Apron-Strings Part 33

"Miss Crosby is here," he began; "I mean the young woman who just came in." He was very curt, very military; and ignored the reproof in her manner. "Please say that Mr. Hull has come."

The maid promptly admitted him.

But to make sure that he would not fail in his purpose to see Clare--that she would not escape from the Club as quietly as she had left Tottie's, he now lifted the bird-cage into view. "Tell Miss Crosby that Mr. Hull has brought the canary," he added.

"Very well,"--the servant went up the stairs at a leisurely pace that was irritating.

She did not return. Instead, Clare herself appeared at the top of the staircase, and descended slowly, looking calmly at him as she came.

Her hat was off, and she had tidied her hair. Something in her manner caused him to move his right arm, as if he would have liked to screen the cage. She glanced at the bird, then at him. Her look disconcerted him. His _pince-nez_ dropped to the end of its ribbon, and clinked musically against a b.u.t.ton.

She did not speak until she reached his side. "I just called the Northrups on the 'phone and asked for you," she began.

"Oh?" He made as if to set the cage down.

"You'd better bring it into the sitting-room," she said.

"Yes." He reddened.

The sitting-room of the Club was a full sister to that garish front-parlor of Tottie's, but a sister tastefully dressed. The woodwork was ivory. The walls were covered with silk tapestry in which an old-blue shade predominated. The curtains of velvet, and the chairs upholstered in the same material, were of a darker blue that toned in charmingly with the walls. Oriental rugs covered the floor.

"You need not have brought an--excuse," Clare observed, as she closed the door to the hall.

"Well, I thought," he explained, smiling a little sheepishly, "that perhaps----"

"Particularly," she interrupted, cuttingly, "as I remember how you said a little while ago that you hate a liar." She lifted her brows.

She had caught him squarely. The cage was a lie. He put it behind a chair, where it would be out of sight.

"Well, you see," he went on lamely, "if you hadn't wanted to see me, why--why----" (Here he was, apologetic!)

"Oh, I quite understand. It's always legitimate for a man to cheat a woman, isn't it? It's not legitimate for a woman to cheat a man." She seated herself.

He winced. He had expected something so different--weeping, pleading, the wringing of hands; or, a hidden face and heaving shoulders, and, of course, more lies. Instead, here was only quiet composure, more dignity of carriage than he had ever noted in her before, and a firmly shut mouth. He had antic.i.p.ated being hurt by the sobbing confessions he would force from her. But her cool indifference, her self-possession, were hurting him far more. Their positions were unpleasantly reversed. And he was standing before her, as if he, and not she, was the culprit!

"Sit down, please," she bade, courteously.

He sat, pulling at his mustache. Now he was getting angry. His look roved beyond her, as he sought for the right beginning.

"What I'd like to ask," he commenced, "is, are you prepared to tell me all I ought to know--about yourself?" ("Tell me the truth" was what he would have liked to say, but the confounded cage made impossible any allusion to truth!)

She smiled. "And I'd like to know, are you prepared to tell me all--all I ought to know--about yourself?"

"Oh, now come!" he returned--and could go no further. Here was more of the unexpected: he was being put on the defensive!

"You've been a soldier," she went on; "you've seen a lot of the world before you met me. But you didn't recite anything you'd done. You expected me to take you 'as is,' and I thought, naturally enough, that that was the way you meant to take me."

"But I don't see why a girl should know about matters in which she is not concerned--which were a part of a man's past."

"Exactly. And that's just the way I felt about matters in which you were not concerned. But--I was wrong, wasn't I? You're not an American. You're a European. And you have the Continental att.i.tude toward women--proprietors.h.i.+p, and so on."

He stared. He had never heard her talk like this before. "Ah, um," he murmured, still worrying the mustache. She was using no slang, and that "Continental att.i.tude"--his glance said, "Where did you come by _that_?"

"I've known all along that you had the Old World bias--the idea that it is justice for the Pot to call the Kettle black--the idea that a man can do anything, but that a woman is lost forever if she happens to make one mistake. That all belongs, of course, right back where you came from. No doubt your mother taught----"

"Please leave my mother out of this discussion!" Here was something he could say with great severity and dignity--something that would imply the contrast between what Clare Crosby stood for and the high standards of his mother, whose fame might not be tarnished even through the mention of her name by a culpable woman.

Clare laughed. "Early Victorian," she commented, cheerfully; "that do-not-sully-the-fair-name-of-mother business. It's in your blood, Felix,--along with the determination you feel never to change when once you've made up your mind, as if your mind were something that has set itself solid, as metal does when it's run into a mold."

"Oh, indeed! Just like that!"

She nodded. "Precisely. And when you make up your mind that someone is wrong, or has hurt your vanity (which is worse), you are just middle-cla.s.s enough to love to swing a whip."

He got up. "Pardon me if I don't care to listen to your opinion of me any longer," he said. "It just happens that I've caught you at your tricks today."

"It just happens that you _think_ you've caught me--you've dropped to that conclusion. But--do you know anything?"

"Well--well,----"

"You shall. Please sit down again. And feel that you were justified--that I am really a culprit of some kind--just as you are."

He sat, too astonished to retort--but too curious to take himself away.

"Because I really want to tell you quite a little about myself." There was a glint of real humor in her eyes. "And first of all, I want to tell the real truth, and it'll make you feel a lot better--it'll soothe your vanity."

"You seem to have a rather sudden change in your opinion of me." He tried to be sarcastic. And he leaned back, folding his arms.

"Oh, no. I've always known that you were vain, and hard. But I didn't expect perfection."

"Ah."

"But, first, let me tell you--when I left Tottie's just now, I thought of the river. Suicide--that's what first came to my mind."

"I'm very glad you changed it,"--this with almost a parental note. Her mention of the river had soothed his vanity!

"Oh, are you?" She laughed merrily.

"And what brought about the--the----"

"Sue Milo."

"Er--who do you say?" He had expected a compliment.

"A woman you don't know--a woman that you must have seen go into Tottie's just after Barbara left--as you stood sentry."

"Ah, yes." He had the grace to blush again.

"She is the secretary at the Church near by--you know, St. Giles. She keeps books, and answers telephones, and types sermons, and does all the letters for the Rector--formerly my husband."

An involuntary start--which he adroitly made the beginning of an a.s.sent.