Arkwright steered him through the throng, and up to the hostess--Mrs.
Burke, stout, honest, with sympathy in her eyes and humor in the lines round her sweet mouth. "Well, Josh," she said in a slow, pleasant monotone, "you HAVE done a lot of growing since I saw you. I always knew you"d come to some bad end. And here you are--in politics and in society. Gus!"
A tall, haughty-looking young woman, standing next her, turned and fixed upon Craig a pair of deep, deep eyes that somehow fl.u.s.tered him. Mrs.
Burke presented him, and he discovered that it was her daughter-in-law.
While she was talking with Arkwright, he examined her toilette. He thought it startling--audacious in its display of shoulders and back--until he got over his dazed, dazzled feeling, and noted the other women about. Wild horses could not have dragged it from him, but he felt that this physical display was extremely immodest; and at the same time that he eagerly looked his face burned. "If I do pick one of these,"
said he to himself, "I"m jiggered if I let her appear in public dressed this way. Why, out home women have been white-capped for less."
Arkwright had drifted away from him; he let the crowd gently push him toward the wall, into the shelter of a clump of palms and ferns. There, with his hands in his pockets, and upon his face what he thought an excellent imitation of Arkwright"s easy, bored expression of thinly-veiled cynicism, he surveyed the scene and tried to judge it from the standpoint of the "common people." His verdict was that it was vain, frivolous, unworthy, beneath the serious consideration of a man of affairs such as he. But he felt that he was not quite frank, in fact was dishonest, with himself in this lofty disdain. It represented what he ought to feel, not what he actually was feeling. "At least," said he to himself, "I"ll never confess to any one that I"m weak enough to be impressed by this sort of thing. Anyhow, to confess a weakness is to encourage it ... No wonder society is able to suck in and destroy so many fellows of my sort! If _I_ am tempted what must it mean to the ordinary man?" He noted with angry shame that he felt a swelling of pride because he, of so lowly an origin, born no better than the machine-like lackeys, had been able to push himself in upon--yes, up among--these people on terms of equality. And it was, for the moment, in vain that he reminded himself that most of them were of full as lowly origin as he; that few indeed could claim to be more than one generation removed from jack-boots and jeans; that the most elegant had more relations among the "vulgar herd" than they had among the "high folks."
"What are you looking so glum and sour about?" asked Arkwright.
He startled guiltily. So, his mean and vulgar thoughts had been reflected in his face. "I was thinking of the case I have to try before the Supreme Court next week," said he.
"Well, I"ll introduce you to one of the Justices--old Towler. He comes of the "common people," like you. But he dearly loves fashionable society--makes himself ridiculous going to b.a.l.l.s and trying to flirt.
It"ll do you no end of good to meet these people socially. You"ll be surprised to see how respectful and eager they"ll all be if you become a recognized social favorite. For real sn.o.bbishness give me your friends, the common people, when they get up where they can afford to put on airs. Why, even the President has a sneaking hankering after fashionable people. I tell you, in Washington EVERYTHING goes by social favor, just as it does in London--and would in Paris if fashionable society would deign to notice the Republic."
"Introduce me to old Towler," said Craig, curt and bitter. He was beginning to feel that Arkwright was at least in part right; and it angered him for the sake of the people from whom he had sprung, and to whom he had pledged his public career. "Then," he went on, "I"m going home. And you"ll see me among these b.u.t.terflies and hoptoads no more."
"Can"t trust yourself, eh?" suggested Arkwright.
Craig flashed exaggerated scorn that was confession.
"I"ll do better than introduce you to Towler," proceeded Arkwright.
"I"ll present you to his daughter--a dyed and padded old horror, but very influential with her father and all the older crowd. Sit up to her, Josh. You can lay the flattery on as thick as her paint and as high as her topknot of false hair. If she takes to you your fortune"s made."
"I tell you, my fortune is not dependent on--" began Craig vehemently.
"Cut it out, old man," interrupted Arkwright. "No stump speeches here.
They don"t go. They bore people and create an impression that you"re both ridiculous and hypocritical."
Arkwright left Josh with Towler"s daughter, Mrs. Raymond, who was by no means the horror Arkwright"s language of fashionable exaggeration had pictured, and who endured Craig"s soph.o.m.oric eulogies of "your great and revered father," because the eulogist was young and handsome, and obviously anxious to please her. As Arkwright pa.s.sed along the edge of the dancers a fan reached out and touched him on the arm. He halted, faced the double line of women, mostly elderly, seated on the palm-roofed dais extending the length of that end of the ballroom.
"Hel-LO!" called he. "Just the person I was looking for. How is Margaret this evening?"
"As you see," replied the girl, unfurling the long fan of eagle plumes with which she had tapped him. "Sit down.... Jackie"--this to a rosy, eager-faced youth beside her--"run away and amuse yourself. I want to talk seriously to this elderly person."
"I"m only seven years older than you," said Arkwright, as he seated himself where Jackie had been vainly endeavoring to induce Miss Severence to take him seriously.
"And I am twenty-eight, and have to admit to twenty-four," said Margaret.
"Don"t frown that way. It makes wrinkles; and what"s more unsightly than a wrinkled brow in a woman?"
"I don"t in the least care," replied the girl. "I"ve made up my mind to stop fooling and marry."
"Jackie?"
"If I can"t do better." She laughed a low, sweet laugh, like her voice; and her voice suggested a leisurely brook flitting among mossy stones.
"You see, I"ve lost that first bloom of youth the wife-pickers prize so highly. I"m not unsophisticated enough to please them. And I haven"t money enough to make them overlook such defects as maturity and intelligence--in fact, I"ve no money at all."
"You were never so good-looking in your life," said Grant. "I recall you were rather homely as a child and merely nice and fresh-looking when you came out. You"re one of those that improve with time."
"Thanks," said the girl dryly. She was in no mood for the barren blossom of non-marrying men"s compliments.
"The trouble with you is the same as with me," pursued he. "We"ve both spent our time with the young married set, where marriage is regarded as a rather stupid joke. You ought to have stuck to the market-place until your business was settled."
She nodded a thoughtful a.s.sent. "Yes, that was my sad mistake," said she. "However, I"m going to do my best to repair it."
He reflected. "You must marry money," he declared, as if it were a verdict.
"Either some one who"s got it or some one who can get it."
"Some one who"s got it, I"d advise."
"Bad advice," commented the girl, her hazel eyes gazing dreamily, languorously into the distance. She looked a woman on romance bent, a woman without a mercenary thought in her head. "Very bad advice," she went on. "Men who"ve got money may lose it and be unable to make any more. What a helpless thing YOU"D be but for what you have inherited and will inherit. Yet you"re above the average of our sort."
"Humph!" said Arkwright, with an irritated laugh. Humor at his expense was a severe strain upon him. It always is to those whose sense of humor is keen; for they best appreciate the sting that lies in the pleasantest jest.
"It would be wiser--if one dared be wise," pursued the girl, "to marry a man who could get money. That kind of man is safest. Only death or insanity can make him a disappointment."
Arkwright eyed her curiously. "What a good head you"ve got on you, Rita," said he. "Like your grandmother."
The girl shivered slightly. "Don"t SPEAK of her!" she exclaimed with an uneasy glance around. And Grant knew he was correct in his suspicion as to who was goading and lashing her to hasten into matrimony.
"Well--have you selected your--"
As Arkwright hesitated she supplied, "Victim." They laughed, she less enthusiastically than he. "Though," she added, "I a.s.sure you, I"ll make him happy. It takes intelligence to make a man happy, even if he wants the most unintelligent kind of happiness. And you"ve just admitted I"m not stupid."
Arkwright was studying her. He had a sly instinct that there was a reason deeper than their old and intimate friendship for her reposing this extreme of confidence in him. No doubt she was not without a vague hope that possibly this talk might set him to thinking of her as a wife for himself. Well, why not? He ought to marry, and he could afford it.
Where would he find a more ladylike person--or where one who was at the same time so attractive? He studied, with a certain personal interest, her delicate face, her figure, slim and gracefully curved, as her evening dress fully revealed it. Yes, a charming, most ladylike figure.
And the skin of her face, of neck and shoulders, was beautifully white, and of the texture suggesting that it will rub if too impetuously caressed. Yes, a man would hesitate to kiss her unless he were well shaved. At the very thought of kissing her Grant felt a thrill and a glow she had never before roused in him. She had an abundance of blue-black hair, and it and her slender black brows and long lashes gave her hazel eyes a peculiar charm of mingled pa.s.sion and languor. She had a thin nose, well shaped, its nostrils very sensitive; slightly, charmingly-puckered lips; a small, strong chin. Certainly she had improved greatly in the two years since he had seen her in evening dress. "Though, perhaps," reflected he, "I only think so because I used to see her too much, really to appreciate her."
"Well, why didn"t you?" she was saying, idly waving her fan and gazing vaguely around the room.
"Why didn"t I--what?"
"You were trying to decide why you never fell in love with me."
"So I was," admitted Arkwright.
"Now if I had had lots of cash," mocked she.
He reddened, winced. She had hit the exact reason. Having a great deal of money, he wanted more--enough to make the grandest kind of splurge in a puddle where splurge was everything. "Rather, because you are too intelligent," drawled he. "I want somebody who"d fit into my melting moods, not a woman who"d make me ashamed by seeming to sit in judgment on my folly."
"A man mustn"t have too much respect for a woman if he"s to fall utterly in love with her--must he?"
Arkwright smiled constrainedly. He liked cynical candor in men, but only pretended to like it in women because bald frankness in women was now the fashion. "See," said he, "how ridiculous I"d feel trying to say sentimental things to you. Besides, it"s not easy to fall in love with a girl one has known since she was born, and with whom he"s always been on terms of brotherly, quite unsentimental intimacy."
Rita gave him a look that put this suggestion out of countenance by setting him to thrilling again. He felt that her look was artful, was deliberate, but he could not help responding to it. He began to be a little afraid of her, a little nervous about her; but he managed to say indifferently, "And why haven"t YOU fallen in love with ME?"