CHAPTER IV
As they went down the stairs—those same stairs on which only two evenings before they had first met—toward the drawing-room where their great announcement was to be made, Riatt stopped Christine in her triumphal progress.
“You’re not going to have the supreme cruelty,” he said, “to let poor Hickson think that our engagement is a genuine one?”
Christine paused. “I wonder,” she answered thoughtfully, “which in the end would deceive him most—to make him think it was real or fake?”
“You blood-curdling woman,” said Riatt. “I am not engaged to you.”
“Oh, yes, you are—until March first.”
“I am pretending to be until March first.”
She leant against the banisters, and regarded him critically. “Isn’t it strange,” she remarked, “that you dislike so much the idea of my trying to make you care for me? Some men would be crazy about the process.”
“Oh, if I enjoyed the process, I should regard myself as lost.”
She shook her head. “I’m not sure that this terror isn’t a more significant confession of weakness. Who is it is most afraid of high places? Those who feel a desire to jump off.”
“I’m not afraid,” he returned crossly. “I just don’t like it. I don’t want to be made love to. That’s one of the mistakes women are always making. They think all men want to be made love to by any woman. We don’t.”
Christine sighed gently. “You’re getting disagreeable again,” she said with the softest reproach in her tone. “Let’s go on.”
“You haven’t answered my question,” he said. “Are you going to tell Hickson the truth?”
“How can I? If I told him, Nancy would know at once, and the whole aim of this plot is to deceive Nancy. However,” she added brightly, “I shall do what I can to alleviate his sufferings. I shall tell him that I am not in the least in love with you, that you have never so much as kissed me, and that my present intention is that you never shall.”
“And you may add that my intention is the same,” replied Riatt with some sternness.
Christine smiled. “There’s no use in telling him that,” she answered, “for he wouldn’t believe it.”
“Upon my word,” said he, “I think you’re the vainest woman I ever met.”
“Candid, merely,” she returned, as she opened the door of the drawing-room. The scene that greeted them was eminently suited to their purpose. Laura and Ussher were standing at the table watching the last bitter moments of the game between Nancy and the unfortunate Wickham. Hickson was not there.
“Oh, Laura,” said Christine, “could I have just a word with you?”
Mrs. Ussher looked up startled. She had been deeply depressed by her unsuccessful conversation with her cousin. He had seemed to her absolutely immovable, but there was no mistaking the significant bride-like modulations of Christine’s voice.
“With me?” she said, and in her eagerness she was already at the door, before Christine stopped her.
“Really,” she said, “I don’t know why only with you. I know you are all enough my friends to be interested—even Mr. Wickham. Max and I wanted to tell you that we are engaged. Only, of course, it’s a secret.”
Riatt had resolved that he would not look at Mrs. Almar, and he didn’t. She was adding up the score, and her arithmetic did not fail her. “And that makes 387, Mr. Wickham,” she said, and then she looked up with her bright, piercing eyes, in time to see Laura fling herself enthusiastically into Riatt’s arms. She got up with a shrewd smile. “Let me congratulate you, too, Mr. Riatt,” she said. “I always like to see people get what they deserve.”
“Oh, Nancy, I’m sure you think I’m getting far more than I deserve,” said Christine.
“You haven’t actually got it yet, darling,” returned Mrs. Almar.
“That sounds almost like a threat, my dear.”
“More in the line of a prophecy.”
At this moment the footman created a diversion by announcing that the sleigh was waiting to take Mr. Riatt to the train, and Riatt explained that he had decided not to take the train that day. Then Christine, on inquiring, found that Hickson was writing letters in the library, and went away to talk to him. She had no fear of leaving Max; she knew he was in safe hands; Laura would not allow Nancy an instant alone with him. Nor, as a matter of fact, was Riatt himself eager to subject himself to the cross-examination of that keen and contemptuous intelligence. Indeed Nancy soon drifted out of the room, and Riatt found himself committed to a long tête-à-tête with Laura on the subject of Christine’s perfections, and his supposed deceitfulness in pretending indifference. “Oh, you protested too much, my dear Max,” Laura insisted with the most irritating exuberance. “I knew when you began to say that she was the last woman in the world you would fall in love with, that your hour had come. No man ever lived who could resist Christine when she chooses to make herself agreeable.”
Riatt felt he was looking rather grim for an accepted lover, as he answered that it was a great comfort to feel one had succumbed only to the irresistible. Before very long Christine came back, and taking in what had been going on, managed to get rid of her friend. Laura made it plain that she was only too glad to accord the lovers a few blissful moments alone.
“I can’t describe to you,” he said crossly, “how intensely disagreeable I find the situation.”
Christine laughed. “And did you look like that while Laura was detailing my perfections? A judge about to pronounce the death sentence is gay in comparison. Cheer up. I haven’t had a pleasant fifteen minutes myself. I never thought myself kind-hearted, but I assure you I really longed to tell Ned the truth. He is the nicest person.”
“I believe he will make you an excellent husband.”
“Oh, dear, I’m afraid he will.” She sighed. “Safety first will be a dull motto to go through life with. Do you want to know what I told him? No? Well, I’m going to tell you anyhow. I said that you had made me this magnificent offer, prompted, I felt sure, by the purest chivalry; and that I felt I owed it to my family, my friends and my reputation to accept it, but that you had left my heart untouched, and that if he and you were both penniless, I should prefer him to you. That wasn’t all perfectly true.”
Suddenly Riatt found himself smiling. “My innocent child,” he said, “let me make one thing clear to you. Any effort on your part to create an impression that you have fallen in love with me will not be crowned with success.”
Christine was quite unabashed by his directness.
“I’m not a bit in love with you,” she said—“not any more than you are with me, only I realize that there is a possibility for either of us, and of the two,” she added maliciously, “I really think I’m the more hard-hearted.”
“Perhaps you will think I am running away from danger,” he answered, “when I tell you that as soon as I have seen your father, got your ring, and fulfilled the immediate necessities of the occasion, I shall go home.”
“Oh, you can’t do that!” cried Christine, in genuine alarm.
“You surely don’t expect me to neglect my legitimate business on account of this ridiculous farce.”
For the first time a certain amount of real hostility crept in their relation. They looked at each other steadily. Then Christine said politely: “Well, we’ll see how things go.” He knew, however, that she was as determined that he should stay as he was to leave, and the knowledge made him all the firmer.
The evening was a stupid one, devoted largely to toasts, jokes, congratulations and a few stabs from Nancy. Through it all poor Hickson’s gloom was obvious.
The next day the party broke up. Wickham and Hickson taking an early express; the others, even Nancy who abandoned her motor on account of the snow, going in by a noonday train. Already, it seemed to Riatt that the bonds of matrimony were closing about him as he found himself delegated to look up Christine’s trunks, maid and dressing-case.
Soon after the arrival of the train he had an appointment, made by telephone, with Mr. Fenimer. The interview was to take place at Mr. Fenimer’s club, a most discreet and elegant organization of fashionable virility. Riatt was not kept waiting. Fenimer came promptly to meet him.
He was a man of fifty, well made, and supremely well dressed. He was tanned as befits a sportsman; on his face the absence of furrows created by the absence of thought was made up for by the fine wrinkles induced by poignant and continued anxiety about his material comforts. In his figure the vigor of the athlete contended with the comfortable stoutness of the epicure. He had left a discussion in which all his highest faculties had been roused, a discussion on the replenishing of the club’s cellar, and had come to speak to his future son-in-law, with satisfaction but without vital interest. His manner was a perfect blending of reserve and cordiality.
“You will hardly expect a definite answer from me to-day, Mr. Riatt,” he said. “You understand, I am sure, that knowing so little of you—an only child, my daughter”—He waved his hand, not manicured but most beautifully cared for. Riatt noticed that in spite of these chilling sentences, Fenimer was soon composing a paragraph for the press, and advocating the setting of the date for the wedding early in April, as he himself was booked for a fishing-trip later. He did this under the assumption that he was yielding to Riatt’s irresistible eagerness. “You have an excellent advocate in Christine. My daughter has always ruled me. And now in my old age I am to lose her. I had a long letter from her by the early mail, speaking of you in the highest terms.” He smiled. Riatt rose, and allowed him to return to the question of the club’s wines.
Something about this interview was more shocking to him than the cynicism of Nancy and Christine; Fenimer’s suave eagerness to hand his daughter over to a total stranger, did not amuse him as the women’s light talk had done. He felt sorry for Christine and a little disgusted. He wondered what that letter had really said. Was Fenimer a conspirator, too, or only a willing dupe?
From the club he went to the jeweler’s and selected the most conspicuous diamond he could find. Her friends should not miss the fact that she was engaged if a solitaire could prove it to them. He ordered it sent to her, much to the surprise of the clerk, who pointed out that it was usual to present such things in person.
After this he went to his hotel and found a pile of letters had accumulated in his absence.
The first he opened was in a round childish hand with uncertain margins, and a final “e” on the word Hotel.
“Dear Cousin Max,” it said, “I do not know you, but Mamma says that you are going to marry Christine. I think you are very lucky, and am glad you are bringing her into our family. Victor and I love her. She comes to the nursery sometimes, but never stays long.“Your loving cousin,“Muriel Ussher.”
“Dear Cousin Max,” it said, “I do not know you, but Mamma says that you are going to marry Christine. I think you are very lucky, and am glad you are bringing her into our family. Victor and I love her. She comes to the nursery sometimes, but never stays long.
“Your loving cousin,“Muriel Ussher.”
Riatt laughed as he laid it down. “I bet she doesn’t stay long,” he said. “How she does skim the cream!” And then with an exclamation of surprise he tore open another envelope which had been left by hand. It said:
“Dear Max:“I hope you will be pleasantly surprised to find that Mother and I are staying in this hotel. I find New York more wonderful but more unfriendly than I had been told, and I want terribly to see a familiar face. Won’t you look us up as soon as you can?“Yours as ever,“Dorothy.”
“Dear Max:
“I hope you will be pleasantly surprised to find that Mother and I are staying in this hotel. I find New York more wonderful but more unfriendly than I had been told, and I want terribly to see a familiar face. Won’t you look us up as soon as you can?
“Yours as ever,“Dorothy.”
He went to the telephone, found that she was in and immediately arranged that she should go out to lunch with him.
All the morning and some of the night, he had been engaged in the composition of a letter to Dorothy Lane. Theirs was an old and sentimental friendship, which adverse circumstances might have ended, or favoring circumstances have changed into love. As things were, it seemed to be tending toward their marriage without any whirlwind rapidity.
There was no doubt he was very glad to see her, as he hurried her into a taxicab, and told the man to drive to the restaurant of the hour. She was very neatly and nicely dressed in a tailor-made costume for which she had just paid twice as much as a native New York woman would have paid. In fact she was an essentially neat and nice little person. They talked both at once like two children about all the people at home, until they were actually seated at table, and lunch was ordered. Then Riatt made up his mind he must take the plunge.
“Dolly,” he said, “do I look as if something tremendous had just happened?”
“Don’t tell me you’ve invented a submarine, or something?”
“No, this is something of a more personal nature.”
“Oh, Max, you’ve fallen in love?”
A waiter rushing up with rolls and butter suggested that Madame probably preferred fresh butter to salted, before Riatt answered: “No, that is just what I haven’t done—and that’s the secret, Dolly. I’m not a bit in love, but I am engaged to be married.”
“Max! But why if—”
“I’ll tell you on the second of March. It’s a good story. You’ll enjoy it, but for the present, my dear, you must just accept the fact that I am engaged, that I am neither wildly elated nor unduly depressed.”
Miss Lane had grown extremely serious. “Who is she?” she asked.
“Her name is Christine Fenimer.”
“I’ve seen her name in the papers.”
“Who has not?” he returned bitterly.
“What is she like?”
Riatt felt some temptation to answer truthfully and say: “She is designing, mercenary, hard-hearted and as beautiful as a goddess.” But he did not, and, as he paused he saw the head waiter spring forward from the doorway, smiling and holding up a pencil to attract the attention of some underling, and then he saw that Christine, Hickson and Mr. and Mrs. Linburne were being ushered in. Christine approached, tall, beautiful, conspicuous, and as divinely unconscious of it as Adam and Eve of their nakedness; she moved between the tables, bowing here and there to people she knew, not purposely ignoring all others, but seeming to find them invisible as thin air. Riatt watched as if she were some great spectacle, and was recalled only by hearing Dorothy’s voice saying:
“What a lovely creature!”
“That is Miss Fenimer.”
A sudden and deep flush spread over Miss Lane’s face.
“And you have been telling me of your indifference to her?” she asked bitterly. “How could any man be indifferent!”
“Good Heavens,” cried Riatt fiercely. “All you women are alike! Beauty isn’t the only thing in the world for a man to love. There are such things as truth and honor—”
“Yes, and old friendship, too,” said Miss Lane, “but they don’t always amount to much.”
“That is an unnecessary, unkind thing to say,” he answered. “My friendship for you means a good deal more to me than my engagement to her.”
“Max, I don’t need to be consoled or soothed about your engagement,” said Miss Lane with a good deal of spirit. “As far as I am concerned you are quite free not only to become engaged, but to have any feeling you like for the lady you have chosen. I’m sure I congratulate you very heartily.”
“You mean you don’t believe a word of what I have been trying to tell you.”
“Oh, yes, I do. I believe you are engaged.”
Perhaps it was as well that at this instant, Christine’s eyes fell upon her; she stared, then laughed, and pointed him out to Hickson, who glanced at him coldly; he was evidently thinking that he would not have taken another girl out to lunch the very day his engagement was announced.
“I suppose I had better go and speak to them,” Max said.
“I should think so,” replied Dorothy tonelessly. “Who are the others?”
Riatt, not sorry for a moment’s respite, entered into a detailed account of Lee Linburne. He was the third generation of a great fortune, augmenting rather than decreasing with years. He was but little over thirty and had taken the whole field of amusement and sports as his own. He played polo, had a racing stable and a racing yacht, had gone in recently for flying (hence Riatt’s connection with him), occasionally financed a theatrical show, and now and then attended a directors’ meeting of some of his grandfather’s companies. The result was that his name was as widely known through the country as Abraham Lincoln’s. Dorothy knew as soon as she heard his name, that he had married a girl from Pittsburg, and had gone through her native city in a private car on his honeymoon three years before, and had stopped, she rather thought, and had lunch with the Governor of the State.
On Hickson, Max touched more briefly.
When at last he did cross the room, Christine received him with the utmost cordiality.
“What luck to run across you, though of course this is the only place in New York where one can get food that doesn’t actually poison one. Last week—do you remember, Lee? We dined somewhere or other with the Petermans and nothing from the beginning of dinner to the end was fit to eat. But, bless them, they did not know. Have you met Mrs. Linburne? Oh, she knows all aboutus. In fact every one does, for I can’t resist wearing this.” She moved her left hand on which his diamond shone like a swollen star. “How did you find my father?”
“Most amiable,” answered Riatt rather poisonously, and regretted the poison when he saw the Linburnes exchange an amused glance. Of course every one knew that Mr. Fenimer would present no obstacles.
“Who are you lunching with, Max? Is that your little secretary?”
The tone, very civil and friendly, made Max furious, as if any one that Christine did not know was hardly worth inquiring about.
“No, it’s Miss Lane—an old friend of mine. I think I must have spoken to you about her.”
“Oh, the perfect provider? Is that really she?” Christine craned her neck openly to stare at her. “Why, she’s rather nice looking—for a good housekeeper, that is. You’re dining with me to-night, aren’t you?”
“No,” answered Riatt, with a sudden inspiration of ill-humor. “I’m dining with Miss Lane.”
“Bring her, too! Won’t she come?”
“I really can’t say.”
“You can ask her.”
“To your house?”
Christine always knew when she was really beaten. She got up with a sigh. “Take me over,” she said to him, “and I’ll ask her myself.” And she added to the Linburnes: “Out of town people are always so fussy about little things.”
Riatt did not know if this slightly contemptuous observation were meant to apply to him or to Miss Lane; he hoped in his heart that Dorothy would refuse the invitation. But he under-estimated Christine’s powers. No one could have been more persuasive, more meltingly sweet, and compellingly cordial than she was, and it was soon arranged that he was to bring Dorothy to dine that evening.
It was arranged that he was to bring Dorothy to dine with them that evening
It was arranged that he was to bring Dorothy to dine with them that evening
It was arranged that he was to bring Dorothy to dine with them that evening
When it was over, and he was back again in his own seat, he could see, by glancing at Christine that she was engaged in a long humorous account of the incident, for her own table; and he could tell, even from that distance, when he was supposed to be speaking, when Dorothy, and when Christine was repeating her own words. Meanwhile Dorothy was saying:
“How charming and simple she is, Max. You always hear of these people as being so artificial and elaborate.”
“Oh, they’re direct enough,” returned Riatt bitterly.
The bitterness was so apparent that Dorothy could not ignore it. She looked up at him for an instant and then she said seriously: “I believe I know what the trouble with you is, Max. You can’t believe that she loves you for yourself. You’re haunted by the dread that what you have has something to do with it. Isn’t that it?”
Max now made use of the well-known counter question as an escape from a tight place.
“And what is your judgment on that point, Dolly?”
“She loves you,” said Miss Lane, with conviction, and a moment afterward she sighed.
“Without disputing your opinion,” returned Riatt, “I should very much like to know on what you base it.”
“Oh, on a hundred things—on her look, her manner, her being so nice to me—on woman’s intuition in fact.”
Riatt thought to himself that he had never had much confidence in the intuition theory and now he had none.
They did not part at the termination of lunch. It was almost a duty, Riatt considered, to show a stranger a few of the sights. Miss Lane, who was extremely well-informed on all questions of art, suggested the Metropolitan Museum; and after that they took a taxicab and drove along the river and watched the winter sunset above the palisades; and then they went and had tea at the Plaza, and by the time they returned to Mrs. Lane it was almost the hour for dressing for dinner; and then Max sat gossiping with Mrs. Lane, for whom he had always had the deepest affection, until he knew he was going to be late.
They were late—a difficult thing to be in the Fenimer household. The party, a small one, was waiting when Miss Lane and Mr. Riatt were ushered in. Nancy was there, and Hickson, and Mr. Linburne without his wife this time; and Mr. Fenimer himself, doing honor to his future son-in-law by taking a meal at home.
Christine in a wonderful pink chiffon and lace tea-gown came forward to greet Dorothy, rather than Max, to whom she gave merely an understanding smile, while she held the girl’s hand an instant.
“Max says this is your first visit to New York,” she said, after she had introduced her father and Nancy. “It is good of you to give us an evening, when there are so many more amusing things to do, but Max says we are as interesting as Bushmen or Hottentots. I hope you’ll find us so.”
The hope seemed unlikely to be fulfilled, for while the presence of Mr. Fenimer, who was rather a stickler for etiquette, prevented the perfect freedom that had reigned at the Usshers’, the talk turned on people whom Dorothy did not know, and it was so quick and allusive that no outsider could have followed it. Hickson, soon appreciating something in Miss Lane’s situation not utterly unlike his own, was touched by her obvious isolation, and tried to make up for the neglect of the others. Riatt, sitting between Nancy and Christine, had little time left to him for observation of any one else.
When dinner was over Christine instantly drew him away to her own little sitting-room, on pretense of showing him some letter of congratulation that she had received. But once there, she shut the door, and standing before it, she said, with an air of the deepest feeling:
“You’re in love with this girl.”
Riatt, who had sunk comfortably down on a sofa by the fire, looked up in surprise.
“And if I am?” he answered.
“You need not humiliate me by making it so evident,” she retorted, and almost stamped her foot. “Lunching with her in public, and taking her to tea, as I was told, getting here so late for dinner—I wish you could have heard the way Nancy and Lee Linburne were goading me before dinner about it.”
“My dear Christine,” said Max, and he was amused to hear a tone of real conjugal remonstrance in his voice, “you have lunched and dined in one day with Hickson, and yet I don’t feel I have any grounds of complaint.”
“Every one knows how little I care for Ned,” she answered, “but people say you do care for this little Western mouse. I hate her. She’s good and nice, and the kind of a girl men think it wise to marry, and just as different from me as she can be. I do hate her—and I hate myself too.” And she covered her face with her hands.
“Come here, Christine,” said Riatt, without moving, and was rather surprised when she obeyed. He made her sit down beside him, and taking her hands from her face, was astonished to find that she was really crying.
“Why, my dear child,” he said, in the most paternal manner he could manage. “What is this all about?” And it was quite in the same note that Christine wept a moment on his shoulder. Then she raised her head, with a return of her old brisk manner.
“I’m jealous,” she said. “Oh, don’t suppose one can’t be jealous of people one doesn’t care for. I could be jealous of any one when Nancy begins teasing me and making fun of me. And I’m jealous too, because I’m sure she’s a nice girl and I’ve made such a mess of my life, and I deserve it all; but when you came in together, as if you had just been happily married, and I looked at Ned and thought how wretched I’m always going to be with him, and what silly things I shall undoubtedly do before I die—”
“I hate to hear you talk like that.”
“Why should you care?She’llnever do silly things—that’s clear. Is that why you love her?”
“As a matter of fact I am not in love with Miss Lane.”
“My dear Max, there’s really no reason why you should deceive me about it.”
“That’s just what she said about you.”
“You mean”—Christine sprang to her feet and gazed at him like an outraged empress—“You mean that you told her that you didn’t love me?”
“I most assuredly did.”
“Max, how could you be so low, so despicable, so false?”
Riatt laughed. “Well, it certainly was not false, Christine,” he said. “It happens to be true, you know; and I felt I owed a measure of truth to a very old and very real friendship. I told her nothing more than that—I was engaged and not madly in love.”
Christine threw up her hands. “The game is up,” she said. “She’ll tell everybody, of course.”
“She’ll tell absolutely no one.”
“Because she’s perfect, I suppose?”
“Because she didn’t for one moment believe me.”
“Didn’t believe we were engaged?”
“Didn’t believe that any one could be engaged to so beautiful and charming a person as you are and not be in love with her.”
Christine’s manner softened slightly. “She thinks me charming?”
“She thinks you irresistible, almost as irresistible as Laura thinks you; and she is trying to find out why I am so eager to deceive her in the matter.”
Christine clapped her hands, and executed a few steps. “She’s jealous, too,” she cried. “The perfect woman is jealous. I never thought of her suffering, too.”
“She is not jealous, but I suppose it may hurt her feelings a little that I shouldn’t—”
“Oh, nonsense, Max, she loves you. Do you think I could be deceived on such a subject? She watches you all the time. She loves you. And I think it would be very impertinent of her not to. I should think very poorly of her if she didn’t. Imagine what she must be undergoing at this moment, by our prolonged absence.”
“Perhaps, we’d better be going back,” said Riatt calmly.
Christine barred the door, spreading out both her arms.
“She thinks you’re making love to me, Max.”
“And yet, Christine, I’m not.”
“But she doesn’t know that; she doesn’t know what an immovable iceberg you are.”
“No, indeed she doesn’t.”
Christine’s manner again changed utterly. All the playfulness disappeared. “You mean,” she said, “that you’re not cold and immovable with her?”
“What’s the use of my telling you anything, if you don’t believe me?” The idea of teasing Christine had never occurred to him before, but he thought highly of it. She came toward him at once.
“Oh, Max, my dear,” she said, “don’t be horrid, when I’m having such a wretched time anyhow. Don’t you think you mightpretendto care for me just a little?”
Riatt rose. “Yes, I do,” he said, “and so I shall, in public.”
Christine was all the gentle, wistful child immediately.
“Never when we’re alone?” she asked.
Max lit a cigarette briskly. “I don’t suppose we shall very often be alone,” he returned. “After all, why should we?”
She looked at him like a wounded bird: “No reason if you don’t want to.”
At this moment the door opened and her father came in.
“Come, come, my dear, this is no way to treat your guests,” he said. “I must really insist that you go back to the drawing-room. Upon my word, Riatt, you ought not to keep her like this.”
“It was a great temptation to have her a few minutes to myself, Mr. Fenimer,” said Max, and Christine grinned gratefully at him behind her father’s back.
“Very likely, very likely,” said Mr. Fenimer crossly, “but I want to go to the club, and how can I, unless she goes back? You can’t think only of yourself, my dear fellow.”
Riatt admitted that this was true and he and Christine went back to the drawing-room.
Very soon afterwards, he gave Dorothy a keen prolonged look, which she did not misunderstand. She got up at once and said good night. In the taxicab, he questioned her at once as to her impressions.
“I didn’t like Mr. Linburne or Mrs. Almar at all, Max. She kept asking me the greatest number of questions about you and the story of your life. What interest has she in you, I wonder?”
“None,” answered Riatt, but added rather quickly, “And what did you think of Linburne?”
“I couldn’t bear him, though I own he’s nice looking. But he told Mrs. Almar a story—I could not help hearing—I never heard such a story in my life.”
“I gather it did not shock Mrs. Almar.”
“She knew it already. ‘Lee,’ she said, ‘that story is so old that even my husband knows it,’ and every one laughed.”
“I’m afraid you did not enjoy yourself.”
“I like Mr. Hickson very much. And I thought Miss Fenimer more beautiful than before. He was telling me what a wonderful nature she has. He said he had never seen her out of temper.”
“Yes, Hickson’s crazy about her,” said Riatt casually.
“Dear Max, why do you try to deceive yourself about your own feeling for her?”
“Deceive myself,” he said angrily. “If you knew the truth, my dear Dolly!” His heart stood still. Deceive himself! What an insulting phrase. He repressed a strong impulse to propose on the instant to Dolly. That would show her how indifferent he was to Christine. It would assure him, too.
Instead he formed a plan to go home with her and her mother, when they went.
“When are you going back, Dolly?”
“The day after to-morrow.”
“Any objections to my going, too?”
“Objections! Max, dear!”
He engaged his ticket at once at the hotel office. Having done so, he felt tranquil and relieved, and perhaps the least little bit dull. The clerk assured him he was fortunate to be able to get a berth at such short notice. “Very fortunate,” he agreed and was annoyed at a certain cold ring in his voice.
The next day, true to his promise to show Christine all attentions that the public could expect, he sent her a box of flowers, and at four he stopped for her and they went and took a long walk together, hoping to meet as many people whom they knew as possible.
“We won’t walk in the Park,” said Christine. “No one sees you there, though of course if they do, it makes an impression. But, no; we’ll stick to Fifth Avenue, and study all the windows that have clothes or furniture in them, as if our minds were entirely taken up with trousseaux and house-furnishing.”
She was true to her word, and not squeamish. Riatt found it rather amusing to wander at her side, dressing her in imagination in every garment that the windows so frankly displayed, and answering with real interest her constant inquiry: “Do you think that would become me? Would you like me in that? Do you prefer silk to batiste?”
They were standing in front of a stocking shop in which on a row of composition legs which might have made a chorus envious, “new ideas in hosiery” were romantically displayed, when Riatt decided to tell her of his approaching departure. He chose the street, because he was well aware that she would not approve of his plan, and he wished to avoid a repetition of last evening’s scene.
“I shall have to go away the day after to-morrow,” he said, and glanced quickly down on her to see how she would take it.
She was studying the stockings, and she drew away with her head at a critical angle.
“It’s a queer thing,” she said, “that certain stripes do make the ankle look large. Theoretically they ought to make it look slim, but you take my word for it, Max, they don’t.”
“Nothing could make your ankles look anything but slim, Christine,” he replied politely.
“No, my ankles are rather good, aren’t they?” she replied, and then as if she had now disposed of the more serious topic, she added: “And so you are going home? Well, you mayn’t believe it, but I shall really miss you a great deal. Oh, look at these jade flowers! They’re really good.”
Riatt looked at the pale lilac and pink blossoms starting from their icy green leaves, but he hardly saw them. He was disgusted at the discovery of an unexpected perversity in his nature. He found himself hardly pleased at the absence of protest with which his announcement was greeted. All her attention was absorbed by the jade.
“Wouldn’t it look well on our drawing-room mantel-piece?” she said.
“I’ll give it to you as a wedding present,” he answered. “That is, if you think Hickson would like it.”
“I don’t think he’ll like anything you ever give me. He did not even like my ring. He thinks the stone too large. By the way, I never properly thanked you for the ring. It has been most splendidly persuasive. Even Nancy grew pale when she saw the proof of your sincerity.”
“Will it be sufficient even in the face of my continued absence?” he asked, for it occurred to him that perhaps she had not understood that he meant to remain in the West indefinitely.
“Oh, I think so,” she answered, pleasantly. “You might write to me now and then, and I’ll show just a suitable paragraph here and there to an intimate friend.”
A new idea suddenly occurred to him. Had she any motive for desiring his absence? Had some unexpected possibility cropped up? Did she want to get rid of him? Not, he added, that he minded if she did, but it would be rather interesting to know.
“I’m going a little earlier than I expected,” he went on, “because the Lanes are going, and I hate to make that long journey alone.”
She nodded understandingly. “It will be much nicer for you to have them.”
He looked at her coldly. It seemed to him he had never known a more callous nature. And to think that the evening before she had actually shed tears, simply because he took another girl to lunch! It caught his attention, he said to himself, just as a study in human nature.
He did not see her the next day until evening. They were both to dine at Nancy’s—(thus had the proposed dinner with Mrs. Almar deteriorated) and go afterward to the opera. Nancy of course would not have dreamed of crowding three women into her box, so the party consisted of herself and Christine, Riatt, Roland Almar—a pale, eager, little man, trying to placate the world with smiles, and once again Linburne, whose handsome dark head, and curved mouth, half cynical, half sensuous, began to weary Riatt inexpressibly.
After dinner he found that he and Mrs. Almar were to go in her tiny coupé, and the four others in Linburne’s large car.
“And so,” she observed as soon as they started, “the mouse preferred the trap after all?” And he could feel that she was laughing at him in the shadow.
“But feels none the less grateful for the kind intention to rescue him.”
“Oh, I don’t care much for the gratitude of a man in love with another woman.”
“You judge me to be very much in love?”
This general conviction on the part of the ladies of his acquaintance was growing monotonous. Nancy continued:
“But come back in two years, and we’ll talk of gratitude then. In the meantime let us stick to the impersonal. What do you think of Linburne?”
“I’ve had many opportunities of judging. I’ve been nowhere for two days without meeting him.”
Mrs. Almar laughed with meaning.
“I wonder why that should be,” she said.
“What do you mean?” Riatt asked, but at that moment they drew up before the Thirty-ninth Street entrance, and the doorman, opening the motor’s door, shouted “Ten—Forty-five”—a cheerful lie he has been telling four times a week for many years.
In the opera box, Riatt at once seated himself behind Christine. There is no place like the opera for public devotion. Christine was resplendent in black and gold with a huge black and gold fan that made the fans of the temple dancers—the opera was “Aïda”—look commonplace and ineffective.
Behind it she now murmured to Max:
“And what poisonous thing did dear Nancy tell you coming down?”
“Nothing—except what everyone has been telling me for the last few days—that I seemed very much in love.”
“And that annoyed you, I suppose.”
“On the contrary. I was delighted to find I was such a good actor.”
“People who pretend to be asleep sometimes end by actually doing it. Pretending is rather dangerous sometimes.”
“Yes, but you see I shan’t have to pretend after to-morrow.”
“Are you all packed and ready?”
“Mentally I am.”
In theentr’actewhich followed quickly after their entrance, Christine dismissed him very politely. “There,” she said, “you don’t have to stay on duty all the time. You can go and stretch your legs, if you want.”
He rose at once, and as he did so, Linburne slipped into his place.
Riatt had caught sight of Laura Ussher across the house, and knew his duty demanded that he should go and say a word to his exuberant cousin who, he supposed, regarded herself as the artificer of his happiness.
“Oh, my dear Max,” she began, hastily bundling out an old friend who had been reminiscing about the days of the de Rezskes, and waving Riatt into place, “every one is so delighted at the engagement, and thinks you both so fortunate. How happy she is, Max! She looks like a different person.”
“I thought she looked rather tired this evening,” answered Riatt, who always found himself perverse in face of Laura’s enthusiasm.
Mrs. Ussher raised her opera glass and studied Christine’s profile, bent slightly toward Linburne, who was talking with the immobility of feature which many people use when saying things in public which they don’t wish overheard. “Oh, well, she doesn’t look as brilliant as she did whenyouwere with her. But isn’t that natural? I wonder why Nancy asked Lee Linburne and where is that silly little wife of his. Oh, don’t go, Max. It’s only the St. Anna attaché; we met him on the coast last summer.”
But Riatt insisted on making way for the South American diplomat, who was standing courteously in the back of the box.
He wandered out into the corridors, not enough interested in any of his recent acquaintances to go and speak to them. Two men coming up behind him were talking; he could not help hearing their dialogue:
“Who’s this fellow she’s engaged to?”
“No one knows—a Western chap with a lot of money.”
“Suppose she cares anything about him?”
“Oh, no, she’s telling every one she doesn’t. They say he’s mad about her.”
“Ought to be, by Jove. I always thought the only man she ever cared for—”
Riatt found himself straining his ears vainly to catch the name, but it was drowned in other conversations that rose about him. He understood now why Christine had been angry at his telling Dorothy that he was not in love, for he found himself annoyed at the idea of her having told everybody that she wasn’t. But, it’s a different thing, he thought, to tell one intimate friend in confidence, or to give the news to every Tom, Dick and Harry. Then the juster side of his nature reasserted itself, and he saw that she was only laying the trail for the breaking of her engagement. Yet this evidence of her good faith did not entirely allay the irritation of his spirit.
When he went back to the box, Linburne was gone, and the man who had replaced him, yielded to Riatt with the most submissive promptness. But this time no easy interchange occurred between them.
About half past ten, Christine leaned over to her hostess, and said: “Would you care at all if I deserted you, dear? I’m tired.”
“Mind when I have my Roland to keep me company?” said Nancy. “One seems to take one’s husband to the opera this year.”
At this point Linburne, who had been standing in the back of the box, came forward and said: “Won’t you take my car, Miss Fenimer? I’ll go down and find it for you.”
A look that passed between them, a twinkle in Nancy’s eyes, suddenly convinced Riatt that the scheme was for Linburne to take Christine home. He did not stop to ask why this idea was repugnant to him, but he said firmly:
“I have a car of my own downstairs, and I’ll take Miss Fenimer home.” It was of course a lie, as the simple taxicab was his only means of vehicular locomotion, but a taxi, thank heaven, can always be obtained quickly at the Metropolitan. Christine consented. Linburne stepped back.
They drove the few blocks in silence. He went up the steps of her house, and when the door was opened he said: “May I come in for a few minutes? I shan’t have time to-morrow probably.”
“Do,” said Christine. She went into the drawing-room and sank into a chair. “Who ever heard of not saying good-by to one’s fiancée?”
He saw that she was in her most teasing mood, and somehow this made him more serious.
“Perhaps,” he said rather stiffly, “you think I carry out your instructions too exactly. Perhaps I show a more scrupulous devotion in public than you meant.”
“Oh, no. It looked so well.”
“It would not have looked so well for Linburne to take you home.”
She clapped her hands. “Excellent,” she said, “but you know it is not necessary to take that proprietary tone when we are alone.”
“Even as a mere acquaintance I might offer you some advice,” he said.
“I’m rather sleepy as it is,” she returned, yawning slightly.
For the first time Riatt had a sense of crisis. He knew he must either save her, or leave her. He could not give her a little sage advice and abandon her. It would be like advising a starving man not to steal and going away with your pockets full. He could not say, “Have nothing to do with a selfish materialist like Linburne,” when he knew better perhaps than any one how empty of any ideality or hope her relation to Hickson was bound to be. Yet on the other hand, he could not say, “Come to me, instead.” He despised her method of life, distrusted her character, disliked her ideas, and was under no illusion as to her feeling for himself. If he had come to her without money she would have laughed in his face. What chance would either of them have under such circumstances? It was simple madness to consider it. And why was he considering it? Just because she looked lovely and wan, sunk in a deep chair in all her black and gold finery, just because her face had the lines of an Italian saint and her voice had strange and moving tones in it.
“Good-by,” he said briefly.
She sprang up. “Good gracious,” she said, “and are you going just like that? You know it is customary to extract a promise to write. At least to beg for a lock of the hair.” (She drew out a golden lock, and let it crinkle back into place again.) “Or do you think you will remember me without it?”