"'I—I beg your pardon,' said Jacqueline"
"I—I beg your pardon," said Jacqueline, not understanding.
"Come to see me in town. I've a rotten little place in a fashionable apartment house—one of the Park Avenue kind, which they number instead of calling it the 'Buena Vista' or the 'Hiawatha.' Will you come?"
"Thank you."
The old lady looked at her grimly:
"What does 'thank you' mean? Yes or no? Because I really want you. Don't you wish to come?"
"I would be very glad to come—only, you know, I am in business—and go out very little——"
"Except on business," added Desboro, looking Aunt Hannah unblushingly in the eye until she wanted to pinch him. Instead, she seized another biscuit, which Farris presented on a tray, smoking hot, and applied jam to it vigorously. After she had consumed it, she rose and marched around the room, passing the portraits and book shelves in review. Half turning toward Jacqueline:
"I haven't been in the musty old mansion for years; that young man never asks me. But I used to know the house. It was this sort of house that drove me out of Westchester, and I vowed I'd marry a New York man or nobody. Do you know, child, that there is a sort of simpering smugness about a house like this that makes me inclined to kick dents in the furniture?"
Jacqueline ventured to smile; Desboro's smile responded in sympathy.
"I'm going home," announced Aunt Hannah. "Good-bye, Miss Nevers. I don't want you to drive me, James; I'd rather have your man take me back. Besides, you've a train to catch, I understand——" She turned and looked at Jacqueline, who had risen, and they stood silently inspecting each other. Then, with a grim nod, as though partly of comprehension, partly in adieu, Aunt Hannah sailed out. Desboro tucked her in beside Vail. The latter being quite deaf, they talked freely under his very nose.
"James!"
"Yes, dear lady."
"You gaveyourselfaway about Elena Clydesdale. Haven't you any control over your countenance?"
"Sometimes. But don't do that again beforeher! The story is a lie, anyway."
"So I've heard—from you. Tell me, James, do you think this little Nevers girl dislikes me?"
"Do you want her to?"
"No. You're a very clever young one, aren't you? Really quite an expert! Do you know, I don't think that girl would care for what I might have to offer her. There's more to her than to most people."
"How do you know? She scarcely spoke a word."
The old lady laughed scornfully:
"I know people by what theydon'tsay. That's why I know you so much better than you think I do—you and Elena Clydesdale. AndIdon't think you're much good, James—or some of your married friends, either."
She settled down among the robes, with a bright, impertinent glance at him. He shrugged, standing bareheaded by the mud-guard, a lithe, handsome young fellow. "—A Desboro all over," she thought, with a mental sniff of admiration.
"Are you going to speak to Miss Nevers?" she asked, abruptly.
"About what!"
"About employing me, you idiot!"
"Yes, if you like. If she comes up here as my guest, she'll need a gorgon."
"I'll gorgon you," she retorted, wrathfully.
"Thanks. So you'll accept the—er—job?"
"Of course, if she wishes. I need the money. It's purely mercenary on my part."
"That's understood."
"Are you going to tell her I'm mercenary?"
"Naturally."
"Well, then—don't—if you don't mind. Do you think I wanteveryliving creature to detest me?"
"Idon't detest you. And you have an unterrified tabby-cat at home, haven't you?"
She could have boxed his ears as he leaned over and deliberately kissed her cheek.
"I love you because you're so bad," he whispered; and, stepping lightly aside, nodded to Vail to go ahead.
The limousine, acetylenes shining, rolled up as the other car departed. He went back to the library and found Jacqueline pinning on her hat.
"Well?" he inquired gaily.
"Why did you bring her, Mr. Desboro?"
"Didn't you like her?"
"Who is she?"
"A Mrs. Hannah Hammerton. She knows everybody. Most people are afraid of her. She's poor as a guinea-pig."
"She was beautifully gowned."
"She always is. Poor Aunt Hannah!"
"Is she your aunt?"
"No, she's Lindley Hammerton's aunt—a neighbour of mine. I call her that; it made her very mad in the beginning, but she rather likes it now. You'll go to call on her, won't you?"
Jacqueline turned to him, drawing on her gloves:
"Mr. Desboro, I don't wish to be rude; and, anyway, she will forget that she asked me in another half-hour. Why should I go to see her?"
"Because she's one species of gorgon. Now, do you understand?"
"What!"
"Of course. It isn't a case of pin-money with her; it's a case of clothing, rent, and nourishment. A microscopic income, supplemented by gifts, commissions, and odd social jobs, keeps her going. What you and I want of her is for her to be seen at various times with you. She'll do the rest in talking about you—'my unusually talented young friend, Miss Nevers,' and that sort of thing. It will deceive nobody; but you'll eventually meet some people—she knows all kinds. The main point is that when I ask you here she'll bring you. People will understand that you are another of her social enterprises, for which she's paid. But it won't count against you. It will depend on yourself entirely how you are received. And not a soul will be able to say a word—" he laughed, "—except that I am very devoted to the beautiful Miss Nevers—as everybody else will be."
Jacqueline remained motionless for a few moments, an incomprehensible expression on her face; then she went over to him and took one of his hands in her gloved ones, and stood looking down at it in silence.
"Well," he asked, smiling.
She said, still looking down at his hand lying between her own:
"You have behaved in the sweetest way to me—" Her voice grew unsteady, and she turned her head sharply away.
"Jacqueline!" he exclaimed under his breath. "It's a broken reed you're trusting. Don't, dear. I'm like all the others."
She shook her head slightly, still looking away from him. After a short silence, her voice returned to her control again.
"You are very kind to me, Mr. Desboro. When a man sees that a girl likes him—and is kind to her—it is wonderful to her."
He tried to take a lighter tone.
"It's the case of the beast born in captivity, Jacqueline. I'm only going through the tricks convention has taught me. But every instinct remains unaltered."
"Thatiscivilisation, isn't it?"
"Oh, I don't know what it is—you wonderful little thing!"
He caught her hand, then encircled her waist, drawing her close. After a moment, she dropped her big, fluffy muff on his shoulder and hid her flushed face in the fur.
"Don't trust me, will you?" he said, bluntly.
"No."
"Because I—I'm an unaccountable beast."
"We—both have to account—sometime—to somebody. Don't we?" she said in a muffled voice.
"That would never check me."
"It would—me."
"Spiritual responsibility?"
"Yes."
"Is thatall?"
"What else is there to remember—when a girl—cares for a man."
"Do you really care very much?"
Perhaps she considered the question superfluous, for she remained silent until his nerveless arm released her. Then she lifted her face from the muff. It was pale but smiling when he met her eyes.
"I'll go to see Mrs. Hammerton, some day," she said, "because it would hurt too much not to be able to come here when you ask me—and other people—like the—the Clydesdales. Youwerethinking of me when you thought of this, weren't you?"
"In a way. A girl has got to reckon with what people say."
She nodded, pale and expressionless, slowly brushing up the violets fastened to her muff.
Farris appeared, announced the time, and held Desboro's coat. They had just margin enough to make their train.
The following morning, Aunt Hannah returned to her tiny apartment on Park Avenue, financially benefitted by her Westchester sojourn, having extracted a bolt of Chinese loot-silk for a gown from her nephew's dismayed wife, and the usual check from her nephew.
Lindley, a slow, pallid, and thrifty soul, had always viewed Aunt Hannah's event with unfeigned alarm, because, somehow or other, at the close of every visit he found himself presenting her with a check. And it almost killed him.
Years ago he had done it for the first time. He had never intended to; certainly never meant to continue. Every time she appeared he vowed to himself that he wouldn't. But before her visit ended, the pressure of custom became too much for him; a deadly sense of obligation toward this dreadful woman—of personal responsibility for her indigence—possessed him, became gradually an obsession, until he exorcised it by the present of a check.
She never spoke of it—never seemed to hint at it—always seemed surprised and doubtful of accepting; but some devilish spell certainly permeated the atmosphere in her immediate vicinity, drawing perfectly good money out of his innermost and tightly buttoned breast-pockets and leaving it certified and carelessly crumpled in her velvet reticule.
It happened with a sickening regularity which now he had come to view with the modified internal fury of resignation. It had simply become a terrible custom, and, with all his respectable inertia and thrifty caution, adherence to custom ruled Lindley Hammerton. For years he had pinched roses; for years he had drawn checks for Aunt Hannah. Nothing but corporeal dissolution could terminate these customs.
As for Aunt Hannah, she banked her check and had her bolt of silk made into a gown, and trotted briskly about her business with perennial self-confidence in her own ability to get on.
Once or twice during the following fortnight she remembered Jacqueline, and mentally tabulated her case as a possible source of future income; but social duties were many and acridly agreeable, and pecuniary pickings plenty. Up to her small, thin ears in intrigue, harmless and not quite so harmless, she made hay busily while the social sun shone; and it was near the end of February before a stagnation in pleasure and business brought Jacqueline's existence into her mind again.
She called up Silverwood, and eventually got Desboro on the wire.
"Do you know," she said, "that your golden-headed and rather attenuated inamorata has never had the civility to call on me!"
"She has been too busy."
"Too busy gadding about Silverwood with you!"
"She hasn't been here since you saw her."
"What!"
"It's quite true. An important collection is to be sold under the hammer on the premises; she had the contract to engineer that matter before she undertook to catalogue my stuff."
"Oh! Haven't you seen her since?"
"Yes."
"Notat Silverwood?"
"No, only at her office."
He could hear her sniff and mutter something, then:
"I thought you were going to give some parties at Silverwood, and ask me to bring your pretty friend," she said.
"I am. She has the jades and crystals to catalogue. What I want, as soon as she gets rid of Clydesdale, is for her to resume work here—come up and remain as my guest until the cataloguing is finished. So you see I'll have to have you, too."
"That's a cordial and disinterested invitation, James!"
"Will you come? I'll ask half a dozen people. You can kill a few at cards, too."
"When?"
"The first Thursday in March. It's a business proposition, but it's between you and me, and she is not to suspect it."
"Very well," said Aunt Hannah cheerfully. "I'll arrange my engagements accordingly. And do try to have a gay party, James; and don't ask the Clydesdales. You know how Westchester gets on my nerves. And I always hated her."
"You are very unjust to her and to him——"
"You can't tell me anything about Cary Clydesdale, or about his wife, either," she interrupted tartly, and rang off in a temper. And Desboro went back to his interrupted business with Vail.
Since Jacqueline had been compelled to suspend temporarily her inventory at Silverwood in favor of prior engagements, Desboro had been to the city only twice, and both times to see her.
He had seen her in her office,remained on both occasions for an hour only, and had then taken the evening train back to Silverwood. But every evening he had written her of the day just ended—told her about the plans for farming, now maturing, of the quiet life at Silverwood, how gradually he was reëstablishing neighbourly relations with the countryside, how much of a country squire he was becoming.
"—And the whole thing with malice aforethought," he wrote. "—Every blessed move only a strategy in order that, to do you honour, I may stand soberly and well before the community when you are among my guests.
"In tow of Aunt Hannah; engaged for part of the day in your business among the jades, crystals, and porcelains of a celebrated collection; one of a house party; and the guest of a young man who has returned very seriously to till the soil of his forefathers; all that anybody can possibly think of it will be that your host is quite as captivated by your grace, wisdom, and beauty as everybody else will be.
"And what do you think of that, Jacqueline?"
"I think," she wrote, "that no other man has ever been as nice to me. I do not really care about the other people, but I quite understand that you and I could not see each other as freely as we have been doing, without detriment to me. I like you—superfluous admission! And I should miss seeing you—humble confession! And so I suppose it is best that everybody should know who and what I am—a business woman well-bred enough to sit at table with your friends, with sufficient self-confidence to enter and leave a room properly, to maintain my grasp on the conversational ball, and to toss it lightly to my vis-à-vis when the time comes.
"All this is worth doing and enduring for the sake of being your guest. Without conscientious scruples, apprehensions, perplexities, and fears I could never again come to Silverwood and be there alone with you as I have been. Always I have been secretly unhappy and afraid after a day with you at Silverwood. Sooner or later it would have had to end. It can not go on—as it has been going. I know it. The plea of business is soon worn threadbare if carelessly used.
"And so—caring for your friendship as I do—and it having become such a factor in my life—I find it easy to do what you ask me; and I have arranged to go with Mrs. Hammerton to Silverwood on the first Thursday in March, to practice my profession, enjoy the guests at your house party, and cultivate our friendship with a clear conscience and a tranquil and happy mind.
"It was just that little element of protection I needed to make me more happy than I have ever been. Somehow, Icouldn'tcare for you as frankly and freely as I wanted to. And some things have happened—you know what I mean. I didn't reproach you, or pretend surprise or anger. I felt neither—only a confused sense of unhappiness. But—I cared for you enough to submit.
"Now I go to you with a sense of security that is delightful. You don't understand how a girl situated as I am feels when she knows that she is in a position where any woman has the right to regard her with suspicion. Skating, motoring, with you, I could not bear to pass people you knew and to whom you bowed—women—even farmers' wives.
"But now it will be different; I feel so warmly confident at heart, so secure, that I shall perhaps dare to say and do and be much that you never suspected was in me. The warm sun of approval makes a very different person of me. A girl, who, in her heart, does not approve of what she is doing, and who is always expecting to encounter other women who would not approve, is never at her best—isn't even herself—and isn't really happy, even with a man she likes exceedingly. You will, I think, see a somewhat different girl on Thursday."
"If your words are sometimes a little misty," he wrote, "your soul shines through everything you say, with a directness entirely heavenly. Life, for us, begins on Thursday, under cover no longer, but in the open. And the field will be as fair for you as for me. That is as it should be; that is as far as I care to look. But somehow, after all is done and said that ever will be said and done between you and me, I am conscious that when we two emerge from the dream called 'living,' you will lead and direct us both—even if you never do so here on earth.
"I am not given to this sort of stuff.
"Jacqueline, dear, I'd like to amuse my guests with something unusual. Could you help me out?"
She answered: "I'll do anything in the world I can to make your house party pleasant for you and your guests. So I've asked Mr. Sissly to give a recital. It is quite the oddest thing; you don'tlistento a symphony which he plays on the organ; youseeit. He will send the organ, electrical attachments, lights, portable stage and screen, to Silverwood; and his men will install everything in the armoury.
"Then, if it would amuse your guests, I could tell them a little about your jades and crystals, and do it in a rather unusual way. I think you'd rather like it. Shall I?"
He wrote some days later: "What a darling you are! Anything you do will be charming. Sissly's men have arrived and are raising a racket in the armoury with hammer and saw.
"The stage will look quite wonderful between the wide double rank of equestrian figures in armour.
"Aunt Hannah writes that you called on her and that you and she are coming up on the train together, which is delightfully sensible, and exactly as it should be. Heaven alone knows how long you are going to be able to endure her. It's rather odd, you know, but I like her and always have, though she's made things disagreeable for me more than once in my life.
"Your room is ready; Aunt Hannah's adjoins. Quarters for other guests are ready also. Have you any idea how I look forward to your coming?"
Three days later his guests arrived on the first three morning trains—a jolly crowd of young people—nineteen of them—who filled his automobiles and horse-drawn vehicles. Their luggage followed in vans, from which protruded skis and hockey sticks. There being no porter, the butler of Silverwood House received them in front of the lodge at the outer gates, offering the "guest cup," a Desboro custom of many generations, originating in England, although the lodge had stood empty and the gates open since his grandfather's time.
"There was, for a moment, an unconscious and unwonted grace in his manner"
Desboro welcomed them on his own doorstep; and there was, for a moment, an unconscious and unwonted grace in his manner and bearing—an undefined echo in his voice of other and more courtly times, as he gave his arm to Aunt Hannah and led her inside the hall.
There it exhaled and vanished as Mrs. Quant and the maids smilingly conducted the guests to their various quarters—vanished with the smiling formality of his greeting to Jacqueline.
The men returned first, clad in their knickerbockers and skating jackets. Cocktails awaited them in the billiard-room, and they gathered there in noisy curiosity over this celebrated house not often opened to anybody except its owner.
"Who is the dream, Jim?" demanded Reginald Ledyard. "I mean the wonder with the gold hair, that Mrs. Hammerton has in tow?"
"A friend of Aunt Hannah's—an expert in antique art—and as clever and charming as she is pretty," said Desboro pleasantly.
"High-brow! Oh, help!" muttered Ledyard. "Where's your library? I want to read up."
"She can talk like other people," remarked Van Alstyne. "I got next on the train—old lady Hammerton stood for me. She can flirt some, I'll tell you those."
Bertie Barkley extracted the olive from a Bronx and considered it seriously.
"The old lady is on a salary, of course. Nobody ever heard of anybody named Nevers," he remarked.
"They'll hear of somebody named Nevers now," observed Captain Herrendene with emphasis, "or," he added in modest self-depreciation, "I am all kinds of a liar."
"Where did you know her, Jim?" inquired Ledyard curiously.
"Oh, Miss Nevers's firm has charge of cataloguing my armour and jades. They're at it still. That's how I first met her—in a business way. And when I found her to be a friend of Aunt Hannah's, I asked them both up here as my guests."
"You always had an eye for beauty," said Cairns. "What do you suppose Mrs. Hammerton's game is?"
"Why, to make Miss Nevers known where she really ought to belong," replied Desboro frankly.
"How high does she plan to climb?" asked Barkley. "Above the vegetating line?"
"Probably not as far as the line of perpetual stupidity," said Desboro. "Miss Nevers appears to be a very busy, and very intelligent, and self-sufficient young lady, and I imagine she would have neither time nor inclination to decorate any of the restless, gilt-encrusted sets."
Van Alstyne said: "She's got the goods to deliver almost anywhere Mrs. Hammerton chooses—F. O. B. what?"
"She's some dream," admitted Ledyard as they all moved toward the library.
There were a lot of gay young girls there in skating costumes; Ledyard's sister Marie, with her large figure and pretty but slightly stupid face; Helsa Steyr, blonde, athletic, and red-haired; Athalie Vannis, with her handsome, dark face, so often shadowed by discontent; Barkley's animated little wife, Elizabeth, grey-eyed and freckled and brimming with mischief of the schoolboy quality; the stately Katharine Frere; Aunt Hannah; and Jacqueline.
All except the latter two had been doing something to cocktails of various species; Jacqueline took nothing; Aunt Hannah, Scotch whiskey with relish.
"It's about the last of the skating," said Desboro, "so we'd better take what we can get as soon as luncheon is over. Pick your partners and don't squabble. Me for Mrs. Hammerton!" and he led her out.
At table he noticed that Captain Herrendene had secured Jacqueline, and that Reggie Ledyard, on the other side, was already neglecting his own partner in his eager, good-looking and slightly loutish fashion of paying court to the newest and prettiest girl.
Aunt Hannah's glance continually flickered sideways at Desboro, but when she discovered that he was aware of her covert scrutiny, she said under her breath:
"I've been shopping with her; the little thing didn't know how to clothe herself luxuriously in the more intimate details. I'd like to see anybody's maid patronise her now! Yours don't know enough—but she'll go where there are those who do know, sooner or later. What do you think of her?"
"What I always think," he said coolly. "She is the most interesting girl I ever met."
"She's too clever to care very much for what I can offer her," said Mrs. Hammerton drily. "Glitter and tinsel would never dazzle her, James; pretense, complacency, bluff, bragg, she'd devilish soon see through it all with those clear, intelligent eyes—see at the bottom what lies squirming there—anxiety, self-distrust, eternal dread, undying envy, the secret insecurityof those who imitate the real—which does not exist in America—and who know in their hopeless hearts that they are only shams, like that two-year-old antique tavern yonder, made quaint to order."
He said smilingly: "She'll soon have enough of your particular familiars. But, little by little, she'll find herself in accord with people who seek her as frankly as she seeks them. Natural selection, you know. Your only usefulness is to give her the opportunity, and you've begun to do it, bless your heart."
She flashed a malicious glance at him; under cover of the gay hubbub she said:
"I may do more than that, James."
"Really."
"Yes; I may open her eyes to men of your sort."
"Her eyes are open already, I suppose."
"Not very wide. For example—you'd never marry her. Would you?"
"Don't talk that way," he said coldly.
"No, I don't have to talk at all. Iknow. If you ever marry, I know what deadly species of female it will be. You're probably right; you're that kind, too—no real substance to you, James. And so I think I'll have to look after my intellectual protégée, and be very sure that her pretty eyes are wide open."
He turned toward her; their glances met level and hard:
"Let matters alone," he said. "I have myself in hand."
"You have in hand a horse with a runaway record, James."
Cairns, on her left, spoke to her; she turned and answered, then presented her well-shaped back to that young gentleman and again crossed glances with Desboro, who was waiting, cool as steel.
"Come, James," she said in a low voice, "what do you mean to do? A man always means something or nothing; and the latter is the more dangerous."
As that was exactly what Desboro told himself he had always meant, he winced and remained silent.
"Oh, you—the lot of you!" she said with smiling contempt. "I'll equip that girl to take care of herself before I'm through with her. Watch me."
"It is part of your business. Equip her to take care of herself as thoroughly as anybody you know. Then it will be up to her—as it is up to all women, after all—and to all men."
"Oh, is it? You've all the irresponsibility and moral rottenness of your Cavalier ancestors in you; do you know it, James? The Puritan, at least, never doubted that he was his brother's keeper."
Desboro said doggedly: "With the individual alone rests what that individual will be."
"Is that your mature belief?" she asked ironically.
"It is, dear lady."
"Lord! To think of a world full of loosened creatures like you! A civilised society swarming with callow and irresponsible opportunists, amateur Jesuits, idle intelligences reinfected with the toxins of their own philosophy! But," she shrugged, "I am indicting man himself—nations and nations of him. Besides, we women have always known this. And hybrids are hybrids. If there's any claret in the house, tell Farris to fetch some. Don't be angry, James. Man and woman once were different species, and the world has teemed with their hybrids since the first mating."
Mrs. Barkley leaned across the table toward him:
"What's the matter, James? You look dangerous."
His face cleared and he smiled:
"Nobody is really dangerous except to themselves, Betty."
She quoted saucily: "Il n'y a personne qui ne soit dangereux pour quelqu'un!"
Mrs. Hammerton added: "Il faut tout attendre et tout craindre du temps et des hommes."
Reggie Ledyard, much flattered, admitted the wholesale indictment against his sex:
"How can we help it? Man, possessing always dual personality, is naturally inclined toward a double life."
"Man's chief study has been man for so long," observed Mrs. Hammerton, "that the world has passed by, leaving him behind, still engrossed in counting his thumbs. Name your French philosopher who can beat that reflection," she added to Desboro, who smiled absently.
"All the men there had yielded to the delicate attraction of her"
From moment to moment he had been watching Jacqueline and the men always leaning toward her—Reggie Ledyard persistently bringing to bear on her the full splendour of his straw-blond and slightly coarse beauty; Cairns, receptive and débonnaire as usual; Herrendene, with his keen smile and sallow visage lined with the memory of things that had left their marks—all the men there had yielded to the delicate attraction of her.
Desboro said to Mrs. Hammerton: "Now you realise where she really belongs."
"Better than you do," she retorted drily.
After luncheon there were vehicles to convey them to the pond, a small sheet of water down in the Desboro woods. And while a declining sun glittered through the trees, the wooded shores echoed with the clatter and scrape of skates and the rattle of hockey-sticks crossed in lively combat.
But inshore the ice had rotted; the end of such sport was already in sight. Along the gravelly inlet, where water rippled, a dozen fingerling trout lay half hidden among the pebbles; over a bank of soft, sun-warmed snow, gnats danced in the sunset light; a few tree-buds had turned sticky.
Later, Vail came and built a bonfire; Farris arrived with tea baskets full of old-fashioned things, such as turnovers and flip in stone jugs of a century ago.
Except for a word or two at intervals, Desboro had found no chance to talk to Jacqueline. Now and then their glances encountered, lingered, shifted, with scarcely a ghost of a smile in forced response to importunities. So he had played an impartial game of hockey, skated with any girl who seemed to be receptive, cut intricate figures with Mrs. Hammerton in a cove covered with velvet-smooth black ice, superintended the bonfire construction, directed Farris with the tea.
Now, absently executing a "grape-vine," he was gliding along the outer ranks of his guests with the mechanical patrolling instinct of a collie, when Jacqueline detached herself from a fire-lit group and made him a gay little sign to halt.
Picking her way through the soft snow on the points of her skates, she took to the ice and joined him. They linked hands and swung out into the starlight.
"Are you enjoying it?" he asked.
"That's why I signalled you. I never have had such a good time. I wanted you to know it."
"You like my friends?"
She looked up: "They are all so charming to me! I didn't expect people to be cordial."
"You need expect nothing else wherever you go and whomever you meet—barring the inevitable which no attractive girl can avoid arousing. Do you get on with Aunt Hannah?"
She laughed: "Isn't it odd?Icall her that, too. She asked me to. And do you know, she has been a perfect dear about everything. We shopped together; I never had quite ventured to buy certain fascinating things to wear. And we had such a good time lunching at the Ritz, where I had never dared go. Such beautiful women! Such gowns! Such jewels!"
They halted and looked back across the ice at the distant fire and the dark forms moving about it.
"You've bowled over every man here, as a matter of course," he said lightly. "If you'll tell me how you like the women I'll know whether they like you."
"Oh, I like them; they are as nice to me as they are to each other!" she exclaimed, "—except, perhaps, one or two——"
"Marie Ledyard is hopelessly spoiled; Athalie Vannis is usually discontented," he said philosophically. "Don't expect either of them to give three cheers for another girl's popularity."
They crossed hands and swept toward the centre of the pond on the "outer edge." Jacqueline's skating skirt was short enough for her to manage a "Dutch roll," steadied and guided by Desboro; then they exchanged it for other figures, not intricate.
"Your friend, Mr. Sissly, is dining with us," he observed.
"He's really very nice," she said. "Just a little too—artistic—for you, perhaps, and for the men here—except Captain Herrendene——"
"Herrendene is a fine fellow," he said.
"I like him so much," she admitted.
He was silent for a moment, turned toward her as though to speak, but evidently reconsidered the impulse.
"He is not very young, is he?" she asked.
"Herrendene? No."
"I thought not. Sometimes in repose his face seems sad. But what kind eyes he has!"
"He's a fine fellow," said Desboro without emphasis.
Before they came within the firelight, he asked her whether she had really decided to give them a little lecture on jades and crystals; and she said that she had.
"It won't be too technical or too dry, I hope," she added laughingly. "I told Captain Herrendene what I was going to say and do, and he liked the idea."
"Won't you tell me, too, Jacqueline?"
"No, I wantyouto be surprised. Besides, I haven't time; we've been together too long already. Doesn't one's host have to be impartially attentive? And I think that pretty little Miss Steyr is signalling you."
Herrendene came out on the ice toward them:
"The cars are here," he said, "and Mrs. Hammerton is cold."
Dinner was an uproariously lively function, served amid a perfect eruption of bewildering gowns and jewels and flowers. Desboro had never before seen Jacqueline in a dinner gown, or even attempted to visualise her beauty amid such surroundings in contrast with other women.
She fitted exquisitely into the charming mosaic; from crown to toe she was part of it, an essential factor that, once realised, became indispensable to the harmony.
Perhaps, he told himself, she did not really dominate with the fresh delicacy of her beauty; perhaps it was only what he saw in her and what he knew of her that made the others shadowy and commonplace to him.
"In all the curious eyes turned toward her, he saw admiration, willing or conceded."
Yet, in all the curious eyes repeatedly turned toward her, he saw admiration, willing or conceded, recognised every unspoken tribute of her own sex as well as the less reserved surrender of his; saw her suddenly developed into a blossom of unabashed and youthful loveliness under what she had once called "the warm sun of approval"; and sat in vague and uneasy wonder, witnessing the transfiguration.
Sissly was there, allotted to Katharine Frere; and that stately girl, usually credited among her friends with artistic aspirations, apparently found him interesting.
So all went well enough, whether gaily or seriously, even with Aunt Hannah, who had discovered under Desboro's smiling composure all kinds of food for reflection and malicious diversion.
For such a small party it was certainly a gay one—at least people were beginning to think so half way through dinner—which merely meant that everybody was being properly appreciated by everybody's neighbours, and that made everybody feel unusually witty, and irrepressible, and a little inclined to be silly toward the end.
But then the after-dinner guests began to arrive—calm, perfectly poised and substantial Westchester propositions who had been bidden to assist at an unusual programme, and to dance afterward.
The stodgy old house rang with chatter and laughter; hall, stairs, library, and billiard-room resounded delightfully; you could scare up a pretty girl from almost any cover—if you were gunning for that variety of girl.
Reggie Ledyard had managed to corner Jacqueline on the stairs, but couldn't monopolise her nor protect himself against the shameless intrusion of Cairns, who spoiled the game until Herrendene raided the trio and carried her off to the billiard-room on a most flimsy pretext.
Here, very properly, a Westchester youth of sterling worth got her away and was making toward the library with her when Desboro unhooked a hunting horn from the wall and filled the house with deafening blasts as signal that the show was about to begin in the armoury.
The armoury had been strung with incandescent lights, which played over the huge mounted figures in mail, and glanced in a million reflections from the weapons on the wall. A curtained and raised stage faced seats for a hundred people, which filled the long, wide aisle between the equestrian shapes; and into these the audience was pouring, excited and mystified by the odd-looking and elaborate electrical attachments flanking the stage in front of the curtained dressing-rooms.
Jacqueline, passing Desboro, whispered:
"I'm so thrilled and excited. I know people will find Mr. Sissly's lecture interesting, but do you think they'll like mine?"
"How do I know, you little villain? You've told Herrendene what you are going to do, but you haven't given me even a hint!"
"I know it; I wanted to—to please you—" Her light hand fell for a moment on his sleeve, and he saw the blue eyes a little wistful.
"You darling," he whispered.
"Thank you. It isn't the proper thing to say to me—but I've quite recovered my courage."
"Have you quite recovered all the scattered fragments of your heart? I am afraid some of these men may carry portions of it away with them."
"I don't think so, monsieur. Really, I must hurry and dress——"
"Dress?"
"Certainly; also make up!"
"But I thought you were to give us a little talk on Chinese jades."
"But I must do it in my own way, Mr. Des——"
"Wait!" They were in the rear of the dressing-room and he took her hand.
"I call you Jacqueline, unreproved. Is my name more difficult for you?"
"Do you wish me to? In cold blood?"
"Not in cold blood."
He took her into his arms; she bent her head gravely, but he felt her restless fingers worrying his sleeve.
"Jacqueline?"
"Yes—Jim."
The swift fire in his face answered the flush in hers; he drew her nearer, but she averted her dainty head in silence and stood so, her hand always restless on his arm.
"You haven't changed toward me in these few weeks, have you, Jacqueline?"
"Do you think I have?"
He was silent. After a moment she glanced up at him with adorable shyness. He kissed her, but her lips were cold and unresponsive, and she bent her head, still picking nervously at the cloth of his sleeve.
"Imustgo," she said.
"I know it." He released her waist.
She drew a quick, short breath and looked up smiling; then sighed again, and once more her blue eyes became aloof and thoughtful.
He stood leaning against the side of the dressing-room, watching her.
Finally she said with composure: "Imustgo. Please like what I shall do. It will be done to please you—Jim."
He opened the dressing-room door for her; she entered, turned to look back at him for an instant, then closed the door.
He went back to his place among the audience.
A moment later a temple gong struck three times; the green curtains parted, revealing a white screen, and Mr. Lionel Sissly advancing with a skip to the footlights. The audience looked again at its programme cards and again read:
"No. 1: A Soundless Symphony ... Lionel Sissly."
"Colour," lisped Mr. Sissly, "is not only precious for its own sake, but also because it is the blessed transmogrification of sound. And sound is sacred because all vibrations, audible or inaudible, are in miraculous harmony with that holiest of all phenomena, silence!"
"Help!" whispered Ledyard to Cairns, with resignation.
"Any audible rate of regular air vibrations is a musical note," continued Mr. Sissly. "If you double that vibratory speed, you have the first note of the octave above it. Now, the spectrum band is the colour counterpart of the musical octave; the ether vibrates with double the speed at thevioletend of the spectrum band that it does at the opposite extremity, orredend. Let me show you the chromatic scales in colour and music—the latter the equivalent of the former, revealing how the intervals correspond when C represents red." And he flashed upon the screen a series of brilliant colours.
"Remember," he said, "that it is with colour as it is with sound—there is a long range of vibrations below and above the first and last visible colour and the first and last audible note—a long, long range beyond compass of the human eye and ear. Probably the music of the spheres is composed of such harmonies," he simpered.
"Modern occidental music is evolved in conformity with an arbitrary scale," he resumed earnestly. "An octave consists of seven whole tones and five half-tones. Combinations and sequences of notes or tints affect us emotionally—pleasurably when harmonious, painfully when discordant. But," and his voice shook with soulful emotion, "the holiest and the most precious alliance ever dreamed of beyond the Gates of Heaven lies in the sacred intermingling of harmonious colour and harmonious silence. Let me play for you, upon my colour organ, my soundless symphony which I call 'Weather.' Always in the world there will be weather. We have it constantly; there is so much of it that nobody knows how much there is; and I do not see very clearly how there ever could be any less than there is. Weather, then, being the only earthly condition which is eternal, becomes precious beyond human comprehension; and I have tried to interpret it as a symphony of silence and of colour divinely intermingled."
Ledyard whispered to Betty Barkley: "I'll go mad and bite if he says another word!"
She cautioned him with a light touch of her gloved hand, and strove very hard to remain serious as Mr. Sissly minced over to his "organ," seated himself, and gazed upward.
All at once every light in the house went out.
For a while the great screen remained invisible, then a faint sheen possessed its surface, blotted out at eccentric intervals by a deep and thunderous tint which finally absorbed it and slowly became a coldly profound and depthless blue.
The blue was not permanent; almost imperceptible pulsations were stirring and modifying it toward a warmer and less decisive hue, and through it throbbed and ebbed elusive sensations of palest turquoise, primrose and shell-pink. This waned and deepened into a yellow which threatened to become orange.
Suddenly all was washed out in unaccented grey; the grey gradually became instinct with rose and gold; the gold was split by a violet streak; then virile scarlet tumbled through crashing scales of green, amethyst, crimson, into a chaos of chromatic dissonance, and vanished engulfed in shimmering darkness.
The lights flashed up, disclosing Mr. Sissly, very pale and damp of features, facing the footlights again.
"That," he faltered, amid a stillness so profound that it seemed to fill the ear like a hollow roar,—"that is weather. If you approve it, the most precious expression of your sympathy will be absolute silence."
Fortunately, not even Reggie Ledyard dropped.
Mr. Sissly passed a lank and lily hand across his large pale eyes.
"Like the Japanese," he lisped, "I bring to you my most precious thought-treasures one at a time—and never more than two between the rising of the orb of day and the veiling of it at eventide. I offer you, on the altar of my colour organ, a transposition of Von Schwiggle's symphony in A minor; and I can only say that it is replete with a meaning so exquisitely precious that no human intelligence has yet penetrated it."
Out went the lights. Presently the screen became visible. Upon it there seemed to be no colour, no hint of any tint, no quality, no value. It was merely visible, and remained so for three mortal minutes. Then the lights broke out, revealing Mr. Sissly half fainting at his organ, and two young women in Greek robes waving bunches of violets at him. And the curtain fell.
"There only remains," whispered Ledyard, "the funny-house for me."
"If you make me laugh I'll never forgive you," Mrs. Barkley warned him under her breath. "But—oh, do look at Mrs. Hammerton!"
Aunt Hannah's visage resembled that of a cornered and enraged mink surrounded by enemies.
"If that man comes near me," she said to Desboro, "I shall destroy him with hatpins. You'd better keep him away. I'm morally and nervously disorganised."
Sissly had come off the stage and now stood in the wide aisle, surrounded by the earnest and intellectual womanhood of Westchester, eagerly seeking more light.
But there was little in Mr. Sissly's large and washed-out eyes; even less, perhaps, than illuminated his intellect. He gazed wanly upon adoration, edging his way toward Miss Frere, who, at dinner, had rashly admitted that she understood him.
"Was it satisfying?" he lisped, when he had attained to her vicinity.
"It was most—remarkable," she said, bewildered. "So absolutely new to me that I can find nothing as yet to say to you, except thank you."
"Why say it? Why not merely look it? Your silence would be very, very precious to me," he said in a low voice. And the stately Miss Frere blushed.
The audience, under the stimulus of the lights, recovered very quickly from its semi-stupor, and everybody was now discussing with animation the unique experience of the past half-hour. New York chattered; Westchester discussed; that was the difference. Both had expected a new kind of cabaret show; neither had found the weird performance disappointing. Flippant and unintellectual young men felt safe in the certainty that neither their pretty partners nor the more serious representatives of the substantial county knew one whit more about soundless symphonies than did they.