The telephone in the luxurious living-room of their suite rang sharply
as Daniel Glamorgan and his daughter entered. The girl looked at the
instrument as though she suspected a concealed bomb in its mysterious
depths, then appealingly at her father. He took down the receiver.
"Yes. All right. Send them up." He replaced it with a click. His grim
mouth softened into a self-congratulatory smile. "Courtlandt and his son
are down-stairs," he announced. "Did you order supper, Jerry?"
"Yes, Dad. The table is laid in the breakfast-room. Leon will serve it
when you ring. I'll--I'll go to my room and leave my wrap."
His green eyes dilated with pride as he regarded her.
"You look like a princess to-night, my girl."
"I feel like a princess. They're usually disposed of to a title or some
little thing like that, aren't they?" she asked with a laugh which held
a sob of terror.
"Look here, Jerry. You're not losing your nerve? You're not going back
on me, are you?"
She met his eyes squarely.
"I am not, Dad. The fewer ancestors one has behind one the better
ancestor one must make of oneself. When I make a promise I make it to
keep. I promised you that if Stephen Courtlandt asked me to marry him
I'd say 'Yes.'"
Glamorgan's eyes glistened with satisfaction.
"You have the right idea, Jerry. Here they are now," as the bell rang.
"You meet them. I'll take off my wrap--I'll----" In sudden panic the
girl entered her room and closed the door behind her. She leaned against
it. Her heart beat like mad. In the process of making the dream of her
father's life come true was she wrecking her own life? But he had been
such a wonderful father--and--to be honest with herself, the romance and
tradition and social standing of the Courtlandt name made an alluring
appeal to her. She had envied friends at school and college for their
careless references to their grandfathers; her earliest recollection was
of a room full of hot, grimy miners in a little home near the
coal-fields. To marry into the Courtlandt family in America would be
commensurate with marrying into a dukedom in England. She breathed a
fervent prayer of thanksgiving that her father's ambition hadn't urged
him in that direction, also that character had counted with him before
social position when he selected his prospective son-in-law.
Her shimmering wrap dropped to the floor as she crossed to her
dressing-table and gravely appraised her reflection in the mirror. Was
the girl staring so intently back at her fitted to preside over the
Courtlandt Manor? She tested every detail of her appearance. Her orchid
evening gown set off her arms and the curves of her white shoulders to
perfection. Her hair was of glistening brown, brown shot through with
red and gold where its soft waves caught the light. Her eyes were brown,
large and dark and velvety, like deep pools reflecting a myriad tiny
gold stars now when she was deeply moved and excited. Her mouth seemed
fashioned for laughter. The lips were vivid and exquisitely curved, and
when they smiled a deep dimple dented one cheek. Her ringless hands were
slender and beautifully formed.
"Dad says that you have Mother to thank for your hands," she told the
looking-glass girl. She lingered before the mirror, aimlessly moving the
gold and enameled appointments on the dressing-table. She dreaded to
enter the next room. Her life might be changed for all time, doubtless
would be, for she would marry Stephen Courtlandt if he wanted to save
his estate enough to take her on her own conditions. She flushed then
whitened. Perhaps he wouldn't want her after all. Well, that would soon
be settled. Better to have the awkward meeting over as soon as possible.
She picked up a large feather fan that was a shade deeper than her gown.
As she touched it she felt armed for any contingency, and not without
reason, for a fan in the hands of a beautiful woman is as effective as a
machine-gun directed by an expert rifleman. Jerry swept her vis-a-vis a
profound courtesy.
"I'll say you'll do, Mrs. Stephen Courtlandt," she encouraged with gay
inelegance. The laugh still lingered on her lips and lurked in her eyes
as she entered the living-room.
The three men who had been looking into the fire turned. The girl's
heart went out to the elder Courtlandt in a rush of sympathy. His head
was so high, his face so white, his eyes so full of hurt pride. The
younger man's face was quite as white, his head quite as high, but there
was an aggressive set to lips and jaw, a mixture of amazement and
antagonism in his eyes, then something else flamed there which she
couldn't diagnose as easily.
"He looks stunned. What did he expect, the pig-faced lady?" the girl
thought contemptuously even as she advanced with extended hand and
smiled up at the elder Courtlandt.
"Mr. Courtlandt, you seem like an old friend, my father has spoken of
you so often," she welcomed in her charming, well-bred voice which had a
curiously stimulating lilt in it.
The color rushed back to Peter Courtlandt's face, the expression in his
eyes changed to one of relief and honest admiration as he bent over her
hand.
"I realize now how much I have lost in not accepting your father's
invitation to call before. Will you permit me to present my son,
Stephen?"
Jerry crushed down an hysterical desire to laugh. It was so ridiculous,
the casual, pleased-to-meet-you attitude of the three persons whom her
father was moving at his will about the checker-board of life. She
murmured something in which the words "a pleasure" were alone audible.
Steve acknowledged them stiffly. Her eyes met his with their faint
scornful smile which she felt masked so much. They held hers for a
second before she turned to her father.
"Shall we go out to supper?" With engaging camaraderie she slipped her
hand under Peter Courtlandt's arm. The expression of his eyes when they
had first met hers had won her tender heart. "We'll let the younger set
follow us," she laughed. He shook his head.
"I defy Steve to feel as young as I feel now," he asserted with a
gallant promptness which delighted her.
At supper she devoted herself to him. He laughed and jested with her and
but for his white hair looked almost as young as his son. Steve, angered
by her persistent avoidance of himself, broke into their conversation
with a banality which caused his father to look at him in amazed
incredulity.
"Are you enjoying New York, Miss Glamorgan?"
Jerry regarded him for a moment from under long lashes before, with a
smile which she was sure made him want to shake her, she answered:
"Immensely; but this is not my first winter in the city. Dad and I have
made our headquarters here since I grew up." She turned to his father,
but Steve refused to be ignored.
"Do you like it?"
"Like it? I love it! It's so big, so beautiful and--and--and so faulty,"
her pose of indifference had fallen from her like a discarded veil; she
was all eager enthusiasm. "I--I like to be where there are many people.
I would starve for companionship, not food, in the wilderness." Steve
raised his brows and smiled unsmilingly.
"Then you believe in love?"
The color burned over her face to her scornful eyes. "He is willing to
marry for money yet he dares sneer at me about love," she thought
angrily, even as she looked up and deliberately studied him. She
laughed a gay little, mocking laugh.
"Believe in love? Of course I believe in love; don't you? But what an
absurd question to ask. As though you would champion the tender
passion." She saw his eyes darken and his jaw set before she turned to
his father. She was contrite, a little frightened. What had possessed
her to antagonize him like that? A poor way to begin a partnership which
she had hoped would develop into a real friendship.
"Jerry, take Steve into the living-room and give us some music. Mr.
Courtlandt and I will smoke here," commanded Glamorgan, as his servant,
who fairly exuded efficiency, passed cigars and cigarettes.
"Perhaps--perhaps he would prefer to stay here and smoke," the girl
suggested hurriedly, for the first time losing her poise. She caught a
glint of challenge in Stephen's eyes and rose. Her color was high, her
breath a bit uneven as she smiled at him with bewildering charm. "After
all, why should I make suggestions? You are quite old enough to decide
what you want to do yourself, aren't you?"
"Yes. Quite old enough and quite ready to decide for myself," he
answered as he stood aside for her to precede him into the living-room.
"Do you play or sing?" he asked as he followed her to the piano. The
instrument looked as though it were loved and used. It was her turn to
be a trifle scornful.
"I play and sing. Does it seem incredible that I should?" She seated
herself and dropped her hands in her lap. "Shall I play for you?"
"Please." He leaned his arms on the piano and looked down at her, but
she realized that his thoughts were not following his eyes. "I am not in
the least musical, but we had a chap in our company overseas who could
make the most shell-shocked instrument give out what seemed to us in the
midst of that thundering inferno, heavenly music. Sometimes now a wave
of longing for the sound of a piano sweeps over me, played by someone
who loves music as that boy loved it. Do you know--Schumann's
'Papillions'? That was one of his favorites."
For answer she played the first bar of the exquisite thing. Once she
glanced up. The eyes of the man leaning on the piano, not blue now, but
dark with memories, were an ocean removed from her. It was a minute
after the last note was struck before they came back to her face. He
drew a long breath.
"Thank you," he said simply, but his tone was better than a paean of
praise. Then the softness left his eyes. There was aggressiveness and a
hint of irony in his voice as he said stiffly:
"My--my father has given me to understand that you will do me the honor
to marry me."
A passion of anger shook the girl. She valiantly forced back the tears
which threatened, rose and faced him defiantly. Her slender fingers
smoothed out the long plumes of her fan. There should be no subterfuge
now, she determined, no cause for recrimination later.
"Your father, doubtless, has told you also that my father is willing to
buy your name and social position for me with a portion of his fortune.
A sort of fifty-fifty arrangement, isn't it?" she added flippantly, with
the faintest flicker of her bronze-tipped lashes. Courtlandt shrugged.
"If you wish to put it so crudely."
She took a step back and clenched her hands behind her. Her beautiful
eyes were brilliant with scorn, her heart pounded. It seemed as though
it must visibly shake her slender body as she answered:
"Why not? If we speak the truth now it may save complications later. You
know that my father wants me to marry you and--and why. I frankly
confess that I sympathize with his ambitions. I want the best of life in
my associations. Your father is in difficulties of one sort--my father
is in difficulties of another sort--if a lack of family background can
be called a difficulty--and it appears that with our help they can
accommodate one another. I'd do anything for Dad--he has done so much
for me." She set her teeth sharply in her under lip to steady it.
"Then--then you are not afraid to marry without love?" His eyes were
inscrutable.
"Without love? For the man I marry? No, not as long as I have no love
for any other. I might love a man when I married him, and then--love
comes unbidden, oftentimes unwanted and pouf!--it goes the way it came,
and no one can stop it. You know that yourself."
"Not if it is real love, the love of a man for the one woman," he
defended.
"Is there such a thing? I wonder?" skeptically.
If he felt a temptation to retaliate he resisted it.
"Then I may conclude that you accept me?" he prompted with frigid
courtesy.
"Yes, that is----" a nervous sob caught at her voice. "If--if you will
agree to my conditions. Dad has promised me an income of a hundred
thousand a year. I will keep half of it in my possession, the other half
you are to have to use as you please."
Courtlandt's eyes were black with anger, his knuckles white. He was
rough, direct, relentless as he answered:
"You are indeed determined to make this a business affair. But
understand now that I won't touch one cent of your cursed money.
Whatever arrangement your father wants to make with you and my father is
his affair and yours, but you are to leave me out of it absolutely.
That's my condition. Do you get it?"
"Yes, I get it." She colored richly, angrily, then paled. Even her lips
went white. "There is one thing more. I--we--this marriage is really a
bargain--money for social position. Let it be only that. Need there be
anything else? You must understand me--you must," in passionate appeal.
She laid her hand on his arm. He looked down at her with disconcerting
steadiness. His face was stern.
"Yes, I understand. You mean a marriage stripped to its skeleton of
legal terms. No mutual responsibilities, no mutual sacrifices, no--no
love. That is for you to decide. The Courtlandt debt is far too great
for me not to accept any terms you may dictate. It shall be as you wish,
I--promise."
Her brown eyes were brilliant with unshed tears as she held out an
impulsive hand.
"Thank you. You make the arrangements seem bleak and sordid, but you
have given me back my self-respect. Now I feel that it is an honorable
bargain between us two. You are to be perfectly free to come and go as
you like, and I shall be free, too--but there is one thing I promise
you, I--I shall never harm the name I take."
He looked down at the hand he held for an instant then released it.
"I knew that when you came into the room to-night. Will you marry me
soon?"
"Whenever you like. Will you--say good-night to your father for me?
I----" With a valiant effort to steady her lips, she smiled faintly,
opened the door of her room and closed it quickly behind her.
Peter Courtlandt was the first to break the silence as father and son
motored home. He made an effort to speak lightly.
"Well, my boy, your close-up was wrong. Geraldine Glamorgan has neither
prominent teeth, nor little eyes, nor a kittenish manner; in fact, I
don't know when I have seen so beautiful a girl so singularly free from
the barnacles of vanity and self-consciousness."
"Kittenish!" his son repeated curtly. "She's far from kittenish. She's
an iceberg, and what's more she has the business instinct developed to
the nth degree. Believe me, she's a born trader."