VAN ATTEMPT TO DAZZLE
Ata quarter past eight the following night Roger drove up to the vast entrance to Red Hill in the buggy he had hired from Burke, the Deer Spring liveryman. Five lackeys in gorgeous livery, with powdered hair and white silk stockings—five strapping fellows with the dumb faces and the stalwart figures the rich select as menial showpieces—appeared in the huge doorway. Three of them advanced to assist Roger. A fourth disappeared—to telephone the stables about this unexpected, humble equipage. The fifth stood upon the threshold, ready to take the hat and coat of the evening’s one guest from without. The moon was high, almost directly above the towers of the great, gray chateau. By the soft, abundant light Roger surveyed the splendid, broad terraces that broke the long and steep descent to Lake Wauchong; the enormous panorama of untouched wilderness covering little mountain, big hill and valley far as the eye could reach—all of it the property of Daniel Richmond. Nearer, in the immediate neighborhood of the house were the elaborations of theskilled landscape gardener. It was indeed a scene of beauty—beauty as well as magnificence—an interesting exhibit of the grandiose style of living wherein the rich sacrifice practically all the joys of life and most of its comforts for the sake of tickling their own vanity and stimulating the envy of their fellow-beings.
As Roger advanced into the lofty, gloomily paneled entrance hall—its carvings had cost a fortune—he drew off his overcoat, disclosing evening dress that would have passed muster on a figure far less in need of ornamentation than his massive yet admirably proportioned frame with its climax of godlike head. And the most impressive feature of that head was the frank simplicity of the expression of the face—that expression which marks the man who is something and lifts him high above the flocks and herds of men who are trying—not too successfully—to seem to be something. The modern evening dress for men is one of the few conventions—perhaps the only one—not designed to bolster up insignificance by reducing all to the same level of smooth elegance. It is one of the curiosities of the history of manners how such a blunder came to be firmly established as a propriety. In evening dress, as in no other kind of costume or lack of costume, the personality, the individuality, of the wearer obtrudes itself to every eye. At a glance one may classify any number of men bytheir qualities and quantities of head and heart. Beatrice Richmond, coming along the corridor leading into the entrance hall from the east, stopped short at sight of her artist.
She herself, in an evening gown of pale silver, with lovely shoulders bare and graceful head looking exquisite under its crown of simply arranged, yellow hair, was quite a different person from the rather hoydenish elf of wood and stream whom Roger had been painting. But she had lost, instead of gaining, in the transformation. She was more beautiful, but much less fascinating. She had been leveled down toward the conventional. She merely looked what the newspapers call “a beautiful, young, society girl.” Roger, on the other hand, had gained. He was retaining all his charm of the large, the free, the sincere, the natural; he now had in addition a certain refinement that yet had nothing of conventionality’s cheapness. It was somewhat like the difference between a thoroughbred uncurried and curried. His natural proportions showed to better advantage in this sleekness than they had in the rough.
“What’s the matter?” demanded Roger, as he took her hand. “Am I late, or is it the wrong evening?”
“Neither,” she assured him, and it delighted her to note that he did not dream of taking to himself her pale and trembling joy in his splendor of manhood. “Nothingmuch. Just—I was thinking this is the first time we’ve seen each other in civilized dress.”
“Oh!” Roger evidently thought this not worth pursuing. “This is a wonderful place you’ve got here. It’d be hard to blame anybody for making any sort of sacrifice to keep it.” He glanced round with the expression of a man used to such surroundings. In fact, there was nothing about him which in the remotest degree suggested the ill-at-easeness she had anticipated and feared. She felt humbled. He was again—and where she had least expected it—rebuking her nervousness over trifles and exaggeration of them. As they stood in the corridor, talking, she could discover not a trace of the awe she had confidently expected and hoped for. He treated her precisely as he had in the woods. But she was not discouraged. She felt that he must be deeply impressed, that he must be understanding now why she had taken the proposing upon herself—and must be appreciating what a fine thing that proposal was. He was concealing his feelings, reasoned she—was perhaps unconscious of them; later on they would show in results.
“I’ll take you to mother,” said she.
They turned in at one of the several doors, were facing a roomful of the sort of people one always finds in houses of that kind—carefully dressed, carefullypatterned people, leading the monotonous life fashion imposes upon the upper class throughout the world. Beatrice looked round, then looked proudly up at the huge, young man whose expression made him seem to tower and loom, even among those physically his equals. “Father isn’t here,” she explained. “He hates this sort of thing for himself, though he tolerates it for us.”
Roger found himself being welcomed by a youngish, shrewd-looking woman with a cold, discontented face. Beatrice’s mother was merely a type—one of the kind the development of great fortunes is turning out by the score in every city and large town from New York to San Francisco: an indefatigable and not unintelligent seeker after the correct aristocratic pose. She was in simple black velvet. Her graying hair made her too-sharp face softer and more youthful. Her figure was as slim and straight as her daughter’s, though not without evidences of toil and corset manipulation to give it that girlish appearance. Peter Vanderkief—Hanky—was beside her.
“So, you are really here?” she said cordially to Roger, as she gave him a warm hand clasp and the smile of an old friend. “I can hardly believe my own eyes.”
“Impossible to resist,” said Roger. “It’s indeed a pleasure to see you again. How d’ye do, Mr. Vanderkief?”
Vanderkief forced a smile to his lips and extended a tardy hand. But his brow remained sullen—not the sullenness of suspicion now, but of jealousy.
“How is the picture coming on?” asked Mrs. Richmond of Roger.
“Oh, you know how those things go with me,” was Roger’s subtly noncommittal reply.
“I remember,” laughed Mrs. Richmond. “You are the true artist. You’re to take in Beatrice. She tells me you still have your old horror of strangers.”
“Not horror—shyness,” protested Roger, with no more shyness or suggestion of it than a well-brought-up child.
Then a small, slim, dark man—obviously a Continental foreigner—joined the group. In dress and bearing he was a most elegant-looking person—or, rather, personage. His fine, sensitive face was exceedingly handsome. “Ah, my dear Wade!” cried he, pronouncing the name as if it were spelled Vahd.
Roger’s face lighted up. “D’Artois!” exclaimed he, and they shook hands with enthusiasm.
“How are you in this country without my hearing of it?” said Count d’Artois. “I’d not have believed one so famous could move about quietly.”
Mrs. Richmond and Beatrice—and Hank—were intensely interested spectators and listeners. D’Artoisturned to Mrs. Richmond. “Vahd must be extremely fond of you, that you are able to get him. In Paris they run after him in vain. He keeps himself hidden.”
Mrs. Richmond smiled nervously. Peter stared despondently at the big man thus suddenly disclosed as a great man. As for Beatrice, her eyes sparkled and her cheeks flushed proudly. Roger’s expression was good-natured tolerance, perhaps touched with annoyance. Dinner was announced and Beatrice took his arm. “I might have known!” she exclaimed, gazing up at him.
He reddened and frowned. “Known what?” said he.
“That you were famous.”
“Trash!” observed Roger carelessly. “D’Artois is polite. Also, he is my friend.”
“Oh, I know,” said the girl. “At lunch he was talking about you—what a great painter you are—how rapidly you, though an American, were making yourself famous in Europe. We didn’t dream he was talking of you. He pronounces your name peculiarly.”
“I’m enormously hungry,” said Roger. “Where do these people come from? I had no idea this was such a fashionable neighborhood.”
“Oh, they’re stopping in the house. Most of them came last night and to-day.”
Roger ate and listened to the girl on his left—AliciaKinnear, the tennis player. Mrs. Richmond had Count d’Artois on her right, and he talked steadily of “Vahd.” She listened sourly and from time to time shot a glance down the table at him—the glance of the alarmed and angry mother of a rather unmanageable heiress. Peter—directly opposite Roger—was as silent as he, but instead of covering his silence with appreciation of the Richmond chef he stared at the lace insertion of the tablecloth and crumbled and messed his roll. Beatrice was the happiest of the thirty-two at that table. She was radiant, ecstatic.
“Aren’t you going to say a single word tome?” she inquired of Roger when he had finished the game course. “You can’t still be ravenously hungry.”
“I’ve eaten too much,” replied he. “I’m stupid.”
“It really doesn’t matter, as I’ll see you to-morrow morning.”
“I’m not working to-morrow. I’ve got to go to town.”
“Then the day after?”
“I may stay in town several days.”
Her expression was so hurt, so depressed, that he felt guilty, mean.
“It’s terribly hard to be friends with you, isn’t it?” said she.
“Because I refuse to spend my time idling about?You must choose your friends in your own class. No good ever comes of going out of it.”
“I’m surprised atyourtalking about classes in this country.”
“There are classes everywhere—and always will be. A class simply means a group of people of similar sympathies, tastes, habits and means.”
“Means!” said she. “I was under the impression you despised money!”
“I?” He laughed. “No more than I despise food. Money is a kind of food. I want—and I try to get—all of it I need. My appetite is larger than some, smaller than others. I take—or try to take—in proportion to my appetite.”
She nodded thoughtfully. It was in a queer, hesitating voice that she went on to ask: “And you really don’t care to be rich?”
“No more than I want to be fat. And I want to be poor no more than I want to be emaciated.”
Again she reflected. Suddenly she asked: “Do you like this house?”
“Certainly. It is beautiful of its kind.”
“I mean, wouldn’tyoulike to have such a house?”
“God forbid!” said he, and she knew he was speaking sincerely. “I’ve other things to do in my brief life than take care of property.”
“But one can hire those things done.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” said he to close the subject; but unconsciously his glance traveled round the room, rested here and there for an instant on the evidences of slovenly housekeeping which always disfigure any great house for a critical observer. Her glance followed his. Presently she colored, for she understood. “You are a terrible man,” said she. “You see everything.”
“I wish I did,” replied he, not realizing what she had in mind. “Then I’d paint the picture I dream about.”
“Do you like these people?” asked she.
“Certainly. They seem very nice. They’re most attractive to look at.”
“But you wouldn’t be friends with them?”
“Couldn’t be,” said he. “We have too little in common.”
“Don’t you wantanyfriends?” she said wistfully.
“I have friends. I shall have more. People of my own sort—people who can give me what I want and who want what I have to give.”
“You despise us—don’t you?” cried she.
“Haven’t I told you,” protested he, “that I don’t despise anybody? Why should I think people despicable because they are different?”
“You’d despise my sister Rhoda, who married the Earl of Broadstairs for his title.”
“Not at all. I approve of her for taking what she wanted. Why should she have been a hypocrite and married for love when she didn’t want love, but splurge?”
“Do you know why I was so anxious to have you come here?”
“How you do jump about!” laughed he. “Well—why? To smooth down——”
“No,” she interrupted, coloring furiously. “Imustbe truthful with you. I wanted it because I thought you’d be impressed.”
“And I am,” he assured her, a friendly smile of raillery in his eyes. “I had no idea you were such a grand person.”
“Don’t jeer at me,” she pleaded. “I’m in earnest. It isn’t fair to mock at anyone who’s in earnest—is it?”
“No. It’s contemptible,” said he. “But I understand you better than you understand yourself.”
In defiance of conventionality she looked at him with eyes whose meaning no observer could have mistaken. He glanced hastily round. “Don’t do silly, sensational things,” said he. “You’re making us both ridiculous.”
“I don’t in the least care,” she declared.
He said sternly: “Now, my friend, I’m gettingjust a little tired of this. You’ve always had your own way. You are piqued because you can’t make a fool of me. So, you are willing to go to any lengths. I understand you perfectly.”
Her gaze was steady and earnest—not at all proper for a public place. “Do you think I’m simply coquetting? Don’t you realize that I’m in earnest?”
“Perhaps you think you are,” admitted he. “You’re so wrought up by your game of make-believe that you have partly convinced yourself. Luckily,Iremain cool.”
“If I were a poor girl you wouldn’t act like this!”
“How did I act when I thought you were a poor girl?”
That silenced her for the moment. He went on: “You and I are going to be as good friends as our separate lots permit. And you are going to marry in your own class—are going to do your duty. I’ll admit I did think it strange that a girl like you should be deliberately marrying for money. But at that time I thought you were poor. Now that I have seen what your life is, I don’t blame you. I can see how you simply couldn’t give up all this magnificence that has become necessity to you. It’d be like asking me to give up my painting.”
She looked at him with a puzzled expression. “ButI’m not marrying to keep it. My father’s much richer than Hank. Hank’s not so very rich.”
Over his dark features slowly crept a look like the fall of a winter evening. “Oh,” said he coldly. “I thought— No matter.”
“What did you think?”
“Naturally, I assumed—from your saying so much about your duty—I assumed your father had lost, or was about to lose, his money.”
“Mercy, no!” exclaimed she, brightening hopefully. “I meant my family—my social—duty.”
His expression was quizzical. “To be sure—to be sure. I never thought of that.”
“You see, we’re newcomers among fashionable people, while the Vanderkiefs—they’re right at the top of the heap.”
He nodded smilingly. “Of course—of course. A very sensible marriage.”
“But I’m not going to marry him,” cried she. “I never intended to.”
He forgot where he was for a moment in his astonishment. “Then why did you engage yourself to him?”
“It isn’t that kind of engagement,” she explained sweetly. “I did it becauseyouacted so. But I was square with Peter. I warned him I didn’t love him andcouldn’t. Our engagement is simply that he is having a chance to make me care for him if he can.”
“You’ll be married within six months,” said Roger lightly; and he lifted a glass of champagne to his lips.
“Not to him,” replied she. “If to anybody, to the man I love—the man who loves me.”
Her words, so direct, and her tone, so simple, disconcerted him to such an extent that he choked upon the champagne. While he was still coughing Mrs. Richmond rose, and the men were left alone. Roger went with the first man who rejoined the women. He made straight for Mrs. Richmond, bade her good night and got himself out of the house before Beatrice, hemmed in by several people, could extricate herself and intercept him.
He did the homeward drive slowly, preyed upon by swarms of disagreeable thoughts. His experience of women had taught him to be more than suspicious of any feminine show of enthusiasm for a man; women were too self-centered, too prudent by nature and training, to give themselves out freely, even when encouraged—unless there were some strong, sordid motive. In this case sordid motive simply could not be. Nor could he conceive any practical reason why Beatrice should pretend to care for him—any practical reason why sheshould wish to marry him. He felt like a fool—as a normal man not swollen with conceit is bound to feel in circumstances such as Beatrice had made for him. And what vanity she had!—to fancy herself so fascinating that it simply could not be that he did not love her. And how poor an opinion she had of him! How little respect for him!—to believe that his reason for hiding his love was awe of her wealth and social position. “What can I have said or done to give her such an impression of me?” He could recall nothing that might have been twisted by her into a suggestion of that sort. No, the mystery was without a clew. “Am I crazy, or is she?” he demanded of the moonlit night.... And when was this thing to stop? Could Fate have dealt more irritatingly with him? He had come back home to make the grand effort of his life—to concentrate his whole being, every power of mind and body, every thought and feeling, upon the realization of his lifelong dream. And here was this girl, a nice enough girl, no doubt, an unusually attractive girl, as girls go, but still a mere idle, time-wasting woman with no real seriousness—here she was, harassing him, retarding his work, distracting his thoughts, involving him with a lot of people who had neither importance nor interest for him. In spite of himself he was being dragged into her life, whirled about by her caprices. He felt not onlylike a fool, but like a weak fool. “And what the devil can I do about it? How can I be insulting to a sweet, friendly girl who doesn’t realize what she’s doing and has been so brought up that she can’t be made to realize?”
The only hopeful course that suggested itself was flight. “Yes—if she keeps this up I’ll have to take to my heels.” There his sense of humor came to the rescue and he jeered at himself. “A delightful person I’m becoming!—discussing what to do to escape from a girl who is madly in love with me!”
About the time that Burke, the liveryman, was once more in possession of his “rig,” Beatrice, undressing for bed with the aid of her maid Valentine, received a peremptory summons from her mother by way of her mother’s maid, Marthe.
Mrs. Richmond was established in splendor in five big rooms on the second floor of the east wing. She received her daughter in her office—a luxurious, library-like room with few signs that it was the seat of the administration of a household of forty-two servants. Indeed, Mrs. Richmond was little of an administrator. She nagged at and criticised Pinney, the superintendent, and Mrs. Lambert, the housekeeper. She picked flaws in accounts, usually in the wrong places. Shedelivered sharp talks on economy and extravagance. But things were run sloppily, as is bound to happen where the underlings learn that there is no such thing as justice, that criticism is as likely to fall upon good work as upon bad. The stealing and the waste grew apace; and though Richmond, each year, largely increased his wife’s allowance for the maintenance of their various establishments, she was never able to put by more than twenty-five thousand or thereabouts for her own secret, privy purse.
Yet she was a most industrious woman, up early, to bed late. How did she occupy her time? Chiefly in taking care of her person. She was not highly intelligent about this. She wasted much of the time and most of the money she invested in the tragi-comic struggle for youth. Still, she got some results. Perhaps, however, most of her success in keeping down fat and wrinkles, and holding in her hair and her teeth in spite of self-indulgence as to both food and drink, was due to the superb constitution she had inherited. Mrs. Richmond came originally from Indiana; and out there they grow—or, in former days grew—a variety of the human species comparable to an oak knot—tough of fiber beyond belief, capable of resisting both fire and steel, both food and drink.
There was small resemblance between mother anddaughter save in the matter of figure. Beatrice’s sweet and pretty face was an inheritance from the Richmonds, though not from her father direct. Her shrewdness and persistence were from her father direct. The older woman in the pale-blue dressing gown looked up sharply as the younger, in pink and white, entered. But the sharp, angry glance wavered at sight of the resolute little face wearing an expression of faintly amused indifference. She had long since taken her daughter’s measure—and she knew that her daughter had taken hers.
“What did you send for me about?” Beatrice asked.
“You know very well.”
“Chang?”
“Chang! What doesthatmean?”
“It’s my pet name for our dear old friend Roger—Roger Wade. He calls me Rix. I call him Chang.”
Mrs. Richmond seemed stupefied for the moment by this cool and candid shamelessness.
“I hate beating round the bush,” pursued Beatrice. “So, I might as well tell you at the outset that I intend to marry him.”
“Beatrice!” exclaimed her mother, electrified into panic.
“You knowme, mother. You know I always dowhat I say I’ll do. Didn’t I cut off my hair close to my head when I was eight because you insisted on those foolish curls? Didn’t I——”
“You have always been obstinate and troublesome,” interrupted her mother. “I’ve warned your father you would make a wreck of your life. But he wouldn’t heed me.”
“Father and I understand each other,” said Beatrice.
“You think he will consent to your marrying that common, poor artist?” demanded her mother excitedly. “Well, for once you are mistaken. In some ways I know your father better than you do. And when it comes to any such insanity as that——”
“Don’t agitate yourself, mother.”
“He’ll cut you off if you do it. I shouldn’t be surprised if he should turn against you as soon as he hears you have thought of such a thing.”
Beatrice listened calmly. “That remains to be seen,” said she.
“I think you’ve lost your mind, Beatrice,” cried her mother, between railing and wailing.
“I think so, too,” replied Beatrice, dreamy-eyed. “Yes, I’m sure I have.”
“This isn’t a bit like you.”
“No, not a bit. I thought I was hard as—as you’vebrought me up to be. I thought I cared only for the material things.”
“Whatisthe matter with you?”
“I wanthim,” said the girl, lips compressing resolutely. Presently she added, “And I’m going to get him—at any cost.”
“Trapped by an adventurer! You!”
Beatrice laughed. “You ought to hear Chang on that subject.”
Her mother started up. “You don’t mean it’s gone as far as that?”
“As what?”
“You haven’t talked about such things to him?”
“Long ago,” said the daughter coolly.
Mrs. Richmond, all a-quiver with fright and fury, moved toward the door. “I shall telephone for your father at once!”
“Do.”
“We will have you put away somewhere.”
“I’m of age.”
Mrs. Richmond could not altogether conceal how this terse reminder had discomfited her. “Your father will know how to deal with this,” said she, trying to cover the essential weakness of the remark by a savagely threatening tone.
“I hope so,” said the girl, unmoved. “You see—thefact is—Chang has turned me down. I’ve got to get father to bring him round—some way.”
Her mother, at the door into the anteroom where the telephones were, halted and whirled round. “What are you talking about?” she demanded.
“I asked Mr. Wade to marry me. He refused. He is still refusing.”
Mrs. Richmond, hand on the knob, seemed to give careful thought to each of these three highly significant little sentences. Her comment was even more compressed; she laughed harshly.
“I saw that he was an unusually clever, experienced man.”
Beatrice looked quickly at her mother with shrewd, inquiring eyes. “You think he’s afraid father will cut me off?”
“Of course that’s it.”
“I wonder?” said the girl thoughtfully. “I hope so—yet I’m afraid.”
Mrs. Richmond’s mouth dropped open and her eyes widened with horror. At last she said witheringly: “You—hope—so!”
The girl did not answer; she was deep in thought.
Her mother sat down near the door. “Youknowso. I see you are more sensible than I feared. You know he’s simply looking for money.”
“You don’t understand me at all, mother.” Beatrice leaned toward her mother across the arm of the sofa. “Haven’t you ever wanted anything—wanted it so intensely, so—so fiercely—that you would take it on any terms—would do anything to get it?”
“Beatrice—that is—shocking!” As the word shocking had lost its force in the general emancipation from the narrow moralities that is part of fashionable life, Mrs. Richmond decided to bolster it up with something having real strength. “Also, it is ridiculous,” she added.
“Father would understand,” said the girl pensively. “He has that sort of nature. I inherit it from him. You know, they’ve almost ruined and jailed him several times because he got one of those cravings that simply have to be satisfied.”
No loyal wife could have taken a better air and tone than did Daniel Richmond’s wife as she rebuked: “You are talking of your father, Beatrice!”
“Yes—and I love him—adore him—just because hedoesthings. He’s good—good as gold. But he isn’t afraid to be bad. He doesn’t hesitate to take what he wants because he hasn’t the nerve.”
“Your father has been lied about—maligned—enviously slandered by his enemies.”
“Don’t talk rot, mother,” interrupted the girl.“You know him as well as I. You’re afraid of him. I’m not. He knows he can rule you through your love of luxury—just as he makes Rhoda and her earl crawl and fawn and lick his boots—and the boys—even Conny, who’s only fourteen. Oh, I don’t blame him for making people cringe, when he can. I like to do that, myself.”
The mother regarded this daughter, so mysterious to her, with mingled admiration and terror. “You are frightful—frightful!”
Beatrice seemed to accept this as a rare, agreeable compliment. “I’ve got the courage to say what I think. And—really, I’m not so frightful. I used to imagine I was. But”—she paused, laughed softly, a delightful change sweeping over her face—“just ask Chang!”
To Mrs. Richmond the words and the manner of them were like an impudent defiance. They drove her almost beside herself with alarm and anger. “Your father’ll soon bring you to terms! You’ll see, miss! You’ll see.” And she nodded her head, laughing viciously, an insane glitter in her bright, brown eyes. “Yes, you’ll find out!”
Beatrice was not in the least impressed.
“All father can do is to cut me off. I’ve got five thousand a year in my own right—enough to keep bodyand soul together. So, he knows he’s powerless with me.”
“What a fool he was,” cried her mother, “to give you that money.”
“It isn’t altogether the money,” pursued Beatrice. “You’ve got nearly half a million put by out of the household allowances. And your jewels make as much more. Yet you’re afraid of him.”
Instead of becoming furious, Mrs. Richmond sank weakly back in her chair. “He’s my husband,” she said appealingly. “You don’t understand how much that means—not yet.”
Beatrice laughed softly. “No, but I’m beginning to,” said she. However, she did not pursue that branch of the subject—did not force her mother into the corner of admission that the real source of Richmond’s power over her was not wifely duty nor yet motherly feeling, but love of the vast and costly luxury which being Richmond’s indulged wife got for her. All the girl wished to accomplish was to reduce her mother to that pliable state of mind in which she would cease to be the active enemy of her projects. Mrs. Richmond was now down to that meek weakness; through the rest of their talk her manner toward her daughter was friendly, sisterly, remonstrant rather than denunciatory.
“You don’t realize what is the matter with you, Beatrice,” said she.
“Whatisthe matter with me?”
“You wouldn’t understand— I couldn’t explain— You have had no experience. If you had, you’d realize and control yourself.”
“All I know is, Imusthavehim.”
“That’s it, exactly,” cried her mother. “That’s the way it affects anyone who gets possessed by it. If you married under a spell of that sort you’d wonder at yourself afterwards—when you had got enough.”
“But—I wouldn’t ‘get enough,’ as you call it.”
“Oh, yes, you would. They always do.”
“Always?”
Mrs. Richmond shifted ground. “You will never get your father to consent—never!”
“That’s the least of my troubles,” said Beatrice confidently. “The only question is: How could he help me to bring over Roger?”
“How can you be so silly, child!” exclaimed the mother. “That fellow would jump at you just as soon as he found your father consenting.” Mrs. Richmond smiled. “And when he did jump at you— Oh, I know you so well! You’d laugh at him and turn your back on him then.”
“I wonder,” said Beatrice absently. “I wonder.”
“I’m sure of it,” cried her mother with energy.
“I—don’t—know,” replied the girl. “It isn’t a bit like me to marry out of my own class. At first I laughed at myself for even imagining I’d really marry Chang. I was fascinated by him—everything he said and did—and the way he said or did it—the way his hair grew—the way his clothes fit—the way he blew smoke out of his mouth—the way he held his palette—and his long brushes— You see, mother, I was infatuated with him. Isn’t hesplendidto look at?”
“He certainly is strikingly handsome,” admitted Mrs. Richmond. “But hardly more so than Peter.”
“Oh, mother!” laughed out Beatrice. “You are not that undiscriminating. There’s all the difference between them that there is between—between a god and a mere mortal.” Contrasting the two men seemed to fire the girl afresh. “Yes, I do want Chang,” she cried. “I’d be enormously proud to have such a man to exhibit as my husband.”
“But think, my dear! He’s nobody!”
“You heard d’Artois——”
“Yes—but if he were to try to marry d’Artois’s sister——”
“I know. I understand,” said Beatrice impatiently. “I wish he were arealsomebody. Still, he probably comes of as good a family as we do.” She roseand faced her mother. “When I’m with him I’m ashamed of being so—so cheap. When I see him beside Peter I’d laugh at anybody who talked such snobbishness. But— Oh, I’ve been so rottenly brought up! No wonder he won’t have me! If he knew me as I am he’d spurn me.” Her expression softened to loving tenderness. “No, he wouldn’t. He’s big and broad. He’d understand and sympathize—and try to help me to be worthy of him. And I will be!”
Her mother looked at her with the uncertain expression one sees on the faces of the deaf when they are making pretense of having heard and understood. “You’re very queer, Beatrice,” said she.
“Ain’t I, though!” exclaimed the girl. “I guess you were right a while ago. I guess I’m crazy.”
“Don’t you think we’d better go abroad right away, instead of waiting till June?”
“I’ve thought of that. But the idea of getting out of reach of him sets me wild. I’d not be able to stand it to Sandy Hook. I’d spring overboard and swim back to see what he was about.... Were you ever in love, mother?”
“Of course,” replied Mrs. Richmond. “But I didn’t fall in love with a nobody with nothing—at least, a man with no prospects.”
“Then you don’t know whatloveis! Oh, it wasdelicious—caring about him—crazy about him—trembling all over if he spoke—shivering if he happened to look at me in that calm, big way of his—and that when I felt he might be little more than a tramp, for all I knew.”
There was no sympathy in the mother’s face, nothing but plain aversion and dismay. Yet she dared not speak her opinion. She knew Beatrice. “I’m afraid he’s very artful, dear,” she ventured to say. “He seems to understand exactly how to lead you on.”
“I don’t think so,” replied Beatrice. “I may be wrong. I often doubt. I’m like father—very suspicious by nature. Of course, it’s possible he is playing with me. If he is, why, it’s the most daring, splendid game a man ever played, and he deserves to win.... No, mother. He’s not playing with me. I tried to win him when he thought I was a poor nobody. It didn’t go. Then I thought he was holding back because he was poor; and I tried to win him by showing him what he would be getting. I’m still trying that. But it doesn’t seem to be working any better than the other.”
“Beatrice, I’m amazed. Whatmusthe think of you?”
“Now, you know very well, mother, that a girl in my position has to do the courting if the man’s poorand has any self-respect. In fact, I’ve got a notion that the women, in any circumstances, do a lot more courting than is generally supposed.”
“I don’t know how it is in this day,” said her mother stiffly. “But inmyday——”
“You wouldn’t own up, mother dear,” laughed the girl. “And your manner is suspiciously like an attempt to hide guilt.”
“I’m sure of one thing,” said Mrs. Richmond tartly. “In my day children did not insult their parents.”
“Now, don’t get cross at my joking, dear,” cajoled the daughter, kissing her mother’s well-arranged, gray hair so lightly that there could be no danger of disarranging it.
As if it had all suddenly come over her again Mrs. Richmond cried despairingly, “Whatwillyour father say! He’ll blame me. He’ll say things that will prostrate me.”
“If you’ll not mention it to him,” said Beatrice, “I’ll guarantee that he’ll not blame you. Hank is going away in the morning. You and Hector can pretend to know nothing. I’ll take it up with him.”
Her mother looked somewhat reassured, but said dubiously, “He’ll give it to me for not having guarded you more closely.”
“I’ll fix all that,” said Beatrice with infectious confidence. “Trust me.”
Mrs. Richmond gave her a look of gratitude so deep that it was almost loving. “If you’d only be sensible and put this foolishness out of your mind,” she said plaintively.
Rix laughed gayly, then softly. “It isn’t in my mind,” said she. “It’s in another place—one I didn’t know about until I met him.” She looked at herself admiringly in a long mirror that happened to be at hand. “Don’t you see how much better looking I’ve grown of late? You understand why. Oh, I’m so happy!”
Her mother gave a sigh of helplessness. Rix laughed again and went away to her own rooms—to try to write poetry!