White-heat anger enveloped Steve's very soul, yet strangely enough he felt not like sinning but rather like Laertes crying out in mental anguish: "Do you see this, O G.o.d?"

CHAPTER XXI

Steve knew he brushed by Aunt Belle, who was coming in to see what her brother was roaring about, and down those detestable gilded curlicue stairs to seek out his wife and try again to make her realize that for once he was determined on what should come to pa.s.s as regarded their future together, to force her to realize even if he created a cheap scene.

Whatever blame fell upon Constantine's shoulders was not within his province to judge--Constantine was a dying man and Steve was not quite thirty-five. So that ended the matter from Steve's viewpoint. It was his intention not to try to evade his personal blame in the matter but to make reparation to his own self and to his wife if he were permitted. If he could once convince his wife that their sole chance of future happiness and sanity lay in beginning as medium-incomed young persons with all the sane world before them it would have been worth it all--excepting for Mary Faithful.

Even as Steve tried in a quick, tense fashion to dismiss Mary from his mind and say that Beatrice was his wife and that love must come as the leavener once this hideous wealth was removed, he knew the thing was impossible. The best solution of which he was capable was to say that he owed it to both Mary Faithful and Beatrice to play the game from the right angle and that in causing Beatrice to disclaim her t.i.tle of Gorgeous Girl and all it implied he at least would find contentment--the same sort of uninteresting contentment of which Mary boasted.

He found Beatrice in a furore of tears and protests, angered at missing the dinner engagement and not understanding why any of it was necessary. She felt her own territory had been infringed upon, since making a scene was her peculiar form of mental intoxication.

But Steve was composed, even smiling, and as he came up to her she fancied her father had made everything all right as his check book had seen fit to do upon so many occasions. The slight worry over Steve's possible folly vanished, and she felt it safe to proceed to reproach him for having been so horrid.

"Now, my dear Stevuns, why did you get me all upset? And yourself and poor papa, to say nothing of my having to send word at the last moment that we could not attend the dinner. Oh, Steve, Steve, will you ever be really tamed?"

"Come and sit beside me." He drew out a notebook and pencil. "I must tell you some things."

Rather curious, she obeyed, but keeping a discreet distance so her frock would not be ruffled. "I'm still cross," she warned.

Steve was writing down figures, adding them and making notations.

"Look here, dear," he began, patiently; "this is just where I shall stand--a poor man to your way of thinking, almost as poor as when I set out to win you. I'm going into a salaried job for a few years--a real hope-to-die job--and we can have a house----"

"I thought we talked that all out before," she interrupted, half petulantly, half wistfully. "Why do you keep repeating yourself?

You'll be thumping your fists the first thing we know!"

"Do you fancy I am not going to do this? Are you not sufficiently concerned to listen, to realize that I have been a blind, conceited fool? But I have learned my lesson. I shall support my wife from now on and live in my own house or else I shall no longer be your husband."

"Steve!"

She opened and shut her fan quickly, then it fell to the floor. But he did not pick it up.

"You were never keen for details, so I shall not irritate you now by introducing them. But the fact remains that I have been made and backed by your father merely because he wished me to be your husband.

You picked me out--and I was keen to be picked out--and he decided to make me as proper a companion for you as possible. I am in some ways as untried to-day as any youngster starting out; as I was when I fancied I made the grand and initial stride by myself. Your father feels that I ought to be eternally grateful--but then, what else could the father of the Gorgeous Girl think? He has harmed me--but he has ruined you. I hardly thought you would meet me halfway, still it was worth the try."

Forgetful of her flounces Beatrice crumpled them in her hands, saying sharply: "Are you taking this way of getting out of it?"

"Good heavens!" Steve murmured, half inaudibly, "I keep forgetting you have never been taught values or sincerity! There is no way I can prove to you how in earnest I am, is there?"

"You mean to say that I am a failure?" she preened herself unconsciously.

"The most gorgeous failure we have with us to-day! And the worst of it is it is growing to be a common type of failure since gorgeousness is becoming prevalent. There are many like you--not many more gorgeous, and thousands less so. You are a type that has developed in the last twenty years and is developing these days at breakneck speed! And you can't understand and you don't want to and I'm d.a.m.ned if I'll try to explain again."

"Well," she asked, shrewdly, quite the woman of the world, "what is it you are about to do? Wear corduroy trousers and a red bandanna and start a butcher-paper-covered East-Side magazine filled with ravings?"

"No; that is another type we plain Americans have on our hands."

"Don't spar for time."

"I'm not. I'm through sparring; I want to go to work. I want----"

What was the use? He stopped before adding another spark to her wrath.

"I suppose you want to marry that woman--Mary Faithful, who has loved you so long and made herself so useful! She was clever enough to pretend to efface herself and go to work for someone else, but I dare say you have seen her as often as before. Oh, are you surprised I know? I gave you the credit of being above such a thing, but Trudy told me that this woman had told her the truth--so you see even your Mary Faithful cannot be trusted. You had better turn monk, Steve, be done with the whole annoying pack of us! Anyway, Trudy came running to me, but I never lost sleep over the rumour. I felt you were above such things, as I said, but presently little indications--straws, you know--told me she cared; and if a woman cares for a man and is able to pa.s.s several hours each day in his employ, unless she is cross-eyed or a blithering idiot she cannot fail to win the game! Now can she, Stevuns?"

Steve raised his hand in protest. "Please leave her out of it."

"So--we must talk about my being a failure, my father clipping your wings of industry and all that--yet we must not mention a woman who has loved you--and gossiped about it."

"She did not! You know Trudy--you know her nature," he interrupted.

"Taking up her defence! n.o.ble Stevuns! Then you do reciprocate--and you are planning one of those ready-to-be-served bungalows with even a broom closet and lovely gla.s.s doork.n.o.bs, where Mary may gambol about in organdie and boast of the prize pie she has baked for your supper.

Oh, Stevuns, you are too funny for words!"

She laughed, but there was a malicious sparkle in her eyes. She was carrying off the situation as best she knew how, for she did not comprehend its true significance, its highest motive. Underneath her veneer of sarcasm and ridicule she was hurt, stabbed--quite helpless.

With her father's spirit she resolved to take the death gamely--and make Steve as ridiculous as possible, to have as good a time as she could out of such a sorry ending. But she knew as she stood facing him, so tired and heavy-eyed, the rejected sheet of figures fallen on the brocaded sofa between them, that it was she who met and experienced lasting defeat.

By turns she had been the spoiled child of fortune, the romantic parasite, the mad b.u.t.terfly, the advanced woman, the Bolshevik de luxe; and finally and for all time to come she was confronted with the last possibility--there was no forked road for her--that of a shrewd, cold flirt. She realized too late the injustice done her under the name of a father's loving protection. Moreover, she determined never to let herself realize to any great extent the awfulness of the injustice. It was, as Steve said, a common fate these days--there was solace in the fact of never being alone in her defeat. But at five minutes after twelve she had glimpsed the situation and regretted briefly all she was denied. Still it was an impossibility to cease being a Gorgeous Girl.

She felt cheated, stunted, revengeful because of this common fate.

Steve was setting out for new worlds to conquer--he very likely would have a good time in so doing. She must continue to be fearfully rushed and terribly popular, having a good time, too. How dull everything was! Strangely, she did not give Mary Faithful or her part in Steve's future a thought--just then. She was thinking that Ibsen merely showed the awakened Nora's going out the door--as have Victorian matrons shown their daughters, urging them to do likewise. But it really begins to be interesting at this very point since it is not the dramatic closing of the door that is so vital, but the pitfalls and adventures on the long road that Nora and her sisters have seen fit to travel.

Beatrice was deprived of even this chance, even the falling by the wayside and admitting a new sort of defeat, or travelling the road in cold, supreme fashion and ending with selfish victory and impersonal theories warranted to upset the most domestic and content of her stay-at-home sisters. But she, like all Gorgeous Girls, must be content to stand peering through the luxurious gates of her father's house, watching Steve go down the long road, then glancing back at her lovely habitation, where no one except tradesmen really took her seriously, and where all that was expected of her, or really permitted, was to have a good time.

Steve shrugged his shoulders. He felt a great weariness concerning the situation, nonchalant scorn of what happened in the future of this woman. As for Mary Faithful--that was a different matter, but he could not think about Mary Faithful while standing in the salon of the Villa Rosa with the Gorgeous Girl as mentor.

"Suppose we do not try to talk any more just now?" he suggested. "We are neither one fit to do so. Wait until morning and then come to an agreement." He spoke as impersonally as if a stranger asking aid interrupted his busiest time.

Beatrice recognized the tone and what it implied. "I am agreed," she said, after a second's hesitation. "Do not fancy my father and I will come on our knees to you."

She swept from the room in a dignified manner. Steve waited until he heard the door of Constantine's room bang. He knew his wife had rushed to tell her father her side of the matter--to receive the eternal heart's ease in the form of a check so she could go and play and forget all about Stevuns the brute.

He walked unsteadily through the rooms of the lower floor, out on to the main balcony, and back again. He could not think in these rooms; he could not think in any corner of the whole tinsel house. It seemed a consolation prize to those who have been forbidden to think.

He went to his own ornate and impossible room, which should have belonged to an actor desiring publicity, or some such puppet as Gay.

He tried to sleep, but that too was impossible. He kept pacing back and forth and back and forth, playing the white bear as Beatrice had so often said, wondering if it would be too much the act of a cad to go to Mary Faithful and merely tell her. He could think at Mary's house--he must have a chance to think, to realize that Beatrice refused to come with him and to tell himself that nothing should force him to remain in the Villa Rosa and be the husband of the Gorgeous Girl, set right by her father's checks, the laughingstock of the business world that had called his hand.

The humiliation, the failure, the loss--were good to have; stimulating.

Wonderfully alive and keen, he did not know how to express the new sensation that took possession of his jaded brain. He was like a gourmand dyspeptic who has long hesitated before trying the diet of a workingman and when someone has whisked him off to a sanitarium and fed him bran and milk until he has forgotten nerves, headaches, and logginess he vows eternal thankfulness to bran and milk, and is humbly setting out to adopt the workingman's diet instead of the old-time menus.

Steve could begin to work simply, to find his permanent place in the commercial world. He had enough money--or would have--to start a home in simple yet pleasant fashion; he had knowledge and ability that would place him favourably and furnish him the chance to work normally toward the top. That was all very well, he told himself toward early morning--but must it be done alone? He had had the Gorgeous Girl as the incentive to make his fortune, and now he had Mary Faithful as the incentive to lose it--and if the Gorgeous Girl stayed on at the villa and became that pitied, dangerous object, a divorcee; and if Mary did care-----Strange things, both wonderful and fearsome, happen in the United States of America.