_ CHAPTER XVII. ANGIE SCORES
"I was sorry to have missed you at my sister's, although I do not think you would have welcomed my appearance!" laughed Kearn Thode. "I was striped with plaster like a savage in war paint."
"I had the pleasure of seeing the other victim of that motor accident," Willa remarked demurely. "He was even less prepossessing than usual. I--I knew something of what occurred as I think you could understand from my note. I think that I have again to thank you for your championship."
They were sitting out a dance in the Allardyce's conservatory at their first meeting the night of the Erskine dinner and for some reason speech was difficult to them both. Her eyes, usually so candid, were veiled from him, but Thode swept her with a hungrily wistful gaze.
"You are mistaken. You have nothing to thank me for. I am sorry that any idle gossip reached your ears, but believe me, no other course was open to me. No man could have helped himself--"
"Oh, I understand, of course." Willa blundered helplessly in her haste. "You would have done as much, under the same circumstances, for any other girl, but it is good to feel that there are real men in the world who will protect the name of a friend as though it were that of an own sister."
"It wasn't exactly that, Willa." His voice was very low and his eyes had dropped from her face. "A man would naturally resent any insinuation against a good woman, whether she were his sister or not. There is only one woman in the world for whom a man fights with the primitive blind rage of a human creature for his mate: only, fool that he is, he does not always recognize the feeling which consumes him for what it really is."
He paused, and Willa, too, was silent, but she feared that the very beating of her heart would be audible to his ears. The dreamy waltz had given way to the syncopation of a fox-trot, yet neither was aware of the passing minutes.
"I was blind in Limasito!" he went on. "No woman has come deeply into my life except my sister and I did not know, I did not realize what you had come to mean to me in our few meetings until you were going away into this new existence which was awaiting you, and then I could not speak. I did not follow you then because I had nothing to offer, but I made up my mind to succeed in what I had set out to do, if honest endeavor and the hardest kind of work could achieve it and then, if I were not too late, I meant to come to you and ask you to be my wife."
Willa stirred tremulously, but still her lips were dumb, and Thode misinterpreted her silence.
"Please, don't be afraid!" he assured her, bitterly. "I am not going to ask you that now, for I have failed! I'm not even going to ask you to wait for me, to give me any hope, for I am losing faith in myself; not in my love for you, Willa, but in the success which alone would make it possible for me to approach you. I only wanted you to know that I had awakened to the truth. No girl was ever yet displeased at one more victim bound to her chariot wheels."
"I am not displeased, but I--I am distressed!" Willa stammered through stiffened lips. "You think because I accepted the name and the fortune of the grandfather I never knew, and apparently forgot the old life and all that Dad had done for me, that I am just coldly mercenary! You think I am that sort, ambitious and pushing and soulless! I thought you knew and understood me, I thought that we were friends!"
"That, I hope, we shall always be," he said gently. "It would have been quixotic, absurd for you to refuse the golden opportunity when it came. I did not think of that, nor did I believe you mercenary. I did not mean to whine about my failure, either; it was the chance of fortune and I have lost. You will forgive my having spoken--I had to tell you! I could not keep silent any longer, it was as if you, all unconsciously, were twisting the heart from my breast. You could not help it if you wanted to, you are so sweet, so wonderful! Please, don't be sorry for me, either, it is the greatest thing that ever happened to me and I shall be glad of it, always, even when I have to stand aside and see you turn to a better, bigger man. No matter what happens I shall, all my life through, be at your service."
"Oh, I am not the least bit sorry for you!" Willa cried. "I am exasperated with you! Do you suppose I am the sort of woman to care what a man has, rather than what he is? Am I a painted pampered doll that I must be approached with gifts and sweets and dangled before the highest bidder? My mother married the man she loved and starved with him and died working to take care of his child! Am I less a woman than she?"
"Willa!" He breathed her name in a fervent whisper and caught her two hands in his. "Willa, look at me!"
She raised her blazing eyes and the flame died to a soft luminous glow, while the rich color mantled to her brow.
"Willa, do you mean that you care, really?--Oh, I vowed I would not ask you until I had proved myself worthy, and now, when everything is at a standstill, an impasse, and you yourself have warned me of the impossibility of winning out in my plan for the future, I--I forget all my resolutions! It is unfair for me to speak now, it is not playing the game, but will you tell me at least that you won't be displeased with me if sometime I come to you, when I have won the right? I will ask no promise now, I cannot, but if I could know that you cared ever so little--"
"How can you know if--if you don't ask?" Willa's downright honesty had gotten the better of her timidity and with characteristic fearlessness she disclosed all that was in her own wildly throbbing heart. "I don't know how a man could prove himself more worthy of any woman than by taking his life in his hands on a hundred-to-one chance of saving hers! I don't know what difference the loss or finding of the Pool makes in the happiness of you and me. Go ahead and make a martyr of yourself over your silly pride if you want to! If I thought you didn't care, that you were just trying to carry on the ghastly game they call flirtation up here, I wouldn't be so angry with you. I'm not Willa Murdaugh down inside of me, and you know it!--I'm just Gentleman Geoff's Billie, a waif raised by the greatest-hearted man that ever lived, but I've got some pride myself. I don't want any man who hasn't s-spunk enough to ask me!"
"Willa! Oh, my dearest, will you--!"
"Here comes Winnie Mason!" She drew her hands from his and sprang up with a nervous tinkle of laughter. "That means we've missed three dances, and you were to have had two of them with Angie! You'll be in for a dreadful panning--"
"You wicked little--adorable little--girl o' mine!" he exclaimed softly, as Winnie's mildly inquiring face appeared around a narrow alley between the close-packed flowering plants. "I'm coming to-morrow, before breakfast--"
Willa shook her head, the light waning in her eyes.
"No, not to-morrow, Kearn. There is something that I must do, something I cannot put aside even--even for you."
"In the evening, then? I must see you to-morrow sometime! It's going to be hard enough to live through to-night!"
She nodded, and, not trusting herself to speak again, turned and slipped away to meet Winnie Mason.
That placidly dense young man was mightily pleased with the effusive greeting with which she favored him, and had she vision enough to note it, she might have read in his worshiping eyes a like message to that which she had just heard.
But she was blind, dazed in the light of her own swiftly gained wondrous happiness. The music, the dancers, the little crystal-laden supper-tables, the final romp all passed in a kaleidoscopic dream before her, and only the wintry night wind beating upon her in a frigid blast, as she stepped from the awninged passage-way to the limousine, awakened her to a sense of reality.
Just then, the flash of a street-lamp in at the window fell for a passing moment on Angie's face as she sat half-turned from her cousin and Willa caught her breath to stifle a sudden startled exclamation. She had seen Angie in many fits of temper, sullen and raging, but never had the girl's expression been so fiendish! The doll-like beauty was gone in a distortion of anger, but there was a suggestion of malignant triumph, too, which aroused Willa's apprehension.
She knew that in her heart Angie despised her as an upstart and bitterly resented her small success in the social world, beside blaming her for the episode with Starr Wiley. She remembered, too, how Angie had betrayed her to him. In her maddening anxiety for Tia Juana's safety, Willa had given no thought to the means Wiley must have used to reinstate himself once more in her cousin's willing eyes.
Was this evidence of fury directed against her because she had been the unwitting cause of Kearn Thode's defection in the matter of the two dances, or was something deeper and more significant in the wind?
Willa was not left in doubt for long. She had scarcely finished her preparations for the night and was braiding her long black hair into a massive rope, when a light, brittle tapping came upon her door.
Almost before the wondering assent had left her lips, Angie slipped in and stood before her. She was still in her spangled dance frock and her round blue eyes were snapping fire.
"I suppose I have come on a thankless mission, Willa," she began. "Every time I have tried to help you or teach you anything, you have looked on it, in your spiteful way, as mere jealousy on my part, although why I should be jealous of you, heaven only knows!"
"Please, Angelica! We have had all this out before and I am very tired. Would you mind if I asked you to wait until morning?" Willa gave her hair a final twist and turned from the mirror. "I am honestly sorry Kearn Thode missed those dances with you to-night, but it really wasn't my fault--"
"Do you suppose I wanted to dance with him?" Angie interrupted in immense scorn. "I only permitted him to put his name down on my card in ordinary courtesy because of his sister; she has such a caustic tongue that one must keep on the right side of her. If he chose to ignore his dances with me it was because he was playing a game which you, you conceited little simpleton, couldn't see through. Oh, I heard what he said to you in the conservatory--!"
"You listened!" Willa turned on her at last. "Lord, what a miserable specimen of a girl you are, anyhow! I knew you were spying about and listening at my heels here at home to learn what you could and run with it to the man who's making a tool of you and a fool besides, but I didn't think you were so low down as to skulk about and pry into affairs which are no concern of yours! Is nothing sacred to you?"
"I was only doing my duty!" Angie returned loftily. Then her consuming rage got the better of her once more. "You dare to speak of anyone making a tool of me! It is you who are waiting for anyone's hand! Starr Wiley made a fool of you, and you simpered and purred and thought you were taking him from me, when he was only amusing himself for the moment because he was jealous of me with Art. Judson! Now, in your bursting conceit you think this impecunious fortune-hunter, Thode, is in love with you. I listened because it was my duty to keep any member of the family from throwing herself away and I wanted to see how far he would dare to go. I'm here now to tell you the truth."
"I do not want to hear another word!" Willa cried hotly. "It is no affair of yours and you shall not speak of Kearn Thode as a--a fortune-hunter! He is the only real man in this whole spindling, self-seeking, artificial crowd! If you listened, you know how proud and independent he is!"
"I heard, but that was only his cleverness; he knew how eager you were and he simply led you on to almost propose to him yourself! That was good stuff about not knowing he cared for you down in Mexico until you were leaving. What would you say if I were to tell you that he made a deliberate play for you from the moment he reached that town? Oh, he's serious enough! He'll marry you if he can; that's what he meant to do from the first."
"I think you must be mad!" Willa stared at her cousin in sheer wonder. "Why should he have wanted to marry me? There were lots of other girls in town----"
"Because he knew who you really were all the time! He knew before Mason North ever found you, and he knew, too, what a fortune you were coming into. You needn't look at me like that, I know what I am talking about!"
"I don't think you do," Willa remarked simply. "You must have taken leave of your senses or else Starr Wiley has been making you believe the silliest sort of lies. How could Kearn Thode have known who I was? No one did but--but the man who had made me his own daughter, and he would not tell me because he did not want to hurt me by letting me know what mean, contemptible snobs my people were and how they had served my own father for marrying my brave mother! Kearn Thode knew nothing!"
"What if I were to show you proof? Here is a letter in his own hand, telling all about you and what he meant to do." Angie pulled a crumpled wad of paper from her bodice and held it out, her whole body quivering in triumph. "Read it and then you'll know whether he cares for you or not! Read it, I say!"
"And I say to you that if you don't leave this room at once I will ring and have you put out! Don't you imagine that I can see through a scurvy trick of Starr Wiley's to get back at the man who beat him twice to a mere pulp? I do not want to see the letter, I will not read it. It is all a lie!"
"Then listen!" Angie smoothed the sheet of paper and fairly danced in her excitement. "You shall listen! You shall know what that man is scheming to marry you for! There is only a part of it here, but it ought to be enough to open your eyes, blinded with conceit as you are!"
"I will not----!" Willa began indignantly, but Angie's voice silenced her.
"----'Except for him, of course, no one here knows her real name'," she read, "'and it wouldn't mean anything to them if they did, but I spotted her at once and later events have only proved the truth of my suspicions. She is the undoubted owner of almost boundless wealth and when I have gone after her and won her consent----'"
"Stop!" Willa clapped her hands to her ears. "I will not listen to one more word! It is a lie, I tell you! A lie!"
"There isn't any more," Angie announced with a sly grimace. "That is the bottom of the page, but it ought to be enough for you."
"Kearn Thode never wrote a word of it!" exclaimed Willa passionately. "I would not believe you if you swore it from now till you die! Go, before I make you!"
"Oh, I'm going." Angie shrugged, and the letter fluttered from her fingers to the floor. "I've no desire for a disgraceful brawl, I assure you! Of course, I am not familiar with Kearn Thode's handwriting, but I have proof enough to satisfy me that the letter is his. If you marry him now, you will have bought him with your eyes open and have no one but yourself to blame if you're not pleased with your bargain! I have done my duty anyway, my dear cousin. Good-night."
Her footsteps died away down the hall, and Willa dropped into a low chair before the hearth, covering her face with her hands. It was Just a trick of Wiley's, of course! She would not let her gaze stray to that tell-tale sheet of white paper upon the floor, and yet something seemed to draw her eyes to it with an almost physical strength.
Wiley must have written it himself and put it in Angie's hands to work what mischief she might with it. There could be no harm in one glance at it; a glance which would prove instantly its falseness, just as she knew it in her heart to be at best a forgery.
Slowly Willa rose and step by step made her way to where the letter lay. She made no effort to touch it at first, but it had fallen with the written side uppermost and gradually as she stared down at it the scorn in her face gave way to wonder and then despair.
The brief note she had received from Kearn Thode, after he had thrashed Wiley at the club, was engraved deep in her thoughts with every line distinct and the characters on the paper before her eyes were so similar in every detail that it seemed impossible for them not to have been fashioned by the same hand.
With grief and horror surging in her heart, Willa rushed to the little drawer of her dressing-table where the first note had been treasured, and drew it forth. Then, seizing the other paper from the floor, she held them beneath the glow of the lamp with shaking hands and compared them.
The next minute she had crumpled them both fiercely and cast them from her, flinging herself across her bed in a paroxysm of bitter grief and disillusionment.
Kearn Thode had written both letters; there could be no longer doubt. He was like all the rest! Truth and chivalry departed from the world and her shattered dream, and once more Willa found herself alone, but in a depth of solitude she had never known before. Love had gone. _