Chapter 20

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_ CHAPTER XX

In the faces of men who have dominion of whatever kind over their fellow men--be it the brutal rule of the prize fighter over his gang or the apparently gentle sway of the apparently meek bishop over his loving flock--in the faces of all men of power there is a dangerous look. They may never lose their tempers. They may never lift their voices. They may be ever suave and civil. The dangerous look is there--and the danger behind it. And the sense of that look and of its cause has a certain restraining effect upon all but the hopelessly impudent or solidly dense. Norman was one of the men without fits of temper. In his moments of irritation, no one ever felt that a storm of violent language might be impending. But the danger signal flaunted from his face. Danger of what? No one could have said. Most people would have laughed at the idea that so even tempered a man, pleased with himself and with the world, could ever be dangerous. Yet everyone had instinctively respected that danger flag--until Dorothy.

Perhaps it had struck for her--had really not been there when she looked at him. Perhaps she had been too inexperienced, perhaps too self-centered, to see it. Perhaps she had never before seen his face in an hour of weariness and relaxation--when the true character, the dominating and essential trait or traits, shows nakedly upon the surface, making the weak man or woman look pitiful, the strong man or woman formidable.

However that may be, when he walked into the sitting room, greeted her placidly and kissed her on the brow, she, glancing uncertainly up at him, saw that danger signal for the first time. She studied his face, her own face wearing her expression of the puzzled child. No, not quite that expression as it always had been theretofore, but a modified form of it. To any self-centered, self-absorbed woman--there comes in her married life, unless she be married to a booby, a time, an hour, a moment even--for it can be narrowed down to a point--when she takes her first _seeing_ look at the man upon whom she is dependent for protection, whether spiritual or material, or both. In her egotism and vanity she has been regarding him as her property. Suddenly, and usually disagreeably, it has been revealed to her that she is his property. That hour had come for Dorothy Norman. And she was looking at her husband, was wondering who and what he was.

"You've had your lunch?" he said.

"No," replied she.

"You have been out for the air?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"You didn't tell me what to do."

He smiled good humoredly. "Oh, you had no money."

"Yes--a little. But I--" She halted.

"Yes?"

"You hadn't told me what to do," she repeated, as if on mature thought that sentence expressed the whole matter.

He felt in his pockets, found a small roll of bills. He laid twenty-five dollars on the table. "I'll keep thirty," he said, "as I shan't have any more till I see Tetlow to-morrow. Now, fly out and amuse yourself. I'm going to sleep. Don't wake me till you're ready for dinner."

And he went into his bedroom and closed the door. When he awoke, he saw that it was dark outside, and some note in the din of street noises from far below made him feel that it was late. He wrapped a bathrobe round him, opened the door into the sitting room. It was dark.

"Dorothy!" he called.

"Yes," promptly responded the small quiet voice, so near that he started back.

"Oh!" he exclaimed, and switched on the light. "There you are--by the window. What were you doing, in the dark?"

She was dressed precisely as when he had last seen her. She was sitting with her hands listless in her lap and her face a moving and beautiful expression of melancholy dreams. On the table were the bills--where he had laid them. "You've been out?" he said.

"No," she replied.

"Why not?"

"I've been--waiting."

"For what?" laughed he.

"For--I don't know," she replied. "Just waiting."

"But there's nothing to wait for."

She looked at him interrogatively. "No--I suppose not," she said.

He went back into his room and glanced at his watch. "Eleven o'clock!" he cried. "Why didn't you wake me? You must be nearly starved."

"Yes, I am hungry," said she.

Her patient, passive resignation irritated him. "I'm ravenous," he said. "I'll dress--and you dress, too. We'll go downstairs to supper."

When he reappeared in the sitting room, in a dinner jacket, she was again seated near the window, hands listless in her lap and eyes gazing dreamily into vacancy. But she was now dressed in the black chiffon and the big black hat. He laughed. "You are prompt and obedient," said he. "Nothing like hunger to subdue."

A faint flush tinged her lovely skin; the look of the child that has been struck appeared in her eyes.

He cast about in his mind for the explanation. Did she think he meant it was need that had brought her meekly back to him? That was true enough, but he had not intended to hint it. In high good humor because he was so delightfully hungry and was about to get food, he cried: "Do cheer up! There's nothing to be sad about--nothing."

She lifted her large eyes and gazed at him timidly. "What are you going to do with me?"

"Take you downstairs and feed you."

"But I mean--afterward?"

"Bring--or send--you up here to go to bed."

"Are you going away?"

"Where?"

"Away from me."

He looked at her with amused eyes. She was exquisitely lovely; never had he seen her lovelier. It delighted him to note her charms--the charms that had enslaved him--not a single charm missing--and to feel that he was no longer their slave, was his own master again.

A strange look swept across her uncannily mobile face--a look of wonder, of awe, of fear, of dread. "You don't even like me any more," she said in her colorless way.

"What have I done to make you think I dislike you?" said he pleasantly.

She gazed down in silence.

"You need have no fear," said he. "You are my wife. You will be well taken care of, and you will not be annoyed. What more can I say?"

"Thank you," she murmured.

He winced. She had made him feel like an unpleasant cross between an alms-giver and a bully. "Now," said he, with forced but resolute cheerfulness, "we will eat, drink and be merry."

On the way down in the elevator he watched her out of the corner of his eye. When they reached the hall leading to the supper room he touched her arm and halted her. "My dear," said he in the pleasant voice which yet somehow never failed to secure attention and obedience, "there will be some of my acquaintances in there at supper. I don't want them to see you with that whipped dog look. There's no occasion for it."

Her lip trembled. "I'll do my best," said she.

"Let's see you smile," laughed he. "You have often shown me that you know the woman's trick of wearing what feelings you choose on the outside. So don't pretend that you've got to look as if you were about to be hung for a crime you didn't commit. There!--that's better."

And indeed to a casual glance she looked the happy bride trying--not very successfully--to seem used to her husband and her new status.

"Hold it!" he urged gayly. "I've no fancy for leading round a lovely martyr in chains. Especially as you're about as healthy and well placed a person as I know. And you'll feel as well as you look when you've had something to eat."

Whether it was obedience or the result of a decision to drop an unprofitable pose he could not tell, but as soon as they were seated and she had a bill of fare before her and was reading it, her expression of happiness lost its last suggestion of being forced. "Crab meat!" she said. "I love it!"

"Two portions of crab meat," he said to the waiter with pad and pencil at attention.

"Oh, I don't want that much," she protested.

"You forget that I am hungry," rejoined he. "And when I am hungry, the price of food begins to go up." He addressed himself to the waiter: "After that a broiled grouse--with plenty of hominy--and grilled sweet potatoes--and a salad of endive and hothouse tomatoes--and I know the difference between hothouse tomatoes and the other kinds. Next--some cheese--Coullomieres--yes, you have it--I got the steward to get it--and toasted crackers--the round kind, not the square--and not the hard ones that unsettle the teeth--and--what kind of ice, my dear?--or would you prefer a fresh peach flambee?"

"Yes--I think so," said Dorothy.

"You hear, waiter?--and a bottle of--there's the head waiter--ask him--he knows the champagne I like."

As Norman had talked, in the pleasant, insistent voice, the waiter had roused from the air of mindless, mechanical sloth characteristic of the New York waiter--unless and until a fee below his high expectation is offered. When he said the final "very good, sir," it was with the accent of real intelligence.

Dorothy was smiling, with the amusement of youth and inexperience. "What a lot of trouble you took about it," said she.

He shrugged his shoulders. "Anything worth doing at all is worth taking trouble about. You will see. We shall get results. The supper will be the best this house can put together."

"You can have anything you want in this world, if you only can pay for it," said she.

"That's what most people think," replied he. "But the truth is, the paying is only a small part of the art of getting what one wants."

She glanced nervously at him. "I'm beginning to realize that I'm dreadfully inexperienced," said she.

"There's nothing discouraging in that," said he. "Lack of experience can be remedied. But not lack of judgment. It takes the great gift of judgment to enable one to profit by mistakes, to decide what is the real lesson of an experience."

"I'm afraid I haven't any judgment, either," confessed she.

"That remains to be seen."

She hesitated--ventured: "What do you think is my worst fault?"

He shook his head laughingly. "We are going to have a happy supper."

"Do you think I am very vain?" persisted she.

"Who's been telling you so?"

"Mr. Tetlow. He gave me an awful talking to, just before I--" She paused at the edge of the forbidden ground. "He didn't spare me," she went on. "He said I was a vain, self-centered little fool."

"And what did you say?"

"I was very angry. I told him he had no right to accuse me of that. I reminded him that he had never heard me say a word about myself."

"And did he say that the vainest people were just that way--never speaking of themselves, never thinking of anything else?"

"Oh, he told you what he said," cried she.

"No," laughed he.

She reddened. "_You_ think I'm vain?"

He made a good-humoredly satirical little bow. "I think you are charming," said he. "It would be a waste of time to look at or to think of anyone else when oneself is the most charming and interesting person in the world. Still--" He put into his face and voice a suggestion of gravity that caught her utmost attention--"if one is to get anywhere, is to win consideration from others--and happiness for oneself--one simply must do a little thinking about others--occasionally."

Her eyes lowered. A faint color tinged her cheeks.

"The reason most of us are so uncomfortable--downright unhappy most of the time--is that we never really take our thoughts off our precious fascinating selves. The result is that some day we find that the liking--and friendship--and love--of those around us has limits--and we are left severely alone. Of course, if one has a great deal of money, one can buy excellent imitations of liking and friendship and even love--I ought to say, especially love----"

The color flamed in her face.

"But," he went on, "if one is in modest circumstances or poor, one has to take care."

"Or dependent," she said, with one of those unexpected flashes of subtle intelligence that so complicated the study of her character. He had been talking to amuse himself rather than with any idea of her understanding. Her sudden bright color and her two words--"or dependent"--roused him to see that she thought he was deliberately giving her a savage lecture from the cover of general remarks. "With the vanity of the typical woman," he said to himself, "she always imagines _she_ is the subject of everyone's thought and talk."

"Or dependent," said he to her, easily. "I wasn't thinking of you, but yours _is_ a case in point. Come, now--nothing to look blue about! Here's something to eat. No, it's for the next table."

"You won't let me explain," she protested, between the prudence of reproach and the candor of anger.

"There's nothing to explain," replied he. "Don't bother about the mistakes of yesterday. Remember them--yes. If one has a good memory, to forget is impossible--not to say unwise. But there ought to be no more heat or sting in the memory of past mistakes than in the memory of last year's mosquito bites."

The first course of the supper arrived. Her nervousness vanished, and he got far away from the neighborhood of the subjects that, even in remotest hint, could not but agitate her. And as the food and the wine asserted their pacific and beatific sway, she and he steadily moved into better and better humor with each other. Her beauty grew until it had him thinking that never, not in the most spiritual feminine conceptions of the classic painters, had he seen a loveliness more ethereal. Her skin was so exquisite, the coloring of her hair and eyes and of her lips was so delicately fine that it gave her the fragility of things bordering upon the supernal--of rare exotics, of sunset and moonbeam effects. No, he had been under no spell of illusion as to her beauty. It was a reality--the more fascinating because it waxed and waned not with regularity of period but capriciously.

He began to look round furtively, to see what effect this wife of his was producing on others. These last few months, through prudence as much as through pride, he had been cultivating the habit of ignoring his surroundings; he would not invite cold salutations or obvious avoidance of speaking. He now discovered many of his former associates--and his vanity dilated as he noted how intensely they were interested in his wife.

Some men of ability have that purest form of egotism which makes one profoundly content with himself, genuinely indifferent to the approval or the disapproval of others. Norman's vanity had a certain amount of alloy. He genuinely disdained his fellow-men--their timidity, their hypocrisy, their servility, their limited range of ideas. He was indifferent to the verge of insensibility as to their adverse criticism. But at the same time it was necessary to his happiness that he get from them evidences of their admiration and envy. With that amusing hypocrisy which tinges all human nature, he concealed from himself the satisfaction, the joy even, he got out of the showy side of his position. And no feature of his infatuation for Dorothy surprised him so much as the way it rode rough shod and reckless over his snobbishness.

With the fading of infatuation had come many reflections upon the practical aspects of what he had done. It pleased him with himself to find that, in this first test, he had not the least regret, but on the contrary a genuine pride in the courageous independence he had shown--another and strong support to his conviction of his superiority to his fellow-men. He might be somewhat snobbish--who was not?--who else in his New York was less than supersaturated with snobbishness? But snobbishness, the determining quality in the natures of all the women and most of the men he knew, had shown itself one of the incidental qualities in his own nature. After all, reflected he, it took a man, a good deal of a man, to do what he had done, and not to regret it, even in the hour of disillusionment. And it must be said for this egotistic self-approval of his that like all his judgments there was sound merit of truth in it. The vanity of the nincompoop is ridiculous. The vanity of the man of ability is amusing and no doubt due to a defective point of view upon the proportions of the universe; but it is not without excuse, and those who laugh might do well to discriminate even as they guffaw.

Looking discreetly about, Norman was suddenly confronted by the face of Josephine Burroughs, only two tables away.

Until their eyes squarely met he did not know she was there, or even in America. Before he could make a beginning of glancing away, she gave him her sweetest smile and her friendliest bow. And Dorothy, looking to see to whom he was speaking, was astonished to receive the same radiance of cordiality. Norman was pleased at the way his wife dealt with the situation. She returned both bow and smile in her own quiet, slightly reserved way of gentle dignity.

"Who was that, speaking?" asked she.

"Miss Burroughs. You must remember her."

He noted it as characteristic that she said, quite sincerely: "Oh, so it is. I didn't remember her. That is the girl you were engaged to."

"Yes--'the nice girl uptown,'" said he.

"I didn't like her," said Dorothy, with evident small interest in the subject. "She was vain."

"You mean you didn't like her way of being vain," suggested Norman. "Everyone is vain; so, if we disliked for vanity we should dislike everyone."

"Yes, it was her way. And just now she spoke to us both, as if she were doing us a favor."

"Gracious, it's called," said he. "What of it? It does us no harm and gives her about the only happiness she's got."

[Illustration: "At Josephine's right sat a handsome young foreigner."]

Norman, without seeming to do so, noted the rest of the Burroughs party. At Josephine's right sat a handsome young foreigner, and it took small experience of the world to discover that he was paying court to her, and that she was pleased and flattered. Norman asked the waiter who he was, and learned that he came from the waiter's own province of France, was the Duc de Valdome. At first glance Norman had thought him distinguished. Afterward he discriminated. There are several kinds or degrees of distinction. There is distinction of race, of class, of family, of dress, of person. As Frenchman, as aristocrat, as a scion of the ancient family of Valdome, as a specimen of tailoring and valeting, Miss Burroughs's young man was distinguished. But in his own proper person he was rather insignificant. The others at the table were Americans. Following Miss Burroughs's cue, they sought an opportunity to speak friendlily to Norman--and he gave it them. His acknowledgment of those effusive salutations was polite but restrained.

"They are friends of yours?" said Dorothy.

"They were," said he. "And they may be again--when they are friends of _ours_."

"I'm not very good at making friends," she warned him. "I don't like many people." This time her unconscious and profound egotism pleased him. Evidently it did not occur to her that she should be eager to be friends with those people on any terms, that the only question was whether they would receive her.

She asked: "Why was Miss--Miss Burroughs so friendly?"

"Why shouldn't she be?"

"But I thought you threw her over."

He winced at this crude way of putting it. "On the contrary, she threw me over."

Dorothy laughed incredulously. "I know better. Mr. Tetlow told me."

"She threw me over," repeated he coldly. "Tetlow was repeating malicious and ignorant gossip."

Dorothy laughed again--it was her second glass of champagne. "You say that because it's the honorable thing to say. But I know."

"I say it because it's true," said he.

He spoke quietly, but if she had drunk many more than two glasses of an unaccustomed and heady liquor she would have felt his intonation. She paled and shrank and her slim white fingers fluttered nervously at the collar of her dress. "I was only joking," she murmured.

He laughed good-naturedly. "Don't look as if I had given you a whipping," said he. "Surely you're not afraid of me."

She glanced shyly at him, a smile dancing in her eyes and upon her lips. "Yes," she said. And after a pause she added: "I didn't used to be. But that was because I didn't know you--or much of anything." The smile irradiated her whole face. "You used to be afraid of me. But you aren't, any more."

"No," said he, looking straight at her. "No, I'm not."

"I always told you you were mistaken in what you thought of me. I really don't amount to much. A man as serious and as important as you are couldn't--couldn't care about me."

"It's true you don't amount to much, as yet," said he. "And if you never do amount to much, you'd be no less than most women and most men. But I've an idea--at times--that you _could_ amount to something."

He saw that he had wounded her vanity, that her protestations of humility were precisely what he had suspected. He laughed at her: "I see you thought I'd contradict you. But I can't afford to be so amiable now. And the first thing you've got to get rid of is the part of your vanity that prevents you from growing. Vanity of belief in one's possibilities is fine. No one gets anywhere without it. But vanity of belief in one's present perfection--no one but a god could afford that luxury."

Observing her closely he was amused--and pleased--to note that she was struggling to compose herself to endure his candors as a necessary part of the duties and obligations she had taken on herself when she gave up and returned to him.

"What _you_ thought of _me_ used to be the important thing in our relations," he went on, in his way of raillery that took all or nearly all the sting out of what he said, but none of its strength. "Now, the important thing is what I think of you. You are much younger than I, especially in experience. You are going to school to life with me as teacher. You'll dislike the teacher for the severity of the school. That isn't just, but it's natural--perhaps inevitable. And please--my dear--when you are bitterest over what _you_ have to put up with from _me_--don't forget what _I_ have to put up with from _you_."

She was fighting bravely against angry tears. As for him, he had suddenly become indifferent to what the people around them might be thinking. With all his old arrogance come back in full flood, he was feeling that he would live his own life in his own way and that those who didn't approve--yes, including Dorothy--might do as they saw fit. She said:

"I don't blame you for regretting that you didn't marry Miss Burroughs."

"But I don't regret it," replied he. "On the contrary, I'm glad."

She glanced hopefully at him. But the hopeful expression faded as he went on:

"Whether or not I made a mistake in marrying you, I certainly had an escape from disaster when she decided she preferred a foreigner and a title. There's a good sensible reason why so many girls of her class--more and more all the time--marry abroad. They are not fit to be the wives of hard-working American husbands. In fact I've about reached the conclusion that of the girls growing up nowdays very few in any class are fit to be American wives. They're not big enough. They're too coarse and crude in their tastes. They're only fit for the shallow, showy sort of thing--and the European aristocracy is their hope--and their place."

Her small face had a fascinating expression of a child trying to understand things far beyond its depth. He was interested in his own thoughts, however, and went on--for, if he had been in the habit of stopping when his hearers failed to understand, or when they misunderstood, either he would have been silent most of the time in company or his conversation would have been as petty and narrow and devoid of originality or imagination as is the mentality of most human beings--as is the talk and reading that impress them as interesting--and profound!

"The American man of the more ambitious sort," he went on, "either has to live practically if not physically apart from his wife or else has to educate some not too difficult woman to be his wife."

She understood that. "You are really going to educate me?" she said, with an arch smile. Now that Norman had her attention, now that she was centering upon him instead of upon herself, she was interested in him, and in what he said, whether she understood it or not, whether it pleased her vanity or wounded it. The intellects of women work to an unsuspected extent only through the sex charm. Their appreciations of books, of art, of men are dependant, often in the most curious indirect ways, upon the fact that the author, the artist, the politician or what not is betrousered. Thus, Dorothy was patient, respectful, attentive, was not offended by Norman's didactic way of giving her the lessons in life. Her smile was happy as well as coquettish, as she asked him to educate her.

He returned her smile. "That depends," answered he.

"You're not sure I'm worth the trouble?"

"You may put it that way, if you like. But I'd say, rather, I'm not sure I can spare the time--and you're not sure you care to fit yourself for the place."

"Oh, but I do!" cried she.

"We'll see--in a few weeks or months," replied he.

The Burroughs party were rising. Josephine had choice of two ways to the door. She chose the one that took her past Norman and his bride. She advanced, beaming. Norman rose, took her extended hand. Said she:

"So glad to see you." Then, turning the radiant smile upon Dorothy, "And is this your wife? Is this the pretty little typewriter girl?"

Dorothy nodded--a charming, ingenuous bend of the head. Norman felt a thrill of pride in her, so beautifully unconscious of the treacherous attempt at insult. It particularly delighted him that she had not made the mistake of rising to return Josephine's greeting but had remained seated. Surely this wife of his had the right instincts that never fail to cause right manners. For Josephine's benefit, he gazed down at Dorothy with the proudest, fondest eyes. "Yes--this is she," said he. "Can you blame me?"

Josephine paled and winced visibly, as if the blow she had aimed at him had, after glancing off harmlessly, returned to crush her. She touched Dorothy's proffered hand, murmured a few stammering phrases of vague compliment, rejoined her friends. Said Dorothy, when she and Norman were settled again:

"I shall never like her. Nor she me."

"But you do like this cheese? Waiter, another bottle of that same."

"Why did she put you in such a good humor?" inquired his wife.

"It wasn't she. It was you!" replied he. But he refused to explain. _

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