Christine was glad to get out of the wind, but the damp chill of
the deserted house was not much of an improvement. Ahead of her in
the darkness, she could hear Riatt snapping electric switches which
produced nothing.
“Isn’t the light connected?” he called.
“I don’t know.”
“Aren’t there lamps in the house?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where could I find some candles?”
“What a tiresome man!” she thought; and for the third time she
answered: “I don’t know.”
A rather unappreciative grunt was his only reply, and then he
called back: “You’d better stay where you are, till I find
something to make a light.”
She asked nothing better. She was oppressed with a sense of crisis.
An inner voice seemed to be saying, in parody of Charles Francis
Adams’s historic words: “I need hardly point out to your ladyship
that this means marriage.”
She had thought, lightly enough, that everything was settled the
evening before on the stairs when she had made up her mind that he
would do. But with all her belief in herself, she was not unaware
even then that unforeseen obstacles might arise. He might be
secretly engaged for all she knew to the contrary. But now she felt
quite sure of him. With Fate playing into her hands like this--with
romance and adventure and the possibilities of an uninterrupted
tête-à-tête, she knew she could have him if she wanted him. And the
point was that she did. At least she supposed she did. She felt as
many a young man feels when he lands his first job--triumphant, but
conscious of lost freedoms.
Marriage, she knew, was the only possible solution of her problems.
Her life with her father was barely possible. As a matter of fact
they were but rarely together. The tiny apartment in New York
did not attract Fred Fenimer as a winter residence, when he had
an opportunity of going to Aiken or Florida or California at the
expense of some more fortunate friend. In summer it was much the
same. “My dear,” he would say to his daughter, “I really can’t
afford to open the house this summer.” And Christine would coldly
acquiesce, knowing that this statement only meant that he had
received an invitation that he preferred to a quiet summer with her.
Sometimes throughout the whole season father and daughter would
only meet by chance on some unexpected visit, or coming into a
harbor on different yachts.
“Isn’t that the _Sea-Mew’s_ flag?” Christine would say languidly.
“I rather think my father is on board.”
And then, perhaps, some amiable hostess in need of an extra man
would send the launch to the _Sea-Mew_ to bring Mr. Fenimer back
to dine; and he would come on board, very civil, very neat, very
punctilious on matters of yachting etiquette; and he and Christine
having exchanged greeting, would find that they had really nothing
whatsoever to say to each other.
Their only vital topic of conversation was money, and as this was
always disagreeable, both of them instinctively tried to avoid
it. Whenever Fenimer had money, he either speculated with it, or
immediately spent it on himself. So that he was always able to say
with perfect truth, whenever his daughter asked for it, that he
had none. The result of this was that she had easily drifted into
the simple custom of running up bills for whatever she needed, and
allowing the tradesmen to fight it out with her father.
Such a system does not tend to economy. Christine’s idea of what
was necessary, derived from the extravagant friends who offered her
the most opportunity for amusing herself, enlarged year by year.
Besides, she asked herself, why should she deny herself, in order
that her father might lose more money in copper stocks?
Sometimes during one of their casual meetings, he would say to
her under his breath: “Good Heavens, girl, do you know, I’ve just
had a bill of almost three thousand dollars from your infernal
dressmaker? How can I stop your running up such bills?” And she
would answer coolly: “By paying them every year or so.”
She knew--she had always known since she was a little girl--that
from this situation, only marriage could rescue her, and from the
worse situation that would follow her father’s death; for she
suspected that he was deeply in debt. Not having been brought up in
a sentimental school she was prepared to do her share in arranging
such a marriage. In the world in which she lived, competition was
severe. Already she had seen a possible husband carried off under
her nose by a little school-room mouse who had had the aid of an
efficient mother.
But now for the first time in her life, she saw that the game was
in her own hands. She had only to do the right thing--only perhaps
to avoid doing the wrong one--and her future was safe.
She heard Riatt calling and she followed him into the laundry,
where he had collected some candles: he was much engaged in
lighting a fire in the stove.
“But wouldn’t the kitchen range be better?” she asked.
“No water turned on,” he answered.
To her this answer was utterly unintelligible. What, she
wondered, was the connection between fire and water. But, rather
characteristically, she was disinclined to ask. She walked to the
sink, however, and turned the tap; a long husky cough came from it,
but no water.
After this burst of energy she sank into a chair, amused to watch
his arrangements. Thoroughly idle people--and there is not much
question that Miss Fenimer was idle--learn a variety of methods for
keeping other people at work, and probably the most effective of
these is flattery. Christine may have been ignorant of the feminine
arts of cooking and fire-making; but of the super-feminine art of
flattery she was a thorough mistress.
Now as Riatt finished building his fire, and began to bring in
buckets of snow to supply their need of water, the gentle flow of
her flattery soothed him as the sound of a hidden brook in the
leafy month of June. Nor, strangely enough, did the fact that he
dimly apprehended its purpose in the least interfere with his
enjoyment.
“If ever I’m thrown away on a desert island, I speak to be
thrown away with you,” she said. “There isn’t another man of
my acquaintance who could bring order out of these primitive
conditions.”
He laughed. “Well, you know,” he said, “this isn’t really what
you’d call primitive. I was snowed up in Alaska once.”
“Alaska! You’ve been snowed up in Alaska?” she echoed in the tone
of a child who says: was it a _black_ bear?
Oh, yes, it lightened his toil. Nevertheless, he asked for her
assistance in trying to find something to eat. She knew no more
about the kitchen than he did, but she advanced toward a door and
opened it gingerly between her thumb and forefinger. It was the
kitchen closet. She opened a tin box.
“There is something here that looks like gravel,” she called. He
rushed to her side. It was cereal. He found other supplies, too, a
little salt, sugar, coffee, and a jar of bacon.
“How clever of you to know what they all are,” she murmured, and he
felt as if he had invented them out of thin air, like an Eastern
magician.
He carried them back to the kitchen. “I wonder if you’d get the
coffee grinder,” he said.
She hadn’t the faintest idea what a coffee grinder looked like, but
she went away to find it, and came back presently with an object
strange enough to serve any purpose.
“Is this it?” she asked.
“That’s a meat chopper,” he answered, and then laughed. “You’re not
a very good housekeeper, are you?”
“Of course not,” she said. “Did you ever know an agreeable woman
who was? Good housekeepers are always bores, because they can never
for an instant get their minds off the most tiresome things in the
world like bills, and how the servants are behaving. All clever
women are bad housekeepers, and so they always find some one like
you to take care of them.”
He was putting the cereal to boil, and answered only after a
second. “Perhaps you’ll think me old-fashioned, but I cannot help
respecting the art of housekeeping.”
“Oh, so do I in its place,” replied Miss Fenimer. “My maid does the
whole thing capitally. But let me give you a test. Think of the
very best housekeeper you ever met. Would you like to have her here
instead of me? You may be quite candid.”
Riatt stopped and considered an instant with his head on one side.
“She’d make me awfully comfortable,” he said.
Miss Fenimer nodded, as much as to say: yes, but even so--
“No,” he said at length, as if the decision had been close.
“No, after all I would rather do the work and have you. But it
isn’t because you are a poor housekeeper that I prefer you. It’s
because--”
Compliments upon her charms were platitudes to Christine, and
she cut him short. “Yes, it is. It’s because I’m so detached, and
don’t interfere, and let you do things your own way, and think you
so wonderful to be able to do them at all. Now if I knew how to do
them, too, I should be criticizing and suggesting all the time, and
you’d have no peace. You like me for _being a poor housekeeper_.”
He smiled. “On that ground I ought to like you very much then,” he
answered.
“Perhaps you do,” she said cheerfully. “Anyhow I’m sure you like
me better than that other girl you were thinking of--that good
housekeeper. Who is she?”
“I like her quite a lot.”
“I see--you think she’d make a good wife.”
“I think she’d make a good wife to any man who was fortunate
enough--”
“Oh, what a dreadful way to talk of the poor girl!”
“On the contrary, I admire her extremely.”
“I believe you are engaged to her.”
“Not as much as you are to Hickson.”
Christine laughed. “From the way you describe her,” she said, “I
believe she’d make a perfect wife for Ned.”
“Oh, she’s much too good for him.”
“Thank you. You seem to think I’ll do nicely for him.”
“Ah, but she’s much better than you are.”
“And yet you said you’d rather have me here than her.”
He smiled. “I think,” he said, and Christine rather waited for his
next words, “I think I shall go down and see if I can’t get the
furnace going.”
Nevertheless, she said to herself when he was gone, “I should not
feel at all easy about him, if I were the other girl.”
She knew there was no prospect of their being rescued that night.
When the sleigh arrived at the Usshers’, if it ever did arrive, its
empty shattered condition would suggest an accident. The Usshers
were at that moment probably searching for them in ditches, and
hedges. The marks of the sleigh would be quickly obliterated by the
storm. No, she thought comfortably, there was no escape from the
fact that their situation was compromising. The only question was
how could the matter be most tactfully called to his attention.
At the moment he seemed happily unaware that such things as the
proprieties existed.
At this his head appeared at the head of the cellar stairs.
“Watch the cereal, please,” he said, “and see that it doesn’t burn.”
“Like King Alfred?”
“Not too much like him, please, for that pitiful little dab of food
is about all we have to eat.”
When he was gone Christine advanced toward the stove and looked
at the cereal--looked at it closely, but it seemed to her to be
but little benefited by her attention. Presently she discovered
on a shelf beside the laundry clock a pinkish purple paper novel,
called: “The Crime of the Season.” Its cover depicted a man in a
check suit and side-whiskers looking on in astonishment at the
removal of a drowned lady in full evening dress from a very minute
pond. Christine opened it, and was so fortunate as to come full
upon the crime. She became as completely absorbed in it as the
laundress had been before her.
She was recalled to the more sordid but less criminal surroundings
of real life by a strong pungent smell. She sniffed, and then her
heart suddenly sank as she realized that the cereal was burning.
She recognized a peculiarly disagreeable flavor about which she had
often scolded the cook, thinking such carelessness on the part of
one of her employees to be absolutely inexcusable.
She ran to the head of the cellar stairs. “Mr. Riatt!” she called.
He was now shaking down the furnace, and the noise completely
drowned her voice. “Oh, dear, what a noisy man he is,” she thought
and when he had finished, she called again: “Mr. Riatt!”
This time he heard. “What is it?” he answered.
“Mr. Riatt, what shall I do? The cereal is burning terribly.”
“I should think it was,” he said. “I can smell it down here.” He
sprang up the stairs and snatched the pot from the stove. “You must
have stopped stirring it,” he said.
“Oh, I didn’t stir it!”
“What did you do?”
“You didn’t tell me to stir it.”
“I certainly did.”
“No, you said just to watch it.”
Riatt looked at her. “Well,” he said, “I’ve heard of glances
cutting like a knife, but never stirring like a spoon. If I were a
really just man,” he went on, “I’d make you eat that burnt mess for
your supper, but I’m so absurdly indulgent that I’ll share some of
my bacon and biscuits with you.”
His tone as well as his words were irritating to one not used to
criticism in any form.
“I don’t care for that sort of joke,” she said.
“I wasn’t aware of having made a joke.”
“I mean your attitude as if I were a child that had been naughty.”
“It wouldn’t be so bad if you were a child.”
“You consider me to blame because that wretched cereal chose to
burn?”
“Emphatically I do.”
“How perfectly preposterous,” said Christine, and a sense of bitter
injustice seethed within her. “Why in the world should _I_ be
expected to know how to cook?”
“I’m a little too busy at the moment to explain it to you,” Riatt
answered, “but I promise to take it up with you at a later date.”
There was something that sounded almost like a threat in this.
She turned away, and walking to the window stood staring out into
the darkness. He was really quite a disagreeable young man, she
thought. How true it was, that you couldn’t tell what people were
like when everything was going smoothly. She wondered if he would
always be like that--trying to keep one up to one’s duty and making
one feel stupid and ignorant about the merest trifles.
“Well, this rich meal is ready,” he said presently.
She turned around. The table was set--she couldn’t help wondering
where he had found the kitchen knives and forks--the bacon was
sizzling, the tin of biscuits open, and the coffee bubbling and
gurgling in its glass retort.
She sat down and began to eat in silence, but as she did so, she
studied him furtively. She was used to many different kinds of
masculine bad temper; her father’s irritability whenever anything
affected his personal comfort: and from other men all forms of
jealousy and hurt feelings. But this stern indifference to her as
a human being was something a little different. She decided on her
method.
“Oh, dear,” she said, “this meal couldn’t be much drearier if we
were married, could it?”
“Except,” he returned, unsmilingly, “that then it would be one of a
long series.”
“Not as far as I’m concerned,” she answered. “I should leave you on
account of your bad temper.”
“If I hadn’t first left you on account of--”
“Of burning the cereal?”
“Of being so infernally irresponsible about it.”
“Oh, that’s the trouble, is it?” she said. “That I did not seem to
care? Well, I assure you that I don’t like burnt food any better
than you do, but I have some self-control. I wouldn’t spoil a whole
evening just because--” A sudden inspiration came to her. Her voice
failed her, and she hid her face in her pocket handkerchief.
Riatt leant back in his chair and looked at her, looked at least at
the back of her long neck, and the twist of her golden hair and the
occasional heave of her shoulders.
The strange and the humiliating thing was that she had just as much
effect upon him when he quite obviously knew that she was insincere.
“Why,” he said gently, “are you crying? Or perhaps I ought to say,
why are you pretending to cry?”
She paid no attention to the latter part of his question.
“You’re so unkind,” she said, careful not to overdo a sob. “You
don’t seem to understand what a terrible situation this is for me.”
“In what way is it terrible?”
“Don’t you know that a story like this clings to a girl as long
as she lives? That among the people I know there will always be
gossip--”
“You’re not serious?”
She nodded, still behind her handkerchief, “Yes, I am. This will be
something I shall have to live down, as much as you would if you
had robbed a bank.”
She now raised her head, and wiping her eyes hard enough to make
them a little red, she glanced at him.
Really she thought it would save a great deal of time and trouble,
if he could just see the thing clearly and ask her to marry him now.
But apparently his mind did not work so quickly.
“Who will repeat it?” he said. “Not the Usshers--”
“Nancy Almar won’t let it pass. She’ll have found the evening dull
without you, and she’ll feel she has a right to compensation. And
that worm, Wickham; it will be his favorite anecdote for the rest
of his life. I was horrible to him last night at dinner.”
“Sorry you were?”
“Not a bit. I’d do it again, but I may as well face the fact that
he won’t be eager to conceal his own social triumphs for the sake
of my good name. Can’t you hear him, ‘Curious thing happened the
other day--at my friends the Usshers’. Know them? A lovely country
place--’--”
“I’m awfully sorry,” he said. “What a bore! Is there anything I
could do--”
“Well, there _is_ one thing.”
He looked up quickly. If ever terror flashed in a man’s eyes, she
saw it then in his. Her heart sank, but her mind worked none the
less well.
“It’s this,” she went on smoothly. “There’s a lodge, a sort of
tool-house, only about half a mile down the road. Couldn’t you take
a lantern, couldn’t you possibly spend the night there?”
“It isn’t by any chance,” he said, “that you’re afraid of having me
here?”
“Oh, no, not you,” she answered. “No, I should feel much safer with
you here than there.” (If he went her case was ruined, and she was
now actually afraid perhaps he would go.) “I should be terrified
in this great place all by myself. Still, I think you ought to go.
It’s not so very far. You go down the road a little way and then
turn to the right through the woods. I think you’ll find it. The
roof used to leak a little, but I dare say you won’t mind that.
There isn’t any fireplace, but you could take lots of blankets--”
“I tell you what I’ll do,” he said. “No one will come to rescue us
to-night. I’ll sleep here to-night, and to-morrow as soon as it’s
light, I’ll go to this cottage, and when they come, you can tell
them any story you please. Will that do?”
It did perfectly. “Oh, thank you,” she said. “How kind you are! And
you do forgive me, don’t you?”
“About the cereal? Oh, yes, on one condition.”
“What is that?” She was still meltingly sweet.
“That you wash these dishes.”
She felt inclined to box his ears. Had he seen through her all the
time?
“I never washed a dish in my life,” she observed thoughtfully.
“Have you ever done anything useful?”
She reflected, and after some thought she replied, not boastfully,
but as one who states an indisputable fact: “Never.”
He folded his arms, leant against the wall and looked down upon
her. “I wish,” he said, “if it isn’t too much trouble that you
would give me a detailed account of one of your average days.”
“You talk,” said she, “as if you were studying the manners and
customs of savages.”
“Let us say of an unknown tribe.”
She leant back in her chair and stretched her arms over her head.
“Well, let me see,” she said. “I wake up about nine or a little
after if I haven’t been up all night, and I ring for my maid. And
about eleven--”
“Don’t skip, please. You ring for your maid. What does she do for
you?”
Imagine any one’s not knowing! Miss Fenimer marveled. “Why, she
draws my bath and puts out my things, and while I’m taking my
bath, she straightens the room and lights the fire, if it’s cold,
and brings in my breakfast-tray and my letters. And by half past
ten, I’m finally dressed if no one has come in to delay me, only
some one always has. Last winter my time was immensely occupied
by two friends of mine who had both fallen in love with the same
man--one of them was married to him--and they used to come every
day and confide in me. You have no idea how amusing it was. He
behaved shockingly, but I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for
him. They were both such determined women. Finally I went to him,
and told him how it was I knew so much about his affairs, and said
I thought he ought to try and make up his mind which of them he
really did care for. And what do you think he said? That he had
always been in love with me.” She laughed. “How absurdly things
happen, don’t they?”
“Good Heavens!” said Riatt.
“But even at the worst, I’m generally out by noon, and get a walk.
I’m rather dependent on exercise, and then I lunch with some one or
other--”
“Men or women?”
“Either or both. And then after lunch I drive with some one, or go
to see pictures or hear music, and then I like to be at home by
tea time, because that’s, of course, the hour every one counts on
finding you; and then there’s dressing and going out to dinner, and
very often something afterwards.”
“Good Lord,” said Riatt again, and after a moment he added: “And
does that life amuse you?”
“No, but it doesn’t bore me as much as doing things that are more
trouble.”
“What sort of things?”
“Oh, being on committees that you don’t really take any interest
in.” She rather enjoyed his amazement.
“Now tell me one thing more,” he said. “What would you do if you
had to earn your living?”
The true answer was that she would marry Edward Hickson, but,
though heretofore she had been fairly candid, she thought on this
point a little dissembling was permissible. “I should starve, I
suppose,” she returned gaily.
“And suppose you fell in love with a poor man?”
She grew grave at once. “Oh, that’s a dreadful thing to happen to
one,” she said. “I’ve had two friends who did that.” She almost
shuddered. “One actually married him.”
“And what happened to her?”
Miss Fenimer shook her head. “I don’t know. She’s living in the
suburbs somewhere. I haven’t seen her for ages.”
“And the other?”
“She was more practical. She married him to a rich widow ten years
older than he was. That provided for him, you see, at least. But it
turned out worse than the other case.”
“How?”
“Why, he fell in love with this other woman--”
“His wife, you mean?”
“Yes. Imagine it! Men are so fickle.”
“Do you know that you really shock me?”
“It’s better to appreciate the way things are.”
“It isn’t the way things are among decent normal human beings.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Oh, I imagine it is,” she said, “only
they’re not honest enough to admit it.”
He continued to stare at her and, strangely enough, she had never
seemed to him more beautiful.
“And do you mean to tell me,” he said, “that people who have the
standards that you describe will attach the slightest importance to
an innocent little adventure like this of ours?”
“Of course. They are the very people who will.”
“Nonsense.”
“Yes, because they make a point of always believing the worst, or
at least of pretending to.”
“Why pretend?”
“Because it makes conversation so much more amusing. Sometimes,”
she added thoughtfully, “I have a terrible suspicion that there
really isn’t an atom of harm in any of them--that they all behave
perfectly well, and just excite themselves by talking as if they
didn’t.”
“And you call that suspicion terrible?”
“Well, it makes it all seem a little flat. But then sometimes,” she
went on brightly, “one does find out something absolutely hideous.”
“See here,” he said, “it’s a crime for a girl of your age to talk
like this. It’s a silly habit. I don’t believe you’re like that at
heart.”
“You talk,” said she, “like Edward Hickson.”
“In some communities that would be thought a fighting word,” he
returned. “But you haven’t yet answered my question. You’ve told me
what your friends have done; but what would you do yourself, if you
fell in love with a poor man?”
“In the first place, I never should. What makes a man attractive
to me is power, preëminence, being bowed down to. If I lived in a
military country, I’d love the greatest soldier; and if I lived in
a savage country, I’d love the strongest warrior; but here to-day,
the only form of power I see is money. It’s what makes you able to
have everything you want, and that’s a man’s greatest charm.”
“And it seems to me that the most tied-down creatures I ever saw
are the rich men I’ve met in the East.”
She was honestly surprised. “Why, what is there they can’t do?” she
asked.
He smiled. “They can’t do anything that might endanger their
property rights,” he answered, “and that seems to me to cut them
off from most forms of human endeavor. But no matter about that.
You say you would not be likely to fall in love with a poor man,
but suppose you _did_. Perhaps it has happened already?”
Miss Fenimer looked thoughtful. “I was trying to think,” she said.
“Yes, there was a young artist two years ago that I was rather
interested in. He was very nice looking, and Nancy Almar kept
telling me how much he was in love with her.”
“And that stimulated your interest?”
“Of course.”
“Just for the sake of information,” he said, “do you always want to
take away any man who is safely devoted to another woman?”
Christine seemed resolved to be accurate. “It depends,” she
answered, “whether or not I have anything else to do, but of course
the idea always pops into one’s head: I wonder if I couldn’t make
him like me best.”
“And do you always find you can?”
“Oh, there’s no rule about it; only as a newcomer one has the
advantage of novelty, and that’s something.”
“And what happened about this artist?”
Christine smiled reminiscently: “I found he wasn’t really in love
with Nancy at all: he just wanted to paint her portrait.”
“I should think he would have wanted to paint yours.”
“He did and gave it to me as a present, and then he behaved very
badly.” She sighed.
“What did he do?”
“Well,” she hesitated. “He did not really want to give me the
picture. He thought he wanted to keep it himself. It was much the
best thing he ever did. I had to persuade him a good deal, and in
persuading him, I may have given him the impression that I cared
about him more than I really did. Anyhow, after I actually had
the portrait hanging in my sitting-room, I told him I thought it
was better for us not to meet any more. Some men would have been
flattered to think I took them so seriously. But he was furious,
and one day when I was out he sent for the portrait and cut it all
to pieces. Wasn’t that horrible? My pretty portrait!”
“Horrible!” said Riatt. “It seems to me the one spark of spirit the
poor young man showed.”
She glanced at him under her lashes. “What would you have done?”
“I’d take you out to the plains for a year or so, and let you find
out a little about what life is like.”
“I don’t think it would be a success,” she returned. “I don’t
profit by discipline, I’m afraid. But,” she stood up, “I’m
perfectly open minded. I’ll make a beginning. I’ll wash the
dishes--just to please you.”
[Illustration: And then, with a clean towel, he deliberately dried
her hands, finger by finger]
He watched her go to the kitchen sink, and pour water from the
steaming kettle into a dish pan, saw her turn up her lace-frilled
cuffs, and begin with her long, slim, inefficient hands to take
up the dirty plates. Suddenly, much to his surprise, he found he
couldn’t bear it, couldn’t bear to see the lace fall down again and
again, and her obvious shrinking from the task.
He crossed the room and took the plates from her, and then with a
clean towel, he deliberately dried her hands, finger by finger,
while she stood by like a docile child, looking up at him in wonder.
“Don’t you want to reform me?” she asked plaintively.
“No,” he answered shortly.
“Why not?”
“Because you would be too dangerous,” he returned. “Now you have
every charm except goodness. If you turned good and gentle you’d be
supreme.”
“I never thought goodness was a _charm_,” she objected.
“And that’s just what I hope you will never find out.”
She laughed. “I don’t believe there’s much danger,” she said. “I
think I shall go on being wicked and mercenary and selfish to the
day of my death, and probably getting everything I want.”
“I hope not. I mean I hope you won’t get what you want.”
“Oh, why are you so unkind?”
“Because I shall want to use you as a terrible example to my
grandchildren.”
“Do you think you will remember me as long as that?”
“I feel no doubt about it.”
She smiled. “It seems rather hard that I have to come to a bad end
just to oblige your horrid little grandchildren,” she said. “As a
matter of fact, I shall probably run them down in my motor as they
go to work with their little dinner-pails. And as I take their
mangled forms to the hospital, I’ll murmur: ‘Riatt, Riatt, I think
I once knew a half-hearted reformer of that name.’”
“You think you, too, will remember as long as that?”
“I have an excellent memory for trifles,” she returned, and rose
yawning. “And now I think I’ll go to bed--unless there’s anything
more you want to know about our tribal customs. Are you going to
write a nature book about us: ‘Head-hunting Among the Idle Rich’?”
“‘The Cannibals of the Atlantic Coast’ is the title,” he answered
as he gave her a candle. “I’ll leave your breakfast for you in the
morning before I go. And by the way, if some one comes to rescue
you, don’t go off and leave me in the tool-house, will you?”
“Oh, I’m not really as bad as that.”
He shook his head as if he didn’t feel sure.
She went away well satisfied with her evening’s work. There had
been something extremely flattering in his mingled horror and
amusement at her candid revelations. Holding up the candle she
looked at her own image in her mirror. “I wonder,” she thought, “if
that young man knows what a dangerous frame of mind he’s in?”
He had some suspicion, for as he dragged a mattress downstairs and
laid it before the kitchen fire, he kept repeating to himself, as
if in a last effort to rouse some moral enthusiasm: “What a band of
cut-throats they are!”
Christine woke the next morning to find the sun shining on an
unbroken sheet of snow. The storm had passed in the night. She
dressed quickly and went down to find the kitchen empty, and the
track of footsteps in the snow leading away in the direction of the
tool-house. Her coffee was bubbling and slices of bacon neatly laid
in the frying pan were ready for cooking. She thought he might have
stayed and cooked it for her.
“No one will come as early as this,” she thought, plaintively.
But hardly had she finished her simple meal, when the sound of
sleigh bells reached her ears, and running to the window she saw
that Ussher and Hickson in a two horse sleigh were driving down the
slope.
A moment later they were in the kitchen. And after the minimum time
had elapsed during which all three talked at once recounting their
own individual anxieties, Ussher asked:
“Where’s Max?”
Christine cast down her eyes with a sort of Paul-and-Virginia
expression, as she answered: “Oh, he is sleeping in the tool-house!”
“Well, I call that damned nonsense,” said Ussher. “Let a man freeze
to death! Upon my word, Christine, I thought you had more sense.”
And he strode away to the back door. “Yes, here are his tracks,
poor fellow.” Ussher went out after him, and Hickson turned back.
“But _you_ think I was right, don’t you, Edward?” said Christine,
for she had never failed to elicit commendation from Edward.
But now his brow was dark. “But, I say, Christine,” he said,
“there’s one thing I don’t understand. These tracks of his
footsteps in the snow.”
“He didn’t fly, Ned, even if he is an aviator.”
“Yes, but it didn’t stop snowing until four o’clock this morning.”
How irritating the weather always is, Christine thought. For though
she was willing to use scandal as a weapon over Riatt, she was not
sure that she wished to put it into Hickson’s hands.
She thought hard, and then said brightly:
“Oh, perhaps he came back for his breakfast before I was up.”
Hickson shook his head: “They only lead one way,” he said.
In the face of the tactlessness of hard facts, Christine decided to
create a diversion.
“I can’t stand here gossiping about the conduct of an aviator,”
she said, “when there’s so much to be done. Look at all these
dirty plates. What ought to be done with them, Edward, dear?” she
appealed to him as to a fountain of wisdom, and he did not fail her.
“They ought to be washed,” he said. “Give me a towel. I’ll do it.”
And he felt more than rewarded when, as she handed him a towel, her
hand touched his.
The many duties of which she had just spoken seemed suddenly to
have melted away, for she sat down quite idly and watched him.
“How well you do it, Edward,” she said, not quite honestly, for
she compared his slow gestures very unfavorably with Riatt’s deft
hands. “It’s quite as if you had washed dishes all your life.”
“Ah, Christine,” he answered, looking at her sentimentally over
a coffee-cup, “I shouldn’t ask anything better than to wash your
dishes for the rest of my life.”
“Thank you, Edward, but I think I should ask something a good deal
better,” she answered.
It was on this scene that Ussher and Riatt entered, and the eyes of
the latter twinkled.
“Engaged a kitchen-maid, I see,” he said in a low tone to Christine.
“I think it’s so good for people to do something useful now and
then, don’t you?”
“A form of education that you offer almost every one who comes near
you.”
Hickson did not hear everything, but he caught the idea, and said
severely:
“I don’t suppose any one would ask Miss Fenimer to wash dirty
dishes.”
Riatt laughed: “No one who had ever seen her try.”
Ussher, who had been fuming in the background, now broke out:
“Upon my word, Christine, that tool-house was like a vault. It was
madness to ask any one to spend the night in such a place.”
“Did you spend the night in the tool-house?” said Hickson with
unusual directness.
“There are worse places than the tool-house,” said Riatt, as he and
Ussher hurried down to the cellar to put out the furnace fire.
Hickson turned to Christine. “The fellow didn’t answer me,” he said.
“Perhaps he thought it was none of your business, Edward, my dear,”
she answered.
“Everything connected with you is my business,” he returned.
“Oh, Edward, what a dreary outlook for me!”
“Christine, answer me. Did or did not this man make advances to
you?”
“Edward, he did.”
“What happened?”
“He gave me a long, tiresome, moral lecture and, judging by you, my
dear, that is proof of affection.”
“You’re simply amusing yourself with me!”
“I’m not amusing myself very much, Edward, if that’s any comfort.”
“You drive me mad,” he said and stamped away from her so hard, that
Ussher came up from the cellar.
“What’s Edward doing?” he said.
“He says he’s going mad,” returned Christine, “but I thought he was
washing the dishes.”
“There’s no pleasing Edward,” said Ussher. “He was in my room at
six o’clock this morning trying to get me to start a rescuing party
(and I needn’t tell you, Christine, we none of us had much sleep
last night), and now that he is here and finds you safe, he seems
to be just as restless as ever.” And Ussher returned to the cellar
still grumbling.
“You know why I’m restless, Christine,” Hickson said when they were
again alone.
Christine seemed to wonder. “The artistic temperament is usually
given as the explanation, but somehow, in your case, Edward--”
He came and stood directly in front of her.
“Christine, what did happen last night?”
Although not a muscle of Miss Fenimer’s face moved, she knew very
well that this was a turning-point. She had the choice between
killing the scandal, or giving it such life and strength that
nothing but her marriage with Riatt would ever allay it. She
knew that a few sensible words would put Hickson straight, and
Hickson would be a powerful ally. On the other hand, if he came
back plainly weighted with a terrible doubt, no one would ask any
further evidence. The question was, how much would Riatt feel the
responsibility of such a situation. It was a fighting chance.
Themistocles when he burnt his ships must have argued in very much
the same way, but probably not so rapidly.
“There are some things, Edward,” Christine said in a low shaken
voice, “that I cannot discuss even with you.”
Hickson turned away with a groan.