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Show KATHLEEN -l-fBtS-W COPYRIGHT, KATHLEEN NORP.I5 vV.N.U. SERVICE CHAPTER XXV Continued 23 "And when'd you come down, Tony?" asked Caroline. "Joe picked me up at Bendy's this morning. There was a big Bed Cross thing yesterday, and I had to do it." "And how's the old office?" "Just the same. The same old story. Typewriters clicking, and the boys washing themselves and dripping all over their collars, and Betsy Ross mooning about some murderer's little gray wistful-eyed mother." "You doing signed stuff?" Three or four times a week. And I run a woman's page; we have two new girls in the office now, both Stanford graduates." "I'm going 'round there tomorrow." tomor-row." "Are you going to have your office again upstairs?" "It all depends, Caroline hates San Francisco." "Yes, but Caroline doesn't necessarily nec-essarily have to stay there. I think Joe and I could have a very nice time in Rio," Caroline said for herself. her-self. "You can see us off!" "You've only been married five months!" Joe observed innocently. "Five months or five minutes," Caroline said, "Larry can't expect me to sit up there alone in the Fairmont while he runs his old newspaper." - "She likes to pretend she's jealous," jeal-ous," Larry said, with a little laugb that was not quite easy. "1 don't like to pretend anything of the kind," Caroline retorted warmly. Tony perceived, with a sense of shock, that there was more in this than met the eyes. Some earlier quarrel was lending depth to this one. "I say seriously that I'd like to go to South America with Joe, If he'll take me," Caroline said, adding with a coquettish laugh, "I'bil Polhemus Is down there !" "Well, we'll discuss It later," Larry Lar-ry put in, temporizing, as she paused, looking evenly at her brother. broth-er. And Tony saw the dark angry red come up under his skin. She went out into the kitchen, when Caroline went upstairs, and began the familiar Inspection of icebox ice-box and cupboards. Wood crackled In the stove, and Tony, dodging the green thick smoke as she put back the iron plate, found Larry beside her. "This is a lot of fuss, our staying." stay-ing." "Oh, no, it's not, truly I We thought Cliff and Mary Rose might come. All I'm doing " Tony said, bringing forth a half-consumed hamj and hunting In a table drawer for her longest knife. "All I'm doing is to reheat the enchiladas and cut the ham, and let's see, heat up biscuits, bis-cuits, and open plum Jam, and make a salad." Larry was not listening, and she ill 4l Tm fey I Began the Familiar Inspection of Ice Box and Cupboards. know he was not. He snid in a low tone, "Tony, how are you?" "Perfect!" she told him, smiling. "Xo, hut I mean how are you?" The little Intimate significance did not escape her. but there was no hint of fluctuation lu her steady wide-open blue eyes. "Happy!" she told him, with a nervous shred of laughter. "I'm glad," he said in a low tone, witli his narrowed gaze keenly fixed on her. "Oo you realize that it Is more than two years since we have een each other'.'" "Two and a half, almost," Tony agreed. "It was spring." "You know I was very ill?" "Joe told me. Caroline wrote him, you know. And when I would come down week-ends, he'd tell me." "You and he have become great friends, haven't you?" "Joe and I? There's nobody like him," Tony said, smiling. Her brown hands went on steadily slicing the firm pink ham ; she lifted each slice on her knife and laid it evenly on the blue dolphin platter. "How well do you like him, Tony?" "Oh, tremendously !" "And are you going to marry him?" Larry asked. Her eyes clouded, and she gave him a dubious look, slowly shaking shak-ing her head. "No," she said. "Then may I say something to you, Tony? because I have an opportunity op-portunity now and may not have another. May I say that I'm terribly terri-bly terribly sorry?" "I know what you mean," Tony said, her bright eyes fixed steadily on his, the color coming up quickly under her clear brown skin. "Of course you know what I mean. Of course you know, and I know, what we meant to each other. I had been 111, I was badly shaken by Ruth's death, Caroline was right there " Larry said. And as her eyes narrowed uncomfortably and she made a gesture of restraint he went on, "My dear Tony, this is no disloyalty. Caroline and I hadn't been married six weeks ; hadn't been married six days before we both knew that it was a mistake. We'd been drawn into it lulled into it; you know what the circumstances were. There in that little place, with Ruth's mother dying, nurses there, the doctor coming every day, we lived as much alone as If we'd been on an island. I thought she'd told me that she cared for Phil Polhemus; Pol-hemus; we'd seen him out in China. I never thought of myself at all "And then only a few days after Ruth's death she told me told me that I had been the one always even in the early days of Ruth's first knowing me, when Caroline was a child. She said we would go to Paris, entertain, she said that was why she had refused Phil." "I rather thought that it was something like that," Tony said, in the pause. The man followed her, a little awkwardly, to the table, and sat down facing her across its end. Tony had a soup plate before her; she began the concoction of a salad sal-ad dressing, pouring oil, measuring vinegar, occasionally tasting the mixture on the tip of her finger. "Tony," Larry said, "if I had come straight back, after Ruth's death, would you have been waiting wait-ing for me?" "You know I would," Tony answered, an-swered, with a full, steady look. "I failed you," Larry muttered, looking away. "Caroline's interest is clothes men " he said. There was a pause. "Oh, yes! Did Caroline get her chinchilla coat?" Tony asked cheerfully, cheer-fully, ending it The man looked up In surprise. "flow do you mean?" "Caroline used to say that If ever she married again the first thing she'd make her husband buy her would be a chinchilla coat." "Our marriage was a mistake we both see It now," Larry said, paying no attention. "It's all like a dream a bad dream." "But you don't mean; Larry, that you and Caroline already are thinking think-ing of a break?" "I've come back here to work," he said doggedly. "She says she despises San Francisco society and hates the West. Her heart is set now on going to Rio with Joe you heard her just now. I can't go; I don't want to go. I want to stay here and dig into my job." He looked up, and his dark face brightened bright-ened with the smile she remembered so well, Larry's masterful, slow smile. "And now and then take you to lunch," he slid. Instead of smiling in return she slowly shook her head, her face very sober. "Xo. no more of that! That's what I paid for so dearly, Larry, knowing that yoi. belonged to her to Ruth, and pretending that I had any right." "Isn't caring for each other a right?" "I thought so then. I'm older now. I see things differently now." "You're changed," he said. "In all the lovely ways lovelier, and In so many other ways changed. You're outstanding, Tony. I don't ask you to forgive me. I was confused with the suddenness of everything I was changed, too from my Illness. Ill-ness. Everything at home seemed far away and dreamy; the only real ities were the villa, and the hot sunshine, and Caroline all In white being tremendously helpful and kind the one lovely living thing In all our lives! Can't you understand?" under-stand?" "I do understand," Tony said. "And I think," she added almost timidly, "I think you admire Caroline Caro-line more than you think you do, Larry. It seems to me, now, since you are married since you did marry so so soon " "So soon after Ruth's death. Yes. we both feel that; we both feel that for that very reason we have no right to separate," he conceded, as she hesitated. "But it was one of those marriages that could only have taken place In exactly that way. If we had waited a year, if we had waited until even three or four months after Ruth's death, It never would have happened." Tony dipped her littlest fingertip Into the salad dressing, tasted it, narrowed her eyes. "But you are not always unhappy, un-happy, Larry?" "Not always. At base there's something that holds us together. Only she's quarrelsome, Tony, and jealous." "I see the Jealousy." "She's Intensely jealous of you," the man said. "Of me? It seems to me the shoe ought to be on the other foot." "But she knows, of course, how I felt how I feel for you." "I wonder how Caroline would have felt if all Ruth's money hadn't been involved?" Tony asked idly. "It wasn't all Ruth's money," Larry reminded her quickly. "She wrote Joe of the legacies." "And Joe got a splendid slice, and Joe's the one that ought to have "And Yet You Can't Love Him." iu, too," Tony said. "He helps so many people. There's no end to Joe's goodness!" "And yet you can't love him? Tony, Tony, Tony, how blind I've been! It's sickening," Larry said, with a rueful smile, "to have had to have had all the difficulties In one's life that I had to meet, and to have felt, as I did feel, that If I ever were free I could make my own destiny so wonderful, so happy, hap-py, and then to have had my chance and Instantly thrown it away." "Were you terribly young when you married Ruth, Larry?" "Twenty-one." "A boy." "That was all." "And did you love her?" "I admired her tremendously. She was a great horse-woman, you know, and she had a splendid stable. I remember thinking her glorious, galloping along those lanes in the autumn, and telling her men In the stables what to do with this fine horse and that. Yes," he said, with the thoughtful expression she liked best of all on his handsome face, "I always loved Ruth. Not but then there are different ways of loving. I think she never had any misgivings, misgiv-ings, I think she was never anxious, until you came along, and everything every-thing got out of hand." "That's the thing I find it hard to forgive myself." "One can't always help those things, Tony. We didn't after all, we didn't what shall I say? betray be-tray her." "Not In actual fact, no, I didn't," Tony said In a lighter tone, as she rose to carry her salad dressing to the icebsx, "I didn't surrender. There were times " She smiled at him over her shoulder. "But we didn't," she said. "I remember re-member praying about It, hanging on to my code until my fingernails were almost torn out But I'm glad now every woman Is glad afterward after-ward when she remembers." - Coming back, she sat down at the table with idle hands, looking at him frankly. "For that part fire and flame and breathlcssness and not eating your dinner and lying awake all night that part isn't the Important part, is It? It never has lasted, it never will." "Couldn't it?' the man asked, a dark flush on his face, his voice low. "No, for It Isn't the riirht, the wise and true part.'" Tony an-swered. an-swered. "And, for the rest, Larry, seriously, seriously, haven't you and Caroline a great deal In comni.ni? Haven't you two more in cuuiiunn than yon and t ever could have had? You like dinners chinchilla coats " "I despise dinners. I despise chinchilla coats !" "If you two had a handsome apartment In San Francisco, entertained enter-tained a good deal, were In on opera nights and polo meets " "What are you talking about?" the man asked almost roughly. "You're not you're surely not trying try-ing to trying to persuade me that Caroline and I are rightly married? mar-ried? I tell you it was one of those impulsive, stupid things that men and women only do when they have lost their bearings, when they've been under a heavy strain. A week later we were in Paris then we both seemed suddenly to wake up, to come back to our, old point of view. We said then, 'We must make a go of this, we've drawn the attention of all our world to our marriage, we can't confess failure!' But from that moment to this we've never thought alike, we have nothing noth-ing in common, we are only making mak-ing each other miserable!" Tony looked at him speculatively "I noticed the gray hair, Larry." "That began when I was ill. Oh, Tony, If I could only go back the last eight months and have it all to live over again ! It was so simple sim-ple so easy, just to bring Ruth's mother home and to come out here to you ! But it seemed to be a time when I had to plunge madly ahead dizzy with freedom, perhaps, per-haps, feeling that now I could do anything, travel, buy a country place, have horses, do all the things that of late years hadn't Interested her "And within a few weeks Caroline Caro-line and I were somehow engaged, and even then I wasn't taking it all seriously; even then I didn't realize real-ize that she was in earnest. We had said at first that of course we would wait the whole year then she began to well, and I did, too. I'm not blaming anyone but myself. We were there at the villa, with everything to settle, - discuss, decide, de-cide, and since we were going to be married some day, why not at once, and quietly, and not tell anyone any-one for six or eight months?" "Larry," Tony said seriously, "you don't have to tell me. Nobody knows better than I how easily one can do a thing In one mood and wonder about it in another." It was the first touch of anything like sympathy, like tenderness she had shown him, and he grasped at It eagerly. "Tony, only promise me this: that whatever the complications of the next year are, whatever Caroline Caro-line and I decide to do, you'll be my friend. I may have your friendship, mayn't I, Tony? You and I may see each other, and talk things over, and go back to the old days when we used to go to lunch at one and talk until half-past half-past three?" "I don't like to remember those days !" Tony said, smiling. And in the silence Joe put his head in at the door and asked: "Do we eat In here?" and her talk with Larry was over. The door between the Hiving room and the kitchen was opened, and Caroline and Joe began be-gan to set a table in by the fire. "Any more talk of your going to New York, Tony?" Caroline asked. "Not now, no." "I got my coat there," Caroline said. "The divinest chinchilla you ever saw. I'll show it to you tomorrow." to-morrow." Tony did not look at Larry. "I remember you wanted one." "Ready, Joe," Tony said. The salad was green and crisp in Its bowl; the enchiladas smoking hot Joe brought a great stack of brown toast to the table. "Does anyone want coffee now? Nobody wants coffee until later, Joe," Tony said. "Are you going to town tonight, Tony?" "No. Not tonight." "Staying with Brenda?" "No." Tony, her face suddenly paling, but her eyes like sparkling blue stars, burst into joyous laughter laugh-ter and caught Joe around the neck as she passed his chair at the table. "Oh, Joe, darling, we'll have to tell them!" she said. Larry shoved his chair back a little, facing them with a faintly knitted brow. Caroline's face was a study In hurt Incredulity. "You two are engaged," she said quickly, as one not to be surprised. "Married!" Joe said, Tony drawn down on his knee now, and his kiss against her chin. "We were married mar-ried two weeks after you were. We've been bursting to tell you, but we've not told anyone except Cliff and Brenda and the family, and Tony didn't want to spill it without with-out asking me, and I didn't dare without asking her! This Is my beautiful, my adoring, my glorious wife!" he said. "And she's going to Rio with me next month, aren't you, sweetheart?" "This Is my husband," Tony said, under her breath, looking only at Joe. her arm about his neck, her words only for him. And so said, they snnnrlpd like a snnr. (TO BE C0M1M ED) |