_ CHAPTER IV. "HE ISN'T LIKE US"
Margaret continued to sit there, her elbows on the dressing-table, her knuckles pressing into her cheeks, the hazel eyes gazing at their reflection in the mirror. "What is it in me," she said to her image, "that makes me less successful at drawing men to the point than so many girls who are no better looking than I?" And she made an inventory of her charms that was creditably free from vanity. "And men certainly like to talk to me," she pursued. "The fish bite, but the hook doesn't hold. Perhaps--probably--I'm not sentimental enough. I don't simper and pretend innocence and talk tommy rot--and listen to it as if I were eating honey."
This explanation was not altogether satisfactory, however. She felt that, if she had a certain physical something, which she must lack, nothing else would matter--nothing she said or did. It was baffling; for, there, before her eyes were precisely the charms of feature and figure that in other women, in far less degree, had set men, many men, quite beside themselves. Her lip curled, and her eyes laughed satirically as she thought of the follies of those men--how they had let women lead them up and down in public places, drooling and sighing and seeming to enjoy their own pitiful plight. If that expression of satire had not disappeared so quickly, she might have got at the secret of her "miserable failure." For, it was her habit of facing men with only lightly veiled amusement, or often frank ridicule, in her eyes, in the curve of her lips, that frightened them off, that gave them the uneasy sense that their assumptions of superiority to the female were being judged and derided.
But time was flying. It was after three; the headache was still pounding in her temples, and her eyes did look almost as haggard and her skin almost as sallow as her grandmother had said. She took an anti-pyrene powder from a box in her dressing-table, threw off all her clothes, swathed herself in a long robe of pale-blue silk. She locked the door into the hall, and went into her bedroom, closed the door between. She put the powder in water, drank it, dropped down upon a lounge at the foot of her bed and covered herself. The satin pillow against her cheek, the coolness and softness of the silk all along and around her body, were deliciously soothing. Her blood beat less fiercely, and somber thoughts drew slowly away into a vague cloud at the horizon of her mind. Lying there, with senses soothed by luxury and deadened to pain by the drug, she felt so safe, so shut-in against all intrusion. In a few hours the struggle, the bitterness would begin again; but at least here was this interval of repose, of freedom. Only when she was thus alone did she ever get that most voluptuous of all sensations--freedom. Freedom and luxury! "I'm afraid I can't eat my cake and have it, too," she mused drowsily. "Well-- whether or not I can have freedom, at least I MUST have luxury. I'm afraid Grant can't give me nearly all I want--who could? ... If I had the courage--Craig could make more than Grant has, if he were put to it. I'm sure he could. I'm sure he could do almost anything--but be attractive to a woman. No, Craig is too strong a dose--besides, there's the risk. Grant is safest. Better a small loaf than--than no Paris dresses."
Arkwright, entering Mrs. Severence's drawing-room with Craig at half-past five, found a dozen people there. Most of them were of that young married set which Margaret preferred, to the anger and disgust of her grandmother and against the entreaties of her own common sense. "The last place in the world to look for a husband," Madam Bowker had said again and again, to both her daughter and her granddaughter. "Their talk is all in ridicule of marriage, and of every sacred thing. And if there are any bachelors, they have come--well, certainly not in search of honorable wedlock."
The room was noisily gay; but Margaret, at the tea-table in a rather somber brown dress with a big brown hat, whose great plumes shadowed her pale, somewhat haggard face, was evidently not in one of her sparkling moods. The headache powder and the nap had not been successful. She greeted Arkwright with a slight, absent smile, seemed hardly to note Craig, as Arkwright presented him.
"Sit down here beside Miss Severence," Grant said.
"Yes, do," acquiesced Margaret; and Joshua thought her cold and haughty, an aristocrat of the unapproachable type, never natural and never permitting others to be natural.
"And tell her all about yourself," continued Grant.
"My friend Josh, here," he explained to Margaret, "is one of those serious, absorbed men who concentrate entirely upon themselves. It isn't egotism; it's genius."
Craig was ruffled and showed it. He did not like persiflage; it seemed an assault upon dignity, and in those early days in Washington he was full of dignity and of determination to create a dignified impression. He reared haughtily and looked about with arrogant, disdainful eyes.
"Will you have tea?" said Miss Severence, as Arkwright moved away.
"No, thanks," replied Craig. "Tea's for the women and the children."
Miss Severence's expression made him still more uncomfortable. "Well," said she, "if you should feel dry as you tell me about yourself, there's whiskey over on that other table. A cigarette? No? I'm afraid I can't ask you to have a cigar--"
"And take off my coat, and put my feet up, and be at home!" said Craig. "I see you think I'm a boor."
"Don't you want people to think you a boor?" inquired she with ironic seriousness.
He looked at her sharply. "You're laughing at me," he said, calmly. "Now, wouldn't it be more ladylike for you to try to put me at my ease? I'm in your house, you know."
Miss Severence flushed. "I beg your pardon," she said. "I did not mean to offend."
"No," replied Craig. "You simply meant to amuse yourself with me. And because I don't know what to do with my hands and because my coat fits badly, you thought I wouldn't realize what you were doing. You are very narrow--you fashionable people. You don't even know that everybody ought to be judged on his own ground. To size up a race-horse, you don't take him into a drawing room. And it wouldn't be quite fair, would it, for me to judge these drawing- room dolls by what they could do out among real men and women? You--for instance. How would you show up, if you had to face life with no husband and no money and five small children, as my mother did? Well, SHE won out."
Miss Severence was not attracted; but she was interested. She saw beyond the ill-fitting frock-coat, and the absurd manner, thoroughly ill at ease, trying to assume easy, nonchalant man-of- the-world airs. "I'd never have thought of judging you except on your own ground," said she, "if you hadn't invited the comparison."
"You mean, by getting myself up in these clothes and coming here?"
"Yes."
"You're right, young lady," said Craig, clapping her on the arm, and waving an energetic forefinger almost in her face. "And as soon as I can decently get away, I'll go. I told Arkwright I had no business to come here."
Miss Severance colored, drew her arm away, froze. She detested all forms of familiarity; physical familiarity she abhorred. "You have known Grant Arkwright long?" she said, icily.
"NOW, what have I done?" demanded Joshua.
She eyed him with a lady's insolent tranquillity. "Nothing," replied she. "We are all so glad Grant has come back."
Craig bit his lip and his tawny, weather-beaten skin reddened. He stared with angry envy at Arkwright, so evidently at ease and at home in the midst of a group on the other side of the room. In company, practically all human beings are acutely self-conscious. But self-consciousness is of two kinds. Arkwright, assured that his manners were correct and engaging, that his dress was all it should be, or could be, that his position was secure and admired, had the self-consciousness of self-complacence. Joshua's consciousness of himself was the extreme of the other kind--like a rat's in a trap.
"You met Mr. Arkwright out West--out where you live?"
"Yes," said Craig curtly, almost surlily.
"I was out there once," pursued the young woman, feeling that in her own house she must do her best with the unfortunate young man. "And, curiously enough, I heard you speak. We all admired you very much."
Craig cheered up instantly; he was on his own ground now. "How long ago?" he asked.
"Three years; two years last September."
"Oh, I was a mere boy then. You ought to hear me now."
And Joshua launched forth into a description of his oratory, then related how he had won over juries in several important cases. His arms, his hands were going, his eyes were glistening, his voice had that rich, sympathetic tone which characterizes the egotist when the subject is himself. Miss Severence listened without comment; indeed, he was not sure that she was listening, so conventional was her expression. But, though she was careful to keep her face a blank, her mind was busy. Surely not since the gay women of Barras's court laughed at the megalomaniac ravings of a noisy, badly dressed, dirty young lieutenant named Buonaparte, had there been a vanity so candid, so voluble, so obstreperous. Nor did he talk of himself in a detached way, as if he were relating the performances and predicting the glory of a human being who happened to have the same name as himself. No, he thrust upon her in every sentence that he, he himself and none other, had said and done all these splendid startling things, would do more, and more splendid. She listened, astounded; she wondered why she did not burst out laughing in his very face, why, on the contrary, she seemed to accept to a surprising extent his own estimate of himself.
"He's a fool," thought she, "one of the most tedious fools I ever met. But I was right; he's evidently very much of a somebody. However does he get time to DO anything, when he's so busy admiring himself? How does he ever contrive to take his mind off himself long enough to think of anything else?"
Nearly an hour later Arkwright came for him, cut him off in the middle of an enthusiastic description of how he had enchained and enthralled a vast audience in the biggest hall in St. Paul. "We must go, this instant," said Arkwright. "I had no idea it was so late."
"I'll see you soon again, no doubt, Mr. Craig," said Miss Severence, polite but not cordial, as she extended her hand.
"Yes," replied Craig, holding the hand, and rudely not looking at her but at Arkwright. "You've interrupted us in a very interesting talk, Grant."
Grant and Margaret exchanged smiles, Margaret disengaged her hand, and the two men went. As they were strolling down the drive, Grant said: "Well, what did you think of her?"
"A nobody--a nothing," was Craig's wholly unexpected response. "Homely--at least insignificant. Bad color. Dull eyes. Bad manners. A poor specimen, even of this poor fashionable society of yours. An empty-head."
"Well--well--WELL!" exclaimed Arkwright in derision. "Yet you and she seemed to be getting on beautifully together."
"I did all the talking."
"You always do."
"But it was the way she listened. I felt as if I were rehearsing in a vacant room."
"Humph," grunted Arkwright.
He changed the subject. The situation was one that required thought, plan. "She's just the girl for Josh," said he to himself. "And he must take her. Of course, he's not the man for her. She couldn't care for him, not in a thousand years. What woman with a sense of humor could? But she's got to marry somebody that can give her what she must have. ... It's very important whom a man marries, but it's not at all important whom a woman marries. The world wasn't made for them, but for US!"
At Vanderman's that night he took Mrs. Tate in to dinner, but Margaret was on his left. "When does your Craig make his speech before the Supreme Court?" asked she.
He inspected her with some surprise. "Tuesday, I think. Why?"
"I promised him I'd go."
"And will you?"
"Certainly. Why not?"
This would never do. Josh would get the impression she was running after him, and would be more contemptuous than ever. "I shouldn't, if I were you."
"Why not?"
"Well, he's very vain, as you perhaps discovered. He might misunderstand."
"And why should that disturb me?" asked she, tranquilly. "I do as I please. I don't concern myself about what others think. Your friend interests me. I've a curiosity to see whether he has improved in the last two or three years as much as he says he has."
"He told you all about himself?"
"Everything--and nothing."
"That's just it!" exclaimed Arkwright, misunderstanding her. "After he has talked me into a state of collapse, every word about himself and his career, I think it all over, and wonder whether there's anything to the man or not. Sometimes I think there's a real person beneath that flow of vanity. Then, again, I think not."
"Whether he's an accident or a plan," mused the young woman; but she saw that Arkwright did not appreciate the cleverness and the penetration of her remark. Indeed, she knew in advance that he would not, for she knew his limitations. "Now," thought she, "Craig would have appreciated it--and clapped me on the arm--or knee."
"Did you like Josh?" Grant was inquiring.
"Very much, indeed."
"Of course," said Arkwright satirically.
"He has ability to do things. He has strength. ... He isn't like us."
Arkwright winced. "I'm afraid you exaggerate him, merely because he's different."
"He makes me feel an added contempt for myself, somehow. Doesn't he you?"
"I can't say he does," replied Arkwright, irritated. "I appreciate his good qualities, but I can't help being offended and disturbed for him by his crudities. He has an idea that to be polite and well-dressed is to be weak and worthless. And I can't get it out of his head."
Margaret's smile irritated him still further. "All great men are more or less rude and crude, aren't they?" said she. "They are impatient of the trifles we lay so much stress on."
"So, you think Josh is a great man?"
"I don't know," replied Margaret, with exasperating deliberateness. "I want to find out."
"And if you decide that he is, you'll marry him?"
"Perhaps. You suggested it the other day."
"In jest," said Arkwright, unaccountably angry with her, with himself, with Joshua. "As soon as I saw him in your presence, I knew it wouldn't do. It'd be giving a piece of rare, delicate porcelain to a grizzly as a plaything."
He was surprised at himself. Now that he was face to face with a possibility of her adopting his own proposition, he disliked it intensely. He looked at her; never had she seemed so alluring, so representative of what he called distinction. At the very idea of such refinement at the mercy of the coarse and boisterous Craig, his blood boiled. "Josh is a fine, splendid chap, as a man among men," said he to himself." But to marry this dainty aristocrat to him--it'd be a damned disgraceful outrage. He's not fit to marry among OUR women.... What a pity such a stunning girl shouldn't have the accessories to make her eligible." And he hastily turned his longing eyes away, lest she should see and attach too much importance to a mere longing--for, he felt it would be a pitiful weakness, a betrayal of opportunity, for him to marry, in a mood of passion that passes, a woman who was merely well born, when he had the right to demand both birth and wealth in his wife.
"I've often thought," pursued Margaret, "that to be loved by a man of the Craig sort would be--interesting."
"While being loved by one of your own sort would be dull?" suggested Arkwright with a strained smile.
Margaret shrugged her bare white shoulders in an inflammatory assent. "Will you go with me to the Supreme Court on Tuesday?"
"Delighted," said Arkwright. And he did not realize that the deep- hidden source of his enthusiasm was a belief that Josh Craig would make an ass of himself. _