_ She laughed again--in her way, so that he could not tell whether she
was laughing at him or at herself or at the nonsense she was talking;
and she said: "But you see I don't care whether I get away with it
or not. I wish you'd tell me frankly if you think I've got a change
to get away with YOU?"
"More like if you've got a chance to get away FROM me!" Jim was
inspired to reply. "Not one in the world, especially after beginning
by making fun of me like that."
"I mightn't be so much in fun as you think," she said, regarding him
with sudden gravity.
"Well," said Jim, in simple honesty, "you're a funny girl!"
Her gravity continued an instant longer. "I may not turn out to be
funny for YOU."
"So long as you turn out to be anything at all for me, I expect I can
manage to be satisfied." And with that, to his own surprise, it was
his turn to blush, whereupon she laughed again.
"Yes," he said, plaintively, not wholly lacking intuition, "I can see
you're the sort of girl that would laugh the minute you see a man
really means anything!"
"'Laugh'!" she cried, gaily. "Why, it might be a matter of life and
death! But if you want tragedy, I'd better put the question at once,
considering the mistake I made with your brother."
Jim was dazed. She seemed to be playing a little game of mockery
and nonsense with him, but he had glimpses of a flashing danger in
it; he was but too sensible of being outclassed, and had somewhere a
consciousness that he could never quite know this giddy and alluring
lady, no matter how long it pleased her to play with him. But he
mightily wanted her to keep on playing with him.
"Put what question?" he said, breathlessly.
"As you are a new neighbor of mine and of my family," she returned,
speaking slowly and with a cross-examiner's severity, "I think it
would be well for me to know at once whether you are already walking
out with any young lady or not. Mr. Sheridan, think well! Are you
spoken for?"
"Not yet," he gasped. "Are you?"
"NO!" she cried, and with that they both laughed again; and the
pastime proceeded, increasing both in its gaiety and in its gravity.
Observing its continuance, Mr. Robert Lamhorn, opposite, turned from
a lively conversation with Edith and remarked covertly to Sibyl that
Miss Vertrees was "starting rather picturesquely with Jim." And he
added, languidly, "Do you suppose she WOULD?"
For the moment Sibyl gave no sign of having heard him, but seemed
interested in the clasp of a long "rope" of pearls, a loop of which
she was allowing to swing from her fingers, resting her elbow upon the
table and following with her eyes the twinkle of diamonds and platinum
in the clasp at the end of the loop. She wore many jewels. She was
pretty, but hers was not the kind of prettiness to be loaded with too
sumptuous accessories, and jeweled head-dresses are dangerous--they
may emphasize the wrongness of the wearer.
"I said Miss Vertrees seems to be starting pretty strong with Jim,"
repeated Mr. Lamhorn.
"I heard you." There was a latent discontent always somewhere in her
eyes, no matter what she threw upon the surface of cover it, and just
now she did not care to cover it; she looked sullen. "Starting any
stronger than you did with Edith?" she inquired.
"Oh, keep the peace!" he said, crossly. "That's off, of course."
"You haven't been making her see it this evening--precisely," said
Sibyl, looking at him steadily. "You've talked to her for--"
"For Heaven's sake," he begged, "keep the peace!"
"Well, what have you just been doing?"
"SH!" he said. "Listen to your father-in-law."
Sheridan was booming and braying louder than ever, the orchestra
having begun to play "The Rosary," to his vast content.
"I COUNT THEM OVER, LA-LA-TUM-TEE-DUM," he roared, beating the
measures with his fork. "EACH HOUR A PEARL, EACH PEARL TEE-DUM-
TUM-DUM--What's the matter with all you folks? Why'n't you SING?
Miss Vertrees, I bet a thousand dollars YOU sing! Why'n't--"
"Mr. Sheridan," she said, turning cheerfully from the ardent Jim,
"you don't know what you interrupted! Your son isn't used to my
rough ways, and my soldier's wooing frightens him, but I think he
was about to say something important."
"I'll say something important to him if he doesn't!" the father
threatened, more delighted with her than ever. "By gosh! if I was
his age--or a widower right NOW--"
"Oh, wait!" cried Mary. "If they'd only make less noice! I want
Mrs. Sheridan to hear."
"She'd say the same," he shouted. "She'd tell me I was mighty slow
if I couldn't get ahead o' Jim. Why, when I was his age--"
"You must listen to your father," Mary interrupted, turning to Jim,
who had grown read again. "He's going to tell us how, when he was
your age, he made those two blades of grass grow out of a teacup--and
you could see for yourself he didn't get them out of his sleeve!"
At that Sheridan pounded the table till it jumped. "Look here, young
lady!" he roared. "Some o' these days I'm either goin' to slap you--
or I'm goin' to kiss you!"
Edith looked aghast; she was afraid this was indeed "too awful," but
Mary Vertrees burst into ringing laughter.
"Both!" she cried. "Both! The one to make me forget the other!"
"But which--" he began, and then suddenly gave forth such stentorian
trumpetings of mirth that for once the whole table stopped to listen.
"Jim," he roared, "if you don't propose to that girl to-night I'll
send you back to the machine-shop with Bibbs!"
And Bibbs--down among the retainers by the sugar Pump Works, and
watching Mary Vertrees as a ragged boy in the street might watch a
rich little girl in a garden--Bibbs heard. He heard--and he knew
what his father's plans were now.
Mrs. Vertrees "sat up" for her daughter, Mr. Vertrees having retired
after a restless evening, not much soothed by the society of his
Landseers. Mary had taken a key, insisting that he should not come
for her and seeming confident that she would not lack for escort; nor
did the sequel prove her confidence unwarranted. But Mrs. Vertrees
had a long vigil of it.
She was not the woman to make herself easy--no servant had ever seen
her in a wrapper--and with her hair and dress and her shoes just what
they had been when she returned from the afternoon's call, she sat
through the slow night hours in a stiff little chair under the
gaslight in her own room, which was directly over the "front hall."
There, book in hand, she employed the time in her own reminiscences,
though it was her belief that she was reading Madame de Remusat's.
Her thoughts went backward into her life and into her husband's; and
the deeper into the past they went, the brighter the pictures they
brought her--and there is tragedy. Like her husband, she thought
backward because she did not dare think forward definitely. What
thinking forward this troubled couple ventured took the form of a
slender hope which neither of them could have borne to hear put in
words, and yet they had talked it over, day after day, from the very
hour when they heard Sheridan was to build his New House next door.
For--so quickly does any ideal of human behavior become an antique
--their youth was of the innocent old days, so dead! of "breeding"
and "gentility," and no craft had been more straitly trained upon
them than that of talking about things without mentioning them.
Herein was marked the most vital difference between Mr. and Mrs.
Vertrees and their big new neighbor. Sheridan, though his youth
was of the same epoch, knew nothing of such matters. He had been
chopping wood for the morning fire in the country grocery while they
were still dancing.
It was after one o'clock when Mrs. Vertrees heard steps and the
delicate clinking of the key in the lock, and then, with the opening
of the door, Mary's laugh, and "Yes--if you aren't afraid--to-morrow!"
The door closed, and she rushed up-stairs, bringing with her a breath
of cold and bracing air into her mother's room. "Yes," she said,
before Mrs. Vertrees could speak, "he brought me home!"
She let her cloak fall upon the bed, and, drawing an old red-velvet
rocking-chair forward, sat beside her mother after giving her a light
pat upon the shoulder and a hearty kiss upon the cheek.
"Mamma!" Mary exclaimed, when Mrs. Vertrees had expressed a hope that
she had enjoyed the evening and had not caught cold. "Why don't you
ask me?"
This inquiry obviously made her mother uncomfortable. "I don't--"
she faltered. "Ask you what, Mary?"
"How I got along and what he's like."
"Mary!"
"Oh, it isn't distressing!" said Mary. "And I got along so fast--"
She broke off to laugh; continuing then, "But that's the way I went
at it, of course. We ARE in a hurry, aren't we?"
"I don't know what you mean," Mrs. Vertrees insisted, shaking her
head plaintively.
"Yes," said Mary, "I'm going out in his car with him to-morrow
afternoon, and to the theater the next night--but I stopped it there.
You see, after you give the first push, you must leave it to them
while YOU pretend to run away!"
"My dear, I don't know what to--"
"What to make of anything!" Mary finished for her. "So that's all
right! Now I'll tell you all about it. It was gorgeous and deafening
and tee-total. We could have lived a year on it. I'm not good at
figures, but I calculated that if we lived six months on poor old
Charlie and Ned and the station-wagon and the Victoria, we could
manage at least twice as long on the cost of the 'house-warming.'
I think the orchids alone would have lasted us a couple of months.
There they were, before me, but I couldn't steal 'em and sell 'em,
and so--well, so I did what I could!" _