"But now?" he said.
She smiled absently. "It often amuses me to see how it irritates you
that you can't--crowd me. You do so firmly believe that a woman has no
right to individuality."
He was not really listening. He was absorbed in watching her slowly
take off her long gloves; as her white forearms, her small wrists, her
hands, emerged little by little, his blood burned with an exhilaration
like the sting of a sharp wind upon a healthy skin----
"Neva, will you marry me?"
So far as he could see, she had not heard. She kept on at the gloves
until they were off, were lying in her lap. She began to remove her hat
pins; her arms, bare to the elbows, were at their best in that position.
"A year ago, two years ago," he went on, "I thought we had never been
married. I know now that we have never been unmarried."
"And when did you make that interesting discovery?" inquired she, still
apparently giving her hat her attention.
"When I saw how I felt toward Raphael. You think I am jealous of him.
But it is not jealousy. I know you couldn't fall in love with a fellow
that rigs himself out like a peacock."
The delicate line of Neva's eyebrows lifted. "Boris dresses to suit
himself," said she. "I never think of it--nor, I fancy, does he."
"Besides," continued Armstrong, "you could no more fall in love with him
than you could at any other place step over the line between a nice
woman and the other kind."
"Really!"
"Yes--really!" he retorted, showing as much anger as he dared. "My
feeling about Raphael is that he has no right to hang about another
man's wife as he does. And you feel the same way."
With graceful, sure fingers she was arranging her hair where it had been
pressed down by her hat. "That is amusing," she said tranquilly. "You
must either change your idea of what 'nice woman' means or change your
idea of me. I haven't the slightest sense of having been married to
you."
"Impossible!" he maintained.
"I know why you say that--why men think that. But I assure you, my
friend, I have no more the feeling that I am married than that I am
still sick because I had a severe illness once."
His mind had been much occupied by memories of their married days; their
dead child so long, so completely forgotten by him and never thought of
as a tie between him and his wife, had suddenly become a thing of
vividness, the solemn and eternal sealing of its mother to him. Her
calm repudiation of him and his rights now seemed to him as unwomanly as
would have seemed any attempt on her part to claim him, had he not begun
to care for her.
"Don't say those things," he protested angrily. "You don't mean them,
and they sound horrible."
She looked at him satirically. "You men!" she mocked. "You men, with
your coarse, narrow ideas of us women that encourage all that is least
self-respecting in us! I do not attach the same importance to the
physical side of myself that you do. I try to flatter myself there is
more to me than merely my sex. I admit, nature intended only that. But
we are trying to improve on nature."
"I suppose you think you have made me ashamed because I am still in a
state of nature," he rejoined. "But you haven't. No matter what any man
may pretend, he will care for you in the natural way as long as you look
as you do." And his glance swept her in bold admiration. "As I said a
while ago, I'm not jealous of Raphael. I'm jealous of all men.
Sometimes I get to thinking about you--that you are somewhere--with some
man, several men--their heads full of the ideas that steam in my head
whenever I look at you--and I walk the floor and grind my teeth in
fury."
The color was in her cheeks, though her eyes were mocking. "Go on," she
said. "This is interesting."
"Yes--it must be interesting, and amusing, in view of the way I used to
act. But that was your fault. You hid yourself from me then. You
cheated me. You let me make a fool of myself, and throw away the best
there was in my life."
"You forget your career," said she. "You aren't a human being. You are
a career."
"I suppose you--a woman--would prefer an obscurity, a nobody, provided
he were a sentimental, Harry-hug-the-hearth."
"I think so," she said. "A nobody with a heart rather than the greatest
somebody on earth without one. Heart is so much the most important
thing in the world. You'll find that out some day, when you're not so
strong and self-reliant and successful."
"I have found it out," replied he. "And that is why I ask you to marry
me."
"Ask me to become an incident in your career."
"No. To become joint, equal partner in our career."
She shook her head. "You couldn't, wouldn't have a partner, male or
female--not yet. Besides it would be impossible for me to interest
myself in getting rich or taking care of riches or distributing them
among a crowd of sycophants."
"I'm not getting rich," replied he. "I'm making a good salary, and
spending it almost all. But I'm not making much, outside."
"I had heard otherwise. They tell me your sort of business is about the
best 'graft'--isn't that the word?--downtown, and that you are where you
can get as much as you care to carry away."
"Yes. I _could_."
"But you don't? I knew it!"
Her belief in his honesty made him uncomfortable. "I didn't say I was
different from the others--really different," he said hesitatingly.
That very morning he had been forced to listen to a long series of
reports on complaints of O.A.D. policy holders--how some had been
swindled by false promises of agents whom he must shield; how others had
been cheated on lapsed or surrendered policies; how, in a score of sly
ways, the "gang" in control were stealing from their wards, their
trusting and helpless victims. "I can't, and don't purpose to, deny,"
he went on to her, "that I'm part of the system of inducing some other
fellow to sow, and then reaping his harvest, or most of it. I don't put
it in my own barn, but I do help at the reaping. Oh, everything's
perfectly proper and respectable--at least, on the surface. But--well,
sometimes I get desperately sick of it all. Just now, I'm in that mood;
it brought me here to-day. There's a row on down there, and it's plot
and counterplot, move and check, all very exciting, but I--hate it!
Nobody's to blame. It's simply a system that's grown up. And if one
plays the game, why, he's got to conform to the rules."
"_If_ one plays the game."
"What's a man to do? Go back to the farm and become a slave to a
railroad company or a mortgage? We can't all be painters."
She glanced at him quickly with a sudden narrowing of the eyelids that
seemed to concentrate her gaze like a burning glass. "I hadn't thought
of that," said she.
"If you had to be either a sheep or a shearer, which would you choose?"
"Is that how it is?"
"Pretty nearly," was his gloomy reply.
A long silence, he staring at the floor, she watching him. At last she
said, "Haven't they--got--something on you--something they can use
against you?"
He startled. "Where did you hear that? What did you hear?" he
demanded, with an astonished look at her.
"I was lunching to-day with some people who know we used to be married,
but they don't know we're good friends. They supposed I'd be glad to
hear of any misfortune to you. And they said a mine was going to blow
up under you, and that you'd disappear and never be heard of again."
"You can't tell me who told you?"
"No--unless it's absolutely necessary. It has something to do with an
investigating committee. You're to be called quite suddenly and
something is to come out--something you did that will look bad--" She
came to a full stop.
His face cleared. "Oh--I know about that. I've arranged for it." His
mind was free to consider her manner. "And you assumed I was guilty?"
"I didn't know," she replied. "I was sure you were no worse than the
rest of them. If you hadn't come to-day, I'd have sent you warning."
His eyes lighted; he smiled triumphantly. "I told you!" he cried. "You
see, you still feel that we're married, that our interests are the
same."
She colored, but he could not be sure whether her irritation was against
herself or against him. "You are very confident of yourself--and of
me," said she ironically, and her eyes were laughing at him. "And this
is the man," she mocked, "who less than three brief years ago was so
eager to be rid of me!"
"Yes," he admitted, with a brave and not unsuccessful effort at
brazening out what could not be denied or explained away. "But you were
not the same person then that you are now."
"And whose fault was that?" retorted she. "You married me when I was a
mere child. You could have made of me what you pleased. Instead,
you----"
"I admit it all," he interrupted. "I married you--from a base motive,
though I can plead that I glamoured it over to myself. Still, I owed it
to myself and to you to have done my level best with and for you. And I
shirked and skulked."
She did not show the appreciation of this abjectness which he had,
perhaps unconsciously, expected. Instead, she laughed satirically, but
with entire good humor. "How clever you think yourself, Horace," said
she, "and how stupid you think me. That's a very old trick, to try to
make a crime into a virtue by confessing it."
He hung his head, convicted. "At least," he said humbly, "I love you
now. If you will give me another chance----"
"You had as good a chance as a man could ask," she reminded him, without
the anger that would have made him feel sure of her. "How you used to
exasperate me! You assumed I had neither intelligence nor feeling. You
were so selfish, so self-centered. I don't see how you can hope to be
trusted, even as a friend. You shake me off; you see me again; find I
have been somewhat improved by a stay in New York; find I am not wholly
unattractive to others. Your jealousy is roused. No, please don't
protest. You see, I understand you perfectly."
"I deserve it," he said.
"Do you think a woman would be showing even the small good sense you
concede women, if she were to trust a man whose interest in her was
based upon jealousy of another man?"
"I'm not jealous of that damned, scented foreigner, with his rings and
his jeweled canes and his hand-kissing. I know it must make your honest
American flesh creep to have him touch his lips to the back of your
hand."
Neva blazed at him. "How dare you!" she cried, rising in her wrath.
"How dare _you_ stand in my house, in my presence, and insult thus the
best friend I ever had--the only friend!"
"Friend!" sneered Armstrong. "I know all about the sort of friendship
that rake is capable of."
Neva was facing him with a look that blanched his face. "You will
withdraw those insults to Boris," she said, in that low, even voice
which is wrath's deadliest form of expression, "and you will apologize
to me, or you will leave here, never to return."
"I beg your pardon," he responded instantly. "I am ashamed of having
said those things. I--I ... It was jealousy. I love you, and I can't
bear to think of the possibility of rivalry."
"You are swift with apologies. In the future, be less swift with
impertinence and insult," she answered, showing in manner, as well, that
she was far from mollified. "As between Boris's friendship and
professions of love from a man who only a little while ago neglected and
abandoned and forgot me----"
"For God's sake, Neva," he pleaded. "I've been paying for that. And
now that you have shown me how little hope there is for me, I shall
continue to suffer. Be a little merciful!"
His agitation, where usually there was absolute self-control, convinced
and silenced her. Presently he said, "Will you be friends again--if
I'll behave myself?"
She nodded with her humorous smile and flash of the eyes. "_If_ you
behave yourself," replied she. "We were talking of--of Fosdick, was it
not?"
"Fosdick!" He made a gesture of disgust. "That name! I never hear it
or think of it except in connection with something repulsive. It's
always like a whiff from a sewer."
"And you were about to marry his daughter!" said she, with a glance of
raillery.
He reddened; anything that was past for him was so completely shut out
and forgotten that, until she reminded him, the sentimental episode with
Amy was as if it had not been. "Where did you hear that?" he asked, his
guilty eyes lowering; for he felt she must have suspected why he had
thought of marrying Amy.
"Everybody was talking about it when I came to New York."
He was silent for a moment. "Well," he finally continued, "she and I
are not even friends." Into his eyes came the steely, ruthless look.
"Within a week I'm going to destroy Josiah Fosdick." Then, in comment
on her swiftly changing expression, "I see you don't like that."
"No," she replied bluntly.
"I'm going to do a public service," said he, absolutely unconscious of
the real reason why his threat so jarred upon her. "I ought to have a
vote of thanks."
She could not tell him that it was not his condemnation of Josiah but
his merciless casting out of his friendship with Amy that revolted and
angered and saddened her. If she did tell him, he, so self-absorbed and
so bent upon his own inflexible purposes that he was quite blind to his
own brutality, would merely think her jealous. Besides, she began to
feel that her real ground for anger against him ought to be Josiah's
fate, even if her femininity made the personal reason the stronger. She
accordingly said, "You just got through telling me it was a system, and
not any one man's fault."
Armstrong dismissed that with a shrug. "I'm in his way, he's in mine.
One or the other has to go down. I'm seeing to it that it's not I."
Then, angered by her expression, and by the sense of accusing himself in
making what sounded like excuse, he cried, "Say it! You despise me!"
"It isn't a judgment," she answered; "it's a feeling."
"But you don't know what the man has done."
"One should not ask himself, What has the other man done? but, What will
my self-respect let me do?"
He ignored this. "Let me tell you," he said, with a return of the
imperious manner that was second nature to him nowadays. "This man
brought me to New York because he found I knew how to manage the agents
so that they would lure in the most suckers--that's the only word for
it. When I came, I believed the O.A.D. was a big philanthropic
institution--yes, I did, really! Of course I knew men made money out of
it. I was making money out of it, myself. But I thought that, in the
main, the object was to give people a chance to provide against old age
and death."
"Yes, I remember," she said. "You used to talk about what a grand thing
it was."
He laughed. "Well, we do give 'em _some_ return for their money--if
they aren't careless and don't give us a chance to cheat them out of
part or all of it, under the laws we've been fixing up against them.
But we never give anything like what's their due. I found I was little
more than a puller-in for a den of respectable thieves--that life
insurance is simply another of the devices of these oily rascals here in
New York--like all their big stock companies and bonding schemes and the
rest of it--a trick to get hold of money and use it for their own
benefit. Ours is the vilest trick of all, though--it seems to me. For
we play on people's heart strings, while the other swindles appeal
chiefly to cupidity." He took a magazine from the table. "Look here!"
He pointed to an illustrated advertisement. "It's the 'ad' of one of
our rivals--same business as ours. See the widow with the tears
streaming down her cheeks, and the three little children clinging to
her; see the heap of furniture on the sidewalk--that means they've
ejected her for not paying the rent. And the type says, 'This wouldn't
have happened if the father had been insured in the Universal.' Clever,
isn't it? Well, the men back of that company and those back of ours
and, worst of all, Trafford's infamous gang, all get rich by stealing
from poor old people, from widows and orphans. That is Fosdick's
business--robbing dead bodies, picking the pockets of calico mourning
dresses."
It gave him relief and a sense of doing penance, to utter these truths
about himself and his associates that had been rankling in him. As he
believed she knew nothing of business and as he thought her sex did not
reason but only felt, he assumed she would accept his own lenient view
of his personal part in the infamy, of his own deviations from the
"ideal" standards. Her expression disquieted him. "The most respectable
people in the country are in it, in some branch of it," he hastened to
explain, without admitting to himself that he was explaining. "You must
read the list of our directors."
Her silence alarmed him. He wished he had not been so frank. Recalling
his words he was appalled by their brutality; he could not deny to
himself that they stated the truth, and he wondered that he had not seen
that truth in its full repulsiveness until now. "Of course, they don't
look at it that way," he went on. "A man can get his conscience to
applaud almost anything he's making money out of--the more money, the
easier."
"Then they do these things quite openly?" said Neva, in amazement.
"Openly? Certainly not," replied Armstrong, with a slight smile at her
innocence.
"If they don't do them openly, they know just what they're about."
"No," he said, imperious and impatient. "You don't understand human
nature. You don't appreciate how men delude themselves."
His tone, its reminder of his intolerance of any independence of thought
in a woman, or in anyone around him for that matter, brought the color
to her cheeks. "A man who does wrong, but thinks he is doing right, is
not ashamed," she answered. "If he shuffles and conceals, you may be
sure he does not deceive himself, no matter how completely his pretense
deceives you."
There seemed to be no answer to this. It made ridiculous nonsense of
the familiar excuse for reputable rascality, the excuse he had heard a
thousand times, and had accepted without question. But it also somehow
seemed a home thrust through his own armor. With anger that was what he
would have called feminine in its unreasonableness, he demanded, "Then
you don't think I have the right to tear Fosdick down?"
"If you are going to tear them all down, and yourself, too," was her
answer, slowly spoken, but firm.