The Magpies Nest (14 page)

Mrs. Patten did not know. For herself she could do nothing for Hope; she was in mourning that year for the death of her father.

They owned defeat, by yielding to helpless belated laughter at the scene Mary had recreated.

"Yes, let's talk about something else, and leave Hope to the ultimate mercy of Heaven," said Mary resignedly.

"Well," sighed Mrs. Patten, "if I knew what to do I'd do it. Ned keeps telling me about it, you know..."

"Oh, Ned…" Mary bit the rest of the sentence off and swallowed it.

"He never had a chance," said Mrs. Patten, almost inaudibly, her eyes over-brilliant. "His father..."

"Yes, yes, I know," said Mary hastily, softened. "Those idiotic Roman fathers. They break their boys, and then virtuously chuck them on the dust-heap— out here. It's sweeping smoking flax into the fireplace. What's a man to hold to here? Lisbeth, do let's be cheerful, talk about a nice murder, or something."

So they went out in the kitchen to get tea, and later Mary walked home, not so much for the exercise as because there were no street-cars. Spring was late and stormy; she got herself in a pleasant glow, tempered with apprehensions of a frostbitten ear, struggling against a snow-laden Norther that seemed utterly unaware this was April.

"A perfectly irrational climate," she commented to herself. "Perhaps it accounts for Hope." And she jerked open the storm door, plunged into the house headlong, and cannoned off Ned Angell, who was just going out.

"Ned," she said acidly, "you have a positive genius for being in the wrong place," and left him, before he could find breath to answer, to put whatever construction he chose on the sentence.

Hope was at her drawing-board. It was quite evident she had been working without regard for Ned's presence. She looked up with a half-frown, as if she feared he might have come back.

"Oh, Mary," she said, in the level tone that denotes a preoccupied mind,
"what
was the fourth Moon Baby doing in the story we did yesterday? I forget and I can't find your copy. Lookyhere, woman, he goes up in this corner; I've left room for him."

"I forget, too," said Mary, "but here's the story." She produced it from beneath the lamp. "Oh, the darlings! I love their ducktail curls and funny little sad faces. Hope, why don't you use them some way? Make a nursery dado—say?"

"Well, dear," said Hope, "we haven't any nursery. And would anyone in this town know what to do with a dado?"

"No," agreed Mary, dropping the suggestion. "They'd probably think it was something out of a menagerie. Had company, didn't you?" There were two empty tea-cups.

"Only Ned."

"Expecting anyone else to-night?"

Hope shook her head. Her eyes remained fixed on her drawing.

CHAPTER XIII

THE storm raged itself out; before the snow had time to compose to the outline of the earth a chinook shrieked down from over the heads of the mountains, and the white coverlet shrank and dissolved as if a hot iron were being passed over it. When the wind quieted after a day or two nothing of the snow remained. Hope walked dry-shod over the unpaved crossings in the part of the town where she and Mary lived, directing her course toward a grateful spot of green in the heart of the town, the gardens surrounding the railway station. There were no flowers yet, but the dwarf cedars were sharply fresh. There was even a faint flush of green on the close sward, for the grass grew like magic when a warm spell encouraged it while any moisture remained. Hope had a letter in her hand; she wanted to catch the mail train from the South. She paced up and down idly, through the small expectant crowd, consciously enjoying the thin sunshine which the boarded platform seemed to conserve. There was no one she knew in sight. By and by the express swept in with a clanging rush. She went forward toward the mail car.

A girl in a brown tailor-made, with a pheasant wing on her smart hat, was first foot out of the Pullman to the porter's stool. Behind her pressed a tall man in grey—Edgerton. Emily, revealing herself by tossing back a travelling veil, handed him her dressing-case.

"Hold it, daddy," she adjured him. "I have eleventy-three telegrams to send; wait for me."

She went into the station, and he stood over their luggage, looking for a porter. Emily had a passion for telegraphing to her girl friends.

Through the confused crowd, Hope came by and would have passed him unseeing. He called her name, twice; several people turned to stare before she would notice.

But when she did, her welcome was heartening.

"Why didn't you say you were coming?" she reproached him. "I'm sure Mary didn't know."

"You mean," he said, for he was capable of mischief, "Miss Dark is playing hooky from the office I came on purpose to catch her at it. Why didn't
you
write, little girl?"

"I—I meant to," she stammered.

He looked at her closely.

"You look tired," he said.

"It was a long winter." She sighed. "Did you have a good time in New York?"

"Great—I wish you'd been there. Emily spent two hundred dollars a day."

She laughed; that was so like him.

"You've got some beautiful new clothes yourself," she said, becoming properly serious.

"The very latest thing," he told her. "This waistcoat, now..." But she had begun to laugh again.

"I brought you something," he said. "Am I to see you, this trip?"

The naïve bribe also amused her.

"Why not? Do you stay long? I thought Emily was coming with you again."

"She's here," he said, and Hope, turning, was just in time to see her coming through the big swing doors. "How pretty—and well dressed," she thought. Emily seemed to have grown, she had perceptibly gained in finish. Tony Yorke was with her; Edgerton was still explaining, "I don't know how long; I have some business to wind up."

"At Kenatchee?" asked Hope half teasingly.

"You and Miss Dark," said Edgerton confidentially, "for two clever women, are slow, darned slow. There are several other people would like to know what you'd like to know; I want to see if you won't get next before them. And here's one of the others," he nodded toward Tony, hardly yet within ear-shot. He chuckled to himself. "Emmy," he said, "trust you to spear a young man within five minutes after you get off the train in a strange town. Hello, Yorke." They shook hands; Tony's manner was easy and unconstrained Emily was a trifle rosy, and seemed to remember Hope with difficulty.

"But of course, I do," she protested, "only your name's so odd; pretty, too, I think." Yes, Emily was assimilating her world more and more. "Tell me, do you still see Miss Dark? I liked her so much; and I met some of her people lately. Tell her I am in town; perhaps she will be nice and come to see me. Daddy, have you got a porter yet?"

He had; they strolled away together, Emily and Tony walking on ahead, carrying on a gay but indistinguishable conversation of their own. At the end of the long platform Hope stopped.

"End of the line," she announced. "I have an appointment; yes, with Mary. I shall warn her. Goodbye, Miss Edgerton," she called.

Emily turned.

"Oh, wait," she cried. "I wanted to say—will you not come with Miss Dark? Do, please."

Hope promised; and, as Edgerton was again asking her if he might see her, she smiled at him, so the assent covered both questions. But he detained her yet a moment.

"I say," he asked, for Emily and Tony were again walking on, "what sort of chap is that Yorke? You know him well, don't you?"

Why did he ask?

"Yes, rather," she said. Once she had so answered Tony's question about Edgerton. "He's very—agreeable," she added calmly.

"Emmy seems to like him," Edgerton explained. "Got his picture—oh, well, she has a regular gallery!"

Hope repeated her good-byes. She still felt singularly calm, but dull—heavy. She forgot about Mary, until she had walked nearly home. Then she ran all the way downtown again, and forgot what it was had caused her to forget.

But Tony, although he was having a very pleasant moment with Emily Edgerton, did not forget that  he had heard Edgerton call Hope by her name, seen her turn and hold out both her hands, there on the station platform. He had been in the crowd there but a moment before he had gone into the station and met Emily. He thought Hope had come to meet Edgerton. That he was there himself, innocently; that everyone walked by the station every day, he forgot. That was why he had turned away without speaking.

Of course Emily's presence put a slightly different face on that. And since she had brought him into the party, not unwillingly, he thought perhaps it was an excellent opportunity to sound Edgerton. He walked with them to the hotel, and Emily was kind. Tony had had enough experience to know when a pretty girl was delicately smoothing the way for an advance for him; it did not require undue conceit on his part to understand Emily's attitude. She was gracious, and just flatteringly shy; she reverted to incidents of her former visit as if she had forgotten no phase of it. And he lost nothing of her added social stature; even her costume, a year ahead of the
modes
there, was not wasted on him. She had grown into such a girl as he had once led cotillions with at home. Such a girl, he might have added, as he had once previsioned as a wife. The second generation had come into its own.

In the lobby she left the two men to go to her room, and they gravitated insensibly towards the bar. Edgerton was quite encouragingly cordial. He meant, in fact, to have a little of his own kind of fun with Tony, knowing quite well of what the young man was thinking. Within the week a meeting of the Kenatchee Falls Company's directors was to be held, and Edgerton had fully made up his mind to come finally to terms with them; his own terms, but not too ungenerous. But he had not the least intention of giving any clue of those terms to Tony, and was jocular when he deliberately brought up the subject.

"Oh, well," said Tony, "of course, if you can't see your way to going into it, we'll have to turn our guns in another direction.
I
suppose you know Sir Wardell Bromley looked it over a few weeks ago, but we held him off to give you first call."

Edgerton chuckled; he did know. He knew quite well, also, by cable from London, that Sir Wardell's "pool," alarmed by a recent slump in Canadian securities brought about by a big bank failure, had definitely withdrawn. The echoes of that bank crash were still heard; capital had never been so shy.

"Oh, yes. Yes," he said. "Well, I've been waiting on my engineer's report." He had had it six months before. "Yorke, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, trying to sell me a gold brick like that." Tony's jaw dropped; then he looked sincerely angry, and was about to speak. "Oh, come on, can't you take a joke?" Edgerton forestalled him good-naturedly. "Do you want me to own up I simply can't raise the coin just now? Hard times, hard times." He shook his head and Tony missed the twinkle in his eyes. "I guess I'll have to pass the buck to your Britisher. Too bad. Say, come around and lunch some day this week. Didn't I hear Emmy asking you? Glad to see you Guess I'll go up and put on a clean collar." He went.

Perhaps if he had known how much it meant to Tony, everything, in short, he would not have extracted quite the same flavour of fun from his deception. But then, business was business; he had to drive a bargain, and he knew the psychological value of suspense. What he wanted was simply a clear majority in the company, and he meant to have that or nothing. He wanted to show the others very plainly that "nothing" from him meant exactly nothing from any source; and he thought Tony would do it for him. They would go to that meeting without hope, now, and would snatch at whatever he offered.

Without hope was exactly Tony's own feeling. And he had not the small consolation he had counted on when he came West, of losing nothing; for to lose even the hope of a very material good is to lose a great deal. It was checkmate. Where could he turn? He pondered despondently over a lone glass of Scotch and soda, turning with a sensation of distinct annoyance when someone slapped him heartily on the shoulder.

It was a day for meetings, evidently. The newcomer was Jim Sanderson, exuding good-fellowship at every pore, and loud in his rejoicings at being back, after a long sojourn in the Northern wilderness investigating copper prospects.

"How's everyone?" he inquired genially. "Anyone dead, married, eloped? Any new girls? Spin it out."

Jim Sanderson,
inter alia,
was a male gossip; a creature not so rare as may be innocently supposed. He and Dr. Wilton were cronies; he had plenty of men friends of a casual sort besides, but to one who knew either of those two that simple fact sufficed to express him. It was not difficult to get him to talk; a harder proposition would have been to silence him. Tony sometimes tried uneasily to clear himself of having brought in Hope's name, there, in that glittering and profanely masculine room with the long mahogany counter and huge mirror, when he thought of the matter afterwards; but the best he could do for himself was to be not quite sure. What Sanderson said, in detail, were hardly worth setting down, but the import was sufficiently black: and he was extraordinarily explicit with names, dates, and places. Poor Evan Hardy, had he been there, would have acted the man's part which Tony declined. By a miracle, there was no one else in the bar at the moment, and they lowered their voices, Jim with that air of forbidden enjoyment always noticeable when such confidences are being exchanged, whether over Pekoe or Scotch. So he collected payment for that blow on the cheek But to do him justice, he would have told the tale quite gladly with no such incentive.

After that, having washed his hands in such exceedingly muddy water, Tony felt clean to go to Emily Edgerton, who had promised to meet him in the tearoom in an hour. He was unusually gay. "Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow..." no, not to-morrow, to-day, everything had tumbled about his ears. His hope of a fortune was gone, and Hope was faithless. Why, she had been faithless before he ever met her! Deep down, some bewildered protest struggled to be heard in him: it was not possible that any girl, nay, not the most clever woman, could have seemed, and only seemed, to be what she was. But he refused to hear it. And this was most characteristic of him, that he felt most like a gambler who has lost his last stake, rather than a man deceived. Hope went with the rest. It did not make matters pleasanter, but then it was only a part of the whole.