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CHAPTER IX

New Ideas

A parting shot in conversation sometimes rankles like the Parthian's arrow. So it had been with Pease. Beth had said to him: "How can you think you know life, when you live so much alone?" – words to that effect. He had had no chance to defend himself to her, and in consequence had been defending himself to himself ever since. Truly a serious mind is a heavy burden.

Finally he had come down to Chebasset to get the matter off his mind; at least, such was his real purpose. He coloured it with the intention of "looking in at the mill," and gave Mather a few words at the office. Mather had been working at his desk, as Mr. Daggett, the Harbour Commissioner, had found and left him. Orders, Mather said, were piling in too fast.

Pease smiled. "Enlarge, then."

"Delay in profits," warned Mather. "No dividend this quarter."

"Go ahead just the same," said Pease. "I hoped for this."

Mather began writing. "Come, leave work," invited Pease. "I'm going up to the Blanchards'. Come with me."

"I'm ordering coal and material," said Mather. "We have plenty of ore, but the new work must begin soon."

Pease struck his hand upon the desk. "Do you mean," he demanded, "that you are writing about the enlargements already?"

"Plans were made long ago," answered Mather.

"What do you do for exercise?" cried Pease. "How do you keep well? I'll not be responsible, mind, for your breakdown when it comes."

But he made no impression and went away alone, climbed the hill, and found the Blanchards on their piazza. Ellis was more than he had bargained for, and the Colonel had never been exactly to Pease's taste, but they departed, leaving him alone with Beth. She presently noticed the signs that he was endeavouring to bring the conversation to a particular subject, as one becomes aware of a heavy vessel trying to get under way. So she gave him the chance to speak.

"Miss Blanchard," he said, when he found that he might forge ahead, "you said something the other day – other evening – against which I must defend myself. That I live much alone."

She remembered at once, flashed back in her mind to that whole conversation, and was ready to tease him. Tease him she did as he began his explanation; she refused to be persuaded that he did not live alone. He might enumerate dinners, might point to his pursuits, might speak of the hundred people of all classes with whom he came in close daily contact: she would not acknowledge that she had been wrong.

"You are your mind," she declared, "and your mind is aloof."

He would have grieved, but that he felt again, dimly as before, that she was rallying him. And he was pleased that she did not fear him, nor call him Sir – that title which causes such a painful feeling of seniority. She gave him a feeling of confidence, of youthfulness, which had not been his even in boyhood. He had been "Old Pease" then; he was "Old Pease" to many people still. The respect in which young and old held him was a natural, if very formal atmosphere. This defiance of Beth's came upon him like a fresh breeze, bringing younger life. He threw off his earnestness at last and laughed with her at himself.

"Upon my word!" thought the Colonel, on whose ears such laughter had a new sound. He looked out of the window; Pease was actually merry. "Second childhood," grinned the Colonel, as he returned to his writing.

Beth discovered that Pease was no fossil, and began to enjoy herself less at his expense but more for other reasons. He could never lose the flavour of originality, for his odd manner's sake. Even as he sat and laughed he was upright and precise, though the twinkle was genuine and the noise was hearty. Then she rose from the tea-table, and they went to the piazza's edge together. There they discovered Judith returning with Ellis.

"Come away," said Beth quickly; "there are places where we can go. They have not seen us; take your hat."

This was wonderful, slipping with a girl away from other people, and Pease felt the delight of it. Fleeing by passages he had never seen, in a house he had never before entered, smacked of the youthful and romantic. Beth brought him out behind the house, and thirty seconds put them in shrubbery. She led the way, not suspecting that his mental vision was dazzled by new vistas.

For Pease would have faced Ellis and Judith as a duty, borne with their conversation, and returned home without a sigh for the wasted hour. Such was his conception of life – to take what was sent, nor avoid the unpleasant. It had gone so far that in some matters he did not consult his own feelings at all, but gave his time to others, recognising himself as a trustee for their benefit. The good which can be done in such a way is enormous, in business or professional matters merely; but Pease had carried the habit into his social scheme, and was therefore the sufferer from his own good nature, the victim of every bore. It was a revelation that one could exercise choice, and could flee (losing dignity, but gaining in romance) from the unpleasant. So that boyish thrill came over him, with a manly one besides as he felt the compliment Beth paid him. It put them on a closer footing when, laughing and out of breath, she sat in a garden seat and motioned him to take the place beside her.

"Do you think me foolish?" she asked.

"Not at all!" he answered eagerly.

"But perhaps you wished to stay and meet Mr. Ellis?"

"Not for anything!" he averred.

Then she looked at him soberly. "What do you think of him?" She posed him, for polite vagueness was his desire, and he could not find the words.

"He is – " he hesitated, "very – er, pleasant, of course. Not my – kind, perhaps."

"And you really do not like him," she stated, so simply and confidently that in all innocence he answered "Yes," and then could have bitten his tongue off.

"Neither do I," she acknowledged.

And so those two took the same important step which Judith and Ellis had already taken – of showing true feeling to each other, and breaking rules thereby. For Beth, while not reserved, chose her confidants carefully, after long trial; and Pease's habit had been never to acknowledge personal feeling against any one, least of all a business rival.

"Judith has encouraged him before," said Beth. "People talked of her when she met him; they will do so the more now that she has asked him here. Not that she will care for that, Mr. Pease, but I shall not enjoy it."

"Of course you will not," he agreed.

They hovered on the verge of confidences for a moment, then Beth took the plunge. She looked at Pease with a little distress in her eyes. "Judith is headstrong," she said. "She is discontented, but does not know what she wants. I have sometimes thought that George Mather, if he only knew how, might – "

"Yes," said Pease, filling the pause. "I wish he did. He is not happy himself, poor fellow. They have been intimate?"

"Till within a little while. But they are both too masterful. And yet I sometimes think she has him always in mind, but as if defying him, do you understand?"

"Indeed?" he murmured.

"I hope," said Beth, "that this acquaintance of hers with Mr. Ellis is just a phase of that. If it is not, and if she should – Judith cares so little for people's opinions, you know."

"It would be very – painful," murmured Pease. "But it has not come to anything of that sort yet?"

"No, but I know Judith so well that I don't know what she'll do." And Beth concluded her confidences in order to draw some from Pease. The sort of man Ellis was: could he be called dishonest? He was not of course a gentleman? Pease cast off restraint and answered frankly; she found he had considerable power of defining his thoughts, saying that Ellis had never been proved dishonest, but that his conscience seemed no bar to questionable actions; that he was unrefined, good-natured when he had conquered, rough in breaking his way. What his personal charms might be Pease had never had the chance to determine. Mrs. Harmon seemed to like him – but one must not judge by that, because – and silence fell for a moment, as they looked at each other with understanding.

It seems simple and so commonplace, but this was one of the talks which accomplish, bringing the speakers together as nothing else can do. Such talks build human ties; Pease and Beth formed one now. By the time they saw Ellis going away they had new feelings toward each other, differing in degree and result – for Beth knew friendship well, but to Pease it was altogether astonishing and momentous. When Ellis was well away Pease also took his leave and followed down the winding road.

"Tell Mr. Mather to come," were Beth's last words to him.

So Pease went again to the mill, where Mather was still in the office. Pease had little finesse, and went about his errand directly.

"Miss Jenks," he said, and the stenographer vanished.

"Anything?" asked Mather.

Pease put his hand on his shoulder. "Just a message," he answered. "Miss Elizabeth Blanchard – "

"Oh, Beth, you mean," said Mather.

"Yes," replied Pease. "She told me to tell you to come and see them."

"Indeed?" asked Mather.

"She was particular about it," Pease urged. "She meant something by it."

"Thanks," was all Mather said. "Now these enlargements, Mr. Pease. You meant what you said?"

"Yes, yes," answered Pease impatiently, and closed his hand on the other's shoulder. "And I mean this: Take Miss Blanchard's advice. Good day." He went to the door, and turned. "Ellis was up there this afternoon."

On his way home he did little thinking, but he felt. He had touched people's lives in a new way; he felt the breath of Mather's romance, and warmed at the trust which Beth reposed in him. Odd quivers ran through him, strange little impulses toward his kind, calling him to a youth which his life had earlier denied him. It was not possible for him to understand their meaning, but they were pleasurable.

In like manner Mather gave that evening to musings concerning persons rather than things. To follow his new line of conduct with Judith, or (now that Ellis had appeared again) to turn once more and earnestly pursue her – which? Clearly he saw that Judith would go her own way, would play with fire, would even burn her fingers for all that he could do. He must wait, be her friend, and having once said his say, must never again bother her with his warnings.

And Ellis, that evening, also mused upon the Blanchards, though his thoughts were very definite. On leaving the house he had borrowed the newspaper; the Colonel had asked him to post some letters in the city. When in the train, Ellis turned the newspaper to the stock-market reports and studied the Colonel's pencillings. Blanchard had underlined the names of certain stocks usually considered skittish rather than safe, and had made multiplications in the margin. When Ellis came to post the letters, very deliberately he read the addresses. Some were meaningless to him, but one bore the address of a broker whose reputation was quite as uncertain as the value of the stocks he chiefly dealt in. Ellis did not cast off thought until he reached his house.

Then he looked up at the Gothic building and scanned its various projections. "Ornate?" he murmured. "Well, wait till the inside is properly beautified!"

He spoke lightly, but when he entered the house his feeling changed. The great hall was dim and shadowy; seldom aired, it seemed cold. In front of him wound the huge staircase; to left and right were dusky apartments which echoed his steps. Since he first built the place it had satisfied him, but fresh from the influence of Judith, suddenly he saw the house as it was. Empty, gloomy, it was but a vast artificial cave, without life or warmth. For the second time a wistfulness, misunderstood, almost bewildering, came over him, and he wondered if anybody – somebody! – would ever brighten the house for him, and make it a home.

CHAPTER X

Drawn Both Ways

Those youthful promptings which so stirred Pease, far beyond his own comprehension, kept working in him through the summer weeks. The joy of living, which he supposed he had mastered, appeared to him an altered thing, so that its object no longer reposed on shelves in his study, but moved serenely in a cottage above the harbour at Chebasset. Pease accepted the change with the innocence which was particularly his, and followed his new chase with but slight idea that he was varying from his usual course. For being a man of social preciseness, he was given to making calls, and made no distinction between the kind to which he was habituated, the so-named duty call, and the new visit which was made for pleasure. Mather wondered, after a few unusual appearances of Pease at the mill, if the banker was overseeing his work; but as on each occasion Pease went farther up the hill Mather put the visits down to the right cause.

As most people are gifted with that kind of insight which the manager thus exercised, others as well came to note Pease's actions, and their cause, before the banker did himself. Miss Cynthia, who spent summer as well as winter in the city (for since her poor people could not get away, neither would she), came early to know what seed she had planted in her cousin's breast. For he was open as the day, and without thought of concealment told her where he was going or where he had been. Miss Cynthia set her mouth at each mention of Chebasset, but as they came oftener she began to consider if she should not have to give up her chamber, the best in the house, and take the one in the rear. Or perhaps it might be best to live elsewhere altogether. But looking at her cousin one day, all his goodness seemed lost in his homeliness and lack of charm. So she smiled the grim smile of pity, and set about making him more comfortable at home than ever.

Mather also had occasion to smile thus, when one day he allowed Beth Blanchard's word of advice to move him at last. He had seen Ellis more than once in Chebasset, and felt uneasy; Pease looked in one afternoon and asked him to go up to the Blanchards'. As usual, Mather refused, but after an hour he started up the hill, to be passed by Pease coming down. They were on different ways, for Mather had just left the high road for a path which would save distance, when looking back he saw Pease going down the hill. Pease wore a flower which he had not had before; he was smiling cheerfully, with a retrospective air, and Mather smiled also, grimly as Miss Cynthia had done, at the thought of the late plant of love springing in the barren soil of middle-age.

He went on to the Blanchards' house; Judith was not there. But Beth welcomed him and sat him down, gave him tea, and talked to him as he sat half-silent.

"People do not see much of you nowadays," she said with a tone of reproach. "You are much too busy, George."

"Oh, well – !" he shrugged inattentively, and Beth might interpret as she pleased. She looked at him as he sat, with his chair against the piazza railing, his arm across it, and his face turned to look out upon the bay. He was neither gloomy nor resigned, but bore the look of a strong man waiting. Time was not of account to him.

"You do not worry much," she said.

"Not I," he answered, but he turned to her. "Is there anything to worry about, little Beth?"

"Sometimes I think so," she replied. "I think that now you'd better stay to dinner."

"Thank you," he said, looking at her more carefully. "I suppose you know best," he added.

There had never been anything between these two except undefined good-feeling, expressed only by the inattentive conversation of those who have often met in the same house with different interests. There had existed, besides, that consciousness of a difference in age which makes a few years seem almost a generation, so that with boys and girls "sets" are separated by a bar of habit which prevents an older from seeing anything in a younger, even after the passage of years has brought them both to maturity. Thus, to Mather, Beth had always been a little girl, until just now her quiet, assured carriage, as she interfered in his affairs, opened his eyes. For she answered his last remark with confidence.

"Yes, I know best." And he believed her.

"Talk to me," he said, turning still more toward her. "I have seen no one for a long time. Who is doing? What is doing?" So Beth talked to him.

This was her mission in life – to talk people into cheerfulness and bring them nearer the rest of the world. She enjoyed it always, but it was especially pleasant to her as she spoke with Mather. For he was real, he was big, he was not baulked by conditions which might have been too much for him. Estrangement from Judith was not, she was glad to see, making him melancholy. He seemed in good physical condition; though he had not gone much with people of late, she had seen him from her window, early in the morning, sailing on the bay before he went to his work. It was not Judith alone, therefore, but work also, that kept him from going about. All this she felt, or guessed, as she told him of little matters.

"It is too bad," she said after a while. "You should have a mother, or a sister, to tell you all this."

"That Esther Fenno is away yachting, or that John Watson is attentive to Mary Carr?" He laughed. "But, Beth, you shall be my sister of mercy, and I will come here oftener."

"Come, then," she said. "Some day there will be better or more important items, and you may be glad of the bargain. Or if you happen to call on Judith when Mr. Ellis does, you may talk with me."

"Couldn't he do that?" He maintained the appearance of jesting, but she said seriously:

"I don't like him."

Then he put out his hand to her; she took it, and Judith came upon them thus.

A pang shot through him as he rose and greeted her; she was quiet in her manner – his coming could not move her in the least. He wished he might feel that there had been a flash of inquiry in her first glance at him and Beth, but her face had not really changed. She welcomed him kindly enough. "He is going to stay to dinner," said Beth. Judith answered with a conventional "Good!" Then the Colonel appeared; he had brought the mail.

"A letter for you, Judith," he said. "A thick package, rather."

Thoughtlessly, she opened it. Ellis had promised to send her his house-plans, and for the purpose had had a set made, much reduced in size. He had mailed them to her himself; but for carelessness she would have recognised his hand. The Colonel, always inquisitive, craned his neck as Judith drew the plans from the envelope.

"Plans!" he exclaimed. "Are you going into building, Judith?"

She looked at the upper plan, carelessly as before, though the red came into her cheek. Then she put them all back into the paper. "No, I'm not going to build," she said.

"This reminds me," said the Colonel. "They say Ellis has bought the Welton place."

"Indeed!" cried Beth. Her glance sought Mather's; his responded, cynically humorous. That he should be there when the news was given! But he turned to the Colonel.

"That must be very recent, sir."

"It may not be so," replied he, "but Kingston is hopping for fury, and Dent for fright, because they'll be his neighbours. Judith, do you happen to know if the news is true?"

In spite of herself, she looked at the floor. "Yes, it is true."

"Aha!" cried the Colonel. "Then those plans – " She looked up now, and flashed him into silence.

"I think," said Judith, "that I will go and dress for dinner." She went, and Beth went also, casting a glance of sympathy at Mather.

"Will you come in?" asked the Colonel nervously of his guest.

"I'll stay here, thank you. Don't let me keep you, sir."

"Thanks. I think I will fix up."

Mather smiled scornfully at the relief the Colonel showed. Alone, he leaned against a pillar and looked out over the bay. So this was what he had come to learn! And being here, he must stay and put the matter through.

It was a miserable meal. Judith was furious with her father; Beth was appalled at the length to which matters appeared to have gone. Mather and the Colonel struggled manfully, and spoke of matters in the business world. The Colonel inclined toward the subject of stocks.

"Consolidated," he suggested. "Don't you think it a good investment?"

"I am leaving silver alone," responded Mather. "I consider all those stocks very unsafe just now, sir."

So with that radical difference of opinion between them, which really concerned the Colonel more than he would show, conversation languished even between the gentlemen. Out upon the piazza, after dinner, matters went more smoothly, but Mather concluded that it was wiser to "eat and run" than to stay where constraint hung in the air like a fog. So, pleading the habit of early sleep, he took his leave.

Then Judith, fearing that he had been suffering, roused herself. "I will go with you to the gate," she said, as he offered his hand for good-by. They left the piazza together, but Beth, catching his eye to signal satisfaction, saw him shake his head. Judith's condescension could no longer thrill him. Beth felt that his attitude, for one who was so concerned, was strangely like that of an observer.

And Judith felt it, too. He had passed through the stage of eager homage, a favour could no longer enrapture him; she wondered if he had even noticed the incident of the house-plans – whether, after all, he had been hurt, so steadily he had borne himself. When they were alone together, walking toward the gate, he turned to her a gaze almost quizzical.

"Have you forgiven me my chimney, Judith?"

Thus he drew a smile from her; then, for the first time, he spoke of his mill, but left her no burden of answering. The walk was short, and he filled it with tales of his men, their weaknesses, their characteristics, the troubles which some of them had confided to him. But he said nothing of his difficulties or of his growing success, though as he talked she thought of them.

"Does it not please you," she asked, "that people speak well of what you are doing?"

"Do they?" was all he answered. "By the way – "

"And the work of organisation?" she asked him.

"It was fun," he said, "and not difficult at all."

"I can't believe you!" she cried.

"Nothing, nothing!" he answered.

"And is all smooth sailing now?"

"One of the men is getting up a strike," he answered. "That is all."

"A strike!" she exclaimed.

"So the older men tell me. A little one."

"How can you take it so easily?" she asked.

He smiled. "I think I can meet it. Well, here we are at the gate. Thank you for coming, Judith. Good-by." He started away briskly, then turned back. She was looking at him seriously.

"Here is Jim Wayne coming up the road," he said. "He comes to see Beth?"

"Yes."

"And what of my employer?"

"Poor Mr. Pease!"

"Mr. Pease," repeated Mather. "There it all is in a nutshell. Jim is Jim, twenty-three. Pease is Mr. Pease, forty-five. The young to the young, as Salvation Yeo said. Poor Pease! Good-night again, Judith."

And this time he was off for good, not turning again. Judith returned thoughtfully to the house. He had interested her – turned her back a little toward her real self, her old self. No small part of the effect he had made was caused by his cheerful self-command. Did he love her still? She thought of what he had done for Chebasset. He was very much of a man.

On the way down the hill Mather passed Wayne. This was that broker's clerk who always nodded to Ellis so carelessly, whose mother Ellis had bought out, and whose name the promoter envied. Handsome, thought Mather as they greeted; on second thought he added, a bit weak. But Mrs. Harmon, looking from her garden as they passed on the road below, thought that Wayne was handsome without qualification. Thus those two, both of whom were to influence Wayne's fate, thought of him as he went on to see Beth. Mrs. Harmon followed him with her eyes until he entered the Blanchards' gate; with her thoughts, still longer. Mather forgot him in grieving for Pease, the poor dreamer who would wake too late.

"Beth," asked Judith, returning to the house, "where was it we read about Salvation Yeo?"

"In Kingsley's 'Westward Ho,'" answered Beth. After Wayne had come and gone, she noticed that Judith was reading the book.

"Do you like it?" asked Beth.

"Romance – love," said Judith. "It seems unnatural." She laid the book aside. "A pleasant evening, Beth?"

"Very," Beth answered.

"And Mr. Pease?" asked Judith.

She saw with surprise that Beth's eyes filled with tears. "What can I do?" asked the younger sister; but expecting no answer, she went away.

Judith took up her book again, yet held it without opening it. Romance and love had come to Beth; why not to herself? Judith had had suitors; and true love might win her yet. Was it to be found? Such lasting love, she meant, as it was certain Pease would give. No wonder Beth grieved; any woman's heart would be touched by such devotion. Yet as Judith thought of her old suitors she could name half a dozen now married, having forgotten their griefs. But it was Mather who was most in her mind, who ever since his rejection had been so strangely independent, and this evening most of all. He had shown no surprise, no dismay, at the sight of Ellis's house-plans. At the thought Judith started up with pique, resentment – it would have been hard to define her feeling at the thought that Mather needed no one to sorrow for him.