She coloured again, and put her horse to the trot.
"Onwards and upwards," he cried. "Veni, vidi, vici, ascendi."
"It seems to me," she laughed, "that so much education is thrown away on the stock market."
"Whether you will be any happier higher up," he went on, "God knows. Sometimes I think you ought to go back to the Arcadia you came from. Did you pick out Spence for an embryo lord of high finance?"
"My excuse is," replied Honora, "that I was very young, and I hadn't met you."
Whether the lion has judged our heroine with astuteness, or done her a little less than justice, must be left to the reader. Apparently he is accepting her gentle lashings with a meek enjoyment. He assisted her to alight at her own door, sent the horses home, and offered to come in and give her a lesson in a delightful game that was to do its share in the disintegration of the old and tiresome order of things—bridge. The lion, it will be seen, was self-sacrificing even to the extent of double dummy. He had picked up the game with characteristic aptitude abroad —Quicksands had yet to learn it.
Howard Spence entered in the midst of the lesson.
"Hello, Brent," said he, genially, "you may be interested to know I got that little matter through without a hitch to-day."
"I continue to marvel at you," said the lion, and made it no trumps.
Since this is a veracious history, and since we have wandered so far from home and amidst such strange, if brilliant scenes, it must be confessed that Honora, three days earlier, had entered a certain shop in New York and inquired for a book on bridge. Yes, said the clerk, he had such a treatise, it had arrived from England a week before. She kept it looked up in her drawer, and studied it in the mornings with a pack of cards before her.
Given the proper amount of spur, anything in reason can be mastered.
By Winston Churchill
In the religious cult of Gad and Meni, practised with such enthusiasm at Quicksands, the Saints' days were polo days, and the chief of all festivals the occasion of the match with the Banbury Hunt Club —Quicksands's greatest rival. Rival for more reasons than one, reasons too delicate to tell. Long, long ago there appeared in Punch a cartoon of Lord Beaconsfield executing that most difficult of performances, an egg dance. We shall be fortunate indeed if we get to the end of this chapter without breaking an egg!
Our pen fails us in a description of that festival of festivals, the Banbury one, which took place early in September. We should have to go back to Babylon and the days of King Nebuchadnezzar. (Who turns out to have been only a regent, by the way, and his name is now said to be spelled rezzar). How give an idea of the libations poured out to Gad and the shekels laid aside for Meni in the Quicksands Temple?
Honora privately thought that building ugly, and it reminded her of a collection of huge yellow fungi sprawling over the ground. A few of the inevitable tortured cedars were around it. Between two of the larger buildings was wedged a room dedicated to the worship of Bacchus, to-day like a narrow river-gorge at flood time jammed with tree-trunks—some of them, let us say, water-logged—and all grinding together with an intolerable noise like a battle. If you happened to be passing the windows, certain more or less intelligible sounds might separate themselves from the bedlam.
"Four to five on Quicksands!"
"That stock isn't worth a d—n!"
"She's gone to South Dakota."
Honora, however, is an heretic, as we know. Without going definitely into her reasons, these festivals had gradually become distasteful to her. Perhaps it would be fairer to look at them through the eyes of Lily Dallam, who was in her element on such days, and regarded them as the most innocent and enjoyable of occasions, and perhaps they were.
The view from the veranda, at least, appealed to our heroine's artistic sense. The marshes in the middle distance, the shimmering sea beyond, and the polo field laid down like a vast green carpet in the foreground; while the players, in white breeches and bright shirts, on the agile little horses that darted hither and thither across the turf lent an added touch of colour and movement to the scene. Amongst them, Trixton Brent most frequently caught the eye and held it. Once Honora perceived him flying the length of the field, madly pursued, his mallet poised lightly, his shirt bulging in the wind, his close-cropped head bereft of a cap, regardless of the havoc and confusion behind him. He played, indeed, with the cocksureness and individuality one might have expected; and Honora, forgetting at moments the disturbing elements by which she was surrounded, followed him with fascination. Occasionally his name rippled from one end of the crowded veranda to the other, and she experienced a curious and uncomfortable sensation when she heard it in the mouths of these strangers.
From time to time she found herself watching them furtively, comparing them unconsciously with her Quicksands friends. Some of them she had remarked before, at contests of a minor importance, and they seemed to her to possess a certain distinction that was indefinable. They had come to-day from many mysterious (and therefore delightful) places which Honora knew only by name, and some had driven the twenty-five odd miles from the bunting community of Banbury in coaches and even those new and marvellous importations—French automobiles. When the game had ended, and Lily Dallam was cajoling the club steward to set her tea-table at once, a group of these visitors halted on the lawn, talking and laughing gayly. Two of the younger men Honora recognized with a start, but for a moment she could not place them—until suddenly she remembered that she had seen them on her wedding trip at Hot Springs. The one who lisped was Mr. Cuthbert, familiarly known as "Toots": the other, taller and slimmer and paler, was Jimmy Wing. A third, the regularity of whose features made one wonder at the perfection which nature could attain when she chose, who had a certain Gallic appearance (and who, if the truth be told, might have reminded an impartial eye of a slightly animated wax clothing model), turned, stared, hesitated, and bowed to Lily Dallam.
"That's Reggie Farwel, who did my house in town," she whispered to Honora. "He's never been near me since it was finished. He's utterly ruined."
Honora was silent. She tried not to look at the group, in which there were two women of very attractive appearance, and another man.
"Those people are so superior," Mrs. Dallam continued.
"I'm not surprised at Elsie Shorter. Ever since she married Jerry she's stuck to the Graingers closer than a sister. That's Cecil Grainger, my dear, the man who looks as though he were going to fall asleep any moment. But to think of Abby Kame acting that way! Isn't it ridiculous, Clara?" she cried, appealing to Mrs. Trowbridge. "They say that Cecil Grainger never leaves her side. I knew her when she first married John Kame, the dearest, simplest man that ever was. He was twenty years older than Abby, and made his money in leather. She took the first steamer after his funeral and an apartment in a Roman palace for the winter. As soon as she decently could she made for England. The English will put up with anybody who has a few million dollars, and I don't deny that Abby's good-looking, and clever in her way. But it's absurd for her to come over here and act as though we didn't exist. She needn't be afraid that I'll speak to her. They say she became intimate with Bessie Grainger through charities. One of your friend Mrs. Holt's charities, by the way, Honora. Where are you going?"
For Honora had risen.
"I think I'll go home, Lily," she said; "I'm rather tired."
"Home!" exclaimed Mrs. Dallam. "What can you be thinking of, my dear? Nobody ever goes home after the Banbury match. The fun has just begun, and we're all to stay here for dinner and dance afterwards. And Trixy Brent promised me faithfully he'd' come here for tea, as soon as he dressed."
"I really can't stay, Lily. I—I don't feel up to it," said Honora, desperately.
"And you can't know how I counted on you! You look perfectly fresh, my dear."
Honora felt an overwhelming desire to hide herself, to be alone. In spite of the cries of protest that followed her and drew—she thought—an unnecessary and disagreeable attention to her departure, she threaded her way among groups of people who stared after her. Her colour was high, her heart beating painfully; a vague sense of rebellion and shame within her for which she did not try to account. Rather than run the gantlet of the crowded veranda she stepped out on the lawn, and there encountered Trixton Brent. He had, in an incredibly brief time, changed from his polo clothes to flannels and a straw hat. He looked at her and whistled, and barred her passage.
"Hello!" he cried. "Hoity-toity! Where are we going in such a hurry?"
"Home," answered Honora, a little breathlessly, and added for his deception, "the game's over, isn't it? I'm glad you won."
Mr. Brent, however, continued to gaze at her penetratingly, and she avoided his eyes.
"But why are you rushing off like a flushed partridge?—no reference to your complexion. Has there been a row?"
"Oh, no—I was just—tired. Please let me go."
"Being your good angel—or physician, as you choose—I have a prescription for that kind of weariness," he said smilingly. "I—anticipated such an attack. That's why I got into my clothes in such record time."
"I don't know what you mean," faltered Honora. "You are always imagining all sorts of things about me that aren't true."
"As a matter of fact," said Brent, "I have promised faithfully to do a favor for certain friends of mine who have been clamouring to be presented to you."
"I can't—to-day—Mr. Brent," she cried. "I really don't feel like-meeting people. I told Lily Dallam I was going home."
The group, however, which had been the object of that lady's remarks was already moving towards them—with the exception of Mrs. Shorter and Mr. Farwell, who had left it. They greeted Mr. Brent with great cordiality.
"Mrs. Kame," he said, "let me introduce Mrs. Spence. And Mrs. Spence, Mr.Grainger, Mr. Wing, and Mr. Cuthbert. Mrs. Spence was just going home."
"Home!" echoed Mrs. Kame, "I thought Quicksands people never went home after a victory."
"I've scarcely been here long enough," replied Honora, "to have acquired all of the Quicksands habits."
"Oh," said Mrs. Kame, and looked at Honora again. "Wasn't that Mrs. Dallam you were with? I used to know her, years ago, but she doesn't speak to me any more."
"Perhaps she thinks you've forgotten her," said Honora.
"It would be impossible to forget Mrs. Dallam," declared Mrs. Kame.
"So I should have thought," said Honora.
Trixton Brent laughed, and Mrs. Kame, too, after a moment's hesitation.She laid her hand familiarly on Mr. Brent's arm.
"I haven't seen you all summer, Trixy," she said. "I hear you've been here at Quicksands, stewing in that little packing-case of yours. Aren't you coming into our steeplechase at Banbury.
"I believe you went to school with my sister," said young Mr. Wing.
"Oh, yes," answered Honora, somewhat surprised. "I caught a glimpse of her once, in New York. I hope you will remember me to her."
"And I've seen you before," proclaimed Mr. Cuthbert, "but I can't for the life of me think where."
Honora did not enlighten him.
"I shan't forget, at any rate, Mrs. Spence," said Cecil Grainger, who had not taken his eyes from her, except to blink.
Mrs. Kame saved her the embarrassment of replying.
"Can't we go somewhere and play bridge," Trixy demanded.
"I'd be delighted to offer you the hospitality of my packing-case, as you call it," said Brent, "but the dining-room ceiling fell down Wednesday, and I'm having the others bolstered up as a mere matter of precaution."
"I suppose we couldn't get a fourth, anyway. Neither Jimmy nor Toots plays. It's so stupid of them not to learn."
"Mrs. Spence might, help us out," suggested Brent.
"Do you play?" exclaimed Mrs. Kame, in a voice of mixed incredulity and hope.
"Play!" cried Mr. Brent, "she can teach Jerry Shorter or the Duchess ofTaunton."
"The Duchess cheats," announced Cecil Grainger. "I caught her at it atCannes—"
"Indeed, I don't play very well," Honora interrupted him, "and besides—"
"Suppose we go over to Mrs. Spence's house," Trixton Brent suggested."I'm sure she'd like to have us wouldn't you, Mrs. Spence?"
"What a brilliant idea, Trixy!" exclaimed Mrs. Kame.
"I should be delighted," said Honora, somewhat weakly. An impulse made her glance toward the veranda, and for a fraction of a second she caught the eye of Lily Dallam, who turned again to Mrs. Chandos.
"I say," said Mr. Cuthbert, "I don't play—but I hope I may come along."
"And me too," chimed in Mr. Wing.
Honora, not free from a certain uneasiness of conscience, led the way to the Brackens, flanked by Mr. Grainger and Mr. Cuthbert. Her frame of mind was not an ideal one for a hostess; she was put out with Trixton Brent, and she could not help wondering whether these people would have made themselves so free with another house. When tea was over, however, and the bridge had begun, her spirits rose; or rather, a new and strange excitement took possession of her that was not wholly due to the novel and revolutionary experience of playing, for money—and winning. Her star being in the ascendant, as we may perceive. She had drawn Mrs. Kame for a partner, and the satisfaction and graciousness of that lady visibly grew as the score mounted: even the skill of Trixton Brent could not triumph over the hands which the two ladies held.
In the intervals the talk wandered into regions unfamiliar to Honora, and she had a sense that her own horizon was being enlarged. A new vista, at least, had been cut: possibilities became probabilities. Even when Mrs. Kame chose to ridicule Quicksands Honora was silent, so keenly did she feel the justice of her guest's remarks; and the implication was that Honora did not belong there. When train time arrived and they were about to climb into Trixton Brent's omnibus—for which he had obligingly telephoned—Mrs. Kame took Honora's band in both her own. Some good thing, after all, could come out of this community—such was the triumphant discovery the lady's manner implied.
"My dear, don't you ever come to Banbury?" she asked. I'd be so glad to see you. I must get Trixy to drive you over some day for lunch. We've had such a good time, and Cecil didn't fall asleep once. Quite a record. You saved our lives, really."
"Are you going to be in town this winter?" Mr. Grainger inquired.
"I,—I suppose so—replied Honora, for the moment taken aback, although I haven't decided just where."
"I shall look forward to seeing you," he said.
This hope was expressed even more fervently by Mr. Cuthbert and Mr. Wing, and the whole party waved her a cordial good-by as the carriage turned the circle. Trixton Brent, with his hands in his pockets, stood facing her under the electric light on the porch.
"Well?" he said.
"Well," repeated Honora.
"Nice people," said Mr. Brent.
Honora bridled.
"You invited them here," she said. "I must say I think it, was rather —presumptuous. And you've got me into no end of trouble with Lily Dallam."
He laughed as he held open the screen door for her.
"I wonder whether a good angel was ever so abused," he said.
"A good angel," she repeated, smiling at him in spite of herself.
"Or knight-errant," he continued, "whichever you choose. You want to get out of Quicksands—I'm trying to make it easy for you. Before you leave you have to arrange some place to go. Before we are off with the old we'd better be on with the new."
"Oh, please don't say such things," she cried, "they're so—so sordid." She looked searchingly into his face. "Do I really seem to you like that?"
Her lip was quivering, and she was still under the influence of the excitement which the visit of these people had brought about.
"No," said Brent—coming very close to her, "no, you don't. That's the extraordinary part of it. The trouble with you, Honora, is that you want something badly very badly—and you haven't yet found out what it is.
"And you won't find out," he added, "until you have tried everything.Therefore am I a good Samaritan, or something like it."
She looked at him with startled eyes, breathing deeply.
"I wonder if that is so!" she said, in a low voice.
"Not until you have had and broken every toy in the shop," he declared. "Out of the mouths of men of the world occasionally issues wisdom. I'm going to help you get the toys. Don't you think I'm kind?"
"And isn't this philanthropic mood a little new to you?" she asked.
"I thought I had exhausted all novelties," he answered. "Perhaps that's the reason why I enjoy it."
She turned and walked slowly into the drawing-room, halted, and stood staring at the heap of gold and yellow bills that Mr. Grainger had deposited in front of the place where she had sat. Her sensation was akin to sickness. She reached out with a kind of shuddering fascination and touched the gold.
"I think," she said, speaking rather to herself than to Brent, "I'll give it to charity."
"If it is possible to combine a meritorious act with good policy, I should suggest giving it to Mrs. Grainger for the relief of oppressed working girls," he said.
Honora started.
"I wonder why Howard doesn't come she exclaimed, looking at the clock.
"Probably because he is holding nothing but full hands and flushes," hazarded Mr. Brent. "Might I propose myself for dinner?"
"When so many people are clamouring for you?" she asked.
"Even so," he said.
"I think I'll telephone to the Club," said Honora, and left the room.
It was some time before her husband responded to the call; and then he explained that if Honora didn't object, he was going to a man's dinner in a private room. The statement was not unusual.
"But, Howard," she said, I—I wanted you particularly to-night."
"I thought you were going to dine with Lily Dallam. She told me you were.Are you alone?"
"Mr. Brent is here. He brought over some Banbury people to play bridge.They've gone."
"Oh, Brent will amuse you," he replied. "I didn't know you were going to be home, and I've promised these men. I'll come back early."
She hung up the receiver thoughtfully, paused a moment, and went back to the drawing-room. Brent looked up.
"Well," he said, "was I right?"
"You seem always to be right," Honora, sighed.
After dinner they sat in the screened part of the porch which Mrs. Fern had arranged very cleverly as an outside room. Brent had put a rug over Honora's knees, for the ocean breath that stirred the leaves was cold. Across the darkness fragments of dance music drifted fitfully from the Club, and died away; and at intervals, when the embers of his cigar flared up, she caught sight of her companion's face.
She found him difficult to understand. There are certain rules of thumb in every art, no doubt,—even in that most perilous one of lion-taming. But here was a baffling, individual lion. She liked him best, she told herself, when he purred platonically, but she could by no means be sure that his subjection was complete. Sometimes he had scratched her in his play. And however natural it is to desire a lion for one's friend, to be eaten is both uncomfortable and inglorious.
"That's, a remarkable husband of yours," he said at length.
"I shouldn't have said that you were a particularly good judge of husbands," she retorted, after a moment of surprise.
He acknowledged with a laugh the justice of this observation.
"I stand corrected. He is by no means a remarkable husband. Permit me to say he is a remarkable man."
"What makes you think so?" asked Honora, considerably disturbed.
"Because he induced you to marry him, for one thing," said Brent. "Of course he got you before you knew what you were worth, but we must give him credit for discovery and foresight."
"Perhaps," Honora could not resist replying, "perhaps he didn't know what he was getting."
"That's probably true," Brent assented, "or he'd be sitting here now, where I am, instead of playing poker. Although there is something in matrimony that takes the bloom off the peach."
"I think that's a horrid, cynical remark," said Honora.
"Well," he said, "we speak according to our experiences—that is, if we're not inclined to be hypocritical. Most women are."
Honora was silent. He had thrown away his cigar, and she could no longer see his face. She wondered whither he was leading.
"How would you like to see your husband president of a trust company?" he said suddenly.
"Howard—president of a trust company!" she exclaimed.
"Why not?" he demanded. And added enigmatically, "Smaller men have been."
"I wish you wouldn't joke about Howard," she said.
"How does the idea strike you?" he persisted. "Ambition satisfied —temporarily; Quicksands a mile-stone on a back road; another toy to break; husband a big man in the community, so far as the eye can see; visiting list on Fifth Avenue, and all that sort of thing."
"I once told you you could be brutal," she said.
"You haven't told me what you thought of the idea."
"I wish you'd be sensible once in a while," she exclaimed.
"Howard Spence, President of the Orange Trust Company!" he recited. "I suppose no man is a hero to his wife. Does it sound so incredible?"
It did. But Honora did not say so.
"What have I to do with it?" she asked, in pardonable doubt as to his seriousness.
"Everything," answered Brent. "Women of your type usually have. They make and mar without rhyme or reason—set business by the ears, alter the gold reserve, disturb the balance of trade, and nobody ever suspects it. Old James Wing and I have got a trust company organized, and the building up, and the man Wing wanted for president backed out."
Honora sat up.
"Why—why did he 'back out'?" she demanded.
"He preferred to stay where he was, I suppose," replied Brent, in another tone. "The point is that the place is empty. I'll give it to YOU."
"To me?"
"Certainly," said Brent, "I don't pretend to care anything about your husband. He'll do as well as the next man. His duties are pretty well —defined."
Again she was silent. But after a moment dropped back in her chair and laughed uneasily.
"You're preposterous," she said; "I can't think why I let you talk to me in this way."
Honora may be pardoned for finally ascribing to Mr. Brent's somewhat sardonic sense of humour his remarks concerning her husband's elevation to a conspicuous position in the world of finance. Taken in any other sense than a joke, they were both insulting and degrading, and made her face burn when she thought of them. After he had gone—or rather after she had dismissed him—she took a book upstairs to wait for Howard, but she could not read. At times she wished she had rebuked Trixton Brent more forcibly, although he was not an easy person to rebuke; and again she reflected that, had she taken the matter too seriously, she would have laid herself open to his ridicule. The lion was often unwittingly rough, and perhaps that was part of his fascination.
If Howard had come home before midnight it is possible that she might have tried to sound him as to his relations with Trixton Brent. That gentleman, she remembered, had the reputation of being a peculiarly hardheaded business man, and it was of course absurd that he should offer her husband a position merely to please her. And her imagination failed her when she tried to think of Howard as the president of a trust company. She was unable to picture him in a great executive office:
This tram of thought led her to the unaccustomed task of analyzing his character. For the first time since her marriage comparisons crept into her mind, and she awoke to the fact that he was not a masterful man—even among men. For all his self-confidence-self-assurance, perhaps, would be the better word—he was in reality a follower, not a leader; a gleaner. He did not lack ideas. She tried to arrest the process in her brain when she got as far as asking herself whether it might not be that he lacked ideals. Since in business matters he never had taken her into his confidence, and since she would not at any rate have understood such things, she had no proof of such a failing. But one or two vague remarks of Trixton Brent's which she recalled, and Howard's own request that she should be friendly with Brent, reenforced her instinct on this point.
When she heard her husband's footstep on the porch, she put out her light, but still lay thinking in the darkness. Her revelations had arrived at the uncomfortable stage where they began to frighten her, and with an effort she forced herself to turn to the other side of the account. The hour was conducive to exaggerations. Perfection in husbands was evidently a state not to be considered by any woman in her right senses. He was more or less amenable, and he was prosperous, although definite news of that prosperity never came from him—Quicksands always knew of it first. An instance of this second-hand acquisition of knowledge occurred the very next morning, when Lily Dallam, with much dignity, walked into Honora's little sitting-room. There was no apparent reason why dignity should not have been becoming to Lily Dallam, for she was by no means an unimpressive-looking woman; but the assumption by her of that quality always made her a little tragic or (if one chanced to be in the humour—Honora was not) a little ridiculous.
"I suppose I have no pride," she said, as she halted within a few feet of the doorway.
"Why, Lily!" exclaimed Honora, pushing back the chair from her desk, and rising.
But Mrs. Dallam did not move.
"I suppose I have no pride," she repeated in a dead voice, "but I just couldn't help coming over and giving you a chance."
"Giving me a chance?" said Honora.
"To explain—after the way you treated me at the polo game. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I shouldn't have believed it. I don't think I should have trusted my own eyes," Mrs. Dallam went so far as to affirm, "if Lula Chandos and Clara Trowbridge and others hadn't been there and seen it too; I shouldn't have believed it."
Honora was finding penitence a little difficult. But her heart was kind.
"Do sit down, Lily," she begged. "If I've offended you in any way, I'm exceedingly sorry—I am, really. You ought to know me well enough to understand that I wouldn't do anything to hurt your feelings."
"And when I counted on you so, for my tea and dinner at the club!" continued Mrs. Dallam. "There were other women dying to come. And you said you had a headache, and were tired."
"I was," began Honora, fruitlessly.
"And you were so popular in Quicksands—everybody was crazy about you. You were so sweet and so unspoiled. I might have known that it couldn't last. And now, because Abby Kame and Cecil Grainger and—"
"Lily, please don't say such things!" Honora implored, revolted.
"Of course you won't be satisfied now with anything less than Banbury or Newport. But you can't say I didn't warn you, Honora, that they are a horrid, selfish, fast lot," Lily Dallam declared, and brushed her eyes with her handkerchief. "I did love you."
"If you'll only be reasonable a moment, Lily,—" said Honora.
"Reasonable! I saw you with my own eyes. Five minutes after you left me they all started for your house, and Lula Chandos said it was the quickest cure of a headache she had ever seen."
"Lily," Honora began again, with exemplary patience, when people invite themselves to one's house, it's a little difficult to refuse them hospitality, isn't it?"
"Invite themselves?"
"Yes," replied Honora. "If I weren't—fond of you, too, I shouldn't make this explanation. I was tired. I never felt less like entertaining strangers. They wanted to play bridge, there wasn't a quiet spot in the Club where they could go. They knew I was on my way home, and they suggested my house. That is how it happened."
Mrs. Dallam was silent a moment.
"May I have one of Howard's cigarettes?" she asked, and added, after this modest wish had been supplied, that's just like them. They're willing to make use of anybody."
"I meant," said Honora, "to have gone to your house this morning and to have explained how it happened."
Another brief silence, broken by Lily Dallam.
"Did you notice the skirt of that suit Abby Kame had on?", she asked. "I'm sure she paid a fabulous price for it in Paris, and it's exactly like one I ordered on Tuesday."
The details of the rest of this conversation may be omitted. That Honora was forgiven, and Mrs. Dallam's spirits restored may be inferred from her final remark.
"My dear, what do you think of Sid and Howard making twenty thousand dollars apiece in Sassafras Copper? Isn't it too lovely! I'm having a little architect make me plans for a conservatory. You know I've always been dying for one—I don't see how I've lived all these years without it."
Honora, after her friend had gone, sat down in one of the wicker chairs on the porch. She had a very vague idea as to how much twenty thousand dollars was, but she reflected that while they had lived in Rivington Howard must have made many similar sums, of which she was unaware. Gradually she began to realize, however, that her resentment of the lack of confidence of her husband was by no means the only cause of the feeling that took possession of and overwhelmed her. Something like it she had experienced before: to-day her thoughts seemed to run through her in pulsations, like waves of heat, and she wondered that she could have controlled herself while listening to Lily Dallam.
Mrs. Dallam's reproaches presented themselves to Honora in new aspects. She began to feel now, with an intensity that frightened her, distaste and rebellion. It was intolerable that she should be called to account for the people she chose to have in her house, that any sort of pressure should be brought to bear on her to confine her friends to Quicksands. Treason, heresy, disloyalty to the cult of that community—in reality these, and not a breach of engagement, were the things of which she had been accused. She saw now. She would not be tied to Quicksands—she would not, she would not, she would not! She owed it no allegiance. Her very soul rebelled at the thought, and cried out that she was made for something better, something higher than the life she had been leading. She would permit no one forcibly to restrict her horizon.
Just where and how this higher and better life was to be found Honora did not know; but the belief of her childhood—that it existed somewhere—was still intact. Her powers of analysis, we see, are only just budding, and she did not and could not define the ideal existence which she so unflaggingly sought. Of two of its attributes only she was sure—that it was to be free from restraint and from odious comparisons. Honora's development, it may be remarked, proceeds by the action of irritants, and of late her protest against Quicksands and what it represented had driven her to other books besides the treatise on bridge. The library she had collected at Rivington she had brought with her, and was adding to it from time to time. Its volumes are neither sufficiently extensive or profound to enumerate.
Those who are more or less skilled in psychology may attempt to establish a sequence between the events and reflections just related and the fact that, one morning a fortnight later, Honora found herself driving northward on Fifth Avenue in a hansom cab. She was in a pleasurable state of adventurous excitement, comparable to that Columbus must have felt when the shores of the Old World had disappeared below the horizon. During the fortnight we have skipped Honora had been to town several times, and had driven and walked through certain streets: inspiration, courage, and decision had all arrived at once this morning, when at the ferry she had given the cabman this particular address on Fifth Avenue.
The cab, with the jerking and thumping peculiar to hansoms, made a circle and drew up at the curb. But even then a moment of irresolution intervened, and she sat staring through the little side window at the sign, T. Gerald Shorter, Real Estate, in neat gold letters over the basement floor of the building.
"Here y'are, Miss," said the cabman through the hole in the roof.
Honora descended, and was almost at the flight of steps leading down to the office door when a familiar figure appeared coming out of it. It was that of Mr. Toots Cuthbert, arrayed in a faultless morning suit, his tie delicately suggestive of falling leaves; and there dangled over his arm the slenderest of walking sticks.
"Mrs. Spence!" he lisped, with every appearance of joy.
"Mr. Cuthbert!" she cried.
"Going in to see Jerry?" he inquired after he had put on his hat, nodding up at the sign.
"I—that is, yes, I had thought of it," she answered.
"Town house?" said Mr. Cuthbert, with a knowing smile.
"I did have an idea of looking at houses," she confessed, somewhat taken aback.
"I'm your man," announced Mr. Cuthbert.
"You!" exclaimed Honora, with an air of considering the lilies of the field. But he did not seem to take offence.
"That's my business," he proclaimed,—"when in town. Jerry gives me a commission. Come in and see him, while I get a list and some keys. By the way, you wouldn't object to telling him you were a friend of mine, would you?"
"Not at all," said Honora, laughing.
Mr. Shorter was a jovial gentleman in loose-fitting clothes, and he was exceedingly glad to meet Mr. Cuthbert's friend.
"What kind of a house do you want, Mrs. Spence?" he asked. "Cuthberttells me this morning that the Whitworth house has come into the market.You couldn't have a better location than that, on the Avenue between theCathedral and the Park."
"Oh," said Honora with a gasp, "that's much too expensive, I'm sure. And there are only two of us." She hesitated, a little alarmed at the rapidity with which affairs were proceeding, and added: "I ought to tell you that I've not really decided to take a house. I wished to—to see what there was to be had, and then I should have to consult my husband."
She gazed very seriously into Mr. Shorter's brown eyes, which became very wide and serious, too. But all the time it seemed to her that other parts of him were laughing.
"Husbands," he declared, "are kill-joys. What have they got to do with a house—except to sleep in it? Now I haven't the pleasure of knowing you as well as I hope to one of these days, Mrs. Spence—"
"Oh, I say!" interrupted Mr. Cuthbert.
"But I venture to predict, on a slight acquaintance," continued Mr. Shorter, undisturbed, "that you will pick out the house you want, and that your husband will move into it."
Honora could not help laughing. And Mr. Shorter leaned back in his revolving chair and laughed, too, in so alarming a manner as to lead her to fear he would fall over backwards. But Mr. Cuthbert, who did not appear to perceive the humour in this conversation, extracted some keys and several pasteboard slips from a rack in the corner. Suddenly Mr. Shorter jerked himself upright again, and became very solemn.
"Where's my hat?" he demanded.
"What do you want with your hat?" Mr. Cuthbert inquired.
"Why, I'm going with you, of course," Mr. Shorter replied. "I've decided to take a personal interest in this matter. You may regard my presence, Cuthbert, as justified by an artistic passion for my profession. I should never forgive myself if Mrs. Spence didn't get just the right house."
"Oh," said Mr. Cuthbert, "I'll manage that all right. I thought you were going to see the representative of a syndicate at eleven."
Mr. Shorter, with a sigh, acknowledged this necessity, and escorted Honora gallantly through the office and across the sidewalk to the waiting hansom. Cuthbert got in beside her.
"Jerry's a joker," he observed as they drove off, "you mustn't mind him."
"I think he's delightful," said Honora.
"One wouldn't believe that a man of his size and appearance could be so fond of women," said Mr. Cuthbert. "He's the greatest old lady-killer that ever breathed. For two cents he would have come with us this morning, and let a five thousand dollar commission go. Do you know Mrs. Shorter?"
"No," replied Honora. "She looks most attractive. I caught a glimpse of her at the polo that day with you."
"I've been at her house in Newport ever since. Came down yesterday to try to earn some money," he continued, cheerfully making himself agreeable. "Deuced clever woman, much too clever for me and Jerry too. Always in a tete-a-tete with an antiquarian or a pathologist, or a psychologist, and tells novelists what to put into their next books and jurists how to decide cases. Full of modern and liberal ideas—believes in free love and all that sort of thing, and gives Jerry the dickens for practising it."
"Oh!" exclaimed Honora.
Mr. Cuthbert, however, did not appear to realize that he had shocked her.
"By the way," he asked, "have you seen Cecil Grainger since theQuicksands game?"
"No," she replied. "Has Mr. Grainger been at Quicksands since?"
"Nobody knows where he's been," answered Mr. Cuthbert. "It's a mystery. He hasn't been home—at Newport, I mean-for a fortnight. He's never stayed away so long without letting any one know where he is. Naturally they thought he was at Mrs. Kame's in Banbury, but she hasn't laid eyes on him. It's a mystery. My own theory is that he went to sleep in a parlour car and was sent to the yards, and hasn't waked up."
"And isn't Mrs. Grainger worried?" asked Honora.
"Oh, you never can tell anything about her," he said. "Do you know her?She's a sphinx. All the Pendletons are Stoics. And besides, she's been sobusy with this Charities Conference that she hasn't had time to think ofCecil. Who's that?"
"That" was a lady from Rivington, one of Honora's former neighbours, to whom she had bowed. Life, indeed, is full of contrasts. Mr. Cuthbert, too, was continually bowing and waving to acquaintances on the Avenue.
Thus pleasantly conversing, they arrived at the first house on the list, and afterwards went through a succession of them. Once inside, Honora would look helplessly about her in the darkness while her escort would raise the shades, admitting a gloomy light on bare interiors or shrouded furniture.
And the rents: Four, five, six, and seven and eight thousand dollars a year. Pride prevented her from discussing these prices with Mr. Cuthbert; and in truth, when lunch time came, she had seen nothing which realized her somewhat vague but persistent ideals.
"I'm so much obliged to you," she said, "and I hope you'll forgive me for wasting your time."
Mr. Cuthbert smiled broadly, and Honora smiled too.
Indeed, there was something ludicrous in the remark. He assumed an attitude of reflection.
"I imagine you wouldn't care to go over beyond Lexington Avenue, would you? I didn't think to ask you."
"No," she replied, blushing a little, "I shouldn't care to go over as far as that."
He pondered a while longer, when suddenly his face lighted up.
"I've got it!" he cried, "the very thing—why didn't. I think of it? Dicky Farnham's house, or rather his wife's house. I'll get it straight after a while,—she isn't his wife any more, you know; she married Eustace Rindge last month. That's the reason it's for rent. Dicky says he'll never get married again—you bet! They planned it together, laid the corner-stone and all that sort of thing, and before it was finished she had a divorce and had gone abroad with Rindge. I saw her before she sailed, and she begged me to rent it. But it isn't furnished."
"I might look at it," said Honora, dubiously.
"I'm sure it will just suit you," he declared with enthusiasm. "It's a real find. We'll drive around by the office and get the keys."
The house was between Fifth Avenue and Madison, on a cross street not far below Fifty-Ninth, and Honora had scarcely entered the little oak-panelled hall before she had forgotten that Mr. Cuthbert was a real estate agent—a most difficult thing to remember.
Upstairs, the drawing-room was flooded with sunlight that poured in through a window with stone mullions and leaded panes extending the entire width of the house. Against the wall stood a huge stone mantel of the Tudor period, and the ceiling was of wood. Behind the little hall a cosey library lighted by a well, and behind that an ample dining-room. And Honora remembered to have seen, in a shop on Fourth Avenue, just the sideboard for such a setting.
On the third floor, as Mr. Cuthbert pointed out, there was a bedroom and boudoir for Mrs. Spence, and a bedroom and dressing-room for Mr. Spence. Into the domestic arrangement of the house, however important, we need not penetrate. The rent was eight thousand dollars, which Mr. Cuthbert thought extremely reasonable.
"Eight thousand dollars!" As she stood with her back turned, looking out on the street, some trick of memory brought into her mind the fact that she had once heard her uncle declare that he had bought his house and lot for that exact sum. And as cashier of Mr. Isham's bank, he did not earn so much in a year.
She had found the house, indeed, but the other and mightier half of the task remained, of getting Howard into it. In the consideration of this most difficult of problems Honora, who in her exaltation had beheld herself installed in every room, grew suddenly serious. She was startled out of her reflections by a remark of almost uncanny penetration on the part of Mr. Cuthbert.
"Oh, he'll come round all right, when he sees the house," that young gentleman declared.
Honora turned quickly, and, after a moment of astonishment, laughed in spite of herself. It was impossible not to laugh with Mr. Cuthbert, so irresistible and debonair was he, so confiding and sympathetic, that he became; before one knew it, an accomplice. Had he not poured out to Honora, with a charming gayety and frankness, many of his financial troubles?
"I'm afraid he'll think it frightfully expensive," she answered, becoming thoughtful once more. And it did not occur to her that neither of them had mentioned the individual to whom they referred.
"Wait until he's feeling tiptop," Mr. Cuthbert advised, "and then bring him up here in a hurry. I say, I hope you do take the house," he added, with a boyish seriousness after she had refused his appeal to lunch with him, "and that you will let me come and see you once in a while."
She lunched alone, in a quiet corner of the dining-room of one of the large hotels, gazing at intervals absently out of the window. And by the middle of the afternoon she found herself, quite unexpectedly, in the antique furniture shop, gazing at the sideboard and a set of leather-seated Jacobean chairs, and bribing the dealer with a smile to hold them for a few days until she could decide whether she wished them. In a similar mood of abstraction she boarded the ferry, but it was not until the boat had started on its journey that she became aware of a trim, familiar figure in front of her, silhouetted against the ruffed blue waters of the river—Trixton Brent's. And presently, as though the concentration of her thoughts upon his back had summoned him, he turned.
"Where have you been all this time?" she asked. "I haven't seen you for an age."
"To Seattle."
"To Seattle!" she exclaimed. "What were you doing there?"
"Trying to forget you," he replied promptly, "and incidentally attempting to obtain control of some properties. Both efforts, I may add, were unsuccessful."
"I'm sorry," said Honora.
"And what mischief," he demanded, "have you been up to?"
"You'll never guess!" she exclaimed.
"Preparing for the exodus," he hazarded.
"You surely don't expect me to stay in Quicksands all winter?" she replied, a little guiltily.
"Quicksands," he declared, "has passed into history."
"You always insist upon putting a wrong interpretation upon what I do," she complained.
He laughed.
"What interpretation do you put on it?" he asked.
"A most natural and praiseworthy one," she answered. "Education, improvement, growth—these things are as necessary for a woman as for a man. Of course I don't expect you to believe that—your idea of women not being a very exalted one."
He did not reply, for at that instant the bell rang, the passengers pressed forward about them, and they were soon in the midst of the confusion of a landing. It was not until they were seated in adjoining chairs of the parlour-car that the conversation was renewed.
"When do you move to town?" he inquired.
However simple Mr. Brent's methods of reasoning may appear to others, his apparent clairvoyance never failed to startle Honora.
"Somebody has told you that I've been looking at houses!" she exclaimed.
"Have you found one?"
She hesitated.
"Yes—I have found one. It belongs to some people named Farnham—they're divorced."
"Dicky Farnham's ex-wife," he supplied. "I know where it is —unexceptionable neighbourhood and all that sort of thing."
"And it's just finished," continued Honora, her enthusiasm gaining on her as she spoke of the object which had possessed her mind for four hours. "It's the most enchanting house, and so sunny for New York. If I had built it myself it could not have suited me better. Only—"
"Only—" repeated Trixton Brent, smiling.
"Well," she said slowly, "I really oughtn't to talk about it. I—I haven't said anything to Howard yet, and he may not like it. I ran across it by the merest accident."
"What will you give me," he said, "if I can induce Howard to like it?"
"My eternal friendship," she laughed.
"That's not enough," said Trixton Brent.
"Howard," said Honora that evening, "I've been going through houses to-day."
"Houses!" he exclaimed, looking up from his newspaper.
"And I've been most fortunate," she continued. "I found one that Mrs. Farnham built—she is now Mrs. Rindge. It is just finished, and so attractive. If I'd looked until doomsday I couldn't have done any better."
"But great Scott!" he ejaculated, "what put the notion of a town house into your head?"
"Isn't it high time to be thinking of the winter?" she asked. "It's nearly the end of September."
He was inarticulate for a few moments, in an evident desperate attempt to rally his forces to meet such an unforeseen attack.
"Who said anything about going to town?" he inquired.
"Now, Howard, don't be foolish," she replied. "Surely you didn't expect to stay in Quicksands all winter?"
"Foolish!" he repeated, and added inconsequently, "why not?"
"Because," said Honora, calmly, "I have a life to lead as well as you."
"But you weren't satisfied until you got to Quicksands, and now you want to leave it."
"I didn't bargain to stay here in the winter," she declared. "You know very well that if you were unfortunate it would be different. But you're quite prosperous."
"How do you know?" he demanded unguardedly.
"Quicksands tells me," she said. "It is—a little humiliating not to have more of your confidence, and to hear such things from outsiders."
"You never seemed interested in business matters," he answered uneasily.
"I should be," said Honora, "if you would only take the trouble to tell me about them." She stood up. "Howard, can't you see that it is making us—grow apart? If you won't tell me about yourself and what you're doing, you drive me to other interests. I am your wife, and I ought to know—I want to know. The reason I don't understand is because you've never taken the trouble to teach me. I wish to lead my own life, it is true—to develop. I don't want to be like these other women down here. I—I was made for something better. I'm sure of it. But I wish my life to be joined to yours, too—and it doesn't seem to be. And sometimes—I'm afraid I can't explain it to you—sometimes I feel lonely and frightened, as though I might do something desperate. And I don't know what's going to become of me."
He laid down his newspaper and stared at her helplessly, with the air of a man who suddenly finds himself at sea in a small boat without oars.
"Oh, you can't understand!" she cried. "I might have known you never could."
He was, indeed, thoroughly perplexed and uncomfortable: unhappy might not be too strong a word. He got up awkwardly and put his hand on her arm. She did not respond. He drew her, limp and unresisting, down on the lounge beside him.
"For heaven's sake, what is the matter, Honora?" he faltered. "I—I thought we were happy. You were getting on all right, and seemed to be having a good time down here. You never said anything about—this."
She turned her head and looked at him—a long, searching look with widened eyes.
"No," she said slowly, "you don't understand. I suppose it isn't your fault."
"I'll try," he said, "I don't like to see you—upset like this. I'll do anything I can to make you happy."
"Not things, not—not toys," Trixton Brent's expression involuntarily coming to her lips. "Oh, can't you see I'm not that kind of a woman? I don't want to be bought. I want you, whatever you are, if you are. I want to be saved. Take care of me—see a little more of me—be a little interested in what I think. God gave me a mind, and—other men have discovered it. You don't know, you can't know, what temptations you subject me to. It isn't right, Howard. And oh, it is humiliating not to be able to interest one's husband."
"But you do interest me," he protested.
She shook her head.
"Not so much as your business," she said; "not nearly so much."
"Perhaps I have been too absorbed," he confessed. "One thing has followed another. I didn't suspect that you felt this way. Come, I'll try to brace up." He pressed her to him. "Don't feel badly. You're overwrought. You've exaggerated the situation, Honora. We'll go in on the eight o'clock train together and look at the house—although I'm afraid it's a little steep," he added cautiously.
"I don't care anything about the house," said Honora. "I don't want it."
"There!" he said soothingly, "you'll feel differently in the morning.We'll go and look at it, anyway."
Her quick ear, however, detected an undertone which, if not precisely resentment, was akin to the vexation that an elderly gentleman might be justified in feeling who has taken the same walk for twenty years, and is one day struck by a falling brick. Howard had not thought of consulting her in regard to remaining all winter in Quicksands. And, although he might not realize it himself, if he should consent to go to New York one reason for his acquiescence would be that the country in winter offered a more or less favourable atmosphere for the recurrence of similar unpleasant and unaccountable domestic convulsions. Business demands peace at any price. And the ultimatum at Rivington, though delivered in so different a manner, recurred to him.
The morning sunlight, as is well known, is a dispeller of moods, a disintegrator of the night's fantasies. It awoke Honora at what for her was a comparatively early hour, and as she dressed rapidly she heard her husband whistling in his room. It is idle to speculate on the phenomenon taking place within her, and it may merely be remarked in passing that she possessed a quality which, in a man, leads to a career and fame. Unimagined numbers of America's women possess that quality—a fact that is becoming more and more apparent every day.
"Why, Honora!" Howard exclaimed, as she appeared at the breakfast table."What's happened to you?"
"Have you forgotten already," she asked, smilingly, as she poured out her coffee, "that we are going to town together?"
He readjusted his newspaper against the carafe.
"How much do you think Mrs. Farnham—or Mrs. Rindge—is worth?" he asked.
"I'm sure I don't know," she replied.
"Old Marshall left her five million dollars."
"What has that to do with it?" inquired Honora.
"She isn't going to rent, especially in that part of town, for nothing."
"Wouldn't it be wiser, Howard, to wait and see the house. You know you proposed it yourself, and it won't take very much of your time."
He returned to a perusal of the financial column, but his eye from time to time wandered from the sheet to his wife, who was reading her letters.
"Howard," she said, "I feel dreadfully about Mrs. Holt. We haven't been at Silverdale all summer. Here's a note from her saying she'll be in town to-morrow for the Charities Conference, asking me to come to see her at her hotel. I think I'll go to Silverdale a little later."
"Why don't you?" he said. "It would do you good."
"And you?" she asked.
"My only day of the week is Sunday, Honora. You know that. And I wouldn't spend another day at Silverdale if they gave me a deed to the property," he declared.
On the train, when Howard had returned from the smoking car and they were about to disembark at Long Island City, they encountered Mr. Trixton Brent.
"Whither away?" he cried in apparent astonishment. "Up at dawn, and the eight o'clock train!"
"We were going to look at a house," explained Honora, "and Howard has no other time."
"I'll go, too," declared Mr. Brent, promptly. "You mightn't think me a judge of houses, but I am. I've lived in so many bad ones that I know a good one when I see it now."
"Honora has got a wild notion into her head that I'm going to take the Farnham house," said Howard, smiling. There, on the deck of the ferryboat, in the flooding sunlight, the idea seemed to give him amusement. With the morning light Pharaoh must have hardened his heart.
"Well, perhaps you are," said Mr. Brent, conveying to Honora his delight in the situation by a scarcely perceptible wink. "I shouldn't like to take the other end of the bet. Why shouldn't you? You're fat and healthy and making money faster than you can gather it in."
Howard coughed, and laughed a little, uncomfortably. Trixton Brent was not a man to offend.
"Honora has got that delusion, too," he replied. He steeled himself in his usual manner for the ordeal to come by smoking a cigarette, for the arrival of such a powerful ally on his wife's side lent a different aspect to the situation.
Honora, during this colloquy, was silent. She was a little uncomfortable, and pretended not to see Mr. Brent's wink.
"Incredible as it may seem, I expected to have my automobile ready this morning," he observed; "we might have gone in that. It landed three days ago, but so far it has failed to do anything but fire off revolver shots."
"Oh, I do wish you had it," said Honora, relieved by the change of subject. "To drive in one must be such a wonderful sensation."
"I'll let you know when it stops shooting up the garage and consents to move out," he said. "I'll take you down to Quicksands in it."
The prospective arrival of Mr. Brent's French motor car, which was looked for daily, had indeed been one of the chief topics of conversation at Quicksands that summer. He could appear at no lunch or dinner party without being subjected to a shower of questions as to where it was, and as many as half a dozen different women among whom was Mrs. Chandos —declared that he had promised to bring them out from New York on the occasion of its triumphal entry into the colony. Honora, needless to say, had betrayed no curiosity.
Neither Mr. Shorter nor Mr. Cuthbert had appeared at the real estate office when, at a little after nine o'clock; Honora asked for the keys. And an office boy, perched on the box seat of the carriage, drove with them to the house and opened the wrought-iron gate that guarded the entrance, and the massive front door. Honora had a sense of unreality as they entered, and told herself it was obviously ridiculous that she should aspire to such a dwelling. Yesterday, under the spell of that somewhat adventurous excursion with Mr. Cuthbert, she had pictured herself as installed. He had contrived somehow to give her a sense of intimacy with the people who lived thereabout—his own friends.
Perhaps it was her husband who was the disillusionizing note as he stood on the polished floor of the sunflooded drawing-room. Although bare of furniture, it was eloquent to Honora of a kind of taste not to be found at Quicksands: it carried her back, by undiscernible channels of thought, to the impression which, in her childhood, the Hanbury mansion had always made. Howard, in her present whimsical fancy, even seemed a little grotesque in such a setting. His inevitable pink shirt and obviously prosperous clothes made discord there, and she knew in this moment that he was appraising the house from a commercial standpoint. His comment confirmed her guess.
"If I were starting out to blow myself, or you, Honora," he said, poking with his stick a marmouset of the carved stone mantel, "I'd get a little more for my money while I was about it."
Honora did not reply. She looked out of the window instead.
"See here, old man," said Trixton Brent, "I'm not a real estate dealer or an architect, but if I were in your place I'd take that carriage and hustle over to Jerry Shorter's as fast as I could and sign the lease."
Howard looked at him in some surprise, as one who had learned thatTrixton Brent's opinions were usually worth listening to.Characteristically, he did not like to display his ignorance.
"I know what you mean, Brent," he replied, "and there may be something to the argument. It gives an idea of conservativeness and prosperity."
"You've made a bull's-eye," said Trixton Brent, succinctly.
"But—but I'm not ready to begin on this scale," objected Howard.
"Why," cried Brent, with evident zest—for he was a man who enjoyed sport in all its forms, even to baiting the husbands of his friends,—"when I first set eyes on you, old fellow, I thought you knew a thing or two, and you've made a few turns since that confirmed the opinion. But I'm beginning to perceive that you have limitations. I could sit down here now, if there were any place to sit, and calculate how much living in this house would be worth to me in Wall Street."
Honora, who had been listening uneasily, knew that a shrewder or more disturbing argument could not have been used on her husband; and it came from Trixton Brent—to Howard at least—ex cathedra. She was filled with a sense of shame, which was due not solely to the fact that she was a little conscience-stricken because of her innocent complicity, nor that her husband did not resent an obvious attempt of a high-handed man to browbeat him; but also to the feeling that the character of the discussion had in some strange way degraded the house itself. Why was it that everything she touched seemed to become contaminated?
"There's no use staying any longer," she said. "Howard doesn't like it."
"I didn't say so," he interrupted. "There's something about the place that grows on you. If I felt I could afford it—"
"At any rate," declared Honora, trying to control her voice, "I've decided, now I've seen it a second time, that I don't want it. I only wished him to look at it," she added, scornfully aware that she was taking up the cudgels in his behalf. But she could not bring herself, in Brent's presence, to declare that the argument of the rent seemed decisive.
Her exasperation was somewhat increased by the expression on Trixton Brent's face, which plainly declared that he deemed her last remarks to be the quintessence of tactics; and he obstinately refused, as they went down the stairs to the street, to regard the matter as closed.
"I'll take him down town in the Elevated," he said, as he put her into the carriage. "The first round's a draw."
She directed the driver to the ferry again, and went back to Quicksands. Several times during the day she was on the point of telephoning Brent not to try to persuade Howard to rent the house, and once she even got so far as to take down the receiver. But when she reflected, it seemed an impossible thing to do. At four o'clock she herself was called to the telephone by Mr. Cray, a confidential clerk in Howard's office, who informed her that her husband had been obliged to leave town suddenly on business, and would not be home that night.
"Didn't he say where he was going?" asked Honora.
"He didn't even tell me, Mrs. Spence," Cray replied, and Mr. Dallam doesn't know."
"Oh, dear," said Honora, "I hope he realizes that people are coming for dinner to-morrow evening."
"I'm positive, from what he said, that he'll be back some time to-morrow," Cray reassured her.
She refused an invitation to dine out, and retired shortly after her own dinner with a novel so distracting that she gradually regained an equable frame of mind. The uneasiness, the vague fear of the future, wore away, and she slept peacefully. In the morning, however; she found on her breakfast tray a note from Trixton Brent.
Her first feeling after reading it was one of relief that he had not mentioned the house. He had written from a New York club, asking her to lunch with him at Delmonico's that day and drive home in the motor. No answer was required: if she did not appear at one o'clock, he would know she couldn't come.