The Girl in his House - Harold MacGrath (reading fiction .txt) 📗

FROM eleven until one o’clock each day Armitage sat in his office. His name was now upon the door, and he never looked at it without a tonic thrill of pride. Often it takes but little to amuse one’s vanity. He was playing the game, anyhow; he was no longer a cipher in human affairs: he was something, even if infinitesimally something. It was odd, but twist away from it as he might, this new energy was primarily due to Bordman’s calm unimpassioned analysis. The irony had cut deep. Bordman had rooked him thoroughly, but on the other hand the old scalawag had awakened a desire to play the game. What he had lost in money, then, he was determined to gain in character…

About his only customer was the janitor, with the usual round of complaints from tenants. Morrissy came in about noon, and together they would go over matters in detail. Plumbers and gas-fitters, meter-men and electricians, masons and tinsmiths— there was very little poetry to the job. When Armitage undertook to serve an idea he served it thoroughly; that was in the blood. He rather enjoyed the new responsibilities. His tenants always found him courteous, albeit he was always firm.

About twenty minutes were sufficient to cover the day’s work; the other hundred were devoted to the newspapers, broken dreams, and the window from which he could get a glimpse of the ceaseless flow moving north and south on Broadway, two blocks west. Sometimes he would stand over Bordman’s globe and pick out the spots he had intimately known. Only a little while ago he had been in this place or that. Here he had shot his first lion, there his first black leopard, over back of Perak. Sometimes his thoughts veered to Bordman. Where had he gone with his ill-gotten fortune?

Armitage always became cynical whenever Bordman came into his mind. He recalled the old curio-dealer in one of Balzac’s tales, “The Magic Skin,“and how the young wastrel had wished that the old chap fall in love with a ballerina. He never could quite separate Bordman from the idea that some one had accompanied him on his journey. There was no fool like an old fool. Every day in the year the newspapers had some story of this caliber. When a young woman enters the life of an old man there is no folly inconceivable. She would probably pick his pockets some day, and retribution would come in for its own.

Promptly at one Armitage left the office, changing his restaurant frequently for fear that he might fall into the old habit of going certain rounds until he became so bored that Wanderlust might not be denied, for all that at present New York held him in the strongest thrall.

The rainy season had fallen upon the town by the end of October. There were no more gallops through the Park. But there were occasions when he drove Doris about town in his recently purchased runabout. It was rare sport teaching her how to drive. She was always alive with interest.

A child’s interest. He did not notice the strange silences that often fell upon her. There were a certain restraint and demureness in these spells that would have interested Betty Burlingham.

One Saturday, as he rocked in his creaky swivel chair, smoking his strong pipe and dreaming pleasantly, the door swung open and Betty and Doris swept in, bright of eye and rich in color, for a cold northeaster was blowing. He was on his feet instantly.

“Well, this is a pleasure!”

“Don’t be too sure of that,” replied Betty. “We came at this hour because we thought you might ask us out to lunch.”

“I thought perhaps you might be looking for an office. There’s one to rent.”

Betty perched herself upon a comer of the desk, while Doris strolled about. She paused at the globe, and with the tip of her finger sent it spinning upon its axis.

“How do you like work?” asked Betty, pushing the still smoking pipe to the farthest end of the desk. “I don’t see why we women marry you men, you have such horrid habits. But never mind. How are you making out?”

“Great! I can tell a plumber from a mason at a glance. I can tell a book agent from a charity-worker by the smile alone.”

“Into what class do you put us?” asked Doris, giving the globe a final spin as she turned away.

“Angels from heaven!”

“We’ll certainly fly if you talk like that. And so this is the place where that funny little agent of yours used to work? What has become of him?”

“He was getting along in years and concluded to retire,” said Armitage, reaching for his pipe and putting it into a drawer mechanically and wondering all the rest of the day what he had done with it.

Betty stared at her hands because she was afraid to trust her eyes.

“He was very quaint,” said Doris, innocent of the bomb fuse she had lighted. “Can you write on the typewriter?”

“I can pick out Yankee Doodle, but that’s about all. It’s twelve,” he said, briskly. The sight of Doris in this office rather embarrassed him. “Any place in mind for lunch?”

“Yes. We want to go where there’s dancing. Doris hasn’t seen that phase of New York life yet. Bob’s too busy to come up-town, and so we thought you might help us out.”

“All right. But I’m as much in the dark as Miss Athelstone. You’ll have to do the guiding, Betty. How’d you come?”

“Subway. We’ve been shopping all the morning. Doris wants a new dress for that dinner I’m going to give Clare. The Honorable George is very nice. Clare is in luck.”

“So am I,” said Armitage.

“It will be my first real dinner. I’m so excited!” Doris came close to the desk. “How nice and kind you people are to me! Some one told me once that a person might live and die in New York and not know a single neighbor.”

“That’s true enough,” said Armitage, getting into his coat. “But on this especial occasion you moved in next to the nicest lady but one in this world.”

“And just who is the nicest?” Betty demanded; but she was thinking, “What a stupendous, scrumptious thing that would be!” For. now that Armitage had signified his intention of settling down and becoming a stay-at-home, she must search around among the younger women to find him a suitable wife. A normal married woman can no more tolerate a handsome eligible bachelor than she can tolerate poison in the nursery. Armitage’s doom was sealed then and there. And what appealed to Betty most strongly was the fact that it would be the most romantic thing she had ever heard of.

A pleasant hour and a half was idled away at one of the popular restaurants on Broadway. There was a little dancing, just enough to show Armitage that he had entirely lost track of the game. But Doris was interested. Her little feet kept patting time to the music. She confessed that she had never known the exhilaration of a waltz. And Armitage, gazing at her beauty, considered that it would be an exceedingly pleasurable task to be her instructor.

An idea formed and grew in his head, too; it haunted him all the rest of the day, followed him into bed that night, and made havoc of his dreams. Thereafter this idea became an obsession. Arguments were out-argued and logic had its legs knocked from under. He fought it, denied it, forswore it, but always, like the north wind, the idea returned. It grew like the genie free of the bottle; and he knew that in his case he never could coax it back into the bottle again. I don’t suppose he would have changed his plans even if he could have seen what was forward—the bullet that was nearly to write ” Finis” to his pleasant if rather checkered career.

Rather a peculiar thing happened at the dinner Betty Burlingham gave to Clare to announce her engagement to Wickliffe. After dinner and the solemn announcement that Clare was ready to risk her liberty once more, there was dancing in the big drawing-room. Doris, of course, did not dance—that is, not well enough to risk a flight across the glistening floor. She and Armitage watched the dancers for a while. Suddenly she leaned toward him.

“Let’s go home,” she said in a whisper.

The suggestion hypnotized him; the phrase was so intimate and companionable. Home, her home and still his! For it was his morally, no matter how well legally she might be intrenched there.