Williams, all frigid dignity and politeness, stood at the large entrance doors, significantly holding aside one curtain. Craig rose, his face red. "Mrs. Severence isn't very well," said he noisily to the servant, as if he were on terms of closest intimacy with the family. "Tell Margaret I'll wait for her in the garden." And he rushed out by the window that opened on the veranda, leaving the amazed butler at the door, uncertain what to do.
Mrs. Severence, ascending the stairs in high good humor with herself at having handled a sudden and difficult situation as well as she had ever read of its being handled in a novel, met her daughter descending.
"Sh-h!" said she in a whisper, for she had not heard the front door close. "He may not be gone. Come with me."
Margaret followed her mother into the library at the head of the stairs.
"It was that Craig man," explained Mrs. Severence, when she had the door closed. "What DO you think he had the impudence to do?"
"I'm sure I can't imagine," said Margaret, impatient.
"He proposed for you!"
Margaret reflected a brief instant. "Nonsense!" she said decisively. "He's not that kind. You misunderstood him."
"I tell you he did!" cried her mother. "And I ordered him out of the house."
"What?" screamed Margaret, clutching her mother's arm. "WHAT?"
"I ordered him out of the house," stammered her mother.
"I wish you'd stick to your novels and let me attend to my own affairs," cried Margaret, pale with fury. "Is he gone?"
"I left Williams attending to it. Surely, Rita—"
But Margaret had flung the door open and was darting down the stairs. "Where is he?" she demanded fiercely of Williams, still in the drawing-room doorway.
"In the garden, ma'am," said Williams. "He didn't pay no attention."
But Margaret was rushing through the drawing-room. At the French windows she caught sight of him, walking up and down in his usual quick, alert manner, now smelling flowers, now staring up into the trees, now scrutinizing the upper windows of the house. She drew back, waited until she had got her breath and had composed her features. Then, with the long skirts of her graceful pale-blue dress trailing behind her, and a big white sunshade open and resting upon her shoulder, she went down the veranda steps and across the lawn toward him. He paused, gazed at her in frank—vulgarly frank—admiration; just then, it seemed to her, he never said or did or looked anything except in the vulgarest way.
"You certainly are a costly-looking luxury," said he loudly, when there were still a dozen yards between them. "Oh, there's your mother at the window, upstairs—her bedroom window."
"How did you know it was her bedroom?" asked Margaret.
"While I was waiting for you to come down one day I sent for one of the servants and had him explain the lay of the house."
"Really!" said Margaret, satirical and amused. "I suppose there was no mail on the table or you'd have read that while you waited?"
"There you go, trying to say clever, insulting things. Why not be frank? Why not be direct?"
"Why should I, simply because YOU wish it? You don't half realize how amusing you are."
"Oh, yes, I do," retorted he, with a shrewd, quick glance from those all-seeing eyes of his.
"Half, I said. You do half realize. I told you once before that I knew what a fraud you were."
"I play my game in my own way," evaded he; "and it seems to be doing nicely, thank you."
"But the further you go, the harder it'll be for you to progress."
"Then the harder for those opposing me. I don't make it easy for those who are making it hard for me. I get 'em so busy nursing their own wounds that they've no longer time to bother me. I've told you before, and I tell you again, I shall go where I please."
"Let me see," laughed Margaret; "it was Napoleon—wasn't it?—who used to talk that way?"
"And you think I'm imitating him, eh?"
"You do suggest it very often."
"I despise him. A wicked, little, dago charlatan who was put out of business as soon as he was really opposed. No!—no Waterloo for me!... How's your mother? She got sick while I was talking to her and had to leave the room."
"Yes, I know," said Margaret.
"You ought to make her take more exercise. Don't let her set foot in a carriage. We are animals, and nature has provided that animals shall walk to keep in health. Walking and things like that are the only sane modes of getting about. Everything aristocratic is silly. As soon as we begin to rear and strut we stumble into our graves—But it's no use to talk to you about that. I came on another matter."
Margaret's lips tightened; she hastily veiled her eyes.
"I've taken a great fancy to you," Craig went on. "That's why I've wasted so much time on you. What you need is a husband—a good husband. Am I not right?"
Margaret, pale, said faintly: "Go on."
"You know I'm right. Every man and every woman ought to marry. A home—children—THAT'S life. The rest is all incidental—trivial. Do you suppose I could work as I do if it wasn't that I'm getting ready to be a family man? I need love—sympathy—tenderness. People think I'm hard and ambitious. But they don't know. I've got a heart, overflowing with tenderness, as some woman'll find out some day. But I didn't come to talk about myself."
Margaret made a movement of surprise—involuntary, startled.
"No, I don't always talk about myself," Craig went on; "and I'll let you into a secret. I don't THINK about myself nearly so much as many of these chaps who never speak of themselves. However, as I was saying, I'm going to get you a husband. Now, don't you get sick, as your mother did. Be sensible. Trust me. I'll see you through—and that's more than any of these cheap, shallow people round you would do."
"Well?" said Margaret.
"You and Grant Arkwright are going to marry. Now don't pretend—don't protest. It's the proper thing and it must be done. You like him?"
As Craig was looking sharply at her she felt she must answer. She made a vague gesture of assent.
"Of course!" said Craig. "If you and he led a natural life you'd have been married long ago. Now, I'm going to dine with him to-night. I'll lay the case before him. He'll be out here after you to-morrow."
Margaret trembled with anger. Two bright spots burned in her cheeks. "You wouldn't dare!" she exclaimed breathlessly. "No, not even you!"
"And why not?" demanded Craig calmly. "Do you suppose I'm going to stand idly by, and let two friends of mine, two people I'm as fond of as I am of you two creatures, make fools of yourselves? No. I shall bring you together."
Margaret rose. "If you say a word to Grant I'll never speak to you again. And I assure you I shouldn't marry HIM if he were the last man on earth."
"If you only knew men better!" exclaimed Craig earnestly. His eyes fascinated her, and his sharp, penetrating voice somehow seemed to reach to her very soul and seize it and hold it enthralled. "My dear child, Grant Arkwright is one man in a million. I've been with him in times that show men's qualities. Don't judge men by what they are ordinarily. They don't reveal their real selves. Wait till a crisis comes—then you see manhood or lack of it. Life is bearable, at the worst, for any of us in the routine. But when the crisis comes we need, not only all our own strength, but all we can rally to our support. I tell you, Miss Severence, Grant is one of the men that can be relied on. I despise his surface—as I do yours. But it's because I see the man—the manhood—beneath that surface, that I love him. And I want him to have a woman worthy of him. That means YOU. You, too, have the soul that makes a human being—a real aristocrat—of the aristocracy, of strong and honest hearts."
Craig's face was splendid, was ethereal in its beauty, yet flashing with manliness. He looked as she had seen him that night two years before, when he had held even her and her worldly friends spellbound, had made them thrill with ideas of nobility and human helpfulness foreign to their everyday selves. She sat silent when he had finished, presently drew a long breath.
"Why aren't you always like that?" she exclaimed half to herself.
"You'll marry Grant?"
She shook her head positively. "Impossible."
"Why not?"
"Impossible," she repeated. "And you mustn't speak of it to me—or to him. I appreciate your motive. I thank you—really, I do. It makes me feel better, somehow, to have had any one think so well of me as you do. And Grant ought to be proud of your friendship."
Their eyes met. She flushed to the line of her hair and her glance fell, for she felt utterly ashamed of herself for the design upon him which she had been harboring. "Let us go in and join the others," said she confusedly. And her color fled, returned in a flood.
"No, I'm off," replied he, in his ordinary, sharp, bustling way. "I'm not defeated. I've done well—very well, for a beginning." And he gave her hand his usual firm, uncomfortable clasp, and rushed away.
She walked up and down full fifteen minutes before she went toward the house. At the veranda Lucia intercepted her. "Did he?" she asked anxiously.
Margaret looked at her vaguely, then smiled. "No, he did not."
"He didn't?" exclaimed Lucia, at once disappointed and relieved.
"Not yet," said Margaret. She laughed, patted Lucia's full-blown cheek. "Not quite yet." And she went on in to tea, humming to herself gayly; she did not understand her own sudden exceeding high spirits.
Craig did not leave Margaret more precipitately than he had intended; that would have been impossible, as he always strove to make his departures seem as startling and mysterious as a dematerialization. But he did leave much sooner than he had intended, and with only a small part of what he had planned to say said. He withdrew to think it over; and in the long walk from the Severences to his lodgings in the Wyandotte he did think it over with his usual exhaustive thoroughness.
He had been entirely sincere in his talk with Margaret. He was a shrewd judge both of human nature and of situations, and he saw that a marriage between Margaret and Grant would be in every way admirable. He appreciated the fine qualities of both, and realized that they would have an uncommonly good chance of hitting it off tranquilly together. Of all their qualities of mutual adaptability the one that impressed him most deeply was the one at which he was always scoffing—what he called their breeding. Theoretically, and so far as his personal practice went, he genuinely despised "breeding"; but he could not uproot a most worshipful reverence for it, a reverence of which he was ashamed. He had no "breeding" himself; he was experiencing in Washington a phase of life which was entirely new to him, and it had developed in him the snobbish instincts that are the rankest weeds in the garden of civilization. Their seeds fly everywhere, are sown broadcast, threaten the useful plants and the flowers incessantly, contrive to grow, to flourish even, in the desert places. Craig had an instinct against this plague; but he was far too self-confident to suspect that it could enter his own gates and attack his own fields. He did not dream that the chief reason why he thought Grant and Margaret so well suited to each other was the reason of snobbishness; that he was confusing their virtues with their vices; and was admiring them for qualities which were blighting their usefulness and even threatening to make sane happiness impossible for either. It was not their real refinement that he admired, and, at times, envied; it was their showy affectations of refinement, those gaudy pretenses that appeal to the crude human imagination, like uniforms and titles.
It had not occurred to him that Margaret might possibly be willing to become his wife. He would have denied it as fiercely to himself as to others, but at bottom he could not have thought of himself as at ease in any intimate relation with her. He found her beautiful physically, but much too fine and delicate to be comfortable with. He could be brave, bold, insolent with her, in an impersonal way; but personally he could not have ventured the slightest familiarity, now that he really appreciated "what a refined, delicate woman is."
But the easiest impression for a woman to create upon a man—or a man upon a woman—is the impression of being in love. We are so conscious of our own merits, we are so eager to have them appreciated, that we will exaggerate or misinterpret any word or look, especially from a person of the opposite sex, into a tribute to them. When Craig pleaded for Grant and Margaret, moved by his eloquent sincerity, dropped her eyes and colored in shame for her plans about him, in such black contrast with his frank generosity, he noted her change of expression, and instantly his vanity flashed into his mind: "Can it be that she loves me?"
The more he reflected upon it the clearer it became to him that she did. Yes, here was being repeated the old story of the attraction of extremes. "She isn't so refined that appreciation of real manhood has been refined out of her," thought he. "And why shouldn't she love me? What does all this nonsense of family and breeding amount to, anyway?" His mind was in great confusion. At one moment he was dismissing the idea of such delicateness, such super-refined super-sensitiveness being taken with a man of his imperfect bringing-up and humble origin. The next moment his self-esteem was bobbing again, was jauntily assuring him that he was "a born king" and, therefore, would naturally be discovered and loved by a truly princess—"And, by Heaven, she IS a princess of the blood royal! Those eyes, those hands, those slender feet!" Having no great sense of humor he did not remind himself here how malicious nature usually deprives royalty of the outward marks of aristocracy to bestow them upon peasant.
At last he convinced himself that she was actually burning with love for him, that she had lifted the veil for an instant—had lifted it deliberately to encourage him to speak for himself. And he was not repelled by this forwardness, was, on the contrary, immensely flattered. It is the custom for those of high station to reassure those of lower, to make them feel that they may draw near without fear. A queen seeking a consort among princes always begins the courting. A rich girl willing to marry a poor man lets him see she will not be offended if he offers to add himself to her possessions. Yes, it would be quite consistent with sex-custom, with maidenly modesty, for a Severence to make the first open move toward a Josh Craig.
"But do I want her?"
That was another question. He admired her, he would be proud to have such a wife. "She's just the sort I need, to adorn the station I'm going to have." But what of his dreams of family life, of easy, domestic undress, which she would undoubtedly find coarse and vulgar? "It would be like being on parade all the time—she's been used to that sort of thing her whole life, but it'd make me miserable." Could he afford a complete, a lifelong sacrifice of comfort to gratify a vanity?
He had devoted much thought to the question of marriage. On the one hand he wanted money; for in politics, with the people so stupid and so fickle, a man without an independence, at least, would surely find himself, sooner or later, in a position where he must choose between retiring and submitting himself to some powerful interest—either a complete sale, or a mortgage hardly less galling to pride, no less degrading to self-respect. On the other hand he wanted a home—a wife like his mother, domestic, attentive, looking out for his comfort and his health, herself taking care of the children. And he had arrived at a compromise. He would marry a girl out West somewhere, a girl of some small town, brought up somewhat as he had been brought up, not shocked by what Margaret Severance would regard as his vulgarities—a woman with whom he felt equal and at ease. He would select such a woman, provided, in addition, with some fortune—several hundred thousands, at least, enough to make him independent. Such had been his plan. But now that he had seen Margaret, had come to appreciate her through studying her as a possible wife for his unattached friend Arkwright, now that he had discovered her secret, her love for him—how could he fit her into his career? Was it possible? Was it wise?
"The best is none too good for me," said he to himself swaggeringly. No doubt about it—no, indeed, not the slightest. But—well, everybody wouldn't realize this, as yet. And it must be admitted that those mere foppish, inane nothings did produce a seeming of difference. Indeed, it must even be admitted that the way Margaret had been brought up would make it hard for her, with her sensitive, delicate nerves, to bear with him if she really knew him. A hot wave passed over his body at the thought. "How ashamed I'd be to have her see my wardrobe. I really must brace up in the matter of shirts, and in the quality of underclothes and socks." No, she probably would be shocked into aversion if she really knew him—she, who had been surrounded by servants in livery all her life; who had always had a maid to dress her, to arrange a delicious bath for her every morning and every evening, to lay out, from a vast and thrilling store of delicate clothing, the fresh, clean, fine, amazingly costly garments that were to have the honor and the pleasure of draping that aristocratic body of hers. "Why, her maid," thought he, "is of about the same appearance and education as my aunts. Old Williams is a far more cultured person than my uncles or brothers-in-law." Of course, Selina and Williams were menials, while his male kin were men and his female relatives women, "and all of them miles ahead of anything in this gang when it comes to the real thing—character." Still, so far as appearances went—"I'm getting to be a damned, cheap snob!" cried he aloud. "To hell with the whole crowd! I want nothing to do with them!"
But Margaret, in her beautiful garments, diffusing perfume just as her look and manner diffused the aroma of gentle breeding—The image of her was most insidiously alluring; he could not banish it. "And, damn it all, isn't she just a human being? What's become of my common-sense that I treat these foolish trifles as if they were important?"
Grant Arkwright came while the debate was still on. He soon noted that something was at work in Josh's mind to make him so silent and glum, so different from his usual voluble, flamboyant self. "What's up, Josh? What deviltry are you plotting now to add to poor old Stillwater's nervous indigestion?"
"I'm thinking about marriage," said Craig, lighting a cigarette and dropping into the faded magnificence of an ex-salon chair.
"Good business!" exclaimed Arkwright.
"It's far more important that you get married than that I do," explained Craig. "At present you don't amount to a damn. You're like one of those twittering swallows out there. As a married man you'd at least have the validity that attaches to every husband and father."
"If I could find the right girl," said Grant.
"I thought I had found her for you," continued Craig. "But, on second thoughts, I've about decided to take her for myself."
"Oh, you have?" said Arkwright, trying to be facetious of look and tone.
"Yes," said Josh, in his abrupt, decisive way. He threw the cigarette into the empty fireplace and stood up. "I think I'll take your advice and marry Miss Severance."
"Really!" mocked Grant; but he was red with anger, was muttering under his breath, "Insolent puppy!"
"Yes, I think she'll do." Craig spoke as if his verdict were probably overpartial to her. "It's queer about families and the kind of children they have. Every once in a while you'll find a dumb ass of a man whose brain will get to boiling with liquor or some other ferment, and it'll incubate an idea, a real idea. It's that way about paternity—or, rather, maternity. Now who'd think that inane, silly mother of Margaret's could have brought such a person as she is into the world?"
"Mrs. Severence is a very sweet and amiable LADY," said Grant coldly.
"Pooh!" scoffed Craig. "She's a nothing—a puff of wind—a nit. Such as she, by the great gross, wouldn't count one."
"I doubt if it would be—wise—politically, I mean—for you to marry a woman of—of the fashionable set." Grant spoke judicially, with constraint in his voice.
"You're quite right there," answered Craig promptly. "Still, it's a temptation.... I've been reconsidering the idea since I discovered that she loves me."
Grant leaped to his feet. "Loves you!" he shouted. Josh smiled calmly. "Loves me," said he. "Why not, pray?"
"I—I—I—don't know," answered Grant weakly.
"Oh, yes, you do. You think I'm not good enough for her—as if this were not America, but Europe." And he went on loftily: "You ought to consider what such thoughts mean, as revelations of your own character, Grant."
"You misunderstood me entirely," protested Grant, red and guilty. "Didn't I originally suggest her to you?"
"But you didn't really mean it," retorted Craig with a laugh which Grant thought the quintessence of impertinence. "You never dreamed she'd fall in love with me."
"Josh," said Grant, "I wish you wouldn't say that sort of thing. It's not considered proper in this part of the country for a gentleman to speak out that way about women."
"What's there to be ashamed of in being in love? Besides, aren't you my best friend, the one I confide everything to?"
"You confide everything to everybody."
Craig looked amused. "There are only two that can keep a secret," said he, "nobody and everybody. I trust either the one or the other, and neither has ever betrayed me."
"To go back to the original subject: I'd prefer you didn't talk to me in that way about that particular young lady."
"Why?... Because you're in love with her, yourself?"
Grant silently stared at the floor.
"Poor old chap," said Craig sympathetically.
Arkwright winced, started to protest, decided it was just as well to let Craig think what he pleased at that juncture.
"Poor old chap!" repeated Josh. "Well, you needn't despair. It's true she isn't in love with you and is in love with me. But if I keep away from her and discourage her it'll soon die out. Women of that sort of bringing up aren't capable of any enduring emotion—unless they have outside aid in keeping it alive."
"No, thank you," said Arkwright bitterly. "I decline to be put in the position of victim of your generosity. Josh, let me tell you, your notion that she's in love with you is absurd. I'd advise you not to go round confiding it to people, in your usual fashion. You'll make yourself a laughing stock."
"I've told no one but you," protested Craig.
"Have you seen any one else since you got the idea?"
"No, I haven't," he admitted with a laugh. "Now that you've told me the state of your heart I'll not speak of her feeling for me. I give you my word of honor on that. I understand how a chap like you, full of false pride, would be irritated at having people know he'd married a woman who was once in love with some one else. For of course you'll marry her."
"I'm not sure of that. I haven't your sublime self-confidence, you know."
"Oh, I'll arrange it," replied Craig, full of enthusiasm. "In fact, I had already begun, this very afternoon, when she let me see that she loved me and, so, brought me up standing."
"Damn it, man, DON'T say that!" cried Grant, all afire. "I tell you it's crazy, conceited nonsense."
"All right, all right, old chap," soothed Josh.
And it frenzied Arkwright to see that he said this merely to spare the feelings of an unrequited lover, not at all because he had begun to doubt Margaret's love. "Come down to dinner and let's talk no more about it," said Grant, with a great effort restraining himself. "I tell you, Josh, you make it mighty hard sometimes for me to remember what I owe you."
Craig wheeled on him with eyes that flashed and pierced. "My young friend," said he, "you owe me nothing. And let me say to you, once for all, you are free to break with me at any instant—you or any other man. Whenever I find I'm beginning to look on a man as necessary to me I drop him—break with him. I am necessary to my friends, not they to me. I like you, but be careful how you get impertinent with me."
Craig eyed him fiercely and steadily until Arkwright's gaze dropped. Then he laughed friendly. "Come along, Grant," said he. "You're a good fellow, and I'll get you the girl." And he linked his arm in Arkwright's and took up another phase of himself as the topic of his monologue.
Margaret, on the way home afoot from the White House, where she had been lunching with the President's niece, happened upon Craig standing with his hands behind his back before the statue of Jackson. He was gazing up at the fierce old face with an expression so animated that passers-by were smiling broadly. She thought he was wholly absorbed; but when she was about half-way across his range of vision he hailed her. "I say, Miss Severence!" he cried loudly.
She flushed with annoyance. But she halted, for she knew that if she did not he would only shout at her and make a scene.
"I'll walk with you," said he, joining her when he saw she had no intention of moving toward him.
"Don't let me draw you from your devotions," protested she. "I'm just taking a car, anyhow."
"Then I'll ride home with you and walk back. I want to talk with a woman—a sensible woman—not easy to find in this town."
Margaret was disliking him, his manner was so offensively familiar and patronizing—and her plans concerning him made her contemptuous of herself, and therefore resentful against him. "I'm greatly flattered," said she.
"No, you're not. But you ought to be. I suppose if you had met that old chap on the pedestal there when he was my age you'd have felt toward him much as you do toward me."
"And I suppose he'd have been just about as much affected by it as you are."
"Just about. It was a good idea, planting his statue there to warn the fellow that happens to be in the White House not to get too cultured. You know it was because the gang that was in got too refined and forgot whom this country belonged to that old Jackson was put in office. The same thing will happen again."
"And you'll be the person?" suggested Margaret with a smile of raillery.
"If I show I'm fit for the job," replied Craig soberly. It was the first time she had ever heard him admit a doubt about himself. "The question is," he went on, "have I got the strength of character and the courage?... What do you think?"
"I don't know anything about it," said Margaret with polite indifference. "There comes my car. I'll not trouble you to accompany me." She put out her hand. "Goodby." She did not realize it, or intend it, but she had appealed to one of his powerful instincts, a powerful instinct in all predatory natures—the instinct to pursue whatever seems to be flying.
He shook his head at the motorman, who was bringing the car to a halt; the car went on. He stood in front of her. Her color was high, but she could not resist the steady compulsion of his eyes. "I told you I wanted to talk with you," said he. "Do you know why I was standing before that statue?"
"I do not," Margaret answered coldly.
"I was trying to get the courage to ask you to be my wife."
She gave a queer laugh. "Well, you seem to have got what you sought," said she. He had, as usual, taken her wholly unawares.
"Not so fast," replied Craig. "I haven't asked you yet."
Margaret did not know whether she most wished to laugh or to burst out in anger. "I'm sure I don't care anything about it, one way or the other," said she.
"Why say those insincere things—to ME?" he urged. She had begun to walk, and he was keeping pace with her. "Jackson," he proceeded, "was a man of absolute courage. He took the woman he wanted—defied public opinion to do it—and it only made him the more popular. I had always intended to strengthen myself by marrying. If I married you I'd weaken myself politically, while if I married some Western girl, some daughter of the people, I'd make a great popular stroke."
"Well—do it, then," said Margaret. "By all means do it."
"Oh, but there's you," exclaimed Craig. "What'd I do about you?"
"That's true," said Margaret mockingly. "But what am I to stand between a man and ambition?"
"I say that to myself," replied Craig. "But it's no use." His eyes thrilled her, his voice seemed to melt her dislike, her resolve, as he said: "There you are, and there you stay, Margaret. And you're not at all fit to be my wife. You haven't been brought up right. You ought to marry some man like Grant. He's just the man for you. Why did you ever fall in love with me?"
She stopped short, stared at him in sheer amazement. "I!" exclaimed she. "I—in love with YOU!"
He halted before her. "Margaret," he said tenderly, "can you deny it?"
She flushed; hung her head. The indignant denial died upon her lips.
He sighed. "You see, it is fate," said he. "But I'll manage it somehow. I'll win out in spite of any, of every handicap."
She eyed him furtively. Yes, if she wished to make a marriage of ambition she could not do better. All Washington was laughing at him; but she felt she had penetrated beneath the surface that excited their mirth—had seen qualities that would carry him wherever he wished to go—wherever she, with her grandmother's own will, wished him to go.
"And," pursued he, "I'm far too rough and coarse for you—you, the quintessence of aristocracy."
She flushed with double delight—delight at this flattery and the deeper delight a woman feels when a man shows her the weakness in himself by which she can reach and rule him.
"I'm always afraid of offending your delicacy," he went fatuously on. "You're the only person I ever felt that way about. Absolutely the only one. But you've got to expect that sort of thing in a man who prevails in such a world as this. When men get too high-toned and aristocratic, too fussy about manners and dress, along come real men to ride them down and under. But I'll try to be everything you wish—to you. Not to the others. That would defeat our object; for I'm going to take my wife high—very high."
Yes, he would indeed take her high—very high. Now that what she wanted, what she must have, was offering, how could she refuse? They were crossing another square of green. He drew—almost dragged—her into one of the by-paths, seized her in his arms, kissed her passionately. "I can't resist you—I can't!" he cried.
"Don't—don't!" she murmured, violently agitated. "Some one might see!"
"Some one is seeing, no doubt," he said, his breath coming quickly, a look that was primeval, ferocious almost, in his eyes as they devoured her. And, despite her protests and struggles, she was again in those savage arms of his, was again shrinking and burning and trembling under his caresses. She flung herself away, sank upon a bench, burst out crying.
"What is it, Margaret?" he begged, alarmed, yet still looking as if he would seize her again.
"I don't know—I don't know," she replied.
Once more she tried to tell him that she did not love him, but the words would not come. She felt that he would not believe her; indeed, she was not sure of her own heart, of the meaning of those unprecedented emotions that had risen under his caresses, and that stirred at the memory of them. "Perhaps I am trying to love him," she said to herself. "Anyhow, I must marry him. I can trifle with my future no longer. I must be free of this slavery to grandmother. I must be free. He can free me, and I can manage him, for he is afraid of me."
"Did I hurt you?" Craig was asking.
She nodded.
"I am so sorry," he exclaimed. "But when I touched you I forgot—everything!"
She smiled gently at him. "I didn't dream you cared for me," she said.
He laughed with a boisterousness that irritated her. "I'd never have dared tell you," replied he, "if I hadn't seen that you cared for me."
Her nerves winced, but she contrived to make her tone passable as she inquired: "Why do you say that?"
"Oh—the day in the garden—the day I came pleading for Grant. I saw it in your eyes—You remember."
Margaret could not imagine what he had misinterpreted so flatteringly to himself. But what did it matter? How like ironic fate, to pierce him with a chance shaft when all the shafts she had aimed had gone astray!
She was startled by his seizing her again. At his touch she flamed. "Don't!" she cried imperiously. "I don't like it!"
He laughed, held her the more tightly, kissed her half a dozen times squarely upon the lips. "Not that tone to me," said he. "I shall kiss you when I please."
She was furiously angry; but again her nerves were trembling, were responding to those caresses, and even as she hated him for violating her lips, she longed for him to continue to violate them. She started up. "Let us go," she cried.
He glanced at his watch. "I'll have to put you in a car," said he. "I forgot all about my appointment." And he fumed with impatience while she was adjusting her hat and veil pushed awry by his boisterous love-making. "It's the same old story," he went on. "Woman weakens man. You are a weakness with me—one that will cost me dear."
She burned with a sense of insult. She hated him, longed to pour out denunciations, to tell him just what she thought of him. She felt a contempt for herself deeper than her revulsion against him. In silence she let him hurry her along to a car; she scarcely heard what he was saying—his tactless, angry outburst against himself and her for his tardiness at that important appointment. She dropped into the seat with a gasp of relief. She felt she must—for form's sake—merely for form's sake—glance out of the window for the farewell he would be certain to expect; she must do her part, now that she had committed herself. She glanced; he was rushing away, with never a backward look—or thought. It was her crowning humiliation. "I'll make him pay for all this, some day!" she said to herself, shaking with anger, her grandmother's own temper raging cyclonically within her.
Her mood—outraged against Craig, sullenly determined to marry him, angry with her relatives, her mother no less than her grandmother, because they were driving her to these desperate measures—this mood persisted, became intenser, more imperious in its demand for a sacrifice as the afternoon wore on. When Grant Arkwright came, toward six o'clock, she welcomed him, the first-comer bringing her the longed-for chance to discharge the vials of her wrath. And she noted with pleasure that he, too, was in a black humor. Before she could begin he burst forth:
"What's this that Josh Craig has been telling me? He seems to have gone stark mad!"
Margaret eyed him with icy disdain. "If there is any quality that can be called the most repulsive," said she, "it is treachery. You've fallen into a way of talking of your friend Craig behind his back that's unworthy—perhaps not of you, but certainly of the person you pose as being."
"Did you propose to him this afternoon?" demanded Grant.
Margaret grew cold from head to foot. "Does he say I did?" she succeeded in articulating.
"He does. He was so excited that he jumped off a car and held me an hour telling me, though he was late for one of those important conferences he's always talking about."
Margaret had chosen her course. "Did he ask you to run and tell me he had told you?" inquired she, with the vicious gleam of a vicious temper in her fine hazel eyes.
"No," admitted Grant. "I suppose I've no right to tell you. But it was such an INFERNAL lie."
"Did you tell him so?"
Arkwright grew red.
"I see you did not," said Margaret. "I knew you did not. Now, let me tell you, I don't believe Craig said anything of the kind. A man who'd betray a friend is quite capable of lying about him."
"Margaret! Rita Severence!" Grant started up, set down his teacup, stood looking down at her, his face white to the lips. "Your tone is not jest; it is insult."
"It was so intended." Margaret's eyes were upon him, her grandmother's own favorite expression in them. Now that she was no longer a matrimonial offering she felt profoundly indifferent to eligible men, rejoiced in her freedom to act toward them as she wished. "I do not permit any one to lie to me about the man I have engaged to marry."
"What!" shouted Grant. "It was TRUE?"
"Go out into the garden and try to calm yourself, Grant," said the girl haughtily. "And if you can't, why—take yourself off home. And don't come back until you are ready to apologize."
"Rita, why didn't you give me a hint? I'd have married you myself. I'm willing to do it.... Rita, will you marry me?"
Margaret leaned back upon the sofa and laughed until his blood began to run alternately hot and cold.
"I beg your pardon," he stammered. "I did not realize how it sounded. Only—you know how things are with our sort of people. And, as men go, I can't help knowing I'm what's called a catch, and that you're looking for a suitable husband.... As it's apparently a question of him or me, and as you've admitted you got him by practically proposing—...Damn it all, Rita, I want you, and I'm not going to let such a man as he is have you. I never dreamed you'd bother with him seriously or I'd not have been so slow."
Margaret was leaning back, looking up at him. "I've sunk even lower than I thought," she said, bringing to an end the painful silence which followed this speech.
"What do you mean, Rita?"
She laughed cynically, shrugged her shoulders. First, Craig's impudent assumption that she loved him, and his rude violation of her lips; now, this frank insolence of insult, the more savage that it was unconscious—and from the oldest and closest of her men friends. If one did not die under such outrages, but continued to live and let live, one could save the situation only by laughing. So, Margaret laughed—and Arkwright shivered.
"For God's sake, Rita!" he cried. "I'd not have believed that lips so young and fresh as yours could utter such a cynical sound."
She looked at him with disdainful, derisive eyes. "It's fortunate for me that I have a sense of humor," said she. "And for you," she added.
"But I am in earnest, I mean it—every word I said."
"That's just it," replied she. "You meant it—every word."
"You will marry me?"
"I will not."
"Why?"
"For several reasons. For instance, I happen to be engaged to another man."
"That is—nothing." He snapped his fingers.
She elevated her brows. "Nothing?"
"He'd not keep his promise to you if—In fact, he was debating with me whether or not he'd back down."
"Either what you say is false," said she evenly, "or you are betraying the confidence of a friend who trusted in your honor."
"Oh, he said it, all right. You know how he is about confidences."
"No matter."
Margaret rose slowly, a gradual lifting of her long, supple figure. Grant watching, wondered why he had never before realized that the sensuous charm of her beauty was irresistible. "Where were my eyes?" he asked himself. "She's beyond any of the women I've wasted so much time on."
She was saying with quiet deliberateness: "A few days ago, Grant, I'd have jumped at your offer—to be perfectly frank. Why shouldn't I be frank! I'm sick of cowardly pretenses and lies. I purpose henceforth to be myself—almost." A look within and a slightly derisive smile. "Almost. I shall hesitate and trifle no longer. I shall marry your friend Craig."
"You'll do nothing of the kind," raged Arkwright. "If you make it necessary I'll tell him why you're marrying him."
"You may do as you like about that," replied she. "He'll probably understand why you are trying to break off our engagement."
"You're very confident of your power over him," taunted he.
She saw again Craig's face as he was kissing her. "Very," replied she.
"You'll see. It's a mere physical attraction."
She smiled tantalizingly, her long body displayed against the window-casing, her long, round arms bare below the elbows, her hazel eyes and sensuous lips alluring. "You, yourself, never thought of proposing to me until I had made myself physically attractive to you," said she. "Now—have I power over you, or not?"
She laughed as his color mounted, and the look she had seen in Craig's eyes blazed out in his.
"How little physical charm you have for me," she went on. "Beside Craig you're like an electric fan in competition with a storm-wind. Now, Craig—" She closed her eyes and drew a long breath.
Arkwright gnawed his lip. "What a—a DEVIL you ARE!" he exclaimed.
"I wonder why it is a woman never becomes desirable to some men until they find she's desired elsewhere," she went on reflectively. "What a lack of initiative. What timidity. What an absence of originality. If I had nothing else against you, Grant, I'd never forgive you for having been so long blind to my charms—you and these other men of our set who'll doubtless be clamorous now."
"If you'd been less anxious to please," suggested he bitterly, "and more courageous about being your own real self, you'd not have got yourself into this mess."
"Ah—but that wasn't my fault," replied she absently. "It was the fault of my training. Ever since I can remember I've been taught to be on my guard, lest the men shouldn't like me." In her new freedom she looked back tranquilly upon the struggle she was at last emancipated from, and philosophized about it. "What a mistake mothers make in putting worry about getting a husband into their daughters' heads. Believe me, Grant, that dread makes wretched what ought to be the happiest time of a girl's life."
"Rita," he pleaded, "stop this nonsense, and say you'll marry me."
"No, thanks," said she. "I've chosen. And I'm well content."
She gave him a last tantalizing look and went out on the veranda, to go along it to the outdoor stairway. Arkwright gazed after her through a fierce conflict of emotions. Was she really in earnest? Could it be possible that Josh Craig had somehow got a hold over her? "Or, is it that she doesn't trust me, thinks I'd back down if she were to throw him over and rely on me?" No, there was something positively for Craig in her tone and expression. She was really intending to marry him. Grant shuddered. "If she only realized what marrying a man of that sort means!" he exclaimed, half aloud. "But she doesn't. Only a woman who has been married can appreciate what sort of a hell for sensitive nerves and refined tastes marriage can be made."
"Ah—Mr. Arkwright!"
At this interruption in a woman's voice—the voice he disliked and dreaded above all others—he startled and turned to face old Madam Bowker in rustling black silk, with haughty casque of gray-white hair and ebon staff carried firmly, well forward. Grant bowed. "How d'ye do, Mrs. Bowker?" said he with respectful deference. What he would have thought was the impossible had come to pass. He was glad to see her. "She'll put an end to this nonsense—this nightmare," said he to himself.
Madam Bowker had Williams, the butler, and a maid-servant in her train. She halted, gazed round the room; she pointed with the staff to the floor a few feet from the window and a little back. "Place my chair there," commanded she.
The butler and the maid hastened to move a large carved and gilded chair to the indicated spot. Madam Bowker seated herself with much ceremony.
"Now!" said she. "We will rearrange the room. Bring that sofa from the far corner to the other side of this window, and put the tea-table in front of it. Put two chairs where the sofa was; arrange the other chairs—" And she indicated the places with her staff.
While the room was still in confusion Mrs. Severence entered. "What is it, Mamma?" she asked.
"Simply trying to make this frightful room a little less frightful."
"Don't you think the pictures should be rehung to suit the new arrangement, ma'am?" suggested Arkwright.
Madam Bowker, suspicious of jest, looked sharply at him. He seemed serious. "You are right," said she.
"But people will be coming in a few minutes," pleaded Roxana.
"Then to-morrow," said Madam Bowker reluctantly. "That will do, Williams—that will do, Betty. And, Betty, you must go at once and make yourself neat. You've had on that cap two days."
"No, indeed, ma'am!" protested Betty.
"Then it was badly done up. Roxana, how can you bear to live in such a slovenly way?"
"Will you have tea now, Mamma?" was Roxana's diplomatic reply.
"Yes," answered the old lady.
"Tea, Mr. Arkwright?"
"Thanks, no, Mrs. Severence. I'm just going. I merely looked in to—to congratulate Rita."
Madam Bowker clutched her staff. "To congratulate my granddaughter? Upon what, pray?"
Arkwright simulated a look of surprise. "Upon her engagement."
"Her WHAT?" demanded the old lady, while Roxana sat holding a lump of sugar suspended between bowl and cup.
"Her engagement to Josh Craig."
"No such thing!" declared the old lady instantly. "Really, sir, it is disgraceful that MY granddaughter's name should be associated in ANY connection with such a person."
Here Margaret entered the room by the French windows by which she had left. She advanced slowly and gracefully, amid a profound silence. Just as she reached the tea-table her grandmother said in a terrible voice: "Margaret!"
"Yes, Grandmother," responded Margaret smoothly, without looking at her.
"Mr. Arkwright here has brought in a scandalous story about your being engaged to that—that Josh person—the clerk in one of the departments. Do you know him?"
"Yes, Grandma. But not very well."
Madam Bowker glanced triumphantly at Arkwright; he was gazing amazedly at Margaret.
"You see, Grant," said Roxana, with her foolish, pleasant laugh, "there is nothing in it."
"In what?" asked Margaret innocently, emptying the hot water from her cup.
"In the story of your engagement, dear," said her mother.
"Oh, yes, there is," replied Margaret with a smiling lift of her brows. "It's quite true." Then, suddenly drawing herself up, she wheeled on Grant with a frown as terrible as her grandmother's own. "Be off!" she said imperiously.
Arkwright literally shrank from the room. As he reached the door he saw her shiver and heard her mutter, "Reptile!"
In the midst of profound hush Madam Bowker was charging her heavy artillery, to train it upon and demolish the engagement certainly, and probably Margaret, too. Just as she was about to open fire callers were ushered in. As luck had it they were the three Stillwater girls, hastily made-over Westerners, dressed with great show of fashion in what purported to be imported French hats and gowns. An expert eye, however, would instantly have pierced the secret of this formidable array of plumes and furbelows. The Stillwaters fancied they had exquisite taste and real genius in the art of dress. Those hats were made at home, were adaptations of the imported hats—adaptations of the kind that "see" the original and "go it a few better." As for the dresses, the Stillwaters had found one of those treasures dear to a certain kind of woman, had found a "woman just round the corner, and not established yet"—"I assure you, my dear, she takes a mental picture of the most difficult dress to copy, and you'd never know hers from the original—and SO reasonable!"
In advance came Molly Stillwater, the youngest and prettiest and the most aggressively dressed because her position as family beauty made it incumbent upon her to lead the way in fashion. As soon as the greetings were over—cold, indeed, from Madam Bowker, hysterical from Roxana—Molly gushed out: "Just as we left home, Josh Craig came tearing in. If possible, madder than a hatter—yes—really—" Molly was still too young to have learned to control the mechanism of her mouth; thus, her confused syntax seemed the result of the alarming and fascinating contortions of her lips and tongue—"and, when we told him where we were going he shouted out, 'Give Rita my love.'"
Margaret penetrated to the purpose to anger her against Craig. Was not Craig intended by Mrs. Stillwater for Jessie, the eldest and only serious one of the three? And was not his conduct, his hanging about Margaret and his shying off from Jessie, thoroughly up on public questions and competent to discuss them with anybody—was not his conduct most menacing to her plans? Mrs. Stillwater, arranging for matrimony for all her daughters, had decided that Jess was hopeless except as a "serious woman," since she had neither figure nor face, nor even abundant hair, which alone is enough to entangle some men. So, Jess had been set to work at political economy, finance, at studying up the political situations; and, if started right and not interfered with, she could give as good account of her teaching as any phonograph.
Margaret welcomed Molly's message from Craig with a sweet smile. An amused glance at the thunderous face of her grandmother, and she said, "Perhaps it would interest you, dear, to know that he and I are engaged."
What could Madam Bowker say? What could she do? Obviously, nothing. The three Stillwaters became hysterical. Their comments and congratulations were scraps of disjointed nonsense, and they got away under cover of more arrivals, in as great disorder as if the heavy guns Madam Bowker had stacked to the brim for Margaret had accidentally discharged into them. Madam Bowker could wait no longer. "Margaret," said she, "help me to my carriage."
Mrs. Severence gave her difficult daughter an appealing glance, as if she feared the girl would cap the climax of rebellion by flatly refusing; but Margaret said sweetly:
"Yes, Grandma."
The two left the room, the old lady leaning heavily on her granddaughter and wielding her ebony staff as if getting her arm limbered to use it. In the hall, she said fiercely, "To your room," and waved her staff toward the stairway.
Margaret hesitated, shrugged her shoulders. She preceding, and Madam Bowker ascending statelily afterward, they went up and were presently alone in Margaret's pretty rose and gold boudoir, with the outer door closed.
"Now!" exclaimed Madam Bowker.
"Not so loud, please," suggested the tranquil Margaret, "unless you wish Selina to hear." She pointed to the door ajar. "She's sewing in there."
"Send the woman away," commanded the old lady.
But Margaret merely closed the door. "Well, Grandmother?"
"Sit at this desk," ordered the old lady, pointing with the ebony staff, "and write a note to that man Craig, breaking the engagement. Say you have thought it over and have decided it is quite impossible. And to-morrow morning you go to New York with me."
Margaret seated herself on the lounge instead. "I'll do neither," said she.
The old lady waved the end of her staff in a gesture of lofty disdain. "As you please. But, if you do not, your allowance is withdrawn."
"Certainly," said Margaret. "I assumed that."
Madam Bowker gazed at her with eyes like tongues of flame. "And how do you expect to live?" she inquired.
"That is OUR affair," replied the girl. "You say you are done with me. Well, so am I done with you."
It was, as Margaret had said, because she was not afraid of her grandmother that that formidable old lady respected her; and as she was one of those who can give affection only where they give respect, she loved Margaret—loved her with jealous and carping tenacity. The girl's words of finality made her erect and unyielding soul shiver in a sudden dreary blast of loneliness, that most tragic of all the storms that sweep the ways of life. It was in the tone of the anger of love with the beloved that she cried, "How DARE you engage yourself to such a person!"
"You served notice on me that I must marry," replied the girl, her own tone much modified. "He was the chance that offered."
"The chance!" Madam Bowker smiled with caustic scorn, "He's not a chance."
"You ordered me to marry. I am marrying. And you are violating your promise. But I expected it."
"My promise? What do you mean?"
"You told me if I'd marry you'd continue my allowance after marriage. You even hinted you'd increase it."
"But this is no marriage. I should consider a connection between such a man and a Severence as a mere vulgar intrigue. You might as well run away with a coachman. I have known few coachmen so ill-bred—so repellent—as this Craig."
Margaret laughed cheerfully. "He isn't what you'd call polished, is he?"
Her grandmother studied her keenly. "Margaret," she finally said, "this is some scheme of yours. You are using this engagement to help you to something else."
"I refused Grant Arkwright just before you came."
"You—refused—Arkwright?"
"My original plan was to trap Grant by making him jealous of Craig. But I abandoned it."
"And why?"
"A remnant of decency."
"I doubt it," said the old lady.
"So should I in the circumstances. We're a pretty queer lot, aren't we? You, for instance—on the verge of the grave, and breaking your promise to me as if a promise were nothing."
Mrs. Bowker's ebon staff twitched convulsively and her terrible eyes were like the vent-holes of internal fires; but she managed her rage with a skill that was high tribute to her will-power. "You are right in selecting this clown—this tag-rag," said she. "You and he, I see, are peculiarly suited to each other.... My only regret is that in my blind affection I have wasted all these years and all those thousands of dollars on you." Madam Bowker affected publicly a fine scorn of money and all that thereto appertained; but privately she was a true aristocrat in her reverence and consideration for that which is the bone and blood of aristocracy.
"Nothing so stupid and silly as regret," said Margaret, with placid philosophy of manner. "I, too, could think of things I regret. But I'm putting my whole mind on the future."
"Future!" Madam Bowker laughed. "Why, my child, you have no future. Within two years you'll either be disgracefully divorced, or the wife of a little lawyer in a little Western town."
"But I'll have my husband and my children. What more can a woman ask?"
The old lady scrutinized her granddaughter's tranquil, delicate face in utter amazement. She could find nothing on which to base a hope that the girl was either jesting or posing. "Margaret," she cried, "are you CRAZY?"
"Do you think a desire for a home, and a husband who adores one, and children whom one adores is evidence of insanity?"
"Yes, you are mad—quite mad!"
"I suppose you think that fretting about all my seasons without an offer worth accepting has driven me out of my senses. Sometimes I think so, too." And Margaret lapsed into abstracted, dreamy silence.
"Do you pretend that you—you—care for—this person?" inquired the old lady.
"I can't discuss him with you, Grandmother," replied the girl. "You know you have washed your hands of me."
"I shall never give up," cried the old lady vehemently, "until I rescue you. I'll not permit this disgrace. I'll have him driven out of Washington."
"Yes, you might try that," said Margaret. "I don't want him to stay here. I am sick—sick to death—of all this. I loathe everything I ever liked. It almost seems to me I'd prefer living in a cabin in the back-woods. I've just wakened to what it really means—no love, no friendship, only pretense and show, rivalry in silly extravagance, aimless running to and fro among people that care nothing for one, and that one cares nothing for. If you could see it as I see it you'd understand."
But Madam Bowker had thought all her life in terms of fashion and society. She was not in the least impressed. "Balderdash!" said she with a jab at the floor with the ebony staff. "Don't pose before me. You know very well you're marrying this man because you believe he will amount to a great deal."
Margaret beamed upon her grandmother triumphantly, as if she had stepped into a trap that had been set for her. "And your only reason for being angry," cried she, "is that you don't believe he will."
"I know he won't. He can't. Stillwater has kept him solely because that unspeakable wife of his hopes to foist their dull, ugly eldest girl on him."
"You think a man as shrewd as Stillwater would marry his daughter to a nobody?"
"It's useless for you to argue, Margaret," snapped the old lady. "The man's impossible—for a Severence. I shall stop the engagement."
"You can't," rejoined Margaret calmly. "My mind is made up. And along with several other qualities, Grandmother, dear, I've inherited your will."
"Will without wit—is there anything worse? But I know you are not serious. It is merely a mood—the result of a profound discouragement. My dear child, let me assure you it is no unusual thing for a girl of your position, yet without money, to have no offers at all. You should not believe the silly lies your girlfriends tell about having bushels of offers. No girl has bushels of offers unless she makes herself common and familiar with all kinds of men—and takes their loose talk seriously. Most men wouldn't dare offer themselves to you. The impudence of this Craig! You should have ordered him out of your presence."
Margaret, remembering how Craig had seized her, smiled.
"I admit I have been inconsiderate in urging you so vigorously," continued her grandmother. "I thought I had observed a tendency to fritter. I wished you to stop trifling with Grant Arkwright—or, rather, to stop his trifling with you. Come, now, my dear, let me put an end to this engagement. And you will marry Grant, and your future will be bright and assured."
Margaret shook her head. "I have promised," said she, and her expression would have thrilled Lucia.
Madam Bowker was singularly patient with this evidence of sentimentalism. "That's fine and noble of you. But you didn't realize what a grave step you were taking, and you—"
"Yes, but I did. If ever anything was deliberate on a woman's part, that engagement was." A bright spot burned in each of the girl's cheeks. "He didn't really propose. I pretended to misunderstand him."
Her grandmother stared.
"You needn't look at me like that," exclaimed Margaret. "You know very well that Grandfather Bowker never would have married you if you hadn't fairly compelled him. I heard him tease you about it once when I was a little girl."
It was Madam Bowker's turn to redden. She deigned to smile. "Men are so foolish," observed she, "that women often have to guide them. There would be few marriages of the right sort if the men were not managed."
Margaret nodded assent. "I realize that now," said she. Earnestly: "Grandmother, try to make the best of this engagement of mine. When a woman, a woman as experienced and sensible as I am, makes up her mind a certain man is the man for her, is it wise to interfere?"
Madam Bowker, struck by the searching wisdom of this remark, was silenced for the moment. In the interval of thought she reflected that she would do well to take counsel of herself alone in proceeding to break this engagement. "You are on the verge of making a terrible misstep, child," said she with a gentleness she had rarely shown even to her favorite grandchild. "I shall think it over, and you will think it over. At least, promise me you will not see Craig for a few days."
Margaret hesitated. Her grandmother, partly by this unusual gentleness, partly by inducing the calmer reflection of the second thought, had shaken her purpose more than she would have believed possible. "If I've made a mistake," said she, "isn't seeing him the best way to realize it?"
"Yes," instantly and emphatically admitted the acute old lady. "See him, by all means. See as much of him as possible. And in a few days you will be laughing at yourself—and very much ashamed."
"I wonder," said Margaret aloud, but chiefly to herself.
And Madam Bowker, seeing the doubt in her face, only a faint reflection of the doubt that must be within, went away content.
Margaret made it an all but inflexible rule not to go out, but to rest and repair one evening in each week; that was the evening, under the rule, but she would have broken the rule had any opportunity offered. Of course, for the first time since the season began, no one sent or telephoned to ask her to fill in at the last moment. She half-expected Craig, though she knew he was to be busy; he neither came nor called up. She dined moodily with the family, sat surlily in a corner of the veranda until ten o'clock, hid herself in bed. She feared she would have a sleepless night. But she had eaten no dinner; and, as indigestion is about the only thing that will keep a healthy human being awake, she slept dreamlessly, soundly, not waking until Selina slowly and softly opened the inner blinds of her bedroom at eight the next morning.
There are people who are wholly indifferent about their surroundings, and lead the life dictated by civilized custom only because they are slaves of custom, Margaret was not one of these. She not only adopted all the comforts and luxuries that were current, she also spent much tune in thinking out new luxuries, new refinements upon those she already had. She was through, and through the luxurious idler; she made of idling a career—pursued it with intelligent purpose where others simply drifted, yawning when pastimes were not provided for them. She was as industrious and ingenious at her career as a Craig at furthering himself and his ideas in a public career.
Like the others of her class she left the care of her mind to chance. As she had a naturally good mind and a bird-like instinct for flitting everywhere, picking out the food from the chaff, she made an excellent showing even in the company of serious people. But that was accident. Her person was her real care. To her luxurious, sensuous nature every kind of pleasurable physical sensation made keen appeal, and she strove in every way to make it keener. She took the greatest care of her health, because health meant beauty and every nerve and organ in condition to enjoy to its uttermost capacity.
Because of this care it was often full three hours and half between the entrance of Selina and her own exit, dressed and ready for the day. And those three hours and a half were the happiest of her day usually, because they were full of those physical sensations in which she most delighted. Her first move, after Selina had awakened her, was to spend half an hour in "getting the yawns out." She had learned this interesting, pleasant and amusing trick from a baby in a house where she had once spent a week. She would extend herself at full length in the bed, and then slowly stretch each separate muscle of arm and leg, of foot and hand, of neck and shoulders and waist. This stretching process was accompanied by a series of prolonged, profound, luxurious yawns.
The yawning exercise completed, she rose and took before a long mirror a series of other exercises, some to strengthen her waist, others to keep her back straight and supple, others to make firm the contour of her face and throat. A half-hour of this, then came her bath. This was no hurried plunge, drying and away, but a long and elaborate function at which Selina assisted. There had to be water of three temperatures; a dozen different kinds of brushes, soaps, towels and other apparatus participated. When it was finished Margaret's skin glowed and shone, was soft and smooth and exhaled a delicious odor of lilacs. During the exercises Selina had been getting ready the clothes for the day—everything fresh throughout, and everything delicately redolent of the same essence of lilacs with which Selina had rubbed her from hair to tips of fingers and feet. The clothes were put on slowly, for Margaret delighted in the feeling of soft silks and laces being drawn over her skin. She let Selina do every possible bit of work, and gave herself up wholly to the joy of being cared for.
"There isn't any real reason why I shouldn't be doing this for you, instead of your doing it for me—is there, Selina?" mused she aloud.
"Goodness gracious, Miss Rita!" exclaimed Selina, horrified. "I wouldn't have it done for anything. I was brought up to be retiring about dressing. It was my mother's dying boast that no man, nor no woman, had ever seen her, a grown woman, except fully dressed."
"Really?" said Margaret absently. She stood up, surveyed herself in the triple mirror—back, front, sides. "So many women never look at themselves in the back," observed she, "or know how their skirts hang about the feet. I believe in dressing for all points of view."
"You certainly are just perfect," said the adoring Selina, not the least part of her admiring satisfaction due to the fact that the toilette was largely the creation of her own hands. "And you smell like a real lady—not noisy, like some that comes here. I hate to touch their wraps or to lay 'em down in the house. But you—It's one of them smells that you ain't sure whether you smelt it or dreamed it."
"Pretty good, Selina!" said Margaret. She could not but be pleased with such a compliment, one that could have been suggested only by the truth. "The hair went up well this morning, didn't it?"
"Lovely—especially in the back. It looks as if it had been marcelled, without that common, barbery stiffness-like."
"Yes, the back is good. And I like this blouse. I must wear it oftener."
"You can't afford to favor it too much, Miss Rita. You know you've got over thirty, all of them beauties."
"Some day, when I get time, we must look through my clothes. I want to give you a lot of them.... What DOES become of the time? Here it is, nearly eleven. See if breakfast has come up. I'll finish dressing afterward if it has."
It had. It was upon a small table in the rose and gold boudoir. And the sun, shining softly in at the creeper-shaded window, rejoiced in the surpassing brightness and cleanness of the dishes of silver and thinnest porcelain and cut glass. Margaret thought eating in bed a "filthy, foreign fad," and never indulged in it. She seated herself lazily, drank her coffee, and ate her roll and her egg slowly, deliberately, reading her letters and glancing at the paper. A charming picture she made—the soft, white Valenciennes of her matinee falling away from her throat and setting off the clean, smooth healthiness of her skin, the blackness of her vital hair; from the white lace of her petticoat's plaited flounces peered one of her slim feet, a satin slipper upon the end of it. At the top of the heap of letters lay one she would have recognized, she thought, had she never seen the handwriting before.
"Sure to be upsetting," reflected she; and she laid it aside, glancing now and then at the bold, nervous, irregular hand and speculating about the contents and about the writer.
She had gone to bed greatly disturbed in mind as to whether she was doing well to marry the obstreperous Westerner. "He fascinates me in a wild, weird sort of a way when I'm with him," she had said to herself before going to sleep, "and the idea of him is fascinating in certain moods. And it is a temptation to take hold of him and master and train him—like broncho-busting. But is it interesting enough for—for marriage? Wouldn't I get horribly tired? Wouldn't Grant and humdrum be better? less wearying?" And when she awakened she found her problem all but solved. "I'll send him packing and take Grant," she found herself saying, "unless some excellent reason for doing otherwise appears. Grandmother was right. Engaging myself to him was a mood." Once more she was all for luxury and ease and calmness, for the pleasant, soothing, cut-and-dried thing. "A cold bath or a rough rub-down now and then, once in a long while, is all very well. It makes one appreciate comfort and luxury more. But that sort of thing every day—many times each day—" Margaret felt her nerves rebelling as at the stroking of velvet the wrong way.