Let Love Come Last

by Caldwell, Taylor;

Ursula’s shoulders moved under her cloak in something like a shrug. She wanted to go. But the thing, the obscure but powerful impulse which had brought her to this office today, held her in her chair.

  “I suppose you are right, dear Albert,” she said, encouragingly. She paused. “A most uncivil man, Mr. Prescott. And, from what you have told me, apparently disreputable. Odd, too.”

  “Insane,” agreed Mr. Jenkins, emphatically. “Do you know what he did a year ago? He adopted a brat left in a slum hallway by some slut, some unknown female, of whom the less said, in the presence of a lady like yourself, the better. The brat was about a year old, then. Origin unknown,” said Mr. Jenkins, using legal phraseology. “The orphan asylum is very crowded and wretched, so he had no difficulty. It was in the papers. Made quite a stir. Everyone laughed at him, and properly, too. But now the wretch has a nursemaid for the brat, and has rented the best suite in the Imperial Hotel. And he is paying a pretty penny for it, too!” Mr. Jenkins chuckled enviously, thinking of his friend, the owner and proprietor of the hotel. “Well, dishonestly come, easily go, to paraphrase the old saying about money,” he added.

  “He is a rich man?” asked Ursula, innocently.

  Mr. Jenkins bristled. “No one knows! He doesn’t bank here, or I’d know from Bassett. Banks in Pittsburgh. Probably not, though he will be,” he added, with a return of his original infuriated malignance. “But I do know this: someone is backing him, to the extreme limit. And I know who the ‘someone’ is. An outsider.”

  Ursula appeared bewildered, and Mr. Jenkins did not enlarge.

  “It was a kind thing, at least, to adopt the child,” she murmured.

  Mr. Jenkins laughed shortly. He was about to make an insinuating remark, but refrained, remembering his visitor’s sex. He said: “I told you he was insane. Do you know what else he did, a week ago? He gave the orphanage five thousand dollars, for a new wing!”

  Ursula’s wine-colored eyes became very bright and intent, as they regarded Mr. Jenkins. Suddenly, without knowing why, he flushed sullenly.

  “I suppose,” he said, with elaborate carelessness, “there are some who would approve of that. I, myself, think he intends a strong attack on Andersburg society in the near future; he believes he will ingratiate himself this way. He will be sadly disillusioned, I am sure. No one worth anything, socially, will ever have anything to do with Bill Prescott, even if he endows a college or a dozen orphan asylums. We know him too well for what he is, and when the whole story comes out he will be more anathema than ever—the trash!”

  “But why, until the story is known, is he held in such low esteem?” asked Ursula.

  Mr. Jenkins became quite excited. “My dear Ursula! Who is the man? The son of a woman who kept a noisome house for the workers in the mills and factories! A man who is nobody! An upstart, a climber, from the slums! A former waiter, if not worse! He hasn’t a friend in the city! No schooling, nothing—”

  “He speaks like an educated man, if he does not have an educated man’s careful accent,” said the daughter of a schoolmaster.

  Mr. Jenkins shrugged. “There is some rumor that old Cowlesbury—that ancient quack doctor who died about ten years ago—took an interest in him, let him read his books, bought him books, actually, and tutored him in his spare time. But everyone knew about Cowlesbury. He was more than a little mad, himself, living off there in the woods, after his retirement, with a pack of dogs. He had about two thousand dollars when he died, and he left it—with all his books—to Prescott.”

  Ursula vaguely remembered Dr. Cowlesbury, who had been a town “character” for many years. He must have been almost a hundred years old when he had died. Whatever esteem or position he had ever commanded had been forgotten twenty years before his death. Ursula had never seen him, but had sometimes heard his name mentioned.

  She rose, and Mr. Jenkins came to his feet with gallant alacrity.

  “My dear Ursula,” he said, grateful that she was leaving, so that he could concentrate on his glorious new idea, “please let me send you home in my carriage. I can send for it immediately. It is in the stables around the corner.”

  Ursula was about to refuse, as usual. Then, all at once, she was very still. She stood and looked at Mr. Jenkins, and her eyes became quite brilliant.

  “Thank you very much, Albert,” she said. “Though I intend to drop in at Mrs. Bassett’s tea, and it is only a few steps from here, as you know. But I do feel rather fatigued.”

  CHAPTER III

  Mr. Jenkins’ carriage, while not the finest in Andersburg, and distinctly not of the class of some of the elegant carriages that, in the summer, conveyed the exquisite families of the rich coal mine owners and oil barons and land aristocracy about the streets of the city on their calls, had yet about it a solid, middle-class soundness and comfort. No dainty appointments marked the carriage’s interior, nor was the coachman uniformed in maroon or black or dark-blue. The only concession to splendor on the part of the coachman (who was also Mr. Jenkins’ gardener, handyman and messenger) was a sober cap with a visor.

  The carriage robe, while not of fine fur, was of thick wool, and for this Ursula Wende was grateful, for the early April afternoon had turned chill. A hard and relentless wind poured down from the hills; the light had become bleak, robbing every house and street of its third dimension. The sun had retreated behind determined clouds, so that no glass shone on shopwindows, and no shadow stood under bare trees. A sky of gray and ugly faint brown lowered over the city. Andersburg, never a handsome town, appeared preternaturally ugly in this spring light, and the “square,” as Ursula rolled past it, had an untidy and disheveled look; even its statue of a Civil War hero stood amid a melancholy litter of straw, paper, twigs and other debris.

  It was no day for an excursion, especially an “unreasonable” and impulsive one, Ursula reflected. Few other carriages were taking the air. She, herself, ought now to be sitting by the cosy fire in Mrs. Bassett’s drawing-room, genteelly sipping tea and softly exchanging news and scandal. Not that one could really call scandal what transpired among the polite females of Mrs. Bassett’s acquaintance. It was not that juicy and fruity, though a reputation or two might be slightly damaged or impugned by those dainty and chirping voices.

  Ursula, with a quite inexplicable complacency, began to wonder whether her friends, now probably murmuring questioningly about her absence from the tea-party, might not be scandalized if they knew where she was going at this moment, and why. But then, I myself, she thought, truly do not know why. Everything, including my thoughts, has become so remarkable to me during the last few days. I presume that if I should sit down quietly, and really concentrate upon the matter, I might come upon a clue.

  Her cheeks suddenly became warm, and she pushed aside the robe a trifle. Oh, how absurd this was, how very cheap! She would call to the coachman and ask him to take her to the Bassetts’, after all. Her gloved hand lifted; then, very slowly, it subsided. Her cheeks remained hot, but her mouth set itself firmly, and her eyes, under the bonnet-ruching, glinted with a strong and outlandish excitement.

  “It is only curiosity,” she murmured aloud. Then, because she was very seldom capable of total self-deception, she laughed, ironically. The coachman turned his head in inquiry; Ursula pretended to be returning the bow of a lady in a passing carriage. The necessity irked her; a week ago, she would not have given the gesture a thought, for it would have seemed only proper. What a smug dolt I have been all my life, she remarked inwardly.

  These are very fine thoughts indeed for an incipient schoolmistress, she thought, as the carriage rolled through streets becoming less and less respectable. I must learn to keep them from showing on my face or I shall not survive a single term. Sad, in a way. The young ladies in the forms might learn something real and valuable were schoolmistresses permitted a few original comments of their own, not prescribed in decorous school-books. But honesty in schoolrooms, as in civilized society, must always remain a dream, lest anarchy result. Was it necess
ary to make men dull in order to keep them from murdering each other?

  Ursula was so engrossed with her extraordinary thoughts that she looked up in bemusement when the carriage stopped and the horse halted along the side of the cobbled road, which ended at this place. She knew this plot of land very well, and she remembered it with distaste. She had last seen it in February, broken, uneven, blotched with dirty snow and puddles of brown water. Now the snow had gone, but the water lay in larger pools on the land, and the pools were partly filled with rubble and trash of all kinds. Far beyond, at a considerable distance, clear and small and busy in the hard and waning April light, Ursula could just discern a veritable hive of workmen with shovels and buckets. Near them loomed enormous heaps of tossed wet earth, which they had thrown up. Carts and wagons tilted and heaved near by; men were filling them with earth, and with the shale which had already been dug from beneath the surface. Ursula, surprised at all this activity, guessed that a huge foundation was already in process of being dug, though the deed to the property was not yet signed. Now, she was no longer surprised. She smiled. It was something to be expected of the precipitate Mr. Prescott.

  Except for the workmen, the land was empty. Beyond its boundaries stood barren shacks in haphazard formation, smoke pouring from tilted chimneys. Scattered little houses spread behind them, in patches of land used for truck farming later in the spring. Then, with gardens rich and crowded, the scene did not appear as desolate as it did now, in this fugitive and shadowless light of fading afternoon, with the gray and lowering sky bent over it, and a rising wind ruffling the tops of the cold brown pools of water.

  The coachman, who had not received his training at the hands of “fine people,” directed a question at Ursula, half turning on his seat: “This where you wanted to go, ma’am? Your land, ain’t it?”

  “It was, Bob. It isn’t, now,” replied Ursula calmly. “I sold it a few days ago to a Mr. William Prescott.”

  “Bill Prescott?” Bob turned to her fully now, his old red face staring. “You mean that trash from Clifton Street, him who’s trying to rob his betters? Him that’s no better than a jailbird, ma’am?” His reedy voice was incredulous.

  Ursula’s face, out of habit, began to settle into prim cold lines. Then she deliberately forced the expression from her features. She smiled up at the old man. “Oh, Bob, come now, he isn’t that bad! And you mustn’t believe everything you hear, you know. People will talk.” She paused. “Especially envious ones. What if Mr. Prescott was poor once, or what the work he once did? He is rich now,” she added, tentatively, “and is making quite a name for himself.”

  Bob Willard snorted. “Well, ma’am, getting rich that way, quick and fast and sure, can’t be honest,” he said, darkly, “even if you don’t pay much attention to what folks say.”

  Ursula privately agreed with this. She remembered Mr. Jenkins. It was very disreputable of her, she knew, that she should regard Mr. Prescott’s mysterious derelictions so tolerantly, and be so annoyed with Mr. Jenkins. But there was an enormity inherent in Mr. Prescott’s predatoriness; huge and criminal manipulations appeared to her just now, for no adequate reason at all, less dreadful than the mean and petty ones. I apparently share this opinion with millions of other people, she thought, ruefully, otherwise we should not tolerate wars so benignly, and hang a man with one mere murder to his credit.

  Sitting in the carriage, and looking absently out over what had once been her land, she let her strange new meditations have their way with her. She had been a very young girl when the Civil War had ended, but she remembered clearly the distress and misery of the years that followed, the high prices which deprived millions of bread and shoes and clothing and houses, the vast national uneasiness and nameless dismay, the fear, the formless hatred, the restless and sullen faces on the streets and in the shops. The air of the country had been weighted with a kind of speechless dread and suspicion. All men had been aware of it. They explained it vaguely as “the usual aftermath of war.” It was more than that. It was a kind of soul-sickness, a smothering sense of guilt.

  Could it be, wondered Ursula, that man instinctively knows that to kill his brother is the highest atrocity, not only before God, but before himself? Was it because man subconsciously knew that it was expected of humanity that it resolve its problems without murder? If man knew this, how did he know? It was instinct, just as the Bible, itself, was only instinctual apperception.

  She started when she heard the rumble of wheels, and quickly glanced to her left. A very resplendent carriage, which made Mr. Jenkins’ comfortable victoria appear most humble and commonplace, was drawing up beside her. It was a closed vehicle, all glass, black and red lacquer, all silver harness, and drawn by two black horses beautifully groomed. The coachman wore a smart black uniform, with touches of red, to match the carriage, and he was a young and apparently well-trained man.

  Ursula flushed deeply, and fervently hated herself for being in this place. She had an impulse to tell old Bob to drive on, and remembered, just in time, that this would only add to the humiliation she had brought upon herself. So, flushed as she was, she merely waited with every appearance of serenity as the coachman sprang down, walked importantly to the side of the other carriage, and opened the door.

  CHAPTER IV

  William Prescott descended from his carriage with gravity, and without haste, ignoring his coachman’s courtesies. He stood for a moment and gave the desolate land he had bought, and the workers upon it, a quick and casual glance. Of course he knows I am here, thought Ursula, vexed. How very silly of him to pretend to be unaware of me.

  Mr. Prescott turned and came towards Ursula’s carriage, and he did not simulate any surprise. She saw his face in the thin shadowless light, which gave an odd clarity to everything. And again, she was excited by the contradictions in that face, the mingled eloquence and coarseness, refinement and brutality, power and wariness. Now she detected what she had missed before: a sullen uncertainty in his small hard eyes. But he was smiling, and he was openly curious.

  Ursula was accustomed to the conventional dictum that ladies never explained, and gentlemen never asked them to explain, so that she was not prepared when he said: “Miss Wende? Come to look your last on your property?”

  For a second or two she was at a loss, then replied: “Good evening, Mr. Prescott.” She paused, to let him meditate on his impoliteness. But he was not at all conscious, apparently, that he was acting like a lout. He merely came closer to her carriage, and stared at her with open question, and, in spite of his fixed smile, it was a question inexplicably full of hostile implications.

  She could have touched him from where she stood, and her heart began to beat thickly. Why, the man seemed to pervade the atmosphere for a good distance about him! It was not a pleasant thing to feel, neither was it unpleasant. She looked at him in silence, and did not know that both her lips and her eyes had opened very wide. She looked down at his hands, remembering them as she had seen them in lamplight. They were gloved now. Something like keen disappointment came to her. She forced herself to smile again and to speak calmly, but she detected the falseness in her own voice.

  “I am out for a drive,” she said. “The first dry day, you see.”

  Her head swirled with confusing thoughts. She knew that all the strange ideas which had come to her during the past days had been because of this uncivil and disagreeable man, that he had, unwittingly, forced her to think honestly for the first time in her life. And the strangest thought of all came to her at this moment. She saw that in spite of the honesty he had aroused in her, she could never be honest with him.

  She saw that she was quite right in this, for the hostility, or resentment, with which he had recognized her began to fade, and was replaced by a heavy awkwardness. He did not know what to say next, and she graciously helped him, feeling more in command of herself:

  “You have not wasted any time, Mr. Prescott, in beginning your house.”

  “I never waste time,” he s
aid. In another man, this might have been boasting. But, in Mr. Prescott, it was simply an irritable stating of fact. He studied her with hard candor. What feeble men you must have known before, he seemed to be saying contemptuously. He went on: “I have hopes that it will be finished within six months. I have all the furnishings ordered from New York, and am importing others. Then I shall move in.” He scowled, and Ursula was taken aback. He gestured roughly towards the workmen. “That is, if this cattle decides to do an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. But that, I suppose, is more than one could expect.”

  Now his face turned ugly and common, as if with hatred, lost all its eloquence and fluidity, and became unfinished and rude. This man had come from “the people.” Yet he had neither understanding nor kindness—nor forgiveness, perhaps—for them. Ursula drew the woolen carriage-robe closer about her.

  She said, coldly: “They appear to be working very hard.” She hesitated before speaking again, and then said something she would never before have dreamed of saying to anyone, or even of thinking: “After all, their wages are poor. They look thin and worn to me, and I am very sorry for them. I wonder if their food is adequate.”

  She regarded him directly, and the lids of her eyes were stiff and hard.

  He was genuinely surprised at this. He laughed shortly. “I see that you know nothing about this kind of people, Miss Wende. But I do. I have the advantage of you in this respect. My mother cooked for them.”

  “Indeed,” murmured Ursula.

  “Just animals, let me assure you,” he continued, and now he was looking at her with dislike, and again she detected contempt in him. He put one of his polished boots on the step of the carriage, and leaned towards her. “Miss Wende, I’ll make it very brief for you. Quite often a self-made man is condemned by others because he ‘forgets’ or ‘oppresses’ the very people from which he came. No one ever considers that he perhaps both ‘forgets’ and ‘oppresses’ because he understands, and has reason for what he does.”