“You know very well that I couldn’t possibly have anything better to do.”
“I suppose that you’re full of news?”
He thought he detected in her voice a note of apprehension.
“Yes,” he answered.
“Well, you must tell me to-night.
Good-bye.”
She rang off.
It was characteristic of her that she should be able to wait so many unnecessary hours to know what so immensely concerned her.
To Bateman there was an admirable fortitude in her restraint.
At dinner, at which beside himself and Isabel no one was present but her father and mother, he watched her guide the conversation into the channels of an urbane small-talk, and it occurred to him that in just such a manner would a marquise under the shadow of the guillotine toy with the affairs of a day that would know no morrow.
Her delicate features, the aristocratic shortness of her upper lip, and her wealth of fair hair suggested the marquise again, and it must have been obvious, even if it were not notorious, that in her veins flowed the best blood in Chicago.
The dining-room was a fitting frame to her fragile beauty, for Isabel had caused the house, a replica of a palace on the Grand Canal at Venice, to be furnished by an English expert in the style of Louis XV; and the graceful decoration linked with the name of that amorous monarch enhanced her loveliness and at the same time acquired from it a more profound significance.
For Isabel’s mind was richly stored, and her conversation, however light, was never flippant.
She spoke now of the Musicale to which she and her mother had been in the afternoon, of the lectures which an English poet was giving at the Auditorium, of the political situation, and of the Old Master which her father had recently bought for fifty thousand dollars in New York.
It comforted Bateman to hear her.
He felt that he was once more in the civilised world, at the centre of culture and distinction; and certain voices, troubling and yet against his will refusing to still their clamour, were at last silent in his heart.
“Gee, but it’s good to be back in Chicago,” he said.
At last dinner was over, and when they went out of the dining-room Isabel said to her mother:
“I’m going to take Bateman along to my den.
We have various things to talk about.”
“Very well, my dear,” said Mrs Longstaffe.
“You’ll find your father and me in the Madame du Barry room when you’re through.”
Isabel led the young man upstairs and showed him into the room of which he had so many charming memories.
Though he knew it so well he could not repress the exclamation of delight which it always wrung from him.
She looked round with a smile.
“I think it’s a success,” she said.
“The main thing is that it’s right.
There’s not even an ashtray that isn’t of the period.”
“I suppose that’s what makes it so wonderful.
Like all you do it’s so superlatively right.”
They sat down in front of a log fire and Isabel looked at him with calm grave eyes.
“Now what have you to say to me?” she asked.
“I hardly know how to begin.”
“Is Edward Barnard coming back?”
“No.”
There was a long silence before Bateman spoke again, and with each of them it was filled with many thoughts.
It was a difficult story he had to tell, for there were things in it which were so offensive to her sensitive ears that he could not bear to tell them, and yet in justice to her, no less than in justice to himself, he must tell her the whole truth.
It had all begun long ago when he and Edward Barnard, still at college, had met Isabel Longstaffe at the tea-party given to introduce her to society.
They had both known her when she was a child and they long-legged boys, but for two years she had been in Europe to finish her education and it was with a surprised delight that they renewed acquaintance with the lovely girl who returned.
Both of them fell desperately in love with her, but Bateman saw quickly that she had eyes only for Edward, and, devoted to his friend, he resigned himself to the role of confidant.
He passed bitter moments, but he could not deny that Edward was worthy of his good fortune, and, anxious that nothing should impair the friendship he so greatly valued, he took care never by a hint to disclose his own feelings.
In six months the young couple were engaged.
But they were very young and Isabel’s father decided that they should not marry at least till Edward graduated.
They had to wait a year.
Bateman remembered the winter at the end of which Isabel and Edward were to be married, a winter of dances and theatre-parties and of informal gaieties at which he, the constant third, was always present.
He loved her no less because she would shortly be his friend’s wife; her smile, a gay word she flung him, the confidence of her affection, never ceased to delight him; and he congratulated himself, somewhat complacently, because he did not envy them their happiness.
Then an accident happened.
A great bank failed, there was a panic on the exchange, and Edward Barnard’s father found himself a ruined man.
He came home one night, told his wife that he was penniless, and after dinner, going into his study, shot himself.
A week later, Edward Barnard, with a tired, white face, went to Isabel and asked her to release him.