Part 13 (2/2)
”However--I found out one thing to-day. The dancing is to be out of doors. There will be an immense arbor or something of the sort erected on the lawn above the sunken garden. My gown is a dream and I shall wear the ruby.”
”Yes,” he said smiling. ”You shall wear the ruby. But you must expect me to keep very close to you--”
”The closer the better.” She smiled charmingly. ”Have you tried on your costume?”
”I haven't even looked at it. Who am I?”
”Caesar Borgia. You are not much like him yourself, darling, but I thought he was not so very unlike modern American business, as a whole.”
Ruyler laughed. ”Why not Machiavelli? But as no doubt it is black velvet, much puffed and slashed, I may hope it will be becoming to my nondescript fairness. You must promise not to wander off for long walks with any of your admirers. Not that I fear the admirers, but the thieves that are bound to get into that crowd one way or another. They have a way of unclasping necklaces even of the most circ.u.mspect wives in the company of not too absorbing men.”
Her eyes opened and flashed, but he had no time to a.n.a.lyze that fleeting expression before she was promising volubly not to wander from the illuminated s.p.a.ces.
He interrupted her suddenly. They were in the library now, and sat down on a little sofa in front of the window. The moon was high and brilliant and the great expanse of water with the high cl.u.s.ters of lights on the islands, the sharp hard silhouette of the encircling mountains, the green and silver stars so high above, the moving golden dots of an incoming liner from j.a.pan, the long rows of arc lights along the sh.o.r.e, made a landscape of the night that Mrs. Thornton with all her millions hardly could rival.
”Are you not grateful for this?” he asked whimsically and a little wistfully.
”Oh, Price, dear, I am more grateful than you will ever know. I have not a fault on earth to find with you. You would be the prince of the fairy tale if you were not so busy.
”But that is the tragedy. You are busy--I am not.”
”Well, let us have the personal solution--one that fits ourselves. You have time to think it out. I, alas! have not.” He took her hand and fondled it, hoping for her confidence.
”I don't know.” She had a deep rich voice and she could make it very intense. ”I only know there must--must--be a change--if--if--I am to--Can't you take me abroad for a year? That might not be work, but at least I should be learning some thing--I have traveled almost not at all--and, at least, I should have you.”
”But later? Most of your friends have spent a good deal of time in Europe. I doubt if any state in the Union goes to Europe as often as California! They are all the more discontented when they come back here to vegetate--as Mrs. Thornton would express it.
”It would be a blessed interval, but no more.”
”We should have time to think out a new and different life....
”You know--in the cla.s.s I come from--in France--the women are the partners of their husbands. Even in the higher bourgeoisie, that is, where they still are in business, not living on great inherited fortunes--
”My uncle had a small silk house in Rouen, and my aunt kept the books and attended to all the correspondence. He always said she was the cleverer business man of the two; but French women have a real genius for business. Some of our great ladies help their husbands manage their estates.
”It is only the few that live for pleasure and glitter in the most glittering city in the world that have furnished the novelists the material to give the world a false impression of France.
”The majority live such sober, useful, busy lives that only the highest genius could make people read about them.
”Of course, young girls dream of something far more brilliant, and wait eagerly for the husband who shall deliver them from their narrow restricted little spheres... perhaps take them to the great world of Paris; but they settle down, even in Paris, and devote themselves to their husbands' interests, which are their own, and to their children....
”That is it! They are indispensable--not as women, but as partners. I barely know what your business is about--only that you are in some tremendous wholesale commission thing with tentacles that reach half round the world.
”Only the wives of politicians are any real help to their husbands in this country. Isabel Gwynne! What a help she will be--has been--to Mr.
Gwynne. But then she was always busy. When her uncle died he left her that little ranch and scarcely anything else, she took to raising chickens--not to fuss about and fill in her time, but to keep a roof over her head and have enough to eat and wear. I doubt if she ever was bored in her life.”
”I can't take you into the business, sweetheart,” said Ruyler slowly.
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