THE EMBASSY GARDEN PARTY
Craig dined at the Secretary of State's that night, and reveled in the
marked consideration every one showed him. He knew it was not because of
his political successes, present and impending; in the esteem of that
fashionable company his success with Margaret overtopped them. And while
he was there, drinking more than was good for him and sharing in the
general self-complacence, he thought so himself. But waking up about
three in the morning, with an aching head and in the depths of the
blues, the whole business took on again its grimmest complexion. "I'll
talk it over again with Grant," he decided, and was at the Arkwright
house a few minutes after eight.
It so happened that Grant himself was wakeful that morning and had got
up about half-past seven. When Craig came he was letting his valet dress
him. He sent for Craig to come up to his dressing-room. "You can talk to
me while Walter shaves me," said Grant from the armchair before his
dressing table. He was spread out luxuriously and Josh watched the
process of shaving as if he had never seen it before. Indeed, he never
had seen a shave in such pomp and circumstance of silver and gold, of
ivory and cut glass, of essence and powder.
"That's a very ladylike performance for two men to be engaged in," said
he.
"It's damn comfortable," answered Grant lazily.
"Where did you get that thing you've got on?"
"This gown? Oh, Paris. I get all my things of that sort there. Latterly
I get my clothes there, too."
"I like that thing," said Craig, giving it a patronizing jerk of his
head. "It looks cool and clean. Linen and silk, isn't it? Only I'd
choose a more serviceable color than white. And I'd not have a pink silk
lining and collar in any circumstances."
He wandered about the room.
"Goshalimity!" he exclaimed, peering into a drawer. "You must have a
million neckties. And"--he was at the partly open door of a huge
closet--"here's a whole roomful of shirts--and another of clothes." He
wheeled abruptly upon the smiling, highly-flattered tenant of the
armchair. "Grant, how many suits have you got?"
"Blest if I know. How many, Walter?"
"I really cannot say, sir. I know 'em all, but I never counted 'em.
About seventy or eighty, I should say, not counting extra trousers."
Craig looked astounded. "And how many shirts, Walter?"
"Oh, several hundred of them, sir. Mr. Grant's most particular about his
linen."
"And here are boots and shoes and pumps and gaiters and Lord knows what
and what not--enough to stock a shoe-store. And umbrellas and
canes--Good God, man! How do you carry all that stuff round on your
mind?"
Grant laughed like a tickled infant. All this was as gratifying to his
vanity as applause to Craig's. "Walter looks after it," said he.
Craig lapsed into silence, stared moodily out of the window. The idea of
his thinking of marrying a girl of Grant's class! What a ridiculous,
loutish figure he would cut in her eyes! Why, not only did he not have
the articles necessary to a gentleman's wardrobe, he did not even know
the names of them, nor their uses! It was all very well to pretend that
these matters were petty. In a sense they were. But that sort of trifles
played a most important part in life as it was led by Margaret
Severence. She'd not think them trifles. She was probably assuming that,
while he was not quite up to the fashionable standard, still he had a
gentleman's equipment of knowledge and of toilet articles. "She'd think
me no better than a savage--and, damn it! I'm not much above the savage
state, as far as this side of life is concerned."
Grant interrupted his mournful musings with: "Now, if you'll excuse me,
I'll have my bath."
And, Walter following, he went in at a door to the right, through which
Craig had a glimpse of marble walls and floor, of various articles of
more than Roman luxury. The moments dragged away until half an hour had
passed.
"What the devil!" Josh called out. "What are you doing all this time?"
"Massage," responded Grant. "You can come in."
Craig entered the marble chamber, seated himself on a corner of the
warmed marble couch on which Grant lay luxuriating in Walter's powerful
massage. "Do you go through this thing often?" demanded he.
"Every morning--except when I'm roughing it. You ought to take massage,
Josh. It's great for the skin."
Craig saw that it was. His own skin, aside from his hands and face, was
fairly smooth and white; but it was like sandpaper, he thought, beside
this firm, rosy covering of the elegant Arkwright's elegant body. "Get
through here and send Walter away," he said harshly. "I want to talk to
you. If you don't I'll burst out before him. I can't hold in any
longer."
"Very well. That'll do, Walter," acquiesced Grant. "And please go and
bring us some breakfast. I'll finish dressing afterward."
As soon as the door closed on the valet, Craig said, "Grant, I've got
myself into a frightful mess. I want you to help me out of it."
Grant's eyes shifted. He put on his white silk pajamas, thrust his feet
into slippers, tossed the silk-lined linen robe about his broad, too
square shoulders, and led the way into the other room. Then he said: "Do
you mean Margaret Severence?"
"That's it!" exclaimed Craig, pacing the floor. "I've gone and got
myself engaged--"
"One minute," interrupted Arkwright in a voice so strange that Joshua
paused and stared at him. "I can't talk to you about that."
"Why not?"
"For many reasons. The chief one--Fact is, Josh, I've acted like a
howling skunk about you with her. I ran you down to her; tried to get
her myself."
Craig waved his hand impatiently. "You didn't succeed, did you? And
you're ashamed of it, aren't you? Well, if I wasted time going round
apologizing for all the things I'd done that I'm ashamed of I'd have no
time left to do decently. So that's out of the way. Now, help me."
"What a generous fellow you are!"
"Generous? Stuff! I need you. We're going to stay friends. You can do
what you damn please--I'll like you just the same. I may swat you if you
get in my way; but as soon as you were out of it--and that'd be mighty
soon and sudden, Grant, old boy--why, I'd be friends again. Come, tell
me how I'm to get clear of this engagement."
"I can't talk about it to you."
"Why not?"
"Because I love her."
Craig gasped: "Do you mean that?"
"I love her--as much as I'm capable of loving anybody. Didn't I tell you
so?"
"I believe you did say something of the kind," admitted Craig. "But I
was so full of my own affairs that I didn't pay much attention to it.
Why don't you jump in and marry her?"
"She happens to prefer you."
"Yes, she does," said Craig with a complacence that roiled Arkwright. "I
don't know what the poor girl sees in me, but she's just crazy about
me."
"Don't be an ass, Josh!" cried Grant in a jealous fury.
Craig laughed pleasantly. "I'm stating simple facts." Then, with abrupt
change to earnestness, "Do you suppose, if I were to break the
engagement, she'd take it seriously to heart?"
"I fancy she could live through it if you could. She probably cares no
more than you do."
"There's the worst of it. I want her, Grant. When I'm with her I can't
tolerate the idea of giving her up. But how in the mischief can I marry
HER? I'm too strong a dose for a frail, delicate little thing like her."
"She's as tall as you are. I've seen her play athletes to a standstill
at tennis."
"But she's so refined, so--"
"Oh, fudge!" muttered Arkwright. Then louder: "Didn't I tell you not to
talk to me about this business?"
"But I've got to do it," protested Craig. "You're the only one I can
talk to--without being a cad."
Arkwright looked disgusted. "You love the girl," he said bitterly, "and
she wants you. Marry her."
"But I haven't got the money."
Craig was out with the truth at last. "What would we live on? My salary
is only seventy-five hundred dollars. If I get the Attorney-Generalship
it'll be only eight thousand, and I've not got twenty thousand dollars
besides. As long as I'm in politics I can't do anything at the law. All
the clients that pay well are clients I'd not dare have anything to do
with--I may have to prosecute them. Grant, I used to think Government
salaries were too big, and I used to rave against office-holders
fattening on the people. I was crazy. How's a man to marry a LADY and
live like a GENTLEMAN on seven or eight thousand a year? It can't be
done."
"And you used to rave against living like a gentleman," thrust Grant
maliciously.
Craig reddened. "There it is!" he fairly shouted. "I'm going to the
devil. I'm sacrificing all my principles. That's what this mixing with
swell people and trying to marry a fashionable lady is doing for me!"
"You're broadening out, you mean. You're losing your taste for
tommy-rot."
"Not at all," said Craig surlily and stubbornly. "I'll tell you what I'm
going to do. I'm going to see the girl to-day and put the whole case
before her. And I want you to back me up."
"I'll do nothing of the sort," cried Grant. "How can you ask such a
thing of ME?"
"Yes, you must go with me to-day."
"I've got an engagement--garden-party at the British Embassy."
"Going there, are you?... Um!... Well, we'll see."
The breakfast came and Craig ate like a ditch-digger--his own breakfast
and most of Grant's. Grant barely touched the food, lit a cigarette, sat
regarding the full-mouthed Westerner gloomily. "What DID Margaret see in
this man?" thought Grant. "True, she doesn't know him as well as I do;
but she knows him well enough. Talk about women being refined! Why,
they've got ostrich stomachs."
"Do you know, Grant," said Craig thickly, so stuffed was his mouth, "I
think your refined women like men of my sort. I know I can't bear
anything but refined women. Now, you--you've got an ostrich stomach.
I've seen you quite pleased with women I'd not lay my finger on. Yet
most people'd say you were more sensitive than I. Instead, you're much
coarser--except about piffling, piddling, paltry non-essentials. You
strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. I shouldn't be a bit surprised if
Margaret had penetrated the fact that your coarseness is in-bred while
mine is near surface. Women have a surprising way of getting at the
bottom of things. I'm a good deal like a woman in that respect myself."
Grant thrust a cigar upon him, got him out of the room and on the way
out of the house as quickly as possible. "Insufferable egotist!" he
mumbled, by way of a parting kick. "Why do I like him? Damned if I
believe I do!"
He did not dress until late that afternoon, but lay in his rooms, very
low and miserable. When he issued forth it was to the garden-party--and
immediately he ran into Margaret and Craig, apparently lying in wait for
him. "Here he is!" exclaimed Josh, slapping him enthusiastically on the
back. "Grant, Margaret wants to talk with you. I must run along." And
before either could speak he had darted away, plowing his way rudely
through the crowd.
Margaret and Grant watched his progress--she smiling, he surly and
sneering. "Yet you like him," said Margaret.
"In a way, yes," conceded Arkwright. "He has a certain sort of
magnetism." He pulled himself up short. "This morning," said he, "I
apologized to him for my treachery; and here I am at it again."
"I don't mind," said Margaret. "It's quite harmless."
"That's it!" exclaimed Grant in gloomy triumph. "You can't care for me
because you think me harmless."
"Well, aren't you?"
"Yes," he admitted, "I couldn't give anybody--at least, not a blase
Washington society girl--anything approaching a sensation. I understand
the mystery at last."
"Do you?" said Margaret, with a queer expression in her eyes. "I wish I
did."
Grant reflected upon this, could make nothing of it. "I don't believe
you're really in love with him," he finally said.
"Was that what you told him you wished to talk to me about?"
"I didn't tell him I wanted to talk with you," protested Grant. "He
asked me to try to persuade you not to marry him."
"Well--persuade!"
"To explain how coarse he is."
"How coarse is he?"
"To dilate on the folly of your marrying a poor man with no money
prospects."
"I'm content with his prospects--and with mine through him."
"Seven or eight thousand a year? Your dresses cost much more than that."
"No matter."
"You must be in love with him!"
"Women take strange fancies."
"What's the matter, Rita? What have you in the back of your mind?"
She looked straight at him. "Nothing about YOU. Not the faintest, little
shadow of a regret." And her hazel eyes smiled mirth of the kind that is
cruelest from woman to man.
"How exasperating you are!"
"Perhaps I've caught the habit from my man."
"Rita, you don't even like me any more."
"No--candidly--I don't."
"I deserve it."
"You do. I can never trust you again."
He shrugged his shoulders; but he could not pretend that he was
indifferent. "It seems to me, if Josh forgave me you might."
"I do--forgive."
"But not even friendship?"
"Not EVEN friendship."
"You are hard."
"I am hard."
"Rita! For God's sake, don't marry that man! You don't love him--you
know you don't. At times you feel you can hardly endure him. You'll be
miserable--in every way. And I--At least I can give you material
happiness."
She smiled--a cold, enigmatic smile that made her face seem her
grandmother's own peering through a radiant mask of youth. She glanced
away, around--"Ah! there are mamma and Augusta Burke." And she left him
to join them.
He wandered out of the garden, through the thronged corridors, into the
street, knocking against people, seeing no one, not heeding the frequent
salutations. He went to the Wyandotte, to Craig's tawdry, dingy
sitting-room, its disorder now apparently beyond possibility of
righting. Craig, his coat and waistcoat off, his detachable cuffs on the
floor, was burrowing into masses of huge law-books.
"Clear out," said he curtly; "I'm busy."
Grant plumped himself into a chair. "Josh," cried he desperately, "you
must marry that girl. She's just the one for you. I love her, and her
happiness is dear to me."
Craig gave him an amused look. "However did she persuade you to come
here and say that?" he inquired.
"She didn't persuade me. She didn't mention it. All she said was that
she had wiped me off the slate even as a friend."
Craig laughed uproariously. "THAT was how she did it--eh? She's a deep
one."
"Josh," said Arkwright, "you need a wife, and she's it."
"Right you are," exclaimed Craig heartily. "I'm one of those
surplus-steam persons--have to make an ass of myself constantly,
indulging in the futility of blowing off steam. Oughtn't to do it
publicly--creates false impression. Got to have a wife--no one else but
a wife always available and bound to be discreet. Out with you. I'm too
busy to talk--even about myself."
"You will marry her?"
"Like to see anybody try to stop me!"
He pulled Arkwright from the chair, thrust him into the hall, slammed
the door. And Arkwright, in a more hopeful frame of mind, went home.
"I'll do my best to get back her respect--and my own," said he. "I've
been a dog, and she's giving me the whipping I deserve."