"Are you in love with me now?" he asked wistfully (Frontispiece).
She wished that she might die, or, infinitely better, that she had 4
never been born.
She had on her work-apron, but she was not working.
He praised, blamed, patronized, puffed his pipe, and dwelt with
superiority on topics which are best left alone.
She took some coins from her purse and dropped them into the tin cup.
The young man knelt at the door by which he had entered and began to
remove its ancient lock.
Harry, the workman, ... rose to his feet, and turned to Barbara with a
certain quiet eagerness.
But Barbara and Wilmot Allen, well used to even larger and more stately
rooms, chatted ... as two children.
She faced him, still scornful, but white now, and biting her lips.
In a few minutes Bubbles returned. "He's just sitting there with a hell
of a face on him," he said, "and she's working like a dynamo".
Dr. Ferris frowned. "I'm not trying to interfere," he said. "You're old
enough to know what's best for you".
"Some unknown person," said Barbara, "has formed the habit of sending me
flowers".
In the dim light she looked wonderfully young and beautiful.
He turned with one foot on the sidewalk, and one in the cab.... "Here I
wishes you salutations".
Wilmot Allen took her in to dinner, and looked much love at her, and
talked much nonsense.
He saw her with the vase of jonquils in her hand ... and his stout heart
failed him a little.
When Bubbles had trotted off, she dropped into her chair and cried.
The door opened, and Rose staggered into the room.
And in his soul the legless man was playing only for Barbara.
"'D afternoon, Mr. Lichtenstein," said Bubbles.
"I want me thumb bandaged".
She said in a small; surprised voice, "Why, it's finished".
In that instant the legless man overreached himself and fell heavily.
Barbara ... dashed into her dressing-room and locked the door behind
her.
They passed out of the house and by marble steps into the first and most
formal of their many gardens.
"What is Wilmot doing with himself these days?" "He went away," said
Barbara, her eyes troubled.
He caught her by the wrist, drew her to her feet, and into the room.
"I twisted the truth out of him, and then flung him over a cliff".
"Climb out of that chair, and let me out of this house".
"I've seen that man. I was writing notes in the summer house when he
came".
"Read that, father".
The engineer made generous terms across the dinner-table.
"You will," said Barbara, "when the things dry".
They were much amused with Bubbles, who came out to them for Christmas
vacation.
"And when you think," said she, "that some women spend the best years of
their lives making _statues_!"
I
The number of love affairs which intervened between Barbara Ferris's
first one, when she was eleven, and her twenty-second birthday could not
have been counted on the fingers of her two hands. Many boys, many men,
had seemed wonderfully attractive to her. She did not know why. She knew
only that the attraction seemed strong and eternal while it lasted, and
that it never lasted long. She was sixteen before she began to consider
herself a heartless, flirtatious, unstable, jilting sort of a girl. When
she made this discovery, she was terribly ashamed, and for one long
depressing year fell in love with nobody, became very shy, and hated
herself. It was during this year that she had her first, last, and only
touch of mania. It lasted only a little while and was not acute. She got
the idea that she was being watched, spied on, and followed. But she was
too strong in body and mind to give in for long to so silly an
hallucination. And when she had dismissed the second man and her maid,
who had particularly excited her suspicions, the mania left her, as a
dream leaves at waking.
In her seventeenth year she was presented to society, and became an
immense favorite. There were excellent reasons for this: she was lovely
to look at, she would inherit a great deal of money, she had charming
natural manners, and she was sweet-tempered.
During her second season she had an unpleasant experience. She had
almost reached an understanding with a certain young man with whom she
fancied herself in love. They were spending a Saturday to Monday at a
great place on Long Island. On Sunday night, her host, a man old enough
to be her father, invited her to see his rose garden by moonlight. She
accepted this invitation as a matter of course. Pacing down a path
between tall privet hedges, her host, who for some minutes seemed to
have lost the use of his tongue, made her a sudden impassioned
declaration of love, seized her in his arms, and kissed her wherever he
could with a kind of dreadful fury. For half a minute she stood still as
a statue. Then, crimson with shame and anger, she wrenched free, and
struck him heavy blows on the face and head with her strong young fists.
She beat him, not indeed to insensibility, but to his senses. They
returned to the house after a time, and entered the drawing-room talking
in lazy, natural voices and praising the beauty of the night and of the
garden. Not even Barbara's lover suspected that anything out of the
common had happened.
Barbara, having played half a dozen rubbers of bridge with the great
skill and sweet temper which were natural to her, excused herself, went
to her room, and cried half the night. It was not the shame of having
been forcibly kissed that sickened her of herself, but the
unforgettable, unforgivable fact that toward the last of that furious
kissing she had found a certain low feline pleasure in the kisses. She
wished that she might die, or, infinitely better, that she had never
been born.
It seemed terrible to her that she could at once be in love with one man
and enjoy the kisses of another. She had heard of girls who were thus,
and had for them the contempt which they deserved. And yet it seemed
that she was one of them; neither better nor worse. What Barbara did not
realize was, that in the first place she was not really in love with
anybody and never had been, and that it was not she herself who enjoyed
being kissed by a man to whom she was indifferent, neither liking nor
loathing, but nature, which for reasons, or perhaps only whims, of its
own, tempts the cell to divide and the flower to go to seed.
Through the tangle of her love affairs Wilmot Allen threaded a path of
hope, despair, and cynicism. There were times when she seemed to have a
return of her childhood infatuation for him; there were times when he
feared that in one of her moments of impressionable enthusiasm she would
marry some other man in haste, and repent at leisure. And there were the
cynical intervals, when it seemed to him that he could do without her,
and that nothing was worth while but enjoyment, both base and innocent,
and pleasure.
During Wilmot's junior year at New Haven, his father's sensational,
dissipated, and stock-gambling career came to a sudden end. There was
even a shadow on the name. He had done something _really_ discreditable,
something of course to do with money; since a man who is _merely_ a
gambler, a drunkard, and a Don Juan may with ease keep upon good terms
with society.
Wilmot Allen failed, at least without honor, filled himself full of
brandy, cocked a forty-five-calibre revolver, put the muzzle in his
mouth, pulled the trigger, blew off the back of his head, and was
"accidentally shot while cleaning the weapon."
The real tragedy was that so good a career as the son's should have come
to so untimely an end in so good a collegiate world as Yale. He stood
well in his class, he had played right tackle for two seasons and was
heir apparent to the captaincy; he was well beloved and would have
received an election to a senior society in the spring. But the solid
ground being withdrawn from under his feet--in other words, his
allowance from his father--he left amid universal regret, and found
himself a very small person in a very great city; worse, a youth who had
always had everything, loved pleasure, lights, games, and color, and who
now had no visible means of support.
[Illustration: She wished that she might die, or, infinitely better,
that she had never been born.]
Friends found him a position in Wall Street. Being young, attractive,
a good "mixer," not in the least shy, he was given a handsome
"entertaining" allowance and told to bring in business. So he
foregathered with out-of-town magnates, made the city a pleasant,
familiar place to them, and brought much of their money into the firm's
office. When Barbara was kind he despised his anomalous position and
strove to free himself from it; but even the best man has to live.
And during those intervals when he thought he could do without her,
Wilmot sank deeper and deeper into methods of self-advancement which, if
not actually base and culpable, at least smirched the finer qualities of
his nature, and hardened his heart.
If the father's heritage, drink and women, were spared him, or at least
that part of him which was really noble, a love of cleanness,
clear-mindedness, and purity, died hard. But gambling was second nature
to him. He could not enjoy a game unless he had something on it; and all
book-makers and proprietors of gambling-houses were friends of his and
called him by his first name. Sometimes through a series of lucky turns
he rose to heights of picturesque affluence; more often he was
stone-broke; but so much money passed through his hands in the course of
a year that it was always possible for him to borrow and live well
enough on credit. Money became his passion, not for its own sake, not
for the sake of what it could buy, but because it was a game upon which
the best wits of the world have been engaged for ages and ages--and
because you have to have it, or be able to owe so much that it amounts
to the same thing.
At first when he got in a hole, owed money which he saw no way of
raising, Wilmot suffered all the anguish and remorse of the trustee who
has speculated with orphans' funds (for the first time) and lost them.
Gradually he became hardened. And those who knew him best could never
tell whether he was worth fifty thousand or had just lost that much. He
drew upon a stock of courage and cheerfulness worthy of even the noblest
cause, until the term "self-respect" dropped automatically from his
inner vocabulary and his moral sense became a rotten, rusty buckler
through which the spear of temptation or necessity passed like a pin
through a sheet of tissue-paper.
He put himself under obligation--in moments of supreme need--to
dangerous persons, and suffered from the familiarity and perhaps the
contempt of some who were his inferiors in breeding, in heart, and
in soul.
One day, being at his wit's end, he walked rapidly, seeking light,
through a quarter of the city which was not familiar to him. He was in
that mood when a man does not wish to be at the trouble of nodding or
exchanging a word even with his best friend. A voice hailed him,
"Mr. Allen."
He stopped and saw that the voice came from a legless man who sat in the
sun by a hand-organ on which were displayed for sale a few pairs of
shoe-laces and, to excite charity, a battered (and empty) tin cup.
"Have you forgotten me?"
The light of recognition had twinkled instantly in Wilmot's eyes, for he
was wonderful at remembering faces. And he smiled and said:
"Of course not. How are you?"
"Pretty well," said the beggar. "And you?"
"Pretty well."
Wilmot's giving hand had slipped automatically into his trousers pocket.
Then, for once in his charitable life, he hesitated, since the pocket
contained nothing but a ten-dollar bill, and that was all the money he
had in the world with which to meet a pressing note of ten thousand. His
hesitation lasted only a moment. He laughed and stuffed the ten-dollar
bill into the cup, and said:
"For old acquaintance' sake."
The beggar studied the young man's face. Then he said: "Mr. Allen, I
once had the honor to warn you against three things."
"I remember."
"Your face is innocent of wine and women. How about the gambling?"
"My friend," said Wilmot, "you read me like a book. The gambling is all
to the bad. I have just given you all the money I had in the world."
"A few dollars are of no use to me," said the beggar.
"Nor to me. Don't worry."
"I am not worrying. I'm thinking that you and I have something in
common. And for that reason I am tempted to ask if a few thousand would
be of any use to you?"