his glance traveled round the room, rested here and there for an
instant on the evidences of slovenly housekeeping which always
disfigure any great house for a critical observer. Her glance followed
his. Presently she colored, for she understood. “You are a terrible
man,” said she. “You see everything.”
“I wish I did,” replied he, not realizing what she had in mind. “Then
I’d paint the picture I dream about.”
“Do you like these people?” asked she.
“Certainly. They seem very nice. They’re most attractive to look at.”
“But you wouldn’t be friends with them?”
“Couldn’t be,” said he. “We have too little in common.”
“Don’t you want _any_ friends?” she said wistfully.
“I have friends. I shall have more. People of my own sort--people who
can give me what I want and who want what I have to give.”
“You despise us--don’t you?” cried she.
“Haven’t I told you,” protested he, “that I don’t despise anybody? Why
should I think people despicable because they are different?”
“You’d despise my sister Rhoda, who married the Earl of Broadstairs for
his title.”
“Not at all. I approve of her for taking what she wanted. Why should
she have been a hypocrite and married for love when she didn’t want
love, but splurge?”
“Do you know why I was so anxious to have you come here?”
“How you do jump about!” laughed he. “Well--why? To smooth down----”
“No,” she interrupted, coloring furiously. “I _must_ be truthful with
you. I wanted it because I thought you’d be impressed.”
“And I am,” he assured her, a friendly smile of raillery in his eyes.
“I had no idea you were such a grand person.”
“Don’t jeer at me,” she pleaded. “I’m in earnest. It isn’t fair to mock
at anyone who’s in earnest--is it?”
“No. It’s contemptible,” said he. “But I understand you better than you
understand yourself.”
In defiance of conventionality she looked at him with eyes whose
meaning no observer could have mistaken. He glanced hastily round.
“Don’t do silly, sensational things,” said he. “You’re making us both
ridiculous.”
“I don’t in the least care,” she declared.
He said sternly: “Now, my friend, I’m getting just a little tired
of this. You’ve always had your own way. You are piqued because you
can’t make a fool of me. So, you are willing to go to any lengths. I
understand you perfectly.”
Her gaze was steady and earnest--not at all proper for a public place.
“Do you think I’m simply coquetting? Don’t you realize that I’m in
earnest?”
“Perhaps you think you are,” admitted he. “You’re so wrought up by your
game of make-believe that you have partly convinced yourself. Luckily,
_I_ remain cool.”
“If I were a poor girl you wouldn’t act like this!”
“How did I act when I thought you were a poor girl?”
That silenced her for the moment. He went on: “You and I are going to
be as good friends as our separate lots permit. And you are going to
marry in your own class--are going to do your duty. I’ll admit I did
think it strange that a girl like you should be deliberately marrying
for money. But at that time I thought you were poor. Now that I have
seen what your life is, I don’t blame you. I can see how you simply
couldn’t give up all this magnificence that has become necessity to
you. It’d be like asking me to give up my painting.”
She looked at him with a puzzled expression. “But I’m not marrying to
keep it. My father’s much richer than Hank. Hank’s not so very rich.”
Over his dark features slowly crept a look like the fall of a winter
evening. “Oh,” said he coldly. “I thought-- No matter.”
“What did you think?”
“Naturally, I assumed--from your saying so much about your duty--I
assumed your father had lost, or was about to lose, his money.”
“Mercy, no!” exclaimed she, brightening hopefully. “I meant my
family--my social--duty.”
His expression was quizzical. “To be sure--to be sure. I never thought
of that.”
“You see, we’re newcomers among fashionable people, while the
Vanderkiefs--they’re right at the top of the heap.”
He nodded smilingly. “Of course--of course. A very sensible marriage.”
“But I’m not going to marry him,” cried she. “I never intended to.”
He forgot where he was for a moment in his astonishment. “Then why did
you engage yourself to him?”
“It isn’t that kind of engagement,” she explained sweetly. “I did it
because _you_ acted so. But I was square with Peter. I warned him I
didn’t love him and couldn’t. Our engagement is simply that he is
having a chance to make me care for him if he can.”
“You’ll be married within six months,” said Roger lightly; and he
lifted a glass of champagne to his lips.
“Not to him,” replied she. “If to anybody, to the man I love--the man
who loves me.”
Her words, so direct, and her tone, so simple, disconcerted him to
such an extent that he choked upon the champagne. While he was still
coughing Mrs. Richmond rose, and the men were left alone. Roger went
with the first man who rejoined the women. He made straight for Mrs.
Richmond, bade her good night and got himself out of the house before
Beatrice, hemmed in by several people, could extricate herself and
intercept him.
He did the homeward drive slowly, preyed upon by swarms of disagreeable
thoughts. His experience of women had taught him to be more than
suspicious of any feminine show of enthusiasm for a man; women were too
self-centered, too prudent by nature and training, to give themselves
out freely, even when encouraged--unless there were some strong, sordid
motive. In this case sordid motive simply could not be. Nor could he
conceive any practical reason why Beatrice should pretend to care for
him--any practical reason why she should wish to marry him. He felt
like a fool--as a normal man not swollen with conceit is bound to feel
in circumstances such as Beatrice had made for him. And what vanity
she had!--to fancy herself so fascinating that it simply could not be
that he did not love her. And how poor an opinion she had of him! How
little respect for him!--to believe that his reason for hiding his
love was awe of her wealth and social position. “What can I have said
or done to give her such an impression of me?” He could recall nothing
that might have been twisted by her into a suggestion of that sort. No,
the mystery was without a clew. “Am I crazy, or is she?” he demanded
of the moonlit night.... And when was this thing to stop? Could Fate
have dealt more irritatingly with him? He had come back home to make
the grand effort of his life--to concentrate his whole being, every
power of mind and body, every thought and feeling, upon the realization
of his lifelong dream. And here was this girl, a nice enough girl, no
doubt, an unusually attractive girl, as girls go, but still a mere
idle, time-wasting woman with no real seriousness--here she was,
harassing him, retarding his work, distracting his thoughts, involving
him with a lot of people who had neither importance nor interest for
him. In spite of himself he was being dragged into her life, whirled
about by her caprices. He felt not only like a fool, but like a weak
fool. “And what the devil can I do about it? How can I be insulting to
a sweet, friendly girl who doesn’t realize what she’s doing and has
been so brought up that she can’t be made to realize?”
The only hopeful course that suggested itself was flight. “Yes--if she
keeps this up I’ll have to take to my heels.” There his sense of humor
came to the rescue and he jeered at himself. “A delightful person I’m
becoming!--discussing what to do to escape from a girl who is madly in
love with me!”
* * * * *
About the time that Burke, the liveryman, was once more in possession
of his “rig,” Beatrice, undressing for bed with the aid of her maid
Valentine, received a peremptory summons from her mother by way of her
mother’s maid, Marthe.
Mrs. Richmond was established in splendor in five big rooms on the
second floor of the east wing. She received her daughter in her
office--a luxurious, library-like room with few signs that it was
the seat of the administration of a household of forty-two servants.
Indeed, Mrs. Richmond was little of an administrator. She nagged at
and criticised Pinney, the superintendent, and Mrs. Lambert, the
housekeeper. She picked flaws in accounts, usually in the wrong places.
She delivered sharp talks on economy and extravagance. But things were
run sloppily, as is bound to happen where the underlings learn that
there is no such thing as justice, that criticism is as likely to fall
upon good work as upon bad. The stealing and the waste grew apace; and
though Richmond, each year, largely increased his wife’s allowance for
the maintenance of their various establishments, she was never able
to put by more than twenty-five thousand or thereabouts for her own
secret, privy purse.
Yet she was a most industrious woman, up early, to bed late. How did
she occupy her time? Chiefly in taking care of her person. She was not
highly intelligent about this. She wasted much of the time and most of
the money she invested in the tragi-comic struggle for youth. Still,
she got some results. Perhaps, however, most of her success in keeping
down fat and wrinkles, and holding in her hair and her teeth in spite
of self-indulgence as to both food and drink, was due to the superb
constitution she had inherited. Mrs. Richmond came originally from
Indiana; and out there they grow--or, in former days grew--a variety
of the human species comparable to an oak knot--tough of fiber beyond
belief, capable of resisting both fire and steel, both food and drink.
There was small resemblance between mother and daughter save in the
matter of figure. Beatrice’s sweet and pretty face was an inheritance
from the Richmonds, though not from her father direct. Her shrewdness
and persistence were from her father direct. The older woman in the
pale-blue dressing gown looked up sharply as the younger, in pink
and white, entered. But the sharp, angry glance wavered at sight of
the resolute little face wearing an expression of faintly amused
indifference. She had long since taken her daughter’s measure--and she
knew that her daughter had taken hers.
“What did you send for me about?” Beatrice asked.
“You know very well.”
“Chang?”
“Chang! What does _that_ mean?”
“It’s my pet name for our dear old friend Roger--Roger Wade. He calls
me Rix. I call him Chang.”
Mrs. Richmond seemed stupefied for the moment by this cool and candid
shamelessness.
“I hate beating round the bush,” pursued Beatrice. “So, I might as well
tell you at the outset that I intend to marry him.”
“Beatrice!” exclaimed her mother, electrified into panic.
“You know _me_, mother. You know I always do what I say I’ll do.
Didn’t I cut off my hair close to my head when I was eight because you
insisted on those foolish curls? Didn’t I----”
“You have always been obstinate and troublesome,” interrupted her
mother. “I’ve warned your father you would make a wreck of your life.
But he wouldn’t heed me.”
“Father and I understand each other,” said Beatrice.
“You think he will consent to your marrying that common, poor artist?”
demanded her mother excitedly. “Well, for once you are mistaken. In
some ways I know your father better than you do. And when it comes to
any such insanity as that----”
“Don’t agitate yourself, mother.”
“He’ll cut you off if you do it. I shouldn’t be surprised if he should
turn against you as soon as he hears you have thought of such a thing.”
Beatrice listened calmly. “That remains to be seen,” said she.
“I think you’ve lost your mind, Beatrice,” cried her mother, between
railing and wailing.
“I think so, too,” replied Beatrice, dreamy-eyed. “Yes, I’m sure I
have.”
“This isn’t a bit like you.”
“No, not a bit. I thought I was hard as--as you’ve brought me up to
be. I thought I cared only for the material things.”
“What _is_ the matter with you?”
“I want _him_,” said the girl, lips compressing resolutely. Presently
she added, “And I’m going to get him--at any cost.”
“Trapped by an adventurer! You!”
Beatrice laughed. “You ought to hear Chang on that subject.”
Her mother started up. “You don’t mean it’s gone as far as that?”
“As what?”
“You haven’t talked about such things to him?”
“Long ago,” said the daughter coolly.
Mrs. Richmond, all a-quiver with fright and fury, moved toward the
door. “I shall telephone for your father at once!”
“Do.”
“We will have you put away somewhere.”
“I’m of age.”
Mrs. Richmond could not altogether conceal how this terse reminder had
discomfited her. “Your father will know how to deal with this,” said
she, trying to cover the essential weakness of the remark by a savagely
threatening tone.
“I hope so,” said the girl, unmoved. “You see--the fact is--Chang has
turned me down. I’ve got to get father to bring him round--some way.”
Her mother, at the door into the anteroom where the telephones were,
halted and whirled round. “What are you talking about?” she demanded.
“I asked Mr. Wade to marry me. He refused. He is still refusing.”
Mrs. Richmond, hand on the knob, seemed to give careful thought to each
of these three highly significant little sentences. Her comment was
even more compressed; she laughed harshly.
“I saw that he was an unusually clever, experienced man.”
Beatrice looked quickly at her mother with shrewd, inquiring eyes. “You
think he’s afraid father will cut me off?”
“Of course that’s it.”
“I wonder?” said the girl thoughtfully. “I hope so--yet I’m afraid.”
Mrs. Richmond’s mouth dropped open and her eyes widened with horror. At
last she said witheringly: “You--_hope_--so!”
The girl did not answer; she was deep in thought.
Her mother sat down near the door. “You _know_ so. I see you are more
sensible than I feared. You know he’s simply looking for money.”
“You don’t understand me at all, mother.” Beatrice leaned toward
her mother across the arm of the sofa. “Haven’t you ever wanted
anything--wanted it so intensely, so--so fiercely--that you would take
it on any terms--would do anything to get it?”
“Beatrice--that is--shocking!” As the word shocking had lost its force
in the general emancipation from the narrow moralities that is part of
fashionable life, Mrs. Richmond decided to bolster it up with something
having real strength. “Also, it is ridiculous,” she added.
“Father would understand,” said the girl pensively. “He has that sort
of nature. I inherit it from him. You know, they’ve almost ruined and
jailed him several times because he got one of those cravings that
simply have to be satisfied.”
No loyal wife could have taken a better air and tone than did Daniel
Richmond’s wife as she rebuked: “You are talking of your father,
Beatrice!”
“Yes--and I love him--adore him--just because he _does_ things. He’s
good--good as gold. But he isn’t afraid to be bad. He doesn’t hesitate
to take what he wants because he hasn’t the nerve.”
“Your father has been lied about--maligned--enviously slandered by his
enemies.”
“Don’t talk rot, mother,” interrupted the girl. “You know him as well
as I. You’re afraid of him. I’m not. He knows he can rule you through
your love of luxury--just as he makes Rhoda and her earl crawl and fawn
and lick his boots--and the boys--even Conny, who’s only fourteen. Oh,
I don’t blame him for making people cringe, when he can. I like to do
that, myself.”
The mother regarded this daughter, so mysterious to her, with mingled
admiration and terror. “You are frightful--frightful!”
Beatrice seemed to accept this as a rare, agreeable compliment. “I’ve
got the courage to say what I think. And--really, I’m not so frightful.
I used to imagine I was. But”--she paused, laughed softly, a delightful
change sweeping over her face--“just ask Chang!”
To Mrs. Richmond the words and the manner of them were like an impudent
defiance. They drove her almost beside herself with alarm and anger.
“Your father’ll soon bring you to terms! You’ll see, miss! You’ll see.”
And she nodded her head, laughing viciously, an insane glitter in her
bright, brown eyes. “Yes, you’ll find out!”
Beatrice was not in the least impressed.
“All father can do is to cut me off. I’ve got five thousand a year in
my own right--enough to keep body and soul together. So, he knows he’s
powerless with me.”
“What a fool he was,” cried her mother, “to give you that money.”
“It isn’t altogether the money,” pursued Beatrice. “You’ve got nearly
half a million put by out of the household allowances. And your jewels
make as much more. Yet you’re afraid of him.”
Instead of becoming furious, Mrs. Richmond sank weakly back in her
chair. “He’s my husband,” she said appealingly. “You don’t understand
how much that means--not yet.”
Beatrice laughed softly. “No, but I’m beginning to,” said she. However,
she did not pursue that branch of the subject--did not force her mother
into the corner of admission that the real source of Richmond’s power
over her was not wifely duty nor yet motherly feeling, but love of the
vast and costly luxury which being Richmond’s indulged wife got for
her. All the girl wished to accomplish was to reduce her mother to that
pliable state of mind in which she would cease to be the active enemy
of her projects. Mrs. Richmond was now down to that meek weakness;
through the rest of their talk her manner toward her daughter was
friendly, sisterly, remonstrant rather than denunciatory.
“You don’t realize what is the matter with you, Beatrice,” said she.
“What _is_ the matter with me?”
“You wouldn’t understand-- I couldn’t explain-- You have had no
experience. If you had, you’d realize and control yourself.”
“All I know is, I _must_ have _him_.”
“That’s it, exactly,” cried her mother. “That’s the way it affects
anyone who gets possessed by it. If you married under a spell of that
sort you’d wonder at yourself afterwards--when you had got enough.”
“But--I wouldn’t ‘get enough,’ as you call it.”
“Oh, yes, you would. They always do.”
“_Always?_”
Mrs. Richmond shifted ground. “You will never get your father to
consent--never!”
“That’s the least of my troubles,” said Beatrice confidently. “The only
question is: How could he help me to bring over Roger?”
“How can you be so silly, child!” exclaimed the mother. “That fellow
would jump at you just as soon as he found your father consenting.”
Mrs. Richmond smiled. “And when he did jump at you-- Oh, I know you so
well! You’d laugh at him and turn your back on him then.”
“I wonder,” said Beatrice absently. “I wonder.”
“I’m sure of it,” cried her mother with energy.
“I--don’t--know,” replied the girl. “It isn’t a bit like me to marry
out of my own class. At first I laughed at myself for even imagining
I’d really marry Chang. I was fascinated by him--everything he said and
did--and the way he said or did it--the way his hair grew--the way his
clothes fit--the way he blew smoke out of his mouth--the way he held
his palette--and his long brushes-- You see, mother, I was infatuated
with him. Isn’t he _splendid_ to look at?”
“He certainly is strikingly handsome,” admitted Mrs. Richmond. “But
hardly more so than Peter.”
“Oh, mother!” laughed out Beatrice. “You are not that undiscriminating.
There’s all the difference between them that there is between--between
a god and a mere mortal.” Contrasting the two men seemed to fire the
girl afresh. “Yes, I do want Chang,” she cried. “I’d be enormously
proud to have such a man to exhibit as my husband.”
“But think, my dear! He’s nobody!”
“You heard d’Artois----”
“Yes--but if he were to try to marry d’Artois’s sister----”
“I know. I understand,” said Beatrice impatiently. “I wish he were a
_real_ somebody. Still, he probably comes of as good a family as we
do.” She rose and faced her mother. “When I’m with him I’m ashamed of
being so--so cheap. When I see him beside Peter I’d laugh at anybody
who talked such snobbishness. But-- Oh, I’ve been so rottenly brought
up! No wonder he won’t have me! If he knew me as I am he’d spurn me.”
Her expression softened to loving tenderness. “No, he wouldn’t. He’s
big and broad. He’d understand and sympathize--and try to help me to be
worthy of him. And I will be!”
Her mother looked at her with the uncertain expression one sees on the
faces of the deaf when they are making pretense of having heard and
understood. “You’re very queer, Beatrice,” said she.
“Ain’t I, though!” exclaimed the girl. “I guess you were right a while
ago. I guess I’m crazy.”
“Don’t you think we’d better go abroad right away, instead of waiting
till June?”
“I’ve thought of that. But the idea of getting out of reach of him
sets me wild. I’d not be able to stand it to Sandy Hook. I’d spring
overboard and swim back to see what he was about.... Were you ever in
love, mother?”
“Of course,” replied Mrs. Richmond. “But I didn’t fall in love with a
nobody with nothing--at least, a man with no prospects.”
“Then you don’t know what _love_ is! Oh, it was delicious--caring
about him--crazy about him--trembling all over if he spoke--shivering
if he happened to look at me in that calm, big way of his--and that
when I felt he might be little more than a tramp, for all I knew.”
There was no sympathy in the mother’s face, nothing but plain aversion
and dismay. Yet she dared not speak her opinion. She knew Beatrice.
“I’m afraid he’s very artful, dear,” she ventured to say. “He seems to
understand exactly how to lead you on.”
“I don’t think so,” replied Beatrice. “I may be wrong. I often doubt.
I’m like father--very suspicious by nature. Of course, it’s possible
he is playing with me. If he is, why, it’s the most daring, splendid
game a man ever played, and he deserves to win.... No, mother. He’s
not playing with me. I tried to win him when he thought I was a poor
nobody. It didn’t go. Then I thought he was holding back because he was
poor; and I tried to win him by showing him what he would be getting.
I’m still trying that. But it doesn’t seem to be working any better
than the other.”
“Beatrice, I’m amazed. What _must_ he think of you?”
“Now, you know very well, mother, that a girl in my position has to
do the courting if the man’s poor and has any self-respect. In fact,
I’ve got a notion that the women, in any circumstances, do a lot more
courting than is generally supposed.”
“I don’t know how it is in this day,” said her mother stiffly. “But in
_my_ day----”
“You wouldn’t own up, mother dear,” laughed the girl. “And your manner
is suspiciously like an attempt to hide guilt.”
“I’m sure of one thing,” said Mrs. Richmond tartly. “In my day children
did not insult their parents.”
“Now, don’t get cross at my joking, dear,” cajoled the daughter,
kissing her mother’s well-arranged, gray hair so lightly that there
could be no danger of disarranging it.
As if it had all suddenly come over her again Mrs. Richmond cried
despairingly, “What _will_ your father say! He’ll blame me. He’ll say
things that will prostrate me.”
“If you’ll not mention it to him,” said Beatrice, “I’ll guarantee that
he’ll not blame you. Hank is going away in the morning. You and Hector
can pretend to know nothing. I’ll take it up with him.”
Her mother looked somewhat reassured, but said dubiously, “He’ll give
it to me for not having guarded you more closely.”
“I’ll fix all that,” said Beatrice with infectious confidence. “Trust
me.”
Mrs. Richmond gave her a look of gratitude so deep that it was almost
loving. “If you’d only be sensible and put this foolishness out of your
mind,” she said plaintively.
Rix laughed gayly, then softly. “It isn’t in my mind,” said she.
“It’s in another place--one I didn’t know about until I met him.” She
looked at herself admiringly in a long mirror that happened to be at
hand. “Don’t you see how much better looking I’ve grown of late? You
understand why. Oh, I’m so happy!”
Her mother gave a sigh of helplessness. Rix laughed again and went away
to her own rooms--to try to write poetry!
VI
THE GUILE OF INNOCENCE