“in at the death” together after a run across a stiff country that
included several dangerous jumps. “You’re the only one that can keep
up with me,” he said, admiring her glowing face and star-like eyes,
her graceful, assured seat on a hunter that no one else either cared or
dared to ride.
“You mean you are the only one who can keep up with _me,_” she laughed,
preparing for what his face warned her was coming.
“No I don’t, Marian dear. I mean that we ought to go right on keeping up
with each other. You won’t say no, will you?”
Marian was liking him that day--he was looking his best. She
particularly liked his expression as he proposed to her. She had
intended to pretend to refuse him; instead her colour rose and she said:
“No--which means yes. Everybody expects it of us, Teddy. So I suppose we
mustn’t disappoint them.”
The fact that “everybody” did expect it, the fact that he was the great
“catch” in their set, with his two hundred and fifty thousand a year,
his good looks and his good character--these were her real reasons,
with the first dominant. But she did not admit it to herself then. At
twenty-four even the mercenary instinct tricks itself out in a most
deceptive romantic disguise if there is the ghost of an opportunity.
Besides, there was no reason, and no sign of an approaching reason, for
the shadow of a suspicion that life with Teddy Danvers would not be full
of all that she and her friends regarded as happiness.
But she would not marry immediately. She was tenacious of her freedom.
She was restless, dissatisfied with herself and not elated by her
prospects. She had an excellent mind, reasonable, appreciative,
ambitious. Until she “came out” she had spent much time among books; but
as she had had no capable director of her reading, she got from it
only a vague sense, that there was somewhere something in the way of
achievement which she might possibly like to attain if she knew what it
was or where to look for it. As she became settled in her place in the
routine of social life, as her horizon narrowed to the conventional
ideas of her set, this sense of possible and attractive achievement
became vaguer. But her restlessness did not diminish.
“I never saw such an ungrateful girl,” was Mrs. Carnarvon’s comment
upon one of Marian’s outbursts of almost peevish fretting. “What do you
want?”
“That’s just it,” exclaimed Marian, half-laughing. “What _do_ I want?
I look all about me and I can’t see it. Yet I know that there must be
something. I think I ought to have been a man. Sometimes I feel
like running away--away off somewhere. I feel as if I were getting
second-bests, paste substitutes for the real jewels. I feel as I did
when I was a child and demanded the moon. They gave me a little gilt
crescent and said: ‘Here is a nice little moon for baby;’ and it made me
furious.”
Mrs. Carnarvon looked irritated. “I don’t understand it. You are getting
the best of everything. Of course you can’t expect to be happy. I don’t
suppose that any one is happy. But all the solid things of life are
yours, and you can and should be comfortable and contented.”
“That’s just it,” answered Marian indignantly. “I have always been
swaddled in cotton wool. I have never been allowed really to feel. I
think it is the spirit of revolt in me. Yes, I ought to have been a man.
I’m sure that then I could have made life a little less tiresome.”
It was this dissatisfaction that postponed the announcement of the
engagement from month to month until a year had slipped away.
Instead of coming to New York, Danvers went off to Montana for a
mountain-lion hunt with two Englishmen who had been staying with him in
“The Valley.” He would join Marian for the trip South, the engagement
would be announced, and the wedding would be in May--such was the
arrangement which Marian succeeded in making. It settled everything and
at the same time it gave her a month of freedom in New York. She hinted
enough of this programme to Howard to enable him to grasp its essential
points.
“A month’s holiday,” was his comment. They were alone on the second seat
of George Browning’s coach, driving through the Park. “If we were like
those people”--he was looking at a young man and young woman, side by
side upon a Park bench, blue with cold but absorbed in themselves and
obviously ecstatic. Marian glanced at them with slightly supercilious
amusement and became so interested that she turned her head to follow
them with her eyes after the coach had passed.
“Is he kissing her?” asked Howard.
“No--not yet. But I’m sure he will as soon as we have turned the
corner.” She said nothing for a moment or two, her glance straight ahead
and upon vacancy, he admiring the curve of her cheek at the edge of its
effective framing of fur.
“But we are not----” She spoke in a low tone, regretful, pensive, almost
sad. “We are not like them.”
“Oh, yes we are. But--we fancy we are not. We’ve sold our birthright,
our freedom, our independence for--for----”
“Well--what?”
“Baubles--childish toys--vanities--shadows. Doesn’t it show what
ridiculous little creatures we human beings are that we regard the most
valueless things as of the highest value, and think least of the true
valuables. For, tell me, Lady-Whom-I-Love, what is most valuable in
the few minutes of this little journey among the stars on the good ship
Mother Earth?”
“But you would not care always as you care now? It would not, could not,
last. If we--if we were like those people on the bench back there, we’d
go on and--and spoil it all.”
“Perhaps--who can say? But in some circumstances couldn’t I make you
just as happy as--as some one else could?”
“Not if you had made me infinitely happier at one time than even you
could hope to make me all the time. At least I think not. It would
always be--be racing against a record; we both would be, wouldn’t we?”
Howard looked at her with an expression which transfigured his face and
sent the colour flaming to her cheeks. “That being the case,” he said,
“let us--let us make the record one that will not be forgotten--soon.”
During the month he saw her almost every day. She was most ingenious in
arranging these meetings. They were together afternoons and evenings.
They were often alone. Yet she was careful not to violate any
convention, always to keep, or seem to be keeping, one foot “on the
line.” Howard threw himself into his infatuation with all his power of
concentration He practically took a month’s holiday from the office.
He thought about her incessantly. He used all his skill with words in
making love to her. And she abandoned herself to an equal infatuation
with equal absorption. Neither of them spoke of the past or the future.
They lived in the present, talked of the present.
One day she spoke of herself as an orphan.
“I did not know that,” he said. “But then what do I know about you in
relation to the rest of the world? To me you are an isolated act of
creation.”
“You must tell me about yourself.” She was looking at him, surprised.
“Why, I know nothing at all about you.”
“Oh, yes, you do. You know all that there is to know--all that is
important.”
“What?” She was asking for the pleasure of hearing him say it.
“That I love you--you--all of you--all of you, with all of me.”
Her eyes answered for her lips, which only said smilingly: “No, we
haven’t time to get acquainted--at least not to-day.”
* * * * *
She was to start for Florida at ten the next morning. Mrs. Carnarvon was
going away to the opera, giving them the last evening alone. Marian had
asked this of her point-blank.
“You are an extraordinarily sensible as well as strong-willed girl,
Marian,” Mrs. Carnarvon replied.
“I can’t find it in my heart to blame you for what you’re doing. The
fact that I haven’t even hinted a protest, but have lent myself to your
little plots, shows that that young man has hypnotized me also.”
“You needn’t disturb yourself, as you know,” Marian said gaily. “I’m not
hypnotized. I shall not see Mr. Howard again until--after it’s all over.
Perhaps not then.”
He came to dinner and they were not alone until almost nine. She sat
near the open fire among the cushions heaped high upon the little sofa.
She had never been more beautiful, and apparently never in a happier
mood. They both laughed and talked as if it were the first instead of
the last day of their month. Neither spoke of the parting; each avoided
all subjects that pointed in direction of the one subject of which both
thought whenever their minds left the immediate present. As the little
clock on the mantle began to intimate in a faint, polite voice the
quarter before eleven, he said abruptly, almost brusquely:
“I feel like a coward, giving you up in this way. Yes--giving you up;
for you have a traitor in your fortress who has offered me the keys, who
offers them to me now. But I do not trust you; and I can’t trust myself.
The curse of luxury is on you, the curse of ambition on me. If we had
found each the other younger; if I had lived less alone, more in the
ordinary habit of dependence upon others; if you had been brought up
to live instead of to have all the machinery of living provided and
conducted for you--well, it might have been different.”
“You are wrong as to me, right as to yourself. But yours is not the
curse of ambition. It is the passion for freedom. It would be madness
for you, thinking as you do, even if you could--and you can’t.”
He stood up and held out his hand. She did not rise or look at him.
“Good night,” she said at last, putting her hand in his. “Of course I
am thinking I shall see you tomorrow. One does not come out of such a
dream,”--she looked up at him smiling--“all in a moment.”
“Good night,” he smiled back at her. “I shall not open ‘the fiddler’s
bill’ until--until I have to.” At the door he turned. She had risen and
was kneeling on the sofa, her elbow on its low arm, her chin upon her
hand, her eyes staring into the fire. He came toward her.
“May I kiss you?” he said.
“Yes.” Her voice was expressionless.
He bent over and just touched his lips to the back of her neck at the
edge of her hair. He thought that she trembled slightly, but her face
was set and she did not look toward him. He turned and left her. Half an
hour later she heard the bell ring--it was Mrs. Carnarvon. She wished to
see no one, so she fled through the rear door of the reception room and
up the great stairway to lock herself in her boudoir. She sank slowly
upon the lounge in front of the fire and closed her eyes. The fire died
out and the room grew cold. A warning chilliness made her rise to get
ready for bed.
“No,” she said aloud. “It isn’t ambition and it isn’t lack of love.
It’s a queer sort of cowardice; but it’s cowardice for all that. He’s
a coward or he wouldn’t have given up. But--I wonder--how am I going to
live without him? I need him--more than he needs me, I’m afraid.”
She was standing before her dressing table. On it was a picture of
Danvers--handsome, self-satisfied, healthy, unintellectual. She looked
at it, gave a little shiver, and with the end of her comb toppled it
over upon its face.
XIII.
RECKONING WITH DANVERS.
On that journey south Marian for the first time studied Danvers as a
husband in prospect.
The morning after they left New York, their private car arrived at
Savannah. At dark the night before they were rushing through a snow
storm raging in a wintry landscape. Now they were looking out upon
spring from the open windows. As soon as the train stopped, all except
Marian and Danvers left the car to walk up and down the platform.
Danvers, standing behind Marian, looked around to make sure that none of
the servants was about, then rubbed his hand caressingly and familiarly
upon her cheek.
“Did you miss me?” he asked.
Marian could not prevent her head from shrinking from his touch.
“There’s nobody about,” Danvers said, reassuringly. But he acted upon
the hint and, taking his hand away, came around and sat beside her.
“Did you miss me?” he repeated, looking at her with an expression in his
frank, manly blue eyes that made her flush at the thought of “treason”
past and to come.
“Did _you_ miss _me_?” she evaded.
“I would have returned long ago if I had not been ashamed,” he answered,
smiling. “I never thought that I should come not to care for as good
shooting as that. You almost cost me my life.”
“Yes?” Marian spoke absently. She was absorbed in her mental comparison
of the two men.
“I got away from the others and was looking at your picture. They
started up a lion and he came straight at me from behind. If he hadn’t
made a misstep in his hurry and loosened a stone, I guess he would have
got me. As it was, I got him.”
“You mean your gun got him.”
“Of course. You don’t suppose I tackled him bare-handed.”
“It might have been fairer. I don’t see how you can boast of having
killed a creature that never bothered you, that you had to go thousands
of miles out of your way to find, and that you attacked with a gun,
giving him no chance to escape.”
“What nonsense!” laughed Danvers. “I never expected to hear you say
anything like that. Who’s been putting such stuff into your head?”
Marian coloured. She did not like his tone. She resented the suggestion
of the truth that her speech was borrowed. It made her uncomfortable to
find herself thus unexpectedly on the dangerous ground.
“I suppose it must have been that newspaper fellow Mrs. Carnarvon has
taken up. She talked about him for an hour after you left us to go to
bed last night.”
“Yes, it was--was Mr. Howard.” Marian had recovered herself. “I want you
to meet him some time. You’ll like him, I’m sure.”
“I doubt it. Mrs. Carnarvon seemed not to know much about him. I suppose
he’s more or less of an adventurer.”
Marian wondered if this obvious dislike was the result of one of those
strange instincts that sometimes enable men to scent danger before any
sign of it appears.
“Perhaps he is an adventurer,” she replied. “I’m sure I don’t know. Why
should one bother to find out about a passing acquaintance? It is enough
to know that he is amusing.”
“I’m not so sure of that. He might make off with the jewels when you had
your back turned.”
As soon as she had made her jesting denial of her real lover Marian was
ashamed of herself. And Danvers’ remark, though a jest, cut her. “What
I said about a passing acquaintance was not just or true,” she said
impulsively and too warmly. “Mr. Howard is not an adventurer. I admire
and like him very much indeed. I’m proud of his friendship.”
Danvers shrugged his shoulders and looked at her suspiciously.
“You saw a good deal of this--this friend of yours?” he demanded, his
mouth straightening into a dictatorial line.
At this Marian grew haughty and her eyes flashed: “Why do you ask?” she
inquired, her tone dangerously calm.
“Because I have the right to know.” He pointed to the diamond on her
third finger.
“Oh--that is soon settled.” Marian drew off the ring and held it out to
him. “Really, Teddy, I think you ought to have waited a little longer
before insisting so fiercely on your rights.”
“Don’t be absurd, Marian.” Danvers did not take the ring but fixed his
eyes upon her face and changed his tone to friendly remonstrance. “You
know the ring doesn’t mean anything. It’s your promise that counts. And
honestly don’t you think your promise does give me the right to ask you
about your new friends when you speak of them, of one of them, in--in
such a way?”
“I don’t intend to deceive you,” she said, turning the ring around
slowly on her finger. “I didn’t know how to tell you. I suppose the only
way to speak is just to speak.”
“Do you think you are in love with this man, Marian?”
She nodded, then after a long pause, said, “Yes, Teddy, I love him.”
“But I thought----”
“And so did I, Teddy. But he came, and I--well I couldn’t help it.”
As he did not speak, she looked at him. His face was haggard and white
and in his eyes which met hers frankly there was suffering.
“It wasn’t my fault, Teddy,” Marian laid her hand on his arm, “at least,
not altogether. I might have kept away and I didn’t.”
“Oh, I don’t blame you. I blame him.”
“But it wasn’t his fault. I--I--encouraged him.”
“Did he know that we were engaged?”
“Yes,” reluctantly.
“The scoundrel! I suspected that he was rotten somewhere.”
“You are unjust to him. I have not told you properly.”
“Did he tell you that he cared for you?”
“Yes--but he didn’t try to get me to break my engagement.”
“So much the more a scoundrel, he. Tell me, Marian--come to your senses
and tell me--what in the devil did he hang about you for and make love
to you, if he didn’t want to marry you? Would an honest man, a decent
man, do that?”
Marian’s face confessed assent.
“I should think you would have seen what sort of a fellow he is. I
should think you would despise him.”
“Sometimes it seems to me that I ought to. But I always end by despising
myself--and--and--it makes no difference in the way I feel toward him.”
“I think I would do well to look him up and give him a horse-whipping.
But you’ll get over him, Marian. I am astonished at your cousin. How
could she let this go on? But then, she’s crazy about him too.”
Marian smiled miserably. “I’ve owned up and you ought to congratulate
yourself on so luckily getting rid of such an untrustworthy person as
I.”
“Getting rid of you?” Danvers looked at her defiantly. “Do you think I’m
going to let you go on and ruin yourself on an impulse? Not much! I hold
you to your promise. You’ll come round all right after you’ve been away
from this fellow for a few days. You’ll be amazed at yourself a week
from now.”
“You don’t understand, Teddy.” Marian wished him to see once for all
that, whatever might be the future for her and Howard, there was no
future for her and him. “Don’t make it so hard for me to tell you.”
“I don’t want to hear any more about it now, Marian. I can’t stand it--I
hardly know what I’m saying--wait a few days--let’s go on as we have
been--here they come.”
The others of the party came bustling into the car and the train
started. For the rest of the journey Danvers avoided her, keeping to the
smoking room and the game of poker there. Marian could neither read nor
watch the landscape. She did not know whether to be glad or sorry that
she had told him. She hated to think that she had inflicted pain and she
could not believe, in spite of what she had seen in his eyes, that his
feeling in the matter was more than jealousy and wounded vanity.
“He doesn’t really care for me,” she thought. “It’s his pride that is
hurt. He will flare out at me and break it off. I do hope he’ll get
angry. It will make it so much easier for me.”
Late in the afternoon she took Mrs. Carnarvon into her confidence. “I’ve
told Teddy,” she said.
“I might have known!” exclaimed her cousin. “What on earth made you do
that?”
“I don’t know--perhaps shame.”
“Shame--trash! Your life is going to be a fine turmoil if you run to
Teddy with an account of every little mild flirtation you happen
to have. Of all the imbeciles, the most imbecile is the woman who
confesses.”
“But how could I marry him when----”
“When you don’t love him?”
“No--I might have done that. I like him. But, when I love another man.”
“It does make a difference. But you ought to be able to foresee that
you’ll get over Howard in a few weeks----”
“Precisely what Teddy said.”
“Did he? I’m surprised at his having so much sense. For, if you’ll
forgive me, I don’t think Teddy will ever set New York on fire--at
least, he’s--well, he has the makings of an ideal husband. And has he
broken it off?”
“No. He wouldn’t have it.”
“Really? Well he _is_ in love. Most men in his position--able to get any
girl he wants--would have thrown up the whole business. Yes, he must be
awfully in love.”
“Do you think that?” Marian’s voice spoke distress but she felt only
satisfaction. “Oh, I hope not--that is, I’d like to think he cared a
great deal and at the same time I don’t want to hurt him.”
“Don’t fret yourself about these two men. Just go on thinking as you
please. You’ll be surprised how soon Howard will fade.” Mrs. Carnarvon
smiled satirically at some thought--perhaps a memory. “You’re a good
deal of a goose, my dear, but you are a great deal more of a woman.
That’s why I feel sure that Teddy will win.”
With such an opportunity--with the field clear and the woman
half-remorseful over her treachery, half-indignant at the man who had
shown himself so weak and spiritless--a cleverer or a less vain man than
Danvers would have triumphed easily. And for the first week he did make
progress. He acted upon the theory that Marian had been hypnotized and
that the proper treatment was to ignore her delusion and to treat her
with assiduous but not annoying consideration. He did not pose as an
injured or jealous lover. He was the friend, always at her service,
always thinking out plans for her amusement. He made no reference to
their engagement or to Howard.
Several people of their set were at the hotel and Marian was soon
drifting back into her accustomed modes of thought. The wider horizon
which she fancied Howard had shown her was growing dim and hazy. The
horizon which he had made her think narrow was beginning again to
seem the only one. This meant Danvers; but he was not acute enough to
understand her and to follow up his advantage.
One morning as he was walking up and down under the palms, waiting for
Mrs. Carnarvon and Marian, Mrs. Fortescue called him. She was a cold,
rather handsome woman. In her eyes was the expression that always
betrays the wife or the mistress who loathes the man she lives with,
enduring him only because he gives her that which she most wants--money.
She had one fixed idea--to marry her daughter “well,” that is, to money.
“Can you join us to-day, Teddy?” she asked. “We need one more man.”
“I’m waiting for Mrs. Carnarvon and Marian,” he explained.
“Oh, of course.” Mrs. Fortescue smiled. “What a nice girl she is--so
clever, so--so independent. I admired her immensely for deciding to
marry that poor, obscure young fellow. I like to see the young people
romantic.”
Danvers flushed angrily and pulled at his mustache. He tried to smile.
“We’ve teased her about it a good deal,” he said, “but she denies it.”
“I suppose they aren’t ready to announce the engagement yet,” Mrs.
Fortescue suggested. “I suppose they are waiting until he betters
his position a little. It’s never a good idea to have too long a time
between the announcement and the marriage.”
“Perhaps that is it.” Danvers tried to look indifferent but his eyes
were sullen with jealousy.
“I always rather thought that you and Marian were going to make a match
of it,” continued Mrs. Fortescue. Just then her daughter came down the
walk. She was fashionably dressed in white and blue that brought out all
the loveliness of her golden hair and violet eyes and faintly-coloured,
smooth fair skin. Danvers had not seen her since she “came out,” and was
dazzled by her radiance.
They say that every man must be a little in love with every pretty
woman he sees. And Danvers at once gave Ellen Fortescue her due. She
sat silent beside her mother, looking the personification of innocence,
purity and poetry. Her mother continued subtly to poison Danvers against
Marian, to make him feel that she had not appreciated him, that she
had trifled with him, that she had not treated him as his dignity and
importance merited. When she and Mrs. Carnarvon appeared, he joined them
tardily, after having made an arrangement with the Fortescues for the
next day.
That evening he danced several times with Ellen Fortescue and adopted
the familiar lover’s tactics--he set about making Marian jealous. He
scored the customary success. When she went to bed she lay for several
hours looking out into the moonlight, raging against the Fortescues and
against Danvers. The mere fact that a man whom she regarded as hers was
permitting himself to show marked attention to another woman would have
been sufficient. But in addition, Marian was perfectly aware of the
material advantages of this particular man. She did not want to marry
him; at least she was of that mind at the moment. But she might change
her mind. Certainly, if there was to be any breaking off, she wished
it to be of her doing. She did not fancy the idea of him departing
joyfully.