SCENE IV
Dedham was sitting on the edge of one of the reception-room chairs, locking and unlocking his fingers until his hands were as red as those of a son of toil. He was nervous, happy, terrified, annoyed.
“That beastly porter to keep me waiting so long for my portmanteau!” he almost cried aloud. “What must she think of me?”
“You wicked boy!” said a voice of gentle reproach. “What made you so late? I was just about to send and inquire if anything had happened to you. But sit down. How tired you must be! Would you like a glass of sherry and a biscuit?”
“Nothing! Nothing! You know, it’s not my fault that I’m late. My portmanteau got mislaid and my travelling clothes were so dusty. And you really are glad to see me?”
“What a question! It makes me feel young again to see you.”
“Young again! You!”
“I am twenty-four, Teddy, and a widow,” and she shook her head sadly. “I feel fearfully old—like your mother. I have had so much care and responsibility in my life, and you are so careless and debonair.”
“You’ll make me cry in a minute,” said Teddy; “and I wish you wouldn’t talk like that. You seem to put a whole Adirondack between us.”
“I can’t help it. Perhaps I’ll get over it after a time. It’s so sad being mewed up six whole months!”
“Then marry me right off. That’s just the point. We’ll go and travel and have a jolly good time. That’ll brace you up and make you feel as young as you look.”
“I can’t, Teddy. I must wait a year in common decency. Think how people would talk.”
“Let ’em. They’ll soon find something else and forget us. Marry me next month.”
“Next month—well—”
“It would be rather fun to be the hero and heroine of a sensation, anyhow. That’s what everybody’s after. You’re just a nonentity until you’ve been black-guarded in the papers. Whose ring is that?”
“One of Edith’s. I put it on to remember something by.”
“Well, take it off and wear this instead. It’ll help your memory just as well.”
“What, a solitaire!”
“I knew you would prefer it. I know all your tastes by instinct.”
“You do, Teddy. Coloured stones are so tiresome.”
“By the way, I think your old admirer, Severance, must be about to put himself in silken fetters, as Boswell would say. I caught him buying an unusually fine sapphire in Tiffany’s yesterday. Said it was for his sister. H’m—h’m.”
“Ah! I wonder who it can be?”
“Don’t know. Hasn’t looked at a woman since you left. But I have a strong suspicion that it is some one here in Newport.”
“Here! I wonder if it can be Edith?”
“Miss Decker? Sure enough. Never seemed to pay her much attention, though. She’s not my style; too much like sixteen dozen other New York girls.”
He buttoned up his coat, braced himself against it, and gave his moustache a frantic twist.
“Mrs.—Jessica!” he ejaculated desperately, “you are engaged to me—won’t you—won’t you—”
She drew herself up and glanced down upon him from her higher chair with a look of sad disapproval.
“I did not think it of you, Teddy,” she said. “And it is one of the things of which I have never approved.”
“But why not?” asked Teddy, feebly.
“I thought you knew me better than to ask such a question.”
“I know you are an angel—oh, hang it! You do make me feel as if you were my mother.”
“Now, don’t be unreasonable, or I shall believe that you are a tyrant.”
“A tyrant? I? Horri—no, I wish I was. What a model of propriety you are! I never should have thought it—I mean—darling! you were always such a coquette, you know. Not that I ever thought so. You know I never did—oh, hang it all—but if I let you have your own way in this unreasonable—I mean this perfectly natural whim—you might at least promise to marry me in a month. And, indeed, I think that if you are an angel, I am a saint.”
“Well, on one condition.”
“Any! Any!”
“It must be an absolute secret until the wedding is over. I hate congratulations, and if we are going to have a sensation we might as well have a good concentrated one.”
“I agree with you, and I’ll never find fault with you again. You—”
Miss Decker almost ran into the room.
“Jessica!” she cried. “Oh, dear Mr. Dedham, how are you? Jessica, mother has one of her terrible attacks, and I must ask you to stay with her while I go for the doctor myself. I cannot trust servants.”
“Let me go! let me go!” cried Teddy. “I’ll bring him back in a quarter of an hour. Who shall—”
“Coleman. He lives—”
“I know. Au revoir!” And the girls were alone.
“There!” exclaimed Miss Decker, “we have got rid of him. Now for the others. You slip upstairs, and I’ll dispose of them one by one. You are taken suddenly ill. Teddy will not be back for an hour. Dr. Coleman has moved.”
