# Instruments of Darkness (collection)/A Woman with a Past

pp. 268–299.

### A WOMAN WITH A PAST

Nobody asked her to dance, nobody noticed her, nobody looked as if they ever would notice her. She was nineteen years old and nothing like this had ever happened to her before. At home—she and her ancestors before her came from a prosperous country suburb of Boston—she was almost too popular for her own happiness; she lived so much in a group that she hardly had time enough to think life over—to savor her own enjoyment. Of the Harvard men who thronged her parents' house there were always one or two who wanted to marry her, three or four who merely loved her hopelessly, and a great many—and these gave Deborah the most pleasure—who offered her a frank, warm, equal comradeship. She lived surrounded by these different types of masculine admiration.
She was an excellent companion; she was fond of horses and dogs, she rode and drove and motored; she played a good game of tennis and a fair game of golf; she was distinctly an out-of-doors girl, and yet she was so finely made that in evening dress she looked as slim and fragile as any fainting heroine of the early nineteenth century. Only in her movements there was a vigor and firmness that meant strength; her slender ankle never shook, her wrist never trembled. She was very pretty, blond, but not of the pale silver type; nor yet of the purely golden; her hair was the color of old maple furniture; her color was high; her profile short and clear; her jaw a little too square. American men of all ages, even the boys whose friends she had refused, were apt to say when her name was mentioned, “They don't come any better than Deb Goreham.”
So much for New England, but this was the Lido—that irresponsible little stretch of sand between Venice and the Adriatic. Here, where hardly a hundred years ago Byron and Shelley rode their horses along the empty beach, hotels are crowded together.
The Lido is the summer playground of half Italy; and in September it has a special season. Then it draws fashionable English people who do not care for shooting, and Americans who find the month dull in London and Paris, and yet are by no means ready to go home.
Deborah had been in France most of the summer with her parents, but as they were starting for Venice, which was to be the climax of their trip, they had been summoned to Scotland by the illness of an old friend. They were grateful to their cousin, Bradley Goreham, who suggested that Deborah should join his wife and himself, already established at the Lido.
All the Gorehams had the greatest confidence in Bradley—a thin, haggard, prematurely aged New Englander of forty, a noble soul with a poor digestion; he managed the business affairs of the entire clan. He had married a Southerner—not, his relations murmured among themselves, of the best Southern blood. She was admitted into the Goreham family as a sort of nonresident member; she was seldom in Boston, preferring New York and Paris; her desire to know people of importance and to make herself felt in new groups was thought vulgar and snobbish by her family-in-law, whose own opinion was that to have married a Goreham was enough. Deborah knew that Flora would be friends with every one in Venice with a title, and though she disapproved of the methods by which Flora attained these acquaintances, it must be owned she was looking forward to meeting Flora's friends.
Her cousin Bradley was at the station to meet her. She stepped from the dust and dirt of the Paris express out upon the majesty of the Grand Canal. It was the late afternoon, and though her cousin had brought a motor boat to meet her, the distance to the Lido was so great that Flora was already dressing for dinner when they arrived at the hotel. Deborah went into her bedroom to greet her, but Flora was so busy telling her maid how to hook her dress, and urging Bradley to be quick about dressing, and to be sure the motor boat waited to take them back to Venice, where they were dining with a Russian princess, that the interview was not continuous. In the hard light over the dressing table Flora looked harder and older. As she talked she kept passing a powder puff under her chin, where a little hollow was visible. Her handsome, glossy, blue-black eyes kept flitting from her looking-glass to her dress, and back again—never to Deborah.
The girl dined in her room, which was not part of her cousin's suite, and then dressed and waited for them to come, as they had promised, and take her to the dance. She waited until after eleven, and then only Bradley came. Flora, he said, had gone straight to the party with some people who had been at their dinner. In the ballroom Bradley found her a chair and sat down beside her; he did not dance. The room was not overcrowded, and for a few minutes Deborah was amused at watching the dancers, as her cousin pointed out the notables—a celebrated cellist tangoing vigorously with Flora, a great singer of immense bulk pirouetting on his tiny feet.
“I wish I knew some of these younger fellows to introduce to you,” Bradley said. “I'll get hold of Flora as soon as she stops dancing.”
“Oh, don't trouble,” answered Deborah, who thought Flora ought not to require being got hold of; “I'm perfectly happy looking on.”
This was a lie; she was not happy; after a few minutes she began to hate—not only sitting still but the feeling that no one saw her, no one even glanced in her direction. She was not vain, but to be sought after and admired in a ballroom was as much a matter of course to her as to be fed and waited upon in her daily life; it was a presupposition; and, as we all know, there is something panicky in a presupposition giving way under us. She tried not to take it seriously, but as the dances succeeded each other—the same tunes, the same steps that she danced so well—and no one asked to be introduced to her or even looked at her, a terrified depression began to come over her.
She kept saying to herself: “Of course I don't know any of these people as yet.”
There was Tommy Cotter; he had almost lived at their house during his senior year; but Cousin Bradley had told her that Tommy was desperately in love with the dark-browed Spanish lady with whom he was dancing; she was a connection of the Carlist claimant of the Spanish throne, large, and old enough to be Tommy's mother, but Deborah could see that there was something romantic about her—enough to turn Tommy's head. Besides, as the girl was sufficiently just to admit, she had never particularly liked Tommy; there was no reason why he should rush to her side.
And there—yes, no, yes—there was Mary Brockton—poor Mary, whom she had always considered uninteresting and, to be candid, second-rate at home. Mary was completely made over. Her dress seemed to be nothing but black jet chains which parted in the most unexpected places; her skin was a uniform dead white and her mouth redder than the reddest coral. Deborah did not know whether she was hideous or very beautiful, but it was obvious she was much admired—she was surrounded.
Suddenly a low ironic English voice said in her ear, “Of what nationality is that red-mouthed young person?”
Deborah turned and noticed for the first time an old lady sitting beside her—surprised that she hadn't noticed her before, for she was a strange figure. She wore a black velvet skullcap on her white hair, and had a great many lusterless diamond chains and stars and rings; she was small and seemed to be slightly twisted by gout or rheumatism, but her profile was sharp and all her features carefully modeled as if by a fine-fingered artist, and her skin was soft and pink and white.
Deborah saw that she was asking about Mary. “Oh, she's an American like me,” she answered.
The old lady looked at her. “Oh, really?” she said. “Are you an American? You don't speak like one.”
This questionable compliment which most of us have heard at one time or another from our English friends was new to Deborah. She answered in perfect innocence: “Oh, yes, I do. I speak like all the Americans I know. Perhaps you have never met the right kind.”
This answer, which might have annoyed the old lady, appeared to amuse her. She laughed; in fact, she chuckled. “That must be it,” she said.
Deborah had been brought up to be polite to the aged, but she had something of the American feeling that it is always youth that confers the favor. It never crossed her mind that her conversation could be unwelcome, and as a matter of fact it was cordially received. She told the old lady a good deal about America, Boston and the Goreham family. Suddenly in the midst of one of her sentences, she stopped short.
“Do you know who that is,” she asked—“that man dancing with my cousin?”
It was obvious he was an Englishman. In many countries the fashionable sporting set make themselves look like Englishmen—their clothes, their tones, their habits, even their manners may be English, but never their manner. That manner—blank without being sulky, unregardful yet never missing a trick, aloof and yet ready to break into the simplest friendliness to the right person—it isn't copied, the well-bred English manner. This man had it superlatively. There were several princes and counts in the room, the cousin of a king, and the supposed son of a great sovereign, some of them lean and aristocratic as a greyhound is aristocratic, but none of them had the unassuming superiority of this man. He was dark, too—at least his hair looked brown, though it was really a smooth dark red; his skin was tanned to a permanent copper color; his cheek bones high and prominent; and his left arm almost useless. Deborah couldn't take her eyes off him. She liked the way he moved and talked and never smiled, the way his coat hung from his flat shoulders, the perfect way in which it was cut, and the casual way in which one of its buttons was broken.
“He's my nephew,” said the old lady. “His name is Brainard.”
Deborah had plenty of time to observe him; never perhaps in the course of her short life had she been so completely at leisure, so unthreatened by interruption of any kind as she was in that ballroom. She said to herself, “I could fall in love with a man like that.”
A few minutes later she heard her Cousin Bradley saying to her, “Sorry, Deb; I think I'll be off—don't feel just right—must have eaten something—scampi, probably. Do you want to stay? If you do, Lady Armistead won't mind your sitting with her.”
She had wanted, a little while ago, to get away, but now there was something worth waiting for, What more natural than that Brainard should presently say to himself: “Who in thunder is that pretty girl in white and cherry color whom my aunt has picked up?” and come across the room to—speak to his aunt? She said she thought she'd stay a little longer—it was so amusing to watch, and Cousin Bradley, who she now saw was a strange gray color, disappeared from the room. Nothing happened. Brainard stopped dancing—and danced again, and went and stood by the door. He did not come. Once or twice his eyes seemed to glance across her, but they never paused.
It must have been noticeable that her own eyes never left him, for at last the old lady said, as if in answer to a spoken wish, “I'll call him over,” and she stood up and beckoned.
He came at once.
“I want you to dance with this little American friend of mine,” she said. “She doesn't know anybody.”
“Oh, rather,” said Brainard, but without any of that enthusiasm which may be thrown into that overworked word.
Deborah was ashamed that she was glad to get him even on these terms. She enjoyed dancing with him, and she liked the hard feeling of the arm he put about her. And, she said to herself, it was only the beginning—she had two weeks before her. Perhaps—— She did not spoil their dance by talking, but when they stopped she said the first silly thing that came into her head:
“Better weather for swimming than dancing. Do you swim in the morning or the afternoon here?”
He did not look at her. He took his handkerchief from his sleeve and mopped his brow, and then he answered as if he had almost forgotten she had spoken to him:
“Oh, I'm goin' on this beastly early train.”
He wasn't a bit interested in her—nothing that she said ever would interest him—he had just danced with her to oblige his aunt. They were standing near a long open window, and an idea she had had of perhaps passing through the window to the terrace died within her. She felt she ought to go away and leave him free, but she did not know exactly how it would be best to go, and as she hesitated Flora approached her—for the first time—and swept them both out to the terrace with her own motion.
“Hello, Deb,” she said. “Having a good time?” And then turning to Brainard she added: “Looks nice down on the beach, doesn't it?”
“Get your slippers full of sand,” answered Brainard.
Deborah was delighted to see that he wasn't a bit more cordial to Flora, with whom he had been dancing a good deal, than to her, with whom he had not wanted to dance at all.
“Oh, I don't care if I do,” said Flora. “Come on. I left a scarf down there this afternoon in my tent, and I want to find it. The moon is bright enough.”
The next moment Deborah was standing alone on the terrace. Brainard had said something about not liking to leave her alone, and she had answered that it was all right, she was going to bed.
“Yes,” Flora agreed; “she must be tired.”
And they had disappeared round the corner of the hotel, leaving Deborah where she stood.
Flora was right; she was tired—tired and lonely and sad. She went upstairs to her room.
Her windows faced—not the sea, but Venice. She could see the lights of the piazzetta and the campanile gleaming faintly in the moonlight. It was very beautiful, and the beauty made her feel worse. She knew it was foolish to feel that her place in the universe was fixed by one unsuccessful evening, but she did feel it—felt that her looks were uninteresting, her personality nonexistent; that she was a crude, raw, unattractive New England girl, who had better go back to her native obscurity as quickly as possible. And having reached this salutary conclusion about dawn, she went to bed and to sleep.
She slept until after eleven o'clock, and woke, if not hopeful, at least not quite so much obsessed by the idea of Brainard. “I might have been able to do something with him if I'd only had time,” she thought as she rang for coffee. Then she called up Flora's room. The maid answered. Monsieur had been ill, very ill, during the night; the doctor was there. Deborah hurried to her cousin's door in her dressing gown, and had a word with Flora, who looked paler and wilder and more irritable than ever.
“No, no,” she said. “He's better. It's just ptomaine. He will eat scampi. He's going to be all right. You'd better go and get a swim.”
It was a hot bright morning, and Deborah thought the advice good. She put on her black bathing dress with the short slit skirt, hardly more than an apron, which had been so much commented on last summer on the North Shore, and wrapped about her the gay pink knit cloak which she had bought especially for the Lido while she was in Paris, and which she now feared was a little too conspicuous.
As she came out of the hotel and advanced toward the water, with the crowded piazzas behind her and the crowded beach before her, she had a sudden illusion that she was being stared at; a strange obsession that as she passed, excited conversation in Italian or English or French or Spanish sprang up behind her. Her first thought was that there must be something wrong with her clothes. She glanced down hastily. No, the pink cloak was holding together all right. Besides, as she looked about her, she asked herself what in the way of costume or lack of costume could be conspicuous here? On the one hand girls were playing tennis in one-piece bathing suits rolled up as high as one-piece bathing suits will roll, and on the other, men in trunks and girls in pajamas were talking and sitting and strolling on the beach. No, it couldn't be her clothes.
Perhaps she was getting queer, imagining things—last night that no one noticed her, and to-day that every one did. She decided to ignore the impression; and then as she passed another group a hissed “Oui, c'est elle,” just reached her. She turned quickly. Yes, they were all looking at her.
Suddenly Mary Brockton, in peacock-blue tights and a flamelike bathing cap, rose from the sands, and two or three men sprang up about her.
“Oh—ho, Deb!” she shouted in the wrong kind of Boston voice. “The Prince of Berengaria wants to be introduced to you. And these are two counts—Rubino their name is—that's Sandro and that's Roberto, but you'll never know them apart. Tommy, of course, you know.”
Deborah had a sudden feeling of being welcomed into a gang—of being wanted as a playmate the way she was at home.
“You are up early,” said one of the little counts.
Deborah at once noted a difference between American men and Italians; the latter could say a mere platitude like this as if it had a special meaning.
“And I didn't get to sleep till awfully late,” she answered.
At this every one laughed heartily, as if she had said something extremely clever; and Deborah, knowing that it wasn't clever, assumed that this was a measure of their friendliness and felt grateful to them.
“But you did sleep?” said the count, as if this were a point he wanted to have settled once and for all.
It crossed her mind that perhaps they were making fun of her for the horrible time she had had at the party. They should never know how long she had sat at her window worrying about it.
She answered rather proudly, “Certainly I slept—very well.”
The count gave a slight exclamation, shrugged his shoulders and turned away. She saw that for some reason her answer had not pleased him.
The Prince of Berengaria, who, even in his bathing suit, wore a monocle, and had been studying her through it, now dropped it with a quick motion of his brows, and said with a most insinuating softness of tone, “I am having a leetle peek-neek on the beach this evening. Will you do me the honor to come?”
It would have been Deborah's impulse to accept at once and definitely, but something about his manner—she did not know just what—made her pause.
“I must consult Mrs. Goreham,” she returned rather primly.
The prince turned to Count Sandro. “She must consult Mrs. Goreham,” he repeated.
He spoke with absolute gravity, but as the little count at once burst into a peal of laughter Deborah saw that the prince's gravity was the kind that merely points a good joke.
She did not understand it, and annoyed with them all she turned away, dropped her cloak and walked into the water. To her surprise they all followed her, and others joined them. It was as if she were the magnet for the entire beach. They swam about her, asking her to various parties. The little counts were having tea for what they called the gang-a on the beach that afternoon; wouldn't she please come? Mary Brockton was giving a dinner to be followed by dancing, before the peek-neek—which Deborah learned with surprise was not to take place until midnight at least—would she come? And the next day she must have tea in the Piazza—that was the thing to do in Venice—Miss Goreham must do that. She could not have got rid of them if she had wanted to, but soon she didn't want to. She thought she had not understood them at first; she saw now they were most eager to be kind and friendly; they evidently liked her and wanted her to be one of them. After all, if it had not been for last evening she would have thought such a wish normal enough.
By the time she had finished her swim and had sat a little while in the warm sunshine and had swum just once more, she felt pleased with herself and her new friends and the world in general.
After luncheon she knocked again at the Gorehams' door. Her cousin was sleeping and Flora was resting and could not be disturbed. All was going well. She busied herself with unpacking and arranging her dresses for the round of parties she saw ahead of her.
A pretty girl of nineteen does not, unless she has something morbid in her nature, inquire too closely why it is that her fellows like her. Deborah wasted little time on this aspect of her situation. All she regretted was that Brainard should have gone away before she came into her own. She knew he would have been at all these parties; she had noticed how civil the Italians were to him. She thought that if she had been meeting him three and four times a day she could have succeeded in making him look at her when he spoke and think of her when he looked.
She was eager to know more about him; and that evening at dinner when Count Sandro, who sat at her right, mentioned his name she took it up with interest.
What was the matter with his left arm?
Didn't she know? That was how he got his Victoria Cross.
“Oh!” cried Deborah, overwhelmed at this thought. “I didn't know he was a V. C.”
“No?” answered the little count, surprised. “But that is the main reason why all the lovely ladies fall in love with him.”
There was a distinct intimation here that Deborah was in love with him, too; and she replied quickly, “Why, I've only seen the man once—last night.”
“That's the worst of it,” said the count.
“I mean,” said Deborah, feeling that still their minds had not met on the point, “that his aunt just introduced me ——”
“Ah, the wisest of us makes mistakes.”
“I can't see why it was a mistake,” the girl returned.
The count laughed at this. “You mayn't,” he answered, “and yet she may. And apropos—how is the other gentleman—your poor cousin?”
“He's ill; I haven't seen him.”
“Oh, you heartless girl!”
This was most unjust. Deborah protested. “I tried to see him, but Flora won't let me.”
“Ah, well, she is within her rights.”
And as the man on her left spoke to her she heard the little count turn to his neighbor and repeat her last remarks with much enjoyment. What the man on her left was saying was interesting too. He was an older man—a painter who had been a good deal in America. He observed that it was really too bad that Brainard had been forced to leave so suddenly. This time Deborah contented herself with a bare assent.
Her companion pursued the topic.
“When is he coming back?”
“I really don't know,” answered Deborah coldly.
He leaned back in his chair and studied with interest.
“Oh, you American girls,” he exclaimed, “you're wonderful! Such poise, such aplomb!”
What was it all about? Deborah wondered. Had Flora been making herself conspicuous with Brainard? Were they all trying to get information about it from her? Venice, she knew, had always been a hotbed for international gossip.
It seemed a little strange to her, and yet she was enjoying herself so much that she soon forgot all about it. Never at any party anywhere had she been so much of a belle as she was at the little dance before the picnic. Every man in the room who did not already know her had himself introduced to her and danced with her again and again. Tommy's royal Spaniard and Mary Brockton were neglected in comparison. What a contrast to the night before!
And it was the same thing at the picnic on the sands. Many efforts were made to draw her away into moonlight strolls along the beach, but she resisted. The little count became distinctly annoyed.
“Mademoiselle does not like the moon as well to-night as she did last night,” he said.
“I hardly saw it last night,” answered Deborah stiffly. She did not like his manner.
“Too busee?” asked the count teasingly.
Three other people asked her when Brainard was coming back.
She knew that her mother would not approve of the fact that staying like this in a great hotel she scarcely saw her chaperon at all. Yet it was nobody's fault; Flora was busy taking care of her husband. Three or four times a day Deborah stopped at the door of the Gorehams' suite to ask after Cousin Bradley's health. The morning after the picnic on her way to swim she stopped, but as usual saw only the maid. Mr. Goreham was better.
How different was her reception on the beach this second morning. It seemed now as if every one was waiting only for her. The prince, thin as a rail in his black bathing suit and always his single eyeglass; the two little counts in pajamas of Turkish toweling, one dark red and one dark blue; and half a dozen other men of various nations with whom she had danced the night before were standing in a semicircle; and as she appeared in the distance they cheered and waved their hands and beckoned.
Between her and them old Lady Armistead was moving slowly toward the hotel; she wore a large black beach hat, and she was followed by Parker, a severe English maid, carrying a shawl, two books, a copy of the Times and a parasol.
It was the first time Deborah had seen the old lady since the dance two evenings before—the terrible evening of her first arrival. She was a different girl this morning, full of life and spirits and self-confidence. She did not wait for the old lady to recognize her; she stepped forward, showing her regular white teeth in a beaming smile, and held out a frank American hand.
“Oh, Lady Armistead,” she said, “isn't it a wonderful morning?”
Lady Armistead did not look at Deborah, or stop, or smile. She simply answered, “Oh, quite,” and, stepping round the girl, went on her way.
Deborah was so much surprised that she stood where she was and stared; and then as the prince drew near her she exclaimed: “Why! I think she meant to be rude to me!”
The prince shook a long manicured finger at her. “She does not approve of dueling.”
“I haven't fought a duel.”
The prince received this as a witticism. “Ah,” he said, “it's worse to cause others to sin than to sin yourself, you know.”
“I?” cried Deb, and the monosyllable fell from her lips like the bleating of a lost lamb.
“I believe that's the version this morning,” returned the prince casually. “How blue the sea is! Shall we go in now, or sit on the beach for a little?”
But to his surprise, as he turned back from the contemplation of the Adriatic he saw that his companion had left his side. With the pink cloak billowing out behind her she was tearing up the long steps of the hotel after Lady Armistead.
The old lady, who suffered, as most of her family did, from gout, moved slowly, and Deb caught her halfway up—the most conspicuous spot in the whole Lido.
“Lady Armistead,” she asked fiercely, “what have you heard about me?”
The old lady straightened herself with some difficulty, looked at Deborah without the slightest change of expression while you might have counted three, and then she said, “It would take rather too long to tell,” and began to go on.
Deborah's was not a tumultuous nature; she was not often angry, but never in all her life before had she received a personal insult. Everything she had inherited from her country and her family, as well as her own individual self-respect, made her feel that this was something one didn't put up with. She laid her hand on the old lady's arm—pitifully small and soft under her firm grasp—and said, “But you must tell me!”
“Must?” said Lady Armistead, raising the place where her eyebrows should have been. She, also, was an indomitable spirit, and of much wider experience. “Must?” she said again, in the tone of one who now remembers she has heard a word like that before somewhere. Then she added as if observing that the earth went round the sun, “I rest before luncheon,” and continued up the steps and into the hotel, followed by Parker, who had never even turned her head during the short dialogue.
Deborah stood there, beaten, her heart thumping, her cheeks hot. The incident was public. She was not only angry and shocked, but she was a little bit frightened—frightened, as most people are, of something they do not understand.
But having learned so much, it was not difficult to get the whole story. Mary Brockton was her informant. The story, Mary said, had many versions, but roughly it was as follows:
Flora Goreham had not wanted Deborah to come; she had been perfectly open about that—had gone about telling every one what a bore it was to have an American flapper on her hands. The husband, however, had been awfully keen for her arrival, and had told every one what a charming pretty girl his cousin was; so much so that even before her coming some of the Italians had suspected a love affair between him and his youthful charge. Well, she had come, and what had happened? Flora had barely spoken to her, and Goreham had hung about all the evening. And then Brainard—Brainard, whom so many women were making a fuss about—had plainly caught her fancy.
Even Donna Ana had noticed the ecstatic expression of her face while she was dancing with him. He had taken her out on the sands—the English were like that, all for direct action if they got going at all—Cousin Bradley had followed, had arrived, some said too soon and some too late; anyhow the two men had fought—that was what was the matter with Goreham—some said knives, some said fists; Flora had rushed out to save one man or the other, and had succeeded in getting the injured Goreham unnoticed into the hotel. Of course some people thought Flora had tried to poison him, but that was absurd. Brainard had made a get-away. The point that every one agreed on was that the two men were desperately in love with Deborah.
“And of course what people here don't like about it,” said Mary in conclusion, “is that you're so cold-blooded about the whole thing—don't seem to care that your cousin may die or even that Brainard has chucked you.”
“But, Mary,” Deborah gasped, “you know that there isn't one word of it true! You know that, don't you?”
“Well,” replied Mary dispassionately, “some of it's true. Flora didn't want you, not a little bit; and she's simply off her head about Brainard; and you all four were outside together, at least out of the ballroom for hours that evening; and Brainard has gone off without a word, and your cousin is ill in a funny sort of way. I suppose all the rest is embroidery.”
“Indeed it is,” said Deborah, and gave an exact, detailed account of every hour of her time since her arrival, ending, as Mary kept nodding her head in perfect credence, with a request that she should tell every one what the facts were.
“Or perhaps you have told them already that it's all a lie?”
“Not I,” answered Mary quickly. “I want you to have a good time here. Haven't you noticed the difference in the way every one treats you since this came out?” And she went on to expound at some length the philosophy of the situation—nothing like a good scandal for mystery and charm—that is, if your past was really unimpeachable. “I myself—and I'm just as much cursed by being a New Englander as you are, Deb—I try to get the result by my clothes and this new lip rouge. But you have all the luck. What do you suppose a girl like you—a good, nice and, if you'll forgive me, commonplace American girl—has to offer these people? Just nothing at all. But now, without any effort, without doing anything you oughtn't to do, you have attained fame—you're the most conspicuous and alluring figure here. Oh, yes, your simple, open manner combined with this horrid story is the most provocative, amusing thing to them all. Every man on the beach is mad to find out what you're really like.”
“I think it's perfectly disgusting!” said Deborah. It was disgusting when she thought of the other men, but when she thought of Brainard—oddly enough she noted that the idea of her name being associated with his was not so revolting as it should have been. “Besides,” she added after a second, “suppose the people at home heard about it?”
Mary laughed. “People at home aren't as different perhaps as you think they are. But don't worry; if they heard of it they wouldn't believe it. They know you, and they know Flora.”
“It wasn't twelve o'clock when I went upstairs to bed,” repeated Deborah.
“No use in saying that if you can't prove it.”
“I shall prove it somehow or other.”
“You'll make a great mistake if you do.”
But Deborah couldn't agree to this. More than the scandal the remembrance of Lady Armistead's insolence poisoned her whole being. She must settle the score with the old lady.
Still in her dry bathing dress—her interview with Mary had taken place in Flora's tent on the beach—still with her pink cloak wrapped about her, she went to the desk and inquired the number of Lady Armistead's sitting room, and went straight there, unannounced.
She did not know how she was going to get in, short of strangling Parker, but as a matter of fact the door was not even locked. She opened it and walked in. Lady Armistead was not resting, she was writing a letter—in purple ink on cross-hatched paper. She looked up as Deborah entered and said, “Really!”
The English make fun of us for our universal use of the word “well,” but really they overwork “really” in much the same way. They make it express interest and disbelief and belief and surprise and, as Lady Armistead now used it, extreme protest.
“Lady Armistead,” said Deborah, her voice shaking a little, but her purpose firm as a rock, “I've just found out why you were so rude to me a few minutes ago.”
“Was I rude?” murmured the old lady, as if rudeness had been nearly but not quite the note she had intended to strike.
Deborah did not leave in her any doubt. “Yes, you were,” she answered. “You were rude to me because you had heard this awful story about me—but it isn't true.”
Lady Armistead dipped her pen in the purple ink. “Perhaps,” she said in her lovely low voice—“perhaps you overestimate the interest I take in whether it's true or untrue.”
Deborah felt an impulse to snatch the pen out of the small gnarled hand, but she didn't. She approached the desk and said, “But you do take an interest. You must—you bet you must! You think you have a lot of influence—oh, yes, you do; all English people like you think so—and you have. But you've got to use it right. Now this time you were wrong. I did not go on the beach at all. I went straight to bed after I had danced with your nephew. It wasn't midnight when I went up.”
The old lady looked at her reflectively. “I don't know how much of this disagreeable story you know,” she said, “but I may say that if you can prove what you say it will leave your cousin, Mrs. Goreham, in rather an uncomfortable position.”
“I can prove it,” said Deborah, though her tone betrayed that at the moment she did not know exactly how, and she added suddenly: “But do I need to, as far as you're concerned? Lady Armistead, don't you really know I'm telling the truth?”
There was a little pause, and then Lady Armistead said very quietly, “Yes, I believe you are.”
This reply gave Deborah so much pleasure that she knew that in about two minutes she would be crying, and she wanted to get away before that happened, so she hurried on:
“Thank you. In that case you must do something about it. You must——”
The old lady interrupted her. “Really, my dear child,” she said, “you use the word 'must' too much. I shall do something about it, but you must leave it to me—what it shall be. And now I hope you won't think me insolent—or shall we say British?—if I ask you, next time you come, to knock on the door first.”
Deborah felt guilty. “I'm awfully sorry,” she answered. “Bursting in like that. But you know,” she added, smiling, “it's a good deal of an adventure to tackle you. You're a good deal of a proposition, Lady Armistead. It needed a lot of courage.”
Lady Armistead smiled, too, broadly; she had been half smiling for some time. “I think you have a great deal of it,” she said. “I like courage.” And she nodded and went back to her letter.
Deborah went back to her room comforted. It didn't matter so much what other people thought, if Lady Armistead understood. In her room she found a basket of peaches and grapes from the two little counts, who owned a fruit farm on the island; a huge bunch of Venetian flowers from the prince, and several notes and telephone messages suggesting parties of various kinds. What a fraud she was, she thought; she owed all this civility to the scandal—to the idea that she was a woman with a past. And suddenly some lines of Wilfrid Blunt's popped into her head:
“A woman with a past.” What happier omen
Could heart desire for mistress or for friend?
Phœnix of friends, and most divine of women,
Skilled in all arts to venture or defend,
And with love's science at her finger's end,
No tears to vex, no ignorance to bore,
A fancy ripe, the zest which sorrows lend——
Ah, there was a picture to stir any nineteen-year-old girl's imagination! And that was the picture she would break up by offering proof—if she could get it—that she was nothing but a nice, good, commonplace little American girl. She sat down in a chair by the window.
“I must think,” she said to herself. “What proof can I get?” Instead she began thinking about Brainard.
She was interrupted in this pleasing occupation by the entrance of Flora, Flora looking so distracted that Deborah's first thought was that Bradley must be dead.
“Oh, no, no,” said Flora; “he's all right. He'll be up to-morrow. See here, Deb, I had nothing to do with your coming here. I know it's no place for young girls. It isn't my fault that you've got yourself into a mess.”
“I haven't got myself into a mess, Flora.”
“The thing for you to do is to go back to your parents at once—to-night—by that seven-o'clock train.”
So that was what she had come for! Of course. To get her away before Cousin Bradley, the soul of honor, was up and able to insist on the truth being told.
“No,” said the girl; “that would look like running away.”
“They'd all forget about you in half an hour.”
“I shan't do it, Flora.”
Flora shrugged her shoulders. “Oh, very well,” she said. “As an older woman I've advised you what you ought to do. Of course I can't make you do it.” And she turned and left the room again.
Deborah's wishes were conflicting. A great deal of her did want to shake the dust of the Lido from her feet and go back to her mother, but some of her wanted to remain, not only to fight but to savor this romantic vision of herself—to enjoy this exotic international admiration.
“It's the only time in all my life I shall ever be a woman with a past,” she thought, “and I should like to find cut what it's like.”
She had tea on the beach that afternoon with the gang-a. It was a lovely day—the sea looked like a turquoise, and boats with leather-colored sails kept drifting past. Some of the party were in bathing clothes, some in flannels, some in muslins. Deborah had on her favorite dress—plain white with a hat the color of the sea.
It was long after seven when they began to saunter, still in a group, toward the hotel. The prince, walking beside her, was making fun of her ivory-handled parasol, which he insisted was just the sort of thing a Puritan would select, and the two little counts, behind her, were commenting to each other on the becoming lines of her dress, when Deborah, looking up, saw that Brainard, standing on the steps of the hotel, was simply waiting for them to reach him.
From the emotion she experienced at seeing him again—more splendid and blank than ever—one terrible idea emerged: He was going to make it clear—to her if to no one else—that he had never taken the least interest in her, that no scandal ever had or ever could group itself about her and him as central figures. She stopped short, and so did every one else. Only the prince, who prided himself on keeping up with the English language as spoken on both sides of the Atlantic, said: “Why, look who's he-a!”
And then other voices greeted him. “Hello, Brainard. You back? Isn't this unexpected?”
“Rather,” he answered, and approaching the group spoke to Deborah quite loudly—loudly at least for one of his nation—that is to say, just so that those standing near her could hear what he said. He said, “My aunt wants most tremendously to speak to you. May I take you to her?”
It never occurred to Deborah to make any verbal reply; she simply moved forward like a manikin in a trance and went up the long steps beside him. She was trembling, trembling with excitement, and the sense of his nearness, but most of all with shame. What must he think of her for having made no public denial? She saw now so clearly that a girl of any refinement of feeling could not have existed a minute without repudiating such a scandal. She kept glancing up at him, but his handsome tanned profile was like a mask.
He opened the door of his aunt's sitting room—without knocking.
“Here she is, Aunt Pattie,” he said; and even in the midst of her distress Deborah was aware of a faint amusement that Lady Armistead should be so inappropriately named.
“Ah, yes, my dear,” said the old lady, much in the tone she might have used if she were going on to ask if any one had seen her knitting bag. “You see, the proof you spoke of has appeared in the most convincing form—my nephew himself. We both think you have behaved so admirably.”
“So very decently,” corrected Brainard, as if his aunt had hardly put it strong enough. He was standing in the middle of the room with his arms folded and his long legs a little spread, and he looked down at Deborah and smiled.
“But was it quite worth while?” asked Lady Armistead.
“Rather not,” said her nephew.
Deborah did not understand what they meant, and Lady Armistead explained: “Forgive my saying I don't think your cousin is quite worth sacrificing yourself for like this.”
Deborah saw it then—they thought she was being noble—that was why they were so kind and flattering. She must tell them the truth—that it wasn't for Flora's sake she had been silent, but just to gratify her own disgusting greed for admiration. She drew a loud, trembling breath.
“I haven't been decent or noble or whatever you call it,” she said, and then she sat down on the sofa and began to cry.
Almost instantly Lady Armistead was sitting on one side holding her left hand, and Brainard was sitting on the other holding her right hand, and they were exchanging sentences about how much she had been through and whether it wouldn't be better for Brainard to fetch the sal volatile—a mysterious substance which Deborah had read about in English novels and felt rather curious to see—only she hoped he wouldn't let go of her hand in order to go and get it. He didn't.
“I say,” said Brainard after a minute, “hadn't she better move her things down to one of your rooms?”
“I want to go straight back to my mother,” sobbed Deborah.
“Quite right,” said Lady Armistead. “Where is she?”
“In Scotland.”
“Really!” exclaimed Brainard, and this time the word meant pleasure. “We are going back there almost at once.” And he added to his aunt, “We'd better take her with us.”
They murmured back and forth above her head about trains and trunks. Deborah was shocked to find that her resolution to tell the truth had melted away; she couldn't find enough of it to piece together. She heard Lady Armistead say, “Then I'd better tell Parker to pack her things for her at once.”
Deborah felt her left hand replaced on her lap. Lady Armistead had risen and left the room. Deborah—she never knew exactly why—made an effort to rise too. But it did not succeed. Brainard's left arm was not so useless as it appeared. She found herself crying comfortably on a gray tweed shoulder. To be doing so seemed perfectly natural.