Something in the dull sadness of his face, as he sat there, checked the first elaborately careless question her lips were already framing. Leaning a little nearer in the dim light she looked at him inquiringly and he returned her gaze in silence.
“What is it, Mr. Plank,” she said; “is anything wrong?”
He knew that she did not mean to ask if anything was amiss with him. She did not care. Nobody cared. So, recognising his cue, he answered: “No, nothing is wrong that I have heard of.”
“You wear a very solemn countenance.”
“Gaiety affects me solemnly, sometimes. It is a reaction from frivolity. I suppose that I am over-enjoying life; that is all.”
She laughed, using her fan, although the place was cool enough and they had not danced long. To and fro flitted the silken vanes of her fan, now closing impatiently, now opening again like the wings of a nervous moth in the moonlight.
He wished she would come to her point, but he dared not lead her to it too brusquely, because her purpose and her point were supposed to be absolutely hidden from his thick and credulous understanding. It had taken him some time to make this clear to himself; passing from suspicion, through chagrin and overwounded feeling, to dull certainty that she, too, was using him, harmlessly enough from her standpoint, but how bitterly from his, he alone could know.
The quickened flutter of her fan meant impatience to learn from him what she had come to him to learn, and then, satisfied, to leave him alone again amid the peopled solitude of clustered lights.
He wished she would speak; he was tired of the sadness of it all. Whenever in his isolation, in his utter destitution of friendship, he turned guilelessly to meet a new advance, always, sooner or later, the friendly mask was lifted enough for him to divine the cool, fixed gaze of self-interest inspecting him through the damask slits.
Sylvia was speaking now, and the plumy fan was under savant control, waving graceful accompaniment to her soft voice, punctuating her sentences at times, at times making an emphasis or outlining a gesture.
It was the familiar sequence; topics that led to themes which adroitly skirted the salient point; returned capriciously, just avoiding it — a subtly charming pattern of words which required so little in reply that his smile and nod were almost enough to keep her aria and his accompaniment afloat.
It began to fascinate him to watch the delicacy of her strategy, the coquetting with her purpose; her naive advance to the very edges of it, the airy retreat, the innocent detour, the elaborate and circuitous return. And at last she drifted into it so naturally that it seemed impossible that fatuous man could have the most primitive suspicion of her premeditation.
And Plank, now recognising his cue, answered her: “No, I have not heard that he is in town. I stopped to see him the other day, but nobody there knew how soon he intended to return from the country.”
“I didn’t know he had gone to the country,” she said without apparent interest.
And Plank was either too kind to terminate the subject, or too anxious to serve his turn and release her; for he went on: “I thought I told you at Mrs. Ferrall’s that Mr. Siward had gone to the country.”
“Perhaps you did. No doubt I’ve forgotten.”
“I’m quite sure I did, because I remember saying that he looked very ill, and you said, rather sharply, that he had no business to be ill. Do you remember?”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “Is he better?”
“I hope so.”
“You hope so?” — with the controlled emphasis of impatience.
“Yes. Don’t you, Miss Landis? When I saw him at his home, he was lame — on crutches — and he looked rather ghastly; and all he said was that he expected to leave for the country. I asked him to shoot next year at Black Fells, and he seemed bothered about business, and said it might keep him from taking any vacation.”
“He spoke about his business?”
“Yes, he—”
“What is the trouble with his business? Is it anything about Amalgamated and Inter-County?”
“I think so.”
“Is he worried?”
Plank said deliberately: “I should be, if my interests were locked up in Amalgamated Electric.”
“Could you tell me why that would worry you?” she asked, smiling persuasively across at him.
“No,” he said, “I can’t tell you.”
“Because I wouldn’t understand?”
“Because I myself don’t understand.”
She thought awhile, brushing the rose velvet of her mouth with the fan’s edge, then, looking up confidently:
“Mr. Siward is such a boy. I’m so glad he has you to advise him in such matters.”
“What matters?” asked Plank bluntly.
“Why, in — in financial matters.”
“But I don’t advise him.”
“Why not?”
“Because he hasn’t asked me to, Miss Landis.”
“He ought to ask you.... He must ask you.... Don’t wait for him, Mr. Plank. He is only a boy in such things.”
And, as Plank was silent:
“You will, won’t you?”
“Do what — make his business my business, without an invitation?” asked Plank, so quietly that she flushed with annoyance.
“If you pretend to be his friend is it not your duty to advise him?” she asked impatiently.
“No; that is for his business associates to do. Friendship comes to grief when it crosses the frontiers of business.”
“That is a narrow view to take, Mr. Plank.”
“Yes, straight and narrow. The boundaries of friendship are straight and narrow. It is best to keep to the trodden path; best not to walk on the grass or trample the flowers.”
“I think you are sacrificing friendship for an epigram,” she said, careless of the undertone of contempt in her voice.
“I have never sacrificed friendship.” He turned, and looked at her pleasantly. “I never made an epigram consciously, and I have never required of a friend more than I had to offer in return. Have you?”
The flush of hot displeasure stained her cheeks.
“Are you really questioning me, Mr. Plank?”
“Yes. You have been questioning me rather seriously — have you not?”
“I did not comprehend your definition of friendship. I did not agree with it. I questioned it, not you! That is all.”
Plank rested his head on one big hand and stared at the clusters of dim blossoms behind her; and after a while he said, as though thinking aloud:
“Many have taken my friendship for granted, and have never offered their own in return. I do not know about Mr. Siward. There is nothing I can do for him, nothing he can do for me. If there is to be friendship between us it will be disinterested; and I would rather have that than anything in the world, I think.”
There was a pause; but when Sylvia would have broken it his gesture committed her to silence with the dignity one might use in checking a persistent child.
“You question my definition of friendship, Miss Landis. I should have let your question pass, however keenly it touched me, had it not also touched him. Now I am going to say some things which lie within the straight and narrow bounds I spoke of. I never knew a man I cared for as much as I care for Mr. Siward. I know why, too. He is disinterested. I do not believe he wastes very many thoughts on me. Perhaps he will. I want him to like me, if it’s possible. But one thing you and I may be sure of: if he does not care to return the friendship I offer him he will never accept anything else from me, though he might give at my request; and that is the sort of a man he is; and that is why he is every inch a man; and so I like him, Miss Landis. Do you wonder?”
She did not reply.
“Do you wonder?” he repeated sharply.
“No,” she said.
“Then—” He straightened up, and the silent significance of his waiting attitude was plain enough to her.
But she shook her head impatiently, saying: “I d
on’t know whose dance it is, and I don’t care. Please go on. It is — is pleasant. I like Mr. Siward; I like to hear men speak of him as you do. I like you for doing it. If you should ever come to care for my friendship that is the best passport to it — your loyalty to Mr. Siward.”
“No man can truthfully speak otherwise than I have spoken,” he said gravely.
“No, not of these things. But — you know w-what is — is usually said when his name comes up among men.”
“Do you mean about his habits?” he asked simply.
“Yes. Is it not an outrage to drag in that sort of thing? It angers me intensely, Mr. Plank. Why do they do it? Is there a single one among them qualified to criticise Mr. Siward? And besides, it is not true any more!... is it? — what was once said of him with — with some truth? Is it?”
The dull red blood mantled Plank’s heavy visage. The silence grew grim as he did his slow, laborious thinking, the while his eyes, expressionless and almost opaque in the dim light, never left her’s, until, under the unchanging, merciless inspection, the mask dropped for an instant from her anxious face, and he saw what he saw.
He was no fool. What he had come to believe she at last had only confirmed; and now the question became simple: was she worth enlightening? And by what title did she demand his confidence?
“You ask me if it is true any more. You mean about his habits. If I answer you it is because I cannot be indifferent to what concerns him. But before I answer I ask you this: Would your interest in his fortunes matter to him?”
She waited, head bent; then:
“I don’t know, Mr. Plank,” very low.
“Did your interest in his fortunes ever concern him?”
“Yes, once.”
He looked at her sternly, his jaw squaring until his heavy under lip projected. “Within my definition of friendship, is he your friend?”
“You mean he—”
“No, I mean you! I can answer for him. How is it with you? Do you return what he gives — if there is really friendship between you? Or do you take what he offers, offering nothing in return?”
She had turned rather white under the direct impact of the questions. The jarring repetition of his voice itself was like the dull echo of distant blows. Yet it never occurred to her to resent it, nor his attitude, nor his self-assumed privilege. She did not care; she no longer cared what he said to her or thought about her; nor did she care that her mask had fallen at last. It was not what he was saying, but what her own heart repeated so heavily that drove the colour from her face. Not he, but she herself had become the pitiless attorney for the prosecution; not his voice, but the clamouring conscience within her demanded by what right she used the name of friendship to characterise the late relations between her and the man to whom she had denied herself.
Then a bitter impatience swept her, and a dawning fear, too; for she had set her foot on the fallen mask, and the impulse rendered her reckless.
“Why don’t you speak?” she said. “Yes, I have a right to know. I care for him as much as you do. Why don’t you answer me? I tell you I care for him!”
“Do you?” he said in a dull voice. “Then help me out, if you can, for I don’t know what to do; and if I did, I haven’t the authority of friendship as my warrant. He is in New York. He did go to the country; and, at his home, the servants suppose he is still away. But he isn’t; he is here, alone, and sick — sick of his old sickness. I saw him, and” — Plank rested his head on his hand, dropping his eyes— “and he didn’t know me. I — I do not think he will remember that he met me, or that I spoke. And — I could do nothing, absolutely nothing. And I don’t know where he is. He will go home after a while. I call — every day — to see — see what can be done. But if he were there I would not know what to do. When he does go home I won’t know what to say — what to try to do.... And that is an answer to your question, Miss Landis. I give it, because you say you care for him as I do. Will you advise me what to do? — you, who are more entitled than I am to know the truth, because he has given you the friendship which he has as yet not accorded to me.”
But Sylvia, dry-eyed, dry-lipped, could find no voice to answer; and after a little while they rose and moved through the fragrant gloom toward the sparkling lights beyond.
Her voice came back as they entered the brilliant rooms: “I should like to find Grace Ferrall,” she said very distinctly. “Please keep the others off, Mr. Plank.”
Her small hand on his arm lay with a weight out of all proportion to its size. Fair head averted, she no longer guided him with that impalpable control; it was he who had become the pilot now, and he steered his own way through the billowy ocean of silk and lace, master of the course he had set, heavily bland to the interrupter and the importunate from whom she turned a deaf ear and dumb lips, and lowered eyes that saw nothing.
Fleetwood had missed his dance with her, but she scarcely heard his eager complaints. Quarrier, coldly inquiring, confronted them; was passed almost without recognition, and left behind, motionless, looking after them out of his narrowing, black-fringed eyes of a woman.
Then Ferrall came, and hearing his voice, she raised her colourless face.
“Will you take me home with you, Kemp, when you take Grace?” she asked.
“Of course. I don’t know where Grace is. Are you in a hurry to go? It’s only four o’clock.”
They were at the entrance to the supper-room. Plank drew up a chair for her, and she sank down, dropping her elbows on the small table, and resting her face between her fingers.
“Pegged out, Sylvia?” exclaimed Ferrall incredulously. “You? What’s the younger set coming to?” and he motioned a servant to fill her glass. But she pushed it aside with a shiver, and gave Plank a strange look which he scarcely understood at the moment.
“More caprices; all sorts of ’em on the programme,” muttered Ferrall, looking down at her from where he stood beside Plank. “O tempora! O Sylvia!... Plank, would you mind hunting up my wife? I’ll stay and see that this infant doesn’t fall asleep.”
But Sylvia shook her head, saying: “Please go, Kemp. I’m a little tired, that’s all. When Grace is ready, I’ll leave with her.” And at her gesture Plank seated himself, while Ferrall, shrugging his square shoulders, sauntered off in quest of his wife, stopping a moment at a neighbouring table to speak to Agatha Caithness, who sat there with Captain Voucher, the gemmed collar on her slender throat a pale blaze of splendour.
Plank was hungry, and he said so in his direct fashion. Sylvia nodded, and exchanged a smile with Agatha, who turned at the sound of Plank’s voice. For a while, as he ate and drank largely, she made the effort to keep up a desultory conversation, particularly when anybody to whom she owed an explanation hove darkly in sight on the horizon. But Plank’s appetite was in proportion to the generous lines on which nature had fashioned him, and she paid less and less attention to convention and a trifle more to the beauty of Agatha’s jewels, until the silence at the small table in the corner remained unbroken except by the faint tinkle of silver and crystal and the bubbling hiss of a glass refilled.
Major Belwether, his white, fluffy, chop-whiskers brushed rabbit fashion, peeped in at the door, started to tiptoe out again, caught sight of them, and came trotting back, beaming rosy effusion. He leaned roguishly over the table, his moist eyes a-twinkle with suppressed mirth; then, bestowing a sprightly glance on Plank, which said very plainly, “I’m up to one of my irrepressible jokes again!” he held up a smooth, white, and over-manicured forefinger:
“I was in Tiffany’s yesterday,” he said, “and I saw a young man in there who didn’t see me, and I peeped over his shoulder, and what do you think he was doing?”
She lifted her eyes a little wearily:
“I don’t know,” she said.
“I do,” he chuckled. “He was choosing a collar of blue diamonds and aqua marines! — Te-he! — probably to wear himself! — Te-he! Or perhaps he was going to be married! — He-he-he! — next winter —
ahem! — next November — Ha-ha! I don’t know, I’m sure, what he meant to do with that collar. I only—”
Something in Sylvia’s eyes stopped him, and, following their direction, he turned around to find Quarrier standing at his elbow, icy and expressionless.
“Oh,” said the aged jester, a little disconcerted, “I’m caught talking out in church, I see! It was only a harmless little fun, Howard.”
“Do you mean you saw me?” asked Quarrier, pale as a sheet. “You are in error. I have not been in Tiffany’s in months.”
Belwether, crestfallen under the white menace of Quarrier’s face, nodded, and essayed a chuckle without success.
Sylvia, at first listless and uninterested, looked inquiringly from the major to Quarrier, surprised at the suppressed feeling exhibited over so trivial a gaucherie. If Quarrier had chosen a collar like Agatha’s for her, what of it? But as he had not, on his own statement, what did it matter? Why should he look that way at the foolish major, to whose garrulous gossip he was accustomed, and whose inability to refrain from prying was notorious enough.
Turning disdainfully, she caught a glimpse of Plank’s shocked and altered face. It relapsed instantly into the usual inert expression; and a queer, uncomfortable perplexity began to invade her. What had happened to stir up these three men? Of what importance was an indiscretion of an old gentleman whose fatuous vanity and consequent blunders everybody was familiar with? And, after all, Howard had not bought anything at Tiffany’s; he said so himself.... But it was evident that Agatha had chanced on the collar that Belwether thought he saw somebody else examining.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 304
