The Gorgeous Girl Part 33

CHAPTER XXII

Beatrice, never having gone to her father for anything save money, did not know how to broach the subject in heartfelt and deep-water fas.h.i.+on. When she went into his room she found him with scarlet spots burning in his grayish cheeks, his dark eyes harsher and more formidable than ever. He tried twisting himself on the bed, resulting in awkward, halfway muscular contortions and gruff moans punctuating the failure. He held out his arms to her and she went flying into them, not the dignified woman of the world putting a cave man in his proper place.

"He is impossible!" was all she said, giving way to hysterical sobs.

"Don't even try talking to him again----"

More gruff moans before Constantine began coherently: "He'll do what I say or he'll not stay in this house. I expected this----"

"Oh, you don't understand, papa. He doesn't want to stay here, not at all! He does not want me. There, now you know it! He must have said something of this to you--perhaps you didn't believe him. Neither did I--at first. Oh, my head aches terribly and I know I shall be ill. He wants me to be a poor man's wife--starting again, he calls it--while he earns a salary and we live in a poky house and I do the cooking.

I'd think it awfully funny if it was happening to any of my friends--but this is terrible! Well, goat-tending tells, doesn't it?

And after all we have done for him--to babble on about honesty and earning and all those socialistic ideas. He is a dangerous man, papa; really. I don't care."

Constantine stopped moaning. "Look up at me." He made her lift her face from the tangle of silk bed quilts. "Do you love him?"

"Why, papa, I always adored Stevuns--but of course I can't give up the things to which I've been accustomed! It's so silly that I think he is queer even to suggest it--don't you?"

"You won't love him if he goes out of here and you stay," the old man said, slowly; "but if he will stay and do as I tell him--then you'll love him?"

"Yes"--with great relief that she was not called upon to keep on explaining and a.n.a.lyzing her own feelings and Steve's motives; it was entirely too much of a strain--"that is it. If Steve will stay here and do what you tell him--I think he'd better retire from business and just look after our interests--I shall forgive him. But if he keeps up this low anarchistic talk about dragging me to a washtub--oh, it's too absurd!--I'm going to Reno and be done with all of it." She drew away from her father and the same cold, shrewd look of the mature flirt replaced her confusion. "Don't you think that is sensible?"

Her father closed his eyes for a moment. Then he whispered: "So you don't love him."

Beatrice had to stoop to catch the words. "You can't be expected to love people that make you unhappy."

"Oh, can't you?" he asked. "Can't you? Did you never think that loving someone is the bravest thing in the world? It takes courage to keep on loving the dead, for instance; the dead that keep stabbing away at your heart all through the years. Loving doesn't always make you happy, it makes you brave--real love!"

He opened his eyes to look at her closely. Beatrice whimpered.

"Isn't it time for your drops? You're too excited, papa dear."

"Then you don't love him," he repeated. "Well, then, it's best for you both that he go--that's all I've got to say. I thought you cared."

Beatrice's eyebrows lifted. "Really, I can't find any one who can talk about this thing sensibly," she began.

Suddenly she thought of Gay. There was always Gay; at least she could never disappoint him, which was what she meant by having him talk sensibly. Gay knew everyone, how to laugh at the most foolish whims, pick up fans, exercise lap dogs, and wear a fancy ball costume. What a blessed thing it was there was Gay.

"It has been quite too strenuous an evening," she said, in conclusion, "so I'm off for bed. Steve and I will talk more to-morrow. Good-night, papa. I'm terribly distressed that this has come up to annoy you." She bent and kissed him prettily.

"I've seen you make more fuss when your lap dog had a goitre operation," her father surprised her by way of an answer. "It's all different in my mind now." The thick fingers picked at the bed quilt.

"I thought it would break your heart, but it's just that you want to break his spirit; so it's better he should go."

Left alone, Constantine lay staring into darkness, his harsh eyes winking and blinking, and the gnarled thick fingers, which had robbed so cleverly by way of mahogany-trimmed offices and which had written so many checks for his Gorgeous Girl, kept on their childish picking at the quilt. Yet his love for Beatrice, monument to his folly, never dimmed. He merely was beginning to realize the truth--too late to change it. And as the pain of loving his dead wife had never ceased throughout the years, so the new and more poignant pain of loving his daughter and knowing that she was in the wrong began tugging at his heartstrings. Well, he was the original culprit; he must see her through the game with flying colours. As for Steve--he envied him!

In the morning Steve was accosted by Aunt Belle, who felt she must say her conventional, marcelled, gray-satin, and violet-perfumed reproaches. All Beatrice had told her was that Steve was now an impossible pauper, that he loved Mary Faithful and had loved her for years, that it was quite awful, and she was going to divorce him. Her aunt, with the proper emotions of a Gorgeous Girl's aunt, and uncomfortable memories of love in a cottage with the late Mr. Todd, began to upbraid Steve. She began in a cold, stereotyped fas.h.i.+on, calling his attention to the broken-hearted wife, the sick man who lay upstairs and who had befriended him, and of the social ostracism that was to result should he take such a drastic step.

She felt it indelicate to mention Mary but she did say there were "other vicious deceits of which we are well aware, my young man,"

warning him that in years to come old age would bring nothing but remorse and terror, asking him what he would be forced to think when his marriage was recalled?

"My marriage?" Steve answered, too pleasantly to be safe. "I dare say in time I'll come to realize it is always the open season for salamanders." Which left Aunt Belle with the wild thought that she must accompany Beatrice to Reno to sit out in the sagebrush for the best part of a year.

Steve found his wife in her dressing room; she had waited as eagerly for his coming as she had done during the first days of their engagement. She, too, during a sleepless night had resolved that the only solution was a divorce, but she was going to have just as gay a time out of the event as was possible, which included making Steve as wretched as could be. Even with the rumours concerning Mary she believed, in the conceited fas.h.i.+on of all persons so cowardly that they merely consent to be loved, that Steve still adored her and that she was dealing with the deluded man of a few years ago.

She wore a sapphire-coloured neglige with slippers to match, and lay in her chaise-longue gondola, her prayer books with their silver covers and a new Pom as touching details to the farewell tableau. Then Steve was permitted to come into the room.

She gazed at him in a sorrowful, forgiving fas.h.i.+on, quite enjoying the situation. Then she held out her hand, wondering if he would kiss it; but he took it as meaning that he might sit down or try to sit down on a perilous little ha.s.sock which he had always named the Rocky Road to Dublin despite its Florentine appearance.

"I hope you agree with me," he began, in businesslike fas.h.i.+on as he noted the prayer books, the untouched breakfast tray, the snapping Pom, which never tolerated his presence without protest. "I am going to see your father, out of courtesy, and explain more in detail how things stand. It won't interest you so I sha'n't bore you. I have enough money and securities to cover the loss of any of his money. I shall apply for a position in another city. I am reasonably sure of obtaining it. It seems to me it would be better that I go away."

"I forgive you, Steve," she said, sadly, shaking her golden head.

"I presume you will want to do something about a legal separation--and if you do not I shall."

The prayer books fell to the floor in collision with the slipping Pom but Beatrice did not notice.

"So you do love her!" There was a hint of a snarl in her high-pitched voice. "So you want to marry her after all!"

"I think," Steve continued, in the same even voice, "that as you are going to tire of being a divorcee playing about, and will want a second husband to help with the ennui that is bound to occur, you had best select your form of a divorce and let me do what I can to aid in the matter. You are very lovely this morning, as you usually are.

There is no doubt but what many men far better suited to you than I will try to have you marry them--they will wisely never expect to marry you. That was our great mistake, Beatrice. I thought I was marrying you--but you were really marrying me."

"So you do love her," she repeated, paying no heed to what else he said.

"Yes, I do," Steve said, with sudden honesty. It was a relief to be as brutal and uncomplimentary as possible; it offset the silver-covered prayer books, the breakfast tray, the bejewelled Pom, the whole studied, inane effect of a discontented woman trying to play coquette up to the last moment.

"I have loved her a long time. I could no more have refrained from it than you can refrain from feeling a pique at the fact, though you have nothing but contempt for us both and only a pa.s.sing interest if the truth were known. I am glad you have persisted in asking me until I told you. I think one of the most promising signs that women will survive is the fact that they are never afraid to ask questions, no matter how delicate the situation. Men keep silence and often bring disaster on their sulky heads as a result."

"So--and you dare tell me this?"

"Of course I do. I dare to tell you the truth, which no one else has ever taken the pains to tell you. If you do not get a divorce I intend to. Not that I champion the custom as a particularly healthy inst.i.tution, but it is sometimes a necessary one. If it is any satisfaction to you I do not think Miss Faithful has the slightest idea of marrying me. She has put that part of her aside for business and taking care of Luke. The time has pa.s.sed when she would have married me. Still, I shall try to make her change her mind," he added with the same spirit he had once displayed toward winning the Gorgeous Girl. "Only this time I shall not bargain for her."

Beatrice gave an affected laugh. "Quite a satisfactory arrangement all round. I hope you do not bother me again. Tell my father what you like, and then take yourself off to the new position and do as you please. When I decide what course I shall pursue you will be informed. Would you please pick up my prayer book?" she added, languidly.

Steve bent over to grasp the intricate nothing in his hand and lay it gently in the sapphire-velvet lap.

"Good-bye, Beatrice," he said, a trifle sadly--for the day the child discovers there are no fairies is one of sadness.

It was something of this Steve felt as he looked at his wife for the last time. How thrilled and adoring he would have one time been. Just such visions, a trifle cruder no doubt, had stirred his young soul in the bleak orphanage days--the boo'ful princess and the valiant young hero chaining the seven-headed dragon. And in America it was just bound to have come true!

"Good-bye, Stevuns," she answered, in the same gay voice--but a trifle forced if one knew her well. "I hope you have a wonderful time leading a mob somewhere and your wife selling your photographs on the next corner curbstone!"

She pretended to become interested in the prayer book; and, with the Pom shooing him out by sharp, ear-piercing barks, Steve left the room.

CHAPTER XXIII