“Isn’t it nice?” she answered.
“You can have it if you want it,” he remarked.
“That’s a pretty ring you have,” he said, touching a commonplace setting which adorned the hand holding the card he had given her.
“Do you think so?”
“That’s right,” he answered, making use of a pretence at examination to secure her finger. “That’s fine.”
The ice being thus broken, he launched into further observation pretending to forget that her fingers were still retained by his. She soon withdrew them, however, and retreated a few feet to rest against the window-sill.
“I didn’t see you for a long time,” she said, coquettishly, repulsing one of his exuberant approaches. “You must have been away.”
“I was,” said Drouet.
“Do you travel far?”
“Pretty far—yes.”
“Do you like it?”
“Oh, not very well. You get tired of it after a while.”
“I wish I could travel,” said the girl, gazing idly out of the window.
“What has become of your friend, Mr. Hurstwood?” she suddenly asked, bethinking herself of the manager, who, from her own observation, seemed to contain promising material.
“He’s here in town. What makes you ask about him?”
“Oh, nothing, only he hasn’t been here since you got back.”
“How did you come to know him?”
“Didn’t I take up his name a dozen times in the last month?”
“Get out,” said the drummer, lightly. “He hasn’t called more than half a dozen times since we’ve been here.”
“He hasn’t, eh?” said the girl, smiling. “That’s all you know about it.”
Drouet took on a slightly more serious tone. He was uncertain as to whether she was joking or not.
“Tease,” he said, “what makes you smile that way?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“Have you seen him recently?”
“Not since you came back,” she laughed.
“Before?”
“Certainly.”
“How often?”
“Why, nearly every day.”
She was a mischievous newsmonger, and was keenly wondering what the effect of her words would be.
“Who did he come to see?” asked the drummer, incredulously.
“Mrs. Drouet.”
He looked rather foolish at this answer, and then attempted to correct himself so as not to appear a dupe.
“Well,” he said, “what of it?”
“Nothing,” replied the girl, her head cocked coquettishly on one side.
“He’s an old friend,” he went on, getting deeper into the mire.
He would have gone on further with his little flirtation, but the taste for it was temporarily removed. He was quite relieved when the girl’s named was called from below.
“I’ve got to go,” she said, moving away from him airily.
“I’ll see you later,” he said, with a pretence of disturbance at being interrupted.
When she was gone, he gave freer play to his feelings. His face, never easily controlled by him, expressed all the perplexity and disturbance which he felt. Could it be that Carrie had received so many visits and yet said nothing about them? Was Hurstwood lying? What did the chambermaid mean by it, anyway? He had thought there was something odd about Carrie’s manner at the time. Why did she look so disturbed when he had asked her how many times Hurstwood had called? By George! He remembered now. There was something strange about the whole thing.
He sat down in a rocking-chair to think the better, drawing up one leg on his knee and frowning mightily. His mind ran on at a great rate.
And yet Carrie hadn’t acted out of the ordinary. It couldn’t be, by George, that she was deceiving him. She hadn’t acted that way. Why, even last night she had been as friendly toward him as could be, and Hurstwood too. Look how they acted! He could hardly believe they would try to deceive him.
His thoughts burst into words.
“She did act sort of funny at times. Here she had dressed, and gone out this morning and never said a word.”
He scratched his head and prepared to go down town. He was still frowning. As he came into the hall he encountered the girl, who was now looking after another chamber. She had on a white dusting cap, beneath which her chubby face shone good-naturedly. Drouet almost forgot his worry in the fact that she was smiling on him. He put his hand familiarly on her shoulder, as if only to greet her in passing.
“Got over being mad?” she said, still mischievously inclined.
“I’m not mad,” he answered.
“I thought you were,” she said, smiling.
“Quit your fooling about that,” he said, in an offhand way. “Were you serious?”
“Certainly,” she answered. Then, with an air of one who did not intentionally mean to create trouble, “He came lots of times. I thought you knew.”
The game of deception was up with Drouet. He did not try to simulate indifference further.
“Did he spend the evenings here?” he asked.
“Sometimes. Sometimes they went out.”
“In the evening?”
“Yes. You mustn’t look so mad, though.”
“I’m not,” he said. “Did any one else see him?”
“Of course,” said the girl, as if, after all, it were nothing in particular.
“How long ago was this?”
“Just before you came back.”
The drummer pinched his lip nervously.
“Don’t say anything, will you?” he asked, giving the girl’s arm a gentle squeeze.
“Certainly not,” she returned. “I wouldn’t worry over it.”
“All right,” he said, passing on, seriously brooding for once, and yet not wholly unconscious of the fact that he was making a most excellent impression upon the chambermaid.
“I’ll see her about that,” he said to himself, passionately, feeling that he had been unduly wronged. “I’ll find out, b’George, whether she’ll act that way or not.”
Chapter XXI
* * *
The Lure Of The Spirit — The Flesh In Pursuit
When Carrie came Hurstwood had been waiting many minutes. His blood was warm; his nerves wrought up. He was anxious to see the woman who had stirred him so profoundly the night before.
“Here you are,” he said, repressedly, feeling a spring in his limbs and an elation which was tragic in itself.
“Yes,” said Carrie.
They walked on as if bound for some objective point, while Hurstwood drank in the radiance of her presence. The rustle of her pretty skirt was like music to him.
“Are you satisfied?” he asked, thinking of how well she did the night before.
“Are you?”
He tightened his fingers as he saw the smile she gave him.
“It was wonderful.”
Carrie laughed ecstatically.
“That was one of the best things I’ve seen in a long time,” he added.
He was dwelling on her attractiveness as he had felt it the evening before, and mingling it with the feeling her presence inspired now.
Carrie was dwelling in the atmosphere which this man created for her. Already she was enlivened and suffused with a glow. She felt his drawing toward her in every sound of his voice.
“Those were such nice flowers you sent me,” she said, after a moment or two. “They were beautiful.”
“Glad you liked them,” he answered, simply.
He was thinking all the time that the subject of his desire was being delayed. He was anxious to turn the talk to his own feelings. All was ripe for it. His Carrie was beside him. He wanted to plunge in and expostulate with her, and yet he found himself fishing for words and feeling for a way.
“You got home all right,” he said, gloomily, of a sudden, his tune modifying itself to one of self-commiseration.
“Yes,” said Carrie, easily.
He looked at her steadily for a moment, slowing his pace and fixing her with his eye.
She felt the flood of feeling.
“How about me?” he asked.
This confused Carrie considerably, for she realised the floodgates were open. She didn’t know exactly what to answer. “I don’t know,” she answered.
He took his lower lip between his teeth for a moment, and then let it go. He stopped by the walk side and kicked the grass with his toe. He searched her face with a tender, appealing glance.
“Won’t you come away from him?” he asked, intensely.
“I don’t know,” returned Carrie, still illogically drifting and finding nothing at which to catch.
As a matter of fact, she was in a most hopeless quandary. Here was a man whom she thoroughly liked, who exercised an influence over her, sufficient almost to delude her into the belief that she was possessed of a lively passion for him. She was still the victim of his keen eyes, his suave manners, his fine clothes. She looked and saw before her a man who was most gracious and sympathetic, who leaned toward her with a feeling that was a delight to observe. She could not resist the glow of his temperament, the light of his eye. She could hardly keep from feeling what he felt.
And yet she was not without thoughts which were disturbing. What did he know? What had Drouet told him? Was she a wife in his eyes, or what? Would he marry her? Even while he talked, and she softened, and her eyes were lighted with a tender glow, she was asking herself if Drouet had told him they were not married. There was never anything at all convincing about what Drouet said.