CHAPTER XIIIMOONLIGHT AND MISTAKES
The musicale was over. The first floor of the Standish house looked as though a devastating army had camped there. Caine, who had lingered for a goodnight word with Letty, glanced over the empty music room.
“I wonder,” he said, “if there is anything else on earth quite so vacant as the place a crowd of guests have just deserted. They always seem to have carried away with them whatever local atmosphere there was and to have left behind a vacuum of desolation.”
Letty did not answer. She was tired, nerve-worn, relaxed, after the evening’s strain. Characteristically, she was aware of a mild desire to make someone else uncomfortable. Someone who cared for her enough to be hurt. Caine suited her purpose to perfection. Hence the sheath of grieved silence that always brought him hastening to the anxious seat. The ruse prevailed now, as ever.
“You aren’t unhappy about anything, are you, dear?” he queried solicitously.
“Oh, no!” she replied, a throaty quaver in her voice.
“Ihaven’t done anything, have I?” came the second stereotyped question in love’s catechism.
“Oh,no!” she returned briefly with full feminine power of making the answer read, “Oh, yes!”
“Butwhat?” he begged.
“Oh, nothing!” with the rarified loftiness that precedes a plunge into the vale of tears, “Nothing! Nothing at all.”
Nor was it until he had rung all the traditional changes on the query and had worked himself into a state of pitiable humility that she would consent to burst forth into the flood-tide of her grievances.
“You made me so unhappy,” she wept. “It was all your fault.Whydid you do it? Howcouldyou?”
“Please—pleasetell me!” he urged. “I don’t understand. How?”
“That disgusting man! That brute you brought here!”
“Conover?Ididn’t bring him. Your father—”
“He is your friend, though,” she insisted, “And he frightened me and he behaved so abominably. And everybody laughed when he went to sleep. I could have died of mortification.”
“But why?” he reasoned. “Youweren’t responsible for him. If anyone had cause to feel mortified it was Miss Shevlin who sat beside him. Yet she—”
“Please don’t talk about her!” demanded Letty with a flash of watery dignity, “I have enough tobear without that. If she chose to sit up, looking unconcerned, and talking to him as if nothing had happened, and keeping the brute wide awake and interested all the rest of the evening—it was probably because she knew no better. I suppose her sort of people—”
And here the gods deprived Amzi Nicholas Caine of wisdom.
“She’s a little thoroughbred!” he interposed stoutly, “I never saw anything better done in my life than her treatment of that poor, sheepish, suddenly-awakened chap. It made one ashamed of having wanted to laugh. I—”
“If you are going to take other people’s part against me,” sniffed Letty, “you needn’t trouble to wait here any longer. Goodnight. I am very tired andverymiserable.”
Caine forthwith performed prodigies of self abasement that little by little wooed Letty back from tears to temper.
“Just the same!” she snapped. “Itwasyour fault. If it hadn’t been for you, I’m quite sure Father would never have invited him.”
“I never heard of your father’s sacrificing his own wishes to that extent for my sake,” said Caine, unwarily. “If he invited Conover out of compliment to me, he didn’t think it important enough to tell me so. Shall I thank him?”
“No, no!” cried Letty in alarm. “And,” with recovering self-control, “I never want to see thatman again as long as I live. I feel—strangled—when he is near me. As if he were trying to mastermeas he does his railroads and legislatures. He hypnotizes me, with his mud-colored eyes and that great lower jaw. I—Ihatehim. I’ll—I’ll never have to see him again,willI? Promise me!”
Punishment had given place to a demand for coddling. Caine rose ardently to the occasion. Yet she was not content.
“Promise me!” she reiterated, “Promise me he’ll never come here again.”
“He’ll have to pay a dinner call,” protested Caine. “Even Conover knows enough to do that, I’m afraid. If he doesn’t, Miss Shevlin will tell him.”
“I won’t be at home!” she declared, fearfully, “I—he can’tmakeme see him. I never want to see either of them again.Eitherof them. Promise me I needn’t. Promise me you’ll thrash him if he annoys me.”
She peered coyly up at him from between thin, soaked lashes; her nose quivering. But, for once, loverlike heroics were lacking. For, even as he started to voice the idle promise, a picture of Blacarda,—smashed and unrecognizable, screaming in agony of terror—flashed into Caine’s mind. And the pardonable boast stuck midway in his throat.
“I think you are getting tired of me,” sobbed Letty, accusingly. “If you are, don’t be afraid to say so. I can bear it. It’s only one thing more for me to bear.”
Mrs. Hawarden, at Desirée’s whispered plea, had offered Caleb a homeward lift in her carriage. The Fighter sat in heavy silence throughout the drive. When the carriage stopped at Desirée’s door, he helped her out and, with a grunt of goodnight to Mrs. Hawarden, followed the girl up the walk. Nor did he speak as he unlocked the door for her.
But Desirée was in no haste to say goodnight. A waning moon made the veranda bright. The air was still warm. She threw her cloak over a chair arm and seated herself in a porch rocker; Caleb standing dumbly before her. She leaned back comfortably in the deep chair, looking up with inscrutable eyes at his silhouette that bulked big in the moonlight. Of a sudden, she fell to laughing softly.
“Oh, you big baby!” she cried. “You’ve punished yourself all you’re going to. It’sallright. Now stop being unhappy! Stop!Smile!”
“You aren’t sore on me?” he asked in lingering doubt.
“Silly! Why should I be?”
“I—I made awful small of you, the way I acted,” he confessed.
“If I can stand it,youought to,” she retorted. “Now be friends and stop sulking.”
“You’re sure you ain’t mad,” he queried, still in doubt.
“Mad? Not one smidgin!—I—”
“Oh, Dey,” he interrupted, all contrition. “It wasrottenof me! To think of my snorin’ out loud an’makin’ everybody rubber at you while they gave me the laugh! An’ you never batted an eye! You sat there lookin’ so friendly an’ cool, an’ talkin’ to me like nothin’ had happened! I could a’ knelt down and kissed both your feet, I kep’ a’ thinkin’ all evenin’ that you’d most likely take it out on me when we was alone. It’d a’ been only hooman nature if you had. That’s why I came here now. To take my medicine. An’ you ain’t even disgusted with me. Youain’tare you?” he added in hasty need for reassurance.
“Would you have been ‘disgusted’ withme,” she asked, “if it had been I instead of you that—?”
“You know blame well I wouldn’t!” he declared, “An’ I’d a’licked ev’ry man in the place that dared to laugh or look sneerin’. I’d a’—”
“That’s just what I wanted to do,” said Desirée. “If I was cross inside, it wasn’t atyou, dear boy.”
“I’ll win out on ’em yet,” growled Conover. “I made a mistake. An’ I’m ashamed of it. The only feller who’s never ashamed of his mistakes is a loonatic. And I ain’t a loonatic, by a long shot. I’m ashamed. But I’ll win.”
“Listen to me!” she demanded, “If there was a big, lovable, splendid child you knew and he insisted on going to play with children who hadn’t the sense to see how fine he was and what good company he could be, it wouldn’t make you angry athim, would it, if he got laughed at for not understanding their stiff, set ways? Of course not. But when he’dhadhis lesson and had burned his poor stubby fingers,wouldn’t it make you just the least little bit impatient if he began right away to plan to try his luck with those same horrid children again? Wouldn’t you be tempted to spank him or—?”
“You’re dead right, little girl,” he admitted, “An’ you’re a lot cleverer than I am. I—”
“Then youwillgive it up?” she urged.
“I can’t, Dey! Honest, I can’t. I couldn’t look myself in the face again if I let those gold-shirters beat me out. You see how it is, don’t you? I’m in towin. If I ever was to give up a fight, I could never win another. It’d take the ‘win’ out of me, for keeps.Pleasedon’t make me do it, Dey!”
“All right!” she sighed, in comic despair, “It’s only for your own sake and because I care for you.”
“If it’s goin’ to make you unhappy or ashamed of me, I’ll give it up,” he said with slow resignation.
“No,” she forbade. “You needn’t feel that way about it. It doesn’t make me unhappy, except on your account. And I couldn’t be ‘ashamed’ of you if I tried all day. You know I couldn’t.”
“You’re the dandiest, littlest, prettiest girl there is!” he said gratefully, “An’ those big eyes of yours kind of make me feel like I was in church. Now I’ll chase home an’ give you a chance to do some sleepin’. Say—” as he started to go, “What do you think of Miss Standish?”
“Why,” she answered, perplexed, “I never thought much about her. She’s very nice;—and pretty, too; isn’t she?”
“Looks a little like a rabbit, don’t she?” he ventured.
The girl’s quick laugh flashed out and she clasped her hands together.
“Beautiful!” she cried. “How did youeverthink of it?”
“Struck me the first time I saw her,” he replied, flattered, “I told her about it to-night at dinner.”
“Caleb! Youdidn’t!”
“Honest, I did!” he reiterated. “I—”
“Whatdidshe say?”
“Oh, she didn’t seem to mind. Got sort o’ red, an’ grinned. I guess she liked it. Her’n me didn’t get on so bad together, takin’ all into account. I guess we’ll pull together first rate when we’re better acquainted.”
“You seem pretty certain of being ‘better acquainted’”, she mocked; albeit there was a little tug at her heart.
“I am,” he answered, coolly, “The fact is, Dey, I’m thinkin’ of makin’ it a case of marry.”
For a moment she did not answer. The footfalls of a pedestrian sounded rhythmically distinct in the silence that fell between the man and the girl. Then Desirée observed, with a slight restraint that sat strangely upon her:—
“I don’t think that is a very nice joke.”
“’Tisn’t a joke at all,” Caleb assured her, “I mean it. I’d a’ talked it over with you before, only the idee never came clear to me till to-night. Here’s how it is—”
“You—you care for her?” asked Desirée very quietly. Caleb, full as he was of his own aspirations, noticed how dull and lifeless her voice had all at once grown.
“You’re tired out!” he cried, all remorse, “Here I keep you up, listenin’ to my fool talk when you ought to be sound asleep! Nice sort of guardian I am! I’m goin’—”
“No. Wait!” she ordered, with a pitiful shadow of her wonted dainty imperiousness, “I’m not tired. Tell me. Are you in love with her?”
“In love with her?” scoffed Caleb. “With that little rabbit-faced bunch of silliness? Not me! But she comes of about the biggest fam’ly here. She’s pop’lar ev’rywhere. If I was to marry her, I’d get with the best crowd in Granite. My place’d be as sure as yours’ll be when you marry that gold-shirt chap—whoever he turns out to be—that we was talkin’ about the other day. I was speakin’ of the idee to Caine, only to-night, an’ he says—”
“Oh!”
The furious monosyllable snapped through his rambling talk like a pistol shot. Caleb paused in amaze. The girl had risen. Her tiny fists were clinched, her face was hard as a statue’s. The moonlight gave back cold fire from her great eyes.
“How dare you?” she panted, “Howdareyou! You speak of marrying Letty Standish as you would speak of buying a horse! You even talk it over with the man she has promised to marry! But I supposeyou chuckled to yourself over your barroom cunning in getting an opinion from him without letting him know it washissweetheart you planned to steal. You sneer at her as a ‘rabbit-faced little bunch of silliness’ and yet you speak in the same breath of making her your wife. Do you realize you are not only insulting her by such a thought, but you are insultingmeby speaking so in my presence?”
“Dey!” gasped the bewildered man, “You must be crazy, child! I never saw you like—”
“Be still!” she commanded, her silver voice ringing harsh, “I forbid you to speak to me, now or any time. A man who can plan what you are planning, and who can boast of it, isn’t fit to speak toany woman. You went to that house as a guest—and you asked mens’ opinions in the smoking room—”
“It was the dressin’ room, Dey,” he pleaded, “An’ it was only me an’ Caine—”
“You ask mens’ opinion,” blazed on Desirée, unheeding, “as to whether you are likely to gain anything in a social way by wrecking an innocent girl’s life. You sit by her at dinner—at her own father’s table—and plan in smug complacency how to separate her from a man she really loves,—and to compel her to marryyou. Why, you aren’t fit to marry her chambermaid. There isn’t a groom in her stable that hasn’t higher, holier ideals. Nowgo! This is the last time I want to see you as long as I live!”
A swirl of soft skirts, the sharp slam of a door,and Caleb Conover, aghast, wordless with dismay stood alone on the little moon-lit porch.
For a full minute he stood there, dumbfounded. Then, from somewhere in the darkness beyond the closed door, came faintly the sound of sobbing. Rending, heartbroken sobs that brought a lump to his own throat.
“Dey!” he called, frantically miserable, “Dey!”
He tried the locked door, and rapped as loudly as he dared upon its panels. The sobbing died away. For an hour Conover waited; alternately whispering the girl’s name and tapping appealingly for admittance. But the house remained silent. At length with a despairing growl he turned away.
“Now what in blazes could a’ made her act like that?” he pondered, half-aloud. “Gee, but I’d rather be horsewhipped than make that kid cry! An’ I s’pose,” he went on as he passed out of the gate, “I s’pose ’bout this time Letty Standish an’ Caine are sayin’ goodnight, all slushly like, an’ grinnin’ at each other, like a couple of measly love-birds.”
He looked back once more at the dark house; sighed noisily, and started homeward. A passing policeman recognized him; and, in deference to the Fighter’s fast-growing political power, so far unbent as to say:
“Good evenin’, Mr. Conover. Fine night, ain’t it? Are—?”
“Oh, go to hell!” snarled Caleb.