The Crimson Tide: A Novel

He heard her laughing again.

“Nothing,” she answered, “–only I thought that might be the quickest way–” Her laughter interrupted her, “–to bring me the evening papers. I haven’t a thing to read.”

“That’s why you want me to take a taxi!”

“It is. News is a necessity to me, and I’m famishing… What other reason could there be for a taxi? Did you suppose I was in a hurry to see you?”

He listened to her laughter for a moment:

“All right,” he said, “I’ll take a taxi and bring a book for myself.”

“And please don’t forget my evening papers or I shall have to requisition your book… Or possibly share it with you on the upholstered sofa… And I read very rapidly and don’t like being kept waiting for slower people to turn the page… Mr. Shotwell?”

“Yes.”

“This is a wonderful floor. Could you bring some roller skates?”

“No,” he said, “but I’ll bring a music box and we’ll dance.”

“You’re not serious–”

“I am. Wait and see.”

“Don’t do such a thing. My servants would think me crazy. I’m mortally afraid of them, too.”

He found a toy-shop on Third Avenue still open, and purchased a solemn little music-box that played ting-a-ling tunes.

Then, in his taxi, he veered over to Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street, where he bought roses and a spray of orchids. Then, adding to his purchases a huge box of bon-bons, he set his course for the three story and basement house which he had sold to Palla Dumont.

CHAPTER VII

Shotwell Senior and his wife were dining out that evening.

Shotwell Junior had no plans–or admitted none, even to himself. He got into a bath and later into a dinner jacket, in an absent-minded way, and finally sauntered into the library wearing a vague scowl.

The weather had turned colder, and there was an open fire there, and a convenient armchair and the evening papers.

Perhaps the young gentleman had read them down town, for he shoved them aside. Then he dropped an elbow on the table, rested his chin against his knuckles, and gazed fiercely at the inoffensive Evening Post.

Before any open fire any young man ought to be able to make up whatever mind he chances to possess. Yet, what to do with a winter evening all his own seemed to him a problem unfathomable.

Perhaps his difficulty lay only in selection–there are so many agreeable things for a young man to do in Gotham Town on a winter’s evening.

But, oddly enough, young Shotwell was trying to persuade himself that he had no choice of occupation for the evening; that he really didn’t care. Yet, always two intrusive alternatives continually presented themselves. The one was to change his coat for a spike-tail, his black tie for a white one, and go to the Metropolitan Opera. The other and more attractive alternative was not to go.

Elorn Sharrow would be at the opera. To appear, now and then, in the Sharrow family’s box was expected of him. He hadn’t done it recently.

He dropped one lean leg over the other and gazed gravely at the fire. He was still trying to convince himself that he had no particular plan for the evening–that it was quite likely he might go to the opera or to the club–or, in fact, almost anywhere his fancy suggested.

In his effort to believe himself the scowl came back, denting his eyebrows. Presently he forced a yawn, unsuccessfully.

Yes, he thought he’d better go to the opera, after all. He ought to go… It seemed to be rather expected of him.

Besides, he had nothing else to do–that is, nothing in particular–unless, of course–

But that would scarcely do. He’d been there so often recently… No, that wouldn’t do… Besides it was becoming almost a habit with him. He’d been drifting there so frequently of late!.. In fact, he’d scarcely been anywhere at all, recently, except–except where he certainly was not going that evening. And that settled it!.. So he might as well go to the opera.

His mother, in scarf and evening wrap, passing the library door on her way down, paused in the hall and looked intently at her only son.

Recently she had been observing him rather closely and with a vague uneasiness born of that inexplicable sixth sense inherent in mothers.

Perhaps what her son had faced in France accounted for the change in him;–for it was being said that no man could come back from such scenes unchanged;–none could ever again be the same. And it was being said, too, that old beliefs and ideals had altered; that everything familiar was ending;–and that the former things had already passed away under the glimmering dawn of a new heaven and a new earth.

Perhaps all this was so–though she doubted it. Perhaps this son she had borne in agony might become to her somebody less familiar than the baby she had nursed at her own breast.

But so far, to her, he continued to remain the same familiar baby she had always known–the same and utterly vital part of her soul and body. No sudden fulfilment of an apocalypse had yet wrought any occult metamorphosis in this boy of hers.

And if he now seemed changed it was from that simple and familiar cause instinctively understood by mothers,–trouble!–the most ancient plague of all and the only malady which none escapes.

She was a rather startlingly pretty woman, with the delicate features and colour and the snow-white hair of an 18th century belle. She stood, now, drawing on her gloves and watching her son out of dark-fringed deep blue eyes, until he glanced around uneasily. Then he rose at once, looking at her with fire-dazzled eyes.

“Don’t rise, dear,” she said; “the car is here and your father is fussing and fuming in the drawing-room, and I’ve got to run… Have you any plans for the evening?”

“None, mother.”

“You’re dining at home?”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you go to the opera to-night? It’s the Sharrows’ night.”

He came toward her irresolutely. “Perhaps I shall,” he said. And instantly she knew he did not intend to go.

“I had tea at the Sharrows’,” she said, carelessly, still buttoning her gloves. “Elorn told me that she hadn’t laid eyes on you for ages.”

“It’s happened so… I’ve had a lot of things to do–”

“You and she still agree, don’t you, Jim?”

“Why, yes–as usual. We always get on together.”

Helen Shotwell’s ermine wrap slipped; he caught it and fastened it for her, and she took hold of both his hands and drew his arms tightly around her pretty shoulders.

“What troubles you, darling?” she asked smilingly.

“Why, nothing, mother–”

“Tell me!”