The Blue Window/Chapter 8
MERIWEATHER never forgot the picture which they presented, father and daughter, so much alike, facing each other across the little table—Hildegarde's cheeks blazing, Carew's eyes hard. The young secretary knew what it meant when Carew's eyes were like that. In such a mood he would say bitter things, sarcastic things, cruel things sometimes, things he would regret.
Hildegarde, slim as a young birch in her white wool frock, stood up. "I'm sorry it has all ended like this."
"Ended!" The word seemed to ring through the room.
The three of them were standing now, and Carew was saying, "I am sorry you care more for this boy than for me."
"Daddy, it isn't that."
"But why should you want so much to have him here?"
"Because he was my friend and mother's."
"You've said that before. Yet your mother sent you to me, to share my life, to cut away from old associations."
"Mother would never have had me ungrateful."
"But don't I deserve something?"
Hildegarde regarded him with troubled eyes. "Yes. You do. You've given me a lovely home and a lot of pretty things. But if you haven't given me love, it doesn't amount to anything."
"Why should you say that I don't love you?"
"Because if you did, you wouldn't let me go."
"I won't let you go, if you'll give up this Crispin."
Meriweather was conscious of a surge of blood in his body. So that was the cause of it all—the boy of whom she had spoken on their ride together. Did he mean, then, so much to her? So much that she would leave her father? Well, the thing must not happen. He did not want to face the days ahead without Hildegarde.
"Oh, look here," he broke out boyishly, "I suppose it isn't any of my business, but what has happened?"
"Daddy won't let me invite Crispin here."
"Are you engaged to him, Hildegarde?"
"No."
"Good. I almost had heart failure at the thought of it. As Sally would say, 'Who would ride with me 'n everything,' if you found the One Man?"
"It is not a matter to be joked about," Hildegarde reminded him coldly. "You'd find plenty of people to ride with. And Crispin isn't the One Man. He's my friend. I've known him all my life."
"But he's in love with you," Carew interposed.
"Daddy, please! It isn't quite fair, is it? Merry isn't interested in what Crispin thinks of me."
"Oh, but I am. We both are, your father and I—we're jealous."
Carew whirled around on him. "Do you think I could be jealous of a country clod?"
"Oh," Hildegarde's voice was low and deep with anger, "Crispin's not a clod. He's—beautiful. He's like a young god out there under the wide skies."
She was so much in earnest that her poetic exaggeration took on an effect of dignity. There was dignity, too, in the way she left them, her head up, without a word.
When the two men were alone, Meriweather said, leaning forward and looking into the fire, "If she were mine, I would never let her go."
"It's not your affair, Merry. If she doesn't care any more for me that that—"
"She does care for you. But she won't be dictated to. It's your own blood, Louis."
Carew was held by that. "Yes, she's like me. That's why she means so much to me. She's bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh."
"Yet you are letting her go?"
"But what can I do?"
"Let her have him here. It is much simpler. She will see him then away from the wide skies which make him—beautiful." A faint smile curled on Meriweather's lip. "Distance lends enchantment. When she compares him with your friends, there may be disillusionment."
"You mean that he won't fit in, and she'll know it?"
"Yes."
"If I thought that, I'd let her have her way."
"Let her have it, Louis. Go up and tell her now. You may have to eat humble pie. But it will do you good, and the game is worth it."
Upstairs Hildegarde was flying from the closet to the bed, from the bed to her trunk, with armfuls of dresses and hats and lingerie. She was packing violently, the tears streaming down her face.
She was acting as she had never acted in her life, impulsively, heatedly. But then no one had ever hurt her in quite the way that her father's words had hurt. She felt that she must get away at once, before she thought of how happy she had been that morning when Delia was singing in the bathroom; before she thought of her mood when she had said "darling," and "darling," and "darling." Would she ever again call her father "darling"? Would her heart ever stop aching?
She threw herself across the bed sobbing. She had locked the door. No one must come in, not even Delia, until this storm within herself subsided.
There was a knock on the door. "Hildegarde."
It was her father's voice. She sat up. "Yes?"
"Let me in."
She looked about her at the wild confusion. The mirror showed her tear-stained face, her disordered hair. How could she let him in? Yet how could she shut him out? So she opened the door.
And when he saw her, something within him broke—the hardness. Downstairs, with Meriweather, he had thought himself a diplomat, gaining his own ends while seeming to yield. But he knew now that he must yield even if he did not gain his end. The child was so young and sweet and unhappy. And in this room years ago had been another child-woman, sweet and young and despairing. And he had let her go.
Well, Hildegarde should not leave him. He gathered her into his arms.
"I've been a brute—"
"Daddy—"
"I want you here, Hildegarde. At any price. You're mine."
Meriweather, downstairs by the library fire, felt that he had used Machiavellian tactics. It was not fair, perhaps, to Hildegarde, but it had seemed the only way. He had had to reach back to Carew's egotism. Make him see the advantages.
As for himself, he wondered how he felt about this young god of Hildegarde's. Was she in love with him? And if she was, what had happened to him, Meriweather, that the thought stabbed him like a sword?
Miss Anne, trailing down presently in a tea-gown of bronze satin, demanded: "What in the world is the matter? Louis is in Hildegarde's room, and I heard her crying."
Meriweather told her.
"Oh, the idiot!" was Miss Anne's comment. "Doesn't he know that opposition simply fans the flame in an affair like this?"
"He wanted his own way."
"He always wants it."
"He listened to reason finally, when I insisted that he let the boy come. Hildegarde may find him less attractive in a more sophisticated atmosphere."
Miss Anne, tapping a restless foot on the fender, asked, "Why should any one want to be sophisticated?"
"Whether we want to be or not, this boy's crudeness may show up against it."
"That doesn't sound in the least like you, Merry."
He flushed. "I'm being perfectly frank with you. I don't want her to love him."
She surveyed him with open eyes. "So that's it. You've fallen in love with her yourself."
"Perhaps I have not gone quite that far. But I know this, that I don't want any one else to have her."
Miss Anne threw up her hands in a little gesture of despair. "Life is like the House that Jack Built—Sally is in love with you, you are in love with Hildegarde, Hildegarde is in love with Crispin—"
He smiled at her. "I fancy that none of us has gone as far as you think."
"But you have gone far enough." Miss Anne sat staring into the fire. Years ago, family pride had separated her from the man she wanted to marry. Because of that, her life was incomplete. "I'll have nothing to do with Hildegarde's love-affairs," she declared. "Let her choose for herself."
"By all means," Meriweather agreed. "And now, shall we talk about Louis? You said this morning that you wanted a minute with me to discuss him."
"I am worried about his finances. This Christmas party seems to me a mad extravagance. He can't afford it, Merry."
"He says he might as well be killed for a sheep as a lamb."
"But what does he expect to get out of it?"
"Winslow wanted it. He can meet the people here who will help him—socially and politically."
"But can Louis stand the expense?"
"Yes, Winslow gave him a check for the whole thing."
Miss Anne blazed. "Do you mean that Louis is being paid for his hospitality?"
"It really isn't so bad as it sounds. Winslow wanted what Louis couldn't afford, so he put up the money."
"Oh, why didn't he come to me? I'd gladly pay his bills."
"He may have to come to you yet. He's talking about that villa in Italy for the three of you."
"I wish he'd go. Get away from Winslow, get rid of this house, look his poverty straight in the face, and find some way to rise on the wreck of his fortunes."
Meriweather nodded. "I know how you feel about it. But I know how he feels, too. Life has taken a lot out of him. The war did that for me. It was such a cataclysm that after it nothing seemed worth while. I was glad of a safe harbor here with Louis. And so I have stayed and let the world go by. But lately I have felt the stirrings of ambition. I want something for myself—a future and a name."
"Knowing Hildegarde has made you feel that way?" Miss Anne demanded.
"Yes."
Miss Anne's response was indirect. "Poor Sally, I am afraid her goose is cooked."
He laughed. "Sally isn't in earnest. You know that. If she cared, she'd never tell it."
"Yes, she would. The modern girl flings out her emotions like a banner to the breeze. She shouts them from the housetop, and sometimes her vociferousness wins."
"Sally is the moon, Hildegarde is the sun," he stated simply. "I might as well tell you. This thing has got me. My lance is against Crispin, and I shall beat him if I can. I am in the fight in earnest, and I shall stay in it until the best man wins."