The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  Instantly I had the feeling one sometimes has, of having done just that same thing, with the same surroundings, in the same place, years before, I was looking up at him, and he was staring down at me and holding my hand. And then the music stopped and he was saying:

  "Where was it?"

  "Where was what?" I asked. The feeling was stronger than ever with his voice.

  "I beg your pardon," he said, and let my hand drop. "Just for a second I had an idea that we had met before somewhere, a long time ago. I suppose—no, it couldn't have happened, or I should remember." He was smiling, half at himself.

  "No," I smiled back at him. "It didn't happen, I'm afraid—unless we dreamed it."

  "We?"

  "I felt that way, too, for a moment."

  "The Brushwood Boy!" he said with conviction. "Perhaps we will find a common dream life, where we knew each other. You remember the Brushwood Boy loved the girl for years before they really met." But this was a little too rapid, even for me.

  "Nothing so sentimental, I'm afraid," I retorted. "I have had exactly the same sensation sometimes when I have sneezed."

  Betty Mercer captured him then and took him off to see Jim's newest picture. Anne pounced on me at once.

  "Isn't he delicious?" she demanded. "Did you ever see such shoulders? And such a nose? And he thinks we are parasites, cumberers of the earth, Heaven knows what. He says every woman ought to know how to earn her living, in case of necessity! I said I could make enough at bridge, and he thought I was joking! He's a dear!" Anne was enthusiastic.

  I looked after him. Oddly enough the feeling that we had met before stuck to me. Which was ridiculous, of course, for we learned afterward that the nearest we ever came to meeting was that our mothers had been school friends! Just then I saw Jim beckoning to me crazily from the den. He looked quite yellow, and he had been running his fingers through his hair.

  "For Heaven's sake, come in, Kit!" he said. "I need a cool head. Didn't I tell you this is my calamity day?"

  "Cook gone?" I asked with interest. I was starving.

  He closed the door and took up a tragic attitude in front of the fire. "Did you ever hear of Aunt Selina?" he demanded.

  "I knew there WAS one," I ventured, mindful of certain gossip as to whence Jimmy derived the Wilson income.

  Jim himself was too worried to be cautious. He waved a brazen hand at the snug room, at the Japanese prints on the walls, at the rugs, at the teakwood cabinets and the screen inlaid with pearl and ivory.

  "All this," he said comprehensively, "every bite I eat, clothes I wear, drinks I drink—you needn't look like that; I don't drink so darned much—everything comes from Aunt Selina—buttons," he finished with a groan.

  "Selina Buttons," I said reflectively. "I don't remember ever having known any one named Buttons, although I had a cat once—"

  "Damn the cat!" he said rudely. "Her name isn't Buttons. Her name is Caruthers, my Aunt Selina Caruthers, and the money comes from buttons."

  "Oh!" feebly.

  "It's an old business," he went on, with something of proprietary pride. "My grandfather founded it in 1775. Made buttons for the Continental Army."

  "Oh, yes," I said. "They melted the buttons to make bullets, didn't they? Or they melted bullets to make buttons? Which was it?"

  But again he interrupted.

  "It's like this," he went on hurriedly. "Aunt Selina believes in me. She likes pictures, and she wanted me to paint, if I could. I'd have given up long ago—oh, I know what you think of my work—but for Aunt Selina. She has encouraged me, and she's done more than that; she's paid the bills."

  "Dear Aunt Selina," I breathed.

  "When I got married," Jim persisted, "Aunt Selina doubled my allowance. I always expected to sell something, and begin to make money, and in the meantime what she advanced I considered as a loan." He was eyeing me defiantly, but I was growing serious. It was evident from the preamble that something was coming.

  "To understand, Kit," he went on dubiously, "you would have to know her. She won't stand for divorce. She thinks it is a crime."

  "What!" I sat up. I have always regarded divorce as essentially disagreeable, like castor oil, but necessary.

  "Oh, you know well enough what I'm driving at," he burst out savagely. "She doesn't know Bella has gone. She thinks I am living in a little domestic heaven, and—she is coming tonight to hear me flap my wings."

  "Tonight!"

  I don't think Jimmy had known that Dallas Brown had come in and was listening. I am sure I had not. Hearing his chuckle at the doorway brought us up with a jerk.

  "Where has Aunt Selina been for the last two or three years?" he asked easily.

  Jim turned, and his face brightened.

  "Europe. Look here, Dal, you're a smart chap. She'll only be here about four hours. Can't you think of some way to get me out of this? I want to let her down easy, too. I'm mighty fond of Aunt Selina. Can't we—can't I say Bella has a headache?"

  "Rotten!" laconically.

  "Gone out of town?" Jim was desperate.

  "And you with a houseful of dinner guests! Try again, Jim."

  "I have it," Jim said suddenly. "Dallas, ask Anne if she won't play hostess for tonight. Be Mrs. Wilson pro tem. Anne would love it. Aunt Selina never saw Bella. Then, afterward, next year, when I'm hung in the Academy and can stand on my feet"—("Not if you're hung," Dallas interjected.)—"I'll break the truth to her."

  But Dallas was not enthusiastic.

  "Anne wouldn't do at all," he declared. "She'd be talking about the kids before she knew it, and patting me on the head." He said it complacently; Anne flirts, but they are really devoted.

  "One of the Mercer girls?" I suggested, but Jimmy raised a horrified hand.

  "You don't know Aunt Selina," he protested. "I couldn't offer Leila in the gown she's got on, unless she wore a shawl, and Betty is too fair."

  Anne came in just then, and the whole story had to be told again to her. She was ecstatic. She said it was good enough for a play, and that of course she would be Mrs. Jimmy for that length of time.

  "You know," she finished, "if it were not for Dal, I would be Mrs. Jimmy for ANY length of time. I have been devoted to you for years, Billiken."

  But Dallas refused peremptorily.

  "I'm not jealous," he explained, straightening and throwing out his chest, "but—well, you don't look the part, Anne. You're—you are growing matronly, not but what you suit ME all right. And then I'd forget and call you 'mammy,' which would require explanation. I think it's up to you, Kit."

  "I shall do nothing of the sort!" I snapped. "It's ridiculous!"

  "I dare you!" said Dallas.

  I refused. I stood like a rock while the storm surged around me and beat over me. I must say for Jim that he was merely pathetic. He said that my happiness was first; that he would not give me an uncomfortable minute for anything on earth; and that Bella had been perfectly right to leave him, because he was a sinking ship, and deserved to be turned out penniless into the world. After which mixed figure, he poured himself something to drink, and his hands were shaking.

  Dal and Anne stood on each side of him and patted him on the shoulders and glared across at me. I felt that if I was a rock, Jim's ship had struck on me and was sinking, as he said, because of me. I began to crumble.

  "What—what time does she leave?" I asked, wavering.

  "Ten: nine; KIT, are you going to do it?"

  "No!" I gave a last clutch at my resolution. "People who do that kind of thing always get into trouble. She might miss her train. She's almost certain to miss her train."

  "You're temporizing," Dallas said sternly. "We won't let her miss her train; you can be sure of that."

  "Jim," Anne broke in suddenly, "hasn't she a picture of Bella? There's not the faintest resemblance between Bella and Kit."

  Jim became downcast again. "I sent her a miniature of Bella a couple of years ago," he said despondently. "Did it myself."

  But Dal said he
remembered the miniature, and it looked more like me than Bella, anyhow. So we were just where we started. And down inside of me I had a premonition that I was going to do just what they wanted me to do, and get into all sorts of trouble, and not be thanked for it after all. Which was entirely correct. And then Leila Mercer came and banged at the door and said that dinner had been announced ages ago and that everybody was famishing. With the hurry and stress, and poor Jim's distracted face, I weakened.

  "I feel like a cross between an idiot and a criminal," I said shortly, "and I don't know particularly why every one thinks I should be the victim for the sacrifice. But if you will promise to get her off early to her train, and if you will stand by me and not leave me alone with her, I—I might try it."

  "Of course, we'll stand by you!" they said in chorus. "We won't let you stick!" And Dal said, "You're the right sort of girl, Kit. And after it's all over, you'll realize that it's the biggest kind of lark. Think how you are saving the old lady's feeling! When you are an elderly person yourself, Kit, you will appreciate what you are doing tonight."

  Yes, they said they would stand by me, and that I was a heroine and the only person there clever enough to act the part, and that they wouldn't let me stick! I am not bitter now, but that is what they promised. Oh, I am not defending myself; I suppose I deserved everything that happened. But they told me that she would be there only between trains, and that she was deaf, and that I had an opportunity to save a fellow-being from ruin. So in the end I capitulated.

  When they opened the door into the living room, Max Reed had arrived and was helping to hide a decanter and glasses, and somebody said a cab was at the door.

  And that was the way it began.

  Chapter III. I MIGHT HAVE KNOWN IT

  The minute I had consented I regretted it. After all, what were Jimmy's troubles to me? Why should I help him impose on an unsuspecting elderly woman? And it was only putting off discovery anyhow. Sooner or later, she would learn of the divorce, and—Just at that instant my eyes fell on Mr. Harbison—Tom Harbison, as Anne called him. He was looking on with an amused, half-puzzled smile, while people were rushing around hiding the roulette wheel and things of which Miss Caruthers might disapprove, and Betty Mercer was on her knees winding up a toy bear that Max had brought her. What would he think? It was evident that he thought badly of us already—that he was contemptuously amused, and then to have to ask him to lend himself to the deception!

  With a gasp I hurled myself after Jimmy, only to hear a strange voice in the hall and to know that I was too late. I was in for it, whatever was coming. It was Aunt Selina who was coming—along the hall, followed by Jim, who was mopping his face and trying not to notice the paralyzed silence in the library.

  Aunt Selina met me in the doorway. To my frantic eyes she seemed to tower above us by at least a foot, and beside her Jimmy was a red, perspiring cherub.

  "Here she is," Jimmy said, from behind a temporary eclipse of black cloak and traveling bag. He was on top of the situation now, and he was mendaciously cheerful. He had NOT said, "Here is my wife." That would have been a lie. No, Jimmy merely said, "Here she is." If Aunt Selina chose to think me Bella, was it not her responsibility? And if I chose to accept the situation, was it not mine? Dallas Brown came forward gravely as Aunt Selina folded over and kissed me, and surreptitiously patted me with one hand while he held out the other to Miss Caruthers. I loathed him!

  "We always expect something unusual from James, Miss Caruthers," he said, with his best manner, "but THIS—this is beyond our wildest dreams."

  Well, it's too awful to linger over. Anne took her upstairs and into Bella's bedroom. It was a fancy of Jim's to leave that room just as Bella had left it, dusty dance cards and favors hanging around and a pair of discarded slippers under the bed. I don't think it had been swept since Bella left it. I believe in sentiment, but I like it brushed and dusted and the cobwebs off of it, and when Aunt Selina put down her bonnet, it stirred up a gray-white cloud that made her cough. She did not say anything, but she looked around the room grimly, and I saw her run her finger over the back of a chair before she let Hannah, the maid, put her cloak on it.

  Anne looked frightened. She ran into Bella's bath and wet the end of a towel and when Hannah was changing Aunt Selina's collar—her concession to evening dress—Anne wiped off the obvious places on the furniture. She did it stealthily, but Aunt Selina saw her in the glass.

  "What's that young woman's name?" she asked me sharply, when Anne had taken the towel out to hide it.

  "Anne Brown, Mrs. Dallas Brown," I replied meekly. Every one replied meekly to Aunt Selina.

  "Does she live here?"

  "Oh, no," I said airily. "They are here to dinner, she and her husband. They are old friends of Jim's—and mine."

  "Seems to have a good eye for dirt," said Aunt Selina and went on fastening her brooch. When she was finally ready, she took a bead purse from somewhere about her waist and took out a half dollar. She held it up before Hannah's eyes.

  "Tomorrow morning," she said sternly, "You take off that white cap and that fol-de-rol apron and that black henrietta cloth, and put on a calico wrapper. And when you've got this room aired and swept, Mrs. Wilson will give you this."

  Hannah took two steps back and caught hold of a chair; she stared helplessly from Aunt Selina to the half dollar, and then at me. Anne was trying not to catch my eye.

  "And another thing," Aunt Selina said, from the head of the stairs, "I sent those towels over from Ireland. Tell her to wash and bleach the one Mrs. What's-her-name Brown used as a duster."

  Anne was quite crushed as we went down the stairs. I turned once, half-way down, and her face was a curious mixture of guilt and hopeless wrath. Over her shoulder, I could see Hannah, wide-eyed and puzzled, staring after us.

  Jim presented everybody, and then he went into the den and closed the door and we heard him unlock the cellarette. Aunt Selina looked at Leila's bare shoulders and said she guessed she didn't take cold easily, and conversation rather languished. Max Reed was looking like a thundercloud, and he came over to me with a lowering expression that I had learned to dread in him.

  "What fool nonsense is this?" he demanded. "What in the world possessed you, Kit, to put yourself in such an equivocal position? Unless"—he stopped and turned a little white—"unless you are going to marry Jim."

  I am sorry for Max. He is such a nice boy, and good looking, too, if only he were not so fierce, and did not want to make love to me. No matter what I do, Max always disapproves of it. I have always had a deeply rooted conviction that if I should ever in a weak moment marry Max, he would disapprove of that, too, before I had done it very long.

  "Are you?" he demanded, narrowing his eyes—a sign of unusually bad humor.

  "Am I what?"

  "Going to marry him?"

  "If you mean Jim," I said with dignity, "I haven't made up my mind yet. Besides, he hasn't asked me."

  Aunt Selina had been talking Woman's Suffrage in front of the fireplace, but now she turned to me.

  "Is this the vase Cousin Jane Whitcomb sent you as a wedding present?" she demanded, indicating a hideous urn-shaped affair on the mantel. It came to me as an inspiration that Jim had once said it was an ancestral urn, so I said without hesitation that it was. And because there was a pause and every one was looking at us, I added that it was a beautiful thing.

  Aunt Selina sniffed.

  "Hideous!" she said. "It looks like Cousin Jane, shape and coloring."

  Then she looked at it more closely, pounced on it, turned it upside down and shook it. A card fell out, which Dallas picked up and gave her with a bow. Jim had come out of the den and was dancing wildly around and beckoning to me. By the time I had made out that that was NOT the vase Cousin Jane had sent us as a wedding present, Aunt Selina had examined the card. Then she glared across at me and, stooping, put the card in the fire. I did not understand at all, but I knew I had in some way done the unforgivable thing. Later, Dal told me it
was HER card, and that she had sent the vase to Jim at Christmas, with a generous check inside. When she straightened from the fireplace, it was to a new theme, which she attacked with her usual vigor. The vase incident was over, but she never forgot it. She proved that she never did when she sent me two urn-shaped vases with Paul and Virginia on them, when I—that is, later on.

  "The Cause in England has made great strides," she announced from the fireplace. "Soon the hand that rocks the cradle will be the hand that actually rules the world." Here she looked at me.

  "I'm not up on such things," Max said blandly, having recovered some of his good humor, "but—isn't it usually a foot that rocks the cradle?"

  Aunt Selina turned on him and Mr. Harbison, who were standing together, with a snort.

  "What have you, or YOU, ever done for the independence of woman?" she demanded.

  Mr. Harbison smiled. He had been looking rather grave until then. "We have at least remained unmarried," he retorted. And then dinner was again announced.

  He was to take me out, and he came across the room to where I sat collapsed in a chair, and bent over me.

  "Do you know," he said, looking down at me with his clear, disconcerting gaze, "do you know that I have just grasped the situation? There was such a noise that I did not hear your name, and I am only realizing now that you are my hostess! I don't know why I got the impression that this was a bachelor establishment, but I did. Odd, wasn't it?"

  I positively couldn't look away from him. My features seemed frozen, and my eyes were glued to his. As for telling him the truth—well, my tongue refused to move. I intended to tell him during dinner if I had an opportunity; I honestly did. But the more I looked at him and saw how candid his eyes were, and how stern his mouth might be, the more I shivered at the plunge. And, of course, as everybody knows now, I didn't tell him at all. And every moment I expected that awful old woman to ask me what I paid my cook, and when I had changed the color of my hair—Bella's being black.