for a moment, as he stood in the doorway, watching her, he had a vision. he saw her in the music-room at oversite, her head outlined against the stained-glass window that he had helped rachel choose, while philip, restless, radiant, pervasive philip, hung over the piano, turning her music, or looking at her with those adoring eyes of his. he shook his head impatiently, the picture vanished, and he went forward to the piano.
leslie looked up with a smile, and though her fingers kept on playing, that appeared to offer no bar to their owner's conversing.
"it was very wise and kind of you to get father to talking about the indians," she said, looking at him with grateful eyes. "it took his mind from these worrying affairs. he has a lot of enthusiasm for the indians and the old times in the woods."
"that's the way we get credit we don't deserve, and miss praise that belongs to us," said burton. "as de bergerac said, 'i have done better since.' but i drew your father out for purely selfish reasons. i wanted information. i am going up to the reservation myself to-morrow to make a few inquiries."
"what if something happens while you are away?" she said, in evident alarm.
"it isn't likely to, while your brother is in jail."
she looked so dismayed and reproachful that he hastened to make his meaning clearer. "oh, merely because this evil genius of his will be too shrewd to try anything on while your brother is so evidently and publicly out of the reckoning. i think you are quite safe for the immediate present. but at the same time i hope you will be very watchful, and if anything happens that is out of the ordinary, be sure to make a note of it, and let me know when i come back."
"what sort of things?" she asked, with wide eyes.
"if you see any one hanging about the house, or talking to mrs. bussey,--"
"goodness! she talks to everybody!"
"go on playing," said burton softly. as she took up the thread of the melody with obedient fingers, though wondering eyes, he sauntered across the room and then suddenly turned into the hall as he passed the open doorway.
"oh, mrs. bussey! is that you?" he asked. "did you want something?"
there was a sound of pattering feet, as the housekeeper hurried nervously away.
"she lacks invention," said burton, as he came back to the piano. "it would have been so easy for her to pretend that she came to see if you wanted another lamp, or something of that sort."
"she is stupid past belief," said leslie, in manifest annoyance.
"does her habit of eavesdropping suggest nothing to you but idle curiosity?" burton could not refrain from asking.
she looked startled. "no. you don't mean--"
"oh, i am of an uncharitable nature, and i am ready to see something sinister in anything and everything. i don't want to sow seeds of distrust in your mind, but i'm rather anxious to overlook no possible agency."
"i can't believe it is anything more than vulgar curiosity," said leslie, after a thoughtful pause. "you know people of that sort have so little to occupy their minds that they become inordinately curious about the personal doings and sayings of the people they live among. i don't suppose a delivery wagon goes by in the street that mrs. bussey does not know about it, and speculate as to where it is going and what it is going to deliver at whose house. if she were not so curious about everything, i might feel that this was a more serious matter. but--she is so inefficient! i can't imagine her a mysterious conspirator!"
"well, let's forget her. won't you play some more for me?"
"i'd rather talk," she said. "there are some things i want to ask you."
"that pleases me still better."
"i want you to tell me about philip's mother."
"very well," he said, but the eagerness had faded out of his voice. "what in particular?"
"you are a great friend of hers, are you not?"
"yes,--an old friend."
"it was to please her, rather than philip, that you came here?"
"yes," he said. he knew that something more than this tame acquiescence was really due from him, but he felt suddenly as barren of invention as ever mrs. bussey could have been.
leslie touched the keys of the piano softly and absent-mindedly as she asked her next question. "what does she look like? is she very beautiful?"
"i have always thought so," said burton. "she is a little woman, compared with you,--tiny, but very imperious and queenly. when she tells me to do a thing, i go and do it, without any objection."
"what would happen if you didn't?"
burton laughed. "goodness knows! i never tried it."
"is she dark?"
"no, very fair."
"then she probably looks younger than she is. how young does she look?"
"oh,--as though she had been caught in an eddy somewhere between twenty-five and thirty!"
"and would stay there. i see. and she dresses exquisitely, doesn't she?"
"that is exactly the word for it."
"is she contemptuous of those who do not dress exquisitely? or merely tolerant?"
burton felt rather uncomfortable under these probing questions, but he understood something of the girl's mood, and he could not resent the trace of defiance that he caught under rather than in her words. he therefore answered gently:
"i think that if she likes a person, she likes him whole-heartedly, and without regard to the accidental attributes. she will like you. she will love you."
"what makes you think so?" she asked, with her searching eyes steadily upon him.
"why,--because philip does, for one thing."
"but if it were not for that,--am i the sort of girl that she would be apt to like?"
"what sort of a girl are you?" he asked, with a smile. he knew that her last question held dangerous depths into which he did not care to look at that instant. rachel was so--well, narrow in her social sympathies!
"never mind that," said the girl, and he wondered uneasily whether she thought her last question had been sufficiently answered. "tell me something about their place,--oversite. that is the name of their estate at putney?"
"yes, and it is quite as important a place as the town that honors itself by existing alongside the estate. it goes back to the colonial days. the overmans were tories during the revolution, but they managed somehow to hold or to recover their estate, and though the family has consented to live under a republic, it has always been conscious of the graciousness of its attitude. of course rachel--mrs. overman--is an overman by marriage only. she comes from a southern family, herself, and she has the southern woman's beautiful voice and sweet graciousness. and philip you know. there is nothing priggish about him."
she was silent a moment, considering.
"is he fond of the place,--oversite? would he wish to live there?"
"oh, unquestionably. it would be difficult to imagine an overman in any other setting."
"does mrs. overman have the same feeling about it?"
"she is devoted to it. she is more of a royalist than the king."
the broken music that was dropping unconsciously from leslie's fingers crashed into a sudden stormy volume of sound that made burton feel as nervous as though a peal of thunder had suddenly shot across the summer night. it filled the room with inharmonious noise for a few minutes. then leslie stopped abruptly and whirled about on her piano stool. there was a threatening storm in her cloudy eyes.
"you understood clearly, didn't you, that my--my agreement to consider philip's proposal further was conditioned upon the absolute, complete and unequivocal clearing of my family's name from the reflections that have been cast upon it? under no other conditions would i for a moment consider the possibility of entering such a family."
"i understood perfectly," said burton gravely. "believe me, i shall guard your dignity quite as jealously as you would yourself."
she dropped her eyes swiftly, but not soon enough to hide the rush of tears that suddenly brimmed them at his words. but she was staunch, and after a moment she said gaily, though without lifting her eyelids:
"you asked a while ago what sort of a girl i am. i fancy i am a sort that mrs. overman has never met,--a girl who has known humiliation, poverty, struggle, and yet who is unreasonably and uncomfortably proud. what have i to commend me to her? my accomplishments are commonplace,--perhaps not even passable in her eyes. and i have nothing else, except a knowledge of life which she would deprecate as something most undesirable,--a knowledge that has never come near her. i am just one of the great average!"
she had begun gaily, but she ended bitterly. burton could not help realizing, as he watched her eyes, misty with deep feeling, and her flushed face, what an exceptional woman she would be in any assembly by the one gift of beauty, and yet he felt that she was one of the few women who would regard a reference to her beauty as a slur rather than a compliment. so he only answered, as lightly as possible:
"you are--yourself! and that is not an average, by any means. and as for the knowledge of life that you are inclined to treat so slightingly, any real knowledge is one of the precious things of earth, and what is more to be desired than true understanding of the most important thing the planet holds,--life? you surely know in your heart that you would not give up what you know for the most graceful ignorance that ever bloomed in some sheltered corner of a drawing-room! when your epitaph comes to be written, would you rather have it read. 'here lies leslie, beloved wife, et cetera, et cetera, whose horizon was bounded by the painted windows of her husband's colonial mansion, and who could make the most exquisite courtesy of any in her set'; or, 'she knew the real things of real life. she faced the troubles and the humiliations that come to the men and women who are building up the world of to-morrow out of today, and she helped to build courage and loyalty and love and good cheer into the work!'"
leslie listened with held breath, then suddenly she dropped her folded arms upon the jangled keys and hid her face upon them. a tremor ran all through her slender body. burton bit his lip as he looked at her. he wanted to put his hand out and touch her bowed head, to tell her how wonderful he thought her, to comfort her in some way. the impulse was an amazing one. it set every pulse in his body tingling. it astonished him so that he walked slowly away toward the window, wondering what had come over him, and how he was going to keep her from guessing that he was liable to attacks of losing his senses. but in a moment she lifted her head, with a long breath.
"don't think me silly. i--believe i am too tired to be quite myself."
"we are all a little overwrought," said burton, with great relief. that was probably what the trouble was!
"you have been so much more than kind that there is nothing for me to say about it," she added, rising. "i can't really imagine what i should have done if all this trouble had developed before you came. you have somehow made it seem possible to go through with it."
"of course we will go through with it," he answered cheerily. "a year from now, you and philip will be laughing at it." he said the words deliberately, to see how they sounded. they seemed to sound quite simple and natural.
"a year is a long way to guess," she said lightly. "you are going away to-morrow? then i will say goodbye now."
"let it be good night only," he said, and held out his hand steadily.
she touched it so carelessly with her own that the act seemed almost unconscious.
"good night," she repeated. and then, as he was turning away, she added quickly, "how long has mrs. overman been a widow?"
"nearly a year," he answered.
"good night," she said again, as though forgetful that she had already said it twice. "i think i am a little tired. but--i'll be all right to-morrow." she lifted her head with that gallant air of hers, and he turned away. it required something of a conscious effort.
he got away quickly, but he did not return at once to his hotel. he wanted to be by himself,--though there was nothing that he wanted to say to himself. he simply wanted to walk and walk under the spreading trees that lined the avenues of the town and--avoid all thinking. the moonlight flickered down through the branches very beautifully. he did not remember that he had ever noticed before how very beautiful that effect was. and yet there was something sad in it. he had not noticed that before, either. at least, not since he was in college, and spent good time that should have been otherwise occupied in writing bad poetry to rachel. yes, decidedly there was something saddening about the effect of the moonlight.
