As they drove back she revealed another plan to him—she was taking him
for a moment to see a friend of hers. He protested. He did not want to
see anyone but herself, but Crystal was firm. He must see this woman;
she was their celebrated parlor Bolshevist. Ben hated parlor
Bolshevists. Did he know any? No. Well, then. Anyhow, Sophia would
never forgive her if she did not bring him. Sophia adored celebrities.
Sophia who? Sophia Dawson. The name seemed dimly familiar to Ben, and
then he remembered. It was the name on the thousand-dollar check for
the strike sufferers that had come in the day before.
They drove up an avenue of little oaks to a formidable palace built of
gray stone, so smoothly faced that there was not a crevice in the
immense pale façade. Two men in knee-breeches opened the double doors
and they went in between golden grilles and rows of tall white lilies.
They were led through a soundless hall, and up stairs so thickly
carpeted that the feet sank in as in new-fallen snow, and finally they
were ushered through a small painted door into a small painted room,
which had been brought all the way from Sienna, and there they found
Mrs. Dawson—a beautiful, worn, world-weary Mrs. Dawson, with one streak
of gray in the front of her dark hair, her tragic eyes, and her long
violet and black draperies—a perfect Sibyl.
Crystal did not treat her as a Sibyl, however. “Hullo, Sophie!” she
said. “This is my brother-in-law’s brother, Ben Moreton. He’s crazy to
meet you. You’ll like him. I can’t stay because I’m dining somewhere or
other, but he’s not.”
“Will he dine with me?” said Mrs. Dawson in a wonderful deep, slow
voice—“just stay on and dine with me alone?”
Ben began to say that he couldn’t, but Crystal said yes, that he would
be delighted to, and that she would stop for him again about half past
nine, and that it was a wonderful plan, and then she went away.
Mrs. Dawson seemed to take it all as a matter of course. “Sit down, Mr.
Moreton,” she said. “I have a quarrel with you.”
Ben could not help feeling a little disturbed by the way he had been
injected into Mrs. Dawson’s evening without her volition. He did not
sit down.
“You know,” he said, “there isn’t any reason why you should have me to
dine just because Crystal says so. I do want to thank you for the check
you sent in to us for the strike fund. It will do a lot of good.”
“Oh, that,” replied Mrs. Dawson. “They are fighting all our battles for
us.”
“It cheered us up in the office. I wanted to tell you, and now I think
I’ll go. I dare say you are dining out, anyhow—”
Her eyes flashed at him. “Dining out!” she exclaimed, as if the
suggestion insulted her. “You evidently don’t know me. I never dine
out. I have nothing in common with these people. I lead a very lonely
life. You do me a favor by staying. You and I could exchange ideas.
There is no one in Newport whom I can talk to—reactionaries.”
“Miss Cord is not exactly a reactionary,” said Ben, sitting down.
Mrs. Dawson smiled. “Crystal is not a reactionary; Crystal is a child,”
she replied. “But what can you expect of William Cord’s daughter? He is
a dangerous and disintegrating force—cold—cynical—he feels not the
slightest public responsibility for his possessions.” Mrs. Dawson laid
her hand on her heart as if it were weighted with all her jewels and
footmen and palaces. “Most Bourbons are cynical about human life, but
he goes farther; he is cynical about his own wealth. And that brings me
to my quarrel with you, Mr. Moreton. How could you let your brother
spend his beautiful vigorous youth as a parasite to Cord’s vapid son?
Was that consistent with your beliefs?”
This attack on his consistency from a lady whose consistency seemed
even more flagrant amused Ben, but as he listened he was obliged to
admit that there was a great deal of good sense in what she had to say
about David, whom she had met once or twice at the Cords’. Ben was too
candid and eager not to ask her before long the question that was in
his mind—how it was possible for a woman holding her views to be
leading a life so opposed to them.
She was not at all offended, and even less at a loss for an answer. “I
am not a free agent, Mr. Moreton,” she said. “Unhappily, before I began
to think at all, I had undertaken certain obligations. The law allows a
woman to dispose of everything but her property while she is still a
child. I married at eighteen.”
It was a story not without interest and Mrs. Dawson told it well. There
does not live a man who would not have been interested.
They dined, not in the great dining room downstairs, nor even in the
painted room from Sienna, but in a sort of loggia that opened from it,
where, beyond the shaded lights, Ben could watch the moon rise out of
the sea.
It was a perfect little meal, short, delicious, and quickly served by
three servants. He enjoyed it thoroughly, although he found his hostess
a strangely confusing companion. He would make up his mind that she was
a sincere soul captured by her environment, when a freshly discovered
jewel on her long fingers would shake his faith. And he would just
decide that she was a melodramatic fraud, when she would surprise him
by her scholarly knowledge of social problems. She had read deeply,
knew several languages, and had known many of the European leaders.
Such phrases as “Jaurès wrote me ten days before he died—” were
frequent, but not too frequent, on her lips.
By the time Crystal stopped for him Ben had begun to feel like a child
who has lost his mother in a museum, or as Dante might have felt if he
had missed Virgil from his side. When he bade Mrs. Dawson good night,
she asked him to come back.
“Come and spend September here,” she said, as if it were a small thing.
“You can work all day if you like. I sha’n’t disturb you, and you need
never see a soul. It will do you good.”
He was touched by the invitation, but of course he refused it. He tried
to explain tactfully, but clearly, why it was that he couldn’t do that
sort of thing—that the editor of _Liberty_ did not take his holiday at
Newport.
She understood, and sighed. “Ah, yes,” she said. “I’m like that man in
mythology whom neither the sky nor the earth would receive. I’m very
lonely, Mr. Moreton.”
He found himself feeling sorry for her, as he followed a footman
downstairs, his feet sinking into the carpets at each step. Crystal in
the blue car was at the door. She was bareheaded and the wind had been
blowing her hair about.
“Well,” she said, as he got in, “did you have a good time? I’m sure you
had a good dinner.”
“Excellent, but confusing. I don’t quite get your friend.”
“You don’t understand Sophia?” Crystal’s tone expressed surprise. “You
mean her jewels and her footmen? Why, Ben, it’s just like the fathers
of this country who talked about all men being equal and yet were
themselves slaveholders. She sincerely believes those things in a way,
and then it’s such a splendid role to play, and she enjoys that; and
then it teases Freddie Dawson. Freddie is rather sweet if he’s
thoroughly unhappy, and this keeps him unhappy almost all the time. Did
she ask you to stay? I meant her to.”
“Yes, she did; but of course I couldn’t.”
“Oh, Ben, why not?”
This brought them once more to the discussion of the barrier. This time
Ben felt he could make her see. He said that she must look at it this
way—that in a war you could not go and stay in enemy country, however
friendly your personal relations might be. Well, as far as he was
concerned this was a war, a class war.
They were headed for the Ocean Drive, and Crystal rounded a sharp turn
before she answered seriously:
“But I thought you didn’t believe in war.”
“I don’t,” he answered. “I hate it—I hate all violence. We—labor, I
mean—didn’t initiate this, but when men won’t see, when they have power
and won’t stop abusing it, there is only one way to make—”
“Why, Ben,” said Crystal, “you’re just a pacifist in other people’s
quarrels, but as militaristic as can be in your own. I’m not a
pacifist, but I’m a better one than you, because I don’t believe in
emphasizing any difference between human beings. That’s why I want a
League of Nations. I hate gangs—all women really do. Little girls don’t
form gangs like little boys. Every settlement worker knows that. I
won’t have you say that I belong to the other group. I won’t be
classified. I’m a human being—and I intend to behave as such.”
Since she had left him she had been immersed again in her old life—her
old friends—and the result had been to make her wonder if her
experience with Ben had been as wonderful as it had seemed. When she
stopped for him she had been almost prepared to find that the wild joy
of their meetings had been something accidental and temporary, and that
only a stimulating and pleasant friendship was left. But as soon as she
saw that he really regarded their differences seriously, all her own
prudence and doubt melted away. She knew she was ready to make any
sacrifices for him, and in view of that all talk of obstacles was
folly.
She stopped the car on the point of the island, with the open sea on
one hand, the harbor on the other. In front of them the lightship was
moving with a slow, majestic roll, and to the right was the long
festoon of Narragansett lights, and as they stopped the lighted bulk of
the New York boat appeared, making its way toward Point Judith.
His prolonged silence began to frighten her.
“Ben,” she said, “do you seriously mean that you believe friendship
between us is impossible?”
“Friendship, nothing,” answered Moreton. “I love you.”
He said it as if it had always been understood between them, as of
course it had, but the instant he said it, he gave her a quick,
appealing look to see how she would take so startling an assertion.
If Crystal had poured out just what was in her mind at that second she
would have answered: “Of course you do. I’ve known that longer than you
have. And can’t you see that if I had had any doubt about its being
true, I’d have taken steps to make it true? But, as I really did not
doubt it, I’ve been able to be quite passive and leave it mostly to
you, which I so much prefer.”
But rigorous candor is rarely attained, and Crystal did not say this.
In fact, for a few seconds she did not say anything, but merely allowed
her eyes to shine upon him, with the inevitable result that at the end
of precisely six seconds of their benevolent invitation he took her in
his arms and kissed her. It was a very unprotected point, and several
cars were standing not too far away, but Crystal, who had an excellent
sense of proportion, made no objection whatever. She was being proved
right in two important particulars—first, that she was a human being,
and second, that there was no barrier between them. She was very
generous about it. She did not say, “Where’s your barrier now?” or
anything like that; she simply said nothing, and the barrier passed out
of the conversation and was no more seen.
Very soon, alleging that she must get home at the time at which she
usually did get home from dinners, she took him back; but she soothed
him with the promise of an uninterrupted day to follow.
Time—the mere knowledge of unbroken hours ahead—is a boon which real
love cannot do without. Minor feelings may flourish on snatched
interviews and stolen meetings, but love demands—and usually
gets—protected leisure. The next day these lovers had it. They spent
the morning, when Mr. Cord was known to be playing golf, at the Cords’
house, and then when Mr. Cord telephoned that he was staying to
luncheon at the club, if Crystal did not object (and Crystal did not),
she and Ben arranged a picnic—at least Tomes did, and they went off
about one o’clock in the blue car. They went to a pool in the rocks
that Crystal had always known about, with high walls around it, and
here, with a curtain of foam between them and the sea, for the waves
were rising, they ate lunch, as much alone as on a desert island.
It was here that Ben asked her to marry him, or, to be accurate, it was
here that they first began talking about their life together, and
whether Nora would become reconciled to another woman about the flat.
The nearest approach to a definite proposal was Ben’s saying:
“You would not mind my saying something about all this to your father
before I go this evening, would you?”
And Crystal replied: “Poor father! It will be a blow, I’m afraid.”
“Well,” said Ben, “he told me himself that he liked me better than
David.”
“That’s not saying much.”
At this Ben laughed lightly.
He might have had his wrong-headed notions about barriers, but he was
not so un-American as to regard a father as an obstacle.
“But, oh, Crystal,” he added, “suppose you find you do hate being poor.
It is a bore in some ways.”
Crystal, who had been tucking away the complicated dishes of her
luncheon basket, looked at Ben and lightly sucked one finger to which
some raspberry jam from Tomes’s supernal sandwiches had adhered.
“I sha’n’t mind it a bit, Ben,” she said, “and for a good
reason—because I’m terribly conceited.” He did not understand at all,
and she went on: “I believe I shall be just as much of a person—perhaps
more—without money. The women who really mind being poor are the
humble-minded ones, who think that they are made by their clothes and
their lovely houses and their maids and their sables. When they lose
them they lose all their personality, and of course that terrifies
them. I don’t think I shall lose mine. Does it shock you to know that I
think such a lot of myself?”
It appeared it did not shock him at all.
[Illustration: “Suppose You Find You Do Hate Being Poor?”]
When they reached the house she established him in the drawing-room and
went off to find her father.
She was a true woman, by which is meant now and always that she
preferred to allow a man to digest his dinner before she tried to bring
him to a rational opinion. But in this case her hands were tied. The
Cords dined at eight—or sometimes a little later, and Ben’s boat left
for New York at half past nine, so that it would be utterly impossible
to postpone the discussion of her future until after dinner. It had to
be done at once.
Crystal ran up and knocked at his bedroom door. Loud splashings from
the adjoining bathroom were all the answer she got. She sat down on the
stairs and waited. Those are the moments that try men’s and even
women’s souls. For the first time her enterprise seemed to her a little
reckless. For an instant she had the surprising experience of
recognizing the fact that Ben was a total stranger. She looked at the
gray-stone stairway on which she was sitting and thought that her life
had been as safe and sheltered as a cloister, and now, steered by this
total stranger, she proposed to launch herself on an uncharted course
of change. And to this program she was to bring her father’s
consent—for she knew very well that if she couldn’t, Ben wouldn’t be
able to—in the comparatively short time between now and dinner. Then,
the splashing having ceased, the sound of bureau drawers succeeded, and
Crystal sprang up and knocked again.
“That you, Peters?” said an unencouraging voice. (Peters was Mr. Cord’s
valet.)
“No, dear, it’s I,” said Crystal.
“Oh, come in,” said Mr. Cord. He was standing in the middle of the room
in his shirt sleeves and gloomily contemplating the shirt he wore.
“What’s this laundress, anyhow? A Bolshevist or a pastry-cook?” he
said. “Did you ever see anything like this shirt?”
Crystal approached and studied the shirt. It appeared to her to be
perfectly done up, but she said: “Yes, dear, how terrible! I’ll pack
her off to-morrow, but you always look all right whatever you wear;
that’s some comfort.” She saw that even this hadn’t done much good,
and, going to the heart of the problem, she asked, “How did your golf
go?”
Mr. Cord’s gloom gathered as he answered, with resignation, “Oh, all
right.”
His manner was exactly similar to Ben’s in his recent moment of
depression, and not unlike McKellar’s when he had explained what he
suffered under the good Lord’s weather.
“Is Eddie’s game any better?” asked Crystal, feeling her way.
“No,” cried her father, contemptuously. “He’s rotten, but I’m worse.
And golf-clubs, Crystal! No one can make a club any more. Have you
noticed that? But the truth of the matter is, I’m getting too old to
play golf.” And Mr. Cord sat down with a good but unconscious imitation
of a broken old man.
Of course Crystal swept this away. She scolded him a little, pointed
out his recent prowess, and spoke slightingly of all younger athletes,
but she really had not time to do the job thoroughly, for the thought
of Ben, sitting so anxious in the drawing-room alone, hurried her on.
“Anyhow, dear,” she said, “I’ve come to talk to you about something
terribly important. What would you say, father, if I told you I was
engaged?”
Mr. Cord was so startled that he said, what was rare for him, the first
thing that came into his head:
“Not to Eddie?”
The true diplomatist, we have been told, simply takes advantage of
chance, and Crystal was diplomatic. “And suppose it is?” she replied.
“I should refuse my consent,” replied her father.
Crystal looked hurt. “Is there anything against Eddie,” she asked,
“except his golf?”
“Yes,” answered her father, “there are two of the most serious things
in the world against him—first, that he doesn’t amount to anything; and
second, that you don’t love him.”
“No,” Crystal admitted, “I don’t, but then—love—father, isn’t love
rather a serious undertaking nowadays? Is it a particularly helpful
adjunct to marriage? Look at poor Eugenia. Isn’t it really more
sensible to marry a nice man who can support one, and then if in time
one does fall in love with another man—”
“Never let me hear you talk like that again, Crystal,” said her father,
with a severity and vigor he seldom showed outside of board meetings.
“It’s only your ignorance of life that saves you from being actually
revolting. I’m an old man and not sentimental, you’ll grant, but, take
my word for it, love is the only hope of pulling off marriage
successfully, and even then it’s not easy. As for Eugenia, I think
she’s made a fool of herself and is going to be unhappy, but I’d rather
do what she has done than what you’re contemplating. At least she cared
for that fellow—”
“I’m glad you feel like that, darling,” said Crystal, “because it isn’t
Eddie I’m engaged to, but Ben Moreton. He’s waiting downstairs now.”
Mr. Cord started up—his eyes shining like black flames.
“By God! Crystal,” he said, “you sha’n’t marry that
fellow—Eugenia—perhaps—but not you.”
“But, father, you said yourself, you thought he was a fine—”
“I don’t care what I said,” replied Mr. Cord, and, striding to the
door, he flung it open and called in a voice that rolled about the
stone hall: “Mr. Moreton, Mr. Moreton! Come up here, will you?”
Ben came bounding up the stairs like a panther. Cord beckoned him in
with a sharp gesture and shut the door.
“This won’t do at all, Moreton,” he said. “You can’t have Crystal.”
Ben did not answer; he looked very steadily at Cord, who went on:
“You think I can’t stop it—that she’s of age and that you wouldn’t take
a penny of my money, anyhow. That’s the idea, isn’t it?”
“That’s it,” said Ben.
Cord turned sharply to Crystal. “Does what I think make any difference
to you?” he asked.
“A lot, dear,” she answered, “but I don’t understand. You never seemed
so much opposed to the radical doctrine.”
“No, it’s the radical, not the doctrine, your father objects to,” said
Ben.
“Exactly,” answered Mr. Cord. “You’ve put it in a nutshell. Crystal,
I’m going to tell you what these radicals really are—they’re
failures—everyone of them. Sincere enough—they want the world changed
because they haven’t been able to get along in it as it is—they want a
new deal because they don’t know how to play their cards; and when they
get a new hand, they’ll play it just as badly. It’s not their theories
I object to, but them themselves. You think if you married Moreton
you’d be going into a great new world of idealism. You wouldn’t. You’d
be going into a world of failure—of the pettiest, most futile quarrels
in the world. The chief characteristic of the man who fails is that he
always believes it’s the other fellow’s fault; and they hate the man
who differs with them by one per cent more than they hate the man who
differs by one hundred. Has there ever been a revolution where they did
not persecute their fellow revolutionists worse than they persecuted
the old order, or where the new rule wasn’t more tyrannical than the
old?”
“No one would dispute that,” said Ben. “It is the only way to win
through to—”
“Ah,” said Cord, “I know what you’re going to say, but I tell you, you
win through to liberal practices when, and only when, the conservatives
become converted to your ideas, and put them through for you. That’s
why I say I have no quarrel with radical doctrines—they are coming,
always coming, but”—Cord paused to give his words full weight—“I hate
the radical.”
There was a little pause. Crystal, who had sunk into a low chair,
raised her eyes to Ben, as if she expected a passionate contradiction
from him, but it did not come.
“Yes,” he said, after a moment, “that’s all true, Mr. Cord—with
limitations; but, granting it, you’ve put my side, too. What are we to
say of the conservative—the man who has no vision of his own—who has to
go about stealing his beliefs from the other side? He’s very efficient
at putting _them_ into effect—but efficient as a tool, as a servant.
Look at the mess he makes of his own game when he tries to act on his
own ideas. He crushes democracy with an iron efficiency, and he creates
communism. He closes the door to trade-unionism and makes a revolution.
That’s efficiency for you. We radicals are not so damned inefficient,
while we let the conservatives do our work for us.”
“Well, let it be revolution, then,” said Cord. “I believe you’re right.
It’s coming, but do you want to drag a girl like Crystal into it? Think
of her! Say you take her, as I suppose a young fellow like you can do.
She’d have perhaps ten years of an exciting division of allegiance
between your ideas and the way she had been brought up, and the rest of
her life (for, believe me, as we get older we all return to our early
traditions)—the rest of her life she’d spend regretting the ties and
environment of her youth. On the other hand, if she gives you up she
will have regrets, too, I know, but they won’t wreck her and embitter
her the way the others will.”
Ben’s face darkened. No man not a colossal egotist could hear such a
prophesy with indifference. He did not at once answer, and then he
turned to Crystal.
“What do you think of that?” he asked.
To the surprise of both men, Crystal replied with a laugh. “I was
wondering,” she said, “when either of you would get round to asking
what I thought of it all.”
“Well, what do you think?” said Cord, almost harshly.
Crystal rose, and, slipping her arm through his, leaned her head on the
point of her father’s shoulder—he was of a good height. “I think,” she
said, “you both talk beautifully. I was so proud of you both—saying
such profound things so easily, and keeping your tempers so perfectly”
(both brows smoothed out), “and it was all the more wonderful because,
it seemed to me, you were both talking about things you knew nothing
about.”
“What do you mean?” burst from both men with simultaneous astonishment.
“Ben, dear, father doesn’t know any radicals—except you, and he’s only
seen you twice. Father dear, I don’t believe Ben ever talked five
minutes with an able, successful conservative until he came here
to-day.”
“You’re going to throw me over, Crystal?” said Ben, seeing her pose
more clearly than he heard her words.
“No,” said Mr. Cord, bitterly, “she’s going to throw over an old man in
favor of a young one.”
“You silly creatures,” said Crystal, with a smile that made the words
affectionate and not rude. “How can I ever throw either of you over?
I’m going to be Ben’s wife, and I am my father’s daughter. I’m going to
be those two things for all my life.”
Ben took her hand. She puzzled him, but he adored her. “But some day,
Crystal,” he said, “you will be obliged to choose between our
views—mine or your father’s. You must see that.”
“He’s right,” her father chimed in. “This is not a temporary difference
of opinion, you know, Crystal. This cleavage is as old as mankind—the
radical against the conservative. Time doesn’t reconcile them.”
Again the idea came to her: “They do love to form gangs, the poor
dears.” Aloud she said: “Yes, but the two types are rarely pure ones.
Why, father, you think Ben is a radical, but he’s the most hidebound
conservative about some things—much worse than you—about free verse,
for instance. I read a long editorial about it not a month ago. He
really thinks anyone who defends it ought to be deported to some poetic
limbo. Ben, you think my father is conservative. But there’s a great
scandal in his mental life. He’s a Baconian—”
“He thinks Bacon wrote the plays!” exclaimed Ben, really shocked.
“Certainly I do,” answered Mr. Cord. “Every man who uses his mind must
think so. There is nothing in favor of the Shakespeare theory, except
tradition—”
He would have talked for several hours upon the subject, but Crystal
interrupted him by turning to Ben and continuing what she had meant to
say:
“When you said I should have to choose between your ideas, you meant
between your political ideas. Perhaps I shall, but I won’t make my
choice, rest assured, until I have some reason for believing that each
of you knows something—honestly knows something about the other one’s
point of view.”
“I don’t get it, exactly,” said Ben.
She addressed Mr. Cord.
“Father,” she went on, “Ben has a little flat in Charles Street, and an
old servant, and that’s where I’m going to live.”
Her father, though bitterly wounded, had regained his sardonic calm.
“Perhaps,” he said, “you’ll bring him up to Seventy-ninth Street for
Sunday dinner now and then.”
Crystal shook her head. “No, dear,” she said. “That isn’t the way it’s
going to be. As soon as I get settled and have time to look about me, I
shall take another little flat for you. You will live with us, for a
few months in the winter, and get to know Ben’s friends—his gang, as
you would say—get to know them not as a philanthropist, or an employer,
or an observer, but just as one of our friends—see if they really are
the way you think they are. And then, in March you shall go off to Palm
Beach or Virginia just as usual.”
“That’s a fine idea,” said Mr. Cord, sarcastically. “Do you realize
that I shall hardly survive your marriage with the editor of _Liberty_.
I shall be kicked off—requested to resign from half a dozen boards for
having such a son-in-law—”
“There’s freedom for you,” said Ben.
“And,” continued Mr. Cord, “if it were known that I consented to the
marriage, and actually consorted with such fellows! You must realize,
Crystal, that most of the most influential men in the country think the
way Eddie does. Half my boards are composed of older Eddies.”
“You’ll do better to resign from them, then,” said Crystal.
Ben had been very much struck by Crystal’s suggestion.
“Really, Mr. Cord,” he said, “I believe that is a great idea of
Crystal’s. I really believe if capital had more idea of the real views
of labor—as you said, you eventually adopt all our ideas, why wouldn’t
an intimate knowledge of individuals hurry that process?”
“Simply because I should lose all influence with my own people by
merely investigating you in a friendly spirit.”
“Glory!” exclaimed Ben, with open contempt for such people. “Think of
penalizing the first honest attempt to understand!”
“You see the point of my plan, don’t you, Ben?” said Crystal.
“You bet I do.”
“That’s wonderful,” she answered, “for you’ve only heard half of it. In
July, August, and September, we will come here to Newport, and you will
get to understand father’s—”
“Hold on,” cried Ben, “just a moment. That is absolutely impossible,
Crystal. You don’t understand. The paper couldn’t keep me a day if I
did that.”
“Ha!” cried Mr. Cord, coming suddenly to life. “There’s freedom for
you!”
“That would be very cruel of the owners, Ben, but if they did—”
“It wouldn’t be cruel at all,” said Moreton. “They wouldn’t have any
choice. I should have lost all influence with my readers, if it were
known—”
“Glory!” said Mr. Cord. “Think of penalizing the first honest attempt
to understand the capitalistic class!”
Ben stood silent, caught in the grip of an intellectual dilemma which
he felt every instant would dissolve itself and which didn’t.
Crystal for the first time moved away from her father. “Those are my
terms,” she said. “I stay with the man who agrees to them, and if you
both decline them—well, I’ll go off and try and open the oyster by
myself.”
There was a long momentous pause, and then Tomes’s discreet knock on
the door.
“Mr. Verriman on the telephone, madam.”
“I can’t come,” said Crystal. “Ask him to send a message.”
“Don’t you see, Crystal, what your plan would do?” said her father.
“Either it would make Moreton a red revolutionist and me a persecuting
Bourbon, or else it would just ruin us both for either of our
objectives.”
“It won’t ruin you for my objectives,” said Crystal, “and women are
more human, you know, than men.”
Another knock at the door. Tomes’s voice again:
“Mr. Verriman wishes to know if he might dine here this evening?”
“No,” said Cord, looking at Crystal.
Crystal raised her voice. “Certainly, Tomes. Say we shall be delighted
to have him—at eight.”
Both men turned to her.
“Why did you do that, Crystal? Verriman—here—to-night?”
Crystal did not answer—the identity of their tones, their words, and
their irritation with her should have told them the answer, but didn’t.
She knew that only opposition to Eddie and Eddie’s many prototypes
could weld her two men solidly together.
THE END