CHAPTER XII
In classifying Howard Benton as a ne’er-do-well his father had not been altogether right. So much of the young man’s training was responsible for the recklessness which was making his name a by-word even among his own sort, accustomed as they were themselves to outré performances. Nor was his unwillingness to work congenital, but only that he had been led to believe that the son of his father—the son of Hugh Benton, Wall Street magnate—was expected to lead an idle life. What was the good of so much money if it was not to be spent?
But in spite of Howard’s wild life, there was something underlying it all that would, if he had admitted it, proclaimed him the son of his mother also, and there was not a little of Marjorie’s Puritanism lying dormant in the subconsciousness of her son. Howard’s reaction now to what his sister had told him of where she was going and her admission of the deception she had practiced in order to do as she pleased rather amazed him, as much as the facts themselves disturbed him. Who was he, he thought, to censor anyone? But with Druid it was different. Elinor was his sister. It was his duty to see that she was not led into anything or any place where harm could reach her. He had been right in telling her he knew all about Templeton Druid and the manner of man the actor was. His fine eyebrows knit in perplexity as he considered the matter. It would not do to let Elinor go on. Quite fully he realized that. But equally well he realized that no word of his would in the least turn her from the path she had chosen. It was obviously a case where he would have to play tale bearer, no matter how angry his sister might be.
He crunched out the lighted end of his cigarette with a force that showed his mind made up, rose and crossed the room.
“Griggs!” he called down the hallway. “Is dad upstairs?”
“No, Mr. Howard,” was the reply. “Mr. Benton didn’t come home for dinner—I believe he said he would remain at the club.”
Howard turned in the direction of his mother’s room. But before he had gone many steps thought better of it and turned about, muttering to himself.
“No, she wouldn’t understand—I’ll see dad to-morrow.”
Nell Thurston’s jolly and interesting companionship drove all thoughts of Elinor from his mind, and it was not until they were seated in The Claridge, having dinner, that he was unexpectedly reminded of her again.
“I feel so wonderfully independent to-night,” Nell laughed. “Just imagine, this is the first time I have ever been out with a gentleman unchaperoned; but mother and dad, having known you ever since you were a youngster, feel toward you as if you were my brother.”
“Well, I sure do feel complimented to think they have confidence enough in me to trust me with their precious child,” he rejoined laughingly. “I didn’t know your folks went in so much for all this propriety stuff.”
“Mother’s not nearly as strict as dad. I could reason with her easily,” she sighed, “but dad is so set in his ideas.”
“Isn’t that funny? It’s just the reverse in our family. Dad’s dead easy—it’s mother who is the difficult one.”
“Oh—I know—Elinor’s talked enough about it,” Nell replied. “Your mother may have her peculiarities, but just the same, I admire her, because she has the courage to stand by her convictions. By the way, how does she feel about Elinor and Templeton Druid—or doesn’t she know about him yet?”
“Why, what is there to know about Elinor and Druid?” Howard turned to face her, as surprised as he was anxious.
“Heavens! I hope I haven’t put my foot into it!” Nell pursed up her lips, and gave her attention to her hors d’œuvre. “I thought you surely knew! Isn’t he a particular friend of yours?”
“Know what?” he demanded. There was a grimness in the boy’s tone that worried the girl.
“What’s the excitement?” she answered crossly. “Gracious, you don’t have to shout at me like that. There isn’t anything dreadful to know, only that Elinor and Templeton are going about together a great deal, and that she’s simply mad about him.”
“I hadn’t even an idea that they were seeing each other until this evening,” he replied, and then he told her about the argument he had had with Elinor just before she went out.
“What’s the matter with the little fool?” Nell demanded angrily. “Wouldn’t you think if she were going to use me as an excuse to get out, she’d at least have the decency to tell me about it. Supposing your mother should take a notion to call up my house—she’d be bound to find out.”
“Mother will never think of calling your house,” he assured her. “She’ll be in bed by nine o’clock. There isn’t any reason why she should suspect Elinor of not dining with you, is there?”
“No—none that I know of—but just the same you never can tell what might happen. I’ll warn Elinor to-morrow never to use my name again unless she is willing to take me into her confidence in advance so that I can at least be prepared to meet an emergency, should it arrive.”
“That won’t be necessary, Nell,” Howard said quickly. “I’ll see that Elinor doesn’t meet him after to-night!” The tight line of his lips as he made his affirmation showed that Howard Benton meant what he said.
At the theater later, his mind was miles away. Somehow, he couldn’t rid his thoughts of Elinor. As soon as he had taken Nell home, he ordered the taxi to return to town and take him to the club. He would probably find his father there, and he would tell him without delay about these clandestine meetings.
But Howard Benton did not find his father at his club. He found friends, though, and while he was enjoying his drinks with them could he have seen and heard his father at that hour, he would have had more to disturb him over cataclysms imminent in his own family than he was disturbed by his sister’s friendship for the Broadway prodigal Druid.
For him, Hugh Benton had returned home early.
“Griggs,” he ordered, as the man took his hat and stick, “will you go to Mrs. Benton’s room and ask her please to come to me in the library?”
As he waited for her, he fidgeted uneasily. This night, he believed was to be a great climax in his life. He wondered how Marjorie would act, how she would feel (he could not, even in his selfishness engendered and nurtured by Geraldine DeLacy through the past weeks keep from one thought of this kind)—what she would say. Oh, well, he might as well make up his mind that whatever she would say it would be unpleasant. But it would be for the last time. So thoroughly had his selfish desires gained a hold on the man who had once been so stanch and upright that the time had come when he could wait no longer. But just how much of his impatience was due to the subtle urging of Geraldine DeLacy even he did not know. So he waited nervously, picking up a book here, an ornament there, examining the intricacies of the carved woodwork during what seemed the unconscionable time it took Marjorie to appear.
But his wife had not kept him waiting. Instead, so unusual had been the request that Griggs purveyed to her that she rose at once, placed the book she had been reading on the table, and hurried down.
Hugh lost no time. He did not mean to mince matters in this interview.
“Marjorie,” he began at once when she stood before him inquiringly. “I’ll not keep you long. What I have to say may be said quickly, but the time has come to say it and I hope you’ll be reasonable.”
Marjorie sat down quietly. “Yes, Hugh,” she replied, outwardly calm enough, but seized with a nervous inward trembling.
Hugh dropped the cigar he had been picking to pieces, crossed over and stood facing her, his arms folded across his chest.
“Marjorie, you know just as well as I do,” he went directly to the point, “that you and I haven’t been congenial for a very long time.”
“I tried to remedy it, though, Hugh,” she answered quickly, “only a short time ago, but you refused to meet me even half way.”
Her husband’s brows contracted in annoyance.
“I told you at that time that it was entirely too late,” was his impatient comment. “Your years of indifference have killed something inside of me that nothing can ever bring to life again.”
“I—I don’t understand,” she ventured feebly, and the sobs she had sought to hold back shook her slender frame. The sight but annoyed the man the more.
“Please refrain from creating a scene,” he admonished coldly. “It will not in the least facilitate matters.”
Hopeless as she felt it in her innermost being to be, Marjorie Benton felt that she must struggle with all her might through one other battle in an effort to keep her husband—he who was all in the world to her, though he so little realized it.
She looked up at him, her hands clasped tightly for self-control (Hugh always did so dislike tears, she remembered), her eyes pleading.
“Surely, Hugh dear,” she begged, “you cannot mean what you are saying! You cannot mean that your love for me is so wholly dead—why, think of all the years—” Hugh turned his face indifferently away—“no small thing like different tastes and beliefs could make them count for nothing, I know—Oh, Hugh!” and a wail crept into the pleading voice, “can it be—was I right after all? Is it—is it—that—woman?”
Hugh Benton kicked at the rug under his feet. He could not bring himself at first to look into the face of his suffering wife. Then his shoulders straightened and his level glance came to meet her defiantly. His words were cold, calm.
“If you are referring to Mrs. DeLacy,” he observed, “then let me tell you, that you yourself were the indirect cause of forcing me into the realization of all that she meant to me.”
“You expect me to believe that, Hugh?” There was a suggestion of a sneer on her drawn lips.
“Believe it, or not, as you please,” he answered nonchalantly, “but up to the afternoon when you took it upon yourself so unjustly to insult her, I had merely liked and admired Mrs. DeLacy.”
“Indeed! I am consumed with curiosity to know just how I happened to play the rôle of Cupid in your love affair?” Marjorie Benton’s dignity was coming to her aid.
“Sarcasm won’t succeed in getting us anywhere, Marjorie,” was Hugh’s stern comment. “Yours has lost the power to sting me in the least. But if you wish to know, after you had treated Mrs. DeLacy so shamefully, I called upon her the following evening, determined to offer some excuse for you,” he went on serenely. “It was then that we discovered for the first time our exact sentiments toward one another.”
“How delightfully romantic!” The wife laughed hysterically. “You—you really are foolish enough to think she cares for you? You are a rich man, Hugh.”
His impatience increased. “Please permit me to be the judge,” he advised, in a satisfied manner. “I want to be perfectly frank and honest with you, Marjorie—that is why I have stated the absolute truth to you.”
She shook her head as she replied bitterly: “You are indeed kind to me.”
“I don’t want to be cruel, but I see that you refuse to permit me to be anything else,” he snapped impatiently. “The problem is this: I love her! What are you going to do about it?”
“What do you expect me to do?” She shuddered and closed her eyes.
“Well, I thought—perhaps—” He found it a difficult thing to say in spite of himself, “couldn’t we—er—come to some agreement, say, whereby you would consent to a—a divorce?”
“A—a divorce—Oh—no—no—I don’t believe in divorce!” Marjorie Benton’s voice rose hysterically. But her husband was not to be swayed from his purpose.
“But surely, Marjorie,” he reasoned, “you wouldn’t care to continue living under the same roof with me—knowing that I love—another woman?”
“Have you thought of the children, at all?” She grasped at the suggestion of the dreadful scandal this thing would be bound to create, knowing as she did, Hugh’s horror of anything of the sort.
Parrot-like, Hugh Benton repeated the exact words of Geraldine DeLacy as she had expounded her philosophy of life to him, but had anyone told him that he was so swayed into unconscious repetition, he would have denied it with indignation. Hugh Benton was fond of declaring he was a man with a mind of his own. So, at the reference to his children, he turned and told her with calm dignity:
“For once in my life I am thinking only of myself and my own happiness, Marjorie. Up to now I have always considered others, but I can’t see that it has brought me very much.”
“And yet I can remember you telling me,” she hastened to remind him, “that the only real happiness in life could be derived through helping others.”
“If I said that, it must have been a great many years ago—before I became disillusioned.” The retort was bitter.
Marjorie Benton rose and herself stooped to pick up the shredded handkerchief she had dropped. There was a hauteur in her manner that conveyed her belief that humiliation had gone far enough. She must put an end to the scene before her tautened nerves snapped and she became a driveling suppliant at the feet of the husband who was so cruelly telling her he had done with her—that he loved another.
“Don’t you think we’ve said enough for one evening, Hugh?” she queried. “We don’t appear to be getting anywhere, as you put it, and—and I might as well tell you,” and the emphasis of her utterance left no room for doubt, “I will never consent to a divorce! Treat me as you please—do anything you please—I shall always remain Mrs. Hugh Benton!”
She started to brush by him, but he caught roughly at her arm as she swept by. She stopped, startled at the fury in his face.
“But that is so thoroughly unreasonable,” he urged querulously. “You haven’t cared for me in years. You want to hold me now, just because someone else has come into my life.”
“Suppose I were to tell you that I do care for you. What then?” she asked slowly, contemplatively.
“I shouldn’t believe you! Oh, Marjorie, please listen to me. Doesn’t it seem foolish to wreck both of our lives? I intend being more than fair with you. I will settle three-quarters of my fortune upon you.”
Marjorie’s lips curved in a slow smile. “And what does Mrs. DeLacy say to that?” was her query.
“Why we haven’t even discussed such a thing.”
“Well, then, go to her,” she commanded, “tell her exactly just what you propose doing, and see if the fervor of her devotion remains the same.”
“And if it does—what then?”
“I will be reasonable enough to acknowledge that I have misjudged that—er—Mrs. DeLacy.”
“And what will you do?” he asked eagerly.
She faced him proudly: “I will still remain—Mrs. Hugh Benton.”
Hugh fairly glared as his wife swept triumphantly toward the door. “So that is your attitude, is it?” he frothed, and he had reached the open portal before her. From outside, he hurled back his ultimatum. “Well, then, I shall be forced to use other methods. I am determined to gain my freedom, and you can rest assured I will manage it in spite of you!”
Still fighting for the dignity and self-control that had deserted her, Marjorie Benton stood still where he had left her for moments, her hand pressed to her heart. The tension broke. She swayed back and forth, staggering to the davenport. In its comforting depths she sank down, sobbing hysterically.
“Oh, I can’t bear it—I can’t bear it,” she moaned over and over again. Fully, completely, now that she was about to lose her husband, Marjorie Benton realized how much she loved him. What a fool she had been to allow her pride and her silly ambitions to come between them. Her thoughts traveled back over the years to the time she was a happy wife and mother in her humble little cottage. She buried her head in the pillows, endeavoring to crush out the memories—memories that burned and scarred. She thought her brain on fire. With futile fists she beat the air, her one moan that this thing could not be true.
In a frenzy she sprang to her feet and began to pace the floor. Up and down—up and down—she walked like an animal at bay, trying to peer into the darkness that seemed stretched before her. There might be years—God!—think of it!—Years of loneliness and heartaches waiting for her!
Thoroughly exhausted, physically and mentally, she sat down heavily. Her brain refused to think any longer. Hot, bitter tears rained down her cheeks, and then, without the slightest warning, she began to laugh, at first almost inaudibly, then loud and wildly. What a huge joke life had seen fit to play upon her. She had passed years of unhappiness without uttering a single protest, sacrificing everything for her children, and it had brought her—this!
In the hallway outside, Griggs heard the strange cachinnations. He came running in.
“What is it, Mrs. Benton?” he inquired anxiously.
“Why—why—” she began, looking at him in bewilderment.
“You’re here all alone, and laughing so. Are you ill?”
“Ill? Why no—I’m all right. Only something struck me as being very funny. We don’t have to read the comic sections of the papers, Griggs. All we have to do is look for the comedy in our own lives.”
“Yes—Madame—I suppose so. But don’t you think you had better let me send for Marie? She will help you to your room. You are——”
“No, Griggs, I’ll pull myself together in a moment, and I’m not going to my room. I shall wait here until Miss Elinor or Mr. Howard come in.”
“But it is only ten-thirty,” Griggs protested, “and they may not come for hours.”
“Miss Elinor is bound to come in early. She is at the Thurstons’. Just put another log on the fire, and I’ll wait.”
“Very well, Madame,” Griggs attended to the fire, and left the room, turning as he reached the door. “I shall be just outside should you wish me.”
“Thank you, Griggs,” she murmured, gazing intently into the flames.
With only a dulled pain she was able to visualize what Hugh was doing, where he had gone since he left her. Her instinct told her he had gone straight to Geraldine DeLacy. And, right as is so often the case with a woman who loves, Marjorie Benton’s instinct had been right.
Straight as a homing pigeon, the infatuated man had rushed from the room where he had had his aggravating and unsatisfactory interview with his wife, and, waiting long enough only to telephone to be sure that she was in, he had hurried to the woman who had taken his wife’s place in his affections. No thought of the pain of the woman he had left behind. Only an eagerness to be with the new love—to hear her soft voice whisper words of love and compassion, to tell him there was nought else in the world beside their love, to reassure him he had been right.
Geraldine DeLacy, alone, as she told him, since the Thurstons were in Atlantic City and Nell, the daughter of the house, was out with Hugh’s own son, carefully hung up the receiver after her telephonic interview and rushed to arrange her hair and to slip into a becoming negligee. From Hugh’s tone, she knew that something was wrong. She did not need his further assurance that he was “frightfully upset,” but she shrewdly suspected the reason for his being so.
She had known right along that Marjorie would prove difficult, but Hugh had been so sure of being able to reason with her. “Like all men,” she thought impatiently, “he believes he can handle any situation. Hmph! Men!” There was a deep sarcasm in the gesture with which she shook out a clinging flounce. One thing she was assured of, however. She must be cautious and most tactful in everything she said to him, as he would probably be in a trying mood.
She met him with an encouraging smile: “What has happened, dear? I have been terribly worried about you. You seem so unnerved!”
“Darling!” he replied. “My one comfort in a comfortless world!” He took her in his arms and kissed her tenderly. “I’ve been through a dreadful scene—I just had to come to you to talk it over.”
“There, there,” she soothed him, “everything is bound to be all right. Sit here beside me and tell me all about it.”
“Well—I went to Marjorie to-night, as we discussed doing,”—Geraldine smiled inwardly when she remembered who it was who had suggested the interview,—“and asked her to divorce me.”
“Yes—and—?” The young widow’s hand trembled beneath his.
Hugh threw out his hands impatiently. “She positively refuses to give me my freedom, and you know that I, myself, haven’t a chance in the world of obtaining it.”
“What did she say—what reasons did she give?” Geraldine purred softly to hide her chagrin.
“Oh, she used every argument available,” was the despairing reply. “Said she loved me and was anxious to start life anew. Then she brought up the children—their futures, and what this scandal would mean to them.”
“Perhaps you went about it in the wrong way. You may have been harsh when you should have been gentle,” she ventured.
“I tried hard to control myself and reason with her, and I didn’t actually lose my temper until she intimated that you didn’t care about me—it was only my money.”
“How dared she say that?” Geraldine sat up indignantly. “What have I ever done that has given her the right to consider me mercenary?”
“It was in answer to a proposition of mine.”
“What was it?” She leaned toward him anxiously.
“I tried to—to bribe her,” he confessed, somewhat shamefully. “I offered to settle a—a very large amount upon her, if she would consent to free me. She jumped up excitedly and asked me what you had to say to that.”
“Yes—yes—and——?”
“I told her I hadn’t even discussed it with you, and then she said I should go to you and tell you what I proposed doing, and I should soon see whether or not your devotion remained the same.”
“So that is her opinion of me?” Geraldine DeLacy’s eyes flashed dangerously. “Well, you can tell her from me—that I’d marry you to-morrow, Hugh Benton, if you hadn’t a dollar in the world!”
“My own darling!” he exclaimed, as his arms went out and he held her close to him. “I knew it—I knew it.”
She lay in his arms passively submitting to his caresses, but inwardly she boiled with rage. So Marjorie Benton thought she could spoil her game, did she! Well—they should see—they should see! The cleverest one in this case would have the last laugh.
“I am so grateful for your wonderful love, dear,” he whispered, “and had Marjorie considered my proposition, I should still have plenty left with which to surround you with all the luxury you so richly deserve.”
“Oh,” she breathed, “as if that mattered!” But the light in her eyes shone radiantly as a weight of lead dropped from her heart.
“I shall have a talk with my attorney to-morrow, and see what he advises,” Hugh assured her. “There must be some way to go about this thing.”
“Perhaps when you tell your wife that it is not your money I care about, as she seems to think, she may reconsider her decision.”
“My dear, I wouldn’t allow her to think for a moment that I had even mentioned her miserable suspicions to you.” He pulled out his watch. “It is growing late and I must hurry along before Nell and Howard return. I’ll telephone you to-morrow. Good-night, dearest.”
She clung to him tenderly: “You are so strong and forceful,” was her farewell, “your arms seem like a haven of refuge.”
He felt that he could not bear to return home, so he ordered his chauffeur to drive to one of his clubs. Never again would he return home until he and Marjorie had reached some sort of compromise.