CHAPTER IX
BEATRICE UP STAGE
If you vision Clay as a man of battles and violent deaths you don't seehim as he saw himself. He was a peaceful citizen from the law-abidingWest. It was not until he had been flung into the whirlpool of NewYork that violent and melodramatic mishaps befell this innocent. TheWild East had trapped him into weird adventure foreign to his nature.
This was the version of himself that he conceived to be true and theone he tried to interpret to Bee Whitford when he emerged from thehospital after two days of seclusion and presented himself before her.
It was characteristic of Beatrice that when she looked at his batteredface she asked no questions and made no exclamations. After the firststartled glance one might have thought from her expression that hehabitually wore one black eye, one swollen lip, one cauliflower ear,and a strip of gauze across his check.
The dark-lashed eyes lifted from him to take on a business-likedirectness. She rang for the man.
"Have the runabout brought round at once, Stevens. I'll drive myself,"she gave orders.
With the light ease that looked silken strong she swept the car intothe Park. Neither she nor Clay talked. Both of them knew that anexplanation of his appearance was due her and in the meantime neithercared to fence with small talk. He watched without appearing to do sothe slender girl in white at the wheel. Her motions delighted him.There was a very winning charm in the softly curving contours of herface, in that flowerlike and precious quality in her personality whichlay back of her boyish comradeship.
She drew up to look at some pond lilies, and they talked about them fora moment, after which her direct eyes questioned him frankly.
He painted with a light brush the picture of his adventure intoBohemia. The details he filled in whimsically, in the picturesquephraseology of the West. Up stage on his canvas was the figure of thepoet in velveteens. That Son of the Stars he did full justice. JerryDurand and Kitty Mason were accessories sketched casually.
Even while her face bubbled with mirth at his story of the improvisedtango that had wrecked the Sea Siren, the quick young eyes of the girlwere taking in the compelling devil-may-care charm of Lindsay.Battered though he was, the splendid vigor of the man still showed in acertain tigerish litheness that sore, stiff muscles could not conceal.No young Greek god's head could have risen more superbly from thebrick-tanned column of his neck than did this bronzed one.
"I gather that Mr. Lindsay of Arizona was among those present,"Beatrice said, smiling.
"I was givin' the dance," he agreed, and his gay eyes met hers.
Since she was a woman, one phase of his story needed expansion for MissWhitford. She made her comment carelessly while she adjusted themileage on the speedometer.
"Queer you happened to meet some one you knew down there. You did sayyou knew the girl, didn't you?"
"We were on the same train out of Denver. I got acquainted with her."
Miss Whitford asked no more questions. But Clay could not quite letthe matter stand so. He wanted her to justify him in her mind for whathe had done. Before he knew it he had told her the story of KittyMason and Durand.
Nor did this draw any criticism of approval or the reverse.
"I couldn't let him hypnotize that little girl from the country, couldI?" he asked.
"I suppose not." Her whole face began to bubble with laughter in theway he liked so well. "But you'll be a busy knight errant if youundertake to right the wrongs of every girl you meet in New York." Adimple flashed near the corner of her mouth. "Of course she's pretty."
"Well, yes. She is right pretty."
"Describe her to me."
He made a lame attempt. Out of his tangled sentences she picked onsome fragments. ". . . blooms like a cherokee rose . . . soft like akitten."
"I'm glad she's so charming. That excuses any indiscretion," the girlsaid with a gleam of friendly malice. "There's no fun in rescuing theplain ones, is there?"
"They don't most usually need so much rescuin'," Clay admitted.
"Don't you think it possible that you rescued her out of a job?"
The young man nodded his head ruefully. "That's exactly what I did.After all her trouble gettin' one I've thrown her out again. I'm asure-enough fathead."
"You've been down to find out?" she asked with a sidelong tilt of herquick eyes.
"Yes. I went down this mawnin' with Tim Muldoon. He's a policeman Imet down there. Miss Kitty hasn't been seen since that night. We wentout to the Pirate's Den, the Purple Pup, Grace Godwin's Garret, and allthe places where she used to sell cigarettes. None of them have seenanything of her."
"So that really your championship hasn't been so great a help to herafter all, has it?"
"No."
"And I suppose it ruined the business of the man that owns the SeaSiren."
"I don't reckon so. I've settled for the furniture. And Muldoon sayswhen it gets goin' again the Sea Siren will do a big business onaccount of the fracas. It's Kitty I'm worried about."
"She's a kind of cuddly little girl who needs the protection of somenice man, you say?"
"That's right."
The eyes of Miss Whitford were unfathomable. "Fluffy and--kind ofhelpless."
"Yes."
"I wouldn't worry about her if I were you. She'll land on her feet,"the girl said lightly.
Her voice had not lost its sweet cadences, but Clay sensed in itsomething that was almost a touch of cool contempt. He felt vaguelythat he must have blundered in describing Kitty. Evidently MissWhitford did not see her quite as she was.
The young woman pressed the starter button. "We must be going home. Ihave an engagement to go riding with Mr. Bromfield."
The man beside the girl kept his smile working and concealed the littlestab of jealousy that dirked him. Colin Whitford had confided toLindsay that his daughter was practically engaged to ClarendonBromfield and that he did not like the man. The range-rider did notlike him either, but he tried loyally to kill his distrust of theclubman. If Beatrice loved him there must be good in the fellow. Claymeant to be a good loser anyhow.
There had been moments when the range-rider's heart had quickened witha wild, insurgent hope. One of these had been on a morning when theywere riding in the Park, knee to knee, in the dawn of a new cleanworld. It had come to him with a sudden clamor of the blood that inthe eternal rightness of things such mornings ought to be theirs tillthe youth in them was quenched in sober age. He had looked into theeyes of this slim young Diana, and he had throbbed to the certaintythat she too in that moment of tangled glances knew a sweet confusionof the blood. In her cheeks there had been a quick flame of flyingcolor. Their talk had fallen from them, and they had ridden in a shy,exquisite silence from which she had escaped by putting her horse to acanter.
But in the sober sense of sanity Clay knew that this wonderful thingwas not going to happen to him. He was not going to be given herhappiness to hold in the hollow of his hand. Bee Whitford was a modernyoung woman, practical-minded, with a proper sense of the values thatthe world esteems. Clarendon Bromfield was a catch even in New York.He was rich, of a good family, assured social position, good-looking,and manifestly in love with her. Like gravitates to like the landover. Miracles no longer happen in this workaday world. She wouldmarry the man a hundred other girls would have given all they had towin, and perhaps in the long years ahead she might look back with alittle sigh for the wild colt of the desert who had shared some perfectmoments with her once upon a time.
Bromfield, too, had no doubt that Bee meant to marry him. He was inlove with her as far as he could be with anybody except himself. Hisheart was crusted with selfishness. He had lived for himself only andhe meant to continue so to live. But he had burned out his firstyouth. He was coming to the years when dissipation was beginning totake its toll of him. And as he looked into the future it seemed tohim an eminently desirable thing that the fresh, eager beauty of thisgirl should belong to him
, that her devotion should stand as a shieldbetween him and that middle age with which he was already skirmishing.He wanted her--the youth, the buoyant life, the gay, glad comradeshipof her--and he had always been lucky in getting what he desired. Thatwas the use of having been born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
But though Clarendon Bromfield had no doubt of the issue of his suit,the friendship of Beatrice for this fellow from Arizona stabbed hisvanity. It hurt his class pride and his personal self-esteem that sheshould take pleasure in the man's society. Bee never had been wellbroken to harness. He set his thin lips tight and resolved that hewould stand no nonsense of this sort after they were married. If shewanted to flirt it would have to be with some one in their own set.
The clubman was too wise to voice his objections now except by anoccasional slur. But he found it necessary sometimes to put a curb onhis temper. The thing was outrageous--damnably bad form. Sometimes itseemed to him that the girl was gratuitously irritating him byflaunting this bounder in his face. He could not understand it in her.She ought to know that this man did not belong to her world--could notby any chance be a part of it.
Beatrice could not understand herself. She knew that she was behavingrather indiscreetly, though she did not fathom the cause of therestlessness that drove her to Clay Lindsay. The truth is that she waslonging for an escape from the empty life she was leading, had beenseeking one for years without knowing it. Her existence was losing itssavor, and she was still so young and eager and keen to live. Surelythis round of social frivolities, the chatter of these silly women andsmug tailor-made men, could not be all there was to life. She musthave been made for something better than that.
And when she was with Clay she knew she had been. He gave her a visionof life through eyes that had known open, wide spaces, clean,wholesome, and sun-kissed. He stood on his own feet and did his ownthinking. Simply, with both hands, he took hold of problems andexamined them stripped of all trimmings. The man was elemental, but hewas keen and broad-gauged. He knew the value of the things he hadmissed. She was increasingly surprised to discover how wide hisinformation was. It amazed her one day to learn that he had readWilliam James and understood his philosophy much better than she did.
There was in her mind no intention whatever of letting herself doanything so foolish as to marry him. But there were moments when thethought of it had a dreadful fascination for her. She did not invitesuch thoughts to remain with her.
For she meant to accept Clarendon Bromfield in her own good time andmake her social position in New York absolutely secure. She had beenin the fringes too long not to appreciate a chance to get into thesocial Holy of Holies.
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