He paused. She touched her cheeks proudly to remove the tears. His low and toneless voice, so without resonance, seemed to fill her ears long after he had done. Her agitation was like a storm in her heart; she felt impelled to weep with a nameless passion.
“Well,” she said, hardly able to speak. “I am listening, Mr. Bollister.”
He took her hand again. It trembled in his, but she did not remove it. He led her back to her chair. She sat down, shivering uncontrollably. The pain in her breast, so urgent, yet so inexplicable, increased, so that she was flooded with desolation. He drew his chair closer to her, leaned forward so that his face was very near hers. She saw its hardness, its subtle malignance, its rigorous calm. Her heart swelled again with that nameless and wild emotion, and her eyelids fluttered.
“Why have I pursued you, Miss Eugenia?” he asked, softly. “Because we were made for each other, deny it vehemently though you will. We are alike; we understand each other. You will repudiate what I tell you now, cry out your denial, but the truth remains that you love me as I love you. Had I not been assured of this knowledge from the beginning, I should have removed myself from your presence long ago.”
She stared at him, incredulous. Then she uttered a short and caustic laugh.
“You are amusing, Mr. Bollister!” she exclaimed. “I assure you that I have no regard for you whatsoever, not even liking!”
She clenched her fingers together, and shivered again. Her breast lifted, and trembled, and her lips shook.
He smiled faintly. “Miss Eugenia, I have said you would deny it. You are still bewitched by some infatuation which is ludicrous. But the time will come when you will realize the truth, that you love me, that we belong to each other, that for either of us to have married any one else would be little short of bigamy.” And he laughed lightly.
She regarded him, white with anger and affront, as though he had vilely insulted her. But the wild passionate clamouring in her breast grew even stronger.
“I do not give up my own so easily,” he whispered, and now he took her hand, and pressed his lips into the quivering dry palm.
She flung back her head, rigidly, closing her eyes. A violent current passed through her whole body.
“No one has ever known you in the slightest, but I,” he pursued, still very softly. “You thought you had been loved, and believed that you loved. But that was not true. You have never loved any one, before. You love me, Eugenia, and I have never loved any one but you. Look at me, please, my darling.”
Irresistibly, she was compelled to look at him. But she forced her expression to remain cold and remote, and inexpressibly contemptuous and amazed.
“Ah,” he murmured, looking into her eyes. “What a proud little thing it is, to be sure! You see, only I understand such pride.”
He gently dropped her hand and stood up, looking down at her with new sternness. She felt a sudden bereavement, and a new desolation.
“I am proud, too, Eugenia,” he said, and his voice was cold and harsh. “That is why, even before I received your note, I determined that I would see you only once again, and then, if you were obdurate, I would remove myself forever from you.”
He smiled slightly.
“It seems that every one is going to America. That is where I am going very soon, also. My uncle, Mr. Richard Gorth, has some thought of making me his heir to his cotton importing business. His agent had talked to me a few weeks ago, and I have determined to go. I have waited, however, for your final word.”
Her wet face changed strangely. She rose very slowly, and gazed at him with her large gray eyes. She was shaking visibly.
“America!” she repeated.
His smile was secret, and grimly amused. “Yes, America. I presume you have heard of it, Miss Eugenia?”
She was unaware of his malicious undertone. She pressed her clenched hands to her breast, and continued to gaze at him. And he waited, his smile more secret and amused and knowing than ever.
She caught her breath, slowly sank into her chair, as though her strength was gone. The rosy firelight played over her rigid features. She seemed to have forgotten Andrew Bollister. Her fingers convulsively knitted themselves again, the knuckles starting out from the frail flesh.
Then she spoke, in so low and breathless a tone that he had to lean down towards her to catch her words:
“Mr. Bollister. I have reconsidered. I will marry you.”
For a long time he merely stood there near her. Then he knelt beside her, and gently took her into his arms. She resisted a moment. Their faces were close together. Her features became contorted, then softened and dissolved in a storm of mysterious grief and weakness. Tears ran down her cheeks. He kissed them away, with the greatest gentleness, holding her tenderly. She suffered his caresses. Her sobs were loud and unrestrained. Finally, as if with despair, she dropped her head on his shoulder. Her arms lifted without volition, wound themselves about his neck, and clung to him with an odd fierceness. Her soft breast pressed itself against his chest, and he could feel the thundering and pulsing of her heart.
An hour later, Eugenia crept into her mother’s room. Her face was flushed, her movements uncertain as if she walked in her sleep. Mrs. MacNeill laid aside the rich novel she had been avariciously perusing, and looked up at her daughter with her usual hatred. She burst out into reproaches.
“So, my daughter, my unfeeling child leaves her mother alone to suffer and repine, neglected, while she amuses herself in her naughty satisfaction!” she cried. “But, why do I reprove you, you little wretch? Why do I waste a moment’s grief upon you?”
Eugenia’s breath was disordered. She attempted to speak. Then, with a gesture clumsy with despair and haste, she extended her little fleshless hand. A large gem flashed upon one finger. Mrs. MacNeil stared at it, stupefied.
“I have accepted Mr. Bollister,” said Eugenia. Her voice was changed and muted.
Mrs. MacNeill uttered a great triumphant cry. She reached up for her daughter, caught her in her big fat arms, and dragged the flaccid girl down upon the bed, clasping her against her vast and heaving breast. Eugenia did not resist. She lay there like a slender dead thing, her lips smothered in a welter of perfumed laces and warm heavy flesh.
“O my darling!” screamed Mrs. MacNeill, beside herself, convulsively showering kisses upon that cold young face with the closed eyes. “O, how happy you have made me, my pet, my love, my dearest one! O, I shall die for very joy, my sweetest, my child, my little angel!”
But Eugenia said nothing. Slow tears poured from under her lashes, wet the laces upon her mother’s bosom with their saltness and their endless and painful bitterness.
CHAPTER 15
If Mr. Bob Wilkins was insensible to bad weather, he was appreciative of good weather, and especially of the spring in New York. Ah, what cool wine was in the air, what refreshment, what stimulation, what sparkling effervescence! None of that dang murkiness of London, that livid pale light lying like glimmering reflection on the dour fronts of sooty buildings! None of that fetid odour of centuries to choke the streets and fill the alleys with a miasma like a palpable mist! None of that powerful and crushing gloom of a city standing in fog to its knees and glowering at a world! What London had done was accomplished. What New York was to do was like a bright delirium in the air, feverish, joyous, youthful and thunderous.
He breathed deeply. Unashamed, he would strike his casklike chest with his gloved hands, turning his head from side to side with that beaming, sunny look which distinguished him. He would swagger and strut, flourishing his cane, tilting his hat at a precarious angle, his gilt buttons shining, his gaiters immaculate, his boots glistening, his coattails fluttering, his linen polished by hot irons until it glittered. He attracted smiles as a mirror in the sun attracts light. His feet came down on the pavements lovingly. Nothing was too small, too insignificant to catch his delighted attention. He fed pigeons as they fluttered down from shining roofs, the sun on their wings. He patted horses, watched them
drink sympathetically. He touched the heads of children playing in the Sabbath sunlight. He watched the gay passage of carriages with fondness of a well-fed uncle, and tipped his hat gallantly to young ladies who fluttered along the walks, stepping aside with elaborate courtesy to permit the passage of their huge billowing hoops. He loved the spring glow on the fresh faces under the tiny bonnets, and glanced happily at violets tucked in neatly at gentle bosoms. At these times, he was not Lucifer, but Puck.
He had walked miles, for the sheer joy of walking. Now he turned down West Fourteenth street, and glanced complacently at the old houses, which, mingled with heavy old trees, lined the length of the street. The trees were full of green and fragile mist, the black boughs struck with pale bright light. The patina of spring polished every long shrouded window glimpsed through awakening branches. Occasionally, he passed a house in whose stable-yard he could discern a stolid cow contentedly munching at the new grass. The air was still cool, strong with the winds from the sea, but the sun lay warmly gentle on the slate roofs and the brown stone steps of the houses, and the rough cobbles of the street. The sky above was pale but brilliantly blue, with swift white clouds like small sails briskly fleeing across it.
The houses were old, but solid, with tiny front gardens in which crocuses and other early blossoms were already in colourful bloom. Mr. Wilkins saw the brilliance of tulips, red, yellow, purple and pink, standing in their bristling thickets of stiff green leaves. The gardens were protected by low iron railings, or white picket fences, and from these gardens rose the steep brown steps to the firm doors of the houses, on which brass knockers blinked ruddily in the sunlight.
Mr. Wilkins looked at the houses with increased complacency. A fine old street, this, not yet decayed, and still faintly haunted by the shades of Dutch burghers despite the infrequent horse-car which rocked its noisy way through the Sabbath calm. He reached an old brown house, four stories high, a tall and severe house with long narrow slits of windows fully eight feet in length. The windows were polished vigorously; shutters were thrown back to reveal crimson draperies. The house itself stood on a wide lot, carefully landscaped, if meagrely sprinkled with little trees. At the end of the lot was a stable; a cow and a calf grazed obliviously, and from the stable came the stomping of an impatient old horse.
Mr. Wilkins mounted the steps with a stately but benevolent air, and lifted the glittering knocker. The street, whose quiet had just lately been rocked by the clatter of a horse-car, had subsided into breathless, sunlit silence, disturbed only by the echo of the knocker. The door, after an interval, was opened by a kitchen girl in cap and white apron, her stout Irish face flushed from the stove, her black hair in little tendrils falling about her neck. When she saw Mr. Wilkins, she curtsied briefly, and returned his beaming smile with one as broad, as she held the door wide for his entrance. The “missus,” she informed him, was out for her constitutional. Mr. Wilkins nodded gravely. He had not come to see Miss Beardsley, the elderly spinster in decayed circumstances who owned this house. He had business with the lodgers he had cajoled her into taking under her severe and immured roof. These lodgers lived on the third floor, beneath the servants’ quarters. “And very comfortable, too,” thought Mr. Wilkins, as he climbed the dark and narrow staircase, carpeted in frayed Brussels fabric. The house smelled of wax and soap and polish; its air was quite chill, but fresh as only extreme cleanliness can be fresh. There were no fires today, for Miss Beardsley was very frugal, and believed in fires only when snow lay on the ground. Mr. Wilkins had his suspicions that Miss Beardsley was not quite as “decayed” as her sparsely furnished house and sombre garments would lead one to believe. In fact, Mr. Wilkins suspected that she was miserly. However, he had no objection to miserly people. It was his experience that miserly people had great self-respect and were exceptionally clean, neat, and competent. It was the generous people who lacked pride, and were apt to be slovenly, careless and incompetent. Give him, within reason of course, a penny-pincher to a penny-thrower. The penny-pincher, more often than not, was a solid citizen, full of honour, uprightness, integrity and intelligence, while the penny-thrower could rarely be relied upon to keep his word and usually had no character.
The paradox to Mr. Wilkins, however, was that miserly people had their price, and it was not always an honourable one, despite their usual integrity and righteousness. But the generous, though giving the impression of carelessness and haphazardliness, frequently could not be induced by money into dark by-paths. By love, yes. But not by money. Whereas the miserly could be bought by cash; they remained obdurate to the pleadings of love.
Mr. Wilkins, at the end, preferred to deal with miserly people. Once their cupidity was aroused, there was nothing they would not do.
As he knocked softly at a tall white door, he reflected whether his new protégé was miserly or generous. He inclined to the latter belief. However, he was comforted by his observation that a generous man turned furious and resentful could give many a lesson to the greedy. What be lacked in calculation, he made up in ruthlessness, when his angry passions were aroused. It was not money he was after, but revenge. Mr. Wilkins, instinctively distrusting the generous man, was not yet certain that revenge was as firm a foundation to build upon as avarice. Revenge, in a burst of contrition, frequently tumbled down the largest edifices, whereas empires themselves, built on avarice, could resist the onslaughts of centuries. Mr. Wilkins’ dealings, in the past, had been almost exclusively with avaricious men. Now he had the new excitement of dealing with a generous one, potential with earthquakes and cataclysms. Yes, he had quite a new interest in life.
The white door opened, and revealed Lilybelle on the threshold, dressed in glimmering mauve satin with gigantic hoops, the bodice a froth of white lace. Her rich auburn hair was caught in a net, and bedecked with little mauve bows. Under that hair, her round face, so pretty and so stupid and vulgar, was flushed on one cheek, as though she had just risen from a couch. Mr. Wilkins, who saw everything, discerned that the mauve satin was quite crumpled, and stained here and there from careless eating. But she was a beguiling picture, even so, with her full luscious figure and bold bosom and plump white neck, even if her expression was chronically baffled and sulky.
She was delighted to see Mr. Wilkins, and stretched out her big warm hands with joyous pleasure, seizing him and pulling him into the room. She knew he was genuinely fond of her, and she was gratefully fond of him. Moreover, the day had been unbearably dull, and he was a happy diversion. She greeted him loudly, her voice already promising that hoarse booming quality which was to distinguish it in later years.
“Mr. Wilkins, sir!” she cried, boisterously, blinking her round blue eyes at him, and hoping that he would not observe their reddened and swollen rims. “Mr. Turnbull, Mr. Wilkins is ’ere!” Vitality, coarse but strong, gushed from her. She dragged Mr. Wilkins irresistibly across the floor, as a heedless exuberant child drags a puppy. Mr. Wilkins, laughing and chuckling, clutched his hat, gloves and cane, and tried to keep his balance, trying, also, to protect himself from the whirling and bouncing of the enormous hoops which buffeted him. During all this, he was not unaware of the fluttering lace drawers revealed to the knee by the hoops, and the tidy sturdiness of the good ankles in white stockings.
The room into which he had been dragged was large, awash with the glittering and colourless sun. The tall thin windows blazed with light, the draperies impatiently thrust back, the shutters flung out, so that one saw the spring sky, the ruddy brick of the opposite houses, and the soft green fog in the trees. Miss Beardsley’s lodgers occupied this room and a small adjoining bedroom, both of which were furnished in her severe sparse custom. The floors, of wide oaken boards, were dark and unbelievably polished, so that they were like brown mirrors. Over them were carefully scattered a few little rugs, at strategic spots. The tiniest of fires burned in a black marble fireplace, and the white walls increased the sense of shining chill and astringent cleanliness of the apartments. The furniture, too, was very
austere and stiff; a mahogany rocker or two, with upright uncomfortable backs, a cane sofa, a few tables covered by stiff linen or crimson velvet, an ancient rosewood spinet, a wardrobe of some mouldering black wood, intricately carved, a massive bookcase boasting formidable tomes untouched for generations, and a really beautiful little mahogany desk, made up the furnishings of the sitting room. Beyond, Mr. Wilkins could see the bedroom, with its enormous canopied bed and its fringed white coverlet reflected in the darkly shining floor, its one gloomy commode and its single rocker. Miss Beardsley had wasted no carpet here, and there was no fireplace. The ceilings were so tall that all furniture was dwarfed to insignificance.
Nevertheless, despite the formal stiffness and lack of comfort of the apartments, it was all so clean, so polished, so fresh, that it had a kind of hard dignity and much gentility. Mr. Wilkins, who loved space and glittering austerity in the homes of others, admired these apartmests. (As for himself, give him roaring fires, thick carpets, close warm furniture, and velvet and plush!)
John Turnbull sat in a rocker between the two windows, a big ledger on his knees, a pencil in his hand. He rose slowly upon Mr. Wilkins’ entrance, and bowed slightly, with surly reticence, and without a smile. His dark face was sullen.
“Ah!” exclaimed Mr. Wilkins, placing his hat, cane and gloves in Lilybelle’s eager hand, and favouring her with a fleeting smile of genuine fondness, “a lovely day, sir, if I may say so, a lovely day! I’ve been walking for hours, sir, and what a pleasure it is! I said to myself: ‘Bob Wilkins, why not drop in on your young friends though I doubt you’ll find them in on such a day.’ It’s quite a surprise to find you here, Mr. Turnbull.”
Lilybelle, who had been standing and gazing at Mr. Wilkins with affectionate joy and pride, as though he were a creation of her own, now drooped her full red lips in a childish expression of artless sadness. She glanced timidly at her husband, and faltered: