Chapter 34
Erroll did not go to the office this afternoon?"
Neergard looked at her--almost--a fixed and uncomfortable smirk on his round, red face: "Not at all, Mrs. Ruthven, if you have anything better for him--"
"I have--an allopathic dose of it. Thank you, Mr. Neergard.
Rosamund, we ought to start, you know: Gerald!"--with quiet significance--"_good_-bye, Mr. Neergard. Please do not buy up the rest of Long Island, because we need a new kitchen-garden very badly."
Rosamund scarcely nodded his dismissal. And the next moment Neergard found himself quite alone, standing with the smirk still stamped on his stiffened features, his hat-brim and gloves crushed in his rigid fingers, his little black mousy eyes fixed on nothing, as usual.
A wandering head-waiter thought they were fixed on him and sidled up hopeful of favours, but Neergard suddenly snarled in his face and moved toward the door, wiping the perspiration from his nose with the most splendid handkerchief ever displayed east of Sixth Avenue and west of Third.
Mrs. Ruthven's motor moved up from its waiting station; Rosamund was quite ready to enter when Alixe said cordially: "Where can we drop you, dear? _Do_ let us take you to the exchange if you are going there--"
Now Rosamund had meant to go wherever they were going, merely because they evidently wished to be alone. The abruptness of the check both irritated and amused her.
"If I knew anybody in the Bronx I'd make you take me there," she said vindictively; "but as I don't you may drop me at the Orchils'--you uncivil creatures. Gerald, I know _you_ want me, anyway, because you've promised to adore, honour, and obey me.... If you'll come with me now I'll play double dummy with you. No? Well, of all ingrat.i.tude!...
Thank you, dear, I perceive that this is Fifth Avenue, and furthermore that this ramshackle cha.s.sis of yours has apparently broken down at the Orchils' curb.... Good-bye, Gerald; it never did run smooth, you know. I mean the course of T.L. as well as this motor. Try to be a good boy and keep moving; a rolling stone acquires a polish, and you are not in the moss-growing business, I'm sure--"
"Rosamund! For goodness' sake!" protested Alixe, her gloved hands at her ears.
"Dear!" said Rosamund cheerfully, "take your horrid little boy!"
And she smiled dazzlingly upon Gerald, then turned up her pretty nose at him, but permitted him to attend her to the door.
When he returned to Alixe, and the car was speeding Parkward, he began again, eagerly:
"Jack asked me to come up and, of course, I let you know, as I promised I would. But it's
"You accepted!" demanded Alixe, in quick displeasure.
"Why, yes--as the stakes are not to amount to anything--"
"Gerald!"
"What?" he said uneasily.
"You promised me that you would not play again in my house!"
"I--I said, for more than I could afford--"
"No, you said you would not play; that is what you promised, Gerald."
"Well, I meant for high stakes; I--well, you don't want to drive me out altogether--even from the perfectly harmless pleasure of playing for nominal stakes--"
"Yes, I do!"
"W-why?" asked the boy in hurt surprise.
"Because it is dangerous sport, Gerald--"
"What! To play for a few cents a point--"
"Yes, to play for anything. And as far as that goes there will be no such play as you imagine."
"Yes, there will--I beg your pardon--but Jack Ruthven said so--"
"Gerald, listen to me. A bo--a man like yourself has no business playing with people whose losses never interfere with their appet.i.tes next day.
A business man has no right to play such a game, anyway. I wonder what Mr. Neergard would say if he knew you--"
"Neergard! Why, he does know."
"You confessed to him?"
"Y-es; I had to. I was obliged to--to ask somebody for an advance--"
"You went to him? Why didn't you go to Captain Selwyn?--or to Mr.
Gerard?"
"I did!--not to Captain Selwyn--I was ashamed to. But I went to Austin and he fired up and lit into me--and we had a muss-up--and I've stayed away since."
"Oh, Gerald! And it simply proves me right."
"No, it doesn't; I did go to Neergard and made a clean breast of it. And he let me have what I wanted like a good fellow--"
"And made you promise not to do it again!"
"No, he didn't; he only laughed. Besides, he said that he wished he had been in the game--"
"What!" exclaimed Alixe.
"He's a first-rate fellow," insisted Gerald, reddening; "and it was very nice of you to let me bring him over to-day.... And he knows everybody downtown, too. He comes from a very old Dutch family, but he had to work pretty hard and do without college.... I'd like it awfully if you'd let me--if you wouldn't mind being civil to him--once or twice, you know--"
Mrs. Ruthven lay back in her seat, thoroughly annoyed.
"My theory," insisted the boy with generous conviction, "is that a man is what he makes himself. People talk about climbers and b.u.t.ters-in, but where would anybody be in this town if n.o.body had ever b.u.t.ted in? It's all rot, this aping the caste rules of established aristocracies; a decent fellow ought to be encouraged. Anyway, I'm going to propose, him for the Stuyvesant and the Proscenium. Why not?"
"I see. And now you propose to bring him to my house?"
"If you'll let me. I asked Jack and he seemed to think it might be all right if you cared to ask him to play--"
"I won't!" cried Alixe, revolted. "I will not turn my drawing-rooms into a clearing-house for every money-laden social derelict in town! I've had enough of that; I've endured the acc.u.mulated wreckage too long!--weird treasure-craft full of steel and oil and coal and wheat and Heaven knows what!--I won't do it, Gerald; I'm sick of it all--sick! sick!"
The sudden, flushed outburst stunned the boy. Bewildered, he stared round-eyed at the excited young matron who was growing more incensed and more careless of what she exposed every second:
"I will not make a public gambling-h.e.l.l out of my own house!" she repeated, dark eyes very bright and cheeks afire; "I will not continue to stand sponsor for a lot of queer people simply because they don't care what they lose in Mrs. Ruthven's house! You babble to me of limits, Gerald; this is the limit! Do you--or does anybody else suppose that I don't know what is being said about us?--that play is too high in our house?--that we are not too difficile in our choice of intimates as long as they can stand the pace!"
"I--I never believed that," insisted the boy, miserable to see the tears flash in her eyes and her mouth quiver.
"You may as well believe it for it's true!" she said, exasperated.