” asked Rufus solicitously. His brother lay on the bed, drained and exhausted. “There are about ten people here now.”