They mutually wished to God that they were different, of better stuff
and more worth while.
"It's for you to speak," she said.
"You were right about the feeling that something was going to happen
to-day."
She nodded and put the telegram in her pocket. It didn't seem to matter
much what the outcome of it was going to be.
"We must all go back on the _Galatea_ to-night," he went on.
"You will alter your plans for me? You will stand by me again?"
He gave a queer sort of laugh. "You didn't call me a sportsman for
nothing," he said.
*XXXIX*
New York again,--tired, hot, irritable New York. A New York in the
summer, careless of her appearance like an overworked woman with a too
large family and, in consequence, a trifle blowsy, with stringy hair and
a rather dirty skirt.
Four cars drove away from the river which lay glistening beneath an
afternoon sun.
"Well," said Beatrix, sitting back, "all we need to make the procession
really noticeable is a mounted policeman, a band and a banner."
Franklin laughed and looked over his shoulder. Following them came Mrs.
Lester Keene alone in all her glory with the smaller cases. Behind her,
apparently not on speaking terms, Helene and the valet with a collection
of hat and shoe boxes. Finally an open touring car piled high with
luggage.
"What tune would you suggest for the band?"
"There'd be a nice touch of irony in 'See the Conquering Hero Comes,'"
she said. "Don't you think so?"
"Quite nice." He congratulated himself upon becoming an excellent
actor.
"And now tell me a few things. What about the _Galatea_?"
"Oh, she'll remain in commission," said Franklin. "McLeod is going home
for a few days and the first officer will be in charge. Malcolm will
stay aboard too. I shall let him know what happens."
"Why didn't you bring him with us?"
"Don't you think he might have been in the way?"
"And where's Mrs. Larpent going?"
"Home first and then to Southampton, I believe."
"I forgot to say good-bye to her in the hurry of getting away from the
yacht," said Beatrix, hoping never to see her again.
"I thought you would," said Franklin, a little dryly. His mind went back
to the strained and uncomfortable return trip during which Beatrix and
Ida Larpent had instinctively avoided each other as much as possible. He
couldn't for the life of him make out why.
"She's very beautiful," said Beatrix, as though she were talking about a
view or a horse.
"Yes, but better than that," said Franklin. "She's a good sort."
And Beatrix changed the conversation abruptly. "Dear little Brownie! It
was very thoughtful of her to insist on riding alone."
"Probably imagined that you and I had plenty to talk about."
"Have we?"
"I suppose so, but I don't know where to begin."
And after that there was silence, for which both of them were glad.
This was the first time since leaving the one-eyed place with its frogs
and chickens that they had been alone. During the return trip on the
_Galatea_ they had both tacitly agreed that no purpose could be served
by being together more than was necessary. Beatrix had kept Malcolm at
her side consistently. She confided nothing, spoke little and pretended
to read one of Jones's novels, keeping her false brilliance for lunch
and dinner. Malcolm, glad to believe that for some unfathomable reason
his companionship was necessary, stretched himself out in a deck chair
and wrote masses of _vers libre_. When inspiration failed he
surreptitiously watched Beatrix and wondered why her eyes were nearly
always on the horizon with a wistfulness that worried him. Once or
twice it flashed across his mind that she loved his friend and was
hiding the fact because of pride, and the excitement of the thought
drove every other idea out of his head. But when he saw that her manner
to Franklin was cheery and devil-may-care and boyish,--that word seemed
right to him,--he dismissed it. "No such luck," he said to himself and
went on being quiet when he sensed that she wished for quietude and
broke into voluble conversation when it seemed to him that she silently
asked him to chatter.
He was a lazy fellow, was Malcolm Fraser, a happy-go-lucky
procrastinating young-old man, was this very dear chap, to whom the mere
passing of time counted for little so that it passed pleasantly and who
seemed to be content to absorb the color of life and revel in the
pageantry of Nature. But he had been born a poet and one fine day, when
he took himself seriously, ceased to be impressionistic and settled down
to work, his God-sent sympathy, the milk of human kindness, of which he
was full, and the exquisite imagery that he had been collecting as a bee
gathers honey, would put him among the few men whose verse fills a hard
world with music and gives back to wounded souls that gift of faith
without which life is a hollow and a useless episode.
All the way back Mrs. Larpent had kept to her own room, giving out that
she was unwell,--as indeed she was. Her mind was sick, and her body
disappointed. Franklin had told her the truth, she was obliged to own,
when he said that he loved Beatrix. There was no accounting for tastes
and it seemed to her that a man might infinitely better give his heart
like a toy to a toy-surfeited child than to this young autocrat.
And so Franklin had found companionship with Captain McLeod, the first
officer, and--it was enough to make a cat laugh--with Mrs. Lester Keene.
He spent hours trying to make the time pass a little pleasantly for the
elderly woman who was, he knew, anxious, frightened and full of
conscientious but wholly unnecessary self-reproach. They became good
friends before the yacht dropped her anchor off her usual
moorings,--even they. One of Mrs. Keene's resolutions was that, in
future, she would revise her novel-made opinion of men. That was
something to have achieved, had Franklin only known it.
Through the mostly ugly, but sometimes queerly beautiful and always
unique city they went together, Franklin and Beatrix followed by their
entourage, and it came to them both that, in returning to the house in
which they had joined forces in a manner that now appeared to them to be
inconceivable, they were completing a curious and a useless circle.
They had undergone strange feelings, placed themselves into difficult
and dangerous situations, disconnected themselves from the
irresponsibility, the right to which was theirs by inheritance, given up
an individualism that was part and parcel of their training and
environment, and all for what? To return discontented, disappointed and
dispirited to the spot from which they had set out. He loved her and
would lay his life at her feet and she loved him and would gladly be his
servant, and both, being alike and having the same want of confidence
when it came to the fundamentals, had not found it out. Fate had played
a pretty game with these two for having dared to tamper with her. And,
oddly enough, Ida Larpent was the only one of the characters in this
little comedy from which she had made her exit who had guessed what Fate
had done and now peeked through the cracks in the scenery to see how it
was going to end. And she, being a worldling, suspicious of humanity,
was not prepared to make a guess.
"Well," said Beatrix at last, gathering herself together. "We're almost
there. In for a very amusing evening, if I know my respected and
respectable family."
Franklin turned and looked at her. There was something in her voice,--a
sort of school-girl note, the note of a high spirited young thing who
had broken bounds and been discovered and faced punishment,--that made
him shoot out a laugh.
"Why laugh?" she asked. She never tolerated being laughed at.
"You'd make a rattlesnake chortle." He laughed again.
"Look out, or I _may_ hit you," she said. "It's one of the things that
makes my arm utterly irresponsible."
He made a gesture that was almost French. "You beat me," he said. "By
Jove, you beat me."
"If you'd beaten me it might have been different," she snapped back at
him.
"One doesn't beat you," said Franklin. "God made you and that's the end
of it, I find. No argument, as a man I know always says when the rain
has set in for the day or a bottle's empty. You are you, kiddie, and so
are the sun, the moon and the stars."
"You're a fool," she cried, "a fool, a fool!" And then she put her hand
quickly over her mouth. What kind of a fool would _she_ look if she
allowed herself to fling out even the beginning of what was in her mind?
"I knew that five minutes after I grinned like a Cheshire cheese and
posed before your people as the sheepish husband. All the same it was
worth it, here and there." He was damned if he'd give himself away
either.
"I think so too," she said.
The car turned and went through the great iron gates.
"I shall like the _Galatea_ all the better because you've touched her,"
he said.
She laughed because her lips insisted on trembling. "I suppose you asked
Malcolm to give you that. Don't you think one poet in the family's
enough? There's mother's machine-made hair and Aunt Honoria's perfect
nose and dear old daddy's kind but suspicious eyes. 'It's all right in
the wintertime but in the summertime it's awful.'" She sang these
pathetic words beneath her breath and waved her hand to the waiting
family with an air of superb confidence and affection.
He didn't laugh again. Metaphorically he took off all his hats to her
and laid them at her feet.
*XL*
The perfect Mrs. Vanderdyke, fresh from the manipulations of her
constant time-fighters, arranged herself on the top step of the house.
With a light, controlling touch she placed her husband on her right and
her sister-in-law on her left, so that, viewed from below, they should
be exactly framed in the elaborate doorway. She did this, as she did
everything, with a self-conscious sense of the decorative, of being like
royalty, in the public eye, of standing before an imaginary battery of
masked cameras as the chief representative of American high society.
It was a good picture, she knew, and one of which her country might well
feel proud. She was quite satisfied with her own appearance. Her head,
which had taken an hour to dress, was a work of art. She wore no hat.
After some consideration she had come to the conclusion that a hat would
spoil the intimate, home-like effect that she desired to achieve. Her
face, strangely un-lined and immobile, had the faintest touch of color.
Her chin, held high in order that there should not be the mere
suggestion of sag, certainly gave her the appearance of gargling, but
what did that matter? Her dress, which had almost broken a woman's
heart, gave her youth. Of her sister-in-law she felt proud. She added
the right note of dignity and autumnal beauty, with her white hair and
eagle nose and unconscious grace. She wished that her husband had taken
more pains with his clothes and had put up a better fight with
elderliness but, after all, he was Vanderdyke and a man.
She was pleased with the way in which Franklin helped Beatrix out of the
car and, going down two steps, she welcomed the daughter of whom she
knew absolutely nothing as though she were a rather interesting and
important relation. "How well you look, dear Beatrix," she said, in a
voice which gave the impression of having been as well massaged as her
face. She placed a light kiss on the girl's cheek. "But I've never seen
you so sunburned before," she added reproachfully.
"The simple life, Mother," said Beatrix, knowing that her satire was
wasted. She put her arms round her father's neck. "How are you, Daddy
darling? Glad to see me?"
Mr. Vanderdyke, whose to-days were just as monotonous and uninspired as
his yesterdays, was unexpectedly emotional. He held his only child
closely and kissed her several times and said, "My dear, my dear," a
little brokenly. His little girl was returning from her honeymoon. It
might mean so much in the history of the family.
And then it was Aunt Honoria's turn. With eager tenderness and pride
she gathered into her warm arms the girl she would have given so much to
own. Her broken romance lived again at that moment. Her eyes were
blurred with tears.
Not her father and not her mother gave Beatrix a sudden feeling of being
a fraud and an impostor, but this kind, sweet woman whose silence was so
eloquent. How different everything might have been if only she had been
her mother!
With what she intended to be marked cordiality Mrs. Vanderdyke gave both
her hands to Franklin, who had never been so uncomfortable in his life.
She wanted to convey to him the fact that even in the face of rumors and
anonymous letters she believed in him. "My dear Pelham," she said, "it
is kind of you to cut your honeymoon so short in deference to our
wishes."
"Not at all," replied Franklin. He pulled himself up as he was about to
add, "I'm only too delighted."
Mr. Vanderdyke seemed anxious to support his wife. "My dear fellow," he
said, "my dear fellow," and stuck.
Franklin returned his grip. "I'm awfully glad to see you, sir," he
said. "Er--what stunning weather." He caught the impish look which
Beatrix darted at him and gave it up.
"My dear lad," said Aunt Honoria, so kindly and with a smile that was so
maternal that Franklin put her hand to his lips. It was only as they
all went into the hall that he turned cold under the realization that he
was little better than a cheat among these people. All the same, with
one refreshing glance at Beatrix, whose impression of half-shy,
half-defiant young wifehood was amazingly perfect, he played the
son-in-law to the best of his ability.
Once more they were back, these two, in the place where life had taken a
sudden and astonishing twist. Months seemed to have gone by since they
had been there before.
"The Bannermans, Mrs. Gordon and Ethel, the Duc de la Faucheroucould and
Roy Stanton have been staying," said Mrs. Vanderdyke. "By a very lucky
chance we shall be alone to-night and to-morrow. We will have a family
council after dinner."
Beatrix looked at Franklin over her father's shoulder, and drew down the
corners of her mouth. No, he was not the man to make her take things
seriously.
Mr. Vanderdyke let out some of the uneasiness that he had done his best
to disguise during the welcome. "I wish I'd acted on my intuition to
telephone to my lawyer," he said petulantly. "Eventually we shall have
to take legal advice, I feel sure."
Aunt Honoria broke in. "Now, now," she said, "we agreed not to go into
this matter until our young people had settled down. It is far too
serious to take up in a desultory manner. Personally, my opinion is
that as soon as Pelham has all the facts and has dined well and is
smoking a cigar he will bring his practicality to bear and possibly do
away with any recourse to the law. I have great confidence in Pelham,"
and she smiled at him in a way that made him cold again.
And then Mrs. Lester Keene came in and was greeted graciously by the two
ladies.
Beatrix went across casually to Franklin. "What on earth has happened?"
she asked, in an anxious whisper.
"I wish I knew," he whispered back.
"Do you feel curious? I do."
He nodded gravely. Beatrix and scandal,--they were never meant to run
in double harness.
And then the imp of mischief that was never very far away from Beatrix
took its old accustomed place on her shoulder, and her eyes began to
dance. "I'm not surprised at my family's confidence in you," she said.
"There's something in your appearance that could win you orders even for
an encyclopedia. What fills me with surprise and amusement is the
confidence they seem to feel in _me_. That's quite new."
"Not so loud," he said.
She sent out a ripple of laughter. "Well, you certainly are practical.
That, I know."
"Do you?"
"Don't I?" She looked straight into his eyes and her laughter ceased.
Mrs. Vanderdyke joined them. "You have twenty minutes for a little rest
before you dress for dinner, Beatrix. You must be tired after your hot
drive."
"No, Mother, thanks," said Beatrix airily. "Pelham talked all the way
here and was so merry and bright that the journey seemed short." But
she went upstairs to the suite that he would never forget, and her
little touch of sarcasm found its mark.
"Come into my room," said Mr. Vanderdyke, "and we'll smoke a cigarette."
Franklin followed him.
It was a curious room in which he presently found himself,--a room which
gave a pathetic keynote to the character and life of the man who spent
so many hours in it. Very large and lofty, it was crammed with ideas at
which he appeared to have made a beginning, dabbled in and wearied of.
There were leather-bound manuscript books in dozens, several of which
had labels on the back,--"Notes on Old China," "Impressions of European
Labor Conditions," "Butterflies," "Songs and Sonnets," "A Life of
Russell Vanderdyke, Book I.," "Trout Streams," "The Improvement of
Factories,"--it would have taken an hour to examine them all. The note
of the dilettante was everywhere,--in the pieces of rare silver that
were mixed with old pottery, Japanese lacquer, Jacobean chests, Oriental
curios, ancient Bibles, first editions, faded prints, modern etchings,
and one or two appalling examples of so-called Cubist work which
appealed to Franklin merely as pervertism or the attempt of men who had
never been taught to paint to illustrate delirium tremens. It was the
room of a man of confirmed irresolution, of an inherited lack of grip,
of an intellect that was as unconcentrated as a flight of pigeons. It
showed a scattering of interest that could only belong to some-one who
had never felt the splendid urge of achieving an object in the face of
dire necessity. It provided the most unobservant eye with a complete
history of an ambitious but vacillating life. It conveyed to workers the
impression of many acres of dead-level ground long ago carefully staked
out as a garden city, with neat boards indicating here an avenue, here a
public library, here a country club, here a huge hotel, here a railroad
station, all very neat and well weeded but without the fulfilment of one
single promise.
Franklin didn't get the feeling of the room at once. It seemed to him to
be rather intimate though somewhat uninhabitable. It was only while Mr.
Vanderdyke was talking in his vague impersonal way that the pathetic
incompleteness of it all came to him and hit him hard. Good Heavens,
what if he, too, dwindled, for the same reason, into a similar dabbler!
What if he, too, scattered away his life with the same kind of
uselessness!
He was glad to get away to change and to think. He was pretty certain
that the time was near, whatever might be the way out of the maze that
he was in with Beatrix, for him to do a good deal of thinking. He was
pretty certain that when he left the Vanderdyke house alone,--he
couldn't see how else he could leave it,--the effect that Beatrix had
had upon him would impel him to hitch himself on to life in some other
capacity than that of a mere observer. For her sake, in her honor, he
would dedicate his life to a job that should relieve the pressure in
some way on the toilers of the earth and help things forward.
When he returned to the hall he found the punctual, punctilious family
ready and waiting to go into dinner. Beatrix followed him down almost
immediately, wearing a simple and charming frock. Aunt Honoria met her
and brought her into the group. There was something about the girl, a
new dignity, a riper air, an uncharacteristic quietude that was caught
at once by the three Vanderdykes and especially by Aunt Honoria. Her
words to Franklin in the garden before the honeymoon came back into her
mind and with an emotion that she was unable to suppress she said, "This
is a good night in the history of the family. Our little girl has found
herself as we have prayed that she would. I speak for my brother and
sister when I say that we are grateful to you, Pelham." She bowed to
him with old-fashioned grace.
Mr. Vanderdyke, obviously disconcerted, murmured approval, and Mrs.
Vanderdyke smiled. She was a little resentful of the way in which Aunt
Honoria always took the lead but this was outweighed by her immense
relief at the fact that Beatrix was happy and disposed of.
Franklin was the most uncomfortable man on earth.
And then Beatrix did a thing that once more made him wish that they were
back in the stone age. "Let me speak for myself," she said quietly.
"Pelham, I am very grateful, too," and put her hand on his shoulder,
stood on tiptoes and kissed him.
He was wrong, once more, when he told himself, angrily, that she was
deliberately fooling, getting a thrill of amusement at his expense. If
he had known her as she was now, he would have realized that she had
seized the public moment to do something she would not have dared to do
privately, that she was thanking him for what he had done for her and
saying "Good-bye." She had made up her mind to tell the truth at the
family council that night.
*XLI*
While Helene had been brushing her hair and getting her ready for dinner
Beatrix had gone in for honest thinking too.
She came at once to the conclusion that from every point of view the
sham that she had created in that wild moment of self-preservation and
devil-may-care must be smashed. Scandal had driven her into it. Scandal
was following at her heels and in a blaze of scandal the episode must
end. The futile punishment, which, as a girl, she had been so keen to
dodge mattered nothing to her now as a woman. Let Aunt Honoria drag her
into the back of beyond. She would go gladly. In silent lonely places
she could sit in dreams and live over again those wonderful moments
during which she had burst into womanhood. What did it matter now if
she missed a season, many seasons in New York? She had looked into the
eyes of life. She had no longer any desire to take her part among the
silly sheep that ran about in droves. She was sorry for the pain and
humiliation that she must cause her family to suffer. There seemed to
be no way to prevent that. To enter into Franklin's scheme of marriage
only meant a postponement of scandal. Divorce would provide the
gossipers with an even more succulent morsel than the one that was
waiting for them. Out of this smash, bad as it must be, she would at
any rate preserve her pride and set Franklin free.
There were three things that hit her hard as she sat in front of her
looking glass that evening. Her failure to make Franklin eat the words
that he had flung at her vanity as he stood at the foot of her bed. Her
failure to turn the sex attraction that she had deliberately stirred in
him into love. Her failure to compete with such a woman as Ida Larpent.
In fact it was the word failure that seemed to her to be written all
over the episode into which she had entered without a thought for anyone
except herself,--and it was the one word which had, till then, never
been allowed to have a place in her dictionary.
It was a bad hour that she went through as she summed things up, and she
came out of it startled at the knowledge that she, even she, was
required to pay for her mistakes to the uttermost cent.
Well, she _would_ pay and pay smiling. She would prove to Franklin that
he was right when he said that she had courage.
Dinner was a rather pompous, long drawn out affair, watched, as usual,
by several of Romney's rosy-cheeked men, a beautiful Gainsborough woman,
and a Reynolds' legal luminary, cynical beneath a heavy wig.
Conversation was conducted, rather than allowed to run easily, through
the superfluous courses. The butler, with the air of a bishop, held an
aloof place in the background and silent-footed men-servants hovered
like hawks over the shoulders of the diners.
To Mr. Vanderdyke dinner was an institution, the land-mark in his vacant
days. He trained for it with assiduous care and self-restraint, enjoyed
it with his characteristic halfheartedness and took his punishment and
his tabloids as a matter of course. To Mrs. Vanderdyke it was a severe
temptation which, for the most part, she resisted with great pluck. The
smallest increase of weight meant hours of treatment. Aunt Honoria just
ate and let it go at that and so did Franklin, whose appetite was the
envy and wonder of many of his less healthy friends. Beatrix pecked a
little and said a little but smiled at everybody. She was keeping up
the bluff until her cards were called.
How different and how wonderful it would all have been if instead of
acting parts she and Franklin were playing them in reality!
After the ladies had left Franklin smoked a cigarette with Mr.
Vanderdyke and did his best to show interest in his host's rather
petulant criticisms of the ways and methods of the Government. He was
very glad to follow him into the drawing-room in whose stiff immensity
the ladies were almost lost.
He went straight up to Mrs. Vanderdyke, who was leaning on a Tudor
mantelpiece, torn from Little Claverings in Essex. She always stood for
twenty minutes after dinner. It was part of her regime. "I'm very keen
to hear what there is to be told, Mrs. Vanderdyke," he said. "May we
get to it now?"
"Isn't it a little early yet?" Mrs. Vanderdyke turned to Aunt Honoria,
who was talking to Beatrix. The energy of this tall, tanned man was a
little disconcerting. "Will you----"
"I have everything here," said Aunt Honoria, "and I agree with Pelham
that there is no time like the present. I have given orders that we are
on no account to be disturbed. You will sit down, won't you?"
Mrs. Vanderdyke did so, having glanced at the clock. Mr. Vanderdyke lay
back in a low chair with the fingers of his long, thin hands together.
He would far rather have been in the hands of a dentist than in that
room at that time. Franklin sat bolt upright next to Beatrix, who had
her metaphorical bomb all ready to throw into the middle of the group.
Only to these two did the underlying drama of this curious meeting
appeal fully.
And then Aunt Honoria opened the proceedings quietly, calmly and with
all the dignity of which she was a mistress. "I have here," she said,
"a bundle of anonymous letters and a cutting from a scurrilous paper.
The first letter came addressed to me. Others are written to my brother
and sister, and there are half a dozen which were sent to intimate
friends of ours and placed in my hands by them. They are all in the
same handwriting, which looks to me as though it were disguised. They
began to arrive the morning after you left on your honeymoon, my dear,
and have come every morning since. They take the form of a series of
questions. This is the first one. "Have you taken the trouble to
discover at which Church or registry your niece Beatrix and Pelham
Franklin were married?" And then they run in this order. You will see
that I have copied them out. "What will you do when you find that your
daughter, who imagines herself to belong to the salt of the earth, is a
common wanton and liar? What will you do to repair the damage that she
has done to your prestige in society by humbugging the papers into
printing the story of a marriage that never took place? How is it that
sophisticated people of your type have accepted a man as a son-in-law
without evidence of his legal right to call himself so? Do you think
you set a good example to all the people who copy your ways and manners
by allowing your daughter to go on the loose with any man she takes a
fancy to? Have you a grudge against society in which you assume a
leading position and have you made yourselves party to an unmoral and
disgraceful transaction in order to hold it up to the ridicule of the
world? Would you speak to a young girl, however well-born and wealthy,
who to hide a love affair with one man bluffed a marriage with a mere
acquaintance? What decent man will marry your daughter after she has
been 'honeymooning' with another? Don't you know that truth will out
and that already tongues are busy with the names of Vanderdyke and
Franklin? Aren't you sufficiently worldly to have learned that people
who condone are classed with people who commit? Why not, if you have
been as gullible as press and public, set things right and make what
reparation you can to the members of your class? Do you want the name
of Beatrix Vanderdyke to be placed among those of notorious chorus
girls? Why not at once institute a search among the registrations of
marriages and force the guilty couple, now basking in the light of a
mock honeymoon, to confession and penitence?"
"Don't go on, don't go on," cried Mr. Vanderdyke. "I can't stand it, I
tell you. I can't stand it!" His voice was almost hysterical and his
gesture almost feminine.
"These dreadful questions," said Mrs. Vanderdyke, in a low voice, "give
me mental sickness."
Franklin sat quite still, with his hands clenched.
Beatrix looked as though she had been turned to stone. Had all these
hideous things grown out of one impetuous moment?
"I will gladly pass over the rest," said Aunt Honoria, "and come to the
cutting from the paper that was sent to me three days ago. This," she
added in a voice that became suddenly sharp with anger, "calls for
immediate action, Pelham, and is the reason of your being here
to-night."
"Please read it," said Franklin.
Aunt Honoria read, holding the clipping as though it held contamination.
It was written in the usual smart manner with the usual lascivious
snigger. "There is a very precious high life scandal in the offing, so
to speak,--one which will, it is said on the best authority, flutter the
dovecotes of all our Best Families. Much satisfaction was recently
expressed, and gallons of ink expended in fulsome congratulation, upon
the marriage of a well-known amateur yachtsman to the beautiful and
adventurous daughter of a multi-millionaire. No recent royal marriage
was more widely commented upon. It is rumored, however, that the
high-spirited young lady who, even as a debutante had shown a certain
lofty disregard for the conventions, is now conducting an ultra-modern
experiment with the good-looking amateur yachtsman by honeymooning with
him before the legal prescription has been made out, with the view,
perhaps, to ultimate marriage. This sort of thing has been perpetrated,
it is true, though without any attempt to mislead the public, by persons
of artistic temperament and no social position to lose, but the question
is being very generally asked as to how this peculiar proceeding will
presently be viewed by American Society, which still clings to one or
two hard and fast standards. I shall certainly watch the outcome with
immense curiosity and shall be especially interested to see how soon the
matrons on and near Fifth Avenue will show how the wind is blowing in
their treatment of a certain member of the girl's family who has
constituted herself the guide and mentor of her set for many years."
Although he had read this cunningly offensive thing over many times, Mr.
Vanderdyke squirmed in his chair and put one hand over his eyes. His
fastidious and beautiful wife, usually too self-centered to be concerned
with the troubles of other people, gave him a glance of very genuine
sympathy. It had been the fetish of them both to regard convention as a
sort of religion, and she knew, unable herself to translate her
indignation and disgust into words, how deeply her husband took this
utterly undeserved scurrility to heart. Like him and like Aunt Honoria
she had no suspicion of there being anything in the least out of order
in the marriage.
Beatrix still sat as though she had been turned to stone.
But Franklin got up. This poisonous collection of sniggering words made
him see red. Oh, God, for five minutes with that fat brute York! He
walked up and down, watched with grim satisfaction by the family,
especially by Mr. Vanderdyke, who poked himself up on his elbow and with
a flush on his face and an eager light in his pale eyes saw in that
tall, wiry, sun-burned man all the symptoms of an overwhelming desire
for the sort of physical vengeance in which he himself would never be
able to indulge.
Franklin got himself under control, stood in front of the fireplace and
asked himself what he was going to do. The moment had come when he
could get free of the girl who tortured his lonely hours and compelled
his adoration and was further away than Heaven. In a few words he could
give her people, who deserved most of the blame, the story of the result
of spoiling. Should he seize it? Should he cut loose from an empty tie
and become his own master again? Once, at school, he had been summoned
before the Head Master to give evidence against Malcolm Fraser, who had
broken bounds. He had lied through his teeth to save his friend. Under
the eyes of these people the feeling came back to him and pervaded him
like a perfume that he was standing again in the sanctum of that stern,
old task-master. Not for a friend this time, not for a man who could
take his punishment and grin, but for a girl who would be stained in the
sight of unbelievers, the girl of all living girls whom he loved beyond
words and whom, under any circumstances, he must hold, he would lie
himself black in the face to defend. That was settled. It was almost
laughable to have supposed that there had been any other solution. He
turned. There was a curious smile in his eyes. "What is your
proposition?" he asked.
Aunt Honoria took a sheet of note paper from the little table at her
elbow. There was something about this man Franklin that reminded her of
the one who had taken her heart with him beyond the outpost of eternity.
With some difficulty she steadied her voice. "When we first read that
paragraph with its abominable suggestiveness," she said, "we had no
intention of being drawn into making a statement. We agreed that it
would be undignified. But since then, having talked of nothing else, we
have come to the conclusion that we must send something to the leading
papers. What we suggest is this, if it meets with your approval."
"Please read it." He noticed that Beatrix was opening and closing her
hands as though she had pins and needles.
"My brother drew this up and he left the spaces for you to fill in,
Pelham." Aunt Honoria then read the statement which her brother had
written and re-written at least a dozen times. "'From the recent
account of the romantic and closely-guarded marriage of Miss Beatrix
Vanderdyke and Mr. Pelham Franklin published by us we omitted to give
the name of the church in which it was celebrated and the date of the
ceremony. 'The Church was ---- and the date ----.' All you have to do
is to fill in the facts and I will send the necessary copies to town
to-night by messenger. If this doesn't put an end to letters and
paragraphs we must then claim the protection of the law."
Franklin took the sheet of paper. All he had to do was to fill in the
facts! Ye Gods, what was he to do with the thing? He glanced at
Beatrix. She still seemed to be half frozen. No help was to be had
from her. He must put forward a good objection and a good alternative
at once. "I think that your first idea was the right one," he said.
"This statement is a confession of weakness. I want you, if you will,
to leave the whole thing to me. I know the man who's written those
letters. It will give me immense pleasure to deal with him. One visit
to the office of that paper will settle the editor's hash." He spoke
with all the confidence that he could master and smiled at the three
Vanderdykes, who seemed to hang on his words. "And, after all, this is
entirely my affair. Beatrix is my wife and it is for me and no one else
to protect her."
Beatrix, now fully alive, sprang to her feet. "No," she said, "it's not
your affair. It's mine, and it's for me to put an end to it."
All eyes were turned on her,--the Vanderdykes' with some surprise.
Franklin's with quick apprehension. She was going to give the show away,
he saw. At all costs she must be stopped. With what he tried to make a
newly-married smile he took her hand and scrunched it so that she nearly
screamed with pain. "There's going to be a friendly argument between
us," he said. "Would you permit us to conduct it out in the air?" And
before another word could be said by anybody he put his arm around
Beatrix's waist, controlled her to one of the open French windows and
out under the sky.
"What do you mean by this?" she cried angrily.