He had passed them, when Pauline, turning, said composedly but sharply:
"Can't I take you to your office, Court?"
"Thanks, no. I won't trouble you. It's just a step from here." He lifted his hat—an act which he had already performed a second or so previously—and walked onward. He had not betrayed the least sign of annoyance all through this transient and peculiarly awkward interview. He had been precisely the same serene, quiescent, demure Courtlandt as of old.
Pauline stood for some little time watching him as he gradually disappeared. When the curve near Castle Garden hid him, she gave an impatient, irritated sigh.
"You seem vexed," said Kindelon, who had been intently though furtively regarding her.
"I am vexed," she murmured. Her increased color was still a deep rose.
"Is there anything very horrible in walking for a little while on the Battery?" he questioned.
She gave a broken laugh. "Yes," she answered. "I'm afraid there is."
Kindelon shrugged his shoulders. "But surely you are your own mistress?"
"Rather too much so," she said, with lowered eyes. "At least that is what people will say, I suppose."
"I thought you were above idle and aimless comments."
"Let us go back to the carriage."
"By all means, if you prefer it."
They reversed their course, and moved along for some time in silence. "I think you must understand," Pauline suddenly said, lifting her eyes to Kindelon's face.
"I understand," he replied, with hurt seriousness, "that I was having one of the pleasantest hours I have ever spent, until that man accosted us like a grim fate."
"You must not call my cousin Courtlandt 'that man.' I don't like it."
"I am sorry," he said curtly, and a little doggedly. "I might have spoken more ill of him, but I didn't."
Pauline was biting her lips. "You have no right to speak ill of him," she retorted. "He is my cousin."
"That is just the reason why I held my tongue."
"You don't like him, then?"
"I do not."
"I can readily comprehend it."
Kindelon's light-blue eyes fired a little under their black lashes. "You say that in a way I do not understand," he answered.
"You and Courtlandt are of a different world."
"I am not a combination of a fop and a parson, if you mean that."
Pauline felt herself grow pale with anger as she shot a look up into her companion's face.
"You would not dare say that to my cousin himself," she exclaimed defiantly, "though you dare say it to me!"
Kindelon had grown quite pale. His voice trembled as he replied. "I dare do anything that needs the courage of a man," he said. "I thought you knew me well enough to be sure of this."
"Our acquaintance is a recent one," responded Pauline. She felt nearly certain that she had shot a wounding shaft in those few words, but she chose to keep her eyes averted and not see whether wrath or pain had followed its delivery.
A long silence followed. They had nearly reached her carriage when Kindelon spoke.
"You are in love with your cousin," he said.
She threw back her head, laughing ironically. "What a seer you are!" she exclaimed. "How did you guess that?"
"Ah," he answered her, with a melancholy gravity, "you will not deny it!"
She repeated her laugh, though it rang less bitterly than before. She had expected him to meet her irony in a much more rebellious spirit.
"I don't like to have my blood-relations abused in my hearing," she said. "I am in love with all of them, that way, if that is the way you mean."
"That is not the way I mean."
They were now but a few yards from the waiting carriage. The footman, seeing them, descended from his box, and stood beside the opened door.
"I shall not return with you," continued Kindelon, "since I perceive you do not wish my company longer. But I offer you my apologies for having spoken disparagingly of your cousin. I was wrong, and I beg your pardon."
With the last words he extended his hand. Pauline took it.
"I have not said that I did not wish your company," she answered, "but if you choose to infer so, it is your own affair."
"I do infer so, and I infer more.... It is best that I—I should not see you often, like this. There is a great difference between you and me. That cousin of yours hated me at sight. Your aunt, Mrs. Poughkeepsie, hated me at sight as well. Perhaps their worldly wisdom was by no means to blame, either.... Oh, I understand more than you imagine!"
There was not only real grief in Kindelon's voice, but an under-throb of real passion.
"Understand?" Pauline murmured. "What do you understand?"
"That you are as stanch and loyal as ever to your old traditions. That this idea of change, of amelioration, of casting aside your so-called patrician bondage, has only the meaning of a dainty gentlewoman's dainty caprice ... that"—
His voice broke. It almost seemed to her as if his large frame was shaken by some visible tremor. She had no thought of being angry at him now.
She pitied him, and yet with an irresistible impulse her thought flew to Cora Dares, the sweet-faced young painter, and what she herself had of late grown to surmise, to suspect. A sort of involuntary triumph blent itself with her pity, on this account.
She spoke in a kind voice, but also in a firm one. She slightly waved her hand toward the adjacent carriage. "Will you accompany me, then?" she asked.
He looked at her fixedly for an instant. Then he shook his head. "No," he answered. "Good-by." He lifted his hat, and walked swiftly away.
She had seen his eyes just before he went. Their look haunted her. She entered the carriage, and was driven up town. She told herself that he had behaved very badly to her. But she did not really think this. She was inwardly thrilled by a strange, new pleasure, and she had shed many tears before reaching home.
The excitement of Pauline had by no means passed when she regained her home. Kindelon's last words still rang in her ears.
She declared to herself that it was something horrible to have been called a dainty gentlewoman. At the same time, she remembered the impetuosity of his address, and instinctively forgave even while she condemned. Still, there remained with her a certain severe resentful sense. "What right," she asked herself, "has this man to undervalue and contemn my purpose? Is it not based upon a proper and worthy impulse? Is egotism at its root? Is not a wholesome disgust there, instead? Have I not seen, with a radical survey, the aimless folly of the life led by men and women who presume to call themselves social leaders and social grandees? Has Kindelon any shred of excuse for telling me to my face that I am a mere politic trimmer?"
She had scarcely been home an hour before she received a note from Cora Dares. The note was brief, but very accurate in meaning. It informed Pauline that Mrs. Dares had just sent a message to her daughter's studio, and that Cora would be glad to receive Mrs. Varick on that or any succeeding afternoon, with the view of a consultation regarding the proposed list of guests.
Pauline promptly resolved to visit Cora that same day. She ordered her carriage, and then countermanded the order. Not solely because of the pleasant weather, and not solely because she was in a mood for walking, did she thus alter her first design. She reflected that there might be a touch of apparent ostentation in the use of a carriage to call upon this young self-supporting artist. She even made a change of toilet, and robed herself in a street costume much plainer than that which she had previously worn.
Cora Dares's studio was on Fourth Avenue, and one of many others in a large building which artists principally peopled. It was in the top floor of this structure, and was reached, like her mother's sanctum, by that most simplifying of modern conveniences, the elevator. Pauline's knock at a certain rather shadowy door in an obscure passage was at once answered by Cora herself.
The studio was extremely pretty; you saw this at a glance. Its one ample window let in a flood of unrestricted sunlight. Its space was small, and doubtless for this reason a few brilliant draperies and effective though uncostly embellishments had made its interior bloom and glow picturesquely enough. But it contained no ornament of a more alluring pattern than Cora herself, as Pauline soon decided.
"Pray don't let me disturb you in your painting," said the latter, after an exchange of greetings had occurred. "I see that you were busily engaged at your easel. I hope you can talk and paint at the same time."
"Oh, yes," said Cora, with her bright, winsome smile. She was dressed in some dark, soft stuff, whose sombre hue brought into lovely relief the chestnut ripples of her hair and the placid refinement of her clear-chiselled face. "But if I am to give you a list of names," she went on, "that will be quite another matter."
"Oh, never mind the list of names," replied Pauline, who had just seated herself. "I mean, not for the present. It will be more convenient for you, no doubt, to send me this list to-morrow or next day. Meanwhile I shall be willing to wait very patiently. I am in no great hurry, Miss Dares. It was exceedingly kind of you to communicate with me in this expeditious way. And now, if you will only extend your benevolence a little further and give an hour or two of future leisure toward the development of my little plan, I shall feel myself still more in your debt."
Cora nodded amiably. "Perhaps thatwouldbe the better arrangement," she said. Her profile was now turned toward Pauline, as she stood in front of her canvas and began to make little touches upon it with her long, slim brush. "I think, Mrs. Varick, that I can easily send you the list to-morrow. I will make it out to-night; I shall not forget anybody; at least I am nearly sure that I shall not."
"You are more than kind," said Pauline. She paused for a slight while, and then added: "You spend all day here, Miss Dares?"
"All day," was Cora's answer; and the face momentarily turned in Pauline's direction, with its glimpse of charming, dimpled chin, with the transitory light from its sweet, blue, lustrous eyes, affected her as a rarity of feminine beauty. "But I often have my hours of stupidity," Cora continued. "It is not so with me to-day. I have somehow seized my idea and mastered it, such as it is. You can see nothing on the canvas as yet. It is all obscure and sketchy."
"It is still very vague," said Pauline. "But have you no finished pictures?"
"Oh, yes, five or six. They are some yonder, if you choose to look at them."
"I do choose," Pauline replied, rising. She went toward the wall which Cora had indicated by a slight wave of her brush.
The pictures were four in number. They were without frames. Pauline examined each attentively. She knew nothing of Art in a technical and professional way; but she had seen scores of good pictures abroad; she knew what she liked without being able to tell why she liked it, and not seldom it befell that she liked what was intrinsically and solidly good.
"You paint figures as if you had studied in foreign schools," she said, quite suddenly, turning toward her hostess.
"I studied in Paris for a year," Cora replied. "That was all mamma could afford for me." And she gave a sad though by no means despondent little laugh.
"You surely studied to advantage," declared Pauline. "Your color makes me think of Henner ... and your flesh-tints, too. And as for these two landscapes, they remind me of Daubigny. It is a proof of your remarkable talent that you should paint both landscapes and figure-pieces with so much positive success."
Cora's face was glowing, now. "You have just named two artists," she exclaimed, "whose work I have always specially admired and loved. If I resemble either of them in the least, I am only too happy and thankful!"
Pauline was silent for several minutes. She was watching Cora with great intentness. "Ah! how I envy you!" she at length murmured, and as she thus spoke her voice betrayed excessive feeling.
"I thoughtyouenvied nobody," answered Cora, somewhat wonderingly.
Pauline gave a little soft cry. "You mean because I am rich, no doubt!" she said, a kind of melancholy sarcasm tinging her words.
"Riches mean a great deal," said Cora.
"But if you have no special endowment that separates you from the rest of the world, you are still a woman."
"I am not sorry to be a woman."
"No! because you are a living protest against the inferiority of our sex. You can do something; you need not forever have men doing something for you, like the great majority of us!" Pauline's gray eyes had kindled, and her lips were slightly tremulous as they began to shape her next sentence. "Most of usaresorry to be women," she went on, "but I think a great many of us are sorry to be the sort of women fate or circumstance makes us. There is the galling trouble. If we have no gift, like yours, that can compel men's recognition and respect, we must content ourselves with being merged into the big commonplace multitude. And to be merged into the big commonplace multitude is to be more or less despised. This may sound like the worst kind of cynicism, but I assure you, Miss Dares, that it is by no means as flippant as that. I have seen more of life than you ... why not? You perhaps have heard a fact or two about my past. I havehada past—and not a pleasant one, either. And experience (which is the name we give our disappointments, very often) has taught me that if we could see down to the innermost depth of any good man's liking for any good woman, we would find there an undercurrent of real contempt."
"Contempt!" echoed Cora. She had slightly thrown back her head, either in dismay or denial.
"Yes—contempt," asseverated Pauline. "I believe, in all honesty, at this hour, that if the charm which our sex exerts over the other—the physical fascination, and the fascination of sentiment, tenderness, idealization—had never existed, we would have been literally crushed out of being long ago. Men have permitted us to live thus far through the centuries, not because we are weaker than they, but because some extraordinary and undiscoverable law has made them bow to our weakness instead of destroying it outright. They always destroy every other thing weaker than themselves, except woman. They have no compunction, no hesitation. History will show you this, if you accept its annals in an unbiased spirit. They either eat the lower animals, or else put them into usages of the most severe labor. They leave woman unharmed because Nature has so commanded them. But here they are the slaves of an edict which they obey more blindly, more instinctively, than even the best of them know."
"I can't believe that these are your actual views!" now exclaimed Cora. "I can't believe that you rate the sacred emotion of love as something to be discussed like a mere scientific problem!"
Pauline went up to the speaker and stood close beside her while she responded,—
"Ah! my dear Miss Dares, the love between man and woman is entitled to no more respect than the law of gravitation. Both belong to the great unknown scheme. We may shake our heads in transcendental disapprobation, but it is quite useless. The loftiest affection of the human heart is no more important and no more mysterious than the question of why Newton's apple fell from the tree or why a plant buds in spring. All causes are unknown, and to seek their solution is to idly grope."
Cora was regarding Pauline, as the latter finished, with a look full of sad interest. "You speak like ... like some one whom we both know," she said hesitatingly. "You speak as if you did not believe in God."
"I do not disbelieve in God," quickly answered Pauline. "The carelessly-applied term of 'atheist' is to my thinking a name fit only for some pitiable braggart. He who denies the existence of a God is of no account among people of sense; but he who says, 'I am ignorant of all that concerns the conceivability of a God' has full right to express such ignorance."
Cora slowly inclined her head. "That is the way I have heardhimtalk," she said, almost musingly. Then she gave a quick glance straight into Pauline's watchful eyes. "I—I mean," she added, confusedly, as if she had betrayed herself into avowing some secret reflection, "that Mr. Kindelon has more than once spoken in a similar way."
"Mr. Kindelon?" replied Pauline, with a gentle, peculiar, interrogative emphasis. "And did you agree with him?"
"No," swiftly answered Cora. "I have a faith that he cannot shake—that no one can shake! But he has not tried to do so; I must render him that justice."
Pauline turned away, with a faint laugh. "The wise men, who have thought and therefore doubted," she returned, "are often fond of orthodoxy in the women whom they like. They think it picturesque."
She laughed again, and Cora's eyes followed her as she moved toward the pictures which she had previously been examining. "Let us change the subject," she went on, with a note of cold composure in her voice. "I see that you don't like rationalism.... Well, you are a poet, as your pictures tell me, and few poets like to do more than feel first and think afterward.... Are these pictures for sale, Miss Dares?"
Cora's answer came a trifle tardily. "Three of them," she said.
"Which three?" Pauline asked, somewhat carelessly, as it seemed.
"All but that study of a head. As you see, it is scarcely finished."
"It is the one I should like to purchase. You say it is not for sale?"
"No, Mrs. Varick."
"It is very clever," commented Pauline, almost as though she addressed her own thoughts. She turned her face toward Cora's; it wore an indefinite flickering sort of smile. "Has it any name?"
"Oh, no; it is a mere study."
"I like it extremely.... By the way, is it a portrait?"
Cora did not reply for several seconds. She had begun to put little touches upon her canvas again—or to seem as if she were so putting them.
"It's not good enough to be called anything," she presently replied.
"I want it," said Pauline. She was looking straight at the picture—a small square of rather recklessly rich color. "I want it very much indeed. I ... I will give you a considerable sum for it."
She named the sum that she was willing to give, and in an admirably cool, loitering voice. It was something that surpassed any price ever proposed to Cora Dares for one of her paintings, by several hundreds of dollars.
Cora kept silent. She was touching her canvas. Pauline waited. Suddenly she turned and regarded her companion.
"Well?" she said.
Cora flung aside her brush. The two women faced each other.
"I think you are cruel!" cried Cora. It was evident that she was nearly in straits for speech, and her very lovely blue eyes seemed to sparkle through unshed tears. "I—I told you that I did not wish to sell the picture," she hurried on. "I—I don't call it a picture at all, as I also told you. It—it is far from being worth the price that you have offered me. It ... it ... And," here Cora paused. Her last words had a choked sound.
Pauline was looking at her fixedly but quite courteously.
"It is Ralph Kindelon's portrait," she said.
Cora started. "Well! and if it is!" she exclaimed.
Instantly, after that, Pauline went over to her and took one of her hands.
"My dear Miss Dares," she said, with that singular sweetness which she could always throw into her voice, "I beg you to forgive me. If you really wish to retain that picture—and I see that you do—why, then I would not take it from you even as a voluntary gift. Let us speak no more on the subject."
Cora gave a pained, difficult smile, now. She looked full into Pauline's steady eyes for a brief space, and then withdrew her own.
"Very well," she almost faltered, "let us speak no more on the subject...."
"I have been horribly merciless," Pauline told herself, when she had quitted Cora Dares's studio about ten minutes later. "I have made that poor girl confess to me that she loves Ralph Kindelon. And how suited they are to each other! She has actual genius—he is brimming with intellectual power. I have made a sad failure in my visit to Cora Dares.... I hope all my vain exploits among these people, who are so different from the people with whom my surroundings of fortune and destiny have thus far brought me into natural contact, will not result so disastrously."
Her thoughts returned to Kindelon, as she walked homeward, and to the hostile terms on which they had parted but a few hours ago.
"My project begins badly," she again mused. "Everything about it seems to promise ill. But it is too late to draw back. Besides, I am very far from wishing to draw back. I am like an enthusiastic explorer; I want to face new discoveries in the very teeth of disaster."
On reaching home she had scarcely time to take off her bonnet before the name of her cousin Courtlandt was brought to her by a servant. She went down into the little reception-room to meet him, with rather lively anticipations of being forced to put herself on the defensive. Her sensations had not been unlike those with which we regard the lowering of the mercury in a thermometer, while ordering extra fuel so as to be on guard against a sudden chill.
Courtlandt was standing before the silver-grated hearth-place; he watched the black, tumbled blocks of coal with eyes bent down upon their snapping and crackling flames as Pauline appeared. He did not immediately raise his eyes as her entering step sounded. But when he did raise them, she saw that he was clad in his old impregnable calm.
She sank into a chair, not far from the fire. "Well," she said, with an amused smile playing about her lips, "I suppose you have come to scold me dreadfully."
"What makes you suppose so?" he asked.
"You darted away, there at the Battery, as if you were fearfully shocked."
"I don't think I darted away."
"Oh, well, we won't split hairs. You wouldn't stay, and you might easily have stayed. You pleaded stress of business, and you hadn't any, or this appearance up-town at so early an hour couldn't have taken place."
"It is remarkable," said Courtlandt, with his gravest serenity, "how you pierce through people's pitiful disguises. You make me feel conscience-stricken by a realization of my own deceit."
"That is fortunate," said Pauline, with a slight, curt laugh. "For then you will, perhaps, express your disapprobation less impudently."
"I might speak pretty plainly to you and yet not be at all impudent."
Pauline threw back her head with a defiant stolidity. "Oh, speak as plainly as you please," she said. "I shall have my own views of just how impudent you are. I generally have."
"You did something that was a good deal off color for a woman who wants herself always regarded as careful of the proprieties. I found you doing it, and I was shocked, as you say."
Pauline straightened herself in her chair. "I don't know what you mean," she replied, a little crisply, "by 'off color.' I suppose it is slang, and I choose, with a good reason, to believe that it conveys an unjustly contemptuous estimate of my very harmless act. I took a stroll along that beautiful Battery with a friend."
"With an adventuring newspaper fellow, you mean," said Courtlandt, cool as always, but a little more sombre.
Pauline rose. "I will stand a certain amount of rudeness toward myself," she declared, "but I will not stand sneers at Mr. Kindelon. No doubt if you had met me walking with some empty-headed fop, like Fyshkille, or Van Arsdale, you would have thought my conduct perfectly proper."
"I'd have thought it devilish odd," said Courtlandt, "and rather bad form. I've no more respect for those fellows than you have. But if you got engaged to one of them I shouldn't call it a horrible disaster."
Pauline smiled, with a threat of rising ire in the smile. "Who thought of my becoming 'engaged' to anybody?" she asked. And her accentuation of the word which Courtlandt had just employed produced the effect of its being scornfully quoted.
He was toying with the links of his watch-chain, and he kept his eyes lowered while he said: "Are you in love with this Kindelon chap?"
She flushed to the roots of her hair. "I—I shall leave the room," she said unsteadily, "if you presume to talk any further in this strain."
"You are a very rich woman," pursued Courtlandt. What he said had somehow the effect of a man exploding something with a hand of admirable firmness.
Pauline bit her lips excitedly. She made a movement as if about to quit the chamber. Then some new decision seemed to actuate her. "Oh, Court!" she exclaimed reproachfully, "how can you treat me in this unhandsome way?"
He had lifted his eyes, now. "I am trying to save you from making a ridiculous marriage," he said. "I tried once before—a good while ago—to save you from making a frightful one. My attempt was useless then. I suppose it will be equally useless now."
Pauline gave an agitated moan, and covered her face with both hands.... Hideous memories had been evoked by the words to which she had just listened. But immediately afterward a knock sounded at the partly closed door which led into the hall. She started, uncovered her face, and moved toward this door. Courtlandt watched her while she exchanged certain low words with a servant. Then, a little later, she approached him, and he saw that her agitation had vanished, and that it appeared to have so vanished because of a strong controlling effort.
"Mr. Kindelon is here," she said, in abrupt undertone. "If you do not wish to meet him you can go back into the dining-room." She made a gesture toward aportièrenot far away. "That leads to the dining-room," she went on. "Act just as you choose, but be civil, be courteous, or do not remain."
"I will not remain," said Courtlandt.
He had passed from the room some little time before Kindelon entered it.
"You did not expect to see me," said the latter, facing Pauline. His big frame had a certain droop that suggested humility and even contrition. He held his soft hat crushed in one hand, and he made no sign of greeting with the other.
"No," said Pauline softly, "I did not expect to see you." She was waiting for the sound of the hall-door outside; she soon heard it, and knew that it meant the exit of Courtlandt. Then she went on: "but since you are here, will you not be seated?"
"Not until you have forgiven me!" Kindelon murmured. Between the rich, fervent, emotional voice which now addressed her and the even regularity of the tones she had just heard, what a world of difference lay!
"You were certainly rude," she said, thinking how chivalrously his repentance became him, and how strong a creature he looked in this weaker submissive phase. "You know that I had only the most friendly feelings toward you. You accused me of actual hypocrisy. But I will choose to believe that you did not mean to lose your temper in that positively wild way. Yes, I forgive you, and, in token of my forgiveness there is my hand."
She extended her hand, and as she did so he literally sprang forward, seizing it. The next instant he had stooped and kissed it. After that he sank into a near chair.
"If you had not forgiven me," he said, "I should have been a very miserable man. Your pardon makes me happy. Now I am ready to turn over a new page of—of friendship—yes, friendship, of course. I shall never say those absurd, accusatory things again. What right have I to say them? What right have I to anything more than the honor of your notice, as long as you choose to bestow it? I have thought everything over; I've realized that the fact of your being willing to know me at all is an immense extended privilege!"
Pauline still remained standing. She had half turned from him while he thus impetuously spoke; she was staring down into the ruddy turmoil of the fire.
"Don't say anything more with regard to the little disagreement," she answered. "It is all ended. Now let us talk of other things."
He did not answer, and she let quite a long pause ensue while she still kept her eyes upon the snapping coal-blocks. At length she continued,—
"I shall have the full list of Mrs. Dares's guests quite soon. It has been promised me."
"Yes?" she heard him say, a little absently.
"I shall, no doubt, have it by to-morrow morning," she went on. "Then I shall begin my arrangements. I shall issue invitations to those whom I wish for my guests. And I shall expect you to help me. You promised to help me, as you know. There will be people on the list whom I have not yet met—a good many of them. You shall tell me all about these, or, if you prefer, you shall simply draw your pen through their names—Why don't you ask me how I shall obtain this boasted list?"
"You mean that Mrs. Dares will send it?" she heard him ask.
"No, I mean that I shall secure it from her daughter."
"Her daughter?"
"Yes—Cora. I have been to see Cora. I visited her studio—By the way, what a good portrait she has there of you. It is really an excellent likeness."
She slowly turned and let a furtive look sweep his face. It struck her that he was confused and discomfited in a wholly new way.
"I think it a fair likeness," he returned. "But I did not sit for it," he added quickly. "She painted it from memory. It—it is for sale like her other things."
"Oh, no, it is not for sale," said Pauline. She saw his color alter a little as her gaze again found stealthy means of scrutinizing it. "Miss Cora told me that very decidedly. She wants to keep it—no doubt as a precious memento. I thought the wish very flattering—I—I wondered why you did not ask Cora Dares to marry you."
She perceived that he had grown pale, now, as he rose and said,—
"I think I shall never ask any woman to marry me." He walked slowly toward the door, pausing at a little distance from its threshold. "When you want me," he now proceeded, "will you send for me? Then I will most gladly come."
"You mean—about thesalon?" she questioned.
"Yes—about thesalon. In that and all other ways I am yours to command—"
When he had gone she sat musing before the fire for nearly an hour. That night, at a little after nine o'clock, she was surprised to receive a copious list of names from Cora Dares, accompanied by a brief note.
She sent for Kindelon on the following day, and they spent the next evening together from eight until eleven. He was his old, easy, gay, brilliant self again. What had occurred between them seemed to have been absolutely erased from his memory. It almost piqued her to see how perfectly he played what she knew to be a part.
Soon afterward her invitations were sent out for the following Thursday. Each one was a simple "At Home." She awaited Thursday with much interest and suspense.
By nine o'clock on Thursday evening all her guests had arrived. They comfortably filled her two smart and brilliant drawing-rooms, but quite failed to produce the crowded effect noticeable in Mrs. Dares's less ample quarters.
Pauline saw with pleasure that the fine pictures, bronzes, and bric-à-brac which she had brought from Europe were most admiringly noticed. Small groups were constantly being formed before this canvas or that cabinet, table, and pedestal. She had kept for some time quite close to Mrs. Dares, having a practical sense of the little lady's valuable social assistance on an occasion like the present, apart from all personal feelings of liking.
"You make it much easier for me," she said at length, after the assemblage appeared complete and no new arrivals had occurred for at least ten minutes. "It was so kind of you to come, when I know that you make a rule of not going anywhere."
"This was a very exceptional invitation, my dear," answered Mrs. Dares. "It was something wholly out of the common, you know."
"I understand," said Pauline, with her sweetest laugh. "You wanted to see your mantle descend, after a manner, upon my younger shoulders. You wanted to observe whether I should wear it gracefully or not."
"I had few doubts on that point," was the slow, soft reply.
"So you really think me a worthy pupil?" continued Pauline, glancing about her with an air of pretty and very pardonable pride.
"You have a most lovely home," said Mrs. Dares, "and one exquisitely designed for the species of entertainment which you are generous enough to have resolved upon."
"Ah, don't say 'generous,'" broke in Pauline. "You give me a twinge of conscience. I am afraid my motive has been quite a selfishly ambitious one. At least, I sometimes fancy so. How many human motivesarethoroughly disinterested? But if I succeed with mysalon—which before long I hope to make as fixed and inevitable a matter as the day of the week on which it is held—the result must surely be a most salutary and even reformatory one. In securing my guerdon for work accomplished I shall have done society a solid benefit; and when I wear my little crown I shall feel, unlike most royal personages, that it is blessed by friends and not stained by the blood of enemies."
Her tone was one of airy jest, but a voice at her side instantly said, as she finished,—
"Do not be too sure of that. Very few crowns are ever won without some sort of bloodshed."
She turned and saw Kindelon, who had overheard nearly all her last speech to Mrs. Dares. Something in his manner lessened the full smile on Pauline's lips without actually putting it to flight.
"You speak as if you bore gloomy tidings," she said.
Kindelon's eyes twinkled, though his mouth preserved perfect sobriety. "You have done precisely what I expected you would do," he said, "in undertaking an arbitrary selection of certain guests and an arbitrary exclusion of certain others. You have raised a growl."
"A growl!" murmured Mrs. Dares, with a slight dismayed gesture.
Pauline's face grew serious. "Who, pray, are the growlers?" she asked.
"Well, the chief one is that incorrigible and irrepressible Barrowe. He has his revolutionary opinions, of course. He is always having revolutionary opinions. He makes me think of the Frenchman who declared that if he ever found himself in Heaven his first impulse would be to throw up barricades."
Pauline bit her lip. "Barricades are usually thrown up in streets," she said, with a faint, ired ring of the voice. "Mr. Barrowe probably forgets that fact."
"Do you mean that you would like to show him the street now?" asked Kindelon.
"I have not heard of what his alleged growl consists."
"I warned you against him, but you thought it best that he should be invited. Since you had decided upon weeding, there was no one whom you could more profitably weed."
"Mr. Barrowe has a very kind heart," here asserted Mrs. Dares, with tone and mien at their gentlest and sweetest. "He is clad with bristles, if you please, but the longer you know him the more clearly you recognize that his savage irritability is external and superficial."
"I think it very appropriate to say that he is clad with bristles," retorted Kindelon. "It makes me wish that I had reported him as grunting instead of growling. In that case the simile would be perfect."
Mrs. Dares shook her head remonstratingly. "Don't try to misrepresent your own good heart by sarcasm," she replied. She spoke with her unchangeable gravity; she had no lightsome moments, and the perpetually serious views which she took of everything made you sometimes wonder how and why it was that she managed to make her smileless repose miss the austere note and sound the winsome one.
"I am certain of not losing your esteem," exclaimed Kindelon, with all his most characteristic warmth. "Your own heart is so large and kind that everybody who has got to know it can feel secure in drawing recklessly upon its charity."
Mrs. Dares made him no answer, for just then a gentleman who had approached claimed her attention. And Pauline, now feeling that she and Kindelon were virtually alone together, said with abrupt speed,—
"You told me that this Mr. Barrowe had a kind heart, in spite of his gruff, unreasonable manners. You admitted as much, and so, remembering how clever his writings are, I decided to retain him on the list. But please tell me just what he has been saying."
"Oh, he's tempestuous on the subject of your having done any weeding at all. He thinks it arrogant and patronizing of you. He thinks that I am at the bottom of it; he always delights in blaming me for something. He positively revels, I suppose, in his present opportunity."
"But if he is indignant and condemnatory," said Pauline, "why does he not remain away? He has the right of discountenancing my conduct by his absence."
"Ah, you don't know him! He never neglects a chance for being turbulent. I heard him assert, just now, that Miss Cragge had received a most cruel insult from you."
"Miss Cragge!" exclaimed Pauline, with a flash of her gray eyes. "I would not have such a creature as that in my drawing-rooms for a very great deal! Upon my word," she went on, with a sudden laugh that had considerable cold bitterness, "this irascible personage needs a piece of my mind. I don't say that I intend giving it to him, for I am at home, and the requirements of the hostess mark imperative limits. But I have ways left me of showing distinct disfavor, for all that. Are there any other acts of mine which Mr. Barrowe does me the honor to disapprove?"
"Oh, yes. I hear that he considers you have acted most unfairly toward the triad of poets, Leander Prawle, Arthur Trevor, and Rufus Corson."
Pauline gave a smile that was really but a curl of the lip. "Indeed!" she murmured. "I was rather amused by Mr. Prawle's poetic prophecy of a divine future race; it may be bad poetry, as he puts it, but I thought it rather good evolution. Then theQuartier Latinfloridity of Mr. Trevor amused me as well: I have always liked fervor of expression in verse, and I am not prepared to say that Mr. Trevor has always written ludicrous exaggeration—especially since he reveres Théophile Gautier, who is an enchanting singer. But when it comes to treating with that morbidposeur, Mr. Corson, who affects to see beauty in decay and corruption, and who makes a silly attempt to deify indecency, I draw my line, and shut my doors."
"Of course you do," said Kindelon. "No doubt if you had opened them to Mr. Corson, Barrowe would have been scandalized at your doing so. As it is, he chooses to championize Mr. Corson and Miss Cragge. He is a natural grumbler, a constitutional fighter. By the way, he is coming in our direction. Do you see him approaching?"
"Oh, yes, I see him," said Pauline resolutely, "and I am quite prepared for him."
Mr. Barrowe presented himself at her side in another minute or two. His tall frame accomplished a very awkward bow, while his little eyes twinkled above his beak-like nose, with a suggestion of restrained belligerence.
"Your entertainment is very successful, Mrs. Varick," he began, ignoring Kindelon, who had already receded a step or two.
"Have you found it so?" returned Pauline coolly. "I had fancied otherwise."
Mr. Barrowe shrugged his frail shoulders. "Your rooms are beautiful," he said, "and of course you must know that I like the assemblage; it contains so many of my good friends."
"I hope you miss nobody," said Pauline, after a slight pause.
Mr. Barrowe gave a thin, acid cough. "Yes," he declared, "I miss more than one. I miss them, and I hear that you have not invited them. I am very sorry that you have not. It is going to cause ill-feeling. Everybody knows that you took Mrs. Dares's list—my dear, worthy friend's list. It is too bad, Mrs. Varick; I assure you that it is too bad."
"I do not think that it is too bad," said Pauline freezingly, with the edges of her lips. "I do not think that it is bad at all. I have invited those whom I wished to invite."
"Precisely!" cried Mr. Barrowe, with a shrill, snapping sound in the utterance of the word. "You have been wrongly advised, however—horribly advised. I don't pretend to statewhohas advised you, but if you had consulted me—well, handicapped as I am by a hundred other duties, bored to death as I am by people applying for all sorts of favors, I would nevertheless, in so good a cause, have willingly spared you some of my valuable time. I would have told you by no means to exclude so excellent a person as poor, hard-working Miss Cragge. To slight her like that was a very unkind cut. You must excuse my speaking plainly."
"I must either excuse it or resent it," said Pauline, meeting the glitter of Mr. Barrowe's small eyes with the very calm and direct gaze of her own. "But suppose I do the latter? It has usually been my custom, thus far through life, to resent interference of any sort."
"Interference!" echoed Mr. Barrowe, with querulous asperity. "Ah, madam, I think I recognize just whohasbeen advising you, now; you make my suspicion a certainty." He glanced irately enough toward Kindelon as he spoke the last words.
Kindelon took a step or two forward, reaching Pauline's side and pausing there. His manner, as he began to speak, showed no anger, but rather that blending of decision and carelessness roused by an adversary from whom we have slight fear of defeat.
"Come, Barrowe," he said, "if you mean me you had better state so plainly. As it happens, Mrs. Varick was advised, in the matter of not sending Miss Cragge an invitation, solely by herself. But if she had asked my counsel it would entirely have agreed with her present course."
"No doubt," almost snarled Mr. Barrowe. "The ill turn comes to the same thing. We need not split hairs. I made no personal reference to you, Kindelon; but if the cap fits you can wear it."
"I should like to hand it back to you with a bunch of bells on it," said Kindelon.
"Is that what you call Irish wit?" replied Mr. Barrowe, while his lips grew pale. "If so, you should save it for the columns of the 'Asteroid,' which sadly needs a little."
"The 'Asteroid' never prints personalities," returned Kindelon, with nonchalant mockery. "It leaves that kind of journalism to your friend Miss Cragge."
"Miss Cragge, sir," muttered Barrowe, "is a lady."
"I did not say she was a gentleman," retorted Kindelon, "though her general deportment has more than once cast a doubt upon her sex."
Mr. Barrowe gave a faint shiver. "I'm glad I haven't it on my conscience," he declared, "that I injured an honest girl to gratify a mere spite." He at once turned to Pauline, now. "Madam," he pursued, "I must warn you that your project will prove a dire failure if you attempt to develop it on a system of despotic preferences. We were all glad to come to you, in a liberal, democratic, intellectual spirit. But the very moment you undertake the establishment of a society formed on a basis of capricious likes and dislikes, I assure you that you are building on sand and that your structure will fall."
"In that case, Mr. Barrowe," said Pauline, stung by his unwarranted officiousness into the employment of biting irony, "you can have no excuse if you allow yourself to be buried in my ruins."
She passed rapidly away, while Kindelon accompanied her. "You were quite right," came his speedy encouragement, as they moved onward together. "You showed that insufferable egotist the door in the politest and firmest manner possible."
"I was in my own house, though," said Pauline, with an intonation that betokened the dawn of repentance. "He was very exasperating, truly, but—I was in my own house, you know."
"Of course you were," exclaimed Kindelon, "and he treated you as if it belonged to somebody else. We are all apt to assert a proprietary right when a fellow-citizen ventures to relieve us of our purse, and I think a similar claim holds good with regard to our self-respect."
Pauline presently came to a standstill. She looked troubled, and her gaze remained downcast for a little while. But soon she lifted it and met Kindelon's eyes steadily watching her.
"You don't think I was unjustifiably rude?" she asked.
"No; indeed I do not. I don't think you were rude at all."
She was silent for a brief interval. Then she said, without taking her eyes in the least from her companion's face,—
"Do you believe that most women would have acted the same?"
"No," he said, with a quick, slight laugh, "because most women have neither your brains nor your independence."
"And you like both in a woman?"
"I like both in you," he said, lowering his handsome head a little as he uttered the words.
"Do you think Cora Dares would have acted as I have done?" Pauline asked.
He made an impatient gesture; he appeared for a moment distressed and embarrassed.
"You and Cora Dares are—are not the same," he said, almost stammeringly.
"Oh, I know that very well," answered Pauline. "I have had very good reason to know that we are not the same. We are extremely different. By the way, she is not here to-night."
"Not here?" he repeated interrogatively, but with a suggestion of drolly helpless duplicity.
Pauline raised one finger, shaking it at him for an instant and no more. The gesture, transient as it was, seemed to convey a world of significance. No doubt Kindelon tacitly admitted this, though his face preserved both its ordinary color and composure.
"You are well aware that she is not here," Pauline said.
"Why do you say that?" he asked.
"I think so."
"But perhaps you may be mistaken. Perhaps you have merely fancied that I have noticed Miss Cora's non-appearance."
"Perhaps," Pauline repeated. She seemed to be saying the word to her own thoughts. But suddenly her manner became far less absent. "Mrs. Dares told me that Miss Cora had a headache to-night," she said, with brisk activity. "We can all have headaches, you know," she went on, "when we choose."
Kindelon nodded slowly. "I have heard that it is an accommodating malady," he said, in tones that were singularly lifeless and neutral.
Pauline put forth her hand, and let it rest on his broad, strong arm for a second or two.
"Did Miss Cora have a headache?" she asked.
He threw back his head, and shook it with a sudden sound of his breath which resembled a sigh of irritation, and yet was not quite that.
"Upon my word, I don't know!" he cried softly.
Just then Pauline found herself confronted by Mr. Howe, the novelist. His stoop was very apparent; it seemed even more consumptive than usual; his slim hand was incessantly touching and retouching his blue spectacles, which gleamed opaque and with a goblin suggestion from the smooth-shaven, scholarly pallor of his visage.
"Excuse me, Mrs. Varick," he began, "but I—I wish to speak a word with you."
Pauline smiled and assumed an affable demeanor. It cost her an effort to do so, for certain acute reasons; but she nevertheless achieved good results.
"A great many words, Mr. Howe," she answered, "if you wish."
Mr. Howe gave a sickly smile. "Oh, I don't ask a great many," he faltered; and it at once became evident that he was for some reason ill at ease, disconsolate, abysmally depressed.
"You are annoyed," said Pauline, chiefly because she found nothing else, as a would-be courteous hostess, to say.
"Annoyed?" came the hesitant reply, while Mr. Howe rearranged his blue spectacles with a hand that seemed to assume a new momentary decisiveness. "I am grieved, Mrs. Varick. I am grieved because a friend of mine has received a slight from you, and I hope that it is an unintentional slight. I—I want to ask you whether it cannot be corrected. I allude to Mr. Bedlowe."
"Mr. Bedlowe!" repeated Pauline amazedly. She turned to Kindelon as she spoke.
"Oh, yes," came Kindelon's ready answer; "you remember Bedlowe, of course."
"I remember Mr. Bedlowe," said Pauline, sedately.
"Ah! you seem to have forgotten him!" exclaimed Mr. Howe, with a great deal of gentlemanly distress. He had discontinued all manual connection with his blue glasses; he had even pressed both hands together, in a rotatory, nervous way, while he went on speaking. "I hope you did not mean to leave poor Bedlowe out," he proceeded, with quite a funereal pathos. "The poor fellow feels it dreadfully. I promised him I would say nothing about the matter, and yet (as you see) I have broken my promise."
"I think Mrs. Varick is sorry to see that you have broken your promise," said Kindelon, shortly and tepidly.
Mr. Howe glanced at Kindelon through his glasses. He was obliged to raise his head as he did so, on account of their differing statures.
"Kindelon!" he cried, in reproach, "I thought you were one of my friends."
"So I am," came Kindelon's reply, "and that is why I don't like the pietistic novelist, Bedlowe, who wrote 'The Christian Knight in Armor' and the 'Doubtful Soul Satisfied.'"
If there could be the ghost of a cough, Mr. Howe gave it. He again lifted his wan, lank hand toward his spectacles.
"Oh, Kindelon," he remonstrated, "you must not be as uncharitable as that. Bedlowe does the best he can—and really, between ourselves, his best is remarkably good. Think of his great popularity. Think of the way he appeals to the large masses. Think"—
But here Pauline broke in, with the merriest laugh that had left her lips that night.
"My dear Mr. Howe!" she exclaimed, "you forget that I heard a bitter wrangle between you and Mr. Bedlowe only a few days ago. You had a great many hard things to say of him then. I hope you have not so easily altered your convictions."
"I—I haven't altered my convictions at all," stammered Mr. Howe, quite miserably. "But between Bedlowe as a literary man, and—and Bedlowe as a social companion—I draw a very marked line."
Kindelon here put his big hand on Mr. Howe's slight shoulder, jovially and amicably, while he said,—
"Come, now, my dear Howe, you mean that the analytical and agnostic novelist wants the romantic and pietistic novelist, only for the purpose of breaking a lance with him. You want him for that reason and no other."
Mr. Howe removed his spectacles, and while he performed this act it was evident that he was extremely agitated. The removal of his spectacles revealed two very red-rimmed eyes, whose color escaped all note because of their smallness.
"I—I want Mr. Bedlowe for no such reason," he asserted. "But I—I do not want to attend a—so-calledsalonat which mere fashionable fancy takes the place of solid hospitality."
"You forget," said Pauline, with rapid coolness, "that you are speaking in the presence of your hostess."
"He remembers only," came the fleet words of Kindelon, "that he speaks at the prompting of Barrowe."
Pauline tossed her head; she was angry again. "I don't care anything about Mr. Barrowe," she asserted, with a very positive glance at the unspectacled Mr. Howe. "I should prefer to believe that Mr. Howe expresses his own opinions. Even if they are very rude ones, I should prefer having them original."
"They are original," said Mr. Howe feebly, but somehow with the manner of a man who possesses a reserve of strength which he is unable to readily command. "I do not borrow my opinions. I—I think nearly all people must know this."
"I know it," said Pauline very tranquilly, and with an accent suave yet sincere. "I have read your novels, Mr. Howe, and I have liked them very much. I don't say that this is the reason why I have asked you here to-night, and I don't say that my dislike of Mr. Bedlowe's novels is the reason why I have not asked Mr. Bedlowe here to-night. But I hope you will let my admiration of your talent cover all delinquencies, and permit me to be the judge of whom I shall choose and whom I shall not choose for my guests."
Mr. Howe put on his spectacles. While he was putting them on, he said in a voice that had a choked and also mournfully reproachful sound,—
"I have no social gifts, Mrs. Varick. I can't measure swords with you. I can only measure pens. That is the trouble with so many of us writers. We can only write; we can't talk. I—I think it grows worse with us, in these days when one has to write with the most careful selection of words, so as to escape what is now called commonplace diction. We get into the habit of striving after novelty of expression—we have to use our 'Thesaurus,' and search for synonyms—we have to smoke excessively (a good many of us) in order to keep our nerves at the proper literary pitch—we have to take stimulants (a good many of us—though I don't understand that, for I never touch wine) in order to drag up the words and ideas from an underlying stagnancy. Frankly, for myself, I talk quite ill. But I don't want to have you think that I am talking in another voice than my own. I don't want, in spite of my failure as a man of words, that you should suppose"—
"I suppose nothing, Mr. Howe," broke in Pauline, while she caught the speaker's hand in hers, gloved modishly up to the elbow with soft, tawny kid. "I insist upon supposing nothing except that you are glad to come here and will be glad to come again. I know three or four of your novels very well, and I know them so well that I love them, and have read them twice or thrice, which is a great deal to say of a novel, as even you, a novelist, will admit. But I don't like Mr. Bedlowe's novels any more than you do; and if Mr. Barrowe has tried to set you on fire with his incendiary feelings, I shall be excessively sorry. You have written lovely and brilliant things; you know the human soul, and you have shown that you know it. You may not have sold seventy thousand copies, as the commercial phrase goes, but I don't care whether you have sold seventy thousand or only a plain seventy; you are a true artist, all the same.... And now I am going to leave you, for my other guests claim me. But I hope you will not care for anything severe and bitter which that dyspeptic Mr. Barrowe may say; for, depend upon it, he only wins your adherence because he is a clever man on paper, and not because he is even tolerable in the stern operations of real life. Frankly, between ourselves, I am sure that he makes a very bad husband, though he is always talking of being handicapped by autograph-bores and interviewers who keep him away from Mrs. Barrowe. I suspect that Mrs. Barrowe must be a very unhappy lady. And I'm sure, on the other hand, that Mrs. Howe is very happy—for I know there is a Mrs. Howe, or you couldn't describe the American women as ably as you do...." Pauline passed onward as she ended her final sentence. Kindelon, still at her side, soon said to her,—
"What a clever farewell you made: you have won Howe. You flattered him very adroitly. It's an open secret that his wife helps him in those exquisite novels of his. She is his one type of woman. I think that is why Howe will never be great; he will always be exquisite instead. He adores his wife, who hates society and always stays at home. If Howe had once committed a genuine fault it might have served posterity as a crystallized masterpiece."
Pauline shook her head with negative emphasis. "I like him just as he is," she murmured. She was silent for a moment, and then added, almost plaintively: "My entertainment looks pleasant enough, but I fear that it is all a disastrous failure."
"A failure?" echoed Kindelon, with no sympathy in the interrogation.
"Yes, everybody is grumbling. I distinctly feel it. It is not only that Barrowe has infected everybody; it is that everybody has a latent hostility towards anything like harmonious reunion."
"Isn't there a bit of pure imagination in your verdict?" Kindelon asked.
"Premonition," answered Pauline, "if you choose to call it by that name." She stood, while she thus spoke, under an effulgent chandelier, whose jets, wrought in the semblance of candles, dispersed from ornate metallic sconces a truly splendid glow.
"We have a new arrival," he said. He was glancing toward a near doorway while he spoke. Pauline's eyes had followed his own.
"My aunt!" she exclaimed. "And Sallie—and Courtlandt, too!"
"Yes, Courtlandt, too—my friend, Courtlandt," said Kindelon oddly.
"I told Aunt Cynthia she had best not come," murmured Pauline.
"And your cousin, Courtlandt?" said Kindelon. "Did you tellhimnot to come?"
"I am sorry that they came—I somehow can't help but be sorry!" exclaimed Pauline, while she moved towards the door by which she had seen her kindred enter.
"Sorry? So am I," said Kindelon. He spoke below his breath, but Pauline heard him.
"I am very glad to see you," Pauline was telling her aunt, a little later. She felt, while she spoke them, that her words were the merest polite falsehood. "I did not suppose you would care to honor me this evening—I mean all three of you," she added, with a rather mechanical smile in the direction of Miss Sallie and Courtlandt.
Mrs. Poughkeepsie promptly spoke. She was looking about her through a pair of gold-rimmed glasses while she did so. Her portliness was not without a modish majesty; folds of a black, close-clinging, lace-like fabric fell about her large person with much grace of effect; her severe nose appeared to describe an even more definite arc than usual.
"Sallie and I had nothing for to-night," said Mrs. Poughkeepsie. "Lent began to-day, you know, and there wasn't even a dinner to go to."
"I am pleased to afford you a refuge in your social distress," returned Pauline. It flashed through her mind that circumstance was drawing upon her, to-night, for a good deal of bitter feeling. What subtle thunder was in the air, ready to sour the milk of human kindness to its last drop?
"My dear," murmured her aunt, temporarily discontinuing her stares, and speaking more in reproach than conciliation, "you must not be so very quick to take offence when none is intended."
Pauline gave a laugh which she tried to make amiable. "It pleases me to think that no offence was intended," she declared.
"Your little party was by no means apis-allerwithme, dear Pauline," here stated Sallie, "whatever it may have been in mamma's case. I really wanted so much, don't you know, to see these—a—persons." The peculiar pause which Sallie managed to make before she pronounced the word "persons," and the gentle yet assertive accent which she managed to place upon the word itself, were both, in their way, beyond description. Not that either was of the import which would render description requisite, except from the point of view which considers all weightless trifles valuable.
Pauline bit her lip. She had long ago thought Sallie disqualified for contest by her native silliness. The girl had not a tithe of her mother's brains; she possessed all the servitude of an echo and all the imitativeness of a reflection. But like most weak things she had the power to wound, though her little sting was no doubt quite unintentional at present.
Courtlandt here spoke. He was perfectly his ordinary sober self as he said,—
"I happened to drop in upon Aunt Cynthia to-night, and she brought me here. I believe that I come without an invitation. Don't I? I've forgotten."
"You haven't forgotten," contradicted Pauline, though not at all unpleasantly. "You know I didn't invite you, because I didn't think you would care to come. You gave me every reason to think so."
"That was very rude," commented Sallie, with a rebuking look at Courtlandt. She had a great idea of manners, but her reverence was quite theoretical, as more than one ineligible and undesirable young gentleman knew, when she had chosen to freeze him at parties with the blank, indifferent regard of a sphinx. "It is so odd, really, Pauline," she went on, with her supercilious drawl, which produced a more irritating effect upon her cousin because apparently so spontaneous and unaffected—"it is so odd to meet people whom one does not know. I have always been accustomed to go to places where I knew everybody, and bowed, and had them come up and speak."
Pauline busied herself for an instant in smoothing the creases of her long gloves between wrist and elbow. "Don't you find it rather pleasant, Sallie," she said, "to procure an occasional change?"
"It ought to be refreshing," struck in Courtlandt, neutrally.
"You can have people to talk to you this evening, if you wish," pursued Pauline, while a certain sense that she was being persecuted by her relatives waged war with a decorous recognition of who and where she was.
Before Sallie could answer, Mrs. Poughkeepsie, who had ceased her determined survey, said in her naturally high, cool, suave tones,—
"Oh, of course we want you to present some of them to us, Pauline, dear. We came for that, Sallie and I. We want to see what has made you so fond of them. They are all immensely clever, of course. But one can listen and be instructed, if one does not talk. Do they expect you to talk, by the way? Will they not be quite willing to do all the talking themselves? I have heard—I don't just remember when or how—that they usuallyarewilling."
"My dear Aunt Cynthia," said Pauline, in a low but not wholly composed voice, "you speak of my guests as if they were the inmates of a menagerie."
Mrs. Poughkeepsie threw back her head a very little. The motion made a jewel of great price and fine lustre shoot sparks of pale fire from the black lace shrouding her ample bosom. She laughed at the same moment, and by no means ill-naturedly. "I am sure they wouldn't like to have you suggest anything so dreadful," she said, "you, their protectress and patroness."
"I am neither," affirmed Pauline stoutly.
Mrs. Poughkeepsie lifted her brow in surprise. She almost lifted her august shoulders as well. "Then pray what are you, my dear?" she asked.
"Their hostess—and their equal," asserted Pauline. She spoke with momentary seriousness, but immediately afterward she chose to assume an air of careless raillery.
"Ah, Aunt Cynthia," she went on, "you don't know how you make me envy you!"
"Envy me, Pauline?"
"Oh, yes; you have settled matters so absolutely. You have no misgivings, no distrusts. You are so magnificently secure."
"I don't understand," politely faltered Mrs. Poughkeepsie. She looked inquiringly at Courtlandt.
"It is metaphysics," Courtlandt at once said. "They are a branch of study in which Pauline has made great progress." His face remained so completely placid and controlled that he might have been giving the number of a residence or recording the last quotation in stocks.
Sallie had become absorbed in staring here and there, just as her mother had been a brief while ago; Mrs. Poughkeepsie was at a little distance from her niece; Courtlandt stood close at Pauline's side, so that the latter could ask him, in an undertone full of curt, covert imperiousness,—
"Did you come here to say and do rude things?"
"I never say nor do rude things if I can help it," he answered, with a leaden stolidity in his own undertone.
"Why didtheycome?" continued Pauline, lowering her voice still more.
"You invited them, I believe. That is, at least, my impression."
"I mentioned the affair. I never imagined they would wish to come."
"You see that you were mistaken. If I had been you I wouldn't have given them the awful opportunity."
"What awful opportunity?" queried Pauline, furtively bristling.
"Of coming," said Courtlandt.
"My dear Pauline," here broke in Mrs. Poughkeepsie, "shall you not present anybody to us?"
"Anyone whom you please to meet, Aunt," responded Pauline.
"But, mydear, we please to meetanyone. We have no preferences. Howcanwe have?"
"This is torment," thought poor Pauline. She glanced toward Courtlandt, but she might as well have appealed to one of her chairs. "What shall I do?" her thoughts sped fleetly on. "This woman and this girl would shock and repel whomever I should bring to them. It would be like introducing the North Pole and the South."
But her face revealed no sign of her perplexity. She quietly put her hand within Courtlandt's arm. "Come, Court," she said, with a very creditable counterfeit of gay sociality, "let us find a few devotees for Aunt Cynthia and Sallie."
"We shall find a good many," said Courtlandt, as they moved away. "Have no fear of that."
"I am by no means sure that we shall findany," protested Pauline, both with dismay and antagonism.
"Pshaw," retorted Courtlandt. "Mention the name. It will work like magic."
"The name? What name?"
"Poughkeepsie. Do you suppose these haphazard Bohemians wouldn't like to better themselves if they could?"
Pauline took her hand from his arm, though he made a slight muscular movement of detention.
"They are not haphazard Bohemians," she said. "You know, too, that they are not. They are mostly people of intellect, of culture, of high and large views. I don't know what you mean by saying that they would 'like to better themselves.' Where have they ever heard of Aunt Cynthia? Her name would be simply a dead letter to them."
Courtlandt gave a low laugh, that was almost gruff, and was certainly harsh. "Where have they ever heard of Aunt Cynthia?" he repeated. "Why, she never dines out that the society column of half-a-dozen newspapers does not record it, and her name would be very far from a dead letter. It would be a decidedly living letter."
"But you don't understand," insisted Pauline, exasperatedly. "These people have no aims to know the so-called higher classes."
"Excuse me," said Courtlandt, with superb calm. "Everybody has aims to know the so-called higher classes—if he or she possibly can. Especially 'she'," he added in his colorless monotone.
Just then Pauline found herself confronted by Miss Upton. The moon-like face of this diminutive lady wore a flushed eagerness as she began to speak.
"Oh, Mrs. Varick," she said, "I've a great,greatfavor to ask of you! I want you to introduce me to your aunt, Mrs. Poughkeepsie."
"With pleasure," answered Pauline, feeling as if the request had been a sort of jeer. "You know my aunt by sight, then, Miss Upton?"
"Oh, yes, I've known her for some time by sight, Mrs. Varick. Miss Cragge pointed her out to me one night at Wallack's. She had a box, with her daughter and several other people. One of them was an English lord—or so Miss Cragge said.... But excuse my mentioning my friend's name, as you don't like her."
"Who told you that I did not like Miss Cragge?" asked Pauline, with abrupt crispness.