"Then what am I to be called?"
She might have retorted that she should call him nothing at all: he
never addressed her by any name. Instead, she answered, "Boobles."
"Boobles?"
"Boobles," she repeated firmly. And then came laughter. Ikey's rages had
a way of breaking up in inconvenient bursts of hilarity these days.
But what difference did that make now? What difference did anything
make?
"I don't see," Ikey said to herself desperately, "what makes me so
stupid. I'm afflicted with chronic mental nearsightedness. Most
distressing. This is really a tragedy I'm mixed up in--a tragedy. And
tragedy's a thing I never cared for."
She collapsed miserably on a bench and stared at the letter.
"It's queer how tragedy and going to sea give you the same feeling."
It was not pity--oh, no--that had made him want to marry her. And it was
not love. And it was not because he needed an anchor. Not he. He was not
that kind. It was simply because she was his opportunity. Yes; that was
the word. And she had never suspected.
Not that afternoon in the vacant lot, when he had inquired so
exhaustingly as to her bank account.
Not the next week, when he appeared from town in the middle of the
afternoon, all unheralded and paler than ordinary, with papers to sign,
and the exhilarating news that the insurance companies had paid up, and
a new bank-book with her name and comforting fat figures in it.
How desperately glad she had been over that. For hot shame possessed her
at her appearance--shabby clothes and hardly any of them, when his
ready-made dust-colored garments had immediately been replaced by the
well-fitting blue serge that was her special weakness in masculine
attire. She had invested heavily in frills and slowly regained her
self-respect.
And not when he had appeared with a list of her property--how had he
come by that list?--stating that he had made arrangements to lease
certain pieces and rebuild at once on the others, and asking her
approval of the final arrangements.
She had not suspected him then, either, idiot that she was. She had been
too busy being rested, being thankful, being happy in the big garden,
tucked away from the people who had failed her and the ghastly city and
the memory of its great disaster.
She turned to the letter again. Bixler McFay had always written a good
letter. This time he quite surpassed himself.
Heart-broken, unreconciled; his hopes shipwrecked; his faith destroyed.
How could she have treated him so? She had been practically engaged to
him; and she had left him a prey to every horrible emotion at a time
when one word would have put his mind at rest. No clew as to her
whereabouts by which he could trace her.
She passed that over with her little crooked, sarcastic smile. She had
telegraphed and written both--and the second letter had been registered.
He had probably forgotten that little fact. But it was of little
consequence now. The sting lay in what followed.
And then what did he learn? the letter inquired. That a man he supposed
to be his friend, a fellow he had met daily in Arizona for a couple of
months at a time, had systematically pumped him about her; had taken
means of ascertaining her financial status, and, recognizing her as his
opportunity (that was where the word came from) had rushed off to San
Francisco, married her hand over fist, and launched himself as a
capitalist--on her capital. And she had allowed it.
The girl dropped the pages in her lap. Her little fist came down on top
of them.
"It's a despicable letter," she told herself hotly. "And what he thinks
to gain by it, I don't know. He just wants to make trouble.--And he
has," she breathed with a downward sigh.
The question was, what to do now. And pride stood at her elbow and
pointed out the only course.
This Arthur Hammond, this big, quiet, self-contained, efficient,
indifferent young man--whose opportunity she was--must never know that
she knew, or, knowing, cared.
That was the only solution. Pride forbade a scene--on his account; on
hers; on Bixler McFay's; on everybody's, when it came to that. No one
should know--anything.
"After a while I shall get quite old and pin-cushiony," she assured
herself, "and pricks won't prick; and nothing will matter. I must be
quite affable, and quite indifferent, and always polite--for women are
only rude to men they care about." Her lips trembled. "It's all happened
before, hundreds of times to hundreds of women--and money is very
interesting to men--and there's no reason why this shouldn't happen to
you, Ikey, dear--and a hundred of years from now it won't make any
difference anyway.
"But I'll never tell him anything again----"
For latterly she had told him many things about herself--young
lonesomenesses that nothing could dispel; family hunger for brothers and
sisters and all the ramifications of a home; and, half unconsciously,
her utter content with the present. She turned hot at the thought of it
all.
"But one thing I won't stand." She jumped up and made for the house. "He
shan't have my photograph on his dressing-table."
She had seen it there one day on passing his open door, and had
wondered, wide-eyed, how he came by it--it was one she had had taken in
the East--and had felt unaccountably shy at the thought of asking him
about it.
She tore into the house, to get it, to destroy it, to tear it into tiny
bits, and trample upon it--at once, without a moment to lose--when,
rushing up the porch steps, she collided with the one person of all
others she least expected to see.
V
Late afternoon. The house was very still. Outside, the rain was falling,
falling, and the shrubs bent under their burden of shining drops.
Inside, the fire crackled and whispered and the girl lay in the big
armchair and looked around the room.
The fireplace; the big, rich rugs; the dark paneling; the fine,
unemotional pictures--no wonder the whole place had reminded her of
Arthur Hammond. She ought to have known. She ought to have known.
She heard his step in the hall. His door banged, once; twice; again.
Then, his voice, asking Eliza some question, and the murmur of the
housekeeper's reply.
Then he came in.
She did not speak or move, and his, "Good-evening" was presently
followed by the easy question: "What's the matter?"
Then she turned on him.
"Is it true that this house belongs to you?"
A pause. Then he answered slowly,
"Yes."
"And the grounds?"
"Yes."
"And the automobile--is yours?"
"Yes."
He stood quietly watching her. She knew it, though she did not look at
him. She took a deep breath.
"Those insurance companies have not paid," she said in a stifled voice.
"You told me they had. You--you gave me--Where did all that money come
from I've been spending?"
"Well, I suppose originally it was mine."
"Then it's true you are a millionaire?"
"Ye-es. Just about, I guess."
"And my property--all those buildings that burnt up were mortgaged
and--and I couldn't have rebuilt--and everybody knew it--except me. The
money that's putting them up again----"
"I arranged about that. But what difference does it make?"
"What did you do it for?"
"I thought you'd feel better to have an income again--and on account of
other people, too. It made me hot to have you treated as though you
were--just anybody at all--simply because your income happened to be
short for a time. And--and I thought you'd rather have it that way than
take it from me--at the first," he ended lamely.
She jumped up and confronted him, white with rage.
"How dared you do that? How dared you? How do you suppose I feel, being
in this position--to you?"
"I hope you don't feel at all. And besides--But how did you find out
about this?"
"Cousin Mary has been here," the girl burst out, losing all idea of
keeping anything back. "She had all sorts of things to say: how badly
she'd been treated--how she was shipped off East, and I never wrote to
her, nothing about my affairs, or that I was married, or anything. She
couldn't talk enough. She said everybody sympathized with her, because
her prospects were ruined, because the companies I'd insured in wouldn't
pay and my land was mortgaged so I couldn't rebuild. She knew that--and
she'd never told me. And then she spoke a piece about my conduct in
getting married and never telling her a word about it beforehand. She
said she was mortified to death to have to learn about my marriage from
strangers--strangers--just accidentally. But there wasn't anything she
didn't know: that you were a millionaire, but very eccentric and not
given to going around like a rational being--in society; and that you
had places around in different States and always made it a point not to
know your neighbors, so you wouldn't have them come dropping in
interfering with you; and that you were amusing yourself now with
putting my affairs on their legs again; and how lucky it was for me; and
how strange it was, when I was making a brilliant marriage, not to make
it, at least, in a dignified, even if not in a brilliant manner, with a
church wedding and all. There wasn't anything she didn't know. I believe
she used detectives to find out. And she ended up by saying that she had
a lovely disposition and would forgive me--I could have killed her--I
was her only first cousin's only child--and she was coming here to
live."
"The deuce she did!"
"But what did you do it for?" She turned on him furiously. "What did you
do it for?"
"Yes--but where's this Cousin Mary?"
"We had a scene--at least, part of one: we didn't either of us say half
we wanted to--and she's left. She'll probably decide in the end, though,
that her disposition's lovely enough to overlook it, and insist on
making her home with her eccentric millionaire cousin-in-law--What did
you do this for?"
He stood there, frowning in perplexity. Then with a sigh of relief,
"Supposing we sit down," he said, as one who has a happy inspiration. "I
don't know as I can explain this to your satisfaction--exactly. But I'll
try. It seemed to me--Don't you know, I thought--Hang it all, that King
Cophetua business--was that the chap's name?--never did appeal to me a
little bit. I'm dead sure that Beggar Maid had it in for him from the
start for his beastly condescending ways to her. And I was afraid you
might think--you see, it seemed to me that when your affairs were back
in the position they ought to be, perhaps you'd feel better towards me."
He looked at her with boyish entreaty in his eyes. It was as though she
were suddenly in the room with a new person. The expression of his face
left her breathless.
"Then you came to that boarding-house deliberately to----"
"I did. Deliberately to let you get a bit used to me. It might have
upset you to have a perfect stranger come up and marry you offhand."
"But--but"--she gasped.
She was flushed to the eyes. Suddenly he turned and switched on the
electric lights. Then he turned back and looked at her--hard. The rose
deepened.
"Surely, you're not pretending to tell me," he said slowly, as one
thoroughly bedazed, "that you don't know I'm so looney about you my hand
shakes whenever you come into the room?"
The girl looked away.
"You said that day--that day--that day, you know----"
"Well?"
"You said most distinctly that--you didn't love me."
He turned an exasperated face toward her.
"Said that? Of _course_ I said it. What did you expect me to say? How
apt would you have been to have taken me----"
"_Taken_ you!"
"----if I'd come up with the confession that your eyes set me crazy and
the impudent tilt of your little nose was very much on my nerves?
Supposing I'd told you that you bowled me over the moment I saw
you--It's God's truth. I saw you at the theater in New York just before
you left for Fort Leavenworth. I followed you there, but nothing that
wasn't brass buttons seemed to be having an inning; and I didn't care to
meet you at all, unless I could win out. So I left and went down to
Arizona, where there was some land business I had to look after. Then
McFay came down there and talked a good deal with his mouth; and I was
sure it was all off and was doubly glad I hadn't met you. Then came the
news of the earthquake and the fire; and I kept waiting for the beggar
to get leave and go to you--and he didn't go. And then one night
he--well, he was drunk, or he wouldn't have done it--but he talked some
more with his mouth; and so I knew what to expect from him and--er,
removed your photograph from his rooms--he hadn't any business having it
around for men to stare at, anyway--and then I came here to find you;
and--and that's about all, I guess."
He laughed an embarrassed laugh.
"I was pretty well done for before--it seems to me everybody I met kept
talking about you--but the boarding-house business finished me
completely. There were you--you'd lost more than all that trash put
together, and had been badly treated, and all--but you held your head
high and never peeped and made that dining-table a thing to look forward
to beyond everything. No wonder the landlady hated you. I could have
kneeled down and kissed your little boots--not that you'd have cared
about it especially."
He laughed his boyish, embarrassed laugh again.
"But to go back a bit--how apt would you have been to have taken
me--after your experiences and that cur down at your office, besides--if
I'd have trotted up and told you how I felt and asked you please to have
me? How apt would you have been? I got the license and kept it dark and
bided my time. There was nothing else to do--then."
They were standing again, facing one another, wide-eyed, and both rather
breathless.
The girl turned away.
"I won't be humble," she whispered to herself tremulously. "I won't.
It's a wretched policy for women, and the effects are dreadful on men."
She trailed away towards the other end of the room.
"I'm not Ikey any more. I'm not the Wandering Jew. The thirteenth move
is a glorious move, and I've come home--to a man in a million."
Aloud she observed disdainfully, "The whole performance from beginning
to end has been unspeakable--simply unspeakable; and I insist----"
She had reached the bay-window and pressed her little nose tight against
the window-pane.
"I insist you're no gentleman," came her muffled, shaky voice from
behind the curtains, "or I wouldn't have to be standing here quite by
myself, waiting for you to come over here and--and kiss me."
[Illustration]