CHAPTER XIII

JILTED!

When a tempest in a teapot goes out at the spout it is always disappointing to spectators!

One naturally expects the vessel to burst--or the lid to fly off, at least--and when neither takes place one experiences a little collapsed feeling of disappointment.

The barest thought of the pain I was going to inflict upon Guilford Blake when I broke my lifelong engagement to him had been sending shivers up and down my backbone ever since four o'clock on the afternoon of Mrs. Hiram Walker's reception--_then_, when I turned away from Maitland Tait's motor-car the night I went to Loomis on urgent business, and came face to face with my betrothed standing in the shadow of the office door waiting for me--the unexpected happened!

Mr. Blake broke his engagement with me!

"Grace, you amaze me!" he said.

He said it so quietly, with so icy an air of disapproval that I looked up quickly to see what the trouble was. Then I observed that he had told the truth. I hadn't crushed, wounded, nor annihilated him. I had simply amazed him.

"Oh, Guilford! I didn't know you were here!"

"I suppose not."

"But, how does it happen--?"

He motioned me to silence.

"Have the goodness to let me ask the questions," he suggested.

"Oh, certainly!"

"Will you, first of all, tell me what this means?" was the opening query, but before I could reply he went on: "Not that _I_ have any right to pry into your affairs, understand!"

"Guilford!"

"It's true! My right to question you has ceased to exist!"

"You mean that you have washed your hands of me?" I gasped. After all, it was most unusual for Guilford and me to be talking to each other like this. I was bewildered by the novelty of it.

He caught the sound of the gasp and interpreted it as a plea for quarter. It settled him in his determination.

"I must," he declared.

"By all means--if that's the way you feel about it," I said courteously, as if granting a request.

He looked down at me, in a manner that said: "It hurts me more than it does you, my child."

"I've endured--things from you before this, Grace," he reminded me, "But to-night--why, this out-Herods-Herod!"

Now, if he had looked hurt--cruelly wounded or deeply shocked--I'd have been penitent enough to behave decently to him. But he didn't. He was simply angry. He looked like the giant when he was searching around for Jack and saying: "Fee! Faw! Fum! I smell the blood of an Englishman!"

"But what have I done?" I demanded indignantly. "Mayn't a man come to see me, and--"

"Certainly he may!"

"And mayn't I--"

"And you may go to see him, too--if you like!"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean--I mean," he answered, stammering a little with wrath, "of course _you_ may do such things--Grace Christie may--but my future wife may not."

For a moment I had a blinded angry paralysis descend upon me. I had a great desire to do something to relieve the situation, but I didn't know what to do--rather as you feel sometimes at the breakfast table when your morning grapefruit hits you squarely in the eye.

"Suppose you try to calm yourself a little and tell me just what the trouble is," I said, struggling after calmness for my own individual use.

He took off his hat and mopped his brow.

"Your mother suspected last night that something had gone wrong with you at that dance," he began explaining, the flash of the street light at the corner showing that he had gone quite pale.

"Well?"

"She said that you came in looking wild-eyed and desperate."

"I am not willing to admit that," I said with dignity.

"And, then she knew you didn't sleep!" he kept on. "All day she has been feeling that something was amiss with you."

"I see! And when I didn't show up to-night at dinner--"

"She called the office--naturally."

"Naturally!" I encouraged.

"And the fool who answered the telephone consoled her by telling her that you had--gone--out--to--_Loomis_!"

He paused dramatically, but I failed to applaud.

"Well, what next?" I inquired casually.

He drew back.

"Then you don't deny it?"

I gave a little laugh.

"Why should I attempt to deny it?" I asked. "Haven't you just caught me in the act of coming back in Mr. Tait's car?"

"I have!" he answered in gloating triumph, "that is, I have caught you leaving his car--while he made love to you at the curb! This, however, doesn't necessarily confirm the Loomis rumor!"

He waited for me to explain further, but I simply bowed my head in acquiescence.

"Yes," I said serenely. "He was making love to me."

"And you acknowledge this, too?"

I made a gesture of impatience.

"I acknowledge everything, Guilford!--That you and I have been the victims of heredity, first of all, and--"

He drew back stiffly.

"Victims? I beg pardon?"

"I mean in this engagement of ours--that we had nothing to do with!"

"But I assure you that I have never looked upon myself in the light of a victim!" he said proudly. "And--although I know that it will not interest you especially--I wish to add that I have never given a serious thought to any other woman in my life."

"Yet you have never been in love with me!" I challenged.

He hesitated.

"I have always felt very close to you," he endeavored to explain. "We have so many things in common--there is, of course, a peculiar congeniality--"

"Congeniality?"

It struck me that the only point of congeniality between us was that we were both Caucasians, but I didn't say it.

"Our parents were friends long before we were born! This, of itself, certainly must bring in its wake a degree of mutual affection," he explained, and as the words "mutual affection" came unfeelingly from his lips I suddenly felt a thousand years further advanced in wisdom than he.

"But real love may be--is, I'm sure--a vastly different thing from the regard we've had for each other," I ventured, trying not to make a display of my superiority in learning, but he interrupted me contemptuously.

"'Real love!' What could you possibly know about that?" he asked chillingly. "You, who are ready to flirt with any stray foreigner who chances to stop over in this city for a week! But for me--why, I have never glanced at another woman! I have always understood my good fortune in being affianced to the one woman in the whole country round who was best fitted to bear the honored name which has descended to me."

When he said this I began to feel sorry for him. I was not sorry for his disappointment, you understand, but for his view-point. "I was never fitted for it, Guilford!" I said humbly. "It's true I come of the same sort of stock that produced you--but I am awkwardly grafted on my family tree! At heart I am a barbarian."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean--the things you love most I simply forget about."

"I think you do!" he coincided heartily. "You have certainly forgotten all about ordinary propriety to-night."

At this I waxed furious again.

"How I hate that word propriety!" I said. "And there's another one--a companion word which I never mean to use until I'm past sixty! It's _Platonic_!--Those two words remind me of tarpaulins in a smuggler's boat because you can hide so much underneath them!"

"I'm not speaking of hiding things," he fired back, as angry as I was. "And, if you want to know the truth, I rather admire your honesty in not trying to pretend that your flirtation with this Englishman _is_ Platonic!--Yet that certainly doesn't throw any more agreeable light upon this happening to-night.--You _did_ go to Loomis!"

I could scarcely keep from laughing at this, for his anger seemed to be centered in one spot--like an alderman's avoirdupois! He was thinking far less of losing me than of the indelicacy of my going to Loomis.

"Yes," I answered, trying to make my words inconsequential. "Old man Hudson sent me!"

His hat, which he had held deferentially in his hand all this time, suddenly fluttered to the ground.

"What!"

"Didn't you and mother _know_ that?" I asked.

"That--that it was a business proposition?" he panted.

"Certainly--or I should never have gone! How little you and mother know about me, after all, Guilford."

He looked crestfallen for a moment, then his face brightened once more into angry triumph.

"But I saw him making love to you!" he summed up hastily, as an afterthought.

"Yes--you did," I assured him exultantly.

"And you met him for the first time--let me see? What day was it?"

I ignored the sarcasm.

"Tuesday," I answered. "At four o'clock in the afternoon."

"And not a soul in this town knows a thing about him!"

"Except myself," I protested. "I know a great deal about him."

"Then, do you happen to know--I heard it from a fellow in Pittsburgh who has followed his meteoric career as captain of industry--do _you_ happen to know that he makes no secret of having left England because he was so handicapped by disadvantages of birth?"

I hesitated just a moment--not in doubt as to what I should say, but as to how I should say it.

"That's all right, Guilford," I answered complacently. "If his ancestors all looked like 'gentlemen of the jury' it doesn't lessen his own dignity and grandeur."

Now, if you've never been in a circuit court room you can't appreciate the above simile, but Guilford was a lawyer.

He looked at me in a dazed fashion for an instant.

"Grace, you don't feel ill--nor anything--do you?" he asked anxiously.

"Oh, no!"

"But I can't believe that you're exactly right in your mind!"

"Well--maybe--"

"I can't believe that to-morrow morning will actually dawn and find us asunder," he kept on quickly. "It must be some sort of fantastic dream."

"It will seem very--queer, at first, Guilford," I confessed, with a preliminary shrinking at the thought of facing mother.

"Queer's no word to use in connection with it," he answered crossly, then I heard heavy footsteps in the corridor above, and I took a quick step toward him.

"I must go up-stairs," I whispered. "Old man Hudson is making night hideous, I know!--But all this is really true, Guilford! And--and you must wear _this_ in your vest pocket now!"

I slipped the scarab ring into his hand.

"You are determined?" he asked dully.

"I am--awakened," I replied.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that you are not really in love with me--never have been in love with me, and never could be except upon certain occasions when I was dreadfully dressed-up--where there were red roses and the sound of violin music."

"Grace, you are--unkind," he said, with a groping look on his face. "I confess that I don't in the least understand you!"

"Then how lucky we are!" I exclaimed. "So many people don't find this out until after they've got their house all furnished! We're going to be friends always, Guilford."

Then, without waiting for him to say more I turned away and ran breathlessly up the steps into the office.

The brilliant light in the city news room met me squarely as I opened the door. I blinked a little--then raised my left hand and examined it closely. It looked--_awful_! I had worn that same ring ever since I was seventeen years old--and I felt as I might feel if I'd just had my hair cut off or suffered some other unprecedented loss.

The city editor looked up from his desk.

"Well?" he inquired. "Have you got it?"

I was still gazing at that left hand.

"No," I answered stupidly. "It's _gone_!"

He jumped to his feet.

"Here!" he commanded sharply. "Sit down here!"

I sat down, letting my bag slide to the floor.

"You don't feel sick--do you?"

"No."

"You didn't fall off the street-car--did you?"

"No."

"You haven't happened to any sort of trouble--have you?"

"No."

The "No--No--No--" was in the monotonous tone a person says "Ninety-nine" when his lungs are being examined.

Mr. Hudson looked at me closely.

"Then--the story!" he said.

I blankly reached for my bag, opened it and took out the blank copy paper.

"Oh--damn--" he began, then swallowed.

This awakened me from my trance.

"But he _does_!" I exclaimed in triumph. He _is_--and he's _going to be_!"

"Here?" the editorial voice called out sharply and joyously. "Here in Oldburgh?"

My head bobbed a concise yes.

"Bigger and better than ever?" my questioner tormented.

"A thousand times! Happiness for everybody!--Where there's a family there'll also be a House that's a Home--"

The old fellow began scribbling.

"I reckon he means model cottages," he observed sourly. "They all make a great pretense of loving their neighbor as themselves in this day and time."

"Yes--even if it's a cottage it will certainly be a model one--and what more could one desire?" I asked, rambling again.

"Then--what else?"

"And--oh! Gardens! Gardens--gardens!"

He held up his hand.

"Wait--you go too darn fast!"

"I'm sorry! Maybe I have gone too fast!" I answered, as I settled back in my chair and my face reddened uncomfortably. "Maybe I have gone too fast!"

"You have! You confuse me--talking the way you do and looking the way you do! By rights I ought to make you write the story out yourself--but you don't look as if you could spell 'Unprecedented good fortune in the annals of Oldburgh's industrial career,' to-night!"

"I'm sure I couldn't," I admitted readily. "Please don't ask me to."

"Well--go on with your narrative. What else?"

"Acres and acres! Acres and _acres_!" I impressed upon him. "That's what I've always wanted! I love acres so much better than neighbors--don't you?"

He paused in his writing.

"Of course the Macdermott Realty Company did the stunt?" he asked, scratching his head with his pencil tip and leaving a little black mark along the field of redness. "We mustn't forget to mention each individual member of the firm.--And then--?"

"A schoolhouse," I remembered.

He glared.

"A schoolhouse?" he questioned. "What for?"

"For the children!" I answered, lowering my eyes. "Did you think there wouldn't be any children? How could there be a House that was a Home without them?"

"Oh, and this fellow, Tait, is going to see to it that they're educated, eh? They're going to have advantages that he didn't have--and all that sort of thing? Very praiseworthy, I'm sure!"

I sprang up from my chair.

"I'm going home, Mr. Hudson, please!" I begged. "There _is_ something wrong with my head."

He smiled.

"It's different from any other woman's head I ever saw," he admitted half grudgingly. "It's _level_!"

"But indeed you're mistaken!" I plead. "Right this minute I'm--I'm seeing things!"

Then, when I said this a gentle light stole over his face--such a light I'm sure that few people ever saw there--perhaps nobody ever had except Mrs. Hudson the day he proposed to her.

"Visions?" he asked kindly. "A House that's a Home--and _English_ gardens."

"That's not fair!" I warned. "I really ought not to have gone out there to-night--and I don't know whether he'll want all this written up or not--for I didn't mention the _Herald's_ name in our conversation, and--"

"Bosh!" he snapped. "Rot! And piffle! You had a right to go out there if I sent you--and of course he can't object to the public knowing _now_! Why, I expect any one of the reporters could have got as much out of him to-night as you did!"

"Do you really think so?" I asked, from the doorway. "Good night, Mr. Hudson. You can easily make two columns out of that, by drawing on your--past experience."

He waved me crossly away, without once looking up or saying "Thank you" and I caught a car home. Half an hour later, when the curve was turned into the full face of West Clydemont Place I still thought I was "seeing things." A big motor-car stood before our door, but my heart changed its tune when I got closer. It was not a limousine. It was a doctor's coupé. Mother had suffered a violent chill.

"Grace, I--have no words!" she moaned, as I came into the room.