“He is honest and independent,” replied Beatrice strongly—but not so strongly as she wished. “He wouldn’t marry me unless he loved me.”
“But I should think,” subtly suggested Richmond, “it would be—well, not so very hard for a man to fall in love with a girl who had so many advantages.”
Beatrice’s vanity lined up strongly behind her worldly common sense in conceding plausibility—and more—to this suggestion. She laughed, but she was impressed.
When they were near the house her father said good-humoredly: “Will you take me in the way you came out? I’ve told Pinney not to turn on the alarms until I come out of my study—where he thinks I am.”
So, father and daughter reëntered Red Hill by stealth, getting a lot of fun out of the adventure—and separating at her door with a good, old-fashioned, old-time hug and kiss.
XIII
PETER’S BAD QUARTER HOUR
The bill for that excursion in flimsy dress and slippers through the wet, cold woods was promptly presented; and, after the rude manner of all such bills, it had to be met on sight. As has been hinted, Beatrice did not have those refined, ladylike colds which enable heroines of fiction to continue in undiminished loveliness. She had the plain, human cold that reduces its victim to a wheezing, sneezing, snuffling hunk of misery, swollen of eyes and nose, laden with pocket handkerchiefs. She let no one but the family see her at such times—and was just as well pleased if they kept away.
Thus, she now had five days for uninterrupted reflection, in a humble, most penitential frame of mind. Her father did not disturb her, flattered her with attentions of specially selected flowers, of solicitous inquiries twice a day, not through secretary or butler or valet, but personally seeking her own maid.
The third day her mother came with glowing accounts of what he purposed doing for her in commemoration of the marriage. The chief items were magnificent jewels and the Red Hill estate. As the jewels would be too dear, to her who loved jewels, for her ever to think of realizing on them, and as the Red Hill estate would call for a huge annual appropriation from her father’s bounty for maintenance, it must be said that Richmond, resolved to keep his children dependent, had chosen not uncannily. But Beatrice was in no mood to tear his acts into shreds in search for the slyly concealed motive. Since he had reversed her expectations by dealing gently with her when he caught her at the cascade, she had almost restored him to favor in her thoughts. Nor did the fact that gentle dealing was absolutely the only course left open to him affect her generous judgment. This news of the gifts, the excited talk of her maid, on her own behalf and also in repeating what was being said below stairs, the journalistic comments on the approaching “alliance”—all these things tended to put marrying Peter before her in a less unfavorable light. And she was not seeing Peter—nor Roger.
Abased by her cold, she took a low view of her goings-on with Roger. She succeeded in shaming her skulking pride into the open, where it made earnest efforts to reproach her for having thrown herself at a man who had promptly and decisively repulsed her. No matter what his reason. He had shown her that he did not love her—and did not want her love. The older people grow, the less nervous they are about being sillily romantic; they glory in the divine follies of love. Young heart being all they have left of youth’s fair, fleeting riches, they try to enjoy it to the uttermost. But young people, if at all sophisticated, shy from extravagant romance; they fear to be convicted of the horrible crime of being young and green; they dread falling victim to the humiliating swindle of loving more than they are loved, of giving more than they get. Until Beatrice met Roger she had prided herself on the control of her mind over her heart, on being “woman of the world.” She now began to smile—faintly, but with attempt at mockery—upon her delirium of love. She did not regret it, did not repent it. But she thought of it as a thing of the past.