VI
TWO days later Gregory received the following note from his wife:
Dear Gregory:Ora is here, and before going out to the mine has promised to help me through the ordeal of my first big dinner. Entertaining goes with this house, and although I am beginning somewhat sooner, perhaps, than is necessary, I have my reasons. I have asked twenty-four people, the most important of the older and the younger married sets. The dinner is to be at eight o’clock Tuesday. I want you to come. Yow have been very generous, but there is one thing more that you can do for me and I feel that I have the right to demand it. If you no longer care for me, that is something I cannot help; nor you either for that matter. But so far as the world knows, I am your wife, and if we are never seen together there is bound to be disagreeable gossip. I don’t want to be gossipped about. It is vulgar and it complicates life. The Butte women I most wanted to know are all right, but the town has the usual allowance of fools and scandal mongers. By showing yourself at my first dinner in your own house you will muzzle them. You can arrive in time for dinner and take a late train back to Pony, if there is one. But please come. I am sure if you think it over you will admit that I am merely proving my new knowledge of the world in asking for your formal protection.Ida.
Dear Gregory:
Ora is here, and before going out to the mine has promised to help me through the ordeal of my first big dinner. Entertaining goes with this house, and although I am beginning somewhat sooner, perhaps, than is necessary, I have my reasons. I have asked twenty-four people, the most important of the older and the younger married sets. The dinner is to be at eight o’clock Tuesday. I want you to come. Yow have been very generous, but there is one thing more that you can do for me and I feel that I have the right to demand it. If you no longer care for me, that is something I cannot help; nor you either for that matter. But so far as the world knows, I am your wife, and if we are never seen together there is bound to be disagreeable gossip. I don’t want to be gossipped about. It is vulgar and it complicates life. The Butte women I most wanted to know are all right, but the town has the usual allowance of fools and scandal mongers. By showing yourself at my first dinner in your own house you will muzzle them. You can arrive in time for dinner and take a late train back to Pony, if there is one. But please come. I am sure if you think it over you will admit that I am merely proving my new knowledge of the world in asking for your formal protection.
Ida.
Gregory read this note hastily when he found it in his morning mail-bag in company with many business letters, to which he also gave scant attention: he was in haste to go underground. There was still no sign of the lost vein, and nineteen days of the three weeks’ limit he had set himself were gone. But they broke into it that same afternoon. He barely left the mine until the following morning, but he finally sought his cabin and bed satisfied that the recovered vein of copper pyrite was, like the original, six feet thick and as rich in values. When he awoke he remembered Ida’s note, and although it had provoked a frown of annoyance when he read it, his spirits were now so ebullient that he not only admitted the justiceof her demand, but would have granted almost anyone a reasonable request.
Moreover, as he reread the note, its restraint and dignity struck him forcibly, as well as its remote likeness to the Ida Hook he had wooed in Nine Mile Cañon. Certainly she had made the most of her opportunities!
And apparently she had recovered from her first disappointment, or pique—if, indeed, she had felt either—and he assumed that the last year, crowded with exceptional experiences, had made her over into something like a woman of the world. No doubt among her many accomplishments she had acquired self-control. (That she might also have acquired finesse did not occur to him.) He dismissed the fear that she would make a scene—and himself thoroughly uncomfortable. On the whole it would be interesting to see Ida as a bird of paradise. He remembered her in shirtwaists and serviceable skirts, and recalled that he had sometimes thought it a pity she should not have the plumage worthy of her beauty and style.
And if the fates had willed that he must meet Ora Blake again he preferred that the first interview should be in public.
He rang up Pony and in the course of half an hour was connected with Butte.
“Hello!” he said cordially, as he heard his wife’s voice. “Got your letter, but couldn’t find time to answer before. I’ll come to the dinner with pleasure.”
“Oh, I am so glad.” Ida’s tones were crisp and cool. There was none of the husky warmth that Gregory suddenly remembered; nor any of the old common inflection. “Are your evening togs at Mark’s?”
“Yes, will you send for them?”
“I’ll have everything here in one of the spare rooms. The maid will show you up if you are late. It takes me hours to dress.”
“All right. Say—Ida—I wish you’d persuade Mrs. Blake to give up that idea of coming out here. It won’t work. She’ll only be in the way of the men, and if there was a big row on would be one more responsibility for her manager. I suppose she knows I’ve opened up her mine. Besides, it’s no place for a woman anyhow. There are only a few women—miners’ wives—in my camp; none in the others.”
“I’ve told her all that. But—well—you don’t know Ora. Gambling—taking long chances—is in her blood, I guess. You should have seen her at Monte Carlo. You must take in Mrs. Cameron, but I am putting Ora on your left as it is time you two got acquainted. Try to dissuade her. I want her to stay here with me.”
“I’ll do my best. How are you getting on? Butte still panning out?”
“I adore Butte and find nothing to change. It’s too wonderful—to have all your old dreams come true like this! I hope your mine is behaving. I heard a rumour the other day that you had lost your vein——”
“Just found it again!”
Ida noted the exultant ring of his voice, and was about to laugh when she changed her tactics swiftly. “Good! I know just how fine you feel—and that it wasn’t the loss of money that worried you either. Well, the dinner will be a sort of celebration. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye.” There was a faint accent of surprise in Gregory’s voice. Ida smiled and returned to her interrupted toilette.
“Just let me get a good chance at him once more,” she thought. “I’ll be eating copper before I get through, but I don’t know him or his sex if he won’t be nibbling off the same chunk.”