Part 4 (1/2)

”I have had to live almost seventy years to find out that, after all, I am nothing but an old fool.”

CHAPTER III

A STRANGE BETROTHAL

When dinner was served at seven that Sat.u.r.day evening, the banker and his daughter faced each other in silence across the table. There was no wife and mother in this money-king's family, for she had pa.s.sed out of life when Patricia came into the world. This, perhaps, may account for the close intimacy that had always existed in the relations of father and daughter, between whom there had never been any break or shadow, until this particular Sat.u.r.day afternoon.

”Old Steve,” iron-faced, heavy jawed, and steady of eye, wore his Wall-street mask at this particular dinner; and he wore it as grimly as ever he did when encountering a financial storm or a threatened panic. He felt that he had more to conceal, just now, than any financial problem could ever compel him to face. He was no longer ”dad.” Patricia had practically omitted the use of even the less endearing term of father; but whether intentionally or not, even the shrewd old banker could not determine. For years, he had forgotten that he had a heart, save when he and his daughter were alone together. The money whirlpool of the financial section of the city had made him colder of aspect, harder in nature, and less considerate of the feelings of others. It had never even remotely occurred to him that there could be any rupture between himself and Patricia, or that a yawning gulf, like this one was, could separate them.

But now there was one, and he recognized its breadth and its depth. He knew that he could not cross it to her, and that it would never be bridged, save by Patricia herself. He had offended her beyond forgiveness, almost. He had not entirely realized that Patricia's nature and characteristics were so like his own, save only where they were feminine instead of masculine, that she would now adopt the course he would have pursued under circ.u.mstances which might, by a stretch of the imagination, be called parallel.

Patricia's face was almost as mask-like as her father's, save that her great, dark eyes were stormy in their depths, and would have suggested to one who had sailed the Southern seas the brooding and far away approach of a monsoon. Her olive-tinted skin had in it a suggestion of pallor; but only a suggestion. When she spoke at all it was to John, the butler who served them; and then it was always in her accustomed low, evenly modulated tone. Not perceptibly different to the butler were her tone and manner, and yet even the servant, wise in his generation, sensed the unsettled condition of things, and moved about like a phantom; perhaps also he was a trifle more a.s.siduous than usual in his efforts at perfect service.

Patricia ate sparingly, but bravely. There was nothing of the shrinking or pouting, or even of the petulant, in her character. Her father ate nothing at all. He dawdled with his soup, turned his fish over and sent it away, and sniffed contemptuously at everything else that was placed before him. He made his dinner of coffee and cognac, and seemed to be greatly interested while he burned the latter over three dominoes of sugar.

When the moment came to leave the table, there had been no word exchanged between them; but then, with an effort, the banker a.s.sumed his brightest and most kindly tone; and he asked, cheerily:

”Well, what have you on for to-night, my dear?”

”Nothing at all,” she replied, indifferently, as if the question held no interest for her--as, indeed, it did not, for the moment; but she followed him from the dining-room into the library, as was their usual custom whenever they had dined alone. Now, as they entered it, the banker, with an a.s.sumption of high spirits he did not feel, remarked:

”If you don't object to a Sat.u.r.day-night opera, Garden is singing 'Salome' at the Manhattan to-night, and I should like to hear it. Will you go, with your old dad?”

”No, thank you,” she replied, indifferently. ”I shall remain at home.”

She was standing at the table, turning the leaves of a magazine, and her father glanced keenly at her across the intervening s.p.a.ce, while he lighted a cigar. Then, with a shrug of his shoulders, and a sigh which could not have been seen or heard, and which only he himself knew to have existed, he crossed the floor. As he was pa.s.sing from the room, he said, as indifferently as she had spoken:

”Then, I suppose, I will have to take it in, alone.”

”You might ask Roderick to go with you,” she threw at him, as he pa.s.sed into the hallway; but Langdon pretended not to hear, for he called back at her:

”I'll get Beatrice, I think, and ask her to play daughter for me; eh?”

Patricia made no comment upon this suggestion; but having awaited, where she was, the sound of the closing outer door, she slowly crossed the room.

The drop-light at her favorite chair was adjusted, and she began the reading of a new book which someone had placed on the table beside it.

She read on and on, apparently with interest, but really without knowing at all what she did read, until more than an hour had pa.s.sed; and then a card was brought to her.

She glanced at it, although she believed she knew perfectly well what name it bore, before she did so. Her lips tightened for an instant, and she frowned ever so little. But she said to the footman:

”You may bring Mr. Duncan here, James.”

Patricia did not rise from her chair when her caller entered the library. Duncan moved toward her eagerly, but meeting her eyes, which she raised quite calmly to his as he crossed the floor, he paused, and remained at about midway of the distance.

”Good evening, Patricia,” he said. ”I'm awfully glad to have found you at home. I was afraid you might go out before I could get here.”

”I expected you,” she told him, without returning his salute. ”I have been expecting you for an hour. In fact, I have been waiting for you.”

”That is very pleasant news, indeed, Patricia.” Duncan was startled by it, however. He had not expected it, and he did not quite like the tone in which Patricia uttered it.