“So, ’s I was tellin’ you this mornin’, Marmaduke,” Gladys-Marie flipped her dish-towel at the yellow kitchen cat, “I ain’t so thrilled over the i-dea. As Adalbert said to Evelyn Hortense, inThe Madness of a Handsome Hero, when the grewsomeness o’ this black scheme was sprung upon me, I—well, Marmaduke, though ’twas me own missus, Lady Elinore, put it up to me, I says, ‘Oh, pshaw!’ I did, fer a fact. Course I knew all along Lady Elinore and Mr. Michael was goin’ away, ’n’ leave me here to head off th’ burglars, but w’en she—bless her heart!—come in here yesterday mornin’ ’n’ broke it to me that that Mrs. Verplanck was goin’ to be herewhile they was away——! Marmaduke, me boy, y’ could ’a’ had me fer this dish-rag, I was that limp ’n’ speechless. ‘Mrs. Verplanck ’n’ her husband need a change,’ says Lady Elinore, in that kind o’ pitiful sweet way o’ hers. ’Y’ see, they live in a hotel, ’n’ they don’t know nothin’ about a home, or the country,’ she says. ‘I’m dependin’ on you, Gladys-Marie, to mak’ ’em see how nice it is. Yes,’ she says, drawin’ on her sixteen-button gloves thoughtful—like the heroine when she’s plannin’ the day-nooment—‘you c’n teach Ellen ’n’ Knollys a lot,’ she says.
“Oh, I know it’s funny, Marmaduke! Y’ needn’t squint yer old wall-eye at me! I know just ’s well ’s you that fer me, Lady Elinore’s gen’ral housemaid, to teach Mrs. Knollys Verplanck ’n’ husband anything is such a Hippodrome-size joke, y’ couldn’t get anybody t’ laugh at it. ’N’ my eye! W’en the station-master drove ’em over last night, I says t’ meself, it’s you that has the nerve, I says, t’ imagine Lady Elinore was drivin’ at anything but a joke, herself. Anyway,” Gladys-Marie patted her pompadour reassuringly, “she don’t even wear a transformation, ’n’ she’d be real plain, Mrs. Verplanck, if ’twasn’t fer her eyes. My, but she has the lamps, Marmaduke—all big ’n’ black ’n’ soft—’n’ the clothes! Gee! makes aBon Toncolored plate look like a suffragette! Now git out o’ my way, yer Grace, ’n’ pertly too—I gotta get a hike on an’ lift in the dinner. Livin’ ’n hotels don’t give ye no correspondence course in th’ gentle art o’ waitin’.” And Gladys-Marie shoved Marmaduke affectionately under the table as she pinned on her scrap of a cap and took up her tray.
“Really quite a quaint place, don’t you think, Knollys?” Mrs. Verplanck was saying, as Gladys-Marie came in with the soup. She sat languidly back in her chair, so that the gracious candle-light touched her shimmery gown to even more wonderful glory than aBon Toncolored plate. “It was most awfully sweet of Anne and Michael to turn it over to us for this week, though I dare say they grow bored enough with the quiet. I can’t think why they don’t come in to town for at least the winter.”
“Lady Elinore says th’ country in winter’s the most gorgeous place in the world,” plumped Gladys-Marie, twirling her tray resentfully. “’nN’ last winter we had taffy-pulls ’n’ sleigh-rides, ’n’ corn-roasts, ’n’ toboggans, ’n’ Miss Dorry ’n’ Mister Timothy says people was just fightin’ over bids t’ come out here. I used t’ think th’ city was th’ lobby o’ heaven meself, but my word! ’tain’t nothin’ to the country—Lady Elinore’s country!” She looked at Mrs. Verplanck earnestly.
Mrs. Verplanck looked at her—as though Gladys-Marie had never been heard to say a word.
“Er—rather an interesting person, my dear.” Knollys Verplanck put up his eye-glasses after the little maid’s retreating figure. “A bit—er—chatty, certainly, but—er——”
“Anne has spoiled her scandalously,” returned Mrs. Verplanck. “Fancy her putting in like that, in the midst of serving! No waiter at the hotel would dare think of such a thing. And then calling Anne ‘Lady Elinore,’ as though she were a personage—it’s absurd. Yet Anne seems entirely satisfied with her.”
“Um-m!” Mr. Verplanck looked about the charming, well-ordered dining-room. “She does seem a good servant, doesn’t she? This soup is excellent.” And, behind the big bowl of daffodils, he tipped his plate for the last spoonful—a thing he would never have dared to do in the hotel, before a waiter.
“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Verplanck admitted, indifferently, “I suppose she can cook and sweep and things, this—er—Marie (I can’t really be expected to call her whole name), but she gives no tone, no prestige to the place, does she? And that’s so important nowadays, when one’s friends—really, Knollys, I think we should move to the St. Midas this spring. Where we are now, it hasn’t the name it used to have, you know.”
“No?” Knollys looked mildly undisturbed. “Then why not take a house some place? Really, Ellen, this—this strikes me as very pleasant, this house of Michael’s; all the room, you know, and noliveries forever underfoot. Even this—er—Marie person’s a relief. I’ve been Sir-ed now for over ten years. Do you know it is ten years since we went to live at Marble Court, Ellen?”
“We were married ten years ago next Sunday,” Ellen’s great black eyes were softer than usual, “and we went to live at the hotel directly we came back from our honeymoon. Yes, it is almost ten years, Knollys. But I’m quite contented; aren’t you? We should never be as comfortable in a house as we have been at Marble Court, I am sure. A house is such a care.”
“I suppose it is.” Knollys smothered his sigh—it was ten years since he had remembered to sigh for a house. “Too much trouble, and all that.”
“Yes,” said Ellen, firmly. “And with all I have to do—and next year I’m up for the Four-in-Hand Club—oh, it’s not to be thought of, of course. No doubt you were only joking, Nollsie——” yet she looked at him a little anxiously; for in spite of the ten years, she was more than very fond of him.
“Joking?” When he let his gaze fall, in thatabsent-minded way, it suddenly occurred to her that he was almost forty. That slight silvering of the hair about his temples (which secretly pleased her, as an aristocratic touch) took on a hint of new significance. “Joking? Yes, I suppose I was, my dear. I suppose I was. Yet”—his voice grew unwontedly wistful—“it would have been nice if I hadn’t been, wouldn’t it? If our house hadn’t been just a joke. Anne and Michael——”
“Anne and Michael are the two most erratic people one knows,” put in Ellen, somewhat shortly. “As a criterion, they aren’t to be taken seriously. They hide themselves here in the woods in order that Michael may write books—— Oh, they’re good books, I admit that (as Knollys started to interrupt)—but what Anne does with herself while he’s writing them I can’t imagine. A week here is very nice; but a lifetime!” Mrs. Verplanck’s slender hands went up in expressive wonderment.
“That—er—Marie girl said the winters were all right,” reminded Knollys, tentatively; “she said——”
“My dear——” Mrs. Verplanck regarded her husband with the nearest disapproval she could turn upon him. “And what if she did? Do you thinksheknows—what would be all right for you and me? After all, you are Knollys Verplanck, of Wall Street and Marble Court. This girl—this Marie may be perfectly conscientious, perfectly respectable; but she is nothing but a plain person, my dear Knollys, merely a maid, is she not?” And with reassured composure Mrs. Verplanck rang for her.
“What are you doing?”
Two days later, and Mr. Verplanck was squinting his glasses for a nearer view of Gladys-Marie’s trim stooping figure. The stoop was over a bed of strawberries, near which Marmaduke sniffed about for catnip, guileless and very, very yellow in the morning sun.
“I’m weedin’ this strawb’ry-patch,” puffed Gladys-Marie, looking up very flushed in the face. “What’reyoudoing?”
“I am—ah—I am doing just nothing,” admittedMr. Verplanck, suddenly aware that it was a trivial occupation. “But I should like to weed very much if I——”
“You’d spoil yer clothes,” said Gladys-Marie, briefly; “’nn’ besides, what’d she say t’ you?”
Mr. Verplanck stopped regarding his spotless white flannels and regarded Gladys-Marie somewhat sharply; then—“She can’t say anything,” he returned. “She shut me out of the kitchen because she was making angel-food; and whatever I may do in revenge—— I say, Gladys-Marie, if I were to change my clothes, you know?”
“There’s a pair o’ Mister Michael’s overalls in the closet under the stairs,” Gladys-Marie relented. “But you’re s’ much taller—— Ain’t he the handsome figger of a man, though?” she murmured to Marmaduke as Knollys disappeared within the house. “An’ t’ think o’ him cramped up in a hotel! My eye! he’d ought a have the whole world t’ run around in!”
And Marmaduke blinked assent as he swept his yellow tail majestically among the tall grasses.
“Y’ see,” said Gladys-Marie, when she had turned over her trowel to Knollys, “this is Lady Elinore’s strawb’ry-patch, ’n’ while she’s away I gotta keep it goin’ fer her. D’ye ever notice, Mister Verplanck, how much more ye feel like doin’ fer other folks w’en y’re in the country? In the city it’s ev’ry kid fer ’imself, ’n’ a rush t’ get the main graft first. But in th’ country, seems like there’s time fer other people, s’ much time that yerself kind a fergits its kickin’.”
Again Mr. Verplanck glanced penetratingly at her, the plain conscientious person; but the curve of a pink ear was all that he could see. The rest of Gladys-Marie seemed to have been absorbed by the strawberry-bed.
“I guess I never told you about George—the swell middy I’m engaged to?” From the green leaves the friendly voice went on unself-consciously. “He’s gotta serve another year yet, an’ honest, Mister Verplanck, before I come to th’ country I took on worse ’n any Deserted at th’ Altar, over the dee-lay. I was thinkin’ all th’ time about me clothes, ’n’ howwe c’d board for a year er two, George ’n’ me, so’s t’ put on a little more style, y’ know. But now—well, I tell y’ on the straight, since I got this country habit, style kinda strikes me like movin’ picters at a vaudyville. I’m s’ keen on the main show, I ain’t no time t’ waste on it. So George ’n’ I’re goin’ t’ be married next June, out here; ’n’ we’re goin’ to have a House!”
When she said that, Gladys-Marie looked up with a smile that did things to Knollys’s throat. A House!
“Nollsie! Nollsie!” Before he could answer the little maid, some one called from the kitchen porch. “I’m going to make the icing now—you can come and help, if you like.” Looking up from the strawberry-patch, one could see Ellen, pink-cheeked and swayingly girlish in her blue cotton frock. “Why, Nollsie Verplanck!” As she caught sight of the overalls her laugh rang out as Knollys had almost forgotten it used to ring. “Whatever are you doing?”
“There—run along, quick!” Gladys-Marie tookthe trowel from him with an impetuous hurry. “Don’t che see? She wants ye t’ help her!—-- ’N’ what I was ever s’ cross-eyed ’s to call her plain for, it ’ud take a couple o’ Con-an Doyles t’ tell me! Don’t it beat Paree how some people c’n get all their best points brought out by chambray at ’leven cents th’ yard?” And Gladys-Marie looked up wistfully at the two just disappearing into the kitchen. She would have liked to go in and make icing with them, as she often did with Lady Elinore; but something back of her pompadour reminded that she was merely a maid. So she sighed, and went on weeding Lady Elinore’s strawberry-patch.
In the kitchen, Mr. and Mrs. Knollys Verplanck (of Wall Street and Marble Court) sat opposite each other, with a big yellow bowl between them. The blue of Mr. Verplanck’s overalls exactly matched the blue of Mrs. Verplanck’s cotton frock.
“Great eye for color, Anne and Michael, ain’t they?” reflected Mr. Verplanck, mildly, as he sifted sugar into white of egg, with some absorption. “But a blessed good thing they left some of theirclothes around. Ours are rather—er—too exotic for this atmosphere.”
“Well, one could hardly bake a cake in white broadcloth, could one?” defended Mrs. Verplanck, as though an excuse demanded itself.
“I never knew one could bake a cake at all,” returned her husband, watching the clever white hands admiringly.
“Mother taught me before I was married; but of course at the hotel——”
“Exactly.” There was something so suggestive in Knollys’s complete understanding that Mrs. Knollys glanced at him suspiciously from under her thick black lashes.
“Anyway, we go back on Monday,” she reassured herself, aloud. “I—it will seem natural to have some one to order about once more, won’t it? With this Gladys-Marie I find myself falling quite into Anne’s lax indulgence—why, do you know, Nollsie, this morning I even dusted the hall for her, and sewed a fresh frill on her cap. Fancy!”
“I suppose that’s what Anne does while Michael’s writing books,” fancied Knollys, dropping vanilla with fascinated attention. “Rather fun, isn’t it?”
“Oh, for a while, perhaps,” acknowledged Ellen, carelessly. “Of course we’re having great larks playing at it, this week, and the house is sweet, but—after all, I’d rather have a little bit more tone, wouldn’t you, Knollys?”
“Gladys-Marie wouldn’t,” said Knollys, gazing out toward the strawberry-patch. “She says she’s so keen on the main show that she has no time to think about style and things.”
“The main show?” Ellen looked up, puzzled.
“Getting married, you know, and—a House. A House in the country.”
“Oh!” For some minutes Ellen stirred in silence. Then suddenly she set the bowl down on the table and untied her apron. “I think”—she took Knollys firmly by the hand—“we will go up and put on our own clothes. Gladys-Marie can finish the icing.”
“Certainly she can,” agreed Knollys, bewildered, “but why? Weren’t we doing it perfectly well?”
“Too well,” returned his wife, succinctly, pushing him before her out of the kitchen.
But as she saw him safely started up the stairs, she slipped back guiltily for just one look at her cake.
Mrs. Verplanck stood regarding a ragged wreath of daisies. Across the centre ran “10 Yeres” in straggling brown-eyed-susan capitals. It was Sunday morning.
“10 Yeres”! Something brighter than the dew upon the daisies brimmed Mrs. Verplanck’s eyes and fell upon the awkward little wreath.
“Why, you silly goose, Ellen!” Her friend, Mrs. Deverence (out from town for the anniversary), took her by the shoulders with an amused little laugh. “Getting sentimental over a bunch of wild flowers!—it was merely a maid who fixed them, wasn’t it?”
Mrs. Verplanck turned sharply to answer. Then she remembered the words had a quoted ring. “Merely a maid,” she assented, mechanically, butin spite of her, two more big drops of sentiment fell upon the daisies.
“It’s a good thing for you you’re going back to town to-morrow,” declared Mrs. Deverence, briskly. “Another week of this morbid country atmosphere——”
“It isn’t a morbid atmosphere,” contradicted Ellen, impolitely.
“With nobody in the house except a servant and your husband,” went on the friend calmly. “Tell me, Ellen, hasn’t it seemed awfully odd, having Knollys about, all the time?”
“About, all the time?” Ellen’s amazement was too frank to be mistrusted. “Why, my dear Sheila, I’ve scarcely seen him. You see, he weeds the strawberry-patch every morning, while I’m dusting and doing the flowers, and then after lunch I have my sewing and practising—yes, actually I’ve managed two hours a day!—and Knollys always gets through his mail and goes to the village to wire for stock quotations—why, we’ve never been as busy in our lives.”
“Um-m! And to-morrow it all ends——” Mrs. Deverence sat down very practically to breakfast.
“To-morrow—yes, I suppose so.” Ellen sat down too—as though one chair had been pushed from under her. “We go back—to the hotel to-morrow.”
“And I see you’re up for the Four-in-Hand.” Mrs. Deverence’s manner added to itself blitheness as the men came in. The change in attitude had never before struck Ellen as artificial.
“Yes—a regular club-gourmand she’s getting to be, eh, Knollys?” Hawley Deverence’s weighty laugh took heavy possession of the charming sunny dining-room as he slumped into his chair. “The women are usurping us, Nolly, my boy—they’re usurping us!”
“And Ellen’s such a complex person,” amended Mrs. Deverence. “A whirl of committees and things just suits her. Of course”—she looked brightly at Knollys—“this is all very well for a week, but for a lifetime——!”
“I think it might do quite well for a lifetime,” said Ellen, sitting very straight as she poured the coffee. “Two lumps, Hawley?”
“Er—thanks, three.” Hawley was staring at the graceful uplifted hands. “Ah—you really do that very well, you know, Ellen,” he allowed, graciously. “Don’t think I ever saw you pourin’ things before. You’ve always been at the hotel, haven’t you?”
“Yes”—Ellen looked at Knollys with a smile that had a twist to it—“always at the hotel.”
When Knollys looked back at her there was something in his eyes that seemed to sweep away ten years.
“Well,” Mrs. Deverence announced, cheerfully, “a house is very nice—we’ve had ours ever since we were married; but it’s a great care—oh, a shocking care, really!—and for you, Ellen——” she shrugged her pretty shoulders with a soft laugh. “I simply can’t imagine it. A house for you would be a joke!”
“Why?” Knollys turned to her very quietly. “Why do you think so?”
“Oh, dear me, now I do hope I haven’t said something ultra,” fluttered Sheila. “All I meant was the clubs and things, you know—dear Ellen has so many, and so much to do.”
“I dare say you are right,” said Ellen, slowly. “A house for me would be a joke. Yet—did I tell you, Knollys, what Gladys-Marie said yesterday? ‘Always seems t’ me,’ she said, ‘like a woman’s house is a sort of frame for her, only some poor things don’t care enough about it t’ more’n passepartout ’emselves.’”
“Ha! ha! Smart little baggage, isn’t she?” roared Hawley.
“But, my dear Ellen”—Mrs. Deverence raised her eyebrows a trifle—“surely you don’t encourage a person like that to talk so freely with you? Why, no servant at the hotel would dare——”
“No,” said Ellen, this time avoiding Knollys’s eyes. “No servant at the hotel; but Anne’s and Michael’s servant——”
“Still, one can’t take them as an example, can one, dear? Delightful people, of course, but a bit—er—eccentric. Her frocks—you know——”
“This is one of them.” Ellen smoothed it with a sudden tenderness. “I—it has been a very nice frock.”
“Ahem! A very decent chap he is—the husband, I mean,” put in Hawley, evidently feeling things a bit strained. “Writes A-1 books, doesn’t he?”
“It was really too dear of them to lend you this place, wasn’t it?” Sheila came in conscientiously on her husband’s initiative. “Simply a wonderful house!”
“Yes,” agreed Ellen and Knollys simultaneously, “a wonderful house!”
The Deverences were gone. Knollys and Ellen sat on the porch alone. Beside them lay Gladys-Marie’s wreath.
“Ten years,” said Knollys, meditatively. “Ten years—in the hotel. And to-morrow we go back. To clubs and Wall Street!” There was no cynicism in his brief laugh—just an ache, a sort of emptiness.
“Knollys Verplanck”—his wife laid her hands impressively upon his shoulders, and even throughthe darkness he could feel the warmth in her great dark eyes—“we’re not going back! That’s the only joke—I—oh, those silly city people! Knollys!—Knollys dear, we’re going to have a House. Say we are! I—I don’t want to be just passepartouted. Knollys—couldn’t we—don’t you think we might pretend it’s ten years ago? Don’t you think we might start over and be just plain married people?”
And Gladys-Marie, coming round the corner of the porch just in time to see Knollys’s answer, stole noiselessly back into the house with Marmaduke. A conscientious person, Gladys-Marie, though, after all, merely a maid.
“She’sthe sweetest thing in the world”—Doromea looked up extenuatingly from a large hole in Timothy’s best socks that she was darning—“and ever so lovable, Sheila, but——”
“Just a born butterfly, that’s all,” continued Ellen, for the moment abstracted from dish-towels piled up before her to be hemmed, “a captivating will-o’-the-wisp creature, made to have things done for her—even thought for her; a——”
“Simply a society person!” Patsy sat triumphantly upright, with the air of having nutshelled the whole argument. “Can you imagine Sheila, sitting here on Ellen’s porch, with anything but a bridge score or a cup of tea in her hand? Fancy her making baby-clothes!” There was a pitying smile for the defrauded Sheila as Patsy bent again over the filmy microscopic thing that she was stitching.
“She did do that clever little sketch for us to act at Anne’s last Christmas,” suggested Ellen, doubtfully. It was partly through Sheila that Ellen had come into possession of her own; through Sheila’s very superficiality that Ellen’s desire for a house had crystallized. She looked about the cool shaded porch and into the wide, charming rooms of which she was chatelaine, and sighed contentedly. “If only one could make her a bit more self-realizing——”
“Make her see that she is just a Plain Person.” Doromea was biting thread. “Timothy says that’s where society people disparage themselves—they’re always imagining themselves something extraordinary. But the bewildering part about Sheila is that she doesn’t imagine herself at all; she simply pays no attention to herself.”
“Hasn’t time,” Patsy explained, succinctly. “She’s always at the Suffrage Club or at the theatre—you know, Dorry, she told Anne she fairly lived in the theatre—or off with Hawley somewhere. Of course I’m terribly fond of Hawley—he’s an excellent person, really, and makes one the most delicious things to drink; but as a husband—well, of course he isn’t like Warren.”
“Or Knollys.”
“Or Timothy!”
The three wives nodded at one another emphatically.
“He puffs so,” complained Patsy, returning to her mutton. “And all he ever says when Sheila asks him something is, ‘Yes, m’ dear,’ or, ‘Do jus’ ’s you like, darlin’.’ He does seem fond of her—but then, so many men have been fond of one. It would have been so easy for Sheila to have taken somebody a little less—er—husky. She’s such a midget, they make each other ridiculous.”
“Didn’t she say they were going somewhere together this afternoon, Ellen? Wasn’t that the reason she couldn’t come out from town to lunch with us?” The socks were finished and folded, andDoromea turned her attention entirely to the matter of conversation.
“Yes—that is, they were going to motor out to the Claremont, to try Hawley’s new machine—how is it that society peoplealwayshave a new machine?—and then to look at some ponies for the twins. Sheila said she’d get Hawley to drop her here before he went back to town, if there was time; she must be at the Elbert Lewises’ for tea, she said, and get home to dine early. It seems there’s a first night of something. Did you ever hear such a programme! How she keeps that pink and white look is what I can’t fathom—bridge until all hours, and then day after day of mad rushing about—all for what? I’m sureInever knew, when I was doing it! Why, when I contrast that ten years of slavery with this last one——” Ellen’s great dark eyes softened happily. “And Knollys was just as miserable as I; he confesses it, now that we’ve emancipated ourselves from hotels and clubs and things. Poor Sheila! If she’d only realize—for I suppose even butterflies must get tired of flying.”
“They’re always wanting to fly just a little higher.” Patsy wagged her auburn head sagaciously. “And then they’re determined that the children shall simplysoar—Sheila says quite naïvely that her ambition for the twins is too enormous to be taken seriously by any one else than herself. I dare say she wants Margretta to marry a duke, and Maurice to distinguish himself in polo, or something of the sort. Now all I ask for the Angel is that he sha’n’t be President; I just won’t have him bully me.”
Doromea and Ellen looked at each other; and—quickly—looked away again. They had no children.
But Doromea smoothed Timothy’s socks upon her lap with very much the same tenderness that Patsy smoothed the tiny frock. “The Angel’s a dear,” said Doromea. “So are Maurice and Margretta, even though they are society children. I shouldn’t wonder if they do other things besides dukes and polo later on. Sheila herself may get to want them to.”
Ellen shook her head. “Not as long as she remains simply a society person. It’s like running round and round in a chariot-race, always pushing desperately to get ahead, but never able to make a wide-enough swing outside the circle that’s been laid out. Poor Sheila!”
“Absolutely conventional!” In her conviction Patsy broke her needle. “Must be deadly for her. Just supposeshe’dslid down the banisters——!”
“It would have been a fad with the younger married set for a whole week,” supplemented Ellen. “Sheila leads them all about by the nose, her society. Well,” with a sigh, “I wish she’d come. Even her affectations are charming; it’s only to herself that she doesn’t do justice. To other people she’s delightful.”
“I wish she’d come, too,” joined in Doromea. “Somehow I never have time to go to see her—it’s such an undertaking to go in to town.”
“And it used to be such an undertaking to come out,” Ellen laughed. “I think it’s rather sweet of Sheila to bother. Ah”—as a cloud of dust cameround the corner of the road—“there she is now—at least I suppose she will emerge shortly.”
And in another minute she had emerged; a tiny, wild-rose sort of creature, all fluffy chiffons and flying yellow curls—a baby, you would have said, until you saw her reach up and kiss her husband.
“Wasn’t he a darling to bring me?” she asked the other women, when he and the machine had vanished down the drive. “He had two men to see by three o’clock, and a simply terrifically important race to follow; but he brought me out just the same. And he’s coming back for me—those wretched Elbert Lewises!—but I promised Peter Butler I’d go to something of theirs; they took care of Peter when he broke his knee that time, and as long as he’s my cousin—well, what I meant to say in the very first place was, how are you all? Patsy, where’s the Angel?”
“Up-stairs on Ellen’s bed, asleep,” returned Patsy, promptly. “Want to go look at him?”
“Rather!” Sheila was tugging at the strings of her frilly blue motor-bonnet. “There!—and I’lljust shed this coat, too; then I can’t get him the least bit dusty.” She was out of the coat in a second, and more childish than ever in her simple rose-colored frock.
“Fancy Sheila thinking about getting dust on the baby!” Doromea turned to Ellen, as the two ridiculously young mothers disappeared inside the house.
“A society person with ideas on hygiene!” echoed Ellen.
“He does look so well and rosy.” Sheila peered wistfully at Patsy’s Angel from under her long curling eyelashes. “And in Washington, too, you can keep him always out-of-doors—there are so many squares and flowery places.”
“Oh, yes,” said Patsy, cheerfully. “There are dozens of parks for him in Washington; though I always look forward to this real country when we come to visit Timothy and Dorry.”
“The twins have only our back yard,” reflected Sheila, her wide blue eyes very serious. “Hawleygot them swings and a sand-pile, but—it’s always city for them; and they’re four years old now.”
“Why don’t you send them to the Park—Central Park, I mean?” Patsy’s impulsive sympathy darted at once to the most obvious idea.
“I couldn’t go with them,” said Sheila, simply. “They would have to play with their governess, and they wouldn’t like that. You see, when we come home, either Hawley or I, we can always run down to the yard with them right away. But it’s rather grim and stiff for them, poor dears, with only trees in tubs and a fence all round. Some day perhaps we can afford to live in the country.”
“Oh!” Patsy’s glance was rather blank. If she had not known Sheila to be simply a society person, she would have suspected her of trying to make an epigram. But, as Ellen said, Sheila paid no attention to herself—it would never have occurred to her to attempt being clever.
“How was the new machine?” asked Patsy, steering away from what she did not understand.
Sheila’s lovely little face beamed. “Hawley wassopleased over it! He says it’s a rip-snorter—the bulliest engine he’s had yet!” Hawley’s large enthusiasm came quaintly from the small, almost infantile mouth. “I’m so delighted; though it—it does go rather fast. I had to hold on to the rail all the way out.”
“I’m crazy over them when they go fast,” protested Patsy, relapsing into her old sportsman vernacular. “At the Vanderbilt Cup race——”
“Ah! You saw the play, then? You remember——” and the babyish features lit up with a something that made downright Patsy blink with surprise, as Sheila went on to enumerate certain scenes in the play, certain thrilling passages—quoting, explaining, mimicking—so eagerly that one had not the heart or any longer the interest to explain that one had meant the actual race itself.
Patsy listened absorbedly. “And I never had thought she could talk,” she told Doromea afterward. “But then she really didn’t talk; something just talked through her.”
The something kept on talking, until Ellen cameand “shooed” them downstairs to the porch and Doromea. “Here I’ve been waiting for days to see Sheila, and now you two go off and look at a year-old baby the whole while! Tell me, Sheila, when are you going to free yourself of clubs and bridge and suffrage leagues and theatres and things?”
“When Hawley makes me,” answered Sheila, serenely. She was fumbling for something in her exquisite little gold bag—a half-finished lace collar it rolled out to be. “I’m just crocheting this bit of fluff for Margretta,” she explained, laughing a delicious, gurgling sort of laugh. “Isn’t it a joke? I carry it about with me, and work on it between acts—I did two rows in bed this morning—Fanchon was late with my breakfast—and then lots more during the lectures at the Mechanics’ Association.”
“The Mechanics’ Association?” bolted Doromea.
“Yes—every Thursday at noon, you know.” Sheila was counting stitches busily. “Air-ships it was to-day—the mostthrillingsubject.”
“Oh!” Doromea sat back again. Air-ships; onecould understand. Society was engrossed with air-ships just at present.
“I do hope Maurice will take to air-ships,” murmured Sheila, dreamily. “He’s so given over to fireworks now—some part of him’s always exploded. If he keeps it up, he’ll look a guy by the time he’s old enough to lead cotillons.” Behind Sheila’s back, Ellen and Patsy and Doromea exchanged a triumvirate “I told you so”; if it was not polo, it was less than polo; cotillons!
“And Margretta,” suggested Ellen, wondering if Sheila would have looked as absolutely charming had she been hemming dish-towels instead of crocheting Irish lace, “what is Margretta’sraison de vivre?”
“Margretta is going to be an actress,” said Margretta’s mother, slowly. “She is absorbed with playing Little Red Riding-hood to Peter Butler’s wolf at the moment. But later she will be playing—other things in Peter Butler’s theatres. It saves so much management, having a cousin who owns things one wants to enter.”
“And when your two offspring are at their separate vocations,” Doromea smiled above the childish curly head, “while the one is whirring furiously through the air, and the other acknowledging a triumphant series of curtain-calls, what will you be doing? Where will you and Hawley be?”
“Oh, I——!” Sheila shook her hair all into her eyes, as she laughed, gayly insouciant. “I shall be still in society, of course—simply a society butterfly! Hawley and I shall be still giving dinners and going to Elbert Lewises’ and living within call of Wall Street and our clubs. And perhaps—when we feel specially bored—we shall sneak down and play in the sand-pile. But we shall always be doing the conventional, Hawley and I—just Plain People, like the ones in Timothy’s stories” (she turned to Doromea with a little nod of homage); “it is the children who must accomplish the extraordinary. As Hawley says, we shall just be going round the same old track, taking the same old hurdles—and happy as larks at it!”
The careless, rippling voice stopped; for somereason Ellen and Doromea had caught up their sewing again, and were stitching away at a hectic pace. Patsy decided with great suddenness that she must go up and wake the baby. Dumbness seemed to have seized everybody—except Sheila. But then a society person is expected to keep on talking.
“That reminds me—I meant to speak of it when I first came—can’t you come with me one night to see this play,The Rut, that Peter’s putting on? He’s given me a box for all next week, knowing how I’ve always remained the matinée girl!”—Sheila’s face looked up for a moment from Margretta’s collar with an appealing ingenuousness—“and it would be jolly if we could all go; you two and Knollys and Timothy. Patsy, too, if she could be persuaded while Warren is away, and if she’ll leave the Angel. I don’t know much about the play’s merits,” added Sheila, indifferently. “But—they say it’s being talked about a good deal.”
“Timothy says it’s the most subtle satire of our generation,” put in Doromea, eagerly. “He’s been trying to get seats for us all week, but it was quiteimpossible. You see, a critic took him the first night, but they had to stand the whole time—itisgood of you to ask us, Sheila!”
“That play is absolutely the only thing that could get me to town on a June night,” chimed in Ellen. “But that—why, it’s been running only ten days, and already it is a classic; what a pity the author can’t be here to receive his ovation! Mr. Butler gave it out that the man who wrote it is abroad, and won’t even allow his identity to be divulged. So extraordinary, in this day of the fame-greedy!”
“Perhaps he didn’t write the play for fame,” suggested Sheila, always continuing to count stitches. “Perhaps he wrote it just because he couldn’t help it; and now he wants to stay a Plain Person, with his home and children and all.”
“He has children, then? But, yes—of course; it said in the papers that that had been the most phenomenal part of his creation—introducing two perfectly natural children in a satire of society! And then they say he has the most remarkable range—that he handles theories of electricity anddeepest economical problems with the same piercing ease that he does feminine psychology.The Rut!—you can’t know what a treat you’ll be giving us, Sheila.”
“Then we’ll say Monday night, shall we?” Sheila had a trick of reflecting other people’s eagerness—a quick little turn of the head, that was compelling of still more enthusiasm. “Hawley will be able to go Monday night, and we will motor you out in the new machine afterward.”
“Heavenly!” Doromea forgot that she had ever felt—vaguely—uncomfortable, and dropped her work again.
“You are such satisfactory society people,” sighed Ellen. “Except when you have to go away,” she added, as a siren blew its warning up the drive.
Sheila jumped up. “It’s the bondage of our rut,” she said, lightly, once more tying on the frilly bonnet; “you see, it is us this new playwright has satirized—and idealized a bit as well, perhaps? Doesn’t he show that we never go or stay, just as we please—that we’re forever doing the things we don’t wantto do; just because we fit our groove so exactly? I think that’s it—awfully serious, isn’t it?” Her laugh rang softly amused as she went out to meet her husband. “Till Monday, then—you’ll meet us at the theatre at half past eight, and, oh—do bring Patsy—where is she?”
“Coming!” Patsy’s pretty auburn head appeared at the door—over the Angel whom she was holding. “Where am I to be brought, Sheila?”
“To see two perfectly natural children!” The blue eyes under the motor-hood sought her husband’s. “But society children, I suppose, Hawley—inThe Rut, you know?”
“Yes, m’ dear, certainly; jus’ ’s you say.” He looked down at her with the benignity of a large Newfoundland.
“To the Elbert Lewises’, then—good-by, good-by!” And Sheila’s fluffy curls swirled round, hiding her face, as she was carried smoothly away.
“In the groove,” Ellen reminded Patsy and Doromea. “The man who wroteThe Rutwas right when he called it bondage, because the people fit itso exactly. Poor little Sheila!—there’s something very pathetic about her at times.”
“It’s because of her blind satisfaction with surface things,” said Doromea.
“Because she’s simply a society person,” said Patsy.
Monday night, and, at Peter Butler’s Theatre,The Rutwas nearing its big scene. Doromea and Timothy, Ellen and Knollys, sat well toward the front of the box—breathless with anticipations realized; Sheila and her big, immovable husband were farther back—out of sight almost, against the box door.
Timothy looked back at them anxiously. “I don’t suppose they’re thinking much about it,” he sighed; “they look a good deal more taken up with each other. And it’s the greatest play of our age—such a shame Patsy didn’t come—nobody will ever do anything that can touch it; unless, of course, the same author——”
“Sheila says the author doesn’t care to write anymore,” said Doromea, as the curtain went down on the first act. “Mr. Butler told Sheila that if only the man would keep on, he could make a fortune and anything else he liked out of plays. But he seems a strange creature, the author; he prefers to remain just a Plain Person. No one even knows his name, except Peter Butler.”
“Then how do they know he’s a man?” asked Timothy, suddenly. “Very probably, you know, he isn’t—— I say, Dorry, Mr. Butler’s coming into the box. After this next act I’m going to ask him.”
“Are you enjoying it?” Sheila called, her smile including Ellen and Knollys. She was a veritable bit of froth to-night, Sheila, a Dresden shepherdess in a cloud of chiffons.
“It’s splendid!” Ellen answered for them all. “But we want to know about the author, Sheila—Timothy thinks it may be a woman, and——”
“I want to ask Mr. Butler,” said Timothy, looking at the manager, who was absorbed in conversation with Hawley. “You see,” he smiled at Sheila,“I’ve gone quite foolish over this play; it has stirred me so enormously that——”
“Wait until after this second act.” Sheila’s small, frivolous head was bent over an unruly glove-button. “Peter has an announcement to make then, something or other about this author creature, and it might throw some light on what you want to know. I think I’ll go outside for a bit,” she added, as the curtain went up. “One gets so warm—and I’ve seen the play before.”
Ellen and Doromea looked after her. Then they looked at each other. “If only she could be brought to realize herself,” was in their eyes. “Overlooking the big scene in the biggest play of her time because one gets warm—and she has seen it before! Poor Sheila!”
Then the scene was on, and they forgot all about Sheila. Doromea sat close to the box rail, and when once in a while she came to, stole a second to look at Timothy, whose eyes were round and sending out little sparks behind his glasses. Knollys and Ellen sat on the edge of their chairs, obliviouseven of each other. But in the back of the box was a man who paid the deepest attention of them all; who watched the stage with only less interest than he ordinarily watched Sheila. His big thumbs held a book, which he followed closely as he followed the play; a conscientious creature, Hawley, though perhaps not like Warren, or Knollys, or Timothy.
When the curtain went down, he sat back and wiped his forehead exhaustedly; though he had come every night, it was always the same. The others were sitting back too, limp with the wonder of the playwright’s conception.
“And now for the announcement.” Timothy drew a long breath.
Peter Butler had come out before the footlights: his clever, shrewd face was very keen. “Playgoers,” he began, slowly, “have certain rights that are all their own; one right is to adore the star, another to hear the author make a speech. This play has been running two weeks now, and still the author has not satisfied the theatregoer’s curiosity about—herself.” He paused a moment to let the revelation sink in—“herself.” “To-night, however, she has decided to break her silence. I will let her tell you why.”
He stepped back into the wings; there was an excited buzz—which grew into an uproar, and cries of “Author!” “Author!” followed each other with an enthusiasm headed by the group in Sheila’s box. They were on thequi vive, impatient, insistent; all except Hawley, who simply sat quietly stolid, like an excellent husband-person.
“I could shake him!” declared Ellen to Doromea, her eyes always on the stage. “This dazzling play—and now the author, and—oh!” She stopped with a quick gasp, as once more the curtains parted and out in front stepped—Sheila! “Why, what—what——” Sheila’s two friends fell back speechless. It was the small butterfly creature who spoke now—deliberately, and with a faintly smiling friendliness. She stood scarcely five feet in her tiny, frivolous French slippers, a wide-eyed rose-leaf doll, in a halo of golden curls and gossamer rose fluff, before the dark dignity of the velvet curtain.
“Yes, I wrote it,” she confessed, looking out over the crowd without an atom of self-consciousness. “I didn’t want to tell, because I’ve always wanted the twins to do the extraordinary. I wanted to stay just their mother. But Mr. Butler says it will help the play if people know who wrote it; and I want to help the play. It’s a good play?” Like Peter Pan, she searched their faces eagerly. “You think it’s a good play, don’t you?”
“Yes!”
“Well, rather!”
“You betcherlife!”
Sheila dimpled. “Then it’s all right. I don’t mind your knowing; and I can stay on in ‘The Rut’—it’s not such a bad rut,” she pleaded. “I’ve dug it to pieces for you, but for myself I have had to put it together again, since the groove of it is my life. After all, you see, the author is just a plain, ordinary person!” With a gay little nod she slipped back behind the scenes, and so to Hawley.
“Thatisall I am, isn’t it, Hawley?” she asked, hiding herself behind his bigness, as the applauserose more and more enthusiastic. “Simply a society person and your wife—the mother of the twins.”
“Yes, darlin’—certainly; jus’ ’s you say.” But this time Hawley’s expression was quite satisfactory to Ellen and Doromea.
“And we said she didn’t realize herself”—Doromea turned to Ellen—“we said she could never swing wide enough to get outside the circle! Ellen!”
“Just shows we have a rut all our own, doesn’t it?” Ellen was wiping her eyes joyously. “We hadn’t the sense to see that she was staying in hers voluntarily—that she was creating an ideal society person!”
“And they’re the most rarely plain people of all,” added Timothy—not without reverence.
“ ... Just as I was telling Timmie the other night, when a man’s serious—and only then—his trouble begins! Well, I must be tripping along; promised to help Sheila give Lady Trotworthy tea—the dear old soul’s mind isn’t so light on its feet any more, you know. Bye-bye, Hawley. Bye, Plunkett.” Warner threw his coat over his shoulder and departed.
Hawley moved his feet still an inch higher on one of the Club’s red leather chairs. “Awful’ good fellow, Warner,” he vouchsafed, as intelligibly as his cigar would let him.
“Fine,” agreed Plunkett (respectfully speaking, Mr. Knollys Verplanck) from the depths of another red leather chair.
“Er—awfullyfunny, and all that, you know. Keeps things goin’. I don’t know what Sheila’d do if it wasn’t for Warner, since she has that old English Someone to stop. Nice old lady, y’know, but—well, her mindisa bit heavy on its feet, just as Warner said. Don’t know what he’d say if he knew there was another coming to-morrow—another Englishwoman I mean, but nothing like Lady Trot; Sheila says this one’s young and tremendously good-looking. Well, I’m glad—for Warner. He deserves some kind of reward after a week of Lady Trot. Deuced good of him to help Sheila; he’s so—so funny, don’ che know.”
“Very funny,” agreed Verplanck again.
“But—but I say, Plunkett”—uneasily the substantial tan boots drew themselves down from comfort, and Hawley’s big, solid body bent confidentially toward his friend—“I wouldn’t have any of these other chaps hear me, you know, not for worlds; but I’ve often wondered—d’ye think Warner’s anythingbesidesfunny, Plunkett? D’ye think—well, what else but a wag is he, eh?Idunno.”
“Well, I don’t,” said Verplanck, frankly; and he stared out across the crowded Avenue, with an expression that paid Warner no little compliment—by its regret. “I tell you candidly, Deverence, I’ve known Jim Warner now for nearly twelve years, and I’ve never yet heard him say anything but a joke. By George, the other night at Treadham’s, when that girl’s dress was on fire, I could havekilledWarner! There the girl was, in flames, and Warner,with his eyes right on her, sitting still on the other side of the room,telling a funny story! Why half the people in the room didn’t know she was on fire, even. I tell you, it made me mad—so mad, I’ve scarcely been civil to Jim since.”
“D’you say anything to him about it?” Hawley’s cigar had gone out. His big, good-humored face looked almost earnest.
“I told him—I couldn’t help telling him—I thought he might have made some pretence at least, at aiding the girl, as long as he saw——”
“And what d’ he say?”
“He said ‘my dear boy, there were five of you aiding her already. I never deliberately make myself inconspicuous!’ Yes, sir, that was just exactly what he said!”
Hawley swore; plentifully. “And d’ye know,” he added, plaintive through his disgust, “Sheila told me that was the funniest story she ever heard in her life; told me about it after we got home, and by Gad, itwasfunny! Began with——”
“Oh, of course!” Knollys shook his shoulders impatiently. “His stories always are funny. He’s always funny. He can’t help being funny. But great Heavens, Hawley, hecanhelp being nothing else! It does seem to me that a fellow ought to have something come to him besides a laugh. He’s got an almighty fine face.”
“Right!” Genuine affection beamed from Hawley’s dog-eyes. “I—don’t you suppose it’s rather because he—there’s never been any woman, I mean?” The big “society man” lapsed into sudden shyness. “I think all that—that sort of thing, y’know, makes a tremendous difference, old chap.”
The other man met his eyes squarely. “So do I,” he said; and it was as though their hands had gripped for the moment. “Yes, I daresay you’re right: Warner’s never had much to do with women—now I think of it, I’ve never seen him with one, except Ellen and Sheila, and then only at parties, or when there’s some guest to help entertain, like now at your house. Odd, too, for Warner’s just the sort that ought to succeed with a woman——”
“Yes”—Hawley nodded—“devilish good-lookin’, plenty of money, and er—what d’ye call it? Debonair, y’know; um-m, that’s it, debonair. Asked Sheila what it meant, and she said the sort of person who could tell you his own tragedy as though it were some one’s else. Poor little Sheila! I’ll bet she’s having her own troubles this afternoon—a tea-party and Lady Trot all together—whew! S’pose I’d better run along and help ’em out, what?” He drained his glass regretfully. “Come up for a bit, Plunkett?”
“Thanks”—Knollys too was reaching for his hat—“I’ve to do ‘notions’ for Ellen: beeswax and binding-tape, and er—ah, yes! Elastic, you know!Pale blue, a yard and—and how much, Hawley?” Mr. Verplanck’s aristocratic nose wrinkled thoughtfully. “Blessed if I know.”
Hawley roared. “Come on up, when you’ve found out,” he called, as they left each other at the foot of the Club steps. “Warner’s sure to have some ripping story for us; so—er—so deuced funny, y’know, Warner!”
In Sheila’s charming octagon room, an impatient little group of people crowded about some one seated cross-legged on a quaint Chinese stool. “Come, Sheila, do make him! He’s such a lazy beggar——”
“And he’s had his eternal three cups of tea; there’s not a particle of excuse——”
“Warner, you Sphinx, unravel! We’re waiting, these fifteen minutes; why are you invited, d’ye suppose, if not to tell stories? You’re no good at allen tête-à-tête, you know.”
“MydearMr. Warner (it was a delightfully ugly old lady in a marvelous tea-gown, who spoke tohim), I’m afraid you reallymustgratify them. Such noise—and my poor neuralgia—really!”
The person on the tabouret raised his careless attractive face to her, smiling. “You win, Lady Trot! What shall it be, Sheila? Broad farce, or screaming tragedy? Nothing so appallingly funny, you know, as a really tremendous tragedy.”
“Then tell us one,” commanded Sheila—a veritable bit of her own Dresden china, as she glanced at him over the tea-cups. She was genuinely fond of Warner, the little society lady; his sense of the dramatic, something told her, made them subtly kin. “Tell us the most awful—and the funniest—tragedy you can think of, Jim, an original one, you know.” And Sheila pushed her chair back from the teatable, and curled down into it, in a luxury of anticipation.
“All right”—Warner’s drawl came a bit slower than usual; he was sitting forward, gazing steadily at the fire—“I’ll tell you one. It—I’m quite sure it’s original, that it’s never been told before. Because,” he laughed contagiously, looking around at all of them, “it was my tragedy, you see!”
“Yours—ha! ha!” Every one was laughing with him, as they drew their chairs into a closer circle. “A tragedy that happened to Jim! That’s a good one. Go on, Jim; it starts rippingly!”
Warner balanced a plate of frivolous pink cakes on one of his crossed knees; his eyes, as he regarded them, were full of negligent amusement. “She—that’s the way all tragedies begin, of course—was a bachelor girl, and lived in a flat. Nothing very original about that, but then she was the sort of girl who made the commonplace very nice. She even made me very nice—for a time: at least so people told me. And out of sheer gratitude, I suppose, I—silly ass!—fell in love with her.”
“Haw! Haw!” It was Hawley’s large roar that interrupted. He had just come in, and was standing near the door. “Warner in love!—that’s the best yet! Nothing that chap won’t tell, for the sake of a story. Funny old Warner!”
“Fact.” Warner grinned back at him. “Well,naturally, when I realized the shocking state I was in, I set about to pry into the lady’s emotions. Butmalheureusement, I found she hadn’t any. That is, not for me. There were other men—oh, a disgusting lot of other men!—with whom she was shy, coquette, difficult—all the encouraging things, you know; but with me she remained always that frightful neutrality, one’s Platonic friend. So, things went; I mean, stood still. I went to the flat, and she came out to dine; and, ah, yes; a pretty touch I had almost forgotten—she always wore a tiny carved jade elephant hung on a fine gold chain about her neck. Lends a neat flavor of the artistic, that elephant, what?” He smiled at the little group whimsically. “Um-m; one night at the Savoy——”
“Ah! It was in London then?” The ugly old lady’s beautiful bright eyes betrayed what she thought of London. “You didn’t tell us that.”
“Of course—in London, five years ago last November. As I said, we were having supper at the Savoy, and she told me she called the elephant Jim. I thought it a crude joke, myself; but I let it pass....I let it pass. He did me no end of good turns after all, that elephant: every time I was on the verge of insanity—blurting the thing, I mean, of course, and so losing her for a pal or anything—I seemed to catch that old beast’s green eye fixed on me—with the leeriest grin you ever saw. And I swore I’d never be as clumsy as he, no matter if our names were the same.
“Well, to get on to the tragedy”—Warner’s laugh rang out so delightfully clear that every one had to join in it; even Sheila, whose adorable butterfly face had been rather serious in its attention. “One dull afternoon I had dropped in to tea, as I did a shocking lot of rainy evenings, and found her in a blue frock—um-m—a delicious frock really—but blue and in a mood to match. After she’d made us each three very bad cups of tea—and she generally made very creditable tea, too, for a girl—I said: ‘Come, let’s have it! which of them is it—who’s bothering you?’
“For a minute she looked as though she’d like to box my ears—you know the kind of look, whenyou’ve just displayed a little perspicacity in some one’s else affairs; then ‘it’s the one who isn’t bothering me,’ she said, toying with the little elephant and looking at it in a peculiar sort of fashion. ‘The one who hasn’t the perception to bother me—or doesn’t want to,’ she added, in a rather lower voice.
“‘But who——?’ I began.
“‘Never mind’—— you know how girls are, the minute one begins to be useful; nothing women hate so much as usefulness. A practical man has absolutely no chance with ’em. ‘I’m absurd even to mention it to you. I hate rainy days—they always make one so absurd. Come, let’s try those new songs——’
“‘Not until you’ve told me——’
“‘What? I don’t intend to tell you anything,’ she declared—so firmly that I knew she would end by telling me everything.
“‘Oh, yes, you do,’ I said—with that disgusting urbanity which has made all my friends abhor me, more or less—‘yes, you do. First of all, what’s his name?’
“‘J—Jack,’ she stammered. The reason people hate that urbanity is because it’s a sort of subtle hypnotic.
“‘And he—ah, doesn’t bother you enough? Isn’t sufficiently courageous in his attitude of approach, I mean?’
“‘Oh!’ she threw up her hands with a little gesture of abandon. ‘He’s sufficiently courageous, I suppose; but he doesn’tsee. Oh, I don’t know why I tell you all this, but it’s gone on so long now—our being just such good pals and all that—it—it’s getting on my nerves frightfully. And then this beastly wet afternoon’—— she laughed a bit hysterically. ‘Yes, yes; I’ll tell you. You see (she was twisting the jade elephant almost off its chain) this man I’ve known for ages—a year at least—and we’ve done everything together; I’ve always kept my best jokes for him, and my craziest hopes and plans, and—yes, I’m afraid my worst moods, too. He’s never seemed to mind somehow, no matter how disagreeable I’ve been, and—well, just lately I’ve found that—that I can’t go on being pals,that’s all. I daren’t even hint to him—I might lose everything, you see; and yet—oh, don’t you see, if hedidcare—and was perhaps in exactly my position—I’ve worn the mask so faithfully. If he did care——! Oh, Jim (but she was looking at the clumsy little elephant), isn’t it funny? Isn’t it funny, funny, funny!’
“And’twasfunny, now, wasn’t it? Nothing so frightfully funny as a real tragedy. Now I—I was just clown enough to snatch at one little ravelled end of her story, and try to match it up with a ragged corner of mine—that, you see, was where the delicious joke of it came in. Of course, I couldn’t be sure, but—something said slyly, ‘Why it’s you she means, can’t you see? It’s you, you blessed idiot, and everything’s coming out all shipshape.’
“Just the same, one can’t believe oneself just offhand like that—it seems so reckless; so I suggested, carelessly, you know, that she bring this tongue-tied impossibility to tea with me next day. In that way, I told her, I could see exactly how thingsstood (and I meant it more literally than she knew, by a good deal!); we’d tea at some Galleries—good place, I pointed out, for me to watch this Jack person, without his knowing it, and then (by this time my ridiculous tongue was fairly tripping itself up with expectation) she and I would have another talk, and decide her next move.
“‘Capital!’ she pronounced—a bit nervously, I thought at the time. ‘If only I can get hold of Jack for to-morrow——’
“‘Oh, well, if to-morrow turns out impossible, any day next week will be all right,’ I said cheerfully—the burning question being, of course, whether she would find it possible, any day, to produce this ‘Jack’—whom by the way I was beginning to care for quite foolishly—as one cares for oneself, don’t you know! ‘Say you meet him at the New, at four; have an hour for the pictures—which means anything you want to say to him, while I stroll quietly about after you—unobserved. Then we go to teaà trois, and—the game’s complete. Attea——’ I endeavored to look at her quite impersonally—‘I shall try to make you understand just what I think. It’s understood?’
“‘Yes.’ She drew a long breath. ‘Yes, I suppose it might as well be to-morrow as any other day. We can’t go on as we’ve been doing, that’s certain.’
“‘No,’ I said—my voice as leading man was quite good in this part, really! ‘No,’ I said, ‘we can’t. We must er—come to some new arrangement to-morrow.’
“But will you believe me, when I said good-bye to her, that detestable elephant actually leered at me; and for some unaccountable reason I was suddenly furious at his being named Jim. A senseless liberty, I thought it. However, when I was outdoors again, and walking home through Regent’s Park, I began to think less and less about the elephant; more and more aboutherpeculiar nervousness and agitation. The way she’d answered me at first—‘it’s the one who isn’t bothering me—who hasn’t the perception to bother me, or doesn’t want to’—and all the time looking at that little jade elephant,whose name was Jim! Not such a bad elephant after all, I decided.
“Then the way she hesitated when I asked his name: ‘J-Jack’ why of course! She was always the frankest, most absurdly truthful creature; and she had started to say—ah! It was almost too exquisite, even the hint of it. And—‘it’s gone on so long now—our being just good pals’ came back to me on leaping little bounds of recollection; and then ‘oh, don’t you see, if hedidcare—and was perhaps in exactly my position’—Hm! There was certainly no one else of whom she could possibly have thought that; no one else who had been shown her ‘worst moods’ as well as her ‘craziest hopes and plans!’ My children (Warner passed his plate of pink cakes to each one of them, with an elaborate bow, while his wonderful smiling eyes mocked their gravity), I assure you, that was one of the most remarkable twenty-four hours I have ever spent—from the time I left her, till the time I saw her again next afternoon. Those of you who have known the emotion will remember its alternativephases—of leaving one entirely strangled, and again curiously hollow. I underwent them both, with breathless rapidity, all night and the next day; and they left me rather weak-kneed and stuttery, when I arrived at the Galleries at precisely half past four.
“I strolled about, and watched the Americans, at the same time keeping a weather eye out for her—and Jack! Awfully amusing, you know, waiting round for one’s fate to make up its mind! I never spent such a funny half hour in my life!
“Then I saw her. And she was alone. And, you know, to this day, for the life of me, I can’t remember what I thought—much less what I said or did, when I saw her—alone—at five o’clock! I do remember she had on another blue gown, some sort of tailored thing, with little lines in it; and those lines danced themselves up and down and round that room, till somehow they caught up those tiresome weighted feet of mine, and drew me over to her.
“‘Jack not here?’ I asked—oh, with an enormouscarelessness. My voice, once out, sounded so odd, I just asked again to make sure.
“‘Jack not here?’ ‘No—no; that is, not yet. I can’t understand,’ she went on hurriedly, ‘I wrote him a line—rather an absurd line, I’m afraid—and told him if for any reason he couldn’t be here, to send me a wire. And he didn’t send the wire, and I haven’t seen anything of him—up till now.’
“Up till now! I was grinning like a fool, trying to remember all I had planned to say, and failing utterly to say anything—until she took the reins and suggested rather faintly that we might as well have tea.
“So we had it; and I gulped mine, and said quite the most brilliant things I’ve ever said in my life—naturally, since I hadn’t an idea what I was talking about; and watched her eat her muffin (which she did with the most frantic deliberation), wishing to goodness she’d finish, so that—well, one certainly could not propose, withthe personeating a muffin!