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Title: The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig

Author: David Graham Phillips

Posting Date: February 22, 2011 [EBook #4929]
Release Date: January, 2004
[This file was first posted on March 27, 2002]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

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THE FASHIONABLE ADVENTURES OF JOSHUA CRAIG

A NOVEL

BY DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS




CONTENTS


    I.--MR. CRAIG ARRAYS HIMSELF
   II.--IN THE BEST SOCIETY
  III.--A DESPERATE YOUNG WOMAN
   IV.--"HE ISN'T LIKE US"
    V.--ALMOST HOOKED
   VI.--MR. CRAIG IN SWEET DANGER
  VII.--MRS. SEVERENCE IS ROUSED
 VIII.--MR. CRAIG CONFIDES
   IX.--SOMEWHAT CYCLONIC
    X.--A BELATED PROPOSAL
   XI.--MADAM BOWKER HEARS THE NEWS
  XII.--PUTTING DOWN A MUTINY
 XIII.--A MEMORABLE MEETING
  XIV.--MAGGIE AND JOSH
   XV.--THE EMBASSY GARDEN PARTY
  XVI.--A FIGHT AND A FINISH
 XVII.--A NIGHT MARCH
XVIII.--PEACE AT ANY PRICE
  XIX.--MADAM BOWKER'S BLESSING
   XX.--MR. CRAIG KISSES THE IDOL'S FOOT
  XXI.--A SWOOP AND A SCRATCH
 XXII.--GETTING ACQUAINTED
XXIII.--WHAT THE MOON SAW AND DID
 XXIV.--"OUR HOUSE IS AFIRE"
  XXV.--MRS. JOSHUA CRAIG





THE FASHIONABLE ADVENTURES OF JOSHUA CRAIG




CHAPTER I

MR. CRAIG ARRAYS HIMSELF


It was one of the top-floor-rear flats in the Wyandotte, not merely
biggest of Washington's apartment hotels, but also "most
exclusive"--which is the elegant way of saying most expensive. The
Wyandotte had gone up before landlords grasped the obvious truth that in
a fire-proof structure locations farthest from noise and dust should and
could command highest prices; so Joshua Craig's flat was the cheapest in
the house. The ninety dollars a month loomed large in his eyes, focused
to little-town ideas of values; it was, in fact, small for shelter in
"the DE LUXE district of the de luxe quarter," to quote Mrs. Senator
Mulvey, that simple, far-Western soul, who, finding snobbishness to be
the chief distinguishing mark of the Eastern upper classes, assumed it
was a virtue, acquired it laboriously, and practiced it as openly and
proudly as a preacher does piety. Craig's chief splendor was a
sitting-room, called a parlor and bedecked in the red plush and
Nottingham that represent hotel men's probably shrewd guess at the
traveling public's notion of interior opulence. Next the sitting-room,
and with the same dreary outlook, or, rather, downlook, upon disheveled
and squalid back yards, was a dingy box of a bedroom. Like the parlor,
it was outfitted with furniture that had degenerated upward, floor by
floor, from the spacious and luxurious first-floor suites. Between the
two rooms, in dark mustiness, lay a bathroom with suspicious-looking,
wood-inclosed plumbing; the rusted iron of the tub peered through scuffs
and seams in the age-grayed porcelain.

Arkwright glanced from the parlor where he was sitting into the gloom of
the open bathroom and back again. His cynical brown-green eyes paused
upon a scatter of clothing, half-hiding the badly-rubbed red plush of
the sofa--a mussy flannel nightshirt with mothholes here and there;
kneed trousers, uncannily reminiscent of a rough and strenuous wearer; a
smoking-jacket that, after a youth of cheap gayety, was now a frayed and
tattered wreck, like an old tramp, whose "better days" were none too
good. On the radiator stood a pair of wrinkled shoes that had never
known trees; their soles were curved like rockers. An old pipe clamored
at his nostrils, though it was on the table near the window, the full
length of the room from him. Papers and books were strewn about
everywhere. It was difficult to believe these unkempt and uncouth
surroundings, and the personality that had created them, were actually
being harbored behind the walls of the Wyandotte.

"What a hole!" grumbled Arkwright. He was in evening clothes, so correct
in their care and in their carelessness that even a woman would have
noted and admired. "What a mess! What a hole!"

"How's that?" came from the bedroom in an aggressive voice, so
penetrating that it seemed loud, though it was not, and much roughened
by open-air speaking. "What are you growling about?"

Arkwright raised his tone: "Filthy hole!" said he. "Filthy mess!"

Now appeared in the bedroom door a tall young man of unusual strength
and nearly perfect proportions. The fine head was carried commandingly;
with its crop of dark, matted hair it suggested the rude, fierce
figure-head of a Viking galley; the huge, aggressively-masculine
features proclaimed ambition, energy, intelligence. To see Josh Craig
was to have instant sense of the presence of a personality. The contrast
between him standing half-dressed in the doorway and the man seated in
fashionable and cynically-critical superciliousness was more than a
matter of exteriors. Arkwright, with features carved, not hewn as were
Craig's, handsome in civilization's over-trained, overbred extreme, had
an intelligent, superior look also. But it was the look of expertness in
things hardly worth the trouble of learning; it was aristocracy's
highly-prized air of the dog that leads in the bench show and tails in
the field. He was like a firearm polished and incrusted with gems and
hanging in a connoisseur's wall-case; Josh was like a battle-tested
rifle in the sinewy hands of an Indian in full war-paint. Arkwright
showed that he had physical strength, too; but it was of the kind got at
the gymnasium and at gentlemanly sport--the kind that wins only where
the rules are carefully refined and amateurized. Craig's figure had the
solidity, the tough fiber of things grown in the open air, in the cold,
wet hardship of the wilderness.

Arkwright's first glance of admiration for this figure of the forest and
the teepee changed to a mingling of amusement and irritation. The
barbarian was not clad in the skins of wild beasts, which would have set
him off superbly, but was trying to get himself arrayed for a
fashionable ball. He had on evening trousers, pumps, black cotton socks
with just enough silk woven in to give them the shabby, shamed air of
having been caught in a snobbish pretense at being silk. He was
buttoning a shirt torn straight down the left side of the bosom from
collar-band to end of tail; and the bosom had the stiff, glassy glaze
that advertises the cheap laundry.

"Didn't you write me I must get an apartment in this house?" demanded
he.

"Not in the attic," rejoined Arkwright.

"I can't afford anything better."

"You can't afford anything so bad."

"Bad!"

Craig looked round as pleased as a Hottentot with a string of colored
glass beads. "Why, I've got a private sitting-room AND a private bath! I
never was so well-off before in my life. I tell you, Grant, I'm not
surprised any more that you Easterners get effete and worthless. I begin
to like this lolling in luxury, and I keep the bell-boys on the jump.
Won't you have something to drink?"

Arkwright pointed his slim cane at the rent in the shirt. "What are you
going to do with that?" said he.

"This? Oh!"--Josh thrust his thick backwoods-man's hand in the
tear--"Very simple. A safety-pin or so from the lining of the
vest--excuse me, waistcoat--into the edge of the bosom."

"Splendid!" ejaculated Arkwright. "Superb!"

Craig, with no scent for sarcasm so delicate, pushed on with enthusiasm:
"The safety-pin's the mainstay of bachelor life," said he rhetorically.
"It's his badge of freedom. Why, I can even repair socks with it!"

"Throw that shirt away," said Arkwright, with a contemptuous switch of
his cane. "Put on another. You're not dressing for a shindy in a shack."

"But it's the only one of my half-dozen that has a bang-up bosom."

"Bang-up? That sheet of mottled mica?"

Craig surveyed the shiny surface ruefully. "What's the matter with
this?" he demanded.

"Oh, nothing," replied Arkwright, in disgust. "Only, it looks more like
something to roof a house with than like linen for a civilized man."

Craig reared. "But, damn it, Grant, I'm not civilized. I'm a wild man,
and I'm going to stay wild. I belong to the common people, and it's my
game--and my preference, too--to stick to them. I'm willing to make
concessions; I'm not a fool. I know there was a certain amount of truth
in those letters you took the trouble to write me from Europe. I know
that to play the game here in Washington I've got to do something in
society. But"--here Josh's eyes flashed, and he bent on his friend a
look that was impressive--"I'm still going to be myself. I'll make 'em
accept me as I am. Dealing with men as individuals, I make them do what
_I_ want, make 'em like me as I am."

"Every game has its own rules," said Arkwright. "You'll get on
better--quicker--go further--here if you'll learn a few elementary
things. I don't see that wearing a whole shirt decently done up is going
to compromise any principles. Surely you can do that and still be as
common as you like. The people look up to the fellow that's just a
little better dressed than they."

Josh eyed Arkwright in the way that always made him wonder whether he
was in full possession of the secret of this strenuous young Westerner.
"But," said he, "they love and trust the man who will have nothing which
all may not have. The shirt will do for this evening." And he turned
back into the bedroom.

Arkwright reflected somewhat uncomfortably. He felt that he himself was
right; yet he could not deny that "Josh's cheap demagoguery" sounded
fine and true. He soon forgot the argument in the study of his
surroundings. "You're living like a wild beast here, Josh," he presently
called out. "You must get a valet."

A loud laugh was the reply.

"Or a wife," continued Arkwright. Then, in the voice of one announcing
an inspiration, "Yes--that's it! A wife!"

Craig reappeared. He had on his waistcoat and coat now, and his hair was
brushed. Arkwright could not but admit that the personality took the
edge off the clothes; even the "mottled mica"--the rent was completely
hid--seemed to have lost the worst of its glaze and stiffness. "You'll
do, Josh," said he. "I spoke too quickly. If I hadn't accidentally been
thrust into the innermost secrets of your toilet I'd never have
suspected." He looked the Westerner over with gentle, friendly
patronage. "Yes, you'll do. You look fairly well at a glance--and a
man's clothes rarely get more than that."

Craig released his laugh upon his fastidious friend's judicial
seriousness. "The trouble with you, Grant, is you've never lived a human
life. You've always been sheltered and pampered, lifted in and out of
bed by valets, had a suit of clothes for every hour in the day. I don't
see how it is I happen to like you." And in Craig's face and voice there
was frankly the condescension of superior to undoubted inferior.

Arkwright seemed to be wavering between resentment and amused disdain.
Then he remembered the circumstances of their first acquaintance--those
frightful days in the Arizona desert, without food, with almost no
water, and how this man had been absolute ruler of the party of lost and
dying men; how he had forced them to march on and on, with entreaties,
with curses, with blows finally; how he had brought them to safety--all
as a matter of course, without any vanity or boasting--had been leader
by divine right of strength of body and soul. Grant turned his eyes from
Craig, for there were tears in them. "I don't see why you like me,
either, Josh," said he. "But you do--and--damn it all, I'd die for you."

"I guess you'll come pretty near dying of shame before this evening's
over," laughed Craig. "This is the first time in my life I ever was in a
fashionable company."

"There's nothing to be frightened about," Grant assured him.

"Frightened!" Josh laughed boisterously--Arkwright could have wished he
would temper that laugh. "I--frightened by a bunch of popinjays? You
see, it's not really in the least important whether they like me or
not--at least, not to me. I'll get there, anyhow. And when I do, I'll
deal with them according to their deserts. So they'd better hustle to
get solid with me."

In the two years since he had seen Craig, Arkwright had almost forgotten
his habit of bragging and blowing about himself--what he had done, what
he was going to do. The newspapers, the clippings Josh sent him, had
kept him informed of the young Minnesotan's steady, rapid rise in
politics; and whenever he recalled the absurd boasting that had made him
feel Craig would never come to anything, he assumed it was a weakness of
youth and inexperience which had, no doubt, been conquered. But, no;
here was the same old, conceited Josh, as crudely and vulgarly
self-confident as when he was twenty-five and just starting at the law
in a country town. Yet Arkwright could not but admit there had been more
than a grain of truth in Craig's former self-laudations, that there was
in victories won a certain excuse for his confidence about the future.
This young man, not much beyond thirty, with a personality so positive
and so rough that he made enemies right and left, rousing the envy of
men to fear that here was an ambition which must be downed or it would
become a tyranny over them--this young man, by skill at politics and by
sympathetic power with people in the mass, had already compelled a
President who didn't like him to appoint him to the chief post under an
Attorney-General who detested him.

"How are you getting on with the Attorney-General?" asked Arkwright, as
they set out in his electric brougham.

"He's getting on with me much better," replied Craig, "now that he has
learned not to trifle with me."

"Stillwater is said to be a pretty big man," said Arkwright warningly.

"The bigger the man, the easier to frighten," replied Josh carelessly,
"because the more he's got to lose. But it's a waste of time to talk
politics to you. Grant, old man, I'm sick and worn out, and how
lonesome! I'm successful. But what of that, since I'm miserable? If it
wasn't for my sense of duty, by Heaven, I sometimes think I'd drop it
all and go back to Wayne."

"Don't do that, Josh!" exclaimed Arkwright. "Don't let the country go
rolling off to ruin!"

"Like all small creatures," said Craig, "you take serious matters
lightly, and light matters seriously. You were right a moment ago when
you said I needed a wife."

"That's all settled," said Grant. "I'm going to get you one."

"A woman doesn't need a man--if she isn't too lazy to earn a living,"
pursued Craig. "But what's a man without a woman about?"

"You want a wife, and you want her quick," said Arkwright.

"You saw what a condition my clothes are in. Then, I need somebody to
talk with."

"To talk to," corrected Grant.

"I can't have you round all the time to talk to."

"Heaven forbid!" cried Arkwright. "You never talk about anything but
yourself."

"Some day, my boy," said Josh, with his grave good humor of the great
man tolerating the antics of a mountebank, "you'll appreciate it wasn't
the subject that was dull, but the ears. For the day'll come when
everybody'll be thinking and talking about me most of the time."

Arkwright grinned. "It's lucky you don't let go before everybody like
that."

"Yes, but I do," rejoined Craig. "And why not? They can't stop my going
ahead. Besides, it's not a bad idea"--he nodded, with that shrewdness
which was the great, deep-lying vein in his nature--"not at all a bad
idea, to have people think you a frank, loose-mouthed, damn fool--IF you
ain't. Ambition's a war. And it's a tremendous advantage to lead your
enemies to underestimate you. That's one reason why I ALWAYS win ... So
you're going TO TRY to get me a wife?"

"I'm going to get you one--one of the sort you need. You need a woman
who'll tame you down and lick you into shape."

Craig smiled scornfully.

"One who'll know how to smooth the enemies you make with your
rough-and-tumble manners; one who'll win friends for you socially--"

Josh made a vehement gesture of dissent. "Not on your life!" cried he.
"Of course, my wife must be a lady, and interested in my career. But
none of your meddling politicians in petticoats for me! I'll do my own
political maneuvering. I want a woman, not a bad imitation of a man."

"Well, let that go," said Arkwright. "Also, she ought to be able to
supply you with funds for your political machinery."

Josh sat up as if this were what he had been listening for.

"That's right!" cried he. "Politics is hell for a poor man, nowadays.
The people are such thoughtless, short-sighted fools--" He checked
himself, and in a different tone went on: "However, I don't mean exactly
that--"

"You needn't hedge, Josh, with me."

"I don't want you to be thinking I'm looking for a rich woman."

"Not at all--not at all," laughed his friend.

"If she had too much money it'd be worse for my career than if she had
none at all."

"I understand," said Arkwright.

"Enough money to make me independent--if I should get in a tight place,"
continued Josh. "Yes, I must marry. The people are suspicious of a
bachelor. The married men resent his freedom--even the happily married
ones. And all the women, married and single, resent his not
surrendering."

"I never suspected you of cynicism."

"Yes," continued Craig, in an instantly and radically changed tone, "the
people like a married man, a man with children. It looks respectable,
settled. It makes 'em feel he's got a stake in the country--a home and
property to defend. Yes, I want a wife."

"I don't see why you've neglected it so long."

"Too busy."

"And too--ambitious," suggested Arkwright.

"What do you mean?" demanded Josh, bristling.

"You thought you'd wait to marry until you were nearer your final place
in the world. Being cut out for a king, you know--why, you thought you'd
like a queen--one of those fine, delicate ladies you'd read about."

Craig's laugh might have been confession, it might have been mere
amusement. "I want a wife that suits me," said he. "And I'll get her."

It was Arkwright's turn to be amused. "There's one game you don't in the
least understand," said he.

"What game is that?"

"The woman game."

Craig shrugged contemptuously. "Marbles! Jacks!" Then he added: "Now
that I'm about ready to marry, I'll look the offerings over." He clapped
his friend on the shoulder. "And you can bet your last cent I'll take
what I want."

"Don't be too sure," jeered Arkwright.

The brougham was passing a street lamp that for an instant illuminated
Craig's face. Again Arkwright saw the expression that made him feel
extremely uncertain of the accuracy of his estimates of the "wild man's"
character.

"Yes, I'll get her," said Josh, "and for a reason that never occurs to
you shallow people. I get what I want because what I want wants me--for
the same reason that the magnet gets the steel."

Arkwright looked admiringly at his friend's strong, aggressive face.

"You're a queer one, Josh," said he. "Nothing ordinary about you."

"I should hope not!" exclaimed Craig. "Now for the plunge."




CHAPTER II

IN THE BEST SOCIETY


Grant's electric had swung in at the end of the long line of carriages
of all kinds, from coach of ambassador and costly limousine of
multi-millionaire to humble herdic wherein poor, official grandee's wife
and daughter were feeling almost as common as if they had come in a
street car or afoot. Josh Craig, leaning from the open window, could see
the grand entrance under the wide and lofty porte-cochère--the women,
swathed in silk and fur, descending from the carriages and entering the
wide-flung doors of the vestibule; liveries, flowers, lights, sounds of
stringed instruments, intoxicating glimpses of magnificence at windows,
high and low. And now the electric was at the door. He and Arkwright
sprang out, hastened up the broad steps. His expression amused
Arkwright; it was intensely self-conscious, resolutely indifferent--the
kind of look that betrays tempestuous inward perturbations and
misgivings. "Josh is a good deal of a snob, for all his brave talk,"
thought he. "But," he went on to reflect, "that's only human. We're all
impressed by externals, no matter what we may pretend to ourselves and
to others. I've been used to this sort of thing all my life and I know
how little there is in it, yet I'm in much the same state of
bedazzlement as Josh."

Josh had a way of answering people's thoughts direct which Arkwright
sometimes suspected was not altogether accidental. He now said: "But
there's a difference between your point of view and mine. You take this
seriously through and through. I laugh at it in the bottom of my heart,
and size it up at its true value. I'm like a child that don't really
believe in goblins, yet likes the shivery effects of goblin stories."

"I don't believe in goblins, either," said Arkwright.

"You don't believe in anything else," said Josh.

Arkwright steered him through the throng, and up to the hostess--Mrs.
Burke, stout, honest, with sympathy in her eyes and humor in the lines
round her sweet mouth. "Well, Josh," she said in a slow, pleasant
monotone, "you HAVE done a lot of growing since I saw you. I always knew
you'd come to some bad end. And here you are--in politics and in
society. Gus!"

A tall, haughty-looking young woman, standing next her, turned and fixed
upon Craig a pair of deep, deep eyes that somehow flustered him. Mrs.
Burke presented him, and he discovered that it was her daughter-in-law.
While she was talking with Arkwright, he examined her toilette. He
thought it startling--audacious in its display of shoulders and
back--until he got over his dazed, dazzled feeling, and noted the other
women about. Wild horses could not have dragged it from him, but he felt
that this physical display was extremely immodest; and at the same time
that he eagerly looked his face burned. "If I do pick one of these,"
said he to himself, "I'm jiggered if I let her appear in public dressed
this way. Why, out home women have been white-capped for less."

Arkwright had drifted away from him; he let the crowd gently push him
toward the wall, into the shelter of a clump of palms and ferns. There,
with his hands in his pockets, and upon his face what he thought an
excellent imitation of Arkwright's easy, bored expression of
thinly-veiled cynicism, he surveyed the scene and tried to judge it from
the standpoint of the "common people." His verdict was that it was vain,
frivolous, unworthy, beneath the serious consideration of a man of
affairs such as he. But he felt that he was not quite frank, in fact was
dishonest, with himself in this lofty disdain. It represented what he
ought to feel, not what he actually was feeling. "At least," said he to
himself, "I'll never confess to any one that I'm weak enough to be
impressed by this sort of thing. Anyhow, to confess a weakness is to
encourage it ... No wonder society is able to suck in and destroy so
many fellows of my sort! If _I_ am tempted what must it mean to the
ordinary man?" He noted with angry shame that he felt a swelling of
pride because he, of so lowly an origin, born no better than the
machine-like lackeys, had been able to push himself in upon--yes, up
among--these people on terms of equality. And it was, for the moment, in
vain that he reminded himself that most of them were of full as lowly
origin as he; that few indeed could claim to be more than one generation
removed from jack-boots and jeans; that the most elegant had more
relations among the "vulgar herd" than they had among the "high folks."

"What are you looking so glum and sour about?" asked Arkwright.

He startled guiltily. So, his mean and vulgar thoughts had been
reflected in his face. "I was thinking of the case I have to try before
the Supreme Court next week," said he.

"Well, I'll introduce you to one of the Justices--old Towler. He comes
of the 'common people,' like you. But he dearly loves fashionable
society--makes himself ridiculous going to balls and trying to flirt.
It'll do you no end of good to meet these people socially. You'll be
surprised to see how respectful and eager they'll all be if you become a
recognized social favorite. For real snobbishness give me your friends,
the common people, when they get up where they can afford to put on
airs. Why, even the President has a sneaking hankering after fashionable
people. I tell you, in Washington EVERYTHING goes by social favor, just
as it does in London--and would in Paris if fashionable society would
deign to notice the Republic."

"Introduce me to old Towler," said Craig, curt and bitter. He was
beginning to feel that Arkwright was at least in part right; and it
angered him for the sake of the people from whom he had sprung, and to
whom he had pledged his public career. "Then," he went on, "I'm going
home. And you'll see me among these butterflies and hoptoads no more."

"Can't trust yourself, eh?" suggested Arkwright.

Craig flashed exaggerated scorn that was confession.

"I'll do better than introduce you to Towler," proceeded Arkwright.
"I'll present you to his daughter--a dyed and padded old horror, but
very influential with her father and all the older crowd. Sit up to her,
Josh. You can lay the flattery on as thick as her paint and as high as
her topknot of false hair. If she takes to you your fortune's made."

"I tell you, my fortune is not dependent on--" began Craig vehemently.

"Cut it out, old man," interrupted Arkwright. "No stump speeches here.
They don't go. They bore people and create an impression that you're
both ridiculous and hypocritical."

Arkwright left Josh with Towler's daughter, Mrs. Raymond, who was by no
means the horror Arkwright's language of fashionable exaggeration had
pictured, and who endured Craig's sophomoric eulogies of "your great and
revered father," because the eulogist was young and handsome, and
obviously anxious to please her. As Arkwright passed along the edge of
the dancers a fan reached out and touched him on the arm. He halted,
faced the double line of women, mostly elderly, seated on the
palm-roofed dais extending the length of that end of the ballroom.

"Hel-LO!" called he. "Just the person I was looking for. How is Margaret
this evening?"

"As you see," replied the girl, unfurling the long fan of eagle plumes
with which she had tapped him. "Sit down.... Jackie"--this to a rosy,
eager-faced youth beside her--"run away and amuse yourself. I want to
talk seriously to this elderly person."

"I'm only seven years older than you," said Arkwright, as he seated
himself where Jackie had been vainly endeavoring to induce Miss
Severence to take him seriously.

"And I am twenty-eight, and have to admit to twenty-four," said
Margaret.

"Don't frown that way. It makes wrinkles; and what's more unsightly than
a wrinkled brow in a woman?"

"I don't in the least care," replied the girl. "I've made up my mind to
stop fooling and marry."

"Jackie?"

"If I can't do better." She laughed a low, sweet laugh, like her voice;
and her voice suggested a leisurely brook flitting among mossy stones.
"You see, I've lost that first bloom of youth the wife-pickers prize so
highly. I'm not unsophisticated enough to please them. And I haven't
money enough to make them overlook such defects as maturity and
intelligence--in fact, I've no money at all."

"You were never so good-looking in your life," said Grant. "I recall you
were rather homely as a child and merely nice and fresh-looking when you
came out. You're one of those that improve with time."

"Thanks," said the girl dryly. She was in no mood for the barren blossom
of non-marrying men's compliments.

"The trouble with you is the same as with me," pursued he. "We've both
spent our time with the young married set, where marriage is regarded as
a rather stupid joke. You ought to have stuck to the market-place until
your business was settled."

She nodded a thoughtful assent. "Yes, that was my sad mistake," said
she. "However, I'm going to do my best to repair it."

He reflected. "You must marry money," he declared, as if it were a
verdict.

"Either some one who's got it or some one who can get it."

"Some one who's got it, I'd advise."

"Bad advice," commented the girl, her hazel eyes gazing dreamily,
languorously into the distance. She looked a woman on romance bent, a
woman without a mercenary thought in her head. "Very bad advice," she
went on. "Men who've got money may lose it and be unable to make any
more. What a helpless thing YOU'D be but for what you have inherited and
will inherit. Yet you're above the average of our sort."

"Humph!" said Arkwright, with an irritated laugh. Humor at his expense
was a severe strain upon him. It always is to those whose sense of humor
is keen; for they best appreciate the sting that lies in the pleasantest
jest.

"It would be wiser--if one dared be wise," pursued the girl, "to marry a
man who could get money. That kind of man is safest. Only death or
insanity can make him a disappointment."

Arkwright eyed her curiously. "What a good head you've got on you,
Rita," said he. "Like your grandmother."

The girl shivered slightly. "Don't SPEAK of her!" she exclaimed with an
uneasy glance around. And Grant knew he was correct in his suspicion as
to who was goading and lashing her to hasten into matrimony.

"Well--have you selected your--"

As Arkwright hesitated she supplied, "Victim." They laughed, she less
enthusiastically than he. "Though," she added, "I assure you, I'll make
him happy. It takes intelligence to make a man happy, even if he wants
the most unintelligent kind of happiness. And you've just admitted I'm
not stupid."

Arkwright was studying her. He had a sly instinct that there was a
reason deeper than their old and intimate friendship for her reposing
this extreme of confidence in him. No doubt she was not without a vague
hope that possibly this talk might set him to thinking of her as a wife
for himself. Well, why not? He ought to marry, and he could afford it.
Where would he find a more ladylike person--or where one who was at the
same time so attractive? He studied, with a certain personal interest,
her delicate face, her figure, slim and gracefully curved, as her
evening dress fully revealed it. Yes, a charming, most ladylike figure.
And the skin of her face, of neck and shoulders, was beautifully white,
and of the texture suggesting that it will rub if too impetuously
caressed. Yes, a man would hesitate to kiss her unless he were well
shaved. At the very thought of kissing her Grant felt a thrill and a
glow she had never before roused in him. She had an abundance of
blue-black hair, and it and her slender black brows and long lashes gave
her hazel eyes a peculiar charm of mingled passion and languor. She had
a thin nose, well shaped, its nostrils very sensitive; slightly,
charmingly-puckered lips; a small, strong chin. Certainly she had
improved greatly in the two years since he had seen her in evening
dress. "Though, perhaps," reflected he, "I only think so because I used
to see her too much, really to appreciate her."

"Well, why didn't you?" she was saying, idly waving her fan and gazing
vaguely around the room.

"Why didn't I--what?"

"You were trying to decide why you never fell in love with me."

"So I was," admitted Arkwright.

"Now if I had had lots of cash," mocked she.

He reddened, winced. She had hit the exact reason. Having a great deal
of money, he wanted more--enough to make the grandest kind of splurge in
a puddle where splurge was everything. "Rather, because you are too
intelligent," drawled he. "I want somebody who'd fit into my melting
moods, not a woman who'd make me ashamed by seeming to sit in judgment
on my folly."

"A man mustn't have too much respect for a woman if he's to fall utterly
in love with her--must he?"

Arkwright smiled constrainedly. He liked cynical candor in men, but only
pretended to like it in women because bald frankness in women was now
the fashion. "See," said he, "how ridiculous I'd feel trying to say
sentimental things to you. Besides, it's not easy to fall in love with a
girl one has known since she was born, and with whom he's always been on
terms of brotherly, quite unsentimental intimacy."

Rita gave him a look that put this suggestion out of countenance by
setting him to thrilling again. He felt that her look was artful, was
deliberate, but he could not help responding to it. He began to be a
little afraid of her, a little nervous about her; but he managed to say
indifferently, "And why haven't YOU fallen in love with ME?"

She smiled. "It isn't proper for a well-brought-up girl to love until
she is loved, is it?" Her expression gave Grant a faint suggestion of a
chill of apprehension lest she should be about to take advantage of
their friendship by making a dead set for him. But she speedily
tranquilized him by saying: "No, my reason was that I didn't want to
spoil my one friendship. Even a business person craves the luxury of a
friend--and marrying has been my business," this with a slight curl of
her pretty, somewhat cruel mouth. "To be quite frank, I gave you up as a
possibility years ago. I saw I wasn't your style. Your tastes in women
are rather--coarse."

Arkwright flushed. "I do like 'em a bit noisy and silly," he admitted.
"That sort is so--so GEMUTHLICH, as the Germans say."

"Who's the man you delivered over to old Patsy Raymond? I see he's still
fast to her."

"Handsome, isn't he?"

"Of a sort."

"It's Craig--the Honorable Joshua Craig--Assistant TO the
Attorney-General. He's from Minnesota. He's the real thing. But you'd
not like him."

"He looks quite--tame, compared to what he was two years or so ago,"
said Rita, her voice as indolent as her slowly-moving eagle feathers.

"Oh, you've met him?"

"No--only saw him. When I went West with the Burkes, Gus and the husband
took me to a political meeting--one of those silly, stuffy gatherings
where some blatant politician bellows out a lot of lies, and a crowd of
badly-dressed people listen and swallow and yelp. Your friend was one of
the speakers. What he said sounded--" Rita paused for a word.

"Sounded true," suggested Grant.

"Not at all. Nobody really cares anything about the people, not even
themselves. No, it sounded as if he had at least half-convinced himself,
while the others showed they were lying outright. We rather liked
him--at the safe distance of half the hall. He's the kind of man that
suggests--menageries--lions--danger if the bars break."

"How women do like that in a man!"

"Do you know him?"

"Through and through. He's a fraud, of course, like all politicians. But
beneath the fraud there's a man--I think--a great, big man, strong and
sure of himself--which is what can't be said of many of us who wear
trousers and pose as lords of creation."

The girl seemed to have ceased to listen, was apparently watching the
dancers, Arkwright continued to gaze at his friend, to admire the
impressive, if obviously posed, effect of his handsome head and
shoulders. He smiled with a tender expression, as one smiles at the
weakness of those one loves. Suddenly he said: "By Jove, Rita--just the
thing!"

"What?" asked the girl, resuming the languid waving of her eagle fan.

"Marry him--marry Josh Craig. He'll not make much money out of politics.
I doubt if even a woman could corrupt him that far. But you could take
him out of politics and put him in the law. He could roll it up there.
The good lawyers sell themselves dear nowadays, and he'd make a
killing."

"This sounds interesting."

"It's a wonder I hadn't thought of it before."

The girl gave a curious, quiet smile. "I had," said she.

"YOU had!" exclaimed Arkwright.

"A woman always keeps a careful list of eligibles," explained she. "As
Lucy Burke told me he was headed for Washington, I put him on my list
that very night--well down toward the bottom, but, still, on it. I had
quite forgotten him until to-night."

Arkwright was staring at her. Her perfect frankness, absolute
naturalness with him, unreserved trust of him, gave him a guilty feeling
for the bitter judgment on her character which he had secretly formed as
the result of her confidences. "Yet, really," thought he, "she's quite
the nicest girl I know, and the cleverest. If she had hid herself from
me, as the rest do, I'd never for one instant have suspected her of
having so much--so much--calm, good sense--for that's all it amounts
to." He decided it was a mistake for any human being in any
circumstances to be absolutely natural and unconcealingly candid. "We're
such shallow fakers," reflected he, "that if any one confesses to us
things not a tenth part as bad as what we privately think and do, why,
we set him--or her--especially her--down as a living, breathing atrocity
in pants or petticoats."

Margaret was of the women who seem never to think of what they are
really absorbed in, and never to look at what they are really
scrutinizing. She disconcerted him by interrupting his reflections with:
"Your private opinion of me is of small consequence to me, Grant, beside
the relief and the joy of being able to say my secret self aloud.
Also"--here she grew dizzy at her own audacity in the frankness that
fools--"Also, if I wished to get you, Grant, or any man, I'd not be
silly enough to fancy my character or lack of it would affect him. That
isn't what wins men--is it?"

"You and Josh Craig have a most uncomfortable way of answering people's
thoughts," said Arkwright. "Now, how did you guess I was thinking mean
things about you?"

"For the same reason that Mr. Craig is able to guess what's going on in
your head."

"And that reason is--"

She laughed mockingly. "Because I know you, Grant Arkwright--you, the
meanest-generous man, and the most generous-mean man the Lord ever
permitted. The way to make you generous is to give you a mean impulse;
the way to make you mean is to set you to fearing you're in danger of
being generous."

"There's a bouquet with an asp coiled in it," said Arkwright, pleased;
for with truly human vanity he had accepted the compliment and had
thrown away the criticism. "I'll go bring Josh Craig."

"No, not to-night," said Miss Severence, with a sudden compression of
the lips and a stern, almost stormy contraction of the brows.

"Please don't do that, Rita," cried Arkwright. "It reminds me of your
grandmother."

The girl's face cleared instantly, and all overt signs of strength of
character vanished in her usual expression of sweet, reserved
femininity. "Bring him to-morrow," said she. "A little late, please. I
want others to be there, so that I can study him unobserved." She
laughed. "This is a serious matter for me. My time is short, and my list
of possible eligibles less extended than I could wish." And with a
satiric smile and a long, languorous, coquettish glance, she waved him
away and waved the waiting Jackie into his place.

Arkwright found Craig clear of "Patsy" Raymond and against the wall near
the door. He was obviously unconscious of himself, of the possibility
that he might be observed. His eyes were pouncing from blaze of jewels
to white neck, to laughing, sensuous face, to jewels again or to lithe,
young form, scantily clad and swaying in masculine arm in rhythm with
the waltz. It gave Arkwright a qualm of something very like terror to
note the contrast between his passive figure and his roving eyes with
their wolfish gleam--like Blucher, when he looked out over London and
said: "God! What a city to sack!"

Arkwright thought Josh was too absorbed to be aware of his approach; but
as soon as he was beside him Josh said: "You were right about that
apartment of mine. It's a squalid hole. Six months ago, when I got my
seventy-five hundred a year, I thought I was rich. Rich? Why, that woman
there has ten years' salary on her hair. All the money I and my whole
family ever saw wouldn't pay for the rings on any one of a hundred hands
here. It makes me mad and it makes me greedy."

"'I warned you," said Arkwright.

Craig wheeled on him. "You don't--can't--understand. You're like all
these people. Money is your god. But I don't want money, I want
power--to make all these snobs with their wealth, these millionaires,
these women with fine skins and beautiful bodies, bow down before
me--that's what I want!"

Arkwright laughed. "Well, it's up to you, Joshua."

Craig tossed his Viking head. "Yes, it's up to me, and I'll get what I
want--the people and I.... Who's THAT frightful person?"

Into the room, only a few feet from them, advanced an old woman--very
old, but straight as a projectile. She carried her head high, and her
masses of gray-white hair, coiled like a crown, gave her the seeming of
royalty in full panoply. There was white lace over her black velvet at
the shoulders; her train swept yards behind her. She was bearing a cane,
or rather a staff, of ebony; but it suggested, not decrepitude, but
power--perhaps even a weapon that might be used to enforce authority
should occasion demand. In her face, in her eyes, however, there was
that which forbade the supposition of any revolt being never so remotely
possible.

As she advanced across the ballroom, dancing ceased before her and
around her, and but for the noise of the orchestra there would have been
an awed and painful silence. Mrs. Burke's haughty daughter-in-law, with
an expression of eager desire to conciliate and to please, hastened
forward and conducted the old lady to a gilt armchair in the center of
the dais, across the end of the ballroom. It was several minutes before
the gayety was resumed, and then it seemed to have lost the abandon
which the freely-flowing champagne had put into it.

"WHO is that frightful person?" repeated Craig. He was scowling like a
king angered and insulted by the advent of an eclipsing rival.

"Grandma,"' replied Arkwright, his flippancy carefully keyed low.

"I've never seen a more dreadful person!" exclaimed Craig angrily. "And
a woman, too! She's the exact reverse of everything a woman should
be--no sweetness, no gentleness. I can't believe she ever brought a
child into the world."

"She probably doubts it herself," said Arkwright.

"Why does everybody cringe before her?"

"That's what everybody asks. She hasn't any huge wealth--or birth,
either, for that matter. It's just the custom. We defer to her here
precisely as we wear claw-hammer coats and low-neck dresses. Nobody
thinks of changing the custom."

Josh's lip curled. "Introduce me to her," he said commandingly.

Arkwright looked amused and alarmed. "Not to-night. All in good time.
She's the grandmother of a young woman I want you to meet. She's Madam
Bowker, and the girl's name is Severence."

"I want to meet that old woman," persisted Josh. Never before had he
seen a human being who gave him a sense of doubt as to the superiority
of his own will.

"Don't be in too big a hurry for Waterloo," jested Arkwright. "It's
coming toward you fast enough. That old lady will put you in your place.
After ten minutes of her, you'll feel like a schoolboy who has 'got his'
for sassing the teacher."

"I want to meet her," repeated Craig. And he watched her every movement;
watched the men and women bowing deferentially about her chair; watched
her truly royal dignity, as she was graciously pleased to relax now and
then.

"Every society has its mumbo-jumbo to keep it in order," said Arkwright.
"She's ours.... I'm dead tired. You've done enough for one night. It's a
bad idea to stay too long; it creates an impression of frivolity. Come
along!"

Craig went, reluctantly, with several halts and backward glances at the
old lady of the ebon staff.




CHAPTER III

A DESPERATE YOUNG WOMAN


The house where the Severances lived, and had lived for half a century,
was built by Lucius Quintus Severence, Alabama planter, suddenly and,
for the antebellum days, notably rich through a cotton speculation. When
he built, Washington had no distinctly fashionable quarter; the
neighborhood was then as now small, cheap wooden structures where dwelt
in genteel discomfort the families of junior Department clerks. Lucius
Quintus chose the site partly for the view, partly because spacious
grounds could be had at a nominal figure, chiefly because part of his
conception of aristocracy was to dwell in grandeur among the humble. The
Severence place, enclosed by a high English-like wall of masonry, filled
the whole huge square. On each of its four sides it put in sheepish and
chop-fallen countenance a row of boarding houses. In any other city the
neighborhood would have been intolerable because of the noise of the
rowdy children. But in Washington the boarding house class cannot afford
children; so, few indeed were the small forms that paused before the big
iron Severence gates to gaze into the mysterious maze of green as far as
might be--which was not far, because the walk and the branching drives
turn abruptly soon after leaving the gates.

From earliest spring until almost Christmas that mass of green was sweet
with perfume and with the songs of appreciative colonies of bright
birds. In the midst of the grounds, and ingeniously shut in on all sides
from any view that could spoil the illusion of a forest, stood the
house, Colonial, creeper-clad, brightened in all its verandas and lawns
by gay flowers, pink and white predominating. The rooms were large and
lofty of ceiling, and not too uncomfortable in winter, as the family was
accustomed to temperatures below the average American indoors. In spring
and summer and autumn the rooms were delightful, with their
old-fashioned solid furniture, their subdued colors and tints, their
elaborate arrangements for regulating the inpour of light. All this
suggested wealth. But the Severances were not rich. They had about the
same amount of money that old Lucius Quintus had left; but, just as the
neighborhood seemed to have degenerated when in fact it had remained all
but unchanged, so the Severence fortune seemed to have declined,
altogether through changes of standard elsewhere. The Severances were no
poorer; simply, other people of their class had grown richer, enormously
richer. The Severence homestead, taken by itself and apart from its
accidental setting of luxurious grounds, was a third-rate American
dwelling-house, fine for a small town, but plain for a city. And the
Severence fortune by contrast with the fortunes so lavishly displayed in
the fashionable quarter of the capital, was a meager affair, just enough
for comfort; it was far too small for the new style of wholesale
entertainment which the plutocracy has introduced from England, where
the lunacy for aimless and extravagant display rages and ravages in its
full horror of witless vulgarity. Thus, the Severences from being
leaders twenty years before, had shrunk into "quiet people," were saved
from downright obscurity and social neglect only by the indomitable will
and tireless energy of old Cornelia Bowker.

Cornelia Bowker was not a Severence; in fact she was by birth
indisputably a nobody. Her maiden name was Lard, and the Lards were
"poor white trash." By one of those queer freaks wherewith nature loves
to make mockery of the struttings of men, she was endowed with ambition
and with the intelligence and will to make it effective. Her first
ambition was education; by performing labors and sacrifices incredible,
she got herself a thorough education. Her next ambition was to be rich;
without the beauty that appeals to the senses, she married herself to a
rich New Englander, Henry Bowker. Her final and fiercest ambition was
social power. She married her daughter to the only son and namesake of
Lucius Quintus Severence. The pretensions of aristocracy would soon
collapse under the feeble hands of born aristocrats were it not for two
things--the passion of the masses of mankind for looking up, and the
frequent infusions into aristocratic veins of vigorous common blood.
Cornelia Bowker, born Lard, adored "birth." In fulfilling her third
ambition she had herself born again. From the moment of the announcement
of her daughter's engagement to Lucius Severence, she ceased to be Lard
or Bowker and became Severence, more of a Severence than any of the
veritable Severences. Soon after her son-in-law and his father died, she
became so much THE Severence that fashionable people forgot her origin,
regarded her as the true embodiment of the pride and rank of
Severence--and Severence became, thanks wholly to her, a synonym for
pride and rank, though really the Severences were not especially
blue-blooded.

She did not live with her widowed daughter, as two establishments were
more impressive; also, she knew that she was not a livable person--and
thought none the worse of herself for that characteristic of strong
personalities. In the Severence family, at the homestead, there were,
besides five servants, but three persons--the widowed Roxana and her two
daughters, Margaret and Lucia--Lucia so named by Madam Bowker because
with her birth ended the Severence hopes of a son to perpetuate in the
direct line the family Christian name for its chief heir. From the side
entrance to the house extended an alley of trees, with white flowering
bushes from trunk to trunk like a hedge. At one end of the alley was a
pretty, arched veranda of the house, with steps descending; at the other
end, a graceful fountain in a circle, round which extended a stone
bench. Here Margaret was in the habit of walking every good day, and
even in rainy weather, immediately after lunch; and here, on the day
after the Burke dance, at the usual time, she was walking, as usual--up
and down, up and down, a slow even stride, her arms folded upon her
chest, the muscles of her mouth moving as she chewed a wooden tooth-pick
toward a pulp. As she walked, her eyes held steady like a soldier's, as
if upon the small of the back of an invisible walker in front of her.
Lucia, stout, rosy, lazy, sprawling upon the bench, her eyes opening and
closing drowsily, watched her sister like a sleepy, comfortable cat. The
sunbeams, filtering through the leafy arch, coquetted with Margaret's
raven hair, and alternately brightened and shadowed her features. There
was little of feminine softness in those unguarded features, much of
intense and apparently far from agreeable thought. It was one of her bad
days, mentally as well as physically--probably mentally because
physically. She had not slept more than two hours at most, and her eyes
and skin showed it.

"However do you stand it, Rita!" said Lucia, as Margaret approached the
fountain for the thirty-seventh time. "It's so dull and tiring, to walk
that way."

"I've got to keep my figure," replied Margaret, dropping her hands to
her slender hips, and lifting her shoulders in a movement that drew down
her corsets and showed the fine length of her waist.

"That's nonsense," said Lucia. "All we Severences get stout as we grow
old. You can't hope to escape."

"Grow old!" Margaret's brow lowered. Then she smiled satirically. "Yes,
I AM growing old. I don't dare think how many seasons out, and not
married, or even engaged. If we were rich, I'd be a young girl still. As
it is, I'm getting on.'"

"Don't you worry about that, Rita," said Lucia. "Don't you let them
hurry you into anything desperate. I'm sure _I_ don't want to come out.
I hate society and I don't care about men. It's much pleasanter lounging
about the house and reading. No dressing--no fussing with clothes and
people you hate."

"It isn't fair to you, Lucy," said Margaret. "I don't mind their
nagging, but I do mind standing in your way. And they'll keep you back
as long as I'm still on the market."

"But I want to be kept back." Lucia spoke almost energetically, half
lifting her form whose efflorescence had a certain charm because it was
the over-luxuriance of healthy youth. "I shan't marry till I find the
right man. I'm a fatalist. I believe there's a man for me somewhere, and
that he'll find me, though I was hid--was hid--even here." And she gazed
romantically round at the enclosing walls of foliage.

The resolute lines, the "unfeminine" expression disappeared from her
sister's face. She laughed softly and tenderly. "What a dear you are!"
she cried.

"You can scoff all you please," retorted Lucia, stoutly. "I believe it.
We'll see if I'm not right.... How lovely you did look last night!... You
wait for your 'right man.' Don't let them hurry you. The most dreadful
things happen as the result of girls' hurrying, and then meeting him
when it's too late."

"Not to women who have the right sort of pride." Margaret drew herself
up, and once more her far-away but decided resemblance to Grandmother
Bowker showed itself. "I'd never be weak enough to fall in love unless I
wished."

"That's not weakness; it's strength," declared Lucia, out of the fulness
of experience gleaned from a hundred novels or more.

Margaret shook her head uncompromisingly. "It'd be weakness for me." She
dropped upon the bench beside her sister. "I'm going to marry, and I'm
going to superintend your future myself. I'm not going to let them kill
all the fine feeling in you, as they've killed it in me."

"Killed it!" said Lucia, reaching out for her sister's hand. "You can't
say it's dead, so long as you cry like you did last night, when you came
home from the ball."

Margaret reddened angrily, snatched her hand away. "Shame on you!" she
cried. "I thought you were above spying."

"The door was open between your bedroom and mine," pleaded Lucia. "I
couldn't help hearing."

"You ought to have called out--or closed it. In this family I can't
claim even my soul as my own!"

"Please, dear," begged Lucia, sitting up now and struggling to put her
arms round her sister, "you don't look on ME as an outsider, do you?
Why, I'm the only one in all the world who knows you as you are--how
sweet and gentle and noble you are. All the rest think you're cold and
cynical, and--"

"So I am," said Margaret reflectively, "except toward only you. I'm
grandmother over again, with what she'd call a rotten spot."

"That rotten spot's the real you," protested Lucia.

Margaret broke away from her and resumed her walk. "You'll see," said
she, her face stern and bitter once more.

A maidservant descended the steps. "Madam Bowker has come," announced
she, "and is asking for you, Miss Rita."

A look that could come only from a devil temper flashed into Margaret's
hazel eyes. "Tell her I'm out."

"She saw you from the window."

Margaret debated. Said Lucia, "When she comes so soon after lunch she's
always in a frightful mood. She comes then to make a row because,
without her after-lunch nap, she's hardly human and can be more--more
fiendish."

"I'll not see her," declared Margaret.

"Oh, yes, you will," said Lucia. "Grandmother always has her way."

Margaret turned to the maid. "Tell her I had just gone to my room with a
raging headache."

The maid departed. Margaret made a detour, entered the house by the
kitchen door and went up to her room. She wrenched off blouse and skirt,
got into a dressing sacque and let down her thick black hair. The
headache was now real, so upsetting to digestion had been the advent of
Madam Bowker, obviously on mischief bent. "She transforms me into a
raging devil," thought Margaret, staring at her fiercely sullen
countenance in the mirror of the dressing table. "I wish I'd gone in to
see her. I'm in just the right humor."

The door opened and Margaret whisked round to blast the intruder who had
dared adventure her privacy without knocking. There stood her
grandmother--ebon staff in gloved hand--erect, spare body in rustling
silk--gray-white hair massed before a sort of turban--steel-blue eyes
flashing, delicate nostrils dilating with the breath of battle.

"Ah--Margaret!" said she, and her sharp, quarrel-seeking voice tortured
the girl's nerves like the point of a lancet. "They tell me you have a
headache." She lifted her lorgnon and scrutinized the pale, angry face
of her granddaughter. "I see they were telling me the truth. You are
haggard and drawn and distressingly yellow."

The old lady dropped her lorgnon, seated herself. She held her staff out
at an angle, as if she were Majesty enthroned to pass judgment of life
and death. "You took too much champagne at those vulgar Burkes last
night," she proceeded. "It's a vicious thing for a girl to do--vicious
in every way. It gives her a reputation, for moral laxity which an
unmarried woman can ill-afford to have--unless she has the wealth that
makes men indifferent to character.... Why don't you answer?"

Margaret shrugged her shoulders. "You know I detest champagne and never
drink it," said she. "And I don't purpose to begin, even to oblige you."

"To oblige me!"

"To give you pretext for contention and nagging and quarreling."

Madam Bowker was now in the element she had been seeking--the stormy sea
of domestic wrangling. She struck out boldly, with angry joy. "I've long
since learned not to expect gratitude from you. I can't understand my
own weakness, my folly, in continuing to labor with you."

"That's very simple," said Margaret. "I'm the one human being you can't
compel by hook or crook to bow to your will. You regard me as unfinished
business."

Madam Bowker smiled grimly at this shrewd analysis. "I want to see you
married and properly settled in life. I want to end this disgrace. I
want to save you from becoming ridiculous and contemptible--an object of
laughter and of pity."

"You want to see me married to some man I dislike and should soon hate."

"I want to see you married," retorted the old lady. "I can't be held
responsible for your electing to hate whatever is good for you. And I
came to tell you that my patience is about exhausted. If you are not
engaged by the end of this season, I wash my hands of you. I have been
spending a great deal of money in the effort to establish you. You are a
miserable failure socially. You attach only worthless men. You drive
away the serious men."

"Stupid, you mean."

"I mean serious--the men looking for wives. Men who have something and
have a right to aspire to the hand of MY grandchild. The only men who
have a right to take the time of an unmarried woman. You either cannot,
or will not, exert yourself to please. You avoid young girls and young
men. You waste your life with people already settled. You have taken on
the full airs and speech of a married woman, in advance of having a
husband--and that is folly bordering on insanity. You have discarded
everything that men--marrying men--the right sort of men--demand in
maidenhood. I repeat, you are a miserable failure."

"A miserable failure," echoed Margaret, staring dismally into the glass.

"And I repeat," continued the old lady, somewhat less harshly, though
not less resolutely, "this season ends it. You must marry or I'll stop
your allowance. You'll have to look to your mother for your dresses and
hats and gee-gaws. When I think of the thousands of dollars I've wasted
on you--It's cheating--it's cheating! You have been stealing from me!"
Madam Bowker's tone was almost unladylike; her ebon staff was
flourishing threateningly.

Margaret started up. "I warned you at the outset!" she cried. "I took
nothing from you that you didn't force on me. And now, when you've made
dress, and all that, a necessity for me, you are going to snatch it
away!"

"Giving you money for dress is wasting it," cried the old lady. "What is
dress for? Pray why, do you imagine, have I provided you with three and
four dozen expensive dresses a year and hats and lingerie and everything
in proportion? Just to gratify your vanity? No, indeed! To enable you to
get a husband, one able to provide for you as befits your station. And
because I have been generous with you, because I have spared no expense
in keeping you up to your station, in giving you opportunity, you turn
on me and revile me!"

"You HAVE been generous, Grandmother," said Margaret, humbly. There had
risen up before her a hundred extravagances in which the old lady had
indulged her--things quite unnecessary for show, the intimate luxuries
that contribute only indirectly to show by aiding in giving the feeling
and air of refinement. It was of these luxuries that Margaret was
especially fond; and her grandmother, with an instinct that those tastes
of Margaret's proved her indeed a lady--and made it impossible that she
should marry, or even think of marrying, "foolishly"--had been most
graciously generous in gratifying them. Now, these luxuries were to be
withdrawn, these pampered tastes were to be starved. Margaret collapsed
despairingly upon her table. "I wish to marry, Heaven knows!
Only--only--" She raised herself; her lip quivered--"Good God,
Grandmother, I CAN'T give myself to a man who repels me! You make me
hate men--marriage--everything of that kind. Sometimes I long to hide in
a convent!"

"You can indulge that longing after the end of this season," said her
grandmother. "You'll certainly hardly dare show yourself in Washington,
where you have become noted for your dress.... That's what exasperates
me against you! No girl appreciates refinement and luxury more than you
do. No woman has better taste, could use a large income to better
advantage. And you have intelligence. You know you must have a competent
husband. Yet you fritter away your opportunities. A very short time, and
you'll be a worn, faded old maid, and the settled people who profess to
be so fond of you will be laughing at you, and deriding you, and pitying
you."

Deriding! Pitying!

"I've no patience with the women of that clique you're so fond of," the
old lady went on. "If the ideas they profess--the shallow frauds that
they are!--were to prevail, what would become of women of our station?
Women should hold themselves dear, should encourage men in that old-time
reverence for the sex and its right to be sheltered and worshiped and
showered with luxury. As for you--a poor girl--countenancing such low
and ruinous views--Is it strange I am disgusted with you? Have you no
pride--no self-respect?"

Margaret sat motionless, gazing into vacancy. She could not but endorse
every word her grandmother was saying. She had heard practically those
same words often, but they had had no effect; now, toward the end of
this her least successful season, with most of her acquaintances married
off, and enjoying and flaunting the luxury she might have had--for, they
had married men, of "the right sort"--"capable husbands"--men who had
been more or less attentive to her--now, these grim and terrible axioms
of worldly wisdom, of upper class honor, from her grandmother sounded in
her ears like the boom of surf on reefs in the ears of the sailor.

A long miserable silence; then, her grandmother: "What do you purpose to
do, Margaret?"

"To hustle," said the girl with a short, bitter laugh. "I must rope in
somebody. Oh, I've been realizing, these past two months. I'm awake at
last."

Madam Bowker studied the girl's face, gave a sigh of relief. "I feel
greatly eased," said she. "I see you are coming to your senses before
it's too late. I knew you would. You have inherited too much of my
nature, of my brain and my character."

Margaret faced the old woman in sudden anger. "If you had made
allowances for that, if you had reasoned with me quietly, instead of
nagging and bullying and trying to compel, all this might have been
settled long ago." She shrugged her shoulders. "But that's past and
done. I'm going to do my best. Only--I warn you, don't try to drive me!
I'll not be driven!"

"What do you think of Grant Arkwright?" asked her grandmother.

"I intend to marry him," replied Margaret.

The old lady's stern eyes gleamed delight.

"But," Margaret hastened to add, "you mustn't interfere. He doesn't like
you. He's afraid of you. If you give the slightest sign, he'll sheer
off. You must let me handle him."

"The insolent puppy," muttered Madam Bowker. "I've always detested him."

"You don't want me to marry him?"

"On the contrary," the old lady replied. "He would make the best
possible husband for you." She smiled like a grand inquisitor at
prospect of a pleasant day with rack and screw. "He needs a firm hand,"
said she.

Margaret burst out laughing at this implied compliment to herself; then
she colored as with shame and turned away. "What frauds we women are!"
she exclaimed. "If I had any sense of decency left, I'd be ashamed to do
it!"

"There you go again!" cried her grandmother. "You can't be practical
five minutes in succession. Why should a woman be ashamed to do a man a
service in spite of himself? Men are fools where women are concerned. I
never knew one that was not. And the more sensible they are in other
respects, the bigger fools they are about us! Left to themselves, they
always make a mess of marriage. They think they know what they want, but
they don't. We have to teach them. A man needs a firm hand during
courtship, and a firmer hand after marriage. So many wives forget their
duty and relax. If you don't take hold of that young Arkwright, he'll no
doubt fall a victim to some unscrupulous hussy."

Unscrupulous hussy! Margaret looked at herself in the mirror, met her
own eyes with a cynical laugh. "Well, I'm no worse than the others," she
added, half to herself. Presently she said, "Grant is coming this
afternoon. I look a fright. I must take a headache powder and get some
sleep." Her grandmother rose instantly. "Yes, you do look badly--for
you. And Arkwright has very keen eyes--thanks to those silly women of
your set who teach men things they have no business to know." She
advanced and kissed her granddaughter graciously on top of the head. "I
am glad to see my confidence in you was not misplaced, Margaret," said
she. "I could not believe I was so utterly mistaken in judgment of
character. I'll go to your mother and take her for a drive."




CHAPTER IV

"HE ISN'T LIKE US"


Margaret continued to sit there, her elbows on the dressing-table, her
knuckles pressing into her cheeks, the hazel eyes gazing at their
reflection in the mirror. "What is it in me," she said to her image,
"that makes me less successful at drawing men to the point than so many
girls who are no better looking than I?" And she made an inventory of
her charms that was creditably free from vanity. "And men certainly like
to talk to me," she pursued. "The fish bite, but the hook doesn't hold.
Perhaps--probably--I'm not sentimental enough. I don't simper and
pretend innocence and talk tommy rot--and listen to it as if I were
eating honey."

This explanation was not altogether satisfactory, however. She felt
that, if she had a certain physical something, which she must lack,
nothing else would matter--nothing she said or did. It was baffling;
for, there, before her eyes were precisely the charms of feature and
figure that in other women, in far less degree, had set men, many men,
quite beside themselves. Her lip curled, and her eyes laughed
satirically as she thought of the follies of those men--how they had let
women lead them up and down in public places, drooling and sighing and
seeming to enjoy their own pitiful plight. If that expression of satire
had not disappeared so quickly, she might have got at the secret of her
"miserable failure." For, it was her habit of facing men with only
lightly veiled amusement, or often frank ridicule, in her eyes, in the
curve of her lips, that frightened them off, that gave them the uneasy
sense that their assumptions of superiority to the female were being
judged and derided.

But time was flying. It was after three; the headache was still pounding
in her temples, and her eyes did look almost as haggard and her skin
almost as sallow as her grandmother had said. She took an anti-pyrene
powder from a box in her dressing-table, threw off all her clothes,
swathed herself in a long robe of pale-blue silk. She locked the door
into the hall, and went into her bedroom, closed the door between. She
put the powder in water, drank it, dropped down upon a lounge at the
foot of her bed and covered herself. The satin pillow against her cheek,
the coolness and softness of the silk all along and around her body,
were deliciously soothing. Her blood beat less fiercely, and somber
thoughts drew slowly away into a vague cloud at the horizon of her mind.
Lying there, with senses soothed by luxury and deadened to pain by the
drug, she felt so safe, so shut-in against all intrusion. In a few hours
the struggle, the bitterness would begin again; but at least here was
this interval of repose, of freedom. Only when she was thus alone did
she ever get that most voluptuous of all sensations--freedom. Freedom
and luxury! "I'm afraid I can't eat my cake and have it, too," she mused
drowsily. "Well--whether or not I can have freedom, at least I MUST have
luxury. I'm afraid Grant can't give me nearly all I want--who could?...
If I had the courage--Craig could make more than Grant has, if he were
put to it. I'm sure he could. I'm sure he could do almost anything--but
be attractive to a woman. No, Craig is too strong a dose--besides,
there's the risk. Grant is safest. Better a small loaf than--than no
Paris dresses."

Arkwright, entering Mrs. Severence's drawing-room with Craig at
half-past five, found a dozen people there. Most of them were of that
young married set which Margaret preferred, to the anger and disgust of
her grandmother and against the entreaties of her own common sense. "The
last place in the world to look for a husband," Madam Bowker had said
again and again, to both her daughter and her granddaughter. "Their talk
is all in ridicule of marriage, and of every sacred thing. And if there
are any bachelors, they have come--well, certainly not in search of
honorable wedlock."

The room was noisily gay; but Margaret, at the tea-table in a rather
somber brown dress with a big brown hat, whose great plumes shadowed her
pale, somewhat haggard face, was evidently not in one of her sparkling
moods. The headache powder and the nap had not been successful. She
greeted Arkwright with a slight, absent smile, seemed hardly to note
Craig, as Arkwright presented him.

"Sit down here beside Miss Severence," Grant said.

"Yes, do," acquiesced Margaret; and Joshua thought her cold and haughty,
an aristocrat of the unapproachable type, never natural and never
permitting others to be natural.

"And tell her all about yourself," continued Grant.

"My friend Josh, here," he explained to Margaret, "is one of those
serious, absorbed men who concentrate entirely upon themselves. It isn't
egotism; it's genius."

Craig was ruffled and showed it. He did not like persiflage; it seemed
an assault upon dignity, and in those early days in Washington he was
full of dignity and of determination to create a dignified impression.
He reared haughtily and looked about with arrogant, disdainful eyes.

"Will you have tea?" said Miss Severence, as Arkwright moved away.

"No, thanks," replied Craig. "Tea's for the women and the children."

Miss Severence's expression made him still more uncomfortable. "Well,"
said she, "if you should feel dry as you tell me about yourself, there's
whiskey over on that other table. A cigarette? No? I'm afraid I can't
ask you to have a cigar--"

"And take off my coat, and put my feet up, and be at home!" said Craig.
"I see you think I'm a boor."

"Don't you want people to think you a boor?" inquired she with ironic
seriousness.

He looked at her sharply. "You're laughing at me," he said, calmly.
"Now, wouldn't it be more ladylike for you to try to put me at my ease?
I'm in your house, you know."

Miss Severence flushed. "I beg your pardon," she said. "I did not mean
to offend."

"No," replied Craig. "You simply meant to amuse yourself with me. And
because I don't know what to do with my hands and because my coat fits
badly, you thought I wouldn't realize what you were doing. You are very
narrow--you fashionable people. You don't even know that everybody ought
to be judged on his own ground. To size up a race-horse, you don't take
him into a drawing room. And it wouldn't be quite fair, would it, for me
to judge these drawing-room dolls by what they could do out among real
men and women? You--for instance. How would you show up, if you had to
face life with no husband and no money and five small children, as my
mother did? Well, SHE won out."

Miss Severence was not attracted; but she was interested. She saw beyond
the ill-fitting frock-coat, and the absurd manner, thoroughly ill at
ease, trying to assume easy, nonchalant man-of-the-world airs. "I'd
never have thought of judging you except on your own ground," said she,
"if you hadn't invited the comparison."

"You mean, by getting myself up in these clothes and coming here?"

"Yes."

"You're right, young lady," said Craig, clapping her on the arm, and
waving an energetic forefinger almost in her face. "And as soon as I can
decently get away, I'll go. I told Arkwright I had no business to come
here."

Miss Severance colored, drew her arm away, froze. She detested all forms
of familiarity; physical familiarity she abhorred. "You have known Grant
Arkwright long?" she said, icily.

"NOW, what have I done?" demanded Joshua.

She eyed him with a lady's insolent tranquillity. "Nothing," replied
she. "We are all so glad Grant has come back."

Craig bit his lip and his tawny, weather-beaten skin reddened. He stared
with angry envy at Arkwright, so evidently at ease and at home in the
midst of a group on the other side of the room. In company, practically
all human beings are acutely self-conscious. But self-consciousness is
of two kinds. Arkwright, assured that his manners were correct and
engaging, that his dress was all it should be, or could be, that his
position was secure and admired, had the self-consciousness of
self-complacence. Joshua's consciousness of himself was the extreme of
the other kind--like a rat's in a trap.

"You met Mr. Arkwright out West--out where you live?"

"Yes," said Craig curtly, almost surlily.

"I was out there once," pursued the young woman, feeling that in her own
house she must do her best with the unfortunate young man. "And,
curiously enough, I heard you speak. We all admired you very much."

Craig cheered up instantly; he was on his own ground now. "How long
ago?" he asked.

"Three years; two years last September."

"Oh, I was a mere boy then. You ought to hear me now."

And Joshua launched forth into a description of his oratory, then
related how he had won over juries in several important cases. His arms,
his hands were going, his eyes were glistening, his voice had that rich,
sympathetic tone which characterizes the egotist when the subject is
himself. Miss Severence listened without comment; indeed, he was not
sure that she was listening, so conventional was her expression. But,
though she was careful to keep her face a blank, her mind was busy.
Surely not since the gay women of Barras's court laughed at the
megalomaniac ravings of a noisy, badly dressed, dirty young lieutenant
named Buonaparte, had there been a vanity so candid, so voluble, so
obstreperous. Nor did he talk of himself in a detached way, as if he
were relating the performances and predicting the glory of a human being
who happened to have the same name as himself. No, he thrust upon her in
every sentence that he, he himself and none other, had said and done all
these splendid startling things, would do more, and more splendid. She
listened, astounded; she wondered why she did not burst out laughing in
his very face, why, on the contrary, she seemed to accept to a
surprising extent his own estimate of himself.

"He's a fool," thought she, "one of the most tedious fools I ever met.
But I was right; he's evidently very much of a somebody. However does he
get time to DO anything, when he's so busy admiring himself? How does he
ever contrive to take his mind off himself long enough to think of
anything else?"

Nearly an hour later Arkwright came for him, cut him off in the middle
of an enthusiastic description of how he had enchained and enthralled a
vast audience in the biggest hall in St. Paul. "We must go, this
instant," said Arkwright. "I had no idea it was so late."

"I'll see you soon again, no doubt, Mr. Craig," said Miss Severence,
polite but not cordial, as she extended her hand.

"Yes," replied Craig, holding the hand, and rudely not looking at her
but at Arkwright. "You've interrupted us in a very interesting talk,
Grant."

Grant and Margaret exchanged smiles, Margaret disengaged her hand, and
the two men went. As they were strolling down the drive, Grant said:
"Well, what did you think of her?"

"A nobody--a nothing," was Craig's wholly unexpected response.
"Homely--at least insignificant. Bad color. Dull eyes. Bad manners. A
poor specimen, even of this poor fashionable society of yours. An
empty-head."

"Well--well--WELL!" exclaimed Arkwright in derision. "Yet you and she
seemed to be getting on beautifully together."

"I did all the talking."

"You always do."

"But it was the way she listened. I felt as if I were rehearsing in a
vacant room."

"Humph," grunted Arkwright.

He changed the subject. The situation was one that required thought,
plan. "She's just the girl for Josh," said he to himself. "And he must
take her. Of course, he's not the man for her. She couldn't care for
him, not in a thousand years. What woman with a sense of humor could?
But she's got to marry somebody that can give her what she must have....
It's very important whom a man marries, but it's not at all important
whom a woman marries. The world wasn't made for them, but for US!"

At Vanderman's that night he took Mrs. Tate in to dinner, but Margaret
was on his left. "When does your Craig make his speech before the
Supreme Court?" asked she.

He inspected her with some surprise. "Tuesday, I think. Why?"

"I promised him I'd go."

"And will you?"

"Certainly. Why not?"

This would never do. Josh would get the impression she was running after
him, and would be more contemptuous than ever. "I shouldn't, if I were
you."

"Why not?"

"Well, he's very vain, as you perhaps discovered. He might
misunderstand."

"And why should that disturb me?" asked she, tranquilly. "I do as I
please. I don't concern myself about what others think. Your friend
interests me. I've a curiosity to see whether he has improved in the
last two or three years as much as he says he has."

"He told you all about himself?"

"Everything--and nothing."

"That's just it!" exclaimed Arkwright, misunderstanding her. "After he
has talked me into a state of collapse, every word about himself and his
career, I think it all over, and wonder whether there's anything to the
man or not. Sometimes I think there's a real person beneath that flow of
vanity. Then, again, I think not."

"Whether he's an accident or a plan," mused the young woman; but she saw
that Arkwright did not appreciate the cleverness and the penetration of
her remark. Indeed, she knew in advance that he would not, for she knew
his limitations. "Now," thought she, "Craig would have appreciated
it--and clapped me on the arm--or knee."

"Did you like Josh?" Grant was inquiring.

"Very much, indeed."

"Of course," said Arkwright satirically.

"He has ability to do things. He has strength.... He isn't like us."

Arkwright winced. "I'm afraid you exaggerate him, merely because he's
different."

"He makes me feel an added contempt for myself, somehow. Doesn't he
you?"

"I can't say he does," replied Arkwright, irritated. "I appreciate his
good qualities, but I can't help being offended and disturbed for him by
his crudities. He has an idea that to be polite and well-dressed is to
be weak and worthless. And I can't get it out of his head."

Margaret's smile irritated him still further. "All great men are more or
less rude and crude, aren't they?" said she. "They are impatient of the
trifles we lay so much stress on."

"So, you think Josh is a great man?"

"I don't know," replied Margaret, with exasperating deliberateness. "I
want to find out."

"And if you decide that he is, you'll marry him?"

"Perhaps. You suggested it the other day."

"In jest," said Arkwright, unaccountably angry with her, with himself,
with Joshua. "As soon as I saw him in your presence, I knew it wouldn't
do. It'd be giving a piece of rare, delicate porcelain to a grizzly as a
plaything."

He was surprised at himself. Now that he was face to face with a
possibility of her adopting his own proposition, he disliked it
intensely. He looked at her; never had she seemed so alluring, so
representative of what he called distinction. At the very idea of such
refinement at the mercy of the coarse and boisterous Craig, his blood
boiled. "Josh is a fine, splendid chap, as a man among men," said he to
himself. "But to marry this dainty aristocrat to him--it'd be a damned
disgraceful outrage. He's not fit to marry among OUR women.... What a
pity such a stunning girl shouldn't have the accessories to make her
eligible." And he hastily turned his longing eyes away, lest she should
see and attach too much importance to a mere longing--for, he felt it
would be a pitiful weakness, a betrayal of opportunity, for him to
marry, in a mood of passion that passes, a woman who was merely well
born, when he had the right to demand both birth and wealth in his wife.

"I've often thought," pursued Margaret, "that to be loved by a man of
the Craig sort would be--interesting."

"While being loved by one of your own sort would be dull?" suggested
Arkwright with a strained smile.

Margaret shrugged her bare white shoulders in an inflammatory assent.
"Will you go with me to the Supreme Court on Tuesday?"

"Delighted," said Arkwright. And he did not realize that the deep-hidden
source of his enthusiasm was a belief that Josh Craig would make an ass
of himself.




CHAPTER V

ALMOST HOOKED


In human affairs, great and small, there are always many reasons for
every action; then, snugly tucked away underneath all these reasons that
might be and ought to be and pretend to be but aren't, hides the real
reason, the real moving cause of action. By tacit agreement among human
beings there is an unwritten law against the exposing of this real
reason, whose naked and ugly face would put in sorry countenance
professions of patriotism or philanthropy or altruism or virtue of
whatever kind. Stillwater, the Attorney-General and Craig's chief, had a
dozen reasons for letting him appear alone for the Administration--that
is, for the people--in that important case. Each of these
reasons--except one--shed a pure, white light upon Stillwater's public
spirit and private generosity. That one was the reason supposed by Mrs.
Stillwater to be real. "Since you don't seem able to get rid of Josh
Craig, Pa," said she, in the seclusion of the marital couch, "we might
as well marry him to Jessie"--Jessie being their homeliest daughter.

"Very well," said "Pa" Stillwater. "I'll give him a chance."

Still, we have not got the real reason for Josh's getting what
Stillwater had publicly called "the opportunity of a lifetime." The
really real reason was that Stillwater wished, and calculated, to kill a
whole flock of birds with one stone.

Whenever the people begin to clamor for justice upon their exploiters,
the politicians, who make themselves valuable to the exploiters by
cozening the people into giving them office, begin by denying that the
people want anything; when the clamor grows so loud that this pretense
is no longer tenable, they hasten to say, "The people are right, and
something must be done. Unfortunately, there is no way of legally doing
anything at present, and we must be patient until a way is discovered."
Way after way is suggested, only to be dismissed as "dangerous" or
"impractical" or "unconstitutional." The years pass; the clamor
persists, becomes imperious. The politicians pass a law that has been
carefully made unconstitutional. This gives the exploiters several years
more of license. Finally, public sentiment compels the right kind of
law; it is passed. Then come the obstacles to enforcement. More years of
delay; louder clamor. A Stillwater is put in charge of the enforcement
of the law; a case is made, a trial is had, and the evidence is so
incomplete or the people's lawyers so poorly matched against the lawyers
of the exploiters that the case fails, and the administration is able to
say, "You see, WE'VE done our best, but the rascals have escaped!" The
case against certain Western railway thieves had reached the stage at
which the only way the exploiters could be protected from justice was by
having a mock trial; and Stillwater had put Craig forward as the
conductor of this furious sham battle, had armed him with a poor gun,
loaded with blanks. "We'll lose the case," calculated Stillwater; "we'll
save our friends, and get rid of Craig, whom everybody will blame--the
damned, bumptious, sophomoric blow-hard!"

What excuse did Stillwater make to himself for himself in this course of
seeming treachery and assassination? For, being a man of the highest
principles, he would not deliberately plan an assassination as an
assassination. Why, his excuse was that the popular clamor against the
men "who had built up the Western country" was wicked, that he was
serving his country in denying the mob "the blood of our best citizens,"
that Josh Craig was a demagogue who richly deserved to be hoist by his
own petar. He laughed with patriotic glee as he thought how "Josh, the
joke" would make a fool of himself with silly, sophomoric arguments,
would with his rude tactlessness get upon the nerves of the finicky old
Justices of the Supreme Court!

As Craig had boasted right and left of the "tear" he was going to make,
and had urged everybody he talked with to come and hear him, the small
courtroom was uncomfortably full, and not a few of the smiling,
whispering spectators confidently expected that they were about to enjoy
that rare, delicious treat--a conceited braggart publicly exposed and
overwhelmed by himself. Among these spectators was Josh's best friend,
Arkwright, seated beside Margaret Severence, and masking his
satisfaction over the impending catastrophe with an expression of
funereal somberness. He could not quite conceal from himself all these
hopes that had such an uncomfortable aspect of ungenerousness. So he
reasoned with himself that they really sprang from a sincere desire for
his friend's ultimate good. "Josh needs to have his comb cut," thought
he. "It's sure to be done, and he can bear it better now than later. The
lesson will teach him a few things he must learn. I only hope he'll be
able to profit by it."

When Josh appeared, Grant and the others with firmly-fixed opinions of
the character of the impending entertainment were not a little
disquieted. Joshua Craig, who stepped into the arena, looked absolutely
different from the Josh they knew. How had he divested himself of that
familiar swaggering, bustling braggadocio? Where had he got this look of
the strong man about to run a race, this handsome face on which sat real
dignity and real power? Never was there a better court manner; the
Justices, who had been anticipating an opportunity to demonstrate, at
his expense, the exceeding dignity of the Supreme Court, could only
admire and approve. As for his speech, it was a straightway argument;
not a superfluous or a sophomoric word, not an attempt at rhetoric. His
argument--There is the logic that is potent but answerable; there is the
logic that is unanswerable, that gives no opportunity to any sane mind,
however prejudiced by association with dispensers of luxurious
hospitality, of vintage wines and dollar cigars, however enamored of
fog-fighting and hair-splitting, to refuse the unqualified assent of
conviction absolute. That was the kind of argument Josh Craig made. And
the faces of the opposing lawyers, the questions the Justices asked him
plainly showed that he had won.

After the first ten minutes, when the idea that Craig could be or ever
had been laughable became itself absurd, Arkwright glanced uneasily,
jealously at Margaret. The face beneath the brim of her beautiful white
and pale pink hat was cold, conventional, was the face of a mere
listener. Grant, reassured, resumed his absorbed attention, was soon
completely swept away by his friend's exhibition of power, could hardly
wait until he and Margaret were out of the courtroom before exploding in
enthusiasm. "Isn't he a wonder?" he cried. "Why, I shouldn't have
believed it possible for a man of his age to make such a speech. He's a
great lawyer as well as a great orator. It was a dull subject, yet I was
fascinated. Weren't you?"

"It was interesting--at times," said Margaret.

"At times! Oh, you women!"

At this scorn Margaret eyed his elegant attire, his face with its
expression of an intelligence concentrated upon the petty and the
paltry. Her eyes suggested a secret amusement so genuine that she could
not venture to reveal it in a gibe. She merely said: "I confess I was
more interested in him than in what he said."

"Of course! Of course!" said Grant, all unconscious of her derision.
"Women have no interest in serious things and no mind for logic."

She decided that it not only was prudent but also was more enjoyable to
keep to herself her amusement at his airs of masculine superiority. Said
she, her manner ingenuous: "It doesn't strike me as astonishing that a
man should make a sensible speech."

Grant laughed as if she had said something much cleverer than she could
possibly realize. "That's a fact," admitted he. "It was simply supreme
common-sense. What a world for twaddle it is when common-sense makes us
sit up and stare.... But it's none the less true that you're prejudiced
against him."

"Why do you say that?"

"If you appreciated him you'd be as enthusiastic as I." There was in his
tone a faint hint of his unconscious satisfaction in her failure to
appreciate Craig.

"You can go very far astray," said she, "you, with your masculine
logic."

But Grant had guessed aright. Margaret had not listened attentively to
the speech because it interested her less than the man himself. She had
concentrated wholly upon him. Thus, alone of all the audience, she had
seen that Craig was playing a carefully-rehearsed part, and, himself
quite unmoved, was watching and profiting by every hint in the
countenance of his audience, the old Justices. It was an admirable piece
of acting; it was the performance of a genius at the mummer's art. But
the power of the mummer lies in the illusion he creates; if he does not
create illusion, as Craig did not for Margaret, he becomes mere
pantomimist and mouther. She had never given a moment's thought to
public life as a career; she made no allowances for the fact that a
man's public appearances, no matter how sincere he is, must always be
carefully rehearsed if he is to use his powers with unerring effect; she
was simply like a child for the first time at the theater, and, chancing
to get a glimpse behind the scenes, disgusted and angry with the players
because their performance is not spontaneous. If she had stopped to
reason about the matter she would have been less uncompromising. But in
the shock of disillusionment she felt only that the man was working upon
his audience like a sleight-of-hand performer; and the longer she
observed, and the stronger his spell over the others, the deeper became
her contempt for the "charlatan." He seemed to her like one telling a
lie--as that one seems, while telling it, to the hearer who is not
deceived. "I've been thinking him rough but genuine," said she to
herself. "He's merely rough." She had forgiven, had disregarded his rude
almost coarse manners, setting them down to indifference, the impatience
of the large with the little, a revolt from the (on the whole
preferable) extreme opposite of the mincing, patterned manners of which
Margaret herself was a-weary. "But he isn't indifferent at all," she now
felt. "He's simply posing. His rudenesses are deliberate where they are
not sheer ignorance. His manner in court showed that he knows how, in
the main."

A rather superior specimen of the professional politician, but
distinctly of that hypocritical, slippery class. And Margaret's
conviction was strengthened later in the day when she came upon him at
tea at Mrs. Houghton's. He was holding forth noisily against "society,"
was denouncing it as a debaucher of manhood and womanhood, a waster of
precious time, and on and on in that trite and tedious strain.
Margaret's lip curled as she listened. What did this fakir know about
manhood and womanhood? And could there be any more pitiful, more paltry
wasting of time than in studying out and performing such insincerities
as his life was made up of? True, Mrs. Houghton, of those funny,
fashionable New Yorkers who act as if they had only just arrived at the
estate of servants and carriages, and are always trying to impress even
passing strangers with their money and their grandeur--true, Mrs.
Houghton was most provocative to anger or amused disdain at the
fashionable life. But not even Mrs. Houghton seemed to Margaret so cheap
and pitiful as this badly-dressed, mussy politician, as much an actor as
Mrs. Houghton and as poor at the trade, but choosing low comedy for his
unworthy attempts where Mrs. Houghton was at least trying to be
something refined.

With that instinct for hostility which is part of the equipment of every
sensitively-nerved man of action, Craig soon turned toward her,
addressed himself to her; and the others, glad to be free, fell away.
Margaret was looking her best. White was extremely becoming to her;
pink--pale pink--being next in order. Her dress was of white, with
facings of delicate pale pink, and the white plumes in her hat were
based in pale pink, which also lined the inside of the brim. She watched
him, and, now that it was once more his personality pitted directly and
wholly against hers, she, in spite of herself, began to yield to him
again her respect--the respect every intelligent person must feel for an
individuality that is erect and strong. But as she was watching, her
expression was that of simply listening, without comment or intention to
reply--an expression of which she was perfect mistress. Her hazel eyes,
set in dark lashes, her sensuous mouth, her pallid skin, smooth and
healthy, seemed the climax of allurement to which all the lines of her
delightful figure pointed. To another woman it would have been obvious
that she was amusing herself by trying to draw him under the spell of
physical attraction; a man would have thought her a mere passive
listener, perhaps one concealing boredom, would have thought her
movements to bring now this charm and now that to his attention were
simply movements of restlessness, indications of an impatience difficult
to control. He broke off abruptly. "What are you thinking?" he demanded.

She gave no sign of triumph at having accomplished her purpose--at
having forced his thoughts to leave his pet subject, himself, and center
upon her. "I was thinking," said she reflectively, "what a brave
whistler you are."

"Whistler?"

"Whistling to keep up your courage. No, rather, whistling FOR courage.
You are on your knees before wealth and social position, and you wish to
convince yourself--and the world--that you despise them."

"_I_? Wealth? Social position?" Craig exclaimed, or rather, blustered.
And, red and confused, he was at a loss for words.

"Yes--you," asserted she, in her quiet, tranquil way. "Don't bluster at
me. You didn't bluster at the Court this morning." She laughed softly,
eyeing him with friendly sarcasm. "You see, I'm 'on to' you, Mr. Craig."

Their eyes met--a resolute encounter. He frowned fiercely, and as his
eyes were keen and blue-green, and, backed by a tremendous will, the
odds seemed in his favor. But soon his frown relaxed; a smile replaced
it--a handsome acknowledgment of defeat, a humorous confession that she
was indeed "on to" him. "I like you," he said graciously.

"I don't know that I can say the same of you," replied she, no answering
smile in her eyes or upon her lips, but a seriousness far more
flattering.

"That's right!" exclaimed he. "Frankness--absolute frankness. You are
the only intelligent woman I have met here who seems to have any
sweetness left in her."

"Sweetness? This is a strange place to look for sweetness. One might as
well expect to find it in a crowd of boys scrapping for pennies, or in a
pack of hounds chasing a fox."

"But that isn't all of life," protested Craig.

"It's all of life among our sort of people--the ambitious socially and
otherwise."

Josh beamed upon her admiringly. "You'll do," approved he. "We shall be
friends. We ARE friends."

The gently satiric smile her face had borne as she was talking became
personal to him. "You are confident," said she.

He nodded emphatically. "I am. I always get what I want."

"I'm sorry to say I don't. But I can say that at least I never take what
I don't want."

"That means," said he, "you may not want my friendship."

"Obviously," replied she. And she rose and put out her hand.

"Don't go yet," cried he. "We are just beginning to get acquainted. The
other day I misjudged you. I thought you insignificant, not worth
while."

She slid her hand into her ermine muff. She gave him an icy look, not
contemptuous but oblivious, and turned away. He stared after her. "By
Jove!" thought he, "THERE'S the real thing. There's a true aristocrat."
And he frankly paid aristocracy in thought the tribute he would with any
amount of fuming and spluttering have denied it in word. "Aristocracy
does mean something," reflected he. "There must be substance to what can
make ME feel quite put down."

When he saw Arkwright he said patronizingly: "I like that little friend
of yours--that Miss What's-her-name."

Grant suspected from his tone that this forgetfulness was an
affectation. "You know very well what her name is," said he irritably.
"What a cheap affectation."

Josh countered and returned magnificently: "I remember her face
perfectly," said he. "One shares one's name with a great many people, so
it's unimportant. But one's face is one's own. I remember her face very
well indeed--and that gorgeous figure of hers."

Grant was furious, thought Craig's words the limit of impertinent
free-spokenness. "Well, what of it?" said he savagely.

"I like her," replied Josh condescendingly. "But she's been badly
brought up, and is full of foolish ideas, like all your women here. But
she's a thoroughbred."

"Then you like her?" observed Arkwright without enthusiasm.

"So-so. Of course, she isn't fit to be a wife, but for her type and as a
type she's splendid."

Arkwright felt like kicking him and showed it. "What a bounder you are
at times, Josh," he snapped.

Craig laughed and slapped him on the back. "There you go again, with
your absurd notions of delicacy. Believe me, Grant, you don't understand
women. They don't like you delicate fellows. They like a man--like me--a
pawer of the ground--a snorter--a warhorse that cries ha-ha among the
trumpets."

"The worst thing about what you say," replied Arkwright sourly, "is that
it's the truth. I don't say the women aren't worthy of us, but I do say
they're not worthy of our opinion of them.... Well, I suppose you're
going to try to marry her"--this with a vicious gleam which he felt safe
in indulging openly before one so self-absorbed and so insensible to
subtleties of feeling and manner.

"I think not," said Craig judicially. "She'd play hell with my politics.
It's bad enough to have fights on every hand and all the time abroad.
It'd be intolerable to have one at home--and I've got no time to train
her to my uses and purposes."

Usually Craig's placid conviction that the universe existed for his
special benefit and that anything therein was his for the mere formality
of claiming it moved Arkwright to tolerant amusement at his lack of the
sense of proportion and humor. Occasionally it moved him to reluctant
admiration--this when some apparently absurd claim of his proved more or
less valid. Just now, in the matter of Margaret Severence, this
universal overlordship filled him with rage, the more furious that he
realized he could no more shake Josh's conviction than he could make the
Washington monument topple over into the Potomac by saying, "Be thou
removed." He might explain all the obvious reasons why Margaret would
never deign to condescend to him; Josh would dismiss them with a laugh
at Arkwright's folly.

He hid his rage as best he could, and said with some semblance of genial
sarcasm: "So all you've got to do is to ask her and she's yours?"

Craig gave him a long, sharp, searching look. "Old man," he said
earnestly, "do you want her?"

"_I_!" exclaimed Arkwright angrily, but with shifting eyes and with
upper lip twitching guiltily. Then, satirically: "Oh, no; I'd not dare
aspire to any woman YOU had condescended to smile upon."

"If you do I'll get her for you," pursued Craig, his hand seeking
Arkwright's arm to grip it.

Arkwright drew away, laughed outright. "You ARE a joke!" he cried,
wholly cured of his temper by the preposterous offer. It would be absurd
enough for any one to imagine he would need help in courting any woman
he might fancy--he, one of the most eligible of American bachelors. It
passed the uttermost bounds of the absurd, this notion that he would
need help with a comparatively poor girl, many seasons out and eager to
marry. And then, climax of climaxes, that Josh Craig could help him!
"Yes, a joke," he repeated.

"Oh, no doubt I do seem so to you," replied Josh unruffled. "People are
either awed or amused by what they're incapable of understanding. At
this stage of my career I'm not surprised to find they're amused. But
wait, my boy. Meanwhile, if you want that lady, all you've got to do is
to say the word. I'll get her for you."

"Thanks; no," said Arkwright. "I'm rather shy of matrimony. I don't
hanker after the stupid joys of family life, as you do."

"That's because of your ruinous, rotten training," Craig assured him.
"It has destroyed your power to appreciate the great fundamentals of
life. You think you're superior. If you only knew how shallow you are!"

"I've a competent valet," said Arkwright. "And your idea of a wife seems
to be a sort of sublimated valet--and nurse."

"I can conceive of no greater dignity than to take care of a real man
and his children," replied Craig. "However, the dignity of the service
depends upon the dignity of the person to whom it is rendered--and upon
the dignity of the person who renders it."

Arkwright examined Craig's face for signs that this was the biting
sarcasm it would have seemed, coming from another. But Craig was
apparently merely making one of his familiar bumptious speeches. The
idea of a man of his humble origin proclaiming himself superior to an
Arkwright of the Massachusetts Arkwrights!

"No, I'd not marry your Miss Severence," Craig continued. "I want a
wife, not a social ornament. I want a woman, not a toilette. I want a
home, not a fashionable hotel. I want love and sympathy and children. I
want substance, not shadow; sanity, not silliness."

"And your socks darned and your shirts mended."

"That, of course." Josh accepted these amendments with serene
seriousness. "And Miss Severence isn't fit for the job. She has some
brains--the woman kind of brains. She has a great deal of rudimentary
character. If I had the time, and it were worth while, I could develop
her into a real woman. But I haven't, and it wouldn't be worth while
when there are so many real women, ready made, out where I come from.
This girl would be exactly the wife for you, though. Just as she is,
she'd help you mince about from parlor to parlor, and smirk and jabber
and waste time. She's been educating for the job ever since she was
born." He laid his hand in gracious, kindly fashion on his friend's
shoulder. "Think it over. And if you want my help it's yours. I can show
her what a fine fellow you are, what a good husband you'd make. For you
are a fine person, old man; when you were born fashionable and rich it
spoiled a--"

"A superb pram-trundler," suggested Arkwright.

"Precisely. Be off now; I must work. Be off, and exhibit that wonderful
suit and those spotless white spats where they'll be appreciated." And
he dismissed the elegantly-dressed idler as a king might rid himself of
a favorite who threatened to presume upon his master's good humor and
outstay his welcome. But Arkwright didn't greatly mind. He was used to
Josh's airs. Also, though he would not have confessed it to his inmost
self, Josh's preposterous assumptions, by sheer force of frequent and
energetic reiteration, had made upon him an impression of possible
validity--not probable, but possible; and the possible was quite enough
to stir deep down in Arkwright's soul the all but universal deference
before power. It never occurred to him to suspect there might be design
in Craig's sweeping assertions and assumptions of superiority, that he
might be shrewdly calculating that, underneath the ridicule those
obstreperous vanities would create, there would gradually form and
steadily grow a conviction of solid truth, a conviction that Joshua
Craig was indeed the personage he professed to be--mighty, inevitably
prevailing, Napoleonic.

This latent feeling of Arkwright's was, however, not strong enough to
suppress his irritation when, a few days later, he went to the
Severences for tea, and found Margaret and Josh alone in the garden,
walking up and down, engaged in a conversation that was obviously
intimate and absorbing. When he appeared on the veranda Joshua greeted
him with an eloquent smile of loving friendship.

"Ah, there you are now!" he cried. "Well, little ones, I'll leave you
together. I've wasted as much time as I can spare to-day to frivolity."

"Yes, hurry back to work," said Arkwright. "The ship of state's wobbling
badly through your neglect."

Craig laughed, looking at Margaret. "Grant thinks that's a jest," said
he. "Instead, it's the sober truth. I am engaged in keeping my Chief in
order, and in preventing the President from skulking from the policies
he has the shrewdness to advocate but lacks the nerve to put into
action."

Margaret stood looking after him as he strode away.

"You mustn't mind his insane vanity," said Arkwright, vaguely uneasy at
the expression of her hazel eyes, at once so dark, mysterious,
melancholy, so light and frank and amused.

"I don't," said she in a tone that seemed to mean a great deal.

He, still more uneasy, went on: "A little more experience of the world
and Josh'll come round all right--get a sense of proportion."

"But isn't it true?" asked Margaret somewhat absently.

"What?"

"Why, what he said as he was leaving. Before you came he'd been here
quite a while, and most of the time he talked of himself--"

Arkwright laughed, but Margaret only smiled, and that rather
reluctantly.

"And he was telling how hard a time he was having; what with
Stillwater's corruption and the President's timidity about really acting
against rich, people--something about criminal suits against what he
calls the big thieves--I didn't understand it, or care much about it,
but it gave me an impression of Mr. Craig's power."

"There IS some truth in what he says," Arkwright admitted, with a
reluctance of which his pride, and his heart as well, were ashamed.
"He's become a burr, a thorn, in the Administration, and they're really
afraid of him in a way--though, of course, they have to laugh at him as
every one else does."

"Of course," said Margaret absently.

Arkwright watched her nervously. "You seem to be getting round to the
state of mind," said he, "where you'll be in danger of marrying our
friend Craig."

Margaret, her eyes carefully away from him, laughed softly--a
disturbingly noncommittal laugh.

"Of course, I'm only joking," continued Arkwright. "I know YOU couldn't
marry HIM."

"Why not?"

"Because you don't think he's sincere."

Her silence made him feel that she thought this as weak as he did.

"Because you don't love him."

"No, I certainly don't love him," said Margaret.

"Because you don't even like him."

"What a strange way of advocating your friend you have."

Arkwright flushed scarlet. "I thought you'd quite dismissed him as a
possibility," he stammered.

"With a woman every man's a possibility so long as no man's a
certainty."

"Margaret, you couldn't marry a man you didn't like?"

She seemed to reflect. "Not if I were in love with another at the time,"
she said finally. "That's as far as my womanly delicacy--what's left of
it after my years in society--can influence me. And it's stronger, I
believe, than the delicacy of most women of our sort."

They were sitting now on the bench round the circle where the fountain
was tossing high its jets in play with the sunshine. She was looking
very much the woman of the fashionable world, and the soft grays,
shading into blues, that dominated her costume gave her an exceeding and
entrancing seeming of fragility. Arkwright thought her eyes wonderful;
the sweet, powerful yet delicate odor of the lilac sachet powder with
which her every garment was saturated set upon his senses like a
love-philter.

"Yes, you are finer and nobler than most women," he said giddily. "And
that's why it distresses me to hear you talk even in jest, as if you
could marry Josh."

"And a few weeks ago you were suggesting him as just the husband for
me."

Arkwright was silent. How could he go on? How tell her why he had
changed without committing himself to her by a proposal? She was
fascinating--would be an ideal wife. With what style and taste she'd
entertain--how she'd shine at the head of his table! What a satisfaction
it would be to feel that his money was being so competently spent.
But--well, he did not wish to marry, not just yet; perhaps, somewhere in
the world, he would find, in the next few years, a woman even better
suited to him than Margaret. Marrying was a serious business. True, now
that divorce had pushed its way up and had become recognized by
fashionable society, had become an established social favorite, marriage
had been robbed of one of its terrors. But the other remained--divorce
still meant alimony. The woman who trapped an eligible never endangered
her hard-earned position; a man must be extremely careful or he would
find himself forced to hard choice between keeping on with a woman he
wished to be rid of and paying out a large part of his income in
alimony. It seemed far-fetched to think of these things in connection
with such a woman as Margaret. He certainly never could grow tired of
her, and her looks were of the sort that had staying power. Nor was she
in the least likely to be so ungrateful as to wish to be rid of him and
hold him up for alimony. Still--wouldn't it have been seemingly just as
absurd to consider in advance such sordid matters in connection with any
one of a dozen couples among his friends whose matrimonial enterprises
had gone smash? It was said that nowadays girls went to the altar
thinking that if the husbands they were taking proved unsatisfactory
they would soon be free again, the better off by the title of Mrs. and a
good stiff alimony and some invaluable experience. "I must keep my
head," thought he. "I must consider how I'd feel after the fatal cards
were out."

"Yes, you were quite eager for me to marry him," persisted she. She was
watching his face out of the corner of her eye.

"I admit it," said he huskily. "But we've both changed since then."

"Changed?" said she, perhaps a shade too encouragingly.

He felt the hook tickling his gills and darted off warily. "Changed
toward him, I mean. Changed in our estimate of his availability as a
husband for you." He rose; the situation was becoming highly perilous.
"I must speak to your mother and fly. I'm late for an appointment now."

As he drove away ten minutes later he drew a long breath. "Gad!" said he
half aloud, "Rita'll never realize how close I was to proposing to-day.
She ALMOST had me.... Though why I should think of it that way I don't
know. It's damned low and indelicate of me. She ought to be my wife. I
love her as much as a man of experience can love a woman in advance of
trying her out thoroughly. If she had money I'd not be hesitating, I'm
afraid. Then, too, I don't think the moral tone of that set she and I
travel with is what it ought to be. It's all very well for me,
but--Well, a man ought to be ready for almost anything that might happen
if his wife went with that crowd--or had gone with it before he married
her. Not that I suspect Margaret, though I must say--What a pup this
sort of life does make of a man in some ways!... Yes, I almost leaped.
She'll never know how near I came to it.... Perhaps Josh's more than
half-right and I'm oversophisticated. My doubts and delays may cost me a
kind of happiness I'd rather have than anything on earth--IF it really
exists." There he laughed comfortably. "Poor Rita! If she only knew, how
cut up she'd be!"

He might not have been so absolutely certain of her ignorance could he
have looked into the Severances' drawing-room just then. For Margaret,
after a burst of hysterical gayety, had gone to the far end of the room
on the pretext of arranging some flowers. And there, with her face
securely hid from the half-dozen round the distant tea-table, she was
choking back the sobs, was muttering: "I'll have to do it! I'm a
desperate woman--desperate!"




CHAPTER VI

MR. CRAIG IN SWEET DANGER


It is a rash enterprise to open wide to the world the private doors of
the family, to expose intimate interiors all unconscious of outside
observation, and all unprepared for it. Such frankness tends to destroy
"sympathetic interest," to make delusion and illusion impossible; it
gives cynicism and his brother, pharisaism, their opportunity to simper
and to sneer. Still rasher is it to fling wide the doors of a human
heart, and, without any clever arrangement of lights and shades, reveal
in the full face of the sun exactly what goes on there. We lie to others
unconsciously; we lie to ourselves both consciously and unconsciously.
We admit and entertain dark thoughts, and at the first alarm of exposure
deny that we ever saw them before; we cover up our motives, forget where
we have hidden them, and wax justly indignant when they are dug out and
confronted with us. We are scandalized, quite honestly, when others are
caught doing what we ourselves have done. We are horrified and cry
"Monster!" when others do what we ourselves refrain from doing only
through lack of the bad courage.

No man is a hero who is not a hero to his valet; and no woman a lady
unless her maid thinks so. Margaret Severence's new maid Selina was
engaged to be married; the lover had gone on a spree, had started a free
fight in the streets, and had got himself into jail for a fortnight. It
was the first week of his imprisonment, and Selina had committed a
series of faults intolerable in a maid. She sent Margaret to a ball with
a long tear in her skirt; she let her go out, open in the back, both in
blouse and in placket; she upset a cup of hot CAFÉ AU LAIT on her arm;
finally she tore a strap off a shoe as she was fastening it on
Margaret's foot. Though no one has been able to fathom it, there must be
a reason for the perversity whereby our outbursts of anger against any
seriously-offending fellow-being always break on some trivial offense,
never on one of the real and deep causes of wrath. Margaret, though
ignorant of her maid's secret grief and shame, had borne patiently the
sins of omission and commission, only a few of which are catalogued
above; this, though the maid, absorbed in her woe, had not even
apologized for a single one of them. On the seventh day of discomforts
and disasters Margaret lost her temper at the triviality of the ripping
off of the shoe-strap, and poured out upon Selina not only all her
resentment against her but also all that she had been storing up since
the beginning of the season against life and destiny. Selina sat on the
floor stupefied; Margaret, a very incarnation of fury, raged up and down
the room, venting every and any insult a naturally caustic wit
suggested. "And," she wound up, "I want you to clear out at once. I'll
send you your month's wages. I can't give you a character--except for
honesty. I'll admit, you are too stupid to steal. Clear out, and never
let me see you again."

She swept from the room, drove away to lunch at Mrs. Baker's. She acted
much as usual, seemed to be enjoying herself, for the luncheon was very
good indeed, Mrs. Baker's chef being new from France and not yet grown
careless, and the company was amusing. At the third course she rose.
"I've forgotten something," said she. "I must go at once. No, no one
must be disturbed on my account. I'll drive straight home." And she was
gone before Mrs. Baker could rise from her chair.

At home Margaret went up to her own room, through her bedroom to
Selina's--almost as large and quite as comfortable as her own and hardly
plainer. She knocked. As there was no answer, she opened the door. On
the bed, sobbing heart-brokenly, lay Selina, crushed by the hideous
injustice of being condemned capitally merely for tearing off a bit of
leather which the shoemaker had neglected to make secure.

"Selina," said Margaret.

The maid turned her big, homely, swollen face on the pillow, ceased
sobbing, gasped in astonishment.

"I've come to beg your pardon," said Margaret, not as superior to
inferior, nor yet with the much-vaunted "just as if they were equals,"
but simply as one human being to another. The maid sat up. One of her
braids had come undone and was hanging ludicrously down across her
cheek.

"I insulted you, and I'm horribly ashamed." Wistfully: "Will you forgive
me?"

"Oh, law!" cried the maid despairingly, "I'm dreaming." And she threw
herself down once more and sobbed afresh.

Margaret knelt beside the bed, put her hand appealingly on the girl's
shoulder. "Can you forgive me, Selina?" said she. "There's no excuse for
me except that I've had so much hard luck, and everything seems to be
going to pieces under me."

Selina stopped sobbing. "I told a story when I came to you and said I'd
had three years' experience," moaned she, not to be outdone in honorable
generosity. "It was only three months as lady's maid, and not much of a
lady, neither."

"I don't in the least care," Margaret assured her. "I'm not strictly
truthful myself at times, and I do all sorts of horrid things."

"But that's natural in a lady," objected Selina, "where there ain't no
excuse for me that have only my character."

Margaret was careful not to let Selina see her smile in appreciation of
this unconsciously profound observation upon life and morals. "Never
mind," said she; "you're going to be a good maid soon. You're learning
quickly."

"No, no," wailed Selina. "I'm a regular block-head, and my hands is too
coarse."

"But you have a good heart and I like you," said Margaret. "And I want
you to forgive me and like me. I'm so lonely and unhappy. And I need the
love of one so close to me all the time as you are. It'd be a real
help."

Selina began to cry again, and then Margaret gave way to tears; and,
presently, out came the dreadful story of the lover's fight and jailing;
and Margaret, of course, promised to see that he was released at once.
When she went to her own room, the maid following to help her efface the
very disfiguring evidence of their humble, emotional drama, Margaret had
recovered her self-esteem and had won a friend, who, if too stupid to be
very useful, was also too stupid to be unfaithful.

As it was on the same day, and scarcely one brief hour later, it must
have been the very same Margaret who paced the alley of trimmed elms,
her eyes so stern and somber, her mouth and chin so hard that her
worshipful sister Lucia watched in silent, fascinated dread. At length
Margaret noted Lucia, halted and: "Why don't you read your book?" she
cried fiercely. "Why do you sit staring at me?"

"What a temper you have got--what a NASTY temper!" Lucia was goaded into
retorting.

"Haven't I, though!" exclaimed Margaret, as if she gloried in it. "Stop
that staring!"

"I could see you were thinking something--something--TERRIBLE!"
explained Lucia.

Margaret's face cleared before a satirical smile. "What a romancer you
are, Lucia." Then, with a laugh: "I'm taking myself ridiculously
seriously to-day. Temper--giving way to temper--is a sure sign of
defective intelligence or of defective digestion."

"Is it about--about Mr. Craig?"

Margaret reddened, dropped to the bench near her sister--evidence that
she was willing to talk, to confide--so far as she ever confided her
inmost self--to the one person she could trust.

"Has he asked you to marry him?"

"No; not yet."

"But he's going to?"

Margaret gave a queer smile. "He doesn't think so."

"He wouldn't dare!" exclaimed Lucia. "Why, he's not in the same class
with you."

"So! The little romancer is not so romantic that she forgets her
snobbishness."

"I mean, he's so rude and noisy. I DETEST him!"

"So do I--at times."

Lucia looked greatly relieved. "I thought you were encouraging him. It
seemed sort of--of--cheap, unworthy of you, to care to flirt with a man
like that."

Margaret's expression became strange indeed. "I am not flirting with
him," she said gravely. "I'm going to marry him."

Lucia was too amazed to speak, was so profoundly shocked that her
usually rosy cheeks grew almost pale.

"Yes, I shall marry him," repeated Margaret slowly.

"But you don't love him!" cried Lucia.

"I dislike him," replied Margaret. After a pause she added: "When a
woman makes up her mind to marry a man, willy-nilly, she begins to hate
him. It's a case of hunter and hunted. Perhaps, after she's got him, she
may change. But not till the trap springs--not till the game's bagged."

Lucia shuddered. "Oh, Rita!" she cried. And she turned away to bury her
face in her arms.

"I suppose I oughtn't to tell you these things," pursued Margaret; "I
ought to leave you your illusions as long as possible. But--why
shouldn't you know the truth? Perhaps, if we all faced the truth about
things, instead of sheltering ourselves in lies, the world would begin
to improve."

"But I don't see why you chose him," persisted Lucia.

"I didn't. Fate did the choosing."

"But why not somebody like--like Grant Arkwright? Rita, I'm sure he's
fond of you."

"So am I," said Rita. "But he's got the idea he would be doing me a
favor in marrying me; and when a man gets that notion it's fatal.
Also--He doesn't realize it himself, but I'm not prim enough to suit
him. He imagines he's liberal--that's a common failing among men. But a
woman who is natural shocks them, and they are taken in and pleased by
one who poses as more innocent and impossible than any human being not
perfectly imbecile could remain in a world that conceals nothing.... I
despise Grant--I like him, but despise him."

"He IS small," admitted Lucia.

"Small? He's infinitesimal. He'd be mean with his wife about money. He'd
run the house himself. He should have been a butler."

"But, at least, he's a gentleman."

"Oh, yes," said Margaret. "Yes, I suppose so. I despise him, while, in a
way, I respect Craig."

"He has such a tough-looking skin," said Lucia.

"I don't mind that in a man," replied Margaret.

"His hands are like--like a coachman's," said Lucia. "Whenever I look at
them I think of Thomas."

"No, they're more like the parrot's--they're claws.... That's why I'm
marrying him."

"Because he has ugly hands?"

"Because they're ugly in just that way. They're the hands of the man who
gets things and holds on to things. I'm taking him because he can get
for me what I need." Margaret patted her sister on the shoulder. "Cheer
up, Lucia! I'm lucky, I tell you. I'm getting, merely at the price of a
little lying and a little shuddering, what most people can't get at any
price."

"But he hasn't any money," objected Lucia.

"If he had, no doubt you'd find him quite tolerable. Even you--a young
innocent."

"It does make a difference," admitted Lucia. "You see, people have to
have money or they can't live like gentlemen and ladies."

"That's it," laughed Margaret. "What's a little thing like self-respect
beside ease and comfort and luxury? As grandmother said, a lady who'd
put anything before luxury has lost her self-respect."

"Everybody that's nice ought to have money," declared Lucia. "Then the
world would be beautiful, full of love and romance, with everybody clean
and well-dressed and never in a hurry."

But Margaret seemed not to hear. She was gazing at the fountain, her
unseeing eyes gloomily reflecting her thoughts.

"If Mr. Craig hasn't got money why marry him?" asked her sister.

"He can get it," replied Margaret tersely. "He's the man to trample and
crowd and clutch, and make everybody so uncomfortable that they'll
gladly give him what he's snatching for." She laughed mockingly. "Yes, I
shall get what I want"--then soberly--"if I can get him."

"Get HIM! Why, he'll be delighted! And he ought to be."

"No, he oughtn't to be; but he will be."

"A man like him--marrying a lady! And marrying YOU!" Lucia threw her
arms round her sister's neck and dissolved in tears. "Oh, Rita, Rita!"
she sobbed. "You are the dearest, loveliest girl on earth. I'm sure
you're not doing it for yourself, at all. I'm sure you're doing it for
my sake."

"You're quite wrong," said Rita, who was sitting unmoved and was looking
like her grandmother. "I'm doing it for myself. I'm fond, of luxury--of
fine dresses and servants and all that.... Think of the thousands,
millions of women who marry just for a home and a bare living!... No
doubt, there's something wrong about the whole thing, but I don't see
just what. If woman is made to lead a sheltered life, to be supported by
a man, to be a man's plaything, why, she can't often get the man she'd
most like to be the plaything of, can she?"

"Isn't there any such thing as love?" Lucia ventured wistfully.
"Marrying for love, I mean."

"Not among OUR sort of people, except by accident," Margaret assured
her. "The money's the main thing. We don't say so. We try not to think
so. We denounce as low and coarse anybody that does say so. But it's the
truth, just the same.... Those who marry for money regret it, but not so
much as those who marry only for love--when poverty begins to pinch and
to drag everything fine and beautiful down into the mud. Besides, I
don't love anybody--thank God! If I did, Lucia, I'm afraid I'd not have
the courage!"

"I'm sure you couldn't!" cried Lucia, eager to save all possible
illusion about her sister. Then, remorseful for disloyal thoughts: "And,
if it wasn't right, I'm sure you'd not do it. You MAY fall in love with
him afterward."

"Yes," assented Margaret, kissing Lucia on an impulse of gratitude.
"Yes, I may. I probably shall. Surely, I'm not to go through life never
doing anything I ought to do."

"He's really handsome, in that bold, common way. And you can teach him."

Margaret laughed with genuine mirth. "How surprised he'd be," she
exclaimed, "if he could know what's going on in my head!"

"He'll be on his knees to you," pursued Lucia, wonderfully cheered up by
her confidence in the miracles Margaret's teaching would work. "And
he'll do whatever you say."

"Yes, I'll teach him," said Margaret, herself more hopeful; for must
always improves with acquaintance. "I'll make him over completely. Oh,
he's not so bad as they think--not by any means."

Lucia made an exaggerated gesture of shivering.

"He gets on my nerves," said she. "He's so horribly abrupt and
ill-mannered."

"Yes, I'll train him," said Margaret, musing aloud. "He doesn't
especially fret my nerves. A woman gets a good, strong nervous
system--and a good, strong stomach--after she has been out a few years."
She laughed. "And he thinks I'm as fine and delicate as--as--"

"As you look," suggested Lucia.

"As I look," accepted Margaret. "How we do deceive men by our looks!
Really, Lucia, HE'S far more sensitive than I--far more."

"That's too silly!"

"If I were a millionth part as coarse as he is he'd fly from me. Yet I'm
not flying from him."

This was unanswerable. Lucia rejoined: "When are you going to--to do
it?"

"Right away.... I want to get it over with. I can't stand the
suspense.... I can't stand it!" And Lucia was awed and silenced by the
sudden, strained look of anguish almost that made Margaret's face
haggard and her eyes wild.




CHAPTER VII

MRS. SEVERENCE IS ROUSED


Craig swooped upon the Severences the next afternoon. His arrivals were
always swoopings--a swift descent on a day when he was not expected; or,
if the day was forearranged, then the hour would be a surprise. It was a
habit with him, a habit deliberately formed. He liked to take people
unawares, to create a flurry, reasoning that he, quick of eye and
determined of purpose, could not but profit by any confusion. He was
always in a hurry--that is, he seemed to be. In this also there was
deliberation. It does not follow because a man is in a hurry that he is
an important and busy person; no more does it follow that a man is an
inconsequential procrastinator if he is leisurely and dilatory. The
significance of action lies in intent. Some men can best gain their ends
by creating an impression that they are extremely lazy, others by
creating the impression that they are exceedingly energetic. The
important point is to be on the spot at the moment most favorable for
gaining the desired advantage; and it will be found that of the men who
get what they want in this world, both those who seem to hasten and
those who seem to lounge are always at the right place at the right
time.

It best fitted Craig, by nature impatient, noisily aggressive, to adopt
the policy of rush. He arrived before time usually, fumed until he had
got everybody into that nervous state in which men, and women, too, will
yield more than they ever would in the kindly, melting mood. Though he
might stay hours, he, each moment, gave the impression that everybody
must speak quickly or he would be gone, might quickly be rid of him by
speaking quickly. Obviously, intercourse with him was socially
unsatisfactory; but this did not trouble him, as his theory of life was,
get what you want, never mind the way or the feelings of others. And as
he got by giving, attached his friends by self-interest, made people do
for him what it was just as well that they should do, the net result,
after the confusion and irritation had calmed, was that everybody felt,
on the whole, well content with having been compelled. It was said of
him that he made even his enemies work for him; and this was undoubtedly
true--in the sense in which it was meant as well as in the deeper sense
that a man's enemies, if he be strong, are his most assiduous allies and
advocates. It was also true that he did a great deal for people. Where
most men do favors only when the prospect of return is immediate, he
busied himself as energetically if returns seemed remote, even
improbable, as he did when his right hand was taking in with interest as
his left hand gave. It was his nature to be generous, to like to give;
it was also his nature to see that a reputation for real generosity and
kindness of heart was an invaluable asset, and that the only way to win
such a reputation was by deserving it.

Craig arrived at the Severences at half-past four, when no one was
expected until five. "Margaret is dressing," explained Mrs. Severence,
as she entered the drawing-room. "She'll be down presently--if you care
to wait." This, partly because she hoped he would go, chiefly because he
seemed in such a hurry.

"I'll wait a few minutes," said Craig in his sharp, irritating voice.

And he began to tour the room, glancing at pictures, at articles on the
tables, mussing the lighter pieces of furniture about. Mrs. Severence,
pink-and-white, middle-aged, fattish and obviously futile, watched him
with increasing nervousness. He would surely break something; or, being
by a window when the impulse to depart seized him, would leap through,
taking sash, curtains and all with him.

"Perhaps we'd better go outdoors," suggested she. She felt very
helpless, as usual. It was from her that Lucia inherited her laziness
and her taste for that most indolent of all the dissipations, the
reading of love stories.

"Outdoors?" exploded Craig, wheeling on her, as if he had previously
been unconscious of her presence. "No. We'll sit here. I want to talk to
you."

And he plumped himself into a chair near by, his claw-like hands upon
his knees, his keen eyes and beak-like nose bent toward her. Mrs.
Severence visibly shrank. She felt as if that handsome, predatory face
were pressed against the very window of her inmost soul.

"You wish to talk to me," she echoed, with a feeble conciliatory smile.

"About your daughter," said Craig, still more curt and aggressive. "Mrs.
Severence, your daughter ought to get married."

Roxana Severence was so amazed that her mouth dropped open. "Married?"
she echoed, as if her ears had deceived her.

The colossal impudence of it! This young man, this extremely common
young man, daring to talk to her about such a private matter! And she
had not yet known him a month; and only within the last fortnight had he
been making frequent visits--entirely on his own invitation, for she
certainly would not overtly provoke such a visitation as his coming
meant. Mrs. Severence would have been angry had she dared. But Craig's
manner was most alarming; what would--what would not a person so
indifferent to the decencies of life do if he were crossed?

"She must get married," pursued Craig firmly. "Do you know why I've been
coming here these past two or three weeks?"

Mrs. Severence was astounded anew. The man was actually about to propose
for her daughter! This common man, with nothing!

"It's not my habit to make purposeless visits," continued he,
"especially among frivolous, idle people like you. I've been coming here
to make a study of your daughter."

He paused. Mrs. Severence gave a feeble, frightened smile, made a sound
that might have been mirth and again might have been the beginnings of a
hastily-suppressed call for help.

"And," Craig went on energetically, "I find that she is a very superior
sort of person. In another environment she might have been a big, strong
woman. She's amazing, considering the sickly, sycophantic atmosphere
she's been brought up in. Now, I want to see her married. She's
thoroughly discontented and unhappy. She's becoming sour and cynical. WE
must get her married. It's your duty to rouse yourself."

Mrs. Severence did rouse herself just at this moment. Cheeks aflame and
voice trembling, she stood and said:

"You are very kind, Mr. Craig, to offer to assist me in bringing up my
family. Surely--such--such interest is unusual on brief and very slight
acquaintance." She rang the bell. "I can show my appreciation in only
one way." The old butler, Williams, appeared. "Williams, show this
gentlemen out." And she left the room.

Williams, all frigid dignity and politeness, stood at the large entrance
doors, significantly holding aside one curtain. Craig rose, his face
red. "Mrs. Severence isn't very well," said he noisily to the servant,
as if he were on terms of closest intimacy with the family. "Tell
Margaret I'll wait for her in the garden." And he rushed out by the
window that opened on the veranda, leaving the amazed butler at the
door, uncertain what to do.

Mrs. Severence, ascending the stairs in high good humor with herself at
having handled a sudden and difficult situation as well as she had ever
read of its being handled in a novel, met her daughter descending.

"Sh-h!" said she in a whisper, for she had not heard the front door
close. "He may not be gone. Come with me."

Margaret followed her mother into the library at the head of the stairs.

"It was that Craig man," explained Mrs. Severence, when she had the door
closed. "What DO you think he had the impudence to do?"

"I'm sure I can't imagine," said Margaret, impatient.

"He proposed for you!"

Margaret reflected a brief instant. "Nonsense!" she said decisively.
"He's not that kind. You misunderstood him."

"I tell you he did!" cried her mother. "And I ordered him out of the
house."

"What?" screamed Margaret, clutching her mother's arm. "WHAT?"

"I ordered him out of the house," stammered her mother.

"I wish you'd stick to your novels and let me attend to my own affairs,"
cried Margaret, pale with fury. "Is he gone?"

"I left Williams attending to it. Surely, Rita--"

But Margaret had flung the door open and was darting down the stairs.
"Where is he?" she demanded fiercely of Williams, still in the
drawing-room doorway.

"In the garden, ma'am," said Williams. "He didn't pay no attention."

But Margaret was rushing through the drawing-room. At the French windows
she caught sight of him, walking up and down in his usual quick, alert
manner, now smelling flowers, now staring up into the trees, now
scrutinizing the upper windows of the house. She drew back, waited until
she had got her breath and had composed her features. Then, with the
long skirts of her graceful pale-blue dress trailing behind her, and a
big white sunshade open and resting upon her shoulder, she went down the
veranda steps and across the lawn toward him. He paused, gazed at her in
frank--vulgarly frank--admiration; just then, it seemed to her, he never
said or did or looked anything except in the vulgarest way.

"You certainly are a costly-looking luxury," said he loudly, when there
were still a dozen yards between them. "Oh, there's your mother at the
window, upstairs--her bedroom window."

"How did you know it was her bedroom?" asked Margaret.

"While I was waiting for you to come down one day I sent for one of the
servants and had him explain the lay of the house."

"Really!" said Margaret, satirical and amused. "I suppose there was no
mail on the table or you'd have read that while you waited?"

"There you go, trying to say clever, insulting things. Why not be frank?
Why not be direct?"

"Why should I, simply because YOU wish it? You don't half realize how
amusing you are."

"Oh, yes, I do," retorted he, with a shrewd, quick glance from those
all-seeing eyes of his.

"Half, I said. You do half realize. I told you once before that I knew
what a fraud you were."

"I play my game in my own way," evaded he; "and it seems to be doing
nicely, thank you."

"But the further you go, the harder it'll be for you to progress."

"Then the harder for those opposing me. I don't make it easy for those
who are making it hard for me. I get 'em so busy nursing their own
wounds that they've no longer time to bother me. I've told you before,
and I tell you again, I shall go where I please."

"Let me see," laughed Margaret; "it was Napoleon--wasn't it?--who used
to talk that way?"

"And you think I'm imitating him, eh?"

"You do suggest it very often."

"I despise him. A wicked, little, dago charlatan who was put out of
business as soon as he was really opposed. No!--no Waterloo for me!...
How's your mother? She got sick while I was talking to her and had to
leave the room."

"Yes, I know," said Margaret.

"You ought to make her take more exercise. Don't let her set foot in a
carriage. We are animals, and nature has provided that animals shall
walk to keep in health. Walking and things like that are the only sane
modes of getting about. Everything aristocratic is silly. As soon as we
begin to rear and strut we stumble into our graves--But it's no use to
talk to you about that. I came on another matter."

Margaret's lips tightened; she hastily veiled her eyes.

"I've taken a great fancy to you," Craig went on. "That's why I've
wasted so much time on you. What you need is a husband--a good husband.
Am I not right?"

Margaret, pale, said faintly: "Go on."

"You know I'm right. Every man and every woman ought to marry. A
home--children--THAT'S life. The rest is all incidental--trivial. Do you
suppose I could work as I do if it wasn't that I'm getting ready to be a
family man? I need love--sympathy--tenderness. People think I'm hard and
ambitious. But they don't know. I've got a heart, overflowing with
tenderness, as some woman'll find out some day. But I didn't come to
talk about myself."

Margaret made a movement of surprise--involuntary, startled.

"No, I don't always talk about myself," Craig went on; "and I'll let you
into a secret. I don't THINK about myself nearly so much as many of
these chaps who never speak of themselves. However, as I was saying, I'm
going to get you a husband. Now, don't you get sick, as your mother did.
Be sensible. Trust me. I'll see you through--and that's more than any of
these cheap, shallow people round you would do."

"Well?" said Margaret.

"You and Grant Arkwright are going to marry. Now don't pretend--don't
protest. It's the proper thing and it must be done. You like him?"

As Craig was looking sharply at her she felt she must answer. She made a
vague gesture of assent.

"Of course!" said Craig. "If you and he led a natural life you'd have
been married long ago. Now, I'm going to dine with him to-night. I'll
lay the case before him. He'll be out here after you to-morrow."

Margaret trembled with anger. Two bright spots burned in her cheeks.
"You wouldn't dare!" she exclaimed breathlessly. "No, not even you!"

"And why not?" demanded Craig calmly. "Do you suppose I'm going to stand
idly by, and let two friends of mine, two people I'm as fond of as I am
of you two creatures, make fools of yourselves? No. I shall bring you
together."

Margaret rose. "If you say a word to Grant I'll never speak to you
again. And I assure you I shouldn't marry HIM if he were the last man on
earth."

"If you only knew men better!" exclaimed Craig earnestly. His eyes
fascinated her, and his sharp, penetrating voice somehow seemed to reach
to her very soul and seize it and hold it enthralled. "My dear child,
Grant Arkwright is one man in a million. I've been with him in times
that show men's qualities. Don't judge men by what they are ordinarily.
They don't reveal their real selves. Wait till a crisis comes--then you
see manhood or lack of it. Life is bearable, at the worst, for any of us
in the routine. But when the crisis comes we need, not only all our own
strength, but all we can rally to our support. I tell you, Miss
Severence, Grant is one of the men that can be relied on. I despise his
surface--as I do yours. But it's because I see the man--the
manhood--beneath that surface, that I love him. And I want him to have a
woman worthy of him. That means YOU. You, too, have the soul that makes
a human being--a real aristocrat--of the aristocracy, of strong and
honest hearts."

Craig's face was splendid, was ethereal in its beauty, yet flashing with
manliness. He looked as she had seen him that night two years before,
when he had held even her and her worldly friends spellbound, had made
them thrill with ideas of nobility and human helpfulness foreign to
their everyday selves. She sat silent when he had finished, presently
drew a long breath.

"Why aren't you always like that?" she exclaimed half to herself.

"You'll marry Grant?"

She shook her head positively. "Impossible."

"Why not?"

"Impossible," she repeated. "And you mustn't speak of it to me--or to
him. I appreciate your motive. I thank you--really, I do. It makes me
feel better, somehow, to have had any one think so well of me as you do.
And Grant ought to be proud of your friendship."

Their eyes met. She flushed to the line of her hair and her glance fell,
for she felt utterly ashamed of herself for the design upon him which
she had been harboring. "Let us go in and join the others," said she
confusedly. And her color fled, returned in a flood.

"No, I'm off," replied he, in his ordinary, sharp, bustling way. "I'm
not defeated. I've done well--very well, for a beginning." And he gave
her hand his usual firm, uncomfortable clasp, and rushed away.

She walked up and down full fifteen minutes before she went toward the
house. At the veranda Lucia intercepted her. "Did he?" she asked
anxiously.

Margaret looked at her vaguely, then smiled. "No, he did not."

"He didn't?" exclaimed Lucia, at once disappointed and relieved.

"Not yet," said Margaret. She laughed, patted Lucia's full-blown cheek.
"Not quite yet." And she went on in to tea, humming to herself gayly;
she did not understand her own sudden exceeding high spirits.




CHAPTER VIII

MR. CRAIG CONFIDES


Craig did not leave Margaret more precipitately than he had intended;
that would have been impossible, as he always strove to make his
departures seem as startling and mysterious as a dematerialization. But
he did leave much sooner than he had intended, and with only a small
part of what he had planned to say said. He withdrew to think it over;
and in the long walk from the Severences to his lodgings in the
Wyandotte he did think it over with his usual exhaustive thoroughness.

He had been entirely sincere in his talk with Margaret. He was a shrewd
judge both of human nature and of situations, and he saw that a marriage
between Margaret and Grant would be in every way admirable. He
appreciated the fine qualities of both, and realized that they would
have an uncommonly good chance of hitting it off tranquilly together. Of
all their qualities of mutual adaptability the one that impressed him
most deeply was the one at which he was always scoffing--what he called
their breeding. Theoretically, and so far as his personal practice went,
he genuinely despised "breeding"; but he could not uproot a most
worshipful reverence for it, a reverence of which he was ashamed. He had
no "breeding" himself; he was experiencing in Washington a phase of life
which was entirely new to him, and it had developed in him the snobbish
instincts that are the rankest weeds in the garden of civilization.
Their seeds fly everywhere, are sown broadcast, threaten the useful
plants and the flowers incessantly, contrive to grow, to flourish even,
in the desert places. Craig had an instinct against this plague; but he
was far too self-confident to suspect that it could enter his own gates
and attack his own fields. He did not dream that the chief reason why he
thought Grant and Margaret so well suited to each other was the reason
of snobbishness; that he was confusing their virtues with their vices;
and was admiring them for qualities which were blighting their
usefulness and even threatening to make sane happiness impossible for
either. It was not their real refinement that he admired, and, at times,
envied; it was their showy affectations of refinement, those gaudy
pretenses that appeal to the crude human imagination, like uniforms and
titles.

It had not occurred to him that Margaret might possibly be willing to
become his wife. He would have denied it as fiercely to himself as to
others, but at bottom he could not have thought of himself as at ease in
any intimate relation with her. He found her beautiful physically, but
much too fine and delicate to be comfortable with. He could be brave,
bold, insolent with her, in an impersonal way; but personally he could
not have ventured the slightest familiarity, now that he really
appreciated "what a refined, delicate woman is."

But the easiest impression for a woman to create upon a man--or a man
upon a woman--is the impression of being in love. We are so conscious of
our own merits, we are so eager to have them appreciated, that we will
exaggerate or misinterpret any word or look, especially from a person of
the opposite sex, into a tribute to them. When Craig pleaded for Grant
and Margaret, moved by his eloquent sincerity, dropped her eyes and
colored in shame for her plans about him, in such black contrast with
his frank generosity, he noted her change of expression, and instantly
his vanity flashed into his mind: "Can it be that she loves me?"

The more he reflected upon it the clearer it became to him that she did.
Yes, here was being repeated the old story of the attraction of
extremes. "She isn't so refined that appreciation of real manhood has
been refined out of her," thought he. "And why shouldn't she love me?
What does all this nonsense of family and breeding amount to, anyway?"
His mind was in great confusion. At one moment he was dismissing the
idea of such delicateness, such super-refined super-sensitiveness being
taken with a man of his imperfect bringing-up and humble origin. The
next moment his self-esteem was bobbing again, was jauntily assuring him
that he was "a born king" and, therefore, would naturally be discovered
and loved by a truly princess--"And, by Heaven, she IS a princess of the
blood royal! Those eyes, those hands, those slender feet!" Having no
great sense of humor he did not remind himself here how malicious nature
usually deprives royalty of the outward marks of aristocracy to bestow
them upon peasant.

At last he convinced himself that she was actually burning with love for
him, that she had lifted the veil for an instant--had lifted it
deliberately to encourage him to speak for himself. And he was not
repelled by this forwardness, was, on the contrary, immensely flattered.
It is the custom for those of high station to reassure those of lower,
to make them feel that they may draw near without fear. A queen seeking
a consort among princes always begins the courting. A rich girl willing
to marry a poor man lets him see she will not be offended if he offers
to add himself to her possessions. Yes, it would be quite consistent
with sex-custom, with maidenly modesty, for a Severence to make the
first open move toward a Josh Craig.

"But do I want her?"

That was another question. He admired her, he would be proud to have
such a wife. "She's just the sort I need, to adorn the station I'm going
to have." But what of his dreams of family life, of easy, domestic
undress, which she would undoubtedly find coarse and vulgar? "It would
be like being on parade all the time--she's been used to that sort of
thing her whole life, but it'd make me miserable." Could he afford a
complete, a lifelong sacrifice of comfort to gratify a vanity?

He had devoted much thought to the question of marriage. On the one hand
he wanted money; for in politics, with the people so stupid and so
fickle, a man without an independence, at least, would surely find
himself, sooner or later, in a position where he must choose between
retiring and submitting himself to some powerful interest--either a
complete sale, or a mortgage hardly less galling to pride, no less
degrading to self-respect. On the other hand he wanted a home--a wife
like his mother, domestic, attentive, looking out for his comfort and
his health, herself taking care of the children. And he had arrived at a
compromise. He would marry a girl out West somewhere, a girl of some
small town, brought up somewhat as he had been brought up, not shocked
by what Margaret Severance would regard as his vulgarities--a woman with
whom he felt equal and at ease. He would select such a woman, provided,
in addition, with some fortune--several hundred thousands, at least,
enough to make him independent. Such had been his plan. But now that he
had seen Margaret, had come to appreciate her through studying her as a
possible wife for his unattached friend Arkwright, now that he had
discovered her secret, her love for him--how could he fit her into his
career? Was it possible? Was it wise?

"The best is none too good for me," said he to himself swaggeringly. No
doubt about it--no, indeed, not the slightest. But--well, everybody
wouldn't realize this, as yet. And it must be admitted that those mere
foppish, inane nothings did produce a seeming of difference. Indeed, it
must even be admitted that the way Margaret had been brought up would
make it hard for her, with her sensitive, delicate nerves, to bear with
him if she really knew him. A hot wave passed over his body at the
thought. "How ashamed I'd be to have her see my wardrobe. I really must
brace up in the matter of shirts, and in the quality of underclothes and
socks." No, she probably would be shocked into aversion if she really
knew him--she, who had been surrounded by servants in livery all her
life; who had always had a maid to dress her, to arrange a delicious
bath for her every morning and every evening, to lay out, from a vast
and thrilling store of delicate clothing, the fresh, clean, fine,
amazingly costly garments that were to have the honor and the pleasure
of draping that aristocratic body of hers. "Why, her maid," thought he,
"is of about the same appearance and education as my aunts. Old Williams
is a far more cultured person than my uncles or brothers-in-law." Of
course, Selina and Williams were menials, while his male kin were men
and his female relatives women, "and all of them miles ahead of anything
in this gang when it comes to the real thing--character." Still, so far
as appearances went--"I'm getting to be a damned, cheap snob!" cried he
aloud. "To hell with the whole crowd! I want nothing to do with them!"

But Margaret, in her beautiful garments, diffusing perfume just as her
look and manner diffused the aroma of gentle breeding--The image of her
was most insidiously alluring; he could not banish it. "And, damn it
all, isn't she just a human being? What's become of my common-sense that
I treat these foolish trifles as if they were important?"

Grant Arkwright came while the debate was still on. He soon noted that
something was at work in Josh's mind to make him so silent and glum, so
different from his usual voluble, flamboyant self. "What's up, Josh?
What deviltry are you plotting now to add to poor old Stillwater's
nervous indigestion?"

"I'm thinking about marriage," said Craig, lighting a cigarette and
dropping into the faded magnificence of an ex-salon chair.

"Good business!" exclaimed Arkwright.

"It's far more important that you get married than that I do," explained
Craig. "At present you don't amount to a damn. You're like one of those
twittering swallows out there. As a married man you'd at least have the
validity that attaches to every husband and father."

"If I could find the right girl," said Grant.

"I thought I had found her for you," continued Craig. "But, on second
thoughts, I've about decided to take her for myself."

"Oh, you have?" said Arkwright, trying to be facetious of look and tone.

"Yes," said Josh, in his abrupt, decisive way. He threw the cigarette
into the empty fireplace and stood up. "I think I'll take your advice
and marry Miss Severance."

"Really!" mocked Grant; but he was red with anger, was muttering under
his breath, "Insolent puppy!"

"Yes, I think she'll do." Craig spoke as if his verdict were probably
overpartial to her. "It's queer about families and the kind of children
they have. Every once in a while you'll find a dumb ass of a man whose
brain will get to boiling with liquor or some other ferment, and it'll
incubate an idea, a real idea. It's that way about paternity--or,
rather, maternity. Now who'd think that inane, silly mother of
Margaret's could have brought such a person as she is into the world?"

"Mrs. Severence is a very sweet and amiable LADY," said Grant coldly.

"Pooh!" scoffed Craig. "She's a nothing--a puff of wind--a nit. Such as
she, by the great gross, wouldn't count one."

"I doubt if it would be--wise--politically, I mean--for you to marry a
woman of--of the fashionable set." Grant spoke judicially, with
constraint in his voice.

"You're quite right there," answered Craig promptly. "Still, it's a
temptation.... I've been reconsidering the idea since I discovered that
she loves me."

Grant leaped to his feet. "Loves you!" he shouted. Josh smiled calmly.
"Loves me," said he. "Why not, pray?"

"I--I--I--don't know," answered Grant weakly.

"Oh, yes, you do. You think I'm not good enough for her--as if this were
not America, but Europe." And he went on loftily: "You ought to consider
what such thoughts mean, as revelations of your own character, Grant."

"You misunderstood me entirely," protested Grant, red and guilty.
"Didn't I originally suggest her to you?"

"But you didn't really mean it," retorted Craig with a laugh which Grant
thought the quintessence of impertinence. "You never dreamed she'd fall
in love with me."

"Josh," said Grant, "I wish you wouldn't say that sort of thing. It's
not considered proper in this part of the country for a gentleman to
speak out that way about women."

"What's there to be ashamed of in being in love? Besides, aren't you my
best friend, the one I confide everything to?"

"You confide everything to everybody."

Craig looked amused. "There are only two that can keep a secret," said
he, "nobody and everybody. I trust either the one or the other, and
neither has ever betrayed me."

"To go back to the original subject: I'd prefer you didn't talk to me in
that way about that particular young lady."

"Why?... Because you're in love with her, yourself?"

Grant silently stared at the floor.

"Poor old chap," said Craig sympathetically.

Arkwright winced, started to protest, decided it was just as well to let
Craig think what he pleased at that juncture.

"Poor old chap!" repeated Josh. "Well, you needn't despair. It's true
she isn't in love with you and is in love with me. But if I keep away
from her and discourage her it'll soon die out. Women of that sort of
bringing up aren't capable of any enduring emotion--unless they have
outside aid in keeping it alive."

"No, thank you," said Arkwright bitterly. "I decline to be put in the
position of victim of your generosity. Josh, let me tell you, your
notion that she's in love with you is absurd. I'd advise you not to go
round confiding it to people, in your usual fashion. You'll make
yourself a laughing stock."

"I've told no one but you," protested Craig.

"Have you seen any one else since you got the idea?"

"No, I haven't," he admitted with a laugh. "Now that you've told me the
state of your heart I'll not speak of her feeling for me. I give you my
word of honor on that. I understand how a chap like you, full of false
pride, would be irritated at having people know he'd married a woman who
was once in love with some one else. For of course you'll marry her."

"I'm not sure of that. I haven't your sublime self-confidence, you
know."

"Oh, I'll arrange it," replied Craig, full of enthusiasm. "In fact, I
had already begun, this very afternoon, when she let me see that she
loved me and, so, brought me up standing."

"Damn it, man, DON'T say that!" cried Grant, all afire. "I tell you it's
crazy, conceited nonsense."

"All right, all right, old chap," soothed Josh.

And it frenzied Arkwright to see that he said this merely to spare the
feelings of an unrequited lover, not at all because he had begun to
doubt Margaret's love. "Come down to dinner and let's talk no more about
it," said Grant, with a great effort restraining himself. "I tell you,
Josh, you make it mighty hard sometimes for me to remember what I owe
you."

Craig wheeled on him with eyes that flashed and pierced. "My young
friend," said he, "you owe me nothing. And let me say to you, once for
all, you are free to break with me at any instant--you or any other man.
Whenever I find I'm beginning to look on a man as necessary to me I drop
him--break with him. I am necessary to my friends, not they to me. I
like you, but be careful how you get impertinent with me."

Craig eyed him fiercely and steadily until Arkwright's gaze dropped.
Then he laughed friendly. "Come along, Grant," said he. "You're a good
fellow, and I'll get you the girl." And he linked his arm in Arkwright's
and took up another phase of himself as the topic of his monologue.




CHAPTER IX

SOMEWHAT CYCLONIC


Margaret, on the way home afoot from the White House, where she had been
lunching with the President's niece, happened upon Craig standing with
his hands behind his back before the statue of Jackson. He was gazing up
at the fierce old face with an expression so animated that passers-by
were smiling broadly. She thought he was wholly absorbed; but when she
was about half-way across his range of vision he hailed her. "I say,
Miss Severence!" he cried loudly.

She flushed with annoyance. But she halted, for she knew that if she did
not he would only shout at her and make a scene.

"I'll walk with you," said he, joining her when he saw she had no
intention of moving toward him.

"Don't let me draw you from your devotions," protested she. "I'm just
taking a car, anyhow."

"Then I'll ride home with you and walk back. I want to talk with a
woman--a sensible woman--not easy to find in this town."

Margaret was disliking him, his manner was so offensively familiar and
patronizing--and her plans concerning him made her contemptuous of
herself, and therefore resentful against him. "I'm greatly flattered,"
said she.

"No, you're not. But you ought to be. I suppose if you had met that old
chap on the pedestal there when he was my age you'd have felt toward him
much as you do toward me."

"And I suppose he'd have been just about as much affected by it as you
are."

"Just about. It was a good idea, planting his statue there to warn the
fellow that happens to be in the White House not to get too cultured.
You know it was because the gang that was in got too refined and forgot
whom this country belonged to that old Jackson was put in office. The
same thing will happen again."

"And you'll be the person?" suggested Margaret with a smile of raillery.

"If I show I'm fit for the job," replied Craig soberly. It was the first
time she had ever heard him admit a doubt about himself. "The question
is," he went on, "have I got the strength of character and the
courage?... What do you think?"

"I don't know anything about it," said Margaret with polite
indifference. "There comes my car. I'll not trouble you to accompany
me." She put out her hand. "Goodby." She did not realize it, or intend
it, but she had appealed to one of his powerful instincts, a powerful
instinct in all predatory natures--the instinct to pursue whatever seems
to be flying.

He shook his head at the motorman, who was bringing the car to a halt;
the car went on. He stood in front of her. Her color was high, but she
could not resist the steady compulsion of his eyes. "I told you I wanted
to talk with you," said he. "Do you know why I was standing before that
statue?"

"I do not," Margaret answered coldly.

"I was trying to get the courage to ask you to be my wife."

She gave a queer laugh. "Well, you seem to have got what you sought,"
said she. He had, as usual, taken her wholly unawares.

"Not so fast," replied Craig. "I haven't asked you yet."

Margaret did not know whether she most wished to laugh or to burst out
in anger. "I'm sure I don't care anything about it, one way or the
other," said she.

"Why say those insincere things--to ME?" he urged. She had begun to
walk, and he was keeping pace with her. "Jackson," he proceeded, "was a
man of absolute courage. He took the woman he wanted--defied public
opinion to do it--and it only made him the more popular. I had always
intended to strengthen myself by marrying. If I married you I'd weaken
myself politically, while if I married some Western girl, some daughter
of the people, I'd make a great popular stroke."

"Well--do it, then," said Margaret. "By all means do it."

"Oh, but there's you," exclaimed Craig. "What'd I do about you?"

"That's true," said Margaret mockingly. "But what am I to stand between
a man and ambition?"

"I say that to myself," replied Craig. "But it's no use." His eyes
thrilled her, his voice seemed to melt her dislike, her resolve, as he
said: "There you are, and there you stay, Margaret. And you're not at
all fit to be my wife. You haven't been brought up right. You ought to
marry some man like Grant. He's just the man for you. Why did you ever
fall in love with me?"

She stopped short, stared at him in sheer amazement. "I!" exclaimed she.
"I--in love with YOU!"

He halted before her. "Margaret," he said tenderly, "can you deny it?"

She flushed; hung her head. The indignant denial died upon her lips.

He sighed. "You see, it is fate," said he. "But I'll manage it somehow.
I'll win out in spite of any, of every handicap."

She eyed him furtively. Yes, if she wished to make a marriage of
ambition she could not do better. All Washington was laughing at him;
but she felt she had penetrated beneath the surface that excited their
mirth--had seen qualities that would carry him wherever he wished to
go--wherever she, with her grandmother's own will, wished him to go.

"And," pursued he, "I'm far too rough and coarse for you--you, the
quintessence of aristocracy."

She flushed with double delight--delight at this flattery and the deeper
delight a woman feels when a man shows her the weakness in himself by
which she can reach and rule him.

"I'm always afraid of offending your delicacy," he went fatuously on.
"You're the only person I ever felt that way about. Absolutely the only
one. But you've got to expect that sort of thing in a man who prevails
in such a world as this. When men get too high-toned and aristocratic,
too fussy about manners and dress, along come real men to ride them down
and under. But I'll try to be everything you wish--to you. Not to the
others. That would defeat our object; for I'm going to take my wife
high--very high."

Yes, he would indeed take her high--very high. Now that what she wanted,
what she must have, was offering, how could she refuse? They were
crossing another square of green. He drew--almost dragged--her into one
of the by-paths, seized her in his arms, kissed her passionately. "I
can't resist you--I can't!" he cried.

"Don't--don't!" she murmured, violently agitated. "Some one might see!"

"Some one is seeing, no doubt," he said, his breath coming quickly, a
look that was primeval, ferocious almost, in his eyes as they devoured
her. And, despite her protests and struggles, she was again in those
savage arms of his, was again shrinking and burning and trembling under
his caresses. She flung herself away, sank upon a bench, burst out
crying.

"What is it, Margaret?" he begged, alarmed, yet still looking as if he
would seize her again.

"I don't know--I don't know," she replied.

Once more she tried to tell him that she did not love him, but the words
would not come. She felt that he would not believe her; indeed, she was
not sure of her own heart, of the meaning of those unprecedented
emotions that had risen under his caresses, and that stirred at the
memory of them. "Perhaps I am trying to love him," she said to herself.
"Anyhow, I must marry him. I can trifle with my future no longer. I must
be free of this slavery to grandmother. I must be free. He can free me,
and I can manage him, for he is afraid of me."

"Did I hurt you?" Craig was asking.

She nodded.

"I am so sorry," he exclaimed. "But when I touched you I
forgot--everything!"

She smiled gently at him. "I didn't dream you cared for me," she said.

He laughed with a boisterousness that irritated her. "I'd never have
dared tell you," replied he, "if I hadn't seen that you cared for me."

Her nerves winced, but she contrived to make her tone passable as she
inquired: "Why do you say that?"

"Oh--the day in the garden--the day I came pleading for Grant. I saw it
in your eyes--You remember."

Margaret could not imagine what he had misinterpreted so flatteringly to
himself. But what did it matter? How like ironic fate, to pierce him
with a chance shaft when all the shafts she had aimed had gone astray!

She was startled by his seizing her again. At his touch she flamed.
"Don't!" she cried imperiously. "I don't like it!"

He laughed, held her the more tightly, kissed her half a dozen times
squarely upon the lips. "Not that tone to me," said he. "I shall kiss
you when I please."

She was furiously angry; but again her nerves were trembling, were
responding to those caresses, and even as she hated him for violating
her lips, she longed for him to continue to violate them. She started
up. "Let us go," she cried.

He glanced at his watch. "I'll have to put you in a car," said he. "I
forgot all about my appointment." And he fumed with impatience while she
was adjusting her hat and veil pushed awry by his boisterous
love-making. "It's the same old story," he went on. "Woman weakens man.
You are a weakness with me--one that will cost me dear."

She burned with a sense of insult. She hated him, longed to pour out
denunciations, to tell him just what she thought of him. She felt a
contempt for herself deeper than her revulsion against him. In silence
she let him hurry her along to a car; she scarcely heard what he was
saying--his tactless, angry outburst against himself and her for his
tardiness at that important appointment. She dropped into the seat with
a gasp of relief. She felt she must--for form's sake--merely for form's
sake--glance out of the window for the farewell he would be certain to
expect; she must do her part, now that she had committed herself. She
glanced; he was rushing away, with never a backward look--or thought. It
was her crowning humiliation. "I'll make him pay for all this, some
day!" she said to herself, shaking with anger, her grandmother's own
temper raging cyclonically within her.




CHAPTER X

A BELATED PROPOSAL


Her mood--outraged against Craig, sullenly determined to marry him,
angry with her relatives, her mother no less than her grandmother,
because they were driving her to these desperate measures--this mood
persisted, became intenser, more imperious in its demand for a sacrifice
as the afternoon wore on. When Grant Arkwright came, toward six o'clock,
she welcomed him, the first-comer bringing her the longed-for chance to
discharge the vials of her wrath. And she noted with pleasure that he,
too, was in a black humor. Before she could begin he burst forth:

"What's this that Josh Craig has been telling me? He seems to have gone
stark mad!"

Margaret eyed him with icy disdain. "If there is any quality that can be
called the most repulsive," said she, "it is treachery. You've fallen
into a way of talking of your friend Craig behind his back that's
unworthy--perhaps not of you, but certainly of the person you pose as
being."

"Did you propose to him this afternoon?" demanded Grant.

Margaret grew cold from head to foot. "Does he say I did?" she succeeded
in articulating.

"He does. He was so excited that he jumped off a car and held me an hour
telling me, though he was late for one of those important conferences
he's always talking about."

Margaret had chosen her course. "Did he ask you to run and tell me he
had told you?" inquired she, with the vicious gleam of a vicious temper
in her fine hazel eyes.

"No," admitted Grant. "I suppose I've no right to tell you. But it was
such an INFERNAL lie."

"Did you tell him so?"

Arkwright grew red.

"I see you did not," said Margaret. "I knew you did not. Now, let me
tell you, I don't believe Craig said anything of the kind. A man who'd
betray a friend is quite capable of lying about him."

"Margaret! Rita Severence!" Grant started up, set down his teacup, stood
looking down at her, his face white to the lips. "Your tone is not jest;
it is insult."

"It was so intended." Margaret's eyes were upon him, her grandmother's
own favorite expression in them. Now that she was no longer a
matrimonial offering she felt profoundly indifferent to eligible men,
rejoiced in her freedom to act toward them as she wished. "I do not
permit any one to lie to me about the man I have engaged to marry."

"What!" shouted Grant. "It was TRUE?"

"Go out into the garden and try to calm yourself, Grant," said the girl
haughtily. "And if you can't, why--take yourself off home. And don't
come back until you are ready to apologize."

"Rita, why didn't you give me a hint? I'd have married you myself. I'm
willing to do it.... Rita, will you marry me?"

Margaret leaned back upon the sofa and laughed until his blood began to
run alternately hot and cold.

"I beg your pardon," he stammered. "I did not realize how it sounded.
Only--you know how things are with our sort of people. And, as men go, I
can't help knowing I'm what's called a catch, and that you're looking
for a suitable husband.... As it's apparently a question of him or me,
and as you've admitted you got him by practically proposing--...Damn
it all, Rita, I want you, and I'm not going to let such a man as he is
have you. I never dreamed you'd bother with him seriously or I'd not
have been so slow."

Margaret was leaning back, looking up at him. "I've sunk even lower than
I thought," she said, bringing to an end the painful silence which
followed this speech.

"What do you mean, Rita?"

She laughed cynically, shrugged her shoulders. First, Craig's impudent
assumption that she loved him, and his rude violation of her lips; now,
this frank insolence of insult, the more savage that it was
unconscious--and from the oldest and closest of her men friends. If one
did not die under such outrages, but continued to live and let live, one
could save the situation only by laughing. So, Margaret laughed--and
Arkwright shivered.

"For God's sake, Rita!" he cried. "I'd not have believed that lips so
young and fresh as yours could utter such a cynical sound."

She looked at him with disdainful, derisive eyes. "It's fortunate for me
that I have a sense of humor," said she. "And for you," she added.

"But I am in earnest, I mean it--every word I said."

"That's just it," replied she. "You meant it--every word."

"You will marry me?"

"I will not."

"Why?"

"For several reasons. For instance, I happen to be engaged to another
man."

"That is--nothing." He snapped his fingers.

She elevated her brows. "Nothing?"

"He'd not keep his promise to you if--In fact, he was debating with me
whether or not he'd back down."

"Either what you say is false," said she evenly, "or you are betraying
the confidence of a friend who trusted in your honor."

"Oh, he said it, all right. You know how he is about confidences."

"No matter."

Margaret rose slowly, a gradual lifting of her long, supple figure.
Grant watching, wondered why he had never before realized that the
sensuous charm of her beauty was irresistible. "Where were my eyes?" he
asked himself. "She's beyond any of the women I've wasted so much time
on."

She was saying with quiet deliberateness: "A few days ago, Grant, I'd
have jumped at your offer--to be perfectly frank. Why shouldn't I be
frank! I'm sick of cowardly pretenses and lies. I purpose henceforth to
be myself--almost." A look within and a slightly derisive smile.
"Almost. I shall hesitate and trifle no longer. I shall marry your
friend Craig."

"You'll do nothing of the kind," raged Arkwright. "If you make it
necessary I'll tell him why you're marrying him."

"You may do as you like about that," replied she. "He'll probably
understand why you are trying to break off our engagement."

"You're very confident of your power over him," taunted he.

She saw again Craig's face as he was kissing her. "Very," replied she.

"You'll see. It's a mere physical attraction."

She smiled tantalizingly, her long body displayed against the
window-casing, her long, round arms bare below the elbows, her hazel
eyes and sensuous lips alluring. "You, yourself, never thought of
proposing to me until I had made myself physically attractive to you,"
said she. "Now--have I power over you, or not?"

She laughed as his color mounted, and the look she had seen in Craig's
eyes blazed out in his.

"How little physical charm you have for me," she went on. "Beside Craig
you're like an electric fan in competition with a storm-wind. Now,
Craig--" She closed her eyes and drew a long breath.

Arkwright gnawed his lip. "What a--a DEVIL you ARE!" he exclaimed.

"I wonder why it is a woman never becomes desirable to some men until
they find she's desired elsewhere," she went on reflectively. "What a
lack of initiative. What timidity. What an absence of originality. If I
had nothing else against you, Grant, I'd never forgive you for having
been so long blind to my charms--you and these other men of our set
who'll doubtless be clamorous now."

"If you'd been less anxious to please," suggested he bitterly, "and more
courageous about being your own real self, you'd not have got yourself
into this mess."

"Ah--but that wasn't my fault," replied she absently. "It was the fault
of my training. Ever since I can remember I've been taught to be on my
guard, lest the men shouldn't like me." In her new freedom she looked
back tranquilly upon the struggle she was at last emancipated from, and
philosophized about it. "What a mistake mothers make in putting worry
about getting a husband into their daughters' heads. Believe me, Grant,
that dread makes wretched what ought to be the happiest time of a girl's
life."

"Rita," he pleaded, "stop this nonsense, and say you'll marry me."

"No, thanks," said she. "I've chosen. And I'm well content."

She gave him a last tantalizing look and went out on the veranda, to go
along it to the outdoor stairway. Arkwright gazed after her through a
fierce conflict of emotions. Was she really in earnest? Could it be
possible that Josh Craig had somehow got a hold over her? "Or, is it
that she doesn't trust me, thinks I'd back down if she were to throw him
over and rely on me?" No, there was something positively for Craig in
her tone and expression. She was really intending to marry him. Grant
shuddered. "If she only realized what marrying a man of that sort
means!" he exclaimed, half aloud. "But she doesn't. Only a woman who has
been married can appreciate what sort of a hell for sensitive nerves and
refined tastes marriage can be made."

"Ah--Mr. Arkwright!"

At this interruption in a woman's voice--the voice he disliked and
dreaded above all others--he startled and turned to face old Madam
Bowker in rustling black silk, with haughty casque of gray-white hair
and ebon staff carried firmly, well forward. Grant bowed. "How d'ye do,
Mrs. Bowker?" said he with respectful deference. What he would have
thought was the impossible had come to pass. He was glad to see her.
"She'll put an end to this nonsense--this nightmare," said he to
himself.

Madam Bowker had Williams, the butler, and a maid-servant in her train.
She halted, gazed round the room; she pointed with the staff to the
floor a few feet from the window and a little back. "Place my chair
there," commanded she.

The butler and the maid hastened to move a large carved and gilded chair
to the indicated spot. Madam Bowker seated herself with much ceremony.

"Now!" said she. "We will rearrange the room. Bring that sofa from the
far corner to the other side of this window, and put the tea-table in
front of it. Put two chairs where the sofa was; arrange the other
chairs--" And she indicated the places with her staff.

While the room was still in confusion Mrs. Severence entered. "What is
it, Mamma?" she asked.

"Simply trying to make this frightful room a little less frightful."

"Don't you think the pictures should be rehung to suit the new
arrangement, ma'am?" suggested Arkwright.

Madam Bowker, suspicious of jest, looked sharply at him. He seemed
serious. "You are right," said she.

"But people will be coming in a few minutes," pleaded Roxana.

"Then to-morrow," said Madam Bowker reluctantly. "That will do,
Williams--that will do, Betty. And, Betty, you must go at once and make
yourself neat. You've had on that cap two days."

"No, indeed, ma'am!" protested Betty.

"Then it was badly done up. Roxana, how can you bear to live in such a
slovenly way?"

"Will you have tea now, Mamma?" was Roxana's diplomatic reply.

"Yes," answered the old lady.

"Tea, Mr. Arkwright?"

"Thanks, no, Mrs. Severence. I'm just going. I merely looked in to--to
congratulate Rita."

Madam Bowker clutched her staff. "To congratulate my granddaughter? Upon
what, pray?"

Arkwright simulated a look of surprise. "Upon her engagement."

"Her WHAT?" demanded the old lady, while Roxana sat holding a lump of
sugar suspended between bowl and cup.

"Her engagement to Josh Craig."

"No such thing!" declared the old lady instantly. "Really, sir, it is
disgraceful that MY granddaughter's name should be associated in ANY
connection with such a person."

Here Margaret entered the room by the French windows by which she had
left. She advanced slowly and gracefully, amid a profound silence. Just
as she reached the tea-table her grandmother said in a terrible voice:
"Margaret!"

"Yes, Grandmother," responded Margaret smoothly, without looking at her.

"Mr. Arkwright here has brought in a scandalous story about your being
engaged to that--that Josh person--the clerk in one of the departments.
Do you know him?"

"Yes, Grandma. But not very well."

Madam Bowker glanced triumphantly at Arkwright; he was gazing amazedly
at Margaret.

"You see, Grant," said Roxana, with her foolish, pleasant laugh, "there
is nothing in it."

"In what?" asked Margaret innocently, emptying the hot water from her
cup.

"In the story of your engagement, dear," said her mother.

"Oh, yes, there is," replied Margaret with a smiling lift of her brows.
"It's quite true." Then, suddenly drawing herself up, she wheeled on
Grant with a frown as terrible as her grandmother's own. "Be off!" she
said imperiously.

Arkwright literally shrank from the room. As he reached the door he saw
her shiver and heard her mutter, "Reptile!"




CHAPTER XI

MADAM BOWKER HEARS THE NEWS


In the midst of profound hush Madam Bowker was charging her heavy
artillery, to train it upon and demolish the engagement certainly, and
probably Margaret, too. Just as she was about to open fire callers were
ushered in. As luck had it they were the three Stillwater girls, hastily
made-over Westerners, dressed with great show of fashion in what
purported to be imported French hats and gowns. An expert eye, however,
would instantly have pierced the secret of this formidable array of
plumes and furbelows. The Stillwaters fancied they had exquisite taste
and real genius in the art of dress. Those hats were made at home, were
adaptations of the imported hats--adaptations of the kind that "see" the
original and "go it a few better." As for the dresses, the Stillwaters
had found one of those treasures dear to a certain kind of woman, had
found a "woman just round the corner, and not established yet"--"I
assure you, my dear, she takes a mental picture of the most difficult
dress to copy, and you'd never know hers from the original--and SO
reasonable!"

In advance came Molly Stillwater, the youngest and prettiest and the
most aggressively dressed because her position as family beauty made it
incumbent upon her to lead the way in fashion. As soon as the greetings
were over--cold, indeed, from Madam Bowker, hysterical from
Roxana--Molly gushed out: "Just as we left home, Josh Craig came tearing
in. If possible, madder than a hatter--yes--really--" Molly was still
too young to have learned to control the mechanism of her mouth; thus,
her confused syntax seemed the result of the alarming and fascinating
contortions of her lips and tongue--"and, when we told him where we were
going he shouted out, 'Give Rita my love.'"

Margaret penetrated to the purpose to anger her against Craig. Was not
Craig intended by Mrs. Stillwater for Jessie, the eldest and only
serious one of the three? And was not his conduct, his hanging about
Margaret and his shying off from Jessie, thoroughly up on public
questions and competent to discuss them with anybody--was not his
conduct most menacing to her plans? Mrs. Stillwater, arranging for
matrimony for all her daughters, had decided that Jess was hopeless
except as a "serious woman," since she had neither figure nor face, nor
even abundant hair, which alone is enough to entangle some men. So, Jess
had been set to work at political economy, finance, at studying up the
political situations; and, if started right and not interfered with, she
could give as good account of her teaching as any phonograph.

Margaret welcomed Molly's message from Craig with a sweet smile. An
amused glance at the thunderous face of her grandmother, and she said,
"Perhaps it would interest you, dear, to know that he and I are
engaged."

What could Madam Bowker say? What could she do? Obviously, nothing. The
three Stillwaters became hysterical. Their comments and congratulations
were scraps of disjointed nonsense, and they got away under cover of
more arrivals, in as great disorder as if the heavy guns Madam Bowker
had stacked to the brim for Margaret had accidentally discharged into
them. Madam Bowker could wait no longer. "Margaret," said she, "help me
to my carriage."

Mrs. Severence gave her difficult daughter an appealing glance, as if
she feared the girl would cap the climax of rebellion by flatly
refusing; but Margaret said sweetly:

"Yes, Grandma."

The two left the room, the old lady leaning heavily on her granddaughter
and wielding her ebony staff as if getting her arm limbered to use it.
In the hall, she said fiercely, "To your room," and waved her staff
toward the stairway.

Margaret hesitated, shrugged her shoulders. She preceding, and Madam
Bowker ascending statelily afterward, they went up and were presently
alone in Margaret's pretty rose and gold boudoir, with the outer door
closed.

"Now!" exclaimed Madam Bowker.

"Not so loud, please," suggested the tranquil Margaret, "unless you wish
Selina to hear." She pointed to the door ajar. "She's sewing in there."

"Send the woman away," commanded the old lady.

But Margaret merely closed the door. "Well, Grandmother?"

"Sit at this desk," ordered the old lady, pointing with the ebony staff,
"and write a note to that man Craig, breaking the engagement. Say you
have thought it over and have decided it is quite impossible. And
to-morrow morning you go to New York with me."

Margaret seated herself on the lounge instead. "I'll do neither," said
she.

The old lady waved the end of her staff in a gesture of lofty disdain.
"As you please. But, if you do not, your allowance is withdrawn."

"Certainly," said Margaret. "I assumed that."

Madam Bowker gazed at her with eyes like tongues of flame. "And how do
you expect to live?" she inquired.

"That is OUR affair," replied the girl. "You say you are done with me.
Well, so am I done with you."

It was, as Margaret had said, because she was not afraid of her
grandmother that that formidable old lady respected her; and as she was
one of those who can give affection only where they give respect, she
loved Margaret--loved her with jealous and carping tenacity. The girl's
words of finality made her erect and unyielding soul shiver in a sudden
dreary blast of loneliness, that most tragic of all the storms that
sweep the ways of life. It was in the tone of the anger of love with the
beloved that she cried, "How DARE you engage yourself to such a person!"

"You served notice on me that I must marry," replied the girl, her own
tone much modified. "He was the chance that offered."

"The chance!" Madam Bowker smiled with caustic scorn, "He's not a
chance."

"You ordered me to marry. I am marrying. And you are violating your
promise. But I expected it."

"My promise? What do you mean?"

"You told me if I'd marry you'd continue my allowance after marriage.
You even hinted you'd increase it."

"But this is no marriage. I should consider a connection between such a
man and a Severence as a mere vulgar intrigue. You might as well run
away with a coachman. I have known few coachmen so ill-bred--so
repellent--as this Craig."

Margaret laughed cheerfully. "He isn't what you'd call polished, is he?"

Her grandmother studied her keenly. "Margaret," she finally said, "this
is some scheme of yours. You are using this engagement to help you to
something else."

"I refused Grant Arkwright just before you came."

"You--refused--Arkwright?"

"My original plan was to trap Grant by making him jealous of Craig. But
I abandoned it."

"And why?"

"A remnant of decency."

"I doubt it," said the old lady.

"So should I in the circumstances. We're a pretty queer lot, aren't we?
You, for instance--on the verge of the grave, and breaking your promise
to me as if a promise were nothing."

Mrs. Bowker's ebon staff twitched convulsively and her terrible eyes
were like the vent-holes of internal fires; but she managed her rage
with a skill that was high tribute to her will-power. "You are right in
selecting this clown--this tag-rag," said she. "You and he, I see, are
peculiarly suited to each other.... My only regret is that in my blind
affection I have wasted all these years and all those thousands of
dollars on you." Madam Bowker affected publicly a fine scorn of money
and all that thereto appertained; but privately she was a true
aristocrat in her reverence and consideration for that which is the bone
and blood of aristocracy.

"Nothing so stupid and silly as regret," said Margaret, with placid
philosophy of manner. "I, too, could think of things I regret. But I'm
putting my whole mind on the future."

"Future!" Madam Bowker laughed. "Why, my child, you have no future.
Within two years you'll either be disgracefully divorced, or the wife of
a little lawyer in a little Western town."

"But I'll have my husband and my children. What more can a woman ask?"

The old lady scrutinized her granddaughter's tranquil, delicate face in
utter amazement. She could find nothing on which to base a hope that the
girl was either jesting or posing. "Margaret," she cried, "are you
CRAZY?"

"Do you think a desire for a home, and a husband who adores one, and
children whom one adores is evidence of insanity?"

"Yes, you are mad--quite mad!"

"I suppose you think that fretting about all my seasons without an offer
worth accepting has driven me out of my senses. Sometimes I think so,
too." And Margaret lapsed into abstracted, dreamy silence.

"Do you pretend that you--you--care for--this person?" inquired the old
lady.

"I can't discuss him with you, Grandmother," replied the girl. "You know
you have washed your hands of me."

"I shall never give up," cried the old lady vehemently, "until I rescue
you. I'll not permit this disgrace. I'll have him driven out of
Washington."

"Yes, you might try that," said Margaret. "I don't want him to stay
here. I am sick--sick to death--of all this. I loathe everything I ever
liked. It almost seems to me I'd prefer living in a cabin in the
back-woods. I've just wakened to what it really means--no love, no
friendship, only pretense and show, rivalry in silly extravagance,
aimless running to and fro among people that care nothing for one, and
that one cares nothing for. If you could see it as I see it you'd
understand."

But Madam Bowker had thought all her life in terms of fashion and
society. She was not in the least impressed. "Balderdash!" said she with
a jab at the floor with the ebony staff. "Don't pose before me. You know
very well you're marrying this man because you believe he will amount to
a great deal."

Margaret beamed upon her grandmother triumphantly, as if she had stepped
into a trap that had been set for her. "And your only reason for being
angry," cried she, "is that you don't believe he will."

"I know he won't. He can't. Stillwater has kept him solely because that
unspeakable wife of his hopes to foist their dull, ugly eldest girl on
him."

"You think a man as shrewd as Stillwater would marry his daughter to a
nobody?"

"It's useless for you to argue, Margaret," snapped the old lady. "The
man's impossible--for a Severence. I shall stop the engagement."

"You can't," rejoined Margaret calmly. "My mind is made up. And along
with several other qualities, Grandmother, dear, I've inherited your
will."

"Will without wit--is there anything worse? But I know you are not
serious. It is merely a mood--the result of a profound discouragement.
My dear child, let me assure you it is no unusual thing for a girl of
your position, yet without money, to have no offers at all. You should
not believe the silly lies your girlfriends tell about having bushels of
offers. No girl has bushels of offers unless she makes herself common
and familiar with all kinds of men--and takes their loose talk
seriously. Most men wouldn't dare offer themselves to you. The impudence
of this Craig! You should have ordered him out of your presence."

Margaret, remembering how Craig had seized her, smiled.

"I admit I have been inconsiderate in urging you so vigorously,"
continued her grandmother. "I thought I had observed a tendency to
fritter. I wished you to stop trifling with Grant Arkwright--or, rather,
to stop his trifling with you. Come, now, my dear, let me put an end to
this engagement. And you will marry Grant, and your future will be
bright and assured."

Margaret shook her head. "I have promised," said she, and her expression
would have thrilled Lucia.

Madam Bowker was singularly patient with this evidence of
sentimentalism. "That's fine and noble of you. But you didn't realize
what a grave step you were taking, and you--"

"Yes, but I did. If ever anything was deliberate on a woman's part, that
engagement was." A bright spot burned in each of the girl's cheeks. "He
didn't really propose. I pretended to misunderstand him."

Her grandmother stared.

"You needn't look at me like that," exclaimed Margaret. "You know very
well that Grandfather Bowker never would have married you if you hadn't
fairly compelled him. I heard him tease you about it once when I was a
little girl."

It was Madam Bowker's turn to redden. She deigned to smile. "Men are so
foolish," observed she, "that women often have to guide them. There
would be few marriages of the right sort if the men were not managed."

Margaret nodded assent. "I realize that now," said she. Earnestly:
"Grandmother, try to make the best of this engagement of mine. When a
woman, a woman as experienced and sensible as I am, makes up her mind a
certain man is the man for her, is it wise to interfere?"

Madam Bowker, struck by the searching wisdom of this remark, was
silenced for the moment. In the interval of thought she reflected that
she would do well to take counsel of herself alone in proceeding to
break this engagement. "You are on the verge of making a terrible
misstep, child," said she with a gentleness she had rarely shown even to
her favorite grandchild. "I shall think it over, and you will think it
over. At least, promise me you will not see Craig for a few days."

Margaret hesitated. Her grandmother, partly by this unusual gentleness,
partly by inducing the calmer reflection of the second thought, had
shaken her purpose more than she would have believed possible. "If I've
made a mistake," said she, "isn't seeing him the best way to realize
it?"

"Yes," instantly and emphatically admitted the acute old lady. "See him,
by all means. See as much of him as possible. And in a few days you will
be laughing at yourself--and very much ashamed."

"I wonder," said Margaret aloud, but chiefly to herself.

And Madam Bowker, seeing the doubt in her face, only a faint reflection
of the doubt that must be within, went away content.




CHAPTER XII

PUTTING DOWN A MUTINY


Margaret made it an all but inflexible rule not to go out, but to rest
and repair one evening in each week; that was the evening, under the
rule, but she would have broken the rule had any opportunity offered. Of
course, for the first time since the season began, no one sent or
telephoned to ask her to fill in at the last moment. She half-expected
Craig, though she knew he was to be busy; he neither came nor called up.
She dined moodily with the family, sat surlily in a corner of the
veranda until ten o'clock, hid herself in bed. She feared she would have
a sleepless night. But she had eaten no dinner; and, as indigestion is
about the only thing that will keep a healthy human being awake, she
slept dreamlessly, soundly, not waking until Selina slowly and softly
opened the inner blinds of her bedroom at eight the next morning.

There are people who are wholly indifferent about their surroundings,
and lead the life dictated by civilized custom only because they are
slaves of custom, Margaret was not one of these. She not only adopted
all the comforts and luxuries that were current, she also spent much
tune in thinking out new luxuries, new refinements upon those she
already had. She was through, and through the luxurious idler; she made
of idling a career--pursued it with intelligent purpose where others
simply drifted, yawning when pastimes were not provided for them. She
was as industrious and ingenious at her career as a Craig at furthering
himself and his ideas in a public career.

Like the others of her class she left the care of her mind to chance. As
she had a naturally good mind and a bird-like instinct for flitting
everywhere, picking out the food from the chaff, she made an excellent
showing even in the company of serious people. But that was accident.
Her person was her real care. To her luxurious, sensuous nature every
kind of pleasurable physical sensation made keen appeal, and she strove
in every way to make it keener. She took the greatest care of her
health, because health meant beauty and every nerve and organ in
condition to enjoy to its uttermost capacity.

Because of this care it was often full three hours and half between the
entrance of Selina and her own exit, dressed and ready for the day. And
those three hours and a half were the happiest of her day usually,
because they were full of those physical sensations in which she most
delighted. Her first move, after Selina had awakened her, was to spend
half an hour in "getting the yawns out." She had learned this
interesting, pleasant and amusing trick from a baby in a house where she
had once spent a week. She would extend herself at full length in the
bed, and then slowly stretch each separate muscle of arm and leg, of
foot and hand, of neck and shoulders and waist. This stretching process
was accompanied by a series of prolonged, profound, luxurious yawns.

The yawning exercise completed, she rose and took before a long mirror a
series of other exercises, some to strengthen her waist, others to keep
her back straight and supple, others to make firm the contour of her
face and throat. A half-hour of this, then came her bath. This was no
hurried plunge, drying and away, but a long and elaborate function at
which Selina assisted. There had to be water of three temperatures; a
dozen different kinds of brushes, soaps, towels and other apparatus
participated. When it was finished Margaret's skin glowed and shone, was
soft and smooth and exhaled a delicious odor of lilacs. During the
exercises Selina had been getting ready the clothes for the
day--everything fresh throughout, and everything delicately redolent of
the same essence of lilacs with which Selina had rubbed her from hair to
tips of fingers and feet. The clothes were put on slowly, for Margaret
delighted in the feeling of soft silks and laces being drawn over her
skin. She let Selina do every possible bit of work, and gave herself up
wholly to the joy of being cared for.

"There isn't any real reason why I shouldn't be doing this for you,
instead of your doing it for me--is there, Selina?" mused she aloud.

"Goodness gracious, Miss Rita!" exclaimed Selina, horrified. "I wouldn't
have it done for anything. I was brought up to be retiring about
dressing. It was my mother's dying boast that no man, nor no woman, had
ever seen her, a grown woman, except fully dressed."

"Really?" said Margaret absently. She stood up, surveyed herself in the
triple mirror--back, front, sides. "So many women never look at
themselves in the back," observed she, "or know how their skirts hang
about the feet. I believe in dressing for all points of view."

"You certainly are just perfect," said the adoring Selina, not the least
part of her admiring satisfaction due to the fact that the toilette was
largely the creation of her own hands. "And you smell like a real
lady--not noisy, like some that comes here. I hate to touch their wraps
or to lay 'em down in the house. But you--It's one of them smells that
you ain't sure whether you smelt it or dreamed it."

"Pretty good, Selina!" said Margaret. She could not but be pleased with
such a compliment, one that could have been suggested only by the truth.
"The hair went up well this morning, didn't it?"

"Lovely--especially in the back. It looks as if it had been marcelled,
without that common, barbery stiffness-like."

"Yes, the back is good. And I like this blouse. I must wear it oftener."

"You can't afford to favor it too much, Miss Rita. You know you've got
over thirty, all of them beauties."

"Some day, when I get time, we must look through my clothes. I want to
give you a lot of them.... What DOES become of the time? Here it is,
nearly eleven. See if breakfast has come up. I'll finish dressing
afterward if it has."

It had. It was upon a small table in the rose and gold boudoir. And the
sun, shining softly in at the creeper-shaded window, rejoiced in the
surpassing brightness and cleanness of the dishes of silver and thinnest
porcelain and cut glass. Margaret thought eating in bed a "filthy,
foreign fad," and never indulged in it. She seated herself lazily, drank
her coffee, and ate her roll and her egg slowly, deliberately, reading
her letters and glancing at the paper. A charming picture she made--the
soft, white Valenciennes of her matinee falling away from her throat and
setting off the clean, smooth healthiness of her skin, the blackness of
her vital hair; from the white lace of her petticoat's plaited flounces
peered one of her slim feet, a satin slipper upon the end of it. At the
top of the heap of letters lay one she would have recognized, she
thought, had she never seen the handwriting before.

"Sure to be upsetting," reflected she; and she laid it aside, glancing
now and then at the bold, nervous, irregular hand and speculating about
the contents and about the writer.

She had gone to bed greatly disturbed in mind as to whether she was
doing well to marry the obstreperous Westerner. "He fascinates me in a
wild, weird sort of a way when I'm with him," she had said to herself
before going to sleep, "and the idea of him is fascinating in certain
moods. And it is a temptation to take hold of him and master and train
him--like broncho-busting. But is it interesting enough for--for
marriage? Wouldn't I get horribly tired? Wouldn't Grant and humdrum be
better? less wearying?" And when she awakened she found her problem all
but solved. "I'll send him packing and take Grant," she found herself
saying, "unless some excellent reason for doing otherwise appears.
Grandmother was right. Engaging myself to him was a mood." Once more she
was all for luxury and ease and calmness, for the pleasant, soothing,
cut-and-dried thing. "A cold bath or a rough rub-down now and then, once
in a long while, is all very well. It makes one appreciate comfort and
luxury more. But that sort of thing every day--many times each day--"
Margaret felt her nerves rebelling as at the stroking of velvet the
wrong way.

She read all her other letters, finished her toilette, had on her hat,
and was having Selina put on her boots when she opened Craig's letter
and read:

"I must have been out of my mind this afternoon. You are wildly
fascinating, but you are not for me. If I led you to believe that I
wished to marry you, pray forget it. We should make each other unhappy
and, worse still, uncomfortable.

"Do I make myself clear? We are not engaged. I hope you will marry
Arkwright; a fine fellow, in every way suited to you, and, I happen to
know, madly in love with you. Please try to forgive me. If you have any
feeling for me stronger than friendship you will surely get over it.

"Anyhow, we couldn't marry. That is settled.

"Let me have an answer to this. I shall be upset until I hear." No
beginning. No end. Just a bald, brutal casting-off. A hint--more than a
hint--of a fear that she would try to hold him in spite of himself. She
smiled--small, even teeth clenched and eyelids contracted cruelly--as
she read a second time, with this unflattering suggestion obtruding. The
humiliation of being jilted! And by such a man!--the private shame--the
public disgrace--She sprang up, crunching her foot hard down upon one of
Selina's hands. "What is it?" said she angrily, at her maid's cry of
pain.

"Nothing, Miss," replied Selina, quickly hiding the wounded hand. "You
moved so quick I hadn't time to draw away. That was all."

"Then finish that boot!"

Selina had to expose the hand, Margaret looked down at it indifferently,
though her heel had torn the skin away from the edge of the palm and had
cut into the flesh.

"Hurry!" she ordered fiercely, as Selina fumbled and bungled.

She twitched and frowned with impatience while Selina finished buttoning
the boot, then descended and called Williams. "Get me Mr. Craig on the
telephone," she said.

"He's been calling you up several times to-day, ma'am,--"

"Ah!" exclaimed Margaret, eyes flashing with sudden delight.

"But we wouldn't disturb you."

"That was right," said Margaret. She was beaming now, was all sunny good
humor. Even her black hair seemed to glisten in her simile. So! He had
been calling up! Poor fool, not to realize that she would draw the
correct inference from this anxiety.

"Shall I call him?" "No. I'll wait. Probably he'll call again soon. I'll
be in the library."

She had not been roaming restlessly about there many minutes before
Williams appeared "He's come, himself, ma'am," said he. "I told him I
didn't know whether you'd be able to see him or not."

"Thank you, Williams," said Margaret sweetly. "Order the carriage to
come round at once. Leave Mr. Craig in the drawing-room. I'll speak to
him on the way out."

She dashed upstairs. "Selina! Selina!" she called. And when Selina came:
"Let me see that hand. I hurt you because I got news that went through
me like a knife. You understand, don't you?"

"It was nothing, Miss Rita," protested Selina. "I'd forgot it myself
already."

But Margaret insisted on assuring herself with her own eyes, got blood
on her white gloves, had to change them. As she descended she was
putting on the fresh pair--a new pair. How vastly more than even the
normal is a man's disadvantage in a "serious" interview with a woman if
she is putting on new gloves! She is perfectly free to seem occupied or
not, as suits her convenience; and she can, by wrestling with the
gloves, interrupt him without speech, distract his attention, fiddle his
thoughts, give him a sense of imbecile futility, and all the time offer
him no cause for resentment against her. He himself seems in the wrong;
she is merely putting On her gloves.

She was wrong in her guess that Arkwright had been at him. He had simply
succumbed to his own fears and forebodings, gathered in force as soon as
he was not protected from them by the spell of her presence. The mystery
of the feminine is bred into men from earliest infancy, is intensified
when passion comes and excites the imagination into fantastic activity
about women. No man, not the most experienced, not the most depraved, is
ever able wholly to divest himself of this awe, except, occasionally, in
the case of some particular woman. Awe makes one ill at ease; the woman
who, by whatever means, is able to cure a man of his awe of her, to make
him feel free to be himself, is often able to hold him, even though he
despises her or is indifferent to her; on the other hand, the woman who
remains an object of awe to a man is certain to lose him. He may be
proud to have her as his wife, as the mother of his children, but he
will seek some other woman to give her the place of intimacy in his
life.

At the outset on an acquaintance between a man and a woman his awe for
her as the embodiment of the mystery feminine is of great advantage to
her; it often gets him for her as a husband. In this particular case of
Margaret Severence and Joshua Craig, while his awe of her was an
advantage, it was also a disadvantage. It attracted him; it perilously
repelled him. He liked to release his robust imagination upon those
charms of hers--those delicate, refined beauties that filled him with
longings, delicious in their intensity, longings as primeval in kind as
well as in force as those that set delirious the savage hordes from the
German forests when they first poured down over the Alps and beheld the
jewels and marbles and round, smooth, soft women of Italy's ancient
civilization. But at the same time he had the unmistakable, the
terrifying feeling of dare-devil sacrilege. What were his coarse hands
doing, dabbling in silks and cobweb laces and embroideries? Silk
fascinated him; but, while he did not like calico so well, he felt at
home with it. Yes, he had seized her, had crushed her madly in the
embrace of his plowman arms. But that seemed now a freak of courage, a
drunken man's deed, wholly beyond the nerve of sobriety.

Then, on top of all this awe was his reverence for her as an aristocrat,
a representative of people who had for generations been far removed
above the coarse realities of the only life he knew. And it was this
adoration of caste that determined him. He might overcome his awe of her
person and dress, of her tangible trappings; but how could he ever hope
to bridge the gulf between himself and her intangible superiorities? He
was ashamed of himself, enraged against himself for this feeling of worm
gazing up at star. It made a mockery of all his arrogant, noisy
protestations of equality and democracy.

"The fault is not in my ideas," thought he; "THEY'RE all right. The
fault's in me--damned snob that I am!"

Clearly, if he was to be what he wished, if he was to become what he had
thought he was, he must get away from this sinister influence, from this
temptation that had made him, at first onset, not merely stumble, but
fall flat and begin to grovel. "She is a superior woman--that is no snob
notion of mine," reflected he. "But from the way I falter and get weak
in the knees, she ought to be superhuman--which she isn't, by any means.
No, there's only one thing to do--keep away from her. Besides, I'd feel
miserable with her about as my wife." My wife! The very words threw him
into a cold sweat.

So the note was written, was feverishly dispatched.

No sooner was it sent than it was repented. "What's the matter with me?"
demanded he of himself, as his courage came swaggering back, once the
danger had been banished. "Why, the best is not too good for me. She is
the best, and mighty proud she ought to be of a man who, by sheer force
of character, has lifted himself to where I am and who, is going to be
what I shall be. Mighty proud! There are only two realities--money and
brains. I've certainly got more brains than she or any of her set; as
for money, she hasn't got that. The superiority is all on my side. I'm
the one that ought to feel condescending."

What had he said in his note? Recalling it as well as he could--for it
was one, the last, of more than a dozen notes he had written in two
hours of that evening--recalling phrases he was pretty sure he had put
into the one he had finally sent, in despair of a better, it seemed to
him he had given her a wholly false impression--an impression of her
superiority and of his fear and awe. That would never do. He must set
her right, must show her he was breaking the engagement only because she
was not up to his standard. Besides, he wished to see her again to make
sure he had been victimized into an engagement by a purely physical,
swiftly-evanescent imagining. Yes, he must see her, must have a look at
her, must have a talk with her.

"It's the only decent, courageous thing to do in the circumstances.
Sending that note looked like cowardice--would be cowardice if I didn't
follow it up with a visit. And whatever else I am, surely I'm not a
coward!"

Margaret had indulged in no masculine ingenuities of logic. Woman-like,
she had gone straight to the practical point: Craig had written instead
of coming--he was, therefore, afraid of her. Having written he had not
fled, but had come--he was, therefore, attracted by her still. Obviously
the game lay in her own hands, for what more could woman ask than that a
man be both afraid and attracted? A little management and she not only
would save herself from the threatened humiliation of being
jilted--jilted by an uncouth nobody of a Josh Craig!--but also would
have him in durance, to punish his presumption at her own good pleasure
as to time and manner. If Joshua Craig, hardy plodder in the arduous
pathway from plowboy to President, could have seen what was in the mind
so delicately and so aristocratically entempled in that graceful,
slender, ultra-feminine body of Margaret Severence's, as she descended
the stairs, putting fresh gloves upon her beautiful, idle hands, he
would have borrowed wings of the wind and would have fled as from a
gorgon.

But as she entered the room nothing could have seemed less formidable
except to the heart. Her spring dress--she was wearing it for the first
time--was of a pale green, suggesting the draperies of islands of
enchantment. Its lines coincided with the lines of her figure. Her hat,
trimmed to match, formed a magic halo for her hair; and it, in turn, was
the entrancing frame in which her small, quiet, pallid face was
set--that delicate, sensitive face, from which shone, now softly and now
brilliantly, those hazel eyes a painter could have borrowed for a wood
nymph. In the doorway, before greeting him, she paused.

"Williams," she called, and Craig was thrilled by her "high-bred"
accent, that seemed to him to make of the English language a medium
different from the one he used and heard out home.

"Yes, ma'am," came the answer in the subtly-deferential tone of the
aristocracy of menialdom, conjuring for Craig, with the aid of the woman
herself and that aristocratic old room, a complete picture of the life
of upper-class splendor.

"Did you order the carriage, as I asked?"

"Yes, ma'am; it's at the door."

"Thank you." And Margaret turned upon an overwhelmed and dazzled Craig.
He did not dream that she had calculated it all with a view to
impressing him--and, if he had, the effect would hardly have been
lessened. Whether planned or not, were not toilette and accent, and
butler and carriage, all realities? Nor did he suspect shrewd
calculations upon snobbishness when she said: "I was in such haste to
dress that I hurt my poor maid's hand as she was lacing my boot"--she
thrust out one slender, elegantly-clad foot--"no, buttoning it, I mean."
Oh, these ladies, these ladies of the new world--and the old--that are
so used to maids and carriages and being waited upon that they no more
think of display in connection with them than one would think of
boasting two legs or two eyes!

The advantage from being in the act of putting on gloves began at the
very outset. It helped to save her from deciding a mode of salutation.
She did not salute him at all. It made the meeting a continuation,
without break, of their previous meeting.

"How do you like my new dress?" she asked, as she drew the long part of
her glove up her round, white arm.

"Beautiful," he stammered.

From the hazel eyes shot a shy-bold glance straight into his; it was as
if those slim, taper fingers of hers had twanged the strings of the lyre
of his nerves. "You despise all this sort of trumpery, don't you?"

"Sometimes a man says things he don't mean," he found tongue to utter.

"I understand," said she sympathetically, and he knew she meant his
note. But he was too overwhelmed by his surroundings, by her envelope of
aristocracy, too fascinated by her physical charm, too flattered by
being on such terms with such a personage, to venture to set her right.
Also, she gave him little chance; for in almost the same breath she went
on: "I've been in such moods!--since yesterday afternoon--like the
devils in Milton, isn't it?--that are swept from lands of ice to lands
of fire?--or is it in Dante? I never can remember. We must go straight
off, for I'm late. You can come, too--it's only a little meeting about
some charity or other. All rich people, of course--except poor me. I'm
sure I don't know why they asked me. I can give little besides advice.
How handsome you are to-day, Joshua!"

It was the first time she had called him by his first name. She repeated
it--"Joshua--Joshua"--as when one hits upon some particularly sweet and
penetrating chord at the piano, and strikes it again, and yet again.

They were in the carriage, being whirled toward the great palace of Mrs.
Whitson, the latest and grandest of plutocratic monuments that have
arisen upon the ruins of the old, old-fashioned American Washington. And
she talked incessantly--a limpid, sparkling, joyous strain. And either
her hand sought his or his hers; at any rate, he found himself holding
her hand. They were almost there before he contrived to say, very
falteringly: "You got my note?"

She laughed gayly. "Oh, yes--and your own answer to it, Joshua--my
love"--the "my love" in a much lower, softer tone, with suggestion of
sudden tears trembling to fall.

"But I meant it," he said, though in tones little like any he was used
to hearing from his own lips. But he would not dare look himself in the
face again if he did not make at least a wriggle before surrendering.

"We mean many things in as many moods," said she. "I knew it was only a
mood. I knew you'd come. I've such a sense of implicit reliance on you.
You are to me like the burr that shields the nut from all harm. How
secure and cozy and happy the nut must feel in its burr. As I've walked
through the woods in the autumn I've often thought of that, and how, if
I ever married--"

A wild impulse to seize her and crush her, as one crushes the ripe berry
for its perfume and taste, flared in his eyes. She drew away to check
it. "Not now," she murmured, and her quick breath and flush were not
art, but nature. "Not just now--Joshua."

"You make me--insane," he muttered between his teeth. "God!--I DO love
you!"

They were arrived; were descending. And she led him, abject and in
chains, into the presence of Mrs. Whitson and the most fashionable of
the fashionable set. "So you've brought him along?" cried Mrs. Whitson.
"Well, I congratulate you, Mr. Craig. It's very evident you have a
shrewd eye for the prizes of life, and a strong, long reach to grasp
them."

Craig, red and awkward, laughed hysterically, flung out a few
meaningless phrases. Margaret murmured: "Perhaps you'd rather go?" She
wished him to go, now that she had exhibited him.

"Yes--for Heaven's sake!" he exclaimed. He was clutching for his
braggart pretense of ease in "high society" like a drowning man scooping
armsful of elusive water.

She steered her captive in her quiet, easeful manner toward the door,
sent him forth with a farewell glance and an affectionate interrogative,
"This afternoon, at half-past four?" that could not be disobeyed.

The mutiny was quelled. The mutineer was in irons. She had told him she
felt quite sure about him; and it was true, in a sense rather different
from what the words had conveyed to him. But it was of the kind of
security that takes care to keep the eye wakeful and the powder dry. She
felt she did not have him yet where she could trust him out of her sight
and could herself decide whether the engagement was to be kept or
broken.

"Why, my dear," said Mrs. Whitson, "he positively feeds out of your
hand! And such a wild man he seemed!"

Margaret, in the highest of high spirits, laughed with pleasure.

"A good many," pursued Mrs. Whitson, "think you are throwing yourself
away for love. But as I size men up--and my husband says I'm a wonder at
it--I think he'll be biggest figure of all at one end of Pennsylvania
Avenue or the other. Perhaps, first one end, then at the other."

"I'm glad to hear you say that," cried Margaret, with the keen
enthusiasm with which, in time of doubt, we welcome an ally to our own
private judgment. "But," she hastened to add, with veiled eye and
slightly tremulous lip, "I'm ready to take whatever comes."

"That's right! That's right!" exclaimed Mrs. Whitson, a tender and
dreamy sentimentalist except in her own affairs. "Love is best!"

"Love is best," echoed Margaret.




CHAPTER XIII

A MEMORABLE MEETING


In that administration the man "next" the President was his Secretary of
the Treasury, John Branch, cold and smooth and able, secreting, in his
pale-gray soul, an icy passion for power more relentless than heat ever
bred. To speak of him as unscrupulous would be like attributing moral
quality to a reptile. For him principle did not exist, except as an
eccentricity of some strangely-constructed men which might be used to
keep them down. Life presented itself to him as a series of mathematical
problems, as an examination in mathematics. To pass it meant a diploma
as a success; to fail to pass meant the abysmal disgrace of obscurity.
Cheating was permissible, but not to get caught at it. Otherwise Branch
was the most amiable of men; and why should he not have been, his
digestion being good, his income sufficient, his domestic relations
admirable, and his reputation for ability growing apace? No one
respected him, no one liked him; but every one admired him as an
intellect moving quite unhampered of the restraints of conscience. In
person he was rather handsome, the weasel type of his face being well
concealed by fat and by judicious arrangements of mustache and
side-whiskers. By profession he was a lawyer, and had been most
successful as adviser to wholesale thieves on depredations bent or in
search of immunity for depredations done. It was incomprehensible to him
why he was unpopular with the masses. It irritated him that they could
not appreciate his purely abstract point of view on life; it irritated
him because his unpopularity with them meant that there were limits, and
very narrow ones, to his ambition.

It was to John Branch that Madam Bowker applied when she decided that
Joshua Craig must be driven from Washington. She sent for him, and he
came promptly. He liked to talk to her because she was one of the few
who thoroughly appreciated and sympathized with his ideas of success in
life. Also, he respected her as a personage in Washington, and had it in
mind to marry his daughter, as soon as she should be old enough, to one
of her grandnephews.

"Branch," said the old lady, with an emphatic wave of the ebony staff,
"I want that Craig man sent away from Washington."

"Josh, the joke?" said Branch with a slow, sneering smile that had an
acidity in it interesting in one so even as he.

"That's the man. I want you to rid us of him. He has been paying
attention to Margaret, and she is encouraging him."

"Impossible!" declared Branch. "Margaret is a sensible girl and Josh has
nothing--never will have anything."

"A mere politician!" declared Madam Bowker. "Like hundreds of others
that wink in with each administration and wink out with it. He will not
succeed even at his own miserable political game--and, if he did, he
would still be poor as poverty."

"I don't think you need worry about him and Margaret. I repeat, she is
sensible--an admirable girl--admirably brought up. She has distinction.
She has the right instincts."

Madam Bowker punctuated each of these compliments with a nod of her
haughty head. "But," said she, "Craig has convinced her that he will
amount to something."

"Ridiculous!" scoffed Branch, with an airy wave of the hand. But there
was in his tone a concealment that set the shrewd old lady furtively to
watching him.

"What do they think of him among the public men?" inquired she.

"He's laughed at there as everywhere."

Her vigilance was rewarded; as Branch said that, malignance hissed, ever
so softly, in his suave voice, and the snake peered furtively from his
calm, cold eyes. Old Madam Bowker had not lived at Washington's great
green tables for the gamblers of ambition all those years without
learning the significance of eyes and tone. For one politician to speak
thus venomously of another was sure sign that that other was of
consequence; for John Branch, a very Machiavelli at self-concealment and
usually too egotistic to be jealous, thus to speak, and that, without
being able to conceal his venom--"Can it be possible," thought the old
lady, "that this Craig is about to be a somebody?" Aloud she said: "He
is a preposterous creature. The vilest manners I've seen in three
generations of Washington life. And what vanity, what assumptions! The
first time I met him he lectured me as if I were a schoolgirl--lectured
me about the idle, worthless life he said I lead. I decided not to
recognize him next time I saw him. Up he came, and without noticing that
I did not speak he poured out such insults that I was answering him
before I realized it."

"He certainly is a most exasperating person."

"So Western! The very worst the West ever sent us. I don't understand
how he happened to get about among decent people. Oh, I remember, it was
Grant Arkwright who did it. Grant picked him up on one of his shooting
trips."

"He is insufferable," said Branch.

"You must see that the President gets rid of him. I want it done at
once. I assure you, John, my alarm is not imaginary. Margaret is very
young, has a streak of sentimentality in her. Besides, you know how weak
the strongest women are before a determined assault. If the other sex
wasn't brought up to have a purely imaginary fear of them I don't know
what would become of the world."

Branch smiled appreciatively but absently. "The same is true of men,"
said he. "The few who amount to anything--at least in active life--base
their calculations on the timidity and folly of their fellows rather
than upon their own abilities. About Craig--I'd like to oblige you,
but--well, you see, there is--there are certain political exigencies--"

"Nonsense!" interrupted the old lady. "I know the relative importance of
officials. A mere understrapper like Craig is of no importance."

"The fact is," said Branch with great reluctance, "the President has
taken a fancy to Craig."

Branch said it as if he hardly expected to be believed--and he wasn't.
"To be perfectly frank," he went on, "you know the President, how easily
alarmed he is. He's afraid Craig may, by some crazy turn of this crazy
game of politics, develop into a Presidential possibility. Of course,
it's quite absurd, but--"

"The more reason for getting rid of him."

"The contrary. The President probably reasons that, if Craig has any
element of danger in him the nearer he keeps him to himself the better.
Craig, back in the West, would be free to grow. Here the President can
keep him down if necessary. And I think our friend Stillwater will
succeed in entangling him disastrously in some case sooner or later."
There Branch laughed pleasantly, as at the finding of the correct
solution to a puzzling problem in analytics or calculus.

"What a cowardly, shadow-fighting, shadow-dodging set you men are!"
commented Madam Bowker. Though she did not show it, as a man certainly
would, her brain was busy with a wholly different phase of the matter
they were discussing.

"Isn't Stillwater going to retire?" she asked presently.

Branch startled. "Where did you hear that?" he demanded.

The old lady smiled. "There are no secrets in Washington," said she.
"Who will be his successor?"

Branch's cold face showed annoyance. "You mustn't speak of it," replied
he, "but the President is actually thinking of appointing Craig--in case
the vacancy should occur. Of course, I am trying to make him see the
folly of such a proceeding, but--You are right. Men are cowards. That
insufferable upstart is actually bullying the President into a state of
terror. Already he has compelled him to prosecute some of our best
friends out in the Western country, and if the Courts weren't with us--"
Branch checked himself abruptly. It was not the first time he had caught
himself yielding to Washington's insidious custom of rank gossip about
everything and everybody; but it was about his worst offense in that
direction. "I'm getting to be as leaky as Josh Craig is--as he SEEMS to
be," he muttered, so low, however, that not even her sharp ears caught
it.

"So it is to be Attorney-General Craig," said the old lady, apparently
abstracted but in reality catlike in watchfulness, and noting with
secret pleasure Branch's anger at this explicit statement of the triumph
of his hated rival.

"Isn't it frightful?" said Branch. "What is the country coming to?"

But she had lost interest in the conversation. She rid herself of Branch
as speedily as the circumstances permitted. She wished to be alone, to
revolve the situation slowly from the new viewpoint which Branch,
half-unconsciously and wholly reluctantly, had opened up. She had lived
a long time, had occupied a front bench overlooking one of the world's
chief arenas of action. And, as she had an acute if narrow mind, she had
learned to judge intelligently and to note those little signs that are,
to the intelligent, the essentials, full of significance. She had
concealed her amazement from Branch, but amazed she was, less at his
news of Craig as a personage full of potentiality than at her own
failure, through the inexcusable, manlike stupidity of personal pique,
to discern the real man behind his mannerisms. "No wonder he has pushed
so far, so fast," reflected she; for she appreciated that in a man of
action manners should always be a cloak behind which his real campaign
forms. It must be a fitting cloak, it should be a becoming one; But
always a cloak. "He fools everybody, apparently," thought she. "The
results of his secret work alarm them; then, along he comes, with his
braggart, offensive manners, his childish posings, his peacock vanity,
and they are lulled into false security. They think what he did was an
accident that will not happen again. Why, he fooled even ME!"

That is always, with every human being, the supreme test, necessarily.
Usually it means nothing. In this case of Cornelia Bowker it meant a
great deal; for Cornelia Bowker was not easily fooled. The few who
appear in the arena of ambition with no game to play, with only
sentiment and principle to further, the few who could easily have fooled
her cynical, worldly wisdom could safely be disregarded. She felt it was
the part of good sense to look the young man over again, to make sure
that the new light upon him was not false light. "He may be a mere
accident in spite of his remarkable successes," thought she. "The same
number sometimes comes a dozen times in succession at roulette." She
sent her handy man, secretary, social manager and organizer, MAÎTRE
D'HOTEL, companion, scout, gossip, purveyor of comfort, J. Worthington
Whitesides, to seek out Craig and to bring him before her forthwith.

As Mr. Whitesides was a tremendous swell, in dress, in manner and in
accent, Craig was much impressed when he came into his office in the
Department of Justice. Whitesides' manner, the result of Madam Bowker's
personal teaching, was one of his chief assets in maintaining and
extending her social power. It gave the greatest solemnity and dignity
to a summons from her, filled the recipient with pleasure and with awe,
prepared him or her to be duly impressed and in a frame of mind suitable
to Madam Bowker's purposes.

"I come from Madam Bowker," he explained to Craig, humbly conscious of
his own disarray and toiler's unkemptness. "She would be greatly obliged
if you will give her a few minutes of your time. She begs you to excuse
the informality. She has sent me in her carriage, and it will be a great
satisfaction to her if you will accompany me."

Craig's first impulse of snobbish satisfaction was immediately followed
by misgivings. Perhaps this was not the formal acceptance of the
situation by the terrible old woman as he had, on the spur, fancied.
Perhaps she had sent for him to read him the riot act. Then he
remembered that he was himself in doubt as to whether he wished to marry
the young woman. All his doubts came flooding back, and his
terrors--for, in some of its aspects, the idea of being married to this
delicate flower of conventionality and gentle breeding was literally a
terror to him. If he went he would be still further committing himself;
all Washington would soon know of the journey in the carriage of Madam
Bowker, the most imposing car of state that appeared in the streets of
the Capital, a vast, lofty affair, drawn by magnificent horses, the
coachman and footman in costly, quiet livery, high ensconced.

"No, thanks," said Josh, in his most bustlingly-bounderish manner. "Tell
the old lady I'm up to my neck in work."

Mr. Whitesides was taken aback, but he was far too polished a gentleman
to show it. "Perhaps later?" he suggested.

"I've promised Margaret to go out there later. If I get through here in
time I'll look in on Mrs. Bowker on the way. But tell her not to wait at
home for me."

Mr. Whitesides bowed, and was glad when the outer air was blowing off
him the odor of this vulgar incident. "For," said he to himself, "there
are some manners so bad that they have a distinct bad smell. He is 'the
limit!' The little Severence must be infernally hard-pressed to think of
taking him on. Poor child! She's devilish interesting. A really handsome
bit, and smart, too--excellent ideas about dress. Yet somehow she's
been marooned, overlooked, while far worse have been married well.
Strange, that sort of thing. Somewhat my own case. I ought to have been
able to get some girl with a bunch, yet I somehow always just failed to
connect--until I got beyond the marrying age. Devilish lucky for me,
too. I'm no end better off." And Mr. Whitesides, sitting correctly upon
Madam Bowlder's gray silk cushions, reflected complacently upon his
ample salary, his carefully built-up and most lucrative commissions, his
prospects for a "smashing-good legacy when her majesty deigns to pass
away."

At four Madam Bowker, angry yet compelled to a certain respect, heard
with satisfaction that Craig had come. "Leave me, Whitesides," said she.
"I wish to be quite alone with him throughout."

Thus Craig, entering the great, dim drawing-room, with its panel
paintings and its lofty, beautifully-frescoed ceiling, found himself
alone with her. She was throned upon a large, antique gold chair, ebony
scepter in one hand, the other hand white and young-looking and in fine
relief against the black silk of her skirt; she bent upon him a keen,
gracious look. Her hazel eyes were bright as a bird's; they had the
advantage over a bird's that they saw--saw everything in addition to
seeming to see.

Looking at him she saw a figure whose surfaces were, indeed, not
extraordinarily impressive. Craig's frame was good; that was apparent
despite his clothes. He had powerful shoulders, not narrow, yet neither
were they of the broad kind that suggest power to the inexpert and
weakness and a tendency to lung trouble to the expert. His body was a
trifle long for his arms and legs, which were thick and strong, like a
lion's or a tiger's. He had a fine head, haughtily set; his eyes
emphasized the impression of arrogance and force. He had the leader's
beaklike nose, a handsome form of it, like Alexander's, not like
Attila's. The mouth was the orator's--wide, full and flexible of lips,
fluent. It was distinctly not an aristocratic mouth. It suggested common
speech and common tastes--ruddy tastes--tastes for quantity rather than
for quality. His skin, his flesh were also plainly not aristocratic;
they lacked that fineness of grain, that finish of surface which are got
only by eating the costly, rare, best and best-prepared food. His hair,
a partially disordered mop over-hanging his brow at the middle, gave him
fierceness of aspect. The old lady had more than a suspicion that the
ferocity of that lock of hair and somewhat exaggerated forward thrust of
the jaw were pose--in part, at least, an effort to look the valiant and
relentless master of men--perhaps concealing a certain amount of
irresolution. Certainly those eyes met hers boldly rather than
fearlessly.

She extended her hand. He took it, and with an effort gave it the
politician's squeeze--the squeeze that makes Hiram Hanks and Bill Butts
grin delightedly and say to each other: "B'gosh, he ain't lost his
axe-handle grip yet, by a durn sight, has he?--dog-gone him!"

Madam Bowker did not wince, though she felt like it. Instead she
smiled--a faint, derisive smile that made Craig color uncomfortably.

"You young man," said she in her cool, high-bred tones, "you wish to
marry my granddaughter."

Craig was never more afraid nor so impressed in his life. But there was
no upflaming of physical passion here to betray him into yielding before
her as he had before her granddaughter. "I do not," replied he
arrogantly. "Your granddaughter wants to marry me."

Madam Bowker winced in spite of herself. A very sturdy-appearing
specimen of manhood was this before her; she could understand how her
granddaughter might be physically attracted. But that rude accent, that
common mouth, those uncouth clothes, hand-me-downs or near it, that
cheap look about the collar, about the wrists, about the ankles--

"We are absolutely unsuited to each other--in every way," continued
Craig. "I tell her so. But she won't listen to me. The only reason I've
come here is to ask you to take a hand at trying to bring her to her
senses."

The old lady, recovered from her first shock, gazed at him admiringly.
He had completely turned her flank, and by a movement as swift as it was
unexpected. If she opposed the engagement he could hail her as an ally,
could compel her to contribute to her own granddaughter's public
humiliation. On the other hand, if she accepted the engagement he would
have her and Margaret and all the proud Severence family in the position
of humbly seeking alliance with him. Admirable! No wonder Branch was
jealous and the President alarmed. "Your game," said she pleasantly, "is
extremely unkempt, but effective. I congratulate you. I owe you an
apology for having misjudged you."

He gave her a shrewd look. "I know little Latin and less Greek," said
he, "but, 'timeo Danaos dona ferentes.' And I've got no game. I'm
telling you the straight truth, and I want you to help save me from
Margaret and from myself. I love the girl. I honestly don't want to make
her wretched. I need a sock-darner, a wash-counter, a pram-pusher, for a
wife, as Grant would say, not a dainty piece of lace embroidery. It
would soon be covered with spots and full of holes from the rough wear
I'd give it."

Madam Bowker laughed heartily. "You are--delicious," said she. "You
state the exact situation. Only I don't think Rita is quite so fragile
as you fancy. Like all persons of common origin, Mr. Craig, you
exaggerate human differences. They are not differences of kind, but of
degree."

Craig quivered and reddened at "common origin," as Madam Bowker expected
and hoped. She had not felt that she was taking a risk in thus hardily
ignoring her own origin; Lard had become to her, as to all Washington,
an unreality like a shadowy reminiscence of a possible former sojourn on
earth. "I see," pursued she, "that I hurt your vanity by my frankness--"

"Not at all! Not at all!" blustered Joshua, still angrier--as Madam
Bowker had calculated.

"Don't misunderstand me," pursued she tranquilly. "I was simply stating
a fact without aspersion. It is the more to your credit that you have
been able to raise yourself up among us--and so very young! You are not
more than forty, are you?"

"Thirty-four," said Craig surlily. He began to feel like a cur that is
getting a beating from a hand beyond the reach of its fangs. "I've had a
hard life--"

"So I should judge," thrust the old lady with gentle sympathy. It is not
necessary to jab violently with a red-hot iron in order to make a deep
burn.

"But I am the better for it," continued Craig, eyes flashing and orator
lips in action. "And you and your kind--your granddaughter
Margaret--would be the better for having faced--for having to face--the
realities of life instead of being pampered in luxury and uselessness."

"Then why be resentful?" inquired she. "Why not merely pity us? Why this
heat and seeming jealousy?"

"Because I love your granddaughter," replied Craig, the adroit at
debate. "It pains, it angers me to see a girl who might have been a
useful wife, a good mother, trained and set to such base uses."

The old lady admired his skillful parry. "Let us not discuss that," said
she. "We look at life from different points of view. No human being can
see beyond his own point of view. Only God sees life as a whole, sees
how its seeming inconsistencies and injustices blend into a harmony.
Your mistake--pardon an old woman's criticism of experience upon
inexperience--your mistake is that you arrogate to yourself divine
wisdom and set up a personal opinion as eternal truth."

"That is very well said, admirably said," cried Craig. Madam Bowker
would have been better pleased with the compliment had the tone been
less gracious and less condescending.

"To return to the main subject," continued she. "Your hesitation about
my granddaughter does credit to your manliness and to your sense. I have
known marriages between people of different station and rank to turn out
well--again--"

"That's the second or third time you've made that insinuation," burst
out Craig. "I must protest against it, in the name of my father and
mother, in the name of my country, Mrs. Bowker. It is too ridiculous!
Who are you that you talk about rank and station? What is Margaret but
the daughter of a plain human being of a father, a little richer than
mine and so a little nearer opportunities for education? The claims to
superiority of some of the titled people on the other side are silly
enough when one examines them--the records of knavery and thievery and
illegitimacy and insanity. But similar claims over here are laughable at
a glance. The reason I hesitate to marry your daughter is not to her
credit, or to her parents' credit--or to yours."

Madam Bowker was beside herself with rage at these candid insults, flung
at her with all Craig's young energy and in his most effective manner;
for his crudeness disappeared when he spoke thus, as the blackness and
roughness of the coal vanish in the furnace heat, transforming it into
beauty and grace of flames.

"Do I make myself clear?" demanded Craig, his eyes flashing superbly
upon her.

"You certainly do," snapped the old lady, her dignity tottering and a
very vulgar kind of human wrath showing uglily in her blazing eyes and
twitching nose and mouth and fingers.

"Then let us have no more of this caste nonsense," said the young man.
"Forbid your granddaughter to marry or to see me. Send or take her away.
She will thank you a year from now. My thanks will begin from the moment
of release."

"Yes, you have made yourself extremely clear," said Madam Bowker in a
suffocating voice. To be thus defied, insulted, outraged, in her own
magnificent salon, in her own magnificent presence! "You may be sure you
will have no further opportunity to exploit your upstart insolence in my
family. Any chance you may have had for the alliance you have so
cunningly sought is at an end." And she waved her ebony scepter in
dismissal, ringing the bell at the same time.

Craig drew himself up, bowed coldly and haughtily, made his exit in
excellent style; no prince of the blood, bred to throne rooms, no
teacher of etiquette in a fashionable boarding-school could have done
better.




CHAPTER XIV

MAGGIE AND JOSH


Wrath is a baseless flame in the intelligent aged; also, Margaret's
grandmother was something more than a mere expert in social craft, would
have been woman of the world had not circumstances compressed her to its
petty department of fashionable society. Before Craig had cleared the
front door she was respecting him, even as she raged against him.
Insolent, impudent, coarsely insulting--yes, all these. But very much a
man, a masculine force; with weaknesses, it was true, and his full
measure of the low-sprung's obsequious snobbishness; but, for all that,
strong, persistent, concentrated, one who knew the master-art of making
his weaknesses serve as pitfalls into which his enemies were lured, to
fall victim to his strength.

"Yes, he will arrive," reflected Madam Bowker. "Branch will yet have to
serve him. Poor Branch! What a misery for a man to be born with a
master's mind but with the lack of will and courage that keeps a man a
servant. Yes, Craig will arrive!... What a pity he has no money."

But, on second thought, that seemed less a disadvantage. If she should
let him marry Margaret they would be dependent upon her; she could
control them--him--through holding the purse strings. And when that
remote time came at which it would please God to call her from her
earthly labors to their eternal reward, she could transfer the control
to Margaret. "Men of his origin are always weak on the social side," she
reflected. "And it wouldn't be in nature for a person as grasping of
power as he is not to be eager about money also."

With the advent of plutocratic fashion respect for official position had
dwindled at Washington. In Rome in the days when the imperators became
mere creatures of the army, the seat of fashion and of power was
transferred to the old and rich families aloof from the government and
buying peace and privilege from it. So Washington's fashionable society
has come to realize, even more clearly than does the rest of the
country, that, despite spasmodic struggles and apparent spurts of
reaction, power has passed to the plutocracy, and that officialdom is,
as a rule, servant verging toward slave. Still, form is a delusion of
tenacious hold upon the human mind. The old lady's discoveries of
Craig's political prospects did not warm her toward him as would news
that he was in the way of being vastly rich; but she retained enough of
the fading respect for high-titled office to feel that he was not the
quite impossibility she had fancied, but was fit to be an aspirant for
an aristocratic alliance.

"If Margaret doesn't fall in love with him after she marries him,"
reflected she, "all may be well. Of course, if she does she'll probably
ruin him and herself, too. But I think she'll have enough sense of her
position, of how to maintain it for herself, and for him and her
children, not to be a fool."

Meanwhile Craig was also cooling down. He had meant every word he
said--while he was saying it. Only one self-convinced could have been so
effective. But, sobering off from his rhetorical debauch in the quiet
streets of that majestic quarter, he began to feel that he had gone
farther, much farther, than he intended.

"I don't see how, in self-respect, I could have said less," thought he.
"And surely the old woman isn't so lost to decency that she can't
appreciate and admire self-respect."

Still he might have spoken less harshly; might have been a little
considerate of the fact that he was not making a stump speech, but was
in the drawing-room of a high-born, high-bred lady. "And gad, she IS a
patrician!"

His eyes were surveying the splendid mansions round about--the beautiful
window-gardens--the curtains at the windows, which he had learned were
real lace, whatever that might be, and most expensive. Very fine, that
way of living! Very comfortable, to have servants at beck and call, and
most satisfactory to the craving for power--trifles, it is true, but
still the substantial and tangible evidence of power. "And it impresses
the people, too. We're all snobs at bottom. We're not yet developed
enough to appreciate such a lofty abstraction as democracy."

True, Margaret was not rich; but the old grandmother was. Doubtless, if
he managed her right, she would see to it that he and Margaret had some
such luxury as these grandly-housed people--"but not too much, for that
would interfere with my political program." He did not protest this
positively; the program seemed, for the moment, rather vague and not
very attractive. The main point seemed to be money and the right sort of
position among the right sort of people. He shook himself, scowled,
muttered: "I am a damn fool! What do _I_ amount to except as I rise in
politics and stay risen? I must be mighty careful or I'll lose my point
of view and become a wretched hanger-on at the skirts of these fakers.
For they are fakers--frauds of the first water! Take their accidental
money away from them and they'd sink to be day laborers, most of
them--and not of much account there."

He was sorely perplexed; he did not know what to do--what he ought to
do--even what he wanted to do. One thing seemed clear--that he had gone
further than was necessary in antagonizing the old woman. Whether he
wanted to marry the girl or not, he certainly did not wish, at this
stage of the game, to make it impossible. The wise plan was to leave the
situation open in every direction, so that he could freely advance or
freely retreat as unfolding events might dictate. So he turned in the
direction of the Severence house, walked at his usual tearing pace,
arrived there somewhat wilted of collar and exceedingly dusty of shoe
and trouser-leg.

Greater physical contrast could hardly have been than that between him
and Margaret, descending to him in the cool garden where he was mopping
himself and dusting his shoes, all with the same handkerchief. She was
in a graceful walking costume of pale blue, scrupulously neat, perfect
to the smallest detail. As she advanced she observed him with eyes that
nothing escaped; and being in one of her exquisite moods, when the
senses are equally quick to welcome the agreeable or to shrink from the
disagreeable, she had a sense of physical repugnance. He saw her the
instant she came out of the house. Her dress, its harmony with her
delicateness of feature and coloring, the gliding motion of her form
combined to throw him instantly into a state of intoxication. He rushed
toward her; she halted, shivered, shrank. "Don't--look at me like that!"
she exclaimed half under her breath.

"And why not? Aren't you mine?" And he seized her, enwrapped her in his
arms, pressed his lips firmly upon her hair, her cheek--upon her lips.
There he lingered; her eyes closed, her form, he felt, was yielding
within his embrace as though she were about to faint.

"Don't--please," she murmured, when he let her catch her breath.
"I--I--can't bear it."

"Do you love me?" he cried passionately.

"Let me go!" She struggled futilely in his plowman arms.

"Say you love me!"

"If you don't let me go I shall hate you!"

"I see I shall have to kiss you until you do love me."

"Yes--yes--whatever you wish me to say," she cried, suddenly freeing
herself by dodging most undignifiedly out of his arms.

She stood a little way from him, panting, as was he. She frowned
fiercely, then her eyes softened, became tender--just why she could not
have explained. "What a dirty boy it is!" she said softly. "Go into the
house and ask Williams to take you where you can make yourself
presentable."

"Not I," said he, dropping into a seat. "Come, sit here beside me."

She laughed; obeyed. She even made several light passes at his wet mop
of hair. She wondered why it was that she liked to touch him, where a
few minutes before she had shrunk from it.

"I've just been down telling that old grandmother of yours what I
thought of her," said he.

She startled. "How did you happen to go there?" she exclaimed. She
forgot herself so completely that she added imperiously: "I wanted you
to keep away from her until I was ready for you to go."

"She sent for me," apologized he. "I went. We came together with a bang.
She told me I wanted to marry you; I told her YOU wanted to marry ME.
She told me I was low; I told her she was a fraud. She said I was
insolent; I said good-afternoon. If I hadn't marched out rather quickly
I guess she'd have had me thrown out."

Margaret was sitting stone-still, her hands limp in her lap.

"So you see it's all up," continued he, with a curious air of bravado,
patently insincere. "And it's just as well. You oughtn't to marry me.
It's a crime for me to have permitted things to go this far."

"Perhaps you are right," replied she slowly and thoughtfully. "Perhaps
you are right."

He made one of his exclamatory gestures, a swift jerk around of the head
toward her. He had all he could do to restrain himself from protesting,
without regard to his pretenses to himself and to her. "Do you mean
that, Maggie?" he asked with more appeal in his voice than he was
conscious of.

"Never call me that again!" she cried. "It's detestable--so common!"

He drew back as if she had struck him. "I beg your pardon," he said with
gentle dignity. "I shall not do it again. Maggie was my mother's
name--what she was always called at home."

She turned her eyes toward him with a kind of horror in them. "Oh,
forgive me!" she begged, her clasped hands upon his arm. "I didn't mean
it at all--not at all. It is I that am detestable and common. I spoke
that way because I was irritated about something else." She laid one
hand caressingly against his cheek. "You must always call me
Maggie--when--when "--very softly--"you love me very, very much. I like
you to have a name for me that nobody else has."

He seized her hands. "You DO care for me, don't you?" he cried.

She hesitated. "I don't quite know," said she. Then, less seriously:
"Not at all, I'm sure, when you talk of breaking the engagement. I WISH
you hadn't seen grandmother!"

"I wish so, too," confessed he. "I made an ass of myself."

She glanced at him quickly. "Why do you say that?"

"I don't know," he stammered confusedly. How could he tell her?

"A moment ago you seemed well pleased with what you'd done."

"Well, I guess I went too far. I wasn't very polite."

"You never are."

"I'm going to try to do better.... No, I don't think it would be wise
for me to go and apologize to her."

She was looking at him strangely. "Why are you so anxious to conciliate
her?"

He saw what a break he had made, became all at once red and
inarticulate.

"What is she to you?" persisted the girl.

"Nothing at all," he blustered. "I don't care--THAT"--he snapped his
fingers--"for her opinion. I don't care if everybody in the world is
against our marrying. I want just you--only you."

"Obviously," said she with a dry laugh that was highly disconcerting to
him. "I certainly have no fortune--or hope of one, so far as I know."

This so astounded, so disconcerted him that he forgot to conceal it.
"Why, I thought--your grandmother--that is--" He was remembering, was
stammering, was unable to finish.

"Go on," she urged, obviously enjoying his hot confusion.

He became suddenly angry. "Look here, Margaret," he cried, "you don't
suspect me of--"

She put her fingers on his lips and laughed quietly at him. "You'd
better run along now. I'm going to hurry away to grandmother, to try to
repair the damage you did." She rose and called, "Lucia! Lucia!" The
round, rosy, rather slovenly Miss Severence appeared in the little
balcony--the only part of the house in view from where they sat.

"Telephone the stables for the small victoria," called Margaret.

"Mother's out in it," replied Lucia.

"Then the small brougham."

"I want that. Why don't you take the electric?"

"All right."

Lucia disappeared. Margaret turned upon the deeply-impressed Craig.
"What's the matter?" asked she, though she knew.

"I can't get used to this carriage business," said he. "I don't like it.
Where the private carriage begins just there democracy ends. It is the
parting of the ways. People who are driving have to look down; people
who aren't have to look up."

"Nonsense!" said Margaret, though it seemed to her to be the truth.

"Nonsense, of course," retorted Craig. "But nonsense rules the world."
He caught her roughly by the arm. "I warn you now, when we--"

"Run along, Josh," cried she, extricating herself and laughing, and with
a wave of the hand she vanished into the shrubbery. As soon as she was
beyond the danger of having to continue that curious conversation she
walked less rapidly. "I wonder what he really thinks," she said to
herself. "I wonder what I really think. I suspect we'd both be amazed at
ourselves and at each other if we knew."

Arrived at her grandmother's she had one more and huger cause for
wonder. There were a dozen people in the big salon, the old lady
presiding at the tea-table in high good humor. "Ah--here you are,
Margaret," cried she. "Why didn't you bring your young man?"

"He's too busy for frivolity," replied Margaret.

"I saw him this afternoon," continued Madam Bowker, talking aside to her
alone when the ripples from the new stone in the pond had died away.
"He's what they call a pretty rough customer. But he has his good
points."

"You liked him better?" said the astonished Margaret.

"I disliked him less," corrected the old lady. "He's not a man any
one"--this with emphasis and a sharp glance at her
granddaughter--"likes. He neither likes nor is liked. He's too much of
an ambition for such petty things. People of purpose divide their
fellows into two classes, the useful and the useless. They seek allies
among the useful, they avoid the useless."

Margaret laughed.

"Why do you laugh, child? Because you don't believe it?"

Margaret sighed. "No, because I don't want to believe it."




CHAPTER XV

THE EMBASSY GARDEN PARTY


Craig dined at the Secretary of State's that night, and reveled in the
marked consideration every one showed him. He knew it was not because of
his political successes, present and impending; in the esteem of that
fashionable company his success with Margaret overtopped them. And while
he was there, drinking more than was good for him and sharing in the
general self-complacence, he thought so himself. But waking up about
three in the morning, with an aching head and in the depths of the
blues, the whole business took on again its grimmest complexion. "I'll
talk it over again with Grant," he decided, and was at the Arkwright
house a few minutes after eight.

It so happened that Grant himself was wakeful that morning and had got
up about half-past seven. When Craig came he was letting his valet dress
him. He sent for Craig to come up to his dressing-room. "You can talk to
me while Walter shaves me," said Grant from the armchair before his
dressing table. He was spread out luxuriously and Josh watched the
process of shaving as if he had never seen it before. Indeed, he never
had seen a shave in such pomp and circumstance of silver and gold, of
ivory and cut glass, of essence and powder.

"That's a very ladylike performance for two men to be engaged in," said
he.

"It's damn comfortable," answered Grant lazily.

"Where did you get that thing you've got on?"

"This gown? Oh, Paris. I get all my things of that sort there. Latterly
I get my clothes there, too."

"I like that thing," said Craig, giving it a patronizing jerk of his
head. "It looks cool and clean. Linen and silk, isn't it? Only I'd
choose a more serviceable color than white. And I'd not have a pink silk
lining and collar in any circumstances."

He wandered about the room.

"Goshalimity!" he exclaimed, peering into a drawer. "You must have a
million neckties. And"--he was at the partly open door of a huge
closet--"here's a whole roomful of shirts--and another of clothes." He
wheeled abruptly upon the smiling, highly-flattered tenant of the
armchair. "Grant, how many suits have you got?"

"Blest if I know. How many, Walter?"

"I really cannot say, sir. I know 'em all, but I never counted 'em.
About seventy or eighty, I should say, not counting extra trousers."

Craig looked astounded. "And how many shirts, Walter?"

"Oh, several hundred of them, sir. Mr. Grant's most particular about his
linen."

"And here are boots and shoes and pumps and gaiters and Lord knows what
and what not--enough to stock a shoe-store. And umbrellas and
canes--Good God, man! How do you carry all that stuff round on your
mind?"

Grant laughed like a tickled infant. All this was as gratifying to his
vanity as applause to Craig's. "Walter looks after it," said he.

Craig lapsed into silence, stared moodily out of the window. The idea of
his thinking of marrying a girl of Grant's class! What a ridiculous,
loutish figure he would cut in her eyes! Why, not only did he not have
the articles necessary to a gentleman's wardrobe, he did not even know
the names of them, nor their uses! It was all very well to pretend that
these matters were petty. In a sense they were. But that sort of trifles
played a most important part in life as it was led by Margaret
Severence. She'd not think them trifles. She was probably assuming that,
while he was not quite up to the fashionable standard, still he had a
gentleman's equipment of knowledge and of toilet articles. "She'd think
me no better than a savage--and, damn it! I'm not much above the savage
state, as far as this side of life is concerned."

Grant interrupted his mournful musings with: "Now, if you'll excuse me,
I'll have my bath."

And, Walter following, he went in at a door to the right, through which
Craig had a glimpse of marble walls and floor, of various articles of
more than Roman luxury. The moments dragged away until half an hour had
passed.

"What the devil!" Josh called out. "What are you doing all this time?"

"Massage," responded Grant. "You can come in."

Craig entered the marble chamber, seated himself on a corner of the
warmed marble couch on which Grant lay luxuriating in Walter's powerful
massage. "Do you go through this thing often?" demanded he.

"Every morning--except when I'm roughing it. You ought to take massage,
Josh. It's great for the skin."

Craig saw that it was. His own skin, aside from his hands and face, was
fairly smooth and white; but it was like sandpaper, he thought, beside
this firm, rosy covering of the elegant Arkwright's elegant body. "Get
through here and send Walter away," he said harshly. "I want to talk to
you. If you don't I'll burst out before him. I can't hold in any
longer."

"Very well. That'll do, Walter," acquiesced Grant. "And please go and
bring us some breakfast. I'll finish dressing afterward."

As soon as the door closed on the valet, Craig said, "Grant, I've got
myself into a frightful mess. I want you to help me out of it."

Grant's eyes shifted. He put on his white silk pajamas, thrust his feet
into slippers, tossed the silk-lined linen robe about his broad, too
square shoulders, and led the way into the other room. Then he said: "Do
you mean Margaret Severence?"

"That's it!" exclaimed Craig, pacing the floor. "I've gone and got
myself engaged--"

"One minute," interrupted Arkwright in a voice so strange that Joshua
paused and stared at him. "I can't talk to you about that."

"Why not?"

"For many reasons. The chief one--Fact is, Josh, I've acted like a
howling skunk about you with her. I ran you down to her; tried to get
her myself."

Craig waved his hand impatiently. "You didn't succeed, did you? And
you're ashamed of it, aren't you? Well, if I wasted time going round
apologizing for all the things I'd done that I'm ashamed of I'd have no
time left to do decently. So that's out of the way. Now, help me."

"What a generous fellow you are!"

"Generous? Stuff! I need you. We're going to stay friends. You can do
what you damn please--I'll like you just the same. I may swat you if you
get in my way; but as soon as you were out of it--and that'd be mighty
soon and sudden, Grant, old boy--why, I'd be friends again. Come, tell
me how I'm to get clear of this engagement."

"I can't talk about it to you."

"Why not?"

"Because I love her."

Craig gasped: "Do you mean that?"

"I love her--as much as I'm capable of loving anybody. Didn't I tell you
so?"

"I believe you did say something of the kind," admitted Craig. "But I
was so full of my own affairs that I didn't pay much attention to it.
Why don't you jump in and marry her?"

"She happens to prefer you."

"Yes, she does," said Craig with a complacence that roiled Arkwright. "I
don't know what the poor girl sees in me, but she's just crazy about
me."

"Don't be an ass, Josh!" cried Grant in a jealous fury.

Craig laughed pleasantly. "I'm stating simple facts." Then, with abrupt
change to earnestness, "Do you suppose, if I were to break the
engagement, she'd take it seriously to heart?"

"I fancy she could live through it if you could. She probably cares no
more than you do."

"There's the worst of it. I want her, Grant. When I'm with her I can't
tolerate the idea of giving her up. But how in the mischief can I marry
HER? I'm too strong a dose for a frail, delicate little thing like her."

"She's as tall as you are. I've seen her play athletes to a standstill
at tennis."

"But she's so refined, so--"

"Oh, fudge!" muttered Arkwright. Then louder: "Didn't I tell you not to
talk to me about this business?"

"But I've got to do it," protested Craig. "You're the only one I can
talk to--without being a cad."

Arkwright looked disgusted. "You love the girl," he said bitterly, "and
she wants you. Marry her."

"But I haven't got the money."

Craig was out with the truth at last. "What would we live on? My salary
is only seventy-five hundred dollars. If I get the Attorney-Generalship
it'll be only eight thousand, and I've not got twenty thousand dollars
besides. As long as I'm in politics I can't do anything at the law. All
the clients that pay well are clients I'd not dare have anything to do
with--I may have to prosecute them. Grant, I used to think Government
salaries were too big, and I used to rave against office-holders
fattening on the people. I was crazy. How's a man to marry a LADY and
live like a GENTLEMAN on seven or eight thousand a year? It can't be
done."

"And you used to rave against living like a gentleman," thrust Grant
maliciously.

Craig reddened. "There it is!" he fairly shouted. "I'm going to the
devil. I'm sacrificing all my principles. That's what this mixing with
swell people and trying to marry a fashionable lady is doing for me!"

"You're broadening out, you mean. You're losing your taste for
tommy-rot."

"Not at all," said Craig surlily and stubbornly. "I'll tell you what I'm
going to do. I'm going to see the girl to-day and put the whole case
before her. And I want you to back me up."

"I'll do nothing of the sort," cried Grant. "How can you ask such a
thing of ME?"

"Yes, you must go with me to-day."

"I've got an engagement--garden-party at the British Embassy."

"Going there, are you?... Um!... Well, we'll see."

The breakfast came and Craig ate like a ditch-digger--his own breakfast
and most of Grant's. Grant barely touched the food, lit a cigarette, sat
regarding the full-mouthed Westerner gloomily. "What DID Margaret see in
this man?" thought Grant. "True, she doesn't know him as well as I do;
but she knows him well enough. Talk about women being refined! Why,
they've got ostrich stomachs."

"Do you know, Grant," said Craig thickly, so stuffed was his mouth, "I
think your refined women like men of my sort. I know I can't bear
anything but refined women. Now, you--you've got an ostrich stomach.
I've seen you quite pleased with women I'd not lay my finger on. Yet
most people'd say you were more sensitive than I. Instead, you're much
coarser--except about piffling, piddling, paltry non-essentials. You
strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. I shouldn't be a bit surprised if
Margaret had penetrated the fact that your coarseness is in-bred while
mine is near surface. Women have a surprising way of getting at the
bottom of things. I'm a good deal like a woman in that respect myself."

Grant thrust a cigar upon him, got him out of the room and on the way
out of the house as quickly as possible. "Insufferable egotist!" he
mumbled, by way of a parting kick. "Why do I like him? Damned if I
believe I do!"

He did not dress until late that afternoon, but lay in his rooms, very
low and miserable. When he issued forth it was to the garden-party--and
immediately he ran into Margaret and Craig, apparently lying in wait for
him. "Here he is!" exclaimed Josh, slapping him enthusiastically on the
back. "Grant, Margaret wants to talk with you. I must run along." And
before either could speak he had darted away, plowing his way rudely
through the crowd.

Margaret and Grant watched his progress--she smiling, he surly and
sneering. "Yet you like him," said Margaret.

"In a way, yes," conceded Arkwright. "He has a certain sort of
magnetism." He pulled himself up short. "This morning," said he, "I
apologized to him for my treachery; and here I am at it again."

"I don't mind," said Margaret. "It's quite harmless."

"That's it!" exclaimed Grant in gloomy triumph. "You can't care for me
because you think me harmless."

"Well, aren't you?"

"Yes," he admitted, "I couldn't give anybody--at least, not a blase
Washington society girl--anything approaching a sensation. I understand
the mystery at last."

"Do you?" said Margaret, with a queer expression in her eyes. "I wish I
did."

Grant reflected upon this, could make nothing of it. "I don't believe
you're really in love with him," he finally said.

"Was that what you told him you wished to talk to me about?"

"I didn't tell him I wanted to talk with you," protested Grant. "He
asked me to try to persuade you not to marry him."

"Well--persuade!"

"To explain how coarse he is."

"How coarse is he?"

"To dilate on the folly of your marrying a poor man with no money
prospects."

"I'm content with his prospects--and with mine through him."

"Seven or eight thousand a year? Your dresses cost much more than that."

"No matter."

"You must be in love with him!"

"Women take strange fancies."

"What's the matter, Rita? What have you in the back of your mind?"

She looked straight at him. "Nothing about YOU. Not the faintest, little
shadow of a regret." And her hazel eyes smiled mirth of the kind that is
cruelest from woman to man.

"How exasperating you are!"

"Perhaps I've caught the habit from my man."

"Rita, you don't even like me any more."

"No--candidly--I don't."

"I deserve it."

"You do. I can never trust you again."

He shrugged his shoulders; but he could not pretend that he was
indifferent. "It seems to me, if Josh forgave me you might."

"I do--forgive."

"But not even friendship?"

"Not EVEN friendship."

"You are hard."

"I am hard."

"Rita! For God's sake, don't marry that man! You don't love him--you
know you don't. At times you feel you can hardly endure him. You'll be
miserable--in every way. And I--At least I can give you material
happiness."

She smiled--a cold, enigmatic smile that made her face seem her
grandmother's own peering through a radiant mask of youth. She glanced
away, around--"Ah! there are mamma and Augusta Burke." And she left him
to join them.

He wandered out of the garden, through the thronged corridors, into the
street, knocking against people, seeing no one, not heeding the frequent
salutations. He went to the Wyandotte, to Craig's tawdry, dingy
sitting-room, its disorder now apparently beyond possibility of
righting. Craig, his coat and waistcoat off, his detachable cuffs on the
floor, was burrowing into masses of huge law-books.

"Clear out," said he curtly; "I'm busy."

Grant plumped himself into a chair. "Josh," cried he desperately, "you
must marry that girl. She's just the one for you. I love her, and her
happiness is dear to me."

Craig gave him an amused look. "However did she persuade you to come
here and say that?" he inquired.

"She didn't persuade me. She didn't mention it. All she said was that
she had wiped me off the slate even as a friend."

Craig laughed uproariously. "THAT was how she did it--eh? She's a deep
one."

"Josh," said Arkwright, "you need a wife, and she's it."

"Right you are," exclaimed Craig heartily. "I'm one of those
surplus-steam persons--have to make an ass of myself constantly,
indulging in the futility of blowing off steam. Oughtn't to do it
publicly--creates false impression. Got to have a wife--no one else but
a wife always available and bound to be discreet. Out with you. I'm too
busy to talk--even about myself."

"You will marry her?"

"Like to see anybody try to stop me!"

He pulled Arkwright from the chair, thrust him into the hall, slammed
the door. And Arkwright, in a more hopeful frame of mind, went home.
"I'll do my best to get back her respect--and my own," said he. "I've
been a dog, and she's giving me the whipping I deserve."




CHAPTER XVI

A FIGHT AND A FINISH


In his shrewd guess at Margaret's reason for dealing so summarily with
Arkwright, Craig was mistaken, as the acutest of us usually are in
attributing motives. He had slowly awakened to the fact that she was not
a mere surface, but had also the third dimension--depth, which
distinguishes persons from people. Whenever he tried to get at what she
meant by studying what she did, he fell into the common error of judging
her by himself, and of making no allowance for the sweeter and brighter
side of human nature, which was so strong in her that, in happier
circumstances, the other side would have been mere rudiment.

Her real reason for breaking with Grant was a desire to be wholly
honorable with Craig. She resolved to burn her bridges toward Arkwright,
to put him entirely out of her mind--as she had not done theretofore;
for whenever she had grown weary of Craig's harping on her being the
aggressor in the engagement and not himself, or whenever she had become
irritated against him through his rasping mannerisms she had straightway
begun to revolve Arkwright as a possible alternative. Craig's
personality had such a strong effect on her, caused so many moods and
reactions, that she was absolutely unable to tell what she really
thought of him. Also, when she was so harassed by doubt as to whether
the engagement would end in marriage or in a humiliation of jilting,
when her whole mind was busy with the problem of angling him within the
swoop of the matrimonial net, how was she to find leisure to examine her
heart? Whether she wanted him or simply wanted a husband she could not
have said.

She felt that his eccentric way of treating the engagement would justify
her in keeping Arkwright in reserve. But she was finding that there were
limits to her ability to endure her own self-contempt, and she
sacrificed Grant to her outraged self-respect. Possibly she might have
been less conscientious had she not come to look on Grant as an
exceedingly pale and shadowy personality, a mere vague expression of
well-bred amiability, male because trousered, identifiable chiefly by
the dollar mark.

Her reward seemed immediate. There came a day when Craig was all
devotion, was talking incessantly of their future, was never once
doubtful or even low-spirited. It was simply a question of when they
would marry--whether as soon as Stillwater fixed his date for retiring,
or after Craig was installed. She had to listen patiently to hours on
hours of discussion as to which would be the better time. She had to
seem interested, though from the viewpoint of her private purposes
nothing could have been less important. She had no intention of
permitting him to waste his life and hers in the poverty and uncertainty
of public office, struggling for the applause of mobs one despised as
individuals and would not permit to cross one's threshold. But she had
to let him talk on and on, and yet on. In due season, when she was ready
to speak and he to hear, she would disclose to him the future she had
mapped out for him, not before. He discoursed; she listened. At
intervals he made love in his violent, terrifying way; she endured, now
half-liking it, now half-hating it and him, but always enduring,
passive, as became a modest, inexperienced maiden, and with never a
suggestion of her real thoughts upon her surface.

It was the morning after one of these outbursts of his, one of unusual
intensity, one that had so worn upon her nerves that, all but revolted
by the sense of sick satiety, she had come perilously near to indulging
herself in the too costly luxury of telling him precisely what she
thought of him and his conduct. She was in bed, with the blinds just up,
and the fair, early-summer world visioning itself to her sick heart like
Paradise to the excluded Peri at its barred gate. "And if he had given
me half a chance I'd have loved him," she was thinking. "I do believe in
him, and admire his strength and his way of never accepting defeat. But
how can I--how CAN I--when he makes me the victim of these ruffian moods
of his? I almost think the Frenchman was right who said that every man
ought to have two wives.... Not that at times he doesn't attract me that
way. But because one likes champagne one does not wish it by the cask. A
glass now and then, or a bottle--perhaps--" Aloud: "What is it, Selina?"

"A note for you, ma'am, from HIM. It's marked important and immediate.
You told me not to disturb you with those marked important, nor with
those marked immediate. But you didn't say what to do about those marked
both."

"The same," said Margaret, stretching herself out at full length, and
snuggling her head into the softness of her perfumed hair. "But now that
you've brought it thus far, let me have it."

Selina laid it on the silk and swansdown quilt and departed. Margaret
forgot that it was there in thinking about a new dress she was planning,
an adaptation of a French model. As she turned herself it fell to the
floor. She reached down, picked it up, opened it, read:

"It's no use. Fate's against us. I find the President is making my
marriage the excuse for not appointing me. How lucky we did not announce
the engagement. This is a final good-by. I shall keep out of your way.
It's useless for you to protest. I am doing what is best for us both.
Thank me, and forget me."

She leaped from the bed with one bound, and, bare of foot and in her
nightgown only, rushed to the telephone. She called up the Arkwrights,
asked for Grant. "Wake him," she said. "If he is still in bed tell him
Miss Severence wishes to speak to him at once."

Within a moment Grant's agitated voice was coming over the wire: "Is
that you, Rita? What is the matter?"

"Come out here as soon as you can. How long will it be?"

"An hour. I really must shave."

"In an hour, then. Good-by."

Before the end of the hour she was pacing her favorite walk in the
garden, impatiently watching the point where he would appear. At sight
of her face he almost broke into a run. "What is it, Margaret?" he
cried.

"What have you been saying to Josh Craig?" she demanded.

"Nothing, I swear. I've been keeping out of his way. He came to see me
this morning--called me a dozen times on the telephone, too. But I
refused him."

She reflected. "I want you to go and bring him here," she said
presently. "No matter what he says, bring him."

"When?"

"Right away."

"If I have to use force." And Grant hastened away.

Hardly had he gone when Williams appeared, carrying a huge basket of
orchids. "They just came, ma'am. I thought you'd like to see them."

"From Mr. Arkwright?"

"No, ma'am; Mr. Craig."

"Craig?" ejaculated Margaret.

"Yes, Miss Rita."

"Craig," repeated Margaret, but in a very different tone--a tone of
immense satisfaction and relief. She waved her hand with a smile of
amused disdain. "Take them into the house, but not to my room. Put them
in Miss Lucia's sitting-room."

Williams had just gone when into the walk rushed Grant and Craig. Their
faces were so flurried, so full of tragic anxiety that Margaret,
stopping short, laughed out loud. "You two look as if you had come to
view the corpse."

"I passed Craig on his way here," explained Grant, "and took him into my
machine."

"I was not on my way here," replied Josh loftily. "I was merely taking a
walk. He asked me to get in and brought me here in spite of my
protests."

"You were on the road that leads here," insisted Arkwright with much
heat.

"I repeat I was simply taking a walk," insisted Craig. He had not once
looked at Margaret.

"No matter," said Margaret in her calm, distant way. "You may take him
away, Grant. And"--here she suddenly looked at Craig, a cold, haughty
glance that seemed to tear open an abysmal gulf between them--"I do not
wish to see you again. I am done with you. I have been on the verge of
telling you so many times of late."

"Is THAT what you sent Grant after me to tell me?"

"No," answered she. "I sent him on an impulse to save the engagement.
But while he was gone it suddenly came over me that you were
right--entirely right. I accept your decision. You're afraid to marry me
because of your political future. I'm afraid to marry you because of my
stomach. You--nauseate me. I've been under some kind of hideous spell.
I'm free of it now. I see you as you are. I am ashamed of myself."

"I thought so! I knew it would come!" exclaimed Arkwright triumphantly.

Craig, who had been standing like a stock, suddenly sprang into action.
He seized Arkwright by the throat and bore him to the ground. "I've got
to kill something," he yelled. "Why not you?"

This unexpected and vulgar happening completely upset Margaret's pride
and demolished her dignified pose. She gazed in horror at the two men
struggling, brute-like, upon the grass. Her refined education had made
no provision for such an emergency. She rushed forward, seized Craig by
the shoulders. "Get up!" she cried contemptuously, and she dragged him
to his feet. She shook him fiercely. "Now get out of here; and don't you
dare come back!"

Craig laughed loudly. A shrewd onlooker might have suspected from his
expression that he had deliberately created a diversion of confusion,
and was congratulating himself upon its success. "Get out?" cried he.
"Not I. I go where I please and stay as long as I please."

Arkwright was seated upon the grass, readjusting his collar and tie.
"What a rotten coward you are!" he said to Craig, "to take me off guard
like that."

"It WAS a low trick," admitted Josh, looking down at him genially. "But
I'm so crazy I don't know what I'm doing."

"Oh, yes, you do; you wanted to show off," answered Grant.

But Craig had turned to Margaret again. "Read that," he commanded, and
thrust a newspaper clipping into her hand. It was from one of the
newspapers of his home town--a paper of his own party, but unfriendly to
him. It read:

"Josh Craig's many friends here will be glad to hear that he is catching
on down East. With his Government job as a stepping-stone he has sprung
into what he used to call plutocratic society in Washington, and is
about to marry a young lady who is in the very front of the push. He
will retire from politics, from head-hunting among the plutocrats, and
will soon be a plutocrat and a palace-dweller himself. Success to you,
Joshua. The 'pee-pul' have lost a friend--in the usual way. As for us,
we've got the right to say, 'I told you so,' but we'll be good and
refrain."

"The President handed me that last night," said Craig, when he saw that
her glance was on the last line. "And he told me he had decided to ask
Stillwater to stay on."

Margaret gave the clipping to Grant. "Give it to him," she said and
started toward the house.

Craig sprang before her. "Margaret," he cried, "can you blame me?"

"No," said she, and there was no pose in her manner now; it was
sincerely human. "I pity you." She waved him out of her path and, with
head bent, he obeyed her.

The two men gazed after her. Arkwright was first to speak: "Well, you've
got what you wanted."

Craig slowly lifted his circled, bloodshot eyes to Arkwright. "Yes,"
said he hoarsely, "I've got what I wanted."

"Not exactly in the way a gentleman would like to get it," pursued
Grant. "But YOU don't mind a trifle of that sort."

"No," said Craig, "I don't mind a trifle of that sort. 'Bounder
Josh'--that's what they call me, isn't it?"

"When they're frank they do."

Craig drew a long breath, shook himself like a man gathering himself
together after a stunning blow. He reflected a moment. "Come along,
Grant. I'm going back in your machine."

"The driver'll take you," replied Arkwright stiffly. "I prefer to walk."

"Then we'll walk back together."

"We will not!" said Arkwright violently. "And after this morning the
less you say to me the better pleased I'll be, and the less you'll
impose upon the obligation I'm under to you for having saved my life
once."

"You treacherous hound," said Craig pleasantly. "Where did you get the
nerve to put on airs with me? What would you have done to her in the
same circumstances? Why, you'd have sneaked and lied out of it. And you
dare to scorn me because I've been frank and direct! Come! I'll give you
another chance. Will you take me back to town in your machine?"

A pause, Craig's fierce gaze upon Grant, Grant's upon the ground. Then
Grant mumbled surlily: "Come on."

When they were passing the front windows of the house Craig assumed that
Margaret was hiding somewhere there, peering out at them. But he was
wrong. She was in her room, was face down upon her bed, sobbing as if
her first illusion had fallen, had dashed to pieces, crushing her heart
under it.




CHAPTER XVII

A NIGHT MARCH


Arkwright saw no one but his valet-masseur for several days; on the left
side of his throat the marks of Craig's fingers showed even above the
tallest of his extremely tall collars. From the newspapers he gathered
that Margaret had gone to New York on a shopping trip--had gone for a
stay of two or three weeks. When the adventure in the garden was more
than a week into the past, as he was coming home from a dinner toward
midnight he jumped from his electric brougham into Craig's arms.

"At last!" exclaimed Josh, leading the way up the Arkwright steps and
ringing the bell. Grant muttered a curse under his breath. When the man
had opened the door, "Come in," continued Josh loudly and cheerily,
leading the way into the house.

"You'd think it was his house, by gad!" muttered Grant.

"I've been walking up and down before the entrance for an hour. The
butler asked me in, but I hate walls and roof. The open for me--the
wide, wide open!"

"Not so loud," growled Arkwright. "The family's in bed. Wait till we get
to my part of the house."

When they were there, with doors closed and the lights on, Craig exhaled
his breath as noisily as a blown swimmer. "What a day! What a day!" he
half-shouted, dropping on the divan and thrusting his feet into the rich
and rather light upholstery of a near-by chair.

Grant eyed the feet gloomily. He was proud of his furniture and as
careful of it as any old maid.

"Go ahead, change your clothes," cried Josh. "I told your motorman not
to go away."

"What do you mean?" Arkwright demanded, his temper boiling at the rim of
the pot.

"I told him before you got out. You see, we're going to New York
to-night--or rather this morning. Train starts at one o'clock. I met old
Roebuck at the White House to-night--found he was going by special
train--asked him to take us."

"Not I," said Arkwright. "No New York for me. I'm busy to-morrow.
Besides, I don't want to go."

"Of course you don't," laughed Craig, and Arkwright now noted that he
was in the kind of dizzy spirits that most men can get only by drinking
a very great deal indeed. "Of course you don't. No more do I. But I've
got to go--and so have you."

"What for?"

"To help me get married."

Grant could only gape at him.

"Don't you know Margaret has gone to New York?"

"I saw it in the paper, but--"

"Now, don't go back a week to ancient history."

"I don't believe it," foamed Grant, so distracted that he sprang up and
paced the floor, making wild gestures with his arms and head.

Craig watched, seemed hugely amused. "You'll see, about noon to-morrow.
You've got to put in the morning shopping for me. I haven't got--You
know what sort of a wardrobe mine is. Wardrobe? Hand satchel!
Carpet-bag! Rag-bag! If I took off my shoes you'd see half the toes of
one foot and all the heel of the other. And only my necktie holds this
collar in place. Both buttonholes are gone. As for my underclothes--but
I'll spare you these."

"Yes, do," said Grant with a vicious sneer.

"Now, you've got to buy me a complete outfit." Craig drew a roll of
bills from his pocket, counted off several, threw them on the table.
"There's four hundred dollars, all I can afford to waste at present.
Make it go as far as you can. Get a few first-class things, the rest
decent and substantial, but not showy. I'll pay for the suits I've got
to get. They'll have to be ready-made--and very good ready-made ones a
man can buy nowadays. We'll go to the tailor's first thing--about seven
o'clock in the morning, which'll give him plenty of time for
alterations."

"I won't!" exploded Grant, stopping his restless pacing and slamming
himself on to a chair.

"Oh, yes, you will," asserted Craig, with absolute confidence. "You're
not going back on me."

"There's nothing in this--nothing! I've known Rita Severence nearly
twenty years, and I know she's done with you."

Craig sprang to his feet, went over and laid his heavy hand heavily upon
Arkwright's shoulder. "And," said he, "you know me. Did I ever say a
thing that didn't prove to be true, no matter how improbable it seemed
to you?"

Arkwright was silent.

"Grant," Craig went on, and his voice was gentle and moving, "I need
you. I must have you. You won't fail me, will you, old pal?"

"Oh, hell!--I'll go," said Grant in a much-softened growl. "But I know
it's a wild-goose chase. Still, you do need the clothes. You're a
perfect disgrace."

Craig took away his hand and burst into his noisy, boyish laughter, so
reminiscent of things rural and boorish, of the coarse, strong spirits
of the happy-go-lucky, irresponsibles that work as field hands and
wood-haulers. "By cracky, Grant, I just got sight of the remnants of
that dig I gave you. It was a beauty, wasn't it?"

Arkwright moved uneasily, fumbled at his collar, tried to smile
carelessly.

"I certainly am the luckiest devil," Craig went on. "Now, what a stroke
pushing you over and throttling you was!" And he again laughed loudly.

"I don't follow you," said Grant sourly.

"What a vanity box you are! You can't take a joke. Now, they're always
poking fun at me--pretty damn nasty! some of it--but don't I always look
cheerful?"

"Oh--YOU!" exclaimed Grant in disgust.

"And do you know why?" demanded Craig, giving him a rousing slap on the
knee. "When I find it hard to laugh I begin to think of the greatest
joke of all--the joke I'll have on these merry boys when the cards are
all played and I sweep the tables. I think of that, and, by gosh, I
fairly roar!"

"Do you talk that way to convince yourself?"

Craig's eyes were suddenly shrewd. "Yes," said he, "and to convince you,
and a lot of other weak-minded people who believe all they hear. You'll
find out some day that the world thinks with its ears and its mouth, my
boy. But, as I say, who but I could have tumbled into such luck as came
quite accidentally out of that little 'rough-house' of mine at your
expense?"

"Don't see it," said Grant.

"Why, can't you see that it puts you out of business with Margaret?
She's not the sort of woman to take to the fellow that shows he's the
weaker."

"Well, I'll be--damned!" gasped Arkwright. "You HAVE got your nerve! To
say such a thing to a man you've just asked a favor of."

"Not at all," cried Craig airily. "Facts are facts. Why deny them?"

Arkwright shrugged his shoulders. "Well, let it pass.... Whether it's
settled me with her or not, it somehow--curiously enough--settled her
with me. Do you know, Josh, I've had no use for her since. I can't
explain it."

"Vanity," said Craig. "You are vain, like all people who don't talk
about themselves. The whole human race is vain--individually and
collectively. Now, if a man talks about himself as I do, why, his vanity
froths away harmlessly. But you and your kind suffer from ingrowing
vanity. You think of nothing but yourselves--how you look--how you
feel--how you are impressing others--what you can get for
yourself--self--self--self, day and night. You don't like Margaret any
more because she saw you humiliated. Where would I be if I were like
that? Why, I'd be dead or hiding in the brush; for I've had nothing but
insults, humiliations, sneers, snubs, all my life. Crow's my steady
diet, old pal. And I fatten and flourish on it."

Grant was laughing, with a choke in his throat. "Josh," said he, "you're
either more or less than human."

"Both," said Craig. "Grant, we're wasting time. Walter!" That last in a
stentorian shout.

The valet appeared. "Yes, Mr. Craig."

"Pack your friend Grant, here, for two days in New York. He's going
to-night and--I guess you'd better come along."

Arkwright threw up his hands in a gesture of mock despair. "Do as he
says, Walter. He's the boss."

"Now you're talking sense," said Craig. "Some day you'll stand before
kings for this--or sit, as you please."

On their way out Josh fished from the darkness under the front stairs a
tattered and battered suitcase and handed it to Walter. "It's my little
all," he explained to Grant. "I've given up my rooms at the Wyandotte.
They stored an old trunkful or so for me, and I've sent my books to the
office."

"Look here, Josh," said Grant, when they were under way; "does Margaret
know you're coming?"

"Does Margaret know I'm coming?" repeated Joshua mockingly. "Does
Margaret know her own mind and me?... Before I forget it here's a list I
wrote out against a lamp-post while I was waiting for you to come home.
It's the things I must have, so far as I know. The frills and froth you
know about--I don't."




CHAPTER XVIII

PEACE AT ANY PRICE


Miss Severance, stepping out of a Waldorf elevator at the main floor,
shrank back wide-eyed. "You?" she gasped.

Before her, serene and smiling and inflexible, was Craig. None of the
suits he had bought at seven that morning was quite right for immediate
use; so there he was in his old lounge suit, baggy at knees and elbows
and liberally bestrewn with lint. Her glance fell from his mussy collar
to his backwoodsman's hands, to his feet, so cheaply and shabbily shod;
the shoes looked the worse for the elaborate gloss the ferry bootblack
had put upon them. She advanced because she could not retreat; but never
had she been so repelled.

She had come to New York to get away from him. When she entered the
train she had flung him out of the window. "I WILL NOT think of him
again," she had said to herself. But--Joshua Craig's was not the sort of
personality that can be banished by an edict of will. She could think
angrily of him, or disdainfully, or coldly, or pityingly--but think she
must. And think she did. She told herself she despised him; and there
came no echoing protest or denial from anywhere within her. She said she
was done with him forever, and well done; her own answer to herself
there was, that while she was probably the better off for having got out
of the engagement, still it must be conceded that socially the manner of
her getting out meant scandal, gossip, laughter at her. Her cheeks
burned as her soul flamed.

"The vulgar boor!" she muttered.

Was ever woman so disgraced, and so unjustly? What had the gods against
her, that they had thus abased her? How Washington would jeer! How her
friends would sneer! What hope was there now of her ever getting a
husband? She would be an object of pity and of scorn. It would take more
courage than any of the men of her set had, to marry a woman rejected by
such a creature--and in such circumstances!

"He has made everybody think I sought him. Now, he'll tell everybody
that he had to break it off--that HE broke it off!"

She ground her teeth; she clenched her hands; she wept and moaned in the
loneliness of her bed. She hated Craig; she hated the whole world; she
loathed herself. And all the time she had to keep up appearances--for
she had not dared tell her grandmother--had to listen while the old lady
discussed the marriage as an event of the not remote future.

Why had she not told her grandmother? Lack of courage; hope that
something would happen to reveal the truth without her telling. HOPE
that something would happen? No, fear. She did not dare look at the
newspapers. But, whatever her reason, it was not any idea that possibly
the engagement might be resumed. No, not that. "Horrible as I feel,"
thought she, "I am better off than in those weeks when that man was
whirling me from one nightmare to another. The peace of desolation is
better than that torture of doubt and repulsion. Whatever was I thinking
of to engage myself to such a man? to think seriously of passing my life
with him? Poor fool that I was, to rail against monotony, to sigh for
sensations! Well, I have got them."

Day and night, almost without ceasing, her thoughts had boiled and
bubbled on and on, like a geyser ever struggling for outlet and ever
falling vainly back upon itself.

Now--here he was, greeting her at the elevator car, smiling and
confident, as if nothing had happened. She did not deign even to stare
at him, but, with eyes that seemed to be simply looking without seeing
any especial object, she walked straight on. "I'm in luck," cried he,
beside her. "I had only been walking up and down there by the elevators
about twenty minutes."

She made no reply. At the door she said to the carriage-caller:

"A cab, please--no, a hansom."

The hansom drove up; its doors opened. Craig pushed aside the carriage
man, lifted her in with a powerful upward swing of his arm against her
elbow and side--so powerful that she fell into the seat, knocking her
hat awry and loosening her veil from the brim so that it hung down
distressfully across her eyes and nose. "Drive up Fifth Avenue to the
Park," said Craig, seating himself beside her. "Now, please don't cry,"
he said to her.

"Cry?" she exclaimed. Her dry, burning eyes blazed at him.

"Your eyes were so bright," laughed he, "that I thought they were full
of tears."

"If you are a gentleman you will leave this hansom at once."

"Don't talk nonsense," said he. "You know perfectly well I'll not leave.
You know perfectly well I'll say what I've got to say to you, and that
no power on earth can prevent me. That's why you didn't give way to your
impulse to make a scene when I followed you into this trap."

She was busy with her hat and veil.

"Can I help you?" said he with a great show of politeness that was
ridiculously out of harmony with him in every way. That, and the
absurdity of Josh Craig, of all men, helping a woman in the delicate
task of adjusting a hat and veil, struck her as so ludicrous that she
laughed hysterically; her effort to make the laughter appear an outburst
of derisive, withering scorn was not exactly a triumph.

"Well," she presently said, "what is it you wish to say? I have very
little time."

He eyed her sharply. "You think you dislike me, don't you?" said he.

"I do," replied she, her tone as cutting as her words were curt.

"How little that amounts to! All human beings--Grant, you, I, all of us,
everybody--are brimful of vanity. It slops over a little one way and we
call it like. It slops over the other way and we call it
dislike--hate--loathing--according to the size of the slop. Now, I'm not
here to deal with vanity, but with good sense. Has it occurred to you in
the last few days that you and I have got to get married, whether we
will or no?"

"It has not," she cried with frantic fury of human being cornered by an
ugly truth.

"Oh, yes, it has. For you are a sensible woman--entirely too sensible
for a woman, unless she marries an unusual man like me."

"Is that a jest?" she inquired in feeble attempt at sarcasm.

"Don't you know I have no sense of humor? Would I do the things I do and
carry them through if I had?"

In spite of herself she admired this penetration of self-analysis. In
spite of herself the personality beneath his surface, the personality
that had a certain uncanny charm for her, was subtly reasserting its
inexplicable fascination.

"Yes, we've got to marry," proceeded he. "I have to marry you because I
can't afford to let you say you jilted me. That would make me the
laughing-stock of my State; and I can't afford to tell the truth that I
jilted you because the people would despise me as no gentleman. And,
while I don't in the least mind being despised as no gentleman by
fashionable noddle-heads or by those I trample on to rise, I do mind it
when it would ruin me with the people."

Her eyes gleamed. So! She had him at her mercy!

"Not so fast, young lady," continued he in answer to that gleam. "It is
equally true that you've got to marry me."

"But I shall not!" she cried. "Besides, it isn't true."

"It IS true," replied he. "You may refuse to marry me, just as a man may
refuse to run when the dynamite blast is going off. Yes, you can refuse,
but--you'd not be your grandmother's granddaughter if you did."

"Really!" She was so surcharged with rage that she was shaking with it,
was tearing up her handkerchief in her lap.

"Yes, indeed," he assured her, tranquil as a lawyer arguing a commercial
case before a logic-machine of a judge. "If you do not marry me all your
friends will say I jilted you. I needn't tell you what it would mean in
your set, what it would mean as to your matrimonial prospects, for you
to have the reputation of having been turned down by me--need I?"

She was silent; her head down, her lips compressed, her fingers fiercely
interlaced with the ruins of her handkerchief.

"It is necessary that you marry," said he summing up. "It is wisest and
easiest to marry me, since I am willing. To refuse would be to inflict
an irreparable injury upon yourself in order to justify a paltry whim
for injuring me."

She laughed harshly. "You are frank," said she.

"I am paying you the compliment of frankness. I am appealing to your
intelligence, where a less intelligent man and one that knew you less
would try to gain his point by chicane, flattery, deception."

"Yes--it is a compliment," she answered. "It was stupid of me to sneer
at your frankness."

A long silence. He lighted a cigarette, smoked it with deliberation
foreign to his usual self but characteristic of him when he was closely
and intensely engaged; for he was like a thoroughbred that is all fret
and champ and pawing and caper until the race is on, when he at once
settles down into a calm, steady stride, with all the surplus nervous
energy applied directly and intelligently to the work in hand. She was
not looking at him, but she was feeling him in every atom of her body,
was feeling the power, the inevitableness of the man. He angered her,
made her feel weak, a helpless thing, at his mercy. True, it was his
logic that was convincing her, not his magnetic and masterful will; but
somehow the two seemed one. Never had he been so repellent, never had
she felt so hostile to him.

"I will marry you," she finally said. "But I must tell you that I do not
love you--or even like you. The reverse."

His face, of the large, hewn features, with their somehow pathetic
traces of the struggles and sorrows of his rise, grew strange, almost
terrible. "Do you mean that?" he said, turning slowly toward her.

She quickly shifted her eyes, in which her dislike was showing, shifted
them before he could possibly have seen. And she tried in vain to force
past her lips the words which she believed to be the truth, the words
his pathetic, powerful face told her would end everything. Yes, she knew
he would not marry her if she told him the truth about her feelings.

"Do you mean that?" he repeated, stern and sharp, yet sad, wistfully
sad, too.

"I don't know what I mean," she cried, desperately afraid of him, afraid
of the visions the idea of not marrying him conjured. "I don't know what
I mean," she repeated. "You fill me with a kind of--of--horror. You draw
me into your grasp in spite of myself--like a whirlpool--and rouse all
my instinct to try and save myself. Sometimes that desire becomes a
positive frenzy."

He laughed complacently. "That is love," said he.

She did not resent his tone or dispute his verdict externally. "If it is
love," replied she evenly, "then never did love wear so strange, so
dreadful a disguise."

He laid his talon-hand, hardened and misshapen by manual labor, but if
ugly, then ugly with the majesty of the twisted, tempest-defying oak,
over hers. "Believe me, Margaret, you love me. You have loved me all
along.... And I you."

"Don't deceive yourself," she felt bound to say, "I certainly do not
love you if love has any of its generally accepted meanings."

"I am not the general sort of person," said he. "It is not strange that
I should arouse extraordinary feelings, is it? Driver"--he had the trap
in the roof up and was thrusting through it a slip of paper--"take us to
that street and number."

She gasped with a tightening at the heart. "I must return to the hotel
at once," she said hurriedly.

He fixed his gaze upon her. "We are going to the preacher's," said he.

"The preacher's?" she murmured, shrinking in terror.

"Grant is waiting for us there"--he glanced at his watch--"or, rather,
will be there in about ten minutes. We are a little earlier than I
anticipated."

She flushed crimson, paled, felt she would certainly suffocate with
rage.

"Before you speak," continued he, "listen to me. You don't want to go
back into that torment of doubt in which we've both been hopping about
for a month, like a pair of damned souls being used as tennis balls by
fiends. Let's settle the business now, and for good and all. Let us have
peace--for God's sake, peace! I know you've been miserable. I know I've
been on the rack. And it's got to stop. Am I not right?"

She leaned back in her corner of the cab, shut her eyes, said no
more--and all but ceased to think. What was there to say? What was there
to think? When Fate ceases to tolerate our pleasant delusion of free
will, when it openly and firmly seizes us and hurries us along, we do
not discuss or comment. We close our minds, relax and submit.

At the parsonage he sprang out, stood by to help her descend,
half-dragged her from the cab when she hesitated. He shouted at the
driver: "How much do I owe you, friend?"

"Six dollars, sir."

"Not on your life!" shouted Craig furiously. He turned to Margaret,
standing beside him in a daze. "What do you think of THAT! This fellow
imagines because I've got a well-dressed woman along I'll submit. But
I'm not that big a snob." He was looking up at the cabman again. "You
miserable thief!" he exclaimed. "I'll give you three dollars, and that's
too much by a dollar."

"Don't you call me names!" yelled the cabman, shaking his fist with the
whip in it.

"The man's drunk," cried Josh to the little crowd of people that had
assembled. Margaret, overwhelmed with mortification, tugged at his
sleeve. "The man's not overcharging much--if any," she said in an
undertone.

"You're saying that because you hate scenes," replied Josh loudly. "You
go on into the house. I'll take care of this hound."

Margaret retreated within the parsonage gate; her very soul was sick.
She longed for the ground to open and swallow her forever. It would be
bad enough for a man to make such an exhibition at any time; but to make
it when he was about to be married!--and in such circumstances!--to
squabble and scream over a paltry dollar or so!

"Here's a policeman!" cried Craig. "Now, you thief, we'll see!"

The cabman sprang down from his seat. "You damn jay!" he bellowed. "You
don't know New York cabfares. Was you ever to town before--eh?"

Craig beckoned the policeman with vast, excited gestures. Margaret fled
up the walk toward the parsonage door, but not before she heard Craig
say to the policeman:

"I am Joshua Craig, assistant to the Attorney-General of the United
States. This thief here--" And so on until he had told the whole story.
Margaret kept her back to the street, but she could hear the two
fiercely-angry voices, the laughter of the crowd. At last Craig joined
her--panting, flushed, triumphant. "I knew he was a thief. Four dollars
was the right amount, but I gave him five, as the policeman said it was
best to quiet him."

He gave a jerk at the knob of parsonage street bell as if he were
determined to pull it out; the bell within rang loudly, angrily, like
the infuriate voice of a sleeper who has been roused with a thundering
kick. "This affair of ours," continued Craig, "is going to cost money.
And I've been spending it to-day like a drunken sailor. The more careful
I am, the less careful I will have to be, my dear."

The door opened--a maid, scowling, appeared.

"Come on," cried Joshua to Margaret. And he led the way, brushing the
maid aside as she stood her ground, attitude belligerent, but expression
perplexed. To her, as he passed, Craig said: "Tell Doctor Scones that
Mr. Craig and the lady are here. Has Mr. Arkwright come?"

By this time he was in the parlor; a glance around and he burst out:

"Late, by jiminy! And I told him to be here ahead of time."

He darted to the window. "Ah! There he comes!" He wheeled upon Margaret
just as she dropped, half-fainting, into a chair. "What's the matter,
dear?" He leaped to her side. "No false emotions, please. If you could
weather the real ones what's the use of getting up ladylike excitement
over--"

"For God's sake!" exclaimed Margaret, "sit down and shut up! If you
don't I shall scream--scream--SCREAM!"

The maid gaped first at one, then at the other, left them reluctantly to
admit Arkwright. As she opened the door she had to draw back a little.
There was Craig immediately behind her. He swept her aside, flung the
door wide. "Come on! Hurry!" he cried to Grant. "We're waiting." And he
seized him by the arm and thrust him into the parlor. At the same
instant the preacher entered by another door. Craig's excitement, far
from diminishing, grew wilder and wilder. The preacher thought him
insane or drunk. Grant and Margaret tried in vain to calm him. Nothing
would do but the ceremony instantly--and he had his way. Never was there
a more undignified wedding. When the responses were all said and the
marriage was a fact accomplished, so far as preacher could accomplish
it, Craig seemed suddenly to subside.

"I should like to go into the next room for a moment," said the pallid
and trembling Margaret.

"Certainly," said Doctor Scones sympathetically, and, with a fierce
scowl at the groom, he accompanied the bride from the room.

"What a mess you have made!" exclaimed Arkwright indignantly. "You've
been acting like a lunatic."

"It wasn't acting--altogether," laughed Josh, giving Grant one of those
tremendous slaps on the back. "You see, it was wise to give her
something else to think about so she couldn't possibly hesitate or bolt.
So I just gave way to my natural feelings. It's a way I have in
difficult situations."

Grant's expression as he looked at him was a mingling of admiration,
fear and scorn. "You are full of those petty tricks," said he.

"Why petty? Is it petty to meet the requirements of a situation? The
situation was petty--the trick had to be. Besides, I tell you, it wasn't
a trick. If I hadn't given my nerves an outlet I might have balked or
bolted myself. I didn't want to have to think any more than she."

"You mustn't say those things to me," objected his friend.

"Why not? What do I care what you or any one else thinks of ME? And what
could you do except simply think? Old pal, you ought to learn not to
judge me by the rules of your little puddle. It's a ridiculous habit."
He leaped at the door where Margaret had disappeared and rapped on it
fiercely.

"Yes--yes--I'm coming," responded a nervous, pleading, agitated voice;
and the door opened and Margaret appeared.

"What shall we do now?" she said to Craig. Grant saw, with an amazement
he could scarcely conceal, that for the time, at least, she was quite
subdued, would meekly submit to anything.

"Go to your grandmother," said Craig promptly. "You attend to the
preacher, Grant. Twenty-five's enough to give him."

Margaret's cheeks flamed, her head bowed. Grant flushed in sympathy with
her agony before this vulgarity. And a moment later he saw Margaret
standing, drooping and resigned, at the curb, while Craig excitedly
hailed a cab. "Poor girl!" he muttered, "living with that
nightmare-in-breeches will surely kill her--so delicate, so refined, so
sensitive!"




CHAPTER XIX

MADAM BOWKER'S BLESSING


"If you like I'll go up and tell your grandmother," said Craig, breaking
the silence as they neared the hotel. But Margaret's brain had resumed
its normal function, was making up for the time it had lost. With the
shaking off of the daze had come amazement at finding herself married.
In the same circumstances a man would have been incapacitated for
action; Craig, who had been so reckless, so headlong a few minutes
before, was now timid, irresolute, prey to alarms. But women, beneath
the pose which man's resolute apotheosis of woman as the embodiment of
unreasoning imagination has enforced upon them, are rarely so
imaginative that the practical is wholly obscured. Margaret was
accepting the situation, was planning soberly to turn it to the best
advantage. Obviously, much hung upon this unconventional, this
vulgarly-sensational marriage being diplomatically announced to the
person from whom she expected to get an income of her own. "No," said
she to Joshua, in response to his nervously-made offer. "You must wait
down in the office while I tell her. At the proper time I'll send for
you."

She spoke friendlily enough, with an inviting suggestion of their common
interests. But Craig found it uncomfortable even to look at her. Now
that the crisis was over his weaknesses were returning; he could not
believe he had dared bear off this "delicate, refined creature," this
woman whom "any one can see at a glance is a patrician of patricians."
That kind of nervousness as quickly spreads through every part, moral,
mental and physical, of a man not sure of himself as a fire through a
haystack. He could not conceal his awe of her. She saw that something
was wrong with him; being herself in no "patrician" mood, but, on the
contrary, in a mood that was most humanly plebeian, she quite missed the
cause of his clumsy embarrassment and constraint; she suspected a sudden
physical ailment. "It'll be some time, I expect," said she. "Don't
bother to hang around. I'll send a note to the desk, and you can
inquire--say, in half an hour or so."

"Half an hour!" he cried in dismay. Whatever should he do with himself,
alone with these returned terrors, and with no Margaret there to make
him ashamed not to give braver battle to them.

"An hour, then."

She nodded, shook hands with a blush and a smile, not without its gleam
of appreciation of the queerness of the situation. He lifted his hat,
made a nervous, formal bow and turned away, though no car was there. As
the elevator was starting up with her he came hurrying back.

"One moment," he said. "I quite forgot."

She joined him and they stood aside, in the shelter of a great
wrap-rack. "You can tell your grandmother--it may help to smooth things
over--that my appointment as Attorney-General will be announced day
after to-morrow."

"Oh!" exclaimed she, her eyes lighting up.

He went on to explain. "As you know, the President didn't want to give
it to me. But I succeeded in drawing him into a position where he either
had to give it to me or seem to be retiring me because I had so
vigorously attacked the big rascals he's suspected of being privately
more than half in sympathy with."

"She'll be delighted!" exclaimed Margaret.

"And you?" he asked with awkward wistfulness.

"I?" said she blushing and dropping her glance. "Is it necessary for you
to ask?"

She went back to the elevator still more out of humor with herself. She
had begun their married life with what was very nearly a--well, it
certainly was an evasion; for she cared nothing about his political
career, so soon to end. However, she was glad of the appointment,
because the news of it would be useful in calming and reconciling her
grandmother. Just as her spirits began to rise it flashed into her mind:
"Why, that's how it happens I'm married! If he hadn't been successful in
getting the office he wouldn't have come.... He maneuvered the President
into a position where he had to give him what he wanted. Then he came
here and maneuvered me into a position where _I_ had to give him what he
wanted. Always his 'game!' No sincerity or directness anywhere in him,
and very little real courage." Here she stopped short in the full swing
of pharisaism, smiled at herself in dismal self-mockery. "And what am
_I_ doing? Playing MY 'game.' I'm on my way now to maneuver my
grandmother. We are well suited--he and I. In another walk of life we
might have been a pair of swindlers, playing into each other's hands....
And yet I don't believe we're worse than most people. Why, most people
do these things without a thought of their being--unprincipled. And,
after all, I'm not harming anybody, am I? That is, anybody but myself."

She had her campaign carefully laid out; she had mapped it in the cab
between the parsonage and the hotel. "Grandmother," she began as the old
lady looked up with a frown because of her long, unexpected absence, "I
must tell you that just before we left Washington Craig broke the
engagement."

Madam Bowker half-started from her chair. "Broke the engagement!" she
cried in dismay.

"Abruptly and, apparently, finally. I--I didn't dare tell you before."

She so longed for sympathy that she half-hoped the old lady would show
signs of being touched by the plight which that situation meant. But no
sign came. Instead, Madam Bowker pierced her with wrathful eyes and said
in a furious voice: "This is frightful! And you have done nothing?" She
struck the floor violently with her staff. "He must be brought to a
sense of honor--of decency! He must! Do you hear? It was your fault, I
am sure. If he does not marry you are ruined!"

"He came over this morning," pursued Margaret. "He wanted to marry me at
once."

"You should have given him no chance to change his mind again," cried
Madam Bowker. "What a trifler you are! No seriousness! Your intelligence
all in the abstract; only folly and fritter for your own affairs. You
should have given him no chance to change!"

Margaret closed in and struck home. "I didn't," said she tersely. "I
married him."

The old lady stared. Then, as she realized how cleverly Margaret had
trapped her, she smiled a grim smile of appreciation and forgiveness.
"Come and kiss me," said she. "You will do something, now that you have
a chance. No woman has a chance--no LADY--until she is a Mrs. It's the
struggle to round that point that wrecks so many of them."

Margaret kissed her. "And," she went on, "he has been made
Attorney-General."

Never, never had Margaret seen such unconcealed satisfaction in her
grandmother's face. The stern, piercing eyes softened and beamed
affection upon the girl; all the affection she had deemed it wise to
show theretofore always was tempered with sternness. "What a pity he
hasn't money," said she. "Still, it can be managed, after a fashion."

"We MUST have money," pursued the girl. "Life with him, without it,
would be intolerable. Poor people are thrown so closely together. He is
too much for my nerves--often."

"He's your property now," Madam Bowker reminded her. "You must not
disparage your own property. Always remember that your husband is your
property. Then your silly nerves will soon quiet down."

"We must have money," repeated Margaret. "A great deal of money."

"You know I can't give you a great deal," said the old lady
apologetically. "I'll do my best.... Would you like to live with me?"

There was something so fantastic in the idea of Joshua Craig and Madam
Bowker living under the same roof, and herself trying to live with them,
that Margaret burst out laughing. The old lady frowned; then,
appreciating the joke, she joined in. "You'll have to make up your mind
to live very quietly. Politics doesn't pay well--not Craig's branch of
it, except in honor. He will be very famous."

"Where?" retorted Margaret disdainfully. "Why, with a lot of people who
aren't worth considering. No, I am going to take Joshua out of
politics."

The old lady looked interest and inquiry.

"He has had several flattering offers to be counsel to big corporations.
The things he has done against them have made them respect and want him.
I'm going to get him to leave politics and practice law in New York.
Lawyers there--the shrewd ones, like him--make fortunes. He can still
speak occasionally and get all the applause he wants. Joshua loves
applause."

The old lady was watching her narrowly.

"Don't you think I'm right, Grandma? I'm telling you because I want your
opinion."

"Will he do it?"

Margaret laughed easily. "He's afraid of me. If I manage him well he'll
do whatever I wish. I can make him realize he has no right to deprive
myself and him of the advantages of my station."

"Um--um," said the old lady, half to herself. "Yes--yes--perhaps.
Um--um--"

"He will be much more content once he's settled in the new line.
Politics as an end is silly--what becomes of the men who stick to it?
But politics as a means is sensible, and Joshua has got out of it about
all he can get--about all he needs."

"He hopes to be President."

"So do thousands of other men. And even if he should get it how would we
live--how would _I_ live--while we were waiting--and after it was over?
I detest politics--all those vulgar people." Margaret made a disdainful
mouth. "It isn't for our sort of people--except, perhaps, the diplomatic
posts, and they, of course, go by 'pull' or purchase. I like the life
I've led--the life you've led. You've made me luxurious and lazy,
Grandma.... Rather than President I'd prefer him to be ambassador to
England, after a while, when we could afford it. We could have a great
social career."

"You think you can manage him?" repeated Madam Bowker.

She had been simply listening, her thoughts not showing at the surface.
Her tone was neither discouraging nor encouraging, merely interrogative.
But Margaret scented a doubt. "Don't you think so?" she said a little
less confidently.

"I don't know.... I don't know.... It will do no harm to try."

Margaret's expression was suddenly like a real face from which a mask
has dropped. "I must do it, Grandma. If I don't I shall--I shall HATE
him! I will not be his servant! When I think of the humiliations he has
put upon me I--I almost hate him now!"

Madam Bowker was alarmed, but was too wise to show it. She laughed. "How
seriously you take yourself, child," said she. "All that is very young
and very theatrical. What do birth and breeding mean if not that one has
the high courage to bear what is, after all, the lot of most women, and
the high intelligence to use one's circumstances, whatever they may be,
to accomplish one's ambitions? A lady cannot afford to despise her
husband. A lady is, first of all, serene. You talk like a Craig rather
than like a Severance. If he can taint you this soon how long will it be
before you are at his level? How can you hope to bring him up to yours?"

Margaret's head was hanging.

"Never again let me hear you speak disrespectfully of your husband, my
child," the old lady went on impressively. "And if you are wise you will
no more permit yourself to harbor a disrespectful thought of him than
you would permit yourself to wear unclean underclothes."

Margaret dropped down at her grandmother's knee, buried her face in her
lap. "I don't believe I can ever love him," she murmured.

"So long as you believe that, you never can," said Madam Bowker; "and
your married life will be a failure--as great a failure as mine was--as
your mother's was. If I had only known what I know now--what I am
telling you--" Madam Bowker paused, and there was a long silence in the
room. "Your married life, my dear," she went on, "will be what you
choose to make of it. You have a husband. Never let yourself indulge in
silly repinings or ruinous longings. Make the best of what you have.
Study your husband, not ungenerously and superciliously, but with eyes
determined to see the virtues that can be developed, the faults that can
be cured, and with eyes that will not linger on the faults that can't be
cured. Make him your constant thought and care. Never forget that you
belong to the superior sex."

"I don't feel that I do," said Margaret. "I can't help feeling women are
inferior and wishing I'd been a man."

"That is because you do not think," replied Madam Bowker indulgently.
"Children are the center of life--its purpose, its fulfillment. All
normal men and women want children above everything else. Our only title
to be here is as ancestors--to replace ourselves with wiser and better
than we. That makes woman the superior of man; she alone has the power
to give birth. Man instinctively knows this, and it is his fear of
subjection to woman that makes him sneer at and fight against every
effort to develop her intelligence and her independence. If you are a
true woman, worthy of your race and of your breeding, you will never
forget your superiority--or the duties it imposes on you--what you owe
to your husband and to your children. You are a married woman now.
Therefore you are free. Show that you deserve freedom and know how to
use it."

Margaret listened to the old woman with a new respect for her--and for
herself. "I'll try, Grandmother," she said soberly. "But--it won't be
easy." A reflective silence, and she repeated, "No, not easy."

"Easier than to resist and repine and rage and hunt another man who, on
close acquaintance, would prove even less satisfactory," replied her
grandmother. "Easy--if you honestly try." She looked down at the girl
with the sympathy that goes out to inexperience from those who have
lived long and thoughtfully and have seen many a vast and fearful bogy
loom and, on nearer view, fade into a mist of fancy. "Above all, child,
don't waste your strength on imaginary griefs and woes--you'll have none
left for the real trials."

Margaret had listened attentively; she would remember what the old lady
had said--indeed, it would have been hard to forget words so direct and
so impressively uttered. But at the moment they made small impression
upon her. She thought her grandmother kindly but cold. In fact, the old
lady was giving her as deep commiseration as her broader experience
permitted in the circumstances, some such commiseration as one gives a
child who sees measureless calamity in a rainy sky on a long-anticipated
picnic morning.




CHAPTER XX

MR. CRAIG KISSES THE IDOL'S FOOT


Grant Arkwright reached the Waldorf a little less than an hour after he
had seen the bride and groom drive away from Doctor Scones'. He found
Craig pacing up and down before the desk, his agitation so obvious that
the people about were all intensely and frankly interested. "You look as
if you were going to draw a couple of guns in a minute or so and shoot
up the house," said he, putting himself squarely before Josh and halting
him.

"For God's sake, Grant," cried Joshua, "see how I'm sweating! Go
upstairs--up to their suite, and find out what's the matter."

"Go yourself," retorted Grant.

Craig shook his head. He couldn't confess to Arkwright what was really
agitating him, why he did not disregard Margaret's injunction.

"What're you afraid of?"

Josh scowled as Grant thus unconsciously scuffed the sore spot. "I'm not
afraid!" he cried aggressively. "It's better that you should go. Don't
haggle--go!"

As Grant could think of no reason why he shouldn't, and as he had the
keenest curiosity to see how the "old tartar" was taking it, he went.
Margaret's voice came in response to his knock. "Oh, it's you," said she
in a tone of relief.

Her face was swollen and her eyes red. She looked anything but lovely.
Grant, however, was instantly so moved that he did not notice her
homeliness. Also, he was one of those unobservant people who, having
once formed an impression of a person, do not revise it except under
compulsion; his last observation of Margaret had resulted in an
impression of good looks, exceptional charm. He bent upon her a look in
which understanding sympathy was heavily alloyed with the longing of the
covetous man in presence of his neighbor's desirable possessions. But he
discreetly decided that he would not put into words--at least, not just
yet--his sympathy with her for her dreadful, her tragic mistake. No, it
would be more tactful as well as more discreet to pretend belief that
her tears had been caused by her grandmother. He glanced round.

"Where's Madam Bowker?" inquired he. "Did she blow up and bolt?"

"Oh, no," answered Margaret, seating herself with a dreary sigh. "She's
gone to her sitting-room to write with her own hand the announcement
that's to be given out. She says the exact wording is very important."

"So it is," said Grant. "All that's said will take its color from the
first news."

"No doubt." Margaret's tone was indifferent, absent.

Arkwright hesitated to introduce the painful subject, the husband; yet
he had a certain malicious pleasure in doing it, too. "Josh wants to
come up," said he. "He's down at the desk, champing and tramping and
pawing holes in the floor." And he looked at her, to note the impression
of this vivid, adroitly-reminiscent picture.

"Not yet," said Margaret curtly and coldly. All of a sudden she buried
her face in her hands and burst into tears.

"Rita--dear Rita!" exclaimed Grant, his own eyes wet, "I know just how
you feel. Am I not suffering, too? I thought I didn't care, but I did--I
do. Rita, it isn't too late yet--"

She straightened; dried her eyes. "Stop that, Grant!" she said
peremptorily. "Stop it!"

His eyes sank. "I can't bear to see you suffer."

"You don't mean a word of what you've just said," she went on. "You are
all upset, as I am. You are his friend and mine." Defiantly: "And I love
him, and you know I do."

It was the tone of one giving another something that must be repeated by
rote. "That's it," said he, somewhat sullenly, but with no hint of
protest. "I'm all unstrung, like you, and like him."

"And you will forget that you saw me crying."

"I'll never think of it again."

"Now go and bring him, please."

He went quickly toward the door.

"Grant!" she cried. As he turned she rose, advanced with a friendly
smile and put out her hand for his. "Thank you," she said. "You have
shown yourself OUR best friend."

"I meant to be," he answered earnestly, as he pressed her hand. "When I
pull myself together I think you'll realize I'm some decenter than I've
seemed of late."

Madam Bowker came just as he returned with Craig. So all attention was
concentrated upon the meeting of the two impossibilities. The old lady
took her new relative's hand with a gracious, queenly smile--a smile
that had the effect both of making him grateful and of keeping him "in
his place." Said she, "I have been writing out the announcement."

"Thank you," was Joshua's eager, respectful reply.

She gave him the sheet of notepaper she was carrying in her left hand.
It was her own private paper, heavy, quiet, rich, engraved with
aristocratic simplicity, most elegant; and most elegant was the
handwriting. "This," said she, "is to be given out in addition to the
formal notice which Grant will send to the newspapers."

Craig read:

"Mrs. Bowker announces the marriage of her granddaughter, Margaret
Severence, and Joshua Craig, of Wayne, Minnesota, and Washington, by the
Reverend Doctor Scones, at the Waldorf, this morning. Only a few
relatives and Mr. Craig's friend, Mr. Grant Arkwright, were present. The
marriage occurred sooner than was expected, out of consideration for
Mrs. Bowker, as she is very old, and wished it to take place before she
left for her summer abroad."

Craig lifted to the old lady the admiring glance of a satisfied expert
in public opinion. Their eyes met on an equality; for an instant he
forgot that she figured in his imagination as anything more than a human
being. "Splendid!" cried he, with hearty enthusiasm. "You have covered
the case exactly. Grant, telephone for an Associated Press reporter and
give him this."

"I'll copy it off for him," said Grant.

Madam Bowker and Craig exchanged amused glances. "You'll give it to him
in Madam Bowker's handwriting," ordered Craig. "You told Scones to keep
his mouth shut, when you paid him?"

The other three looked conscious, and Margaret reddened slightly at this
coarse brusqueness of phrase. "Yes," said Grant. "He'll refuse to be
interviewed. I'll go and attend to this."

"We're having a gala lunch, at once--in the apartment," said the old
lady. "So, come back quickly."

When he was gone she said to the two: "And now what are your plans?"

"We have none," said Craig.

"I had thought--" began Margaret. She hesitated, colored, went on:
"Grandmother, couldn't you get the Millicans' camp in the Adirondacks? I
heard Mrs. Millican say yesterday they had got it all ready and had
suddenly decided to go abroad instead."

"Certainly," said the old lady. "I'll telephone about it at once, and
I'll ask the Millicans to lunch with us to-day."

She left them alone. Craig, eyeing his bride covertly, had a sense of
her remoteness, her unattainability. He was like a man who, in an hour
of rashness and vanity, has boasted that he can attain a certain
mountain peak, and finds himself stalled at its very base. He decided
that he must assert himself; he tried to nerve himself to seize her in
his old precipitate, boisterous fashion. He found that he had neither
the desire to do so nor the ability. He had never thought her so full of
the lady's charm. That was just the trouble--the lady's charm, not the
human being's; not the charm feminine for the male.

"I hope you'll be very patient with me," said she, with a wan smile. "I
am far from well. I've been debating for several days whether or not to
give up and send for the doctor."

He did not see her real motive in thus paving the way for the formation
of the habit of separate lives; he eagerly believed her, was grateful to
her, was glad she was ill. So quaint is the interweaving of thought,
there flashed into his mind at that moment: "After all, I needn't have
blown in so much money on trousseau. Maybe I can get 'em to take back
those two suits of twenty-dollar pajamas. Grant went in too deep." This,
because the money question was bothering him greatly, the situation that
would arise when his savings should be gone; for now it seemed to him he
would never have the courage to discuss money with her. If she could
have looked in upon his thoughts she would have been well content; there
was every indication of easy sailing for her scheme to reconstruct his
career.

"When do you think of starting for the Adirondacks?" he asked, with a
timidity of preliminary swallowing and blushing that made her turn away
her face to hide her smile. How completely hers was the situation! She
felt the first triumphant thrill of her new estate.

"To-night," she replied. "We can't put it off."

"No, we can't put it off," assented he, hesitation in his voice, gloom
upon his brow. "Though," he added, "you don't look at all well." With an
effort: "Margaret, are you glad--or sorry?"

"Glad," she answered in a firm, resolute tone. It became a little hard
in its practicality as she added: "You were quite right. We took the
only course."

"You asked me to be a little patient with you," he went on.

She trembled; her glance fluttered down.

"Well--I--I--you'll have to be a little patient with me, too." He was
red with embarrassment. She looked so still and cold and repelling that
he could hardly muster voice to go on: "You can't but know, in a general
sort of way, that I'm uncouth, unaccustomed to the sort of thing you've
had all your life. I'm going to do my best, Margaret. And if you'll help
me, and be a little forbearing, I think--I hope--you'll soon find
I'm--I'm--oh, you understand."

She had given a stealthy sigh of relief when she discovered that he was
not making the protest she had feared. "Yes, I understand," replied she,
her manner a gentle graciousness, which in some moods would have sent
his pride flaring against the very heavens in angry scorn. But he
thought her most sweet and considerate, and she softened toward him with
pity. It was very, pleasant thus to be looked up to, and, being human,
she felt anything but a lessened esteem for her qualities of
delicateness and refinement, of patrician breeding, when she saw him
thus on his knees before them. He had invited her to look down on him,
and she was accepting an invitation which it is not in human nature to
decline.

There was one subject she had always avoided with him--the subject of
his family. He had not exactly avoided it, indeed, had spoken
occasionally of his brothers and sisters, their wives and husbands,
their children. But his reference to these humble persons, so far
removed from the station to which he had ascended, had impressed her as
being dragged in by the ears, as if he were forcing himself to pretend
to himself and to her that he was not ashamed of them, when in reality
he could not but be ashamed. She felt that now was the time to bring up
this subject and dispose of it.

Said she graciously: "I'm sorry your father and mother aren't living.
I'd like to have known them."

He grew red. He was seeing a tiny, unkempt cottage in the outskirts of
Wayne, poor, even for that modest little town. He was seeing a bent,
gaunt old laborer in jeans, smoking a pipe on the doorsill; he was
seeing, in the kitchen-dining-room-sitting-room-parlor, disclosed by the
open door, a stout, aggressive-looking laborer's wife in faded calico,
doing the few thick china dishes in dented dishpan on rickety old table.
"Yes," said he, with not a trace of sincerity in his ashamed,
constrained voice, "I wish so, too."

She understood; she felt sorry for him, proud of herself. Was it not
fine and noble of her thus to condescend? "But there are your brothers
and sisters," she went graciously on. "I must meet them some time."
"Yes, some time," said he, laboriously pumping a thin, watery pretense
of enthusiasm into his voice.

She had done her duty by his dreadful, impossible family. She passed
glibly to other subjects. He was glad she had had the ladylike tact not
to look at him during the episode; he wouldn't have liked any human
being to see the look he knew his face was wearing.

In the press of agitating events, both forgot the incident--for the
time.




CHAPTER XXI

A SWOOP AND A SCRATCH


When Molly Stillwater heard that Margaret and her "wild man" had gone
into the woods for their honeymoon she said: "Rita's got to tame him and
train him for human society. So she's taken him where there are no
neighbors to hear him scream as--as--" Molly cast about in her stock of
slang for a phrase that was vigorous enough--"as she 'puts the boots'
to him."

It was a shrewd guess; Margaret had decided that she could do more
toward "civilizing" him in those few first weeks and in solitude than in
years of teaching at odd times. In China, at the marriage feast, the
bride and the groom each struggle to be first to sit on the robe of the
other; the idea is that the winner will thenceforth rule. As the Chinese
have been many ages at the business of living, the custom should not be
dismissed too summarily as mere vain and heathenish superstition. At any
rate, Margaret had reasoned it out that she must get the advantage in
the impending initial grapple and tussle of their individualities, or
choose between slavery and divorce. With him handicapped by awe of her,
by almost groveling respect for her ideas and feelings in all man and
woman matters, domestic and social, it seemed to her that she could be
worsted only by a miracle of stupidity on her part.

Never had he been so nearly "like an ordinary man--like a gentleman"--as
when they set out for the Adirondacks. She could scarcely believe her
own eyes, and she warmed to him and felt that she had been greatly
overestimating her task. He had on one of the suits he had bought ready
made that morning. It was of rough blue cloth--dark blue--most becoming
and well draped to show to advantage his lithe, powerful frame, its
sinews so much more manly-looking than the muscularity of artificially
got protuberances usually seen in the prosperous classes in our Eastern
cities. Grant had selected the suit, had selected all the suits, and had
superintended the fittings. Grant had also selected the negligee shirt
and the fashionable collar, and the bright, yet not gaudy, tie, and
Grant had selected the shoes that made his feet look like feet; and
Grant had conducted him to a proper barber, who had reduced the mop of
hair to proportion and order, and had restored its natural color and
look of vitality by a thorough shampooing. In brief, Grant had taken a
gloomy pleasure in putting his successful rival through the machine of
civilization and bringing him out a city man, agreeable to sight, smell
and touch.

"Now," said he, when the process was finished, "for Heaven's sake try to
keep yourself up to the mark. Take a cold bath every morning and a warm
bath before dinner."

"I have been taking a cold bath every day since I got my private
bathroom," said Joshua, with honest pride.

"Then you're just as dirty as the average Englishman. He takes a cold
bath and fancies he's clean, when in fact he's only clean-looking. Cold
water merely stimulates. It takes warm water and soap to keep a man
clean."

"I'll bear that in mind," said Craig, with a docility that flattered
Grant as kindly attentions from a fierce-looking dog flatter the timid
stranger.

"And you must take care of your clothes, too," proceeded the arbiter
elegantiarum. "Fold your trousers when you take them off, and have them
pressed. Get your hair cut once a week--have a regular day for it. Trim
your nails twice a week. I've got you a safety razor. Shave at least
once a day--first thing after you get out of bed is the best time. And
change your linen every day. Don't think because a shirt isn't downright
dirty that you can pass it off for fresh."

"Just write those things down," said Josh. "And any others of the same
kind you happen to think of. I hate to think what a state I'd be in if I
hadn't you. Don't imagine I'm not appreciating the self-sacrifice."

Grant looked sheepish. But he felt that his shame was unwarranted, that
he really deserved Craig's tactless praise. So he observed virtuously:
"That's where we men are beyond the women. Now, if it were one woman
fixing up another, the chances are a thousand to one she'd play the cat,
and get clothes and give suggestions that'd mean ruin."

It may not speak well for Arkwright's capacity for emotion, but it
certainly speaks well for his amiability and philanthropy that doing
these things for Craig had so far enlisted him that he was almost as
anxious as the fluttered and flustered bridegroom himself for the
success of the adventure. He wished he could go along, in disguise, as a
sort of valet and prime minister--to be ever near Josh to coach and
advise and guide him. For it seemed to him that success or failure in
this honeymooning hung upon the success or failure of Craig in
practising the precepts that for Grant and his kind take precedence of
the moral code. He spent an earnest and exhausting hour in neatly and
carefully writing out the instructions, as Craig had requested. He
performed this service with a gravity that would move some people to the
same sort of laughter and wonder that is excited by the human doings of
a trained chimpanzee. But Craig--the wild man, the arch foe of
effeteness, the apostle of the simple life of yarn sock and tallowed
boot and homespun pants and hairy jaw--Craig accepted the service with
heartfelt thanks in his shaking voice and moist eye.

Thus the opening of the honeymoon was most auspicious. Craig, too much
in awe of Margaret to bother her, and busy about matters that concerned
himself alone, was a model of caution, restraint and civility. Margaret,
apparently calm, aloof and ladylike, was really watching his discreet
conduct as a hawk watches a sheltered hen; she began to indulge in
pleasant hopes that Joshua's wild days had come to an abrupt end. Why,
he was even restrained in conversation; he did not interrupt her often,
instantly apologized and forebore when he did; he poured out none of his
wonted sophomoric diatribes, sometimes sensible, more often inane, as
the prattle of a great man in his hour of relaxation is apt to be. She
had to do most of the talking--and you may be sure that she directed her
conversation to conveying under an appearance of lightness many valuable
lessons in the true wisdom of life as it is revealed only to the
fashionable idle. She was careful not to overdo, not to provoke, above
all not to put him at his ease.

Her fiction of ill health, of threatened nervous prostration, also
served to free her from an overdose of his society during the long and
difficult days in that eventless solitude. He was all for arduous tramps
through the woods, for excursions in canoe under the fierce sun. She
insisted on his enjoying himself--"but I don't feel equal to any such
exertion. I simply must rest and take care of myself." She was somewhat
surprised at his simplicity in believing her health was anything but
robust, when her appearance gave the lie direct to her hints and
regrets. While he was off with one of the guides she stayed at camp,
reading, working at herself with the aid of Selina, revolving and
maturing her plans.

When she saw him she saw him at his best. He showed up especially well
at swimming. She was a notable figure herself in bathing suit, and could
swim in a nice, ladylike way; but he was a water creature--indeed,
seemed more at home in the water than on land. She liked to watch his
long, strong, narrow body cut the surface of the transparent lake with
no loss of energy in splashing or display--as easy and swift as a fish.
She began to fear she had made a mistake in selecting a place for her
school for a husband, "He's in his element--this wilderness," thought
she, "not mine. I'll take him back with everything still to be done."

And, worst of all, she found herself losing her sense of proportion, her
respect for her fashionable idols. Those vast woods, that infinite
summer sky--they were giving her a new and far from practical point of
view--especially upon the petty trickeries and posturings of the
ludicrously self-important human specks that crawl about upon the earth
and hastily begin to act queer and absurd as soon as they come in sight
of each other. She found herself rapidly developing that latent
"sentimentality" which her grandmother had so often rebuked and warned
her against--which Lucia had insisted was her real self. Her
imagination beat the bars of the cage of convention in which she had
imprisoned it, and cried out for free, large, natural emotions--those
that make the blood leap and the flesh tingle, that put music in the
voice and softness in the glance and the intense joy of life in the
heart. And she began to revolve him before eyes that searched hopefully
for possibilities of his giving her precisely what her nerves craved.

"It would be queer, wouldn't it," she mused--she was watching him
swim--"if it should turn out that I had come up here to learn, instead
of to teach?"

And he--In large presences he was always at his best--in the large
situations of affairs, in these large, tranquillizing horizons of
nature. He, too, began to forget that she was a refined, delicate,
sensitive lady, with nerves that writhed under breaks in manners and
could in no wise endure a slip in grammar, unless, of course, it was one
of those indorsed by fashionable usage. His health came flooding and
roaring back in its fullness; and day by day the difficulty of
restraining himself from loud laughter and strong, plebeian action
became more appalling to him. He would leave the camp, set off at a run
as soon as he got safely out of sight; and, when he was sure of
seclusion in distance, he would "cut loose"--yell and laugh and caper
like a true madman; tear off his superfluous clothes, splash and thresh
in some lonely lake like a baby whale that has not yet had the primary
lessons in how to behave. When he returned to camp, subdued in manner,
like a bad boy after recess, he was, in fact, not one bit subdued
beneath the surface, but the more fractious for his outburst. Each day
his animal spirits surged higher; each day her sway of awe and respect
grew more precarious. She thought his increasing silence, his really
ridiculous formality of politeness, his stammering and red-cheeked dread
of intrusion meant a deepening of the sense of the social gulf that
rolled between them. She recalled their conversation about his
relatives. "Poor fellow!" thought she. "I suppose it's quite impossible
for people of my sort to realize what a man of his birth and bringing up
feels in circumstances like these." Little did she dream, in her
exaltation of self-complacence and superiority, that the "poor fellow's"
clumsy formalities were the thin cover for a tempest of wild-man's wild
emotion.

Curiously, she "got on" his nerves before he on hers. It was through her
habit of rising late and taking hours to dress. Part of his code of
conduct--an interpolation of his own into the Arkwright manual for a
honeymooning gentleman--was that he ought to wait until she was ready to
breakfast, before breakfasting himself. Several mornings she heard
tempestuous sounds round the camp for two hours before she emerged from
her room. She knew these sounds came from him, though all was quiet as
soon as she appeared; and she very soon thought out the reason for his
uproar. Next, his anger could not subdue itself beyond surliness on her
appearing, and the surliness lasted through the first part of breakfast.
Finally, one morning she heard him calling her when she was about
half-way through her leisurely toilette: "Margaret! MARGARET!"

"Yes--what is it?"

"Do come out. You're missing the best part of the day."

"All right--in a minute."

She continued with, if anything, a slackening of her exertions; she
appeared about an hour after she had said "in a minute." He was ready to
speak, and speak sharply. But one glance at her, at the exquisite
toilette--of the woods, yet of the civilization that dwells in palaces
and reposes languidly upon the exertions of menials--at her cooling,
subduing eyes, so graciously haughty--and he shut his lips together and
subsided.

The next morning it was a knock at her door just as she was waking--or
had it waked her? "Yes--what is it?"

"Do come out! I'm half starved."

The voice was pleading, not at all commanding, not at all the
aggressive, dictatorial voice of the Josh Craig of less than a month
before. But it was distinctly reminiscent of that Craig; it was plainly
the first faint murmur, not of rebellion, but of the spirit of
rebellion. Margaret retorted with an icily polite, "Please don't wait
for me."

"Yes, I'll wait. But be as quick as you can."

Margaret neither hastened nor dallied. She came forth at the end of an
hour and a half. Josh, to her surprise, greeted her as if she had not
kept him waiting an instant; not a glance of sullenness, no suppressed
irritation in his voice. Next morning the knock was a summons.

"Margaret! I say, Margaret!" came in tones made bold and fierce by
hunger. "I've been waiting nearly two hours."

"For what?" inquired she frigidly from the other side of the door.

"For breakfast."

"Oh! Go ahead with it. I'm not even up yet."

"You've been shut in there ten hours."

"What of it?" retorted she sharply. "Go away, and don't bother me."

He had put her into such an ill humor that when she came out, two hours
later, her stormy brow, her gleaming hazel eyes showed she was "looking
for trouble." He was still breakfastless--he well knew how to manipulate
his weaknesses so that his purposes could cow them, could even use them.
He answered her lowering glance with a flash of his blue-green eyes like
lightning from the dark head of a thunder-cloud. "Do you know it is nine
o'clock?" demanded he.

"So early? I try to get up late so that the days won't seem so long."

He abandoned the field to her, and she thought him permanently beaten.
She had yet to learn the depths of his sagacity that never gave battle
until the time was auspicious.

Two mornings later he returned to the attack.

"I see your light burning every night until midnight," said he--at
breakfast with her, after the usual wait.

"I read myself to sleep," explained she.

"Do you think that's good for you?"

"I don't notice any ill effects."

"You say your health doesn't improve as rapidly as you hoped."

Check! She reddened with guilt and exasperation. "What a sly trick!"
thought she. She answered him with a cold: "I always have read myself to
sleep, and I fancy I always shall."

"If you went to sleep earlier," observed he, his air unmistakably that
of the victor conscious of victory, "you'd not keep me raging round two
or three hours for breakfast."

"How often I've asked you not to wait for me! I prefer to breakfast
alone, anyhow. It's the dreadful habit of breakfasting together that
causes people to get on together so badly."

"I'd not feel right," said he, moderately, but firmly, "if I didn't see
you at breakfast."

She sat silent--thinking. He felt what she was thinking--how common this
was, how "middle class," how "bourgeois," she was calling it.
"Bourgeois" was her favorite word for all that she objected to in him,
for all she was trying to train out of him by what she regarded as most
artistically indirect lessons. He felt that their talk about his family,
what he had said, had shown he felt, was recurring to her. He grew red,
burned with shame from head to foot.

"What a fool, what a pup I was!" he said to himself. "If she had been a
real lady--no, by gad--a real WOMAN--she'd have shown that she despised
me."

Again and again that incident had come back to him. It had been,
perhaps, the most powerful factor in his patience with her airs and
condescensions. He felt that it, the lowest dip of his degradation in
snobism, had given her the right to keep him in his place. It seemed to
him one of those frightful crimes against self-respect which can never
be atoned, and, bad as he thought it from the standpoint of good sense
as to the way to get on with her, he suffered far more because it was
such a stinging, scoffing denial of all his pretenses of personal pride.
"Her sensibilities have been too blunted by association with those
Washington vulgarians," he reasoned, "for her to realize the enormity of
my offense, but she realizes enough to look down at me more
contemptuously every time she recalls it." However, the greater the
blunder the greater the necessity of repairing. He resolutely thrust his
self-abasing thoughts to the background of his mind, and began afresh.

"I'm sure," said he, "you'd not mind, once you got used to it."

She was startled out of her abstraction. "Used to--what?" she inquired.

"To getting up early."

"Oh!" She gave a relieved laugh. "Still harping on that. How persistent
you are!"

"You could accomplish twice as much if you got up early and made a right
start."

She frowned slightly. "Couldn't think of it," said she, in the tone of
one whose forbearance is about at an end. "I hate the early morning."

"We usually hate what's best for us. But, if we're sensible, we do it
until it becomes a habit that we don't mind--or positively like."

This philosophy of the indisputable and the sensible brimmed the
measure. "What would you think of me," said she, in her pleasantest,
most deliberately irritating way in the world, "if I were to insist that
you get up late and breakfast late? You should learn to let live as well
as to live. You are too fond of trying to compel everybody to do as you
wish."

"I make 'em see that what I wish is what they ought. That's not
compelling."

"It's even more unpopular."

"I'm not looking for popularity, but for success."

"Well, please don't annoy me in the mornings hereafter."

"You don't seem to realize you've renounced your foolish idlers and all
their ways, and have joined the working classes." His good humor had
come back with breakfast; he had finished two large trout, much bread
and marmalade and coffee--and it had given her a pleasure that somehow
seemed vulgar and forbidden to see him eat so vastly, with such obvious
delight. As he made his jest about her entry into the working
classes--she who suggested a queen bee, to employ the labors of a whole
army of willing toilers, while she herself toiled not--he was tilted
back at his ease, smoking a cigarette and watching the sunbeams sparkle
in the waves of her black hair like jewels showered there. "You're
surely quite well again," he went on, the trend of his thought so hidden
that he did not see it himself.

"I don't feel especially well," said she, instantly on guard.

He laughed. "You'd not dare say that to yourself in the mirror. You have
wonderful color. Your eyes--there never was anything so clear. You were
always straight--that was one of the things I admired about you. But
now, you seem to be straight without the slightest effort--the natural
straightness of a sapling."

This was most agreeable, for she loved compliments, liked to discover
that the charms which she herself saw in herself were really there. But
encouraging such talk was not compatible with the course she had laid
out for herself with him. She continued silent and cold.

"If you'd only go to sleep early, and get up early, and drop all that
the railway train carried us away from, you'd be as happy as the birds
and the deer and the fish."

"I shall not change my habits," said she tartly. "I hope you'll drop the
subject."

He leaned across the table toward her, the same charm now in his face
and in his voice that had drawn her when she first heard him in public
speech. "Let's suppose I'm a woodchopper, and you are my wife. We've
never been anywhere but just here. We're going to live here all our
lives--just you and I--and no one else--and we don't want any one else.
And we love each other--"

It was very alluring, but there was duty frowning upon her yielding
senses. "Please don't let that smoke drift into my face," said she
crossly. "It's choking me."

He flung away the cigarette. "Beg pardon," he muttered, between anger
and humility. "Thought you didn't mind smoking."

She was ashamed of herself, and grew still angrier. "If you'd only think
about some one beside yourself once in a while," said she. "You quite
wear people out, with your everlasting thinking and talking about
yourself."

"You'd better stop that midnight reading," flared he. "Your temper is
going to the devil."

She rose with great dignity; with an expression that seemed to send him
tumbling and her soaring she went into the house.

In some moods he would have lain where he fell for quite a while. But
his mood of delight in her charms as a woman had completely eclipsed his
deference for her charms as a lady. He hesitated only a second, then
followed her, overtook her at the entrance to her room. She, hearing him
coming, did not face about and put him back in his place with one
haughty look. Instead, she in impulsive, most ill-timed panic, quickened
her step. When the woman flees, the man, if there be any manhood in him,
pursues. He caught her, held her fast.

"Let me go!" she cried, not with the compelling force of offended
dignity, but with the hysterical ineffectiveness of terror. "You are
rough. You hurt."

He laughed, turned her about in his arms until she was facing him. "The
odor of those pines, out there," he said, "makes me drunk, and the odor
of your hair makes me insane." And he was kissing her--those fierce,
strong caresses that at once repelled and compelled her.

"I hate you!" she panted. "I hate you!"

"Oh, no, you don't," retorted he. "That isn't what's in your eyes." And
he held her so tightly that she was almost crying out with pain.

"Please--please!" she gasped. And she wrenched to free herself. One of
his hands slipped, his nail tore a long gash in her neck; the blood
spurted out, she gave a loud cry, an exaggerated cry--for the pain,
somehow, had a certain pleasure in it. He released her, stared vacantly
at the wound he had made. She rushed into her room, slammed the door and
locked it.

"Margaret!" he implored.

She did not answer; he knew she would not. He sat miserably at her door
for an hour, then wandered out into the woods, and stayed there until
dinner-time.

When he came in she was sitting by the lake, reading a French novel. To
him, who knew only his own language, there was something peculiarly
refined and elegant about her ability at French; he thought, as did she,
that she spoke French like a native, though, in fact, her accent was
almost British, and her understanding of it was just about what can be
expected in a person who has never made a thorough study of any
language. As he advanced toward her she seemed unconscious of his
presence. But she was seeing him distinctly, and so ludicrous a figure
of shy and sheepish contrition was he making that she with difficulty
restrained her laughter. He glanced guiltily at the long, red scratch on
the pallid whiteness of her throat.

"I'm ashamed of myself," said he humbly. "I'm not fit to touch a person
like you. I--I--"

She was not so mean as she had thought she would be. "It was nothing,"
said she pleasantly, if distantly. "Is dinner ready?"

Once more she had him where she wished--abject, apologetic, conscious of
the high honor of merely being permitted to associate with her. She
could relax and unbend again; she was safe from his cyclones.




CHAPTER XXII

GETTING ACQUAINTED


Her opportunity definitely to begin her campaign to lift him up out of
politics finally came. She had been doing something in that direction
almost every day. She must be careful not to alarm his vanity of being
absolute master of his own destiny. The idea of leaving politics and
practising law in New York, must seem to originate and to grow in his
own brain; she would seem to be merely assenting. Also, it was a
delicate matter because the basic reason for the change was money; and
it was her cue as a lady, refined and sensitive and wholly free from
sordidness, so to act that he would think her loftily indifferent to
money. She had learned from dealing with her grandmother that the way to
get the most money was by seeming ignorant of money values, a cover
behind which she could shame Madam Bowker into giving a great deal more
than she would have given on direct and specific demand. For instance,
she could get more from the old lady than could her mother, who
explained just what she wanted the money for and acted as if the giving
were a great favor. No, she must never get with him on a footing where
he could discuss money matters frankly with her; she must simply make
him realize how attractive luxury was, how necessary it was to her, how
confidently she looked to him to provide it, how blindly, in her
ignorance of money and all sordid matters, she trusted to him to
maintain her as a wife such as she must be maintained. She knew she did
not understand him thoroughly--"we've been so differently brought up."
But she felt that the kind of life that pleased her and dazzled him must
be the kind he really wished to lead--and would see he wished to lead,
once he extricated himself, with her adroit assistance, from the kind of
life to which his vociferous pretenses had committed him.

Whether her subtleties in furtherance of creating a sane state of mind
in him had penetrated to him, she could not tell. In the earliest step
of their acquaintance she had studied him as a matrimonial possibility,
after the habit of young women with each unattached man they add to
their list of acquaintances. And she had then discovered that whenever
he was seriously revolving any matter he never spoke of it; he would be
voluble about everything and anything else under the sun, would seem to
be unbosoming himself of his bottommost secret of thought and action,
but would not let escape so much as the smallest hint of what was really
engaging his whole mind. It was this discovery that had set her to
disregarding his seeming of colossal, of fatuous egotism, and had
started her toward an estimate of him wholly different from the current
estimate. Now, was he thinking of their future, or was it some other
matter that occupied his real mind while he talked on and on, usually of
himself? She could not tell; she hoped it was, but she dared not try to
find out.

They were at their mail, which one of the guides had just brought. He
interrupted his reading to burst out: "How they do tempt a man! Now,
there's"--and he struck the open letter in his hand with a flourishing,
egotistic gesture--"an offer from the General Steel Company. They want
me as their chief counsel at fifty thousand a year and the privilege of
doing other work that doesn't conflict."

Fifty thousand a year! Margaret discreetly veiled her glistening eyes.

"It's the fourth offer of the same sort," he went on, "since we've been
up here--since it was given out that I'd be Attorney-General as soon as
old Stillwater retires. The people pay me seventy-five hundred a year.
They take all my time. They make it impossible for me to do anything
outside. They watch and suspect and grumble. And I could be making my
two hundred thousand a year or more."

He was rattling on complacently, patting himself on the back, and, in
his effort to pose as a marvel of patriotic self-sacrifice, carefully
avoiding any suggestion that mere money seemed to him a very poor thing
beside the honor of high office, the direction of great affairs, the
flattering columns of newspaper praise and censure, the general
agitation of eighty millions over him. "Sometimes I'm almost tempted to
drop politics," he went on, "and go in for the spoils. What do you
think?"

She was taken completely off guard. She hadn't the faintest notion that
this was his way of getting at her real mind. But she was too feminine
to walk straight into the trap. "I don't know," said she, with
well-simulated indifference, as if her mind were more than half on her
own letter. "I haven't given the matter any thought." Carelessly: "Where
would we live if you accepted this offer?"

"New York, of course. You prefer Washington, don't you?"

"No, I believe I'd like New York better. I've a great many friends
there. While there isn't such a variety of people, the really nice New
Yorkers are the most attractive people in America. And one can live so
well in New York."

"I'd sink into a forgotten obscurity," pursued the crafty Joshua. "I'd
be nothing but a corporation lawyer, a well-paid fetch-and-carry for the
rich thieves that huddle together there."

"Oh, you'd be famous wherever you are, I'm sure," replied she with
judicious enthusiasm. "Besides, you'd have fame with the real people."

His head reared significantly. But, to draw her on, he said: "That's
true. That's true," as if reflecting favorably.

"Yes, I think I'd like New York," continued she, all unsuspicious. "I
don't care much for politics. I hate to think of a man of your abilities
at the mercy of the mob. In New York you could make a really great
career."

"Get rich--be right in the social swim--and you too," suggested he.

"It certainly is very satisfactory to feel one is of the best people.
And I'm sure you'd not care to have me mix up with all sorts, as
politicians' wives have to do."

He laughed at her--the loud, coarse Josh Craig outburst. "You're stark
mad on the subject of class distinctions, aren't you?" said he. "You'll
learn some day to look on that sort of thing as you would on an attempt
to shovel highways and set up sign-posts in the open sea. Your kind of
people are like the children that build forts out of sand at the
seashore. Along comes a wave and washes it all away.... You'd be willing
for me to abandon my career and become a rich nonentity in New York?"

His tone was distinctly offensive. "I don't look at it in that way,"
said she coldly. "Really, I care nothing about it." And she resumed the
reading of her letter.

"Do you expect me to believe," demanded he, excited and angry--"do you
expect me to believe you've not given the subject of our future a
thought?"

She continued reading. Such a question in such a tone called for the
rebuke of an ignoring silence. Also, deep down in her nature, down where
the rock foundations of courage should have been but were not, there had
begun an ominous trembling.

"You know what my salary is?"

"You just mentioned it."

"You know it's to be only five hundred dollars a year more after
January?"

"I knew the Cabinet people got eight thousand." She was gazing dreamily
out toward the purple horizon, seemed as far as its mountains from
worldliness.

"Hadn't you thought out how we were to live on that sum? You are aware
I've practically nothing but my salary."

"I suppose I ought to think of those things--ought to have thought of
them," replied she with a vague, faint smile. "But really--well, we've
been brought up rather carelessly--I suppose some people would call it
badly--and--"

"You take me for a fool, don't you?" he interrupted roughly.

She elevated her eyebrows.

"I wish I had a quarter for every row between your people and your
grandmother on the subject of money. I wish I had a dollar for every row
you and she have had about it."

He again vented his boisterous laugh; her nerves had not been so rasped
since her wedding day. "Come, Margaret," he went on, "I know you've been
brought up differently from me. I know I seem vulgar to you in many
ways. But because I show you I appreciate those differences, don't
imagine I'm an utter ass. And I certainly should be if I didn't know
that your people are human beings."

She looked guilty as well as angry now. She felt she had gone just the
one short step too far in her aristocratic assumptions.

He went on in the tone of one who confidently expects that there will be
no more nonsense: "When you married me you had some sort of idea how
we'd live."

"I assumed you had thought out those things or you'd not have married
me," cried she hotly. In spite of her warnings to herself she couldn't
keep cool. His manner, his words were so inflammatory that she could not
hold herself from jumping into the mud to do battle with him. She
abandoned her one advantage--high ground; she descended to his level.
"You knew the sort of woman I was," she pursued. "You undertook the
responsibility. I assume you are man enough to fulfill it."

He felt quite at home with her now. "And you?" rasped he. "What
responsibility did YOU undertake?"

She caught her breath, flamed scarlet.

"Now let us hear what wife means in the dictionary of a lady. Come,
let's hear it!"

She was silent.

"I'm not criticising," he went on; "I'm simply inquiring. What do you
think it means to be a wife?"

Still she could think of no answer.

"It must mean something," urged he. "Tell me. I've got to learn some
time, haven't I?"

"I think," said she, with a tranquil haughtiness which she hoped would
carry off the weakness of the only reply she could get together on such
short notice, "among our sort of people the wife is expected to attend
to the social part of the life."

He waited for more--waited with an expression that suggested thirst. But
no more came. "Is that all?" he inquired, and waited again--in vain.
"Yes?... Well, tell me, where in thunder does the husband come in? He
puts up the cash for the wife to spend in dressing and amusing
herself--is that all?"

"It is generally assumed," said she, since she had to say something or
let the case go against her by default, "that the social side of life
can be very useful in furthering a man."

He vented a scornful sound that was like a hoot. "In furthering a
lick-spittle--yes. But not a MAN!"

"Our ideas on some subjects are hopelessly apart."

She suddenly realized that this whole conversation had been deliberately
planned by him; that he had, indeed, been debating within himself their
future life, and that he had decided that the time was ripe for a frank
talk with her. It angered her that she had not realized this sooner,
that she had been drawn from her position, had been forced to discuss
with him on his own terms and at his own time and in his own manner. She
felt all the fiery indignation of the schemer who has been outwitted.

"Your tone," said she, all ice, "makes it impossible for a well-bred
person to discuss with you. Let us talk of something else, or of nothing
at all."

"No. Let's thresh it out now that we've begun. And do try to keep your
temper. There's no reason for anger. We've got to go back to
civilization. We've got to live after we get there. We want to live
comfortably, as satisfactorily for both as our income permits. Now, what
shall we do? How shall we invest our eight thousand a year--and whatever
your grandmother allows you? I don't need much. I'll turn the salary
over to you. You're entirely welcome to all there is above my board and
clothes."

This sounded generous and, so, irritated Margaret the more. "You know
very well we can't live like decent people on twelve or fifteen thousand
a year in Washington."

"You knew that before you married me. What did you have in mind?"

Silence.

"Why do you find it difficult to be frank with me?"

His courteous, appealing tone and manner made it impossible to indulge
in the lie direct or the lie evasive. She continued silent, raging
inwardly against him for being so ungenerous, so ungentlemanly as to put
her in such a pitiful posture, one vastly different from that she had
prearranged for herself when "the proper time" came.

"You had something in mind," he persisted. "What is it?"

"Grandmother wishes us to live with her," she said with intent to flank.

"Would you like that?" he inquired; and her very heart seemed to stand
still in horror at his tone. It was a tone that suggested that the idea
was attractive!

She debated. He must be "bluffing"--he surely must. She rallied her
courage and pushed on: "It's probably the best we can do in the
circumstances. We'd have almost nothing left after we'd paid our rent if
we set up for ourselves. Even if I were content to pinch and look a
frump and never go out, you'd not tolerate it."

"Nothing could be more galling," said he, after reflecting, "than what
people would say if we lived off your grandmother. No, going there is
unthinkable. I like her, and we'd get on well together--"

Margaret laughed. "Like two cats drowning in a bag."

"Not at all," protested he sincerely. "Your grandmother and I understand
each other--better than you and I--at least, better than you understand
me. However, I'll not permit our being dependents of hers."

Margaret had a queer look. Was not her taking enough money from the old
lady to pay all her personal expenses--was not that dependence?

"We'll return to that later," continued he, and she had an uncomfortable
sense that he was answering her thought. "To go back to your idea in
marrying me. You expected me to leave politics."

"Why do you think that?" exclaimed she.

"You told me."

"_I_!"

"You, yourself. Have you not said you could not live on what I get as a
public man, and that if I were a gentleman I'd not expect you to?"

Margaret stared foolishly at this unescapable inference from her own
statements and admissions during his cross-examination. She began to
feel helpless in his hands--and began to respect him whom she could not
fool.

"I know," he went on, "you're too intelligent not to have appreciated
that either we must live on my salary or I must leave public life."

He laughed--a quiet, amused laugh, different from any she had ever heard
from him. Evidently, Joshua Craig in intimacy was still another person
from the several Joshua Craigs she already knew. "And," said he, in
explanation of his laughter, "I thought you married me because I had
political prospects. I fancied you had real ambition.... I might have
known! According to the people of your set, to be in that set is to have
achieved the summit of earthly ambition--to dress, to roll about in
carriages, to go from one fussy house to another, from one showy
entertainment to another, to eat stupid dinners, and caper or match
picture cards afterward, to grin and chatter, to do nothing useful or
even interesting--" He laughed again, one of his old-time, boisterous
outbursts. But it seemed to her to fit in, to be the laughter of
mountain and forest and infinity of space at her and her silly friends.
"And you picture ME taking permanent part in that show, or toiling to
find you the money to do it with. ME!... Merely because I've been, for a
moment, somewhat bedazzled by its cheap glitter."

Margaret felt that he had torn off the mask and had revealed his true
self. But greater than her interest in this new personality was her
anger at having been deceived--self-deceived. "You asked me how I'd like
to live," cried she, color high and eyes filled with tears of rage. "I
answered your question, and you grow insulting."

"I'm doing the best I know how," said he.

After a moment she got herself under control. "Then," asked she, "what
have you to propose?"

"I can't tell you just now," replied he, and his manner was most
disquieting. "To-morrow--or next day."

"Don't you think I'm right about it being humiliating for us to go back
to Washington and live poorly?"

"Undoubtedly. I've felt that from the beginning."

"Then you agree with me?"

"Not altogether," said he. And there was a quiet sternness in his smile,
in his gentle tone, that increased her alarms. "I've been hoping,
rather," continued he, "that you'd take an interest in my career."

"I do," cried she.

"Not in MY career," replied he, those powerful, hewn features of his sad
and bitter. "In your own--in a career in which I'd become as
contemptible as the rest of the men you know--a poor thing like Grant
Arkwright. Worse, for I'd do very badly what he has learned to do well."

"To be a well-bred, well-mannered gentleman is no small achievement,"
said she with a sweetness that was designed to turn to gall after it
reached him.

He surveyed her tranquilly. She remembered that look; it was the same he
had had the morning he met her at the Waldorf elevator and took her away
and married her. She knew that the crisis had come and that he was
ready. And she? Never had she felt less capable, less resolute.

"I've been doing a good deal of thinking--thinking about us--these last
few days--since I inflicted that scratch on you," said he. "Among other
things, I've concluded you know as little about what constitutes a real
gentleman as I do; also, that you have no idea what it is in you that
makes you a lady--so far as you are one."

She glanced at him in fright, and that expression of hers betrayed the
fundamental weakness in her--the weakness that underlies all character
based upon the achievements of others, not upon one's own. Margaret was
three generations away from self-reliance. Craig's speech sounded like a
deliberate insult, deliberate attempt to precipitate a quarrel, an
estrangement. There had been nothing in her training to prepare her for
such a rude, courage-testing event as that.

"Do you remember--it was the day we married--the talk we had about my
relatives?"

She colored, was painfully embarrassed, strove in vain to conceal it.
"About your relatives?" she said inquiringly.

He made an impatient gesture. "I know you remember. Well, if I had been
a gentleman, or had known what gentleman meant, I'd never have said--or,
rather, looked what I did then. If you had known what a gentleman is, if
you had been a lady, you'd have been unable to go on with a man who had
shown himself such a blackguard."

"You are unjust to us both," she eagerly interrupted. "Joshua--you--"

"Don't try to excuse me--or yourself," said he peremptorily. "Now, you
thought what I showed that day--my being ashamed of honester,
straighter--more American--people than you or I will ever be--you
thought that was the real me. Thank God, it wasn't. But"--he pointed a
fascinating forefinger at her--"it was the me I'd be if you had your
way."

She could not meet his eyes.

"I see you understand," said he earnestly. "That's a good sign."

"Yes, I do understand," said she. Her voice was low and her head was
still hanging. "I'm glad you've said this. I--I respect you for it."

"Don't fret about me," said he curtly. "Fret about your own melancholy
case. What do your impulses of decent feeling amount to, anyway? An inch
below the surface you're all for the other sort of thing--the cheap and
nasty. If you could choose this minute you'd take the poorest of those
drawing-room marionettes before the finest real man, if he didn't know
how to wear his clothes or had trouble with his grammar."

She felt that there was more than a grain of truth in this; at any rate,
denial would be useless, as his tone was the tone of settled conviction.

"We've made a false start," proceeded he. He rose, lighted a cigarette.
"We're going to start all over again. I'll tell you what I'm going to do
about it in a day or two."

And he strolled away to the landing. She saw him presently enter a
canoe; under his powerful, easy stroke it shot away, to disappear behind
the headland. She felt horribly lonely and oppressed--as if she would
never see him again. "He's quite capable of leaving me here to find my
way back to Washington alone--quite capable!" And her lip curled.

But the scorn was all upon the surface. Beneath there was fear and
respect--the fear and respect which those demoralized by unearned luxury
and by the purposeless life always feel when faced by strength and
self-reliance in the crises where externals avail no more than its paint
and its bunting a warship in battle. She knew she had been treating him
as no self-respecting man who knew the world would permit any woman to
treat him. She knew her self-respect should have kept her from treating
him thus, even if he, in his ignorance of her world and awe of it, would
permit. But more than from shame at vain self-abasement her chagrin came
from the sense of having played her game so confidently, so carelessly,
so stupidly that he had seen it. She winced as she recalled how shrewdly
and swiftly he had got to the very bottom of her, especially of her
selfishness in planning to use him with no thought for his good. Yet so
many women thus used their husbands; why not she? "I suppose I began too
soon.... No, not too soon, but too frigidly." The word seemed to her to
illuminate the whole situation. "That's it!" she cried. "How stupid of
me!"




CHAPTER XXIII

WHAT THE MOON SAW AND DID


Physical condition is no doubt the dominant factor in human thought and
action. State of soul is, as Doctor Schulze has observed, simply the
egotistic human vanity for state of body. If the health of the human
race were better, if sickness, the latent and the revealed together,
were not all but universal, human relations would be wonderfully
softened, sweetened and simplified. Indigestion, with its various
ramifications, is alone responsible for most of the crimes, catastrophes
and cruelties, public and private discord; for it tinges human thought
and vision with pessimistic black or bloody red or envious green or
degenerate yellow instead of the normal, serene and invigorating white.
All the world's great public disturbers have been diseased. As for
private life, its bad of all degrees could, as to its deep-lying,
originating causes, be better diagnosed by physician than by
psychologist.

Margaret, being in perfect physical condition, was deeply depressed for
only a short time after the immediate cause of her mood ceased to be
active. An hour after Joshua had revealed himself in thunder and
lightning, and had gone, she was almost serene again, her hopefulness of
healthy youth and her sense of humor in the ascendent. Their stay in the
woods was drawing to an end. Soon they would be off for Lenox, for her
Uncle Dan's, where there would be many people about and small, perhaps
no, opportunity for direct and quick action and result. She reviewed her
conduct and felt that she had no reason to reproach herself for not
having made an earlier beginning in what she now saw should have been
her tactics with her "wild man." How could she, inexpert, foresee what
was mockingly obvious to hindsight? Only by experiment and failure is
the art of success learned. Her original plan had been the best
possible, taking into account her lack of knowledge of male nature and
the very misleading indications of his real character she had got from
him. In her position would not almost any one have decided that the
right way to move him was by holding him at respectful distance and by
indirect talk, with the inevitable drift of events doing the principal
work--gradually awakening him to the responsibilities and privileges
which his entry into a higher social station implied?

But no time must now be lost; the new way, which experience had
revealed, must be taken forthwith and traveled by forced marches. Before
they left the woods she must have led him through all the gradations of
domestic climate between their present frosty if kindly winter, and
summer, or, at least, a very balmy spring. From what she knew of his
temperament she guessed that once she began to thaw he would forthwith
whirl her into July. She must be prepared to accept that,
however--repellent though the thought was--she assured herself it was
most repellent. She prided herself on her skill at catching and checking
herself in self-deception; but it somehow did not occur to her to
contrast her rather listless previous planning with the energy and
interest she at once put into this project for supreme martyrdom, as she
regarded it.

When he came back that evening she was ready. But not he; he stalked in,
sulking and blustering, tired, ignoring her, doing all the talking
himself, and departing for bed as soon as dinner was over. She felt as
if he had repulsed her, though, in fact, her overtures were wholly
internal and could not, by any chance, have impressed him. Bitter
against him and dreading the open humiliation she would have to endure
before she could make one so self-absorbed see what she was about, she
put out her light early, with intent to rise when he did and be at
breakfast before he could finish. She lay awake until nearly dawn, then
fell into a deep sleep. When she woke it was noon; she felt so greatly
refreshed that her high good humor would not suffer her to be deeply
resentful against him for this second failure. "No matter," reflected
she. "He might have suspected me if I'd done anything so revolutionary
as appear at breakfast. I'll make my beginning at lunch."

She was now striving, with some success, to think of him as a tyrant
whom she, luckless martyr, must cajole. "I'm going the way of all the
married women," thought she. "They soon find there's no honorable way to
get their rights from their masters, find they simply have to degrade
themselves." Yes, he was forcing her to degrade herself, to simulate
affection when the reverse was in her heart. Well, she would make him
pay dearly for it--some day. Meanwhile she must gain her point. "If I
don't, I'd better not have married. To be Mrs. is something, but not
much if I'm the creature of his whims."

She put off lunch nearly an hour; but he did not come, did not reappear
until dinner was waiting. "I've been over to town," he explained, "doing
a lot of telegraphing that was necessary." He was in vast spirits,
delighted with himself, volubly boastful, so full of animal health and
life and of joy in the prospect of food and sleep that mental worries
were as foreign to him as to the wild geese flying overhead.

He snuffed the air in which the odor of cooking was mingled deliciously
with the odor of the pines. "If they don't hurry up dinner," said he,
"I'll rush in and eat off the stove. We used to at home sometimes. It's
great fun."

She smiled tolerantly. "I've missed you," said she, and she was telling
herself that this statement of a literal truth was the quintessence of
hypocritical cajolery. "You might have taken me along."

He gave her a puzzled look. "Oh," said he finally, "you've been thinking
over what I said."

This was disconcerting; but she contrived to smile with winning
frankness. "Yes," replied she. "I've been very wrong, I see." She felt
proud of the adroitness of this--an exact truth, yet wholly misleading.

His expression told her that he was congratulating himself on his wisdom
and success in having given her a sharp talking to; that he was thinking
it had brought her to her senses, had restored her respect for him, had
opened the way for her love for him to begin to show itself--that love
which he so firmly believed in, egotist that he was! Could anything be
more infuriating? Yet--after all, what difference did it make, so long
as he yielded? And once she had him enthralled, then--ah, yes--THEN!
Meanwhile she must remember that the first principle of successful
deception is self-deception, and must try to convince herself that she
was what she was pretending to be.

Dinner was served, and he fell to like a harvest hand. As he had the
habit, when he was very hungry, of stuffing his mouth far too full for
speech, she was free to carry out her little program of encouraging talk
and action. As she advanced from hesitating compliment to flattery, to
admiring glances, to lingering look, she marveled at her facility. "I
suppose ages and ages of dreadful necessity have made it second nature
to every woman, even the best of us," reflected she. If he weren't a
handsome, superior man she might be finding it more difficult; also, no
doubt the surroundings, so romantic, so fitting as background for his
ruggedness, were helping her to dexterity and even enthusiasm.

It was amusing, how she deceived herself--for the harmless
self-deceptions of us chronic mummers are always amusing. The fact was,
this melting and inviting mood had far more of nature and sincerity in
it than there had been in her icy aloofness. Icy aloofness, except in
the heroines of aristocratic novels, is a state of mind compatible only
with extreme stupidity or with some one of those organic diseases that
sour the disposition. Never had she been in such health as in that camp,
never so buoyant, never had merely being alive been so deliciously
intoxicating; the scratch he had made on her throat had healed in
twenty-four hours, had all but disappeared in seventy-two. Never had she
known to such a degree what a delight a body can be, the sense of its
eagerness to bring to the mind all the glorious pleasures of the senses.
Whatever disinclination she had toward him was altogether a prompting of
class education; now that she had let down the bars and released feeling
she was in heart glad he was there with her, glad he was "such a MAN of
a man."

The guides made a huge fire down by the shore, and left them alone. They
sat by it until nearly ten o'clock, he talking incessantly; her
overtures had roused in him the desire to please, and, instead of the
usual monologue of egotism and rant, he poured out poetry, eloquence,
sense and humorous shrewdness. Had he been far less the unusual, the
great man, she would still have listened with a sense of delight, for in
her mood that night his penetrating voice, which, in other moods, she
found as insupportable as a needle-pointed goad, harmonized with the
great, starry sky and the mysterious, eerie shadows of forest and
mountain and lake close round their huge, bright fire. As they rose to
go in, up came the moon. A broad, benevolent, encouraging face, the face
of a matchmaker. Craig put his arm round Margaret. She trembled and
thrilled.

"Do you know what that moon's saying?" asked he. In his voice was that
exquisite tone that enabled him to make even commonplaces lift great
audiences to their feet to cheer him wildly.

She lifted soft, shining eyes to his. "What?" she inquired under her
breath. She had forgotten her schemes, her resentments, her make-believe
of every kind. "What--Joshua?" she repeated.

"It's saying: 'Hurry up, you silly children, down there! Don't you know
that life is a minute and youth a second?'" And now both his arms were
round her and one of her hands lay upon his shoulder.

"Life a minute--youth a second," she murmured.

"Do you think I'd scratch you horribly if I kissed you--Rita?"

She lowered her eyes but not her face. "You might try--Josh."




CHAPTER XXIV

"OUR HOUSE IS AFIRE"


Next morning she was up and in her dressing-room and had almost finished
her toilette before he awakened. For the first time in years--perhaps
the first time since the end of her happy girlhood and the beginning of
her first season in Washington society--she felt like singing. Was there
ever such a dawn? Did ever song of birds sound so like the voice of
eternal youth? Whence had come this air like the fumes from the
winepresses of the gods? And the light! What colors, what tints, upon
mountain and valley and halcyon lake! And the man asleep in the next
room--yes, there WAS a Joshua Craig whom she found extremely trying at
times; but that Joshua Craig had somehow resigned the tenancy of the
strong, straight form there, had resigned it to a man who was the living
expression of all that bewitched her in these wilds.

She laughed softly at her own ecstasy of exaggeration. "The other Josh
will come back," she reminded herself, "and I must not forget to be
practical. THIS is episodic." These happy, superhuman episodes would
come, would pass, would recur at intervals; but the routine of her life
must be lived. And if these episodes were to recur the practical must
not be neglected. "It's by neglecting the practical that so many wives
come to grief," reflected she. And the first mandate of the practical
was that he must be rescued from that vulgar political game, which meant
poverty and low associations and tormenting uncertainties. He must be
got where his talents would have their due, their reward. But subtly
guiding him into the way that would be best for him was a far different
matter from what she had been planning up to last night's moonrise--was
as abysmally separated from its selfish hypocrisy as love from hate. She
would persist in her purpose, but how changed the motive!

She heard him stirring in her--no, THEIR room. Her face lighted up, her
eyes sparkled. She ran to the mirror for a final primp before he should
see her. She was more than pleased with the image she saw reflected
there. "I never looked better in my life--never so well. I'm glad I kept
back this particular dress. He's sure to like it, and it certainly is
becoming to me--the best-fitting skirt I ever had--what good lines it
has about the hips." She startled at a knock upon the door. She rushed
away from the mirror. He had small physical vanity himself--she had
never known any one with so little. He had shown that he thought she had
no vanity of that kind, either, and he would doubtless misunderstand her
solicitude about her personal appearance. Anyhow, of all mornings this
would be the worst for him to catch her at the glass.

"Yes?" she called.

"Margaret," came in his voice. And, oh, the difference in it!--the note
of tenderness--no, it was not imagination, it was really there! Her eyes
filled and her bosom heaved.

"Are you joining me at breakfast?"

"Come in," cried she.

When the door did not open she went and opened it. There stood HE! If he
had greeted her with a triumphant, proprietorial expression she would
have been--well, it would have given her a lowered opinion of his
sensibility. But his look was just right--dazzled, shy, happy. Nor did
he make one of his impetuous rushes. He almost timidly took her hand,
kissed it; and it was she who sought his shoulder--gladly, eagerly, with
a sudden, real shyness. "Margaret," he said. "Mine--aren't you?"

Here was the Joshua she was to know thenceforth, she felt. This Joshua
would enable her to understand, or, rather, to disregard, so far as she
personally was concerned, the Josh, tempestuous, abrupt, often absurd,
whom the world knew. But--As soon as they went where the guides were,
the familiar Josh returned--boyish, boisterous, rather foolish in trying
to be frivolous and light. Still--what did it matter? As soon as they
should be alone again--

When they set out after breakfast her Joshua still did not return, as
she had confidently expected. The obstreperous one remained, the one
that was the shrewdly-developed cover for his everlasting scheming mind.
"What an unending ass I've been making of myself," he burst out, "with
my silly notions." He drew a paper from his pocket and handed it to her.
"And this infernal thing of Grant's has been encouraging me in idiocy."

She read the Arkwright gentleman's gazette and complete guide to dress
and conduct in the society of a refined gentlewoman. Her impulse was to
laugh, an impulse hard indeed to restrain when she came to the last line
of the document and read in Grant's neat, careful-man's handwriting with
heavy underscorings: "Above all, never forget that you are a mighty
stiff dose for anybody, and could easily become an overdose for a
refined, sensitive lady." But prudent foresight made her keep her
countenance. "This is all very sensible," said she.

"Sensible enough," assented he. "I've learned a lot from it.... Did you
read that last sentence?"

She turned her face away. "Yes," she said.

"That, taken with everything else, all but got me down," said he
somberly. "God, what I've been through! It came near preventing us from
discovering that you're not a grand lady but a human being." His mood
veered, and it was he that was gay and she glum; for he suddenly seized
her and subjected her to one of those tumultuous ordeals so disastrous
to toilette and to dignity and to her sense of personal rights. Not that
she altogether disliked; she never had altogether disliked, had found a
certain thrill in his rude riotousness. Still, she preferred the other
Joshua Craig, HER Joshua, who wished to receive as well as to give. And
she wished that Joshua, her Joshua, would return. She herself had
thought that, so far as she was concerned, those periods of tender and
gentle sentiment would be episodic; but it was another thing for him to
think so--and to show it frankly. "I feel as if I'd had an adventure
with a bear," said she, half-laughing, half-resentful.

"So you did," declared he; "I'm a bear--and every other sort of
animal--except rabbit. There's no rabbit in me. Now, your men--the Grant
Arkwrights--are all rabbit."

"At least," said she, "do refrain from tearing my hair down. A woman who
does her hair well hates to have it mussed."

"I'll try to remember," was his careless answer. "As I was about to say,
our discovery that you are not a lady out of a story-book, but a human
being and a very sweet one--it came just in the nick of time. We're
leaving here to-night."

Now she saw the reason for the persistence of the Craig of noise and
bluster--and craft. "To-night?" she exclaimed. "It's impossible."

"Yes--we go at five o'clock. Tickets are bought--sleeper section
engaged--everything arranged."

"But Uncle Dan doesn't expect us for four days yet."

"I've sent him a telegram."

"But I can't pack."

"Selina can."

"Impossible in such a little time."

"Then I'll do it," said Craig jovially. "I can pack a trunk twice as
quick as any man you ever saw. I pack with my feet as well as with my
hands."

"It's impossible," repeated she angrily. "I detest being hurried."

"Hurried? Why, you've got nine hours to get used to the idea. Nine
hours' warning for anything isn't haste."

"Why didn't you tell me this yesterday?" demanded she, coming to a full
stop and expecting thus to compel him to face her. But he marched on.

"It has been my lifelong habit," declared he over his shoulder, "to
arrange everything before disclosing my plans. You'll find, as we get
on, that it will save you a lot of fretting and debating."

Reluctantly and with the humiliating sense of helpless second fiddle she
followed him along the rough path. "I loathe surprises," she said.

"Then adjust your mind to not being surprised at anything from me."

He laughed noisily at his own humor. She was almost hating him again. He
seemed to have eyes in the back of his head; for as she shot a fiery
glance at him he whirled round, shook his forefinger maddeningly at her:
"Now listen to me, my dear," said he, in his very worst manner, most
aggressive, most dictatorial; "if you had wanted an ordinary sort of man
you should have married one and not me."

"Don't you think common courtesy required you at least to consult me
about such a matter?"

"I do not. If I had I should have done so. I found it was necessary that
we go. I went ahead and arranged it. If you saw the house on fire would
you wait till you had consulted me before putting it out?"

"But this is entirely different."

"Not at all. Entirely the same, on the contrary. The talk we had day
before yesterday convinced me that our house is afire. I'm going to put
it out." He shut his teeth together with a snap, compressed his lips,
gave her one of those quick, positive nods of his Viking head. Then he
caught her by the arm. "Now," said he jocosely, "let's go back to camp.
You want to do your packing. I've got to go over to the station and
telegraph some more."

She wrenched her arm away pettishly and, with sullen face, accompanied
him to the camp. It was all she could do to hide her anger when, in full
sight of the guides, he swept her up into his arms and kissed her
several times. Possibly she would have been really angered, deeply
angered, had she realized that these cyclones were due, as a rule, not
so much to appreciation of her as to the necessity of a strong
counter-irritant to a sudden attack of awe of her as a fine lady and
doubt of his own ability to cope with her. "Good-by, Rita," cried he,
releasing her as suddenly as he had seized her and rushing toward the
landing. "If I don't get back till the last minute be sure you're ready.
Anything that isn't ready will be left behind--anything or anybody!"

The idea of revolt, of refusing to go, appealed to her first anger
strongly. But, on consideration, she saw that merely asserting her
rights would not be enough--that she must train him to respect them. If
she refused to go he would simply leave her; yes, he was just the man,
the wild man, to do precisely that disgraceful thing. And she would be
horribly afraid to spend the night alone in those woods with only the
guides and Selina, not to speak of facing the morrow--for he might
refuse to take her back! Where would she turn in that case? What would
her grandmother say? Who would support her in making such a scandal and
giving up a husband for reasons that could not be made impressive in
words though they were the best of all reasons in terms of feeling? No,
if she gave him up she would be absolutely alone, condemned on every
hand, in the worst possible position. Then, too, the break was
unattractive for another reason. Though she despised herself for her
weakness, she did not wish to give up the man who had given her that
brief glimpse of happiness she had dreamed as one dreams an
impossibility. Did not wish? Could not--would not--give him up. "I
belong to him!" she thought with a thrill of ecstasy and of despair.

"But he'd better be careful!" she grumbled. "If I should begin to
dislike him there'd be no going back." And then it recurred to her that
this would be as great a calamity of loss for her as for him--and she
went at her packing in a better humor. "I'll explain to him that I yield
this once, but--" There she stopped herself with a laugh. Of what use to
explain to him?--him who never listened to explanations, who did not
care a fig why people did as he wished, but was content that they did.
As for warning him about "next time"--how ridiculous! She could hear his
penetrating, rousing voice saying: "We'll deal with 'next time' when it
comes."




CHAPTER XXV

MRS. JOSHUA CRAIG


"We change at Albany," said he when they were on the train, after a last
hour of mad scramble, due in part to her tardiness, in the main to the
atmosphere of hysteric hustle and bustle he created as a precaution.

"At Albany!" she exclaimed. "Why, when do we get there?"

"At midnight."

"At midnight!" It was the last drop in the cup of gall, she thought.
"Why, we'd get to Lenox, or to some place where we'd have to change
again, long before morning! Josh, you must be out of your senses. It's a
perfect outrage!"

"Best I could do," said he, laughing uproariously and patting her on the
back. "Cheer up. You can sleep on my shoulder until we get to Albany."

"We will go on to New York," said she stiffly, "and leave from there in
the morning."

"Can't do it," said he. "Must change at Albany. You ought to learn to
control your temper over these little inconveniences of life. I've
brought a volume of Emerson's essays along and I'll read to you if you
don't want to sleep."

"I hate to be read aloud to. Joshua, let's go on to New York. Such a
night of horror as you've planned will wear me out."

"I tell you it's impossible. I've done the best thing in the
circumstances. You'll see."

Suddenly she sprang up, looked wildly round. "Where's Selina?" she
gasped.

"Coming to-morrow or next day," replied he. "I sent her to the camp for
some things I forgot."

She sank back and said no more. Again she was tempted to revolt against
such imbecile tyranny; and again, as she debated the situation, the
wisdom, the necessity of submitting became apparent. How would it sound
to have to explain to her grandmother that she had left him because he
took an inconvenient train? "I'd like to see him try this sort of thing
if we'd been married six months instead of six weeks," she muttered.

She refused to talk with him, answered him in cold monosyllables. And
after dinner, when he produced the volume of Emerson and began to read
aloud, she curtly asked him to be quiet. "I wish to sleep!" snapped she.

"Do, dear," urged he. And he put his arm around her.

"That's very uncomfortable," said she, trying to draw away.

He drew her back, held her--and she knew she must either submit or make
a scene. There was small attraction to scene-making with such a master
of disgraceful and humiliating scenes as he. "He wouldn't care a rap,"
she muttered. "He simply revels in scenes, knowing he's sure to win out
at them as a mongrel in a fight with a"--even in that trying moment her
sense of humor did not leave her--"with a lapdog."

She found herself comfortable and amazingly content, leaning against his
shoulder; and presently she went to sleep, he holding the book in his
free hand and reading calmly. The next thing she knew he was shaking her
gently. "Albany," he said. "We've got to change here."

She rose sleepily and followed him from the car, adjusting her hat as
she went. She had thought she would be wretched; instead, she felt fine
as the sharp, night air roused her nerves and freshened her skin. He led
the way into the empty waiting-room; the porter piled the bags on the
bench; she seated herself. "I must send a telegram," said he, and he
went over to the window marked "Telegraph Office." It was closed. He
knocked and rattled, and finally pounded on the glass with his umbrella
handle.

Her nerves went all to pieces. "Can't you see," she called impatiently,
"that there's no one there?"

"There will be some one!" he shouted in reply, and fell to pounding so
vigorously that she thought the glass would surely break. But it did
not; after a while the window flew up and an angry face just escaped a
blow from the vibrating umbrella handle. A violent altercation followed,
the operator raging, but Craig more uproarious than he and having the
further advantage of a more extensive and more picturesque vocabulary.
Finally the operator said: "I should think you'd be ashamed of yourself.
Don't you see there's a lady present?"

"It's my wife," said Craig. "Now take this message and get it off at
once. You should thank me for not having you dismissed."

The operator read the message. His face changed and he said in a surlily
apologetic manner: "I'll send it off right away, Mr. Craig. Anything
else?"

"That's all, my friend," said Josh. He returned to his wife's side. She
was all confusion and doubt again. Here they were back in civilization,
and her man of the woods was straightway running amuck. What should she
do? What COULD she do? WHAT had she got herself into by marrying?

But he was speaking. "My dear," he was saying in his sharp, insistent
voice, that at once aroused and enfeebled the nerves, "I must talk fast,
as the train comes in fifteen or twenty minutes--the train for
Chicago--for Minneapolis--for Wayne--for home--OUR home."

She started up from the seat, pale, quivering, her hands clinched
against her bosom.

"For home," he repeated, fixing her with his resolute, green-blue eyes.
"Please, sit down."

She sank to the seat. "Do you mean--" she began, but her faltering voice
could not go on.

"I've resigned from office," said he, swift and calm. "I've told the
President I'll not take the Attorney-Generalship. I've telegraphed your
people at Lenox that we're not coming. And I'm going home to run for
Governor. My telegrams assure me the nomination, and, with the hold I've
got on the people, that means election, sure pop. I make my first speech
day after to-morrow afternoon--with you on the platform beside me."

"You are mistaken," she said in a cold, hard voice. "You--"

"Now don't speak till you've thought, and don't think till I finish. As
you yourself said, Washington's no place for us--at present. Anyhow, the
way to get there right is to be sent there from the people--by the
people. You are the wife of a public man, but you've had no training."

"I--" she began.

"Hear me first," he said, between entreaty and command. "You think I'm
the one that's got it all to learn. Think again. The little
tiddledywinks business that I've got to learn--all the value there is in
the mass of balderdash about manners and dress--I can learn it in a few
lessons. You can teach it to me in no time. But what you've got to
learn--how to be a wife, how to live on a modest income, how to take
care of me, and help me in my career, how to be a woman instead of,
largely, a dressmaker's or a dancing-master's expression for
lady-likeness--to learn all that is going to take time. And we must
begin at once; for, as I told you, the house is afire."

She opened her lips to speak.

"No--not yet," said he. "One thing more. You've been thinking things
about me. Well, do you imagine this busy brain of mine hasn't been
thinking a few things about you? Why, Margaret, you need me even more
than I need you, though I need you more than I'd dare try to tell you.
You need just such a man as me to give you direction and purpose--REAL
backbone. Primping and preening in carriages and parlors--THAT isn't
life. It's the frosting on the cake. Now, you and I, we're going to have
the cake itself. Maybe with, maybe without the frosting. BUT NOT THE
FROSTING WITHOUT THE CAKE, MARGARET!"

"So!" she exclaimed, drawing a long breath when he had ended. "So! THIS
is why you chose that five o'clock train and sent Selina back. You
thought to--"

He laughed as if echoing delight from her; he patted her
enthusiastically on the knee. "You've guessed it! Go up head! I didn't
want you to have time to say and do foolish things."

She bit her lip till the blood came. Ringing in her ears and defying her
efforts to silence them were those words of his about the cake and the
frosting--"the cake, maybe with, maybe without frosting; BUT NOT THE
FROSTING WITHOUT THE CAKE!" She started to speak; but it was no
interruption from him that checked her, for he sat silent, looking at
her with all his fiery strength of soul in his magnetic eyes. Again she
started to speak; and a third time; and each time checked herself. This
impossible man, this creator of impossible situations! She did not know
how to begin, or how to go on after she should have begun. She felt that
even if she had known what to say she would probably lack the courage to
say it--that final-test courage which only the trained in self-reliance
have. The door opened. A station attendant came in out of the frosty
night and shouted:

"Chicago Express! Express for--Buffalo! Chicago! Minneapolis! St.
Paul!--the Northwest!--the Far West! All--a--BOARD!"

Craig seized the handbags. "Come on, my dear!" he cried, getting into
rapid motion.

She sat still.

He was at the door. "Come on," he said.

She looked appealingly, helplessly round that empty, lonely, strange
station, its lights dim, its suggestions all inhospitable. "He has me at
his mercy," she said to herself, between anger and despair. "How can I
refuse to go without becoming the laughing-stock of the whole world?"

"Come on--Rita!" he cried. The voice was aggressive, but his face was
deathly pale and the look out of his eyes was the call of a great
loneliness. And she saw it and felt it. She braced herself against it;
but a sob surged up in her throat--the answer of her heart to his
heart's cry of loneliness and love.

"Chicago Express!" came in the train-caller's warning roar from behind
her, as if the room were crowded instead of tenanted by those two only.
"All aboard!... Hurry up, lady, or you'll get left!"

Get left!... Left!--the explosion of that hoarse, ominous voice seemed
to blow Mrs. Joshua Craig from the seat, to sweep her out through the
door her husband was holding open, and into the train for their home.

THE END









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