# Ainslee's Magazine/Mrs. Carrington's Last Chance

Déclassée, Mrs. Carrington sees a chance for social rehabilitation in marrying the young son of an established family. But Billy's mother uses her own tactics
Mrs. Carrington's Last Chance
By Margaret Pedler
Author of “The House of Dreams Come True,” “The Lamp of Destiny,” etc.
IT began in the easiest and most natural way in the world.
Billy had pulled up in the middle of the pavement to light a cigarette and at the same moment a big collie, racing hell-for-leather in agonized pursuit of a vanished owner, bounded past him, knocking one of his crutches from under the boy's arm.
Precisely as the accident occurred, Mrs. Carrington was strolling out of a draper's shop with her characteristic air of exquisite detachment.
The crutch fell with a clatter at her feet, and Billy, flung off his balance, lurched toward her. In an instant her small, strong hand was beneath his elbow, steadying him, and he found himself looking into a pair of melting, hyacinth-blue eyes, “the stunningest eyes in the world,” as he told himself later on, when, in the privacy of his hotel bedroom, he was able to reassemble his faculties of discrimination and comparison.
“Can you manage for a moment?” asked a satin-soft voice.
That and her aloof little air of detachment were Madeline Carrington's two biggest assets, neither being commonly associated with the predatory type of woman.
With the aid of his remaining crutch Billy propped himself securely, while Mrs. Carrington stooped swiftly and picked up the one which had fallen, slipping it beneath his arm with a quiet deftness which bespoke experience.
“I say, thanks most awfully! How prompt you were!”
His blue eyes shining, Billy blurted out his gratitude. Mrs. Carrington laughed. Her laugh was charming, a little, flutelike sound, the note of a bird.
“You learn to be prompt when you've done two years' nursing in France,” she replied.
“Did you do that?” asked Billy warmly. “How topping of you!”
Of course, hundreds of other women had done as much and more during those four ghastly years of war, but Billy forgot them all for the moment and was only conscious of the “toppingness,” of one individual woman.
To Madeline Carrington, her two years' war nursing had chiefly represented its equivalent in board and lodging, with an added value of possible matrimonial opportunities,
She was thirty-seven, although she contrived to look considerably less, and the chances of acquiring a satisfactory settlement in life by way of a second marriage meant a good deal to her. She had been left a widow with an income altogether inadequate to the extravagances of life, and for the last five or six years she had supplemented it in various ways which had not precisely added to her reputation.
Not that any one had any definite charge to bring against her. But odd stories floated about, and Mrs. Carrington was variously credited with a partiality for high stakes at auction and with a tendency toward flirtations which strained even the elastic limits of postwar convention. It was whispered that she was quite willing to dine and dance nightly at the expense of any man friend who was prepared to foot the bill and that if he were willing to include the settlement of an overdue miliner's or dressmaker's account, why, so much the better.
Watchful mothers carefully shepherded their sons away from her vicinity, and the lists of one or two hostesses showed an irrevocable line scored through her name.
For the rest, Mrs. Carrington clung on desperately to the fringe of society and confronted the world with a sweet, enigmatic smile. But there were moments, tense, panicky moments, when to herself she admitted the bitter truth. She had invariably just failed to secure her footing. Unless she could make good by a successful marriage, she was destined to remain always on society's outskirts, a precarious hanger-on, barely able to scrape along. And the years simply raced!
Only she herself knew how she envied “those others,” women with assured positions and assured incomes, whom she sometimes watched from the window of her tiny, roof-high flat as they slid by in their cars, with their unshakable poise bred of the knowledge that no doors were closed against them.
When the war came she had rushed into every kind of war work which might seem to promise the unlatching of those doors. But the women who readily availed themselves of her brains and energy showed an equal readiness to forget her existence socially. She was quietly “dropped” when the need for her services was over.
Finally, she had turned her attention to nursing. But, somehow or other, she had failed to achieve matrimony. With war romances blossoming into marriage all around her, she still had been unlucky. The officers to whom it had been her lot to minister had proved to be either impecunious subalterns, who had adored her, or else, if more profusely blessed with this world's goods, they were always happily married and had written home to their wives not to worry, “as Sister was the kindest and cleverest nurse a fellow could have.” All of which, to Mrs. Carrington's credit be it said, was perfectly true.
And now a trifling accident had suddenly opened the way to new possibilities. The look of fervent admiration in Billy's honest eyes told her that.
She knew who he was quite well, the Honorable Billy Bethune, Lord Rainault's only son, and he was stopping at Sandbeach at the same hotel as herself, alone with his valet. Mrs. Carrington generally made it her business to know about the men at any hotel where she might be staying, more particularly if they were unattended by their womenkind.
It seemed quite natural, after she had helped him, that she and Billy should stroll on together. They were both going in the same direction.
“Not a relic of the war, I hope?” she asked gently, indicating his crutches.
He shook his head.
“Oh, no. I smashed my foot up a bit playin' polo. Three of us came down in a heap together and I got rather knocked about generally, so the doctor buzzed me off here to recruit. Sea breezes and all that, you know.”
Mrs. Carrington nodded.
“Sandbeach is a nice little place,” she said simply. “You're staying at my hotel, aren't you? The Royal.”
“Yes, I'm at the Royal. But are you there, too? How could I have missed seeing you?”
His eyes, resting ardently on the dark-red hair which flamed beneath her hat, framing her small, distinctive face, sufficiently explained the naïve astonishment in his tones.
Mrs. Carrington laughed a little.
“Oh, I'm not very noticeable. I'm a very quiet person, you see. And I don't know any one down here.”
“Nor do I,” said Billy. He paused. After a moment, he went on with some embarrassment: “I say, if—if you're really alone, like me, would you think it awful cheek of me to suggest that we might forgather a bit? Of course,” quickly, “I know it would be frightfully dull for you, 'cos I can't do anything.”
“I don't 'do' things, either, I'm afraid,” she answered. “And it's a bit lonely, sometimes, by oneself, isn't it?”
“'M. That's what I meant. We might watch the tennis tournaments together. You keen on tennis.” She nodded. “Good! And perhaps, now and then, you know, you might let me dine at your table.”
Mrs. Carrington assented with a simple graciousness which was entirely disarming. She showed no eagerness, nothing beyond the pleasant acquiescence of a woman who, having no immediate claims upon her time, is good-naturedly willing to make the idle days pass less forlornly for some one else.
So she and the Honorable Billy Bethune were seen in company at the tennis courts quite frequently. Sometimes they drove together. And the occasional sharing of the same table at meal times grew to be a daily custom.
The result was soon regarded as a foregone conclusion by observant people at the hotel. Even Mrs. Carrington herself began to feel a certain confidence in it. But she was experienced enough to know that even a boy of Billy's age, twenty-three at most, isn't safely landed until he has let the word “marriage” slip between his lips.
There had been one ghastly moment when she had thought it was all up with her chances. That was when Billy, fumbling in his pocketbook for the snapshot of a favorite polo pony he wanted to show her, had flicked out the portrait of a girl. It had fluttered to the ground between them, and Madeline, as she picked it up and handed it back, had met his embarrassed glance fair and square. There had been polite curiosity in her own. She had preserved that delicate aloofness of hers intact while Billy, his cheeks reddening, had rushed into flurried explanation,
“Oh, that's a girl I know. Gave it to me last time I went to France. Didn't know it was still there.”
He hesitated, looking anxiously at Mrs. Carrington. She leaned forward,
“May I look? Is she—the girl, Billy?”
“Oh, no. There's—there's nothing like that.” He stumbled rather badly over it, because a month ago there had been something very like that. Matters had not gone quite so far as an actual understanding between him and the girl, at least not the kind of understanding that has crystallized in words, but news of Billy's engagement to any one except herself certainly would have come as a considerable surprise to little Anne Seton.
Madeline examined the photo in silence. It was very young, the face looking back at her out of the worn leather case, young and brave, with clear, steady, direct eyes and a mouth curled up deliciously at the corners.
“She is very pretty,” she observed as she relinquished the case into Billy's outstretched hand. She admitted the fact quite freely. She was too clever a woman to refuse to recognize another woman's charm when she saw it.
“Pretty? Oh, I dunno.” Billy stuffed the case back into his pocket. “But she's not a bad kid, Anne isn't. A real little sport. Game as you like.”
If Billy suffered from any subsequent prickings of conscience, he stifled them successfully. Anne Seton's name was never mentioned again in the days which followed, and Mrs. Carrington's demeanor remained unaltered, serenely friendly, with just an occasional responsive flickering of something warmer. And then, one day, the inevitable happened.
They had been strolling along the shore together and had finally established themselves in the shelter of a big rock, Billy perched on a shelving spur, his game leg stretched carefully out in front of him, and Mrs. Carrington sitting on the sand at his side, her slim hands clasped around her knees.
There was no one else in sight. They were alone with just the blue sea and the golden sand and the fragrant afternoon warmth. The sound of the sea murmuring among the scattered rocks on the shore came to their ears with an intimate little suggestion of their solitude, seeming to set the rest of the world very far away.
Madeline had taken off her hat, tossing it onto the ground beside her, and her coppery hair glowed with a red, sumberous fire in the blazing sunlight. Billy's gaze was bent on it worshipfully. Suddenly, with a stifled exclamation, he stooped and laid his cheek impulsively against it. The sun-warmed sweetness of it sent his heart thudding crazily against his ribs. Madeline turned her head slowly and looked up at him.
“I had to! I couldn't help it!” The words, awkward and blunt in their impetuous honesty, came tumbling out from the boy's lips. “Madeline! Sweetest! I love you! I—oh—I want you!”
He drew her close to him with quick, enfolding arms.
“Have I a chance, Madeline? Have I?”
The whole clean soul of him looked at her out of his blue eyes, and suddenly her knowledge of the years between them, of his unthinking youth and her experience, slashed across her consciousness. Every decent instinct in her forbade her taking what he offered. Impulsively she drew away, her body stiffening a little in his eager clasp.
Though she had not spoken, he sensed the significance of her recoil.
“Don't say no!” he exclaimed sharply, his young voice roughening.
“Billy boy, I ought to say—just that!” Mrs. Carrington spoke very quietly. Her eyes looked sad.
“Why ought you?” he demanded hotly.
“Why? Oh, Billy, it's so obvious, isn't it? A man may not marry his grandmother!” She laughed a little, but the laugh broke in her throat, ending on a sudden, hoarse note.
“Grandmother?' What on earth are you talking about? Suppose I am twenty-three and you're thirty. What then? My four years at the front more than equal the odd seven between us, I should think!” he answered with a grim reminiscence in his tones.
She was silent. She had made her effort, reminded Billy of the gulf of years between them, and he had bridged it triumphantly. Even honor could demand no more of her. And Billy represented everything in the world she most craved—wealth, an assured position, and the headlong, uncritical devotion which only a boy would ever offer her. In all probability he also represented her last chance. The gulf was wider than he guessed by seven years.
Her eyes hardened. For a moment a ridiculous scruple nearly had made her throw away this glorious chance. She almost laughed. She was not a woman who could afford to have scruples. They were a privilege for the well-endowed, not for the Madeline Carringtons of the world.
When at last she spoke it was still to raise objections, but the quality of her voice had altered. There was a note of yielding in it.
“But your people, Billy? What would Lady Rainault say?”
“She'll love you nearly as much as I do when she knows you,” he protested valiantly. “Say you'll marry me, darling!”
“And you're sure—quite sure—you want me?”
“I'm sure I can't live without you! That's about the size of it.”
“Then, if you're really sure——”
But the sentence was never finished. Billy's eager mouth on hers quenched it, and the grip of his strong young arms about her made Mrs. Carrington almost forget for the moment that she had just concluded an excellent bargain from a worldly point of view and remember only that Billy loved her very much and that something within her stirred oddly in answer to that love.
“My dear! Did you say Mrs. Carrington? Madeline Carrington?”
Lady Rainault's well-bred voice did not rise the fraction of a tone above its normal, quiet level, yet something in her utterance of the other woman's name, a delicately faint inflection, seemed to set Mrs. Carrington down in some side street, the sort of side street in which no one would care to be seen.
Billy detected it and reddened defiantly.
“Yes. Madeline Carrington,” he returned shortly.
The golden weeks at Sandbeach were over at last, and Billy had returned to town, though Mrs. Carrington had elected to stay a little longer by the sea.
It was very typical of her that she had refrained from following him back to London. Few women in her position would have had the confidence to hold him on so slack a rein or the strength of will to triumph over all the fears and apprehensions which beset her when he spoke of going.
She knew she was risking the adverse influences which would certainly be brought to bear on him when he rejoined his people. But she banked on Billy being sufficiently in love with her to resist all opposition to their marriage. If he were, she felt sure that, rather than suffer anything which savored of a scandal, rather than be pitied and condoled with by their friends over “dear Billy's unfortunate marriage,” the Rainaults would bow to fate with as good a grace as they could simulate. They would tolerate her, outwardly accept her. And with them behind her, however unwillingly behind, she knew that her position would be unassailable
So Mrs. Carrington waited quietly at Sandbeach.
silly had found it more difficult to broach the subject of his engagement than he had anticipated. The first week or two after his return he had been very much under his doctor's orders, and when, at last, his crutches were discarded in favor of a stick and a temporary limp, his mother had celebrated the occasion by a little dinner at the Ritz, to which Anne Seton had been bidden.
Anne, looking very sweet and young in one of “Minetta's” simplest and most expensive little frocks, had welcomed him back to London with a shy, frank pleasure which was rather disturbing. There had been even a tiny proprietary touch about her greeting, that elusive little royal air which invests a woman, no matter her age, when she knows that the man is in love with her.
Billy enjoyed it, enjoyed it so much that it frightened him. More than once during the evening, as he met the clear, candid gaze of Anne's gray eyes, he had to remind himself that he was engaged, engaged to Mrs. Carrington. And that queer, incomprehensible mingling of fright and elation drove him, the next morning, into announcing his engagement to his mother.
Lady Rainault's reception of the news had not been encouraging. To embolden himself he reiterated the information more firmly:
“Yes. Mrs. Carrington and I are engaged to be married.”
For a moment his mother made no response. When finally she did, it took a totally unexpected form.
“She is a very beautiful woman,” she said quietly
Billy felt inadequate. He had been expecting opposition and was prepared to fight it. But this calmly uttered tribute left him feeling, somehow, weaponless.
Lady Rainault looked across at him and smiled.
“Why, Billy,” she said. “You didn't suppose I'd be stupid enough to pretend she wasn't, did you?”
“Some women would have,” returned Billy doggedly. “But you'd never need to be jealous of another woman's good looks, mater.”
Lady Rainault kept her eyes fixed upon the blotting pad lying on the desk in front of her.
“And yet we must be about the same age, Mrs. Carrington and I.” She looked up suddenly, her direct glance meeting her son's. “I don't think I want a beautiful daughter-in-law about three years younger than myself, Billy.”
He sprang to his feet, outraged, protesting volubly. His mother shook her head.
“I'm right, Billy boy. Madeline Carrington is very much nearer forty than thirty.”
“She may be,” he said stubbornly. “I haven't asked her age. I asked her if she loved me. And she does!”
“Do you think she'd love you quite so much if you weren't Lord Rainault's son, with, presumably, plenty of money?”
“I'm sure of it,” he replied warmly. “Madeline isn't out just to catch a fortune.” His voice softened as he added: “She's damned lonely.”
Somehow, in the discussion which followed Lady Rainault managed to keep all bitterness out of it. Very quietly and composedly she sketched a picture of Mrs. Carrington as she appeared in the eyes of the world at large, watching, as she did so, the boy's face whiten into a mute, defiant misery. It ended, as such discussions almost invariably do end, in his valiantly championing the woman he had asked to be his wife.
“If what you say is true, it's all the more reason why I should marry her and give her a little happiness at last,” he flared. “I couldn't let her down now, even—even if I didn't care for her. She's never had a dog's chance. She only wants to be looked after and protected and made happy, like our own women are.”
Lady Rainault observed the distinction so unconsciously emphasized and smiled a little to herself. Billy did not see the smile, but he flung down his last card triumphantly. “As you say, marriage means everything to her.”
A long silence ensued.
“I wish—I wish your father were back from India,” Lady Rainault said presently, a note of wistfulness in her voice.
“Why? He wouldn't make me give her up, if that's what you mean!” he retorted with quick defiance.
Another silence followed. Lady Rainault was rapidly weighing values. She realized that further opposition would only serve to strengthen the boy's determination.
“Well?” he demanded, at last, with a certain nervous belligerence. “What are you going to say about it?”
She rose and came quickly across the room to where he stood, staring moodily out of the window.
“It needs thinking over,” she said simply. “I don't think I want to say anything just now, Billy, except that you know I love you and that your happiness, yours and your father's, means more to me than anything in the world.”
He swung round and, catching up her slim, still-girlish figure in his arms, gave her a great, schoolboy hug. Somehow, the spontaneous, clumsy, boyish clasp seemed to loosen the band tightening apprehensively about her heart. For all his six feet and his love affair with a woman whose reputation was patched with gray, he was still just her “little boy.”
Mrs. Carrington's flat was perched on the top floor, and the services of a lift were not included among the advantages offered by the landlord.
Lady Rainault climbed the steep, stone stairway with lagging feet. She was in no hurry to reach the top. She frankly dreaded the forthcoming interview with the woman who, as the matter involuntarily phrased itself in her own mind, had trapped her son into an offer of marriage. Had her husband been home, she would, of course, have left it to him to arrange the affair. Men were more used to buying their way out of difficulties, she reflected ruefully.
But since Lord Rainault still was occupied with certain governmental duties in India, and since Mrs. Carrington had returned to London and was already monopolizing two-thirds of Billy's time and the whole of his thoughts, his mother had taken her courage in both hands and sought an interview with her.
A diminutive maid opened the door of the flat in response to her ring, and a minute later Lady Rainault found herself trying to gather from the room into which she was shown some impression of the woman she had come to see. There was nothing in the furnishings at which she could cavil. It was all very modern, but in quite good taste. Yet, to the woman who was straining to draw from it some clew as to its owner's personality, the whole effect of the room failed to ring true. It was as though, knowing that this or that was considered the right thing, its occupant had promptly acquired it and substituted it for something which would have expressed more nearly her own individuality. With a sigh Lady Rainault relinquished her attempt to make the room yield up its secret, and at the same moment the door opened to admit Mrs. Carrington.
She came in very quietly. Her dress was almost Quakerish in its simplicity; but here, too, Lady Rainault received the impression of striving after an effect. Simplicity was not the keynote of Mrs. Carrington's character. Her red hair flamed denial. But the expression in the hyacinth-blue eyes was genuine enough. It asked apprehensively, “Have you come here as a friend or as an enemy?” And Lady Rainault, conscious of a sudden twinge of pity for the woman before her, answered the unspoken question swiftly.
“No. I'm afraid you must not regard this as a friendly visit, Mrs. Carrington.”
The other made no attempt to misunderstand her meaning. Some women would have simulated ignorance, but Madeline Carrington never wasted time or energy on futilities. If it was to be war, then let it be war to the knife and at once.
“So you disapprove of my engagement to your son?” she said, speaking as quietly as her visitor.
“Could you expect me to do otherwise?” returned Lady Rainault. “I am very sorry, but neither my husband nor I could possibly give our sanction to it.”
“Why not?” At least, Billy's mother should be forced out into the open.
“The disparity between your ages is surely sufficient reason.”
“Oh, no, it isn't!' The composed parrying of her attack broke through Mrs. Carrington's guard of cool aloofness and something faintly common, a suggestion of the woman who lives by wits, showed itself in the smartly uttered contradiction.
“Plenty of women marry men younger than themselves,” she went on. “Is that your only reason?”
“You know it is not,” answered Lady Rainault quietly. “Mrs. Carrington, need I go into details? You and I both know that there are a hundred reasons why you are an unsuitable wife for my son. Won't you just accept the fact that I can't consent to an engagement between you?”
“I suppose you think I'm not good enough?” she queried bluntly.
“I know you are not. And you know it, too. You'd spoil his life. He's young, and you're very beautiful, and he thinks he's in love with you. But he isn't really. He'd find it out as soon as you were married.”
“No, he wouldn't. He does love me! I tell you he does!”
Lady Rainault made no answer. Something in her silence dragged an unwilling question from the other.
“Is there some one else?” She was thinking of the girl in the photograph.
“Yes, I think there is. Though I'm not quite sure,” Lady Rainault answered simply, “that Billy realizes it. You've dazzled him, you see.”
“And I'm going to marry him. What's more, you can't stop me. He's over age,” Mrs. Carrington burst out triumphantly.
“True. He's over age. But he's not independent of his father financially.”
The significance of Lady Rainault's reply shattered Mrs. Carrington's last shred of self-control. That clever assumption of aloofness, which so often had passed muster successfully where she was unknown as the quiet detachment of a woman of unquestionable status, went with it.
“Then, if that's the case,” she flung back, “Lord Rainault would either have to make him independent or stand the racket of a breach-of-promise case. I've plenty of Billy's letters,” she added meaningly.
“There is still another alternative,” replied Lady Rainault. She nerved herself to speak what really she had come to say. “I want you to release my son. How much would you consider reasonable compensation?”
Madeline Carrington thought rapidly. She could guess what lay at the back of the offer. The Rainaults were as proud as Lucifer, and they funked a breach-of-promise case. Rather would they face the fact of her marriage with Billy and cloak their disapproval in the eyes of the world by seeming to accept her. The trump cards were all in her hands. She didn't want merely money. She wanted that and everything else which marriage with Billy represented.
Lady Rainault misread her silence.
“I know, of course,” she continued, “that in releasing my son you would sacrifice certain financial security, and I am prepared to make this up to you. Would a check for three thousand pounds——”
She stopped, checked by the sudden, strained expression in the other woman's face.
“Of course, you think it's only a question of money?” Mrs. Carrington burst out vehemently. “You don't understand! How should you? You've always had all the things I've missed. You couldn't understand!”
Lady Rainault stared at her in bewilderment.
“The things you've missed?” she repeated.
“Yes. You've always been cared for,” Mrs. Carrington went on with gathering intensity. “I haven't! I've had to fight for my own hand. Everything that came to you naturally—luxury and position and a good time—I've had to get by angling for it. I'm sick of angling, sick of pretending! I want the real thing. And Billy can give it me. I've never had anything, never! I've always been on the edge. Oh, I know what people say; I'm an outsider. Well, they won't be able to say it any longer. If I marry Billy, you and people like you will have to accept me whether they want to or not!”
“Yes,” responded Lady Rainault gravely. “I—we should have to accept you. I grant that.”
“Very well,” retorted Mrs. Carrington triumphantly. “You can't expect me to give up all that.”
“No, I suppose I can't,” replied Lady Rainault very slowly. “Unless you care for him.”
The five short words dropped into a silence, sudden and tense. Mrs. Carrington drew back a pace and stood a little away from the older woman, staring at her with a curiously awakened expression.
There was something startled and bewildered, almost shy, in the hyacinth eyes. It invested her, this woman of the world, and a somewhat shady world, at that, with an atmosphere at once elusive and sweet and virginal. Billy's mother, watching the transformation, could imagine what she must have been like as a young girl.
“I—I do care!” The words jerkily. “I didn't know it before. But—I do care!”
And looking into the other's beautiful face, pale in the grip of a sudden tensity of emotion, Lady Rainault realized she spoke the naked truth.
But it could make no difference. Whether she loved him or loved only all he could give her, this woman was no wife for her son. She spoke inexorably:
“Then, if you care, give him up!”
Mrs. Carrington drew in her breath sharply.
“I can't!” she muttered in a stifled voice. “I can't give him up.”
Almost as though her legs would no longer support her, she sank down into a chair and stared dumbly at Billy's mother. When Lady Rainault spoke again it was rather sorrowfully.
“If you love him, you'll give him up. Just because you do love him. And, if you're brave enough, you'll send him away from you—without any regret that he has to go.”
The door closed quietly behind her. Madeline Carrington sat huddled in her chair, Lady Rainault's last words beating in her brain like a pulse: “Send him away from you—without any regret that he has to go.”
“Oh, I can't! I can't!” she whispered hoarsely.
Love's eyes are very clear. In the days which followed Madeline Carrington could see Billy chafing against the bonds which held him, although gamely he was refusing to recognize the fact, every instinct of his boy's honor alert to conceal it from her. She set her teeth and tried not to recognize the bitter truth, but it jumped out and mocked at her.
Sometimes she would test him.
“I'm too old for you, Billy,” she said one day, watching restlessly under her white lids for the old indignation to leap into his eyes, eagerly listening for the headlong denial. The denial came, but it lacked conviction.
“Of course you're not,” said Billy. “I wish you wouldn't keep harping on the subject of age.”
The crisis came one evening at the Gloria restaurant. They were dining there together, and at first he had appeared to be enjoying himself much as usual. But all at once he grew fidgety and his attention wandered. The alteration in his manner synchronized with the arrival of a party of friends who took possession of a table near at hand, and Mrs. Carrington, following the direction of Billy's nervously roving glance, recognized in one of the newcomers the girl whose photograph he had had with him at Sandbeach.
There was no mistaking the pure, childish oval of her face, with its wide-open, fearless eyes. And if there could have been a doubt, it was dispelled an instant later when, meeting Billy's eyes, she nodded and smiled across at him.
Then her glance passed on from Billy to his companion. The smile died abruptly on her lips, as though it had been wiped off, and she turned aside. But, before she turned, her young, hard summing up of the older woman was visible in the suddenly aloof expression of her eyes.
Mrs. Carrington exerted herself to be even more charming and entertaining than usual, desperately striving to regain and hold Billy's attention so that his thoughts might not linger about the girl at that other table. Linger about her and compare!
But it was uphill work, and as they drove back to her flat, Madeline, leaning back silently in the darkness of the taxi, knew she was holding fast to the mere letter of the pledge between them. The spirit of it was dead.
“Coming in for a smoke?” she asked as Billy helped her out of the taxi.
“Not to-night.” Then, catching sight of her face in the light of the street lamps, he went on hurriedly. “Oh, very well, then. Just one.”
They climbed the long flights of stairs almost in silence. Arrived at the flat, she established him in a big easy-chair and held a match while he lit his cigarette, fussing round him in a way quite foreign to her usual custom.
“You're very attentive,” he commented, with a puzzled little smile. “Why am I being so spoiled to-night?”
She had been moving restlessly about the room. Now she came back and stood in front of him on the hearth.
“Perhaps—because—it's our last evening together.”
Billy's cigarette dropped from his fingers to the floor. He stooped and picked it up.
“Our last night!” he repeated stupidly. “What do you mean?”
“Would you be very sorry?” she asked, evading the question. “You wouldn't really, Billy. I'm too old for you.”
“That's my business, isn't it?” he said quickly. “If I care for you——”
“But you don't!” she interrupted. “You're in love with—Anne Seton.”
He sprang to his feet.
“Madeline! I've given you no right to say that!”
“Except the right of observation,” she returned dryly. “I saw you look at her to-night—at the Gloria——”
“Suppose we leave Anne Seton's name out of this discussion,” said Billy, his boyish voice suddenly cold. “I don't understand what's the matter with you to-night, Madeline.”
“Nothing. Only—only I don't believe you want to marry me now, Billy. You'd rather not. You'd like to get out of it.”
In a minute he was on fire, his young pride scraped raw to the quick, denying, reassuring. She had touched him on a point of honor, that clean, untarnished honor so dear to a boy of twenty-three.
All he knew of the woman he had asked to be his wife, all his mother had told him, only urged him into more vehement determination to keep his pledge, to lift her out of her shoddy life of makeshifts and pretense. It was all very young and stanch and not a little touching.
But his face betrayed him. She could read the truth in his half-shamed, half-defiant eyes. He did not care any longer. But he was going to play the game, whatever it cost.
“Oh, go! Go!” she exclaimed violently. Then, as he turned away impetuously, she caught him back to her, pulling his face down to hers.
“No! Don't go, Billy!” she cried in frightened, breathless tones. “I didn't mean it. Kiss me! Kiss me!”
When he was gone, he left her secure in the knowledge that he would never claim his release, would not even accept it when she almost flung it at him. She could take him if she chose or send him away and give him the freedom of which he was too young and too hot-headed to recognize the value. But if it was to be a gift, love's gift, he must go gladly, without regrets.
Feverishly she snatched up a pen and began to write. Her pen jerked along:
She caught up a wrap and went slowly downstairs. A letterbox stood at the end of the street like a gray sentinel in the lamplit dark. There was a flicker of white as she held the letter poised an instant in her hand, then the grim, black mouth of the letterbox engulfed it. She remained staring fascinatedly at the blank slit.
“Next clearance twelve midnight,” she said tonelessly.
Billy stormed his way to her flat within an hour of the letter's receipt. His face was white and strained and there was a curious, frozen look in his eyes.
“Did you mean this?” he asked. “Just what it says?”
She nodded.
“I'm afraid I did, Billy. I'm sorry. But, you see, I'm quite a material person. I'd love to be the Honorable Mrs. Billy, but it looks as though it's a luxury I can't afford.” She shrugged her shoulders a little. “So I'll have to content myself with being plain Mrs. Silas Arkwright.”
“Arkwright! That bounder!”
“'M. He's got pots of money, you know. And he likes me quite a lot.”
“So you were just out after the money?” he said slowly.
“A woman in my position has to—think of things,” she answered.
It hit him hard. He had been go frightfully sorry for her, for the bad luck against which she had put up such a plucky fight, had championed her so fiercely in his eager, young chivalry, And now she had revealed herself the rapacious, predatory type.
“You're not going to kick up a fuss about it, Billy?” she asked anxiously,
“Oh, no,” he said shortly. “I won't queer your pitch with—Silas Arkwright.” He laughed suddenly and harshly. “A man doesn't want to marry your kind, if he knows.”
“No, I suppose not.”
She held out her hand. He looked at it, but made no effort to take it.
“Good-by,” he said.
She sat very still when he had gone, her hands lying idly folded on her knee, her eyes staring into space. She could hear his footsteps as he descended the stone stairway grow fainter and fainter. When the last one had died away into silence she gave a little, shivering sigh like a tired child worn out with crying.
Six months later Lady Rainault and her daughter-in-law were lunching together at the Gloria restaurant. Anne was looking radiant, vivid with the triumphant radiance of youth and love.
Her glance flitted interestedly over the crowded room. Presently it was checked and held by a woman lunching with a middle-aged, opulent-looking man at another table.
Anne's lips curved into faint disdain.
“There's that atrocious Mrs. Carrington with a man of the rich, financier type,” she observed. “She's rather a dreadful person, isn't she?”
“Is she?” Lady Rainault's quiet eyes rested on the woman at the other table. “I don't know. But I know she is a very brave woman.”
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1948, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 75 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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