A BELATED PROPOSAL
Her mood--outraged against Craig, sullenly determined to marry him,
angry with her relatives, her mother no less than her grandmother,
because they were driving her to these desperate measures--this mood
persisted, became intenser, more imperious in its demand for a sacrifice
as the afternoon wore on. When Grant Arkwright came, toward six o'clock,
she welcomed him, the first-comer bringing her the longed-for chance to
discharge the vials of her wrath. And she noted with pleasure that he,
too, was in a black humor. Before she could begin he burst forth:
"What's this that Josh Craig has been telling me? He seems to have gone
stark mad!"
Margaret eyed him with icy disdain. "If there is any quality that can be
called the most repulsive," said she, "it is treachery. You've fallen
into a way of talking of your friend Craig behind his back that's
unworthy--perhaps not of you, but certainly of the person you pose as
being."
"Did you propose to him this afternoon?" demanded Grant.
Margaret grew cold from head to foot. "Does he say I did?" she succeeded
in articulating.
"He does. He was so excited that he jumped off a car and held me an hour
telling me, though he was late for one of those important conferences
he's always talking about."
Margaret had chosen her course. "Did he ask you to run and tell me he
had told you?" inquired she, with the vicious gleam of a vicious temper
in her fine hazel eyes.
"No," admitted Grant. "I suppose I've no right to tell you. But it was
such an INFERNAL lie."
"Did you tell him so?"
Arkwright grew red.
"I see you did not," said Margaret. "I knew you did not. Now, let me
tell you, I don't believe Craig said anything of the kind. A man who'd
betray a friend is quite capable of lying about him."
"Margaret! Rita Severence!" Grant started up, set down his teacup, stood
looking down at her, his face white to the lips. "Your tone is not jest;
it is insult."
"It was so intended." Margaret's eyes were upon him, her grandmother's
own favorite expression in them. Now that she was no longer a
matrimonial offering she felt profoundly indifferent to eligible men,
rejoiced in her freedom to act toward them as she wished. "I do not
permit any one to lie to me about the man I have engaged to marry."
"What!" shouted Grant. "It was TRUE?"
"Go out into the garden and try to calm yourself, Grant," said the girl
haughtily. "And if you can't, why--take yourself off home. And don't
come back until you are ready to apologize."
"Rita, why didn't you give me a hint? I'd have married you myself. I'm
willing to do it.... Rita, will you marry me?"
Margaret leaned back upon the sofa and laughed until his blood began to
run alternately hot and cold.
"I beg your pardon," he stammered. "I did not realize how it sounded.
Only--you know how things are with our sort of people. And, as men go, I
can't help knowing I'm what's called a catch, and that you're looking
for a suitable husband.... As it's apparently a question of him or me,
and as you've admitted you got him by practically proposing--...Damn
it all, Rita, I want you, and I'm not going to let such a man as he is
have you. I never dreamed you'd bother with him seriously or I'd not
have been so slow."
Margaret was leaning back, looking up at him. "I've sunk even lower than
I thought," she said, bringing to an end the painful silence which
followed this speech.
"What do you mean, Rita?"
She laughed cynically, shrugged her shoulders. First, Craig's impudent
assumption that she loved him, and his rude violation of her lips; now,
this frank insolence of insult, the more savage that it was
unconscious--and from the oldest and closest of her men friends. If one
did not die under such outrages, but continued to live and let live, one
could save the situation only by laughing. So, Margaret laughed--and
Arkwright shivered.
"For God's sake, Rita!" he cried. "I'd not have believed that lips so
young and fresh as yours could utter such a cynical sound."
She looked at him with disdainful, derisive eyes. "It's fortunate for me
that I have a sense of humor," said she. "And for you," she added.
"But I am in earnest, I mean it--every word I said."
"That's just it," replied she. "You meant it--every word."
"You will marry me?"
"I will not."
"Why?"
"For several reasons. For instance, I happen to be engaged to another
man."
"That is--nothing." He snapped his fingers.
She elevated her brows. "Nothing?"
"He'd not keep his promise to you if--In fact, he was debating with me
whether or not he'd back down."
"Either what you say is false," said she evenly, "or you are betraying
the confidence of a friend who trusted in your honor."
"Oh, he said it, all right. You know how he is about confidences."
"No matter."
Margaret rose slowly, a gradual lifting of her long, supple figure.
Grant watching, wondered why he had never before realized that the
sensuous charm of her beauty was irresistible. "Where were my eyes?" he
asked himself. "She's beyond any of the women I've wasted so much time
on."
She was saying with quiet deliberateness: "A few days ago, Grant, I'd
have jumped at your offer--to be perfectly frank. Why shouldn't I be
frank! I'm sick of cowardly pretenses and lies. I purpose henceforth to
be myself--almost." A look within and a slightly derisive smile.
"Almost. I shall hesitate and trifle no longer. I shall marry your
friend Craig."
"You'll do nothing of the kind," raged Arkwright. "If you make it
necessary I'll tell him why you're marrying him."
"You may do as you like about that," replied she. "He'll probably
understand why you are trying to break off our engagement."
"You're very confident of your power over him," taunted he.
She saw again Craig's face as he was kissing her. "Very," replied she.
"You'll see. It's a mere physical attraction."
She smiled tantalizingly, her long body displayed against the
window-casing, her long, round arms bare below the elbows, her hazel
eyes and sensuous lips alluring. "You, yourself, never thought of
proposing to me until I had made myself physically attractive to you,"
said she. "Now--have I power over you, or not?"
She laughed as his color mounted, and the look she had seen in Craig's
eyes blazed out in his.
"How little physical charm you have for me," she went on. "Beside Craig
you're like an electric fan in competition with a storm-wind. Now,
Craig--" She closed her eyes and drew a long breath.
Arkwright gnawed his lip. "What a--a DEVIL you ARE!" he exclaimed.
"I wonder why it is a woman never becomes desirable to some men until
they find she's desired elsewhere," she went on reflectively. "What a
lack of initiative. What timidity. What an absence of originality. If I
had nothing else against you, Grant, I'd never forgive you for having
been so long blind to my charms--you and these other men of our set
who'll doubtless be clamorous now."
"If you'd been less anxious to please," suggested he bitterly, "and more
courageous about being your own real self, you'd not have got yourself
into this mess."
"Ah--but that wasn't my fault," replied she absently. "It was the fault
of my training. Ever since I can remember I've been taught to be on my
guard, lest the men shouldn't like me." In her new freedom she looked
back tranquilly upon the struggle she was at last emancipated from, and
philosophized about it. "What a mistake mothers make in putting worry
about getting a husband into their daughters' heads. Believe me, Grant,
that dread makes wretched what ought to be the happiest time of a girl's
life."
"Rita," he pleaded, "stop this nonsense, and say you'll marry me."
"No, thanks," said she. "I've chosen. And I'm well content."
She gave him a last tantalizing look and went out on the veranda, to go
along it to the outdoor stairway. Arkwright gazed after her through a
fierce conflict of emotions. Was she really in earnest? Could it be
possible that Josh Craig had somehow got a hold over her? "Or, is it
that she doesn't trust me, thinks I'd back down if she were to throw him
over and rely on me?" No, there was something positively for Craig in
her tone and expression. She was really intending to marry him. Grant
shuddered. "If she only realized what marrying a man of that sort
means!" he exclaimed, half aloud. "But she doesn't. Only a woman who has
been married can appreciate what sort of a hell for sensitive nerves and
refined tastes marriage can be made."
"Ah--Mr. Arkwright!"
At this interruption in a woman's voice--the voice he disliked and
dreaded above all others--he startled and turned to face old Madam
Bowker in rustling black silk, with haughty casque of gray-white hair
and ebon staff carried firmly, well forward. Grant bowed. "How d'ye do,
Mrs. Bowker?" said he with respectful deference. What he would have
thought was the impossible had come to pass. He was glad to see her.
"She'll put an end to this nonsense--this nightmare," said he to
himself.
Madam Bowker had Williams, the butler, and a maid-servant in her train.
She halted, gazed round the room; she pointed with the staff to the
floor a few feet from the window and a little back. "Place my chair
there," commanded she.
The butler and the maid hastened to move a large carved and gilded chair
to the indicated spot. Madam Bowker seated herself with much ceremony.
"Now!" said she. "We will rearrange the room. Bring that sofa from the
far corner to the other side of this window, and put the tea-table in
front of it. Put two chairs where the sofa was; arrange the other
chairs--" And she indicated the places with her staff.
While the room was still in confusion Mrs. Severence entered. "What is
it, Mamma?" she asked.
"Simply trying to make this frightful room a little less frightful."
"Don't you think the pictures should be rehung to suit the new
arrangement, ma'am?" suggested Arkwright.
Madam Bowker, suspicious of jest, looked sharply at him. He seemed
serious. "You are right," said she.
"But people will be coming in a few minutes," pleaded Roxana.
"Then to-morrow," said Madam Bowker reluctantly. "That will do,
Williams--that will do, Betty. And, Betty, you must go at once and make
yourself neat. You've had on that cap two days."
"No, indeed, ma'am!" protested Betty.
"Then it was badly done up. Roxana, how can you bear to live in such a
slovenly way?"
"Will you have tea now, Mamma?" was Roxana's diplomatic reply.
"Yes," answered the old lady.
"Tea, Mr. Arkwright?"
"Thanks, no, Mrs. Severence. I'm just going. I merely looked in to--to
congratulate Rita."
Madam Bowker clutched her staff. "To congratulate my granddaughter? Upon
what, pray?"
Arkwright simulated a look of surprise. "Upon her engagement."
"Her WHAT?" demanded the old lady, while Roxana sat holding a lump of
sugar suspended between bowl and cup.
"Her engagement to Josh Craig."
"No such thing!" declared the old lady instantly. "Really, sir, it is
disgraceful that MY granddaughter's name should be associated in ANY
connection with such a person."
Here Margaret entered the room by the French windows by which she had
left. She advanced slowly and gracefully, amid a profound silence. Just
as she reached the tea-table her grandmother said in a terrible voice:
"Margaret!"
"Yes, Grandmother," responded Margaret smoothly, without looking at her.
"Mr. Arkwright here has brought in a scandalous story about your being
engaged to that--that Josh person--the clerk in one of the departments.
Do you know him?"
"Yes, Grandma. But not very well."
Madam Bowker glanced triumphantly at Arkwright; he was gazing amazedly
at Margaret.
"You see, Grant," said Roxana, with her foolish, pleasant laugh, "there
is nothing in it."
"In what?" asked Margaret innocently, emptying the hot water from her
cup.
"In the story of your engagement, dear," said her mother.
"Oh, yes, there is," replied Margaret with a smiling lift of her brows.
"It's quite true." Then, suddenly drawing herself up, she wheeled on
Grant with a frown as terrible as her grandmother's own. "Be off!" she
said imperiously.
Arkwright literally shrank from the room. As he reached the door he saw
her shiver and heard her mutter, "Reptile!"