Part 4

With a supreme effort of will, Beatrix controlled an almost overwhelming desire to scream at what was, to her way of thinking, a form of punishment quite barbarian in its severity. She remained, instead, in an attitude of polite patience, determining to die rather than to show how awful the very thought of such an excommunication was to her, who was only really happy when in the whirl of town life. Her inherent honesty made her confess to herself that, little as she realized it at the time,--never having stopped in her impetuous desire to go her own way and carry out her own wishes,--she had laid herself open to every charge brought against her. She owned that her indiscretion had been colossal, and instantly dismissed all idea of giving her family a picture of the utter harmlessness of her relations with York. She disliked and regretted having brought the family name into the mouth of gossipers as much as the three people who stood over her and knew perfectly well that they fully intended to carry the punishment out to its bitter end. But,--and here her fertile mind began to work,--was there a single living person so foolish as to believe that she was made of the feeble stuff that knuckled down to the loss of one whole exciting season in town for the lack of a brain wave? Had she ever yet, either in the nursery or in school, so wanted in courage or in wit as not to have been able to carry out a quick and effective counterstroke against authority? Not she!

She looked up, avoided the eyes of her father, mother and aunt, and saw Pelham Franklin in the gallery that ran round the hall. He was standing with his hands in his pockets, looking at a portrait of the Vanderdyke who had come over from Holland to lay the foundations of a great fortune. A sudden impish and daring idea took possession of her. She would use this man, as she had hitherto used any other likely person, to triumph over her present quandary, and trust to her invariable good luck to see her through. It was the legitimate outcome of her autocratic upbringing, the fact that she had had it instilled into her from babyhood that she had only to raise her finger to obtain her own way. Acting, as usual, on impulse and not stopping to give a second's thought to the complications that might be caused by it, she turned back to the three people who stood waiting for her to speak with a very sweet smile, and the glorious knowledge that she could turn the tables upon them and become top-dog again. She was going to fight for that season in town with all her strength, never mind who paid for her success.

"I'm very sorry about all this," she said, "and I want you to believe that I had no intention of inspiring unpleasant remarks or putting you to all this pain. But you'll be glad to hear that this story about my visits to Sutherland York is only half true,--like most stories of the kind. It hasn't occurred to you, has it, that more than one man may live in York's apartment house and that I may have been going to see him?" She saw, with a quicker action of her heart, that Franklin was coming downstairs.

"It makes no difference whether the man you went to see was York or another," said Aunt Honoria, in her most incisive way. "The fact remains that everyone is talking about your visits to some man, alone at night."

Franklin caught the words, gave a quick, sympathetic glance at Beatrix, whom he rather pitied,--he detested family rows,--and drew up to examine another picture, with well-simulated interest.

Beatrix began to enjoy herself. A wave of exhilaration swept over her. She had a surprise in store for her family that would transfer her from the position of a prodigal daughter to that of a Joan of Arc, a Grace Darling, a Florence Nightingale. Never mind who paid!

She raised her voice so that Franklin should hear her. "I would willingly and without any argument be sent to the backwoods for a year if I'd made a fool of myself with a man like Sutherland York. He was never anything more to me than a poseur and a freak, and as such he amused me. But what will you and all these people with nasty minds say if I tell you that I had every right to pay midnight visits to the man who lived in the studio opposite to York's, and if there is anything attaching to our name it is not scandal, but romance?"

Franklin wheeled round. What on earth was the girl trying to suggest to save her skin?

An amazing change came over the three accusers. They all knew that Franklin's rooms were in the same building as York's,--Franklin, the man whom they would rather see married into their family than anyone alive.

"W-what d'you mean?" cried Mr. Vanderdyke, stammering in his eagerness.

Mrs. Vanderdyke lost her perfect reserve for once and grasped her daughter's arm. "Tell us! Tell us!" she cried.

Over Aunt Honoria's face the beginning of a new understanding came. "What is this right, Beatrix?" she asked. "What is it?"

Beatrix came to the jump, rose to it and cleared it at a bound, with every drop of blood in her lovely body tingling with excitement and a glorious sense of being alive, being beautiful, being able to carry everything before her. She was leaping from one scrape to another, but in this one she was dealing with a sportsman who would help her somehow.

"The right," she said, throwing up her head, "of a girl who goes to see the man to whom she has been secretly married."

She rose, and with exquisite shyness and her fair skin touched with the color that nature paints upon the petals of apple blossoms, went across to Franklin and ran her hand through his arm.

*VI*

In her relief at being able to put a stop to the ugly story which coupled the names of Beatrix Vanderdyke and Sutherland York, Aunt Honoria,--who invariably took the lead in all matters relating to her family,--not only at once gave out to the house-party the news of the romantic marriage of her niece and Pelham Franklin, but, with her characteristic thoroughness, called up the editor of the New York _Times_ and gave it to him for immediate publication. In her mind's eye she saw the front page of the next day's issue setting forth under big headlines, with photographs of the happy couple, an elaborate account of the wealth and importance of the families of Vanderdyke and Franklin. This would be taken up and spun out by all the other papers in the country, and then, she rejoiced to know, would be killed the insidious scandal with which the family name had been connected to the horror and pain of all who bore it.

Neither she, nor any of the members of the house party, stopped to ask a single question. They had swallowed the story of Beatrix and Sutherland York whole. They now swallowed the news of the secret marriage with the same appetite. It is the human way. The details mattered nothing. The motive which led to so unusual a proceeding as a secret marriage, the place and date of the ceremony, mattered nothing. They had all believed without corroboration that Beatrix had fallen a victim to the picturesque attractions of the much-advertised portrait painter. In the same way they accepted the new and much more exciting fact and hastened to congratulate their hostess and the two young people concerned.

Beatrix found herself, as she knew that she would, the heroine of the family. Her mother smiled upon her during the remainder of the day and frequently placed her usually unemotional hand on her daughter's shoulder and said: "My dear, dear child," or "dear Beatrix."

Her father,--that rather pathetic figure, a man who had never done a stroke of work since his birth--whose immense wealth had utterly deprived him of the initiative to do things, conquer things or achieve things, and who found himself in late middle-age without having discovered the master-secret of life--how to live,--came out of his almost settled melancholia for the time being and behaved at dinner like any ordinary healthy, normal man, laughing frequently and cracking little jokes with his guests.. Whenever he caught his daughter's eyes he gave her the most tender and appreciative smile, and came so far out of his shell as to raise his glass to Franklin, who responded with a very queer smile.

As for Aunt Honoria,--a past-mistress in the art of graciousness,--so proud and happy was she that her pet ambition of a union between her family and Franklin's had been fulfilled, that she readily forgave the unconventional behavior of the two young people, the lack of a wonderful wedding and a great society function, and beamed upon them both. She caught Beatrix as she was about to dash upstairs to change for dinner and folded her arms about the girl, whose eyes danced with the spirit of mischief and the sheer fun of it all. "My darling," she said, "you've made me very happy. No wonder you came home to-day defiant and with a high head. You held a royal flush. You've won the love of a man, my dear. Honor and respect it, and may God bless you!"

Upstairs in her room, whose windows gave a view of the Sound that was indescribably charming, Beatrix had a brief, almost breathless talk with Mrs. Lester Keene, to whom the story of the secret marriage had come as a frightful shock. This amiable, weak woman, hide-bound in her ideas of right and wrong, met her with nerves unstrung, and incoherent in her terror of being implicated in what she knew to be a lie.

But Beatrix waved her stammering reproaches aside. "Brownie," she cried, at the top of her form, "whatever happens you're safe, so don't worry. I've jumped out of the frying-pan into the fire, but I'm an excellent jumper and I believe in luck. I dare not think where the next spring will land me, so I'm not going to think. Sufficient unto the day, you know, and Franklin is a sportsman. All I know is that at this moment I'm the little pet of all the world; that I had the unspeakable delight of turning the tables on my people and that I feel as beautiful as I look,--and that's saying a good deal. Now run away and tell Helene to come and dress me as befits a young wife still on her honeymoon." She gave the elderly, disturbed lady a kiss on both her cheeks, shooed her out of the room and broke into song.

Only once during dinner did she permit herself to meet Franklin's eyes and then, for the first time since she had sprung her suddenly conceived surprise upon her irate family, she received a momentary shock which ran through her body like that of electricity, leaving her tingling and frightened. But with her abounding capacity for recovery and her all-conquering belief in herself and her gift for getting out of scrapes she shook the feeling off and went through the rest of the evening in the highest spirits. No one had ever seen her looking so brilliantly or so exquisitely beautiful. Her eyes shone like stars, her dimples came and went and came again. She was the life of the house, moving from group to group like a young Helen--a wood nymph--the very spirit of joy and laughter. Not for the ninety-ninth part of a second did she permit herself to pull up and wonder what she had done; where her impetuous, hare-brained, autocratic desire for self-preservation might lead. Never for an instant, or the fraction of an instant, did she give a thought to the appalling difficult position into which her spur-of-the-moment scheme had placed Franklin. What she had done she had done, and there, for the time being, was the end of it. Somehow or other everything would come right, as it always did. Why else was she who she was? Why else had she been led to believe that the earth, the sun and the moon were hers. It was all the natural correlation of her training since she had been brought into the world.

Franklin allowed Beatrix to avoid a talk with him until many of the guests had gone to bed. Between the moment when she had slipped her arm through his and made that urgent and almost childlike appeal which had carried him off his feet and left him without caution and sanity, and the one when he stalked across the pompous hall to her side and drew her into an alcove, he had done some peculiar thinking. He was a straight-going, honest fellow, who, like Beatrix, had gone through life having his own way. No living soul had ever before coerced him from the path that he had chosen. He was in no sense of the word a lady's man, and he had no idea of marrying and settling down until he had had enough of hunting and camping.

He had watched Beatrix closely. He had seen her reinstated into the family favor, taking the congratulations that were poured upon her by them and their friends with a charming dignity that took his breath away. He guessed, of course, that he had been "used" by Beatrix to save herself from punishment, because he had been obliged to overhear the last part of the family attack. But he expected from moment to moment that she would either permit him to deny the story of the secret marriage or do so herself. It was inconceivable to him that this lie was to be allowed to get them both deeper and deeper into a most deplorable tangle.

He was blazing with anger when at last he found her alone for a moment, and he made no attempt to hide it. "I want a word with you," he said shortly.

Beatrix tried to escape. "A little later," she said.

"No, now."

"I'm so sorry----"

Franklin took her arm and led her into the quiet corner. "Sit down," he said.

There was something so new and refreshing in receiving orders, that Beatrix gave a little laugh and obeyed.

Franklin took a seat at her side. Their knees almost touched.

"You evidently take me for many kinds of a fool," he said.

"Not at all. May I trouble you for a cushion?" She bent slightly forward.

He placed one behind her back. "Whether you do or not, you've made me one,--the most colossal example of a damned idiot I've ever struck."

"Oh, please don't say that."

Franklin's eyes flicked. This girl could be flippant under such circumstances, could she? She could sit knee to knee with an angry man and remain as self-possessed and undisturbed as though she were resting between dances. Well, he would show her with whom she was dealing!

"Before your mother goes to bed," he said, "I'm going to put my foot through this yarn of yours and give the game away."

"Oh, no," replied Beatrix, "you'll certainly not do that."

"Why not?"

"Because, in addition to many other attributes, you happen to be a sportsman."

"But how long d'you imagine I'm to let this thing go on?"

"I haven't thought about it."

"Don't you see that you'd better begin to think pretty quickly?"

"No. Everything is going very well. Why disturb it?"

"But look at it from my point of view."

"To tell you the truth--I usually do tell the truth--to-day has been the exception that proves the rule,--I'm only able at present to look at it from mine."

"You realize that every hour makes the whole thing more impossible. It'll all be in the papers to-morrow."

"Isn't that exciting? I hope they'll be able to get an attractive photograph of you." Her heart was beating more and more quickly.

Franklin began to pull his short moustache. He hardly dared to trust to his choice of words. Yesterday he had told himself that this girl wanted the spurs. The thought came back to him as he sat racking his brain for some way out of the ghastly mess into which she had placed him. He saw that it was no earthly use to endeavor to talk sensibly to her and that she had made up her mind to hold him to the mad plan of escape into which she had dragged him. Very good. He would show her that sportsmen were also very human men.

He raised his finger to a footman who was crossing the hall. "Have my things taken at once from my room to Mrs. Franklin's," he said, and, as the man bowed and went, put his hand under the elbow of the girl--who had turned as white as the gardenia at her waist--and added: "Let's go and say good night, darling. It's time for bed."

Beatrix turned upon him and wrenched her arm away. "You don't know what you're saying," she said.

"Oh, yes, I do. You've had your way to-day, I'm going to have mine to-night. Two can play your game, you know, and I'm going to show you how completely I can play it when I choose."

He took her hand in a grip of iron and led her to where Mrs. Vanderdyke was standing with Aunt Honoria. He looked the loving husband to the life. "Good night," he said. "Bee and I are rather tired after an exciting day."

Mrs. Vanderdyke gave him her hand, with her best smile. "And to-morrow we begin rehearsing and shall all be very busy. Good night."

"You look quite tired, my darling," said Aunt Honoria tenderly.

Beatrix received the kiss, tried to return the smile and to find even one word to say, but her heart was trembling, and her hand was held so tight that her fingers were crushed together. She heard other remarks as though they were spoken a long way off, felt herself guided and controlled up the wide stairway as if she were walking in a dream, and found herself standing in the gallery.

"Which is your room!"

It was not a question. It was an order, sharp and short.

She pointed to the door, shaking like a frightened deer.

But when she stood inside her room, heard the door shut and locked, and saw Franklin with his white teeth gleaming under his moustache, her voice came back and she clasped her hands together in a very ecstasy of appeal.

"Let me off! Please, _please_ let me off!"

Franklin shot out a laugh. "Not I. You've told everybody that you're my wife. Good. Live up to it."

He took the key out of the lock and put it in his pocket. Then he sat down and crossed one leg over the other. "How long will you be?" he asked.

This girl needed the spurs. He intended to use them.

*VII*

The sound of the key turning in the lock of her door had an instant and peculiar effect on Beatrix. It awoke in her the same primeval spirit which had carried Franklin into her bedroom on the wave of an infuriated impulse. It made her realize that the time for protest was over; that the moment when she could appeal (with any hope of success) to this man's sense of honor had passed. It was through her own action, and she knew it, that she had cracked the skin-deep veneer of civilization and rendered Franklin the mere savage which most men become under the influence of one or other of the passions.

Self-preservation was the instinct which was now uppermost in her mind. Alone, without help, with only her native wit to fall back on, she had to save herself from the almost unbelievable crisis that she had so lightly brought about. She grasped this fact quickly enough. One look at Franklin's face made it plain,--his blazing eyes, his set mouth, the squareness of his jaw.

It was characteristic of her, however, that while still under the first shock of his threat, his presence and the knowledge that he intended to carry out his purpose with all the cold-bloodedness and cruelty which comes from wounded vanity, the thought of the fight which faced her filled her with a sort of mental delight. Here, if you like, was something new upon which she could bend her whole ingenuity--something which sent the monotony of her all-too-complete existence flying as before a cyclone. Her blood danced. Her spirits rose. Her eyes sparkled like those of the mountaineer who stands at the foot of a summit which has hitherto been unclimbed. She gave a little laugh as all these things flashed through her brain. She thrilled with the sense of adventure which had always been latent in her character and which was the cause of the amazing position in which she now found herself. Like a superb young animal brought to bay, she turned to defend herself, strung up to fight with every atom of her mental and physical strength for that which counted for more than life. That she regarded her antagonist with respect surprised her a little, but she was glad to make the discovery, because it made the fight all the more worth while. She recognized in this tall, wiry, dark-haired man, who looked in the very pink of condition and bore on his well-cut young face the tan of sun and wind, someone who had in him every single one of her own faults, whose training and environment were the same as her own, who had been made as impatient of control from the possession of excessive wealth as she was, and whose capacity for becoming untamed the very moment that the thin layer of culture which education gives falls in front of passionate resentment was similar in every way to that which had made her lie to her family.

It was with the feeling that she was leading lady in an extremely daring society drama, that she took what she inwardly called the stage, as much mistress of herself as she had been in the rooms of the portrait painter. When she turned up the shaded lights on her dressing-table and over the fireplace she did so with the rhythmic movement and the sense of time which would have been hers had she rehearsed the scene and been now playing it to a crowded house on the first night of a metropolitan production. She seemed to hear the diminuendo of the orchestra and to feel that curious nervous exhilaration that comes from the knowledge of being focused by thousands of unseen eyes. It was surely an almost uncanny sense of humor which allowed her to stand outside herself in this way and watch all her movements as though they were those of another person. But,--she knew her part. She had the confidence of one who has completely memorized her lines. Her triumph would be complete when she succeeded in making Franklin put the key back into the lock of her door and remove himself from her presence.

As Franklin examined the room in which he never imagined that he would find himself and had no desire to be his determination to get even with the spoiled girl who had used him to get herself out of a family fracas grew stronger and stronger. It seemed to him that the room,--almost insolent in its evidences of wealth,--was symbolic. It was not, he saw, the room of a young, healthy, normal girl so much as of a woman of the world, a highly finished, highly fastidious mondaine, who had won the right to live in an atmosphere of priceless tapestries, historic furniture, and a luxury that was quite Roman. He ran his eyes scornfully about and scoffed at the four-poster bed in which a French queen might have received, and probably did receive, the satellites and flatterers of her court; and saw through an open door not a mere bathroom, but a pool, marble-lined, with florid Byzantine decorations, discreetly lit. This thing angered him. It stood, he thought, as the reason for this girl's distorted idea of life--of her myopic point of view. It stood for many thousands of misplaced dollars which would, if sanely used, have provided much-needed beds for the accident wards of a hospital.

Not for the first time in his life, Franklin staggered at the sight of the abnormality of excessive wealth, and felt that he himself, like Beatrix, was nearer to lunacy than the ordinary human being because of the possession of it. The queer paradox of his having been made the instrument to bring this girl down from the false pedestal upon which she had stood ever since she was born, also struck him. He had never been much given to self-analysis or to the psychological examination of social conditions; but as he sat there in that large, lofty and extravagant, almost grotesquely furnished bedroom, more closely resembling that of one or other of the great courtezans than of an American girl in the first exquisite flush of youth, he came to the conclusion, with a savage sense of justice, that he would be doing something for civilization by bringing this millionaire's daughter face to face with the grim truth of things.