Mrs. Crego, who sat nearly opposite, stared at the girl in stupefaction. "She makes me feel dowdy," she had confessed to Lee in the dressing-room. "Why didn't you warn me to come in my best? Who has been coaching her? Alice Heath, I suppose." She now wondered as sharply over the girl's manner; for Bertha, carried out of herself by Ben's word of praise, felt no desire to drink or to eat, and her reticence and the delicacy of her appetite conferred a distinction which concealed her lack of small talk, and protected her from the criticism to which exuberance of manner ordinarily exposed her.
She was deeply impressed, too, with Ben's management of the waiters, and with the ease and skill with which he supported Alice in carrying forward the courses. It was a revelation of training which instructed her absurdly, for her mind was quick to link and compare. It leaped so swiftly and so subtilely along connecting lines of thought that a hint alone sufficed to set in motion a hundred latent memories and inherited aptitudes. Her father had been a man of native refinement, and she possessed unstirred deeps of character, as Alice now well understood. And from her end of the table she glanced often at the sweetly smiling girl-wife whose beauty abashed Haney. At last she said to him: "Your wife is very lovely to-night, Captain."
He hesitated a moment; then replied, slowly: "She is. She's as fine as anny queen!" Then after another pause, added: "And the more shame to me, being what I am! She's a good girl, miss, true as steel. Never a word of complaint or a frown. She bears with me like an angel."
"You're doing a great deal for her."
His face lightened. "So she says. I mean to do more. I mean to show her the world. That's the only comfort I have; my money is giving her nice clothes and a home as good as anny, and to-night I feel 'tis giving her friends."
"But she is worth while, even without the money."
"True," he quickly said. "But I take comfort in the consideration that had I not carried her away she'd be in Sibley Junction this night."
"Sibley Junction! Can this radiant young creature sitting there at the head of my table be the clerk of the Golden Eagle Hotel?" thought Alice. "Money is magical! No wonder we all work for it—and worship it!"
The dinner was both early and short, in order that Bertha and the Captain might take the train at ten o'clock. And as they were to have the drawing-room in the sleeping-car (Ben's suggestion), they went directly to the coach in their party clothes. And so it happened that this little woman, who had never occupied a berth in a Pullman, entered her compartment in the robes of a princess.
Alice had suggested a maid, but Bertha would not hear to that; but she was willing that their coachman should go along to help the Captain. Ben had interposed here, and said: "You need some one used to travelling. I know a colored fellow who is out of service just now, and would like to come to you. He's a good, reliable man, and a fine nurse." So she had engaged him. He was on the platform as they drove up—a slight, quiet man, of gentle speech and indeterminable age, who took charge of the Captain at once, as if he had been his servant for years.
Alice said good-bye at the carriage door, but Ben went with them into the coach. And in the excitement of getting to the train and into the car Bertha had been able to forget the sick feeling about her heart. But now, as he turned and said, "It's nearly time to start," and held out his hand in parting, a desolation, a loneliness, a helpless hunger swept over her, the like of which had never anguished her before.
"I wish you were going too!" she faltered, her speech broken and full of sad cadences.
He, too, was tense with emotion as he answered: "I wish I were, but I can't—I must not!" Then, with the gesture of a brother, he bent and kissed her and turned away, blind to everything else but his pain, and, so stumbling and shaken, vanished from her sight.
For a moment she remained standing in the aisle, the touch of his lips still clinging to her cheek, surprised, full of bewildered defence; then, as reckless of on-lookers as he had been, she rushed to the window in swift attempt to catch a final glimpse of him. But in vain; he had hurried away without looking back, her look of wonder and surprise still dazzling him with its significance. A kiss with him, as with her, had never been a thing lightly given or received, and this caress, so simple to others, sprang from an impulse that was elemental. That he had both shocked and angered her he fully believed; but the arch of her brows, the wistful curve of her lips, and the pretty, almost childish, push of her hands against his breast were still so appealingly vivid that he entered the carriage and took his seat beside Alice with a kind of rebellious joy hot in his blood.
However, as his passion ebbed his uneasiness deepened, and he went to his room that night with a feeling that his connection with the Haneys, so profitable and so pleasant, was in danger of being irremediably broken off. "She will be justified in refusing ever to see me again," he groaned. And in this spirit of self-condemnation and loneliness he took up his work next day.
Bertha's self-revelation was slower. She was so young and so innately honest and good that no sense of guilt attached to the pleasure she felt in the sudden revelation that this splendid young man loved her—a pleasure which grew as the first shock of the parting, the pain, and the surprise wore away. "He likes me! He said I was beautiful! He kissed me!" These were the rounds in the ladder of her ascent, and she was carried high, only to fall into despair. For was she not leaving him and all the pleasant people she had come so recently to know—hurrying away into darkness with a crippled man, old before his time, out into a world of which she knew little—for which, at this moment, she cared nothing?
She went back, a few moments later, with this sorrow written on her face, to find Lucius, the colored man, deftly preparing the Captain for bed. The old borderer looked up with a smile, in which shame and sadness mingled. "Well, Bertie, I didn't think I'd come to this—me, that could once sit in me saddle and pick a dollar out o' the dust. But so it is."
"I'll take care of you!" she cried, in swift contrition. Turning almost fiercely to the valet, she said: "You can go, I'll 'tend to him!"
The Captain stopped her gently. "No, darlin', Ben's right; I'm too clumsy and heavy for you. I need just such a handy man. Now, now! Let be!... Go ahead, Lucius, strip off these monkey-fixens, and dom the man that gets me into them again."
Efficient as she was, the girl could not but admit that Lucius was better able to serve her husband than herself. He was both deft and strong; and though the swaying of the car troubled his master, he steadied him and guided him and stowed him away as featly as if it were the fiftieth instead of the first time; then, with a few words of explanation to the wife, he quietly withdrew, and shut the door with a final touch of considerate care which was new to her.
She would have been less troubled by him had he been a black man, but he was not. He seemed more like a Spaniard, and his grizzled mustache, yellowish skin, and big dreamy black eyes lent him a curious distinction, and the thought that he was to take her place as crutch and cane to the Captain gave her a sense of uselessness which she had not, up to this moment, confessed.
His suggestions, combined to the minute instructions of Miss Franklin, enabled her to get to her bunk in fair order, but no sleep came to her for hours. She longed for her mother more childishly than at any time since her marriage. She reproached herself for not bringing Miss Franklin. "Why did I come at all?" she wailed, in final accusation.
There had been a time when the thought of this trip—of Chicago, New York, and Washington—was big in her mind, but it was so no longer. These great cities were but names—empty sounds compared to the realities she was leaving: her splendid house, her horses and dogs—and her daily joy in Ben Fordyce. She did not put these visits in their highest place, not even when remembering his parting kiss, but she dwelt upon the inspiriting morning drives, the talks in the mellow-tinted, sunshine-lighted office. She recalled the lunches they took together and the occasional wild gallops up the cañon—these she treasured as the golden realities, for the loss of which she was even now hea
rt-sick.
One thought alone steadied her—gave her a kind of resignation: the Captain wanted to find his sisters, to revisit the scenes of his youth, and it was her duty to go with him. And in this somewhat dreary comfort she fell asleep at last.
She was awakened next morning by a pleasant voice saying: "The first call for breakfast has been made, Mrs. Haney." And she looked up to find Lucius peering in at the door with serious, kindly eyes. He added, formally: "If I can assist you in any way call me, and please let me know when you are ready to have me come in."
His speech was so precise and his manner so perfect that Bertha was puzzled and a little embarrassed by them. It seemed abnormal to have a hired servant so polished, so thoughtful. She dressed hurriedly, while the Captain yawned and talked between his yawning. "That yellow chap is sure handy. I wish I'd had him before; 'twould have saved you a power o' work and worry. Did ye sleep last night?"
"Not very well. I hope you did. You can't complain of the bunk."
"'Tis luxurious—'tis so! But there's nothing like the west side of Colorado Avenue, after all, or a bed of pine boughs beside a roaring mountain stream. 'Twas a fine little supper Ben gave us last night."
The level lands awed and depressed the mountain girl. They seemed to type the flat and desolate spiritual world into which she was entering, and the ride seemed interminable, carrying her every hour farther from the scenes and sounds to which her love clung. She was bitterly homesick, and nothing seemed to promise comfort. She gazed with lack-lustre eyes on the towns and rivers along the way, and she entered the great inland metropolis by the lake with dread and a deepening sense of her inexperience and youth.
On the neighboring track stood the return sleepers headed for the hills, and she acknowledged a wild desire to take her place among the jocund folk who stood on the observation-platform exchanging good-byes with friends. Thunderous, smothering, and vast the city seemed as they drove through it on their way to the hotel, and upon reaching her room she flung herself down on her bed and sobbed in a frenzy of homesickness.
Haney, who had never before perceived a tear on her face, was startled, and stood in puzzled pain looking down at her, while the tactful Lucius went about the unpacking of the trunks, confident that the shower would soon be over.
"What's the ail of it?" asked the Captain. "Tell me, darlin'. Are ye sick?"
She shook her head from side to side, like a suffering and weary child, and made no further answer.
* * *
CHAPTER XV
MART'S VISIT TO HIS SISTER
Bertha woke next morning with a sense of weariness and desolation still at her heart, but she dressed and went to breakfast with Haney at an hour so early that the dining-room was nearly empty. Lucius, with quiet insistence upon the importance of his employers, had secured a place at a window overlooking the lake, and was glad to see his mistress brighten as her eyes swept the burnished shoreless expanse.
Haney, still troubled by her languid air and gloomy face, took heart, and talked of what Chicago was in the days when he saw it and what it was now. "People say it don't improve. But listen: when I was here the Palmer House was the newly built wonder of the West, the streets were tinkling with bobtail horse-cars. And now look at it!"
Bertha went back to her room, still in nerveless and despondent mood, not knowing what to do. The Captain proposed the usual round. "We'll take an auto-car, and go to the parks, and inspect the Lake Shore Drive and the Potter Palmer castle. Then we'll go down and see where the World's Fair was. Then we'll visit the Wheat Pit. 'Tis all there is, bedad."
Lucius, who had been answering the 'phone in the hall, came in at the moment to say; "A lady wishes to speak with Mrs. Haney."
"A lady! Who?"
"A certain Mrs. Brent—a friend of Miss Franklin's."
Bertha's face darkened. "Oh I'd forgot all about her. Miss Franklin gave me a letter to her," she explained, as she went out.
She had no wish to see Mrs. Brent. On the contrary, she had an aversion to seeing or doing anything. But there was something compelling in the cool, sweet, quiet voice which came over the line, and before realizing it she had promised to meet her at eleven o'clock.
Mrs. Brent then added: "I am consumed with desire to see you, for Dor—I mean Miss Franklin—has been writing to me about you. You're just in time to come to a little dinner of mine—don't make any engagement for to-morrow night. I'm coming down immediately."
Bertha quite gravely answered, "All right, I'll be here," and hung up the receiver, committed to an interview that became formidable, now that the sweetness of the voice had died out of her ears.
"Who was it?" asked the Captain.
"A friend of Miss Franklin's—sounds just like her voice, but I think she's only a cousin. She wants to see me, and I've promised to be here at eleven."
The Captain looked a little disappointed. "Well, we can take a spin up the lake. Lucius, go hire a buckboard and we're off."
"There's an auto-car waiting, sir. I ordered it half an hour ago."
The gambler looked at him humorously. "Ye must be a mind-reader."
A tap on the door called the man out, and when he returned he bore a telegram. "For you, Captain," he said, presenting it on the salver.
The gambler took it with sudden apprehension in his face. "I hope there's no trouble at the mine," he muttered.
Bertha, leaning over his shoulder, read it first. "It's from Ben!" she called, joyously. "Ain't it just like him?"
This message seemed a little bit foolish to Haney.
"Just to say hello! All well here. Have a good time.
"Fordyce."
To Bertha it made all the difference between sunshine and shadow. She thrilled to it as if it had been a voice. "He knew I'd be homesick, and so he sent this to cheer me up," she said. And in this she was right. Her shoulders lifted and her face cleared. "Come on, Captain, if we're going."
As they came down the elevator, men in buttons met them, and attended them to the door, and turned them over to still other uniformed attendants, who were fain to help them into the auto-car; for Lucius had managed to convey to the hotel a proper sense of his employer's money value. He himself was always close to his master's side, for lately Haney had taken to stumbling at unexpected moments, and his increasing bulk made a fall a real danger.
A thrill of delight, of elation, ran through the young wife as she glanced up and down Chicago's proudest avenue. It conformed to her notion of a city. The level park, flooded with spring sunshine, was walled on the west by massive buildings, while to the east stretched the shining lake. From here the city seemed truly cosmopolitan. It had dignity and wealth of color, and to the girl from Sibley Junction was completely satisfying—almost inspiring.
It was uplifting also to be attended to a splendid auto-car by willing, alert servants, and to feel that the passers-by were all envious of her careless ease. Bertha forgot her homesickness, and took her seat in the spirit of one who is determined to have the worth of her money (for once anyhow), and the pedestrians, if they had any definite notion of her at all, probably said: "There goes a rich old cattle king and his pretty daughter. It's money that makes the 'mobile go."
She held to this pose for half an hour, while they threaded the tumult of Wabash Avenue, and, crossing the river, swept up the Lake Shore Drive. But the lake filled her with other thoughts. "I wish we had this at the Springs," she said. "This is fine!"
"We have our share," answered he. "If we had this at our door, there wouldn't be anything left to go to."
They whizzed through the park, and down another avenue into the thick tangle of traffic, which scared them both, and so back to the hotel, the Captain saying: "My! my! but she has grown. 'Tis twenty years since I took this turn."
In some strange way Bertha had drawn courage, resolution, pride, and ambition from what she saw on this short ride. That she was in a car and mistress of it was in itself a marvellous distinction, and the thought of what she would have been�
��as a "round-tripper" from Sibley Junction—added to her pleasure and pride. She was always doing sums in her head now. Thus: "Suppose our excursion does cost twenty dollars per day; that's only one hundred and fifty per week, six hundred per month, and our income is ten times that, and more." She had not risen above the habit of calculation, but she was fast rising to higher levels of expenditure.
She met Mrs. Brent with something of this mood in her manner, but was instantly softened and won by her visitor, who did not in the least resemble Miss Franklin in appearance, though her voice was wonderfully the same. Her eyes were wide, her brow serene, and her lips smiling.
"Why, you're a child," she said—"a mere babe! Dorothy didn't tell me that."
Bertha stiffened a little, and Mrs. Brent laughingly added: "Please don't be offended—I am really surprised." And then her manner became so winning that before the Western girl realized it she had given her consent to join a dinner-party the following night. "Come early, for we are to go to the theatre afterwards. I'll have some of the university people in to see you. Miss Franklin has made us all eager to meet you."
Bertha had a dim perception that this eagerness to meet her was curiosity, but her loyalty to her teacher and the charm of her visitor kept her from openly rebelling.
The Captain was not so easily persuaded. "'Tis poor business for me," he said. "Time was when I went to bed like a wolf—when the time served; but now I'm as regular to me couch as a one-legged duck. However, to keep me wife in tune, I'll go or come, as the case may be."
Money Magic Page 14