The President Part 4

Richard found a chance to say to Dorothy,

"I see that you love flowers."

This was when Dorothy had taken refuge among those blossoms.

"I worship flowers," returned Dorothy.

"Now I don't wonder," exclaimed Richard. "You and they have so much in common."

Mrs. Hanway-Harley was for the moment preoccupied with thoughts of Mr.

Gwynn, and plans for the small Senate dinner at which that austere gentleman would find himself in the place of honor. However, she caught some flash of Richard's remark. For the fraction of an instant it bred a doubt of his dullness. What if he should come philandering after Dorothy? Mrs. Hanway-Harley's feathers began to rise. No beggar fed by charity need hope for her daughter's hand; she was firm-set as to that.

Perhaps Mr. Gwynn intended to make him rich by his will. At this Mrs.

Hanway-Harley's feathers showed less excitement. Mr. Gwynn should be sounded on the subject of bequests. Why not put the question to Mr.

Storms? It would at least lead to the development of that equivocal gentleman's expectations.

"Has Mr. Gwynn any family in England?" asked Mrs. Hanway-Harley.

"A nephew or two, I believe; possibly a brother."

"But he will make you his heir."

"Me?" Richard gave a negative shake of the head. "The old fellow wouldn't leave me a shilling. Why should he? Nor would I accept it if he did." Richard's sidelong look at Mrs. Hanway-Harley was full of amus.e.m.e.nt. "No, the old rogue hates me, if he would but tell the truth--which he won't--and if it were worth my while and compatible with my self-respect, I've no doubt I'd hate him."

This sentiment was delivered with the blase air of weariness worn out, that should belong with him who has seen and heard and known a world's mult.i.tude; which manner is everywhere recognized as the very flower of good breeding.

Mrs. Hanway-Harley sat tongue-tied with astonishment. In the end she recalled herself. Mrs. Hanway-Harley scented nothing perilous in the situation. In any event, Dorothy would wed whomsoever she decreed; Mrs.

Hanway-Harley was deservedly certain of that. While this came to her mind, Richard the enterprising went laying plans for the daily desolation of an entire greenhouse.

"Dorothy," observed Mrs. Hanway-Harley, after Richard had gone his way, "there you have a young man remarkable for two things: his dullness and his effrontery. Did you hear how he spoke of his benefactor? The wretch!

After all that good, poor Mr. Gwynn has done for him!"

"How do you know what Mr. Gwynn has done for him?"

Dorothy, while she confessed the justice of her mother's strictures, felt uncommonly inclined to defend the absent one. Her memory of those tender glances was coming back.

"Why, it is all over town! Mr. Storms is dependent on Mr. Gwynn. By the way, I hope Count Storri did not meet him?" This was given in the rising inflection of a query.

"Only for a moment," returned Dorothy, breaking into a little crow of laughter. "The Count did not seem to like him." Dorothy thought of that combat of the hands, and how Storri was beaten to his knee, and how fiercely glorious Richard looked at that instant.

"What should you expect?" observed Mrs. Hanway-Harley. "The Count is a n.o.bleman. And that reminds me: Dorothy, he appears a bit smitten. What if it were to prove serious?"

"You wouldn't have me marry him, mamma?"

"What! Not marry a Count!" Mrs. Hanway-Harley was shocked as only an American mother could have been shocked. She appealed to the ceiling with her horrified hands. "Oh! the callousness of children!" she cried.

Following this outburst of despair, Mrs. Hanway-Harley composed herself.

"We need not consider that now; it will be soon enough when the Count offers us his hand." Mrs. Hanway-Harley sank back in her chair with closed eyes and saw a vision of herself at the Court of the Czar. Then she continued her thoughts aloud. "It's more than likely, my dear, that the Czar would appoint Count Storri Amba.s.sador to Washington."

"It would be extremely intelligent of the Czar, I'm sure," returned Dorothy with a twinkle.

The next morning a colored youth clad in the garish livery of an Avenue florist made his appearance on the Harley premises bearing aloft an armful of flowers as large as a sheaf of wheat. By the card they were for "Miss Harley." The morning following, and every morning, came the colored youth bearing an odorous armful. Who were they from? The card told nothing; it was the handwriting of the florist.

"Don't you think it might be Count Storri?" said Dorothy demurely, taking her pretty nose--the nose Richard saved--out of the flowers.

"Those Russians are so extravagant, so eccentric!"

"Suppose I thank him for them," observed Mrs. Hanway-Harley; "that would bring him out!"

"No, no," exclaimed Dorothy hastily; "it might embarra.s.s the Count."

"Pshaw! I'll ask the florist."

"No; that would offend the Count. You see, mamma, he thinks that we will know without asking. He would hardly regard our ignorance as a compliment," and Dorothy pouted. "You'd spoil everything."

Mrs. Hanway-Harley saw the force of this and yielded, though it cost her curiosity a pang.

Dorothy's dearest friend was with them--a tall, undulating blonde, who was sometimes like a willow and sometimes like a cat. When Mrs.

Hanway-Harley had left the room, and Miss Marklin and Dorothy were alone, the former said firmly:

"Dorothy, who sent them?"

"Now, how should I know, Bess? You read the card."

"When a woman receives flowers, she always knows from whom," returned this wise virgin oracularly.

"Well, then," said Dorothy resignedly, drawing the golden head of the pythoness down until the small, pink ear was level with her lips, "if you must know, let me whisper."

There are people who hold that everybody they do not understand is a fool. There be others who hold that everybody who doesn't understand them is a fool. Mrs. Hanway-Harley belonged to the former cla.s.s, and not making Richard out, she marked him "fool," and so informed Mr. Harley as she penned the dinner invitation to Mr. Gwynn.

"Of course, we shall not ask this Mr. Storms to the dinner. He would be misplaced by his years for one thing. Besides, I'm sure Mr. Gwynn wouldn't like it. I saw enough of Mr. Storms to doubt if, in their own house, he dines at the same table with Mr. Gwynn."

"At any rate," remarked the cautious Mr. Harley, "it's safe to leave him out this time. We'll establish his proper level, socially, by talking with Mr. Gwynn."

Mr. Gwynn came back from New York on Thursday afternoon. His traffic with Talon & Trehawke was successful, and he had bought the _Daily Tory_.

Richard was put in charge of the Washington correspondence. He was given a brace of a.s.sistants to protect, as he said, the subscribers; for be it known that Richard of the many blemishes knew no more of newspaper work than he did of navigation.

Mr. Gwynn found Mrs. Hanway-Harley's dinner invitation awaiting him; it was for the next evening. He brought it to Richard.

"You will go, Mr. Gwynn," said that gentleman. "I will consider; and to-morrow I will tell you what you are to say."

Richard has been referred to as a soul of many blemishes. The chief of these was his cynicism, although that cynicism had a cause if not a reason. With other traits, the same either virtues or vices according to the occasion and the way they were turned, Richard was sensitive. He was as thin-skinned as a woman and as greedy of approval. And yet his sensitiveness, with nerves all on the surface, worked to its own defeat.

It rendered Richard fearful of jar and jolt; with that he turned brusque, repelled folk, and shrunk away from having them too near.

For a crowning disaster, throughout his years of manhood, Richard had had nothing to do. He had been idle with no work and no object to work for. You can suffer from brain famine and from hand famine. You may starve your brain and your hand with idleness as readily as you starve your stomach with no food. And Richard's nature, without his knowing, had pined for lack of work.

There had been other setbacks. Richard lost his mother before he could remember, and his father when he was twelve. He was an only child, and his father, as well as his mother, had been an only child. Richard stood as utterly without a family as did the first man. He grew up with schoolmasters and tutors, looked after by guardians who, infected of a fashion, held that the best place to rear an American was Europe. These maniacs kept Richard abroad for fairly the fifteen years next before he meets you in these pages. The guardians were honest men; they watched the dollars of their ward with all the jealous eyes of Argus. His mind they left to chance-blown influences, all alien; and to teachers, equally alien, and as equally the selection of chance. And so it came that Richard grew up and continued without an attachment or a friendship or a purpose; and with a distrust of men in the gross promoted to feather-edge. Altogether he should be called as loveless, not to say as, unlovable, a character as any you might encounter, and search throughout a summer's day.

Most of all, Richard had been spoiled by an admiration for Democritus, which Thracian's acquaintance he picked up at school. He saw, or thought he saw, much in the ease of the Abderite to remind him of his own; and to imitate him he traveled, professed a chuckling indifference to both the good and the ill in life, and, heedful to laugh at whatever turned up, humored himself with the notion that he was a philosopher.

Democritus was Richard's affectation: being only an affectation Democritus did not carry him to the extreme of putting out his own eyes as a help to thought.