A Sappho of Green Springs Part 21

Vaguely uneasy, and still perplexed with her previous agitation, as Mr.

Rushbrook closed the door behind him, Grace, following some feminine instinct rather than any definite reason, walked to the door and placed her hand upon the lock to prevent any intrusion until he returned.

Her caution seemed to be justified a moment later, for a heavier but stealthier footstep halted outside. The handle of the door was turned, but she resisted it with the fullest strength of her small hand until a voice, which startled her, called in a hurried whisper:--

"Open quick, 'tis I."

She stepped back quickly, flung the door open, and beheld Somers on the threshold!

The astonishment, agitation, and above all, the awkward confusion of this usually self-possessed and ready man, was so unlike him, and withal so painful, that Grace hurried to put an end to it, and for an instant forgot her own surprise at seeing him. She smiled a.s.suringly, and extended her hand.

"Grace--Miss Nevil--I beg your pardon--I didn't imagine"--he began with a forced laugh. "I mean, of course--I cannot--but"--He stopped, and then a.s.suming a peculiar expression, said: "But what are YOU doing here?"

At any other moment the girl would have resented the tone, which was as new to her as his previous agitation, but in her present self-consciousness her situation seemed to require some explanation.

"I came here," she said, "to see Mr. Rushbrook on business. Your business--OUR business," she added, with a charming smile, using for the first time the p.r.o.noun that seemed to indicate their unity and interest, and yet fully aware of a vague insincerity in doing so.

"Our BUSINESS?" he repeated, ignoring her gentler meaning with a changed emphasis and a look of suspicion.

"Yes," said Grace, a little impatiently. "Mr. Leyton thought he ought to write to my uncle something positive as to your prospects with Mr.

Rushbrook, and"--

"You came here to inquire?" said the young man, sharply.

"I came here to stop any inquiry," said Grace, indignantly. "I came here to say I was satisfied with what you had confided to me of Mr.

Rushbrook's generosity, and that was enough!"

"With what I had confided to you? You dared say that?"

Grace stopped, and instantly faced him. But any indignation she might have felt at his speech and manner was swallowed up in the revulsion and horror that overtook her with the sudden revelation she saw in his white and frightened face. Leyton's strange inquiry, Rushbrook's cold composure and scornful acceptance of her own credulousness, came to her in a flash of shameful intelligence. Somers had lied! The insufferable meanness of it! A lie, whose very uselessness and ign.o.bility had defeated its purpose--a lie that implied the basest suspicion of her own independence and truthfulness--such a lie now stood out as plainly before her as his guilty face.

"Forgive my speaking so rudely," he said with a forced smile and attempt to recover his self-control, "but you have ruined me unless you deny that I told you anything. It was a joke--an extravagance that I had forgotten; at least, it was a confidence between you and me that you have foolishly violated. Say that you misunderstood me--that it was a fancy of your own. Say anything--he trusts you--he'll believe anything you say."

"He HAS believed me," said Grace, almost fiercely, turning upon him with the paper that Rushbrook had given her in her outstretched hand. "Read that!"

He read it. Had he blushed, had he stammered, had he even kept up his former frantic and pitiable att.i.tude, she might at that supreme moment have forgiven him. But to her astonishment his face changed, his handsome brow cleared, his careless, happy smile returned, his graceful confidence came back--he stood before her the elegant, courtly, and accomplished gentleman she had known. He returned her the paper, and advancing with extended hand, said triumphantly:--

"Superb! Splendid! No one but a woman could think of that! And only one woman achieve it. You have tricked the great Rushbrook. You are indeed worthy of being a financier's wife!"

"No," she said pa.s.sionately, tearing up the paper and throwing it at his feet; "not as YOU understand it--and never YOURS! You have debased and polluted everything connected with it, as you would have debased and polluted ME. Out of my presence that you are insulting--out of the room of the man whose magnanimity you cannot understand!"

The destruction of the guarantee apparently stung him more than the words that accompanied it. He did not relapse again into his former shamefaced terror, but as a malignant glitter came into his eyes, he regained his coolness.

"It may not be so difficult for others to understand, Miss Nevil," he said, with polished insolence, "and as Bob Rushbrook's generosity to pretty women is already a matter of suspicion, perhaps you are wise to destroy that record of it."

"Coward!" said Grace, "stand aside and let me pa.s.s!" She swept by him to the door. But it opened upon Rushbrook's re-entrance. He stood for an instant glancing at the pair, and then on the fragments of the paper that strewed the floor. Then, still holding the door in his hand, he said quietly:--

"One moment before you go, Miss Nevil. If this is the result of any misunderstanding as to the presence of another woman here, in company with Mr. Somers, it is only fair to him to say that that woman is here as a friend of MINE, not of his, and I alone am responsible."

Grace halted, and turned the cold steel of her proud eyes on the two men. As they rested on Rushbrook they quivered slightly. "I can already bear witness," she said coldly, "to the generosity of Mr. Rushbrook in a matter which then touched me. But there certainly is no necessity for him to show it now in a matter in which I have not the slightest concern."

As she swept out of the room and was received in the respectable shadow of the waiting James, Rushbrook turned to Somers.

"And I'M afraid it won't do--for Leyton saw you," he said curtly. "Now, then, shut that door, for you and I, Jack Somers, have a word to say to each other."

What that word was, and how it was said and received, is not a part of this record. But it is told that it was the beginning of that mighty Iliad, still remembered of men, which shook the financial camps of San Francisco, and divided them into bitter contending parties. For when it became known the next day that Somers had suddenly abandoned Rushbrook, and carried over to a powerful foreign capitalist the secret methods, and even, it was believed, the LUCK of his late employer, it was certain that there would be war to the knife, and that it was no longer a struggle of rival enterprise, but of vindictive men.

CHAPTER VII

For a year the battle between the Somers faction and the giant but solitary Rushbrook raged fiercely, with varying success. I grieve to say that the proteges and parasites of Maecenas deserted him in a body; nay, they openly alleged that it was the true artistic nature and refinement of Somers that had always attracted them, and that a man like Rushbrook, who bought pictures by the yard,--equally of the unknown struggling artist and the famous masters,--was no true patron of Art. Rushbrook made no attempt to recover his lost prestige, and once, when squeezed into a tight "corner," and forced to realize on his treasures, he put them up at auction and the people called them "daubs;" their rage knew no bounds. It was then that an unfettered press discovered that Rushbrook never was a Maecenas at all, grimly deprecated his a.s.sumption of that t.i.tle, and even doubted if he were truly a millionaire. It was at this time that a few stood by him--notably, the mill inventor from Siskyou, grown plethoric with success, but eventually ground between the upper and nether millstone of the Somers and Rushbrook party. Miss Nevil had returned to the Atlantic States with Mrs. Leyton. While rumors had played freely with the relations of Somers and the Signora as the possible cause of the rupture between him and Rushbrook, no mention had ever been made of the name of Miss Nevil.

It was raining heavily one afternoon, when Mr. Rushbrook drove from his office to his San Francisco house. The fierce struggle in which he was engaged left him little time for hospitality, and for the last two weeks his house had been comparatively deserted. He pa.s.sed through the empty rooms, changed in little except the absence of some valuable monstrosities which had gone to replenish his capital. When he reached his bedroom, he paused a moment at the open door.

"James!"

"Yes, sir," said James, appearing out of the shadow.

"What are you waiting for?"

"I thought you might be wanting something, sir."

"You were waiting there this morning; you were in the ante-room of my study while I was writing. You were outside the blue room while I sat at breakfast. You were at my elbow in the drawing-room late last night.

Now, James," continued Mr. Rushbrook, with his usual grave directness, "I don't intend to commit suicide; I can't afford it, so keep your time and your rest for yourself--you want it--that's a good fellow."

"Yes, sir."

"James!"

"Yes, sir."

Rushbrook extended his hand. There was that faint, rare smile on his handsome mouth, for which James would at any time have laid down his life. But he only silently grasped his master's hand, and the two men remained looking into each other's eyes without a word. Then Mr.

Rushbrook entered his room, lay down, and went to sleep, and James vanished in the shadow.

At the end of an hour Mr. Rushbrook awoke refreshed, and even James, who came to call him, appeared to have brightened in the interval. "I have ordered a fire, sir, in the reserved room, the one fitted up from Los Osos, as your study has had no chance of being cleaned these two weeks.

It will be a change for you, sir. I hope you'll excuse my not waking you to consult you about it."

Rushbrook remained so silent that James, fancying he had not heard him, was about to repeat himself when his master said quickly, "Very well, come for me there when dinner is ready," and entered the pa.s.sage leading to the room. James did not follow him, and when Mr. Rushbrook, opening the door, started back with an exclamation, no one but the inmate heard the word that rose to his lips.

For there, seated before the glow of the blazing fire, was Miss Grace Nevil. She had evidently just arrived, for her mantle was barely loosened around her neck, and upon the fringe of brown hair between her bonnet and her broad, low forehead a few drops of rain still sparkled.

As she lifted her long lashes quickly towards the door, it seemed as if they, too, had caught a little of that moisture. Rushbrook moved impatiently forward, and then stopped. Grace rose unhesitatingly to her feet, and met him half-way with frankly outstretched hands. "First of all," she said, with a half nervous laugh, "don't scold James; it's all my fault; I forbade him to announce me, lest you should drive me away, for I heard that during this excitement you came here for rest, and saw no one. Even the intrusion into this room is all my own. I confess now that I saw it the last night I was here; I was anxious to know if it was unchanged, and made James bring me here. I did not understand it then. I do now--and--thank you."

Her face must have shown that she was conscious that he was still holding her hand, for he suddenly released it. With a heightened color and a half girlish naivete, that was the more charming for its contrast with her tall figure and air of thoroughbred repose, she turned back to her chair, and lightly motioned him to take the one before her. "I am here on BUSINESS; otherwise I should not have dared to look in upon you at all."

She stopped, drew off her gloves with a provoking deliberation, which was none the less fascinating that it implied a demure consciousness of inducing some impatience in the breast of her companion, stretched them out carefully by the fingers, laid them down neatly on the table, placed her elbows on her knees, slightly clasped her hands together, and bending forward, lifted her honest, handsome eyes to the man before her.

"Mr. Rushbrook, I have got between four and five hundred thousand dollars that I have no use for; I can control securities which can be converted, if necessary, into a hundred thousand more in ten days. I am free and my own mistress. It is generally considered that I know what I am about--you admitted as much when I was your pupil. I have come here to place this sum in your hands, at your free disposal. You know why and for what purpose."

"But what do you know of my affairs?" asked Rushbrook, quickly.