"And you"ll be the person?" suggested Margaret with a smile of raillery.
"If I show I"m fit for the job," replied Craig soberly. It was the first time she had ever heard him admit a doubt about himself. "The question is," he went on, "have I got the strength of character and the courage?... What do you think?"
"I don"t know anything about it," said Margaret with polite indifference. "There comes my car. I"ll not trouble you to accompany me." She put out her hand. "Goodby." She did not realize it, or intend it, but she had appealed to one of his powerful instincts, a powerful instinct in all predatory natures--the instinct to pursue whatever seems to be flying.
He shook his head at the motorman, who was bringing the car to a halt; the car went on. He stood in front of her. Her color was high, but she could not resist the steady compulsion of his eyes. "I told you I wanted to talk with you," said he. "Do you know why I was standing before that statue?"
"I do not," Margaret answered coldly.
"I was trying to get the courage to ask you to be my wife."
She gave a queer laugh. "Well, you seem to have got what you sought,"
said she. He had, as usual, taken her wholly unawares.
"Not so fast," replied Craig. "I haven"t asked you yet."
Margaret did not know whether she most wished to laugh or to burst out in anger. "I"m sure I don"t care anything about it, one way or the other," said she.
"Why say those insincere things--to ME?" he urged. She had begun to walk, and he was keeping pace with her. "Jackson," he proceeded, "was a man of absolute courage. He took the woman he wanted--defied public opinion to do it--and it only made him the more popular. I had always intended to strengthen myself by marrying. If I married you I"d weaken myself politically, while if I married some Western girl, some daughter of the people, I"d make a great popular stroke."
"Well--do it, then," said Margaret. "By all means do it."
"Oh, but there"s you," exclaimed Craig. "What"d I do about you?"
"That"s true," said Margaret mockingly. "But what am I to stand between a man and ambition?"
"I say that to myself," replied Craig. "But it"s no use." His eyes thrilled her, his voice seemed to melt her dislike, her resolve, as he said: "There you are, and there you stay, Margaret. And you"re not at all fit to be my wife. You haven"t been brought up right. You ought to marry some man like Grant. He"s just the man for you. Why did you ever fall in love with me?"
She stopped short, stared at him in sheer amazement. "I!" exclaimed she.
"I--in love with YOU!"
He halted before her. "Margaret," he said tenderly, "can you deny it?"
She flushed; hung her head. The indignant denial died upon her lips.
He sighed. "You see, it is fate," said he. "But I"ll manage it somehow.
I"ll win out in spite of any, of every handicap."
She eyed him furtively. Yes, if she wished to make a marriage of ambition she could not do better. All Washington was laughing at him; but she felt she had penetrated beneath the surface that excited their mirth--had seen qualities that would carry him wherever he wished to go--wherever she, with her grandmother"s own will, wished him to go.
"And," pursued he, "I"m far too rough and coa.r.s.e for you--you, the quintessence of aristocracy."
She flushed with double delight--delight at this flattery and the deeper delight a woman feels when a man shows her the weakness in himself by which she can reach and rule him.
"I"m always afraid of offending your delicacy," he went fatuously on.
"You"re the only person I ever felt that way about. Absolutely the only one. But you"ve got to expect that sort of thing in a man who prevails in such a world as this. When men get too high-toned and aristocratic, too fussy about manners and dress, along come real men to ride them down and under. But I"ll try to be everything you wish--to you. Not to the others. That would defeat our object; for I"m going to take my wife high--very high."
Yes, he would indeed take her high--very high. Now that what she wanted, what she must have, was offering, how could she refuse? They were crossing another square of green. He drew--almost dragged--her into one of the by-paths, seized her in his arms, kissed her pa.s.sionately. "I can"t resist you--I can"t!" he cried.
"Don"t--don"t!" she murmured, violently agitated. "Some one might see!"
"Some one is seeing, no doubt," he said, his breath coming quickly, a look that was primeval, ferocious almost, in his eyes as they devoured her. And, despite her protests and struggles, she was again in those savage arms of his, was again shrinking and burning and trembling under his caresses. She flung herself away, sank upon a bench, burst out crying.
"What is it, Margaret?" he begged, alarmed, yet still looking as if he would seize her again.
"I don"t know--I don"t know," she replied.
Once more she tried to tell him that she did not love him, but the words would not come. She felt that he would not believe her; indeed, she was not sure of her own heart, of the meaning of those unprecedented emotions that had risen under his caresses, and that stirred at the memory of them. "Perhaps I am trying to love him," she said to herself.
"Anyhow, I must marry him. I can trifle with my future no longer. I must be free of this slavery to grandmother. I must be free. He can free me, and I can manage him, for he is afraid of me."
"Did I hurt you?" Craig was asking.
She nodded.
"I am so sorry," he exclaimed. "But when I touched you I forgot--everything!"
She smiled gently at him. "I didn"t dream you cared for me," she said.
He laughed with a boisterousness that irritated her. "I"d never have dared tell you," replied he, "if I hadn"t seen that you cared for me."
Her nerves winced, but she contrived to make her tone pa.s.sable as she inquired: "Why do you say that?"
"Oh--the day in the garden--the day I came pleading for Grant. I saw it in your eyes--You remember."
Margaret could not imagine what he had misinterpreted so flatteringly to himself. But what did it matter? How like ironic fate, to pierce him with a chance shaft when all the shafts she had aimed had gone astray!
She was startled by his seizing her again. At his touch she flamed.
"Don"t!" she cried imperiously. "I don"t like it!"
He laughed, held her the more tightly, kissed her half a dozen times squarely upon the lips. "Not that tone to me," said he. "I shall kiss you when I please."
She was furiously angry; but again her nerves were trembling, were responding to those caresses, and even as she hated him for violating her lips, she longed for him to continue to violate them. She started up. "Let us go," she cried.
He glanced at his watch. "I"ll have to put you in a car," said he. "I forgot all about my appointment." And he fumed with impatience while she was adjusting her hat and veil pushed awry by his boisterous love-making. "It"s the same old story," he went on. "Woman weakens man.
You are a weakness with me--one that will cost me dear."
She burned with a sense of insult. She hated him, longed to pour out denunciations, to tell him just what she thought of him. She felt a contempt for herself deeper than her revulsion against him. In silence she let him hurry her along to a car; she scarcely heard what he was saying--his tactless, angry outburst against himself and her for his tardiness at that important appointment. She dropped into the seat with a gasp of relief. She felt she must--for form"s sake--merely for form"s sake--glance out of the window for the farewell he would be certain to expect; she must do her part, now that she had committed herself. She glanced; he was rushing away, with never a backward look--or thought. It was her crowning humiliation. "I"ll make him pay for all this, some day!" she said to herself, shaking with anger, her grandmother"s own temper raging cyclonically within her.
CHAPTER X
A BELATED PROPOSAL
Her mood--outraged against Craig, sullenly determined to marry him, angry with her relatives, her mother no less than her grandmother, because they were driving her to these desperate measures--this mood persisted, became intenser, more imperious in its demand for a sacrifice as the afternoon wore on. When Grant Arkwright came, toward six o"clock, she welcomed him, the first-comer bringing her the longed-for chance to discharge the vials of her wrath. And she noted with pleasure that he, too, was in a black humor. Before she could begin he burst forth:
"What"s this that Josh Craig has been telling me? He seems to have gone stark mad!"