in about fifteen minutes. Tell me, does anyone in your family--or among
your acquaintances--does _anyone_ ever dispute with you?”
She reflected, ignoring the irony in his tone. “No,” said she, “I don’t
believe they do. I have my own way.”
“I’d have sworn it,” cried he.
“You are the only one that ever opposes me,” said she.
“I? Oh, no. Never! But in this one thing I must.” He changed to
seriousness. “Rix, I’ll have nothing to do with your deceiving that
nice young chap. That’s flat and final.”
“Isn’t he nice, though!” exclaimed she. “I’ve always liked him since
he was a little boy at dancing school with such a polite, quiet way of
sniffling. He hates to blow his nose. You know, there are people like
that. I wouldn’t hurt his feelings for the world. You see, everybody
can’t be harsh and hard like you. Now, you take a positive delight in
saying unpleasant truths.”
“I’m nothing of a liar,” said he curtly.
“I like that in you,” cried she with enthusiasm. “It makes me feel
such confidence. You’re the only person I ever knew whom I believed in
everything they said.”
He gave her a look of frank surprise and suspicion. “What are you
driving at?” he demanded. “Now, don’t look innocent. Out with it!”
“I don’t understand,” said she, smiling.
“Pardon me, but you do--perfectly. What are you wheedling for?”
“How _can_ we be friends,” pleaded she, “if you’re always suspecting
me?”
“We’re not going to be friends,” replied he positively. “This--here and
now--is the end.”
It was evident that his words had given her a shock--a curious shock
of surprise, as if she had expected some very different reception to
this proffer of hers. However, after a brief reflection she seemed to
recover. “How _can_ so clever a man as you be so foolish?” expostulated
she. “You know as well as you’re sitting there that we simply can’t
help being friends.”
“Friends--yes,” he conceded. “But we’re not going to see each other.”
“And what would I say to Pete?”
“Something clever and satisfying. By the way, how did you manage to get
away with it when you reached home?”
She laughed delightedly. She was looking her most innocent, most
youthful. “Oh, _such_ a time!” cried she. “Mother-- You don’t know
mother, so you can’t appreciate. But you will, when you do know her.
It was a three-cornered row--Heck and mother and I. Heck took a shine
to you, so he was really about half on my side. I told just how I met
you--the whole story--except I didn’t tell the exact truth about the
picture.”
Her look was so queer that he said in alarm: “What did you say about
it?”
“We’ll talk of that later,” replied she--and his knowledge of her
methods did not allow him to receive with an eased mind this hasty
insistence on delay. “Mother wanted to know who you were, and, of
course, I couldn’t tell her--not anything that would satisfy a woman
like mother. She forbade me ever to see you again. I told her that,
on the contrary, I’d see you this morning. She raved--my, how she did
rave!” And Rix burst into peals of laughter. “You ought to have heard!
She’s so conventional. She accused me--but you can imagine.”
“Yes, I can,” said he dryly. “And she’s right--absolutely right. We’ll
not see each other again.”
“Oh, but she wants to see you,” rejoined Miss Richmond. “She can hardly
wait to see you, herself. She’s badly frightened lest you’ll not come.”
Roger let his absolute disbelief show in his face. There must somewhere
be bounds to what this resourceful and resolute young person could
accomplish. These assertions of hers were beyond those bounds--far
beyond them.
“It was this way,” pursued Miss Richmond with innocent but intense
satisfaction in her own cleverness. “I pointed out to her that, if I
didn’t go to you and keep on with the picture, Hanky--that’s Peter
Vanderkief--would realize I’d been flirting _wildly_ with a strange man
I had picked up in the woods and would break the engagement. And mother
is set on my marrying Peter. So she sent me off herself this morning
and took charge of Peter to keep him safe. Am I not clever?”
“I can think of nothing to add to what I have already said on that
point,” observed Roger mildly. “I am actually flabbergasted!”
“So was mother,” said she with innocent, young triumph. “And she used
just that word. Here’s a note from her to you.”
Miss Richmond took a letter from the pocket of her jacket and held it
toward him. He made no move to advance and take it from her. Instead he
made a gesture that was the beginning of a carrying out of the boyish
impulse to put his hands behind his back.
“Do you want me to get up and bring it to you?” said she.
“I want nothing to do with it,” said he coldly. “I don’t know your
mother. I’ve no doubt she’s an estimable woman, but I’ve no time to
enlarge the circle of my acquaintances.”
Miss Richmond once more seemed astounded by this unmistakable evidence
of an intention on his part to end their friendship absolutely. She
looked at him incredulously, then questioningly, then haughtily. She
put the note in her pocket, rose and stood very straight and dignified.
“That is rude,” she said.
“Yes, it is rude,” admitted he. “But you have left me no alternative.
There is only the one way to avoid being drawn into deceptions that are
most distasteful to me.”
She eyed him as if measuring his will. She saw no sign of yielding.
“You think I’m contemptible, don’t you?” said she, her tone friendly
again.
“I do not presume to judge you. You have your own scheme of life, I
mine. They are different--that is all. I don’t ask you to accept mine.
You must not ask me to accept yours. You must not--shall not--entangle
me in yours.”
She leaned against a tree, gazed thoughtfully at the rainbow appearing
and disappearing on the little waterfall. When she returned to him her
face was sweet and sad. He glanced up from his work, hastily fixed
his gaze on it again. “You are right--absolutely right,” she said.
“I’ve always done as I pleased. And everyone round me--the family, the
servants, the governesses--everyone--has humored and petted me and
encouraged me to take my own way.”
“I understand,” said he. “The wonder is--” But he deemed it wise not to
say what the wonder was.
“You really can’t blame me, Chang, can you, for having got into the
habit of thinking whatever I please to do is right?”
“Certainly I don’t blame you, Rix,” said he gently. “Considering what
you’ve probably been through, you’re amazing. In the same circumstances
I’d have been unfit to live.”
“You don’t despise me?” asked she eagerly.
“Despise you? Why, I couldn’t despise anybody. It’s a roomy world--room
for all kinds.”
“You like me? Not love,” she hastened to explain, “just like. Do you?”
He smiled his friendliest. “Sure! You’re about the nicest girl I ever
met--when you want to be.”
“Thank you,” she said, tears in her eyes; and she dropped back into her
reverie, he resuming his work. There was a long pause between them--a
pause filled by the song of birds thronging the foliage above and
around them, and by the soft music of the falling waters. “Sometimes
I think it’s an awful bad thing for people to have all the money they
want--to be rich,” said she pensively. “That’s one trouble with our
family.”
“Why, you told me you had to marry for money,” said Roger, much
surprised. He hated liars; he was loath to believe that she had lied to
him.
She looked miserably confused. “You didn’t understand quite,” she
replied hastily. “And I can’t explain--not now. You mustn’t ask me.”
“Ask you? It’s none of my business.”
“I didn’t mean--I didn’t mean to deceive you,” pleaded she. “But--I
can’t explain now.”
“Don’t think of it again,” said he, with a careless wave of one of his
long brushes. It was no new experience to find that people supposed
to be rich were merely struggling along on the edge of the precipice
of poverty. Poor child, making one of those hideous sacrifices on
the altar of snobbishness!--or, rather, being sacrificed, for she was
too young to realize to the full what she was doing. Still, Peter
Vanderkief did not size up so badly, as husband material went.
Silence for several minutes; she, seated again and studying his strong,
handsome face with its intent, absorbed expression--concentrated,
powerful. She did not venture to speak until he happened to glance at
her with an absent smile. Then she inquired sweetly: “May I ask you
something?”
“Go ahead.”
“Won’t you please come to dinner to-morrow night? That’s what mother’s
note’s about. It would be a great favor to me. It would straighten
everything out. You won’t have to do any further deceiving.”
He went on with his work. After a while he asked: “Does your Peter
think you love him?”
The color mounted in her cheeks. But it was in the accents of truth
that she replied: “He knows I don’t.”
“And if I came I’d not be helping to deceive him as to what you think
of him?”
“No--on my honor.”
He looked at her. “No’s quite enough,” said he, in a tone that made her
thrill with pride. “I think you are truthful.”
“And I am--with you,” said she, her expression at its very
best. “I’d be ashamed to lie to you. Not that I’ve always been
quite--quite--painfully _accurate_----”
“I understand. You and I mean the same thing when we say truthful.”
“Will you come?”
“Yes. Where do you live?”
She laughed. “Why, we’re _the_ Richmonds. Didn’t you guess?” She nodded
as if a mystery had been cleared up for her. “Oh, I understand now why
you’ve acted so differently from what I thought you would when you
found out.”
He smiled faintly. “I suppose I ought to know. But I’m a stranger here.
When I was here as a boy the city lawyers and merchants hadn’t got
the habit of coming up and taking farmhouses for the summer. Are you
boarding or have you a place of your own?”
She had got very red and was hanging her head. Evidently she was
suffering keenly from embarrassment.
“What’s the matter, Rix?”
“I--I rather thought--after yesterday--you sort of--understood about
us,” she stammered.
He laughed encouragingly. “Good Lord, don’t be a snob,” cried he. “What
do I care about where you live? I don’t select my acquaintances by
what’s in their pockets, but by what’s in their heads. A while ago you
said you were rich--and then you said you weren’t----”
“Oh, I’m all upset,” interrupted she. “Don’t mind the way I act. We
live on Red Hill. The house up there belongs to father.”
“That big, French country house?” said Roger, surprised. “I’ve seen it.
I’ll be glad to see it closer.” He painted a few minutes. “I suppose
you put on a lot of style up there. Well, I’ve got evening clothes
somewhere in my traps. I used to wear them occasionally in Paris, but
not much. Paris doesn’t go in for formalities--at least, not the Paris
I know.... What time’s the dinner?”
“Half past eight.”
He groaned and laughed. “Just my bedtime. But I’ll brace myself and
show up awake.... I wonder if I’ve got an evening shirt.” He happened
to glance at her, was struck by a queer gleam in her gray eyes. “What
now?”
“Nothing--nothing,” she hastened to assure him. “Just some silliness.
I’m full of it.”
He went on painting, and presently resumed his soliloquizing: “May
have to come in ordinary clothes. But that wouldn’t be a killing
matter--would it?... This isn’t town--it’s backwoods.... I’ve heard
some sorts of Americans have got to be worse than the English for
agitation about petty little forms. Are yours that sort?”
“Mother’s a dreadful snob,” said she weakly.
“Well, I’ll do the best I can,” was his careless reply. “Perhaps it’ll
be just as well if I have to horrify her.” He laughed absently.
“I hope you’ll do the best you can,” pleaded she. “For my sake.”
He looked amused. “You don’t want her to think you picked up a
hooligan--eh?”
“Oh, I don’t care what she thinks--not deep down,” cried the girl.
“I don’t care what anybody thinks about you--not really. But on the
surface--I’m--I’m a horrible snob, too.”
“All right. I’ll try not to disgrace you utterly.”
She reflected absently. Presently she interrupted his painting with
“Heck and father are both small. But Hank--I might send you down one
of Hank’s shirts. He’s almost as big as you--in the way of size. And I
could get my maid to borrow one from his valet----”
His expression--amused, intensely, boyishly amused--halted her. She had
been blushing. She flamed scarlet, looked as if she were about to sink
with humiliation. Then she lifted her head proudly and a strange light
came into her eyes--a light that made him quail. “Anyway you please,”
she said--and the words came jerkily--“Anything _you_ please.” And she
fled.
He stared after her until she was lost to view among the rocks and
bushes. He held the brush poised before the canvas--laid it down
again--gazed at the radiant figure he was conjuring in the midst of
his picture. He drew a huge breath. “Well, to-morrow night will be the
finish,” he muttered. “And it’s high time.”
V
AN ATTEMPT TO DAZZLE
At a quarter past eight the following night Roger drove up to the vast
entrance to Red Hill in the buggy he had hired from Burke, the Deer
Spring liveryman. Five lackeys in gorgeous livery, with powdered hair
and white silk stockings--five strapping fellows with the dumb faces
and the stalwart figures the rich select as menial showpieces--appeared
in the huge doorway. Three of them advanced to assist Roger. A fourth
disappeared--to telephone the stables about this unexpected, humble
equipage. The fifth stood upon the threshold, ready to take the hat
and coat of the evening’s one guest from without. The moon was high,
almost directly above the towers of the great, gray chateau. By the
soft, abundant light Roger surveyed the splendid, broad terraces
that broke the long and steep descent to Lake Wauchong; the enormous
panorama of untouched wilderness covering little mountain, big hill and
valley far as the eye could reach--all of it the property of Daniel
Richmond. Nearer, in the immediate neighborhood of the house were the
elaborations of the skilled landscape gardener. It was indeed a scene
of beauty--beauty as well as magnificence--an interesting exhibit of
the grandiose style of living wherein the rich sacrifice practically
all the joys of life and most of its comforts for the sake of tickling
their own vanity and stimulating the envy of their fellow-beings.
As Roger advanced into the lofty, gloomily paneled entrance hall--its
carvings had cost a fortune--he drew off his overcoat, disclosing
evening dress that would have passed muster on a figure far less in
need of ornamentation than his massive yet admirably proportioned
frame with its climax of godlike head. And the most impressive feature
of that head was the frank simplicity of the expression of the
face--that expression which marks the man who is something and lifts
him high above the flocks and herds of men who are trying--not too
successfully--to seem to be something. The modern evening dress for
men is one of the few conventions--perhaps the only one--not designed
to bolster up insignificance by reducing all to the same level of
smooth elegance. It is one of the curiosities of the history of manners
how such a blunder came to be firmly established as a propriety. In
evening dress, as in no other kind of costume or lack of costume, the
personality, the individuality, of the wearer obtrudes itself to every
eye. At a glance one may classify any number of men by their qualities
and quantities of head and heart. Beatrice Richmond, coming along the
corridor leading into the entrance hall from the east, stopped short at
sight of her artist.
She herself, in an evening gown of pale silver, with lovely shoulders
bare and graceful head looking exquisite under its crown of simply
arranged, yellow hair, was quite a different person from the rather
hoydenish elf of wood and stream whom Roger had been painting. But
she had lost, instead of gaining, in the transformation. She was
more beautiful, but much less fascinating. She had been leveled down
toward the conventional. She merely looked what the newspapers call “a
beautiful, young, society girl.” Roger, on the other hand, had gained.
He was retaining all his charm of the large, the free, the sincere,
the natural; he now had in addition a certain refinement that yet
had nothing of conventionality’s cheapness. It was somewhat like the
difference between a thoroughbred uncurried and curried. His natural
proportions showed to better advantage in this sleekness than they had
in the rough.
“What’s the matter?” demanded Roger, as he took her hand. “Am I late,
or is it the wrong evening?”
“Neither,” she assured him, and it delighted her to note that he did
not dream of taking to himself her pale and trembling joy in his
splendor of manhood. “Nothing much. Just--I was thinking this is the
first time we’ve seen each other in civilized dress.”
“Oh!” Roger evidently thought this not worth pursuing. “This is a
wonderful place you’ve got here. It’d be hard to blame anybody for
making any sort of sacrifice to keep it.” He glanced round with
the expression of a man used to such surroundings. In fact, there
was nothing about him which in the remotest degree suggested the
ill-at-easeness she had anticipated and feared. She felt humbled.
He was again--and where she had least expected it--rebuking her
nervousness over trifles and exaggeration of them. As they stood in the
corridor, talking, she could discover not a trace of the awe she had
confidently expected and hoped for. He treated her precisely as he had
in the woods. But she was not discouraged. She felt that he must be
deeply impressed, that he must be understanding now why she had taken
the proposing upon herself--and must be appreciating what a fine thing
that proposal was. He was concealing his feelings, reasoned she--was
perhaps unconscious of them; later on they would show in results.
“I’ll take you to mother,” said she.
They turned in at one of the several doors, were facing a roomful of
the sort of people one always finds in houses of that kind--carefully
dressed, carefully patterned people, leading the monotonous life
fashion imposes upon the upper class throughout the world. Beatrice
looked round, then looked proudly up at the huge, young man whose
expression made him seem to tower and loom, even among those physically
his equals. “Father isn’t here,” she explained. “He hates this sort of
thing for himself, though he tolerates it for us.”
Roger found himself being welcomed by a youngish, shrewd-looking
woman with a cold, discontented face. Beatrice’s mother was merely a
type--one of the kind the development of great fortunes is turning
out by the score in every city and large town from New York to San
Francisco: an indefatigable and not unintelligent seeker after the
correct aristocratic pose. She was in simple black velvet. Her graying
hair made her too-sharp face softer and more youthful. Her figure was
as slim and straight as her daughter’s, though not without evidences of
toil and corset manipulation to give it that girlish appearance. Peter
Vanderkief--Hanky--was beside her.
“So, you are really here?” she said cordially to Roger, as she gave him
a warm hand clasp and the smile of an old friend. “I can hardly believe
my own eyes.”
“Impossible to resist,” said Roger. “It’s indeed a pleasure to see you
again. How d’ye do, Mr. Vanderkief?”
Vanderkief forced a smile to his lips and extended a tardy hand. But
his brow remained sullen--not the sullenness of suspicion now, but of
jealousy.
“How is the picture coming on?” asked Mrs. Richmond of Roger.
“Oh, you know how those things go with me,” was Roger’s subtly
noncommittal reply.
“I remember,” laughed Mrs. Richmond. “You are the true artist. You’re
to take in Beatrice. She tells me you still have your old horror of
strangers.”
“Not horror--shyness,” protested Roger, with no more shyness or
suggestion of it than a well-brought-up child.
Then a small, slim, dark man--obviously a Continental foreigner--joined
the group. In dress and bearing he was a most elegant-looking
person--or, rather, personage. His fine, sensitive face was exceedingly
handsome. “Ah, my dear Wade!” cried he, pronouncing the name as if it
were spelled Vahd.
Roger’s face lighted up. “D’Artois!” exclaimed he, and they shook hands
with enthusiasm.
“How are you in this country without my hearing of it?” said Count
d’Artois. “I’d not have believed one so famous could move about
quietly.”
Mrs. Richmond and Beatrice--and Hank--were intensely interested
spectators and listeners. D’Artois turned to Mrs. Richmond. “Vahd must
be extremely fond of you, that you are able to get him. In Paris they
run after him in vain. He keeps himself hidden.”
Mrs. Richmond smiled nervously. Peter stared despondently at the big
man thus suddenly disclosed as a great man. As for Beatrice, her
eyes sparkled and her cheeks flushed proudly. Roger’s expression
was good-natured tolerance, perhaps touched with annoyance. Dinner
was announced and Beatrice took his arm. “I might have known!” she
exclaimed, gazing up at him.
He reddened and frowned. “Known what?” said he.
“That you were famous.”
“Trash!” observed Roger carelessly. “D’Artois is polite. Also, he is my
friend.”
“Oh, I know,” said the girl. “At lunch he was talking about you--what a
great painter you are--how rapidly you, though an American, were making
yourself famous in Europe. We didn’t dream he was talking of you. He
pronounces your name peculiarly.”
“I’m enormously hungry,” said Roger. “Where do these people come from?
I had no idea this was such a fashionable neighborhood.”
“Oh, they’re stopping in the house. Most of them came last night and
to-day.”
Roger ate and listened to the girl on his left--Alicia Kinnear, the
tennis player. Mrs. Richmond had Count d’Artois on her right, and he
talked steadily of “Vahd.” She listened sourly and from time to time
shot a glance down the table at him--the glance of the alarmed and
angry mother of a rather unmanageable heiress. Peter--directly opposite
Roger--was as silent as he, but instead of covering his silence with
appreciation of the Richmond chef he stared at the lace insertion of
the tablecloth and crumbled and messed his roll. Beatrice was the
happiest of the thirty-two at that table. She was radiant, ecstatic.
“Aren’t you going to say a single word to _me_?” she inquired of Roger
when he had finished the game course. “You can’t still be ravenously
hungry.”
“I’ve eaten too much,” replied he. “I’m stupid.”
“It really doesn’t matter, as I’ll see you to-morrow morning.”
“I’m not working to-morrow. I’ve got to go to town.”
“Then the day after?”
“I may stay in town several days.”
Her expression was so hurt, so depressed, that he felt guilty, mean.
“It’s terribly hard to be friends with you, isn’t it?” said she.
“Because I refuse to spend my time idling about? You must choose your
friends in your own class. No good ever comes of going out of it.”
“I’m surprised at _your_ talking about classes in this country.”
“There are classes everywhere--and always will be. A class simply means
a group of people of similar sympathies, tastes, habits and means.”
“Means!” said she. “I was under the impression you despised money!”
“I?” He laughed. “No more than I despise food. Money is a kind of food.
I want--and I try to get--all of it I need. My appetite is larger than
some, smaller than others. I take--or try to take--in proportion to my
appetite.”
She nodded thoughtfully. It was in a queer, hesitating voice that she
went on to ask: “And you really don’t care to be rich?”
“No more than I want to be fat. And I want to be poor no more than I
want to be emaciated.”
Again she reflected. Suddenly she asked: “Do you like this house?”
“Certainly. It is beautiful of its kind.”
“I mean, wouldn’t _you_ like to have such a house?”
“God forbid!” said he, and she knew he was speaking sincerely. “I’ve
other things to do in my brief life than take care of property.”
“But one can hire those things done.”