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"Say," he said, rising,
putting a note of determination in his voice which caused her to delay her
departure, "what's the matter with you of late? Can't I talk with you
any more?"
"Certainly, you can TALK
with me," she replied, laying emphasis on the word.
"Well, you wouldn't think so
by the way you act. Now, you
want to know when I'll be ready--not for a month yet.
Maybe not then."
"We'll go without you."
"You will, eh?" he
sneered.
"Yes, we will."
He was astonished at the woman's
determination, but it only irritated him the more.
"Well, we'll see about that.
It seems to me you're trying to run things with a pretty high hand of
late. You talk as though you
settled my affairs for me. Well,
you don't. You don't regulate
anything that's connected with me. If
you want to go, go, but you won't hurry me by any such talk as that."
He was thoroughly aroused now.
His dark eyes snapped, and he crunched his paper as he laid it down.
Mrs. Hurstwood said nothing more.
He was just finishing when she turned on her heel and went out into
the hall and upstairs. He
paused for a moment, as if hesitating, then sat down and drank a little
coffee, and thereafter arose and went for his hat and gloves upon the main
floor.
His wife had really not
anticipated a row of this character. She
had come down to the breakfast table feeling a little out of sorts with
herself and revolving a scheme which she had in her mind.
Jessica had called her attention to the fact that the races were not
what they were supposed to be. The
social opportunities were not what they had thought they would be this year.
The beautiful girl found going every day a dull thing. There was an
earlier exodus this year of people who were anybody to the watering places
and Europe. In her own circle of acquaintances several young men in whom
she was interested had gone to Waukesha.
She began to feel that she would like to go too, and her mother
agreed with her.
Accordingly, Mrs. Hurstwood
decided to broach the subject. She
was thinking this over when she came down to the table, but for some reason
the atmosphere was wrong. She
was not sure, after it was all over, just how the trouble had begun.
She was determined now, however, that her husband was a brute, and
that, under no circumstances, would she let this go by unsettled.
She would have more lady-like treatment or she would know why.
For his part, the manager was
loaded with the care of this new argument until he reached his office and
started from there to meet Carrie. Then
the other complications of love, desire, and opposition possessed him.
His thoughts fled on before him upon eagles' wings.
He could hardly wait until he should meet Carrie face to face.
What was the night, after all, without her--what the day? She must
and should be his.
For her part, Carrie had
experienced a world of fancy and feeling since she had left him, the night
before. She had listened to
Drouet's enthusiastic maunderings with much regard for that part which
concerned herself, with very little for that which affected his own gain.
She kept him at such lengths as she could, because her thoughts were
with her own triumph. She felt
Hurstwood's passion as a delightful background to her own achievement, and
she wondered what he would have to say.
She was sorry for him, too, with that peculiar sorrow which finds
something complimentary to itself in the misery of another. She was now experiencing the first shades of feeling of that
subtle change which removes one out of the ranks of the suppliants into the
lines of the dispensers of charity. She
was, all in all, exceedingly happy.
On the morrow, however, there was
nothing in the papers concerning the event, and, in view of the flow of
common, everyday things about, it now lost a shade of the glow of the
previous evening. Drouet
himself was not talking so much OF as FOR her.
He felt instinctively that, for some reason or other, he needed
reconstruction in her regard.
"I think," he said, as
he spruced around their chambers the next morning, preparatory to going down
town, "that I'll straighten out that little deal of mine this month and
then we'll get married. I was
talking with Mosher about that yesterday."
"No, you won't," said
Carrie, who was coming to feel a certain faint power to jest with the
drummer.
"Yes, I will," he
exclaimed, more feelingly than usual, adding, with the tone of one who
pleads, "Don't you believe what I've told you?"
Carrie laughed a little.
"Of course I do," she
answered.
Drouet's assurance now misgave
him. Shallow as was his mental
observation, there was that in the things which had happened which made his
little power of analysis useless. Carrie
was still with him, but not helpless and pleading.
There was a lilt in her voice which was new. She did not study him with eyes expressive of dependence.
The drummer was feeling the shadow of something which was coming.
It coloured his feelings and made him develop those little attentions
and say those little words which were mere forefendations against danger.
Shortly afterward he departed,
and Carrie prepared for her meeting with Hurstwood.
She hurried at her toilet, which was soon made, and hastened down the
stairs. At the corner she
passed Drouet, but they did not see each other.
The drummer had forgotten some
bills which he wished to turn into his house.
He hastened up the stairs and burst into the room, but found only the
chambermaid, who was cleaning up.
"Hello," he exclaimed,
half to himself, "has Carrie gone?"
"Your wife? Yes, she went
out just a few minutes ago."
"That's strange,"
thought Drouet. "She
didn't say a word to me. I wonder where she went?"
He hastened about, rummaging in
his valise for what he wanted, and finally pocketing it.
Then he turned his attention to his fair neighbour, who was
good-looking and kindly disposed towards him.
"What are you up to?"
he said, smiling.
"Just cleaning," she
replied, stopping and winding a dusting towel about her hand.
"Tired of it?"
"Not so very."
"Let me show you
something," he said, affably, coming over and taking out of his pocket
a little lithographed card which had been issued by a wholesale tobacco
company. On this was printed a
picture of a pretty girl, holding a striped parasol, the colours of which
could be changed by means of a revolving disk in the back, which showed red,
yellow, green, and blue through little interstices made in the ground
occupied by the umbrella top.
"Isn't that clever?" he
said, handing it to her and showing her how it worked. "You never saw anything like that before."
"Isn't it nice?" she
answered.
"You can have it if you want
it," he remarked.
"That's a pretty ring you
have," he said, touching a commonplace setting which adorned the hand
holding the card he had given her.
"Do you think so?"
"That's right," he
answered, making use of a pretence at examination to secure her finger.
"That's fine."
The ice being thus broken, he
launched into further observation pretending to forget that her fingers were
still retained by his. She soon withdrew them, however, and retreated a few
feet to rest against the window-sill.
"I didn't see you for a long
time," she said, coquettishly, repulsing one of his exuberant
approaches. "You must have
been away."
"I was," said Drouet.
"Do you travel far?"
"Pretty far--yes."
"Do you like it?"
"Oh, not very well.
You get tired of it after a while."
"I wish I could
travel," said the girl, gazing idly out of the window.
"What has become of your
friend, Mr. Hurstwood?" she suddenly asked, bethinking herself of the
manager, who, from her own observation, seemed to contain promising
material.
"He's here in town.
What makes you ask about him?"
"Oh, nothing, only he hasn't
been here since you got back."
"How did you come to know
him?"
"Didn't I take up his name a
dozen times in the last month?"
"Get out," said the
drummer, lightly. "He
hasn't called more than half a dozen times since we've been here."
"He hasn't, eh?" said
the girl, smiling. "That's
all you know about it."
Drouet took on a slightly more
serious tone. He was uncertain
as to whether she was joking or not.
"Tease," he said,
"what makes you smile that way?"
"Oh, nothing."
"Have you seen him
recently?"
"Not since you came
back," she laughed.
"Before?"
"Certainly."
"How often?"
"Why, nearly every
day."
She was a mischievous newsmonger,
and was keenly wondering what the effect of her words would be.
"Who did he come to
see?" asked the drummer, incredulously.
"Mrs. Drouet."
He looked rather foolish at this
answer, and then attempted to correct himself so as not to appear a dupe.
"Well," he said,
"what of it?"
"Nothing," replied the
girl, her head cocked coquettishly on one side.
"He's an old friend,"
he went on, getting deeper into the mire.
He would have gone on further
with his little flirtation, but the taste for it was temporarily removed.
He was quite relieved when the girl's named was called from below.
"I've got to go," she
said, moving away from him airily.
"I'll see you later,"
he said, with a pretence of disturbance at being interrupted.
When she was gone, he gave freer
play to his feelings. His face,
never easily controlled by him, expressed all the perplexity and disturbance
which he felt. Could it be that
Carrie had received so many visits and yet said nothing about them? Was
Hurstwood lying? What did the chambermaid mean by it, anyway? He had thought
there was something odd about Carrie's manner at the time.
Why did she look so disturbed when he had asked her how many times
Hurstwood had called? By George! He remembered now. There was something
strange about the whole thing.
He sat down in a rocking-chair to
think the better, drawing up one leg on his knee and frowning mightily.
His mind ran on at a great rate.
And yet Carrie hadn't acted out
of the ordinary. It couldn't
be, by George, that she was deceiving him.
She hadn't acted that way. Why,
even last night she had been as friendly toward him as could be, and
Hurstwood too. Look how they
acted! He could hardly believe they would try to deceive him.
His thoughts burst into words.
"She did act sort of funny
at times. Here she had dressed,
and gone out this morning and never said a word."
He scratched his head and
prepared to go down town. He
was still frowning. As he came
into the hall he encountered the girl, who was now looking after another
chamber. She had on a white dusting cap, beneath which her chubby face
shone good-naturedly. Drouet almost forgot his worry in the fact that she
was smiling on him. He put his
hand familiarly on her shoulder, as if only to greet her in passing.
"Got over being mad?"
she said, still mischievously inclined.
"I'm not mad," he
answered.
"I thought you were,"
she said, smiling.
"Quit your fooling about
that," he said, in an offhand way. "Were you serious?"
"Certainly," she
answered. Then, with an air of
one who did not intentionally mean to create trouble, "He came lots of
times. I thought you
knew."
The game of deception was up with
Drouet. He did not try to
simulate indifference further.
"Did he spend the evenings
here?" he asked.
"Sometimes. Sometimes they went out."
"In the evening?"
"Yes. You mustn't look so mad, though."
"I'm not," he said.
"Did any one else see him?"
"Of course," said the
girl, as if, after all, it were nothing in particular.
"How long ago was
this?"
"Just before you came
back."
The drummer pinched his lip
nervously.
"Don't say anything, will
you?" he asked, giving the girl's arm a gentle squeeze.
"Certainly not," she
returned. "I wouldn't
worry over it."
"All right," he said,
passing on, seriously brooding for once, and yet not wholly unconscious of
the fact that he was making a most excellent impression upon the
chambermaid.
"I'll see her about
that," he said to himself, passionately, feeling that he had been
unduly wronged. "I'll find
out, b'George, whether she'll act that way or not."
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