The Crimson Tide Part 59

"I know her only at the Red Cross."

"Well, is she at all common?"

"No.... That is why it is difficult for me to talk to Jim about her.

There's nothing of that sort to criticise."

"No social objections to the girl?"

"None. She's an unusual girl."

"Attractive?"

"Unfortunately."

"Well, then----"

"Oh, James, I _want_ him to marry Elorn! And if he's going to make himself conspicuous over this Dumont girl, I don't think I can bear it!"

"What _is_ the objection to the girl, Helen?" he asked, flinging his paper onto a table and drawing nearer the fire.

"She isn't at all our kind, James----"

"But you just said----"

"I don't mean socially. And still, as far as that goes, she seems to care nothing whatever for position or social duties or obligations."

"That's not so unusual in these days," he remarked. "Lots of nice girls are fed up on the social aspects of life."

"Well, for example, she has not made the slightest effort to know anybody worth knowing. Janet Speedwell left cards and then asked her to dinner, and received an amiable regret for her pains. No girl can afford to decline invitations from Janet, even if her excuse is a club meeting.

"And two or three other women at the Red Cross have asked her to lunch at the Colony Club, and have made advances to her on Leila Vance's account, but she hasn't responded. Now, you know a girl isn't going to get on by politely ignoring the advances of such women. But she doesn't even appear to be aware of their importance."

"Why don't you ask her to something?" suggested her husband.

"I did," she said, a little sharply. "I asked her and Leila Vance to dine with us. I intended to ask Elorn, too, and let Jim realise the difference if he isn't already too blind to see."

"Did she decline?"

"She did," said Helen curtly.

"Why?"

"It happened that she had asked somebody to dine with her that evening. And I have a horrid suspicion it was Jim. If it was, she could have postponed it. Of course it was a valid excuse, but it annoyed me to have her decline. That's what I tell you, James, she has a most disturbing habit of declining overtures from everybody--even from----"

Helen checked herself, looked at her husband with an odd smile, in which there was no mirth; then:

"You probably are not aware of it, dear, but that girl has also declined Jim's overtures."

"Jim's what?"

"Invitation."

"Invitation to do what?"

"Marry him."

Shotwell Senior turned very red.

"The devil she did! How do you know?"

"Jim told me."

"That she turned him down?"

"She declined to marry him."

Her husband seemed unable to grasp such a fact. Never had it occurred to Shotwell Senior that any living, human girl could decline such an invitation from his only son.

After a painful silence: "Well," he said in a perplexed and mortified voice, "she certainly seems to be, as you say, a most unusual girl....

But--if it's settled--why do you continue to worry, Helen?"

"Because Jim is very deeply in love with her.... And I'm sore at heart."

"Hard hit, is he?"

"Very unhappy."

Shotwell Senior reddened again: "He'll have to face it," he said....

"But that girl seems to be a fool!"

"I--wonder."

"What do you mean?"

"A girl may change her mind." She lifted her head and looked with sad humour at her husband, whom she also had kept dangling for a while.

Then:

"James, dear, our son _is_ as fine as we think him. But he's just a splendid, wholesome, everyday, unimaginative New York business man.

And he's fallen in love with his absolute ant.i.thesis. Because this girl is all ardent imagination, full of extravagant impulses, very lovely to look at, but a perfectly illogical fanatic!

"Mrs. Vance has told me all about her. She really belongs in some exotic romance, not in New York. She's entirely irresponsible, perfectly unstable. There is in her a generous sort of recklessness which is quite likely to drive her headlong into any extreme. And what sort of mate would such a girl be for a young man whose ambition is to make good in the real estate business, marry a nice girl, have a pleasant home and agreeable children, and otherwise conform to the ordinary conventions of civilisation?"

"I think," remarked her husband grimly, "that she'd keep him guessing."

"She would indeed! And that's not all, James. For I've got to tell you that the girl entertains some rather weird and dreadful socialistic notions. She talks socialism--a mild variety--from public platforms.

She admits very frankly that she entertains no respect for accepted conventions. And while I have no reason to doubt her purity of mind and personal chast.i.ty, the unpleasant and startling fact remains that she proposes that humanity should dispense with the marriage ceremony and discard it and any orthodox religion as obsolete superst.i.tions."

Her husband stared at her.