"Oh yes--of course! This certainly is a beautiful day. If El Paso hadn't been so far away we'd have brought one of our cars with us, but I don't see any sense spending all that money when you can hire cars so cheap by the hour. Madeleine don't like to ride in hired cars. I like any kind of car."

So far I had had no opportunity of doing more than bend my head, a chance to speak not having been permitted me, but, at her mother's pause for breath, the girl at the window looked down upon the street and then turned her face toward me. "That's a pretty car you came in. Can you drive it yourself?"

"I have no car. That's Kitty's--I mean Mrs. McBryde's. That reminds me. I have a message from her. She could not call this afternoon, but she asks me to say she hopes you can both come in Thursday afternoon and have tea with her. She is always at home on Thursdays and--"

"Yes, indeed; we'll be glad to come." Mrs. Swink took up Kitty's card, which had been sent up with mine, and looked at it through her lorgnette, suspended around her neck by a chain studded with amethysts, large and small. "We'll come with pleasure. Won't we, Madeleine? Shall we write and tell her?"

"Of course not, mother. Didn't you just hear Miss Heath say it was her regular 'at home' day? You don't write notes for things like that." Miss Swink's eyes again turned in my direction. "I'm much obliged, but I don't think I can come. I've an engagement for Thursday."

"If it's with Harrie, he won't mind waiting awhile." With unconcealed eagerness Mrs. Swink twisted herself in her tight and too-embracing chair, for the moment forgetting, seemingly, that I was a hearing person. "You can't afford to miss a chance like that.

You'll meet the best people. Harrie can stay to dinner. I'll get tickets for the theatre."

"He won't come to dinner. I asked him. Says he's sick." The girl's lips curled slightly. "He's always sick when--"

"Madeleine!" The sudden change in Mrs. Swink's voice was beyond belief, and with a shrug of her shoulders the girl again looked out of the window. I was making discoveries with unexpected rapidity, discoveries that were filling me with speculation and promising conclusions that were at variance with Selwyn's, and for a moment the uncomfortable silence, following the sharp e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, was unbroken by me in the realization of my unwilling partic.i.p.ation in a bit of family revelation, and also by inability to think of anything to say.

"I hope you can come." My tone was but feebly urging. "Everybody has such a good time at Kitty's. I hope, too, you are going to like our city." I looked from mother to daughter as I uttered the usual formulas for strangers. "This is not your first visit?"

"Oh no--we've been here several times before. We like it very much.

It's so distinguay and all that." Mrs. Swink's hands went to her head and she patted her transformation, but failed to straighten it.

"I was born in Alabama, and Mr. Swink in Missouri, and Madeleine in Texas, so we feel kin to all Southerners and at home anywhere in the South; but I like this city best of any in it. Some day, I reckon, we'll live here." Her voice was significant and again she looked at her daughter, but her daughter did not look at her.

"We think it a very nice city, but I suppose I'd love any place in which I had to live. That is, I'd try to. You have old friends here, I believe, and of course you'll make new ones." My voice was even less affirmative than interrogatory. I hardly knew what I was saying. I was thinking of something else.

"Yes, indeed. That's what we expect to do. We don't know a great many people here. Mrs. Hadden Cressy and I are old friends, but we don't see much of each other. I suppose you know the Cressys?"

"I know of them very well. They are among our most valuable people.

I have often wanted to know Mr. and Mrs. Cressy. Their son, Tom, I used to see often as a boy, but of late I rarely come across him.

What's become of him? He was one of the nicest boys I ever knew."

Mrs. Swink's hands made expressive gesture, but the girl at the window gave no sign of hearing me. In her face, however, I saw color creep, saw also that she bit her lips.

"n.o.body knows what he does with himself." Mrs. Swink sighed. "After all the money his father spent on his education, and after everybody took him up, he dropped out of society and stuck at his business as if he didn't have a cent in the world. He hasn't any ambition. He could go with the most fashionable people in town, if his parents can't, but he won't do it. He must be a great disappointment to his parents."

With a slow movement of her shoulders, Miss Swink turned and looked at her mother, in her eyes that which made me sit up. What the look implied I was unable altogether to understand, but I could venture a guess at it, and on the venture I spoke:

"He's the pride of their life, I've been told. Any parents would be proud of such a son--that is, if they were the kind of parents a son could be proud of. I'd like to see Tom. I used to be very fond of him when he was a boy. He lived just back of us and he and Kitty were great friends as children. I'm afraid he's forgotten me, however."

"No, he hasn't--" Miss Swink stopped as abruptly as she began, but the color that had crept into her face at mention of Tom Cressy's name now crimsoned it, and again she turned her head away. In her eyes, however, I had caught the grat.i.tude flashed to me, and quickly I decided I must see her alone, talk to her alone; and so absorbed was I in wondering how I could do it that only vaguely did I hear Mrs. Swink, who was telling me of various engagements already made, of the difficulty of getting in what had to be gotten in between being manicured and marcelled and ma.s.saged and chiropodized and tailored and dress-makered, and had she not been so interested in the telling she would have discovered I was not at all interested in the hearing. She did not discover.

When for the third time I saw Miss Swink glance at the watch upon her wrist, and then out of the window, I knew she was waiting for some one to pa.s.s. It wasn't Harrie. There was no necessity for furtive watching for Harrie to pa.s.s, The latter's plaint of sickness was evidently not convincing to the girl. I looked at the clock on the mantel. I had been in the room twenty-seven minutes, but I didn't agree with Selwyn that Miss Swink was in love with his brother. Her engagement to him was due, I imagined, not so much to her literalness as to her mother's management. An unholy desire to demonstrate that the latter was not of a scientific kind possessed me, and quickly my mind worked.

CHAPTER XIX

With eyes apparently on Mrs. Swink, I missed no movement of her daughter, and when presently I saw her put her elbow on the window-sill and wipe her lips with her handkerchief, and then make movement as if to brush something away, I got up, made effort to say good-by unhurriedly to her mother, and went over to the girl. As I held out my hand I glanced out of the window. Exactly opposite, and looking up at it, was Tom Cressy, his handkerchief to his lips.

I took the hand she held toward me in both of mine and something in her eyes, something both mutinous and pleading, filled me with sympathy I should not have felt, perhaps. She was only nineteen, and her mother was obviously trying to make her marry Harrie when she probably loved Tom. It was all so weak and so wicked, so sordid and stupid, that I felt like Kitty when with Alice Herbert. I needed disinfecting. I would have to get away before I said things I shouldn't.

"Your mother says the ma.s.seuse comes this afternoon. Can't you take a drive with me while she is here?" I turned to Mrs. Swink. "You will not mind if she leaves you for a little while? It is too lovely to stay indoors."

"No, indeed, I won't mind. I'll be glad to have her go if she'll do it. Lately she won't do anything but sit at that window." Mrs.

Swink, who had gotten out of her chair with difficulty, turned to her daughter, blinking her little, near-sighted eyes at her as if she were beyond all human understanding; and the fretfulness of her tone she made no effort to control. "She's that restless and hard to please and hard to interest in anything that she nearly wears me out.

Girls didn't do like that when I was young. If I'd had a hundredth part of what she's got--"

"What's the use of having things you don't want?" Miss Swink's shoulders made resentful movement; then she turned to me, for a moment hesitated.

"Thank you very much for asking me, but I can't go this afternoon. I need exercise. If I don't walk a great deal I--"

"I'd much rather walk. I love to walk." I must know why she was meeting Tom without her mother's knowledge. "I'll send the car home and we'll walk together. It isn't often I have an afternoon without something that must be done in it. I'll wait here while you get your hat and coat."

Into the girl's face came flush that spread slowly to the temples, and uncertainly she looked at me. Steadily my eyes held hers and after half a moment she turned and went out of the room. Coming back, she followed me into the hall and to the elevator, but, eyes on the gloves she was fastening, she said nothing until we reached the street. On the corner opposite us Tom Cressy was standing in the doorway of a cigar-shop, and as he saw the car dismissed, saw us cross the street and come toward him, into his honest, if not handsome, face came puzzled incredulity. Not until in front of him did I give evidence of seeing him; then I stopped.

"Why, Tom Cressy!" I held out my hand and, as he took it, I noticed the one holding his hat was not entirely steady. "It's ages since I've seen you, Tom. You know Miss Swink, I believe." I pretended not to see their formal and somewhat frightened bow. "We're going to walk. Can't you go with us? Come on. We're going to the park."

Slipping my arm through Madeleine's, I caught step, and on the other side of her Tom did likewise, hands in his pockets, and into both faces came glow that illuminated them and enlightened me. At the end of our walk I would know pretty well what I wanted to know.

For an hour and a half we walked briskly and talked along lines usually self-revealing; and by the time the hotel was again reached I was quite satisfied concerning a complicated situation that needed skilful steering to avoid a dangerous and disastrous smash-up.

"Can't I go home with you, Miss Dandridge?" Tom twisted his hat nervously. "It's too late for you to go so far by yourself. Please let me go with you."

"Of course you're going with me. After dark I'm only a baby person and I like a nice, big man with me! Good-by, dear." I turned to Madeleine. "Some afternoon, if your mother does not mind, come down and have tea with me in Scarborough Square. Tom can come, too, and bring you home. I'll telephone you one day next week."

With a nod I walked away, but not before I saw a flash of joy pa.s.s between two faces which were raised to each other, and, guiltily, I wondered if I had again done something I shouldn't. I was always doing it. Hurrying on with Tom, I talked of many things, but at my door I turned to him and held out my hand.

"I haven't any right to ask you, but I'm going to ask you. You care for each other and something is the matter. What is it, Tom?"

"Matter!" Indignation, wrathful and righteous, flared in face and voice, and Tom's clutch of my hand was more fervid than considerate.

"Her mother's the matter. She's batty on the subject of society and position, and first families, and fashion, and rot of that sort--all right in its way, but not her way. I'm not aristocratic enough for her. She doesn't want her daughter to marry me because we haven't any family brush and coats of arms, and don't belong to the inside set, and marrying me wouldn't give Madeleine what she wants her to have. Madeleine don't want it. She wants--"

"You. I understand. Does Mrs. Swink want her to marry some one else?" I hated my pretended ignorance, but I must know just what he knew. Know if Madeleine had told him of her engagement. "Who is it she wants her to marry?"

"Harrie Thorne. If she knew what others knew of Harrie--" Tom bit his lip. "I don't want to go into that, however. Not my business.

But if she was told she wouldn't believe. She don't want to believe.

She wants her daughter to marry what Harrie can give her. An honored name which he has dishonored."

Tom took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead, in his eyes boyish incomprehension of incomprehensible things. "Men are wicked, Miss Dandridge, but they wouldn't do what some women do. They've got it in their hands to do a lot they don't do--women have--and if it wasn't for some of them, for those we believe in, the world would go smash in certain ways as far as men are concerned. What's the use of keeping straight and living clean when plenty of women don't seem to care, or certainly don't ask too much about a man if he's got money, or anything else they want for their daughters? Mrs. Swink is determined that Madeleine shall marry Harrie."

"But has Madeleine no will of her own? If she permits her mother to dispose of her--"

"She's been disposed of since she was a baby, and resistance wears thin after a while, I suppose." The tips of Tom's right shoe made a small circle on the brick pavement, but presently he looked up at me.

"It's pretty queer for me to be telling things like this, but you always did understand a fellow. I've often wished I could come and see you. Madeleine and I were engaged once."

"Why aren't you engaged now? Tell me anything you want. What happened?"

"Mother Swink happened!" Tom's words came jerkily. "She wouldn't even let me talk to her; made a devil of a row, dragged Madeleine all around Europe, wouldn't let her have a letter from me--sent them back herself--and told Madeleine if she married me she would never speak to me."