THE MAYOR’S COURTSHIP
Admiration throughout the City-State had been growing over the administration of the Mayor, its Governor, and it had not been confined to any class. He had exhibited exacting industry, careful judgment and unexpectedly evinced the qualities of poise and decision, virtues which the observant Mr. Briggs had so hugely doubted he possessed. Nor did he appear less advantageously on the dress occasions of the city’s public ceremonies. He had made a really remarkable public speech in which he discussed many of the coming questions of the day and century, emphasized the absolute supremacy of Law and Order and, by an adroit mixture of rhetoric and facts, succeeded in holding an audience composed of every grade and circumstance, and which departed uttering golden opinions over his sense and his eloquence.
He had not hesitated to explain his action in allowing a reprieve to the convicted anarchists—an action which for a time brought down upon his head the fulminations of the better papers, and exposed him to the scurrilous abuse of his enemies—and defended their complete right to obtain a new trial. Without divulging the nature of the new evidence in their behalf, he boldly declared an injustice had been done and that, if judgment was suspended, his course would be universally endorsed. He talked straight to the hearts of his hearers, in this matter, and appealed to their American sense of fairness. He had consulted Helen Lorimer about this address, and almost with rapture he had inserted in it many of her suggestions, jealously preserving their exact language.
Her cheeks flushed as she recognized her own words, and she perceptibly leaned forward a little to catch the well adjusted sentences, joining with proud elation in the tribute of applause as he ended.
The speech had been given in the Carnegie Hall—still after so many years, the chosen forum for public discussions—and all through it the young speaker turned his eyes constantly to the box in which the Lorimers were sitting, not with too puerile an attention, but just so much as would enable him to see the face of the lovely woman, and catch from her approval, inspiration, for his task. His eyes were not the only ones which sought that place, for Helen Lorimer never seemed more beautiful. Her presence gave the occasion distinction, though it was conjoined with the gratified recognition of the aristocracy of Carrara. The new Mayor pleased them. He had been seen often at the Lorimers, and the impression he made was admirable. His intentions were suspected, and that very fact threw into his public appearances—to them—a fresh interest. Not indeed that much was said about it, and nothing was known.
It was understood in some indirect way, that the Mayor and Helen Lorimer were together interested in the forthcoming trial, and while Miss Lorimer’s social movements were rigorously watched, the dispensations of good taste were not at any time forgotten. Her splendid public activity belonged to the history of the times, and the frequent presence of the Governor in her house, could be readily explained in other obvious ways, than by the gratuitous assumption of any more delicate relation, than the calls of the state. A group of malcontents—those whose machinations with Longtinsky were suspected by Helen Lorimer herself—and who belonged to the rich classes, were very envious of the Mayor’s popularity with their own friends, and viewed with positive hatred his assured entrance within the confines of their social prestige and privileges.
Many men among them, and some women, convinced themselves that the Mayor was a masked demagogue, at heart desirous of a political revolution, that his clemency to the anarchists was a cheap trick, and that his popularity was a menace and also his talents. To these people Helen Lorimer, though the most distinguished member of their order, was a dreamer and a dilletante. But some of them felt again their own danger, from the probable exposure of their tricks and conspiracies. The Mayor _was not_ popular with Theodore Lorimer.
Helen Lorimer sat in a box between her uncle and her mother at the front, and a group of neighbors, in which a few handsome men appeared, assembled behind her. Hats were not removed, and the purple velvet Gainsborough exquisitely formed, and becoming her dark abundant hair gave her a most charming effectiveness. As the Mayor gazed at her from his seat on the platform, she became an Aurora, this minute his own dawn, and the rushing years, full of work, of usefulness, of conquests, the glorious endless day of Life. Never before had he felt such gratitude for what powers he knew he owned, and he fairly grew impatient to begin, that the tide of his powers thus awakened might flow unimpeded—flow, as it were, to _her_ feet.
His heart sprang to his lips, and the words as if attuned to some inner harmony of love, were rich with gracious melody, and strong with manly thought. Mr. Briggs stood near the stage in a side aisle with Tom Ratler, and it was amusing to note his slowly gathering astonishment. His old doubts as to the character of the new Mayor were surely giving way before the man’s manifest power, but Mr. Briggs had still obstinately—perhaps a little vainly—clung to the conviction, that it was he—BRIGGS—that shaped his ends, and lest the Mayor should fail to understand this, Mr. Briggs plied him more vigorously than ever with long winded speeches, and animated apostrophes, and educational diversions. All of which the Mayor with grace and good nature accepted heartily, though behind his secretary’s back his smile prolonged itself into a wearied grimace of forbearance.
The Mayor’s heart was not the only one stirred, not the only one which beat with quickened pulses. Never did Helen Lorimer think so well of him as then; she made the confession to herself, and she made it with blushes bending, by one knows not what spell, to the witchery and command of words—mere words—And yet—the Mayor was not deprived of the charm of physical interest, though in his case it was subtly wrought in with intellectual expression. His winning play of features, the earnestness and beauty of his eyes, a peculiar and native grace of motion in the tall lithe frame, and the constant attractiveness of the ingratiating mouth, framed for speech, told effectively upon his audience, and it was even fondly noted in its details by one, whose lightest thought for him was priceless.
And in that sea of faces, on the occasion of this memorable address of the Mayor, was a face belonging to one, who by the magic of the destiny ruling the ways of men was drawn—not by accident, for there are no accidents in the uses of fate—into his audience. It was Amato.
He was then still an occupant of the Anchorite, and had not yet had the interview with the Cardinal, that we have just witnessed. He was placed far up against the ceiling of the enclosure, having walked through Fifty-sixth Street, and lingering for a minute on the opposite side of the way, noticed the broad signs announcing the speech of the Mayor. There was no room anywhere else in the packed and eager house. Amato had heard of the new Mayor, and the fame of his successful combination of warring policies in the last election, winning the choice of the great city by his naïve but skillful appeal to hostile parties. It had been commented on in the papers both of Europe and the States. He felt curious to see this rising political Cicero or young Alcibiades—as he musingly remarked—and so fought his way up to the top gallery of the hall. And none listened with more open and delighted ears than Amato.
Emancipating himself from the narrow seclusion of his student’s life, responding intuitively to the power of personality and of talent, the Mayor’s eloquence, the fine modulation and grasping insistency of his voice, and the breadth and culture of his views, allied with a certain artfulness of phrase, carried the young ascetic off his feet. His applause was not very apparent, and one observing him might have thought that he was not pleased, but the conclusion would have been a stupid misunderstanding.
Amato became so interested, and so instinctively endorsed the Mayor’s attitude that he forgot the customary tribute, and while others were clapping, was himself revolving the Mayor’s weighty conclusions. And it was just then, in one of the outbursts of applause, that his wandering eye caught sight of Helen Lorimer, for she too joined in the enthusiasm. She was far away from his lofty perch, but Amato, awakening to the attributes of beauty, feeling the flourishing power of his senses, and innately luxurious and tasteful, saw her, and noted her charm. It was only after his interview with the Cardinal that—as he arose from his slumbers the next morning—he consciously identified the face he had seen at Carnegie Hall, with the visitor of the Cardinal’s.
The industry of the Mayor was remarkable; he had begun a splendid effort to reform the clerical service of the city, and to bring into operation a new system of accounting. The enormous growth of the city during the first half of the twentieth century had quadrupled its debt, and made its yearly budget formidable. The outcry against extravagance had been gaining in strength, and there seemed some reason for it, though it was in a measure exaggerated by a popular subserviency to the sensational mongerings of newspapers, and rabid articles in the monthlies. The great city with its almost unexampled generosity towards all sorts of public enterprises, its stupendous educational system, and the vastness of its improvements, had indeed assumed heavy burdens, reflected in a mounting tax levy. The century had developed a strong tendency towards a hidden sort of socialism, and while the organization of society was unchanged, heavy taxes imposed upon the property of the rich and upon corporations, lent a semblance of reality to the claim that the city government—and it was symptomatic of municipal conditions throughout the world—had become socialistic.
The Mayor confronted a discontented public when he assumed office as the governor of the little municipal state. Capable and experienced, and gifted with invention, inclined himself to view in a new light the dawning tendencies of the time, which really urged a greater participation of the many in the aggregate returns of the state, he met upon his inauguration a double problem. He was expected to give a business administration, curbing excess, limiting expenditures, where they were foolish or unnecessary, diminishing waste, and also, by some process of education, making the entire city realize that it must succumb to the refreshing influences of an increasing desire to advance the weal and general happiness, introducing—not recklessly or with demagogic aims—an idealism of sympathy between all classes.
Helen Lorimer had herself engaged in the latter problem, approaching it from the side of Class, with the strongest instincts of Individualism, forming—if she could—an aristocracy of Worth, which should assume a guiding hand in the control of affairs, and involve itself in a perennial ministration of mercy and helpfulness. Unseen to her there lay in all her thoughts the latent socialistic image; to the Mayor that image was clearly seen, and attacking the problem more from the side of the Commoner, he was never deceived or misled.
This community of serious interest had greatly heightened the flavor of the Mayor’s acquaintanceship with Helen Lorimer. Their most significant qualities of mind, had been mutually seen, and while they very earnestly differed, there was no loss of admiration on either side. More secretly and more profoundly they felt the collision in themselves of two irreconcilable entities, the religious idea, and the scientific idea. On that ground their tempers were inclined to take fire, but the Mayor’s constraining love corrected his impulse, and Helen’s slowly increasing surrender and engrossment oftentimes closed her lips.
The evening of the fourteenth of July was spent by the Mayor at the villa of the Lorimers’. The company—not a large party—ate in the salon the reader has already visited, and perhaps for the first time—or almost the first—some whispered conjectures were hazarded, that the Mayor was decidedly interested in Helen Lorimer, while eloquent glances told the same story. None of those present at the dinner—with one exception, the count and his wife—at which Miss Lorimer so boldly threw down the gauntlet of her convictions as to the transplantation of the Pope, were this evening among the little throng. It was most variously composed, though the young people predominated; the few elders being well preserved old ladies, whose composure it would have been dangerous for the younger set to have disturbed by any frivolity. These old ladies were solid exemplars of propriety, well dressed and effectively garrulous. The banquet was an informal collation, the usual service of the young men to the ladies prevailing, the latter sitting about the room, or, in many cases, out of it, in such inviting nooks and retreats as offered less surveillance for their coquetry and the interchange of vows.
In this confusion, amid the decorous collision of flying Ganymedes, replenishing emptied plates from the overburdened table, the suave exit and entrance of servants, the noisy expostulations of the avid dowagers, and the murmurous tumult of comment, pleasure, and platitudes, the Mayor and Helen talked alone at one end of the room. Here they were soon joined by a shaking but emphatic old gentleman—a Livingston—and a middle aged banker—a Gunther—whose cushioned perfection of deportment, finish of address, and scrupulous attention to the removal of crumbs from his attire, contrasted amusingly with the older man’s carelessness, nervousness, and vituperation.
“You spoke well Mr. Mayor at Carnegie Hall,” it was the nervous old gentleman speaking, “but you don’t use the meat axe—the meat axe—as you should. I tell you Sir, that fine words never buttered parsnips, and if you try pretty words on these socialistic renegades you’ll get them back in your ears charged with curses. Hound them out—out. You had no justification for interference. Let ’em hang!”
“But surely,” Miss Lorimer began, “Mr. Livingston you don’t wish to be so unjust as to slay the innocent. I cannot think you aspire to the detestable distinction of being a murderer.”
“A murderer, Miss Lorimer? The term can be given some meanings that take away its reproach. War is not murder although we kill innocent and guilty alike. Intimidation is worth more than just flat justice in this matter. Besides in the case of pestilence those exposed to the plague must be quarantined along with those who are sick. That’s plain—very plain—and it’s furthermore plain to me that a new trial means procrastination—compromise—escape.
“It’s futile—futile—Yes! it’s knavery to think of it!”
“Ah now,” this time the intercessory banker, “really Mr. Livingston I think you mistake the nature of the evidence. Let us be judicial—strictly judicial—the judicial course is the safest course. It is sanctioned by authority and reason.”
“What! the Law’s way!” cried the irate representative of a family which had given its members to the State and the Bench, “I tell you Sir, the Law is the enemy of sense. It plunders our pocket-books, and what does it give back?—demurrers and writs, and bills, and motions. Martial Law, Sir I believe in, and martial law is the cure-all just now. But your ordinary law, your court law—why! it’s a mouse in a gally-pot—a buzz-fly in a pounding barrel! Surgery, _no_ medicine!”
The Mayor had not spoken; he was still seated watching with a curious semblance of avoidance of debate, the face of Helen—he was beginning to be audacious enough, softly to whisper to himself “his Helen”—but now he stood, and turning to Mr. Livingston who was likely to fly into a rage at his exasperating silence spoke, while at the same moment Count Schinazi and his approving and inseparable wife approached the group.
“Mr. Livingston you are afraid of the peace and permanency of our State, because of these socialists, to whom you, on that account, deny justice. Do you recall this fable of La Fontaine? A ruler of a realm was told by the messenger of a hostile country that his master could summon an army from all his dependencies whereupon a wise courtier told the trembling monarch that it recalled to him a vision that he had dreamt; he had seen a dragon with many heads and only one tail on the other side of a hedge, and, thus affrighted, he had stood dumb, and powerless with fear, when he saw that because it had many heads it could not pierce the hedge between them; but, thus recovered from his dread, the next instant he saw a dragon with ONE head and MANY tails approach the hedge; this last easily passed the hedge with all his tails, one making a path for the next. Mercy and Justice to these misguided men Mr. Livingston will multiply the heads of the movement, because it will certainly throw them into discord, but Cruelty and Injustice will consolidate their councils into a unanimity that can readily cause us apprehension. The Dragon with many heads is harmless.”
The rejoinder was a little unexpected, and the irascible critic was non-plussed, to recover however with the muttered ejaculation that he knew a fable worth two of that, “the mouse who gnawed the nets of the lion and let him loose”; at which the Mayor laughed, and Mr. Livingston, shaking his head ominously, retired.
“Veery vell put your Honor,” it was the voice and grinning phiz of the Count, “bit I tink de gentlemans who vas so, as you say, peevish, might have, as you say, got you von better; vas it not a leetle like dis, you haf de bone in de mouf like de leetle dog in de storie, and ven you look in de vater you drop de bone to geet de shadow and you loose bofe. Ees it not day vay?”
“I hardly think so Count Schinazi,” the mayor had made the acquaintance of the eccentric foreigner and the two men rather liked each other, “at any rate the bone is not yet _out_ of my mouth, and if I am chasing shadows, we sometimes say rainbows, I am not likely to disappoint any one but myself—or am I?” The last words were directed to Miss Lorimer, and the smile and reproach that dawned on her face again told the Mayor that he was something more to her than a name and a friend simply.
Just then the voice of Theodore Lorimer was heard requesting silence; there was an instant suppression of the social hubbub, and the same voice told the company that if they would follow him they would be led to the roof of the northern towers, where there would be music, and a view of some few fireworks, and where there was also furnished, upon one of the broader spaces a carpet covered square for the dancers. This announcement was received with unconcealed admiration, and the chorus of applause from the many couples, summoned hither and thither from their coverts and hiding spots was overwhelming, causing Mr. Lorimer to remark to a business neighbor “that Terpsichore was probably a more popular deity than Columbia.”
The path taken by the guests led through a remarkable series of halls and up many broad stairways graced with niches, holding bronzes and marble figures, with walls decorated—not lavishly—with paintings, and at the end of the ranges led into a spiral stairs, from which eyelet windows covered the adjacent valleys. The hilarious company emerged out upon a roof flanked by four towers, in a sort of uncovered room, over which a trellis hung, carrying pendent vines, a summery pergola. The towers flanking this space were pierced by doorways, and these opened within upon narrower ascents, to the tops of the towers themselves. In the centre of the room was the dancing carpet, and the musicians, set to one side, already welcomed the guests with pleasant melodies.
Almost the last to reach the outlook was Miss Lorimer and the Mayor, and when they came, the place was in a surge of enjoyment; the musicians breathed the enchanted measures of a Waldteufel waltz, the dancers were noiselessly circling over the middle area, while in all sorts of ways the rest of the group was engaged, in talking, in rapturous comments upon the beauty of the night and the scene, or taking restricted walks about the parapets. Helen Lorimer had pressed forward, and, with the Mayor following, both with an unusual eagerness, quite oblivious of the others, who for their part were equally indifferent advanced to one of the tower doors, entered, and disappeared.
An instant later Helen Lorimer came to the top—a round enclosure with a low wall—and after her the Mayor. How was it that the woman put back her hand, as if to assist him, and how was it that it was so smoothly taken, and then—Oh you artful deities who watch such things and watching smile—how was it that the man kissed it and kept it? That kiss Helen felt, not alone upon her hand but very mightily upon her heart; yes the confession rose to her, as with the sudden spring of a concealed conviction, that, rushing in all the tides of her being, she had hitherto shunned and repudiated.
The mounting color told the abject fact, though in the softly illumined night, _that_ was hid from the man at her side, her pulsating heart told the same story, though those rapid beats none could hear but herself, certainly not he who seemed indeed dazed with some dizzying emotion, for he left her side and gazed upward silent. Nor was it alone the color in her cheeks, or the tumult at her heart that thus miserably proclaimed her conquest; her limbs proved traitorous, and the brave, strong woman sank upon a narrow stone seating, that surrounded the wall, suffocated with her own intolerable defeat. Defeat—yes in one way as women feel it—but after the shock of surrender has passed, then the pent up tide inundates the whole being,
_till strange love grown bold, Think true love, acted, simple modesty_.
The Mayor came back to her side and standing there, leaned nearer and whispered; “Have I offended you Helen?”
He had never spoken her name before, and the sound of it from his lips startled her, with even a keener realization of the sudden change in herself. And yet not sudden. The blossom that to-day blushes on the branches of the rose bush means an inevitable process of formation, a graduated range of growth from the tiniest bud to its challenging beauty, the mute unfolding of an invisible yet discreet nourishment that built up its silken petals, gave to it its subtle fragrance, and painted it with colors blended from the earth and sky. These steps in nature are not sudden, and yet when the bush, that yesterday was but a wealth of buds, to-day is seen laden with flowers, the change seems sudden—but it is SEEMS only; the process unmarked by the eye, has taken time and if, with favoring circumstances, with greater heat and light, it has advanced more quickly, not a single step in its adventurous course has been missed or skipped.
After his first declaration on the night of their conference in the museum, the Mayor had withdrawn into a modest silence, though his affections were clearly understood by Helen, and this diffidence itself charmed her. His excellent mind, the powers of thought that he showed, a peculiar earnestness, together with a reticence, delighted her. He took pains to understand her projects and even to criticise them. He did no longer conceal his own prejudices but clothed in his ingenuous speech they seemed less dreadful to her. He had a boyish way, blent with an extreme elegance of manner, a certain distinction of address, and this favored in him a personal brightness of appearance, hard to describe, but easily recognized. And then their quarrels—why they so often dissolved in laughter!
It was on her side, Helen’s, a preposterous antipathy to the scientific dryness and rigor of exact conclusions, on his, a humorous enmity of too much belief in the unknown, a quiet skepticism that showed itself unabashed before her intense appeals, and yet was always unobtrusive. At times they did discover how far apart lay their ultimate goals of tendency, and then Helen mourned that it was so, and for that very reason loved him better. Her steadfast heart, bathed in a deep catholic spirituality, wanted dearly to bring him to her own standpoint of view, and in her prayers his name was not omitted.
There were indeed moments when they rebelled against each other, when they felt the chasm of a deep difference lying between them, and yet why was it that even then they felt their arms stretched above it, towards each other, as if to bridge and close it? In both there was an inherent honesty that forbade compromise, and yet they were not reluctant to hide their feud. Often it came to this, that the Mayor said, he thought better now than he ever could have believed that he would think, of religion, _because of her_ its precepts gained an unexpected beauty. And they would both grow serious or perhaps both smile, and in those smiles lurked the honey of an increasing love between them.
And as for the Mayor the rich tide of life into which he entered when with Helen Lorimer, her personal glory united with her elevation of mind which his nature adored, her goodness, and the fine touches of her delicate fancy almost swept him from his feet. He loved passionately, and in spite of that he kept his footing, strained to the last effort of exertion by his will, his dominant sense of fitness, and by the call of his duties. He felt somehow that he even maintained a supremacy in mind, and this helped him to abstain from violence and entreaty. He felt too, with intoxication that the end must come as he willed it, and as he felt that, the surges of desire rising about him almost overwhelmed him.
They had seen a great deal of each other. There was the trial to rehearse, upon which depended so much for the reputation of the Mayor, and the overthrow of the enemies of order and the enemies of justice. There were conferences with Mr. Moser the lawyer, who was to open the new trial. There was Helen’s museum projects, and her new plans of the Settlement House. There were broader, grander imaginings of the Mayor himself, for the great city, to whose service he bent all his powers, wedding it with the love that now controlled him to the last fibres of his being. These plans were also revealed to Miss Lorimer and discussed with her—how eloquently!—and her views sought!
And yet by the strangest of collusions there had been no gossip among the news mongers, no whisperings in the public prints, no express admissions in SOCIETY, nowhere any concurrent wonderings and guesses and intimations. And all because both the Mayor and Helen had, in their intercourse, admonished suspicion by their own discretions. Both were eminent, and withdrawn somewhat in that fame, were less carelessly discussed. Observation too passed beyond them to the great trial of which now the general mind was full.
There was unrest in the city over the socialistic propaganda on the east side, for though the office of The Beehive had been seized—Mr. Briggs had attended to that, and Tom Ratler had been his good agent in finding out the new location of the dangerous paper—no further move towards its suppression had been made, and it was realized that the turbulent organ yet maintained itself, and that an underground circulation of its inflammatory appeals was going on, “making surer” as Mr. Briggs said, “every day the eventual explosion and with rapine and conflagration.”
There was some national alarm besides over threatened war, and it seemed as if, for the last time, the convulsed earth stood on the brink of a terrific combat, its elements shaking into compact orbs of allies, whose circling collision would remake the civilized world.
But three persons in the huge city knew of this growing love. Helen’s mother, Julieta, knew it and the Mayor’s mother knew it, and Tom Ratler knew it. But not one of these could tell the others, Julieta knew it, less by any visible witness, than by the safe conclusion of her mother’s heart, and her woman’s instinct; the Mayor’s mother knew it because her son had told her; and Tom Ratler knew it from the moment he had seen the Mayor accompany Miss Lorimer down the City Hall’s steps, and caught the Mayor’s eye following her vanishing vehicle. With such as Tom, love is everywhere, in the daily air, in each turn of the head, and a man not in love is a man not alive. Tom was himself so dreadfully fettered, that his aching soul was only at peace when he could see others in the same predicament, while his mind, with a ferret’s ease, caught the faintest whiff, as it were, of love stirring in the air.
And now Helen and the Mayor knew it themselves. It filled their hearts, as a wine the chalice, but it could not stay there, for it was a rising torrent and dauntless, sped to their lips and spoke.
“Offense? How can there be offense, if I could have wished it?” it was Helen’s answer.
“Oh Helen, I have waited for this; I have prayed for it; it has come to me in dreams, and when I awoke the dream, and the dear thing I dreamt, seemed hopelessly far off and impossible. But no images and riddles—let me tell you my whole heart, and now give to you my life—all of it Helen; it is all yours, keep it, enrich it, make it priceless, for with you in it, it will grow into something splendid.
“How wonderfully you have stimulated and inspired me during this last month, I can hardly tell you. When I wrote, you were at my elbow like a good deity, dictating, when I thought, you were before my eyes lifting and sharpening my thoughts, giving them wings, and surely a better grace. You know that my life has needed just this, and Oh! so deeply!”
“Marston;” the words were softly uttered, but they were an invitation, and the Mayor knelt quickly, caught the head of the beautiful woman in front of him tenderly with his spread hands, and drew it to his own, and their lips sealed again their vows, yet unspoken, but now so acutely revealed and understood.
There was tumult enough in the Mayor’s breast, he felt delirious with this sudden draught of joy, this burst of blazoning sunlight amid the gray arduous fields of daily duty, and toil, and rivalry. The poetic nature was strong within him; it had been sagaciously apprehended by Mr. Briggs and that sage observer felt in it a danger to the state and an inscrutable foe to his own complete possession of his superior. In books, in stolen contemplations, the Mayor had secretly fed his cravings, though the hard aspects of life, and the unflinching tyranny of events had robbed poetry to him of much of its meanings. And now like a flower revived by light, which had been stricken into paleness and languor in gloom and neglect, this ardent poesy raised in him its dropped head, and the new life pouring through his veins brought to him an ecstacy that overpowered him, like a gigantic wave of misery.
_Page 240._]
How strange it was, that here in the very garden of fruition he felt the _darkening blight of storm_! was it his own timidity, or was it the inversion of his own happiness, inverted by its own excess:
_dark with excessive light_?
The man seemed bewildered, and withdrew from Helen Lorimer, as if shrinking from his own surrender or was it the doubt of his own senses? But Helen Lorimer followed him, she put her arms about his neck, she admitted her capitulation, and that same bright intelligence, conjoined in her with a cheerful heartiness of admiration, offered to him ingenuously her abounding love, for with a nature so copious in feelings, so generous in givings, and so spiritual, Love opened a landscape of delight:
_where the river of bliss through midst of heaven Rolls o’er Elysian flowers her amber stream_;
and into that scene she walked, without misgivings and without fear. “Let me confess too,” she said, “my life needs you. A woman naturally shudders at the thought of loneliness in the world, though I think God leaves no one quite alone, who will seek Him. But then—ah then—it is something different; the meaning here with us is part of the Great Plan,—and I have grown proud of you,—and—and—Oh indeed I cannot live without you. I am yours—all yours.”
The Mayor’s arms caught her, their breaths and kisses mingled, and amid the merriment below them, with the pulsing music keeping time to their own heart beats, oblivious to the growing wonders of the skies above them, they became married in thought and heart, while the senses sent:
_A soul dissolving odour, to invite To some more lovely mystery_.
The lights had become more numerous in the heavens, and the dancing fires of the wavering or shooting aeronauts added a stranger splendor to the air. And as yet no one came to interrupt them, no one indeed missed them, so rapturous had all become over their entertainment, while the singing violins and the sonorous cornets kept the dancers busy. The young men were assiduous, and the ladies retentive, the elders lost their reserve and attempted to revive their lost art of charm and repartee, the dowagers were lenient, and in the swirling gayety, though some anxious faces sought for Helen, none attempted the pursuit, and the rumor gained ground that the Mayor had departed. The Count Schinazi was in his glory. His witticisms were laughed at, the girls declared his dancing “heavenly,” and as he glided hither and thither, watched by his approving wife, the ripples of enjoyment or hilarious shouts attested his success as a social card. A sudden spit of fire above them, the swish of a rocket’s stick among the trees below them, startled the spectators into a little cry of alarm, and immediately the voice of the count brought them back into composure and mirth:
“I tinks dat vas a fire-fly—von big American fire-fly. It vas as you say, an up-to-date fire-fly, it vas a johnny-on-the-spot fire-fly—und it vas a fine ting, ven the bugs, as you say, know their bizziness und celebrat mit de peoples.”
An instant later a sharp crack emitted somewhere from the highest southernward tower accompanied by a sputtering line of sparks, surprised the gathering, and the huddled crowd watched with amazement a shooting winding sheet of flame surround the pinnacle, rise, and light a set piece of pyrotechnics at the top. It blazed, and the whole pediment was brilliant with reflections while the space between the towers became as bright as day. It banished the shades in which the Mayor and Helen Lorimer had remained, and they were easily seen standing together, and because higher up than the guests glaringly lit up by the illumination.
There was no concealment now and they could even see the amusement on the faces beneath, while to many there, and notably to Theodore Lorimer, the picture of the two lovers standing unchanged, though a little apart, was more interesting, more unexpected than the fizzing showering eruptions of the _feu-de-joie_. With the safe execution of this feature, the music was resumed and the dancers returned to their evolutions, but something had thrown the comfortable festivity into disarray.
There had been some fear about the fireworks, there was considerable agitation over the discovery of the interesting relation of Helen Lorimer and the Governor of New York. A good many “I told you soes” cautiously gained a hearing, and some masculine hearts felt grieved and injured. Theodore was a trifle vexed, Julieta smiled over the accuracy of her premonitions. The night had advanced, the balloons over the city had vanished into darkness, a storm seemed at hand, and one by one, and in groups, the guests departed. Among them the courteous bowing count, and his wife, and as the former pressed the hand of Julieta his perennial grin contracted into an amusing pout, and he said, casting a look of forlorn expostulation at Mr. Lorimer; “Vell, vell it mek me, as you say a leetle tired; et vas most onexpected und I tink it pit me—as you say—on de blink. I vas reddy, ven Madame Schinazi tink she—as you say—fly de coop—to mek Mees Lorimer veery happy meeself;” and so under a shower of reproving taps of the countess’ fan the egregiously satisfied pair took their leave.
Long before this Helen Lorimer had descended to the roof parlor, and with grace and confidence, though perhaps with a heightened color had moved among the guests, while the Mayor who had descended with her exhibited his own social skill, and though he found no Livingston or Gunther to dispute or applaud his public actions, he found little difficulty in securing attention, and, mastering his own impulse to fly from the place, by pure desperation achieved wonders, engaging old and young in animated conversation, testing his varied eloquence to the best advantage, with much literary discretion and aptness.
To Miss Retruve, celebrated for short sonnets and addicted to melancholy epitaphs upon her deceased pets, he pointed out the starry firmament, where there lingered a few sky-rockets quoting:
_The skies are painted with unnumbered sparks, They are all fire and every one doth shine_,
from Julius Caesar. To Miss Ballinger, well known for her amateur theatricals, and a tripping desire to appear unalterably young, and whom he found seated upon the parapet slightly above his head, he quoted Romeo:
_for thou art As glorious to this night, being o’er my head As is a winged messenger of Heaven Unto the white up-turned wond’ring eyes Of mortal, that fall back to gaze on him, When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds, And sails upon the bosom of the air_.
To young Prentice, a youth who had won a Columbian medal for a dramatic composition, he remarked, as both watched the speeding aeronauts:
_through the purple night I see cars drawn by rainbow-winged steeds Which trample the dim winds: in each there stands A wild-eyed charioteer urging their flight. Some look behind, as fiends pursued them there, And yet I see no shapes but the keen stars: Others with burning eyes, lean forth, and drink With eager lips the wind of their own speed, As if the thing they loved fled on before, And now, even now, they clasped it. Their bright locks Stream like a comet’s flashing hair: they all Sweep onward_.
And to Theodore Lorimer whom he found at the end of his touring interviews he said, firmly gazing into his eyes equally sincere and solemn:
“Mr. Lorimer, perhaps I owe you an apology, though, on my soul, I cannot perceive that I have done any wrong. Miss Lorimer has given me her troth, not I believe unadvisedly. I love her with my whole being. All honor I have attained to, all I can gain, became immensely enriched by her alliance. The denouement was sudden. I admit it. Am I to blame? Do you blame me?”
Mr. Theodore Lorimer was a business man; he was also a widower, and though no doubt he had had his love affairs, his demeanor to the tenderness of life was a little austere and unbendingly practical. He fully appreciated his niece’s talent and beauty; had a rather vainglorious pride in the Lorimer family, and he estimated with the keenest pleasure their exact wealth. His hopes with regard to Helen were certainly indefinite, but he felt the Mayor’s humble origin, as the phrase goes, and while he knew his ability, and his possibilities of progression and promotion, he somehow yet stuck to that invincible theory of caste, of class, the inbred feeling of separation. He was loyal to American ideas, he was patriotic, but he treasured the aristocratic formula—as indeed Helen herself did, but with a difference—and he believed in making that aristocratic ideal a very influential and beneficial factor in American public life, under just those incentives reviewed in the earlier pages of this story. He was not—to be really truthful—satisfied with the Mayor.
His family too was a Catholic one, and though creed offered no rifts among the rich associates of Carrara it did sensibly suggest an antagonism to a man like the Mayor, who was not of them, and who had, in his earlier life, actually written a book upon the needlessness of religion in the current meaning of the word. Then he suspected the Mayor of socialism, which he thought already tinctured unfavorably his own niece’s views, and socialism was to Theodore Lorimer a monstrous sin. The very word brought a frown to a face uniformly serene. He stood in a very close relation to his niece since her father’s death, and with her mother constituted a strict guardianship, which Helen respected, and, after the Catholic fashion, filially honored. Besides, and in addition, he experienced a vague resentment against the Mayor for the, to him, unnoticed insinuation of himself in the favor of his niece. There was a suggestion in it to Theodore Lorimer of something surreptitious and vulgar, it contravened the dignity of the method he should have preferred. Somehow it seemed to him that under the guise of conferences—conferences which he had regarded askance, as in his heart he had small sympathy with the end in view—about a public question, the Mayor had succeeded in injecting a love mission which was neither creditable nor desirable.
During the hour between the letting off of the _feu-de-joie_ when the speaking isolation of the Mayor with Miss Lorimer was discovered, and the departure of the guests, and the Mayor’s personal appeal, Theodore had been working himself into a state of mind. This became more bitter as he reviewed the chances—the matrimonial chances—his niece could hope for. That extravagant and stupid idolatry, which rich American girls suffered from, for foreign placards and names, had greatly disappeared, at the beginning of the twentieth-first century, although the ludicrous hunt on the part of impecunious and wasted and morally unfit scions of noble houses for American money still persisted. But the gloss dazzled, and the lure of name yet exerted its malign and fallacious attractions. The malady had taken a more aesthetic and reputable form. The offers from Europe were more carefully scrutinized, and they were themselves less mercenary though seldom could the taint of a money thirst be utterly excluded.
The Lorimers had been much in Europe, and Helen’s charm had gathered about her many shining lights, handsome and striking figures in its public and social circles, and none among these had to the observant eyes of Julieta and Theodore seemed more acceptable than the young Count of Monte Ferrato who had also shown his immediate interest in Helen. Some such marriage would have frankly pleased Mr. Lorimer, and while the matter to Julieta properly remained, as it should in a woman’s thought, in the realm of ideation and emotion, she too regarded the young foreign notable with partiality. As for domestic unions, as Theodore said to Julieta, Helen “had the world to choose from.”
The insoluble element was Helen herself; she neither leaned with prestige or property, as might have easily been discerned. Her Americanism was of the just type and she lived in ideals political and religious, and the former sprang from the latter. Certainly she had responded with appreciation perhaps to the admiration she excited, but none of her adorers had touched these springs of feeling which open a woman’s heart and win her. This was the bothersome part of it to Theodore Lorimer, and while Julieta was amused, noticing her brother-in-law’s vexation, she felt too the responsible task of guiding Helen in her final choice, if she made it, and yet was bewildered by the unusual nature of her daughter, which rather defied coercion. She had endeavored in talking with Helen to get some inkling of her feelings, but she only disconsolately admitted that it was impossible, as Helen felt as yet no overpowering choice. With that she dropped it, believing that Helen would take care of herself in the great concern of her marriage, and having no inconsiderable admixture of romantic sympathy in her own nature was content to leave things to the God of Love, who indeed, while not infallible, does adjust things of this sort fairly well.
So when the Mayor addressed Theodore Lorimer and corroborated the shrewd suspicions which Lorimer had felt when he saw his niece and the Mayor together on the tower, he simply said:
“I would like to talk this matter over with you Mr. Mayor. It is a subject upon which I feel strongly and perhaps my views may not fully coincide with yours. Will you please follow me to a room down stairs where we may discuss it;” and whispering a word to his sister-in-law left the roof followed by the Mayor, whose flushed face and bowed head afforded some indication of his humiliation and disappointment.
While the two men, not moving together, but behind each other, thus made their way through the scattered and departing friends, Helen had resumed her neglected duties. She had been as active as the Mayor, passing from person to person with greetings and caressing banter. To Miss Retruve, whom she found in a giggling condition of pleased vanity over the Mayor’s attention, she admitted that his Excellency was “an admirable Crichton, really too dangerous for unprotected hearts,” which caused that lady to contract her elongated physiognomy into a map of smiles, and to remark, pointing her mittened finger at Helen, “that men were deceivers ever,” which seemed to receive Miss Lorimer’s assent, for she seized the probationary forefinger and shook it desperately. To Miss Ballinger whose intense face was fixed as it were, upon the upturned features of an elderly aspiring suitor, and to whom she was recommending the Mayor’s gallantry for his emulation, she said, while her voice shook with amusement;
_winter sunshine! Beware of opening out thy bosom to it. Lest thou myself, and all thy flock should catch An after ague—fit to trembling_.
And to the dazzled Prentice who met her with adjurations as to “the charming evening he had enjoyed, and the wonderfulness of their Mayor, who was quite a literary paragon,” she said, passing abruptly her handkerchief over her eyes, almost as if tired:
“Why yes—he is excellent in many ways, and I seem to be treading his tracks among you all, reversing the old fable of The Hares and Hounds.”
She left the budding dramatist, nursing his moustache, just as his sapient fancy was about to remark—with bold originality—something about the “observed of all observers,” and flew again further in the thinning throng.
Mr. Lorimer led the Mayor to a room in the villa used by him as a private office whose one window looked out upon the Kingsbridge road. There was not much furniture in it, a large table littered with papers, with a glass of roses decorating the centre, and filling the air with fragrance, which to the Mayor seemed an imprisoned effluence warning him. A painting covered the wall above the mantelpiece, and this was the only important object in the place. It was a painting of Robert Lorimer, Julieta, and the young Helen between them. The grouping was conventional, but the art was unmistakable and the drawing perfect. It was small wonder, thought the Mayor as his eyes eagerly perused the big picture, that Helen was beautiful; the ordinary course of heredity would have been strangely perverted if from such parents beauty had not sprung.
It had been painted at the time (about the middle last of the twentieth century) when there had been a temporary, but most improving, return to the fashions of the beginning of the nineteenth, when high collars with spreading tips and stocks, erect coat collars, constricted waists, and voluminous scarfs, conferred an ancient dignity to the imperial dudes. And with it, at least in this picture, accorded the rich and flowing gown of the lady, like the dress of Juliet in the play. The girl nestled upon the lap of her mother with head pressed close to her mother’s knee, and with her face just perceptibly turned upward. She was dressed in a light blue tunic-like gown, and with a girl’s cap of a deeper blue in her dropped hand. She perhaps had reached the age of thirteen, and her well moulded features already showed a budding charm.
The eyes of the Mayor rested there a short instant only; a strange tumult was rising in his breast; he knew that the man before him would assail his pride, and that if a break came it would spell the ruin of his happiness. Of that there could be no doubt, for he also knew full well the sinewy resistance of his own nature, and how quickly the fires of his heart kindled into resentment, when insult, or rebuke, or any form of immoderate opposition stumbled in his path. Not that he was unreasonable, but that he also was proud, with the pride that was first born in him, and with some natural increase from his life’s material success. Nor could he be altogether unconscious that Nature had given him great gifts, that he had used them well, and that office held its just respects.
Mr. Lorimer drew forward a chair and motioning to his visitor, sat down himself upon the opposite side of the table which thus was between them. The Mayor took the proffered chair slowly, and was seated somewhat after his host. There was an awkward silence, and then Mr. Lorimer who appeared flushed and a little disconcerted, spoke:
“Your Honor, I think that I appreciate the compliment of your notice of my niece, but I will bluntly say that I think that it is a matter that should have been more deliberately planned. I knew nothing about it until this moment and I believe that my sister, Miss Lorimer’s Mother has not received any announcement of your intentions—or has she?”
The Mayor answered readily and not without some sense of amusement:
“Why, no Sir—there has been none. In the nature of the case there could hardly be any. I did indeed fall in love—as the phrase goes—with your niece almost from the first moment I saw her, and I confessed that feeling on the first visit I paid to this mansion—but Sir, it has never passed my lips since, until this evening, when the accidents which no one can surely foresee or prevent—even if it were desirable to do so—accidents of voice, word, action—any thing—told me that Miss Lorimer yielded to a similar feeling;” the Mayor paused, and leaning forward continued: “Please do not mistake this for a stupid, a ridiculous vanity; no one realized better than I do my unworthiness of such a love, but I am not ashamed to claim it, not afraid to assume all the responsibilities it means.”
“I fear Mr. Mayor,” returned Theodore Lorimer, who had not failed to notice the flitting smile crossing the Mayor’s pale face, “that this is not a subject for innuendoes, and certainly not for pleasantries.”
The Mayor felt his blood surging a little, and the evident intention of his questioner became to his mind more clearly inquisitorial. He looked up at the painting, and realizing the narrow formalism of the man before him, and the wretched chances of loss now threatening his joy, he mastered his impatience, and spoke more carefully, not indeed without the accent of entreaty in his voice:
“I beg you, Sir, not to misunderstand or wrong me. No one could feel more deeply than I do that innuendoes and pleasantries are out of place in such a matter, and if you could see into my own heart, you too would keenly feel how solemn and serious it all is to me. Before you too hastily blame me will you not consult your niece, and learn from her my exoneration, if you harbor any suspicion of my candor?”
Mr. Lorimer had hardly up to this moment kept his gaze fixed upon the Mayor. He seemed to be talking to his hands, crossed on his lap, though he did see by sidelong glances the Mayor’s expression, and it had suddenly dawned upon him that the way to a rupture—and a rupture was what he wanted—was through the Mayor’s pride, and he was pitiless enough to try it.
“What do you mean, Sir, by accidents of voice, word, action; that appears to me very much like innuendo, and if I was not mistaken the smile on your face indicated your amusement.” As he said this he raised his eyes and turned them unflinchingly on the Mayor.
The Mayor looked at Mr. Lorimer, and through his mind ran the involuntary thought whether this man, who had become so closely related to his happiness, had any humour, or experience, or poetry in him. His scrutiny and his hesitation appeared to vex the banker, and again he spoke with an acerbity that whipped the blood into the cheeks of the Mayor, and brought him to his feet.
“My niece is romantic, idealistic, not, to my thinking, altogether wise, in her plans or ambitions, and she readily can be influenced by any suavity of word or ingenuity of speech.”
He could not go farther; the Mayor raised his hand, and with authority interrupted him; “You wrong her, you wrong me, you wrong yourself, you impute, at least by implication, Sir, that I have used unmanly methods to win the good will of your niece. How unfair this is until you know, until you have heard my story, and such tenders of her confidence as Miss Lorimer might give you or, I think, more naturally, her mother! There has been no trick of speech, no flattery of voice, which is what I suppose you mean, but, what I fear is not intelligible to you, a slow growth of affection between us, nurtured no doubt by some identity of feeling, and common interests, as indeed what love must not be?
“I must believe that you fail to feel that all love-making,” the Mayor smiled perhaps bitterly, “is not the same, and that a formal measure of the ways of love-making would make it all absurd. Pardon me, Sir, but I believe this all should be left to Miss Lorimer.”
Mr. Lorimer resented the interruption, which began this speech, he felt himself overruled, and he hazarded the inference that the Mayor intended to have his own way, without much respect for him. He also started to his feet. His voice was harsh and trembling, and a vein in his neck, which was the danger signal of his excitement, had seriously swollen;
“Mr. Mayor,” he said, “you are conscious that Miss Lorimer’s father was my brother, and that he charged me at his death to watch over all the interests of his daughter, my niece. I intend to do so, and I have no reason to believe that Helen will care to set up her wishes against mine. Miss Lorimer, as you too fully understand, could not be a beggar on the matrimonial world;” the Mayor raised again his hand, in protest, but it was not to enforce his desire to speak, but in repugnance to the commercial words which had been used, and which hurt him with their coarse meanings; Mr. Lorimer disregarded the sign, wrongly thinking that the Mayor ordered him to desist; he lost control of himself, and continued more violently, rashly, heedlessly, cruelly:
“Please permit me to proceed; I say that Miss Lorimer has no misgivings or need have none as to her matrimonial prospects, and I consider it to be a duty I owe at least to her family, to tell you that her hand has already been sought by representatives of distinguished families abroad and in this country. Miss Lorimer’s position is one which I think demands some consideration, and that proposals for her hand should follow a less common, a less precipitate course. You forget Sir that in such a case some etiquette is imperative. Neither Mrs. Lorimer nor myself have been acquainted with your intentions, and perhaps neither of us would altogether approve of them. Of course—”
The Mayor’s voice broke in, he would brook no more, he was not there to be rapped like a school boy, and that native repudiation of ceremonial stupidity and artificial systems, the fires of his strong radicalism, which often made him blind to the importance of conventions, awoke in him, and put him in a rage. His voice, always persuasive, sounded with an unusual vehemence:
“There appears to me no longer any cause for the continuance of this conversation, as I find no excuse either in manners or reasons for your observations. I love your niece; any and all things that a man may or can do for a great love I am prepared to do, but Sir I am not prepared to endure the intimations of a callous and a superfluous Pride. Direct your servant to escort me to your entrance. I am not likely to disturb you again. You may explain your position to Miss Lorimer and—for my—own part—” the words fell slowly and with a deeper hushed voice, “I will not invade her liberty, or stand in the way of her social promotion.”
The sarcasm was not unfelt by Theodore Lorimer, and for an instant he was irresolute. The next he recovered his calmness, and easy politeness, and moved to the door of the room. He opened it, and the Mayor passed through. Mr. Lorimer followed him, and the two men without a word, threaded the stairways and corridors, from which now the guests had departed, made their way to the entrance, and with a still unbroken mask of toleration bowed to each other and separated. The Mayor passed down the broad terraces of steps, and took his seat in the automobile guided by Tom Ratler, and sped away. He never turned his head to the stately palace from which he felt himself driven, leaving behind him an incalculable happiness; but at length he leaned forward on the back before him, and buried his head in his hands, and when he reached his home he hurried to his chamber and sank heavily on the bed. Something in him yielded and he had fainted.
The next morning Miss Lorimer received—handed into her at her bed-room door—a letter which she quickly tore open and read; she had begun to read standing near her mirror, and she had not read it far, when she sank upon a couch, and even while she continued to read, the color faded from her cheeks, and then returned with a mantling power that made her look more beautiful. The words she read were these:
Dear Miss Lorimer:
I fear that I have made a serious mistake. I have mistaken my own feelings. Forget everything, and let us be as strangers. Our mutual interest in the trial will be now fully cared for by counsel, and our further interviews become unnecessary.
Yours faithfully, ——Mayor of New York.
Miss Lorimer crushed the little paper in her clenched hands: her eyes strayed forlornly about the large bedchamber filled with artistic treasures and touched everywhere with feminine taste, and then she arose. An embroidered night tunic covered her, and her unconfined hair poured its floods over her shoulders, and it rose and fell upon her breast with sudden quickness. Again she unfolded the disfigured note, and reread it, and again she sat upon the couch, and her hands dropped between her knees that pressed themselves together over them, and the disconsolate stunned look came again, and again the color came and went. Curiously her face turned to an etching hanging on the wall near her, which showed the Duke Orsino of Twelfth Night, lying on a couch, listening to a trio of musicians playing from a balcony above him, and her lips seemed to repeat the inscription, under it:
_O spirit of love: how quick and fresh art thou, That notwithstanding thy capacity Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there, Of what validity and pitch soe’er But falls into abatement and low price, Even in a minute! so full of shapes is fancy, That it alone is high fantastical_
A hollow smile passed over her face, and the bewildered glance at the torn sheet told of the conflicting thoughts racing in her brain. And then with a sigh that made her for a moment steady herself at the side of the cheval glass, where her form and _deshabille_ made a picture which would have charmed the brush of a Bouguereau, she resumed her toilet, and that finished, she went to the breakfast table. She found her mother and uncle awaiting her. As she greeted them she suddenly recalled that the Mayor had not taken leave of her the night before; she had seen him leave the roof and had for the instant attributed it to some necessary despatch of business or the confusion into which they had both fallen over their mutual confessions. But she made no inquiry.
Mr. Lorimer also had received a letter from the Mayor. It was the soul of brevity; it ran:
Dear Sir,
Miss Lorimer understands my disinclination to continue my suit. There need be no reference to our late interview.
Your etc. etc. ——Mayor of New York.
Mr. Lorimer had retired after his talk with the Mayor in a very ruffled frame of mind, and, as it made him nervous and sleepless, he charged his disorder and discomfort upon that unfortunate official. The waking hours of the night only fortified in him a resolve to prevent the union of his niece and the Mayor, and he determined to hasten—were he successful in diverting his niece from this unwelcome infatuation—Helen’s nuptials with some one to his mind more suitable, and more agreeable to himself. The gentleman however understood the strength of will in his niece, though with that was conjoined, as he also knew, a tenderness of love and obedience, that he had often put to the test.
But he felt uneasy over any discussion of the subject with Helen, and he too keenly realized that his own discretion in the matter needed her mother’s assistance, and this he prepared himself to obtain. Her mother seldom, he knew, disturbed Helen’s “visionary schemes,” but in some ways her influence upon her daughter was decisive, and if—working upon these ideas of caste benefit, and the public protection of an aristocratic superiority, which she preached—her mother could make her see the importance of her reserving the union of her family within a class restriction, his point might be gained.
The Mayor was an excellent man (even then Mr. Lorimer made reservations)—Yes—an able man—Yes—a man with a future—Yes—but he was a self-made man, a man of the people, and he was _bourgeoise_, and that to the pinched apprehension of Mr. Theodore Lorimer was an incredible predicament. As Mr. Lorimer had known very little about any sort of Love, that ingredient in the problem gave him no anxiety, though as a cultivated man he recognized certain poetic obstinacies connected with a lover’s prepossessions.
When he opened the Mayor’s letter he could not repress a motion of gratitude towards the writer; “Amazingly sensible,” he repeated; “I will assure him of our political support,” and with a renewed cheerfulness in his admiration of his own astuteness, the stilted gentleman stepped into the dining-room, and after saluting his sister-in-law watched for Helen’s appearance with undisguised impatience. And, when she came, she seemed the same divine and happy being he had always known; perhaps he noticed that she ate but little, and seemed preoccupied, but that was mere physical weariness. Surely this calm and serene being suffered from no insurmountable disappointment. He had noticed that a letter directed to his niece, had come in the morning’s mail, and doubtless that was the communication alluded to by the Mayor, and the matter was now settled, and after a little unavoidable regret—he concurred in the popular superstition that there might be a _little_—everything would be as before, and lest more dangers should arise, he would actively prosecute his matrimonial intrigues.
As the three arose from the table—Mrs. Lorimer thought it had been an unusually quiet breakfast, and detected the unaccustomed reticence of her daughter—a servant entered, and handed Mr. Lorimer a letter which he took with surprise observing, “Something from the Cardinal.” The word caught the instant attention of Miss Lorimer and her mother, and the two women paused as they rose from the table expecting the announcements of its contents. It came with a delightful alacrity from Mr. Lorimer’s lips:
“Cardinal Fenton sends me a good word for a young friend of his, whom he wishes us to know. His name is Rudolph Amato. It seems he had hoped to make him a priest, but the young protegée changed his mind. He comes of a good Italian stock, originally, has great wealth, and the Cardinal has expended much attention upon his education. He solicits our consideration for the young man.” Stopping to read further, Mr. Lorimer looked at his niece, and said, “The Cardinal says you know the gentleman, Helen, that you met him at his residence, and that Mr. Amato’s enthusiasm for the Church’s prosperity is as great as yours, and that you should both make a splendid combination for the sublime project—now resting in the minds of progressive Catholics—of IMPORTING—those are his very words—_the Pope_.”
To the questioning glance of both her mother and uncle, and with a little renewed animation Helen Lorimer said:
“Yes. I met Mr. Amato at the Cardinal’s—a very handsome young man; he has recently come from Europe. He was there in the interests of the IMPORTATION question, and—Ah—” she ended, and clasping her hands over her face she sank into a chair and broke into stifling sobs.
Mr. Lorimer left the room—this nervous agitation, he said to himself, will end it,—while Julieta with tearful sympathy embraced her child, and kneeled at her side pressing her own loving warm cheeks against the face of the stricken woman, and yet, with a wise sympathy, asking no questions.