He looked up and beheld what any astute reader of romance will have already suspected--the woman to whom he believed he owed his ruin in San Francisco. She was as beautiful and alluring as ever, albeit she was thinner and more spiritual than he had ever seen her. She was tastefully dressed, as she had always been, a certain style of languorous silken deshabille which she was wont to affect in better health now became her paler cheek and feverishly brilliant eyes. There was the same opulence of lace and ornament, and, whether by accident or design, clasped around the slight wrist of her extended hand was a bracelet which he remembered had swept away the last dregs of his fortune.
He took her hand mechanically, yet knowing whatever rage was in his heart he had not the strength to refuse it.
"They told me it was Mrs. Merrydew," he stammered.
"That was my mother's name," she said, with a little laugh. "Ithought you knew it. But perhaps you didn't. When I got my divorce from Dick--you didn't know that either, I suppose; it's three months ago,--I didn't care to take my maiden name again; too many people remembered it. So after the decree was made I called myself Mrs. Merrydew. You had disappeared. They said you had gone East.""But the clerk says you are expecting your HUSBAND on the steamer.
What does this mean? Why did you tell him that?" He had so far collected himself that there was a ring of inquisition in his voice.
"Oh, I had to give him some kind of reason for my being alone when I did not find you as I expected," she said half wearily. Then a change came over her tired face; a smile of mingled audacity and tentative coquetry lit up the small features. "Perhaps it is true;perhaps I may have a husband coming on the steamer--that depends.
Sit down, Jim."
She let his hand drop, and pointed to an armchair from which she had just risen, and sank down herself in a corner of the sofa, her thin fingers playing with and drawing themselves through the tassels of the cushion.
"You see, Jim, as soon as I was free, Louis Sylvester--you remember Louis Sylvester?--wanted to marry me, and even thought that he was the cause of Dick's divorcing me. He actually went East to settle up some property he had left him there, and he's coming on the steamer.""Louis Sylvester!" repeated Reddy, staring at her. "Why, he was a bigger fool than I was, and a worse man!" he added bitterly.
"I believe he was," said the lady, smiling, "and I think he still is. But," she added, glancing at Reddy under her light fringed lids, "you--you're regularly reformed, aren't you? You're stouter, too, and altogether more solid and commercial looking. Yet who'd have thought of your keeping a hotel or ever doing anything but speculate in wild-cat or play at draw poker. How did you drift into it? Come, tell me! I'm not Mrs. Sylvester just yet, and maybe I might like to go into the business too. You don't want a partner, do you?"Her manner was light and irresponsible, or rather it suggested a childlike putting of all responsibility for her actions upon others, which he remembered now too well. Perhaps it was this which kept him from observing that the corners of her smiling lips, however, twitched slightly, and that her fingers, twisting the threads of the tassel, were occasionally stiffened nervously. For he burst out: Oh yes; he had drifted into it when it was a toss up if it wasn't his body instead that would be found drifting out to sea from the first wharf of San Francisco. Yes, he had been a common laborer,--a farm hand, in those fields she had passed,--a waiter in the farm kitchen, and but for luck he might be taking her orders now in this very hotel. It was not her fault if he was not in the gutter.
She raised her thin hand with a tired gesture as if to ward off the onset of his words. "The same old Jim," she repeated; "and yet Ithought you had forgotten all that now, and become calmer and more sensible since you had taken flesh and grown so matter of fact.
You ought to have known then, as you know now, that I never could have been anything to you as long as I was tied to Dick. And you know you forced your presents on me, Jim. I took them from YOUbecause I would take nothing from Dick, for I hated him. And Inever knew positively that you were in straits then; you know you always talked big, Jim, and were always going to make your fortune with the next thing you had in hand!"It was true, and he remembered it. He had not intended this kind of recrimination, but he was exasperated with her wearied acceptance of his reproaches and by a sudden conviction that his long-cherished grievance against her now that he had voiced it was inadequate, mean, and trifling. Yet he could not help saying:--"Then you had presents from Sylvester, too. I presume you did not hate him, either?""He would have married me the day after I got my divorce.""And so would I," burst out Reddy.
She looked at him fixedly. "You would?" she said with a peculiar emphasis. "And now"--He colored. It had been part of his revengeful purpose on seeing her to tell her of his engagement to Kelly. He now found himself tongue-tied, irresolute, and ashamed. Yet he felt she was reading his innermost thoughts.
She, however, only lowered her eyes, and with the same tired expression said: "No matter now. Let us talk of something nearer.