The Grain of Dust Part 51

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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 friends.h.i.+p--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 friends.h.i.+p and even love--I ought to say, especially love----"

The color flamed in her face.