Part 9

Richmond did not relent, not a whit. She had taken him so completely by surprise, had put him in such an absurdly false position that temper got the better of prudence. He did not view the situation calmly and proceed along lines of wisdom--using common-sense argument, appeal to material instincts and that mightiest of weapons, gentle ridicule. He hurled at her through his eyes the hot wrath of his tyrant will. “You are going to marry Peter, I tell you. I’m astounded at you. I’m disgusted with you. I’d have thought you could see straight through a cheap, lazy fortune hunter. Vanity--always vanity! He makes a few flattering speeches, and you believe he is in love with you. And you begin to make a god out of him. I’m glad you spoke to me about this. If the Vanderkiefs had any idea of it they’d drop you double-quick.”

Beatrice knew her father--knew when he was in earnest. Never before had she seen or felt a deeper earnestness than this of his now. She sat dazed, staring at the restless ears of the thoroughbreds before her.

“No good ever comes of marrying out of your own class,” continued he. “I thought you had more pride. I know you have. You were joking. Let’s hear no more about it.”

“He is not a fortune hunter,” said Beatrice in a numb way.

“I tell you he is!” cried Richmond violently. “The impudent hound! No wonder he tried to work off that picture of his as a gift!” Richmond laughed with a sneer. “The impudent puppy!”

“He is a great artist,” said Beatrice. “D’Artois says so.”

“What of that? What’s an artist? What standing has he got? But don’t talk about it. I’ll not be able to contain myself.” He faced her sharply. “Look at me!”

The girl turned her eyes slowly, with her wounded soul’s suffering revealed in them. But Richmond did not see people ever; he saw only his own purposes. “How far has this gone?”

She eyed him steadily long enough for him to get the sense of an immovable obstacle squarely across the path of his indomitable will. “It has gone so far that I’ll not marry anyone else,” she said, neither hot nor cold. “I couldn’t.”

“Don’t let me hear that kind of talk!” shouted Richmond, in his rage forgetting the groom. “You are going to marry a man who can make you happy--a man in your own station--a man who has family and standing.”

“But you said Roger was of the only true aristocracy,” pleaded Beatrice. “You said----”

“And a fool I was, to talk to a silly, little idiot of an ignorant girl with no experience of life, with no ability to understand what I was talking about. I wasn’t discussing a husband for you. I wasn’t discussing the world as it is. I wasn’t discussing people of our station. I wasn’t discussing fortune-hunting artists. It shows how little sense you’ve got, that you could twist what I said into an appeal to you to marry an impudent fortune hunter!”

In his fury at her for being thus stupid he gave the off thoroughbred a sharp cut with the whip. The horse, unused to such loutish disrespect to his royal blood, leaped forward, started to run. For five minutes Richmond had to fix his undivided attention upon the horses; they gave him a bad scare before consenting to submit.

The girl, unconscious of what was going on, sat in the blinding storm of her own unhappiness.

“You and Peter are engaged?” was her father’s resuming remark.

“In a fashion.”

“What does that mean?”

“Not much of anything,” replied his daughter indifferently.

Richmond’s strong, sallow teeth looked as if they were crowded because they were pushing eagerly to the fore in competition to be first in sinking into the prey. Said he: “I want the date of the wedding fixed at once.”

Silence.

“Did you hear?”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you answer?”

“You didn’t ask a question. You issued an order.”

“And you will obey it.”

Silence.

“Did you hear?”

“Yes.”

“I won’t tolerate sullenness. I am your father. I know life--the world--what is best for my family--for you. I don’t often interfere. When I do, I expect obedience.”

“It seems to me you are blustering a good deal, for one who is sure of obedience,” said Beatrice, in a way that brought out all her latent resemblance to the incarnation of passionate will and willful passion who begot her.

“I’ve always been indulgent with all my family--with you,” fumed Richmond. “But I think you know me well enough to know I’m not to be trifled with.”

“Nor am I,” said the girl. And again she eyed him in that unyielding way.

“Where did you and your mother pick up that vagabond, anyhow?” demanded Richmond.

“_I_ picked him up. D’Artois told you----”

“D’Artois was talking about him as an artist, not as an equal.”

“Equal!” cried Beatrice. And she laughed mockingly.

“Don’t be impudent to me!” raged her father. “You’ve been brought up in a certain way. You’re not fit for any other way of life. You are not to be allowed to make a fool of yourself, to muddle your life up. I’ll have no scandals in my family--no scoundrels blackmailing me to release my daughter.”

Beatrice’s look at him was so appealing, so reminiscent of his bold talk about democracy, about the democracy of achievement, that some men, if they had been in his place, would have been ashamed and confounded. Not Daniel Richmond, however--not when his plans of social grandeur, nursed all these years in his secretest heart, were endangered.

When Rhoda was marrying the Earl of Broadstairs he had been able to keep his pose intact--had contrived to protest against one of his children’s yielding to the craze for “decayed aristocrats with fly-blown titles,” and to yield only because “personally, Broadstairs wasn’t as bad as some,” and because the girl and her mother had made it clear to him that her heart would be broken if she didn’t get the man she loved--at the price such luxuries cost. He had assumed that Beatrice had been equally well brought up--to love where she should, to do as well in the American upper class as her sister had done in the foreign upper class. This revelation of her waywardness, the waywardness of the child who was his especial pride, for whom he had dreamed the most dazzling splendors of social grandeurs in New York--this astounding revelation put him in the rage of his life. His face was a study in hatefulness. Beatrice shivered as she looked at it--but not with fear.

“Yes,” said she calmly, after a pause. “I’ve been brought up in a certain way. But I was born to insist on having what I want. I want Roger. And, father, I’m going to have him--in spite of you both.”

After a pause, in a voice of dreadful calm Richmond said: “You are going to marry Peter Vanderkief within six weeks or two months--or you are going to get the shock of your willful life.”

“No,” replied she, in a voice of calm equally dreadful. “I have already had that shock. I thought mother was the snob. I thought women were the snobs. But I see it’s the men--worse than the women--you worse than mother. Oh, father,” she said, changing suddenly to passionate pleading, “how can _you_ be like this! _You_--of all men!”

“Never mind me, young lady,” snapped her father, flying to the safe refuge of rage. “I’m going to save you from this blackmailing fortune hunter.” And the unpleasantly crowded teeth showed savagely through the ragged gray mustache.

“I have asked him to marry me, and----”

“What!” shouted Richmond, again forgetting the groom. “Are you _crazy_?”

“I am,” said Beatrice simply. “I love him. I’m crazy--permanently crazy.”

“Your mother will take you to New York this very day. You’ll sail day after to-morrow morning.”

“I shall do nothing of the kind,” said the girl.

The sound Richmond made was in the guise of laughter--of mockery. But no snarl or roar could have been so fraught with menace. “We’ll see about this, miss,” said he. “I’ll show you who is master in my family. I’ll show you you can’t go on degrading yourself with this low intrigue. That hound! So he thought he could fasten himself on me--did he? I’ll teach him!”

“I have proposed to him. He has refused me. I’ve made love to him. He has repulsed me.”

Richmond’s cruel mouth under his ragged mustache was horrible to see. “You shameless girl!” he cried. “It’ll be one of the servants next. I must get you safely married at once. If your mother wasn’t absolutely incompetent she’d have had you settled long ago.”

“I shall marry no one but Roger Wade,” came from the quiet figure beside him in a quiet voice.

“Have you got no sense at all? You say the puppy refused you. Don’t you know why?”

“I know the reason you’d give.”

“And that’s the real reason. He has heard about _me_! He’s got brains enough to understand that his best game is to----”

“Don’t you say another word against him!” cried Beatrice, at the end of her forbearance. “You talk of my being a fool. What do you think of yourself? You don’t want me to marry this man. How do you go about preventing it? Why, you show me that you are not the father who, I thought, loved me, but that you couldn’t love anybody. You show me that you are not the kind of man I thought, but a snob, a hypocritical snob--yes, a hypocritical snob, who has been pulling wires behind mother--you all the time railing at her and at me and at Rhoda as snobs. And then, when you’ve shown me the truth about my surroundings, you go on to attack the man I love--to say about him things I know to be false. Is _that_ what you call clever?”

“I’m glad you’re letting me see you in your true colors,” said the father, so exhausted by his passions that his voice came as little more than a hoarse whisper. “As for that--that fortune hunter who has been making a fool of you--don’t ever mention his name to me again!”

“Do you want me to jump out of this cart?” cried the daughter, quivering with fury.

Richmond pushed the horses into their swiftest trot. He did not speak again until he reined in at the entrance to the gray chateau. Then he said viciously, “Go to your rooms and get ready to leave for New York and Europe. You have two hours and a half.”

IX

FAMILY BEHIND-THE-SCENES

Richmond, shrewd student of human nature and well versed in his favorite child’s peculiarities of will and temper, did not underestimate what she had revealed to him--neither that which she had revealed consciously nor the no less important things she had unconsciously implied. Also, he had seen the man for whom she confessed infatuation, had measured his physical attractions and had got a fair notion of the inner charms which made the physical charms so potent. It was a time for swift and summary action; this adventurer must be got rid of before he could use the foolish child’s infatuation to put himself in a position where he might cause scandal and, if he chose, could exact heavy blackmail. Theoretically, Richmond regarded his daughter as lovely and fascinating enough to bring any man in the world to her feet. Practically, he believed feeling for her had no part in the doings of “that fortune-hunting hound.” He had been young and now was not far from old, yet he had not seen any exception to the rule he held axiomatic--that wherever money is involved at all it is the only real factor.

Yes, it was a time for action, instant and drastic. As he drove back toward Wade’s studio he strove with his rage, trying to calm it so that his sly brain might plot one of those subtle tricks which had got him his vast fortune and had made him about the most admired, most hated and most denounced man in American finance. But every time he thought of his child’s weak-minded lack of self-respect or of the brazen impudence of the penniless artist he fell to grinding his teeth again and to cursing his inability to lock her up until she recovered her senses, and to horsewhip the artist out of the neighborhood. Richmond had been so long used to having his will of any and every human being he happened to need that he latterly had become really insane when opposed. It was enough for a man to appear in his pathway; at once he began to take the worst possible view of that man’s character, a method which greatly assisted him in stifling the voice of conscience. Time was when he, like all men who have built themselves up from small beginnings, had his temper well under control, a bloodhound to be released only when it was prudent and advantageous to do so. But the habit of power had wrought as destructively in him as it has in almost all those who have become rulers. His temper was fast becoming a dangerous weakness--that traitor within who overthrows where foes without could never prevail.

When he arrived in sight of the studio there sat “the hound” on the doorsill, smoking a pipe. Roger did not move until Richmond was within, perhaps, twenty yards--reasonable speaking distance; then he rose and waited in large tranquillity. Richmond advanced until he was about ten feet away. There he halted. To have gone nearer would have been to put himself, the small of stature and the spare of build, absurdly in contrast to the towering Roger--like a meager little bush at the base of a tree. Across the space between them he hurled at Roger one of those glances which Roger himself had described as “aimed to kill.”

“What can I do for you, sir?” inquired the young man at length. He showed not a hint that he was aware of the wrath storming in the small man.

“You--you damn scoundrel!” ejaculated Richmond between his teeth--for the feeling of futility acted on his rage like oil on fire.

Richmond’s mien had prepared Roger for something like this, so he bore the shock with infuriating composure. He eyed his insulter without moving a muscle of his face, then turned and crossed the threshold of his studio, reaching for the door to close it.

“Hold on there!” cried Richmond. “I’ve got something to say to you.”

Roger went on in and closed the door. Richmond stared at it with mouth ajar. What sort of a scheme was this? What did the fellow calculate to gain toward his ends by making such a move? Richmond could not but admire its audacity. “No wonder he has succeeded in convincing the little fool that he is sincere.” He advanced and opened the door. He entered the big, bare room; Roger, crayon in hand, was standing before the sketch that had been upon the easel when they left. He did not glance toward Richmond; he did not pause in his work. Richmond had not entered without having thought out a plan of procedure. Plain talk was the thing--not insulting, but plain. He must frankly assume that the artist was a detected and baffled plotter of a marriage for money.

“My daughter has confessed to me,” said Richmond in a tone that was at least not insulting. “I have talked with her, and she is already ashamed of herself. So I have come from her to inform you that it will be useless for you to pursue your projects further.”

The big, young man stood back from his sketch, eyed it critically. A thin stream of smoke curled from the pipe in the corner of his mouth. He went on drawing as if he were alone in the room.

“I wish you clearly to understand,” pursued Richmond, “that your attentions are distasteful to her and to her family. Acquaintance with her must cease.”

Roger sketched on.

As physical violence was out of the question, Richmond did not know what to do--how to extricate himself from the absurd position into which his wrath had hurried him. He glowered at the big artist. The sense of impotence set his rage to steaming. “And I must tell you that if you had not had the cleverness to hold off--if you had lured that foolish child into marriage--you’d never have got a cent--not a cent! I’d cast off a child of mine who so disgraced her family. I’d forget she existed. But now that she realizes how she was trapped--what a slick citizen you are--she’s ashamed of herself--ashamed of herself. There ought to be a law that could reach fellows like you.”

While he was talking Roger was pushing his easel into the huge closet. He now closed and locked it, threw his coat over his arm and strode calmly past Richmond and out at the door. Not a word, not a glance, not a sign. Richmond followed him slowly. Roger marched at a long, swinging gait down the hill toward the east and disappeared into the woods. Richmond stared after him. When the undergrowth hid him from view Richmond took out his handkerchief and mopped his face. In a long life dotted with many an unusual scene between him and sundry of his fellow-men he had never experienced the like of this.

“The scoundrel!” he said, a look of reluctant respect in his wrathful eyes. “The best game I ever ran up against.”

He must hurry his girl out of the country--and not give her an unwatched moment until the steamer was clear of the dock.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, Beatrice had gone to her mother.

Mrs. Richmond was taking advantage of a lull in the entertaining to give herself a thorough physical overhauling. The lower part of the west wing was fitted up as a complete gymnasium, with a swimming pool underneath. She had played basket ball with her secretary and companion, Miss Cleets, had fenced ten minutes, had swum twenty, and was now lying on a lounge in her boudoir, preparing to go off into a delicious sleep. In came Beatrice.

“Well, mamma,” said she, “the fat’s in the fire.”

Mrs. Richmond opened her drowsy eyes. “You’ve told your father?”

Beatrice nodded. “And he promptly blew up.”

“I was sure he would.”

Beatrice’s expression--strange, satirical, sad, bitterly sad--could not but have impressed her mother had she not been more than half asleep. “You knew him better than I did,” said the girl. “Still--no matter.”

“We’ll talk about it after I’ve had my nap.”

“Oh, there’s nothing to talk about.”

“That’s true,” said her mother comfortably, as she slid luxuriously down the descent into unconsciousness--or is it an ascent? “You know there’s nothing to do but to obey your father. And he’s right. You’ll be better satisfied with Peter.” And Mrs. Richmond was asleep.

Beatrice stood looking at her mother. Her expression of somewhat undaughterly pity vanished and there was a rush of tears to her eyes, an uncontrollable tremor of the fresh, young lips usually curved in response to emotions in which tenderness had little part. “Dear mother,” she murmured. She understood her mother’s lot now, and sympathized in a way which Daniel Richmond’s wife, unconscious what havoc those years of gradually deepened slavery had wrought in her mind, her heart, her whole life, would have regarded as hysterical and silly. Love had lifted Beatrice above the narrow environment in which she had been bred and had quickened her to a sense of values she could hardly have got otherwise. She saw her mother as she was, as her mother could no more have seen herself than the lifelong drunkard, happy in his squalid sottishness, could reconstruct and regret the innocence from which he has dropped into the depths by a gradient so easy that it was unnoted. The girl realized that her mother’s chief substantial happiness was inability to comprehend her own fate. “Thank God,” said she to herself, “I had my eyes opened in time.” And one by one before her passed faces of fashionable matrons, young and old, whom she knew well--hard or hardening features, like landscapes upon which only bleak winds blow and only meager light from cold, gray skies falls; eyes from which looked shriveled souls, souls in which all human sympathy, save the condescending charity that is vanity rather than sympathy, had dried up; lives filled with shams and pretenses; trim and showy gardens in which no flower had perfume, no fruit had taste, and where shone not one of the free, beautiful blossoms of genuine love. Not hard hearts really, but shriveled; not unhappy lives, but stunted and sunless, like plants grown in the luxury of a rich loam--in a dark cellar. The shock of disillusionment as to her father completed for Beatrice the transformation that had been started by the undermining effect of Roger upon her conventional ideas--as a thunderbolt crashes down a weakened dam and releases its floods.

Beatrice passed a light and caressing hand over her mother’s beautifully arranged hair, bent and kissed her. Then she stole from the room--with a lingering glance of tenderest sweetness back from the threshold.

An hour and a quarter ticked away in that splendid room, with its wall coverings and upholsteries of dark-red brocaded silk. In stepped Richmond, brisk and bristling. He frowned at his sleeping wife, tapping his foot impatiently upon the floor. “Lucy!” he called sharply.

Mrs. Richmond’s eyes opened, saw him. Over her face flitted an expression as primeval and as moving as that of a weary slave awakened from delightful sleep to resume the hated toil. “Why did you wake me?” she cried peevishly.

“Where’s Beatrice?”

Mrs. Richmond resumed her normal expression of haughty discontent. “She was in here a while ago,” replied she. “In her rooms, probably.”

“Did she tell you?” asked he.

“About Wade?”

“Yes,” snapped her husband. “What else is there, pray? Has she been up to something else disgraceful?”

“Why, Dan, she’s done nothing disgraceful,” cried the mother. “Every girl has those passing fancies. But she’ll not oppose you. Anyhow, her own good sense----”

Richmond gave an impatient snort. “She’s a fool--an impetuous fool.”

His wife ventured a sly, catlike look from the corner of her eye into his back. “You always say she’s the most like you of any of----”

“She takes her impetuosity from me. I hardly need say from whom she inherits her folly.”

“I can see nothing to get excited about.” And Mrs. Richmond stretched herself in preparation for a leisurely sitting up.

Richmond regarded his wife with his habitual expression of disdain for her uselessness. He said peremptorily: “You are going to town this evening with her, and you take her abroad day after to-morrow.”

Mrs. Richmond sat up as if she had been prodded with a spike. “I can’t do it!” she cried. “I can’t get ready. And we’ve got invitations out for----”

“I’m going to send my own secretary--Lawton--along with you, to watch her and report to me,” said Richmond. “You have shown that you are unable to take care of her. Excited? Indeed I am excited. To find that a wretched fortune hunter has just about foisted himself on me. And what of our plans for the girl’s future? Have bridge and these masseuses and hair women and all the rest of the fiddle-faddle that you fuddle about with taken from you the last glimmerings of sense?” He was storming up and down the room. “Good Heaven! Have I got to take one eye off my business to keep guard over my family? Are you good for _nothing_, Lucy?”

“I hope you were careful what you said to her,” exclaimed Mrs. Richmond, alarmed by his complete lack of self-control. There had been many bitter scenes between them since their love waned as their wealth waxed. But theretofore he had attacked her with irony and sarcasm, with sneer and jeer. Never before had he used straight denunciation, made coarse and brutal by a manner he had hitherto reserved for the office. “You can’t treat her as you treat the rest of us,” she warned him.

“And why not, pray?” demanded he. As she was silent, he repeated. “Why not? I said!” he cried in a tone so menacing, so near a blow, that she flushed a deep and angry red.

“Because you have made her independent,” the wife was stung into replying.

“What imbecility!” scoffed he, enraged by this home truth that had been tormenting him for several hours. “She’s got less than any of the rest of you. I’ve purposely kept her where she’d have to behave herself and love me. Your mind never was strong, Lucy. It has become flabby.”