Part 19

“I can’t receive him up here. It’s against the rules. Yet I want-- No--say I’ll be down to the parlor immediately.”

“But I’m here,” suggested her father. “He could come up.”

“He mustn’t see you.”

“I could wait in there--couldn’t I?”

“Yes--the door is thick,” reflected Beatrice aloud. “Yes--say he is to come up. Val--Miss Clermont has gone out.... No--I’ll see him in the parlor.”

And Beatrice closed the door. It was not many minutes before she opened it again--to appear bewitchingly dressed in a new spring toilet--and the styles that year were exactly suited to her figure. She was radiant, and her father’s depressed countenance did not lessen her overflowing delight. “You can’t deny that he loves me--can you?” cried she.

“No,” replied Richmond. “The fact is, I saw he did yesterday.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” demanded she.

“You guessed it. What was the use?” evaded he.

“Guess?” The girl laughed. “You call that guessing because you’re merely a man. It was certainty--proof--plain as if he had said so. But then, I’ve known it for weeks. Now, keep well back in the elevator, dear, for he mustn’t see you as I get out.”

When the elevator was slowing for the parlor floor Richmond caught his daughter’s hand and pressed it convulsively. “Good luck!” he said in an undertone. “If you don’t win to-day we’ll follow him to France.”

“To the ends of the earth,” laughed she, kissing his hand and gayly pushing him back to a rear corner of the car.

The door closed behind her and the car resumed its descent; of all the thoughts boiling in Richmond’s excited brain not one was related to the strangeness of his own conduct or to the amazing transformation in a cold, tyrannical nature. In fact, the transformation was apparent rather than real. The chase had ever dominated him--the passion for the chase. And it was dominating him now.

* * * * *

In the wall opposite the elevator, and the width of the rather wide room from it, was a long mirror. No man could well have been freer from physical vanity than this big, self-conscious Roger Wade. Beyond his human duty of making himself inoffensive to the eye in the matter of clothing, he did nothing whatever toward personal adornment. Yet as Beatrice advanced he was primping industriously and unconsciously. To occupy his agitated mind he was standing before the mirror smoothing his hair, arranging his tie, fussing with the hang of the big, loose, dark-blue suit that gave his splendid figure an air of freedom. Their eyes met in the glass. He did not turn, but gazed at her--and who would not have been charmed by a creature so redolent of springtime freshness, from the yellow roses in her hat, looking as if they were just from the garden, to the scrupulously neat effect of stockings and ties? She stood beside him, her yellow roses nodding in line with his ear. And they made a delightful picture--a rare harmony of contrasts and symmetries.

She laughed radiantly. “Chang!” she cried.

He was straightway so disconcerted that her amusement could not but increase. “Through primping?” mocked she.

“I think so,” he replied. “I see you attended to all that thoroughly before you came down.”

“Yes,” said she with the air of half-serious, half-jesting complacency she could carry off so well. “I’m ready to the last button. Let’s sit over there--by the window.” Then, as they sat opposite each other: “Why are you so solemn?”

Again Roger had to struggle to keep himself in hand.

“Why do you avoid looking at me?” laughed she. And so glad was she to see him again that she had less difficulty than she had feared in hiding her anxiety, her feeling that she was playing her last stake in the game that seemed to her to mean lifelong happiness or lifelong wretchedness.

He colored, but contrived to smile and to look at her. It was an unsteady gaze, a grave smile. “I’ve come,” said he, “because I wish to urge you to go back home. Your father and I----”

“Yes, I know,” interrupted she. “Father has been here.”

“And you’re going back?”

“No--no, indeed. I’ve made the first step toward being independent. I’m going to keep on. Father’s a dear, but he’s not to be trusted. If he controls he tyrannizes. He might try not to do it, but he could not help himself. So--I’m to be a dressmaker.”

“What nonsense, Rix!” exclaimed he. “There’s nothing so detestable as an independent woman--a masculine woman.”

“One that has a will of her own and proposes to the man if she happens to feel like it?” suggested she, with dancing eyes.

“Well--yes--if you insist on putting it that way.”

“Woman, the weak, the foolish, the clinging--that’s your ideal?” said she.

He nodded emphatically.

“Isn’t it strange,” said she absently, “that we never fall in love with our ideals?”

Roger stirred about in his chair, much embarrassed.

“I suppose it’s part of our never--_never_--wanting to do what we ought--and never, never doing it if we can help.”

Roger took his hat from the floor beside his chair, got ready to rise. “If you’re determined on not going home I suppose it’s useless for me to talk. But--your father is old--much older these last few weeks, Rix. If you could make it up with him----”

“Oh, but I have,” cried she. “We are better friends than ever. I don’t think we’ll ever quarrel again.”

The artist showed a rather conventional kind of pleasure. “I’m sincerely glad,” said he. “I like him and I like you, and I’d have been sorry to go away feeling that you two were at outs.”

“You’re not a bit natural, Chang. You don’t talk like yourself. What’s the matter?”

“Probably I’ve got too much on my mind--the hurry of going so soon. That reminds me. I must say good-by. I’ve got such a lot to do.”

Her face did not change, but her heart began to flutter wildly.

“You and your father are friends,” proceeded he, his inward state showing only in the fact that he was absurdly repeating himself. “What I came to do is done. So I’ll go--as that was my only reason for bothering you.”

She gazed mockingly at him, shaking her head. “Oh, no--Chang. That wasn’t why you came.”

“I assure you it was. My only reason.”

“You big, foolish Chang!” mocked she. “You don’t know your own mind. Now, do sit down. That’s better. Now--there you are, jumping up again. What _is_ the matter?”

“I must be going.”

“Is it really true that big men are more stupid?... No, that wasn’t why you came. You came because----”

“Now, Rix,” cried he angrily--for her eyes plainly foretold what was coming. “That joke has gone far enough--too far--much too far.”

“What joke?”

“About your being in love with me.”

“Whether or not it’s a joke that I’m in love with you, it certainly is not a joke that _you_ are in love with _me_.”

He sat on the arm of his chair and smiled ironically. “Really?” said he.

“Really,” declared she. “Shall I prove it to you?”

He stood. “I’ve no time. It’s very pleasant dawdling here with you, but----”

She ignored his hand, concentrated on his eyes. “What else have you painted besides that picture?” asked she.

He blushed slightly. “I’m very slow at my work.”

Her smile let him know that she was fully aware how heavily she had scored. “You came over to stay here in America,” pursued she. “Yet, you are going back--never to return, you announce. Why?... You’re not going through fear of father. No--don’t pretend. Fear isn’t in your line--fear of _men_. And you’re not going through fear of me? You could easily bar me out--make it impossible for me to annoy you.”

He had seated himself again. He was listening intently.

“You are going,” she went on, “through fear of yourself.” She laughed softly. “A regular panic, Chang!” she cried. “You didn’t intend to sail till next week. You are running off in the morning--by the first steamer.”

He made a faint effort to rise, gave it up, resumed the study of his hatband.

“You were going to take my picture with you,” continued she.

“_Your_ picture?” said he with feeble irony.

“_Our_ picture,” corrected she softly.

He waved the hat in a gesture of hopelessness.

“Then,” proceeded she, “you changed your mind and decided to leave it. But you thought you wouldn’t part with it until the last moment--to-morrow morning. Oh, Chang! Chang!”

“I found it more convenient to send it last night,” said he with a brave effort at indifference.

“Convenient?” she laughed. “I can see you storming against your weakness, as you call it. I can see you resolving to be brave--to free yourself immediately. But your scheme didn’t work. For the only result of not having the picture to say good-by to was that you had to come here and take one last look at the original.”

He laughed aloud--a forced, mirthless laugh. “Same old Rix!” exclaimed he. “Of all the conceit!”

“Isn’t it, though?” retorted she with a coquettish nod. “But it’s the truth, too--isn’t it?”

“I’d hate to destroy any illusion that seems to give you so much happiness.”

“You couldn’t, Chang. For”--softly--“I couldn’t feel as I do toward you if I didn’t know, with that deep, deep heart knowledge, that we are--like one.”

He rose resolutely, in his eyes an expression that thrilled and frightened her. She had from time to time caught glimpses of the man of whom that was the expression, but only glimpses--when he was at work and unconscious of her presence. Now, somehow, the expression seemed to reveal this almost unknown man within the Roger she loved. However, she concealed her alarm.

“You see, I’ve proved that you do love me,” said she. “But, Chang”--solemnly--“even though you do love me and I love you, what does it amount to--except for--for misery--unless we have each other?”

He slowly dropped to the chair again. He looked at her sternly, angrily. “It’s the truth,” said he. “I do love you. It is a whim with you--a caprice--a piece of willfulness. But with me”--he drew a long breath--“I love you. The only excuse for the way you’ve acted is that you’re too young and light-hearted to know what you’re about.”

Her hands clutched each other convulsively in her lap. But she was careful to keep from her face all sign of the feeling those words inspired.

He laughed with bitter irony. “To that extent--you’ve had your way,” he went on. “Get what satisfaction you can out of it--for, while you’ve conquered my heart, you’ll not conquer my will. I am not yours to dispose of as you see fit. I can get over caring for you--and I shall.”

“But _why_, Chang? _Why?_”

For answer he smiled mockingly at her.

“In your heart of hearts you don’t believe for an instant it’s a caprice with me. You know better, Chang.” Sincerity looked from her eyes, pleaded in her voice.

But Roger held his ground stubbornly. “I know it is caprice,” he said. “I’m not clean crazy with vanity, Rix. But even if you were in earnest--as much in earnest as you pretend--perhaps as you think--still, that wouldn’t change things. We can’t be anything more to each other than friends. In any other relation we’d be worse than useless to each other. You need a man of your own sort. If I tied up with any woman it’d be with one of my sort.”

“I don’t understand,” said she. “It wouldn’t be worth while for you to explain--for I couldn’t understand. All I know is, we love each other.”

“But marriage is a matter of temperaments. If you had less will I might compel you to go my way, to learn to like and lead my kind of life. If I had less will I might adapt myself to you--and become a comfortable, contemptible rich woman’s nonentity of a husband. But neither of us can change--so, we part.”

“I’ve thought of those things,” said she, quiet and sweet and unconvinced. “I’ve gone over and over them, day and night. But--Chang, I can’t give you up.”

“That is to say, you don’t care what becomes of me so long as you get your way.”

She did not respond to his argumentative mood, but took refuge in woman’s impregnable citadel. “I trust my instinct--what it tells me is best for us.”

“You don’t realize it,” argued he desperately, “but you count on my love for you making me weak enough to adapt myself to your kind of life.”

“I count on our love’s making us both happy.”

“You wish to marry me simply because you think I’m necessary to your happiness?”

“Yes--Chang. You are necessary to my happiness.”

“And _my_ happiness--have you thought of it?”

“I love you.”

“And you feel that your love ought to be enough to make me happy?”

“Your love is all I need,” replied she with sad gentleness.

“That’s the woman’s point of view,” cried he. “I’ll admit it’s more or less mine, too--when I’m with you or have been thinking about you till my head’s turned. But--Rix”--he was powerfully in earnest now--“while love may be all that’s necessary to make a woman happy, it isn’t so with a man. For a man, love is to life what salt is to food--not the food as it is with a woman, but the thing that gives the food savor.”

He paused. But she sat silent, her gaze upon her hands folded listlessly in her lap. He went on: “You have been indulging this whim of yours without giving it a serious thought. Now, I want you to think--to help me save us from the folly your willfulness and my weakness are tempting us to commit. I want you to ask yourself: ‘What sort of life would Chang and I lead together? Would I tolerate his devotion to his work? Would I respect him if he gradually yielded to my temptings and gave up his work? Whichever way it turned out, wouldn’t I either dislike or despise him?’”

“You--don’t love me,” she murmured.

“I do. But I’m not so selfish as your inexperience and thoughtlessness make you.”

She scarcely heard. She was gazing with all her mind and heart at the new Chang revealed clearly for the first time in the intense earnestness of this their first profoundly and crucially serious talk. This was the man her father had warned her about. There were dark circles round her eyes as if they had been bruised, and in them the look of present pain. He happened to glance at her. He saw--groaned. “No matter!” he cried. “I love you. I can’t bear it. I’m weak--contemptibly weak where you’re concerned. We’ll surely fail--fail miserably. But we must go on, now. I had a presentiment--I was a damn fool to come here to-day. Yes--we’ve drifted too far. We must go on--over the falls.”

He stopped, appalled by his own passionate outburst. She shook her head slowly. “No, we must not go on,” said she.

Her tone instantly calmed his runaway passion; he stared in amazement.

“You really feel like that?” she went on--“feel it’d be weak and wrong for you to marry me?”

“I have told you the truth--about yourself and about me,” was his reply. “You surely must see it.”

She gave a long sigh, furtive, deep. But her voice was steady as she said sadly: “Then--we must give each other up.”

“That is certainly best,” promptly assented he. “You see now that you didn’t want me, but only your own way.”

“I see that we should not be happy. I don’t understand your point of view. I suppose I’m not experienced enough. But I see you are in earnest--that it isn’t just a--a notion with you. So--” From her face waned the last glimmer of its look of the springtime. Her voice sank almost to a whisper--“I give up.”

He stood with aggressive erectness. “Then--it is settled.”

She nodded without looking at him. She could not trust herself to look. “I’ll not bother you any more,” said she.

He saw that he was victor--had gained his point. Yet never did man look or feel less the victor. He put out his hand; she let hers rest in it. “Good-by, Rix,” he said with a brave attempt at philosophic calm. “This is much better than seeing our love end in a quarrel and a scandal--isn’t it?”

“You go--in the morning?”

“Yes.”

Her hand dropped to her lap. He looked steadily at her, with no restraint upon his expression, because her eyes were down. “Good-by,” he repeated. He waited for a reply, but none came. With that long, sure stride of his, free and graceful, he went to the stairway and descended--and departed.

XXI

ROGER WINS

La Provence was due to sail in twenty minutes. One whistle had blown; one of the gangways was casting off. Roger, with a suppressed excitement more effective than any shouting or waving of fists, was superintending the taking of his luggage from the ship. “There’s still one piece to come ashore--the old leather trunk with brass nails,” he said to the polite chief steward. “It must be found. Double your efforts and I’ll double your fee.” He turned, found himself squarely facing Beatrice Richmond.

The color flamed in his face; it vanished from hers. “You got my note?” she said. “And you are sailing anyhow?”

“I did not get your note,” replied he. “But I am not sailing.... One moment, please.” Then to the chief steward: “There is also a note for me. I must have it.”

“Parfaitement, Monsieur.” And the chief steward raced up the gangway.

Roger and Beatrice stood aside in a quiet place, a calm in the surging crowd of the voyagers and their friends. Beatrice looked at him with that fine, frank directness which had been her most conspicuous trait in all her dealings with him. Said she: “In my note I asked you to take me on any terms or on no terms. All I wish is to be near you and to love you.”

She spoke the words without any trace of emotion in either tone or manner--spoke them with a certain monotonous finality that gave them all the might of the simply genuine. And he answered in much the same way. “I am not sailing,” said he, “because--because to love you and to have you--that’s life for me. The rest isn’t worth talking about.”

“Not worth talking about,” echoed she. “I don’t know whether we’ll be happy or not, but I do know it’s my only chance to be anything but miserable.”

“I don’t know whether I could get over you or not,” was his matching confession, “but I do know that I don’t want to--and won’t.”

A moment’s silence, with the two gazing up at the towering steamer through the great doors in the pier shed. Then his eyes turned to her, to look at her with an intensity that made her feel as if she had been suddenly seized in strong yet gentle arms and were being borne by mighty wings up and up and still up.

“Chang,” she said between laughing and sobbing, “I must have been crazy yesterday to refuse you.”

“No--you’re crazy to-day. So am I. That is, I’m normal again--what’s been normal for me ever since I knew you. And I hope the day’ll never come when I’ll be sane.”

“Are you happy now?”

“Delirious.”

“As we used to be when we were together by the cascade?”

“Like that--only a thousand times more so.” And they gazed at each other with foolish-fond eyes, and from their lips issued those extraordinary sounds that seem imbecile or divine, according as the listening ears are attuned.

“Your father was right,” said Roger. “Love is master.” Again she was seeing the new and more wonderful and more compelling Chang. “I found that everything was going to stop stock-still if I went away from you.”

The chief steward, bearing the note, and his assistants who had been collecting Roger’s luggage around him, now appeared. Roger tore open the note, read its one brief sentence of unconditional surrender. Then he dismissed the men with fees so amazing to them that they thanked him with tears in their eyes. “But you really must be careful,” cautioned Beatrice. “You know we’ve got no money to throw away.”

Roger gave her a look that dazzled her. “I see you understand,” said he. “Well, we may be happy in spite of all--all the difficulties.”

She laughed. “I don’t think, dear,” said she, “that you’re so weak as you fear, or I so foolish.... Maybe you’d like me to keep on with the dressmaking?”

He frowned in mock severity. “I don’t want ever to hear of it again.”

“Then you never shall,” replied she with mock humility. “You want a meek slave--and you shall have one.” Her lips moved with no sound issuing.

“What are you saying there?” demanded he.

“What Ruth said to Naomi.” She gazed at him with ecstatic, incredulous eyes. “Have I _really_ got you?” she said.

He looked at her with an amused smile. It died away slowly, and his gaze grew solemn. “That will depend on--you,” he said.

She saw there was more than the surface meaning in the words; then she saw their deeper meaning--saw as clearly as an inexperienced girl may see, but only so clearly, the hidden reality of the man she had been striving to win, and would ever have to strive to keep. And beautiful was the light in her eyes as she murmured: “Love will teach me!”

He half turned away to hide the wave of emotion that almost unmanned him. When he spoke it was to say in a queer, husky voice: “Let me see the expressman about this luggage--then--we’ll go to lunch somewhere.”

“Let’s go--in--” She halted, eyes dancing.

“In a cab?”

She blushed and laughed. “Isn’t it about time?” said she, eyes full of that charming audacity of hers. “How well we understand each other! How congenial we are!”

“Wonderful, isn’t it?” cried he. “I hope there have been other cases like ours--lots of ’em. But I doubt it.”

She waited while he negotiated the return of the baggage to Deer Spring. When he rejoined her--or, rather, gave her his undivided attention, for he had not let her get so much as three feet away from him--she said: “Now I must telephone father.”

“Oh, why hurry about that?”

“I must tell him not to engage passage for next Wednesday,” explained she.

And they both burst out laughing.

THE END

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.