“Do you think,” he said gravely, “that you are spoiling me for business purposes?”
She smiled: “I was thinking — wondering whether you did not more accurately represent the corps of officers and I the line. I am only a temporary employee of yours, Mr. Desboro, and some day you may be angry at what I do and you may say, ‘Tonnerre de Dieu!’ to me — which I wouldn’t like if we were friends, but which I’d otherwise endure.”
“We’re friends already; what are you going to do about it?”
She knew it was so now, for better or worse, and she looked at him shyly, a little troubled by what the end of this day had brought her.
Silent, absent-eyed, she began to wonder what such men as he really thought of a girl of her sort. It could happen that his attitude toward her might become like that of the only men of his kind she had ever encountered — wealthy clients of her father, young and old, and all of them inclined to offer her attentions which instinct warned her to ignore.
As for Desboro, even from the beginning she felt that his attitude toward her depended upon herself; and, warranted or not, this sense of security with him now, left her leisure to study him. And she concluded that probably he was like the other men of his class whom she had known — a receptive opportunist, inevitably her antagonist at heart, but not to be feared except under deliberate provocation from her. And that excuse he would never have.
Aware of his admiration almost from the very first, perplexed, curious, uncertain, and disturbed by turns, she was finally convinced that the matter lay entirely with her; that she might accept a little, venture a little in safety; and, perfectly certain of herself, enjoy as much of what his friendship offered as her own clear wits and common sense permitted. For she had found, so far, no metal in any man unalloyed. Two years’ experience alone with men had educated her; and whatever the alloy in Desboro might be that lowered his value, she thought it less objectionable than the similar amalgam out of which were fashioned the harmless youths in whose noisy company she danced, and dined, and bathed, and witnessed Broadway “shows”; the Eddies and Joes of the metropolis, replicas in mind and body of clothing advertisements in street cars.
Her blue eyes, wandering from the ruddy andirons, were arrested by the clock. What had happened? Was the clock still going? She listened, and heard it ticking.
“Is that the right time?” she demanded incredulously.
He said, so low she could scarcely hear him: “Yes, Stray Lock. Must I close the story book and lay it away until another day?”
She rose, brushing the bright strand from her cheek; he stood up, pulled the tassel of an old-time bell rope, and, when the butler came, ordered the car.
She went away to her room, where Mrs. Quant swathed her in rain garments and veils, and secretly pressed into her hand a bottle containing “a suffusion” warranted to discourage any insidious advances of typod.
“A spoonful before meals, dearie,” she whispered hoarsely; “and don’t tell Mr. James — he’d be that disgusted with me for doin’ of a Christian duty. I’ll have some of my magic drops ready when you come to-morrow, and you can just lock the door and set and rock and enj’y them onto a lump of sugar.”
A little dismayed, but contriving to look serious, Jacqueline thanked her and fled. Desboro put her into the car and climbed in beside her.
“You needn’t, you know,” she protested. “There are no highwaymen, are there?”
“None more to be dreaded than myself.”
“Then why do you go to the station with me?”
He did not answer. She presently settled into her corner, and he wrapped her in the fur robe. Neither spoke; the lamplight flashed ahead through the falling rain; all else was darkness — the widest world of darkness, it seemed to her fancy, that she ever looked out upon, for it seemed to leave this man and herself alone in the centre of things.
Conscious of him beside her, she was curiously content not to look at him or to disturb the silence encompassing them. The sense of speed, the rush through obscurity, seemed part of it — part of a confused and pleasurable irresponsibility.
Later, standing under the dripping eaves of the station platform with him, watching the approaching headlight of the distant locomotive, she said:
“You have made it a very delightful day for me. I wanted to thank you.”
He was silent; the distant locomotive whistled, and the vista of wet rails began to glisten red in the swift approach.
“I don’t want you to go to town alone on that train,” he said abruptly.
“What?” in utter surprise.
“Will you let me go with you, Miss Nevers?”
“Nonsense! I wander about everywhere alone. Please don’t spoil it all. Don’t even go aboard to find a seat for me.”
The long train thundered by, brakes gripping, slowed, stopped. She sprang aboard, turned on the steps and offered her hand:
“Good-bye, Mr. Desboro.”
“To-morrow?” he asked.
“Yes.”
They exchanged no further words; she stood a moment on the platform, as the cars glided slowly past him and on into the rainy night. All the way to New York she remained motionless in the corner of the seat, her cheek resting against her gloved palm, thinking of what had happened — closing her blue eyes, sometimes, to bring it nearer and make more real a day of life already ended.
CHAPTER IV
When the doorbell rang the maid of all work pushed the button and stood waiting at the top of the stairs. There was a pause, a moment’s whispering, then light footsteps flying through the corridor, and:
“Where on earth have you been for a week?” asked Cynthia Lessler, coming into Jacqueline’s little parlour, where the latter sat knitting a white wool skating jacket for herself.
Jacqueline laid aside the knitting and greeted her visitor with a warm, quick embrace.
“Oh, I’ve been everywhere,” she said. “Out in Westchester, mostly. To-day being Sunday, I’m at home.”
“What were you doing in the country, sweetness?”
“Business.”
“What kind?”
“Oh, cataloguing a collection. Take the armchair and sit near the stove, dear. And here are the chocolates. Put your feet on the fender as I do. It was frightfully cold in Westchester yesterday — everything frozen solid — and we — I skated all over the flooded fields and swamps. It was simply glorious, Cynthia — —”
“I thought you were out there on business,” remarked Cynthia dryly.
“I was. I merely took an hour at noon for luncheon.”
“Did you?”
“Certainly. Even a bricklayer has an hour at noon to himself.”
“Whose collection are you cataloguing?”
“It belongs to a Mr. Desboro,” said Jacqueline carelessly.
“Where is it?”
“In his house — a big, old house about five miles from the station — —”
“How do you get there?”
“They send a car for me — —”
“Who?”
“They — Mr. Desboro.”
“They? Is he plural?”
“Don’t be foolish,” said Jacqueline. “It is his car and his collection, and I’m having a perfectly good time with both.”
“And with him, too? Yes?”
“If you knew him you wouldn’t talk that way.”
“I know who he is.”
“Do you?” said Jacqueline calmly.
“Yes, I do. He’s the ‘Jim’ Desboro whose name you see in the fashionable columns. I know something about that young man,” she added emphatically.
Jacqueline looked up at her with dawning displeasure. Cynthia, undisturbed, bit into a chocolate and waved one pretty hand:
“Read the Tattler, as I do, and you’ll see what sort of a man your young man is.”
“I don’t care to read such a — —”
“I do. It tells you funny things about society. Every week or two there’s something
about him. You can’t exactly understand it — they put it in a funny way — but you can guess. Besides, he’s always going around town with Reggie Ledyard, and Stuyve Van Alstyne, and — Jack Cairns — —”
“Don’t speak that way — as though you usually lunched with them. I hate it.”
“How do you know I don’t lunch with some of them? Besides everybody calls them Reggie, and Stuyve, and Jack — —”
“Everybody except their mothers, probably. I don’t want to hear about them, anyway.”
“Why not, darling?”
“Because you and I don’t know them and never will — —”
Cynthia said maliciously: “You may meet them through your friend, Jimmy Desboro — —”
“That is the limit!” exclaimed Jacqueline, flushing; and her pretty companion leaned back in her armchair and laughed until Jacqueline’s unwilling smile began to glimmer in her wrath-darkened eyes.
“Don’t torment me, Cynthia,” she said. “You know quite well that it’s a business matter with me entirely.”
“Was it a business matter with that Dawley man? You had to get me to go with you into that den of his whenever you went at all.”
Jacqueline shrugged and resumed her knitting: “What a horrid thing he was,” she murmured.
Cynthia assented philosophically: “But most men bother a girl sooner or later,” she concluded. “You don’t read about it in novels, but it’s true. Go down town and take dictation for a living. It’s an education in how to look out for yourself.”
“It’s a rotten state of things,” said Jacqueline under her breath.
“Yes. It’s funny, too. So many men are that way. What do they care? Do you suppose we’d be that way, too, if we were men?”
“‘There are nice men, too’”
“No. There are nice men, too.”
“Yes — dead ones.”
“Nonsense!”
“With very few exceptions, Jacqueline. There are horrid, horrid ones, and nice, horrid ones, and dead ones and dead ones — but only a few nice, nice ones. I’ve known some. You think your Mr. Desboro is one, don’t you?”
“I haven’t thought about him — —”
“Honestly, Jacqueline?”
“I tell you I haven’t! He’s nice to me. That’s all I know.”
“Is he too nice?”
“No. Besides, he’s under his own roof. And it depends on a girl, anyway.”
“Not always. If we behave ourselves we’re dead ones; if we don’t we’d better be. Isn’t it a rotten deal, Jacqueline! Just one fresh man after another dropped into the discards because he gets too gay. And being employed by the kind who’d never marry us spoils us for the others. You could marry one of your clients, I suppose, but I never could in a million years.”
“You and I will never marry such men,” said Jacqueline coolly. “Perhaps we wouldn’t if they asked us.”
“You might. You’re educated and bright, and — you look the part, with all the things you know — and your trips to Europe — and the kind of beauty yours is. Why not? If I were you,” she added, “I’d kill a man who thought me good enough to hold hands with, but not good enough to marry.”
“I don’t hold hands,” observed Jacqueline scornfully.
“I do. I’ve done it when it was all right; and I’ve done it when I had no business to; and the chances are I’ll do it again without getting hurt. And then I’ll finally marry the sort of man you call Ed,” she added disgustedly.
Jacqueline laughed, and looked intently at her: “You’re so pretty, Cynthia — and so silly sometimes.”
Cynthia stretched her young figure full length in the chair, yawning and crooking both arms back under her curly brown head. Her eyes, too, were brown, and had in them always a half-veiled languor that few men could encounter undisturbed.
“A week ago,” she said, “you told me over the telephone that you would be at the dance. I never laid eyes on you.”
“I came home too tired. It was my first day at Silverwood. I overdid it, I suppose.”
“Silverwood?”
“Where I go to business in Westchester,” she explained patiently.
“Oh, Mr. Desboro’s place!” with laughing malice.
“Yes, Mr. Desboro’s place.”
The hint of latent impatience in Jacqueline’s voice was not lost on Cynthia; and she resumed her tormenting inquisition:
“How long is it going to take you to catalogue Mr. Desboro’s collection?”
“I have several weeks’ work, I think — I don’t know exactly.”
“All winter, perhaps?”
“Possibly.”
“Is he always there, darling?”
Jacqueline was visibly annoyed: “He has happened to be, so far. I believe he is going South very soon — if that interests you.”
“‘Phone me when he goes,” retorted Cynthia, unbelievingly.
“What makes you say such things!” exclaimed Jacqueline. “I tell you he isn’t that kind of a man.”
“Read the Tattler, dearest!”
“I won’t.”
“Don’t you ever read it?”
“No. Why should I?”
“Curiosity.”
“I haven’t any.”
Cynthia laughed incredulously:
“People who have no curiosity are either idiots or they have already found out. Now, you are not an idiot.”
Jacqueline smiled: “And I haven’t found out, either.”
“Then you’re just as full of curiosity as the rest of us.”
“Not of unworthy curiosity — —”
“I never knew a good person who wasn’t. I’m good, am I not, Jacqueline?”
“Of course.”
“Well, then, I’m full of all kinds of curiosities — worthy and unworthy. I want to know about everything!”
“Everything good.”
“Good and bad. God lets both exist. I want to know about them.”
“Why be curious about what is bad? It doesn’t concern us.”
“If you know what concerns you only, you’ll never know anything. Now, when I read a newspaper I read about fashionable weddings, millionaires, shows, murders — I read everything — not because I’m going to be fashionably married, or become a millionaire or a murderer, but because all these things exist and happen, and I want to know all about them because I’m not an idiot, and I haven’t already found out. And so that’s why I buy the Tattler whenever I have five cents to spend on it!”
“It’s a pity you’re not more curious about things worth while,” commented Jacqueline serenely.
Cynthia reddened: “Dear, I haven’t the education or brain to be interested in the things that occupy you.”
“I didn’t mean that,” protested Jacqueline, embarrassed. “I only — —”
“I know, dear. You are too sweet to say it; but it’s true. The bunch you play with knows it. We all realise that you are way ahead of us — that you’re different — —”
“Please don’t say that — or think it.”
“But it’s true. You really belong with the others—” she made a gay little gesture— “over there in the Fifth Avenue district, where art gets gay with fashion; where lady highbrows wear tiaras; where the Jims and Jacks and Reggies float about and hand each other new ones between quarts; where you belong, darling — wherever you finally land!”
Jacqueline was laughing: “But I don’t wish to land there! I never wanted to.”
“All girls do! We all dream about it!”
“Here is one girl who really doesn’t. Of course, I’d like to have a few friends of that kind. I’d rather like to visit houses where nobody has to think of money, and where young people are jolly, and educated, and dress well, and talk about interesting things — —”
“Dear, we all would like it. That’s what I’m saying. Only there’s a chance for you because you know something — but none for us. We understand that perfectly well — and we dream on all the same
. We’d miss a lot if we didn’t dream.”
Jacqueline said mockingly: “I’ll invite you to my Fifth Avenue residence the minute I marry what you call a Reggie.”
“I’ll come if you’ll stand for me. I’m not afraid of any Reggie in the bench show!”
They laughed; Cynthia stretched out a lazy hand for another chocolate; Jacqueline knitted, the smile still hovering on her scarlet lips.
Bending over her work, she said: “You won’t misunderstand when I tell you how much I enjoy being at Silverwood, and how nice Mr. Desboro has been.”
“Has been.”
“Is, and surely will continue to be,” insisted Jacqueline tranquilly. “Shall I tell you about Silverwood?”
Cynthia nodded.
“Well, then, Mr. Desboro has such a funny old housekeeper there, who gives me ‘magic drops’ on lumps of sugar. The drops are aromatic and harmless, so I take them to please her. And he has an old, old butler, who is too feeble to be very useful; and an old, old armourer, who comes once a week and potters about with a bit of chamois; and a parlour maid who is sixty and wears glasses; and a laundress still older. And a whole troop of dogs and cats come to luncheon with us. Sometimes the butler goes to sleep in the pantry, and Mr. Desboro and I sit and talk. And if he doesn’t wake up, Mr. Desboro hunts about for somebody to wait on us. Of course there are other servants there, and farmers and gardeners, too. Mr. Desboro has a great deal of land. And so,” she chattered on quite happily and irrelevantly, “we go skating for half an hour after lunch before I resume my cataloguing. He skates very well; we are learning to waltz on skates — —”
“Who does the teaching?”
“He does. I don’t skate very well; and unless it were for him I’d have such tumbles! And once we went sleighing — that is, he drove me to the station — in rather a roundabout way. And the country was so beautiful! And the stars — oh, millions and millions, Cynthia! It was as cold as the North Pole, but I loved it — and I had on his other fur coat and gloves. He is very nice to me. I wanted you to understand the sort of man he is.”
“Perhaps he is the original hundredth man,” remarked Cynthia skeptically.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 638
