Part 41 (1/2)

”Somebody ought to make _her_ a present of a little ordinary sense,” he commented, with no great interest in the subject. ”I've seen her kind before. They tear things loose till they get what they want, and then they don't like it.”

”Eugenia just loves it, every bit of it,” Marise objected.

”Well, let her,” he dismissed her from consideration with his usual nonchalance, and taking the last of the Dubonnet, he rose to go into his room.

In a moment Marise heard an indignant roar, ”_Melanie has forgotten my hot water again!_” Her father came to the door of his room, vast and bulging in his s.h.i.+rt and trousers, outraged by the oversight.

”Oh, yes,” said Marise, in annoyance. ”You might have known she would.

Biron has been in another tantrum and taking her head off. It gets her so rattled she forgets her own work.”

”I don't see what that has to do with _my hot water_,” cried the master of the house aggrieved.

”It hasn't! It hasn't!” cried Marise hastily, running to tell Melanie of her crime.

Not till the hot water was safely delivered, and her father's comments on bad service diminished to a distant solitary mutter, did Marise go into her own room to dress. She had no hot water, either, but she washed in cold, scorning with all her heart the childishness of men, and laughing childishly at the picture her father had made, shouting and indignant, billowing in his s.h.i.+rt and trousers. He and Biron! One had always to be smoothing them down and wrapping them up in the little things they wanted. It must be truly lovely to be married to one, as poor Melanie was! But, after all, Father did his best to be good to her, when everything about the house was all right and he could think of it.

She hoped the dinner would be all right. It was too bad about that sole.

Sole was so expensive too. Not that Father ever objected to anything the table cost. Oh, _flute_! she had forgotten to see if Biron had exchanged that Benedictine for Chartreuse. Father would raise the roof if they served him Benedictine again. She put on her dress hurriedly, and hooking it up as she went, she stepped hastily down the hall to the kitchen. She never had any help from Melanie in dressing, not even costumes that hooked up on the shoulders and under the arms, because it was important not to disturb the small quant.i.ty of gray matter Melanie had, at the hour of serving a meal. It was all needed for the matter in hand.

Dinner was over, and had been acceptable. Her father had partaken of everything with his careful appraising attention, and had found no adverse comment to make. Coffee had been served, and the Chartreuse--Biron had not forgotten.

Out in the kitchen Biron (first, taught by much experience, loosening the sash which bound his mighty paunch), was sitting with his wife at table, eating and drinking like a page out of Rabelais. The dinner had pleased his exacting and irritable master (Biron immensely respected him for being exacting and irritable), and it also had pleased Biron. There was plenty of it left and this was a house where the cook was never subjected to the indignity of having inquiries made about _les restes_.

He leaned back in his chair, undid the b.u.t.ton at his throat, and smiled at his wife, over his gla.s.s of excellent Burgundy.

”Life is good, hein, old lady?” he said.

She nodded in agreement, keeping her thoughts to herself in the usual stealthy, secretive, feminine fas.h.i.+on.

Over the coffee and Chartreuse, facing another well-satisfied man sat another secretive woman, talking in one key, feeling in another, and finding the process far from enlivening. Down below the surface of the sparkling, chatting Marise, drooped a listless, dispirited Marise for whom a birthday was a most depressing occasion.

”You're nineteen, aren't you, Marise?” asked her father over his cigar.

Marise nodded.

”Well, that's another one gone! Congratulations on every one you get over with,” he commented, sipping the stinging green fire of his liqueur with satisfaction.

Marise thought of nothing amusing to say and was silent.

Her father stirred his big body, with the air of some one arousing himself to an effort. The effort seemed to be to say, ”Is there anything you want I can get for you?”

His daughter was at a loss before the comprehensiveness of this blanket question. ”What kind of a thing?” she inquired.

He professed himself more at a loss than she. ”If I had any idea what, I wouldn't need to ask you, would I?”

But he managed, all the same, at least to eliminate some of the things he didn't mean, ”Oh, not dresses or hats,” and in a moment, after another sip at the liqueur, to give a little more definite idea of what he did, ”Something going on, social life; what girls of nineteen are supposed to want.”

”Oh, you needn't bother. I get enough of that,” she answered, ”between Mrs. Marbury and Eugenia and Madame Vallery.” She was surprised at her father's interest. They seldom talked together, except of what they were to eat, had eaten, or were eating, or of the interminable games of chess which occupied any leisure moments of his and hers which chanced to coincide. He seemed to have something on his mind now. And he always hated the effort of bringing out what was in his mind. He stopped beating about the bush now and said heavily, ”You're no fool, Marise. I don't know any of the roundabout ways to say it to you, that a woman would have, but you won't mind that. What I mean is, I suppose--I imagine that's what's at the bottom of all of it--is this. Are you getting a chance to meet the right sort of young man, the kind you'd want to marry? For you will be marrying before long, I suppose.”