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Numerical Methods
and Optimization
in Finance
Second Edition
Manfred Gilli
Geneva School of Economics and Management
University of Geneva
Geneva, Switzerland
Swiss Finance Institute
Zürich, Switzerland
Dietmar Maringer
Faculty of Business and Economics
University of Basel
Basel, Switzerland
Geneva School of Economics and Management
University of Geneva
Geneva, Switzerland
Enrico Schumann
Faculty of Business and Economics
University of Basel
Basel, Switzerland
© 2019 Elsevier Inc.
ISBN: 978-0-12-815065-8
Contents
G
IBBS, his battered face red and perspiring, tramped the
length of the room without speech; then he turned and
tramped back again.
“When did you get to town?” asked Stephen, putting down the
lamp he carried. He knew that Gibbs had not come on the afternoon
stage for he had been in the crowd at the hotel when it arrived.
“Oh, I missed the stage, and got a man to drive me across,” said
the general, pausing and moodily mopping his face. “Well, what they
did to us up at Topeka ain't a little. We don't get the county seat! I
don't know who gets it, but we won't—you can everlastingly make
up your mind to that!”
“Is there nothing you can do?”
“Do!” cried the general in a tone of infinite disgust. “I didn't have
a chance to do!”
Stephen looked his dismay.
“A little public spirit and we might have landed it, but I was left to
give my time and spend my money, as if my personal influence
unsupported, was all that was needed! I been made to look foolish!
Well, when they ask me where those county buildings are, I'll tell
'em they can search me!” and the general shrugged his shoulders to
indicate the indifference he did not feel. “It's news to sleep on, ain't
it?” continued Gibbs. “Grant City's given itself county seat airs from
the start, now all we got to do is to lose the railroad, and we might
just as well shut up shop. Well, we ain't lost the railroad.”
“No,” said Stephen clutching at this hope. “The engineers are in
camp here now.”
“It's going to give us a set back,” said the general, who was still
thinking of the county seat. “But I reckon we're strong enough to
stand it—annoying though, ain't it?” and he paused in his tramping
which he had resumed, to stare hard at Stephen. “How do you feel
about it anyhow?” he asked.
“It's a calamity,” said Landray gravely.
“It certainly is,” agreed the general. “We thought we had it sure,
didn't we? Well, there is such a thing as being too sure. I tell you,
Steve, we ain't the only fellows in Kansas with land to sell; there was
plenty of others in the same line, and I went up against 'em hard at
the capital, and they sat down pat on our little scheme. We got to go
slow, things will come steady presently, but until they do we got to
slack off on the building. I am sorry I got you up to tell you nothing
better than this; don't worry though. How's Mrs. Landray?”
“About the same.”
“Humph! What does Arling say? I wonder if you hadn't better get
away from here, Steve?” asked the general with kindly concern.
“And leave you to face the crisis?”
“It won't be the first one I've faced,” and Gibbs expanded his
chest. “Maybe the climate just don't agree with her.”
“No, I sha'n'. leave you; and I doubt if Marian could make the
change now.”
“Well, you know best, Landray, only don't let any sense of honour
hold you here when it's to your interest to leave. I'm willing to split
with you to-morrow if you say the word, and I'll think none the less
of you. I ain't always been above running away myself. Just
remember there's some money to divide now, and there may not be
a red cent six months hence.”
“I'll chance it,” said Stephen firmly.
“Just as you like, but I want you to know that I don't consider you
in any ways obligated to me. You have earned all you have had out
of the business; it wouldn't set well for me to pretend otherwise.”
“Thank you, general,” said the younger man gratefully.
“Well, it's so. You sleep on what I've said.”
Then the general took his leave, and Stephen went back to his
bed, but not to sleep. He had thought himself on the high road to
fortune, and all at once things began to look black. In the morning
he went early to the office where Gibbs soon joined him. He looked
into Stephen's grave face and smiled.
“I guess my call didn't give you pleasant dreams, Landray. I've
thought it over and I guess we'll just keep quiet and see what
happens.”
But before the day was over, it was evident that the information
Gibbs brought from Topeka was not held by him alone. Before
night there was a well-developed stampede among the owners of
lots. This acted on Gibbs rather differently from what might have
been expected.
“We'll show 'em,” he said, “that we got confidence; let 'em get in a
panic, let 'em get rid of their lots, let 'em play the damn fool, Grant
City's here to stay! It's got a future in the very nature of things. We
don't need the county seat; they can locate that wherever they
blame please; but we do want to get rid of these speculators, I
always been opposed to speculation. I'd rather see things go back to
the normal, even if we do lose; I would so, Stephen.”
But hard on the news that Grant City was not to get the county
seat, came the news that neither was it to get the railroad.
“It's a lie! They can't afford to ignore us!” cried Gibbs when he
heard this. “It's a trick to depress real estate! Any one who's fooled
by it deserves to get skinned out of his last dollar.”
But the rumour was verified, and even Gibbs was forced to own
that for the present at least they had lost the railroad.
“You ain't involved, Landray,” he told Stephen. “You stood to share
only in the profits; and I can't lose much, for I hadn't five hundred
dollars when I came here, and I got seventy or eighty lots that are
worth something, and fifteen or twenty houses.”
Here Stephen recalled to his mind the fact that these houses were
in the main unpaid for, and that his creditors might swoop down
upon him at any moment.
“My creditors? Oh, hell—let 'em sweat!” and the general snapped
his fingers almost gaily, and said in the same breath, “I expect
you're cussing me, Steve, for fetching you here.”
“Nothing of the kind, general!” said Stephen stoutly.
“If I fooled you, I fooled myself, Steve; I knew there was some
foxy gentlemen in this part of Kansas, but I thought I was the foxiest
thing on two legs. I have had my ambitions too, Steve, and they
ain't dead yet, a man of my calibre don't give up readily; but I'm
adaptable. I don't sit down to weep over an unpropitious occasion,
in some fashion I dominate it. For the present I suppose there is
nothing for us to do but wait and see how things turn out.”
And through one long hot summer they watched things turn out.
They saw the departure of the town-site speculators; they saw the
settlement of tents and prairie schooners disappear from the waste
beyond the town, until at last there was only the rolling plain, with
its thousands of pegs that marked the lots of the various
subdivisions, or the streets by which they were to be reached; and
with this swift panoramic change came a leaden depression which
ate into the very soul. There was no more poker at the Metropolitan,
once a feature of the nightly gatherings there; the wilderness of
signs creaked idly in the breeze; half the houses stood tenantless;
the stages ceased to rumble in and out of town; the remnant of a
population loafed in heavy lethargetic idleness.
Gibbs and Stephen sat through that long summer, idly for the
most part, in their shirt-sleeves in the shade of their office; the only
business they had was to see Gibbs's creditors, and in the end these
ceased to trouble them.
At first Stephen had been somewhat sustained by Gibbs's
confidence; for Gibbs had been sure things would come right, that
the depression was only temporary; but in the end even his fine
courage failed him. He spent less and less time in the shade of his
office, and more and more time at Mr. Youtsey's bar; but at last Mr.
Yout-sey announced that he was about to leave to seek fortune
elsewhere.
“I've sat up with the corpse,” he told Gibbs jocosely, “and now I'm
going to pull out. I leave the last words to you, for you seem to be
chief mourner; I reckon you'll stay to the finish.”
“I don't know about that,” retorted Gibbs briskly. “You can't keep a
squirrel on the ground; but I'm free to say I don't want to make any
mistakes next time. I'm getting along to a time in life when I don't
expect to make more than two or three more fortunes before I quit.”
“Well, you don't squeal none, general, that's what I admire about
you; win or lose, there's a kind word still coming,” said Mr. Youtsey
admiringly.
In private to Stephen, Gibbs deplored the conditions which he
semed to think were largely responsible for their present situation;
he was seeing deeper than the mere surface of things.
“The war was a mistake, Steve; patriotism and sentiment aside, it
was a big mistake. It's knocked half the country into a cocked hat.
The South is dead, and in my opinion we won't live long enough to
see it come to life. If it had been just left alone, it would have been
mighty interesting to have seen how it would have settled the nigger
question. And what's been the result to the nation at large; we've
lost over half a million of men—young men who'd a pushed out into
the West here, and made this country a wonder. We wouldn't be
waiting for population if they'd lived. But it wasn't to be! The
country's filling up with all sorts of riff-raff from Europe, a class that
never used to come; not the good English and Scotch and Irish, who
came because they wanted elbow room; but greasy serfs, who ain't
caring a damn for anything but wages. I tell you in twenty years an
American will be a curiosity. And to think the way they were wasted,
just thrown at each other by the thousands, in the greatest and
crudest war of modern times.”
But Stephen could not sit there gossiping with Gibbs while Grant
City sank into the prairie, or its shabbily built houses collapsed about
his ears; he must do something, yet what was he to do? Gibbs came
to his rescue with a suggestion.
“I been thinking of your luck, Steve,” he said one day with kindly
concern. “I can hold up this building quite a while by myself just by
leaning against it; I reckon it will be about a hundred years before
anybody sells a lot again in Grant City, and you can't wait on that, on
the chance that you will be the lucky fellow.”
“If I could go!” cried Stephen, with savage earnestness.
“But you can't! Now look here, the farmers have had a pretty good
season; you can always sell a farmer improved machinery, and I
understand you can secure an agency without any capital to speak
of.”
“Why don't you try something of the sort?” asked Landray.
Gibbs shook his head.
“I'm too old a man, Steve, to knock about the country the way I'd
have to; besides, I'm getting ready to start up in business.”
“Start up in what?” cried Stephen.
“In a small way in the licker business,” said the general with
dignity.
“You mean a saloon?”
The general averted his eyes.
“Well, yes—it will have to be retail—I suppose you might almost
call it a saloon,” he admitted reluctantly.
“We are coming down between us, general,” said Landray with a
scornful laugh.
“Not at all, Steve, not at all. I've never claimed more than that I
was up to the occasion, and Youtsey's quit here; fact is, before he
left I made a dicker for what was left of his stock. His going makes
an opening for a commercial enterprise of this sort—in a small way,
of course.”
“Very small, I should say.”
“No, Steve, you must own there are a few people left; not many,
but a few; and they are not going to be any less thirsty in the future
than they have been in the past. I'm not counting on riches, but
merely enough to tide me over until I see an opening. Maybe the
venture might justify a partnership; if you think it will, I'm ready to
whack up,” concluded Gibbs generously.
“Excuse me, general,” said the young man haughtily, “but we'll
reserve that until the last.” He saw that Gibbs was hurt by his words
and manner, and hastened to add, “I think your first suggestion was
the best, do you know where I should write?”
“There are all sorts of catalogues in the office. I'd write to half a
dozen different firms. I merely suggested this as a temporary
makeshift; you might add insurance and lightning-rods.”
“We'll stop with the farm implements, more than that would only
be funny; and I'm in desperate need.”
“I really shouldn't wonder if you didn't do quite well, Landray, after
you get started,” Gibbs said, with ready faith in this new enterprise.
“The farmers farm the land, you'll farm the farmers;” and Stephen's
letters not appearing sufficiently hopeful in tone to his critical mind,
he ended by drafting them for him. “Now I reckon they'll get you
consideration,” said he, when their labours came to an end. “What!
You ain't got any stamps? Why didn't you tell me you were that hard
put? I ain't got much myself, but I always put down a little nest-egg.
I hoped you'd done the same—why didn't you tell me?”
He brought from an inner pocket an old leathern wallet; it was
limp enough, but it contained two twenty dollar bills, one of which
he forced Stephen to accept.
“I never give up quite all; and if I'd known about the county seat a
week earlier, there'd a been a few more gone broke here, but it
wouldn't been you or me, Steve?”
A week later Stephen was present at the formal opening of the
Golden West Saloon in their former office, Gibbs presiding with
typical versatility.
There still lingered in Grant City those who either could not get
away or were too indifferent to try, whose imagination had utterly
failed them; and occasionally, though rarely, the wagons of
emigrants paused for repairs at the blacksmith's; thus there was still
the semblance of life, though half the houses in the town stood
vacant; these seemed to fade away, to disappear in the rank grass
that had come back to flourish in the small trampled lots, and in the
midst of this universal decay, this final phase of the small tragedy of
settlement, Stephen waited and organized the business Gibbs had
suggested, but with no large measure of faith in it.
If Marian's condition would only improve sufficiently so that they
might quit Grant City, he was almost certain that by some
tremendous effort the money he would then require would be
forthcoming.
However when he finally got to work the effect on him was that of
a tonic; and through that fall, and the ensuing winter, over
desperately bad roads, he travelled far and wide; and by spring
when he began to reap the benefits of his winter's work, he saw that
he was not only clear of debt but that he had actually made some
money.
And while he toiled for her, Marian was left alone with a slatternly
unattached female, who was both housekeeper and nurse; and for
medical attendant there was Dr. Arling, who found Grant City entirely
congenial. Drunk and sodden, he was not unskillful; and when he
was needed he could always be found at the Golden West Saloon,
where he loafed tirelessly, and where he played countless games of
checkers with Gibbs.
It never occurred to Stephen that Marian might not recover. To
him it seemed only a question of time until her strength would
return; but he was the only one who was really ignorant of her
condition. Arling had no doubts as to what the end would be, nor
had Mrs. Bassett, the sick woman's attendant.
The end, when it came, came when he was least prepared to
meet it. It was fall again, and he had driven in from the country to
be with Marian over Sunday. He had stabled his horse, and had
come up from the barn, lantern in hand, cold and stiff from his drive
home from a farm far out on the plains.
Mrs. Bassett was in the little kitchen fussing over his supper when
he entered the house by the back door. She had seen his light in the
stable.
“I'll have your supper ready for you in just a minute, Mr. Landray,”
she said. “You've got time to run up and see Mis' Landray. She
knows you're back, I called up and told her you'd come.”
“How is she?” asked Stephen.
“Well, she seems to be about the same, I don't see no difference,”
answered Mrs. Bassett guardedly. She turned and followed him with
her eyes as he went through the sitting-room and entered the
narrow front hall from which the stairs led to the floor above.
He was gone but a moment, then he came quickly into the
kitchen, his face very white.
“She is worse!” he said in a husky whisper. “Why didn't you tell me
so?” but he did not wait for an answer. “Where is the child?” he
demanded.
“I carried him across the back lots to Mis' Gibbs a spell ago. I
couldn't tend him and her, too, he was real fretful.”
“I must go for the doctor,” said Stephen.
“You needn't, Mr. Landray, Mis' Gibbs said she'd go to the saloon
for him; I seen her lantern just a moment ago. You'd best have
something to eat,” she urged.
He turned away impatiently.
“I'm not hungry. Have the doctor come up-stairs as soon as he
gets here.”
But when Arling arrived a few moments later, accompanied by
Gibbs, and joined Stephen in the chamber above where he sat
holding his wife's hand in both his own, he merely shook his head. It
was as he had expected, only the end had been longer deferred
than he had thought possible. He stole from the room and rejoined
Gibbs in the kitchen.
“You tell him, Gibbs—I can't,” he said.
Gibbs rubbed his straggling unkempt beard with a tremulous
hand.
“Maybe he don't need to be told,” he suggested. “But if you think
he should be, I'll do it;” and he stood erect, with something of his
old air.
He mounted the creaking stairs. Stephen must have heard him
coming, for he opened the door and stepped out into the narrow
hall, that was barely large enough to hold the two men and the
small stand, where Mrs. Bassett had placed a smoky lamp with a
dirty chimney.
“Where's the doctor—why don't he come back?” Landray
demanded in a fierce whisper. “Is the drunken fool going to do
nothing?”
“Steve,” began the general, with white shaking lips, “Steve, bear
up, Arling says there ain't anything he can do.”
Stephen looked at him, scarce comprehending what it was he
said.
“He don't know what he's talking about—the fool's drunk!” he said
roughly.
“I reckon he is,” lamented Gibbs weakly. “I'd'a had him under the
pump if there'd been time, but my Julia said for him to hurry, and I
closed up and brought him along just as he was, he wasn't fit to
come by himself.”
“Send him up here again,” said Stephen with stern insistence.
“There is something he can do—my God—” and he broke off
abruptly and re-entered his wife's room.
“Come!” said Gibbs, when he had returned to the kitchen. “Come,
stir around!” he ordered, laying a hand on Arling's shoulder. “Come,
there's something you can do, and you've got to do it.” He was in a
panic of haste. He snatched up his dingy medicine case and thrust it
into Arling's shaking hands. “He's waiting for you, go up and do what
you can.”
“Haven't you told him, Gibbs? She is dying, all he's got to do is to
look at her to see that.”
“You're the one to tell him then—poor Steve—you go to him. I
must go fetch my Julia and the baby;” and he stumbled out into the
darkness with neither hat nor lantern, and fled across the back lots
toward the light that burned in his own window.
He soon returned with Julia, who went at once to the room above.
In the narrow hall she encountered Arling, who had just come from
Marian's bedside, where he had administered to her some simple
restorative. She brushed past him without a word.
“Thank you for coming, it's good to have a woman about,”
murmured Stephen, glancing toward the door as she entered.
Marian lay on the bed without speech or movement, but her eyes,
now brilliant and filled with a strange light, followed every
movement of the two. Julia, with Stephen's help, made her more
comfortable; they smoothed her pillows and raised her higher on
them, for Mrs. Gibbs had been quick to see that her breath came
with difficulty.
She had never liked Marian, and Marian had never liked her—but
she had forgotten all this—which, after all, was only that chance
which determines who shall love and who shall hate. Now she was
all tenderness, this brisk energetic woman, with the lines of a
shrewish temper already stamped upon her face; and her glance
always softened when she looked at Stephen.
There was little either could do but wait; and Marian, save for the
look in her eyes and their restless turning, gave no sign that she
knew what was passing about her.
Presently Julia stole down-stairs to the kitchen. She found Mrs.
Bassett, the general, and Arling still there; the boy fast asleep in her
husband's arms.
“Law!” she cried. “Haven't any of you had sense enough to put
that child to bed?” and she whisked him out of Gibbs's arms and
carried him into the adjoining room.
After that the four fell to watching the clock as if the slow moving
hands would tell them when all was over; and as they watched, the
row of ragged lights in the uncurtained windows that looked out
upon Grant City's Main Street, disappeared one by one, and it was
midnight and very still.
At last Julia rose from her chair and without a word went up-
stairs; she seemed to know that all was over. She noiselessly pushed
open the door and entered the room.
Stephen's face was buried in the pillow beside his wife's. A glance
told her what had happened during her absence from the room. She
stepped to the bedside and placed her hand gently on the man's
shoulder; she felt him shrink from the sudden touch.
“Come,” she said kindly. “You mustn't stay here any longer, Mr.
Landray. You go on down-stairs and ask Mrs. Bassett to come up
here to me.”
“Is she—” he gasped chokingly.
He had risen to his feet, and she urged him away from the
bedside with gentle but determined force.
“You must go down-stairs, Mr. Landray,” she insisted.
“She never spoke—never once,” he cried, turning his bloodshot
eyes on her.
“But she knew you; do go down-stairs, Mr. Landray, indeed, you
mustn't stay here any longer.”
She had pushed him from the room as she spoke, and he crossed
the hall and went slowly and heavily down the narrow steps.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
I
F Virginia had been unable to influence Stephen's life as she
wished, this was far from being the case with Jane and Harriett,
who had wholly abandoned themselves to her care and control,
which had to do, unselfishly enough, with their comfort and
convenience. They were also indebted to her for their mental
outlook. They echoed her opinions and acquired her convictions, by
which they endured with unshaken pertinacity, and she had
furnished them with such prejudices as had found a home in their
gentle unworldly hearts. In sentiment they were quite as much
Landray as she was herself; and their pride in the name was quite
equal to her own pride in it; while their affection for her was, aside
from their affection for each other, quite the deepest emotion in their
simple lives.
Under these conditions Harriett had grown into young
womanhood, a shy pretty girl, who looked out upon the world with
soft, inexperienced eyes. But her father's death, and Stephen
Landray's, and perhaps more than all, Virginia's beauty and silent
devotion to her dead husband, had supplied a background of
romance and mystery of which she was never wholly unconscious.
Of society, as it was understood in Benson, she knew nothing; her
mother had never made any friends in the town, and Virginia's own
circle had narrowed; she went nowhere.
Some day Harriett knew she would teach; this Virginia and Jane
had decided for her. It was their conviction that it was the one thing
a young lady could do without compromising her position, it was
entirely dignified, a polite and unexceptional occupation where one
was so unfortunate as to have her own future to consider; and so to
teach, Harriett was fitting herself, when something happened which
materially changed all her plans.
Mr. Stark, who for many years had been the pioneer banker in
Benson, had long since gone to his reward, and now there were
several banks in the town; chief of these was the County Bank
where the interest on certain loans which Benson had made for
Virginia, with the money he had given her for the land in Belmont
County, was regularly paid. Here Harriett often went for Virginia, and
it was here she first met Mark Norton, whose uncle, Judge Norton,
was interested in the fortunes of the bank; indeed, young Norton
was supposed to be mastering the intricacies of the banking
business under the judge's eye.
He came of an excellent family in the county, and Harriett had
frequently observed the young fellow. She had even noted that after
business hours, the easy hours of banks, he indulged himself in the
pleasure of driving most excellent horses. His father was a rich
farmer, which doubtless had much to do with the soundness of the
son's judgment in the matter of horse-flesh; it also explained why it
was that he was able to keep fast horses, a luxury not within the
reach of the ordinary bank clerk. Harriett had seen all this, as he
frequently drove past the cottage presumably on his way into the
country beyond. It afterward developed that Norton had observed
the slight figure of the girl on the lawn in front of the cottage with
the two elder ladies, and he had noted that she was very pretty—
singularly pretty, he would have said.
But it was Harriett's privilege not only to see him in his hours of
recreation, but also when she went to the bank on some errand for
Virginia. He never ventured on anything that could be termed
conversation, though he occasionally appeared to be anxious to
discover Miss Walsh's opinion on such impersonal subjects as the
weather; or if it was a warm day he obligingly called her attention to
that fact. He always addressed her as Miss Walsh. He had been
almost the first person who found such formality necessary, and that
he did, had provoked her to a new and gratifying emotion.
But on one occasion when she stopped at the bank, he was rather
more disposed to talk than was usual with him, but Miss Walsh was
in some haste to go, once the business that had brough her there
was transacted; indeed, so great was her haste that she did not
observe that she had left her check-book.
Later in the afternoon, as she sat on the lawn with Virginia and
her mother, Norton appeared, striding briskly up the street. He
opened the gate, and crossed the lawn to them, smiling and at ease.
“I didn't give Miss Walsh her check-book,” he said. He addressed
himself to Virginia. “I thought she would find it out and come back—
but you didn't”—he turned to Harriett as he spoke—“and so I've
brought it.”
They were all very grateful to him; that is, Virginia and Jane
expressed their gratitude. They thought he had been most kind and
had put himself to a great deal of trouble in a really unimportant
matter. Harriett said nothing, but she suffered an accusing pang
when she recalled that she had shown no interest in the weather.
Virginia asked him to be seated, for though he had given the book
into her keeping, he still stood before them hat in hand.
Norton sat down with alacrity.
He was not under ordinary circumstances a garrulous young
fellow, but on the present occasion he talked hard and fast, as one
will who is trying to gain time; but the burden of what he had to say
was directed to Virginia. Instinct warned him that it would be her
opinion that would have weight with the others, that if he was ever
to return there, as he hoped he might be permitted to do, it would
be because she was willing he should come; and though Virginia
regarded him a little critically at first perhaps, there was nothing of
unkindness in her glance.
At last he quitted his chair; but he was manifestly most reluctant
to go; they rose, too; and the four walked slowly across the lawn.
Norton lagged more and more as they neared the gate; it involved a
positive effort for him to tear himself away. In this extremity he fell
to admiring the flowers; he was particularly fond of flowers, it
seemed; no doubt because he had always lived in the country and
was accustomed to having growing things about; he even ventured
the hope that Mrs. Landray would let him come later when the roses
were in bloom.
“I hope you may come again, Mr. Norton,” responded Virginia
kindly.
“Thank you—if it won't be an intrusion, I'll be only too glad to
come;” and he stole a swift glance at Harriett.
It may have been the merest chance, but after this in one way
and another, Harriett saw a good deal of Norton, for his love of the
country took him past the cottage very often. Harriett knew this
because she read much by the window in the small parlour.
One night as the three sat in the parlour, the girl's quick ear
caught the sound of wheels, and a horse at a rapid trot drew up at
the curb. She hid her face in the book she was reading, and her
heart beat rapidly. There was a brisk step on the path, and a brisk
knock at the door, which Mrs. Walsh opened, and there stood
Norton. To the girl's eyes he seemed wonderfully confident,
wonderfully sure of himself, and later she might have added,
wonderfully discreet, for he devoted himself almost exclusively to
Virginia.
He had, it developed, a lively interest in local history; his own
maternal grandfather having been a contemporary in the county
with General Landray; during the last war with England he had
served as a captain in the company of riflemen which the former had
raised; furthermore his father had known Mrs. Landray's husband, a
fact of which Mrs. Landray herself was well aware. These were all
points that were calculated to make her feel a certain liking for the
young fellow himself, which was only intensified by his quite evident
respect for the very name of Landray; nothing could have been more
commendable or better calculated to show him a person of proper
instincts. Virginia recalled that as a girl she had been a guest at his
mother's wedding; and that General Harrison—to whom Mrs. Norton
was distantly related—had been present.
But while they talked of these matters, his glance drifted on past
Virginia to the pretty silent girl.
When at last Norton took his leave, he was hospitably urged to
call again, an invitation he professed himself as fully determined to
make the most of.
He was the first young man who had ever called there, though
this was not because there was any dearth of young men in the
town; but Harriett was aware that Virginia's point of view regarding
strangers was conservative to say the least; here, however, was a
young man whose grandfather had been a prominent man in the
county when a Landray had been the prominent man of all that
region.
So Norton was welcomed graciously whenever he chose to call.
Yet somehow after that first call they avoided all mention of him;
even repeated visits did not provoke them to discussion; and at this,
Harriett wondered not a little.
At last Virginia astonished her small household by announcing that
she had invited Norton to tea. They dined in the middle of the day,
but on this particular evening tea became a very elaborate affair
indeed, for it was the first time in twenty years, or since Stephen
Landray's death, that Virginia had bidden a guest to her home. Even
Harriett, who thought she knew all the resources of the household,
was astonished at the old silver and glass and china that was
brought out for the occasion; nor had she ever before seen Virginia
dressed with such richness; and she did not wonder that Norton
whispered to her as Virginia quitted the room on some errand:
“What a beautiful woman Mrs. Landray is, I wonder she never
married again.”
“She will never marry, she is devoted to her husband,” said
Harriett.
“Odd, isn't it, that one should always be thinking of that?” he said.
“You mean her devotion to his memory?”
“No, not that—I mean that one should always wonder why a
pretty woman doesn't marry.”
“But when you have lost some one you love.”
“Of course—I suppose love only seems so important in our own
lives because we know what it has meant to some, and so hope it
may mean the same to us.”
“Does it seem so important?” she asked, the colour coming into
her cheeks.
“Doesn't it?” he asked quietly.
“Really I don't know, I had never thought of it—in that way.”
“It's a part of what we call success in life; it may be the better
part—it should be, Harriett.” His voice dwelt lingeringly and
caressingly on her name.
She gave him a frightened, embarrassed glance. It was the first
time he had ever called her anything else than Miss Walsh. She
hoped all at once that her mother or Virginia would come into the
room; but she knew they were busy elsewhere and would not
appear until tea was served.
“Don't you think that?” he asked.
“I don't know. I have never thought of it,” she said faintly.
“I wish you'd think of it now,” he insisted.
“Why?” she faltered.
“Can't you guess?” he asked. “As something that might affect you,
as something that might affect—us.” He leaned forward in his chair
until his face was very close to hers. “Don't you understand what I
mean, Harriett?” he went on, and his voice had become suddenly
tender. “I wonder if you could think it worth while to care for a
fellow like me; don't you know why I've been coming here?”
“To see my Aunt Virginia,” she faltered.
“Well, no—hardly, Harriett; but I fear you are not quite honest
with me. You know that you have brought me here. I wanted to
come long enough before I did; but there seemed no way. What are
you going to tell me about caring for a fellow like me; caring in a
particular way—I mean?”
The colour came and went in the girl's face.
“Of course I can wait—after all you don't know me so very well
yet; but I'd like to think that my case is not entirely hopeless. Won't
you tell me what I want to know, Harriett,”—he heard the swish of
heavy silks in the hall, it was Virginia returning. “I'm going to come
to-morrow for your answer,” he said quickly.
The next day, after the young man had taken his leave of her,
Harriett fled up-stairs to her mother's room with a burning face;
while Norton drove away from the house apparently in the best of
spirits, for he had the unmistakable air of a man who has just heard
something that was unqualifiedly pleasant to hear. The girl hesitated
nervously.
“Mr. Norton has just left,” she said.
“I thought I heard him, or some one, drive up to the gate.”
“It was he,” said Harriett.
Her mother went placidly on with her sewing.
“He wants me to tell you that he wishes to come and see you very
soon, mama,” said Harriett at last, with a little gasp.
“Wants to see me, dear?” in mild surprise.
“Yes.”
“But what about?”
“About—about me—he wants to tell you something.”
“He seems to have told you already,” said Mrs. Walsh.
The girl dropped on her knees before her mother, burying her face
in her lap. There was a little silence between them, and then Mrs.
Walsh said.
“We must tell Virginia. I hope, dear, that she will approve.”
Harriett glanced up quickly at this. She was very white of face.
“Oh, you don't think she won't—you don't think that?”
“Then you want her to approve?”
And Harriett nodded; a single little emphatic inclination of the
head.