Chapter IV: Part 4

Jack’s voice thrilled with affection for his friend. Russell’s fingers clasped in succession three gloved right hands. He knew by intuition when he touched those of the girl whose charm had enthralled him and, looking her full in the eyes, met in return a glance of gentle approbation.

“Jack has cried me in their market better than I knew,” he thought, gratefully. By the immediate departure of the other two young ladies in answer to the inspiriting strains of the “Washington Post,” set to a two-step, together with Jack’s flight in search of his own partner, Russell found himself for a moment alone with the Miss Benedict he most admired.

“I am not detaining you?” he asked, nervously.

“Not at all. In fact, I am stranded upon your hands. My idea is that the man I promised this dance to is fainting somewhere on the outskirts of the crowd. When I saw him last he was already pumped, and supper not yet served,” she answered, laughing.

“I hope they will not revive him,” said Russell, yielding for once to the temptation of the hour.

Back of the committee box was a little room set apart for wraps and _tête-à-têtes_, into which he had the hardihood to invite his companion to retire, hoping thus to seclude her from the observation of her tardy dancer.

“Yes, do go; I shan’t tell,” said Mrs. Benedict, smiling approval. “The little rest will do you good, and I know Jack will think well of your change of comrades.”

Thus everything conspired to bring closer around poor Russell the net he had not sought to weave. Sitting back among the cloaks and hats, with the music floating in to them in softened cadence, he could feast his eyes upon the beauty that had ensnared him. Her talk, bright, friendly, unaffected, girlish, was exactly calculated to win him from his habitual attitude of reserve. He found himself pouring out upon her ear the stream of strong original thought and language which had first made Jack Benedict his ardent admirer. She, in turn, felt a sense of pleasure and bedazzlement in this man’s society that she had never known before. All Jack had said of Hubert Russell was more than confirmed by her talk with him; and before the brief period of their isolation was ended, something of the same everyday marvel worked upon him by her was accomplished in her gentle breast by him. A tremor of admiration, of preference for his society, ran through her veins. She asked herself timorously what _should_ she do if she never met him again; why fate had been so long in granting to her this experience of delight!

An invasion of young men (the missing partner, full of apologies for the accident of his detention, and the man to whom the next intermission was promised) broke up their _tête-à-tête_. Russell hardly believed his good fortune when she said, in a vexed aside:

“There, now, they have spoiled the best of the evening for me. I am sure we shall have no other chance to talk.”

“You are going to-morrow?” he murmured, trying to seem indifferent.

“Yes, at eleven. I am so sorry,” she answered in the same vein of restrained feeling.

“I _must_ see you once more,” he said, briefly--then drew within himself, frightened at his own audacity.

After that he watched her from afar, not being able to bring himself to join the throng of chatterers who surrounded her in the intervals of dancing or at supper time. Once only, Jack, running upon him, paused under the weight of official cares to say, brightly:

“You took to them, then? My people, I mean.”

“I should say I did. They are all delightful, and your sister, Jack, is--well--”

“Which sister?” interrogated his friend, merrily.

“I actually do not know,” said Russell, shame-facedly. “But she wears blue and has a wreath of white roses.”

“That’s my sister Margaret. Do you know I always had an idea that you would hit it off with Margaret. She doesn’t let herself out to everybody by any means. But, Hubert, you might say one word for my own particular goddess--Agnes--who is the chief woman in the world for me, though I daren’t tell her so till I’m farther ahead in fortune.”

“Agnes? Which is she?” answered Russell, confusedly, conscious that he had given thought only to the companion of his talk in the committee-room.

“Stupid!” laughed Jack, pulled this way and that by people asking him questions. “There’s but one Agnes, as I said, and she--er--she wears blue.”

He was torn away by an imperative demand for the floor manager, and Russell felt relieved.

“I should not like to have confessed to him that neither of the others made the least impression upon my sensibility. I saw, of course, that there were two young females of pleasing but conventional exterior--that was all. Only the blindness of a brother could overlook the fact that Margaret is far and away the most distinguished, individual, high-bred, graceful, gracious, of the three. A man who has once spoken to Margaret would seek conversation with the other two only when he had absolutely no chance with Margaret.”

Russell stayed till daylight, looking in at the armory windows, drove the last dancers to withdraw. Poor Mrs. Benedict, yawning dismally behind the ostrich-feather fan, had to confess herself beaten by sheer fatigue. Walking stiffly out upon the arm of her son, she soon fell into the corner of her carriage, thanking heaven that Jack could by no possibility be again the floor manager of a Junior “Prom.” All around her limp figures were seen slinking into retreat. The most indefatigable of the dancers among the men revealed foreheads streaked with matted hair, staring eyes, shirt-fronts and collars flaccid for want of starch, buttonhole bouquets like crushed vegetables. Upon that stage of the annual festivity it were well to let fall a veil!

When Russell appeared at the carriage door to aid Jack in putting his family into their vehicle, a faint blush came into the clear pale cheeks of his companion in the talk of a few hours before.

“Might I--would you take a little stroll with me before you leave?” he ventured, with throbbing heart, to ask her.

“To-morrow? I mean, to-day?” she queried, a little confused.

“Yes; you see it is my only chance.”

“I will be waiting in the little reception-room of the hotel at ten,” she said, rapidly. It seemed to her that they were in a boat being borne onward by the current.

Jack and Russell walked together back to their dormitory building, where each man occupied with a room-mate a suite of two bedrooms and a sitting-room. As the gray of the sky warmed with rose color, Jack yawned mightily between two puffs at a cigar.

“I’d give a kingdom for a solid eight hours’ sleep,” he said, stretching his arms out. “But alas! I’ve got to be up betimes at the station, on duty, putting ‘them’ in the train, you know, or I think I’d take ‘cuts’ enough to tide me over a half a day in bed.”

“That is one of those things I can’t do for you, or I would,” said Russell. “I mean putting the ladies in the train.”

“Why, man, are you made of iron and whale-bone that you show not a sign of somnolence?” asked Jack.

“Not in the least. I never so heartily wished that I were constructed after that model as since this evening’s experience. But remember that you have danced many miles, while I’ve merely hung around on the outskirts.”

“You sound gay as a lark. What’s come over you? I’d advise a ball a week at this rate. Perhaps you are going to come out as a ‘fusser’--a regular squire of dames--in your old age.”

“No such good luck. I have seen but one dame I should care to squire, and she--well--” and Russell sighed genuinely.

“A confession?” exclaimed Jack, gleefully. “But it’s never too late to mend, so go ahead.”

“I have no story. I am simply the victim of overwhelming circumstances. Love came unsought, unsent, and it will probably expire when I do. So no more at present from yours idiotically.”

“I know you too well to press queries. You will, as usual, just shut your jaw and glare in silence if you don’t care to hold forth on any topic. I, too, am ready for silence, though for a grosser reason.”

They kept pace together without speaking, until they reached the landing where Jack turned in at his door, Russell ascending higher.

“Good night! Good day!” said Jack as they parted. “By the way, I forgot to mention that my mother tells me it was Agnes--my Agnes, you know--and not my sister Margaret, with whom you had that chat in the committee-room. Now, I did suppose that even a churlish old bach like you could tell the difference between those two. Margaret’s a nice girl--a dear girl--but Agnes--well, you know what I think of Agnes!”

“Agnes?” repeated Russell, almost in a whisper.

“Yes, my bride-to-be, when I get money enough to claim her. My mother said she as evidently took to you as you did to her. That’s as it should be, old chap. When I’m awake we’ll have a jolly long talk over her perfections. Meantime, you evidently need sleep as much as I do. I never saw such a pale face as you’ve got on you suddenly. Brace up, and good-by till we meet again.”

“Agnes,” repeated Russell, mechanically, as he crept up his flight of stairs and went into his room.

Down fell his card-castle! The havoc wrought on him by that one short talk must be borne in silence and lived down. It was Jack’s lady-love that he had coveted. To follow up the advantage he could not but feel that what he had gained with her would mean treachery to Jack. Rather than betray his friend he would so cancel his engagement to meet her at ten o’clock that she, considering him a boor, would not choose to hold speech with him again. He would simply fail to go to her hotel; and, cost him what it might, this course were better than undermining Jack.

III

As the hour of her appointment with Hubert Russell passed without sign or token from him, a blush of shame dyed the cheek of Agnes Benedict. She wondered at herself for making this engagement to meet Jack’s friend, and for feeling ashamed to speak of it to her family. But with a sort of desperate faith in him she waited in the little reception-room at the foot of the hotel stairs where she had promised to be found. When she could wait no longer she went into her room and burst into tears. Mortified by her want of self-control, she promised herself that Russell would yet explain satisfactorily the slight to her. At the station, where Jack finally appeared--arriving at a gallop in a cab just as the train was about to start--she experienced a new pang of disappointment. Not only was Hubert Russell nowhere to be seen, but he had sent no message. Agnes came to the swift, maidenly conclusion that it was because she had cheapened herself by making an appointment to see him alone after but a half-hour’s acquaintance. She would bear her punishment in silence, and tell nobody--Jack, least of all.

As the days wore on, Agnes felt that something had gone out of her life--something not quite warranted by the briefness of that interlude at the ball. Try as she might, she could not forget Russell and the emotion he had caused in and had seemed to feel for her. Jack’s letters home spoke of him as winning new honors in the college course. When June came the family went up again to Yale to hear the speaking for the “De Forest” medal, for which both Jack and Russell were to be competitors. It was known that popular opinion inclined to select Jack Benedict as the prize-winner, but that Russell was considered a close second. In their zeal for their own hero the Benedicts were beginning to look a little frigidly upon Jack’s opponent. And it is safe to say that all of them, save Agnes, hoped and prayed that Russell might not win.

Agnes, who would have given anything for an excuse to stay away, found none. The appointed day saw her one of an audience assembled within the walls of the old college chapel, whose prim Puritan interior made even this gala occasion seem a little less cheerful than a funeral elsewhere. She had been standing with her cousins in the corridor as the procession of senior classmen in caps and gowns filed by; and, to her utter discomfiture, a momentary halt in the line had brought her face to face with Hubert Russell. In an instant the blood rushed into her cheeks. Russell, looking her full in the face, saluted her with conventional reserve. In reality he felt more of inward excitement than did she. A moment more and they had parted, she to sit gathering her faculties together in one end of the pew to which the Benedicts had been assigned, and trying to believe that she had not cared a bit.

“Did you see that Mr. Russell?” whispered Louisa in her ear. “A stiff, cross-looking fellow, spite of Jack’s praises. Oh, Agnes, if he and not Jack should win the ‘De Forest’ I could never get over it--never. I almost hate him now, don’t you?”

“No-o,” whispered Agnes, blushing and hesitating.

“You are too angelic. And when any one can see Jack cares more for what you think than for all the rest of us put together! At any rate, you will own that Hubert Russell is very uncivil. He has never taken the least notice of Jack’s family, and considering all Jack has been to him! A man told me it is quite well known there’s a cloud over Russell’s family--something really dreadful, and that Jack has simply brought everybody to forget it and to treat Russell as if it had never been.”

“What Jack has done is grand, and I honor him for it,” said Agnes. “Who dares judge a man for the sins of his father? If ever any one showed a high and noble nature in his countenance it is Hubert Russell.”

“Don’t get excited,” said Lou, teasingly. “The object isn’t worth it, in my opinion. I suppose, though, you and Jack see things with the same eyes nowadays.”

“Lou, you mustn’t. Jack and I are nothing but cousins--_dear_ cousins,” said Agnes, imploringly.

Mrs. Benedict, looking across Margaret, here hushed their whispers. The exercises were already under way.

When it was Jack’s turn to step upon the platform, and after a courteous bow in his student’s gown to the president and judges, to begin his oration, all hearts in the audience warmed toward the manly and graceful and straight-forward young fellow. His essay, well-written, carefully polished, was delivered with excellent judgment, and when he had ended and stepped down amid tremendous applause from his friends and classmen, the general verdict was that it would win the prize. Last upon the list of speakers came Hubert Russell. The rather measured applause bestowed on him as he appeared was warmed up by the individual hand-clapping of his friend and predecessor, Jack. Hardly a smile lighted Russell’s dark and handsome face as he began. His manner, never prepossessing, seemed now under some spell or chill of indifference.

By hazard the pew in which the Benedicts were placed was well to the front, upon the left-hand side of the speaker. As Russell finally approached his peroration, his glance chanced for a moment to rest upon the glowing, inspiring, appealing countenance of a girl who leaned forward to gaze on him with her whole soul in her eyes. The effect of this was immediate. Casting aside his embarrassment, his indifference, he burst into a fervor of natural eloquence the like of which had not been heard in that spot that day, or for many a day. To Russell was given the persuasiveness of speech, the music of the voice, the flow of language, the flexibility of countenance, that combined may give interest to material of less value than was his. When he had finished the brief essay there was no question among his hearers as to who had spoken best; they yielded him the spontaneous applause that no favor to the individual can simulate. Louder and longer than any other present applauded honest Jack Benedict, who knew himself outdone.

“Why, mother, that is not like you,” said Jack that evening, when he went to take supper with his family at their hotel.

Mrs. Benedict, who had been delivering herself of a few rather bitter criticisms upon the winner of the “De Forest” (news of the award to Hubert Russell had just been communicated to them by Jack), tried to smile deprecatingly, and ended by dropping a few tears.

“I know it, Jack darling. But it’s because you are so much more to us than any Mr. Russell.”

“Oh, mother dear, that’s the fortune of war. Russell did it a thousand times better than ever I could have done. When you think he has no one--absolutely no human being to whom to telegraph his success, and I have all of you--you will see that what I have is more than a balance for Hubert’s luck to-day.”

“Poor fellow! I wish he had come here with you. I wish we could say something nice to him,” said the good lady, her little fit of ill-temper dissipated by native kindness of heart.

“He can’t be captured, I’m afraid. He is more queer than ever regarding women since the Prom. About that time he let me think he was or had been hopelessly in love, and was ashamed of himself for being so. Had he confided in me, I should keep my lips sealed. But no! Hubert Russell lives and must always live, I fear, severely within himself.”

A secret love for some one that must govern all his life! Agnes, listening, felt her heart sink in very shame. Since she had heard Russell speak, her fancy for him, that had but lain dormant, had sprung up in full growth and vigor. And now she was told that he whom she loved in secret cared nothing at all for her. That meeting on going into chapel but confirmed her in this conviction. She little knew that a glimpse of her face it was which had inspired his brilliant effort of oratory. She little knew--

After supper, in the cool, soft evening air of June, they walked over to the town green, and while Mrs. Benedict and Margaret sat together on a bench talking, Lou strolled in one direction, accompanied by a certain young man who had of late begun to arrest her butterfly attention, while Agnes and Jack took another path.

The latter pair talked long and easily together, of the interests shared by them through relationship and intimacy of habit. It was only when Jack began insensibly to glide into the tone of tenderness she had noticed often of late with some alarm that his cousin drew back a little in her friendly attitude.

“Don’t Jack; there’s a dear boy,” she said, coaxingly. “If you only knew how nice you can be when you are sensible.”

Jack’s reply was a burst of long repressed devotion, to which Agnes listened in dismay. She had no idea matters had gone so far, and was shocked at this evidence of deep feeling.

Very gently, very tenderly, she pleaded with him to give up the idea, and after a long and painful talk brought herself to the point of avowing that her love was not hers to give. Jack, who knew most of her acquaintances, could not conceive of a rival among them. But the double blow of losing in one day the cherished hopes of two such prizes was more than the poor fellow could meet with equanimity. In their absorption, as they walked to and fro, neither observed that Russell, straying out to be alone beneath the starlight with his own swelling emotions, had encountered them; had made an irrepressible movement toward Agnes, then, seeing the expression of Jack’s face, had hurried on with a bitterness of jealousy in his heart that robbed success of all its charms.

“Then you care for some one else?” Jack was saying in a fierce undertone.

“Jack--don’t, please!” murmured she, tears welling into her eyes.

“But I must know,” he went on, hardly aware of his own insistence.

“Yes,” she said at last, never so faintly. “But he does not care for me.”

All of Jack’s manhood answered to this pitiful confession. He spoke to her gently, soothingly, laid her hand in his arm, and told her he would always watch over her like a brother. And Agnes, reassured, looked up in his face with loving gratitude.

At this point, Russell, on the return, again passed them. A single glance at the couple convinced him that Jack had won a prize dearer far than the one his friend had that day wrested from him.

“It was a miserable delusion of my vanity,” Russell said within himself, “that made me answer to the inspiration of her gaze. It is Jack, the fortunate, the pet of Destiny, who is to claim her. Here endeth the chapter of my folly.”

And with gloom in his heart he went back into his lonely room and life.

IV

Three years after the brief episode of Hubert Russell’s two meetings with Agnes Benedict he found himself enjoying a hard-earned holiday in camp on an island in Georgian Bay. Since graduating, he had made a quick climb up the ladder of success. A series of fortunate circumstances had enabled him to conquer difficulties apparently insuperable. His residence in a progressive town of the Middle West, congenial occupation, and the sense of work well bestowed, had done much to restore the healthy tone of his mind, biased to melancholy through another’s crime. He had corresponded intermittently with Jack Benedict, but without touching upon the subject of Jack’s domestic or sentimental ties. He had read, in the “society” columns of certain New York newspapers, of various occasions upon which the three Misses Benedict had appeared before the world; of their summers abroad and at home; of the marriage of Margaret; and recently of the more than amateur achievement of Agnes as the artist of some pastels displayed at an exhibition in the spring. What he had expected to read--the announcement of her marriage with her cousin Jack--had not yet reached Russell’s eye. When that event should occur, and not till then, Russell said to himself, he would give up, once and for all, the haunting witchery of Agnes Benedict’s fair face. Through the mists of three years of memory it shone upon him still!

One day in August a little pleasure-yacht of light draft and dainty build (meant to thread her way between innumerable rocky islands and dally beside tempting bits of shore, rather than to brave the rough water of the open bay) passed into an inlet where its owner had decided to throw a rope over a large rock and stop to lunch!

This primitive method of anchorage was a favorite one with the owners of the Juanita, the Cartwrights, a benevolent elderly couple from New York, who, owning a summer residence upon one of the islands lower down the bay, often took their house-parties away for days of pleasuring afloat. Mr. and Mrs. Cartwright had now as their guests several young men and maidens, among them Jack Benedict, his sister Louisa, and his Cousin Agnes. All day the Juanita had run through narrow channels of pale green water, between rocky ramparts crowned with spruce and birch, around the gray flanks of which sprang from the water forests of bulrushes, sprinkled with cardinal flowers and water-lilies. As they now steered skillfully into the channel, in which it was expected to find their usual landing-place open to approach, an expression of disappointment arose from the forward deck, where gathered a little group of voyagers in the gay attire of summer on the wave.

“A camp of men! Horrid things! Why did they choose our island!” cried Lou Benedict, pouting.

A rough house-boat anchored near the shore formed the center of supplies for the camp, often replenished by a tri-weekly steam launch from the mainland. Around a fire built upon stones a party of young men were making rather bored preparations for their mid-day meal. As the whistle of the toy yacht sounded a salute they arose to their feet and came hurrying down to the water’s edge, evidently not displeased at the invasion of their privacy.

“Hubert Russell!” exclaimed Benedict, joyfully, as he identified among them his old friend. “Who would have dreamed of our meeting here?”

Greetings and introductions followed, and from this point no expression was heard from the girls of disapproval of “those horrid men.”

It was in truth a stalwart and good-looking band of which Russell was the leader. Mr. and Mrs. Cartwright, nominally joining forces with them for luncheon, brought joy to the hearts of these weary cooks and bottle-washers by the unpacking of a dainty meal, well served by the yacht’s cook and stewards. As the party grouped itself under the shade of glimmering birches, Russell, as if through a mockery of Fate, found himself next to the lady of his dreams. The talk, at first general, subsided into chat between persons sitting at a picnic casually side by side. Russell, almost fearing to continue where he was, looked over the circle to see Jack Benedict half reclining on the moss at the feet of an extremely pretty girl in white duck, a sailor-hat tied down with a white veil half covering her face. Seeing him thus provided for, Russell had less scruple in accepting his own half-hour of joy.

He thought Agnes sweeter, more womanly, more to his taste than ever. The rare experience was his of finding one’s self confirmed in a predilection after three years of total separation from the object. They talked easily, without reference to the past, without touching upon intimate topics. He fancied, without being sure, that Agnes knew the incidents of his advance since leaving college. That she had thus kept track of him was a flattery he must accept only because he was Jack’s friend. When he left her, his pulses bounding with delight of her presence, Jack Benedict took him off to the roof of the yacht’s deck, where they sat by the pilot-house and smoked and chatted through a long and lazy hour. During this time the rest of the party had scattered for various enterprises--exploring the waters in canoes, fishing, reading novels under the deck-awning, or lounging beneath the trees and overhanging rocks.

And as yet no word had passed Jack’s lips concerning his sentimental relations with the sex. Suddenly Mrs. Cartwright’s voice called up to him:

“Mr. Benedict, won’t you please take a canoe and paddle up that inlet yonder in search of your cousin and Miss Clare? We shall be starting before long, and I must begin to gather my chickens under my wings.”

Jack blushed as he prepared to obey the chaperon’s behest.

“You will think that for an engaged man I’m rather forgetful of my treasure,” he said, smiling. “I meant to tell you, Russell, that I’m to be married in October.”

Russell’s heart gave a despairing leap. “Wasn’t it to be expected?” he said, smiling also.

“Well--I--there were reasons why I couldn’t bring myself to write to you, old chap,” rejoined Jack, as he dropped lightly into the canvas canoe a deck-hand had put into the water, Russell following. “And perhaps we need not discuss it further. But I’m happier than I deserve to be, and I have won a gem of purest ray.”

As they paddled rapidly around the sharp projection of rocks that had seemed to block the way ahead of them, they saw the girls’ canoe in the center of a field of lily-pads bordering another one of the rocky points here so numerous in the channel. When the lily-gatherers, who had half filled their craft with masses of gleaming flowers and long, curling stems, espied the search-party, they waved them a merry welcome.

“I knew they were not fishing; she’s too tender-hearted by far,” exclaimed Jack, with a lover’s pride.

Simultaneously the smiles vanished from his handsome face. A naphtha launch just then passing into this inlet had left behind it a swell that made the canoe containing the two girls rock perilously from side to side. Agnes, evidently recognizing the danger, sat quite still, but Edith Clare threw herself forward with a scream and clasped her companion in her arms. The canoe, upsetting, plunged both occupants into the broad-leafed greenery, under which they sank at once out of sight.

“Can they swim?” asked Russell, quickening his stroke.

“Yes, both of them, if they are not caught below,” answered Benedict, hoarsely.

Their canoe shot madly forward. Prompt as were the people in the naphtha launch in turning back to attempt rescue, they could not vie with these men in their eager effort to reach the scene of the disaster. It was soon fatally evident that while one of the young women had arisen to the surface and was keeping herself afloat, something had happened to prevent the reappearance of the other. Jack was not so quick as Hubert Russell to see that it was Agnes who was missing. With misery clutching at his heart-strings, Russell said, entreatingly:

“Let me save her for you, Jack! It will be something to pay back all you’ve done for me if I can put the woman I’ve loved ever since I first laid eyes on her into your arms again.”

He could not see that Jack was not even looking toward the place where Agnes had gone down. All his thoughts were directed to the spot whence Edith Clare called out to him to save her. “Coming, my darling; have no fear,” Jack answered her, tenderly.

Russell, without an instant’s further delay, dived overboard. The canoe, violently shaken, was yet steadied by the other occupant, who succeeded in reaching Edith and extricating her in safety from her perilous surroundings.

An anxious interval, and Russell reappeared, bringing with him the sodden form of Agnes, who, snared and held under water by the green serpents of the lily-stems, was quite inanimate. They got her aboard the launch and hurried back to the yacht, where poor Mrs. Cartwright received them wringing her hands over this sad ending of her day of pleasure. During the hour while Russell waited in an agony of fear on deck, Jack Benedict, who stood beside him, became for the first time aware of his friend’s long ordeal of repressed feeling for Agnes.

“And I might have spared you so much of it; it was my fault; I only was to blame,” Jack said, sorrowfully. “Ages ago, had I known this, I might have told you how she gently and tenderly--poor soul--but with finality, put a stop to my boy’s dream of winning her. Now, when God only knows whether she will be with us in the future, I can say no more. I think, Hubert--mind, I can’t say I am sure, but I think--she must have loved you from the first.”

Russell could not speak. He wrung Benedict’s hand, looking at him with hollow, haggard eyes.

“So many people have known for the last two years of my attentions to Edith Clare, we have been so frequently announced by our friends to be engaged, that, even before the engagement was a fact, it did not occur to me that you, though living so far from us, were in total ignorance of our relations. You can see, Hubert, that Edith is my other self. My fancy for Agnes grew up with me, but the love for Edith came with my maturer manhood. Our engagement was announced only just before we all came off here to visit Mrs. Cartwright, or I should have written to inform you of it officially and of my approaching marriage.”

“There!” exclaimed Russell, who was straining his ears to hear sounds from the little inner cabin, where Agnes lay under the care of Mrs. Cartwright and a doctor--found, fortunately, among the campers on the island. “I am sure I heard her voice.”

Jack’s sister Lou came out to them, her face beaming with delight. “She has stirred--has spoken; she breathes easily now,” was what they heard. “In a little while, the doctor says, she will be herself again,” Lou tried to add, but was choked by her excitement.

An hour or two later Russell, who had been invited by their hostess to go back with them for a little visit to her island villa, sat beside the lounging-chair of Indian bamboo heaped with rugs and cushions, in which they had placed Agnes upon deck--clad for the occasion in things they always carried aboard in a wardrobe assembled for such emergencies. The yacht was speeding merrily homeward over a track of westering sunshine. Forest fires upon the small islands along their route glowed like jewels under canopies of dense, pearly smoke. In the wake of the boat violet shadows appeared and vanished into the water. All ahead of the two was bright as the Promised Land.

What had so long seemed impossible to these lovers had come about in the simplest fashion. Their hands meeting had conveyed the joy of each at reunion with the other. A few broken words from Russell told Agnes that he had no dearer wish than to win her love. And Agnes--Now she was pouring out to him the confidences of three years past; was claiming his in return; was hanging upon his words, her face so full of happiness as to tell its own story.

“We are all avoiding that part of the deck as if it were a region of pestilence,” said Lou to her future sister-in-law. “I don’t think I ever saw such bare-faced love-making in public. I have had to put up a parasol so as not to see them. As for you and Jack, Edith, you may step down from your pedestal as fiancés. Although mamma will be very much taken by surprise to hear that Agnes has come up into these remote waters to annex a young man from off an island, I think Jack will induce her to feel resigned. Certainly, Russell is a fine, manly fellow. From all I can see, I fancy there will soon be only one Miss Benedict.”

“And for how long will there be even one?” asked Edith, teasingly.

Lou blushed, and would not answer.

A GIRL OF THE PERIOD

A GIRL OF THE PERIOD

A great deal of feeble sympathy was expressed for the Foljambes when it became known they had lost their money. But regret for that sort of misfortune to one’s neighbors is always tempered when they have previously shone before the world as the dispensers of extravagant hospitality. Thrifty, self-centered people who have been inconspicuous because of their objection to amusing society at the expense of their own purses, are apt, under similar circumstances, to receive much more hearty condolence. The Foljambes, father, mother, sons, and daughters, invitations to whose parties had been scrambled for in New York and Newport, during several seasons past, were now reaping the harvest of over-abundant giving.

It was generally agreed that Mrs. Foljambe, a weak, silly woman with a bee in her bonnet for fashionable life, had quite long enough enjoyed her place in the fierce light that beats upon the throne of American plutocracy. The father, a clever financier, with the one social accomplishment of effacing himself when the strain of recognizing his individuality became too great upon the frequenters of his house, was dismissed with even scanter consideration. The sons--one recently started in business, the other but just out of college--were very little known except to their cronies. The real stars of the Foljambe family, those whose effulgence or eclipse was likely to be of consequence in the social firmament, were the daughters, Lilian and Olive.

Of Lilian, the elder, it had been customary to say that in a matrimonial point of view she might be expected to do “anything.” Beautiful, accomplished, fine of grain, cradled and bred in polished luxury, she was the traditional princess who could not sleep for the crumpled roseleaf in her couch of down. Since she had made her appearance before the world her friends had watched, open-mouthed, to see who would carry off the prize. Of the half a dozen men prominently in her train, none could be adjudged exactly fit for her. “Dancing men and dips”--meaning diplomats--was the way they were summed up. Of course it was not to be expected that a mere diner-out and frequenter of cotillons--a man whose boast it was not to have missed a ball or banquet during the season--could presume to mate with this very choice specimen of the leading set in Manhattan’s aristocracy. Lilian Foljambe was destined to high place, name, fame, and representative position. She was of the stuff--declared some enthusiasts--of which the wives of our ambassadors to foreign courts should be made. Though if ever there was a head for which nature intended a tiara--inherited, not bought--it was Lilian Foljambe’s.

But Lilian had come to be four-and-twenty--an age in woman when the insolence of youth must needs begin to curb itself and look about to reckon the comparative values of its chances for actual establishment in life, without realizing any of the hopes fixed upon her. She had, needless to say, her full complement of unemotional offers from the kind of young men whom she met nightly wearing evening dress with white waistcoats, who talked afterward at the club together concerning their ill-luck with her, and wondered “what the deuce the girl was waitin’ for.” She went abroad year after year with her family, was presented at various courts, made many titled acquaintances, was extolled for her good looks, and reputed to have twice her actual fortune. And still there was no hint of the “great match,” or of any kind of a match, for the fair Miss Foljambe.

Olive, on the contrary, with not half Lilian’s beauty or style or grand air, had at twenty-one her quiver full of admirers who would have liked to be something more. Olive’s chief possessions were a brown skin, a pair of laughing hazel eyes, a bewitching mouth and teeth, plenty of common sense, a merry nature, and a nimble wit. During her first winter “out” she had announced to her family her intention to marry Stephen Luttridge, a clever young architect, who had nothing in particular a year. Mrs. Foljambe--ranking the outcome of Luttridge’s profession, together with those of art and literature, as in some way connected with food cooked in chafing-dishes and a maid-servant receiving cards between thumb and finger--looked honestly alarmed. She induced her husband to declare that he would give nothing “down” with either daughter unless she should marry to please her parents.

Olive smilingly declared that she could very well afford to wait until Luttridge should have three thousand a year, at which time she meant to take the matter into her own hands. Mr. Foljambe, egged on by his wife, had stipulated that the affair should not be called an engagement. And Olive had answered, laughing, that she did not care what they called it, provided no other girl got Stephen Luttridge.

Now a crash had come. Foljambe’s name, hitherto most familiar to a set of men who had confidence in his probity and were dazzled by his schemes, had been seen of late in every newspaper in connection with the story of his stupendous, over-confident, and rash speculations. And such a tremendous failure had not been chronicled in years! It was a curious fact that the men who commented on it said generally, in conclusion, “If he could only have gone on for one week longer, by George, he’d have been safe!”

Foljambe was not afraid to meet his creditors. He had chosen a trusty and capable friend to be his assignee for their benefit, and was sure he could more than pay his debts--though his remaining assets were not all of a kind to be immediately turned into cash, and he could hardly expect much of a surplus for himself. Indeed, nobody else expected his assignee to be even able to satisfy the creditors; and so his credit, even with his friends, was entirely gone. He had given to his sons good educations with which to fight the world on their own account--for most young Americans a more fatherly benefaction than a balance at a bank and leisure to haunt clubs. And they were manly young fellows. It was, in plain words, his womenkind of whom Martin Foljambe was afraid.

His wife, with whom he had begun life in the narrowest fashion--who had helped herself with both hands to the accretions of his successful business career--would never, he knew, be able to forgive the folly of his downfall. With women of her type, to have is to forget all previous deficiencies, to claim prosperity as a right, to resent reverses as a personal wrong. Sweet, beautiful Lilian, who was the poetry of his prosy existence, she would be gentle and forbearing with him. But Lilian, deprived of her luxuries, was an image he could not bear to contemplate. He knew her to be so utterly unfitted for the world of work-a-day. Olive, now, was in some way different. She, like her sister, had been an extravagant little puss. But Olive had a way of pulling herself together and facing contingencies that gave him more hope for her endurance of the change.

Those were sad days in the great stately house off the Park, and so well known to the world of fashion, following the Foljambe failure. The large staff of servants was prompt to desert the sinking ship. A buxom kitchen-maid officiated over the copper stew-pans of the departed chef. Mrs. Foljambe, in her bed with nervous prostration, in charge of a trained nurse, complained that she could not get a cup of bouillon fit to eat since Lenormand had left. Next the stables were depopulated. Then the pictures and curios and ceramics were sold at auction, and the house was offered for sale by the assignee, to whom everything had been surrendered. As there is always in the great metropolis some family stepping up to replace one that chances to step down, the agents effected a prompt “arrangement” by which the Foljambe mansion, furniture and all, passed into other ownership.

In less than two months after his misfortune Mr. Foljambe stepped out alone into the street, and looked back upon a dwelling in which he had no belongings save a couple of modest trunks and several portmanteaux to be called for by an expressman later on.

Who shall say that Martin Foljambe did not feel a lump of bitterness in his throat as he gave his final instructions to a care-taker and walked hurriedly away into the avenue whence he could no longer see his home? It had been at his wife’s instigation that he had built it; she had devised, superintended, ordered everything on a scale that outshone most of his predecessors in such constructions in their neighborhood. The only things she had not concerned herself about were the bills. Enormous as they were, he had paid them without a hint to her that she must have been cheated in various quarters. But it had been many a long year since Mrs. Foljambe had concerned herself about the sum total of a bill!

All--all--the fruits of his manhood’s work had been lavished at her feet, and here, when he was wounded to the quick by the jilt Fortune, his wife, where was she? Sailing eastward in the best rooms of a crack ocean liner, in company with her lovely Lilian, without whose society she had declared it would be impossible to recover the tone of her shattered nerves!

It was really the only thing for her to do, so had said Mrs. Foljambe to her doctor, reminding him of the tremendous help she had previously derived from certain baths in Germany. The doctor, wise in his generation and well aware of what was expected of him, had suavely acquiesced. Mr. Foljambe was informed by his wife that her sole chance of recovery lay in the jaunt in question--and as to expense, it was a real economy, he knew. The money she was to have at her disposal was a sum of a few thousand dollars which had been given to her years before by her husband--which he had invested for her in her own name--and which had chanced to have been never as yet spent by her. So the state-room on the ship had been taken within a day or two after she had announced to him her intention of going abroad.

Lilian, clinging to her father’s neck with tears and caresses, assured him that she did not want to go; that it would be dull as ditchwater for her, and that she should always be thinking of him left behind. But Lilian was overpowered, and in due time yielded to her mother’s decree that her first duty was to her.

Not so Olive. Without protestation, without gush over her father, she had calmly said she had no idea of going abroad that summer. With the help of her friend Luttridge she had picked out a little flat on the west side of the Park, where there were tree-tops for the trouble of going to the window and a delightful sense of being out-of-doors. The sale of her pearl necklace had paid for the furniture. She retained as cook the kitchen-maid who had been trained under M. Lenormand, and then, when all was done, announced to her father that they--he, she, and the brother recently come home from college--were going there to live, the other brother having resigned his place in New York and gone to the West to grow up with the country.

The evening of the day that found Martin Foljambe creeping dejectedly out of his former mansion, with a heart in his bosom heavy as the iron that had seared it, brought him uptown to see for the first time Miss Olive’s new arrangements for his comfort.

To Martin, past the age for picnics, the whole thing appeared but a mournful makeshift. But Olive and Luttridge, who came in to dine upon a grilled fowl and a can of mock-turtle soup, and Tom, the recent graduate, who was charged by Olive “to help to cheer papa,” laughed and chaffed and made merry with the glorious unconcern of youth. After dinner, when the two young men went out into the Park to smoke their pipes, Olive sat with her father upon a sofa pinched between two doorways of their narrow sitting-room.

“And now tell me, papa,” she said with alarming briskness, “just what I may expect as an allowance to keep house upon.”

He explained that for the present he would have nothing he could call his own except the sum the assignee was paying him weekly for his services in assisting to wind up the assigned estate to the best possible advantage, and that, even from that, certain amounts would have to be deducted for use for things other than mere housekeeping.

“Oh, well,” said she, “we shall be able to live. And do you know, I already love this. It is like a honeymoon without the bother of a husband. You will have an excellent draught of air through your bedroom. I forgot to tell you that I got a note to-day from Mrs. Louis Rushmore offering me the work on her husband’s notes of that expedition they made last year to Mexico. Mrs. Rushmore started in herself to put them in shape for publication, but seems to have got into a hole. You know, it is to be a sort of ‘In Memoriam’ for Mr. Rushmore, published on the most lavish scale, with illustrations and all that. She recalled that when we all met in Mexico Mr. Rushmore took rather a fancy to me principally because I was the only person of the party who could read his handwriting. You remember, he got me to copy out in his note-book certain of his own memoranda that he couldn’t decipher to save himself?”

“And how, pray,” said Mr. Foljambe, writhing upon the hard little sofa Olive and Luttridge had thought so artistic in design, “did Mrs. Rushmore come to suppose you were in need of employment?”

“Because, daddy dear, I’ve been foraging around for something to do, for a month past,” said the girl, frankly. “You know I am nothing if not up to date. I expected to be somebody’s secretary, thanks to my good, clear handwriting. But the blessing of Mrs. Rushmore’s work is that I can do most of it just here, and at the same time ‘boss’ the maid, who might get tired and bolt if she were left too much to herself.”

“Poor Rushmore died just while he was deciding to go into San Miguel with me,” remarked Mr. Foljambe. “He was one of the careful, conservative kind--while I--”

“Don’t be ashamed of your spirit of daring--don’t, papa; you share it liberally with me!” said Olive, gayly. “I haven’t the vaguest idea of what San Miguel was or is, but I’m perfectly sure I’d have gone into it and left Mr. Rushmore trembling on the brink.”

“It was one of my failures, dear--a mining speculation that promised everything, and flattened out in a year or two. If I had the money now that my holdings in that stock represent to me, it wouldn’t be long before I should be out of this pit, I tell you. Until I was failing, I hardly counted the cost of it. What it has cost me amounted to a fortune in itself; and I hold--or rather my assignee for the benefit of my creditors now holds--a strong majority of the whole capital stock. But within the last few years there has been no work done in the mine except what the sale of ore extracted would pay for--which has not been much--and the stock cannot now be sold for even a penny a share. Indeed I advised the assignee to-day to sell the shares to anybody who will offer anything whatever for them, and to do it quickly, before the chap can change his mind. Olive, my child, whether you succeed or not in your Rushmore business, I’m proud of you for taking up the first work that comes to hand. But there’s one thing I ought to ask--how long is Luttridge going to be satisfied to do without you?”

“Of course, papa, he was deadly foolish,” said Olive, crimsoning. “He wanted to be married right away, and come in here, the saucy fellow. But I’ve stuck to my ultimatum of last autumn. When he gets enough to keep us without my being a drag on him, I’ll say ‘yes.’ Just now I wouldn’t leave you for all the world. Every minute of this day I’ve been thinking of your getting home and finding everything so nice.”

Foljambe’s heart reproached him for his contempt of her poor devisings. He caught his brave little woman in his arms and kissed her as he had not done in years.

Olive’s interest in deciphering the Rushmore hieroglyphics grew with the continuance of her work, which daily opened out into new channels of discovery and information. Mrs. Rushmore, rejoiced to find she had not misplaced her confidence in the girl’s ability, went off to Europe, leaving the whole charge of the book in Miss Olive’s hands, together with a very liberal sum to be paid her in weekly installments in remuneration, and the promise of more to follow when the work should be finished. Foljambe himself, in better health and spirits for his daughter’s guardian care, found that, on the whole, his enjoyment of life was rather increased than diminished. His younger son rejoiced his family by finding employment as secretary to one of his father’s old friends, who was primarily to take him off for a summer of travel through the wonders of the far West. Letters from Mrs. Foljambe, while giving gratifying assurance of her physical improvement and of the usual impression made by Lilian’s beauty upon casual grandees, did not now touch a sore spot in Martin’s heart, for the simple reason that the wound was healing under Olive’s influence.

Summer came, and Olive, at her desk heaped with dictionaries, encyclopedias, and works of reference, transferred from Mrs. Rushmore’s library, had hardly time to wonder if she were herself. While all the other young women of her acquaintance were preparing gowns for their holiday campaign, going off to lovely country homes with keen zest for the outdoor life that had previously been her greatest joy, or taking wing for Europe, she in her trim cotton gown sat down by nine o’clock to spend all the morning hours in close devotion to her task in hand.

With her mental energies thus healthily astir, her faculties bent upon elucidating and compiling interesting facts, she was really happy and at her best. She could truly say that she envied no one in the world.