One morning she woke to changed air and brilliant sunshine. A hurricane had burst over southern waters the week before and the fresh winds had blown northward against the heat and stagnation of the city. She felt every nerve quicken, her muscles were eager to move, and her body urged her will. She would go downtown today and simply announce at the MacArd Building that she wished to see Mr. MacArd. Dress was suddenly important, although for days she had not cared what she wore, and she chose a grey silk skirt and jacket and a soft yellow blouse. She put on one hat after another and settled at last upon a yellow felt, broad-brimmed and soft, too. This was the day and the time, she decided, to look her feminine best, and she put on her yellow kid gloves.
Thus arrayed after her breakfast she tiptoed into her mother’s room, found her asleep and tiptoed out again. Irene, the maid, was in the kitchen and she left a message that she was going for a long walk and then she was free. She walked the streets with feet made swift by health and excitement. It was a long walk, but the cool wind was a delight, her cheeks grew pink and her black eyes bright. She caught a glimpse of herself in the glass doors of the entrance to the MacArd Building, and the handsome face she saw was the last assurance she needed.
“Mr. MacArd, please,” she said at the desk. “Miss Olivia Dessard.”
The tired blonde at the desk glanced at her. “Have you an appointment?”
“Tell him, please, that I have a letter from his son.”
She sat down on a red leather chair and waited for a very few minutes when a man came in.
“Mr. MacArd will see you, Miss Dessard. Please come with me.”
She rose and followed him through corridors and rooms filled with men and women and typewriters and machines and then through corridors again until heavy mahogany double doors made a barrier. The man opened the doors and there were corridors again and offices but carpeted and quiet now, and then another heavy mahogany door confronted her. This the man opened and there, behind an enormous desk, mahogany again, she saw MacArd sitting reading a letter. He wore pince-nez and a heavy black ribbon and his suit was of black broadcloth, his stiff wing collar was whiter than any snow and his black cravat was of satin. She saw all this quickly as a frame for his grim grey face and the red-grey beard and eyebrows. Underneath the brows, deep set, his small grey eyes stared at her. The pince-nez dropped the length of its ribbon.
“Well, Miss Dessard! Sit down.”
The man went away and shut the door softly and she sat down in the upright red leather chair across the desk.
“Good morning, Mr. MacArd.”
“Good morning, Miss. What can I do for you?”
She did not take off her yellow kid gloves but she stretched her right hand across the desk. He seemed to be surprised to see it but he shook it formally without getting up.
She smiled and leaned her elbows on the desk. “I don’t wonder you are surprised to see me, Mr. MacArd, but I felt I ought to come, although I know you are busy. I have had a letter from your son.”
“Indeed!” He put down a letter he was still holding in his left hand and stared at her, his eyebrows twitching.
She went on. “He has asked me to marry him, Mr. MacArd, and I have said I would. I thought you ought to know.”
She waited motionless, her eyes unwavering as he stared at her. Points of light shone in the deep eyes, and suddenly MacArd laughed.
“So he’s come to his senses!” he shouted. His hairy face creased in thick wrinkles.
Her eyes questioned the laughter. “You mean—?”
He banged the desk with his outspread hands. “I mean he’s coming home, ain’t he? He’ll have to come home to marry you, won’t he?”
“Certainly not,” she retorted, amazed. “It didn’t occur to him — nor to me. He asks me to come to India.”
MacArd got up and leaned on his clenched fists toward her. “What? You ain’t going! Why, I didn’t think you’d be such a fool.”
She tilted her head to look back at him. “Of course I am going!”
“Ever been there?”
“No, but I’m not afraid.”
“Wait till you get there! Snakes, heat, beggars, filth, naked men strutting around pretending to be saints—”
“I thought you built MacArd Memorial to change—”
“There’s no MacArd Memorial!” he roared.
He sat down abruptly and his great body seemed to crumple.
“Why, Mr. MacArd—”
“I gave it all up as foolishness,” he said heavily. “I’ve got a precision works there now instead.”
“A factory!” she gasped. “In our house—”
“Not in the house exactly — that’s administration and so on. Other buildings.”
“I didn’t know,” she said.
She looked away from him then, to the big window. Far beyond the city she saw the river swelling into the Sound. The sun shone down upon the water, metal-bright.
“I suppose I should’ve told you,” MacArd said heavily. “Still, I’d bought the place. I daresay if David had stayed here I would have carried out the idea. But when he was set on leaving me and going to India as a goddamned missionary himself, I couldn’t go on with it. My feelings changed.”
“Did David know before he went?”
“Yes, but it made no difference. I guess nothing made any difference. He was set.”
“I see,” she said. What she saw, gazing out to the river as it rushed to the ocean, was a man different indeed from the boy she had known. He had dared to defy his father and choose his own path! She could not have believed it possible but he had done it. He took on stature before her eyes, the son of his father.
She brought her eyes back to MacArd. “So now?”
He shrugged his thick shoulders. “I keep busy, all right. I have a lot of things to interest me. Look here, this letter—” he took up the letter he had put down and fastened his pince-nez upon his nose with hideous grimaces. “You may not know anything about it, young woman, but the country is saved. That fellow Bryan is out now for good and all. He’ll never be President. Know why? Cyanide, potassium cyanide! Two young Scotchmen have found the trick, and here’s their letter. I’ll back them to any tune. Gold in Australia, gold in South Africa, gold in the Klondike, it’s all helped, but this is the real savior.” He thumped the flapping pages of the letter. “You remember that name — potassium cyanide! It will get the gold out of low grade ore. At last I can do it. Bryan’s free silver doesn’t matter any more. We have gold — all the gold we want.”
“What does gold mean, Mr. MacArd?” Olivia insisted.
“It means that people are going to be able to pay their debts, it means business is going up, it means people can go to shows and spend money and have a good time! The country is solid again on gold.” He was thumping the letter with every sentence.
“But what does it mean to you, Mr. MacArd?” Olivia insisted again.
The grizzled red eyebrows lowered. MacArd frowned at her. “Why, young woman, it will mean millions to me, that’s what it’ll mean!”
“I see.” But what she saw was that suddenly she loathed this big red-haired man and she wanted to get away from him quickly.
She got up and put her gloved hand across the desk. “Good-by, Mr. MacArd. I’ll be going now. I can see you are very busy.”