Shotwell Senior and his wife were dining out that evening.
Shotwell Junior had no plans--or admitted none, even to himself. He
got into a bath and later into a dinner jacket, in an absent-minded
way, and finally sauntered into the library wearing a vague scowl.
The weather had turned colder, and there was an open fire there, and a
convenient armchair and the evening papers.
Perhaps the young gentleman had read them down town, for he shoved
them aside. Then he dropped an elbow on the table, rested his chin
against his knuckles, and gazed fiercely at the inoffensive _Evening
Post_.
Before any open fire any young man ought to be able to make up
whatever mind he chances to possess. Yet, what to do with a winter
evening all his own seemed to him a problem unfathomable.
Perhaps his difficulty lay only in selection--there are so many
agreeable things for a young man to do in Gotham Town on a winter's
evening.
But, oddly enough, young Shotwell was trying to persuade himself that
he had no choice of occupation for the evening; that he really didn't
care. Yet, always two intrusive alternatives continually presented
themselves. The one was to change his coat for a spike-tail, his black
tie for a white one, and go to the Metropolitan Opera. The other and
more attractive alternative was _not_ to go.
Elorn Sharrow would be at the opera. To appear, now and then, in the
Sharrow family's box was expected of him. He hadn't done it recently.
* * * * *
He dropped one lean leg over the other and gazed gravely at the fire.
He was still trying to convince himself that he had no particular plan
for the evening--that it was quite likely he might go to the opera or
to the club--or, in fact, almost anywhere his fancy suggested.
In his effort to believe himself the scowl came back, denting his
eyebrows. Presently he forced a yawn, unsuccessfully.
Yes, he thought he'd better go to the opera, after all. He ought to
go.... It seemed to be rather expected of him.
Besides, he had nothing else to do--that is, nothing in
particular--unless, of course----
But _that_ would scarcely do. He'd been _there_ so often recently....
No, _that_ wouldn't do.... Besides it was becoming almost a habit with
him. He'd been drifting there so frequently of late!... In fact, he'd
scarcely been anywhere at all, recently, except--except where he
certainly was not going that evening. And that settled it!... So he
might as well go to the opera.
* * * * *
His mother, in scarf and evening wrap, passing the library door on her
way down, paused in the hall and looked intently at her only son.
Recently she had been observing him rather closely and with a vague
uneasiness born of that inexplicable sixth sense inherent in mothers.
Perhaps what her son had faced in France accounted for the change in
him;--for it was being said that no man could come back from such
scenes unchanged;--none could ever again be the same. And it was being
said, too, that old beliefs and ideals had altered; that everything
familiar was ending;--and that the former things had already passed
away under the glimmering dawn of a new heaven and a new earth.
Perhaps all this was so--though she doubted it. Perhaps this son she
had borne in agony might become to her somebody less familiar than the
baby she had nursed at her own breast.
But so far, to her, he continued to remain the same familiar baby she
had always known--the same and utterly vital part of her soul and
body. No sudden fulfilment of an apocalypse had yet wrought any occult
metamorphosis in this boy of hers.
And if he now seemed changed it was from that simple and familiar
cause instinctively understood by mothers,--trouble!--the most ancient
plague of all and the only malady which none escapes.
She was a rather startlingly pretty woman, with the delicate features
and colour and the snow-white hair of an 18th century belle. She
stood, now, drawing on her gloves and watching her son out of
dark-fringed deep blue eyes, until he glanced around uneasily. Then he
rose at once, looking at her with fire-dazzled eyes.
"Don't rise, dear," she said; "the car is here and your father is
fussing and fuming in the drawing-room, and I've got to run.... Have
you any plans for the evening?"
"None, mother."
"You're dining at home?"
"Yes."
"Why don't you go to the opera to-night? It's the Sharrows' night."
He came toward her irresolutely. "Perhaps I shall," he said. And
instantly she knew he did not intend to go.
"I had tea at the Sharrows'," she said, carelessly, still buttoning
her gloves. "Elorn told me that she hadn't laid eyes on you for
ages."
"It's happened so.... I've had a lot of things to do----"
"You and she still agree, don't you, Jim?"
"Why, yes--as usual. We always get on together."
Helen Shotwell's ermine wrap slipped; he caught it and fastened it for
her, and she took hold of both his hands and drew his arms tightly
around her pretty shoulders.
"What troubles you, darling?" she asked smilingly.
"Why, nothing, mother----"
"Tell me!"
"Really, there is nothing, dear----"
"Tell me when you are ready, then," she laughed and released him.
"But there isn't anything," he insisted.
"Yes, Jim, there is. Do you suppose I don't know you after all these
years?"
She considered him with clear, amused eyes: "Don't forget," she added,
"that I was only seventeen when you arrived, my son; and I have grown
up with you ever since----"
"For heaven's sake, Helen!--" protested Sharrow Senior plaintively
from the front hall below. "Can't you gossip with Jim some other
time?"
"I'm on my way, James," she announced calmly. "Put your overcoat on."
And, to her son: "Go to the opera. Elorn will cheer you up. Isn't that
a good idea?"
"That's--certainly--an idea.... I'll think it over.... And, mother, if
I seem solemn at times, please try to remember how rotten every fellow
feels about being out of the service----"
Her gay, derisive laughter checked him, warning him that he was not
imposing on her credulity. She said smilingly:
"You have neglected Elorn Sharrow, and you know it, and it's on your
conscience--whatever else may be on it, too. And that's partly why you
feel blue. So keep out of mischief, darling, and stop neglecting
Elorn--that is, if you ever really expect to marry her----"
"I've told you that I have never asked her; and I never intend to ask
her until I am making a decent living," he said impatiently.
"Isn't there an understanding between you?"
"Why--I don't think so. There couldn't be. We've never spoken of that
sort of thing in our lives!"
"I think she expects you to ask her some day. Everybody else does,
anyway."
"Well, that is the one thing I _won't_ do," he said, "--go about with
the seat out of my pants and ask an heiress to sew on the patch for
me----"
"Darling! You _can_ be so common when you try!"
"Well, it amounts to that--doesn't it, mother? I don't care what busy
gossips say or idle people expect me to do! There's no engagement, no
understanding between Elorn and me. And I don't care a hang what
anybody----"
His mother framed his slightly flushed face between her gloved hands
and inspected him humorously.
"Very well, dear," she said; "but you need not be so emphatically
excited about it----"
"I'm not excited--but it irritates me to be expected to do anything
because it's expected of me--" He shrugged his shoulders:
"After all," he added, "if I ever should fall in love with anybody
it's my own business. And whatever I choose to do about it will be my
own affair. And I shall keep my own counsel in any event."
His mother stepped forward, letting both her hands fall into his.
"Wouldn't you tell me about it, Jim?"
"I'd tell you before I'd tell anybody else--if it ever became
serious."
"If _what_ became serious?"
"Well--anything of that sort," he replied. But a bright colour stained
his features and made him wince under her intent scrutiny.
She was worried, now, though her pretty, humorous smile still
challenged him with its raillery.
But it was becoming very evident to her that if this boy of hers were
growing sentimental over any woman the woman was not Elorn Sharrow.
So far she had held her son's confidence. She must do nothing to
disturb it. Yet, as she looked at him with the amused smile still
edging her lips, she began for the first time in her life to be
afraid.
They kissed each other in silence.
* * * * *
In the limousine, seated beside her husband, she said presently: "I
wish Jim would marry Elorn Sharrow."
"He's likely to some day, isn't he?"
"I don't think so."
"Well, there's no hurry," remarked her husband. "He ought not to marry
anybody until he's thirty, and he's only twenty-four. I'm glad enough
to have him remain at home with us."
"But that's what worries me; he _doesn't_!"
"Doesn't what?"
"Doesn't remain at home."
Her husband laughed: "Well, I meant it merely in a figurative sense.
Of course Jim goes out----"
"Where?"
"Why, everywhere, I suppose," said her husband, a little surprised at
her tone.
She said calmly: "I hear things--pick up bits of gossip--as all women
do.... And at a tea the other day a man asked me why Jim never goes to
his clubs any more. So you see he doesn't go to any of his clubs when
he goes 'out' in the evenings.... And he's been to no dances--judging
from what is said to me.... And he doesn't go to see Elorn Sharrow any
more. She told me that herself. So--where does he go?"
"Well, but----"
"Where _does_ he go--every evening?"
"I'm sure I couldn't answer----"
"Every evening!" she repeated absently.
"Good heavens, Helen----"
"And what is on that boy's mind? There's something on it."
"His business, let us hope----"
She shook her head: "I know my son," she remarked.
"So do I. What is particularly troubling you, dear? There's something
you haven't told me."
"I'm merely wondering who that girl was who lunched with him at
Delmonico's--_three times_--last week," mused his wife.
"Why--she's probably all right, Helen. A man doesn't take the other
sort there."
"So I've heard," she said drily.
"Well, then?"
"Nothing.... She's very pretty, I understand.... And wears mourning."
"What of it?" he asked, amused. She smiled at him, but there was a
trace of annoyance in her voice.
"Don't you think it very natural that I should wonder who any girl is
who lunches with my son three times in one week?... And is remarkably
pretty, besides?"
* * * * *
The girl in question looked remarkably pretty at that very moment,
where she sat at her desk, the telephone transmitter tilted toward
her, the receiver at her ear, and her dark eyes full of gayest
malice.
"Miss Dumont, please?" came a distant and familiar voice over the
wire. The girl laughed aloud; and he heard her.
"You _said_ you were not going to call me up."
"Is it _you_, Palla?"
"How subtle of you!"
He said anxiously. "Are you doing anything this evening--by any
unhappy chance----"
"I am."
"Oh, hang it! What _are_ you doing?"
"How impertinent!"
"You know I don't mean it that way----"
"I'm not sure. However, I'll be kind enough to tell you what I'm
doing. I'm sitting here at my desk, listening to an irritable young
man----"
"That's wonderful luck!" he exclaimed joyously.
"Wonderful luck for a girl to sit at a desk and listen to an irritable
young man?"
"If you'll stop talking bally nonsense for a moment----"
"If you bully me, I shall stop talking altogether!"
"For heaven's sake----"
"I hear you, kind sir; you need not shout!"
He said humbly: "Palla, would you let me drop in----"
"Drop into what? Into poetry? Please do!"
"For the love of----"
"Jim! You told me last evening that you expected to be at the opera
to-night."
"I'm not going."
"--So I didn't expect you to call me!"
"Can't I see you?" he asked.
"I'm sorry----"
"The deuce!"
"I'm expecting some people, Jim. It's your own fault; I didn't expect
a tete-a-tete with you this evening."
"Is it a party you're giving?"
"Two or three people. But my place is full of flowers and as pretty as
a garden. Too bad you can't see it."
"Couldn't I come to your garden-party?" he asked humbly.
"You mean just to see my garden for a moment?"
"Yes; let me come around for a moment, anyway--if you're dressed. Are
you?"
"Certainly I'm dressed. Did you think it was to be a garden-of-Eden
party?"
Her gay, mischievous laughter came distinctly to him over the wire.
Then her mood changed abruptly:
"You funny boy," she said, "don't you understand that I want you to
come?"
"You enchanting girl!" he exclaimed. "Do you really mean it?"
"Of course! And if you come at once we'll have nearly an hour together
before anybody arrives."
She had that sweet, unguarded way with her at moments, and it always
sent a faint shock of surprise and delight through him.
* * * * *
Her smiling maid admitted him and took his hat, coat and stick as
though accustomed to these particular articles.
Palla was alone in the living-room when he was announced, and as soon
as the maid disappeared she gave him both hands in swift welcome--an
impulsive, unconsidered greeting entirely new to them both.
"You didn't mind my tormenting you. Did you, Jim? I was so happy that
you did call me up, after all. Because you know you _did_ tell me
yesterday that you were going to the opera to-night. But all the
same, when the 'phone rang, somehow I knew it was you--I knew
it--somehow----"
She loosened one hand from his and swung him with the other toward the
piano: "Do you like my flower garden? Isn't the room attractive?"
"Charming," he said. "And you are distractingly pretty to-night!"
"In this dull, black gown? But, _merci_, anyway! See how effective
your roses are!--the ones you sent yesterday and the day before!
They're all opening. And I went out and bought a lot more, and all
that fluffy green camouflage----"
She withdrew her other hand from his without embarrassment and went
over to rearrange a sheaf of deep red carnations, spreading the
clustered stems to wider circumference.
"What is this party you're giving, anyway?" he asked, following her
across the room and leaning beside her on the piano, where she still
remained very busily engaged with her decorations.
"An impromptu party," she exclaimed. "I was shopping this morning--in
fact I was buying pots and pans for the cook--when somebody spoke to
me. And I recognised a university student whom I had known in
Petrograd after the first revolution--Marya Lanois, her name is----"
She moved aside and began to fuss with a huge bowl of crimson roses,
loosening the blossoms, freeing the foliage, and talking happily all
the while:
"Marya Lanois," she repeated, "--an interesting girl. And with her was
a man I had met--a pianist--Vanya Tchernov. They told me that another
friend of mine--a girl named Ilse Westgard--is now living in New York.
They couldn't dine with me, but they're coming to supper. So I also
called up Ilse Westgard, she's coming, too;--and I also asked your
friend, Mr. Estridge. So you see, Monsieur, we shall have a little
music and much valuable conversation, and then I shall give them some
supper----"
She stepped back from the piano, surveyed her handiwork critically,
then looked around at him for his opinion.
"Fine," he said. "How jolly your new house is"--glancing about the
room at the few well chosen pieces of antique furniture, the
harmonious hangings and comfortably upholstered modern pieces.
"It really is beginning to be livable; isn't it, Jim?" she ventured.
"Of course there are many things yet to buy----"
They leisurely made the tour of the white-panelled room, looking with
approval at the delicate Georgian furniture; the mezzotints; the
damask curtains of that beautiful red which has rose-tints in it, too;
the charming old French clock and its lovely gilded garniture; the
deep-toned ash-grey carpet under foot.
Before the mantel, with its wood fire blazing, they paused.
"It's so enchantingly homelike," she exclaimed. "I already love it
all. When I come in from shopping I just stand here with my hat and
furs on, and gaze about and adore everything!"
"Do you adore me, too?" he asked, laughing at her warmth. "You see I'm
becoming one of your fixtures here, also."
In her brown eyes the familiar irresponsible gaiety began to glimmer:
"I do adore you," she said, "but I've no business to."
"Why not?"
She seated herself on the sofa and cast a veiled glance at him,
enchantingly malicious.
"Do you think you know me well enough to adore me?" she inquired with
misleading gravity.
"Indeed I do----"
"Am I as easy to know as that? Jim, you humiliate me."
"I didn't say that you are easy to know----"
"You meant it!" she insisted reproachfully. "You think so, too--just
because I let myself be picked up--by a perfectly strange man----"
"Good heavens, Palla--" he began nervously; but caught the glimmer in
her lowered eyes--saw her child's mouth tremulous with mirth
controlled.
"Oh, Jim!" she said, still laughing, "do you think I care how we met?
How absurd of you to let me torment you. You're altogether too boyish,
too self-conscious. You're loaded down with all the silly traditions
which I've thrown away. I don't care how we met. I'm glad we know each
other."
She opened a silver box on a little table at her elbow, chose a
cigarette, lighted it, and offered it to him.
"I rather like the taste of them now," she remarked, making room for
him on the sofa beside her.
When he was seated, she reached up to a jar of flowers on the piano,
selected a white carnation, broke it short, and then drew the stem
through his lapel, patting the blossom daintily into a pom-pon.
"Now," she said gaily, "if you'll let me, I'll straighten your tie.
Shall I?"
He turned toward her; she accomplished that deftly, then glanced
across at the clock.
"We've only half an hour longer to ourselves," she exclaimed, with
that unconscious candour which always thrilled him. Then, turning to
him, she said laughingly: "Does it really matter how two people meet
when time races with us like that?"
"And do you realise," he said in a low, tense voice, "that since I met
you every racing minute has been sweeping me headlong toward you?"
She was so totally unprepared for the deeper emotion in his voice and
bearing--so utterly surprised--that she merely gazed at him.
"Haven't you been aware of it, Palla?" he said, looking her in the
eyes.
"Jim!" she protested, "you are disconcerting! You never before have
taken such a tone toward me."
She rose, walked over to the clock, examined it minutely for a few
moments. Then she turned, cast a swift, perplexed glance at him, and
came slowly back to resume her place on the sofa.
"Men should be very, very careful what they say to me." As she
lifted her eyes he saw them beginning to glimmer again with that
irresponsible humour he knew so well.
"Be careful," she said, her brown gaze gay with warning; "--I'm
godless and quite lawless, and I'm a very dangerous companion for any
well-behaved and orthodox young man who ventures to tell me that I'm
adorable. Why, you might as safely venture to adore Diana of the
Ephesians! And you know what she did to her admirers."
"She was really Aphrodite, wasn't she?" he said, laughing.
"Aphrodite, Venus, Isis, Lada--and the Ephesian Diana--I'm afraid they
all were hussies. But I'm a hussy, too, Jim! If you doubt it, ask any
well brought up girl you know and tell her how we met and how we've
behaved ever since, and what obnoxious ideas I entertain toward all
things conventional and orthodox!"
"Palla, are you really serious?--I'm never entirely sure what is under
your badinage."
"Why, of course I am serious. I don't believe in any of the things
that you believe in. I've often told you so, though you don't believe
me----"
"Nonsense!"
"I don't, I tell you. I did once. But I'm awake. No 'threats of hell
or hopes of any sugary paradise' influence me. Nor does custom and
convention. Nor do the laws and teachings of our present civilisation
matter one straw to me. I'd break every law if it suited me."
He laughed and lifted her hand from her lap: "You funny child," he
said, "you wouldn't steal, for example--would you?"
"I don't desire to."
"Would you commit perjury?"
"No!"
"Murder?"
"I have a law of my own, kind sir. It doesn't happen to permit murder,
arson, forgery, piracy, smuggling----"
Their irresponsible laughter interrupted her.
"What else wouldn't you do?" he managed to ask.
"I wouldn't do anything mean, deceitful, dishonest, cruel. But it's
not your antiquated laws--it's my own and original law that governs my
conduct."
"You always conform to it?"
"I do. But you don't conform to yours. So I'll try to help you
remember the petty but always sacred conventions of our own accepted
code----"
And, with unfeigned malice, she began to disengage her hand from
his--loosened the slim fingers one by one, all the while watching him
sideways with prim lips pursed and lifted eyebrows.
"Try always to remember," she said, "that, according to your code, any
demonstration of affection toward a comparative stranger is
exceedingly bad form."
However, he picked up her hand again, which she had carelessly left
lying on the sofa near his, and again she freed it, leisurely.
They conversed animatedly, as always, discussing matters of common
interest, yet faintly in her ears sounded the unfamiliar echo of
passion.
It haunted her mind, too--an indefinable undertone delicately
persistent--until at last she sat mute, absent-minded, while he
continued speaking.
Her stillness--her remote gaze, perhaps--presently silenced him. And
after a little while she turned her charming head and looked at him
with that unintentional provocation born of virginal curiosity.
What had moved him so unexpectedly to deeper emotion? Had she? Had
she, then, that power? And without effort?--For she had been conscious
of none.... But--if she tried.... Had she the power to move him
again?
Naive instinct--the emotionless curiosity of total
inexperience--everything embryonic and innocently ruthless in her was
now in the ascendant.
She lifted her eyes and considered him with the speculative candour of
a child. She wished to hear once more that unfamiliar _something_ in
his voice--see it in his features----
And she did not know how to evoke it.
"Of what are you thinking, Palla?"
"Of you," she answered candidly, without other intention than the
truth. And saw, instantly, the indefinable _something_ born again into
his eyes.
Calm curiosity, faintly amused, possessed her--left him possessed of
her hand presently.
"Are you attempting to be sentimental?" she asked.
Very leisurely she began once more to disengage her hand--loosening
the fingers one by one--and watching him all the while with a slight
smile edging her lips. Then, as his clasp tightened:
"Please," she said, "may I not have my freedom?"
"Do you want it?"
"You never did this before--touched me--unnecessarily."
As he made no answer, she fell silent, her dark eyes vaguely
interrogative as though questioning herself as well as him concerning
this unaccustomed contact.
His head had been bent a little. Now he lifted it. Neither was
smiling.
Suddenly she rose to her feet and stood with her head partly averted.
He rose, too. Neither spoke. But after a moment she turned and looked
straight at him, the virginal curiosity clear in her eyes. And he took
her into his arms.
Her arms had fallen to her side. She endured his lips gravely, then
turned her head and looked at the roses beside her.
"I was afraid," she said, "that we would do this. Now let me go,
Jim."
He released her in silence. She walked slowly to the mantel and set
one slim foot on the fender.
Without looking around at him she said: "Does this spoil me for you,
Jim?"
"You darling----"
"Tell me frankly. Does it?"
"What on earth do you mean, Palla! Does it spoil _me_ for you?"
"I've been thinking.... No, it doesn't. But I wondered about you."
He came over to where she stood.
"Dear," he said unsteadily, "don't you know I'm very desperately in
love with you?"
At that she turned her enchanting little head toward him.
"If you are," she said, "there need be nothing desperate about it."
"Do you mean you care enough to marry me, you darling?" he asked
impetuously. "Will you, Palla?"
"Why, no," she said candidly. "I didn't mean that. I meant that
I care for you quite as much as you care for me. So you need not
be desperate. But I really don't think we are in love--I mean
sufficiently--for anything serious."
"Why don't you think so!" he demanded impatiently.
"Do you wish me to be quite frank?"
"Of course!"
"Very well." She lifted her head and let her clear eyes rest on his.
"I like you," she said. "I even like--what we did. I like you far
better than any man I ever knew. But I do not care for you enough to
give up my freedom of mind and of conduct for your asking. I do not
care enough for you to subscribe to your religion and your laws. And
that's the tragic truth."
"But what on earth has all that to do with it? I haven't asked you to
believe as I believe or to subscribe to any law----"
Her enchanting laughter filled the room: "Yes, you have! You asked me
to marry you, didn't you?"
"Of course!"
"Well, I can't, Jim, because I don't believe in the law of marriage,
civil or religious. If I loved you I'd live with you unmarried. But
I'm afraid to try it. And so are you. Which proves that I'm not really
in love with you, or you with me----"
The door bell rang.
"But I do care for you," she whispered, bending swiftly toward him.
Her lips rested lightly on his a moment, then she turned and walked
out into the centre of the room.
The maid announced: "Mr. Estridge!"