Ross Beeckman

“ She is a strange girl; but I love her, almost as much as you do," Beatrice continued, as if she had not heard his question. "She possesses characteristics, the depth of which I have never been able to sound, and I am her best and closest friend. If you two live up to this agreement, in the spirit in which it was made, and conclude it in the spirit in which she has dictated her conditions to Melvin, I tremble for the consequences that will ensue, for I can almost foresee them. Patricia is not one who forgives easily, and she will resent a hurt to her pride with all the force there is in her." ”

“ Patricia called out, in a voice that was wholly unlike her usual calm tones. "Will you call someone to care for the car?" Without waiting for a reply, she sprang from beneath the wheel, and with a light laugh returned the impetuous embrace with which the young matron greeted her.
In some mysterious manner, word had already been passed to the guests that Patricia Langdon had arrived in Richard Morton's car, but alone; and so, by the time Patricia had released herself from Sally's clinging arms, Roderick Duncan, followed by the others of the party, appeared in the open doorway. ”

“ Duncan obeyed her, but without haste; and she led him into a pathway among the trees, soon emerging upon an open space in the center of which a rustic pavilion had been erected. It was overgrown by a riot of climbing vines; an inclosure with windows at every side of it, occupied the center of the space beneath the roof, and inside the inclosure were all the evidences of feminine occupancy. Wicker chairs and chairs of willow, rugs, hassocks, cushions, pillows with embroidered covers, littered the place. One could discern at a glance that it was a place of retreat and rest for a woman of taste. ”

“ All her life, Patricia had been her father's chum; ever since she could remember, they had talked together of stocks and bonds, and puts and calls, and opening and closing quotations, and she knew every slang word that is uttered in "the street," that is used on the floor of the stock-exchange, or that appears in the financial columns of the newspapers.
And these two, father and daughter, were as much alike in outward bearing, in demeanor and in appearance, in gesture and in motion, as a man and a woman can be when the man is approaching seventy and the woman is only just past twenty. ”

“ I dare you, Beatrice! They always have a wedding ceremony on tap, there; if you've got the sand, come on. It offers a solution of everything. Come on, Bee—marry me!"
She raised her eyes to his, and he understood, instantly, how he had wounded her; he saw that her laughter had not been real, and that she was very near to tears. But the fact that she shrank away from his impetuous words and manner, only spurred him on anew. He caught her hands again.
"Let's do it, Beatrice," he said rapidly, bending forward with sudden eagerness. "I hate all this mess and muddle of affairs. I hate it! ”

“ Twenty millions is a large sum to pay at an hour's notice. It was not a tithe of the fortune which Stephen Langdon was supposed to possess; yet his circumstances at the moment were such that terrible disaster would immediately follow upon the demand for its payment. He knew it; Melvin knew it; Roderick Duncan knew it. But the fighting blood of Roderick Duncan's father was surging in his son's soul, just then; and, in his day, "Old Man Duncan" had been a harder and a more relentless financier than ever his partner, Stephen Langdon, had become. ”

“ He laughed, shortly.
"From any other woman than you, such an answer as that would be tantamount to an affirmative; but you are a puzzle, Patricia. You are not like anybody else. There is a depth to you that I cannot sound. There is a breadth to you that is like the open country of the Northwest, where one cannot see beyond the sky-line, ever, and where the sky-line remains, always, just so far away."
"I think I'll ask you to excuse me, Mr. Morton," she said, making as if to rise. "This interview is not a pleasant one. You are not kind, or considerate." ”

“ Duncan shrugged his shoulders and parted his lips to reply, but she went on rapidly:
"That is asking me to go rather farther than I would care to venture, my friend; or you, either, if you should stop to think about it. Your proposition is utterly a selfish one. You must know that. You have thought only of yourself and the mess you are in. You do not consider me at all. You would cheerfully use me as a means of venting your spite—or shall I call it, temper?—against Patricia. For the moment, you are intensely angry at her. Not only that, you feel that you have been out-done, at every point. ”

“ I tell you, now, to your face, that Roderick Duncan is one man in ten thousand; and that he has loved you for years, as a woman is rarely loved. But you cast his love aside as if it were of no value—as if it were a little thing, to be picked up anywhere, and to be played with, as a child plays with a toy. ”

“ Then, with a slight toss of her head, Beatrice added: "I suppose Patricia has refused you again?"
"No. She has accepted me, this time," was the blunt reply.
Beatrice stared straight in front of her for a moment, and there was a suggestion of gathering pallor in her face. Then, she drew backward, away from her companion, and her blue eyes widened. If there was a shock to her in the knowledge she had just received, she accepted it with a very clever little laugh which she always had ready at hand.
"So," she said, "that is what makes you so glum, is it? Really, you are a most amazing person. ”

“ On the other hand, I shall be very glad when you are Roderick Duncan's wife. He is the son of the best friend I ever had, the only man I ever trusted. And he is every bit as good a man as his father was. He is square and on the level. He has wealth, and he doesn't go bumming around town, giving champagne parties, and monkey dinners. He knows how to be a good fellow without making a fool of himself, and that is more than you can say of most young men who have money to burn. You have grown up together, and why in the world you have kept putting him off is more than I can guess. ”

“ They frequented the same clubs, and Morton had made the acquaintance of many of Duncan's friends; they knew each other by sight, and Duncan had heard, vaguely and without particular interest, that Morton had fallen under the spell of Patricia's stately loveliness. That was a circumstance which had suggested no misgivings whatever to him. He had long been accustomed to such conditions, for it was a rare thing that a man should be presented to Patricia without being at once attracted and charmed by her physical beauty, as well as by her brilliancy of wit. ”

“ The almost tragic occurrences of the evening had brought the real Jack Gardner to the surface, and he was for the moment again the dauntless young miner who had fought his way upward to the position he now held, by sheer force of character; for it requires a whole man to lift himself from the pick and shovel, and the drill and fuse, to the millionaire mine-owner and the person of prominence in the world such as he had become. He stood beside the small table at one end of the room; Morton occupied the center of it, facing him. ”

“ Standing alone at the top of the steps, while he waited for the car, Morton was presently conscious of a slight movement near him, and he turned quickly. Patricia Langdon slowly arose from one of the veranda chairs, and approached him. She came quite close to him, and stopped. For a moment, both were silent; he, with hard, unrelenting eyes, which nevertheless expressed the exquisite pain he felt; she, with tear-dimmed vision, in which pity, regret, sympathy and real liking strove for dominant expression. ”

“ The state of Montana held no finer ranch and range, no better or more up-to-date buildings, no better outfit in all respects, than Three-Star. The house, set well up along the side of a hill, faced toward the south, and commanded a view which had been the pride of its former owners, before Richard Morton bought up all the rangeland in that locality and converted it into one huge estate of his own. A broad veranda extended from end to end, at the front, and from that vantage point miles upon miles of rich pasture could be seen, dotted with grazing thousands of cattle. ”

“ When Patricia entered the house, she passed rapidly forward to the spacious library, encountering no one. Entering it, she found Sally Gardner seated upon one of the chairs, convulsed with laughter, while directly before her stood Beatrice, her eyes flashing contemptuous anger, and scorn upon the fun-loving and now half-hysterical young matron, who seemed to be unduly amused. Neither of them was at the moment, conscious of Patricia's presence. She had approached so quietly and swiftly that her footsteps along the hallway had made no sound. ”

“ Downtown in the private office of Stephen Langdon, Roderick Duncan stepped from the inner sanctum into the presence of the banker just as the latter started to his feet after the sudden and unexpected departure of his daughter. For an interval, the young man and the old faced each other in silence, the latter with a cynical and satirical smile on his strong face, the former with an unmistakable frown of anger. ”

“ Talk about me getting things into a mess! Great Scott! if you don't get into one, out at Cedarcrest, with that sort of a mix-up to take care of, I'm a sheep-herder. Maybe you haven't got on to the fact, my girl, but, as sure as you're the best little woman in all New York, Dick Morton is so dead stuck on Patricia Langdon that he can't forget it for a minute. If you bring all that bunch together, you'll have Rod Duncan and Dick at each other's throat, before you get through with it. ”

“ She realized the utter futility of her effort to hold the man at bay, and she was suddenly inspired to practise a subterfuge upon him. She permitted herself to sink down helplessly, into his confining grasp, and she became, apparently, unconscious.
It was Richard Morton's turn to be frightened, then. On the instant, he realized what he had done. The enormity of the offense he had committed against her rushed upon him like a blow in the face, and he released her, so that she sank back into the confining seat beside him.
"Patricia! Patricia!" he called to her. ”