Part 15

Customarily they met each evening about half-past six at some distance from their lodgings: a precaution against gossip on the part of the other inmates of the Maison Duprat. Thence they would go to dine at some favourite restaurant, where food was good and evening dress not obligatory--the café of their first supper by preference, or else the Lafayette, in University Place, the Brevoort House, or one of a few minor French establishments upon which Matthias had conferred the approval of a discriminating taste. Thereafter, if he meant to work, they would take a taxicab for a brief whirl through Central Park or up Riverside Drive to Grant's Tomb and back. Or if he considered attendance upon some first representation important enough to interfere with his work, as forming part of the education of a student of contemporaneous drama, they would go to a theatre, where he always contrived to have good but inconspicuous seats.

In all, Joan must have attended with him eight or nine first-nights; and since Matthias refused to waste his time on musical comedy, they witnessed for the most part plays dealing with one phase or another of social life in either London or New York. From these Joan derived an amount of benefit which would have surprised anyone ignorant of the quickness of perception and intelligent adaptability characteristic of the American girl, however humble her origin. The poorest plays furnished her with material for self-criticism and improvement. As plays, indeed, she was but vaguely interested in them, but as schools of deportment, they held her breathlessly attentive. She never took her gaze from the stage so long as there remained upon it an actress portraying, however indifferently, a woman of any degree of cultivation whatever. Gestures, postures, vocal inflections, the character of their gowns and the manner in which they contrived to impart to them something of their wearer's personality, the management of a tea-cup or a fashion of shaking hands: all these were registered and stored away in the girl's memory, to be recalled when alone, reviewed, dissected, modified to fit her individually, practised, and eventually to be adopted with varying discretion and success.

She who was to be the wife of a man of position, was determined that his friends and associates should find little to censure in her manners. For long Helena Tankerville figured to Joan as an impeccable model of tact, distinction, taste, and gentlewomanliness. To become as Helena was, summed up the dearest aspirations of the girl. She began to be very guarded in her use of English, eschewed as far as her means permitted the uniform style of costume to which New York women are largely prone, dressed her hair differently and upon no superstructure other than its own, and spent long hours manicuring and observing the minor niceties of the feminine toilet.

Paradoxically, with the obtuseness characteristic of a certain type of imaginative man, Matthias appreciated and was grateful for the improvement in his fiancée without realizing it objectively; what pleased his sensitive tastes, he accepted as normal expressions of innate good-breeding; what jarred, he glossed with charity. It was inconceivable that he should love any woman but one instinctively fine: he endowed Joan with many a grace and many a virtue that she did not possess; and this implicit assertion of his, that she was all that the mistress of his heart ought to be, incited her to more determined efforts to resemble all that by birth and training she was not.

It was some time before the novelty palled and she grew restive under the strain of it all....

"I had a talk with Rideout today," he observed during dinner, on an evening about a fortnight subsequent to the disbanding of "The Jade God" company. "He's dickering with Algerson--thinks the thing may possibly come to a deal before long."

"How do you mean?" Joan enquired with quick interest.

"Algerson wants to buy Rideout's interest in the play--at a bargain to himself, of course. Rideout is holding out for a better offer, but he's hard pressed, and I rather think he'll close with Algerson within a few days."

"Who's Algerson?" Joan asked, after an interval devoted to ransacking her memory for some echo of that name; resulting in the conviction that she had never heard it before.

"He runs a chain of stock companies out on the Pacific Coast, and now he's anxious to branch out into the producing business."

"And if he gets 'The Jade God'--when will he put it on?"

"Can't say--haven't seen him. I'm not supposed to know he's interested as yet; though of course they'll have to come to me before the deal can be ratified."

"But you'll consent?"

"Rather! Especially if Algerson will take over Rideout's contract as it stands. It provides for pretty good royalties, and as a prospective bridegroom I'm very much interested in such sordid matters."

Joan traced a meaningless pattern on the cloth with a tine of her fork; glanced surreptitiously at Matthias; remembered that toying with the tableware wasn't good form, and quietly abandoned the occupation.

"I wonder ..." she murmured abstractedly.

"You wonder what--?" Matthias prompted when she failed to round out her thought.

She laughed uneasily. "I was just wondering if--if he gets the piece--Algerson would give me a chance at my old part?"

"Not with my consent," said Matthias promptly. "You know I don't want you to stick at that game."

"But I'm tired doing nothing," she pouted prettily.

Matthias shook his stubborn head. "Besides," he added quickly, "Algerson will probably try the show out in one of his stock houses before he goes to the expense of organizing a new and separate production. I mean, he'll use people already on his pay roll, and not engage outsiders until he knows pretty well whether he's got a success or a failure on his hands."

"You think he will produce out West?"

"Probably."

"And will you have to go?"

"I don't know. I shan't unless I get some guarantee of expenses. Although ... I don't know ... perhaps I ought to. Wilbrow and I are the only people who know how the thing ought to be done, and Algerson most certainly won't pay what Wilbrow asks for making a production--and his expenses to the Coast and back, besides.... It would be a shame to let a valuable property go smash for want of intelligent supervision."

"Then you may go, after all?"

"I can't say until something definite is arranged. I'll have to think it over."

Joan sighed.

A week elapsed before the subject came up again.

Matthias had been out all day; Joan, with no typing to engage her, had sought surcease of ennui with a book and an easy chair in the back-parlour. But the story was badly chosen for her purpose. Its heroine, like herself, had in the beginning been merely a girl of the people, little if any better equipped for the struggle to the top: Joan could see no reason why she should not rise with a rapidity as wonderful, given but the chance denied her through the unreasonable prejudice of her lover.

And presently the book lay open and neglected in her lap, while her thoughts engaged mutinously with this obstruction to her desires, seeking a way to circumvent it without imperilling her conquest.

Joan was proud and sure of her power over Matthias, but she realized that in spite of it she didn't as yet fill his life; there existed in his nature reticences her imagination might not plumb; and until chance, or the confidence only to be engendered through long, slow processes of intimate association, should make these known to her, she hesitated to join issue with his will.

And yet ... she was continually restless and discontented. Sometimes she felt that the old order of uncertainty and stifled longings had been better for her soul; that she couldn't much longer endure the tension of living up to the rigorous standards of Matthias and his kind; that she might even be happier as the object of a passion less honourable and honest than that which he offered her.

But never before this day had she admitted so much to herself, even in her most secret hours of egoistic self-communion....

Matthias came in briskly, in a glow of high spirits, shortly before sunset; and immediately, as always, her every doubt and misgiving vanished like mists in the morning-glow of his love.

Throwing hat and stick upon the couch, he went directly to her chair, knelt beside it, gathered her to him. She yielded with a sedate yet warm tenderness perhaps the more sincere today because of a conscience stricken by the memory of her late disloyalty of thought. And something of her fond gravity and gentleness penetrated and sobered his own mood. He held her very close for many minutes. But when he drew back at arm's-length to worship her with his eyes, she turned her head aside quickly, if not quickly enough to deceive him. He was instant to detect the glimmer of tears in her long lashes, the childish tremor of her sweet lips, and again drew her to him.

"My dearest one!" he whispered with infinite gentleness and solicitude. "What is it? Tell me."

"Nothing," she breathed brokenly in return. "Nothing--only--I guess--I'm a little blue--lonely without you, dear. I'm afraid I need either to be at work or--with you always."

"Then be comforted, sweetest girl; the time won't be long, now--I believe in my very soul."

"Till when--?" She leaned back in her chair, examining his face with eyes that shone with infectious fire of his confident excitement. "Till when? What do you mean? Something has happened!"

"You're right," he laughed exultantly: "two big things have happened to me today. Wylie has accepted 'Tomorrow's People': we signed the contract this afternoon; he's to put it on about the first of the year."

"Oh, I'm so glad!"

"But that isn't all: Algerson has bought Rideout's contract and is to produce 'The Jade God' in Los Angeles as soon as it can be got ready."

"Dearest!"

There was an interval....

"Only," he said presently, "it's going to mean a little real loneliness for you, dear--not more than a few weeks--"

"Why?" she demanded sharply.

"Because I've promised Algerson to superintend the rehearsals. I couldn't well refuse. You know how much it means to us, dear heart."

"When do you leave?"

"Monday--the Twentieth Century Limited for Chicago then on to Los Angeles."

"And you'll be gone, altogether, how long?" Joan persisted tensely.

"With good luck, about a month. If we strike a snag, of course, I may have to stop over a week or so longer. It's hard to say."

"Then I'm to be left--here--alone--with nothing to do but wait--perhaps more than a month!"

"I'm afraid so, dear. It's for both of our sakes. So much depends--"

"Jack!" Placing her hands on his shoulders, Joan held him off. "Take me with you," she pleaded earnestly.

"Think a moment, sweetheart. You must see how impossible it is. For one thing, it wouldn't--O it's all very well to say 'Conventions be hanged!' but--it wouldn't look right. We're not married."

"Take me with you, Jack," she repeated stubbornly.

He shook his head. "And, fairly and squarely, dear, I can't afford it. I haven't got enough money. Even if we were married, I'd have to leave you here."

For a moment longer the girl kept her hands upon his shoulders, exploring his face with eyes that seemed suddenly to have been robbed of much of their girlishness. Then: "Very well," she said coldly, and releasing him, she sat back and averted her countenance.

Matthias got up, distressed and perplexed.

"You can't mean your love won't stand the strain of a few weeks' separation, Joan!"

She made no answer. He shrugged, moved to the work-table, found a cigarette and lighted it.

"Surely you can wait that long--"

"I'll do my best," she interrupted almost impatiently. "If it can't be, it can't. So don't let's talk any more about it."

"I'd give a good deal to be able to arrange things the way you wish," he grumbled. "But I don't see...."

She was silent. He paced the worn path on the carpet for a few moments, then turned aside to his desk and stood idly examining a little collection of correspondence which had been delivered in his absence. One or two letters he opened, skimmed through without paying much attention to their contents, and tossed aside. A third brought from him an exclamation: "Hello!"

"What is it?" Joan enquired indifferently.

"What do you say to running down to Tanglewood over Sunday?"

"Tanglewood?"

"My Aunt Helena's home--down at Port Madison, Long Island, you know. She has just written, asking us. It would be rather fun. Would you like to go?"

A blunt negative was barely suppressed. Curiosity made Joan hesitate, and temporarily to forego further petulance.

"I've got nothing to wear," she doubted uncertainly.

"Rot: you don't need anything but shirtwaists and skirts. There won't be anybody but you, Helena, George Tankerville and myself." Matthias leaned over the back of her chair and caught her face between his hands. "It'll be a splendid holiday for us, before I start. Say yes--sweetheart!"

Joan turned up her face to his, lifting her arms to encircle his neck. She nodded consent as he bent his lips to hers.

XX

At times Joan was more than half inclined to doubt the reality of some of those unique phases of existence to which her love affair introduced her. Some experiences seemed beyond belief, even to an imagination stimulated by inordinate ambition and further excited by incessant novel-reading and theater-going.

On the Friday morning following the receipt of Helena's invitation she went shopping, squandering upwards of three weeks' savings with that delicious abandonment to extravagance which is possible only to a woman of supremely confident tomorrows. The hundreds she was in subsequent days to disburse as thoughtlessly never afforded her one-half the pleasure that accompanied the expenditure of those seventy hoarded dollars. (For aside from the rent of her room, her association with Matthias had spared her nearly every other expense of daily life.)

Among other things, she purchased for twenty-five dollars a simple evening frock eminently adapted to her requirements. A tolerably faithful copy of a foreign model, it had been designed to fetch a much higher price than that at which Joan was able to acquire it at an end-of-the-season bargain sale. She tried it on before deciding, and had the testimony of the department store mirrors that it was wonderfully becoming to her years and type of beauty. And it was the only garment of its kind that she had ever owned.

As she hurried, tardily, to keep an appointment with Matthias for lunch at Martin's, she told herself that she would never know greater happiness. She could not rid her mind of that wonderful frock and the figure she had cut in it, posing in the dressing-room.

But after luncheon--over which they lingered until they were quite alone in the eastern dining-room--with some hesitation, and having assured himself that there was not even a waiter near at hand, Matthias fumbled in one of his waistcoat pockets, produced a small leather-covered case, and passed it across the table.

"I'd meant to keep this till we got home," he said with an awkward smile. "But I don't think I can wait...."

Joan opened the box--and drew the longest breath of her life. Her heart seemed to leap and then stand stock-still for a full minute before she grasped the magnificence of his present: her engagement ring!

Then and there the girl lost all touch with the tough verities of life; and throughout the day and until she lost consciousness in bed that night, a sensual enchantment held dominion over all her being....

Nor was the great adventure of the visit to Tanglewood of a nature calculated to dissipate that glamour--save, perhaps, in one untoward circumstance which, wholly unforeseen, could not have been provided against.

A woman less shrewd and intelligent than Helena Tankerville, and one as violently opposed to the match, might have planned that short week-end visit to influence and discourage the girl rather than Matthias. But Helena knew that contrast would have the desired effect only upon the man; to whom its significance would be in inverse ratio to the emphasis lent it. So with infinite tact and thoughtfulness Joan's way was made smooth for her from the moment she alighted from the train until the moment of her leave-taking; and this without the least tangible suggestion that any especial consideration was being shewn her. The smallness of the party sanctioned informality; and George Tankerville's obtuse kindness of heart (which permitted him to see nothing in the stratagems of his wife other than a desire to put the girl completely at her ease) facilitated matters immensely.

Joan was spared the embarrassment of a maid--was, indeed, given no reason to believe there were any such servants attached to the establishment. Suffered to unpack her modest effects and dispose of them herself, she received at Helena's hands the indispensable service of "hooking-up." And her unpretentious, pretty frock was by no means overshadowed by Helena's or by the unceremonious dinner jackets of the men; while the simplicity of the evening meal put her thoroughly at her ease, whose recently acquired but rather extensive acquaintance with New York restaurant ways and waiters robbed the attentions of a butler of their terrors.

Nor was it, possibly, altogether a matter of chance that neighbouring friends telephoned an after-dinner invitation to Helena and Tankerville to run over and make up a table at auction: so that Joan was left alone with her lover to become acquainted with and at home among the charms of Tanglewood....

But it wasn't until the first hours of a still and splendid September Sunday that her sense of wonder was quite ravished by the place: its foreign and luxurious atmosphere, the half-wild loveliness of its grounds, the perfection of its appointments and the uniquity of its location. Then the sense of unreality resumed full sway over her perceptions: she seemed to move and have her being in a strange, new world of rare and iridescent witchery. And Helena was at pains to leave her no time for doubts or analysis. They motored in the morning to the South Shore and back, and after luncheon took the Enchantress for a short spin up the Sound, returning for tea upon the terrace....

Tankerville and Matthias were wrangling amiably about the least comfortless routes overland to the Pacific; Helena, with binoculars at the balustrade, was simulating an extravagant interest in the manoeuvers of two small yachts far in the distance (and, in the breathing-space thus cunningly contrived, wildly ransacking a rather extensive fund of resource for some subject which might prove a common ground of interest between herself and her guest) and Joan, in the depths of a basket-chair, while seeming smilingly to attend to the light banter of the men, was deeply preoccupied in consideration of her extraordinary sensation of comfort and security in this exotic environment. She was deliciously flattered by appreciation of her own ease and adaptability. The conclusion seemed inevitable that, somehow, strangely, Nature had meant her for just such an existence as this.

The terrace was aflood with the golden glow of the westering sun--the season so far advanced that there was no discomfort in its warmth. The Sound shone like a sapphire, still and vast, and the cup of the skies bending over it was flawless sapphire banded at its rim with an exquisite shade of amethyst. Ashore, the wooded slopes were all aflame in the mortal passion of Indian summer.

In the stirless, suave, and aromatic air hung an impalpable yet ineluctable hint of melancholy....

From landward, with unusual resonance in the deep quiet of that hour, sounded the long, dull, whining purr of a motor-car.

Helena lowered the glasses, turned an ear to the sound, and came slowly back to the tea-table and Joan. Her faint smile, together with a slight elevation of her delicately darkened brows, indicated surprise.

Engrossed in their argument, Matthias and Tankerville gave no heed to the threatened visitation.

Resentfully, Joan detached her attention from the diamond Matthias had given her, and at discretion tossed aside a cigarette which she had been pretending to like because Helena smoked quite openly, and it was consequently the smart thing to do.

Undoubtedly the car was stopping on the drive. Helena moved a few paces toward the house, paused, waited. A woman's laugh with an accent of cheerful excitement came to them. Joan saw Helena start and noticed Matthias break off a sentence in the middle and swing round in his chair. Immediately a woman ran through the doorway to the terrace, a light dust-wrap streaming from her shoulders. A man followed, but at the time Joan hardly noticed him. The woman absorbed all her interest, even though it was an interest compounded of jealousy and hostility. She was unquestionably the loveliest creature Joan had ever seen. Without moving, but staring, the girl sat transfixed with distrust and poignant envy.

With a cry of wonder--"Venetia!"--Helena ran to greet these unpresaged guests.

Meeting, the two women indulged in an embrace almost theatrically perfunctory. The commonplaces of such situations were breathlessly exchanged. Then Helena, disengaging turned to the man and extended a hand.

"Well, Mr. Marbridge!..." she cried with a light note of semi-reproof in her laughter.

At this, with a brightening smile, Marbridge bent over her hand, saying something indistinguishable to Joan.

She was watching the meeting between Matthias and Venetia Marbridge.

He held both her hands, and she permitted him to retain them, for a longer moment of silent greeting than Joan thought necessary. But this circumstance alone betrayed whatever constraint was felt by either. A smile, vague and perhaps not lacking a thought of tender sadness, touched the lips and eyes of Venetia. Matthias returned his twisted and indefinitely apologetic grin.

"More than ever charming, Venetia!"

"Thank you, Jack."

If there were any hint of challenge in her tone or her straightforward eyes, Joan didn't detect it.

George Tankerville submitted with open resignation to the embrace of his sister.

"I suppose I've got to stand for this," he observed with philosophy. "Do you mean me to infer that you're humble and contrite?"

"Not in the least," Venetia retorted defiantly.

"Oh, very well," said he. "That being the case, I extend to you my belated blessing. How did you leave things on the other side?"

"Much as usual--and by steamer."

"When'd you get back?"

"Last Monday...."

Venetia became openly aware of Joan. Matthias interposed.

"Miss Thursday--my fiancée. Joan, this is Mrs. Marbridge."

"Truly?"

The shock told; she had been playing off very deftly a painful contretemps, but this announcement dashed Venetia. Momentarily she hesitated, scarlet lips apart but inarticulate, widening eyes of violet a shade darker, with--if possible--a pallor deeper even than that most striking attribute of her beauty. But the check could have been apparent only to the initiate or to a strongly intuitive intelligence.

"I _am_ so glad!" she cried with sincerity--"so glad for both of you!" Impulsively she caught Joan's hands, drew the girl to her--"May I, my dear? We're to be great friends, you know!"--kissed her; then swinging round--"Vincent!" she called gaily. "Such news! Do come here immediately!"

Marbridge showed a face strongly marked with the enquiry of his heavy, lifting eyebrows. His glance comprehended Joan with kindling interest. With Helena he approached, his heavy body rolling a little in spite of the elasticity of his stride.