CHAPTER II
AN INDOOR TEMPEST
"If you're broke," said Starrett, leering, "why don't you marry yourcousin?"
Carl Granberry stared insolently across the table.
"Pass the buck," he reminded coolly. "And pour yourself some morewhiskey. You're only a gentleman when you're drunk, Starrett. You'resober now."
Payson and Wherry laughed. Starrett, not yet in the wine-flush of hisheavy courtesy, passed the buck with a frown of annoyance.
A log blazed in the library fireplace, staining with warm, rich shadowsthe square-paneled ceiling of oak and the huge war-beaten slab oftable-wood about which the men were gathered, both feudal relicsbrought to the New York home of Carl Granberry's uncle from a ruinedcastle in Spain.
"If you've gone through all your money," resumed Starrett offensively,"I'd marry Diane."
"_Miss_ Westfall!" purred Carl correctively. "You've forgotten,Starrett, my cousin's name is Westfall, _Miss_ Westfall."
"Diane!" persisted Starrett.
With one of his incomprehensible whims, Carl swept the cards into adisorderly heap and shrugged.
"I'm through," he said curtly. "Wherry, take the pot. You need it."
"Damned irregular!" snapped Starrett sourly.
"So?" said Carl, and stared the recalcitrant into sullen silence.Rising, he crossed to the fire, his dark, impudent eyes lingeringreflectively upon Starrett's moody face.
"Starrett," he mused, "I wonder what I ever saw in you anyway. You'reinfernally shallow and alcoholic and your notions of poker are asdistorted as your morals. I'm not sure but I think you'd cheat." Heshrugged wearily. "Get out," he said collectively. "I'm tired."
Starrett rose, sneering. There had been a subtle change to-night inhis customary attitude of parasitic good-fellowship.
"I'm tired, too!" he exclaimed viciously. "Tired of your infernalwhims and insults. You're as full of inconsistencies as a lunatic.When you ought to be insulted, you laugh, and when a fellow leastexpects it, you blaze and rave and stare him out of countenance. AndI'm tired of drifting in here nights at your beck and call, to be senthome like a kid when your mood changes. Mighty amusing for us! Ifyou're not vivisecting our lives and characters for us in thatimpudent, philosophical way you have, you're preaching a sermon thatyou couldn't--and wouldn't--follow yourself. And then you end bymessing everybody's cards in a heap and sending us home with the lastpot in Dick Wherry's pocket whether it belongs there or not. I tellyou, I'm tired of it."
Carl laughed, a singularly musical laugh with a note of mockery in it.
"Who," he demanded elaborately, "who ever heard of a treasonousbarnacle before? A barnacle, Starrett, adheres and adheres, parasiteto the end as long as there's liquid, even as you adhered while theship was keeled in gold. Nevertheless, you're right. I'm all of whatyou say and more that you haven't brains enough to fathom. And somethat you can't fathom is to my credit--and some of it isn't. As, forinstance, my inexplicable poker _penchant_ for you."
To Starrett, hot of temper and impulse, his graceful mockery wasmaddening. Cursing under his breath, he seized a glass and flung itfuriously at his host, who laughed and moved aside with the lithenessof a panther. The glass crashed into fragments upon the wall of themarble fireplace. Payson and Wherry hurriedly pushed back theirchairs. Then, suddenly conscious of a rustle in the doorway, they allturned.
Wide dark eyes flashing with contempt, Diane Westfall stood motionlessupon the threshold. The aesthete in Carl thrilled irresistibly to hervivid beauty, intensified to-night by the angry flame in her cheeks andthe curling scarlet of her lips. There were no semi-tones in Diane'sdark beauty, Carl reflected. It was a thing of sable and scarlet, andthe gold-brown satin of her gypsy skin was warm with the tints of anautumn forest. Carelessly at his ease, Carl noted how the bold eyes ofthe painted Spanish grandee above the mantel, the mild eyes of thesaint in the Tintoretto panel across the room and the flashing eyes ofDiane seemed oddly to converge to a common center which was Starrett,white and ill at ease. And of these the eyes of Diane were loveliest.
With the swift grace which to Carl's eyes always bore in it somethingof the primitive, Diane swept away, and the staring tableau dissolvedinto a trio of discomfited men of whom Carl seemed But an indifferentonlooker.
"Well," fumed Starrett irritably, "why in thunder don't you saysomething?"
"Permit me," drawled Carl impudently, with a lazy flicker of hislashes, "to apologize for my cousin's untimely intrusion. I reallyfancied she was safe at the farm. Unfortunately, the house belongs toher. Besides, your crystal gymnastics, Starrett, were as unscheduledas her arrival. As it is, you've nobly demonstrated an unalterablescientific fact. The collision of marble and glass is unvaryinglyeventful."
Bellowing indignantly, Starrett charged into the hallway, followed byPayson. Presently the outer door slammed violently behind them.Wherry lingered.
Carl glanced curiously at his flushed and boyish face.
"Well?" he queried lightly.
Wherry colored.
"Carl," he stammered, "you've been talking a lot about parasitesto-night and I'd like you to know that--money hasn't made a jot ofdifference to me." He met Carl's laughing glance with doggeddirectness and for a second something flamed boyishly in his face fromwhich Carl, frowning, turned away.
"Why don't you break away from this sort of thing, Dick?" he demandedirritably. "Starrett and myself and all the rest of it. You'resapping the splendid fires of your youth and inherent decency in unholyfurnaces. Yes, I know Starrett drags you about with him and youdaren't offend him because he's your chief, but you're clever and youcan get another job. In ten years, as you're going now, you'll be analcoholic ash-heap of jaded passions. What's more, you have infernalluck at cards and you haven't money enough to keep on losing soheavily. Half of the poker sermons Starrett's been growling about werepreached for you."
Now there were mad, irreverent moments when Carl Granberry deliveredhis poker sermons with the eloquent mannerisms of the pulpit, save, asPayson held, they were infinitely more logical and eloquent, butto-night, husking his logic of these externals, he fell flatly topreaching an unadorned philosophy of continence acutely at variancewith his own habits.
Wherry stared wonderingly at the tall, lithe figure by the fire.
"Carl," he said at last, "tell me, are you honestly in earnest when yourag the fellows so about work and decency and all that sort of thing?"
Carl yawned and lighted a cigar.
"I believe," said he, "in the eternal efficacy of good. I believe inthe telepathic potency of moral force. I believe in physicalconservation for the eugenic good of the race and mental dominance overmatter. But I'm infernally lazy myself, and it's easy to preach. It'seven easier to create a counter-philosophy of condonance andindividualism, and I'm alternately an ethical egoist, a Fabiansocialist and a cynic. Moreover, I'm a creature of whims andinconsistencies and there are black nights in my temperament when JohnBarleycorn lightens the gloom; and there are other nights when hetreacherously deepens it--but I'm peculiarly balanced and subject toirresistible fits of moral atrophy. All of which has nothing at all todo with the soundness of my impersonal philosophy. Wherefore," with aflash of his easy impudence, "when I preach, I mean it--for the otherfellow."
Wherry glanced at the handsome face of his erratic friend with frankallegiance in his eyes.
Carl flung his cigar into the fire, poured himself some whiskey andpushed the decanter across the table.
"Have a drink," he said whimsically.
Dick obeyed. It was an inconsistent supplement to the sermon butcharacteristic.
"Carl," he said, flushing under the ironical battery of the other'seyes, "I don't think I understand you--"
Carl laughed.
"Nobody does," he said. "I don't myself."