Chapter 13

Never had she respected him so profoundly. For the first time she had measured strength with him and had been beaten and routed. She fancied herself enormously proud; for she labored under the common delusion which mistakes for pride the silly vanity of class, or birth, or wealth, or position. She had imagined she would never lower that cherished pride of hers to any man. And she had lowered it into the dust. No wonder women had loved him, she said to herself; couldn't he do with them, even the haughtiest of them, precisely as he pleased? He had not tried to calm, much less to end her jealousy; on the contrary, he had let it flame as high as it would, had urged it higher. And she did not dare ask him, even as a loving concession to her weakness, to give up an affair upon which everybody was putting the natural worst possible construction! On the contrary, she had given him leave to go on--because she feared--yes, knew--that if she tried to interfere he would take it as evidence that they could not get on together. What a man!

* * * * *

But there was more to come that day. As he was finishing dressing for dinner his sister Ursula knocked. "May I come, Frederick?" she said.

"Sure," he cried. "I'm fixing my tie."

Ursula, in a gown that displayed the last possible--many of the homelier women said impossible--inch of her beautiful shoulders, came strolling sinuously in and seated herself on the arm of the divan. She watched him, in his evening shirt, as he with much struggling did his tie. "How young you do look, Fred!" said she. "Especially in just that much clothes. Not a day over thirty."

"I'm not exactly a nonogenarian," retorted he.

"But usually your face--in spite of its smoothness and no wrinkles--has a kind of an old young--or do I mean young old?--look. You've led such a serious life."

"Um. That's the devil of it."

"You're looking particularly young to-night."

"Same to you, Urse."

"No, I'm not bad for thirty-four. People half believe me when I say I'm twenty-nine." She glanced complacently down at her softly glistening shoulders. "I've still got my skin."

"And a mighty good one it is. Best I ever saw--except one."

She reflected a moment, then smiled. "I know it isn't Josephine's. Hers is good but not notable. Eyes and teeth are her strongholds. I suppose it's--the other lady's."

"Exactly."

"I mean the one in Jersey City."

He went on brushing his hair with not a glance at the bomb she had exploded under his very nose.

"You're a cool one," she said admiringly.

"Cool?"

"I thought you'd jump. I'm sure you never dreamed I knew."

He slid into his white waistcoat and began to button it.

"Though you might know I'd find out," she went on, "when everyone's talking."

"Everyone's always talking," said he indifferently.

"And they rattle on to beat the band when they get a chance at a man like you. Do you know what they're saying?"

"Certainly. Loosen these straps in the back of my waistcoat--the upper ones, won't you?"

As she fussed with the buckles she said: "But you don't know that they say you're going to pieces--neglecting your cases--keeping away from your office--wasting about half of your day with your lady love. They say that you have gone stark mad--that you are rushing to ruin."

"A little looser. That's better. Thanks."

"And everyone's wondering when Josephine will hear and go on the rampage. She's so proud and so stuck on herself that they're betting she'll give you the bounce."

"Well--" getting into his coat--"you'd delight in that. For you don't like her."

"Oh--so--so," replied Ursula. "She's all right, as women go. You know we women don't ever think any too well of each other. We're 'on.' Now, I'm frank to admit I'm not worth the powder to blow me up. I can't do anything worth doing. I don't know anything worth knowing--except how to dress and make a fool of an occasional man. I'm not a good house-keeper, nor a good wife--and I'd as lief go to jail for two years as have a baby. But I admit I'm n. g. Most women are as poor excuses as I am, yet they think they're _grand_!"

Norman, standing before his sister and smiling mysteriously, said: "My dear Urse, let me give you a great truth in a sentence. The value of anything is not its value to itself or in itself, but its value to some one else. A woman--even as incompetent a person as you----"

"Or Josephine."

"--or Josephine--may seem to some man to be pricelessly valuable. And if she happens to seem so to him, why, she _is_ so."

"Meaning--Jersey City?"

His eyes glittered curiously. "Meaning Jersey City," he said.

A long silence. Then Ursula: "But suppose Josephine hears?"

He stood beside the doorway, waiting for her to pass out. His face expressed nothing. "Let's go down. I'm hungry. We were talking about it this afternoon."

"You and Jo!"

"Josephine and I."

"And it's all right?"

"Why not?"

"You fooled her?"

"I don't stoop to that sort of thing."

"No, indeed," she laughed. "You rise to heights of deception that would make anyone else giddy. Oh, I'd give anything to have heard."

"There's nothing to deceive about," said he.

She shook her head. "You can't put it over me, Fred. You've never before made a fool of yourself about a woman. I'd like to see her. I suppose I'd be amazed. I've observed that the women who do the most extraordinary things with men are the most ordinary sort of women."

"Not to the men," said he bitterly. "Not while they're doing it."

"Does _she_ seem extraordinary to _you_ still?"

He thrust his hands deep in his pockets. "What you heard is true. I'm letting everything slide--work--career--everything. I think of nothing else. Ursula, I'm mad about her--mad!"

She threw back her head, looked at him admiringly. Never had she so utterly worshiped this wonderful, powerful brother of hers. He was in love--really--madly in love--at last. So he was perfect! "How long do you think it will hold, Fred?" she said, all sympathy.

"God knows!"

"Yet--caring for her you can go on and marry another woman!"

He looked at his sister cynically. "You wouldn't have me marry _her_, would you?"

"Of course not," protested she hastily. Her passion for romance did not carry her to that idiocy. "You couldn't. She's a sort of working girl--isn't she?--anyhow, that class. No, you couldn't marry her. But how can you marry another woman?"

"How could I give up Josephine?--and give her up probably to Bob Culver?"

Ursula nodded understandingly. "But--what are you going to do?"

"How should I know? Perhaps break it off when I marry--if you can call it breaking off, when there's nothing to break but--me."

"You don't mean--" she cried, stopping when her tone had carried her meaning.

He laughed. "Yes--that's the kind of damn fool I've been."

"You must have let her see how crazy you were about her."

"Was anyone ever able to hide that sort of insanity?"

Ursula gazed wonderingly at him, drew a long breath. "You!" she exclaimed. "Of all men--you!"

"Let's go down."

"She must be a deep one--dangerous," said Ursula, furious against the woman who was daring to resist her matchless brother. "Fred, I'm wild to see her. Maybe I'd see something that'd help cure you."

"You keep out of it," he replied, curtly but not with ill humor.

"It can't last long."

"It'd do for me, if it did."

"The marriage will settle everything," said Ursula with confidence.

"It's got to," said he grimly.

XI

The next day or the next but one Dorothy telephoned him. He often called her up on one pretext or another, or frankly for no reason at all beyond the overwhelming desire to hear her voice. But she had never before "disturbed" him. He had again and again assured her that he would not regard himself as "disturbed," no matter what he might be doing. She would not have it so. As he was always watching for some faint sign that she was really interested in him, this call gave him a thrill of hope--a specimen of the minor absurdities of those days of extravagant folly.

"Are you coming over to-day?" she asked.

"Right away, if you wish."

"Oh, no. Any time will do."

"I'll come at once. I'm not busy."

"No. Late this afternoon. Father asked me to call up and make sure. He wants to see you."

"Oh--not you?"

"I'm a business person," retorted she. "I know better than to annoy you, as I've often said."

He knew it was foolish, tiresome; yet he could not resist the impulse to say, "Now that I've heard your voice I can't stay away. I'll come over to lunch."

Her answering voice was irritated. "Please don't. I'm cleaning house. You'd be in the way."

He shrank and quivered like a boy who has been publicly rebuked. "I'll come when you say," he replied.

"Not a minute before four o'clock."

"That's a long time--now you've made me crazy to see you."

"Don't talk nonsense. I must go back to work."

"What are you doing?" he asked, to detain her.

"Dusting and polishing. Molly did the sweeping and is cleaning windows now."

"What have you got on?"

"How silly you are!"

"No one knows that better than I. But I want to have a picture of you to look at."

"I've got on an old white skirt and an old shirt waist, both dirty, and a pair of tennis shoes that were white once but are gray now, where they aren't black. And I've got a pink chiffon rag tied round my hair."

"Pink is wonderful when you wear it."

"I look a fright. And my face is streaked--and my arms."

"Oh, you've got your sleeves rolled up. That's an important detail."

"You're making fun of me."

"No, I'm thinking of your arms. They are--ravishing."

"That's quite enough. Good-by."

And she rang off. He was used to her treating compliment and flattery from him in that fashion. He could not--or was it would not?--understand why. He had learned that she was not at all the indifferent and unaware person in the matter of her physical charms he had at first fancied her. On the contrary, she had more than her share of physical vanity--not more than was her right, in view of her charms, but more than she could carry off well. With many a secret smile he had observed that she thought herself perfect physically. This did not repel him; it never does repel a man--when and so long as he is under the enchantment of the charms the woman more or less exaggerates. But, while he had often seen women with inordinate physical vanity, so often that he had come to regarding it as an essential part of feminine character, never before had he seen one so content with her own good opinion of herself that she was indifferent to appreciation from others.

He did not go back to the office after lunch. Several important matters were coming up; if he got within reach they might conspire to make it impossible for him to be with her on time. If his partners, his clients knew! He the important man of affairs kneeling at the feet of a nobody!--and why? Chiefly because he was unable to convince her that he amounted to anything. His folly nauseated him. He sat in a corner in the dining room of the Lawyers' Club and drank one whisky and soda after another and brooded over his follies and his unhappiness, muttering monotonously from time to time: "No wonder she makes a fool of me. I invite it, I beg for it, damned idiot that I am!" By three o'clock he had drunk enough liquor to have dispatched the average man for several days. It had produced no effect upon him beyond possibly a slight aggravation of his moodiness.

It took only twenty minutes to get from New York to her house. He set out at a few minutes after three; arrived at twenty minutes to four. As experience of her ways had taught him that she was much less friendly when he disobeyed her requests, he did not dare go to the house, but, after looking at it from a corner two blocks away, made a detour that would use up some of the time he had to waste. And as he wandered he indulged in his usual alternations between self-derision and passion. He appeared at the house at five minutes to four. Patrick, who with Molly his wife looked after the domestic affairs, was at the front gate gazing down the street in the direction from which he always came. At sight of him Pat came running. Norman quickened his pace, and every part of his nervous system was in turmoil.

"Mr. Hallowell--he's--_dead_," gasped Pat.

"Dead?" echoed Norman.

"Three quarters of an hour ago, sir. He came from the lobatry, walked in the sitting room where Miss Dorothy was oiling the furniture and I was oiling the floor. And he sets down--and he looks at her--as cool and calm as could be--and he says, 'Dorothy, my child, I'm dying.' And she stands up straight and looks at him curious like--just curious like. And he says, 'Dorothy, good-by.' And he shivers, and I jumps up just in time to catch him from rolling to the floor. He was dead then--so the doctor says."

"Dead!" repeated Norman, looking round vaguely.

He went on to the house, Pat walking beside him and chattering on and on--a stream of words Norman did not hear. As he entered the open front door Dorothy came down the stairs. He had thought he knew how white her skin was. But he did not know until then. And from that ghostly pallor looked the eyes of grief beyond tears. He advanced toward her. But she seemed to be wrapped in an atmosphere of aloofness. He felt himself a stranger and an alien. After a brief silence she said: "I don't realize it. I've been upstairs where Pat carried him--but I don't realize it. It simply can't be."

"Do you know what he wished to say to me?" he asked.

"No. I guess he felt this coming. Probably it came quicker than he expected. Now I can see that he hasn't been well for several days. But he would never let anything about illness be said. He thought talking of those things made them worse."

"You have relatives--somebody you wish me to telegraph?"

She shook her head. "No one. Our relatives out West are second cousins or further away. They care nothing about us. No, I'm all alone."

The tears sprang to his eyes. But there were no tears in her eyes, no forlornness in her voice. She was simply stating a fact. He said: "I'll look after everything. Don't give it a moment's thought."

"No, I'll arrange," replied she. "It'll give me something to do--something to do for him. You see, it's my last chance." And she turned to ascend the stairs. "Something to do," she repeated dully. "I wish I hadn't cleaned house this morning. That would be something more to do."

This jarred on him--then brought the tears to his eyes again. How childish she was!--and how desolate! "But you'll let me stay?" he pleaded. "You'll need me. At any rate, I want to feel that you do."

"I'd rather you didn't stay," she said, in the same calm, remote way. "I'd rather be alone with him, this last time. I'll go up and sit there until they take him away. And then--in a few days I'll see what to do--I'll send for you."

"I can't leave you at such a time," he cried. "You haven't realized yet. When you do you will need some one."

"You don't understand," she interrupted. "He and I understood each other in some ways. I know he'd not want--anyone round."

At her slight hesitation before "anyone" he winced.

"I must be alone with him," she went on. "Thank you, but I want to go now."

"Not just yet," he begged. Then, seeing the shadow of annoyance on her beautiful white face, he rose and said: "I'm going. I only want to help you." He extended his hand impulsively, drew it back before she had the chance to refuse it. For he felt that she would refuse it. He said, "You know you can rely on me."

"But I don't need anybody," replied she. "Good-by."

"If I can do anything----"

"Pat will telephone." She was already halfway upstairs.

He found Pat in the front yard, and arranged with him to get news and to send messages by way of the drug store at the corner, so that she would know nothing about it. He went to a florist's in New York and sent masses of flowers. And then--there was nothing more to do. He stopped in at the club and drank and gambled until far into the morning. He fretted gloomily about all the next day, riding alone in the Park, driving with his sister, drinking and gambling at the club again and smiling cynically to himself at the covert glances his acquaintances exchanged. He was growing used to those glances. He cared not the flip of a penny for them.

On the third day came the funeral, and he went. He did not let his cabman turn in behind the one carriage that followed the hearse. At the graveyard he stood afar off, watching her in her simple new black, noting her calm. She seemed thinner, but he thought it might be simply her black dress. He could see no change in her face. As she was leaving the grave, she looked in his direction but he was uncertain whether she had seen him. Pat and Molly were in the big, gloomy looking carriage with her.

He ventured to go to the front gate an hour later. Pat came out. "It's no use to go in, Mr. Norman," he said. "She'll not see you. She's shut up in her own room."

"Hasn't she cried yet, Pat?"

"Not yet. We're waiting for it, sir. We're afraid her mind will give way. At least, Molly is. I don't think so. She's a queer young lady--as queer as she looks--though at first you'd never think it. She's always looking different. I never seen so many persons in one."

"Can't Molly _make_ her cry?--by talking about him?"

"She's tried, sir. It wasn't no use. Why, Miss Dorothy talks about him just as if he was still here." Pat wiped the sweat from his forehead. "I've been in many a house of mourning, but never through such a strain as this. Somehow I feel as if I'd never before been round where there was anyone that'd lost somebody they _really_ cared about. Weeping and moaning don't amount to much beside what she's doing."

Norman stayed round for an hour or more, then rushed away distracted. He drank like a madman--drank himself into a daze, and so got a few hours of a kind of sleep. He was looking haggard and wild now, and everyone avoided him, though in fact there was not the least danger of an outburst of temper. His sister--Josephine--the office--several clients telephoned for him. To all he sent the same refusal--that he was too ill to see anyone. Not until the third day after the funeral did Dorothy telephone for him.

He took an ice-cold bath, got himself together as well as he could, and reached the house in Jersey City about half past three in the afternoon. She came gliding into the room like a ghost, trailing a black negligee that made the whiteness of her skin startling. Her eyelids were heavy and dark, but unreddened. She gazed at him with calm, clear melancholy, and his heart throbbed and ached for her. She seated herself, clasped her hands loosely in her lap, and said:

"I've sent for you so that I could settle things up."

"Your father's affairs? Can't I do it better?"

"He had arranged everything. There are only the papers--his notes--and he wrote out the addresses of the men they were to be sent to. No, I mean settle things up with you."

"You mustn't bother about that," said he. "Besides, there's nothing to settle."

"I shan't pretend I'm going to try to pay you back," she went on, as if he had not spoken. "I never could do it. But you will get part at least by selling this furniture and the things at the laboratory."

"Dorothy--please," he implored. "Don't you understand you're to stay on here, just the same? What sort of man do you think I am? I did this for you, and you know it."

"But I did it for my father," replied she, "and he's gone." She was resting her melancholy gaze upon him. "I couldn't take anything from you. You didn't think I was that kind?"

He was silent.

"I cared nothing about the scandal--what people said--so long as I was doing it for him. . . . I'd have done _anything_ for him. Sometimes I thought you were going to compel me to do things I'd have hated to do. I hope I wronged you, but I feared you meant that." She sat thinking several minutes, sighed wearily. "It's all over now. It doesn't matter. I needn't bother about it any more."

"Dorothy, let's not talk of these things now," said Norman. "There's no hurry. I want you to wait until you are calm and have thought everything over. Then I'm sure you'll see that you ought to stay on."

"How could I?" she asked wonderingly.

"Why not? Am I demanding anything of you? You know I'm not--and that I never shall."

"But there's no reason on earth why _you_ should support _me_. I can work. Why shouldn't I? And if I didn't, if I stayed on here, what sort of woman would I be?"

He was unable to find an answer. He was trying not to see a look in her face--or was it in her soul, revealed through her eyes?--a look that made him think for the first time of a resemblance between her and her father.

"You see yourself I've got to go. Any money I could earn wouldn't more than pay for a room and board somewhere."

"You can let me advance you money while you--" He hesitated, had an idea which he welcomed eagerly--"while you study for the stage. Yes, that's the sensible thing. You can learn to act. Then you will be able to make a decent living."

She slowly shook her head. "I've no talent for it--and no liking. No, Mr. Norman, I must go back to work--and right away."

"But at least wait until you've looked into the stage business," he urged. "You may find that you like it and that you have talent for it."

"I can't take any more from you," she said.

"You think I am not to be trusted. I'm not going to say now how I feel toward you. But I can honestly say one thing. Now that you are all alone and unprotected, you needn't have the least fear of me."

She smiled faintly. "I see you don't believe me. Well, it doesn't matter. I've seen Mr. Tetlow and he has given me a place at twelve a week in his office."

Norman sank back in his chair. "He is in for himself now?"

"No. He's head clerk for Pitchley & Culver."

"Culver!" exclaimed Norman. "I don't want you to go into Culver's office. He's a scoundrel."

Again Dorothy smiled faintly. Norman colored. "I know he stands well--as well as I do. But I can't trust you with him. That sounds ridiculous but--it's true."

"I think I can trust myself," she said quietly. Her grave regard fixed his. "Don't you?" she asked.

His eyes lowered. "Yes," he replied. "But--why shouldn't you come back with us? I'll see that you get a much better position than Culver's giving you."

Over her face crept one of those mysterious transformations that made her so bafflingly fascinating to him. Behind that worldly-wise, satirical mask was she mocking at him? All she said was: "I couldn't work there. I've settled it with Mr. Tetlow. I go to work to-morrow."

"To-morrow!" he cried, starting up.

"And I've found a place to live. Pat and Molly; will take care of things for you here."

"Dorothy! You don't _mean_ this? You're not going to break off?"

"I shan't see you again--except as we may meet by accident."

"Do you realize what you're saying means to me?" he cried. "Don't you know how I love you?" He advanced toward her. She stood and waited passively, looking at him. "Dorothy--my love--do you want to kill me?"

"When are you to be married?" she asked quietly.

"You are playing with me!" he cried. "You are tormenting me. What have I ever done that you should treat me this way?" He caught her unresisting hands and kissed them. "Dear--my dear--don't you care for me at all?"

"No," she said placidly. "I've always told you so."

He seized her in his arms, kissed her with a frenzy that was savage, ferocious. "You will drive me mad. You _have_ driven me mad!" he muttered. And he added, unconscious that he was speaking his thoughts, so distracted was he: "You _must_ love me--you _must_! No woman has ever resisted me. You cannot."