Chapter 14. "Let Us Have A Betrayal"

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_ CHAPTER XIV. "LET US HAVE A BETRAYAL"

Mr. Archie Weil had become quite intimate with Mr. Wilton Fern; so much so that he called at his office every few days, took walks with him on business errands, went with him to lunch (to the annoyance of Lawrence Gouger, who did not like to eat alone) and sometimes took the train home with him at night, on evenings when Shirley Roseleaf was not of the party. Everybody in the Fern family liked Archie. Even Hannibal, who had conceived a veritable hatred for Roseleaf, brightened at the entrance of Mr. Weil either at the house or office, the negro seeming to alternate between the two places very much as he pleased. Millicent liked him because he was so "facile," as she expressed it; a man with whom one could talk without feeling it necessary to pick each step. Daisy liked him because her father did, and because Roseleaf did, and because he treated her with marked politeness that had apparently no double meaning.

And they all got confidential with him, which was exactly what he wanted them to do; only the one he most wanted to give him confidence gave him the least. This was Mr. Fern, himself.

Try as he might, Archie could not discover what clouded the brow of the wool merchant, what made him act like a person who fears each knock at the door, each sound of a human voice in the hallway of his office. He could find no reason for Mr. Fern's attitude toward Hannibal, whose manners were as far removed as possible from those supposed to belong to a personal servant. There must be a cause of no ordinary character when this polished gentleman permitted a negro to insult him and his daughter, in a way to excite comment. What it was Mr. Weil was bent on discovering, but as yet he had made little progress.

It was on account of this plan that Mr. Weil affected to like Hannibal so well. He used to spend hours in devising ways for securing the truth from that source. Hannibal, however, gave no signs of intending to reveal his secret, and if he was going abroad to study, it seemed unlikely that the investigator would get at many facts in that quarter.

One day, Mr. Weil happened to call at the office of the merchant at an hour when the latter was out, and found Hannibal in possession. As this was an opportunity seldom available, Archie entered into a lively conversation with the fellow.

"They tell me you are soon going to leave us," he said, as a beginning. "I hear that you are going to Europe."

"Yes," said Hannibal, with a certain wariness.

"If I can tell you anything about the country I shall be glad," said Weil, affably. "I have spent considerable time there. You don't understand the language, I believe?"

The negro simply shook his head.

"It's easy enough to acquire. Get right into a hotel with a lot of students, and pitch in. Though they do say," added the speaker, archly, "that the best method is to engage a pretty grisette. The poet was right:

"'Tis pleasing to be schooled in a strange tongue
By female eyes and lips; that is, I mean,
When both the teacher and the taught are young--

"You know the rest."

The answering smile that he expected, did not come into the negro's face. If possible, it grew still more reserved and earnest.

"There's one good thing, if you'll excuse my mentioning it," pursued Archie, "and that is, the French have no prejudice whatever against color. Indeed, a colored student gets a little better attention in Paris than a white one."

Then the silent lips were unlocked.

"Could a black man--marry--a white woman, of the upper or middle classes?" asked Hannibal, slowly.

"To be sure. There was the elder Dumas, and a dozen others. I tell you there's absolutely no color line there. They judge a man by what he is, not by the accident of race or skin. You'll see such a difference you'll be sorry you didn't go years before."

Hannibal sat as if lost in thought.

"Mr. Fern will miss you, though," continued Archie. "Yes, and the family. You seem almost indispensable."

A suspicious glance was shot at the speaker, but his face bore such an ingenuous look that the suggestion was dismissed. What could he know?

"They will get some one else," said the negro, quietly.

"Yes, but in these days it is not easy to get people one can trust. Mr. Fern will not find any one to take your place in a moment. And just now, when he evidently has a great deal of trouble on his mind, it will be unpleasant to make a change."

Hannibal was completely deceived by the apparently honest character of these observations. He could not resist the temptation to boast a little, that peculiar trait of a menial.

"I know all about Mr. Fern's affairs," he agreed. "Both here and at the house. He would not trust the next man as he has me."

Mr. Weil nodded wisely.

"I see, I see," he answered. "You know then what has annoyed him of late--that which has puzzled all the rest of us so much. You know, but having the knowledge in a sort of confidential capacity, you would, of course, have no right to reveal it."

Hannibal straightened himself up in an exasperating way.

"You will not find what troubles Mr. Fern," he said, loftily. "And now, may I ask you something. Do you expect to marry his eldest daughter?"

An inclination to kick the fellow for his impudence came so strong upon Mr. Weil that it required all of his powers to suppress the sentiment. But through his indignation there struggled his old admiration for this elegant physical specimen. He wished he could get a statue modeled from him, before the original left the country.

"That is a delicate question," he managed to say.

"I know it," replied Hannibal. "But I have observed some things which may have escaped you. Shall I tell you what I mean?"

Not at all easy under this strain, the curiosity of Mr. Weil was so great that he could only reply in the affirmative.

"Miss Millicent," explained Hannibal, slowly, "is in love--very much in love--with another person."

A stare that could not be concealed answered him.

"You have not seen anything to indicate it?" asked the negro. "I thought as much. She has done her best to cover it, and yet I can swear it is true. She likes you, as a friend. But she loves him, passionately."

He was in for it now and might as well follow this strange matter to the end.

"Do I know this individual?" asked Archie.

"Yes. You brought him to the house and introduced him to her."

The man gave a slight cry, in spite of himself.

"Not Roseleaf!"

Hannibal bowed impressively; and at the moment Mr. Fern's footsteps were heard in the entry.

Mr. Weil did not know, when he tried to think about it afterwards, whether the wool merchant noticed particularly that he and Hannibal had been talking together, or suspected that they might have confidences. His head was too full of the startling statement he had heard, and when he was again upon the street he wandered aimlessly for an hour trying to reconcile this view with the facts as they had presented themselves to his mind previously.

Millicent in love with Roseleaf! She had said very little to the young man, so far as he had observed. Her younger sister--sweet little Daisy--had monopolized his attention. If it were true, what an instance it was of the odd qualities in the feminine mind, that leave men to wonder more and more of what material it is constructed. But was it true? Was Hannibal a better judge, a closer student, than the rest of them? He did not like Millicent, any better than she liked him. Was he trying a game of mischief, with some ulterior purpose that was not apparent on the surface?

Out of it all, Archie Weil emerged, sure of but one thing. He must use his eyes. If Millicent loved Roseleaf, she could not hide it successfully from him, now that he had this clue.

The girl's novel was selling fairly well. Weil had made a bargain with Cutt & Slashem that was very favorable. It gave him an excuse to talk with the authoress as much as he pleased, and he used his advantage. He brought her the comments of the press--not that they amounted to anything, for it was evident that most of the critics had merely skimmed through the pages. He came to tell her the latest things that Gouger had said, what proportion of cloth and paper covers were being ordered, and the other gossip of the printing house. And now he talked about the work that Shirley was engaged on, and grew enthusiastic, declaring that the young man would yet make a place for himself beside the Stevensons and Weymans.

Millicent struck him as caring much more for news of her own production than that of the young man who had been represented as the object of her adoration. If she was half as fond of Roseleaf as Hannibal intimated, she was certainly successful in concealing her sentiments from the shrewd observer. The result of a fortnight's investigation convinced Weil that the negro had made a complete mistake, and all the hypotheses that had arisen were allowed to dissipate into thin air and fly away.

Another two weeks passed and Hannibal still remained with the Ferns. An inquiry of Daisy produced the answer that he thought of remaining in America till spring. The girl tried to act as if it made not the slightest consequence to her whether he went or stayed, but she did not succeed. Mr. Weil knew that she wished most heartily for the time when the negro would take his departure. She was bound up in her father, and Hannibal was worrying him to death--from whatever cause. She wanted the tie between him and this black man broken, and hated every day that stood between them and his hour of sailing.

Roseleaf was almost as uneasy as Daisy over the delay. He had given her the money she asked for, though no allusion to its purpose had been made.

She still had it, somewhere, unless she had given it to the one for whom it was intended. When she took the package from his hand she rose on her tiptoes and kissed him with the most affectionate of gestures. It was the second occasion on which he had been permitted to touch her lips, and he appreciated it fully. He realized from her action how deeply she felt his kindness in providing her with the funds that were to relieve her father of an incubus that was sapping his very life.

"You don't find much use for our black Adonis yet, I see," said Weil, as he laid down the latest page of the slowly building novel. "I had hoped you would penetrate the secret of his power over your heroine's father, by this time."

"No, I cannot understand it at all," replied Roseleaf. "And if you, with your superior quickness of perception, have found nothing, I don't see how you could expect me to."

"You have greater opportunities," said Weil, with a smile that was not quite natural. "You have the ear of the fair Miss Daisy, remember," he explained, in reply to the inquiring look that was raised to him.

"Ah, but she knows nothing, either," exclaimed Roseleaf. "I am sure of that."

Mr. Weil was silent for some moments.

"Well, if you cannot find the true cause," he said, "you will have to invent a hypothetical one. Your novel cannot stand still forever. Imagine something--a crime, for instance, of which this black fellow is cognizant. A murder--that he peeped in at a keyhole and saw. How would that do?"

Roseleaf turned pale.

"You know," he said, "that you are talking of impossibilities."

"On the contrary, nothing is impossible," responded the other, impatiently. "College professors, delicate ladies, children not yet in their teens, have committed homicide, why not this handsome gentleman in the wool business? Or if you won't have murder--and I agree that blood is rather tiresome, it has been overdone so much--bring a woman into the case. Let us have a betrayal, a wronged virgin, and that sort of thing."

The color did not return to the young man's cheek.

"Which is still more incredible in the present case," he said. "Do you think Wilton Fern could do evil to a woman? Look in his face once and dismiss that libel within the second."

A desperate expression crossed the countenance of the elder man.

"You must agree that he has done something!" he cried. "He wouldn't allow a darkey to annoy him like this for fun, would he? He wouldn't wear that deathly look, and let his child grow thin with worriment, just as a matter of amusement!"

To this Roseleaf could not formulate a suitable answer. He felt the force of the suggestions, but he would not associate crime with the sedate gentleman who was the object of these suspicions. He simply could not think of anything disreputable in connection with Daisy's father, and it seemed almost as bad to invent an offense for the character in his novel whose photograph he had thus far taken from Mr. Fern.

Daisy was surprised, a month after this, to have Mr. Weil stop her in the hallway, and speak with a new abruptness.

"Why don't that cursed nigger start for Europe?" he asked.

She glanced around her with a frightened look. She feared ears that should not might hear them. But she rallied as she reflected that Hannibal was miles away, in fact in the city with her father.

"He is going soon," she replied. "But why do you allude to him by that harsh term? I thought you rather liked him."

"I do," he answered. "I like him so well that if he continues to talk to--to your father--as I heard him the other day, I will throw him into the Hudson: I can't stand by and see him insult an--an old man--much longer."

The girl looked at him with sad eyes.

"I thought I had succeeded in silencing that kind of talk," she said. "Mr. Roseleaf used to speak very violently of Hannibal, but he has listened to reason of late. Let me beg you to see nothing and hear nothing, if you are the friend of this family you have given us reason to believe."

She extended her hand, as if to ask a promise of him, but he affected not to see it.

"When does he intend to go?" he demanded.

"Before the 1st of April."

"I will give him till that date," he answered, "but not an hour beyond. He will sail out of this country for some port or other, or there will be a collision. You must not, you shall not defend him!" he added, as she was about to speak. "I know the harm he is doing, and it must have an end!"

Turning from her suddenly he went out of doors. Far down the road he stopped to look around, pressing his hand to his forehead, like one who would make sure he is awake, and not the victim of some fearful dream. _

Read next: Chapter 15. The Green-Eyed Monster

Read previous: Chapter 13. A Question Of Color

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