The Deluge Part 23

But a moment later came a sense of humility. Her beauty intoxicated me, but her youth, her fineness, so fragile for such rough hands as mine, awed and humbled me.

"I must be very gentle," said I to myself. "I have promised that she shall never regret. G.o.d help me to keep my promise! She is mine, but only to preserve and protect."

And that idea of _responsibility in possession_ was new to me--was to have far-reaching consequences. Now that I think of it, I believe it changed the whole course of my life.

She was leaning forward, her elbow on the cas.e.m.e.nt of the open window of the brougham, her cheek against her hand; the moonlight was glistening on her round, firm forearm and on her serious face. "How far, far away from--everything it seems here!" she said, her voice tuned to that soft, clear light, "and how beautiful it is!" Then, addressing the moon and the shadows of the trees rather than me: "I wish I could go on and on--and never return to--to the world."

"I wish we could," said I.

My tone was low, but she started, drew back into the brougham, became an outline in the deep shadow. In another mood that might have angered me.

Just then it hurt me so deeply that to remember it to-day is to feel a faint ache in the scar of the long-healed wound. My face was not hidden as was hers; so, perhaps, she saw. At any rate, her voice tried to be friendly as she said: "Well--I have crossed the Rubicon. And I don't regret. It was silly of me to cry. I thought I had been through so much that I was beyond such weakness. But you will find me calm from now on, and reasonable."

"Not too reasonable, please," said I, with an attempt at her lightness. "A reasonable woman is as trying as an unreasonable man."

"But we are going to be sensible with each other," she urged, "like two friends. Aren't we?"

"We are going to be what we are going to be," said I. "We'll have to take life as it comes."

That clumsy reminder set her to thinking, stirred her vague uneasiness in those strange circ.u.mstances to active alarm. For presently she said, in a tone that was not so matter-of-course as she had tried to make it: "We'll go now to my Uncle Frank's. He's a brother of my father's. I always used to like him best--and still do. But he married a woman mama thought--queer.

They hadn't much, so he lives away up on the West Side--One Hundred and Twenty-seventh Street."

"The wise plan, the only wise plan," said I, not so calm as she must have thought me, "is to go to my partner's house and send for a minister."

"Not to-night," she replied nervously. "Take me to Uncle Frank's, and to-morrow we can discuss what to do and how to do it."

"To-night," I persisted. "We must be married to-night. No more uncertainty and indecision and weakness. Let us begin bravely, Anita!"

"To-morrow," she said. "But not to-night. I must think it over."

"To-night," I repeated. "To-morrow will be full of its own problems. This is to-night's."

She shook her head, and I saw that the struggle between us had begun--the struggle against her timidity and conventionality. "No, not tonight." This in her tone for finality.

To argue with any woman in such circ.u.mstances would be dangerous; to argue with her would have been fatal. To reason with a woman is to flatter her into suspecting you of weakness and herself of strength. I told the chauffeur to turn about and go slowly up town. She settled back into her corner of the brougham. Neither of us spoke until we were pa.s.sing Grant's Tomb. Then she started out of her secure confidence in my obedience, and exclaimed: "This is not the way!" And her voice had in it the hasty call-to-arms.

"No," I replied, determined to push the panic into a rout. "As I told you, our future shall be settled to-night." That in _my_ tone for finality.

A pause, then: "It _has_ been settled," she said, like a child that feels, yet denies, its impotence as it struggles in the compelling arms of its father. "I thought until a few minutes ago that I really intended to marry you. Now I see that I didn't."

"Another reason why we're not going to your uncle's," said I.

She leaned forward so that I could see her face. "I can not marry you," she said. "I feel humble toward you, for having misled you. But it is better that you--and I--should have found out now than too late."

"It is too late--too late to go back."

"Would you wish to marry a woman who does not love you, who loves some one else, and who tells you so and refuses to marry you?" She had tried to concentrate enough scorn into her voice to hide her fear.

"I would," said I. "And I shall. I'll not desert you, Anita, when your courage and strength shall fail. I will carry you on to safety."

"I tell you I can not marry you," she cried, between appeal and command.

"There are reasons--I may not tell you. But if I might, you would--would take me to my uncle's. I can not marry you!"

"That is what conventionality bids you say now," I replied. And then I gathered myself together and in a tone that made me hate myself as I heard it, I added slowly, each word sharp and distinct: "But what will conventionality bid you say to-morrow morning, as we drive down crowded Fifth Avenue, after a night in this brougham?"

I could not see her, for she fell back into the darkness as sharply as if I had struck her with all my force full in the face. But I could feel the effect of my words upon her. I paused, not because I expected or wished an answer, but because I had to steady myself--myself, not my purpose; my purpose was inflexible. I would put through what we had begun, just as I would have held her and cut off her arm with my pocket-knife if we had been cast away alone, and I had had to do it to save her life. She was not competent to decide for herself. Every problem that had ever faced her had been decided by others for her. Who but me could decide for her now? I longed to plead with her, longed to let her see that I was not hard-hearted, was thinking of her, was acting for her sake as much as for my own. But I dared not. "She would misunderstand," said I to myself. "She would think you were weakening."

Full fifteen minutes of that frightful silence before she said: "I will go where you wish." And she said it in a tone that makes me wince as I recall it.

I called my partner's address up through the tube. Again that frightful silence, then she was trying to choke back the sobs. A few words I caught: "They have broken my will--they have broken my will."

My partner lived in a big, gray-stone house that stood apart and commanded a n.o.ble view of the Hudson and the Palisades. It was, in the main, a reproduction of a French chateau, and such changes as the architect had made in his model were not positively disfiguring, though amusing. There should have been trees and shrubbery about it, but--"As Mrs. B. says," Joe had explained to me, "what's the use of sinking a lot of cash in a house people can't see?" So there was not a bush, not a flower. Inside--One day Ball took me on a tour of the art shops. "I've got a dozen corners and other big bare spots to fill," said he. "Mrs. B. hates to give up money, haggles over every article. I'm going to put the job through in business style." I soon discovered that I had been brought along to admire his "business style," not to suggest. After two hours, in which he bought in small lots several tons of statuary, paintings, vases and rugs, he said, "This is too slow." He pointed his stick at a crowded corner of the shop.

"How much for that bunch of stuff?" he demanded. The proprietor gave him a figure. "I'll close," said Joe, "if you'll give fifteen off for cash." The proprietor agreed. "Now we're done," said Joe to me. "Let's go down town, and maybe I can pick up what I've dropped."

You can imagine that interior. But don't picture it as notably worse than the interior of the average New York palace. It was, if anything, better than those houses, where people who deceive themselves about their lack of taste have taken great pains to prevent any one else from being deceived.

One could hardly move in Joe's big rooms for the litter of gilded and tapestried furniture, and their crowded walls made the eyes ache.

The appearance of the man who opened the door for Anita and me suggested that our ring had roused him from a bed where he had deposited himself without bothering to take off his clothes. At the sound of my voice, Ball peered out of his private smoking-room, at the far end of the hall. He started forward; then, seeing how I was accompanied, stopped with mouth ajar. He had on a ragged smoking-jacket, a pair of shapeless old Romeo slippers, his ordinary business waistcoat and trousers. He was wearing neither tie nor collar, and a short, black pipe was between his fingers.

We had evidently caught the household stripped of "lugs," and sunk in the down-at-the-heel slovenliness which it called "comfort." Joe was crimson with confusion, and was using his free hand to stroke, alternately, his shiny bald head and his heavy brown mustache. He got himself together sufficiently, after a few seconds, to disappear into his den. When he came out again, pipe and ragged jacket were gone, and he rushed for us in a gorgeous velvet jacket with dark red facings, and a showy pair of slippers.

"Glad to see you, Mr. Blacklock"--in his own home he always addressed every man as Mister, just as "Mrs. B." always called him "Mister Ball," and he called her "Missus Ball" before "company." "Come right into the front parlor. Billy, turn on the electric lights."

Anita had been standing with her head down. She now looked round with shame and terror in those expressive blue-gray eyes of hers; her delicate nostrils were quivering. I hastened to introduce Ball to her. Her impulse to fly pa.s.sed; her lifelong training in doing the conventional thing a.s.serted itself. She lowered her head again, murmured an inaudible acknowledgment of Joe's greeting.

"Your wife is at home?" said I. If one was at home in the evening, the other was also, and both were always there, unless they were at some theater--except on Sunday night, when they dined at Sherry's, because many fashionable people did it. They had no friends and few acquaintances.

In their humbler and happy days they had had many friends, but had lost them when they moved away from Brooklyn and went to live, like uneasy, out-of-place visitors, in their grand house, pretending to be what they longed to be, longing to be what they pretended to be, and as discontented as they deserved.

"Oh, yes, Mrs. B.'s at home," Joe answered. "I guess she and Alva were--about to go to bed." Alva was their one child. She had been christened Malvina, after Joe's mother; but when the b.a.l.l.s "blossomed out"

they renamed her Alva, which they somehow had got the impression was "smarter."

At Joe's blundering confession that the females of the family were in no condition to receive, Anita said to me in a low voice: "Let us go."

I pretended not to hear. "Rout 'em out," said I to Joe. "Then, take my electric and bring the nearest parson. There's going to be a wedding--right here." And I looked round the long salon, with everything draped for the summer departure. Joe whisked the cover off one chair, his man took off another. "I'll have the women-folks down in two minutes," he cried. Then to the man: "Get a move on you, Billy. Stir 'em up in the kitchen. Do the best you can about supper--and put a lot of champagne on the ice. That's the main thing at a wedding."

Anita had seated herself listlessly in one of the uncovered chairs. The wrap slipped back from her shoulders and--how proud I was of her! Joe gazed, took advantage of her not looking up to slap me on the back and to jerk his head in enthusiastic approval. Then he, too, disappeared.

A wait followed, during which we could hear, through the silence, excited undertones from the upper floors. The words were indistinct until Joe's heavy voice sent down to us an angry "No d.a.m.n nonsense, I tell you. Allie's got to come, too. She's not such a fool as you think. Bad example--bosh!"

Anita started up. "Oh--please--please!" she cried. "Take me away--anywhere!

This is dreadful."

It was, indeed, dreadful. If I could have had my way at just that moment, it would have gone hard with "Mrs. B." and "Allie"--and heavy-voiced Joe, too. But I hid my feelings.

"There's nowhere else to go," said I, "except the brougham."

She sank into her chair.

A few minutes more of silence, and there was a rustling on the stairs.