CHAPTER IXTHE TEST OF LIFE
Nowthat he had won, now that the marriage and Loveman’s plans were potentially blocked, there should have been a let-down from Clifford’s long strain. But there was not. The settling of this affair seemed only to give mind-room to other concerns. He tossed about restlessly during the few hours that remained of the night; and he realized that his restlessness was not due wholly to the suspense of waiting for the finality that would come with Loveman’s completed promise.
In the slow hours before the coming of the slate-colored dawn a vague, disturbing doubt crept in upon him. He had interfered with events, he had tried to shape life upon his ideas: was his course right?—that seemed to be something of the impalpable substance of his doubt. But what this new doubt was, strive as he would he could not evoke it from its vagueness into definite shape.
He had breakfast; and then, obeying an impulse which seemed to emerge from this new, obscure maze of his mind, he suddenly decided to see Mary Regan again—for what purpose he had no idea. Arrived at the Grantham he had his name ’phoned up to “Mrs. Gardner,” and was informed that Mrs. Gardner would see him.
Mary herself admitted him, and, not even replying to his “good-morning,” she led him into the sitting-room. There she faced him, proud and coldly defiant.
“I suppose you have come to inform me you have told the Mortons all about me?”
“No,” he replied.
“Then, to threaten me again that you will tell?”
“No.”
“Then, what have you come for?”
He knew now—at least partly. During the moment he had been in the room and had gazed upon her, there had emerged from the maze of his thoughts and feelings, a sharply defined repugnance to what within the next hour or two was to happen between her and Loveman: a repugnance, felt in her behalf, that she should be made to yield to whatever influences that cunning little lawyer would be able to exert.
“I have come to ask you,” he said, trying to speak composedly, but with all his being vibrant beneath that composure, “to break off this affair with Jack Morton of your own free will. You know you don’t care for him. You know what you are planning to do isn’t square. Why don’t you be true to the best self that is in you and end it all yourself?—and end it now? There’s the telephone,” he urged—remembering that Loveman might any moment appear—“call Jack Morton up and tell him you’ve decided not to do it!”
As he spoke, her face had grown sharp with decision. “Mr. Clifford,” she exclaimed in a low, cutting voice, “I’m tired of your presumption, your interference! I’m tired of your trying to make me be what you think I ought to be! As if it mattered to me what you thought!”
She took a step nearer, her straight, young figure stiffened, and her dark eyes flashed at him. “Understand this, Mr. Clifford,—I’ve made up my mind, and made it up definitely, finally. I am going to do exactly what I want to do, and it is not in your power to stop me or divert me. You may tell either of the Mortons if you like—my real course will not be changed—that will merely mean that I’ll do what I want to do in some other way!”
Clifford did not attempt to answer. Her defiant words, her young figure so rigid with its determined spirit of worldliness, had set some strange force working in him; a vague power seemed to be at conflict with the purpose he had held to for so long; a strange revulsion seized him, a revolution was under way which was compelling in its sweeping drive, but whose intent and direction for a moment he could not perceive.
He stood still, and stared at her. And then out of the inner turmoil came a clear, bright order; and then he realized that the restlessness, the formless doubts of the night before, had been the first faint stirrings of this which was grown and clarified into a new purpose and a new vision—a purpose and vision thatastonished him. For they had come at the very time when his old purpose was the same as achieved.
She could but notice the remarkable change in his appearance. “Well, what is it now?” she demanded.
He drew a deep, quivering breath. A recklessness, a defiance—but behind which his new purpose remained cool—now possessed him. He was aware that he had to act quickly, for any instant Peter Loveman might be here.
“What is it now?” he repeated, with a provoking smile. If he did not have power to stir her to love, he knew that he had the power to stir her to anger. “I was just recalling what you said a moment ago: to the effect that you were going to do what you pleased and do it when you pleased. Pardon me for smiling—but when a woman boasts, it sometimes is amusing and a bit absurd.”
“What do you mean?” she said sharply.
“Oh, I’m smiling at myself, too, for I’ve just realized what a fool I’ve made of myself in trying to stop you—an entirely unnecessary effort. What I mean, Miss Regan, is that I do not believe you could do it.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, I suppose you’d go through with your part of it. But if put to the test of marrying at once, Jack Morton would never go through with his part. He may be a bit infatuated; but he’s too wise to marry a woman without money—without knowing more about who she is—and without his father’s approval.No wonder Jack has been putting this off!”
She flushed hotly. “I have been the one to put it off!” she cried.
“Indeed,” he exclaimed with unbelief none too polite. “From the way he was dancing last night with Miss Cordova—you know, that pretty musical-comedy star—I have an idea she’s had a lot to do with the delay. And I imagine she’ll have a lot more to do with further delay. Why, you poor thing,”—he smiled irritatingly,—“to think you could hold a man like Jack Morton—you having to remain inactive, under cover—he free to roam about with all sorts of charming women—particularly with Miss Cordova!”
She did not speak for a moment. She was choked with that anger on which he had so carefully counted: no person, he knew, would be so likely to act upon impulse as a proud and angered woman, before the man who has insulted her.
“So you think I can’t do it!” she exclaimed. “So he’s the one who is holding back! Well, I’ll just show you! Anyhow, this thing might as well come to a head right now. And I’ll give you your chance to tell all you know about me.”
She turned and took up the telephone from the writing-desk and asked for the Biltmore. Fortune favored her purpose, for in a minute she had Jack Morton on the wire.
“Can you come right over, Jack,—with yourcar?... No, don’t bring your chauffeur; drive yourself.... Why? I’ll tell you that when you come—only bring plenty of wraps.... All right, I’ll be ready; come right up.”
“He’ll be over in fifteen minutes,” she said to Clifford. “You may wait if you like. But you’ll excuse me.”
She passed into her bedroom. Clifford sank rather limply into a chair. He had come to what just then seemed the supreme crisis of his life, and he was still dazed at the way he had willed that crisis to eventuate. He sat thinking—thinking; the minutes she was out were long minutes to him.
Presently she reëntered. She had changed to a black velvet suit trimmed with black fur; a small fur hat sat snugly down upon her thick, dark hair; and she carried a fur motor-coat. She was an unforgettable picture for him: the high color of her dark face against the background of soft and sheeny blacks.
She did not address Clifford; but there was little time for their silence to become awkward, for almost at once the bell of the suite rang. Mary went to the door, and admitted Jack Morton. The pleasant-faced young fellow looked most comfortably handsome in his great motoring-coat of raccoon.
“I say, Mary, this is certainly fine!” he cried, after he had kissed her. “And, hello—there’s Bob Clifford. How’s the old boy?” He shook Clifford’s hand warmly. “But say, Mary, what’s doing?”
Mary looked at Morton when she replied, but her voice was directed at Clifford: “I’ve decided, Jack, to give in to you. I’m ready to be married at once—to-day.”
“Hurrah!” cried young Morton, seizing both her hands. “But we’ll have to keep it quiet—same as we planned. You’re ready now?”
She did not answer. Clifford noted that her body tautened and her breath was held—as one who waits for a blow; and he understood that she was waiting for, and expecting him to speak the truth about her.
She slowly turned and looked at Clifford. Surprise that he had said nothing was in her face. Then she turned back to Morton.
“I’m all ready,” she said distinctly, so that Clifford might not miss a word. “We’ll do as you suggested: motor away back into the country to some small place—get married—and a little money spent judiciously there will keep our marriage quiet as long as we like.” She turned again to Clifford. “I’m sure we have the best wishes of Mr. Clifford.”
He knew that her words, and her straight look, were not now so much challenge or defiance as the bold offering him a second time the chance to speak, and to speak at the most effective moment imaginable. She might be perverse—but of a certainty she had nerve!
“You surely have my wishes that it will all turnout for the very best,” said Clifford; and again he saw surprise in her gaze.
He rode down the elevator with them and walked out to the curb where stood Morton’s machine, a black, closed car with a long hood that bespoke the engine-power of a racer. Morton was swinging open the door when Clifford, trying to keep down the choke that sought to rise in his throat, remarked with attempted good-fellowship:—
“If you don’t mind, Morton, I wish you’d wire me as soon as it’s over. Here at the Grantham.”
“Sure, old man. Step in, Mary.”
Mary started to obey, then checked herself. “May I speak to you a moment, Mr. Clifford?”
They moved a few paces away. She looked at him penetratingly.
“Why have you done this?” she abruptly whispered.
“Done what?” he parried.
“Don’t you think that I see now that you have forced my hand? That I am down here now, about to do this, because you wanted me to do it? Why are you doing it—when you could stop everything, this moment, with just a few words?”
He gave her back a straight look and spoke deliberately. “I have tried for a long time to do with you what I saw as best—to pull the strings—and I have failed, over and over. When you declared a little while ago that I or nothing else could change your purpose, I suddenly had a new vision. I realizedthat if you were poor material I could not save you, and that you would not be worth saving. And I realized that if you were good material, only some way that I had not tried could affect you; and it came to me,” he went on grimly, “that bitter experience might do for you what I had not done. And it also came to me that if anything could arouse you to the human realities, no experiences might be so effective as what might lie before you in this very marriage you had planned.”
“And that is why you said nothing?” she breathed.
He nodded. “I have taken my hands off, to give life its chance to pull the strings.”
She gazed at him a moment longer. Then she returned to the car. But as she stepped in, she paused and glanced back once more. Her face was very pale and dazed—it held the look of one who wondered, but could not understand.
Restlessly, but with a heavy heart within him, Clifford wandered about the great lobby of the Grantham. A slow hour passed—then another. Then he saw Peter Loveman, on his plump face an expression which for Loveman was very serious, come up the broad stairway and go straight for the desk at which visitors sent up their names to guests of the house. Loveman spoke to the blonde within the grilled enclosure—waited—then walked away with a sober, puzzled look. He sighted Clifford in a deep lounging-chair, and his face on the instantgrown genial, he crossed and dropped into a chair beside him.
“Needn’t explain, Clifford,” he said pleasantly, offering a cigarette from a lacquered case which Clifford refused. “Sure, I understand what you showed up here for: to see if I went through with what I promised. Well, I just asked for her, and was told she’d gone out. I’m going to wait for her—and I suppose you’ll wait too.”
Clifford nodded.
Loveman tried to draw Clifford into conversation, but his light remarks failing to evoke a response, he looked through first the “Wall Street Journal,” and then the “Morning Telegraph,” that organ of the theater and the other diversions close to Broadway’s life. Thus the two sat for over an hour, neither speaking; then a page came by, calling in the impersonal voice of hotel pages, “Telegram Mr. Clifford—Telegram Mr. Clifford.”
Clifford took the yellow missive with a hand that he tried to keep from shaking. He was quite certain what was in it—the end of things, just as he had suddenly planned them in his new vision of some three or four hours earlier. Yet, none the less, he had a moment of supreme and sickening suspense as he opened the envelope.
Yes, it was just what he had expected. He gazed fixedly at the typewritten lines before him—lines which were like heavy doors swinging to and locked between him and that of which he had dreamed.Then he became conscious that the big round eyes of little Peter Loveman were gazing at him curiously. Silently he handed the telegram to the lawyer.
Loveman glanced the telegram through. “The devil!” he cried. Then he read it again, this time aloud:—
Married quiet place ten miles from here. Everybody will keep it secret. Happy you bet.J.
Married quiet place ten miles from here. Everybody will keep it secret. Happy you bet.J.
Married quiet place ten miles from here. Everybody will keep it secret. Happy you bet.
J.
Loveman stared at Clifford. “And it’s addressed to you!” he exclaimed. “Say, this means you’ve crossed yourself! What the devil are you up to?”
Clifford did not answer.
There was a moment of silence, then Loveman whispered to himself: “And I just promised Nina Cordova!”
Again Clifford did not answer; he did not hear Loveman. Such of his senses as were not numbed by the finality of which that telegram was the token were directed into that unfinal future which human vision could not penetrate. How was it all going to work out for Mary Regan? Was experience going to do for her what he had failed to do, or was experience going to stimulate to complete and final dominance her worldliness? And had he played into Peter Loveman’s hands? And what would Loveman do?
But these were questions only Life could answer. He had stepped aside to give Life full play, to let human impulses move unhindered by him towardtheir destiny; and he must wait until Life was ready to speak.
He was subconsciously aware that Loveman’s round eyes were fixed upon him sharply, and he was subconsciously aware that the keen brain behind that round face was working swiftly, ranging in every direction. But without looking at Loveman again, or speaking to him, he rose heavily and went down the broad marble stairway, muted with rugs, out into the winter twilight. These questions that engaged his mind were none of his affair. Mary Regan, as far as she touched his personal life, was now become an episode that was closed. He had other affairs to fill his life; he must turn himself to them.
And yet, as he walked away ... he wondered....