On and on, giving her no chance to answer him, during the ten minutes he kept her at the telephone. Yet when she hung up the receiver she found she had spoken one important word: she had promised to come and see him late the following afternoon. She had made him beg; she had refused to come that day, she had put it off; she had, in fact, teased him as much as was consistent with ultimately agreeing to do what he wanted. Before she did agree the impertinence of Thorpe was explained. Valentine had simply told him to get her on the telephone. Of course he had meant to speak to her himself. Thorpe was an idiot—overzealous. Cora had her own view about that, but she let it pass. Thorpe feared her, and Thorpe knew what was to be feared. He knew that if she once entered that house she might never be allowed to leave it.
"No," she said to herself the next day, as she tried various hats, and with hands that shook a little put on the dangling earrings that Valentine had given her in Madrid, "it will be Thorpe who will leave."
If there was fear in Thorpe's heart he did not betray it when he opened the door and led her upstairs to the library. The room was empty.
"Mr. Bing has been expecting you for sometime, madam," he said.
The slight reproach was agreeable to Cora. She had waited long enough for Valentine in old times, and sometimes he had not turned up at all.
The room was familiar to her. They had not been much in New York during their brief marriage, but she had spent part of the previous winter in this house. She had left her own imprint in the decorations. Valentine used his house as he might use a hotel—asking nothing but that it should be convenient for the purposes of his stay. Cora had been greeted on her first arrival by hideous tasseled gold cushions and imitation Japanese lamp shades; remnants, she believed, of Hermione's taste. She had instantly banished them, and now she saw with pleasure that the shades of her own choosing were still on the lamps. Everything had remained as she had arranged it; he had seen that her way was best. A wood fire was burning on the hearth—not the detestable gas logs which Hermione had left behind her. She found herself wondering for the first time what Hermione had found—what Margaret had left. Then she remembered that Valentine had not bought the house in the simpledays of Margaret's reign; he had had a small apartment far uptown and at first Margaret had had no servant.
A wish to know if Valentine had kept a paper cutter she had given him—lapis lazuli, the color of his eyes—made her get up and go to the desk. Yes, it was there, but something else was there, too: an unframed photograph propped against a paper weight—the photograph of a woman.
She bent cautiously to look at it, as one bends to examine the spot where the trembling of the grass suggests the presence of a venomous serpent. It was the picture of a slender woman with heavy dark hair and long slanting eyes, the cruelty of her high cheek bones softened by the sweet drooping curve of her mouth. A terrible and fascinating woman. Then as the light struck across the surface of the picture she saw it was a glossy print for reproduction. It might mean business—a feature for the syndicate—not love.
She was sitting far away from the desk when, a minute or two later, Valentine entered—Valentine a little thinner than before, but no less vital. He greeted her as if they had parted yesterday, or rather he did not greet her at all. He simply began to talk to her as he came into the room. He had a roll of blue prints in his hand.
"Now, my dear girl, these plans of yours—have you thought them over at all?... You practically made them? But don't you see what you've done—sacrificed everything to a patio. A patio—only good for hot weather, when you'll never be here anyhow. The whole comfort of the house arranged for the season you'll beaway. They are without exception the most ridiculous plans— Oh! Yes, I sent down for a copy of them at once. I'm glad I did. If I hadn't—"
"But, Valentine," she interrupted—she knew by experience that you were forced to interrupt Valentine if you wished to speak at all—"it is my house, you know."
"And that's why I want it to be right for you," he answered. "But we'll get it right—never fear."
"It's exactly what I want as it is," she returned, and she heard with a mixture of disgust and fear that the old tone of false determination was creeping into her voice.
"It isn't at all what you want," he said. "You only imagine it is, Cora."
"Valentine, I've thought it all out with the greatest care."
"But it's absurd—you won't like it. Do listen to reason. Don't be obstinate."
Obstinate—the old accusation.
"That's what you always say when I insist on doing anything my own way."
"But your way is wrong. Now just listen to me, my dear girl—"
It was, to the identical phrases, the quarrel of their whole short turbulent married life. He had always made her feel that she was pig-headed and unreasonable not to yield at once to his superior knowledge of her own inmost wishes. The trouble was that the turmoil and the fighting slowly extinguished her own wishes—they weren't changed, they were killed—so that after a little while she was left gallantly defending a corpse; she ceased to care what happened; whereas Valentine's poignant interestgrew with each word he uttered—and he uttered a great many—until he seemed to burn with an almost religious conviction that she must not do the thing in the way she wanted to do it.
It always ended the same way: "Now, my dear girl, don't be so obstinate." Was she obstinate? she wondered; and as she wondered Valentine rushed in like an army through a breach in the wall. He was doing it now.
"All I ask," he was saying, "is that you should look at the set of plans I had my man draw—he's a real architect—not a bungalow wizard like that fellow you employed. Now you might at least do that—it isn't much to ask that you should just look at them. Oh, well, you'll see they call for another piece of land, but honestly, Cora, I cannot let you settle on that switching yard, that you picked out—"
She could not refuse to look at his plans; in fact, she was not a little touched by the idea that he had taken such an infinity of trouble for her.
And at this instant Thorpe entered. Valentine shouted at him to get that other roll of plans from his room.
"Yes, sir," said Thorpe, "directly; but the message has come that the steamer is docking and I've sent for a taxi, sir."
Valentine collected himself. "Oh, yes, the steamer," he said, and then he glanced at Cora. "I don't think I'll go to the steamer, Thorpe."
Cora's heart rose; she knew that look, that tone; he did not want to go. She looked at Thorpe; not a muscle of his face had changed, and yet she knew he was in opposition.
"Yes, sir," he said. "Would you have any objection if I went to the dock? I doubt if the princess will understand the American customs without assistance, sir."
There was a little pause.
"The princess?" said Cora.
Valentine waved toward the photograph on the desk. "She's coming—Hungarian princess. Great stuff, if she's as per invoice. I'm sending her to China for the syndicate. Hun to Hun, you know. Good idea, isn't it? Thorpe told me about her. He lived with her uncle when he was ambassador in London; the uncle, you know, not Thorpe—though why not?"
Valentine rose. The recital of the facts in the case of the princess had revived his interest in her.
"I'll just go and grasp her by the hand. We've got her transportation for the Coast this evening, and she may not relish starting at once, unless it's put just right. I'll show her it's the best thing for her to do. Her last cable suggested she wished to linger in New York, but she would enjoy it more on her way back. I'll explain that to her. It won't take a minute. You'll wait, won't you? Stay and dine with me. I'm alone. Or no; I see by Thorpe's face that I have someone to dinner."
"Indeed, you have, sir.'
"Who is it? I don't remember."
"Mrs. Johnson-Bing, sir."
"Oh, Margaret—good old Margaret—so it is." Thorpe and Cora, a little embarrassed for him, averted their eyes, but Valentine was not embarrassed at all. "You have no idea how good she was to me when I was atthe hospital. And I wasn't very grateful—out of my head, you know. I thought I ought to tell her— You'll wait, Cora; just give you time to look over my plans, and when I come back I'll tell you about the land I bought for you. Well, I have an option on it—"
She lost the end of his sentence, for Thorpe, who during the speech had been putting him into his overcoat and handing him his hat and gloves, finally succeeded in hurrying him out of the door, still talking. But Cora did not require the end of the sentence; no woman who has lived two years with a man does. She knew what he was going to say, but even more important, she knew what was in his mind—that her welfare was as important to him as it had ever been. The marriage ceremony, she had always known, did not unite people, but now she was discovering that a decree of divorce did not always separate them. She was as much married to Valentine as she had ever been—no more and no less. How astonishing!
She sank into a chair. Perhaps the really astonishing fact was that they should ever have parted. They parted because they quarreled, but now she saw that their quarreling was the expression of their love. Her relations with everyone in the world except Valentine were suave and untroubled. And she was sure there was no one else with whom Valentine enjoyed the struggle for mastery. The mere notion of attempting to master the docile Margaret was comic, and as for Hermione, she was like a dish of blanc mange—you liked it and ate it or else you let it alone. No, it was useless to evade the truth that she, Cora, of all women was to him unique.
Thorpe returned presently and brought the new plans. She nodded without looking at him and told him to leave them on the table. She had plenty of time. Valentine's few minutes were always an hour.
"If you don't care to wait, madam, I'm sure Mr. Bing would be very glad to have you take them home with you," said Thorpe.
Cora did not trouble to repress a smile. "I shall wait, Thorpe," she said, with the good humor that comes from perfect confidence.
Thorpe bent very slightly from the waist, and left the room.
At last she rose and began to unroll the plans. She became immediately absorbed in them; they were not only beautiful and ingenious but, better to her than any beauty, they showed how he had remembered her tastes, her needs. She had always loved growing plants, and he had arranged a glassed passageway with sun and heat to be a small conservatory for her; there was a place for her piano; a clever arrangement for hanging her dresses. He had remembered, or rather he had never forgotten. The idea came to her that this was not a house for her alone, but for her and him together. How simply that would explain his passionate interest in the prospect of her building. She began to read the plans as if they were a love letter.
She was still bending over them when later—much later—the door opened and closed. She did not immediately look up. It was not her plan to betray that she had guessed what lay behind his actions. She waited with bent head for Valentine's accustomed opening, andthen hearing nothing she looked up, to find the newcomer was Margaret.
In their last meeting the shadow of death had obliterated the pattern of convention, but now both women were aware of an awkward moment. Margaret smiled first.
"I suppose, as no one sees us, we may shake hands," she said. Cora looked at her predecessor. Even in the low becoming lights of Valentine's big room she was frankly middle-aged, large waisted and dowdy, and yet glowingly human. Cora held out her hand.
"Is it so late?" she said. "Valentine mentioned that you were coming to dinner. He said he hadn't thanked you for all you did for him when he was ill."
Mrs. Johnson-Bings smiled. "That isn't what he wants," she said. She undid her coat and began to remove stout black gloves. She was in a high dark dress—very different from what Cora would have worn if she had decided to come back and dine with Valentine.
"What does he want?" Cora asked. She was really curious to hear.
"He's heard I'm going into business—supplying food to invalids. He wants me to organize according to his ideas, and not according to mine." Margaret smiled. "But poor Valentine doesn't know anything about invalids; just wants the fun of having everything done his way."
The words for some reason sounded like a knell in Cora's ears. Was that all Valentine really cared about—getting his own way? There was a brief silence; far away in some other part of the house she was dimly aware of a clock striking and a telephone bell ringing. It mustbe dinnertime, she thought—Margaret's hour. No, they couldn't both stay to dinner. She found herself wondering which of them Val would put at the head of the table. He would sit there himself, of course, with one on each side of him. "I suppose you'll do it all just as he says," she remarked mechanically.
Margaret laughed; she had a pleasant laugh, almost a chuckle. "Indeed I shan't!" she answered. "But I may let him think I'm going to. It saves such a lot of trouble, as I suppose you found out too."
No, Cora had not found that out. She felt shocked and admiring—as a little boy feels who sees another one smoking. How was it that Hermione, the faithless, and Margaret, the maternal, dared to treat Valentine more carelessly than she did? Perhaps they did not understand him as well as she did, with her more subtle reactions.
Before she could answer, Thorpe was in the room. When she thought of that moment afterwards she appreciated the power of the man, for there was no trace of elation or excitement or even hurry about him. He addressed Margaret:
"Mr. Bing is very sorry, madam, he will not be able to get home to dinner tonight."
Cora's mind working with the quickness of lightning waited for a second part of the message—something that would detain her and let Margaret depart in peace. But Thorpe having delivered himself of this one sentence turned to the desk and began collecting various objects—a fountain pen, a package of letters.
"When will Mr. Bing be back?" Cora asked.
"Mr. Bing is obliged to start for China this evening, madam," said Thorpe, and his eye just wavered across hers. "I'm packing for him now as well as I can at such short notice." The reason, his tone suggested, was sufficient excuse for leaving the two ladies to see each other out. He left the room, his eyes still roving about in search of necessary objects.
In this bitter moment Cora felt vaguely envious of Margaret, who, unmoved by the intelligence, was beginning to replace her heavy gloves.
"To China," she observed placidly. "Now I wonder What the reason for that is."
Cora snatched up the glossy photograph and thrust it between Margaret's shapeless black fingers. "That's the reason!" she said passionately. "He left me for just half an hour to meet her steamer—a princess—'great stuff if as per invoice.' Well, evidently she is as 'per invoice,' if he's going to China with her the first time they meet—he and his princess!"
Margaret took the photograph and studied it with irritating calm.
"I don't suppose there ever lived a human male who would not enjoy going to China with a princess," she said, and she almost smiled at the thought of their departure.
Tears were already running down Cora's cheeks. "What does it mean?" she said. "Are men incapable of permanent attachments?"
"Oh, no," replied Margaret. "Valentine's attachmentsare very permanent—only they're not exclusive. He will always want me when he's sick—and you when he wants to test his will power."
She stopped, for Thorpe had come into the room again. He had come for the photograph, which he now took gently out of Margaret's unresisting hand. She hardly noticed his action, so intently was her mind working upon the question of Valentine's health.
"Thorpe," she said, as if consulting a fellow expert, "do you think Mr. Bing is strong enough to make this journey?"
For the first time Thorpe allowed himself a smile—a faint fleeting lighting of the eyes.
"Oh, yes, madam," he said. "I think now Mr. Bing is quite himself—quite normal. And then, madam, I shall be with him."
The Torbys were giving a large dinner-party, and a scarlet carpet was rolled out from the glass and iron of their grilled door to the curb of the Fifth Avenue gutter—a carpet as red as a cardinal's robe, as the flags in the Bolshevist meeting which was being held simultaneously two miles away in Madison Square and giving the police a good deal of trouble.
It was customary to put on new clothes and treasured jewels for the Torby parties, for they gave very good parties; they were fashionable, and as they had been important, financially and socially, in New York for two generations, and as most other New Yorkers had only lived there a year or two, the Torbys were generally assumed to be as aboriginal as the rocks of Manhattan Island.
As a matter of fact, the first identified Torby, Ephraim by name, had strolled down to the great city from a Vermont farm just before the Civil War, and had made his fortune in questionable real-estate deals during the following years of unrest. But when the present Torby, William, said, "My father used to say that when he held the property at the corner of Twenty-third Street—" it sounded as if the family had always been landed proprietors; and Trevillian Torby, William's son, just twenty-four and not deeply interested in ancestry, had actually come to believe, though he of course knew all the facts, that the Torbys were the oldest and best family in America, and he was very scornful of newcomers from otherStates or countries who drifted into the metropolis to make their fortunes.
Hewer, the Torby butler, stood in the hall, wearing the old-fashioned livery the Torbys affected. Hewer was not the kind of butler who opens the door; on the contrary, when the great double doors had been swung open by two footmen, Hewer was discovered standing back center, doing absolutely nothing, except, if a female guest should be so thoughtless as to direct her steps to the men's dressing-room, or a male to the women's, he set them right with a slight but autocratic gesture of the hand.
Hewer was rather a young man to be so very great. He was the son of one of the gamekeepers on the Duke of Wessex's place, and being ambitious and having a weak heart, he allowed it to be known through the proper channels, when the Torbys were staying with the Duke, that he would like to go to America; and the Torbys, who had had a great deal of trouble with butlers, snapped him up at once.
At first Hewer had found social distinctions in America somewhat confusing. He had been brought up in the strictest sect of inherited aristocracy, but some of his friends who had been in the United States explained to him that there everything was plutocratic—that nothing mattered but money. Hewer thought this not such a bad idea; but when he reached New York, he found it wasn't true. Social distinctions were not entirely based on money—not nearly as much so as in London. He had a friend living second footman to the third or fourth richest family in America, and it appeared that they were asked nowhere. Of course his ownTorbys were all right—absolutely all right; they not only had visiting royalties to stay with them, but what did not always follow, they stayed with those same royalties when they went abroad.
As the motor doors began to slam, Hewer placed one foot on the lower step of the Torbys' beautiful Italian stairway, banked on each side with white lilies in honor of the party, and prepared to announce the first guest who issued from the dressing-room. If he did not know the name (though he almost always did, for he was intelligent, interested in his job, and had been doing the telephoning for the Torby parties for several years), he just drooped his ear toward the guest's mouth for a dilatory second, and then having caught it, he moved straight away upstairs, like a hunting-dog that had picked up the scent.
Many of the guests—more than a dozen—had arrived before one came in who spoke to Hewer by name. This was a small, erect old lady, with eyes as bright as her diamonds in their old-fashioned settings, and a smile as fine as her long old hands.
"Ah, Hewer," she said with a brisk nod, "still here, are you? Do crowds like this always collect for the Torbys' parties?"
Hewer, standing on the lower step, seemed just twice as tall as the old lady as he answered: "Crowds, madam!" And then as she waved her hand toward the front door, he understood and added: "Oh, yes, madam, quite often a crowd collects. And how is Mr. Richard?"
"Oh, of course he's been wounded," said the old lady, as if that had been the least of her expectations, "buthe's well again now, and on his way home." And then, noticing that other people were waiting,—bejeweled creatures whom she did not know,—she nodded again, to indicate that the conversation was over. Hewer mounted the stairs five steps ahead of her and announced, as if this time he were really saying something:
"Mrs. John Grey."
But all the time he was at work announcing other guests—"Admiral and Mrs. Simpsom.... Lady Cecilia and Mr. Hume.... Mr. Lossing.... Miss Watkins"—his mind was grappling with the problem of what Mrs. John Grey was doing dining with the Torbys.
About a year before this, Hewer had left the Torbys and had been engaged by Mrs. Grey. He deeply respected Mrs. Grey, but her household had not been congenial to him. In the first place there was an elderly maid in spectacles who managed everything, and had even attempted to manage Hewer. Then, Mrs. Grey was a widow with an only son, often away, and when he was away, Mrs. Grey dined by the library fire on a chop and rice pudding, and she sometimes omitted the chop; and though when Mr. Richard was at home, he was very gay and good-tempered, on the whole Hewer felt the position to be depressing; and when the Torbys humbly asked him to come back at a higher wage, he had consented.
But he retained a strong admiration for Mrs. Grey. She was afraid of nothing, whereas he knew his present employers were afraid of many things—afraid of being laughed at, afraid of missing the turn of the social tide, afraid even of him, their butler, though they attempted to conceal this fear under a studied insolence of manner.It was because this insolence was not of the particular brand that Hewer admired that he had left them. He had often noticed, as he waited on table, that Mrs. Torby was afraid of having opinions; she always found out what other people thought about art and politics, and only when strongly backed by majority opinion would she express herself—with a good deal of arrogance. She never confessed ignorance of any subject under discussion—except possibly of a childhood friend.
Mrs. Grey, on the other hand, ripped out her opinions with the utmost confidence, and could say, "No, my dear, I never heard of it," when some new school of art or thought was under discussion, in a tone that made those who had been somewhat overpraising it wonder if they had not, after all, been making fools of themselves. Mr. Richard was the same way—never afraid of what people would think of him; perhaps it might have been better if he had been, judging from what Hewer himself had thought of some of Mr. Richard's more youthful escapades.
Now, the last thing Mrs. Grey had said to Hewer when he left her service was: "What, Mr. Hewer, back to those vulgar people?" The words had been a shock to Hewer, for the Torbys were so fashionable, so clearly sought-after, that he had not supposed anyone would apply such a term asvulgarto them. But he did know exactly what Mrs. Grey meant, and he had never forgotten the words, and so he wondered what Mrs. Grey was doing in the house of the people she had so contemptuously described. She was not like the Torbys, who seemed to go to their friends' houses chiefly for thesake of making an amusing story afterward of how dull and badly done their parties had been. Mrs. Grey did not go to the houses of those she considered her social inferiors, and as she considered almost everyone her social inferiors, and as most of them regarded her as a funny little old lady who didn't matter anyhow, she ate most of her meals quietly in her own house.
As so often happens, while Hewer was pondering the problem, the explanation of it was walking into the house—walking in with her head in the air, and a sapphire-blue satin cloak wrapped tightly about her. Hewer recognized her at once, but he did not know her name. She was the young lady who used to come and sit with Mrs. Grey and look pale and tearless during the terrible weeks when Mr. Richard was fighting in the Argonne—and would have liked to cry, Hewer had thought, if only Mrs. Grey had not been so dreadfully heroic, remarking like the Roman emperor, that after all, she had never been under the illusion that her son was immortal. She was the young lady whose photograph had dropped out of one of Mr. Richard's coats one day when he was brushing it. She was beautiful, and she came from far enough West to be aware of the existence of the letterr. She and Mrs. Grey used to have long amiable arguments as to whether or not well-bred people would recognize the letterr, except, of course, in such magnificent words asRichard. Hewer did not know this lady's name until she told it to him at the foot of the stairs—"Miss Evington." He repressed a start. It was the gossip belowstairs in the Torby household that Mr. Trevillian wanted to marry a Miss Evington, whom his family did not consider quiteup to the Torbys' matrimonial standard. When Mrs. Torby had given Hewer the cards and the diagram of the table, and he had seen that Miss Evington's place was next to Mr. Trevillian, he had taken this as a sign that the thing was settled. He never knew how much he had liked Mr. Richard until he felt a wave of contempt for this beautiful young creature who preferred Trevillian and his millions.
Hewer announced "Miss Evington" with quite a sniff.
When he went downstairs, another guest had arrived and was taking his dinner-card from the tray a footman was offering him. It was Mr. Barnsell. Barnsell was a sleek, brown, middle-aged man whose only interest in life was comfort; and as his means were limited and his tastes luxurious, the attainment of supreme comfort had become both an art and sport to him.
"Ah, good evening, Hewer!" he said.
"Good evening, sir," said Hewer without the slightest change of expression. He hated and despised Barnsell, for the reason that he was one of those people who demand a far higher standard of comfort from other people's houses and servants than he did from his own. When he stayed at the Torbys,—as he did for long periods,—he gave a great deal of trouble, and had been known to send a suit of clothes downstairs three times because it had not been properly pressed, although Hewer knew very well that at home his clothes were very sketchily taken care of by the housemaid. Hewer's only revenge was to force upward the whole scale of Mr. Barnsell's tips. Hewer himself did not care much about money and was very well paid by the Torbys, but in theinterests of pure justice, he received Mr. Barnsell's crinkled bill with an air of cold surprise that made him double it next time.
"Gad, Hewer," Mr. Barnsell was saying, "there's a pretty ugly situation outside there—a crowd around the door, and marching up Fifth Avenue. They nearly pulled my chauffeur off the box. If they'd laid a finger on me, I'd have let them have it, I can tell you."
"I hope they did not hurt the chauffeur, sir."
"Oh, no," said Barnsell positively; but Hewer knew from his tone that he had not waited to see.
Immediately after this, terrible things began to happen to the Torbys' nice party—things that had never happened to any of their parties before. The meeting in Madison Square having been broken up by methods which the participants described as being a little short of massacre, and which the police said were too velvet-gloved to be effective, had drifted away into smaller groups, all looking for trouble. Perhaps it was the color of the Torby's carpet, or the size or ugliness of a house built in the worst taste of the '80's, or the delicious smell of terrapin which came floating out of the kitchen windows; but for whatever reason, a crowd had collected about the door and was mocking at and jostling the guests in such a threatening manner that the night watchman rushed in to tell a footman to telephone at once to the police, and poor fat little Mrs. McFarlane arrived with her tiara quite on one side and a conviction that she had just escaped being strung up to a lamp-post in the best style of the French Revolution.
The McFarlanes, who took themselves seriously inevery position, made a dramatic entrance into the drawing-room. Mr. McFarlane held up his hand for silence and then said:
"We are in grave danger."
He was a tall, solemn, hawk-nosed man, who had made a fortune after forty, and had been elected president of a great bank after fifty—an office which he accepted as if it were a sort of financial priesthood. Mrs. McFarlane, who went in for jeweled crowns and sweeping velvets, was suspected by her friends of a repressed wish to be queenly—nor indeed was her height and figure so different from that of the late Victoria.
"Hewer, send down and have the outer doors closed," said Mr. Torby. And Hewer, having announced the last guest, who was a good deal flustered from having had his high hat smashed over his nose—left the room to obey.
"They are bloodthirsty, simply bloodthirsty," continued Mr. McFarlane. "One villainous-looking fellow shouted at my wife: 'You don't look as if you needed another square meal for a year; give us a chance.'"
"Accurate observers, at least," said Mrs. Grey in a twinkling aside to Miss Evington. "Come and sit down, my dear, and let us talk while these people regain their poise."
"Do you think we are in any danger from the mob, Mrs. Grey?" asked the girl quietly.
"The mob inside, or the mob out?"
Miss Evington laughed. "Oh," she said. "Feeling like that about them, why did you come?"
"I came," answered Mrs. Grey, "because I knew these people are trying to dazzle you with all their hideouspossessions; and I wanted," she added simply, "to give you some standard of comparison."
Miss Evington turned away to hide a smile, or perhaps it was a tear, at the old lady's self-confidence. She had an impulse to explain that if she refused the Torby millions, it would not be on account of Mrs. Grey's high breeding; and then she stopped to wonder whether, after all, it had not something to do with the situation—indirectly.
Mr. Barnsell approached them, shaking his head. "Well," he said, "now I hope Washington will see the consequence of coddling the lower classes." Mr. Barnsell's railroad investments had declined.
"This should be a great lesson to the Administration," said Mr. Lossing—a slim, elderly man, who seemed to have decreased in bulk through constant shrinking from outrages against his notion of good taste and good manners. "As my dear old father used to say—"
"It's the French Revolution over again," said Mrs. McFarlane, still panting a little. "It's the hatred of the common man for the aristocrat."
"The aristocrat, my dear!" murmured Mrs. Grey to her young friend. "Her father-in-law was my father's gardener, and she must know I know it."
At this moment a stone crashed through one of the long French windows of the drawing-room. Trevillian Torby rushed to Miss Evington's side. "Don't be alarmed," he said. "Don't be alarmed, Mrs. Grey."
"Thank you—I'm not," said Mrs. Grey, tossing her gray head slightly, as if to say it was a pretty state of affairs when Trevillian Torby could intervene in her fate."If you won't think me rude, I must say the evening is turning out more amusing than I had expected."
Trevillian, fortunately, was not looking for malice from one so small and gray and feminine, and he went on hotly: "I wonder what this rabble thinks they could do with this country without us—without the leadership of people like ourselves."
"They'll soon find out, it seems," answered Mrs. Grey.
"The trouble with this country," continued Trevillian, "is the growing contempt for law and order. No one is brought up to respect the state—the Government. What would the poor do without the ruling class? Do you realize that the hospitals and charitable institutions of this country would have to close? And what would happen then, I should like to know?"
"They would be run by the state, of course," said Miss Evington, who knew her way about sociology.
"The state!" cried Trevillian. "Do you mean government ownership? Well, let me tell you that the state is about the most inefficient, the most corrupt—"
"I thought we ought to respect it," said Miss Evington.
Mrs. Grey laughed out loud. "Ah, Mr. Torby," she said, "women ought not to attempt argument, ought they?"
Trevillian felt soothed by this remark. "I own," he replied, "that I do not think a woman appears at her best in argument." And he never understood why it was that he seemed to have made a very good joke.
They now began to go in to dinner—the dining-room was safely situated across the back of the house. The table was magnificent. Gold vases of pink and whiteflowers alternated down its length with gold bowls of yellow and orange fruit. Tall wineglasses of crystal engraved in gold stood like little groves at each plate. The Torbys' engraved glass was famous.
"But I thought," Lady Cecilia was heard saying to her host, who was of course taking her in to dinner, "I thought there were no classes in the United States?"
Mr. Torby was shocked that Lady Cecilia, who had had so many opportunities, like the present, for observing, should make such a mistake.
"Oh," he said, "I should hardly say that. I yield to none in my belief in the principles of democracy—from the political point of view; but socially, my dear Lady Cecilia, every country in the world has a class—how shall I define it—"
He succeeded in defining it so that it included himself and excluded most of the rest of the world. Aristocracy nowadays, he thought, consisted in having had for two or three generations the advantages of a large fortune with all the cultivation and refinement and responsibility that it brings. A college president, who was present, was equally sure that it was all a question of education. Mr. McFarlane, the head of a large bank, thought it meant the group of men in any country who control the financial destinies—and therefore all the destinies—of a country. Mrs. Grey did not find it worth while to define anything, but sat thinking: "It's being ladies and gentlemen, if they only knew it."
Suddenly there was a tremendous sound of cracking and tearing—a crash as if the stout double outer doors had given way, a shouting, the noise of an ambulancegong, or of a police-wagon. Some people sprang up from the table, but Mr. Torby urged them to remain seated.
"Hewer," he said, "go downstairs and see what is happening."
Hewer immediately left the room, and did not return for a long time.
In the downstairs hall Hewer found the night watchman with a dislocated wrist, several policemen, a young man mopping his brow, whom he did not at first notice, and a great deal of broken glass.
The whole trouble, it appeared, had arisen over the red carpet—the Bolshevist meeting not being able to understand why, if they were not allowed to display red flags in Madison Square, Mr. Torby should be allowed to display a carpet of exactly the same hue in Fifth Avenue. In the interests of pure logic, the participants in the late meeting decided to point out this inconsistency to the municipal authorities, by cutting the Torby's carpet into small pieces and carrying them away. A number of returned sailors and soldiers, who felt perhaps that to fight for a poor cause was better than not fighting at all, had decided to defend the carpet. The complete harmony of everyone was proved by the fact that when driven away by the police-reserves, both parties were soon jointly engaged in upsetting all the ash-cans in a neighboring side-street.
Hewer sent the night-watchman to the housekeeper to get his wrist bandaged, got rid of the police by giving them some of Mr. Torby's second-best cigars and a great deal of irrelevant information which they said was necessary to the preservation of order, directed that thebroken glass should be swept up, and then turned his attention to the young man.
"Why, Mr. Richard!" he exclaimed.
"Look here, Hewer," said Mr. Richard, "I know that Miss Evington is dining here—I saw her going in, as I happened to be passing." He glanced quickly at the butler to see if there was any criticism of an officer in the United States Army hanging about doorways to watch young ladies go in and out. "Is everyone in there frightened to death over this shindy?"
"Well, you know, sir," said Hewer temperately, "they have been very nervous about this Bolshevist movement for a long time; and they do seem anxious—all except Mrs. Grey, sir."
"What!" cried the Captain. "Is my mother dining here?" And Hewer could see that this was the last straw—that his mother should have gone over to the enemy. Hewer was sorry, but felt it his duty to go back to the dining-room. "They are anxious, sir, for fear the mob may have overpowered the police, and I ought to go back and tell them that everything is quiet."
"No, Hewer," said the Captain firmly. "Go back, but tell them just the opposite. Tell them that the police have been driven off, that the mob is in control, that a soviet committee has been formed, which will send a representative to question them and decide on the merits of each of their cases, and say that if a finger is laid on the people's delegate, the house will be blown up with T N T."
Hewer could not help smiling at the plan, but he shookhis head. "I'd like to oblige you, sir," he said, "but I'd lose my job."
"Oh, the cream's off your job anyhow, Hewer," said Mr. Richard decisively. "You don't want to be a butler under the new order. I've just got a good job with a Western railroad. Come with me and run our dining-car service."
The Great War has far-reaching effects. It was the war that made Hewer yield to this insane suggestion—the sense of dissatisfaction with himself because a weak heart had kept him from fighting, and the sense of power in Grey which a year and a half of being obeyed had thrown into his tone.
"But you can't go upstairs like that, sir—they'd all know you."
"You do your part, and I'll do mine," said Richard.
When Hewer entered the dining-room again, the tension had increased. Some of the guests had arisen from the table and were looking for weapons. All had decided to behave nobly. The six footmen, as if paralyzed by the consciousness that they had identified themselves with the capitalistic class, were standing idly about the room, not attempting to go on with the serving of dinner. Mrs. McFarlane had almost fainted again, but finding that no one had time to bring her to, she was coming to by herself. Only Mrs. Grey was finishing her soup in a thorough but not inelegant manner.
Hewer bent to whisper in Mr. Torby's ear.
"Good God!" said Mr. Torby; and an electric thrillran through the company, who did not know that the exclamation expressed anger rather than fear.
"Don't be alarmed," said Mr. Torby, addressing the table. "Keep perfectly calm. Hewer tells me the situation is this: the police have been temporarily driven off. These Bolshevist rascals are in control for a minute or two—nothing more, I am sure. I should advise our yielding for the moment to their demands."
"But what are their demands?" asked Mrs. McFarlane nervously, with a vague recollection of a program about women which her respectable morning paper had not been able to print in full, but which she had looked up later in the chauffeur's more liberal journal, while he was putting on the chains.
Divining her fears, Mrs. Torby gracefully hastened to allay them. "They demand nothing more than that we receive a delegate from their committee, and answer his questions."
"Receive him," said the Admiral with that terrible calm which seems to have replaced the old quarter-deck manner. "We'll receive him a good deal more warmly than he'll like."
Mr. Torby held up his hand. "No," he said. "Our safety, the safety of these ladies, is dependent upon the safe-conduct back of this delegate. The mob, probably through the culpable carelessness of the Administration—"
"Not a word against the Administration, sir," cried the Admiral, "—the Administration under whom this country has just won one of the most signal tri—"
"I'm afraid, sir," said Hewer most respectfully,"that the committee is not inclined to wait very much longer."
It was decided to admit the People's delegate at once. After all, however detestable his philosophy, he would be only one man against twenty-four guests, six footmen and Hewer. But when Hewer opened the dining-room door and announced in his very best manner, "The Representative of the Soviet Committee," everyone saw that confidence had been premature.
The delegate was an alarming figure. He was in his shirt-sleeves, without collar and round his waist was tied a long strip of the Torby's carpet; from this protruded the handle of an army revolver. The lower part of his face was hidden by a black silk handkerchief; and a soft hat, rather too large for him, was pulled down to his brows. It was a hat which Trevillian had passed on to Hewer some months before, but fortunately there is no way of identifying a soft felt hat. Below the brim a pair of piercing gray eyes ran over the company like the glint of steel.
The delegate was tall, and he stood in the doorway with folded arms. Mrs. McFarlane, declaring that at last the aristocracy knew how to die, burst into tears; and Trevillian Torby, bending over Miss Evington, declared in a passionate undertone that he would give his life for hers. But Miss Evington, with her eye fixed on the delegate, drew back almost rudely from Trevillian's protecting droop and said quite loudly: "Nonsense, Trevillian! I don't feel myself in any danger."
"I am here," said the delegate in a deep, rough voice, "as a representative of the first soviet committee—a formof government which, as you now doubtless understand, will soon take over this entire country—indeed, the world. How dare you, a little, idle, parasitic group, eat like this, drink like this—and," he added, snatching a bottle of champagne from the nerveless hand of a footman and quickly returning it, "and such a rotten brand, too? By what right, I say, do you feast, while better people are starving? But we are not cruel or unreasonable, and anyone here who can show that he or his immediate family belong to the proletariat and has worked with his hands, will be spared."
A confused silence greeted this speech. The company did not really take in the meaning of his words, for the reason that any identification of themselves with the proletariat—what they would have called the lower classes—seemed to them simply fantastic. Though they were continually readjusting their social standing with each other, they no more doubted their general superiority to the rest of humanity than they doubted the fact of the skies being above the earth.
Mr. Barnsell, who had had more practice than most of them in adapting himself to his surroundings, spoke first. Getting up, with his hands in his pockets, he said coolly:
"Oh, come, my dear fellow! This is ridiculous. This is un-American—extremely un-American. There are no class-distinctions in this country. We all in a sense belong to the proletariat."
"Speak for yourself," said Mrs. Grey.
Mrs. Torby bent over to her next-door neighbor andwhispered, "Exactly what do they mean by proletariat?" with the manner of one who, being about to be elected to a club, would like to know what the organization signified.
"You will have to offer proof of your assertions," said the delegate in a more threatening tone. "A leisure class is a criminal class, and its wealth will be confiscated for the common good. Are you or are you not members of a leisure class?"
At this the company, which had so far shown a good deal of courage, in face of one of the most terrifying agencies in the world,—an angry mob,—began to show evidence of panic. A threat to human life, even their own, seemed to them less horrible than this danger to the existing order of society. The right of property—not their own property, but the divine right of property in general—seemed worth defending at great cost. A babel of voices arose, out of which Mr. McFarlane's soared like a lark:
"I did, I did," he was saying. "I used to help my father pick the beets and the rose-bugs. My father was a gardener. This lady"—indicating Mrs. Grey—"knows that what I say is true. My father was her father's gardener."
"Is this true?" asked the delegate.
"Yes," answered Mrs. Grey, "and a very coarse, uneducated man too, as I remember him."
"Thank you—oh, thank you," said Mr. McFarlane warmly; and his wife, raising her tiara-ed head, added:
"Yes, and as a girl I used to take in plain—"
"Hush, Maria!" said her husband. "It is unnecessary. A wife always takes the rank of her husband in any society."
Mrs. McFarlane caught the idea at once, and leaning back with folded hands, she looked about patronizingly on those whose position under the new order was less solidly founded than her own.
The complete success of Mr. McFarlane pointed the way to others, whose training had made them quick to learn new methods of pleasing—when they wanted to please. In a few minutes astounding revelations had been made on all sides. Mr. Lossing, the haughty and exclusive Mr. Lossing, confessed, or rather he loudly and repeatedly asserted, that he had long been secretly married to his cook—than whom, he insisted, no one was a more persistent and skillful manual worker. Mr. Barnsell, who had always seemed to live remarkably well on the proceeds of a somewhat tenuous law-practice, pleaded for publicity for the fact that his father had kept a tailor's shop—and he offered to produce photographs in proof of his statement.
"Did you ever work in this shop?" asked the delegate.
"I'm afraid not," answered Mr. Barnsell reluctantly. "My mother,—you know how petty women are about class distinctions,—she wanted me to rise in the world—"
"Rise!" exclaimed the delegate haughtily. "You are untrue to your class, sir."
"Perhaps—a little," murmured Mr. Barnsell meekly.
"But we will pass you," said the delegate, "for the sake of your father."
By a somewhat unexpected application of Bolshevist principles, the delegate exempted members of the military and naval services, and visiting foreigners, from any examination. He showed a tendency also to pass over Mrs. Grey, although she kept asserting that none of her ancestors had ever done anything useful. "Unless," she added thoughtfully, "Lionel Grey, whom they sent to the Tower for a day or two in 1673 for killing his valet. He may have had to sweep out his room. And I have a son," she added more loudly, "who is just as bad."
"You mean your son does not work?" said the delegate, as if he felt the statement so unlikely that he was ready to contradict it.
"I shouldn't call him usefully employed at this moment," replied the old lady. "Would you like me to describe what he is doing?"
"Be silent, madam," said the delegate, and turned hastily away to the examination of the Torby family.
Asked rather roughly what he had to say for himself, Mr. Torby rose. "I have to say," he began, "that I agree with my friend Mr. Barnsell, that this whole movement is extremely un-American. This country is a democracy—our forefathers died to make it so; and for you to attempt to introduce all these dangerous ideas of class antagonism is opposed to all the ideals of the founders of this nation. There are no class distinctions in America. I may rise today, and you tomorrow—or you might have, if you had not cast in your lot with these lawless rascals who all will end in jail. Take the example of Mr.Barnsell here—proud to own his father's trade." (Mr. Barnsell tried to oblige with a proud look.) "And I too—my father was a farmer. He tilled the soil with his own hands. That, ladies and gentlemen, is America."
"Ah, that's easy to say," replied the delegate, strangely unimpressed by an oration that had drawn tears to Mr. Barnsell's eyes. "It's easy to say that your father was a farmer, but can you prove it? Only yesterday I saw an interview with you in our capitalistic press on the occasion of your being elected president of one of these aristocratic social clubs,—which the people will raze to the ground immediately,—and this interview stated on your own authority that yours was one of the oldest and idlest families in this country."
"The reporter misunderstood me," said Mr. Torby with the firmness of a man whose public life has made him long familiar with the phrase.
Trevillian Torby sprang to his feet. "Father," he said pleadingly, "let me go upstairs and bring down Grandfather."
"Goodness," exclaimed Mrs. Grey, "don't tell me that the original Ephraim is still alive!"
"My father-in-law is very old," murmured Mrs. Torby faintly. "He shuns society."
For the first time since the entrance of the People's delegate, the interest of the company turned from him and rested on the door through which Trevillian had departed. The idea that the great Ephraim—the founder of the colossal Torby fortune, the ancestor who had become almost a myth—was not only alive but living somewhere in the top of the palace which his money had built,was an overwhelming surprise to everyone. Everyone began calculating what his age must be, and having reached the conclusion that he was well over eighty, they were prepared to see Trevillian lead, wheel, or even carry him into the room; but the reality was very different.
Ephraim Torby strode in ahead of his grandson. He was tall, over six feet, and the long plum-colored dressing-gown he was wearing made him look taller. The whiskers, which he wore in accordance with the fashion of his youth, gave to his shaven upper lip an added expression of shrewd humor. A slight smile wrinkled the upper part of his face, and his bright black eyes twinkled. From the moment he entered the room, the situation was in his hands.
"Well," he said in a leisurely tone, addressing the delegate, "what's all this about?"
The delegate in a few words, made less fluent by the fact that the old man had put on a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles and was now studying the delegate in detail, explained the principles of the Bolshevist movement, and the relation of these principles to the present company.
"Foolishness!" said the old man. "For the land's sake, what are clever fellars like you doing wasting your time fighting these folks?" And he waved his hand toward the dinner-table. "Ain't you got sense enough to see that you're jest the same—jest the same? Both against justice and law and order—both discontented— Oh, yes, Bill, you are discontented, and Trevillian too. They don't get any fun out of life—not out of spending the money I had such a heap of fun making. And you'll find, young fellar," he added to the delegate, "thatthere's only two kinds of folks worth fussing over in this world—them that enjoys life, and them that would jest as lief jump off the bridge tomorrow. You're both discontented, and you're both narrer: you can't see anybody's interest but your own, and you're both as selfish as the dickens—want to run the world jest for the sake of your own folks. Why, you two ought to be able to get together. But the fellars who are going to beat you both—and you're going to be beaten—is the fellars with a cheap car and a couple of acres, or a three-room flat, who are having too good a time out of it to let you bust it up. And you'll never get past them—never in your lifetime, young fellar."
"We've got a good way already," said the delegate.
"Oh, maybe, maybe," answered the old man. "And I presume you're having a good time out of trying—and if you want any advice about organization, you might drop in to see me some afternoon, when Bill is out. You can't tell; I might even want to subscribe to your campaign-fund—"
"Father," said William Torby, displaying more feeling than at any time during the evening, "that would be being untrue to your class."
"Why, Trevillian was just a-telling me, Bill, that you said there were no classes in America," answered his father.
In the slight pause that followed, Mrs. Grey rose, and approaching Ephraim, she said in her most gracious manner—and that was very gracious:
"Do come over and sit down, Mr. Torby. I should like so much to talk to you."
But the People's delegate interfered. "No, madam," he said fiercely. "As you have shown no connection whatsoever with the proletariat, I must trouble you to come with me."
Mrs. Grey nodded at the terrified company. "Good night," she said. "Such a pleasant evening! Do ask me again sometime, dear Mrs. Torby." And then she added to the delegate: "I insist on Miss Evington's accompanying me. She's quite as bad in her own way as I am in mine."
"No," shouted Trevillian.
"Yes, we'll take her along," said the delegate; and the three left the room hastily, taking the precaution to lock the door behind them.
When safely in the taxicab, which Hewer had waiting for them, Miss Evington said: "Oh, Dick, can you ever forgive me for having been a little bit dazzled by those people?"
"Well, Richard," said his mother, "I should think this would mean a jail-sentence for you when it comes out. But I shall always think it was well worth while, well worth while."
"They'll never tell if we don't," said Richard confidently.
"Perhaps not," said Mrs. Grey, settling back comfortably in her corner. "I want to say this—not that I don't know that you are holding Evalina's hand behind my back, and I should know it, even if I were as blind as a bat, which I'm thankful to say I am not—I want to say that I think I believe in democracy, after all. The only really interesting and agreeable man there this evening,except yourself, my dear Richard, was that delightful old farmer. Evidently the thing that makes American society so dull is not the people they let in nowadays, as I had always imagined, but the people they keep out. Yes, Richard, you have converted me to democracy."
But Richard and Evalina were not paying as much attention to this philosophy as it undoubtedly deserved.
Fifth: To my executors hereinafter named, or to such of them as shall qualify, and the survivors of them, I give and bequeath the sum of one million dollars ($1,000,000) in trust to hold, invest and reinvest the same and to collect the income, issues and profits thereof and pay over the whole of said income, issues and profits, accruing from the date of my death, in semiannual payments, less proper charges and expenses, to my wife, Doris Helen Southgate, as long as she shall remain my widow; and upon the death or remarriage of my said wife, I direct that the principal of said trust shall be paid over to my sister, Antonia Southgate, or in the event of her death—
Fifth: To my executors hereinafter named, or to such of them as shall qualify, and the survivors of them, I give and bequeath the sum of one million dollars ($1,000,000) in trust to hold, invest and reinvest the same and to collect the income, issues and profits thereof and pay over the whole of said income, issues and profits, accruing from the date of my death, in semiannual payments, less proper charges and expenses, to my wife, Doris Helen Southgate, as long as she shall remain my widow; and upon the death or remarriage of my said wife, I direct that the principal of said trust shall be paid over to my sister, Antonia Southgate, or in the event of her death—
It was this fifth clause that Vincent Williams, the dead man's lawyer, found himself considering as he drove uptown with a copy of the will in his pocket. Was or was not a man justified in cutting his wife off in case of her remarriage? After all, why should a fellow work hard all his life to support his successor and perhaps his successor's children? The absolute possession of a large fortune may be a definite danger to a young woman of twenty-five. Yes, there was much to be said in favor of such a provision; and yet, when he had said it all, Williams found himself feeling as he had felt when he drew the will—that it was an unwarranted insult, an ungracious gesture of possession from the grave. He himself couldn't imagine making such a will; but then he had not married a girl thirty-five years his junior.Southgate may have had a vision of some pale, sleek-headed professional dancer, or dark-skinned South European with a criminal record—
Williams was shocked to find he was thinking that the widow would have a right even to such companions as these, if these were what she wanted. He had no clew as to what she did want, for he had never seen her, although he had been Southgate's lawyer for many years. Southgate, since his marriage five years before, had spent most of his time at Pasadena, although he always kept the house on Riverside open.
It was toward this house that Williams was now driving. There was a touch of the mausoleum about it—just the kind of house that a man who had made his fortune in coffins ought to have owned. It was built of cold, smooth graystone, and the door was wider at the bottom than at the top, in the manner of an Egyptian tomb. You went down a few steps into the hall, and Williams always half expected to hear a trapdoor clang behind him and find that, Rhadames in the last act of Aïda, he was walled up for good.
Nichols, Southgate's old manservant, opened the door for him and conducted him to the drawing-room, which ran across the front of the house on the second story, with three windows, somewhat contracted by stone decorations, which looked on the river.
It was an ugly, pretentious room, done in the period of modern satinwood, striped silks and small oil paintings in immense gold frames. Over the mantelpiece hung a portrait of Southgate by Bonnat—a fine, blatantpicture, against a red background, of a man in a frock coat with a square beard.
The house was well constructed and the carpets were deep, so that complete silence reigned. Williams walked to the middle window and looked out. It was the end of February and a wild wind was blowing across the Hudson, but even a ruffled dark gray river was more agreeable to look at than the drawing-room. He stood staring out at an empty freighter making her way slowly upstream to her anchorage, until a rustling of new crape garments made him turn, as Miss Southgate entered.
She was tall—her brother had been tall too; nearly six feet; her face was white as alabaster, and her hair, though she was nearly sixty, was still jet black. Her mourning made her seem more majestic than ever, though Williams would have said she could not possibly have been more majestic than she had been the last time he saw her.
His first impression was that she was alone, but a second later he saw that she was followed by a tiny creature, who looked as much out of scale beside Antonia as if the Creator had been experimenting in different sizes of human beings and had somehow got the two sets mixed up—a little blond-headed doll with eyes the color of Delft china. Miss Southgate held out a solid hand, white as a camellia. "I don't think you know my sister-in-law," she said in her deep voice. "A very old friend of Alexander's, my dear—Mr. Williams."
Williams smiled encouragingly in answer, assuming that anything so small must be timid; but little Mrs. Southgate betrayed no symptom of alarm. She bent herslender throat and sat down on the sofa beside Antonia, with her hands, palms up, in her lap. She did it with a certain crispness, like a good child doing what it has been taught as exactly the right thing to do. She sat perfectly still; whereas Antonia kept up a slow, magnificent undulation of shoulders and hips, as Williams took the will out of his pocket.
"You are familiar with the terms of the will?" he asked, scrupulously including both ladies in the question.
"Yes," said Antonia, "my brother discussed the will with me in great detail before he made it, and I told Doris what you had said to me yesterday after the funeral. I think she understands. You do understand, my dear, don't you, that my brother left you the income of his estate during your life?"
Mrs. Southgate nodded, without the least change of expression.
"During her life or until her remarriage," said Williams, giving the word full weight.
"I shall not remarry," said Mrs. Southgate in a quick, sweet, whispering voice—the sort of voice which made everyone lean forward, although it was perfectly audible.
Antonia looked down at her sister-in-law and smiled, and Williams recognized with surprise that she was obviously attached to the little creature. He was surprised, because he knew that Miss Southgate had disapproved of the marriage; and even if the marriage had been less open to hostile criticism than it was, no one would expect a sister, who had for many years been at the head of her brother's house and a partner in his business, to welcome the intrusion of a young blond-headedwife. It really spoke well for both women, he thought, that they had managed to get on.
He began to go over the will, paragraph by paragraph. In the sixteenth clause it was stated that the jewels now in possession of Mrs. Southgate, in especial a string of pearls and pigeon's-blood rubies, were not to be regarded as gifts, but as part of the estate. He glanced at the widow.
"I suppose that was your understanding," he said.
"I never thought about it," she answered. "If Alexander says so, of course he knew what he meant."
At this moment the door softly opened and Nichols appeared with a visiting card on a salver, which he presented to Antonia. Miss Southgate began feeling for her lorgnette.
"We can see no one," she said reprovingly to Nichols; then as she found her glasses and read the card, she added, "I never heard of such a person. Is it for me?"
"No, madam," said Nichols; "the gentleman asked for Mrs. Southgate."
"Explain to him that we can see no one," said Antonia; and then, as Nichols left the room, she decided as an afterthought to give the card to her sister-in-law—merely for information, however, for the door had already shut behind Nichols.
As the little widow read the card she looked up with large, startled eyes, which from having been light blue suddenly turned without any warning at all to a deep, shiny black, and she colored until not only her face and neck but even her tiny wrists were pink. It was really, Williams thought, very interesting to watch; all the morebecause Antonia, who was talking about a legacy to an old servant, was utterly unaware of what was going on at her elbow. Mrs. Southgate had made no muscular movement at all, except to turn her palms over, so that her two hands were now domed above the visiting card. She sat quite still, gazing into vacancy and obviously not hearing a single word that was said.
But half an hour later, when Williams stood up to go, she came back to life, and said to him without the least preamble, "You did not tell me what would happen if I did remarry."
Antonia turned the full front of her majesty upon her sister-in-law, and said, "You would lose the name of Southgate."
"I am glad you asked that question," said Williams. "You ought to understand exactly what your situation is. In the event of your remarriage, you would have an income from another small fund—amounting to about forty-five hundred dollars a year, I should think."
She nodded thoughtfully; and Antonia, laying her hand on her shoulder, said gently: "Now I have still a few family matters to discuss with Mr. Williams; but you need not wait, if you want to finish your letters, although we shall be very glad to have you with us if you wish to stay."
It was clear to Williams that she did not wish to stay. She held out her hand to him—thin and narrow, but as strong as steel—gave him a smile and left the room. She always had a little difficulty, like a child, with the handle of a door.
Williams and Miss Southgate smiled at each other, andhe expressed a common thought as he said, "If I met Mrs. Southgate unexpectedly in the woods, I shouldn't need any photographs to make me believe in fairies."
"She's a dear little thing," said Antonia as she seated herself again, rather heavily. "Very intelligent in some ways, but in business matters—almost a case of arrested development. My brother never even gave her the trouble of signing a check."
"He just paid her bills?"
"She had very few. She has never been extravagant. She seems to have no wishes at all. I often hope that she will learn to assert herself more as she grows older."
Williams doubted if Miss Southgate would enjoy the realization of this hope, but he only said, "An income of fifty thousand is apt to increase human assertiveness."
"I sincerely hope so," said Miss Southgate. "It's a great care, Mr. Williams, and no special pleasure to find yourself obliged to direct every action, almost every thought, of another person's life. What I wanted to say to you was that I think you had better consult me about all the business details. You see how little grasp she has of them. My brother never discussed anything of the kind with her. He was more like a father than a husband—thirty-five years' difference in age—"