A DINNER-PARTY.
A week later Miss Gastonguay was giving a dinner-party. She had begged the favour of Mr. and Mrs. Mercer's company, and Derrice at the present moment was standing before her husband's wardrobe.
"Don't you have an evening suit, Justin?"
"No, little girl."
"You must get one," and she surveyed his light trousers and black frock coat.
"Do I look badly?" he asked, in some anxiety.
"No, you are very manly and good-looking, and your feet are well-shaped, though the soles of your boots are a trifle thick, but I shall have to change my gown."
"That overpowering creation," and he stared admiringly at her cream satin dress,—a triumph of some foreign dressmaker's art.
"Yes; we are too strong a contrast. I shall not be long."
"I am sorry to give you this trouble, Derrice."
"It is not a trouble. I am satisfied since you have seen how grand I am," and laughing gaily, she caught up her train and ran away from him.
Justin in the utmost satisfaction descended to the hall and put on his overcoat. Derrice was becoming more and more in love with him every day. He certainly was a very happy man, and in beatific silence he gazed at his mother, who was standing in the dining-room doorway, divided between gratification at his invitation to French Cross and annoyance that she should not be included in it.
"I suppose you know this is prayer-meeting night," she said.
"Yes, mother."
"You can't go to it."
"Why not?"
"Why, you are going to a party."
"I can leave the party."
"Will she go?" and Mrs. Prymmer designated Derrice, who was coming down-stairs.
"I think not."
"Well, I'll see you there," and she went back to her well-spread table, where Captain White was rioting among supper enough for a dozen men.
"Has the carriage come?" asked Derrice, when her husband, after running his eye approvingly over her ruffled muslin gown, laid his fingers on the door-knob.
He blushed slightly. "I did not order one. I thought perhaps you would not mind taking a car."
She laid her hand on his arm with a pretty, confiding gesture, and said, as they passed out the doorway, "You have some reason for wishing to economise."
He reluctantly admitted that he had.
"Tell me," she whispered.
He hesitated. "You will be sure to learn of it."
"I wish you to tell me."
She was sweet and womanly, yet insistent. How she was developing, this young wife of his, and pressing her little hand closer to his heart, he said. "There are some debts hanging over me."
"Whose debts?"
"My late stepfather's,—Zebedee Prymmer. He was a lawyer here, who made a failure of the end of his life."
"In what way?"
"He ran away," said Justin, as hurriedly as if the words scorched his lips. "He invested trust money in speculations of his own and lost. He would have been prosecuted had he remained."
"And you are trying to return this money to people who gave it to him?"
"To their heirs."
"And he was only your stepfather?"
"My mother's husband."
"He was a villain," said Derrice, with animation.
"A semi-villain. He hoped to return the money."
"That is villainy."
"Yes, of a certain kind."
"Some of those people in the Bible were also villains. Jacob was a sneak, David was a murderer, and Solomon ought to have been shut up in prison."
Her tone was severe, and Justin forbore to answer her.
"Yet God loved them," she went on, reverently. "Justin, how wicked can we be, and yet escape consequences?"
The wind was bitterly cold, and he paused to wrap her cloak more closely about her before answering. "We must not consider that question. One can love and serve God, fall into sin, and repent. Our finite minds cannot take in the depths of his compassion."
"Did your stepfather repent?"
"It is not for me to judge him, but if he did, we received no word of it. His attitude was that of an injured man, and when he died, after a few years of exile, he left us his body as a precious legacy. We had him brought home and buried, and I hope his soul is with God."
"Curious," said the girl, under her breath. "Justin, are we all links in a chain? I must walk to-night to help pay the debts of a man I never saw."
"You shall not walk if you had rather drive."
"Hush, my husband, and put up your hand to stop that car."
Not many minutes later they were walking briskly up the avenue leading to French Cross. The old château was brilliantly lighted. Miss Gastonguay loved to entertain the people who pleased her, and Prosperity, throwing the door wide open to Derrice and her husband, begged them to walk up-stairs, where his brother Tribulation smilingly assigned them to respective dressing-rooms, and presented Derrice with a loosely tied bunch of carnations.
Derrice, in secret amusement, was obliged to summon her husband to her assistance, in arranging a refractory ruffle.
"Why is it," she whispered as he gropingly tried to fasten a pin over one of her smooth shoulder-blades, "that one sees no women servants about this house?"
"Because," he whispered back, "Miss Gastonguay is a rabid champion for men. She says one hears nothing but arrangements for women's homes and asylums, and women's work of all kinds, and she believes in looking out for some of the neglected ones."
Derrice put her flowers to her diverted face, and together they went down-stairs.
The night was an unpleasant one, and the sight inthe drawing-room was one calculated to cheer two people who had just struggled through the mud of the avenue.
The long room was flooded with soft lamplight. Chelda, sinuous and graceful, was standing on the white fur hearth-rug, talking to a tall, lanky young man with a sallow face, whom Derrice knew to be Capt. Sam Veevers,—his title a legacy from a brief time of service in one of the regiments of his native State of Kentucky.
Mr. Huntington was in a far corner of the room, his hands crossed behind him, his resplendent head shining against a white window curtain, as he talked to Aurelia Sinclair.
Derrice was glad that she had not worn her gleaming satin. Neither Mr. Huntington nor Captain Veevers was in evening dress. Aurelia wore an old-fashioned, high-necked purple "silk shiver" gown, Miss Chelda one of figured velvet, while Miss Gastonguay had on a kind of men's smoking jacket.
"Well, young people," she said, coming forward, watch in hand, "you are five minutes late. A bad way to begin your married life."
"We are five minutes early," said Justin, seriously, but respectfully, as he drew out his own watch.
"You are a bold lad," said the maiden lady, "to try to beard a lioness in her own den."
"I appeal to the rest of the company," said Justin.
Captain Veevers and Mr. Huntington drew out their watches. Miss Gastonguay would not believe them until she had had all the clocks in the house consulted. Then she admitted herself mistaken, and asked Justin's pardon.
"You are one of those uncomfortable people," she said, wagging her head at him, "that one always finds in the right. I should hate to live with you—don't you?" and she wheeled suddenly toward Derrice.
Derrice, to her husband's mingled delight and anxiety lest others should perceive the resemblance, wagged her light head in the same fashion that the old lady wagged her grizzled one. "Yes, but I cannot get away from him."
The girl's tone was so ludicrous that every one smiled except Chelda, who favoured her with a long and searching glance. She wished to discover whether she loved her husband. She could not tell. Justin was impassive, and Derrice was conventionally girlish. She would leave the question open for future consideration.
"Come, let's go to dinner," said Miss Gastonguay. "There is Prosperity swaying his head like a Chinese idol. Give me your arm, Justin Mercer. We will pretend we are royalties and go ahead. The others may follow."
Justin was not comfortable during the dinner,although he went through it with a composed face. His life hitherto had been so quiet, his wants so simple, that this elaborately served meal made him impatient, almost irritated. He begrudged the length of time spent at the table, and inwardly disapproved of the amount of money represented by the hand-painted china, the gold and silver dinner service, and yet, when he glanced at his wife's happy face, he became calm.
"Some men would spoil her," said Miss Gastonguay, in an undertone, "you will discipline her."
Justin did not look up from the plate on which he was eating something out of season, he scarcely knew what it was.
Miss Gastonguay was gnawing a chicken bone with her strong, white teeth, although she would have warmly recommended any one else who should do such a thing to leave the table.
"And she will discipline you," she went on, in the same tone. Then, as he did not reply, she became impatient with the bone, and, dropping it on her plate, called for a fresh napkin to wipe her fingers.
"She looks like a doll," she continued, after a time, "but if she is what you say she is, you'll not find any doll's blood in her."
Justin smiled. "She is brimful of character; she reminds me of—"
"Well?" said his hostess, picking up her napkin and holding it over the lower part of her face.
"Of you."
She dropped the napkin. "You want to flatter me, and I—old fool—like to hear you." In her interest she raised her voice, and every one at the table looked at her except Chelda, who, with the briefest, most surreptitious flash of her eyelids, continued an animated flow of talk addressed to Captain Veevers.
"Nothing, good friends, nothing for general entertainment," said Miss Gastonguay, waving her hand. "My voice ran up because I thought I heard Captain Veevers make a remark, and I wished to drown him."
Every one looked amused but Derrice. Captain Veevers's taciturnity was a standing joke in Rossignol, and it was said that only the general-in-chief of an army, or the chief judicial officer of the nation, could wring a whole sentence from him.
The Southerner subdued the slight crease that formed itself about his silent lips, then he again turned his sallow face toward his brilliant neighbour. He was deliberately and calmly in love with her, and his chief pleasure in life was to hear her talk.
Miss Gastonguay could not help discussing Derrice, who had been thrown like a bombshell into her quiet life. "What a contrast she is to Chelda," she purred in Justin's ear. "My niece is a woman of the world; your wife is an emancipated baby. Cheldais devoted to me, and will be jealous of any attention I bestow on an outsider. I wish they could be friends. I suppose we could not tell her?" And the wistfulness of an advancing old age that would fain lean upon youth crept into her tone.
Justin was alarmed. He had confided his secret to Miss Gastonguay as he would have confided it to another man. He had supposed her strong-mindedness to be invulnerable, and now she was proposing to unfold this secret to some one against whom he had a secret and unconquerable prejudice.
"Most decidedly not," he replied.
"You are a time-seeking, mercenary young man," said Miss Gastonguay, slapping about on her plate an unoffending morsel of potato. "You favoured me with your great mystery in order that I might remember your wife in my will. I shall do nothing of the sort."
"Any one who shirks a duty is sure to suffer for it sometime or another," he said, calmly, "but I am not afraid of your forgetting that my wife has an equal claim on you with your niece."
"Well, I shall have a thorny road to travel," said Miss Gastonguay, with unexpected submission. "Chelda will rebel."
"I beg that you will give her no cause to do so. My appeal was made to you for protection in the event of my death. There is no favour I am willing for my wife to accept from you now, beyond a friendlyrecognition. You can understand that I wish her to lead a quiet life."
"I like her," said Miss Gastonguay, stubbornly. "I shall do what I please for her."
Aurelia Sinclair, who was Justin's left-hand neighbour, suddenly turned to him with some curiosity painted on her transparent face, and warned that he was carrying on a dangerous conversation, he abruptly addressed a question to her.
"Where is the pudding?" said Miss Gastonguay, suddenly.
The joints had been removed, and a long and awkward pause had ensued. Tribulation stood in the doorway, trying to hide behind and restrain his brother, until Miss Gastonguay's lordly, "Come forward," brought them near the table.
"What is the matter?" she asked. "Has the cat run away with the creams and the ices?"
"It's O'Toole, ma'am," said Prosperity, readily.
"Well, what about him? Come, speak out. We have no secrets in this house."
"He's under the kitchen stove," blurted Prosperity, "and the pudding's with him, and we don't know what he's done with the shapes."
"Did you ever hear of the Maine liquor law, my dear?" asked Miss Gastonguay, addressing Derrice with suspicious sweetness.
"Never," said the girl.
"Well, it is a peculiar law. You know there are some States that try to restrain the sale of intoxicants. We don't here. They are as free as water. My cook can order them over the telephone. Unfortunately, he has a weakness for them."
A suppressed smile went around the table, and Derrice saw that some sarcasm was intended.
"There's fruit, I suppose," said Miss Gastonguay to Prosperity; "get us some, if O'Toole hasn't taken it under the stove; and you had better get him out and put him to bed. Chelda, you go look after things, will you?"
The young lady left her seat, and as serenely and gracefully as if intoxicated cooks were every-day occurrences made her way kitchenwards.
"Now what is the matter with you?" said Miss Gastonguay, directing her attention to Justin, who had risen, and was standing beside her.
"I am due at a prayer-meeting."
"A prayer-meeting! What did you accept my invitation for if you couldn't stay?"
"I will come back if you will permit me," he said, in a manner quite courtly.
"Well, go. You will graciously allow your wife to remain?"
"Certainly; we should not have come if she had not decided to do so," and, with a bow, he left the room.
"What about you, Mr. Huntington?" asked Miss Gastonguay.
He shrugged his shoulders. "To tell the truth, I forgot about it when you sent me your note to-day. However, it is only a young people's meeting. I do not need to go."
There was a slight levity in his tone, and Miss Gastonguay, after a keen scrutiny of his flushed face, turned to Derrice. "Do you ever go to prayer-meetings?"
"I was at one last evening."
"What did you think of it?"
"It was very interesting."
"Come, now, tell me what it was like."
"There was a large room under a church," said Derrice, seriously, "with seats. Mr. Huntington was there," and she indicated him as he sat gazing with a softened expression at her.
"Of course; what next?"
"He read a hymn and some one played an organ accompaniment and the people sang."
"'Hark from the tombs a doleful sound,' I suppose, or, 'High o'er my soul damnation's waves do roll.'"
"Miss Gastonguay," interposed Aurelia, "those are very old hymns; no one sings them now."
"What did you sing?" persisted Miss Gastonguay.
"We sang something beginning 'Jesus, lover of my soul,'" murmured Derrice.
"Never mind the rest. Tell me how the meeting impressed you. It was your first, I suppose."
"Yes, I never was at anything of the kind before. May I speak freely?" and she doubtfully scanned her audience.
"Of course," said her hostess.
"I am new to what is called religious life. It seemed marvellous to me that men could get up one after another—and even women—and talk so openly of what was in their hearts."
"Cant,—a great lot of it, cant and rubbish. They would cheat you the next day."
"My husband would not cheat," said Derrice, mildly.
"He is an exception."
"I will tell you what I thought," said the girl, encouraged by Aurelia's breathless admiration and Mr. Huntington's subdued interest. "It seemed to me that they were out of themselves,—that their strength to reveal their faults was supernatural. I never before heard people say, 'I am imperfect,—I do not lead as holy a life as I might,' and they were very full of pity. They spoke of doing more good to others."
"Words only, not deeds."
"My husband visits the poor," said Derrice, sturdily.
"Well now, young lady, what do you think of me? I am not religious, I play cards all day on Sunday if I choose. I do not believe in what you call revealed religion. What is to become of me?"
"It would be hard for me to believe anything against you," replied Derrice, with quiet grace.
"But what will become of me when I die? Your preachers send me right down, down, down,—direct. What do you think about it?"
Derrice silently appealed to Mr. Huntington, but he would not reply, though his kind smile urged her on.
"Where am I going?" pursued Miss Gastonguay.
"How can I tell?"
"But you have your little narrow creed all made up. Saints this way, sinners that. I am no saint, yet I am not an out-and-out sinner."
Derrice stirred uneasily in her seat, and earnestly longed for her husband. At last a solution of the difficulty occurred to her. "What kind of people do you like to be with in this world, Miss Gastonguay?"
Her hostess looked around the table. The way of sinners, the seat of the scornful, had never been hers. These people about her board were all serious, thoughtful, and worthy of respect.
"If you like good people," said Derrice, "then you will be with them in the world to come."
"Child, you are too liberal, too generous foryour creed. Morality does not save,—I have had that shrieked in my ears ever since I was born. You must have religion."
"Perhaps you have it and do not know it."
"What is religion, according to you?"
"I know very little. I have not learned much yet. Is it not that one must have faith in the Bible, and believe in one God and in his Son?"
"I do not believe in the inspiration of the Bible; it was written by men like ourselves."
Derrice shrank back. "But would you be happy in heaven, then?"
"But would I be happy!" muttered Miss Gastonguay, "and this is the girl I am to remember in my will," and she closed the conversation and abruptly turned to her niece, who had just come in, and was taking her place with an amused, cynical expression of countenance.