"Ah, but she"s much better than you are."
"And yet you said you"d rather have me here than her."
He smiled. "I think," he said, and Christine rather waited for his next words, "I think I shall go down and see if I can"t get the furnace going."
Nevertheless, she said to herself when he was gone, "I should not feel at all easy about him, if I were the other girl."
She knew there was no prospect of their being rescued that night. When the sleigh arrived at the Usshers", if it ever did arrive, its empty shattered condition would suggest an accident. The Usshers were at that moment probably searching for them in ditches, and hedges. The marks of the sleigh would be quickly obliterated by the storm. No, she thought comfortably, there was no escape from the fact that their situation was compromising. The only question was how could the matter be most tactfully called to his attention. At the moment he seemed happily unaware that such things as the proprieties existed.
At this his head appeared at the head of the cellar stairs.
"Watch the cereal, please," he said, "and see that it doesn"t burn."
"Like King Alfred?"
"Not too much like him, please, for that pitiful little dab of food is about all we have to eat."
When he was gone Christine advanced toward the stove and looked at the cereal--looked at it closely, but it seemed to her to be but little benefited by her attention. Presently she discovered on a shelf beside the laundry clock a pinkish purple paper novel, called: "The Crime of the Season." Its cover depicted a man in a check suit and side-whiskers looking on in astonishment at the removal of a drowned lady in full evening dress from a very minute pond. Christine opened it, and was so fortunate as to come full upon the crime. She became as completely absorbed in it as the laundress had been before her.
She was recalled to the more sordid but less criminal surroundings of real life by a strong pungent smell. She sniffed, and then her heart suddenly sank as she realized that the cereal was burning. She recognized a peculiarly disagreeable flavor about which she had often scolded the cook, thinking such carelessness on the part of one of her employees to be absolutely inexcusable.
She ran to the head of the cellar stairs. "Mr. Riatt!" she called.
He was now shaking down the furnace, and the noise completely drowned her voice. "Oh, dear, what a noisy man he is," she thought and when he had finished, she called again: "Mr. Riatt!"
This time he heard. "What is it?" he answered.
"Mr. Riatt, what shall I do? The cereal is burning terribly."
"I should think it was," he said. "I can smell it down here." He sprang up the stairs and s.n.a.t.c.hed the pot from the stove. "You must have stopped stirring it," he said.
"Oh, I didn"t stir it!"
"What did you do?"
"You didn"t tell me to stir it."
"I certainly did."
"No, you said just to watch it."
Riatt looked at her. "Well," he said, "I"ve heard of glances cutting like a knife, but never stirring like a spoon. If I were a really just man," he went on, "I"d make you eat that burnt mess for your supper, but I"m so absurdly indulgent that I"ll share some of my bacon and biscuits with you."
His tone as well as his words were irritating to one not used to criticism in any form.
"I don"t care for that sort of joke," she said.
"I wasn"t aware of having made a joke."
"I mean your att.i.tude as if I were a child that had been naughty."
"It wouldn"t be so bad if you were a child."
"You consider me to blame because that wretched cereal chose to burn?"
"Emphatically I do."
"How perfectly preposterous," said Christine, and a sense of bitter injustice seethed within her. "Why in the world should _I_ be expected to know how to cook?"
"I"m a little too busy at the moment to explain it to you," Riatt answered, "but I promise to take it up with you at a later date."
There was something that sounded almost like a threat in this. She turned away, and walking to the window stood staring out into the darkness. He was really quite a disagreeable young man, she thought. How true it was, that you couldn"t tell what people were like when everything was going smoothly. She wondered if he would always be like that--trying to keep one up to one"s duty and making one feel stupid and ignorant about the merest trifles.
"Well, this rich meal is ready," he said presently.
She turned around. The table was set--she couldn"t help wondering where he had found the kitchen knives and forks--the bacon was sizzling, the tin of biscuits open, and the coffee bubbling and gurgling in its gla.s.s retort.
She sat down and began to eat in silence, but as she did so, she studied him furtively. She was used to many different kinds of masculine bad temper; her father"s irritability whenever anything affected his personal comfort: and from other men all forms of jealousy and hurt feelings. But this stern indifference to her as a human being was something a little different. She decided on her method.
"Oh, dear," she said, "this meal couldn"t be much drearier if we were married, could it?"
"Except," he returned, unsmilingly, "that then it would be one of a long series."
"Not as far as I"m concerned," she answered. "I should leave you on account of your bad temper."
"If I hadn"t first left you on account of--"
"Of burning the cereal?"
"Of being so infernally irresponsible about it."
"Oh, that"s the trouble, is it?" she said. "That I did not seem to care?
Well, I a.s.sure you that I don"t like burnt food any better than you do, but I have some self-control. I wouldn"t spoil a whole evening just because--" A sudden inspiration came to her. Her voice failed her, and she hid her face in her pocket handkerchief.
Riatt leant back in his chair and looked at her, looked at least at the back of her long neck, and the twist of her golden hair and the occasional heave of her shoulders.
The strange and the humiliating thing was that she had just as much effect upon him when he quite obviously knew that she was insincere.
"Why," he said gently, "are you crying? Or perhaps I ought to say, why are you pretending to cry?"
She paid no attention to the latter part of his question.
"You"re so unkind," she said, careful not to overdo a sob. "You don"t seem to understand what a terrible situation this is for me."
"In what way is it terrible?"
"Don"t you know that a story like this clings to a girl as long as she lives? That among the people I know there will always be gossip--"