This, looking white, tired, and austere, he reread, folded, enveloped,
stamped, sealed, and addressed to Miss Tennant.
Neither the hand which Miss Tennant laid on his, nor the cigarette which
she lighted for him, completely mollified Mr. Billy McAllen. He was no
longer young enough to dance with pleasure to a maiden's whims. The
experience of dancing from New York to Newport and back, and over the
deep ocean and back, and up and down Europe and back with the late Mrs.
McAllen--now Mrs. Jimmie Greenleaf--had sufficed. He would walk to the
altar any day with Miss Tennant, but he would not dance.
"You have so many secrets with yourself," he complained, "and I'm so
very reasonable."
"True, Billy," said Miss Tennant. "But if I put up with your secrets,
you should put up with mine."
"I have none," said he, "unless you are rudely referring to the fact
that I gave my wife such grounds for divorce as every gentleman must be
prepared to give to a lady who has tired of him. I might have contracted
a pleasant liaison; but I didn't. I merely drove up and down Piccadilly
with a notorious woman until the courts were sufficiently scandalized.
You know that."
"But is it nothing," she said, "to have me feel this way toward you?"
And she leaned and rested her lovely cheek against his.
"At least, Dolly," said he, more gently, "announce our engagement, and
marry me inside of six months. I've been patient for eighteen. It would
have been easy if you had given a good reason...."
"My reason," said she, "will be in Aiken to-morrow."
"You speak with such assurance," said he, smiling, "that I feel sure
your reason is not travelling by the Southern. And you'll tell me the
reason to-morrow?"
She shook her head.
"Not to-morrow, Billy--now."
He made no comment, fearing that she might seize upon any as a pretext
for putting him off. But he slipped an arm around her waist.
"Tighter if you like," she said. "I don't mind. My reason, Billy, is a
young man. Don't let your arm slacken that way. I don't see any one or
anything beyond you in any direction in this world. You know that.
There is nothing in the expression 'a young man' to turn you suddenly
cold toward me. Don't be a goose.... Not so tight." They laughed
happily. "I will even tell you his name," she resumed--"David Larkin;
and I was a little gone on him, and he was over ears with me. You
weren't in Aiken the year he was. Well, he misbehaved something
dreadful, Billy; betted himself into a deep, deep hole, and tried to
float himself out. I took him in hand, loaned him money, and took his
solemn word that he would not even make love until he had paid me back.
There was no real understanding between us, only----"
"Only?" McAllen was troubled.
"Only I think he couldn't have changed suddenly from a little fool into
a man if _he_ hadn't felt that there was an understanding. And his
letters, one every week, confirm that; though he's very careful, because
of his promise, not to make love in them.... You see, he's been working
his head off--there's no way out of it, Billy--for me.... If you hadn't
crossed my humble path I think I should have possessed enough sentiment
for David to have been--the reward."
"But there _was_ no understanding."
"No. Not in so many words. But at the last talk we had together he was
humble and pathetic and rather manly, and I did a very foolish thing."
"What?"
"Oh," she said with a blush, "I sat still."
"Let me blot it out," said McAllen, drawing her very close.
"But I can only remember up to seven," said she, "and I am afraid that
nothing can blot them out as far as David is concerned. He will come
to-morrow as sure that I have been faithful to him as that he has been
faithful to me.... It's all very dreadful.... He will pay me back the
money, and the interest; and then I shall give him back the promises
that he gave, and then he will make love to me...."
She sighed, and said that the thought of the pickle she had got herself
into made her temples ache. McAllen kissed them for her.
"But why," he said, "when you got to care for me, didn't you let this
young man learn gradually in your letters to him that--that it was all
off?"
"I was afraid, don't you see," said she, "that if the incentive was
suddenly taken away from him--he might go to pieces. And I was fond of
him, and I am proud to think that he has made good for my sake, and the
letters.... Oh, Billy, it's a dreadful mess. My letters to him have been
rather warm, I am afraid."
"Damn!" said McAllen.
"Damn!" said Miss Tennant.
"If he would have gone to pieces before this," said McAllen, "why not
now?--after you tell him, I mean."
"Why not?" said she dismally. "But if he does, Billy, I can only be
dreadfully sorry. I'm certainly not going to wreck our happiness just to
keep him on the war-path."
"But you'll not be weak, Dolly?"
"How!--weak?"
"He'll be very sad and miserable--you won't be carried away? You won't,
upon the impulse of the moment, feel that it is your duty to go on
saving him?... If that should happen, Dolly, _I_ should go to pieces."
"Must I tell him," she said, "that I never really cared? He will think
me such a--a liar. And I'm not a liar, Billy, am I? I'm just unlucky."
"I don't believe," said he tenderly, "that you ever told a story in your
whole sweet life."
"Oh," she cried, "I _do_ love you when you say things like that to
me.... Let's not talk about horrid things any more, and mistakes, and
bugbears.... If we're going to show up at the golf club tea.... It's
Mrs. Carrol's to-day and we promised her to come."
"Oh," said McAllen, "we need not start for ten minutes.... When will you
marry me?"
"In May," she said.
"_Good_ girl," said he.
"Billy," she said presently, "it was _all_ the first Mrs. Billy's
fault--wasn't it?"
"No, dear," said he, "it wasn't. It's never all of anybody's fault. Do
you care?"
"No."
"Are you afraid?"
"No."
"Do you love me?"
"Yes."
"How much?"
"So much," and she made the gesture that a baby makes when you ask, "How
big's the baby?"
"What's your name?"
"Dolly."
"Whose girl are you?"
"I'm Billy McAllen's girl."
"All of you?"
She grew very serious in a moment.
"All of me, Billy--all that is straight in me, all that is crooked, all
that is white, all that is black...."
But he would not be serious.
"How about this hand? Is that mine?"
"Yours."
He kissed it.
"This cheek?"
"Yours."
"And this?"
"Yours."
"These eyes?"
"Both yours."
He closed them, first one, then the other.
Then a kind of trembling seized him, so that it was evident in his
speech.
"This mouth, Dolly?"
"Mumm."