Part 14 (1/2)
”You were calling her your mascot two hours ago.”
”She'll be the death of me, yet,” the little man insisted gloomily. He stopped short, jerking his arm free. ”Look here, I'm not going. What's the use? We'd only row. And I've got my work cut out for me back there”--with a jerk of his head toward the theatre.
Whitaker hesitated, then without regret decided to lose him. It would be as well to get over the impending interview without a third factor.
”Very well,” he said, beckoning a taxicab in to the curb. ”What's the address?”
Max gave it sullenly.
”So long,” he added morosely as Whitaker opened the cab door; ”sorry I ever laid eyes on you.”
Whitaker hesitated. ”How about that supper?” he inquired. ”Is it still on?”
”How in blazes do I know? Come round to the Beaux Arts and find out for yourself--same's I'll have to.”
”All right,” said Whitaker doubtfully. He nodded to the chauffeur, and jumped into the cab. As they swung away he received a parting impression of Max, his pose modelled on the popular conception of Napoleon at Waterloo: hands clasped behind his back, hair in disorder, chin on his chest, a puzzled frown shadowing his face as he stared sombrely after his departing guest.
Whitaker settled back and, oblivious to the lights of Broadway streaming past, tried to think--tried with indifferent success to prepare himself against the unhappy conference he had to antic.i.p.ate. It suddenly presented itself to his reason, with shocking force, that his att.i.tude must be humbly and wholly apologetic. It was a singular case: he had come home to find his wife on the point of marrying another man--and _she_ was the one ent.i.tled to feel aggrieved! Strange twist of the eternal triangle!...
He tried desperately, and with equal futility, to frame some excuse for his fault.
Far too soon the machine swerved into Fifty-seventh Street, slipped halfway down the block, described a wide arc to the northern curb and pulled up, trembling, before a modest modern residence between Sixth and Seventh avenues.
Reluctantly Whitaker got out and, on suspicion, told the chauffeur to wait. Then, with all the alacrity of a condemned man ascending the scaffold, he ran up the steps to the front door.
A man-servant answered his ring without undue delay.
Was Miss Law at home? He would see.
This indicated that she was at home. Whitaker tendered a card with his surname pencilled after that of _Mr. Hugh Morten_ in engraved script. He was suffered to enter and wait in the hallway.
He stared round him with pardonable wonder. If this were truly the home of Mary Ladislas Whitaker--her property--he had builded far better than he could possibly have foreseen with that investment of five hundred dollars six years since. But who, remembering the tortured, half-starved child of the Commercial House, could have prefigured the Sara Law of to-day--the woman who, before his eyes, within that hour, had burst through the counterfeit of herself of yesterday like some splendid creature emerging from its chrysalis?
Soft, shaded lights, rare furnis.h.i.+ngs, the rich yet delicate atmosphere of exquisite taste, the hush and orderly perfection of a home made and maintained with consummate art: these furnished him with dim, provoking intimations of an individuality to which he was a stranger--less than a stranger--nothing....
The man-servant brought his dignity down-stairs again.
Would Mr. Whitaker be pleased to wait in the drawing-room?
Mr. Whitaker surrendered top-coat and hat and was shown into the designated apartment. Almost immediately he became aware of feminine footsteps on the staircase--tapping heels, the faint murmuring of skirts. He faced the doorway, indefinably thrilled, the blood quickening in throat and temples.
To his intense disappointment there entered to him a woman impossible to confuse with her whom he sought: a lady well past middle-age, with the dignity and poise consistent with her years, her manifest breeding and her iron-gray hair.
”Mr. Whitaker?”
He bowed, conscious that he was being narrowly scrutinized, nicely weighed in the scales of a judgment prejudiced, if at all, not in his favor.
”I am Mrs. Secretan, a friend of Miss Law's. She has asked me to say that she begs to be excused, at least for to-night. She has suffered a severe shock and is able to see n.o.body.”