"Yes, I met him first then," said Keith.

"Don't you think Ferdy has changed since he was a boy?" she demanded after a moment's reflection.

"How do you mean?" Keith was feeling very uncomfortable, and, to save himself an answer, plunged along:

"Of course he has changed." He did not say how, nor did he give Mrs.

Wentworth time to explain herself. "I will tell you one thing, though,"

he said earnestly: "he never was worthy to loose the latchet of your husband's shoe."

Mrs. Wentworth's face changed again; she glanced down for a second, and then said:

"You and Norman have a mutual admiration society."

"We have been friends a long time," said Keith, thoughtfully.

"But even that does not always count for so much. Friendships seem so easily broken these days."

"Because there are so few Norman Wentworths. That man is blessed who has such a friend," said the young man, earnestly.

Mrs. Wentworth looked at him with a curious light in her eyes, and as she gazed her face grew more thoughtful. Then, as Norman reappeared she changed the subject abruptly.

After dinner, while they were smoking, Norman made Keith tell him of his coal-lands and the business that had brought him to New York. To Keith's surprise, he seemed to know something of it already.

"You should have come to me at first," he said. "I might, at least, have been able to counteract somewhat the adverse influence that has been working against you." His brow clouded a little.

"Wickersham appears to be quite a personage here. I wonder he has not been found out," said Keith after a little reverie.

Norman shifted slightly in his chair. "Oh, he is not worth bothering about. Give me your lay-out now."

Keith put him in possession of the facts, and he became deeply interested. He had, indeed, a dual motive: one of friendship for Keith; the other he as yet hardly confessed even to himself.

The next day Keith met Norman by appointment and gave him his papers.

And a day or two afterwards he met a number of his friends at lunch.

They were capitalists and, if General Keith's old dictum, that gentlemen never discussed money at table, was sound, they would scarcely have met his requirement; for the talk was almost entirely of money. When they rose from the table, Keith, as he afterwards told Norman, felt like a squeezed orange. The friendliest man to him was Mr. Yorke, whom Keith found to be a jovial, sensible little man with kindly blue eyes and a humorous mouth. His chief cross-examiner was a Mr. Kestrel, a narrow-faced, parchment-skinned man with a thin white moustache that looked as if it had led a starved existence on his bloodless lip.

"Those people down there are opposed to progress," he said, b.u.t.toning up his pockets in a way he had, as if he were afraid of having them picked.

"I guess the Wickershams have found that out. I don't see any money in it."

"It is strange that Kestrel doesn't see money in this," said Mr. Yorke, with a twinkle in his eye; "for he usually sees money in everything. I guess there were other reasons than want of progress for the Wickershams not paying dividends."

A few days later Norman informed Keith that the money was nearly all subscribed; but Keith did not know until afterwards how warmly he had indorsed him.

"You said something about sheep the other day; well, a sheep is a solitary and unsocial animal to a city-man with money to invest. My grandfather's man used to tell me: 'Sheep is kind of gregarious, Mr.

Norman. Coax the first one through and you can't keep the others out.'

Even Kestrel is jumping to get in."

CHAPTER XVIII

MRS. LANCASTER

Keith had not yet met Mrs. Lancaster. He meant to call on her before leaving town; for he would show her that he was successful, and also that he had recovered. Also he wanted to see her, and in his heart was a lurking hope that she might regret having lost him. A word that Mrs.

Wentworth had let fall the first evening he dined there had kept him from calling before.

A few evenings later Keith was dining with the Norman Wentworths, and after dinner Norman said:

"By the way, we are going to a ball to-night. Won't you come along? It will really be worth seeing."

Keith, having no engagement, was about to accept, but he was aware that Mrs. Wentworth, at her husband's words, had turned and given him a quick look of scrutiny, that swept him from the top of his head to the toe of his boot.

He had had that swift glance of inspection sweep him up and down many times of late, in business offices. The look, however, appeared to satisfy his hostess; for after a bare pause she seconded her husband's invitation.

That pause had given Keith time to reflect, and he declined to go. But Norman, too, had seen the glance his wife had given, and he urged his acceptance so warmly and with such real sincerity that finally Keith yielded.

"This is not one of _the_ b.a.l.l.s," said Norman, laughingly. "It is only _a_ ball, one of our subscription dances, so you need have no scruples about going along."

Keith looked a little mystified.

"Mrs. Creamer's b.a.l.l.s are _the_ b.a.l.l.s, my dear fellow. There, in general, only the rich and the n.o.ble enter--rich in prospect and n.o.ble in t.i.tle--"

"Norman, how can you talk so!" exclaimed Mrs. Wentworth, with some impatience. "You know better than that. Mrs. Creamer has always been particularly kind to us. Why, she asks me to receive with her every winter."

But Norman was in a bantering mood. "Am not I rich and you n.o.ble?" he laughed. "Do you suppose, my dear, that Mrs. Creamer would ask you to receive with her if we lived two or three squares off Fifth Avenue? It is as hard for a poor man to enter Mrs. Creamer's house as for a camel to pa.s.s through the needle's eye. Her motions are sidereal and her orbit is as regulated as that of a planet."

Mrs. Wentworth protested.

"Why, she has all sorts of people at her house--!"

"Except the unsuccessful. Even planets have a little eccentricity of orbit."

An hour or two later Keith found himself in such a scene of radiance as he had never witnessed before in all his life. Though, as Norman had said, it was not one of the great b.a.l.l.s, to be present at it was in some sort a proof of one's social position and possibly of one's pecuniary condition.

Keith was conscious of that same feeling of novelty and exhilaration that had come over him when he first arrived in the city. It came upon him when he first stepped from the cool outer air into the warm atmosphere of the brilliantly lighted building and stood among the young men, all perfectly dressed and appointed, and almost as similar as the checks they were receiving from the busy servants in the cloak-room. The feeling grew stronger as he mounted the wide marble stairway to the broad landing, which was a bower of palms and flowers, with handsome women pa.s.sing in and out like birds in gorgeous plumage, and gay voices sounding in his ears. It swept over him like a flood when he entered the s.p.a.cious ball-room and gazed upon the dazzling scene before him.

"This is Aladdin's palace," he declared as he stood looking across the large ball-room. "The Arabian Nights have surely come again."

Mrs. Wentworth, immediately after presenting Keith to one or two ladies who were receiving, had been met and borne off by Ferdy Wickersham, and was in the throng at the far end of the great apartment, and some one had stopped Norman on the stairway. So Keith was left for a moment standing alone just inside the door. He had a sense of being charmed.

Later, he tried to account for it. Was it the sight before him? Even such perfect harmony of color could hardly have done it. It must be the dazzling radiance of youth that almost made his eyes ache with its beauty. Perhaps, it was the strain of the band hidden in the gallery among those palms. The waltz music that floated down always set him swinging back in the land of memory. He stood for a moment quite entranced. Then he was suddenly conscious of being lonely. In all the throng before him he could not see one soul that he knew. His friends were far away.

Suddenly the wheezy strains of the fiddles and the blare of the horns in the big dining-room of the old Windsor back in the mountains sounded in his ears, and the motley but gay and joyous throng that tramped and capered and swung over the rough boards, setting the floor to swinging and the room to swaying, swam in a dim mist before his eyes. Girls in ribbons so gay that they almost made the eyes ache, faces flushed with the excitement and joy of the dance; smiling faces, snowy teeth, dishevelled hair, tarlatan dresses, green and pink and white; ringing laughter and whoops of real merriment--all pa.s.sed before his senses.

As he stood looking on the scene of splendor, he felt lost, lonely, and for a moment homesick. Here all was formal, stiff repressed; that gayety was real, that merriment was sincere. With all their crudeness, those people in that condition were all human, hearty, strong, real. He wondered if refinement and elegance meant necessarily a suppression of all these. There, men came not only to enjoy but to make others enjoy as well. No stranger could have stood a moment alone without some one stepping to his side and drawing him into a friendly talk. This mood soon changed.

Still, standing alone near the door waiting for Norman to appear, Keith found entertainment watching the groups, the splendidly dressed women, cl.u.s.tered here and there or moving about inspecting or speaking to each other. One figure at the far end of the room attracted his eye again and again. She was standing with her back partly toward him, but he knew that she was a pretty woman as well as a handsome one, though he saw her face only in profile, and she was too far off for him to see it very well. Her hair was arranged simply; her head was set beautifully on her shoulders. She was dressed in black, the bodice covered with spangles that with her slightest movement shimmered and reflected the light like a coat of flexible mail. A number of men were standing about her, and many women, as they pa.s.sed, held out their hands to her in the way that ladies of fashion have. Keith saw Mrs. Wentworth approach her, and a very animated conversation appeared to take place between them, and the lady in black turned quickly and gazed about the room; then Mrs.

Wentworth started to move away, but the other caught and held her, asking her something eagerly. Mrs. Wentworth must have refused to answer, for she followed her a few steps; but Mrs. Wentworth simply waved her hand to her and swept away with her escort, laughing back at her over her shoulder.