Chapter XV

Rose Hubbell was spending the hottest of the hot weeks at Christmas Lake. Christmas Lake was a summer resort--a hotel and its satellites, plunged in a forest of pines and then made extremely accessible to motorists by assiduous care of the roads. It was beautiful and gay--entirely protected from any rough contacts with weather, and an excellent golf course and tennis courts gave those who wanted exercise opportunity, while no stigma fell upon those who preferred to dress for tennis or golf without running any risk of soiling their clothes. A great many unattached, wealthy people moved lazily about the lawns, eating, drinking, watching, talking and finding the place entirely to their liking. So did Rose Hubbell. Just enough of her story was known to make her interesting and her prettiness and clever clothes added to the interest in her. She was skillful enough to be docile before the elder women and wise enough not to attempt to compete with the very young ones. And by choosing her rôle carefully she drew around her both young and old, the old pitying her and the younger ones admiring romance, as she incarnated it for them.

She kept up, as always, her desultory correspondence with Langley. Her letters to him were idle, half-caressing, half-mocking, and with an occasional plaintive note. In late July she became rather unusually plaintive. Why didn’t Jim come and rest a week at the Lake? She was bored and alone. He must be tired. She had a motor at her disposal and he knew what lovely drives there were around Christmas Lake. She wrote on, saying that if he wanted to come and bring Horatia or if Horatia wanted to come alone, she would play duenna gladly. And urged Horatia’s coming further.

Jim usually pigeonholed Rose’s letters until she had written three or four demanding an answer. Then he wrote very briefly. But he re-read this letter and laid it down beside him, and several times in the day he referred to it and sat thinking. Late in the afternoon he began an answer.

“Dear Rose--It would be very pleasant to bring Horatia to Christmas Lake and you have a way of making the place sound very cool and alluring. She undoubtedly needs a rest and there are some shadows under those pines that induce rest.” He stopped and from his smile he must have been visioning Horatia in those blue shadows--with him, away from all her relatives and friends and the subtle hostilities to her lover---- He did no more work, but early in the evening went up the steps of the Williams house looking young and jubilant.

There were guests and it was half an hour before he could get Horatia by herself. They went out through Maud’s tiny formal garden to a deep hammock and sat there. A million stars swung above them.

“I have a plan,” said Jim. “Will you let me kidnap you for a couple of weeks? Bob can run the office for a little while and we could vacation together.”

“You have only to throw me on your horse,” said Horatia. “I’ll be the most willing lady you ever kidnapped. But where shall we go?”

“Just to a very large, conventional resort--do you see? But one that all the money and nonsense and stupidity in the world hasn’t spoiled--where there are lovely places to tell you how much I love you. To Christmas Lake.”

“I’ve never been there. Everyone says that it’s heavenly. But, Jim, isn’t that where Rose Hubbell is?”

“That’s one of the advantages,” said Jim, eagerly, and yet there was a little damper on his eagerness even as he spoke. “She would be a sort of chaperon--only we wouldn’t have to bother about her too much.”

“I see--did she suggest it?”

Jim began to fumble a little.

“She sort of--gave me the idea.”

Horatia was silent for a minute. She felt on dangerous ground and full of a kind of protective pity for this lover of hers who seemed so oddly unable to see the ridiculousness of what he proposed.

“Jim, do you remember telling me once that Rose Hubbell was dangerous?”

“I remember that I did, but I don’t feel quite that way about it now. Rose likes you very much, you see--and she knows how I feel.”

This time there was real hurt in Horatia’s tone.

“You told her--that?”

He tried to recoup. “Only as much as your sister knows and your aunt.”

Horatia remained cruelly silent. When she spoke again her words reverted to the subject in hand, but her tone was far more distant than they justified.

“I don’t think Christmas Lake is quite practicable.”

Jim showed his hurt as his plans crashed to the ground.

“Just as you say, dear. I only suggested it because I was silly enough to think we might play around together there a lot and have a real rest.”

“But surely you don’t expect me to go under Rose Hubbell’s chaperonage, Jim. Why, think, Jim--dozens of people know her whole history and---- Think how impossible it would be for me.”

“I didn’t count on seeing much of her, you see,” said poor Jim, trying to defend not Rose Hubbell, but his own care and protection of Horatia. “And she would have been just a nominal chaperon. But I see that I was a fool. Just consider the suggestion cancelled, will you, darling? Put it out of your head absolutely.”

He drew her close to him and may have been simple enough to fancy his request had been granted. But thoughts were spinning madly around in Horatia’s head. This outrageously silly plan of Jim’s seemed to clinch the whole matter of Rose Hubbell. If Rose could make him believe that such an arrangement was all right--that it was all right to take the girl he was going to marry away under the chaperonage of a woman about whom he had been the co-respondent in a divorce suit, she could make him believe black was white. She felt older than Jim for once--responsible for him. With an instinctive feminine reaction she refused to blame the man. It was a matter between her and Mrs. Hubbell.

“Jim,” she said softly, “don’t you think the time has come for you to give up Rose Hubbell?”

Jim started. “How on earth could I give her up? She’s nothing to me, Horatia. Child, you surely don’t dream----”

The word “child” offended Horatia.

“No--of course I don’t think you are in love with her--or anything like that. But I think she thinks she has a hold on you and that she intends to play it for what it’s worth. She has a little proprietary air--and I think she has an influence over you which you don’t realize and that for your good you shouldn’t see her any more at all.”

The youth of Horatia, hurling such statements at any man and worst of all at the man who wished to be especially fine and strong in her eyes! She went on, a little flurried and feeling her way.

“Truly, I’m not jealous. I know you love me and I know that you’re not flirting. But I don’t like to see that woman hang around you because she has absolutely nothing to give you. From your own admission you see her because you feel you have a duty towards her and that is no reason at all. She is well able to look out for herself.”

“So am I, sweetheart.” That was the man in him.

Horatia did not agree.

“Let’s not quarrel about Rose Hubbell, please, darling,” he went on. “I don’t give a copper what becomes of her. But she is an old acquaintance and a perfectly harmless one. If you don’t like her you’ll never have to see her again.”

“And would you go on seeing her?”

“Why, no, darling--not unless I couldn’t help it. I can’t go around the block to avoid her--or cut her on the street.”

The slight impatience in his tone found immediate reflection in Horatia’s answer.

“Don’t be silly, Jim. I’m not unreasonable or going to be unreasonable. But I want to know where you stand with her and then we will drop it.” She was pressing the point now partly because her pride wouldn’t let her admit that she was being unreasonable or foolish and partly from sheer womanly desire to break down the resistance in her lover. And because she felt very near to tears her voice was hard and her figure tightened. Jim took it as a repulse, but he became more serious.

“What is it you want, Horatia?”

“I want you to drop Rose Hubbell. Not go to see her. Tell her if necessary that you are dropping her. It wouldn’t hurt her very much. Of course I don’t mean that you’re not to speak to her, but don’t ask her to dance when you are out places--don’t let her write to you. I want you to promise me.”

The tears showed in her voice now and who knows what Jim would not have been ready to promise if the word had not called out the memory of a promise given just a few weeks before to Rose. She had pleaded just not to be dropped. He had a clear memory of the whole conversation with her.

“Will you?” asked Horatia. “Truly it’s awfully hard to ask you. Won’t you promise just that?”

She felt like a child begging for a favor and like a woman to whom refusal would be outrage.

“Will it satisfy you, dear, if I promise to bear all this in mind and never to offend you again?”

The reservation puzzled Horatia and piqued her.

“Why won’t you promise outright?”

“Frankly, dear, I can’t. I can’t give a promise like that. It might be impossible to keep it without wounding Rose terribly.”

Horatia felt that she was wounded terribly. She turned her head away.

“Please,” begged Langley, “this is dreadful, Horatia. Can’t you trust my love for you and forget it?”

Horatia was weeping frankly now. He tried to take her in his arms but she drew away.

“Go away, Jim. Go home now. I want to think.”

“Let me sit here quietly while you think.”

“Please go--please.”

He took her hands and buried his face in them for a moment, his lips against the soft palms. Then he went down the path and through the garden gate.