Geraldine Bonner

“ It’s for your sake. You're too good to waste on such work as this; you must find a wider field, match your energies with your peers. You're shriveling here in this dead backwater, with the great current of life sweeping by. I do a wrong to keep you. I'll help you to your proper place, be the lever that pushes you upward. But you must get there—you must go.”
He rose, turning to look again at the orchid, his glance lingering on its fantastic petals as if reluctant to leave them.
“Mr. Blatch,” said Adamson, “if this is your reason, I have the right to put in my objection to it. ”

“ It was a day that loomed so darkly in her thought that she could not contemplate it, a day of defiance, of her will opposed to Mary’s. Gaynes saw the trouble in her face and leaned nearer, whispering, weaving the spell:
“What does it matter to us if she should object? Isn't it our affair? What’s wrong about being engaged, Lottie dear, when we love one another, truly love one another as we do—we do!” ”

“ She came to the studio at first; then, bored, she relegated the post of chaperon to Isabel. Relieved of her presence, they had breathed more freely, the sittings had ceased to be an irksome duty, had grown joyous with the play of young, high spirits and young enthusiasms. Those enchanted afternoons! Periods of silence when the artist had worked in a rapt abstraction; then the break into movement—the clattering fall of the palette on the table. Alice rising with a lithe, soft stretch, the making of tea, the gathering round the tilting, three-legged taboret—laughter—the music of girls’ voices. ”

“ Mary thought he was going to strike the man and made a step forward. The outburst fell on their gayety disrupting as a thunderbolt. Lottie’s laughter was stilled as by a hand clapped on her mouth; on the shore beyond, the others stood stricken in gaping amaze. Gabriel seemed the least moved, looking at Blatch without anger, but with a set intentness of observation.
Then it was over; Blatch dropped the paddle and told Lottie to get in. She was too frightened to do anything but obey. ”

“ Now time has passed, Blatch’s sun has set—— Again I mustn’t anticipate. There are young people in New York—the last callow crop—who, I fancy, only dimly remember him and Hinterland and the Harmon children. Perhaps I am writing this for them; it may give them a pleasant, creepy chill on one of those rare evenings when they stay at home and in sheer desperation take up a book. Or I may be writing it for an older group, who knew the small, shriveled figure and were proud to salute it as the Blatch motor rolled sumptuously by. ”

“ Visitors were rare, but several times Joe Adamson, Blatch’s secretary, had come with messages from his employer. Moved by this thought, she sprang up and went to a mirror between the windows. There was a dusky color on her cheek bones, and her hands fluttered with arranging touches over her hair and white lawn collar. But it was not Adamson this time; it was Blatch, Lucia, the little Italian maid, flattening herself against the door to give him entrance. He had come to ask if Mary would drive with him. They would go along the river, which would be beautiful in its fresh greenery. ”

“ The small room, its one window facing a brick wall, was dimly lit, the brightness from the parlor slanting across its waxed floor, striking gleams from the china and silver on the sideboard. Presently the girl came back carrying a tray with glasses and a beaded pitcher of lemonade. She set it down on the table and, breathing quickly as if she had been hurried, dropped into a chair. Gaynes swept the room with an idly roving glance which moved to her face, lingered there an instant, then passed on. ”

“ Mary alone was herself, unshaken in some innate stability of poise, which made her always. sure, always unabashed. Adamson, watching her, thought she moved in a plane above the material, maintained her being in the clear heights of spirit. Wherever she was, she would harmonize, because she had no disturbing sense of self. She was as serenely simple among the rich man’s grandeurs as in her own apartment, her manner to Blatch as free from self-consciousness as it was to the little maid Lucia.
“It’s only soul that’s real to her,” the lover thought. “She doesn’t see bodies.” ”

“ The old man smoothed some clothes he carried over his arm. She could make nothing of his face, leathern dry and pale under its freckles.
“He doesn’t seem to like it spoken of.”
He looked at her quickly, the raised lids revealing eyes charged with warning.
“Oh, no, no, miss. Mr. Blatch never likes to be—er—well—what he’d call interfered with. Not that I’m saying so. It’s him—it’s his way of thinking. He’s a bit crusty about such things.”
She nodded, staring beyond him, and as she gazed, he shot a stealthy glance at her thoughtful face. ”

“ One afternoon a man called Harmon came, dropped in to see the picture, was affably complimentary, looking at Alice, looking at the portrait, making stupid, ignorant criticisms. He was one of those other suitors; if Blatch hadn’t known, his manner to Alice would have proclaimed it, a large, handsome person, filling the place with his florid cordiality. A man of the world, he was studiously polite in an effort to hide that he thought it an alien and superior world to that of the artist. ”

“ Adamson’s color deepened. There was a suppressed urgence in his voice:
“Of course no one could. But a girl like that, of that character, doesn’t see such things. She doesn’t like Gaynes—she’s hinted it more than once—but she couldn’t guess what he really is because she’s too fine. Women of her kind don’t suspect—not because they’re stupid, but because there’s too much goodness in them to see evil.”
“Yes, yes,” the other nodded, staring at the table, as if pondering the young man’s words. “No doubt that’s the case—too highminded to understand such a person as our friend the doctor. ”

“ Adamson was surprised. It was not Blatch’s custom to call attention to his perverse actions. The chance was propitious, and the young man answered:
“I certainly was, after what I told you.”
“If you hadn’t told me, I probably wouldn’t have asked him. But forewarned is forearmed. Knowing what I do, there need be no apprehensions about Doctor Gaynes. And why should there be any? Possibly a touch of free, open-air life, a closer contact with nature, may have a beneficial effect upon him. He looks too city-bred. Health and morals have an intimate connection.” ”

“ Out of the door of a gray-stone house on that part of Fifth Avenue which has been called “The Mile of Millionaires,” a gentleman came forth. At the curb, an open motor, an object of shining perfection, awaited him. But before he made his way to it, he halted on the steps, glancing about him as if to take in the scene and the suave, quiet beauty of the afternoon. He looked up the long perspective, with its rampart of majestic houses, and at the Park’s bosky reaches, dappled by tree shadows and the slanting light on lawns. ”

“ Adamson took a deep inhalation, blew out a long thread of smoke, and said:
“I certainly have, Mr. Blatch. She seems to me a very unusual person.”
He would like to have said more, to have broken out into praise of her, but it was too soon. He did not know what she felt, did not want to declare himself as a suitor for Mary Harmon till he was surer of his ground. Through the cigarette smoke, he looked at Blatch and saw him sipping his coffee, over the cup’s rim his somber, animal eyes fixed on space. ”

“ I knew old Tom McGraw well. He died only last winter, in the secluded quiet of a little house he’d bought in the Bronx. A queer old fellow, very secretive, but in his last years, when the friendship was established and old age had limbered the rigidity of temperament and training, he grew more expansive. What he told me, as first-hand witness, and what he had sensed as one who knew Blatch’s character and history, furnished the main facts of the story. ”

“ Frank saw reprobation in the words and defended himself with flushed urgence:
“But, Gaynes, I can’t hound him. I can’t ask him to ask me. In the first place, it’s not just a gentleman’s job, and in the second, he’s the kind that hates to be pushed, and he’d see through it, too. A rich man like that has had too many parasites hanging about not to be wise to their ways.” ”

“ It was not the man’s rôle to speak till he could provide for the woman he wanted.
But there was other matters on his mind that he had to tell her. She must know something of the doctor; not all—it was too ugly a story for such ears—but sufficient to put her on her guard and to pass on to Frank. He was thinking how to begin when she dropped the paper to her lap and said:
“It’s perfectly wonderful, every detail thought out. Mr. Blatch is like a genie in ‘The Arabian Nights.’ There’s just one thing I wish he hadn’t done—asked Dr. Gaynes.” ”

“ At the time when they had been born, Blatch had been prosecuting extensive travels in remote parts of the earth, far from the centers of civilization. No woman had ever figured in his life; the white light of publicity that had beaten on him for the last twenty-five years had revealed no lapse from a monastic austerity. Moreover, if they were his, he would have made provision for them, and Denby knew that his will contained no mention of the name of Harmon. ”

“ She had some trouble in making them understand that being Blatch’s heirs did not mean a radical change of circumstances. She would take nothing from him, not if he insisted; she would keep her independence, as they would theirs. Lottie wanted to know if being some one’s heir meant that you had to live in his house, and was relieved to hear that there was no such obligation. Frank, with a contrite gnawing in his conscience, said he hoped the old chap would live on for ages, and meant it. ”

“ I’ve spoken to Frank about him several times. But he laughs at me—says I don’t understand men. He’s so young, Frank, only a child, and he thinks Doctor Gaynes is so brilliant and——” She stopped, caught by a sudden thought. “But Mr. Blatch—doesn’t he know? Surely you’ve told him?”
Adamson had to explain, and it was not easy; he had to say more of his employer than he thought fitting even to Mary Harmon. He laid stress on the heart weakness, and when she asked the obvious question—why hadn’t a more suitable person been found?—could only fall back on a reiteration of Blatch’s peculiarities. ”

“ A surface of European polish overlaid what seemed a childishly light and thoughtless disposition, all the more noteworthy as the Harmons had no money, no relatives, and no friends. What added to his discomfort was that the boy’s close companion was a young doctor, Melville Gaynes, whom Adamson instinctively disliked and distrusted. At a former conference, he had agreed to have an investigation made of Frank’s brief career in America and the doctor’s antecedents, and if anything discreditable should turn up, to acquaint Blatch. ”

“ Tom was an old man, nearly seventy, tall and large-boned, round-shouldered now, his once sandy hair streaked with white. Years in the employment of a master he served with the devotion of the antique world had transformed him from the rough-and-ready Irishman into the quietly efficient, unobtrusively competent head of the household. ”

“ Hinterland was Blatch’s country place, a vast domain in Canada up toward the Hudson Bay country. It was the one of his possessions that figured oftenest in the newspapers, having a wider interest for the general public than his pictures, his antiques, or even himself. A millionaire retreating for his summer into the wilds was a much more novel spectacle than one settling down sociably at Newport or Bar Harbor.
Adamson had begun a slow pacing up and down across the open space beyond the desk. ”

“ Outside Tom, he cares more for you than for any one else.”
The young man paused in his walk, looking frowningly at his feet.
“I think he does care for me. He’s certainly treated me with unfailing kindness and generosity.”
“Then it’s up to you to keep him from falling a victim to his own sentimentality. It’s a word I never expected to apply to any action of Jaspar Blatch’s; he’s the last man I’d have thought had a soft spot of that kind in his make-up. But before the chance comes to extend any invitation, tell him about Gaynes. ”

“ Adamson had to fight to control his angry amazement, drew back from them, unable to trust his voice. A confused racing of resolutions ran through his head—the desperate resort of expostulation when he got Blatch alone, an excuse invented to cancel the invitation. He tried to think of something, staring into the flower-filled fireplace, hearing Blatch behind him describing Hinterland—its wild isolation, the great log house he called his camp, the long trip into the silences of the North. Their questions crowded in, eager, interspersed with comments. They would follow their host ”

“ What we’ve heard about her makes me more than ever averse to trusting her children. Mercenary instincts, cupidity, craft, repeat themselves as the features do.”
When he had gone, Adamson threw himself again into his chair, but this time not to read. With his hand once more pawing at his hair, his mind ranged back over the conversation, repudiating the lawyer’s suspicions. He told himself that they had no foundation, were fantastic and preposterous, that the Harmon children were as innocent of any intention to lay a covetous hand on Blatch’s millions as he was himself. ”