to keep his pose intact--had contrived to protest against one of
his children’s yielding to the craze for “decayed aristocrats with
fly-blown titles,” and to yield only because “personally, Broadstairs
wasn’t as bad as some,” and because the girl and her mother had made
it clear to him that her heart would be broken if she didn’t get the
man she loved--at the price such luxuries cost. He had assumed that
Beatrice had been equally well brought up--to love where she should,
to do as well in the American upper class as her sister had done
in the foreign upper class. This revelation of her waywardness, the
waywardness of the child who was his especial pride, for whom he
had dreamed the most dazzling splendors of social grandeurs in New
York--this astounding revelation put him in the rage of his life. His
face was a study in hatefulness. Beatrice shivered as she looked at
it--but not with fear.
“Yes,” said she calmly, after a pause. “I’ve been brought up in a
certain way. But I was born to insist on having what I want. I want
Roger. And, father, I’m going to have him--in spite of you both.”
After a pause, in a voice of dreadful calm Richmond said: “You are
going to marry Peter Vanderkief within six weeks or two months--or you
are going to get the shock of your willful life.”
“No,” replied she, in a voice of calm equally dreadful. “I have already
had that shock. I thought mother was the snob. I thought women were
the snobs. But I see it’s the men--worse than the women--you worse
than mother. Oh, father,” she said, changing suddenly to passionate
pleading, “how can _you_ be like this! _You_--of all men!”
“Never mind me, young lady,” snapped her father, flying to the safe
refuge of rage. “I’m going to save you from this blackmailing fortune
hunter.” And the unpleasantly crowded teeth showed savagely through
the ragged gray mustache.
“I have asked him to marry me, and----”
“What!” shouted Richmond, again forgetting the groom. “Are you _crazy_?”
“I am,” said Beatrice simply. “I love him. I’m crazy--permanently
crazy.”
“Your mother will take you to New York this very day. You’ll sail day
after to-morrow morning.”
“I shall do nothing of the kind,” said the girl.
The sound Richmond made was in the guise of laughter--of mockery.
But no snarl or roar could have been so fraught with menace. “We’ll
see about this, miss,” said he. “I’ll show you who is master in my
family. I’ll show you you can’t go on degrading yourself with this low
intrigue. That hound! So he thought he could fasten himself on me--did
he? I’ll teach him!”
“I have proposed to him. He has refused me. I’ve made love to him. He
has repulsed me.”
Richmond’s cruel mouth under his ragged mustache was horrible to see.
“You shameless girl!” he cried. “It’ll be one of the servants next. I
must get you safely married at once. If your mother wasn’t absolutely
incompetent she’d have had you settled long ago.”
“I shall marry no one but Roger Wade,” came from the quiet figure
beside him in a quiet voice.
“Have you got no sense at all? You say the puppy refused you. Don’t you
know why?”
“I know the reason you’d give.”
“And that’s the real reason. He has heard about _me_! He’s got brains
enough to understand that his best game is to----”
“Don’t you say another word against him!” cried Beatrice, at the end
of her forbearance. “You talk of my being a fool. What do you think
of yourself? You don’t want me to marry this man. How do you go about
preventing it? Why, you show me that you are not the father who, I
thought, loved me, but that you couldn’t love anybody. You show me
that you are not the kind of man I thought, but a snob, a hypocritical
snob--yes, a hypocritical snob, who has been pulling wires behind
mother--you all the time railing at her and at me and at Rhoda as
snobs. And then, when you’ve shown me the truth about my surroundings,
you go on to attack the man I love--to say about him things I know to
be false. Is _that_ what you call clever?”
“I’m glad you’re letting me see you in your true colors,” said the
father, so exhausted by his passions that his voice came as little more
than a hoarse whisper. “As for that--that fortune hunter who has been
making a fool of you--don’t ever mention his name to me again!”
“Do you want me to jump out of this cart?” cried the daughter,
quivering with fury.
Richmond pushed the horses into their swiftest trot. He did not speak
again until he reined in at the entrance to the gray chateau. Then he
said viciously, “Go to your rooms and get ready to leave for New York
and Europe. You have two hours and a half.”
IX
FAMILY BEHIND-THE-SCENES
Richmond, shrewd student of human nature and well versed in
his favorite child’s peculiarities of will and temper, did not
underestimate what she had revealed to him--neither that which she
had revealed consciously nor the no less important things she had
unconsciously implied. Also, he had seen the man for whom she confessed
infatuation, had measured his physical attractions and had got a fair
notion of the inner charms which made the physical charms so potent.
It was a time for swift and summary action; this adventurer must be
got rid of before he could use the foolish child’s infatuation to put
himself in a position where he might cause scandal and, if he chose,
could exact heavy blackmail. Theoretically, Richmond regarded his
daughter as lovely and fascinating enough to bring any man in the world
to her feet. Practically, he believed feeling for her had no part in
the doings of “that fortune-hunting hound.” He had been young and now
was not far from old, yet he had not seen any exception to the rule he
held axiomatic--that wherever money is involved at all it is the only
real factor.
Yes, it was a time for action, instant and drastic. As he drove back
toward Wade’s studio he strove with his rage, trying to calm it so that
his sly brain might plot one of those subtle tricks which had got him
his vast fortune and had made him about the most admired, most hated
and most denounced man in American finance. But every time he thought
of his child’s weak-minded lack of self-respect or of the brazen
impudence of the penniless artist he fell to grinding his teeth again
and to cursing his inability to lock her up until she recovered her
senses, and to horsewhip the artist out of the neighborhood. Richmond
had been so long used to having his will of any and every human being
he happened to need that he latterly had become really insane when
opposed. It was enough for a man to appear in his pathway; at once
he began to take the worst possible view of that man’s character, a
method which greatly assisted him in stifling the voice of conscience.
Time was when he, like all men who have built themselves up from
small beginnings, had his temper well under control, a bloodhound to
be released only when it was prudent and advantageous to do so. But
the habit of power had wrought as destructively in him as it has in
almost all those who have become rulers. His temper was fast becoming
a dangerous weakness--that traitor within who overthrows where foes
without could never prevail.
When he arrived in sight of the studio there sat “the hound” on the
doorsill, smoking a pipe. Roger did not move until Richmond was within,
perhaps, twenty yards--reasonable speaking distance; then he rose and
waited in large tranquillity. Richmond advanced until he was about ten
feet away. There he halted. To have gone nearer would have been to
put himself, the small of stature and the spare of build, absurdly in
contrast to the towering Roger--like a meager little bush at the base
of a tree. Across the space between them he hurled at Roger one of
those glances which Roger himself had described as “aimed to kill.”
“What can I do for you, sir?” inquired the young man at length. He
showed not a hint that he was aware of the wrath storming in the small
man.
“You--you damn scoundrel!” ejaculated Richmond between his teeth--for
the feeling of futility acted on his rage like oil on fire.
Richmond’s mien had prepared Roger for something like this, so he bore
the shock with infuriating composure. He eyed his insulter without
moving a muscle of his face, then turned and crossed the threshold of
his studio, reaching for the door to close it.
“Hold on there!” cried Richmond. “I’ve got something to say to you.”
Roger went on in and closed the door. Richmond stared at it with mouth
ajar. What sort of a scheme was this? What did the fellow calculate
to gain toward his ends by making such a move? Richmond could not but
admire its audacity. “No wonder he has succeeded in convincing the
little fool that he is sincere.” He advanced and opened the door. He
entered the big, bare room; Roger, crayon in hand, was standing before
the sketch that had been upon the easel when they left. He did not
glance toward Richmond; he did not pause in his work. Richmond had not
entered without having thought out a plan of procedure. Plain talk was
the thing--not insulting, but plain. He must frankly assume that the
artist was a detected and baffled plotter of a marriage for money.
“My daughter has confessed to me,” said Richmond in a tone that was
at least not insulting. “I have talked with her, and she is already
ashamed of herself. So I have come from her to inform you that it will
be useless for you to pursue your projects further.”
[Illustration: “‘There ought to be a law that could reach fellows like
you.’”]
The big, young man stood back from his sketch, eyed it critically. A
thin stream of smoke curled from the pipe in the corner of his mouth.
He went on drawing as if he were alone in the room.
“I wish you clearly to understand,” pursued Richmond, “that your
attentions are distasteful to her and to her family. Acquaintance with
her must cease.”
Roger sketched on.
As physical violence was out of the question, Richmond did not know
what to do--how to extricate himself from the absurd position into
which his wrath had hurried him. He glowered at the big artist. The
sense of impotence set his rage to steaming. “And I must tell you that
if you had not had the cleverness to hold off--if you had lured that
foolish child into marriage--you’d never have got a cent--not a cent!
I’d cast off a child of mine who so disgraced her family. I’d forget
she existed. But now that she realizes how she was trapped--what a
slick citizen you are--she’s ashamed of herself--ashamed of herself.
There ought to be a law that could reach fellows like you.”
While he was talking Roger was pushing his easel into the huge closet.
He now closed and locked it, threw his coat over his arm and strode
calmly past Richmond and out at the door. Not a word, not a glance,
not a sign. Richmond followed him slowly. Roger marched at a long,
swinging gait down the hill toward the east and disappeared into the
woods. Richmond stared after him. When the undergrowth hid him from
view Richmond took out his handkerchief and mopped his face. In a long
life dotted with many an unusual scene between him and sundry of his
fellow-men he had never experienced the like of this.
“The scoundrel!” he said, a look of reluctant respect in his wrathful
eyes. “The best game I ever ran up against.”
He must hurry his girl out of the country--and not give her an
unwatched moment until the steamer was clear of the dock.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, Beatrice had gone to her mother.
Mrs. Richmond was taking advantage of a lull in the entertaining to
give herself a thorough physical overhauling. The lower part of the
west wing was fitted up as a complete gymnasium, with a swimming
pool underneath. She had played basket ball with her secretary and
companion, Miss Cleets, had fenced ten minutes, had swum twenty, and
was now lying on a lounge in her boudoir, preparing to go off into a
delicious sleep. In came Beatrice.
“Well, mamma,” said she, “the fat’s in the fire.”
Mrs. Richmond opened her drowsy eyes. “You’ve told your father?”
Beatrice nodded. “And he promptly blew up.”
“I was sure he would.”
Beatrice’s expression--strange, satirical, sad, bitterly sad--could not
but have impressed her mother had she not been more than half asleep.
“You knew him better than I did,” said the girl. “Still--no matter.”
“We’ll talk about it after I’ve had my nap.”
“Oh, there’s nothing to talk about.”
“That’s true,” said her mother comfortably, as she slid luxuriously
down the descent into unconsciousness--or is it an ascent? “You know
there’s nothing to do but to obey your father. And he’s right. You’ll
be better satisfied with Peter.” And Mrs. Richmond was asleep.
Beatrice stood looking at her mother. Her expression of somewhat
undaughterly pity vanished and there was a rush of tears to her eyes,
an uncontrollable tremor of the fresh, young lips usually curved
in response to emotions in which tenderness had little part. “Dear
mother,” she murmured. She understood her mother’s lot now, and
sympathized in a way which Daniel Richmond’s wife, unconscious what
havoc those years of gradually deepened slavery had wrought in her
mind, her heart, her whole life, would have regarded as hysterical and
silly. Love had lifted Beatrice above the narrow environment in which
she had been bred and had quickened her to a sense of values she could
hardly have got otherwise. She saw her mother as she was, as her mother
could no more have seen herself than the lifelong drunkard, happy in
his squalid sottishness, could reconstruct and regret the innocence
from which he has dropped into the depths by a gradient so easy that
it was unnoted. The girl realized that her mother’s chief substantial
happiness was inability to comprehend her own fate. “Thank God,” said
she to herself, “I had my eyes opened in time.” And one by one before
her passed faces of fashionable matrons, young and old, whom she knew
well--hard or hardening features, like landscapes upon which only bleak
winds blow and only meager light from cold, gray skies falls; eyes from
which looked shriveled souls, souls in which all human sympathy, save
the condescending charity that is vanity rather than sympathy, had
dried up; lives filled with shams and pretenses; trim and showy gardens
in which no flower had perfume, no fruit had taste, and where shone not
one of the free, beautiful blossoms of genuine love. Not hard hearts
really, but shriveled; not unhappy lives, but stunted and sunless,
like plants grown in the luxury of a rich loam--in a dark cellar. The
shock of disillusionment as to her father completed for Beatrice the
transformation that had been started by the undermining effect of Roger
upon her conventional ideas--as a thunderbolt crashes down a weakened
dam and releases its floods.
Beatrice passed a light and caressing hand over her mother’s
beautifully arranged hair, bent and kissed her. Then she stole from
the room--with a lingering glance of tenderest sweetness back from the
threshold.
An hour and a quarter ticked away in that splendid room, with its
wall coverings and upholsteries of dark-red brocaded silk. In stepped
Richmond, brisk and bristling. He frowned at his sleeping wife, tapping
his foot impatiently upon the floor. “Lucy!” he called sharply.
Mrs. Richmond’s eyes opened, saw him. Over her face flitted an
expression as primeval and as moving as that of a weary slave awakened
from delightful sleep to resume the hated toil. “Why did you wake me?”
she cried peevishly.
“Where’s Beatrice?”
Mrs. Richmond resumed her normal expression of haughty discontent. “She
was in here a while ago,” replied she. “In her rooms, probably.”
“Did she tell you?” asked he.
“About Wade?”
“Yes,” snapped her husband. “What else is there, pray? Has she been up
to something else disgraceful?”
“Why, Dan, she’s done nothing disgraceful,” cried the mother. “Every
girl has those passing fancies. But she’ll not oppose you. Anyhow, her
own good sense----”
Richmond gave an impatient snort. “She’s a fool--an impetuous fool.”
His wife ventured a sly, catlike look from the corner of her eye into
his back. “You always say she’s the most like you of any of----”
“She takes her impetuosity from me. I hardly need say from whom she
inherits her folly.”
“I can see nothing to get excited about.” And Mrs. Richmond stretched
herself in preparation for a leisurely sitting up.
Richmond regarded his wife with his habitual expression of disdain for
her uselessness. He said peremptorily: “You are going to town this
evening with her, and you take her abroad day after to-morrow.”
Mrs. Richmond sat up as if she had been prodded with a spike. “I can’t
do it!” she cried. “I can’t get ready. And we’ve got invitations out
for----”
“I’m going to send my own secretary--Lawton--along with you, to watch
her and report to me,” said Richmond. “You have shown that you are
unable to take care of her. Excited? Indeed I am excited. To find
that a wretched fortune hunter has just about foisted himself on me.
And what of our plans for the girl’s future? Have bridge and these
masseuses and hair women and all the rest of the fiddle-faddle that
you fuddle about with taken from you the last glimmerings of sense?”
He was storming up and down the room. “Good Heaven! Have I got to take
one eye off my business to keep guard over my family? Are you good for
_nothing_, Lucy?”
“I hope you were careful what you said to her,” exclaimed Mrs.
Richmond, alarmed by his complete lack of self-control. There had been
many bitter scenes between them since their love waned as their wealth
waxed. But theretofore he had attacked her with irony and sarcasm, with
sneer and jeer. Never before had he used straight denunciation, made
coarse and brutal by a manner he had hitherto reserved for the office.
“You can’t treat her as you treat the rest of us,” she warned him.
“And why not, pray?” demanded he. As she was silent, he repeated. “Why
not? I said!” he cried in a tone so menacing, so near a blow, that she
flushed a deep and angry red.
“Because you have made her independent,” the wife was stung into
replying.
“What imbecility!” scoffed he, enraged by this home truth that had been
tormenting him for several hours. “She’s got less than any of the rest
of you. I’ve purposely kept her where she’d have to behave herself and
love me. Your mind never was strong, Lucy. It has become flabby.”
Mrs. Richmond was completely possessed by her anger. A cowed creature
is hardest to provoke, cannot be roused until it is literally crazed;
then it is like any other lunatic. She laughed in the face of her
tyrant. “Love!” she jeered. “Love you! You haven’t the least sense of
humor, Dan, or you couldn’t say that.”
Richmond quailed.
“It’s true, Beatrice has less than the rest of us. But Rhoda and I need
more than she does. Anyway, my life’s practically over. I’ve got no
future--no hope elsewhere, or”--she sprang up and her eyes glittered
insanely at him--“or do you suppose I’d stay on with you--you who
have become nothing but a slave driver? Then there’s Rhoda. She and
her husband need quantities of money. The little you’ve given her is
nothing to what she wants and fawns on you to get. As for the boys,
they’re too fond of being rich and showing off to dare do anything but
cringe----”
“A nice brood you’ve brought up, haven’t you?” frothed her husband.
“They’re _your_ children at heart--all of them. You’ve ruined them.
Yes, you--not I, but you!”
He turned his back on her. “You go to Europe day after to-morrow, all
the same,” he cried.
“I’ll do nothing of the sort!” retorted she.
“You will spend the money I allow you in the way I direct, or you will
not get it,” rejoined he. “Ring for your secretary and your maid and
the housekeeper. Set this swarm of idlers in motion. There’s no time to
be lost.”
“I’ll not go!”
“Do you want me to give the orders? Do you want the servants to----”
“Oh, you--_devil_!” she screamed. Then she burst into hysterical tears.
“And I’ve got no will. I’m a weak, degraded nothing. If I were a dozen
years younger! Oh--oh--oh!”
Richmond rang the bell. “I’ve rung for your maid,” said he. “Stop that
slopping--and get busy.” His tone indicated that he was not wholly
pleased with himself.
His wife hastily dried her tears and hurried into her dressing-room to
remove the traces and to hearten herself with a stiff drink of brandy.
Richmond continued to pace the boudoir. Marthe, the suave and ladylike,
appeared with a note on her tray. She curtsied to Richmond and moved
toward the dressing-room door. “What have you got there?” demanded
Richmond.
“A note for madame--from mademoiselle.”
Richmond snatched it from the little, silver tray, tore it open. His
hand shook as he read. “Where did you get this?” he asked, in a voice
from which all the passion had died.
“Mademoiselle gave it to Fillet as she was driving away.”
“Go!” said Richmond; and as she went into the hall he entered the
dressing-room. His wife was before the dressing-table mirror powdering
her nose. He flung the note down before her. “Read that,” he cried.
Mrs. Richmond read:
_Dearest Mother_:
This is to say good-by--for the present. I’ve gone to New York to
stop with Allie Kinnear and look about. I’ve no plans except not to
come under father’s roof again. I thought he loved me. I’ve found
that he hasn’t any heart to love anybody. He can’t bribe me into
putting up with his tyranny. I’m afraid he’ll be cowardly enough to
vent on you the rage for what’s all his own fault. But he’d do that
if I stayed on. So, I don’t make it worse for you by going. Forgive
me, mamma. I love you better than I ever did in my life. I’m so
sorry to go--yet glad, too.
BEATRICE.
Mrs. Richmond laid the note calmly aside and resumed powdering her
nose. She turned her head this way and that, to study effects from
different lights. Apparently the note had made upon her no stronger
impression than would have been made by the swift passage of a fly
between her and the mirror.
“She’s gone,” said Richmond, in a dazed way.
“And I doubt if she’ll come back,” said his wife.
“You must bring her back.”
Mrs. Richmond was searching in the drawer for some toilet article. “I
can do nothing with her,” said she absently. “You know that. _Where_
has Marthe put----”
“You act as if you did not care,” snarled he.
“And I don’t,” replied the wife indifferently. “She’s better off. I
hope she’ll marry Wade.”
“_Marry?_” sneered Richmond. “Do you suppose he’d marry her when he
finds out that she has cut herself off?”
“Maybe so,” replied Mrs. Richmond, with intent to infuriate.
Richmond, with the wounds to his vanity inflicted by Roger open again
and burning and bleeding, gave a kind of howl of rage. “Don’t be a
fool!” he shouted. “I say he will not marry her!”
“Then you ought to be satisfied,” said his wife pleasantly.
“Satisfied?” Richmond, white with rage, shook his hand in her very
face. “Satisfied? With the only one of my family that was worth while
gone--you talk about my being _satisfied_!”
“Then why did you drive her out?” inquired she coldly.
Richmond flung out his arms in a vague, wild gesture, and rushed to the
open window.
“You might go to Kinnear’s and talk with her,” suggested his wife.
“Say what?” demanded Richmond over his shoulder.
“How should I know?”
He wheeled round. “Are you on her side or on mine?”
“Oh, I’m just a fool,” said Lucy.
Richmond’s scowl at her changed to a scowl into vacancy. The scowl
faded into a mere stare. Suddenly he burst out in a voice from which
grief had washed every trace of anger: “I’ve got to have her back! I’ve
got to have her back.”
Mrs. Richmond’s expression of amazement slowly yielded to one of
sullen jealousy. “That’s right,” sneered she. “Go and apologize to her.
Knuckle down to her.”
The husband, a wholly different figure from the bristling, bustling,
self-assured tyrant of a few minutes before, went out without another
word. The wife looked after him. The humiliation of having her daughter
exalted while she herself was in the dust under his contemptuous foot
had one consolation--the tyrant had met his match and might himself
soon be abased.
X
BEATRICE IN CHAINS