Part 5

This seemed to astonish her. She looked at him doubtfully, was so agitated by his expression that she hastily cried, “Oh, no, you’ll not desert me. I admit it’s my fault. But you wouldn’t be so unfriendly as to get me into trouble!”

“How would I get you into trouble? It’s just the other way. If I came to your house it’d make a tangle that even Vanderkief would see.”

“No--no, indeed,” protested she. “I can’t stop to explain now. _Don’t_ be so suspicious, Chang. I’ll be here to-morrow morning--no, at the studio. Pete--that is, Hank--might follow me here. And now that you know who we are, don’t you see there’s no reason for----”

She laughed coquettishly, and away she sped, before he could repeat his refusal. To call after her would be to betray her.

* * * * *

As he was working in the usual place near the cascade the next morning she came upon him from the direction of the studio. “What a fright you’ve given me!” exclaimed she, dropping to the grass a few yards away. “I went up to the studio as I told you I would.”

He had bowed to her with some formality. His tone was distinctly stiff as he replied: “My work compelled me to be here. Anyhow, Miss Richmond, it’s clear to me, and must be to you, that our friendship must cease.”

“You don’t look at me as you say that,” said she, obviously not seriously impressed.

“It isn’t pleasant to say that sort of thing to you,” replied he. “But your coming again, when you ought not, forces me to be frank.”

“Why?” said she, clasping her knees with her hands. “Why must our friendship cease?”

“There are many reasons. One is enough. I do not care to continue it.”

“How nasty you are this morning, Chang!”

He took refuge in silence.

“Surely you’re not jealous of Hanky?” said she, with audacious mischief.

He ignored this.

“Don’t look so sour. I was merely joking. Are you cross because I made you help me tell--things that weren’t quite so?”

“I don’t like that sort of business,” said he, unconvincingly industrious with his brush.

“Neither do I,” said she. “But what was I to do? You know, you forced me into engaging myself to him.”

He stopped work, stared at her. The light--or something--that morning was most becoming to her, the smallish, slim, yellow-haired sprite--most disturbingly becoming.

She went on in the same sweet, even way: “And if it hadn’t been for my coming here to act as your model I’d not have got into trouble. And, having got in, what was there to do but get out with as little damage to poor Peter’s feelings as possible?” Then she looked at him with innocent eyes, as if she had uttered the indisputable.

Roger surveyed her with admiration. “You are--the limit!” he exclaimed. “The limit!”

“But isn’t what I said true?” urged she. “What else could I have done?”

“True? Yes--true,” said he, making a gesture of resignation. “I admit everything--anything.”

“Now, do be reasonable, Chang!” she reproached. “Where isn’t it true?”

“If I let myself argue with you I’d be running wild through the woods in about fifteen minutes. Tell me, does anyone in your family--or among your acquaintances--does _anyone_ ever dispute with you?”

She reflected, ignoring the irony in his tone. “No,” said she, “I don’t believe they do. I have my own way.”

“I’d have sworn it,” cried he.

“You are the only one that ever opposes me,” said she.

“I? Oh, no. Never! But in this one thing I must.” He changed to seriousness. “Rix, I’ll have nothing to do with your deceiving that nice young chap. That’s flat and final.”

“Isn’t he nice, though!” exclaimed she. “I’ve always liked him since he was a little boy at dancing school with such a polite, quiet way of sniffling. He hates to blow his nose. You know, there are people like that. I wouldn’t hurt his feelings for the world. You see, everybody can’t be harsh and hard like you. Now, you take a positive delight in saying unpleasant truths.”

“I’m nothing of a liar,” said he curtly.

“I like that in you,” cried she with enthusiasm. “It makes me feel such confidence. You’re the only person I ever knew whom I believed in everything they said.”

He gave her a look of frank surprise and suspicion. “What are you driving at?” he demanded. “Now, don’t look innocent. Out with it!”

“I don’t understand,” said she, smiling.

“Pardon me, but you do--perfectly. What are you wheedling for?”

“How _can_ we be friends,” pleaded she, “if you’re always suspecting me?”

“We’re not going to be friends,” replied he positively. “This--here and now--is the end.”

It was evident that his words had given her a shock--a curious shock of surprise, as if she had expected some very different reception to this proffer of hers. However, after a brief reflection she seemed to recover. “How _can_ so clever a man as you be so foolish?” expostulated she. “You know as well as you’re sitting there that we simply can’t help being friends.”

“Friends--yes,” he conceded. “But we’re not going to see each other.”

“And what would I say to Pete?”

“Something clever and satisfying. By the way, how did you manage to get away with it when you reached home?”

She laughed delightedly. She was looking her most innocent, most youthful. “Oh, _such_ a time!” cried she. “Mother-- You don’t know mother, so you can’t appreciate. But you will, when you do know her. It was a three-cornered row--Heck and mother and I. Heck took a shine to you, so he was really about half on my side. I told just how I met you--the whole story--except I didn’t tell the exact truth about the picture.”

Her look was so queer that he said in alarm: “What did you say about it?”

“We’ll talk of that later,” replied she--and his knowledge of her methods did not allow him to receive with an eased mind this hasty insistence on delay. “Mother wanted to know who you were, and, of course, I couldn’t tell her--not anything that would satisfy a woman like mother. She forbade me ever to see you again. I told her that, on the contrary, I’d see you this morning. She raved--my, how she did rave!” And Rix burst into peals of laughter. “You ought to have heard! She’s so conventional. She accused me--but you can imagine.”

“Yes, I can,” said he dryly. “And she’s right--absolutely right. We’ll not see each other again.”

“Oh, but she wants to see you,” rejoined Miss Richmond. “She can hardly wait to see you, herself. She’s badly frightened lest you’ll not come.”

Roger let his absolute disbelief show in his face. There must somewhere be bounds to what this resourceful and resolute young person could accomplish. These assertions of hers were beyond those bounds--far beyond them.

“It was this way,” pursued Miss Richmond with innocent but intense satisfaction in her own cleverness. “I pointed out to her that, if I didn’t go to you and keep on with the picture, Hanky--that’s Peter Vanderkief--would realize I’d been flirting _wildly_ with a strange man I had picked up in the woods and would break the engagement. And mother is set on my marrying Peter. So she sent me off herself this morning and took charge of Peter to keep him safe. Am I not clever?”

“I can think of nothing to add to what I have already said on that point,” observed Roger mildly. “I am actually flabbergasted!”

“So was mother,” said she with innocent, young triumph. “And she used just that word. Here’s a note from her to you.”

Miss Richmond took a letter from the pocket of her jacket and held it toward him. He made no move to advance and take it from her. Instead he made a gesture that was the beginning of a carrying out of the boyish impulse to put his hands behind his back.

“Do you want me to get up and bring it to you?” said she.

“I want nothing to do with it,” said he coldly. “I don’t know your mother. I’ve no doubt she’s an estimable woman, but I’ve no time to enlarge the circle of my acquaintances.”

Miss Richmond once more seemed astounded by this unmistakable evidence of an intention on his part to end their friendship absolutely. She looked at him incredulously, then questioningly, then haughtily. She put the note in her pocket, rose and stood very straight and dignified. “That is rude,” she said.

“Yes, it is rude,” admitted he. “But you have left me no alternative. There is only the one way to avoid being drawn into deceptions that are most distasteful to me.”

She eyed him as if measuring his will. She saw no sign of yielding. “You think I’m contemptible, don’t you?” said she, her tone friendly again.

“I do not presume to judge you. You have your own scheme of life, I mine. They are different--that is all. I don’t ask you to accept mine. You must not ask me to accept yours. You must not--shall not--entangle me in yours.”

She leaned against a tree, gazed thoughtfully at the rainbow appearing and disappearing on the little waterfall. When she returned to him her face was sweet and sad. He glanced up from his work, hastily fixed his gaze on it again. “You are right--absolutely right,” she said. “I’ve always done as I pleased. And everyone round me--the family, the servants, the governesses--everyone--has humored and petted me and encouraged me to take my own way.”

“I understand,” said he. “The wonder is--” But he deemed it wise not to say what the wonder was.

“You really can’t blame me, Chang, can you, for having got into the habit of thinking whatever I please to do is right?”

“Certainly I don’t blame you, Rix,” said he gently. “Considering what you’ve probably been through, you’re amazing. In the same circumstances I’d have been unfit to live.”

“You don’t despise me?” asked she eagerly.

“Despise you? Why, I couldn’t despise anybody. It’s a roomy world--room for all kinds.”

“You like me? Not love,” she hastened to explain, “just like. Do you?”

He smiled his friendliest. “Sure! You’re about the nicest girl I ever met--when you want to be.”

“Thank you,” she said, tears in her eyes; and she dropped back into her reverie, he resuming his work. There was a long pause between them--a pause filled by the song of birds thronging the foliage above and around them, and by the soft music of the falling waters. “Sometimes I think it’s an awful bad thing for people to have all the money they want--to be rich,” said she pensively. “That’s one trouble with our family.”

“Why, you told me you had to marry for money,” said Roger, much surprised. He hated liars; he was loath to believe that she had lied to him.

She looked miserably confused. “You didn’t understand quite,” she replied hastily. “And I can’t explain--not now. You mustn’t ask me.”

“Ask you? It’s none of my business.”

“I didn’t mean--I didn’t mean to deceive you,” pleaded she. “But--I can’t explain now.”

“Don’t think of it again,” said he, with a careless wave of one of his long brushes. It was no new experience to find that people supposed to be rich were merely struggling along on the edge of the precipice of poverty. Poor child, making one of those hideous sacrifices on the altar of snobbishness!--or, rather, being sacrificed, for she was too young to realize to the full what she was doing. Still, Peter Vanderkief did not size up so badly, as husband material went.

Silence for several minutes; she, seated again and studying his strong, handsome face with its intent, absorbed expression--concentrated, powerful. She did not venture to speak until he happened to glance at her with an absent smile. Then she inquired sweetly: “May I ask you something?”

“Go ahead.”

“Won’t you please come to dinner to-morrow night? That’s what mother’s note’s about. It would be a great favor to me. It would straighten everything out. You won’t have to do any further deceiving.”

He went on with his work. After a while he asked: “Does your Peter think you love him?”

The color mounted in her cheeks. But it was in the accents of truth that she replied: “He knows I don’t.”

“And if I came I’d not be helping to deceive him as to what you think of him?”

“No--on my honor.”

He looked at her. “No’s quite enough,” said he, in a tone that made her thrill with pride. “I think you are truthful.”

“And I am--with you,” said she, her expression at its very best. “I’d be ashamed to lie to you. Not that I’ve always been quite--quite--painfully _accurate_----”

“I understand. You and I mean the same thing when we say truthful.”

“Will you come?”

“Yes. Where do you live?”

She laughed. “Why, we’re _the_ Richmonds. Didn’t you guess?” She nodded as if a mystery had been cleared up for her. “Oh, I understand now why you’ve acted so differently from what I thought you would when you found out.”

He smiled faintly. “I suppose I ought to know. But I’m a stranger here. When I was here as a boy the city lawyers and merchants hadn’t got the habit of coming up and taking farmhouses for the summer. Are you boarding or have you a place of your own?”

She had got very red and was hanging her head. Evidently she was suffering keenly from embarrassment.

“What’s the matter, Rix?”

“I--I rather thought--after yesterday--you sort of--understood about us,” she stammered.

He laughed encouragingly. “Good Lord, don’t be a snob,” cried he. “What do I care about where you live? I don’t select my acquaintances by what’s in their pockets, but by what’s in their heads. A while ago you said you were rich--and then you said you weren’t----”

“Oh, I’m all upset,” interrupted she. “Don’t mind the way I act. We live on Red Hill. The house up there belongs to father.”

“That big, French country house?” said Roger, surprised. “I’ve seen it. I’ll be glad to see it closer.” He painted a few minutes. “I suppose you put on a lot of style up there. Well, I’ve got evening clothes somewhere in my traps. I used to wear them occasionally in Paris, but not much. Paris doesn’t go in for formalities--at least, not the Paris I know.... What time’s the dinner?”

“Half past eight.”

He groaned and laughed. “Just my bedtime. But I’ll brace myself and show up awake.... I wonder if I’ve got an evening shirt.” He happened to glance at her, was struck by a queer gleam in her gray eyes. “What now?”

“Nothing--nothing,” she hastened to assure him. “Just some silliness. I’m full of it.”

He went on painting, and presently resumed his soliloquizing: “May have to come in ordinary clothes. But that wouldn’t be a killing matter--would it?... This isn’t town--it’s backwoods.... I’ve heard some sorts of Americans have got to be worse than the English for agitation about petty little forms. Are yours that sort?”

“Mother’s a dreadful snob,” said she weakly.

“Well, I’ll do the best I can,” was his careless reply. “Perhaps it’ll be just as well if I have to horrify her.” He laughed absently.

“I hope you’ll do the best you can,” pleaded she. “For my sake.”

He looked amused. “You don’t want her to think you picked up a hooligan--eh?”

“Oh, I don’t care what she thinks--not deep down,” cried the girl. “I don’t care what anybody thinks about you--not really. But on the surface--I’m--I’m a horrible snob, too.”

“All right. I’ll try not to disgrace you utterly.”

She reflected absently. Presently she interrupted his painting with “Heck and father are both small. But Hank--I might send you down one of Hank’s shirts. He’s almost as big as you--in the way of size. And I could get my maid to borrow one from his valet----”

His expression--amused, intensely, boyishly amused--halted her. She had been blushing. She flamed scarlet, looked as if she were about to sink with humiliation. Then she lifted her head proudly and a strange light came into her eyes--a light that made him quail. “Anyway you please,” she said--and the words came jerkily--“Anything _you_ please.” And she fled.

He stared after her until she was lost to view among the rocks and bushes. He held the brush poised before the canvas--laid it down again--gazed at the radiant figure he was conjuring in the midst of his picture. He drew a huge breath. “Well, to-morrow night will be the finish,” he muttered. “And it’s high time.”

V

AN ATTEMPT TO DAZZLE

At a quarter past eight the following night Roger drove up to the vast entrance to Red Hill in the buggy he had hired from Burke, the Deer Spring liveryman. Five lackeys in gorgeous livery, with powdered hair and white silk stockings--five strapping fellows with the dumb faces and the stalwart figures the rich select as menial showpieces--appeared in the huge doorway. Three of them advanced to assist Roger. A fourth disappeared--to telephone the stables about this unexpected, humble equipage. The fifth stood upon the threshold, ready to take the hat and coat of the evening’s one guest from without. The moon was high, almost directly above the towers of the great, gray chateau. By the soft, abundant light Roger surveyed the splendid, broad terraces that broke the long and steep descent to Lake Wauchong; the enormous panorama of untouched wilderness covering little mountain, big hill and valley far as the eye could reach--all of it the property of Daniel Richmond. Nearer, in the immediate neighborhood of the house were the elaborations of the skilled landscape gardener. It was indeed a scene of beauty--beauty as well as magnificence--an interesting exhibit of the grandiose style of living wherein the rich sacrifice practically all the joys of life and most of its comforts for the sake of tickling their own vanity and stimulating the envy of their fellow-beings.

As Roger advanced into the lofty, gloomily paneled entrance hall--its carvings had cost a fortune--he drew off his overcoat, disclosing evening dress that would have passed muster on a figure far less in need of ornamentation than his massive yet admirably proportioned frame with its climax of godlike head. And the most impressive feature of that head was the frank simplicity of the expression of the face--that expression which marks the man who is something and lifts him high above the flocks and herds of men who are trying--not too successfully--to seem to be something. The modern evening dress for men is one of the few conventions--perhaps the only one--not designed to bolster up insignificance by reducing all to the same level of smooth elegance. It is one of the curiosities of the history of manners how such a blunder came to be firmly established as a propriety. In evening dress, as in no other kind of costume or lack of costume, the personality, the individuality, of the wearer obtrudes itself to every eye. At a glance one may classify any number of men by their qualities and quantities of head and heart. Beatrice Richmond, coming along the corridor leading into the entrance hall from the east, stopped short at sight of her artist.

She herself, in an evening gown of pale silver, with lovely shoulders bare and graceful head looking exquisite under its crown of simply arranged, yellow hair, was quite a different person from the rather hoydenish elf of wood and stream whom Roger had been painting. But she had lost, instead of gaining, in the transformation. She was more beautiful, but much less fascinating. She had been leveled down toward the conventional. She merely looked what the newspapers call “a beautiful, young, society girl.” Roger, on the other hand, had gained. He was retaining all his charm of the large, the free, the sincere, the natural; he now had in addition a certain refinement that yet had nothing of conventionality’s cheapness. It was somewhat like the difference between a thoroughbred uncurried and curried. His natural proportions showed to better advantage in this sleekness than they had in the rough.

“What’s the matter?” demanded Roger, as he took her hand. “Am I late, or is it the wrong evening?”

“Neither,” she assured him, and it delighted her to note that he did not dream of taking to himself her pale and trembling joy in his splendor of manhood. “Nothing much. Just--I was thinking this is the first time we’ve seen each other in civilized dress.”

“Oh!” Roger evidently thought this not worth pursuing. “This is a wonderful place you’ve got here. It’d be hard to blame anybody for making any sort of sacrifice to keep it.” He glanced round with the expression of a man used to such surroundings. In fact, there was nothing about him which in the remotest degree suggested the ill-at-easeness she had anticipated and feared. She felt humbled. He was again--and where she had least expected it--rebuking her nervousness over trifles and exaggeration of them. As they stood in the corridor, talking, she could discover not a trace of the awe she had confidently expected and hoped for. He treated her precisely as he had in the woods. But she was not discouraged. She felt that he must be deeply impressed, that he must be understanding now why she had taken the proposing upon herself--and must be appreciating what a fine thing that proposal was. He was concealing his feelings, reasoned she--was perhaps unconscious of them; later on they would show in results.

“I’ll take you to mother,” said she.

They turned in at one of the several doors, were facing a roomful of the sort of people one always finds in houses of that kind--carefully dressed, carefully patterned people, leading the monotonous life fashion imposes upon the upper class throughout the world. Beatrice looked round, then looked proudly up at the huge, young man whose expression made him seem to tower and loom, even among those physically his equals. “Father isn’t here,” she explained. “He hates this sort of thing for himself, though he tolerates it for us.”

Roger found himself being welcomed by a youngish, shrewd-looking woman with a cold, discontented face. Beatrice’s mother was merely a type--one of the kind the development of great fortunes is turning out by the score in every city and large town from New York to San Francisco: an indefatigable and not unintelligent seeker after the correct aristocratic pose. She was in simple black velvet. Her graying hair made her too-sharp face softer and more youthful. Her figure was as slim and straight as her daughter’s, though not without evidences of toil and corset manipulation to give it that girlish appearance. Peter Vanderkief--Hanky--was beside her.

“So, you are really here?” she said cordially to Roger, as she gave him a warm hand clasp and the smile of an old friend. “I can hardly believe my own eyes.”

“Impossible to resist,” said Roger. “It’s indeed a pleasure to see you again. How d’ye do, Mr. Vanderkief?”

Vanderkief forced a smile to his lips and extended a tardy hand. But his brow remained sullen--not the sullenness of suspicion now, but of jealousy.

“How is the picture coming on?” asked Mrs. Richmond of Roger.

“Oh, you know how those things go with me,” was Roger’s subtly noncommittal reply.

“I remember,” laughed Mrs. Richmond. “You are the true artist. You’re to take in Beatrice. She tells me you still have your old horror of strangers.”

“Not horror--shyness,” protested Roger, with no more shyness or suggestion of it than a well-brought-up child.

Then a small, slim, dark man--obviously a Continental foreigner--joined the group. In dress and bearing he was a most elegant-looking person--or, rather, personage. His fine, sensitive face was exceedingly handsome. “Ah, my dear Wade!” cried he, pronouncing the name as if it were spelled Vahd.

Roger’s face lighted up. “D’Artois!” exclaimed he, and they shook hands with enthusiasm.

“How are you in this country without my hearing of it?” said Count d’Artois. “I’d not have believed one so famous could move about quietly.”

Mrs. Richmond and Beatrice--and Hank--were intensely interested spectators and listeners. D’Artois turned to Mrs. Richmond. “Vahd must be extremely fond of you, that you are able to get him. In Paris they run after him in vain. He keeps himself hidden.”