The Magpies Nest (15 page)

Emily came down the stairs, hard on the heels of that lingering thought of Hope; the sight of her crowded the other from his mind. Heavens, the girl was more than pretty; she was a beauty! Her white serge gown—she had thought it worth while to change, then—moulded itself to her long, vigorous lines with classic effect, and her shoes, her gleaming white silk hose, the lacy ruffles that cascaded from the base of her firm throat, her large white hat, were again of the top of the
mode.
He had never appreciated her before. She was charming—and willing to be charmed. Over the wicker tea-table in the farthest corner of the lounge they progressed, in half an hour, a very long way. When he left her, he was not sure but there might yet be a turn of the wheel before the ball fell.

But for Emily, he might not have had the courage or desire to go to Hope as he did, early that evening. He would have let her eat her heart out in slow suspense, because he hated the unpleasantness inseparable from what he meant to do. But she would see Emily and her father probably soon, and while he never expected her to tell anything to anyone, he desired there should be nothing to tell. It might sometimes be more amusing to be on with the new love before he was off with the old, but it was not always safe, and his margin was narrow already. So he went.

She saw his depression instantly. And he did not offer to kiss her, but sat down, looked at the floor, and seemed to wait for some second sight on her part to read his purpose. But all she could do was to ask, in a hurt, frightened, low voice:

"What is the matter, Tony?"

"Everything," he said, trying to hasten the end. "It's all off. I—Hope, I've played out my string. I can't hold you to marrying a man without a cent in the world, and mighty uncertain prospects. I saw Edgerton; he's not going to take us up. So the best thing for you is for me to clear out."

She sat frozen. If he had tried to hold her, even shown her that the renunciation of her meant more to him than the other loss; if he had even asked her to wait for him. There was a weight like lead in her bosom, and beneath that tears, which would not come because the weight withheld them. Was this the man who would over-ride destiny for her? He was yielding without a blow being struck.

"If I'm a burden to you," she said at last in a dull voice, "of course I can't—can't…" Indeed, she could not do anything, not even finish whatever it was she meant to say. "You know you're free," she articulated finally. "You must do what you think best." Now for the first time she longed achingly for him to offer her one caress. Her stillness deceived him into thinking her simply indifferent. With that fine unreason common to love, even love denied, he was wounded by her attitude.

He had come to her honestly meaning to spare her as much as possible; he did not really like to see anyone suffer. But neither did he like to do all the suffering himself; and then, too, he wanted horribly to justify himself.

"Oh, well," he said, "you never cared much. You didn't even want to help."

"I couldn't," she said in bewildered protest.

He eyed her narrowly.

"Anyway, you'll forget me—as you did the others."

"The others?" She looked at him in utter perplexity. "What others?"

"Sanderson told me," he said, with rising heat. "And you said you didn't know him. I believed you, Hope!"

Slowly it reached her confused mind, which was stupefied by the shock.

"I didn't want to know him," she answered, after a pause, and got to her feet, her eyes hard and bright. "He's a—an unspeakable cad. I can't bear to speak of him. You—you talked me over with
him?
Ah!" Her old disgust of the man choked her. She presented her back to Tony, and walked to the window.

"No, I didn't," he denied untruthfully. "And haven't I seen for myself—other things?"

She made no answer. Hope was by no means of an hysterical nature; but now she was fighting, to the last of her strength, to keep from losing self-control while he was near. She had been under a long, unacknowledged strain, and if she even tried to speak she knew not what frantic foolishness she might commit herself to. She wanted to fight for her happiness, to plead for it even; but could not. She wondered wildly what his last words meant, and to ask him was out of her power. And again, she did not want to know. Everything he had said had been so unbearable; to hear any more was beyond her. The others! Thus to cheapen her feeling for him, why, he was committing sacrilege. She had never thought so basely of him.

Unconsciously she pulled a leaf from the geranium, looking at it closely but without seeing it at all, still waiting until she could find some words that might be adequate, and not wild. She heard him cross the room—to the door. And he supplied the needed word.

"Good-bye—dear," he said, his voice singularly gentle. At the end remorse had overtaken him. And also, even at the very last, she remained a puzzle to him. She had explained nothing.

"Good-bye," she said, without turning. She heard the door close. She could not move, to go after him, where her heart went, and recapture her happiness, and her trust.

Mary found her, lying on the couch with the room darkened and a towel bound about her forehead and eyes, quite two hours later. She was sick with weeping, her face swollen and marred with tears, but still.

"It's all over, Mary, and the dead are counted," she said, sitting up as the light came on. "P-please don't tell me how beautiful I look." There was a catch in her voice, which was husky and toneless.

"You and Tony?" said Mary, shocked beyond words by the very thing she had always expected.

"Y-yes," said Hope. "I'll tell you—some time. Let's talk about something else. Something funny."

And Mary did. But that night she heard Hope sobbing in her sleep.

CHAPTER XIV

MARY knew Edgerton had something on his mind; he watched her furtively over his shoulder, and handled the papers on his desk in an aimless manner utterly foreign to him. But when he finally unburdened himself, she was utterly surprised.

"I don't know much about women," he began. '"At least," his brow contracted, "my wife says I don't."

There was a hidden meaning in that reference, for Edgerton's heart was sore and his pride raw from his wife's gentle ministrations. Her parting words to him had been inexpressibly cruel. He had gone to her, in great loneliness of soul, after his return from New York, and begged for a complete reconciliation. Perhaps he wanted to fortify himself against the imminent meeting with Hope; but chiefly, his divided home had always been a secret grief to him, and this was not the first effort he had made to close the breach.

It was her habit to put him in the wrong; to make him lose his temper ineffectually; always he found himself unable to say what he would; but even a stupider woman than she must have understood his blundering advances, and realised what he was offering her But the plain truth was she did not want it because she would not have known what to do with it. This time, when he had pleaded for a little love, like a beggar for a crust, she had told him—the remembrance of it would smart for years—that no woman could love him, except for his money. She had not spared to hint that even Emily's affection was held at a price. He did not realise it yet, but in fact she had at last broken his bonds by overstraining them; her hold on him was gone. He would never again ask her for anything. More, he would never again desire aught from her.

"Oh, well, who does know anything about women?" said Mary cheerfully. "They're exactly like men—all different."

"Are they?" He did not seem certain in his mind. "It's my girl I'm thinking of. You know, I want her to be happy. I want her to have everything she wants, if it's good for her."

"What does she want?" said Mary briskly, but touched by his turning to her in his perplexity.

"She's got a fancy for that young man—Yorke," said Edgerton.

Mary positively gaped at him.

"Do you mean that he has proposed to her?"

"Well, in a way. Emmy and I have always been chums, you know. She just hinted that he had hinted that she was the only girl in the world—oh, she just had to tell someone, you see, and I was the only one handy." He dissembled his pride that she had brought her unfolding little heart to him, her father. "She always does tell me, when any young sprig begins making up. She's had a dozen. But she says she
likes
this one."

"But what do you want me to do?" asked Mary, absently tearing up an advertising layout she had been working at all the morning.

"Tell me if he's good enough," said Edgerton. "You know him, and I'd back your judgment. I don't know anything about him, and I haven't time to find out, if I want to act."

"He's not good enough," said Mary viciously.

Edgerton looked up sharply.

"Why not?"

"Because," she spoke carefully, her dark eyes narrowing like a cat's, "he jilted another girl within the week. And he hasn't a cent in the world. Neither had she. Put two and two together." Then she feared she might have struck him, instead of Tony, through his pride in his daughter. "But certainly," she said, "he is attracted by Emily—who wouldn't be? But I do know him, and he's not good enough, not for your daughter, anyway. Why," she added, with some sincerity, "Emily can pick and choose; she can have the best. She'd be throwing herself away. He's a lame duck," she finished Tony off with one of Edgerton's own phrases.

"All right," said Edgerton. "Thank you, awfully, Mary—I beg your pardon, I mean Miss Dark. I've heard you called by your first name so often. I wonder if you couldn't see Emily, and maybe show her the same thing? She thinks you're so clever, you know; and it takes a girl to talk to another girl."

"I'll try," said Mary rather doubtfully.

She telephoned to Emily for an appointment, and Emily insisted on lunching her, so it promised well. Edgerton fell to pondering again, and as the result of an hour's cogitation, scribbled a note, handed it to Mary hastily, and reached for his hat. At the door he turned.

"Who was the other girl?" he asked.

"Oh, now!  That wouldn't be fair," said Mary. He nodded assent, and went out. The note was for Hope.

If Mary had thought twice, she might not have given Hope her news with the note. But she thought a desperate case required desperate remedies, and the girl was sick of a spiritual fever, sunk in a dreadful lassitude. Her eyes were ringed with black, her face looked pinched and ghostly, and she walked unseeing, like a somnambulist.

She twisted the note around her fingers while she listened, and seemed at first to make no sense of what Mary said. Then her head went up stiffly, with a gesture of a sort of direful pride.

"Are they engaged, then?" she only asked, at last.

"No," said Mary, telling nothing of her own part in the matter. "Her father will not have it; and I know he will prevent it. I am certain of that."

Hope stood up, her hand pressed to her side.

"Mary," she said piteously, "was he like that all the time—all the time? Was I really such a fool? Why didn't I see it?"

Mary knew she must be calm.

"Schopenhauer explains that much better than I can," she said lightly. "And we're all fools, all the time. Poor Tony is what he is; he can't help it. Circumstances cornered him, that's all. But he has all the qualities that attract; I believe I could love him myself, with my eyes wide open, if everything conspired against me. If you were ten years older, you'd have managed circumstances, and been happy. Tony needs a woman of the world, not a gosling like you."

"What should I have done?" she asked again. "What did I do? He didn't believe Jim Sanderson; he only wanted an excuse."

"Well, child, don't we always believe our own excuses?" said Mary sensibly. And, thinking that later the lesson might be of use, she added, "Besides, you have behaved outrageously; you certainly have." Hope listened, with close and rather painful attention, while Mary explained very succinctly and as impartially as a mirror just what she had done and left undone. Mary could see the girl did not quite understand—but in time she would. She ended, "But that won't matter, if you really want him. Of course he's not worth breaking your heart over, but you can have him yet if you like."

"But I don't! I don't! I want what I thought he was. It's just because he isn't worth—Mary, I hate this place; it chokes me. I hate everybody in it. I suppose I was—an—an idiot—but I never hurt any one. Why...? I want to get away from here."

It did choke her. There flooded over her like a wave the feeling she had known the night she met Tony at the dance supper. It was all muddy, evil, hateful; and she felt herself sunk in it unaware, until she could scarcely breathe.

Then she found Edgerton's note in her hand, and began to laugh.

"Was Tony thinking of him?" she asked thoughtfully.

"Oh, probably," said Mary. "Don't bother about it any more now. Will you come and see Emily tomorrow with me?"

"Oh, yes," said Hope. "I'll play the game now. That's what I should have done before, isn't it?"

Then her self-control gave way, and she wept again. And then she laughed, and wrote an answer to Edgerton. Mary went to bed exhausted from sheer sympathy, but Hope sat up half the night reading. Once Mrs. Hamilton tapped at the door to inquire unobtrusively if the light meant someone ill, and Mary heard Hope joking with her for a moment. When she woke again it was day, and Hope lay beside her in a sleep as deep as death, white and quiet.

Edgerton only came to the corner with the motor, but Hope heard the muffled down engine as he stopped, and ran to meet him with a sensation of escape. Mary was away for the evening, but Mrs. Hamilton, according to custom, was at home. Little Bobby galloped after her unsteadily; she turned on him with mock ferocity, and he fled, shrieking with delicious fright. Then she shut the door on him and came up to Edgerton, out of breath. There was something of that air of breathlessness, of going too quickly to think, about her all the evening. They went straight away from the town, very fast at first; and in the close air of a still and clouded night they seemed to skim the earth, to lose identity with reality. It was thickly dark. When Edgerton slowed down, miles away, they seemed adrift in space, detached from the living world.