The Cheat (Holman)/Chapter 5
The telephone that rested on the little stand a foot from Lucy Hodge's disheveled head tinkled insistently under the absurd French doll that covered it, and at last Lucy, blinking and yawning annoyedly in the morning sunlight drenching the room reached out a languid arm from her bed and answered.
She listened. In an instant she was wide awake—for Lucy. She questioned sharply. Finished, she thoughtfully rested the telephone upon its stand.
From the twin bed on the opposite side of the telephone table Jack Hodge was aroused to semi-consciousness.
"Jack," yawned Lucy, having recovered herself, "let this be a great lesson to you—never trust anybody. Carmelita and Dudley Drake were married ten minutes ago. That was Carmelita on the wire."
"No-o," doubted Jack stupidly. "She couldn't be such a fool."
"What I should have done, I suppose," mused Lucy to herself, ignoring him, "was to have gotten up at the unearthly hour and seen
_1.png)
her off at the station as I promised. Especially after the way she and Dudley left Rao's so abruptly last night. I might have suspected they would do something idiotic. However—"
"Never can tell about these foreigners, especially Spanish—hot-blooded, impulsive people," contributed the half-awake Jack. "Probably the Drake chap's done it for her money. Hasn't a penny, has he?"
"Not a sou. The only redeeming feature is that this absurd marriage can't last over six months at the most. Carmelita's father will be furious. I shouldn't wonder if he cut her off without a nickel. And she is such a little spendthrift. She could never be without the slightest luxury. I must tell the others."
She reached for the telephone, sleep forgotten, and played alarm clock and gossip-purveyor for a most enjoyable half hour. When it came Prince Rao-Singh's turn to hear the amazing news, he made a comment the significance of which the astute Lucy conjectured about later.
"I wonder," said the Prince dryly, "whether I should really enjoy this New York of yours—now?"
"There is only one way to find out," answered Mrs. Hodge. "Come and see."
In the meantime the newly married and gorgeously happy Mrs. Dudley Drake was with her husband in his room in a second-rate Paris hotel. She was curled upon his rather uncomfortable bed and chattering while he kneeled upon the floor and tossed his belongings into a suitcase. They had decided to take the afternoon train for Fontainebleau for a hurried honeymoon and there was little time to spare. For one thing they must wire Carmelita's doubtlessly dumbfounded duenna and tell her to board the steamer with her ticket and Carmelita's trunks and throw the other ticket into the ocean. And Carmelita must, she decided soberly, send a cablegram at once to her father. About the matter of replacing, sketchily to be sure, at least two outfits of clothes that she had lost she was rather diffident about discussing with Dudley. But when she did mention it he insisted upon paying for the new purchases, though his wife's purse bulged with a sum that was double his entire fortune.
Dudley had announced that for the ensuing few days they would, as he expressed it to Carmelita's mystification as to his meaning, "shoot the works." He meant, he explained, spending their money like true honeymooners. Then they would settle down to a liquidated status. Carmelita seconded this heartily. She was very virtuous and grave and confident now about her ability to play the rôle of a poor man's wife, but she saw no harm in postponing the beginning of the sacrificing for a few days while the first blush of their married life was painting the world such a roseate tint.
At Fontainebleau they made the delightful discovery of a little inn off the beaten track. Carmelita fell in love instantly with its jolly thatched roof and its low, solid, clean-looking appearance. The price was stiff, but Dudley lacked the heart to disappoint her. He was feeling very expansive and kindly toward the world and terribly in love.
They practically had the place to themselves.
For three glorious days they slept until noon, awakening in the lazy warmth of a pinescented sunshine and spending the remainder of the day in tramping, rowing about the shaded banks of the little lake a half-mile from their inn, and basking in the tender effulgence of their love. Carmelita was as happy as a child who has for the first time in her life been granted perfect freedom. Wading barelegged in the lake after water lilies, smiling tenderly, bewitchingly at him over her breakfast coffee, kissing him good-night with those ripe, warm lips of hers—never, Dudley was sure, had she seemed so seductively, utterly beautiful. They agreed solemnly that they could never be more happy.
But Fontainebleau and a slim purse do not mix for long, and in three days they found themselves back in Dudley's shoddy Paris hotel room and the cold, unsympathetic world of reality.
Two cablegrams upon which two days' dust had accumulated, were handed them by the surly clerk.
Dudley's forehead was furrowed with a frown as he read:
He read it three times. There was more to it than met the eye. He was pleased at the instructions to go back to New York. But the rest—
The senior partner of Drake and Porter was Dudley's uncle, Sanford Drake. He had given his nephew, fresh from Princeton University, a clerkship in his old-established Wall Street banking house with the idea that the youth would eventually work up to something much better. At first Dudley had toiled like a Trojan, but youth is impatient and Sanford Drake was not one who rewarded industry quickly. The financier seemed to be bending over backward in the effort not to use favoritism with Dudley because he was his nephew. Not that Dudley expected favors. He knew that his father, an impractical dreamer, and the rich Sanford Drake had been estranged down to the day of the former's death. After three years with Sanford and Drake, Dudley was tired of waiting for "something better." He began to relax. He spent more and more time loafing around the Princeton Club in New York. He developed the habit of getting along with as little effort as possible, content with the living wage he was drawing from Drake and Porter. Finally his uncle had called him to his private office, read him rather a severe lecture upon the advantages of toil for young men, and promised him a position of more responsibility at the first opportunity.
A few weeks after this indefinite promise was made, Sanford Drake again summoned his nephew into his pompous presence and carefully dismissing his secretary for the nonce, disclosed mid much clearing of the throat and mystery and injections of technical financial jargon that Drake and Porter had been commissioned to close some very delicate negotiations concerning an important client of theirs and Duval Freres, of Paris, who held concessions in the Sear Valley. None of the Drake and Porter executives could be spared at that time to make the trip abroad, and Dudley, with two years' war experience with France and its language, was free to tackle the job if he cared to. Dudley fairly leaped for joy. He sailed within five days.
In Paris young Drake met first an unexpected snarl of business complications, and then he met Carmelita and the Duval negotiations didn't seem very important after all. He admitted his laxness now. He had missed appointments, let people get out of town whom he should have caught and interviewed, fallen down on the job. He couldn't blame Carmelita; she hadn't known anything about the workaday side of his life, didn't yet. If he had been clever, he could have managed both. He was a fool. But was he? He had won Carmelita—and she was more precious than all the Duvals and Drakes and jobs in the world. But as far as his business career went—this cablegram—it was certainly a rebuke, the notification that he had failed, possibly dismissal.
Nevertheless he tried to turn cheerfully to Carmelita and then saw, to his misgiving, that her cablegram must have contained bad news also, for her face bore a surprised, hurt expression.
Alarmed, he put his hand upon her shoulder reassuringly.
"What is it, Carmelita?" he asked.
She controlled herself, tried to smile and crumpled her cablegram defiantly.
"Bad news, dearest? Come, buck up—we can stand anything to-day, together."
She handed him her cablegram with a pathetic little gesture:
Dudley awkwardly read the stinging words over two or three times. He had not expected Carmelita's family to be overjoyed at their romantic elopement. But he had underestimated the terrible pride and ruthlessness of the old Spanish don. Not that he would have touched a penny of de Cordoba's fortune had it been showered upon him. This curt message was positively inhuman. Poor Carmelita. He put his hands on her drooping shoulders and smiled into her wet eyes. He lifted her quivering chin gently.
"We could hardly expect him to be pleased, could we, sweetheart? Don't worry—I'll take care of you, and I expect to be rich myself some day. Your father will change his mind."
And such was the present buoyancy of Carmelita's faith and courage and love that presently she was smiling also and up in Dudley's low-ceilinged, stuffy Paris room when he told, her that they must leave on the first steamer for New York, she fairly clapped her hands for joy.
"We shall get a nice apartment, shall we not, my big American? A regular love-nest—on Riverside Drive, perhaps?"
There were only two thoroughfares in the metropolis which boasted apartment houses, in Carmelita's mind—Fifth Avenue and Riverside Drive. Fifth Avenue, she judged, might be a little too expensive, considering Dudley's penury.
It worried him a little that she had so much to learn. "I'm afraid the Drive will be a little steep for us for a while," he explained. "However, time enough to worry about that when we reach New York. Meantime—how about luncheon? And we'll make some inquiries about sailings."
"The Ritz, please, Dudley. I will—what you call it?—'blow.' The breakfast on the train was so dreadful." Her expression was so pathetic that he seized her lightly under the knees and swung her into the air and kissed her on the rebound, instead of refusing her. Teaching Carmelita to be a poor man's wife, he forecasted to himself ruefully as they walked into the elaborate dining-room, was likely to prove an even more difficult task than locating the elusive Duvals had been. It was emphatically in this luxurious atmosphere of soft carpets and well-fed diners and suave servants that she belonged.
"Is my Dudley still worrying over the cablegram?" she looked up gently from her wine glass. "It is nothing. Really I do not mind. My father has a very bad temper when he does not get his own way. As for Don Pablo—poof, I have forgotten him. Let us both dine and forget. The crab soufflee is so delicious here."
"You will be surprised," she promised gayly as the waiter disappeared. "I shall be the perfect housekeeper. Two servants—that is all I shall need. We shall be so happy."
"I wonder if you understand—" And then he decided he would not continue. There was time enough for grim reality later on. Meantime there was this exquisite creature in a perfect setting and he was the most openly envied man in Paris and two generous portions of steaming crab soufflee had been set before two healthy young people whose previous meal had been the emaciating fare served upon a French railway train.
After luncheon he discovered that there was a sailing to New York in four days. He allowed himself to be persuaded by Carmelita to ah expensive outside cabin, though he attempted diplomatically to demonstrate that the more modest inside quarters were quite as good.
"We should stifle, Dudley," she insisted. And again he lacked the heart to deny her.
The Hodges promised to see them off at the train for Cherbourg, and four days later the Drakes stood, a few minutes before train time, amid a litter of trunks, which Carmelita had declared she simply couldn't dispense with, on the fateful spot outside the grilled gate. She was eagerly scanning the crowd for Lucy Hodge.
Lucy came up at the last minute, late and self-composed as ever, and beside her ambled the colorless Jack, dapper and waxed and caned. Carmelita, in her relief that Lucy had made it, did not at first notice the tall, dark man who stood silently behind Jack gazing upon her with enigmatic eyes. Then she turned and saw that it was Prince Rao-Singh, evidently with the Hodges. Though she inwardly shivered a little, she extended her hand to him graciously. He bowed and kissed her white fingers. Dudley frowned. He had never concealed the fact that he disliked and mistrusted the man, and this foreign gesture of courtesy gave him the creeps.
"You may announce to Broadway that we shall arrive in three months or so," Mrs. Hodge was drawling. "We are going to tour a bit and Jack intends to accomplish some intensive drinking and then we shall come home. If we are lucky, we shall bring Prince Rao-Singh with us."
Carmelita shot a quick glance at him.
"Mrs. Hodge suggests that I might find it very interesting," he agreed.
"I'm sure you would," Carmelita said confusedly.
When they had obeyed the warning of the fussy guard and taken leave of their friends, Carmelita's last backward glance despite herself was at the sinister eyes of Rao-Singh and somehow some of the gayety seemed for the moment to have disappeared from this embarkation upon this new life.
At Cherbourg, as she and Dudley leaned over the rail and watched the bustle of casting off the lines and listened to the excited adieus shouted from deck to shore, she recovered her spirits. What had she to do with this amorous Hindu? Suppose he should come to New York? Was she not the proud daughter of the de Cordobas and was not this handsome, stalwart American at her side her husband? With a little shrug that was not without arrogance she banished her fears.