Money Magic: A Novel

CHAPTER IX

BERTHA MEETS BEN FORDYCE

For all her impassivity, Bertha was really elated by this invitation, for she liked Congdon, and had a very high opinion of his powers. She experienced no special dread of the dinner, for it appeared to her at the moment to be a simple sitting down to eat with some friendly people. She was not in awe of Mrs. Congdon, however much she might admire her husband's skill, and she knew their home. It was a small house on a side street, and did not compare for a moment with her own establishment, in which she had begun to take a settled pride.

As they rode away she was mentally casting up in her mind a choice of clothes, when Haney remarked: "Bertie, I don't believe I'll go to that dinner."

"Why not?"

"Well, I'm not as handy with a cold deck as I used to be, and I don't think I ought to put me lame foot into another man's lap."

"You're all right, Captain, and, besides, I'll be close by to help out in case you run up against a hard knock in the steak. Course you'll go – I want you to get out and see the people. Why, you haven't taken a meal out of the house since we moved, except that one at the Casino. You need more doin'."

Haney was in a dejected mood. "So do you. I'm a heavy handicap to you, Bertie, sure I am. As I see ye settin' there bloomin' as a rose and feel me own age a-creepin' on me, I know I should be takin' me congé out of self-respect – just to give you open road."

"Stop that!" she warningly cried. "Hello, there's Ed! He seems in a rush. Wonder what's eating him?"

Winchell, dressed in a new suit of clothes, darted from the sidewalk to the carriage, his face shining. "Say, folks, I'm called East. Old man died yesterday, and I've got to go home." He was breathing hard with excitement.

"Get in and tell us about it," commanded Bertha.

He climbed up beside the driver, and turned on his seat to continue. "Yes, I've got to go; and, say, the old man was well off. I don't do no more barberin', I tell you that. I'm goin' to study law. I'm comin' back here just as soon as things are settled up. I've been talking with a fellow here – Lawyer Hansall; he says he'll take me in and give me a chance. No more barberin' for me, you hear me!"

"'Tis a poor business, but a necessary," remarked Haney.

Bertha was sympathetic. "I'm glad you're goin' to get a raise. Of course, I'm sorry about your father."

"I understand – so am I. But he's gone, and it's up to me to think of myself. I know you always despised my trade."

"No, I didn't. Men have to be shaved and clipped. It's like dish-washin', somebody has to do it. We can't all sit in the parlor."

Winchell acknowledged the force of this. "Well, I always felt sneakin' about it, I'll admit, but that was because I was raised a farmer, and barbers were always cheap skates with us. We didn't use 'em much, in fact. Well, it's all up now, and when I come back I want you to forget I ever cut hair. A third of the old farm is mine, and that will pay my board while I study."

Neither Haney nor his young wife was surprised by this movement on his part any more than he was surprised at their rise to wealth and luxury; both were in accordance with the American tradition. But as they rode down the street certain scornful Easterners (schooled in European conventions) smiled to see the wife of an Irish millionaire gambler in earnest conversation with a barber.

Mrs. Crego, driving down-town with Mrs. Congdon, stared in astonishment, then turned to Lee. "And you ask me to meet such a woman at dinner!" she exclaimed, and her tone expressed a kind of bewilderment.

Lee laughed. "You can't fail me now. Don't be hasty. Trust in Frank."

"I'd hate to have my dinner partners selected by Frank Congdon. I draw the line at barbers."

"You're a snob, Helen. If you were really as narrow as you sound I'd cut you dead! Furthermore, the barber isn't invited."

"I can't understand such people."

"I can. She don't know any better. You impute a low motive where there is nothing worse than ignorance. As Frank says, the girl is a perfectly natural outgrowth of a little town. I hope our dinner won't spoil her."

Mrs. Congdon had put the dinner-hour early, and when the Haneys drove up in their glittering new carriage, drawn by two splendid black horses, she too had a moment of bewilderment, but her sense of humor prevailed. "Frank," she said, "you can't patronize a turnout like that – not in my presence."

"To-night art's name is mud," he replied, with conviction, and hastened down the steps to help Haney up.

The gambler waved his proffered arm aside. "I'm not so bad as all that," said he. "I let me little Corporal help me – sometimes for love of it, not because I nade it."

He was still gaunt and pale, but his eyes were of unconquerable fire, and the lift of his head from the shoulders was still leopard-like. He was dressed in a black frock-coat, with a cream-colored vest and gray trousers, and looked very well indeed – quite irreproachable.

Bertha was clad in black also – a close-fitting, high-necked gown which made her fair skin shine like fire-flushed ivory, and her big serious eyes and vivid lips completed the charm of her singular beauty. Her bosom had lost some of its girlish flatness, but the lines of her hips and thighs still resembled those of a boy, and the pose of her head was like that of an athlete.

"Won't you come in and take off your hat?" asked Mrs. Congdon. And she followed without reply, leaving the two men on the porch.

Without appearing to do so she saw everything in the house, which was hardly more than an artistic camp, so far as the first floor was concerned. Navajo rugs were on the floor, Moqui plaques starred the walls, and Acoma ollas perched upon book-shelves of thick plank. The chairs were rude, rough, and bolted at the joints. The room made a pleasant impression on Bertha, though she could not have told why. The ceiling was dark, the walls green, the woodwork stained pine, and yet it had charm.

Mrs. Congdon explained meanwhile that Frank had made the big centre-table of plank, and the book-shelves as well. "He likes to tinker at such things," she said. "Whenever he gets blue or cross I set him to shifting the dresser or making a book-shelf, and he cheers up like mad. He's a regular kid anyway – always doing the things he ought not to do."

In this way she tried to put her guest at her ease, while Bertha sat looking at her in an absent-minded way, apparently neither frightened nor embarrassed – on the contrary, she seemed to be thinking of something else. At last, to force a reply, Mrs. Congdon asked: "How do you like my husband's portrait of Mr. Haney?"

"I don't know," she slowly replied. "It looks like him, and then again it don't. I guess I'm not up to hand paintin's. Enlarged photographs are about my size."

"You're disappointed, then?"

"Well, yes, I don't know but I am. I didn't think it was going to look just that way. Mr. Congdon says blue shadows are under anybody's ears in the light, but I can't see 'em on the Captain, and I do see 'em in the picture; that's what gets me twisted. When I look at the picture I can't see nothin' else."

Her hostess laughed. "I know just how you feel, but that's the insolence of the painter – he puts on canvas what he sees, not what his patron sees. The more money you pay for a portrait the more insolent the artist."

At this moment Mrs. Crego came in, and (as she said afterwards) was presented to the gambler's wife "as though I were a nobody and she a visiting countess." Bertha rose, offered her hand, like a boy, in silence; she stood very straight, with very cold and unmistakably suspicious face. And Alice Heath, who entered with Mrs. Crego, shared this chill reception.

Bertha, in truth, instantly and cordially hated Mrs. Crego; but she pitied the younger woman, in whom she detected another fugitive fighting a losing battle with disease. Miss Heath was very fair and very frail, with burning deep-blue eyes and a lovely mouth. She greeted Bertha with such sincere pleasure that the girl inclined to her instantly, and they went out on the porch together. Alice put her hand on Bertha's arm, saying: "I've wanted to meet you, Mr. Congdon has told us so much of you. Your life seems very romantic to me."

The men all rose to meet Mrs. Congdon, and before Bertha had time to recover from the effect of the girl's words she found herself confronted by Ben Fordyce, who looked like a college boy, athletic and smiling. He was tall and broad-chested, with a round blond face and yellow hair. His manner was frank, and his voice deep. His hand, broad and strong, was hardened by the tennis-racket and calloused by the golf-stick, and somehow its leathery clasp pleased the girl. The roughness of his palm made him less alien than either Congdon or Crego.

They went out to dinner immediately, and as she walked beside Mart she felt the young athlete's eyes resting upon her face, and the knowledge of this troubled her unaccountably. Mrs. Congdon seated him opposite her at the table, and he continued to stare at her with the frankest curiosity. She returned his gaze at last with a certain defiance, but found no offence in his eyes, which were round as his face, and of a sincere, steady gray. He was smooth-shaven, and his blond hair was rather short. All these peculiarities appeared one by one in the intervals between her attentions to Mart and her study of the furnishings of the table, which was decorated with candles and flowers in a way quite new to her.

Fordyce was as fine as he looked. Nothing equivocal was in "that magnificent boy," as his friends called him, and his interest in little Mrs. Haney was that of the Easterner who, having been told that strange things take place in the West, is disappointed if they do not happen under his nose. He had heard much of the Haneys from Congdon, and had been especially impressed with the story of Bertha's midnight ride to the bedside of the dying gambler. The wedding in the saloon, her devotion to the wounded man, their descent upon the Springs, and their domestication in a stone palace – all appealed to his imagination. Such things could not happen in Chester; they were of the mountain West, and most satisfying to his taste.

Bertha, on her part, had to admit that the people at the table were most kindly, even considerate. They made her husband the centre of interest, and passed politely over all his disastrous attempts to use his left hand. There were no awkward pauses, for, excepting one or two slips of tongue, Haney rose to the occasion. He was big enough and self-contained enough not to apologize for what he had been or what he was, and under Congdon's skilful guidance told of his experiences as amateur miner and gambler, growing humorous as the wine mellowed and lightened his reminiscences. He felt the sympathy of his audience. All listened delightedly with no accusation in their eyes – except in the case of Mrs. Crego, who still breathed, so it seemed to Bertha, a certain contempt and inner repugnance.

Young Fordyce glowed with delight in these tales, reading beneath the terse lines of Haney's slang something epic, detecting a perfect willingness to take any chance. The fact that his bravery led to nothing conventionally noble or moral did not detract from the inherent interest of the tale; on the contrary, the young fellow, being of unusual imaginative reach and freedom, took pleasure in the thought that a man would risk his life again and again merely for the excitement of it. Occasionally he glanced at Judge Crego, to find him looking upon Haney with thoughtful glance. It was a little like listening to a prisoner's confession of guilt (as he afterwards said), but to him, as to Congdon, it was a most interesting monologue.

It added enormously to the romance, so far as Ben Fordyce was concerned, to look across the table at the grave, watchful face of the girl who unfolded her husband's napkin or cut up his roast with deft hand – always careful not to interrupt his talk.

As he thought of the quiet Quaker neighborhood from which he came, and contrasted these singular and powerfully defined personalities with the "men of weight" and the demure maidens of his acquaintance, Ben's blood tingled with a sense of the bigness and strangeness of the greater America. The West was no longer a nation; it was a world. To be in it at last was a delight as well as an education.

Bertha, on her part, felt no strangeness in her position. Her marriage was a logical outcome of her life and surroundings. The incomprehensible lay in the shining women about her. Their ideas of life, their comment, puzzled her. Their clothes were of a kind which her own money could buy, but their manners, their grace of speech, their gestures, came of something besides money. Mrs. Crego was especially formidable, and made her feel the inadequacy of the black gown which she had thought very fine when she selected it, ready made, in a Denver store. She did not know that Mrs. Crego had dressed "very simply," at the suggestion of her hostess; but she did feel a certain condescension of manner, even in Alice, and was glad the Captain absorbed so much of the table-talk.

Her time of trial came when the ladies rose and, at Mrs. Congdon's suggestion, returned to the porch, leaving the men to finish their cigars. Not one of Ben's little courtesies towards the women escaped her. His acquiescence, Congdon's tone of exaggerated respect, Crego's compliments, were all new to her, and in a certain sense she resented them. She doubted their sincerity a little, notwithstanding their grateful charm.

Alice took her to herself and this was a great relief; for she feared Mrs. Crego's sharp tongue, and was not entirely sure of her hostess.

Laying a slim hand on her arm, the Eastern girl began: "I am fascinated by you, Mrs. Haney. You have had such an interesting life, and you have such an opportunity for doing good."

Bertha looked at her in blank surprise. "What do you mean?"

"With your great wealth you can accomplish so much. Had you thought of that?"

"No, I hadn't." The answer was blunt. "I've been so busy getting settled and looking after the Captain, I haven't had time to think of anything else."

"Oh, of course; but by and by you'll begin to look about you for things to help – I mean hospitals and charities, and all that. The only time when I envy great wealth is when I see some wrong which money can right. Mr. Fordyce is a lawyer, but not a very famous one – he's only twenty-eight; and while we are likely to have all we really need, we can't begin to do what we'd like to do for others. I suppose Mrs. Congdon has told you of us?"

"Where do you live?"

"We live in Chester, but Mr. Fordyce has an office in Philadelphia. We have been engaged a long time, but I couldn't think of marrying while I was so ill. I'm afraid I stayed so long that not even this climate can help me."

This was indeed Bertha's conviction, and her untactful silence said as much. Therefore, Alice hastened on to other more general topics. She was very sprightly, but Bertha maintained a determined silence through it all, quite unable to understand the girl's confidences.

When the men came out Alice took Haney to herself, and they seemed to enjoy each other's society very keenly; indeed, their mutual absorption became so complete that Ben remarked upon it to Bertha. "Miss Heath has been crazy to meet your husband, Mrs. Haney. His adventurous life appeals to her, as to me, very deeply. We don't mean to be offensive, but to us you seem typical of the West."

What he said at this time made less impression on her than the way in which he spoke. The light of an electric street-lamp fell upon his face, revealing its charming lines. On his fine hand a ring gleamed. Autumn insects were singing sleepily in the grass and from the trees. The laughter of girls came from the dusk of neighboring lawns, and over all descended the magical light of a harvest moon, flecking the surface of the little garden with shadows almost as definite as those cast by the flaming white globes of the street-lamps. It is on such nights that the heart of youth expands with longing and sadness.

Crego and Congdon fell into hot argument (their usual method of conversation), leaving the young people to themselves, and, Ben with intent to provoke the grave little wife to laughter, told a funny story which reflected on Congdon's improvidence.

Bertha was really grateful, for she felt herself at a great disadvantage among these fluent and interesting folk, who talked like the characters in novels. Their jests, their comment, meant little to her; but their gestures, their graceful attitudes, their courtesies to each other, meant much. They were something more than polite; they were considerate in a way which showed their thoughtfulness to be deeply grounded in habitual action. They used slang, but they used it as a garnish, not as a habit of speech. Expressions which she had read in books, but had never before heard spoken, flowed from their lips. Their sentences were built up for effect; in Crego's case this was more or less expected, but the phrases of Fordyce and Congdon were still more disconcerting. The art of their stories was a revelation of the neatness and precision of cultivated speech.

When Mrs. Congdon led the way back into the house Ben stepped to Alice's side, saying, in a low tone: "I hope you haven't taken a chill. I beg your pardon, dearest; I should have watched you more closely."

Once within-doors Mrs. Congdon insisted on Ben's singing, which he did with smiling readiness, expressing, however, a profound ignorance of music. "I never take my songs as seriously as my friends seem to do," he explained to Bertha. "Music with me is a gift rather than an acquirement."

His voice was indeed fresh and sweet, and he sang – as Bertha had never heard any one sing – certain love ballads, whose despairing cadences were made the more profoundly piercing, someway, by his happy boyish face and handsomely clothed and powerful figure. "'But I and my True Love Will Never Meet Again!'" seemed to be a fatalistic cry rather than a wail of sadness as it came from his lips, but its melody sank deep into the girl's heart. She sat in rigid absorption, her eyes fixed upon the splendid young singer as a child looks upon some new and complicated toy. The grace with which he pronounced his words, the spread of his splendid chest, his easy pose, his self-depreciating shrugs enthralled her. Surely this was one of the young princes of the earth. His voice came to her freighted with the passion of ideal manhood.

He sang other songs – tunes not worthy of him – but ended with a ballad called "Fair Springtide," by MacDowell – a song so stern, so strange, so inexorably sad that the singer himself grew grave at last and rose to his best. Bertha was thrilled to the heart, saddened yet exalted by his voice. Her horizon – her emotional horizon – was of a sudden extended, and she caught glimpses of strange lands and dim peaks of fabled mountains; and when the singer declared himself at an end she sat benumbed while the others cheered – her hands folded on her lap. It seemed a profanation to applaud.

Haney gloomed in silence also, but not for the same reason. "I might have sung like that once," he thought, for he had been choir-boy in his ragamuffin youth, and had regained a fine tenor voice at eighteen. Age and neglect had ruined it, however. For ten years he had not attempted to sing a note. This youth made him dream of the past – as it caused Bertha to forecast the future.

While young Fordyce was putting away his music the Captain struggled to his feet, and Bertha, seeing a sudden paleness overspread his face, hastened to him.

"I reckon we'd better be going," she said to Mrs. Congdon, with blunt directness.

"It's early yet," replied her hostess.

Haney replied: "Not for cripples. Time was when I could sit all night in the 'lookout's chair,' but not now. Ten o'clock finds me wishful towards the bed." He said this with a faint smile. But the pathos of it, the truth of it, went to Bertha's heart, as it did to Mrs. Congdon's. Not merely was his body maimed, but his mind had correspondingly been weakened by that tearing charge of shot.

Something of his native Celtic gallantry came back to him as he said: "Sure, Mrs. Congdon, we've had a fine evening. You must come to see us soon."

Ben was addressing himself to Bertha. "Do you ever ride?"

"I used to – I don't now. You see, the Captain can't stand the jolt of a horse, so we mostly drive."

"I was about to say that Alice and I would be glad to have you join us. We ride every morning – a very gentle pace, I assure you, for I'm no rough-rider, and, besides, she sets the pace."

Bertha's face was pale and her eyes darkly luminous as she falteringly answered. "I'd like to – but – Perhaps I can some time. I'm much obliged," and then she gave him her hand in parting.

Mrs. Congdon was subtly moved by something in the girl's face as she said good-night, and to her invitation to come and see her cordially responded: "I certainly shall do so."

Little Mrs. Haney rode away from her first dinner party in the silence of one whose thoughts are too swift and too new to find speech. Her brain, sensitive as that of a babe, had caught and ineffaceably retained a million impressions which were to influence all her after life. The most vivid and most powerful of these impressions rose from the glowing beauty of young Fordyce, whose like she had never seen; but as background to him was the lovely room, the shining table, the grace and charm of the conversation, and, dominating all, the music – quite the best she had ever heard. The evening – so simple, almost commonplace, to her hostess – was of unspeakable significance to the uncultured girl.