Gordon Keith Part 33

At the wedding he was one of the gayest of the guests, and he and Miss Yorke were, as the newspapers stated, undoubtedly the handsomest couple of all the attendants. No one congratulated Mrs. Wentworth with more fervid words. To be sure, his eyes sought the bride's with a curious expression in them; and when he spoke with her apart a little later, there was an air of cynicism about him that remained in her memory. The handsomest jewel she received outside of the Wentworth family was from him. Its centre was a heart set with diamonds.

For a time Louise Wentworth was in the seventh heaven of ecstasy over her good fortune. Her beautiful house, her carriages, her gowns, her husband, and all the equipage of her new station filled her heart. She almost immediately took a position that none other of the young brides had. She became the fas.h.i.+on. In Norman's devotion she might have quite forgotten Ferdy Wickersham, had Ferdy been willing that she should do so. But Ferdy had no idea of allowing himself to be forgotten. For a time he paid quite devoted attention to Alice Yorke; but Miss Alice looked on his attentions rather as a joke. She said to him:

"Now, Ferdy, I am perfectly willing to have you send me all the flowers in New York, and go with me to the theatre every other night, and offer me all the flattery you have left over from Louise; but I am not going to let it be thought that I am going to engage myself to you; for I am not, and you don't want me."

"I suppose you reserve that for my fortunate rival, Mr. Lancaster?" said the young man, insolently.

Alice's eyes flashed. "At least not for you."

So Ferdy gradually and insensibly drifted back to Mrs. Wentworth. For a little while he was almost tragic; then he settled down into a state of cold cynicism which was not without its effect. He never believed that she cared for Norman Wentworth as much as she cared for him. He believed that her mother had made the match, and deep in his heart he hated Norman with the hate of wounded pride. Moreover, as soon as Mrs.

Wentworth was beyond him, he began to have a deeper feeling for her than he had ever admitted before. He set before himself very definitely just what he wanted to do, and he went to work about it with a patience worthy of a better aim. He flattered her in many ways which, experience had told him, were effective with the feminine heart.

Ferdy Wickersham estimated Mrs. Wentworth's vanity at its true value; but he underestimated her uprightness and her pride. She was vain enough to hazard wrecking her happiness; but her pride was as great as her vanity.

Thus, though Ferdy Wickersham flattered her vanity by his delicate attentions, his patient waiting, he found himself, after long service, in danger of being balked by her pride. His apparent faithfulness had enlisted her interest; but she held him at a distance with a resolution which he would not have given her credit for.

Most men, under such circ.u.mstances, would have retired and confessed defeat; but not so with Ferdy Wickersham. To admit defeat was gall and wormwood to him. His love for Louise had given place to a feeling almost akin to a desire for revenge. He would show her that he could conquer her pride. He would show the world that he could humble Norman Wentworth. His position appeared to him impregnable. At the head of a great business, the leader of the gayest set in the city, and the handsomest and coolest man in town--he was bound to win. So he bided his time, and went on paying Mrs. Wentworth little attentions that he felt must win her in the end. And soon he fancied that he began to see the results of his patience. Old Mr. Wentworth's health had failed rapidly, and Norman was so wholly engrossed in business, that he found himself unable to keep up with the social life of their set. If, however, Norman was too busy to attend all the entertainments, Ferdy was never too busy to be on hand, a fact many persons were beginning to note.

Squire Rawson's refusal of the offer for his lands began to cause Mr.

Aaron Wickersham some uneasiness. He had never dreamed that the old countryman would be so intractable. He refused even to set a price on them. He "did not want to sell," he said.

Mr. Wickersham conferred with his son. "We have got to get control of those lands, Ferdy. We ought to have got them before we started the railway. If we wait till we get through, we shall have to pay double.

The best thing is for you to go down there and get them. You know the chief owner and you know that young Keith. You ought to be able to work them. We shall have to employ Keith if necessary. Sometimes a very small lever will work a big one."

"Oh, I can work them easy enough," said the young man; "but I don't want to go down there just now--the weather's cold, and I have a lot of engagements and a matter on hand that requires my presence here now."

His father's brow clouded. Matters had not been going well of late. The Wentworths had been growing cooler both in business and in social life.

In the former it had cost him a good deal of money to have the Wentworth interest against him; in the latter it had cost Mrs. Wickersham a good deal of heart-burning. And Aaron Wickersham attributed it to the fact, of which rumors had come to him, that Ferdy was paying young Mrs.

Wentworth more attention than her husband and his family liked, and they took this form of resenting it.

"I do not know what business engagement you can have more important than a matter in which we have invested some millions which may be saved by prompt attention or lost. What engagements have you?"

"That is my affair," said Ferdy, coolly.

"Your affair! Isn't your affair my affair?" burst out his father.

"Not necessarily. There are several kinds of affairs. I should be sorry to think that all of my affairs you had an interest in."

He looked so insolent as he sat back with half-closed eyes and stroked his silken, black moustache that his father lost his temper.

"I know nothing about your affairs of one kind," he burst out angrily, "and I do not wish to know; but I want to tell you that I think you are making an a.s.s of yourself to be hanging around that Wentworth woman, having every one talking about you and laughing at you."

The young man's dark face flushed angrily.

"What's that?" he said sharply.

"She is another man's wife. Why don't you let her alone?" pursued the father.

"For that very reason," said Ferdy, recovering his composure and his insolent air.

"---- it! Let the woman alone," said his father. "Your fooling around her has already cost us the backing of Wentworth & Son--and, incidentally, two or three hundred thousand."

The younger man looked at the other with a flash of rage. This quickly gave way to a colder gleam.

"Really, sir, I could not lower myself to measure a matter of sentiment by so vulgar a standard as your ---- money."

His air was so intolerable that the father's patience quite gave way.

"Well, by ----! you'd better lower yourself, or you'll have to stoop lower than that. Creamer, Crustback & Company are out with us; the Wentworths have pulled out; so have Kestrel and others. Your deals and corners have cost me a fortune. I tell you that unless we pull through that deal down yonder, and unless we get that railroad to earning something, so as to get a basis for rebonding, you'll find yourself wis.h.i.+ng you had my 'd.a.m.ned money.'"

"Oh, I guess we'll pull it through," said the young man. He rose coolly and walked out of the office.

The afternoon he spent with Mrs. Norman. He had to go South, he told her, to look after some large interests they had there. He made the prospects so dazzling that she laughingly suggested that he had better put a little of her money in there for her. She had quite a snug sum that the Wentworths had given her.

"Why do not you ask Norman to invest it?" he inquired, with a laugh.

"Oh, I don't know. He says bonds are the proper investment for women."

"He rather underestimates your s.e.x, some of them," said Wickersham. And as he watched the color come in her cheeks, he added: "I tell you what I will do: I will put in fifty thousand for you on condition that you never mention it to a soul."

"I promise," she said half gratefully, and they shook hands on it.

That evening he informed his father that he would go South. "I'll get those lands easy enough," he said.

A few days later Ferdy Wickersham got off the train at Ridgely, now quite a flouris.h.i.+ng little health-resort, and in danger of becoming a fas.h.i.+onable one, and that afternoon he drove over to Squire Rawson's.

A number of changes had taken place in the old white-pillared house since Ferdy had been an inmate. New furniture of black walnut supplanted, at least on the first floor, the old horsehair sofa and split-bottomed chairs and pine tables; a new plush sofa and a new piano glistened in the parlor; large mirrors with dazzling frames hung on the low walls, and a Brussels carpet as s.h.i.+ny as a bed of tulips, and as stiff as the stubble of a newly cut hay-field, was on the floor.

But great as were these changes, they were not as great as that which had taken place in the young person for whom they had been made.

When Ferdy Wickersham drove up to the door, there was a cry and a scurry within, as Phrony Tripper, after a glance out toward the gate, dashed up the stairs.

When Miss Euphronia Tripper, after a half-hour or more of careful and palpitating work before her mirror, descended the old straight stairway, she was a very different person from the round-faced, plump school-girl whom Ferdy, as a lad, had flirted with under the apple-trees three or four years before. She was quite as different as was the new piano with its deep tones from the rattling old instrument that jingled and clanged out of tune, or as the cool, self-contained, handsome young man in faultless attire was from the slim, uppish boy who used to strum on it.

It was a very pretty and blus.h.i.+ng young country maiden who now entered quite accidentally the parlor where sat Mr. Ferdy Wickersham in calm and indifferent discourse with her grandfather on the crops, on cattle, and on the effect of the new railroad on products and prices.

Several sessions at a boarding-school of some pretension, with ambition which had been awakened years before under the apple-trees, had given Miss Phrony the full number of accomplishments that are to be gained by such means. The years had also changed the round, school-girl plumpness into a slim yet strong figure; and as she entered the parlor,--quite casually, be it repeated,--with a large basket of flowers held carelessly in one hand and a great hat shading her face, the blushes that sprang to her cheeks at the wholly unexpected discovery of a visitor quite astonished Wickersham.

"By Jove! who would have believed it!" he said to himself.

Within two minutes after she had taken her seat on the sofa near Wickersham, that young envoy had conceived a plan which had vaguely suggested itself as a possibility during his journey South. Here was an ally to his hand; he could not doubt it; and if he failed to win he would deserve to lose.

The old squire had no sooner left the room than the visitor laid the first lines for his attack.

Why was she surprised to see him? He had large interests in the mountains, and could she doubt that if he was within a thousand miles he would come by to see her?

The mantling cheeks and dancing eyes showed that this took effect.

"Oh, you came down on business? That was all! I know," she said.