The Dual Alliance Part 4

PART II

It seems sometimes as if a Harlequin rules the world. When once your tired eyes rest on what you know to be the last trick in his bag--lo! he turns the empty sack upside down, and it spills surprises, like the widow's cruse. Some such master jest he played on Barbara.

An absorbing interest had catapulted into her life, and wakened her like a bugle call. She had a fight on her hands and that means life to the Irish. Her extraordinary marriage made little real difference in the order of her days, except that she dined with an interesting man each night. He talked to her of the things he hoped to do, if the people of New York made him governor.

Always, except when political dinners or party caucus kept him too late, she found him pacing the corridor outside her dressing-room. Courteous, urbane, he took her to supper with friends, to a cafe, or back to the hotel, where they had something to eat in Bob's sitting-room. This last arrangement suited her best, for then she could lead him to talk of the fight ahead. He sometimes asked her judgment. She felt his single-purposed strength in these talks; she plumbed the force which had made him a success at forty.

"Why do you always make me talk about myself?" he asked her on one of these occasions of supper in her room.

"I want you to be interested," she retorted.

"You think me such an egotist?"

"I think all successful people are egotists. Success isn't an accident, it is plan and work. You have to focus in on yourself all the time to belong to the master-cla.s.s."

"You don't talk about yourself--you're a success."

"Oh, we'll come to me. It's all 'quiet along the Potomac' with me just now, but you're going into action."

"Think of the egotists who are not a success."

"Well, of course, a man who is merely in love with himself is in danger of a mesalliance," she added, laughing.

"Go on! What is the saving grace for your egotists?"

"I hate to be so bromidic."

"I'm used to it."

"Oh!"

"Not in you--the rest of the world."

"New York nearly lost a governor!" she warned him. "I save my egotist with a sense of humour, which is only a sense of proportion. Humour plus purpose."

"What kind of purpose?"

"To be selfish for unselfish ends."

"Delightfully Irish," he admitted.

The talk never drifted from the impersonal. They both unconsciously fought to keep up all the barriers of their formal relationship, but they both were constantly peering over the wall into the other's personality, hoping not to be caught at it.

The day came when Trent's candidacy for governor was announced by his party. As he never saw Bob in the morning, the news came to her with her coffee and toast. She sent for all the papers and read them more diligently than she had ever searched for notices of her own triumphs.

The bed looked like a sea of print, out of which she rose, a pink mermaid. When the last word was read, she took up the 'phone beside her bed and called Paul. The secretary told her he was in a conference. She asked if there was a message.

"This is-- I am--Mrs. Trent," said Barbara, blushing furiously at her end of the line.

"Oh, just a minute," amended the girl. After a bit she heard his crisp, short greeting.

"Good-morning! This is Bob."

"How are you?"

"I've read every line in every paper. I'm so excited I had to call up.

Could I do something--make a speech, or something like that?"

"Wish you might-- I'd be nominated sure."

She resented his flippancy, she was so in earnest.

"I won't keep you; I know you're busy, Governor."

"I'll take that as a prophecy. By the way, I may not be able to dine with you to-night."

"Sorry! Good-bye."

He frowned at her abrupt dismissal as he went back to work, then he forgot all about her. Bob set down the steel bar smartly. For some reason she was irritated at the interview. She had expressed herself with such emotion, and he had received it with such cool matter of factness. She treated herself to a mental shaking, which Englished might have read thus:

"Look here, Barbara Garratry, this man is nothing to you but an interesting interlude between Now and the Hereafter. He asked you to marry him as an experiment. He laid stress on a lack of sentiment. Now don't you let your Irish feelings clutter things up. You fight for the fight's sake and leave the man out of it."

She arose with much determination. She dressed and outlined a play to be called "The Governor." She read the noon editions. She put in a busy afternoon, disciplining her mind to keep away from the danger-zone, and as punishment she went to dine with some friends, so that she might miss the chance of seeing him, if he did come back to dine.

Paul, in the meantime, worked like five men all day, with the unformed idea in the back of his brain that there was something he must do at seven o'clock. He was to speak at the Waldorf at eight, after a political dinner. The last conference was over a few minutes before seven. The unformed thought crystalized--he wanted to talk to Bob. It would rest him more than anything. He called a taxi and hurried to the hotel. He glowed with satisfaction at the thought of her, there, waiting for him. He laughed at himself and dashed to her door like an eager boy. The maid told him she had gone out to dine, and his disappointment was all out of proportion to the facts, as he told himself on his way to his room.

Why shouldn't she go out to dinner? Just because this night was an important one to him was no reason why it should be to her. He was a man she had married for an experiment. He must not let her woman-lure get between him and his purpose. It was an older, grim-faced candidate for governor who went to the Waldorf an hour later.

Bob's performance dragged that night. She had exhausted herself in forced gaiety at the dinner and she was furious at herself. When her maid reported Paul's appearance at her door, she denied to herself the wave of regret that swept over her.

A party of friends came back after the play to carry her off for supper, but she pleaded a headache and got rid of them. She said to herself over and over as she dressed for the street, "I know he won't come to-night--he's too busy to remember." But when she stepped into the hall and looked for his tall figure, she felt a swift disappointment. She sent her maid on to the hotel alone, on some excuse, and she determined to walk herself.

It was a cold, crisp night. Broadway was a blare of light, as poignant as a din of sound. Taxis honked, policemen shouted; bareheaded women and tall-hatted men hurried to the restaurants, the maelstrom of Broadway, nearing midnight, was in full tide. Bob turned from it toward the shadowy stretch of the avenue.

The moon was clear and round, the heavens a blue plush vault. The broad shining street swept its gleaming length, with the misty lights reflecting themselves. Uptown the cathedral spires p.r.i.c.ked the skyline, downtown was lost in grayness. Bob hesitated at the corner to buy an extra from a bra.s.s-lunged newsy, then stood an instant deciding which way to go. She wanted the solitude and calm of the night.

A click of approaching footsteps caught her attention. She looked at the man who approached, head up, hands deep in his overcoat pockets, his long stride even and swift. Something about her caught his eye and he stopped before her in alarm.

"Barbara!"

"Why, it's you," she said stupidly.

"What's happened? What are you doing here alone, at this hour?"

"Trying to decide whether to walk uptown or downtown," she laughed. He drew her hand through his arm, and fell into step, facing uptown.

"But, my dear girl, I can't have you alone on the streets like this."