"Oh,I don't know that that was my motive.""There is no one like you--no one,"said Beaton,as if apostrophizing her in her absence."To come from that house,with its assertions of money--you can hear it chink;you can smell the foul old banknotes;it stifles you--into an atmosphere like this,is like coming into another world.""Thank you,"said Alma."I'm glad there isn't that unpleasant odor here;but I wish there was a little more of the chinking.""No,no!Don't say that!"he implored."I like to think that there is one soul uncontaminated by the sense of money in this big,brutal,sordid city.""You mean two,"said Alma,with modesty."But if you stifle at the Dryfooses',why do you go there?""Why do I go?"he mused."Don't you believe in knowing all the natures,the types,you can?Those girls are a strange study:the young one is a simple,earthly creature,as common as an oat-field and the other a sort of sylvan life:fierce,flashing,feline--"Alma burst out into a laugh."What apt alliteration!And do they like being studied?I should think the sylvan life might--scratch.""No,"said Beaton,with melancholy absence,"it only-purrs."The girl felt a rising indignation."Well,then,Mr.Beaton,I should hope it would scratch,and bite,too.I think you've no business to go about studying people,as you do.It's abominable.""Go on,"said the young man."That Puritan conscience of yours!
It appeals to the old Covenanter strain in me--like a voice of pre-existence.Go on--"
"Oh,if I went on I should merely say it was not only abominable,but contemptible.""You could be my guardian angel,Alma,"said the young man,making his eyes more and more slumbrous and dreamy.
"Stuff!I hope I have a soul above buttons!"He smiled,as she rose,and followed her across the room."Good-night;Mr.Beaton,"she said.
Miss Woodburn and Fulkerson came in from the other room."What!You're not going,Beaton?""Yes;I'm going to a reception.I stopped in on my way.""To kill time,"Alma explained.
"Well,"said Fulkerson,gallantly,"this is the last place I should like to do it.But I guess I'd better be going,too.It has sometimes occurred to me that there is such a thing as staying too late.But with Brother Beaton,here,just starting in for an evening's amusement,it does seem a little early yet.Can't you urge me to stay,somebody?"The two girls laughed,and Miss Woodburn said:
"Mr.Beaton is such a butterfly of fashion!Ah wish Ah was on mah way to a pawty.Ah feel quahte envious.""But he didn't say it to make you,"Alma explained,with meek softness.
"Well,we can't all be swells.Where is your party,anyway,Beaton?"asked Fulkerson."How do you manage to get your invitations to those things?I suppose a fellow has to keep hinting round pretty lively,Neigh?"Beaton took these mockeries serenely,and shook hands with Miss Woodburn,with the effect of having already shaken hands with Alma.She stood with hers clasped behind her.
V.
Beaton went away with the smile on his face which he had kept in listening to Fulkerson,and carried it with him to the reception.
He believed that Alma was vexed with him for more personal reasons than she had implied;it flattered him that she should have resented what he told her of the Dryfooses.She had scolded him in their behalf apparently;but really because he had made her jealous by his interest,of whatever kind,in some one else.What followed,had followed naturally.Unless she had been quite a simpleton she could not have met his provisional love-making on any other terms;and the reason why Beaton chiefly liked Alma Leighton was that she was not a simpleton.Even up in the country,when she was overawed by his acquaintance,at first,she was not very deeply overawed,and at times she was not overawed at all.
At such times she astonished him by taking his most solemn histrionics with flippant incredulity,and even burlesquing them.But he could see,all the same,that he had caught her fancy,and he admired the skill with which she punished his neglect when they met in New York.He had really come very near forgetting the Leightons;the intangible obligations of mutual kindness which hold some men so fast,hung loosely upon him;it would not have hurt him to break from them altogether;but when he recognized them at last,he found that it strengthened them indefinitely to have Alma ignore them so completely.If she had been sentimental,or softly reproachful,that would have been the end;he could not have stood it;he would have had to drop her.But when she met him on his own ground,and obliged him to be sentimental,the game was in her hands.
Beaton laughed,now,when he thought of that,and he said to himself that the girl had grown immensely since she had come to New York;nothing seemed to have been lost upon her;she must have kept her eyes uncommonly wide open.He noticed that especially in their talks over her work;she had profited by everything she had seen and heard;she had all of Wetmore's ideas pat;it amused Beaton to see how she seized every useful word that he dropped,too,and turned him to technical account whenever she could.He liked that;she had a great deal of talent;there was no question of that;if she were a man there could be no question of her future.He began to construct a future for her;it included provision for himself,too;it was a common future,in which their lives and work were united.
He was full of the glow of its prosperity when he met Margaret Vance at the reception.
