Part 9 (1/2)
”I can't understand your allowing yourself to be dragged there against your will. You say you despise this life, but you seem to take it pretty seriously if you can't break any engagement that you may make.”
”How absurd you are! Of course I often break engagements.”
”I see. You do when the inducement is sufficient. Well, that makes it all perfectly clear.”
She felt both angry and inclined to cry. She knew that to yield to either impulse would instantly solve the problem and bring a very unreasonable young man to reason. She ran over both scenes in her imagination. Registering anger, she would rise and say that, really, Mr. Moreton, if he would not listen to her explanation there was no use in prolonging the discussion. That would be the critical moment.
He would take her in his arms then and there, or else he would let her go, and they would drive in silence, and part at the little park, where of course she might say, ”Aren't you silly to leave me like this?”--only her experience was that it was never very practical to make up with an angry man in public.
To burst into tears was a safer method, but she had a natural repugnance to crying, and perhaps she was subconsciously aware that she might be left, after the quarrel was apparently made up by this method, with a slight resentment against the man who had forced her to adopt so illogical a line of conduct.
A middle course appealed to her. She laid her hand on Ben's. A few minutes before it would have seemed unbelievable to Ben that his own hand would have remained cold and lifeless under that touch, but such was now the case.
”Ben,” she said, ”if you go on being disagreeable a second longer you must make up your mind how you will behave when I burst into tears.”
”How I should behave?”
She nodded.
His hands clasped hers. He told her how he should behave. He even offered to show her, without putting her to the trouble of tears.
”You mean,” she said, ”that you would forgive me? Well, forgive me, anyhow. I'm doing what I think is right about this old dinner. Perhaps I'm wrong about it; perhaps you're mistaken and I'm not absolutely perfect, but if I were, think what a lot of fun you would miss in changing me. And you know I never meant to abandon you for the whole evening. I'll get away at half past nine and we'll take a little turn.”
So that was settled.
CHAPTER III
As they drove back she revealed another plan to him--she was taking him for a moment to see a friend of hers. He protested. He did not want to see anyone but herself, but Crystal was firm. He must see this woman; she was their celebrated parlor Bolshevist. Ben hated parlor Bolshevists. Did he know any? No. Well, then. Anyhow, Sophia would never forgive her if she did not bring him. Sophia adored celebrities.
Sophia who? Sophia Dawson. The name seemed dimly familiar to Ben, and then he remembered. It was the name on the thousand-dollar check for the strike sufferers that had come in the day before.
They drove up an avenue of little oaks to a formidable palace built of gray stone, so smoothly faced that there was not a crevice in the immense pale facade. Two men in knee-breeches opened the double doors and they went in between golden grilles and rows of tall white lilies.
They were led through a soundless hall, and up stairs so thickly carpeted that the feet sank in as in new-fallen snow, and finally they were ushered through a small painted door into a small painted room, which had been brought all the way from Sienna, and there they found Mrs. Dawson--a beautiful, worn, world-weary Mrs. Dawson, with one streak of gray in the front of her dark hair, her tragic eyes, and her long violet and black draperies--a perfect Sibyl.
Crystal did not treat her as a Sibyl, however. ”Hullo, Sophie!” she said. ”This is my brother-in-law's brother, Ben Moreton. He's crazy to meet you. You'll like him. I can't stay because I'm dining somewhere or other, but he's not.”
”Will he dine with me?” said Mrs. Dawson in a wonderful deep, slow voice--”just stay on and dine with me alone?”
Ben began to say that he couldn't, but Crystal said yes, that he would be delighted to, and that she would stop for him again about half past nine, and that it was a wonderful plan, and then she went away.
Mrs. Dawson seemed to take it all as a matter of course. ”Sit down, Mr. Moreton,” she said. ”I have a quarrel with you.”
Ben could not help feeling a little disturbed by the way he had been injected into Mrs. Dawson's evening without her volition. He did not sit down.
”You know,” he said, ”there isn't any reason why you should have me to dine just because Crystal says so. I do want to thank you for the check you sent in to us for the strike fund. It will do a lot of good.”
”Oh, that,” replied Mrs. Dawson. ”They are fighting all our battles for us.”
”It cheered us up in the office. I wanted to tell you, and now I think I'll go. I dare say you are dining out, anyhow--”
Her eyes flashed at him. ”Dining out!” she exclaimed, as if the suggestion insulted her. ”You evidently don't know me. I never dine out. I have nothing in common with these people. I lead a very lonely life. You do me a favor by staying. You and I could exchange ideas.