No Nice Girl (15 page)

Hand in hand they went swiftly up the garden path and to the drive, where the car waited. There she hesitated just a moment, and asked him anxiously, “You—you won't be sorry, later on? You won't feel I took advantage of you because of the moonlight, and because I love you so much?”

“You precious silly!” He caught her and held her close and said, his voice a little rough, “Darling, all my life I've gone hungry for a love that would be real and lasting. I've found it, and it's made me the happiest man that will ever draw breath. Sorry? Life won't be long enough for me to be grateful to you—for loving me and letting me marry you.”

“Oh,” she said when he had kissed her. “Oh, my darling!”

But he seemed to find no inadequacy in the words, as he lifted her in his arms as though she weighed nothing and tucked her into the car.

I
T WAS ELEVEN IN THE MORNING
when Mr. and Mrs. Kenyon Rutledge returned to New York. In spite of Kenyon's pleas, Anice, in the crisply smart little frock he had bought for her en route as soon as the stores were opened, had insisted that she take a taxi to her “shabby little old room” to collect her scanty baggage. Even now, as his dewy-eyed, radiant bride, she could not bear to have him see where she had lived; and because he was idiotically in love with her and she could do no wrong, Kenyon finally reluctantly agreed.

“I'll see Mrs. Lawrence, then, and pick you up here at one,” he promised, and kissed her before he put her into a waiting taxi.

Anice all but bounced like an excited, incredibly delighted child as the taxi threaded its way across town to the small and exclusive women's hotel. She looked with awed eyes at the beautiful diamond ring on her slim finger and the hoop of diamonds that guarded it.

Buying it in the first jewelry shop that she could find open after their departure from Elkton that morning, Kenyon had said, dissatisfied, “It isn't nearly good enough for you, sweet, though I suppose it's the best we can do for now. But we'll replace it. I'll have my mother's jewels reset for you and we can pick up something for you at Cartier's or Tiffany's until that's being done.”

She made no effort to conceal her awed delight in the magnificence of the ring he did not feel was good enough for her. But as she drove through the thick morning traffic toward her hotel, her eyes were narrowed with greed and her rose-red mouth was thin.

In her room, she packed swiftly and competently. Gowns that she had loved and treasured she now despised. They were, as Kenyon had said about the ring, not nearly good enough for Mrs. Kenyon Rutledge. The smart, expensive luggage—she eyed it thoughtfully. Kenyon thought she was desperately poor and shabby, did he? He wanted to shower her with extravagant, expensive things, did he? Well, bless the man, he certainly should!

She took a taxi to a shop specializing in the slightly worn gowns of actresses and society women, and haggled successfully for an excellent price for the gowns and wraps and slippers and hats. She kept the simplest only, and acquired, in place of the expensive new luggage, a well-worn small bag in which she packed the few things she had kept. If Kenyon wanted to look upon himself as Prince Charming marrying Cinderella with the ashes still in her hair—if he liked to think of himself as a King Cophetua marrying a beggar maid—well, that was quite all right with her, she told herself contentedly. She took a taxi to the bank where her savings were deposited and added to the fund the not inconsiderate sum she had received for her clothes and the luggage.

It was an almost irresistible temptation to invade shops heretofore forbidden because of their expensiveness. She would have to wait, though, wait until the world—as much of it as was interested in such matters—knew that she was Mrs. Kenyon Rutledge….

Meanwhile, Kenyon was facing a surprised and puzzled Letty in the living room of her charming apartment.
Quietly, with an almost grim look in his eyes, he said: “I've played you a very shabby trick, Letty, and the least I can do is come and tell you personally.”

“A shabby trick, Ken?” Letty repeated, puzzled. She laughed a little. “Darling, I can't imagine your ever playing a shabby trick on anybody. You've always prided yourself on being a perfect gent, under any and all circumstances.”

He reddened slightly. There it was: the inevitable hint of raillery, of amusement, almost of ridicule that Letty seemed to feel for him. Well Anice thought he was perfect; the realization stiffened his determination.

He gave it to Letty in a single blow.

“I'm married, Letty,” he told her quietly.

Letty stiffened and stared at him, wide-eyed, shocked for the moment beyond the point of speech.

“I realize it's a blow, Letty,” said Kenyon, and to give him credit he did not realize quite how pompous it sounded. “But after all, when two people love each other…”

Letty drew a deep hard breath. She was pale and her hands were clenched hard, but her voice was low and controlled, and there was still a tone of faint amusement in it, causing him to rage inwardly. She said: “So she won, after all.”

Kenyon said stiffly, “I don't know what you're talking about.”

Letty smiled. “I see I committed the cardinal error of underestimating my enemy. I was even fool enough to think that she and I might be friends.”

Puzzled, Kenyon said, “Anice is not your enemy. I didn't even know you'd met.”

“Anice?” Letty repeated, bewildered. “You married Miss Gordon, of course.”

Kenyon's eyebrows climbed up and he was unpleasantly startled.

“Good Lord, whatever gave you that idea? Phyllis Gordon, that—that little tramp?” he exploded furiously.

Letty started, and her eyes widened.

“She's not a tramp,” she cried, and went on before he could protest, “Then who in blazes did you marry? If I'm not asking too many questions?”

“Anice Mayhew, a girl in the office,” answered Kenyon. His voice softened at the very mention of her name, and there was a caressing look in his eyes that made Letty's mouth harden a little. “She's—well, she's marvelous, Letty. The loveliest thing you ever saw—so good and sweet and innocent as the dawn.”

Letty made a little involuntary gesture of protest and Kenyon said hastily, “I'm sorry. It's unforgivable to expect you to listen to praise of her. But I want you to meet her, Letty, you'll understand immediately why it had to be this way.”

“I think I can forego the pleasure,” said Letty stiffly. “I'm afraid I understand better than you do, Ken. Some little chit you've barely met, of whom you know nothing, has aroused your protective instinct. And who was, incidentally, the one who sent me an anonymous message that brought me to your office when you and Miss Gordon were…working late, shall we say?”

Kenyon was stiff with outrage.

“You have a right to be bitter, Letty,” he said coldly. “But you have no right to be unfair. Anice is incapable of a dishonest, malicious, unkind act. She's—why, she's an innocent angel.”

“You poor damned fool!” said Letty slowly and distinctly, perhaps the most venomous statement she had ever made to him, as she slipped from her finger a
superb emerald, exquisitely set, and held it out to him. “She will want this, I'm sure, and the other presents you have sent me. They'll be returned to you immediately. And now if you don't mind, I'd like you to go.”

He took the ring, and she could have slapped him hard for the momentary relief she saw in his eyes as he slipped it into his waistcoat pocket.

“I'm sorry you're taking it like this, Letty,” he said, and now he was pompous again. “I had hoped we would all be friends.”

“You couldn't possibly be that much of a fool, Ken—not even
you
could be,” she told him, and swept from the room, her head erect, her slim back stiff and eloquent in its fury and humiliation….

It was much too early to meet Anice, so Kenyon, relieved that the unpleasant scene with Letty was behind him, thought he might as well stop at the office. The early evening editions of the newspapers would carry the announcement of his elopement with Anice, and he wanted to convey the information to Phyllis and the others before the tabloids started screaming.

The fact that it was almost twelve o'clock, two hours later than he was accustomed to reach the office, had the staff alarmed; several important appointments had been missed. And when he paused at Phyllis' open door, she looked up in sharp relief and said frankly, “I'm so glad you are here, Mr. Rutledge.”

“Come into my office, please,” said Kenyon, curtly brushing her words aside. Puzzled, apprehensive in spite of herself, Phyllis followed him. When the door had closed behind her, Kenyon stood facing, his hands sunk deeply into his pockets.

“Since you seem to be Anice's nearest relative, Miss Gordon, I think perhaps you should be the first
to know that Anice and I were married last night,” he said crisply.

Phyllis caught the edge of his desk and steadied herself against it, as she stared at him, wide-eyed, every drop of color draining from her face. She was dazed, incredulous, yet forced to accept the simple fact that he was telling the truth. And when the first thought that struggled from her dazed emotions found its way into speech, she said: “So she put it over, after all.”

She spoke lowly, merely voicing her thoughts, yet she could not, if she had searched for a hundred years, have found a statement that would have angered and annoyed him more. His eyes blazed, and there was a little muscle quivering in his cheek against his rigid jawline.

“That's a vile thing to suggest, Miss Gordon, and I am afraid it's all the proof I needed of the things that Anice, poor angel, has been forced to reveal to me,” he said slowly and distinctly, his eyes dark with angry dislike. “You have treated her shamefully. You threw her out of your place because she objected to your immorality; you cared nothing that the girl had no place to go, in a city so big and crowded and dangerous for one as innocent and as lovely as Anice. Did you know—or rather, did you care—that she spent one night riding in the subway, in terror of the evil characters who menaced her? Or that I found her here in my office one night, because she had no place to go? And you drove her to such a pass.”

“Mr. Rutledge, Anice left my apartment for an excellent room at a woman's residential club—a place I could not afford,” said Phyllis hotly.

Kenyon eyed her with fury.

“That is, of course, a lie,” he said, and the words came like a brutal slap in the face. “I'm afraid, Miss Gordon, that
I shall have to let you go. A month's notice, of course—or, if you prefer, you can go immediately and receive a month's pay in lieu of notice. I do not care to have women of your moral character employed in my office.”

Phyllis' knees trembled so that she could barely stand, but from somewhere she managed a ghost of a laugh not untouched with hysteria.

“She's certainly done her work well,” she commented when she could steady her voice. “But then I've known from the first how fiendishly clever she is!”

“I suppose she
would
seem fiendishly clever to you because she is transparently honest, essentially decent, and as innocent as a lamb,” said Kenyon sternly.

Phyllis stared at him, caught by such surprise that she could only breathe, “You
really
believe that, don't you?”

“Certainly I believe it—I
know
it to be the truth,” he said sharply. “I pride myself on being a student of character. If Anice were not the sweetest, most honest, purest-minded girl in the world, I'd be the first to know it!”

Phyllis had no words to answer that. Perhaps because she knew instinctively that no words of hers would have any effect on him in his present state of mind. Anice had set her trap and baited it beautifully, and the whole thing was working out exactly as her cold, self-centered little mind had planned it.

Phyllis said evenly, “I shall be glad to go, today—that is, unless you feel I could be of service in training someone.”

And Kenyon, because he hated her for what Anice had told him of her, said brutally, “That won't be necessary. I assure you you are by no means indispensable here, Miss Gordon. Your check will be waiting for you if you will stop at the cashier's office on your way out.”

Phyllis looked at him for a long moment, and then
she nodded and said expressionlessly, “Thank you, Mr. Rutledge,” and went out.

And now Kenyon was free to think of the girl who would be waiting for him at the prearranged meeting place, and hurried off like a schoolboy who cannot wait for a long dreamed of and long planned for treat.

Anice was sitting in the hotel lobby, her small, shabby bag at her feet, waiting for him almost humbly. His heart went out to her, racing ahead of his hurrying feet. She looked up and saw him and the look in her eyes set his blood pounding. But all he said was, “Ready, angel?”

She put her hand in his, and he lifted the shabby little bag with something approaching tenderness and drew her with him to his waiting car.

“Was it—was it so very bad?” she asked when the car was threading its way uptown.

“You mean Mrs. Lawrence?” he asked. “Not pleasant, of course, but—” he lifted one shoulder in a little shrug, took one hand from the wheel and dropped it on her knee “—it was worth it.”

She blushed shyly and dropped her eyes. And Kenyon forced himself to pay attention to the traffic.

“I also told your cousin, Miss Gordon,” he said, and Anice tensed a little and dropped her eyelids above a faintly startled, slightly uneasy glance.

“She—she was surprised?” she began.

“Very much so,” said Kenyon grimly. “So much so that I yielded to an impulse and fired her.”

Anice caught her breath and her eyes flew wide.

“You fired Phyllis?” she gasped.