The Smart Set/Volume 19/Issue 4/A Conspiracy Inhibited

by Inez Haynes Irwin

 

A CONSPIRACY INHIBITED

By Inez Haynes Gillmore

He came swinging out of the Flatiron Building into a piercing hurly-burly of sound and color and movement. He paused a moment to breathe the whipping briskness of the air, his alert, wide-open blue eyes surveying the scene with every appearance of appreciative enjoyment. He dropped into the current presently, and, at a leisurely gait, permitted it to bear him downtown.

Suddenly he started, clapped his hand, as if in tardy remembrance, to an inner pocket and drew out a letter. It was big and square, superscribed in a hand so dashing and large-lettered that it had the effect of pushing the special-delivery stamp quite off the surface. He had just inserted a vandal finger under the flap when his glance, playing casually ahead, caught on that, in the crowd, which impelled him to put the note back, unopened, into his pocket.

She was strolling uptown. There was the same appearance of uncertainty in her graceful, unhurrying gait that marked his own. In the vari-colored human surge, her mouse-like appearance made a detail of contrasting and delicate charm.

She was dressed all in gray—gray broadcloth suit, gray shoes, a chinchilla turban with a saucy gray plume, a chinchilla scarf, crossed on her shoulders and falling to her waist, a huge heart-shaped wad of chinchilla, that was a muff, suspended from her neck by a silver chain.

Her expression was unworldly, almost spiritual. It contrasted piquantly with the chic smartness of her clothes. Drifting nonchalantly from person to person, her look was arrested at his face. There, as if a little puzzled, it paused an instant.

A curious impulse caught him. It ran riot in his brain for a white-hot instant. It crystallized into a definite intention. He stopped at her side.

“I beg your pardon.” His tone was pleasant and filled with an easy deference. “I'm sure that I've met you somewhere, haven't I? Will you let me walk up the Avenue with you?”

The girl stared at him aghast.

He was a tall fellow, his clean-shaven, fair skin browned and reddened by an unseasonable burn. He had a stalwart, well-shaped figure, running a good deal to shoulder. His short crop of hair fitted his head like a cup of gold.

Her stare lasted an instant. Then a haughty color flared into her face. It wiped out the look of aloofness in its expression and brought out the pride in it. “Certainly mot!” she flung freezingly to him.

He resumed his hat equably. Her shocked profile darted past him. It paused halfway.

“Yes,” she suddenly conceded, turning impetuously to him, “you may walk a little way with me. I would like to have a few minutes' conversation with you.”

He placed himself at her side. She walked a few moments in silence. He waited.

The early November twilight was trembling in solution in the air. A heavy gray sky sagged low over the cañon-like sides of the streets and held down their roar. Here and there, a roof prematurely lighted, embroidered it with the glittering letters of an electric sign. An inextricable tangle of cars, carriages and automobiles strained Broadway and Fifth avenue to the spilling-over point. The sidewalks bordered them with parallel human currents. All these streams met at Twenty-third street, eddied there into a whirlpool, in which pedestrian appeared to wrestle with vehicle, then bisected each other and continued smoothly onward.

“I'll cross here, I think,” she commanded curtly. “You understand you are to leave me the moment I desire it. Thank you, I can take care of myself,” as he made a movement, involuntary on his part and purely benevolent, destined merely, as he explained with humility, to prevent her from being “chewed” by the two automobiles that had, simultaneously, marked her for their prey.

She received this elucidation in oppressive silence. She threaded for herself a composed and skilful way until they reached the sidewalk.

He observed that her hair was soft and dusky. It broke primly from each side of the milky part, that protruded in front of her hat, fell to her ears, broke there into an incipient riot of curls, subsided into waves and retreated, entirely quelled, into a decorous plaited mass in her neck.

“Now,” she began imperiously, turning on him with a suggestion of menace in her air, “will you kindly tell me why, out of all the women on Broadway, you selected me to approach in that insufferable way?”

He looked embarrassed.

“Well—I—the fact is—I—I——”

“The fact is,” she took it up heatedly, “that after looking me all over, you concluded that I was the kind of girl who would respond to such an overture.”

Her face flashed indignantly up in his direction and then away. He saw that the light glinted through the transparent bridge of her disdainful little nose.

“I thought nothing of the kind,” he asserted with equal spirit.

“Oh, then you did do me the honor to decide that I looked respectable?”

“Of course, I did. There was no question in my mind about your respectability.”

“You did it to annoy me, to frighten me, then?”

“Oh, I say, I'm not that particular kind of a blackguard.”

“But you deliberately chose to insult me. I think I'll deliver you into the hands of the first policeman we come to.”

Her tone was vicious with steady intention.

“You may—if you want to,” he conceded grovelingly. “You'll have to appear in the Jefferson Market Court against me, and I'm afraid they will put you in the newspapers. But don't mind me, if that's the only thing that will satisfy you. Do you object if I resist arrest, though? I've always thought I would like to lick one New York policeman before I die. I suppose my mother'll feel pretty bad, especially as I've just come back from a trip round the world and haven't seen her for nine months. But I'd like to have you meet her. You'd like each other—I can see that. She's the Spartan kind; she'll agree with you. She'll say I got only my just deserts. But I shall maintain to my dying day that I never meant to insult you.”

All the way, he had been taking stealthy peeps at her profile. Now he looked straight ahead. His manner was absolutely serious, ponderously penitent.

“But if you could only tell me why you did it,” she persisted. “You don't look like a mere vulgar villain. That's why, in a way, I condescended to let you right yourself in my eyes.”

“Heaven knows, I'm trying hard enough to do that. But I can't seem to say the right thing. This is the first time in my life that I ever spoke to a girl that I wasn't sure about. Now, doesn't that mitigate some?”

“But why weren't you sure you couldn't speak to me?” she demanded with ruthless feminine logic. “Why—why, that's the most insulting thing you've said yet! Why should you choose me to be the first to be uncertain about?” She paused. “Was it my manner?' she demanded icily.

“Your manner is perfect.”

“Was it the way I carried myself?”

“Certainly not. You carried yourself as every well-bred girl does.”

“Then it was my clothes.” Under her passionate arraignment of him, her voice had a sub-current of conviction. For an instant she stopped short. Her look was a dagger of interrogation thrust sideways at him.

Her skin was amber with an infusion of cream. He made the charming discovery that it was embroidered delicately with freckles. A row of them filed across her haughty nose and nestled in tiny colonies on her smooth cheeks.

“Listen,” she pushed on rapidly, “when we get level with the mounted policeman at the corner you must leave me. But before you go, I would like to say—this is the real reason why I wished to speak with you. I've come on to New York to be maid-of-honor at the wedding of a friend of mine. I live in a little town in—a long distance from here. I have been very busy doing some charitable work for a year, and I was in mourning anyway, so that when my friend's invitation came, I had no pretty clothes to wear—not a thing. Grandma told me to wait and buy my clothes in New York, and I came on a week ahead, just for that purpose. But, if you can understand it, I'm the kind of girl who hates to shop——”

“I never heard of such a thing in my life,” he commented meekly.

“You see, I never know what to buy. Oh, no more than a baby! I never have known. Yesterday I went about from store to store until I was ready to drop. I could not find anything I liked; New York is so different from Boston, and then, everything looked so ultra. The girls who waited on me would tell me that perfectly dreadful things were becoming to me when I knew they couldn't be. Oh, I got so discouraged!”

“You poor thing—you ought to have had me along. I've just been on a shopping spree with my cousin in Paris. I'm an authority on Winter fashions. I could answer any number of those letters you read on the woman's page—'Wild Rose: Take out the sleeves of your last year's waists and turn them upside down.' But go on.”

“In despair, I went to the matinee. It was 'Rose Leaves.' In the second act, in the afternoon-tea scene, there was the dearest little girl I ever saw in a suit all of gray. Oh, she was such a pretty, dimply little thing! And she looked charming—I was simply crazy about her. Now, if somebody will only give me an idea about clothes, I can carry it out as well as anybody. I got it into my head that I wanted a gray suit just like hers. Yesterday I went out and bought recklessly all the things that I wanted, as much like hers as I could. They came home this afternoon. I put them right on and then, as I had plenty of time, I started out for a walk. But, do you know, simply everybody stared at me. Oh, it was so embarrassing! I began to wonder if it was my clothes—people don't look at you like that in Boston. I don't know what grandma would say if she knew I copied an actress. And then—and then—I saw you coming. I thought you looked so jolly and nice—as if really nice girls knew you——”

“They do,” he assured her promptly. “You never met a man who's known so many nice girls.”

“When you spoke to me, it nearly broke my heart, because I knew then that there was something wrong. And, although you're afraid to tell me, I understood at once. I know that you don't think I look quite like a nice girl.”

The words had poured out, molten with appeal and staccato with notes of high emphasis. She looked entreatingly at him.

“I'll tell you exactly why I spoke to you,” he said simply. “I did not tell you when you first asked me because what happened to be the truth, in my case, is what men always say under these circumstances. I was afraid you would not believe it. You caught my eye at once, because you seemed such a mouse of a creature—that gray is so soft. Then—I have always liked women to part their hair in the middle. As you came nearer, I had—I honestly had—a sudden conviction that I'd met you somewhere, though I couldn't, of course, think where. I spoke to you on impulse. It was a queer business. I don't understand now why I did it. The moment the words were out of my mouth, I knew, definitely, that I'd never seen you before. I was sorry—on my honor. But I was first attracted to you, believe me, because you looked so girlish—so different. I think your new clothes are all right.”

“Oh, I'm so glad. I should have felt uncomfortable all this evening if you hadn't said that. You see, my friend is the best-dressed girl I know. You're sure that you're telling me the truth?”

“Quite sure.” His sidewise glance surveyed her swiftly. “That coat's a corker! In Paris the girls are wearing rigs that look just like it. The sleeves are all right—and I understand that's a life and death matter. You see, my cousin and I looked at two hundred and eighty-nine thousand, seven hundred and fifty-one coats. I know what I'm talking about.”

“They said the suit came from Paris, but, of course, one never knows. I never spent so much money in my life before—at least never just for clothes. But grandma said I was to have everything I wanted this time, no matter what it cost. You know Massachusetts girls don't think so much about clothes—grandma thinks it's vulgar. I do, too.” Her look grew brooding. “And when,” she sighed, “you think of all the poor there are in the world— But I'm very much obliged to you. I'm not nearly so angry as I was at first. And you see, we've reached the policeman who was to mark the limit of our acquaintance.”

“I'm entitled to about a rod more of acquaintance,” he maintained frowningly. “Your own words were, 'When we get level with that mounted policeman,' and we're not level with him yet.”

“Very well.” She shut her lips with what was, palpably, a malicious intent of silence. Involuntarily they both fixed their eyes on the policeman, as rigid as a uniformed dummy, upright in his saddle. Suddenly he came to life, wheeled about and galloped up the Avenue.

“Aha!” he said exultantly, “if you're a gentleman, you've got to wait until we catch up with you.”

She smiled in spite of herself. But she stopped. “Good-bye,” she said inflexibly.

“Oh, I say——”

“You'll not compel me to take the stage.”

He lifted his hat resignedly. She nodded and walked on.

In an instant quick footsteps overtook her. “I'm very sorry to trouble you again,” he began, a statement that his dancing eyes made no effort to reinforce. “You dropped this handkerchief out of your muff.”

She was shocked. “Did I? What a goose!” She flamed. “Of course you know I didn't do it on purpose.”

“Of course. Do you mind if I follow you a little way, just for protection? You might lose your muff—or—or——”

“I might cast a shoe,” she flashed.

“Surely, you won't send me away again when the fates——”

She looked ahead with a little maddening judicial air. The street lights, in globes of blue radiance, looped together by the silver fringes that the thick dusk made of their rays, ran up past the Park and into the very sky. Between them the teeming street glittered like an open kaleidoscope.

“Do you see that branch projecting over the path in the Park—the one with the ring of people about it?”

“Yes.”

“You may walk with me until we stand directly under it—not an inch farther.”

He studied the inexorable distance. “Do you mind my walking very slowly, as I have a weak heart?”

“Do you mind if I don't talk any?” she returned craftily, “I'm very tired.”

“I'll talk to you,' he offered with alacrity. “Do you know that I think Boston is an awfully nice old town. I've often thought I'd like to explore it. Only I could never get around alone. It's so much like walking in a maze—I wonder they don't charge an admission. No matter what direction you take you always come back to the place that you started from. If I only had someone to show me about, I'd make a study of the historical places in Boston—the Old North Church and Bunker Hill and—and—the Liberty Bell.”

“Philadelphia.”

“Well—the Old Manse.”

“Concord.”

“The House of Seven Gables, then.”

“Salem.”

He made a despairing gesture. “There, you see now how much I need instruction. I know I don't half appreciate Boston. But, honest, I love that air of quiet and calm that hangs over it. It's like a mammoth sanatorium. Pompeii, this Summer, seemed so rapid and hectic beside it. I never found anything that you could really compare to Boston, except some places in Egypt. They have that same intellectual chill. But then they ought to have it; they've been in ruins three thousand years.”

Her lips twitched. She quickened her pace.

“You ought not to walk so fast as you do,” he remonstrated. “You'll have walker's cramp some day—you mark my words.”

“We are approaching the selected branch,” was her reply. “Remember, the moment we get under it—” She glued her gaze to it.

He too fixed a pessimistic eye ahead. “Curses!” he began with melodramatic fervor and, “Good work!” he ended with a grin.

This, because the branch, as if blasted by his malediction, fell with a sudden crash to the ground. The man with a saw who, sitting close to the trunk, came into their range of vision with their next step, began his preparations to climb down.

“You said I didn't have to go until we stood directly under it. Now how can I?”

“Well, I—I—” She gave her comment up. “Anyway,” her desperation was evident, “you'll have to leave me soon for I'm almost there. It's somewhere in the Sixties, I think. You're not going to insist on going to dinner with me, are you?”

“I'm not sure yet.”

She had been fumbling in her muff. She brought out a note, a crumpled creamy sheet. She began, with much turning of leaves, to search for an evasive, mysterious something from among the interlacings, interlinings and underscorings of a big-lettered, dashing hand.

He watched her curiously at first, then with a start.

“By every sign and token of long-distance signaling—that's Bettina Thorpe's handwriting,” he commented casually.

She stared.

“Oh, I've got my credentials with me, too. There's no reason why this Peace Conference shouldn't get busy.” He drew an unopened letter from his pocket and thrust it under her bewildered eyes.

“By Jove! I guess I'd better read that,” he exclaimed.

“How perfectly ridiculous!” Her breath came in gasps. “Why, I can't believe it—it's too silly!”

“Bettina ought to serve a can-opener with her stationery,” he complained, tearing at the flap, “or a little dynamite. Ah!” He ran hungrily through the note and then burst into a roar. “I know who you are,” he informed his companion, his face brightening with mischief. “You're Patricia Otis. Listen to this:

“Dear Duke: I've been 'phoning you like all possessed ever since I heard of your arrival, yesterday morning. But nobody knew where you were. Come to 879 Sixty-third street to dinner tonight with Bob and me, if it's a possible thing, to meet Patsy Otis, who's being maid-of-honor next week, at the chief social event of the season. I've always told you you'd go crazy over her, and here's your chance.

⁠“Hurriedly, Betty.”

He jammed the letter back into the envelope. “You see, I've simply got to go to dinner with you.”

“Are you Duke Grayson?”

“I am.”

“Betty never told me you were coming tonight. But then, of course, she knew I wouldn't be there. I have always refused to meet you.”

“Same here!” he agreed brazenly. “She's determined to marry us, you know. That's why you looked so familiar. It's the pictures she showed me. I would never have suspected that you were good-looking from those things.”

“Thank you. I'm not. It's these stage clothes I'm wearing. When you come to that—Betty had any number of pictures of you in her room at Bertram Hall. See here—I don't want to meet you. Oh, Betty's a schemer. You wait until I get alone with her! If I don't—I simply decline to meet you. She'll throw me at you in the most disgusting way—leaving us to tête-à-têtes, and everything like that. She hates my settlement work, you know. Her heart is set on marrying me off. She says that if I married a man like you, I'd be a different woman. Isn't it disgusting?”

“Nauseating,” he agreed.

“Why, I wouldn't marry the kind of man you are for anything in the world—you're too frivolous. I have an object in life.”

He applauded her. “That's right. You stick to that—no matter how many times I ask you.”

She turned back and her little teeth gnawed at her underlip. “Oh, sugar!” she burst out vexedly. She made an indeterminate movement forward and stopped. “I won't go to their dinner,” she said with decision.

He had the look of one inspired. “I'll tell you what we'll do. You see how it is: here are two people conspiring against us—against your happiness and my liberty. Let's evade them by going off to dinner together. I'll call a hansom and we'll go down to the Waldorf. You can telephone Betty, so that she won't worry. There'll be nobody there to foist unwelcome gratuitous tête-à-têtes on us. That's the only way we can beat their game.”

She looked at him, dumfounded. But somewhere in her expression surprise gave way to a kind of perplexed thoughtfulness that betokened that his scheme was being considered. This was broken and vanquished by a smile, mischievous, appreciative. The latter was reinforced by determination.

“I don't know what grandma would say,' she said defiantly, “but, anyway, I'm going to do it. I'll tell Bettina that I've met you by accident, that we understand each other and her, and that we see right through all her plans. And if she has any idea of poking us off into corners to fall in love with each other, she can just give it up, because we absolutely refuse to do it.”

“That's the stuff.” He raised an alert finger to the hansom that had assiduously trailed them up the Avenue.

 

But six months later, when Bettina Bosworth received a certain inevitable announcement, she only smiled placidly.

“I'd give a good deal to know whether she dropped that handkerchief on purpose,” she said to Bob.