The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  I went upstairs then. It had been a fair day's work.

  But it's hard to count on a family. Mother sprained her ankle getting out of the car that night and was laid up for three days. I chafed at first.

  Henry might change his mind or one of the eleven get in some fine work. We declined everything that week, and I made some experiments with my hair and the aid of mother's maid. I wanted a sort of awfully feminine method not sappy but not at all sophisticated. Toots Warrington is always waved and netted, and all the girls by that time had got earrings and were going round waved and netted too.

  I wanted to fix my hair like a girl who slips her hand into a man's coat pocket because she can't help it, and then tries to get it out, and can't because his hand has got hold of it.

  Then one night I got it. Henry had dropped in, and found mother with her foot up and the look of a dyspeptic martyr on her face, and father with a cold and a thermometer in his mouth.

  "I've come to take Kit to the movies," he an nounced calmly. "Far be it from me not to con tribute to the entertainment of a young lady who is just out!"

  "Full of gerbs!" father grunted, referring to the movies of course, not me. But mother agreed.

  "Do take her out, Henry," she said. "She's been on my nerves all evening."

  So we went, and there was a girl in one of the pictures who had exactly the right hair arrangement. She had it loose and wavy about her face, and it blew about the way things do blow in the movies, and in the back it was a sort of soft wad.

  It shows the association of ideas that I found my hand in Henry's coat pocket, and he grabbed it like a lunatic.

  "You darling!" he said thickly. "Don't do that unless you mean it. I can't stand it."

  I had to be very cool on the way home in the motor or he would have kissed me.

  Mother and I went to a reception on the following Tuesday, and I wondered if mother noticed. She did. Coming home in the motor she turned and stared at me.

  "Thank heaven, Kit," she said, "you still look like a young girl. All at once Ellie and the others look like married women. Earrings! It's absurd. And such earrings! I am quite sure," she went on, eying me, "that some of them had been smoking. I got an unmistakable whiff of it when I was talking with Bessie Willing."

  Well, I had rinsed my mouth with mouth wash and dabbed my lips with cologne, so she got nothing from me. But I tasted like a drug store.

  I am not smoking now. I am not doing much of anything. I but I'm coming to that.

  I'm no hypocrite. I'd been raised for one pur pose, and that was to marry well. If I did it in my own way, and you think my way not exactly ethical,

  I can't help it. This thing of sitting back and let ting somebody find you and propose to you is ridiculous. There is only one life, and we have to make the best we can of it.

  Ethical! Don't girls always have the worst of it anyhow? They can't go and ask the man. They have to lie in wait and plan and scheme, or get left and have their younger sisters come out and crowd them, and at twenty-five or so begin to regard any man at all as a prospect. Maybe my methods sound a bit crude, but compared with the average girl I know, I was delicate. I didn't play up my attractions, at least not more than was necessary. I was using my mind, not my body.

  III

  On Tuesday night I was going to a dance. Mother and father were dining out and were to meet me later, so I was free until ten o'clock. That night Henry brought Russell Hill.

  I kept them waiting a few minutes, and came down ready for the car. At the last minute I pulled my hair a bit loose over my face, and the effect was exactly right.

  Henry was horribly uncomfortable, and left in a few minutes. He was going with some people to the dance, and would see us later. About all he said was with his usual tact.

  "You two ought to get together," he said. "There's a lot too much being whispered these days, and not enough talking out loud."

  With that he went, and we two were left facing each other.

  "This is one of Henry's inspirations, Miss Katherine," Russell said. "I--I don't usually have to wait until the family is out before I make a call."

  "Families are queer," I said non-committally. There was a window open and I stood near it, un der a pink lamp, and let my hair blow about.

  "Are we going to sit down, or am I to be ban ished as soon as I've explained that I am a safe companion for a debutante^"

  He was plainly laughing at me, although he was uncomfortable too. And I have some spirit left.

  "I am afraid you are giving me credit for too much interest," I said. "This is Henry's idea, you know. You needn't defend yourself to me. You look entirely safe."

  He hated that. No man likes to look entirely safe. He put his hands in his pockets and half closed his eyes.

  "Humph!" he said. "Then I gather that this whole meeting is a mistake. I'm respectable enough to be uninteresting, and the ban your people have placed on me doesn't particularly concern you!"

  "That's not quite true," I said slowly. "I if I ever got a chance to know you really well, I'm sure we'd be but I'll never get a chance, you know."

  "Upon my word," he broke out, "I'd like to know just what your people have heard! But that doesn't matter. What really matters" he had hardly taken his eyes off me "what really matters is that I am going to see you again. Often!"

  "It's impossible."

  "Rot! We're always going to the same places. Am I absolutely warned off?"

  "You're not. But I am."

  He began to walk up and down the room. Half an hour before he had never given me a thought. Henry, I knew, had lugged him there by sheer force and a misplaced sense of justice. And now he was pacing about in a rage!

  He stopped rathef near me.

  "If it's Mrs. Warrington all the fuss is about, it's imbecile," he said. "In the first place, there never was anything to it. In the second place, it's all over anyhow."

  "I don't know what the fuss is about."

  "You know the whcile thing. Don't pretend you don't. You've got the face of a little saint, with all that fluffy hair, but your eyes don't belong to the rest, young lady. Are you going to dance with me to-night?"

  "I'm afraid not."

  "Well, you'll give me a little time, won't you? I suppose we can sit in a closet and talk, or hide on a veranda."

  "It's it's rather sneaking, isn't it?"

  "That doesn't hurt it any for me."

  So I promised, and, the car being announced, he put my wrap round my shoulders.

  "Stunning hair you've got," he said from behind me. "Thank heaven for hair that isn't marceled and glued up in a net!"

  I held out my hand in the hall, and he took it.

  "I'm not such a bad lot after all, am I?" he demanded.

  With my best spontaneous gesture I put my free hand over his as it held mine.

  "I'm so sorry, so terribly sorry, if I've misunder stood," I said earnestly.

  Wallace had gone to the outer door. Russell Hill stooped over and kissed my hand.

  Well, it was working. An hour before I was one of what I'd heard he had called "the dolly dozen." Now, by merely letting him understand that he couldn't have what he'd never wanted, he was eager.

  We sat out one dance under the stairs, and an intermission in a pantry while the musicians who had been stationed there were getting their supper. He tried to hold my hand and I drew it away not too fast, but so he could understand the struggle I was having between duty and inclination. And we talked about love.

  I said I liked to play round with men and have a good time and all that sort of thing, but that I thought I was naturally cold.

  "You cold?' he said. "It's only that the right man has not come along."

  "I've known a good many. A good many have have"

  "Cared for you? Of course. They're not fools or blind. Look here, I'm going to ring you up now and then."

  "I think you'd better not."

  "If I'm not to see you and not to telephone, how's this friendship of ours
to get on?"

  "People who are real friends don't need to see each other."

  "That's the first real debutante speech you've made to-night. Now, see here, I'm going to see you again, and often. And I'm going to ring you up. What's your tailor's name?"

  I told him, and he put it down on his dance card.

  "All right," he said. "Herschenrother is now my middle name, and if it's not convenient to talk, you can give me the high sign."

  Toots Warrington came along just then with an army officer she'd taken on. They got clear round the palms and into the pantry before they saw us, and her face was funny.

  Mother and I had another heart-to-heart talk that night on the way home. Father had gone a couple of hours earlier and we had the car to ourselves. Mother was tired and irritable.

  "It seemed to me, Kit," she observed, "that you danced with every hopeless ineligible there. You danced three times with Henry."

  "For heaven's sake, mother," I snapped, "let poor Henry alone. Henry is the most useful person I know."

  "You can't play with red-headed people and not get burned," mother said with unconscious humour. "He's very fond of you, Kit. I watched him to night."

  "The fonder the better," I said flippantly. Yes, that's what I said. When I look back on that eve ning and think how little Henry entered into my plans, and the rest of it, it makes me cold.

  "I want you to do one thing just one, mother: I want you to be very cool to Russell Hill."

  "Cool!"

  "And I want you to forbid me to see him."

  "I'm not insane, Katherine."

  "Listen, mother," I said desperately. "All his life Russell Hill has had everything he wanted. He's had so much that that he's got a sort of social indigestion. The only things he wants now are the things he can't have. So he can't have me."

  Mother's not very subtle. And she was alarmed. I can still see her trying to readjust her ideas, and getting tied up in them, and coming a mental crop per, so to speak.

  "If he can't have me he'll want me."

  "I'm not sure of it. He--"

  "Mother," I said in despair, "you've been mar ried for twenty years, and you know less about men in a month than I do in a minute. Please forbid him the house not in so many words, but act it."

  "Why?" she said feebly.

  "Anything you can think of Toots Warrington will do."

  She got out her salts and held them to her nose.

  "I feel as though I'm losing my mind," she said at last. "But if you're set on it--"

  That was all until we got home. Then on the stairs I thought of something.

  "Oh, yes," I said. "No matter what I am doing, mother, if Herschenrother the tailor calls up I want to go to the telephone."

  I can still see her staring after me with her mouth open as I went up the stairs.

  Herschenrother called me up the next morning, and asked me how I was, and how the dragons were, and if there was any chance of my walking in the park at five o'clock. I said there was, and called up Henry and asked him to walk with me.

  "I should say so," he said. "You've only got to ask me, Kit. I'm always ready to hang round."

  There was rather a bad half hour in the park, and for a time I felt that Henry had been a wrong move. But, as it turned out he hadn't, for Russell took advantage of somebody's signalling to Henry from a machine to say:

  "Just a bit afraid of me still, aren't you"?"

  "Why?"

  "You brought Henry. I know the signs. You asked him, and he's so set up about it that he's walking on clouds."

  "I am afraid."

  "Of me?"

  "Of myself."

  He caught my arm as he helped me across a pud dle, and squeezed it.

  "Good girl!" he said.

  And later on, when Henry was called again he's terribly popular, Henry is he had another chance.

  "Pm going to see you alone if I have to steal you," he said.

  Herschenrother called up again the next day, and Madge, who had come home for the Christmas holi days, called me.

  "Gee, Kit," she said, "you must be getting a trousseau. That tailor's always on the phone."

  I went.

  "Hello," said Russell's voice, "how about that fitting?"

  "I don't know. I'm horribly busy to-day."

  "It's very important. I--I can't go ahead with out it."

  "Oh, all right," I said. Madge was listening and I had to be careful. "I must have the suit."

  "You can have anything I've got. How about the Art Gallery? Art is long and time is fleeting. Nobody goes there."

  "Very well, four o'clock," I replied, and rang off.

  "Rather a nice voice," Madge said, eying me. "Think I'll go along, Kit. I've been shut up in school until the mere thought of even a good-looking tailor makes me thrill."

  She was so insistent that I had to go to mother finally, and mother told her she would have to prac tise. She was furious. Really, mother turned out to be a most understanding person. I got to be quite fond of her. We had a chat that afternoon that brought us closer together than ever.

  "Things are doing pretty well, mother," I said when she'd finished Madge.

  "He must be interested when he would take that absurd name."

  "And the Art Gallery! I dare say he has never voluntarily been inside of one in his life."

  "Kit," mother said, "what about your father?'

  "Haven't you told him?"

  "No; he wouldn't understand."

  Of course not. I knew men well enough for that. They believe that life and marriage arrange themselves. That it's all a sort of combination of Providence and chance. Predestination plus oppor tunity!

  "Can't you tell him you've heard something about Russell, and that he'd better be cool to him?"

  "And have him turn the man down if it really comes to a proposal!"

  "That won't matter," I told her. "We'll prob ably elope anyhow."

  Mother opposed that vigorously. She said that no matter how good a match it was, there was al ways something queer about an elopement. And anyhow she'd been giving wedding gifts for years and it was time something came in instead of going out. It was the only point we differed on.

  Well, father did his best to queer things that very day. All the way through I played in hard luck. Just when things were going right something hap pened.

  I met Russell at the Art Gallery. It was a cold day, but I left my muff at home. It was about time for the coat-pocket business. I couldn't afford to wait, for one or two of the girls were wearing their hair like mine, and I'd heard that Toots Warrington had gone to Russell and asked him how he liked kindergartening. Bessie Willing, who told me, said that Russell's reply was:

  "It's rather pleasant. I'm reversing things. In stead of going from the cradle to the grave, I'm going from the grave to the cradle."

  I don't believe he said it. In the first place, he is too polite. In the second place, he is too stupid. But as Toots is not young he may have thought of it.

  He was waiting near a heater, and we sat down together. I shivered.

  "Cold, honey?" he asked.

  "Hands are cold. Do you mind if I put one in your coat pocket?"

  Did he mind? He did not. He was very polite at first and emptied the pocket of various things, in cluding a letter which he mentioned casually was a bill. But after a moment he slid his hand in on top of mine.

  "You're a wonderful young person," he said, "and you've got me going."

  Then he squeezed the hand until it hurt. Sud denly he looked up.

  "Great Scott!" he said. "There's Henry!"

  Of course it was Henry. He had brought a catalogue and was going painstakingly from one picture to another. He did not see us at first, and we had time to stand up and be looking at a landscape when he got to us. He looked moderately surprised and waited to mark something in the catalogue before he joined us.

  "Bully show, isn't it?' he said cheerfully. "Never saw so many good 'uns. Well, what are you chil dren up to?
"

  "Dropped in to get warm," said Russell. And I was going to add something, but Henry's interest in us had passed evidently. He marke^d another cross in the catalogue and went on, with the light shining on his red hair and his soul clearly as up lifted as his chin.

  "You needn't worry about Henry," I said. "He's a friend of the family, and I'll just call him up and tell him not to say anything."

  "I used to think he was fond of you."

  "That's all over," I said casually. "It was just one of the things that comes and goes. Like this little acquaintance of ours."

  "What do you mean, goes?" he demanded almost fiercely.

  "They always do, don't they? Awfully pleasant things don't last. And we can't go on meeting in definitely. Some one will tell father, and then where will I be?"

  That was a wrong move about father.

  "That reminds me," he said. "Are you sure your father dislikes me such a lot?"

  "Don't let's talk about it," I said, and closed my eyes.

  "Because I met him to-day, and he nearly fell on my neck and hugged me."

  Can you beat that"? I was stunned.

  "The more he detests people," I managed finally, "the more polite he is."

  Then I took off my gloves and fell to rubbing the fingers of my left hand. And he moved round and put it in the other coat pocket without a word, with his hand over it, and the danger was past, for the time anyhow.

  Mother came round that evening about the elope ment.

  "Perhaps you are right, Katherine," she said. "A lot of people will send things when the announce ment cards go out. And Russell can afford to buy you anything you want anyhow."

  Madge was a nuisance all that week. She was always at the telephone first when it rang, and I did not like her tone when she said it was Herschenrother again. Once I could have sworn that I saw her following me, but she ducked into a shop when I turned round.

  She had transferred her affections to Henry, and he took her to a cotillon or two for the school set, and played round with the youngsters generally, and showed her a sweet time, as she said.

  But once when mother and I had been shut in my room, going over my clothes and making notes of what I would take with me, if the thing came to an elopement I was pretty sure by that time, and we planned a sort of week-end outfit without riding things I opened the door suddenly, and Madge was just outside.