Mr. Incoul's Misadventure. Saltus Edgar
houses, was furnished in that fashion which is suggestive of a sheriff’s sale, and best calculated to jar the nerves. Mr. Incoul did not wince. He gave the appointments one cursory, reluctant glance, and then went to the window. Across the way the nurse-maid still idled, the young man with a flower was drawing on a red glove, stitched with black, and as he looked out at them he heard a rustle, and turning, saw Miss Barhyte.
“I have come for an answer,” he said simply.
“I am glad to see you,” she answered, “very glad; I have thought much about what you said.”
“Favorably, I hope.”
“That must depend on you.” She went to a bell and touched it. “Archibald,” she said, when the negro appeared, “I am out. If any visitors come take them into the other room. Should any one want to come in here before I ring, say the parlor is being swept.”
The man bowed and withdrew. He would have stood on his head for her. There were few servants that she did not affect in much the same manner. She seemed to win willingness naturally.
She seated herself on a sofa, and opposite to her Mr. Incoul found a chair. Her dress he noticed was of some dark material, tailor-made, and unrelieved save by a high white collar and the momentary glisten of a button. The cut and sobriety of her costume made her look like a handsome boy, a young Olympian as it were, one who had strayed from the games and been arrayed in modern guise. Indeed, her features suggested that combination of beauty and sensitiveness which was peculiar to the Greek lad, but her eyes were not dark – they were the blue victorious eyes of the Norseman – and her hair was red, the red of old gold, that red which partakes both of orange and of flame.
“I hope – ” Mr. Incoul began, but she interrupted him.
“Wait,” she said, “I have much to tell you of which the telling is difficult. Will you bear with me a moment?”
“Surely,” he answered.
“It is this: It is needless for me to say I esteem you; it is unnecessary for me to say that I respect you, but it is because I do both that I feel I may speak frankly. My mother wishes me to marry you, but I do not. Let me tell you, first, that when my father died he left very little, but the little that he left seems to have disappeared, I do not know how or where. I know merely that we have next to nothing, and that we are in debt beside. Something, of course, has had to be done. I have found a position. Where do you suppose?” she asked, with a sudden smile and a complete change of key.
But Mr. Incoul had no surmises.
“In San Francisco! The MacDermotts, you know, the Bonanza people, want me to return with them and teach their daughter how to hold herself, and what not to say. It has been arranged that I am to go next week. Since the other night, however, my mother has told me to give up the MacDermotts and accept your offer. But that, of course, I cannot do.”
“And why not?”
To this Miss Barhyte made no answer.
“You do not care for me, I know; there is slight reason why you should. Yet, might you not, perhaps, in time?”
The girl raised her eyebrows ever so slightly. “So you see,” she continued, “I shall have to go to San Francisco.”
Mr. Incoul remained silent a moment. “If,” he said, at last, “if you will do me the honor to become my wife, in time you will care. It is painful for me to think of you accepting a position which at best is but a shade better than that of a servant, particularly so when I am able – nay, anxious,” he added, pensively – “to surround you with everything which can make life pleasant. I am not old,” he went on to say, “at least not so old that a marriage between us should seem incongruous. I find that I am sincerely attached to you – unselfishly, perhaps, would be the better word – and, if the privilege could be mine, the endeavor to make you happy would be to me more grateful than a second youth. Can you not accept me?”
He had been speaking less to her than to the hat which he held in his hand. The phrases had come from him haltingly, one by one, as though he had sought to weigh each mentally before dowering it with the wings of utterance, but, as he addressed this question he looked up at her. “Can you not?” he repeated.
Miss Barhyte raised a handkerchief to her lips and bit the shred of cambric with the disinvoltura of an heiress.
“Why is it,” she queried, “why is it that marriage ever was invented? Why cannot a girl accept help from a man without becoming his wife?”
Mr. Incoul was about to reply that many do, but he felt that such a reply would be misplaced, and he called a platitude to his rescue. “There are wives and wives,” he said.
“That is it,” the girl returned, the color mounting to her cheeks; “if I could but be to you one of the latter.”
He stared at her wonderingly, almost hopefully. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“Did you ever read ‘Eugénie Grandet’?”
“No,” he answered, “I never have.”
“Well, I read it years ago. It is, I believe, the only one of Balzac’s novels that young girls are supposed to read. It is tiresome indeed; I had almost forgotten it, but yesterday I remembered enough of the story to help me to come to some decision. In thinking the matter over and over again as I have done ever since I last saw you it has seemed that I could not become your wife unless you were willing to make the same agreement with me that Eugénie Grandet’s husband made with her.”
“What was the nature of that agreement?”
“It was that, though married, they were to live as though they were not married – as might brother and sister.”
“Always?”
“Yes.”
“No,” Mr. Incoul answered, “to such an agreement I could not consent. Did I do so, I would be untrue to myself, unmanly to you. But if you will give me the right to aid you and yours, I will – according to my lights – leave nothing undone to make you contented; and if I succeed in so doing, if you are happy, then the agreement which you have suggested would fall of itself. Would it not?” he continued. “Would it not be baseless? See – ” he added, and he made a vague gesture, but before he could finish the phrase, the girl’s hands were before her face and he knew that she was weeping.
Mr. Incoul was not tender-hearted. He felt toward Miss Barhyte as were she some poem in flesh that it would be pleasant to make his own. In her carriage as in her looks, he had seen that stamp of breeding which is coercive even to the dissolute. In her eyes he had discerned that promise of delight which it is said the lost goddesses could convey; and at whose conveyance, the legend says, the minds of men were enraptured. It was in this wise that he felt to her. Such exhilaration as she may have brought him was of the spirit, and being cold by nature and undemonstrative, her tears annoyed him. He would have had her impassive, as befitted her beauty. Beside, he was annoyed at his own attitude. Why should there be sorrow where he had sought to bring smiles? But he had barely time to formulate his annoyance into a thing even as volatile as thought – the girl had risen and was leaving the room.
As she moved to the door Mr. Incoul hastened to open it for her, but she reached it before him and passed out unassisted.
When she had gone he noticed that the sun was setting and that the room was even more hideous than before. He went again to the window wondering how to act. The entire scene was a surprise to him. He had come knowing nothing of the girl’s circumstances, and suddenly he learned that she was in indigence, unable perhaps to pay her board bills and worried by small tradesmen. He had come prepared to be refused and she had almost accepted him. But what an acceptance! In the nature of it his thoughts roamed curiously: he was to be a little more than kin, a little less than kind. She would accept him as a husband for out-of-door purposes, for the world’s sake she would bear his name – at arm’s length. According to the terms of her proposition were she ever really his wife it would be tantamount to a seduction. He was to be with her, and yet, until she so willed it, unable to call her his own. And did he refuse these terms, she was off, no one knew whither. But he had