The Magpies Nest (8 page)

Not that he had these thoughts. Only a part of his brain was active; the part which he used in the making of money. He trained that.

He kissed the crest of her hair, while she sighed ostentatiously and was rigidly unresponsive, repulsing him with her mind rather than with her body. So he let her go. She went out. He heard the soft click of her high heels down the hall, and hoped fervently that no other ears might be listening.

There was no warmth in his heart at the prospect of going home. He finished packing, and locked up his baggage, feeling singularly alone. His wife probably would not be at home; she might be in town, shopping, or visiting; she loved living in huge hotels in a glare of publicity. Ten days before he had sent her a wonderful sapphire ring for their wedding anniversary. She had not even acknowledged it. She was not a beautiful woman, nor charming, nor brilliant, but her very hardness had given her a long ascendency over him. Despite himself, he was essentially a faithful man, craving affection, easily rebuffed. And there is something in the name of wife that gives a woman possession of certain keys to a man's inner nature, if he has anything fine in him at all. She was his wife, and in his young manhood he had given her those keys. Nor can any gift be wholly revoked; the period of possession can never be effaced.

His daughter was the only thing he had got out of it all—a jolly little tomboy, slowly changing now into an unusually frank and lovable young woman. Perhaps she could come with him on his next trip. It might save him from—he did not know quite what. From trying, perhaps, to thrust unwelcome gifts on another than his wife.

Now why would not Hope accept? He could not see that it was, over again, his giving her the dollar. She could not buy anything with it. She wanted chocolates, and could not reach the market. But this time neither could he buy them for her. And yet it was a perfectly good dollar he was offering her. If it puzzled her, it puzzled him still more. He thought her exquisitely foolish—the more lovable for her imbecility. He was the acquisitive type. He refused nothing of value, reached out always for more, no matter whether he could buy anything with his dollar or not.

Well, it was train time. With a final thought of her, a fatuous hope that she slept sound, he went out.

Though he could not know it, she was far from sleeping. The car was miraculously recovered of its late affliction. It streamed through the night like a wandering earth-bound star; the pale-grey, dusty road rushed into its devouring radius of light and was instantly swallowed again by the dark, endlessly, a delight and a fascination to Hope. She was at the wheel, and Allen, beside her, kept a ready hand to correct the errors of her fearful joy. He must reach his arm about her to do it, but she had grown accustomed to his quiet presence and it did not trouble her. They talked, intermittently, cheek to cheek so they might hear. Once she turned suddenly and felt his long lashes brush her face, and laughed. She liked Allen, and one reason was his forthright honesty, which credited hers, so that they stood on firm ground with each other. He gave her less disquiet than any man she ever knew. He was not stolid, either; he merely controlled himself as perfectly as he did the big machine In their expeditions they found themselves in perfect accord, intent on the one thing, the magic of the moment's chance. Their speech had the awful candour of utter, uncalculating youth.

To-night he knew she had been saying good-bye to Edgerton.

"Kinda mean of me," he meditated, "to sneak the car his last night. Only a block to the station, though. Did he say anything about it to you?" "How did you know I was there?" she asked, skidding abruptly into a rut.

"Telephoned—you were out. Waited for you. I followed you home." He laid a restraining finger on the wheel.

"Well, you shouldn't have.
That
was mean."

"Oh, shucks! I knew you went there sometimes." His drawl accepted the fact without comment, reprobation or innuendo.

She shook her head. "Never did, before. This is more fun."

"Aren't you his girl?" questioned Allen directly.

"His girl? No, I don't think so. He's been nice to me. I like him, of course. How do you mean?"

"The limit," said Allen.

She took it in presently. It came to her in the light of a problem. Why should he have thought so? Not being a hypocrite, she made no pretence of anger. Though she did not realise it, that was because of Allen's acceptance of her right to her own choice. Because he had never made it an excuse to be hatefully presumptuous. But why...?

She asked him.

"Oh, well—he likes you, too. And he doesn't get on with his wife.. And he hasn't got a girl here." This was elemental logic with a vengeance. But the force of it could not appeal to any unawakened girl.

"Well, I don't see," she murmured vaguely. "I think he's nice. He is to me. Has he got..."

"Sure, he's all right," said Allen. "He had a girl in St. Paul, I believe. But that was awhile ago."

"I'm not his girl," affirmed Hope.

"All right," said Allen. Allen played the cards as they fell. "I believe you, if you say so. You can't ever tell. I wish you liked me."

"I do," she said instantly.

"Oh, shucks!" said Allen. "You're a funny girl, aren't you?" And he retreated into silence for a time.

"You talk," she said finally, with a rather hopeless air, "as if one had to..."

"Oh, well, not just exactly that," he admitted. "But —life's pretty lonesome. ... I like a girl . . . near me. ... I used to know a lot of chorus girls in Chicago; jolly kids. . . "

He was sufficiently explicit, until she mutely signed "enough." Yet there was something primitively clear in his confession. She regarded him with utter astonishment, unaware that she had often aroused the same sentiment in him.

"I think
I
rather like being alone, mostly," she said at last.

"Sure, I know," he assented. "I can feel it. You're away off. You're a funny girl."

It was two o'clock. And there was her front gate. 

CHAPTER VIII

THE dressing-room was uncomfortably crowded; Hope found herself in a corner, remote from a mirror and reluctant to take off her wrap lest her assurance should go with it. The dreadful feeling of being alone in a crowd assailed her; she felt gooseflesh rising on her bare shoulders, and looked about: despairingly for Mrs. Patten and Mary. They had promised to be there, and were late. Eleanor Travers nodded casually, and went on powdering her nose. Mrs. Shane appraised her with a long, insolently inexpressive look and then turned, with an air of contempt, and adjusted her gown over her hips with a slight wriggling movement. Hope decided she would be no more beautiful for seeing her own reflection once more, and made her way to the door.

While she waited, drawing on her gloves, she could see Ned Angell at the door of the other cloak-room, evidently not yet expecting her; he had his hand on the shoulder of another youth, and they were both laughing, but in a confidential manner, as over a private joke. So it was, rather, though of course Hope could not know; they had just returned it to Ned's topcoat pocket. Ned was in flannels, as were many of the younger men: he even had a cummerbund instead of a waistcoat, but he carried off his dandyism extremely well, as a few men can, by appearing unconscious of it. Hope thought she had never seen anyone look quite so "finished" as he did; she ever forgave him for wearing a seal ring on his little finger, and that his hard was too small for a man's. His mouse-coloured hair, brushed very sleek, had a high light to it, like lacquer. He looked incredibly useless and gay; and was both But for a cavalier at a dance, he was all one could ask, and more, Hope felt, than one so country-cousinish as herself had a right to. Now he saw her, and came across the room, and carried her off on his arm.

Inside the ball-room, a long bare apartment meagrely festooned with dusty-looking bunting and forlorn strings of Japanese lanterns against a glaring white wall, she hesitated again, not knowing whither Ned was guiding her but aware of some immediate duty on his mind. He was taking her to the patronesses, and she stumbled her way past them in an agony of embarrassment, tearing a flounce on the sharp heel of her slipper as she bowed to them. She got another glance of appraisal there, from Mrs. Dupont, who was Cora Shane's bosom friend—a simile which in that respect implied an amplitude of affection on the part of both. A new girl to them was a thing to be considered. Mrs. Dupont, who looked like a Spanish beauty well past her prime, dealt in masculine "futures," and was gowned from Paris. Ned Angell had bored her with accounts of Hope. It gave her and Cora a certain satisfaction to perceive the girl, on her entrance, a dim little thing, obviously
gauche
.

Dim she was, gasping for breath, like a fresh-landed minnow, in her new element. Ned could not strike a spark from her, and he did like coruscations, fireworks. A part of Hope's prettiness was her waxen delicacy of complexion; even her mouth was only pink. When she felt dashed or ill it was as if a fine grey ash had fallen on her. It fell on her now; she looked forlorn, and the odd gown she had chosen, admirably suited to her glowing mood, seemed somber. It was of black lace, and her slippers were of blue satin; a Ridiculous blue rose blossomed on her shoulder; a black chiffon band encircled her head, with a fluffy bow that was meant to be perky. It had slipped a bit, and sat over one eye, making her look lost and neglected, but very quaint. Ned, beside her, felt humorously despairing. He would have to hand her over to the men she must dance with like—like a sick kitten, instead of permitting them the privilege. He did not apply the epithet harshly; no one could feel harsh toward a poor little sick kitten.

He wondered why she attracted him at all. Sometimes so did she. Undoubtedly the attraction existed; more, perhaps, in her absence than otherwise. He always went back to her, as if to look at her once more and confirm a previous impression, or perhaps hoping that at last she might realise some subtle anticipation. That she literally never heeded him at all, neither his comings nor his goings, was part of the charm. He could not imagine her waiting for him, even unconsciously. During an interim she would go on about her own affairs, just being herself. And it might be she would develop a new phase, and he ought not to miss it. He had had so many love affairs of all kinds, he was not sure but this was a new kind —when he was away from her.

They danced the first together, of course; her blue satin shoes were light on the floor, at least. As her card was not half-filled, he left her then to remedy the matter. She subsided into a seat, pale, but evidently of stoic courage. She was looking at the patronesses, with a touch of sly deliberation in her eye, when Mary and Mrs. Patten found her and swept down on her with subdued rustlings and laughter. It was charming to see her eyes at once darken and light up and the animation flow back to her face. The missing colour note was supplied to her tonal ensemble. And she wanted to kiss Mary and Lisbeth; her eyes said it, her mouth said it, without words. That kissing expression was what made Tony Yorke, who had been watching her with mingled pity and amusement, get up from his chair and go in search of Ned. He decided suddenly he wanted to be presented to her.

"Thank heaven," Hope was saying to Mary. "Now I want you to impress all these people indelibly on my mind by telling me something horribly scandalous about each of them. Begin with the patronesses."

They did begin with the patronnesses, who represented every shade of the town's evolution toward "society," as Mary explained. From Mrs. Manners, small, withered, terrifically dignified in her venerable Vandyke gown of black velvet draped with real, if soiled, old lace—who. had brought her county traditions with her from England along with the gown and preserved them inviolate through twenty years of struggle with the rawness of a frontier town—to Mrs. Lockwood, a walking advertisement of her husband's trade as to avoirdupois, and his prosperity as to diamonds, they presented a complete social microcosm.

"Who," asked Lisbeth, "is that small fair woman with Mrs. Lockwood? Have I ever seen her before?"

"Perhaps not; she is only visiting. Mrs. Lockwood caught her in Banff. She," Mary smiled, "is a lady-in-waiting to the Queen of Norway. Now she's talking to Amy Bell; the Bell girls used to peddle milk, and I always fancy Amy carries her muff like a quart measure!"

"Cat!" said Hope. "Goon!"

But Ned interrupted, with a tall, dark-eyed young man in tow, who looked at her with an air of recognition.

Her name he knew; his mind always placed an interrogation point after it. He had seen her times innumerable. It was characteristic of the difference in them; she had seen him, consciously, just once. He knew what she did; vaguely, where she came from; very definitely, what she looked like; and not at all what she was. He had always been curious about her, but only now in a personal way. At first he had thought of her as "a girl Ned Angell took about"; later she was "the girl with the feet"; because of her light and happy way of hurrying along. Then he had seen her in Edgerton's car. Now Tony Yorke was the child of his age, an unconscious worshipper of success. Edgerton's interest in Hope—whatever nature it partook of—invested her with a sort of value, a speculative value, one might say. There must be something in her. And Edgerton and Ned Angell— extraordinary combination! She must be a queer little devil.

He reserved judgment, in the way men do; a way that allows them to feel very generous, since such a reserved judgment is tantamount to no more than a suspended sentence. Even admitting the worst, she must be one of those really rare women who wear their rue with a difference. Edgerton's manner to her convinced him of that. It did not quite convince him of anything else. In respect of Ned Angell, their presence here did convince Yorke; he could have echoed Mary Dark's dictum from that—she must have snubbed Ned! But Edgerton was different; he was a big man in his way, and would act like one. Well, there was the situation. He rather wanted to be on the inside of it all, and was quite willing to grin with her at Ned. But, after all, it was that sudden look of hers made him forget every other reason, and simply wish to meet her because he did wish to meet her. And, his vision clear for a moment, he saw both Ned and Edgerton explained in himself. But unfortunately such moments of clairvoyance do not last.