Part 6

"You mean you didn't bring Lita home last Friday--a week ago?" she said, and her eyes began to get large.

Valentine leaned back and looked at the ceiling, stamped one foot slightly on the floor and crossed the other leg over it. This seemed to help him think, for almost immediately he said:

"We were putting in our new villain"; and when he saw that Mrs. Hazlitt did not grasp the information, he added, "We were rehearsing all that afternoon."

Of course, she told him the whole story, and heard in return many interesting and surprising incidents of a popular actor's life. He was extremely interesting and sympathetic; so different from what she had expected--delightful. She felt she had made a real friend. In fact, she had promised to have tea with him at his apartment the following Thursday. She was so glad he had not said Friday. Lita would be back for her holidays on Friday, and somehow it would be hard to explain after all she had said against actors; though, of course, Lita herself would be called on to explain how she had allowed--and who was the man who had brought her home? Thursday would be safe, though; and she did want to meet this new Spanish actress Doria for whom the party was given. Valentine had assumed that Mrs. Hazlitt spoke Spanish, and when she insisted that she did not he was perfectly tactful. His own, he said, was getting rusty; but Doria was all right in French. He said he would come for her himself on Thursday. She thought that very kind.

She had a flurried, excited feeling when he had gone that she was entering upon a new phase of life. She had had a delightful afternoon. But the mystery of Lita's conduct was deeper than ever. Who was the man? Had there been a man at all? She sat down to write to her child, demanding to know the truth; but was interrupted by the entrance of Freebody with a long, narrow box which looked as if it might contain a boa constrictor, but did actually contain a dozen long-stemmed roses, with Valentine's card.

Mrs. Hazlitt tore up her letter. After all, it would be better to wait until Friday, and when Lita returned they could have a long, clear explanation.

But, as things turned out, Lita came back on Thursday. A little girl in one of the younger classes contrived to catch a light case of measles, and the school was hurried home a day ahead of time. It was generally mentioned that the child deserved a tablet in the common room; and she did actually receive a laurel wreath tied with red, white and blue ribbon, and bearing the inscription, "_Dulce et decora est_ to get measles for the good of your schoolmates."

The New York girls came back unheralded, for the school did not have time to telephone every parent. Miss Jones went about in a bus dropping the girls at their places of residence.

Lita, for the first time in her life, hoped that her mother would not be in. She wanted to be free to telephone Doctor Dacer without comment. She knew her mother would disapprove of her telephoning. She had had other glimpses of the last generation's method of dealing with romantic complications. They had strange old conventions about letting the advances come from the masculine side, or at least of maneuvering so that they appeared to. Subtle, they called it. Lita thought it rather sneaky.

She learned from Freebody at the door that her mother was dressing and was to be out to tea, but was to be home to dinner. Lita walked straight to the library, and having looked up Dacer's number called the office. The office nurse answered. Yes, the doctor was in. Who wished to speak to him? Miss Hazlitt? Just a minute. There was a long silence. What would she do if he refused to speak to her? Go there?

"Oh, Doctor Dacer, I wanted to tell you that Miss Barton told you something that wasn't true, though she thought it was. You know what I mean.... I want to see you, please. I wish you would.... Now; the sooner the better.... Yes; good-by."

She hung up the receiver with a hand not absolutely steady. He was coming at once. She took off her hat and dropped it on the sofa and stood still in the middle of the floor. If only her mother would keep on dressing for half an hour or so! It couldn't take him very long to get from his office in Sixty-third Street near Park-- Now he was putting on his hat, now he was in the street, now he was coming nearer and nearer every minute--

Exactly eleven minutes by the watched clock after she had hung up the telephone receiver the doorbell rang. The doorbell could just be heard in the library by straining ears.

And then Freebody said from the doorway, "Doctor Dacer to see you, miss."

Dacer was standing now in the doorway, looking at her darkly. Severity was evidently going to temper his justice.

"Well?" he said.

The main thing was that he had come.

"Didn't you think I could write a better love letter than that?" she began.

"Unfortunately I have had no opportunities of judging."

"What does a head mistress know about girls?"

"She tells a pretty well-documented story."

It came over Lita that they were quarreling--almost--and that she liked the process, but liked it only because she knew it must come out right. Her case was so clear.

"The letter and the photographs belonged to Aurelia," she said. "I hid them for her when she was taken ill. That was why I was in such a hurry to go that first day--when you patted me on the head. And if they told you about a mysterious man who brought me home in a taxi--that was you, and--"

"You never wrote to Valentine?"

"Never!"

He took a step toward her.

"Never sent him your photograph?"

"No!"

He took another step.

"Never saw him except on the stage?"

"No!"

Another step would bring him to her; and what, she wondered, would happen then?

What happened was that the door opened and Freebody said, "Mr. Valentine."

And there he was, the man himself, more beautiful than the posters.

Never before had the chairman of the self-government committee found herself deserted by the powers of speech and action. She stood helplessly staring at the great artist before her. And even then the day might have been saved if Valentine had not been so kind, so determined to put everything straight.

"Ah," he said, supposing he had to do with an embarrassed child, "you are Miss Hazlitt, and very like your picture. I should know you anywhere."

"You've seen my picture?" said Lita, with a sort of feeble hope that the question would convey her complete innocence to Dacer. She could hear her own voice twittering high and silly like a hysterical bird.

"Yes, indeed," said Valentine; and the voice, which was only kind, sounded in Dacer's ears significant. "This one, isn't it? Photography"--he turned politely, including Dacer in the conversation--"is only just getting back to where it was in the days of the daguerreotype. How wonderful they were! So soft--"

"Photography has always had its uses, I believe," answered Dacer in his deepest voice. He made a slight bow in the general direction of Lita. "Good-by, Miss Hazlitt," he said, and each word came with a terrible distinctness. "If you and I don't meet for some time, you'll remember me to Aurelia, I hope. She seemed to me a singularly candid, truthful nature. I admire that."

He bowed also to Valentine, and was gone. Something about his manner struck Valentine as peculiar. He feared that he had interrupted one of those conversations that do not bear interruption--an impression somewhat confirmed when Miss Hazlitt snatched her hat from the sofa and ran out of the room without a word.

Left alone, Valentine returned to Trivia; but he began to be nervous about the time. He did not want Doria to arrive at his apartment before he and Mrs. Hazlitt got there; so that when Alita came down, apologizing for being late, but in the tone of the habitually late, as if no one really expected you to be on time, he hurried her grimly downstairs.

Freebody was waiting in the hall to open the door, and told her of her daughter's return. She showed a disposition to stay and argue the matter with him. How could it be, when she was not to come till the next day? But Freebody wouldn't argue, and Valentine was firm--they must go.

"Tell Miss Lita I'll be back before seven," said Mrs. Hazlitt, and let herself be hurried out to the car.

Freebody stared at her. Did not she know that Miss Hazlitt had just torn out of the house like a little mad witch?

Lita had moved fast, but an angry man faster. As she left the house she could see him swinging on the step of a moving Madison Avenue car. As it was a southbound car, she hoped this meant that he was going back to his office.

She had seen the address only once, when she looked up his number in the telephone book; but it was indelibly impressed on her mind, although the date of the Battle of Bosworth Field, which she had spent so much time memorizing, always escaped her. In her hurry she had forgotten not only her gloves but her purse, so that she was obliged to walk the eight or nine blocks. Walk? She almost ran, crossing all necessary streets diagonally, dodging in and out between motors. Suppose he should go out again before she got there! It was terrible!

Doctor Burroughs' office was in an oyster-colored apartment house. In a window on the ground floor she read the blue porcelain name of Doctor Burroughs--very large; and Doctor Dacer--very small. She entered a hall that was low and decorated in the style of a Florentine palace. Miss Waverley, with her white hair brushed straighter than ever, answered the door.

"Have you an appointment with the doctor?"

She spoke very politely, but there was a hint that without an appointment--

"I think he'll see me for a minute," said Lita.

She was far from feeling certain of this; and if he refused, she did not know exactly what she could do except sit on the doorstep.

She was shown into the waiting room. A complete silence fell upon the room--the house--the city. Then a returning rustling of starched skirts in the narrow passageway was heard. The doctor would see her. She was led down the long corridor to a small room filled for the most part by a desk. A door was standing open into a larger room beyond, which was lined with white tiles and decorated with glass cases along the walls in which hideous instruments were displayed as if they were objects of art. The nurse having ushered Lita into the first room, retired to the second, where she remained without shutting the door between, and could be heard moving about and doing something with instruments that made a soft, continual clinking.

Dacer rose slowly from his desk, on which cards in several colors were strewn.

He said in his deep voice, "Yes, I thought it might be you."

"Doctor Dacer--" Lita began. Her throat was dry.

"Oh, don't explain," he said. "What's the use?"

For the first time she saw that she had no explanation whatsoever to offer. She could only say, "I haven't any idea why that man suddenly appeared at the house." It sounded feeble, even to her.

"Perhaps to inquire about Aurelia," answered Dacer, and permitted himself a most disagreeable smile.

"That's not funny," said Lita.

"It's not original. I got the main idea from someone else."

"Doctor Dacer, I never saw Mr. Valentine--nor wrote to him. The only explanation I can think of is--"

Miss Waverley entered.

"Mr. Andrews on the telephone, doctor."

Dacer snatched up the telephone as if it were a captured standard, saying as he did so, "Perhaps while I'm telephoning you'll be able to think of the explanation."

But she wasn't able to think at all. She could just stare at him.

"Yes," she heard him saying, "there is a--someone is here at the moment, but I shall be free directly." He hung up the receiver and replaced the telephone on the desk. "Well," he said, "have you got something good ready for me?"

She had one small idea.

"Can't you see that if things were as you think I would hardly have left Mr. Valentine to follow you, at once?"

"Oh, quite a time has gone by!"

"Because I had to walk--I had no money with me. Walk? No, I ran!"

He was affected by the picture of her running after him through the streets, and she pressed on: "Doctor Dacer, I want to tell you why I let my parents and Miss Barton and everyone think that letter to Valentine was from me."

He sat down, shrugging his shoulders as if it were useless but he would not forbid it.

Truth in detail is almost inimitable. Lita told her story in great detail--Aurelia's request--the hidden photographs--the story of the tramp--the letter thrust into her pocket and discovered by Margaret--the identical expressions of her parents on the subject of her marriage and her own sudden inspiration that here, at least, was one topic on which they agreed.

"You see," she said eagerly, "it was only a few hours before that my father had said just the same thing--that I must not think of marrying for years; and then my mother--"

"You had sounded both your parents on the subject of marriage?"

Lita looked at him. His face was like a mask.

"I had happened to mention in the course of conversation--"

"You are thinking of getting married, Miss Hazlitt?"

"No, Doctor Dacer."

"No? The idea has never crossed your mind?"

"No--at least not in connection with--no."

Someone had told her that blushing could be prevented by a sharp pinch in the back of the neck. It was a lie. She felt as if she were being painted in a stinging crimson paint, while Dacer continued to regard her with a cold, impassive stare. He rose and shut the door between the two offices.

"Am I to understand," he said, "that you have never considered the possibility of marriage?"

She shook her head. She felt as if she were drowning.

"Then consider it now," he said, and took her up in his arms, her toes dangling inches from the floor.

Miss Waverley entered again. The apartment was well built and the doors opened without any preliminary creaking.

"Doctor Burroughs on the telephone, doctor," she said.

There was nothing to do but to let Lita slide to her feet and to take up the telephone from the desk. It was all very well for him, with his attention immediately occupied; but Lita was left alone to encounter the blank self-control of Miss Waverley's expression as she again shut the door behind her. Dacer was giving his chief an account of a professional visit, and was about to receive instructions. Lita heard him say, "Yes, I'll hold the wire."

In the pause that followed, Lita whispered, pointing toward the door, "She saw!"

"Unless stricken with blindness."

"She took it so calmly."

"Nothing in her life."

"I mean as if it happened every day."

Dacer shouted, still holding the telephone to his ear, "Miss Waverley!" Miss Waverley returned, and Dacer went on, "Have you ever found a lady in my arms before?"

"No, not in yours, doctor," said the nurse, as if she would not wish to be pressed about some of the people she had worked for.

"Thanks," said Dacer. "Miss Hazlitt thought you were not quite enough surprised."

"I wasn't surprised at all," answered Miss Waverley, and as Dacer was obliged to turn back to the telephone and take down some directions in writing she added, "He's been so absent-minded lately--since Elbridge--forgetting everything if I didn't follow him up."

Dacer had finished telephoning.

"Miss Hazlitt and I are going to be married," he said. "Get me a taxi, will you?"

"Not now!" said Lita.

He laughed.

"No, not tonight," he answered. "I've got to see a patient in Washington Square. You'll go with me and wait in the cab. Then we'll dine somewhere--and not get you back until late. We'll test this theory of yours that parents can be reconciled through anxiety."

"Oh, I couldn't!" said Lita. "It would drive my mother mad!"

"Or to your father."

"It would hurt her terribly."

"I'm a surgeon. I know you've got to hurt people sometimes for their own good. My bag, please, Miss Waverley. My book--thanks. Good-by."

A moment later they had gone, and Miss Waverley was left alone, tidying the office for the night. She shook her head. Her thought was: "And they expect us to respect them as if they were grown men." She sighed. "And the grown-up men aren't any better," she thought.

In the meantime the pleasure of Mrs. Hazlitt's afternoon had been spoiled by the idea that Lita was sitting at home, waiting for her. Hers was a nature most open to self-reproach if no one reproached her.

She returned about seven, eager to do her duty. She came running upstairs, calling to her daughter as she ran, and felt distinctly foolish when Freebody said coldly that Miss Hazlitt had not yet come in.

"Hasn't come in?" cried Mrs. Hazlitt, and looked very severely at him over the banisters.

Freebody had been with her long enough to have learned to withstand the implication that anything he told her was his fault. He moved about, putting the card tray straight.

"Miss Hazlitt went out before you did, madam."

"Alone?"

"After the other gentleman left. Not Mr. Valentine."

"There was no other gentleman but Mr. Valentine."

Freebody, in his irritating way, would not argue with her. She had to begin all over again in order to elicit the facts--a gentleman had come to the house soon after Miss Hazlitt's arrival, and just before the arrival of Mr. Valentine. When he left, Miss Hazlitt had gone directly--Freebody would infer that she had been trying to catch up with him.

"Did she?" asked Mrs. Hazlitt.

"Ah, I couldn't say, madam."

Mrs. Hazlitt was really alarmed. This was the other man--the real danger. By half past eight she was convinced of disaster. She called up her former husband at his club. He had gone out to dinner. How characteristic!

No one in the club seemed to know where he was dining; but the telephone operator was ill-advised enough to say that if they did know they were not allowed to give out the information.

Nothing annoyed Mrs. Hazlitt so much as a rule. The idea that the telephone operator of the club knew something which she wanted to know and would not tell her was an idea utterly intolerable. Was her child to be murdered--or worse--because the club had a silly rule? She ordered her motor and drove down to interview the starter. He fortunately had heard the address Mr. Hazlitt had given his chauffeur. It was that of a small restaurant famous for quiet and for good food.

A few minutes later Mrs. Hazlitt was standing in the doorway, fixing her former husband with a significant stare. He was half through dinner with a man from Baltimore. Baltimoreans believe that good food is only terrapin and canvasback; and that terrapin and canvasbacks can only be properly cooked in Baltimore, hence that no good food is obtainable outside of their native city. Hazlitt was in process of proving his friend wrong when he looked up and saw his former wife. He guessed at once that something had happened to Lita, and began to feel guilty.

Alita, in common with so many wives, had always possessed the power of making her husband feel guilty. In old times, with just a glance or an inflection of the voice she could make him feel like the lowest of criminals. And, rage as he might, he found this power had persisted. Love may not always endure until death do them part, but the ability of married people to make each other feel guilty endures to the grave--and possibly beyond.

Hazlitt sprang to his feet, thinking that he ought to have seen Valentine. It had been mere obstinacy on his part. If anything had happened to Lita as a result--

Presently they were driving back to the house in Mrs. Hazlitt's car, and so strong is the power of association that as they got out at the house Hazlitt found himself feeling for his latchkey, though it was thirteen years since he had had a key to that lock. Mrs. Hazlitt saw it and felt rather inclined to cry. She herself was not without a sense of guilt, for she had not told him about her interview with Valentine. When he said repentantly that he ought to have seen the fellow she answered that she was convinced his first judgment had been correct--it wasn't necessary. He thought this very generous of her.

It was after nine when they entered the house. Still nothing had been heard of Lita. Activity for some common interest can make strangers friends and may keep enemies from open quarrels. Mrs. Hazlitt admired Hazlitt's methods--his instructions to his secretary--his possession of a friend in the police department. He complimented her upon the placing of her telephones, her pens and ink. He thought to himself as he looked about the room that she had always had the power to make the material side of life comfortable and agreeable; if only she had understood mental peace as well--

Their intercourse was impersonal, but not hostile. Hazlitt bore interruption calmly, and though she could not allow him to say that Lita resembled him in temperament, she contradicted him without insult. They came nearest to a disagreement over the question as to whether it was or was not a good rule that club employes should not be allowed to give information as to the whereabouts of the members.

"Are all the members' lives so full of secrets?" she asked, and she made the word "secrets" sound very sly.

Fortunately at that moment the doorbell rang, and Lita and Dacer entered.

"Where have you been?" asked her father angrily.

"Dining with Doctor Dacer," answered Lita. "He and I are engaged."

"Nonsense!" said Mrs. Hazlitt.

"My daughter is not old enough to know her own mind," said Hazlitt to Dacer.

"I know it all right," said Lita.

"Of course," said Dacer temperately, "we understand that we could not be married for some time, but we wanted you to know--"

"Oh, that's what young people always say to begin with," Mrs. Hazlitt answered; "but the first thing you know they are sending out their wedding invitations."

Lita and Dacer looked a trifle silly. This had been exactly their idea--to get consent to a long, long engagement, and then by the summer to start a campaign for an early marriage.

Mr. Hazlitt rose and stood on the hearth rug--as if it were his own.

"You two young people realize," he remarked, "that I have never seen or heard of Doctor Dacer before, and that so far he has caused me nothing but anxiety."

"The whole thing has just been a web of deceit," said Mrs. Hazlitt.

"Until I know a little more about him, and until Lita is a year or so older and more mature, I should not be willing even to discuss an engagement, and I'm sure my wife agrees with me."

All four noticed that he had used the word without qualification, and all four successfully ignored the fact. Indeed anyone entering the room at that moment and seeing Mr. Hazlitt, so commanding on the hearth rug, and Mrs. Hazlitt in a chair beside the fire, looking up at him and nodding her head at the end of every sentence, would have supposed them a married couple entering upon middle age without a thought of disagreement.

The discussion followed good orthodox lines. The older people, Olympian above their distress, granted that in a year or so if all went well an engagement might be discussed; but at present none existed. The young people, really calm, knew that nothing but their own wills could change the fact that they were engaged at that moment.

When Dacer had gone home and Lita had gone to bed her parents outlined their campaign. Delay without definite commitment was the idea--it always is. In the meantime Hazlitt would have the young man thoroughly looked up. Mrs. Hazlitt wagged her head despondently.

"I'm afraid there's nothing really against him. Doctor Burroughs wouldn't have an assistant with anything actually criminal in his record."