Ben Blair Part 28

Sidwell smiled indulgently. "Beg your pardon. I had forgotten our standards were not yet in conformity. It is so considered--here."

Florence was very quiet until they reached the steps of her own home. A light was in the open vestibule, another in the library, where Scotty, his feet comfortably enclosed in carpet-slippers and elevated above his head, was reading. Then she turned to her escort.

"You won't be offended, Mr. Sidwell, if I ask you a question?"

The electric light on the nearby corner shone full upon her soft brown face, a very serious face now, and the man's glance lingered there.

"Certainly not," he answered.

Florence hesitated. Somehow, now that the moment for speaking had arrived, the thing she had in mind to say did not seem so easy after all. At last she spoke, hesitatingly: "You seem to be interested in me, seem to take pleasure in being in my company. For the last few months we have been together almost daily, but up to that time we had lived lives as unlike as--as the city is from the prairie. I know you have many other friends, friends you've known all your life, whose ideals and points of view came from the same experience as your own." She straightened with dignity. "Why is it that you leave those friends to come here? Why do you find pleasure in taking me about as you do? Why is it?"

Not once while she was speaking had the man's eyes left her face; not once had he stirred. Even after she was silent he remained so; and despite the compelling influence which had prompted the question, Florence could not but realize what she had done, what she had all but suggested. The warm color flooded her face, though she held her eyes up bravely. "Tell me why," she repeated firmly.

Sidwell still hesitated. Complex product of the higher civilization, mixture of good and bad, who knows what thoughts were running riot in his brain? At last he aroused and came closer. "You ask me a very hard question," he said steadily; "the most difficult, I think, you could have chosen; one, also, which perhaps I have already asked myself."

Again he took a step nearer. "It is a question, Florence, that admits of but one answer; one both adequate and inadequate. It is because you are you and woman, and I am I and man." Of a sudden his dark face grew swarthier still, his voice lapsed from its customary impersonal. "It means, Florence Baker--"

But the sentence was not completed. As suddenly as the change had come to the man's face, the girl had understood. With an impulse she could not have explained to herself, she had drawn away and swiftly mounted the steps of the house. Not until she reached the porch did she turn.

"Don't, don't, please!" she urged. "I beg your pardon. I shouldn't have asked what I did. Forget that I spoke at all." She was struggling for words, for breath. Her color came and went. "Good-night." And not trusting herself to look back, oblivious of courtesy, she almost ran into the house.

Standing as she had left him, his hat in his hand, Clarence Sidwell watched her pa.s.s through the lighted vestibule into the darkness beyond.

CHAPTER XVIII

PAINTER AND PICTURE

Scotty Baker dropped a lump of sugar into his coffee and stirred the mixture carefully, glancing the while smilingly at his wife and daughter.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed; "it seems good to be back here again."

Mrs. Baker was deep in a letter she had just opened, but Florence returned the smile companionably.

"And it seems mighty good to have you back, daddy," she replied. "Just think of our being alone, a pair of poor defenceless women, three whole months without a man about the house! If you ever dare do it again you're liable to find one in your place when you return. Isn't he, mamma?"

Her mother looked up reproachfully. "For shame, Florence!" she cried.

But Scotty only observed his daughter quizzically. "I did--almost, this time, didn't I?" he bantered. "By the way, who is this wonderful being, this Sidwell, I've heard so much about the last few hours?" He was as obtuse as a post to his wife's meaning look. "Tell me about him, won't you?"

Florence laughed a bit unnaturally. It seemed her words had a way of returning like a boomerang.

"He's a writer," she explained laconically.

"A writer?" Scotty paused, a teaspoonful of coffee between the cup and his mouth. "A real one?"

The smile left the girl's face. "His family is one of the oldest in the city," she explained coldly. "His work sells by the thousand. You can judge for yourself."

Scotty sipped his coffee impa.s.sively, but behind the big gla.s.ses the twinkle left his eyes.

"The inference you suggest would have been more obvious if you hadn't made the first remark," he said a little sharply. "I've noticed the matter of good family has quite an influence in this world."

The subject was dropped, but nevertheless it left its aftermath.

Easy-going Scotty did not often say an unpleasant thing, and for that very reason Florence knew that when he did it had an especial significance.

"By the way," he observed after a moment, "we ought to celebrate to-day in some manner. I rather expected to find a band at the station to welcome me yesterday upon my return, but I didn't, and I fear there's been no public demonstration arranged. What do you say to our packing up our dinner, taking the elevated, and spending the day in the country?

What say you, Mollie?"

His wife looked at her daughter helplessly. "Just as Florence says. I'm willing," she replied.

"What speaks the oracle?" smiled Scotty. "Shall we or shall we not?

Personally, I feel a desire for cooling springs, to step on a good-sized plat of green without having a watchful bluecoat loom in the distance."

Florence fingered the linen of the tablecloth with genuine discomfort.

"You two can go. I'll help you get ready," she ventured at last. "I'm sorry, but I promised Mr. Sidwell last night I'd visit the art gallery with him this afternoon. He says they've some new canvases hung lately, one of them by a particular friend of his. He's such a student of art, and I know so little about it that I hate to miss going."

Again the smile left Scotty's eyes. "Can't you write a note explaining, and postpone the visit until some other time?" It took quite an effort for this undemonstrative Englishman to make the request.

The girl glanced out the window with a look her father understood very well. "I hardly think so," she said. "He's going away for the Summer soon, and his time is limited."

Scotty said no more, and soon after he left the table and went into the library. Florence sat for a moment abstractedly; then with her old impulsive manner she followed him.

"Daddy," the girl's arms clasped around his neck, her cheek pressed against his, "I'm awful sorry I can't go with you to-day. I'd like to, really."

But for one of the very few times that Florence could remember her father did not respond. Instead, he removed her arms rather coldly.

"Oh, that's all right," he said; "I hope you'll have a good time." And picking up the morning paper he lit a cigar and moved toward the shady veranda.

Watching him, the girl had a desire to follow, to prevent his leaving her in that way. But she hesitated and the moment pa.s.sed.

Yet, although a cloud shadowed Florence Baker's morning, by afternoon it had departed. Sidwell's carriage came promptly, creating something of a stir behind the drawn shades of the adjoining residences--for the Bakers were not located in a fas.h.i.+onable quarter. Sidwell himself, immaculate, smiling, greeted her with the deference which became him well, and in itself conveyed a delicate compliment. Neither made any reference to the incident of the night before. His manner gave no hint of the constraint which under the circ.u.mstances might have been expected. A few months before, the girl would have thought he had taken her request literally, and had forgotten; but now she knew better. In this fascinating new life one could pa.s.s pleasantries with one's dearest enemy and still smile. In the old life, under similar circ.u.mstances, there would have been gun-play, and probably later a funeral; but here--they knew better how to live. Already, in the few social events she had attended, she had seen them juggle with emotions as a conjurer with knives--to emerge unhurt, unruffled. To be sure, she could not herself do it--yet; but she understood, and admired.

Out of doors the sun was uncomfortably hot, but within the high walled gallery it was cool and pleasant. Florence had been there before, but earlier in the season, and many other visitors were present. To-day she and Sidwell were practically alone, and she faced him with a little receptive gesture.

"You're always getting me to talk," she said. "To-day I'm going to exchange places. Don't expect me to do anything but listen."

Sidwell smiled. "Won't you even condescend to suggest channels in which my discourse may flow?" he bantered.

The girl hesitated. "Perhaps," she ventured, "if I find it necessary."

For an hour they wandered about, moving slowly, and pausing often to rest. Sidwell talked well, but somewhat impersonally. At last, in an out-of-the-way corner, they came to the modest canvas of his friend, and they sat down before it. The picture was unnamed and unsigned. Without being extraordinary as a work of art, its subject lent its chief claim to distinction. Interested because her companion seemed interested, Florence looked at it steadily. At first there appeared to her nothing but a mountain, steep and rugged, and a weary man who, climbing it, had lain down to rest. Far down at the mountain's base she saw where the figure had begun its ascent. The way was easy there, and the trail, through the abundant gra.s.ses crushed underfoot, was of one who had moved rapidly. Gradually, with the upward incline, obstacles had increased, and the footprints drew nearer together. Still higher, from a straight line the trail had become tortuous and irregular. Here the climber had pa.s.sed around a thicket of trees; there a great boulder had stood in the path; but, ever indomitable, the way had been steadily upward toward some point the climber had in view. Steeper and steeper the way had grown. The prints on the rocky mountain-side, from being those of feet only, merged into those made by hands. The man had begun to crawl, making his way inch by inch. Fragments of his torn clothing hung on the points of rocks. Dim brown lines showed the path his body had taken, as he sometimes slipped back. Breaks in the scant vegetation told where his fingers had clutched desperately to halt his descent. Yet each time the reverse had been but temporary; he had returned, and mounted higher and higher. But at last there had come the end. He had reached his present place in the picture. By gripping tightly he could hold his own, but to advance was impossible. Straight above him, a sheer wall, many times his own height, was the blank, unbroken face of the rock. That he had tried to scale even this was evident, for finger-marks from bleeding hands were thick thereon; but he had finally abandoned the effort. Physically, he was conquered. It seemed that one could almost hear the quick coming and going of his breath. Yet, prostrate as he lay, his eyes were turned toward the barrier his body could not scale, to a something which crowned its utmost height,--something indefinite and unattainable,--the supreme desire and purpose of his life.

The two spectators sat silent. Other visitors came near, glanced at the canvas and at the pair of observers, and pa.s.sed on with m.u.f.fled footsteps.

The girl turned, and, as on the night at the roof-garden, found the man's eyes upon her.

"What name does your friend give to his work?" she asked.