“Really think I’d better go out to Lake Forest, Mark. I more or less promised I would. I shan’t be gone more than a—couple of weeks.”
Triumph dragged a chuckle from Mark. He covered it with, “Oh, sure! If Lacy’s got the blues, run ahead out and cheer him up.” The boy was in full flight from love, of course, and didn’t want to admit it. Mark doted on him, drawled, “Got all the money you’ll need?” and was pleased by Gurdy’s confession that he needed a good deal. He gave the boy errands about Chicago to aid the retreat. “There’s a girl named Marryatt playing at the La Salle. Some of them think she’s got distinction. And poke around and see if you can rake up a scenery man. Take the directions for Captain Salvador along. If you find any one that ain’t just copying Bobby Jones or Gordon Craig make him send me sketches. And there’s this poet on a newspaper—he’s named something like Sandwich—no, Sanbridge. See if he’s got a play up his sleeve. O’Mara was talking about him.”
He saw Gurdy off for Chicago, the next noon, then set about making lists of successive luncheons for Margot. This return must be an ample revenge for her waygoing. She wasn’t, now, the small girl whose presence in Miss Thorne’s school had frightened matrons. She was some one protected by his celebrity and trained by Olive Ilden. He must contrive her content until she married Gurdy. She was democratic—Olive had seen to that. Mark had watched her chaff a knot of convalescent soldiers in Hyde Park. She wouldn’t care that one of his best friends had risen toward management from the rank of a burlesque dancer, that another had been an undertaker in Ohio. She wouldn’t mind things like that. He marshalled the cleverest of the critics and the young women who dealt in publicity. Gurdy would bring proper men to call, when he came back from his flight. The expanse of her future opened like an unfurling robe of exquisite colours. She strolled in Mark’s mind most visibly. He hummed, inspecting his house.
“Yes,” Carlson sneered, “she’s been footloose amongst a pack of dukes and things and you think she’s going to like bein’ mixed up with a lot of—”
“She won’t mind,” said Mark.
She seemed to mind nothing. She landed on the twentieth of that cool May, kissed Mark on the nose and told him she had three cases of champagne in the hold. The customs inspectors were dazzled stumbling among her trunks. A file of other voyagers came to shake hands. A great hostess kissed the girl, smiled at Mark and said gently that she hoped Mr. Walling would bring Margot to luncheon next fall.
“She’s quite nice,” Margot assured him in the motor, “She probably kept your photograph with a bunch of violets in a jar in front of it when you were a matinée—Oh, how you hate that word! How nice your nose is! Where on earth’s Gurdy?—Lake Forest? Oh, that’s where all the Chicago pig kings live, isn’t it? They have chateaux and moats and exclude—But it’s rather rotten he isn’t here. I’ve a couple of awful French novels for him. He speaks such rather remarkable French. I can’t make the right J sounds. He’s such a stately animal. I was awfully frightened of him in London. Such a ghastly crossing!”
“Why, honey?”
She stared at him with wide black eyes and said more slowly, “How nicely you say things like that.—You’re really awfully glad I’m back, aren’t you?”
Mark choked, “Here’s Times Square.”