Tongues of Flame (MacFarlane)/Chapter 6
BUT why—why did they invite me?" Harrington kept asking himself as he went up the hill. "Probably just tact. Saw I was all fussed up and wanted to make me feel right about it. Decent, I'll say," and Henry experienced a very grateful feeling. "And lucky for me!" he gulped.
But the curiosity in his mind which swallowed all others had to do with Billie, and he was glad he had had the courage to get into evening dress himself when she burst on his vision, wearing some shimmering white stuff with an overtone of pink in its coloring; thus imparting an iridescence to the garment which fell away from her gleaming shoulders in classic but form-revealing folds to a train that curved about her dainty silver-shod feet.
Upon the shoes were buckles of green jade, and in the young lady's hand was a bizarre fan of feathers, long, narrow and oddly curled, dyed as green as the jade, while an are of green stones flashed where they nestled in the loose masses of hair. The green of the stones wrought a faint harmony with the green of the fan; at the same time it brought out that bronze tinge in her silky coils, and thus seemed to lengthen this fascinating effect of iridescence.
Even the light-filled eyes were iridescent; and when they welcomed Henry with an unfeigned cordiality they kindled a glow in his soul that was iridescent also.
But just then Mr. Boland, behind a tombstone-like expanse of white shirt-front, loomed tall, immaculate, benign, and assumed a host's possession of his guest.
"Know 'em all, don't you?" he inquired, contemplating the roomful with a sort of paternal pride. Henry bestowed a general bow and smiled. In part, this was an inner smile due to the discovery that when Old Two Blades said "family dinner-party" he meant his business family—the heads of his subsidiary corporations and their wives—for these appeared to make up the guest-list.
Yes; Harrington knew them all. There, for instance, was Scanlon, heavy-shouldered, heavy-jawed and tenacious—a coarse, ill-schooled man, out of whom Henry had taken a fall or two in court. There was Quackenbaugh, head of the manufacturing end, who, thin and wiry, gave an impression of astuteness and also of tenacity. And there were the others, Pierce and Manning and Rudolph, and so on.
After such casual presentation the first mark of distinct favor came when Old Two Blades wilfully winnowed Henry out of the crush and showed him over the house—Humboldt House, Henry had understood that it was called—which was rather pretentious, of course; but then, the house was pretentious. During the ten minutes thus consumed his host was revealed to him as an amiable soul, utterly without swank, who asked Henry homely questions—where he was born, who his parents were and what; and kept up this flow of kindly but keenly penetrative interrogation until dinner was announced.
Harrington, observing that Clayton was not present at this intimate family dinner, felt an absurd glow of triumph in the fact. Not one of that group who had made their boast this day was here, while he was—sitting at Miss Billie's right hand, and able to look forward with vivid anticipation to a real acquaintance-making chat with her sometime after dinner. But a little to his discomfiture, flocks of young people began to arrive for dancing before the dessert was off the table. Here they came—Clayton, Spaulding, Underwood, every eligible and half-eligible in the community, piling in, bubbling with hilarity, breaking up that certain sense of privacy which even the large dinner-party had allowed, and snatching Billie out of his reach.
When the music started Henry experienced a lonely feeling. He had been flung into a serious mood, while these dancing dervishes of young people were frivolous; they were even frivolous about the affair of the afternoon; referring to it as Gaylord's necktie party and frankly congratulating Henry upon his part in it, whereas in the dinner table conversation it had been a subject noticeably taboo.
He stood smoking and looking on, in the party and not of it. He saw the older and heavier women lapse back into corners and members of Boland General drift out probably for a smoke or a chat upon the wide verandas; he saw Mr. Boland go off with Scanlon and after a bit Scanlon come and beckon Quackenbaugh; and he sensed vaguely that amidst all this blare of music and scrape of syncopated feet, with excited laughter and buzz of talk, the business, the great never-sleeping business of Boland General was moving steadily on.
But he had no patience with business just now—not much with anything but one. He marked where a slim and shimmering radiance moved with Louis Spaulding through the eccentricities of a fox-trot and bided his time—his time for finding out what this sudden turmoil within him was all about anyhow.
He was still biding, and impatiently, when Mr. Boland reappeared. His manner had undergone a distinct change since before dinner. His approval was no longer guarded. He beamed upon Henry this time and slipping an arm through his with familiar friendliness, piloted him off, acutely wondering, to a room he called his den, although it was larger than Henry's office. Upon entry Quackenbaugh and Scanlon were discovered with a blueprint map between them, upon a massive table of Flemish oak.
"There is simply no other place for the mill," affirmed Quackenbaugh, and thumped a particular section of the map with his long bony finger.
"It's just like you fellows," grumbled Scanlon, "to go and pick out the only piece of land on the whole west shore of the Basin that we haven't got title to, and then say it's the one spot in the world for your darned old shingle mill."
"It's a simple matter enough to buy the island," insisted Quackenbaugh, rebukingly.
"By thunder, it may not be," averred Scanlon with emphasis. "This Siwash has got a U. S. patent issued to him not six months ago for war service, and some of these Indians are darned stubborn about their land. They get a superstition about it. I tell you we might have a devil of a time trying to get that fellow to give up."
Thus far the conversation had got while Mr. Boland paused before his desk, opened a solid gold cigar box and extended it to Henry with a grave ceremonial air. Henry accepted a perfecto in the same spirit and as his host struck a match, reflected that this was the first time a multimillionaire had ever furnished him with a light. He was, moreover, too human not to experience a few other quick and pleasant reflections.
As Mr. Boland, after two satisfactory puffs of his own weed, whiffed out the match, his eyes shot one arresting glance to where Quackenbaugh and Scanlon were talking. Their voices were instantly hushed. Instantly, too, Henry knew, without turning to see, that they were rolling up their map and going elsewhere to continue their debate.
"Be seated, Harrington," said Mr. Boland graciously, and Henry found himself sinking into the arms of an upholstered leather chair that clasped his figure about and held his body in suspense with a luxury of comfort of which he had never before conceived. At the same time the young man saw how the unctuous glow of a soul, which knew within itself that it meant exceedingly well to all the world, had softened and hallowed all those traces of a hard-bitten life, which had been etched, as if with acid, into the face of Old Two Blades.
"I hope you're sentimental, Harrington."
"Reasonably so, I trust," smiled Henry.
"Then we can start right off," announced Mr. Boland comfortably, and became at once intimate and confidential. "I want to talk to you about a tribe of Indians—or what's left of one—and Indians are rather a sentiment with me."
Indians? Henry was instantly disappointed. He had been hoping Mr. Boland was going to offer him some legal business—Mr. Boland, the biggest client of them all!
"You look at a Siwash," Old Two Blades was going on, with the unconscious directness of his kind, "and he isn't much to gaze on; but they owned all this country once. And I tell you I've got a sentimental feeling for 'em. They ought to be protected. Right now there's a bunch of them up on Shell Point that are in danger of being robbed."
Henry started slightly, recalling that this was exactly what Miss Marceau had been saying.
"They're hard up," explained Old Two Blades. "Their land is valuable, but not to them. Some day when the tribe is hungry and discouraged a white man is going to come along and skin them out of it—buy it for a song—land that might be immensely valuable some time."
"But," Henry's legal mind observed, "there could be no danger of their being inveigled into a bad sale unless the Indian agent could be corrupted."
Old Two Blades shook his head. "Not corrupted; oh, not likely," he averred gravely. "But—swayed in his judgment, let us say. Take that miscreant, Hornblower, now," he instanced, "where that fellow is not too well-known his line of talk is very persuasive. He might convince an Indian agent of most anything; or, let us say, a commissioner of Indian affairs, as far away as Washington, for while that scalawag lives the man is potentially dangerous."
Old Two Blades said this almost as if he regretted the necessity of having saved the wretch's life, and it struck Henry that Mr. Boland was vaguely, distantly apprehensive about Hornblower, which seemed too bad, for he was liking the great business genius more and more.
"However"—with a lift in his voice the magnate switched back his thought—"I've been thinking up a scheme to protect those Indians."
"Yes?" inquired Henry, leaning forward eagerly, thinking with amusement of Miss Marceau's absurd fears, yet discovering that her appeal had somehow laid in his mind a foundation of very genuine interest in the welfare of these Indians.
"Of course, I'll manage to make the project pay somehow," Mr. Boland hastened to qualify, "—make it contribute its quota to the prosperity of us all at the same time we're doing the poor devils good."
Harrington found himself nodding instant acquiescence. He was a trifle suspicious of pure philanthropies.
"My idea is to buy the land myself—before somebody else does." Old Two Blades plumped this sentence out, his whole expression one of the modest consciousness of superior virtue, then elaborated: "My plan, in order to keep 'em from squandering their principal, is to pay for the land in Liberty bonds to be held in trust by the Government. There's a lot of the land and comparatively few of the Siwashes and just the interest would, according to my figures, allow seventy-five dollars a month per Indian, big or little, and with the Government re-investing for him, it would protect him and his children's children as long as they lived."
"Why, that would be fabulous luxury for most of those Siwashes," glowed Henry, enthusiasm kindling in part because of Miss Marceau, in part because of Billie Boland, and in part because of growing admiration for her father.
"Of course, it's a big project, you understand," cautioned Mr. Boland gravely. "It's a big project. Several millions involved!"
Henry was properly impressed. "The real difficulty, Mr. Boland, if you permit me to suggest," he said, "will be in gaining the confidence of the Indians themselves. They're a suspicious lot, as far as my observation goes; if they get stubborn it would be all off."
"Which is exactly where you come in, Harrington," announced Mr. Boland with a sudden and significant lowering of his voice. "Judge Allen tells me you've been active for some of those young fellows, getting citizenship papers and allotments for them. Had some of them in your platoon overseas, I believe? Come to understand the Indian character pretty well, I suppose?"
"Why, yes; I think I may say, Mr. Boland, I understand their psychology tolerably well," responded the young man somewhat guardedly.
"Undoubtedly you do and that's why I am going to put this whole matter in your hands," was announced by Mr. Boland, with quick, conclusive emphasis.
"The—the whole matter?" murmured Henry, a little breathless.
The manner of J. B. had been confidential and intimate from the first; now it became almost affectionate. He laid a hand upon the young man's arm. "People have a way of trusting you, Henry. That's what Judge Allen was telling me this afternoon. How fully I find myself trusting you, after a few brief contacts, I am revealing. I've no doubt you can get these Siwashes to trust you."
With those deep but kindly eyes beaming on him so encouragingly, Henry had to admit frankly: "Yes; I believe I could, Mr. Boland. I am so completely sold to the project," he smiled, "that I think I could make a cigar-store Indian see it, let alone a real one. It's noble. It commands all my enthusiasm."
The tight features of Old Two Blades relaxed into another of his most approving smiles; but immediately his mind was scouting ahead once more. "The instant we get the Indians committed, the Agent and the Commissioner of Indian Affairs will have to be brought round. If you are as successful as I anticipate, I rather think I'll leave that up to you also.
"It's a long route—probably," Old Two Blades meditated over his Havana. "It might take us the best part of five or six years; but the project is worth the time." The long lips had clamped decisively.
Henry's eyes widened dizzily. Why, this was no brief relationship that was being proposed. It might call for years of his attention. It would stretch out into life. It might flow on and on. Subsidiary issues must develop and tie him up with other of the Boland projects; that is, if he were successful—if he could make good!
This which opened to him here and now in the seclusion of John Boland's den with dance music ringing in his ears, was probably the most momentous opportunity that life would ever bring to him. His soul rose at the prospect.
"Will you undertake this for me, Harrington?" Old Two Blades asked incisively.
"Mr. Boland, I will!"
Both men had risen.
"It's a bargain," said the older, offering his hand. Henry took it and felt it clasp him like a hook of steel.
Obviously the conversation was near its end, yet nothing had been said about compensation; and Henry was keenly interested in that, for all at once he was becoming thrifty. Touched tonight by the glamor of riches he was beginning to want riches for himself.
"Scanlon will drop in upon you tomorrow and make whatever arrangements will be satisfactory to you," Mr. Boland suggested expansively, somewhat as if he read Henry's thoughts and recognized them as natural and commendable even.
"I hope he won't find me too—too mercenary," Henry smiled.
"Oh, we must all make money out of the transaction," laughed Mr. Boland, a low chuckling laugh that was characteristic of him, when he laughed at all; "Indians and all of us. It's to be a paying proposition for everybody."
Just at this satisfying moment Henry heard, thrillingly, the voice of Miss Boland calling him and turned to find her framed in the library door, still a vision of shimmering, iridescent beauty. She beckoned to him with her fan and then couched its green plumes diagonally across her breast, allowing the curled tips to touch her soft throat caressingly.
"I was just coming to rescue you from father," she beamed.
"It would be rescue to be snatched by you from the arms of an angel," Henry declared gallantly; "but your father and I seemed to get on amazingly well."
"Isn't that fine?" Miss Billie effervesced. "Father is such a good friend to a young man when he is a friend."
"Everybody seems kind in this house," responded Henry with significance designed to be highly obvious. "Permit me," he said, and took the fan, feeling a most absurd impulse to caress her white chin with its curled velvety ends quite as she had been doing unconsciously when he came up. His nerves were all bounding; he was filled with a primitive exuberance. The dance was still on, the party was at its gayest but she had left them all to seek him. He felt boyish and irrepressible, likely to do any absurd thing. But he restrained that impulse about the fan.
"May I have the next dance?" he asked eagerly.
"And it's the very last," Miss Billie nodded, smiling benignly as a queen confers a favor. "Mother is sending the orchestra home early to protect my delicate constitution. I've been saving it for you because I felt father was taking an unfair advantage."
This sounded all so very delightful that Henry wasn't quite sure it wasn't a dream; yet knew that it was not for he was experiencing very real sensations as he took Miss Boland in his arms for the dance, real but rather unusual—feelings of reverence, feelings that he took hold of something immensely precious but immensely fragile. This sense of fragileness passed with the first contact of her supple body. She was not only a thing alive; she was strong; she stepped through the measures, the eccentric starts and stops, the gaits and gallops, of the modern dance with an elastic lightness which told its own story of perfect health and athletic vigor.
She was warmly radiant, disingenuously friendly and spontaneously happy. She was wonderful, she was glorious; but she was also mysterious. And he held all this mystery in his arms, close to him, rhythmic and pulsing against him, and still it was insoluble. The beautiful face, animate under the spell of the music, seemed more beautiful still. When a single wisp of that bronze-brown hair fell down across a cheek, he wanted to kiss it away. He wanted to. Yet this want assured him definitely of nothing. He had seen many a cheek before that he had desired to kiss. He had never pretended to himself that he was past wanting to kiss a pretty girl.
"Do you golf?" she asked, when the dance was done and the party breaking up—face lighting like the child of the open air she was.
"A duffer's game," confessed Henry, breathing a little quickly, perhaps at the dance, perhaps at wondering if God was about to promise another contact with this fascinating young woman.
"Shall we find out what you mean by that, say, at ten tomorrow?" Billie smiled archly.
Henry's face kindled, then fell as he remembered an appointment to be made with Thomas Scanlon for some time tomorrow morning. "You forget that I am a poor struggler," he bantered; "that only this afternoon I was counseled to struggle hard and that ten is an hour when I should be in my office waiting for clients."
"You win!" the girl conceded with quick laughter, then let her eyes rove the room, saying: "I must fasten upon some idler or spend a lonely morning." But swiftly her glance came back to him and centered upon his with most devastating appeal. "Don't you—don't you think it might be well to—worth your while to idle just one more morning?" she coaxed, glance and tone together shooting Henry all to pieces inside.
"I—yes, on second thought, Miss Boland, I think I ought," he smiled.
"It's a date," confirmed Billie with a decisive nod, as accustomed always to have men defer their plans to hers. With a quick pressure of the hand she was gone from him and mingling among the departing guests.