Mistress Anne Part 30

When he finished he leaned back and talked shop. "If you don't like it,"

he told Eve, "I'll stop. Some women hate it."

"I love it," Eve said. "d.i.c.ky, when I dream of your future you are always at the top of things, with smaller men running after you and taking your orders."

He smiled. "Don't dream. It doesn't pay. I've stopped."

She glanced at him. His face was stern.

"What's up, d.i.c.ky Boy?"

He laughed without mirth. "Oh, I'm beginning to think we are puppets pulled by strings; that things happen as Fate wills and not as we want them."

"Men haven't any right to talk that way. It's their world. If you were a woman you might complain. Look at me! Everything that I have comes from Aunt Maude. She could leave me without a cent if she chose, and she knows it. She owns me, and unless I marry she'll own me until I die."

"You'll marry, Eve. Old Pip will see to that."

"Pip," pa.s.sionately. "d.i.c.ky, why do you always fling Pip in my face?"

"Eve----!"

"You do. Everybody does. And I don't want him."

"Then don't have him. There are others. And you needn't lose your temper over a little thing like that."

"It isn't a little thing."

"Oh, well----" The conversation lapsed into silence until Eve said, "I was horrid--and I think we had better be getting back, d.i.c.ky."

Again in the big limousine, with the stolid chauffeur separated from them by the gla.s.s screen, she said, softly, "Oh, d.i.c.ky, it seems too good to be true that we shall have other nights like this--other rides. When will you come up for good?"

"I am not coming, Eve."

She turned to him, her face frozen into whiteness.

"Not coming? Why not?"

"While mother lives I must make her happy."

"Oh, don't be goody-goody."

He blazed. "I'm not."

"You are. Aren't you ever going to live your own life?"

"I am living it. But I can't break mother's heart."

"You might as well break hers as--mine."

He stared down at her. Mingled forever after with his thoughts of that moment was a blurred vision of her whiteness and stillness. Her slim hands were crossed tensely on her knees.

He laid one of his own awkwardly over them. "Dear girl," he said, "you don't in the least mean it."

"I do. d.i.c.ky, why shouldn't I say it? Why shouldn't I? Hasn't a woman the right? Hasn't she?"

She was shaking with silent sobs, the tears running down her cheeks. He had not seen her cry like this since little girlhood, when her mother had died, and he, a clumsy lad, had tried to comfort her.

He was faced by a situation so stupendous that for a moment he sat there stunned. Proud little Eve for love of him had made the supreme sacrifice of her pride. Could any man in his maddest moment have imagined a thing like this----!

He bent down to her, and took her hands in his.

"Hush, Eve, hush. I can't bear to see you cry. I'm not the fellow to make you happy, dear."

Her head dropped against his shoulder. The perfumed gold of her hair was against his cheeks. "No one else can make me happy, d.i.c.ky."

Then he felt the world whirl about him, and it seemed to him as he answered that his voice came from a long distance.

"If you'll marry me, Eve, I'll stay."

It was the knightly thing to do, and the necessary thing. Yet as they swept on through the night, his mother's face, all the joy struck from it, seemed to stare at him out of the darkness.

CHAPTER XIII

_In Which Geoffrey Plays Cave Man._

MINE OWN UNCLE:

I don't know whether to begin at the beginning or at the end of what I have to tell you. And even now as I think back over the events of the last twenty-four hours I feel that I must have dreamed them, and that I will wake and find that nothing has really happened.

But something has happened, and "of a strangeness" which makes it seem to belong to some of those queer old dime "thrillers" which you never wanted me to read.

Last night Geoffrey Fox asked me to go out with him on the river. I don't often go at night, yet as there was a moon, it seemed as if I might.

We went in Brinsley Tyson's motor boat. It is big and roomy and is equipped with everything to make one comfortable for extended trips. I wondered a little that Geoffrey should take it, for he has a little boat of his own, but he said that Mr. Tyson had offered it, and they had been out in it all day.

Well, it was lovely on the water; I was feeling tired and as blue as blue--some day I may tell you about _that_, Uncle Rod, and I was glad of the quiet and beauty of it all; and of late Geoffrey and I have been such good friends.

Can't you ever really know people, Uncle Rod, or am I so dull and stupid that I misunderstand? Men are such a puzzle--all except you, you darling dear--and if you were young and not my uncle, even you might be as much of a puzzle as the rest.

Well, I would never have believed it of Geoffrey Fox, and even now I can't really feel that he was responsible. But it isn't what I think but what you will think that is important--for I have, somehow, ceased to believe in myself.

It was when we reached the second bridge that I told Geoffrey that we must turn back. We had, even then, gone farther than I had intended. But as we started up-stream, I felt that we would get to Bower's before Peter went back on the bridge, which is always the signal for the house to close, although it is never really closed; but the lights are turned down and the family go to bed, and I have always known that I ought not to stay out after that.

Well, just as we left the second bridge, something happened to the motor.