I
I've thought the thing over and over, and honestly I don't know where it went wrong. It began so well. I planned it out, and it went exactly as I'd expected up to a certain point. Then it blew up.
There's no argument about it, a girl has to look out for herself. The minute the family begin mixing in there's trouble.
The day after I came out mother and I had a real heart-to-heart talk. I'd been away for years at school, and in the summers we hadn't seen much of each other. She played golf all day and I had my tennis and my horse. And in the evenings there were always kid dances. So we really got acquainted that day.
She rustled into my room and gazed at what was left of my ball gown, spread out on the bed.
"It really went rather well last night," she said.
"Yes, mother," I replied.
"I've sent the best of the flowers to the hospital."
"Yes, mother."
"You had more flowers than Bessie Willing."
I shrugged my shoulders, and for some reason or other that irritated her.
"For heaven's sake, Kit," she said sharply, "I wish you'd show a little appreciation. Your father has spent a fortune on you, one way and another. The supper alone last night——But that's not what I came to talk about."
"No, mother?"
"No. Are you going to continue to waste your time on Henry Baring?"
"I rather enjoy playing round with him. That's all it amounts to."
"Not at all," said mother in her best manner. "It keeps the others away."
"As, for instance?" I asked politely.
She was getting on my nerves. I didn't mean to marry Henry, but I did mean to carry on my own campaign.
"You know very well that there are only three marriageable men in town. There are eleven débutantes. And—I don't care to be unkind, but at least four of them are—are——"
"I know," I said wearily—"better looking than I am. Go ahead."
"You're not at all ugly," mother put in hastily. "A great many people said nice things about you last night. The only thing I want to impress on you is that Madge will have to come out next year, and that you've been reared with expensive tastes."
"I've got brains. Most of the other eleven haven't."
"Brains are a liability, not an asset."
"That's an exploded idea, mother. The only times they are a liability is when they are ruined by too much family interest."
"That sounds impertinent," she said coldly.
"Not at all; it's good business. If I'm to put over anything worth while, I shall have to work along my own lines. I can't afford to have my style cramped."
She raised her eyebrows at that, for she hates slang. But she looked relieved too. When I think of how sure of myself I was that day I could rave!
"Then you're not going to waste any more time on Henry?"
"I think," I said reflectively, "that I'm going to use Henry quite a lot. But I don't intend to marry him."
Yes, that's what I said. I remember it perfectly well. I was putting a dab of scent behind my ears at the time. I feel that I shall never use the stuff again.
Well, mother went out quite cheered. It was the first real mother-and-daughter talk we'd had for a long time. When she had gone I went into my bathroom and locked the door and opened the windows and smoked two cigarettes, thinking things out.
The family is opposed to my smoking, and no one knows except mother's maid, who fixes my hair, and the gardener. When for the third time he had seen smoke coming out of my bathroom window, and had rushed upstairs with a fire grenade and all the servants at his heels, I was compelled to take him into my confidence.
Well, I smoked and thought things out. I am not beautiful, but I'm extremely chic, and at night, with a touch of rouge, I do very well. I have always worn sophisticated clothes. I thought they suited my style. But so did all the others. If I was to do anything distinguished it would have to be on new lines.
"Early Victorian?" I said to myself.
But the idea of me Lydia-languishing, prunes-and-prisming round the place was too much.
Athletics? Well, they were not bad. There's a lot of chance in golf, although tennis is blowzy. I look well in sport clothes too. But if a girl is a dub at a game a man is apt to tell her so, and I know my own disposition. If he criticised me, before I knew it I'd be swatting my prey with a mashie or a niblick, and everything over. Three men, mother had said. I knew who they were. They had all sent me flowers and danced with me, without saying a word, and then taken me back to mother and rushed for the particular married woman they were interested in.
Oh, I'm not blind! All the men I knew, old enough to amount to anything, were interested in some married woman. I drive my own car, and I used to meet them on lonely back roads, Lillian Marshall and Tom Connor, Toots Warrington and Russell Hill, and the rest of them.
I ask you, what chance had a débutante among them? There were two things to decide that afternoon, the man and the method. I was out now. The family had agreed to let me alone. I had a year before me, until Madge came out. And I knew I could count on Henry Baring to help me all he could. He was a sort of family friend. When he couldn't get me he would take Madge to kid picnics, and mother used to call on him to make a fourth at bridge or fill in at a dinner. You know the sort.
He worked at something or other, and made enough to keep him and pay his club bills, and to let him send flowers to débutantes, and to set up an occasional little supper to pay his way socially. But nobody ever thought of marrying him. He was tall and red-headed and not very handsome. Have I said that?
So I counted on Henry. It makes me bitter even to write it. His very looks were solid and dependable, although I underestimated his hair. I've said I had brains. Well, I had too many brains. Mother was right—the world doesn't come to the clever folks, it comes to the stubborn, obstinate, one-idea-at-a-time people.
I'm going to tell this thing, because a lot of people are saying I threw away a good thing, and mother——
I have a certain amount of superstition in me. I remember, when I was about to be confirmed at school, I was told to open the Bible at random and take the first verse my eyes fell on for a sort of motto through life. Mine was to the effect that as a partridge sits on eggs and fails to hatch them, so too the person who gets riches without deserving them. It rather bothered me at the time. Well, it never will again.
So I took three cigarettes and marked each one with the initials of an eligible. Then I shook them up in a box and drew Russell Hill. I knew then that I had my work cut out for me. Even with Henry's help it was going to be a hard pull. Russell Hill was spoiled. Probably out of the other eleven at least nine had Russell in the backs of their heads. And he knew every move of the game. They'd all been tried on him—golf and moonlight and 1830 methods and pro and anti suffrage and amateur theatricals and ingénue technique and the come-hither glance. So far they had all failed.
The girls were coming in for tea and to talk things over, and as I dressed I was thinking hard. Mother had gone out for a golf lesson, so I sent the rest of my cigarettes down to the drawing room and picked up a book. I remember only one line of that book. Believe me, as a matrimonial text it had the partridge one going. The girl in the story had been crazy about a man.
"I always had my hand in his coat pocket!" she said.
Don't misunderstand, she was not robbing him. She slipped her hand into his coat pocket to let him know how fond she was of him. And after a moment, she said, he always put his hand in, too, over hers. And he ended her slave. He was a very sophisticated man, up to every move of the game, and he ended her slave!
But Russell would take tact. A man likes to be adored, but he hates to look foolish. The first thing was, of course, to get his attention. I was only one of a dozen. True, he had sent me flowers, but he probably did what all the others did—had a standing order and a box of his cards at the florist's. I wasn't fooled for a minute. To him I was a flapper, nothing else. Whether flapper is a term of reproach or one of tribute depends on whether the girl is a débutante or in the first line of the chorus of a musical show. Oh, I wasn't very old, but I knew my way about.
Margaret North came first and the rest trailed in soon after. Everybody talked about the ball, and said it had been wonderful, and I sat there and sized them up. I had a fight on my hands, and I knew it.
There was a picture of Madge sitting round, and Margaret North picked it up and took it to the light. Margaret is one of the four mother had so delicately referred to.
"You'll have to hurry, Kit," she said. "Sister's a raving beauty."
"Oh, I don't know," I observed casually. "Beauty's not everything. The girl in the book had not been a beauty."
"It's all there is," said Margaret. "Figure doesn't count any more. Anybody can have a figure who has a decent dressmaker."
"How about brains?" I asked.
There was a squeal at that.
"Cut 'em out," said Ellie Clavering. "Hide 'em. Disguise 'em. Brains are—are clandestine."
"Anyhow," somebody put in, "Kit isn't worrying; she's got Henry."
That's how they'd fixed me. I knew what it meant. It was a cheap game, but they were playing it. They were going to tie me to Henry. They would ask us together, and put us together at dinners, and talk about us together. In the end everybody would think of us together. I'd seen it done before. It's ruined more débutantes than anything else. They'd put me out of the running before I'd started.
I sat back with my cup of tea and listened, and it made me positively ill. It wasn't that they were clever. They were just instinctive. I could have screamed. And having disposed of me, having handcuffed me to Henry Baring and lost the key, so to speak, they went on to the real subject, which was Russell.
Mother had said there were three eligibles. But to those little idiots round the tea table there was only one. They'd been friendly enough as long as Henry and I were on the rack. But the moment Russell's name was mentioned there was a difference. They didn't talk so much and they eyed each other more. Ella Clavering put both lemon and cream in her tea, and drank it without noticing. Somebody said very impressively that she understood the affair with Toots was off, and that Russell had said, according to report, that he was glad of it. He'd have a little time to himself now.
"That means, I dare say," I said languidly, "that Russell is ready to bring his warmed-over affections to some of us!"
There was a sort of electric silence for a minute.
"It will take a very sophisticated person to land Russell after Toots," I went on. "He's past the ingénue stage."
"If a girl is pretty she always has a chance with Russell." Margaret, of course. She was standing in front of a mirror and I had my eyes on her. Evidently what I had said made an impression, for she cocked her hat down an inch more over her right eye and watched to see the effect.
"You ought to wear earrings, dear," I said. "You need just that dash of chic."
Just for a moment I could see in every eye a sort of vision of Toots Warrington, with the large pearls she always wore in her ears—Toots, who had had Russell tame-catting for her off and on for years!
Oh, they fell for it all right! I poured myself another cup of tea to hide the triumph in my face. Little idiots! If he was sick of Toots he'd hate everything that reminded him of her. I could see the crowd of them swaggering in at the next party, in their best imitation of Toots Warrington, with eyes slightly narrowed, and earrings. And I could see Russell's soul turn over in revolt and go out and take a walk. I knew a lot about men even then, but not enough. I know more now.
II
That night Henry Baring came to call. Being a sort of family friend he had a way of walking in unexpectedly, with a box of candy for whoever saw him first. If mother and I were out, he played chess with father. If there was no one in, he was quite likely to range round the lower floor, and ask the butler about his family, and maybe read for an hour or so in the library. The servants adored him, but he was matrimonially impossible.
That night he came. I was at home alone.
"You will take two full days' rest after your ball," mother had said. "I have seen enough débutantes looking ready for the hospital the first week they came out."
So I was alone that evening, and mother and father had gone to a dinner. I was sulky, I don't mind saying. At six o'clock a box of flowers had come, but they were only from Henry and not exciting. "Thought I'd send them to-day," he wrote on his card. "Didn't like the idea of my personal offering nailed to the club wall."
About nine o'clock I put on my silk dressing gown and went down to the library for the book about the girl who always had her hand in the man's coat pocket. I had got clear in when I saw Henry's red head over the top of a deep chair.
"Come in!" he called. "I was told there was no one at home, but methinks I know the step and the rustle."
"Don't look round," I said sharply. "I'm not dressed."
"Can't you stay a few minutes?"
"Certainly not."
"If I don't look?"
Well, it seemed silly to run. I was more covered up than I'd been the night before in my ball gown. Besides, it had occurred to me that Henry could be useful if he would. A sort of plan had popped into my head. Inspiration, I called it then.
"Pretty nice last night, wasn't it?" he asked, talking to the fireplace. "You looked some person, Kit, believe me."
"Considering that I've spent nineteen years getting ready, it should have gone off rather well."
"I suppose I'll never see you any more."
"This looks like it! Why?"
"You'll be so popular."
"Oh, that! I'm not sure, Henry. I'm not beautiful."
He jumped at that, and almost turned round.
"Not beautiful!" he said. "You're—you're the loveliest thing that ever lived, and you know it."
It began to look to me as if he wouldn't help after all. There was a sort of huskiness in his voice, a—Oh, well, you know. I began on the plan, however.
"You'll see me, all right," I said. "I'll have other friends, of course. I hope so anyhow. But when one thinks who and what they are——"
"Good gracious, Kit! What are you driving at?"
"I'm young," I said. "I know that. But I'm not ignorant. And a really nice girl with ideals——"
"I'll have to get up," he said suddenly. "I'll stand with my back to you, if you insist, but I'll have to get up. What's all this about ideals?"
"You know very well," I put in with dignity. "If every time I meet a nice man people come to me with stories about him, or mother and father warn me against him, what am I to do?"
"Can't you stand behind a chair and let me face you? This is serious."
"Oh, turn round," I said recklessly. "If I hear any one coming I can run. Anyhow, it may be unconventional but I'm fully clothed."
"Are you being warned against me?" he threw at me like a bomb. "Because, if—if you are, it's absurd nonsense. I'm no saint, and I'd never be fit for you to—What silly story have you heard, Kit?"
He was quite white, and his red hair looked like a conflagration.
"It's not about you at all; it's about Russell Hill."
It took him a moment to breathe normally again.
"Oh—Russell!" he said. "Well, that's probably nonsense too. You don't mean to say your people object to your knowing Russell?"
"Not quite that," I said. "But I can't have him here, or go round with him, or anything of that sort."
"Do they venture to give a reason?"
"Toots Warrington."
It's queer about men, the way they stand up for each other. Henry knew as well as he knew anything that most of the girls we both knew were crazy about Russell. And if he cared for me—and the way he acted made me suspicious—he had a good chance to throw Russell into the discard that night. But he didn't. I knew well enough he wouldn't.
"That's perfect idiocy," he said sternly. "Society is organised along certain lines, and maybe if you and I had anything to do with it we'd change things. But there is no commandment or social law or anything else against a man having a married woman for a friend."
"Friend!"
"Exactly—friend."
"I don't care to have anything to do with him."
"You needn't, of course. But you owe it to Russell to give him a chance to set things straight. Any how he and Mrs. Warrington are not seeing each other much any more. It's off."
"The very fact that you say it is 'off' shows that it was once 'on.'"
He waved his hands in perfect despair. If I'd rehearsed him he couldn't have picked up his cues any better.
"I'm going to tell him," he said. "It's ridiculous. It's—it's libellous."
"I don't want him coming here explaining. I am not even interested."
"You're a perfect child, a stubborn child! Your mind's in pigtails, like your hair."
Yes, my hair was down. I have rather nice hair.
"If he comes here," I said with my eyes wide, "he will have to come when mother and father are out."
"I'll bring him," said Henry valiantly. "I'm not going to see him calumniated, that's all." Then something struck his sense of humour and he chuckled. "It will be a new and valuable experience to him," he said, "to have to come clandestinely. Do him good!"
I went upstairs then. It had been a fair day's work.
But it's hard to count on a family. Mother sprained her ankle getting out of the car that night and was laid up for three days. I chafed at first. Henry might change his mind or one of the eleven get in some fine work. We declined everything that week, and I made some experiments with my hair and the aid of mother's maid. I wanted a sort of awfully feminine method—not sappy but not at all sophisticated. Toots Warrington is always waved and netted, and all the girls by that time had got earrings and were going round waved and netted too.
I wanted to fix my hair like a girl who slips her hand into a man's coat pocket because she can't help it, and then tries to get it out, and can't because his hand has got hold of it.
Then one night I got it. Henry had dropped in, and found mother with her foot up and the look of a dyspeptic martyr on her face, and father with a cold and a thermometer in his mouth.
"I've come to take Kit to the movies," he announced calmly. "Far be it from me not to contribute to the entertainment of a young lady who is just out!"
"Full of gerbs!" father grunted, referring to the movies of course, not me. But mother agreed.
"Do take her out, Henry," she said. "She's been on my nerves all evening."
So we went, and there was a girl in one of the pictures who had exactly the right hair arrangement. She had it loose and wavy about her face, and it blew about the way things do blow in the movies, and in the back it was a sort of soft wad.
It shows the association of ideas that I found my hand in Henry's coat pocket, and he grabbed it like a lunatic.
"You darling!" he said thickly. "Don't do that unless you mean it. I can't stand it."
I had to be very cool on the way home in the motor or he would have kissed me.
Mother and I went to a reception on the following Tuesday, and I wondered if mother noticed. She did. Coming home in the motor she turned and stared at me.
"Thank heaven, Kit," she said, "you still look like a young girl. All at once Ellie and the others look like married women. Earrings! It's absurd. And such earrings! I am quite sure," she went on, eying me, "that some of them had been smoking. I got an unmistakable whiff of it when I was talking with Bessie Willing."
Well, I had rinsed my mouth with mouth wash and dabbed my lips with cologne, so she got nothing from me. But I tasted like a drug store.
I am not smoking now. I am not doing much of anything. I—but I'm coming to that.
I'm no hypocrite. I'd been raised for one purpose, and that was to marry well. If I did it in my own way, and you think my way not exactly ethical, I can't help it. This thing of sitting back and letting somebody find you and propose to you is ridiculous. There is only one life, and we have to make the best we can of it.
Ethical! Don't girls always have the worst of it anyhow? They can't go and ask the man. They have to lie in wait and plan and scheme, or get left and have their younger sisters come out and crowd them, and at twenty-five or so begin to regard any man at all as a prospect. Maybe my methods sound a bit crude, but compared with the average girl I know, I was delicate. I didn't play up my attractions, at least not more than was necessary. I was using my mind, not my body.
III
On Tuesday night I was going to a dance. Mother and father were dining out and were to meet me later, so I was free until ten o'clock. That night Henry brought Russell Hill.
I kept them waiting a few minutes, and came down ready for the car. At the last minute I pulled my hair a bit loose over my face, and the effect was exactly right.
Henry was horribly uncomfortable, and left in a few minutes. He was going with some people to the dance, and would see us later. About all he said was with his usual tact.
"You two ought to get together," he said. "There's a lot too much being whispered these days, and not enough talking out loud."
With that he went, and we two were left facing each other.
"This is one of Henry's inspirations, Miss Katherine," Russell said. "I—I don't usually have to wait until the family is out before I make a call."
"Families are queer," I said non-committally. There was a window open and I stood near it, under a pink lamp, and let my hair blow about.
"Are we going to sit down, or am I to be banished as soon as I've explained that I am a safe companion for a débutante?"
He was plainly laughing at me, although he was uncomfortable too. And I have some spirit left.
"I am afraid you are giving me credit for too much interest," I said. "This is Henry's idea, you know. You needn't defend yourself to me. You look—entirely safe."
He hated that. No man likes to look entirely safe. He put his hands in his pockets and half closed his eyes.
"Humph!" he said. "Then I gather that this whole meeting is a mistake. I'm respectable enough to be uninteresting, and the ban your people have placed on me doesn't particularly concern you!"
"That's not quite true," I said slowly. "I—if I ever got a chance to know you really well, I'm sure we'd be—but I'll never get a chance, you know."
"Upon my word," he broke out, "I'd like to know just what your people have heard! But that doesn't matter. What really matters"—he had hardly taken his eyes off me—"what really matters is that I am going to see you again. Often!"
"It's impossible."
"Rot! We're always going to the same places. Am I absolutely warned off?"
"You're not. But I am."
He began to walk up and down the room. Half an hour before he had never given me a thought. Henry, I knew, had lugged him there by sheer force and a misplaced sense of justice. And now he was pacing about in a rage!
He stopped rather near me.
"If it's Mrs. Warrington all the fuss is about, it's imbecile," he said. "In the first place, there never was anything to it. In the second place, it's all over anyhow."
"I don't know what the fuss is about."
"You know the whole thing. Don't pretend you don't. You've got the face of a little saint, with all that fluffy hair, but your eyes don't belong to the rest, young lady. Are you going to dance with me to-night?"
"I'm afraid not."
"Well, you'll give me a little time, won't you? I suppose we can sit in a closet and talk, or hide on a veranda."
"It's—it's rather sneaking, isn't it?"
"That doesn't hurt it any for me."
So I promised, and, the car being announced, he put my wrap round my shoulders.
"Stunning hair you've got," he said from behind me. "Thank heaven for hair that isn't marceled and glued up in a net!"
I held out my hand in the hall, and he took it.
"I'm not such a bad lot after all, am I?" he demanded.
With my best spontaneous gesture I put my free hand over his as it held mine.
"I'm so sorry, so terribly sorry, if I've misunderstood," I said earnestly.
Wallace had gone to the outer door. Russell Hill stooped over and kissed my hand.
Well, it was working. An hour before I was one of what I'd heard he had called "the dolly dozen." Now, by merely letting him understand that he couldn't have what he'd never wanted, he was eager.
We sat out one dance under the stairs, and an intermission in a pantry while the musicians who had been stationed there were getting their supper. He tried to hold my hand and I drew it away—not too fast, but so he could understand the struggle I was having between duty and inclination. And we talked about love.
I said I liked to play round with men and have a good time and all that sort of thing, but that I thought I was naturally cold.
"You cold?" he said. "It's only that the right man has not come along."
"I've known a good many. A good many have—have——"
"Cared for you? Of course. They're not fools or blind. Look here, I'm going to ring you up now and then."
"I think you'd better not."
"If I'm not to see you and not to telephone, how's this friendship of ours to get on?"
"People who are real friends don't need to see each other."
"That's the first real débutante speech you've made to-night. Now, see here, I'm going to see you again, and often. And I'm going to ring you up. What's your tailor's name?"
I told him, and he put it down on his dance card.
"All right," he said. "Herschenrother is now my middle name, and if it's not convenient to talk, you can give me the high sign."
Toots Warrington came along just then with an army officer she'd taken on. They got clear round the palms and into the pantry before they saw us, and her face was funny.
Mother and I had another heart-to-heart talk that night on the way home. Father had gone a couple of hours earlier and we had the car to ourselves. Mother was tired and irritable.
"It seemed to me, Kit," she observed, "that you danced with every hopeless ineligible there. You danced three times with Henry."
"For heaven's sake, mother," I snapped, "let poor Henry alone. Henry is the most useful person I know."
"You can't play with red-headed people and not get burned," mother said with unconscious humour. "He's very fond of you, Kit. I watched him to-night."
"The fonder the better," I said flippantly. Yes, that's what I said. When I look back on that evening and think how little Henry entered into my plans, and the rest of it, it makes me cold.
"I want you to do one thing—just one, mother: I want you to be very cool to Russell Hill."
"Cool!"
"And I want you to forbid me to see him."
"I'm not insane, Katherine."
"Listen, mother," I said desperately. "All his life Russell Hill has had everything he wanted. He's had so much that—that he's got a sort of social indigestion. The only things he wants now are the things he can't have. So he can't have me."
Mother's not very subtle. And she was alarmed. I can still see her trying to readjust her ideas, and getting tied up in them, and coming a mental cropper, so to speak.
"If he can't have me he'll want me."
"I'm not sure of it. He——"
"Mother," I said in despair, "you've been married for twenty years, and you know less about men in a month than I do in a minute. Please forbid him the house—not in so many words, but act it."
"Why?" she said feebly.
"Anything you can think of—Toots Warrington will do."
She got out her salts and held them to her nose.
"I feel as though I'm losing my mind," she said at last. "But if you're set on it——"
That was all until we got home. Then on the stairs I thought of something.
"Oh, yes," I said. "No matter what I am doing, mother, if Herschenrother the tailor calls up I want to go to the telephone."
I can still see her staring after me with her mouth open as I went up the stairs.
Herschenrother called me up the next morning, and asked me how I was, and how the dragons were, and if there was any chance of my walking in the park at five o'clock. I said there was, and called up Henry and asked him to walk with me.
"I should say so," he said. "You've only got to ask me, Kit. I'm always ready to hang round."
There was rather a bad half hour in the park, and for a time I felt that Henry had been a wrong move. But, as it turned out he hadn't, for Russell took advantage of somebody's signalling to Henry from a machine to say:
"Just a bit afraid of me still, aren't you?"
"Why?"
"You brought Henry. I know the signs. You asked him, and he's so set up about it that he's walking on clouds."
"I am afraid."
"Of me?"
"Of myself."
He caught my arm as he helped me across a puddle, and squeezed it.
"Good girl!" he said.
And later on, when Henry was called again—he's terribly popular, Henry is—he had another chance.
"I'm going to see you alone if I have to steal you," he said.
Herschenrother called up again the next day, and Madge, who had come home for the Christmas holidays, called me.
"Gee, Kit," she said, "you must be getting a trousseau. That tailor's always on the phone."
I went.
"Hello," said Russell's voice, "how about that fitting?"
"I don't know. I'm horribly busy to-day."
"It's very important. I—I can't go ahead without it."
"Oh, all right," I said. Madge was listening and I had to be careful. "I must have the suit."
"You can have anything I've got. How about the Art Gallery? Art is long and time is fleeting. Nobody goes there."
"Very well, four o'clock," I replied, and rang off.
"Rather a nice voice," Madge said, eying me. "Think I'll go along, Kit. I've been shut up in school until the mere thought of even a good-looking tailor makes me thrill."
She was so insistent that I had to go to mother finally, and mother told her she would have to practise. She was furious. Really, mother turned out to be a most understanding person. I got to be quite fond of her. We had a chat that afternoon that brought us closer together than ever.
"Things are doing pretty well, mother," I said when she'd finished Madge.
"He must be interested when he would take that absurd name."
"And the Art Gallery! I dare say he has never voluntarily been inside of one in his life."
"Kit," mother said, "what about your father?"
"Haven't you told him?"
"No; he wouldn't understand."
Of course not. I knew men well enough for that. They believe that life and marriage arrange themselves. That it's all a sort of combination of Providence and chance. Predestination plus opportunity!
"Can't you tell him you've heard something about Russell, and that he'd better be cool to him?"
"And have him turn the man down if it really comes to a proposal!"
"That won't matter," I told her. "We'll probably elope anyhow."
Mother opposed that vigorously. She said that no matter how good a match it was, there was always something queer about an elopement. And anyhow she'd been giving wedding gifts for years and it was time something came in instead of going out. It was the only point we differed on.
Well, father did his best to queer things that very day. All the way through I played in hard luck. Just when things were going right something happened.
I met Russell at the Art Gallery. It was a cold day, but I left my muff at home. It was about time for the coat-pocket business. I couldn't afford to wait, for one or two of the girls were wearing their hair like mine, and I'd heard that Toots Warrington had gone to Russell and asked him how he liked kindergartening. Bessie Willing, who told me, said that Russell's reply was:
"It's rather pleasant. I'm reversing things. Instead of going from the cradle to the grave, I'm going from the grave to the cradle."
I don't believe he said it. In the first place, he is too polite. In the second place, he is too stupid. But as Toots is not young he may have thought of it.
He was waiting near a heater, and we sat down together. I shivered.
"Cold, honey?" he asked.
"Hands are cold. Do you mind if I put one in your coat pocket?"
Did he mind? He did not. He was very polite at first and emptied the pocket of various things, including a letter which he mentioned casually was a bill. But after a moment he slid his hand in on top of mine.
"You're a wonderful young person," he said, "and you've got me going."
Then he squeezed the hand until it hurt. Suddenly he looked up.
"Great Scott!" he said. "There's Henry!"
Of course it was Henry. He had brought a catalogue and was going painstakingly from one picture to another. He did not see us at first, and we had time to stand up and be looking at a landscape when he got to us. He looked moderately surprised and waited to mark something in the catalogue before he joined us.
"Bully show, isn't it?" he said cheerfully. "Never saw so many good 'uns. Well, what are you children up to?"
"Dropped in to get warm," said Russell. And I was going to add something, but Henry's interest in us had passed evidently. He marked another cross in the catalogue and went on, with the light shining on his red hair and his soul clearly as uplifted as his chin.
"You needn't worry about Henry," I said. "He's a friend of the family, and I'll just call him up and tell him not to say anything."
"I used to think he was fond of you."
"That's all over," I said casually. "It was just one of the things that comes and goes. Like this little—acquaintance of ours."
"What do you mean, goes?" he demanded almost fiercely.
"They always do, don't they? Awfully pleasant things don't last. And we can't go on meeting indefinitely. Some one will tell father, and then where will I be?"
That was a wrong move about father.
"That reminds me," he said. "Are you sure your father dislikes me such a lot?"
"Don't let's talk about it," I said, and closed my eyes.
"Because I met him to-day, and he nearly fell on my neck and hugged me."
Can you beat that? I was stunned.
"The more he detests people," I managed finally, "the more polite he is."
Then I took off my gloves and fell to rubbing the fingers of my left hand. And he moved round and put it in the other coat pocket without a word, with his hand over it, and the danger was past, for the time anyhow.
Mother came round that evening about the elopement.
"Perhaps you are right, Katherine," she said. "A lot of people will send things when the announcement cards go out. And Russell can afford to buy you anything you want anyhow."
Madge was a nuisance all that week. She was always at the telephone first when it rang, and I did not like her tone when she said it was Herschenrother again. Once I could have sworn that I saw her following me, but she ducked into a shop when I turned round.
She had transferred her affections to Henry, and he took her to a cotillon or two for the school set, and played round with the youngsters generally, and showed her a sweet time, as she said.
But once when mother and I had been shut in my room, going over my clothes and making notes of what I would take with me, if the thing came to an elopement—I was pretty sure by that time, and we planned a sort of week-end outfit without riding things—I opened the door suddenly, and Madge was just outside.
Well, we got her back to school finally, and Henry took her to the train. I remember mother's watching them as they got into the car together.
"That wouldn't be so bad for Madge," she said reflectively. "She is bound to marry badly anyhow, she's so impulsive, and Henry would be a good counterweight. He is very dependable."
"She would make him most unhappy," I said. "Probably Henry would be all right for Madge, but how about Madge for Henry?"
Mother looked at me and said nothing.
Russell proposed at the end of the next week, and I refused. He proposed in a movie. We'd had to give up the Art Gallery because Henry was always taking people through it. He took Toots one afternoon, and that finished us.
There was a little talk that Henry and Toots were getting rather thick. The army man's leave was up, and she had to have somebody. There was probably something to it. We saw them in the park one afternoon sitting on a bench, and I could have sworn she had her hand in his coat pocket!
Well, I refused Russell.
"Why?" he said. "You're crazy about me, and you know it."
"I'm not going to marry a past," I said. "You'd make me horribly unhappy."
"I'd never bore you, that's one thing."
"No, but you might find me dull."
"Dull! Darling girl, I've never had as interesting a month in my life."
I said nothing. After a minute:
"Do you remember the first night we really met?"
"In the pantry. Yes."
"Do you remember what you said about being cold? And I told you it was a question of the right man?"
I remembered.
"Well, I'm the man," he said triumphantly. "Don't fool yourself—that little hand of yours slips into my coat pocket as if it belonged there. And it does."
He pulled it out and kissed it. Luckily the theatre was dark.
Two days later I consented to elope with him. Mother was quite delirious when I told her. She came over and kissed my cheek.
"You've never disappointed me, Kit, never," she said. "If only Madge would do as well."
She sighed.
"Madge will probably marry for love, and be happy," I snapped. It was a silly speech. I haven't an idea why I made it.
"And shabby," said mother.
I turned on her sharply. The strain of the last month was over, and I dare say I went to pieces.
"It's all very well for you to be satisfied," I cried. "You're not going to marry Russell Hill, and have him call you 'girlie,' and see his hat move every time he raises his eyebrows. I am."
She went out very stiffly, and sent her maid in with hot tea.
I was out at a theatre party that night, and mother was in my room when I got back.
"I want to talk to you, Katherine," she said, "I've been uneasy all evening."
"If you mean about what I said this afternoon, please forget it, mother. I was tired and nervous. I didn't mean it."
"Not that. I don't want any mistake about this elopement. Now and then those things have a way of going wrong. Quite often there is trouble about a license or a minister."
"Send father ahead," I said flippantly.
"Not father. But some one really ought to look after things. Russell is not the sort to arrange anything in advance. I thought perhaps Henry—"
"Henry!"
"He is reliable," said mother. "And he has your well-being at heart. He is more like a brother than a good many brothers I know."
I could scream my head off when I think of it now. For we fixed on Henry, and I telephoned him to come round to dinner. He seemed rather surprised when he heard my voice.
"Honestly, Kit," he said, "do you want me?"
"I want you to do something for me."
"Then I'll come. That's all that's necessary."
But it wasn't as easy as it had promised after all. There's something so downright about Henry. He was standing in front of the library fire after dinner when I told him.
"Henry," I said, "I am going to be married."
He did not say anything at first. Then:
"Well?" he asked.
"Do you know to whom?"
"Yes."
"Aren't you going to say anything?"
"I don't know what I can say," he said very slowly and carefully. "If each of you cares a lot, that's all there is to it, isn't it? The point is, of course, why you are doing it. If it's to cut out somebody else, or to get money or anything like that, I'm not going to wish you happiness, because you won't deserve it. If you're in love with him, that's different."
Did you ever try to tell a lie to a red-headed young man with blue eyes? It's extremely difficult.
"I'm not in love with him, Henry," I said. I was astounded to hear myself saying it.
"Then you're giving him a crooked deal."
"He's not in love with me either. So that's even."
"Then why——"
"Because he thinks he can't have me," I said. "I'm marrying him because he's the most marriageable man I know, and I have to marry money. I've been raised for that. And he's marrying me because I'm the only girl whose people didn't fling her at him."
"Then I wish you joy of each other!" he said hoarsely, and slammed out of the room and out of the house.
I haven't the faintest idea what came over me that night. I went upstairs and cried my eyes out.
A few days later, after a round of luncheons, dinners and dances until I was half dead, I had a free evening. The elopement had been set for Friday, and it was Wednesday. Mother and father were out, and I went downstairs for a book. I had got it and was just going out when I saw Henry's red head over the back of the leather chair by the fire.
I went over. He was not reading. He was just sitting, his long legs stretched out in front of him.
"Hello, Kit," he said calmly. "I knew this was an off night. Sit down."
I sat down, rather suspicious of his manner. Henry can't dissemble.
"About the other night," he said, "I was taken by surprise. Just forget it, Kit. Now, when are you going to pull this thing off?"
I told him, and where.
"Russell made any arrangements?"
"I haven't asked."
"Probably not. He'll expect to get out of the train and find a license and a preacher on the platform. I'd better be best man, and go down there a day before to fix things."
Well, it wasn't flattering to see him so eager to get me married. There had been a time when I thought—However—
"Oh!" I said.
"Better do it right while you're about it," he said. "You might give me one of your rings, and I'll order a wedding ring. Platinum or gold?"
"Platinum," I said feebly.
"Anything inside?"
"The—the date, I suppose."
"No initials or anything like that?"
I roused from a sort of stupor of astonishment.
"I like a very narrow ring," I said. "There won't be room for much inside. The date will do. But I'm sure that Russell——"
"All right if he does. Perhaps I'd better not put in the date. Then, if he takes one along, I can return this and have it credited to him."
"You're very thoughtful."
"Not at all," he said with the first atom of feeling he'd shown. "I don't approve of anything about this business; but if it's going to happen, it's going to happen right!"
He got up and stood in front of the fire.
"The thing to be sure of, Kit," he said soberly, "is that you don't love any one else. It's bad enough as it is, but that would be worse."
"I wouldn't dare to be in love with any one who wasn't eligible," I said, not looking at him. "I've been raised for just what I'm doing. I'm fulfilling my destiny."
"There's nobody else, then?"
"Who could there be?"
"That's twice I've asked you a perfectly simple question, Kit, and you have evaded it. The plain truth, of course, is that you are in love, absolutely single-heartedly in love, but not with Russell."
"Then who?" I demanded sharply.
"With yourself," he said, and picked up his hat and went out.
IV
Russell and I eloped on a Friday morning. Mother and I packed my dressing case and a bag, and I gave her an itemized list of what was to be sent on in my trunk when I wired for it. She was greatly relieved to know that Henry was looking after things, especially the ring.
"I do hope he gets a narrow one," she said. "Wedding rings are nonsense at any time. You can never wear other rings with them. But if it is platinum you can have it set with diamonds later on."
I think she was disappointed when I refused to leave a note on my dressing table for her.
"That's out of date, mother," I said. "You needn't know anything until you get my wire that it's over. Then you can call up the newspapers and deny it. That's the best way to let them know."
Then she went out, per agreement, after kissing me good-by, and I called a taxicab and eloped.
Did you ever have a day when things went wrong with you and when you knew that the fault was somewhere in you? Well, that was that sort of day. The minute I was in the taxicab I was uncomfortable. All at once I didn't want to be married. I hoped Russell would miss the train, and I could go back home and be a spinster lady and be on committees.
But he did not miss the train. He was there, waiting. He had on a very ugly necktie and an English ulster that made his chest dish in, although he has a good figure.
"Hello, girlie," he said. "Stuff all here? Any excitement at home? No? Nice work."
My lips felt stiff.
"Train's waiting," he said. "What do you think of Henry? Big lift, that is. I've never been married before. I'm fairly twittering."
We got into the train. There was no Pullman. Not that it mattered, but it helped to upset me. I hated eloping in a day coach. And a woman with a market basket sat across the aisle, and the legs of a chicken stuck out.
Russell squeezed into the seat beside me.
"Jove, this is great!" he said. "Aren't you going to put your hand in my coat pocket, honey?"
Quite suddenly I said:
"I don't want to."
He drew away a trifle.
"You're nervous," he said. "So am I, for that matter. D'you mind if I go and smoke?"
I didn't mind. I thought if I had to see that ulster dishing in and that tie another minute I'd go crazy.
I grew calmer when he had gone. Here was the thing I had worked so hard for, mine at last. I thought of Toots, and her face when she saw the papers. I thought of Ellie Clavering and Bessie Willing and Margaret North and the others, with their earrings and the imitation of Toots and all the rest of it. I felt rather better. When Russell came back I could even smile at him.
"I wish I could have a cigarette," I said.
He turned and put a hand over mine.
"You're going to cut that out, you know, girlie," he said. "I can't have my wife smoking."
Yes, that's what he said. For ten years he'd sent girls cigarettes and offered them cigarettes and sat with them in corners while they smoked cigarettes. But he didn't want his wife smoking. Wasn't it typical?
Oh, well, I didn't care. I'd do as I liked once we were married. Then about half way, without the slightest warning, I knew I couldn't marry him. Marry him! Why, I didn't even like him. And the way he made me sit with my hand in his coat pocket was sickening.
"I don't think I'll marry you after all," I said.
"Eh? What?"
"I said I've changed my mind. I won't do it."
"I haven't changed mine."
"I'm not really in love with you."
"You're nervous," he said calmly. "Go ahead and talk. It's the new psychology. Never bury your worries. Talk 'em out and get rid of 'em."
"I was never forbidden to see you."
"All right," he said contentedly. "I knew that all along. What else?"
"Even my hand in your coat pocket is a trick."
"Sure it is, but it's a nice trick. What else?"
"I'm not going to marry you."
"Oh, yes, you are. You can't very well go back, can you? Mother's probably called up the papers already."
Then he sat up and looked at me.
"Now, look here, young lady," he said. "I'm no idiot. I knew before you were born some of the stunts you pulled. I've never been fooled for a minute about them. But you're going to marry me. Why? Because I'm crazy about you. That's why. And that's enough."
It was terrible. And there was no way out, none. The train rumbled on. There was a tunnel and he kissed me. It was a short tunnel.
Somebody behind chuckled.
And then at last it was over, and we were there, and I was being led like a sheep to the altar, and Henry was on the platform with ring and license and all the implements of sacrifice.
"Behold," said Russell from the train platform, "the family friend is on hand. Whose idea was Henry, anyhow? His or yours or mother's?"
Henry came up. He looked cheerful enough, although I fancied he was pale. I liked his necktie. I always liked Henry's ties.
"Hello," he said. "Everything here? Where's your luggage?"
"Baggage car," said Russell. "Look after Kit, Henry, will you? I'll see to it."
He hadn't taken two steps before Henry had clutched my arm.
"I knew you wouldn't," he said. "I can see it in your face."
"Henry!" I gasped. "What am I to do?"
"You're to marry me," he said in a sort of fierce whisper. "Don't stop to argue. I've always meant to marry you. Quick, into the taxi!"
That's all I remember just then, except hearing him say he had the license and the ring, and an uproar from where we'd left Russell and all his money on the platform.
"Wha-what sort of license?" I asked, with my teeth chattering from pure fright. "If it's in Russell's name it's not good, is it?"
"It's in my name," said Henry, grimly.
"But the ring—that's Russell's."
"Not at all," said Henry, still without an atom of tenderness. "I bought it and paid for it. It's got 'From H. to K.' inside of it. Very small," he added hastily. "It's quite narrow, as you requested."
"Henry," I said, sitting up stiffly, "what would I have done if you hadn't been round?"
"You needn't worry about that. After this I'll always be round. I don't intend to be underfoot," he volunteered, "but I'll be within call. As a matter of fact," he added, "I've been within call practically all of the last month. It's taken a lot of time."
If only he had said something agreeable or yielding, or looked anything but grim and efficient, I could have stood it. But, there we were, on our way to be married, and he looked as sentimental as a piano tuner.
All at once it came over me that it was Henry, it always had been Henry, it always would be Henry. And he looked calm and altruistic and rather hollow round his eyes.
"If you're only doing this to save me," I said, "you needn't, you know. I can go home, even if the papers have got it."
"Don't make me any more nervous than I am, Kit," he said. "I'm about evenly divided as to beating you up or kissing you. Any extra strain, and it's one or the other."
"Don't beat me, Henry."
"I'm damnably poor, Kit," he said.
For reply I slid my hand into his coat pocket. He melted quite suddenly after that, and put his arms round me. I knew I was being a fool but I was idiotically happy.
"Henry," I said, "do you know that verse in the Bible, that as a partridge sits on eggs and fails to hatch them, so too the person who gets riches without deserving them?"
He held me off and looked at me as if he suspected my sanity. Then he kissed me.
V
Mother has never really forgiven me. It put her in so awfully wrong, of course. For she called up the newspapers, and said that if they received a report that I had eloped with Mr. Russell Hill, they were please to deny it.
Of course they sent reporters everywhere at once. And they traced me to the station. About the time mother was reading the headlines "Society Bud and Well-Known Clubman Elope," and wiring Madge, she got Henry's telegram.
She thinks I threw away the chance of a lifetime. But since the day before yesterday I've been wondering. I was going over Henry's old suits, getting them ready to be cleaned and pressed. We have to be very economical. And in a pocket I came across this letter:
"Dear Boy:
We have decided on the eleven-o'clock train. For the love of Mike don't miss meeting it! And after thinking it over carefully, you're right. When I go to see after the luggage will be the best time.
"Yours,
"Russell."
THE END.