This was like a too abrupt ending to a fairy tale. But, after all, it was only the end of a chapter. On the fourth night a long blue-and-silver box lay across two chairs in the dressing-room. It looked like a box from a smart dressmaker, though no dressmaker's name was visible. "Has Mademoiselle ordered anything?" Céline inquired, as she untied the ribbon-fastenings.
No, Mademoiselle had ordered nothing that day—at least nothing for the theatre. She gave a little gasp as the Frenchwoman removed the box cover and a layer of silver-stencilled blue tissue paper. Underneath filmed a pale blue cloud which Marise snatched up and pronounced to be a "boudoir gown." It was made from a material which fashion names mousseline de soie one year and something else another. It was the blue of bluebells, banded with swansdown and embroidered with silver thistles. Altogether, it might have been created expressly for Miss Sorel by an admiring genius.
"From Herté!" exclaimed Mums.
But Marise knew better, and would pit her own "instinct" against her mother's any day. "No, from Him," she pronounced. "If this goes on much longer without my finding out who He is, I shall simply perish."
And it did go on: not night after night, but stopping, and beginning again just as she thought the giver's invention exhausted or his pockets empty. It went on for ten days, until Marise had received, in addition to the three first gifts, an ancient Italian mirror in a carved silver frame; an exquisite wax doll, modelled and dressed to represent herself as "Dolores" in the third act of "The Spring Song," and an old Sèvres box filled with crystallised violets—evidentlyhisfavoured flower.
"He must be rich, or else he's poor, and so in love that he's absolutely beggaring himself for you," said Mrs. Sorel.
Marise volunteered no opinion. But secretly she preferred the second hypothesis. She was used to rich men; but no girl is ever really used to Romance. The mystery thrilled and delighted her, and bored Severance to distraction. He realised that, if he said to the girl what he had to say while this spell was upon her, she might let him go with hardly a pang, instead of clinging to him at almost any price. So he did not say it. He waited, and sent several cables to his mother's half-brother, Constantine Ionides, one of the richest bankers in Europe. In the first of these telegrams he stated that he had influenza, and might not be allowed to travel for several weeks, but, as soon as he could, he would return to London. This, because he had come to a certain understanding with his half-uncle before undertaking the American "mission," and because Mr. Ionides unluckily knew that the unimportant mission was now wound up.
At the end of ten days the girl decided upon a desperate step, for she felt that "Dolores" as well as Marise Sorel was beginning to suffer from curiosity deferred. She forgot to take a cue on the night of the doll; and at home, after she had been in bed an hour, she suddenly sat up and switched on the light. On a table within reach of her hand were paper and envelopes, and a gold fountain-pen given her by Severance. Quickly she wrote out a paragraph which she had composed in the sleepless hours; and without a word to Mums (sure to disapprove) she gave it very early next morning to Céline with instructions.
That evening, in some of the New York papers, and the following day in all those which had "personal" columns, her paragraph appeared. "Dolores thanks the anonymous friend who has sent her six charming gifts in ten days, and begs that he or she will make an appointment to call at her hotel as soon as possible, in order that Dolores may express her pleasure and gratitude by word of mouth."
When Marise read this appeal in print her heart beat in her throat, and she was dreadfully afraid that her mother or Severance might happen to glance down that column. But she was even more afraid that the person to whom it was addressed might not.
"Oh, by the way, Miss Marks," said Marise, "you needn't trouble to read my letters this morning. I—er—slept badly, and I'm up at such an unearthly hour, I might as well go through them myself."
She spoke from the doorway between her bedroom and the salon, where Miss Marks, her secretary, was taking off gloves and hat before getting to work; and she had on the boudoir gown of mousseline de soie and swansdown sent by the Great Unknown a week ago. This was the first time she had worn it, and Miss Marks's eyes sent forth a flash which might mean admiration or jealousy, or both. Marise diagnosed the emotion as jealousy. If she were right, she was sorry for the girl, who, though handsome, could not compare with her, and who, though very intelligent, was only a stenographer, at about twenty-five: two years older than she, who was already a brilliant star!
This thought was but a flash, brief as the flash in the secretary's eyes, for instantly the mind of Marise turned to the letters. Thank goodness she was in time! Another three minutes, and she might have been too late. Miss Marks would by then have begun her first task of the day: opening letters and sorting them, placing requests for autographs and photos in one pile, pleas for money in a second, demands for advice or help about going on the stage in a third, and so on. Who could tell if the one envelope whose contents no eye but Marise Sorel's should see mightn't lie at the very top?
As a matter of fact, it did not lie at the top. It was nearer the bottom, and long before she found it Marise had begun to fear that it didn't exist.
The trying part was that the envelopes told her nothing. She had to cut or tear open each one, unless she recognised the handwriting of the address, and could then throw it aside till later. She went through the business curled up on a sofa, sitting on one foot, which showed among snowdrifts of swansdown. It was a stockingless foot, thrust into a silvermulelined with blue velvet; and her skin was satin smooth and creamy pink as the inside of a conch shell. Miss Marks noticed this, and noticed also how long and thick was the plait of yellow-brown hair that dangled over the sofa-back, its curling end within a few inches of the floor. She smiled faintly as she saw how fast her employer worked, and how she tossed the letters aside after a fevered glance at each. Marise was quite right. Miss Marks was very intelligent! She knew, almost as well as if she had been told the whole story, just why Miss Sorel had got up at so "unearthly an hour" this morning.
"Ah, now she's found the one she didn't want me to see!" the dark girl said to herself, as the face of Marise turned suddenly pink, and bent over a letter which she read through twice from beginning to end. Then, lest she should be caught staring, Miss Marks began to arrange her newly-sharpened pencils and the writing-pad on which she would take down, in shorthand, letters dictated by Miss Sorel.
She need not, however, have troubled herself with these elaborate precautions. Miss Sorel was interested in and puzzled by this handsome young Jewess with the burning eyes and wet-coral lips; but for the moment Miss Marks's very existence was forgotten.
The letter had come, as Marise hoped it might, on this the second day of her advertisement; but the mystery remained unsolved. Indeed, it was purposely kept up, for the thick parchment paper had neither initial nor address. The few words on the first page were unsigned, and only one secret was given away: but to Marise this was of great importance. The strong, black handwriting was certainly that of a man. She would have turned sick with chagrin at sight of a woman's penmanship.
"It is I who have to thank you, not you me," she read. "You are very kind to invite me to call, and say I must come soon. I will take you at your word. Unless I hear to the contrary through a second 'personal' in theNew York Record, I will ask for you at the Plaza Hotel at three o'clock next Sunday afternoon."
"It is I who have to thank you, not you me," she read. "You are very kind to invite me to call, and say I must come soon. I will take you at your word. Unless I hear to the contrary through a second 'personal' in theNew York Record, I will ask for you at the Plaza Hotel at three o'clock next Sunday afternoon."
This was all, and Marise hardly knew whether to be pleased or disappointed with the brief simplicity of her anonymous admirer. He, whose original ideas in presents had made her imagine him the most modern and mundane of men, expressed himself on paper rather like a shy, old-fashioned schoolboy. A dampening doubt oozed into the girl's mind. What if he hadn't picked out those wonderful things himself? What if he had got some woman to choose them? But even a doubt—a piercing, new doubt—had its fascination. And after Sunday it would be gone for ever. She would know the worst—or best—of her Mystery Man.
On Sunday afternoons she and her mother were "at home" to their friends, from four to six; He proposed coming at three, however, and he was sure to be prompt to the moment. That ought to give an hour before extraneous people began to pour in. But—what about Mums? Marise concentrated her mind upon that pressing problem.
Mums was as curious as she concerning the unknown. But Mums, though an absolute trump and a darling, was the most conventional woman on earth. Just because she and Marise were not born to the high sphere they now adorned, Mums was determined that neither should be guilty of the smallest act unworthy of—at least—a countess. Naturally, as Mums herself would admit, if you were already a countess, you could perhaps afford to do what you pleased: and to judge from "smart society" columns many countesses availed themselves to the full of their prerogatives. Marise might soon be a countess; and if so, Mums would cease to dictate from the rules of an etiquette book; but until that day those keen brown eyes needed no lorgnettes to watch a daughter's doings.
After a few minutes' reflection, the girl decided that she would not confess to Mums what she had done. It would mean a scolding as a first instalment, and a serial continued day by day of gentle, motherly nagging. Marise loved her parent, but she hated to be nagged. No. Mums must somehow be whisked out of the way before three o'clock next Sunday, and kept out of it long enough for an understanding to be reached with Him.
Of course, Marise said to herself, she wouldn't tell a fib. She would just explain frankly (she could see how she would look, her eyes very blue and big, being frank with Him!) that she hadn't dared tell anyone, even her mother, about the advertisement. And she would beg him to "help her out" when she—er—made it seem as if he'd merely written to say he would call unless he heard to the contrary. By that time she would know his name, so the thing could be managed easily, and Mums never suspect to what lengths she had gone. As for Severance, the coast would be clear of him on Sunday till long after three. Dunstan Belloc was giving a "stag" luncheon that day, at one-thirty, and she had persuaded Tony against his will to accept. But Mums? How dispose of her? Suddenly a bright idea swam to the rescue.
Marise slipped the Unknown's letter into a pocket disguised as a bunch of silver thistles. Then, with large, innocent eyes, she turned to her secretary, "Oh, Miss Marks!" she exclaimed. And being an actress, it occurred to her that the young woman addressed was surprisingly absorbed in removing lead-pencil dust from her manicured fingers. If she—Marise—had been secretly studying Miss Marks's profile or back hair, she would have been equally absent-minded if addressed! She wondered for the fiftieth time whether it was a coincidence that Miss Marks had called on the manager of the Plaza the very day after the Sorels had asked him to find a private secretary.
At first, when Marise saw how handsome the girl was, and heard that she'd "hoped Miss Sorel might want someone," the wary young actress feared that Miss Marks wished to go on the stage. But now the stenographer had been coming to the Plaza each morning for a week, and had not thrown out such a hint. She was, indeed, entirely business-like, and possessed of good references. Still, the fact remained that she had never before applied to the manager of this hotel; and her appearance had been apropos as that of the sacrificial sheep caught in the bushes. Besides, Marise had often observed that odd, appreciative flame in the black eyes, as if Miss Marks were more interested than a secretary need be in her employer.
"Yes, Miss Sorel?" the dark girl responded. "Would you like me to take dictation?"
"Not yet, thanks," said Marise. "I haven't had my bath or breakfast, and I'm hungry. But I've thought of something. Mother and I were so excited about that Polish boy-dressmaker genius you were talking of yesterday. He sounds wonderful; and, as he's only beginning, I suppose he's not choked with orders. He might do some work for me in a hurry?"
"I think he'd sit up at night and go without meals by day to work for you," replied Miss Marks. "It would be such an advertisement. And he loves working for pretty people."
"Well, I love helping geniuses." Marise modestly accepted the compliment. "Didn't you say his flat is on your floor?"
Miss Marks answered that this was the case. Valinski would move to a fashionable neighbourhood some day. At present his talent budded in 85th Street.
"I wish I could go to him myself," sighed Marise. "I can't now, for I'm so hard-worked and tired. But I thought mother might take a taxi after lunch next Sunday and choose a design for a tea-gown—his specialty, you said. Would he see her on Sunday—about a quarter to three, so she could get back for her friends?"
Miss Marks was certain of Valinski's consent. She would come for Mrs. Sorel, if that would suit, and take her to the dressmaker. Marise thought it would suit: and Mums, arriving at that moment dressed for the day, an appointment was made.
The life of Marise Sorel was so full, the pattern of each day so gaily embroidered with emotions and incidents, that she was surprised at her own excitement. She did not, however, try to quench it. She loved to feel that, in spite of the adulation she received, one side of her nature was as fresh, as unspoiled, as a child's. And she was as guiltily pleased as a child when, at twenty minutes before three on Sunday afternoon, her mother went down to a waiting taxi with Zélie Marks. Patronising the Pole and choosing a design would eat up an hour, Marise had calculated.
She had put on a white dress of the simplicity whose price is beyond rubies. Her hair was in a great gleaming knot of gold at the nape of her neck. She looked about sixteen, and felt it. When the bell of the telephone rang at three minutes before three, she thrilled all over.
"A gentleman asking for Mademoiselle. He says he has an appointment," announced Céline at the 'phone.
"Any name?" Marise inquired.
Céline put her lips to the instrument, the receiver to her ear. "The gentleman has given no name, because he is expected. But if Mademoiselle wishes that I insist——?"
"No. Tell them he's to come up at once. And, Céline, be ready to open the door of the suite."
The Frenchwoman went out noiselessly: Marise rushed to the long mirror, in front of which tall, scented roses were banked. Her cheeks were very pink. She was like a rose herself. But hastily she rubbed her little nose with powder from a vanity box. The gold case was only just snapped shut, and Marise seated with a book, when she heard a sound in the vestibule. He had come!
Marise raised her eyes from an uncut volume of poems, and looked into the face of—Samson.
The shock of disillusion was so cruel that the girl felt faint. She was giddy, as if she had stooped too long over a hot fire and risen abruptly.
So this—this—was her Man of Mystery, he who had held in unseen hands more than half her thoughts for a delicious fortnight! She had deigned to advertise in a newspaper for the pleasure of meeting this lout, spurned by his smart regiment, despite his Victoria Cross: this cad, whose notion of revenge was to explode as a bomb a bottle of ginger-beer!
The warm glow of anticipation was chilled to ice. The hands that tightened on the book went suddenly cold. Marise did not know what to do. She wavered between an impulse to be rude and the dutiful decency of a hostess. Meanwhile, forgetting to act, she stared at the tall figure as if at an approaching executioner. No one but a blind man or a fool could have failed to see in those beautiful eyes the blankness of disappointment.
John Garth was neither blind nor a fool, and that look of hers was a sharp-edged axe which "hit him where he lived," as his bruised mind vaguely put it.
He too had been like a child. Ever since the day of landing in New York he had planned and existed only for this moment. He had coached himself for it, dressed himself for it, spent his money like water for it. And this was his reward. The sight of him was a blow over the heart for his queen of romance. It blanched her cheeks. It made her physically sick.
Céline had softly shut the door behind the guest, but involuntarily he backed against it. If he had been a few years younger he would have turned like a country boy and rushed away without a word. But there are some things a man can't do; and others he must do. Garth had to say something—the sooner the better.
What he said—or what said itself lamely—was: "You didn't expect to see me?"
"No. I—didn't," Marise as lamely agreed.
"Do you want me to go?" he blundered. "If you do, I will."
"No—no," she breathed a lukewarm protest. "Don't go—please. I—I'm only a little surprised. I remember—seeing you on the ship, of course. And I didn't think——"
"You didn't think I'd force myself on you—by false pretences."
"I was going to say, I didn't think of seeing anyone to-day—whom I'd ever seen before." The ice of her shocked resentment melted slightly in the reflected fire of his pain. "That's all! Do—sit down, won't you? I'm so grateful. I want to tell you how much—how much I thank you for those beautiful things."
As she spoke, the girl's face flushed again. After all, the man had done nothing so monstrous. He couldn't be blamed, perhaps, for not realising that merely by being himself—by being a bounder whom his brother officers rejected—he had broken the charm of the mystery. He couldn't know how undesirable he would seem to a girl of her sort. And the way he had dressed himself up like a provincial actor playing a duke, to make his call, was pathetic! Besides, there was the money he'd spent on her—hundreds and hundreds of dollars which he couldn't afford. Oh, she was glad that she hadn't followed her first fierce impulse, and been rude!
Garth had not accepted the invitation to sit down. He remained standing upright as a stick, and stolid as a stone, against the door. Evidently he stuck to his resolve to take himself away, and was delayed only by the mental puzzle of how best to do it. With a repentant throe the girl sprang up, light and lithe from among her cushions, holding out her hands.
"I do thank you!" she exclaimed. "And Iwantyou to sit down."
Her look, her gesture, overcame him. He took a step forward, seized the offered hands, and almost crushed them in his. Marise was rather frightened, rather touched, but not too much moved to notice that he didn't know enough about behaviour to take off his gloves—his brutally new, gamboge-coloured gloves! Or else he was absent minded!
Partly because her one ring was pressing into her finger, partly because she wished for instant release, she gave a little squeak of pain. "Oh, my ring!"
Red blood poured up to the man's brown face. The pressure relaxed, but he did not let her hands go. He lifted them to his lips and kissed first one, then the other. His mouth was hot as a coal just dropped from the fire!... That was her quick impression. She was not shocked, for her hands had been kissed a hundred times by sad, mad men—though not men like this. She said "Oh!" however, and gazed at him reproachfully, as "Dolores" gazed at the villain in "The Song."
The effect upon Garth was the same as if she had been sincerely offended. He let her hands fall, and stammered "Forgive me!"
Marise was beginning to enjoy herself a little, on the whole.
Of course the man was common and rough. What was it that Tony had called his despised brother officer? A "temporary gentleman!" Yes, that was it! And a "momentary gentleman" would be even more appropriate, she thought, because at an instant of deep emotion all decent men were raised to the heights of Nature's gentility. This fellow was as fine as any nobleman, for these few seconds of time, she realised, and it was worship of her which added the new decoration to his V.C.! Despite her disappointment, she felt that romance was not utterly lacking in the situation.
"There's nothing to forgive," were the obvious words her lips spoke: but the language of such eyes as hers could never be obvious. The soul of John Garth drowned in their blue depths. As dying men lose all care for conventions, so did he lose it while thus he drowned.
"I love you—I love you!" he faltered. "You know, don't you? From the first—from the first look!"
"Oh no, I don't know that," Marise soothed him. "But you've been so kind. Those wonderful presents! You ought not——"
"Thinking of them—sending them—has been the big joy of my life," he broke in. "I've been—drunk with it. I've never felt anything like this before. Why, I'd die for you; I'd sell my soul. Even that's nothing!"
"They're very great things," she assured him gravely, as she had assured other men of different types who had flung themselves on her altar as burnt-offerings. "Any woman would feel the same. But——"
"I don't care a hang what any other woman would feel. All I care for on God's earth is you—you. Couldn't you think of me—couldn't you, if I tried to make something of myself——?"
Marise laughed a charming laugh. "Isn't it making something of yourself, to have won the Victoria Cross?" she challenged.
"Oh, that! That was an accident. I just got so mad I forgot to be scared for a minute or two, and went for a few Germans——"
"The newspapers compared you to Horatio keeping the bridge against an army."
"George! You remember that?"
"Women don't forget such things." (She would have forgotten if that clipping from theDaily Mailhadn't associated itself with Tony's onslaught upon the regimental hero. But she wasn't called upon to mention this.) "It was long before I saw you, that I read what you had done, and fixed your name in my mind," she went on. "Now I have my own special memories of you. I shall keep your gifts always. And I shall be prouder of them than ever, because they came from a hero——"
"You're breaking it to me that there's no hope," he cut in. The blood was gone from his face now. "Nothing I could do, or try to be, would make you like me well enough——"
"Oh, you are too impulsive!" she checked him. "You've seen me only twice——"
"I've seen you every night since we landed, and twice a week in the afternoon."
"What, you've come to the theatre for every performance, even matinées, just to—to——?"
"Hear your voice and see your face. And hate that damned actor-chap who kisses you in the third act."
"He doesn't really kiss me," Marise hurried to explain. "He only seems to."
"God! He must be a stone image!"
"He is a gentleman," amended Marise. "Actors who are gentlemen don't kiss the actresses who play opposite parts, unless—unless it's absolutely necessary."
"Then if I played a part with you on the stage, I couldn't be a gentleman," Garth exploded. But even as he spoke he blushed darkly. "You don't think I am oneoffthe stage," he added. "And you're right. I'm not what your friend Lord Severance calls a gentleman. I know what he does call me, and I am that, I guess, anyhow when he's within gunshot. He brings out all that's worst in me. There's a lot of it—so much, that if that thing on shipboard was to do over again, I'd do it without a qualm. I suppose there's where the 'cad' element he talks about in me shows up. If he was here now——"
"Ze Earl of Severance, Mademoiselle," announced Céline.
Whether Garth had meant to boast or belittle himself Marise would never know. Nor did she care. All her faculties concentrated upon how to account to Severance for the man. It was a suffocating moment. She feared a scene between the two. The situation called for a stroke of genius. Was she equal to it? She must be, for Garth's sake and for her own, even more than for Tony's, and what he would think.
Severance came in. Suddenly Marise felt as she had felt on the stage when something went wrong with the play. She had often had to save situations by sheer, quick mother wit. Never had she failed her fellow actors in a crisis. She ought to be ready for this!
Her nerves ceased to jump. She was calm and confident. As Severance's darkening gaze fell on Garth, she heard herself glibly explaining the latter, as if to an audience.
"Major Garth is a friend of Miss Marks, my secretary. She has gone out for a few minutes with mother, but he is waiting for her. She'll soon be back."
Speaking, she smiled at the V.C., and her eyes pleaded excuses for the fib. "It's only a white one," they said. "And it saves our secret. I know you'd hate me to tell him you'd sent the presents, and I never, never will. That is sacred, between us two. So is all the rest. And I'm trying to straighten things out for us both."
Garth appeared to be astonished, but not shocked. His silk hat (a size too small) lay on a table in a pool of water from an upset vase, he having flung it there to free his hands for hers. Now he made a move to retrieve his damaged property, but a second thought gave him pause. Marise read his mind as if it worked under glass. Her fib about Miss Marks had doomed him to the part of Casabianca, while the ship of his pride burned.
The "lion-look" she had seen in the man's eyes that day at sea was in them again. Poor brute at bay, caged with Severance! The girl pitied him. But things must take their course. Luckily for the success of her lie, Miss Marks was not returning with Mums. She—Marise—need only say, when the latter arrived alone, what a pity it was! Thus Samson would automatically obtain his release.
The men nodded to one another, as polite enemies must sullenly do in a woman's drawing-room. Then Severance turned to Miss Sorel with the air of sponging Garth's mean existence off the earthly slate. "I'm early," he explained, "because the hotel people sent me a cable to Belloc's place. I told them to do so, if one came. My Uncle Constantine Ionides is ill, and I'm afraid I shall have to go back by the first ship I can catch. I hoped to be in time for a few words with you before your friends began to drop in."
This was hard on the intruder, forced against his will to turn a "company" into a "crowd," and Marise's kind heart might have resented the slap if her mind had been free. But it was instantly preoccupied with Tony's news. He was going home! He wanted to talk with her alone. This could mean only one thing. She supposed that he wished her to understand as much; and either he took Garth for a dunce or intended him to understand it too. It was as if he said to the bounder: "You're welcome to what you can find in your own class: Miss Marks and her set. But eyes down and hands off this girl. She's mine."
The hint was too broad, the position too humiliating, for Garth's temper to bear in patience. Like the caged brute in Marise's simile, he searched the bars for some way of breaking through. But he could not leave her in the lurch. Practically, she'd ordered him to "stand by," and he'd have to do it, unless some look of hers gave him leave to bolt. The look did not come, however, and he could not guess that the girl was merely too absent-minded to give it. She had suddenly become as self-absorbed as a hermit-crab when he pulls every filament of himself inside his ample shell. As Miss Sorel questioned Severance about the telegram, Garth was left to his own resources. He felt gigantic in the small, pretty salon, where Chinese jars and ribboned pots of flowers left hardly room for a clumsy fellow like him to turn among frail chairs and tables. He knew that Severance knew how he writhed in spirit, and that Severance knew he knew. How much worse was this ordeal than a petty barrage of ginger-beer! Severance was scoring heavily now. Garth thought in dumb rage that he would give a year of life for some way to pay him back. And the girl, too! He loved her with a burning love, but at this moment the difference between love and hate was as imperceptible as that between the touch of ice and a red-hot poker. She was being very cruel. Garth felt capable of punishing her—with Severance—if he could.
He took his hat from the table, and rubbing the wet silk with his glove, stained the yellow kid. Incidentally he made the hat worse. He wandered to a window looking over the park, and longed to jump out. In his awkward misery, the man's raw sensitiveness suffered to exaggeration. Staring jealously at the crowd below—walking, driving, spinning past in autos—he knew the emotions of one penned at the top of a house on fire, gazing down at the safe, comfortable people free to pursue their daily business of life, and love, and work. Behind him, Marise and her friend jabbered (that was the word in his head, even for her sweet voice) as if he were invisible. Desperation seized him. He turned, and down went a stand with a statuette and the Sèvres box the "Unknown" had sent Miss Sorel. It was poetic justice thathisgift should be the thing smashed!
Marise said "Oh!" Severance said nothing. He stood still, fingering his miniature moustache with the air of a man who expects a lackey to repair damage. Garth saw red; and if he had picked up a piece of the broken box it would have been to hurl it at the dark, sneering face. But Heaven sometimes tempers the wind to shorn lions as well as lambs: and if Providence did not order the entrance of two women at that instant, who did?
It was Mrs. Sorel who appeared and (Marise gasped) Miss Zélie Marks. Out of her shell in self-defence, the actress would have rushed to save this scene, as she had saved the last—somehow, anyhow! But to her bewilderment Garth took one great stride towards Miss Marks and snatched her hand as drowning men are said to snatch at straws. "How do you do?" he exclaimed eagerly.
"Miss Marks and Major Garth are friends," Marise rattled off to her mother. And to herself she added, "How smart of him to guess who she was! Or—did he know?"
The secretary's cheeks were stained carnation, and she was handsomer in an instant than Marise had thought she could be in a year. Her black eyes were twinkling. Did she guess that she was a pawn in a game, and had she so keen a sense of humour as to laugh? Marise was more interested than ever in this young woman: and Mrs. Sorel, not knowing the plot of the play, was yet warned by her famous "instinct" that something queer, something dangerous, was in the air.
She was a woman who prided herself on presence of mind. Marise hadn't expected her secretary to return, therefore it seemed unlikely she would have encouraged the Bounder to wait for Miss Marks. And as for that, why was the Bounder here? Being here, the further he could be kept from Marise and Severance the better. She herself had no time to weave spells for him. Miss Marks must do that, and take him away with her when she went. Without appearing to pause after Marise's announcement, Mary Sorel smiled at Miss Marks. "Talk to Major Garth, my dear," she patronised, "while I explain to my daughter why we tore back in such a rush."
Zélie Marks took the lady at her word, and drew her "friend" apart. By the remotest window the two halted, standing confidentially close, the girl looking up at the man, the man looking down at the girl. As the conversation was now only of Valinski's dress designs, not Severance's plans, Marise had a sub-eyelash glance or so to spare for the couple. Well, certainly Samson was a creditable actor, or else....
"They were all so lovely I dared not choose," Mums was expatiating. "I said to Miss Marks, 'Suppose we run back in the taxi and let my daughter select? Or, she may want to order more than one of the gowns.' So I slipped the designs back into the portfolio Mr. Valinski had taken them from, and asked permission to borrow the lot. Lord Severance must tell us which he prefers. He's such a good judge! And Miss Marks can carry back the portfolio, with a note from me to Valinski, when she goes."
The three heads—Tony's glossy black, Marise Sorel's glittering gold, her mother's a rich, expensive brown—bent together above a trio of water-colour sketches. Under cover of selection Severance whispered: "I have some bad news. Marise knows it. But I've got to have a talk with you both before I leave this room. I can't bear suspense. For heaven's sake get rid of people as early as you can."
"Must talk to them both.... Couldn't bear suspense!" The woman agreed with the girl in thinking there was but one interpretation for this!
"I'll do my best," murmured Mrs. Sorel, and resolved to begin the good work by bustling Miss Marks and Major Garth off the moment the tea-gown business was finished. In the midst, however, Mrs. Dunstan Belloc breezed in with her pretty sister and Belloc's millionaire backer. Mary Sorel moved to meet them with the manner she had copied from Tony's great-aunt, the Duchess of Crownderby. So doing, she slipped Valinski's portfolio into her daughter's hands with an unduchess-like, "Hurry up and choose, and have done with it!"
Somehow, Marise had not the proper new-dress thrill this afternoon. She languidly decided on a classic design which Severance liked, and Valinski had named "Galatea."
"Put the others back in the portfolio, please, Tony," she said. "I must go and help Mums"—but the microbe of accidents was running amok in the Sorels' salon. Tony dropped the book, and the Pole's designs fluttered about the room. Everybody squealed and began picking up papers. One had fallen on the remains of the Sèvres box, as if to hide the wreckage. Garth was nearest the scene of his own disaster. He stooped. Marise seized the chance for a word with him. She stooped also. Each grasped the sketch, which came face uppermost; and under their eyes was the design for the blue and silver gown sent by the Unknown.
Zoyo Valinski had made that dress, then, and sacrificed an advertisement to keep Garth's secret! Zoyo Valinski lived in the house with Miss Marks, and was recommended by her. H'm! H'm!
These thoughts jostled each other in the brain of Marise, and brought in their train another. Naturally Garth had not been shocked at her fib. He didn't know it was a fib! The surprise was only that Miss Sorel had hit on the truth and used it so glibly.
"That Marks girl helped him choose the things," she told herself. And she was as much annoyed as puzzled. She wished to fling at Garth: "You sent her to our hotel manager to ask for my work. Why, she's simply spying on me, for you!"
But she said nothing of the sort. Indeed, she had no time. Seeing Marise and the Bounder together, Mary Sorel flew to part them. "Miss Marks wants me to say she'll be ready to go in a few minutes," the anxious lady encouraged Garth. "She's been captured by Mrs. Belloc. It seems she did secretarial work for her once. Come, and I'll introduce you. I've just told Mrs. Belloc that you aretheV.C."
It was half an hour before the man's martyrdom was ended. The worst had been suffered at the beginning, when he was the third in a reluctant trio. But it was all bad enough. He was as well suited to this jewel-box of a salon as a bull is to a china shop, and he had done nearly as much damage. He didn't know what to say to Mrs. Belloc or her smart, chattering friends, and they didn't know what to say to him. Even a Victoria Cross couldn't excuse such taste in clothes as his! The big fellow's necktie was a scream; his gloves (no other man kept on gloves!) a yell; and his boots—literally—a squeak. That was the description of him which Mrs. Belloc planned for the entertainment of her husband, and Garth saw it developing behind her eyes.
"Give me the trenches!" he thought, when at last Miss Marks wriggled free of the actor-manager's wife. He still hated Marise as much as he loved her. Yet when he said "Good-bye" he did not mean it for farewell. He determined ferociously that he would see her again. "Next time," he resolved, "I won't knock over any tables. I'll turn them. I'll turn the tables my way perhaps, and against that damned pig of an earl!"
"Thank Heaven she's gone, and it's ten minutes past!" fervently sighed Mrs. Sorel, as the door closed behind a guest she had kissed warmly on both cheeks. "Céline, 'phone down and tell them not to send anyone else up, no matter who. We needn't be 'at home' a second after six."
She and Marise and Severance now had the sitting-room to themselves. The girl, who had been too busy feeding others to eat anything herself, selected a macaroon from a half-empty dish and nibbled it prettily. Severance regarded the charming creature with clouded eyes, wondering how much appetite their talk would leave her.
"How dear of you to stay and see us through!" cooed Mary, as if she had not known Severance's impatience equal to her own. She did this to lead up to her own tactful exit; and the mere male swallowed her bait without suspicion.
"See you through?" he echoed. "Why, I've been hanging on by my eyelids, waiting for my chance with you and Marise."
"Unless it's something you need me for," the chaperon said sweetly, "perhaps I might leave you to Marise's tender mercies. I'm a little tired——"
"I do need you," Severance assured her. "I don't dare to say what I've got to say to Marise alone. If I did, she might misunderstand. I can't risk that. Mrs. Sorel, this talk means everything to me. You're my friend. Promiseyouwon't misunderstand."
Mary Sorel retained a fixed, kind smile; but she had a sickly sensation under her Empire waistband, as if something inside had melted and then cooled. She glanced at Marise, to judge if the girl had been in any way prepared for this queer outbreak. No, evidently not! The blue eyes looked large and suddenly scared. Marise stopped eating the macaroon, and, going slowly to the table, she laid the nibbled remnant on somebody else's plate.
"Why, of course I'll stop," Mary said. "I'm not so tired as to desert you when you flatter me like that."
"I'm not flattering, I'm depending on you." Never before, in her acquaintance with him, had the voice of Severance betrayed such agitation. Mary braced herself against a blow; but the melting thing inside began to congeal like cold candle-grease. Her knees felt like water. Still smiling, she sank rather than sat on a sofa, and held up her hand to Marise.
"If Lord Severance has a confession to make, we'd better sit together in judgment," she proposed. "We'll be kind judges, and this shall be our throne."
"Call it an appeal—a prayer—not a confession," Severance said. "If I'd ever prayed to God as I'm going to pray to you both, maybe I'd not be in the fix I'm in now."
"One would think you were afraid of us!" quavered Marise.
"I am," he admitted. "I was never in such a blue funk in my life. My legs are like poached eggs without toast."
The girl laughed nervously. "You'd better sit down," she advised.
"I couldn't to save my life. Might as well ask a chap on the rack to sing 'Araby.'"
"You're really frightening us!" Mary's tone was shrill. "Have Bolsheviks blown up your family castles? Have you lost all your money? Aren't you the true heir to the title?"
"I'm the heir right enough," Severance took her seriously. "And I haven't got any money—worth calling money. There's the rub! Marise, you know I love you?"
The girl caught her breath. "Why—sometimes I've thought so."
"You've known it, as well as you know you're alive. If I hadn't come into the beastly title I'd have asked you to marry me long ago. It was your own fault I didn't ask you, before my Cousin Eric died—the first one of the lot to go. You used to snub me every time I tried to speak of marrying. You didn't want to make up your mind!"
"No, honestly, I didn't," she confessed. "I liked you a whole lot, Tony, but—I wasn't quite sure—of either of us, you see, and——"
"You might have been sure of me! I couldn't look at any woman except you."
"It wasn't that sort of thing—exactly. People—cats!—used to put such horrid ideas into my head."
"What ideas?"
"I simply can't tell you, Tony. Don't ask me, please."
"Oh, well!" he flung out. "It doesn't matter much now what ideas you had then. Do you love me to-day, Marise?"
"I—think I do—a little," she almost whispered, as her parent's arm (twined round her waist) pressed painfully against her side.
"A little isn't enough!" Severance said. "It must be a big love to stand the strain."
"The strain of what?" Mary, as a mother, intervened.
"Of the sacrifice I'm going to ask—to beg, to implore—her to make."
"Sacrifice? Do you mean anything about money?" Mrs. Sorel wanted to know. "You were quite right in calling me your friend. I can assure you it would be a joy to Marise if, in your trouble, her money——"
"The trouble's worse than money."
"Tell us quickly," the girl bade him. "You said you couldn't bear suspense. Neither can I bear it. We're both fond of you, Tony—Mums and I. What hurts you, hurts us." And her tingling brain suddenly, inappropriately, gave her a picture of Garth, as he had stood tall and stiff against the door. He, too, had said, in vibrating tones, that he loved her. He had begged her to give him a chance; implored that she would let him try to be worthy. As if, poor fellow, he ever could come up to her standard! What girl of her breeding would think of him twice when there were blue-blooded, perfectly-groomed Greek gods like Tony Severance on earth? Mentally she whistled John Garth, V.C., down the wind to low-lying valleys peopled with girls like Miss Marks.
Tony was pale with the dusky pallor of olive complexions; his pleading eyes were like velvet with diamonds glittering through. She had never realised how he loved her—he, whom so many women worshipped. She felt that she loved him dearly, too. For the first time her heart was stirred warmly by his extraordinary good looks.
"You know all about my Uncle Constantine, my mother's half-brother," he said, leaning on the mantelpiece and nervously lighting a cigarette (Mrs. Sorel and Marise permitted this; even smoked with him now and then). "Well, Uncle Con had very little use for me till by a fluke I got the title. I never expected a penny of his money, though he was my mother's guardian before she ran away with my father. He thought I was a rotter, and didn't mind my knowing his opinion. He didn't exactly forbid me his house in London, for he'd been fond of mother in his hard way, but he gave me no encouragement to come. His vacillation was because of my cousin Œnone. Did I ever speak of her to you?"
"You may have mentioned her," said Marise. "But, of course, we knew of her existence. There are always things in the papers about people with such incredible stacks of millions as the Ionides family have. She's a 'poor little rich girl,' isn't she? An invalid—something the matter with her spine?"
"She is an invalid," Severance answered. "But as years go, she isn't a 'little girl' any more. She's close on twenty-two. I doubt if she'll ever see twenty-three in this world."
"Pathetic!" sympathised Marise. "All that money couldn't give her happiness!"
"She thinks," said Severance sullenly, "that only one thing can give her happiness—marrying me."
"Good gracious!" gasped Mrs. Sorel. Her blood flew to her head. Was he asking Marise to love him, only to break the news that she was to be jilted?
"Œnone has cared, since she was a tiny child," Severance stumbled gloomily on. "It really was pathetic, then. When she began to grow up (not much in size, poor girl, but in years, you know), Uncle Con would have shut the door on me if he hadn't been afraid Œnone would die of grief. He thought me cad enough to cook up some plot, and contrive to marry the girl behind his back—for her millions. But when I got the earldom, a change came o'er the spirit of his dream.... He's a born snob, is my half-Uncle Constantine! He always loved a title, and hoped he could squeeze one for himself out of some British Government, but he's never succeeded, so far. Instead of chasing me away with a stick, he invited me to come as often as possible. And just before you arranged to sail he made me a definite offer."
"You don't mean——" Mary Sorel broke down in the midst of her sentence.
"I do. He said if I would marry Œnone, and 'make his daughter a countess' (real old melodrama stuff!) he'd settle a million pounds on me, on our wedding-day. Also, I'd inherit Œnone's private fortune. Darling Marise, dear Mrs. Sorel, if you knew all the money troubles I've had, and have still, you'd forgive me if I told you this was a temptation."
"But you didn't yield?" Mary prompted.
"No-o. Because Marise was sailing for the States, and I couldn't let her come over here without me, to be gobbled up by some beastly American millionaire. I had to be with her. I had to!"
"That is real love," cried Mary. "I'm proud of you."
"I'm not proud of myself," he mumbled. "I got that bally mission. I persuaded Uncle Con to believe—at least I hope he more or less believed!—that it was thrust on me, instead of my doing all I knew to bag it. I told him I'd decide directly I returned to England—which would be soon. But it hasn't been soon. He's a man who gets inside information about official things. He knows the mission is finished, and I could go home any day I liked. Presently, if I'm not jolly careful, he'll find out why I don't like. Then my goose will be cooked. Marise—Mrs. Sorel—I simply can't afford to have that happen."
"What do you propose to do?" Mary challenged him, dry-lipped.
The black eyes blazed despair. "What can I do?"
"Tony," said Marise softly, "I've got 'normous lots of money saved up; 'most two hundred thousand dollars. You don't need to grovel in the dust to any old Greek banker, if he is your uncle. So there!"
"My poor, sweet baby," groaned Severance. "What's two hundred thousand dollars? Fifty thousand pounds, isn't it? That's pin money for you and your mother; and you go on making more while you stay on the stage, as a spider winds silvery thread out of itself. But for me it's not nearly enough, as things are now. It wouldn't save the situation. I've come into more than that amount with the estates. It's a drop in the bucket, I find. The fellows behind me in the succession resigned themselves to poverty. I can't, for the best of reasons. I'm in a beastly moneylender's hands. I began by owing him ten thousand pounds. It's more like eighty thousand to-day. Now, maybe, you see where we stand."
"No, I don't see yet, where we are concerned," Mary objected. "You said you'd some suggestion—some proposal to make. But if Manse's money isn't enough to——"
"It isn't, even if I could take it."
"And if you're considering the idea of marrying your cousin——"
"I've got to marry her. That's all there is to it. I've realised it since a heart-to-heart talk old Con forced me to have with him a fortnight before we sailed. I saw that some day this thing would have to happen."
"Then where—does Marise come in?" Mary suddenly bristled like a mother-porcupine.
For a moment Severance did not speak. It seemed that he could not. His gaze turned first to Marise, then to Mary. Could it be possible that those black eyes of his glittered with starting tears?
"I'm going to tell you," he said slowly, at last. "I want to tell you on my knees. It's the only way a man could dare to say a thing like this to a girl like Marise—to a woman like you, Mrs. Sorel."
He did not wait for a word from either, but dropped to one knee, and threw his arms about both women as they clung nervously together. They could feel the throb of blood in his muscles. His face was no longer merely handsome; it was beautiful with a tragic, Greek beauty. The look in his eyes (Mary thought vaguely, as one thinks under a light dose of ether) would touch a heart of stone.
"I've got to marry Œnone," he repeated, "or come the worst cropper of any Severance for a century. If I'd never met you, Marise, I'd have done it without a qualm. Œnone's a nice little thing—not the sort to keep a man in leading-strings because she holds the purse. I could have amused myself without much fear that she'd fuss—or tell tales to her father. But when a man loves a woman as I love you, it changes his outlook. I must see you. I must be with you. I can't live away from you for long."
"I'm afraid you'll have to when you've married Miss Ionides," Mary's frozen voice warned him.
"Wait! Listen to my plan. I've only just thoroughly worked it out. I——"
"Yet you told us a minute ago that you'd decided on this marriage before sailing."
"That's true. But don't be so hard on me. You promised to be kind judges. Put yourself in my place, if you can, Mrs. Sorel. My love for your girl is more than love. It's a flame—a driving passion. Can a man reason coldly when his blood, and his brain too, are on fire! I had to come with her to New York. I couldn't look ahead further than that. I mean to make some plan, and God knows I've tried, day and night. I've thought of little else. But every idea I had was shut up inside what they call a 'vicious circle.' I could see no way out that Marise would accept—or you would let her accept. Then this last cable of old Con's came to-day, while I was at Belloc's. It is a kind of ultimatum. I know he means me to understand that. You can see it if you like—only let me go on now—as I'm started. It would be worse beginning again. He says he's down with 'flu, and Œnone is ill too, and he must see me to 'settle the matter under discussion, or it may be too late.' Those are his words. They're a threat. By Jove, it was a douche, reading that in the midst of a jolly luncheon! I saw stars: but one of them has sent me a ray of light. I almost prayed to get its message. First time I've prayed since I was in the nursery! Yet here I am on my knees to you both, to tell you what the star said.
"Uncle Con may have 'flu, and he may die, but he's sure to tie everything up tight. I'm marked for slaughter. There's no squirming out. But poor Œnone can't live long, even if she gets the toy she wants to play with—me. Her father doesn't thoroughly realise that she's doomed, but her doctors do. One of them is a friend of mine. He told me. She's got some queer kind of incipient tuberculosis, and chronic anæmia. Happiness—such as I can give her—will only be a flash in the pan. I'll be more of a nurse than a husband. Well, I'm willing to go through all that, and do my honest best for her, while she lives. But ifI'mto live, I can't be separated for a year—or at worst, let's say two years—from the light of my life, the core of my heart. I must be able to meet Marise, to have her society, her friendship—by God, I swear I mean no evil! I must have something, I tell you, if I'm to get through that probation. Well, I see as clearly as you both see that we must have no scandal—for her sake—and for mine, too—and even for Œnone's. I don't want to distress the poor little thing! So here's the plan that jumped into my brain ready made. Don't cut me short—don't tell me to stop before I've explained—before I've got to the end."
"Go on," said Mary Sorel, in a strained voice. Marise did not speak. She felt dazed, as if she were in a feverish dream.
"Suppose I marry; suppose I bring my—suppose I bring Œnone (I can hardly call her a 'wife') over to America for a change of air, a tonic. She'd like that. She's always wanted to travel, but her father had no time; and she wouldn't have been happy with paid guardians. I'd paint a glowing picture of California—or Arizona: they say it's great out there for tubercular people. Even Œnone's own father would approve of such a trip if—if Marise were supposed to be out of the running. Don't speak! I'm going to explain! What I mean is this....
"Old Con is the opposite of a mole. He knows I've been a different man this last year. He ferreted out the truth somehow—did it himself, or with a detective's help. Probably himself: he's that kind. He doesn't trust his secrets to others. He didn't object openly to my American mission. In a way, it was an honour. But, of course, he learned that I was sailing on the ship with you two. He hasn't given me a day's rest since we landed. I wired I'd had 'flu. (I did get a cold last week!) Then he took a leaf out of my book. Now he's developed the disease! If Marise were acting in New York and touring the States, he'd smell a rat if I prescribed America for my bride's health. But if Marise were married to another man, and had left the stage——"
"Good heavens!" Mary bounded on the sofa, and gasped aloud. But Severance pressed her down with a strong arm.
"You promised to let me finish!" he urged. "Now you'll begin to understand why I wouldn't say all this to Marise alone. Asking you to be with us proves my respect for her—for you both. This isn't only the plea of a desperate man—though it's that first of all! It's a business proposition. The day I marry Œnone Ionides, I become master of a million pounds. That's five million dollars. One million of those five million dollars I would offer to a—dummy husband for Marise. Let me go on! A man who'd understand that he was to be a figurehead, and nothing more. You'd say—if you'd say anything—that only a cur in the gutter would take such a position, and a cur in the gutter would be of no use to us. To rise above suspicion—even old Con's suspicion!—He'd have to be a decent sort of chap to all appearances, a man who might attract a girl—even a girl like Marise. He'd have to have some money of his own already, and some sort of standing. With that in his favour, the world and my uncle would accept him as a husband Miss Sorel might choose. Such a person could be found—for a million dollars. I know men of all sorts, and I guarantee that. With a million dollars behind her, Marise could give up the stage—she'd do that, anyhow, if she married me. She could travel west with her dummy husband (and her mother, of course, that goes without saying!) By that time, I'd be over here again with poor Œnone. We could all meet—by accident. In England, even that might make talk. England's too small for us. But over here, in a big free country—especially out west—it would be safe. We should see each other, Marise and I. And I'd ask no more than that. For a while I could live on the sight of her—and hope. When Œnone's little spark of life burns out, as it must before long, with the best of care possible, Marise at once divorces her dummy. He gives her technical cause, of course. That's part of the bargain I make with my million. No breath of scandal against Marise! And, a few months later, she and I are married. There's only this short road of red-hot ploughshares for us both to tread. Then, instead of marrying a pauper, such as I am now, and both of us battening on her bank account—she'd perhaps be forced to go back on the stage to keep the pot boiling—my darling girl finds herself the wife of a very rich man, one of the richest peers in Great Britain. For in addition to old Con's million pounds, I should have Œnone's private fortune. He has agreed to that, with her, in the event of her death, which he hopes may be long delayed by happiness, and which I know won't—can't possibly be.... There! I've finished at last! The only thing left is for me to tell you over again that my life depends on your decision. I believe I'll kill myself if the answer is 'No.'"
The hot torrent of words ceased. There was silence in the gaily-tinted, flower-filled salon, save for the tick of an absurd Louis Seize clock on the mantel. Under the gilt wheel of Time a cupid balanced back and forth, in a Rhinestone swing—"Yes," "No," the seesaw motion seemed to say.
The stillness was terrible to Severance. He did not get up from his knees. He did not release the women's waists from the girdle of his arms. His eyes were on the face of Marise. Never had he seen her so pale.
"For God's sake, speak!—one of you," he stammered.
Abruptly the girl pushed his arm away, and sprang to her feet.
"You are wicked!" she cried. "Horrible! It can't be true that this has happened to me. It's a nightmare. I want to wake up!"
Severance abandoned his prayerful position and faced her. He would have caught her hands, but she thrust him back with violence.
"I thought you were a modern Englishman, like other Englishmen—like all other decent men I've known. But you're not," she panted. "You're something out of the Middle Ages. No! you're before that You're of Ancient Rome—the time of the Borgias. Or Beatrice Cenci."
"Don't, don't, Marise, my child!" Mary joined soothing with command. "You'll make yourself ill. We must be calm. We must think."
"Think?" the girl repeated. "What is there to think about? Surely you don't suggest that I should 'reflect'—that I should study whether to accept or not such a—bargain?"
"That's a hard word!" Severance pleaded. "And as for Ancient Rome, I should say that it and modern Britain—or France—or even your own America—are the same at bed-rock. We're all volcanoes with our lava cooled a bit on the surface by laws—or civilisation. Human passions don't change; and the strongest of them is love. Anyhow, it is so with me. I'm half Greek, you know, and my English half is half Spanish."
"Dearest, when I tell you to 'think,' of course it depends on whether you love Tony or not," Mary Sorel reminded her daughter. But even she did not dare touch Marise at that moment. It would have been much like trying to pat a young, unfed leopardess. She, always keeping on the conventional side, had never before called Severance "Tony" to his face. As a parched patch of earth thirstily sucks in the least drop of dew, he caught at this sign of grace, and thanked his stars that he had made a reckless bid for Mary's friendship. She adored England and old English customs; above all, old English titles. In the midst of gratitude, the man knew her for a snob, and counted on the sacrifice she would offer the god of Snobbery. If anyone could help him, she could. If any counsel could prevail with the hurt, humiliated, angry girl, it would be her mother's.
"Do you love him?" Mary persevered, when Marise kept silence behind a bitten red lip.
"I did love him. I thought I did."
"Darling, I know you loved him, and do love him. You're suffering now. But, remember poor Tony is suffering too."
"Poor Tony!"
"Yes, poor Tony. He has gone through a great deal, and has kept it in, hoping against hope. He didn't speak out till there seemed to be no more hope—except in this one way. I told you, even on shipboard, I felt he was living under some strain. I'm a woman, and your mother. I'd be the first on earth to resent the slightest insult to you, if it were meant. But just because I'm a woman, who has lived through a woman's experience of life and love—love of husband—love of child—I recognise sincerity by instinct. Severance is truly sincere. He worships you, and if he has been carried away, it is by worship. Don't drive him to desperation by refusing to forgive him, whatever else you may decide to do."
"It rests with you, Marise, whether I live or die," Severance was now encouraged to plead.
The girl's lips trembled. "Oh, if only I could wake up!" she cried. Tears poured over her cheeks. Mary caught the shaking figure to her breast. The two wept together.
"We must—must face things!" Mary let herself sob. "I'm afraid weareawake—wider awake than we've ever been in our happy life these last three years. We took the pleasant side of things for granted. As they say over here, we're 'up against' the grim side now. If you love Tony only half as much as he loves you, why, it seems to me you ought—indeed it's your duty to your future—to think twice before sending him out into darkness, with no light of hope."
"Things like my plan often happen to people, just by accident," said Tony. "A man who loves one girl has to marry another. His wife dies. Meanwhile, the first girl has taken a husband—perhaps out of pique. He's a rotter. She divorces him. Then the pair who've loved each other are free to be happy ever after. If they're rich, too, so much the better for them! They don't feel guilty. Why should they? They've nothing to feel guilty about. Why should it be so appalling if a man, to save his soul and his love, plans out something of this sort, instead of blundering into it? I can't see any reason. Aren't you being a Pharisee—or a hypocrite, Marise?"
"Aren'tyoubeing a Joseph Surface?" she flung back. "Perhaps I never told you that I played 'Lady Teazle,' and got a prize at my dramatic school. So I know all about the 'consciousness of innocence.'"
The girl spoke stormily. Her eyes blazed at the man through tears. Yet he and Mary both knew from her words—her tone—that in spite of herself she had begun to "think."
"Joseph Surface was a cold snake," said Tony. "At worst I'm not that, or I wouldn't be ready to wade through fire and water to win you at last."
"No, you're not a cold snake," Marise agreed. And the eyes of Severance and Mrs. Sorel met, as the girl dashed a handkerchief across hers. Mary's glance telegraphed Tony, "This sad business may come right, after all!" "You had better leave us, my friend," she said aloud. "Marise and I will at least talk this over—thrash it out, and——"
"A thrashing is just what it deserves," the girl snapped. "A thorough thrashing!"
"It shall have it," Mums soothed her patiently. "But we may think——"
"Even if we did think," Marise broke out, with a sudden flash at Severance, "what good would it do? Even if I were willing—though I can't conceive it! What use would that be? You can't kindle a fire without a match. There isn't a man living who'd be the match. A dummy match!"
"You forget the million dollars," Severance said.
"I don't. But you admitted yourself, he must at least seem a decent man, or the scheme would fail. No decent man——"
"Some smart actor who fancies himself, and dreams of having his own New York theatre," cried Severance, inspired. "With a million dollars——"
"He'd want me to stay on the stage and star with him——"
"Well, then, some inventor who'd sell his soul to have his invention taken up. A million dol——"
The phrase called back an echo in the girl's mind. "I'd sell my soul!" What man had used those words to her that day—an hour ago?...
Marise laughed out aloud. "An inventor!" she exclaimed. "Oh, it's easy to generalise—to suggest someone—anyone—vaguely, in a world of men. But if I should name one—if I should say, 'Here's the man,' you would shudder. The thought of him in flesh and blood as my husband—dummy or no dummy—would drive you mad—if you really love me."
"I wouldn't let it drive me mad," Severance swore. "I'd control myself—and control the man, too."
"You would? Suppose I name yourbête noire, Major John Garth?"
Severance withered visibly. "Garth wouldn't do it," he stammered.
"There you are!" sneered Marise. But she began to experience a very extraordinary sensation. It was composed of obstinacy, anger, vanity, recklessness, resentment, and several fierce sub-emotions, none of which she made the slightest effort to analyse. Tony Severance believed that his passion for her excused everything, because he thought it stronger than any other man living had ever felt. But there was another man, one at least—who thought and said the same thing of himself.
Much as Tony hated and pretended to despise John Garth, without stopping to reflect an instant he set the Bounder aside as one among a few men who wouldn't stoop—who couldn't be tempted—to play so low a part as that of a "dummy husband." Was Tony right? Or was the man he discarded the very one who would marry her at any price? Dimly she wondered in a sullen and heavy curiosity.
"There are plenty of other fellows—of sorts—to choose from, without dragging in Garth," Severance went on. "Give me leave, Marise (give me new life, by giving me leave!), to find such a man. If I must go without finding one here, I will search England. Or I can put it in the hands of——"
"No!" shrilled Mary. "In no hands but our own."
"I wash mine of it!" cried Marise.
"Perhaps you will think it over—the pros and cons—with me, dear," coaxed her mother. "The wonderful future you could have with Tony, when the clouds should pass and all those millions——"
The girl shrugged her shoulders. And turning without another word, she whirled away to her room. It would not have been true to nature if she hadn't slammed the door!
Mary prepared to follow. "Go, Tony," she ordered. "Leave the poor child to me. All this is awful—terrible! But it isn't as if we were wishing for Miss Ionides' death. If she's doomed.... Oh, I hear Marise crying! Go at once—please!"