Part 1

THE WORKS OF MARY ROBERTS RINEHART

AFFINITIES AND OTHER STORIES

THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS CORP. _Publishers_ NEW YORK

PUBLISHED BY ARRANGEMENT WITH GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY.

_Copyright, 1920, By George H. Doran Company_

_Copyright, 1909, 1913, 1914, 1915, by the Curtis Publishing Company_

_Printed in the United States of America_

CONTENTS

I AFFINITIES 9

II THE FAMILY FRIEND 55

III CLARA'S LITTLE ESCAPADE 103

IV THE BORROWED HOUSE 161

V SAUCE FOR THE GANDER 237

AFFINITIES

I

Somebody ought to know the truth about the Devil's Island affair and I am going to tell it. The truth is generally either better or worse than the stories that get about. In this case it is somewhat better, though I am not proud of it.

It started with a discussion about married women having men friends. I said I thought it was a positive duty--it kept them up to the mark with their clothes and gave a sort of snap to things, without doing any harm. There were six of us on the terrace at the Country Club at the time and we all felt the same way--that it was fun to have somebody that everybody expected to put by one at dinners, and to sit out dances with and like the way one did one's hair, and to say nice things.

"And to slip out on the links for a moonlight chat with you," said Annette, who is rather given to those little pastimes, the most harmless in the world.

We were all awfully bored that Sunday afternoon. Most of the men were golfing; and when you meet the same people all the time--day after day, dinner after dinner, dance after dance--anything new is welcome. Really the only variety we had was a new drink now and then. Some one would come home from his vacation with a brand-new idea in beverages and order one all round, and it was a real sensation.

That was all we had had all summer for excitement, except the time Willie Anderson kissed Sybilla--she was his wife--on a wager. They had been rather cool to each other for a month or so.

We would sit on the terrace and the conversation would be about like this:

"There's the Jacksons' car."

"Why on earth does Ida Jackson wear green?"

"Hello, Ida! When d'you get back?"

"Yesterday. Bully time!"

Just in time to save us from utter boredom somebody would yawn and remark:

"Here comes the Henderson car."

"Jane Henderson's put on weight. She's as big as a house! Hello, Jane!"

"Hello, everybody! My goodness! Why did I come back? Isn't it hot?"

More excitement for a minute and then more yawns. It was Ferd Jackson who suggested the affinity party. He had heard about what I had said on the terrace, and he came to me while Day was playing on the links. Day is my husband.

"Had a nice afternoon?" he asked.

"Only fair. Day's been underfoot most of the time. Why?"

"How'd you like a picnic?"

"I would not!" I said decisively. "I hate cold food and motoring in a procession until you choke with dust--and Day getting jealous and disagreeable and wanting to get home early."

"Poor little girl!" said Ferd, and patted my hand in a friendly way.

Ferd was a good scout always; we got along together pretty well and sat together at dinners whenever we could. He never made love to me or anything like that, but he understood me thoroughly, which Day never took the trouble to do. It is absurd, now that it's all over, to have the others saying he was my affinity or anything of the sort. I never cared for him.

"I didn't mean the usual sort of picnic," Ferd said. "How has it got its pretty hair fixed to-day? Rather nice, lady-love; but why do you hide your pretty ears?"

Lady-love was only a nickname.

"So I won't be able to hear Day bragging about his golf score. What sort of a picnic?"

"It's a peach of an idea!" Ferd said. "It came to me out of a clear sky. Every picnic we've ever had has been a failure--because why? Because they were husband-and-wife picnics. There's no trouble about a picnic where nobody's married, is there?"

"Humph! What's the peach of an idea? To get divorces?"

"Certainly not! Have husbands and wives--only somebody else's husband or somebody else's wife. You and I--do you see?--and Annette and Tom; Jane Henderson and Emerson Riley; Catherine Fredericks and that fellow who's visiting the Moores. How about it?"

"Day would have a convulsion, Ferd."

"Good gracious, Fanny!" he said. "Haven't you any imagination? What has Day got to do with it? You wouldn't tell him, of course!"

Well, that was different. I was rather scared when I got to thinking of it, but it sounded amusing and different. One way and another I see such a lot of Day. He's always around unless there's a golf tournament somewhere else.

"It's moonlight," Ferd said. "The only thing, of course, is to get off. I can stay over at the club or go on a motor trip. It's easy enough for the fellows; but the girls will have to work out something."

So we sat and thought. Day came in from the links just then and stopped by my chair.

"Great afternoon!" he said, mopping his face. "Y'ought to hear what I did to Robson, Fan--I drove off my watch and never touched it. Then he tried it with his. Couldn't even find the case!"

"Go away, Day," I said. "I'm thinking."

"Ferd doesn't seem to interfere with your thinking."

"He's negative and doesn't count," I explained. "You're positive."

That put him in a good humour again and he went off for a shower. I turned to Ferd.

"I believe I've got it," I said--"I'll have a fight with Day the morning of the picnic and I'll not be there when he gets home. I've done it before. Then, when I do go home, he'll be so glad to see me he'll not ask any questions. He'll think I've been off sulking."

"Good girl!" said Ferd.

"Only you must get home by ten o'clock--that's positive. By eleven he'd be telephoning the police."

"Sure I will! We'll all have to get home at reasonable hours."

"And--I'm a wretch, Ferd. He's so fond of me!"

"That's no particular virtue in him. I'm fond of you--and that's mild, Fan; but what's a virtue in Day is a weakness in me, I dare say."

"It's an indiscretion," I said, and got up. Enough is a sufficiency, as somebody said one day, and I did not allow even Ferd to go too far.

Annette and Jane and Catherine were all crazy about it. Annette was the luckiest, because Charles was going for a fishing trip, and her time was her own. And Ferd's idea turned out to be perfectly bully when the eight of us got together that evening and talked it over while the husbands were shooting crap in the grill room.

"There's an island up the river," he explained, "where the men from our mill have been camping; and, though the tents are down, they built a wooden pavilion at the edge of the water for a dining hall--and, of course, that's still there. We can leave town at, say, four o'clock and motor up there--you and Tom, Annette and----"

"I've been thinking it over, Ferd," I put in, "and I won't motor. If the car goes into a ditch or turns over you always get in the papers and there's talk. Isn't there a street car?"

"There's a street car; but, for heaven's sake, Fanny----"

"Street car it is," I said with decision. "With a street car we'll know we're going to get back to town. It won't be sitting on its tail lamp in a gully; and we won't be hiding the license plates under a stone and walking home, either."

There was a lot of demur and at first Annette said she wouldn't go that way; but she came round at last.

"I'll send a basket up late in the afternoon," Ferd said, "with something to eat in it. And you girls had better put on sensible things and cut out the high heels and fancy clothes. If you are going in a street car you'd better be inconspicuous."

That was the way we arranged it finally--the men to take one car and the girls another and meet opposite the island on the river bank. We should have to row across and Ferd was to arrange about boats. We set Thursday as the day.

Some sort of premonition made me nervous--and I was sorry about Day too; for though the picnic was only a lark and no harm at all, of course he would have been furious had he known. And he was very nice to me all the week. He sent flowers home twice and on Wednesday he said I might have a new runabout. That made it rather difficult to quarrel with him Thursday, as I had arranged.

I lay awake half the night trying to think of something to quarrel about. I could not find anything that really answered until nearly dawn, when I decided to give him some bills I had been holding back. I fell asleep like a child then and did not waken until eleven o'clock. There was a box of roses by the bed and a note in Day's writing.

"Honey lamb!" he wrote: "Inclosed is a telegram from Waite calling me to Newburyport to the tournament. I'll hardly get back before to-morrow night. I came to tell you, but you looked so beautiful and so sound asleep I did not have the heart to waken you. Be a good girl! DAY."

Somehow the note startled me. Could he have had any suspicion? I felt queer and uneasy all the time I was dressing; but after I had had a cup of tea I felt better. There is nothing underhanded about Day. He has no reserves. And if he had learned about the picnic he would have been bleating all over the place.

The weather was splendid--a late summer day, not too warm, with a September haze over everything. We met at the hairdresser's and Jane Henderson was frightfully nervous.

"Of course I'm game," she said, while the man pinned on her net; "but my hands are like ice."

Catherine, however, was fairly radiant.

"There's a sort of thrill about doing something clandestine," she observed, "that isn't like anything else in the world. I feel like eloping with Mr. Lee. You'll all be mad about him. He's the nicest thing!"

Mr. Lee was the Moores' guest.

I had got into the spirit of the thing by that time and I drew a long breath. Day was safely out of the way, the weather was fine, and I had my hair over my ears the way Ferd liked it.

II

Everything went wonderfully--up to a certain point. Have you ever known it to fail? Everything swims along and all is lovely--and the thing, whatever it may be, is being so successful that it is almost a culmination; and then suddenly, out of a clear sky, there is a slip-up somewhere and you want to crawl off into a corner and die.

Ferd had got there early and had a boat ready, all scrubbed out and lined with old carpets. He was just as excited as any of us.

"The trouble with us," he said, as we rowed over to the island, "is that we are all in a rut. We do the same things over and over, at the same places, with the same people. The _hoi polloi_ never make that mistake and they get a lot more out of life. Every now and then the puddlers from the mill come over here and have a great time."

There were two islands, one just above the other, with about a hundred feet of water between them. The upper island was much the nicer and it was there that Ferd had planned the party.

He does things awfully well, really. He had had a decorator out there early in the day and the pavilion was fixed up with plants and vines which looked as if they grew on it. He had the table fixed too, with a mound of roses and the most interesting place cards. Mine had a little jewelled dagger thrust through it, and the card said:

_That's as much as to say, they are fools that marry._

He said the quotation was from Shakespeare and the dagger was for Day.

Annette's card said:

_She was married, charming, chaste, and twenty-three,_

which delighted Annette, she being more than twenty-three.

Ferd's own card said:

_Another woman now and then Is relished by the best of men._

I have forgotten the others. The dagger was a pin, and each card had something pretty fastened to it.

We sat and gossiped while we waited for the others and then we wandered round. The island was not very pretty--flat and weedy mostly, with a good many cans the campers had left, and a muddy shore where a broken dock, consisting of two planks on poles, was the boat landing. But it was only later that I hated it, really. That afternoon we said it was idyllic, and the very place for a picnic.

The other men arrived soon after, and it was really barrels of fun. We made a rule first. No one was to mention an absent husband or wife; and the person who did had to tell a story or sing a song as a forfeit. I was more than proud of Ferd. He had even had a phonograph sent up, with a lot of new music. We danced the rest of the afternoon and the Lee man danced like an angel. I never had a better time. Jane voiced my feelings perfectly.

"It's not that I'm tired of Bill," she said. "I dote on him, of course; but it is a relief, once in a while, not to have a husband in the offing, isn't it? And the most carping critic could not object to anything we are doing. That's the best of all."

The dinner was really wonderful--trust Ferd for that too. We were almost hilarious. Between courses we got up and changed our own plates, and we danced to the side table and back again. Once we had an alarm, however. An excursion boat came up the river and swung in close to the pavilion. We had not noticed it until it was quite near and there was no time to run; so we all sat down on the floor inside the railing, which was covered with canvas, and had our salad there.

By the time dinner was over it was almost dark; and we took a bottle of champagne down to the dock and drank it there, sitting on the boards, with our feet hanging. Ferd had been growing sentimental for the last hour or two and I had had to keep him down. He sat beside me on the boards and kept talking about how he envied Day, and that Ida was a good wife and better than he deserved; but no one had ever got into him the way I had.

"I'm not trying to flatter you, Fanny," he said. "I've always been honest with you. But there's a woman for every man, and you're my woman."

He had come rather close and, anyhow, he was getting on my nerves; so I gave him just the least little bit of a push and he fell right back into the water. I was never so astonished in my life.

The way Jane Henderson told it later was criminally false. I did not push him with all my strength and he had not tried to kiss me. Nobody had had too much to drink. It was a perfectly proper party, and my own mother could not have found a single thing to criticise.

Well, Ferd was wet through and not very agreeable. He said, however, that he had merely overbalanced, and that he would dry out somehow. The only thing was that he had to get back home and he felt he was not looking his best.

The moon came up and was perfectly lovely; but about the time we had settled down to singing soft little songs and the Lee man was saying what a good lot of sports we were, and that he was going to take the idea back home, a lot of puddlers and their wives rowed out from the shore and started toward our island. Ferd was awfully annoyed. He stood up and shouted at them.

"You can't come here!" he called. "This place is taken. Go to the other island."

"Go to the devil!" one of the puddlers bellowed from the boat; nevertheless they turned the boat's nose round and went to the other island. We could hear them yelling and laughing there, and singing in the commonest fashion. It ruined the moonlight for us. From that time the bloom was off, as one may say, and things went from bad to worse.

The last car went at ten o'clock, and at half-past nine we commenced to pack up. Annette insisted on taking the roses; and there was the phonograph and the club's silver and dishes, and almost a boat-load of stuff. We could not all get in, of course, so Ferd and Emerson Riley agreed to wait; but just as I got into the boat I dropped my gold bag overboard.

I would not go without the bag. It was set with diamonds and I did not know when I should get another. I just got out of the boat and refused to stir until it had been fished out.

There was a great deal of excitement. The last car had come and was waiting on the bank for its return trip, and every one was anxious to get off. Ferd, who was wet anyway, waded in, but he could not locate it immediately, and Jane grew hysterical.

"Come on and leave it, Fan!" she begged. "What's a bag compared with one's reputation? That car's moving now!"

"Go on!" I said coldly. "I shall stay here until Ferd finds it. Go on, all of you! You can send a man back with the boat, I dare say."

They did it! I never was more astounded in my life; but they all piled in except Ferd and me, and made for the shore as fast as they could. They said it was all well enough for me, with Day out of town; but the rest of them never had any luck and they had to get that car.

"They're terribly nervous, all at once!" I said. "If that car goes without me, Ferd, I shall jump into the river!"

It was moonlight, but not very bright. I sat on the dock and Ferd fished for the gold bag. He brought up an empty bottle, two tin cans and an old shoe.

"Look here, Fan," he said finally, "I'll buy you a new bag. I'll do anything--only let's get out of this."

"Try once more."

"I'll get neuralgia," he said. "I have to be awfully careful, Fanny. Ida has to watch me like a hawk."

"I should imagine so," I replied coldly.

"I mean about the neuralgia."

"Humph! Day never has anything the matter with him--that's one thing. Try again, Ferd."

He stooped again, and this time he got it. He straightened up with it in his hand. The car was still on the bank and a boat was putting out from the shore. All seemed to be well.

"They'll bribe the motorman to wait," said Ferd. "I told Riley to. So you see, little girl, everything's all right. Here's the bag and there's the boat. Do you like me a little bit again?"

I felt rather queer, alone there on the island with him; and the only thing that occurred to me was to keep him down.

"I'll like you well enough when we get back to civilization," I said shortly.

"You're not like yourself, Fanny. You aren't a bit kind to me."

"Being nice to you with everybody round is one thing. This is another. I'm scared, Ferd."

"Not of me!" he said, getting hold of one of my hands. He looked horrid in the moonlight, with his collar in a crease and his coat stuck to him. He looked awfully thin, too, and his hair was in straggles over his face. "Fan, the boat's coming and I never see you alone. Do say you care a little bit!"

Well, I had to play the game. I am not a quitter. I had let him get up the party and spend a lot of money, and I had pretended for months to be interested in him. What was I to do? You may say what you like--a lot of married women get into things they never meant to simply because they are kind-hearted and hate to be called quitters.

"I've always cared a little," I said, trying not to look at him. "Ferd, you're dripping! Don't touch me!"

"Lady-love!" cried Ferd, very close to my ear; and then: "Good gracious, Fan! Where's the boat?"

It had absolutely disappeared! Ferd stood up on the shaky dock and peered over the water.

"He's gone to the other island," he said after a moment. "They'll tell him he's wrong, but--time's passing!"

He did not start the lady-love business again, and we sat side by side on the dock, with the river, damp and smelly, underfoot. It was very silent, save for the far-away yells of the puddlers on the next island and the drip-drip from Ferd's trouser-ends to the water below.

Somehow the snap was gone out of the whole thing. I hated it, being alone with him there, and his looking so mussy, and my vanity case soaking from the river. I hated the puddlers' picnic; there was nothing I didn't hate. And the boatman did not come. Even Ferd began to get anxious.

"The infernal fool!" he said. "He's probably joined the picnic, and----Hello, there!" he called, with his hands to his mouth.

I think they heard us on the bank, for we could hear the trolley bell very faintly. And, immediately after, the car moved off! I had the most awful feeling. We sat on the boards watching it getting smaller and smaller down the river, and neither of us said anything. It had been our one tie, as you may say, to respectability and home--and it had deserted us. After a minute Ferd got up on his feet.

"It's the puddlers, after all!" he said. "We'll have to hail them and get them to send that ass of a boatman. Wouldn't you think that Emerson Riley would have had sense enough to wait and see that we got over safely?"

I fairly clutched at his arm.

"You'll do nothing of the sort," I said. "They'll know you if they're from your mill, and they'll know I am not Ida! It will be in the papers!"

Ferd looked sulky.

"What am I to do, then?" he demanded. "Swim to the bank?"

"Couldn't you swim to the other island and steal one of their boats?"

He did not want to. I could see that; but what else was there to do?

"It's a good way off," he said. "It won't help things any for me to be drowned, you know."

"It would be better than a scandal, wouldn't it?"

He threw up his hands.

"Oh, if that's the way you feel----"

"That isn't half the way I feel!"

He went off at that in a fury, leaving me alone on the little dock in a state of frenzy. I kept thinking of Day's getting home sooner than he expected and finding me gone, and calling up the police; and my wandering in about daylight with my slippers worn through. I made up a story--if the worst happened--about having had an attack of loss of memory, coming to myself seven miles from town and walking in.

There was no sign of Ferd. The puddlers' picnic was noisier than ever; they had brought a phonograph, too, and were dancing.

When I had waited for what seemed half the night I got frightened about Ferd. He had said it was a good way to go; and if he was drowned--and Ida really fond of him, and welcome to him so far as I was concerned--it was all up with me. Day would loathe the very sight of me. I knew that.

The grass looked snaky in the moonlight and I felt I was taking my life in my hands; but, somehow or other, with my hair pulled down by branches, and ankle-deep in mud every now and then, I got to the place where the two islands faced each other, end to end. There was not a sign of Ferd.

I just sank down on the ground and hoped for death. There was no way out. Jane and the others would think we had the boat and could hire a machine or something to get to the city, and they would not give us another thought. Even if I hailed the puddlers and told them, they would never believe my story. And, of course, there was poor Ferd in the river mud--sure to float in and spoil any story I could make up about loss of memory.

It was when I had reached that point that pandemonium broke loose on the other island. I could hear shouting--men and women together--and, in a pause, the frantic splashing of oars. The next moment a boat appeared round the corner of the island, with Ferd rowing like mad, and a perfect pandemonium from the shore. He had stolen their boat and they had found it out. I was almost crazy. I waded out to my knees and called to him; and he saw me. There was no other boat after him yet, but some one was yelling to follow him.

Ferd was rather steadied by the excitement, I think. He reached over and dragged me in without a word, and the next instant we were pulling for the shore in the moonlight, with the entire puddlers' picnic on their bank, calling awful things to us.

That was not all, though. One of the men had got into their other boat and was coming after us. He could row, too. I implored Ferd to hurry--hurry. And I kept turning round to see whether he was gaining. That was how I discovered why they were so wrought up. There were two dozen quart bottles of champagne in the stern of that boat! We were carrying off the picnic! I told Ferd. "Throw it overboard!" he said. "It'll lighten the boat."