After Aggie's vigorous comment there followed a long silence. That
volatile young person, little troubled as she was by sensitiveness,
guessed the fact that just now further discussion of the event would be
distasteful to Mary, and so she betook herself discreetly to a cigarette
and the illustrations of a popular magazine devoted to the stage. As for
the man, his reticence was really from a fear lest in speaking at all
he might speak too freely, might betray the pervasive violence of his
feeling. So, he sat motionless and wordless, his eyes carefully
avoiding Mary in order that she might not be disturbed by the invisible
vibrations thus sent from one to another. Mary herself was shaken to the
depths. A great weariness, a weariness that cried the worthlessness
of all things, had fallen upon her. It rested leaden on her soul. It
weighed down her body as well, though that mattered little indeed. Yet,
since she could minister to that readily, she rose and went to a settee
on the opposite side of the room where she arranged herself among the
cushions in a posture more luxurious than her rather precise early
training usually permitted her to assume in the presence of others.
There she rested, and soon felt the tides of energy again flowing in
her blood, and that same vitality, too, wrought healing even for her
agonized soul, though more slowly. The perfect health of her gave her
strength to recover speedily from the shock she had sustained. It was
this health that made the glory of the flawless skin, white with a
living white that revealed the coursing blood beneath, and the crimson
lips that bent in smiles so tender, or so wistful, and the limpid
eyes in which always lurked fires that sometimes burst into flame, the
lustrous mass of undulating hair that sparkled in the sunlight like an
aureole to her face or framed it in heavy splendors with its shadows,
and the supple erectness of her graceful carriage, the lithe dignity of
her every movement.
But, at last, she stirred uneasily and sat up. Garson accepted this as a
sufficient warrant for speech.
“You know--Aggie told you--that Cassidy was up here from Headquarters.
He didn't put a name to it, but I'm on.” Mary regarded him inquiringly,
and he continued, putting the fact with a certain brutal bluntness
after the habit of his class. “I guess you'll have to quit seeing young
Gilder. The bulls are wise. His father has made a holler.
“Don't let that worry you, Joe,” she said tranquilly. She allowed a few
seconds go by, then added as if quite indifferent: “I was married to
Dick Gilder this morning.” There came a squeal of amazement from Aggie,
a start of incredulity from Garson.
“Yes,” Mary repeated evenly, “I was married to him this morning. That
was my important engagement,” she added with a smile toward Aggie. For
some intuitive reason, mysterious to herself, she did not care to meet
the man's eyes at that moment.
Aggie sat erect, her baby face alive with worldly glee.
“My Gawd, what luck!” she exclaimed noisily. “Why, he's a king fish, he
is. Gee! But I'm glad you landed him!”
“Thank you,” Mary said with a smile that was the result of her sense of
humor rather than from any tenderness.
It was then that Garson spoke. He was a delicate man in his
sensibilities at times, in spite of the fact that he followed devious
methods in his manner of gaining a livelihood. So, now, he put a
question of vital significance.
“Do you love him?”
The question caught Mary all unprepared, but she retained her
self-control sufficiently to make her answer in a voice that to the
ordinary ear would have revealed no least tremor.
“No,” she said. She offered no explanation, no excuse, merely stated the
fact in all its finality.
Aggie was really shocked, though for a reason altogether sordid, not one
whit romantic.
“Ain't he young?” she demanded aggressively. “Ain't he good-looking, and
loose with his money something scandalous? If I met up with a fellow
as liberal as him, if he was three times his age, I could simply adore
him!”
It was Garson who pressed the topic with an inexorable curiosity born of
his unselfish interest in the woman concerned.
“Then, why did you marry him?” he asked. The sincerity of him was excuse
enough for the seeming indelicacy of the question. Besides, he felt
himself somehow responsible. He had given back to her the gift of life,
which she had rejected. Surely, he had the right to know the truth.
It seemed that Mary believed her confidence his due, for she told him
the fact.
“I have been working and scheming for nearly a year to do it,” she said,
with a hardening of her face that spoke of indomitable resolve. “Now,
it's done.” A vindictive gleam shot from her violet eyes as she added:
“It's only the beginning, too.”
Garson, with the keen perspicacity that had made him a successful
criminal without a single conviction to mar his record, had seized the
implication in her statement, and now put it in words.
“Then, you won't leave us? We're going on as we were before?” The hint
of dejection in his manner had vanished. “And you won't live with him?”
“Live with him?” Mary exclaimed emphatically. “Certainly not!”
Aggie's neatly rounded jaw dropped in a gape of surprise that was most
unladylike.
“You are going to live on in this joint with us?” she questioned,
aghast.
“Of course.” The reply was given with the utmost of certainty.
Aggie presented the crux of the matter.
“Where will hubby live?”
There was no lessening of the bride's composure as she replied, with a
little shrug.
“Anywhere but here.”
Aggie suddenly giggled. To her sense of humor there was something vastly
diverting in this new scheme of giving bliss to a fond husband.
“Anywhere but here,” she repeated gaily. “Oh, won't that be nice--for
him? Oh, yes! Oh, quite so! Oh, yes, indeed--quite so--so!”
Garson, however, was still patient in his determination to apprehend
just what had come to pass.
“Does he understand the arrangement?” was his question.
“No, not yet,” Mary admitted, without sign of embarrassment.
“Well,” Aggie said, with another giggle, “when you do get around to tell
him, break it to him gently.”
Garson was intently considering another phase of the situation, one
suggested perhaps out of his own deeper sentiments.
“He must think a lot of you!” he said, gravely. “Don't he?”
For the first time, Mary was moved to the display of a slight confusion.
She hesitated a little before her answer, and when she spoke it was in a
lower key, a little more slowly.
“I--I suppose so.”
Aggie presented the truth more subtly than could have been expected from
her.
“Think a lot of you? Of course he does! Thinks enough to marry you! And
believe me, kid, when a man thinks enough of you to marry you, well,
that's some thinking!”
Somehow, the crude expression of this professional adventuress
penetrated to Mary's conscience, though it held in it the truth to which
her conscience bore witness, to which she had tried to shut her ears....
And now from the man came something like a draught of elixir to her
conscience--like the trump of doom to her scheme of vengeance.
Garson spoke very softly, but with an intensity that left no doubt as to
the honesty of his purpose.
“I'd say, throw up the whole game and go to him, if you really care.”
There fell a tense silence. It was broken by Mary herself. She spoke
with a touch of haste, as if battling against some hindrance within.
“I married him to get even with his father,” she said. “That's all there
is to it.... By the way, I expect Dick will be here in a minute or two.
When he comes, just remember not to--enlighten him.”
Aggie sniffed indignantly.
“Don't worry about me, not a mite. Whenever it's really wanted, I'm
always there with a full line of that lady stuff.” Thereupon, she sprang
up, and proceeded to give her conception of the proper welcoming of the
happy bridegroom. The performance was amusing enough in itself, but for
some reason it moved neither of the two for whom it was rendered to
more than perfunctory approval. The fact had no depressing effect on the
performer, however, and it was only the coming of the maid that put her
lively sallies to an end.
“Mr. Gilder,” Fannie announced.
Mary put a question with so much of energy that Garson began finally to
understand the depth of her vindictive feeling.
“Any one with him?”
“No, Miss Turner,” the maid answered.
“Have him come in,” Mary ordered.
Garson felt that he would be better away for the sake of the newly
married pair at least, if not for his own. He made hasty excuses and
went out on the heels of the maid. Aggie, however, consulting only her
own wishes in the matter, had no thought of flight, and, if the truth be
told, Mary was glad of the sustaining presence of another woman.
She got up slowly, and stood silent, while Aggie regarded her curiously.
Even to the insensitive observer, there was something strange in the
atmosphere.... A moment later the bridegroom entered.
He was still clean-cut and wholesome. Some sons of wealthy fathers are
not, after four years experience of the white lights of town. And the
lines of his face were firmer, better in every way. It seemed, indeed,
that here was some one of a resolute character, not to be wasted on the
trivial and gross things. In an instant, he had gone to her, had caught
her in his arms with, “Hello, dear!” smothered in the kiss he implanted
on her lips.
Mary strove vainly to free herself.
“Don't, oh, don't!” she gasped.
Dick Gilder released his wife from his arms and smiled the beatific
smile of the newly-wed.
“Why not?” he demanded, with a smile, a smile calm, triumphant,
masterful.
“Agnes!”... It was the sole pretext to which Mary could turn for a
momentary relief.
The bridegroom faced about, and perceived Agnes, who stood closely
watching the meeting between husband and wife. He made an excellent
formal bow of the sort that one learns only abroad, and spoke quietly.
“I beg your pardon, Miss Lynch, but”--a smile of perfect happiness shone
on his face--“you could hardly expect me to see any one but Mary under
the circumstances. Could you?”
Aggie strove to rise to this emergency, and again took on her best
manner, speaking rather coldly.
“Under what circumstances?” she inquired.
The young man exclaimed joyously.
“Why, we were married this morning.”
Aggie accepted the news with fitting excitement.
“Goodness gracious! How perfectly lovely!”
The bridegroom regarded her with a face that was luminous of delight.
“You bet, it's lovely!” he declared with entire conviction. He turned to
Mary, his face glowing with satisfaction.
“Mary,” he said, “I have the honeymoon trip all fixed. The Mauretania
sails at five in the morning, so we will----”
A cold voice struck suddenly through this rhapsodizing. It was that of
the bride.
“Where is your father?” she asked, without any trace of emotion.
The bridegroom stopped short, and a deep blush spread itself over his
boyish face. His tone was filled full to overflowing with compunction as
he answered.
“Oh, Lord! I had forgotten all about Dad.” He beamed on Mary with a
smile half-ashamed, half-happy. “I'm awfully sorry,” he said earnestly.
“I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll send Dad a wireless from the ship,
then write him from Paris.”
But the confident tone brought no response of agreement from Mary. On
the contrary, her voice was, if anything, even colder as she replied to
his suggestion. She spoke with an emphasis that brooked no evasion.
“What was your promise? I told you that I wouldn't go with you until
you had brought your father to me, and he had wished us happiness.” Dick
placed his hands gently on his wife's shoulders and regarded her with a
touch of indignation in his gaze.
“Mary,” he said reproachfully, “you are not going to hold me to that
promise?”
The answer was given with a decisiveness that admitted of no question,
and there was a hardness in her face that emphasized the words.
“I am going to hold you to that promise, Dick.”
For a few seconds, the young man stared at her with troubled eyes. Then
he moved impatiently, and dropped his hands from her shoulders. But his
usual cheery smile came again, and he shrugged resignedly.
“All right, Mrs. Gilder,” he said, gaily. The sound of the name provoked
him to new pleasure. “Sounds fine, doesn't it?” he demanded, with an
uxorious air.
“Yes,” Mary said, but there was no enthusiasm in her tone.
The husband went on speaking with no apparent heed of his wife's
indifference.
“You pack up what things you need, girlie,” he directed. “Just a
few--because they sell clothes in Paris. And they are some class,
believe me! And meantime, I'll run down to Dad's office, and have him
back here in half an hour. You will be all ready, won't you?”
Mary answered quickly, with a little catching of her breath, but still
coldly.
“Yes, yes, I'll be ready. Go and bring your father.”
“You bet I will,” Dick cried heartily. He would have taken her in his
arms again, but she evaded the caress. “What's the matter?” he demanded,
plainly at a loss to understand this repulse.
“Nothing!” was the ambiguous answer.
“Just one!” Dick pleaded.
“No,” the bride replied, and there was determination in the
monosyllable.
It was evident that Dick perceived the futility of argument.
“For a married woman you certainly are shy,” he replied, with a sly
glance toward Aggie, who beamed back sympathy. “You'll excuse me, won't
you, Miss Lynch,... Good-by, Mrs. Gilder.” He made a formal bow to his
wife. As he hurried to the door, he expressed again his admiration for
the name. “Mrs. Gilder! Doesn't that sound immense?” And with that he
was gone.
There was silence in the drawing-room until the two women heard the
closing of the outer door of the apartment. Then, at last, Aggie
relieved her pent-up emotions in a huge sigh that was near a groan.
“Oh Gawd!” she gasped. “The poor simp!”