CHAPTER XXVIII

A REJUVENATED REGINA

How one admires a woman who takes an unexpected facer without making a scene!

Regina had come to the end of her period of martyrdom. Her weight was ten stones seven pounds, her waist was twenty-five inches. Her family had grown used to what both father and daughter stigmatized as "mother's little vanities." She was now a radiantly healthy, pleasing, well-dressed person of comely, middle-aged womanhood. It is true that she was hopelessly dependent upon Madame d'Estelle for her taste in dress and upon Madame Clementine for her choice of millinery. She was still an excellent customer at The Dressing-Room, and went there regularly to have her luxuriant hair brushed and waved in the fashion to which Alfred Whittaker and Julia no longer raised any objection. She had started a day at her club so that friends at a distance might take a cup of tea with her without journeying out to Northampton Park. She was not yet the chaperon of her daughter, for her daughter had long ago got into the habit of arranging her own life, but she was fully convinced that the new ways were a wide advance upon the old ways, and nothing would have induced her to go back to her original state of benighted self-sufficiency. Never had Regina Whittaker known herself so thoroughly as since she had become aware of the existence of the hussy. And yet, it must be confessed that although she had absolutely remodeled her life, changed her way of being, taken a new standpoint from which to look out upon the world, she was no nearer the consummation of her dearest hopes, she was no more certain than she had been six months before that the heart of Alfred was indisputably hers and hers alone.

"You are going to dine in town again!" she said to him one dreary winter morning.

"My dear girl, you may rest assured that I should not dine in town if there were the ghost of a chance of my being able to get my dinner here, but I shall not be back till late, and I don't know why you and the child should ruin your dinner because I can't get back in reasonable time."

"But Maudie and Harry are coming."

"I can't help that; you must explain to them. My dear girl, there's such a lot at stake just now that I simply dare not leave it to chance. Come, come, be reasonable. One would think," and he smiled benevolently down upon her, "that we were a young couple like our turtle doves, and that one could not dine without the other. I admit that I shall not enjoy it so much."

"Shall you not?"

"Now, how can I? Probably there isn't a man in London who is fonder of his home than I am, but at the same time one wants to do the right thing by one's home as well as to enjoy it."

"But, Alfred, you don't wish me to understand that the firm is in difficulties?"

"No, no, not in the sense you mean, but in another sense it is. The fact is, Queenie, I must stick to the ship now at whatever inconvenience to myself."

"And to me," said Regina.

"Well, dearest, and to you. But, come now, you are a strong-minded woman, you know how many beans make five as well as any woman I have ever met--better than most. I've got myself tied up with the biggest ass in London, whether he's going out of his great mind, or whether he's going to continue on, a danger to everyone with whom he comes in touch, I don't know. The fact is, he's not mad enough to be shut up in a lunatic asylum and he's not sane enough to be allowed to come and go as he likes."

"But you took in Tomkinson to relieve you."

"And so he will in time, but he isn't the head of the firm and I am. He's a splendid man and I should have been furious if any other house in the same line had got hold of him; at the same time you can't expect a man to take my place in the first six months of becoming a partner; it wouldn't be reasonable, particularly as Chamberlain is such a difficult card to handle."

"And where are you dining?" said Regina.

"Well, to-night I've got to dine possibly at the Criterion and talk over a business matter that Chamberlain has let himself in for, and which he is most anxious to get clear of with as little publicity and fuss as possible. Of course the situation with his wife is very difficult; she is a jealous, absurd, sensitive woman, and he makes her a shocking bad husband. It's a pity he was not born to be a clerk with a pound a week, to have to keep his nose down to the grindstone to provide board and lodging; then he would have managed to keep himself straight. I shall get things straightened out in a few months if I can manage it, and then we will take that trip South that we were talking about. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

"I shall be happy anywhere with you."

"We'll take that trip South, it will do you good, and it will be a heaven-sent holiday for me, but I can't go as things are now, and you mustn't worry until I have got matters into something like order."

"You are sure we are not spending too much money?"

"Oh no, no, no, it isn't a question of money, but in one way it's a question of business. Now I must be off."

It happened that Julia had been listening during the entire conversation. "I say, mother," she said, "if daddy is not coming home to dinner, why give Harry and Maudie the fag of coming out here? Let's go and dine at the Trocadero and do a theatre afterward; it isn't often that you and I have the chance of getting off on the loose by ourselves. We could easily send a wire or I could run over and see Maudie, and she could 'phone to Harry from their house."

"Yes, that's a very good idea," said Regina, who certainly did not want to sit at her own table in the absence of her lord and master and explain the exact circumstances of his absence. "You'd better wire, or--no--you might run over."

"Then I'll lunch with Maudie."

"All right. We'll dine at seven o'clock."

"What theatre shall we go to?"

"You can settle that with Maudie, can't you? Then you can 'phone from her house to any theatre you want to go to."

"Very good. Do you know, mother, I think daddy is very worried. I wonder why everything seems to be Mr. Chamberlain; our house seems to be dominated by Mr. Chamberlain. I don't know why daddy doesn't get rid of him; he's no good to anybody."

"Ah, that's easier said than done with a partner of any kind. Mr. Chamberlain may be a little wrong in his head, but he knows right enough when he is in for a good thing; it's no use thinking about that, so we may as well make the best of it."

So at seven o'clock a well-dressed and extremely happy quartette arrived in pairs at the Trocadero and took up a position at a table in the gallery. The dinner was excellent, the music was alluring, the company was abundant and well-dressed, and Regina, released from the thraldom of Dr. Money-Berry, was at liberty to eat whatever came in due course. Harry Marksby had chosen the champagne, and all was merry as a marriage bell, when suddenly Julia made a remark, "Why, there's daddy," she said, looking over the balustrade.

Regina looked in the opposite direction. "Really! he said he was going to dine at the Criterion or somewhere. I suppose his friend preferred to come here."

"His friend is a lady," said Julia.

Regina's heart gave a sick throb, her eyes followed the direction of Julia's gaze, and the next instant she beheld her noble Alfred sitting with his elbow on the table talking earnestly to a young and pretty woman.

"Don't faint, darling," said Julia in a soft undertone.

"I'm not in the least likely to faint," said Regina, with superb dignity. "Doubtless your father will give a perfectly simple explanation of his being here with a lady. Thank you, Harry, I will have a little more champagne."

Oh, she was a plucky woman, Regina Whittaker! It was not in her nature to show the white feather! Her suspicions had crystallized themselves into human form. There was the hussy who had haunted her for months past, there she was in the flesh! "And I must say," said Regina to her own heart, "that Alfred does not look as if he were enjoying himself."