Gordon Keith Part 65

"Well, I saw him on the street helping a woman into a carriage."

"A woman? And why shouldn't he help her in? He probably was the only man you saw that would do it, if you saw the men I met."

"A dis--reputable woman," said Lois, slowly.

"And, pray, what do you know of disreputable women? Not that there are not enough of them to be seen!"

"Some one told me--and she looked it," said Lois, blus.h.i.+ng. The old lady unexpectedly whipped around and took her part so warmly that Lois suddenly found herself defending Gordon. She could not bear that others should attack him, though she took frequent occasion to tell herself that she hated him. In fact, she hated him so that she wanted to see him to show him how severe she would be.

The occasion might have come sooner than she expected; but alas! Fate was unkind. Keith was not conscious until he found that Lois Huntington had left town how much he had thought of her. Her absence appeared suddenly to have emptied the city. By the time he had reached his room he had determined to follow her home. That rift of suns.h.i.+ne which had entered his life should not be shut out again. He sat down and wrote to her: a friendly letter, expressing warmly his pleasure at having met her, picturing jocularly his disappointment at having failed to find her. He made a single allusion to the Terpsich.o.r.e episode. He had done what he could, he said, to soothe his friend's ruffled feelings; but, though he thought he had some influence with her, he could not boast of having had much success in this. In the light in which Lois read this letter, the allusion to the dancing-girl outweighed all the rest, and though her heart had given a leap when she first saw that she had a letter from Keith, when she laid it down her feeling had changed. She would show him that she was not a mere country chit to be treated as he had treated her. His "friend" indeed!

When Keith, to his surprise, received no reply to his letter, he wrote again more briefly, asking if his former letter had been received; but this shared the fate of the first.

Meantime Lois had gone off to visit a friend. Her mind was not quite as easy as it should have been. She felt that if she had it to go over, she would do just the same thing; but she began to fancy excuses for Keith.

She even hunted up the letters he had written her as a boy.

It is probable that Lois's failure to write did more to raise her in Keith's estimation and fix her image in his mind than anything else she could have done. Keith knew that something untoward had taken place, but what it was he could not conceive. At least, however, it proved to him that Lois Huntington was different from some of the young women he had met of late. So he sat down and wrote to Miss Brooke, saying that he was going abroad on a matter of importance, and asking leave to run down and spend Sunday with them before he left. Miss Brooke's reply nearly took his breath away. She not only refused his request, but intimated that there was a good reason why his former letters had not been acknowledged and why he would not be received by her.

It was rather incoherent, but it had something to do with "inexplicable conduct." On this Keith wrote Miss Brooke, requesting a more explicit charge and demanding an opportunity to defend himself. Still he received no reply; and, angry that he had written, he took no further steps about it.

By the time Lois reached home she had determined to answer his letter.

She would write him a severe reply.

Miss Abby, however, announced to Lois, the day of her return, that Mr.

Keith had written asking her permission to come down and see them. The blood sprang into Lois's face, and if Miss Abby had had on her spectacles at that moment, she must have read the tale it told.

"Oh, he did! And what--?" She gave a swallow to restrain her impatience.

"What did you say to him, Aunt Abby? Have you answered the letter?" This was very demurely said.

"Yes. Of course, I wrote him not to come. I preferred that he should not come."

Could she have but seen Lois's face!

"Oh, you did!"

"Yes. I want no hypocrites around me." Her head was up and her cap was bristling. "I came very near telling him so, too. I told him that I had it from good authority that he had not behaved in altogether the most gentlemanly way--consorting openly with a hussy on the street! I think he knows whom I referred to."

"But, Aunt Abby, I do not know that she was. I only heard she was,"

defended Lois.

"Who told you?"

"Mr. Wickersham."

"Well, _he_ knows," said Miss Abigail, with decision. "Though I think he had very little to do to discuss such matters with you."

"But, Aunt Abby, I think you had better have let him come. We could have shown him our disapproval in our manner. And possibly he might have some explanations?"

"I guess he won't make any mistake about that. The hypocrite! To sit up and talk to me as if he were a bishop! I have no doubt he would have explanation enough. They always do."

CHAPTER XXIII

GENERAL KEITH VISITS STRANGE LANDS

Just then the wheel turned. Interest was awaking in England in American enterprises, and, fortunately for Keith, he had friends on that side.

Grinnell Rhodes now lived in England, dancing attendance on his wife, the daughter of Mr. Creamer of Creamer, Crustback & Company, who was aspiring to be in the fas.h.i.+onable set there.

Matheson, the former agent of the Wickershams, with whom Ferdy had quarrelled, had gone back to England, and had acquired a reputation as an expert. By one of the fortuitous happenings so hard to account for, about this time Keith wrote to Rhodes, and Rhodes consulted Matheson, who knew the properties. Ferdy had incurred the Scotchman's implacable hate, and the latter was urged on now by a double motive. To Rhodes, who was bored to death with the life he was leading, the story told by the Wickershams' old superintendent was like a trumpet to a war-horse.

Out of the correspondence with Rhodes grew a suggestion to Keith to come over and try to place the Rawson properties with an English syndicate.

Keith had, moreover, a further reason for going. He had not recovered from the blow of Miss Brooke's refusal to let him visit Lois. He knew that in some way it was connected with his attention to Terpsich.o.r.e; he knew that there was a misunderstanding, and felt that Wickersham was somehow connected with it. But he was too proud to make any further attempt to explain it.

Accordingly, armed with the necessary papers and powers, he arranged to go to England. He had control of and options on lands which were estimated to be worth several millions of dollars at any fair valuation.

Keith had long been trying to persuade his father to accompany him to New York on some of his visits; but the old gentleman had never been able to make up his mind to do so.

"I have grown too old to travel in strange lands," he said. "I tried to get there once, but they stopped me just in sight of a stone fence on the farther slope beyond Gettysburg." A faint flash glittered in his quiet eyes. "I think I had better restrain my ambition now to migrations from the blue bed to the brown, and confine my travels to 'the realms of gold'!"

Now, after much urging, as Gordon was about to go abroad to try and place the Rawson properties there, the General consented to go to New York and see him off. It happened that Gordon was called to New York on business a day or two before his father was ready to go. So he exacted a promise that he would follow him, and went on ahead. Though General Keith would have liked to back out at the last moment, as he had given his word, he kept it. He wrote his son that he must not undertake to meet him, as he could not tell by what train he should arrive.

"I shall travel slowly," he said, "for I wish to call by and see one or two old friends on my way, whom I have not seen for years."

The fact was that he wished to see the child of his friend, General Huntington, and determined to avail himself of this opportunity to call by and visit her. Gordon's letter about her had opened a new vista in life.

The General found Brookford a pleasant village, lying on the eastern slope of the Piedmont, and having written to ask permission to call and pay his respects, he was graciously received by Miss Abby, and more than graciously received by her niece. Miss Lois would probably have met any visitor at the train; but she might not have had so palpitating a heart and so rich a color in meeting many a young man.

Few things captivate a person more than to be received with real cordiality by a friend immediately on alighting at a strange station from a train full of strangers. But when the traveller is an old and somewhat unsophisticated man, and when the friend is a young and very pretty girl, and when, after a single look, she throws her arms around his neck and kisses him, the capture is likely to be as complete as any that could take place in life. When Lois Huntington, after asking about his baggage, and exclaiming because he had sent his trunk on to New York and had brought only a valise, as if he were only stopping off between trains, finally settled herself down beside the General and took the reins of the little vehicle that she had come in, there was, perhaps, not a more pleased old gentleman in the world than the one who sat beside her.

"How you have grown!" he said, gazing at her with admiration. "Somehow, I always thought of you as a little girl--a very pretty little girl."

She thought of what his son had said at their meeting at the ball.

"But you know one must grow some, and it has been eleven years since then. Think how long that has been!"

"Eleven years! Does that appear so long to you?" said the old man, smiling. "So it is in our youth. Gordon wrote me of his meeting you and of how you had changed."

I wonder what he meant by that, said Lois to herself, the color mounting to her cheek. "He thought I had changed, did he?" she asked tentatively, after a moment, a trace of grimness stealing into her face, where it lay like a little cloud in May.

"Yes; he hardly knew you. You see, he did not have the greeting that I got."

"I should think not!" exclaimed Lois. "If he had, I don't know what he might have thought!" She grew as grave as she could.

"He said you were the sweetest and prettiest girl there, and that all the beauty of New York was there, even the beautiful Mrs.--what is her name? She was Miss Yorke."

Lois's face relaxed suddenly with an effect of suns.h.i.+ne breaking through a cloud.