XXXVI THE RACE

During the ensuing fortnight he looked as if a blight had passed over him. His face grew pinched and white, he lost his magnetism, his fine remote dignified assurance, even his good manners. His mother, in as superb an outburst of disdain as he had ever witnessed on the stage, told him that the very cabbies, to say nothing of the servants, must see that he was in the throes of his calf-love, and that he was even more odious than young men usually were during that last and worst of children’s diseases; thanking her stars that she was not forced to remain under the same roof with him, she flounced off to Paris with Rosamond Hayle. Ordham, could he have experienced pleasure in anything during this excruciating period, would have felt delight in being rid of her.

Alas! he could no longer flatter himself with doubts regarding his feeling for the young American beauty, indulge in mental analyses. He had forgotten Styr, his ambitions, his calm belief in himself and his star. But one woman, one object, existed on this earth for him, and he only paused to wonder that he had ever thought himself incapable of love. No man ever got sharper wounds from the archaic darts. He was sentimentally, passionately, wretchedly in love. He thought of nothing else. For the first time in his life appetite and sleep were affected. Several people from whom he had received much hospitality while in Paris paid a short visit to London and sought him out as a matter of course. He took no notice of them. Styr, at last, found time to write him a long letter. He did not even read it. He forgot the existence of the Foreign Office.

Meanwhile, he saw the young lady daily. If she had been merely indifferent before, she was now almost rude, regretting, no doubt, her girlish recrudescence. Mrs. Cutting, were it possible, was even more impressive in her attentions to him. He felt as if tossed between fire and ice, and although this torment had its fascination, he sometimes wished that the mother would gratify the daughter and turn him out. Then he could flee to the ends of the earth, and make some attempt to extinguish the flames that devoured him. He was quite aware of his changed appearance, and one morning, while brushing his hair and scowling at his nervous white face, recalled what Styr had said about young people in the ferment of first love being the mere victims of the race, reversions to type. That, no doubt, was what was the matter with him, and it was no consolation to reflect that it was so much good passion thrown away. If a man had to undergo such torments, why, in heaven’s name, didn’t the girl catch the fever? He should not in the least mind being one of Nature’s victims if he were permitted to be happy with a fellow-victim. Otherwise, there was no sense in it.

The tennis games were abandoned, as he slept late after his bad nights, and Hines, after one conscientious attempt to awaken him, declined the office of mentor a second time. But he spent a part of every day in Grosvenor Square, from which he could not keep away; although he believed that no old-time martyr boiling in a cauldron and pinched with red-hot nippers ever suffered such agonies as his. But at last pride revolted, his spirit cried out under its crushing load, and he had an attack of acute indigestion. He pointedly broke an engagement for luncheon, and presented himself at five o’clock determined to say good-by and leave England next day. He should not return to Munich, for he never wanted to see another woman; probably he should go out to India and remodel himself upon the commonplace family likeness by shooting tigers and sending home the skins.

The ladies were shopping, he was informed, and he was shown up to the small drawing-room to await them. But the small drawing-room would not hold him, and he roamed about the beautiful rooms whose furniture and decorations had once whispered to him of sweet love-tragedies, as well as of terrible dramas involving the collapse into blood or obscurity of the historic families that had loved them. But to-day they had no confidences for Ordham. He came upon a door ajar. It led into a small room that he had never seen, but he did not hesitate to enter, as Mrs. Cutting had made him feel at home long since. He saw at a glance that this must be Mabel’s boudoir, and drew back. Beyond the threshold, however, he was powerless to retreat; he stood trembling, fascinated, feeling himself in the presence of a subtle betrayal of the secrecies of maidenhood,—such as he sometimes fancied emanated from the young girl herself. He had never dreamed that a girl could be so sacred and beautiful, so mysterious a creature. He turned pale and lost his breath.

It was a very simple room to his masculine eye, with its white flowered silks and white enamelled furniture, but as unmistakably luxurious as the rest of the house. Suddenly his eye was caught by a bookcase above the writing table. This temptation was irresistible, and in a moment he was eagerly scanning the titles of the haughty beauty’s chosen literature. It was with something of a shock that he discovered the books to be the essays of Macaulay, the novels of Scott and Dickens, and a selected volume of Shakspere’s plays, as he had read all of these works and more in his earliest teens. It could not be possible that this represented the girl’s idea of erudition, her mother’s disappointment in her beauty’s untimely development of bookish tastes? But what of it? Ordham was too far gone in love and despair to be seriously affected by a minor disappointment, although it might have staggered him a month earlier. Poor ambitious child! What opportunities at a fashionable school in Paris, studying “art,” music, and three languages, to delve into literature! If she had but just begun to read, at least she had not begun with trash, and that she had begun at all was the vital point. Again he was turning away, and again he received a shock. The drawer of the desk was half open. His gaze, as it dropped from the bookcase, rested upon three letters from his mother. The ink was fresh. The postmark was conspicuously “Paris.”

He afterwards described his sensations at that moment as of a lighted torch trying to force its way from the base of his skull through the dull inert mass of his brain to his upper consciousness. But at a certain stage love is a disease analogous to death. The brain, if not disintegrated, is very nearly so, for it is worn out by implacable thought, despair, brooding on the impossible. It is, after long tension, a flabby mass, through which the angry watchers in the subconsciousness can find no avenue, force not a cry of warning. Normally with a brain so alert that the utmost caution and tact were necessary in the handling of him, even although his full share of masculine vanity made him as easy game as most men, the least slip would have roused Ordham’s suspicions and set him on his guard; but, his brain demoralized by the greensickness of love, he was as far beyond rescue as if he had been born a fool.

He was staring stupidly at the letters, mechanically striving to reach their significance, when a footstep on the polished floor of the drawing-room made him retreat hastily, trembling at the prospect of confronting the indignant Mabel and receiving summary dismissal. So great was his discomposure he did not notice that the footsteps were too heavy for a woman, and was astonished to confront a young man, an uncommonly good-looking young man, with a frank well-bred face and an athletic spare figure. Ordham divined at once that here was the handsome American cousin whose advent he had dreaded. Unconsciously he threw back his own shoulders. His eyes became excessively cold, his manner almost unbearably polite.

“No doubt you are Mr. Driscom,” he said. “Mrs. Cutting has spoken of you to me.”

“And you are Mr. Ordham, of course.” The American shook the Englishman warmly by the hand, but received no sort of pressure in response. He wondered, as he had done during previous visits to London, what American women could see in Englishmen.

“Mrs. Cutting is my second cousin,” he said. “She has often mentioned you in her letters. The butler tells me they will be back in a moment. I suppose we may smoke.”

His voice was agreeable and cultivated, his manner easy and cordial. Ordham noticed with intense annoyance that there was nothing here to ridicule and despise. Margarethe Styr had talked to him of this fine type of the young American, and Driscom reminded him of the gallant youth who had stood by her to the last on the wrecked steamer. He felt that in ordinary circumstances he should have warmed to him, but now he hated and feared him; were thought as potent as one day it may be, poor Driscom would have expired of poison in every vein.

But the American, who seemed drawn to that courteous smiling exterior, talked amiably of the yachting news in the evening telegrams, and of yachting in general, smoking steadily the while. It was manifest that he felt quite at home, was doing the honors, in fact! No doubt he would be staying in the house, these Americans were so infernally hospitable.

Fortunately the tête-à-tête was not long enough to exhaust Ordham’s falling stock of patience. Mrs. Cutting swept into the room, followed by Mabel and LaLa. Driscom sprang to his feet and kissed his second cousin warmly. Ordham held his breath, expecting to commit murder were Mabel also saluted. When the young lady merely held out her hand with a radiant smile, his apprehension increased. A kiss might have meant nothing. Were they not cousins and old friends? This formality—before him—might be portentous.

But Mrs. Cutting gave him little time for thought. She apologized for being late, dilated upon “their” disappointment at his desertion of them earlier in the day, and insisted that he remain informally for dinner. He replied with cold decision, and with a full return of his old dignity, that he must “wander along,” as he was dining with some friends and had promised to look in upon others. “People were returning to town.” He had made up his mind that he would not even tell them of his intended departure; a note posted at the station would suffice. Mrs. Cutting, who had regarded him intently, laid her hand firmly on his arm. “I shall not let you go yet awhile,” she said. “I must confer with Bobby at once, so that he may cable to-night, and meanwhile please talk to Mabel until I can come back and pour out the tea.”

She gave him no chance to reply. Taking “Bobby” by the arm, she swept him out the room, darting a swift look of command at her daughter.

Mabel turned pale, but she came forward with her usual girlish grace. “Do sit down,” she said. “You look as if you never intended to sit down again.”

“It is not worth while to sit down—to detain you. I really must go.”

“You don’t intend to come back!”

He looked steadily into her dilated eyes, wondering if he hated her, and betrayed himself. “No,” he said. “I shall not come back.” Then he paused abruptly, and physically braced himself. She had dropped her eyelashes, and he was quite prepared for the coquettish net that would float from those slowly uplifting orbs. But when he met them, he saw only terror and appeal. Mabel’s face looked suddenly pinched and white. Then she burst into tears, and he was swept on that flood straight through the gates of Paradise.

When they descended to earth and were seated on a little sofa in the remotest corner, he demanded an explanation of the torments imposed upon him during the past fortnight. “You say you have always loved me,” he said with automatic masculine logic. “Why, in heaven’s name, didn’t you accept me the first time?”

“I couldn’t be sure—that you really loved me—you seemed to me to be taken by surprise. Besides, I think I wanted to punish you for not having loved me all that long time. I had to be rude and horrid—it was that or betray myself. I don’t think I ever believed that you really loved me till just now. I don’t believe you knew it yourself.”

“Oh, yes, I did,” he replied grimly. “I was so far gone that I became utterly uninteresting.”

“No—but you made me believe that you were miserable because you had proposed to me impulsively and could not think of a way out of it. My only consolation was that I had refused you. But I was ashamed every time I thought of how I had led you on that day—and I had vowed never to be silly and flirt again. And then—well, it cannot be denied that mother has thrown me at your head, and that made me really hate you at times, so that it was easier to be rude.”

“Your mother was beautifully frank.” Ordham was somewhat confused by the number of apologetic reasons advanced, but wholly happy. They talked more or less wildly for an hour. Then Ordham, hearing the swish of Mrs. Cutting’s gown, stood up, flushed and nervous, but so determined not to look sheepish, that he was as formal as an aged diplomatist when his future mother-in-law took both his hands and looked at him with eyes that were really soft. “Thank heaven!” she said with the simplicity appropriate to great moments. “I know that you will both be happy. And how grateful I am that you have not put off making up your minds any longer. Bobby tells me that I must go to New York. It is imperative. But now I can leave Mabel with you, instead of drying her eyes and distracting her mind for six months, when I should be giving all my attention to business.”

Of course he remained to dinner, and before he left he had another half-hour alone with Mabel. An excellent repast, the interesting conversation of Driscom, whom he now liked as much as he had hated a few hours earlier, unruffled bliss, and the prospect of almost immediate marriage, had clarified and braced his normally acute and steady brain. They were sitting among the fragrant flowers of the balcony when he told her abruptly of his incursion into her private little domain, and added: “As it has excited my curiosity, I may as well tell you at once that I saw several letters from my mother in the drawer of your desk, and ask you to explain. I do not want to be annoyed by petty imaginings. You don’t mind?”

The hand he held had grown cold, but when he turned his head he met suffused and smiling eyes.

“I might as well confess! I wrote to Lady Bridgminster imploring her to withdraw her opposition—not to hate me—I know how great her influence over you is—”

“She has not a particle of influence over me. What did she reply? How enchanting of you!”

“Oh, she was quite nice. I believe she said that she had washed her hands of the matter of your marriage, since you would not marry Lady Rosamond. Should you like to read the letters?” She half rose.

“Of course not.” And knowing somewhat of the fecundity of the feminine pen, it did not strike him as odd that his mother should have found it worth while to write this epitome of her disgust three times.