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The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig: A Novel

by David Graham Phillips · English · Gutenberg #4929 · 434,119 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig: A Novel

Author: David Graham Phillips


        
Release date: January 1, 2004 [eBook #4929]
                Most recently updated: February 22, 2011

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FASHIONABLE ADVENTURES OF JOSHUA CRAIG: A NOVEL ***




Produced by Robert Rowe, Charles Franks and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team.









THE FASHIONABLE ADVENTURES OF JOSHUA CRAIG

A NOVEL

BY DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS




CONTENTS


    I.--MR. CRAIG ARRAYS HIMSELF
   II.--IN THE BEST SOCIETY
  III.--A DESPERATE YOUNG WOMAN
   IV.--"HE ISN'T LIKE US"
    V.--ALMOST HOOKED
   VI.--MR. CRAIG IN SWEET DANGER
  VII.--MRS. SEVERENCE IS ROUSED
 VIII.--MR. CRAIG CONFIDES
   IX.--SOMEWHAT CYCLONIC
    X.--A BELATED PROPOSAL
   XI.--MADAM BOWKER HEARS THE NEWS
  XII.--PUTTING DOWN A MUTINY
 XIII.--A MEMORABLE MEETING
  XIV.--MAGGIE AND JOSH
   XV.--THE EMBASSY GARDEN PARTY
  XVI.--A FIGHT AND A FINISH
 XVII.--A NIGHT MARCH
XVIII.--PEACE AT ANY PRICE
  XIX.--MADAM BOWKER'S BLESSING
   XX.--MR. CRAIG KISSES THE IDOL'S FOOT
  XXI.--A SWOOP AND A SCRATCH
 XXII.--GETTING ACQUAINTED
XXIII.--WHAT THE MOON SAW AND DID
 XXIV.--"OUR HOUSE IS AFIRE"
  XXV.--MRS. JOSHUA CRAIG





THE FASHIONABLE ADVENTURES OF JOSHUA CRAIG




CHAPTER I

MR. CRAIG ARRAYS HIMSELF


It was one of the top-floor-rear flats in the Wyandotte, not merely
biggest of Washington's apartment hotels, but also "most
exclusive"--which is the elegant way of saying most expensive. The
Wyandotte had gone up before landlords grasped the obvious truth that in
a fire-proof structure locations farthest from noise and dust should and
could command highest prices; so Joshua Craig's flat was the cheapest in
the house. The ninety dollars a month loomed large in his eyes, focused
to little-town ideas of values; it was, in fact, small for shelter in
"the DE LUXE district of the de luxe quarter," to quote Mrs. Senator
Mulvey, that simple, far-Western soul, who, finding snobbishness to be
the chief distinguishing mark of the Eastern upper classes, assumed it
was a virtue, acquired it laboriously, and practiced it as openly and
proudly as a preacher does piety. Craig's chief splendor was a
sitting-room, called a parlor and bedecked in the red plush and
Nottingham that represent hotel men's probably shrewd guess at the
traveling public's notion of interior opulence. Next the sitting-room,
and with the same dreary outlook, or, rather, downlook, upon disheveled
and squalid back yards, was a dingy box of a bedroom. Like the parlor,
it was outfitted with furniture that had degenerated upward, floor by
floor, from the spacious and luxurious first-floor suites. Between the
two rooms, in dark mustiness, lay a bathroom with suspicious-looking,
wood-inclosed plumbing; the rusted iron of the tub peered through scuffs
and seams in the age-grayed porcelain.

Arkwright glanced from the parlor where he was sitting into the gloom of
the open bathroom and back again. His cynical brown-green eyes paused
upon a scatter of clothing, half-hiding the badly-rubbed red plush of
the sofa--a mussy flannel nightshirt with mothholes here and there;
kneed trousers, uncannily reminiscent of a rough and strenuous wearer; a
smoking-jacket that, after a youth of cheap gayety, was now a frayed and
tattered wreck, like an old tramp, whose "better days" were none too
good. On the radiator stood a pair of wrinkled shoes that had never
known trees; their soles were curved like rockers. An old pipe clamored
at his nostrils, though it was on the table near the window, the full
length of the room from him. Papers and books were strewn about
everywhere. It was difficult to believe these unkempt and uncouth
surroundings, and the personality that had created them, were actually
being harbored behind the walls of the Wyandotte.

"What a hole!" grumbled Arkwright. He was in evening clothes, so correct
in their care and in their carelessness that even a woman would have
noted and admired. "What a mess! What a hole!"

"How's that?" came from the bedroom in an aggressive voice, so
penetrating that it seemed loud, though it was not, and much roughened
by open-air speaking. "What are you growling about?"

Arkwright raised his tone: "Filthy hole!" said he. "Filthy mess!"

Now appeared in the bedroom door a tall young man of unusual strength
and nearly perfect proportions. The fine head was carried commandingly;
with its crop of dark, matted hair it suggested the rude, fierce
figure-head of a Viking galley; the huge, aggressively-masculine
features proclaimed ambition, energy, intelligence. To see Josh Craig
was to have instant sense of the presence of a personality. The contrast
between him standing half-dressed in the doorway and the man seated in
fashionable and cynically-critical superciliousness was more than a
matter of exteriors. Arkwright, with features carved, not hewn as were
Craig's, handsome in civilization's over-trained, overbred extreme, had
an intelligent, superior look also. But it was the look of expertness in
things hardly worth the trouble of learning; it was aristocracy's
highly-prized air of the dog that leads in the bench show and tails in
the field. He was like a firearm polished and incrusted with gems and
hanging in a connoisseur's wall-case; Josh was like a battle-tested
rifle in the sinewy hands of an Indian in full war-paint. Arkwright
showed that he had physical strength, too; but it was of the kind got at
the gymnasium and at gentlemanly sport--the kind that wins only where
the rules are carefully refined and amateurized. Craig's figure had the
solidity, the tough fiber of things grown in the open air, in the cold,
wet hardship of the wilderness.

Arkwright's first glance of admiration for this figure of the forest and
the teepee changed to a mingling of amusement and irritation. The
barbarian was not clad in the skins of wild beasts, which would have set
him off superbly, but was trying to get himself arrayed for a
fashionable ball. He had on evening trousers, pumps, black cotton socks
with just enough silk woven in to give them the shabby, shamed air of
having been caught in a snobbish pretense at being silk. He was
buttoning a shirt torn straight down the left side of the bosom from
collar-band to end of tail; and the bosom had the stiff, glassy glaze
that advertises the cheap laundry.

"Didn't you write me I must get an apartment in this house?" demanded
he.

"Not in the attic," rejoined Arkwright.

"I can't afford anything better."

"You can't afford anything so bad."

"Bad!"

Craig looked round as pleased as a Hottentot with a string of colored
glass beads. "Why, I've got a private sitting-room AND a private bath! I
never was so well-off before in my life. I tell you, Grant, I'm not
surprised any more that you Easterners get effete and worthless. I begin
to like this lolling in luxury, and I keep the bell-boys on the jump.
Won't you have something to drink?"

Arkwright pointed his slim cane at the rent in the shirt. "What are you
going to do with that?" said he.

"This? Oh!"--Josh thrust his thick backwoods-man's hand in the
tear--"Very simple. A safety-pin or so from the lining of the
vest--excuse me, waistcoat--into the edge of the bosom."

"Splendid!" ejaculated Arkwright. "Superb!"

Craig, with no scent for sarcasm so delicate, pushed on with enthusiasm:
"The safety-pin's the mainstay of bachelor life," said he rhetorically.
"It's his badge of freedom. Why, I can even repair socks with it!"

"Throw that shirt away," said Arkwright, with a contemptuous switch of
his cane. "Put on another. You're not dressing for a shindy in a shack."

"But it's the only one of my half-dozen that has a bang-up bosom."

"Bang-up? That sheet of mottled mica?"

Craig surveyed the shiny surface ruefully. "What's the matter with
this?" he demanded.

"Oh, nothing," replied Arkwright, in disgust. "Only, it looks more like
something to roof a house with than like linen for a civilized man."

Craig reared. "But, damn it, Grant, I'm not civilized. I'm a wild man,
and I'm going to stay wild. I belong to the common people, and it's my
game--and my preference, too--to stick to them. I'm willing to make
concessions; I'm not a fool. I know there was a certain amount of truth
in those letters you took the trouble to write me from Europe. I know
that to play the game here in Washington I've got to do something in
society. But"--here Josh's eyes flashed, and he bent on his friend a
look that was impressive--"I'm still going to be myself. I'll make 'em
accept me as I am. Dealing with men as individuals, I make them do what
_I_ want, make 'em like me as I am."

"Every game has its own rules," said Arkwright. "You'll get on
better--quicker--go further--here if you'll learn a few elementary
things. I don't see that wearing a whole shirt decently done up is going
to compromise any principles. Surely you can do that and still be as
common as you like. The people look up to the fellow that's just a
little better dressed than they."

Josh eyed Arkwright in the way that always made him wonder whether he
was in full possession of the secret of this strenuous young Westerner.
"But," said he, "they love and trust the man who will have nothing which
all may not have. The shirt will do for this evening." And he turned
back into the bedroom.

Arkwright reflected somewhat uncomfortably. He felt that he himself was
right; yet he could not deny that "Josh's cheap demagoguery" sounded
fine and true. He soon forgot the argument in the study of his
surroundings. "You're living like a wild beast here, Josh," he presently
called out. "You must get a valet."

A loud laugh was the reply.

"Or a wife," continued Arkwright. Then, in the voice of one announcing
an inspiration, "Yes--that's it! A wife!"

Craig reappeared. He had on his waistcoat and coat now, and his hair was
brushed. Arkwright could not but admit that the personality took the
edge off the clothes; even the "mottled mica"--the rent was completely
hid--seemed to have lost the worst of its glaze and stiffness. "You'll
do, Josh," said he. "I spoke too quickly. If I hadn't accidentally been
thrust into the innermost secrets of your toilet I'd never have
suspected." He looked the Westerner over with gentle, friendly
patronage. "Yes, you'll do. You look fairly well at a glance--and a
man's clothes rarely get more than that."

Craig released his laugh upon his fastidious friend's judicial
seriousness. "The trouble with you, Grant, is you've never lived a human
life. You've always been sheltered and pampered, lifted in and out of
bed by valets, had a suit of clothes for every hour in the day. I don't
see how it is I happen to like you." And in Craig's face and voice there
was frankly the condescension of superior to undoubted inferior.

Arkwright seemed to be wavering between resentment and amused disdain.
Then he remembered the circumstances of their first acquaintance--those
frightful days in the Arizona desert, without food, with almost no
water, and how this man had been absolute ruler of the party of lost and
dying men; how he had forced them to march on and on, with entreaties,
with curses, with blows finally; how he had brought them to safety--all
as a matter of course, without any vanity or boasting--had been leader
by divine right of strength of body and soul. Grant turned his eyes from
Craig, for there were tears in them. "I don't see why you like me,
either, Josh," said he. "But you do--and--damn it all, I'd die for you."

"I guess you'll come pretty near dying of shame before this evening's
over," laughed Craig. "This is the first time in my life I ever was in a
fashionable company."

"There's nothing to be frightened about," Grant assured him.

"Frightened!" Josh laughed boisterously--Arkwright could have wished he
would temper that laugh. "I--frightened by a bunch of popinjays? You
see, it's not really in the least important whether they like me or
not--at least, not to me. I'll get there, anyhow. And when I do, I'll
deal with them according to their deserts. So they'd better hustle to
get solid with me."

In the two years since he had seen Craig, Arkwright had almost forgotten
his habit of bragging and blowing about himself--what he had done, what
he was going to do. The newspapers, the clippings Josh sent him, had
kept him informed of the young Minnesotan's steady, rapid rise in
politics; and whenever he recalled the absurd boasting that had made him
feel Craig would never come to anything, he assumed it was a weakness of
youth and inexperience which had, no doubt, been conquered. But, no;
here was the same old, conceited Josh, as crudely and vulgarly
self-confident as when he was twenty-five and just starting at the law
in a country town. Yet Arkwright could not but admit there had been more
than a grain of truth in Craig's former self-laudations, that there was
in victories won a certain excuse for his confidence about the future.
This young man, not much beyond thirty, with a personality so positive
and so rough that he made enemies right and left, rousing the envy of
men to fear that here was an ambition which must be downed or it would
become a tyranny over them--this young man, by skill at politics and by
sympathetic power with people in the mass, had already compelled a
President who didn't like him to appoint him to the chief post under an
Attorney-General who detested him.

"How are you getting on with the Attorney-General?" asked Arkwright, as
they set out in his electric brougham.

"He's getting on with me much better," replied Craig, "now that he has
learned not to trifle with me."

"Stillwater is said to be a pretty big man," said Arkwright warningly.

"The bigger the man, the easier to frighten," replied Josh carelessly,
"because the more he's got to lose. But it's a waste of time to talk
politics to you. Grant, old man, I'm sick and worn out, and how
lonesome! I'm successful. But what of that, since I'm miserable? If it
wasn't for my sense of duty, by Heaven, I sometimes think I'd drop it
all and go back to Wayne."

"Don't do that, Josh!" exclaimed Arkwright. "Don't let the country go
rolling off to ruin!"

"Like all small creatures," said Craig, "you take serious matters
lightly, and light matters seriously. You were right a moment ago when
you said I needed a wife."

"That's all settled," said Grant. "I'm going to get you one."

"A woman doesn't need a man--if she isn't too lazy to earn a living,"
pursued Craig. "But what's a man without a woman about?"

"You want a wife, and you want her quick," said Arkwright.

"You saw what a condition my clothes are in. Then, I need somebody to
talk with."

"To talk to," corrected Grant.

"I can't have you round all the time to talk to."

"Heaven forbid!" cried Arkwright. "You never talk about anything but
yourself."

"Some day, my boy," said Josh, with his grave good humor of the great
man tolerating the antics of a mountebank, "you'll appreciate it wasn't
the subject that was dull, but the ears. For the day'll come when
everybody'll be thinking and talking about me most of the time."

Arkwright grinned. "It's lucky you don't let go before everybody like
that."

"Yes, but I do," rejoined Craig. "And why not? They can't stop my going
ahead. Besides, it's not a bad idea"--he nodded, with that shrewdness
which was the great, deep-lying vein in his nature--"not at all a bad
idea, to have people think you a frank, loose-mouthed, damn fool--IF you
ain't. Ambition's a war. And it's a tremendous advantage to lead your
enemies to underestimate you. That's one reason why I ALWAYS win ... So
you're going TO TRY to get me a wife?"

"I'm going to get you one--one of the sort you need. You need a woman
who'll tame you down and lick you into shape."

Craig smiled scornfully.

"One who'll know how to smooth the enemies you make with your
rough-and-tumble manners; one who'll win friends for you socially--"

Josh made a vehement gesture of dissent. "Not on your life!" cried he.
"Of course, my wife must be a lady, and interested in my career. But
none of your meddling politicians in petticoats for me! I'll do my own
political maneuvering. I want a woman, not a bad imitation of a man."

"Well, let that go," said Arkwright. "Also, she ought to be able to
supply you with funds for your political machinery."

Josh sat up as if this were what he had been listening for.

"That's right!" cried he. "Politics is hell for a poor man, nowadays.
The people are such thoughtless, short-sighted fools--" He checked
himself, and in a different tone went on: "However, I don't mean exactly
that--"

"You needn't hedge, Josh, with me."

"I don't want you to be thinking I'm looking for a rich woman."

"Not at all--not at all," laughed his friend.

"If she had too much money it'd be worse for my career than if she had
none at all."

"I understand," said Arkwright.

"Enough money to make me independent--if I should get in a tight place,"
continued Josh. "Yes, I must marry. The people are suspicious of a
bachelor. The married men resent his freedom--even the happily married
ones. And all the women, married and single, resent his not
surrendering."

"I never suspected you of cynicism."

"Yes," continued Craig, in an instantly and radically changed tone, "the
people like a married man, a man with children. It looks respectable,
settled. It makes 'em feel he's got a stake in the country--a home and
property to defend. Yes, I want a wife."

"I don't see why you've neglected it so long."

"Too busy."

"And too--ambitious," suggested Arkwright.

"What do you mean?" demanded Josh, bristling.

"You thought you'd wait to marry until you were nearer your final place
in the world. Being cut out for a king, you know--why, you thought you'd
like a queen--one of those fine, delicate ladies you'd read about."

Craig's laugh might have been confession, it might have been mere
amusement. "I want a wife that suits me," said he. "And I'll get her."

It was Arkwright's turn to be amused. "There's one game you don't in the
least understand," said he.

"What game is that?"

"The woman game."

Craig shrugged contemptuously. "Marbles! Jacks!" Then he added: "Now
that I'm about ready to marry, I'll look the offerings over." He clapped
his friend on the shoulder. "And you can bet your last cent I'll take
what I want."

"Don't be too sure," jeered Arkwright.

The brougham was passing a street lamp that for an instant illuminated
Craig's face. Again Arkwright saw the expression that made him feel
extremely uncertain of the accuracy of his estimates of the "wild man's"
character.

"Yes, I'll get her," said Josh, "and for a reason that never occurs to
you shallow people. I get what I want because what I want wants me--for
the same reason that the magnet gets the steel."

Arkwright looked admiringly at his friend's strong, aggressive face.

"You're a queer one, Josh," said he. "Nothing ordinary about you."

"I should hope not!" exclaimed Craig. "Now for the plunge."




CHAPTER II

IN THE BEST SOCIETY


Grant's electric had swung in at the end of the long line of carriages
of all kinds, from coach of ambassador and costly limousine of
multi-millionaire to humble herdic wherein poor, official grandee's wife
and daughter were feeling almost as common as if they had come in a
street car or afoot. Josh Craig, leaning from the open window, could see
the grand entrance under the wide and lofty porte-cochère--the women,
swathed in silk and fur, descending from the carriages and entering the
wide-flung doors of the vestibule; liveries, flowers, lights, sounds of
stringed instruments, intoxicating glimpses of magnificence at windows,
high and low. And now the electric was at the door. He and Arkwright
sprang out, hastened up the broad steps. His expression amused
Arkwright; it was intensely self-conscious, resolutely indifferent--the
kind of look that betrays tempestuous inward perturbations and
misgivings. "Josh is a good deal of a snob, for all his brave talk,"
thought he. "But," he went on to reflect, "that's only human. We're all
impressed by externals, no matter what we may pretend to ourselves and
to others. I've been used to this sort of thing all my life and I know
how little there is in it, yet I'm in much the same state of
bedazzlement as Josh."

Josh had a way of answering people's thoughts direct which Arkwright
sometimes suspected was not altogether accidental. He now said: "But
there's a difference between your point of view and mine. You take this
seriously through and through. I laugh at it in the bottom of my heart,
and size it up at its true value. I'm like a child that don't really
believe in goblins, yet likes the shivery effects of goblin stories."

"I don't believe in goblins, either," said Arkwright.

"You don't believe in anything else," said Josh.

Arkwright steered him through the throng, and up to the hostess--Mrs.
Burke, stout, honest, with sympathy in her eyes and humor in the lines
round her sweet mouth. "Well, Josh," she said in a slow, pleasant
monotone, "you HAVE done a lot of growing since I saw you. I always knew
you'd come to some bad end. And here you are--in politics and in
society. Gus!"

A tall, haughty-looking young woman, standing next her, turned and fixed
upon Craig a pair of deep, deep eyes that somehow flustered him. Mrs.
Burke presented him, and he discovered that it was her daughter-in-law.
While she was talking with Arkwright, he examined her toilette. He
thought it startling--audacious in its display of shoulders and
back--until he got over his dazed, dazzled feeling, and noted the other
women about. Wild horses could not have dragged it from him, but he felt
that this physical display was extremely immodest; and at the same time
that he eagerly looked his face burned. "If I do pick one of these,"
said he to himself, "I'm jiggered if I let her appear in public dressed
this way. Why, out home women have been white-capped for less."

Arkwright had drifted away from him; he let the crowd gently push him
toward the wall, into the shelter of a clump of palms and ferns. There,
with his hands in his pockets, and upon his face what he thought an
excellent imitation of Arkwright's easy, bored expression of
thinly-veiled cynicism, he surveyed the scene and tried to judge it from
the standpoint of the "common people." His verdict was that it was vain,
frivolous, unworthy, beneath the serious consideration of a man of
affairs such as he. But he felt that he was not quite frank, in fact was
dishonest, with himself in this lofty disdain. It represented what he
ought to feel, not what he actually was feeling. "At least," said he to
himself, "I'll never confess to any one that I'm weak enough to be
impressed by this sort of thing. Anyhow, to confess a weakness is to
encourage it ... No wonder society is able to suck in and destroy so
many fellows of my sort! If _I_ am tempted what must it mean to the
ordinary man?" He noted with angry shame that he felt a swelling of
pride because he, of so lowly an origin, born no better than the
machine-like lackeys, had been able to push himself in upon--yes, up
among--these people on terms of equality. And it was, for the moment, in
vain that he reminded himself that most of them were of full as lowly
origin as he; that few indeed could claim to be more than one generation
removed from jack-boots and jeans; that the most elegant had more
relations among the "vulgar herd" than they had among the "high folks."

"What are you looking so glum and sour about?" asked Arkwright.

He startled guiltily. So, his mean and vulgar thoughts had been
reflected in his face. "I was thinking of the case I have to try before
the Supreme Court next week," said he.

"Well, I'll introduce you to one of the Justices--old Towler. He comes
of the 'common people,' like you. But he dearly loves fashionable
society--makes himself ridiculous going to balls and trying to flirt.
It'll do you no end of good to meet these people socially. You'll be
surprised to see how respectful and eager they'll all be if you become a
recognized social favorite. For real snobbishness give me your friends,
the common people, when they get up where they can afford to put on
airs. Why, even the President has a sneaking hankering after fashionable
people. I tell you, in Washington EVERYTHING goes by social favor, just
as it does in London--and would in Paris if fashionable society would
deign to notice the Republic."

"Introduce me to old Towler," said Craig, curt and bitter. He was
beginning to feel that Arkwright was at least in part right; and it
angered him for the sake of the people from whom he had sprung, and to
whom he had pledged his public career. "Then," he went on, "I'm going
home. And you'll see me among these butterflies and hoptoads no more."

"Can't trust yourself, eh?" suggested Arkwright.

Craig flashed exaggerated scorn that was confession.

"I'll do better than introduce you to Towler," proceeded Arkwright.
"I'll present you to his daughter--a dyed and padded old horror, but
very influential with her father and all the older crowd. Sit up to her,
Josh. You can lay the flattery on as thick as her paint and as high as
her topknot of false hair. If she takes to you your fortune's made."

"I tell you, my fortune is not dependent on--" began Craig vehemently.

"Cut it out, old man," interrupted Arkwright. "No stump speeches here.
They don't go. They bore people and create an impression that you're
both ridiculous and hypocritical."

Arkwright left Josh with Towler's daughter, Mrs. Raymond, who was by no
means the horror Arkwright's language of fashionable exaggeration had
pictured, and who endured Craig's sophomoric eulogies of "your great and
revered father," because the eulogist was young and handsome, and
obviously anxious to please her. As Arkwright passed along the edge of
the dancers a fan reached out and touched him on the arm. He halted,
faced the double line of women, mostly elderly, seated on the
palm-roofed dais extending the length of that end of the ballroom.

"Hel-LO!" called he. "Just the person I was looking for. How is Margaret
this evening?"

"As you see," replied the girl, unfurling the long fan of eagle plumes
with which she had tapped him. "Sit down.... Jackie"--this to a rosy,
eager-faced youth beside her--"run away and amuse yourself. I want to
talk seriously to this elderly person."

"I'm only seven years older than you," said Arkwright, as he seated
himself where Jackie had been vainly endeavoring to induce Miss
Severence to take him seriously.

"And I am twenty-eight, and have to admit to twenty-four," said
Margaret.

"Don't frown that way. It makes wrinkles; and what's more unsightly than
a wrinkled brow in a woman?"

"I don't in the least care," replied the girl. "I've made up my mind to
stop fooling and marry."

"Jackie?"

"If I can't do better." She laughed a low, sweet laugh, like her voice;
and her voice suggested a leisurely brook flitting among mossy stones.
"You see, I've lost that first bloom of youth the wife-pickers prize so
highly. I'm not unsophisticated enough to please them. And I haven't
money enough to make them overlook such defects as maturity and
intelligence--in fact, I've no money at all."

"You were never so good-looking in your life," said Grant. "I recall you
were rather homely as a child and merely nice and fresh-looking when you
came out. You're one of those that improve with time."

"Thanks," said the girl dryly. She was in no mood for the barren blossom
of non-marrying men's compliments.

"The trouble with you is the same as with me," pursued he. "We've both
spent our time with the young married set, where marriage is regarded as
a rather stupid joke. You ought to have stuck to the market-place until
your business was settled."

She nodded a thoughtful assent. "Yes, that was my sad mistake," said
she. "However, I'm going to do my best to repair it."

He reflected. "You must marry money," he declared, as if it were a
verdict.

"Either some one who's got it or some one who can get it."

"Some one who's got it, I'd advise."

"Bad advice," commented the girl, her hazel eyes gazing dreamily,
languorously into the distance. She looked a woman on romance bent, a
woman without a mercenary thought in her head. "Very bad advice," she
went on. "Men who've got money may lose it and be unable to make any
more. What a helpless thing YOU'D be but for what you have inherited and
will inherit. Yet you're above the average of our sort."

"Humph!" said Arkwright, with an irritated laugh. Humor at his expense
was a severe strain upon him. It always is to those whose sense of humor
is keen; for they best appreciate the sting that lies in the pleasantest
jest.

"It would be wiser--if one dared be wise," pursued the girl, "to marry a
man who could get money. That kind of man is safest. Only death or
insanity can make him a disappointment."

Arkwright eyed her curiously. "What a good head you've got on you,
Rita," said he. "Like your grandmother."

The girl shivered slightly. "Don't SPEAK of her!" she exclaimed with an
uneasy glance around. And Grant knew he was correct in his suspicion as
to who was goading and lashing her to hasten into matrimony.

"Well--have you selected your--"

As Arkwright hesitated she supplied, "Victim." They laughed, she less
enthusiastically than he. "Though," she added, "I assure you, I'll make
him happy. It takes intelligence to make a man happy, even if he wants
the most unintelligent kind of happiness. And you've just admitted I'm
not stupid."

Arkwright was studying her. He had a sly instinct that there was a
reason deeper than their old and intimate friendship for her reposing
this extreme of confidence in him. No doubt she was not without a vague
hope that possibly this talk might set him to thinking of her as a wife
for himself. Well, why not? He ought to marry, and he could afford it.
Where would he find a more ladylike person--or where one who was at the
same time so attractive? He studied, with a certain personal interest,
her delicate face, her figure, slim and gracefully curved, as her
evening dress fully revealed it. Yes, a charming, most ladylike figure.
And the skin of her face, of neck and shoulders, was beautifully white,
and of the texture suggesting that it will rub if too impetuously
caressed. Yes, a man would hesitate to kiss her unless he were well
shaved. At the very thought of kissing her Grant felt a thrill and a
glow she had never before roused in him. She had an abundance of
blue-black hair, and it and her slender black brows and long lashes gave
her hazel eyes a peculiar charm of mingled passion and languor. She had
a thin nose, well shaped, its nostrils very sensitive; slightly,
charmingly-puckered lips; a small, strong chin. Certainly she had
improved greatly in the two years since he had seen her in evening
dress. "Though, perhaps," reflected he, "I only think so because I used
to see her too much, really to appreciate her."

"Well, why didn't you?" she was saying, idly waving her fan and gazing
vaguely around the room.

"Why didn't I--what?"

"You were trying to decide why you never fell in love with me."

"So I was," admitted Arkwright.

"Now if I had had lots of cash," mocked she.

He reddened, winced. She had hit the exact reason. Having a great deal
of money, he wanted more--enough to make the grandest kind of splurge in
a puddle where splurge was everything. "Rather, because you are too
intelligent," drawled he. "I want somebody who'd fit into my melting
moods, not a woman who'd make me ashamed by seeming to sit in judgment
on my folly."

"A man mustn't have too much respect for a woman if he's to fall utterly
in love with her--must he?"

Arkwright smiled constrainedly. He liked cynical candor in men, but only
pretended to like it in women because bald frankness in women was now
the fashion. "See," said he, "how ridiculous I'd feel trying to say
sentimental things to you. Besides, it's not easy to fall in love with a
girl one has known since she was born, and with whom he's always been on
terms of brotherly, quite unsentimental intimacy."

Rita gave him a look that put this suggestion out of countenance by
setting him to thrilling again. He felt that her look was artful, was
deliberate, but he could not help responding to it. He began to be a
little afraid of her, a little nervous about her; but he managed to say
indifferently, "And why haven't YOU fallen in love with ME?"

She smiled. "It isn't proper for a well-brought-up girl to love until
she is loved, is it?" Her expression gave Grant a faint suggestion of a
chill of apprehension lest she should be about to take advantage of
their friendship by making a dead set for him. But she speedily
tranquilized him by saying: "No, my reason was that I didn't want to
spoil my one friendship. Even a business person craves the luxury of a
friend--and marrying has been my business," this with a slight curl of
her pretty, somewhat cruel mouth. "To be quite frank, I gave you up as a
possibility years ago. I saw I wasn't your style. Your tastes in women
are rather--coarse."

Arkwright flushed. "I do like 'em a bit noisy and silly," he admitted.
"That sort is so--so GEMUTHLICH, as the Germans say."

"Who's the man you delivered over to old Patsy Raymond? I see he's still
fast to her."

"Handsome, isn't he?"

"Of a sort."

"It's Craig--the Honorable Joshua Craig--Assistant TO the
Attorney-General. He's from Minnesota. He's the real thing. But you'd
not like him."

"He looks quite--tame, compared to what he was two years or so ago,"
said Rita, her voice as indolent as her slowly-moving eagle feathers.

"Oh, you've met him?"

"No--only saw him. When I went West with the Burkes, Gus and the husband
took me to a political meeting--one of those silly, stuffy gatherings
where some blatant politician bellows out a lot of lies, and a crowd of
badly-dressed people listen and swallow and yelp. Your friend was one of
the speakers. What he said sounded--" Rita paused for a word.

"Sounded true," suggested Grant.

"Not at all. Nobody really cares anything about the people, not even
themselves. No, it sounded as if he had at least half-convinced himself,
while the others showed they were lying outright. We rather liked
him--at the safe distance of half the hall. He's the kind of man that
suggests--menageries--lions--danger if the bars break."

"How women do like that in a man!"

"Do you know him?"

"Through and through. He's a fraud, of course, like all politicians. But
beneath the fraud there's a man--I think--a great, big man, strong and
sure of himself--which is what can't be said of many of us who wear
trousers and pose as lords of creation."

The girl seemed to have ceased to listen, was apparently watching the
dancers, Arkwright continued to gaze at his friend, to admire the
impressive, if obviously posed, effect of his handsome head and
shoulders. He smiled with a tender expression, as one smiles at the
weakness of those one loves. Suddenly he said: "By Jove, Rita--just the
thing!"

"What?" asked the girl, resuming the languid waving of her eagle fan.

"Marry him--marry Josh Craig. He'll not make much money out of politics.
I doubt if even a woman could corrupt him that far. But you could take
him out of politics and put him in the law. He could roll it up there.
The good lawyers sell themselves dear nowadays, and he'd make a
killing."

"This sounds interesting."

"It's a wonder I hadn't thought of it before."

The girl gave a curious, quiet smile. "I had," said she.

"YOU had!" exclaimed Arkwright.

"A woman always keeps a careful list of eligibles," explained she. "As
Lucy Burke told me he was headed for Washington, I put him on my list
that very night--well down toward the bottom, but, still, on it. I had
quite forgotten him until to-night."

Arkwright was staring at her. Her perfect frankness, absolute
naturalness with him, unreserved trust of him, gave him a guilty feeling
for the bitter judgment on her character which he had secretly formed as
the result of her confidences. "Yet, really," thought he, "she's quite
the nicest girl I know, and the cleverest. If she had hid herself from
me, as the rest do, I'd never for one instant have suspected her of
having so much--so much--calm, good sense--for that's all it amounts
to." He decided it was a mistake for any human being in any
circumstances to be absolutely natural and unconcealingly candid. "We're
such shallow fakers," reflected he, "that if any one confesses to us
things not a tenth part as bad as what we privately think and do, why,
we set him--or her--especially her--down as a living, breathing atrocity
in pants or petticoats."

Margaret was of the women who seem never to think of what they are
really absorbed in, and never to look at what they are really
scrutinizing. She disconcerted him by interrupting his reflections with:
"Your private opinion of me is of small consequence to me, Grant, beside
the relief and the joy of being able to say my secret self aloud.
Also"--here she grew dizzy at her own audacity in the frankness that
fools--"Also, if I wished to get you, Grant, or any man, I'd not be
silly enough to fancy my character or lack of it would affect him. That
isn't what wins men--is it?"

"You and Josh Craig have a most uncomfortable way of answering people's
thoughts," said Arkwright. "Now, how did you guess I was thinking mean
things about you?"

"For the same reason that Mr. Craig is able to guess what's going on in
your head."

"And that reason is--"

She laughed mockingly. "Because I know you, Grant Arkwright--you, the
meanest-generous man, and the most generous-mean man the Lord ever
permitted. The way to make you generous is to give you a mean impulse;
the way to make you mean is to set you to fearing you're in danger of
being generous."

"There's a bouquet with an asp coiled in it," said Arkwright, pleased;
for with truly human vanity he had accepted the compliment and had
thrown away the criticism. "I'll go bring Josh Craig."

"No, not to-night," said Miss Severence, with a sudden compression of
the lips and a stern, almost stormy contraction of the brows.

"Please don't do that, Rita," cried Arkwright. "It reminds me of your
grandmother."

The girl's face cleared instantly, and all overt signs of strength of
character vanished in her usual expression of sweet, reserved
femininity. "Bring him to-morrow," said she. "A little late, please. I
want others to be there, so that I can study him unobserved." She
laughed. "This is a serious matter for me. My time is short, and my list
of possible eligibles less extended than I could wish." And with a
satiric smile and a long, languorous, coquettish glance, she waved him
away and waved the waiting Jackie into his place.

Arkwright found Craig clear of "Patsy" Raymond and against the wall near
the door. He was obviously unconscious of himself, of the possibility
that he might be observed. His eyes were pouncing from blaze of jewels
to white neck, to laughing, sensuous face, to jewels again or to lithe,
young form, scantily clad and swaying in masculine arm in rhythm with
the waltz. It gave Arkwright a qualm of something very like terror to
note the contrast between his passive figure and his roving eyes with
their wolfish gleam--like Blucher, when he looked out over London and
said: "God! What a city to sack!"

Arkwright thought Josh was too absorbed to be aware of his approach; but
as soon as he was beside him Josh said: "You were right about that
apartment of mine. It's a squalid hole. Six months ago, when I got my
seventy-five hundred a year, I thought I was rich. Rich? Why, that woman
there has ten years' salary on her hair. All the money I and my whole
family ever saw wouldn't pay for the rings on any one of a hundred hands
here. It makes me mad and it makes me greedy."

"'I warned you," said Arkwright.

Craig wheeled on him. "You don't--can't--understand. You're like all
these people. Money is your god. But I don't want money, I want
power--to make all these snobs with their wealth, these millionaires,
these women with fine skins and beautiful bodies, bow down before
me--that's what I want!"

Arkwright laughed. "Well, it's up to you, Joshua."

Craig tossed his Viking head. "Yes, it's up to me, and I'll get what I
want--the people and I.... Who's THAT frightful person?"

Into the room, only a few feet from them, advanced an old woman--very
old, but straight as a projectile. She carried her head high, and her
masses of gray-white hair, coiled like a crown, gave her the seeming of
royalty in full panoply. There was white lace over her black velvet at
the shoulders; her train swept yards behind her. She was bearing a cane,
or rather a staff, of ebony; but it suggested, not decrepitude, but
power--perhaps even a weapon that might be used to enforce authority
should occasion demand. In her face, in her eyes, however, there was
that which forbade the supposition of any revolt being never so remotely
possible.

As she advanced across the ballroom, dancing ceased before her and
around her, and but for the noise of the orchestra there would have been
an awed and painful silence. Mrs. Burke's haughty daughter-in-law, with
an expression of eager desire to conciliate and to please, hastened
forward and conducted the old lady to a gilt armchair in the center of
the dais, across the end of the ballroom. It was several minutes before
the gayety was resumed, and then it seemed to have lost the abandon
which the freely-flowing champagne had put into it.

"WHO is that frightful person?" repeated Craig. He was scowling like a
king angered and insulted by the advent of an eclipsing rival.

"Grandma,"' replied Arkwright, his flippancy carefully keyed low.

"I've never seen a more dreadful person!" exclaimed Craig angrily. "And
a woman, too! She's the exact reverse of everything a woman should
be--no sweetness, no gentleness. I can't believe she ever brought a
child into the world."

"She probably doubts it herself," said Arkwright.

"Why does everybody cringe before her?"

"That's what everybody asks. She hasn't any huge wealth--or birth,
either, for that matter. It's just the custom. We defer to her here
precisely as we wear claw-hammer coats and low-neck dresses. Nobody
thinks of changing the custom."

Josh's lip curled. "Introduce me to her," he said commandingly.

Arkwright looked amused and alarmed. "Not to-night. All in good time.
She's the grandmother of a young woman I want you to meet. She's Madam
Bowker, and the girl's name is Severence."

"I want to meet that old woman," persisted Josh. Never before had he
seen a human being who gave him a sense of doubt as to the superiority
of his own will.

"Don't be in too big a hurry for Waterloo," jested Arkwright. "It's
coming toward you fast enough. That old lady will put you in your place.
After ten minutes of her, you'll feel like a schoolboy who has 'got his'
for sassing the teacher."

"I want to meet her," repeated Craig. And he watched her every movement;
watched the men and women bowing deferentially about her chair; watched
her truly royal dignity, as she was graciously pleased to relax now and
then.

"Every society has its mumbo-jumbo to keep it in order," said Arkwright.
"She's ours.... I'm dead tired. You've done enough for one night. It's a
bad idea to stay too long; it creates an impression of frivolity. Come
along!"

Craig went, reluctantly, with several halts and backward glances at the
old lady of the ebon staff.




CHAPTER III

A DESPERATE YOUNG WOMAN


The house where the Severances lived, and had lived for half a century,
was built by Lucius Quintus Severence, Alabama planter, suddenly and,
for the antebellum days, notably rich through a cotton speculation. When
he built, Washington had no distinctly fashionable quarter; the
neighborhood was then as now small, cheap wooden structures where dwelt
in genteel discomfort the families of junior Department clerks. Lucius
Quintus chose the site partly for the view, partly because spacious
grounds could be had at a nominal figure, chiefly because part of his
conception of aristocracy was to dwell in grandeur among the humble. The
Severence place, enclosed by a high English-like wall of masonry, filled
the whole huge square. On each of its four sides it put in sheepish and
chop-fallen countenance a row of boarding houses. In any other city the
neighborhood would have been intolerable because of the noise of the
rowdy children. But in Washington the boarding house class cannot afford
children; so, few indeed were the small forms that paused before the big
iron Severence gates to gaze into the mysterious maze of green as far as
might be--which was not far, because the walk and the branching drives
turn abruptly soon after leaving the gates.

From earliest spring until almost Christmas that mass of green was sweet
with perfume and with the songs of appreciative colonies of bright
birds. In the midst of the grounds, and ingeniously shut in on all sides
from any view that could spoil the illusion of a forest, stood the
house, Colonial, creeper-clad, brightened in all its verandas and lawns
by gay flowers, pink and white predominating. The rooms were large and
lofty of ceiling, and not too uncomfortable in winter, as the family was
accustomed to temperatures below the average American indoors. In spring
and summer and autumn the rooms were delightful, with their
old-fashioned solid furniture, their subdued colors and tints, their
elaborate arrangements for regulating the inpour of light. All this
suggested wealth. But the Severances were not rich. They had about the
same amount of money that old Lucius Quintus had left; but, just as the
neighborhood seemed to have degenerated when in fact it had remained all
but unchanged, so the Severence fortune seemed to have declined,
altogether through changes of standard elsewhere. The Severances were no
poorer; simply, other people of their class had grown richer, enormously
richer. The Severence homestead, taken by itself and apart from its
accidental setting of luxurious grounds, was a third-rate American
dwelling-house, fine for a small town, but plain for a city. And the
Severence fortune by contrast with the fortunes so lavishly displayed in
the fashionable quarter of the capital, was a meager affair, just enough
for comfort; it was far too small for the new style of wholesale
entertainment which the plutocracy has introduced from England, where
the lunacy for aimless and extravagant display rages and ravages in its
full horror of witless vulgarity. Thus, the Severences from being
leaders twenty years before, had shrunk into "quiet people," were saved
from downright obscurity and social neglect only by the indomitable will
and tireless energy of old Cornelia Bowker.

Cornelia Bowker was not a Severence; in fact she was by birth
indisputably a nobody. Her maiden name was Lard, and the Lards were
"poor white trash." By one of those queer freaks wherewith nature loves
to make mockery of the struttings of men, she was endowed with ambition
and with the intelligence and will to make it effective. Her first
ambition was education; by performing labors and sacrifices incredible,
she got herself a thorough education. Her next ambition was to be rich;
without the beauty that appeals to the senses, she married herself to a
rich New Englander, Henry Bowker. Her final and fiercest ambition was
social power. She married her daughter to the only son and namesake of
Lucius Quintus Severence. The pretensions of aristocracy would soon
collapse under the feeble hands of born aristocrats were it not for two
things--the passion of the masses of mankind for looking up, and the
frequent infusions into aristocratic veins of vigorous common blood.
Cornelia Bowker, born Lard, adored "birth." In fulfilling her third
ambition she had herself born again. From the moment of the announcement
of her daughter's engagement to Lucius Severence, she ceased to be Lard
or Bowker and became Severence, more of a Severence than any of the
veritable Severences. Soon after her son-in-law and his father died, she
became so much THE Severence that fashionable people forgot her origin,
regarded her as the true embodiment of the pride and rank of
Severence--and Severence became, thanks wholly to her, a synonym for
pride and rank, though really the Severences were not especially
blue-blooded.

She did not live with her widowed daughter, as two establishments were
more impressive; also, she knew that she was not a livable person--and
thought none the worse of herself for that characteristic of strong
personalities. In the Severence family, at the homestead, there were,
besides five servants, but three persons--the widowed Roxana and her two
daughters, Margaret and Lucia--Lucia so named by Madam Bowker because
with her birth ended the Severence hopes of a son to perpetuate in the
direct line the family Christian name for its chief heir. From the side
entrance to the house extended an alley of trees, with white flowering
bushes from trunk to trunk like a hedge. At one end of the alley was a
pretty, arched veranda of the house, with steps descending; at the other
end, a graceful fountain in a circle, round which extended a stone
bench. Here Margaret was in the habit of walking every good day, and
even in rainy weather, immediately after lunch; and here, on the day
after the Burke dance, at the usual time, she was walking, as usual--up
and down, up and down, a slow even stride, her arms folded upon her
chest, the muscles of her mouth moving as she chewed a wooden tooth-pick
toward a pulp. As she walked, her eyes held steady like a soldier's, as
if upon the small of the back of an invisible walker in front of her.
Lucia, stout, rosy, lazy, sprawling upon the bench, her eyes opening and
closing drowsily, watched her sister like a sleepy, comfortable cat. The
sunbeams, filtering through the leafy arch, coquetted with Margaret's
raven hair, and alternately brightened and shadowed her features. There
was little of feminine softness in those unguarded features, much of
intense and apparently far from agreeable thought. It was one of her bad
days, mentally as well as physically--probably mentally because
physically. She had not slept more than two hours at most, and her eyes
and skin showed it.

"However do you stand it, Rita!" said Lucia, as Margaret approached the
fountain for the thirty-seventh time. "It's so dull and tiring, to walk
that way."

"I've got to keep my figure," replied Margaret, dropping her hands to
her slender hips, and lifting her shoulders in a movement that drew down
her corsets and showed the fine length of her waist.

"That's nonsense," said Lucia. "All we Severences get stout as we grow
old. You can't hope to escape."

"Grow old!" Margaret's brow lowered. Then she smiled satirically. "Yes,
I AM growing old. I don't dare think how many seasons out, and not
married, or even engaged. If we were rich, I'd be a young girl still. As
it is, I'm getting on.'"

"Don't you worry about that, Rita," said Lucia. "Don't you let them
hurry you into anything desperate. I'm sure _I_ don't want to come out.
I hate society and I don't care about men. It's much pleasanter lounging
about the house and reading. No dressing--no fussing with clothes and
people you hate."

"It isn't fair to you, Lucy," said Margaret. "I don't mind their
nagging, but I do mind standing in your way. And they'll keep you back
as long as I'm still on the market."

"But I want to be kept back." Lucia spoke almost energetically, half
lifting her form whose efflorescence had a certain charm because it was
the over-luxuriance of healthy youth. "I shan't marry till I find the
right man. I'm a fatalist. I believe there's a man for me somewhere, and
that he'll find me, though I was hid--was hid--even here." And she gazed
romantically round at the enclosing walls of foliage.

The resolute lines, the "unfeminine" expression disappeared from her
sister's face. She laughed softly and tenderly. "What a dear you are!"
she cried.

"You can scoff all you please," retorted Lucia, stoutly. "I believe it.
We'll see if I'm not right.... How lovely you did look last night!... You
wait for your 'right man.' Don't let them hurry you. The most dreadful
things happen as the result of girls' hurrying, and then meeting him
when it's too late."

"Not to women who have the right sort of pride." Margaret drew herself
up, and once more her far-away but decided resemblance to Grandmother
Bowker showed itself. "I'd never be weak enough to fall in love unless I
wished."

"That's not weakness; it's strength," declared Lucia, out of the fulness
of experience gleaned from a hundred novels or more.

Margaret shook her head uncompromisingly. "It'd be weakness for me." She
dropped upon the bench beside her sister. "I'm going to marry, and I'm
going to superintend your future myself. I'm not going to let them kill
all the fine feeling in you, as they've killed it in me."

"Killed it!" said Lucia, reaching out for her sister's hand. "You can't
say it's dead, so long as you cry like you did last night, when you came
home from the ball."

Margaret reddened angrily, snatched her hand away. "Shame on you!" she
cried. "I thought you were above spying."

"The door was open between your bedroom and mine," pleaded Lucia. "I
couldn't help hearing."

"You ought to have called out--or closed it. In this family I can't
claim even my soul as my own!"

"Please, dear," begged Lucia, sitting up now and struggling to put her
arms round her sister, "you don't look on ME as an outsider, do you?
Why, I'm the only one in all the world who knows you as you are--how
sweet and gentle and noble you are. All the rest think you're cold and
cynical, and--"

"So I am," said Margaret reflectively, "except toward only you. I'm
grandmother over again, with what she'd call a rotten spot."

"That rotten spot's the real you," protested Lucia.

Margaret broke away from her and resumed her walk. "You'll see," said
she, her face stern and bitter once more.

A maidservant descended the steps. "Madam Bowker has come," announced
she, "and is asking for you, Miss Rita."

A look that could come only from a devil temper flashed into Margaret's
hazel eyes. "Tell her I'm out."

"She saw you from the window."

Margaret debated. Said Lucia, "When she comes so soon after lunch she's
always in a frightful mood. She comes then to make a row because,
without her after-lunch nap, she's hardly human and can be more--more
fiendish."

"I'll not see her," declared Margaret.

"Oh, yes, you will," said Lucia. "Grandmother always has her way."

Margaret turned to the maid. "Tell her I had just gone to my room with a
raging headache."

The maid departed. Margaret made a detour, entered the house by the
kitchen door and went up to her room. She wrenched off blouse and skirt,
got into a dressing sacque and let down her thick black hair. The
headache was now real, so upsetting to digestion had been the advent of
Madam Bowker, obviously on mischief bent. "She transforms me into a
raging devil," thought Margaret, staring at her fiercely sullen
countenance in the mirror of the dressing table. "I wish I'd gone in to
see her. I'm in just the right humor."

The door opened and Margaret whisked round to blast the intruder who had
dared adventure her privacy without knocking. There stood her
grandmother--ebon staff in gloved hand--erect, spare body in rustling
silk--gray-white hair massed before a sort of turban--steel-blue eyes
flashing, delicate nostrils dilating with the breath of battle.

"Ah--Margaret!" said she, and her sharp, quarrel-seeking voice tortured
the girl's nerves like the point of a lancet. "They tell me you have a
headache." She lifted her lorgnon and scrutinized the pale, angry face
of her granddaughter. "I see they were telling me the truth. You are
haggard and drawn and distressingly yellow."

The old lady dropped her lorgnon, seated herself. She held her staff out
at an angle, as if she were Majesty enthroned to pass judgment of life
and death. "You took too much champagne at those vulgar Burkes last
night," she proceeded. "It's a vicious thing for a girl to do--vicious
in every way. It gives her a reputation, for moral laxity which an
unmarried woman can ill-afford to have--unless she has the wealth that
makes men indifferent to character.... Why don't you answer?"

Margaret shrugged her shoulders. "You know I detest champagne and never
drink it," said she. "And I don't purpose to begin, even to oblige you."

"To oblige me!"

"To give you pretext for contention and nagging and quarreling."

Madam Bowker was now in the element she had been seeking--the stormy sea
of domestic wrangling. She struck out boldly, with angry joy. "I've long
since learned not to expect gratitude from you. I can't understand my
own weakness, my folly, in continuing to labor with you."

"That's very simple," said Margaret. "I'm the one human being you can't
compel by hook or crook to bow to your will. You regard me as unfinished
business."

Madam Bowker smiled grimly at this shrewd analysis. "I want to see you
married and properly settled in life. I want to end this disgrace. I
want to save you from becoming ridiculous and contemptible--an object of
laughter and of pity."

"You want to see me married to some man I dislike and should soon hate."

"I want to see you married," retorted the old lady. "I can't be held
responsible for your electing to hate whatever is good for you. And I
came to tell you that my patience is about exhausted. If you are not
engaged by the end of this season, I wash my hands of you. I have been
spending a great deal of money in the effort to establish you. You are a
miserable failure socially. You attach only worthless men. You drive
away the serious men."

"Stupid, you mean."

"I mean serious--the men looking for wives. Men who have something and
have a right to aspire to the hand of MY grandchild. The only men who
have a right to take the time of an unmarried woman. You either cannot,
or will not, exert yourself to please. You avoid young girls and young
men. You waste your life with people already settled. You have taken on
the full airs and speech of a married woman, in advance of having a
husband--and that is folly bordering on insanity. You have discarded
everything that men--marrying men--the right sort of men--demand in
maidenhood. I repeat, you are a miserable failure."

"A miserable failure," echoed Margaret, staring dismally into the glass.

"And I repeat," continued the old lady, somewhat less harshly, though
not less resolutely, "this season ends it. You must marry or I'll stop
your allowance. You'll have to look to your mother for your dresses and
hats and gee-gaws. When I think of the thousands of dollars I've wasted
on you--It's cheating--it's cheating! You have been stealing from me!"
Madam Bowker's tone was almost unladylike; her ebon staff was
flourishing threateningly.

Margaret started up. "I warned you at the outset!" she cried. "I took
nothing from you that you didn't force on me. And now, when you've made
dress, and all that, a necessity for me, you are going to snatch it
away!"

"Giving you money for dress is wasting it," cried the old lady. "What is
dress for? Pray why, do you imagine, have I provided you with three and
four dozen expensive dresses a year and hats and lingerie and everything
in proportion? Just to gratify your vanity? No, indeed! To enable you to
get a husband, one able to provide for you as befits your station. And
because I have been generous with you, because I have spared no expense
in keeping you up to your station, in giving you opportunity, you turn
on me and revile me!"

"You HAVE been generous, Grandmother," said Margaret, humbly. There had
risen up before her a hundred extravagances in which the old lady had
indulged her--things quite unnecessary for show, the intimate luxuries
that contribute only indirectly to show by aiding in giving the feeling
and air of refinement. It was of these luxuries that Margaret was
especially fond; and her grandmother, with an instinct that those tastes
of Margaret's proved her indeed a lady--and made it impossible that she
should marry, or even think of marrying, "foolishly"--had been most
graciously generous in gratifying them. Now, these luxuries were to be
withdrawn, these pampered tastes were to be starved. Margaret collapsed
despairingly upon her table. "I wish to marry, Heaven knows!
Only--only--" She raised herself; her lip quivered--"Good God,
Grandmother, I CAN'T give myself to a man who repels me! You make me
hate men--marriage--everything of that kind. Sometimes I long to hide in
a convent!"

"You can indulge that longing after the end of this season," said her
grandmother. "You'll certainly hardly dare show yourself in Washington,
where you have become noted for your dress.... That's what exasperates
me against you! No girl appreciates refinement and luxury more than you
do. No woman has better taste, could use a large income to better
advantage. And you have intelligence. You know you must have a competent
husband. Yet you fritter away your opportunities. A very short time, and
you'll be a worn, faded old maid, and the settled people who profess to
be so fond of you will be laughing at you, and deriding you, and pitying
you."

Deriding! Pitying!

"I've no patience with the women of that clique you're so fond of," the
old lady went on. "If the ideas they profess--the shallow frauds that
they are!--were to prevail, what would become of women of our station?
Women should hold themselves dear, should encourage men in that old-time
reverence for the sex and its right to be sheltered and worshiped and
showered with luxury. As for you--a poor girl--countenancing such low
and ruinous views--Is it strange I am disgusted with you? Have you no
pride--no self-respect?"

Margaret sat motionless, gazing into vacancy. She could not but endorse
every word her grandmother was saying. She had heard practically those
same words often, but they had had no effect; now, toward the end of
this her least successful season, with most of her acquaintances married
off, and enjoying and flaunting the luxury she might have had--for, they
had married men, of "the right sort"--"capable husbands"--men who had
been more or less attentive to her--now, these grim and terrible axioms
of worldly wisdom, of upper class honor, from her grandmother sounded in
her ears like the boom of surf on reefs in the ears of the sailor.

A long miserable silence; then, her grandmother: "What do you purpose to
do, Margaret?"

"To hustle," said the girl with a short, bitter laugh. "I must rope in
somebody. Oh, I've been realizing, these past two months. I'm awake at
last."

Madam Bowker studied the girl's face, gave a sigh of relief. "I feel
greatly eased," said she. "I see you are coming to your senses before
it's too late. I knew you would. You have inherited too much of my
nature, of my brain and my character."

Margaret faced the old woman in sudden anger. "If you had made
allowances for that, if you had reasoned with me quietly, instead of
nagging and bullying and trying to compel, all this might have been
settled long ago." She shrugged her shoulders. "But that's past and
done. I'm going to do my best. Only--I warn you, don't try to drive me!
I'll not be driven!"

"What do you think of Grant Arkwright?" asked her grandmother.

"I intend to marry him," replied Margaret.

The old lady's stern eyes gleamed delight.

"But," Margaret hastened to add, "you mustn't interfere. He doesn't like
you. He's afraid of you. If you give the slightest sign, he'll sheer
off. You must let me handle him."

"The insolent puppy," muttered Madam Bowker. "I've always detested him."

"You don't want me to marry him?"

"On the contrary," the old lady replied. "He would make the best
possible husband for you." She smiled like a grand inquisitor at
prospect of a pleasant day with rack and screw. "He needs a firm hand,"
said she.

Margaret burst out laughing at this implied compliment to herself; then
she colored as with shame and turned away. "What frauds we women are!"
she exclaimed. "If I had any sense of decency left, I'd be ashamed to do
it!"

"There you go again!" cried her grandmother. "You can't be practical
five minutes in succession. Why should a woman be ashamed to do a man a
service in spite of himself? Men are fools where women are concerned. I
never knew one that was not. And the more sensible they are in other
respects, the bigger fools they are about us! Left to themselves, they
always make a mess of marriage. They think they know what they want, but
they don't. We have to teach them. A man needs a firm hand during
courtship, and a firmer hand after marriage. So many wives forget their
duty and relax. If you don't take hold of that young Arkwright, he'll no
doubt fall a victim to some unscrupulous hussy."

Unscrupulous hussy! Margaret looked at herself in the mirror, met her
own eyes with a cynical laugh. "Well, I'm no worse than the others," she
added, half to herself. Presently she said, "Grant is coming this
afternoon. I look a fright. I must take a headache powder and get some
sleep." Her grandmother rose instantly. "Yes, you do look badly--for
you. And Arkwright has very keen eyes--thanks to those silly women of
your set who teach men things they have no business to know." She
advanced and kissed her granddaughter graciously on top of the head. "I
am glad to see my confidence in you was not misplaced, Margaret," said
she. "I could not believe I was so utterly mistaken in judgment of
character. I'll go to your mother and take her for a drive."




CHAPTER IV

"HE ISN'T LIKE US"


Margaret continued to sit there, her elbows on the dressing-table, her
knuckles pressing into her cheeks, the hazel eyes gazing at their
reflection in the mirror. "What is it in me," she said to her image,
"that makes me less successful at drawing men to the point than so many
girls who are no better looking than I?" And she made an inventory of
her charms that was creditably free from vanity. "And men certainly like
to talk to me," she pursued. "The fish bite, but the hook doesn't hold.
Perhaps--probably--I'm not sentimental enough. I don't simper and
pretend innocence and talk tommy rot--and listen to it as if I were
eating honey."

This explanation was not altogether satisfactory, however. She felt
that, if she had a certain physical something, which she must lack,
nothing else would matter--nothing she said or did. It was baffling;
for, there, before her eyes were precisely the charms of feature and
figure that in other women, in far less degree, had set men, many men,
quite beside themselves. Her lip curled, and her eyes laughed
satirically as she thought of the follies of those men--how they had let
women lead them up and down in public places, drooling and sighing and
seeming to enjoy their own pitiful plight. If that expression of satire
had not disappeared so quickly, she might have got at the secret of her
"miserable failure." For, it was her habit of facing men with only
lightly veiled amusement, or often frank ridicule, in her eyes, in the
curve of her lips, that frightened them off, that gave them the uneasy
sense that their assumptions of superiority to the female were being
judged and derided.

But time was flying. It was after three; the headache was still pounding
in her temples, and her eyes did look almost as haggard and her skin
almost as sallow as her grandmother had said. She took an anti-pyrene
powder from a box in her dressing-table, threw off all her clothes,
swathed herself in a long robe of pale-blue silk. She locked the door
into the hall, and went into her bedroom, closed the door between. She
put the powder in water, drank it, dropped down upon a lounge at the
foot of her bed and covered herself. The satin pillow against her cheek,
the coolness and softness of the silk all along and around her body,
were deliciously soothing. Her blood beat less fiercely, and somber
thoughts drew slowly away into a vague cloud at the horizon of her mind.
Lying there, with senses soothed by luxury and deadened to pain by the
drug, she felt so safe, so shut-in against all intrusion. In a few hours
the struggle, the bitterness would begin again; but at least here was
this interval of repose, of freedom. Only when she was thus alone did
she ever get that most voluptuous of all sensations--freedom. Freedom
and luxury! "I'm afraid I can't eat my cake and have it, too," she mused
drowsily. "Well--whether or not I can have freedom, at least I MUST have
luxury. I'm afraid Grant can't give me nearly all I want--who could?...
If I had the courage--Craig could make more than Grant has, if he were
put to it. I'm sure he could. I'm sure he could do almost anything--but
be attractive to a woman. No, Craig is too strong a dose--besides,
there's the risk. Grant is safest. Better a small loaf than--than no
Paris dresses."

Arkwright, entering Mrs. Severence's drawing-room with Craig at
half-past five, found a dozen people there. Most of them were of that
young married set which Margaret preferred, to the anger and disgust of
her grandmother and against the entreaties of her own common sense. "The
last place in the world to look for a husband," Madam Bowker had said
again and again, to both her daughter and her granddaughter. "Their talk
is all in ridicule of marriage, and of every sacred thing. And if there
are any bachelors, they have come--well, certainly not in search of
honorable wedlock."

The room was noisily gay; but Margaret, at the tea-table in a rather
somber brown dress with a big brown hat, whose great plumes shadowed her
pale, somewhat haggard face, was evidently not in one of her sparkling
moods. The headache powder and the nap had not been successful. She
greeted Arkwright with a slight, absent smile, seemed hardly to note
Craig, as Arkwright presented him.

"Sit down here beside Miss Severence," Grant said.

"Yes, do," acquiesced Margaret; and Joshua thought her cold and haughty,
an aristocrat of the unapproachable type, never natural and never
permitting others to be natural.

"And tell her all about yourself," continued Grant.

"My friend Josh, here," he explained to Margaret, "is one of those
serious, absorbed men who concentrate entirely upon themselves. It isn't
egotism; it's genius."

Craig was ruffled and showed it. He did not like persiflage; it seemed
an assault upon dignity, and in those early days in Washington he was
full of dignity and of determination to create a dignified impression.
He reared haughtily and looked about with arrogant, disdainful eyes.

"Will you have tea?" said Miss Severence, as Arkwright moved away.

"No, thanks," replied Craig. "Tea's for the women and the children."

Miss Severence's expression made him still more uncomfortable. "Well,"
said she, "if you should feel dry as you tell me about yourself, there's
whiskey over on that other table. A cigarette? No? I'm afraid I can't
ask you to have a cigar--"

"And take off my coat, and put my feet up, and be at home!" said Craig.
"I see you think I'm a boor."

"Don't you want people to think you a boor?" inquired she with ironic
seriousness.

He looked at her sharply. "You're laughing at me," he said, calmly.
"Now, wouldn't it be more ladylike for you to try to put me at my ease?
I'm in your house, you know."

Miss Severence flushed. "I beg your pardon," she said. "I did not mean
to offend."

"No," replied Craig. "You simply meant to amuse yourself with me. And
because I don't know what to do with my hands and because my coat fits
badly, you thought I wouldn't realize what you were doing. You are very
narrow--you fashionable people. You don't even know that everybody ought
to be judged on his own ground. To size up a race-horse, you don't take
him into a drawing room. And it wouldn't be quite fair, would it, for me
to judge these drawing-room dolls by what they could do out among real
men and women? You--for instance. How would you show up, if you had to
face life with no husband and no money and five small children, as my
mother did? Well, SHE won out."

Miss Severence was not attracted; but she was interested. She saw beyond
the ill-fitting frock-coat, and the absurd manner, thoroughly ill at
ease, trying to assume easy, nonchalant man-of-the-world airs. "I'd
never have thought of judging you except on your own ground," said she,
"if you hadn't invited the comparison."

"You mean, by getting myself up in these clothes and coming here?"

"Yes."

"You're right, young lady," said Craig, clapping her on the arm, and
waving an energetic forefinger almost in her face. "And as soon as I can
decently get away, I'll go. I told Arkwright I had no business to come
here."

Miss Severance colored, drew her arm away, froze. She detested all forms
of familiarity; physical familiarity she abhorred. "You have known Grant
Arkwright long?" she said, icily.

"NOW, what have I done?" demanded Joshua.

She eyed him with a lady's insolent tranquillity. "Nothing," replied
she. "We are all so glad Grant has come back."

Craig bit his lip and his tawny, weather-beaten skin reddened. He stared
with angry envy at Arkwright, so evidently at ease and at home in the
midst of a group on the other side of the room. In company, practically
all human beings are acutely self-conscious. But self-consciousness is
of two kinds. Arkwright, assured that his manners were correct and
engaging, that his dress was all it should be, or could be, that his
position was secure and admired, had the self-consciousness of
self-complacence. Joshua's consciousness of himself was the extreme of
the other kind--like a rat's in a trap.

"You met Mr. Arkwright out West--out where you live?"

"Yes," said Craig curtly, almost surlily.

"I was out there once," pursued the young woman, feeling that in her own
house she must do her best with the unfortunate young man. "And,
curiously enough, I heard you speak. We all admired you very much."

Craig cheered up instantly; he was on his own ground now. "How long
ago?" he asked.

"Three years; two years last September."

"Oh, I was a mere boy then. You ought to hear me now."

And Joshua launched forth into a description of his oratory, then
related how he had won over juries in several important cases. His arms,
his hands were going, his eyes were glistening, his voice had that rich,
sympathetic tone which characterizes the egotist when the subject is
himself. Miss Severence listened without comment; indeed, he was not
sure that she was listening, so conventional was her expression. But,
though she was careful to keep her face a blank, her mind was busy.
Surely not since the gay women of Barras's court laughed at the
megalomaniac ravings of a noisy, badly dressed, dirty young lieutenant
named Buonaparte, had there been a vanity so candid, so voluble, so
obstreperous. Nor did he talk of himself in a detached way, as if he
were relating the performances and predicting the glory of a human being
who happened to have the same name as himself. No, he thrust upon her in
every sentence that he, he himself and none other, had said and done all
these splendid startling things, would do more, and more splendid. She
listened, astounded; she wondered why she did not burst out laughing in
his very face, why, on the contrary, she seemed to accept to a
surprising extent his own estimate of himself.

"He's a fool," thought she, "one of the most tedious fools I ever met.
But I was right; he's evidently very much of a somebody. However does he
get time to DO anything, when he's so busy admiring himself? How does he
ever contrive to take his mind off himself long enough to think of
anything else?"

Nearly an hour later Arkwright came for him, cut him off in the middle
of an enthusiastic description of how he had enchained and enthralled a
vast audience in the biggest hall in St. Paul. "We must go, this
instant," said Arkwright. "I had no idea it was so late."

"I'll see you soon again, no doubt, Mr. Craig," said Miss Severence,
polite but not cordial, as she extended her hand.

"Yes," replied Craig, holding the hand, and rudely not looking at her
but at Arkwright. "You've interrupted us in a very interesting talk,
Grant."

Grant and Margaret exchanged smiles, Margaret disengaged her hand, and
the two men went. As they were strolling down the drive, Grant said:
"Well, what did you think of her?"

"A nobody--a nothing," was Craig's wholly unexpected response.
"Homely--at least insignificant. Bad color. Dull eyes. Bad manners. A
poor specimen, even of this poor fashionable society of yours. An
empty-head."

"Well--well--WELL!" exclaimed Arkwright in derision. "Yet you and she
seemed to be getting on beautifully together."

"I did all the talking."

"You always do."

"But it was the way she listened. I felt as if I were rehearsing in a
vacant room."

"Humph," grunted Arkwright.

He changed the subject. The situation was one that required thought,
plan. "She's just the girl for Josh," said he to himself. "And he must
take her. Of course, he's not the man for her. She couldn't care for
him, not in a thousand years. What woman with a sense of humor could?
But she's got to marry somebody that can give her what she must have....
It's very important whom a man marries, but it's not at all important
whom a woman marries. The world wasn't made for them, but for US!"

At Vanderman's that night he took Mrs. Tate in to dinner, but Margaret
was on his left. "When does your Craig make his speech before the
Supreme Court?" asked she.

He inspected her with some surprise. "Tuesday, I think. Why?"

"I promised him I'd go."

"And will you?"

"Certainly. Why not?"

This would never do. Josh would get the impression she was running after
him, and would be more contemptuous than ever. "I shouldn't, if I were
you."

"Why not?"

"Well, he's very vain, as you perhaps discovered. He might
misunderstand."

"And why should that disturb me?" asked she, tranquilly. "I do as I
please. I don't concern myself about what others think. Your friend
interests me. I've a curiosity to see whether he has improved in the
last two or three years as much as he says he has."

"He told you all about himself?"

"Everything--and nothing."

"That's just it!" exclaimed Arkwright, misunderstanding her. "After he
has talked me into a state of collapse, every word about himself and his
career, I think it all over, and wonder whether there's anything to the
man or not. Sometimes I think there's a real person beneath that flow of
vanity. Then, again, I think not."

"Whether he's an accident or a plan," mused the young woman; but she saw
that Arkwright did not appreciate the cleverness and the penetration of
her remark. Indeed, she knew in advance that he would not, for she knew
his limitations. "Now," thought she, "Craig would have appreciated
it--and clapped me on the arm--or knee."

"Did you like Josh?" Grant was inquiring.

"Very much, indeed."

"Of course," said Arkwright satirically.

"He has ability to do things. He has strength.... He isn't like us."

Arkwright winced. "I'm afraid you exaggerate him, merely because he's
different."

"He makes me feel an added contempt for myself, somehow. Doesn't he
you?"

"I can't say he does," replied Arkwright, irritated. "I appreciate his
good qualities, but I can't help being offended and disturbed for him by
his crudities. He has an idea that to be polite and well-dressed is to
be weak and worthless. And I can't get it out of his head."

Margaret's smile irritated him still further. "All great men are more or
less rude and crude, aren't they?" said she. "They are impatient of the
trifles we lay so much stress on."

"So, you think Josh is a great man?"

"I don't know," replied Margaret, with exasperating deliberateness. "I
want to find out."

"And if you decide that he is, you'll marry him?"

"Perhaps. You suggested it the other day."

"In jest," said Arkwright, unaccountably angry with her, with himself,
with Joshua. "As soon as I saw him in your presence, I knew it wouldn't
do. It'd be giving a piece of rare, delicate porcelain to a grizzly as a
plaything."

He was surprised at himself. Now that he was face to face with a
possibility of her adopting his own proposition, he disliked it
intensely. He looked at her; never had she seemed so alluring, so
representative of what he called distinction. At the very idea of such
refinement at the mercy of the coarse and boisterous Craig, his blood
boiled. "Josh is a fine, splendid chap, as a man among men," said he to
himself. "But to marry this dainty aristocrat to him--it'd be a damned
disgraceful outrage. He's not fit to marry among OUR women.... What a
pity such a stunning girl shouldn't have the accessories to make her
eligible." And he hastily turned his longing eyes away, lest she should
see and attach too much importance to a mere longing--for, he felt it
would be a pitiful weakness, a betrayal of opportunity, for him to
marry, in a mood of passion that passes, a woman who was merely well
born, when he had the right to demand both birth and wealth in his wife.

"I've often thought," pursued Margaret, "that to be loved by a man of
the Craig sort would be--interesting."

"While being loved by one of your own sort would be dull?" suggested
Arkwright with a strained smile.

Margaret shrugged her bare white shoulders in an inflammatory assent.
"Will you go with me to the Supreme Court on Tuesday?"

"Delighted," said Arkwright. And he did not realize that the deep-hidden
source of his enthusiasm was a belief that Josh Craig would make an ass
of himself.




CHAPTER V

ALMOST HOOKED


In human affairs, great and small, there are always many reasons for
every action; then, snugly tucked away underneath all these reasons that
might be and ought to be and pretend to be but aren't, hides the real
reason, the real moving cause of action. By tacit agreement among human
beings there is an unwritten law against the exposing of this real
reason, whose naked and ugly face would put in sorry countenance
professions of patriotism or philanthropy or altruism or virtue of
whatever kind. Stillwater, the Attorney-General and Craig's chief, had a
dozen reasons for letting him appear alone for the Administration--that
is, for the people--in that important case. Each of these
reasons--except one--shed a pure, white light upon Stillwater's public
spirit and private generosity. That one was the reason supposed by Mrs.
Stillwater to be real. "Since you don't seem able to get rid of Josh
Craig, Pa," said she, in the seclusion of the marital couch, "we might
as well marry him to Jessie"--Jessie being their homeliest daughter.

"Very well," said "Pa" Stillwater. "I'll give him a chance."

Still, we have not got the real reason for Josh's getting what
Stillwater had publicly called "the opportunity of a lifetime." The
really real reason was that Stillwater wished, and calculated, to kill a
whole flock of birds with one stone.

Whenever the people begin to clamor for justice upon their exploiters,
the politicians, who make themselves valuable to the exploiters by
cozening the people into giving them office, begin by denying that the
people want anything; when the clamor grows so loud that this pretense
is no longer tenable, they hasten to say, "The people are right, and
something must be done. Unfortunately, there is no way of legally doing
anything at present, and we must be patient until a way is discovered."
Way after way is suggested, only to be dismissed as "dangerous" or
"impractical" or "unconstitutional." The years pass; the clamor
persists, becomes imperious. The politicians pass a law that has been
carefully made unconstitutional. This gives the exploiters several years
more of license. Finally, public sentiment compels the right kind of
law; it is passed. Then come the obstacles to enforcement. More years of
delay; louder clamor. A Stillwater is put in charge of the enforcement
of the law; a case is made, a trial is had, and the evidence is so
incomplete or the people's lawyers so poorly matched against the lawyers
of the exploiters that the case fails, and the administration is able to
say, "You see, WE'VE done our best, but the rascals have escaped!" The
case against certain Western railway thieves had reached the stage at
which the only way the exploiters could be protected from justice was by
having a mock trial; and Stillwater had put Craig forward as the
conductor of this furious sham battle, had armed him with a poor gun,
loaded with blanks. "We'll lose the case," calculated Stillwater; "we'll
save our friends, and get rid of Craig, whom everybody will blame--the
damned, bumptious, sophomoric blow-hard!"

What excuse did Stillwater make to himself for himself in this course of
seeming treachery and assassination? For, being a man of the highest
principles, he would not deliberately plan an assassination as an
assassination. Why, his excuse was that the popular clamor against the
men "who had built up the Western country" was wicked, that he was
serving his country in denying the mob "the blood of our best citizens,"
that Josh Craig was a demagogue who richly deserved to be hoist by his
own petar. He laughed with patriotic glee as he thought how "Josh, the
joke" would make a fool of himself with silly, sophomoric arguments,
would with his rude tactlessness get upon the nerves of the finicky old
Justices of the Supreme Court!

As Craig had boasted right and left of the "tear" he was going to make,
and had urged everybody he talked with to come and hear him, the small
courtroom was uncomfortably full, and not a few of the smiling,
whispering spectators confidently expected that they were about to enjoy
that rare, delicious treat--a conceited braggart publicly exposed and
overwhelmed by himself. Among these spectators was Josh's best friend,
Arkwright, seated beside Margaret Severence, and masking his
satisfaction over the impending catastrophe with an expression of
funereal somberness. He could not quite conceal from himself all these
hopes that had such an uncomfortable aspect of ungenerousness. So he
reasoned with himself that they really sprang from a sincere desire for
his friend's ultimate good. "Josh needs to have his comb cut," thought
he. "It's sure to be done, and he can bear it better now than later. The
lesson will teach him a few things he must learn. I only hope he'll be
able to profit by it."

When Josh appeared, Grant and the others with firmly-fixed opinions of
the character of the impending entertainment were not a little
disquieted. Joshua Craig, who stepped into the arena, looked absolutely
different from the Josh they knew. How had he divested himself of that
familiar swaggering, bustling braggadocio? Where had he got this look of
the strong man about to run a race, this handsome face on which sat real
dignity and real power? Never was there a better court manner; the
Justices, who had been anticipating an opportunity to demonstrate, at
his expense, the exceeding dignity of the Supreme Court, could only
admire and approve. As for his speech, it was a straightway argument;
not a superfluous or a sophomoric word, not an attempt at rhetoric. His
argument--There is the logic that is potent but answerable; there is the
logic that is unanswerable, that gives no opportunity to any sane mind,
however prejudiced by association with dispensers of luxurious
hospitality, of vintage wines and dollar cigars, however enamored of
fog-fighting and hair-splitting, to refuse the unqualified assent of
conviction absolute. That was the kind of argument Josh Craig made. And
the faces of the opposing lawyers, the questions the Justices asked him
plainly showed that he had won.

After the first ten minutes, when the idea that Craig could be or ever
had been laughable became itself absurd, Arkwright glanced uneasily,
jealously at Margaret. The face beneath the brim of her beautiful white
and pale pink hat was cold, conventional, was the face of a mere
listener. Grant, reassured, resumed his absorbed attention, was soon
completely swept away by his friend's exhibition of power, could hardly
wait until he and Margaret were out of the courtroom before exploding in
enthusiasm. "Isn't he a wonder?" he cried. "Why, I shouldn't have
believed it possible for a man of his age to make such a speech. He's a
great lawyer as well as a great orator. It was a dull subject, yet I was
fascinated. Weren't you?"

"It was interesting--at times," said Margaret.

"At times! Oh, you women!"

At this scorn Margaret eyed his elegant attire, his face with its
expression of an intelligence concentrated upon the petty and the
paltry. Her eyes suggested a secret amusement so genuine that she could
not venture to reveal it in a gibe. She merely said: "I confess I was
more interested in him than in what he said."

"Of course! Of course!" said Grant, all unconscious of her derision.
"Women have no interest in serious things and no mind for logic."

She decided that it not only was prudent but also was more enjoyable to
keep to herself her amusement at his airs of masculine superiority. Said
she, her manner ingenuous: "It doesn't strike me as astonishing that a
man should make a sensible speech."

Grant laughed as if she had said something much cleverer than she could
possibly realize. "That's a fact," admitted he. "It was simply supreme
common-sense. What a world for twaddle it is when common-sense makes us
sit up and stare.... But it's none the less true that you're prejudiced
against him."

"Why do you say that?"

"If you appreciated him you'd be as enthusiastic as I." There was in his
tone a faint hint of his unconscious satisfaction in her failure to
appreciate Craig.

"You can go very far astray," said she, "you, with your masculine
logic."

But Grant had guessed aright. Margaret had not listened attentively to
the speech because it interested her less than the man himself. She had
concentrated wholly upon him. Thus, alone of all the audience, she had
seen that Craig was playing a carefully-rehearsed part, and, himself
quite unmoved, was watching and profiting by every hint in the
countenance of his audience, the old Justices. It was an admirable piece
of acting; it was the performance of a genius at the mummer's art. But
the power of the mummer lies in the illusion he creates; if he does not
create illusion, as Craig did not for Margaret, he becomes mere
pantomimist and mouther. She had never given a moment's thought to
public life as a career; she made no allowances for the fact that a
man's public appearances, no matter how sincere he is, must always be
carefully rehearsed if he is to use his powers with unerring effect; she
was simply like a child for the first time at the theater, and, chancing
to get a glimpse behind the scenes, disgusted and angry with the players
because their performance is not spontaneous. If she had stopped to
reason about the matter she would have been less uncompromising. But in
the shock of disillusionment she felt only that the man was working upon
his audience like a sleight-of-hand performer; and the longer she
observed, and the stronger his spell over the others, the deeper became
her contempt for the "charlatan." He seemed to her like one telling a
lie--as that one seems, while telling it, to the hearer who is not
deceived. "I've been thinking him rough but genuine," said she to
herself. "He's merely rough." She had forgiven, had disregarded his rude
almost coarse manners, setting them down to indifference, the impatience
of the large with the little, a revolt from the (on the whole
preferable) extreme opposite of the mincing, patterned manners of which
Margaret herself was a-weary. "But he isn't indifferent at all," she now
felt. "He's simply posing. His rudenesses are deliberate where they are
not sheer ignorance. His manner in court showed that he knows how, in
the main."

A rather superior specimen of the professional politician, but
distinctly of that hypocritical, slippery class. And Margaret's
conviction was strengthened later in the day when she came upon him at
tea at Mrs. Houghton's. He was holding forth noisily against "society,"
was denouncing it as a debaucher of manhood and womanhood, a waster of
precious time, and on and on in that trite and tedious strain.
Margaret's lip curled as she listened. What did this fakir know about
manhood and womanhood? And could there be any more pitiful, more paltry
wasting of time than in studying out and performing such insincerities
as his life was made up of? True, Mrs. Houghton, of those funny,
fashionable New Yorkers who act as if they had only just arrived at the
estate of servants and carriages, and are always trying to impress even
passing strangers with their money and their grandeur--true, Mrs.
Houghton was most provocative to anger or amused disdain at the
fashionable life. But not even Mrs. Houghton seemed to Margaret so cheap
and pitiful as this badly-dressed, mussy politician, as much an actor as
Mrs. Houghton and as poor at the trade, but choosing low comedy for his
unworthy attempts where Mrs. Houghton was at least trying to be
something refined.

With that instinct for hostility which is part of the equipment of every
sensitively-nerved man of action, Craig soon turned toward her,
addressed himself to her; and the others, glad to be free, fell away.
Margaret was looking her best. White was extremely becoming to her;
pink--pale pink--being next in order. Her dress was of white, with
facings of delicate pale pink, and the white plumes in her hat were
based in pale pink, which also lined the inside of the brim. She watched
him, and, now that it was once more his personality pitted directly and
wholly against hers, she, in spite of herself, began to yield to him
again her respect--the respect every intelligent person must feel for an
individuality that is erect and strong. But as she was watching, her
expression was that of simply listening, without comment or intention to
reply--an expression of which she was perfect mistress. Her hazel eyes,
set in dark lashes, her sensuous mouth, her pallid skin, smooth and
healthy, seemed the climax of allurement to which all the lines of her
delightful figure pointed. To another woman it would have been obvious
that she was amusing herself by trying to draw him under the spell of
physical attraction; a man would have thought her a mere passive
listener, perhaps one concealing boredom, would have thought her
movements to bring now this charm and now that to his attention were
simply movements of restlessness, indications of an impatience difficult
to control. He broke off abruptly. "What are you thinking?" he demanded.

She gave no sign of triumph at having accomplished her purpose--at
having forced his thoughts to leave his pet subject, himself, and center
upon her. "I was thinking," said she reflectively, "what a brave
whistler you are."

"Whistler?"

"Whistling to keep up your courage. No, rather, whistling FOR courage.
You are on your knees before wealth and social position, and you wish to
convince yourself--and the world--that you despise them."

"_I_? Wealth? Social position?" Craig exclaimed, or rather, blustered.
And, red and confused, he was at a loss for words.

"Yes--you," asserted she, in her quiet, tranquil way. "Don't bluster at
me. You didn't bluster at the Court this morning." She laughed softly,
eyeing him with friendly sarcasm. "You see, I'm 'on to' you, Mr. Craig."

Their eyes met--a resolute encounter. He frowned fiercely, and as his
eyes were keen and blue-green, and, backed by a tremendous will, the
odds seemed in his favor. But soon his frown relaxed; a smile replaced
it--a handsome acknowledgment of defeat, a humorous confession that she
was indeed "on to" him. "I like you," he said graciously.

"I don't know that I can say the same of you," replied she, no answering
smile in her eyes or upon her lips, but a seriousness far more
flattering.

"That's right!" exclaimed he. "Frankness--absolute frankness. You are
the only intelligent woman I have met here who seems to have any
sweetness left in her."

"Sweetness? This is a strange place to look for sweetness. One might as
well expect to find it in a crowd of boys scrapping for pennies, or in a
pack of hounds chasing a fox."

"But that isn't all of life," protested Craig.

"It's all of life among our sort of people--the ambitious socially and
otherwise."

Josh beamed upon her admiringly. "You'll do," approved he. "We shall be
friends. We ARE friends."

The gently satiric smile her face had borne as she was talking became
personal to him. "You are confident," said she.

He nodded emphatically. "I am. I always get what I want."

"I'm sorry to say I don't. But I can say that at least I never take what
I don't want."

"That means," said he, "you may not want my friendship."

"Obviously," replied she. And she rose and put out her hand.

"Don't go yet," cried he. "We are just beginning to get acquainted. The
other day I misjudged you. I thought you insignificant, not worth
while."

She slid her hand into her ermine muff. She gave him an icy look, not
contemptuous but oblivious, and turned away. He stared after her. "By
Jove!" thought he, "THERE'S the real thing. There's a true aristocrat."
And he frankly paid aristocracy in thought the tribute he would with any
amount of fuming and spluttering have denied it in word. "Aristocracy
does mean something," reflected he. "There must be substance to what can
make ME feel quite put down."

When he saw Arkwright he said patronizingly: "I like that little friend
of yours--that Miss What's-her-name."

Grant suspected from his tone that this forgetfulness was an
affectation. "You know very well what her name is," said he irritably.
"What a cheap affectation."

Josh countered and returned magnificently: "I remember her face
perfectly," said he. "One shares one's name with a great many people, so
it's unimportant. But one's face is one's own. I remember her face very
well indeed--and that gorgeous figure of hers."

Grant was furious, thought Craig's words the limit of impertinent
free-spokenness. "Well, what of it?" said he savagely.

"I like her," replied Josh condescendingly. "But she's been badly
brought up, and is full of foolish ideas, like all your women here. But
she's a thoroughbred."

"Then you like her?" observed Arkwright without enthusiasm.

"So-so. Of course, she isn't fit to be a wife, but for her type and as a
type she's splendid."

Arkwright felt like kicking him and showed it. "What a bounder you are
at times, Josh," he snapped.

Craig laughed and slapped him on the back. "There you go again, with
your absurd notions of delicacy. Believe me, Grant, you don't understand
women. They don't like you delicate fellows. They like a man--like me--a
pawer of the ground--a snorter--a warhorse that cries ha-ha among the
trumpets."

"The worst thing about what you say," replied Arkwright sourly, "is that
it's the truth. I don't say the women aren't worthy of us, but I do say
they're not worthy of our opinion of them.... Well, I suppose you're
going to try to marry her"--this with a vicious gleam which he felt safe
in indulging openly before one so self-absorbed and so insensible to
subtleties of feeling and manner.

"I think not," said Craig judicially. "She'd play hell with my politics.
It's bad enough to have fights on every hand and all the time abroad.
It'd be intolerable to have one at home--and I've got no time to train
her to my uses and purposes."

Usually Craig's placid conviction that the universe existed for his
special benefit and that anything therein was his for the mere formality
of claiming it moved Arkwright to tolerant amusement at his lack of the
sense of proportion and humor. Occasionally it moved him to reluctant
admiration--this when some apparently absurd claim of his proved more or
less valid. Just now, in the matter of Margaret Severence, this
universal overlordship filled him with rage, the more furious that he
realized he could no more shake Josh's conviction than he could make the
Washington monument topple over into the Potomac by saying, "Be thou
removed." He might explain all the obvious reasons why Margaret would
never deign to condescend to him; Josh would dismiss them with a laugh
at Arkwright's folly.

He hid his rage as best he could, and said with some semblance of genial
sarcasm: "So all you've got to do is to ask her and she's yours?"

Craig gave him a long, sharp, searching look. "Old man," he said
earnestly, "do you want her?"

"_I_!" exclaimed Arkwright angrily, but with shifting eyes and with
upper lip twitching guiltily. Then, satirically: "Oh, no; I'd not dare
aspire to any woman YOU had condescended to smile upon."

"If you do I'll get her for you," pursued Craig, his hand seeking
Arkwright's arm to grip it.

Arkwright drew away, laughed outright. "You ARE a joke!" he cried,
wholly cured of his temper by the preposterous offer. It would be absurd
enough for any one to imagine he would need help in courting any woman
he might fancy--he, one of the most eligible of American bachelors. It
passed the uttermost bounds of the absurd, this notion that he would
need help with a comparatively poor girl, many seasons out and eager to
marry. And then, climax of climaxes, that Josh Craig could help him!
"Yes, a joke," he repeated.

"Oh, no doubt I do seem so to you," replied Josh unruffled. "People are
either awed or amused by what they're incapable of understanding. At
this stage of my career I'm not surprised to find they're amused. But
wait, my boy. Meanwhile, if you want that lady, all you've got to do is
to say the word. I'll get her for you."

"Thanks; no," said Arkwright. "I'm rather shy of matrimony. I don't
hanker after the stupid joys of family life, as you do."

"That's because of your ruinous, rotten training," Craig assured him.
"It has destroyed your power to appreciate the great fundamentals of
life. You think you're superior. If you only knew how shallow you are!"

"I've a competent valet," said Arkwright. "And your idea of a wife seems
to be a sort of sublimated valet--and nurse."

"I can conceive of no greater dignity than to take care of a real man
and his children," replied Craig. "However, the dignity of the service
depends upon the dignity of the person to whom it is rendered--and upon
the dignity of the person who renders it."

Arkwright examined Craig's face for signs that this was the biting
sarcasm it would have seemed, coming from another. But Craig was
apparently merely making one of his familiar bumptious speeches. The
idea of a man of his humble origin proclaiming himself superior to an
Arkwright of the Massachusetts Arkwrights!

"No, I'd not marry your Miss Severence," Craig continued. "I want a
wife, not a social ornament. I want a woman, not a toilette. I want a
home, not a fashionable hotel. I want love and sympathy and children. I
want substance, not shadow; sanity, not silliness."

"And your socks darned and your shirts mended."

"That, of course." Josh accepted these amendments with serene
seriousness. "And Miss Severence isn't fit for the job. She has some
brains--the woman kind of brains. She has a great deal of rudimentary
character. If I had the time, and it were worth while, I could develop
her into a real woman. But I haven't, and it wouldn't be worth while
when there are so many real women, ready made, out where I come from.
This girl would be exactly the wife for you, though. Just as she is,
she'd help you mince about from parlor to parlor, and smirk and jabber
and waste time. She's been educating for the job ever since she was
born." He laid his hand in gracious, kindly fashion on his friend's
shoulder. "Think it over. And if you want my help it's yours. I can show
her what a fine fellow you are, what a good husband you'd make. For you
are a fine person, old man; when you were born fashionable and rich it
spoiled a--"

"A superb pram-trundler," suggested Arkwright.

"Precisely. Be off now; I must work. Be off, and exhibit that wonderful
suit and those spotless white spats where they'll be appreciated." And
he dismissed the elegantly-dressed idler as a king might rid himself of
a favorite who threatened to presume upon his master's good humor and
outstay his welcome. But Arkwright didn't greatly mind. He was used to
Josh's airs. Also, though he would not have confessed it to his inmost
self, Josh's preposterous assumptions, by sheer force of frequent and
energetic reiteration, had made upon him an impression of possible
validity--not probable, but possible; and the possible was quite enough
to stir deep down in Arkwright's soul the all but universal deference
before power. It never occurred to him to suspect there might be design
in Craig's sweeping assertions and assumptions of superiority, that he
might be shrewdly calculating that, underneath the ridicule those
obstreperous vanities would create, there would gradually form and
steadily grow a conviction of solid truth, a conviction that Joshua
Craig was indeed the personage he professed to be--mighty, inevitably
prevailing, Napoleonic.

This latent feeling of Arkwright's was, however, not strong enough to
suppress his irritation when, a few days later, he went to the
Severences for tea, and found Margaret and Josh alone in the garden,
walking up and down, engaged in a conversation that was obviously
intimate and absorbing. When he appeared on the veranda Joshua greeted
him with an eloquent smile of loving friendship.

"Ah, there you are now!" he cried. "Well, little ones, I'll leave you
together. I've wasted as much time as I can spare to-day to frivolity."

"Yes, hurry back to work," said Arkwright. "The ship of state's wobbling
badly through your neglect."

Craig laughed, looking at Margaret. "Grant thinks that's a jest," said
he. "Instead, it's the sober truth. I am engaged in keeping my Chief in
order, and in preventing the President from skulking from the policies
he has the shrewdness to advocate but lacks the nerve to put into
action."

Margaret stood looking after him as he strode away.

"You mustn't mind his insane vanity," said Arkwright, vaguely uneasy at
the expression of her hazel eyes, at once so dark, mysterious,
melancholy, so light and frank and amused.

"I don't," said she in a tone that seemed to mean a great deal.

He, still more uneasy, went on: "A little more experience of the world
and Josh'll come round all right--get a sense of proportion."

"But isn't it true?" asked Margaret somewhat absently.

"What?"

"Why, what he said as he was leaving. Before you came he'd been here
quite a while, and most of the time he talked of himself--"

Arkwright laughed, but Margaret only smiled, and that rather
reluctantly.

"And he was telling how hard a time he was having; what with
Stillwater's corruption and the President's timidity about really acting
against rich, people--something about criminal suits against what he
calls the big thieves--I didn't understand it, or care much about it,
but it gave me an impression of Mr. Craig's power."

"There IS some truth in what he says," Arkwright admitted, with a
reluctance of which his pride, and his heart as well, were ashamed.
"He's become a burr, a thorn, in the Administration, and they're really
afraid of him in a way--though, of course, they have to laugh at him as
every one else does."

"Of course," said Margaret absently.

Arkwright watched her nervously. "You seem to be getting round to the
state of mind," said he, "where you'll be in danger of marrying our
friend Craig."

Margaret, her eyes carefully away from him, laughed softly--a
disturbingly noncommittal laugh.

"Of course, I'm only joking," continued Arkwright. "I know YOU couldn't
marry HIM."

"Why not?"

"Because you don't think he's sincere."

Her silence made him feel that she thought this as weak as he did.

"Because you don't love him."

"No, I certainly don't love him," said Margaret.

"Because you don't even like him."

"What a strange way of advocating your friend you have."

Arkwright flushed scarlet. "I thought you'd quite dismissed him as a
possibility," he stammered.

"With a woman every man's a possibility so long as no man's a
certainty."

"Margaret, you couldn't marry a man you didn't like?"

She seemed to reflect. "Not if I were in love with another at the time,"
she said finally. "That's as far as my womanly delicacy--what's left of
it after my years in society--can influence me. And it's stronger, I
believe, than the delicacy of most women of our sort."

They were sitting now on the bench round the circle where the fountain
was tossing high its jets in play with the sunshine. She was looking
very much the woman of the fashionable world, and the soft grays,
shading into blues, that dominated her costume gave her an exceeding and
entrancing seeming of fragility. Arkwright thought her eyes wonderful;
the sweet, powerful yet delicate odor of the lilac sachet powder with
which her every garment was saturated set upon his senses like a
love-philter.

"Yes, you are finer and nobler than most women," he said giddily. "And
that's why it distresses me to hear you talk even in jest, as if you
could marry Josh."

"And a few weeks ago you were suggesting him as just the husband for
me."

Arkwright was silent. How could he go on? How tell her why he had
changed without committing himself to her by a proposal? She was
fascinating--would be an ideal wife. With what style and taste she'd
entertain--how she'd shine at the head of his table! What a satisfaction
it would be to feel that his money was being so competently spent.
But--well, he did not wish to marry, not just yet; perhaps, somewhere in
the world, he would find, in the next few years, a woman even better
suited to him than Margaret. Marrying was a serious business. True, now
that divorce had pushed its way up and had become recognized by
fashionable society, had become an established social favorite, marriage
had been robbed of one of its terrors. But the other remained--divorce
still meant alimony. The woman who trapped an eligible never endangered
her hard-earned position; a man must be extremely careful or he would
find himself forced to hard choice between keeping on with a woman he
wished to be rid of and paying out a large part of his income in
alimony. It seemed far-fetched to think of these things in connection
with such a woman as Margaret. He certainly never could grow tired of
her, and her looks were of the sort that had staying power. Nor was she
in the least likely to be so ungrateful as to wish to be rid of him and
hold him up for alimony. Still--wouldn't it have been seemingly just as
absurd to consider in advance such sordid matters in connection with any
one of a dozen couples among his friends whose matrimonial enterprises
had gone smash? It was said that nowadays girls went to the altar
thinking that if the husbands they were taking proved unsatisfactory
they would soon be free again, the better off by the title of Mrs. and a
good stiff alimony and some invaluable experience. "I must keep my
head," thought he. "I must consider how I'd feel after the fatal cards
were out."

"Yes, you were quite eager for me to marry him," persisted she. She was
watching his face out of the corner of her eye.

"I admit it," said he huskily. "But we've both changed since then."

"Changed?" said she, perhaps a shade too encouragingly.

He felt the hook tickling his gills and darted off warily. "Changed
toward him, I mean. Changed in our estimate of his availability as a
husband for you." He rose; the situation was becoming highly perilous.
"I must speak to your mother and fly. I'm late for an appointment now."

As he drove away ten minutes later he drew a long breath. "Gad!" said he
half aloud, "Rita'll never realize how close I was to proposing to-day.
She ALMOST had me.... Though why I should think of it that way I don't
know. It's damned low and indelicate of me. She ought to be my wife. I
love her as much as a man of experience can love a woman in advance of
trying her out thoroughly. If she had money I'd not be hesitating, I'm
afraid. Then, too, I don't think the moral tone of that set she and I
travel with is what it ought to be. It's all very well for me,
but--Well, a man ought to be ready for almost anything that might happen
if his wife went with that crowd--or had gone with it before he married
her. Not that I suspect Margaret, though I must say--What a pup this
sort of life does make of a man in some ways!... Yes, I almost leaped.
She'll never know how near I came to it.... Perhaps Josh's more than
half-right and I'm oversophisticated. My doubts and delays may cost me a
kind of happiness I'd rather have than anything on earth--IF it really
exists." There he laughed comfortably. "Poor Rita! If she only knew, how
cut up she'd be!"

He might not have been so absolutely certain of her ignorance could he
have looked into the Severances' drawing-room just then. For Margaret,
after a burst of hysterical gayety, had gone to the far end of the room
on the pretext of arranging some flowers. And there, with her face
securely hid from the half-dozen round the distant tea-table, she was
choking back the sobs, was muttering: "I'll have to do it! I'm a
desperate woman--desperate!"




CHAPTER VI

MR. CRAIG IN SWEET DANGER


It is a rash enterprise to open wide to the world the private doors of
the family, to expose intimate interiors all unconscious of outside
observation, and all unprepared for it. Such frankness tends to destroy
"sympathetic interest," to make delusion and illusion impossible; it
gives cynicism and his brother, pharisaism, their opportunity to simper
and to sneer. Still rasher is it to fling wide the doors of a human
heart, and, without any clever arrangement of lights and shades, reveal
in the full face of the sun exactly what goes on there. We lie to others
unconsciously; we lie to ourselves both consciously and unconsciously.
We admit and entertain dark thoughts, and at the first alarm of exposure
deny that we ever saw them before; we cover up our motives, forget where
we have hidden them, and wax justly indignant when they are dug out and
confronted with us. We are scandalized, quite honestly, when others are
caught doing what we ourselves have done. We are horrified and cry
"Monster!" when others do what we ourselves refrain from doing only
through lack of the bad courage.

No man is a hero who is not a hero to his valet; and no woman a lady
unless her maid thinks so. Margaret Severence's new maid Selina was
engaged to be married; the lover had gone on a spree, had started a free
fight in the streets, and had got himself into jail for a fortnight. It
was the first week of his imprisonment, and Selina had committed a
series of faults intolerable in a maid. She sent Margaret to a ball with
a long tear in her skirt; she let her go out, open in the back, both in
blouse and in placket; she upset a cup of hot CAFÉ AU LAIT on her arm;
finally she tore a strap off a shoe as she was fastening it on
Margaret's foot. Though no one has been able to fathom it, there must be
a reason for the perversity whereby our outbursts of anger against any
seriously-offending fellow-being always break on some trivial offense,
never on one of the real and deep causes of wrath. Margaret, though
ignorant of her maid's secret grief and shame, had borne patiently the
sins of omission and commission, only a few of which are catalogued
above; this, though the maid, absorbed in her woe, had not even
apologized for a single one of them. On the seventh day of discomforts
and disasters Margaret lost her temper at the triviality of the ripping
off of the shoe-strap, and poured out upon Selina not only all her
resentment against her but also all that she had been storing up since
the beginning of the season against life and destiny. Selina sat on the
floor stupefied; Margaret, a very incarnation of fury, raged up and down
the room, venting every and any insult a naturally caustic wit
suggested. "And," she wound up, "I want you to clear out at once. I'll
send you your month's wages. I can't give you a character--except for
honesty. I'll admit, you are too stupid to steal. Clear out, and never
let me see you again."

She swept from the room, drove away to lunch at Mrs. Baker's. She acted
much as usual, seemed to be enjoying herself, for the luncheon was very
good indeed, Mrs. Baker's chef being new from France and not yet grown
careless, and the company was amusing. At the third course she rose.
"I've forgotten something," said she. "I must go at once. No, no one
must be disturbed on my account. I'll drive straight home." And she was
gone before Mrs. Baker could rise from her chair.

At home Margaret went up to her own room, through her bedroom to
Selina's--almost as large and quite as comfortable as her own and hardly
plainer. She knocked. As there was no answer, she opened the door. On
the bed, sobbing heart-brokenly, lay Selina, crushed by the hideous
injustice of being condemned capitally merely for tearing off a bit of
leather which the shoemaker had neglected to make secure.

"Selina," said Margaret.

The maid turned her big, homely, swollen face on the pillow, ceased
sobbing, gasped in astonishment.

"I've come to beg your pardon," said Margaret, not as superior to
inferior, nor yet with the much-vaunted "just as if they were equals,"
but simply as one human being to another. The maid sat up. One of her
braids had come undone and was hanging ludicrously down across her
cheek.

"I insulted you, and I'm horribly ashamed." Wistfully: "Will you forgive
me?"

"Oh, law!" cried the maid despairingly, "I'm dreaming." And she threw
herself down once more and sobbed afresh.

Margaret knelt beside the bed, put her hand appealingly on the girl's
shoulder. "Can you forgive me, Selina?" said she. "There's no excuse for
me except that I've had so much hard luck, and everything seems to be
going to pieces under me."

Selina stopped sobbing. "I told a story when I came to you and said I'd
had three years' experience," moaned she, not to be outdone in honorable
generosity. "It was only three months as lady's maid, and not much of a
lady, neither."

"I don't in the least care," Margaret assured her. "I'm not strictly
truthful myself at times, and I do all sorts of horrid things."

"But that's natural in a lady," objected Selina, "where there ain't no
excuse for me that have only my character."

Margaret was careful not to let Selina see her smile in appreciation of
this unconsciously profound observation upon life and morals. "Never
mind," said she; "you're going to be a good maid soon. You're learning
quickly."

"No, no," wailed Selina. "I'm a regular block-head, and my hands is too
coarse."

"But you have a good heart and I like you," said Margaret. "And I want
you to forgive me and like me. I'm so lonely and unhappy. And I need the
love of one so close to me all the time as you are. It'd be a real
help."

Selina began to cry again, and then Margaret gave way to tears; and,
presently, out came the dreadful story of the lover's fight and jailing;
and Margaret, of course, promised to see that he was released at once.
When she went to her own room, the maid following to help her efface the
very disfiguring evidence of their humble, emotional drama, Margaret had
recovered her self-esteem and had won a friend, who, if too stupid to be
very useful, was also too stupid to be unfaithful.

As it was on the same day, and scarcely one brief hour later, it must
have been the very same Margaret who paced the alley of trimmed elms,
her eyes so stern and somber, her mouth and chin so hard that her
worshipful sister Lucia watched in silent, fascinated dread. At length
Margaret noted Lucia, halted and: "Why don't you read your book?" she
cried fiercely. "Why do you sit staring at me?"

"What a temper you have got--what a NASTY temper!" Lucia was goaded into
retorting.

"Haven't I, though!" exclaimed Margaret, as if she gloried in it. "Stop
that staring!"

"I could see you were thinking something--something--TERRIBLE!"
explained Lucia.

Margaret's face cleared before a satirical smile. "What a romancer you
are, Lucia." Then, with a laugh: "I'm taking myself ridiculously
seriously to-day. Temper--giving way to temper--is a sure sign of
defective intelligence or of defective digestion."

"Is it about--about Mr. Craig?"

Margaret reddened, dropped to the bench near her sister--evidence that
she was willing to talk, to confide--so far as she ever confided her
inmost self--to the one person she could trust.

"Has he asked you to marry him?"

"No; not yet."

"But he's going to?"

Margaret gave a queer smile. "He doesn't think so."

"He wouldn't dare!" exclaimed Lucia. "Why, he's not in the same class
with you."

"So! The little romancer is not so romantic that she forgets her
snobbishness."

"I mean, he's so rude and noisy. I DETEST him!"

"So do I--at times."

Lucia looked greatly relieved. "I thought you were encouraging him. It
seemed sort of--of--cheap, unworthy of you, to care to flirt with a man
like that."

Margaret's expression became strange indeed. "I am not flirting with
him," she said gravely. "I'm going to marry him."

Lucia was too amazed to speak, was so profoundly shocked that her
usually rosy cheeks grew almost pale.

"Yes, I shall marry him," repeated Margaret slowly.

"But you don't love him!" cried Lucia.

"I dislike him," replied Margaret. After a pause she added: "When a
woman makes up her mind to marry a man, willy-nilly, she begins to hate
him. It's a case of hunter and hunted. Perhaps, after she's got him, she
may change. But not till the trap springs--not till the game's bagged."

Lucia shuddered. "Oh, Rita!" she cried. And she turned away to bury her
face in her arms.

"I suppose I oughtn't to tell you these things," pursued Margaret; "I
ought to leave you your illusions as long as possible. But--why
shouldn't you know the truth? Perhaps, if we all faced the truth about
things, instead of sheltering ourselves in lies, the world would begin
to improve."

"But I don't see why you chose him," persisted Lucia.

"I didn't. Fate did the choosing."

"But why not somebody like--like Grant Arkwright? Rita, I'm sure he's
fond of you."

"So am I," said Rita. "But he's got the idea he would be doing me a
favor in marrying me; and when a man gets that notion it's fatal.
Also--He doesn't realize it himself, but I'm not prim enough to suit
him. He imagines he's liberal--that's a common failing among men. But a
woman who is natural shocks them, and they are taken in and pleased by
one who poses as more innocent and impossible than any human being not
perfectly imbecile could remain in a world that conceals nothing.... I
despise Grant--I like him, but despise him."

"He IS small," admitted Lucia.

"Small? He's infinitesimal. He'd be mean with his wife about money. He'd
run the house himself. He should have been a butler."

"But, at least, he's a gentleman."

"Oh, yes," said Margaret. "Yes, I suppose so. I despise him, while, in a
way, I respect Craig."

"He has such a tough-looking skin," said Lucia.

"I don't mind that in a man," replied Margaret.

"His hands are like--like a coachman's," said Lucia. "Whenever I look at
them I think of Thomas."

"No, they're more like the parrot's--they're claws.... That's why I'm
marrying him."

"Because he has ugly hands?"

"Because they're ugly in just that way. They're the hands of the man who
gets things and holds on to things. I'm taking him because he can get
for me what I need." Margaret patted her sister on the shoulder. "Cheer
up, Lucia! I'm lucky, I tell you. I'm getting, merely at the price of a
little lying and a little shuddering, what most people can't get at any
price."

"But he hasn't any money," objected Lucia.

"If he had, no doubt you'd find him quite tolerable. Even you--a young
innocent."

"It does make a difference," admitted Lucia. "You see, people have to
have money or they can't live like gentlemen and ladies."

"That's it," laughed Margaret. "What's a little thing like self-respect
beside ease and comfort and luxury? As grandmother said, a lady who'd
put anything before luxury has lost her self-respect."

"Everybody that's nice ought to have money," declared Lucia. "Then the
world would be beautiful, full of love and romance, with everybody clean
and well-dressed and never in a hurry."

But Margaret seemed not to hear. She was gazing at the fountain, her
unseeing eyes gloomily reflecting her thoughts.

"If Mr. Craig hasn't got money why marry him?" asked her sister.

"He can get it," replied Margaret tersely. "He's the man to trample and
crowd and clutch, and make everybody so uncomfortable that they'll
gladly give him what he's snatching for." She laughed mockingly. "Yes, I
shall get what I want"--then soberly--"if I can get him."

"Get HIM! Why, he'll be delighted! And he ought to be."

"No, he oughtn't to be; but he will be."

"A man like him--marrying a lady! And marrying YOU!" Lucia threw her
arms round her sister's neck and dissolved in tears. "Oh, Rita, Rita!"
she sobbed. "You are the dearest, loveliest girl on earth. I'm sure
you're not doing it for yourself, at all. I'm sure you're doing it for
my sake."

"You're quite wrong," said Rita, who was sitting unmoved and was looking
like her grandmother. "I'm doing it for myself. I'm fond, of luxury--of
fine dresses and servants and all that.... Think of the thousands,
millions of women who marry just for a home and a bare living!... No
doubt, there's something wrong about the whole thing, but I don't see
just what. If woman is made to lead a sheltered life, to be supported by
a man, to be a man's plaything, why, she can't often get the man she'd
most like to be the plaything of, can she?"

"Isn't there any such thing as love?" Lucia ventured wistfully.
"Marrying for love, I mean."

"Not among OUR sort of people, except by accident," Margaret assured
her. "The money's the main thing. We don't say so. We try not to think
so. We denounce as low and coarse anybody that does say so. But it's the
truth, just the same.... Those who marry for money regret it, but not so
much as those who marry only for love--when poverty begins to pinch and
to drag everything fine and beautiful down into the mud. Besides, I
don't love anybody--thank God! If I did, Lucia, I'm afraid I'd not have
the courage!"

"I'm sure you couldn't!" cried Lucia, eager to save all possible
illusion about her sister. Then, remorseful for disloyal thoughts: "And,
if it wasn't right, I'm sure you'd not do it. You MAY fall in love with
him afterward."

"Yes," assented Margaret, kissing Lucia on an impulse of gratitude.
"Yes, I may. I probably shall. Surely, I'm not to go through life never
doing anything I ought to do."

"He's really handsome, in that bold, common way. And you can teach him."

Margaret laughed with genuine mirth. "How surprised he'd be," she
exclaimed, "if he could know what's going on in my head!"

"He'll be on his knees to you," pursued Lucia, wonderfully cheered up by
her confidence in the miracles Margaret's teaching would work. "And
he'll do whatever you say."

"Yes, I'll teach him," said Margaret, herself more hopeful; for must
always improves with acquaintance. "I'll make him over completely. Oh,
he's not so bad as they think--not by any means."

Lucia made an exaggerated gesture of shivering.

"He gets on my nerves," said she. "He's so horribly abrupt and
ill-mannered."

"Yes, I'll train him," said Margaret, musing aloud. "He doesn't
especially fret my nerves. A woman gets a good, strong nervous
system--and a good, strong stomach--after she has been out a few years."
She laughed. "And he thinks I'm as fine and delicate as--as--"

"As you look," suggested Lucia.

"As I look," accepted Margaret. "How we do deceive men by our looks!
Really, Lucia, HE'S far more sensitive than I--far more."

"That's too silly!"

"If I were a millionth part as coarse as he is he'd fly from me. Yet I'm
not flying from him."

This was unanswerable. Lucia rejoined: "When are you going to--to do
it?"

"Right away.... I want to get it over with. I can't stand the
suspense.... I can't stand it!" And Lucia was awed and silenced by the
sudden, strained look of anguish almost that made Margaret's face
haggard and her eyes wild.




CHAPTER VII

MRS. SEVERENCE IS ROUSED


Craig swooped upon the Severences the next afternoon. His arrivals were
always swoopings--a swift descent on a day when he was not expected; or,
if the day was forearranged, then the hour would be a surprise. It was a
habit with him, a habit deliberately formed. He liked to take people
unawares, to create a flurry, reasoning that he, quick of eye and
determined of purpose, could not but profit by any confusion. He was
always in a hurry--that is, he seemed to be. In this also there was
deliberation. It does not follow because a man is in a hurry that he is
an important and busy person; no more does it follow that a man is an
inconsequential procrastinator if he is leisurely and dilatory. The
significance of action lies in intent. Some men can best gain their ends
by creating an impression that they are extremely lazy, others by
creating the impression that they are exceedingly energetic. The
important point is to be on the spot at the moment most favorable for
gaining the desired advantage; and it will be found that of the men who
get what they want in this world, both those who seem to hasten and
those who seem to lounge are always at the right place at the right
time.

It best fitted Craig, by nature impatient, noisily aggressive, to adopt
the policy of rush. He arrived before time usually, fumed until he had
got everybody into that nervous state in which men, and women, too, will
yield more than they ever would in the kindly, melting mood. Though he
might stay hours, he, each moment, gave the impression that everybody
must speak quickly or he would be gone, might quickly be rid of him by
speaking quickly. Obviously, intercourse with him was socially
unsatisfactory; but this did not trouble him, as his theory of life was,
get what you want, never mind the way or the feelings of others. And as
he got by giving, attached his friends by self-interest, made people do
for him what it was just as well that they should do, the net result,
after the confusion and irritation had calmed, was that everybody felt,
on the whole, well content with having been compelled. It was said of
him that he made even his enemies work for him; and this was undoubtedly
true--in the sense in which it was meant as well as in the deeper sense
that a man's enemies, if he be strong, are his most assiduous allies and
advocates. It was also true that he did a great deal for people. Where
most men do favors only when the prospect of return is immediate, he
busied himself as energetically if returns seemed remote, even
improbable, as he did when his right hand was taking in with interest as
his left hand gave. It was his nature to be generous, to like to give;
it was also his nature to see that a reputation for real generosity and
kindness of heart was an invaluable asset, and that the only way to win
such a reputation was by deserving it.

Craig arrived at the Severences at half-past four, when no one was
expected until five. "Margaret is dressing," explained Mrs. Severence,
as she entered the drawing-room. "She'll be down presently--if you care
to wait." This, partly because she hoped he would go, chiefly because he
seemed in such a hurry.

"I'll wait a few minutes," said Craig in his sharp, irritating voice.

And he began to tour the room, glancing at pictures, at articles on the
tables, mussing the lighter pieces of furniture about. Mrs. Severence,
pink-and-white, middle-aged, fattish and obviously futile, watched him
with increasing nervousness. He would surely break something; or, being
by a window when the impulse to depart seized him, would leap through,
taking sash, curtains and all with him.

"Perhaps we'd better go outdoors," suggested she. She felt very
helpless, as usual. It was from her that Lucia inherited her laziness
and her taste for that most indolent of all the dissipations, the
reading of love stories.

"Outdoors?" exploded Craig, wheeling on her, as if he had previously
been unconscious of her presence. "No. We'll sit here. I want to talk to
you."

And he plumped himself into a chair near by, his claw-like hands upon
his knees, his keen eyes and beak-like nose bent toward her. Mrs.
Severence visibly shrank. She felt as if that handsome, predatory face
were pressed against the very window of her inmost soul.

"You wish to talk to me," she echoed, with a feeble conciliatory smile.

"About your daughter," said Craig, still more curt and aggressive. "Mrs.
Severence, your daughter ought to get married."

Roxana Severence was so amazed that her mouth dropped open. "Married?"
she echoed, as if her ears had deceived her.

The colossal impudence of it! This young man, this extremely common
young man, daring to talk to her about such a private matter! And she
had not yet known him a month; and only within the last fortnight had he
been making frequent visits--entirely on his own invitation, for she
certainly would not overtly provoke such a visitation as his coming
meant. Mrs. Severence would have been angry had she dared. But Craig's
manner was most alarming; what would--what would not a person so
indifferent to the decencies of life do if he were crossed?

"She must get married," pursued Craig firmly. "Do you know why I've been
coming here these past two or three weeks?"

Mrs. Severence was astounded anew. The man was actually about to propose
for her daughter! This common man, with nothing!

"It's not my habit to make purposeless visits," continued he,
"especially among frivolous, idle people like you. I've been coming here
to make a study of your daughter."

He paused. Mrs. Severence gave a feeble, frightened smile, made a sound
that might have been mirth and again might have been the beginnings of a
hastily-suppressed call for help.

"And," Craig went on energetically, "I find that she is a very superior
sort of person. In another environment she might have been a big, strong
woman. She's amazing, considering the sickly, sycophantic atmosphere
she's been brought up in. Now, I want to see her married. She's
thoroughly discontented and unhappy. She's becoming sour and cynical. WE
must get her married. It's your duty to rouse yourself."

Mrs. Severence did rouse herself just at this moment. Cheeks aflame and
voice trembling, she stood and said:

"You are very kind, Mr. Craig, to offer to assist me in bringing up my
family. Surely--such--such interest is unusual on brief and very slight
acquaintance." She rang the bell. "I can show my appreciation in only
one way." The old butler, Williams, appeared. "Williams, show this
gentlemen out." And she left the room.

Williams, all frigid dignity and politeness, stood at the large entrance
doors, significantly holding aside one curtain. Craig rose, his face
red. "Mrs. Severence isn't very well," said he noisily to the servant,
as if he were on terms of closest intimacy with the family. "Tell
Margaret I'll wait for her in the garden." And he rushed out by the
window that opened on the veranda, leaving the amazed butler at the
door, uncertain what to do.

Mrs. Severence, ascending the stairs in high good humor with herself at
having handled a sudden and difficult situation as well as she had ever
read of its being handled in a novel, met her daughter descending.

"Sh-h!" said she in a whisper, for she had not heard the front door
close. "He may not be gone. Come with me."

Margaret followed her mother into the library at the head of the stairs.

"It was that Craig man," explained Mrs. Severence, when she had the door
closed. "What DO you think he had the impudence to do?"

"I'm sure I can't imagine," said Margaret, impatient.

"He proposed for you!"

Margaret reflected a brief instant. "Nonsense!" she said decisively.
"He's not that kind. You misunderstood him."

"I tell you he did!" cried her mother. "And I ordered him out of the
house."

"What?" screamed Margaret, clutching her mother's arm. "WHAT?"

"I ordered him out of the house," stammered her mother.

"I wish you'd stick to your novels and let me attend to my own affairs,"
cried Margaret, pale with fury. "Is he gone?"

"I left Williams attending to it. Surely, Rita--"

But Margaret had flung the door open and was darting down the stairs.
"Where is he?" she demanded fiercely of Williams, still in the
drawing-room doorway.

"In the garden, ma'am," said Williams. "He didn't pay no attention."

But Margaret was rushing through the drawing-room. At the French windows
she caught sight of him, walking up and down in his usual quick, alert
manner, now smelling flowers, now staring up into the trees, now
scrutinizing the upper windows of the house. She drew back, waited until
she had got her breath and had composed her features. Then, with the
long skirts of her graceful pale-blue dress trailing behind her, and a
big white sunshade open and resting upon her shoulder, she went down the
veranda steps and across the lawn toward him. He paused, gazed at her in
frank--vulgarly frank--admiration; just then, it seemed to her, he never
said or did or looked anything except in the vulgarest way.

"You certainly are a costly-looking luxury," said he loudly, when there
were still a dozen yards between them. "Oh, there's your mother at the
window, upstairs--her bedroom window."

"How did you know it was her bedroom?" asked Margaret.

"While I was waiting for you to come down one day I sent for one of the
servants and had him explain the lay of the house."

"Really!" said Margaret, satirical and amused. "I suppose there was no
mail on the table or you'd have read that while you waited?"

"There you go, trying to say clever, insulting things. Why not be frank?
Why not be direct?"

"Why should I, simply because YOU wish it? You don't half realize how
amusing you are."

"Oh, yes, I do," retorted he, with a shrewd, quick glance from those
all-seeing eyes of his.

"Half, I said. You do half realize. I told you once before that I knew
what a fraud you were."

"I play my game in my own way," evaded he; "and it seems to be doing
nicely, thank you."

"But the further you go, the harder it'll be for you to progress."

"Then the harder for those opposing me. I don't make it easy for those
who are making it hard for me. I get 'em so busy nursing their own
wounds that they've no longer time to bother me. I've told you before,
and I tell you again, I shall go where I please."

"Let me see," laughed Margaret; "it was Napoleon--wasn't it?--who used
to talk that way?"

"And you think I'm imitating him, eh?"

"You do suggest it very often."

"I despise him. A wicked, little, dago charlatan who was put out of
business as soon as he was really opposed. No!--no Waterloo for me!...
How's your mother? She got sick while I was talking to her and had to
leave the room."

"Yes, I know," said Margaret.

"You ought to make her take more exercise. Don't let her set foot in a
carriage. We are animals, and nature has provided that animals shall
walk to keep in health. Walking and things like that are the only sane
modes of getting about. Everything aristocratic is silly. As soon as we
begin to rear and strut we stumble into our graves--But it's no use to
talk to you about that. I came on another matter."

Margaret's lips tightened; she hastily veiled her eyes.

"I've taken a great fancy to you," Craig went on. "That's why I've
wasted so much time on you. What you need is a husband--a good husband.
Am I not right?"

Margaret, pale, said faintly: "Go on."

"You know I'm right. Every man and every woman ought to marry. A
home--children--THAT'S life. The rest is all incidental--trivial. Do you
suppose I could work as I do if it wasn't that I'm getting ready to be a
family man? I need love--sympathy--tenderness. People think I'm hard and
ambitious. But they don't know. I've got a heart, overflowing with
tenderness, as some woman'll find out some day. But I didn't come to
talk about myself."

Margaret made a movement of surprise--involuntary, startled.

"No, I don't always talk about myself," Craig went on; "and I'll let you
into a secret. I don't THINK about myself nearly so much as many of
these chaps who never speak of themselves. However, as I was saying, I'm
going to get you a husband. Now, don't you get sick, as your mother did.
Be sensible. Trust me. I'll see you through--and that's more than any of
these cheap, shallow people round you would do."

"Well?" said Margaret.

"You and Grant Arkwright are going to marry. Now don't pretend--don't
protest. It's the proper thing and it must be done. You like him?"

As Craig was looking sharply at her she felt she must answer. She made a
vague gesture of assent.

"Of course!" said Craig. "If you and he led a natural life you'd have
been married long ago. Now, I'm going to dine with him to-night. I'll
lay the case before him. He'll be out here after you to-morrow."

Margaret trembled with anger. Two bright spots burned in her cheeks.
"You wouldn't dare!" she exclaimed breathlessly. "No, not even you!"

"And why not?" demanded Craig calmly. "Do you suppose I'm going to stand
idly by, and let two friends of mine, two people I'm as fond of as I am
of you two creatures, make fools of yourselves? No. I shall bring you
together."

Margaret rose. "If you say a word to Grant I'll never speak to you
again. And I assure you I shouldn't marry HIM if he were the last man on
earth."

"If you only knew men better!" exclaimed Craig earnestly. His eyes
fascinated her, and his sharp, penetrating voice somehow seemed to reach
to her very soul and seize it and hold it enthralled. "My dear child,
Grant Arkwright is one man in a million. I've been with him in times
that show men's qualities. Don't judge men by what they are ordinarily.
They don't reveal their real selves. Wait till a crisis comes--then you
see manhood or lack of it. Life is bearable, at the worst, for any of us
in the routine. But when the crisis comes we need, not only all our own
strength, but all we can rally to our support. I tell you, Miss
Severence, Grant is one of the men that can be relied on. I despise his
surface--as I do yours. But it's because I see the man--the
manhood--beneath that surface, that I love him. And I want him to have a
woman worthy of him. That means YOU. You, too, have the soul that makes
a human being--a real aristocrat--of the aristocracy, of strong and
honest hearts."

Craig's face was splendid, was ethereal in its beauty, yet flashing with
manliness. He looked as she had seen him that night two years before,
when he had held even her and her worldly friends spellbound, had made
them thrill with ideas of nobility and human helpfulness foreign to
their everyday selves. She sat silent when he had finished, presently
drew a long breath.

"Why aren't you always like that?" she exclaimed half to herself.

"You'll marry Grant?"

She shook her head positively. "Impossible."

"Why not?"

"Impossible," she repeated. "And you mustn't speak of it to me--or to
him. I appreciate your motive. I thank you--really, I do. It makes me
feel better, somehow, to have had any one think so well of me as you do.
And Grant ought to be proud of your friendship."

Their eyes met. She flushed to the line of her hair and her glance fell,
for she felt utterly ashamed of herself for the design upon him which
she had been harboring. "Let us go in and join the others," said she
confusedly. And her color fled, returned in a flood.

"No, I'm off," replied he, in his ordinary, sharp, bustling way. "I'm
not defeated. I've done well--very well, for a beginning." And he gave
her hand his usual firm, uncomfortable clasp, and rushed away.

She walked up and down full fifteen minutes before she went toward the
house. At the veranda Lucia intercepted her. "Did he?" she asked
anxiously.

Margaret looked at her vaguely, then smiled. "No, he did not."

"He didn't?" exclaimed Lucia, at once disappointed and relieved.

"Not yet," said Margaret. She laughed, patted Lucia's full-blown cheek.
"Not quite yet." And she went on in to tea, humming to herself gayly;
she did not understand her own sudden exceeding high spirits.




CHAPTER VIII

MR. CRAIG CONFIDES


Craig did not leave Margaret more precipitately than he had intended;
that would have been impossible, as he always strove to make his
departures seem as startling and mysterious as a dematerialization. But
he did leave much sooner than he had intended, and with only a small
part of what he had planned to say said. He withdrew to think it over;
and in the long walk from the Severences to his lodgings in the
Wyandotte he did think it over with his usual exhaustive thoroughness.

He had been entirely sincere in his talk with Margaret. He was a shrewd
judge both of human nature and of situations, and he saw that a marriage
between Margaret and Grant would be in every way admirable. He
appreciated the fine qualities of both, and realized that they would
have an uncommonly good chance of hitting it off tranquilly together. Of
all their qualities of mutual adaptability the one that impressed him
most deeply was the one at which he was always scoffing--what he called
their breeding. Theoretically, and so far as his personal practice went,
he genuinely despised "breeding"; but he could not uproot a most
worshipful reverence for it, a reverence of which he was ashamed. He had
no "breeding" himself; he was experiencing in Washington a phase of life
which was entirely new to him, and it had developed in him the snobbish
instincts that are the rankest weeds in the garden of civilization.
Their seeds fly everywhere, are sown broadcast, threaten the useful
plants and the flowers incessantly, contrive to grow, to flourish even,
in the desert places. Craig had an instinct against this plague; but he
was far too self-confident to suspect that it could enter his own gates
and attack his own fields. He did not dream that the chief reason why he
thought Grant and Margaret so well suited to each other was the reason
of snobbishness; that he was confusing their virtues with their vices;
and was admiring them for qualities which were blighting their
usefulness and even threatening to make sane happiness impossible for
either. It was not their real refinement that he admired, and, at times,
envied; it was their showy affectations of refinement, those gaudy
pretenses that appeal to the crude human imagination, like uniforms and
titles.

It had not occurred to him that Margaret might possibly be willing to
become his wife. He would have denied it as fiercely to himself as to
others, but at bottom he could not have thought of himself as at ease in
any intimate relation with her. He found her beautiful physically, but
much too fine and delicate to be comfortable with. He could be brave,
bold, insolent with her, in an impersonal way; but personally he could
not have ventured the slightest familiarity, now that he really
appreciated "what a refined, delicate woman is."

But the easiest impression for a woman to create upon a man--or a man
upon a woman--is the impression of being in love. We are so conscious of
our own merits, we are so eager to have them appreciated, that we will
exaggerate or misinterpret any word or look, especially from a person of
the opposite sex, into a tribute to them. When Craig pleaded for Grant
and Margaret, moved by his eloquent sincerity, dropped her eyes and
colored in shame for her plans about him, in such black contrast with
his frank generosity, he noted her change of expression, and instantly
his vanity flashed into his mind: "Can it be that she loves me?"

The more he reflected upon it the clearer it became to him that she did.
Yes, here was being repeated the old story of the attraction of
extremes. "She isn't so refined that appreciation of real manhood has
been refined out of her," thought he. "And why shouldn't she love me?
What does all this nonsense of family and breeding amount to, anyway?"
His mind was in great confusion. At one moment he was dismissing the
idea of such delicateness, such super-refined super-sensitiveness being
taken with a man of his imperfect bringing-up and humble origin. The
next moment his self-esteem was bobbing again, was jauntily assuring him
that he was "a born king" and, therefore, would naturally be discovered
and loved by a truly princess--"And, by Heaven, she IS a princess of the
blood royal! Those eyes, those hands, those slender feet!" Having no
great sense of humor he did not remind himself here how malicious nature
usually deprives royalty of the outward marks of aristocracy to bestow
them upon peasant.

At last he convinced himself that she was actually burning with love for
him, that she had lifted the veil for an instant--had lifted it
deliberately to encourage him to speak for himself. And he was not
repelled by this forwardness, was, on the contrary, immensely flattered.
It is the custom for those of high station to reassure those of lower,
to make them feel that they may draw near without fear. A queen seeking
a consort among princes always begins the courting. A rich girl willing
to marry a poor man lets him see she will not be offended if he offers
to add himself to her possessions. Yes, it would be quite consistent
with sex-custom, with maidenly modesty, for a Severence to make the
first open move toward a Josh Craig.

"But do I want her?"

That was another question. He admired her, he would be proud to have
such a wife. "She's just the sort I need, to adorn the station I'm going
to have." But what of his dreams of family life, of easy, domestic
undress, which she would undoubtedly find coarse and vulgar? "It would
be like being on parade all the time--she's been used to that sort of
thing her whole life, but it'd make me miserable." Could he afford a
complete, a lifelong sacrifice of comfort to gratify a vanity?

He had devoted much thought to the question of marriage. On the one hand
he wanted money; for in politics, with the people so stupid and so
fickle, a man without an independence, at least, would surely find
himself, sooner or later, in a position where he must choose between
retiring and submitting himself to some powerful interest--either a
complete sale, or a mortgage hardly less galling to pride, no less
degrading to self-respect. On the other hand he wanted a home--a wife
like his mother, domestic, attentive, looking out for his comfort and
his health, herself taking care of the children. And he had arrived at a
compromise. He would marry a girl out West somewhere, a girl of some
small town, brought up somewhat as he had been brought up, not shocked
by what Margaret Severance would regard as his vulgarities--a woman with
whom he felt equal and at ease. He would select such a woman, provided,
in addition, with some fortune--several hundred thousands, at least,
enough to make him independent. Such had been his plan. But now that he
had seen Margaret, had come to appreciate her through studying her as a
possible wife for his unattached friend Arkwright, now that he had
discovered her secret, her love for him--how could he fit her into his
career? Was it possible? Was it wise?

"The best is none too good for me," said he to himself swaggeringly. No
doubt about it--no, indeed, not the slightest. But--well, everybody
wouldn't realize this, as yet. And it must be admitted that those mere
foppish, inane nothings did produce a seeming of difference. Indeed, it
must even be admitted that the way Margaret had been brought up would
make it hard for her, with her sensitive, delicate nerves, to bear with
him if she really knew him. A hot wave passed over his body at the
thought. "How ashamed I'd be to have her see my wardrobe. I really must
brace up in the matter of shirts, and in the quality of underclothes and
socks." No, she probably would be shocked into aversion if she really
knew him--she, who had been surrounded by servants in livery all her
life; who had always had a maid to dress her, to arrange a delicious
bath for her every morning and every evening, to lay out, from a vast
and thrilling store of delicate clothing, the fresh, clean, fine,
amazingly costly garments that were to have the honor and the pleasure
of draping that aristocratic body of hers. "Why, her maid," thought he,
"is of about the same appearance and education as my aunts. Old Williams
is a far more cultured person than my uncles or brothers-in-law." Of
course, Selina and Williams were menials, while his male kin were men
and his female relatives women, "and all of them miles ahead of anything
in this gang when it comes to the real thing--character." Still, so far
as appearances went--"I'm getting to be a damned, cheap snob!" cried he
aloud. "To hell with the whole crowd! I want nothing to do with them!"

But Margaret, in her beautiful garments, diffusing perfume just as her
look and manner diffused the aroma of gentle breeding--The image of her
was most insidiously alluring; he could not banish it. "And, damn it
all, isn't she just a human being? What's become of my common-sense that
I treat these foolish trifles as if they were important?"

Grant Arkwright came while the debate was still on. He soon noted that
something was at work in Josh's mind to make him so silent and glum, so
different from his usual voluble, flamboyant self. "What's up, Josh?
What deviltry are you plotting now to add to poor old Stillwater's
nervous indigestion?"

"I'm thinking about marriage," said Craig, lighting a cigarette and
dropping into the faded magnificence of an ex-salon chair.

"Good business!" exclaimed Arkwright.

"It's far more important that you get married than that I do," explained
Craig. "At present you don't amount to a damn. You're like one of those
twittering swallows out there. As a married man you'd at least have the
validity that attaches to every husband and father."

"If I could find the right girl," said Grant.

"I thought I had found her for you," continued Craig. "But, on second
thoughts, I've about decided to take her for myself."

"Oh, you have?" said Arkwright, trying to be facetious of look and tone.

"Yes," said Josh, in his abrupt, decisive way. He threw the cigarette
into the empty fireplace and stood up. "I think I'll take your advice
and marry Miss Severance."

"Really!" mocked Grant; but he was red with anger, was muttering under
his breath, "Insolent puppy!"

"Yes, I think she'll do." Craig spoke as if his verdict were probably
overpartial to her. "It's queer about families and the kind of children
they have. Every once in a while you'll find a dumb ass of a man whose
brain will get to boiling with liquor or some other ferment, and it'll
incubate an idea, a real idea. It's that way about paternity--or,
rather, maternity. Now who'd think that inane, silly mother of
Margaret's could have brought such a person as she is into the world?"

"Mrs. Severence is a very sweet and amiable LADY," said Grant coldly.

"Pooh!" scoffed Craig. "She's a nothing--a puff of wind--a nit. Such as
she, by the great gross, wouldn't count one."

"I doubt if it would be--wise--politically, I mean--for you to marry a
woman of--of the fashionable set." Grant spoke judicially, with
constraint in his voice.

"You're quite right there," answered Craig promptly. "Still, it's a
temptation.... I've been reconsidering the idea since I discovered that
she loves me."

Grant leaped to his feet. "Loves you!" he shouted. Josh smiled calmly.
"Loves me," said he. "Why not, pray?"

"I--I--I--don't know," answered Grant weakly.

"Oh, yes, you do. You think I'm not good enough for her--as if this were
not America, but Europe." And he went on loftily: "You ought to consider
what such thoughts mean, as revelations of your own character, Grant."

"You misunderstood me entirely," protested Grant, red and guilty.
"Didn't I originally suggest her to you?"

"But you didn't really mean it," retorted Craig with a laugh which Grant
thought the quintessence of impertinence. "You never dreamed she'd fall
in love with me."

"Josh," said Grant, "I wish you wouldn't say that sort of thing. It's
not considered proper in this part of the country for a gentleman to
speak out that way about women."

"What's there to be ashamed of in being in love? Besides, aren't you my
best friend, the one I confide everything to?"

"You confide everything to everybody."

Craig looked amused. "There are only two that can keep a secret," said
he, "nobody and everybody. I trust either the one or the other, and
neither has ever betrayed me."

"To go back to the original subject: I'd prefer you didn't talk to me in
that way about that particular young lady."

"Why?... Because you're in love with her, yourself?"

Grant silently stared at the floor.

"Poor old chap," said Craig sympathetically.

Arkwright winced, started to protest, decided it was just as well to let
Craig think what he pleased at that juncture.

"Poor old chap!" repeated Josh. "Well, you needn't despair. It's true
she isn't in love with you and is in love with me. But if I keep away
from her and discourage her it'll soon die out. Women of that sort of
bringing up aren't capable of any enduring emotion--unless they have
outside aid in keeping it alive."

"No, thank you," said Arkwright bitterly. "I decline to be put in the
position of victim of your generosity. Josh, let me tell you, your
notion that she's in love with you is absurd. I'd advise you not to go
round confiding it to people, in your usual fashion. You'll make
yourself a laughing stock."

"I've told no one but you," protested Craig.

"Have you seen any one else since you got the idea?"

"No, I haven't," he admitted with a laugh. "Now that you've told me the
state of your heart I'll not speak of her feeling for me. I give you my
word of honor on that. I understand how a chap like you, full of false
pride, would be irritated at having people know he'd married a woman who
was once in love with some one else. For of course you'll marry her."

"I'm not sure of that. I haven't your sublime self-confidence, you
know."

"Oh, I'll arrange it," replied Craig, full of enthusiasm. "In fact, I
had already begun, this very afternoon, when she let me see that she
loved me and, so, brought me up standing."

"Damn it, man, DON'T say that!" cried Grant, all afire. "I tell you it's
crazy, conceited nonsense."

"All right, all right, old chap," soothed Josh.

And it frenzied Arkwright to see that he said this merely to spare the
feelings of an unrequited lover, not at all because he had begun to
doubt Margaret's love. "Come down to dinner and let's talk no more about
it," said Grant, with a great effort restraining himself. "I tell you,
Josh, you make it mighty hard sometimes for me to remember what I owe
you."

Craig wheeled on him with eyes that flashed and pierced. "My young
friend," said he, "you owe me nothing. And let me say to you, once for
all, you are free to break with me at any instant--you or any other man.
Whenever I find I'm beginning to look on a man as necessary to me I drop
him--break with him. I am necessary to my friends, not they to me. I
like you, but be careful how you get impertinent with me."

Craig eyed him fiercely and steadily until Arkwright's gaze dropped.
Then he laughed friendly. "Come along, Grant," said he. "You're a good
fellow, and I'll get you the girl." And he linked his arm in Arkwright's
and took up another phase of himself as the topic of his monologue.




CHAPTER IX

SOMEWHAT CYCLONIC


Margaret, on the way home afoot from the White House, where she had been
lunching with the President's niece, happened upon Craig standing with
his hands behind his back before the statue of Jackson. He was gazing up
at the fierce old face with an expression so animated that passers-by
were smiling broadly. She thought he was wholly absorbed; but when she
was about half-way across his range of vision he hailed her. "I say,
Miss Severence!" he cried loudly.

She flushed with annoyance. But she halted, for she knew that if she did
not he would only shout at her and make a scene.

"I'll walk with you," said he, joining her when he saw she had no
intention of moving toward him.

"Don't let me draw you from your devotions," protested she. "I'm just
taking a car, anyhow."

"Then I'll ride home with you and walk back. I want to talk with a
woman--a sensible woman--not easy to find in this town."

Margaret was disliking him, his manner was so offensively familiar and
patronizing--and her plans concerning him made her contemptuous of
herself, and therefore resentful against him. "I'm greatly flattered,"
said she.

"No, you're not. But you ought to be. I suppose if you had met that old
chap on the pedestal there when he was my age you'd have felt toward him
much as you do toward me."

"And I suppose he'd have been just about as much affected by it as you
are."

"Just about. It was a good idea, planting his statue there to warn the
fellow that happens to be in the White House not to get too cultured.
You know it was because the gang that was in got too refined and forgot
whom this country belonged to that old Jackson was put in office. The
same thing will happen again."

"And you'll be the person?" suggested Margaret with a smile of raillery.

"If I show I'm fit for the job," replied Craig soberly. It was the first
time she had ever heard him admit a doubt about himself. "The question
is," he went on, "have I got the strength of character and the
courage?... What do you think?"

"I don't know anything about it," said Margaret with polite
indifference. "There comes my car. I'll not trouble you to accompany
me." She put out her hand. "Goodby." She did not realize it, or intend
it, but she had appealed to one of his powerful instincts, a powerful
instinct in all predatory natures--the instinct to pursue whatever seems
to be flying.

He shook his head at the motorman, who was bringing the car to a halt;
the car went on. He stood in front of her. Her color was high, but she
could not resist the steady compulsion of his eyes. "I told you I wanted
to talk with you," said he. "Do you know why I was standing before that
statue?"

"I do not," Margaret answered coldly.

"I was trying to get the courage to ask you to be my wife."

She gave a queer laugh. "Well, you seem to have got what you sought,"
said she. He had, as usual, taken her wholly unawares.

"Not so fast," replied Craig. "I haven't asked you yet."

Margaret did not know whether she most wished to laugh or to burst out
in anger. "I'm sure I don't care anything about it, one way or the
other," said she.

"Why say those insincere things--to ME?" he urged. She had begun to
walk, and he was keeping pace with her. "Jackson," he proceeded, "was a
man of absolute courage. He took the woman he wanted--defied public
opinion to do it--and it only made him the more popular. I had always
intended to strengthen myself by marrying. If I married you I'd weaken
myself politically, while if I married some Western girl, some daughter
of the people, I'd make a great popular stroke."

"Well--do it, then," said Margaret. "By all means do it."

"Oh, but there's you," exclaimed Craig. "What'd I do about you?"

"That's true," said Margaret mockingly. "But what am I to stand between
a man and ambition?"

"I say that to myself," replied Craig. "But it's no use." His eyes
thrilled her, his voice seemed to melt her dislike, her resolve, as he
said: "There you are, and there you stay, Margaret. And you're not at
all fit to be my wife. You haven't been brought up right. You ought to
marry some man like Grant. He's just the man for you. Why did you ever
fall in love with me?"

She stopped short, stared at him in sheer amazement. "I!" exclaimed she.
"I--in love with YOU!"

He halted before her. "Margaret," he said tenderly, "can you deny it?"

She flushed; hung her head. The indignant denial died upon her lips.

He sighed. "You see, it is fate," said he. "But I'll manage it somehow.
I'll win out in spite of any, of every handicap."

She eyed him furtively. Yes, if she wished to make a marriage of
ambition she could not do better. All Washington was laughing at him;
but she felt she had penetrated beneath the surface that excited their
mirth--had seen qualities that would carry him wherever he wished to
go--wherever she, with her grandmother's own will, wished him to go.

"And," pursued he, "I'm far too rough and coarse for you--you, the
quintessence of aristocracy."

She flushed with double delight--delight at this flattery and the deeper
delight a woman feels when a man shows her the weakness in himself by
which she can reach and rule him.

"I'm always afraid of offending your delicacy," he went fatuously on.
"You're the only person I ever felt that way about. Absolutely the only
one. But you've got to expect that sort of thing in a man who prevails
in such a world as this. When men get too high-toned and aristocratic,
too fussy about manners and dress, along come real men to ride them down
and under. But I'll try to be everything you wish--to you. Not to the
others. That would defeat our object; for I'm going to take my wife
high--very high."

Yes, he would indeed take her high--very high. Now that what she wanted,
what she must have, was offering, how could she refuse? They were
crossing another square of green. He drew--almost dragged--her into one
of the by-paths, seized her in his arms, kissed her passionately. "I
can't resist you--I can't!" he cried.

"Don't--don't!" she murmured, violently agitated. "Some one might see!"

"Some one is seeing, no doubt," he said, his breath coming quickly, a
look that was primeval, ferocious almost, in his eyes as they devoured
her. And, despite her protests and struggles, she was again in those
savage arms of his, was again shrinking and burning and trembling under
his caresses. She flung herself away, sank upon a bench, burst out
crying.

"What is it, Margaret?" he begged, alarmed, yet still looking as if he
would seize her again.

"I don't know--I don't know," she replied.

Once more she tried to tell him that she did not love him, but the words
would not come. She felt that he would not believe her; indeed, she was
not sure of her own heart, of the meaning of those unprecedented
emotions that had risen under his caresses, and that stirred at the
memory of them. "Perhaps I am trying to love him," she said to herself.
"Anyhow, I must marry him. I can trifle with my future no longer. I must
be free of this slavery to grandmother. I must be free. He can free me,
and I can manage him, for he is afraid of me."

"Did I hurt you?" Craig was asking.

She nodded.

"I am so sorry," he exclaimed. "But when I touched you I
forgot--everything!"

She smiled gently at him. "I didn't dream you cared for me," she said.

He laughed with a boisterousness that irritated her. "I'd never have
dared tell you," replied he, "if I hadn't seen that you cared for me."

Her nerves winced, but she contrived to make her tone passable as she
inquired: "Why do you say that?"

"Oh--the day in the garden--the day I came pleading for Grant. I saw it
in your eyes--You remember."

Margaret could not imagine what he had misinterpreted so flatteringly to
himself. But what did it matter? How like ironic fate, to pierce him
with a chance shaft when all the shafts she had aimed had gone astray!

She was startled by his seizing her again. At his touch she flamed.
"Don't!" she cried imperiously. "I don't like it!"

He laughed, held her the more tightly, kissed her half a dozen times
squarely upon the lips. "Not that tone to me," said he. "I shall kiss
you when I please."

She was furiously angry; but again her nerves were trembling, were
responding to those caresses, and even as she hated him for violating
her lips, she longed for him to continue to violate them. She started
up. "Let us go," she cried.

He glanced at his watch. "I'll have to put you in a car," said he. "I
forgot all about my appointment." And he fumed with impatience while she
was adjusting her hat and veil pushed awry by his boisterous
love-making. "It's the same old story," he went on. "Woman weakens man.
You are a weakness with me--one that will cost me dear."

She burned with a sense of insult. She hated him, longed to pour out
denunciations, to tell him just what she thought of him. She felt a
contempt for herself deeper than her revulsion against him. In silence
she let him hurry her along to a car; she scarcely heard what he was
saying--his tactless, angry outburst against himself and her for his
tardiness at that important appointment. She dropped into the seat with
a gasp of relief. She felt she must--for form's sake--merely for form's
sake--glance out of the window for the farewell he would be certain to
expect; she must do her part, now that she had committed herself. She
glanced; he was rushing away, with never a backward look--or thought. It
was her crowning humiliation. "I'll make him pay for all this, some
day!" she said to herself, shaking with anger, her grandmother's own
temper raging cyclonically within her.




CHAPTER X

A BELATED PROPOSAL


Her mood--outraged against Craig, sullenly determined to marry him,
angry with her relatives, her mother no less than her grandmother,
because they were driving her to these desperate measures--this mood
persisted, became intenser, more imperious in its demand for a sacrifice
as the afternoon wore on. When Grant Arkwright came, toward six o'clock,
she welcomed him, the first-comer bringing her the longed-for chance to
discharge the vials of her wrath. And she noted with pleasure that he,
too, was in a black humor. Before she could begin he burst forth:

"What's this that Josh Craig has been telling me? He seems to have gone
stark mad!"

Margaret eyed him with icy disdain. "If there is any quality that can be
called the most repulsive," said she, "it is treachery. You've fallen
into a way of talking of your friend Craig behind his back that's
unworthy--perhaps not of you, but certainly of the person you pose as
being."

"Did you propose to him this afternoon?" demanded Grant.

Margaret grew cold from head to foot. "Does he say I did?" she succeeded
in articulating.

"He does. He was so excited that he jumped off a car and held me an hour
telling me, though he was late for one of those important conferences
he's always talking about."

Margaret had chosen her course. "Did he ask you to run and tell me he
had told you?" inquired she, with the vicious gleam of a vicious temper
in her fine hazel eyes.

"No," admitted Grant. "I suppose I've no right to tell you. But it was
such an INFERNAL lie."

"Did you tell him so?"

Arkwright grew red.

"I see you did not," said Margaret. "I knew you did not. Now, let me
tell you, I don't believe Craig said anything of the kind. A man who'd
betray a friend is quite capable of lying about him."

"Margaret! Rita Severence!" Grant started up, set down his teacup, stood
looking down at her, his face white to the lips. "Your tone is not jest;
it is insult."

"It was so intended." Margaret's eyes were upon him, her grandmother's
own favorite expression in them. Now that she was no longer a
matrimonial offering she felt profoundly indifferent to eligible men,
rejoiced in her freedom to act toward them as she wished. "I do not
permit any one to lie to me about the man I have engaged to marry."

"What!" shouted Grant. "It was TRUE?"

"Go out into the garden and try to calm yourself, Grant," said the girl
haughtily. "And if you can't, why--take yourself off home. And don't
come back until you are ready to apologize."

"Rita, why didn't you give me a hint? I'd have married you myself. I'm
willing to do it.... Rita, will you marry me?"

Margaret leaned back upon the sofa and laughed until his blood began to
run alternately hot and cold.

"I beg your pardon," he stammered. "I did not realize how it sounded.
Only--you know how things are with our sort of people. And, as men go, I
can't help knowing I'm what's called a catch, and that you're looking
for a suitable husband.... As it's apparently a question of him or me,
and as you've admitted you got him by practically proposing--...Damn
it all, Rita, I want you, and I'm not going to let such a man as he is
have you. I never dreamed you'd bother with him seriously or I'd not
have been so slow."

Margaret was leaning back, looking up at him. "I've sunk even lower than
I thought," she said, bringing to an end the painful silence which
followed this speech.

"What do you mean, Rita?"

She laughed cynically, shrugged her shoulders. First, Craig's impudent
assumption that she loved him, and his rude violation of her lips; now,
this frank insolence of insult, the more savage that it was
unconscious--and from the oldest and closest of her men friends. If one
did not die under such outrages, but continued to live and let live, one
could save the situation only by laughing. So, Margaret laughed--and
Arkwright shivered.

"For God's sake, Rita!" he cried. "I'd not have believed that lips so
young and fresh as yours could utter such a cynical sound."

She looked at him with disdainful, derisive eyes. "It's fortunate for me
that I have a sense of humor," said she. "And for you," she added.

"But I am in earnest, I mean it--every word I said."

"That's just it," replied she. "You meant it--every word."

"You will marry me?"

"I will not."

"Why?"

"For several reasons. For instance, I happen to be engaged to another
man."

"That is--nothing." He snapped his fingers.

She elevated her brows. "Nothing?"

"He'd not keep his promise to you if--In fact, he was debating with me
whether or not he'd back down."

"Either what you say is false," said she evenly, "or you are betraying
the confidence of a friend who trusted in your honor."

"Oh, he said it, all right. You know how he is about confidences."

"No matter."

Margaret rose slowly, a gradual lifting of her long, supple figure.
Grant watching, wondered why he had never before realized that the
sensuous charm of her beauty was irresistible. "Where were my eyes?" he
asked himself. "She's beyond any of the women I've wasted so much time
on."

She was saying with quiet deliberateness: "A few days ago, Grant, I'd
have jumped at your offer--to be perfectly frank. Why shouldn't I be
frank! I'm sick of cowardly pretenses and lies. I purpose henceforth to
be myself--almost." A look within and a slightly derisive smile.
"Almost. I shall hesitate and trifle no longer. I shall marry your
friend Craig."

"You'll do nothing of the kind," raged Arkwright. "If you make it
necessary I'll tell him why you're marrying him."

"You may do as you like about that," replied she. "He'll probably
understand why you are trying to break off our engagement."

"You're very confident of your power over him," taunted he.

She saw again Craig's face as he was kissing her. "Very," replied she.

"You'll see. It's a mere physical attraction."

She smiled tantalizingly, her long body displayed against the
window-casing, her long, round arms bare below the elbows, her hazel
eyes and sensuous lips alluring. "You, yourself, never thought of
proposing to me until I had made myself physically attractive to you,"
said she. "Now--have I power over you, or not?"

She laughed as his color mounted, and the look she had seen in Craig's
eyes blazed out in his.

"How little physical charm you have for me," she went on. "Beside Craig
you're like an electric fan in competition with a storm-wind. Now,
Craig--" She closed her eyes and drew a long breath.

Arkwright gnawed his lip. "What a--a DEVIL you ARE!" he exclaimed.

"I wonder why it is a woman never becomes desirable to some men until
they find she's desired elsewhere," she went on reflectively. "What a
lack of initiative. What timidity. What an absence of originality. If I
had nothing else against you, Grant, I'd never forgive you for having
been so long blind to my charms--you and these other men of our set
who'll doubtless be clamorous now."

"If you'd been less anxious to please," suggested he bitterly, "and more
courageous about being your own real self, you'd not have got yourself
into this mess."

"Ah--but that wasn't my fault," replied she absently. "It was the fault
of my training. Ever since I can remember I've been taught to be on my
guard, lest the men shouldn't like me." In her new freedom she looked
back tranquilly upon the struggle she was at last emancipated from, and
philosophized about it. "What a mistake mothers make in putting worry
about getting a husband into their daughters' heads. Believe me, Grant,
that dread makes wretched what ought to be the happiest time of a girl's
life."

"Rita," he pleaded, "stop this nonsense, and say you'll marry me."

"No, thanks," said she. "I've chosen. And I'm well content."

She gave him a last tantalizing look and went out on the veranda, to go
along it to the outdoor stairway. Arkwright gazed after her through a
fierce conflict of emotions. Was she really in earnest? Could it be
possible that Josh Craig had somehow got a hold over her? "Or, is it
that she doesn't trust me, thinks I'd back down if she were to throw him
over and rely on me?" No, there was something positively for Craig in
her tone and expression. She was really intending to marry him. Grant
shuddered. "If she only realized what marrying a man of that sort
means!" he exclaimed, half aloud. "But she doesn't. Only a woman who has
been married can appreciate what sort of a hell for sensitive nerves and
refined tastes marriage can be made."

"Ah--Mr. Arkwright!"

At this interruption in a woman's voice--the voice he disliked and
dreaded above all others--he startled and turned to face old Madam
Bowker in rustling black silk, with haughty casque of gray-white hair
and ebon staff carried firmly, well forward. Grant bowed. "How d'ye do,
Mrs. Bowker?" said he with respectful deference. What he would have
thought was the impossible had come to pass. He was glad to see her.
"She'll put an end to this nonsense--this nightmare," said he to
himself.

Madam Bowker had Williams, the butler, and a maid-servant in her train.
She halted, gazed round the room; she pointed with the staff to the
floor a few feet from the window and a little back. "Place my chair
there," commanded she.

The butler and the maid hastened to move a large carved and gilded chair
to the indicated spot. Madam Bowker seated herself with much ceremony.

"Now!" said she. "We will rearrange the room. Bring that sofa from the
far corner to the other side of this window, and put the tea-table in
front of it. Put two chairs where the sofa was; arrange the other
chairs--" And she indicated the places with her staff.

While the room was still in confusion Mrs. Severence entered. "What is
it, Mamma?" she asked.

"Simply trying to make this frightful room a little less frightful."

"Don't you think the pictures should be rehung to suit the new
arrangement, ma'am?" suggested Arkwright.

Madam Bowker, suspicious of jest, looked sharply at him. He seemed
serious. "You are right," said she.

"But people will be coming in a few minutes," pleaded Roxana.

"Then to-morrow," said Madam Bowker reluctantly. "That will do,
Williams--that will do, Betty. And, Betty, you must go at once and make
yourself neat. You've had on that cap two days."

"No, indeed, ma'am!" protested Betty.

"Then it was badly done up. Roxana, how can you bear to live in such a
slovenly way?"

"Will you have tea now, Mamma?" was Roxana's diplomatic reply.

"Yes," answered the old lady.

"Tea, Mr. Arkwright?"

"Thanks, no, Mrs. Severence. I'm just going. I merely looked in to--to
congratulate Rita."

Madam Bowker clutched her staff. "To congratulate my granddaughter? Upon
what, pray?"

Arkwright simulated a look of surprise. "Upon her engagement."

"Her WHAT?" demanded the old lady, while Roxana sat holding a lump of
sugar suspended between bowl and cup.

"Her engagement to Josh Craig."

"No such thing!" declared the old lady instantly. "Really, sir, it is
disgraceful that MY granddaughter's name should be associated in ANY
connection with such a person."

Here Margaret entered the room by the French windows by which she had
left. She advanced slowly and gracefully, amid a profound silence. Just
as she reached the tea-table her grandmother said in a terrible voice:
"Margaret!"

"Yes, Grandmother," responded Margaret smoothly, without looking at her.

"Mr. Arkwright here has brought in a scandalous story about your being
engaged to that--that Josh person--the clerk in one of the departments.
Do you know him?"

"Yes, Grandma. But not very well."

Madam Bowker glanced triumphantly at Arkwright; he was gazing amazedly
at Margaret.

"You see, Grant," said Roxana, with her foolish, pleasant laugh, "there
is nothing in it."

"In what?" asked Margaret innocently, emptying the hot water from her
cup.

"In the story of your engagement, dear," said her mother.

"Oh, yes, there is," replied Margaret with a smiling lift of her brows.
"It's quite true." Then, suddenly drawing herself up, she wheeled on
Grant with a frown as terrible as her grandmother's own. "Be off!" she
said imperiously.

Arkwright literally shrank from the room. As he reached the door he saw
her shiver and heard her mutter, "Reptile!"




CHAPTER XI

MADAM BOWKER HEARS THE NEWS


In the midst of profound hush Madam Bowker was charging her heavy
artillery, to train it upon and demolish the engagement certainly, and
probably Margaret, too. Just as she was about to open fire callers were
ushered in. As luck had it they were the three Stillwater girls, hastily
made-over Westerners, dressed with great show of fashion in what
purported to be imported French hats and gowns. An expert eye, however,
would instantly have pierced the secret of this formidable array of
plumes and furbelows. The Stillwaters fancied they had exquisite taste
and real genius in the art of dress. Those hats were made at home, were
adaptations of the imported hats--adaptations of the kind that "see" the
original and "go it a few better." As for the dresses, the Stillwaters
had found one of those treasures dear to a certain kind of woman, had
found a "woman just round the corner, and not established yet"--"I
assure you, my dear, she takes a mental picture of the most difficult
dress to copy, and you'd never know hers from the original--and SO
reasonable!"

In advance came Molly Stillwater, the youngest and prettiest and the
most aggressively dressed because her position as family beauty made it
incumbent upon her to lead the way in fashion. As soon as the greetings
were over--cold, indeed, from Madam Bowker, hysterical from
Roxana--Molly gushed out: "Just as we left home, Josh Craig came tearing
in. If possible, madder than a hatter--yes--really--" Molly was still
too young to have learned to control the mechanism of her mouth; thus,
her confused syntax seemed the result of the alarming and fascinating
contortions of her lips and tongue--"and, when we told him where we were
going he shouted out, 'Give Rita my love.'"

Margaret penetrated to the purpose to anger her against Craig. Was not
Craig intended by Mrs. Stillwater for Jessie, the eldest and only
serious one of the three? And was not his conduct, his hanging about
Margaret and his shying off from Jessie, thoroughly up on public
questions and competent to discuss them with anybody--was not his
conduct most menacing to her plans? Mrs. Stillwater, arranging for
matrimony for all her daughters, had decided that Jess was hopeless
except as a "serious woman," since she had neither figure nor face, nor
even abundant hair, which alone is enough to entangle some men. So, Jess
had been set to work at political economy, finance, at studying up the
political situations; and, if started right and not interfered with, she
could give as good account of her teaching as any phonograph.

Margaret welcomed Molly's message from Craig with a sweet smile. An
amused glance at the thunderous face of her grandmother, and she said,
"Perhaps it would interest you, dear, to know that he and I are
engaged."

What could Madam Bowker say? What could she do? Obviously, nothing. The
three Stillwaters became hysterical. Their comments and congratulations
were scraps of disjointed nonsense, and they got away under cover of
more arrivals, in as great disorder as if the heavy guns Madam Bowker
had stacked to the brim for Margaret had accidentally discharged into
them. Madam Bowker could wait no longer. "Margaret," said she, "help me
to my carriage."

Mrs. Severence gave her difficult daughter an appealing glance, as if
she feared the girl would cap the climax of rebellion by flatly
refusing; but Margaret said sweetly:

"Yes, Grandma."

The two left the room, the old lady leaning heavily on her granddaughter
and wielding her ebony staff as if getting her arm limbered to use it.
In the hall, she said fiercely, "To your room," and waved her staff
toward the stairway.

Margaret hesitated, shrugged her shoulders. She preceding, and Madam
Bowker ascending statelily afterward, they went up and were presently
alone in Margaret's pretty rose and gold boudoir, with the outer door
closed.

"Now!" exclaimed Madam Bowker.

"Not so loud, please," suggested the tranquil Margaret, "unless you wish
Selina to hear." She pointed to the door ajar. "She's sewing in there."

"Send the woman away," commanded the old lady.

But Margaret merely closed the door. "Well, Grandmother?"

"Sit at this desk," ordered the old lady, pointing with the ebony staff,
"and write a note to that man Craig, breaking the engagement. Say you
have thought it over and have decided it is quite impossible. And
to-morrow morning you go to New York with me."

Margaret seated herself on the lounge instead. "I'll do neither," said
she.

The old lady waved the end of her staff in a gesture of lofty disdain.
"As you please. But, if you do not, your allowance is withdrawn."

"Certainly," said Margaret. "I assumed that."

Madam Bowker gazed at her with eyes like tongues of flame. "And how do
you expect to live?" she inquired.

"That is OUR affair," replied the girl. "You say you are done with me.
Well, so am I done with you."

It was, as Margaret had said, because she was not afraid of her
grandmother that that formidable old lady respected her; and as she was
one of those who can give affection only where they give respect, she
loved Margaret--loved her with jealous and carping tenacity. The girl's
words of finality made her erect and unyielding soul shiver in a sudden
dreary blast of loneliness, that most tragic of all the storms that
sweep the ways of life. It was in the tone of the anger of love with the
beloved that she cried, "How DARE you engage yourself to such a person!"

"You served notice on me that I must marry," replied the girl, her own
tone much modified. "He was the chance that offered."

"The chance!" Madam Bowker smiled with caustic scorn, "He's not a
chance."

"You ordered me to marry. I am marrying. And you are violating your
promise. But I expected it."

"My promise? What do you mean?"

"You told me if I'd marry you'd continue my allowance after marriage.
You even hinted you'd increase it."

"But this is no marriage. I should consider a connection between such a
man and a Severence as a mere vulgar intrigue. You might as well run
away with a coachman. I have known few coachmen so ill-bred--so
repellent--as this Craig."

Margaret laughed cheerfully. "He isn't what you'd call polished, is he?"

Her grandmother studied her keenly. "Margaret," she finally said, "this
is some scheme of yours. You are using this engagement to help you to
something else."

"I refused Grant Arkwright just before you came."

"You--refused--Arkwright?"

"My original plan was to trap Grant by making him jealous of Craig. But
I abandoned it."

"And why?"

"A remnant of decency."

"I doubt it," said the old lady.

"So should I in the circumstances. We're a pretty queer lot, aren't we?
You, for instance--on the verge of the grave, and breaking your promise
to me as if a promise were nothing."

Mrs. Bowker's ebon staff twitched convulsively and her terrible eyes
were like the vent-holes of internal fires; but she managed her rage
with a skill that was high tribute to her will-power. "You are right in
selecting this clown--this tag-rag," said she. "You and he, I see, are
peculiarly suited to each other.... My only regret is that in my blind
affection I have wasted all these years and all those thousands of
dollars on you." Madam Bowker affected publicly a fine scorn of money
and all that thereto appertained; but privately she was a true
aristocrat in her reverence and consideration for that which is the bone
and blood of aristocracy.

"Nothing so stupid and silly as regret," said Margaret, with placid
philosophy of manner. "I, too, could think of things I regret. But I'm
putting my whole mind on the future."

"Future!" Madam Bowker laughed. "Why, my child, you have no future.
Within two years you'll either be disgracefully divorced, or the wife of
a little lawyer in a little Western town."

"But I'll have my husband and my children. What more can a woman ask?"

The old lady scrutinized her granddaughter's tranquil, delicate face in
utter amazement. She could find nothing on which to base a hope that the
girl was either jesting or posing. "Margaret," she cried, "are you
CRAZY?"

"Do you think a desire for a home, and a husband who adores one, and
children whom one adores is evidence of insanity?"

"Yes, you are mad--quite mad!"

"I suppose you think that fretting about all my seasons without an offer
worth accepting has driven me out of my senses. Sometimes I think so,
too." And Margaret lapsed into abstracted, dreamy silence.

"Do you pretend that you--you--care for--this person?" inquired the old
lady.

"I can't discuss him with you, Grandmother," replied the girl. "You know
you have washed your hands of me."

"I shall never give up," cried the old lady vehemently, "until I rescue
you. I'll not permit this disgrace. I'll have him driven out of
Washington."

"Yes, you might try that," said Margaret. "I don't want him to stay
here. I am sick--sick to death--of all this. I loathe everything I ever
liked. It almost seems to me I'd prefer living in a cabin in the
back-woods. I've just wakened to what it really means--no love, no
friendship, only pretense and show, rivalry in silly extravagance,
aimless running to and fro among people that care nothing for one, and
that one cares nothing for. If you could see it as I see it you'd
understand."

But Madam Bowker had thought all her life in terms of fashion and
society. She was not in the least impressed. "Balderdash!" said she with
a jab at the floor with the ebony staff. "Don't pose before me. You know
very well you're marrying this man because you believe he will amount to
a great deal."

Margaret beamed upon her grandmother triumphantly, as if she had stepped
into a trap that had been set for her. "And your only reason for being
angry," cried she, "is that you don't believe he will."

"I know he won't. He can't. Stillwater has kept him solely because that
unspeakable wife of his hopes to foist their dull, ugly eldest girl on
him."

"You think a man as shrewd as Stillwater would marry his daughter to a
nobody?"

"It's useless for you to argue, Margaret," snapped the old lady. "The
man's impossible--for a Severence. I shall stop the engagement."

"You can't," rejoined Margaret calmly. "My mind is made up. And along
with several other qualities, Grandmother, dear, I've inherited your
will."

"Will without wit--is there anything worse? But I know you are not
serious. It is merely a mood--the result of a profound discouragement.
My dear child, let me assure you it is no unusual thing for a girl of
your position, yet without money, to have no offers at all. You should
not believe the silly lies your girlfriends tell about having bushels of
offers. No girl has bushels of offers unless she makes herself common
and familiar with all kinds of men--and takes their loose talk
seriously. Most men wouldn't dare offer themselves to you. The impudence
of this Craig! You should have ordered him out of your presence."

Margaret, remembering how Craig had seized her, smiled.

"I admit I have been inconsiderate in urging you so vigorously,"
continued her grandmother. "I thought I had observed a tendency to
fritter. I wished you to stop trifling with Grant Arkwright--or, rather,
to stop his trifling with you. Come, now, my dear, let me put an end to
this engagement. And you will marry Grant, and your future will be
bright and assured."

Margaret shook her head. "I have promised," said she, and her expression
would have thrilled Lucia.

Madam Bowker was singularly patient with this evidence of
sentimentalism. "That's fine and noble of you. But you didn't realize
what a grave step you were taking, and you--"

"Yes, but I did. If ever anything was deliberate on a woman's part, that
engagement was." A bright spot burned in each of the girl's cheeks. "He
didn't really propose. I pretended to misunderstand him."

Her grandmother stared.

"You needn't look at me like that," exclaimed Margaret. "You know very
well that Grandfather Bowker never would have married you if you hadn't
fairly compelled him. I heard him tease you about it once when I was a
little girl."

It was Madam Bowker's turn to redden. She deigned to smile. "Men are so
foolish," observed she, "that women often have to guide them. There
would be few marriages of the right sort if the men were not managed."

Margaret nodded assent. "I realize that now," said she. Earnestly:
"Grandmother, try to make the best of this engagement of mine. When a
woman, a woman as experienced and sensible as I am, makes up her mind a
certain man is the man for her, is it wise to interfere?"

Madam Bowker, struck by the searching wisdom of this remark, was
silenced for the moment. In the interval of thought she reflected that
she would do well to take counsel of herself alone in proceeding to
break this engagement. "You are on the verge of making a terrible
misstep, child," said she with a gentleness she had rarely shown even to
her favorite grandchild. "I shall think it over, and you will think it
over. At least, promise me you will not see Craig for a few days."

Margaret hesitated. Her grandmother, partly by this unusual gentleness,
partly by inducing the calmer reflection of the second thought, had
shaken her purpose more than she would have believed possible. "If I've
made a mistake," said she, "isn't seeing him the best way to realize
it?"

"Yes," instantly and emphatically admitted the acute old lady. "See him,
by all means. See as much of him as possible. And in a few days you will
be laughing at yourself--and very much ashamed."

"I wonder," said Margaret aloud, but chiefly to herself.

And Madam Bowker, seeing the doubt in her face, only a faint reflection
of the doubt that must be within, went away content.




CHAPTER XII

PUTTING DOWN A MUTINY


Margaret made it an all but inflexible rule not to go out, but to rest
and repair one evening in each week; that was the evening, under the
rule, but she would have broken the rule had any opportunity offered. Of
course, for the first time since the season began, no one sent or
telephoned to ask her to fill in at the last moment. She half-expected
Craig, though she knew he was to be busy; he neither came nor called up.
She dined moodily with the family, sat surlily in a corner of the
veranda until ten o'clock, hid herself in bed. She feared she would have
a sleepless night. But she had eaten no dinner; and, as indigestion is
about the only thing that will keep a healthy human being awake, she
slept dreamlessly, soundly, not waking until Selina slowly and softly
opened the inner blinds of her bedroom at eight the next morning.

There are people who are wholly indifferent about their surroundings,
and lead the life dictated by civilized custom only because they are
slaves of custom, Margaret was not one of these. She not only adopted
all the comforts and luxuries that were current, she also spent much
tune in thinking out new luxuries, new refinements upon those she
already had. She was through, and through the luxurious idler; she made
of idling a career--pursued it with intelligent purpose where others
simply drifted, yawning when pastimes were not provided for them. She
was as industrious and ingenious at her career as a Craig at furthering
himself and his ideas in a public career.

Like the others of her class she left the care of her mind to chance. As
she had a naturally good mind and a bird-like instinct for flitting
everywhere, picking out the food from the chaff, she made an excellent
showing even in the company of serious people. But that was accident.
Her person was her real care. To her luxurious, sensuous nature every
kind of pleasurable physical sensation made keen appeal, and she strove
in every way to make it keener. She took the greatest care of her
health, because health meant beauty and every nerve and organ in
condition to enjoy to its uttermost capacity.

Because of this care it was often full three hours and half between the
entrance of Selina and her own exit, dressed and ready for the day. And
those three hours and a half were the happiest of her day usually,
because they were full of those physical sensations in which she most
delighted. Her first move, after Selina had awakened her, was to spend
half an hour in "getting the yawns out." She had learned this
interesting, pleasant and amusing trick from a baby in a house where she
had once spent a week. She would extend herself at full length in the
bed, and then slowly stretch each separate muscle of arm and leg, of
foot and hand, of neck and shoulders and waist. This stretching process
was accompanied by a series of prolonged, profound, luxurious yawns.

The yawning exercise completed, she rose and took before a long mirror a
series of other exercises, some to strengthen her waist, others to keep
her back straight and supple, others to make firm the contour of her
face and throat. A half-hour of this, then came her bath. This was no
hurried plunge, drying and away, but a long and elaborate function at
which Selina assisted. There had to be water of three temperatures; a
dozen different kinds of brushes, soaps, towels and other apparatus
participated. When it was finished Margaret's skin glowed and shone, was
soft and smooth and exhaled a delicious odor of lilacs. During the
exercises Selina had been getting ready the clothes for the
day--everything fresh throughout, and everything delicately redolent of
the same essence of lilacs with which Selina had rubbed her from hai

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