Lifted Masks | Page 6

regain position. The staring in the corner gave way to tittering--and no dying sheep had ever held its head more haughtily.
The death of this particular sheep proved long and painful. The legs of Virginia's friend and the legs of the tea-table did not seem well adapted to each other. He towered like a human mountain over the dainty thing, twisting now this way and now that. It seemed Providence--or at least so much of it as was represented by the management of that shop--had never meant fat people to drink tea. The table was rendered further out of proportion by having a large box piled on either side of it.
Expansively, and not softly, he discoursed of these things. What did they think a fellow was to do with his _knees_? Didn't they sell tea enough to afford any decent chairs? Did all these women pretend to really like tea?
Virginia's sense of humour rallied somewhat as she viewed him eating the sandwiches. Once she had called them doll-baby sandwiches; now that seemed literal: tea-cups, petit gateau, the whole service gave the fancy of his sitting down to a tea-party given by a little girl for her dollies.
But after a time he fell silent, looking around the room. And when he broke that pause his voice was different.
"These women here, all dressed so fine, nothing to do but sit around and eat this folderol, they have it easy--don't they?"
The bitterness in it, and a faint note of wistfulness, puzzled her. Certainly he had money.
"And the husbands of these women," he went on; "lots of 'em, I suppose, didn't always have so much. Maybe some of these women helped out in the early days when things weren't so easy. Wonder if the men ever think how lucky they are to be able to get it back at 'em?"
She grew more bewildered. Wasn't he "getting it back?" The money he had been spending that day!
"Young Lady," he said abruptly, "you must think I'm a queer one."
She murmured feeble protest.
"Yes, you must. Must wonder what I want with all this stuff, don't you?"
"Why, it's for your wife, isn't it?" she asked, startled.
"Oh yes, but you must wonder. You're a shrewd one, Young Lady; judging the thing by me, you must wonder."
Virginia was glad she was not compelled to state her theory. Loud and common and impossible were terms which had presented themselves, terms which she had fought with kind and good-natured and generous. Their purchases she had decided were to be used, not for a knock, but as a crashing pound at the door of the society of his town. For her part, Virginia hoped the door would come down.
"And if you knew that probably this stuff would never be worn at all, that ten to one it would never do anything more than lie round on chairs--then you would think I was queer, wouldn't you?"
She was forced to admit that that would seem rather strange.
"Young Lady, I believe I'll tell you about it. Never do talk about it to hardly anybody, but I feel as if you and I were pretty well acquainted--we've been through so much together."
She smiled at him warmly; there was something so real about him when he talked that way.
But his look then frightened her. It seemed for an instant as though he would brush the tiny table aside and seize some invisible thing by the throat. Then he said, cutting off each word short: "Young Lady, what do you think of this? I'm worth more 'an a million dollars--and my wife gets up at five o'clock every morning to do washing and scrubbing."
"Oh, it's not that she has to," he answered her look, "but she thinks she has to. See? Once we were poor. For twenty years we were poor as dirt. Then she did have to do things like that. Then I struck it. Or rather, it struck me. Oil. Oil on a bit of land I had. I had just sense enough to make the most of it; one thing led to another--well, you're not interested in that end of it. But the fact is that now we're rich. Now she could have all the things that these women have--Lord A'mighty she could lay abed every day till noon if she wanted to! But--you see?--it got her--those hard, lonely, grinding years took her. She's"--he shrunk from the terrible word and faltered out--"her mind's not--"
There was a sobbing little flutter in Virginia's throat. In a dim way she was glad to see that the girls were going. She could not have them laughing at him--now.
"Well, you can about figure out how it makes me feel," he continued, and looking into his face now it was as though the spirit redeemed the flesh. "You're smart. You can see it