The Flirt

by Booth Tarkington

  Lindley gave the remaining lady a desolate and faintly reproachful look. He was kind, but he was a man; and Laura saw that this last abandonment was being attributed in part to her.

  She reddened, and, being not an angel, observed with crispness: “Certainly. You’re quite right: it’s my fault!”

  “What did you say?” he asked vacantly.

  She looked at him rather fixedly; his own gaze had returned to the angle of the house beyond which the other couple had just disappeared. “I said,” she answered, slowly, “I thought it wouldn’t rain this, afternoon.”

  His wistful eyes absently swept the serene sky which had been cloudless for several days. “No, I suppose not,” he murmured.

  “Richard,” she said with a little sharpness, “will you please listen to me for a moment?”

  “Oh—what?” He was like a diver coming up out of deep water. “What did you say?” He laughed apologetically. “Wasn’t I listening? I beg your pardon. What is it, Laura?”

  “Why do you let Mr. Corliss take Cora away from you like that?” she asked gravely.

  “He doesn’t,” the young man returned with a rueful shake of the head. “Don’t you see? It’s Cora that goes.”

  “Why do you let her, then?”

  He sighed. “I don’t seem to be able to keep up with Cora, especially when she’s punishing me. I couldn’t do something she asked me to, last night–-“

  “Invest with Mr. Corliss?” asked Laura quickly.

  “Yes. It seemed to trouble her that I couldn’t. She’s convinced it’s a good thing: she thinks it would make a great fortune for us–-“

  “`Us’?” repeated Laura gently. “You mean for you and her? When you’re–-“

  “When we’re married. Yes,” he said thoughtfully, “that’s the way she stated it. She wanted me to put in all I have–-“

  “Don’t do it!” said Laura decidedly.

  He glanced at her with sharp inquiry. “Do you mean you would distrust Mr. Corliss?’

  “I wasn’t thinking of that: I don’t know whether I’d trust him or not—I think I wouldn’t; there’s something veiled about him, and I don’t believe he is an easy man to know. What I meant was that I don’t believe it would really be a good thing for you with Cora.”

  “It would please her, of course—thinking I deferred so much to her judgment.”

  “Don’t do it!” she said again, impulsively.

  “I don’t see how I can,” he returned sorrowfully.

  “It’s my work for all the years since I got out of college, and if I lost it I’d have to begin all over again. It would mean postponing everything. Cora isn’t a girl you can ask to share a little salary, and if it were a question of years, perhaps— perhaps Cora might not feel she could wait for me, you see.”

  He made this explanation with plaintive and boyish sincerity, hesitatingly, and as if pleading a cause. And Laura, after a long look at him, turned away, and in her eyes were actual tears of compassion for the incredible simpleton.

  “I see,” she said. “Perhaps she might not.”

  “Of course,” he went on, “she’s fond of having nice things, and she thinks this is a great chance for us to be millionaires; and then, too, I think she may feel that it would please Mr. Corliss and help to save him from disappointment. She seems to have taken a great fancy to him.”

  Laura glanced at him, but did not speak.

  “He IS attractive,” continued Richard feebly. “I think he has a great deal of what people call `magnetism’: he’s the kind of man who somehow makes you want to do what he wants you to. He seems a manly, straightforward sort, too—so far as one can tell—and when he came to me with his scheme I was strongly inclined to go into it. But it is too big a gamble, and I can’t, though I was sorry to disappoint him myself. He was perfectly cheerful about it and so pleasant it made me feel small. I don’t wonder at all that Cora likes him so much. Besides, he seems to understand her.”

  Laura looked very grave. “I think he does,” she said slowly.

  “And then he’s `different,’” said Richard. “He’s more a `man of the world’ than most of us here: she never saw anything just like him before, and she’s seen US all her life. She likes change, of course. That’s natural,” he said gently. “Poor Vilas says she wants a man to be different every day, and if he isn’t, then she wants a different man every day.”

  “You’ve rather taken Ray Vilas under your wing, haven’t you?” asked Laura.

  “Oh, no,” he answered deprecatingly. “I only try to keep him with me so he’ll stay away from downtown as much as possible.”

  “Does he talk much of Cora?”

  “All the time. There’s no stopping him. I suppose he can’t help it, because he thinks of nothing else.”

  “Isn’t that rather—rather queer for you?”

  “`Queer’?” he repeated.

  “No, I suppose not!” She laughed impatiently. “And probably you don’t think it’s `queer’ of you to sit here helplessly, and let another man take your place–-“

  “But I don’t `let’ him, Laura,” he protested.

  “No, he just does it!”

  “Well,” he smiled, “you must admit my efforts to supplant him haven’t–-“

  “It won’t take any effort now,” she said, rising quickly. Valentine Corliss came into their view upon the sidewalk in front, taking his departure. Seeing that they observed him, he lifted his hat to Laura and nodded a cordial good-day to Lindley. Then he went on.

  Just before he reached the corner of the lot, he encountered upon the pavement a citizen of elderly and plain appearance, strolling with a grandchild. The two men met and passed, each upon his opposite way, without pausing and without salutation, and neither Richard nor Laura, whose eyes were upon the meeting, perceived that they had taken cognizance of each other. But one had asked a question and the other had answered.

  Mr. Pryor spoke in a low monotone, with a rapidity as singular as the restrained but perceptible emphasis he put upon one word of his question.

  “I got you in the park,” he said; and it is to be deduced that “got” was argot. “You’re not DOING anything here, are you?”

  “No!” answered Corliss with condensed venom, his back already to the other. He fanned himself with his hat as he went on. Mr. Pryor strolled up the street with imperturbable benevolence.

  “Your coast is cleared,” said Laura, “since you wouldn’t clear it yourself.”

  “Wish me luck,” said Richard as he left her.

  She nodded brightly.

  Before he disappeared, he looked back to her again (which profoundly surprised her) and smiled rather disconsolately, shaking his head as in prophecy of no very encouraging reception indoors. The manner of this glance recalled to Laura what his mother had once said of him. “Richard is one of those sweet, helpless men that some women adore and others despise. They fall in love with the ones that despise them.”

  An ostentatious cough made her face about, being obviously designed to that effect; and she beheld her brother in the act of walking slowly across the yard with his back to her. He halted upon the border of her small garden of asters, regarded it anxiously, then spread his handkerchief upon the ground, knelt upon it, and with thoughtful care uprooted a few weeds which were beginning to sprout, and also such vagrant blades of grass as encroached upon the floral territory. He had the air of a virtuous man performing a good action which would never become known. Plainly, he thought himself in solitude and all unobserved.

  It was a touching picture, pious and humble. Done into coloured glass, the kneeling boy and the asters—submerged in ardent sunshine—would have appropriately enriched a cathedral: Boyhood of Saint Florus the Gardener.

  Laura heartlessly turned her back, and, affecting an interest in her sleeve, very soon experienced the sensation of being stared at with some poignancy from behind. Unchanged in attitude, she unravelled an imaginary thread, whereupon the cough reached her again, shrill a
nd loud, its insistence not lacking in pathos.

  She approached him, driftingly. No sign that he was aware came from the busied boy, though he coughed again, hollowly now—a proof that he was an artist. “All right, Hedrick,” she said kindly. “I heard you the first time.”

  He looked up with utter incomprehension. “I’m afraid I’ve caught cold,” he said, simply. “I got a good many weeds out before breakfast, and the ground was damp.”

  Hedrick was of the New School: everything direct, real, no striving for effect, no pressure on the stroke. He did his work: you could take it or leave it.

  “You mustn’t strain so, dear,” returned his sister, shaking her head. “It won’t last if you do. You see this is only the first day.”

  Struck to the heart by so brutal a misconception, he put all his wrongs into one look, rose in manly dignity, picked up his handkerchief, and left her.

  Her eyes followed him, not without remorse: it was an exit which would have moved the bass-violist of a theatre orchestra. Sighing, she went to her own room by way of the kitchen and the back-stairs, and, having locked her door, brought the padlocked book from its hiding-place.

  “I think I should not have played as I did, an hour ago,” she wrote. “It stirs me too greatly and I am afraid it makes me inclined to self-pity afterward, and I must never let myself feel THAT! If I once begin to feel sorry for myself… . But I WILL not! No. You are here in the world. You exist. You ARE! That is the great thing to know and it must be enough for me. It is. I played to You. I played JUST LOVE to you—all the yearning tenderness—all the supreme kindness I want to give you. Isn’t love really just glorified kindness? No, there is something more… . I feel it, though I do not know how to say it. But it was in my playing—I played it and played it. Suddenly I felt that in my playing I had shouted it from the housetops, that I had told the secret to all the world and EVERYBODY knew. I stopped, and for a moment it seemed to me that I was dying of shame. But no one understood. No one had even listened… . Sometimes it seems to me that I am like Cora, that I am very deeply her sister in some things. My heart goes all to You—my revelation of it, my release of it, my outlet of it is all here in these pages (except when I play as I did to-day and as I shall not play again) and perhaps the writing keeps me quiet. Cora scatters her own releasings: she is looking for the You she may never find; and perhaps the penalty for scattering is never finding. Sometimes I think the seeking has reacted and that now she seeks only what will make her feel. I hope she has not found it: I am afraid of this new man—not only for your sake, dear. I felt repelled by his glance at me the first time I saw him. I did not like it—I cannot say just why, unless that it seemed too intimate. I am afraid of him for her, which is a queer sort of feeling because she has alw–-“

  Laura’s writing stopped there, for that day, interrupted by a hurried rapping upon the door and her mother’s voice calling her with stress and urgency.

  The opening of the door revealed Mrs. Madison in a state of anxious perturbation, and admitted the sound of loud weeping and agitated voices from below.

  “Please go down,” implored the mother. “You can do more with her than I can. She and your father have been having a terrible scene since Richard went home.”

  Laura hurried down to the library.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Oh, COME in, Laura!” cried her sister, as Laura appeared in the doorway. “Don’t STAND there! Come in if you want to take part in a grand old family row!” With a furious and tear-stained face, she was confronting her father who stood before her in a resolute attitude and a profuse perspiration. “Shut the door!” shouted Cora violently, adding, as Laura obeyed, “Do you want that little Pest in here? Probably he’s eavesdropping anyway. But what difference does it make? I don’t care. Let him hear! Let anybody hear that wants to! They can hear how I’m tortured if they like. I didn’t close my eyes last night, and now I’m being tortured. Papa!” She stamped her foot. “Are you going to take back that insult to me?”

  “`Insult’?” repeated her father, in angry astonishment.

  “Pshaw,” said Laura, laughing soothingly and coming to her. “You know that’s nonsense, Cora. Kind old papa couldn’t do that if he tried. Dear, you know he never insulted anybody in his–-“

  “Don’t touch me!” screamed Cora, repulsing her. “Listen, if you’ve got to, but let me alone. He did too! He did! He KNOWS what he said!”

  “I do not!”

  “He does! He does!” cried Cora. “He said that I was—I was too much `interested’ in Mr. Corliss.”

  “Is that an `insult’?” the father demanded sharply.

  “It was the way he said it,” Cora protested, sobbing. “He meant something he didn’t SAY. He did! He did! He MEANT to insult me!”

  “I did nothing of the kind,” shouted the old man.

  I don’t know what you’re talking about. I said I couldn’t understand your getting so excited about the fellow’s affairs and that you seemed to take a mighty sudden interest in him.”

  “Well, what if I DO?” she screamed. Haven’t I a right to be interested in what I choose? I’ve got to be interested in SOMETHING, haven’t I? YOU don’t make life very interesting, do you? Do you think it’s interesting to spend the summer in this horrible old house with the paper falling off the walls and our rotten old furniture that I work my hands off trying to make look decent and can’t, and every other girl I know at the seashore with motor-cars and motor-boats, or getting a trip abroad and buying her clothes in Paris? What do YOU offer to interest me?”

  The unfortunate man hung his head. “I don’t see what all that has to do with it–-“

  She seemed to leap at him. “You DON’T? You DON’T?”

  “No, I don’t. And I don’t see why you’re so crazy to please young Corliss about this business unless you’re infatuated with him. I had an idea—and I was pleased with it, too, because Richard’s a steady fellow—that you were just about engaged to Richard Lindley, and–-“

  “Engaged!” she cried, repeating the word with bitter contempt. “Engaged! You don’t suppose I’ll marry him unless I want to, do you? I will if it suits me. I won’t if it suits me not to; understand that! I don’t consider myself engaged to anybody, and you needn’t either. What on earth has that got to do with your keeping Richard Lindley from doing what Mr. Corliss wants him to?”

  “I’m not keeping him from anything. He didn’t say–-“

  “He did!” stormed Cora. “He said he would if you went into it. He told me this afternoon, an hour ago.”

  “Now wait,” said Madison. “I talked this over with Richard two days ago–-“

  Cora stamped her foot again in frantic exasperation. “I’m talking about this afternoon!”

  “Two days ago,” he repeated doggedly; “and we came to the same conclusion: it won’t do. He said he couldn’t go into it unless he went over there to Italy—and saw for himself just what he was putting his money into, and Corliss had told him that it couldn’t be done; that there wasn’t time, and showed him a cablegram from his Italian partner saying the secret had leaked out and that they’d have to form the company in Naples and sell the stock over there if it couldn’t be done here within the next week. Corliss said he had to ask for an immediate answer, and so Richard told him no, yesterday.”

  “Oh, my God!” groaned Cora. “What has that got to do with YOUR going into it? You’re not going to risk any money! I don’t ask you to SPEND anything, do I? You haven’t got it if I did. All Mr. Corliss wants is your name. Can’t you give even THAT? What importance is it?”

  Well, if it isn’t important, what difference does it make whether I give it or not?”

  She flung up her arms as in despairing appeal for patience. “It IS important to him! Richard will do it if you will be secretary of the company: he promised me. Mr. Corliss told me your name was worth everything here: that men said downtown you could have been rich long ago if you hadn’t been so square. Richard trusts you; h
e says you’re the most trusted man in town–-“

  “That’s why I can’t do it,” he interrupted.

  “No!” Her vehemence increased suddenly to its utmost. “No! Don’t you say that, because it’s a lie. That isn’t the reason you won’t do it. You won’t do it because you think it would please ME! You’re afraid it might make me HAPPY! Happy—happy—HAPPY!” She beat her breast and cast herself headlong upon the sofa, sobbing wildly. “Don’t come near me!” she screamed at Laura, and sprang to her feet again, dishevelled and frantic. “Oh, Christ in heaven! is there such a thing as happiness in this beast of a world? I want to leave it. I want to go away: I want SO to die: Why can’t I? Why can’t I! Why can’t I! Oh, God, why CAN’T I die? Why can’t–-“

  Her passion culminated in a shriek: she gasped, was convulsed from head to foot for a dreadful moment, tore at the bosom of her dress with rigid bent fingers, swayed; then collapsed all at once. Laura caught her, and got her upon the sofa. In the hall, Mrs. Madison could be heard running and screaming to Hedrick to go for the doctor. Next instant, she burst into the room with brandy and camphor.

  “I could only find these; the ammonia bottle’s empty,” she panted; and the miserable father started hatless, for the drug-store, a faint, choked wail from the stricken girl sounding in his ears: “It’s—it’s my heart, mamma.”

  It was four blocks to the nearest pharmacy; he made what haste he could in the great heat, but to himself he seemed double his usual weight; and the more he tried to hurry, the less speed appeared obtainable from his heavy legs. When he reached the place at last, he found it crowded with noisy customers about the “soda-fount”; and the clerks were stonily slow: they seemed to know that they were “already in eternity.” He got very short of breath on the way home; he ceased to perspire and became unnaturally dry; the air was aflame and the sun shot fire upon his bare head. His feet inclined to strange disobediences: he walked the last block waveringly. A solemn Hedrick met him at the door.

  “They’ve got her to bed,” announced the boy. “The doctor’s up there.”