The Man Between Part 10

"You are fencing the real question. He had no business to use the word 'my.' You are engaged to Basil Stanhope, not to Fred Mostyn."

"I am Basil's lovely fiancee; I am Fred's lovely friend."

"Oh! I hope Fred understands the difference."

"Of course he does. Some people are always thinking evil."

"I was thinking of Mr. Stanhope's rights."

"Thank you, Ethel; but I can take care of Mr. Stanhope's rights without your a.s.sistance. If you had said you were thinking of Ethel Rawdon's rights you would have been nearer the truth."

"Dora, I will not listen----"

"Oh, you shall listen to me! I know that you expected Fred to fall in love with you, but if he did not like to do so, am I to blame?" Ethel was resuming her coat at this point in the conversation, and Dora understood the proud silence with which the act was being accomplished.

Then a score of good reasons for preventing such a definite quarrel flashed through her selfish little mind, and she threw her arms around Ethel and begged a thousand pardons for her rudeness. And Ethel had also reasons for avoiding dissension at this time. A break in their friendship now would bring Dora forward to explain, and Dora had a wonderful cleverness in presenting her own side of any question. Ethel shrunk from her innuendoes concerning Fred, and she knew that Basil would be made to consider her a meddling, jealous girl who willingly saw evil in Dora's guileless enjoyment of a clever man's company.

To be misunderstood, to be blamed and pitied, to be made a pedestal for Dora's superiority, was a situation not to be contemplated. It was better to look over Dora's rudeness in the flush of Dora's pretended sorrow for it. So they forgave each other, or said they did, and then Dora explained herself. She declared that she had not the least intention of any wrong. "You see, Ethel, what a fool the man is about me. Somebody says we ought to treat a fool according to his folly. That is all I was doing. I am sure Basil is so far above Fred Mostyn that I could never put them in comparison--and Basil knows it. He trusts me."

"Very well, Dora. If Basil knows it, and trusts you, I have no more to say. I am now sorry I named the subject."

"Never mind, we will forget that it was named. The fact is, Ethel, I want all the fun I can get now. When I am Basil's wife I shall have to be very sedate, and of course not even pretend to know if any other man admires me. Little lunches with Fred, theater and opera parties, and even dances will be over for me. Oh, dear, how much I am giving up for Basil! And sometimes I think he never realizes how dreadful it must be for me."

"You will have your lover all the time then. Surely his constant companionship will atone for all you relinquish."

"Take off your coat and hat, Ethel, and sit down comfortably. I don't know about Basil's constant companionship. Tete-a-tetes are tiresome affairs sometimes."

"Yes," replied Ethel, as she half-reluctantly removed her coat, "they were a bore undoubtedly even in Paradise. I wonder if Eve was tired of Adam's conversation, and if that made her listen to--the other party."

"I am so glad you mentioned that circ.u.mstance, Ethel. I shall remember it. Some day, no doubt, I shall have to remind Basil of the failure of Adam to satisfy Eve's idea of perfect companionship." And Dora put her pretty, jeweled hands up to her ears and laughed a low, musical laugh with a childish note of malice running through it.

This pseudo-reconciliation was not conducive to pleasant intercourse.

After a short delay Ethel made an excuse for an early departure, and Dora accepted it without her usual remonstrance. The day had been one of continual friction, and Dora's irritable pettishness hard to bear, because it had now lost that childish unreason which had always induced Ethel's patience, for Dora had lately put away all her ignorant immaturities. She had become a person of importance, and had realized the fact. The young ladies of St. Jude's had made a pet of their revered rector's love, and the elder ladies had also shown a marked interest in her. The Dennings' fine house was now talked about and visited. Men of high financial power respected Mr. Dan Denning, and advised the social recognition of his family; and Mrs. Denning was not now found more eccentric than many other of the new rich, who had been tolerated in the ranks of the older plutocrats. Even Bryce had made the standing he desired. He was seen with the richest and idlest young men, and was invited to the best houses. Those fashionable women who had marriageable daughters considered him not ineligible, and men temporarily hampered for cash knew that they could find smiling a.s.sistance for a consideration at Bryce's little office on William Street.

These and other points of reflection troubled Ethel, and she was glad the long trial was nearing its end, for she knew quite well the disagreement of that evening had done no good. Dora would certainly repeat their conversation, in her own way of interpreting it, to both Basil Stanhope and Fred Mostyn. More than likely both Bryce and Mrs.

Denning would also hear how her innocent kindness had been misconstrued; and in each case she could imagine the conversation that took place, and the subsequent bestowal of pitying, scornful or angry feeling that would insensibly find its way to her consciousness without any bird of the air to carry it.

She felt, too, that reprisals of any kind were out of the question. They were not only impolitic, they were difficult. Her father had an aversion to Dora, and was likely to seize the first opportunity for requesting Ethel to drop the girl's acquaintance. Ruth also had urged her to withdraw from any active part in the wedding, strengthening her advice with the a.s.surance that when a friendship began to decline it ought to be abandoned at once. There was only her grandmother to go to, and at first she did not find her at all interested in the trouble. She had just had a dispute with her milkman, was inclined to give him all her suspicions and all her angry words--"an impertinent, cheating creature,"

she said; and then Ethel had to hear the history of the month's cream and of the milkman's extortion, with the old lady's characteristic declaration:

"I told him plain what I thought of his ways, but I paid him every cent I owed him. Thank G.o.d, I am not unreasonable!"

Neither was she unreasonable when Ethel finally got her to listen to her own serious grievance with Dora.

"If you will have a woman for a friend, Ethel, you must put up with womanly ways; and it is best to keep your mouth shut concerning such ways. I hate to see you whimpering and whining about wrongs you have been cordially inviting for weeks and months and years."

"Grandmother!"

"Yes, you have been sowing thorns for yourself, and then you go unshod over them. I mean that Dora has this fine clergyman, and Fred Mostyn, and her brother, and mother, and father all on her side; all of them sure that Dora can do no wrong, all of them sure that Ethel, poor girl, must be mistaken, or prudish, or jealous, or envious."

"Oh, grandmother, you are too cruel."

"Why didn't you have a few friends on your own side?"

"Father and Ruth never liked Dora. And Fred--I told you how Fred acted as soon as he saw her!"

"There was Royal Wheelock, James Clifton, or that handsome d.i.c.k Potter.

Why didn't you ask them to join you at your lunches and dances? You ought to have pillared your own side. A girl without her beaux is always on the wrong side if the girl with beaux is against her."

"It was the great time of Dora's life. I wished her to have all the glory of it."

"All her own share--that was right. All of your share, also--that was as wrong as it could be."

"Clifton is yachting, Royal and I had a little misunderstanding, and d.i.c.k Potter is too effusive."

"But d.i.c.k's effusiveness would have been a good thing for Fred's effusiveness. Two men can't go on a complimentary ran-tan at the same table. They freeze one another out. That goes without saying. But Dora's indiscretions are none of your business while she is under her father's roof; and I don't know if she hadn't a friend in the world, if they would be your business. I have always been against people trying to do the work of THEM that are above us. We are told THEY seek and THEY save, and it's likely they will look after Dora in spite of her being so unknowing of herself as to marry a priest in a surplice, when a fool in motley would have been more like the thing."

"I don't want to quarrel with Dora. After all, I like her. We have been friends a long time."

"Well, then, don't make an enemy of her. One hundred friends are too few against one enemy. One hundred friends will wish you well, and one enemy will DO you ill. G.o.d love you, child! Take the world as you find it.

Only G.o.d can make it any better. When is this blessed wedding to come off?"

"In two weeks. You got cards, did you not?"

"I believe I did. They don't matter. Let Dora and her flirtations alone, unless you set your own against them. Like cures like. If the priest sees nothing wrong----"

"He thinks all she does is perfect."

"I dare say. Priests are a soft lot, they'll believe anything. He's love-blind at present. Some day, like the prophet of Pethor, [1] he will get his eyes opened. As for Fred Mostyn, I shall have a good deal to say about him by and by, so I'll say nothing now."

[Footnote 1: One of the Hebrew prophets.]

"You promised, grandmother, not to talk to me any more about Fred."

"It was a very inconsiderate promise, a very irrational promise! I am sorry I made it--and I don't intend to keep it."

"Well, it takes two to hold a conversation, grandmother."

"To be sure it does. But if I talk to you, I hope to goodness you will have the decency to answer me. I wouldn't believe anything different."

And she looked into Ethel's face with such a smiling confidence in her good will and obedience, that Ethel could only laugh and give her twenty kisses as she stood up to put on her hat and coat.

"You always get your way, Granny," she said; and the old lady, as she walked with her to the door, answered, "I have had my way for nearly eighty years, dearie, and I've found it a very good way. I'm not likely to change it now."

"And none of us want you to change it, dear. Granny's way is always a wise way." And she kissed her again ere she ran down the steps to her carriage. Yet as the old lady stepped slowly back to the parlor, she muttered, "Fred Mostyn is a fool! If he had any sense when he left England, he has lost it since he came here."

Of course nothing good came of this irritable interference. Meddling with the conscience of another person is a delicate and difficult affair, and Ruth had already warned Ethel of its certain futility. But the days were rapidly wearing away to the great day, for which so many other days had been wasted in fatiguing worry, and incredible extravagance of health and temper and money--and after it? There would certainly be a break in a.s.sociations. Temptation would be removed, and Basil Stanhope, relieved for a time from all the duties of his office, would have continual opportunities for making eternally secure the affection of the woman he had chosen.

It was to be a white wedding, and for twenty hours previous to its celebration it seemed as if all the florists in New York were at work in the Denning house and in St. Jude's church. The sacred place was radiant with white lilies. White lilies everywhere; and the perfume would have been overpowering, had not the weather been so exquisite that open windows were possible and even pleasant. To the softest strains of music Dora entered leaning on her father's arm and her beauty and splendor evoked from the crowd present an involuntary, simultaneous stir of wonder and delight. She had hesitated many days between the simplicity of white chiffon and lilies of the valley, and the magnificence of brocaded satin in which a glittering thread of silver was interwoven.

The satin had won the day, and the sunshine fell upon its beauty, as she knelt at the altar, like sunshine falling upon snow. It shone and gleamed and glistened as if it were an angel's robe; and this scintillating effect was much increased by the sparkling of the diamonds in her hair, and at her throat and waist and hands and feet. Nor was her brilliant youth affected by the overshadowing tulle usually so unbecoming. It veiled her from head to feet, and was held in place by a diamond coronal. All her eight maids, though lovely girls, looked wan and of the earth beside her. For her sake they had been content with the simplicity of chiffon and white lace hats, and she stood among them l.u.s.trous as some angelic being. Stanhope was entranced by her beauty, and no one on this day wondered at his infatuation or thought remarkable the ecstasy of reverent rapture with which he received the hand of his bride. His sense of the gift was ravishing. She was now his love, his wife forever, and when Ethel slipped forward to part and throw backward the concealing veil, he very gently restrained her, and with his own hands uncovered the blushing beauty, and kissed her there at the altar.