He was glad to get away to change and to think. He was pretty certain that the time was near, whatever might be the way out of the maze that he was in with Beatrix, for him to do a good deal of thinking. He was pretty certain that when he left the Vanderdyke house alone,—he couldn't see how else he could leave it,—the effect that Beatrix had had upon him would impel him to hitch himself on to life in some other capacity than that of a mere observer. For her sake, in her honor, he would dedicate his life to a job that should relieve the pressure in some way on the toilers of the earth and help things forward.
When he returned to the hall he found the punctual, punctilious family ready and waiting to go into dinner. Beatrix followed him down almost immediately, wearing a simple and charming frock. Aunt Honoria met her and brought her into the group. There was something about the girl, a new dignity, a riper air, an uncharacteristic quietude that was caught at once by the three Vanderdykes and especially by Aunt Honoria. Her words to Franklin in the garden before the honeymoon came back into her mind and with an emotion that she was unable to suppress she said, "This is a good night in the history of the family. Our little girl has found herself as we have prayed that she would. I speak for my brother and sister when I say that we are grateful to you, Pelham." She bowed to him with old-fashioned grace.
Mr. Vanderdyke, obviously disconcerted, murmured approval, and Mrs. Vanderdyke smiled. She was a little resentful of the way in which Aunt Honoria always took the lead but this was outweighed by her immense relief at the fact that Beatrix was happy and disposed of.
Franklin was the most uncomfortable man on earth.
And then Beatrix did a thing that once more made him wish that they were back in the stone age. "Let me speak for myself," she said quietly. "Pelham, I am very grateful, too," and put her hand on his shoulder, stood on tiptoes and kissed him.
He was wrong, once more, when he told himself, angrily, that she was deliberately fooling, getting a thrill of amusement at his expense. If he had known her as she was now, he would have realized that she had seized the public moment to do something she would not have dared to do privately, that she was thanking him for what he had done for her and saying "Good-bye." She had made up her mind to tell the truth at the family council that night.
XLI
While Helene had been brushing her hair and getting her ready for dinner Beatrix had gone in for honest thinking too.
She came at once to the conclusion that from every point of view the sham that she had created in that wild moment of self-preservation and devil-may-care must be smashed. Scandal had driven her into it. Scandal was following at her heels and in a blaze of scandal the episode must end. The futile punishment, which, as a girl, she had been so keen to dodge mattered nothing to her now as a woman. Let Aunt Honoria drag her into the back of beyond. She would go gladly. In silent lonely places she could sit in dreams and live over again those wonderful moments during which she had burst into womanhood. What did it matter now if she missed a season, many seasons in New York? She had looked into the eyes of life. She had no longer any desire to take her part among the silly sheep that ran about in droves. She was sorry for the pain and humiliation that she must cause her family to suffer. There seemed to be no way to prevent that. To enter into Franklin's scheme of marriage only meant a postponement of scandal. Divorce would provide the gossipers with an even more succulent morsel than the one that was waiting for them. Out of this smash, bad as it must be, she would at any rate preserve her pride and set Franklin free.
There were three things that hit her hard as she sat in front of her looking glass that evening. Her failure to make Franklin eat the words that he had flung at her vanity as he stood at the foot of her bed. Her failure to turn the sex attraction that she had deliberately stirred in him into love. Her failure to compete with such a woman as Ida Larpent. In fact it was the word failure that seemed to her to be written all over the episode into which she had entered without a thought for anyone except herself,—and it was the one word which had, till then, never been allowed to have a place in her dictionary.