Chapter IV: Part 4

She was still in the noticeably simple and very perfect dress that she had worn at dinner,--a soft, black thing not cut slavishly to the existing fashion, but made to suit her peculiar beauty and slender, hipless lines. Cut down to the waist at the back, it seemed to retain its place in front by a miracle. One large, star-shaped brooch studded as closely with diamonds as a clear sky with stars was fastened between her breasts, and jet beads glinted here and there about the graceful skirt that hid her feet. A band of small pearls was placed like an aureola round her head, from which hung one large insolent diamond just where her hair was parted on her low forehead. She wore no rings.

She moved away from the window and leaned lightly against one of the pillars, running her eyes slowly up and down Franklin's tall, wiry figure. She might easily have been standing for an artist as the modern representation of Lucretia Borgia.

"Well!" she said, with a just perceptible upward inflection of her bell-like voice.

To Franklin she seemed to be symbolical of his lost freedom, the unconscious reminder of the good days when he could go and come at will, answer immediately to a whim and move to a fancy as a sail to a breeze. During the course of that afternoon and evening he had not attempted to do more than pass the time of day with her, and had forgotten, in the sudden whirlpool into which he had been dragged by Beatrix, that he had arranged to meet her under that roof to renew a very charming friendship. It was now easy enough to see from her expression and manner that he was to undergo a bad quarter-of-an-hour for his lack of attention. He deeply regretted to have hurt her feelings but was not sorry that he had gone into the room. If there was anything unpleasant to be faced it was his habit to face it and get it over. He did not suffer from moral cowardice.

"Well!" he said.

"I've just finished writing you a letter."

"That's very nice of you."

There was a kind of laugh. "I hope you'll think so after you've read it."

"I'll read it now, if I may," Said Franklin, holding out his hand.

"You may as well." But she tore the letter into small pieces and dropped them at her feet. "No. Why should I give you the pleasure of seeing how much you've made me suffer?"

The word suffer and the unconcealed break in the woman's voice puzzled and surprised Franklin. Was she acting? He saw no reason why she should. It never entered into the very recesses of his mind that there could be any sentiment on her part. Why should there be? "That wouldn't give me any pleasure," he said, with a sort of boyish sincerity.

She looked at him a little eagerly, saw that there was nothing in his eyes that she needed, nodded two or three times and shrugged her shoulders. It was a hard thing to be made to confess that this man who was so desirable had merely passed a few hours with her for the lack of a friend. A new thing, too, after her wide experience of men. Nevertheless, she had run through the last of her remaining money. This was no hour for pride. She stood in dire and urgent need of funds. It was impossible for him to be her husband, but well within the range of her ability to see that he became her banker.

"Did you know that I was in the library?" she asked, making one more effort to prove herself wrong in her quick intuition. This was probably, she told herself, a marriage of convenience.

"No."

"You just came in by accident?"

"Yes."

"I see. Well, then, as we're here and we're both obviously in no mood for sleep, shall we while away the time with a little discussion on the short memories of men,--some men?"

"Why not?" replied Franklin, and drew up a chair for her.

But Mrs. Larpent gave a sharp, eloquent gesture. The chair ought rightly to have wheeled itself into the darkest corner. "I'll stand, thanks. Oddly enough I feel volcanic like most women at the end of their tether who have been chucked."

The abrupt, descriptive colloquialism came strangely from her. She was so finished, so apparently fastidious. Also she spoke with the slight drawl and affectation that some English people acquire after much practice, and imagine to be smart.

"Chucked?" he echoed. "How? By whom?"

This gave Mrs. Larpent a double opportunity to get rid of her spleen and chagrin in an outburst of hysteria and to work on Franklin's sympathies by letting him see that she must have money or sell her jewels. It didn't matter to her what he thought of her now.

"By you! By you!" she said, her voice all broken with emotion. "You came into my life when I was most lonely, most in need of tenderness and kind treatment and on the very edge of a crumbling cliff. I didn't believe that you were playing the usual game with me. You didn't seem to be that kind of man. I thought,--yes, even I, who have grappled with life and am without much faith in human nature,--that you saw all that is good and decent in me and answered to the love that you had set alight in my heart. Why else, I asked myself, did you come day after day and night after night, in a city reeking with people who would have been eager to amuse you, and claim me in a loneliness that was almost equal to mine? Why else did you let me see the best of yourself and treat me with the respect that a man only shows to the woman whom he is going to ask to be his wife? Most of the men I meet are different. They only see in me an unattached woman living on a shoe-string, willing enough to sell her beauty for cash. But in you I thought I saw honesty and sincerity and chivalry, and whether you knew it or not you let me wander into a fool's paradise and dream of a home and a great love and peace. And on the strength of the little note you wrote before you sailed I saw the promise of security from dunning creditors and hope rising over my unhappy horizon. I blurt all this out now only because I'm still suffering from the shock of finding you married. You must forgive me."

She turned abruptly on her heel, with her hands over her face, and stood once more in the window silvered by the moon. Even with those tears on her face and that pain in her heart she was able to congratulate herself on having made the speech of her life.

Franklin was appalled. His knowledge of women was as small as that of most men whose lives are spent in the open. Of the Larpent type he was wholly ignorant. He believed that she was telling the truth and her confession, made with trembling lips and streaming eyes and a broken voice, hurt him. He had never listened to anything so painful or so horribly embarrassing. What could he do or say? How could he possibly explain that her beauty had only made a skin-deep impression and that he had only regarded her as a most delightful companion. And so he said nothing. It was too difficult. He just remained standing with his shoulders squared and his hands behind his back and willed that woman, for God's sake, to stop crying and tell him what he could do to make things easier for her. And the thing that he wished with all his soul was that he was back on his yacht, with the clean night air brushing across his face and the laughter of his intimate pals ringing in his ears.

During the curious, uneasy moments that followed he let his eyes wander about the huge room with its pseudo-Gothic ceiling and pillars, its book-lined walls and its numerous cases of old Bibles and first editions, collections of rare and wonderful bindings, and the assortment of deep arm-chairs and silky rugs which gave it the appearance of a room in a public library rescued from its cold formality by a lover of books, who saw no reason why they should not be enjoyed in comfort. Only one end of it was lit, and the rest was in shadow except for a shaft of silver light that pierced one of the high windows and spilt itself on the plinth of a pillar. He wondered what Mrs. Larpent would say next. He hadn't missed her hint of the need of money. He felt more than ever unhappy and uncomfortable. But on that point, at any rate, she could count on his help, difficult as it would be to put it into practice.

Mrs. Larpent gave another curious little laugh, turned and came back. Franklin glanced quickly at her. She moved closer and there was something about her mouth and nostrils that showed him that he was right in thinking that she had read his thoughts.

"What are you going to do about it?" she asked, taking advantage of the light so that the softness and whiteness of her body should not be lost. One of her smiles had never failed. She adopted it then. Even she retained her optimism.

"What you say goes," said Franklin.

"You mean that, Pelham?" Two or three steps took her within arm's reach. The light remained upon her. If this was merely a marriage of convenience he might make a suggestion that would, at any rate, give her a brief happiness.

"Of course. I only want you to--to tell me what I can do."

Optimism could not live under that suggestion, however generously meant and delicately put, of payment by cheque. Nevertheless, Ida Larpent sat down. It was bitter to see that her love was not to be returned, but good to feel that her diminished bank account was likely to be substantially refreshed. She felt like a woman who had swum out of her depth, lost her nerve, made a mighty effort and feels at last the sand against her knees. Metaphorically she drew herself wearily out of the water and with a renewed sense of confidence felt the warm sun upon her limbs.

There was something detestably cold-blooded in all this, and Franklin hated it. He had hitherto managed to keep himself free from women. They interfered with his pursuits. Why fate should have gone suddenly out of its way to plunge him into the midst of this woman stuff, as he impatiently called it, was more than he could understand.

He looked down at Ida Larpent. She was sitting in a low, red-leather chair,--the sort of thing that is supposed to belong to a room inhabited by men. Her amazing hair, as black as the wing of a crow, had been touched here and there with the tongs. It framed a face as white as marble,--a curiously small oval face,--with eyes remarkably wide apart and large and luminous; a small aristocratic nose, with sensitive nostrils which indicated passion as well as impatience, and a mouth whose lips were full and artificially red. Her small round white shoulders were more daringly bare than those of any woman he had seen, and her two fine hands looked like those in the old French pictures which hang in those houses in Paris that were spared by the Sans-Culottes. Indeed, the whole figure, from head to foot, looked like an oil painting of a period in French history when aristocracy had reached its acme. As a companion for a man of enforced leisure and unlimited means and no ties she had everything in her favor, physically and mentally. As Franklin stood looking at her, however, with all the admiration that was due to her, he found himself unconsciously comparing her,--this exotic--this most exquisite of rare orchids,--with the fresh, buoyant, healthy, clean, proud, spoilt girl who called herself his wife.

"Will you be honest with me?" she asked.

"I haven't got much to bless myself with except that," he answered.

"Were you married when you came to my apartment in March?"

"No."

"Well, that's something," she said. "When _were_ you married?"

"Does that matter?"

"Perhaps not. The fact remains. I'm naturally interested and curious, so tell me this: Was it a sudden infatuation for that child who rules the roost here,--a sudden burst of sentimentality that doesn't seem part of you, or--what? I think I have the right to ask."

"You have," said Franklin. "It was all very sudden. That's all I can tell you about it."

"I see. And now that you are tied up and more than ever under the microscopic eye of the public--what?"

"Well--what?"

"Are you going to be a little careless in the matter of marriage vows, or carry them out to the letter?" She stretched herself a little and smiled up at him, still fighting for the dream that had made her for a little while so young and gentle and unworldly.

"I asked you to believe that I am honest," said Franklin, who had never in his life been so puzzled as to a choice of words.

And then Mrs. Larpent got up. "I see," she said, and held out her hand. "Well, I, at any rate, have not beaten about the bush, and you have spared my feelings with very real kindness. And so good night!"

"Good night!" said Franklin.

"You can think of nothing else that you would like to say?"

Franklin had something else to say,--the question of a certain sum of money. But, like a horse brought nose up to a high jump, he refused, shook his head, and immediately added, "Yes. I'm awfully sorry about all this. Please accept my humble apologies."

Mrs. Larpent bowed, but the gracious smile on her lips was contradicted by her eyes. They were full of pain and anger. And while she still held Franklin's hand she registered an oath that she would leave no stone unturned to make him forget his honesty before many months had passed and lead her willingly into a new and beautiful dream.

"How long are you staying here?" he asked.

"I'm leaving to-morrow," she said. "It isn't awfully amusing to go through the jealous agonies of hell."

"I'll write to your apartment," said Franklin, stumbling a little over the words.

"Thank you." She took his meaning and was certain of his generosity.

He watched her go, moving with a sort of medieval dignity, an almost uncanny suggestion of having stepped out of an old frame to return to it before the finger of dawn began to rub away the night.

*X*

It was eleven o'clock before Beatrix opened her eyes to a new day. For two hours Mrs. Lester Keene had hovered about the room like an elderly beetle, settling here and there for a moment or two and then continuing her aimless and irresolute flitting. Two or three times she had stood over the sleeping girl and gazed with a sort of amazement at a face that looked strangely childlike, with long lashes like fans upon her cheeks and lips a little parted. Then she would take a magazine to one of the windows, read a few lines here and there without taking in their meaning and gaze at the illustrations intently without knowing what they intended to represent. The truth was that the loyal and well-meaning lady was not herself. Her constitution, not of a very sound order, had been almost shattered by her experience the night before. She had kept watch and had seen Franklin leave the bedroom shortly after he had evicted her from it, and then, with inexpressible relief and thankfulness, gone to bed, but the terrible anxiety had told upon her. Hitherto she had never been called upon to undergo more nerve-strain than is endured by a hen in a well-regulated chicken run, seeing life and adventure and passion only through the eyes of her favorite novelists. She had, however, slept very little and given orders that she should be called at half-past seven, so that she might go early to Beatrix and give her the benefit of her advice. She still remained under the impression, poor little lady, that her advice was of the greatest assistance to the wilful, headstrong girl, even though she never made the merest pretence to follow it.

Beatrix awoke, finally, as a flower opens to the sun. "Oh! Hello, Brownie," she said, "ever-faithful! Heigh-ho! I've had such a lovely sleep. All in one piece without a dream. I feel about fifteen." She stretched herself lazily and put her arms behind her head. "Will you please tell Helene that I want a cup of tea at once,--at once, Brownie. If it doesn't come in five minutes it won't be of any use to me. You're a dear old thing to bother." She gave a little musical yawn as the fluffy-minded woman hurried to the maid's room and gave the order with that sort of mysterious urgency which is connected with embassies in moments of national crises and theatres during a dress rehearsal.

When she returned, which she did at once,--her mind being all astir with curiosity,--she saw that Beatrix was sitting up in bed with her hands clasped about her knees, her eyebrows meeting in a frown, her lips set tightly and her eyes full of anger. Mrs. Keene had never seen this expression on the girl's face before. If she had heard Franklin's parting remark she would have known the reason for it.

"It's very late, dear," said Mrs. Keene; "after eleven, and all the people have been rehearsing in the gardens for an hour."

"Oh, well, it's a charming morning. It will do them good. I wonder if the matinee idol has shaved himself! I understand that they don't do that thing until about four o'clock in the afternoon." And then she began to laugh, more to hide her feelings than anything else.

Not even to Brownie did she intend to show what she felt about the episode of the previous night, or how deeply she resented the humiliation to which Franklin had subjected her. Never in all her life would she forget that, or forgive,--never.

"We certainly may be said to be living on the top of a volcano, Brownie. No monotony about life just now, is there?" And then she suddenly slipped out of bed, alert and full of a new idea, "Go down and see what's happening," she added. "Be my secret agent and come back with a full report of what Franklin has been doing since breakfast. Be very discreet and smile,--smile all the time, bearing in mind that you are the closest friend of a girl who has just been happily married."

"Oh, my dear," cried Mrs. Keene, "don't talk like that! Please, please don't!"

Just for one instant Beatrix allowed her companion to get a glimpse of the strain under which she was laboring. "How else should I talk?" she said, sharply. "Do you think I'm going about with my tail down like a whipped dog----? Run along, Brownie, run along like a good little soul and do this thing for me. In the meantime I'll get up. I feel in my bones that things are going to happen to-day. Thank Heaven I'm on the top of my form, ready for anything and everybody, even Franklin. We do manage to live, you and I, don't we?"

She escorted the amiable, fluttering woman to the door and closed it upon her, quite certain that she would return with full information. If there was one thing in which Mrs. Lester Keene was really proficient it was in spying out the lay of the land.

While bathing in the pool whose hideous Byzantine decorations were never more inappropriate than when they made a background for that sweet, slim form, Beatrix ran her mind over the position. She felt convinced that Franklin, angry and disgusted as he was, would continue to play up until he had her permission to give away the game. She knew a sportsman when she saw one. But she knew also, instinctively, that he was a poor liar, and if,--as was quite likely,--Aunt Honoria and her mother had been pumping him during the morning as to when the marriage took place and for the other details of this great romance, he had probably made a very poor showing. There might have been inconvenient questions asked by her father as to settlements, and so forth. If so, she could imagine how badly Franklin had come out without her at his side to prompt and evade and put tangents into the conversation. She was anxious and owned to it.

When Mrs. Lester Keene returned to the bedroom, slipping into it with an air of almost comic mystery, she was surprised to find Beatrix fully dressed and swinging up and down the room impatiently like a boy.

"What news on the Rialto?" she cried, with a touch of burlesque in her voice.

There was a very serious and even scared look on Brownie's face. "My dear," she said, "listen! I fear that the worst has happened." In a sort of way, Mrs. Keene reveled in the drama of it all. "Mr. Franklin was the first guest in the breakfast-room. He was very quiet and short with the servants. He drank two cups of coffee and ate hardly anything. He was joined on the veranda by your father and they walked up and down together talking earnestly for thirty-six minutes. They were then sent for by Aunt Honoria. They have been closeted----"

"Closeted is excellent," said Beatrix. "Well done, Brownie! I thought so," she added mentally, with a sharp intake of breath.

"They have been in Miss Honoria's room,--your mother was there too,--until about ten minutes ago, when Mr. Franklin came out alone, hurried downstairs and out on the veranda, kicking one of the cane chairs on his way into the garden. My dear, God only knows what took place in that interview! Your father, Aunt Honoria and your mother are still talking. I don't understand--I really utterly fail to comprehend how you can stand there with that smile on your face, being in the midst of what seems to me to be a very terrible situation."

Beatrix whistled a little tune to keep up her courage, sat on the edge of a heavily carved table and swung her legs. "Well, what would you have me do?" she asked, with consummate coolness. "Stand on my head, wail like one of the fat ladies in _Tristan and Isolde_, or sink back on the sofa in an attitude of Early Victorian despair?" She got up and walked to one of the open windows and stood for a moment in the sun as though to get a little necessary warmth and sympathy. Then she went back to the table and looked rather eagerly and girlishly at her altogether useless but very faithful friend. "What d'you think it all means, Brownie dear?"

Mrs. Lester Keene gave the question her serious consideration. She was one of those women who looked most ludicrous when most worried. "If you ask me," she said, "I believe that Mr. Franklin has given you away and told the truth."

This answer came as rather a shock to Beatrix, but only for a moment. "Well, I don't," she said. "Shall I tell you why?"

"Indeed I wish you would."

"If Franklin had given me away he wouldn't have kicked that cane chair."

Brownie gave another gesture of despair. "If only you had it in you to take things seriously."

"Seriously! You dear old thing, I'm most serious. I have every reason to be. But that was a fine piece of deduction and my spirits have gone up with a rush. I'm now going to find Franklin, and I'll bet you a diamond bracelet that he has stood by me like a Trojan and is as angry as a caged hawk. Now, the all-important point is this: What hat shall I wear,--a simple, naive, garden thing, or this sophisticated effort? I must please his eye."

"Wear the smart hat," said Mrs. Keene.

Beatrix wore the other. That almost went without saying.

She sang on her way down-stairs. She chose Santuzza's song from _Cavalleria_, which she ragged in the most masterly manner. She did this to give the impression, to anyone who might hear her, of light-heartedness. Her lithe, young, white-clad figure was reflected by many mirrors as she passed. She made sure that none of her people were in the hall, and then darted out to the veranda to look for Franklin. The members of the house-party had dispersed to pass the morning away in tennis and with the rehearsals for the pastoral. She could see a number of people under the trees to the left. She swung round the veranda, walking on the balls of her feet like a young Diana, singing as she went, but darting quick, anxious glances to the right and left. There was no sign of Franklin. She was about to make her way through the Dutch garden, all aflame with flowers, to the summer-house which overlooked the Sound shining beneath the sun, when a footman came out carrying one of her mother's petulant spaniels.

"Do you happen to know where Mr. Franklin is?" she asked, pulling up short.

"Yes, madam."

The word made her heart pump. "Well,--where?"

"Mr. Franklin ordered his car round ten minutes ago, madam, and has driven off to New York."

New York! Then he _had_ given her away, after all, and left her in the lurch. What on earth was she going to do now?

*XI*

It was twenty minutes to one when Franklin brought his car to a stop at the Willow Tree Club in West Fifty-seventh Street. Malcolm usually dropped in to this rendezvous of writing men, artists and good fellows generally to read the papers, about midday. There was more than a chance that he might be lunching there.

The city lay weltering under a pall of humidity. As about a great hive the people moved like tired bees. Flags lay comatose around their posts, striped awnings hung limply above the windows of those unhappy souls who could not get away, and the buildings which reared their heads up to the sky seemed to perspire.

Franklin enquired for his friend at the office, was told that he had been in but had left half an hour before, murmured a mere second-grade oath, and being a member of the club himself, went into the reading room. He remembered that he needed certain things from Spaldings', especially flies, and knowing from long experience that he had better not trust to his memory, decided to write a brief letter, then and there.

A pale man was sitting within easy reach of the long magazine table. He looked up with the slightly antagonistic expression characteristic of men in clubs who have had a room to themselves, and wondered what sort of lucky creature the interloper was who could afford to achieve such a superb tan in a world of work and effort.

Franklin caught his eye, registered the fact that he had never seen him before and didn't much care if he never did again, and sat down at a writing table behind a book-case in the corner of the room.

After a few moments he was aware of the entrance of someone else because the pale man sang out a greeting, but he had concentrated on his list and what was said didn't reach him. He searched his brain for everything that he needed in the way of flies and tackle, endeavored to make his writing more legible than it usually was and was about to address the envelope when he caught the name of Vanderdyke. It was not so much the mention of the name that made him prick up his ears as the rather ribald tone in which it was said.

"I was surprised to read all that glorification in this morning's papers," he heard. "Gossip had it that you were very much in the running, York."

"I? Oh, no, my dear fellow. I had never entered in the matrimonial stakes for that girl."

"Why not? Beatrix Vanderdyke was worth winning, surely? Money to burn, beauty, youth,--what else do you want?"

"I'm not a marrying man. As they will be pretty certain to say in my obituary notices, I am 'wedded to my art.' Besides, my dear fellow, I have the fortunate knack of getting what I want without the consent of the parson." There was the kind of snigger that only comes from men who belong to the lady-killer tribe.

That, and the gross innuendo that preceded it, carried Franklin to his feet. The lust to hit had seized him. He stalked round the book-case into the middle of the room. His hands were clenched and he was breathing deeply like a man who had been running. He recognized in the tall, red-tied, flamboyant person the man with whom he had seen Beatrix that night when he had left the apartment house with Malcolm Fraser.

"I was luckily in a position to overhear your remark," he said quietly. "I'm Franklin. Miss Vanderdyke is my wife."

The pale man drew in his breath, and a look of excitement and pleasure flashed into his eyes. The one thing that made him feel that he had any blood was a fight.

Sutherland York recovered himself quickly. But for the slight suggestion of whiteness about his mouth he seemed to be perfectly at ease and nonchalant. "I'm glad that you're glad," he said, with a polite smile. "Permit me to offer my congratulations upon your very sudden and romantic marriage."

Franklin went a step or two nearer. "If you were not such a fat, unmuscular brute," he said, slowly, and with the most careful distinctness, "if I shouldn't be laying myself open to a charge of cruelty to animals, I'd thrash you until you blubbered for mercy." He put his hands in his pockets. "Even if I did, it would have very little effect, except to send you to the dentist and the beauty doctor. Your sort of liar is never properly cured."

He waited for a moment, obviously to give the famous artist a chance to revenge himself in some way for the insult that he had deliberately made as strong as he could.

And the pale man eyed York expectantly, eagerly.

But York still smiled, although the whites of his eyes took on a strange yellow tinge. "I regret that I do not possess the gift," he said, with a little bow, "of making suitable tu quoque to cave-men."

Whereupon Franklin burst into a laugh, turned and went out.

The pale man flung his magazine away. He resented being done out of legitimate excitement.

"A curiously uncivilized person," said York, putting a shaky hand up to his vivid tie. "Come to lunch, my dear fellow."

"Thanks, no; I'm lunching at the Biltmore," said the pale man, shortly.

It was when the portrait painter found himself alone that the veneer fell from him like the silver paper from a cheap cigar. His face swelled and grew red. "Curse these two autocrats," he cried inwardly. "I owed her something. Now he's added to the debt. Married, are they? By God, we'll see about that. Scandal? Ah, that's where _I_ come in."

Franklin drove home, and gave his goggles to the chauffeur.

"Keep the car here," he said. "I shall probably want her again. But come up and get something to eat."

It was something to drink that O'Connor wanted, but he showed his excellent teeth in appreciation of the thought and made things ship-shape.

The over-uniformed elevator man in the hall of the apartment-house, which couldn't have been more pompous and imposing if it had been that of an embassy or a moving-picture palace, gave an exclamation of surprise at the sight of Franklin. "Didn't expect to see you here, sir," he said, with that nice touch of deferential camaraderie that is characteristic of all elevator men in apartment houses where rents are so prohibitive that they can boast of a waiting list.

"I didn't expect to _be_ here," said Franklin.

"No, I s'pose not. Well, is this hot enough for you, sir?"

"I don't mind it. Do you know if Mr. Fraser is in?"

"Mr. Fraser? Yes, sir. I took him up awhile ago. He went out early."

Franklin nodded, got out and rang the bell. He had forgotten his latch-key as usual. The elevator man stood hesitating for a moment. His smile was so beaming that instinctively Franklin knew that if his door wasn't opened quickly he would be obliged to reply to very much undesired congratulations. The thing was all over the earth by that time, of course. The door opened at the psychological moment, however, and Franklin was spared. All the same, he turned before he went in, gave the man a nod, said, "Thanks, all the same," and exchanged a very human smile. Good fellows, both.

The man who opened the door was unable to refrain from raising his well-trained eyebrows, and his lips, too, shaped themselves for felicitations. But Franklin gave him his hat and said: "Tell Mrs. Romanes that I shall want lunch." And then let out a loud and ringing shout of "Who's aboard?"

Malcolm Fraser, who was sitting under an electric fan in a suit of white duck, sprang to his feet. "Good Lord!" he said to himself, "what the----"

Franklin turned at the door. "And, Johnson," he called out, "bring me a claret and seltzer! Sharp's the word." He glanced at the evening paper in Fraser's hand and gave a snort. There it was. Oh, Lord, yes! In huge letters half-way down the front page. Far bigger than would have been given to an ordinary war, or the discovery of a genuine cure for consumption. Photographs of bride and bridegroom, too, of course, twined together with flourishing lines and love-knots and orange blossoms.

Fraser shaped his lips.

"Now, look here, Malcolm," said Franklin, grimly, "if you say it,--one word of it,--I'll heave this chair at your head. All the same, I'm darned glad you're in, old man. I never needed your level head so much on earth."

An anxious look came into Fraser's blue and palpably incorruptible eyes. "Why? There's nothing wrong, is there?" he asked.

"Nothing wrong!"

But Johnson, who had dropped his usual heavy dignity in the excitement of the moment and really moved, came in with the claret and seltzer and Franklin cut his remark short, took the refreshing-looking drink and gave the glass back.

With his scrupulously clean-shaven and almost clerical face wreathed in smiles, Johnson spoke: "Will you allow me, sir, to offer you----"

Franklin jumped in quickly. "Yes, thank you, Johnson. Very much obliged. Leave the tray here."

"Very good, sir." Johnson was hurt. He had framed what he considered to be a fine flowing sentence. It seemed a pity that he should not have been permitted to give it full utterance. On his way to the door he resumed his usual iciness.

Franklin put two chairs close to the window. "Sit down, old man," he said, "and listen to this."

*XII*

Beatrix had courage. Instead of shutting herself up in her suite of rooms and hiding behind the excuse of a headache until her family disclosed to her the present condition of affairs, she took her place in the rehearsals for the pastoral, was highly entertained by the airs of the matinee idol, and presently met her mother and father and Aunt Honoria at luncheon, with her head as high as ever and laughter dancing in her eyes.

Imagine her relief when she found her mother cordial, her father affectionate and Aunt Honoria peculiarly gracious. Obviously Franklin had not given her away. She was still the heroine of this family drama. Up went her spirits. Optimism came back like the sun after a storm, and living once more for the moment and leaving the immediate future on the knees of the gods she became the life and soul of the house-party, teasing the matinee idol, complimenting the producer, saying little deferential things to her aunt, and playing the game of badinage with the guests with all the finish and daring of a champion.

Reaction set in early in the afternoon. She was tired. The strain of living over a mine began to tell. Mrs. Lester Keene's continual questions as to where Franklin was and why he had gone to town got on her nerves. And so, leaving Brownie on the veranda as a spy, she went to her rooms, gave orders that she was not to be disturbed and composed herself to sleep like a crown princess of a fictitious kingdom.

It was a little after four o'clock when Mrs. Keene fluttered in, in a high state of excitement. She found Beatrix half-awake and half-asleep lying on her pompous bed in the most charming dishabille, with a little flush on her lovely face like the pink of apple blossoms.

"My dear, my dear!" said Mrs. Keene, bending over her. "Mr. Franklin has just come back."

"Who has just come back, Brownie?"

"Mr. Franklin,--who else?" Sometimes this patient woman held that she had every right to show a touch of exasperation.

"Oh, yes,--Franklin, the sportsman," said Beatrix. "Heigh-ho! I've been dreaming of dancing. I invented a new fox-trot and I danced it with Maurice for an hour. The band was perfect."

"Mr. Franklin glared at me and went up to his room. I didn't like the expression on his face at all. Do please get up, dear. Now, please do!"

Beatrix heaved a sigh, sat up, remained thinking for several moments with her hands clasped about her knees, and then sprang out of bed. "Action!" she said. "Action! Call Helene, please, Brownie. I'm seized with an insatiable curiosity to find out what's happened. Really and truly, if I had consulted a specialist in the art of providing amusement for blase people he couldn't possibly have devised a more wonderful scheme than mine for making life worth living. Now, Helene, pull yourself together. Brownie dear, ring down for a cup of tea. All hands clear for action!"

They did so to such good purpose,--Mrs. Keene bustling herself into a state of hysterical agitation, and Helene into breathlessness,--that barely half-an-hour later Beatrix, in a new and delicious frock, sailed downstairs, was told that Mr. Franklin had gone to the summer-house and followed him, humming a little tune. She came upon him standing with his hands thrust deep into his pockets and his eyes on the horizon.

"I knew I should find you here," she said, in a ringing voice. "Good afternoon! How d'you do?"

Franklin turned and looked at her, and as he did so Malcolm Fraser's outburst came back into his mind. What a charming child she must have been before the spoiling process had had time to take its full effect! What a high-spirited, insolent, beautiful, untamed thing she was now with the world at her feet. "Good afternoon!" he answered, with a curious quickening of his pulse.

"Don't you love the view here? It's wonderful. I always come and drink it in when I feel the need of being soothed."

"That's why you've come now, I suppose," said Franklin, drily.

"No. I'm utterly unruffled and at peace with the world."

"May I say 'I don't believe you' without hurting your feelings?"

"Surely," said Beatrix. "Say anything you like. It's a free country,--a little too free perhaps." She bent down and picked a rose-bud and put it to her lips.

"Very good. Then I'll add this at once. I haven't wasted time since I saw you last."

"Oh, how pleasant to think that I've had a good effect upon you," she said, with a mischievous smile. "You have the reputation of being a past-master in the art of wasting time."

Franklin ignored the remark, although he noticed that she had two of the most ravishing dimples he had ever seen. "You may not know it, but this morning I went through a pretty bad hour with your people. I didn't actually lie to them, but I managed with a great effort not to tell them anything that was true."

"Then I win my bet," said Beatrix.

"I don't know what you mean."

"It doesn't matter. Tell me more. You interest me."

"That's good," said Franklin, with a sort of laugh. "After that,--and I dare say this is also news to you,--I drove to town to get advice. The end of it all is that there's only one way in which you and I can bring this farce to an end."

"No, no!" cried Beatrix, with mock horror at the word, "not farce,--comedy, please."

Franklin would have given nearly all he possessed for the pleasure of spanking that young woman until she cried for mercy. As it was, he pitched away his cigarette, waited until the echo of her voice had died away, and faced her up. "Now listen!" he said, sharply, "and if you are capable of it give some consideration to me and my life and to the gravity of my position and yours."

Beatrix waved her hand.

"We've got to go off at once," said Franklin, giving each word its full importance,--"somewhere or other, I don't know where,--and get married."

Beatrix almost jumped out of her skin.

Franklin went on quickly. "For this reason: I saw Sutherland York this morning at the club. It was perfectly obvious that he intends to make you pay fully for something that you did to him. From his manner and his infernal cheek I gathered that he has seen through the whole of this business, and he's going to spread it about that this is a bluff. He knows how to do this sort of thing better than most men, I judge, and it won't be many days before we find scandal rearing its head at us. Therefore, we must become at once what you said we were,--married. I'm sorry, but there's no way out. That over, you will go your way and I mine, and from the moment that we separate I will proceed to do that disgusting thing which the laws make necessary for a man who wishes to be divorced from his wife. You will please be good enough to make your plans to leave here not later than to-morrow. Some other girl must take your part in the pastoral."

"Impossible," said Beatrix, quietly.

"Why?"

"Simply because it is. I'm going to play that part and I'm going to look very nice in the clothes. Also, I'm looking forward to a great deal of fun with the matinee idol, shaved or unshaved."

Franklin whipped round upon her. "It isn't for you to say what you'll do or not do. For your sake, as well as for mine, I must take charge of this business, and you'll please carry out my orders."

"Orders!" She threw up her head. "That's a word that isn't and never will be contained in my dictionary."

"You're wrong. I've just added it to that volume," he said.

Beatrix gave a big laugh and stood up to him with her chin tilted, her eyes dancing and a look of triumph all over her lovely face. "Take charge--you!" she cried. "Think again. The whip is in my hand now and I shall use it. You dare not give me away. You're afraid of the laughter that will follow you wherever you go. I think you're right. But,--as to being your wife, not in this world, my good sir, for any reason that you can name. I'd rather die."

And then she turned on her heel and swung away, with the roses seeming to bend towards her as she went.

Franklin watched her, with his hands clenched and his mouth set. "By God," he said to himself, "we'll see about that!" And he would have added more angry words, thickly, to his mental outburst, if a new feeling,--bewildering, painful, intoxicating,--had not welled up to his heart. All round him, as he stood there in amazement, the air seemed to be filled with the song of birds. Then it came to him,--the answer to the question he had put to himself impatiently and jealously in his apartment in New York after Malcolm Fraser's little story. "I'm going to begin to live--I've met the woman who can make me give up freedom and peace of mind, take me to Heaven or draw me down into Hell!"

*XIII*

That rather charming haphazard air that is characteristic of afternoon tea in an English country house, to which young people from the tennis courts and golf links slack in just as they are and find the hostess presiding at a substantial table, assisted by all the younger men who are born to carry cups and cake--they always dance and generally play the piano--was missing from the West Terrace of the Vanderdyke mansion. Mrs. Vanderdyke "dressed" for tea. Her costume was a very beautiful and pompous affair, not cut low enough for dinner or for breakfast but quite low enough for the theatre, and she wore a considerable quantity of jewels. Brilliantly made up, she sat under the awning with her back to the sun chatting with royal condescension and studied charm. It was one of the best things that she did. It was also her first public appearance of the day, most of which had been devoted to a hard, stern and successful fight against Anno Domini.

She was surrounded by members of the house party who took themselves and her seriously and she, and they, were under the expert attention of several footmen. Carefully chosen for their height and gravity and truth to type, these men wore a very distinguished livery with knee breeches and black silk stockings, and they hovered from person to person with a rather soothing quietude, moved by invisible machinery.

The vivacious little Mrs. Edgar Lee Reeves who talked continuously of "my daughter Lady Bramshaw and that sweet old place in Hampshire" was purring under the attentions of Admiral De Forrest Wontner. Although a grandmother, an event of which she spoke as if it were rather a malicious lie, Mrs. Reeves looked like a very young, blond, motion picture star who tames cave-men and broncho-busters with just one quick upward glance. Her laughter bubbled like boiling water and at odd moments she clapped her hands and opened her blue eyes very wide and pursed up her little red mouth. Of her tiny ankles she was very proud and hardly ever forgot to expose them. She underlined most of her words with gushing emphasis and everything, from a sunset to a new soap, was "_perfectly wonderful_." Wontner and she had been engaged to be married after a dance at Annapolis somewhere in the seventies, but while he was at sea on his first commission, Ettie Stanton met, danced and ran away with young E. L. Reeves of Baltimore and remained "terribly crazy" about him to the day of his death. It was indeed a peculiarly happy marriage, blessed with three fine manly boys and a girl who was always being mistaken for her mother. And now the retired sea-dog, celebrated for his early Victorian gallantry, one of the few remaining bucks in the country and a man of wit, chivalry and golden heart, carried on a St. Martin's summer flirtation with his former sweetheart, the very sight of whom dispelled his accumulation of years as the sun scatters the dew. Most people were amused at the affair and several were sympathetic.

Talking to Mrs. Vanderdyke, or rather listening to Mrs. Vanderdyke, who either talked or went into a trance, was handsome Percy Campbell, the man who drank a bottle of whiskey before breakfast and played golf all day in order to drink another before going to bed. He owned three streets in New York; he had never done anything more serious than learn to play the violin, about which he talked to everybody. He was now dangerously near fifty-three but since passing out of Harvard he had not found time to practise more than a dozen times. He carried three beautiful Strads wherever he went, however, and whenever he became genuinely fuddled motored to the nearest town, day or night, to buy a new stack of strings and rosin. His wife went with him as well as his violins and received much less consideration although many more cases. They were popular people and Campbell's shooting box in Scotland near Cupar, Fife, from which his remote ancestors strayed, was always full. No altogether Scot could compete with him in his devotion to the national beverage.

Then there were Mrs. Lucas D. Osterpath, in mourning for her son who had just married a Folly from the New Amsterdam Theatre roof; the William Bannermans, recently remarried after a most amusing divorce; Philip Kawbro in his inevitable blue and white striped collar and yellow waistcoat; Regina Westerhaus, as regal as her name, but still a spinster at the end of three seasons, and the Hon. Mrs. Claude Larpent, the centre of attraction for those three vieux marcheurs, Major Thresher, Roger Peek and Courtney Borner.

The young people avoided this function and got whatever refreshment they needed from the bachelors' house.

It was to this terrace that Beatrix made her way after flinging her triumphant refusal at Franklin. All the elation of a victor ran through her veins. What did she care about the possibility either of being blackmailed or shown up by Sutherland York? Why should she give the smallest consideration to Pelham Franklin or join him in any plan to save his name from scandal? He had said an unforgivable thing to her in her bedroom that memorable night, the sting of which still made her smart. She gloried in having been able to make him pay something on account of that huge debt and with characteristic high-handedness turned a Nelsonian eye to the black cloud that was moving up over the horizon. She had always taken chances. It was part and parcel of her nature. With a growing sense of exhilaration and the feeling that she was merely at the beginning of a great adventure she took a chance again. If the storm was fated to burst and Franklin gave her away to her parents, well, let it burst. There would be an epoch-making family row, and unless her wits protected her again she would be sent into the back of beyond. That was an appalling prospect which, however, she pushed aside. She trusted to her usual luck to carry her out of this tangle, if only by the skin of her teeth. The great point at the moment was that she had scored over Franklin and left him impotent. But for that parting remark of his before he left her room she might have considered the possibility of falling in with his plan. The humiliation of being made to obey his orders might have been lived down, greatly as she resented humiliation. But when it came to such a deliberate attack upon her vanity--that was altogether different.

Miss Honoria Vanderdyke, who had been hard at work with a secretary all the afternoon organizing a new society to look after women released from penitentiaries, came out as Beatrix was passing. The graceful, white-haired woman put her arm round the girl's shoulders. "I've never seen you look so happy, dear child," she said, with an unusual touch of tenderness.

Beatrix smiled at her and in her mind's eye saw Franklin's expression as he stood outside the summer-house with her refusal in his face. "I have every reason to be happy, Aunt Honoria," she answered, in a ringing voice. "Life has great compensations."

They fell into step on their way to tea--the elder woman a little envious of what appeared to be her niece's romantic love affair, because her own had ended tragically and left her with a broken heart. Must a woman necessarily break her heart before she will devote her life to the relief of other people's sufferings? An old philosopher, who must have been something of a misogynist, once defined woman's happiness "as that state in which all their immediate desires were gratified, a self-satisfaction which left them blind to the fact that other people littered the earth." Maybe he was right.

Aunt Honoria looked rather searchingly at the beautiful girl at her side who, alone among all the human beings that she knew, possessed the magic carpet. "Why do you talk of compensations?" she asked. "At your age, in your position? You puzzle me, child."

Beatrix laughed the question off. "Oh, that's a long story. One of these fine days, when I am overmastered by a desire to confess, I'll tell you all about it. Look, isn't mother wonderful? It's almost absurd for me to call her by anything but her Christian name."

Aunt Honoria smiled a little dryly. "My dear," she said, "all women could be as unnaturally young as your mother is if they gave up as much time to it. Tell me about that very striking person who is completely hemmed in by old men."