Instead of the Thorn

One evening, a few days before their intended departure, Bertram King came to the house to see his employer. The heavy door stood open after the hot day, and with the familiarity of an intimate he stepped inside, intending to take his way to his old friend's den, but in the hall he met Linda: Linda, blooming, dressed in white, and altogether lovely to look upon. Over her arm she carried a silk motor coat and a chiffon veil.

The young man's face looked haggard by comparison with her fresh beauty, and he smiled unconscious admiration as he greeted the exhilaration of her breezy appearance.

"Father is out," she said, "and I'm so glad!"

"Why? Did you want to see me alone?"

"I can't see you at all. I'm going out."

"But he hasn't come yet."

"Who?"

"Your motoring friend. Why are you glad your father is out?"

"Because I think he sees enough of you in the daytime. Too much. Father's very tired. Can't you see it? I'm going to run away with him on Saturday."

"So I hear. – I'm somewhat seedy myself. I think I'll accept your urgent invitation to sit down until he comes."

"He isn't coming. He'll be out all the evening."

"I'm talking about your beau." There was an empty, nerveless quality to the visitor's voice which began to impress his companion.

"Let's set a spell, as they say in Maine," he added. "I've been thinking about Maine to-day."

Linda followed his lead into a reception room, where they sat down.

"A pretty good place to think about, when Lake Michigan sizzles," she replied; "but I've chosen Colorado. We're going to Estes Park."

"Yes, so Mr. Barry told me. I should like to go there too." King's tone was wistful.

"Perish the thought!" returned Linda devoutly. "I wouldn't have you within a thousand miles of father."

"That's what the doctor says," remarked King, his pensive gaze bent on the ribbon bordering of Linda's thin frock.

She started and leaned toward him. "The doctor!" she repeated. "Has Doctor Flagg been talking to you about father? Is he – is he worried about him?"

King shook his head. "I didn't go to Doctor Flagg. I went to Doctor Young. We've been getting some golf together lately, and he's a good sort."

"What's the matter with you, Bertram?" Linda sat up again, and her voice and manner cooled. "What do you want of a doctor?"

King shook his head. "Never in my life before: first offense. Everything seemed to go back on me all of a sudden. Sleeping, eating, and all the rest of it." The speaker scowled. "The mischief of it is, Young says I've got to get away for a month at least. He says – Oh, you don't care what he says."

Linda regarded the downcast one. He was speaking to her as to an equal, not, as usual, with tacit rebuke for some misdemeanor. This blunt reproach, if it were reproach, merely referred casually to her indifference.

"I care a great deal," she returned, with spirit. "I'm sure it will make my father very anxious to have you away at the same time he is."

King lifted his weary eyes to hers, eager and bright.

"I'm sure Doctor Flagg could give you a tonic or something to tide you over till we return in September," she went on. "You could go then."

Her companion leaned back in his chair with a long, inaudible breath. "We have arranged all that. Mr. Barry wants me to go."

The speaker did look rather cadaverous. Linda realized it now. It was a strange thing to have in any degree a sense of compassion for him: this masterful man on whom her father leaned, the man who alone in all the world had a hundred times without a word put her in the wrong, and whom as often she had fervently wished she might never see again. She had chafed against that chain of her father's reliance which bound herself as well. There was no escaping King, and when in her busy college life she thought of him at all, it was as a presumptuous creature who was continually making good his presumption; and what could be more exasperating than that?

King was a self-made man, one with few connections in Chicago, one of whom was Linda's voice teacher, Mrs. Porter. The girl never had exactly understood this relationship, but the fact that some of Mrs. Porter's blood ran in his veins constituted Bertram's only redeeming trait in the eyes of that lady's adorer. Now as she regarded him, staring with discontented eyes at the rug, a sense came over her for the first time that King was a lonely figure. It was all very well for a man in health to live at the University Club and have his mind and life entirely wrapped up in business; but when eating and sleeping became difficult and the brain was over-weary, the evenings might seem rather long to him.

"It serves a young man right," thought Linda, "when he will bind himself on the wheel of business and act as if there was not one thing in the world worth having but money!" Hadn't she seen to what such a course had brought her father? She spoke: —

"There's a lot of nonsense in all this kow-towing to business," she said. "Why do men make such slaves of themselves?"

"So their women can have a house like this, several gowns like yours, and a motor like the one you're going out in," responded King dully.

Linda's rosy lips curled. "Fred Whitcomb's motor is last year's model."

Her companion smiled.

"There, you see!" he remarked. "There's nothing for me to do but to keep on hustling so you can always have the latest."

Color flashed over Linda's face, but she shrugged carelessly.

"Oh, of course," she retorted, "everything is Eve's fault."

"Pretty sure to be," returned King, nodding slowly. "Cherchez la femme. Toujours cherchez la femme." He regarded her for a moment of silence, during which she was so uncomfortable that she raised both hands to arrange an imaginary hairpin at the back of her head.

"Where have you decided to go?" she asked at last, continually warmer under his eyes, and wondering if Fred Whitcomb had had a puncture.

"Why, I thought it would be great to spend long Colorado days in the saddle with you."

"Did you really?" Linda's little laugh had a most discouraging note.

"Yes, but Dr. Young jumped on that. He said I mustn't go within gunshot of your father."

Linda shook her head. "I should advise you not to myself. I'm a pretty good shot."

King looked up. "It would be great, though. Think of having you through with all this college foolery, and having plenty of time to talk to you."

The girl's eyes brightened. "Pray, did you consider Yale foolery?"

"A lot of it, yes," replied King, wearily; "but never mind, Linda, we're through with all that. I thought of the long days out there in Estes Park, the divine air, 'the dark pilasters of the pines,' and you, sparkling and radiant, on a good horse, and I with time enough to tell you how I love you!"

"Bertram!" Linda shot rather than rose to her feet, and her eyes launched arrows.

"Sit down. Sit down. I shall have to stand if you don't, and I'm dog-tired. Didn't you know I loved you, Linda, honest now?"

The girl sank into her chair. She was trying to think of the cruelest way to crush him. She opened her lips once or twice to speak and closed them again. King regarded her immovably, his worn look meeting her vital gaze.

"Your taste in jokes is very poor," she said at last, and her tone was icy, "and you may rest assured that no regard for you will prevent my telling my father exactly what you have said."

"You needn't. He knows it," returned King. His voice, which had brightened, relapsed into nervelessness.

"My father knows it!" The girl could not restrain the exclamation.

"Yes, of course. I believed you did, upon my honor. I've had so little time, you see, and you've been so busy."

He seemed so innocent of offense that her anger gave way to the habitual exasperation.

"Bertram King," she said, – and if there is such a thing as stormy dignity her manner expressed it, – "I believe the grind of business has dried up your brains. I could count on the fingers of one hand the occasions on which you have expressed even approval of me." Her nostrils dilated as she spoke.

Her companion's solemn visage suddenly beamed in a smile. "You remember them, then," he returned, with a pleased naïveté which nearly wrecked her severity; but she held her pose.

"You dared to speak to my dear father – I think you have him mesmerized, I really do – you dared to speak to him seriously of – of – caring for me, when you have criticized nearly every move I have made at home for four years."

"Have I? I don't remember saying anything discourteous to you."

"You didn't need to," retorted Linda. She didn't wish to snap, she wished to freeze, but old wounds ached. "Your actions, your looks, were quite enough."

"My looks?" repeated King mildly. "I'm sure you exaggerate. It must have been these glasses: the wrong shape or something." He took them off and regarded them critically.

"I hate your jokes!" retorted the girl, hotly.

"Hate what you like so long as it isn't me!"

"It is you!" The words came with emphasis.

"Then you do like me." King nodded. "It's an admission."

"You disgust me with your silliness," she returned, turning away. "I wonder what has become of Fred Whitcomb." She rose and swept to the bay window.

King followed her.

"Fred's a good fellow. I always liked Whitcomb," he said.

Linda made no response to this. She scanned the road anxiously up and down.

There was another interim of silence; then: —

"Your father would be pleased, Linda," ventured King. "He said so."

"You hypnotize him. I said so. My father," she added with scorn, – "my father like me to marry a man who always disapproved of me?"

"Is that why you try to hate me?" asked King thoughtfully. "I have disapproved of you a good many times, but I do think that – considering everything – you've done very well."

Linda, the all-conquering, the leader, the criterion, turned upon the speaker a gaze of amazement; then she laughed.

"How kind! You overwhelm me."

"Yes, I do really think so. Considering your beauty, your strength, your easy finances, your college crushes, your empress-like reign, you've done pretty well to consider others as much as you have."

"Others?" the echo came crisply. "What others?"

"Your father mainly."

"My father!" Linda faced him now, and sparks were flying from the brown eyes. "Bertram King, I adore my father!"

"Yes, I know, – when you have time."

"What – what is it? Would you have had me not go to college?"

"No," – King spoke in a reasonable tone, – "you did right to go to college."

"Thank you – a thousand times." The crisp waves of the speaker's hair seemed to snap as on a cold night while she bowed her thanks.

King played with his glasses; and she turned quickly back to the window in order that he should not see that sudden tears quenched the fire in her eyes. Her father's preoccupied face rose before her. Was it true that she had ever neglected him? A habit of sighing unconsciously had recently grown upon him. She had noticed that, and also that in late months new lines of harassment had come in his face. Never mind, she was going to run away with him, devote herself to him, far from this man who dared to comment, and to pick flaws in her behavior. He should never see her change.

"I did want to do some riding with you, Linda. The idea comes to me like a picture or a poem when I think of those forests: —

' – here and there in solemn linesThe dark pilasters of the pinesBore up the high woods' somber dome;Between their shafts, like tapestry flung,A soft blue vapor fell and hung.'

Nice, isn't it?"

"On what bond issue did you find that?" inquired Linda, tapping the window pane with restless fingers, and watching impatiently for her laggard cavalier.

"I told Dr. Young I wanted to play with you and your father, but he said Mr. Barry and I didn't know how to play."

"He was quite right."

King regarded his companion's averted, charming head with a pale smile. "You know," he remarked after a little, "we can love people while seeing their imperfections."

"Not I! I love only perfection."

King gave a noiseless whistle, and raised his eyebrows. "I'm so glad I'm perfect," he said at last.

Linda looked around at him slowly. How pale he was! Ripples of the flood of tenderness that had bathed the thought of her father flowed grudgingly toward her companion, as he stood there in the long twilight, regarding her with lack-lustre eyes.

"There are pines outside of Colorado," she remarked.

"That's what Mrs. Porter says."

"Mrs. Porter?" Linda echoed him with interest; "but she has left town. I went to the studio yesterday, and she's gone; gone to Maine without letting me know."

"You've been pretty hard to locate, remember. She told me she was going."

Linda sighed. "If she could have gone West with Father and me, it would have been perfect."

"I'm said to resemble Maud very strongly," suggested King.

Linda regarded him with quick appraisement. "I never thought of it." She turned back to the window. "I can quote poetry, too, when I think of her. The other day I found a verse that fits her: —

'He that of such a height hath built his mind,And reared the dwelling of his thoughts so strong,As neither fear nor hope can shake the frameOf his resolvéd powers; nor all the windOf vanity or malice pierce to wrongHis settled peace, or to disturb the same:What a fair seat hath he, from whence he mayThe boundless wastes and wilds of man survey.'

A man named Daniel wrote that. Isn't it perfect?"

"H'm," agreed King. "A Daniel come to judgment. Maud likes you very much," he added.

"She loves me, thank you," flashed Linda, against his tepid speech.

"Then it runs in the family. I've told her how I felt toward you myself."

"And told her all my faults, I suppose." The girl bit her lip.

"Oh, I knew she could see those. Maud is very penetrating." Fire and dew flashed at him again. "Linda," he added in a different tone, "Whitcomb can't be much longer. Do you know I'm asking you to marry me?"

An inarticulate sound from his companion, and continued drumming on the window pane.

"I came to your father's employ ten years ago. I climbed the ladder slowly, but just three years and eight months ago I reached the rung from which I could see you." A pause. "You've haunted me ever since."

"Unintentional, I assure you." But Linda, her cheeks burning, could not look around again. In her tumult of hurt pride and indignation there penetrated a strain of triumph.

"Certainly," returned King; "you had other things to attend to, and so had I. You've attended to them with vast credit, and your father will tell you that I'm not so bad. Now a new chapter begins. Probably no one will ever love you as comprehendingly as I do."

"I shouldn't think of marrying any one who didn't consider me perfect," announced Linda clearly.

"Remember the chromo that goes with me – Mrs. Porter. Maud would be your cousin." King dangled his eyeglasses as he made the suggestion, and regarded a short curl of hair that had dropped against his companion's white neck.

Linda was silent for a moment. "I suppose you'll poison her mind against me now," she said.

"No. You've poured hot tea and cold water on my budding hopes, but I'm strictly honorable; and besides, I'm going to remember that both douches are good for plants. Ask your father if I know how to hang on to a proposition."

Silence. Linda's strong heart beat against her ribs as the man came a step nearer to her.

"Don't you touch me!" she exclaimed.

"I wasn't thinking of touching you, Linda. I just wanted to fix your hair. Something has fallen down here; just wait, I see a hairpin."

The girl preserved her pose under the caressing hands for a second, but he fumbled the soft lock, and she suspected him.

"That will do," she said, jerking her head away.

"Oh, well, I fixed it. You might thank me, going out as you are."

"I should think Fred had fallen dead!" she exclaimed.

"Yes; Maud prescribes Maine for me. She knows the lay of the land pretty well up there. She says she has known it for thirty years. I think that's an exaggeration, don't you?"

"I don't know how old she is, and I don't care; I only know that it must have nearly killed her husband to die and leave her."

King rocked back and forth on his toes. "I've heard that it did, entirely," he responded.

Linda gave her head a quick shake. "No wonder I say idiotic things!" she exclaimed. "It's catching! – Fred! Fred!" The sudden call was a cry of relief, and the girl quickly stepped out of an open glass door upon the piazza, and hurried down the steps. A motor had stopped beside the walk. King caught up his hat and followed her.

"I thought you'd never come!" cried Linda, to the joy of the distracted chauffeur.

"Great Scott! I thought I never would either!" he responded.

"What have you been doing? Climbing trees?" asked King. "Linda and I had nearly decided to be reckless and go to a movie."

"Nothing of the sort," averred Linda, "but I had begun to believe all four were punctured."

"One was," admitted Whitcomb, "and I've had a dozen delays." And he gnashed his teeth over a wasted hour of June as he handed his fair one into the front seat.

"Whither away?" inquired King.

"To the North Shore," responded Whitcomb, with fire in his eye which portended speeding.

"Drop me at the club, then, will you, Freddy?" And without waiting for the assent Bertram landed in the tonneau as the car started.

In front of the University Club he descended, and stepped forward beside Linda.

"I may not see you again," he said, standing between the wheels, hatless, and holding her hand. "Have a good time. If you send me a picture postal, it will be all off between us."

"What did he mean?" asked Whitcomb, as with a whirr and a jerk they were on their way again.

"Why, I'm going to Colorado with my father; or he's going with me. He's tired."

"Well, he has nothing on King," remarked Freddy. "Never saw any one run down as that chap has the last month. He'd better get some smaller collars. Don't you care, Linda! Send me a picture postal, and I'll frame it."

The look that accompanied this outburst was lost on the adored one. She was trying to remember if Bertram King's collar had looked too large.

The University Club was a lonely place!

CHAPTER IV

THE JUNE NIGHT

Linda enjoyed the long flight under the June stars between the waves of the freshwater sea and the star-filled lagoons of Lincoln Park, and returned late to the dark house on the avenue.

"Did you ever see anything look so inhospitable!" she exclaimed, as her escort ran with her up the steps. "I wonder why Sedley didn't light up."

"Do you want me to go in and look under all the beds for you?" asked Whitcomb gayly.

"No. Father's bound to be in one of them by this time. I'm afraid to look at my watch. You shouldn't have kept me out so late, Freddy. You know it was against my will."

He could see her dimples in the starlight. They had been dear to him in grammar school; dear to him all the years while he was bereft of them at Harvard.

"If I could keep you always!" he ejaculated, in a lower tone.

"Against my will?" she laughed. "How about your promise, Freddy?"

"Yes, I know I did," was the incoherent response, "but you're going away – and – are you sure you don't feel a bit – not the least bit different, Linda?"

She shook her head at the pleading tone, and its low vibration set some chord within her to stirring. The sudden vision of Bertram King rose before her, dangling his eyeglasses and watching to see what she would say and how she would say it. Freddy had none of Bertram's hateful way of taking things for granted. He was all that was manly and humble and appealing. She could see in the dim light his square, strong hands clenched, and she felt again King's slender fingers on her hair; insolent, presumptuous: a man who had never courted her.

She liked Whitcomb so much. She approved of him so deeply.

"I ought not to have gone with you to-night," she said, and the gentle, regretful voice was so unlike Linda Barry that it frightened her devoted suitor.

"No, no. No, no!" he exclaimed quickly, taking a fresh grip on the situation. "I assumed all the responsibility. I haven't forgotten it."

His teeth closed, and the two regarded one another. She again contrasted his athletic build and efficient effect with King, very much to the latter's disadvantage.

"Oh, Freddy!" she exclaimed appealingly, and her fingers locked together, "there are so many nice girls." She paused, but he was silent. "I should just love your wife, I know. What fun we would have together!"

"Afraid not, Linda. Three's a crowd." A sudden thought corrugated the speaker's forehead. "Were you thinking – thinking of making it a quartette?"

"What an idea!"

The corrugation remained. "I've been suspecting that that dry-as-dust King would pounce on you as soon as you left school."

"Really, Freddy, your language – "

Linda's cheeks flushed. Were not the boyish words extremely graphic!

"Well, wouldn't it occur to any one? He must have some human moments when the machine's resting, and he has eyes in his head. Each man of us wants the best of everything, and aren't you the best of everything? I don't care a hang for your father's money. I got a raise last week."

"Bless your dear heart, Freddy!"

"Don't!" The young fellow winced. "I abhor that big-sister tone of yours. King's hand in glove with your father. Everybody says Barry & Co. take on nothing that King doesn't sanction, and your father is some business man, as you may know. I only hope he won't ever regret such absolute faith. I know I bought something, and – well, I believe it's shaky to tell the truth, and I've begun to wonder if, after all, King is such a wizard. But – all this is nothing to you. I just want to be sure that if I'm not the leading man it'll be somebody with more flesh and blood than King, somebody gaited more like myself, only a better man. If I've got to give you up, I want it to be to a better man, Linda; not to a long-legged, cadaverous, conceited prig!"

"Why, Freddy, Freddy!" Bertram was all that. Why should Linda object to hearing it in good nervous English? "I had no idea you disliked Bertram so," she said.

"Didn't you think he had his nerve to start out with us to-night? I don't understand how he was able to make me feel that way, but somehow it was just as if he said: 'Yes, you have my permission to take her driving this once. Be good children and enjoy yourselves.'"

Linda laughed. "Imaginative, too! Why, I'm learning a lot about you to-night; and here I was thinking you were an open book!"

"Not if you didn't know I was imaginative," declared Whitcomb. "If I should tell you of some pictures I draw – "

He came a step nearer, and the girl shrank.

"Good-night!" she exclaimed; "Father's pretty indulgent, but if he should wake up he might be worried. Good-night; I've had such a good time, Freddy." She gave him her firm, brief, boyish hand-shake, and glided within the door. It was still open and the house not lighted! Then her father —

"Linda, I'm in here, daughter."

The voice came from the reception room, where earlier she had talked with King.

With a swish of her motor coat the girl turned and entered the room, noting instantly and with relief that her father was leaning back in an armchair in the corner of the dark room farthest from the window. Then he had not overheard Whitcomb's talk.

"Why aren't you in bed? Were you worried, dear?" she asked repentantly. "These June nights are all like day, aren't they?" She hurried forward, and sitting on the arm of her father's chair drew his head toward her and kissed his forehead, taking one of his hands into her lap. "One hasn't sense enough to go in on such a night. We left Sheridan Road as lively as if it were noon. Really I don't know what time it is now. Is it awfully late? I'm sorry if I worried you."

"No, little one." The reply was gentle and abstracted. "I knew you were all right. I knew you were with Fred."

"Why, how did you know it?" The sprightly, fresh voice sounded gay after the tired one.

"Bertram told me."