Part 2. The Book Of Life - It Might Have Been - Chapter 13

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_ PART II. THE BOOK OF LIFE - IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN
CHAPTER XIII

Mary Burton was discovering some things about June. She had often watched lovers leaning silently on a deck-rail, with eyes fixed on a moonlit wake and hands that crept surreptitiously together. She had envied the credulity of these people and turned away with an ache and emptiness in her own heart.

Now at twenty-five she awoke each morning with a smile for the sunlight and a proprietary joy in the blue of the skies and a delight for the roses whose hearts were no younger than her own had become. Bridge-tables and tennis courts saw little of her, because the woods were waiting and Jefferson Edwardes was there to tramp and ride and fish and be companion and guide.

It was most beautiful far back from the oiled roads and trimmed hedges, for here were only woodland voices and languorous forest fragrances. Here, too, hid all those wild flowers that in childhood she had known and fancifully christened--and since forgotten, and here two people with the lilt of this abundant June song in their hearts could leave a few of their years by the roadside and forget them. To Mary Burton it was all a rediscovery and a miracle. He had promised to give her back the message of her hills. He was giving her back the joy of life.

One afternoon she and Jefferson Edwardes were tramping toward a brook where the trout would be flashing like phantom darts, and as he led the way along a narrow trail she followed him with a smile on her lips.

At a sheer twist around the hill's shoulder he stopped and pointed his hand. The view from there was almost county-wide, billowing away across heights and depths to a blue merging of hill and sky.

As she stood by his side her eyes and parted lips spoke her unworded appreciation and the man's gaze came back from the broad picture and dwelt upon her.

"It's strange," she said finally with a vaguely puzzled expression, "that I who was born in just such hills as these should now be realizing their wonder for the first time."

But her companion laughed at her seriousness. "When you knew them first," he reminded her, "you had nothing else with which to compare them. It is one who comes from the north who finds a marvel in the bigness and softness of southern stars. Now you have been away--and have come home, dearest."

She was standing very lancelike and straight by the slender bole of a silver birch. A golden sun flooded richly through the greenery. Overhead was a tunefully unflecked sky and into the shadows crept a richness of furtively underlying color and echoes of color. It was all vivid and beautiful and the girl standing there seemed to dominate its vividness and its beauty. But her eyes were grave, even when a shaft of the radiance struck her delicately blossoming cheeks and played upon the escaping locks with which the breeze played, too.

"Do you know, I suppose in a way I ought to hate you?" she told the man, and he swiftly demanded:

"Hate me? In heaven's name, why?"

"When a woman has been deluded into believing herself a bird of paradise ... and has been content with her feathers, it doesn't precisely help to discover that--" her voice grew self-contemptuous--"that after all she has only lived the life of a Strassburg goose and has been fed to death until she is no earthly good for anything except to be some glutton's delicacy--"

"Strassburg geese don't search their consciences," he smiled. "They are too busy being fed to death. If you had lost your soul I should help you find it--thank God, you don't need my guidance."

"Yet your coming crystallized all the self-accusations that had begun to stir in me. It made me feel my utter emptiness."

"Which only means realizing--that you might have become empty and have not." He came close and bent upon her the eyes whose honesty was so convincing and whose fealty was so clearly writ. In a voice that lost a little of its steadiness he demanded tensely, "Do you hate me?"

Mary Burton stood motionless, almost rigid, but some heart-wave welled up until she felt physically weak yet spiritually stronger than she had ever felt. Her two hands clutched tautly at his shoulders and her eyes gazed into his. Slowly they widened until they had unmasked all their depths and shown what was in her heart. Then as the man's pulses leaped to the elation of what he read there, he heard her shaken whisper inviting him very softly, "Look at me--and answer for yourself. Do I hate you?"

With sudden self-recovery, as he sought to take her in his arms, she slipped aside and after a short space the same voice that had just now been tense rippled into whimsical laughter. "No," she commanded. "It mustn't become a habit." The laugh died and her words and pupils were grave once more. "Why should I lie to you, dear? It's no use trying. I'm absurdly mad about you--but I've doubted my power of really loving so long that we must both be content to put it to the test of time. It's too new to trust. I can't tell how much of it is my own heart and how much is your hypnotism."

"I have come a long way," he said quietly. "I have waited a long while. I can wait longer, if that's the edict, but not as he waits who fears the issue. You are going to love me and marry me."

"I hope so. I pray so." Her answer was vibrantly eager. "I have longed vainly for a day that should make my heart leap beyond control. You brought the day--and if, between us, we can keep it--"

She broke off, and he took both her hands in both of his.

"You are going to marry me," he repeated. "Don't make me wait too long, my sweetheart and comrade. Life is all too short to waste when it can be happy."

"Are we wasting it?" she demanded; then she smiled at him and added: "Thank you, for introducing me to the wonderful originality of being natural. On the whole I don't think I hate you--much."

All that afternoon her eyes held a starry happiness and sometimes they twinkled with a mischievous ripple.

Once she demanded, "Suppose Hamilton were to go broke tomorrow. Stony, flat, hopelessly broke. Would you still want me?" And before he could answer she broke into a merry peal of laughter. "Don't trouble to answer that question," she commanded. "I already know--and I'm fairly contented."

* * * * *

The Duke de Metuan had come and gone back--with his answer, and Paul, too, had left Haverly Lodge. For Paul's return there were two reasons. The music-room which Hamilton had built as a gift to his brother was nearing completion, and the finishing touches demanded personal supervision. As the heart of a high priest turns to his temple, so turned Paul Burton's heart to this spot at this time. It was a temple, but decidedly a pagan temple. Porphyry columns went up from a mosaic floor to a richly encrusted ceiling, and in conception and detail it was lavishly beautiful and perfect. Hamilton had conceived and planned the structure with a very ferocity of tense interest: though to Hamilton a music-room was in itself about as absorbing as a steam laundry.

In the undertaking he saw a monument to a dream and the fulfilment of a promise that one ragged boy had made to another ragged boy standing by a panel of broken fence. Hamilton had never forgotten that moment when first his pent-up ambitions had broken into fiery utterance while his little brother listened with eyes wide and wondering--yet full of faith. Then he had promised Paul an organ in a cathedral of dreams, where the imaginary self which was his greater self might find expression.

This was to be the worthy realization of that boast.

The second reason for the younger Burton's withdrawal from the house party was the departure of Loraine Haswell.

Now, finding himself in town, he had accepted one of those invitations which meant the acknowledgment of his lionizing in Fashion's world of music. Paul had little in common with those struggling men whose passion for violin or piano leads them through poverty and hunger in pursuit of their bays. But to face and stir with his art's hypnosis an audience of the smartest men and women in town, was meat and drink to his soul--was his soul's vanity. Of all his vanities it was the least weak--because the most sincere.

To see faces awaken from ennui and kindle into attentiveness, then soulfulness as he swayed them with the touch of his fingers on the keys was no mean triumph. To draw men out of lolling ease into tense and unconsidered attitudes; to cause women's lips to part and their pupils to grow misty as he carried them with him,

"Through the meadows of the sunset, through the poppies and the wheat, To the land where the dead dreams go"

--these were his delights. There are meaner pleasures.

But when he had played a little while, the composite pattern of faces always faded and darkened into a blur and he forgot them: forgot himself, forgot everything except the instrument that had become the mouthpiece of his soul. Then he, like his audience, was swept away into an impalpable world where nothing remained save the marvelous cascading and crushing tides which were the tides of golden sound. At such moments Paul Burton was almost a master.

This evening it was a benefit recital at the Plaza. He did not recall precisely to what worthy cause he was dedicating his gifted services, but that did not matter. He was bowing with a winning and boyish smile on his cameo features. Such fashionables as lingered in town so late as June were there to do homage; and other anonymous human units drawn from the millions followed where the fashionables led.

As Paul Burton looked out over the seated humanity, secretly searching for Loraine Haswell, he became conscious of another face near the front. It was that of a woman, who seemed quite alone and who was simply dressed. Paul wondered why the features held his interest. It was not precisely a beautiful face, but in its gray-green eyes dwelt a distinctive quality and as some thought parted the lips in a smile there came a sudden flooding of light which was better than ordinary beauty. This girl was frankly looking forward to the evening, for her expression mirrored that rapt anticipation which comes only to the eyes of the true music-lover. The small head under its brown hair was modeled as though a sculptor had spent loving care upon it, and Paul Burton thought that she was inwardly purring with the expectation of pleasure. A responsive glow at once awakened in him. He was subtly flattered because he recognized in that attitude of mind a tribute to his art for its own sake.

Then he began, and as the tide of his emotion swelled and lifted him out of himself, individual countenances grew misty--yet, for some reason this face stood out clear and single for a moment or two after the rest had faded.

Afterward he was told that even he had not played so well before.

As he turned from a congratulatory group when the recital was ended, one of the women whom he knew only by reason of her activity in arranging the entertainment, stopped him. "Mr. Burton," she said, "I want you to meet Miss Terroll." It was a general form of introduction and the man turned to bow--and recognized the face that had been the last to fade. The girl gave him a small and well-gloved hand. She smiled, but said nothing, and her sponsor talked on rapidly.

"I was in the midst of a heated suffrage discussion when you began," she declared. "But of course it was forgotten--at once."

"I'm sorry," laughed Paul Burton, "if I broke up a good argument."

"Oh," she assured him with a prepared quotation, "'I can always leave off talking, when I hear a master play.'"

When Paul Burton reached the street most of the private motors had been summoned and dispatched by the starter. He stood for a little while looking up at the stars and breathing deeply the grateful night air. The moon-mist made a shadowy lacework of the trees in the park, and the dark contours of the avenue's mansions were silhouetted beyond the lights of the Savoy and Netherland. The expenditure of so much of his emotional self always left him strangely restless, and made him crave a brief aftermath of solitude. So he sent his car away and turned down the avenue.

But at Fifty-eighth street, under one of the light-clusters, he encountered a slender and solitary figure, and as he approached, he recognized the girl to whom he had so recently been introduced. The pianist had just been thinking of her, pondering why her face had stood out in the mist, when other faces had been swallowed, and why, although her eyes had confessed the delight of anticipation, she had later vouchsafed no word of commendation. Surely he had not played badly tonight and he was accustomed to ready praise. When the older woman who had presented him had spoken of him as a master he had laughed deprecatingly, but his eyes had gone half-questioningly to the girl, as if seeking corroboration there, and the girl had met them with only an impersonal and non-committal smile.

Paul had drunk enough of flattery to feel piqued at its withholding. Now to see the figure of her who had withheld appear there quite unaccompanied, as though rising in response to his meditations, almost startled him. She did not see him until he reached her side and lifted his hat; not even then, for she was looking across the avenue with something of absorption in her manner, until he spoke her name.

Even as he murmured, "Miss Terroll," the inflection of surprise remained in his voice. It was well after ten o'clock and in those circles of society where he was received the system of chaperonage was rigid enough to fail of understanding for the women who dared the streets at night unescorted. He knew ladies who went to their several rostrums to sound the clarion of sex equality and who went at night, but they did not go uncavaliered. And under the lights this slim figure, with its easy, almost boyish independence, seemed very young, almost childish.

She turned, at his greeting, and her eyes must have read his thoughts, for once more they smiled and in the smile was an amused twinkle. This time, though, it was also a smile of the lips, revealing a row of teeth so small and white that they accentuated her seeming of childishness. She must be about twenty-two or twenty-three he thought.

"Mr. Burton," she laughed, "you spoke my name then almost as though I had astonished or startled you. I was scrutinizing the house across the way rather intently, but honestly there was no burglary in my thoughts."

"I'm rather sorry to hear that," he countered with a simulation of disappointment. "I've never burgled--and I had begun to hope you'd initiate me and let me share the adventure." She said nothing for a moment, and he bluntly demanded, "I was wondering what was in your thoughts just then."

Miss Terroll bent forward to look up the avenue before she answered. The 'buses were not running close together at this hour and the lamps of the nearest were still two blocks away.

"If I tell you, will you tell me why you spoke my name so chidingly?"

"It seems on its face a fair bargain." He spoke with a pretendedly grave consideration of the subject. Then added, "Yes, I will."

"I was thinking of music."

"What music?"

"Just music as music. Music as the one art which needs no background because every listening human being supplies one. That is where it succeeds where sculpture, for instance, fails. Music is a sort of panacea."

"Oh!" His monosyllable was a trifle disappointed. With such a cue she might at least have admitted his music into the summary.

The light from the overhead lamps fell in a circle of comparative radiance and he had time to note the charming modeling of her throat and a certain delicate nobility in the curve of her brow, where the soft hair merged with the dark shadowing of her hat brim.

"You haven't carried out your part of the contract yet," she reminded him. "I've told you what, but you haven't told me why."

"I mean to. Are you waiting for some one?"

"I am waiting for a 'bus to take me home."

"Where are you going to let it take you? Where is your home, I mean?"

"The Square," she answered, "and there is the 'bus coming, to gather me in, and you still haven't told me why I shocked your voice into that undernote of astonishment."

Paul Burton smiled, and did not yet enlighten her. Instead he went on stubbornly questioning. "The Square does not mean Madison or Union. I have deductive genius enough to infer that, because they're not places of homes. Is it Gramercy or Washington?"

The girl flashed her smile on him again and replied lightly.

"One enters my square under a marble arch and we who live there always think of it as the Square."

"But Washington square is a long way," he remonstrated. "It's a far journey to take alone."

The girl had stepped out beyond the curb and signaled, then as the 'bus drew over and came to a stop, she nodded to the man as she started up the stair to the roof. "Good-night, Mr. Burton," she called over her shoulder. "You are a good custodian of secrets."

But the musician was climbing up after her and when she seated herself at the front he took his place beside her. "I am going to answer all questions put to me on the way down to the Square," he announced.

"But you have just complained that it's a far journey."

"I beg your pardon. I said it was a far journey to take alone."

She turned in her seat and looked at him. The lips and brow were reserved, even grave, but in the green-gray eyes danced a truant twinkle. As the heavy vehicle rumbled and lurched along the way where the asphalt fell into shadow she became a graceful silhouette of slenderness, but as they passed through the brighter zones about the great opals swung from the lamp pillars, the dimpled little chin and small nose revealed themselves in a sort of baffling warfare of sauciness and dignity. Paul knew that there were well-held frontiers of reserve and self-containment in this woman's nature, but that back of it lay an alluring playground of mischief.

"And yet we are told," she was saying in a low voice, whose music suddenly impressed the musician, "that--

'Down to Gehenna or up to the throne,
He travels the fastest, who travels alone.'"

"Just at the moment we are not bound for either of those places," he assured her. "We are going to the Square."

"Why was it?" she demanded suddenly. For a few minutes they had been silent, and Paul had revised his estimate. She could hardly be as old as twenty two. Perhaps she might be twenty.

"Really you are exaggerating," he laughed. "I was neither astonished nor shocked. I was only surprised, and when I tell you why I shall no longer be a man of mystery, consequently I shall no longer be a man of interest."

"But my curiosity will be satisfied. Isn't that quite as important?"

He shook his head. His own curiosity was far from satisfied. He was still wondering why she had no kind word to say for his music.

"I was just surprised to find you there--alone," he said at last.

"Oh!"

Until the 'bus swung into view of the Metropolitan tower neither of them spoke, and then the man turned to look at his companion and found her smiling to herself. It struck him that if she would only laugh aloud, it would be worth hearing. But of that, at that moment, he said nothing.

"Won't you share the joke with me?" he smiled, and she said:

"I was just thinking of your solicitude about my being alone on Fifth avenue, after all the formidable places where I've been alone--in one-night stands."

"One-night stands?" he repeated vaguely after her and she replied only with a matter-of-fact nod, then, for his further enlightenment:

"You see I am an actress and most of my work has been on the road."

Paul Burton's face did not succeed in masking his surprise at the announcement.

"Have I shocked you again?" she demurely inquired.

"Shocked me, no." He disavowed with an almost confused haste. "I suppose I was surprised because the few actresses I have known have all been so unlike you."

"You mean," she amplified, "because I don't make up for the street?"

"I shouldn't have said that," he laughed, then added: "Now if you had told me you were playing truant from a young ladies' seminary, I would have found it quite natural. I saw you out front just before I began playing. Somehow the simple directness of your expression--I hoped it was anticipation--didn't seem to me characteristic of the stage. I fancied that professional people were usually chary of enthusiasm."

"There are at least several sorts of stage people, and they're not all gutter-children," she answered. "And then I haven't always been an actress. It was thrust upon me--by necessity."

"When I play," the man assured her, "the faces out front always grow vague to me. Tonight I saw yours when the others had gone. Then I lost yours, too. I hope I didn't disappoint you."

She shook her head. "No," she said, but to the simple negative she added nothing affirmative.

Paul Burton remained silent, half-piqued, and she, divining his thought, smiled quietly to herself at his petulance, but finally she spoke slowly and gravely: "You are an artist and until tonight you didn't know of my existence. Anything I might say would mean little to you."

"Even," he impulsively demanded, "if it came from the last face that faded?"

"If that is true," she responded, "I don't need to say anything, do I?"

To Paul's subtly attuned nature many things came in intuitive impressions. Now he was keenly interested because this woman whom he had met that night had told him only one thing about herself, that she belonged to a world of which, in the personal sense, his world touched only the least creditable segments. He felt that she would not, without a much riper acquaintanceship, tell him anything more. Yet he felt with conviction that her refinement was not only innate and true, but that of an aristocrat; that her mind was not only quick, but cultivated. As though dropping thoughtlessly into a more musical tongue he spoke next in French, and she replied in that tongue as unconsciously as though she had not noticed his change of language. But though he questioned persistently and skilfully until the 'bus rolled under the arch, he drew no further information from her as to herself, save that at present she was unemployed, and that her days were filled with that most cheerless of tasks, calling on managers.

He gathered that the distinguishing difference between triumph and struggle on the stage was that the managers sent for the triumphant and the struggling called uninvited.

As Paul helped Miss Terroll out of the 'bus and walked at her side the short distance between the terminal of its route and the south side of the Square he said abruptly:

"Some day I want you to do something for me."

"What?"

"To laugh aloud. I suppose you sometimes do laugh aloud, don't you?"

Her response was to break unconsciously into a peal of mirth that held in it a tinkle of soft music and spontaneity.

"I can be provoked," she admitted and to that confession she added the inquiry, "Why do you want to hear me laugh?"

"I did want to hear you laugh because some instinct told me there would be music in it," he assured her. "Now I do want to hear you laugh again, and often, because I know it."

When he had said good-night at her door and had walked across to the Brevoort cab-stand at Eighth street, he took a taxi'. During the drive home he thought only once of Loraine Haswell. "I must see more of Miss Terroll," he informed himself. "She is decidedly interesting."

* * * * *

Hamilton Burton shoved back a mass of papers and smiled across his desk at his secretary.

"Carl, do you chance to recall what General Forrest of the late Confederate States of America had to say on the subject of strategy?" Bristoll stretched his arms above his head and leaned back in his chair, grateful for a moment of relaxation after two hours of application.

"I believe he reduced military science to the simple proposition of 'gettin' thar fust with the most men,' didn't he?"

"That was his correct formula--and finance has its points of similarity."

"Is the comment general, or has it a specific bearing?"

"Quite specific. Do you remember my prophecy a short while back? I reminded you that the coin of big business bore on one face the image and superscription of Caesar Augustus Malone--and on the reverse my own poor stamp."

The secretary nodded.

"The time, dear boy, is at hand when one side or the other must be turned down."

"What has happened?" The younger man's voice was tinged with alarm. This child of Destiny might be immune from fear, but those who stood near his person could not always accept without question the talisman of his limitless self-faith. Malone's might was theoretically invincible. Hamilton recognized the undernote of apprehension with a laugh of frank amusement; a laugh which brought to his eyes their most winning sparkle.

"The august over-lord of all the robber barons regards our reign as tributary to his own. He fancies that our loyal respect is thinly spread. We make too little obeisance. Too rarely we 'crook the pregnant hinges of the knee.' Therefore we must be crushed--if possible."

"You mean--"

"I mean that it is in the mind of this generalissimo, to call me before his staff and 'break' me in full view of his halted ranks."

The cheerful grin on the face of the prospective victim was so infectious and reassuring that his secretary laughed with revitalized confidence.

"But how did you learn of this conspiracy, sir?" he demanded.

"The throne which lacks its _cabinet noir_, Carl, is a very precarious one to sit upon." The "Great Bear" spoke casually. "Our secret service is fairly satisfactory. Also, we have a brain which, at times, prognosticates."

"There have been new developments, then?"

Hamilton Burton shrugged his shoulders.

"The stock-holders' meeting of Coal and Ore isn't far distant. After it comes the annual election of officers. I fancy Malone may know of a man who might grace the directorate with a more deferential humility than I show--when he speaks Jove-like from the head of the table."

"To be ousted from that board would mean to wear the brand of defeat."

"If Mr. Malone wants to put some one else in my place he can do it--the chair I occupy faces the window. Sometimes the glare hurts my eyes."

Carl Bristoll thought he knew his chief. Such docile acceptance of reduction to the ranks astounded him and his blank amazement stamped itself on his face. When the elder man had enjoyed it for the space of a long silence he rose suddenly and his voice rang out like a command for a bayonet charge:

"Yes, Malone can have my chair. I mean to take his--at the head of the table."

The secretary started violently. He could never quite accustom himself to the dauntless fashion with which his chief essayed the impossible--and accomplished it. Hamilton Burton's fist came down savagely on the mahogany. The smiling features of a moment ago had vanished and Bristoll was looking up into eyes that rained immeasurable wrath.

"They hate me, because they fear me!" The voice was not loud, but it was terrific in its intensity of anger. "By the Almighty God in heaven, I mean to give them cause to hate me. I mean to crush them to a pulp until nothing remains except the stench of their unmourned memory!" ... Once more the timbre changed and with startling abruptness became quietly declarative.

"This morning, I received a confidential note from Carton."

"The secretary of Coal and Ore?"

"The same. I put him where he is--he's a valuable man--and incidentally a member of my secret service. Malone is calling in all the proxies he can control; he and his myrmidons. He has not taken me into his confidence. How would you construe that?"

"As you do. He means to oust you."

Burton nodded, then a naive smile twinkled in his eyes. "What he is now beginning to do, I went to work on ten minutes after he left my office last spring. Many transactions, some of them of huge proportions, which you did not understand, have since been completed in preparation for this moment. On the floor of the Exchange my brokers have been ostentatiously idle, but others, not known to act for me, have been buying Coal and Ore. They have pretty well gathered in the floating supply."

"Hasn't that been reported to Malone?"

The financier shook his head. "Trading of that character is difficult to trace and is usually presumed to be marginal trading. To disarm possible suspicion my recognized brokers have sold large blocks of Coal and Ore--to my unrecognized brokers. I seem to have been unloading--while I was doing the reverse. When the psychological moment comes, there will be a surprise--and a raid upon the control."

"Then you are ready for the issue."

"No, not quite." Burton rose and took a turn or two across the floor. He stopped before a small painting and spoke irrelevantly. "I always liked Corot. The man could paint, Carl. He understood values." After this art criticism he returned to the desk and sat down again. "No, I'm not ready yet. I've done all that I could do by quiet preparation. The issue now narrows to the hair balance which makes all fights crucial--and interesting. There's a member of the state senate who holds a block I need, and there are two banks in town that hold others. When I have that stock I shall be master of the situation--and of Consolidated--and Malone must take his orders from me."

"And if you fail to get it?"

"I would still be plowing rocks and milking cows, Carl, if I acknowledged the possibility of failing in what I resolve on."

"Yet they may refuse to sell."

Hamilton Burton smiled. "That would be regrettable," he said, and his voice was full of sympathetic softness. "Because in that event an elderly and respected member of the senate will have to reside for a time at Sing Sing and a couple of widely trusted banks will go to the wall." _

Read next: Part 2. The Book Of Life - It Might Have Been: Chapter 14

Read previous: Part 2. The Book Of Life - It Might Have Been: Chapter 12

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