The Lifting of a Finger

Front matter

By Ina Brevoort Roberts

Philadelphia J. B. Lippincott Company 1901

To J. Edwards Roberts and Dudley L. Webster

Chapter 1

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FRANCIS BELLAMY leaned with easy grace against the newel-post at the foot of the broad stairway of his sister's house. He was clad in a long coat and knee-breeches of lavender satin, with a waistcoat of white brocade, and lace ruffles falling over his white hands.

Through the hall and up and down the stairs moved other figures wearing the costume of the last century, and beyond curtained door-ways in adjoining rooms Francis caught glimpses of ever-changing vistas of powdered heads and periwigs. The sounds that met his ears were low laughter and the hum of many voices and, coming from the ballroom at his right, the sweetly plaintive wailing of violins.

With a bored air the young man shifted his position slightly, and as he did so the sword at his side got in his way. "I wonder if all these people feel the fools in their clothes that I do," he muttered to himself. "How silly of Alice to give this colonial ball. I believe women enjoy nothing so much as an opportunity to make their friends feel ridiculous."

However Francis felt in his unaccustomed attire, he looked well. His stalwart, broad-shouldered figure, brought to the high degree of development made possible by the athletics of the nineteenth century, showed to advantage in the costume of the eighteenth.

Now and then he caught snatches of the conversation of those who passed. "Yes, she is actually here; I saw her myself," he heard one woman say. "It scarcely seems possible," began her companion as they moved on out of earshot.

A moment later a couple paused near Bellamy and began to talk in low tones. "Yes, she is here," the woman said. "I would not have believed it if I hadn't seen her. Were I in her place, I'm sure I couldn't be induced to stir out of the house."

"It must have been a blow to the old lady; she's as proud as Lucifer," murmured the man at her side.

Pride always goes before a fall, said his companion reflectively, trying to keep her voice free from malice, but not wholly succeeding. "Poor girl," the woman said in a tone that Francis thought must have made the object of her pity writhe had she been there to hear it.

"Oh, these velvet-clawed cats," he muttered as the couple moved away.

Presently he left his position by the stairs and moved in a somewhat aimless fashion towards the drawing-room. Most of the faces he passed were strange to him, for Francis Bellamy was better known at race-tracks and behind the scenes of theatres than among the society people who were his sister's friends.

At the other end of the hall the young man heard himself accosted, and turned to face Bob Stanton, a sleek club- man of middle age, whose legs seemed too small to support his rotund body.

"What are you doing here?" Stanton asked as the two men shook hands. "I thought you always fought shy of affairs of this sort."

"I generally do. I don't know what induced me to come to-night unless it was the opportunity to show off a pair of rather good legs."

Stanton glanced from Bellamy's well-shaped calves to his own spindly ones with a rueful face.

"You ought to ride your bicycle," remarked Bellamy, speaking in the half-insolent fashion of one who is careless of giving offence.

The two men had entered the drawing-room and were standing in the curtained recess of a window. Bellamy's black eyes roved about the room, now and then pausing to bestow a bold glance upon some beautiful face. One woman in passing chanced to raise her eyes to his: she crimsoned under his gaze and moved a trifle closer to the man at her side.

"You don't know many of the people here?" said Stanton, the rising inflection of his voice indicating inquiry.

"No, nor they me," returned Bellamy.

Stanton made no reply. He knew that the other was known to most people by reputation, if not by sight, and that the news of his presence had already spread through the rooms. The rumors of Francis Bellamy's wild, roving life which reached the higher world in which his sister moved were just vague enough to stimulate curiosity as to whether or not they could be true.

"Who is that girl sitting alone in front of this nearest mantel?" Bellamy asked suddenly, "and what color would you call her gown?"

"The color of skim-milk, I should say," returned Stanton, answering the other's second question first. "The girl is Miss Margaret Winthrop. You must know of the Winthrops."

"Yes, I think I do," Francis answered somewhat doubtfully. "Rather poor people who pride themselves upon family, aren't they?"

"Yes."

"Well, Miss Margaret is a deuced pretty girl, and I wish you'd introduce me to her. I like the way she carries her head: it shows spirit."

"Oh, Margaret Winthrop has spirit, plenty of it. It's a good thing too, for just now she has need of all she has."

"Why?" asked Francis.

"She has had a blow that would have crushed most women. But whatever she feels, Margaret carries her head high."

"What was the trouble?" asked Bellamy, his eyes roving again.

"She was to be married on the first of June to Jack Somers."

"Ah!" said Bellamy. "He is the man who set up for a saint and, just as admirers had a crown ready for him, turned out to be the devil himself in disguise."

"Yes, that's the man," returned Stanton. "Somers was highly educated, of fine principles, apparently, and even taught a class in some Sunday-school: just the kind of man to appeal to a girl of Miss Winthrop's type. And she loved him with all her heart and soul. Everyone, even the men, liked Somers and thought him worthy of Margaret, who is as good as God ever made a woman, and that is saying a great deal."

"And Somers turned out a greater rascal than myself, and that also is saying a great deal," declared Francis, laughing. "What was it he did? Robbed his firm, didn't he?"

"Yes, after first losing a lot of money for his employers by betraying a trust, and then ran away with a woman who2"

"I know: with Violet Dare," interrupted Bellamy. "Well, he needed to rob someone before going away with her. How did the girl over there take the discovery of all this?"

"She read it in the paper one morning and fainted. Since then she has not spoken of Somers even to her mother, they say; but instead of leaving town or shutting herself up, as most women would have done, she has gone on as though nothing had happened."

Again Francis glanced over to where the girl sat, just in front of a mantel that was banked with roses, her head held high and a smile upon her lips.

At that moment someone stopped to speak with her and the smile became a laugh, but Bellamy saw that there was no mirth in her eyes, and that the hand which held her fan clutched its pearl sticks tightly.

"She knows how to dress," he re- marked, after a leisurely survey of the girl from her powdered hair to the tip of a satin slipper.

"I believe she had that gown made expressly for this occasion," Stanton replied. "She was to dance a minuet with Somers in the dining-room after supper. They had practised the dance together and had consented to go through it to-night to please your sister. There are to be a number of old-fashioned dances, including a quadrille performed by 'first families' only, but this minuet, in particular, was looked on as the feature of the evening: I suppose because Somers and Miss Winthrop were such a handsome couple. Then too the nearness of the wedding-day helped to centre interest on them."

Francis laughed,—a reckless, dare- devil laugh, that still had a note of contagion in it. Stanton frowned. He could not understand how anyone could see cause for mirth in Margaret Winthrop's plight.

"I should say she did need plenty of spirit," Bellamy remarked. "By George, she was plucky to come here to-night! I like a woman with spirit. I like horses with spirit too, and I enjoy taking it out of them."

Stanton gave a slight shiver of disgust. He felt as a man does who unexpectedly touches cold marble in the darkness.

"I want to meet her; take me over and present me," went on Bellamy.

Stanton hesitated. His companion was not the sort of man Miss Winthrop ought to meet; yet how could he refuse Bellamy's request in his sister's house?

Seeing Stanton's indecision, Francis fixed his black eyes on his companion with a look of amusement.

"Come," he said; "I'm not going to eat your paragon. If she's been engaged to Somers, I guess five minutes' conversation with me won't hurt her."

Chapter 2

THE two men moved forward to Margaret's side. "Miss Winthrop, may I present Mr. Bellamy, the brother of our hostess?" Stanton put the introduction in the form of a request.

Francis looked into the girl's eyes and smiled, his former sneering expression replaced by one that was frank and winning. He could be charming when he chose, and his face on the rare occasions when the mockery left it had the guileless look that appeals to women and often causes them to pin their faith to the blackest scoundrels that walk the earth.

Bellamy's gaze brought no answering smile to Miss Winthrop's face, nor did it cause her to lower her eyes; she continued to look at him gravely, while Stanton stood by, ill at ease.

"Mr. Stanton tells me you dance the minuet," Francis said, breaking the pause that followed the introduction.

Stanton held his breath and cursed the other's folly. Was the man crazy, to speak of that dance to her, to let her know they had been discussing her? But Margaret did not flinch. Her gaze was unwavering, her voice steady, and her hand even relaxed its tight hold on her fan as she answered:

"Yes, I promised your sister I would dance it to-night, but the gentleman who was to be my partner is not here, and it is a dance few people know."

"And I happen to be one of the few," said Francis, "so why may I not take your absent partner's place? Will you dance a minuet with me?"

"I will, with pleasure." Margaret smiled as she spoke, and Stanton felt as though he were on solid ground once more, after being suspended dizzily in the air.

"Then I will see you after supper." Francis bestowed upon Miss Winthrop one of his charming smiles and strolled away.

When he sought his partner some time later he found her seated at one of the small tables that were scattered about the room in which supper was being served. He stood for a moment near the door-way and looked her over, studying each feature much as he would have noted the good points of a horse.

"A little too thin for her height,", his inventory ran; "still, if she were stouter she wouldn't be so graceful; stunning gray eyes and a complexion that couldn't be bought at any price, or I know a dozen faded females who would have one like it."

Bellamy's roving eyes took in these details in a series of apparently careless glances in Margaret's direction. He saw something else too—that she was winning the admiration of those around her by the way she conducted herself in her difficult position. A stranger, coming into the room, would not have picked her out as the woman whose happiness had just been wrecked and her pride humbled in the dust. Nor did she overdo the matter; if her gayety was feigned, it had not the effect of being forced.

Presently a servant announced that the dances in the dining-room were about to begin, and Bellamy set down his glass and started in Margaret's direction. He knew that by this time he had been pointed out to most of those present as "Mrs. Westlake's scapegrace brother," and that the sight of a daughter of the Winthrops upon his arm would create no small sensation.

When he reached her side Margaret rose at once and, with a word of excuse to those she was leaving, took Bellamy's arm, and the two moved away, leaving a sudden silence behind them.

In the dining-room a crowd had already assembled. This apartment was the finest in a house which lacked nothing that money and taste combined could supply. The furniture was of black Venetian oak, heavily carved; the hangings and the tapestries covering the walls were of rich Gobelin blue. From the lofty ceiling depended a mammoth chandelier set with myriad glass pendants, which saved the room from being too sombre in effect, and high in the walls electric lights glowed, jewel-like, through round shades of opal glass.

"My sister was delighted when I told her you had consented to dance with me," Francis said to his companion as they paused beside a cabinet of china. "I understand she had counted on this dance as the feature of the evening."

"Thank you," said Margaret, but what she meant to thank him for, whether for telling Mrs. Westlake or for understanding that it would be a solace for her to dance the minuet, Francis did not know.

"There is to be a quadrille first, and our dance comes after that," he remarked.

The room was now filled, with the exception of a space before the fireplace which had been left clear for the dancers.

Suddenly the rainbow brilliance of the chandelier vanished, leaving the room lighted only by the dull glow of the lights along the walls and the fitful glare of the log fire. A moment later the quadrille began to form and the music of a violin was heard.

"They make a pretty picture," observed Francis as the figures in the set bowed and moved forward in a stately fashion. "Who is the darky with the fiddle?" he added.

"A servant in our family," Margaret answered; "my mother loaned him to your sister to play for these dances. He was a slave of my father's before the war, and his grandfather belonged to my great-grandfather."

"How far back can you count your grandfathers?" queried Francis lightly.

Margaret laughed, but did not take the trouble to answer. While the last figure of the quadrille was in progress Mrs. Westlake came up to them.

"Miss Margaret, my dear, it is most kind in you to do me this favor," she said, laying her hand on the girl's arm.

Miss Winthrop smiled. "You should thank your brother," she said. "He has my gratitude too for enabling me to show off the new gown I had made expressly to wear to-night."

"You mean for enabling you to exhibit a stock of pride bigger than your pretty self," thought Francis. What he said aloud was: "Both of you had better reserve your thanks until the dance is over. I may disgrace you by tripping over this precious sword and falling headlong."

Mrs. Westlake laughed. "For goodness' sake, don't do that, Frank," she exclaimed; "you would make yourself too ridiculous."

Although she could not help loving him, her brother was a trial to Mrs. Westlake, and she had been secretly uneasy over his presence at her dance. There were people in the house who would never recognize him, and she had dreaded the introductions she might be called upon to make. But fortunately for her, Francis had asked her to present him to no one, but had roamed about by himself.

The quadrille came to an end with a triumphant flourish of the fiddle, and the dancers courtesied and separated in couples.

"Your dance comes next," Mrs. Westlake said.

As the old colored man began the slow, quaint music of the minuet Francis gave his arm to his partner, and together they moved to the centre of the open space before the fire.

When Margaret saw the bending of heads and craning of necks, as a stir went through the crowd, and those farthest away leaned forward, the hand on Bellamy's arm stiffened a moment, then relaxed.

The dance was a slow, graceful one. There was no chance for Margaret to relieve the tension of her feelings by quick motion; every movement must be steady, every gesture calm.

No sound could be heard save an occasional rustle of silk as the two figures moved forward and back in the firelight that danced on polished floor and tapestried walls. Now the silver on the sideboard gleamed; now the scabbard of Bellamy's sword became a flaming blade: one moment Margaret's brown hair was turned to gold; a second later she courtesied in the heart of a red patch of wavering light.

Francis went through the dance with the grace and self-possession he lent to everything he did. He had had no fears for himself; he was aware of his good looks, and he knew that he danced well, but he had been somewhat afraid that his partner's inward nervousness might make her awkward.

He need have had no anxiety. Margaret danced with the noise of the sea in her ears, and the gayly-clad forms on all sides of her were a many-colored blur, but she danced with the ease, the grace, the dignity of a princess.

For the most part her face was grave, but each time their hands met she gave Francis a slow, charming smile, and towards the end of the dance she infused into her manner a trace of dainty, old-fashioned coquetry that lent an added charm to her dignity and grace.

The watchers drew a long breath as the music stopped and Francis bent low over the hand he held, then stood erect and gave his arm to his partner. As the pair went back into the crowd someone near the door started to applaud, and a moment later the room echoed to the clapping of hands. Wondering whether she meant to acknowledge this applause, Bellamy turned to Margaret; she evidently divined his thought, for she said coldly,—

"Do they think they are in a theatre?"

Just inside the door-way leading to the hall the two were met by a tall woman in black velvet, whose face was pale with anger.

"We shall go home at once," this personage said to Margaret, ignoring Francis, whom the girl was about to introduce. "Get your wraps as quickly as you can."

Margaret took her hand from Bellamy's arm. "Pray excuse me," she said, and went away with the other, leaving Francis looking after them with an amused face.

"That is her mother," he thought, "and she's in a towering rage because the girl danced with me. I'm glad I'm not Miss Margaret during her drive home. I wonder if the worthy dame has it in for Alice too. I think I'll stroll out to the hall and see the end of this tragic comedy."

Mrs. Winthrop made her adieux to her hostess in an icy tone.

"Yes, Alice is in for a bad quarter of an hour," muttered Bellamy to himself as he made his way up to the smoking-room.

Chapter 3

FRANCIS was not far wrong in his conjecture that Margaret's drive home would not be an enjoyable one. The carriage had scarcely started when Mrs. Winthrop said,—

"Margaret, do you so enjoy the conspicuous position you are in that you try to make it worse?"

"I don't think I have made it worse," Margaret replied calmly.

Mrs. Winthrop began again. "I fail to see how you could so far forget your position as a Winthrop as to go through a fancy dance with a man of Francis Bellamy's stamp."

Margaret leaned back in her seat and watched the lights flash past the carriage. "What has Mr. Bellamy done?" she asked curiously. "I never heard of him except as a brother of Mrs. Westlake's who spent most of his time in remote corners of the earth."

"He has done everything that he ought not to have done, and he is everything that he ought not to be," rejoined Mrs. Winthrop, sure that her reply would bring Margaret to a proper realization of her folly, for the girl had always resolutely refused to have anything to do with men who did not come up to her standard of what a man should be. Her mother was, therefore, astonished when Margaret merely said in response,—

"He is very good-looking."

Mrs. Winthrop sank back in her seat with something like a gasp. "Well," she remarked in an acid voice, "the thing is done and it can't be undone, but I am sure I don't know what your father will say when I tell him about it."

Although the crowd in the lower rooms of Mrs. Westlake's house had thinned out considerably, Bellamy found the little Turkish apartment on the top floor filled with men. The host pushed a box of cigars towards him as he entered, but Francis shook his head, and walking over to the mantel stood leaning against it.

His coming had put every other man in the room at a disadvantage, perhaps because he showed no consciousness of his unusual dress. The others, now that they were alone together, looked as though they secretly felt ashamed of themselves: each had the apologetic air of a trick-animal dressed in grotesque clothes.

"You quite distinguished yourself to-night, Frank," observed Bellamy's brother-in-law.

Mr. Westlake was a handsome man, with something in his manner which commanded the respect and admiration of everyone he met: even Bellamy admired him. Now he turned to his host and bestowed on him one of the smiles he usually kept for women as he answered:

"Miss Winthrop deserves the credit, I think. She not only danced gracefully, but she entered into the spirit of the thing. Her charming little half-shy, half-coquettish airs were very fetching, and if I were an eighteenth-century gallant instead of a nineteenth-century reprobate, I should have fallen in love with her."

"It's lucky for her you didn't," observed a man at the other side of the fireplace with a short laugh. He was one of the few men there who knew Bellamy or cared to know him.

Francis laughed too. "I'm not so sure of that," he said. "I shouldn't treat her as Somers did; she's too pretty to run away from."

"It is a mystery to me," remarked one of a group who sat at a table playing cards, "why Miss Winthrop's brother didn't thrash Somers."

"He couldn't find him," answered Stanton, who was the last speaker's partner. "Somers and Violet have dropped out of sight and there's no way of locating them. Jack tried, I know, because I helped him in the search, but he couldn't get even a clue to where they went from Southampton. The police are after him too."

"Well, Violet Dare is a fine-looking woman and a jolly companion—as long as a man's money holds out," said Francis in the assured manner of one who knows whereof he speaks. "This Margaret Winthrop is a pretty girl too," he went on. The group at the other side of the fireplace were in the midst of a noisy argument, and Francis was obliged to raise his voice to make himself heard. "I was quite taken with her, I tell you. I was just trying to devise some way of luring her into the conservatory where I could steal a kiss when2"

Stanton's right-hand opponent sprang to his feet, with such haste that his chair overturned, and confronted Francis with a white face and blazing eyes.

"How dare you talk of Miss Winthrop in that light way?" he cried hotly. "She is not a woman to be kissed on mere acquaintance."

The speaker was a young fellow of twenty-two or three, with light hair that curled slightly and a clean-shaven, earnest countenance, in strong contrast with Bellamy's older, sneering face.

Francis smiled at him in a kindly, indulgent fashion.

"My dear boy," he said, "you never know what you can do with a woman until you try."

The young man took a step forward and his right hand clenched. "How dare you?" he cried again. "How dare you? You insult Miss Winthrop when you speak her name."

Those in the room who knew Bellamy's quick temper scarcely breathed for a moment, but Francis did not grow angry. He still smiled as he answered soothingly, as one speaks to a child not old enough to be reasoned with or a woman not sensible enough.

"Come, come," he said; "don't glare at me like a wild animal. This is not a matter to quarrel about. I never quarrel about women, anyway: they're not worth it."

"Well, you shall quarrel about this," retorted Hatfield; "you shall retract what you said."

"What did I say?" inquired Francis coolly. "Merely that I wanted to kiss the girl, but that—if you had allowed me to finish—her indignant mamma flounced up and carried her off before I had a chance to try."

"Your next speech insinuated all sorts of things," was Hatfield's response, "and now you are trying to sneak out of the consequences of it because you see plainly"—here the speaker glanced at the circle of darkening faces gathered around them—"that every man here is willing to fight for Miss Winthrop."

At this implication of cowardice Bellamy's face became like a thundercloud. "So I am trying to crawl, am I?" he said. "Well, since you object to insinuations that prove nothing, I'll give you something better, and also give the woman you are defending so blunderingly a chance to convince me she is all you say she is." Francis paused a moment to look from Hatfield round the circle, then continued: "I'll wager a thousand dollars to any one's five that before a month goes by I shall have kissed this Margaret Winthrop with her consent."

Angry murmurs and expostulations broke out among the spectators, and Mr. Westlake came forward and laid a hand on his brother-in-law's arm.

"This won't do, Frank," he said. "You go too far, even for you, from whom we have learned to expect little. I won't have any such wager made in my house. And you, Hatfield, are too impulsive. You should remember that it never does a woman's reputation any good to make her the subject of a quarrel. We all know what Miss Winthrop is and2"

"Yes, we all know what she is," broke in Hatfield; "her purity, her goodness, are beyond question. That is why I could not stand by and hear her insulted by a man like him. Isn't even Miss Winthrop to be safe from his sneers?"

"I have just offered you an opportunity to let the lady in question win my good opinion for herself," observed Francis. His anger had passed and he was smiling once more, a calm smile that maddened young Hatfield. "Why don't you take my wager?" Francis added.

"And have you win it and defame her still further—by lying?"

"No." Bellamy's lips had whitened a little, though he still smiled. "I never lie; Westlake here will tell you that."

"Is that so?" asked the boy, turning to his host.

"Yes, it is so," the older man answered, "but I tell you I will not have such a wager made in my house. Hatfield, I say again: you are showing more heart than head in this affair, and as for you, Frank, you ought to be ashamed of yourself to taunt the boy and carry your love of teasing so far as to trifle with the name of a good woman."

"Since Mr. Westlake assures me you will speak the truth," said Hatfield, who had by this time grown calmer, "I will take your wager, sir, without odds. A thousand dollars is all I have in the world, but I'll risk it willingly."

"Harry, I know your motive is a good one, but you are doing a very foolish thing," interposed Stanton kindly.

A murmur of assent to this speech went round the circle. There was not a man there who did not like Hatfield and pity him because his boyish, absorbing love for Margaret was hopeless.

"If Miss Winthrop could know the circumstances, I think she would choose to have me do just as I have done." Hatfield spoke quietly, but with a conviction that silenced further argument.

A pause followed his speech, during which the circle broke into smaller groups and Francis moved towards the door.

"I think I will go," he said to Westlake. "Good-night, Jim. As the ladies say, 'I've had a delightful evening!

"Good-night," returned his host. "It is a pity you can enjoy yourself only when you are causing someone else pain and humiliation, and until you change in this respect my doors are no longer open to you."

If Francis felt any shame at his brother-in-law's dismissal, he kept that shame carefully concealed. He continued his journey to the door, saying: "As you please, of course. 'Every man's house is his castle.

At the threshold Bellamy turned to look back into the room, his handsome face and satin-clad figure, framed in by the door-way, making a picture well worth looking at.

"Good-night, gentlemen," he said, and waited a moment, but no response came. Nothing daunted, Francis turned again and went out, and a second later those in the room heard him apologize to Jack Winthrop, whom he ran against just outside the door.

Jack came in humming an air from an opera, but the song died on his lips as he noted the overturned chair, the flushed face of young Hatfield, the stern look Mr. Westlake wore, and the suppressed excitement in the faces of the other men.