Chapter EIGHT

Perhaps, if Polly had imagined that she was serving as a model, or even that she was being shrewdly observed by Angelica, she would not have done what she did. She would have maintained the aristocratic imperturbability that had so impressed her companion, and she would have concealed her malice. For Polly had malice--that agreeable feminine malice, so much more attractive than a forgiving heart. She had a quiet relish for vengeance, and a long, long memory for affronts.

For three years there had been war between herself and her mother-in-law, in which Polly had had to struggle desperately to avoid extermination. The ruthless selfishness of Mrs. Russell would have destroyed her, would have made her an instrument to serve her in her pleasure-hunt. She was not to be reasoned with, she was too heedless and indifferent to weigh consequences, too insolent to be hurt by defeat, too slippery for any sort of compromise. Polly had adopted a policy of implacability toward her. She let nothing slip, forgave nothing, forgot nothing.

They were all at the dinner-table that evening--Eddie in evening dress, and the doctor also, in order to please his punctilious and severe son-in-law. Polly was an altogether pleasant object for contemplation in a brown voile frock, while Mrs. Russell had come forth in an astounding thing of orange and blue. It was shockingly expensive, very unbecoming, and badly put on. Taken with her straggling hair and a pair of dusty and shapeless black velvet slippers, it formed an exterior not likely to enlist her son’s support in the coming encounter.

"Eddie!" said Polly. "What was that man’s name--the one we had for the day when the car was broken? Do you remember? He was such a good, careful driver, and his car was so nice and clean!"

"Why do you want to know?" asked Eddie suspiciously.

"I thought to-day I should have liked to get him."

"What’s the matter with Courtland and your own car?" Eddie persisted sharply.

"But it’s not my own car, Eddie."

"Where was it?"

"It was in use. I can’t expect to have it _all_ the time," she said sweetly.

"You haven’t been out for seven or eight weeks, have you?" he demanded.

"No; but still----”

"That’s not exactly ‘all the time’!" His face had flushed. "Did you have the car, mother?" he asked.

"Yes," she answered with perfect indifference.

"Now look here!" he said. "Can’t you arrange better? Can’t you talk with Polly in the morning and find out what she intends to do?"

"Oh, Eddie, it doesn’t matter!" cried Polly in distress.

Eddie saw the distress and grew more angry. Angelica saw it also, and understood it.

"It seems to me," he said, "that when Polly goes out so seldom, she might have the benefit of her own car. She’s not well--you must remember that."

Mrs. Russell was smiling her mechanical smile.

"She shall have the car," she said, "whenever she wants it. If I’d known to-day, I shouldn’t have taken it."

"I meant to ask Angelica to ask you," said Polly.

"I did ask her, too," said Angelica.

"No," said Mrs. Russell, still smiling. "You didn’t. You forgot, I suppose."

"Were you out in it all day, then?" demanded Eddie.

"My dear boy, I was. And now, if you please, we won’t have any more of this. You can do your scolding in private. Polly shall have the car all the time. Tommy!" she said, turning to her husband. "Who do you think I had lunch with at the Country Club but Horace and Julie Naylor? Poor Horace! She is such a dreadful, vulgar little minx! And yet she’s so amusing. I must have her down here again."

"Not when I’m home," said Eddie. "I think she’s disgusting."

"Pretty little woman, though," said the doctor.

"Plenty of _them_!" said Eddie.

Mrs. Russell had got away from the subject of the motor-car, and rested satisfied. It was a question with Angelica whether, after all, she hadn’t triumphed. It was a drawn battle, at the best.

But before the evening was over the combatants were obliged to forget their hostility and to ally themselves against their common tyrant. All very well for them to quarrel together, but they didn’t forget that Eddie was the source of all good, and that, to placate him, all private feuds must be ignored.

They were still sitting at the table when a telegram arrived, which Eddie opened and read with a frown.

"Confound it!" he said. "Here’s a nice row! Vincent’s getting a bit _too_ bad. This really puts me in a very awkward position. I gave him a letter to give to a man, and apparently he never did. I’ll have to get hold of him now, and find out what he did do with it."

He rose from the table, and so did Polly and Mrs. Russell.

"What’s the matter?" cried Polly, with an anxiety that seemed to Angelica extreme. "What has Vincent done?"

"I gave him a letter to deliver to a man who was leaving for San Francisco--an important letter; and now the fellow telegraphs that he’s reached there, and that the letter hasn’t reached him yet. He should have got it a week ago, before he left.

"But don’t bother Vincent to-night!" implored his mother. "You can’t do anything now. Wait till morning!"

"Why shouldn’t I bother him? He’s bothered me enough! I’m not going to humour him in this damn fool idea of shutting himself up like a---- He’ll have to behave like a human being!"

Polly laid a soothing hand on his arm.

"Do wait till the morning, Eddie," she said. "You know it’s at night that he does his best work, and it seems a pity to disturb him."

"What about it’s being a pity to disturb me while I’m eating my dinner, to try and rectify one of his beastly, inexcusable blunders? No, by Jove, I’m entitled to _some_ consideration! He’s got to come out and tell me what he did."

"Do wait!" cried Polly.

He looked at her in anger and distress.

"Don’t you _understand_?" he demanded. "It’s important. I’ve got to find out what he’s done with my letter. I’ve got to know at once--even," he added with irony, "at the risk of disturbing Vincent. I haven’t seen him for three days."

"Oh, do wait!" cried Mrs. Russell.

"I won’t!" he answered.

Striding out of the room, he began to run up-stairs. To Angelica’s great amusement, the two women followed him. She followed, too, of course.

"Oh, Eddie!" implored Mrs. Russell. "Don’t be so headstrong! Wait! I’m sure he’s asleep."

"He can wake up, then. It’s only eight o’clock."

"Or maybe he’s working, and if you interrupt him he’ll be so vexed!"

"_He_ vexed!" cried Eddie, outraged. "It seems to me that I’m the one to be vexed!"

Proceeding at once to his brother’s room, he knocked at the door, waited, and then knocked again.

"Vincent!" he called. "Open the door! I want to speak to you!"

He knocked louder and louder. Polly again touched his arm.

"Eddie!" she said, in a low voice. "You’re making a dreadful noise. Why _don’t_ you wait? To please me!"

"It can’t really matter," said Mrs. Russell. "You couldn’t really do much at this time of night."

"No," said Eddie. "I could have waited, but now I won’t. There’s something damned queer about it. He can’t help hearing this row."

"But you know how peculiar he is," said Mrs. Russell. "He wouldn’t answer if he didn’t feel like it."

"I’ll make him. I won’t put up with this!"

He had turned away and was starting down-stairs.

"Where are you going?" called his mother.

"I’m going to get Courtland, to help me break in the door!"

Mrs. Russell drew near Polly.

"What do you think we’d better do?" she whispered.

"I don’t know," Polly answered in distress. "Even if he would wait till the morning, I don’t see just what we could do. Perhaps we’d better----”

Mrs. Russell nodded.

Eddie returned promptly, bringing with him the blond young chauffeur, pleased and alert.

"Which door?" he asked. "This? All right! Now, then, all together! One----”

"No!" cried Mrs. Russell. "No, Eddie. Wait a minute!"

He did wait, but impatiently, while she hesitated. Finally she said to him in a half whisper:

"Eddie, _he’s not there_!"

"Not there?" he shouted.

"Do hush! No; he’s been away for three days."

"Why the devil didn’t you tell me?"

"Because I didn’t want to upset you."

"Did Polly know?"

"Yes; she----”

"And you both stood there and let me make a fool of myself?"

"I couldn’t bear to upset you, Eddie, and neither could Polly."

"And you let me knock and call and bring up Courtland. Oh, by Jove, it’s _too_ much!"

"I’m very sorry," said Polly gently.

Eddie didn’t even look at her.

"I’m sick of this!" he cried. "Sick of being made a fool of like this. It’s always the way in this house; every hand’s against me. Nothing but deceit and trickery!"

"Eddie!" said Polly firmly. "You forget yourself!"

The poor chap, recalled by her tone to his standard of propriety--the very fount of his exploitation--became a little quieter.

"No," he said, "I don’t. Where did he go?"

"To New York," said Mrs. Russell. "He had a bag with him. Courtland drove him in."

Eddie turned suddenly upon Courtland.

"Why didn’t you tell me he wasn’t there?" he demanded.

"How did I know he hadn’t come back?" retorted Courtland, smartly.

"Where did you leave him?"

"Corner of Broadway and Forty-Second Street," said Courtland, and, with his unquenchable impudence, he added: "But you won’t find him there now!"

"That’ll do," said Eddie. "You can go. And don’t gossip about this."

Courtland wheeled about briskly and began, quite leisurely to descend the stairs, whistling cheerfully and loudly before he was well out of sight. Eddie did not even appear irritated. He had turned toward the two ladies of his household with an ominous look in his blue eyes.

Eddie was incredibly generous, he was kind-hearted and more or less sympathetic, but he had in him, all the same, the making of a first-class domestic tyrant. He desired, almost morbidly, to be respected, and he was ready to force respect by bullying, if necessary. He knew what every one else knows, moral precepts to the contrary notwithstanding--that the bully is almost universally respected.

Like all domestic tyrants, he was shamelessly deceived and "managed" by the women of his establishment. They managed him clumsily. Neither of them had learned what the doctor had learned at once--that Eddie could be manipulated with ridiculous ease by the employment of either of two means. One was to appeal to his sense of justice; the other was deferentially to ask his advice.

He liked to argue, to discuss, to weigh, to do finally, not without pompousness, whatever he saw to be right; but the women never addressed this vulnerable side. They treated him still as if he were a primitive man, to be coaxed, hoodwinked, pampered, in spite of the fact that he was not primitive in any way. He got along splendidly in his office, because there it was acknowledged unanimously that he was not to be diddled, that he was no fool; but at home he was always treated as if he were a fool, and a slightly dangerous one. That is, of course, the accepted attitude toward any master of any house, but it is not always the most effective.

His anger began to ebb away as he looked at them, and a profound dejection to take its place.

"It’s no use," he said. "No earthly use! I do the best I can--for the entire family--to keep things as decent as possible; but I can’t. I get no help. I can’t do it alone!"

"But Eddie, my dear boy!" said Polly. "It was only to spare your feelings."

He shook his head.

"It wasn’t. You have some reason which I’ll never know. I’m not blaming you, Polly. I know you do what you think is best; but if you’d only be _honest_, regardless of what might happen!"

He stopped, for he had caught Angelica’s eye. He stopped, and his startled and arrested look said, almost as plainly as words:

"I believe _you_ to be honest!"

He was as much surprised as if she had but that instant appeared. Indeed, one might quite truly say that he had never before seen her. She looked so hardy, so bold, so independent, in all ways so different from the two other women who had just humiliated him. He felt a new and sudden interest in her.