Her words, so direct, and her tone, so simple, disconcerted him to such an extent that he choked upon the champagne. While he was still coughing Mrs. Richmond rose, and the men were left alone. Roger went with the first man who rejoined the women. He made straight for Mrs. Richmond, bade her good night and got himself out of the house before Beatrice, hemmed in by several people, could extricate herself and intercept him.
He did the homeward drive slowly, preyed upon by swarms of disagreeable thoughts. His experience of women had taught him to be more than suspicious of any feminine show of enthusiasm for a man; women were too self-centered, too prudent by nature and training, to give themselves out freely, even when encouraged—unless there were some strong, sordid motive. In this case sordid motive simply could not be. Nor could he conceive any practical reason why Beatrice should pretend to care for him—any practical reason why she should wish to marry him. He felt like a fool—as a normal man not swollen with conceit is bound to feel in circumstances such as Beatrice had made for him. And what vanity she had!—to fancy herself so fascinating that it simply could not be that he did not love her. And how poor an opinion she had of him! How little respect for him!—to believe that his reason for hiding his love was awe of her wealth and social position. “What can I have said or done to give her such an impression of me?” He could recall nothing that might have been twisted by her into a suggestion of that sort. No, the mystery was without a clew. “Am I crazy, or is she?” he demanded of the moonlit night.... And when was this thing to stop? Could Fate have dealt more irritatingly with him? He had come back home to make the grand effort of his life—to concentrate his whole being, every power of mind and body, every thought and feeling, upon the realization of his lifelong dream. And here was this girl, a nice enough girl, no doubt, an unusually attractive girl, as girls go, but still a mere idle, time-wasting woman with no real seriousness—here she was, harassing him, retarding his work, distracting his thoughts, involving him with a lot of people who had neither importance nor interest for him. In spite of himself he was being dragged into her life, whirled about by her caprices. He felt not only like a fool, but like a weak fool. “And what the devil can I do about it? How can I be insulting to a sweet, friendly girl who doesn’t realize what she’s doing and has been so brought up that she can’t be made to realize?”
The only hopeful course that suggested itself was flight. “Yes—if she keeps this up I’ll have to take to my heels.” There his sense of humor came to the rescue and he jeered at himself. “A delightful person I’m becoming!—discussing what to do to escape from a girl who is madly in love with me!”
About the time that Burke, the liveryman, was once more in possession of his “rig,” Beatrice, undressing for bed with the aid of her maid Valentine, received a peremptory summons from her mother by way of her mother’s maid, Marthe.
Mrs. Richmond was established in splendor in five big rooms on the second floor of the east wing. She received her daughter in her office—a luxurious, library-like room with few signs that it was the seat of the administration of a household of forty-two servants. Indeed, Mrs. Richmond was little of an administrator. She nagged at and criticised Pinney, the superintendent, and Mrs. Lambert, the housekeeper. She picked flaws in accounts, usually in the wrong places. She delivered sharp talks on economy and extravagance. But things were run sloppily, as is bound to happen where the underlings learn that there is no such thing as justice, that criticism is as likely to fall upon good work as upon bad. The stealing and the waste grew apace; and though Richmond, each year, largely increased his wife’s allowance for the maintenance of their various establishments, she was never able to put by more than twenty-five thousand or thereabouts for her own secret, privy purse.
Yet she was a most industrious woman, up early, to bed late. How did she occupy her time? Chiefly in taking care of her person. She was not highly intelligent about this. She wasted much of the time and most of the money she invested in the tragi-comic struggle for youth. Still, she got some results. Perhaps, however, most of her success in keeping down fat and wrinkles, and holding in her hair and her teeth in spite of self-indulgence as to both food and drink, was due to the superb constitution she had inherited. Mrs. Richmond came originally from Indiana; and out there they grow—or, in former days grew—a variety of the human species comparable to an oak knot—tough of fiber beyond belief, capable of resisting both fire and steel, both food and drink.
There was small resemblance between mother and daughter save in the matter of figure. Beatrice’s sweet and pretty face was an inheritance from the Richmonds, though not from her father direct. Her shrewdness and persistence were from her father direct. The older woman in the pale-blue dressing gown looked up sharply as the younger, in pink and white, entered. But the sharp, angry glance wavered at sight of the resolute little face wearing an expression of faintly amused indifference. She had long since taken her daughter’s measure—and she knew that her daughter had taken hers.
“What did you send for me about?” Beatrice asked.
“You know very well.”