ALMOST HOOKED
In human affairs, great and small, there are always many reasons for
every action; then, snugly tucked away underneath all these reasons that
might be and ought to be and pretend to be but aren't, hides the real
reason, the real moving cause of action. By tacit agreement among human
beings there is an unwritten law against the exposing of this real
reason, whose naked and ugly face would put in sorry countenance
professions of patriotism or philanthropy or altruism or virtue of
whatever kind. Stillwater, the Attorney-General and Craig's chief, had a
dozen reasons for letting him appear alone for the Administration--that
is, for the people--in that important case. Each of these
reasons--except one--shed a pure, white light upon Stillwater's public
spirit and private generosity. That one was the reason supposed by Mrs.
Stillwater to be real. "Since you don't seem able to get rid of Josh
Craig, Pa," said she, in the seclusion of the marital couch, "we might
as well marry him to Jessie"--Jessie being their homeliest daughter.
"Very well," said "Pa" Stillwater. "I'll give him a chance."
Still, we have not got the real reason for Josh's getting what
Stillwater had publicly called "the opportunity of a lifetime." The
really real reason was that Stillwater wished, and calculated, to kill a
whole flock of birds with one stone.
Whenever the people begin to clamor for justice upon their exploiters,
the politicians, who make themselves valuable to the exploiters by
cozening the people into giving them office, begin by denying that the
people want anything; when the clamor grows so loud that this pretense
is no longer tenable, they hasten to say, "The people are right, and
something must be done. Unfortunately, there is no way of legally doing
anything at present, and we must be patient until a way is discovered."
Way after way is suggested, only to be dismissed as "dangerous" or
"impractical" or "unconstitutional." The years pass; the clamor
persists, becomes imperious. The politicians pass a law that has been
carefully made unconstitutional. This gives the exploiters several years
more of license. Finally, public sentiment compels the right kind of
law; it is passed. Then come the obstacles to enforcement. More years of
delay; louder clamor. A Stillwater is put in charge of the enforcement
of the law; a case is made, a trial is had, and the evidence is so
incomplete or the people's lawyers so poorly matched against the lawyers
of the exploiters that the case fails, and the administration is able to
say, "You see, WE'VE done our best, but the rascals have escaped!" The
case against certain Western railway thieves had reached the stage at
which the only way the exploiters could be protected from justice was by
having a mock trial; and Stillwater had put Craig forward as the
conductor of this furious sham battle, had armed him with a poor gun,
loaded with blanks. "We'll lose the case," calculated Stillwater; "we'll
save our friends, and get rid of Craig, whom everybody will blame--the
damned, bumptious, sophomoric blow-hard!"
What excuse did Stillwater make to himself for himself in this course of
seeming treachery and assassination? For, being a man of the highest
principles, he would not deliberately plan an assassination as an
assassination. Why, his excuse was that the popular clamor against the
men "who had built up the Western country" was wicked, that he was
serving his country in denying the mob "the blood of our best citizens,"
that Josh Craig was a demagogue who richly deserved to be hoist by his
own petar. He laughed with patriotic glee as he thought how "Josh, the
joke" would make a fool of himself with silly, sophomoric arguments,
would with his rude tactlessness get upon the nerves of the finicky old
Justices of the Supreme Court!
As Craig had boasted right and left of the "tear" he was going to make,
and had urged everybody he talked with to come and hear him, the small
courtroom was uncomfortably full, and not a few of the smiling,
whispering spectators confidently expected that they were about to enjoy
that rare, delicious treat--a conceited braggart publicly exposed and
overwhelmed by himself. Among these spectators was Josh's best friend,
Arkwright, seated beside Margaret Severence, and masking his
satisfaction over the impending catastrophe with an expression of
funereal somberness. He could not quite conceal from himself all these
hopes that had such an uncomfortable aspect of ungenerousness. So he
reasoned with himself that they really sprang from a sincere desire for
his friend's ultimate good. "Josh needs to have his comb cut," thought
he. "It's sure to be done, and he can bear it better now than later. The
lesson will teach him a few things he must learn. I only hope he'll be
able to profit by it."
When Josh appeared, Grant and the others with firmly-fixed opinions of
the character of the impending entertainment were not a little
disquieted. Joshua Craig, who stepped into the arena, looked absolutely
different from the Josh they knew. How had he divested himself of that
familiar swaggering, bustling braggadocio? Where had he got this look of
the strong man about to run a race, this handsome face on which sat real
dignity and real power? Never was there a better court manner; the
Justices, who had been anticipating an opportunity to demonstrate, at
his expense, the exceeding dignity of the Supreme Court, could only
admire and approve. As for his speech, it was a straightway argument;
not a superfluous or a sophomoric word, not an attempt at rhetoric. His
argument--There is the logic that is potent but answerable; there is the
logic that is unanswerable, that gives no opportunity to any sane mind,
however prejudiced by association with dispensers of luxurious
hospitality, of vintage wines and dollar cigars, however enamored of
fog-fighting and hair-splitting, to refuse the unqualified assent of
conviction absolute. That was the kind of argument Josh Craig made. And
the faces of the opposing lawyers, the questions the Justices asked him
plainly showed that he had won.
After the first ten minutes, when the idea that Craig could be or ever
had been laughable became itself absurd, Arkwright glanced uneasily,
jealously at Margaret. The face beneath the brim of her beautiful white
and pale pink hat was cold, conventional, was the face of a mere
listener. Grant, reassured, resumed his absorbed attention, was soon
completely swept away by his friend's exhibition of power, could hardly
wait until he and Margaret were out of the courtroom before exploding in
enthusiasm. "Isn't he a wonder?" he cried. "Why, I shouldn't have
believed it possible for a man of his age to make such a speech. He's a
great lawyer as well as a great orator. It was a dull subject, yet I was
fascinated. Weren't you?"
"It was interesting--at times," said Margaret.
"At times! Oh, you women!"
At this scorn Margaret eyed his elegant attire, his face with its
expression of an intelligence concentrated upon the petty and the
paltry. Her eyes suggested a secret amusement so genuine that she could
not venture to reveal it in a gibe. She merely said: "I confess I was
more interested in him than in what he said."
"Of course! Of course!" said Grant, all unconscious of her derision.
"Women have no interest in serious things and no mind for logic."
She decided that it not only was prudent but also was more enjoyable to
keep to herself her amusement at his airs of masculine superiority. Said
she, her manner ingenuous: "It doesn't strike me as astonishing that a
man should make a sensible speech."
Grant laughed as if she had said something much cleverer than she could
possibly realize. "That's a fact," admitted he. "It was simply supreme
common-sense. What a world for twaddle it is when common-sense makes us
sit up and stare.... But it's none the less true that you're prejudiced
against him."
"Why do you say that?"
"If you appreciated him you'd be as enthusiastic as I." There was in his
tone a faint hint of his unconscious satisfaction in her failure to
appreciate Craig.
"You can go very far astray," said she, "you, with your masculine
logic."
But Grant had guessed aright. Margaret had not listened attentively to
the speech because it interested her less than the man himself. She had
concentrated wholly upon him. Thus, alone of all the audience, she had
seen that Craig was playing a carefully-rehearsed part, and, himself
quite unmoved, was watching and profiting by every hint in the
countenance of his audience, the old Justices. It was an admirable piece
of acting; it was the performance of a genius at the mummer's art. But
the power of the mummer lies in the illusion he creates; if he does not
create illusion, as Craig did not for Margaret, he becomes mere
pantomimist and mouther. She had never given a moment's thought to
public life as a career; she made no allowances for the fact that a
man's public appearances, no matter how sincere he is, must always be
carefully rehearsed if he is to use his powers with unerring effect; she
was simply like a child for the first time at the theater, and, chancing
to get a glimpse behind the scenes, disgusted and angry with the players
because their performance is not spontaneous. If she had stopped to
reason about the matter she would have been less uncompromising. But in
the shock of disillusionment she felt only that the man was working upon
his audience like a sleight-of-hand performer; and the longer she
observed, and the stronger his spell over the others, the deeper became
her contempt for the "charlatan." He seemed to her like one telling a
lie--as that one seems, while telling it, to the hearer who is not
deceived. "I've been thinking him rough but genuine," said she to
herself. "He's merely rough." She had forgiven, had disregarded his rude
almost coarse manners, setting them down to indifference, the impatience
of the large with the little, a revolt from the (on the whole
preferable) extreme opposite of the mincing, patterned manners of which
Margaret herself was a-weary. "But he isn't indifferent at all," she now
felt. "He's simply posing. His rudenesses are deliberate where they are
not sheer ignorance. His manner in court showed that he knows how, in
the main."
A rather superior specimen of the professional politician, but
distinctly of that hypocritical, slippery class. And Margaret's
conviction was strengthened later in the day when she came upon him at
tea at Mrs. Houghton's. He was holding forth noisily against "society,"
was denouncing it as a debaucher of manhood and womanhood, a waster of
precious time, and on and on in that trite and tedious strain.
Margaret's lip curled as she listened. What did this fakir know about
manhood and womanhood? And could there be any more pitiful, more paltry
wasting of time than in studying out and performing such insincerities
as his life was made up of? True, Mrs. Houghton, of those funny,
fashionable New Yorkers who act as if they had only just arrived at the
estate of servants and carriages, and are always trying to impress even
passing strangers with their money and their grandeur--true, Mrs.
Houghton was most provocative to anger or amused disdain at the
fashionable life. But not even Mrs. Houghton seemed to Margaret so cheap
and pitiful as this badly-dressed, mussy politician, as much an actor as
Mrs. Houghton and as poor at the trade, but choosing low comedy for his
unworthy attempts where Mrs. Houghton was at least trying to be
something refined.
With that instinct for hostility which is part of the equipment of every
sensitively-nerved man of action, Craig soon turned toward her,
addressed himself to her; and the others, glad to be free, fell away.
Margaret was looking her best. White was extremely becoming to her;
pink--pale pink--being next in order. Her dress was of white, with
facings of delicate pale pink, and the white plumes in her hat were
based in pale pink, which also lined the inside of the brim. She watched
him, and, now that it was once more his personality pitted directly and
wholly against hers, she, in spite of herself, began to yield to him
again her respect--the respect every intelligent person must feel for an
individuality that is erect and strong. But as she was watching, her
expression was that of simply listening, without comment or intention to
reply--an expression of which she was perfect mistress. Her hazel eyes,
set in dark lashes, her sensuous mouth, her pallid skin, smooth and
healthy, seemed the climax of allurement to which all the lines of her
delightful figure pointed. To another woman it would have been obvious
that she was amusing herself by trying to draw him under the spell of
physical attraction; a man would have thought her a mere passive
listener, perhaps one concealing boredom, would have thought her
movements to bring now this charm and now that to his attention were
simply movements of restlessness, indications of an impatience difficult
to control. He broke off abruptly. "What are you thinking?" he demanded.
She gave no sign of triumph at having accomplished her purpose--at
having forced his thoughts to leave his pet subject, himself, and center
upon her. "I was thinking," said she reflectively, "what a brave
whistler you are."
"Whistler?"
"Whistling to keep up your courage. No, rather, whistling FOR courage.
You are on your knees before wealth and social position, and you wish to
convince yourself--and the world--that you despise them."
"_I_? Wealth? Social position?" Craig exclaimed, or rather, blustered.
And, red and confused, he was at a loss for words.
"Yes--you," asserted she, in her quiet, tranquil way. "Don't bluster at
me. You didn't bluster at the Court this morning." She laughed softly,
eyeing him with friendly sarcasm. "You see, I'm 'on to' you, Mr. Craig."
Their eyes met--a resolute encounter. He frowned fiercely, and as his
eyes were keen and blue-green, and, backed by a tremendous will, the
odds seemed in his favor. But soon his frown relaxed; a smile replaced
it--a handsome acknowledgment of defeat, a humorous confession that she
was indeed "on to" him. "I like you," he said graciously.
"I don't know that I can say the same of you," replied she, no answering
smile in her eyes or upon her lips, but a seriousness far more
flattering.
"That's right!" exclaimed he. "Frankness--absolute frankness. You are
the only intelligent woman I have met here who seems to have any
sweetness left in her."
"Sweetness? This is a strange place to look for sweetness. One might as
well expect to find it in a crowd of boys scrapping for pennies, or in a
pack of hounds chasing a fox."
"But that isn't all of life," protested Craig.
"It's all of life among our sort of people--the ambitious socially and
otherwise."
Josh beamed upon her admiringly. "You'll do," approved he. "We shall be
friends. We ARE friends."
The gently satiric smile her face had borne as she was talking became
personal to him. "You are confident," said she.
He nodded emphatically. "I am. I always get what I want."
"I'm sorry to say I don't. But I can say that at least I never take what
I don't want."
"That means," said he, "you may not want my friendship."
"Obviously," replied she. And she rose and put out her hand.
"Don't go yet," cried he. "We are just beginning to get acquainted. The
other day I misjudged you. I thought you insignificant, not worth
while."
She slid her hand into her ermine muff. She gave him an icy look, not
contemptuous but oblivious, and turned away. He stared after her. "By
Jove!" thought he, "THERE'S the real thing. There's a true aristocrat."
And he frankly paid aristocracy in thought the tribute he would with any
amount of fuming and spluttering have denied it in word. "Aristocracy
does mean something," reflected he. "There must be substance to what can
make ME feel quite put down."
When he saw Arkwright he said patronizingly: "I like that little friend
of yours--that Miss What's-her-name."
Grant suspected from his tone that this forgetfulness was an
affectation. "You know very well what her name is," said he irritably.
"What a cheap affectation."
Josh countered and returned magnificently: "I remember her face
perfectly," said he. "One shares one's name with a great many people, so
it's unimportant. But one's face is one's own. I remember her face very
well indeed--and that gorgeous figure of hers."
Grant was furious, thought Craig's words the limit of impertinent
free-spokenness. "Well, what of it?" said he savagely.
"I like her," replied Josh condescendingly. "But she's been badly
brought up, and is full of foolish ideas, like all your women here. But
she's a thoroughbred."
"Then you like her?" observed Arkwright without enthusiasm.
"So-so. Of course, she isn't fit to be a wife, but for her type and as a
type she's splendid."
Arkwright felt like kicking him and showed it. "What a bounder you are
at times, Josh," he snapped.
Craig laughed and slapped him on the back. "There you go again, with
your absurd notions of delicacy. Believe me, Grant, you don't understand
women. They don't like you delicate fellows. They like a man--like me--a
pawer of the ground--a snorter--a warhorse that cries ha-ha among the
trumpets."
"The worst thing about what you say," replied Arkwright sourly, "is that
it's the truth. I don't say the women aren't worthy of us, but I do say
they're not worthy of our opinion of them.... Well, I suppose you're
going to try to marry her"--this with a vicious gleam which he felt safe
in indulging openly before one so self-absorbed and so insensible to
subtleties of feeling and manner.
"I think not," said Craig judicially. "She'd play hell with my politics.
It's bad enough to have fights on every hand and all the time abroad.
It'd be intolerable to have one at home--and I've got no time to train
her to my uses and purposes."
Usually Craig's placid conviction that the universe existed for his
special benefit and that anything therein was his for the mere formality
of claiming it moved Arkwright to tolerant amusement at his lack of the
sense of proportion and humor. Occasionally it moved him to reluctant
admiration--this when some apparently absurd claim of his proved more or
less valid. Just now, in the matter of Margaret Severence, this
universal overlordship filled him with rage, the more furious that he
realized he could no more shake Josh's conviction than he could make the
Washington monument topple over into the Potomac by saying, "Be thou
removed." He might explain all the obvious reasons why Margaret would
never deign to condescend to him; Josh would dismiss them with a laugh
at Arkwright's folly.
He hid his rage as best he could, and said with some semblance of genial
sarcasm: "So all you've got to do is to ask her and she's yours?"
Craig gave him a long, sharp, searching look. "Old man," he said
earnestly, "do you want her?"
"_I_!" exclaimed Arkwright angrily, but with shifting eyes and with
upper lip twitching guiltily. Then, satirically: "Oh, no; I'd not dare
aspire to any woman YOU had condescended to smile upon."
"If you do I'll get her for you," pursued Craig, his hand seeking
Arkwright's arm to grip it.
Arkwright drew away, laughed outright. "You ARE a joke!" he cried,
wholly cured of his temper by the preposterous offer. It would be absurd
enough for any one to imagine he would need help in courting any woman
he might fancy--he, one of the most eligible of American bachelors. It
passed the uttermost bounds of the absurd, this notion that he would
need help with a comparatively poor girl, many seasons out and eager to
marry. And then, climax of climaxes, that Josh Craig could help him!
"Yes, a joke," he repeated.
"Oh, no doubt I do seem so to you," replied Josh unruffled. "People are
either awed or amused by what they're incapable of understanding. At
this stage of my career I'm not surprised to find they're amused. But
wait, my boy. Meanwhile, if you want that lady, all you've got to do is
to say the word. I'll get her for you."
"Thanks; no," said Arkwright. "I'm rather shy of matrimony. I don't
hanker after the stupid joys of family life, as you do."
"That's because of your ruinous, rotten training," Craig assured him.
"It has destroyed your power to appreciate the great fundamentals of
life. You think you're superior. If you only knew how shallow you are!"
"I've a competent valet," said Arkwright. "And your idea of a wife seems
to be a sort of sublimated valet--and nurse."
"I can conceive of no greater dignity than to take care of a real man
and his children," replied Craig. "However, the dignity of the service
depends upon the dignity of the person to whom it is rendered--and upon
the dignity of the person who renders it."
Arkwright examined Craig's face for signs that this was the biting
sarcasm it would have seemed, coming from another. But Craig was
apparently merely making one of his familiar bumptious speeches. The
idea of a man of his humble origin proclaiming himself superior to an
Arkwright of the Massachusetts Arkwrights!
"No, I'd not marry your Miss Severence," Craig continued. "I want a
wife, not a social ornament. I want a woman, not a toilette. I want a
home, not a fashionable hotel. I want love and sympathy and children. I
want substance, not shadow; sanity, not silliness."
"And your socks darned and your shirts mended."
"That, of course." Josh accepted these amendments with serene
seriousness. "And Miss Severence isn't fit for the job. She has some
brains--the woman kind of brains. She has a great deal of rudimentary
character. If I had the time, and it were worth while, I could develop
her into a real woman. But I haven't, and it wouldn't be worth while
when there are so many real women, ready made, out where I come from.
This girl would be exactly the wife for you, though. Just as she is,
she'd help you mince about from parlor to parlor, and smirk and jabber
and waste time. She's been educating for the job ever since she was
born." He laid his hand in gracious, kindly fashion on his friend's
shoulder. "Think it over. And if you want my help it's yours. I can show
her what a fine fellow you are, what a good husband you'd make. For you
are a fine person, old man; when you were born fashionable and rich it
spoiled a--"
"A superb pram-trundler," suggested Arkwright.
"Precisely. Be off now; I must work. Be off, and exhibit that wonderful
suit and those spotless white spats where they'll be appreciated." And
he dismissed the elegantly-dressed idler as a king might rid himself of
a favorite who threatened to presume upon his master's good humor and
outstay his welcome. But Arkwright didn't greatly mind. He was used to
Josh's airs. Also, though he would not have confessed it to his inmost
self, Josh's preposterous assumptions, by sheer force of frequent and
energetic reiteration, had made upon him an impression of possible
validity--not probable, but possible; and the possible was quite enough
to stir deep down in Arkwright's soul the all but universal deference
before power. It never occurred to him to suspect there might be design
in Craig's sweeping assertions and assumptions of superiority, that he
might be shrewdly calculating that, underneath the ridicule those
obstreperous vanities would create, there would gradually form and
steadily grow a conviction of solid truth, a conviction that Joshua
Craig was indeed the personage he professed to be--mighty, inevitably
prevailing, Napoleonic.
This latent feeling of Arkwright's was, however, not strong enough to
suppress his irritation when, a few days later, he went to the
Severences for tea, and found Margaret and Josh alone in the garden,
walking up and down, engaged in a conversation that was obviously
intimate and absorbing. When he appeared on the veranda Joshua greeted
him with an eloquent smile of loving friendship.
"Ah, there you are now!" he cried. "Well, little ones, I'll leave you
together. I've wasted as much time as I can spare to-day to frivolity."
"Yes, hurry back to work," said Arkwright. "The ship of state's wobbling
badly through your neglect."
Craig laughed, looking at Margaret. "Grant thinks that's a jest," said
he. "Instead, it's the sober truth. I am engaged in keeping my Chief in
order, and in preventing the President from skulking from the policies
he has the shrewdness to advocate but lacks the nerve to put into
action."
Margaret stood looking after him as he strode away.
"You mustn't mind his insane vanity," said Arkwright, vaguely uneasy at
the expression of her hazel eyes, at once so dark, mysterious,
melancholy, so light and frank and amused.
"I don't," said she in a tone that seemed to mean a great deal.
He, still more uneasy, went on: "A little more experience of the world
and Josh'll come round all right--get a sense of proportion."
"But isn't it true?" asked Margaret somewhat absently.
"What?"
"Why, what he said as he was leaving. Before you came he'd been here
quite a while, and most of the time he talked of himself--"
Arkwright laughed, but Margaret only smiled, and that rather
reluctantly.
"And he was telling how hard a time he was having; what with
Stillwater's corruption and the President's timidity about really acting
against rich, people--something about criminal suits against what he
calls the big thieves--I didn't understand it, or care much about it,
but it gave me an impression of Mr. Craig's power."
"There IS some truth in what he says," Arkwright admitted, with a
reluctance of which his pride, and his heart as well, were ashamed.
"He's become a burr, a thorn, in the Administration, and they're really
afraid of him in a way--though, of course, they have to laugh at him as
every one else does."
"Of course," said Margaret absently.
Arkwright watched her nervously. "You seem to be getting round to the
state of mind," said he, "where you'll be in danger of marrying our
friend Craig."
Margaret, her eyes carefully away from him, laughed softly--a
disturbingly noncommittal laugh.
"Of course, I'm only joking," continued Arkwright. "I know YOU couldn't
marry HIM."
"Why not?"
"Because you don't think he's sincere."
Her silence made him feel that she thought this as weak as he did.
"Because you don't love him."
"No, I certainly don't love him," said Margaret.
"Because you don't even like him."
"What a strange way of advocating your friend you have."
Arkwright flushed scarlet. "I thought you'd quite dismissed him as a
possibility," he stammered.
"With a woman every man's a possibility so long as no man's a
certainty."
"Margaret, you couldn't marry a man you didn't like?"
She seemed to reflect. "Not if I were in love with another at the time,"
she said finally. "That's as far as my womanly delicacy--what's left of
it after my years in society--can influence me. And it's stronger, I
believe, than the delicacy of most women of our sort."
They were sitting now on the bench round the circle where the fountain
was tossing high its jets in play with the sunshine. She was looking
very much the woman of the fashionable world, and the soft grays,
shading into blues, that dominated her costume gave her an exceeding and
entrancing seeming of fragility. Arkwright thought her eyes wonderful;
the sweet, powerful yet delicate odor of the lilac sachet powder with
which her every garment was saturated set upon his senses like a
love-philter.
"Yes, you are finer and nobler than most women," he said giddily. "And
that's why it distresses me to hear you talk even in jest, as if you
could marry Josh."
"And a few weeks ago you were suggesting him as just the husband for
me."
Arkwright was silent. How could he go on? How tell her why he had
changed without committing himself to her by a proposal? She was
fascinating--would be an ideal wife. With what style and taste she'd
entertain--how she'd shine at the head of his table! What a satisfaction
it would be to feel that his money was being so competently spent.
But--well, he did not wish to marry, not just yet; perhaps, somewhere in
the world, he would find, in the next few years, a woman even better
suited to him than Margaret. Marrying was a serious business. True, now
that divorce had pushed its way up and had become recognized by
fashionable society, had become an established social favorite, marriage
had been robbed of one of its terrors. But the other remained--divorce
still meant alimony. The woman who trapped an eligible never endangered
her hard-earned position; a man must be extremely careful or he would
find himself forced to hard choice between keeping on with a woman he
wished to be rid of and paying out a large part of his income in
alimony. It seemed far-fetched to think of these things in connection
with such a woman as Margaret. He certainly never could grow tired of
her, and her looks were of the sort that had staying power. Nor was she
in the least likely to be so ungrateful as to wish to be rid of him and
hold him up for alimony. Still--wouldn't it have been seemingly just as
absurd to consider in advance such sordid matters in connection with any
one of a dozen couples among his friends whose matrimonial enterprises
had gone smash? It was said that nowadays girls went to the altar
thinking that if the husbands they were taking proved unsatisfactory
they would soon be free again, the better off by the title of Mrs. and a
good stiff alimony and some invaluable experience. "I must keep my
head," thought he. "I must consider how I'd feel after the fatal cards
were out."
"Yes, you were quite eager for me to marry him," persisted she. She was
watching his face out of the corner of her eye.
"I admit it," said he huskily. "But we've both changed since then."
"Changed?" said she, perhaps a shade too encouragingly.
He felt the hook tickling his gills and darted off warily. "Changed
toward him, I mean. Changed in our estimate of his availability as a
husband for you." He rose; the situation was becoming highly perilous.
"I must speak to your mother and fly. I'm late for an appointment now."
As he drove away ten minutes later he drew a long breath. "Gad!" said he
half aloud, "Rita'll never realize how close I was to proposing to-day.
She ALMOST had me.... Though why I should think of it that way I don't
know. It's damned low and indelicate of me. She ought to be my wife. I
love her as much as a man of experience can love a woman in advance of
trying her out thoroughly. If she had money I'd not be hesitating, I'm
afraid. Then, too, I don't think the moral tone of that set she and I
travel with is what it ought to be. It's all very well for me,
but--Well, a man ought to be ready for almost anything that might happen
if his wife went with that crowd--or had gone with it before he married
her. Not that I suspect Margaret, though I must say--What a pup this
sort of life does make of a man in some ways!... Yes, I almost leaped.
She'll never know how near I came to it.... Perhaps Josh's more than
half-right and I'm oversophisticated. My doubts and delays may cost me a
kind of happiness I'd rather have than anything on earth--IF it really
exists." There he laughed comfortably. "Poor Rita! If she only knew, how
cut up she'd be!"
He might not have been so absolutely certain of her ignorance could he
have looked into the Severances' drawing-room just then. For Margaret,
after a burst of hysterical gayety, had gone to the far end of the room
on the pretext of arranging some flowers. And there, with her face
securely hid from the half-dozen round the distant tea-table, she was
choking back the sobs, was muttering: "I'll have to do it! I'm a
desperate woman--desperate!"