THE TEST OF LIFE
Now that he had won, now that the marriage and Loveman’s plans were
potentially blocked, there should have been a let-down from Clifford’s
long strain. But there was not. The settling of this affair seemed
only to give mind-room to other concerns. He tossed about restlessly
during the few hours that remained of the night; and he realized that
his restlessness was not due wholly to the suspense of waiting for the
finality that would come with Loveman’s completed promise.
In the slow hours before the coming of the slate-colored dawn a vague,
disturbing doubt crept in upon him. He had interfered with events, he
had tried to shape life upon his ideas: was his course right?--that
seemed to be something of the impalpable substance of his doubt. But
what this new doubt was, strive as he would he could not evoke it from
its vagueness into definite shape.
He had breakfast; and then, obeying an impulse which seemed to emerge
from this new, obscure maze of his mind, he suddenly decided to see
Mary Regan again--for what purpose he had no idea. Arrived at the
Grantham he had his name ’phoned up to “Mrs. Gardner,” and was informed
that Mrs. Gardner would see him.
Mary herself admitted him, and, not even replying to his
“good-morning,” she led him into the sitting-room. There she faced him,
proud and coldly defiant.
“I suppose you have come to inform me you have told the Mortons all
about me?”
“No,” he replied.
“Then, to threaten me again that you will tell?”
“No.”
“Then, what have you come for?”
He knew now--at least partly. During the moment he had been in the room
and had gazed upon her, there had emerged from the maze of his thoughts
and feelings, a sharply defined repugnance to what within the next hour
or two was to happen between her and Loveman: a repugnance, felt in her
behalf, that she should be made to yield to whatever influences that
cunning little lawyer would be able to exert.
“I have come to ask you,” he said, trying to speak composedly, but with
all his being vibrant beneath that composure, “to break off this affair
with Jack Morton of your own free will. You know you don’t care for
him. You know what you are planning to do isn’t square. Why don’t you
be true to the best self that is in you and end it all yourself?--and
end it now? There’s the telephone,” he urged--remembering that Loveman
might any moment appear--“call Jack Morton up and tell him you’ve
decided not to do it!”
As he spoke, her face had grown sharp with decision. “Mr. Clifford,”
she exclaimed in a low, cutting voice, “I’m tired of your presumption,
your interference! I’m tired of your trying to make me be what you
think I ought to be! As if it mattered to me what you thought!”
She took a step nearer, her straight, young figure stiffened, and her
dark eyes flashed at him. “Understand this, Mr. Clifford,--I’ve made up
my mind, and made it up definitely, finally. I am going to do exactly
what I want to do, and it is not in your power to stop me or divert me.
You may tell either of the Mortons if you like--my real course will not
be changed--that will merely mean that I’ll do what I want to do in
some other way!”
Clifford did not attempt to answer. Her defiant words, her young figure
so rigid with its determined spirit of worldliness, had set some
strange force working in him; a vague power seemed to be at conflict
with the purpose he had held to for so long; a strange revulsion seized
him, a revolution was under way which was compelling in its sweeping
drive, but whose intent and direction for a moment he could not
perceive.
He stood still, and stared at her. And then out of the inner turmoil
came a clear, bright order; and then he realized that the restlessness,
the formless doubts of the night before, had been the first faint
stirrings of this which was grown and clarified into a new purpose and
a new vision--a purpose and vision that astonished him. For they had
come at the very time when his old purpose was the same as achieved.
She could but notice the remarkable change in his appearance. “Well,
what is it now?” she demanded.
He drew a deep, quivering breath. A recklessness, a defiance--but
behind which his new purpose remained cool--now possessed him. He was
aware that he had to act quickly, for any instant Peter Loveman might
be here.
“What is it now?” he repeated, with a provoking smile. If he did not
have power to stir her to love, he knew that he had the power to stir
her to anger. “I was just recalling what you said a moment ago: to the
effect that you were going to do what you pleased and do it when you
pleased. Pardon me for smiling--but when a woman boasts, it sometimes
is amusing and a bit absurd.”
“What do you mean?” she said sharply.
“Oh, I’m smiling at myself, too, for I’ve just realized what a fool
I’ve made of myself in trying to stop you--an entirely unnecessary
effort. What I mean, Miss Regan, is that I do not believe you could do
it.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, I suppose you’d go through with your part of it. But if put to the
test of marrying at once, Jack Morton would never go through with his
part. He may be a bit infatuated; but he’s too wise to marry a woman
without money--without knowing more about who she is--and without his
father’s approval. No wonder Jack has been putting this off!”
She flushed hotly. “I have been the one to put it off!” she cried.
“Indeed,” he exclaimed with unbelief none too polite. “From the way
he was dancing last night with Miss Cordova--you know, that pretty
musical-comedy star--I have an idea she’s had a lot to do with the
delay. And I imagine she’ll have a lot more to do with further
delay. Why, you poor thing,”--he smiled irritatingly,--“to think you
could hold a man like Jack Morton--you having to remain inactive,
under cover--he free to roam about with all sorts of charming
women--particularly with Miss Cordova!”
She did not speak for a moment. She was choked with that anger on which
he had so carefully counted: no person, he knew, would be so likely to
act upon impulse as a proud and angered woman, before the man who has
insulted her.
“So you think I can’t do it!” she exclaimed. “So he’s the one who is
holding back! Well, I’ll just show you! Anyhow, this thing might as
well come to a head right now. And I’ll give you your chance to tell
all you know about me.”
She turned and took up the telephone from the writing-desk and asked
for the Biltmore. Fortune favored her purpose, for in a minute she had
Jack Morton on the wire.
“Can you come right over, Jack,--with your car?... No, don’t bring
your chauffeur; drive yourself.... Why? I’ll tell you that when you
come--only bring plenty of wraps.... All right, I’ll be ready; come
right up.”
“He’ll be over in fifteen minutes,” she said to Clifford. “You may wait
if you like. But you’ll excuse me.”
She passed into her bedroom. Clifford sank rather limply into a
chair. He had come to what just then seemed the supreme crisis of his
life, and he was still dazed at the way he had willed that crisis to
eventuate. He sat thinking--thinking; the minutes she was out were long
minutes to him.
Presently she reëntered. She had changed to a black velvet suit trimmed
with black fur; a small fur hat sat snugly down upon her thick, dark
hair; and she carried a fur motor-coat. She was an unforgettable
picture for him: the high color of her dark face against the background
of soft and sheeny blacks.
She did not address Clifford; but there was little time for their
silence to become awkward, for almost at once the bell of the
suite rang. Mary went to the door, and admitted Jack Morton. The
pleasant-faced young fellow looked most comfortably handsome in his
great motoring-coat of raccoon.
“I say, Mary, this is certainly fine!” he cried, after he had kissed
her. “And, hello--there’s Bob Clifford. How’s the old boy?” He shook
Clifford’s hand warmly. “But say, Mary, what’s doing?”
Mary looked at Morton when she replied, but her voice was directed
at Clifford: “I’ve decided, Jack, to give in to you. I’m ready to be
married at once--to-day.”
“Hurrah!” cried young Morton, seizing both her hands. “But we’ll have
to keep it quiet--same as we planned. You’re ready now?”
She did not answer. Clifford noted that her body tautened and her
breath was held--as one who waits for a blow; and he understood that
she was waiting for, and expecting him to speak the truth about her.
She slowly turned and looked at Clifford. Surprise that he had said
nothing was in her face. Then she turned back to Morton.
“I’m all ready,” she said distinctly, so that Clifford might not miss
a word. “We’ll do as you suggested: motor away back into the country
to some small place--get married--and a little money spent judiciously
there will keep our marriage quiet as long as we like.” She turned
again to Clifford. “I’m sure we have the best wishes of Mr. Clifford.”
He knew that her words, and her straight look, were not now so much
challenge or defiance as the bold offering him a second time the chance
to speak, and to speak at the most effective moment imaginable. She
might be perverse--but of a certainty she had nerve!
“You surely have my wishes that it will all turn out for the very
best,” said Clifford; and again he saw surprise in her gaze.
He rode down the elevator with them and walked out to the curb where
stood Morton’s machine, a black, closed car with a long hood that
bespoke the engine-power of a racer. Morton was swinging open the door
when Clifford, trying to keep down the choke that sought to rise in his
throat, remarked with attempted good-fellowship:--
“If you don’t mind, Morton, I wish you’d wire me as soon as it’s over.
Here at the Grantham.”
“Sure, old man. Step in, Mary.”
Mary started to obey, then checked herself. “May I speak to you a
moment, Mr. Clifford?”
They moved a few paces away. She looked at him penetratingly.
“Why have you done this?” she abruptly whispered.
“Done what?” he parried.
“Don’t you think that I see now that you have forced my hand? That I am
down here now, about to do this, because you wanted me to do it? Why
are you doing it--when you could stop everything, this moment, with
just a few words?”
He gave her back a straight look and spoke deliberately. “I have
tried for a long time to do with you what I saw as best--to pull the
strings--and I have failed, over and over. When you declared a little
while ago that I or nothing else could change your purpose, I suddenly
had a new vision. I realized that if you were poor material I could
not save you, and that you would not be worth saving. And I realized
that if you were good material, only some way that I had not tried
could affect you; and it came to me,” he went on grimly, “that bitter
experience might do for you what I had not done. And it also came
to me that if anything could arouse you to the human realities, no
experiences might be so effective as what might lie before you in this
very marriage you had planned.”
“And that is why you said nothing?” she breathed.
He nodded. “I have taken my hands off, to give life its chance to pull
the strings.”
She gazed at him a moment longer. Then she returned to the car. But as
she stepped in, she paused and glanced back once more. Her face was
very pale and dazed--it held the look of one who wondered, but could
not understand.
* * * * *
Restlessly, but with a heavy heart within him, Clifford wandered about
the great lobby of the Grantham. A slow hour passed--then another. Then
he saw Peter Loveman, on his plump face an expression which for Loveman
was very serious, come up the broad stairway and go straight for the
desk at which visitors sent up their names to guests of the house.
Loveman spoke to the blonde within the grilled enclosure--waited--then
walked away with a sober, puzzled look. He sighted Clifford in a deep
lounging-chair, and his face on the instant grown genial, he crossed
and dropped into a chair beside him.
“Needn’t explain, Clifford,” he said pleasantly, offering a cigarette
from a lacquered case which Clifford refused. “Sure, I understand what
you showed up here for: to see if I went through with what I promised.
Well, I just asked for her, and was told she’d gone out. I’m going to
wait for her--and I suppose you’ll wait too.”
Clifford nodded.
Loveman tried to draw Clifford into conversation, but his light remarks
failing to evoke a response, he looked through first the “Wall Street
Journal,” and then the “Morning Telegraph,” that organ of the theater
and the other diversions close to Broadway’s life. Thus the two sat for
over an hour, neither speaking; then a page came by, calling in the
impersonal voice of hotel pages, “Telegram Mr. Clifford--Telegram Mr.
Clifford.”
Clifford took the yellow missive with a hand that he tried to keep from
shaking. He was quite certain what was in it--the end of things, just
as he had suddenly planned them in his new vision of some three or
four hours earlier. Yet, none the less, he had a moment of supreme and
sickening suspense as he opened the envelope.
Yes, it was just what he had expected. He gazed fixedly at the
typewritten lines before him--lines which were like heavy doors
swinging to and locked between him and that of which he had dreamed.
Then he became conscious that the big round eyes of little Peter
Loveman were gazing at him curiously. Silently he handed the telegram
to the lawyer.
Loveman glanced the telegram through. “The devil!” he cried. Then he
read it again, this time aloud:--
Married quiet place ten miles from here. Everybody will keep it
secret. Happy you bet.
J.
Loveman stared at Clifford. “And it’s addressed to you!” he exclaimed.
“Say, this means you’ve crossed yourself! What the devil are you up to?”
Clifford did not answer.
There was a moment of silence, then Loveman whispered to himself: “And
I just promised Nina Cordova!”
Again Clifford did not answer; he did not hear Loveman. Such of his
senses as were not numbed by the finality of which that telegram was
the token were directed into that unfinal future which human vision
could not penetrate. How was it all going to work out for Mary Regan?
Was experience going to do for her what he had failed to do, or was
experience going to stimulate to complete and final dominance her
worldliness? And had he played into Peter Loveman’s hands? And what
would Loveman do?
But these were questions only Life could answer. He had stepped aside
to give Life full play, to let human impulses move unhindered by him
toward their destiny; and he must wait until Life was ready to speak.
He was subconsciously aware that Loveman’s round eyes were fixed upon
him sharply, and he was subconsciously aware that the keen brain behind
that round face was working swiftly, ranging in every direction. But
without looking at Loveman again, or speaking to him, he rose heavily
and went down the broad marble stairway, muted with rugs, out into the
winter twilight. These questions that engaged his mind were none of his
affair. Mary Regan, as far as she touched his personal life, was now
become an episode that was closed. He had other affairs to fill his
life; he must turn himself to them.
And yet, as he walked away ... he wondered....