The Younger Set Part 30

"That Rosamund is quite crazy about you?"

"Good Lord! Do you suppose that any of the monkey set are interested in me or I in them?" he said, disgusted. "Do I ever go near them or meet them at all except by accident in the routine of the machinery which sometimes sews us in tangent patches on this crazy-quilt called society?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'I don't know why I came.'"]

"But Rosamund," she said, laughing, "is now cultivating Mrs. Gerard."

"What of it?" he demanded.

"Because," she replied, still laughing, "I tell you, she is perfectly mad about you. There's no use scowling and squaring your chin. Oh, I ought to know what that indicates! I've watched you do it often enough; but the fact is that the handsomest and smartest woman in town is for ever dinning your perfections into my ears--"

"I know," he said, "that this sort of stuff pa.s.ses in your set for wit; but let me tell you that any man who cares for that brand of humour can have it any time he chooses. However, he goes outside the residence district to find it."

She flushed scarlet at his brutality; he drew up a chair, seated himself very deliberately, and spoke, his unlighted pipe in his left hand:

"The girl I left--the girl who left me--was a modest, clean-thinking, clean-minded girl, who also had a brain to use, and employed it.

Whatever conclusion that girl arrived at concerning the importance of marriage-vows is no longer my business; but the moment she confronts me again, offering friends.h.i.+p, then I may use a friend's privilege, as I do. And so I tell you that loosely fas.h.i.+onable badinage bores me. And another matter--privileged by the friends.h.i.+p you acknowledge--forces me to ask you a question, and I ask it, point-blank: Why have you again permitted Gerald to play cards for stakes at your house, after promising you would not do so?"

The colour receded from her face and her gloved fingers tightened on the arms of her chair.

"That is one reason I came," she said; "to explain--"

"You could have written."

"I say it was _one_ reason; the other I have already given you--because I--I felt that you were friendly."

"I am. Go on."

"I don't know whether you are friendly to me; I thought you were--that night... . I did not sleep a wink after it ... because I was quite happy... . But now--I don't know--"

"Whether I am still friendly? Well, I am. So please explain about Gerald."

"Are you sure?" raising her dark eyes, "that you mean to be kind?"

"Yes, sure," he said harshly. "Go on."

"You are a little rough with me; a-almost insolent--"

"I--I have to be. Good G.o.d! Alixe, do you think this is nothing to me?--this wretched mess we have made of life! Do you think my roughness and abruptness comes from anything but pity?--pity for us both, I tell you. Do you think I can remain unmoved looking on the atrocious punishment you have inflicted on yourself?--tethered to--to _that_!--for life!--the poison of the contact showing in your altered voice and manner!--in the things you laugh at, in the things you live for--in the twisted, misshapen ideals that your friends set up on a heap of nuggets for you to wors.h.i.+p? Even if we've pa.s.sed through the sea of mire, can't we at least clear the filth from our eyes and see straight and steer straight to the anchorage?"

She had covered her pallid face with her m.u.f.f; he bent forward, his hand on the arm of her chair.

"Alixe, was there nothing to you, after all? Was it only a tinted ghost that was blown into my bungalow that night--only a twist of shredded marsh mist without substance, without being, without soul?--to be blown away into the shadows with the next and stronger wind--and again to drift out across the waste places of the world? I thought I knew a sweet, impulsive comrade of flesh and blood; warm, quick, generous, intelligent--and very, very young--too young and spirited, perhaps, to endure the harness which coupled her with a man who failed her--and failed himself.

"That she has made another--and perhaps more heart-breaking mistake, is bitter for me, too--because--because--I have not yet forgotten. And even if I ceased to remember, the sadness of it must touch me. But I have not forgotten, and because I have not, I say to you, anchor! and hold fast.

Whatever _he_ does, whatever you suffer, whatever happens, steer straight on to the anchorage. Do you understand me?"

Her gloved hand, moving at random, encountered his and closed on it convulsively.

"Do you understand?" he repeated.

"Y-es, Phil."

Head still sinking, face covered with the silvery fur, the tremors from her body set her hand quivering on his.

Heart-sick, he forbore to ask for the explanation; he knew the real answer, anyway--whatever she might say--and he understood that any game in that house was Ruthven's game, and the guests his guests; and that Gerald was only one of the younger men who had been wrung dry in that house.

No doubt at all that Ruthven needed the money; he was only a male geisha for the set that harboured him, anyway--picked up by a big, hard-eyed woman, who had almost forgotten how to laugh, until she found him furtively muzzling her diamond-laden fingers. So, when she discovered that he could sit up and beg and roll over at a nod, she let him follow her; and since then he had become indispensable and had curled up on many a soft and silken knee, and had sought and fetched and carried for many a pretty woman what she herself did not care to touch, even with white-gloved fingers.

What had she expected when she married him? Only innocent ignorance of the set he ornamented could account for the horror of her disillusion.

What splendours had she dreamed of from the outside? What flas.h.i.+ng and infernal signal had beckoned her to enter? What mute eyes had promised?

What silent smile invited? All skulls seem to grin; but the world has yet to hear them laugh.

"Philip?"

"Yes, Alixe."

"I did my best, w-without offending Gerald. Can you believe me?"

"I know you did... . Don't mind what I said--"

"N-no, not now... . You do believe me, don't you?"

"Yes, I do."

"Thank you... . And, Phil, I will try to s-steer straight--because you ask me."

"You must."

"I will... . It is good to be here... . I must not come again, must I?"

"Not again, Alixe."

"On your account?"

"On your own... . What do _I_ care?"

"I didn't know. They say--"

"What?" he asked sharply.

"A rumour--I heard it--others speak of it--perhaps to be disagreeable to me--"

"What have you heard?"

"That--that you might marry again--"