IX
When Franklin left the bedroom in which he had gone through the strangest hour of his life, he went into the room which had been allotted to him and from which some of his things had been taken, and stood for a little while at an open window taking in long, deep breaths. His mind was in too chaotic a state to permit him to think patiently of going to sleep, and in the back of it, now that his anger had cooled, there was a growing feeling of self-disgust at the way in which he had treated Beatrix Vanderdyke. He was sorry that he had allowed himself to be carried in front of a wave of extreme indignation and he told himself, a little ruefully, that after all it wasn't for him to take the law into his own hands. He called himself, with unusual sarcasm, an egotist, an individualist, and cursed his vanity which rose up whenever anyone attempted to make a fool of him, and was aghast to discover how very little it took to make a man lose the effects and influence of civilization.
And when he endeavored to look into the future that was staring him in the face—the future all disturbed and upset by the unexpected entrance into his life of the girl who had treated him merely as a pawn upon her lightly considered chess-board, he found himself wholly unable to see through the maze that stretched out in front of him. He was no longer in the splendid position of a free lance. He was no longer able to pass through his days unencumbered with any sort of responsibility. He saw that he was to pay the full price for that moment of aberration during which he had permitted himself to fall in with Beatrix's daringly manufactured lie. It was with a feeling that gave him back something of his self-respect that he realized that it was impossible to give Beatrix away until he had her permission to do so. She had appealed to him as a sportsman and it was as a sportsman, as a man who stuck to the rules of whatever game he played, that he endeavored to report daily to the particular god that he worshipped.
Sick of himself, sick of his room, sick of everything, he went out presently into the passage,—a wide, dimly lit passage hung with old masters and carpeted with Persian rugs which were beautiful and rare enough to hang upon the walls of an art gallery,—and went slowly down-stairs into the hall. For some moments he paced up and down this deserted place asking himself how he was to kill the night. He had no patience for books,—he very rarely read anything except technical things on hunting and fishing,—but eventually he made his way to the library, the nicest and most reasonable room in that uncomfortable, luxurious house. He was aware immediately of the presence of someone standing at the window. The moonlight fell on a dark head and a tall, graceful figure. He turned up the lights and found himself looking into the reproachful and rather sarcastic eyes of Ida Larpent.
She was still in the noticeably simple and very perfect dress that she had worn at dinner,—a soft, black thing not cut slavishly to the existing fashion, but made to suit her peculiar beauty and slender, hipless lines. Cut down to the waist at the back, it seemed to retain its place in front by a miracle. One large, star-shaped brooch studded as closely with diamonds as a clear sky with stars was fastened between her breasts, and jet beads glinted here and there about the graceful skirt that hid her feet. A band of small pearls was placed like an aureola round her head, from which hung one large insolent diamond just where her hair was parted on her low forehead. She wore no rings.
She moved away from the window and leaned lightly against one of the pillars, running her eyes slowly up and down Franklin's tall, wiry figure. She might easily have been standing for an artist as the modern representation of Lucretia Borgia.
"Well!" she said, with a just perceptible upward inflection of her bell-like voice.
To Franklin she seemed to be symbolical of his lost freedom, the unconscious reminder of the good days when he could go and come at will, answer immediately to a whim and move to a fancy as a sail to a breeze. During the course of that afternoon and evening he had not attempted to do more than pass the time of day with her, and had forgotten, in the sudden whirlpool into which he had been dragged by Beatrix, that he had arranged to meet her under that roof to renew a very charming friendship. It was now easy enough to see from her expression and manner that he was to undergo a bad quarter-of-an-hour for his lack of attention. He deeply regretted to have hurt her feelings but was not sorry that he had gone into the room. If there was anything unpleasant to be faced it was his habit to face it and get it over. He did not suffer from moral cowardice.
"Well!" he said.
"I've just finished writing you a letter."