Amazing Grace Part 25

Now, if he had looked hurt--cruelly wounded or deeply shocked--I'd have been penitent enough to behave decently to him. But he didn't. He was simply angry. He looked like the giant when he was searching around for Jack and saying: "Fee! Faw! Fum! I smell the blood of an Englishman!"

"But what have I done?" I demanded indignantly. "Mayn't a man come to see me, and--"

"Certainly he may!"

"And mayn't I--"

"And you may go to see him, too--if you like!"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean--I mean," he answered, stammering a little with wrath, "of course _you_ may do such things--Grace Christie may--but my future wife may not."

For a moment I had a blinded angry paralysis descend upon me. I had a great desire to do something to relieve the situation, but I didn't know what to do--rather as you feel sometimes at the breakfast table when your morning grapefruit hits you squarely in the eye.

"Suppose you try to calm yourself a little and tell me just what the trouble is," I said, struggling after calmness for my own individual use.

He took off his hat and mopped his brow.

"Your mother suspected last night that something had gone wrong with you at that dance," he began explaining, the flash of the street light at the corner showing that he had gone quite pale.

"Well?"

"She said that you came in looking wild-eyed and desperate."

"I am not willing to admit that," I said with dignity.

"And, then she knew you didn't sleep!" he kept on. "All day she has been feeling that something was amiss with you."

"I see! And when I didn't show up to-night at dinner--"

"She called the office--naturally."

"Naturally!" I encouraged.

"And the fool who answered the telephone consoled her by telling her that you had--gone--out--to--_Loomis_!"

He paused dramatically, but I failed to applaud.

"Well, what next?" I inquired casually.

He drew back.

"Then you don't deny it?"

I gave a little laugh.

"Why should I attempt to deny it?" I asked. "Haven't you just caught me in the act of coming back in Mr. Tait's car?"

"I have!" he answered in gloating triumph, "that is, I have caught you leaving his car--while he made love to you at the curb! This, however, doesn't necessarily confirm the Loomis rumor!"

He waited for me to explain further, but I simply bowed my head in acquiescence.

"Yes," I said serenely. "He was making love to me."

"And you acknowledge this, too?"

I made a gesture of impatience.

"I acknowledge everything, Guilford!--That you and I have been the victims of heredity, first of all, and--"

He drew back stiffly.

"Victims? I beg pardon?"

"I mean in this engagement of ours--that we had nothing to do with!"

"But I a.s.sure you that I have never looked upon myself in the light of a victim!" he said proudly. "And--although I know that it will not interest you especially--I wish to add that I have never given a serious thought to any other woman in my life."

"Yet you have never been in love with me!" I challenged.

He hesitated.

"I have always felt very close to you," he endeavored to explain. "We have so many things in common--there is, of course, a peculiar congeniality--"

"Congeniality?"

It struck me that the only point of congeniality between us was that we were both Caucasians, but I didn't say it.

"Our parents were friends long before we were born! This, of itself, certainly must bring in its wake a degree of mutual affection," he explained, and as the words "mutual affection" came unfeelingly from his lips I suddenly felt a thousand years further advanced in wisdom than he.

"But real love may be--is, I'm sure--a vastly different thing from the regard we've had for each other," I ventured, trying not to make a display of my superiority in learning, but he interrupted me contemptuously.

"'Real love!' What could you possibly know about that?" he asked chillingly. "You, who are ready to flirt with any stray foreigner who chances to stop over in this city for a week! But for me--why, I have never glanced at another woman! I have always understood my good fortune in being affianced to the one woman in the whole country round who was best fitted to bear the honored name which has descended to me."

When he said this I began to feel sorry for him. I was not sorry for his disappointment, you understand, but for his view-point. "I was never fitted for it, Guilford!" I said humbly. "It's true I come of the same sort of stock that produced you--but I am awkwardly grafted on my family tree! At heart I am a barbarian."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean--the things you love most I simply forget about."

"I think you do!" he coincided heartily. "You have certainly forgotten all about ordinary propriety to-night."

At this I waxed furious again.

"How I hate that word propriety!" I said. "And there's another one--a companion word which I never mean to use until I'm past sixty! It's _Platonic_!--Those two words remind me of tarpaulins in a smuggler's boat because you can hide so much underneath them!"

"I'm not speaking of hiding things," he fired back, as angry as I was.