Chapter X: Part 10

"You're very generous," she said, and held out her hand. She had an insane desire to sit down on those dirty boards and cry. Everything he did and said made her love him more and more. What was the matter with her that she had turned him into a brother? Life had appeared to be so easy to arrange. It had become so difficult.

He took her hand and held it tight. "I'm not generous," he said, scoffing. "Don't let any man try the breaking business. Remain as you are. Be the spoilt girl all the rest of your life, kiddie. You're all right. Now come in and go to bed and sleep hard. That thing you got just now may find us in the morning."

And they turned their backs to the moon and to love and walked away without another word.

Malcolm and Ida Larpent had gone to bed. And the fat girl with the big bow and her young friends had disappeared. The Victrola was silent. There were no lights in the drawing-room or the sun parlor, but the click of billiard balls came into the foyer and the reek of cheap cigars. Two colored bell boys on the verge of sleep sat near the desk. Outside the frogs were still at work on their endless ensemble.

Beatrix nodded and smiled and went upstairs. She had left her key in Mrs. Keene's room. Franklin hung about aimlessly for ten minutes reading the railroad timetables with no interest and the printed notices to visitors and looking at the colored advertisements of steamships and whisky and magazines, without taking them in. Yes, the episode had failed. He was beat,--beat to a frazzle. What was going to happen next?

Ida Larpent heard him stride along the passage, go into his room and shut the door. Through the thin walls she could hear him shunt a chair and do something to his windows and move about.

She wore a curious smile and an almost transparent nightgown. Her black hair was all about her shoulders and in her eyes there was a strange eagerness.

For half an hour she sat as still as a statue watching the hands of her little diamond-studded watch. Her opportunity had come. She was going to seize it. She knew men, no one better. This one needed love and she, yes, she of all women would give it to him.

In that long, peculiar half hour during which her body was without movement, her brain worked and her heart raced. She loved and would make a sacrifice for love. That was the burden of her inward song. Not of the future, not of freedom from money worries, not of mercenary things,--love, her first great love and its fulfilment. Of that she thought, smiling, and thanking her stars.

And when the half hour was up she rose, put on a peignoir, slipped out of her room on the tips of her little pink slippers and tapped at Franklin's door. He called out "Come" and she went in.

He was sitting in a dressing gown in a cane chair, under the electric lamp that hung from the middle of the ceiling, with a pipe in his mouth and a book in his hand and his feet on a cranky table. There was a cloud of good tobacco smoke round his head.

He sprang to his feet at the sight of her. Although there was nothing of the frightened woman about her, the only thing that occurred to him was that she needed his help. A thief after her rings, probably.

"What's the matter?" instinctively lowering his voice. "Anyone in your room?"

She shut the door and smiled at him. After all she rather liked his naive assumption that she had not gone to his room for anything but his assistance in some emergency. It was very charming and boyish and clean and all that. It made things just a little difficult to explain though. "I see you're not in a hurry to go to bed," she said, "so may I sit down and have a cigarette? I've lots to say to you and there has been no other opportunity to-day."

"Of course," he said. "Please do. I hate reading, and sleep is miles away." He placed his chair for her, the only more or less comfortable one in the room, and got a cigarette and lit it. "Awfully nice of you to come in. Well, what's the news?"

He drew up a stiff-backed chair and sat straddle with his arms on the back of it. A good sort, Ida Larpent, he told himself, and extraordinarily picturesque. He couldn't make out why she didn't marry again. She could take her pick.

"Please may I have a pillow? I can feel every rib of cane. It hurts a little. I'm sorry to be fussy."

"Not a bit." He placed one of his pillows behind her back. "How's that?"

"Much better, thanks."

He went back to his chair and sat looking at her with a most friendly and admiring smile.

She liked the last part of it but not the first. It was all more than a little disconcerting. She knew men but not of his type. It would perhaps have been better for men, to say nothing of herself, if she had known one or two. Give a dog a bad name and hang him. She was conscious of looking extremely alluring in her geranium pink peignoir and slippers and her silk nightgown cut very low and her thick, black hair, which fluffed out over her shoulders, rather like that of a Russian prima ballerina.

"There's no news," she said. "The faithful Mrs. Keene gave me a good deal of worry, poor, little soul, and Malcolm Fraser has not been a very entertaining companion. He's by way of not liking me."

Franklin laughed. "Why? He likes everybody."

"Because I don't like him, I suppose. I never get on very well with poets at any time. They always seem to belong to the cherub family,--cut off at the shoulders, I mean, and surrounded with Christmas card clouds."

Franklin laughed again. "You should see him whipping a trout stream or crawling after deer."

"Mrs. Keene's in the next room," said Mrs. Larpent, warningly. Would he take the hint and be a little less sun-parlorish?

"Is she? By Jove, yes. I mustn't make such a row. I wouldn't disturb her for anything."

No, he had missed it. She crossed one leg over the other. Rather more than a slim, white ankle showed. Well, the night was all in front of them. "It was a horrid trick, getting rid of us like that. I had just settled down on the _Galatea_ and was preparing to have the first really happy time of my life. You alone among men have it in your power to do that for me, Pelham." She felt that she was hurrying a little.

"Well, the _Galatea_ can be at your service again. Not yet though, I'm afraid. Malcolm and I have a plan in the back of our heads." He got up and heaved a sigh and walked about. Beatrix came back into his head at the mention of the _Galatea_. He could see her leaning against the starboard rail with the sun on her golden head and her chin held high. He would always be able to see that picture, thank God!

"Tell me about it," said Mrs. Larpent, hoping that, after all, she had not hurried too fast and that it was not her remark that made him restless. Any other man almost would have caught her meaning.

"Not yet," he said. "It isn't sufficiently formed." And then he lit a cigarette and sat down again, with a chuckle. "I can't fancy _you_ in this one-eyed hole. I thought, of course, that you'd stay the night here and then take the first possible train to New York."

"Did you think what would happen to me after that?"

"No, I confess I didn't. Southampton, or some such place. Society on the beach. You said something about Southampton, in the summer when you had mercy on me that time and we did the theatres. You were awfully good to me then."

She tried a daring move. "You paid me well, didn't you?"

Franklin looked as uncomfortable as he felt. He went off at a quick tangent. "I don't think I shall be in New York next fall," he said. "I may go back to South Africa."

Was he really quite so dense? she asked herself. Had he forgotten every single word of that odd talk in the Vanderdykes' library? Would she have to square up to him and blurt out the truth? What was he made of?

She would have one more try. She got up. "I must go now," she said. "It's getting late."

He got up too and opened his door. "Thanks for looking me up," he said. "It was very friendly of you."

She gave him one long, analytical look. No, she and her beauty meant nothing to him. He was not teasing her into a few uncontrolled hysterical words: He was simply a big, naive, unsuspicious man who thought nothing but good of her. She deserved better than this. She had never had any luck. And she loved this man.

She said "Good night" lightly and passed him with a fleeting smile. But in her own room she flung herself face down on her bed and cried badly.

Franklin hurled off his dressing gown and switched off the light. But in front of his eyes as he lay in the dark he could see Beatrix ankle-deep in a blue sea, with the sun on her red bathing cap, clad in tights, like a boy.

On her way out of Mrs. Keene's room Beatrix saw Ida Larpent leave Franklin's. Someone seemed to have thrown a stone at her heart.

*XXXVIII*

Ida Larpent did not appear at the breakfast table.

Not for many years had she permitted herself to enjoy the luxury of tears. It was true that, since she had been flung on her own resources and faced with the disagreeable necessity of fighting her own battles, there had been many hours when tears would have helped her and made her more human. She had refused herself the indulgence for two reasons. She had no sympathy with what she called weakness and she shuddered at the idea of spoiling her appearance, even temporarily, by swollen lids. Her beauty was her only asset, her only stock-in-trade, and she preserved it with the eager and consistent care of a leading actress. But Nature had been too strong for her and she had capitulated like an ordinary woman for once. She had given herself up to an orgy of disappointment, wounded vanity, anger and bitterness, and after the storm was over had spent the rest of the night trying to see into the future, balancing her account with Fate. She was not in immediate need of money. Franklin's generosity had put her on her feet for the time being. She had paid her pressing bills and could face the remainder of the year without anxiety. But there were other years. What of them? Her small capital saved from the wreck that she had made of the fond and foolish Clive's affairs had gone. It was certain that she had miscalculated the sort of man that Franklin was. Not having been able to "get him" under what, with most men, would have been the most favorable circumstances, she saw so little chance of binding him to her and claiming some sort of protection that she came to the conclusion that she must give him up. She had played Venus to his Adonis and failed. It was not pride that made her retire from the game but the flat knowledge that he could do without her. Once more then she must go back into the Street of Adventure and lay her snares for a rich man, young or old. One satisfaction was here, and this was inconsistent with her materialism. It was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

Beatrix _did_ appear at the breakfast table.

She too, had had a bad night. The shock of seeing Ida Larpent coming out of Franklin's room was awful. She sat for an hour chilled to the bone. After having loved no one but herself, and grown accustomed to the habit of merely touching a bell to procure the earth, it was startling enough suddenly to wake and find that the earth meant nothing to her without the man who did not seem to need her. In itself that was so much a shock that her whole perspective was shattered and out of focus. And even if Franklin only liked her as a sister, which gave her sufficient suffering, she loved him and had surrounded him with a girlish halo of idealism which of all things did not admit the possibility of such a visit as she had witnessed.

No one would have imagined who saw her and heard her laugh that morning that she had sat in the dark for many hours with life lying all smashed about her like a beautiful stained glass window through which a shell had burst. She joined Franklin and Malcolm at breakfast with her chin higher than ever, readier than usual with banter and mischief, the embodiment of youth, health and careless joy. Her pride came to her rescue and she intended to live up to Franklin's estimate of her courage to her last gasp. The difference between Ida Larpent and Beatrix was breeding.

She found the two men on the veranda outside the dining-room,--Franklin smoking his inevitable pipe.

"Good morning," she said. Her ringing voice turned them both around. "Malcolm, if you don't write a long and terrible poem on the early morning noises of the country, I shall. Even New York with the explosions in the subway and the rattle of motor buses is a city of the dead compared with this place. Cocks began to scream at each other before daybreak, hens have been brawling for hours and the gobble of turkeys under my window has been worse than an election meeting. Is Mrs. Larpent down yet?"

"We've not seen her," said Franklin.

"I'm ten minutes late, am I not?"

"About that, but it doesn't matter," said Malcolm.

"I know it doesn't, but ten minutes' grace is enough even for a woman, so let's go in and eat." And she led the way into the bleak dining-room, as glad as a school-girl at the chance of being able to get a little bit back, a very little bit, from Ida Larpent.

The waiters were almost ludicrously obsequious and rolled their eyes towards Franklin with the nervousness of pet monkeys.

"How's Mrs. Keene?" Both men asked the question together.

"Up and about," said Beatrix. "A little weak, of course, but otherwise well. Her trouble was wholly mental. Left alone with Pelham on a yacht, she was convinced that, in order to preserve my honor, as she puts it, I should have to jump overboard. Poor, dear, little affectionate Brownie. If only she had taken the trouble to find out the sort of a man Pelham is she wouldn't have turned a hair."

Malcolm laughed. "Is that meant to be complimentary or reproachful?"

She saw that Franklin was watching her keenly. "Both," she said, with a little bow, and sailed on before he could butt in. "I gave her a faithful account of everything that happened and she is beginning to believe, very reluctantly, that her favorite women novelists don't know anything about men. And now what we both want to know is this. Where are we going, how are we going and how soon are we going, or are we all going to spend the remainder of our lives in this rural retreat to make a study of frogs, farmyards and fogginess?"

Franklin was silent for a moment. This was the old Beatrix. This was the Beatrix of New York, the careless, superficial, sarcastic Beatrix of the house party at the Vanderdykes' palace. What a fool he had been to imagine that he was the man appointed to enable Miss Honoria to give thanks to God! "The _Galatea_ will anchor off this place this afternoon," he said. "Malcolm and I will see you and your staff off to New York on the night train."

"And where do you intend to go?"

"To Europe," he said.

"Is that definitely arranged?"

"Quite. Malcolm and I settled it just now. He will spend a year or so pottering about London, Paris and Rome and I shall go back to Africa."

With a mighty effort Beatrix held herself under absolute control. "But what about the party at Sherry's during Christmas week?"

"Scratched," said Franklin, shortly.

"I see. Well, now we know, don't we? And that's something. How long, exactly, do you propose that I shall remain a grass widow?"

"That," said Franklin, "is entirely up to you."

A bell-boy came in, rumbled grinning up to Beatrix and handed her a telegram. She took it. "Will you allow me?" she asked, and tore it open. A curious smile played round her lips as she read it over several times. "No," she said, "it isn't entirely up to me," and gave it to Franklin.

And what he read was this. "Ask Pelham to bring you home as soon as possible. No one is ill but we are all greatly perturbed by amazing rumors and daily anonymous letters. A consultation is necessary. Much love. Honoria Vanderdyke."

"H'm," said Franklin. "Sutherland York at work. May I show this to Malcolm?"

"Of course," said Beatrix.

Malcolm's remark, gravely spoken, was "Scandal again."

"Yes, we are back again at the beginning," said Franklin.

Beatrix pushed back her chair and got up and went out. As she stood on the veranda with the sun on her golden head there was not anxiety in her eyes, but triumph. If she really knew Franklin he would not desert her at this new crisis. He would not go to Europe and to South Africa. He would not consider only himself.

He came out almost at once and gave her the telegram. "You may want to keep this," he said, and stood in front of her for orders.

"Thanks,--yes."

They looked eagerly at each other, hoping against hope that there was something in all this, something more than mere accident, something which it was not for them to pry into or understand, that was to bring them as close as only love can bring a man and a woman.

"Well?"

And Franklin echoed her. "Well?"

They mutually wished to God that they were different, of better stuff and more worth while.

"It's for you to speak," she said.

"You were right about the feeling that something was going to happen to-day."

She nodded and put the telegram in her pocket. It didn't seem to matter much what the outcome of it was going to be.

"We must all go back on the _Galatea_ to-night," he went on.

"You will alter your plans for me? You will stand by me again?"

He gave a queer sort of laugh. "You didn't call me a sportsman for nothing," he said.

*XXXIX*

New York again,--tired, hot, irritable New York. A New York in the summer, careless of her appearance like an overworked woman with a too large family and, in consequence, a trifle blowsy, with stringy hair and a rather dirty skirt.

Four cars drove away from the river which lay glistening beneath an afternoon sun.

"Well," said Beatrix, sitting back, "all we need to make the procession really noticeable is a mounted policeman, a band and a banner."

Franklin laughed and looked over his shoulder. Following them came Mrs. Lester Keene alone in all her glory with the smaller cases. Behind her, apparently not on speaking terms, Helene and the valet with a collection of hat and shoe boxes. Finally an open touring car piled high with luggage.

"What tune would you suggest for the band?"

"There'd be a nice touch of irony in 'See the Conquering Hero Comes,'" she said. "Don't you think so?"

"Quite nice." He congratulated himself upon becoming an excellent actor.

"And now tell me a few things. What about the _Galatea_?"

"Oh, she'll remain in commission," said Franklin. "McLeod is going home for a few days and the first officer will be in charge. Malcolm will stay aboard too. I shall let him know what happens."

"Why didn't you bring him with us?"

"Don't you think he might have been in the way?"

"And where's Mrs. Larpent going?"

"Home first and then to Southampton, I believe."

"I forgot to say good-bye to her in the hurry of getting away from the yacht," said Beatrix, hoping never to see her again.

"I thought you would," said Franklin, a little dryly. His mind went back to the strained and uncomfortable return trip during which Beatrix and Ida Larpent had instinctively avoided each other as much as possible. He couldn't for the life of him make out why.

"She's very beautiful," said Beatrix, as though she were talking about a view or a horse.

"Yes, but better than that," said Franklin. "She's a good sort."

And Beatrix changed the conversation abruptly. "Dear little Brownie! It was very thoughtful of her to insist on riding alone."

"Probably imagined that you and I had plenty to talk about."

"Have we?"

"I suppose so, but I don't know where to begin."

And after that there was silence, for which both of them were glad. This was the first time since leaving the one-eyed place with its frogs and chickens that they had been alone. During the return trip on the _Galatea_ they had both tacitly agreed that no purpose could be served by being together more than was necessary. Beatrix had kept Malcolm at her side consistently. She confided nothing, spoke little and pretended to read one of Jones's novels, keeping her false brilliance for lunch and dinner. Malcolm, glad to believe that for some unfathomable reason his companionship was necessary, stretched himself out in a deck chair and wrote masses of _vers libre_. When inspiration failed he surreptitiously watched Beatrix and wondered why her eyes were nearly always on the horizon with a wistfulness that worried him. Once or twice it flashed across his mind that she loved his friend and was hiding the fact because of pride, and the excitement of the thought drove every other idea out of his head. But when he saw that her manner to Franklin was cheery and devil-may-care and boyish,--that word seemed right to him,--he dismissed it. "No such luck," he said to himself and went on being quiet when he sensed that she wished for quietude and broke into voluble conversation when it seemed to him that she silently asked him to chatter.

He was a lazy fellow, was Malcolm Fraser, a happy-go-lucky procrastinating young-old man, was this very dear chap, to whom the mere passing of time counted for little so that it passed pleasantly and who seemed to be content to absorb the color of life and revel in the pageantry of Nature. But he had been born a poet and one fine day, when he took himself seriously, ceased to be impressionistic and settled down to work, his God-sent sympathy, the milk of human kindness, of which he was full, and the exquisite imagery that he had been collecting as a bee gathers honey, would put him among the few men whose verse fills a hard world with music and gives back to wounded souls that gift of faith without which life is a hollow and a useless episode.

All the way back Mrs. Larpent had kept to her own room, giving out that she was unwell,--as indeed she was. Her mind was sick, and her body disappointed. Franklin had told her the truth, she was obliged to own, when he said that he loved Beatrix. There was no accounting for tastes and it seemed to her that a man might infinitely better give his heart like a toy to a toy-surfeited child than to this young autocrat.

And so Franklin had found companionship with Captain McLeod, the first officer, and--it was enough to make a cat laugh--with Mrs. Lester Keene. He spent hours trying to make the time pass a little pleasantly for the elderly woman who was, he knew, anxious, frightened and full of conscientious but wholly unnecessary self-reproach. They became good friends before the yacht dropped her anchor off her usual moorings,--even they. One of Mrs. Keene's resolutions was that, in future, she would revise her novel-made opinion of men. That was something to have achieved, had Franklin only known it.

Through the mostly ugly, but sometimes queerly beautiful and always unique city they went together, Franklin and Beatrix followed by their entourage, and it came to them both that, in returning to the house in which they had joined forces in a manner that now appeared to them to be inconceivable, they were completing a curious and a useless circle. They had undergone strange feelings, placed themselves into difficult and dangerous situations, disconnected themselves from the irresponsibility, the right to which was theirs by inheritance, given up an individualism that was part and parcel of their training and environment, and all for what? To return discontented, disappointed and dispirited to the spot from which they had set out. He loved her and would lay his life at her feet and she loved him and would gladly be his servant, and both, being alike and having the same want of confidence when it came to the fundamentals, had not found it out. Fate had played a pretty game with these two for having dared to tamper with her. And, oddly enough, Ida Larpent was the only one of the characters in this little comedy from which she had made her exit who had guessed what Fate had done and now peeked through the cracks in the scenery to see how it was going to end. And she, being a worldling, suspicious of humanity, was not prepared to make a guess.

"Well," said Beatrix at last, gathering herself together. "We're almost there. In for a very amusing evening, if I know my respected and respectable family."

Franklin turned and looked at her. There was something in her voice,--a sort of school-girl note, the note of a high spirited young thing who had broken bounds and been discovered and faced punishment,--that made him shoot out a laugh.

"Why laugh?" she asked. She never tolerated being laughed at.

"You'd make a rattlesnake chortle." He laughed again.

"Look out, or I _may_ hit you," she said. "It's one of the things that makes my arm utterly irresponsible."

He made a gesture that was almost French. "You beat me," he said. "By Jove, you beat me."

"If you'd beaten me it might have been different," she snapped back at him.

"One doesn't beat you," said Franklin. "God made you and that's the end of it, I find. No argument, as a man I know always says when the rain has set in for the day or a bottle's empty. You are you, kiddie, and so are the sun, the moon and the stars."

"You're a fool," she cried, "a fool, a fool!" And then she put her hand quickly over her mouth. What kind of a fool would _she_ look if she allowed herself to fling out even the beginning of what was in her mind?

"I knew that five minutes after I grinned like a Cheshire cheese and posed before your people as the sheepish husband. All the same it was worth it, here and there." He was damned if he'd give himself away either.

"I think so too," she said.

The car turned and went through the great iron gates.

"I shall like the _Galatea_ all the better because you've touched her," he said.

She laughed because her lips insisted on trembling. "I suppose you asked Malcolm to give you that. Don't you think one poet in the family's enough? There's mother's machine-made hair and Aunt Honoria's perfect nose and dear old daddy's kind but suspicious eyes. 'It's all right in the wintertime but in the summertime it's awful.'" She sang these pathetic words beneath her breath and waved her hand to the waiting family with an air of superb confidence and affection.

He didn't laugh again. Metaphorically he took off all his hats to her and laid them at her feet.

*XL*

The perfect Mrs. Vanderdyke, fresh from the manipulations of her constant time-fighters, arranged herself on the top step of the house. With a light, controlling touch she placed her husband on her right and her sister-in-law on her left, so that, viewed from below, they should be exactly framed in the elaborate doorway. She did this, as she did everything, with a self-conscious sense of the decorative, of being like royalty, in the public eye, of standing before an imaginary battery of masked cameras as the chief representative of American high society.

It was a good picture, she knew, and one of which her country might well feel proud. She was quite satisfied with her own appearance. Her head, which had taken an hour to dress, was a work of art. She wore no hat. After some consideration she had come to the conclusion that a hat would spoil the intimate, home-like effect that she desired to achieve. Her face, strangely un-lined and immobile, had the faintest touch of color. Her chin, held high in order that there should not be the mere suggestion of sag, certainly gave her the appearance of gargling, but what did that matter? Her dress, which had almost broken a woman's heart, gave her youth. Of her sister-in-law she felt proud. She added the right note of dignity and autumnal beauty, with her white hair and eagle nose and unconscious grace. She wished that her husband had taken more pains with his clothes and had put up a better fight with elderliness but, after all, he was Vanderdyke and a man.

She was pleased with the way in which Franklin helped Beatrix out of the car and, going down two steps, she welcomed the daughter of whom she knew absolutely nothing as though she were a rather interesting and important relation. "How well you look, dear Beatrix," she said, in a voice which gave the impression of having been as well massaged as her face. She placed a light kiss on the girl's cheek. "But I've never seen you so sunburned before," she added reproachfully.

"The simple life, Mother," said Beatrix, knowing that her satire was wasted. She put her arms round her father's neck. "How are you, Daddy darling? Glad to see me?"

Mr. Vanderdyke, whose to-days were just as monotonous and uninspired as his yesterdays, was unexpectedly emotional. He held his only child closely and kissed her several times and said, "My dear, my dear," a little brokenly. His little girl was returning from her honeymoon. It might mean so much in the history of the family.

And then it was Aunt Honoria's turn. With eager tenderness and pride she gathered into her warm arms the girl she would have given so much to own. Her broken romance lived again at that moment. Her eyes were blurred with tears.

Not her father and not her mother gave Beatrix a sudden feeling of being a fraud and an impostor, but this kind, sweet woman whose silence was so eloquent. How different everything might have been if only she had been her mother!

With what she intended to be marked cordiality Mrs. Vanderdyke gave both her hands to Franklin, who had never been so uncomfortable in his life. She wanted to convey to him the fact that even in the face of rumors and anonymous letters she believed in him. "My dear Pelham," she said, "it is kind of you to cut your honeymoon so short in deference to our wishes."

"Not at all," replied Franklin. He pulled himself up as he was about to add, "I'm only too delighted."

Mr. Vanderdyke seemed anxious to support his wife. "My dear fellow," he said, "my dear fellow," and stuck.

Franklin returned his grip. "I'm awfully glad to see you, sir," he said. "Er--what stunning weather." He caught the impish look which Beatrix darted at him and gave it up.

"My dear lad," said Aunt Honoria, so kindly and with a smile that was so maternal that Franklin put her hand to his lips. It was only as they all went into the hall that he turned cold under the realization that he was little better than a cheat among these people. All the same, with one refreshing glance at Beatrix, whose impression of half-shy, half-defiant young wifehood was amazingly perfect, he played the son-in-law to the best of his ability.

Once more they were back, these two, in the place where life had taken a sudden and astonishing twist. Months seemed to have gone by since they had been there before.

"The Bannermans, Mrs. Gordon and Ethel, the Duc de la Faucheroucould and Roy Stanton have been staying," said Mrs. Vanderdyke. "By a very lucky chance we shall be alone to-night and to-morrow. We will have a family council after dinner."

Beatrix looked at Franklin over her father's shoulder, and drew down the corners of her mouth. No, he was not the man to make her take things seriously.

Mr. Vanderdyke let out some of the uneasiness that he had done his best to disguise during the welcome. "I wish I'd acted on my intuition to telephone to my lawyer," he said petulantly. "Eventually we shall have to take legal advice, I feel sure."

Aunt Honoria broke in. "Now, now," she said, "we agreed not to go into this matter until our young people had settled down. It is far too serious to take up in a desultory manner. Personally, my opinion is that as soon as Pelham has all the facts and has dined well and is smoking a cigar he will bring his practicality to bear and possibly do away with any recourse to the law. I have great confidence in Pelham," and she smiled at him in a way that made him cold again.

And then Mrs. Lester Keene came in and was greeted graciously by the two ladies.

Beatrix went across casually to Franklin. "What on earth has happened?" she asked, in an anxious whisper.

"I wish I knew," he whispered back.

"Do you feel curious? I do."

He nodded gravely. Beatrix and scandal,--they were never meant to run in double harness.

And then the imp of mischief that was never very far away from Beatrix took its old accustomed place on her shoulder, and her eyes began to dance. "I'm not surprised at my family's confidence in you," she said. "There's something in your appearance that could win you orders even for an encyclopedia. What fills me with surprise and amusement is the confidence they seem to feel in _me_. That's quite new."

"Not so loud," he said.

She sent out a ripple of laughter. "Well, you certainly are practical. That, I know."

"Do you?"

"Don't I?" She looked straight into his eyes and her laughter ceased.

Mrs. Vanderdyke joined them. "You have twenty minutes for a little rest before you dress for dinner, Beatrix. You must be tired after your hot drive."

"No, Mother, thanks," said Beatrix airily. "Pelham talked all the way here and was so merry and bright that the journey seemed short." But she went upstairs to the suite that he would never forget, and her little touch of sarcasm found its mark.

"Come into my room," said Mr. Vanderdyke, "and we'll smoke a cigarette."

Franklin followed him.

It was a curious room in which he presently found himself,--a room which gave a pathetic keynote to the character and life of the man who spent so many hours in it. Very large and lofty, it was crammed with ideas at which he appeared to have made a beginning, dabbled in and wearied of. There were leather-bound manuscript books in dozens, several of which had labels on the back,--"Notes on Old China," "Impressions of European Labor Conditions," "Butterflies," "Songs and Sonnets," "A Life of Russell Vanderdyke, Book I.," "Trout Streams," "The Improvement of Factories,"--it would have taken an hour to examine them all. The note of the dilettante was everywhere,--in the pieces of rare silver that were mixed with old pottery, Japanese lacquer, Jacobean chests, Oriental curios, ancient Bibles, first editions, faded prints, modern etchings, and one or two appalling examples of so-called Cubist work which appealed to Franklin merely as pervertism or the attempt of men who had never been taught to paint to illustrate delirium tremens. It was the room of a man of confirmed irresolution, of an inherited lack of grip, of an intellect that was as unconcentrated as a flight of pigeons. It showed a scattering of interest that could only belong to some-one who had never felt the splendid urge of achieving an object in the face of dire necessity. It provided the most unobservant eye with a complete history of an ambitious but vacillating life. It conveyed to workers the impression of many acres of dead-level ground long ago carefully staked out as a garden city, with neat boards indicating here an avenue, here a public library, here a country club, here a huge hotel, here a railroad station, all very neat and well weeded but without the fulfilment of one single promise.

Franklin didn't get the feeling of the room at once. It seemed to him to be rather intimate though somewhat uninhabitable. It was only while Mr. Vanderdyke was talking in his vague impersonal way that the pathetic incompleteness of it all came to him and hit him hard. Good Heavens, what if he, too, dwindled, for the same reason, into a similar dabbler! What if he, too, scattered away his life with the same kind of uselessness!

He was glad to get away to change and to think. He was pretty certain that the time was near, whatever might be the way out of the maze that he was in with Beatrix, for him to do a good deal of thinking. He was pretty certain that when he left the Vanderdyke house alone,--he couldn't see how else he could leave it,--the effect that Beatrix had had upon him would impel him to hitch himself on to life in some other capacity than that of a mere observer. For her sake, in her honor, he would dedicate his life to a job that should relieve the pressure in some way on the toilers of the earth and help things forward.

When he returned to the hall he found the punctual, punctilious family ready and waiting to go into dinner. Beatrix followed him down almost immediately, wearing a simple and charming frock. Aunt Honoria met her and brought her into the group. There was something about the girl, a new dignity, a riper air, an uncharacteristic quietude that was caught at once by the three Vanderdykes and especially by Aunt Honoria. Her words to Franklin in the garden before the honeymoon came back into her mind and with an emotion that she was unable to suppress she said, "This is a good night in the history of the family. Our little girl has found herself as we have prayed that she would. I speak for my brother and sister when I say that we are grateful to you, Pelham." She bowed to him with old-fashioned grace.

Mr. Vanderdyke, obviously disconcerted, murmured approval, and Mrs. Vanderdyke smiled. She was a little resentful of the way in which Aunt Honoria always took the lead but this was outweighed by her immense relief at the fact that Beatrix was happy and disposed of.

Franklin was the most uncomfortable man on earth.

And then Beatrix did a thing that once more made him wish that they were back in the stone age. "Let me speak for myself," she said quietly. "Pelham, I am very grateful, too," and put her hand on his shoulder, stood on tiptoes and kissed him.

He was wrong, once more, when he told himself, angrily, that she was deliberately fooling, getting a thrill of amusement at his expense. If he had known her as she was now, he would have realized that she had seized the public moment to do something she would not have dared to do privately, that she was thanking him for what he had done for her and saying "Good-bye." She had made up her mind to tell the truth at the family council that night.

*XLI*

While Helene had been brushing her hair and getting her ready for dinner Beatrix had gone in for honest thinking too.

She came at once to the conclusion that from every point of view the sham that she had created in that wild moment of self-preservation and devil-may-care must be smashed. Scandal had driven her into it. Scandal was following at her heels and in a blaze of scandal the episode must end. The futile punishment, which, as a girl, she had been so keen to dodge mattered nothing to her now as a woman. Let Aunt Honoria drag her into the back of beyond. She would go gladly. In silent lonely places she could sit in dreams and live over again those wonderful moments during which she had burst into womanhood. What did it matter now if she missed a season, many seasons in New York? She had looked into the eyes of life. She had no longer any desire to take her part among the silly sheep that ran about in droves. She was sorry for the pain and humiliation that she must cause her family to suffer. There seemed to be no way to prevent that. To enter into Franklin's scheme of marriage only meant a postponement of scandal. Divorce would provide the gossipers with an even more succulent morsel than the one that was waiting for them. Out of this smash, bad as it must be, she would at any rate preserve her pride and set Franklin free.

There were three things that hit her hard as she sat in front of her looking glass that evening. Her failure to make Franklin eat the words that he had flung at her vanity as he stood at the foot of her bed. Her failure to turn the sex attraction that she had deliberately stirred in him into love. Her failure to compete with such a woman as Ida Larpent. In fact it was the word failure that seemed to her to be written all over the episode into which she had entered without a thought for anyone except herself,--and it was the one word which had, till then, never been allowed to have a place in her dictionary.

It was a bad hour that she went through as she summed things up, and she came out of it startled at the knowledge that she, even she, was required to pay for her mistakes to the uttermost cent.

Well, she _would_ pay and pay smiling. She would prove to Franklin that he was right when he said that she had courage.

Dinner was a rather pompous, long drawn out affair, watched, as usual, by several of Romney's rosy-cheeked men, a beautiful Gainsborough woman, and a Reynolds' legal luminary, cynical beneath a heavy wig. Conversation was conducted, rather than allowed to run easily, through the superfluous courses. The butler, with the air of a bishop, held an aloof place in the background and silent-footed men-servants hovered like hawks over the shoulders of the diners.

To Mr. Vanderdyke dinner was an institution, the land-mark in his vacant days. He trained for it with assiduous care and self-restraint, enjoyed it with his characteristic halfheartedness and took his punishment and his tabloids as a matter of course. To Mrs. Vanderdyke it was a severe temptation which, for the most part, she resisted with great pluck. The smallest increase of weight meant hours of treatment. Aunt Honoria just ate and let it go at that and so did Franklin, whose appetite was the envy and wonder of many of his less healthy friends. Beatrix pecked a little and said a little but smiled at everybody. She was keeping up the bluff until her cards were called.

How different and how wonderful it would all have been if instead of acting parts she and Franklin were playing them in reality!

After the ladies had left Franklin smoked a cigarette with Mr. Vanderdyke and did his best to show interest in his host's rather petulant criticisms of the ways and methods of the Government. He was very glad to follow him into the drawing-room in whose stiff immensity the ladies were almost lost.

He went straight up to Mrs. Vanderdyke, who was leaning on a Tudor mantelpiece, torn from Little Claverings in Essex. She always stood for twenty minutes after dinner. It was part of her regime. "I'm very keen to hear what there is to be told, Mrs. Vanderdyke," he said. "May we get to it now?"

"Isn't it a little early yet?" Mrs. Vanderdyke turned to Aunt Honoria, who was talking to Beatrix. The energy of this tall, tanned man was a little disconcerting. "Will you----"

"I have everything here," said Aunt Honoria, "and I agree with Pelham that there is no time like the present. I have given orders that we are on no account to be disturbed. You will sit down, won't you?"

Mrs. Vanderdyke did so, having glanced at the clock. Mr. Vanderdyke lay back in a low chair with the fingers of his long, thin hands together. He would far rather have been in the hands of a dentist than in that room at that time. Franklin sat bolt upright next to Beatrix, who had her metaphorical bomb all ready to throw into the middle of the group. Only to these two did the underlying drama of this curious meeting appeal fully.

And then Aunt Honoria opened the proceedings quietly, calmly and with all the dignity of which she was a mistress. "I have here," she said, "a bundle of anonymous letters and a cutting from a scurrilous paper. The first letter came addressed to me. Others are written to my brother and sister, and there are half a dozen which were sent to intimate friends of ours and placed in my hands by them. They are all in the same handwriting, which looks to me as though it were disguised. They began to arrive the morning after you left on your honeymoon, my dear, and have come every morning since. They take the form of a series of questions. This is the first one. "Have you taken the trouble to discover at which Church or registry your niece Beatrix and Pelham Franklin were married?" And then they run in this order. You will see that I have copied them out. "What will you do when you find that your daughter, who imagines herself to belong to the salt of the earth, is a common wanton and liar? What will you do to repair the damage that she has done to your prestige in society by humbugging the papers into printing the story of a marriage that never took place? How is it that sophisticated people of your type have accepted a man as a son-in-law without evidence of his legal right to call himself so? Do you think you set a good example to all the people who copy your ways and manners by allowing your daughter to go on the loose with any man she takes a fancy to? Have you a grudge against society in which you assume a leading position and have you made yourselves party to an unmoral and disgraceful transaction in order to hold it up to the ridicule of the world? Would you speak to a young girl, however well-born and wealthy, who to hide a love affair with one man bluffed a marriage with a mere acquaintance? What decent man will marry your daughter after she has been 'honeymooning' with another? Don't you know that truth will out and that already tongues are busy with the names of Vanderdyke and Franklin? Aren't you sufficiently worldly to have learned that people who condone are classed with people who commit? Why not, if you have been as gullible as press and public, set things right and make what reparation you can to the members of your class? Do you want the name of Beatrix Vanderdyke to be placed among those of notorious chorus girls? Why not at once institute a search among the registrations of marriages and force the guilty couple, now basking in the light of a mock honeymoon, to confession and penitence?"

"Don't go on, don't go on," cried Mr. Vanderdyke. "I can't stand it, I tell you. I can't stand it!" His voice was almost hysterical and his gesture almost feminine.

"These dreadful questions," said Mrs. Vanderdyke, in a low voice, "give me mental sickness."

Franklin sat quite still, with his hands clenched.

Beatrix looked as though she had been turned to stone. Had all these hideous things grown out of one impetuous moment?

"I will gladly pass over the rest," said Aunt Honoria, "and come to the cutting from the paper that was sent to me three days ago. This," she added in a voice that became suddenly sharp with anger, "calls for immediate action, Pelham, and is the reason of your being here to-night."

"Please read it," said Franklin.

Aunt Honoria read, holding the clipping as though it held contamination. It was written in the usual smart manner with the usual lascivious snigger. "There is a very precious high life scandal in the offing, so to speak,--one which will, it is said on the best authority, flutter the dovecotes of all our Best Families. Much satisfaction was recently expressed, and gallons of ink expended in fulsome congratulation, upon the marriage of a well-known amateur yachtsman to the beautiful and adventurous daughter of a multi-millionaire. No recent royal marriage was more widely commented upon. It is rumored, however, that the high-spirited young lady who, even as a debutante had shown a certain lofty disregard for the conventions, is now conducting an ultra-modern experiment with the good-looking amateur yachtsman by honeymooning with him before the legal prescription has been made out, with the view, perhaps, to ultimate marriage. This sort of thing has been perpetrated, it is true, though without any attempt to mislead the public, by persons of artistic temperament and no social position to lose, but the question is being very generally asked as to how this peculiar proceeding will presently be viewed by American Society, which still clings to one or two hard and fast standards. I shall certainly watch the outcome with immense curiosity and shall be especially interested to see how soon the matrons on and near Fifth Avenue will show how the wind is blowing in their treatment of a certain member of the girl's family who has constituted herself the guide and mentor of her set for many years."

Although he had read this cunningly offensive thing over many times, Mr. Vanderdyke squirmed in his chair and put one hand over his eyes. His fastidious and beautiful wife, usually too self-centered to be concerned with the troubles of other people, gave him a glance of very genuine sympathy. It had been the fetish of them both to regard convention as a sort of religion, and she knew, unable herself to translate her indignation and disgust into words, how deeply her husband took this utterly undeserved scurrility to heart. Like him and like Aunt Honoria she had no suspicion of there being anything in the least out of order in the marriage.

Beatrix still sat as though she had been turned to stone.

But Franklin got up. This poisonous collection of sniggering words made him see red. Oh, God, for five minutes with that fat brute York! He walked up and down, watched with grim satisfaction by the family, especially by Mr. Vanderdyke, who poked himself up on his elbow and with a flush on his face and an eager light in his pale eyes saw in that tall, wiry, sun-burned man all the symptoms of an overwhelming desire for the sort of physical vengeance in which he himself would never be able to indulge.