The Auction Block Part 53

"She's not here."

"Then I'd like to talk with you." The door opened slightly, and Pope smiled, whereupon the opening narrowed. "No. You can't come in. I've just cleaned house."

In desperation the man exclaimed: "I won't sit down, but I must talk to you. Really, I must, about--ducks, if nothing else."

"Ducks!" Adoree's expression altered.

"Let's be sensible. I want you to like me." Pope tried to appear amiable, but the effort resulted in a painful smirk.

"Huh!"

"We like the same things--let's be friends. You needn't tell me anything about Lorelei, but I do want your advice about Bob."

"I suppose there's no reason why you shouldn't come in. You'll probably wriggle in somehow, even if you have to steal a key. If you don't know the truth you'll probably make up something about Lorelei, as you did about me--Buzzard!" Pope began to perspire, as he always did when deeply embarra.s.sed. But the door swung wide, and he entered with a strained, unnatural smile upon his face.

"You see I'm not concealing her anywhere," Miss Demorest challenged.

"Of course not. We never suspected you, but we're afraid something has happened to her."

"Something has."

"What?"

Adoree tossed her head. "You're paid to find out."

"See here, I'm not always a newspaper man. Try and forget that side of me for once. Bob will drink himself to death, or do something equally foolish, if Lorelei doesn't come back. He's repentant. He's in a terrible condition. I really believe she can straighten him out if she'll have patience, and you know he's too good a man to lose. He thinks she left him because he got drunk, but I'm sure there must have been some other reason."

"I should say there was! You want scandal? I'll give you some."

Adoree's eyes were flas.h.i.+ng now. "If he's going to drown himself he ought to realize what he did and think it over when he comes up for the third time. Have you any idea what that girl went through out there on Long Island? Listen." She plumped herself down beside Pope and began to talk swiftly with an intensity of indignation that made her forgetful of her dishabille. She was animated; she had an expressive, impulsive manner of using her hands when interested, and now she gesticulated violently. She also squirmed, bounced, hitched, flounced; she seized Pope's arm, she emphasized her points from time to time by a shake or by a dig of her white fingers. When she had finished her story her shocked blue eyes interrogated his, and the critic roused himself with an effort. He found that he was tightly holding the fingers of her right hand, but dropped them and cleared his throat.

"You say she's staying here with you?"

"I didn't say so, but she is."

"Doesn't she care for Bob any more?"

"Y-yes! At first she was furious, but we've talked a good deal, and I think she does care--away down underneath. She may not know it herself, but she does, especially now that--"

"What?" asked Pope, as Adoree hesitated and flushed.

"Nothing! But she won't go back. She declares she won't spoil her whole life for a drunken wretch like him, and she's quite right, of course."

"She's quite wrong, of course! Bob's done pretty well for a man of his type, and he's had a hard lesson. After all, it's a woman's part to sacrifice--she's not happy unless she gives more than she gets. You and I must bring them together."

"How?"

Pope had been thinking while he talked, and now he sketched his plan eagerly.

"You are perfectly detestable and horrid," she told him when he had finished, "but I suppose there must be some good in you. Don't think you argued me into this, however, for you didn't. There's an altogether different reason why I want those two to make up." She laid her hand upon his arm again, and when Pope caught her meaning his sallow cheeks were glowing and his eyes as bright as hers.

"Gee! You're all right!" said he. "I'll call for you after the show."

Adoree's smile was uncertain as she demurred. "Perhaps you'd better meet me here. What will people say?" But Pope was insistent.

We are accustomed to resent the efforts of our friends to arrange our affairs for us, and we pray for deliverance from their mistakes, yet without their a.s.sistance we would often make miserable failures of our lives. So it was in the case of Bob and Lorelei.

Burning with shame and resentment, she had been strong in her determination to end their marriage, and this frame of mind had continued for some time; but as her anger cooled she dimly understood that a change had come over her and that she no longer looked upon the world with the eyes of a girl. Simultaneously there came another discovery which completely upset all her calculations and to which she had not fully adjusted herself even up to the time of the critic's visit to Adoree. One great mystery she had solved; another, the deepest mystery of a woman's life, had begun to unfold, and as yet she could scarcely give it credence.

She was surprised when Adoree brought Campbell Pope home with her that night, and she was somewhat diverted by the complete change in their mutual att.i.tude. Now that the first clash was over, now that they had expressed their dislike and disapproval of each other, they no longer quarreled. Pope was frankly admiring, and Adoree could not conceal her awe at Campbell's literary and musical ability. She explained to Lorelei: "I asked him in for the sake of the piano. I knew you were blue, and there's nothing so cheering as music."

But when Pope finally got around to play the result was not altogether happy. Adoree, to be sure, seemed delighted, but Lorelei felt herself gripped by a greater loneliness than usual.

Pope's music was far from lively, and he had cunningly chosen the hour when it exerts its greatest emotional appeal. He was artist enough, moreover, to work his effects with certainty.

Lorelei sought relief at length in the seclusion of Adoree's rear room, and there in the midst of a "crying spell" Bob found her.

Her first quick resentment at the deception practised upon her melted at sight of him, for he had suffered, and he was evidently suffering now. He was not the Bob she had known, but chastened, repentant, speechless with a tremulous delight at seeing her again. In the next room Campbell played on, smoothing the way for a reconciliation.

Lorelei found herself in her husband's arms, listening dazedly to his pa.s.sionate protestations and his earnest self-denunciation.

Bob had received the fright of his life, his lesson had been seared into him, and he lost no time in telling his wife about it.

At last Lorelei laid her fingers upon his lips, her eyes misty and luminous with the light of a new and wondrous certainty.

"Wait! Let me speak," she said. "I've done a lifetime of thinking in these few days. I'm not sorry that I left you, for it has enabled me to see clearly. But I'll never leave you again, Bob, no matter what you do; I can't--"

He crushed her to him, then held her away at the hint of something unsaid. "You mean you've begun to love me?" he inquired, gladly.

"Perhaps. I don't know. SOMETHING has changed--tremendously."

Under his bewildered gaze the blood rose, warming her cheeks; her eyes swam, but not with tears; her bosom was tremulous with the knowledge that clamored for freedom, and yet refused to come.

"Don't you understand, stupid?" she said, seeing him still mystified. She hid her face, then whispered in his ear, whereupon he fell to trembling, and the fervor of his embrace relaxed. He held her gently, tenderly, as if he suddenly found her to be a fragile thing.

"My dear!--my--DEAR!" And then he too hid his face as if blinded by a pitiless light. When he raised it tears glistened on his lashes and a happiness that was like pain pierced him. "Oh! If I had only known--" he choked. "Kid, what a fool I've been, never to think that this might come! I--can't believe it."

"It's true," she smiled, and her cheeks were still dyed with that virginal flush. "Perhaps that's why I've changed toward you-- something HAS happened, Bob, and you mustn't leave me now. I couldn't bear to do without you."

"YOU may forgive me," he cried, "but I'll never forgive myself. To think that I should learn of this right now--after what I did.

Well, I'm through making new promises; I'm going to keep some of the old ones."

"I think it's about time we both came to earth."

"No need for you--you're the sensible one. If I can't straighten up on my own account and on yours, surely I can and will for-- this."

An hour later Adoree tiptoed back to the piano after a surrept.i.tious peek into the back room, whence nothing but the faintest murmurs issued. Her face was radiant.

"You've played some high-priced divorce lawyer out of a good case, Mr. Cricket," she beamed on Campbell. "She's in his lap." Pope's rippling fingers paused, his hands dropped, and he sighed.

"I could have set them quarreling just as well, but the role of cupid suits me to-night." His shoulders drooped wearily; the feverish brightness of his eyes and the pallor of his thin face indicated that he had indeed spent all his nervous force.