THE RETURN OF PATSIE
During this time Bojo had seen much of life. Marsh was too busily
occupied in the detailed exploration of the machinery and organization
of his paper to be often available, and Bojo's time was pretty evenly
divided between the formal evenings in Doris's set and the excursions
with Fred DeLancy into regions not quite so orthodox. He began to see a
good deal behind the scenes, to marvel at the unbending of big men of a
certain suddenly enriched type, at their gullibility and curious
vanities of display. He himself had an innate love of refinement and an
olden touch of chivalry in his attitude toward women, and went through
what he saw without more harm than disillusionment, wiser for the
lesson.
To his surprise he found, that what DeLancy had estimated of his social
values was quite true. Fred was in great demand at quiet dances in
discreet salons at Tenafly's and Lazare's, where curious elements
combined to distract the adventurer, rich at forty-five, who, after a
life of Spartan routine, awoke to the call of pleasure and curiosity at
an age when other men have solved their attitude. Fred was looked upon
as a sort of _enfant gate_ to be rewarded after a gay night with an
easily tossed off order for a thousand shares of this or that to make
his commission. It did not take Bojo long to perceive the inherent
weakness in DeLancy's lovable but pleasure-running character, nor to
speculate upon his future with some apprehension, despite all Fred's
protestations that he was shrewd as they are made, and jolly well alive
to the main chance every minute of the day.
Bojo had been admitted far enough into his confidence to know that there
was already some one in the practical background, a Miss Gladys Stone,
financially a prize who had been caught with the volatile gaiety and
amusing tricks of Fred DeLancy. DeLancy in fact, in moments of serious
intimacy, openly avowed his intention of settling down within a year or
two at the most, and Bojo, with the memory of riotous nights from which
he had with difficulty extracted the popular Fred, owned to himself that
the sooner this occurred the better he would be suited.
He had met Gladys Stone once when he had dropped in on Doris, and he had
a blurred recollection of a thin, blond girl, who giggled and chattered
a great deal and spoke several times of being bored by this or that, by
the opera where there was nothing new, by dinner parties where it was
such a bore to talk bridge, by Palm Beach, which was getting to be a
bore because cheaper hotels had gone up and every one was being let in,
but who would go off into peals of laughter the moment Fred DeLancy
struck a chord on the piano and imitated a German ballade.
"Gladys is a good soul at bottom. She's crazy about Fred and he can
marry her any day he wants her," said Doris, sitting in judgment.
"Do you think it would turn out well?" he said.
"Why not? Gladys hasn't a thought in her head. She'll be a splendid
audience for Fred. He isn't the sort of a person ever to fall
desperately in love."
"I don't know about that," said Bojo, with an uneasy recollection of a
certain alluring but rather obvious little actress, respectable but
entirely too calculating to his way of thinking, whom Fred had been
seeing entirely too much.
"Nonsense! That sort of person is always thinking of the crowd. Besides
Gladys is too stupid to be jealous. It's a splendid match. She'll get a
husband that'll save her house from being a bore, and he'll get a pile
of money: just what each needs."
He saw Doris three or four times a week. She had become a very busy
lady, constantly complaining of the fatigues of a social season. Fred
DeLancy, who, with Marsh, had been admitted to intimacy, made fun of her
to her face in his impudent way, pretending a deep solicitude for the
overburdened rich.
"But it's true," said Doris indignantly. "I haven't a minute to myself.
I'm going from morning to night. You haven't an idea how exacting our
lives are."
"Tell me," said DeLancy, assuming a countenance of commiseration, while
Bojo laughed.
"Horrid beast!" said Doris, pouting. "And then there's charity; you've
no idea how much time charity takes. I'm on three committees and we have
to meet once a week for luncheon. Then I'm in the show for the benefit
of some hospital or other, and now they want us to come to morning
rehearsals. Then there's the afternoon bridge class until four, and half
a dozen teas to go through, and back to be dressed and curled and start
out for dinner and a dance, night after night. And now there's Dolly's
wedding coming on, and the dressmaker and the shopping. I tell you I'm
beginning to look old already!"
She glanced at the clock and went off with a sigh to be decked out for
another social struggle, as Mrs. Drake entered. The young men excused
themselves. Bojo never felt quite comfortable under the scrutiny of the
mother's menacing lorgnette. She was a frail, uneasy little woman, who
dressed too young for her age, whose ready tears had won down the
opposition of her husband, much as the steady drip of a tiny rivulet
bores its way through granite surfaces. She did not approve of Bojo--a
fact of which he was well aware--and was resolved when her first
ambition had been gratified by Dolly's coming marriage to turn her
forces on Doris.
At present she was too much occupied, for there were weak moments when
Dolly, for all her foreign education, rose up in revolt, and others when
Mr. Drake, incensed at the cold-blooded conduct of the pre-nuptial
business arrangements, had threatened to send the whole pack of impudent
lawyers flying. Patsie had been packed off on a visit to a cousin after
a series of indiscretions, culminating in a demand to know from the Duke
what the French meant by a _mariage de convenance_--a request which fell
like a bombshell in a sudden silence of the family dinner.
It was a week before the wedding, as Bojo was swinging up the Avenue
past the Park on his way to Doris, that he suddenly became aware of a
young lady in white fur cap and black velvets skipping toward him,
pursued by a terrier that had a familiar air, while from the attendant
automobile a tall and scrawny spinster was gesticulating violently and
unheeded. The next moment Patsie had run up to him, her arm through his,
Romp leaning against him in recognition, while she exclaimed:
"Bojo, thank Heaven! Save me from this awful woman!"
"What's wrong, what's the matter?" he said, laughing, feeling all at
once a delightful glow at the sight of her snapping eyes and breathless,
parted lips.
"They've brought me back and tied a dragon to me," she cried
indignantly. "I won't stand it. I won't go parading up and down with a
keeper, just like an animal in a zoo. It's all mother's doings, and
Dolly's, because I miffed her old duke. Send the dragon away, please,
Bojo, please."
"What's her name?" he said, with an eye to the approaching car.
"Mlle. du Something or other--how do I know?"
The frantic companion now bearing down, with the chauffeur set to a
grin, Bojo explained his right to act as Miss Drina's escort, and the
matter was adjusted by the _demoiselle de compagnie_ promising to keep a
block behind until they neared home.
Patsie waxed indignant. "Wait till I get hold of Dad! I'll fix her! The
idea! I'm eighteen-- I guess I can take care of myself. I say, let's
give them the slip. No? Oh, dear, it would be such fun. I'm crazy to
slip off and get some skating. What do you think? Can't even do that.
Too vulgar!"
"What did you say to the Duke that raised such a row?" said Bojo,
pleasantly conscious of the light weight on his arm.
"Nothing at all," said Patsie, with an innocent face; but there was a
twinkle in the eyes. "I simply asked what this _mariage de convenance_
was I heard them all talking about, and when he started in to make some
long-winded speech I cut in and asked him if it wasn't when people
didn't love each other but married to pay the bills. Then every one
talked out loud and mother looked at me through her telescope."
"You knew, of course," said Bojo reprovingly.
Drina laughed a guilty laugh.
"I don't think Dolly wants to marry him a bit," she declared. "It's all
mother. Catch me marrying like that."
"And how are you going to marry?"
"When I marry, it'll be because I'm so doggoned in love I'd be sitting
out on the top step waiting for him to come round. If I were engaged to
a man I'd hook him tight and I wouldn't let go of him either, no matter
who was looking on. What sort of a love is it when you sit six feet
apart and try to look bored when some one rattles a door!"
"Patsie--you're very romantic, I'm afraid."
She nodded her head energetically, rattling on: "Moonlight, shifting
clouds, heavily scented flowers, and all that sort of thing. Never mind,
they'd better look out. I'm not going to stand this sort of treatment.
I'll elope."
"You wouldn't do that, Patsie."
"Yes, I would. I say, when you and Doris marry will you let me come and
stay with you?"
"We certainly will," he said enthusiastically.
"Then what are you waiting for?"
"I'm waiting," said Bojo dryly, after a pause, "until I have made enough
money of my own."
"Good for you," she said, as if immensely relieved. "I knew you were
that sort."
"And when are you coming out?" he asked, to turn the conversation.
"The night before the wedding. Isn't it awful?"
"You'll have lots of men hanging about you--crazy about you," he said
abruptly.
"Pooh!"
"Never mind, I shall watch over you carefully and keep the wrong ones
away."
"Will you?"
He nodded, looking into her eyes.
"Good for you. I'll come to you for advice."
They were at the house, the lemon livery of the footmen showing behind
the glass doors.
"I say," said Patsie, with a sudden mischievous smile, "meet me at the
corner to-morrow at four and we'll go off skating."
He shook his head sternly.
"Bojo, please--just for a lark!"
"I will call for you in a proper social manner perhaps."
"Will Doris have to be along?" she asked, thoughtfully.
"I shall of course ask Doris."
"On second thoughts, no, thank you. I think I shall go to my
dressmaker's," she said, with a perfect imitation of his formal
tone--and disappeared with a final burst of laughter.
* * * * *
He went in to see Doris with a sudden determination to clear up certain
matters which had been on his conscience. As luck would have it, as he
entered the great anteroom Mr. James Boskirk was departing. He was a
painstaking, rather obvious young man of irreproachable industry and
habits, a little over serious, rated already as one of the solid young
men of the younger generation of financiers, who made no secret of the
fact that he had arrived at a deliberate decision to invite Miss Doris
Drake into the new firm which he had determined to found for the
establishment of his home and the perpetuation of his name.
It seemed to Bojo, in the perfunctory greeting which they exchanged as
civilized savages, that there was a look of derogatory accusation in
Boskirk's eyes, and, infuriated, he determined to bring up the subject
of Indiana Smelter again and force the truth from Doris.
He came in with a well-assumed air of amusement, adopting a sarcastic
tone, which he knew she particularly dreaded.
"See here, Miss General Manager, this'll never do," he said lightly. "I
thought you were cleverer than that."
"What do you mean?" she said, instantly scenting danger.
"Letting your visits overlap. I only hope you had time to manage all Mr.
Boskirk's affairs. Only, for Heaven's sake, Doris, now that you've got
him in hand, get him to change his style of collar and cuffs. He looks
like the head of an undertakers' trust."
The idea that he might be jealous pleased her.
"Poor Mr. Boskirk," she said, smiling. "He's a very straightforward,
simple fellow."
"Very simple," he said dryly. "Well, what more information has he been
giving you?"
"He does not give me any information."
"You know perfectly well, Doris, that he gave you the tip on Indiana
Smelter," he said furiously, "and that you denied because you knew I
would never have approved."
"You are perfectly horrid, Bojo," she said, going to the fireplace and
stirring up the logs. "I don't care to discuss it with you."
"I'm sorry," he said, "but you've hurt my pride."
"How?"
"Good heavens, can't you see! Haven't you women any sense of fitness?
Don't you know that some things are done and some things are not done?"
She came to him contritely and put her hands on his shoulders.
"Bojo, why do you reproach me? Because I am only thinking of your
success, all the time, every day? Is that what you are angry about?"
He felt like blurting out that there was something in that too, that he
wanted the privilege of feeling that he was winning his own way; but
instead he said:
"So it was Boskirk."
She looked at him, hesitated, and answered:
"No, it wasn't. But if it had been why should you hold it against me?
Why don't you want me to help?--for you don't!"
He resolved to be blunt.
"If you would only do something that is not reasonable, not calculated,
Doris! But everything you do is so well considered. You didn't use to
be this way. I can't help thinking you care more about your life in
society than you do me. It's the worldly part of you I'm afraid about."
She looked into his eyes steadily a moment and then turned her head away
and nodded, smiling in assent.
"Heavens, Doris, if you want to do like Dolly, if you want a position,
or a title, say so and let's be honest."
"But I don't-- I don't," she cried impetuously. "You don t know how I
have fought--" she stopped, not wishing to mention her mother and,
lifting her glance to him anxiously, said: "Bojo, what do you want me to
do?"
"I want you to do something uncalculated," he burst out--"mad,
impulsive, as persons do who are wild in love with each other. I want
you to marry me now."
"Now!"
"Listen: With what I've got and my salary I can scrape up ten
thousand--no, don't spoil it-- I don't want any money from you. Will you
take your chances and marry me on my own basis now?"
She caught her breath and finally said, marking each word:
"Yes--I--will--marry--you--now!"
He burst out laughing at the look of terror in her eyes at the thought
of facing life on ten thousand a year.
"Don't worry, Doris," he said, taking her in his arms. "I wouldn't be so
cruel. I only wanted to hear you say it."
"But I did--I will--if you ask it," she said quickly.
He shook his head.
"If you'd only said it differently. Don't mind me--I'm an idiot--and you
don't understand."
What he meant was that he was an idiot, when he was getting so much that
other men coveted, to insist on what was not in her charming, facile
self to give him. An hour later, after an interview with Daniel Drake,
he was ready to wonder what had made him flare up so quickly--Boskirk's
presence perhaps, or something impulsive which had awakened within him
when Drina had flushed while describing her distinct ideas upon the
subject of the sentiments.
But a new exhilaration effectively drove away all other emotions--the
delirious appetite for gain which had come irresistibly and tyrannically
into his life with the dramatic intensity of his first speculation. In
the interim in Daniel Drake's library, with Doris perched excitedly on
the arm of his chair, several things had been decided. A great operation
was under way which promised an unusual profit. Bojo was to place
$50,000 in the pool which was to be used to operate in the stocks of a
certain Southern railroad long suspected to be on the verge of a
receivership, at the end of which campaign he was to enter Mr. Drake's
service in the role of a private secretary.
Meanwhile he was to continue in the employ of Hauk, Flaspoller and
Forshay, the better to figure in the mixed scheme of manipulation which
would be necessary. He was so seized with the drama of the opportunity,
so keen over the thought of being once more a part of all the whirling,
hurtling machinery of speculation that he did not remember even for a
passing thought, the horror which had come over him at his first
incredible success.