V
There were two things the matter with Mandeville Ryder, and neither of them was fatal. He was too young, and he was spoiled. He was a handsome fellow, the only son of a well-to-do father; and he was so much run after and so much flattered that he had acquired a manner and an outlook lamentably toploftical. At heart, however, he was wholly honest, generous, and chivalrous.
On the morning after the dance, he went off to the city, resolved not to come back to his sister’s house, and not to think any more of Miss La Chêne; but even before lunch time he had resolved that he would go back. He was a conceited ass, he told himself, and a girl like Miss La Chêne was too good for any man.
So back he went, arriving a little before the dinner hour. Perhaps he was a little too consciously heroic in his determination to show the greatest deference toward Miss La Chêne; but he soon got over that, for he had no chance to display his heroism.
All the sparkle and gayety had gone from the poor girl. When he began to speak to her, she answered him with a hurried little nervous smile, and flitted away. He couldn’t even catch her eye. She fairly clung to Mrs. Robinson, hiding in the[Pg 199] shadow of that regal lady. She was so pale, so subdued, so startlingly changed from the charming little creature of the evening before, that Mandeville was worried.
It never occurred to him that he was responsible for this lamentable change, and he went ahead, making a sufficiently unpleasant situation worse and worse by his well meant efforts. At the dinner table he tried to bring the pale and downcast Miss La Chêne into the conversation, and wondered at her very brief answers and her flat, small voice. He knew that she could talk.
“I’ll try a dance with you, Elaine,” he said to his niece, benevolently, after dinner.
“No, thank you, Mandy,” said she, with a very peculiar smile.
“Well, what about you, Miss La Chêne?” he asked, in all innocence.
There was a terrific silence.
“N-no, thank you, Mr. Ryder,” she finally managed.
The wisdom of the past is very clearly demonstrated in the story of Cinderella. You will remember that that long-suffering girl maintained a canny silence regarding her succès fou at the court balls until the prince had made a frank declaration of his honorable intentions. Otherwise her life between balls, with those stepsisters and that stepmother, would have been unendurable—as Miss La Chêne’s life was now. Naturally Mrs. Robinson and Mrs. Milner did not like to see their adored and only brother making an idiot of himself about a girl who was just a little nobody, and naturally they firmly believed it was all the girl’s fault. They didn’t actually say anything, but they managed remarkably well with implications.
Miss La Chêne could not defend herself. Never before in her brief life had she shown herself deficient in spirit or in proper pride, but now a terrible humility had come over her. She thought Mandeville Ryder was so marvelous that he couldn’t possibly be interested in her. She thought he hadn’t really meant it when he said she was the prettiest girl in the world, and the sweetest. She thought he hadn’t really looked at her like that. How was it possible, when the most beautiful and charming and brilliant girls were all competing for his favor? No—he had only been kind to her, because it was his dear, splendid way to be kind to every one.
And, after all, his kindness had brought her nothing but misery. It seemed to her sometimes that she couldn’t bear the slights and the innuendoes of Mrs. Milner and Mrs. Robinson another moment; and yet she couldn’t quite make up her mind to go back to some cheap little boarding house, to wait there until she could find another position, possibly worse than this—and never, never to see Mandeville Ryder any more. She generally cried after she got into bed at night.
As for young Mandeville, he generally sat out on the veranda alone, smoking, and meditating in a very miserable way. Miss La Chêne as a dancing partner, gay and sparkling and lovely, had charmed him, but Miss La Chêne subdued and obviously unhappy touched him to the heart. What was the matter with her?
A week went by, and then the household was thrown into turmoil by a dramatic and tremendous reconciliation between Mrs. Robinson and her husband. Mrs. Robinson enjoyed it very much, Mr. Robinson not quite so much. Indeed, he had a pretty sheepish look when his wife sat beside him on the sofa, weeping, with her head on his shoulder, and announced to the assembled family:
“Lucian and I are going to make a fresh start, and all the miserable, miserable past is to be as if it had never been!”
That evening Elaine sang Tosti’s “Good-by” for them:
“Hark, a voice from the far-away!
‘Listen and learn,’ it seems to say;
‘All the to-morrows shall be as to-day,
All the to-morrows shall be as to-day!’”
Her dancing eyes met Mandeville’s. He was obliged to get up and walk over to the window, to hide a reluctant and irresistible grin; but Mrs. Robinson noticed nothing. She had no sense of humor. She was too intense.
The next evening Robinson brought out his wife’s jewel case from the city, and, knowing what was expected of him in any reconciliation, he brought also a gift—a diamond pendant on a gold chain. It was impossible for Mrs. Robinson not to show to the other members of the household this proof of her husband’s penitent devotion. She took it downstairs, and Mrs. Milner and Elaine hastened to her, and they all three stood by the piano lamp, vehemently admiring the glittering thing.
Robinson was rather pleased with himself; but then, unfortunately, he caught[Pg 200] sight of little Miss La Chêne standing outside the charmed circle, pointedly disregarded by the others, and trying her valiant best to look as if she didn’t care. Though he was years and years older than Mandeville, and most bitterly experienced, the same dangerous notion came into Mr. Robinson’s head—the wish to be kind to the luckless young creature. He remembered how nice she had been to him, how kind and jolly over that impromptu tea, how loyal and discreet in never mentioning it to Mrs. Robinson.
He crossed the room to her side, and stood there, talking to her. Miss La Chêne, in the joy and comfort of being spoken to like a real, human girl, came to life. Her face grew bright and piquant again, and she said funny, amusing things that made Robinson laugh. They both forgot their terribly precarious positions, and were happy and cheerful.
Mrs. Robinson saw this; and that evening, when she went upstairs to her room, she discovered that one of her bracelets was missing from the jewel case. She had given the case to Miss La Chêne unlocked, and no one else had touched it.
“I c-can’t tell her!” thought the thrice-wretched Robinson. “Not now! If I’d mentioned it in the beginning—but now, after all this t-time! If she knew that we had t-tea together, and that I t-took the infernal case! I can’t stand another of these rows—I simply c-can’t! I’ll make it right, somehow.”
So he persuaded his outraged wife not to summon policemen, or detectives, or sheriffs that night, but to wait until the morning. Then he pretended to go to sleep, but it was a long time before sleep really came to him. He felt certain that Miss La Chêne would not betray him, and he felt equally certain that to count upon her loyalty was about as contemptible a thing as his sorry weakness had ever led him into doing.