Invincible Minnie

CHAPTER TWELVE

“I’ll certainly stop in this evening,” he said. “I want to see for myself.”

“I don’t think you’d better,” she said, reluctantly, “Miss E.’s awfully queer, eccentric, you know. She mightn’t like it.”

“But I want to see her,” he insisted. “She surely can’t object to my stopping in for half a minute. You’re not a servant.”

“It’s not that——”

“I want to see for myself,” he repeated. “It may not be a suitable place for you at all. I’d know at once.”

His attitude, his air of protection, delighted Frankie while it annoyed her. She was so firmly convinced that she could take care of herself, so jealous of her freedom, that she didn’t want even advice. And still couldn’t help being very much pleased by this wholly masculine gesture.

In the end she agreed. And was at once sorry and wretched, going through her classes in a nightmare of worry. How would Miss Eppendorfer take it? What would she think of Frankie’s walking in, uninvited, unpermitted, with a strange man? And how to explain him? Now she was ready to confess herself imprudent. She would have given anything she owned if something would have prevented Mr. Naylor from coming.

He, of course, was perfectly unruffled, as anyone conscious of such superiority would be. He followed Frances into the little Mission sitting-room where Miss Eppendorfer and Mr. Hassler were smoking side by side on the sofa. Frances was bitterly embarrassed; for a minute she couldn’t speak at all. She saw them both staring at her in amazement.

“I’ve brought my friend, Mr. Naylor, in for a few minutes,” she said, in a strained, artificial sort of voice. “We——”

Nothing more came; the girl who could always take care of herself couldn’t account for her visitor.

“We met at the business school,” said Naylor, “and as we were more or less the only human beings there, we naturally had to be friends.”

At the sound of his careless voice, Miss Eppendorfer’s look of amazement died away. She got up and shook hands with him, presented him to Kurt, and asked him to sit down. She was like a good servant; she knew class when she saw it.

Never before had Frances realised how distinguished her Mr. Naylor was until she saw him in Miss Eppendorfer’s sitting-room. She saw the authoress inspecting him in her detailed and unabashed way, staring at him, computing the cost of his clothes, comprehending the high degree he possessed of what she called “style,” and so greatly admired. She was deeply impressed.

He was very gallant to the poor thing, which delighted her beyond measure. No denying that she made a fool of herself. She was coy, imperious, more youthful than she had ever dared to be with Kurt, and, no matter how preposterous her behaviour, Mr. Naylor didn’t once attempt to catch Frankie’s eye, never encouraged her to be more preposterous.

Poor Miss Eppendorfer! Frankie, watching her, reflected on her ingratiating servility toward Mr. Hassler and her present conduct with Mr. Naylor, and found it impossible to reconcile all this with the Miss Eppendorfer she knew. Could it be the same woman who often talked to her with sense, with cynical shrewdness, with sharp knowledge of the world? The same woman who wrote books and sold them, knew how to make money and how to invest it? At the sound of a man’s voice she was horribly bewitched, even her face lost its look of worn good nature and took on a false and stupid simper. It hurt Frances, she was genuinely grateful to Mr. Naylor for not sneering.

But the baleful eye of the young German was fixed upon him. He was forced to sit in silence and listen to their badinage, and it infuriated him. He broke in suddenly, in a harsh, high voice:

“You are in business here?”

Mr. Naylor turned toward him, looked at him, and hated him.

“No,” he said.

“Perhaps you are looking for an opening?”

“No; there’s an ‘opening’ for me when I’m ready for it,” he answered haughtily.

“It should not be at all difficult to find an opening in this country. The requirements are so small,” Mr. Hassler announced, with tact. “Here they will willingly employ a man who knows nothing. Even hard work they don’t expect. With us in Germany all is very different. It is necessary to work very hard. We are all trained to work very hard. A young fellow starting in business with us would never ask, ‘What are the hours?’ Certainly not. We realise that you have got to work very hard, in order to get somewhere.”

“We don’t need to work so hard in England,” said Mr. Naylor. “We are somewhere.”

“Yes, where!” cried the other, raising his voice.

“Where you’d like to be,” Mr. Naylor replied with a smile.

“Bah! You’re getting left behind. We’re beating you everywhere, in every line. Your British trade—where will it be in ten years’ time?”

“Can’t say, I’m sure. I’m not in trade. But I’m not worried. I dare say we’ll still be on the map.”

Mr. Hassler’s excitement carried him away.

“Yes, you’ll be on the map!” he shouted, “as a German Provinz. We’ll stamp out a little of that damn arrogance.”

“I say, are you trying to be funny?”

“That damned British arrogance,” he went on, at the top of his voice. “You half-educated, half-trained, half-alive nation of money-greedy pigs——”

“I say!” cried Mr. Naylor again, puzzled and angry, “You’re going a bit too far!”

“PIGS!” shouted the young German.

Naylor sprang to his feet, as white with anger as the other was red; he was on the point of speaking when Frances caught his arm.

“Oh, please!” she entreated, and suddenly and helplessly, began to laugh.

“Oh, why do Germans always call people pigs!” she cried.

They all looked at her, and under their surprised glance, she struggled for self-control and gained it. She looked down at the ground, her mouth still quivering, and kept very still.

“As for you——” began Mr. Hassler, and then stopped.

“Now! Now!” begged Miss Eppendorfer, in terrible distress, “Now, gentlemen!... What about some nice cold beer?”

She was afraid, though, to fetch it and leave the men alone; she was afraid also to ask Frances, not knowing whether or not she considered herself insulted in the person of her guest. She stood nervously smiling, her eyes on her cousin, mutely beseeching him to be placated by beer. At last Frances took pity on her, and went herself to get the stuff. But Mr. Naylor declined.

“Thanks,” he said, stiff and outraged, “I’ll be going.”

“Pshaw!” muttered Mr. Hassler, who stood at the window with his back turned ostentatiously.

“What’s that?” demanded Mr. Naylor, crisply.

“Pshaw!” the other repeated, somewhat louder.

With a very obvious effort the young Englishman said nothing to this; he took his hat, and with a hasty hand-clasp for Frankie and a bow for Miss Eppendorfer, took himself off.

Frankie went into her own room and tried to compose herself by reading, but not for long. Almost immediately the front door slammed and Miss Eppendorfer came into her room like a whirlwind.

“There! You see!” she screamed. “You miserable creature! He’s gone! He’s gone!”

Frances looked at her severely.

“You’ve spoiled everything!” she went on. “How did you dare to laugh at him? What right have you to laugh at him! You’re nothing better than a servant. And he belongs to one of the finest families in Hamburg. His father’s worth nearly half a million. He’s been through Heidelberg. And you dare to laugh at him! Who are you, anyway? A big, gawky fool of a girl.... Picking up a man in the street and bringing him into my house.... He’s shocked at you.”

And so on, in the strain that so sickened and dismayed Frances.

“He laughs at you. He says you’re a clumsy, ignorant——” ... All manner of dirty insolence.

The heart of the trouble was there, that Frances had laughed at him. He could forget his anger against the Englishman, but he could not stomach being laughed at by a pretty girl. He had said horrible things about her, which Miss Eppendorfer had treasured up and now repeated, with greater malice because she dimly perceived that in his hatred for Frances there was more than a little lust.

Against this attack Frances was defenceless. There was nothing in her nature, nothing in her training, to arm her. She stood up very straight, very proud, but tears were running down her cheeks. She waited until every one of the dreadful words had been said, and the speaker had flung out of the room, then she set to work to pack her little trunk with furious energy, cramming everything in, wishing only to be gone forever from that place. In hat and jacket, she went out into the hall and telephoned for a taxi.

The driver came up after her trunk; he was just dragging it along the hall to put it into the lift, when Miss Eppendorfer came rushing out, in a kimono, her face raddled and tear-blistered, her wisps of hair in a wild tangle.

“No! No!” she screamed. “Stop! Frances!”

Her voice reverberated shockingly in the stone corridor. The lift boy and the chauffeur stared at her. Frances felt ready to faint.

“Frances! Come back and let me explain!”

“I can’t!” said Frances in a low voice. “Please don’t make such a noise!”

“Come back! I can’t let you go like this! I didn’t mean what I said! You know I didn’t!”

Already the doors of two apartments had stealthily opened.

“Oh, please hush!” entreated Frances. “I can’t come back. I’ll write.”

Suddenly Miss Eppendorfer turned to the two men.

“Can’t you beg this hard-hearted girl not to leave me like this, without a chance to explain?” she sobbed, in a torrent of tears. “Can’t you say a word for me? I’m alone in the world. I haven’t——”

“Hush!” commanded Frances. “I’ll come! Please take the trunk in again.”

When the front door was closed Miss Eppendorfer flung her arms about Frances.

“I know you can’t forgive me,” she moaned. “But, oh Frances!... You don’t know what love is! You don’t know how I love that man! I know I’m a fool, but I can’t help it. Oh, Frances, just stand by me till it’s over.”

“I don’t understand you. I thought you were going to marry him——”

“No! No! Never!... Only stand by me till I get over it. It won’t last. He’ll go away soon. It’s madness; I know it. But you don’t know how I suffer. I can’t help myself. Oh, Frances, you’re so cool and reasonable, you don’t know!”

The flood of her confession was not to be dammed. Frances had to hear it all and to learn its lesson, as well as her unready mind permitted. And all the time she listened, in shame, pity and disgust, her adventuring spirit was eagerly and thirstily drinking this new knowledge, this experience, precious even if vicarious.

She really understood very little of it. Miss Eppendorfer, although protesting constantly how she “loved” Kurt, seemed actually to display more hate than affection. She bore him a bitter grudge for this “love.” She was full of stories of his sneers, his taunts; how he had pulled the pins out of her hair and then laughed himself sick at the bleached and scanty locks. How he compared her to other women whom he had seen in the course of the day; how he had asked her to sing, and then mocked her. How he wasted her money and forever demanded more. She knew that he ridiculed her to his friends. He encouraged her to drink and then got her to sign cheques....

The end of her recital left her stripped of all decency, all honour, showed her a weak fool destroyed by a vice, something to shudder at: yet her honesty, her lack of self-justification, the eternal and naked humanness in it all, touched even the fastidious young girl.

“This awful thing is I!” the woman seemed to say. “This is my soul. May God help me, and Man pity me!”

Frances sat beside her till she fell asleep, wiser, kinder, better than she had ever been before.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Not for worlds would she have told anyone of the two dreadful scenes. She enlarged on Miss Eppendorfer’s friendliness and good humour and the excellence of her work.

“That’s all very well,” said he, “but I stick to it that it’s no place for you.”

They didn’t talk much more on the way down; Mr. Naylor was too much occupied with his driving, which was minutely careful. He took no risks, and he muttered furiously against those who did. He seemed to Frankie unnecessarily prudent; she would have liked to go faster, as lots of other cars did. However, a look at his frowning face reproved her; she felt that this driving business must be more difficult, more perilous than her inexperience imagined.

As soon as they reached the beach he proposed taking their swim at once, and she very readily agreed. Poor girl! She hadn’t been in the sea for years, since those long gone days, those happy days when she had been a school-girl. She was, it must be admitted, rather eager to “show off” to her Englishman, for she was a good swimmer, and not at all an unpleasant object in a bathing suit. She came out of her bath-house and walked down on to the beach, conscious of her splendid symmetry, her strong, straight limbs, her face gay and boyish under a tight rubber cap. It was obvious to both of them at once that Mr. Naylor was physically not at all her equal. Gone his chic, his superiority; he was thin, fragile, rather wretched. Within her stirred faintly an old, old instinct, perverted and crushed out through generations of false training, the instinct of the woman to seek for strength and beauty in her mate. Her smile was artificial.

“Beastly cold!” he grumbled.

But Frances dashed by him, through the breakers, and began swimming out in strong and beautiful strokes, her bare arms flashing up rhythmically, her white teeth showing in a broad smile. She looked back, and saw Mr. Naylor moving slowly near the shore; after ten minutes or so he came out on to the sand, and lay in the sun watching her. And presently began to wave.

She came inshore reluctantly.

“What is it?” she asked. “It’s glorious in the water to-day. I never want to come out!”

“It’s time to come out now,” he said.

“Oh, it can’t be! I’ll have to stop longer!”

“But, I say, I want my lunch. This isn’t much of a lark for me, you know, roasting out here like this.”

“Why don’t you go back into the water again?”

“I can’t. It gives me a chill.”

“A chill!” said Frances, and couldn’t keep a faint contempt out of her voice. “You’d better go and dress. I’ll be out presently.”

“I shouldn’t think of leaving you; you’re so rash. Go ahead, enjoy yourself; I’ll wait.”

His good nature conquered Frances; she gave one more look at the glittering sea and went back into her bath-house.

She had to wait quite twenty minutes for him.

“You’re quick, aren’t you?” he said, artlessly.

“Or is it that you’re slow?” she returned. Now he was his own self again, the imperturbable, the superior. She wished to forget the shivering, frail being who had for a time supplanted him.

He ordered an amazing lunch, in the old “Oriental,” which was still standing then, with its unique flavour; he saw people whom he knew by sight and could point out to Frankie. He ordered champagne, which she had never before tasted. He was like a prince, or rather, like a millionaire....

After this meal, which was nothing less than a banquet, Frances said she would have to go home.

“The awful cook’s gone out,” she explained, “and I’ll have to help poor Miss E. to get something ready.”

“What!” he cried. “Do you mean to tell me you’re going to cook!”

“And eat,” she answered, cheerfully. “Please don’t be mediæval.”

“I don’t like it. A girl of your class—and your ability——”

They were spinning along the road by the marshes, passed by an incessant stream of motors going down.

“It’s a confounded shame to go home now anyway,” he said. “If we could only have had the evening!”

“Another time,” she said, before she thought, and was rather confused at her own forwardness.

“I hope so,” he answered gravely, “I can’t tell you how much I—like to be with you. I—altogether—I’ve old Horace to see you.... Do you suppose you could meet him some time? Without his wife, I mean? It’s irregular, I know, but you’re not conventional.”

She said no, that she wasn’t.

“Could you set a time? Next Wednesday?”

And she said she thought that would do.

II

“You don’t mind if I go out to tea on Wednesday, do you?” Frances asked Miss Eppendorfer the next morning.

“Not a bit!” said she, cheerfully. “I like to see you enjoy yourself like a human being. Is it your English friend?”

“Yes. The only trouble is, I haven’t a thing fit to wear, and it’s at a hotel,” she said. “Couldn’t you come down town with me and help me pick out something?”

Miss Eppendorfer was only too pleased; it was one of her good days and she was cheerful and energetic. She led Frances from shop to shop, imperiously rejecting every suggestion.

“I know what suits you,” she insisted, “I’m a wonderful judge of value, too. You leave it all to me.”

At last she was pleased by a grey broadcloth suit.

“Oh, yes!” cried Frankie, ironically. “A hundred and fifty dollars is just what I always pay!”

“I’m going to get it for you.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t!” she protested, shocked.

“You must. To make up for all I said that night,” whispered the authoress. “Be generous, Frances! Don’t be petty!”

She allowed herself to be persuaded, accepted the suit and with it a new hat and blouse. She felt guilty and ashamed and yet delighted. She was so very anxious to make a favourable impression on this brother Horace.

She started off, very nervous and still more ashamed. The whole exploit seemed wrong, meeting the man without his wife, and wearing clothes she could never have bought for herself.... It was common.

“Cheap,” she reflected.

But Horace would have made a supper-club respectable. They were waiting in the corridor; she saw her Mr. Naylor at once though he didn’t see her; slender and drooping, quietly conscious of his impeccable British elegance, he was watching the wrong door. Near him was a heavy, bull-necked, red-faced man with a black moustache and melancholy, bilious eyes, who smoked a big cigar and stared nowhere. This was Horace.

He surprised Frances by his lack of everything that pleased her in his brother. He was altogether the merchant, not a hint of the man-of-the-world. He shook hands with her and smiled, but it was a sad, dull smile. He was distrait, and couldn’t conceal it.

“Well,” he said, with a sigh, “Lead the way, Lionel, my boy!”

They entered an engaging little tea-room with shaded lamps and sofas. Lionel took charge of everything, chose a table, and ordered the cocktails, but the management of the conversation was evidently beyond him. There was a long and awkward silence, while the drinks were coming. No one looked at either of the others.

It was Horace who first revived, after two cocktails.

“Well,” he observed again, “He’s a handful. You’ll have to keep an eye on him, I can tell you.”

Frances was startled; was he talking to her?... She looked up and caught his gaze, melancholy and kindly, fixed on her.

“You’ll have all you can manage, with him,” he continued.

She was alarmed and confused. It wasn’t possible that he thought.... And yet, very evidently, he did think so, for he went on, with a sort of gloomy archness:

“I hope he won’t be too much for you.”

She was anxious to refute the suggestion of any responsibility for Lionel, to tell this brother, subtly and politely, but unmistakably, that he misread the situation. But she could not, on the spur of the moment, think of anything that would do.

“I don’t really know Mr. Naylor very well,” she attempted.

Horace smiled.

“Plenty of time!” he said.

And this time his glance wandered to his brother, and was curiously altered, rested upon that futile young face with limitless fidelity and affection——

“Yes,” he said again, fatuously, “You’ll have your hands full.”

Frances had a horrible feeling of being caught in a net.

“I’m afraid I can’t undertake such a responsibility,” she said, with a sickly smile.

Horace smiled indulgently at her. After a third cocktail, he was becoming a little garrulous on the subject of his brother; partly because he thought it would interest Frankie and partly because it was his great topic anyway. His pride in his brother was rather surprising to Frankie; she couldn’t know, of course, from what a stodgy, obscure family this charming irresponsibility had sprung, couldn’t imagine how audacious his extravagances appeared, how remarkable his social progress; in fine, she couldn’t see him as a Naylor.

It was not until much later that she divined something of the relations between these two. Sons of a well-to-do manufacturer, they had both “received advantages” in the way of education and so forth, but while Horace remained immutably the son of a wealthy manufacturer who had had “advantages,” Lionel in some mysterious way, not unusual in this world, had turned out to be aristocratic, elegant, fashionable. His brother took a naïve pride in this; he admired Lionel as he did royalty, not very useful, but immensely valuable in his place. He never urged him to go into business; he was quite satisfied that he should go his own dazzling way. For Horace was not the classic business man of stage and story, who despises and berates the idler; he was something much newer, the money-maker who is apologetic and secretly bewildered; who feels called upon to justify his activity. Lionel was what he would have liked to be, only that he knew it to be impossible. He acknowledged that they were of different clay.

He told Frankie how Lionel had no idea of time, and was always late.

How he kept the most exclusive people waiting for him and never had a proper excuse.

How he spent preposterous sums on handkerchiefs, his hobby.

How altogether idle and rude and popular he had been “at home.”

In spite of her common-sense, Frankie began to feel that the attentions of such a man were something to boast of, to treasure. He wasn’t rude to her, ever.

After a fourth cocktail and a minute sardine sandwich, Horace said he was obliged to go.

“Au revoir!” he said to Frankie, with a very bad accent. “If this boy gives you any trouble, you let me know, eh?”

He clasped her hand in his warm, moist one with genuine good-will, slapped Lionel on the shoulder, and went out, edging his way clumsily among the little low tables.

Lionel gave a sigh of comfort, and leaned across the table.

“May I have another cup?” he asked.

Frances was looking at him sternly.

“Mr. Naylor!” she said, “You have given your brother a false impression.”

He was startled.

“I ... so it seems,” he said, weakly, “I ... he does seem....”

“It isn’t fair,” she went on, “I’m surprised at you! What could I do? Or say? Mr. Naylor, really, it was not right of you!”

“I know it.... But I give you my word I never exactly said—anything. I dare say I was—oh, enthusiastic.... I suppose he drew his own conclusions.”

He went on, after a pause:

“I did talk a lot about you.... You see——”

He tapped his cigarette nervously on his plate.

“I say!” he said. “Couldn’t it be true, you know?”

She understood him well enough, and a bright colour surged into her face.

“What?” she asked, disingenuously.

“I mean—what Horace thinks.... I mean—do you think you could——”

She faltered.

“I don’t know.... It’s been such a short time——”

“You know that doesn’t matter. Time! Why, the first minute I saw you, there in that beastly school, I knew I was done for. You looked so lovely and so dignified. Such a lady. Just the sort of girl I’d always thought about. My lovely girl! My dear, beautiful girl!”

For some reason her eyes filled with tears. His voice touched her so, moved her so profoundly. She couldn’t pretend, couldn’t hesitate. Because she knew, too, perfectly well. She looked up at him with a trembling smile.

“It’s silly!” she said. “We don’t know each other.”

“I know you, darling, as well as if I’d seen you every day for a year.”

“But, really, we must be sensible,” she said, seriously. “We’ll have to wait—not commit ourselves to anything definite. We’ll be friends——”

“Not I! I want to commit myself as much as possible. Won’t you commit yourself just a little bit, darling girl? Just go so far as to say you like me?”

“You know I like you,” she said, smiling.

He could laugh now, tease her; he knew she was won.

They left the tea-room and began to stroll down Fifth Avenue. And at every crossing he took her arm and their eyes met, and a ridiculous and passionate happiness filled them both.

“My girl!” he whispered.

Frances was almost ashamed of being so happy; she was anxious to appear practical and reasonable. She said she had shopping to do, and that Lionel might come with her, if he liked. He insisted upon augmenting her little purchases, choosing very expensive things, and things he had realised she wanted. In spite of her independence, all this was delightful to her; she hesitated, refused, accepted....

A shop girl looked after them, was amused at their long, long glances and their unwarranted smiles: she thought them a well-matched couple, both so tall and so nice-looking and so well-bred. And she was very right; they were well-matched, by God Himself, Who had filled Lionel’s need of a strong and sober and honest lover, who had given to Frankie the gay and careless companion her heart required, the clinging and exigent affection she could so well support. Lionel had the power to soften the touch of austerity latent in her, the hint of priggishness; she had the nobility and the resoluteness which he needed as an example, a stimulus to his plastic soul. They had, in each other’s company, a sense of absolute completeness and satisfaction; they knew that this love was altogether right.

Frances inspected the new pocketbook he had bought her, so unnecessarily and unsuitably costly, and then again at Lionel’s happy face. And she would have liked to cry out what she and all women know enough to conceal:

“Oh, my love, I want to protect you, to care for you, to shield your raw pride, forever and ever to stand between you and the world!”

And that mustn’t be said. She knew she must call his weakness strength, or she would destroy him. No man must ever see his true self mirrored in a woman’s eyes. He could not endure it.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

She had a genuine dislike for extravagance and frivolity. Old traditions from remote Defoe ancestors urged her always toward prudence and restraint. She really couldn’t enter into Lionel’s mood, couldn’t for a moment be careless, and would never pretend to be. She wanted dignity and purpose; she was fond enough of fun, but it wasn’t his kind. She could not enjoy watching other people spend money. Lionel didn’t care to swim, or to walk; he was quite happy to sit on a crowded veranda, drinking cocktails and chaffing his serious girl. He was happy now, in watching the streams of people going in and out of the hotel, over-dressed, over-perfumed, over-fed, over-stimulated. But there was nothing here for Frankie.

All this life that Lionel had pulled her into distressed her. He had urged her to give up her business course, and instead they went out somewhere every evening. Miss Eppendorfer was always ready to let her go, as long as she wasn’t left alone. She absolutely approved of Lionel. From her point of view, he was the ideal lover, attractive and lavish. He was continually bringing presents to Frankie, flowers, chocolates and books. He refused to believe that she was not very fond of sweets, and was deaf to her hints that her taste in reading was not his. She felt like a prig, a bluestocking, with her perpetual advice and rebuke. Her serious soul was in revolt against this waste of time; often when they were at some blatant cabaret, she would be longing for her quiet room and a good book. She was really weary of this ceaseless pleasure-hunt, disgusted, and yet hadn’t the heart to deny his pleasures to Lionel. He never read a book, and was no more capable or desirous of quiet than a small boy.

She took it for granted that he was more or less a rich man, and that as his wife she would be obliged to endure a good deal of this sort of existence. She did ask him, though, if he wouldn’t just as soon live out of town, and he said, whatever she liked. So she was able to picture herself in one of those charming suburban houses on the Sound, with a fine garden, and horses, and dogs. And undoubtedly children; lovely, happy children.

He had started to work in his brother’s office, which pleased Frankie, for she had the American woman’s dislike for an unoccupied man. He said he was doing well, and talked of an early marriage. But that, too, was against Frankie’s principles. She wanted to wait, not because she wasn’t sure of herself or of him, but because a hasty marriage appeared somehow indecent to her. She even refused to tell her own people.

“Wait till I’ve known you a little longer,” she said.

Taken all in all, this “being engaged” was not what Frankie had expected, was by no means the happiest time of her life, as she had always been told it would be. With Lionel, per se, she could find no fault. If he had been made to order for a Defoe he could not have been more satisfactory. He was almost like a brother in his manner, never too ardent, too pressing, or in any way offending her squeamishness. It was for this she really adored him, for his delicacy and genuine kindliness. She was too ignorant fully to appreciate it; she was simply vaguely thankful that he was not like “some men” of whom she had read and heard.

Moreover, she had a little of Horace’s absurd admiration for Lionel’s social graces. All the solid, substantial, serious people in the world have it, this irrational and somewhat pathetic regard for the others, the spenders, the wasters, the ones who refuse to conform to their righteous code, the gay and audacious good-for-nothings. She knew that she wouldn’t have dared to do as he did, live after his style. Sometimes she had misgivings, fancied her ideas for the future were sordid and petty, her hope for an orderly, self-respecting sort of existence, the house in the suburbs, with books and lectures and intellectual friends.... An existence that had no place for the poor fellow’s febrile excitements.

Characteristically she got Lionel into the picture by assuring herself that he would change.

II

There came one day a careless little note, scrawled in huge letters on a bizarre card with a purple and gold monogram:

Lionel explained it to her when he arrived that evening.

“Horace made her,” he said. “If she had her own way, I don’t think she’d ever ask a woman into the house. Of course she’s out of the question. Impossible. But for Horace’s sake, I wish you’d come. He’s a decent old boy. And he likes you. Thought you were the prettiest thing he’s seen—— You’ll go, won’t you?”

Upon reflection, it seemed the correct thing to do, and she consented.

Miss Eppendorfer helped her to get ready on the very important evening. She took the greatest interest in the whole affair, was very arch about it. Frances persisted in her “nothing really settled yet,” but Miss Eppendorfer refused to believe it.

“Oh, I know all about such things!” she said.

This evening was to mark the end of the feeble pretence, anyway. Lionel came for her a little early, and Miss Eppendorfer undertook to entertain him until Frankie was ready. She heard them talking gaily together, in their usual vein of preposterous flirtation. She surmised the customary brandy and soda, and she felt her invariable shade of annoyance at their camaraderie. If Lionel would only be—not condescending of course, but—oh, a little more——

An unusually loud shriek from the authoress startled her.

“Oh, you extravagant boy! What a beauty! What a perfect beauty!”

She hurried a bit then, and entered the room, looking her very best and loveliest, dignified, concealing her curiosity. They were on the sofa side by side, a little table before them holding the siphon and the brandy bottle, their heads together over something in the authoress’s hand. Directly she saw Frankie, she thrust the thing back at Lionel.

“You must show it to her!” she cried, in great excitement.

Lionel extended his hand, proffered her her ring——

It was the conventional single diamond, set in platinum, a stone so pure and beautiful and of such a size that Frances almost gasped. Her face showed no pleasure at first, nothing but blank dismay. She barely stopped herself in time from saying:

“But oh, how terribly expensive!”

He put it on her finger, and she smiled in duty bound. But secretly it terrified her. It was so much too splendid. Perhaps she had a premonition that it was an unlucky ring——

Lionel was disappointed. He looked into Frankie’s face as they sat in the taxi, and waited for her to praise it.

“Don’t you like it?” he asked, at last, as she said nothing.

“Oh, yes, dear,” she answered, touched by his wistful tone, and, as she very rarely did, kissed him. “It’s beautiful. Too beautiful!”

III

Horace lived in an overwhelmingly grand apartment house on Riverside Drive. His private door was opened by a man servant, and Frances was conducted to a boudoir where a French maid waited to assist her. She was a little nervous at the unexpectedly sumptuous tone of the establishment; she wasn’t accustomed to rich people. She dreaded meeting the mistress of such a household, not only on account of the unfavourable reports she had had from Lionel, but also on account of her richness. A most ignoble awe, from which no living soul is immune.... It might be too that she felt a warning shudder, could divine the shadow of the pain she was to suffer here. She never again entered that house, but she remembered always every detail of what she had seen there. It was the setting, the stage of such an unforgettably bitter scene.

She was glad to find Horace alone, although she was not pleased by her hostess’s delay. He was in the “library,” a panelled room, dimly and richly lighted by Oriental lamps and crowded with massive furniture. (She didn’t see any books.) He was very cordial and kind, though melancholy. He apologised for Julie.

“She was late getting in,” he explained, “and it takes her the deuce of a time to get herself ready.”

It certainly did, for it was quite half an hour more before she appeared.

“I’m sorry, people!” she cried, running into the room, and swept them all with a smile.

This Julie, the impossible, the cruel, the vulgar! This sparkling lovely thing, with her piquant dark face and the figure of a nymph! Frances found it hard to believe.... Except that she was over-dressed, in a glittering sort of ball gown, and that her voice was not at all agreeable.

“I shouldn’t call her ‘impossible,’” she thought. “In fact, I think she’s fascinating.”

And so long as she confined herself solely to looking at Julie, she did find her fascinating. She was very young—years younger than Horace, and filled with an ardent vitality. She produced an extraordinary effect of brilliancy, although her conversation was far from clever. She was one of those people who absolutely take one’s breath away; her glances, her gestures, her gipsy vividness wrought a spell; one could watch her in a daze, indefinitely.

But the fascination wore off a bit for Frances after she had experienced something of Julie’s famous rudeness. She was utterly ignored. Horace tried to talk to her, but he was not fluent, and his dinner engrossed him. She had nothing to do but listen to Julie talking to Lionel, a torrent of gossip about people not personally known to either of them, glib comment on plays and books and fashions and dances. Lionel’s interest lay in just these things; he had as many stories as she: those mysterious tales of prominent people, confidential to a degree, heard from someone who really knows.... If Lionel hated and despised Julie and she loathed him, they dissembled it well. They were friendly, they were more than friendly, they were comrades. He had never talked with such interest to Frankie!

“Did you notice Mrs. Lord on the Avenue yesterday, Li? I never saw such a fool. A skirt like that with her celebrated bowlegs!”

And so on. The impossibleness of Julie was now fully evident to Frances, the gross vulgarity beneath her dainty charm, the malice, the nastiness in her shallow heart. She was glad Lionel didn’t like her; she told herself that his absorption in her chatter was only politeness.

When the dinner was over, she retired with Julie to a little music room, where Julie began to smoke. She changed abruptly now that there were no men about, became frankly, brutally hard.

“Well!” she said. “You’ve picked a winner! When Horace told me Li was going to be married, I couldn’t believe it. I told him there wasn’t a girl on earth who’d be such a fool.”

“Why?” asked Frances coldly.

“The boy’s a joke, my dear child! A perfect joke! The biggest idiot there is. He spent all the money his mother left him in two years, just making a fool of himself. And now he expects to sit down on Horace for the rest of his little life. It makes me sick.”

Frances had grown rather pale.

“I suppose he thinks he is welcome in his brother’s house,” she said.

“Lord! He knows I’m sick and tired of his hanging about. It’s not that! He doesn’t care whether he’s welcome or not. He worries us to death. And that chump of a Horace always gives in to him. I only hope you’ll be able to do something with him. I’ve told old Horace we didn’t understand that in this country—a young, able-bodied man sitting round the house, living on someone else. I said if Horace had any money to waste, he could waste it on me. I can do with all he’s got!”

Frances, shocked, outraged, stunned by this sudden and vigorous attack, tried to rally.

“He does work,” she said.

“Work! My God! Horace told me himself what an infernal nuisance Li is in the office. He comes in late and fiddles about a bit, and then goes uptown again. Work! He just likes to call the money he gets out of Horace a salary instead of graft. It comforts his little pride. Let’s see your ring!” she demanded suddenly.

Frances took it off and handed it to her.

“Two carats! And look at the setting! For God’s sake! I bet poor Horace had to shell out heavily for that!”

Frances did not put it on again; she held it in her hand. She was in anguish, so great that she was afraid she would not be able to hide it much longer. It called for every ounce of self-control she possessed to speak in a fairly natural voice.

“I didn’t understand the situation,” she said, “and I’m sure—he didn’t—entirely realise——”

“I’ve spoken plainly enough to make him ‘realise.’ No; he’s a hopeless case; I only wanted to warn you that Horace isn’t going to take care of a whole family. Oh, don’t get furious! I know you didn’t know about it! Only Li’s a grafter born and bred.”

“You misjudge him,” said Frances sternly. She wasn’t going to be routed by this horrible little savage. “I don’t think you’re able to understand a man of his type.”

“My Lord! I’ve met dozens like him. Just a nice, harmless little grafter. You’ll find them in every hotel in the city. My dear child, I know men mighty well. I’ve had experience!”

Then, to Frankie’s indescribable relief, she left the topic of Lionel and began a history of her own life, with particular emphasis on her suitors. Her father had been a “Cattle King,” she told her, in all seriousness, a millionaire. She had been brought up on a ranch, and then sent to school in the East, to “finish.”

“The best school in New York,” she said. “Dad had a hard time to get me in. But I hated it. I had a great deal of talent for drawing, so I just walked out of the school and got a studio in Washington Square, and plunged right in. I got lots of work from the start, fashions and society sketches. Popper was tickled to death. He said he’d double every cent I made, and he did. He likes independence. But I gave that all up when I got married. I’ve taken up dancing. I’ve got a regular gift for it. I could go on the stage to-morrow if I wanted. I’ve had offers from the big managers.”

The men came in then, and she offered an exhibition.

“I’ll show you the dance I’m going to do in the Fresh Air Fund Bazaar. You play, Li; go over this music while I get ready,” and she disappeared for a long time.

Lionel sat down at the piano and began obediently to try the music she had handed him; a sensual, banal thing, called new, but very reminiscent. He turned his head to smile at Frankie, and then gave his attention to the music, innocently satisfied with the answering smile he had had from her. The light from the lamp shone on his sleek head; he looked so young, so very slim, so fragile and well-bred; her heart ached for him in his unconscious shame. Of course, of course, he didn’t realise! She no more despised him than a mother despises a greedy child.

Julie came back in a costume which completed Frankie’s nightmare of misery and shame. She called it Hindu. Her slim legs and feet were bare, and her body so gauzily covered.... Frances involuntarily glanced at her husband, but he was staring up at the smoke rings he was blowing.

Her dancing was good—quite beautiful. But Frances was not an artist, not an æsthete; she was something of a prig and very much of a Defoe. A little—a tiny bit more of either in her nature would have turned the balance and sent her to her feet in terrible indignation. However, she was able to endure the exhibition with apparent coolness, watched the half-naked Julie twisting supplely before Lionel’s eyes without a visible trace of what she felt.

But how immeasurably glad she was to get away!

“Please send away the taxi,” she asked Lionel. “I’d like to walk a little way. And talk to you.”

Cheerful and unsuspicious, he complied.

“Wonderful night!” he remarked, looking with grateful eyes at the river.

She clutched his arm.

“Oh, Lionel!” she cried, and he was startled to hear a sob in her voice.

“What’s wrong, dearest girl?” he asked anxiously, trying to see her face in the dark.

“That awful—that dreadful, disgusting woman——” she said, in a broken voice. “Oh, Lionel! You can’t imagine!...”

“Did she say anything to upset you, old girl?”

“It’s not that—— It’s ... I didn’t know——”

She dried her eyes and spoke more calmly, all her courage, all her pride, all her love impelling her. She held out the ring, glittering marvellously in the light of a street lamp.

He stared at it in stupefaction.

“Frances!” he cried.

“Please take it! Lionel! My dear boy! I couldn’t wear it.... She said—he had to pay for it. That it’s all his money.... Oh, my dear old Lionel, don’t you see? I’ll wait—till you can get me one—of your own!”

Regardless of passers-by, he put his arm about her waist.

“Frankie,” he said, “I’ll do exactly what you want—always. I know I’m not nearly good enough for you. Only tell me what you want me to do.”

“I want you to be a man!” she cried passionately, and began to cry again.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“Oh, Lionel!” she cried, “You dear old thing! And I was so afraid you’d be hurt or offended!”

“I think you’re right—all that you said,” he answered seriously. “I want to make a new start—begin over again. Only it’s rather hopeless. I’ve a hundred and five pounds a year income from my mother, and that’s all. No prospects. Not a relative who could leave me a son. And eighty dollars in the bank. Rather dismal, isn’t it?”

“Not a bit! Fancy having an income, and calling the outlook dismal! And you’re young, you’ve got everything before you. You’re sure to find a good job before very long——”

“Yes, but my dear girl, that eighty dollars is all I’ve got to live on for three months and a half, until my next remittance comes. Unless I stop on in Horace’s office——”

“No, no! You mustn’t stay there! Please, please break off all that, won’t you?”

“Whatever you say, old girl. But where am I to live if I leave Horace’s?”

“I’ll find you a place,” she said, rashly.

“I’ll have to explain to him, though.... What shall I say?”

He really did not understand quite what was expected of him, or what he was doing. It was somehow a fine thing to renounce his comfort and security, and declare himself independent, and as long as Frances wished it, he was willing to do it. But it was a bit—theatrical. After all these years to refuse old Horace’s money.

“I’ll pop in and take lunch with him to-morrow,” he said.

“And tell him that you’re going to stand on your own feet,” urged Frances. “He’ll understand. And think all the more of you. Tell him—be sure—that you appreciate all he’s done for you, but that now you’re going to take care of yourself.”

He agreed.

“I’ll come and tell you about it as soon as it’s over,” he said. “You can expect me about three.”

She didn’t know with what a heavy heart he went upon this errand, or how well it proved his love and admiration for her. She didn’t know, or suspect, what he felt for Horace, and how he dreaded hurting him. Otherwise, she might have understood that he would necessarily be stupid and clumsy and muddle the whole thing, as he did....

II

Miss Eppendorfer was lying down in her bedroom, not to be disturbed. Kurt was not coming that evening, and the poor woman had seized the chance of gratifying her long-starved vice. So that Frances was as good as alone. She waited half an hour for Lionel without thinking much about it; they wouldn’t be able to talk anyway. She couldn’t go out and leave the authoress in her present condition, and she never entertained Lionel in the flat. They both considered it incorrect. Still, he could tell her what Horace had said. She was anxious about that interview. She was afraid that Horace might have begged him to go on living with him; that he might have weakened Lionel’s very new independence.

An hour passed, and she grew a little restless. It wasn’t like Lionel to keep her waiting. Why didn’t he telephone? She picked up a book and began to read. Another hour. She made herself a cup of tea and tried to be angry, with all the time a dull alarm in her heart. Six o’clock! Her anxiety grew unbearable, in that silent flat, worse than alone. She was not much given to tears, but she shed some now. It grew dark; she lighted a lamp and pulled down the shades and flung herself on the sofa.

She thought the same things any woman would have thought; that he had met with an accident, been run over, that he was injured, dying, perhaps dead. Then that he had deserted her, because he no longer loved her. Then that there was some mistake, that he had meant Sunday....

At last there was a ring at the bell, and she flew to open the door. Lionel stood outside.

“Lionel!” she cried. “I’ve been so worried! What has been the matter?”

He said nothing, made no move to enter.

“Come in,” she said impatiently, “and tell me what’s kept you.”

Her alarm increased every minute; there was something queer about him....

She took his arm and pulled him gently into the sitting room; then when she was able to look at him in the lamp-light, she knew. She had seen that silly smile, that flush before, had heard that thick and faltering voice.

Her heart seemed to stop beating; her blazing eyes were fixed on his face.

“You’re drunk,” she said, with what contempt, disgust, and bitterness! “You’d better go.”

But he sat down on the sofa and began to cry forlornly, like a child.

“Stop!” she said. “Stop! Miss Eppendorfer’ll hear you.”

“I can’t!” he sobbed.

She closed the door into the hall, and went back to the sofa to find him incredibly and suddenly asleep. She couldn’t at first believe in a slumber so very sudden. She shook him.

“Get up and go away!” she said, but it had no effect. There he lay, breathing heavily through his mouth, flushed, oddly serious in his expression, like a weary victor in some mighty struggle.

Frances gave way to a sort of frenzy.

“I can’t have two of you!” she cried.

Recklessly she opened the door of Miss Eppendorfer’s room, found her also sound asleep, not to be wakened. She revolted utterly then, locked herself into her own little room, careless of what might happen to those others.

For the first time in her life she remained awake all night. Early in the morning, before it was quite light, she slipped into the kitchen to make tea, and then went again to wake Lionel. This time it was not so hard. She gave him a cup of tea, stood in stony silence while he gulped it down, handed him his hat and overcoat, and firmly pushed him, dazed and passive, out of the door.

III

Miss Eppendorfer remained in bed until noon; she was “better” she said, but exhausted and listless. Frances was inordinately busy. She typed page after page of the authoress’s manuscript, and when there was absolutely no more to copy, set to work cleaning the table silver. She did not wish to think. It was the end of the world. Nothing ahead, nothing she could endure to contemplate.

She hated Miss Eppendorfer because Lionel had been drunk. It was an illogical and unjust feeling, but she couldn’t repress it. She kept away from her as much as possible. She was very thankful to see her go out, arm in arm, with her cousin Kurt, to a concert for which she had bought tickets for a fabulous price. She thought she would go out herself, perhaps to church; she had begun to get ready, in fact, when Lionel arrived. Lionel exactly the same, nonchalant, superior, not a trace even of fatigue——

“The hall-boy told me Miss E. and the German chap had gone out, so I thought I’d come up,” he said.

Frances was frigidly silent.

“I owe you an explanation,” he went on, “only—I haven’t any. I ... had an awful row with Horace, and it knocked me up, and I ... tried to—more or less—forget it.”

“No doubt you succeeded.”

She spoke with cold precision, like a school teacher to a prejudged culprit; and he, acknowledging her claims as he always did, forced himself to explain. It was wretched for him, an almost intolerable humiliation to be called to account in this way; he was ashamed of himself, and he longed passionately to drop the subject forever. But Frances was the woman who had promised to marry him, and he felt he owed it to her.

“You see, he was offended.... He thought—wanted me to be more—gradual. Stop on in his office, at least. And in the end, we quarrelled. I told him I wouldn’t take anything more from him—all that you advised, and so forth. And he—but what’s the use in repeating all that? It’s the first row we’ve ever had.”

He could not tell her how he regretted old Horace, with what affection and pain he remembered his benefits; couldn’t explain how much this “row” had hurt him. He had been horribly tactless and had wounded and infuriated Horace, without making it clear to him—or to himself—what it was about.

If he expected sympathy he was disappointed. If he had only apologised, said he was ashamed and sorry, she would have melted completely; it was this insistence upon the misfortune of having quarrelled with Horace, this cool passing over of his own beastliness, that she couldn’t stand. She didn’t even ask him to sit down, but remained standing herself, looking straight at him.

“I’m awfully sorry,” he said, “that I came here like that. Awfully sorry. It wasn’t fair to you. But I didn’t realize what I was doing.”

Frances laughed shortly.

“Don’t bother to apologise. Why should I object to being alone all night with two drunken beasts——”

“I say!” he protested.

“It’s evident,” she went on, “that you don’t know at all how I look at that. How I loathe it. I’d rather not talk about it at all. I’d rather you’d go.”

“You don’t mean that, Frankie, old girl!”

“I do!”

He searched her face.

“Frankie, you don’t mean ... I see you do, though. Very well, I’ll go.... But, Frankie!... Good-bye!”

“Good-bye!” said Frankie.

IV

Frankie resolved to forget Lionel. She tried her best.

“I made a mistake,” she said to herself. “Very well! It’s over and done with now. I’m not going to be a sentimental idiot. It’s over!”

It wasn’t, though. Her loneliness was bitter, her wound profound; she had nothing to sustain her but her own self-righteousness—cold comfort in that. It was all very well to tell herself Lionel was no good; whether he was or not, she wanted him back. Worst of all was her worry about him. She was convinced that without her he was lost, was helpless—what all women think about their men. She had the loftiest views about women anyway, and their influence. They were ordained the spiritual monitors of men, as well as the natural guardians of their healths and pocketbooks. Woman was the practical one, the conserver, the frequenter of savings banks; she was also the beauty and the charm of life. What remained was Man.

Frances had planned a future for them with care; and little by little she fancied she was improving the man himself, making him more responsible, more sedate, more what a woman demands of a husband. She was too intelligent to understand him. She couldn’t manage him and comprehend him as an ignorant, emotional woman would have done. With every new idea, every book read, she had retreated from the position that was her birthright.

She thought over Lionel with a passionate desire to do right; tried to obtain guidance from her brain while her heart was dumb. She wondered whether it did him more good to see how seriously she regarded his offence, or whether it would have helped him more to forgive him. Never considered it simply as a matter of cruelty or kindness. She was so concerned with thinking of what was morally best for Lionel that she neglected her own soul’s good.

And without doubt her soul suffered. She was becoming irritable, intolerant, over-haughty, wrapped up in her own affairs. She needed Lionel badly, needed his carelessness, his sweet temper. In spite of that, she thought she was “getting over” it splendidly; being sensible, and so on. She was able to eat and to sleep and to live as usual; even looked the same. And then, suddenly, one night, woke up with a piercing pain, a most irresistible tenderness and longing for him.

“How could I have been so heartless!” she asked herself, sitting up in bed, and clasping her hands hysterically. “What did it matter, what he did? What do I care about that? Lionel! Darling! I want you back so!”

She got up then and there and wrote to him, addressing it in care of Horace.

V

He came the next evening. Quite in accordance with his extreme character he had in ten days’ time become unnecessarily wretched and shabby in looks and manners. He was even thinner.

He had looked and looked for a job, he said, but no one would have an inexperienced man of his age. He was in despair. So that Frances could not for an instant maintain her injured majesty, but had to comfort and fortify him, even to cry over him a little.

“Don’t be discouraged!” she entreated, stroking his hair. “Poor old boy!”

“But I haven’t a penny! I used that money in the bank. I’ve moved into a cheap boarding-house. But still I can’t manage. And my remittance doesn’t come until January.”