The Barrier: A Novel. French Allen
the Colonel looked at them from his desk; then turned his eyes on Beth and Pease. A thrill of wonder, then a sense of exultation seized him. Attractive girls they both were, and the men were the two richest in the city.
Judith conducted Ellis through shrubbery and across fields, up the hillside to a spot where little trees were growing in an old cellar, while charred timbers lying half buried spoke of the catastrophe which had destroyed the house. "I remember the fire," Judith said. "I was a child then, but I stood at the window in the night, mother holding me, and watched the house burn down. Mr. Welton would neither build again nor sell. But the place is on the market now?"
"He's to marry again, I understand," answered Ellis. They both accepted the fact as explaining any and all departures from previous lines of conduct.
"Would you build on this spot?" she asked him.
"What would you advise?" he returned. She swept the situation with her gaze.
"There are sites higher up, or lower down," she said. "Lower is too low. Higher – you might see the chimney."
Ellis noted with satisfaction the prejudice against Mather's landmark, but he passed the remark by. "Don't you like," he said, "a house placed at the highest possible point? It is so striking."
"Couldn't it be too much so?" she inquired.
He turned his sharp look on her, willing to take a lesson and at the same time make it evident that he welcomed the instruction. "That is a new idea," he said. "It explains why that chimney, for instance, is unpleasant."
"It is so tall and – stupid," explained Judith; "and you never can get rid of it."
"I understand," he said. "Then perhaps this is the best place to build. I could get it roofed in before winter, easily, and have the whole thing ready by next summer. Stables where the barn stands, I suppose. My architect could get out the plans in a fortnight."
"The same architect," queried Judith, "that built your city house?" There was that in her voice which seized Ellis's attention.
"You don't like his work?" he demanded.
"Why," she hesitated, caught, "I – you wouldn't put a city house here, would you?"
"I like the kind," he said. "Stone, you know; turrets, carvings, imps, and that sort of thing. All hand-work, but they get them out quickly. Kind of a tall house. Wouldn't that do here?"
"No, no, Mr. Ellis," she answered quickly, almost shuddering at his description. "Think how out of place – here. On a hill a low house, but a long one if you need it, is proper."
"Oh," he said slowly, thinking. "Seems reasonable. But tall is the kind Smithson always builds."
"I know," answered Judith. Smithson was responsible for a good deal, in the city.
Again Ellis searched her face. "You don't care for my city house?"
She had to tell the truth. "For my taste," she acknowledged, "it's a little – ornate."
"That's ornamental?" he asked. "But that's what I like about it. Don't the rest of my neighbours care for it any more than you do?"
"Some do not," she admitted.
"I guess that most of you don't, then," he decided. "Well, well, how a fellow makes mistakes! One of those quiet buildings with columns, now, such as I tore down, I suppose would have been just the thing?"
"Yes," she said. "But Mr. Ellis, you mustn't think – "
He smiled. "Never mind, Miss Blanchard. You would say something nice, I'm sure, but the mischief's done; the building's there, ain't it?"
"I wish – " she began.
"And really I'm obliged to you," he went on. "Because I might have built a house here just like the other. Now we'll have it right – if I decide to build here at all."
"Then you've not made up your mind?"
"Almost," he said. "The bargain's all but closed. Only it seems so useless, for a bachelor." He looked at her a moment. "Give me your advice," he begged. "Sometimes I think I'm doing the foolish thing."
"Why, Mr. Ellis, what can I – and it's not my affair."
"Make it your affair!" he urged. "This is very important to me. I don't want to sicken these people by crowding in; you saw what Miss Fenno thought of me this afternoon. But if there is any chance for me – what do you say?"
It was the mention of Miss Fenno that did it. She sprang up in Judith's consciousness, clothed in her armour of correctness – proper, prim, and stupid. And in Judith was roused wrath against this type of her life, against her class and its narrowness. She obeyed her impulse, and turned a quickening glance on him.
"Would you turn back now?" she asked.
"That is enough!" he cried, with sudden vehemence.
For a while they stood and said no more. Judith saw that he looked around him on the level space where his house was to stand; then he cast his glance down toward those estates which he would overlook. His eye almost flashed – was there more of the hawk or the eagle in his gaze? Judith thought it was the eagle; she knew she had stirred him anew to the struggle, and was exhilarated. Unmarked at the moment, she had taken a step important to them both. She had swayed him to an important decision, and had become in a sense an adviser.
Yet aside from that, she had stimulated him strangely. Her enthusiasm was communicable – not through its loftiness, for from that he shrank with mistrust, but through its energy and daring. She drew him in spite of her ignorance and misconceptions: dangerous as these might be to him if she should come to learn the truth about his practices, he thought that in her love of action lay an offset to them, while her restlessness and curiosity were two strong motives in his favour. She was fearless, even bold, and that high spirit of hers had more charm for him than all her beauty. He did not see, and it was long before he understood, that something entirely new in him had been roused by contact with her; the most that he felt was that he was satisfied as never before, that she had strengthened his impulse to work and to achieve, and that with her to help him he would be irresistible. Yes, he had chosen well!
CHAPTER IX
A parting shot in conversation sometimes rankles like the Parthian's arrow. So it had been with Pease. Beth had said to him: "How can you think you know life, when you live so much alone?" – words to that effect. He had had no chance to defend himself to her, and in consequence had been defending himself to himself ever since. Truly a serious mind is a heavy burden.
Finally he had come down to Chebasset to get the matter off his mind; at least, such was his real purpose. He coloured it with the intention of "looking in at the mill," and gave Mather a few words at the office. Mather had been working at his desk, as Mr. Daggett, the Harbour Commissioner, had found and left him. Orders, Mather said, were piling in too fast.
Pease smiled. "Enlarge, then."
"Delay in profits," warned Mather. "No dividend this quarter."
"Go ahead just the same," said Pease. "I hoped for this."
Mather began writing. "Come, leave work," invited Pease. "I'm going up to the Blanchards'. Come with me."
"I'm ordering coal and material," said Mather. "We have plenty of ore, but the new work must begin soon."
Pease struck his hand upon the desk. "Do you mean," he demanded, "that you are writing about the enlargements already?"
"Plans were made long ago," answered Mather.
"What do you do for exercise?" cried Pease. "How do you keep well? I'll not be responsible, mind, for your breakdown when it comes."
But he made no impression and went away alone, climbed the hill, and found the Blanchards on their piazza. Ellis was more than he had bargained for, and the Colonel had never been exactly to Pease's taste, but they departed, leaving him alone with Beth. She presently noticed the signs that he was endeavouring to bring the conversation to a particular subject, as one becomes aware of a heavy vessel trying to get under way. So she gave him the chance to speak.
"Miss