VIIIAN INFURIATE FATHER
“I supposeyou went back to apologize for me,” said her father as they started on together.
“You don’t understand him,” replied she miserably. “Artists—great artists—are different.”
“Heisa good deal of a man. D’Artois was right. I’ll see that he does those panels.” And Richmond gave the nod of a man who has money and knows that money is all-powerful.
Beatrice stopped short, her eyes opened wide. “Why,” exclaimed she, “I thought you disliked him!”
“Not at all—not at all,” replied her father. “He’s a disagreeable chap. But all men who amount to anything are. A man who’s thoroughly agreeable is invariably weak. An agreeable man’s rarely worth more then twelve or fifteen a week. What this world needs is more people like this friend of yours. I saw that he had built himself up solidly from the ground. I wish I had a son like that! Your brothers are pretty poor excuses, thanks to the vicious training your mother has given them. ‘Be a gentleman—and make everybody comfortable—don’tdo anything to hurt anybody’s feelings or to make yourself conspicuous.’ That is, be a cipher.” Richmond snorted. “A gentleman is a cipher—and ciphers count for nothing unless they’re annexed after a figure that stands for something. But I suppose a successful man can’t expect to have strong sons. He has to be thankful if they’re not imbecile or dissipated.”
Beatrice had been caught up and whirled all in a twinkling from depth to height. The way down through the woods was rough and toilsome. She flitted along as if it were smooth as a French high-road. She beamed upon her father. “What a difference between the ordinary young man, the sort we meet—and a man like Roger Wade!” she cried.
“Those tailor’s dummies!” said Richmond contemptuously. “You can’t compare amanwith them.”
He was on his favorite topic for private and public addresses—the topic that enabled him to express the views which had won for him the name of being the most democratic of the big financiers. Like all men of abounding mentality he was a huge talker; get him started and the only thing to do, whether one wished or no, was to listen. Usually, Beatrice, who was not fond of silence and soon reached the limit of her capacity for listening, would imperiously interrupt these monologues—andboth would enjoy the tussle between their wills as each tried to compel the other to listen. But this discourse—composed though it was of commonplaces he had repeated and she had heard scores of times—she drank in as if it had been the brand-new thing her soul had long thirsted to hear. Like all fluent talkers Richmond often fell victim—in conversation, never in action—to the intoxication of bubbling ideas and phrases. Before they reached the place where they had left the T cart to await their return, Richmond had not merely committed himself finally and completely to the gospel of the aristocracy of achievement, he had hailed that aristocracy as the only one worthy of consideration, had ridiculed and denounced all others as utterly contemptible.
Beatrice took advantage of his pause for getting the horses under way. She gave his arm a loving squeeze. “I’m so proud of you!” she said tenderly, gazing at him with sparkling eyes and delicately flushed cheeks. “Iknewyou’d feel that way about him!”
“About whom?” said her father, whose flooding sermon had borne him swiftly far from view, or remembrance even, of the text whence it had sprung.
“About Chang.”
“Chang? What Chang? Who’s Chang?”
“Roger Wade.”
“Oh, of course,” said he indifferently. “He’s a case in point.”
“I knew you’d help me with him,” pursued the happy girl.
“Of course I will,” said Richmond. “Hasn’t he been doing what you wanted about the picture?”
“I wanthim,” said she, feeling close and sympathetic, completely in touch with this splendid, broad-minded father of hers.
Richmond reined in the horses so sharply that one of them reared. It took a minute or so for them to be quieted, with the groom racing round from the seat behind to steady their heads. When the cart was moving smoothly on Richmond said: “What did you say just as that brown devil began to act up?”
“I want to marry Roger Wade,” replied Beatrice, too strongly under the delusion to read plain signs aright. “You see why. You’ve said yourself that he was one of the realest men you had seen. You can’t wonder at my caring for him. All the others seem so—so puny—beside him. I’d be ashamed to show any of them as my husband. What shall I do, father? How can I get him?”
If one finds oneself pointing south when he ought to be pointing north there are two ways to act. One may veer gently and gradually, hoping that the shift willpass unobserved; or one may make the change with speed swifter than thought or sight, and may point north so stiffly that it will seem impossible that one ever was pointing, or ever could point, in any other direction. When Richmond found it necessary to flop he did not sidle—he flopped. He proceeded to flop now—with a jerk and a bang. “What are you talking about?” he said savagely. “You’re going to marry Peter.”
The instant prompting of instinct to Beatrice was that her father would not help, would not consent, would not tolerate. But straightway came the memory of his gallant democratic speechifyings still echoing in her ears. “You know I couldn’t marry a Peter after I had seen Roger,” she said gayly. “All the time you were talking—as we walked down from his studio—I knew what you really had in mind. You were giving it to me for thinking of Peter when I might have the other man. You thought I was hopelessly frivolous and snobbish like the rest of the family. But I’m like you, father. I don’t want to be married to a tailor’s dummy. I want aman!” She nodded brightly at his thunderous face. “And we’ll get him—you and I!”
Richmond did not relent, not a whit. She had taken him so completely by surprise, had put him in such an absurdly false position that temper got the better of prudence. He did not view the situation calmly andproceed along lines of wisdom—using common-sense argument, appeal to material instincts and that mightiest of weapons, gentle ridicule. He hurled at her through his eyes the hot wrath of his tyrant will. “You are going to marry Peter, I tell you. I’m astounded at you. I’m disgusted with you. I’d have thought you could see straight through a cheap, lazy fortune hunter. Vanity—always vanity! He makes a few flattering speeches, and you believe he is in love with you. And you begin to make a god out of him. I’m glad you spoke to me about this. If the Vanderkiefs had any idea of it they’d drop you double-quick.”
Beatrice knew her father—knew when he was in earnest. Never before had she seen or felt a deeper earnestness than this of his now. She sat dazed, staring at the restless ears of the thoroughbreds before her.
“No good ever comes of marrying out of your own class,” continued he. “I thought you had more pride. I know you have. You were joking. Let’s hear no more about it.”
“He is not a fortune hunter,” said Beatrice in a numb way.
“I tell you he is!” cried Richmond violently. “The impudent hound! No wonder he tried to work off that picture of his as a gift!” Richmond laughed with a sneer. “The impudent puppy!”
“He is a great artist,” said Beatrice. “D’Artois says so.”
“What of that? What’s an artist? What standing has he got? But don’t talk about it. I’ll not be able to contain myself.” He faced her sharply. “Look at me!”
The girl turned her eyes slowly, with her wounded soul’s suffering revealed in them. But Richmond did not see people ever; he saw only his own purposes. “How far has this gone?”
She eyed him steadily long enough for him to get the sense of an immovable obstacle squarely across the path of his indomitable will. “It has gone so far that I’ll not marry anyone else,” she said, neither hot nor cold. “I couldn’t.”
“Don’t let me hear that kind of talk!” shouted Richmond, in his rage forgetting the groom. “You are going to marry a man who can make you happy—a man in your own station—a man who has family and standing.”
“But you said Roger was of the only true aristocracy,” pleaded Beatrice. “You said——”
“And a fool I was, to talk to a silly, little idiot of an ignorant girl with no experience of life, with no ability to understand what I was talking about. I wasn’t discussing a husband for you. I wasn’t discussingthe world as it is. I wasn’t discussing people of our station. I wasn’t discussing fortune-hunting artists. It shows how little sense you’ve got, that you could twist what I said into an appeal to you to marry an impudent fortune hunter!”
In his fury at her for being thus stupid he gave the off thoroughbred a sharp cut with the whip. The horse, unused to such loutish disrespect to his royal blood, leaped forward, started to run. For five minutes Richmond had to fix his undivided attention upon the horses; they gave him a bad scare before consenting to submit.
The girl, unconscious of what was going on, sat in the blinding storm of her own unhappiness.
“You and Peter are engaged?” was her father’s resuming remark.
“In a fashion.”
“What does that mean?”
“Not much of anything,” replied his daughter indifferently.
Richmond’s strong, sallow teeth looked as if they were crowded because they were pushing eagerly to the fore in competition to be first in sinking into the prey. Said he: “I want the date of the wedding fixed at once.”
Silence.
“Did you hear?”
“Yes.”
“Why don’t you answer?”
“You didn’t ask a question. You issued an order.”
“And you will obey it.”
Silence.
“Did you hear?”
“Yes.”
“I won’t tolerate sullenness. I am your father. I know life—the world—what is best for my family—for you. I don’t often interfere. When I do, I expect obedience.”
“It seems to me you are blustering a good deal, for one who is sure of obedience,” said Beatrice, in a way that brought out all her latent resemblance to the incarnation of passionate will and willful passion who begot her.
“I’ve always been indulgent with all my family—with you,” fumed Richmond. “But I think you know me well enough to know I’m not to be trifled with.”
“Nor am I,” said the girl. And again she eyed him in that unyielding way.
“Where did you and your mother pick up that vagabond, anyhow?” demanded Richmond.
“Ipicked him up. D’Artois told you——”
“D’Artois was talking about him as an artist, not as an equal.”
“Equal!” cried Beatrice. And she laughed mockingly.
“Don’t be impudent to me!” raged her father. “You’ve been brought up in a certain way. You’re not fit for any other way of life. You are not to be allowed to make a fool of yourself, to muddle your life up. I’ll have no scandals in my family—no scoundrels blackmailing me to release my daughter.”
Beatrice’s look at him was so appealing, so reminiscent of his bold talk about democracy, about the democracy of achievement, that some men, if they had been in his place, would have been ashamed and confounded. Not Daniel Richmond, however—not when his plans of social grandeur, nursed all these years in his secretest heart, were endangered.
When Rhoda was marrying the Earl of Broadstairs he had been able to keep his pose intact—had contrived to protest against one of his children’s yielding to the craze for “decayed aristocrats with fly-blown titles,” and to yield only because “personally, Broadstairs wasn’t as bad as some,” and because the girl and her mother had made it clear to him that her heart would be broken if she didn’t get the man she loved—at the price such luxuries cost. He had assumed that Beatrice had been equally well brought up—to love where she should, to do as well in the American upperclass as her sister had done in the foreign upper class. This revelation of her waywardness, the waywardness of the child who was his especial pride, for whom he had dreamed the most dazzling splendors of social grandeurs in New York—this astounding revelation put him in the rage of his life. His face was a study in hatefulness. Beatrice shivered as she looked at it—but not with fear.
“Yes,” said she calmly, after a pause. “I’ve been brought up in a certain way. But I was born to insist on having what I want. I want Roger. And, father, I’m going to have him—in spite of you both.”
After a pause, in a voice of dreadful calm Richmond said: “You are going to marry Peter Vanderkief within six weeks or two months—or you are going to get the shock of your willful life.”
“No,” replied she, in a voice of calm equally dreadful. “I have already had that shock. I thought mother was the snob. I thought women were the snobs. But I see it’s the men—worse than the women—you worse than mother. Oh, father,” she said, changing suddenly to passionate pleading, “how canyoube like this!You—of all men!”
“Never mind me, young lady,” snapped her father, flying to the safe refuge of rage. “I’m going to save you from this blackmailing fortune hunter.” And theunpleasantly crowded teeth showed savagely through the ragged gray mustache.
“I have asked him to marry me, and——”
“What!” shouted Richmond, again forgetting the groom. “Are youcrazy?”
“I am,” said Beatrice simply. “I love him. I’m crazy—permanently crazy.”
“Your mother will take you to New York this very day. You’ll sail day after to-morrow morning.”
“I shall do nothing of the kind,” said the girl.
The sound Richmond made was in the guise of laughter—of mockery. But no snarl or roar could have been so fraught with menace. “We’ll see about this, miss,” said he. “I’ll show you who is master in my family. I’ll show you you can’t go on degrading yourself with this low intrigue. That hound! So he thought he could fasten himself on me—did he? I’ll teach him!”
“I have proposed to him. He has refused me. I’ve made love to him. He has repulsed me.”
Richmond’s cruel mouth under his ragged mustache was horrible to see. “You shameless girl!” he cried. “It’ll be one of the servants next. I must get you safely married at once. If your mother wasn’t absolutely incompetent she’d have had you settled long ago.”
“I shall marry no one but Roger Wade,” came from the quiet figure beside him in a quiet voice.
“Have you got no sense at all? You say the puppy refused you. Don’t you know why?”
“I know the reason you’d give.”
“And that’s the real reason. He has heard aboutme! He’s got brains enough to understand that his best game is to——”
“Don’t you say another word against him!” cried Beatrice, at the end of her forbearance. “You talk of my being a fool. What do you think of yourself? You don’t want me to marry this man. How do you go about preventing it? Why, you show me that you are not the father who, I thought, loved me, but that you couldn’t love anybody. You show me that you are not the kind of man I thought, but a snob, a hypocritical snob—yes, a hypocritical snob, who has been pulling wires behind mother—you all the time railing at her and at me and at Rhoda as snobs. And then, when you’ve shown me the truth about my surroundings, you go on to attack the man I love—to say about him things I know to be false. Isthatwhat you call clever?”
“I’m glad you’re letting me see you in your true colors,” said the father, so exhausted by his passions that his voice came as little more than a hoarse whisper.“As for that—that fortune hunter who has been making a fool of you—don’t ever mention his name to me again!”
“Do you want me to jump out of this cart?” cried the daughter, quivering with fury.
Richmond pushed the horses into their swiftest trot. He did not speak again until he reined in at the entrance to the gray chateau. Then he said viciously, “Go to your rooms and get ready to leave for New York and Europe. You have two hours and a half.”