Part 6

Mrs. Richmond smiled nervously. Peter stared despondently at the big man thus suddenly disclosed as a great man. As for Beatrice, her eyes sparkled and her cheeks flushed proudly. Roger’s expression was good-natured tolerance, perhaps touched with annoyance. Dinner was announced and Beatrice took his arm. “I might have known!” she exclaimed, gazing up at him.

He reddened and frowned. “Known what?” said he.

“That you were famous.”

“Trash!” observed Roger carelessly. “D’Artois is polite. Also, he is my friend.”

“Oh, I know,” said the girl. “At lunch he was talking about you--what a great painter you are--how rapidly you, though an American, were making yourself famous in Europe. We didn’t dream he was talking of you. He pronounces your name peculiarly.”

“I’m enormously hungry,” said Roger. “Where do these people come from? I had no idea this was such a fashionable neighborhood.”

“Oh, they’re stopping in the house. Most of them came last night and to-day.”

Roger ate and listened to the girl on his left--Alicia Kinnear, the tennis player. Mrs. Richmond had Count d’Artois on her right, and he talked steadily of “Vahd.” She listened sourly and from time to time shot a glance down the table at him--the glance of the alarmed and angry mother of a rather unmanageable heiress. Peter--directly opposite Roger--was as silent as he, but instead of covering his silence with appreciation of the Richmond chef he stared at the lace insertion of the tablecloth and crumbled and messed his roll. Beatrice was the happiest of the thirty-two at that table. She was radiant, ecstatic.

“Aren’t you going to say a single word to _me_?” she inquired of Roger when he had finished the game course. “You can’t still be ravenously hungry.”

“I’ve eaten too much,” replied he. “I’m stupid.”

“It really doesn’t matter, as I’ll see you to-morrow morning.”

“I’m not working to-morrow. I’ve got to go to town.”

“Then the day after?”

“I may stay in town several days.”

Her expression was so hurt, so depressed, that he felt guilty, mean.

“It’s terribly hard to be friends with you, isn’t it?” said she.

“Because I refuse to spend my time idling about? You must choose your friends in your own class. No good ever comes of going out of it.”

“I’m surprised at _your_ talking about classes in this country.”

“There are classes everywhere--and always will be. A class simply means a group of people of similar sympathies, tastes, habits and means.”

“Means!” said she. “I was under the impression you despised money!”

“I?” He laughed. “No more than I despise food. Money is a kind of food. I want--and I try to get--all of it I need. My appetite is larger than some, smaller than others. I take--or try to take--in proportion to my appetite.”

She nodded thoughtfully. It was in a queer, hesitating voice that she went on to ask: “And you really don’t care to be rich?”

“No more than I want to be fat. And I want to be poor no more than I want to be emaciated.”

Again she reflected. Suddenly she asked: “Do you like this house?”

“Certainly. It is beautiful of its kind.”

“I mean, wouldn’t _you_ like to have such a house?”

“God forbid!” said he, and she knew he was speaking sincerely. “I’ve other things to do in my brief life than take care of property.”

“But one can hire those things done.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” said he to close the subject; but unconsciously his glance traveled round the room, rested here and there for an instant on the evidences of slovenly housekeeping which always disfigure any great house for a critical observer. Her glance followed his. Presently she colored, for she understood. “You are a terrible man,” said she. “You see everything.”

“I wish I did,” replied he, not realizing what she had in mind. “Then I’d paint the picture I dream about.”

“Do you like these people?” asked she.

“Certainly. They seem very nice. They’re most attractive to look at.”

“But you wouldn’t be friends with them?”

“Couldn’t be,” said he. “We have too little in common.”

“Don’t you want _any_ friends?” she said wistfully.

“I have friends. I shall have more. People of my own sort--people who can give me what I want and who want what I have to give.”

“You despise us--don’t you?” cried she.

“Haven’t I told you,” protested he, “that I don’t despise anybody? Why should I think people despicable because they are different?”

“You’d despise my sister Rhoda, who married the Earl of Broadstairs for his title.”

“Not at all. I approve of her for taking what she wanted. Why should she have been a hypocrite and married for love when she didn’t want love, but splurge?”

“Do you know why I was so anxious to have you come here?”

“How you do jump about!” laughed he. “Well--why? To smooth down----”

“No,” she interrupted, coloring furiously. “I _must_ be truthful with you. I wanted it because I thought you’d be impressed.”

“And I am,” he assured her, a friendly smile of raillery in his eyes. “I had no idea you were such a grand person.”

“Don’t jeer at me,” she pleaded. “I’m in earnest. It isn’t fair to mock at anyone who’s in earnest--is it?”

“No. It’s contemptible,” said he. “But I understand you better than you understand yourself.”

In defiance of conventionality she looked at him with eyes whose meaning no observer could have mistaken. He glanced hastily round. “Don’t do silly, sensational things,” said he. “You’re making us both ridiculous.”

“I don’t in the least care,” she declared.

He said sternly: “Now, my friend, I’m getting just a little tired of this. You’ve always had your own way. You are piqued because you can’t make a fool of me. So, you are willing to go to any lengths. I understand you perfectly.”

Her gaze was steady and earnest--not at all proper for a public place. “Do you think I’m simply coquetting? Don’t you realize that I’m in earnest?”

“Perhaps you think you are,” admitted he. “You’re so wrought up by your game of make-believe that you have partly convinced yourself. Luckily, _I_ remain cool.”

“If I were a poor girl you wouldn’t act like this!”

“How did I act when I thought you were a poor girl?”

That silenced her for the moment. He went on: “You and I are going to be as good friends as our separate lots permit. And you are going to marry in your own class--are going to do your duty. I’ll admit I did think it strange that a girl like you should be deliberately marrying for money. But at that time I thought you were poor. Now that I have seen what your life is, I don’t blame you. I can see how you simply couldn’t give up all this magnificence that has become necessity to you. It’d be like asking me to give up my painting.”

She looked at him with a puzzled expression. “But I’m not marrying to keep it. My father’s much richer than Hank. Hank’s not so very rich.”

Over his dark features slowly crept a look like the fall of a winter evening. “Oh,” said he coldly. “I thought-- No matter.”

“What did you think?”

“Naturally, I assumed--from your saying so much about your duty--I assumed your father had lost, or was about to lose, his money.”

“Mercy, no!” exclaimed she, brightening hopefully. “I meant my family--my social--duty.”

His expression was quizzical. “To be sure--to be sure. I never thought of that.”

“You see, we’re newcomers among fashionable people, while the Vanderkiefs--they’re right at the top of the heap.”

He nodded smilingly. “Of course--of course. A very sensible marriage.”

“But I’m not going to marry him,” cried she. “I never intended to.”

He forgot where he was for a moment in his astonishment. “Then why did you engage yourself to him?”

“It isn’t that kind of engagement,” she explained sweetly. “I did it because _you_ acted so. But I was square with Peter. I warned him I didn’t love him and couldn’t. Our engagement is simply that he is having a chance to make me care for him if he can.”

“You’ll be married within six months,” said Roger lightly; and he lifted a glass of champagne to his lips.

“Not to him,” replied she. “If to anybody, to the man I love--the man who loves me.”

Her words, so direct, and her tone, so simple, disconcerted him to such an extent that he choked upon the champagne. While he was still coughing Mrs. Richmond rose, and the men were left alone. Roger went with the first man who rejoined the women. He made straight for Mrs. Richmond, bade her good night and got himself out of the house before Beatrice, hemmed in by several people, could extricate herself and intercept him.

He did the homeward drive slowly, preyed upon by swarms of disagreeable thoughts. His experience of women had taught him to be more than suspicious of any feminine show of enthusiasm for a man; women were too self-centered, too prudent by nature and training, to give themselves out freely, even when encouraged--unless there were some strong, sordid motive. In this case sordid motive simply could not be. Nor could he conceive any practical reason why Beatrice should pretend to care for him--any practical reason why she should wish to marry him. He felt like a fool--as a normal man not swollen with conceit is bound to feel in circumstances such as Beatrice had made for him. And what vanity she had!--to fancy herself so fascinating that it simply could not be that he did not love her. And how poor an opinion she had of him! How little respect for him!--to believe that his reason for hiding his love was awe of her wealth and social position. “What can I have said or done to give her such an impression of me?” He could recall nothing that might have been twisted by her into a suggestion of that sort. No, the mystery was without a clew. “Am I crazy, or is she?” he demanded of the moonlit night.... And when was this thing to stop? Could Fate have dealt more irritatingly with him? He had come back home to make the grand effort of his life--to concentrate his whole being, every power of mind and body, every thought and feeling, upon the realization of his lifelong dream. And here was this girl, a nice enough girl, no doubt, an unusually attractive girl, as girls go, but still a mere idle, time-wasting woman with no real seriousness--here she was, harassing him, retarding his work, distracting his thoughts, involving him with a lot of people who had neither importance nor interest for him. In spite of himself he was being dragged into her life, whirled about by her caprices. He felt not only like a fool, but like a weak fool. “And what the devil can I do about it? How can I be insulting to a sweet, friendly girl who doesn’t realize what she’s doing and has been so brought up that she can’t be made to realize?”

The only hopeful course that suggested itself was flight. “Yes--if she keeps this up I’ll have to take to my heels.” There his sense of humor came to the rescue and he jeered at himself. “A delightful person I’m becoming!--discussing what to do to escape from a girl who is madly in love with me!”

* * * * *

About the time that Burke, the liveryman, was once more in possession of his “rig,” Beatrice, undressing for bed with the aid of her maid Valentine, received a peremptory summons from her mother by way of her mother’s maid, Marthe.

Mrs. Richmond was established in splendor in five big rooms on the second floor of the east wing. She received her daughter in her office--a luxurious, library-like room with few signs that it was the seat of the administration of a household of forty-two servants. Indeed, Mrs. Richmond was little of an administrator. She nagged at and criticised Pinney, the superintendent, and Mrs. Lambert, the housekeeper. She picked flaws in accounts, usually in the wrong places. She delivered sharp talks on economy and extravagance. But things were run sloppily, as is bound to happen where the underlings learn that there is no such thing as justice, that criticism is as likely to fall upon good work as upon bad. The stealing and the waste grew apace; and though Richmond, each year, largely increased his wife’s allowance for the maintenance of their various establishments, she was never able to put by more than twenty-five thousand or thereabouts for her own secret, privy purse.

Yet she was a most industrious woman, up early, to bed late. How did she occupy her time? Chiefly in taking care of her person. She was not highly intelligent about this. She wasted much of the time and most of the money she invested in the tragi-comic struggle for youth. Still, she got some results. Perhaps, however, most of her success in keeping down fat and wrinkles, and holding in her hair and her teeth in spite of self-indulgence as to both food and drink, was due to the superb constitution she had inherited. Mrs. Richmond came originally from Indiana; and out there they grow--or, in former days grew--a variety of the human species comparable to an oak knot--tough of fiber beyond belief, capable of resisting both fire and steel, both food and drink.

There was small resemblance between mother and daughter save in the matter of figure. Beatrice’s sweet and pretty face was an inheritance from the Richmonds, though not from her father direct. Her shrewdness and persistence were from her father direct. The older woman in the pale-blue dressing gown looked up sharply as the younger, in pink and white, entered. But the sharp, angry glance wavered at sight of the resolute little face wearing an expression of faintly amused indifference. She had long since taken her daughter’s measure--and she knew that her daughter had taken hers.

“What did you send for me about?” Beatrice asked.

“You know very well.”

“Chang?”

“Chang! What does _that_ mean?”

“It’s my pet name for our dear old friend Roger--Roger Wade. He calls me Rix. I call him Chang.”

Mrs. Richmond seemed stupefied for the moment by this cool and candid shamelessness.

“I hate beating round the bush,” pursued Beatrice. “So, I might as well tell you at the outset that I intend to marry him.”

“Beatrice!” exclaimed her mother, electrified into panic.

“You know _me_, mother. You know I always do what I say I’ll do. Didn’t I cut off my hair close to my head when I was eight because you insisted on those foolish curls? Didn’t I----”

“You have always been obstinate and troublesome,” interrupted her mother. “I’ve warned your father you would make a wreck of your life. But he wouldn’t heed me.”

“Father and I understand each other,” said Beatrice.

“You think he will consent to your marrying that common, poor artist?” demanded her mother excitedly. “Well, for once you are mistaken. In some ways I know your father better than you do. And when it comes to any such insanity as that----”

“Don’t agitate yourself, mother.”

“He’ll cut you off if you do it. I shouldn’t be surprised if he should turn against you as soon as he hears you have thought of such a thing.”

Beatrice listened calmly. “That remains to be seen,” said she.

“I think you’ve lost your mind, Beatrice,” cried her mother, between railing and wailing.

“I think so, too,” replied Beatrice, dreamy-eyed. “Yes, I’m sure I have.”

“This isn’t a bit like you.”

“No, not a bit. I thought I was hard as--as you’ve brought me up to be. I thought I cared only for the material things.”

“What _is_ the matter with you?”

“I want _him_,” said the girl, lips compressing resolutely. Presently she added, “And I’m going to get him--at any cost.”

“Trapped by an adventurer! You!”

Beatrice laughed. “You ought to hear Chang on that subject.”

Her mother started up. “You don’t mean it’s gone as far as that?”

“As what?”

“You haven’t talked about such things to him?”

“Long ago,” said the daughter coolly.

Mrs. Richmond, all a-quiver with fright and fury, moved toward the door. “I shall telephone for your father at once!”

“Do.”

“We will have you put away somewhere.”

“I’m of age.”

Mrs. Richmond could not altogether conceal how this terse reminder had discomfited her. “Your father will know how to deal with this,” said she, trying to cover the essential weakness of the remark by a savagely threatening tone.

“I hope so,” said the girl, unmoved. “You see--the fact is--Chang has turned me down. I’ve got to get father to bring him round--some way.”

Her mother, at the door into the anteroom where the telephones were, halted and whirled round. “What are you talking about?” she demanded.

“I asked Mr. Wade to marry me. He refused. He is still refusing.”

Mrs. Richmond, hand on the knob, seemed to give careful thought to each of these three highly significant little sentences. Her comment was even more compressed; she laughed harshly.

“I saw that he was an unusually clever, experienced man.”

Beatrice looked quickly at her mother with shrewd, inquiring eyes. “You think he’s afraid father will cut me off?”

“Of course that’s it.”

“I wonder?” said the girl thoughtfully. “I hope so--yet I’m afraid.”

Mrs. Richmond’s mouth dropped open and her eyes widened with horror. At last she said witheringly: “You--_hope_--so!”

The girl did not answer; she was deep in thought.

Her mother sat down near the door. “You _know_ so. I see you are more sensible than I feared. You know he’s simply looking for money.”

“You don’t understand me at all, mother.” Beatrice leaned toward her mother across the arm of the sofa. “Haven’t you ever wanted anything--wanted it so intensely, so--so fiercely--that you would take it on any terms--would do anything to get it?”

“Beatrice--that is--shocking!” As the word shocking had lost its force in the general emancipation from the narrow moralities that is part of fashionable life, Mrs. Richmond decided to bolster it up with something having real strength. “Also, it is ridiculous,” she added.

“Father would understand,” said the girl pensively. “He has that sort of nature. I inherit it from him. You know, they’ve almost ruined and jailed him several times because he got one of those cravings that simply have to be satisfied.”

No loyal wife could have taken a better air and tone than did Daniel Richmond’s wife as she rebuked: “You are talking of your father, Beatrice!”

“Yes--and I love him--adore him--just because he _does_ things. He’s good--good as gold. But he isn’t afraid to be bad. He doesn’t hesitate to take what he wants because he hasn’t the nerve.”

“Your father has been lied about--maligned--enviously slandered by his enemies.”

“Don’t talk rot, mother,” interrupted the girl. “You know him as well as I. You’re afraid of him. I’m not. He knows he can rule you through your love of luxury--just as he makes Rhoda and her earl crawl and fawn and lick his boots--and the boys--even Conny, who’s only fourteen. Oh, I don’t blame him for making people cringe, when he can. I like to do that, myself.”

The mother regarded this daughter, so mysterious to her, with mingled admiration and terror. “You are frightful--frightful!”

Beatrice seemed to accept this as a rare, agreeable compliment. “I’ve got the courage to say what I think. And--really, I’m not so frightful. I used to imagine I was. But”--she paused, laughed softly, a delightful change sweeping over her face--“just ask Chang!”

To Mrs. Richmond the words and the manner of them were like an impudent defiance. They drove her almost beside herself with alarm and anger. “Your father’ll soon bring you to terms! You’ll see, miss! You’ll see.” And she nodded her head, laughing viciously, an insane glitter in her bright, brown eyes. “Yes, you’ll find out!”

Beatrice was not in the least impressed.

“All father can do is to cut me off. I’ve got five thousand a year in my own right--enough to keep body and soul together. So, he knows he’s powerless with me.”

“What a fool he was,” cried her mother, “to give you that money.”

“It isn’t altogether the money,” pursued Beatrice. “You’ve got nearly half a million put by out of the household allowances. And your jewels make as much more. Yet you’re afraid of him.”

Instead of becoming furious, Mrs. Richmond sank weakly back in her chair. “He’s my husband,” she said appealingly. “You don’t understand how much that means--not yet.”

Beatrice laughed softly. “No, but I’m beginning to,” said she. However, she did not pursue that branch of the subject--did not force her mother into the corner of admission that the real source of Richmond’s power over her was not wifely duty nor yet motherly feeling, but love of the vast and costly luxury which being Richmond’s indulged wife got for her. All the girl wished to accomplish was to reduce her mother to that pliable state of mind in which she would cease to be the active enemy of her projects. Mrs. Richmond was now down to that meek weakness; through the rest of their talk her manner toward her daughter was friendly, sisterly, remonstrant rather than denunciatory.

“You don’t realize what is the matter with you, Beatrice,” said she.

“What _is_ the matter with me?”

“You wouldn’t understand-- I couldn’t explain-- You have had no experience. If you had, you’d realize and control yourself.”

“All I know is, I _must_ have _him_.”

“That’s it, exactly,” cried her mother. “That’s the way it affects anyone who gets possessed by it. If you married under a spell of that sort you’d wonder at yourself afterwards--when you had got enough.”

“But--I wouldn’t ‘get enough,’ as you call it.”

“Oh, yes, you would. They always do.”

“_Always?_”

Mrs. Richmond shifted ground. “You will never get your father to consent--never!”

“That’s the least of my troubles,” said Beatrice confidently. “The only question is: How could he help me to bring over Roger?”

“How can you be so silly, child!” exclaimed the mother. “That fellow would jump at you just as soon as he found your father consenting.” Mrs. Richmond smiled. “And when he did jump at you-- Oh, I know you so well! You’d laugh at him and turn your back on him then.”

“I wonder,” said Beatrice absently. “I wonder.”

“I’m sure of it,” cried her mother with energy.

“I--don’t--know,” replied the girl. “It isn’t a bit like me to marry out of my own class. At first I laughed at myself for even imagining I’d really marry Chang. I was fascinated by him--everything he said and did--and the way he said or did it--the way his hair grew--the way his clothes fit--the way he blew smoke out of his mouth--the way he held his palette--and his long brushes-- You see, mother, I was infatuated with him. Isn’t he _splendid_ to look at?”

“He certainly is strikingly handsome,” admitted Mrs. Richmond. “But hardly more so than Peter.”

“Oh, mother!” laughed out Beatrice. “You are not that undiscriminating. There’s all the difference between them that there is between--between a god and a mere mortal.” Contrasting the two men seemed to fire the girl afresh. “Yes, I do want Chang,” she cried. “I’d be enormously proud to have such a man to exhibit as my husband.”

“But think, my dear! He’s nobody!”

“You heard d’Artois----”

“Yes--but if he were to try to marry d’Artois’s sister----”

“I know. I understand,” said Beatrice impatiently. “I wish he were a _real_ somebody. Still, he probably comes of as good a family as we do.” She rose and faced her mother. “When I’m with him I’m ashamed of being so--so cheap. When I see him beside Peter I’d laugh at anybody who talked such snobbishness. But-- Oh, I’ve been so rottenly brought up! No wonder he won’t have me! If he knew me as I am he’d spurn me.” Her expression softened to loving tenderness. “No, he wouldn’t. He’s big and broad. He’d understand and sympathize--and try to help me to be worthy of him. And I will be!”

Her mother looked at her with the uncertain expression one sees on the faces of the deaf when they are making pretense of having heard and understood. “You’re very queer, Beatrice,” said she.

“Ain’t I, though!” exclaimed the girl. “I guess you were right a while ago. I guess I’m crazy.”

“Don’t you think we’d better go abroad right away, instead of waiting till June?”