II
IDA was not given to imaginative excursions, but during the three days’ journey from New York to Butte, she made no acquaintances, resting in the seclusion of her drawing-room; and after she had read all the magazines her mind began to people itself. Although the ladies of Butte, whom she now regarded as equals, moved along the central highway, Gregory was always turning the corners, and she visualised him most frequently advancing hurriedly toward the station as the train entered—both late, of course. She rehearsed the meeting many times, never without a pricking sense of awkwardness, for she now fully realised that when a woman and her husband have not communicated save on the wire for nearly a year, the first interview is liable to constraint. He always had been difficult to talk to. Would he be bored if she tried to entertain him as Ora would entertain Mark: with such excerpts of their many experiences as a confiding husband might appreciate? She never had understood him. Out of her greater knowledge of the world and men should she be better able to fathom the reserves of that strange silent nature—or did she really care whether she could or not? Although she had made up her mind to greet him at the station with the warmth of an old friend, and flatter him with her delight in returning home, she had not the faintest idea how she should carry off the long evening—if the train were on time.
It was not. Probably no Northwestern train has arrived on time in the history of the three railroads. Ida’s train, due at seven in the evening, arrived at midnight. Her Pullman was at the end of the long dark platform, and as she walked slowly toward the station building—which looked like the bunk-house of an abandoned mining camp in the desert—searching for someone to carry her hand baggage—porters being non-existent in the Northwest—she saw neither Gregory nor any other familiar face. For the first time in her life she felt a disposition to cry.But as she tossed her head higher and set her lips, a young man approached and asked if she were Mrs. Gregory Compton. He was a pleasant looking youth, and she was so grateful to be called by name that she forgot her new reserve and replied emphatically that she was.
“I am your chauffeur,” he said. “Your new car arrived a few days ago, and Mr. Compton ’phoned me to meet you. Have you any hand baggage?”
Ida indicated her portmanteau and hat box in the dark perspective and went on to inspect her car. It was a handsome limousine, lighted with electricity, and for a moment she took a childish pleasure in examining its fittings. But as the man returned and piled her baggage in front she asked irrepressibly:
“Is Mr. Compton not in Butte?”
“No, ma’am. He hasn’t been in Butte for weeks. Lively times out at the mine, I guess.”
“And my house? Had I not better go to a hotel?”
“Oh, the house is all right. Mr. Compton’s secretary ’phoned to an agency, and they put in three or four in help. I guess you’ll find everything all right.”
Ida entered her car, but scowled at its luxuries. By this time she was “mad clean through.” “The famous American husband!” she thought, gritting her teeth. “Best in the world—not. If it’s my horse, my dog, my wife with an Englishman, it’s business first last and always with an American. European men are courteous whether they mean it or not, but Americans only remember to be polite when they have time. Ten months and he can’t leave his mine long enough to meet me when I arrive at midnight!”
Her pleasure in returning to Butte had turned as flat as spilt champagne. She did not even glance at the gay electric signs and midnight activities of Broadway as her car rolled through that sleepless thoroughfare toward the West Side. But when her chauffeur, who had ignored the speed limit, stopped abruptly before a large house of admirable architecture and blazing with lights, her face flushed with excitement and she forgot her recalcitrant spouse. The door was opened at once and two maid servants ran down the steps. They were young, neatly dressed and capped, and it was evident that their service was dictated not only by curiosity but by sympathy.
“Welcome home, ma’am,” one of them, a Swede, said shyly as Ida stepped to the pavement. “It’s too bad your train was so late. The cook’s got a nice hot supper for you.”
Ida, who was not easily touched, felt as grateful to these smiling girls as to her friendly chauffeur, and for a moment was tempted to “come down off her perch” and revel in human companionship. But she knew that it “wouldn’t work”; she merely thanked them graciously and ascended the wide steps of her new home, that palatial residence of cream-colored pressed brick of her unswerving desires. While the maids were taking her bags and boxes upstairs, she walked through the large rooms of the lower floor. Everything was in the best modern style of furnishing, the prevailing tone dim and rich, with Eastern rugs on the hardwood floors; French tapestries and carved oak furniture and stained glass in the library—also a few books; paler tapestries set in panels in the immense drawing-room, and many beautiful pieces of furniture carefully selected with an eye to both contrast and mating. Out of this room opened a dining-room that looked like a baronial hall, and although the Murphys had taken their silverware they had left their china, imported from Limoges, and their glass ware, made for them by a Venetian firm that had supplied Ida’s grandes dames for thirty years. In short it was one of those stately and sumptuous interiors, furnished by the best houses in New York, which one associates exclusively with the three or four great cities of the United States, and is always unwarrantably surprised to find in the newer cities of the West.
Ida made a pretence of eating her dainty supper, remembered that she was now a grande dame and visited the kitchen to say an appreciative word to the cook, then ascended to her bedroom divided between anger and a depression so foreign to her temperament that she barely recognised it for what it was.
The large upper hall had been fitted up as a billiard room, and with a continuous divan broken only by the doors of the bedrooms. Ida threw it an appreciative glance, but it merely emphasised the fact that there was no man in the house, and she did not linger. Mrs. Murphy, evidently a brunette, had furnished her bedroom and dressing-room in primrose yellow and much lace. Ida approved both asunreservedly as she had the rest of the house, thankful there was nothing to alter; like many women she had consummate taste in dress and none whatever for house decoration; although unlike most of these disparate ladies she was quite aware of her deficiencies. She knew when a room was all that it should be, but could not have conceived one of the details, much less the unimpeachable combination. The sex instinct teaches those subtleties of personal adornment likely to allure the male, and arrest the anxious eye of other females, but ancestral brain-cells are necessary for the more civilised accomplishment.
Ida’s eyes fell on the telephone beside her bed and lingered. She forgot her beautiful room and the successive throbs of gratified ambition, in an overwhelming desire to call up Gregory and tell him what she thought of him. But she was a woman in whom calculation was stronger than impulse, and in the past year she had learned to control her temper, not only because a carefully nourished refinement had crowded out some of the weeds of her nature, but because her ever-growing intelligence despised lack of self-control in all things. So she merely undressed herself, her eyes wandering every few minutes to the telephone. It was incredible that he did not ring her up. That, at least, would take but a few moments of his precious time.
However, she fell asleep immediately after her bath, and it was the telephone bell that awakened her at eight o’clock. This time she frowned at it, for she wanted to sleep; but she sat up, put the receiver to her ear and asked languidly: “Well?”
A strange man’s voice replied: “Is this Mrs. Compton?”
“Yes. Why am I disturbed so early?”
“I’m sorry—this is Mr. Compton’s secretary speaking—but Mr. Compton told me to call you at eight o’clock. He always comes in for breakfast at this time—here he is.”
“Hello! How are you? What time did you get in?” Gregory’s voice was elaborately polite and as eager as any lover’s of yesteryear.
“Are you interested?” Ida’s heart beat thickly, but her tones were crisp. “I arrived at midnight. Really, I expected you to meet me. That is generally considered the decent thing to do.”
“Oh! I’m sorry it was impossible. I can’t leave the mine at present. How did you like the house?”
“I am enchanted with it—and with the limousine. When are you coming in?”
“I can’t say at present. I dare not leave for a moment. You will find a deposit to your credit at the Daly bank.”
“Thanks. Would—shall I run out?”
“Better not. There is always danger of rows.”
“But of course I’m wild to see the mine. You forget how famous it is.”
“Better wait awhile. It really isn’t safe.”
“Very well. How’s your wound? Where were you hurt, anyhow?”
“Not worth mentioning, as I cabled you, and I suppose you got my telegram in New York saying I was all right again. Sure you got everything you want?”
“I am overwhelmed by all this luxury, and your generosity.”
“Glad you like it. Has Mrs. Blake gone to California?”
“She went directly from the steamer. How is Mark getting on. I’ve had only notes from Ora.”
“All right. He doesn’t write but has telegraphed once or twice. He’d better stay below several months. Write Mrs. Blake to persuade him to take things easy. He had a close call. I can get along without him for awhile, but I can’t afford to lose him. Will you see to this?”
“I’ll write Ora today. She’s in no hurry to return to Butte—was delighted at the prospect of going to California, and intends to take Mark to Santa Barbara, where she knows a lot of people.”
“Ah! Good. Well, I must get some breakfast. Amuse yourself.”
“And you won’t be in for several days?”
“Afraid not. Good-bye.”
Ida set the receiver back on the table, but it was some minutes before she lay down again. She sat thinking, with compressed lips. Born with intuitive knowledge of men, she had, as she once remarked to Ora, turned a goodly number of them inside out during the past year. Gregory Compton did not intend to live with her again. She knew this as conclusively as if his kind matter-of-fact tones had expressed the direct message. Before she left home it never had occurred to Ida to wonder if her husbandstill loved her or not, and she had learned to accept his consuming masculine interest in matters mineralogic as all in the day’s work. Now she wondered if he had ceased to love her then or since. That he took no further interest in her as a woman, although amiably determined to do his duty as her legal provider, would have been almost patent to an imagination as riotous as Ora’s; to Ida, practical and clear-sighted, there was not a loophole for delusion.
In a few moments she relaxed the tension of her body and lay down.
“Well!” she thought impatiently, “what’s the matter with me, anyhow? Isn’t it what I always hopefully looked forward to? Did I ever pretend to be anything but resigned—or to be in love with him after the first few weeks? I guess I’m spoiled with too much devotion, that’s what. Seeing too many men lose their heads. Much their old heads are worth. But I guess I don’t like being turned down for once. Goose. It’s my lay to cut out pique and sing a song of thanksgiving that I’ve got pretty nearly everything I ever romanced about and set my mind on. It’s a pretty good old world when things come your way, and women’ll never be happy till they learn to put men in the same place that men put us—on a handy little side-track. I’ve got a whole parlour car instead of an upper berth like some poor devils, so I’ll quit whining. But if there’s another woman in the case, let them both look out—that’s all!”