The Triflers Part 13

"I heard you when you came in and whispered to the nurse woman. It was mighty white of you to come."

"What else could I do?" She seated herself in a chair by his bed.

"Because we are engaged?" he asked.

She smiled a little as he said that.

"Then you have not forgotten?"

"Forgotten!" he exclaimed. "I'm just beginning to realize it."

"I was afraid it might come back to you as a shock, Monte," she said.

"But it is very convenient--at just this time."

"I don't know what I should have done without it," he nodded. "It certainly gives a man a comfortable feeling to know--well, just to know there is some one around."

"I'm glad if I've been able to do anything."

"It's a whole lot just having you here," he a.s.sured her.

It changed the whole character of this room, for one thing. It ceased to be merely a hotel room--merely number fifty-four attached with a big bra.s.s star to a key. It was more like a room in the Hotel des Roses, which was the nearest to home of any place Monte had found in a decade.

It was as if when she came in she completely refurnished it with little things with which he was familiar. Edhart always used to place flowers in his apartment; and it was like that.

"The only bother with the arrangement," he said, looking serious, "is that it takes your time. Ought n't you to be at Julien's this morning?"

She had forgotten about Julien's. Yet for the last two years it had been the very center other own individual life. Now the crowded studio, the smell of turpentine, the odd cosmopolitan gathering of fellow students, the little pangs following the bitter criticisms of the master, receded into the background until they became as a dream of long ago.

"I don't think I shall ever go to Julien's again," she answered.

"But look here--that won't do," he objected. "If I'm to interfere with all your plans--"

"It isn't that, Monte," she a.s.sured him. "Ever since I came back this last time, I knew I did n't belong there. When Aunt Kitty was alive it was all the opportunity I had; but now--" She paused.

"Well?"

"I have my hands full with you until you get out again," she answered lightly.

"That's what I object to," he said; "If being engaged is going to pin you down, then I don't think you ought to be engaged. You've had enough of that in your life."

The curious feature of her present position was that she had no sense of being pinned down. She had thought of this in the night. She had never felt freer in her life. Within a few hours of her engagement she had been able to do exactly what she wished to do without a single qualm of conscience. She had been able to come here and look after him in this emergency. She would have done this anyway, but she knew how Marcellin and his a.s.sistant and even Nurse Duval would have made her pay for her act--an act based upon nothing but decent loyalty and honest responsibility. Raised eyebrows--gossip in the air--covert smiles--the whole detestable atmosphere of intrigue with which they would have surrounded her, had vanished as by a spell before the magic word fiancee. She was breathing air like that upon the mountain-tops.

It was sweet and clean and bracing.

"Monte," she said, "I'm doing at this moment just exactly what I want to do; and you can't understand what a treat that is, because you've always done just exactly as you wanted. I 'm sure I 'm entirely selfish about this, because--because I'm not making any sacrifice. You can't understand that, either, Monte,--so please don't try. I think we'd better not talk any more about it. Can't we just let it go on as it is a little while?"

"It suits me," smiled Monte. "So maybe I'm selfish, too."

"Maybe," she nodded. "Now I'll see about your breakfast. The doctor told me just what you must have."

So she went out--moving away like a vision in dainty white across the room and out the door. A few minutes later she was back again with a vase of red roses, which she arranged upon the table where he could see them.

CHAPTER VIII

DRAWBACKS OF RECOVERY

Monte's recovery was rapid--in many ways more rapid than he desired.

In a few days Nurse Duval disappeared, and in a few days more Monte was able to dress himself with the help of the hotel valet, and sit by the window while Marjory read to him. Half the time he gave no heed to what she was reading, but that did not detract from his pleasure in the slightest. He liked the sound of her voice, and liked the idea of sitting opposite her.

Her eyes were always interesting when she read. For then she forgot about them and let them have their own way--now to light with a smile, now to darken with disapproval, and sometimes to grow very tender, as the story she happened to be reading dictated.

This was luxury such as Monte had never known, and for more than ten years now he had ordered of the world its choicest in the way of luxury.

At his New York club the experience of many, many years in catering to man comfort was placed at his disposal. As far as possible, every desire was antic.i.p.ated, so that little more effort was required of him than merely to furnish the desires. In a house where no limit whatever had been set upon the expense, a hundred lackeys stood ready to jump if a man as much as raised an eyebrow. And they understood, those fellows, what a man needs--from the chef who searched the markets of the world to satisfy tender tastes, to the doorman who acquainted himself with the names of the members and their personal idiosyncrasies.

That same service was furnished him, if to a more limited extent, on the transatlantic liners, where Monte's name upon the pa.s.senger list was immediately pa.s.sed down the line with the word that he must have the best. At Davos his needs were antic.i.p.ated a week in advance; at Nice there had been Edhart, who added his smiling self to everything else.

But no one at his club, on the boat, or at Davos--not even Edhart--had given him this: this being the somewhat vague word he used to describe what he was now enjoying as Marjory sat by the window reading to him.

It had nothing to do with being read aloud to. He could at any time have summoned a valet to do that, and in five minutes would have felt like throwing the book--any book--at the valet's head. It had nothing to do with the mere fact that she was a woman. Nurse Duval could not have taken her place. Kind as she had been, he was heartily bored with her before she left.

It would seem, then, that in some mysterious way he derived his pleasure from Marjory herself. But, if so, then she had gone farther than all those who made it their life-work to see that man was comfortable; for they satisfied only existing wants, while she created a new one. Whenever she left the room he was conscious of this want.

Yet, when Monte faced the issue squarely and asked himself if this were not a symptom of being in love, he answered it as fairly as he could out of an experience that covered Chic Warren's pre-nuptial brain-storms; a close observation of several dozen honeymoon couples on s.h.i.+pboard, to say nothing of many incipient cases which started there; and, finally, the case of Teddy Hamilton.

The leading feature of all those distressing examples seemed to indicate that, while theoretically the man was in an ideal state of blissful ecstasy, he was, practically, in a condition bordering on madness. At the very moment he was supposed to be happy, he was about half the time most miserable. Even at its best, it did not make for comfort. Poor Chic ran the gamut every week from h.e.l.l to heaven. It was with a sigh of relief that Monte was able to answer his own question conscientiously in the negative. It was just because he was able to retain the use of his faculties that he was able to enjoy the situation.

Monte liked to consider himself thoroughly normal in everything. As far as he had any theory of life, it was based upon the wisdom of keeping cool--of keeping normal. To get the utmost out of every day, this was necessary. It was not the man who drank too much who enjoyed his wine: it was the man who drank little. That was true of everything. If Hamilton had only kept his head--well, after all, Monte was indebted to Hamilton for not having kept his head.

Monte was not in love: that was certain. Marjory was not in love: that also was certain. This was why he was able to light his cigarette, lean back his head on the pillow she arranged, and drift into a state of dreamy content as she read to him. This happy arrangement might go on forever except that, in the course of time, his shoulder was bound to heal. And then--he knew well enough that old Dame Society was even at the end of these first ten days beginning to fidget. He knew that Marjory knew it, too. It began the day Dr. Marcellin advised him to take a walk in the Champs elysees.

He was perfectly willing to do that. It was beautiful out there. They sat down at one of the little iron tables--the little tables were so warm and sociable now--and beneath the whispering trees sipped their cafe au lait. But the fact that he was able to get out of his room seemed to make a difference in their thoughts. It was as if his status had changed. It was as if those who pa.s.sed him, with a glance at his arm in its sling, stopped to tell him so.

It was none of their business, at that. It would have been sheer presumption of them to have b.u.t.ted into any of the other affairs of his life: whether he was losing money or making money; whether he was going to England or to Spain, or going to remain where he was; whether he preferred chops for breakfast, or bread and coffee. Theoretically, then, it was sheer presumption for them to interest themselves in the question of whether he was an invalid confined to his room, or a convalescent able to get out, or a man wholly recovered.

Yet he knew that, with every pa.s.sing day that he came out into the suns.h.i.+ne, these same people were managing to make Marjory's position more and more delicate. It became increasingly less comfortable for her and for him when they returned to the hotel.

Therefore he was not greatly surprised when she remarked one morning:--

"Monte, I've been thinking over where I shall go, and I 've about decided to go to etois."

"When?" he asked.

"Very soon--before the end of the week, anyway."

"But look here!" he protested. "What am I going to do?"

"I don't know," she smiled. "But one thing is certain: you can't play sick very much longer."