Part 16 (1/2)
Armitage interrupted.
”Your mother asked me if I had been in college. I told her I had, but that I preferred not to say where, or why I left.”
”Oh!” she said, and her eyes suffused with pity. ”I am so sorry. But you _must_ tell me one thing now. Was your leaving because of--of anything--that would make me sorry I had found--” she smiled, but looked at him eagerly--”the subject of the Dying Gladiator?”
”I hope not.”
”You are not certain?”
”Miss Wellington, there are certain reasons why the position you helped me to obtain was vitally necessary. I am a dependant in your house. I can a.s.sure you that you will never find anything half so grievous against me as that which you have already found--your 'Dying Gladiator'
a servant. You must think of that.”
”But I am not so deluded as to think you cannot explain that” cried the girl. ”How foolis.h.!.+ You are not a servant, never were, and I am sure never will be one. And I know you have n't sneaked in as a yellow newspaper reporter, or magazine writer,” tentatively. ”You are not a sneak.”
”No, I have not the intention, nor the ability, to make copy of my experiences,” said Armitage.
”Intention!” echoed the girl. ”Well, since you suggest the word, just what was, or is, your intention then?--if I may ask.”
Armitage straightened and looked full at the girl.
”Suppose I should say that ever since that morning on the _General_ I had--” Armitage hesitated. ”I reckon I 'd rather not say that,” he added.
”No, I reckon you had better not,” she said placidly. ”In the meantime, how long do you intend staying with us before giving notice?”
Armitage did not reply immediately. He stood for a moment in deep thought. When he looked up his face was serious.
”Miss Wellington, I have neither done nor said anything that would lead you to believe that, whatever I may have been, I am now in any way above what I appear to be, with the Wellington livery on my back. I say this in justice to you. I say it because I am grateful to you.
You may regard it as a warning, if you will.”
For a moment she did not reply, sitting rigidly thoughtful, while Armitage, abandoning all pretence at work, stood watching her.
”Very well,” she said at length, and her voice was coldly conventional.
”If you have finished your repairs, will you drive me to Mrs. Van Valkenberg's? Follow this road through; turn to your left, and I 'll tell you when to stop.”
Sara Van Valkenberg was one of the most popular of the younger matrons of Newport and New York. As Sara Malalieu, daughter of a prime old family, Billy Van Valkenberg had discovered her, and their wedding had been an event from which many good people in her native city dated things. Van Valkenberg was immensely wealthy and immensely wicked.
Sara had not sounded the black depths of his character when he was killed in a drunken automobile ride two years before, but she had learned enough to appreciate the kindness of an intervening fate.
Now she lived in an Elizabethan cottage sequestered among the rocks a short distance inland from the Ocean Drive. She was very good to look at, very worldly wise, and very, very popular. She was thirty years old, an age not to be despised in a woman.
When Miss Wellington's car arrived at the cottage, Tommy Osgood's motor was in front of the door, which was but a few feet from the road. With an expression of annoyance, Anne ran up the steps and rang the bell.
The footman was about to take her card when Mrs. Van Valkenberg's voice sounded from the library.
”Come in, Anne, we saw you coming.”
Anne entered the apartment and found her friend reclining in all her supple ease, watching flushed-face Tommy, who had been attempting to summon his nerve to tell her how little he cared to continue his course through the world without her, which was just what she did not wish to have him do, because Tommy was a manly, likable, una.s.suming chap and had much yet to learn, being several years her junior.
”Oh, Tommy,” said Anne, ”I wanted to speak to Sara alone for a moment.”