The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  And somehow, as I sat there, it seemed to me that the affinity business was only fun because it was dangerous. We were all children, and life was a Fourth of July, enchanting because it was risky.

  Day was sleeping, with his mouth shut! I leaned over and kissed him as he dozed.

  Sitting there, with Day asleep, I went over the events of the night, and I knew that Ferd had had his lesson, too, and that, having been burnt, he would not play with fire again--at least not until the blister had healed; for Ferd had seen the island picnickers and had learned that they were not puddlers. He had seen Ida and Day and, worst of all, he had known that it was Day who was pursuing us.

  I thought of that hour in the haymow, with Day and the others below, and Ferd dripping; and very quietly, so as not to waken my husband, I went into a paroxysm of mirth.

  THE FAMILY FRIEND

  I'VE thought the thing over and over, and honestly I don't know where it went wrong. It began so well. I planned it out, and it went exactly as I'd expected up to a certain point. Then it blew up.

  There's no argument about it, a girl has to look out for herself. The minute the family begin mixing in there's trouble.

  The day after I came out mother and I had a real heart-to-heart talk. I'd been away for years at school, and in the summers we hadn't seen much of each other. She played golf all day and I had my tennis and my horse. And in the evenings there were always kid dances. So we really got acquainted that day.

  She rustled into my room and gazed at what was left of my ball gown, spread out on the bed.

  "It really went rather well last night," she said.

  "Yes, mother," I replied.

  "I've sent the best of the flowers to the hospital."

  "Yes, mother."

  "You had more flowers than Bessie Willing."

  I shrugged my shoulders, and for some reason or other that irritated her.

  "For heaven's sake, Kit," she said sharply, "I wish you'd show a little appreciation. Your father has spent a fortune on you, one way and another.

  The supper alone last night But that's not what I came to talk about."

  "No, mother?"

  "No. Are you going to continue to waste your time on Henry Baring?"

  "I rather enjoy playing round with him. That's all it amounts to."

  "Not at all," said mother in her best manner. "It keeps the others away."

  "As, for instance?" I asked politely.

  She was getting on my nerves. I didn't mean to marry Henry, but I did mean to carry on my own campaign.

  "You know very well that there are only three marriageable men in town. There are eleven debutantes. And I don't care to be unkind, but at least four of them are are--"

  "I know," I said wearily "better looking than I am. Go ahead."

  "You're not at all ugly," mother put in hastily. "A great many people said nice things about you last night. The only thing I want to impress on you is that Madge will have to come out next year, and that you've been reared with expensive tastes."

  "I've got brains. Most of the other eleven haven't."

  "Brains are a liability, not an asset."

  "That's an exploded idea, mother. The only times they are a liability is when they are ruined by too much family interest."

  "That sounds impertinent," she said coldly.

  "Not at all; it's good business. If I'm to put over anything worth while, I shall have to work along my own lines. I can't afford to have my style cramped."

  She raised her eyebrows at that, for she hates slang. But she looked relieved too. When I think of how sure of myself I was that day I could rave!

  "Then you're not going to waste any more time on Henry?"

  "I think," I said reflectively, "that I'm going to use Henry quite a lot. But I don't intend to marry him."

  Yes, that's what I said. I remember it perfectly well. I was putting a dab of scent behind my ears at the time. I feel that I shall never use the stuff again.

  Well, mother went out quite cheered. It was the first real mother-and-daughter talk we'd had for a long time. When she had gone I went into my bathroom and locked the door and opened the windows and smoked two cigarettes, thinking things out.

  The family is opposed to my smoking, and no one knows except mother's maid, who fixes my hair, and the gardener. When for the third time he had seen smoke coming out of my bathroom window, and had rushed upstairs with a fire grenade and all the servants at his heels, I was compelled to take him into my confidence.

  Well, I smoked and thought things out. I am not beautiful, but I'm extremely chic, and at night, with a touch of rouge, I do very well. I have always worn sophisticated clothes. I thought they suited my style. But so did all the others. If I was to do anything distinguished it would have to be on new lines.

  "Early Victorian?" I said to myself.

  But the idea of me Lydia-languishing, prunes-and-prisming round the place was too much.

  Athletics--Well, they were not bad. There's a lot of chance in golf, although tennis is blowzy. I look well in sport clothes too. But if a girl is a dub at a game a man is apt to tell her so, and I know my own disposition. If he criticised me, before I knew it I'd be swatting my prey with a mashie or a niblick, and everything over. Three men, mother had said. I knew who they were. They had all sent me flowers and danced with me, without saying a word, and then taken me back to mother and rushed for the particular married woman they were interested in.

  Oh, I'm not blind! All the men I knew, old enough to amount to anything, were interested in some married woman. I drive my own car, and I used to meet them on lonely back roads, Lillian Marshall and Tom Connor, Toots Warrington and Russell Hill, and the rest of them.

  I ask you, what chance had a debutante among them? There were two things to decide that after noon, the man and the method. I was out now. The family had agreed to let me alone. I had a year before me, until Madge came out. And I knew I could count on Henry Baring to help me all he could. He was a sort of family friend. When he couldn't get me he would take Madge to kid picnics, and mother used to call on him to make a fourth at bridge or fill in at a dinner. You know the sort.

  He worked at something or other, and made enough to keep him and pay his club bills, and to let him send flowers to debutantes, and to set up an occasional little supper to pay his way socially. But nobody ever thought of marrying him. He was tall and red-headed and not very handsome. Have I said that?

  So I counted on Henry. It makes me bitter even to write it. His very looks were solid and dependable, although I underestimated his hair. I've said I had brains. Well, I had too many brains. Mother was right the world doesn't come to the clever folks, it comes to the stubborn, obstinate, one-idea-at-a-time people.

  I'm going to tell this thing, because a lot of people are saying I threw away a good thing, and mother --

  I have a certain amount of superstition in me. I remember, when I was about to be confirmed at school, I was told to open the Bible at random and take the first verse my eyes fell on for a sort of motto through life. Mine was to the effect that as a partridge sits on eggs and fails to hatch them, so too the person who gets riches without deserving them. It rather bothered me at the time. Well, it never will again.

  So I took three cigarettes and marked each one with the initials of an eligible. Then I shook them up in a box and drew Russell Hill. I knew then that I had my work cut out for me. Even with Henry's help it was going to be a hard pull. Russell Hill was spoiled. Probably out of the other eleven at least nine had Russell in the backs of their heads. And he knew every move of the game. They'd all been tried on him golf and moonlight and 1830 methods and pro- and anti-suffrage and amateur theatricals and ingenue technique and the come-hither glance. So far they had all failed.

  The girls were coming in for tea and to talk things over, and as I dressed I was thinking hard. Mother had gone out for a golf lesson, so I sent the rest of my cigarettes down to the drawing room and picked up a book. I remember only one line of
that book. Believe me, as a matrimonial text it had the partridge one going. The girl in the story had been crazy about a man.

  "I always had my hand in his coat pocket!" she said.

  Don't misunderstand, she was not robbing him. She slipped her hand into his coat pocket to let him know how fond she was of him. And after a moment, she said, he always put his hand in, too, over hers. And he ended her slave. He was a very sophisticated man, up to every move of the game, and he ended her slave!

  But Russell would take tact. A man likes to be adored, but he hates to look foolish. The first thing was, of course, to get his attention. I was only one of a dozen. True, he had sent me flowers, but he probably did what all the others did had a standing order and a box of his cards at the florist's. I wasn't fooled for a minute. To him I was a flapper, nothing else. Whether flapper is a term of reproach or one of tribute depends on whether the girl is a debutante or in the first line of the chorus of a musical show. Oh, I wasn't very old, but I knew my way about.

  Margaret North came first and the rest trailed in soon after. Everybody talked about the ball, and said it had been wonderful, and I sat there and sized them up. I had a fight on my hands, and I knew it.

  There was a picture of Madge sitting round, and Margaret North picked it up and took it to the light. Margaret is one of the four mother had so delicately referred to.

  "You'll have to hurry, Kit," she said. "Sister's a raving beauty."

  "Oh, I don't know," I observed casually. "Beauty's not everything.

  The girl in the book had not been a beauty.

  "It's all there is," said Margaret. "Figure doesn't count any more. Anybody can have a figure who has a decent dressmaker."

  "How about brains?" I asked.

  There was a squeal at that.

  "Cut 'em out," said Ellie Clavering. "Hide 'em. Disguise 'em. Brains are are clandestine."

  "Anyhow," somebody put in, "Kit isn't worrying; she's got Henry."

  That's how they'd fixed me. I knew what it meant. It was a cheap game, but they were playing it. They were going to tie me to Henry. They would ask us together, and put us together at dinners, and talk about us together. In the end every body would think of us together. I'd seen it done before. It's ruined more debutantes than anything else. They'd put me out of the running before I'd started.

  I sat back with my cup of tea and listened, and it made me positively ill. It wasn't that they were clever. They were just instinctive. I could have screamed. And having disposed of me, having handcuffed me to Henry Baring and lost the key, so to speak, they went on to the real subject, which was Russell.

  Mother had said there were three eligibles. But to those little idiots round the tea table there was only one. They'd been friendly enough as long as Henry and I were on the rack. But the moment Russell's name was mentioned there was a difference. They didn't talk so much and they eyed each other more. Ella Clavering put both lemon and cream in her tea, and drank it without noticing. Somebody said very impressively that she understood the affair with Toots was off, and that Russell had said, according to report, that he was glad of it. He'd have a little time to himself now.

  "That means, I dare say," I said languidly, "that Russell is ready to bring his warmed-over affections to some of us!"

  There was a sort of electric silence for a minute.

  "It will take a very sophisticated person to land Russell after Toots," I went on. "He's past the ingenue stage."

  "If a girl is pretty she always has a chance with Russell." Margaret, of course. She was standing in front of a mirror and I had my eyes on her. Evidently what I had said made an impression, for she cocked her hat down an inch more over her right eye and watched to see the effect.

  "You ought to wear earrings, dear," I said. "You need just that dash of chic."

  Just for a moment I could see in every eye a sort of vision of Toots Warrington, with the large pearls she always wore in her ears Toots, who had had Russell tame-catting for her off and on for years!

  Oh, they fell for it all right! I poured myself another cup of tea to hide the triumph in my face. Little idiots! If he was sick of Toots he'd hate everything that reminded him of her. I could see the crowd of them swaggering in at the next party, in their best imitation of Toots Warrington, with eyes slightly narrowed, and earrings. And I could see Russell's soul turn over in revolt and go out and take a walk. I knew a lot about men even then, but not enough. I know more now.

  II

  That night Henry Baring came to call. Being a sort of family friend he had a way of walking in unexpectedly, with a box of candy for whoever saw him first. If mother and I were out, he played chess with father. If there was no one in, he was quite likely to range round the lower floor, and ask the butler about his family, and maybe read for an hour or so in the library. The servants adored him, but he was matrimonially impossible.

  That night he came. I was at home alone.

  "You will take two full days' rest after your ball," mother had said. "I have seen enough debutantes looking ready for the hospital the first week they came out."

  So I was alone that evening, and mother and father had gone to a dinner. I was sulky, I don't mind saying. At six o'clock a box of flowers had come, but they were only from Henry and not exciting. "Thought I'd send them to-day," he wrote on his card. "Didn't like the idea of my personal offering nailed to the club wall."

  About nine o'clock I put on my silk dressing gown and went down to the library for the book about the girl who always had her hand in the man's coat pocket. I had got clear in when I saw Henry's red head over the top of a deep chair.

  "Come in!" he called. "I was told there was no one at home, but methinks I know the step and the rustle."

  "Don't look round," I said sharply. "I'm not dressed."

  "Can't you stay a few minutes?"

  "Certainly not."

  "If I don't look?"

  Well, it seemed silly to run. I was more covered up than I'd been the night before in my ball gown. Besides, it had occurred to me that Henry could be useful if he would. A sort of plan had popped into my head. Inspiration, I called it then.

  "Pretty nice last night, wasn't it?" he asked, talking to the fireplace. "You looked some person, Kit, believe me."

  "Considering that I've spent nineteen years getting ready, it should have gone off rather well."

  "I suppose I'll never see you any more."

  "This looks like it! Why?"

  "You'll be so popular."

  "Oh, that! I'm not sure, Henry. I'm not beautiful."

  He jumped at that, and almost turned round.

  "Not beautiful!" he said. "You're you're the loveliest thing that ever lived, and you know it."

  It began to look to me as if he wouldn't help after all. There was a sort of huskiness in his voice, a -- Oh, well, you know. I began on the plan, how ever.

  "You'll see me, all right," I said. "I'll have other friends, of course. I hope so anyhow. But when one thinks who and what they are--"

  "Good gracious, Kit! What are you driving at?"

  "I'm young," I said. "I know that. But I'm not ignorant. And a really nice girl with ideals--"

  "I'll have to get up," he said suddenly. "I'll stand with my back to you, if you insist, but I'll have to get up. What's all this about ideals?"

  "You know very well," I put in with dignity. "If every time I meet a nice man people come to me with stories about him, or mother and father warn me against him, what am I to do?"

  "Can't you stand behind a chair and let me face you? This is serious."

  "Oh, turn round," I said recklessly. "If I hear any one coming I can run. Anyhow, it may be unconventional but I'm fully clothed."

  "Are you being warned against me?" he threw at me like a bomb. "Because, if if you are, it's absurd nonsense. I'm no saint, and I'd never be fit for you to--What silly story have you heard, Kit?"

  He was quite white, and his red hair looked like a conflagration.

  "It's not about y
ou at all; it's about Russell Hill."

  It took him a moment to breathe normally again.

  "Oh Russell!" he said. "Well, that's probably nonsense too. You don't mean to say your people object to your knowing Russell?"

  "Not quite that," I said. "But I can't have him here, or go round with him, or anything of that sort."

  "Do they venture to give a reason?"

  "Toots Warrington."

  It's queer about men, the way they stand up for each other. Henry knew as well as he knew any thing that most of the girls we both knew were crazy about Russell. And if he cared for me and the way he acted made me suspicious he had a good chance to throw Russell into the discard that night. But he didn't. I knew well enough he wouldn't.

  "That's perfect idiocy," he said sternly. "So ciety is organised along certain lines, and maybe if you and I had anything to do with it we'd change things. But there is no commandment or social law or anything else against a man having a married woman for a friend."

  "Friend!"

  "Exactly friend."

  "I don't care to have anything to do with him."

  "You needn't, of course. But you owe it to Russell to give him a chance to set things straight. Any how he and Mrs. Warrington are not seeing each other much any more. It's off."

  "The very fact that you say it is 'off' shows that it was once 'on.'"

  He waved his hands in perfect despair. If I'd rehearsed him he couldn't have picked up his cues any better.

  "I'm going to tell him," he said. "It's ridiculous. It's it's libellous."

  "I don't want him coming here explaining. I am not even interested."

  "You're a perfect child, a stubborn child! Your mind's in pigtails, like your hair."

  Yes, my hair was down. I have rather nice hair.

  "If he comes here," I said with my eyes wide, "he will have to come when mother and father are out."

  "I'll bring him," said Henry valiantly. "I'm not going to see him calumniated, that's all." Then something struck his sense of humour and he chuckled. "It will be a new and valuable experience to him," he said, "to have to come clandestinely. Do him good!"