by Edna Ferber
Bick Benedict was no fool, and he hadn’t been twenty minutes on the place before he realized that this was a run-down old Southern shebang in need of about fifty thousand dollars in repairs. Not that he was there in the role of anything but guest, and that of the most transitory nature. In Washington on business he had come down to the Lynnton place in Virginia to look at a horse and to buy it if possible.
By the purest of accidents Doctor Horace Lynnton had found himself owner of a long-legged rangy filly who had turned out to be a gold mine. As horses, to him, were four-legged animals meant for riding or for driving he was more bewildered than pleased. He was forever evading gifts from moneyed patients who sent them in gratitude, or from insolvent patients who proffered them in lieu of cash. The filly had come from a long-standing friend who fell just between these two classifications. Doctor Lynnton had good-naturedly accepted the unwanted animal offered in part payment of a bill already absurdly small.
“She’s an accident,” the owner had confessed. “And I won’t say she’s any good except for one of your girls to ride. She’s one of Wind Wings’.”
“But I can’t accept her,” Doctor Lynnton had in the beginning protested. “You say her sire was Wind Wings!”
“Yes, but the dam was a stray plug that we kept for my little Betsy to jog around on. She got into the paddock by mistake, and the damage was done. Not that it matters, except that I want you to know that on her mother’s side she hasn’t a drop of good blood in her that I know of. She’ll never run.”
“Prince and peasant girl,” said Horace Lynnton. “A combination that has been known to produce amazing results. Sire for speed, they say. Dam for stamina.”
They named her My Mistake but in spite of this by the time she was three years old it began to appear that she would soon romp away with everything from New York to Mexico.
Bick Benedict of Texas had sought out Horace Lynnton in Washington not as the famous man of science but as the owner of My Mistake.
“Is she for sale?” he had asked.
“I suppose so. I don’t go in for racing. She was meant for my youngest daughter—to ride around the country roads. Turned out to be a lightning bolt.”
“Could I see her?”
“Drive out with me this afternoon, if you care to, stay for dinner and overnight.”
“Thanks, I’ll be glad to drive out but I can’t stay. I’ve got business engagements here in Washington——”
But he never left—or practically never—until he and Leslie were off for their honeymoon and Texas.
In the first twenty-four hours of his stay at the Lynntons’ Jordan Benedict experienced a series of shocks which left him dazed but strangely exhilarated too. The first shock to his Southwest sensibilities came when Doctor Lynnton introduced the young Negro who drove them down to Virginia. The little ceremony was as casual (but also as formal) as though he were introducing any two friends or acquaintances.
“Benedict, this is Jefferson Swazey who’ll drive us down. Jeff, this is Mr. Jordan Benedict from Texas.”
Well I’ll be damned, thought Jordan Benedict. On the way down the two men talked of this and that—of the freakish little filly; of the dead Harding, that pitiful and scandal-ridden figure with his imposing façade concealing the termite-riddled interior; of Coolidge, the new President of the United States; the rigid and vinegary Vermonter.
Arrived, “Jeff will show us the filly,” Horace Lynnton said, “or perhaps one of the girls will, though they don’t ride her nowadays. She’s in training, very hoity-toity and has ideas about who’s in the saddle.”
Jordan Benedict’s eye, trained to estimate millions of acres and dozens of dwellings as a single unit, made brief work of the wisteria and honeysuckle. They did not hide from his expert gaze the sagging columns or disguise the fact that the outbuildings were in urgent need of repair. But then the family, as he met them one by one, made no effort at disguise, either.
It was almost dusk as they arrived. The two men entered the house. A wide and beautifully proportioned hall ran from front to back with great arched doorways opening off it. Shabby rugs on a caramel floor. Riding crops, tennis racquets; books and papers and magazines on the overflowing hall table; a friendly lean and lazy dog; a delicious scent of something baking or broiling or both. They peered into the big living room. Here was a feminine world, all crystal and flowers and faded yellow satin curtains. Bits of jade. The ruby glow of Bohemian glass. The flicker of flame in the fireplace.
Doctor Lynnton shook his head. “The girls are somewhere around, but they’re probably busy. Perhaps you’d like to wash up.”
“I’d like to have a look at the filly while it’s still light.”
“Yes—the horse,” Doctor Lynnton agreed somewhat vaguely. From a nearby room there came the sound of voices. He raised his voice to a shout. “Leslie!” Then, still more loudly, “Leslie!”
Bick Benedict turned expecting to see a son, perhaps, or a manservant answering to this name. There emerged from the room that later he was to know as the library two figures, a man and a woman. The woman was wearing riding clothes, he was startled to see that it was a sidesaddle habit complete with glistening black boots, crop, white-starched stock. He had seen nothing like this in years—certainly not in Texas. A tall slim girl, not pretty.
“Leslie, this is Jordan Benedict, here from Texas. My daughter Leslie.”
The young man with her was in riding clothes and not only riding clothes but actually a pink coat of the hunting variety. Well I’m damned, Jordan Benedict said to himself for the second time in an hour. Then his ear was caught by the girl’s voice, which was lovely, warm and vibrant.
“Texas! How interesting! Father, you know Nicky Rorik. Mr. Benedict, this is Count Nicholas Rorik, Mr. Jordan Benedict.”
Doctor Lynnton moved toward the rear doorway. “We’re on our way to the paddock. Mr. Benedict’s come to look at My Mistake.”
“I’m coming along,” said Leslie, “to tell you all her bad points. I don’t want anyone to buy her.”
“Dear daughter, kindly remember that Mr. Benedict is a Texan and your father is a country doctor. You two go on down to the stable. I’ll join you directly, Jordan.”
Rorik, Benedict was saying in his mind. Rorik. Now let’s see. He comes from one of those kicked-around kingdoms, or a midget principality or something, it’s one of those musical-comedy places.
Then the slim dark young man said something about seeing everyone at dinner. And vanished with a bow that gave the impression of heel-clicking, though nothing of the sort took place. Weeks later Jordan Benedict dredged the young man up from the depths of his memory and put to his wife Leslie the questions which even now were stirring in his thoughts.
“That first day I met you, Leslie, when I came into the house with your father. You were tucked away in the library with that Rorik guy. What kind of hanky-panky was going on, anyway? Quiet as mice until your father called you.”
“Oh, that. Well, I never quite knew myself. It was a serious proposal of a sort, but it had a morganatic tinge. When his uncle dies he’ll become ruler or Grand Duke or whatever it’s called—if any. I’ve lost track.”
Now, on their way to the paddock he waited for her to speak. In Texas the women talked a lot, they chattered on and on about little inconsequential things calculated to please but not strain the masculine mind. Leslie Lynnton did not start the conversation. She strolled composedly and quietly beside him in her absurdly chic riding clothes. All about them were the ancient trees, the scent of flowers whose perfume yielded itself to the cool evening air. The orchard was cloudy with blossoms.
“How green it is!” he said inadequately.
“Isn’t it green in Texas?”
The girl must be a fool. “Don’t you know about Texas?”
“No. Except that it’s big. And the men wear hats like yours.”
“Yes, I suppose this does look funny to you. But then that rigging you’re wearing looks funny to me.”
For some reason he wanted to jar her composure. “And your friend’s red coat.”
She laughed and paused a moment in her walk and looked directly at him for the first time. And he thought, She might be kind of pretty if she filled out a little. Lovely eyes but there’s a little kind of thing about one of them. A cast in it. She was saying, “They’re called pink, not red. Don’t ask me why. And you’re right about these riding clothes of mine. They’re ridiculous. I never wear them, really.”
“But you’re wearing——”
“I mean I never wear them for riding. Just today. It’s a special day down here. Once a year they do a lot of rather silly stuff that was Virginia a century or two ago. You know—scarlet coats and floating veils and yoicks. The men dig their pink coats out of moth balls and the women wear this sort of thing out of the attic if they still can stick on a side-saddle. Tonight’s the Hunt Ball—not at our house, thank heaven!—and you’re invited.”
“How veddy veddy British!”
“I was born in Ohio so don’t be sneery.”
“I’d look good at a Hunt Ball in these clothes.”
“Oh well. We’re having dinner here—just the family and two or three others. Do stay for that.”
He muttered something about an engagement in Washington, to which she said politely, well, another time perhaps. And there they were at the stables and My Mistake was being paced in the paddock by a young Negro boy. Bick saw instantly that the satin-coated sorrel had the proper conformation; long of leg, neat of hoof, long muscular neck, deep chest. Her hoofs seemed scarcely to touch the ground, they flicked the earth as delicately as a ballet dancer’s toes.
“Well, there she is,” said Doctor Lynnton, coming up behind them.
Horses had been a vital part of Jordan Benedict’s life since birth. “And way before,” he sometimes said. “They tell me that when I was born my mother slid off her horse and into bed at practically the same moment. She had been taking part in an equestrian quadrille at the rodeo in Benedict. All the young women for miles around tried for the quadrille, but only the top riders made it. The women rode in divided skirts those days.”
It could not be said that he prided himself on his horsemanship any more than he could be said to be proud of his breathing or walking. Certainly walking was more foreign to this Texan than riding.
“I’d like to try her out if you’ve no objection,” he said to Doctor Lynnton.
“Of course. How would you like to try her on the track? We’ve rigged up a little half-mile track there just beyond.”
“How about your clothes?” Leslie called to him as he mounted in his Texas tans, his great wide-brimmed Texas Stetson, his brown oxfords.
He flung up his arm. “My grandmother could rope a steer in hoop skirts.”
Perhaps it was the upflung arm that startled My Mistake. Jordan had ridden a thousand quarter horses, bucking ponies, racing horses. This filly was a live electric wire carrying a thousand volts. She was out of the gate and on the track like a lightning flash. Accustomed all his life to the high-pommeled Western saddle, he sat the Eastern saddle well enough but his style was a revelation to Eastern eyes. The stable boys stared, their eyes their mouths making three wide circles in each amazed face. Jordan’s arms were akimbo, he held the reins high, his loose-jointed seat in the saddle irked the little filly, she jerked her head around to glare at him with rolling resentful eyeballs, she skittered sidewise. She gave him a nasty five minutes. Damned girl, watching. He knew he must master her, he did master her, he took her twice around, drew up before his startled audience and dismounted before the animal had come to a stop.
Leslie Lynnton was laughing like a child, peal on peal of helpless spontaneous laughter.
“Now Leslie,” her father said chidingly, “don’t you tease Mr. Benedict. That’s the way they ride in Texas. Informal, their riding.”
Leslie drew a deep breath and choked a little. “That wasn’t riding. That was scuffling with a horse.”
He was deeply offended, it was almost as if a man had impugned his honor—a phrase still used in Texas editorials. Instantly she sensed this, she went to him she spoke so that the grinning boys could hear. “I’m sorry. Forgive me. I’m ignorant about your part of the country. Our way of riding seems queer to you too. You’d laugh at me if you saw me in this habit all bunched up on the side of a horse.”
He was furious. He said nothing. There was a little frown between his eyes and his eyes were steel.
“All right, boys!” Doctor Lynnton called to the stablemen, and waved away the horse, the attendants, the stable, the whole incident. “Thanks. Come on, Jordan—let’s go up to the house and have a little drink before dinner.”
“Oh, I’m afraid I’ll have to——” Jordan began stiffly.
“You must have a wife or a mother or a—or someone who has spoiled you terribly,” Leslie said. “You take teasing so hard.”
“My sister,” he found myself saying to his own intense astonishment. “I’m not married. My sister—I live with my sister.”
“Oh well, that accounts for it. Why aren’t you married, Jordan?”
“Now Leslie!” Doctor Lynnton remonstrated again.
He ignored this. “It seems strange to hear you call me Jordan.” He pronounced it with a u, Jurden, Texas fashion. “Almost no one does. There’s always been a Jordan in the family, but everyone calls me Bick.” I’m talking too much, he told himself. What the hell does she care whether there’s always been a Jordan and they call me Bick.
“Bick Benedict,” Leslie tried the sound of it. “No, I like your own name. Jordan Benedict. Why do they call you Bick?”
He began to feel really foolish. “Oh, when I was a little kid I suppose I couldn’t say Benedict, the nearest I could manage was Bick, and it stuck as a nickname.”
“Jordan,” she said stubbornly. “You’re staying to dinner. And the night. You can drive back to Washington tomorrow morning with Papa, he gets up at a ghastly hour and starts poking at people’s insides before the world is awake.”
“I came here to buy a horse,” Bick announced rudely. “I won’t go to any Hunt Ball.”
Walking between the two men Leslie linked an arm into her father’s arm, into Bick’s. “I’ll get up early and have breakfast with you two. There’s Mama. We’re late I suppose.”
On the veranda steps stood Mrs. Lynnton and beside her a girl of sixteen or seventeen in men’s pants—at least that was what Bick Benedict called them. Benedict was shocked. Even the professional rodeo girls wore full divided skirts in Texas. Even Joella Kilso who was champion woman bronco buster of the Southwest wore a buckskin skirt with fringed trimming and bright brass nailheads.
“Well, really,” began Mrs. Lynnton with considerably less than storied Southern hospitality, “it’s half past seven, dinner’s at eight and you’re not even——”
“Mama, Mr. Jordan Benedict from Texas…. Lacey—my sister Lacey.”
Leslie performed the introductions at a clip which left her mother’s complaint far behind. Mrs. Lynnton had made instant appraisal of this tall broad-shouldered visitor in the ten-gallon hat and dismissed him as negligible.
“Are you the man who wants to buy My Mistake?” Lacey asked bluntly.
Mrs. Lynnton acknowledged his presence for the first time. “I hope so, before Lacey here kills herself riding her.”
“No, Mr. Benedict’s not buying her,” Leslie said, without reason.
“Oh, yes ma’am, I am,” Bick said with a great deal of drawl as always when angry. Too many damned bossy women around here, he thought. And he decided that Mrs. Lynnton looked like a longhorn with that lantern face, her hair in two sort of winged horns at the side, and her long lean wiry frame.
Doctor Lynnton waved a placating hand. “Let’s not decide anything now. We’ll have a drink and then we’ll all clean up and see you downstairs at about eight, Jordan. Uh, Bick. Is that better?”
Stuck, he thought as he entered his room, but then instantly the
re came over him a sensation very strange—a mingling of peace and exhilaration. A large square high-ceilinged room, cool, quiet. Chintz curtains, flowers in a vase, a fire in the fireplace, a bathroom to himself, shaving things and sweet-smelling stuff in bottles in the bathroom, and big thick soft towels. Nothing like this at Reata in spite of the millions of acres and dozens of rooms and scores of servants and “hands.”
Later in the evening when he mentioned the comfort of his room to Leslie she said flippantly, “Yes, who cares about the necessities, it’s the luxuries that count. What if the dishpan does leak!”
Now he still could telephone Washington and have someone drive out to fetch him. What was the sense in staying? He’d made up his mind to buy the filly, if only (he told himself parenthetically) to show those women that they couldn’t run him the way they ran Doctor Lynnton.
He stared at himself in the mirror, decided to bathe and shave, decided against it, the hell with it, dinner was at eight it was quarter to eight now, he couldn’t make it if he wanted to. Whereupon he peeled off his clothes, jerked on the shower, shaved, cut himself, got into his clothes distastefully because they were the crumpled garments he had just kicked off, rushed downstairs to find no one there but Mrs. Lynnton in rustling silk doing something to chair cushions and looking surprisingly handsome. She greeted him politely, she looked at him fleetingly, the rumpled Texas tans the tan shoes that he had hurriedly wiped with a corner of the bath towel. Not only did she mentally dismiss him as an eligible or even a possible suitor for her daughter—she regarded him as a male nobody with whom she could relax cozily without pretense as one would in the company of a sympathetic servant or an old friend with whom one had nothing to gain and nothing to lose.
