VII
Elaine Milner was sitting on the veranda again, the next afternoon, all ready with an astounding piece of news. A station taxi came up the drive, and out stepped Mandeville Ryder.
“Oh, Mandy!” she cried, when her attention was diverted by the arrival of a second taxi, from which descended her Uncle Lucian.
“For Heaven’s sake!” thought she. “Separate taxis—and they’re not even speaking to each other!”
Before she had recovered herself, both men had gone into the house. Robinson went to his wife’s room, where she was not. Mandeville went to Mrs. Milner’s boudoir, where she was. He knocked on the door.
“Come in!” called his two sisters, and in he went.
“Sheila!” he said. “Look here! I—I want you to send for Miss La Chêne to come back—”
“I dare say you do!” his sister interrupted.
His face was flushed, and no man had ever a guiltier air. Young Mandeville was not diplomatic, not adroit. So far in his life he had had no occasion to be. He had existed in magnificent candor.
“You made a big mistake,” he went on. “I knew it all the time. I knew she—”
“Perfectly obvious!” murmured Sheila.
These words very greatly perturbed him. He didn’t know quite what his sister meant, and he was alarmed; but he continued doggedly:
“Because I found your confounded bracelet this morning—in your room at the hotel, where you’d left it.”
Mrs. Robinson and Mrs. Milner looked at each other.
“Ah!” murmured Sheila.
“And here it is,” said he.
Mrs. Robinson took the velvet case that he held out to her, opened it, and looked inside.
“I see!” said she. “What a sweet, dear boy you are, Mandy! Isn’t he, Nina?”
“Perfectly pathetic!” said Mrs. Milner.
“Well, why?” he demanded, horribly confused.
No one answered him.
“Well, look here!” he went on. “Now that you’ve got the thing, will you send for her to come back? Or you can tell me where she lives, and I’ll go and explain—”
“Oh, I’m sure you would, Mandy!” said Sheila sweetly.
“Well, what—” he began, growing angry now.
There was another knock at the door, and in came Lucian Robinson. He started at the sight of Mandeville. He wished never to see Mandeville again. He couldn’t forget that look; and he couldn’t forget that if Mandeville had known the truth, his contempt would have been beyond measure greater. At the same time, he couldn’t help liking the contemptuous young man, and admiring him, because he knew that nothing in this world could ever induce Mandeville to do a base or cowardly thing.
“I—I—I—” he said, turning toward the door again. “L-later, my dear!”
“Do come in, Lucian!” said his wife. “Mandeville was just speaking of Miss La Chêne.”
“Th-that’s queer!” cried Robinson, with very strained geniality. “Dashed queer! Because I—”
“Because you were just thinking about her?” his wife inquired pleasantly.
“N-no,” said he; “but—but—but—the thing is, I got thinking about that b-bracelet, and—well!” From his pocket he pulled a velvet case. “H-here it is!” he said. “I found it in your room at the—”
He stopped, stricken with horror by the[Pg 202] expression on his wife’s face. She rose. She opened the door into Mrs. Milner’s bedroom.
“Miss La Chêne!” she said. “Kindly come here! Perhaps you can explain this!”
In came Miss La Chêne. Her face bore the marks of recent tears, but she looked not at all abashed or humbled. On the contrary, she held her little head mighty high.
“You see,” Mrs. Robinson said to her, “both these gentlemen found my bracelet in the room at the hotel. Doesn’t that seem rather strange?” She turned toward her husband. “Because,” she went on, “I telephoned to Miss La Chêne this morning, to tell her that I had found it myself, in my bureau drawer.”
Silence.
“I wanted to apologize to Miss La Chêne,” Sheila continued. “I thought she might be feeling badly about it. I didn’t know how many people there were to look after her and defend her. Mandeville and Lucian—Mandeville I can understand, but why you should take it upon yourself, Lucian, to shield this girl before you knew whether or not—”
“Please!” Miss La Chêne interrupted anxiously. “It was a kind and generous thing for Mr. Robinson to do for—”
“You have the effrontery to take his part against me?” cried Mrs. Robinson. “This—”
“W-wait!” said Robinson.
They all turned, startled by his tone. The harassed and wretched man had spoken with a sternness no one had ever heard him employ before. The spectacle of Miss La Chêne defending him was a little more than he could bear. He had come to the end of his tether. Indeed, he had cut it, and he stood free. His stammer had left him, and so had his nervous smile.
“Be good enough to keep your disgusting suspicions to yourself,” he said to his wife. “They only lower you in my eyes.”
“You dare—” she began.
“I’m sick and tired of being bullied and suspected and accused,” he went on. “Of course I bought this bracelet. I did it partly to save a defenseless girl, whom I knew to be innocent, from the outrageous treatment I knew she’d get at your hands; but I did it chiefly because I owed it to her. I was the last one to handle your accursed jewel case. I took it from Miss La Chêne in the city. I met her there the day you left. I had tea with her; and you can be proud or not of the fact that I was afraid to tell you I had spoken to her.”
The effect of this speech was tremendous. Every one in the room was stricken into sinister silence.
There stood Robinson, pale, but absolutely resolute, waiting for the storm to break. It was going to be awful, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t going to be badgered and bullied any more. Sheila was a fine woman. He always had thought so, and he thought so now, but she—
“Lucian!” breathed Mrs. Milner, as if in awe.
“Lucian!” cried Mrs. Robinson.
And he saw that instead of being temporarily speechless with rage, she was looking at him as she hadn’t looked for years and years—not since that day, before they were married, when he had won the tennis singles, and she had called him “my hero” in a very silly but somehow rather touching way.
“Oh, Lucian!” she cried again.
His business training had taught him that nothing is more fatal than a half triumph. He must go forward.
“No!” said he. “Don’t talk to me. I won’t be talked to about this. Only I want to offer my most sincere and humble apologies to Miss La Chêne—”
“Mon Dieu!” cried Miss La Chêne, completely overcome. “Ah, monsieur! Que vous êtes gentil! Que vous êtes bon!”
“Please don’t cry!” said Robinson.
“Je n’y puis rien!” sobbed she.
He really couldn’t bear this, especially as, for all he knew, her words might be an appeal to his better nature. He came nearer to her and patted her shoulder.
“There! There! There!” he said gently.
And the poor little thing, worn out by the series of terrific scenes in which she had been engaged, and by the misery and anxiety she had endured, rested her head on Mr. Robinson’s shoulder and cried and cried.
This was a sight which could not fail to impress Sheila Robinson deeply.
“Lucian!” she said, beginning to cry herself, and speaking in an imploring tone. “Please forgive me! Oh, please forgive me—and come over here!”
Robinson looked at his wife over Miss La Chêne’s shoulder. In his heart he felt extremely sorry to see that regal creature[Pg 203] brought low, but he meant never to admit this.
“The episode,” said he, “is ended. You have your bracelet—three of ’em in fact; so we’ll say no more about it.”
Then he looked at Mandeville. The young man was frowning heavily. He was profoundly displeased, but he was no longer contemptuous. On the contrary, he was envious.
“Er—Miss La Chêne!” said he.
She raised her head from Robinson’s shoulder, smiled uncertainly, and walked off to a corner of the room, there to dry her eyes. Mandeville followed her.
“Look here!” said he to her, very low. “Robinson’s a fine fellow, and so on, but he’s married!”
“What of it?” said she coldly. “Do I do anything wrong?”
“Oh, no!” Mandeville replied hastily. “Of course not. Only—look here! Don’t—please don’t be—too French, you know!”
They went out into the garden, and walked about there; and Mandeville must have advanced some excellent arguments, because, before dinner was announced, Miss La Chêne had promised not to be French at all any more, but to become an American for the rest of her life.[Pg 204]
MUNSEY’S
MAGAZINE
APRIL, 1925
Vol. LXXXIV NUMBER 3
The Good Little Pal
HOW BARTY AND JACKO STARTED THEIR MARRIED LIFE UNDER ADVERSE CIRCUMSTANCES
By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
IT was an afternoon very much like many other afternoons. Leadenhall stood on the corner waiting for her. He was so weary, and still so much absorbed in the work he had just left, he had waited for her so often, and he was so sure of her coming, that he scarcely thought of her at all.
It was five o’clock of a fierce July day, and the sun still blazed unabated in a cloudless sky. Before him, along Fifth Avenue, went an unceasing stream of busses and motor cars. The noise, the heat, the reek, the tireless movement, exasperated him. He wanted to go home for a cold shower and a quiet smoke. He wanted to be let alone.
Then he saw her, and there was nothing else in the world. She was coming down a side street with that eager, beautiful gait of hers, so straight and gallant, so self-possessed and debonair—and so touchingly slight and young. He noticed for the first time, with an odd contraction of the heart, how thin she had grown this summer.
She had stopped at the corner. She smiled at him across the stream of traffic, and a pang shot through him, because her dear face was so tired. He raised his hat, but he could not smile in return. All the other things—the minor things that had troubled him—were lost in his great anxiety for Jacqueline. He dashed across the street, with the luck of the foolhardy, and stood before her, looking at her in alarm.
“Jacko!” he said. “Jacko! You’re tired!”
“Well, I know it,” she answered, laughing. “So are you! Who isn’t, this awful weather?”
But she stopped laughing as their eyes met. They stood there, looking at each other in silence for a long minute. Then the color rose in her cheeks, and she turned her head aside.
“Barty, don’t be silly,” she said.
He did not answer. He took her arm to pilot her across the street again. It seemed to him a terribly frail arm. He seized it tightly, in a sort of panic. She meant to make a laughing protest against being hustled along in this fashion, but somehow the light words would not come. A glance at Barty’s face made her heart sink.
“Oh, he is going to be silly!” she thought, in despair. “And I’m so tired, and so hot, and so—unconvincing!”
It had been decided between them that spring that they were to be simply good pals—until a more propitious season. They were not even engaged. No, they were both perfectly free. She had insisted that it should be so, and so it was. She was free to worry about him and yearn over him—even to cry over him night after night, if she liked. He was free, too, to do as he chose; but when she looked at him now, at the close of this weary day—
“You don’t take one bit of care of yourself!” she said suddenly, in an angry, trembling voice. “I know perfectly well you’ve been smoking too much, and I know you didn’t eat a proper lunch. Just look at you!”
He was startled.
“There’s nothing the matter with me, dear girl,” he said. “It’s only—”
“I wish you could see yourself!” she cried. “You have a big black smudge on your chin!”
“Well, that’s not fatal,” he said, beginning to laugh; but then he saw tears in her eyes. “Jacko! You’re nervous and upset. You’re overworked. You’re tired. You’re—Jacko, you look like the devil!”
“Thank you![Pg 206]”
“I can’t stand it,” he went on doggedly, “and I won’t stand it! I want to take care of you!”
“You said you wouldn’t be silly, Barty!”
“Silly!” said he. “I’ve been a fool! I won’t go on like this. If you love me at all, if you care for me even a little, you won’t ask me to.”
They had entered the park, and were walking down their usual path at their usual brisk pace, only that to-day Barty held her by the arm, like a captive, and their customary friendly conversation failed. The hour she had dreaded had come.
Barty was not easy to manage. Her ideal had been not to manage him, not to use any feminine arts to beguile him, but to be frankly and splendidly his comrade; but somehow that didn’t work. She could not reason with Barty, she could not persuade him, she only could make him do as she wished by the power she had over him. He loved her so much that for love he would yield, and she did not want that. A true friend, a good pal, would not stoop to managing.
“Barty,” said she, “let’s sit down here and talk.”
So he sat beside her on a bench and listened. All the time she spoke, she saw—with dismay, and yet with a queer little thrill of delight—that her words made absolutely no impression. Of course, she spoke of Stafford, because Stafford was the dominant factor in their problem. If Barty were to marry now, it would seriously offend Stafford, and that would be the height of folly.
A queer fellow, Stafford was—sensitive and touchy. He had done a great deal for Barty, and he expected Barty to appreciate it. Certainly he gave a great deal, but it had always seemed to Jacqueline that Stafford got the best of the bargain.
He was one of the foremost architects in the city. It was an honor for the obscure young Barty to be singled out by such a man, to be taken into his office, and, just recently, to be asked to share a studio apartment with the great man; but in return he got all Barty’s honest enthusiasm, his fidelity and gratitude. He had Barty’s companionship, Barty’s sympathy for the many affronts this rough world offers to sensitive men.
Indeed, Jacqueline thought, he had a most unfair share of Barty’s life; but Barty did not see that, and she was not going to mention it. Not for any consideration on earth would she speak one word against Barty’s hero. Not for any possible gain to herself would she tarnish his faith in his friend, or injure his prospects for the future. She simply spoke in a quiet, reasonable way of all that he owed Stafford.
“And when it means so much,” she said, “to both of us—when it affects your whole future—”
“Well,” said Barty deliberately, “I dare say you’re right.” She glanced up hopefully. “But I don’t care,” he went on. “I love you, and I won’t go on like this any longer! I’ve tried, and I can’t—that’s all. I can’t stand seeing you thin and miserable and shabby—”
“I’m not shabby, Barty!”
“You are—for you,” he said. “You ought to have everything in the world! You’re so beautiful and wonderful! And you won’t let me do anything for you. You won’t—”
“I would let you,” she said hurriedly. “I’d let you—I’d love you to do all sorts of things for me, Barty. I’d marry you to-morrow, if—”
“If what?” he demanded.
This idea had been so long in her mind, these words had been so often on the tip of her tongue, that now she was going to speak them, whether he liked it or not.
“If you’d just get married—unostentatiously,” she said.
“Unostentatiously?” he repeated. “I don’t know what you mean, Jacko.”
“I mean, just go down to the City Hall and get married, and you go on with your work, and I’ll go on with mine, and we won’t tell any one.”
“Oh!” said he. “You mean secretly, do you?”
He was looking at her with an expression she had never seen on his face before. There was a hard, cold look in his gray eyes.
“It’s no use talking about that,” he said curtly, “because I won’t do it.”
But he did. Later on, she remembered that hour with bitter regret and remorse—the hour of her victory and his defeat. She had been unfair, cruelly unfair. She had made use of those tears which he could not endure. She had held out to him the prospect of gaining everything and losing nothing, of having her and yet not alienating Stafford.[Pg 207]
He was ambitious, and she tempted him. She took advantage of his hot-headed, unreasonable love for her, and she conquered him; and his defeat was bad for her and worse for him.
She meant only to do him good, to help him; but she was very young, and she was a woman, and she had all a woman’s blind and beautiful and absurd determination that her beloved should have his cake and eat it, too. Barty needed her, and he should have her; and he needed Stafford, and he should have Stafford too. Barty should have everything—except his own way.