Running away is seldom a becoming gesture, yet it is one that
should at least bring relief; but as Riatt went westward, he was
conscious of no relief whatsoever. The day was bitter and gray,
and, looking out of the window, he felt that he was about as flat
and dreary as the country through which he was passing.
He sat a little while with the Lanes in their compartment.
“I suppose you’ll be glad to get home and see George and Louise and
the children,” said Mrs. Lane, referring to some cousins of Riatt’s
about whom, it is to be feared, he had not thought for weeks.
Dorothy laughed. “What does he care for home-staying cousins when
he is leaving a lovely creature languishing for him in New York?”
she said.
“I doubt if Christine does much languishing,” he returned, though
the idea was not at all disagreeable to him.
“You two are the strangest lovers I ever knew,” said Miss Lane.
Riatt wondered if that were an accurate description of them--lovers,
though strange ones.
He left his old friends presently and went and sat in the
observation-car. What, he wondered, had Christine meant by her last
words, about never coming back? Never come back to annoy with his
critical attitude? Never come back to watch her deterioration as
Hickson’s wife? Or never come back to disturb her peace of mind and
heart by his mere presence? He debated all interpretations but the
last pleased him most.
A bride and groom were in the car. The girl was not in the least
like Christine. She was small and wore a pair of the most fantastic
gray and black boots that Riatt had ever seen; but she was very
blond and very much in love. Riatt hated both her and her husband.
“People ought not to be allowed to show their feelings like that,”
he said to himself, as he kicked open the door leading to the back
platform, with a violence that was utterly unnecessary.
Nor did things mend on his arrival at his home. His native town was
naturally interested in his engagement; it showed this interest by
keeping the idea continually before him. It assumed, of course,
that he was going to bring his bride home. The rising architect
of the community came to him with the assumption that he would
wish to build her a more suitable house than that of his father,
which, large and comfortable, had been constructed in the very
worst taste of the early “eighties.” No, Riatt found himself saying
with determination, his father’s house would be good enough for
his wife. He thought the sentiment sounded rather well, as he
pronounced it. But this did not solve his difficulties, for now
it was but too evident that he must at least redecorate the old
house; and he found himself, he never knew exactly how, actually
in process of doing over a bedroom, bathroom and boudoir for
Christine, just exactly as if he had expected her ever to lay eyes
on them.
Mrs. Lane came to him with the suggestion that he would wish
Christine to be one of the patronesses of the next winter’s dances.
The list was about to be printed. Max hesitated. “It would be a
little premature to put her down as Mrs. Riatt, wouldn’t it?” he
objected. Mrs. Lane thought this was merely superstitious, and
ordered the cards so printed without consulting him further.
Every one asked him what he heard from her, so that he actually
stooped once or twice to invent sentences from imaginary letters
of hers. He even went so far as to read the society columns of the
New York newspapers, so that he might not be caught in any absurd
error about her whereabouts. Such at least is the reason by which
he explained his conduct to himself.
He was shocked to find that he was restless and dissatisfied. The
only occupation that seemed to give any relief was gambling; or,
as a mine-owning friend of his expressed it, in making “a less
conservative and more remunerative investment of his capital.”
He spent hours every day hanging over the ticker in the office
of Burney, Manders and Company--and this young and eager firm of
brokers made more money in commissions during the first two weeks
of his return than they had during the whole year that preceded it.
On the whole he lost, and Welsley, his mining friend, seeing this
began to urge on him more and more the advisability of buying out
the majority of stock in a certain Spanish-American gold mine. At
first he always made the same answer: “You know as well as I do,
Welsley, I would never put a penny into any property I had not
inspected.”
But gradually a desire to inspect it grew up in his mind. What
would suit his plans better than a long trip, as soon as the
breaking of his engagement was announced? A week at sea, two or
three days on a river, and then sixty miles on mule-back over the
mountains--there at least he would not be troubled by accounts of
Christine’s wedding, or assertions that she had looked brilliant at
the opera.
He had been at home about two weeks, when her first letter came.
So far the only scrap of her handwriting that he possessed was the
formal release that she had given him the afternoon they became
engaged, and which, for safe keeping doubtless, he always carried
in his pocketbook, and which he sometimes found himself reading
over--not as a proof that he could get out of his engagement, but
rather in an attempt to verify the fact that he had ever got into
it.
However unfamiliar with her writing, he had not the least doubt
about the letter from the first instant that he saw it. No one else
could use such absurd faint blue and white paper and such large
square envelopes. As he took it up, he said to himself that it had
never occurred to him that she would write, and yet he saw without
any sense of inconsistency that he had looked for this letter in
every mail. And yet, so perverse is the nature of mankind, that he
opened it, not with pleasure, but with a sudden return of all his
old terror of being trapped.
“Dear Max,” it said. “I have been pretending so often to
write to you for the benefit of my inquiring friends, that
I think I may as well do it as a tribute to truth.
“How foolish that was--the night you went away! One gets
carried away sometimes by the drama of a situation, without
any relation to the facts, and the idea of parting forever
from one’s fiancé is rather dramatic, isn’t it? I cried all
night, and rather enjoyed it. Then in the morning when I
woke up, everything seemed to have returned to the normal,
and I could not understand what had made me so silly.
“Don’t suppose that because you have gone, I am therefore
freed from the disagreeable criticism of which you made
such a speciality. Ned comes in almost every day to tell me
that he does not approve of my conduct. I am not behaving,
it appears, as an affianced bride should. Don’t you like
to think of Ned so loyally protecting your interests in
your absence? His criticisms are, I suppose, based on
the attentions of a nice little boy just out of college,
who calls me ‘Helen,’ and writes sonnets to me which are
to appear in the most literary of weeklies. Look out for
them. They are good, and may raise your low estimate of my
charms. The best one begins:
“When the blond wonder first on Paris dawned--
“Isn’t that pretty?
“Write to me. At least send me a blank envelope that I may
leave ostentatiously on my desk.
“Yours at the moment,
“CHRISTINE.”
Riatt’s first thought on laying down the letter was: “Hickson
never in the world objected to any little poet just out of
college, and she knows it very well. It’s Linburne he is worried
about--Linburne, whose name she does not even mention.” And how
absurd to attempt to make him believe she had cried all night. That
was simply an untruth. Yet oddly enough, it came before his eyes in
a more vivid picture than many a scene he had actually witnessed.
A few minutes later he went to the club and looked up the literary
weekly of which she had spoken. There was no sonnet in it, but the
issue of the next week contained it. Riatt read it with an emotion
he could not mistake. It brought Christine like a visible presence
before him. Also it made him angry, to have to see her like this,
through another man’s eyes. “Little whelp,” he said, “to detail
a woman’s beauty in print like that! What does he know about it
anyhow? I don’t believe for one second she looked at him like that.”
The sonnet ended:
She turned, a white embodiment of joy,
And looking on him, sealed the doom of Troy.
He was roused by a friendly shout in his ear. “Ho, ho, Max, reading
poetry, are you? What love does for the worst of us!” It was
Welsley, who snatched the paper out of his hand, running over the
lines rapidly to himself: “Hem, hem, ‘carnation, alabaster, gold
and fire.’ Some queen, that, eh? Have you had your dinner? Well,
don’t be cross. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t read verse if
you like. And this young man is the latest thing. My wife says they
are going to import him here to speak to the Greek Study Club.”
“I shall be curious to hear him, if the Greek Club will ask me,”
said Max.
“Oh, you’ll be in the East getting married,” answered Welsley.
Strangely enough, it was with something like a pang that Max said
to himself that he wouldn’t be.
“Carnation, alabaster, gold and fire.”
It was not a bad line, he thought.
After dinner, he felt a little more amiable, and so he sat down and
wrote his first real letter to his fiancée.
“If we were really engaged, my dear Christine,” he wrote,
“you would have had a night letter long before this, asking
you to explain to me just how it was that you did look on
that amorous young poet. His verse is pretty enough, though
I can’t say I exactly enjoyed it. However, my native town
thinks very highly of him, and intends to ask him to come
and address one of our local organizations. If so, I shall
have an opportunity of questioning him on the subject of
the sources of his inspiration. ‘Is Helen a real person?’ I
shall ask. ‘Not so very,’ I can imagine his replying. Ah,
what would we both give to know?
“My friends here, stimulated by Dorothy Lane’s ravishing
description of you, have asked many times to see your
picture. I am ashamed of my own carelessness in having gone
away without obtaining one for exhibition purposes. Will
you send me one at once? One not already in circulation
among poets and painters. I will set it on my writing
table, and allow my eyes to stray sentimentally toward it
whenever I have people to dinner.
“By the way, the day I left New York I told a florist
to send you flowers every day. We worked out quite an
elaborate scheme for every day in the week. Did he ever do
it?
“Yours, at least in the sight of this company,
“MAX RIATT.”
In answer to this, he was surprised by a telegram:
“So sorry for absurd mistake. Entirely misunderstood source
of the flowers. Enjoy them a great deal more now. Yes, they
come regularly. A thousand thanks. Am sending photograph by
mail.”
Riatt did not need to ask himself from whom she had imagined they
came. Not the poet, unless magazine rates were rising unduly.
Nor Hickson, who failed a little in such attentions. No, it was
Linburne--and evidently Linburne’s attentions were taken so much as
a matter of course, that she had not even thanked him, nor had he
noticed her omission.
He did not answer the telegram, nor did he acknowledge the
photograph but, true to his word, he established it at once on
his desk in a frame which he spent a long time in selecting.
The picture represented Christine at her most queenly and
unapproachable. She wore the black and gold dress, and the huge
feather fan was folded across her bare arms. Every time he looked
at it, he remembered how those same arms had been clasped round his
own stiff and unbending neck. And sometimes he found the thought
distracted his attention from important matters.
It was about the middle of February when he received one morning a
letter from Nancy Almar. He knew _her_ handwriting. She was always
sending him little notes of one kind or another. This one was very
brief.
“Clever mouse! So it knew a way to get out all the time!”
All day he speculated on the meaning of this strange message. Had
Nancy discovered some proof of the nature of his engagement? Had
Christine been moved by pity to tell Hickson the truth? On the
whole he inclined to think that this was the explanation.
The next day he knew he had been mistaken. He had a letter from
Laura Ussher--not the first in the series--urging him to come back
at once.
“Max,” she wrote, with a haste that made her almost
indecipherable, “you must come. What are you dreaming
of--to leave a proud, beautiful, impressionable creature
like Christine the prey to so finished a villain as
Linburne? You are not so ignorant of the ways of the world
as not to know his intentions. Most people are saying you
deserve everything that is happening to you. I try to
explain, but I know you saw enough while you were here to
be put upon your guard. Why don’t you come? I must warn you
that if you do not come at once you need not come at all.”
Riatt had just come in; it was late in the afternoon. The letters
were lying on his writing table; and as he finished this one, he
raised his eyes and looked at Christine’s picture.
He did not believe Laura’s over-wrought picture. Christine was no
fool, Linburne no villain. There was probably a little flirtation,
and a good deal of gossip. But that would all be put a stop to by
the announcement of Christine’s engagement to Hickson. He did not
even feel annoyed at his cousin’s suggestion that he did not know
his way about the world. He knew it rather better than she did, he
fancied.
And having so disposed of his mail, he took up the evening paper
which lay beneath it, and read the first headline:
Mrs. Lee Linburne to seek divorce: Wife of well-known
multimillionaire now at Reno--
As he read this a blind rage swept over Riatt. He did not stop to
inquire why if he were willing to give Christine up to Hickson he
was infuriated at the idea of Linburne’s marrying her; nor why, as
he had allowed himself to be made use of, he was angry to find that
he had been far more useful than he had supposed. He only knew that
he was angry, and with an anger that demanded instant action.
He looked at his watch. He had time to catch a train to Chicago.
He went upstairs and packed. He knew that what he was doing was
foolish, that he would poignantly regret it, but he never wavered
an instant in his intention.
He reached New York early in the afternoon. He had notified no one
of his departure, and he did not announce his arrival. He went
straight to the Fenimers’ house--not indeed expecting to find
Christine at home at that hour, but resolved to await her return.
The young man at the door, who had known Riatt before, appeared
confused, but was decided.
Miss Fenimer, he insisted, was out.
Glancing past him Riatt saw a hat and stick on the hall table. He
had no doubt as to their owner.
“I’ll wait then,” he said, coming in, and handing his own things to
the footman, who seemed more embarrassed still.
Taking pity on him, Riatt said:
“You mean Miss Fenimer is at home, but has given orders that she
won’t see any one?”
Such, the man admitted, was the case.
“She’ll see me,” Riatt answered, “take my name up.”
The footman, looking still more wretched, obeyed. Riatt heard him
go into the little drawing-room overhead, and then there was a long
pause. Once he thought he heard a voice raised in anger. As may be
imagined his own anger was not appeased by this reception.
While he was waiting, the door of a room next the front door opened
and Mr. Fenimer came out. His astonishment at seeing Riatt was so
great that with all his tact he could not repress an exclamation,
which somehow did not express pleasure.
“You here, my dear Riatt!” he said, grasping him cordially by the
hand. “Christine, I’m afraid--”
“I’ve sent up to see,” said Max, curtly.
“Ah, well, my dear fellow,” Mr. Fenimer went on easily, “come,
you know, a man really can’t go off in the casual way you did and
expect to find everything just as he likes when he comes back.
I have a word to say to you myself. Shall we walk as far as the
corner together?”
To receive his dismissal from Mr. Fenimer was something that Riatt
had never contemplated.
“I should prefer to wait until the footman comes down,” he answered.
“No use, no use,” said Mr. Fenimer, suddenly becoming jovial, “I
happen to know that Christine is out. Come back a little later--”
“And whose hat is that, then?” asked Max.
It had been carelessly left on its crown and the initials “L.L.”
were plainly visible.
Mr. Fenimer could not on the instant think of an answer, and Riatt
decided to go upstairs unannounced.
As he opened the drawing-room door he heard Christine’s voice
saying: “Thank you, I shall please myself, Lee, even without your
kind permission.”
The doors in the Fenimer house opened silently, so that though
Christine, who was facing the door, saw him at once, Linburne,
whose back was turned to it, was unaware of his presence, and
answered:
“You ought to have more pride than to want to see a fellow who has
made it so clear he doesn’t care sixpence about seeing you.”
Christine openly smiled at Max, as she answered: “Well, I do want
to see him,” and Linburne turning to see at what her smile was
directed found himself face to face with Riatt.
Max made a gesture to the footman, and shut the door behind his
hasty retreat, then he came slowly into the room.
“In one thing you are mistaken, Mr. Linburne,” he said. “I do care
whether or not I see Miss Fenimer.”
Linburne was angry at Christine, not only for insisting on seeing
Riatt, but for the lovely smile with which she had greeted him. He
was glad of an outlet for his feelings.
He almost shrugged his shoulders. “An outsider can only judge by
your conduct, Mr. Riatt,” he answered. “And I may tell you that you
have subjected Miss Fenimer to a good deal of disagreeable gossip
by your apparently caring so little.”
“And others by apparently caring so much,” said Max.
Christine was the only one who recognized at once the fact that
both men were angry; and she did not pour oil on the waters by
laughing gaily. “You can’t find any subject for argument there,”
she observed, “for you are both perfectly right. You have both made
me the subject of gossip; but don’t let it worry you, for my best
friends have long ago accustomed me to that.”
“I hope you won’t think I’m asking too much, Mr. Riatt,” said
Linburne, with a politeness that only accentuated his irritation,
“in suggesting that as your visit is, I believe, unexpected, and as
mine is an appointment of some standing, that you will go away and
let me finish my conversation with Miss Fenimer.”
Max smiled. “Oddly enough,” he said, “I was about to make the same
request to you. But I suppose we must let Miss Fenimer settle the
question.”
Christine smiled like an angel. “Can’t we have a nice time as we
are?” she asked.
This frivolous reply was properly ignored by both men, and Riatt
went on: “Don’t you think you ought to consider the fact that Miss
Fenimer and I are engaged?”
“Miss Fenimer assures me she does not intend to marry you.”
“And may I ask if you consider that she does intend to marry
you--that is if you should happen to become marriageable?”
“That is a question between her and me,” returned Linburne.
Riatt laughed. “I see,” he said. “The matrimonial plans of my
future wife are no affair of mine?” And for an instant he felt his
most proprietary rights were being invaded.
“Miss Fenimer is not your future wife.”
“Well, Mr. Linburne, I hear you say so.”
“You shall hear _her_ say so,” answered Linburne. “Christine,” he
added peremptorily, “tell Riatt what you have just been telling me.”
There was a long painful silence. Both men stood looking intently
at Christine, who sat with her head erect, staring ahead of her
like a sphinx, but saying nothing. After a moment she glanced up
at Max’s face, as if she expected to find there an answer to her
problem. She did not look at Linburne.
“Christine,” said Max very gently, “what have you told Mr.
Linburne?”
“She has told me everything,” answered Linburne impetuously, and
then seeing by the glance that the two others exchanged that such
was not the case, his temper got the best of him.
“Do you mean you’ve been lying to me?” he asked.
“Just what did you tell him, Christine?” said Riatt, finding it
easier and easier to be calm and protecting as his adversary grew
more violent.
Christine looked up at him with the innocence of a child. “I told
him that we did not love each other, and that our engagement was
really broken, but that no one was to know until March.”
“Why did you tell him that?”
“It’s the truth, Max--almost the truth.”
“Almost the truth!” cried Linburne. “Do you want me to think you
care something for this man after all?”
“In the simple section of the country from which I come,” observed
Riatt, “we often care a good deal for the people we marry.”
Linburne turned on him. “Really, Mr. Riatt,” he said, “you don’t
take an idea very quickly. You have just heard Miss Fenimer say
that she did not love you and that she considered your engagement
at an end.”
“I heard her say she had told you that.”
“You mean to imply that she said what was untrue?”
“I could answer your question better,” said Riatt, “if I understood
a little more clearly what your connection with this whole
situation is.”
“The connection of any old friend who does not care to see Miss
Fenimer neglected and humiliated,” answered Linburne, all the more
hotly because he knew it was an awkward question.
Perhaps the young poet had not been so wrong in attaching the name
of Helen to Miss Fenimer, for she sat now as calmly interested in
the conflict developing before her, as Helen when she sat on the
walls of Troy and designated the Greek heroes for the amusement of
her newer friends.
“May I ask, Mr. Riatt, what rights in the matter you consider that
you have?” Linburne pursued.
For Riatt, too, the question was an awkward one, but he had his
answer ready. “The rights,” he said, “of a man who certainly was
once engaged to Miss Fenimer, and who came East ignorant that the
engagement was already at an end.”
Christine laughed. “Very neatly put,” she said.
“Neatly put,” exclaimed Linburne. “You talk as if we were playing a
game.”
[Illustration: “May I ask, Mr. Riatt, what rights in the matter you
consider that you have?” Linburne pursued]
“You have the reputation of playing all games well, my dear Lee,”
she returned. The obvious fact that she was enjoying the interview,
made both men eager to end it--but, unfortunately, they wished to
end it in diametrically opposite ways.
“Christine,” said Linburne, “will you ask Mr. Riatt to be so kind
as to let me have ten minutes alone with you?”
Riatt spoke to her also. “I will do exactly as you say,” he said,
“but you understand that if I go now, I shall not come back.”
Christine smiled. “Is that a threat or a promise?” she asked, the
sweetness of her smile almost taking away the sting of her words.
Seeing that she hesitated, Riatt went on: “Since I have come more
than a thousand miles to see you, don’t you think you might suggest
to Mr. Linburne that he let me have my visit undisturbed?”
There was a long and rather terrible pause, terrible that is to the
two men. Christine probably enjoyed every second of it. There was
nothing in Linburne’s experience of life to make him think that any
woman whom he had honored with his preference was likely to prefer
another man to himself. So the pause was terrible to him, not
because he doubted what the climax would be, but because he felt
his dignity insulted by even an appearance of hesitation. Max, on
the other hand, was still a good deal in doubt as to her ultimate
intentions.
It was to him, finally, that she spoke.
“Max,” she said, “do you remember that while we were staying at the
Usshers’ we composed a certain document together?”
He nodded, and then as she did not continue, he opened his
pocketbook and took out the release.
She made no motion to take it; on the contrary, she leaned back and
crossed her hands in her lap.
“Yes,” she said, “that’s it. Well, you may stay, if you care to
burn that scrap of paper.”
It was now Max’s turn to hesitate, for the decision of freedom or
captivity was in his own hands; the crisis he had so recklessly
rushed to meet was now upon him.
“What is in that paper?” asked Linburne, as one who has a right to
question.
Christine was perfectly good-tempered as she answered: “Well, Lee,
it still belongs to Mr. Riatt; but if he decides not to burn it, I
promise to tell you all about it as we drink our tea.”
“Do you promise me that, Christine?”
“Most solemnly, Lee.” She looked up at Linburne, and before Max
knew what he was doing he found he had dropped the paper into the
fire.
Strangely enough, though the fire was hot, the paper did not catch
at once, but curled and rocked an instant in the heat, before it
disappeared in flame and smoke. Not until it was a black crisp did
Christine turn to Linburne, and hold out her hand.
“Good-by, Lee,” she said pleasantly. But he did not answer or take
her hand. He left the room in silence.
When the door had shut behind him, Christine glanced at her
remaining visitor. “And now,” she said, “I suppose you are wishing
you had not.”
“What sort of a woman are you?” Riatt exclaimed. “Will you take any
man that offers, me or Hickson, or Linburne or me again, just as
luck will have it?”
“I take the best that offers, Max--and that’s no lie.”
The implied compliment did not soften Riatt. He went on: “If you
and I are really to be married--”
“If, my dear Max! What could be more certain?”
“Since, then, we are to be married, you must tell me exactly what
has taken place between you and Linburne.”
“With pleasure. Won’t you sit down?” She pointed to a chair near
her own, but Riatt remained standing. “Shall we have tea first?”
“We’ll have the story.”
“Oh, it’s not much of a story. Lee and I have known each other
since we were children. I suppose I always had it in mind that I
might marry him--”
“You loved him?”
“Certainly not. He always had too high an opinion of himself,
and I used to enjoy taking it out of him--and making it up to
him afterwards, too. I used to enjoy that as well. Sometimes, of
course, he found the process too unbearable; and in one of his fits
of anger at me, just after he left college, he went and blundered
into this marriage with Pauline. She, you see, took him at his own
valuation. His marriage seemed to put an end to everything between
us--”
“You surprise me.”
Christine laughed. “Ah, I was younger then.”
“You kept on seeing him?”
“Naturally we met now and then. Sometimes he used to tell me how I
was the only woman--”
“That is your idea of putting an end to everything?”
“Oh, if one took seriously all the men who say that--I did not
think much about Lee’s feelings for me, until my engagement was
announced. Then it appeared that the notion of my marrying some one
else was intolerable to him.”
“A high order of affection,” exclaimed Riatt. “He was content
enough until there seemed some chance of your being happy.”
“Perhaps he did not consider that life with you would promise
absolute happiness, Max.”
“I don’t call that love. I call it jealousy.”
At this Christine laughed outright. “And what emotion, may I ask,
has just brought you here in such haste?”
The thrust went home. Riatt changed countenance.
“But I,” he said, “never pretended to love you.”
“Why then are you marrying me?”
“Heaven knows.”
“I know, too,” she answered, unperturbed by his rudeness, “and some
day if you’re good I’ll tell you.”
Her calm assumption that everything was well seemed to him
unbearable. “I don’t know that I feel very much inclined to chat,”
he said, turning toward the door. “I’ll see you sometime to-morrow.”
She said nothing to oppose him, and he left the room. Downstairs
the same footman was waiting to let him out. To him, at least,
Riatt seemed a triumphant lover, only as Linburne had long since
heavily subsidized him, even his admiration was tinctured with
regret.
As for Max, himself, he left the house even more restless and
dissatisfied than he had entered it.
To be honest, he had, he knew, sometimes imagined a moment when he
would take Christine in his arms and say: “Marry me anyhow.” Such
an action he knew would be reckless, but he had supposed it would
be pleasant. But now there was nothing but bitterness and jealousy
in his mood. What did he know or care for such people? he said to
himself. What did he know of their standards and their histories?
How much of Christine’s story about Linburne was to be believed?
What more natural than that they had always loved each other? Some
one knew the truth--every one, very likely, except himself. But
whom could he ask? He could have believed Nancy on one side as
little as Laura on the other.
And as he thought this, he saw coming down the street, Hickson--a
witness prejudiced, perhaps, but strictly honest.
For the first time in their short acquaintance, Hickson’s face
brightened at the sight of Riatt, and he called out with evident
sincerity: “I am glad to see you.”
“I came on rather unexpectedly.”
“I’m glad you did. Quite right.” Hickson stopped at this, and
looked at his companion with such wistful uncertainty, that it
seemed perfectly natural for Riatt, answering that look, to say:
“You may speak frankly to me, you know.”
Ned took a long breath. “I believe that I may,” he said. “I hope
so, anyhow. I haven’t had any one I could be frank with. Between
ourselves, Fenimer is no good at all.”
“What, my future father-in-law?”
“Is that what he is?” Hickson asked with, for him, unusual
directness.
Riatt’s affirmative was not very decided, and Ned went on:
“I can’t even talk to Nancy about it. She’s keen, but she does not
understand Christine. She attributes the most shocking motives to
her, and when I object, she says every one is like that, only I
haven’t sense enough to see it. Well, I never pretended to have as
much sense as Nancy, but I see some things that she doesn’t. I see,
for instance, that there’s something noble in Christine, in spite
of--I beg your pardon for talking to you like this, but you must
remember that I have known her a good deal longer than you have,
and that in a different way perhaps I care for her almost as much
as you do.”
“I told you to speak frankly,” answered Riatt. “What is it that
Mrs. Almar says of Christine?”
At first Hickson refused to answer, but the suffering and anxiety
he had been undergoing pushed him toward self-expression, and
Riatt did not have to be very skilful to extract the whole story.
Nancy had asserted that Christine had never intended for a minute
to marry Riatt--that she had just used him to excite Linburne’s
jealousy to such a point that he would arrange matters so that he
could marry her himself. For once Riatt found himself in accord
with Nancy.
“Do more people than your sister think that?”
Hickson was not without his reserves. “Oh, I dare say, but I don’t
care about that sort of gossip. It’s absurd to say she and Linburne
are engaged. How can a girl be engaged to a married man?”
“We must move with the times, my dear Hickson,” said Riatt bitterly.
“Linburne’s no good,” Ned went on, “not where women are concerned.
He wouldn’t treat her well if he did marry her. Why, Riatt,” he
added solemnly, “I’d far rather see her married to you than to him.”
If Max felt disposed to smile at this innocent endorsement, he
suppressed the inclination, and merely answered:
“You may have your wish.”
“I hope so,” said Ned. “But you mustn’t go off to kingdom-come, and
leave Linburne a clear field. He’s a man who knows how to talk to
women, and what with the infatuation she has always had for him--”
“You think she has always cared for him?” asked Max. He tried
to smooth his tone down to one of calm interest, but it alarmed
Hickson.
“I don’t know,” he returned hastily. “I used to think so, but I may
be wrong. I thought the same thing about you at the Usshers’. She
kept saying she wasn’t a bit in love with you, but it seemed to me
she was different with you from what she had ever been with any one
else. I suppose I oughtn’t to have said that either. Upon my word,
Riatt, it is awfully good of you to let me talk like this! I can
assure you it is a great relief to me.”
His companion could hardly have echoed this sentiment. As he walked
back alone to his hotel, he found that Hickson’s words had put the
last touches to his mental discomfort.
At first his own conduct had seemed inexplicable to him. Everything
had been going well, he had been just about to be free from the
whole entanglement, when an impulse of primitive jealousy and
fierce masculine egotism had suddenly brought him to New York and
bound him hand and foot. It had not been an agreeable prospect--to
live among people whose standards he did not understand, with
a woman whom he did not love. But, since his conversation with
Hickson, his eyes were opened, and he saw the situation in far more
tragic colors.
He _did_ love her. He did not believe in her or trust her; he
had no illusions as to her feeling for him, but his for her was
clear--he loved her, loved her with that strange mingling of
passion and hatred so often found and so rarely admitted.
He could imagine a man’s learning, even under the most suspicious
circumstances, to conquer jealousy of a woman who loved him. Or
he could imagine having confidence in a woman who did not pretend
love. But to be married to a woman whom you love, without a shred
of belief either in her principles or her affection, seemed to
Riatt about as terrible a prospect as could be offered to a human
being.
There was just one chance for him--that Christine might be willing
to release him. If she really loved Linburne, if there had been
some sort of understanding between them in the past, if his coming
had only precipitated a lovers’ quarrel, then certainly Christine
had too much intelligence to let such a chance slip through her
fingers just on the eve of Linburne’s divorce. Nor was she, he
thought bitterly, too proud to stoop to ask a man to reconsider;
nor did it seem likely, however deeply Linburne’s vanity had been
wounded, that he would refuse to listen.
With this in mind, as soon as he reached his hotel, he sat down and
wrote her a letter:
“My dear Christine:
“What was it, according to your idea, that happened this
afternoon? I believed that for the first time I asked you
to marry me, and that you, for the first time definitely
accepted me. But as I think over your manner, I am led to
think you supposed it was just a continuation of our old
joke.
“Did you accept me, Christine? And if so, why? Why
commit yourself to a marriage without affection, at the
psychological moment when a man for whom you have always
cared is about to be free?
“If you still need me in the game, I am ready enough to be
of use, but I will not be bound to a relation unless you,
too, consider it irrevocably binding.
“Yours,
“M. R.”
He told the messenger to wait for an answer, but he thought that
Christine would hardly be willing to commit herself on such short
notice, or without an interview with Linburne.
But, within a surprisingly short interval, her letter was in his
impatient hands.
“Dear Max:
“I will not be so cruel as to leave you one moment longer
in the false hope that your little break for freedom may
be successful. Face the fact, bravely, my dear. I am going
to marry you. We are both irrevocably bound--at least as
irrevocably as the marriage tie can bind nowadays. If
this afternoon my manner seemed less portentous than you
expected, that must have been because I have always counted
on just this termination to our little adventure. You must
do me the justice to confess that I have always told you
so. As for Lee, in spite of Nancy (I suppose it was Nancy
to whom you rushed for information from my very doorstep) I
have never cared sixpence for him.
“Yours till death us do part,
“CHRISTINE.”
Max read the letter which was brought to him while he was at
dinner. He put it into his pocket, finished an excellent salad,
went to the theater, came back to the hotel and went to bed and
to sleep rather congratulating himself on the fact that he had
become callous to the whole situation, and that, so far as he was
concerned, the crisis was past.
But of course it wasn’t. With the rattle of the first milkcart,
which in a modern city has taken the place of the half-awakened
bird, he woke up, and if he had been in jail he could not have felt
a more choking sense of imprisonment. There was no escape for him,
no hope.
He got up and looked out at the city far below, all outlined like
a great electric sign that said nothing. There must be some way of
being free, besides jumping from the twelfth story window. He lit a
cigarette, and stood thinking. Men disappeared every day; it could
be done. What were the chances, he wondered, of being identified
if he shipped as steward, or engineer for that matter, on a South
American freighter?
It was full daylight before he found himself in possession of a
possible scheme. He remembered the legend of a certain Saint, told
him by his nurse in his early days. She had been beautiful, too
beautiful for her religious ideals; the number of her suitors was
distracting; so to one of them who had extravagantly admired her
eyes she sent them on a salver.
Riatt did not intend sending Christine his worldly goods, but
recognizing that they were the source of the whole trouble, he
decided to get rid of the major part. The problem was simply to
lose his money before the date set for the wedding. And that was
not so difficult, after all. There were a number of people in the
metropolis he thought who would give him every assistance.
The problem of getting it back again at some future time was more
complicated, but even that he thought he could accomplish. He had
made one fortune and he supposed he could some day make another.
The practical question was: What sum would make him impossible to
Christine as a husband? Twenty thousand a year would be out of the
question. But to be perfectly safe he decided to leave himself only
fifteen thousand. He would begin operation as soon as the exchange
opened in the morning. In the meantime what about that mine of
Welsley’s? There was an easy means of sinking almost any sum.
He took up the telephone and sent a telegram at once.
“Plans for my wedding prevent trip to mine. Have, however,
decided after minute investigation here to invest $500,000
in it. Believe we shall make our fortunes.”
He stood an instant with the instrument still in his hand. “Suppose
the damned thing succeeds,” he thought, “I shall be worse off than
ever.”
Then his faith returned to him. “Nothing of Welsley’s ever did
succeed,” he thought; and with this conclusion he went back to bed
and slept like a child.