“Why, Duane!” she exclaimed, offering both her hands with that impulsively unstudied gesture she carefully cultivated for such occasions.
He took them; he always took what women offered.
“This is very jolly,” he said, retaining the hands and examining her with unfeigned admiration. “Tell me, Mrs. Dysart, are you by any fortunate chance as good as you are ornamental?”
“I heard you ask that of the maid around the corner,” said Rosalie coolly. “Don’t let the bucolic go to your head, Mr. Mallett.” And she disengaged her hands, crossed them behind her, and smiled back at him. It was his punishment. Her hands were very pretty hands, and well worth holding.
“That maid,” he said gravely, “has excellent manners. I merely complimented her upon them.... What else did you — ah — hear, Mrs. Dysart?”
“What one might expect to hear wherever you are concerned. I don’t mind. The things you do rather gracefully seem only offensive when other men do them.... Have you just arrived?”
“An hour ago. Did you know I was coming?”
“Geraldine mentioned it to everybody, but I don’t think anybody swooned at the news.... My husband is here.”
She still confronted him, hands behind her, with an audacity which challenged — her whole being was always a delicate and perpetual challenge. There are such women. Over her golden-brown head the late summer sunlight fell, outlining her full, supple figure and bared arms with a rose light.
“Well?” she asked.
“If only you were as good as you are ornamental,” he said, looking at her impudently. “But I’m afraid you’re not.”
“What would happen to me if I were?”
“Why,” he said with innocent enthusiasm, “you would have your reward, too, Mrs. Dysart.”
“The sort of reward which I heard you bestow a few moments ago upon that maid? I’m no longer the latter, so I suppose I’m not entitled to it, am I?”
The smile still edged her pretty mouth; there was an instant when matters looked dubious for her; but a door opened somewhere, and, still smiling, she slipped by him and vanished into a neighbouring corridor.
Howker, the old butler, met him at the foot of the stairs.
“Tea is served on the Long Terrace, sir. Mr. Seagrave wishes to know whether you would care to see the trout jumping on the Gray Water this evening? If so, you are please not to stop for tea, but go directly to the Sachem’s Gate. Redmond will guide you, sir.”
“‘This is one of those rare occasions ... where goodness is amply ... rewarded.’”
“All right, Howker,” said Duane absently; and strolled on along the hall, thinking of Mrs. Dysart.
The front doors swung wide, opening on the Long Terrace, which looked out across a valley a hundred feet below, where a small lake glimmered as still as a mirror against a background of golden willows and low green mountains.
There were a number of young people pretending to take tea on the terrace; and some took it, and others took other things. He knew them all, and went forward to greet them. Geraldine Seagrave, a new and bewitching coat of tan tinting cheek and neck, held out her hand with all the engaging frankness of earlier days. Her clasp was firm, cool, and nervously cordial — the old confident affection of childhood once more.
“I am so glad you came, Duane. I’ve really missed you.” And sweeping the little circle with an eager glance; “You know everybody, I think. The Dysarts have not yet appeared, and Scott is down at the Gate Lodge. Come and sit by me, Duane.”
Two or three girls extended their hands to him — Sylvia Quest, shy and quiet; Muriel Wye, white-skinned, black-haired, red-lipped, red-cheeked, with eyes like melted sapphires and the expression of a reckless saint; and his blond sister, Naïda, who had arrived that afternoon from the Tappans’ at Iron Hill, across the mountain.
Delancy Grandcourt, uncouth and highly coloured, stood up to shake hands; Bunbury Gray, a wiry, bronzed little polo-playing squadron man, hailed Duane with enthusiasm.
“Awfully glad to see you, Bunny,” said Duane, who liked him immensely— “oh, how are you?” offering his hand to Reginald Wye, a hard-riding, hard-drinking, straight-shooting young man, who knew nothing on earth except what concerned sport and the drama. He and his sister of the sapphire eyes and brilliant cheeks were popularly known as the Pink ‘uns.
Jack Dysart arrived presently, graceful, supple, always smilingly, elaborate of manner, apparently unconscious that he was not cordially admired by the men who returned his greeting. Later, Rosalie, came, enchantingly demure in her Greuze-like beauty. Chardin might have made her; possibly Fragonard. She did not resemble the Creator’s technique. Dresden teacups tinkled, ice clattered in tall glasses, the two fountains splashed away bravely, prettily modulated voices made agreeable harmony on the terrace, blending with the murmur of leaves overhead as the wind stirred them to gossip. Over all spread a calm evening sky.
“Tea, dear?” asked Geraldine, glancing up at Mrs. Dysart. Rosalie shook her head with a smile.
Lang, the second man, was flitting about, busy with a decanter of Scotch. A moment later Rosalie signified her preference for it with a slight nod. Geraldine, who sat watching indifferently the filling of Mrs. Dysart’s glass, suddenly leaned back and turned her head sharply, as though the aroma from glass and decanter were distasteful to her. In a few minutes she rose, walked over to the parapet, and stood leaning against the coping, apparently absorbed in the landscape.
The sun hung low over the flat little tree-clad mountains, which the lake, now inlaid with pink and gold, reflected. A few fallow deer moved quietly down there, ruddy spots against the turf.
Duane, carrying his glass with him, rose and stepped across the strip of grass to her side, and, glancing askance at her, was on the point of speaking when he discovered that her eyes were shut and her face colourless and rigid.
“What is it?” he asked surprised. “Are you feeling faint, Geraldine?”
She opened her eyes, velvet dark and troubled, but did not turn around.
“It’s nothing,” she answered calmly. “I was thinking of several things.”
“You look so white — —”
“I am perfectly well. Bend over the parapet with me, Duane. Look at those rocks down there. What a tumble! What a death!”
He placed his glass between them on the coping, and leaned over. She did not notice the glass for a moment. Suddenly she wheeled, as though he had spoken, and her eyes fell on the glass.
“What is the matter?” he demanded, as she turned on her heel and moved away.
“I’m a trifle nervous, I believe. If you want to see the big trout breaking on Hurryon, you’d better come with me.”
She was walking swiftly down the drive to the south of the house. He overtook her and fell into slower step beside her.
The sun had almost disappeared behind the mountains; bluish haze veiled the valley; a horizon of dazzling yellow flecked with violet faded upward to palest turquoise. High overhead a feathered cloud hung, tinged with rose.
The south drive was bordered deep in syringas, all over snowy bloom; and as they passed they inhaled the full fragrance of the flowers with every breath.
“It’s like heaven,” said Duane; “and you are not incongruous in the landscape, either.”
She looked around at him; the smile that curved her mouth had the faintest suspicion of tenderness about it.
She said slowly:
“Do you realise that I am genuinely glad to see you? I’ve been horrid to you. I don’t yet really believe in you, Duane. I detest some of the things you are and say and do; but, after all, I’ve missed you. Incredible as it sounds, I’ve been a little lonely without you.”
He said gaily: “When a woman becomes accustomed to chasing the family cat out of the parlour with the broom, she misses the sport when the cat migrates permanently.”
“Have you migrated — permanently? O Duane! I thought you did care for me — in your own careless fashion — —”
“I do. But I’m not hopelessly enamoured of your broom-stick!”
Her laugh was a little less spontaneous, as she answered:
“I know I have been rather free with my broom. I’m sorry.”
“You have made some sweeping charges on that cat!” he said, laughing.
“I know I have. That was two months ago. I don’t think I am the morally self-satisfied prig I was two months ago.... I’d be easier on anything now, even a cat. But don’t think I mean more than I do mean, Duane,” she added hastily. “I’ve missed you a little. I want you to be nice to me.... After all, you’re the oldest friend I have except Kathleen.”
“I’ll be as nice as you’ll let me,” he said. They turned from the driveway and entered a broad wood road. “As nice as you’ll let me,” he repeated.
“I won’t let you be sentimental, if that’s what you mean,” she observed.
“Why?”
“Because you are you.”
“In a derogatory sense?”
“Somewhat. I might be like you if I were a man, and had your easy, airy, inconsequential way with women. But I won’t let you have it with me, my casual friend. Don’t hope for it.”
“What have I ever done — —”
“Exactly what you’re doing now to Rosalie — what you did to a dozen women this winter — what you did to me” — she turned and looked at him— “the first time I ever set eyes on you since we were children together. I know you are not to be taken seriously; almost everybody knows that! And all the same, Duane, I’ve thought about you a lot in these two months up here, and — I’m happy that you’ve come at last.... You won’t mistake me and try to be sentimental with me, will you?”
She laid her slim, sun-tanned hand on his arm; they walked on together through the woodland where green bramble sprays glimmered through clustering tree trunks and the fading light turned foliage and undergrowth to that vivid emerald which heralds dusk.
“Duane,” she said, “I’m dreadfully restless and I cannot account for it.... Perhaps motherless girls are never quite normal; I don’t know. But, lately, the world has seemed very big and threatening around me.... Scott is nice to me, usually; Kathleen adorable.... I — I don’t know what I want, what it is I miss.”
Her hand still rested lightly on his arm as they walked forward. She was speaking at intervals almost as though talking in an undertone to herself:
“I’m in — perplexity. I’ve been troubled. Perhaps that is what makes me tolerant of you; perhaps that’s why I’m glad to see you.... Trouble is a new thing to me. I thought I had troubles — perhaps I had as a child. But this is deeper, different, disquieting.”
“Are you in love?” he asked.
“No.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Then what — —”
“I can’t tell you. Anyway, it won’t last. It can’t, ... Can it?”
She looked around at him, and they both laughed a little at her inconsequence.
“I feel better for pretending to tell you, anyway,” she said, as they halted before high iron gates hung between two granite posts from which the woven wire fence of the game park, ten feet high, stretched away into the darkening woods on either hand.
“This is the Sachem’s Gate,” she said; “here is the key; unlock it, please.”
Inside they crossed a stream dashing between tanks set with fern and tall silver birches.
“Hurryon Brook,” she said. “Isn’t it a beauty? It pours into the Gray Water a little farther ahead. We must hasten, or it will be too dark to see the trout.”
Twice again they crossed the rushing brook on log bridges. Then through the trees stretching out before them they caught sight of the Gray Water, crinkling like a flattened sheet of hammered silver.
Everywhere the surface was starred and ringed and spattered by the jumping fish; and now they could hear them far out, splash! slap! clip-clap! splash! — hundreds and hundreds jumping incessantly, so that the surface of the water was constantly broken over the entire expanse.
Now and then some great trout, dark against the glimmer, leaped full length into the air; everywhere fish broke, swirled, or rolled over, showing “colour.”
“There is Scott,” she whispered, attuning her voice to the forest quiet— “out there in that canoe. No, he hasn’t taken his rod; he seldom does; he’s perfectly crazy over things of this sort. All day and half the night he’s out prowling about the woods, not fishing, not shooting, just mousing around and listening and looking. And for all his dreadfully expensive collection of arms and rods, he uses them very little. See him out there drifting about with the fish breaking all around — some within a foot of his canoe! He’ll never come in to dress for dinner unless we call him.”
And she framed her mouth with both hands and sent a long, clear call floating out across the Gray Water.
“All right; I’ll come!” shouted her brother. “Wait a moment!”
They waited many moments. Dusk, lurking in the forest, peered out, casting a gray net over shore and water. A star quivered, another, then ten, and scores and myriads.
They had found a seat on a fallen log; neither seemed to have very much to say. For a while the steady splashing of the fish sounded like the uninterrupted music of a distant woodland waterfall. Suddenly it ceased as if by magic. Not another trout rose; the quiet was absolute.
“Is not this stillness delicious?” she breathed.
“It is sweeter when you break it.”
“Please don’t say such things.... Can’t you understand how much I want you to be sincere to me? Lately, I don’t know why, I’ve seemed to feel so isolated. When you talk that way I feel more so. I — just want — a friend.”
There was a silence; then he said lightly:
“I’ve felt that way myself. The more friends I make the more solitary I seem to be. Some people are fashioned for a self-imprisonment from which they can’t break out, and through which no one can penetrate. But I never thought of you as one of those.”
“I seem to be at times — not exactly isolated, but unable to get close to — to Kathleen, for example. Do you know, Duane, it might be very good for me to have you to talk to.”
“People usually like to talk to me. I’ve noticed it. But the curious part of it is that they have nothing to give me in exchange for my attention.”
“What do you mean?”
He laughed. “Oh, nothing. I amuse people; I know it. You — and everybody — say I am all cleverness and froth — not to be taken seriously. But did it ever occur to you that what you see in me you evoke. Shallowness provokes shallowness, levity, lightness, inconsequence — all are answered by their own echo.... And you and the others think it is I who answer.”
He laughed, not looking at her:
“And it happens that you — and the others — are mistaken. If I appear to be what you say I am, it is merely a form of self-defence. Do you think I could endure the empty nonsense of a New York winter if I did not present to it a surface like a sounding-board and let Folly converse with its own echo — while, behind it, underneath it, Duane Mallett goes about his own business.”
Astonished, not clearly understanding, she listened in absolute silence. Never in all her life had she heard him speak in such a manner. She could not make out whether bitterness lay under his light and easy speech, whether a maliciously perverse humour lurked there, whether it was some new mockery.
He said carelessly: “I give what I receive. And I have never received any very serious attention from anybody. I’m only Duane Mallett, identified with the wealthy section of society you inhabit, the son of a wealthy man, who went abroad and dabbled in colour and who paints pictures of pretty women. Everybody and the newspapers know me. What I see of women is a polished coquetry that mirrors my fixed smirk; what I see of men is less interesting.”
He looked out through the dusk at the darkening water:
“You say you are beginning to feel
isolated. Can anybody with any rudiment of intellect feel otherwise in the social environment you and I inhabit — where distinction and inherited position count for absolutely nothing unless propped up by wealth — where any ass is tolerated whose fortune and lineage pass inspection — where there is no place for intelligence and talent, even when combined with breeding and lineage, unless you are properly ballasted with money enough to forget that you have any?”
He laughed.
“So you feel isolated? I do, too. And I’m going to get out. I’m tired of decorating a set where the shuttle-cock of conversation is worn thin, frayed, ragged! Where the battledore is fashionable scandal and the players half dead with ennui and their neighbour’s wives — —”
“Duane!”
“Oh, Lord, you’re a world-wise graduate at twenty-two! Truth won’t shock you, more’s the pity.... As for the game — I’m done with it; I can’t stand it. The amusement I extract doesn’t pay. Good God! and you wonder why I kiss a few of you for distraction’s sake, press a finger-tip or two, brush a waist with my sleeve!”
He laughed unpleasantly, and bent forward in the darkness, clasped hands hanging between his knees.
“Duane,” she said in astonishment, “what do you mean? Are you trying to quarrel with me, just when, for the first time, something in this new forest country seemed to be drawing us together, making us the comrades we once were?”
“We’re too old to be comrades. That’s book rubbish. Men and women have nothing in common, intellectually, unless they’re in love. For company, for straight conversation, for business, for sport, a man would rather be with men. And either you and I are like everybody else or we’re going to really care for each other. Not for your pretty face and figure, or for my grin, my six feet, and thin shanks; I can care for face and figure in any woman. What’s the use of marrying for what you’ll scarcely notice in a month?... If you are you, Geraldine, under all your attractive surface there’s something else which you have never given me.”
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 432
