LESS THAN KINChapter I
LESS THAN KIN
The curtain rolled down, the horns gave forth a final blare, and the whole house rustled with returning self-consciousness. Mrs. Raikes and Miss Lewis had always had orchestra seats for Monday nights. Their well-brushed heads, their high jeweled collars, their little bare backs were as familiar to experienced opera-goers as the figure of the long-suffering doorman. They had the reputation of being musical. What indeed could prove it better than their preference for orchestra seats, when they might so easily have gone whenever they wanted in the boxes of their friends?
As the lights went up, they both turned tothe glittering tiers above them. The opera was a favorite and the house was full, though here and there an empty box caught one’s eye like a missing tooth. Miss Lewis was sweeping the semicircle like an astronomer in full cry after a comet. She had begun conscientiously at the stage box, and with but few comments she had reached the third or fourth, when her hand was arrested. There were three people in it—an old man in a velvet skull-cap, tall, thin, wrinkled, and strangely somber against the red-and-gold background; a younger man dimly seen in the shadow; and a slim young woman in gray.
The curve of the house afforded examples of every sort and kind of brilliantly dressed lady. There were dowagers and young girls, there were women who forgot the public and lounged with an arm over the back of a little gilt chair, and there were others who sat almost too erect, presenting their jewels andtheir composed countenances to the gaze of whoever cared to admire.
The lady in gray did neither. She sat leaning a little forward, and looking down absently into the orchestra, so that it was hard to tell how attentively she was listening to the man behind her. She had an extremely long waist, and had the effect of being balanced like a flower on its stalk.
Miss Lewis, with her glass still on the box, exclaimed:
“What, again! Wasn’t he with the Lees last week?”
“You mean James Emmons,” answered Mrs. Raikes. “He is not with Nellie. He belongs somewhere on the other side of the house. He came into the box just before theentr’acte. Rather she than me. He has a singularly heavy hand in social interchange.”
“He could give Nellie things she would value. I am sure she feels she would shine inhigh politics.” Miss Lewis raised her glass again. “You know she is not really pretty.”
“I think she is, only she looks as cold as a little stone.”
“If you say that, every one answers, ‘But see how good she is to her uncle.’”
“My dear, if you were a penniless orphan, wouldn’t you be good to a rich uncle?”
Miss Lewis hesitated. “I’m not so sure, if he were like Mr. Lee. Besides, some people say he hasn’t anything left, you know.”
“Look how they live, though.”
“My innocent! Does that prove that they pay their bills? Nellie strikes me as being very short of cash now and then.”
“Who is not?”
“And the reprobate son will have to come in for something, won’t he?”
“Oh, I fancy not. I don’t think they haveanything to do with him. He has disappeared, to South America or somewhere.”
“Well,” said Miss Lewis, “I should advise Nellie not to take chances, but to accept—” And then she stopped. “Look at that,” she added. “Don’t you think that is a mistake?”
For the girl in gray had risen slowly, and disappeared into the back of the box, followed by Emmons.
He was a short man, no longer very young. Nature had intended him to be fat, but he had not let her have her way.
The two sat down in the little red-lined room behind the box, with its one electric light and its mirror. Nellie had established herself on the tiny sofa.
“Well, James,” she said.
“I wanted to tell you that I had been appointed to this commission to inquire into the sources of our Russian immigration. I start in September.”
“I congratulate you. You will be an ambassador within a few years, I feel sure.”
Her praise did not seem to elate him. He went on in exactly the same tone:
“I shall be gone three months or more.”
“I shall miss you.” Her manner was too polite to be warm, and he answered, without temper,
“You don’t care whether I go or not.”
She looked at him. “Yes, I do, James,” she said mildly. “You know I depend on you, but it would be very selfish if I thought of myself instead of——”
He brushed it aside, as one anxious only for facts.
“You are not really fond of me,” he said.
“Well, I am not romantically in love with you. I never was with any one, and I don’t suppose I ever shall be, but I like you well enough to marry you, and that is something, you know.”
“You don’t like me well enough to marry me in August and come to Russia with me.” If he had been watching her face at this suggestion, he would not have needed an answer, but fortunately he was looking another way.
“You know I can not leave my uncle, old and ill——”
“Will you be any better able to leave him in three months?”
She hesitated, but as if it were her own motives that she was searching. “When you come back there will be no need for leaving him.”
“Oh,” said Emmons. He glanced through the curtains at the old man’s thin back, as if the idea of a common household were not quite agreeable to him.
There was a short pause, and then he went on,
“It sometimes strikes me that if it weren’t your uncle it would be something else.”
“James,” said Nellie seriously, “I give you my word that if there were anybody who could take my place at home, I would marry you in August.”
Emmons nodded. “Well, I can’t ask more than that,” he answered, and added, with a smile, “though it is a perfectly safe offer, for I suppose no one can take your place.”
“No one,” said Nellie, with the conviction of a person who does not intend to look.
The box door opened, and a man half entered, and paused as he saw how prearranged was the tête-à-tête on which he was intruding. But Nellie welcomed him in.
“Don’t be frightened away, Mr. Merriam,” she said, smiling. “Mr. Emmons and I aren’t talking secrets. We weren’t even quarreling—at leastIwasn’t. But the lights in front hurt my eyes. Don’t you think at my age I can do as I like?”
Mr. Merriam was eminently of that opinion—especiallyas a moment later Emmons rose to go.
“Good-night.” Nellie held out her hand. “Don’t forget that you are dining with us on the 22d.”
“I shan’t forget,” Emmons answered. “I’ve written it down.”
“I shouldn’t have to write it down,” said Merriam.
“Ah, you are not such a busy man as he is,” she returned, but she could not help smiling. It was so like James to tell her he had written it down.