THE RETURN OF PATSIE
During this time Bojo had seen much of life. Marsh was too busily occupied in the detailed exploration of the machinery and organization of his paper to be often available, and Bojo's time was pretty evenly divided between the formal evenings in Doris's set and the excursions with Fred DeLancy into regions not quite so orthodox. He began to see a good deal behind the scenes, to marvel at the unbending of big men of a certain suddenly enriched type, at their gullibility and curious vanities of display. He himself had an innate love of refinement and an olden touch of chivalry in his attitude toward women, and went through what he saw without more harm than disillusionment, wiser for the lesson.
To his surprise he found, that what DeLancy had estimated of his social values was quite true. Fred was in great demand at quiet dances in discreet salons at Tenafly's and Lazare's, where curious elements combined to distract the adventurer, rich at forty-five, who, after a life of Spartan routine, awoke to the call of pleasure and curiosity at an age when other men have solved their attitude. Fred was looked upon as a sort of enfant gâté to be rewarded after a gay night with an easily tossed off order for a thousand shares of this or that to make his commission. It did not take Bojo long to perceive the inherent weakness in DeLancy's lovable but pleasure-running character, nor to speculate upon his future with some apprehension, despite all Fred's protestations that he was shrewd as they are made, and jolly well alive to the main chance every minute of the day.
Bojo had been admitted far enough into his confidence to know that there was already some one in the practical background, a Miss Gladys Stone, financially a prize who had been caught with the volatile gaiety and amusing tricks of Fred DeLancy. DeLancy in fact, in moments of serious intimacy, openly avowed his intention of settling down within a year or two at the most, and Bojo, with the memory of riotous nights from which he had with difficulty extracted the popular Fred, owned to himself that the sooner this occurred the better he would be suited.
He had met Gladys Stone once when he had dropped in on Doris, and he had a blurred recollection of a thin, blond girl, who giggled and chattered a great deal and spoke several times of being bored by this or that, by the opera where there was nothing new, by dinner parties where it was such a bore to talk bridge, by Palm Beach, which was getting to be a bore because cheaper hotels had gone up and every one was being let in, but who would go off into peals of laughter the moment Fred DeLancy struck a chord on the piano and imitated a German ballade.
"Gladys is a good soul at bottom. She's crazy about Fred and he can marry her any day he wants her," said Doris, sitting in judgment.
"Do you think it would turn out well?" he said.
"Why not? Gladys hasn't a thought in her head. She'll be a splendid audience for Fred. He isn't the sort of a person ever to fall desperately in love."
"I don't know about that," said Bojo, with an uneasy recollection of a certain alluring but rather obvious little actress, respectable but entirely too calculating to his way of thinking, whom Fred had been seeing entirely too much.
"Nonsense! That sort of person is always thinking of the crowd. Besides Gladys is too stupid to be jealous. It's a splendid match. She'll get a husband that'll save her house from being a bore, and he'll get a pile of money: just what each needs."
He saw Doris three or four times a week. She had become a very busy lady, constantly complaining of the fatigues of a social season. Fred DeLancy, who, with Marsh, had been admitted to intimacy, made fun of her to her face in his impudent way, pretending a deep solicitude for the overburdened rich.
"But it's true," said Doris indignantly. "I haven't a minute to myself. I'm going from morning to night. You haven't an idea how exacting our lives are."
"Tell me," said DeLancy, assuming a countenance of commiseration, while Bojo laughed.
"Horrid beast!" said Doris, pouting. "And then there's charity; you've no idea how much time charity takes. I'm on three committees and we have to meet once a week for luncheon. Then I'm in the show for the benefit of some hospital or other, and now they want us to come to morning rehearsals. Then there's the afternoon bridge class until four, and half a dozen teas to go through, and back to be dressed and curled and start out for dinner and a dance, night after night. And now there's Dolly's wedding coming on, and the dressmaker and the shopping. I tell you I'm beginning to look old already!"
She glanced at the clock and went off with a sigh to be decked out for another social struggle, as Mrs. Drake entered. The young men excused themselves. Bojo never felt quite comfortable under the scrutiny of the mother's menacing lorgnette. She was a frail, uneasy little woman, who dressed too young for her age, whose ready tears had won down the opposition of her husband, much as the steady drip of a tiny rivulet bores its way through granite surfaces. She did not approve of Bojo—a fact of which he was well aware—and was resolved when her first ambition had been gratified by Dolly's coming marriage to turn her forces on Doris.
At present she was too much occupied, for there were weak moments when Dolly, for all her foreign education, rose up in revolt, and others when Mr. Drake, incensed at the cold-blooded conduct of the pre-nuptial business arrangements, had threatened to send the whole pack of impudent lawyers flying. Patsie had been packed off on a visit to a cousin after a series of indiscretions, culminating in a demand to know from the Duke what the French meant by a mariage de convenance—a request which fell like a bombshell in a sudden silence of the family dinner.
It was a week before the wedding, as Bojo was swinging up the Avenue past the Park on his way to Doris, that he suddenly became aware of a young lady in white fur cap and black velvets skipping toward him, pursued by a terrier that had a familiar air, while from the attendant automobile a tall and scrawny spinster was gesticulating violently and unheeded. The next moment Patsie had run up to him, her arm through his, Romp leaning against him in recognition, while she exclaimed:
"Bojo, thank Heaven! Save me from this awful woman!"
"What's wrong, what's the matter?" he said, laughing, feeling all at once a delightful glow at the sight of her snapping eyes and breathless, parted lips.
"They've brought me back and tied a dragon to me," she cried indignantly. "I won't stand it. I won't go parading up and down with a keeper, just like an animal in a zoo. It's all mother's doings, and Dolly's, because I miffed her old duke. Send the dragon away, please, Bojo, please."
"What's her name?" he said, with an eye to the approaching car.
"Mlle. du Something or other—how do I know?"
The frantic companion now bearing down, with the chauffeur set to a grin, Bojo explained his right to act as Miss Drina's escort, and the matter was adjusted by the demoiselle de compagnie promising to keep a block behind until they neared home.
Patsie waxed indignant. "Wait till I get hold of Dad! I'll fix her! The idea! I'm eighteen— I guess I can take care of myself. I say, let's give them the slip. No? Oh, dear, it would be such fun. I'm crazy to slip off and get some skating. What do you think? Can't even do that. Too vulgar!"
"What did you say to the Duke that raised such a row?" said Bojo, pleasantly conscious of the light weight on his arm.
"Nothing at all," said Patsie, with an innocent face; but there was a twinkle in the eyes. "I simply asked what this mariage de convenance was I heard them all talking about, and when he started in to make some long-winded speech I cut in and asked him if it wasn't when people didn't love each other but married to pay the bills. Then every one talked out loud and mother looked at me through her telescope."
"You knew, of course," said Bojo reprovingly.
Drina laughed a guilty laugh.
"I don't think Dolly wants to marry him a bit," she declared. "It's all mother. Catch me marrying like that."
"And how are you going to marry?"
"When I marry, it'll be because I'm so doggoned in love I'd be sitting out on the top step waiting for him to come round. If I were engaged to a man I'd hook him tight and I wouldn't let go of him either, no matter who was looking on. What sort of a love is it when you sit six feet apart and try to look bored when some one rattles a door!"
"Patsie—you're very romantic, I'm afraid."
She nodded her head energetically, rattling on: "Moonlight, shifting clouds, heavily scented flowers, and all that sort of thing. Never mind, they'd better look out. I'm not going to stand this sort of treatment. I'll elope."
"You wouldn't do that, Patsie."
"Yes, I would. I say, when you and Doris marry will you let me come and stay with you?"
"We certainly will," he said enthusiastically.
"Then what are you waiting for?"
"I'm waiting," said Bojo dryly, after a pause, "until I have made enough money of my own."
"Good for you," she said, as if immensely relieved. "I knew you were that sort."
"And when are you coming out?" he asked, to turn the conversation.
"The night before the wedding. Isn't it awful?"
"You'll have lots of men hanging about you—crazy about you," he said abruptly.
"Pooh!"
"Never mind, I shall watch over you carefully and keep the wrong ones away."
"Will you?"
He nodded, looking into her eyes.
"Good for you. I'll come to you for advice."
They were at the house, the lemon livery of the footmen showing behind the glass doors.
"I say," said Patsie, with a sudden mischievous smile, "meet me at the corner to-morrow at four and we'll go off skating."
He shook his head sternly.
"Bojo, please—just for a lark!"
"I will call for you in a proper social manner perhaps."
"Will Doris have to be along?" she asked, thoughtfully.
"I shall of course ask Doris."
"On second thoughts, no, thank you. I think I shall go to my dressmaker's," she said, with a perfect imitation of his formal tone—and disappeared with a final burst of laughter.
He went in to see Doris with a sudden determination to clear up certain matters which had been on his conscience. As luck would have it, as he entered the great anteroom Mr. James Boskirk was departing. He was a painstaking, rather obvious young man of irreproachable industry and habits, a little over serious, rated already as one of the solid young men of the younger generation of financiers, who made no secret of the fact that he had arrived at a deliberate decision to invite Miss Doris Drake into the new firm which he had determined to found for the establishment of his home and the perpetuation of his name.
It seemed to Bojo, in the perfunctory greeting which they exchanged as civilized savages, that there was a look of derogatory accusation in Boskirk's eyes, and, infuriated, he determined to bring up the subject of Indiana Smelter again and force the truth from Doris.
He came in with a well-assumed air of amusement, adopting a sarcastic tone, which he knew she particularly dreaded.
"See here, Miss General Manager, this'll never do," he said lightly. "I thought you were cleverer than that."
"What do you mean?" she said, instantly scenting danger.
"Letting your visits overlap. I only hope you had time to manage all Mr. Boskirk's affairs. Only, for Heaven's sake, Doris, now that you've got him in hand, get him to change his style of collar and cuffs. He looks like the head of an undertakers' trust."
The idea that he might be jealous pleased her.
"Poor Mr. Boskirk," she said, smiling. "He's a very straightforward, simple fellow."
"Very simple," he said dryly. "Well, what more information has he been giving you?"
"He does not give me any information."
"You know perfectly well, Doris, that he gave you the tip on Indiana Smelter," he said furiously, "and that you denied because you knew I would never have approved."
"You are perfectly horrid, Bojo," she said, going to the fireplace and stirring up the logs. "I don't care to discuss it with you."
"I'm sorry," he said, "but you've hurt my pride."
"How?"
"Good heavens, can't you see! Haven't you women any sense of fitness? Don't you know that some things are done and some things are not done?"
She came to him contritely and put her hands on his shoulders.
"Bojo, why do you reproach me? Because I am only thinking of your success, all the time, every day? Is that what you are angry about?"
He felt like blurting out that there was something in that too, that he wanted the privilege of feeling that he was winning his own way; but instead he said:
"So it was Boskirk."
She looked at him, hesitated, and answered:
"No, it wasn't. But if it had been why should you hold it against me? Why don't you want me to help?—for you don't!"
He resolved to be blunt.
"If you would only do something that is not reasonable, not calculated, Doris! But everything you do is so well considered. You didn't use to be this way. I can't help thinking you care more about your life in society than you do me. It's the worldly part of you I'm afraid about."
She looked into his eyes steadily a moment and then turned her head away and nodded, smiling in assent.
"Heavens, Doris, if you want to do like Dolly, if you want a position, or a title, say so and let's be honest."
"But I don't— I don't," she cried impetuously. "You don t know how I have fought—" she stopped, not wishing to mention her mother and, lifting her glance to him anxiously, said: "Bojo, what do you want me to do?"
"I want you to do something uncalculated," he burst out—"mad, impulsive, as persons do who are wild in love with each other. I want you to marry me now."
"Now!"
"Listen: With what I've got and my salary I can scrape up ten thousand—no, don't spoil it— I don't want any money from you. Will you take your chances and marry me on my own basis now?"
She caught her breath and finally said, marking each word:
"Yes—I—will—marry—you—now!"
He burst out laughing at the look of terror in her eyes at the thought of facing life on ten thousand a year.
"Don't worry, Doris," he said, taking her in his arms. "I wouldn't be so cruel. I only wanted to hear you say it."
"But I did—I will—if you ask it," she said quickly.
He shook his head.
"If you'd only said it differently. Don't mind me—I'm an idiot—and you don't understand."
What he meant was that he was an idiot, when he was getting so much that other men coveted, to insist on what was not in her charming, facile self to give him. An hour later, after an interview with Daniel Drake, he was ready to wonder what had made him flare up so quickly—Boskirk's presence perhaps, or something impulsive which had awakened within him when Drina had flushed while describing her distinct ideas upon the subject of the sentiments.
But a new exhilaration effectively drove away all other emotions—the delirious appetite for gain which had come irresistibly and tyrannically into his life with the dramatic intensity of his first speculation. In the interim in Daniel Drake's library, with Doris perched excitedly on the arm of his chair, several things had been decided. A great operation was under way which promised an unusual profit. Bojo was to place $50,000 in the pool which was to be used to operate in the stocks of a certain Southern railroad long suspected to be on the verge of a receivership, at the end of which campaign he was to enter Mr. Drake's service in the rôle of a private secretary.
Meanwhile he was to continue in the employ of Hauk, Flaspoller and Forshay, the better to figure in the mixed scheme of manipulation which would be necessary. He was so seized with the drama of the opportunity, so keen over the thought of being once more a part of all the whirling, hurtling machinery of speculation that he did not remember even for a passing thought, the horror which had come over him at his first incredible success.