Mistress Anne Part 28

"Austin wanted me with him in an operation. He telegraphed me and I took the first train. I have been here for two days without a minute's time in which to call you up."

"I thought that perhaps you had come to see me."

"Seeing you is a pleasant part of it, Eve."

He was really glad to see her; to be drawn away by it all from the somberness of his thoughts. The night before he had left the train on the Jersey side and had ferried over so that he might view once more the sky-line of the great city. There had been a stiff breeze blowing and it had seemed to him that he drew the first full breath since the moment when he had walked with Geoffrey in the wood. What had followed had been like a dream; the knowledge that the great surgeon wanted him, his mother's quick service in helping him pack his bag, the walk to Bower's in the fragrant dark to catch the ten o'clock train; the moment on the porch at Bower's when he had learned from a word dropped by Beulah that Anne was on the river with Geoffrey.

And now it all seemed so far away--the river with the moon's broad path, Bower's low house and its yellow-lighted panes, the silence, the darkness.

Since morning he had done a thousand things. He had been to the hospital and had yielded once more to the spell of its splendid machinery; he had talked with Austin and the talk had been like wine to a thirsty soul. In such an atmosphere a man would have little time to--think. He craved the action, the excitement, the uplift.

He came back to Eve's prattle. "I told Winifred Ames we would come to her little supper after the play. I was to have gone with her and Pip and Jimmie Ford. Tony is away. But when you 'phoned, I called the first part of it off. I wanted to have a little time just with you, Richard."

He smiled at her. "Who is Jimmie Ford?"

"A lovely youth who is in love with me--or with my money--he was at your birthday party, d.i.c.ky Boy; don't you remember?"

"The Blue b.u.t.terfly? Yes. Is he another victim, Eve?"

She shrugged. "Who knows? If he is in love with me, he'll get hurt; if he is in love with Aunt Maude's money, he won't get it. Oh, how can a woman know?" The lightness left her voice. "Sometimes I think that I'll go off somewhere and see if somebody won't love me for what I am, and not for what he thinks Aunt Maude is going to leave me."

"And you with a string of scalps at your belt, and Pip ready at any moment to die for you."

She nodded. "Pip is pure gold. n.o.body can question his motives. And anyhow he has more money than I can ever hope to have. But I am not in love with him, d.i.c.ky."

"You are not in love with anybody. You are a cold-blooded little thing, Eve. A man would need much fire to melt your ice."

"Would he?"

"You know he would."

He swept away from her petulances to the thing which was for the moment uppermost in his mind. "I have had an offer, Eve, from Austin. He wants an a.s.sistant, a younger man who can work into his practice. It is a wonderful working opportunity."

"It would be wicked to throw it away," she told him, breathlessly, "wicked, Richard."

"It looks that way. But there's mother to think of, and Crossroads has come to mean a lot to me, Eve."

"Oh, but New York, d.i.c.ky! Think of the good times we'd have, and of your getting into Austin's line of work and his patients. You would be rolling in your own limousine before you'd know it."

Rolling in his own limousine! And missing the rhythm of big Ben's measured trot----!

"_I think--she was the--most beautiful_----"

As they motored to Winifred's, Eve spoke of his quiet mood. "Why don't you talk, d.i.c.ky?"

"It has been a busy day--I'll wake up presently and realize that I am here."

It was before he went down-stairs at the Dutton-Ames that he had a moment alone with Jimmie Ford.

Jimmie was not in the best of moods. Winifred had asked him a week ago to join a choice quartette which included Pip and Eve. Of course Meade made a troublesome fourth, but Jimmie's conceit saved him from realizing the real fact of the importance of the plain and heavy Pip to that group. And now, things had been shifted, so that Eve had stayed to talk to a country doctor, and he had been left to the callow company of an indefinite debutante whom Winifred had invited to fill the vacancy.

"When did you come down, Brooks?" he asked coldly.

"This morning."

"Nice old place of yours in Harford."

"Yes."

"Owned it long?"

"Several generations."

"Oh, ancestral halls, and all that----?"

"Yes."

"I saw Cynthia Warfield's picture on the wall--used to know the family down in Carroll--our old estates joined--Anne Warfield and I were brought up together."

They had reached the head of the stairway. Richard stopped and stood looking down. "Anne Warfield?"

"Yes. Surprised to find her teaching. I fancy they've been pretty hard up--grandfather drank, and all that, you know."

"I didn't know." It was now Richard's turn to speak coldly.

"Oh, yes, ran through with all their money. Years ago. Anne's a little queen. Engaged to her once myself, you know. Boy and girl affair, broken off----"

Below them in the hall, Richard could see the women with whom he was to sup. Shining, shimmering figures in silk and satin and tulle. For these, softness and ease of living. And that other one! Oh, the cheap little gown, the braided hair! Before he had known her she had been Jimmie's and now she was Geoffrey's. And he had fatuously thought himself the first.

He threw himself uproariously into the fun which followed. After all, it was good to be with them again, good to hear the familiar talk of people and of things, good to eat and drink and be merry in the fashion of the town, good to have this taste of the old tumultuous life.

He and Eve went home together. Philip's honest face clouded as he saw them off. "Don't run away with her, Brooks," he said, as he leaned in to have a last look at her. "Good-night, little lady."

"Good-night."

It was when they were motoring through the park that Eve said, "I am troubled about Pip."

"Why?"

"Oh, I sometimes have a feeling that he has a string tied to me--and that he is pulling me--his way. And I don't want to go. But I shall, if something doesn't save me from him, Richard."

"You can save yourself."

"That's all you know about it. Women take what they can get in this world, not what they want. Every morning Pip sends me flowers, sweetheart roses to-day, and lilies yesterday, and before that gardenias and orchids, and when I open the boxes every flower seems to be shouting, 'Come and marry me, come and marry me.'"

"No woman need marry a man she doesn't care for, Eve."

"Lots of them do."