Alice Duer Miller

“ Fire seldom visited Hilltop, but when it came the little town was almost helpless. Emmons rose, too, but more slowly. They went to the door and listened.
Already the quiet night was full of the sounds of shouting and hurrying feet, and then the tinkle of the little hand fire-machine. The fire was at some distance, for the tinkling grew fainter and fainter, and finally died away entirely.
“Oh, let’s go, James,” said Nellie.
A man may be pardoned for not wishing to take his fiancée to one of the few situations where he can not shine. Emmons shook his head, pouting out his lips slightly. ”

“ There was a short pause, and then Nellie said, with determination: “Bob, I am to a certain degree responsible for your being here at all.”
“You are entirely responsible.”
“I feel the responsibility. I feel it is my duty to make you behave rightly while you are here. It is not behaving rightly to try and acquire an influence over an inexperienced child like Louisa Overton.”
“My dear Nellie, how women jump to conclusions! Is an evening visit a sure prelude to acquiring an influence?” ”

“ Lewis Vickers had left his native town by night—a fugitive, and yet a certain glory had still attached to him. He had none of the bitterness to look back to that slights and small insults bring to a man. Never in all his life had he been spoken to and looked at as Nellie had looked at him and spoken to him the evening before. ”

“ He had gained, too early, a reputation in the neighborhood, as a good sport, and the best amateur boxer in the countryside. He had, besides, a certain social prestige, for his father’s family had once been very rich and very much respected. A new town, a lake, a street, all bore the name of Vickers; and, though this had been over for a generation, some legend of greatness still lingered about the name.
It was all the worst possible training for a man of his temperament. His father sent him off—a little too late—to study scientific agriculture at a neighboring university. ”

“ I can say anything to you. As far as a woman like you is concerned, I realize a man like myself—without a cent, without even a decent name—doesn’t exist at all; not [Pg 225] even Emmons himself could suppose that in advising you not to marry him, I have any hope for myself.”
“And yet that is just what he does think.” She forced herself to look at him, and her look had the anxious temerity of a child who has just defied its elders.
“Nellie, what do you mean?”
“I am not going to marry Mr. Emmons.”
“You are not! You are not!! Oh, my darling! What a place the world is! Have I really lost you?” ”

“ Vickers had been away from home for seven years, and in that time the highest type of feminine beauty which he had seen had been little round-faced Rosita, with her coarse muslins and cotton lace. And now he suddenly found himself the center of interest to a group of half a dozen women, to whose [Pg 52] natural beauty care, taste, fashion, and money had added everything that could adorn. Their soft shining dresses, their pretty necks and arms, their endless jewels dazzled him. He thought of his own little party—of Ascencion’s efforts, of the phonograph, of the macaw. ”

“ Nellie nodded. “I do not think that he is a good or safe friend for Louisa,” she said. “You may tell me it is none of my business, but I am largely responsible for his being here, and James and I both thought I ought to speak to you.”
“Am I to understand that Emmons thinks your cousin likely to attract Louisa?”
“James? Oh, I don’t know whether James’s opinion on that point would be very valuable. But I do.”
“You surprise me,” said Overton.
“I know. It must surprise you to realize that women should ever be attracted by men they can not respect, and yet it does sometimes happen, Mr. Overton. ”

“ No wonder you resented it!”
“I always think,” Nellie observed with the utmost detachment, “that a person who is not very strong in morals ought to have particularly good taste to make up. I don’t think your last remark was conspicuous for either.”
“My dear Nellie,” said Vickers, “if I had promised to marry Emmons, I should never hear the word taste again without a blush.”
“We won’t discuss Mr. Emmons.”
“Discuss my revered employer with an outsider? I should think not,” returned Vickers.
“At least he is your employer, which not many men who knew your record would care to be.” ”

“ I find my country beautiful,—my countrymen attaching. I believed that you felt it too.”
“And so I do, so I do,” said Vickers, “but, man, I’m a northener, and I’d give every palm and orchid in the place for the noise of wheels creaking on packed snow.”
“All the more reason, then, why you should go home.”
“Look here, my friend,” the other answered, “if I go home I run a fair chance of being electrocuted. If I stay here the sharks get me, or if I escape the sharks, the Señor Don Papa is going to marry me to Rosita. There are three uncomfortable alternatives for a man to choose from.” ”

“ And Vickers, too, was glad to go. A quiet countryside in spring promised happier opportunities for tête-à-têtes with Nellie than New York had afforded him. Every day in the [Pg 95] course of the past two weeks he had felt irked and humiliated by his position, and had been strongly tempted to slip away. Perhaps if escape had looked more difficult he would have been more likely to try it, but it was too easy to excite his interest. And, though it seemed always possible to him that the next day would be the last, his reasons for staying grew, without his realizing it, more and more powerful. ”

“ Left alone, Nellie sat down on the steps of the front piazza and waited. Now that Emmons had gone so meekly, her conscience began to reproach her for her treatment of him throughout the evening. No wonder he disapproved of Bob. He was quite right to do so; she disapproved of him, herself. Yet, the result of a day’s effort to be, as he had asked, a little more civil had rendered him more civil in return. Even if one did disapprove of a man’s morals, one could not help noticing the extraordinary quickness with [Pg 131] which he caught one’s ideas and anticipated one’s wishes. ”

“ Emmons believes that certain sums are owed Miss Nellie by you——”
“Compromise be damned, Overton,” said Vickers. “You know this money is not mine, and I won’t touch it.”
Nellie started up. “The money is yours, Bob. My uncle would never have pinched [Pg 199] and saved to pay me back. The money exists only because he loved you so much. It is yours.”
Vickers smiled at her. “I am glad,” he said, “that I do not have to argue that extremely sophistical point with you. The reason that the money is not mine is—I hate to repeat a statement that you asked me not to make again—but I am not Bob Lee.” ”

“ People like Bob are such a rarity in Hilltop.”
Emmons glanced at her to see what in the world she could mean, and not being very much the wiser for his glance, answered contemptuously: “A rarity! Fortunately.”
Nellie appeared to be willing to take up the subject from a thoughtful and scientific stand-point.
“I don’t know that I think it fortunate,” she replied. “It does not seem to me that the absence of fine-looking, amusing young men is a matter for any community to congratulate itself upon.” ”

“ Nature or art had made it easy for Emmons’s face to express nothing.
“And you are not Bob Lee?” he said.
“Lee died the day before I left South America.”
“Why have you come to tell me this?”
“I found myself rather in need of a dispassionate outsider, and Miss Lee mentioned your name.”
“Well,” said Emmons, “you’ve come to the wrong person. I am not a dispassionate outsider. I have known the Lees for some time, and have watched Miss Lee, and I know some of the difficulties she has had. There have been times, sir, when your father would not give her a penny for months together—and why? ”

“ But surely you do not think your cousin such a person.”
“Very much such a person.”
Overton wagged his head. “Well, well, you surprise me,” he returned. “A jovial, amusing fellow—a favorite with men, perhaps. But what would you say a girl could see in him?”
His malice was rewarded as malice ought not to be.
“Why,” said Nellie rather contemptuously, “think a moment. In the first place his looks. Any girl, at least any very young girl, might easily be carried away by such striking good looks.” ”

“ Nellie was watching Vickers’s back as he swung out of sight, and she returned rather absently, “He is dining at the Overtons’.” She did not at first observe the expression of surprise and annoyance that appeared upon the face of her betrothed.
“The Overtons’!” he exclaimed.
Now we all know that strangely petty ambitions are laid away in the minds of even the greatest; and Emmons had always cherished a secret wish to be on terms of intimacy with Overton, whom he often described as the “ablest man in New England.” ”

“ I had no idea it would be to your interest, too, to disbelieve me.”
“To disbelieve you!” cried Emmons. “Do you expect any one in their senses to believe you? Does a man not know his own son, or a girl not recognize the cousin she was brought up with? You acknowledge that you come from the same place, you are the same age, the same height, you walk straight to his house, and it is not until you find that your being Lee means that you have got to work for your living that you begin to run in this story about your being some one else. ”

“ The house is mine, and I won’t have any one in it who can’t be civil to James.”
[Pg 205]
“Then you certainly can’t have me,” said Vickers.
“It seems not,” answered Nellie.
They exchanged such a steel-like glance as only those who love each other can inflict, and then Vickers flung out of the house.
When, a few minutes later, Overton caught up with him, his anger had not cooled.
“Hush, hush, my dear fellow,” said the lawyer. “Hilltop is not accustomed to such language. Let a spirited lady have her heroics if she wants.” ”

“ I myself am all for romance, pure ethereal romance. I scorn fact, and by Heaven, if I can’t describe a tigre so that Lee’s mother will believe in it, I’ll eat my hat.”
“In that case,” returned the doctor dryly, “I suppose it is unnecessary to mention that Lee does not seem to have a mother.”
[Pg 18]
“Oh, well,” said Vickers, in evident discouragement, “if a fellow hasn’t got a mother, that prohibits pathos at once. A wife? At least a sister?”
Nuñez shook his head. “Nothing but a father,” he said firmly. ”

“ Vickers could not resist saying lightly:
“You don’t seem very glad to see me, Nellie.”
“On the contrary,” she answered, with meaning. “Don’t sit up too late talking to Bob, Uncle Robert,” and with the curtest of nods she was gone.
He turned to Mr. Lee and observed with some bitterness that Nellie’s manner was not very cordial.
The old man shook his head. “No,” he said; “I was afraid you would notice it. You must not expect too much of Nellie. She is a good girl, but she has not a warm heart.”
“She has an attractive face,” said Vickers. ”

“ Overton. Morality is a kind of courage.”
Overton laughed. “I’m not so sure of that,” he said; “but I rather think courage is a kind of morality.”
The sentence impressed itself on Nellie’s mind. She admired Mr. Overton, and was accustomed to give attention to anything he said. Of course, courage was a kind of morality—Bob’s kind—not so difficult and praiseworthy as a steady industry, like James Emmons’s; but, oh, so much more interesting!
She amused herself listening to the different comments on her cousin’s action. ”

“ No, Overton thought not. The barn was old, and fortunately there was no live-stock in it. “Except,” he added with his crooked Yankee smile, “that puppy your cousin pulled out.”
“I am afraid Bob was very foolhardy,” Nellie replied, not quite ingenuously.
[Pg 137]
Overton laughed. “Why, so they are all saying,” he answered. “But I don’t know. The little girl says she had promised the old bitch to preserve one puppy when all the others were drowned. A lady’s promise is a sacred thing, isn’t it, Miss Nellie? Oughtn’t a gentleman to risk his life to help her keep her word of honor?” ”

“ The phrase struck Vickers disagreeably, but he bowed again, and prepared to move away, but the old man stopped him.
“I was glad it should be so, Don Luis,” he said. “There is no one to whom I should more trustfully confide my daughter’s future. I am sufficiently Americanized to believe that marriages of the heart are the best marriages. My wife cries out for a man of our own country, but I say, ‘No, let the hearts of our children speak.’ I do not mind telling you that the heart of the little Rosita has spoken. ”

“ Don’t marry Emmons! He is not the right sort. Perhaps you think I have no right to criticise a man who has always kept a good deal straighter than I, but it is just because I have knocked about that I know. He won’t do. You are independent now. Your farm will bring you in something. Keep the fellow I put in there, and sell a few of the upland lots. You won’t be rich, but you’ll be comfortable. Don’t marry Emmons. ”