prospective son-in-law was in the proper state of flabbiness, he went
back to the point. “Now--as to the trouble between you and Beatrice.
Please explain it. Let’s see just what it is.”
“She cares nothing about me.”
“Who says so?”
“She does.”
“When?”
“When we became engaged.”
“Yet you proposed and she accepted.”
Peter squirmed. “But I didn’t know she cared about--about some one
else.”
“Who?”
“An--an artist.”
“Who?”
“I met him at your house.” Peter’s anger was rising, as will the anger
of the worst frightened boy in the world if the whipping is kept up
long enough. “I might have known,” he cried. “I did suspect, the
day I saw him painting her. But it seemed absurd that a girl of her
position----”
“It _is_ absurd,” cut in Richmond. “Who told you this story?”
Peter did not reply.
“My daughter?”
“No. I’m not at all likely to----”
“Then it was Allie Kinnear,” said Richmond, and Peter guiltily felt as
if the information had been wrenched from him. “So, _she’s_ trying to
marry you?”
“Mr. Richmond,” said Peter with the stiffness of an insulted man of
ancient lineage, “I have the highest esteem for Miss----”
“So have I,” interrupted Richmond. “She’s a pretty, bright, shrewd
girl. She fools everybody. But I’d have thought _you_ would have been
on guard.”
“I assure you, sir, Miss Kinnear----”
“Oh--by the way”--Richmond broke into Peter’s sentence as if a thought
on another subject had happened to flash through his mind. “Bring
those mortgages to my office before two o’clock to-morrow,” said he
carelessly. “I’ve an appointment at two-thirty. That gives us a clear
half hour--plenty of time.”
Peter seemed to wither. The internal havoc was more dire than the
external; for, internally, he had shriveled.
“Miss Kinnear is pretending to love you,” went on his tormentor,
harking back to the matrimonial business. “I want to find out just how
far you’ve walked into her trap.”
“She has made no pretenses,” protested Peter. “I’m sure if she married
a man it’d be because she cared for him.”
“Fudge, Peter--fudge!” laughed Richmond. “You’re a man of the world.
You know what she wants.” Then, with gimlet eyes and with bony finger
poking into the heavy muscle of Peter’s arm: “If you wish to know what
anybody wants you don’t listen to what they _say_, you look at what
they _need_.”
This was the kind of shrewdness that made impression upon Peter, the
sensitively suspicious. He winced, looked uncomfortable and sheepish.
“There’s nothing in that artist story,” scoffed Richmond. “You know
Beatrice. She’s very proud. Take my advice, don’t speak to her about
it. If she got a notion that you were flirting with Allie--” Richmond
made a gesture suggestive of vague, vast dangers.
“I hope, sir, you’ve not got the impression that I--that I--” Peter
came to a full stop.
“I’ve got no impression at all except that you wish to marry Beatrice
on the eighteenth.”
“The twentieth,” corrected Peter.
“The twentieth, then.” Richmond had now changed his manner to the
benevolent paternal. “And do be sensible, young man, and make no
trouble between Beatrice and Allie.”
Thus it came to pass that when Peter and Beatrice were strolling
down the Italian garden after lunch, Peter lost no time in obeying
Richmond’s orders. Nor did he set about it with any reluctance, for
Beatrice was once more herself and, in a costume that gave her every
charm its best chance, was enough to turn a far steadier head than
Peter’s had been in several years where she was concerned. “Don’t you
think,” said he, “that we’d better change the date to the eighteenth?”
She made no immediate reply. They walked slowly toward the arch at the
farther end, he glancing at her from time to time with a notion that
she had not heard. At last he asked: “Did you hear?”
She nodded, seated herself on an old stone seat from the garden of an
ancient palace, where it had no doubt participated in many a fateful
interview between man and woman.
“What are you thinking about?” inquired he.
“About our marriage.” She gave him a steady, penetrating look--the sort
of look that always made him ill at ease with her and a little afraid
of what marrying her might mean. “Do you want to marry me, Peter?” she
asked.
“What rot!” exclaimed he. His glance shifted.
“You know you don’t,” rejoined the girl. “Your good sense tells you I’m
not the sort of woman a man would enjoy being tied to unless she loved
him. You don’t want to marry me, and I don’t want to marry you.”
“What’s the use of this kind of talk?” he remonstrated.
“Every use. Let’s refuse to marry.”
Peter looked strangely alarmed, glanced round as if in mortal dread
lest they were being overheard. “If your father hears of this he’ll
blame me,” he cried. “I tell you I want to marry you. I’m determined to
marry you. I’ve given my word and you’ve given yours. And we’ll marry
on the----”
“I ask you to release me,” interrupted the girl.
“I’ll not do it!” And visions of money pouring out and mortgages
pouring in put a note of shrill hysteria into his usually heavy voice.
“I thought I could marry you,” said Beatrice, strong, vigorously strong
under a surface of sweet gentleness. “I find I can’t. You’ll release
me.”
“I will not!” exclaimed Peter, once more shiny with sweat and mopping
industriously. “And I want you to tell your father that I absolutely
refused to release you--that I insisted on your marrying me.”
“My father?” said the girl wonderingly. “What has he got to do with it?”
Peter was winded for the moment. He recovered quickly, hastened to
explain: “I--I’ve the highest respect for your father. I wouldn’t like
him to think for a minute that I was careless about my word--or that
I wasn’t bent and determined to marry you. I want you to understand,
Beatrice. I hold you to your promise.”
“As I’ve told you, I love another man,” said Beatrice. “I thought I was
getting over it. I find it was simply a fit of the blues.” She smiled
absently. “I ran across an old pipe of his that I had locked in a
drawer--a horrid, smelly, old pipe. And--Peter, were you ever in love?”
“With you,” said he, sullen and jealous--and certainly her expression,
her tone, were not soothing to his vanity, fine and beautiful though
they were in themselves.
She laughed. “Your grandmother!” mocked she. “That pipe--it was like
one of those enchanted things in The Arabian Nights. It made me
see”--her eyes grew fascinatingly tender and dreamy--“and see--and
_see_!... Could you marry a woman who felt like that about another man?”
“Then why did you engage yourself to me?”
“Because he won’t have me,” confessed she, her old-time pride in her
love rampant.
“I never heard such rot!” exclaimed he in disgust.
“And I know you really don’t want to marry me,” she went on in a voice
of appeal, of confidence in his manhood, in his friendliness for her,
his childhood playmate.
If Richmond had been standing behind his daughter, making menacing
faces at Peter over her shoulder, that sore-beset, young man could not
have felt him more curdlingly. “You don’t know anything of the kind,”
he blustered. “Don’t you dare tell your father anything like that.”
She scrutinized him. “You seem to have father on the brain....
Peter--Hanky--_what_ has he been saying to you?”
“Nothing,” lied Peter shiftily. “Not a word.”
“That isn’t true, Hanky. Is it?”
He hung his head.
“Own up. He’s been--threatening you?”
“Now, look here, Beatrice--you are trying to get me into trouble,”
pleaded and protested Hanky. “I haven’t said a word about your father’s
having spoken to me of you.”
“What has he been threatening?” persisted the girl, her hand on his
arm. “You can trust me, Hanky. You know, I keep my mouth shut.”
“I’ve got nothing to tell,” he insisted with a kind of whining
doggedness. “All I say is, I want to marry you. If you’re stuck on
another man and won’t marry me I can’t help it. But _I_ want to marry
_you_.”
“I understand perfectly--perfectly,” said Beatrice. “He’s compelling
each of us to marry the other. I want to marry another man. You want to
marry Allie. But----”
“I don’t want to marry Allie!” he protested with the energy of
terror. “I said nothing to you about her. Anyhow, I regard her as an
underhanded, designing fraud. She told me about you and Wade. Yes, she
was the one that did it.”
“Well, why not?” cried Beatrice. “I’ve no objection. She knows I want
to get out of marrying you.”
Peter’s eyes glistened with hope. “You gave her leave to tell? You
asked her to tell?”
“Practically. What of it?”
“I _am_ glad to hear that!” cried he with a gusty breath of relief. “I
was beginning to think women were all alike--that there wasn’t any such
thing as sentiment in them.”
Beatrice’s eyes sparkled with mischief. “Yes, Hanky, and she
practically had my permission to make love to you. I’m sure she’s just
dying to marry you. Now, you’ll release me, won’t you?”
Peter lit a cigarette and inspected the horizon as if hoping to sight
something in the way of aid. “I can’t do it, Beatrice,” he finally
said, deeply apologetic. “If I could tell you what a ghastly fix I’m
in, I assure you you’d not blame me.”
“I don’t blame you,” said she. “It’s just as well for me to do it
alone.”
“You’re going to release me?” cried he eagerly.
“What would father say if he saw you now!” said she.
The eagerness whisked out of his face.
“That’s better,” mocked she. “But I’ll not tease you, Hanky--with
your soul torn between love and money. I shall take the whole
responsibility. I shall refuse to marry you.”
But Peter continued to look depressed. “Your father’ll think it was
something I said.”
“My father will not think I could have been discouraged that easily--or
at all--if I wished to be your wife. He’ll know you are too fond
of money to risk losing any. Don’t be alarmed, Peter. Father will
understand the instant you tell him.”
“_I_ tell him!” cried Peter. “You’ll have to do that yourself. You’re
used to him. You don’t realize how he gets on my nerves. If I tried to
tell him I’d get permanent paralysis of the tongue before a word came.”
“What a stupid you are! Don’t you see that I’m letting you tell him, as
a favor--to help you to escape? You go to him--complain of me--urge him
to make me keep my promise. Understand?”
Peter saw it, looked humble apology.
“Put it to him as strong as you like,” pursued Beatrice. “You can’t
make it any worse for me, and you’ll make it a lot better for yourself.”
Peter looked at her so admiringly that she sent him away on the
instant. She knew him--knew how easily she could get him back if she
wished, and how little it would take to make him forget his resentment
at her failure to appreciate him and at her father’s energetic
methods--and his dread of what life with so strenuous a will as hers
might mean. “Tell him right away, Hanky,” advised she, pointing with
her sunshade to where Richmond stood in the library window observing
them. “Let’s get it over with.”
* * * * *
Mrs. Richmond sat writing at a desk not far from where Richmond was
standing. As Peter started up the walk toward the house Richmond said
to his wife: “What a chucklehead Peter is! No wonder Beatrice felt like
balking.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t say Peter was worth getting excited about, one way or
the other,” replied Mrs. Richmond.
“The young men growing up nowadays are a mighty cheap, thin lot. He’s
as good as any.” Richmond pressed his lips together firmly. “And he’s
the best possible husband for her. A strong woman ought to marry a
small man if there’s to be peace.”
Mrs. Richmond sneered--faintly and covertly--at the paper before her.
She did not miss any of the possible implications of her husband’s
remark. For once, however, she did him an injustice. He was not hitting
at her--had not meant to insinuate that a strong man ought to marry a
small woman, and that Daniel Richmond had done this very thing. He was
thinking only of his daughter and Peter. He would have liked to provide
her with a real man; he sincerely regretted the exigencies of his
game--of the game of life as it lies--that forbade it, that forced him
to give her only a Peter Vanderkief.
He consoled himself by feeling that she would before many years
appreciate what he had done for her--this, when she should have
installed herself in the dazzling position her ability would make out
of the wealth he could give her and the prestige she would get through
Peter’s ancient lineage. Being a man of imagination--as every man who
achieves in whatever direction must be--Richmond had a strong vein of
sentiment, of romance. He could not but sympathize with his daughter’s
heart trouble, now that her acquiescence in his plans permitted him to
be fair-minded--in secret. But romance was a fleeting thing, while the
things he had been planning for her were not spring-time ephemerals,
but the substantialities that make a human being comfortable and often
happy the whole life through from youth to old age.
When Peter entered, Mrs. Richmond had finished her note and was just
departing. “Will you drive with me in about an hour?” asked she,
passing him in the door.
“Sorry, but I’ve got----”
“Oh, if Beatrice needs you,” laughed she, going on and leaving the two
men alone.
Peter interrupted Richmond’s reverie with a bomb. “Beatrice has broken
the engagement,” said he nervously. “She refuses to marry me.”
The small, wiry figure in the window swung round with a jerk. Gone were
the sentimental reflections inspired by the lovely prospect from that
window, his daughter the crown and climax of the loveliness. “Why?” he
shot at the young man.
Peter shrank only a trifle. He was strong in his strong case. “Because
she does not care for me and cares for some one else.”
“That trash again! You refused to release her?”
“Yes, sir,” said Peter, proud of his virtue.
“Well?”
“She released herself.”
Richmond wheeled round, noted his daughter seated in the same place,
twirling her pale-blue sunshade and looking idly about. He wheeled
back, started for the door.
“Pardon me, sir,” said Peter, “but I am taking the train for town. This
puts me in an embarrassing--painful----”
“Wait here,” ordered Richmond, and disappeared.
Peter, discreetly standing well back in the room, watched the father
speeding toward the daughter and awaited in nervous suspense the crash
of the collision. He marveled that she could sit placidly when she knew
exactly what was coming. “She _sure_ is the real thing,” he muttered.
“Where can you beat it? A sport--that’s what I call her--a good sport.”
When Richmond arrived within comfortable speaking distance of the
placid girl with the sweet smile of welcome he began. “How did
Vanderkief get this false impression?” said he in a flexible tone,
readily convertible either to geniality or to wrathful imperiousness.
“Has he told you I am willing to marry him?” inquired she.
Richmond beamed. “I thought the numskull didn’t know what he was
talking about!” he exclaimed. “He says you won’t marry him.”
“Oh,” said Beatrice with her merriest smile. “I thought you said he had
a false impression.”
Richmond shook his head impatiently. “Have you or have you not told him
you’d not marry him?”
“Yes,” replied Beatrice, eyes dancing with the pleasure of teasing him.
“Yes--what?” demanded he.
“What you said,” replied she.
“Beatrice--I insist on a serious answer. Peter came to me and said----”
“Oh, papa! Surely, you’re not going over that again. You said it all
before.”
Richmond paused to frame a question that could be answered only
plainly. “Did you tell Peter you would not marry him?” he said sternly,
though he had too good a sense of humor not to appreciate her childish
cleverness.
“I did,” laughed Beatrice, engagingly at her ease. “Can you blame me?”
Richmond seated himself on the bench beside her. “You realize the
consequences of your refusal?” he said coldly.
Her face became sober. The eyes with which she met his gaze were as
resolute as his own. “I realize the consequences of _not_ refusing,”
said she. “And I’m prepared to take the consequences _of_ refusing.”
Richmond’s baffled expression was pushed aside by one of arrogant
anger. “What did Peter say to you? I understand this affair. I’ll make
that young man writhe for his impudent treachery!”
“He pleaded with me to marry him. He refused to release me. He went
straight to you----”
“You can’t trick me!” cried her father, his expressive eyes sparkling
ominously. “Before I get through with this situation I think all
concerned will regret having crossed my will. That’s always the
way--good nature is mistaken for weakness.”
“You may ruin Peter if you feel you can afford to be so contemptible,”
said Beatrice unmoved, “and you may ruin Roger Wade--though I doubt if
he’ll regard losing a little money as ruin. But you----”
“I told you I’d drive him from the country in disgrace!”
Through the youth of the girl showed her inheritance of strength of
soul, to make a woman of her, a personality a match for his own. “If
you bring out anything disgraceful about him that’s true you’ll be only
doing what’s right,” said she calmly. “If you try to damage him with
falsehood I shall myself tell who’s doing it and why.”
A sense of his powerlessness against her silenced him.
“You may do your worst, as I was saying,” she went on. “But I shall not
marry any man I do not at least respect; I shall not marry any poor,
tiresome creature like Hanky. I’ve learned better. I’ve found something
with which to contrast life with him. And I cannot and will not do it.”
There, of course, had been a time in Daniel Richmond’s career when he
had made his way and gained his points by discussing and reasoning
with his fellow-beings. Every leader wins leadership by persuading his
fellows that he has the necessary qualifications. But that time had
long passed; for many a year Richmond had been in the habit of deciding
what to do at a council within his own brain and informing the outside
world of his decision only by acts and orders. He now continued silent,
regarding the ground; he was fighting for control of his temper,
fighting for the calmness to argue with this rebel daughter. To make
her reasonable he must first become so, himself.
“You have not known this artist long--have you?” he said at length in
the tone of a rational being and a father.
“Long enough,” replied the girl.
“Long enough for what?” inquired the father pleasantly, though his
daughter’s tone--she being still much ruffled internally--was teasing
his temper.
“Long enough to know that I care for him.”
Her father laughed agreeably. “You and I are much alike, my dear,”
said he. “You know yourself well enough to know that the real reason
for your excitement is opposition. Now, be reasonable. What could I
do but oppose? Can you blame me for opposing? Can you wonder that I
am afraid you will do something foolish--something you will regret
your whole life? Suppose this was a case of some other father and
daughter--a case you had no personal interest in. Would you be on the
side of the father or of the daughter?”
There was no resisting this fairness, so fairly put. Beatrice smiled.
“On the side of the father,” said she promptly. “I don’t expect you to
understand, father. I see all your arguments. I see how foolish and
headlong I seem to you. But-- The fact remains that I love Roger Wade.
I know I am not making a fool of myself in loving him. Oh, you’ll say
that in the same circumstances other girls have said the same thing,
when they were simply blinded and deceived by their craze for romance.
But this case is the exception. And I _know_ it.” She looked at him
with her sweetest expression. “Let me ask you a few questions. Do you
_know_ Roger?”
“I understand that sort of man perfectly. It’s a familiar type. Every
girl with expectations has several such buzzing about her.”
[Illustration: “‘Not another word! I’ll show you, miss--’”]
“Is that _honest_, father? Is that really the impression you have of
Roger Wade?”
The dangerous look reappeared in Richmond’s face--in his eyes, round
his mouth.
“Now, don’t get angry, father. That would be confession, you know. One
does not get angry in a discussion unless one is in the wrong.”
“Who wouldn’t get angry, seeing a girl like you bent on making a fool
of herself.”
“If you were where you were when you started, and you met such a man as
Roger, you’d be----”
“Don’t speak his name to me,” cried Richmond, twitching and squirming.
“I ask you to take time to come to your senses.”
“I’ve tried that. When I don’t see him, it’s even clearer to me than
when I do that I must marry him. Besides, if he _weren’t_ on earth now,
I still couldn’t marry the Hanky sort. Oh, father dear--can’t you see
the change in me? As you say, I’m like you. Put yourself in my place.
Would _you_ marry the sort of person Hanky is--the sort all the Hankies
are--if you could--” She sighed. “But I can’t. He won’t. Father, please
help me!”
There was a conflict of expressions in Richmond’s face as she made this
appeal movingly. It was sheer confession of fear of his own better
self which loved his daughter, which respected the things she was now
learning to respect--it was sheer confession when he flew into furious
rage--the one mood where a human being is safe from the entreaties of
heart and the counsels of higher intelligence. “You are crazy--plain
crazy!” he cried in his most insulting tone. “There’s no excuse for
you--none! Reasoning with you is time wasted.”
“If I’m crazy there’s every excuse for me,” answered she, with the
placidity of the anger that is beyond the stage of bluster and sputter.
“If I’m not crazy there’s no excuse for you.”
“Answer me! Are you going to be sensible? Are you ready to drop
tomfoolery and make a happy and contented future for yourself?”
“If I can,” replied she. “If Roger will----”
Up sprang Richmond. “Not another word! I’ll show you, miss----”
“Yes, one word more,” interrupted she. “I want to say just one thing
more. If you do not agree to let Peter and Mr. Wade alone I shall leave
your house at once--and this time it will be for good.”
“_You_--threaten _me_!” he shouted, shaking with fury, for that sense
of ultimate powerlessness with her had driven him quite insane.
“Do you wish me to stay or to go?” asked she, her color gone, but
every sign of steadfastness in her face, in her figure, in her attitude.
“Go!” he shrieked. “Go--and make a fool and a scandal of yourself. Go!
Go! Go!”
And away he rushed, a crazy man.
XIV
THE SECOND FLIGHT
Peter met her in the main entrance. “How did he take it?” he asked
excitedly, his nerves obviously unstrung.
“Not very well,” replied she.
“Yes--I saw him tearing away into the woods. Good Lord! How _can_ you
take it so quietly!”
By way of answer Beatrice shrugged her shoulders and lifted her
eyebrows.
“Beatrice--honestly don’t you think we’d better go ahead and do as he
wants? He is a dangerous man--believe me, he is. I don’t like to speak
so of your father, but everyone agrees that he----”
“You can never tell a man’s family any news about what he is,” said
Beatrice.
“He’ll make life a hell for you,” groaned Hanky. “And he’ll make
mischief for me.”
“I think not,” replied she. “He’ll have other things besides you to
occupy him. He knows it’s wholly my fault.”
“But, Beatrice--don’t be obstinate. You must know it’d really not be so
rotten bad to marry me.”
“I thought I mentioned the fact that I’m in love with some one else.”
“Oh--to be sure,” said Peter. “I suppose that has got something to do
with it. But your obstinacy----”
“That’s it,” mocked the girl. “Obstinacy. Well, whatever my reason is,
I’m leaving here by the next train.”
“But I was going by that,” objected Hanky. “I must get away from here.”
“Better stay on and let father see you’re not at all to blame,” advised
she. “If we went up town together he’d be sure you were conspiring with
me.”
“Oh, I’ll stay--I’ll stay,” cried Peter. “But where are you going,
Beatrice?”
“Not to get any of my friends in trouble,” said she. “I’ll take
Valentine and go to a hotel--to the Wolcott. Come and call. I’ll not
tell father.”
“At a hotel!” Peter stared stupefied. “You don’t mean you’re leaving
home--for good?”
“Wouldn’t you--in my place?”
“No. I’d be sensible and marry the man my father wished.”
Beatrice looked at him quizzically. “Hanky,” said she, “you ought to
fall on your knees every day of your life and give thanks that you had
the good luck to escape marrying me.”