"Well, the indications point to it."
"You have a very vivid imagination, my child."
"A man doesn't call his wife a child until he's been married to her at
least ten years, and then is quarreling over her extravagances."
"You may be right," said Franklin, shortly. "You'll oblige me by ceasing
to play the fool. I'm not in a mood for it. I'll do the maid's job if
you don't want that girl in here."
He got up again and stood over her, apparently the very acme of
importunity.
Beatrix only showed her fright by a slight distention of her nostrils.
She burst out laughing. "Among your other achievements, then, you know
how to unhook a frock."
"I do," said Franklin. "Stand up, will you, please?"
"My dear Mr. Franklin," she said, drawling ever so little, "I forget
your Christian name,--isn't there something just a trifle Oriental in
your tone?"
"Very likely," said Franklin.
Beatrix sat back and put up a smiling face. "How old are you?" she
asked.
"Does that matter?"
"Oh, yes. I think so. I'm trying to piece you together like one of
those picture puzzles that children and septuagenarians play with. It
seems to me that you must have spent a certain number of years among the
black races. When you speak I seem to hear the distant hollow noise of
the tomtom and the quaint semi-religious nasal voices of half-clothed
savages who stand cowed before you. Am I right, sir?" She laughed
again, disguising her trepidation with the expertness of a finished
actress.
Franklin turned away and helped himself to a cigarette. "You said that
I could smoke."
"Of course."
With almost impish glee, Beatrix told herself that she had won the first
round.
When a man pauses to smoke it is usually a sign either that he is tired
or that he needs something to keep his nerves under control. Franklin
lit a cigarette for the latter purpose. The girl's assumption of utter
coolness made him want to take her roughly by the shoulders and shake
her as he would a naughty child. Her air of enjoyment and mischief made
him all the more determined to see the thing through to the logical end
of it. He could see that she imagined she could mark time and possibly
wear him out by the use of her wits, but that it did not occur to her
how at any moment brute force might come into the argument. Ever since
he had been old enough to go to school Franklin had resented being made
a fool of, and any boy who had had the temerity to attempt to do so paid
for it. He saw red on those occasions and could remember each one of
them in every detail. He began to see red now. Not only had this
young, wilful, uncontrolled child of wealth already made a most colossal
fool of him, but there she was, calmer than he had ever seen her,
treating him as though he were a green and callow youth, playing with
him in order to break the monotony of a dull evening. His temper grew
hotter.
"Listen!" he said. "It doesn't appear to be any use to treat you as an
ordinary girl."
"Have you only just come to that conclusion?"
"I have broken in many thoroughbreds in my time, and unless you conform
pretty quickly to the rules of the game that you have forced me to play,
I shall have to use horse-breaking methods with you. Do you want me to
put it plainer than that?"
"Before we go any further," said Beatrix, showing a most tantalizing
flash of white teeth, "don't you think you ought to tell me what your
Christian name is? I can't keep on saying 'My dear Mr. Franklin,' under
these unconventional circumstances. It's so formal." She knew well
enough, and he knew it.
"Get up!" said Franklin, thickly, keeping his hands off her with the
greatest difficulty. "Either go to your maid, or call her in. I'm
through."
With a little bow, Beatrix rose. It was perfectly evident to her that
Franklin was rapidly becoming dangerous and that at any moment he might
let himself go. What could she do? According to her family, this man
was her husband and, as such, had the right to be in her room. To
scream would only make her look ridiculous, unless she intended to give
herself away, and this she was not prepared to do under any
circumstances. She might be able to fence with Franklin a little longer
and, as a last resource, to pursue the ordinary tactics of a woman
cornered and throw herself on his mercy, with tears. Humiliation,--that
was the thing she hated most. And as she faced Franklin again, with
these things running rapidly through her mind, she felt once more a
renewed sense of admiration for his grim determination to punish. She
owned to herself with perfect frankness that this odd and neurotic fight
was between the two most spoiled children of her country. The sense of
humor which was her saving grace gave her the power to see it in the
light of something which was not without value and meaning in her life.
If she had actually to fight like a wild-cat, she intended that the
morning should find her as she was at that moment.
"Will you call Helene, then?" she said.
Franklin went across the room to the door of the maid's cubby-hole and
rapped.
Beatrix, seized with a new idea, followed Franklin and with a touch of
masterly audacity stood at his side with her hand on his arm. "Don't
you think we make a charming picture of connubial felicity?"
[Illustration: "Don't you think we make a charming picture of connubial
felicity?"]
"My God!" said Franklin.
The maid came out, and as she did so, Beatrix made a dart into her room.
She had suddenly remembered that she could escape through it into the
main part of the house, and that if she could get away and find shelter
in the arms of her fluttering companion she would be safe for that night
at any rate.
But Franklin was too quick for her. He caught her by the arm just as
she was about to win the first round.
"Oh, no, you don't," he said, and picked her up in his arms, carried her
back into the bedroom and dumped her down on a divan as though she were
a bundle of feathers.
Then he turned to the maid. "Just lock your door and bring me the key."
And when in a moment it was timidly handed to him, he added, sharply:
"Now get Mrs. Franklin ready for the night."
Beatrix stopped the girl as she padded softly over to the dressing-room.
"Wait a minute, Helene," she said, and turned towards Franklin. "This
is the hour when I drink a glass of hot milk, oh, my lord and master!
Have I your gracious permission to continue the habit to-night? If so,
will you permit my handmaiden to go below and get it for me?"
Franklin held out the key. Helene took it, and he turned on his heel.
With an eel-like movement Beatrix slipped from the divan, made a dart at
the French girl and in a quick whisper told her to go and fetch Mrs.
Lester Keene at once. Whereupon, under the firm belief that this new
manoeuvre made her top-dog, all her audacity and self-assurance
returned. With Brownie there to protect her she could really begin to
enjoy herself and make Franklin wish, not only that he had never entered
her room, but that he had never been born. She could play with him as a
cat plays with a mouse. She could make him sting and smart under her
badinage, She could make him see that he had placed himself in a
position in which he would look the most egregious idiot, and eventually
rout him from the scene with her laughter ringing in his ears. "It will
take a better man than Mr. Pelham Franklin," she told herself, "to break
me in."
She began her new tactics at once. She strolled over to where Franklin
was standing and sat on the arm of a chair. Her color had come back and
her eyes were sparkling. She looked like one of Sir Joshua Reynolds'
pictures of Lady Hamilton come to life. "Tell me," she said, "what's
your opinion of York? We may as well have a little bright conversation
while Helene has gone on her domestic errand, don't you think so?"
Franklin looked at the girl with a sort of analytical examination. He
admitted her courage and her spirit. He admitted her overwhelming
beauty and her inherited assurance. But he began to wonder whether,--in
spite of the little piteous appeal which had come involuntarily from her
lips when she found herself alone with him,--there was not a streak of
callousness in her nature which put her well up among some of the almost
degenerate young women of her class.
"I only know York by sight," he said. "That was enough."
"Don't you think you take things too seriously? His fur coat, Italian
moustache and flamboyant tie do put one off, of course, but he's one of
the comics of the city and, as such, well worth knowing. I wonder you
haven't dropped in to see him sometimes. He's conveniently near to
you,--luckily for me." She gave a low laugh as she added the last
words.
Franklin stood with his back against one of the carved bed-posts, with
his hands in his pockets. In various parts of the world he had met all
sorts and conditions of women, from the red-cheeked coquettish daughters
of mountaineers to the glum squaws of dilapidated Indian chiefs. Also
he had come in contact with the rather cold and quizzical society women
of England, the great ladies of Paris who have made immobility a fine
art, the notorious cocottes of all nationalities and many of those
unconsciously pathetic but perfectly happy little women who, as artists'
models of the Latin quarter, live with exquisite though temporary
morality in an atmosphere in which morals are as scarce as carpets and
as little needed. His acquaintanceship with all these various types had
been casual, but he had been interested enough in them to study their
characteristics, their mannerisms and their tricks. But here, in
Beatrix Vanderdyke, was a girl who didn't come under any of the six
types of women. She didn't conform in any one way either to his
preconceived ideas of herself. Even his brutality hadn't disturbed her.
She was still as unruffled as a white fan-tailed pigeon. Her eyes still
gleamed with mocking laughter and there was not one single sign of fear,
or even of nervousness, in her easiness and grace. His interest in her
grew with every moment of delay and her desirability became more and
more obvious with every moment that passed. He might have been inclined
to let her off had she shown any weakness. His anger might have grown
cold had she let him see anything of outraged maidenly modesty. But her
present attitude egged him on, added fuel to his fire and doubled his
desire to break her will.
"What do you propose to do to-morrow and the day after?" she asked, as
though she had been married to him for some time and wanted to make her
plans.
The question startled Franklin. "Sufficient for the night," he said.
Beatrix gave one of the tantalizing little bows which were so annoying
to her mother. "I see! Probably I shall take my estimable, but rather
irritating companion to Europe by the first possible boat. As Mrs.
Franklin, I shall be doubly welcomed in English society. The combined
and much-paragraphed wealth of our two families will make me a very
romantic figure even in England, where blood is wrongly supposed to
weigh more than money-bags. It will be very refreshing to be a free
agent at last. I wonder what sort of thrill you'll get when you see my
face in the _Sketch_ and _Tatler_ among actresses and cabinet ministers'
wives and trans-Atlantic duchesses! By this time, of course, the
epoch-making news of our alliance,--as Aunt Honoria calls it,--will have
been flashed to the far ends of the earth. What'll you do if any legal
person asks to see our marriage lines?"
The sheer impertinence of this young woman left him wordless, until,
followed by the French maid, Mrs. Lester Keene,--hastily dressed in a
discreet Jaeger dressing-gown,--fluttered tremulously in, hurried over
to the girl who was popularly supposed to be in her charge, and put her
arms dramatically around her shoulders. Then he cursed ripely beneath
his breath.
Mrs. Lester Keene was one of those numerous women whose sense of the
romantic, whose belief in the lowness of human nature and whose relish
for melodrama were the result of having lived a placid, uneventful,
incompetent and wholly protected life. Like a boy who is a constant
attendant at the movies and carries home with him a keen desire to
murder his baby brother and brain his little friends with his father's
wood-chopper, Amelia Keene had derived a distorted view of the life and
people beyond her horizon from an absolutely quenchless thirst for
sensational novels, which she drank in, firmly believing that they gave
true pictures of men, women and events.
To Beatrix, who knew this kindly, ineffectual, ordinary little woman
through and through, it was funny to see the manner in which she
"believed the worst,"--to use one of her own favorite phrases,--of what
she saw from a first quick glance. The lofty, museum-like chamber so
little suggested the bedroom of a young girl or of any woman except a
painted harridan who was accustomed to being surrounded, even in her
most intimate moments with grotesque acquaintances, that the presence of
Franklin there might have meant nothing. It was conceivable that he and
Beatrix, who had the same royal way of disdaining the laws of convention
if it suited their purpose to do so, might have arranged to meet there
in order to be out of the family eye and to discuss the chaos in which
they both stood. It was as unromantic a meeting place as the great
echoing hall of the Grand Central Station or the foyer of the
Metropolitan Opera House. But Amelia Keene, whose excitement since her
few minutes' conversation with Beatrix before dinner had churned her
into a condition almost approaching apoplexy, seized with instant
avidity at the chance of adding drama to the scene in which she had been
called upon to take a part.
"Oh, my darling! My darling!" she cried. "Thank God you sent for me!
Am I in time?"
This was altogether too much for Beatrix. She threw one look at her
unruffled reflection in the mirror and another at Franklin, the very
epitome of self-control, and gave herself up to the enjoyment of a burst
of laughter which left her utterly weak. Even Franklin, who was in no
mood for hilarity, smiled at the obvious inanity of the remark.
Mrs. Lester Keene turned from one to the other with an air of comical
indignation. _She_ saw nothing to laugh at. If there had been any fun
in all this, why had she been sent for? Her age and her position in
that house gave her the right to protect her untamable charge. The mere
fact, if such a fact could be mere, that a man was in the bedroom of
this young girl was in itself a frightful shock to all her inherited
ideas of propriety. To her, novel-fed as she was, Franklin could not be
anything but a desperate character, a menace to virtue, a man of the
world. He and Beatrix might look at it from the callous modern angle,
but she had made up her mind that she was called upon to perform a great
rescue and to stand as the representative of Chastity and Moral
Goodness,--and like all the women of her type she consciously dignified
these terms with capital letters. The only thing that she regretted was
that she had done her hair for the night and had not given herself time
to touch her face with a powder-puff.
As soon as Beatrix had recovered herself and was able to speak again,
she unlaced herself from Mrs. Keene's plump, well-meaning arms and
pushed her gently to the nearest chair. "Pull yourself together,
Brownie dear," she said. "I hope I sha'n't have to keep you out of bed
longer than a few minutes. I sent for you because you had very little
opportunity of speaking to Mr. Franklin to-day and he's in a
particularly brilliant mood. As you know, I like you to share my
pleasures, Brownie, dear." She threw a look of triumph at Franklin,
which said as plainly as spoken words, "My game, my friend!"
Franklin caught her meaning. He shot out a laugh and answered her
aloud. "Don't you believe it. I have all night at my disposal." And
after trying several chairs he sat down in one that had arms and a
slanting back, made himself completely comfortable and eyed the newcomer
with such interest that she bristled beneath his gaze.
Summing up the state of the game,--it was still in this way that she
regarded this amazing episode inconceivable except when conducted by
these two products of a social system peculiar to America,--Beatrix
didn't like the look of things. It had seemed to her that the entrance
of Mrs. Keene would reduce the position to one of such absurdity that
Franklin would be only too glad to take himself off with as much dignity
as he could muster up. His tenacity took her breath away. What sort of
a man was this who intended to stick to his point even in the face of a
witness?
Not having been endowed with as much humor as would slip through a
sugar-sifter, Mrs. Lester Keene had the faculty of jumping in where
angels fear to tread. Her love and admiration for Beatrix were the
biggest things in her life,--far bigger than her nebulous marriage and
her occasional social triumphs in suburban London. It gave her a sort
of false courage and carried her over all conventional bunkers which her
provincial up-bringing had erected between herself and the truth. There
was therefore a touch of heroism in the way in which she turned upon
Franklin. "How long have you been here?" she demanded.
"I'm not sure," said Franklin.
"Time flies when one is interested," said Beatrix, with a charming
smile.
"What right have you to be here at all?"
"Ask my wife," said Franklin, drily.
"She isn't your wife, and you know it."
"I am the only man who does," said Franklin.
"And for that reason your behavior is inexcusable and unforgivable. It
is not that of a gentleman. I am astounded that a man who bears such a
name as yours could descend to these depths."
She had never spoken to anyone like this before, not even to the little
servant who, far away in the past, had brushed her hair and mislaid her
hair-pins. She was surprised at herself. She felt, with a thrill of
curious excitement, that she was rising bravely to a great occasion.
Franklin remained patient. He felt sorry for this obviously weak woman
who was notoriously no more able to cope with Beatrix than could a
canvas screen with a fifty-mile gale. She was doing her best and he
respected her. It was not so much her fault as her misfortune that the
result was farcical. He caught a look of amusement in the eyes of his
antagonist, and waiving all feeling of enmity in a moment of sympathy,
smiled back at her. He shrugged his shoulders and said nothing, and so
Mrs. Keene, now oiled up, started off again.
"It doesn't require any imagination to know what your intentions are,"
she said, her choice of words becoming more and more high-flown and her
rather fat chin quivering under her emotion. "You seek to take
advantage of a young girl who has placed herself in a most dangerous
position. I have no words in which to say how despicable--" Her voice
broke.
Beatrix patted her shoulder. "There, there, Brownie dear! There,
there! Don't take it so much to heart. The last half-an-hour has been
full of fun and I've enjoyed it all enormously, and presently when Mr.
Franklin comes to the conclusion that after all this is the twentieth
century, he'll recover his chivalry and find some other way in which to
pay me out."
"Then all I've got to say is this," said Mrs. Lester Keene: "the sooner
he comes to that conclusion the better. You, my dear, ought to be in
bed and asleep. And after my recent attack of lumbago, I don't think
anyone has the right to keep me out of bed as late as this."
Franklin got up and held out his right arm. "I'm so sorry. Allow me to
escort you to the door," he said.
"And you intend to go to your own room?"
Beatrix held her breath. On the answer to that question everything that
she could see in the future depended.
"This is my room," said Franklin. And when the little lady drew back he
went behind her chair, put his hands gently under her elbows, lifted her
up and ran her, a perfect mass of impotent protest, to and through the
door of the maid's room, which he locked. He knew that Mrs. Keene dared
not make a fuss, and returned to face Beatrix once more, with a curious
smile, "All square at the turn," he said.
"Well played, sir," replied Beatrix, generously.
A lugubrious clock that was somewhere in that unsuitable room struck
twelve. Through the open windows came the raucous enthusiasm of the
frogs on a close-by pond. Their imitation of the mechanical noises made
by a factory in full blast was more exact than usual. A local cock
flung out his throaty challenge to other barn-yard sheiks and was
answered from near and far. A full moon in a sky that was very mosaic
of stars laid a magic light upon the earth and water.
Beatrix heaved a little sigh. She was beginning to feel tired.
Excitement was burning low, and Nature, whom she was in the habit of
ignoring with characteristic imperiousness, demanded sleep. Franklin
was not to be beaten by tricks, it seemed, or turned off by sarcasm.
She must change her tactics and see how honesty would work.
"You'll go now, won't you?" she said quietly, with an offer of
friendship that was usually irresistible.
Franklin shook his head and stood firm.
"No? Oh, I think so. There isn't any need to carry your strong man
performance any farther. You've quite convinced me that education and
all the advantages of civilization mean nothing to me. I'll take it for
granted that they mean just as little to you. In a word, I'll own
myself punished and give you the game. Will that do?"
"No," said Franklin. "That's not good enough."
Beatrix stood thoughtfully in front of him, with her hands behind her
back, drooping a little like a flower in the evening. Her new and utter
naturalness made her seem startlingly young and immature and different.
Franklin hardly recognized in this Beatrix the brilliant, sparkling,
insolent, triumphant creature who had turned the tables on her family
and claimed his help as a sportsman without one iota of consideration
for him or the future. But he refused to weaken. He realized that if he
allowed himself to drift even into the approach of sympathy she would
twist him round her little finger. She deserved no mercy. He would
give her none. She had had the temerity to place him high up among the
world's fools and she must pay the full price for the privilege.
"Perhaps you don't know," she said, "how much it costs me to retire from
any sort of contest until the result is hopelessly against me. I've
only done it once before, and that was in a tennis tournament at Palm
Beach last winter, when I went on playing, with a sprained ankle, and
fainted. I don't intend to faint now, but I'm very, very tired. Won't
you let me give up?"
Franklin shook his head again. "This is not anything like the little
games that you kill time with," he said. "I'm not Sutherland York, nor
am I one of the green youths who help you to get through monotonous
days. I have been just as spoiled as you have and this can't end until
my vanity has been healed. You know that as well as I do."
"Oh, yes," she said frankly, "I understand. If I stood in your shoes I
should feel as you do and be just as brutal in my desire for revenge.
But put yourself in mine for a minute. You can if you will. You have
imagination. The mere fact that you've been in my room for an hour and
made me undergo the worst sort of humiliation before my maid and my
companion ought to be sufficient to heal any ordinary type of vanity,
however severe the wound. Come, now. I don't ask you to be fair. I
don't deserve that. But be big and get off that awfully high horse.
What d'you say? Shall I cry quits?" She held out her hand with the
charming smile which had never failed since the time when she was the
little queen of her big nursery.
Franklin compelled himself to ignore it. "No," he said. "I'm here to
make you feel the spurs for the first time in your life, and I shall
stay."
In a flash Beatrix changed back to the personality behind which she hid
her best and undiscovered self. She threw back her head and squared her
shoulders and brought her exquisite slim young body into an attitude of
audacious challenge and ran her eyes over Franklin with an expression in
which there was contempt and amusement.
"Then you may make up your mind to a long and arduous job," she said.
"It'll take a better man than you to break me in."
"We'll see about that," he said.
She burst into a derisive laugh. Her blood was up. This man had
frightened her, amused her, interested her. He had won her admiration,
even a little of her sympathy. Now he bored her. He had stayed too
long, harped on one subject too steadily. She might consent to play at
something else, but this game was threadbare. She refused to entertain
the possibility of his attempting to carry out his threat beyond taking
possession of her room, which, in itself, was impertinent enough.
"What precisely do you imagine that you can do?" she asked, with the
very essence of scorn.
Franklin's patience had almost run out, too. "I don't _imagine_ that I
can do anything. I know exactly what I'm _going_ to do."
"Is that so? Do tell me."
"Conform in detail to the right you've given me," he said, "without any
further argument."
"Beginning how, pray?"
"By tearing that frock off your back, unless you have your maid in right
away."
"You wouldn't dare!" she said, scoffing at him.
That was the worst word she could have chosen. To dare Franklin to do a
thing was to guarantee that it was done. With the blood in his head he
laid instant hands on her and ripped the chiffon from one soft white
shoulder.
There was an inarticulate cry, a brief, breathless struggle, and the
next instant he received a blow on the face that made him see stars.
"You little tyrant!" he said, with a short laugh. "That's your spirit,
is it?"
He made for her again, angrier than he had ever been in his life. But
she darted away like a beautiful fish, and with her round shoulder
gleaming in the moonlight stood close to an open window, her breasts
rising and falling, her nostrils distended, her eyes like two great
stars, her face as white as the feathers of a white dove.
"Touch me again and I'll jump out of this window!"
"I don't believe you," he said, but remained standing.
"I swear to God I will!"
He knew that she meant it. "You'd break every bone in your body," he
said.
"That would be better than having your hands on me again."