IV
It was about halfway through dinner that the primitive man in him routed every variety of apprehension that had tormented him since two o'clock that afternoon.
Trennahan, another distinguished New Yorker, who had made his home in California for many years, had taken in Mrs. Gwynne, and his Spanish California wife sat at the foot of the table with the host. Ford had been given a lively girl, Aileen Lawton, to dissipate the financial anxieties of the day, and, to Ruyler's satisfaction, Mrs. Thornton had fallen to his lot and he sat on the left of Isabel. In this little group at the head of the table, his chosen intimates, who were more interested in the affairs of the world than in Consummate California, Ruyler had forgotten his wife for a time and had not noticed with whom she had gone in to dinner.
But during an interval when Mrs. Thornton's attention had been captured by the man on her right, and the others drawn into a discussion over the merits of the new mayor, Price became aware that Doremus sat beside his wife halfway down the table on the opposite side, and that they were talking, if not arguing, in a low tone, oblivious for the moment of the company.
The deferential bend was absent from the neck of the adroit social explorer, his head was alertly poised above the lovely young matron whose beauty, wealth, and foreign personality, to say nothing of the importance of her husband, gave her something of the standing of royalty in the aristocratic little republic of San Francisco Society. There was a vague threat in that poise, as if at any moment venom might dart down and strike that drooping head with its crown of blue-black braids. Suddenly Hélène lifted her eyes, full of appeal, to the round pale blue orbs that at this moment openly expressed a cold and ruthless mind.
Ruyler endeavored to piece together those disconnected whispers—letters discovered or stolen—blackmail—but such whispers were too often the whiffs from energetic but empty minds, always floating about and never seeming to bring any culprit to book.
Had this man got hold of his wife's secret?
But this merely sequacious thought was promptly routed. The young man, who was undeniably good looking and was rumored to possess a certain cold charm for women—although, to be sure, the wary San Francisco heiress had so far been impervious to it—was now leaning over Mrs. Price Ruyler with a coaxing possessive air, and the appeal left Hélène's eyes as she smiled coquettishly and began to talk with her usual animation; but still in a tone that was little more than a murmur.
She moved her shoulder closer to the man she evidently was bent upon fascinating, and her long eyelashes swept up and down while her black eyes flashed and her pink color deepened.
There was a faint amusement mixed with Doremus' habitual air of amiable deference, and somewhat more of assurance, but he was as absorbed as Hélène and had no eyes for Janet Maynard, on his left, whose fortune ran into millions.
For a moment Ruyler, who had kept his nerve through several years of racking strain which, even an American is seldom called upon to survive, wondered if he were losing his mind. To business and all its fluctuations and even abnormalities, he had been bred; there was probably no condition possible in the world of finance and commerce which could shatter his self-possession, cloud his mental processes. But his personal life had been singularly free of storms. Even his emotional upheaval, when he had fallen completely in love for the first time, had lacked that torment of uncertainty which might have played a certain havoc, for a time, with those quick unalterable decisions of the business hour; and even his engagement had only lasted a month.
It was true that during the past six months he had worried off and on about the shadow that had fallen upon his wife's spirits and affected his own, but, when he had had time to think of it, before yesterday morning, he had assumed it was due to some phase of feminine psychology which he had never mastered. That she could be interested in another man never had crossed his mind, in spite of his passing flare of jealousy. She was still passionately in love with, him, for all her vagaries—or so he had thought—
Ruyler was conscious of a riotous confusion of mind that really made him apprehensive. Had he witnessed that scene on the dummy—this afternoon?—it seemed a long while ago—had he heard those portentous words of his mother-in-law to his wife?—had they meant that she had warned her daughter against the bad blood in her veins, extracted a promise—broken!—to walk in the narrow way of the dutiful wife—mercifully spared by a fortunate marriage the terrible temptations of the older woman's youth? Had Hélène confessed … in desperate need of help, advice? … Doremus was just the bounder to compromise a woman and then blackmail her…. Good God! What was it?
For all his mental turmoil he realized that here alone was the only possible menace to his life's happiness. His mother-in-law's past was a bitter pill for a proud man to swallow, and there was even the possibility of his wife's illegitimacy, but, after all, those were matters belonging to the past, and the past quickly receded to limbo these days.
Even an open scandal, if some one of the offal sheets of San Francisco got hold of the story and published it, would be forgotten in time. But this—if his wife had fallen in love with another man—and women had no discrimination where love was concerned—(if a decent chap got a lovely girl it was mainly by luck; the rotters got just as good)—then indeed he was in the midst of disaster without end. The present was chaos and the future a blank. He'd enlist in the first war and get himself shot….
Hélène had a charming light coquetry, wholly French, and she exercised it indiscriminately, much to the delight of the old beaux, for she loved to please, to be admired; she had an innocent desire that all men should think her quite beautiful and irresistible. Even her husband had never seen her in an unbecoming déshabillé; she coquetted with him shamelessly, whenever she was not too gloriously serious and intent only upon making him happy. Until lately—
This was by no means her ordinary form.
He had come upon too many couples in remote corners of conservatories, had been a not unaccomplished principal in his own day … there was, beyond question, some deep understanding between her and this man.
Suddenly Ruyler's gaze burned through to his wife's consciousness. She moved her eyes to his, flushed to her hair, then for a moment looked almost gray. But she recovered herself immediately and further showed her remarkable powers of self-possession by turning back to her partner and talking to him with animation instead of plunging into conversation with the man on her right.
At the same moment Ruyler became subtly aware that Mrs. Thornton was looking at his wife and Doremus, and as his eyes focused he saw her long, thin, mobile mouth curl and her eyes fill with open disdain. The mist in his brain fled as abruptly as an inland fog out in the bay before one of the sudden winds of the Pacific. In any case, his mind hardly could have remained in a state of confusion for long; but that his young wife was being openly contemned by the cleverest as well as the most powerful woman in San Francisco was enough to restore his equilibrium in a flash. Whatever his wife's indiscretions, it was his business to protect her until such time as he had proof of more than indiscretion. And in this instance he should be his own detective.
He turned to Mrs. Thornton.
"Going on to the Fairmont?" he asked.
"Oh, yes, I have a new gown—have you admired it? Arrived from Paris last night—and I am chaperoning two of these girls. You are not, of course?"
"I did intend to, but it's no go. Still, I may drop in late and take my wife home—"
"Let me take her home." Was his imagination morbid, or was there something both peremptory and eager in Mrs. Thornton's tones? "I'm stopping at the Fairmont, of course, but Fordy and I often take a drive after a hot night and a heavy supper."
"If you would take her home in case I miss it. I must go to the office—"
"I'd like to. That's settled." This time her tones were warm and friendly. Ruyler knew that Mrs. Thornton did not like his wife, but her friendliness toward him, since her return from Europe three or four months ago, had increased, if anything. His mind was now working with its accustomed keen clarity. He recalled that there had been no surprise mixed with the contempt in her regard of his wife and Doremus…. He also recalled that several times of late when he had met her at the Fairmont—where he often lunched with a group of men—she had regarded him with a curious considering glance, which he suddenly vocalized as: "How long?"
This affair had been going on for some time, then. Either it was common talk, or some circumstance had enlightened Mrs. Thornton alone.
He glanced around the table. No one appeared to be taking the slightest notice of one of many flirtations. At least, whatever his wife's infatuation, he could avert gossip. Mrs. Thornton might be a tigress, but she was not a cat.
"When do you go down to Burlingame?" she asked.
"Not for two or three weeks yet. I don't fancy merely sleeping in the country. But by that time things will ease up a bit and I can get down every day in time to have a game of golf before dinner."
"Shall Mrs. Ruyler migrate with the rest?"
"Hardly."
"It will be dull for her in town. No reflections on your charming society, but of course she does not get much of it, and she will miss her young friends. After all, she is a child and needs playmates."
Ruyler darted at her a sharp look, but she was smiling amiably. Doremus and the men he lived with, in town had a bungalow at Burlingame and they bought their commutation tickets at precisely the fashionable moment. "She will stay in town," he said shortly. "She needs a rest, and San Francisco is the healthiest spot on earth."
"But trying to the nerves when what we inaccurately call the trade winds begin. Why not let her stay with me? Of course she would be lonely in her own house, and is too young to stay there alone anyhow, but I'd like to put her up, and you certainly could run down week-ends—possibly oftener. American men are always obsessed with the idea that they are twice as busy as they really are."
"You are too good. I'll put it up to Hélène. Of course it is for her to decide. I'd like it mighty well." But grateful as he was, his uneasiness deepened at her evident desire to place her forces at his disposal.