"Mr. Franklin ordered his car round ten minutes ago, madam, and has
driven off to New York."
New York! Then he _had_ given her away, after all, and left her in the
lurch. What on earth was she going to do now?
*XI*
It was twenty minutes to one when Franklin brought his car to a stop at
the Willow Tree Club in West Fifty-seventh Street. Malcolm usually
dropped in to this rendezvous of writing men, artists and good fellows
generally to read the papers, about midday. There was more than a chance
that he might be lunching there.
The city lay weltering under a pall of humidity. As about a great hive
the people moved like tired bees. Flags lay comatose around their posts,
striped awnings hung limply above the windows of those unhappy souls who
could not get away, and the buildings which reared their heads up to the
sky seemed to perspire.
Franklin enquired for his friend at the office, was told that he had
been in but had left half an hour before, murmured a mere second-grade
oath, and being a member of the club himself, went into the reading
room. He remembered that he needed certain things from Spaldings',
especially flies, and knowing from long experience that he had better
not trust to his memory, decided to write a brief letter, then and
there.
A pale man was sitting within easy reach of the long magazine table. He
looked up with the slightly antagonistic expression characteristic of
men in clubs who have had a room to themselves, and wondered what sort
of lucky creature the interloper was who could afford to achieve such a
superb tan in a world of work and effort.
Franklin caught his eye, registered the fact that he had never seen him
before and didn't much care if he never did again, and sat down at a
writing table behind a book-case in the corner of the room.
After a few moments he was aware of the entrance of someone else because
the pale man sang out a greeting, but he had concentrated on his list
and what was said didn't reach him. He searched his brain for
everything that he needed in the way of flies and tackle, endeavored to
make his writing more legible than it usually was and was about to
address the envelope when he caught the name of Vanderdyke. It was not
so much the mention of the name that made him prick up his ears as the
rather ribald tone in which it was said.
"I was surprised to read all that glorification in this morning's
papers," he heard. "Gossip had it that you were very much in the
running, York."
"I? Oh, no, my dear fellow. I had never entered in the matrimonial
stakes for that girl."
"Why not? Beatrix Vanderdyke was worth winning, surely? Money to burn,
beauty, youth,--what else do you want?"
"I'm not a marrying man. As they will be pretty certain to say in my
obituary notices, I am 'wedded to my art.' Besides, my dear fellow, I
have the fortunate knack of getting what I want without the consent of
the parson." There was the kind of snigger that only comes from men who
belong to the lady-killer tribe.
That, and the gross innuendo that preceded it, carried Franklin to his
feet. The lust to hit had seized him. He stalked round the book-case
into the middle of the room. His hands were clenched and he was
breathing deeply like a man who had been running. He recognized in the
tall, red-tied, flamboyant person the man with whom he had seen Beatrix
that night when he had left the apartment house with Malcolm Fraser.
"I was luckily in a position to overhear your remark," he said quietly.
"I'm Franklin. Miss Vanderdyke is my wife."
The pale man drew in his breath, and a look of excitement and pleasure
flashed into his eyes. The one thing that made him feel that he had any
blood was a fight.
Sutherland York recovered himself quickly. But for the slight
suggestion of whiteness about his mouth he seemed to be perfectly at
ease and nonchalant. "I'm glad that you're glad," he said, with a
polite smile. "Permit me to offer my congratulations upon your very
sudden and romantic marriage."
Franklin went a step or two nearer. "If you were not such a fat,
unmuscular brute," he said, slowly, and with the most careful
distinctness, "if I shouldn't be laying myself open to a charge of
cruelty to animals, I'd thrash you until you blubbered for mercy." He
put his hands in his pockets. "Even if I did, it would have very little
effect, except to send you to the dentist and the beauty doctor. Your
sort of liar is never properly cured."
He waited for a moment, obviously to give the famous artist a chance to
revenge himself in some way for the insult that he had deliberately made
as strong as he could.
And the pale man eyed York expectantly, eagerly.
But York still smiled, although the whites of his eyes took on a strange
yellow tinge. "I regret that I do not possess the gift," he said, with
a little bow, "of making suitable tu quoque to cave-men."
Whereupon Franklin burst into a laugh, turned and went out.
The pale man flung his magazine away. He resented being done out of
legitimate excitement.
"A curiously uncivilized person," said York, putting a shaky hand up to
his vivid tie. "Come to lunch, my dear fellow."
"Thanks, no; I'm lunching at the Biltmore," said the pale man, shortly.
It was when the portrait painter found himself alone that the veneer
fell from him like the silver paper from a cheap cigar. His face
swelled and grew red. "Curse these two autocrats," he cried inwardly.
"I owed her something. Now he's added to the debt. Married, are they?
By God, we'll see about that. Scandal? Ah, that's where _I_ come in."
Franklin drove home, and gave his goggles to the chauffeur.
"Keep the car here," he said. "I shall probably want her again. But
come up and get something to eat."
It was something to drink that O'Connor wanted, but he showed his
excellent teeth in appreciation of the thought and made things
ship-shape.
The over-uniformed elevator man in the hall of the apartment-house,
which couldn't have been more pompous and imposing if it had been that
of an embassy or a moving-picture palace, gave an exclamation of
surprise at the sight of Franklin. "Didn't expect to see you here,
sir," he said, with that nice touch of deferential camaraderie that is
characteristic of all elevator men in apartment houses where rents are
so prohibitive that they can boast of a waiting list.
"I didn't expect to _be_ here," said Franklin.
"No, I s'pose not. Well, is this hot enough for you, sir?"
"I don't mind it. Do you know if Mr. Fraser is in?"
"Mr. Fraser? Yes, sir. I took him up awhile ago. He went out early."
Franklin nodded, got out and rang the bell. He had forgotten his
latch-key as usual. The elevator man stood hesitating for a moment.
His smile was so beaming that instinctively Franklin knew that if his
door wasn't opened quickly he would be obliged to reply to very much
undesired congratulations. The thing was all over the earth by that
time, of course. The door opened at the psychological moment, however,
and Franklin was spared. All the same, he turned before he went in,
gave the man a nod, said, "Thanks, all the same," and exchanged a very
human smile. Good fellows, both.
The man who opened the door was unable to refrain from raising his
well-trained eyebrows, and his lips, too, shaped themselves for
felicitations. But Franklin gave him his hat and said: "Tell Mrs.
Romanes that I shall want lunch." And then let out a loud and ringing
shout of "Who's aboard?"
Malcolm Fraser, who was sitting under an electric fan in a suit of white
duck, sprang to his feet. "Good Lord!" he said to himself, "what
the----"
Franklin turned at the door. "And, Johnson," he called out, "bring me a
claret and seltzer! Sharp's the word." He glanced at the evening paper
in Fraser's hand and gave a snort. There it was. Oh, Lord, yes! In
huge letters half-way down the front page. Far bigger than would have
been given to an ordinary war, or the discovery of a genuine cure for
consumption. Photographs of bride and bridegroom, too, of course,
twined together with flourishing lines and love-knots and orange
blossoms.
Fraser shaped his lips.
"Now, look here, Malcolm," said Franklin, grimly, "if you say it,--one
word of it,--I'll heave this chair at your head. All the same, I'm
darned glad you're in, old man. I never needed your level head so much
on earth."
An anxious look came into Fraser's blue and palpably incorruptible eyes.
"Why? There's nothing wrong, is there?" he asked.
"Nothing wrong!"
But Johnson, who had dropped his usual heavy dignity in the excitement
of the moment and really moved, came in with the claret and seltzer and
Franklin cut his remark short, took the refreshing-looking drink and
gave the glass back.
With his scrupulously clean-shaven and almost clerical face wreathed in
smiles, Johnson spoke: "Will you allow me, sir, to offer you----"
Franklin jumped in quickly. "Yes, thank you, Johnson. Very much
obliged. Leave the tray here."
"Very good, sir." Johnson was hurt. He had framed what he considered
to be a fine flowing sentence. It seemed a pity that he should not have
been permitted to give it full utterance. On his way to the door he
resumed his usual iciness.
Franklin put two chairs close to the window. "Sit down, old man," he
said, "and listen to this."
*XII*
Beatrix had courage. Instead of shutting herself up in her suite of
rooms and hiding behind the excuse of a headache until her family
disclosed to her the present condition of affairs, she took her place in
the rehearsals for the pastoral, was highly entertained by the airs of
the matinee idol, and presently met her mother and father and Aunt
Honoria at luncheon, with her head as high as ever and laughter dancing
in her eyes.
Imagine her relief when she found her mother cordial, her father
affectionate and Aunt Honoria peculiarly gracious. Obviously Franklin
had not given her away. She was still the heroine of this family drama.
Up went her spirits. Optimism came back like the sun after a storm, and
living once more for the moment and leaving the immediate future on the
knees of the gods she became the life and soul of the house-party,
teasing the matinee idol, complimenting the producer, saying little
deferential things to her aunt, and playing the game of badinage with
the guests with all the finish and daring of a champion.
Reaction set in early in the afternoon. She was tired. The strain of
living over a mine began to tell. Mrs. Lester Keene's continual
questions as to where Franklin was and why he had gone to town got on
her nerves. And so, leaving Brownie on the veranda as a spy, she went
to her rooms, gave orders that she was not to be disturbed and composed
herself to sleep like a crown princess of a fictitious kingdom.
It was a little after four o'clock when Mrs. Keene fluttered in, in a
high state of excitement. She found Beatrix half-awake and half-asleep
lying on her pompous bed in the most charming dishabille, with a little
flush on her lovely face like the pink of apple blossoms.
"My dear, my dear!" said Mrs. Keene, bending over her. "Mr. Franklin
has just come back."
"Who has just come back, Brownie?"
"Mr. Franklin,--who else?" Sometimes this patient woman held that she
had every right to show a touch of exasperation.
"Oh, yes,--Franklin, the sportsman," said Beatrix. "Heigh-ho! I've been
dreaming of dancing. I invented a new fox-trot and I danced it with
Maurice for an hour. The band was perfect."
"Mr. Franklin glared at me and went up to his room. I didn't like the
expression on his face at all. Do please get up, dear. Now, please do!"
Beatrix heaved a sigh, sat up, remained thinking for several moments
with her hands clasped about her knees, and then sprang out of bed.
"Action!" she said. "Action! Call Helene, please, Brownie. I'm seized
with an insatiable curiosity to find out what's happened. Really and
truly, if I had consulted a specialist in the art of providing amusement
for blase people he couldn't possibly have devised a more wonderful
scheme than mine for making life worth living. Now, Helene, pull
yourself together. Brownie dear, ring down for a cup of tea. All hands
clear for action!"
They did so to such good purpose,--Mrs. Keene bustling herself into a
state of hysterical agitation, and Helene into breathlessness,--that
barely half-an-hour later Beatrix, in a new and delicious frock, sailed
downstairs, was told that Mr. Franklin had gone to the summer-house and
followed him, humming a little tune. She came upon him standing with
his hands thrust deep into his pockets and his eyes on the horizon.
"I knew I should find you here," she said, in a ringing voice. "Good
afternoon! How d'you do?"
Franklin turned and looked at her, and as he did so Malcolm Fraser's
outburst came back into his mind. What a charming child she must have
been before the spoiling process had had time to take its full effect!
What a high-spirited, insolent, beautiful, untamed thing she was now
with the world at her feet. "Good afternoon!" he answered, with a
curious quickening of his pulse.
"Don't you love the view here? It's wonderful. I always come and drink
it in when I feel the need of being soothed."
"That's why you've come now, I suppose," said Franklin, drily.
"No. I'm utterly unruffled and at peace with the world."
"May I say 'I don't believe you' without hurting your feelings?"
"Surely," said Beatrix. "Say anything you like. It's a free country,--a
little too free perhaps." She bent down and picked a rose-bud and put
it to her lips.
"Very good. Then I'll add this at once. I haven't wasted time since I
saw you last."
"Oh, how pleasant to think that I've had a good effect upon you," she
said, with a mischievous smile. "You have the reputation of being a
past-master in the art of wasting time."
Franklin ignored the remark, although he noticed that she had two of the
most ravishing dimples he had ever seen. "You may not know it, but this
morning I went through a pretty bad hour with your people. I didn't
actually lie to them, but I managed with a great effort not to tell them
anything that was true."
"Then I win my bet," said Beatrix.
"I don't know what you mean."
"It doesn't matter. Tell me more. You interest me."
"That's good," said Franklin, with a sort of laugh. "After that,--and I
dare say this is also news to you,--I drove to town to get advice. The
end of it all is that there's only one way in which you and I can bring
this farce to an end."
"No, no!" cried Beatrix, with mock horror at the word, "not
farce,--comedy, please."
Franklin would have given nearly all he possessed for the pleasure of
spanking that young woman until she cried for mercy. As it was, he
pitched away his cigarette, waited until the echo of her voice had died
away, and faced her up. "Now listen!" he said, sharply, "and if you are
capable of it give some consideration to me and my life and to the
gravity of my position and yours."
Beatrix waved her hand.
"We've got to go off at once," said Franklin, giving each word its full
importance,--"somewhere or other, I don't know where,--and get married."
Beatrix almost jumped out of her skin.
Franklin went on quickly. "For this reason: I saw Sutherland York this
morning at the club. It was perfectly obvious that he intends to make
you pay fully for something that you did to him. From his manner and
his infernal cheek I gathered that he has seen through the whole of this
business, and he's going to spread it about that this is a bluff. He
knows how to do this sort of thing better than most men, I judge, and it
won't be many days before we find scandal rearing its head at us.
Therefore, we must become at once what you said we were,--married. I'm
sorry, but there's no way out. That over, you will go your way and I
mine, and from the moment that we separate I will proceed to do that
disgusting thing which the laws make necessary for a man who wishes to
be divorced from his wife. You will please be good enough to make your
plans to leave here not later than to-morrow. Some other girl must take
your part in the pastoral."
[Illustration: "It won't be many days before we find scandal rearing its
head at us."]
"Impossible," said Beatrix, quietly.
"Why?"
"Simply because it is. I'm going to play that part and I'm going to
look very nice in the clothes. Also, I'm looking forward to a great
deal of fun with the matinee idol, shaved or unshaved."
Franklin whipped round upon her. "It isn't for you to say what you'll
do or not do. For your sake, as well as for mine, I must take charge of
this business, and you'll please carry out my orders."
"Orders!" She threw up her head. "That's a word that isn't and never
will be contained in my dictionary."
"You're wrong. I've just added it to that volume," he said.
Beatrix gave a big laugh and stood up to him with her chin tilted, her
eyes dancing and a look of triumph all over her lovely face. "Take
charge--you!" she cried. "Think again. The whip is in my hand now and
I shall use it. You dare not give me away. You're afraid of the
laughter that will follow you wherever you go. I think you're right.
But,--as to being your wife, not in this world, my good sir, for any
reason that you can name. I'd rather die."
And then she turned on her heel and swung away, with the roses seeming
to bend towards her as she went.
Franklin watched her, with his hands clenched and his mouth set. "By
God," he said to himself, "we'll see about that!" And he would have
added more angry words, thickly, to his mental outburst, if a new
feeling,--bewildering, painful, intoxicating,--had not welled up to his
heart. All round him, as he stood there in amazement, the air seemed to
be filled with the song of birds. Then it came to him,--the answer to
the question he had put to himself impatiently and jealously in his
apartment in New York after Malcolm Fraser's little story. "I'm going
to begin to live--I've met the woman who can make me give up freedom and
peace of mind, take me to Heaven or draw me down into Hell!"
*XIII*
That rather charming haphazard air that is characteristic of afternoon
tea in an English country house, to which young people from the tennis
courts and golf links slack in just as they are and find the hostess
presiding at a substantial table, assisted by all the younger men who
are born to carry cups and cake--they always dance and generally play
the piano--was missing from the West Terrace of the Vanderdyke mansion.
Mrs. Vanderdyke "dressed" for tea. Her costume was a very beautiful and
pompous affair, not cut low enough for dinner or for breakfast but quite
low enough for the theatre, and she wore a considerable quantity of
jewels. Brilliantly made up, she sat under the awning with her back to
the sun chatting with royal condescension and studied charm. It was one
of the best things that she did. It was also her first public
appearance of the day, most of which had been devoted to a hard, stern
and successful fight against Anno Domini.
She was surrounded by members of the house party who took themselves and
her seriously and she, and they, were under the expert attention of
several footmen. Carefully chosen for their height and gravity and
truth to type, these men wore a very distinguished livery with knee
breeches and black silk stockings, and they hovered from person to
person with a rather soothing quietude, moved by invisible machinery.
The vivacious little Mrs. Edgar Lee Reeves who talked continuously of
"my daughter Lady Bramshaw and that sweet old place in Hampshire" was
purring under the attentions of Admiral De Forrest Wontner. Although a
grandmother, an event of which she spoke as if it were rather a
malicious lie, Mrs. Reeves looked like a very young, blond, motion
picture star who tames cave-men and broncho-busters with just one quick
upward glance. Her laughter bubbled like boiling water and at odd
moments she clapped her hands and opened her blue eyes very wide and
pursed up her little red mouth. Of her tiny ankles she was very proud
and hardly ever forgot to expose them. She underlined most of her words
with gushing emphasis and everything, from a sunset to a new soap, was
"_perfectly wonderful_." Wontner and she had been engaged to be married
after a dance at Annapolis somewhere in the seventies, but while he was
at sea on his first commission, Ettie Stanton met, danced and ran away
with young E. L. Reeves of Baltimore and remained "terribly crazy" about
him to the day of his death. It was indeed a peculiarly happy marriage,
blessed with three fine manly boys and a girl who was always being
mistaken for her mother. And now the retired sea-dog, celebrated for
his early Victorian gallantry, one of the few remaining bucks in the
country and a man of wit, chivalry and golden heart, carried on a St.
Martin's summer flirtation with his former sweetheart, the very sight of
whom dispelled his accumulation of years as the sun scatters the dew.
Most people were amused at the affair and several were sympathetic.
Talking to Mrs. Vanderdyke, or rather listening to Mrs. Vanderdyke, who
either talked or went into a trance, was handsome Percy Campbell, the
man who drank a bottle of whiskey before breakfast and played golf all
day in order to drink another before going to bed. He owned three
streets in New York; he had never done anything more serious than learn
to play the violin, about which he talked to everybody. He was now
dangerously near fifty-three but since passing out of Harvard he had not
found time to practise more than a dozen times. He carried three
beautiful Strads wherever he went, however, and whenever he became
genuinely fuddled motored to the nearest town, day or night, to buy a
new stack of strings and rosin. His wife went with him as well as his
violins and received much less consideration although many more cases.
They were popular people and Campbell's shooting box in Scotland near
Cupar, Fife, from which his remote ancestors strayed, was always full.
No altogether Scot could compete with him in his devotion to the
national beverage.
Then there were Mrs. Lucas D. Osterpath, in mourning for her son who had
just married a Folly from the New Amsterdam Theatre roof; the William
Bannermans, recently remarried after a most amusing divorce; Philip
Kawbro in his inevitable blue and white striped collar and yellow
waistcoat; Regina Westerhaus, as regal as her name, but still a spinster
at the end of three seasons, and the Hon. Mrs. Claude Larpent, the
centre of attraction for those three vieux marcheurs, Major Thresher,
Roger Peek and Courtney Borner.
The young people avoided this function and got whatever refreshment they
needed from the bachelors' house.
It was to this terrace that Beatrix made her way after flinging her
triumphant refusal at Franklin. All the elation of a victor ran through
her veins. What did she care about the possibility either of being
blackmailed or shown up by Sutherland York? Why should she give the
smallest consideration to Pelham Franklin or join him in any plan to
save his name from scandal? He had said an unforgivable thing to her in
her bedroom that memorable night, the sting of which still made her
smart. She gloried in having been able to make him pay something on
account of that huge debt and with characteristic high-handedness turned
a Nelsonian eye to the black cloud that was moving up over the horizon.
She had always taken chances. It was part and parcel of her nature.
With a growing sense of exhilaration and the feeling that she was merely
at the beginning of a great adventure she took a chance again. If the
storm was fated to burst and Franklin gave her away to her parents,
well, let it burst. There would be an epoch-making family row, and
unless her wits protected her again she would be sent into the back of
beyond. That was an appalling prospect which, however, she pushed aside.
She trusted to her usual luck to carry her out of this tangle, if only
by the skin of her teeth. The great point at the moment was that she had
scored over Franklin and left him impotent. But for that parting remark
of his before he left her room she might have considered the possibility
of falling in with his plan. The humiliation of being made to obey his
orders might have been lived down, greatly as she resented humiliation.
But when it came to such a deliberate attack upon her vanity--that was
altogether different.
Miss Honoria Vanderdyke, who had been hard at work with a secretary all
the afternoon organizing a new society to look after women released from
penitentiaries, came out as Beatrix was passing. The graceful,
white-haired woman put her arm round the girl's shoulders. "I've never
seen you look so happy, dear child," she said, with an unusual touch of
tenderness.
Beatrix smiled at her and in her mind's eye saw Franklin's expression as
he stood outside the summer-house with her refusal in his face. "I have
every reason to be happy, Aunt Honoria," she answered, in a ringing
voice. "Life has great compensations."
They fell into step on their way to tea--the elder woman a little
envious of what appeared to be her niece's romantic love affair, because
her own had ended tragically and left her with a broken heart. Must a
woman necessarily break her heart before she will devote her life to the
relief of other people's sufferings? An old philosopher, who must have
been something of a misogynist, once defined woman's happiness "as that
state in which all their immediate desires were gratified, a
self-satisfaction which left them blind to the fact that other people
littered the earth." Maybe he was right.
Aunt Honoria looked rather searchingly at the beautiful girl at her side
who, alone among all the human beings that she knew, possessed the magic
carpet. "Why do you talk of compensations?" she asked. "At your age,
in your position? You puzzle me, child."
Beatrix laughed the question off. "Oh, that's a long story. One of
these fine days, when I am overmastered by a desire to confess, I'll
tell you all about it. Look, isn't mother wonderful? It's almost absurd
for me to call her by anything but her Christian name."
Aunt Honoria smiled a little dryly. "My dear," she said, "all women
could be as unnaturally young as your mother is if they gave up as much
time to it. Tell me about that very striking person who is completely
hemmed in by old men."
"Mrs. Larpent? Isn't she attractive? Isn't she exactly like one's idea
of a favorite in the Court of Louis Quinze? I don't know anything about
her yet. Wait until to-night and I will give you my impressions." She
kissed her hand to her aunt, touched her arm with an affectionate and
respectful finger and crossed the terrace to Ida Larpent's chair. "May
I join your admirers?" she asked.
With a curious smile Mrs. Larpent drew closer the chair out of which
Courtney Borner had done his best to spring. "I should like nothing so
much," she said. It might be most useful to become the friend of the
wife of the man who had stirred her calculating heart to love. Who
could tell?
In the meantime having immediately gained Mrs. Vanderdyke's permission
to ask a friend of his to dine and sleep, Franklin shut himself up in
the telephone room, asked for the number of his apartment in New York
and told Johnson to call Malcolm Fraser.
"Old man," he said, when his friend's voice came rather anxiously over
the wire, "will you do something for me? Will you get a car at once and
pack your things for dinner and sleeping and rattle down here as quick
as you can? I can't say anything now except that I need you worse than
ever.... Thanks. I knew you would. So long."
In a secret corner of his staunch heart Fraser had locked up his love
for Beatrix. He was now to be consulted again as to how to put things
right between her and his best pal. It's a queer world and full of
paradox.
*XIV*
A few minutes later Franklin was exuberantly welcomed to tea by little
Mrs. Edgar Lee Reeves. "I'm _terribly_ glad to see you," she cried.
"Come and tell me _all_ about _everything_. I was _distracted_ when I
heard that you had gone to town. Admiral, have you _ever_ seen such an
_intriguing_ tie as the boy's wearing?"
Poor little comic lady! She had much the same effect on Franklin as
that diabolical machine that drills holes in steel girders. He sat down
at her side and made ready to endure the continual tapping of her
uncontrollable tongue because he could see Beatrix with the sun on her
hair and the nape of her neck. He didn't quite know why, but he was
queerly disconcerted and annoyed to see that she was in animated
conversation with Ida Larpent and the fact that he received an
enigmatical glance through the latter lady's half-closed eyes did much
to add to this uncomfortable feeling.
"I've been talking to Mrs. Vanderdyke about your unconventional
behavior, Mr. Franklin," continued Mrs. Reeves.
"Unconventional," echoed Franklin, listening with half an ear. "In what
way?"
"Well, isn't it the usual thing for two young people to enjoy a
honeymoon after they are married, especially such young people?"
The word honeymoon came strangely to Franklin. If it had been mentioned
the day before in connection with this extraordinary business it would
have caused him to scoff inwardly and do his best to pass it over with a
forced smile. As it was, on top of his sudden realization that in
Beatrix was the woman who called him to live bigly and love to
distraction, but who had refused with utter scorn even to go through the
form of marriage with him, it acted like the sting of a knife.
But the word also gave him an idea and Mrs. Reeves' remark about having
spoken to Mrs. Vanderdyke a new plan. For some little time he remained
where he sat while the little woman babbled, going from subject to
subject in her characteristically unconcentrated way. He nodded where
he thought that a nod was due, smiled frequently and threw in a yes or
no as it seemed necessary. Finally he got up, when the Admiral drew his
old sweetheart's attention once more to himself, and went over to Aunt
Honoria.
"May I take you for a little exercise in the garden?" he asked.
"With great pleasure," she said, rising at once. "I have been trying to
catch your eye for some minutes. I want your advice."
As they passed Beatrix she had the audacity to throw at Franklin a most
connubial smile. It gave the elderly lady a thrill and very nearly
threw Franklin off his feet. He heard the contralto of Mrs. Larpent's
voice and Beatrix's ringing reply: "Yes, he's a darling." Ye gods, but
this girl must surely be a surprise to Nature herself.
Miss Vanderdyke refrained from saying a word until she was out of
earshot of the cheerful group. Then she drew up at the top of the
Italian steps that led into the geometrical gardens. "I want you to
listen to this extraordinary epistle, Pelham," she said. "It was sent to
my sister-in-law before she left her rooms this afternoon." She drew it
out of its envelope and read it in her clear, incisive voice.
"Dear Mrs. Vanderdyke,
"I have just received a telegram from a leading motion picture concern
in Los Angeles offering me very big money to leave to-night to do a
picture for them. Business before pleasure, you know, so I have just
time before making a train to New York to write these few lines. I am
sorry for the pastoral, but doubtless you will be able to find a
substitute for me, though not, I fear, with an equal sense of rommance.
Thanking you for your kindness and asuring you that I shall not require
any fee for rehearsals.
"Sinceerely,
"BRIAN YOUNG."
"Good Lord!" said Franklin. "Pretty cool piece of impertinence."
"I thought so. And look, he spells romance with two 'm's,' and assuring
with one 's.' He also makes the inappropriate word, sincerely, look
even quainter by a superfluous 'e' in the middle. Are all matinee idols
quite so illiterate, I wonder?"
"Hardly," said Franklin. "What's to be done?"
Aunt Honoria shrugged her shoulders. "Your mother-in-law and I, after
consultation with my brother, who showed even less than his usual
interest in the matter, have decided to cancel the pastoral, especially
as we have all been discussing the advisability of your taking Beatrix
away."
"For a honeymoon?" asked Franklin involuntarily.
"Exactly," Aunt Honoria gave a little laugh. "Because you two young
despots have broken the conventions by this secret marriage, I think it
follows that you should do something to stop gossip and comment by
conforming to an old custom. What do you say, my friend?"
Franklin put a curb upon his eagerness. To get Beatrix to sea on his
yacht--that was the thing. It would give him a chance, just a chance,
to win his way to Beatrix's untouched and wilful heart, and go far to
show York that his intuition and cunning reasoning were wrong.
"If you think so," he said, "I am perfectly willing to fall in with your
wishes."
"That's extremely nice of you!"
Franklin showed his excellent teeth and gave a little bow. But not
being a lady's man he failed to produce an Elizabethan compliment or one
that might have proved that there is gallantry even in these careless
days.
Aunt Honoria took the word for the deed, and Franklin's arm down the
steps. The sun was dipping into the Sound and the whole panorama of sky
was striped and splashed with red. Young voices drifted toward them
from the tennis courts and a flock of wild ducks high up in a wide V
flew rapidly above their heads. The scent of flowers rose up to them as
they walked and a very golden day slipped gently into evening.
"I don't know what Beatrix will have to say about it," said Franklin.
There was a rather dry laugh. "Oh, I had not forgotten that Beatrix,
although happily married, is a factor to be consulted."
Franklin laughed too. "No," he said, with several memories very clear
in his mind, "one could hardly forget that."
And then the tall, white-haired, dignified woman, about whom there was
an intellectual humanity very rarely met with, did an unexpected thing.
She stopped suddenly and stood in front of Franklin, eye to eye with
him. "My dear Pelham," she said, with a touch of propheticism, "you
will not find the woman in Beatrix, nor will she have discovered the
woman in herself, until that precious moment when, quite conscious of
her abdication of a mock throne, she falls in with your wishes like a
simple trusting child. When that moment comes, if ever it does, I shall
give praise to God, because the woman in Beatrix will be very sweet and
beautiful."
And then they continued on their way through the sleepy gardens.
"So shall I," said Franklin quietly.
"The fact that the pastoral will not be given will help us considerably.
Beatrix, who, by the way, has taken small part in the rehearsals, will
turn for amusement to something else. Her father and mother both desire
that she shall put an end to gossip and give our good friends no further
excuse to hold her up as the most unconventional girl of the day. That
sort of reputation so rightly belongs to young women of the stage whose
success depends far more on advertisement than talent. Where is your
yacht?"
"Lying in the river, fully commissioned."
"Oh, well, then everything is easy! Surely nothing could be more
delightful for Beatrix than to make a cruise under these romantic
circumstances. Leave it all to me, my dear boy. I'll see that you get
your wife to yourself, never fear."
Beatrix ran her arm round Aunt Honoria's waist. "Well," she said, with
the smile that she always used when it was urgently necessary to win a
heart, "am I to be allowed in this conference, or am I a back number in
the family now?" She had watched this intimate talk between Miss
Vanderdyke and Franklin with growing uneasiness. Finally, in the middle
of one of Ida Larpent's best stories, she had sprung up, made short work
of the distance between herself and them and broken into the
conversation.
"We were talking about you, my dear," said Aunt Honoria.
"No!" cried Beatrix. "Impossible!"
Franklin caught her mocking glance and dug his heels into the path.
"We were making plans for you, charming plans, honeymoon plans as a
matter of fact, and as the pastoral is cancelled you will no doubt fall
in with them with enthusiasm."
"The pastoral cancelled? Why?" The girl's voice was incredulous. "But
I've been to all the trouble of getting a special costume, nearly all
the younger people in the house-party have been chosen on purpose."
"Our friend the matinee idol has flown away to pick up a bigger seed
elsewhere."
A flush of anger colored Beatrix's face and her eyes glinted. "He said
something to me this morning about motion pictures. I thought he was
endeavoring to advertise himself. I never dreamed he would have the
impertinence to chuck _us_!"
"Well, his withdrawal simplified things, my dear, as I will tell you
later. Come to my room ten minutes before dinner and I will give you
the latest family plan. In the meantime, two's company, and I will get a
few words with my old friend, the Admiral, who is wandering about like a
lost soul." Aunt Honoria nodded and with her shoulders as square as
those of a well-drilled man, went gracefully to where the septuagenarian
lover was either chewing the cud of bitter reflection or recovering from
a long bout of exaggerated and over-emphasized commonplaces.
And then Beatrix turned sharply to Franklin. "Be good enough to tell me
what all this means," she said.
Franklin showed his teeth in his peculiar silent laugh. "Why put a pin
through Miss Vanderdyke's little surprise?"
Beatrix intended to know. Her curiosity was alight. It was so obvious
that she had been under discussion and as the family was to be dragged
in, so certain that she was going to be coerced into something totally
against her wishes. But she changed her tactics.
"Oh, look," she cried, "isn't that sail perfectly charming against the
sky?"
"Corking," said Franklin, not looking at it, but at her. By Jupiter,
how lovely, how desirable, but how amazingly perverse she was! A man
would have not lived for nothing who could break her and make her, even
if she never returned his love.
"It's a good world," she said, with a little sigh, waiting to catch
Franklin on the hop. "Sometimes I'm consumed with a longing to be right
away in the middle of the sea--to get even with things."
She caught him. It was uncanny. "The chance is yours," he said, easily
beaten. "It has been decided that we go for our honeymoon on the
_Galatea_."
She whipped around. "Oh, so that's it, is it? You've been working up a
conspiracy to get me on your yacht so that you may escape from gossip?
I see. Quite clever to enrol my family against me, but my answer to you
this afternoon holds good."
For all the love that had come upon him so suddenly, Franklin lost
patience. He put his hand on her arm and held her in a close grip.
"Let it hold good," he said. "Stand out against being my wife until you
see sense and learn that others deserve consideration besides yourself.
But conform now to your people's wishes and put York off the scent.
That's all you're required to do at the moment."
"Take your hand away," said Beatrix icily. "This is not a woman's
bedroom. I can call for help here remember."
Franklin retained his grip. He was very angry. "You fool," he said, too
completely out of control to choose his words. "Look at this thing
sanely. Come out of your house of cards and play the game like a grown
woman. The scandal that drove you into taking advantage of me will be
ten thousand times worse if York gets to work."
"That doesn't worry me," said Beatrix calmly. "I'll thank you for my
arm."
"You don't count," said Franklin. "Consideration must be given to your
people and to me."
"I'm perfectly willing and even anxious to protect my people, but"--and
she gave him two fearless eyes--"I see no reason why I should worry
about you."
"Why not? Where would you be now but for my having come to the rescue?"
Beatrix gave a most tantalizing laugh. "When you learned to play the
trumpet you were a good pupil, Mr. Franklin. Any other man would have
done as well, you know."
Franklin dropped her arm. "Good God," he said, "you beat me. I can't
compete with you. I might just as well try to drive sense into a
lunatic."
It was good, it was worth being alive to Beatrix to see this man, this
fine, strong, clean-built, square-shouldered man, who had dared to
conceive the remote possibility of humbling her for what she had done,
who had had the sublime audacity to believe that he could teach her a
lesson, standing impotent before her, self-confessedly her inferior,
when it came to wits. She showed it in her smile, in her almost bland
and child-like glee, in her frank pleasure. He had said a thing to her
that no man should ever have said to a woman and expect to be forgiven.
She would remember it as long as she lived and make him pay for it and
pay and pay again.
"Even lunatics have their sane moments," she said. "Mine come whenever I
think about you. Isn't that Malcolm Fraser on the terrace? How
delightful. Suppose we go back now, after yet another of our little
wrangles, shall we?"
She stood silhouetted against the darkening sky, with her hands behind
her back, her head held high, the very epitome of utter carelessness,
the last word in individualism, the thoughtless and selfish enjoyment of
the moment and of life generally so long as it was without
responsibility, concentration, or a call to do anything for anybody but
herself.
"Count me out, please," said Franklin. "You must get out of this
business in your own way. I shall leave here to-night and go to sea. I
wish you luck."
He bowed, turned on his heel and walked away, and as he went, he hoped
that he might never see that girl again.
*XV*
"Now, old man," said Franklin when at last he found himself with Malcolm
Fraser, "let's get out of earshot of this chattering crowd and come up
to things."
"The sooner the better," said Fraser.
They left the hall and passed the ball-room, to which everyone with a
sense of rhythm, even if with no ear for music, had been drawn by the
irresistible syncopation of a large banjo band of colored musicians.
The drummer was already committing demented acts upon a scavenger
collection of tins, boxes, and whistles. They went out into the
moonlight and through the gardens to the summer house.
The dynamic energy which radiated from Franklin did much, so far as
Fraser was concerned, to spoil the exquisite peace and lassitude of the
night. All the poet in him gave him the keys with which to open some of
the unnoticed doors to Nature's storehouses of beauty and called him to
stand very still and fill his brain and soul with the sight that met his
eyes. He had never felt prouder of his country than when he revelled in
the picture of the moon-touched Sound, magic with the reflection of a
multitude of stars, and ran his eyes along the dim outline of shore to
his right and caught the bright eyes of thousands of cheerful lights.
It seemed to him that Nature, with the proud consciousness of her genius
as an artist, had outdone herself in setting a scene for the human
comedy in which he had been cast for the second male part. Water and
moon and stars, the mystery of night, the feeling of illimitable space,
the scent of sleeping flowers, the whisper of fairies, all as old and
even older than the hills--surely this was an appropriate setting for
the working out of the ancient and inevitable drama, the ever-recurring
clash, between a man and a woman.
"Go ahead, Pel," he said. "This morning in New York you left this
strange story of yours at the point where the entrance of York into it
made you decide to marry Beatrix. I have not got the novelist's brain
so I can't for the life of me see what can have happened in the chapter
that has been begun since then."
"My dear chap," said Franklin, flinging the end of a cigarette over the
wall, "don't you know that more impossible things are done every hour in
life than ever find their way into books?"
"Yes, I know that."
"Well, the thing that I should have thought the very limit of
impossibility happened here, on this very spot, this afternoon when I
got back. Take a guess."