Ladies Must Live written by Alice Duer Miller

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"You ought to have more pride than to want to see a fellow who has made
it so clear he doesn't care sixpence about seeing you."

Christine openly smiled at Max, as she answered: "Well, I do want to see
him," and Linburne turning to see at what her smile was directed found
himself face to face with Riatt.

Max made a gesture to the footman, and shut the door behind his hasty
retreat, then he came slowly into the room.

"In one thing you are mistaken, Mr. Linburne," he said. "I do care
whether or not I see Miss Fenimer."

Linburne was angry at Christine, not only for insisting on seeing Riatt,
but for the lovely smile with which she had greeted him. He was glad of
an outlet for his feelings.

He almost shrugged his shoulders. "An outsider can only judge by your
conduct, Mr. Riatt," he answered. "And I may tell you that you have
subjected Miss Fenimer to a good deal of disagreeable gossip by your
apparently caring so little."

"And others by apparently caring so much," said Max.

Christine was the only one who recognized at once the fact that both men
were angry; and she did not pour oil on the waters by laughing gaily.
"You can't find any subject for argument there," she observed, "for you
are both perfectly right. You have both made me the subject of gossip;
but don't let it worry you, for my best friends have long ago accustomed
me to that."

"I hope you won't think I'm asking too much, Mr. Riatt," said Linburne,
with a politeness that only accentuated his irritation, "in suggesting
that as your visit is, I believe, unexpected, and as mine is an
appointment of some standing, that you will go away and let me finish my
conversation with Miss Fenimer."

Max smiled. "Oddly enough," he said, "I was about to make the same
request to you. But I suppose we must let Miss Fenimer settle the
question."

Christine smiled like an angel. "Can't we have a nice time as we are?"
she asked.

This frivolous reply was properly ignored by both men, and Riatt went on:
"Don't you think you ought to consider the fact that Miss Fenimer and I
are engaged?"

"Miss Fenimer assures me she does not intend to marry you."

"And may I ask if you consider that she does intend to marry you--that is
if you should happen to become marriageable?"

"That is a question between her and me," returned Linburne.

Riatt laughed. "I see," he said. "The matrimonial plans of my future wife
are no affair of mine?" And for an instant he felt his most proprietary
rights were being invaded.

"Miss Fenimer is not your future wife."

"Well, Mr. Linburne, I hear you say so."

"You shall hear _her_ say so," answered Linburne. "Christine," he added
peremptorily, "tell Riatt what you have just been telling me."

There was a long painful silence. Both men stood looking intently at
Christine, who sat with her head erect, staring ahead of her like a
sphinx, but saying nothing. After a moment she glanced up at Max's face,
as if she expected to find there an answer to her problem. She did not
look at Linburne.

"Christine," said Max very gently, "what have you told Mr. Linburne?"

"She has told me everything," answered Linburne impetuously, and then
seeing by the glance that the two others exchanged that such was not the
case, his temper got the best of him.

"Do you mean you've been lying to me?" he asked.

"Just what did you tell him, Christine?" said Riatt, finding it easier
and easier to be calm and protecting as his adversary grew more violent.

Christine looked up at him with the innocence of a child. "I told him
that we did not love each other, and that our engagement was really
broken, but that no one was to know until March."

"Why did you tell him that?"

"It's the truth, Max--almost the truth."

"Almost the truth!" cried Linburne. "Do you want me to think you care
something for this man after all?"

"In the simple section of the country from which I come," observed Riatt,
"we often care a good deal for the people we marry."

Linburne turned on him. "Really, Mr. Riatt," he said, "you don't take an
idea very quickly. You have just heard Miss Fenimer say that she did not
love you and that she considered your engagement at an end."

"I heard her say she had told you that."

"You mean to imply that she said what was untrue?"

"I could answer your question better," said Riatt, "if I understood a
little more clearly what your connection with this whole situation is."

"The connection of any old friend who does not care to see Miss Fenimer
neglected and humiliated," answered Linburne, all the more hotly because
he knew it was an awkward question.

Perhaps the young poet had not been so wrong in attaching the name
of Helen to Miss Fenimer, for she sat now as calmly interested in
the conflict developing before her, as Helen when she sat on the
walls of Troy and designated the Greek heroes for the amusement of
her newer friends.

"May I ask, Mr. Riatt, what rights in the matter you consider that you
have?" Linburne pursued.

For Riatt, too, the question was an awkward one, but he had his answer
ready. "The rights," he said, "of a man who certainly was once engaged to
Miss Fenimer, and who came East ignorant that the engagement was already
at an end."

Christine laughed. "Very neatly put," she said.

"Neatly put," exclaimed Linburne. "You talk as if we were playing a
game."

"You have the reputation of playing all games well, my dear Lee," she
returned. The obvious fact that she was enjoying the interview, made both
men eager to end it--but, unfortunately, they wished to end it in
diametrically opposite ways.

"Christine," said Linburne, "will you ask Mr. Riatt to be so kind as to
let me have ten minutes alone with you?"

Riatt spoke to her also. "I will do exactly as you say," he said, "but
you understand that if I go now, I shall not come back."

Christine smiled. "Is that a threat or a promise?" she asked, the
sweetness of her smile almost taking away the sting of her words.

Seeing that she hesitated, Riatt went on: "Since I have come more than a
thousand miles to see you, don't you think you might suggest to Mr.
Linburne that he let me have my visit undisturbed?"

There was a long and rather terrible pause, terrible that is to the two
men. Christine probably enjoyed every second of it. There was nothing in
Linburne's experience of life to make him think that any woman whom he
had honored with his preference was likely to prefer another man to
himself. So the pause was terrible to him, not because he doubted what
the climax would be, but because he felt his dignity insulted by even an
appearance of hesitation. Max, on the other hand, was still a good deal
in doubt as to her ultimate intentions.

It was to him, finally, that she spoke.

"Max," she said, "do you remember that while we were staying at the
Usshers' we composed a certain document together?"

He nodded, and then as she did not continue, he opened his pocketbook and
took out the release.

She made no motion to take it; on the contrary, she leaned back and
crossed her hands in her lap.

"Yes," she said, "that's it. Well, you may stay, if you care to burn that
scrap of paper."

It was now Max's turn to hesitate, for the decision of freedom or
captivity was in his own hands; the crisis he had so recklessly rushed to
meet was now upon him.

"What is in that paper?" asked Linburne, as one who has a right to
question.

Christine was perfectly good-tempered as she answered: "Well, Lee, it
still belongs to Mr. Riatt; but if he decides not to burn it, I promise
to tell you all about it as we drink our tea."

"Do you promise me that, Christine?"

"Most solemnly, Lee." She looked up at Linburne, and before Max knew what
he was doing he found he had dropped the paper into the fire.

Strangely enough, though the fire was hot, the paper did not catch at
once, but curled and rocked an instant in the heat, before it disappeared
in flame and smoke. Not until it was a black crisp did Christine turn to
Linburne, and hold out her hand.

"Good-by, Lee," she said pleasantly. But he did not answer or take her
hand. He left the room in silence.

When the door had shut behind him, Christine glanced at her remaining
visitor. "And now," she said, "I suppose you are wishing you had not."

"What sort of a woman are you?" Riatt exclaimed. "Will you take any
man that offers, me or Hickson, or Linburne or me again, just as luck
will have it?"

"I take the best that offers, Max--and that's no lie."

The implied compliment did not soften Riatt. He went on: "If you and I
are really to be married--"

"If, my dear Max! What could be more certain?"

"Since, then, we are to be married, you must tell me exactly what has
taken place between you and Linburne."

"With pleasure. Won't you sit down?" She pointed to a chair near her own,
but Riatt remained standing. "Shall we have tea first?"

"We'll have the story."

"Oh, it's not much of a story. Lee and I have known each other since
we were children. I suppose I always had it in mind that I might
marry him--"

"You loved him?"

"Certainly not. He always had too high an opinion of himself, and I used
to enjoy taking it out of him--and making it up to him afterwards, too. I
used to enjoy that as well. Sometimes, of course, he found the process
too unbearable; and in one of his fits of anger at me, just after he left
college, he went and blundered into this marriage with Pauline. She, you
see, took him at his own valuation. His marriage seemed to put an end to
everything between us--"

"You surprise me."

Christine laughed. "Ah, I was younger then."

"You kept on seeing him?"

"Naturally we met now and then. Sometimes he used to tell me how I was
the only woman--"

"That is your idea of putting an end to everything?"

"Oh, if one took seriously all the men who say that--I did not think
much about Lee's feelings for me, until my engagement was announced.
Then it appeared that the notion of my marrying some one else was
intolerable to him."

"A high order of affection," exclaimed Riatt. "He was content enough
until there seemed some chance of your being happy."

"Perhaps he did not consider that life with you would promise absolute
happiness, Max."

"I don't call that love. I call it jealousy."

At this Christine laughed outright. "And what emotion, may I ask, has
just brought you here in such haste?"

The thrust went home. Riatt changed countenance.

"But I," he said, "never pretended to love you."

"Why then are you marrying me?"

"Heaven knows."

"I know, too," she answered, unperturbed by his rudeness, "and some day
if you're good I'll tell you."

Her calm assumption that everything was well seemed to him unbearable. "I
don't know that I feel very much inclined to chat," he said, turning
toward the door. "I'll see you sometime to-morrow."

She said nothing to oppose him, and he left the room. Downstairs the same
footman was waiting to let him out. To him, at least, Riatt seemed a
triumphant lover, only as Linburne had long since heavily subsidized him,
even his admiration was tinctured with regret.

As for Max, himself, he left the house even more restless and
dissatisfied than he had entered it.

To be honest, he had, he knew, sometimes imagined a moment when he would
take Christine in his arms and say: "Marry me anyhow." Such an action he
knew would be reckless, but he had supposed it would be pleasant. But now
there was nothing but bitterness and jealousy in his mood. What did he
know or care for such people? he said to himself. What did he know of
their standards and their histories? How much of Christine's story about
Linburne was to be believed? What more natural than that they had always
loved each other? Some one knew the truth--every one, very likely, except
himself. But whom could he ask? He could have believed Nancy on one side
as little as Laura on the other.

And as he thought this, he saw coming down the street, Hickson--a witness
prejudiced, perhaps, but strictly honest.

For the first time in their short acquaintance, Hickson's face brightened
at the sight of Riatt, and he called out with evident sincerity: "I am
glad to see you."

"I came on rather unexpectedly."

"I'm glad you did. Quite right." Hickson stopped at this, and looked at
his companion with such wistful uncertainty, that it seemed perfectly
natural for Riatt, answering that look, to say:

"You may speak frankly to me, you know."

Ned took a long breath. "I believe that I may," he said. "I hope so,
anyhow. I haven't had any one I could be frank with. Between ourselves,
Fenimer is no good at all."

"What, my future father-in-law?"

"Is that what he is?" Hickson asked with, for him, unusual directness.

Riatt's affirmative was not very decided, and Ned went on:

"I can't even talk to Nancy about it. She's keen, but she does not
understand Christine. She attributes the most shocking motives to her,
and when I object, she says every one is like that, only I haven't sense
enough to see it. Well, I never pretended to have as much sense as Nancy,
but I see some things that she doesn't. I see, for instance, that there's
something noble in Christine, in spite of--I beg your pardon for talking
to you like this, but you must remember that I have known her a good deal
longer than you have, and that in a different way perhaps I care for her
almost as much as you do."

"I told you to speak frankly," answered Riatt. "What is it that Mrs.
Almar says of Christine?"

At first Hickson refused to answer, but the suffering and anxiety he had
been undergoing pushed him toward self-expression, and Riatt did not have
to be very skilful to extract the whole story. Nancy had asserted that
Christine had never intended for a minute to marry Riatt--that she had
just used him to excite Linburne's jealousy to such a point that he would
arrange matters so that he could marry her himself. For once Riatt found
himself in accord with Nancy.

"Do more people than your sister think that?"

Hickson was not without his reserves. "Oh, I dare say, but I don't care
about that sort of gossip. It's absurd to say she and Linburne are
engaged. How can a girl be engaged to a married man?"

"We must move with the times, my dear Hickson," said Riatt bitterly.

"Linburne's no good," Ned went on, "not where women are concerned. He
wouldn't treat her well if he did marry her. Why, Riatt," he added
solemnly, "I'd far rather see her married to you than to him."

If Max felt disposed to smile at this innocent endorsement, he suppressed
the inclination, and merely answered:

"You may have your wish."

"I hope so," said Ned. "But you mustn't go off to kingdom-come, and leave
Linburne a clear field. He's a man who knows how to talk to women, and
what with the infatuation she has always had for him--"

"You think she has always cared for him?" asked Max. He tried to smooth
his tone down to one of calm interest, but it alarmed Hickson.

"I don't know," he returned hastily. "I used to think so, but I may be
wrong. I thought the same thing about you at the Usshers'. She kept
saying she wasn't a bit in love with you, but it seemed to me she was
different with you from what she had ever been with any one else. I
suppose I oughtn't to have said that either. Upon my word, Riatt, it is
awfully good of you to let me talk like this! I can assure you it is a
great relief to me."

His companion could hardly have echoed this sentiment. As he walked back
alone to his hotel, he found that Hickson's words had put the last
touches to his mental discomfort.

At first his own conduct had seemed inexplicable to him. Everything had
been going well, he had been just about to be free from the whole
entanglement, when an impulse of primitive jealousy and fierce masculine
egotism had suddenly brought him to New York and bound him hand and foot.
It had not been an agreeable prospect--to live among people whose
standards he did not understand, with a woman whom he did not love. But,
since his conversation with Hickson, his eyes were opened, and he saw the
situation in far more tragic colors.

He _did_ love her. He did not believe in her or trust her; he had no
illusions as to her feeling for him, but his for her was clear--he loved
her, loved her with that strange mingling of passion and hatred so often
found and so rarely admitted.

He could imagine a man's learning, even under the most suspicious
circumstances, to conquer jealousy of a woman who loved him. Or he could
imagine having confidence in a woman who did not pretend love. But to be
married to a woman whom you love, without a shred of belief either in her
principles or her affection, seemed to Riatt about as terrible a prospect
as could be offered to a human being.

There was just one chance for him--that Christine might be willing to
release him. If she really loved Linburne, if there had been some sort of
understanding between them in the past, if his coming had only
precipitated a lovers' quarrel, then certainly Christine had too much
intelligence to let such a chance slip through her fingers just on the
eve of Linburne's divorce. Nor was she, he thought bitterly, too proud to
stoop to ask a man to reconsider; nor did it seem likely, however deeply
Linburne's vanity had been wounded, that he would refuse to listen.

With this in mind, as soon as he reached his hotel, he sat down and wrote
her a letter:

"My dear Christine:

"What was it, according to your idea, that happened this afternoon? I
believed that for the first time I asked you to marry me, and that you,
for the first time definitely accepted me. But as I think over your
manner, I am led to think you supposed it was just a continuation of
our old joke.

"Did you accept me, Christine? And if so, why? Why commit yourself to a
marriage without affection, at the psychological moment when a man for
whom you have always cared is about to be free?

"If you still need me in the game, I am ready enough to be of use, but
I will not be bound to a relation unless you, too, consider it
irrevocably binding.

"Yours,
M.R."

He told the messenger to wait for an answer, but he thought that
Christine would hardly be willing to commit herself on such short notice,
or without an interview with Linburne.

But, within a surprisingly short interval, her letter was in his
impatient hands.

"Dear Max:

"I will not be so cruel as to leave you one moment longer in the false
hope that your little break for freedom may be successful. Face the fact,
bravely, my dear. I am going to marry you. We are both irrevocably
bound--at least as irrevocably as the marriage tie can bind nowadays. If
this afternoon my manner seemed less portentous than you expected, that
must have been because I have always counted on just this termination to
our little adventure. You must do me the justice to confess that I have
always told you so. As for Lee, in spite of Nancy (I suppose it was Nancy
to whom you rushed for information from my very doorstep) I have never
cared sixpence for him.

"Yours till death us do part,

"CHRISTINE."

Max read the letter which was brought to him while he was at dinner. He
put it into his pocket, finished an excellent salad, went to the theater,
came back to the hotel and went to bed and to sleep rather congratulating
himself on the fact that he had become callous to the whole situation,
and that, so far as he was concerned, the crisis was past.

But of course it wasn't. With the rattle of the first milkcart, which in
a modern city has taken the place of the half-awakened bird, he woke up,
and if he had been in jail he could not have felt a more choking sense of
imprisonment. There was no escape for him, no hope.

He got up and looked out at the city far below, all outlined like a great
electric sign that said nothing. There must be some way of being free,
besides jumping from the twelfth story window. He lit a cigarette, and
stood thinking. Men disappeared every day; it could be done. What were
the chances, he wondered, of being identified if he shipped as steward,
or engineer for that matter, on a South American freighter?

It was full daylight before he found himself in possession of a possible
scheme. He remembered the legend of a certain Saint, told him by his
nurse in his early days. She had been beautiful, too beautiful for her
religious ideals; the number of her suitors was distracting; so to one of
them who had extravagantly admired her eyes she sent them on a salver.

Riatt did not intend sending Christine his worldly goods, but recognizing
that they were the source of the whole trouble, he decided to get rid of
the major part. The problem was simply to lose his money before the date
set for the wedding. And that was not so difficult, after all. There were
a number of people in the metropolis he thought who would give him every
assistance.

The problem of getting it back again at some future time was more
complicated, but even that he thought he could accomplish. He had made
one fortune and he supposed he could some day make another.

The practical question was: What sum would make him impossible to
Christine as a husband? Twenty thousand a year would be out of the
question. But to be perfectly safe he decided to leave himself only
fifteen thousand. He would begin operation as soon as the exchange opened
in the morning. In the meantime what about that mine of Welsley's? There
was an easy means of sinking almost any sum.

He took up the telephone and sent a telegram at once.

"Plans for my wedding prevent trip to mine. Have, however, decided after
minute investigation here to invest $500,000 in it. Believe we shall make
our fortunes."

He stood an instant with the instrument still in his hand. "Suppose the
damned thing succeeds," he thought, "I shall be worse off than ever."

Then his faith returned to him. "Nothing of Welsley's ever did
succeed," he thought; and with this conclusion he went back to bed and
slept like a child.

CHAPTER VI

With his definite decision and unalterable plan of action, wonderful
peace of mind had come to Riatt. He said to himself that he was now to
have a few weeks--whatever time it should take him to lose his fortune
decently--of being engaged to a woman whom, he now acknowledged, he
passionately loved. He intended to make the best of it.

The next day as he walked up Fifth Avenue on his way to lunch with her,
another inspiration came to him; it was not necessary to lose his money;
spending it would be quite as effective. Acting on this idea, he went
into a celebrated jeweler's shop, and with astonishing celerity chose,
paid for and pocketed a string of brilliant pearls.

It was a present that might have made any man welcome--and Christine had
never been accused of not being able to express herself when she wanted
to--but Christine had already welcomed him for his changed demeanor; his
brilliant smile and unruffled brow told her as soon as she saw him that
he was a very different person from the tortured and irritable creature
who had left her the preceding afternoon.

Never were two people more disposed to find each other and themselves
agreeable, and Riatt was in process of clasping the pearls about
Christine's neck (for she had had some unaccountable difficulty in doing
it for herself) when the drawing-room door opened and Nancy Almar
strolled in.

Her jaw did not actually drop at the scene that met her eyes, for that
did not happen to be her method of expressing surprise, but her manner
conveyed none the less an astonishment not very agreeable.

"Was I mistaken," she said, "in thinking I was to stop and take you to
the Bentons'?"

"Quite right, my dear. Only Max's return has put everything else out
of my head."

"What, you didn't ever expect him to come back?"

"You talk, Nancy, as if you had never heard that we were engaged."

"If you really are, Christine, why are the Linburnes being divorced?"

"Because they loathe each other, I imagine."

"What a changeable creature you are, Christine! It seems only the other
day that you were crying your eyes out because Lee was engaged."

Without glancing at Max, Christine became aware that some of the gaiety
had gone from his expression.

"Have you seen my pearls, dear?" she said.

It was a complete answer, so far as Nancy was concerned, for she was one
of the women who can never harden herself to the sight of another
woman's jewels.

"How beautiful, love," she answered. "If they were only a trifle larger
they might be mistaken for your old imitation string." Then feeling that
she could never better this, she took her departure.

"Oh, dear," sighed Christine, "do you think I shall ever get so superior
that Nancy can't tease me when she says things like that?"

"Did you really cry, Christine?"

"The night you went away?"

"When you first heard of Linburne's engagement?"

She nodded at him, like a child who would like to lie its way out
of a scrape.

"But then I often cry over trifles," she added.

"Like my going away?"

"Really, Max, you ought to be able to understand why I cried over Lee's
engagement. It was Nancy who brought me the news, and she was so
triumphant over it. She said every one would think he had been making a
fool of me. You know she has the power of teasing me more than any one in
the world--except, perhaps, you."

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