Chapter XIV

Not nearly enough admiration has been granted by the male human to the most remarkable quality possessed by the human female--her ability to recuperate. Man worships the heroic virtues in man. But in woman he worships the intangible thing called charm, the fleeting thing called beauty. Man hates to concede that woman is his superior in anything, wherefore even that well-known ability of hers to endure suffering he brushes aside as inconsequential, giving credit to Mother Nature. Possibly Mother Nature does deserve the credit. Still, man has no quality that he has bestowed upon himself. Yet that does not prevent him from being proud of the physique that he inherited from his grandfather, the brain that he inherited from his father, or the wit that descended to him from some other ancestor.

So may women justly be proud of their recuperative powers. For these powers are more than physical. Thousands of years of child-bearing, of undergoing an agony that in each successive generation, because of corsets, because of silly notions of living, of too much work or too little work, has become more poignant, have had their effect upon the female character.

If the baby dies, father is prostrated. It is mother who attends to all the needful details, although her own sense of loss, of unbearable grief, is greater, perhaps, than her husband's. If father loses his job, he mopes in despair; it is mother who encourages him, who wears a smiling face, even though the problem of existence seems more unsolvable to her than to him.

It does not do to attribute this quality to women's histrionic ability. For the histrionism is due to the quality, not the obverse. It was not acting that made Clancy smile coquettishly up into Randall's lowering visage as he swept her away from Vandervent. It was courage--the sheerest sort of courage.

In the moment that Randall had come to claim her, her feet had suddenly become leaden, her eyes had been shifting, frightened. Yet they had not taken half a dozen steps before she was again the laughing heroine of the party. For that she had been! Even a novice such as Clancy Deane knew that more than courtesy to a hostess' _protégée_ was behind the attentions of Judge Walbrough. And she was versed enough in masculine admiration to realize that Vandervent's interest had been genuinely roused. Flattery, success had made her eyes brilliant, her lips and cheeks redder, her step lighter. Danger threatened her, but cringing would not make the danger any less real. Therefore, why cringe? This, though she did not express it, even to herself, inspired her gayety.

The fact that Randall's brows were gathered together in a frown made her excitement--her pleasurable excitement--greater. Knowing that he had conceived a quick jealousy for Vandervent, she could not forbear asking, after the immemorial fashion of women who know what is the matter,

"What's the matter?"

And Randall, like a million or so youths before him, who have known that the questioner was well aware of the answer, said,

"You know well enough."

"No, I don't," said Clancy.

"Yes, you do, too," asserted Randall.

"Why"--and Clancy was wide-eyed--"how could I?"

Randall stared down at her. He had made a great discovery.

"You're a flirt," he declared bitterly.

He could feel Clancy stiffen in his arms. Her face, quickly averted, seemed to radiate chill, as an iceberg, though invisible, casts its cold atmosphere ahead. He had offended beyond hope of forgiveness. Wherefore, like the criminal who might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb, he plunged into newer and greater offenses.

"Well, of course I'm not a multimillionaire, and I don't keep a press-agent to tell the world what a great man I am, like Vandervent, but still--" He paused, as though confronted by thoughts too terrible for utterance. Clancy sniffed.

"Running other men down doesn't run you up, Mr. Randall."

She felt, as soon as she had uttered the words, that they were unworthy of her. And because she felt that she had spoken in a common fashion, she became angry at Randall, who had led her to this--well, indiscretion.

"I didn't mean to do that, Miss Deane," he said hastily; "only, I--I'm sorry I spoke that way. Vandervent doesn't hire a press-agent--so far as I know. And he's a good citizen and an able man. I'm sorry, Miss Deane. I'm jealous!" he blurted.

Clancy grinned. She twisted her head until she met Randall's eyes again. For the moment, she had completely forgotten the deadly though unconscious threat behind Vandervent's words of a few moments ago.

"You mustn't be absurd, Mr. Randall," she said, with great severity.

"I don't mean to be," he answered, "but I can't help it. You promised me a _tête-à-tête_," he said plaintively.

"Did I?" She laughed. Randall reversed as she spoke, and she faced the door. Vandervent was eyeing her. Although his eyes were friendly, eager, she saw him, not as a partner in flirtation but as an officer of the law. Half a minute ago, engrossed in teasing Randall, she'd almost forgotten him. Back and forth, up and down--thus the Clancy spirits. She was, in certain emotional respects, far more Irish than American. She pressed Randall's left hand.

"Let's go down-stairs," she suggested.

She caught the look of disappointment in Vandervent's eyes as she passed him. For a moment, she hesitated. How simple it would be to exchange _tête-à-tête_ partners, take Vandervent down-stairs, and, from the very beginning, tell him the amazing history of her half-week in New York! He _liked_ her. Possibly his feeling toward her might grow into something warmer. Certainly, even though it remained merely liking, that was an emotion strong enough to justify her in throwing herself upon his mercy. And, of course, he'd _believe_ her.

She wondered. She realized, as she had realized many times before in the past few days, and would realize again in the days to come, that the longer one delays in the frank course, the more difficult frankness becomes. Even if Vandervent did believe her, think of the position in which she would find herself! It came home to her that she liked the affair that she was attending to-night. It was more fun than any kind of work, she imagined--playing round with successful, fashionable, wealthy people. Scandal, if she emerged from it with her innocence proved, might not hurt her upon the stage or in the moving pictures, or even in Sally Henderson's esteem. But it would ruin her socially.

"A husband with the kale." That was what Fanchon DeLisle had said. No such husband could be won by a girl who had been the central figure of a murder trial. Clancy was the born gambler. It had taken the temperament of a gambler to leave Zenith; it had taken the temperament of a gambler to escape from the room that contained Beiner's dead body; it had taken the temperament of a gambler to decide, with less than seven dollars in the world, to brave the pursuit of the police, the wrath of Zenda, the loneliness of New York, rather than surrender to the police, conscious of her innocence.

A gambler! A chance-taker! Thus she had been created, and thus, in the fulfilment of her destiny, she would always be. The impulse to surrender, to throw herself upon Vandervent's mercy, passed as instantly as it had come. Yet, once out of the studio, she leaned heavily upon Randall's arm.

In the drawing-room, on the ground floor, Randall paused. Clancy withdrew her hand from his arm. They faced each other a bit awkwardly. Clancy always had courage when there were others present, but, when alone with a man, a certain shyness became visible. Also, although there had been boys in Zenith who had fancied themselves in love with her, she had always held herself high. She had not encouraged their attentions.

Randall was different. He was a grown man. And, after his confession of jealousy, it was silly for her not to take him seriously. He was not the flirtatious kind. He frightened her.

"You're worried," he stated surprisingly.

"'Worried?'" She tried to laugh, but something inside her seemed to warn her to beware.

"Yes--worried," repeated Randall. He came close to her. "Has Vandervent annoyed you? You were happy--you seemed to be--until you danced with him. Then----"

"Mr. Randall, you talk like a little boy," she said. "First, you want _tête-à-têtes_; then you are jealous; then you are sure that some one is annoying me----"

"You _are_ worried," he charged.

He did not make the iteration stubbornly. He made it as one who was certain of what he said. Also, there was a patience in his tone, as though he were prepared for denial, and had discounted it in advance and had no intention of changing his belief.

For a moment, Clancy wavered. He was big and strong and competent-seeming. He looked the sort of man who would understand. There are some men who one knows will always be faithful to any trust imposed in them, who can be counted upon always. Randall had the fortunate gift of rousing this impression. He was, perhaps, not overbrilliant--not, at least, in the social way; but he was the sort that always inspires, from men and women both, not merely confidence but confidences. Had he not been making love to her, Clancy would perhaps have confided in him. But a lover is different from a friend. One hides from a lover the things that one entrusts to a friend. It is not until people have been married long enough to inspire faith that confidences result. Whoever heard of a bride telling important secrets to her husband?

Clancy's wavering stopped. Possible husbands could not be entrusted with knowledge prejudicial to her chances as a possible wife.

"If you're going to continue absurd, we'll go up-stairs again," she announced.

Her chin came slightly forward. Randall looked at her doubtfully, but he was too full of himself, as all lovers are, to press the subject of Clancy's worriment. He was tactful enough, after all. And he told her of his boyhood in Ohio, of his decision to come to New York, of the accident that had caused him to leave the bank which, on the strength of his father's Congressional career, had offered him an opening. It had to do with the discontinuance of the account of an apparently valuable customer. Randall, acting temporarily as cashier, had, on his own responsibility, refused further credit to the customer. He had done so because a study of the man's market operations had convinced him that a corner, which would send the customer into involuntary bankruptcy, had been effected. There had ensued a week of disgrace; his job had hung in the balance. Then the customer's firm suspended; the receiver stepped in, and Randall had been offered a raise in salary because of the money--from the refusal of worthless paper offered as security by the bankrupt--that the bank had been saved.

He had refused the increase in salary and left the bank, convinced--and having convinced certain financiers--that his judgment of the stock-market was worth something. His success had been achieved only in the past two years, but he was worth some hundreds of thousands of dollars, with every prospect, Clancy gathered, of entering the millionaire class before he was much over thirty.

He went farther back. Despite his apparently glowing health, he'd suffered a bad knee at football. The army had rejected him in 1917. Later on, when the need for men had forced the examiners to be less stringent, he had been accepted, and had been detailed to a training-camp. But he had won no glory, achieving a sergeancy shortly before the armistice. He had not gone abroad. He was a graduate of the University of Illinois, knew enough about farming to maintain a sort of "ranch" in Connecticut, and was enthusiastic about motor-cars.

This was about as far as he got when he insisted that Clancy supplement his slight knowledge of her. She told him of the Zenith normal school, which she had attended for two years, of the summer residents of Zenith, of the fishing-weirs, of the stage that brought the mail from Bucksport, of the baseball games played within the fort of Revolutionary times on the top of the hill on which the town of Zenith was built. And this was as far as she had reached when Vandervent found them.

He was extremely polite, but extremely insistent in a way that admitted of no refusal.

"I say, Randall, you mustn't monopolize Miss Deane. It's not generous, you know. You've been lucky enough. This is my dance."

Clancy didn't remember the fact, but while she and Randall had rambled on, she had been doing some close thinking. She couldn't confess to Vandervent that she was Florine Ladue, but she could utilize the heaven-sent opportunity to fascinate the man who might, within twenty-four hours, hold her life in his hand--although it couldn't be as serious as that, she insisted to herself. But, in the next breath, she decided that it could easily be as serious as that, and even more serious. Yet, with all her worry, she could repress a smile at Randall's stiff courtesy to his rival. Clancy was young, and life was thrilling.

But she had no chance to "vamp" Vandervent. A Paul Jones was in full swing as they reached the studio, and Judge Walbrough took her from Vandervent after a half-dozen bars had been played. From him she went to Mortimer, the illustrator, and from him to Darnleigh, the poet, and from him to Cavanagh, the millionaire oil-man, the richest bachelor in the world, Judge Walbrough informed her, in a hoarse whisper meant to reach the ears of Cavanagh.

And then Mrs. Carey announced that the storm was increasing so savagely that she feared to detain her guests any longer lest they be unable to reach their homes. There was much excitement, and several offers to take Clancy home. But Mrs. Carey came to her.

"I want you to stay with me, Miss Deane. Please!" she added, in a whisper. Clancy thought there was appeal in her voice. She said that she would. Whereas Randall looked savage, and Vandervent downcast. Which looks made Clancy's heart sing. In this laughing crowd, under these lights, with the jazz band only a moment stilled, it was absurd to suppose that she was really in danger from Vandervent or any one else. Wasn't she innocent of any wrong-doing?

Up and down, down and up! The Clancys of this world are always so. Which is why they are the best beloved and the happiest, all things considered.

She was properly remote and cool to both her suitors, as she called them to herself. Modesty was not her failing.