The Saturday Evening Post/The Reluctant Duchess/Part 4
“Would You be So Good as to Tell Me What All This is About?” Said Dormier
IV
MR. McMANNIS had a study, or office—a small room next the front door. He himself spent little time there, but Williams, his secretary, functioned here; and here were kept all the business cabinets unsuited to the library.
On leaving Pitts-Cave, Jacqueline went straight to this room. She had always hated it, whether because it was dark, being on the street level, or because the iron grilles in the window made it like a prison. But she knew that when her father came in, as he usually did between three and four, he stopped here to sign any checks and letters Williams might have prepared for him.
The room, when she entered, was empty; but as the desk light was burning, she knew Williams must be somewhere about. She sat down.
People who deal in truth themselves recognize it when they hear it, just as people who deal in diamonds recognize a real stone when they see it. Jacqueline knew that what Pitts-Cave had told her was true; knew that Dormier had not fallen in love with her on the stairs, but had come over to marry her; knew that Mrs. McMannis had not been won over to the romance but had deliberately planned it, sacrificing her stepdaughter's happiness to her own social ambitions. She had been warned. Paul and Lucy had both told her that Dormier had come over to marry her; she had hardly heard them. One reason why she had fallen such an easy prey to the plot was that she never thought of herself as having a part in her father's fortune. She knew that she was an heiress, but she had not learned to think of herself as one. Yet if she had not wanted to believe he loved her, there had been plenty of signs—those vast trunks of clothes—trousseau, of course—and Miss Salisbury's manner—there had been a subtle change. It was a terribly humiliating experience—to have shown so clearly that she supposed herself loved for herself. But humiliation was one of the minor agonies. She loved him so very much, and yet she never doubted for a moment that she must at once put a stop to the marriage.
It was strange, she thought as she sat there, that she had never before been so unhappy and had never felt less like crying. She was like iron. She felt as if she would never again melt enough to shed a tear.
The secretary came in.
“Ah, good afternoon, Miss McMannis. May I congratulate you? Quite a change for you; quite a new life, I presume—interesting, I have no doubt.”
“Very, I'm sure,” said Jacqueline.
Williams thought, “Well, well, think of that! She's different already—stiffer—that child!” He felt sorry, for he had always immensely admired Jacqueline. Still, it would make an interesting story to tell his wife. He had seen a lot of this sort of thing in his life.
“You're waiting to see Mr. McMannis, I suppose.”
Jacqueline bowed her head. Williams could take a hint. If prospective duchesses didn't want to converse he could let them alone. He went back to his pen, and Jacqueline sat as immovable as a Buddha.
Before long her father entered, in one of his most genial moods. He had walked uptown. The clear autumn weather was continuing and all his blood was agreeably tingling. As soon as she saw him Jacqueline knew he was going to say something comic and unreal about her being a duchess. She shut her eyes, and he said, “Ah, Jacqueline, you do us a great honor. We are not accustomed to visits from Her Grace, are we, Williams?.... Are those the certificates? Good! It seems now that this other man is going to take over the whole block of the bonds, so that transfers will be easy; but the stock”
“Father,” said Jacqueline, “I want to speak to you, please.”
Mr. McMannis' manner indicated that nothing his daughter could have to say could be as important or demand as immediate attention as the transactions between him and his secretary.
“Perhaps you won't mind waiting, my dear,” he answered, “until I've signed these certificates—not unconnected with your own future.”
“I cannot wait.”
“Ah, these imperial manners, Williams, they seem easy to acquire.”
By this time Williams had arranged the beautifully engraved certificates, some printed in orange and some in green, some bearing pictures of locomotives. Before he turned them over Jacqueline had a glimpse of typed figures on them—ten thousand shares—fifty thousand shares
“It costs a good deal to get rid of me,” she said.
She spoke very low, but at last she had attracted her father's attention. He looked up, and being, like most people, wise enough when his attention was fully roused, he made a gesture to Williams to go.
“What's the matter, Jacqueline?” he said. “What do you mean?”
“What I said—that you seem to be paying Dormier a lot to marry me.”
“I don't like talk of that kind,” said McMannis. “It's not suitable; it's not ladylike; it's not pretty in a girl of your age.”
“No; it's just true.”
“It is not true,” answered her father. “If you mean that Dormier has been grasping—greedy—quite the contrary. He has been singularly generous—right feeling about settlements. And anyhow, whose business is it but my own—the dowry I choose to give my only child?”
“Hers, I should think,” said Jacqueline, but he did not notice this interruption.
“I don't like this tone you're taking. You wound me very much. As if I did not know what was best for you, as if it were a crime for me to send you out properly equipped”
She interrupted again.
“There's no use in discussing my dowry, father,” she said, “for I'm not going to be married.”
It was strange how being very unhappy armed her against fear. The expected outbreak did not alarm her, though the subject of her father's speech surprised her. She had expected to be reproached for changeableness— folly, not knowing her own mind.
She was astonished to find she was being accused of ingratitude, lack of confidence in her parent's omniscience. He became eloquent.
“By heaven,” he cried, bringing his fist down on the table, “it's hard on a man! I work all my life for you, my only child; I have no other thought or care; and now you talk as if I were trying to get you into something that would ruin your life, as if I did not know what was for your good! If I'd been an unsuccessful man, an indifferent father, you couldn't disregard my wishes and opinion more completely!”
As he talked she gradually sank back in her chair, staring at him in a limp sort of way. He had not even asked her reasons; or rather, though he had said “Why do you change your mind?” he had never waited for an answer, which seemed to indicate that he did not greatly care. It was only another aspect of the old trouble between them. She did not believe that love could exist except for a known individual, and she saw that to him she was merely a symbol, an object of paternal emotion. And he was hurt, not only for the reasons he had stated but because there was something repugnant to him in being obliged to envisage his child as an individuality differing from himself. It was further complicated by his general attitude toward women. McMannis demanded that women should fill allotted rôles—rôles selected by him. If Jacqueline had been his son he would not have loved her so well, but he would have been interested to discover what lay behind this change of mind. He would have set himself to track down the facts. But with women he had a blanket explanation for everything they did.
“A little feminine psychology,” he would say, and feel no need of inquiring further.
“I don't understand why you're making this scene,” he kept saying. “I don't understand you, Jacqueline.”
“I don't see how you can, father, when you don't listen to what I say.”
“It isn't as if he weren't a charming fellow. I don't see how you can help liking him.”
“Like him? Oh, dear!” said Jacqueline. “But I won't marry him.”
“I'll tell you what you do—have a talk with your mother.”
“My mother?” cried Jacqueline. “My mother is dead. Why should I talk to this woman you have put”
“Steady, Jacqueline! Steady now!”
“I'm steadier than you think, father.”
They were getting nowhere with their talk, and after a little longer they parted, she unshaken in her resolution, he unshaken in his belief that her resolution was unimportant.
She went upstairs to her own room. She was determined that within the next two days—before Dormier came back—she must have made some definite demonstration of her intention. What could it be? What ought it to be? She had no one to turn to. She thought of Mr. Winters—of Paul.
About an hour later a knock came at her door and she rose to meet her stepmother. Jacqueline knew that her interview with her father had been a mere preliminary skirmish—an effort, singularly unsuccessful, to gain an ally for the main contest.
Mrs. McMannis sat down, and even in this crisis her calm eyes seemed to rove over the walls and ceilings and floor, assuring her that everything in the room was right—the pictures straight, the hearth swept.
“Your father tells me you have changed your mind about your marriage.”
Jacqueline gave a little fierce nod. She found that unhappiness had not quite cast out fear of this iron will.
“I didn't get a clear idea of your reasons for changing.”
“I don't wonder. My father did not listen to them.”
“Tell them to me.”
That was one of the alarming qualities of this woman—she listened—she even understood, if you gave her half a chance.
“I won't marry any man who plans it three months before he even saw me. I won't marry a man who doesn't love me. I suppose you'll think me a terrible fool, and I guess you'd be right, but I actually thought he loved me.”
“He doesn't love you?” asked Mrs. Mac mildly.
“A man who picks me out unseen because father will endow me like—like a university? Oh,” said Jacqueline with well-controlled fire, “I don't see how you could do such a thing to me—you, perhaps, but my own father!”
There was a short silence, and then Mrs. McMannis said:
“Jacqueline, you have always thought that I did not love you. I am not very emotional by nature. I only know one way of expressing affection—many people seem to find it an unsatisfactory way. I try to arrange the lives of those I love to their advantage; to the best of my ability, to their advantage. I assure you—and I say this without egotism—that I have not very often been mistaken. In arranging this marriage for you—and I take the full responsibility for arranging it; your father would never have thought of it but for me—I believe I showed my love for you. I believe I showed a long interested study of your character. Your father, Jacqueline, loves you dearly. He knows nothing about your character.”
“You don't need to tell me that,” said Jacqueline. She was absorbed by the bare stern reality of her stepmother's words.
“But I do. And I know something of the world, You are a person absolutely certain to make a mess of any marriage which for the next few years you would make for yourself. You are intelligent—far more intelligent than the people set over you—so you have this enormous belief in your own judgments; you are lonely, emotional, starved for affection.”
“What? What?” cried the child. “But if you knew this, why have you never given it to me?”
“Because,” answered Mrs. McMannis, her voice as smooth as her immobile face, “I am incapable of it, I have other powers—not that. As I was saying, with all these qualities, you are known to be one of the greatest heiresses in this country. Free choice on your part would be disaster. You would either be married by some adventurer for your money, or you would yourself choose to marry some utterly insignificant boy—because he was poor; this young Traver, for instance, with whom I think you were inclined to fancy yourself in love.”
“You knew about”
“It wasn't very difficult to guess.”
“Paul is wonderful,” said Jacqueline. Her heart went out to Paul.
“Exactly,” answered her stepmother. “He is honest and hard-working and very egotistical, but you don't know the dangers of that. If you had come and said you wanted to marry him, there would have been no conceivable objection to be made, because you can't really say to the young man that you oppose his marrying your daughter because you know he will bore her to death. And yet I should have known perfectly clearly, Jacqueline, that if you had married him now you would have run away with somebody else within five years. At thirty, I believe you would make an excellent choice. But life won't give you time to grow up. You will think you are in love with the first man who asks you to be”
Jacqueline interrupted.
“And is not Dormier a fortune hunter and an adventurer?” she asked.
“No,” said the other, “Dormier is simply a young man in a position to ask that his wife should have everything—beauty, virtue, character and money. A dukedom is like a kingdom; the heir has an obligation to it as well as to himself. Dormier must marry a girl with money. There are plenty of them in England. But he wanted one he could love, and he has found one.”
“Indeed!” said Jacqueline. “He knew last August that he was going to be able to love me! How convenient!”
“If he were unattractive and if you were my daughter, I should still advise you to do it, for the truth is—though everyone tries to keep it a secret—that all marriages, whether with a duke or a laborer, whether made from love or from ambition, become tiresome and domestic and unromantic. You won't escape being bored and disenchanted whatever you do. But in a marriage like this, when the disenchantment comes, you will have something left—a great position, an interesting outside life, rather important duties, a part in an old and respected institution—the British Empire. And if in after life you and Dormier decide to go your different ways, there is no country in the world where a woman can be so free as among the upper classes in England. So if Dormier were unattractive, I should still advise you to do it; but he isn't unattractive—he's charming—and you find him so.”
“Yes, I do,” answered the girl. “But if you and he are banking on that, you've made a mistake. That will make it all the worse—to love him—good heavens! All alone in England, married to a man you love who doesn't want anything but your money—oh, no! I should suspect that he had said to one of those beauties we see in the magazines with coronets and big eyes and little pointed chins—in their photographs, I mean—I should think of every girl I saw that she was the one to whom he said, 'Now I'll just run over and marry this little American and get her fortune, and then you and I, my darling, will be free.' You can break the engagement in any way that you and my father think best, but make up your mind that I will not marry him.”
“I shall not break the engagement.” Mrs. McMannis looked at the girl with unshakable resolution in her face; then added, “Of course, it would not be possible to do anything until Dormier gets back.”
Jacqueline knew that much her stepmother said was true—probably at forty she would be as happy having married the duke as having married somebody like Paul. But what no one seemed to understand was that she had been betrayed, unforgivably wounded. She had loved him and trusted him and he had deceived her—how completely only she herself knew. She could not marry him, because every second of time she spent with him would now be an agony.
During the two days that elapsed before his return the preparations for the wedding went on as if nothing had occurred. Jacqueline felt as if she were speaking into a dead telephone. She saw her stepmother, sitting hour after hour, with a pencil in her hand and the Social Register before her, checking off the names to whom the announcements of the wedding were to be sent. The ceremony itself was to be attended only by members of the two families. The second afternoon she heard herself called from Mrs. McMannis' room; and going in, she saw the pale-blue sofa was draped under yards of old point lace, like an early snowfall, like the trimming of an old-fashioned valentine—delicate morning-glories and roses, lily buds and acanthus, alternating with cobwebs—the color something between ivory and mother-of-pearl. It seemed to Jacqueline the most delicately beautiful object she had ever seen.
“Your wedding veil,” said Mrs. McMannis quite sweetly and calmly, as if there had never been any doubt about the matter.
Jacqueline simply turned on her heel and walked out of the room—hearing a cluck-cluck behind Miss Salisbury's teeth as she went. Miss Salisbury, too, was in the powerful conspiracy against her. For, oh, it was powerful—this steady subconscious suggestion that nothing had changed, that everything was moving satisfactorily forward! She began to be frightened; not so much of these formidable, determined, grown-up foes of hers as of her own weakness. She had accomplished nothing and the great peril was still ahead of her—the interview with Dormier. If he said this—if he said that—if he just took her in his arms
He would be back early the next morning, and all that last night she lay awake thinking of mad schemes of escape—to run away, to sell her jewelry, to steal her father's pocketbook, to work in a shop, to ask Mr. Winters to take her away But, as Mrs. McMannis had said, she was essentially intelligent, and a certain innate dignity of character made her shrink from silly, flighty action.
As it began to be dawn—as pale objects in her room began to start out of the darkness with a faint glimmer of their own, as forlorn town-bred sparrows began to chirp and milk cans to rattle and early sweepers of sidewalks to whistle, as the cold autumn air filled the room, air as pure and fresh as on some distant mountain top, Jacqueline decided on a better and to her mind perfectly practical way out.
Dormier's train was late. It did not arrive at the Grand Central until half past nine. As he and Heccles walked down the platform—Heccles bearing two of those bags which have made the name of a great statesman famous—Dormier felt himself touched on the arm. He recognized the young man's profession—those quick penetrating eyes, that brisk confident manner which says that hundreds of thousands of readers are waiting for your report.
“Oh, no, my dear fellow,” said the duke. “Your sleeping cars are bad enough without superimposing your press. On, Heccles, on! I'm not going to be interviewed before I have a decent cup of tea. Anglo-American relations can go hang.” The duke had had a cup of tea in the train; but as it had been brewed in a pot recently filled with coffee, it had partaken disadvantageously of the nature of both beverages.
The young man smiled, indicating that he was going to allow the duke to come to a full stop by himself, and not interrupt him.
“The funny part of it is,” he said, “it isn't an interview.”
“It's not going to be,” said the duke. They were now all three moving briskly along the platform, the young man on one side of the duke and Heccles, sallower than ever, on the other.
“I'm doing you a favor,” said the reporter; “only, of course, you can never get anyone to believe the papers ever do anyone a favor—because I know something you'd want to know. A young lady came into the office about three-quarters of an hour ago, alleging that she was Miss McMannis and that she had come to tell us that the engagement was off.”
“Really?” said Dormier, without the slightest interest.
“Well, you know, I suppose, that there isn't anybody round at that hour to handle a story like that properly. Still, they did call up the McMannis residence, and were told that Miss McMannis was in bed and asleep.”
“Well, there you are,” said Dormier.
They were passing through the gates now, and veering toward the taxicab stand.
“One of our society reporters saw her and said it was the girl herself.”
“If my engagement were broken,” said Dormier, not too friendly in manner, “don't you think I might be among the first to know of it? Certain to get to me in time, don't you know.”
“Now look here, duke,” said the young man, “it was the girl. I know that. I killed the story for the time, but we can't keep it out very long. She came to our office and told us the engagement was off. That will be in the first edition of tomorrow's papers—unless you can give us some proof it isn't true.”
Heccles had procured a taxi, piled on the bags and was holding open the door, calmly indifferent to the long line he was keeping waiting.
“I'm going straight to the McMannises' now,” said the duke.
“Well, that isn't where she went,” said the reporter. “She hopped a taxi and went to this number in Nassau Street.” He gave the duke a scrap of paper.
Dormier began to be impressed by the young man. He took the paper.
“That's very decent of you—to tell me,” he said, ignoring the starter, who was urging him to get into his cab.
“Sure it's decent of me,” said the young man with a very pleasant, sad, wise smile. “The press is decent. We gotta print the news; but gee, when we can we take care of some of you fellars like you were babies.” He took off his hat and disappeared.
“Say,” said the starter, “are you going to take this cab or are you going to let somebody else have a chance at it?”
“As a matter of fact—neither,” said the duke, thinking it out. He sent Heccles home with his bags and he himself made his way to the Subway.
Everybody, in moments of excitement, forms mental pictures instead of thinking. Dormier had been downtown often enough to know that a number in Nassau Street would be the number of a large office building containing the population of a village, or even of a small town. But he had formed a picture of one of those low, broad, four-story houses in the city at home, in which a slender, blue-eyed, long-throated girl could be so easily identified. Therefore it was a shock to him to find himself in front of a twenty-story building with at least two entrances, circular doors whirling steadily and elevators going up crowded every few seconds.
Dormier knew that McMannis' offices were many blocks away in Broadway, but it seemed possible there might be some connection—some minor company in this building. He joined the group before the directory of names and read them slowly over, beginning with the first A. He was growing discouraged before, among the W's, the remembered name of Winters flashed before his eyes. Of course he had heard a great deal about Winters; and though he had as yet not met him, he knew that a luncheon engagement was arranged for the near future.
The office was very shabby and respectable. Although, of course, it was not in a court built in the early days of the eighteenth century, although it did not contain a blazing open fire of sea coal, it did remind Dormier a little of the office of his own solicitor in London. The woodwork was of a sort of mustard yellow streaked with purplish brown in imitation of no known wood, and through the open door of the library he could see thick calf-bound volumes.
An erect gray-haired woman with a peculiar pronunciation of the letter “a” which Dormier had not yet learned to recognize as the badge of the New Englander, said, when he inquired for Mr. Winter, “May I ask your name?”
“The Duke of Dormier,” he answered, and if the lady had been—as very likely she was—a reader of Mrs. Browning, she would have thought that he said his name as if “it meant not much indeed, but something.”
True to the race that bred them both, she betrayed not a flicker of interest, but, rising, murmured in a discouraging tone, “I'll see if Mr. Winters can see you.” Presently she came back, and without glancing in his direction, she said “Mr. Winters will see you,” as if she never knew what strange thing her employer would do next.
Entering Winters' room, Dormier was still further struck by its English flavor, for here a soft-coal fire was actually burning in a grate, a steel engraving of Wedderburn in wig and robes was over the mantelpiece, and the tall, white-haired, blue-eyed man who rose to meet him was, as Dormier said to himself, a thoroughly English type.
“Ah, your grace,” he said, pleasant but not very cordial, “sit down. You made us wait forty minutes for dinner the other evening, and yet I'm glad to see you, although,” he added—and Dormier observed that each time he himself was ready to speak the older man's sentence got into action again—“although a lawyer never knows how glad he ought to be to see his friends, for it usually means they are in some sort of trouble from which they need to be rescued; not that a young man as fortunately situated as you are”
“I have come to ask, sir” said the duke.
“Old men don't like to be interrupted,” said Mr. Winters, smiling a fine meaningless smile at the duke. “I was about to ask you who your English solicitors are. Something seems to tell me it's Sir Mordred Guiles. It is? I knew it. I remember him very well. When I was in London in 1908 on a shipping case, I dined with Guiles; he was against us, but very agreeable. He told me”
“Is Miss McMannis here, Mr. Winters?”
“You are interrupting me again, your grace—and a very good story too.”
“No doubt,” said the duke. “But I am anxious about Jacqueline. Is she here?”
There was a pause.
Winters studied the young man, and then dropping all further effort to distract his attention, he said, “Before I answer your question, I want to ask you one—do you love her?”
“I have reason to be a little anxious about her and should be glad to know that she is here and safe.”
There was no suggestion in the duke's manner that he had even heard the question.
“You have not answered my question.”
“It isn't the sort of question one does answer, is it?” said the duke. “Because if one takes the trouble to analyze it, it's rather an insulting one.”
“Merciful powers!” said Winters. “You're an irritating nation—you British!”
“Really?” said the duke, shutting his eyes.
Winters stared at his blank face—stared with an expression between anger and amusement.
“Well,” he observed at last, “I'll meet you halfway. I'll tell you why I asked my question. Jacqueline McMannis, with whom, if I were young, I should be passionately in love, and with whom, being seventy-one, I'm only this much in love—that I think her the sweetest, loveliest, most honest and most desirable woman I ever saw, and I'd about as lief as not kill anybody who gave her a moment's sorrow, and having been almost fifty years at the bar, I could probably do it and get away with it—Jacqueline has the idea, with some serious evidence behind it, that you do not love her, but are marrying her for her money.”
The faintest flush rose to Dormier's pale face.
“I should prefer to discuss that with Jacqueline,” he said.
“Very possibly you would,” said Winters. “But you've got to discuss it with me.”
“Afraid I can't see it,” said Dormier.
“It's pretty simple,” returned Winters in a slightly higher voice that he adopted when imperative, a voice suggesting a long ancestry of New England farmers. “Jacqueline has come to me”
“Oh, she's here then?” said the duke, as if now everything was comfortably arranged.
The tone annoyed Winters enough to make him say something he had meant to put off saying till the last possible moment. He pointed to a door.
“She's in that room. No,” he added as the duke promptly rose to his feet; “no, don't go in. I promised her that she should not be interrupted.”
“That you would do your best,” corrected Dormier. He continued to move toward the door, but Winters had merely to rise in order to stand between him and it. Dormier looked at him. “Interrupted,” he said reflectively. “She isn't alone then?”
“No,” answered Winters. He had the situation well in hand now.
“Who is there?”
“A young lawyer by the name of Traver—a very fine type of young American.”
“I'm not in the least interested in Mr. Traver's type,” said the duke. “I must speak to Jacqueline.”
“Well, now,” said Winters, “I'm not at all sure you wouldn't be interested in Traver. For Jacqueline, it seems, intends to marry him. She's putting it to him at this very moment.”
It never crossed Winters' mind, for he was a privileged being in his own circle, that anyone would venture to lay hands upon him; it never occurred to him that when he stepped between Dormier and the door of the inner office, that door was not absolutely protected.
He was utterly unprepared when Dormier took hold of him by the shoulders and with a somewhat dilatory “So sorry,” opened the door.
There was Jacqueline, facing them. She was kneeling with one knee on the seat of a broad old black leather chair, her elbows on the back of it and her hands stretched out in the direction of the young man, who was turned toward her and away from the opened door.
She looked first at Dormier, and for a second her face seemed to break up, the way a great musician's will sometimes seem to dissolve and remake itself as he plays. Then, glancing past the duke, to Winters, she spoke to him.
“Oh,” she wailed, “he won't do it!”
“What?” cried Winters.
“He doesn't really want to.”
“The young lout!” said Winters, surprised at his own selection of this particular word.
“You're unjust, Mr. Winters,” said Traver sulkily.
“I repeat—a lout!” replied Winters; “yes, a lout!”
“There are things a man puts before his own wishes—honor—a man must think of how the world will interpret his conduct,” said Traver.
“A prig must,” answered the older man. “Ah, that was what I meant! I withdraw 'lout' and substitute 'prig.'”
“Would you be so good as to tell me what all this is about?” said Dormier. No one answered him, and he walked over to Jacqueline and took her hand. She, supposing that this was a caress, struggled to pull it, away, and then seeing that it was only a method of asserting his right to her attention, she left it in his. “No,” he went on, “I must have an explanation. You promised to marry me. If you have changed your mind, the first information ought to come to me.”
Jacqueline had stepped down from the chair, and with her wrist still awkwardly but firmly held by the duke, was attempting a cold dry exposition of facts.
“I will not marry you—that's all. You plotted it months ago, before you even saw me.”
He wasn't at all staggered by the indictment. He said, with a slight outward gesture of his free hand, “Leaving all that aside—the business between us—why must you ask another man to marry you? Couldn't you break your engagement to me without running off with someone else?”
She knew it would be wiser not to answer questions, but she was still so young as to feel the pressure of a direct question.
“No,” she said; “no, it was the only way. My family would not even cable your mother to delay her sailing. While I was telling them I would not marry you, they were checking the lists of names for the announcements.”
“But why not wait a day or two until I got back? You owed me that, Jacqueline,” said Dormier sternly.
“No, I couldn't do that.”
“Why not?”
This was a difficult question to answer truthfully, and Jacqueline did not know any other way to answer. She looked desperately at her old friend, but he gave her no help. It was s who unexpectedly came to the rescue.
“I think I can answer that, if you will allow me,” he began, but Dormier very quietly interrupted.
“I will not allow you,” he said. He said it so gently that Traver did not seem to take it in, but drove on along the lines he had decided upon.
“I think I can speak for Miss McMannis”
“Not to me,” said the duke.
This was really insolent, and Traver was not slow to take it in, but hesitated an instant for an answer; and Mr. Winters seeing trouble ahead, said, “If I were you, Traver, I'd withdraw from the picture. You've had the center of the stage, but now your scene is over.”
“I will not go, sir,” replied Traver, “because it seems to me that this is a time when everyone who loves Jacqueline should stand by her.”
“Quite, quite,” said the duke; “but you hardly qualify, do you?”
“I really don't know what you can know about my feelings,” retorted Traver.
“I know your actions—or lack of them,” said Dormier. “I know, as every man knows, that if you love a woman you marry her when you have the chance—whether she's a queen or a charwoman.”
“Ah,” exclaimed Traver bitterly, “if she had only been a charwoman I'd have jumped at the chance!”
“Ah?” said Dormier, really insolently.
Winters intervened.
“If a charwoman is all you've been waiting for, Paul, I dare say you'd find a lot of them about the building at this very moment.”
“Have you turned against me, sir?” said Traver.
“Paul, my boy,” said Mr. Winters, putting his hand on his clerk's shoulder, “to be honest, I was never exactly for you. I gave you a chance, that's all. To tell the truth, your outlook has always been a little too elderly to suit a man of seventy-one. I like a man who has some what we used to call at home get-up-and-git about him. I like this other fellow's technic. He's insolent, but he knows what he's after.”
Jacqueline went up to Traver and held out her hand.
“It was my fault, Paul,” she said, “and I know why you did it as you did. Thank you.” They shook hands and she did not go on speaking until after he had shut the door behind him. “Don't be horrid to him, Mr. Winters,” she said then; “he doesn't really want to marry me, and he thought it made it a little easier for me if he pretended it was on account of money. It was my fault.” She sighed. “I don't seem to be a very good judge of people's feelings.”
Winters' heart went out to her in pity, but Dormier's face betrayed nothing but determination.
“Now, Jacqueline,” he said, “as between you and me. Here it is: I do need money. I could not—or, if you prefer it, I will not marry a girl without it. My mother has had a dozen ideas and suggestions. I couldn't go any of them. Mrs. Mac is a very wise woman. What she said I listened to; what she said about you seemed to me about perfect. Yes, I came out here to marry you, if when I saw you I liked you; and not such a dirty business, either, for I should have been on the square with you. But when I saw you, instead of liking you, I fell in love with you.”
As he spoke Jacqueline had retreated nearer and nearer to Winters, and now she was actually shrinking back against him so that she spoke as from a guarded tent, when she said, “Loved me? Easy to say!”
“Not so frightfully easy in the circumstances,” answered the duke.
Jacqueline turned her head up toward Winters' great height, as a bird does.
“Oh, what shall I do?” she said. “Advise me.”
He shook his head.
“You don't need any advice, my dear.”
“I do, I do!”
“You don't need it, and you wouldn't take it.”
“I would, I would!” she returned eagerly. “I will do whatever you advise me to do. ”
He looked serious, almost severe.
“Do you really mean that?” She nodded, setting her teeth. “Then,” he said, “I advise you not to marry this man—not to consider it for a moment.”
“Oh,” cried Jacqueline, “I never thought you were going to say that!”
Winters laughed.
“Ah,” he said, “that's the very best way in the world of finding out what a person means to do—advise them the other way.” He stooped toward her. “May I kiss your duchess?”
“I let her settle that sort of thing for herself,” answered the duke, “at least as far as other people are concerned; but I may tell you I mean to do it myself.”
And they did—in the order named.
“You see,” said Dormier to Winters, “all the trouble has come from my trying to be too noble. Frightful mistake to be too noble, as that pers—that young—that chap Jacqueline called Paul has so clearly shown us. But the fact is that Jacqueline is so young and so frightfully”
“Exactly,” agreed Winters.
“that I've been afraid of her.”
“Oh, Tac,” exclaimed Jacqueline, “afraid of me! That's the nicest thing anyone ever said to me!”
Dormier looked at her and smiled.
“Afraid to make love to you, I mean.”
This astonished her even more.
“Don't you think you've made love to me?”
He shook his head slowly, and Mr. Winters said, “Nous allons changer tout ça.”
She allowed herself to look silly and round-eyed, but she knew perfectly what they meant.
It was after eleven o'clock and Winters suggested that they should wait about and have luncheon with him; but Dormier insisted that they ought to be going back to the McMannises'. So presently they were in a taxi on their way uptown. But they had not gone very far when Dormier stuck his stick up and pushed back the front window and told the driver to go to Gerardin's.
“I haven't had any breakfast,” he explained. Thus reminded, Jacqueline recalled that she hadn't either.
Of course she had never been to a restaurant with a man before—hardly ever with anyone. It was all new to her. The slender, dark, impenetrable head waiter knew perfectly who they were, for it was his profession to know; but he was far too polite to let them know he knew, and called them monsieur, madame.
They were the only occupants of the great, quiet, shaded room at that hour of the morning. Yet even so, they were directed to a table in the center of the room, and Dormier said “Certainly not,” and walked to one in the corner where they could both sit on cushioned sofas against the wall.
The head waiter hovered with his pencil and the menu. He made Jacqueline horribly nervous.
“You order for me,” she whispered to Dormier, and he and the head waiter took it up as if the whole problem of the world was to get her just what she would like.
Jacqueline had never been called madame before, and it made her feel almost faint with excitement, especially when Dormier fell in with it as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“Omelette aux fines herbes pour madame”
How beautifully he spoke French! She imagined their entering a restaurant in Paris, in Nice, all over the world, for from now on they would eat together. And everywhere they went, she thought, Dormier would know what to do.
“Tea or coffee, Jacqueline?” All action suspended for her reply.
“I suppose I'd better begin to learn to drink tea,” said Jacqueiine.
“Et du thé aussi pour madame,” said the duke.
It was almost the betrothal service.
(THE END)