CHAPTER XIV
THE AFTERMATH
THE one tantalizing thing that had kept Ellen awake destroyed completely her peace of mind and killed for the moment even the desire for her lover was the fear of future quarrels.
She got the first vivid pictures of what freedom might mean for a man. Manning had struggled fairly well against the flood of sex allurement into which designing women had sought to overwhelm him to-night. He would probably struggle again. His sense of humor was keen. His sense of loyalty was even keener.
But could any man withstand the continuous challenge with which girls who wished to win could pound him?
The trouble was women were yet in the zoölogical period of development. They couldn’t and they wouldn’t keep their eyes off her man. Being free he was fair game.
It was equally true that men would not keep their eyes off her. She had resented Manning’s accusation of an attempt to flirt with Brown, yet in her heart she knew that Brown had been drawn to her by a resistless desire to test the depth and sincerity of her love for Manning. Beneath the friendly and always polite solicitude of the host she felt the nose of the hunter. It irritated yet flattered her vanity. It irritated her to think that men should hold her so shallow and changeable. It flattered her to feel that in spite of her union with Manning, a man of Brown’s position, power and strength of character found it worth while to follow her. It went without saying that Field would never give up the chase so long as she held him at bay.
With a little pang she recalled at daylight her refusals to admit Manning to her room. She wondered vaguely what he would say and just how he would take it.
She fell asleep at last from sheer exhaustion and slept until noon. She sprang from bed, glanced at the clock and listened for a sound from Manning. Not a movement could be heard. A flood of bitter regret at her rebuff overwhelmed her. She would make up for it. Married people quarrelled and made up. They were married in the truest and deepest sense. They were bound by love alone. What a fool she had been to allow anger and jealousy to make them both miserable.
She tiptoed to his door, softly slipped the bolt and turned the knob. The door was fast! He had thrown the bolt on his side.
She laughed at first and tapped gently.
“Served me right!” she muttered.
She knocked again and listened. Still not a sound. She knocked more distinctly.
“I’m sorry, love-man!” she called plaintively.
For ten minutes she stood and listened. He had, of course, risen early and gone to his breakfast.
A sickening fear began to grow in her heart. She had treated him outrageously. She had no right to expect him to forget it instantly. Yet why shouldn’t she bolt her door against a husband if she liked? Old-fashioned marriage forbade such rights to a wife. But she was not an old-fashioned wife and never intended to be one. He was trying to bully her. Well, she would show him that two people could play that game!
She dressed hastily and hurried down to breakfast. The dining-room was crowded with guests equally late. Manning was nowhere to be seen.
She ate her breakfast in silence. She longed to see Lucy Sheldon. She wondered vaguely if her transfer to Holt’s Chicago paper had anything to do with her relations to Manning. The idea was impossible. Lucy Sheldon was too frank to have run away to avoid such an issue. And yet if Manning had told his aunt the truth, that he had yielded to her imperious demand for a marriage of her own making, she might have accepted the Chicago opening with its larger salary to avoid the pain of a discussion.
The thought angered and worried her this morning beyond measure. It had never occurred to her before. The more she thought of it, the more certain became the conviction that her friend knew and left New York to avoid her. She would find Manning at once and ask him.
A sense of bitter loneliness choked her. She couldn’t finish her breakfast. She stopped abruptly, left the table, and began her search over the spacious and beautiful grounds. She walked through the garden in vain. Here and there a young couple sat spooning, but nowhere the familiar tall figure.
These young fools spooning at the noon hour angered her still more. She left the garden in disgust, strolled along the water’s edge and scanned the boats. A half dozen couples were rowing close in shore.
He was not among them. She sat down in the little boat-house on the pier utterly depressed. He was avoiding her, of course. He was as sensitive as he was stubborn. She made up her mind finally that he could go to the devil. He could look for her from now on.
She had just reached this state of perfect unhappiness when Brown suddenly stood before her, tipped his hat and said:
“Mr. Manning received a telephone call from the office this morning that took him to town on the eight o’clock train----”
He paused and watched the blood slowly mount to her cheeks.
“I’m afraid you quarrelled,” he added gravely.
“You’re a keen observer.”
“Well, I couldn’t help wondering how any man could leave you at such an unearthly hour.”
“I suppose he had to go.”
“He did not.”
“You saw him this morning?”
“No, the butler told me.”
A silence followed.
“You did quarrel?” he persisted.
“Yes.”
“About me?”
Ellen laughed.
“Vanity of vanities--all is vanity, saith the preacher!”
“No?”
“No.”
“About what, then?”
“About these pretty girls who did their best to steal my man away from me last night. Did you bring them here for that purpose?”
It was Brown’s turn to laugh and he did it heartily.
“That would have been a neat revenge on you, wouldn’t it?”
“Very.”
“I assure you the thought never entered the back of my head.”
“I never saw so many pretty girls in one spot in my life.”
“Really?”
“And I never saw them so unanimously bent on one thing before.”
She stopped and deliberately brushed a tear from her cheek.
“You’re an interesting study,” he observed drily.
“I’m anything but interesting to myself just now. Do you wish to be very nice to me in my misery?”
“Always.”
“Will you send me home in one of your cars?”
“Certainly. May I go with you?”
“I prefer to be alone.”
“All right,” he agreed lightly.
[Illustration: “YOU’RE AN INTERESTING STUDY.”]
The day was one of rare beauty in late September--a perfect sky of deepest azure flecked with white clouds. The sun shone in dazzling splendor, lighting the purple-tipped leaves of the trees with tints of unusual depth. The beauty of the drive only made the ache in her heart the more hopeless.
“It was cruel and cowardly,” she muttered; “cruel and cowardly!”
She knew that she was to blame and that made it the harder to bear. She would tell him what she thought of him now in words he would not forget--and then make up and love him to death!
It was three o’clock before she reached home. She called his apartment. He was not there. She called his club. He was not there. She didn’t believe he was at the office at this hour, but she called it.
“Yes, Mr. Manning is here, but he cannot be disturbed.”
“Connect me!”
“Excuse me, please----”
The connection was broken! She rang up the managing editor. He was not in. She tried three times to get Manning and quit in rage.
She made up her mind once for all that she would die sooner than call him again. If there were any more telephone calls he could ring her up!
She waited three days in vain. It was incredible that he could be so sullen and vindictive. She reviewed the miserable dinner party in minute detail. She hated the memory of it--the eager ravenous eyes of those matchmaking mothers fastened on her lover! She resented the fact without the ability to realize their point of view.
“Of course, the poor fools couldn’t know he was mine!” she exclaimed finally.
And then her keen ears caught the expression “mine” and she turned her wrath on herself for the lapse into the old jargon of the slave-marriage régime.
“He’s not _mine_ and I’m not _his_ after all,” she admitted. “He can do as he pleases and I can do as I please. He pleases to sulk. Let him sulk. He’s free--so am I. And I thank God I am. I wouldn’t be chained to such a brute; at least, I’ve escaped that tragedy!”
She confronted herself with the philosophic reflection that their free alliance was being tried under conditions most unfavorable. To announce it to the world would be the open avowal of a crime under the present slave laws of marriage. In the new moral world of freedom and individualism such announcements would be made, of course. And this would take the place of the present system of registration.
This announcement would make such a scene as the one witnessed at the dinner party impossible. But would it? The more she thought of the ravenous hunger of those matchmaking mothers the graver became the doubt. The first sense of misgiving as to the perfection of her new ideal crept into her consciousness and made her ill. Would the matchmakers stop because of a mere “announcement” which has no legal meaning? The announcement of a free alliance meant that each party to the agreement would remain at all times free to quit--the moment the arrangement ceased to be mutually satisfactory. A pretty girl and designing mother might make the most ideal arrangement unsatisfactory with a little time to manage it. They would, too, unless those mothers and pretty girls could be killed off or made over again.
The more she thought of it the deeper became the conviction that one of these vampires would get Manning.
She wondered what he was doing to-night. It was the fourth day since their return from Long Island and not a word had been received from him. She had sworn never to call him again. She had been too ill to work to-day and had gone to bed at noon.
If she could only get him on the telephone and say that she was ill he would come, of course. She shrank from the baby act. But the temptation was too strong once the idea took possession of her.
She would ring his apartment. He must be there at this hour unless he had gone out for a late dinner. His work at the office was finished at eleven-thirty. It was now twelve. A call at this late hour would be an abject confession on her part. What of it? Her misery was abject. Her repentance should be equally so.
She seized the telephone eagerly.
She heard him take the receiver from the hook at last! Her heart beat with pain.
“Well, what is it?” he asked in quick business-like tones. He evidently thought the office had called. He hadn’t answered her after all.
Her hand trembled so violently as she tried to hang up she fumbled and missed it.
“Well, well, what is it?” he repeated wearily.
There was a note of suffering in his tones that caught her. She couldn’t endure it.
“Haven’t you punished me enough now, dear love-man?” she said softly:
“Oh--it’s you!”
“Please come quickly. I’ve been ill all day. I can’t sleep. Will you come?”
He hesitated and she could feel the iron grip of his hand on the telephone as he answered:
“Yes; right away.”
She met him at the door and sprang into his arms with a cry of anguish.
“Oh, how could you be so cruel!”
He smoothed the mass of waving hair with tender touch.
“Have you missed me?”
She pressed him close.
“You have a heart of stone,” she groaned.
“But you shut me out of your life at a moment when I was tired and ill with worry. This is a free alliance by your stern decree. You had the right to put me out, but it hurt.”
She was too honest to whine and say she hadn’t meant to hurt him. Only she hadn’t quite figured the possibilities of her act. She wouldn’t lie out of it.
“Forgive me; I’m sorry,” she murmured.
She was too honest to swear it wouldn’t happen again. He felt the strength of her remarkable character as never before. He admired her for it in a way and yet it chilled the ardor of their reconciliation. It left a bitter taste in their kisses.
“You won’t be sullen again, will you, dear?”
“I’ll try not to.”
“We’ll begin all over again now!” she cried. “I’ll love you harder than ever!”
She paused, drew his head down and whispered: “And I’ll never have another fit of idiotic jealousy.”
“Never?”
“Never--I’m cured.”
She kissed him again with clinging tenderness.