"Nice things! I don"t deserve them."
"What awful crime have you been committing? Break it to me gently. You know my weak heart."
"Your tobacco heart!" she said, severely. "Well, I"ve been committing a mental murder, if you want to know the facts. Don"t protest. It"s done.
She"s quite dead already."
"Good gracious! And I have reared this young viper! Who is she?"
"I don"t intend to make you an accessory, daddy."
But" behind her smile he felt a real hurt. He would have given a great deal to have taken her in his arms and tried to coax out her trouble so he might comfort her. But that essential fineness in him which his worldliness only covered like a veneer told him not to force her confidence. Only, he wandered off rather disconsolately to hunt his pipe and to try to realize that Delight was now a woman grown, and liable to woman"s heart-aches.
"What do you think it is?" he asked that night, when after her nightly custom Mrs. Haverford had reached over from the bed beside his and with a single competent gesture had taken away his book and switched off his reading lamp, and he had, with the courage of darkness, voiced a certain uneasiness.
"Who do you think it is, you mean."
"Very well, only the word is "whom.""
Mrs. Haverford ignored this.
"It"s that Hayden girl," she said. "Toots. And Graham Spencer."
"Do you think that Delight--"
"She always has. For years."
Which was apparently quite clear to them both.
"If it had only been a nice girl," Mrs. Haverford protested, plaintively. "But Toots! She"s fast, I"m sure of it."
"My dear!"
"And that boy needs a decent girl, if anybody ever did. A shallow mother, and a money-making father--all Toots Hay den wants is his money.
She"s ages older than he is. I hear he is there every day and all of Sundays."
The rector had precisely as much guile as a turtle dove, and long, after Mrs. Haverford gave unmistakable evidences of slumber, he lay with his arms above his head, and plotted. He had no conscience whatever about it. He threw his scruples to the wind, and if it is possible to follow the twists of a theological mind turned from the straight and narrow way into the maze of conspiracy, his thoughts ran something like this:
"She is Delight. Therefore to see her is to love her. To see her with any other girl is to see her infinite superiority and charm.
Therefore--"
Therefore, on the following Sunday afternoon, the totally unsuspecting daughter of a good man gone wrong took a note from the rector to the Hayden house, about something or other of no importance, and was instructed to wait for an answer. And the rector, vastly uneasy and rather pleased with himself, took refuge in the parish house and waited ten eternities, or one hour by the clock.
Delight herself was totally unsuspicious. The rectory on a Sunday afternoon was very quiet, and she was glad to get away. She drove over, and being in no hurry she went by the Spencer house. She did that now and then, making various excuses to herself, such as liking the policeman at the corner or wanting to see the river from the end of the street. But all she saw that day was Rodney Page going in, in a top hat and very bright gloves.
"Precious!" said Delight to herself. Her b.u.mp of reverence was very small.
But she felt a little thrill, as she always did, when she pa.s.sed the house. Since she could remember she had cared for Graham. She did not actually know that she loved him. She told herself bravely that she was awfully fond of him, and that it was silly, because he never would amount to anything. But she had a little argument of her own, for such occasions, which said that being really fond of any one meant knowing all about them and liking them anyhow.
She stopped the car at the Hayden house, and carried her note to the door. When she went in, however, she was instantly uncomfortable. The place reeked with smoke, and undeniably there was dancing going on somewhere. A phonograph was sc.r.a.ping noisily. Delight"s small nose lifted a little. What a deadly place! Coming in from the fresh outdoors, the noise and smoke and bar-room reek stifled her.
Then a door opened, and Marion Hayden was drawing her into a room.
"How providential, Delight!" she said. "You"ll take my hand, won"t you?
It"s Graham"s dummy, and we want to dance."
The two connecting rooms were full of people, and the air was heavy.
Through the haze she saw Graham, and nodded to him, but with a little sinking of the heart. She was aware, however, that he was looking at her with a curious intentness and a certain expectancy. Maybe he only hoped she would let him dance with Toots.
"No, thanks," she said. "Sorry."
"Why not, Delight? Just a hand, anyhow."
"Three good reasons: I don"t play cards on Sunday; I don"t ever play for money; and I"m stifling for breath already in this air."
She was, indeed, a little breathless.
There was, had she only seen it, relief in Graham"s face. She did not belong there, he felt. Delight was--well, she was different. He had not been thinking of her before she came in; he forgot her promptly the moment she went out. But she had given him, for an instant, a breath of the fresh out-doors, and quietness and--perhaps something clean and fine.
There was an insistent clamor that she stay, and Tommy Hale even got down on his knees and made a quite impa.s.sioned appeal. But Delight"s chin was very high, although she smiled.
"You are all very nice," she said. "But I"m sure I"d bore you in a minute, and I"m certain you"d bore me. Besides, I think you"re quite likely to be raided."
Which met with great applause.
But there was nothing of Delight of the high head when she got out of her car and crept up the rectory steps. How could she even have cared?
How could she? That was his life, those were the people he chose to play with. She had a sense of loss, rather than injury.
The rector, tapping at her door a little later, received the answer to his note through a very narrow crack, and went away feeling that the way of the wicked is indeed hard.
Clayton had been watching with growing concern Graham"s intimacy with the gay crowd that revolved around Marion Hayden. It was more thoughtless than vicious; more pleasure-seeking than wicked; but its influence was bad, and he knew it.
But he was very busy. At night he was too tired to confront the inevitable wrangle with Natalie that any protest about Graham always evoked, and he was anxious not to disturb the new rapprochement with the boy by direct criticism.
The middle of December, which found the construction work at the new plant well advanced, saw the social season definitely on, also, and he found himself night after night going to dinners and then on to b.a.l.l.s.
There were fewer private dances than in previous Winters, but society had taken up various war activities and made them fashionable. The result was great charity b.a.l.l.s.
On these occasions he found himself watching for Audrey, always. She had, with a sort of diabolical cleverness, succeeded in losing herself.
Her house was sold, he knew, and he had expected that she would let him know where to find her. She had said she counted on him, and he had derived an odd sort of comfort from the thought. It had warmed him to think that, out of all the people he knew, to one woman he meant something more than success.
But although he searched the gayest crowds with his eyes, those hilarious groups of which she had been so frequently the center, he did not find her. And there had been no letter save a brief one without an address, enclosing her check for the money she had borrowed. She had apparently gone, not only out of her old life, but out of his as well.
At one of the great charity b.a.l.l.s he met Nolan, and they stood together watching the crowd.
"Pretty expensive, I take it," Nolan said, indicating the scene.
"Orchestra, florist, supper--I wonder how much the Belgians will get."
"Personally, I"d rather send the money and get some sleep."