The Deluge Part 22

"If our friend Langdon hadn't slipped away, I might not look and feel so comfortable," said I. "His brother blundered, and there was no one to checkmate my moves." She seemed nearer to me, more in sympathy with me than ever before.

"I can't tell you how glad I am!"

Her eyes were wide and bright, as from some great excitement, and her color was high. Once my attention was on it, I knew instantly that only some extraordinary upheaval in that household could have produced the fever that was blazing in her. Never had I seen her in any such mood as this.

"What is it?" I asked. "What has happened?"

"If anything disagreeable should be said or done this evening here," she said, "I want you to promise me that you'll restrain yourself, and not say or do any of those things that make me--that jar on me. You understand?"

"I am always myself," replied I. "I can't be anybody else."

"But you are--several different kinds of self," she insisted. "And please--this evening don't be _that_ kind. It's coming into your eyes and chin now."

I had lifted my head and looked round, probably much like the leader of a horned herd at the scent of danger.

"Is this better?" said I, trying to look the thoughts I had no difficulty in getting to the fore whenever my eyes were on her.

Her smile rewarded me. But it disappeared, gave place to a look of nervous alarm, of terror even, at the rustling, or, rather, bustling, of skirts in the hall--there was war in the very sound, and I felt it. Mrs. Ellersly appeared, bearing her husband as a dejected trailer invisibly but firmly coupled. She acknowledged my salutation with a stiff-necked nod, ignored my extended hand. I saw that she wished to impress upon me that she was a very grand lady indeed; but, while my ideas of what const.i.tutes a lady were at that time somewhat befogged by my sn.o.bbishness, she failed dismally. She looked just what she was--a mean, bad-tempered woman, in a towering rage.

"You have forced me, Mr. Blacklock," said she, and then I knew for just what purpose that voice of hers was best adapted--"to say to you what I should have preferred to write. Mr. Ellersly has had brought to his ears matters in connection with your private life that make it imperative that you discontinue your calls here."

"My private life, ma'am?" I repeated. "I was not aware that I had a private life."

"Anita, leave us alone with Mr. Blacklock," commanded her mother.

The girl hesitated, bent her head, and with a cowed look went slowly toward the door. There she paused, and, with what seemed a great effort, lifted her head and gazed at me. How I ever came rightly to interpret her look I don't know, but I said: "Miss Ellersly, I've the right to insist that you stay." I saw she was going to obey me, and before Mrs. Ellersly could repeat her order I said: "Now, madam, if any one accuses me of having done anything that would cause you to exclude a man from your house, I am ready for the liar and his lie."

As I spoke I was searching the weak, bad old face of her husband for an explanation. Their pretense of outraged morality I rejected at once--it was absurd. Neither up town nor down, nor anywhere else, had I done anything that any one could regard as a breach of the code of a man of the world.

Then, reasoned I, they must have found some one else to help them out of their financial troubles--some one who, perhaps, has made this insult to me the price, or part of the price, of his generosity. Who? Who hates me? In instant answer, up before my mind flashed a picture of Tom Langdon and Sam Ellersly arm in arm entering Lewis' office. Tom Langdon wishes to marry her; and her parents wish it, too; he is the man she was confessing to me about--these were my swift conclusions.

"We do not care to discuss the matter, sir," Mrs. Ellersly was replying, her tone indicating that it was not fit to discuss. And this was the woman I had hardly been able to treat civilly, so nauseating were her fawnings and flatterings!

"So!" I said, ignoring her and opening my batteries full upon the old man.

"You are taking orders from Mowbray Langdon now. Why?"

As I spoke, I was conscious that there had been some change in Anita. I looked at her. With startled eyes and lips apart, she was advancing toward me.

"Anita, leave the room!" cried Mrs. Ellersly harshly, panic under the command in her tones.

I felt rather than saw my advantage, and pressed it.

"You see what they are doing, Miss Ellersly," said I.

She pa.s.sed her hands over her eyes, let her face appear again. In it there was an energy of repulsion that ought to have seemed exaggerated to me then, knowing really nothing of the true situation. "I understand now!"

said she. "Oh--it is--loathsome!" And her eyes blazed upon her mother.

"Loathsome," I echoed, dashing at my opportunity. "If you are not merely a chattel and a decoy, if there is any womanhood, any self-respect in you, you will keep faith with me."

"Anita!" cried Mrs. Ellersly. "Go to your room!"

I had, once or twice before, heard a tone as repulsive--a female dive-keeper hectoring her wretched white slaves. I looked at Anita. I expected to see her erect, defiant. Instead, she was again wearing that cowed look.

"Don't judge me too harshly," she said pleadingly to me. "I know what is right and decent--G.o.d planted that too deep in me for them to be able to uproot it. But--oh, they have broken my will! They have broken my will!

They have made me a coward, a thing!" And she hid her face in her hands and sobbed.

Mrs. Ellersly was about to speak. I could not offer better proof of my own strength of will than the fact that I, with a look and a gesture, put her down. Then I said to the girl:

"You must choose now! Woman or thing--which shall it be? If it is woman, then you have me behind you and in front of you and around you. If it is thing--G.o.d have mercy on you! Your self-respect, your pride are gone--for ever. You will be like the carpet under his feet to the man whose creature you become."

She came and stood by me, with her back to them.

"If you will take me with you now," she said, "I will go. If I delay, I am lost. I shall not have the courage. And I am sick, sick to death of this life here, of this hideous wait for the highest bidder."

Her voice gained strength and her manner courage as she spoke; at the end she was meeting her mother's gaze without flinching. My eyes had followed hers, and my look was taking in both her mother and her father. I had long since measured them, yet I could scarcely credit the confirmation of my judgment. Had life been smooth and comfortable for that old couple, as it was for most of their acquaintances and friends, they would have lived and died regarding themselves, and regarded, as well-bred, kindly people, of the finest instincts and tastes. But calamity was putting to the test the system on which they had molded their apparently elegant, graceful lives.

The storm had ripped off the attractive covering; the framework, the reality of that system, was revealed, naked and frightful.

"Anita, go to your room!" almost screamed the old woman, her fury tearing away the last shreds of her cloak of manners.

"Your daughter is of age, madam," said I. "She will go where she pleases.

And I warn you that you are deceived by the Langdons. I am not powerless, and"--here I let her have a full look into my red-hot furnaces of wrath--"I stop at nothing in pursuing those who oppose me--at nothing!"

Anita, staring at her mother's awful face, was shrinking and trembling as if before the wicked, pale-yellow eyes and quivering, outstretched tentacles of a devil-fish. Clinging to my arm, she let me guide her to the door. Her mother recovered speech. "Anita!" she cried. "What are you doing?

Are you mad?"

"I think I must be out of my mind," said Anita. "But, if you try to keep me here, I shall tell him all--_all_."

Her voice suggested that she was about to go into hysterics. I gently urged her forward. There was some sort of woman's wrap in the hall. I put it round her. Before she--or I--realized it, she was in my waiting electric.

"Up town," I said to my man.

She tried to get out.

"Oh, what have I done! What am I doing!" she cried, her courage oozing away. "Let me out--please!"

"You are going with me," said I, entering and closing the door. I saw the door of the Ellersly mansion opening, saw old Ellersly, bareheaded and distracted, scuttling down the steps.

"Go ahead--fast!" I called to my man.

And the electric was rushing up the avenue, with the bell ringing for crossings incessantly. She huddled away from me into the corner of the seat, sobbing hysterically. I knew that to touch her would be fatal--or to speak. So I waited.

XXII. MOST UNGENTLEMANLY

As we neared the upper end of the park, I told my chauffeur, through the tube, to enter and go slowly. Whenever a lamp flashed in at us, I had a glimpse of her progress toward composure--now she was drying her eyes with the bit of lace she called a handkerchief; now her bare arms were up, and with graceful fingers she was arranging her hair; now she was straight and still, the soft, fluffy material with which her wrap was edged drawn close about her throat. I shifted to the opposite seat, for my nerves warned me that I could not long control myself, if I stayed on where her garments were touching me.

I looked away from her for the pleasure of looking at her again, of realizing that my overwrought senses were not cheating me. Yes, there she was, in all the l.u.s.ter of that magnetic beauty I can not think of even now without an upblazing of the fire which is to the heart what the sun is to a blind man dreaming of sight. There she was on my side of the chasm that had separated us--alone with me--mine--mine! And my heart dilated with pride.