CHAPTER XX
EVENING AT THE CRAIGHILLS’
MRS. CRAIGHILL had not relaxed her severity toward Wayne when, with Jean between them, they sat down to dinner. She continued, however, her protecting attitude toward the girl, whom she had installed in the best of the guest chambers adjoining her own room. Any doubts that had crossed her mind as to the extent of Wayne’s knowledge of the young woman had been dispelled by Jean herself. She had sought eagerly for any basis for suspicions, but Miss Morley was apparently all that she pretended to be; and Wayne’s own manner at the table set the seal of truth upon his protestations of merest acquaintance as uttered at the club-house. The girl interested Wayne and it was, Mrs. Craighill divined, the interest of novelty; she was of an order of woman that had not heretofore attracted his attention. And seeing his absorption, noting the pains he took to be entertaining, Mrs. Craighill’s glances in his direction gained nothing in amiability. He imagined that she wished to punish him for having been caught in the act of kissing her; and his acceptance of the situation, and his cool appropriation of the girl whom she had brought home merely for the purpose of placation, added to the blackness of his offenses.
The talk, as led by Wayne, fell into lines that served to minimize Mrs. Craighill’s importance in the trio. She did not care about magazine illustration, or know very much about Claude Monet; and Miss Morley’s ignorance of grand opera, and her naïve preferences in the music she did know called for nothing but occasional smiles of polite indulgence from Mrs. Craighill. Wayne was making far too much of the girl; it was unnecessary and unbecoming. Her poverty, proclaimed in her shabby clothing, her lack of ease, her deficiencies in a hundred other trifling ways irritated Mrs. Craighill. But if the girl did not know how to manage her artichoke she was not dull. When she became aware of her hostess’s silence she made a point of including her in the talk.
It was an event in the girl’s life, this hour at the prettily set table, with its bowl of roses aglow in the soft candle-light; the silent service; the leisure born of plenty and secure from the clutch of time. Her awe passed. Mrs. Craighill had been kind and Jean was taking her kindness at its face value, and in apparent ignorance of its ulterior intention. She saw in Mrs. Craighill a woman of the ampler world, whom the gods had favoured with good looks and fortune, and Jean studied her with an artist’s eye. Adelaide Craighill’s head, so admirably set on her pretty neck, had never pleased anyone more. That half-languorous droop of the lids that withheld the full gaze of her eyes for sudden, unexpected, flashing contacts, was not without its fascination. If Jean Morley interested Mrs. Craighill, Mrs. Craighill interested Jean Morley even more.
Jean’s frankness, now that her diffidence had passed, revealed her in a new light. Wayne had never placed her, never found an adequate background for her. In their several meetings he had been satisfied with what the moment disclosed. A reference to her fondness for walking served to open a long vista, which his fancy crowded with pictures.
“I was born and brought up in the hills,” Jean said, “but a long way from here. I don’t belong in the soft coal country—my home is in the anthracite region. I never was here before, and probably shouldn’t be here now if it weren’t that I’m able to spend the winter in study at the Institute. I think I like my own country better than this; I have never been in cities very much. Just a few times I have been down to Philadelphia to look at the exhibitions. I should have spent this year there, but I came here, for several reasons, and now the winter is going so fast and I have so little to show for it.”
“You can’t do it all in one winter,” Mrs. Craighill remarked sympathetically.
“No—and you can’t do much in many winters! I’m not a genius—I know that as well as anybody; but I want to make the most of my little talent. Bad pictures seem so much worse than anything else—worse than bad music even. It’s better not to start if you’ve got to go on forever being an amateur.”
“Well, one has the fun of trying,” murmured Mrs. Craighill. She had seen American students abroad on their eternal pursuit of fame, and her words were lightly shaded with her forbearance of all hopeless aspirants.
“Did you always fancy pictures and drawing?”
“I’m afraid so! It seems absurd to speak of my things at all to people who know—to those who have seen the great galleries abroad. But I used to pick up pieces of charcoal and try to draw when I was a child, and I never seemed able to give it up. I would bribe the little neighbour children to pose for me; the boys who worked in the breakers were nicer to draw because if I smutted my picture it didn’t matter—it made it all the truer to life. When we had the last strike up there in my country”—she called it “my country,” as though it were detached and alien and Wayne liked it in her—“a lot of newspaper correspondents came to report the troubles, and I suppose if it hadn’t been for the strike I should have lost my courage and given up trying. But I was sketching some of the children in town one day with charcoal on wrapping-paper and one of the newspaper men asked me to give him a few souvenirs. I had a whole trunkful and he helped himself. He sent them off with an article called ‘The Children of the Breakers’ and it came out the next Sunday in a Philadelphia paper with my pictures. The artist on the paper sent me some ink and paper of the kind used in black and white work and then a check came for twenty dollars. That helped to spoil me; and then I heard of a free scholarship here and when I came Mrs. Blair, who’s on the Students’ Aid Committee of the Institute, was kinder than anyone else had ever been; she’s been lovely to me!”
“Mrs. Blair is splendid to everyone—so enthusiastic and helpful. You are fortunate in having her for your friend.”
It was in Mrs. Craighill’s mind that if the girl should tell Mrs. Blair just how she came to be dining at the Craighill table the story might require elucidation. Fanny Blair believed her to be in Boston, and from Boston to the Rosedale Country Club was a far cry. Her irritation at Wayne increased: he had certainly made a mess of things; and his absorption in the girl, his ready transfer of interest, did not mitigate his offense. She was not in the least interested in Jean Morley’s studies in black and white, and she was considering the advisability of anticipating the girl by telling Fanny Blair the Rosedale story first, in a way to protect herself. The prospect did not please her. She had a high opinion of Fanny Blair’s intelligence, which caught at truth in zigzag lightning flashes of intuition. And while she considered these things, Jean Morley, whose character was not involved, described the landscape of the upper Susquehanna with almost childish enthusiasm and Wayne, who had no reputation to lose, listened to her with an attention that would have been excessive if paid to a first visitor from Mars.
Mrs. Craighill preceded them slightly as they sought the library. Her fine carriage, her short, even step, the train of her gown that swept after her detainingly—these trifles added to Jean’s impression of her hostess as a finished product of the fashionable world.
Before the blazing logs in the library Mrs. Craighill rallied again, touched to pity by the sight of Jean’s shoes, borrowed of the housekeeper at Rosedale, which, as she placed her own dainty slippers on the fender, seemed to shrink in their own humility out of sight under the girl’s crumpled skirt. Wayne threw up a blind to observe the weather and called them to see the snow, which lay white under the electric light of the streets and had transformed the hedge into a stern barricade of white masonry. The jingle of sleigh-bells stole in upon them as they turned to the fire.
The storm served a distinct purpose in eliminating from the possibilities the chance of interruption. People had been in the habit of dropping in in the evening—it was an attention that Colonel Craighill liked; but as her departure had been duly gazetted by the society reporters it was hardly possible, Mrs. Craighill reflected, that anyone would brave the storm merely to leave a card at the door.
By half-past eight Mrs. Craighill had begun to be bored, and it was upon this trying situation that the maid entered with Wingfield’s and Walsh’s cards. These gentlemen had found a sleigh for the journey and the tinkle of bells in the carriage entrance cheerfully preluded their arrival. Their appearance had been accomplished with so much expedition that before Mrs. Craighill could hand the cards over to Wayne the two gentlemen were within the library portières, rubbing their hands at the sight of the blaze and exhaling an air so casual and amiable as to disarm suspicion.
“It was Walsh did it,” began Wingfield. “He took me for a sleigh-ride and when I complained of being cold he said we’d go into the Craighills’ on the chance of finding somebody at home. It’s always Mr. Walsh; you never can say no to him. I’ve undoubtedly contracted pneumonia and they’ll be pumping oxygen into me before daylight.”
Mrs. Craighill introduced Miss Morley, and Wayne’s astonishment at seeing the men hardly exceeded his surprise when Walsh, turning from Mrs. Craighill, spoke Miss Morley’s name distinctly and shook hands with her.
“I have met Miss Morley before,” he said, and sat down by her.
“You see,” Mrs. Craighill was saying, “the papers tried to send me to Boston, but here I am, and glad not to be up there in the blizzard.”
“Nothing could be cosier than this! That is hickory; there’s a particular charm in hickory, but my mother will have none of it; she sticks to pine knots.”
Nothing had escaped Wingfield’s keen eyes; but the sigh with which he settled himself was half an expression of relief. The presence of the third figure in the scene satisfied him of the baseness of Walsh’s assumption, and added, moreover, an agreeable novelty to the call. Mrs. Craighill was a clever woman; his interest in her increased; he paid her the tribute of his sincere admiration. As to the girl’s identity, he could wait. As he discussed current social history with Mrs. Craighill he appraised Jean with a connoisseur’s eye. Wayne had been tinkering the fire, and when he rose he sat down between Mrs. Craighill and Wingfield.
Walsh, his face reddened by the wind, was giving his attention to Miss Morley, and the others caught only occasionally a word of their conversation.
“So your grandfather’s still in town? I supposed he would be going home before this.”
“He’s waiting to finish up the Sand Creek matter. He wants to know what is going to be done about that before he goes back. It’s worried him a great deal, and he feels that he must press it now while he can. He’s an old man, and not well. I’ve tried to get him to abandon it altogether, but it’s on my account he’s doing it. He wants to get the money for my sake, but I’m afraid he will only be disappointed.”
“Have you ever seen Colonel Craighill yourself? Do you know what he says to your grandfather?”
“Only that he puts him off—he never really tells him anything.”
“Um!”
Walsh rubbed his bald pate reflectively. The trio nearer the fire were well launched in frivolous talk. Wayne seemed in excellent spirits; Mrs. Craighill had entered into the spirit of Wingfield’s banter with zest, and Wingfield was enjoying himself immensely.
“I didn’t know you were acquainted with the family in this way. Does Wayne know?” continued Walsh.
“It’s just an accident, my being here. It was Mrs. Craighill’s kindness—I had never seen her before; and Mr. Wayne Craighill I knew, slightly. I met him at Ironstead, at Father Paddock’s settlement there.”
Walsh bent closer, as though he had not understood, and when she repeated her last sentence he drew his hand slowly down his cheek.
“Um! Is Wayne going in for that kind of business? I hadn’t heard of it.”
“He was out there one night when Father Paddock had an entertainment. Mr. Craighill brought me and a friend of mine home in his motor.”
Walsh found a handkerchief and blew his nose vigorously. When he had settled his pudgy frame back in his chair he asked abruptly:
“What do you think of him?”
“Why—I don’t think!” said the girl, and her laugh reached Wayne—her light laugh of real mirth that had the ease of a swallow’s flight.
“Are you afraid of him?”
“No; I’m not afraid of him. We’re hardly acquainted. I’ve only seen him three or four times.”
“Oh! The meeting at Paddock’s place wasn’t the first?”
“No. I had seen him before—the first time at the Institute; you know I’m studying there.”
“He didn’t hesitate to speak to you without an introduction, did he?” persisted Walsh, though with a good-humoured twinkle in his little eyes.
“No, Mr. Walsh, he did speak to me, but it was all right. The circumstances made it all right.”
He was amused by her readiness to defend Wayne, who was just then chaffing Wingfield about something for Mrs. Craighill’s edification, wholly unconscious that he was being discussed.
“They always do,” said Walsh.
He turned round in his chair so that he looked directly into the girl’s face. There was no insolence in his gaze; it was merely his direct, blunt way of looking at anything he wanted to see. His eyes were not satisfied with surface observations; they bored in like gimlets. Jean met his scrutiny for a moment and turned away; but Walsh’s eyes dwelt still on her head, then he glanced toward Wayne, then back to Jean again. He seemed satisfied with this inspection and asked her how she was getting on with her studies. When she had answered, his “Um” was so colourless that she smiled; his mind had been on something else all the while.
“Your grandfather had never talked to Wayne about the Sand Creek affair, I suppose?”
“Yes,” she replied with reluctance; but on second thought she answered him fully. In spite of Walsh’s gruffness and his grim countenance, people trusted him. His sources of information were many because he never betrayed a confidence. His mind was a card catalogue. If an obscure corner grocer at Johnstown mortgaged his home to buy an automobile, Walsh knew it first. The office systems that Roger Craighill delighted in installing had always annoyed Walsh. Now that he was managing his own business his office was conducted with the severest simplicity. He checked his own trial balances; he would, without warning, throw up a window and demand of a startled drayman the destination of a certain crate or cask, to which he pointed with a sturdy, accusing forefinger.
It was not for Jean Morley to withhold information from Tom Walsh; it seemed the most natural thing in the world to be imparting it.
“These people have no idea that I am related to Grandfather Gregory. Mr. Wayne Craighill has no idea of it; Mrs. Blair doesn’t know it—she knows me only officially, you might say; she’s on a committee of the Institute that looks out for young women students who have no homes here. It’s strange that I should have fallen in their way; and now I’m here in Colonel Craighill’s house! It wouldn’t do for grandfather to know that—it would make him angry. But grandfather talked to Mr. Wayne about the Sand Creek Company matter just a few days ago. Colonel Craighill wouldn’t see grandfather; he sent word to him that he could do nothing and that he’d better see a lawyer. Mr. Wayne met grandfather leaving the building and took him back to his own office. He was very friendly and offered to help arrange a settlement; but grandfather refused. He’s very indignant at Colonel Craighill and says he’s going to make him settle. It’s because he’s known him a long time—many, many years, I suppose—that he’s so bitter. He says it isn’t the money now—it’s the injustice of it.”
The girl had spoken eagerly and she paused now and turned to see if the others were observing them. She concluded in a lower tone:
“I don’t know about it; it may not be a just claim. I sometimes think grandfather isn’t sane on the subject; he acts queerly and keeps coming to town to see Colonel Craighill. I went with him to see you in the hope that you might tell him to quit bothering about it. He didn’t understand that, having been with Colonel Craighill so long, you wouldn’t want to discuss his affairs, now that you have left him. And you couldn’t do anything about the claim—of course.”
“Um! I couldn’t do anything for your grandfather; that would be bad faith to the Colonel; but—Um!—I might do it for you. That would be different!”
He looked at her kindly, enjoying her mystification.
“I will tell you this, just as a favour to you and because—because you are not afraid of Wayne Craighill; I’ll tell you that the claim against the Sand Creek property is good in law. Wayne knows it; the Colonel’s lawyer told him so; but the Colonel is so high and mighty that he doesn’t want to pay any attention to it. He’s a great negotiator, the Colonel; he wants to wait until Mr. Gregory gets real hungry, then fix it up with him in a large spirit of generosity—do the noble thing for an old friend in adversity. But this is treason, young woman, right here in the Colonel’s own house. Your grandpa had better take Wayne’s offer. I think we’ll move over there with the others.”
He rose in his heavy fashion and Wingfield, who had been waiting his opportunity, sat down beside Jean. Wingfield’s face showed the least annoyance when, a moment later, having seen that Mrs. Craighill and Walsh were taking care of themselves, Wayne drew in beside him.
“It’s well you joined us; we were about to say the most dreadful things of you, weren’t we, Miss Morley? But now we’ll discuss the diplodocus in the museum, the greatest of Pittsburg topics. Mrs. Craighill has just been telling me of your studies. Can you enlighten me as to whether you students of the graphic arts really take an interest in music—and the other way around? I have my doubts of it; one art’s enough at a time.”
“Oh, the students at the Institute all go to the concerts because they like music and it helps. I went to the Wagner matinée and it quite inspired me; I wasn’t so bad for several days.”
“Ah, you were there at that matinée! I had expected to go myself, but my nerves had been screwed up like a fiddle-string by the rumour that the harpist was threatened with a felon on her thumb; I couldn’t have stood that. The troubles of an orchestra are innumerable, I assure you, Miss Morley. I’m always bailing out some fiddler who has beaten his wife. And the oboe is a dreadful instrument; they say men who elect it as their life work always go insane: the strain of piping into so small a hole bursts blood vessels in the brain. Think of a man giving his whole life to perfecting himself on an instrument that sends him, just as he pipes his most perfect note, to a mad-house for his pains.”
“For mad-house you might substitute jail,” remarked Wayne. “The oboe is not my favourite instrument.”
“You don’t know an oboe from a parlour melodeon. Please don’t take Mr. Craighill’s musical criticisms seriously, Miss Morley. He and I are on the programme committee—perhaps it’s only fair to the rest of the community to say that we are it! We wrestle with the conductor about what we shall give the dear people, and because we don’t give ‘request’ programmes every time with Sousa and Beethoven hashed together, the newspapers jump on us hard.”
When at ten o’clock the door closed upon the callers, Mrs. Craighill declared that she was tired, and carried Jean off to bed. Wayne understood perfectly, however, that he was to await Mrs. Craighill’s further pleasure, and he lighted a cigar and made himself comfortable before the fire. In a few minutes he heard the murmur of her skirts on the stair, and she entered quickly with accusation in her eyes. He rose and leaned against the mantel-shelf. She was very angry in her pretty, pouting way. She flung herself into a chair and broke out at once:
“What do you think of that? Wasn’t the girl enough without those two men? The most hateful, hideous persons I ever met!”
“But, Addie, you don’t suppose I asked them here? You’ve got to be reasonable about this. The girl was unfortunate; but if we hadn’t picked her up we should have been in a box if these men had come here. It strikes me that we’re in the greatest luck.”
“But why did the men come at all? That man Walsh doesn’t go to people’s houses; he’s a malevolent old fellow; he has the most dreadful eyes I ever saw. And your friend Wingfield, how often does he call here in the course of the year? I doubt if he was ever here before. You told him I was away, didn’t you? Please answer me that!”
“Why, yes, Addie, I believe I did,” and he paused blankly. There was no doubt but that he had told Wingfield of Mrs. Craighill’s absence that morning when he fully believed that she had gone; but that fact only added plausibility to Wingfield’s story that he and Walsh had been driving and had dropped in for a brief respite from the storm. Wingfield did the most unaccountable things; this was undoubtedly one of them. Having said as much, he felt that the matter might be dropped, but the evidence in rebuttal was immediately thrust upon him. Mrs. Craighill picked up four visiting cards and held them out for his inspection.
“They asked for your father and me at the door—I called the maid upstairs to ask. Why do you suppose they did that if they just came in here to get warm or to see you?”
“My dear Addie, it’s as plain as daylight that they were driving; that Wingfield—it’s just like him—got cold, and Walsh suggested that they come into the house to get warm; and Wingfield—well, you simply don’t know Dick—he’s the most formal person alive. And when you come to think of it he did the right thing in asking for everybody. If we were all in Egypt and Dick stopped at the house to warm himself he would leave his cards. He would have a feeling about it; Dick’s a fellow of nice feeling; and besides, it would only be decent to the servants. Please don’t worry over this! You’re attributing motives to those fellows that are beneath them. Do you suppose they would have turned up here to-night if they had thought you and I were just sitting here playing checkers together. Not on your life, Addie! And assuming for an instant the preposterous idea that they came thinking we were alone, why, they must have felt pretty cheap when they found that you had a young lady guest in the house. There’s nothing to trouble over, I tell you.”
“I like your cheerful way of disposing of the whole business! It doesn’t seem to me so easy as you think. Did you ever hear of those men going calling together before? I don’t believe you ever did.”
“Well, there are lots of things I don’t know about Walsh, and Wingfield, too, for that matter. Dick’s always studying somebody. He’s as bad as Fanny for fads, though he chases his in gum shoes; and just now he thinks he’s struck a new type in Walsh. Oh, Lord, but it’s funny! It’s a cinch that Walsh has Dick under the microscope. Those fellows going sleigh-riding is too sweetly pastoral for any use. It’s enough to make Walsh’s thoroughbreds laugh.”
Mrs. Craighill shrugged her shoulders and her eyes brightened with a rekindling of her anger, coloured now by what seemed to be a genuine fear.
“Wayne,” she cried, “what is there about that man? He’s an evil being of some kind. That first time I saw him at Fanny’s he affected me just as he did to-night. I have a feeling of suffocation, of smothering, when he looks at me and those little eyes of his dance like devils.”
“Oh, now, Addie, that’s coming pretty rough! Walsh is a bully old fellow. He can’t help not being handsome, but he’s the real thing; there’s no punk in Tom Walsh. He’s a rare fellow and he’s been mighty kind to me. You’d better forget all this—it’s all right. That girl can be relied on—she isn’t going to blab—why should she? And Walsh and Wingfield are not out on snowy nights looking for a chance to injure anybody. Don’t work yourself into a morbid frame of mind about these things; we all had a good time and let it go at that. Why, old Tom Walsh made a point of talking to you; he isn’t the fellow to bore himself, I can tell you!”
“Oh, Walsh!” she wailed. “That hideous monster! What do you think he has asked me to do!”
“Well, not to elope with him; I’ll wager he didn’t propose that.”
“He asked me to go driving with him! He said there would be such sleighing to-morrow as we rarely see any more. He said he would show me the hills and that I’d see we had winter scenery here just as good as Vermont.”
She offered this, it seemed, as a last proof of Walsh’s depravity, and having launched it in half-sobs she waited for Wayne to mitigate its evil if he could. The laughter with which he greeted her announcement added an unneeded straw to her burden and she wept bitterly, bending her head upon the mantel-shelf. She was an effective study in grief, but Wayne’s humour had been too sincerely touched to leave any room for pity.
“Oh, Addie! Walsh asked you to drive with him! He asked you—he asked you——”
He exploded again, but when, tearful and scornful, she turned toward him, he subsided to demand:
“Well, what did you say?”
“Oh, I said I’d go! I was afraid to say no!”