Four days of anxious meditation did not help Horace Boyce to clear his mind, and on the fifth he determined upon a somewhat desperate step, in the hope that its issue would assist decision.
His dilemma was simple enough in character. Two ways of acquiring a fortune lay before him. One was to marry Kate Minster; the other was to join the plot against her property and that of her family, which the subtile Tenney was darkly shaping.
The misery of the situation was that he must decide at once which of the ways he would choose. In his elation at being selected as the legal adviser and agent of these millionnaire women, no such contingency as this had been foreseen. He had assumed that abundant time would be at his disposal, and he had said to himself that with time all things may be accomplished with all women.
But this precious element of time had been harshly cut out of his plans, here at the very start. The few days reluctantly granted him had gone by, one by one, with cruel swiftness, and to-morrow would be Monday—and still his mind was not made up.
If he could be assured that Miss Minster would marry him, or at least admit him to the vantage-ground of quasi-recognition as a suitor, the difficulty would be solved at once. He would turn around and defend her and her people against the machinations of Tenney. Just what the machinations were he could not for the life of him puzzle out, but he felt sure that, whatever their nature, he could defeat them, if only he were given the right to do battle in the name of the family, as a prospective member of it.
On the other hand, it might be that he had no present chance with Miss Minster as an eligible husband. What would happen if he relied on a prospect which turned out not to exist? His own opportunity to share in the profits of Tenney’s plan would be abruptly extinguished, and his father would be thrown upon the world as a discredited bankrupt. About that there was no doubt.
Sometimes the distracted young man thought he caught glimpses of a safe middle course. In these sanguine moments it seemed feasible to give in his adhesion to Tenney’s scheme, and go along with him for a certain time, say until the intentions of the conspirators were revealed. Then he might suddenly revolt, throw himself into a virtuous attitude, and win credit and gratitude at the hands of the family by protecting them from their enemies. Then the game would be in his own hands, and no mistake!
But there were other times when this course did not present so many attractions to his mind—when it was borne in upon him that Tenney would be a dangerous kind of man to betray. He had seen merciless and terrible depths in the gray eyes of the hardware merchant—depths which somehow suggested bones stripped clean of their flesh, sucked bare of their marrow, at the bottom of a gloomy sea. In these seasons of doubt, which came mostly in the early morning when he first awoke, the mere thought of Tenney’s hatred made him shudder. It was as if Hugo’s devil-fish had crawled into his dreams.
So Sunday afternoon came and found the young man still perplexed and harassed. To do him justice, he had once or twice dwelt momentarily on the plan of simply defying Tenney and doing his duty by the Minsters, and taking his chances. But these impulses were as quickly put down. The case was too complicated for mere honesty. The days of martyrdom were long since past. One needed to be smarter than one’s neighbors in these later times. To eat others was the rule now, if one would save himself from being devoured. It was at least clear to his mind that he must be smart, and play his hand so as to get the odd trick even if honors were held against him.
Horace decided finally that the wisest thing he could do would be to call upon the Minsters before nightfall, and trust to luck for some opportunity of discovering Miss Kate’s state of mind toward him. He was troubled more or less by fears that Sunday might not be regarded in Thessaly as a proper day for calls, as he dressed himself for the adventure. But when he got upon the street, the fresh air and exhilaration oc exercise helped to reassure him. Before he reached the Minster gate he had even grown to feel that the ladies had probably had a dull day of it, and would welcome his advent as a diversion.
He was shown into the stately parlor to the left of the wide hall—a room he had not seen before—and left to sit there in solitude for some minutes. This term of waiting he employed in looking over the portraits on the wall and the photographs on the mantels and tables. Aside from several pictures of the dissipated Minster boy who had died, he could see no faces of young men anywhere, and he felt this to be a good sign as he tiptoed his way back to his seat by the window.
Fortune smiled at least upon the opening of his enterprise. It was Miss Kate who came at last to receive him, and she came alone. The young man’s cultured sense of beauty and breeding was caressed and captivated as it had never been before—at least in America, he made mental reservation—as she came across the room toward him, and held out her hand. He felt himself unexpectedly at ease, as he returned her greeting and looked with smiling warmth into her splendid eyes.
His talk was facile and pleasant. He touched lightly upon his doubts as to making calls on Sunday, and how they were overborne by the unspeakable tedium of his own rooms. Then he spoke of the way the more unconventional circles of London utilize the day, and of the contrasting features of the Continental Sunday. Miss Kate seemed interested, and besides explaining that her mother was writing letters and that her sister was not very well, bore a courteous and affable part in the exchange of small-talk.
For a long time nothing was said which enabled Horace to feel that the purpose of his visit had been or was likely to be served. Then, all at once, through a most unlikely channel, the needed personal element was introduced.
“Mamma tells me,” she said, when a moment’s pause had sufficed to dismiss some other subject, “that she has turned over to you such of her business as poor old Mr. Clarke used to take care of, and that your partner, Mr. Tracy, has nothing to do with that particular branch of your work. Isn’t that unusual? I thought partners always shared everything.”
“Oh, not at all,” replied Horace. “Mr. Tracy, for example, has railroad business which he keeps to himself. He is the attorney for this section of the road, and of course that is a personal appointment. He couldn’t share it with me, any more than the man in the story could make his wife and children corporals because he had been made one himself. Besides, Mr. Tracy was expressly mentioned by your mother as not to be included in the transfer of business. It was her notion.”
“Ah, indeed!” said that young woman, with a slight instantaneous lifting of the black brows which Horace did not catch. “Why? Isn’t he nice?”
“Well, yes; he’s an extremely good fellow, in his way,” the partner admitted, looking down at his glossy boots in well-simulated hesitation. “That little word ‘nice’ means so many things upon feminine lips, you know,” he added with a smile. “Perhaps he wouldn’t answer your definition of it all around. He’s very honest, and he is a prodigious worker, but—well, to be frank, he’s farm bred, and I daresay your mother suspected the existence of—what shall I say?—an uncouth side? Really, I don’t think that there was anything more than that in it.”
“So you furnish the polish, and he the honesty and industry? Is that it?”
The words were distinctly unpleasant, and Horace looked up swiftly to the speaker’s face, feeling that his own was flushed. But Miss Kate was smiling at him, with a quizzical light dancing in her eyes, and this reassured him on the instant. Evidently she felt herself on easy terms with him, and this was merely a bit of playful chaff.
“We don’t put it quite in that way,” he said, with an answering laugh. “It would be rather egotistical, on both sides.”
“Nowadays everybody resents that imputation as if it were a cardinal sin. There was a time when self-esteem was taken for granted. I suppose it went out with chain-armor and farthingales.” She spoke in a musing tone, and added after a tiny pause, “That must have been a happy time, at least for those who wore the armor and the brocades.”
Horace leaped with avidity at the opening. “Those were the days of romance,” he said, with an effort at the cooing effect in his voice. “Perhaps they were not so altogether lovely as our fancy paints them; but, all the same, it is very sweet to have the fancy. Whether it be historically true or not, those who possess it are rich in their own mind’s right. They can always escape from the grimy and commercial conditions of this present work-a-day life. All one’s finer senses can feed, for example, on a glowing account of an old-time tournament—with the sun shining on the armor and burnished shields, and the waving plumes and iron-clad horses and the heralds in tabards, and the rows of fair ladies clustered about the throne—as it is impossible to do on the report of a meeting of a board of directors, even when they declare you an exceptionally large dividend............