The Complete Writings of Charles Dudley Warner Part 159

"Yes. We were great cronies when she was Sadie Mack. She isn't a genius, but she is good-hearted. I suppose she is on all the charity boards in the city. She patronizes everything," Jack continued, with a smile.

"I'm sure she is," said Carmen, thinking that however good-hearted she might be she was very "snubby." "And it makes it all the more awkward, for I am interested in so many things myself."

"I can arrange all that," Jack said, in an off-hand way. Carmen's look of grat.i.tude could hardly be distinguished from affection. "That's easy enough. We are just as good friends as ever, though I fancy she doesn't altogether approve of me lately. It's rather nice for a fellow, Mrs.

Henderson, to have a lot of women keeping him straight, isn't it?" asked Jack, in the tone of a bad boy.

"Yes. Between us all we will make a model of you. I am so glad now that I told you."

Jack protested that it was nothing. Why shouldn't friends help each other? Why not, indeed, said Carmen, and the talk went on a good deal about friendship, and the possibility of it between a man and a woman.

This sort of talk is considered serious and even deep, not to say philosophic. Carmen was a great philosopher in it. She didn't know, but she believed, it seemed natural, that every woman should have one man friend. Jack rose to go.

"So soon?" And it did seem pathetically soon. She gave him her hand, and then by an impulse she put her left hand over his, and looked up to him in quite a business way.

"Mr. Delancy, don't you be troubled about that rumor we were speaking of.

It will be all right. Trust me."

He understood perfectly, and expressed both his understanding and his grat.i.tude by bending over and kissing the little hand that lay in his.

When he had gone, Carmen sat a long time by the fire reflecting. It would be sweet to humiliate the Delancy and Schuyler Blunt set, as Henderson could. But what would she gain by that? It would be sweeter still to put them under obligations, and profit by that. She had endured a good many social rebuffs in her day, this tolerant little woman, and the sting of their memory could only be removed when the people who had ignored her had to seek social favors she could give. If Henderson only cared as much for such things as she did! But he was at times actually brutal about it. He seemed to have only one pa.s.sion. She herself liked money, but only for what it would bring. Henderson was like an old Pharaoh, who was bound to build the biggest pyramid ever built to his memory; he hated to waste a block. But what was the good of that when one had pa.s.sed beyond the reach of envy?

Revolving these deep things in her mind, she went to her dressing-room and made an elaborate toilet for dinner. Yet it was elaborately simple.

That sort needed more study than the other. She would like to be the Carmen of ten years ago in Henderson's eyes.

Her lord came home late, and did not dress for dinner. It was often so, and the omission was usually not allowed to pa.s.s by Carmen without notice, to which Henderson was sure to growl that he didn't care to be always on dress parade. Tonight Carmen was all graciousness and warmth.

Henderson did not seem to notice it. He ate his dinner abstractedly, and responded only in monosyllables to her sweet attempts at conversation.

The fact was that the day had been a perplexing one; he was engaged in one of his big fights, a scheme that aroused all his pugnacity and taxed all his resources. He would win--of course; he would smash everybody, but he would win. When he was in this mood Carmen felt that she was like a daisy in the path of a cyclone. In the first year of their marriage he used to consult her about all his schemes, and value her keen understanding. She wondered why he did not now. Did he distrust even her, as he did everybody else? Tonight she asked no questions. She was unruffled by his short responses to her conversational attempts; by her subtle, wifely manner she simply put herself on his side, whatever the side was.

In the library she brought him his cigar, and lighted it. She saw that his coffee was just as he liked it. As she moved about, making things homelike, Henderson noticed that she was more Carmenish than he had seen her in a long time. The sweet ways and the simple toilet must be by intention. And he knew her so well. He began to be amused and softened.

At length he said, in his ordinary tone, "Well, what is it?"

"What is what, dear?"

"What do you want?"

Carmen looked perplexed and sweetly surprised. There is nothing so pitiful about habitual hypocrisy as that it never deceives anybody.

It was not the less painful now that Carmen knew that Henderson knew her to the least fibre of her self-seeking soul, and that she felt that there were currents in his life that she could not calculate. A man is so much more difficult to understand than a woman, she reflected. And yet he is so susceptible that he can be managed even when he knows he is being managed. Carmen was not disconcerted for a moment. She replied, with her old candor:

"What an idea! You give me everything I want before I know what it is."

"And before I know it either," he responded, with a grim smile. "Well, what is the news today?"

"Just the same old round. The Foundlings' Board, for one thing."

"Are you interested in foundlings?"

"Not much," said Carmen, frankly. "I'm interested in those that find them. I told you how hateful that Mrs. Schuyler Blunt is."

"Why don't you cut her? Why don't you make it uncomfortable for her?"

"I can't find out," she said, with a laugh, dropping into the language of the Street, "anything she is short in, or I would."

"And you want me to get a twist on old Blunt?" and Henderson roared with laughter at the idea.

"No, indeed. Dear, you are just a goose, socially. It is nothing to you, but you don't understand what we women have to go through. You don't know how hard it is--that woman!"

"What has she done?"

"Nothing. That's just it. What do you say in the Street--freeze? Well, she is trying to freeze me out."

Henderson laughed again. "Oh, I'll back you against the field."

"I don't want to be backed," said Carmen; "I want some sympathy."

"Well, what is your idea?"

"I was going to tell you. Mr. Delancy dropped in this afternoon for a cup of tea--"

"Oh!"

"Yes, and he knows Mrs. Schuyler Blunt well; they are old friends, and he is going to arrange it."

"Arrange what?"

"Why, smooth everything out, don't you know. But, Rodney, I do want you to do something for me; not for me exactly, but about this. Won't you look out for Mr. Delancy in this deal?"

"Seems to me you are a good deal interested in Jack Delancy," said Henderson, in a sneering tone. The remark was a mistake, for it gave Carmen the advantage, and he did not believe it was just. He knew that Carmen was as pa.s.sionless as a diamond, whatever even she might pretend for a purpose.

"Aren't you ashamed!" she cried, with indignation, and her eyes flared for an instant and then filled with tears. "And I try so hard."

"But I can't look out for all the lame ducks."

"He isn't a duck," said Carmen, using her handkerchief; "I'd hate him for a duck. It's just to help me, when you know, when you know--and it is so hard," and the tears came again.

Did Henderson believe? After all, what did it matter? Perhaps, after all, the woman had a right to her game, as he had to his.

"Oh, well," he said, "don't take on about it. I'll fix it. I'll make a memorandum this minute. Only don't you bother me in the future with too many private kites."

Carmen dried her eyes. She did not look triumphant; she just looked sweet and grateful, like a person who had been helped. She went over and kissed her lord on the forehead, and sat on the arm of his chair, not too long, and then patted him on the shoulder, and said he was a good fellow, and she was a little bother, and so went away like a dutiful little wife.

And Henderson sat looking into the fire and musing, with the feeling that he had been at the theatre, and that the comedy had been beautifully played.

His part of the play was carried out next day in good faith. One of the secrets of Henderson's success was that he always did what he said he would do. This attracted men to him personally, and besides he found, as Bismarck did, that it was more serviceable to him than lying, for the crafty world usually banks upon insincerity and indirectness. But while he kept his word he also kept his schemes to himself, and executed them with a single regard to his own interest and a Napoleonic selfishness.

He did not lie to enemy or friend, but he did not spare either when either was in his way. He knew how to appeal to the self-interest of his fellows, and in time those who had most to do with him trusted him least when he seemed most generous in his offers.

When, the next day, his secretary reported to him briefly that Delancy was greatly elated with the turn things had taken for him, and was going in again, Henderson smiled sardonically, and said, "It was the worst thing I could have done for him."

Jack, who did not understand the irony of his temporary rescue, and had little experience of commercial integrity, so called, was intent on fulfilling his part of the understanding with Carmen. This could best be effected by a return dinner to the Hendersons. The subject was broached at breakfast in an off-hand manner to Edith.

It was not an agreeable subject to Edith, that was evident; but it was not easy for her to raise objections to the dinner. She had gone to the Hendersons' to please Jack, in her policy of yielding in order to influence him; but having accepted the hospitality, she could not object to returning it. The trouble was in making the list.