AN INTERLUDE
“Why folks should drink tea when they’re not thirsty, an’ gobble sweet
crackers when they’re not hungry,” observed Conover, impersonally, as
he balanced his cup and saucer on one thick palm and stared at the tea
as though it might turn and rend him, “is somethin’ I never could make
out. As far as I can learn, s’ciety is made up of doin’ things you
don’t want to at times you don’t need to.”
“There is nothing in afternoon tea,” quoted Desirée,
“To appeal to a person like me.
There’s too little to eat,
What there is is too sweet.
And I feel like a cow up a tree.”
“And,” improvised Caine,
“In Boston we threw away tea
Because of King George’s decree.
When England disputed,
We just revoluted.
Hurray for the Land of the Free!
“And now that we’ve all testified,” he added, “may I please have
another cup? If not, I’m going to keep on repeating insipid verses till
I get it.”
The two men had dropped in at the Shevlin house on their way from the
Arareek Club. Desirée had listened delightedly to Caleb’s expurgated
account of the Committee meeting, and at the story’s close had rung for
tea. Caine was a prime favorite of hers. Caleb was wont to lean back
and listen in unaffected admiration to their talk--about one-half of
which he could understand. His hazarded remark about tea had been thus
far the Fighter’s only contribution to the chatter. Emboldened by it he
now ventured a second observation.
“I see by the ‘_Star_’,” said he, “that there’s goin’ to be a blowout
up at the Standishes’, week after next. A dinner party and a musicle.
Whatever a musicle may be. You’re goin’ of course, Caine?”
“Yes,” replied Caine, adding flippantly, “of course _you_ are?”
“Yes,” said Caleb, slowly, “I think I am.”
“You’re not in earnest?” cried Desirée, surprised.
“I’m in earnest all right. It’ll be a big affair. I think I’ll go to
the musicle an’ the dinner too.”
“But I didn’t know you knew any of the Standishes except--”
“I don’t yet. But I will by then. I’ll get asked. You’re goin’ to
the musicle part of it with Mrs. Hawarden, ain’t you, Dey? You said
somethin’ about it yesterday. Well, you’ll see me there. Say!” as
a new idea struck him, “how’d you like to be asked to the dinner,
too? That’s the excloosive part of the whole show. Only about a dozen
guests. More’n a couple of hundred at the musicle. Want to go to the
dinner?”
“Of course not,” she exclaimed. “What a crazy idea! As if you could get
me an invitation, even if I _did_ want to!”
“Oh, I could get it all right,” urged Caleb. “I’m goin’ myself.”
Caine, who had dropped wholly out of the talk, rose to go. There was a
curious restraint about his manner as he bade Desirée goodbye.
“Well, _Caleb Conover_!” rebuked Desirée as soon as she and the Fighter
were left alone. “Of all the historically idiotic plunges into other
peoples’ greenhouses I _ever_ saw!”
“What’ve I done now?” asked Caleb in due humility.
“What _haven’t_ you done?” she retorted. “Don’t you know Mr. Caine is
engaged to Letty Standish?”
“I’d forgotten for the minute. What of it?”
“There you sat and boasted you’d be invited to dinner at her house!
When you don’t even know her. What _am_ I to do with you? I’ve a great
mind to make you drink two more cups of tea!”
“I don’t see yet what the row is,” he pleaded. “But I’ve riled you,
Dey. I’m awful sorry. I oughtn’t to come here when there’s civilized
folks callin’. I only make you ashamed, an’--”
“How often must I tell you,” she cried angrily, her big eyes suddenly
growing moist, “never to say such things? You know they hurt me!”
“Why should it hurt anyone when I talk of goin’ to a--?”
“I’m not speaking about the dinner. It’s about your not coming to see
me. If people don’t like to meet my chum, they needn’t call on me. As
for being ‘ashamed’ of _you_--here! Take this cup of tea and drink it.
_Drink_ it, I say. And when you finish you must drink another. _All_
of it. With sugar in it. Two lumps. I don’t care if you do hate sweet
things. You’ve got to be punished! Drink it!”
Conover obediently gulped down the loathed liquid and held out his cup
with an air of awkward contrition, for the second instalment of his
penance.
“_Now_, do I get forgiven?” he begged. “It’s vile stuff. An’ I drank
every drop, Dey. Please be friends again. Aw, _please_ do!”
“You big overgrown baby!” she said looking laughingly down into his
red, remorseful face. “You talk very, _very_ loudly about being a
‘grown man’, and a financier. And some of the papers call you ‘Brute’
Conover--the wretched sheets! But you’re only about ten years old. No
one knows you except me. To the others you may be able to talk as if
you were grown up, but it never imposes on _me_ for a minute.”
“That’s right,” he assented wonderingly. “I never thought of it that
way before. I don’t know why it is except maybe because I never had
any boyhood or had a chance to be young. I seem to have been born grown
up an’ on the lookout to get the best of the next feller. Then, when I
get with you, I lose about twenty years and feel like a kid. It’s great
to be that way. Nobody else ever makes me feel so.”
“I suppose not,” mocked the girl. “Your other friends are fossly people
all about a million years old. And you look on me as a child and try
to talk and act down to my level. It is _very_ humiliating. I’m nearly
twenty and quite grown up and--”
“Your eyes are, anyhow,” commented Caleb. “They’re two sizes too large
for your face.”
“Is that a compliment? If it is--”
“I don’t know,” pursued Conover. “I never noticed how big they was
till one day when you were drinkin’ ice-tea. Then, all of a sudden, it
struck me that if your eyes wasn’t so big you’d be li’ble to tumble
into your glass. Now you’re mad again!” he sighed. “But it’s true.
You’re awful little. You don’t much more’n come up to my elbow.”
“When you’re _quite_ through saying woozzey things about my size and
my eyes,” said Desirée, coldly, “perhaps you won’t mind talking of
something sensible?”
“If you’d just as leave,” hesitated Caleb, “I’d like to talk a little
’bout what you said a few minutes ago. About my bein’ young. You don’t
get it quite right. I’m not young an’ I never was or will be,--except
with you. When you an’ me are together, some part of me that I don’t
gener’lly know is there, seems to take charge. Maybe I don’t explain
it very clear. I don’t seem quite to understand it myself. Here’s the
idee: D’you remember that measly little green-covered French book I
found you cryin’ over, once? The ‘Vee’ of something.”
“You mean Barriere’s ‘_Vie de Bohéme_?’”
“That’s it. The French play you said was wrote from a book by some
other parly-voo chap. You told me the story of it, I remember. It
didn’t make much of a hit with me at the time, an’ I couldn’t quite see
where the cry come in. But I got to thinkin’ of it when you spoke just
now. Remember the chap in there who told the girl she was his Youth
an’ that if it wasn’t for her he’d be nothin’ but just a plain grown
man? ’Twas _her_ that kep’ him feelin’ like a boy. An’ then when she
died--let’s see--what was it he hollered? Something ’bout--”
“‘_O, ma Jeunesse, c’est vous qu’on enterre_,’” quoted Desirée.
“Maybe so,” assented Caleb, doubtfully. “It sounds like a Chinee
laundry ticket to _me_. That was the part you were cryin’ over, too.
What is it in English?”
“‘Oh my _Youth_, it is _you_ they are burying!’” translated the girl.
“That’s the answer,” said Conover, gravely. “Now let’s talk about
something better worth while than me. I was chinnin’ with Caine this
afternoon about you. He says if you marry the right sort of man, your
place in society’s cinched. What do you think of that?”
“How utterly silly!” she laughed. “Caleb, this society idea of yours
has become an obsession. What do I care for that sort of thing? It’s
pleasant to be asked to houses where one has a good time. That’s all.
It’s like eating ice-cream when one is used to bread pudding. I’m not
anxious to eat, drink and breathe nothing but ice-cream three times
a day all the rest of my life. Why should I want a ‘cinched place in
society’ as you so elegantly put it?”
“You don’t understand,” he insisted. “It means a lot more’n that. With
your looks and brains an’--an’ the big lot of cash your father left
you,--you could make no end of a hit there. You’d run the whole works
inside of five years. You’d have the same sort of position here in
Granite that Mrs. Astor an’ those people have in New York. Think of
that, Dey! It’s a thing you can’t afford to throw away. When anyone
says he don’t care to shine in s’ciety,--well, you may not tell him so;
but you think it, all the same. An’ it’d be a crime for _you_ to miss
it all. If you marry the right sort of man--”
“‘The right sort of man!’” mimicked Desirée, wrathfully, “Caleb, there
are times when I’d like to box your ears. I wish you and Mr. Caine
would mind your own grubby Steeloid business and not gabble like two
old washerwomen about my affairs. ‘The right sort of a man--!’ Why,--”
“How’d you like to marry Amzi Nicholas Caine?” suggested Conover,
tentatively. “Dandy fam’ly,--fairly rich--good looker--travels in the
best crowd--”
“Warranted sound and kind--a child can drive him--a good hill
climber--guaranteed rustless,” snapped Desirée in lofty contempt.
“Caleb, do you _want_ to be made to drink more tea?”
“Honest, girl, I’m in earnest. He’s--”
“He’s engaged to Letty Standish, for one thing. And if he wasn’t, I
wouldn’t marry him if he and a tone-deaf piano tuner were the only two
men left on earth.”
“His bein’ engaged to the Standish girl needn’t matter,” urged Caleb,
too much engrossed in her first observation to note the second,
“Because I can fix that all right.”
In spite of her indignation, Desirée laughed aloud.
“Oh, you great and wise man!” she cried. “How, may I ask?”
“I don’t know yet,” he said with perfect confidence, “Because I haven’t
thought it over. But I can fix it. I can always fix things when I have
to.”
“Well, in this case,” she retorted, “you can spare yourself the crime
of parting two loving souls and fracturing two adoring hearts and
shattering Granite’s social fabric just on my account. When I really
want to marry and I find I can’t lure the shrinking Adonis to my feet
I’ll let you know. Then you can try your luck at making him propose.”
“Sure, I will,” promised Conover, in all seriousness, “Just give me
the word when the time comes an’ the feller’s yours for the askin’. But
I’m kind of disappointed in the way you turn Caine down. It seemed such
a grand idee. That’s one of the reasons I asked him in, this afternoon.
I thought when you saw us together he’d kind of shine by contrast with
me, you know. More’n when you meet him with folks of his own sort.”
“The contrast was there!” she blazed. “It fairly _sizzled_, it was
so strong. For one thing Mr. Caine has manner. And you haven’t got
even _manners_. And I ought to hate you for daring to talk so to me.
And--and you’re the dearest, stupidest, splendidest boy I know. Now
I’m going to dress for dinner. You can talk to Siegfried-Mickey if you
want to while I’m gone. But if you want to win his fondness, don’t make
silly, squiffy plans for his social future.”
She was out of the room before Conover could frame an answer. But on
the instant she had turned back long enough to thrust her flushed face
momentarily through the opening of the curtains and suggest demurely:
“Caleb, if Mr. Hawarden should ever die, don’t you think it would be
nice for Mrs. Hawarden to marry Billy? It would make the dear little
fellow’s position in society so nice and secure!”