"Certainly not," laughed he. "But why shouldn't you? What is there
against our getting married? Nothing. And everything for it. Our
marriage will straighten out all the--the little difficulties, and you
can go ahead with the singing and not bother about money, or what
people might say, or any of those things."
"I--I've got to think about it, Stanley," she said gently. "I want to
do the decent thing by you and by myself."
"You're afraid I'll interfere in the career--won't want you to go on?
Mildred, I swear I'm--"
"It isn't that," she interrupted, her color high. "The truth is--" she
faltered, came to a full stop--cried, "Oh, I can't talk about it
to-night."
"To-morrow?" he suggested.
"I--don't know," she stammered. "Perhaps to-morrow. But it may be two
or three days."
Stanley looked crestfallen. "That hurts, Mildred," he said. "I was SO
full of it, so anxious to be entirely happy, and I thought you'd fall
right in with it. Something to do with money? You're horribly
sensitive about money, dear. I like that in you, of course. Not many
women would have been as square, would have taken as little--and worked
hard--and thought and cared about nothing but making good-- By Jove,
it's no wonder I'm stark crazy about YOU!"
She was flushed and trembling. "Don't," she pleaded. "You're beating
me down into the dust. I--I'm--" She started up. "I can't talk
to-night. I might say things I'd be-- I can't talk about it. I must--"
She pressed her lips together and fled through the hall to her own
room, to shut and lock herself in. He stared in amazement. When he
heard the distant sound of the turning key he dropped to a chair again
and laughed. Certainly women were queer creatures--always doing what
one didn't expect. Still, in the end--well, a sensible woman knew a
good chance to marry and took it. There was no doubt a good deal of
pretense in Mildred's delicacy as to money matters--but a devilish
creditable sort of pretense. He liked the ladylike, "nice" pretenses,
of women of the right sort--liked them when they fooled him, liked them
when they only half fooled him.
Presently he knocked on the door of the little library, opened it when
permission came in Cyrilla's voice. She was reading the evening
paper--he did not see the glasses she hastily thrust into a drawer. In
that soft light she looked a scant thirty, handsome, but for his taste
too intellectual of type to be attractive--except as a friend.
"Well," said he, as he lit a cigarette and dropped the match into the
big copper ash-bowl, "I'll bet you can't guess what I've been up to."
"Making love to Miss Stevens," replied she. "And very foolish it is of
you. She's got a steady head in that way."
"You're mighty right," said he heartily. "And I admire her for that
more than for anything else. I'd trust her anywhere."
"You're paying yourself a high compliment," laughed Cyrilla.
"How's that?" inquired he. "You're too subtle for me. I'm a bit slow."
Mrs. Brindley decided against explaining. It was not wise to risk
raising an unjust doubt in the mind of a man who fancied that a woman
who resisted him would be adamant to every other man. "Then I've got
to guess again?" said she.
"I've been asking her to marry me," said Stanley, who could contain it
no longer. "Mrs. B. was released from me to-day by the court in
Providence."
"But SHE'S not free," said Cyrilla, a little severely.
Stanley looked confused, finally said: "Yes, she is. It's a queer
story. Don't say anything. I can't explain. I know I can trust you
to keep a close mouth."
"Minding my own business is my one supreme talent," said Cyrilla.
"She hasn't accepted me--in so many words," pursued Baird, "but I've
hopes that it'll come out all right."
"Naturally," commented Cyrilla dryly.
"I know I'm not--not objectionable to her. And how I do love her!" He
settled himself at his ease. "I can't believe it's really me. I never
thought I'd marry--just for love. Did you?"
"You're very self-indulgent," said Cyrilla.
"You mean I'm marrying her because I can't get her any other way.
There's where you're wrong, Mrs. Brindley. I'm marrying her because I
don't want her any other way. That's why I know it's love. I didn't
think I was capable of it. Of course, I've been rather strong after
the ladies all my life. You know how it is with men."
"I do," said Mrs. Brindley.
"No, you don't either," retorted he. "You're one of those cold,
stand-me-off women who can't comprehend the nature of man."
"As you please," said she. In her eyes there was a gleam that more
than suggested a possibility of some man--some man she might
fancy--seeing an amazingly different Cyrilla Brindley.
"I may say I was daft about pretty women," continued Baird. "I never
read an item about a pretty woman in the papers, or saw a picture of a
pretty woman that I didn't wish I knew her--well. Can you imagine
that?" laughed he.
"Commonplace," said Cyrilla. "All men are so. That's why the papers
always describe the woman as pretty and why the pictures are published."
"Really? Yes, I suppose so." Baird looked chagrined. "Anyhow, here I
am, all for one woman. And why? I can't explain it to myself. She's
pretty, lovely, entrancing sometimes. She has charm, grace, sweetness.
She dresses well and carries herself with a kind of sweet haughtiness.
She looks as if she knew a lot--and nothing bad. Do you know, I can't
imagine her having been married to that beast! I've tried to imagine
it. I simply can't."
"I shouldn't try if I were you," said Mrs. Brindley.
"But I was talking about why I love her. Does this bore you?"
"A little," laughed Cyrilla. "I'd rather hear some man talking about
MY charms. But go on. You are amusing, in a way."
"I'll wager I am. You never thought I'd be caught? I believed I was
immune--vaccinated against it. I thought I knew all the tricks and
turns of the sex. Yet here I am!"
"What do you think caught you?"
"That's the mystery. It's simply that I can't do without her.
Everything she looks and says and does interests me more than anything
else in the world. And when I'm not with her I'm wishing I were and
wondering how she's looking or what she's saying or doing. You don't
think she'll refuse me?" This last with real anxiety.
"I haven't an idea," replied Mrs. Brindley. "She's--peculiar. In some
moods she would. In others, she couldn't. And I've never been able to
settle to my satisfaction which kind of mood was the real Mary Stevens."
"She IS queer, isn't she?" said Stanley thoughtfully. "But I've told
her she'd be free to go on with the career. Fact is, I want her to do
it."
Mrs. Brindley's eyes twinkled. "You think it would justify you to your
set in marrying her, if she made a great hit?"
Stanley blushed ingenuously. "I'll not deny that has something to do
with it," he admitted. "And why not?"
"Why not, indeed?" said she. "But, after she had made the hit, you'd
want her to quit the stage and take her place in society. Isn't that
so?"
"You ARE a keen one," exclaimed he admiringly. "But I didn't say that
to her. And you won't, will you?"
"It's hardly necessary to ask that," said Mrs. Brindley. "Now,
suppose-- You don't mind my talking about this?"
"What I want," replied he. "I can't talk or think anything but her."
"Now, suppose she shouldn't make a hit. Suppose she should
fail--should not develop reliable voice enough?"
Stanley looked frightened. "But she can't fail," he cried with
over-energy. "There's no question about her voice."
"I understand," Mrs. Brindley hastened to say. "I was simply making
conversation with her as the subject."
"Oh, I see." Stanley settled back.
"Suppose she should prove not to be a great artist--what then?"
persisted Cyrilla, who was deeply interested in the intricate obscure
problem of what people really thought as distinguished from what they
professed and also from what they imagined they thought.
"The fact that she's a great artist--that's part of her," said Baird.
"If she weren't a great singer, she wouldn't be she--don't you see?"
"Yes, I see," said Mrs. Brindley with an ironic sadness which she
indulged openly because there was no danger of his understanding.
"I don't exactly love her because she amounts to a lot--or is sure to,"
pursued he, vaguely dissatisfied with himself. "It's just as she
doesn't care for me because I've got the means to take care of her
right, yet that's part of me--and she'd not be able to marry me if I
hadn't. Don't you see?"
"Yes, I see," said Mrs. Brindley with more irony and less sadness.
"There's always SOME reason beside love."
"I'd say there's always some reason FOR love," said Baird, and he felt
that he had said something brilliant--as is the habit of people of
sluggish mentality when they say a thing they do not themselves
understand. "You don't doubt that I love her?" he went on. "Why should
I ask her to marry me if I didn't?"
"I suppose that settles it," said Cyrilla.
"Of course it does," declared he.
For an hour he sat there, talking on, most of it a pretty dull kind of
drivel. Mrs. Brindley listened patiently, because she liked him and
because she had nothing else to do until bedtime. At last he rose with
a long sigh and said:
"I guess I might as well be going."
"She'll not come in to-night again," said Cyrilla slyly.
He laughed. "You are a good one. I'll own up, I've been staying on
partly in the hope that she'd come back. But it's been a great joy to
talk to you about her. I know you love her, too."
"Yes, I'm extremely fond of her," said she. "I've not known many
women--many people without petty mean tricks. She's one."
"Isn't she, though?" exclaimed he.
"I don't mean she's perfect," said Mrs. Brindley. "I don't even mean
that she's as angelic as you think her. I'd not like her, if she were.
But she's a superior kind of human."
She was tired of him now, and got him out speedily. As she closed the
front door upon him, Mildred's door, down the hall, opened. Her head
appeared, an inquiring look upon her face. Mrs. Brindley nodded.
Mildred, her hair done close to her head, a dressing-robe over her
nightgown and her bare feet in little slippers, came down the hall. She
coiled herself up in a big chair in the library and lit a cigarette.
She looked like a handsome young boy.
"He told you?" she said to Mrs. Brindley.
"Yes," replied Cyrilla.
Silence. In all their intimate acquaintance there had never been an
approach to the confidential on either side. It was Cyrilla's notion
that confidences were a mistake, and that the more closely people were
thrown together the more resolutely they ought to keep certain barriers
between them. She and Mildred got on too admirably, liked each other
too well, for there to be any trifling with their relations--and
over-intimacy inevitably led to trifling. Mildred had restrained
herself because Mrs. Brindley had compelled it by rigid example. Often
she had longed to talk things over, to ask advice; but she had never
ventured further than generalities, and Mrs. Brindley had never
proffered advice, had never accepted opportunities to give it except in
the vaguest way. She had taught Mildred a great deal, but always by
example, by doing, never by saying what ought or ought not to be done.
Thus, such development of Mildred's character as there had been was
natural and permanent.
"He has put me in a peculiar position," said Mildred. "Or, rather, I
have let myself drift into a peculiar position. For I think you're
right in saying that oneself is always to blame. Won't you let me talk
about it to you, please? I know you hate confidences. But I've got
to--to talk. I'd like you to advise me, if you can. But even if you
don't, it'll do me good to say things aloud."
"Often one sees more clearly," was Cyrilla's reply--noncommittal, yet
not discouraging.
"I'm free to marry him," Mildred went on. "That is, I'm not married.
I'd rather not explain--"
"Don't," said Mrs. Brindley. "It's unnecessary."
"You know that it's Stanley who has been lending me the money to live
on while I study. Well, from the beginning I've been afraid I'd find
myself in a difficult position."
"Naturally," said Mrs. Brindley, as she paused.
"But I've always expected it to come in another way--not about
marriage, but--"
"I understand," said Mrs. Brindley. "You feared you'd be called on to
pay in the way women usually pay debts to men."