CHAPTER III

Christine had been right when she told Riatt that Nancy Almar would be resentful after a dull evening at the Usshers’.

The evening, as far as Nancy was concerned, had been very dull indeed. To be bored, in her creed, was a confession of complete failure; it indicated the most contemptible inefficiency, since she designed the whole fabric of her life with the unique object of keeping herself amused. Nothing bored her more than to have the general attention centered on some one else, as all that evening it had been focussed on the absent ones. Not only did she miss the excitement of her contest with Christine over the possession of Riatt, but she was positively wearied by the Usshers’ anxiety, by her brother’s agony of jealousy and fear, and by Wickham’s continual effort to strike an original thought from the dramatic quality of the situation.

She was finally reduced to playing piquet with Wickham, and though she won a good deal of money from him—more, that is, than he could comfortably afford to lose—she still counted the evening a failure, bad in the present, and extremely menacing to the future. For with her habitual mental candor, she admitted that by this time Christine, if not actually frozen to death—which after all one could not exactly hope—had probably won the game. The chances were that Riatt was captured.

“What is the matter, Ned?” she said to her brother, as he fidgeted about the card-table, after a last futile expedition to the telephone. “Can’t you decide whether you’d rather the lady of your love were dead or subjected for twenty-four hours to the fascinations of an irresistible young man?”

“What an interesting question that raises,” observed Wickham, examining rather ruefully the three meager cards he had drawn. “A modern Lady-or-the-Tiger idea. I am not of a jealous temperament and should always prefer to see a woman happy with another man.”

“And often do, I dare say,” said Nancy. “I have a point of seven, and fourteen aces.”

“I must own I can’t see Riatt’s irresistible quality,” said Hickson irritably.

“Rich, nice looking and has his wits about him,” replied Mrs. Almar succinctly.

“About as good-looking as a fence-rail.”

“And they say women are envious!” exclaimed his sister.

“Are you a feminist, Mrs. Almar?” inquired the irrepressible Wickham.

“No, just a female, Mr. Wickham.”

“I never thought a big bony nose made a man a beauty,” grumbled Hickson.

“Ah, how much wisdom there is in that reply of yours, Mrs. Almar,” said Wickham. “Just a female. Your meaning is, if I interpret you rightly, that you are content with the duties and charms which Nature has bestowed upon your sex—”

“Until I can get something better,” replied Nancy briskly, drawing the score toward her and beginning to add it up. “My idea is to let the other women do the fighting; if they win, I shall profit; if they lose, I’m no worse off. I believe I’ve rubiconed you again, Mr. Wickham.”

“Well, I don’t understand women’s taste, anyhow,” said Hickson.

“You never spoke a truer word than that, my dear,” said Nancy. “Seventy-four fifty, I think that makes it, Mr. Wickham, subtracting the dollar and a half you made on the first game. Oh, yes, a check will do perfectly. I’m less likely to lose it.”

“I never had a worse run of luck,” observed Wickham with an attempt at indifference.

Mrs. Almar stood up yawning. “Doubtless you are on the brink of a great amorous triumph,” she said languidly, and went off to bed.

Hickson did not attempt to sleep. He sat up for the remainder of the night, in the hope that some sudden call might come, and at six o’clock as Ussher had told Christine, he was ready for new efforts.

Rescued and rescuers reached the Usshers’ house about half past ten the following morning. Nancy was not yet downstairs. Wickham had not been able to judge what was the correct note to strike in connection with the whole incident, and so did not dare to sound any. The arrival was comparatively simple. Mrs. Ussher received her beloved Christine with open arms; Riatt went noncommittally upstairs to take a bath; Hickson had decided, in spite of his depression of spirits, to try to make up a little of last night’s lost sleep, when he received a summons from his sister. Her maid, a clever, sallow little Frenchwoman, came down with her hands in her apron pockets to say that Madame should like to speak to Monsieur at once.

He found Nancy still in bed; her little black head looking blacker than usual against the lace of the pillows and the coverlet and of her own bed-jacket. The only color about her was the yellow covered French novel she laid down as he entered, and the one enormous ruby on her fourth finger.

“And now, Ned, my dear,” she said quite affectionately for her, “I hear you have brought the wanderers safely home. Tell me all about it.”

Hickson, to whom this summons had not come as a surprise, had resolved that he would confide none of his anxieties to his sister but, alas, as well might a pane of glass resolve to be opaque to a ray of sunlight. Within ten minutes, Nancy knew not only all that he knew, but such additional deductions as her sharper wits enabled her to draw.

“I see,” she murmured, as he finished. “The only positive fact that we have is that he did not leave the house until after five. How very interesting!”

“Very terrible,” said Hickson.

“Terrible,” exclaimed Nancy, with the most genuine surprise. “Not at all. From your point of view most encouraging. It can mean only one thing. The young man very prudently ran away.”

Edward was really stirred to anger. “Nancy,” he said, “how do you dare, even in fun—”

“Oh, my dear,” answered his sister, as one wearied by all the folly in the world, “how can I be of any use to you if you will not open your eyes? He ran away. We don’t know of course just from what; but we do know this: Max Riatt is the best match that has yet presented himself, and that Christine is the last girl in the world to ignore that simple fact. Come, Ned, even if you do love her, you may as well admit the girl is not a perfect fool. Fate, accident, or possibly her own clever manœuvering put the game into her hands. The question is, how did she play it? I know what I’d have done, but I don’t believe she would. I think she probably tried to make him believe that she was hopelessly compromised in the eyes of the world, and that there was no course open to an honorable man but to ask her to marry him.”

“I can’t imagine Christine playing such a part.”

“I tell you, you never do the poor girl justice. If she did that—and the chances are she did—then his running away is most encouraging. It means, in your own delightful language, that he did not fall for it—did not want to run any risk of compromising her, if marriage was the consequence.”

“But, Nancy, Christine almost admitted that—that he tried to make love to her.”

“I can’t see what that has to do with it, or what difference it makes,” replied Mrs. Almar. “However, too much importance should not be attached to such admissions. I have sometimes made them myself when the facts did not bear me out. No woman likes to confess, especially to an old adorer like you, that she has spent so many hours alone with a man and he has not made love to her.”

Hickson shook his head. “I’m not clever enough to be able to explain it,” he said, “but I received the clearest impression from her that she had been through some painful experience.”

“Good,” said Nancy. “Do you know the most painful experience she could have been through?”

“No, what?”

“If he hadn’t paid the slightest attention to her; and that, my dear brother, is what I am inclined to think took place. No, the game is still on; only now she’ll have the Usshers to help her. This is no time for me to lie in bed.”

Ned looked at her doubtfully. “I thought I’d try and sleep a little,” he said.

“The best thing you can do,” she returned. “Lucie! Lucie! Where are the bells in this house! What privations one suffers for staying away from home! Oh, yes, here it is,” and she caught the atom of enamel and gold dangling at the head of her bed, and rang it without ceasing until the maid, who regarded her mistress with an admiration quite untinctured by affection, appeared silently at the doorway.

In an astonishingly short space of time, she was dressed and downstairs, presenting her usual sleek and polished appearance. Wickham was alone in the drawing-room, and a suggestion that they should have another game of piquet quickly drove him to the writing of some purely imaginary business letters.

The coast was thus clear, but Riatt was still absent.

Nancy’s methods were nothing if not direct. She rang the bell and when the butler appeared she said:

“Where is Mr. Riatt?”

“In his room, madam.”

“Dressing?”

“No, madam, he is dressed. Resting, I should say.”

Nancy nodded her head once. “One moment,” she said; and going to the writing table she sat down and wrote quickly:

“I should like five minutes’ conversation with you. Strange to say my motive is altruistic—so altruistic that I feel I should sign myself ‘Pro Bono Publico,’ instead of Nancy Almar. There is no one down here in the drawing-room at the moment.”

She put this in an envelope, sealed it with sealing wax (to the disgust of the butler who found it hard enough, as it was, to keep up with all that went on in the house) and told the man to send it at once to Mr. Riatt’s room.

She did not have long to wait. Riatt, with all the satisfaction in his bearing of one who has just bathed, shaved and eaten, came down to her at once.

“Good morning, Pro Bono Publico,” he said, just glancing about to be sure he was not overheard. “It was not necessary to put this interview on an altruistic basis. I should have been glad to come to it, even if it had been as a favor to you.”

“Isn’t that rather a reckless way for a man in your situation to talk?”

She looked at him with her hard, dark eyes. “Isn’t that rather a reckless way for a man in your situation to talk?”

“I was not aware that I was in a situation.”

This was exactly the expression that she had wanted from him. It seemed to come spontaneously, and could only mean that at least he was not newly engaged.

She relaxed the tension of her attitude. “Are you really under the impression that you’re not?”

“I feel quite sure of it.”

“You poor, dear, innocent creature.”

“However,” he went on, sitting down beside her on the wide, low sofa, “something tells me that I shall enjoy extremely having you tell me all about it.”

Tucking one foot under her, as every girl is taught in the school-room it is most unladylike to do, she turned and faced him. “Mr. Riatt,” she said, “when I was a child I used to let the mice out of the traps—not so much, I’m afraid, from tenderness for the mice, as from dislike of my natural enemy, the cook. Since then I have never been able to see a mouse in anybody’s trap but my own, without a desire to release it.”

“And I am the mouse?”

She nodded. “And in rather a dangerous sort of trap, too.”

He smiled at the seriousness of her tone.

“Ah,” said she, “the self-confidence which your smile betrays is one of the weaknesses by which nature has delivered your sex into the hands of mine. I would explain it to you at length, but the time is too short. The great offensive may begin at any moment. The Usshers have made up their minds that you are to marry Christine Fenimer. That was why you were asked here.”

“Innocent Westerner as I am,” he answered, “that idea—”

She interrupted him. “Yes, but don’t you see it’s entirely different now. Now they really have a sort of hold on you. I don’t know what Christine’s own attitude may be, but I can tell you this: her position was so difficult that she was on the point of engaging herself to Ned.”

“Oh, come,” said Riatt politely, “your brother is not so bad as you seem to think.”

“He’s not bad at all, poor dear. He’s very good; but women do not fall in love with him. You, on the contrary, are rich and attractive. You’ll just have to take my word for that,” she added without a trace of coquetry. “And so—and so—and so, if I were you, my dear Cousin Max, I should give orders to have my bag packed at once, and take a very slow, tiresome train that leaves here at twelve-forty-something, and not even wait for the afternoon express.”

There was that in her tone that would have made the blood of any man run cold with terror, but he managed a smile. “In my place you would run away?” he said.

She shook her head. “No, I wouldn’t run away myself, but I advise you to. I shouldn’t be in any danger. Being a mere woman, I can be cruel, cold and selfish when the occasion demands. But this is a situation that requires all the qualities a man doesn’t possess.”

“What do you mean?”

“Does your heart become harder when a pretty woman cries? Is your conscience unmoved by the responsibility of some one else’s unhappiness? Can you be made love to without a haunting suspicion that you brought it on yourself?”

“Good heavens, no!” cried Riatt from the heart.

“Then, run while there’s time.”

As the ox fears the gad-fly and the elephant the mouse, so does the bravest of men fear the emotional entanglement of any making but his own. For an instant Riatt felt himself swept by the frankest, wildest panic. Misadventures among the clouds he had had many times, and had looked a clean straight death in the face. He had never felt anything like the terror that for an instant possessed him. Then it passed and he said with conviction:

“Well, after all, there are certain things you can’t be made to do against your will.”

“Certainly. But you are not referring to marriage, are you?”

“Yes, I was.”

“My poor, dear man! As if half the marriages in the world were not made against the wish of one party or the other.”

His heart sank. “It’s perfectly true,” he said. “And yet one does rather hate to run away.”

“Not so much as one hates afterward to think one might have.”

He laughed and she went on: “The moment is critical. Laura Ussher and Christine have been closeted together for the better part of two hours. Something is going to happen immediately. At any moment Laura may appear and say with that wonderfully casual manner of hers, ‘May I have a word with you, Max?’ And then you’ll be lost.”

“Oh, not quite as bad as that, I hope,” said Riatt.

“Lost,” she repeated, and leaning over she laid one polished finger tip on the bell. “When the man comes, tell him to get you ready for that early train.”

There was complete silence between them until the footman appeared and Riatt had given the necessary orders.

“I wonder,” he said when they were again alone, “whether I shall be angry at you for this advice, or grateful. It’s a dangerous thing, you know, to advise a man to run away.”

“Dine with me in town on Wednesday, and you can tell me which it is.”

“You don’t seem to be much afraid of my anger.”

“I think perhaps your gratitude might be the more dangerous of the two.”

While he was struggling between a new-found prudence, and a natural desire to inquire further into her meaning, a door upstairs was heard to shut, and presently Laura Ussher came sauntering into the room.

“You’re up early, Nancy,” she said pleasantly.

“I thought I ought to recognize the return of the wanderers in some way—particularly, as I hear we are to lose one of them so soon.”

Mrs. Ussher glanced quickly at her cousin. “Are you leaving us, Max?”

“I’m sorry to say I’ve just had word that I must, and I told the man to make arrangements for me to get that twelve-something-or-other train.”

Mrs. Ussher did not change a muscle. “I’m sorry you have to go,” she said. “We shall all miss you. By the way, you won’t be able to get anything before the four-eighteen. That midday train is taken off in winter. Didn’t the footman tell you? Stupid young man; but he’s new and has not learnt the trains yet, I suppose. Do you want to send a telegram? They have to be telephoned here, but if you write it out I’ll have it sent for you.”

“How wonderful you are, Laura,” murmured Mrs. Almar.

Mrs. Ussher looked vague. “In what way, dear?”

“In all ways, but I think it’s as a friend that I admire you most.”

Mrs. Ussher smiled. “Yes,” she said, “I’m very devoted to my friends even when they don’t behave quite fairly to me. But I love my relations, too,” she added. “Max, since I’m to lose you so soon, I’d like to have a talk with you before lunch. Shall we go to my little study?”

Nancy’s eyes danced. “No, Laura,” she said, “he will not. He has just promised to teach me a new solitaire, and I won’t yield him to any one.”

Riatt, terrified at this proof that Nancy’s prophecy was coming true, resolved to cling to her.

“Sit down and learn the game, too, Laura,” he said. “It’s a very good one.”

“I want to speak to you about a business matter, Max.”

“I never attend to business during church hours, Laura,” he answered. “We’ll talk about it after lunch, if you like.”

Laura had learnt the art of yielding gracefully. “That will do just as well,” she said, and sat down to watch the game.

Presently Wickham, seeing that Mrs. Almar seemed to be safely engaged, ventured back. And they were all thus innocently occupied when luncheon was announced.

Christine came down looking particularly lovely. It is a precaution which a good-looking woman rarely fails to take in a crisis. She was wearing a deep blue dress trimmed with fur, and only needed a solid gold halo behind her head to make her look like a Byzantine saint.

“Well, Miss Fenimer,” said Wickham, as they sat down. “You look very blooming after your terrible experiences.”

Christine had come prepared for battle. “Oh, they weren’t so very terrible, Mr. Wickham, thank you,” she said, and she leant her elbow on the table and played with those imitation pearls which she now hoped so soon to give to her maid. “Mr. Riatt is the most wonderful provider—expert as a cook as well as a furnace-man.”

“It mayn’t have been terrible for you,” put in Ussher, who had a habit of conversational reversion, “but I bet it was no joke in the tool-house! How an intelligent woman like you, Christine, could dream of making a man spend the night in that hole, just for the sake of—”

“But I thought it was Mr. Riatt’s own choice,” said Nancy gently.

“You wouldn’t think so if you could have felt the place,” Ussher continued. “And what difference did it make? Who was there to talk? Every one knows that their being there was just an unavoidable accident—”

“Oh, if it had been an accident!” said Nancy, and it was as if a little venomous snake had suddenly wriggled itself into the conversation. Every one turned toward her, and her brother asked sternly:

“If, it had been an accident, Nancy? What the deuce do you mean byif?”

Nancy shook her small head. “I express myself badly,” she said. “English rhetoric was left out of my education.”

“You manage to convey your ideas, dear,” said Laura.

“I was trying to say that if poor, dear Christine had not been so unfortunately the one to hit the horse in the head, and start him off—”

Wickham pricked up his ears. “Oh, I say, Miss Fenimer,” he exclaimed, “did you really hit the horse?”

“Certainly, I did, Mr. Wickham.”

“But what did you do that for?”

Christine did not trouble to answer this question. Hickson, who had been suffering far more than any one, rushed to the rescue.

“Miss Fenimer did not do it on purpose, Wickham. She happened to be standing—”

“Oh, is that what your sister meant?” said Christine, as if a sudden light dawned on her. “Tell me, Nancy darling, do you really think I hit the horse on purpose, so as to have an uninterrupted evening with Mr. Riatt? How you do flatter men! It’s a great art. I’m afraid I shall never learn it.”

For the first time, Riatt found himself looking at her with a certain amount of genuine admiration. This was very straight fighting. “They have the piratical virtues,” he thought, “courage, and the ability to give and take hard blows.”

Mrs. Almar was not to be outdone. “Well,” she said, “I may as well be honest. I can imagine myself doing it, for the right man. And we should have had an amusing evening of it, which was more than we had here, I can tell you. We were very dreary. Mr. Wickham tried to relieve the monotony by a game of piquet, but I’m afraid he did not really enjoy it, for he has not asked me to play since.” And she cast a quick stimulating glance at Wickham, whose usual inability to say nothing again betrayed him.

“Oh,” he said, “I enjoyed our game immensely.”

“Good,” answered Nancy. “We’ll have another this afternoon then.”

“Indeed, yes,” said Wickham, looking rather wan.

“After Mr. Riatt has gone,” said Nancy distinctly. She knew that Laura had had no opportunity to convey this intelligence to Christine, and it amused her to see how she would support the blow. Christine’s expression did not change, but her blue eyes grew suddenly a little darker. She turned slowly toward Riatt.

“And are you leaving us?” she asked.

“Sorry to say I am.”

“What a bore,” said Miss Fenimer politely. Hickson’s simple heart bounded for joy. “She’s refused him,” he thought, “and that’s why he’s rushing off like this.”

“Yes,” said Ussher, “I should think he would want to go home and take some care of himself. It’s a wonder if he doesn’t develop pneumonia.”

Christine smiled at Riatt across the table. “They make me feel as if I had been very cruel, Mr. Riatt,” she said.

“Cruel, my dear,” cried Nancy. “Oh, I’m sure you weren’tthat,” and then intoxicated by her own success, she made her first tactical error. She turned to Riatt and said: “Don’t forget that you are dining with me on Wednesday evening.” She enjoyed this exhibition of power. She saw Laura and Christine glance at each other. But they were not dismayed; they saw at once that Max had not been playing his hand alone; he was going not entirely on his own initiative, and that was encouraging.

Riatt, who perfectly understood the public protectorate that was thus established over him, resented it; in fact by the time they rose from the table, he was thoroughly disgusted with all of them—weary, as he said to himself of their hideous little games. He hardened his heart even as Pharaoh did, and he felt not the least hesitation in according Laura the promised interview, for the reason that he felt no doubt of his own powers of resistance.

He permitted himself to be ostentatiously led away, upstairs to her little private sitting-room, with its books, and fireplace, and signed photographs, and he pretended not to see Nancy Almar’s glance, which was almost a wink, and might have been occasioned by the fact that she herself was at the same moment gently guiding Wickham in the direction of a card-table.

Laura made her cousin very comfortable, in a long chair by the fire, with his cigarettes and his coffee beside him on a little table, and then she began murmuring:

“Isn’t it a pity Nancy Almar is so poisonous at times! She isn’t really bad hearted, but anything connected with Christine has always roused her jealousy—the old beauty and the new one, I suppose.”

“I wonder,” said Riatt, “what is the difference, if any, between a pirate and a bucaneer? Miss Fenimer and Mrs. Almar seem to me to have many qualities in common.”

“Oh, Max, how can you say that? Christine is so much more gentle and womanly, so much—”

“My dear Laura, we haven’t very much time, and I think you said you wanted to talk to me on a business matter.”

Laura Ussher had the grace to hesitate, just an instant, before she answered: “Oh, yes, but it’s your business I want to talk about. I want to speak to you about this terrible situation in which Christine finds herself. Do you realize that Nancy and Wickham between them will spread this story everywhere, with all the embellishments their fancy may dictate, particularly emphasizing the fact that it was Christine who made the horse run away. It will be in the papers within a week. You know, Max, just as well as I do, that it wasn’t her fault. Is she to be so cruelly punished for it? Can you permit that?”

“It’s not my fault either, Laura.”

“You can so easily save the situation.”

“How?”

“By asking her to marry you.”

“That I will not do.”

“Are you involved with some one else?”

“I might make you understand better if I said yes, but it would not be true. I’m not in love with any individual, but I know clearly the type of woman I could fall in love with, and it most emphatically is not Miss Fenimer’s.”

“Yet so many men have fallen in love with her.”

“Oh, I see her beauty; I even feel her charm; but to marry her, no.”

“Think of the prestige her beauty and position—”

“My dear Laura, what position? Social position as represented by the hectic triviality of the last few days? Thank you, no, again.”

“Dear Max,” said his cousin more seriously than she had hitherto spoken, “you know I would not want you to do anything that I thought would make you unhappy. But this wouldn’t. I know Christine better than you do. I know that under all her worldliness and hardness there is a vein of devotion and sweetness—”

“Very likely there is. But it would not be brought out by a mercenary marriage with a man who cared nothing for her. If that is all you have to say, Laura, let’s end an interview which hasn’t been very pleasant for either of us.”

“Oh, Max, how can you abandon that lovely creature to some tragic future?”

“You know quite well she is going to do nothing more tragic than to marry Hickson.”

“And you are willing to sacrifice her to Hickson?”

“My dear Laura, I cannot prevent all the beautiful, dissatisfied women in the world from marrying dull, kind-hearted young men who adore them.”

Mrs. Ussher stared at him in baffled, unhappy silence, and in the pause, the door quickly and silently opened and Christine herself entered. She looked calm, almost Olympian, as she laid her hand on Laura’s arm.

“Let me have just a word alone with Mr. Riatt,” she said; and as Laura precipitately left the room, Christine turned to Riatt with a reassuring smile. “Don’t be alarmed,” she said. “Your most dangerous antagonist has just gone. I’ve really come to rescue you.” She sank into a chair. “How exhausting scenes are. Let me have a cigarette, will you?”

She smoked a moment in silence, while he stood erect and alert by the mantel-piece. At last, glancing up at him, she said:

“I suppose Laura was suggesting that you marry me?”

He nodded.

“Laura’s a dear, but not always very wise. You see, she thinks we are both so wonderful, she can’t believe we wouldn’t make each other happy. And from her point of view, it is rather an obvious solution. You see, she does not know about that paragon in the Middle West.”

“She existed only in my imagination.”

“Oh, a dream-lady,” said Christine, and her eyes brightened a little. “No wonder you thought her too good for Ned. Well, that brings me to what I came to tell you. I have decided to marry Edward Hickson.”

There was a blank and rather flat pause, during which Riatt took his cigarette from his mouth and very carefully studied the ash, but could think of nothing to say. The thought in his mind was that Hickson was a dull dog.

“Have you told Hickson?” he asked after a moment.

She shook her head. “No, and I shan’t till I get more accustomed to the idea myself. It isn’t exactly an easy idea to get accustomed to. The prospect is not lively.”

“I dare say you will contrive to make it as lively as possible.”

She smiled drearily. “How very poorly you do think of me! I shan’t make Ned a bad wife. He will be very happy, and Nancy and I will be like sisters. By the way, you’re not in love with Nancy, are you?”

“Certainly not.”

“Good. They all say it’s a dog’s life.” She yawned. “Oh, isn’t everything tiresome! If I had had any idea my filial deed in going to find my father’s coat would have resulted in my having to marry Ned, I never would have gone.”

Riatt struggled in silence. He wanted—any man would have wanted—to ask her whether there wasn’t some other way out; but knowing that he himself was the only other way, he refrained and asked instead: “Is there anything I can do to help you?”

“There is,” she responded promptly. “Rather a disagreeable thing, too. But it will be all over in an instant, and you can take your afternoon train and forget all about us. Will you do it?”

He hesitated, and she went on:

“Ah, cautious to the last! It’s just a demonstration, abeau geste. It’s this: You see, the situation, as I have discovered from a little talk with Ned, is more ugly than has yet appeared. They are holding one thing up their sleeve. Ned, it seems, noticed the track of your feet leaving the house, and it did not stop snowing until the morning. That was rather careless of you, wasn’t it? Nancy can make a good deal of that one little fact.”

“What people you are!”

“Rather horrid, aren’t we? Did Laura keep telling you what a wonderful advantage it would be for you to be one of us? I wish I could have seen your face.”

“Yes, she did say something of the advantages of belonging to a group like this. Do you know what any man who married you ought to do with you,” he added with sudden vigor. “He ought to take you to the smallest, ugliest, deadest town he could find and keep you there five years.”

“Thank you,” she said. “You have achieved the impossible. You have made Ned seem quite exciting. Hitherto I have taken New York for granted, but now I shall add it to his positive advantages. But you haven’t heard yet what it is I want you to do.”

“What is it?”

“I want you to make me a well authenticated offer of marriage before you go for good.”

“Miss Fenimer, I have the honor to ask you to marry me.”

“I regret so much, Mr. Riatt, that a previous attachment prevents my accepting—but, my dear man, that isn’t at all what I mean. Do you suppose Wickham and Nancy will believe me just because I walk out of this room and say you asked me to marry you? No, we must have some proof to offer.”

“Something in writing?”

She hesitated.

“No,” she said, “one really can’t go about with a framed proposal like a college degree. I want a public demonstration.”

“Something with a band or a phonograph?”

She was evidently thinking it out—or wished to appear to be. “Not quite that either. This would be more like it. Suppose I send for Nancy to come here now and consult with me as to whether I shall accept your offer or not. If I told her before you, she could hardly refuse to believe it. And you would be safe, for there isn’t the least doubt what advice she will give me.”

“You think she will advise you against me?”

Christine nodded. “She will try to save you from the awful fate she is reserving for her brother.” She touched the bell. “Do you feel nervous?”

“A trifle,” he answered, and indeed he did, for he knew better than Christine could, how strange this coming interview would appear to Mrs. Almar after the conversation before lunch. He consoled himself, however, by the thought that train-time was drawing near, “and then, please heaven,” he said to himself, “I need never see any of them again.”

“Isn’t it strange,” began Miss Fenimer, and then as a servant appeared in the doorway: “Oh, will you please ask Mrs. Almar to come here for a few minutes and speak to me. Tell her it is very important. Isn’t it strange,” she went on, when the man had gone, “that I’m not a bit nervous, and yet I have so much more at stake than you have.”

“You have a good deal clearer notion of your rôle than I.”

“Your rôle is easy. You confirm everything I say, and contrive to look a little depressed at the end. Nothing could be simpler.”

He hesitated. “Simpler than to look depressed when you refuse me?”

“No one really likes to be refused,” she said. “Even I, hardened as I am, felt a certain distaste for the idea that Laura had been urging me on your reluctant acceptance. By the way, you did seem able to say no, after all your talk on our unfortunate drive about no man’s being able to refuse a woman.”

“Oh, a third party,” he answered. “That’s a very different thing. Had it been you yourself, with streaming eyes—” He looked at her sitting very cool and straight at a safe distance.

“I don’t think I could cry to save my life,” she observed. “Certainly not to save my reputation.”

He did not answer. The situation had begun to seem like a game to him, or some absurd farce in which he was only reading some regular actor’s part; and when presently the door opened to admit Mrs. Almar, he felt as if she had been waiting all the time in the wings.

Nancy stopped with a gesture of surprise, on finding that she was interrupting a tête-à-tête. Christine ignored her astonishment.

“Nancy dear,” she said. “How nice of you to come, when I know how busy you were teaching Wickham piquet. Sit down. This is the reason I sent for you. As one of my best friends, I want your candid advice about this horrid situation.”

“But Laura is one of your best friends, too,” said Mrs. Almar.

“You’ll see why I did not send for Laura. She is so ridiculously prejudiced in favor of Mr. Riatt. There’s no question as to what her advice would be. In fact,” said Christine with the frankest laugh, “she’s advised it long ago—even before he asked me.”

At these sinister words, Mrs. Almar gave a glance like the jab of a knife at Riatt.

“See here, Christine,” she said, “every minute I spend here is a direct pecuniary loss to me. Let’s get to the point.”

“Of course. How selfish I am,” answered Miss Fenimer. “The point is this. In view of the gossip and talk, and your own dear little suggestion, darling, that I had frightened the horse on purpose, Mr. Riatt has thought it necessary to ask me to marry him. I say he has thought it necessary, because in spite of all his flattering protestations, I can’t help feeling that he’s done it from a sense of duty. But whatever his sentiments may be, I’ve been quite open about mine. I’m not in love with him. In view of all this, Nancy, do you think it advisable that I accept his offer?”

Mrs. Almar had never been considered particularly good-tempered. Now she jumped to her feet with her eyes positively blazing. “Have I been called away from the care of my depleted bank account to take part in a farce like this?” she cried. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Christine. You know just as well as I do that that young man never even thought of asking you to marry him.”

Christine was quite unruffled. “Oh, Nancy dear,” she said, “how helpful you always are. I see what you mean. You think no one will believe that he ever did propose unless I accept him. I think you’re perfectly right.”

“They won’t and I don’t,” said Nancy, and moved rapidly to the door.

“One moment, Mrs. Almar,” said Riatt, firmly. “You happen to be mistaken. I did very definitely ask Miss Fenimer to marry me not ten minutes ago.”

“And do you renew that request?” said Christine.

“Well, heaven itself can’t save a fool,” said Mrs. Almar

“I do.”

Christine held out her hand with the gesture of a queen. “And I very gratefully accept your generous offer,” she said.

“Well, heaven itself can’t save a fool,” said Mrs. Almar, and she went out of the room, and slammed the door after her.

As she went, Riatt actually flung the hand of his newly affianced wife from him. “May I ask,” he said, “what you think you are doing?”

Christine had covered her face with her hands, and had sunk into a chair. For an instant Riatt really thought that the strain of the situation had been too much for her; but on closer inspection he found that she was shaking with laughter.

“I can’t be sure which was funnier,” she gasped, “your face or Nancy’s.”

Riatt did not seem to feel mirthful. “Do you take in,” he asked her sternly, “that you have just broken your word.”

“I’ve just plighted it, haven’t I?”

“You promised to refuse me.”

She sprang up. “I did not. I never said a word like it. If a stenographer had been here, the record would bear me out. You inferred it, I dare say. Besides, what could I do? Even Nancy herself told us no one would believe us unless I accepted you—at least for a time.”

“For what time?”

“Oh, don’t let us cross bridges until we get to them. We are hardly engaged yet—Max! I must practise calling you Max, mustn’t I?” In attempting to repress an irrepressible smile she developed an unknown dimple in her left cheek. The sight of it made his tone particularly relentless as he answered:

“If by the fifteenth of this month you have not broken this engagement, I’ll announce its termination myself.”

“And you,” she went on, as if he had not spoken, “must get into the habit of calling me Christine.”

“Listen to me,” he said, and he took her by the shoulders with a gesture that no one could have mistaken for a caress. “I do not intend to marry you.”

“I see you feel no doubt of my wishes in the matter.”

“I wonder where I got the idea.”

“Be reassured,” she said, finding herself released. “My intentions are honorable. I would not marry any really nice man absolutely against his will. Although I did say to myself the very first time I saw you, coming downstairs in that well-cut coat of yours—or is it the shoulders?—I did say: ‘I could be happy with that man, happier, that is, than with Ned.’ You may think it isn’t much of a compliment, but Ned has a very nice disposition, nicer than yours.”

“And I should say it was the first requisite for your husband.”

She became suddenly plaintive. “Of course I can see,” she said, “why any one shouldn’t want to be married, but I can’t see why you object to being engaged to me for a few weeks.”

“How can I be sure you will keep your word?”

“I’ll give it to you in writing,” she returned. “Write: This is to certify that I, Christine Fenimer, have enveigled the innocent and unsuspecting youth—”

“I won’t,” said Riatt.

“I will then,” she answered, and sitting down she wrote:

“This is to certify that I, Christine Fenimer, have speciously, feloniously and dishonorably induced Mr. Max Riatt to make me an offer of marriage, which I knew at the time he had no wish to fulfil, and I hereby solemnly vow and swear to release him from same on or before the first day of March of this year of grace. (Signed)Christine Fenimer.”

“There,” she said, “put that in your pocketbook, and for goodness’ sake don’t let your pocket be picked between now and the first of March.”

He took it and put it very carefully away, observing as he did so: “It’s a long time to the first of March.”

“It mayn’t seem as long as you think.”

“Are you by any chance supposing,” he asked with a directness he had learnt from her own methods, “that by that time I may have fallen in love with you?”

She did not hesitate at all. “Well, I think it is a possibility.”

“Oh, anything’s possible, but I can tell you this: Even if I were in love with you, you are not the type of woman I should ever dream of marrying.”

“What would you do?”

“If I saw the slightest chance of falling in love with you—which I don’t—I should try all the harder to free myself.”

“I don’t see how you could try any harder than you have. You begin to make me suspicious.”

“Miss Fenimer—”

“Christine, please.”

“Christine, I am not the least bit in love with you.”

“Quite sure that you’re not whistling to keep your courage up?”

“Quite sure.”

“Well,” she said, “just to show my fair spirit, I’ll tell you that I entirely believe you. Shall I add it to the contract: And I credit his repeated assertion that he is not and never will be in the least in love with me? No, I think I’ll omit the ‘and never will be’ clause.”

“And may I ask one other question,” he continued, ignoring her last suggestion. “What did you mean when you told me that you had decided to marry Hickson?”

“So I have. Don’t you see? He and I are really engaged, but he doesn’t know it. You and I are not really engaged, and youdoknow it.”

“I wish I did,” he returned gloomily.

“Oh, yes,” she said, “you know it and I know it, but the dog—that’s Nancy—she doesn’t know it.”

He seemed unimpressed by the humor of the situation. He walked away and put his hand on the knob.

“One thing more,” he said. “I would like to be sure that you understand this. The weapons are all in my hands. The only strength of your position lies in my good nature and willingness to keep up appearances. Neither one is a rock of defense. I’m not, as you said yourself, good-tempered, and I care very little for appearances. The risk you run, if you don’t play absolutely fair, is of being publicly jilted.”

“And I should hate that,” she answered candidly.

“I’m sure you would,” he answered. “And I don’t particularly enjoy threatening you with such a possibility.”

“Really,” said she. “Now I rather like you when you talk like that.”

“Fortunate that you do,” he returned, “for you will probably hear a good deal of it.”

She nodded with perfect acquiescence. “And now,” she said, “if you have no more hateful things to say, let’s go and tell our friends of the great happiness that has come into our lives.”

Back to Index Next