Part 5

It was Beatrix who broke a silence which had only lasted a few minutes. "There are cigarettes at your elbow," she said. "Won't you smoke?"

Franklin looked up. The note of camaraderie in her voice surprised him. The last time he had heard her speak it was in a tone of agonized appeal. "No, thanks," he replied, "I've smoked enough."

"In training for one of your much-paragraphed athletic feats, perhaps," she said, a quizzical smile playing round her lips.

"I am," said Franklin. "Though I doubt whether this one will be as much advertised as the others." He looked steadily at her as he said this thing, caught the merest flick of her eyes and marked up to his credit the fact that she understood his meaning.

For several seconds these two eyed each other deliberately, like contestants in a prize ring. They measured each other up calculatingly without any attempt to hide the fact. It was with unwilling admiration that Franklin noted the girl's return to courage. He had to confess to himself that the fearless tilt of her chin and the superb grace of her attitude, which was as far from being self-conscious as though she were standing in the corner of a crowded drawing-room, pleased him. It was to be a fight, then. That was evident. The spirit of the huntsman rose in him as he realized this.

"Will you ring the bell for your maid?" he asked, making the first attack, "or shall I?"

She shook her head. "Pray don't trouble, there's plenty of time."

"I don't agree with you."

"Does that matter?"

"I think so."

"It's a free country."

She sat down in a chair which Louis XIV was popularly supposed to have used. The yellow light of a lamp on a silver pedestal fell upon her white shoulders.

Franklin got up. His blood raced through his veins. He didn't intend to stand any nonsense. He was going to show her precisely what it meant to be at the mercy of an impatient man. He went across to the door at the far end of the room and opened it. It disclosed a large and elaborate dressing-room lined with full-length mirrors, lighted like a theatre, and with a table covered with implements with tortoise-shell backs. There was another door beyond it. He turned the handle and threw it open. This was apparently a workroom, but much of it was in shadow. He saw a young, dark-haired woman kneeling on a chair with her shoulders rounded over a magazine spread out on a table. One black slipper had fallen off and lay on its side on the rug. A half-empty box of candies was near to her elbow. "Mrs. Franklin is ready for you," he said, and marched back again to his chair.

The maid, obviously French and with the characteristic Breton good-looks, followed him out, unable to disguise her amazement. She stood waiting for orders, with her hands clasped in front of her, in an attitude of rather serf-like humility,--a quiet, slight, black figure, touched with white at the collar and cuffs. Beatrix crossed her legs and settled herself more comfortably into her chair. "You may go back, Helene," she said. "I will call you presently."

The girl bowed and slipped quietly away. Then Beatrix turned to Franklin, with a most tantalizing air of intimacy. "I'm not tired," she said, "and although you are very thoughtful,--more so than most husbands, which is perfectly charming,--I'm all for a little bright conversation. I was rather bored during dinner and afterwards. Don't you think you might amuse me? You seem to be a very amusing person."

Franklin showed his teeth in a silent laugh. "You think so?"

"Well, the indications point to it."

"You have a very vivid imagination, my child."

"A man doesn't call his wife a child until he's been married to her at least ten years, and then is quarreling over her extravagances."

"You may be right," said Franklin, shortly. "You'll oblige me by ceasing to play the fool. I'm not in a mood for it. I'll do the maid's job if you don't want that girl in here."

He got up again and stood over her, apparently the very acme of importunity.

Beatrix only showed her fright by a slight distention of her nostrils. She burst out laughing. "Among your other achievements, then, you know how to unhook a frock."

"I do," said Franklin. "Stand up, will you, please?"

"My dear Mr. Franklin," she said, drawling ever so little, "I forget your Christian name,--isn't there something just a trifle Oriental in your tone?"

"Very likely," said Franklin.

Beatrix sat back and put up a smiling face. "How old are you?" she asked.

"Does that matter?"

"Oh, yes. I think so. I'm trying to piece you together like one of those picture puzzles that children and septuagenarians play with. It seems to me that you must have spent a certain number of years among the black races. When you speak I seem to hear the distant hollow noise of the tomtom and the quaint semi-religious nasal voices of half-clothed savages who stand cowed before you. Am I right, sir?" She laughed again, disguising her trepidation with the expertness of a finished actress.

Franklin turned away and helped himself to a cigarette. "You said that I could smoke."

"Of course."

With almost impish glee, Beatrix told herself that she had won the first round.

When a man pauses to smoke it is usually a sign either that he is tired or that he needs something to keep his nerves under control. Franklin lit a cigarette for the latter purpose. The girl's assumption of utter coolness made him want to take her roughly by the shoulders and shake her as he would a naughty child. Her air of enjoyment and mischief made him all the more determined to see the thing through to the logical end of it. He could see that she imagined she could mark time and possibly wear him out by the use of her wits, but that it did not occur to her how at any moment brute force might come into the argument. Ever since he had been old enough to go to school Franklin had resented being made a fool of, and any boy who had had the temerity to attempt to do so paid for it. He saw red on those occasions and could remember each one of them in every detail. He began to see red now. Not only had this young, wilful, uncontrolled child of wealth already made a most colossal fool of him, but there she was, calmer than he had ever seen her, treating him as though he were a green and callow youth, playing with him in order to break the monotony of a dull evening. His temper grew hotter.

"Listen!" he said. "It doesn't appear to be any use to treat you as an ordinary girl."

"Have you only just come to that conclusion?"

"I have broken in many thoroughbreds in my time, and unless you conform pretty quickly to the rules of the game that you have forced me to play, I shall have to use horse-breaking methods with you. Do you want me to put it plainer than that?"

"Before we go any further," said Beatrix, showing a most tantalizing flash of white teeth, "don't you think you ought to tell me what your Christian name is? I can't keep on saying 'My dear Mr. Franklin,' under these unconventional circumstances. It's so formal." She knew well enough, and he knew it.

"Get up!" said Franklin, thickly, keeping his hands off her with the greatest difficulty. "Either go to your maid, or call her in. I'm through."

With a little bow, Beatrix rose. It was perfectly evident to her that Franklin was rapidly becoming dangerous and that at any moment he might let himself go. What could she do? According to her family, this man was her husband and, as such, had the right to be in her room. To scream would only make her look ridiculous, unless she intended to give herself away, and this she was not prepared to do under any circumstances. She might be able to fence with Franklin a little longer and, as a last resource, to pursue the ordinary tactics of a woman cornered and throw herself on his mercy, with tears. Humiliation,--that was the thing she hated most. And as she faced Franklin again, with these things running rapidly through her mind, she felt once more a renewed sense of admiration for his grim determination to punish. She owned to herself with perfect frankness that this odd and neurotic fight was between the two most spoiled children of her country. The sense of humor which was her saving grace gave her the power to see it in the light of something which was not without value and meaning in her life. If she had actually to fight like a wild-cat, she intended that the morning should find her as she was at that moment.

"Will you call Helene, then?" she said.

Franklin went across the room to the door of the maid's cubby-hole and rapped.

Beatrix, seized with a new idea, followed Franklin and with a touch of masterly audacity stood at his side with her hand on his arm. "Don't you think we make a charming picture of connubial felicity?"

"My God!" said Franklin.

The maid came out, and as she did so, Beatrix made a dart into her room. She had suddenly remembered that she could escape through it into the main part of the house, and that if she could get away and find shelter in the arms of her fluttering companion she would be safe for that night at any rate.

But Franklin was too quick for her. He caught her by the arm just as she was about to win the first round.

"Oh, no, you don't," he said, and picked her up in his arms, carried her back into the bedroom and dumped her down on a divan as though she were a bundle of feathers.

Then he turned to the maid. "Just lock your door and bring me the key." And when in a moment it was timidly handed to him, he added, sharply: "Now get Mrs. Franklin ready for the night."

Beatrix stopped the girl as she padded softly over to the dressing-room. "Wait a minute, Helene," she said, and turned towards Franklin. "This is the hour when I drink a glass of hot milk, oh, my lord and master! Have I your gracious permission to continue the habit to-night? If so, will you permit my handmaiden to go below and get it for me?"

Franklin held out the key. Helene took it, and he turned on his heel.

With an eel-like movement Beatrix slipped from the divan, made a dart at the French girl and in a quick whisper told her to go and fetch Mrs. Lester Keene at once. Whereupon, under the firm belief that this new manoeuvre made her top-dog, all her audacity and self-assurance returned. With Brownie there to protect her she could really begin to enjoy herself and make Franklin wish, not only that he had never entered her room, but that he had never been born. She could play with him as a cat plays with a mouse. She could make him sting and smart under her badinage, She could make him see that he had placed himself in a position in which he would look the most egregious idiot, and eventually rout him from the scene with her laughter ringing in his ears. "It will take a better man than Mr. Pelham Franklin," she told herself, "to break me in."

She began her new tactics at once. She strolled over to where Franklin was standing and sat on the arm of a chair. Her color had come back and her eyes were sparkling. She looked like one of Sir Joshua Reynolds' pictures of Lady Hamilton come to life. "Tell me," she said, "what's your opinion of York? We may as well have a little bright conversation while Helene has gone on her domestic errand, don't you think so?"

Franklin looked at the girl with a sort of analytical examination. He admitted her courage and her spirit. He admitted her overwhelming beauty and her inherited assurance. But he began to wonder whether,--in spite of the little piteous appeal which had come involuntarily from her lips when she found herself alone with him,--there was not a streak of callousness in her nature which put her well up among some of the almost degenerate young women of her class.

"I only know York by sight," he said. "That was enough."

"Don't you think you take things too seriously? His fur coat, Italian moustache and flamboyant tie do put one off, of course, but he's one of the comics of the city and, as such, well worth knowing. I wonder you haven't dropped in to see him sometimes. He's conveniently near to you,--luckily for me." She gave a low laugh as she added the last words.

Franklin stood with his back against one of the carved bed-posts, with his hands in his pockets. In various parts of the world he had met all sorts and conditions of women, from the red-cheeked coquettish daughters of mountaineers to the glum squaws of dilapidated Indian chiefs. Also he had come in contact with the rather cold and quizzical society women of England, the great ladies of Paris who have made immobility a fine art, the notorious cocottes of all nationalities and many of those unconsciously pathetic but perfectly happy little women who, as artists' models of the Latin quarter, live with exquisite though temporary morality in an atmosphere in which morals are as scarce as carpets and as little needed. His acquaintanceship with all these various types had been casual, but he had been interested enough in them to study their characteristics, their mannerisms and their tricks. But here, in Beatrix Vanderdyke, was a girl who didn't come under any of the six types of women. She didn't conform in any one way either to his preconceived ideas of herself. Even his brutality hadn't disturbed her. She was still as unruffled as a white fan-tailed pigeon. Her eyes still gleamed with mocking laughter and there was not one single sign of fear, or even of nervousness, in her easiness and grace. His interest in her grew with every moment of delay and her desirability became more and more obvious with every moment that passed. He might have been inclined to let her off had she shown any weakness. His anger might have grown cold had she let him see anything of outraged maidenly modesty. But her present attitude egged him on, added fuel to his fire and doubled his desire to break her will.

"What do you propose to do to-morrow and the day after?" she asked, as though she had been married to him for some time and wanted to make her plans.

The question startled Franklin. "Sufficient for the night," he said.

Beatrix gave one of the tantalizing little bows which were so annoying to her mother. "I see! Probably I shall take my estimable, but rather irritating companion to Europe by the first possible boat. As Mrs. Franklin, I shall be doubly welcomed in English society. The combined and much-paragraphed wealth of our two families will make me a very romantic figure even in England, where blood is wrongly supposed to weigh more than money-bags. It will be very refreshing to be a free agent at last. I wonder what sort of thrill you'll get when you see my face in the _Sketch_ and _Tatler_ among actresses and cabinet ministers' wives and trans-Atlantic duchesses! By this time, of course, the epoch-making news of our alliance,--as Aunt Honoria calls it,--will have been flashed to the far ends of the earth. What'll you do if any legal person asks to see our marriage lines?"

The sheer impertinence of this young woman left him wordless, until, followed by the French maid, Mrs. Lester Keene,--hastily dressed in a discreet Jaeger dressing-gown,--fluttered tremulously in, hurried over to the girl who was popularly supposed to be in her charge, and put her arms dramatically around her shoulders. Then he cursed ripely beneath his breath.

Mrs. Lester Keene was one of those numerous women whose sense of the romantic, whose belief in the lowness of human nature and whose relish for melodrama were the result of having lived a placid, uneventful, incompetent and wholly protected life. Like a boy who is a constant attendant at the movies and carries home with him a keen desire to murder his baby brother and brain his little friends with his father's wood-chopper, Amelia Keene had derived a distorted view of the life and people beyond her horizon from an absolutely quenchless thirst for sensational novels, which she drank in, firmly believing that they gave true pictures of men, women and events.

To Beatrix, who knew this kindly, ineffectual, ordinary little woman through and through, it was funny to see the manner in which she "believed the worst,"--to use one of her own favorite phrases,--of what she saw from a first quick glance. The lofty, museum-like chamber so little suggested the bedroom of a young girl or of any woman except a painted harridan who was accustomed to being surrounded, even in her most intimate moments with grotesque acquaintances, that the presence of Franklin there might have meant nothing. It was conceivable that he and Beatrix, who had the same royal way of disdaining the laws of convention if it suited their purpose to do so, might have arranged to meet there in order to be out of the family eye and to discuss the chaos in which they both stood. It was as unromantic a meeting place as the great echoing hall of the Grand Central Station or the foyer of the Metropolitan Opera House. But Amelia Keene, whose excitement since her few minutes' conversation with Beatrix before dinner had churned her into a condition almost approaching apoplexy, seized with instant avidity at the chance of adding drama to the scene in which she had been called upon to take a part.

"Oh, my darling! My darling!" she cried. "Thank God you sent for me! Am I in time?"

This was altogether too much for Beatrix. She threw one look at her unruffled reflection in the mirror and another at Franklin, the very epitome of self-control, and gave herself up to the enjoyment of a burst of laughter which left her utterly weak. Even Franklin, who was in no mood for hilarity, smiled at the obvious inanity of the remark.

Mrs. Lester Keene turned from one to the other with an air of comical indignation. _She_ saw nothing to laugh at. If there had been any fun in all this, why had she been sent for? Her age and her position in that house gave her the right to protect her untamable charge. The mere fact, if such a fact could be mere, that a man was in the bedroom of this young girl was in itself a frightful shock to all her inherited ideas of propriety. To her, novel-fed as she was, Franklin could not be anything but a desperate character, a menace to virtue, a man of the world. He and Beatrix might look at it from the callous modern angle, but she had made up her mind that she was called upon to perform a great rescue and to stand as the representative of Chastity and Moral Goodness,--and like all the women of her type she consciously dignified these terms with capital letters. The only thing that she regretted was that she had done her hair for the night and had not given herself time to touch her face with a powder-puff.

As soon as Beatrix had recovered herself and was able to speak again, she unlaced herself from Mrs. Keene's plump, well-meaning arms and pushed her gently to the nearest chair. "Pull yourself together, Brownie dear," she said. "I hope I sha'n't have to keep you out of bed longer than a few minutes. I sent for you because you had very little opportunity of speaking to Mr. Franklin to-day and he's in a particularly brilliant mood. As you know, I like you to share my pleasures, Brownie, dear." She threw a look of triumph at Franklin, which said as plainly as spoken words, "My game, my friend!"

Franklin caught her meaning. He shot out a laugh and answered her aloud. "Don't you believe it. I have all night at my disposal." And after trying several chairs he sat down in one that had arms and a slanting back, made himself completely comfortable and eyed the newcomer with such interest that she bristled beneath his gaze.

Summing up the state of the game,--it was still in this way that she regarded this amazing episode inconceivable except when conducted by these two products of a social system peculiar to America,--Beatrix didn't like the look of things. It had seemed to her that the entrance of Mrs. Keene would reduce the position to one of such absurdity that Franklin would be only too glad to take himself off with as much dignity as he could muster up. His tenacity took her breath away. What sort of a man was this who intended to stick to his point even in the face of a witness?

Not having been endowed with as much humor as would slip through a sugar-sifter, Mrs. Lester Keene had the faculty of jumping in where angels fear to tread. Her love and admiration for Beatrix were the biggest things in her life,--far bigger than her nebulous marriage and her occasional social triumphs in suburban London. It gave her a sort of false courage and carried her over all conventional bunkers which her provincial up-bringing had erected between herself and the truth. There was therefore a touch of heroism in the way in which she turned upon Franklin. "How long have you been here?" she demanded.

"I'm not sure," said Franklin.

"Time flies when one is interested," said Beatrix, with a charming smile.

"What right have you to be here at all?"

"Ask my wife," said Franklin, drily.

"She isn't your wife, and you know it."

"I am the only man who does," said Franklin.

"And for that reason your behavior is inexcusable and unforgivable. It is not that of a gentleman. I am astounded that a man who bears such a name as yours could descend to these depths."

She had never spoken to anyone like this before, not even to the little servant who, far away in the past, had brushed her hair and mislaid her hair-pins. She was surprised at herself. She felt, with a thrill of curious excitement, that she was rising bravely to a great occasion. Franklin remained patient. He felt sorry for this obviously weak woman who was notoriously no more able to cope with Beatrix than could a canvas screen with a fifty-mile gale. She was doing her best and he respected her. It was not so much her fault as her misfortune that the result was farcical. He caught a look of amusement in the eyes of his antagonist, and waiving all feeling of enmity in a moment of sympathy, smiled back at her. He shrugged his shoulders and said nothing, and so Mrs. Keene, now oiled up, started off again.

"It doesn't require any imagination to know what your intentions are," she said, her choice of words becoming more and more high-flown and her rather fat chin quivering under her emotion. "You seek to take advantage of a young girl who has placed herself in a most dangerous position. I have no words in which to say how despicable--" Her voice broke.

Beatrix patted her shoulder. "There, there, Brownie dear! There, there! Don't take it so much to heart. The last half-an-hour has been full of fun and I've enjoyed it all enormously, and presently when Mr. Franklin comes to the conclusion that after all this is the twentieth century, he'll recover his chivalry and find some other way in which to pay me out."

"Then all I've got to say is this," said Mrs. Lester Keene: "the sooner he comes to that conclusion the better. You, my dear, ought to be in bed and asleep. And after my recent attack of lumbago, I don't think anyone has the right to keep me out of bed as late as this."

Franklin got up and held out his right arm. "I'm so sorry. Allow me to escort you to the door," he said.

"And you intend to go to your own room?"

Beatrix held her breath. On the answer to that question everything that she could see in the future depended.

"This is my room," said Franklin. And when the little lady drew back he went behind her chair, put his hands gently under her elbows, lifted her up and ran her, a perfect mass of impotent protest, to and through the door of the maid's room, which he locked. He knew that Mrs. Keene dared not make a fuss, and returned to face Beatrix once more, with a curious smile, "All square at the turn," he said.

"Well played, sir," replied Beatrix, generously.