"Cora," said Crane, "is that your hat?""Cora," said Crane, "is that your hat?"
"What is the trouble, then?"
"The trouble," said Mrs. Falkener, seeing Crane hesitate for a word, "is that you have on my daughter's hat."
"Your daughter's hat!" said Lily contemptuously. "Nothing of the kind."
Mrs. Falkener turned to Tucker.
"This is intolerable. This is insufferable," she cried. "To have that woman standing there in Cora's hat, which I chose myself and paid forty-five dollars for at a sale, and cheap, too, for a Diane Duruy model; to stand there and tell me I don't know the hat when I see it—"
"Cora," said Crane, "is that your hat?"
"Why, yes, I'm afraid it is," answered Cora, rather reluctantly.
"Lily, have you any explanation to make?" he asked.
"None at all," replied the housemaid, looking like white granite.
"Cora," said Crane, "you did not by any chance say anything that could have led Lily to believe you meant to give her the hat?"
Miss Falkener smiled.
"No," she said. "My mother would not encourage such a generous impulse in regard to a French hat."
"Then, Lily," said Burton, "take off the hat, and give it back to Miss Falkener, and go and pack your things and be out of the house in an hour."
"You must have her luggage searched," said Tucker.
"Give the hat back!" cried Mrs. Falkener. "What good will that do? Do you suppose that I would ever let Cora put it on her head again, after that woman has worn it? She may as well keep it now."
"I shall," answered Lily. "It's mine."
The girl's determination impressed Crane more than it did the others, though even he could not see any loop-hole of escape for her. He rang the bell, and when Smithfield appeared, he said:
"Smithfield, I have dismissed Lily. We found her leaving the house in one of Miss Falkener's hats."
"Oh, begging your pardon, no, sir," said Smithfield. "It is really not Miss Falkener's hat. Surely, Lily, you explained it?"
"I don't care to speak to them at all," answered Lily.
"Oh, that's no way to speak to your employers, my girl," said Smithfield. "The explanation is this, sir: I understand those great French houses send out many hats alike, sir, and this one was given to Lily by a friend, by Mrs. Crosslett-Billington, to be exact, sir, she thinking it a trifle youthful for herself after she had bought it, and I can't but say she was right, sir, she being a lady now nearing sixty, though hardly looking forty-five. The first evening the ladies came, sir, when Lily had done unpacking their things, she mentioned in the kitchen that Miss Falkener had a hat similar to her own, and we all advised her, sir, under the circumstances, not to wear it during the ladies' stay, as being more suitable and respectful; and she agreed not to, but young women when they have pretty things, dear me, sir, they do like to wear them, and that I presume is why she put on the hat, in spite of our warnings, and I'm sure she regrets it heartily, sir."
"I don't," said Lily. "I'm right glad I did."
"Tut, tut," said Smithfield, "no way to answer, no way to answer."
"Cora," Crane said, "would you go up and see if your hat is in your room?" Cora agreed and left the room at once.
Complete silence reigned until she returned. She was carrying in her hand a hat, the exact duplicate of that which the housemaid wore. They looked from one to another. Lily's triumph was complete.
"Lily," said Crane, "an apology seems to be due to you, which I have great pleasure in offering you, but I must say that if you had been just a trifle more civil, the whole mistake might have been cleared up sooner and more agreeably."
"I think it outrageous," observed Mrs. Falkener, rising. "I think it perfectly outrageous that any servant should own a hat which anywhere but at a special sale must have cost sixty or seventy dollars."
"And now I'll tell you what I think outrageous," said Lily, her soft Southern drawl taking on a certain vigor, "and that is that women like you, calling themselves ladies, should be free to browbeat and insult servants as much as they please—"
"Shut up, Lily," said Smithfield, but she paid no attention.
"No," she said, "no one knows what I've put up with from this insolent old harridan, and now I am going to say what I think."
"Oh, no, Lily," said Crane, taking her by the arm, "you really are not. We're all sorry for the incident, but really, you know you can't be allowed to talk like that."
"But, Mr. Crane," drawled Lily, "you don't appreciate what a dreadful woman she is—no one could who did not have to hook her up every evening."
Between Smithfield and Crane, she was hustled out of the room.
Alone in the hall, Crane and his butler held a consultation.
"She's got to go, Smithfield. Why in the world wouldn't she hold her tongue? Poor girl, I felt every sympathy with her."
"Oh, sir," exclaimed Smithfield, "what shall we do? Jane-Ellen and I really can't run the house entirely alone, sir."
"Of course not, of course not," Burton answered. "You must get some more servants. Get as many as you please—black, white, or red—but for heaven's sake get the kind that won't be impertinent to Mrs. Falkener."
Smithfield shook his head.
"That's a kind will be hard to find, sir, begging your pardon," he observed.
Crane thought it best to ignore this remark.
"I tell you what to do," he said. "Call up Mr. Eliot and say we should all be glad to accept his invitation to lunch to-day if he can still have us. That will give you a little time to look about you. By to-morrow you ought to be able to find some one."
He waited to get Eliot's answer before he returned to the sitting-room, where he saw that Tucker and Mrs. Falkener had had a long, comfortable talk about their grievances and their own general righteousness. He hated to break into the calm that had succeeded by announcing that they were all going out to lunch.
"Burton," said Mrs. Falkener, directing a stern glance at her daughter, "I explained to you yesterday that was an invitation I did not care to accept."
"I know," said Crane, "but my household is now so short-handed that it seemed a question of lunching out or getting no lunch at all. If you really object to going to Eliot's, I dare say they could give you something cold at home, if you did not mind that. You will come, won't you, Cora?"
"With pleasure," answered Cora.
Crane's manner was unusually decisive, and Mrs. Falkener saw that it was time to make things smooth.
"Oh, no," she said. "No, if you are all going, I shall go, too. Only, home is so delightful, I hate the thought of leaving it."
"It hasn't seemed very delightful to me for the past few minutes," answered Burton, "but I'm glad if you've enjoyed it."
"Ah, Burton, my dear, you take these things too seriously," replied Mrs. Falkener. "A little trouble with the servants—an everyday occurrence in a woman's life. You of the stronger sex must not let it worry you so much. When you've kept house as many years as I have, you'll learn that the great thing is to be firm from the beginning. That's the only criticism I could make of you, Burt, a little weak, a little weak."
Tucker here rose, pressing his hand over his eyes.
"I think, if you don't mind, I won't go," he said. "I've a slight headache. Oh, nothing much, but I'll lunch quietly here, if you'll let me—a slice of cold meat and a glass of sherry is all I shall require."
If Crane were weak, he did not look so at this moment.
"I am sorry, Solon," he answered, "but it would be very much more convenient, if you went with us." He had no intention of leaving Tucker alone in the house with Jane-Ellen, while Smithfield was scouring the countryside for fresh servants.
"I'm not thinking so much of myself," said Tucker, "but of you. I fear I should not be much of an addition to the party."
"But I think of you, Tuck," answered his host. "What in the world would there be for you to do at home, except talk to the cook?"
Tucker said, rather ungraciously, that of course he would go if Crane wished him to, but that—
Crane, however, did not allow him to finish his sentence.
"Thank you," he said briskly. "That will be delightful. We shall be starting at half-past twelve."
ELIOT'S large library, to which Crane and his party were led on their arrival, looked as only a room can look which has been occupied for several hours by a number of idle men. All the sofa cushions were on the floor, all the newspapers were on the sofas, cigarette ashes were everywhere, and the air was heavy with a combination of wood and tobacco smoke, everybody's hair was ruffled, as if they had all been sitting on the back of their heads, and Eliot, himself, now standing commandingly on the hearth-rug, was saying:
"Yes, and he did not have a sound leg when he bought him, and that must have been in 1909, for I remember it was the last year I went to Melton—" He broke off reluctantly to greet his guests.
Lefferts, who looked peculiarly neat and fresh among his companions, approached Burton, who was beside Mrs. Falkener.
"They have been talking for three hours," he observed, "about a splint on the nigh foreleg of a gray horse that doesn't belong to any of them. Sit down, Mrs. Falkener, and let us have a little rational conversation. Doesn't that idea attract you?"
"Not particularly, since you ask me," replied Mrs. Falkener, not deigning even to look at the poet, but sweeping her head about slowly as if scanning vast horizons.
"The rational doesn't attract you," Lefferts went on cheerfully. "Well, then we must try something else. How about the fantastic-sardonical, or the comic-fantastical, or even better, the—"
But Mrs. Falkener, uttering a slight exclamation of impatience, moved away.
Lefferts turned to Crane, with his unruffled smile.
"She doesn't like me," he said.
"Cora," he added, very slightly raising his voice so as to attract the attention of Miss Falkener, who immediately approached them, "Cora, why is it your mother hates me so much?"
"She certainly does," returned Cora frankly. "You know, Leonard, you are really rather stupid with her. You always begin by saying things she doesn't understand, and of course no one likes that."
Lefferts sighed.
"You see, she stimulates me so tremendously. One gets used to just merely boring or depressing one's friends, but to be actively hated is exciting. People who have lived through blood feuds and tong wars tell you that there is no excitement comparable to it. I feel a little like the leader of a tong whenever I meet Mrs. Falkener. Cora, would you belong to my tong, or would you feel loyalty demanded your remaining in your mother's?"
They went in to luncheon before Cora was obliged to answer, and here Lefferts contrived to sit next to her by the comparatively simple expedient of making the man who had already seated himself at her side get up and yield him the place.
Crane, sitting between his host and another man, enjoyed a period of quiet. Without his exactly arranging it, a definite plan for the afternoon was growing up in his mind—a plan which, it must be confessed, had been first suggested by Tucker's idea of staying at home, a plan based on a vision of Jane-Ellen and Willoughby holding the kitchen in solitary state.
Crane knew that luncheons at Eliot's were long ceremonies. Food was served and eaten slowly, you sat a long time over coffee and cigars, and at the smallest encouragement, Eliot would bring out his grandfather's Madeira. And after that you were unusually lucky if you escaped a visit to the stables, and that meant the whole afternoon.
So he awaited a good opportunity after lunch was over, when Tucker, under pretense of reading a newspaper, had sunk into a comfortable doze, and Mrs. Falkener, while carrying on a fairly connected conversation with Eliot, was really concentrated on preventing Lefferts from taking Cora into another room. This was Crane's chance. He slipped into the hall, found his coat and hat, unearthed his chauffeur and motor, and drove quickly home, sending back the car at once to wait for the others.
He did not, as his impulse was, go in the kitchen way. He did not want to do anything that might annoy Jane-Ellen. At the same time, he rebelled at the notion of having always to offer an excuse for seeing her, as if he were so superior a being that he had to explain how he could stoop to the level of her society. He wanted to say frankly that he had come home because he wanted more than anything in the world to see her again.
The first thing he noticed as he went up the steps of the piazza was Willoughby sleeping in the warm afternoon sun. Then he was aware of the sound of a victrola playing dance music. The hall-door stood wide open; he looked in. Smithfield and Jane-Ellen were dancing.
Though no dancer himself, Crane had never been aware of any prejudice on the subject; indeed, he had sometimes thought that those who protested were more dangerously suggestive than the dances themselves. But now he felt a wave of protest sweep over him; the closeness, the identity of intention, seemed to him an intolerable form of intimacy.
The two were quite unconscious of his presence, and he stood there for several minutes, stood there, indeed, until Jane-Ellen's hair fell down and she had to stop to rearrange it. She looked very pretty as she stood panting and putting it up again, but she exerted no attraction upon Crane. Disgust, he thought, was all he now felt. One did not, after all, as he told himself, enter into competition with one's own butler.
He went quietly away, ordered a horse and went for a long ride. A man not very easily moved emotionally, he had never experienced the sensation of jealousy, and he now supposed himself to have reached as calm a judgment as any in his life. Everything he had ever heard to Jane-Ellen's discredit, every intimation of Tucker's, every sneer of Mrs. Falkener's, came back to him now. He would like to have sent for her and in the most scathing terms told her what he thought of her—an interview which he imagined as very different from his former reproof. But he decided it would be simpler and more dignified never to notice her in any way again. On this decision he at last turned his horse's head homeward.
Smithfield let him in, as calm and imperturbable as ever.
"Your afternoon been satisfactory, Smithfield?" inquired his employer.
Smithfield stared.
"I beg pardon, sir?"
"Have you succeeded in finding a boy to replace Brindlebury?"
The butler's face cleared.
"Oh, yes, I believe I have—not a boy, exactly, quite an elderly man, but one who promises to do, sir."
"Good." Crane turned away, but the man followed him.
"Miss Falkener asked me to tell you when you came in, sir, that she would be glad of a word with you. She's in your office."
Crane stood absolutely still for a second or two, and as he stood, his jaw slowly set, as he took a resolution. Then he opened the door of his office and went in.
Two personalities sometimes advance to a meeting with intentions as opposite as those of two trains on a single track. Crane and Cora were both too much absorbed in their own aims to observe the signals of the other.
"Cora," began Crane, with all the solemnity of which the two syllables were capable.
"Oh, Burton," cried the girl, "why did you leave Mr. Eliot's like that? It has worried me so much. Did anything happen to annoy you? What was it?"
"I sent the car right back for you."
"It wasn't the car I wanted."
Crane began at once to feel guilty, the form of egotism hardest to eradicate from the human heart.
"I'm sorry if I seemed rude, my dear Cora. I thought you were settled and content with Lefferts. I did not suppose any one would notice—"
"Your absence? Oh, Burt!"
He became aware of a suppressed excitement, an imminent outburst of some sort. A sudden terror swept over him, terror of the future, of the deed he was about to do, terror even of this strange and utterly unknown woman whom he was about to make a part of his daily life, as long as days existed. For a second he had an illusion that he had never seen, never spoken to her before, and as he struggled against this queer abnormality, he heard that in set, clear and not ill-chosen terms he was asking her to marry him.
She clasped her hands together.
"Oh, it's just what I was trying to prevent."
"To prevent?"
"Burt, I've treated you so badly."
He looked at her without expression.
"Well, let's get the facts before we decide on that."
The facts, Cora intimated, were terrible. She was already engaged.
"To Lefferts?"
She nodded tragically.
Crane felt a strong inclination to laugh. The world took on a new aspect. Reality returned with a rush, and with it a strong, friendly affection for Cora. He hardly heard her long and passionate self-justification. She knew, she said, that she had given him every encouragement. Well, the truth was she had simply made up her mind to marry him; nothing would have pleased her mother more, but she did not intend to shelter herself behind obedience to her mother; she had intended to do it for her own ends.
"That was what I tried to tell you last evening in the garden, Burt. I deliberately schemed to marry you, but you mustn't think I did not like and admire you, in a way—"
"There's only one way, Cora."
This sent her off again into the depths of self-abasement. She had no excuse to offer, she kept protesting, and offered a dozen; the most potent being her uncertainty of Crane's own feelings for her.
"You behaved so strangely for a man in love, Burt," she wailed, "I was never sure."
"In the sense you mean, I was not in love with you, Cora."
"And yet, you want to marry me?"
"In your own words, I liked and admired you, but I was not in love. The humiliating truth is, my dear girl, that I was so fatuous as to believe that you were fond of me."
There was a short silence, and then Cora exclaimed candidly:
"Aren't people queer! Here I have been worrying myself sick over my treatment of you, and now that I find you are not made unhappy by it, do you know what I feel? Disappointed, disappointed somehow, that you don't love me!"
Crane laughed.
"I also," he said, "have been slightly oppressed by the responsibility of your fancied affection, and I, too, am conscious of a certain flatness in facing the truth."
Cora hardly listened.
"It seems so queer you don't love me," she murmured. "Why don't you love me, Burt?"
At this they both laughed, and went on presently to the more detailed consideration of Cora's affairs. She and Lefferts had met the winter before; she had not liked him at first, prejudiced perhaps by the fact that he was a poet, and that he pretended to dislike all the things she cared for, but she had found, almost at once, that he understood more about the things he hated than most men did about their favorite topics.
"He's really wonderful, Burt," she said. "He understands everything, every one. Do you know, he told me yesterday that I needn't worry about you—that you weren't in love with me. Only I did not believe him. He said: 'What confuses you, my dear, is that Crane is undoubtedly in love, one sees that clearly enough, but not with you.'"
"He did not just hit it there, though," answered Crane, in a rather feeble tone. Cora, however, was in a condition of mind in which it was not difficult to distract her, and she continued without paying any further attention to the example of Lefferts' extraordinary insight. She went on to say that she had had no idea that she was in love, until one day when she found herself speaking of it as if it had always been. Crane asked about Lefferts' worldly prospects, which turned out to be extremely dark. Had he a profession? Yes, such a strange one for a poet—he was an expert statistician, but, Cora sighed, there did not seem to be a very large demand for his abilities.
Among the many minor responsibilities inherited from his father, Crane remembered a statistical publication. He immediately offered its editorship to Lefferts. Cora's answer was to fling her arms about his neck.
"Oh, Burt," she said, "you really are an angel!"
It was Crane's idea of what would have happened if Mrs. Falkener had entered at this moment, which she did not, that made him ask how matters stood in regard to her.
"She doesn't know," answered Cora, "and I don't think she even suspects, and I'm such a coward I can't make up my mind to tell her. Every time I see Leonard he asks me if I have, and now he is threatening to do it himself, and that you know, Burt, would be fatal."
"Cora," said Crane, "I am about to prove that I am no fair weather friend. With your permission, I will tell your mother."
No permission was ever more easily secured.
It was now five o'clock, an hour when the elder lady became restless if not served with a little tea and attention. Crane rang and ordered tea for two served in the office, and then sent Smithfield to ask Mrs. Falkener if he might have a word with her. She and her daughter passed each other on the threshold.
"How cozy this is," she began as she seated herself by the fire. "Smithfield keeps the silver bright, but I'm afraid he has no judgment. Have you seen the man he has engaged instead of that dreadful boy?—why, he's so old and lame he can hardly get up and down stairs. He'll never do, Burton, take my word for that."
"I have something more serious to say to you than the discussion of domestic matters, Mrs. Falkener," said Crane; and for one of the few times in her life, Mrs. Falkener forgot that the house contained such a thing as servants. A more important idea took possession of her attention.
Burton began to speak about romance. He said he did not know exactly how an older generation than his looked at such questions; for his own part, he regarded himself in many ways as a practical and hard-headed man, and yet more and more he found himself gravitating to the belief that romance, love, the drawing together for mutual strength and happiness of two individuals, was the only basis for individual life. People talked of the modern taste for luxury; to his mind there was no luxury like a congenial companion, no hardship like having to go through life without it. Love—did Mrs. Falkener believe in love?
"Do I believe in love, my dear Burt?" she cried. "What else is there to believe in? No girl, no nice girl, ever marries for any other reason. Oh, they try sometimes to be mercenary, but they don't succeed. I could never forgive a woman for considering anything else."
"I thought you would feel like that," said Crane. "I thought Cora was wrong in thinking you would oppose her. For, prudent or not from a worldly point of view, there is no doubt that she and Lefferts are in love."
The blow was a cruel one, and perhaps cruelly administered. Mrs. Falkener, even in the first instant of disaster, saw and took the only way out. Love, yes. But this was not love, this was a mere infatuation on one side, and a dark and wicked plot on the other. She would never forgive Burton, never, for being a party to this scheme to throw her daughter, her dear Cora, into the arms of this adventurer. Burton, who had always professed such friendship for her! She would not stay another moment in his house. There was a six-thirty train to the North, and she and her misguided daughter would take it.
Crane began to see why Cora, for all her physical courage, dreaded a disagreement with her mother. He himself felt as if an avalanche had passed over him, leaving him alive but dazed.
Mrs. Falkener sat with her handkerchief pressed to her eyes, not so much to wipe away her tears, for she was not crying, but to shut out the sight of her perfidious young host.
"Be so kind," she directed from behind this veil, "as to give orders for the packing of my trunks, and let Cora know that we are leaving immediately."
Burton hesitated.
"I am afraid, since the housemaid has left, there isn't any one to pack for you, Mrs. Falkener," he said. "Won't you delay your going until to-morrow? I can't bear to have you leave me like this."
Mrs. Falkener shook her head.
"Call Solon," she said. "No, don't ask me to stay. And why, pray, can't the cook make herself useful, for once?"
Mrs. Falkener was not, of course, in a position to know that Crane would not at the moment stoop to ask any favor of Jane-Ellen. He was glad of an excuse to escape, however, and summon Solon to take his place. He found Smithfield in the hall and explained to him that the ladies were called suddenly away, and then he himself walked down to the garage to arrange for their departure.
When he came back he found the house in the sort of turmoil that only a thoroughly executive woman in a bad temper can create. Smithfield, Cora and Jane-Ellen seemed to be all together engaged in packing. Solon and the new man were running up and down stairs with forgotten books and coats and umbrellas, while Mrs. Falkener was exercising a general and unflattering supervision of every one's activities. To say the new man was running is inaccurate. Even Tucker's dignified celerity hardly deserves such a word. But the new man, crippled and bent as he was, attained only such velocity as was consistent with a perfectly stiff left leg. Crane really felt he ought to interfere on his behalf, when he saw him laboring downstairs with heavy bags and bundles. He probably would have done so, had not his mind been distracted by coming unexpectedly upon a little scene in the upper hall. Cora was trying to press a fee into the hand of Jane-Ellen, and Jane-Ellen was refusing it. Both were flushed and embarrassed.
"I wanted to give you this because—"
"Oh, I couldn't, really; I've not done any—"
"Oh, you've been such a—"
"Oh, no, miss, I've not done—"
The approach of Crane enabled the cook to escape. Cora turned to Burton.
"She's worked so hard, and she wouldn't take a tip," she said. "And you never felt anything like her little hands, Burt. It's like touching a bird."
"Yes, I know," said Crane. "I mean, they look so. I want just a word with you, Cora," he continued, rather rapidly. "I'm afraid I haven't done you much good except that your mother is angrier with me than she is with you, and that's something."
"Oh, I don't care, now it's over," she answered. "And you'll tell Len this evening all that's happened, and where to write to me, and we shall both be grateful to you as long as we live."
At this moment, Mrs. Falkener in hat, veil, and wrap swept out of her room, followed by Smithfield, Tucker and the old man, carrying the last of her possessions. The moment of departure had come.
AFTER the departure of the ladies, Tucker and Crane stood an instant in silence on the piazza. Solon, who had been waked from his customary afternoon nap by the frantic summons of Mrs. Falkener, was still a little confused as to all that had happened, and had gathered nothing clearly except that Burton was in some way very much to be blamed.
"It's too bad," he observed, "to have them go off like that. We shall miss them, I fear."
Crane was standing with his hands in his pockets, watching the tail-light as it disappeared down the drive.
"Let us avoid that, Tuck, by going away ourselves."
"You mean to leave here?"
"Why not? The experiment has not struck me as a very happy one. Our servants have gone, our guests have left us, and for my part, I am eager to be off as well."
The time had come, then, when Jane-Ellen was to be friendless and out of a job; the third act was here.
"Anything that suits you pleases me, Burton," said Tucker.
"In that case," answered Crane, "I will telephone Reed to come over at once and make arrangements for giving up the house. We can't, I suppose, catch that night train, but with luck we may get away to-morrow morning."
"You seem in a great hurry."
"I'd like never to see the place again," returned Burton.
In the moment of silence that followed this heartfelt exclamation, a figure came briskly around the corner of the piazza, a figure discernible in the light shed by the front door.
"Oh, come here," said Crane.
The figure betrayed no sign of having heard, unless a slight accentuation in its limp might be so interpreted.
"What's your name?" shouted Burton.
The old man looked up.
"Yes, yes," he said, in a high shaking voice, "I'm lame; you're right there, sir. I've been lame these twenty years, and carrying down all them trunks has put sich a crick in my back as never was."
"I asked you your name," repeated his employer.
"When I came? Why, this afternoon, sir. It was your butler engaged me. I worked at the hotel here once, and Mr. Smithfield he come to my wife and says, 'Susan,' he says, he knowing her since he was a little boy—"
"Let me look at you," said Crane sternly.
But the elderly man, still talking to himself, retreated into the shadow.
And then Tucker was surprised to hear his host exclaim with violence:
"By Jove, the young devil," and to see him hurl himself off the piazza at its highest point. He would have landed actually on top of his decrepit servitor, had not the old man developed an activity utterly unsuspected by Tucker, which enabled him to get away down the avenue with a speed that Crane could not surpass.
"Well, well, what are we coming to?" Tucker murmured as he watched them dodge and double around trees and bushes. Presently they passed out of the light from the house, and only the sound of their feet beating on the hard avenue indicated that the fugitive had taken to the open.
Solon was still peering nervously into the dark when at last his host returned. Crane was breathing hard, and held in his hand a small furry object that Tucker made out gradually to be a neat gray wig.
"Oh," said Burton, still panting and slapping his side, "I haven't run so hard since I was in college. But I should have got him if it hadn't been for his superior knowledge of the ground."
"My dear Burton," said Tucker crossly, "what in the world have you been doing?"
"What have I been doing? I've been trying to catch that wretched boy, Brindlebury, but it's as well I didn't, I dare say. I thought his limp a little spectacular this afternoon when the trunks were being carried down. But his deafness—the young fool!—that deafness, never found anywhere but on the comic stage, was too much for me. He runs fast, I'll say that for him. He led me through a bramble hedge; backed through, himself. That's when I got his wig."
"I should not be surprised if we all were murdered in our beds," said Tucker.
"That's right, Tuck," said Crane, "look on the cheerful side. Come with me now, while I speak to Smithfield. I want to know what he has to say for himself."
Smithfield, looking particularly elegant in his shirt sleeves, a costume which shows off a slim figure to great advantage, was rather languidly setting the dinner-table for two; that is to say, he was rubbing a wine-glass, shaped like a miniature New England elm-tree, to remove the faint imprint of his own fingers.
"Smithfield," said Crane briskly, "I'm afraid your new useful man isn't going to be very useful. He seems to me too old."
Smithfield placed the glass deliberately upon the table.
"He's not so old as he appears, sir," he answered. "Only sixty-six his next birthday."
"A married man?"
"No, sir, a widower of many years. His wife died when her first baby was born—that's Mr. Crosslett-Billington's present chauffeur. That's how I happened to get the old fellow. And when the rheumatism—"
"Smithfield," said Crane, "that's about enough. Put down that glass, put on your coat and hat, and get out. You're lying to me, and you've been lying to me from the beginning. Don't stay to pack your things; you can settle all that with Mr. Reed to-morrow. Get out of my house, and don't let me see you again. And," he added, throwing the gray wig into his hands, "there's a souvenir for you."
Smithfield, without the least change of expression, caught the wig, bowed, and withdrew.
"And now, Tuck," Crane added, turning to his lawyer, "I wish you would go and telephone Reed to come here at once and clear this whole thing up. Tell him I'll send the motor for him as soon as it comes back."
"It's dinner-time now," observed Tucker.
"Ask him to dinner then," said Crane. "I must go and see that Smithfield really gets out of this house."
Scene from the Play the dinner. olivia, lefferts, tucker, weeks and crane. Act IIIScene from the PlayThe dinner. Olivia, Lefferts, Tucker, Weeks and Crane.Act III
Both tasks had been accomplished when at about eight o'clock Tucker and Crane again met in the hall. Smithfield had been actually seen off the place, Tucker had telephoned Reed and despatched the motor for him, and now the sound of an approaching car was heard.
"That can't be Reed, yet," said Tucker, "there hasn't been time."
Crane shook his head.
"It isn't the sound of my engine, either," he answered.
Headlights came sweeping up the drive, and a few minutes later, Lefferts, in full evening dress, entered the house.
"I'm afraid I'm a little bit late," he said, "but I missed a turn."
For an instant Crane regarded him blankly. Then he remembered that once, ages before, or perhaps no earlier than that very afternoon, he had invited Lefferts to dinner. And at the same time he realized what had not heretofore occurred to him, that there was no one in the house to serve dinner, except Jane-Ellen, who had, in all probability, cooked dinner for only two. Reed might be there at any minute. It was really necessary, in so acute a domestic crisis, to put pride in his pocket and go downstairs and speak to his cook.
He put his hand on Lefferts' shoulder.
"Awfully sorry, my dear fellow," he said, "that things are not quite as anticipated. Tucker will tell you we have had rather a stormy afternoon. Give him a cigarette and a cocktail, Tuck, and I'll be back in a minute." He disappeared down the kitchen stairs.
With what different feelings, he said to himself, did he now descend those stairs; but, when he was actually in the kitchen, when Willoughby was once again bounding forward to greet him, and Jane-Ellen was allowing herself that slow curved smile of hers, he was surprised and disappointed to find that his feelings were, after all, much the same as before. Over his manner, however, he was still master, and that was cold and formal in the extreme.
"I wanted to speak to you, Jane-Ellen," he began, but she interrupted.
"This time," she said gaily, "I know what it is that you are going to scold about."
"I am not going to scold."
She laughed.
"Well, that's a wonder," and glancing at him she was astonished to find no answering smile. "Are you really angry at me," she asked, "on account of this afternoon?"
"This afternoon?"
"On account of that silly plan about Brindlebury? I did not know they were going to do it, and when it was done, I couldn't betray them, could I?"
Crane made a gesture that seemed to indicate that he really had no means of judging what his cook might or might not do.
"You believe me, don't you?"
"Believe you?" said Crane. "I haven't considered the question one way or the other."
"Why, Mr. Crane," said Jane-Ellen, "whatever has come over you that you should speak like that?"
"This has come over me," answered Crane, "that I came down here in a hurry to give some orders and not to discuss the question of veracity."
The figure of Jane-Ellen stiffened, she clasped her hands behind her back.
"And what are your orders?" she said, in a tone of direful monotony.
Crane, as has been stated, was no coward, and even if he had been, anger would have lent him courage.
"There are two gentlemen coming to dine—four in all," and as he saw Jane-Ellen slightly beck her head at this, he added recklessly, "as Smithfield is gone, you will have to serve dinner as well as cook it."
"No," replied the cook. "No, indeed. Certainly not. I was engaged to cook, and I will cook to the very best of my abilities, but I was not engaged to be a maid of all work."
"You were engaged to do as you're told."
"There you are mistaken."
"Jane-Ellen, you will serve dinner."
"Mr. Crane, I will not."
The problem of the irresistible force and the immovable body seemed about to be demonstrated. They looked each other steadily and hostilely in the eyes.
"We seem," said Crane, "to be dealing with the eternal problem between employer and employee. You're not lazy, the work before you is nothing, but you deliberately choose to stand on your rights, on a purely technical point—"
"I do nothing of the kind."
"What are you doing then?"
"I'm making myself just as disagreeable as I can," answered Jane-Ellen. "Of course, I should have been delighted to do anything for any one who asked me politely. But when a man comes into my kitchen and talks about giving orders, and my doing as I'm told, and serving dinner, why, my answer is, he ought to have thought of his extra guests before he dismissed my brothers—"
"Your brothers!" cried Crane. "Do you mean to say that Smithfield is your brother too?"
"Well, I didn't mean to tell you," said the cook crossly, "but it happens to be true."
From the point of view of the irresistible force, the problem was now completely resolved.
"O Jane-Ellen!" he cried, "why in the world didn't you tell me so before?"
"I can't see what it has to do with things."
"It has everything," he answered. "It makes me see how wrong I have been, how rude. It makes me want to apologize for everything I have said since I came into the kitchen. It makes me ask you most humbly if you won't help me out in the ridiculous situation in which I find myself."
"But I don't see why Smithfield's being—"
"It would take a long time to explain," answered Burton, "although, I assure you, it can and shall be done. Perhaps this evening, after these tiresome men have gone, you will give me a few minutes. In the meantime, just let me say that I was angry at you, however wrongly, when I came down—"
"I'm not sure but that I'm still angry atyou," said the cook, but she smiled as she said it.
"You have every right to be, and no reason," he returned. "And you are going to be an angel and serve dinner, aren't you?"
"I said I would if asked politely."
"Though how in the world I shall sit still and let you wait on me, I don't see."
"Oh," said Jane-Ellen, "if you never have anything harder to do than that, you are very different from most of your sex. And now," she added, "I'd better run upstairs and put two more places at the table, for it's dinner-time already."
"If I come back later in the evening, you won't turn me out of the kitchen?"
She was already on her way upstairs, but she turned with a smile.
"It's your kitchen, sir," she said.
Crane followed her slowly. It occurred to him that he must have a talk with Lefferts. He found him and Tucker making rather heavy weather of conversation in the drawing-room. Tucker had naturally enough determined to adopt Mrs. Falkener's views of Lefferts. He had conformed with Crane's request and given the poet a cigarette and a cocktail, but he had attempted no explanation beyond an unsatisfactory statement that the ladies had been called away unexpectedly.
"Nothing serious, I hope," Lefferts had said.
"I hope not," Tucker had returned, and not another word would he utter on the subject.
Lefferts was, therefore, glad to respond to Crane's invitation to come into the office for a few minutes and leave Tucker to the contemplation of his own loyalty.
Left alone, Tucker's eager ears soon detected the sound of dishes in the dining-room, and he knew that this could be produced by the hand of no other than Jane-Ellen. The moment seemed to have been especially designed for his purpose, and he decided to take advantage of it.
Jane-Ellen was setting the table with far more energy than Smithfield had displayed; in fact her task was almost finished when Tucker entered, and, advancing to the mantelpiece, leaned his elbow on the shelf and smiled down upon her benevolently.
"The time has come sooner than we anticipated when I can be of assistance to you, Jane-Ellen," he said.
"Yes, indeed, sir," she returned with a promptness that fifteen years before would have made his heart beat faster.
"Thank you for giving me the opportunity."
"The finger-bowls, sir," she interrupted, flicking a napkin in their direction, "they ought to be filled; not too full, sir; that's quite enough, it isn't a tub, you know. And now, if you've a match about you, and gentlemen always have matches, I believe, would you light the candles, and then, yes, I do think we're about ready now."
Tucker, who could not very well refuse such trivial services when he was offering one much more momentous, poured a little water from the ice pitcher into the glass finger-bowls, but he did it with such dignity and from such a height that he spilled much of it over the doilies. The cook did not reprove him directly, but she changed the doily with a manner that seemed to suggest that another time she would do the job herself. And when Tucker took a neat gold match-box from his pocket and prepared to light the candles, she coolly took the whole thing out of his hands, remarking that he might set the shades on fire and then they'd be in what she described as "a nice way."
Observing that she was about to leave the room, he put himself before the door.
"I want just a word, Jane-Ellen."
"No time now, sir. Perhaps to-morrow morning."
"To-morrow will be too late. You must know this evening. I don't want to say a word against Mr. Crane; young men who have always had everything they want are naturally thoughtless. But I can't bear to see you turned out at a moment's notice—"
"Turned out?"
"Yes, Mr. Crane is going either to-night or to-morrow morning. Didn't he tell you?"
He had her attention now. She looked at him intently.
"Mr. Crane going? I thought he had the house for six weeks."
"So he had, but he's bored with it. Miss Falkener has gone, and he sees no reason for staying on. He'll be off either at midnight or in the morning. You're about to lose your place, Jane-Ellen."
She stood staring before her so blankly that it grieved him to see her so deeply concerned about the loss of her position, and he pressed on.
"I can't bear to think of your comfort being dependent on the caprices of Crane, or any one. Come to me, Jane-Ellen. This is no life for you, with your youth and beauty and charm. I could offer you a position that you need never leave, never, unless you wanted to—"
"Please move from the door, sir."
"Not until you've heard me," and he moved toward her as if to take her in his arms.
At some previous period of time, the Revellys, presided over by a less elegant functionary than Smithfield, must have been in the habit of summoning the family to meals by means of a large Japanese gong that now stood neglected in a corner. To this, Jane-Ellen sprang, and beat it with a vigor that made the house resound.
The next instant Crane burst into the room.
"What's the matter?" he exclaimed, and added, fixing his eyes on his lawyer,
"What the deuce are you doing here, Tuck?"
"I," said Tucker, "was giving Jane-Ellen what help I could in setting the table."
"Like hell you were."
"Do you mean you doubt what I say?"
"You bet I do."
"And may I ask what you do think I was doing?" asked Tucker.
"I think you were making love to the cook."
"Gentlemen, gentlemen," murmured the cook, "won't you please let me go down and attend to the dinner. The chicken will be terribly overdone."
Nobody paid any attention to the request.
"Well," said Tucker, "I certainly wouldn't turn a poor girl out at a few hours' notice, as you mean to do."
"Who says I mean to?"
"You told me yourself you meant to leave to-morrow."
"And what kind of a job were you offering her?"
"I tell you I was trying to help her."
"And is that why she rang the gong?"
"She rang presumably because dinner was ready."
"There's another presumption that seems to me more probable."
"Burton, I shall not spend another night under your roof."
"I had reached the same conclusion."
Tucker turned with great dignity.
"The trouble is," he said, "that you have not the faintest idea of the conduct of a gentleman," and with this he walked slowly from the room.
The cook did not now seem so eager to get back to the kitchen. She stood twisting a napkin in her hands and looking at the floor, not unaware, however, that her employer was looking at her.
"The trouble really is, Jane-Ellen," he said gently, "that you are too intolerably lovely."
"Oh, sir."
"'Oh, sir, oh, sir!' You say that as if every man you knew had not been saying the same thing to you for the last five years."
Jane-Ellen had another of her attacks of dangerous candor.
"Well, a good many have said it, sir," she whispered, "but it never sounded to me as it did when you said it." And after this she had the grace to dart through the door and downstairs, so fast that he could hear her little heels clatter on each step as she went.
In the hall he found Tucker, standing under a lamp, studying a time-table, with glasses set very far down his nose. Opposite, Lefferts was leaning against the wall, his arms folded and the expression on his face of one who has happened unexpectedly upon a very good moving picture show.
Seeing Crane, Tucker folded up his time-table and removed his glasses.
"Your other guest has just arrived," he observed.
"Oh, is Reed here?"
"Yes," said Lefferts, "he's in your office taking off his coat."
"And you may be interested to know," added Tucker, with a biting simplicity that had impressed many juries in its time, "you may be interested to know that he is the man I found kissing Jane-Ellen last week."
"What, Reed!" cried Crane, with a gesture that might have been interpreted as ferocious.
Hearing his name called, Reed came hurrying out.
"Yes," he said, advancing with outstretched hand, "here I am. Sorry to be late, but I was ready before—"
"We'll go in to dinner," said Crane shortly. Tucker and Reed moved first toward the dining-room. Lefferts drew his host aside.
"Just one moment," he said. "You went off so quickly when that gong rang that I did not have any chance to tell you how I feel about your generosity. It makes—"
Crane grasped his hand.
"You have an opportunity this very moment," he replied, "to repay me for anything I ever have done or may do for you. Talk, my dear fellow, talk at dinner. Do nothing but talk. Otherwise, I shall knock those two men's heads together."
Lefferts smiled.
"I doubt if you'd get much sense into them even if you did," he murmured.
"No," answered Burton, "but I should have a great deal of enjoyment in doing it."
THEY sat down at table, and, as Crane looked at his guests, he had little hope that even Lefferts' cheerful facility could save the situation. Circumstances would be too much against him. Even the poet himself could hardly be at his best, having just arrived in the hope of dining with his lady-love to find she had been spirited away by an irate mother. This in itself was enough to put a pall on most men; yet, of the three guests, Lefferts seemed by far the most hopeful. Tucker was already sullen and getting more sullen every moment. Crane knew the signs of his lawyer's bearing—the irritable eye that would meet no one's directly, the tapping fingers, the lips compressed but moving. Tucker was one of those people cursed by anger after the event. His nature, slow moving or overcontrolled, bore him past the real moment of offense without explosion; but with the crisis over, his resentment began to gain in strength and to grow more bitter as the opportunity for action receded more and more into the past. Crane knew now that Tucker was reviewing every phrase that had passed between them; every injury, real or fancied, that he had ever received at Crane's hands; these he was summoning like a sort of phantom army to fight on his side. No, Tucker was not a guest from whom any host could expect much genial interchange that evening.
Reed, on the other hand, was too unconscious. Placid, good-natured, confident in his own powers to arrange any little domestic difficulties that might have arisen, he sat down, unfolded his napkin, and turned to Lefferts in answer to the inquiry about real estate which Lefferts had just tactfully addressed to him.
"The great charm of this section of the country," he was saying, "is that from the time of its earliest settlement it has been in the hands of a small group of—" At this instant Jane-Ellen entered with the soup. Reed, who had expected to see Smithfield, stopped short, and stared at her with an astonishment he did not even attempt to disguise. Lefferts, following the direction of his eyes and seeing Jane-Ellen for the first time, mistook the subject of Reed's surprise.
"Oh," he said, as the girl left the room, "is this 'the face that launched a thousand ships'?"
Tucker, who was perhaps not as familiar with the Elizabethan dramatists as he should have been, replied shortly that this was the cook.
"A very beautiful little person," said Lefferts, imagining, poor fellow, that he was now on safe ground.
"I own," said Tucker, "that I have never been able to take much interest in the personal appearance of servants."
"You sometimes behave as if you did, Tuck," remarked his host.
"If you are interested in beauty," observed Lefferts, "I don't see how you can eliminate any of its manifestations, particularly according to social classes."
"Such a preoccupation with beauty strikes me as decadent," answered Tucker crossly.
"Indeed, how delightful," Lefferts replied. "What, exactly, is your definition of 'decadent'?"
Now in Tucker's vocabulary the word "decadent" was a hate word. It signified nothing definite, except that he disliked the person to whose opinions he applied it. He had several others of the same sort—hysterical, half-baked and subversive-of-the-Constitution being those most often in use. This being so, he really couldn't define the word, and so he pretended not to hear and occupied himself flicking an imaginary crumb from the satin lapel of his coat.
Lefferts, who had no wish to be disagreeable, did not repeat the question, but contented himself by observing that he had never tasted such delicious soup. Reed shook his head in an ecstasy that seemed to transcend words. Only Tucker scowled.
As Jane-Ellen entered at this moment to take away the soup-plates, Crane, who was growing reckless, decided to let her share the compliment.
"The gentlemen enjoyed the soup, Jane-Ellen," he said, "at least, Mr. Lefferts and Mr. Reed did, but Mr. Tucker has not committed himself. Did you enjoy the soup, Tuck?"
Tucker rapped with his middle finger.
"I care very little for my food," he answered.
"Well," said Crane, "I've heard of hating the sin and loving the sinner; I suppose it is possible to hate the cooking and—and—" He paused.
"I did not say I hated the cooking," answered Tucker. "I only say I am not interested in talking about it all the time."
"All right," said Burton, "we'll talk about something else, and you shall have first choice of a topic, Tuck."
"One moment before we begin," exclaimed Reed, "I must ask, where is Smithfield?"
Crane turned to him.
"Smithfield," he said, "in common with my two guests, the housemaid Lily and the boy Brindlebury, have all left, or been ejected from my house within the last twenty-four hours."
"You mean," gasped Reed, "that you and Mr. Tucker and the cook are alone in the house!"
"I regret to say that Mr. Tucker also leaves me this evening."
"But—but—" began Reed, in a protest too earnest to find words on the instant.
"We won't discuss the matter now," said Crane. "I have several things to talk over with you, Mr. Reed, after dinner. In the meantime," he added, looking around on the dreary faces of all but Lefferts, "let us enjoy ourselves."
"Certainly, by all means," agreed Reed, "but I would just like to ask you, Mr. Crane—You can't mean, you don't intend, you don't contemplate—"
"Oh, I won't trouble you with my immediate plans," said Crane, and added, turning to Lefferts, "my experience is that no one is really interested in any one else's plans—their daily routine, I mean, and small domestic complications."
"Oh, come, I don't know about that," answered Lefferts, on whom the situation was beginning vaguely to dawn. "Mr. Reed struck me as being very genuinely interested in your intentions. You are genuinely interested, aren't you, Mr. Reed?"
Reed was interested beyond the point of being able to suspect malice.
"Yes, yes," he said eagerly, "I am, genuinely, sincerely. You see, I understand what would be said in a community like this,—what would be thought. You get my idea?"
"I own I don't," answered Burton suavely, "but I will say this much, that in deciding my conduct, I have usually considered my own opinion rather than that of others."
"Of course, exactly. I do, myself," said Reed, "but in this case, I really think you would agree with me if I could make myself clear."
"Doubtless, doubtless," answered Crane, and seeing that Jane-Ellen was again in the room, he went on: "What is it exactly that we are talking about? What is it that you fear?"
Reed cast an agonized look at the cook and remained speechless, but Tucker, with more experience in the befogging properties of language, rushed to his assistance.
"It's perfectly clear what he means," he said. "Mr. Reed's idea is that in a small community like this the conduct of every individual is watched, scrutinized and discussed, however humble a sphere he or she may occupy; and that if any young woman should find herself in a position which has been considered a compromising one by every author and dramatist in the language, she would not be saved from the inevitable criticism that would follow by the mere fact that—"
But here something very unfortunate happened. The lip of the ice-water pitcher, which Jane-Ellen was approaching to Tucker's glass, suddenly touched his shoulder, and a small quantity of the chilling liquid trickled between his collar and his neck. It was not enough to be called a stream, and yet it was distinctly more than a drop; it was sufficient to cut short his sentence.
"Oh, sir, I'm so sorry," she cried, and she added, with a sort of wail, looking at Crane, "You see how it is, sir, I'm not used to waiting on table."
"I think she waits admirably," murmured Lefferts aside to his host.
"Extremely competent, I call it," said Crane clearly. "Don't give it another thought, Jane-Ellen. See," he added, glancing at Tucker's face which was distorted with anger, "Mr. Tucker has forgotten it already."
"Oh, sir, how kind you are to me!" cried the cook and ran hastily into the pantry, from which a sound which might have been a cough was instantly heard.
"Yours is a strange but delightful home, Crane," observed Lefferts. "I don't really recall ever having experienced anything quite like it."
"You refer, I fancy," replied Crane, "to the simple peace, the assured confidence that—"
"That something unexpected is going to happen within the next ten seconds."
Tucker and Reed, both absorbed in their private wrongs, were for an instant like deaf men, but the latter having now dried his neck and as much of his collar as was possible, showed signs of coming to, so that Crane included both in the conversation.
"Lefferts and I were speaking," he said, slightly raising his voice, "of the peculiar atmosphere that makes for the enjoyment of a home. What, Mr. Reed, do you think is most essential?"
"Just one moment, Mr. Crane," said Reed. "I want to say a word more of that other subject we were speaking of."
Crane's seat allowed him to see the pantry door before any one else could. On it his eyes were fixed as he answered thoughtfully:
"Our last subject. Now, let me see, what was that?"
"It was the question of the propriety of—"
"Fish, sir?" said a gentle voice in Reed's ear. He groaned and helped himself largely and in silence.
Lefferts, who was really kind-hearted, pitied his distress and decided to change the topic.
"What a fine old house this is," he said, glancing around the high-ceilinged room. "Who does it belong to?"
"It belongs," answered Tucker, "to a family named Revelly—a family who held a highly honored position in the history of our country until they took the wrong side in war."
"In this part of the country, sir," cried Reed, "we are not accustomed to thinking it the wrong side."
Tucker bowed slightly.
"I believe that I am voicing the verdict of history and time," he answered.
It was in remorse, perhaps, for having stirred up this new subject of dispute that Lefferts now went on rapidly, too rapidly to feel his way.
"Well, this present generation seems to be an amusing lot. Eliot was telling me about them last night. He says one of the girls is a perfect beauty. Now, what was her name—such a pretty one. Oh, yes," he added, slightly raising his voice, as his memory gave it to him, "Claudia."
"What?" said the cook.
"Nobody spoke to you, Jane-Ellen," said Crane, but his eyes remained fixed on her long and meditatively as she handed the sauce for the fish.
Lefferts continued:
"Eliot said that she was a most indiscriminating fascinator—engaged to three men last summer, to his knowledge. Our Northern girls are infants compared—"
Reed suddenly sprang up from the table.
"I'd be obliged, sir," he said, "if you'd tell Mr. Eliot, with my compliments, that that story of his is untrue, and if he doesn't know it, he ought to. I don't blame you, sir, a stranger, for repeating all you hear about one of the loveliest young ladies in the country, but I do blame him—"
At this the cook approached him and said with a stern civility:
"Do sit down and eat your fish, sir, before it gets cold." They exchanged a long and bitter glance, but Reed sat down.
"I'm sure you'll believe," said Lefferts, "that I'm sorry to have said anything I ought not, particularly about any friend of yours, Mr. Reed, but the truth is, I thought of it only as being immensely to the credit of the young lady, in a neighborhood which must be, you'll forgive my saying, rather dull if you're not fond of hunting."
"The point is not whether it is to her credit or not," returned Reed, who was by no means placated, "the point is that it is not true."
"Probably not," Lefferts agreed, "only," he added, after a second's thought, "I don't see how any one can say that except the young lady herself."