CHAPTER I
"THE trouble with you, Mr. Bevans," said Mrs. Rolles, gently, "is that you really are the least little bit vulgar."
"Good!" said he. "I knew there was something nice about me."
Mrs. Rolles smiled imperturbably. With her hands lying palms upward in her lap, she was leaning back with that calm which good breeding brings only to those who believe absolutely in its supremacy. She was a woman of fifty, not handsome, but with all the marks of race—small ears flat to the head; a long, slender throat; fine, soft hair, and delicate hands, a little too clawlike for beauty. Her drawing-room in which they were sitting was a hideous room. It had been furnished for her by her parents on the occasion of her marriage in the year 1891. It was so long for its width that it had the effect of being a brocaded tunnel; the walls were hung with pale pink, on which electric lights and French water-colors alternated; the chairs were, of course, copies of Louis XV, and the mantelpiece was as crowded as a lawn-party with Dresden figures. No books were visible, except a copy of the Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines, bound in black-and-gold, and three immense volumes of steel-engravings from the National Gallery. The house had a library—up-stairs in what had before Mr. Rolles's death been her bedroom—but the drawing-room was no place for reading; it was the place for just such terrible interviews as the one now taking place there.
The young man was of the most extraordinary beauty—not only of face, but of figure, for he was as lithe and active as a cat, but his conspicuous feature was his eyes—eyes of the clearest sky blue, in surprising contrast to his bronzed skin and black hair and lashes. He was clean-shaven, so that a mouth of sensitive curves could be seen, and a chin that contradicted those curves by its firm aggression.
"You don't really think it nice to be vulgar," Mrs. Rolles went on, "if for no other reason than because it is the one thing that Susie and I can't forgive."
"Well, if I can forgive Susie her refinement, I think she ought to be able to forgive me a nice little trace of vulgarity. We shall do very well. She can teach me to be refined and a touch of my vulgarity will improve her immensely."
Mrs. Rolles shook her head. "You would be the last person to find it an improvement," she said.
Bevans struck the tea-table lightly with his fist. "Now that's where you're wrong," he said. "I really can't see that refinement is anything but a weakness; it seems to consist entirely in things you can't do. Susie can't go out without a maid, she can't go in a trolley-car, she can't wear ready-made clothes—all liabilities. Tell me one single positive thing that her being a lady enables her to do."
Her mother, without an instant's hesitation, answered, "She can charm." She scored heavily.
Bevans groaned. There was no denying that Susie had done so in his case.
Elated by success, Mrs. Rolles pushed on: "Charm," she opined, "is the refinement of the soul," and she felt she might almost be quoting Emerson or the Psalms.
"Oh, I'm all right, then," answered Bevans, cheerfully. "I don't stick up for my manners, and I know my looks are fierce—"
"Fierce!" exclaimed his hostess. "I should have thought you would be above pretending not to know you are extremely handsome."
Bevans wriggled. "Don't let's talk about it," he said. "I believe it's the only thing in the world it embarrasses me to speak of. I hate looking like this; it's a great disadvantage; it makes every one distrust me, particularly employers. I'd give anything in the world for a good ugly mug like David's—and the joke of it is, he isn't a bit more honest and serious than I am—only every one thinks he must be."
"Mr. Stewart has a very aristocratic kind of ugliness," said Mrs. Rolles, reprovingly.
"But to go back to the question of my soul," Bevans went on. "I'd match souls with any one—even some of our oldest families'—even Susie's, which is, I am sure, an attractive mauve trifle."
"It isn't necessary to be profane," said Mrs. Rolles.
"No, but it helps a lot when you've not feeling very cheerful."
When she was in complete control of a situation Mrs. Rolles could be very kind, and she felt no doubt at the present moment of the completeness of her control. "I think you know, Mr. Bevans," she said, graciously, "that I sincerely like you, that I find you a stimulating intelligence, but you must admit that you are very different from most of the young men whom Susie has about her."
"Flatterer!"
The lady stiffened. "I do not consider it a compliment to tell you you are different from the other men who come to the house. You would do well to model yourself upon them—well-bred, well-connected young people. If they have not money, they have tradition, and you, Mr. Bevans, as far as I know, have neither."
"I have a feeling I'm going to make a lot of money some day," said Bevans, but his manner betrayed a knowledge that his position was weak.
"Indeed?" returned his hostess, dryly. "Well, you know you cannot support a wife on that feeling."
There was a pause. Bevans got up—not so much because he had any intention of going, as because he felt too wretched to sit still.
"I'm not doing so badly," he began.
Let me see—you are an automobile salesman?" said Mrs. Rolles, and if she had said, you are a creeping worm, she would not have needed to change her tone.
"Yes, and a very good one, too," returned Bevans. "I sold a car yesterday to old Johns, Homer Johns of the New Republic Bank, you know?"
Mrs.Rolles inclined her head; she herself kept a very small balance at the New Republic, and insisted in return that the president should see her whenever she stopped in and advise her about investments.
"Well, then you know he's not an easy man to manage, and he did not really want this car a bit, yet I sold it to him, and even made him drive me home in it. It isn't every man could do that, now is it, Mrs. Rolles?" He looked at her wistfully, but she would not catch his eye. She was thinking that it was really high time for him to go, or Susie, obediently keeping out of the way in response to a parental command, might get restless.
"Some of Susie's friends have married much vulgarer people than me." he pleaded.
"Than I," said Mrs. Rolles.
Bevans sighed, and began what seemed to be an effort to dig his toe permanently into the rug. "You don't seem to attach the least importance to Susie's affection for me."
Mrs. Rolles smiled. "Shall I be perfectly candid?" she asked.
It is a question at which the stoutest heart sinks, which every one would like to answer in the negative, but to which good usage seems to demand that an enthusiastic affirmative be given.
"Good Lord!" cried Bevans, "is there still worse to come?"
There was. "The truth is," said Mrs. Rolles, "that Susie's feelings are not deep. She never has and I don't believe she ever will care deeply for any one. Now, I don't mean by that that she is a cold, calculating villain. Quite the contrary. She is kind, unselfish, and in her own way affectionate, only no one matters very much to her. Her nurses, her teachers, her friends have always loved her better than she loved them. She accepts their love as a sort of natural responsibility. I really believe, in my own way, I like you better than she does—shall miss you more when you stop coming here."
"But I have no intention of stopping coming."
She smiled. "When you stop getting in, then."
"Oh," cried he, "isn't life rottenly arranged! By the time I'm an old man I shall probably have all the money I want, and I'd gladly sell the last twenty years of my life for a good income at this moment."
"If we could make those bargains there would be no old people in the world," remarked Mrs. Rolles.
"Perhaps it wouldn't be any the worse on that account."
She did not seem offended. "Dear me!" she said, "you're worse than Herod with the babies. You'd sacrifice all the old without a qualm. But perhaps you have some elderly relation with money."
He shook his head emphatically. "No indeed, or I'd be off now to wring their necks. The only relation I have is an old aunt by marriage who runs a girls' school in Westchester."
"Oh yes!" Mrs. Rolles nodded. "The Bevans School. I once thought of sending Susie there, but they want to teach girls mathematics, and college requirements, and all the things I disapprove of most in a girl's education."
"How ought a girl to be educated?" said Bevans, who had thought on this as on many other irrelevant subjects.
"She ought to be educated to be charming."
"Is there any way of doing that?—there'd be money in it, if there were."
"There's a way of educating her not to be—your aunt's way. Dear me! I remember there was a young woman there teaching geometry—the minute I saw her I withdrew Susie's name—so hard, so competent. However, this was several years ago. I dare say it has improved." She held out her hand cordially, but he did not notice the gesture.
"Mrs.Rolles," he said, "I really am awfully in love with Susie."
"And six months from now you'll be awfully in love with some one else."
"Why do you say that?"
"Men are never constant to the unattainable."
He couldn't help laughing at her tone, though her meaning was so unpalatable. "Perhaps not," he said, "but, you see, I don't admit that she is unattainable—not so long as she loves me."
"Has she ever said she loved you?"
He was silent. She hadn't. She had said she liked him better than any one else—even David, for, of course, David was in love with her, too; she had told him he never bored her, and he knew, though he could not admit it even to himself, that when they went about together she enjoyed the sensation his appearance always made. She had written him quantities of the nicest notes—Susie could write the pleasantest notes, in the neatest little hand—and, since it had been clearly understood between them that he always came on Thursdays, she had been wonderfully kind in never allowing any one to interfere with him. But he could not feel that all these taken together indicated a great passion, and now, with Mrs. Rolles's cold eye upon him, they seemed particularly paltry.
He had met Susie five years before when, as a girl of sixteen, she had come to his senior dance at the invitation of David Stewart. He had thought her a lovely, fairy-like being and had danced with her as many times in the evening as he could. Two years later, when she came out, he had found a snap-shot of her in a newspaper and had cut it out and carried it in his pocket-book, so that it was very easy to say, when he met her again, though not strictly true, that he had fallen in love with her at first sight at his senior dance. Anyhow, it was always said between them, and believed—by Susie at least. David, however, could have testified, if he had been disloyally inclined, which he wasn't, that many photographs had preceded the magnificent full length of Susie which now occupied the place of honor on Bevans's desk. He was so subject to enthusiasms that a fair share of them were bound to be feminine.
Mrs. Rolles suddenly decided to be drastic.
"Good-by, Mr. Bevans," she said. "And now that we are really parting, let me give you a bit of advice. Do learn to make an exit. So few young men can. Don't stand about first on one foot and then on the other long after you have made up your mind to go."
Bevans was not, of course, superior to the almost sacred terror that Mrs. Rolles inspired in young men, particularly when she talked like this, but it was immensely to the credit of his courage that after the wave of panic had passed he stood his ground. He smiled now very sweetly at her. "But you see," he said, "I haven't made up my mind to go—not until I see Susie."
"Susie's out, I'm afraid," said her mother, in a tone politely false.
"Oh no, she's not!" said he, and, stepping to the door, he opened it and shouted at the top of a good pair of lungs, "Susie!"
"That is impertinent," observed Mrs. Rolles, more as a critic of manners than as an outraged parent.
"Our modern efficiency," answered Bevans, and then suddenly lost all his lightness of touch as Susie entered.
She was the sort of young woman about whom ideals easily cluster, for she was pretty, pale, and almost totally non-committal. Some people believed her to be simply unawakened; others cherished the belief that beneath an iron reserve she seethed with emotions. Susie never did anything to contradict either hypothesis. When she was reproached with concealing her feelings, she smiled and shook her head with just the same manner as when she was reproached with having no feelings to conceal.
Standing now with her hand on her mother's shoulder, she smiled at Bevans as if she thought him very good to look at, which represented her opinion most accurately.
"Susie," he said, "what are we going to do? I have no money to speak of, and your mother won't hear of our being engaged."
"Oh, Austin," she murmured, as if a little shocked at the last word, "what could we possibly do?"
"We might be engaged, anyhow."
"Secretly?"
"Not so damned secretly—but without your mother's consent." He looked at her, hoping to see some sign of rebellion.
"Oh, I couldn't do that," she said.
"You could if you cared anything about me."
"I shall never forget you," she answered, and indeed as he stood looking at her with his eyes like two blue flames no woman would have been able to forget him.
"I'll never give you the chance," he said, and flung himself out of the room.
When he was gone, her mother looked at her and said, chattily, "My dear, you have no human feelings, have you?"
Susie was naturally startled and annoyed. "Mamma," she said, "I thought I did just what you would think wise."
"So you did,"answered her mother, hastily. "No one ever said that human feelings were wise."
Bevans in the mean time was walking gloomily home. Even one of his company's new cars painted a geranium pink picked out in black failed to raise more than a passing interest in his mind. He was depressed not only at Susie's coolness, but by a sudden conviction that had come over him that he was not a man who would ever inspire a lasting love. And when two girls actually stopped and walked backward to stare at him as he passed, his only thought was a bitter reflection that they wouldn't stick to him a week.
It was a lovely afternoon in the end of February, when something in the faint color of the sky and the gentle movements of the air promised an early spring. The sun was low and struck down the side-street, throwing long shadows, as Bevans turned toward the little east-side park where he and David Stewart had rooms.
David was reading for his bar examinations. He always began to read in a normal, upright position, but as the intellectual strain became greater he sank lower and lower, until finally the elevation of his feet began. When Bevans entered, the intricacies of the subject were such that David was lying on the sofa with his feet festooned over the back. He was evidently delighted to be interrupted.
"What have you been doing that you oughtn't to do?" was his greeting. "There's a special-delivery letter for you from a firm of lawyers, and a deep male voice has been telephoning at intervals of twenty minutes to know if you have come in yet."
"Lawyers?" said Bevans, without interest, taking up the letter with a languid hand. "It's all up between me and Susie."
David sat up with one motion of his entire body.
"Yesterday it was all on."
"I was wrong. Her feeling seems to be that if some day I came back with enough money to marry she wouldn't be any more opposed to me than to the next man."
"Do you believe it's just the money question?" asked David, loyally.
"I'd go a good way on the downward path to get some at this moment," Bevans answered, and began tearing open the envelop in his hand.
Silences, as every observer knows, have strange characteristics all their own—passionate silences, and hateful silences, and silences full of friendly, purring content. The silence that followed the opening of Bevans's letter was frankly portentous. It was not that Bevans's manner altered, though there may have been a slight change in the rhythm of his breathing, but somehow David knew at once that the letter contained something of supreme importance. So, being a good friend, he said nothing, but sat watching Bevans out of the corner of his eye as a dog watches his master to see if he is going to be taken for a walk.
Having read the letter twice, Bevans raised his eyes, shining with excitement, and said:
"Dave, I've inherited a school."
"A school? An automobile school?"
"No, a girls' boarding-school."
"A what?" said David, who had heard perfectly.
"You see before you," answered his friend, "the principal of the well-known fashionable school—the Bevans Boarding-school for Young Ladies."
"Well, next to inheriting the Sultan's harem, I can't think of anything pleasanter. Now let's have the facts."
But almost all the available facts were already before him. Bevans had not even seen the announcement of his aunt-by-marriage's death in the papers a few weeks before. Now, her lawyers wrote to say that, as she had left no will, he, as next of kin, appeared to have inherited all her estate. This consisted entirely of her school-grounds of about ten acres overlooking the Sound, two large houses accommodating about fifty pupils with the necessary teaching and household staff, also the small cottage in which Mrs. Bevans herself had lived, all not too heavily mortgaged and yielding the former owner a net income of about $3,000 a year.
"Three thousand a year!" cried David. It seemed to him a very large income.
"And the house," added Bevans.
"You must never go near the place, Austin," said his friend. "If you do, all the little darlings will fall in love with you, and their parents will take them away and the school will be ruined."
"Not go near it!" said Bevans. "I shall live there and direct it exactly as my aunt did—only not in the same direction."
"You're mad," cried David. "You at the head of a girls' school!"
"There's money in it and I need money."
"Your face would wreck a thousand schools," cried the other, with conviction.
David's opposition was not to be shaken. He was naturally inclined to conservatism, and the study of the law had not rendered him more liberal. He had never before heard of a man under thirty owning and managing a girls' school, and therefore for that reason alone he considered the idea inherently wrong. He attempted to argue the question also on practical grounds, but the true basis of his disapproval was its newness. Bevans, on the other hand, with a streak of creativeness in his make-up, was attracted to an idea by its mere unfamiliarity. For David's constantly reiterated assertion that he would make himself ridiculous he cared nothing. What, he asked, could be more ridiculous than to let slip one's great opportunity?
After dinner he put an end to discussion by dressing himself very carefully and going out. When asked where he was going, he replied that he was going to pick up a little capital to start his school right.