When the sombre morning broke at last, Jacqueline awoke, sprang from her bed, and fluttered away about her dressing as blithely as an April linnet in a hurry.
She had just time to breakfast and catch her train, with the help of heaven and a taxicab, and she managed to do it about the same moment that Desboro, half a hundred miles away, glanced out of his dressing-room window and saw the tall trees standing like spectres in the winter fog, and the gravel on the drive shining wet and muddy through melting snow. But he turned to the mirror again, whistling a gay air, and twisted his necktie into a smarter knot. Then he went out to the greenhouses and snipped off enough carnations to make a great sheaf of clove-scented blossoms for Jacqueline's room; and after that he proceeded through the other sections of the fragrant glass galleries, cutting, right and left, whatever he considered beautiful enough to do her fresh, young beauty honour.
At the station, he saw her standing on the platform of the drawing-room car as the train thundered in, veil and raincoat blowing, just as he had seen her there the first time she arrived at Silverwood station.
The car steps were sheathed in ice; she had already ventured down a little way when he reached her and offered aid; and she permitted him to swing her to the cinder-strewn ground.
"Are you really here!" he exclaimed, oblivious of interested glances from trainmen and passengers.
They exchanged an impulsive hand-clasp. Both were unusually animated.
"Are you well?" she asked, as though she had been away for months.
"Yes. Are you? It's perfectly fine of you to come"—still retaining her hand—"I wonder if you know how glad I am to see you! I wonder if you really do!"
She started to say something, hesitated, blushed, then their hands parted, and she answered lightly:
"What a very cordial welcome for a business girl on a horrid day! You mustn't spoil me, Mr. Desboro."
"I was afraid you might not come," he said; and indiscreet impulse prompted her to answer, as she had first answered him there on the platform two weeks ago:
"Do you suppose that mere weather could have kept me away from the famous Desboro collection?"
The charming malice in her voice, the delightful impertinence of her reply, so obviously at variance with fact, enchanted him. She was conscious of its effect on him, and, already slightly excited, ventured to laugh at her own thrust as though challenging his self-conceit to believe that she had even grazed herself with the two-edged weapon.
"Do I count for absolutely nothing?" he said.
"Do you flatter yourself that I returned to seeyou?"
"Let me believe it for just one second."
"I don't doubt that you will secretly and triumphantly believe it all the time."
"If I dared——"
"Is that sort of courage lacking in you, Mr. Desboro? I have heard otherwise. And how long are we going to remain here on this foggy platform?"
Here was an entirely new footing; but in the delightful glow of youthful indiscretion she still maintained her balance lightly, mockingly.
"Please tell me," she said, as they entered the car, and he drew the big fur robe around her, "just how easily you believe in your own overpowering attractions. Do women encourage you in such modest faith in yourself? Or are you merely created that way?"
"The house has been a howling wilderness without you," he said. "I admitmyloneliness, anyway."
"Iadmit nothing. Besides, I wasn't."
"Is that true?"
She laughed tormentingly, eyes and cheeks brilliant, now undisguisedly on guard—her first acknowledgment that in this man she condescended to divine the hereditary adversary.
"I mean to punish," said her eyes.
"What an attack from a clear sky on a harmless young man," he said, at last.
"No, an attack from the fog on an insufferable egoist—an ambush, Mr. Desboro. And I thought a little sword-play might do your complacent wits a service. Has it?"
"But you begin by a dozen thrusts, then beat down my guard, and cuff me about with blade and pommel——"
"I had to. Now, does your vanity believe that my return to Silverwood was influenced by your piteous appeal over the wire—and your bad temper, too?"
"No," he said solemnly.
"Well, then! I came here partly to put my notes in better shape for Mr. Sissly, partly to clearup odds and ends and leave him a clear field to plow—in your persistent company," she added, with such engaging malice that even the name of Sissly, which he hated, made him laugh.
"You won't do that," he said confidently.
"Do what, Mr. Desboro?"
"Turn me over to anything named Sissly."
"Indeed, I will—you and your celebrated collection! Of course youcouldgo South, but, judging from your devotion to the study of ancient armour——"
"You don't mean it, do you?"
"What? About your devotion?"
"No, about Sissly."
"Yes, I do. Listen to me, Mr. Desboro. I made up my mind that sleighing, and skating, and luncheon and tea, and—you, are not good for a busy girl's business career. I'm going to be very practical and very frank with you. I don't belong here except on business, and you make it so pleasant and unbusinesslike for me that my conscience protests. You see, if the time I now take to lunch with you, tea with you, skate, sleigh, talk, listen, in your very engaging company is properly employed, I can attend to yards and yards of business in town. And I'm going to. I mean it, please," as he began to smile.
His smile died out. He said, quietly:
"Doesn't our friendship count for anything?"
She looked at him; shrugged her shoulders:
"Oh, Mr. Desboro," she said pleasantly, "does it,really?"
The blue eyes were clear and beautiful, and a little grave; only the upcurled corners of her mouth promised anything.
The car drew up at the house; she sprang out and ranupstairs to her room. He heard her in animated confab with Mrs. Quant for a few minutes, then she came down in her black business gown, with narrow edges of lawn at collar and cuffs, and the bright lock already astray on her cheek. A white carnation was tucked into her waist; the severe black of her dress, as always, made her cheeks and lips and golden hair more brilliant by contrast.
"Now," she said, "for my notes. And what are you going to do while I'm busy?"
"Watch you, if I may. You've heard about the proverbial cat?"
"Care killed it, didn't it?"
"Yes; but it had a good look at the Queen first."
A smile touched her eyes and lips—a little wistfully.
"You know, Mr. Desboro, that I like to waste time with you. Flatter your vanity with that confession. And even if things were—different—but they couldn't ever be—and I must work very hard if I'm ever going to have any leisure in my old age. But come to the library for this last day, and smoke as usual. And you may talk to amuse me, if you wish. Don't mind if I'm too busy to answer your folly in kind."
They went together to the library; she placed the mass of notes in front of her and began to sort them—turned for a second and looked around at him with adorable malice, then bent again to the task before her.
"Miss Nevers!"
"Yes?"
"You will come to Silverwood again, won't you?"
She wrote busily with a pencil.
"Won't you?"
She made some marginal notes and he looked at the charming profile in troubled silence.
"She turned leisurely.... 'Did you say anything recently, Mr. Desboro?'"
About ten minutes later she turned leisurely, tucking up the errant strand of hair with her pencil:
"Did you say anything recently, Mr. Desboro?"
"Out of the depths, yes. The voice in the wilderness as usual went unheeded. I wished to explain to you how we might give up our skating and sleighing and everything except the bare necessities—and you could still come to Silverwood on business——"
"What are the 'bare necessities'?"
"Your being here is one——"
"Answer me seriously, please."
"Food, then. We must eat."
She conceded that much.
"We've got to motor to and from the station!"
She admitted that, too.
"Those," he pointed out, "are the bare necessities. We can give up everything else."
She sat looking at him, playing absently with her pencil. After a while, she turned to her desk again, and, bending over it, began to make meaningless marks with her pencil on the yellow pad.
"What is the object," she said, "of trying to make me forget that I wouldn't be here at all except on business?"
"Do you think of that every minute?"
"I—must."
"It isn't necessary."
"It is imperative, Mr. Desboro—and you know it."
She wrote steadily for a while, strapped a bundle of notes with an elastic band, laid it aside, and turned around, resting her arm on the back of the chair. Blue eyes level with his, she inspected him curiously. And, if the tension of excitement still remained, all her high spirits and the indiscreet impulses of a gay self-confidence had vanished. But curiosity remained—the eternal, insatiable curiosity of the young.
How much did this man really mean of what he said to her? What did his liking for her signify other than the natural instinct of an idle young man for any pretty girl? What was he going to do about it? For she seemed to be conscious that, sooner or later, somewhere, sometime, he would do something further about it.
Did he mean to make love to her sometime? Was he doing it now? It resembled the preliminaries; she recognised them—had been aware of them almost from the very first.
Men had made love to her before—men in her own world, men in his world. She had learned something since her father died—not a great deal; perhaps more from hearsay than from experience. But some unpleasant knowledge had been acquired at first hand; two clients of her father's had contributed, and a student, named Harroun, and an amateur of soft paste statuettes, the Rev. Bertie Dawley.
Innocently and wholesomely equipped to encounter evil, cool and clear eyed mistress of herself so far, she had felt, with happy contempt, that her fate was her own to control, and had wondered what the word "temptation" could mean to any woman.
What Cynthia had admitted made her a little wiser, but still incredulous. Cold, hunger, debts, loneliness—these were not enough, as Cynthia herself had said. Nor, after all, was Cynthia's liking for Cairns. Which proved conclusively that woman is the arbiter of her own destiny.
Desboro, one knee crossed over the other, sat looking into the fire, which burned in the same fireplace where he had recently immolated the frivolous souvenirs of the past.
Perhaps some gay ghost of that scented sacrifice took shape for a moment in the curling smoke, for he suddenly frowned and passed his hand over his eyes in boyish impatience.
Something—the turn of his head and shoulders—the shape of them—she did not know what—seemed to set her heart beating loudly, ridiculously, without any apparent reason on earth. Too much surprised to be disturbed, she laid her slim hand on her breast, then against her throat, till her pulses grew calmer.
Resting her chin on her arm, she gazed over her shoulder into the fire. He had laid another log across the flames; she watched the bark catch fire, dully conscious, now, that her ideas were becoming as irresponsible and as reasonless as the sudden stirring of her heart had been.
For she was thinking how odd it would be if, like Cynthia, she too, ever came to care about a man of Desboro's sort. She'd see to it that she didn't; that was all. There were other men. Better still, there were to be no men; for her mind fastidiously refused to consider the only sort with whom she felt secure—her intellectual inferiors whose moral worthiness bored her to extinction.
Musing there, half turned on her chair, she saw Desboro rise, still looking intently into the fire, and stand so, his well-made, graceful figure, in silhouette, edged with the crimson glow.
"What do you see in it, Mr. Desboro?"
He turned instantly and came over to her:
"A bath of flames would be very popular," he said, "if burning didn't hurt. I was just thinking about it—how to invent——"
She quoted: "'But I was thinking of a plan to dye one's whiskers green.'"
He said: "I suppose you think me as futile as that old man 'a-settin' on a gate.'"
"Your pursuits seem to be about as useful as his."
"Why should I pursue things? I don't want 'em."
"You are hopeless. There is pleasure even in pursuit of anything, no matter whether you ever attain it or not. I will never attain wisdom, but it's a pleasure to pursue it."
"It's a pleasure even to pursue pleasure—and it's the only pleasure in pleasure," he said, so gravely that for a moment she thought with horror that he was trying to be precious. Then the latent glimmer in his eyes set them laughing, and she rose and went over to the sofa and curled up in one corner, abandoning all pretense of industry.
"Once," she said, "I knew a poet who emitted such precious thoughts. He was the funniest thing; he had the round, pale, ancient eyes of an African parrot, a pasty countenance, and a derby hat resting on top of a great bunch of colourless curly hair. And that's the wayhetalked, Mr. Desboro!"
He seated himself on the other arm of the sofa:
"Did you adore him?"
"At first. He was a celebrity. He did write some pretty things."
"What woke you up?"
She blushed.
"I thought so," observed Desboro.
"Thought what?"
"That he came out of his trance and made love to you."
"How did you know? Wasn't it dreadful! And he'd always told me that he had never experienced an emotion except when adoring the moon. He was a very dreadful young man—perfectly horrid in his ideas—and I sent him about his business very quickly; and I remember being a little frightened and watching him from the window as he walked off down the street in his soiled drab overcoat and the derby hat on hisfrizzly hair, and his trousers too high on his ankles——"
Desboro was so immensely amused at the picture she drew that her pretty brows unbent and she smiled, too.
"What did he want of you?" he asked.
"I didn't fully understand at the time——" she hesitated, then, with an angry blush: "He asked me to go to Italy with him. And he said he couldn't marry me because he had already espoused the moon!"
Desboro's laughter rang through the old library; and Jacqueline was not quite certain whether she liked the way he took the matter or not.
"I know him," said Desboro. "I've seen him about town kissing women's hands, in company with a larger and fatter one. Isn't his name Munger?"
"Yes," she said.
"Certainly. And the fat one's name is Waudle. They were a hot team at fashionable literary stunts—the Back Alley Club, you know."
"No, I don't know."
"Oh, it's just silly; a number of fashionable and wealthy young men and women pin on aprons, now and then, and paint and model lumps of wet clay in several severely bare studios over some unfragrant stables. They proudly call it The Back Alley Club."
"Why do you sneer at it?"
"Because it isn't the real thing. It's a strutting ground for things like Munger and Waudle, and all the rag-tag that is always sniffing and snuffling at the back doors of the fine arts."
"At least," she said, "they sniff."
He said, good-humouredly: "Yes, and I don't even do that. Is that what you mean?"
She considered him: "Haven't you any profession?"
"I'm a farmer."
"Why aren't you busy with it, then?"
"I have been, disastrously. There was a sickening deficit this autumn."
She said, with pretty scorn: "I'll wager I could make your farm pay."
He smiled lazily, and indulgently. After a moment he said:
"So the spouse of the moon wanted you to go to Italy with him?"
She nodded absently: "A girl meets queer men in the world."
"Did you ever meet any others?"
She looked up listlessly: "Yes, several."
"As funny as the poet?"
"If you call him funny."
"I wonder who they were," he mused.
"Did you ever hear of the Reverend Bertie Dawley?"
"No."
"He was one."
"Thatkind?"
"Oh, yes. He collects soft paste figurines; he was a client of father's; but I found very soon that I couldn't go near him. He has a wife and children, too, and he keeps sending his wife to call on me. You know he's a good-looking young man, too, and I liked him; but I never dreamed——"
"Sure," he said, disgusted at his own sex—with the exception of himself.
"That seems to be the way of it," she said thoughtfully. "You can't be friendswith men; they all annoy you sooner or later in one way or another!"
"Annoy you? Do you mean make love to you?"
"Yes."
"Idon't; do I?"
She bent her head and sat playing with the petals of the white carnation drooping on her breast.
"No," she said calmly. "You don't annoy me."
"Would it seriously annoy you if I did make love to you some day?" he asked, lightly.
Instinct was whispering hurriedly to her: "Here it is at last. Do something about it, and do it quick!" She waited until her heart beat more regularly, then:
"You couldn't annoy—make love—to a girl you really don't care for. That is very simple, isn't it?"
"Suppose I did care for you."
She looked up at him with troubled eyes, then lowered them to the blossom from which her fingers were detaching petal after petal.
"If you did really care, you wouldn't tell me, Mr. Desboro."
"Why not?"
"Because it would not be fair to me." A flush of anger—or she thought it was, brightened her cheeks. "This is nonsense," she said abruptly. "And I'll tell you another thing; I can't come here again. You know I can't. We talk foolishness—don't you know it? And there's another reason, anyway."
"What reason?"
"Therealreason," she said, clenching both hands. "You know what it is and so do I—and—and I'm tired of pretending that the truth isn't true."
"What is the truth?"
She had turned her back on him and was staring out of the windows into the mist.
"The truth is," she answered deliberately, "that you and I can not be friends."
"Why?"
"Because we can't be! Because—men are always men. There isn't any way for men and women to be friends. Forgive me for saying it. But it is quite true. A business woman in your employment—can't forget that a real friendship with you is impossible. That is why, from the very beginning, I wanted it to be purely a matter of business between us. I didn't really wish to skate with you, or do anything of that kind with you. I'd rather not lunch with you; I—I had rather you drew the line—and let me draw it clearly, cleanly, and without mistake—as I draw it between myself and my employees. If you wish, I can continue to come here on that basis until my work is finished. Otherwise, I shall not come again."
Her back was still toward him.
"Very well," he said, bluntly.
She heard him rise and walk toward the door; sat listening without turning her head, already regretting what she had said. And now she became conscious that her honesty with herself and with him had been a mistake, entailing humiliation for her—the humiliation of letting him understand that she couldn't afford to care for him, and that she did already. She had thought of him first, and of herself last—had conceded a hopeless situation in order that her decision might not hurt his vanity.
It had been a bad mistake. And now he might be thinking that she had tried to force him into an attitude toward herself which she could not expect, or—God knew what he might be thinking.
Dismayed and uncertain, she stood up nervously as he reëntered the room and came toward her, holding out his hand.
"I'm going to town," he said pleasantly. "I won't bother you any more. Remain; come and go as you like without further fear of my annoying you. The servants are properly instructed. They will be at your orders. I'm sorry—I meant to be more agreeable. Good-bye, Miss Nevers."
She laid her hand in his, lifelessly, then withdrew it. Dumb, dreadfully confused, she looked up at him; then, as he turned coolly away, an inarticulate sound of protest escaped her lips. He halted and turned around.
"It isn't fair—what you are doing—Mr. Desboro."
"What else is there to do?"
"Why do you ask me? Why must the burden of decision always rest with me?"
"But my decision is that I had better go. I can't remain here without—annoying you."
"Why can't you remain here as my employer? Why can't we enjoy matter-of-fact business relations? I ask no more than that—I want no more. I am afraid you think I do expect more—that I expect friendship. It is impossible, unsuitable—and I don't even wish for it——"
"I do," he said.
"How can we be friends, from a social standpoint? There is nothing to build on, no foundation—nothing for friendship to subsist on——"
"Could you and I meet anywhere in the world and becomelessthan friends?" he asked. "Tell me honestly. It is impossible, and you and I both know it."
And, as she made no reply: "Friends—more than friends, possibly; never less. And you know it, and so do I," he said under his breath.
She turned sharply toward the window and looked out across the foggy hills.
"If that is what you believe, Mr. Desboro, perhaps you had better go."
"Do you send me?"
"Always the decision seems to lie with me. Why do you not decide for yourself?"
"I will; and for you, too, if you will let me relieve you of the burden."
"I can carry my own burdens."
Her back was still toward him. After a moment she rested her head against the curtained embrasure, as though tired.
He hesitated; there were good impulses in him, but he went over to her, and scarcely meaning to, put one arm lightly around her waist.
She laid her hands over her face, standing so, golden head lowered and her heart so violent that she could scarcely breathe.
"Jacqueline."
A scarcely perceptible movement of her head, in sign that she listened.
"Are we going to let anything frighten us?" He had not meant to say that, either. He was adrift, knew it, and meant to drop anchor in a moment. "Tell me honestly," he added, "don't you want us to be friends?"
She said, her hands still over her face:
"I didn't know how much I wanted it. I don't see, even now, how it can be. Your own friends are different. But I'll try—if you wish it."
"I do wish it. Why do you think my friends are sodifferent from you? Because some happen to be fashionable and wealthy and idle? Besides, a man has many different kinds of friends——"
She thought to herself: "But he never forgets to distinguish between them. And here it is at last—almost. And I—I do care for him! And here I am—like Cynthia—asking myself to pardon him."
She looked up at him out of her hands, a little pale, then down at his arm, resting loosely around her waist.
"Don't hold me so, please," she said, in a low voice.
"Of course not." But instead he merely took her slender hands between his own, which were not very steady, and looked her straight in the eyes. Such men can do it, somehow. Besides, he really meant to control himself and cast anchor in a moment or two.
"Will you trust me with your friendship?" he said.
"I—seem to be doing it. I don't exactly understand what I am doing. Would you answer me one question?"
"If I can, Jacqueline."
"Then, friendshipispossible between a man and a woman, isn't it?" she insisted wistfully.
"I don't know."
"What! Why don't you know? It's merely a matter of mutual interest and respect, isn't it?"
"I've heard so."
"Then isn't a friendship between us possible without anything threatening to spoil it? Isn't it to be just a matter of enjoying together what interests each? Isn't it? Because I don't mind waiving social conditions that can't be helped, and conventions that we simply can't observe."
"Yes, you wonderful girl," he said under his breath, meaning to anchor at once. But he drifted on.
"You know," she said, forcing a little laugh, "Iamrather wonderful, to be so honest with a man like you. There's so much about you that I don't care for."
He laughed, enchanted, still retaining her hands between his own, the palms joined together, flat.
"You're so wonderful," he said, "that you make the most wonderful masterpiece in the Desboro collection look like a forgery."
She strove to speak lightly again: "Even the gilding on my hair is real. You didn't think so once, did you?"
"You're all real. You are the most real thing I've ever seen in the world!"
She tried to laugh: "You mustn't believe that I've never before been real when I've been with you. And I may not be real again, for a long time. Make the most of this moment of expansive honesty, Mr. Desboro. I'll remember presently that you are an hereditary enemy."
"Have I ever acted that part?"
"Not toward me."
He reddened: "Toward whom?"
"Oh," she said, with sudden impatience, "do you suppose I have any illusions concerning the sort of man you are? But what do I care, as long as you are nice to me?" she laughed, more confidently. "Men!" she repeated. "I know something about them! And, knowing them, also, I nevertheless mean to make a friend of one of them. Do you think I'll succeed?"
He smiled, then bent lightly and kissed her joined hands.
"Luncheon is served," came the emotionless voice of Farris from the doorway. Their hands fell apart; Jacqueline blushed to her hair and gave Desboro a lovely, abashed look.
She need not have been disturbed. Farris had seen such things before.
That evening, Desboro went back to New York with her and took her to her own door in a taxicab.
"Are you quite sure you can't dine with me?" he asked again, as they lingered on her doorstep.
"I could—but——"
"But you won't!"
One of her hands lay lightly on the knob of the partly open door, and she stood so, resting and looking down the dark street toward the distant glare of electricity where Broadway crossed at right angles.
"We have been together all day, Mr. Desboro. I'd rather not dine with you—yet."
"Are you going to dine all alone up there?" glancing aloft at the lighted windows above the dusky old shop.
"Yes. Besides, you and I have wasted so much time to-day that I shall go down stairs to the office and do a little work after dinner. You see a girl always has to pay for her transgressions."
"I'm terribly sorry," he said contritely. "Don't work to-night!"
"Don't be sorry. I've really enjoyed to-day's laziness. Only it mustn't be like this to-morrow. And anyway, I knew I'd have to make it up to-night."
"I'm terribly sorry," he said again, almost tenderly.
"But you mustn't be, Mr. Desboro. It was worth it——"
He looked up, surprised, flushing with emotion; and the quick colour in her cheeks responded. They remained very still, and confused, and silent, as fire answered fire; suddenly aware how fast they had been drifting.
She turned, nervously, pushed open the door, and entered the vestibule; he held the door ajar for her while she fitted her key with unsteady fingers.
"So—thank you," she said, half turning around, "but I won't dine with you—to-night."
"Then, perhaps, to-morrow——"
"Don't come into town with me to-morrow, Mr. Desboro."
"I'm coming in anyway."
"Why?"
"There's an affair—a kind of a dance. There are always plenty of things to take me into town in the evenings."
"Is that why you came in to-night?" She knew she should not have said it.
He hesitated, then, with a laugh: "I came in to town because it gave me an hour longer with you. Are you going to send me away now?" And her folly was answered in kind.
She said, confused and trying to smile: "You say things that you don't mean. Evening, for us, must always mean 'good-night.'"
"Why, Jacqueline?"
"Because. Also, it is my hour of freedom. You wouldn't take that away from me, would you?"
"What do you do in the evenings?"
"Sew, read, study, attend to the thousand wretched little details which concern my small household. And, sometimes, when I have wasted the day, I make it up at night. Because, whether I have enjoyed it or not, this dayhasbeen wasted."
"But sometimes you dine out and go to the theatre and to dances and things?"
"Yes," she said gravely. "But you know there is no meeting ground there for us, don't you?"
"Couldn't you ask me to something?"
"Yes—I could. But you wouldn't care for the people. You know it. They are not like the people to whom you are accustomed. They would only bore you."
"So do many people I know."
"Not in the same way. Why do you ask me? You know it is better not." She added smilingly: "There is neither wealth nor fashion nor intellectual nor social distinction to be expected among my friends——"
She hesitated, and added quietly: "You understand that I am not criticising them. I am merely explaining them to you. Otherwise, I'd ask you to dinner with a few people—I can only have four at a time, my dining room is so small——"
"Ask me, Jacqueline!" he insisted.
She shook her head; but he continued to coax and argue until she had half promised. And now she stood, facing him irresolutely, conscious of the steady drift that was forcing her into uncharted channels with this persuasive pilot who seemed to know no more of what lay ahead of them than did she.
But there was to be no common destination; she understood that. Sooner or later she must turn back toward the harbour they had left so irresponsibly together, her brief voyage over, her last adventure with this man ended for all time.
And now, as the burden of decision still seemed to rest upon her, she offered him her hand, saying good-night; and he took it once more and held it between both of his. Instantly the impending constraint closed in upon them; his face became grave, hers serious, almost apprehensive.
"You have—have made me very happy," he said. "Do you know it, Jacqueline?"
"Yes."
A curious lassitude was invading her; she leaned sideways against the door frame, as though tired, and stood so, one hand abandoned to him, gazing into the lamp-lit street.
"Good-night, dear," he whispered.
"Good-night."
She still gazed into the lamp-lit darkness beyond him, her hand limp in his; and he saw her blue eyes, heavy lidded and dreamy, and the strand of hair curling gold against her cheek.
When he kissed her, she dropped her head, covering her face with her forearm, not otherwise stirring—as though the magic pageant of her fate which had been gathering for two weeks had begun to move at last, passing vision-like through her mind with a muffled uproar—sweeping on, on, brilliant, disarrayed, timed by the deafening beating of her heart.
Dully she realised that it was here at last—all that she had dreaded—if dread be partly made of hope!
"Are you crying?" he said, unsteadily.
She lifted her face from her arm, like a dazed child awaking.
"You darling," he whispered.
Eyes remote, she stood watching unseen things in the darkness beyond him.
"Must I go, Jacqueline?"
"Yes."
"You are very tired, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"You won't sit up and work, will you?"
"No."
"Will you go straight to bed?"
She nodded slowly, yielding to him as he drew her into his arms.
"To-morrow, then?" he asked under his breath.
"Yes."
"And the next day, and the next, and next, and—always, Jacqueline?" he demanded, almost fiercely.
After a moment she slowly turned her head and looked at him. There was no answer, and no question in her gaze, only the still, expressionless clairvoyance of a soul that sees but does not heed.
There was no misunderstanding in her eyes, nothing wistful, nothing afraid or hurt—nothing of doubt. What had happened to others in the world was happening now to her. She understood it; that was all—as though the millions of her sisters who had passed that way had left to her the dread legacy of familiarity with the smooth, wide path they had trodden since time began on earth. And here it was, at last! Her own calmness surprised her.
He detained her for another moment in a swift embrace; inert, unresponsive, she stood looking down at the crushed gardenia in his buttonhole, dully conscious of being bruised. Then he let her go; her hand fell from his arm; she turned and faced the familiar stairs and mounted them.
Dinner waited for her; whether she ate or not, she could not afterward remember. About eleven o'clock, she rose wearily from the bed where she had been lying, and began to undress.
As for Desboro, he had gone straight to his rooms very much excited and unbalanced by the emotions of the moment.
He was a man not easily moved to genuine expression. Having acquired certain sorts of worldly wisdom in a career more or less erratic, experience had left him unconvinced and even cynical—or he thought it had.
But now, for the moment, all that lay latent in him of that impetuous and heedless vigour which may become strength, if properly directed, was awakening. Every recurring memory of her had already begun to tamper with his self-control; for the emotions of the moments just ended had been confusingly real; and, whatever they were arousing in him, now clamoured for some sort of expression.
The very thought of her, now, began to act on him like some freshening perfume alternately stimulating and enervating. He made the effort again and again, and could not put her from his mind, could not forget the lowered head and the slender, yielding grace of her, and her fragrance, and her silence.
Dressing in his rooms, growing more restless every moment, he began to walk the floor like some tormented thing that seeks alleviation in purposeless activity.
He said, half aloud, to himself:
"I can't go on this way. This is damn foolish! I've got to find out where it's landing me. It will land her, too—somewhere. I'd better keep away from her, go off somewhere, get out, stop seeing her, stop remembering her!—if she's what I think she is."
Scowling, he went to the window and jerked aside the curtain. Across the street, the Olympian Club sparkled with electricity.
"Good Lord!" he muttered. "What a tempest in a teapot! What the devil's the matter with me? Can't I kiss a girl now and then and keep my senses?"
It seemed that he couldn't, in the present instance, for after he had bitten the amber stem of his pipe clean through, he threw the bowl into the fireplace. It had taken him two years to colour it.
"Idiot!" he said aloud. "What are you sorry about? You know damn well there are only two kinds of women, and it's up to them what sort they are—not up to any man who ever lived! What are you sorry for? For her?"
He stared across the street at the Olympian Club. He was expected there.
"If she only wasn't so—so expressionless and—silent about it. It's like killing something that lets you do it. That's a crazy thing to think of!"
Suddenly he found he had a fight on his hands. He had never had one like it; didn't know exactly what to do, except to repeat over and over:
"It isn't square—it isn't square. She knows it, too. She's frightened. She knows it isn't square. There's nothing ahead but hell to pay! She knows it. And she doesn't defend herself. Thereareonly two kinds of women. Itisup to them, too. But it's like killing something that lets you kill it. Good God! What adamn fool I am!"
Later he repeated it. Later still he found himself leaning over his desk, groping blindly about for a pen, and cursing breathlessly as though he had not a moment to lose.
He wrote:
"Dear Little Jacqueline: I'm not going to see you again. Where the fool courage to write this comes from I don't know. But you will now learn that there is nothing to me after all—not even enough of positive and negative to make me worth forgiveness. And so I let it go at that. Good-bye.
"Dear Little Jacqueline: I'm not going to see you again. Where the fool courage to write this comes from I don't know. But you will now learn that there is nothing to me after all—not even enough of positive and negative to make me worth forgiveness. And so I let it go at that. Good-bye.
"Desboro."
In the same half blind, half dazed way, cursing something all the while, he managed to seal, stamp, and direct the letter, and get himself out of the house with it.
A club servant at the Olympian mailed it; he continued on his way to the dining room, and stumbled into a chair between Cairns and Reggie Ledyard, who were feasting noisily and unwisely with Stuyvesant Van Alstyne; and the racket and confusion seemed to help him. He was conscious of laughing and talking and drinking a great deal—conscious, too, of the annoyance of other men at other tables. Finally, one of the governors came over and very pleasantly told him to shut up or go elsewhere.
They all went, with cheerfulness unimpaired by gubernatorial admonition. There was a large dinner dance for debutantes at the Barkley's. This function they deigned to decorate with their presence for a while, Cairns and Van Alstyne behaving well enough, considering the manners of the times; Desboro, a dull fire smouldering in his veins, wandered about, haunted by a ghost whose soft breath touched his cheek.
His manners were good when he chose; they were always faultless when he was drunk. Perfectly steady on his legs, very pale, and a trifle over polite, the drunker he was the more courtly he invariably became, measuredly graceful, in speech reticent. Only his pallor and the lines about his mouth betrayed the tension.
Later, one or two men familiar with the house strolled into the distant billiard room and discovered him standing there looking blankly into space.
Ledyard, bad tempered when he had dined too well, announced that he had had enough of that debutante party:
"Look at 'em," he said to Desboro. "Horrible little fluffs just out of the incubator—with their silly brains and rotten manners, and their 'Bunny Hugs' and 'Turkey Trots' and 'Dying Chickens,' and the champagne flaming in their baby cheeks! Why, their mothers are letting 'em dance likefilles de Brasserie! Men used to know where to go for that sort of thing——"
Cairns, balancing gravely on heels and toes, waved one hand comprehensively.
"Problem was," he said, "how to keep the young at home. Bunny Hug solves it. See? All the comforts of the Tenderloin at home. Tha's 'splaination."
"Come on to supper," said Ledyard. "Your Blue Girl will be there, Jim."
"By all means," said Desboro courteously. "My car is entirely at your disposal." But he made no movement.
"Come to supper," insisted Ledyard.
"Commer supper," echoed Cairns gravely. "Whazzer mazzer? Commer supper!"
"Nothing," said Desboro, "could give me greater pleasure." He rose, bowed courteously to Ledyard, included Cairns in a graceful salute, and reseated himself.
Ledyard lost his temper and began to shout at him.
"I beg your pardon for my inexcusable absent-mindedness," said Desboro, getting slowly onto his feet once more. With graceful precision, he made his way to his hostess and took faultless leave of her, Cairns and Ledyard attempting vainly to imitate his poise, urbanity and self-possession.
The icy air of the street did Cairns good and aided Ledyard. So they got themselves out across the sidewalk and ultimately into Desboro's town car, which was waiting, as usual.
"Little bunny-hugging, bread-and-butter beasts," muttered Ledyard to himself. "Lord! Don't they want us to draw the line between them and the sort we're to meet at supper?"
"They're jus' fools," said Cairns. "No harm in 'em! And I'm not going to supper. I'll take you there an' go'me!"
"What's the matter withyou?" demanded Ledyard.
"No—I'm through, that's all. You 'sult nice li'l debutantes. Rotten bad taste. Nice li'l debbys."
"Come on, you jinx!"
"That girl in blue. Will she be there—the one who does the lute solo in 'The Maid of Shiraz'?"
"Yes, but she's crazy about Desboro."
"I waive all pretension to the charming condescension of that very lovely young lady, and cheerfully concede your claims," said Desboro, raising his hat and wrecking it against the roof of the automobile.
"As you wish, dear friend. But why so suddenly the solitary recluse?"
"A personal reason, I assure you."
"I see," remarked Ledyard. "And what may be the name and quality of this personal reason? And is she a blonde?"
Desboro shrugged his polite impatience. But when the others got out at the Santa Regina he followed. Cairns was inclined to shed a few tears over Ledyard's insults to the "debbys."
"Sure," said the latter, soothingly. "The brimming beaker for you, dear friend, and it will pass away. Hark! I hear the fairy feetsteps of a houri!" as they landed from the elevator and encountered a group of laughing, bright-eyed young girls in the hallway, seeking the private supper room.
One of them was certainly the girl in blue. The others appeared to Desboro as merely numerous and, later, exceedingly noisy. But noise and movement seemed to make endurable the dull pain thudding ceaselessly in his heart. Music and roses, flushed faces, the ringing harmony of crystal and silver, and the gaietyà diableof the girl beside him would ease it—mustease it, somehow. For it had to be first eased, then killed. There was no sense, no reason, no excuse for going on this way—enduring such a hurt. And just at present the remedy seemed to lie in a gay uproar and many brilliant lights, and in the tinted lips of the girl beside him, babbling nonsense while her dark eyes laughed, promising all they laughed at—if he cared to ask an answer to the riddle.
But he never asked it.
Later somebody offered a toast to Desboro, but when they looked around for him in the uproar, glasses aloft, he had disappeared.
There was no acknowledgment of his note to Jacqueline the day following; none the next day, or the next. It was only when telephoning to Silverwood he learned by chance from Mrs. Quant that Jacqueline had been at the house every day as usual, busy in the armoury with the work that took her there.
He had fully expected that she would send a substitute; had assumed that she would not wish to return and take the chance of his being there.
What she had thought of his note to her, what she might be thinking of him, had made him so miserable that even the unwisdom of excess could not dull the pain of it or subdue the restless passion ever menacing him with a shameful repudiation of the words he had written her. He had fought one weakness with another, and there was no strength in him now. He knew it, but stood on guard.
For he knew, too, in his heart that he had nothing to offer her except a sentiment which, in the history of man, has never been anything except temporary. With it, of course, and part of it, was a gentler inclination—love, probably, of one sort or another—with it went also genuine admiration and intellectual interest, and sympathy, and tenderness of some unanalysed kind.
But he knew that he had no intention of marrying anybody—never, at least, of marrying out of his own social environment. That he understood fully; had wit and honesty enough to admit to himself. And so there was no way—nothing, now, anyway. He had settled that definitely—settled it for her and for himself, unrequested; settled, in fact, everything except how to escape the aftermath of restless pain for which there seemed to be no remedy so far—not even the professional services of old Doctor Time. However, it had been only three days—three sedative pills from the old gentleman's inexhaustible supply. It is the regularity of taking it, more than the medicine itself which cures.
On the fourth day, he emerged from the unhappy seclusion of his rooms and ventured into the Olympian Club, where he deliberately attempted to anæsthetise his badly battered senses. But he couldn't. Cairns found him there, sitting alone in the library—it was not an intellectual club—and saw what Desboro had been doing to himself by the white tensity of his features.
"Look here," he said. "If there's really anything the matter with you, why don't you go into business and forget it? You can't fool real trouble with what you buy in bottles!"
"What business shall I go into?" asked Desboro, unoffended.
"Stocks or literature. All the ginks who can't do anything else go into stocks or literature."
Desboro waved away the alternatives with amiable urbanity.
"Then run for your farms and grow things for market. You could do that, couldn't you? Even a Dutchess County millionaire can run a milk-route."
"I don't desire to grow milk," explained Desboro pleasantly.
Cairns regarded him with a grin of anxiety.
"You're jingled," he concluded. "That is, you are as jingled asyouever get. Why?"
"No reason, thanks."
"It isn't some girl, is it?Younever take them seriously. All the same,isit?"
Desboro smiled: "Do you think it's likely, dear friend?"
"No, I don't. But whatever you're worrying about isn't improving your personal beauty. Since you hit this hamlet you've been on one continuous tootlebat. Why don't you go back to Westchester and hoe potatoes?"
"One doesn't hoe them in January, you know," said Desboro, always deprecatingly polite. "Please cease to trouble yourself about me. I'm quite all right, thanks."
"You've resigned from a lot of clubs and things, I hear."
"Admirably reported, dear friend, and perfectly true."
"Why?"
"Motives of economy; nothing more serious, John."
"You're not in any financial trouble, are you?"
"I—ah—possibly have been a trifle indiscreet in my expenditures—a little unfortunate in my investments, perhaps. You are very kind to ask me. It may afford you some gratification to learn that eventually I anticipate an agreeable return to affluence."
Cairns laughed: "Youarejingled all right," he said. "I recognise the urbane symptoms of your Desboro ancestors."
"You flatter them and me," said Desboro, bowing. "Theywere the limit, and I'm nearing it."
"Pardon! You have arrived, sir," said Cairns, returning the salute with exaggerated gravity.
They parted with pomp and circumstance, Desboro to saunter back to his rooms and lie limply in his arm chair beside an empty fireplace until sleep overcame him where he sat. And he looked very young, and white, and somewhat battered as he lay there in the fading winter daylight.
The ringing racket of his telephone bell aroused him in total darkness. Still confused by sleep, he groped for the electric light switch, could not find it; but presently his unsteady hand encountered the telephone, and he unhooked the receiver and set it to his ear.
At first his imagination lied to him, and he thought it was Jacqueline's distant voice, though he knew in his heart it could not be.
"Jim," repeated the voice, "what are you doing this evening?"
"Nothing. I was asleep. It's you, Elena, isn't it?"
"Of course. To whom are you in the habit of talking every evening at seven by special request?"
"I didn't know it was seven."
"That's flattering to me. Listen, Jim, I'm coming to see you."
"I've told you a thousand times it can't be done——"
"Do you mean that no woman has ever been in your apartments?"
"You can't come," he repeated obstinately. "If you do, it ends my interest in your various sorrows. I mean it, Elena."
She laughed: "I only wanted to be sure that you are still afraid of caring too much for me. Somebody told me a very horrid thing about you. It was probably a lie—as long as you are still afraid of me."
He closed his eyes patiently and leaned his elbow on the desk, waiting for her to go on or to ring off.
"Was it a lie, Jim?"
"Was what a lie?"
"That you are entertaining a very pretty girl at Silverwood House—unchaperoned?"
"Do you think it likely?"
"Why not? They say you've done it before."
"Nobody has been there except on business. And, after all, you know, it doesn't——"
"Yes, it does concern me! Oh, Jim,areyou being horrid—when I'm so unhappy and helpless——"
"Be careful what you say over the wire!"
"I don't care who hears me. If you mean anybody in your apartment house, they know my voice already. I want to see you, Jim——"
"No!"
"You said you'd be friendly to me!"
"I am—by keeping away from you."
"Do you mean that I am never to see you at all?"
"You know well enough that it isn't best, under the circumstances."
"You could come here if you only would. He is not in town to-night——"
"Confound it, do you think I'm that sort?"
"I think you are very absurd and not very consistent, considering the things that they say you are not too fastidious to do——"
"Will you please be a little more reticent over the telephone!"
"Then take me out to dinner somewhere, where wecantalk!"
"I'm sorry, but it won't do."
"I thought you'd say that. Very well, then, listen: they are singingArianeto-night; it's an 8:15 curtain. I'll be in the Barkley's box very early; nobody else will arrive before nine. Will you come to me at eight?"
"Yes, I'll do that for a moment."
"Thank you, dear. I just want to be happy for a few minutes. You don't mind, do you?"
"It will be very jolly," he said vaguely.
The galleries were already filling, but there were very few people in the orchestra and nobody at all to be seen in the boxes when Desboro paused before a door marked with the Barkleys' name. After a second's hesitation, he turned the knob, stepped in, and found Mrs. Clydesdale already seated in the tiny foyer, under the hanging shadow of her ermine coat—a charming and youthful figure, eyes and cheeks bright with trepidation and excitement.
"What the dickens do you suppose prompted Mrs. Hammerton to arrive at such an hour?" she said, extending her hand to Desboro. "That very wicked old cat got out of somebody's car just as I did, and I could feel her beady eyes boring into my back all the way up the staircase."
"Do you mean Aunt Hannah?"
"Yes, I do! What does she mean by coming here at such an unearthly hour? Don't go out into the box, Jim. She can see you from the orchestra. I'll wager that her opera glasses have been sweeping the house every second since she saw me!"
"If she sees me she won't talk," he said, coolly. "I'm one of her exempts——"
"Wait, Jim! What are you going to do?"
"Let her see us both. I tell you she never talks about me, or anybody with whom I happen to be. It's the best way to avoid gossip, Elena——"
"I don't want to risk it, Jim! Please don't! I'm in abject terror of that woman——"
But Desboro had already stepped out to the box, and his keen, amused eyes very soon discovered the levelled glasses of Mrs. Hammerton.
"Come here, Elena!"
"Had I better?"
"Certainly. I want her to see you. That's it! That's enough. She won't say a word about you now."
Mrs. Clydesdale shrank back into the dim, rosy half-light of the box; Desboro looked down at Mrs. Hammerton and smiled; then rejoined his flushed companion.
"Don't worry; Aunt Hannah's fangs are extracted for this evening. Elena, you are looking pretty enough to endanger the record of an aged saint! There goes that meaningless overture! What is it you have to say to me?"
"Why are you so brusque with me, Jim?"
"I'm not. But I don't want the Barkleys and their guests to find us here together."
"Betty knows I care for you——"
"Oh, Lord!" he said impatiently. "You always did care for anything that is just out of reach when you stand on tip-toe. You always were that way, Elena. When we were free to see each other you would have none of me."
She was looking down while he spoke, smoothing one silken knee with her white-gloved hand. After a moment, she lifted her head. To his surprise, her eyes were brilliant with unshed tears.
"You don't love me any more, do you, Jim?"
"I—I have—it is about as it always will be with me. Circumstances have altered things."
"Isthat all?"
He thought for a moment, and his eyes grew sombre.
"Jim! Are you going to marry somebody?" she said suddenly.
He looked up with a startled laugh, not entirely agreeable.
"Marry? No."
"Is there any girl you want to marry?"
"No. God forbid!"
"Why do you say that? Is it because of what you know about marriages—like mine?"
"Probably. And then some."
"There are happy ones."
"Yes, I've read about them."
"But there really are, Jim."
"Mention one."
She mentioned several among people both knew. He smiled. Then she said, wearily:
"There are plenty of decent people and decent marriages in the world. The people we play with are no good. It's only restlessness, idleness, and discontent that kills everything among people of our sort. I know I'm that way, too. But I don't believe I would be if I had married you."
"You are mistaken."
"Why? Don't you believe any marriage can be happy?"
"Elena, have you ever heard of a honeymoon that lasts? Do you know how long any two people can endure each other without merciful assistance from a third? Don't you know that, sooner or later, any two people ever born are certain to talk each other out—pump each other dry—love each other to satiation—and ultimately recoil, each into the mysterious seclusion of its own individuality, from whence it emerged temporarily in order that the human race might not perish from the earth!"
"What miserable lesson have you learned to teach you such a creed?" she asked. "I tell you the world is full of happy marriages—full of honoured husbands and beloved wives, and children worshipped and adored——"
"Children, yes, they come the nearest to making the conventional contract endurable. I wish to God you had some!"
"Jim!"
He said, almost savagely: "If youcan, anddon't, you'll make a hell for yourself with any man, sooner or later—mark my words! And it isn't worth while to enact the hypocrisy of marriage with nothing more than legal license in view! Why bother with priest or clergyman? That contract won't last. And it's less trouble not to make one at all than to go West and break one."
"Do you know you are talking very horridly to me?" she said.
"Yes—I suppose I am. I've got to be going now, anyway——"
As he spoke, the glittering house became dark; the curtain opened upon a dim scene of shadowy splendour, into which, exquisite and bewitchingly immortal as any goddess in the heavenly galaxy, glided Farrar, in the shimmering panoply ofAriane.