The Three Partners Part 10

There was a slight struggle, the sound of a kiss, and the woman succeeded in finally shutting the door. Then she walked slowly, but with a certain familiarity towards the mantel, struck a match and lit the candle. The light shone upon the bright eyes and slightly flushed face of Mrs. Barker. But the motionless woman in the chair had recognized her voice and the voice of her companion at once. And then their eyes met.

Mrs. Barker drew back, but did not utter a cry. Mrs. Horncastle, with eyes even brighter than her companion's, smiled. The red deepened in Mrs. Barker's cheek.

"This is my room!" she said indignantly, with a sweeping gesture around the walls.

"I should judge so," said Mrs. Horncastle, following the gesture; "but,"

she added quietly, "they put ME into it. It appears, however, they did not expect you."

Mrs. Barker saw her mistake. "No, no," she said apologetically, "of course not." Then she added, with nervous volubility, sitting down and tugging at her gloves, "You see, I just ran down from Marysville to take a look at my father's old house on my way to Hymettus. I hope I haven't disturbed you. Perhaps," she said, with sudden eagerness, "you were asleep when I came in!"

"No," said Mrs. Horncastle, "I was not sleeping nor dreaming. I heard you come in."

"Some of these men are such idiots," said Mrs. Barker, with a half-hysterical laugh. "They seem to think if a woman accepts the least courtesy from them they've a right to be familiar. But I fancy that fellow was a little astonished when I shut the door in his face."

"I fancy he WAS," returned Mrs. Horncastle dryly. "But I shouldn't call Mr. Van Loo an idiot. He has the reputation of being a cautious business man."

Mrs. Barker bit her lip. Her companion had been recognized. She rose with a slight flirt of her skirt. "I suppose I must go and get a room; there was n.o.body in the office when I came. Everything is badly managed here since my father took away the best servants to Hymettus." She moved with affected carelessness towards the door, when Mrs. Horncastle, without rising from her seat, said:--

"Why not stay here?"

Mrs. Barker brightened for a moment. "Oh," she said, with polite deprecation, "I couldn't think of turning you out."

"I don't intend you shall," said Mrs. Horncastle. "We will stay here together until you go with me to Hymettus, or until Mr. Van Loo leaves the hotel. He will hardly attempt to come in here again if I remain."

Mrs. Barker, with a half-laugh, sat down irresolutely. Mrs. Horncastle gazed at her curiously; she was evidently a novice in this sort of thing. But, strange to say,--and I leave the ethics of this for the s.e.x to settle,--the fact did not soften Mrs. Horncastle's heart, nor in the least qualify her att.i.tude towards the younger woman. After an awkward pause Mrs. Barker rose again. "Well, it's very good of you, and--and---I'll just run out and wash my hands and get the dust off me, and come back."

"No, Mrs. Barker," said Mrs. Horncastle, rising and approaching her, "you will first wash your hands of this Mr. Van Loo, and get some of the dust of the rendezvous off you before you do anything else. You CAN do it by simply telling him, SHOULD YOU MEET HIM IN THE HALL, that I was sitting here when he came in, and heard EVERYTHING! Depend upon it, he won't trouble you again."

But Mrs. Barker, though inexperienced in love, was a good fighter.

The best of the s.e.x are. She dropped into the rocking-chair, and began rocking backwards and forwards while still tugging at her gloves, and said, in a gradually warming voice, "I certainly shall not magnify Mr.

Van Loo's silliness to that importance. And I have yet to learn what you mean by talking about a rendezvous! And I want to know," she continued, suddenly stopping her rocking and tilting the rockers impertinently behind her, as, with her elbows squared on the chair arms, she tilted her own face defiantly up into Mrs. Horncastle's, "how a woman in your position--who doesn't live with her husband--dares to talk to ME!"

There was a lull before the storm. Mrs. Horncastle approached nearer, and, laying her hand on the back of the chair, leaned over her, and, with a white face and a metallic ring in her voice, said: "It is just because I am a woman IN MY POSITION that I do! It is because I don't live with my husband that I can tell you what it will be when you no longer live with yours--which will be the inevitable result of what you are now doing. It is because I WAS in this position that the very man who is pursuing you, because he thinks you are discontented with YOUR husband, once thought he could pursue me because I had left MINE. You are here with him alone, without the knowledge of your husband; call it folly, caprice, vanity, or what you like, it can have but one end--to put you in my place at last, to be considered the fair game afterwards for any man who may succeed him. You can test him and the truth of what I say by telling him now that I heard all."

"Suppose he doesn't care what you have heard," said Mrs. Barker sharply.

"Suppose he says n.o.body would believe you, if 'telling' is your game.

Suppose he is a friend of my husband and he thinks him a much better guardian of my reputation than a woman like you. Suppose he should be the first one to tell my husband of the foul slander invented by you!"

For an instant Mrs. Horncastle was taken aback by the audacity of the woman before her. She knew the simple confidence and boyish trust of Barker in his wife in spite of their sometimes strained relations, and she knew how difficult it would be to shake it. And she had no idea of betraying Mrs. Barker's secret to him, though she had made this scene in his interest. She had wished to save Mrs. Barker from a compromising situation, even if there was a certain vindictiveness in her exposing her to herself. Yet she knew it was quite possible now, if Mrs. Barker had immediate access to her husband, that she would convince him of her perfect innocence. Nevertheless, she had still great confidence in Van Loo's fear of scandal and his utter unmanliness. She knew he was not in love with Mrs. Barker, and this puzzled her when she considered the evident risk he was running now. Her face, however, betrayed nothing.

She drew back from Mrs. Barker, and, with an indifferent and graceful gesture towards the door, said, as she leaned against the mantel, "Go, then, and see this much-abused gentleman, and then go together with him and make peace with your husband--even on those terms. If I have saved you from the consequences of your folly I shall be willing to bear even HIS blame."

"Whatever I do," said Mrs. Barker, rising hotly, "I shall not stay here any longer to be insulted." She flounced out of the room and swept down the staircase into the office. Here she found an overworked clerk, and with crimson cheeks and flas.h.i.+ng eyes wanted to know why in her own father's hotel she had found her own sitting-room engaged, and had been obliged to wait half an hour before she could be shown into a decent apartment to remove her hat and cloak in; and how it was that even the gentleman who had kindly escorted her had evidently been unable to procure her any a.s.sistance. She said this in a somewhat high voice, which might have reached the ears of that gentleman had he been in the vicinity. But he was not, and she was forced to meet the somewhat dazed apologies of the clerk alone, and to accompany the chambermaid to a room only a few paces distant from the one she had quitted. Here she hastily removed her outer duster and hat, washed her hands, and consulted her excited face in the mirror, with the door ajar and an ear sensitively attuned to any step in the corridor. But all this was effected so rapidly that she was at last obliged to sit down in a chair near the half-opened door, and wait. She waited five minutes--ten--but still no footstep. Then she went out into the corridor and listened, and then, smoothing her face, she slipped downstairs, past the door of that hateful room, and reappeared before the clerk with a smiling but somewhat pale and languid face. She had found the room very comfortable, but it was doubtful whether she would stay over night or go on to Hymettus. Had anybody been inquiring for her? She expected to meet friends. No! And her escort--the gentleman who came with her--was possibly in the billiard-room or the bar?

"Oh no! He was gone," said the clerk.

"Gone!" echoed Mrs. Barker. "Impossible! He was--he was here only a moment ago."

The clerk rang a bell sharply. The stableman appeared.

"That tall, smooth-faced man, in a high hat, who came with the lady,"

said the clerk severely and concisely,--"didn't you tell me he was gone?"

"Yes, sir," said the stableman.

"Are you sure?" interrupted Mrs. Barker, with a dazzling smile that, however, masked a sudden tightening round her heart.

"Quite sure, miss," said the stableman, "for he was in the yard when Steptoe came, after missing the coach. He wanted a buggy to take him over to the Divide. We hadn't one, so he went over to the other stables, and he didn't come back, so I reckon he's gone. I remember it, because Steptoe came by a minute after he'd gone, in another buggy, and as he was going to the Divide, too, I wondered why the gentleman hadn't gone with him."

"And he left no message for me? He said nothing?" asked Mrs. Barker, quite breathless, but still smiling.

"He said nothin' to me but 'Isn't that Steptoe over there?' when Steptoe came in. And I remember he said it kinder suddent--as if he was reminded o' suthin' he'd forgot; and then he asked for a buggy. Ye see, miss," added the man, with a certain rough consideration for her disappointment, "that's mebbe why he clean forgot to leave a message."

Mrs. Barker turned away, and ascended the stairs. Selfishness is quick to recognize selfishness, and she saw in a flash the reason of Van Loo's abandonment of her. Some fear of discovery had alarmed him; perhaps Steptoe knew her husband; perhaps he had heard of Mrs. Horncastle's possession of the sitting-room; perhaps--for she had not seen him since their playful struggle at the door--he had recognized the woman who was there, and the selfish coward had run away. Yes; Mrs. Horncastle was right: she had been only a miserable dupe.

Her cheeks blazed as she entered the room she had just quitted, and threw herself in a chair by the window. She bit her lip as she remembered how for the last three months she had been slowly yielding to Van Loo's cautious but insinuating solicitation, from a flirtation in the San Francisco hotel to a clandestine meeting in the street; from a ride in the suburbs to a supper in a fast restaurant after the theatre.

Other women did it who were fas.h.i.+onable and rich, as Van Loo had pointed out to her. Other fas.h.i.+onable women also gambled in stocks, and had their private broker in a "Charley" or a "Jack." Why should not Mrs.

Barker have business with a "Paul" Van Loo, particularly as this fast craze permitted secret meetings?--for business of this kind could not be conducted in public, and permitted the fair gambler to call at private offices without fear and without reproach. Mrs. Barker's vanity, Mrs.

Barker's love of ceremony and form, Mrs. Barker's sn.o.bbishness, were flattered by the attentions of this polished gentleman with a foreign name, which even had the flavor of n.o.bility, who never picked up her fan and handed it to her without bowing, and always rose when she entered the room. Mrs. Barker's scant schoolgirl knowledge was touched by this gentleman, who spoke French fluently, and delicately explained to her the libretto of a risky opera bouffe. And now she had finally yielded to a meeting out of San Francisco--and an ostensible visit--still as a speculator--to one or two mining districts--with HER BROKER. This was the boldest of her steps--an original idea of the fas.h.i.+onable Van Loo--which, no doubt, in time would become a craze, too. But it was a long step--and there was a streak of rustic decorum in Mrs. Barker's nature--the instinct that made Kitty Carter keep a perfectly secluded and distinct sitting-room in the days when she served her father's guests--that now had impelled her to make it a proviso that the first step of her journey should be from her old home in her father's hotel.

It was this instinct of the proprieties that had revived in her suddenly at the door of the old sitting-room.

Then a new phase of the situation flashed upon her. It was hard for her vanity to accept Van Loo's desertion as voluntary and final. What if that hateful woman had lured him away by some trick or artfully designed message? She was capable of such meanness to insure the fulfillment of her prophecy. Or, more dreadful thought, what if she had some hold on his affections--she had said that he had pursued her; or, more infamous still, there were some secret understanding between them, and that she--Mrs. Barker--was the dupe of them both! What was she doing in the hotel at such a moment? What was her story of going to Hymettus but a lie as transparent as her own? The tortures of jealousy, which is as often the incentive as it is the result of pa.s.sion, began to rack her.

She had probably yet known no real pa.s.sion for this man; but with the thought of his abandoning her, and the conception of his faithlessness, came the wish to hold and keep him that was dangerously near it. What if he were even then in that room, the room where she had said she would not stay to be insulted, and they, thus secured against her intrusion, were laughing at her now? She half rose at the thought, but a sound of a horse's hoofs in the stable-yard arrested her. She ran to the window which gave upon it, and, crouching down beside it, listened eagerly. The clatter of hoofs ceased; the stableman was talking to some one; suddenly she heard the stableman say, "Mrs. Barker is here." Her heart leaped,--Van Loo had returned.

But here the voice of the other man which she had not yet heard arose for the first time clear and distinct. "Are you quite sure? I didn't know she left San Francisco."

The room reeled around her. The voice was George Barker's, her husband!

"Very well," he continued. "You needn't put up my horse for the night. I may take her back a little later in the buggy."

In another moment she had swept down the pa.s.sage, and burst into the other room. Mrs. Horncastle was sitting by the table with a book in her hand. She started as the half-maddened woman closed the door, locked it behind her, and cast herself on her knees at her feet.

"My husband is here," she gasped. "What shall I do? In heaven's name help me!"

"Is Van Loo still here?" said Mrs. Horncastle quickly.

"No; gone. He went when I came."

Mrs. Horncastle caught her hand and looked intently into her frightened face. "Then what have you to fear from your husband?" she said abruptly.

"You don't understand. He didn't know I was here. He thought me in San Francisco."

"Does he know it now?"

"Yes. I heard the stableman tell him. Couldn't you say I came here with you; that we were here together; that it was just a little freak of ours? Oh, do!"

Mrs. Horncastle thought a moment. "Yes," she said, "we'll see him here together."

"Oh no! no!" said Mrs. Barker suddenly, clinging to her dress and looking fearfully towards the door. "I couldn't, COULDN'T see him now.

Say I'm sick, tired out, gone to my room."