“I don’t want to get well,I don’t want to get well,I’m in love with a beautiful nurse!”
“I don’t want to get well,I don’t want to get well,I’m in love with a beautiful nurse!”
“I don’t want to get well,I don’t want to get well,I’m in love with a beautiful nurse!”
“I don’t want to get well,
I don’t want to get well,
I’m in love with a beautiful nurse!”
The young man heeded neither the humming nor the remark about his unfortunate importance. He frowned, looking anxiously at his watch on the table beside his couch. “I wonder what’s keeping her,” he said, peevishly. “She said she’d be here with a book to read to me. When anybody does to another person what she did to me, I think the least they can do is to be punctual, especially when they’ve promised they would.”
She of whom he complained was not far away, however. At that moment she had just been greeted and detained by two girl friends of hers who encountered her in the park on her way to the hospital. Their manner did not please her.
“Lill-lee!” they shouted from the distance, at sight of her. They whistled shrilly, and, as she looked toward them, they waved their arms at her; then came running, visibly excited and audibly uproarious.
They seemed to be bursting with laughter; yet when they reached her, what they said was only, “Where yougoing, Lily?” And before she replied, they clutched each other, perishing of their mutual jocularity. From the first, Lily did not like their laughter;—it had not the sound of true mirth, but was the kind of mere vocal noise that hints of girlish malice.
She looked at them disapprovingly. “I’m going to the hospital,” she said with some primness. “What’s so funny?”
“What you going todoat the hospital, Lily?”
“Read to Mr. McArdle,” she replied. “He’s better and——”
But their immediate uproar cut her short. They clung together, shrieking. “That’s notyourfault,isit, Lily?” one of them became coherent enough to inquire, whereupon they both doubled themselves, rocked, gurgled, screamed, and clung again.
“What’s not my fault?” she asked.
“That he’s better!”
With that, they moved to be upon their way, still uproarious, still clutching each other; and as they went they looked back to shout at her.
“He won’t get better very fast, will he, Lily?” one of them thus called back to her, and, without pausing, replied to herself: “Not if you haveyourway!”
And the other: “Eleanor Gray and Harriet Joyce have nothing onyou, have they, Lily?”
They disappeared round a curving path, leaning upon each other from exhaustion; and Lily stood looking after them frowningly. There had been little good-nature in their raillery, and also there were mysterious and vaguely unpleasant implications in it—particularly in the final jibe about Eleanor Gray and Harriet Joyce. Miss Gray was the girl accused by rumour of having sought to put herself upon James Herbert McArdle’s train, and Miss Joyce was widely supposed to have fainted with the deliberate purpose of attracting his attention. The implication of the mirthful pair just encountered that Lily surpassed both Miss Gray and Miss Joyce was plain enough—as if going to a hospital to read to a patient were a mere manœuvre of the type to which the Gray and Joyce manœuvres belonged! And as if one wouldn’t gladly give a little of one’s time to a hospital patient who has become a patient through one’s own fault! But more than mere rallying upon the hospital readings seemed to have been implied; and as Lily thought the matter over, she felt that something of the teasing pair’s meaning evaded her.
She had the same feeling after an interview the next day with one of her nearest and dearest girl friends, who came to see her at home. “I don’t want to be intrusive, dear,” the caller informed her, with sympathetic but rather eager gravity. “You know me too well to believe I’d ask such a thing out of pure curiosity; but I’ve simplygotto know how poor Henry Burnett is taking it.”
“Taking what, Emma?”
“Lily! You know what I mean. I mean all this about you and Mr. McArdle.”
“ ‘All this’?” Lily repeated in a tone of cold inquiry. “I don’t see that such a simple matter needs quite that sort of definition. Naturally, I’m doing what I can to help him through his convalescence. Oughtn’t I to? But perhaps you don’t know that I’m responsible for hisbeingin the hospital, Emma.”
“Oh, yes,” Emma said, quietly, and she gave her friend a queer look. “Yes, everybody knows that, Lily,” she went on in a thoughtful voice. “Everybody! Yes, indeed!” She paused, then reverted to her former topic. “I just wondered how poor Henry Burnett is taking it all.”
“I haven’t any idea what you mean,” Lily said, impatiently. “I fail to see that there’s anything for him to ‘take’; and if there were, it would certainly be no affair of his. I have no responsibilities to Mr. Burnett.”
“But you did! Weren’t you almost——”
“That may be,” Lily interrupted. “But I don’t see him any more.”
“You broke with him, Lily?”
“I did not, because there was nothing absolutely announced and definite to break. I simply decided not to waste any more of his time and mine.”
“Why?” Emma asked.
“Because I found that I had no feeling for him; none for him nor for anything else—no interest in him or in any other man alive.”
“Oh, Lily!” Emma cried; and then she sat open-mouthed and round-eyed, staring in perfect incredulity. “Oh,Lily!”
“What’s the matter?”
Emma still stared; but finally, being a true friend, she half gasped, “Nothing!” as she rose to go.
She was still round of eye, though her mouth had become decorous for a street appearance, when she left the house a few moments later; and Lily was not much better pleased with her friend Emma than she had been with the two taunting girls in the park.
Nor were these three the sum of all who displeased her. She went to a “tea,” and easily perceived that she became instantly the centre of all interest;—but she did not like the interest. Whispering and half-suppressed laughter buzzed about her; eyes were furtively upon her wherever she glanced; elderly women looked at her and talked behind their hands; and she was uncomfortably aware of a wondering derision focussing constantly upon her. She came away shivering, marvelling at the pettiness of human nature that could make such a disagreeable pother over a girl’s doing her simple best to atone for a moment’s carelessness with a golf club. Moreover, before she got out of the gate she found herself surrounded by a group of newcomers, girls of her own age, who repeated almost precisely the performance of the two in the park. “How long do you think you can keep his head from fitting together where you broke it, Lily?” This was the last thing she heard from the group near the gate, except for a loud burst of unfriendly laughter. She began to be seriously indignant.
XXVIIIA PUBLIC MOCKERY
NOT MUCH time was granted her indignation to cool;—it became outright fury not twenty-four hours later; and the occasion of this change for the worse was a spectacular little performance on the part of the gentleman for whom her emotions had forever ceased to stir—that unhappy Henry so recently dismissed. And since Henry’s performance took place “in public,” according to Lily’s definition of its background, her fury was multiplied in intensity by a number corresponding to the number of witnesses present at the spectacle.
One of these was Mr. James Herbert McArdle, who was seated beside her at the time. She was accompanying him for a drive, as she had promised him; and his choice for the excursion had been an open red car, noticeable also in contour and dimensions. The top was folded back, so that Lily and her escort, both richly shrouded in furs, presented to the world a fast-flying sketch of affluent luxury. A fleeting glimpse of beauty might be caught there, too; for Lily’s colour was high, and sunshine glinted in her hair; amber lights danced from it and blue sparklings from her eyes as she sped by.
At one point, however, the fast-flying sketch ceased to fly, and halted, affording spectators more leisure for observation; but this, as presently appeared, was just the wrong point for such a thing to happen. The red car, returning from the open country, passed into the suburban outskirts, and Mr. McArdle directed the chauffeur to turn into the country club driveway. “I’ve got a fancy to see where our friendship began,” he said to Lily. “I noticed the last green was near the driveway. Let’s go look at it.”
She assented, and they drove to the spot that interested him; but they found it inhabited. A score or so of people were there, watching the conclusion of a match evidently of some special interest as an exhibition of proficiency. When the red car stopped, the last shot into the cup was in the final crisis of action, and a popular triumph was thereby attained, as the spectators made plain. They instantly raised a loud shout, acclaiming the successful player, cheering him and rushing forward to shake his hand; though he, himself, seemed far from elated.
On the contrary, there gleamed a bitter spark in his eye, and his appearance, though manly, was one of so dark a melancholy that he might have been thought an athletic and Americanized Hamlet. Not speaking, he waved the enthusiasts away, tossed his club to his caddy and turned to leave the green; but, as he did so, his glance fell upon the red car in the driveway near by. He halted, stock-still, while a thrilled murmur was heard rustling among the bystanders. Everybody stared at Lily, at her companion, and at the morbid winner of the golf match. There was a moment of potent silence.
Then the sombre player advanced a step toward Lily and, looking her full in the eye, took off his cap and swept the ground with it before her in mocking salutation—derisive humility before satirized greatness.
A startled but delighted “Oh!” came from among the people about the green. They began to buzz, and silvery giggles were heard.
Lily’s eyes shot icy fire at the bowing harlequin. “Tell the driver to goon,” she said to McArdle.
“Who was that fellow?” he asked her, as they drove away. “I had a notion to get out and see if I couldn’t make him bow even a little lower.”
“No, no,” she said, hastily. “You shouldn’t have. You aren’t well enough, and, besides, he’s only a ruffian.”
“But who is he?”
“I’ve just told you,” she said, fiercely. “He’s a ruffian. His name is Henry Burnett, if you want something to go with the definition of him I’ve just given you.”
“But what did he do it for? What made him bow like that?”
“Because heisa ruffian!” Lily said. Her eyes were not less fiery than they had been, and neither were her checks. “I believe I never knew what it was to hate anybody before,” she went on in a low voice. “When I’ve thought I hated people it must have been just dislike. I’m sure I’ve never known what it was to hate anybody as he’s just made me hate him.”
“But see here!” Young Mr. McArdle was disquieted. “What’s it all about? Telling me he’s a ruffian doesn’t explain it. What made him do it?”
“This,” Lily said between her teeth. “For a while I thought I cared a little about him—not much but some—enough to let him know I thought so. Well, I found I didn’t.”
“How’d you find it out?” he asked.
“I discovered that I was absolutely indifferent to him, and that nothing he could ever do would have the slightest power to make me feel anything whatever. I told him so in the gentlest way I could, and since then he’s behaved like the brute that he is.”
“But is it true?”
“Is what true?” she asked, sharply.
“I mean,” he said, “is it true you’re indifferent to him?”
“Good heavens!” she cried, with the utmost bitterness. “Don’t you see that I hate him so that I’d like to wring his neck? I would!” she cried, fiercely. “I could almostdoit, too, if I were alone with him for a few minutes!” And she held up to his view her slender white-gloved hands, with her fingers curved as for the fatal performance.
Mr. McArdle seemed to be relieved. “Well, I guess it’s all right,” he said. “That is, if you’re sure you don’t like him.” Then as she turned angrily upon him, he added hurriedly, “And I see you don’t. I’m sure you don’t.” He laughed with a slight hint of complacency not unnatural in an important and well-petted invalid. “I think you kind of owe it to me not to go around liking other men from now on. I mean—well, you know how I’m getting to feel about you, I guess.”
Lily sat staring straight forward at the chauffeur’s back, though that was not what she saw. What she saw was the tall young man of the tragic face, mocking her before delighted onlookers. “I know what I feel abouthim!” she said, too preoccupied with her fury to listen well to her companion.
“I’m glad you do,” he said, earnestly. “I wouldn’t like to feel you were thinking much about anybody but me. Of course I know you’ve been giving me a good deal of your time; but the fact is, I’ll want you to give me even more of it, especially the next week or so—before my mother comes out to visit me. Will you?”
As she did not answer, but still gazed fiercely at the chauffeur’s back, he repeated, “Will you?”
“I could!” she said; but this was evidently not a reply to his question, for she again held up her curved fingers to view. “I could, and I would! If I were left alone with him for five minutes IknowI would!”
“Let’s forget him just now,” young Mr. McArdle suggested. “I was telling you about my mother’s coming out here to visit me in a week or so. My family’s really pretty terrible about keeping tabs on me, you know—I mean, for fear I’ll get engaged to anybody except my second cousin Lulu. She’s one of the female branch of the family, you know, that married into the banks, and of course they all feel it ought to be kept together, and Lulu would be a great advantage. But she’s homely as sin, and, so far, they’ve had a pretty hard time persuading me. You understand, don’t you?”
“What?” Lily asked, vaguely. Then she drew a deep breath, clenched her curved fingers tightly upon the fur rug and said virulently to herself: “I could do it and sing for joy that Ihaddone it!” However, in the ears of her companion this was only an indistinct murmur.
“I mean I suppose you understand about the family and all that,” he said. “My mother’s bound to interfere, of course. If you and I expect to see much of each other after she comes, we’ll have a fight on our hands, because, of course, the family won’t stand for my getting too interested in anybody out here. Naturally, they don’t expect me not to have a good time; but you know what I mean;—they wouldn’t stand for my getting serious, I mean.”
He was serious enough just then, however; that was plain. His voice was almost quaveringly plaintive, in fact, as he leaned toward her. “Lily,” he said, “I expect my mother would like you all right if you were my cousin Lulu, or somebody in Lulu’s position; but the way things are—well, of course she isn’t going to. She’s going to make an awful fuss if I try to go about with you at all. But I’m willing to buck up to her and see if we can’t pull it off anyhow. Honestly, I am. How about it?”
“What?” she said, absently, still looking forward and not at him. “What did you say?”
“My goodness!” he exclaimed, blankly. “I don’t believe you were evenlistening!”
“I’m afraid I wasn’t.”
At that, a natural resentment deepened the colour in this important young man’s cheeks. “Well, I should think it might be considered worth your while,” he said. “I don’t put too much on being James Herbert McArdle, Third, I believe; but at least I might claim it isn’t a thing that happens every day in the world, exactly—my asking a girl to marry me, I mean.”
She turned to him, frowning. “Was that what you were doing?”
“I was telling you I hoped to make a try for it,” he explained a little querulously. “When my mother comes and hears about this she’ll send for my father probably and there’ll be a big fuss—more than you could have any idea of until you really hear it. But I never took to any girl as much as I’ve taken to you, never in my life.” Here his querulousness gave way to another feeling and his voice softened. “I’m ready to buck up to the whole crew of ’em for your sake, Lily. What about it?”
She looked at him blankly. “I don’t know,” she said.
“What?” he cried. “Don’t you understand? I’m asking you tomarryme!”
“Yes,” she said. “I hear you say it; but so far as I’m concerned you might almost as well be telling me it’s a pleasant day! I’m not in the right state to think about it or even to understand it.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” she said, “I’m so angry I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Look here——” he began; but said no more, and, in spite of her preoccupation with her anger, she was able to perceive that he now had some of his own. She put her hand lightly upon his sleeve and, simultaneously, the car stopped at the hospital door.
“Forgive me,” she said. “I’m afraid I’m terribly rude. But don’t you know there are times when you get so furious you justcan’tthink about anything else?”
“Can’t you?” he returned, coldly, as the chauffeur helped him down from the car. “I’m afraid I doubt if you’deverconsider what I was saying as of enough importance to listen to.”
“I’m so sorry,” Lily said; and in spite of herself she said it absently; so that nothing could have been plainer than that her mind was not even upon this apology, but altogether upon the offence she had received from Mr. Henry Burnett.
A special attendant of the convalescent’s came from within the building and offered his arm. Young Mr. McArdle took it and gave a final glance at the flushed cheeks and fiery eyes of the lady who had already twice smitten him and thus smote him again. Something hot in his upper chest seemed to rise against this provincial and suburban young woman who was too busy being furious with a local nonentity to know what she was doing indeed! The affronted young man’s last word was to the chauffeur.
“When you have taken Miss Dodge home I sha’n’t want you until day-after-to-morrow. I don’t care to drive every day.”
Lily was borne away murmuring, “I’m sorry,” again, but what she thought was: “I could! I could wring Henry Burnett’s neck and sing for joy!”
. . . When the long red car drew up before her father’s house, there was another machine standing at the curb, a small black thing of the hardiest variety and odiously familiar to Lily. She jumped out, and, shaking with rage and her desire to express it, fairly ran up the brick walk to her front door.
But here a housemaid sought to detain her, whispering urgently: “Mr. Burnett’s in the living-room, waiting. Your mother isn’t home and I didn’t know how to keep him out. If you don’t want to see him you’d better go round to the——”
Lily interrupted her. “Idowant to see him,” she declared in a loud voice. “I want to see himinstantly!” And she swept into the room to confront the mocker.
But mockery was no part of Mr. Henry Burnett’s present mood—far from it. He had come to apologize, and apology was profoundly in his manner as he rose from the chair in which he had been most dejectedly sitting. Dark semicircles beneath his eyes were proof of inner sufferings; he was haggard with his trouble and more Hamlet-like than ever; but now he was a Hamlet truly humble.
“Lily,” he said, huskily, “I’d sworn to myself I’d never make another attempt to see you as long as I lived, but after what I did awhile ago I had to. Ihadto explain it. It was in vile taste, and you can’t think any worse of it than I do. But you came on me suddenly. I hadn’t dreamed I’d see you; then all at once I looked up and there you were—and with the man you threw me over for! I just couldn’t——”
“Henry Burnett,” she said, and her hot little voice shook with the rage that vibrated in her whole body;—“you used to be a gentleman. Twice within less than an hour you’ve shown me you’ve forgotten what that word means.”
“Twice, Lily?” he said, pathetically; “I admit the other time—out at the club—but how have I offended you besides that?”
“In your very apology,” she told him scornfully. “You’ve just had the petty insolence to stand there and say I threw you over for Mr. McArdle!”
“But you did,” he said; and he seemed surprised that she should not admit it. “Why, it’s—why, Lily, everybody knows that!”
“What? You dare to repeat it?”
He looked at her in the most reasonable astonishment, his eyes widening. “But, Lily, I’m not the only one. Everybody repeats it.”
“Who does?”
“Everybody,” he said. “You certainly couldn’t expect a thing like this not to be talked about, with the whole place in the state of excitement it was about McArdle’s coming here, let alone what’s happened since. I had no idea you’d deny it to me now, though I supposed you might to other people, as a matter of form. Of course no one would believe it could be a coincidence.”
She stepped closer to him dangerously. “No one would believe what could be a coincidence, Henry Burnett?”
“That you threw me over just by chance the very day before McArdle came to town and you took that shot at him.”
“I didwhat?”
“Hit him in the head,” Henry explained. “Your name didn’t get in the papers; but you don’t for a moment imagine that everybody in town doesn’t understand, do you, Lily?”
She stamped her foot. “Understand what? What are you talking about?Whatdoes everybody understand?”
“Your plan,” he said, simply. “You don’t think you can lay out a man like that—a man that every other girl in the place is ready to fight you for—you don’t think you can do it in such a way as to make you theonlygirl who has achanceto see him, and then spend all your time with him, and day after day send him so many bushels of flowers that the florist himself gasps over it—and read to him hour after hour, and drivemorehours with him—you can’t do all that and expect people not toseeit, can you?”
Lily’s high colour was vanishing, pallor taking its place. “You needn’t believe I don’t hate you because I stop telling you so for a moment,” she said. “But there’s a mystery somewhere, and I’ve got to get at it. What do you mean I mustn’t expect people not to see?”
“Why, the truth about how he got hurt.”
Lily stepped back from him. “Henry Burnett,” she said, “Henry Burnett, do you dare——”
Henry interrupted her. He had come to apologize; but what he believed to be her hypocrisy was too much for him. “I don’t see the use of your pretending,” he said. “The whole population knows you did it on purpose.”
“Didwhaton purpose?”
“Hit him in the head with your golf ball on purpose!”
Lily uttered a loud cry and clasped her hands to her breast. Aghast, she stared at him with incredulous great eyes; but even as she stared, her mind’s eye renewed before itself some painful pictures that had mystified her—the spitefully uproarious girls in the park; her friend, Emma; the buzzing “tea”; the group at the gate as she came out;—and there were other puzzles that explained themselves in the dreadful light now shed upon them. Uttering further outcries, she sank into a chair.
“Slander!” she gasped. “Oh, ahorribleslander!”
“What?” Henry cried again. “When everybody knows the things you can do with a golf ball if you care to? When that professional trick-player gave his exhibition here, knocking five balls into five hats in a row, and all that, how many of his shots didn’t you duplicate after you’d practised them? And some of the girls talked to the caddy McArdle had with him when it happened, and the boy said he didn’t think you were over forty yards away when you hit him. Lily, there isn’t a soul that knows you who’ll ever believe you didn’t do exactly what you planned to do. I don’t mean they think you could do it every time, or that they’re all certain you aimed at his head; but they all believe you tried to hit him—and succeeded!”
“Andyoudo?” she said. “Youbelieve it?”
He laughed bitterly. “Lily, it’s clear as daylight, and I knew it when I looked up and saw you with him to-day. I knew you’d won what you were after. It was in his face.”
Lily gulped and smiled a wry smile. “I see,” she said. “It all works out, and nobody’ll ever believe I didn’t plan it. Yes, I think he proposed to me on the way home this afternoon.”
“Let me wish you happiness,” Henry said, and seemed disposed to repeat his satiric bow, but thought better of it. “Is the engagement to be a long one?” he inquired, lightly, instead; and this seemed to be as effective as the bow, for Lily sprang up, as if she would strike him.
“I could murder you!” she cried. “And, oh, how I’d like to! I’m notsureMr. McArdle proposed to me; I onlythinkhe did. I told him I couldn’t listen because I was too angry.”
“Too angry with whom?” Henry asked, frowning.
“Withyou!” Lily shouted fiercely.
At that, it was his turn to utter a loud cry. “Lily, is it true? Did you hate me so that you couldn’t even listen to him? Is it true?”
“A thousand times true!” she said, and, in her helpless rage, began to weep. “But I hate you worse than that!”
“And you sent me away because I couldn’t make youfeelanything!” he cried. “Lily, when will you marry me?”
“Do you think I’d ever be engaged to you again,” she sobbed, “when you believed I’d do a brutal thing like that on purpose?”
“Lily,” he said again, “when will you marry me?”
“Never,” she answered. “I’ll never marry anybody.” But even as she spoke, the fortunate young man’s shoulder was becoming damper with her tears.
XXIXMRS. CROMWELL’S OLDEST DAUGHTER
ALL OF the players except three had returned to the clubhouse before the close of the fine April afternoon, and, after an interval in the locker rooms, had departed either in their cars or strolling away on foot, homeward bound to the pleasant groups of suburban houses east of the country club. Westward lay the links, between ploughed fields and groves of beech and ash and maple, a spacious park of rolling meadows with a far boundary of woodland, and, beyond that, nothing but a smoky sunset. All was quiet; there were no sounds from within the clubhouse, nor came any from the links; and although no kine wound slowly o’er the lea and no ploughman plodded his weary way, the impending twilight in such a peace might well have stirred a poetic observer to murmurous quotation from the Elegy. Nevertheless, in this sweet evening silence, emotion was present and not peaceful.
There was emotion far out upon the links, and there was more upon the western veranda of the clubhouse where two ladies sat, not speaking, but gazing intently toward where the dim and hazy great sun was immersing itself in the smoke of the horizon. These two emotional ladies were sisters; that was obvious, for they shared a type of young matronly fairness so decidedly that a photograph of one might have been mistaken, at first glance, for that of the other.
A student of families, observing them, would have guessed immediately that their mother was a fair woman, probably still comely with robust good health, and of no inconsiderable weight in body as well as in general prestige. The two daughters were large young women, but graceful still; not so large as they were going to be some day, nor less well-favoured than they had been in their slenderer girlhood. They were alike, also, in the affluence displayed by the sober modishness of what they wore; and other tokens of this affluence appeared upon the club driveway, where waited two shining, black, closed cars, each with a trim and speechless driver unenclosed. The sisters were again alike in the expectancy with which they gazed out upon the broad avenue of the golf links; but there was a difference in their expressions;—for the expectancy of the younger one was a frowning expectancy, an indignant expectancy, while the expectancy of the other, who was only a year or two the older, appeared to be a timid and apprehensive expectancy—an expectancy, in fact, of calamity.
This elder sister was the one who broke the long silence, though not by uttering words, the sound she produced being an exclamatory gasp and but faintly audible. It appeared to be comprehended as definite information, however, by the younger sister.
“Where, Mildred?” she asked. “I don’t see them yet.”
The other’s apprehension was emphasized upon her troubled forehead, as she nodded in the direction of the far boundary of the links. There, upon the low crest of rising ground capped with the outermost green, appeared six tiny figures, dwindled by the distance and dimmed by the mist that rose into the failing light. For the sun was now so far below the dark horizon that the last ruddiness grew dingy in the sky.
“Yes,” said the younger sister, and her angry frown deepened. “It’s they.”
“Oh, Anne!” the older murmured. “Oh, Anne!”
“Yes, I should say so!” this Anne returned, decisively. “I certainly intend to express myself tomyhusband, Mildred.”
Mildred shook her head unhappily. “If I only could to mine! But that’s just what I can’t do.”
“I don’t know,” the other said. “I think in your place I should; though it’s true I can’t imagine myself in your place, Mildred. My husband has his faults, and one of ’em’s the way he’s letting himself be used to-day, but I can’t imagine his behaving as your husband is behaving. Notthatway!”
She made an impatient gesture toward the west, where the six figures had left the green and were now moving toward the clubhouse, three of them playing deliberately as they came, with three smaller figures, the caddies, in advance. One of the players detached himself, keeping to the southern stretch of the fairway; while the two others, a man and a woman, kept to the northern, walking together, each halting close by when the other paused for a stroke.
“Can you make out which is which, Anne?” the older sister inquired in a voice of faint hope. “Isn’t it John who’s playing off there by himself, and Hobart she keeps so close to her?”
“Not very likely!” Anne returned with a short laugh. “She’s usingmyhusband as a chaperon strictly, and I must say he’s behaving like a tactful one. It’s your John she ‘keeps so close to her’—as usual, Mildred!”
Mildred made merely a desolate sound, and then the sisters resumed the troubled silence that falls between people who have long since discussed to a conclusion every detail of an unhappy affair, and can only await its further development.
The three players came nearer slowly, growing dimmer in the evening haze as they grew larger; until at last it was difficult to see them at all. Other things were as dim as they, the player to the south found to his cost; and, finally deciding to lose no more balls that day, he crossed the fairway to his competitors.
“I’m through, John,” he called, cheerfully. “It’s no use in the world trying to play out these last two holes.”
“I don’t suppose it is,” the other man assented. “Julietta rather wanted to, though.” He turned to the tall girl beside him. “Hobart says——”
“I heard him!” she said, laughing a light laugh, a little taunting in its silveriness. “Hobart’s a well-trained husband. You know what that is, don’t you, John? A well-trained husband is one who doesn’t dare to call his soul his own. Hobart’s been worrying this last half-hour about what Mrs. Simms will say to him for keeping her waiting.”
“You’re right about that, Julietta,” Mr. Hobart Simms agreed. “My wife’s a pretty amiable lady; but I’ve kept her waiting longer than I like to, and old John’s done the same thing. So, as he’s probably in the same apologetic state I’m in, and it’s ridiculous to try to play these last two holes in the pitch dark anyhow, I suggest we——”
The girl interrupted him, though it was to his brother-in-law that she addressed herself. “Areyou in the ‘same apologetic state’ that Hobart is, John?” she asked; and there was an undercurrent in her voice that seemed to ask more than appeared upon the surface. She seemed to challenge, in fact, and yet to plead. “Are you as afraid of Mrs. Tower as Hobart is of Mrs. Simms, John?”
Mr. Tower laughed placatively. “My dear Julietta! Of course if you’d like to play it out——”
“There!” Julietta said, gaily triumphant. “You see he wants to, himself. I believe you’re the one man I know who isn’t terrorized by a wife, John.” She stepped closer to him, speaking through the darkness in a warm, soft voice, almost a whisper. “But then you’re a wonderful man, anyhow—the most wonderful I ever knew, John.”
“Oh, no!” He laughed deprecatingly, and, pleased with her, yet embarrassed by his modesty, coughed lightly for a moment or two. “Of course I’m not; but I do value your thinking so, Julietta. I appreciate it very deeply indeed.”
“Are yousureyou do?” she said in a hurried whisper, so low that he could just hear it. Then she turned briskly toward his brother-in-law, who stood at a little distance, waiting their pleasure. “Run along, Hobart, and please tell Mrs. Tower I haven’t kidnapped him;—he’s staying to play it out with me of his own free will. And please pay all the caddies off and let them go. We don’t need them, and they’re dying to get home.”
He was obedient, and from the clubhouse veranda, where lights now shone, it could be discerned that the party on the links had broken up. The caddies ran scurrying by, their shrill outcries disturbing the air about them, and, in their wake, the slight figure of Mr. Hobart Simms appeared within the radius of illumination from the building.
“They’re coming,” Anne Simms said to her sister. “Don’t let them see anything.”
Mr. Simms mounted the dozen steps that led up to the veranda. “Dear me, Anne!” he said. “I’m afraid you’ve been waiting quite a time. I can’t tell you how sorry——”
But she cut his apology short. “Where’s John?”
“Old John? Why, I gave up; but he’s decided to play it out. Old John and I started pretty late anyhow, and we were playing around with Julietta Voss, as it happened——”
“Yes,” his wife said, dryly, “ ‘as it happens’ rather often! Where are they?”
“Just out yonder.”
“Where?Wecan’t see anybody.”
“Well, they’re there anyhow,” he returned. “They’ll be along in a minute or two.”
Mrs. Simms rose from her chair. “Suppose you go and bring them,” she said.
But before he could make any response, her sister intervened. “No! Oh,no!” Mildred cried in a voice of distress, and, rising, too, she caught Anne’s hand in hers. “Don’t send him! It would look as if——” She stopped, perceptibly agitated.
The surprise of the gentleman present was genuine, though not so acute as that of an inexperienced man who expects ladies never to show unreasonable and apparently causeless emotion. “Why, what’s the matter?” he said. “It doesn’t seem to me that just because two people happen to get interested in the game——”
“Never mind!” his wife said, sharply. “If you intend to take your clubs down to the locker room you’d better be doing it.”
“Very well.” He entered the clubhouse through a French window that opened upon the veranda, and his surprise was somewhat increased when his wife followed him.
“Wait,” she said, as she closed the window behind her. “Hobart Simms, I never dreamed you’d allow yourself to be put in such a position.”
“What?” he said. “What position am I in?”
“I didn’t think you were this kind of man at all,” his wife informed him with continued severity. “I always believed you were intelligent—even about women!”
“Oh, no,” he protested. “Don’t go so far as that, my dear!” He laughed as he spoke, but despite both his protest and his laughter, his looks deserved what Mrs. Simms declared to have been her previous opinion of him. Bodily, he was still a featherweight, and of that miraculous slimness which appears inconsistent with the possession of the organs necessary to sustain life; but his glance was the eagle’s.
“I did think so!” his wife exclaimed. “I used to think you were different, and that women couldn’t fool you any more than men could.”
“Anne, what woman has taken enough interest in me to fool me?”
“Nobody. She doesn’t take any interest in you; she only uses you.”
“Who is she?”
The lady gave utterance to an outcry of indignant amazement at the everlasting stupidity of a man beguiled by a woman; for, in spite of the ages during which men have been beguiled by women, the women who are not doing the beguiling never cease to marvel that it can be done. “You poor blind thing!” she cried. “Julietta Voss!”
At this he was merely amused. “You’re not feeling well, Anne,” he remarked. “What you say doesn’t sound like you at your best. I never heard anything so——”
Mrs. Simms interrupted him. “Who paid her caddy?”
“I did. I paid both hers and old John’s, but I don’t think we need——”
“What made you keep so far away from them? What made you play down the south side of the course and leave them so far over on the north? Did she ask you to?”
“Good gracious!” he exclaimed. “It just happened! They were playing the same ball, against me. Naturally——”
“ ‘Naturally,’ ” she said, taking up the word sharply, “it was like that all round the course, wasn’t it?”
“What of it? I understood you to charge me with being fooled by poor little Julietta——”
“Stop calling her ‘little’,” Mrs. Simms commanded. “She’s a foot taller than you are!”
“Well, then,” he mildly remonstrated, “with all that advantage, what would she take the trouble to fool me for? If she wanted to make love to me she could do it openly, by force.”
At this, his wife’s face showed sheer despair of him. “I just said that she doesn’t take the slightest interest in you—except as a foil! This is the third time.”
“The third time what?”
“The third time you’ve been manœuvred into coming out here to play with them. Good heavens, don’t youseeit?”
“No,” he returned, meekly. “Tell me in words of one syllable, Anne.”
Mrs. Simms complied, and in her response there was that direct brevity not unusual with her sex in the climaxes of bitter moments. “She’s trying to get my sister’s husband away from her!”
The bewilderment of Mr. Simms was complete. “Old John?” he cried. “Old JohnTower? Poor little Julietta Voss is trying to get old John away from Mildred? Of all the preposterous——” His laughter interrupted his enunciation. “Why, that’s the most far-fetched fancy work I ever—— But of course you don’t mean it seriously.”
“I do.”
“But it’s nonsense! Julietta’s always ready to come and be an outdoor comrade for anybody; but it’s only because she’s such a good fellow she doesn’t stop to care whether she’s with old married men like John and me, or with the boys of her own age that she’d naturally like to be with a great deal better of course.”
“She’s almost my own age; she’s over thirty,” the grim Mrs. Simms informed him. “The ‘boys of her own age’ are busy elsewhere.”
“Well, she isn’t that kind of a schemer, no matter what her age is, and if she were, why, the last person on earth she’d pick out would be steady old John Tower. He’s absolutely devoted to Mildred, and everybody knows it. And, finally, if poor Julietta is trying to break up Mildred’s hearth and home, what in the world are you so sharp withmeabout? If it’s John, and not me that Julietta’s after——”
“Didn’t I tell you she uses you as a foil? Who could criticize her for running after another woman’s husband when his own brother-in-law is always chaperoning them? She knows there’s talk——”
“She does? Well, I don’t. You say——”
“I certainly do. Ofcoursethere’s talk. There has been for some time.”
“Does Mildred share your idea?” he asked.
“She does—most unhappily!”
“Anne, do you mean to tell me that as sensible a woman as Mildred’s always seemed could actually let herself get worried about——”
“Any wife would,” Anne interrupted, severely. “Especially with a husband as odd as John Tower. So far as women are concerned he’s nothing but a grown-up child! He believes everything they tell him, and Julietta knows it. It’s because heisso perfectly simple and naïve and trustful—with women—that Mildred is wretched about him.”
“What’s she said to old John about it?”
“Nothing.”
“Why not?”
“Because if she did,” Mrs. Simms explained, “it might look as if she were jealous.”
“Well, she is, isn’t she?”
“Not at all. She’s terribly hurt, and naturally she’s angry and rather disgusted to think her husband would let such a person as Julietta Voss have so much effect upon him.”
Hobart’s intelligent forehead became lined with the effort to solve the puzzle before him. “You say she’s terribly hurt and she’s angry and she’s disgusted because she thinks her husband is letting another woman carry on with him; but she’s not jealous. How would you define jealousy, Anne?”
“As nothing that a girl like Julietta Voss could make a lady feel,” Anne returned, with no little heat. “Mildred is a lady—and I’m going back to her. Be kind enough to hurry with your ablutions, if you intend any.”
He went away meekly to obey, and when he returned to the veranda he still looked meek, though there was in his glance a sly skepticism readily visible to his wife. She was sitting by the veranda railing with her sister, who was staring forth into the darkness in a manner somewhat pathetic; but, as her brother-in-law thought her imaginings absurd, his sympathies were not greatly roused. “Hasn’t that old Don Giovanni of yours finished playing it out yet, Mildred?” he inquired.
Both ladies looked round at him over their shoulders, Mildred piteously, but Anne sternly. “There’s one great trouble with an unflagging humour,” Mrs. Simms said. “It never flags.”
“Dear me!” he exclaimed. “If Mildred thinks poor old John and Julietta—— Mildred, you don’t for one minute honestly and truly——”
But Mildred made a gesture of agonized entreaty. “Please! Please!” she said in a low voice. “They’re coming!”
A peal of light laughter was heard from the darkness, and the figures of the two delaying players became visible within the outer reaches of the clubhouse lights. They were walking slowly, engaged in obviously cheerful conversation, and from the shoulders of the stalwart Tower were slung both bags containing the implements used in the game they had been playing. It was characteristic and like old John’s punctilious gallantry, his brother-in-law thought, to have seized upon both those bags the moment the caddies were dismissed. Miss Voss, almost as tall as he, was more than equal to carrying her own bag without effort.
She had the figure of a distance runner in training, lithe, hard, and active; and there was something lively, yet hard, too, in her tanned long face, which was a handsome face in spite of its length. But her eyes were what was most noticeable about her, for they were beautiful. They were brilliantly dark, and at times seemed to hold little dancing lights within them, as if they gave glimpses of secret laughter. All in all, she was a cheery companion for an outdoor afternoon, but by no manner of means a tricky witch, Mr. Hobart Simms decided, as he looked down smilingly upon her and upon that odd man, his brother-in-law and junior partner, old John Tower.
“Old John,” of an age not more than Hobart’s, was queer, Hobart thought; but his queerness did not alter the simple steadiness of character that made his intimates think and speak of him as “old John.” Moreover, his oddity lay mainly in his literal, simple truthfulness under all conditions, in his belief that others were as truthful as himself, and in an indefatigable formal politeness of manner, sometimes a little stately, that was really the expression of a kind heart.
The two came gaily up the steps, still laughing at something said out of hearing from the veranda, and Julietta gave a final fillip to their joke by reeling against her companion as they reached the top step. She steadied herself by clutching his shoulder, and seemed almost to hang upon him, for a moment or two, while she chid him. “Don’t make me laugh any more, or I’ll give you up as a partner and absolutely not play with you again to-morrow!” Then she turned briskly to Mildred. “I hope you haven’t been waiting long for your poor abducted husband, Mrs. Tower. I’m afraid he’s the kind of man who never gives up anything he sets out to do, even when he has to finish it in the dark. I suppose that’s why he’s a great man.”
“Do you think he’s a great man, Julietta?” Hobart Simms inquired in a carefully naïve manner.
“Everyone knows he is,” Julietta returned. “Ofcourseyou’re a great man, John, since Hobart asks me!”
“At least, it’s most lovely of you to say you think so,” Mr. Tower responded, bowing his dark head before her gratefully. “I’m only a feeble assistant to Hobart here, who reallyisa great man; but it’s charming of you to say I’m one, too. Really it’s most kind of you, Julietta.” He turned to his wife. “My dear, I hope you haven’t been waiting long, and I hope, if you have, you haven’t minded.”
“No, not at all,” she murmured. “But can’t we go now?”
“Just a moment. I must take these bags to the locker room and freshen up the least bit. Julietta, if you’ll give me the key to your locker I’ll have your bag put away for you.”
But Julietta laughed ruefully and shook her head. “Just leave the bag here. It takes every penny of my poor little allowance to keep me a member of the club. They charge too much for lockers. I told you the other day I didn’t have a locker.”
The kindly John struck his hands together in a sharp sound; he was shocked by his forgetfulness. “Dear me! So you did! Of course, you must allow me to make up for my omission. I’d meant to attend to that yesterday. Ofcourseyou must have a locker. I’ll see to it at once and bring you the key.”
Julietta said promptly, “How lovely of you!” and he went toward the French windows; but a murmur from his wife stopped him.
“John, it’s very late. Couldn’t you postpone seeing about lockers and things like that, and let’s be starting home?”
“In just a moment, my dear,” he said in the kindest tone. “I’ll just arrange about a locker for Julietta and leave our clubs. It won’t take a moment.”
“He’s so thoughtful always,” Julietta said, looking after him gratefully as he departed. “I think I never knew a man so careful about all the little things most men don’t seem even to be conscious of.”
“Thanks, Julietta,” Mr. Simms said, cheerfully, and was immediately aware that his wife looked at him with some tensity. She had not spoken since the arrival of Julietta and her companion upon the veranda. “Thanks for the rest of us.”
“Oh, you!” Julietta said; and the dancing lights in her extraordinary eyes sparkled as she turned to him. “You’re a great man really, as dear old John just explained, and we all know what everybody says about you and Julius Cæsar—or is it Napoleon? You’ve scattered fortunes around among your friends taking them into your corporations, the way he scattered kingdoms around among his relatives. You’re so great you don’t have to bother being thoughtful about little things.”
“Julietta,” he responded, “you sound like a testimonial banquet. I hope you’ll convince my wife, though.”
“She’d be the last to need convincing,” Julietta returned. “Wouldn’t you, Mrs. Simms?”
“I might be,” Anne replied, dryly. “Hobart, I think you’d better run and tell John he’s keeping us all waiting.”
But the absent gentleman returned before his brother-in-law, moving to obey, could go in search of him; and he came with a key in his hand. “There, Julietta, if you’ll be so kind as to use this——”
“You dear man!” she cried, enthusiastically. “Now just for that I’m going to forgive you for making me laugh so hard, and we’ll finish that game to-morrow, because Hobart didn’t play it out with us to-day. Don’t you think we could all three be here aweebit earlier to-morrow—say by four o’clock?”
At this, Mildred Tower turned to her sister in an almost visible appeal for help; and Anne hurriedly endeavoured to respond with the succour besought. “So far as Mr. Simms is concerned——” she began; but Tower, unaware that she was speaking, had already accepted Julietta’s invitation.
“Delightful,” he said, bowing. “Julietta, that will be delightful. I shall be here by four o’clock promptly. Thank you for thinking of it.”
“You’ll be sure to come, too, Hobart?” Julietta asked.
Hobart’s wife began again, and her tone was emphatic. “So far as Mr. Simms is concerned——” But again she was interrupted, this time by her husband.
“Why, yes, Julietta,” he said, amiably, “I’d like very much to play it out. I’ll be here at four.”
For a moment or two there was a silence during which his consciousness that both his wife and his sister-in-law were looking at him became somewhat acute. Then, without even a murmur of leave-taking or any sound at all, Mildred Tower walked quickly to the steps, descended them, and went toward the waiting cars. Her sister, after a final look, which swept scorchingly over both gentlemen—though but one of them, her husband, was aware of its heat—turned sharply away and hurried after her.
Only the best of women are capable of doing things so embarrassing, thought the philosophical Mr. Simms; and then realized that his brother-in-law was not embarrassed at all.
“Wait a moment, my dear,” Tower called placidly after his wife. “Julietta has been kind enough to say we could drop her at her house on our way. She’s going with us.”
No response came from the hurrying Mrs. Tower.
“My dear!” her husband called. “Julietta is going to permit us——” Then, as Mildred disappeared silently into the interior of her car, he remarked with unsullied confidence, “She doesn’t hear me.”
Julietta laughed and put her hand upon his arm, looking up at him. “Do you think she wants me?”
“My dear Julietta! Of course she does. Everybody wants you. Why shouldn’t she?”
“Perhaps she thinks I live too far out of your way, and she’s in a hurry to eat her dinner,” Julietta said, wistfully. “It isn’t everyone that’s too generous to keep thinking of food when someone needs a little lift. It isn’t everybody who remembers all the little thoughtful things as you do, John, you know.”
“Nonsense!” he exclaimed. “Mildred will be only too delighted to have you, though I do appreciate your kind opinion of me.” He looked down at her hand, which was still upon his coat sleeve, and, taking it in one of his, tucked it under his arm. “You’re charming, Julietta,” he said, beaming upon her. “Indeed you are! Perfectly charming! Shall we go down and get into the car?”
It was time for the third person present during this little interview to depart, that person decided. “Hobart!” his wife called from her car, and her voice was threateningly eloquent.
Hobart delayed no longer, though he was thinking with some concentration just then; and, bidding Miss Voss and his brother-in-law a quick good-night, he went by them and hurried toward the summoning voice.
Descending the steps arm-in-arm, and talking, old John and Julietta did not seem to hear the word of farewell;—Hobart was some distance away when the scrupulous Tower called after him: “Hobart, did you say, ‘Good-night’? I beg your pardon; I was listening to Julietta. Good-night, Hobart. Good-night, Anne.” Then, as Hobart got into his own car, he could hear his brother-in-law busily talking beside the other. “And now, my dear Julietta, if you’ll be so kind as to step in and sit beside Mildred, I believe you’ll be quite comfortable. There’s an extra rug, Julietta, if you——”
But Mrs. Simms had already spoken to her chauffeur, and the engine was in motion. As they drove away, she and her husband could still hear the thoughtful old John addressing himself to the subject of Julietta’s comfort, and replying to her thanks. “Not at all, my dear Julietta; it’s the greatest imaginable pleasure. And if you’ll be so kind as to allow me to place this other rug over your knees, Julietta——”
The Simms’ car passed out of hearing, and within the dark interior its owner continued to be thoughtful. He was still certain that Mildred indulged herself in mere folly when she worried about steady, simple old John. But he was not so sure of the artlessness of Julietta;—the final little interview upon the veranda had somewhat shaken his convictions in regard to Julietta.
“I suppose you’re pleased with yourself,” Mrs. Simms said, icily, after an extended silence.
“I couldn’t decline,” he returned, easily. “You didn’t give me a chance to.”
“Hobart, that’s really too much! You stopped me—interrupted me when I was in the very act of declining for you.”
“That was the reason,” he explained. “I couldn’t let you decline for me. It might have looked as though I let my wife do embarrassing things for me that I haven’t backbone enough to do for myself.”
“How diplomatic!” she said. “May I ask yourrealreason for accepting her invitation after what I’d just told you about her? Perhaps, though, it was merely to hurt Mildred and irritate me. In that case, you made a perfect success of what you intended.”
“It wasn’t precisely that,” he laughed. “For one thing, if what you and Mildred believe has any foundation, why, old John certainly needs a chaperon; and, for another thing, I wanted the chance to see for myself if there is any reason to believe what you told me.”
“Oh,so?” She uttered a little cry of triumph, and laughed in the tone of her outcry. “So you’re not so sure as you were a little while ago, when you implied that my mind was wandering! So you see thereissomething in it?”
“Only this: I admit the possibility that Julietta might want to have him attached to her as a sort of providing friend, to do little useful things for her and——”
“ ‘Little useful things’?” his wife said, scornfully. “Don’t you understand what type she belongs to? Only a few minutes ago you paid her caddy for her, and John rented a locker for her. Last week he got her a new set of golf clubs, Mildred told me. Julietta complained of her old ones, and he sent away for the most expensive clubs you can get in the country. When she said you put your friends into fortunes, she meant more than just to flatter you about the fortune you’ve put John Tower into; she meant you to begin to get the idea into your head that it would be pleasant some day to putherinto one—or her worthless old father, perhaps!”
Then, as Hobart laughed loudly at an idea apparently so far-fetched, Anne defended it. “Oh, I know it was only her impulse and not deliberate, just a chance shot of hers; but she never misses a possibility, and that possibility was somewhere in the back of her head. Of course, it isn’t you, but John that she’s playing for. She’dratherhave played for you; but she didn’t see any chance, of course. She discovered John’s weakness and did see the chance with him.”
“What weakness, Anne?”
“Why, the poor old thing’s childlike acceptance of women at the face value they put upon themselves, and his quaint belief that they say everything they mean and mean everything they say—just as he does himself. Mildred’s helpless because he’s such a helpless idealist; he tells her the only thing he can’t bear in a woman is when she’s so small-minded as to speak slightingly of any other woman! All Mildred can do is to suffer and not speak. I never saw anything so pitiful as what she did when you hurt her feelings so terribly.”
“When I did what?”
“When you insulted her awhile ago,” Mrs. Simms explained with calm frigidity. “She knew I’d told you what she was suffering;—I’d just told her I had. And then she had not only to listen to her husband accepting that girl’s overtures for another long tête-à-tête with him to-morrow, but to hear you promising to lend countenance to it by being used again as you’ve already been used three times. It was the same as either telling Mildred that she’s a fool, imagining the whole thing, or that you approve of Julietta’s little plans and intend to lend your aid to further them. You might as well have slapped my sister in the face.”
“Dear me!” he exclaimed. “Don’t look at it that way! I didn’t mean——”
“Didn’t you?” Anne had no compunctions whatever in punishing him to the best of her ability. “You’d already mocked her for suffering what no woman in her position couldhelpsuffering. Then, in addition to what she was already trying to bear and not show, you gave her somemoreto bear—and she couldn’t trust herself to speak; she could only run from you!”
This was indeed a new light upon what Hobart had been masculine enough to think a mere example of woman’s rudeness to woman; and in that light the speechless flight of the unfortunate Mildred now bore the colour of true pathos. Moreover, following his awakened doubts of Julietta, his wife’s view of his conduct began to be uncomfortably convincing. He feared that he was going to be remorseful.
“Of course you don’t dream I’m not fond of Mildred,” he said. “I’ve always been very——”
“You show it strangely,” Anne interrupted. She spoke with no softening of her resentment, though what she felt for her sister brought to her eyes the tears she had been withholding, and he saw them as a street light flashed through the glass of the window beside her. “Mildred’s the kind of woman people do hurt, I suppose. She’s so gentle and harmless herself, it must be a temptation! She’s always been so lovely toyou, I suppose you couldn’t resist it.”
“Oh, look here!” he protested, and his fears were realized; he was already remorseful. “You know I wouldn’t have hurt——”
“Then why did you?”
“Well, if I did,” he said, desperately;—“and, confound it, I’m afraid maybe I did—I suppose it was because jealousy is the kind of suffering that onlookers always have the least sympathy with. I’ll beg her pardon, and, if I caused her pain, I’ll try to make it up to her.”
“How can you do that?”
“I don’t know,” he said, regretfully. “I’ll just have to try to find some way.”
“That wouldn’t be very easy,” his wife said. “Could you get her husband back for her, if this girl gets him away?”
“But thatisnonsense,” he protested. “Julietta Voss couldn’t get that far with old John—not if she had all eternity to try in!”
This was the position he took, and he maintained it during the rest of their drive, and at intervals during the rather stately dinner for two people that was the evening custom of their big country house. After dinner, however, as he sat down to coffee with his wife in the library, he was forced to adopt another view. His sister-in-law came in suddenly and dramatically, the fur cloak she had thrown about her for a hasty drive falling to the floor as she entered the door.
Anne sprang up from her easy chair. “Mildred! What’s happened?”
For Mildred’s pallor, and her visible struggle for composure, as she stood with both hands upon the back of a chair to steady herself, left no doubt that she came because of some definite happening.
Hobart moved to withdraw. “I imagine you and Anne might like to have a talk together, Mildred. I’ll just——”
“No,” Mildred said in a strained and plaintive voice, “I’ve come for help. You’ve both got to help me somehow, because I can’t stand it. I really can’t.”
He was distressed for her. “Anything—anything in the world——”
“Ihopeyou mean it,” Mildred said, staring at him with wide and desperate eyes. “If any one can do anything to help me it’s you, Hobart, because you’ve always been able to do everything you’ve ever wanted to do. Maybe you won’t want to help me.”
“What?” he cried. “My dear girl!”
“No,” she said, pathetically;—“maybe you won’t want to. After the way you treated me before them at the club, I shouldn’t be sure you’d want to.”
“My dear sister, don’t think that,” he begged. “I see I did hurt you, and I only ask a chance to make up to you for it. What can I do?”
“Nothing!” his wife said, taking the reply into her own mouth, as she put an arm about her sister and stood facing him scornfully. “Nothing that will make up to her for what you did. That’s something you can never do, because even you can’t recall and do again what has passed.”
Troubled, admiring Anne for the proud anger of her attitude, and secretly pleased with her “even you,” he gave her a queer look in which there was a gleam of doggedness. “I’ll try, at any rate,” he said; and then, more casually, he addressed his sister-in-law: “You drove over alone, Mildred?”
“As soon as John left the house after dinner,” she said. “I kept up till he went, and then I found I couldn’t bear it any longer—I had to ask for help. After he put her into the car with me at the club, he asked me why I was so quiet, and I said I had a bad headache;—it was true enough, too. She said that was ‘too bad’ and immediately proposed that we should ‘all three’ drive into town after dinner to a cabaret vaudeville and dance and late supper!”