PAGE 8
Her First Appearance
by
Van Bibber picked up his high hat from the table, looked into it critically, and settled it on his head. “Good-night,” he said, and walked slowly towards the door. He had his hand on the knob, when Mr. Caruthers raised his head.
“Wait just one minute, please, Mr. Van Bibber?” asked Mr. Caruthers.
Van Bibber stopped with a prompt obedience which would have led one to conclude that he might have put on his hat only to precipitate matters.
“Before you go,” said Mr. Caruthers, grudgingly, “I want to say–I want you to understand my position.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Van Bibber, lightly, opening the door.
“No, it is not all right. One moment, please. I do not intend that you shall go away from here with the idea that you have tried to do me a service, and that I have been unable to appreciate it, and that you are a much-abused and much-misunderstood young man. Since you have done me the honor to make my affairs your business, I would prefer that you should understand them fully. I do not care to have you discuss my conduct at clubs and afternoon teas with young women until you–“
Van Bibber drew in his breath sharply, with a peculiar whistling sound, and opened and shut his hands. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that if I were you,” he said, simply.
“I beg your pardon,” the older man said, quickly. “That was a mistake. I was wrong. I beg your pardon. But you have tried me very sorely. You have intruded upon a private trouble that you ought to know must be very painful to me. But I believe you meant well. I know you to be a gentleman, and I am willing to think you acted on impulse, and that you will see to-morrow what a mistake you have made. It is not a thing I talk about; I do not speak of it to my friends, and they are far too considerate to speak of it to me. But you have put me on the defensive. You have made me out more or less of a brute, and I don’t intend to be so far misunderstood. There are two sides to every story, and there is something to be said about this, even for me.”
He walked back to his place beside the mantel, and put his shoulders against it, and faced Van Bibber, with his fingers twisted in the cord around his waist.
“When I married,” said Mr. Caruthers, “I did so against the wishes of my people and the advice of all my friends. You know all about that. God help us! who doesn’t?” he added, bitterly. “It was very rich, rare reading for you and for every one else who saw the daily papers, and we gave them all they wanted of it. I took her out of that life and married her because I believed she was as good a woman as any of those who had never had to work for their living, and I was bound that my friends and your friends should recognize her and respect her as my wife had a right to be respected; and I took her abroad that I might give all you sensitive, fine people a chance to get used to the idea of being polite to a woman who had once been a burlesque actress. It began over there in Paris. What I went through then no one knows; but when I came back–and I would never have come back if she had not made me–it was my friends I had to consider, and not her. It was in the blood; it was in the life she had led, and in the life men like you and me had taught her to live. And it had to come out.”