He could hear her sniff and mutter something, then:
“I thought you were going to give some parties at Silverwood, and ask me to bring your pretty friend,” she said.
“I am. She has the jades and crystals to catalogue. What I want, as soon as she gets rid of Clydesdale, is for her to resume work here — come up and remain as my guest until the cataloguing is finished. So you see I’ll have to have you, too.”
“That’s a cordial and disinterested invitation, James!”
“Will you come? I’ll ask half a dozen people. You can kill a few at cards, too.”
“When?”
“The first Thursday in March. It’s a business proposition, but it’s between you and me, and she is not to suspect it.”
“Very well,” said Aunt Hannah cheerfully. “I’ll arrange my engagements accordingly. And do try to have a gay party, James; and don’t ask the Clydesdales. You know how Westchester gets on my nerves. And I always hated her.”
“You are very unjust to her and to him — —”
“You can’t tell me anything about Cary Clydesdale, or about his wife, either,” she interrupted tartly, and rang off in a temper. And Desboro went back to his interrupted business with Vail.
Since Jacqueline had been compelled to suspend temporarily her inventory at Silverwood in favor of prior engagements, Desboro had been to the city only twice, and both times to see her.
He had seen her in her office, remained on both occasions for an hour only, and had then taken the evening train back to Silverwood. But every evening he had written her of the day just ended — told her about the plans for farming, now maturing, of the quiet life at Silverwood, how gradually he was reëstablishing neighbourly relations with the countryside, how much of a country squire he was becoming.
“ — And the whole thing with malice aforethought,” he wrote. “ — Every blessed move only a strategy in order that, to do you honour, I may stand soberly and well before the community when you are among my guests.
“In tow of Aunt Hannah; engaged for part of the day in your business among the jades, crystals, and porcelains of a celebrated collection; one of a house party; and the guest of a young man who has returned very seriously to till the soil of his forefathers; all that anybody can possibly think of it will be that your host is quite as captivated by your grace, wisdom, and beauty as everybody else will be.
“And what do you think of that, Jacqueline?”
“I think,” she wrote, “that no other man has ever been as nice to me. I do not really care about the other people, but I quite understand that you and I could not see each other as freely as we have been doing, without detriment to me. I like you — superfluous admission! And I should miss seeing you — humble confession! And so I suppose it is best that everybody should know who and what I am — a business woman well-bred enough to sit at table with your friends, with sufficient self-confidence to enter and leave a room properly, to maintain my grasp on the conversational ball, and to toss it lightly to my vis-à-vis when the time comes.
“All this is worth doing and enduring for the sake of being your guest. Without conscientious scruples, apprehensions, perplexities, and fears I could never again come to Silverwood and be there alone with you as I have been. Always I have been secretly unhappy and afraid after a day with you at Silverwood. Sooner or later it would have had to end. It can not go on — as it has been going. I know it. The plea of business is soon worn threadbare if carelessly used.
“And so — caring for your friendship as I do — and it having become such a factor in my life — I find it easy to do what you ask me; and I have arranged to go with Mrs. Hammerton to Silverwood on the first Thursday in March, to practice my profession, enjoy the guests at your house party, and cultivate our friendship with a clear conscience and a tranquil and happy mind.
“It was just that little element of protection I needed to make me more happy than I have ever been. Somehow, I couldn’t care for you as frankly and freely as I wanted to. And some things have happened — you know what I mean. I didn’t reproach you, or pretend surprise or anger. I felt neither — only a confused sense of unhappiness. But — I cared for you enough to submit.
“Now I go to you with a sense of security that is delightful. You don’t understand how a girl situated as I am feels when she knows that she is in a position where any woman has the right to regard her with suspicion. Skating, motoring, with you, I could not bear to pass people you knew and to whom you bowed — women — even farmers’ wives.
“But now it will be different; I feel so warmly confident at heart, so secure, that I shall perhaps dare to say and do and be much that you never suspected was in me. The warm sun of approval makes a very different person of me. A girl, who, in her heart, does not approve of what she is doing, and who is always expecting to encounter other women who would not approve, is never at her best — isn’t even herself — and isn’t really happy, even with a man she likes exceedingly. You will, I think, see a somewhat different girl on Thursday.”
“If your words are sometimes a little misty,” he wrote, “your soul shines through everything you say, with a directness entirely heavenly. Life, for us, begins on Thursday, under cover no longer, but in the open. And the field will be as fair for you as for me. That is as it should be; that is as far as I care to look. But somehow, after all is done and said that ever will be said and done between you and me, I am conscious that when we two emerge from the dream called ‘living,’ you will lead and direct us both — even if you never do so here on earth.
“I am not given to this sort of stuff.
“Jacqueline, dear, I’d like to amuse my guests with something unusual. Could you help me out?”
She answered: “I’ll do anything in the world I can to make your house party pleasant for you and your guests. So I’ve asked Mr. Sissly to give a recital. It is quite the oddest thing; you don’t listen to a symphony which he plays on the organ; you see it. He will send the organ, electrical attachments, lights, portable stage and screen, to Silverwood; and his men will install everything in the armoury.
“Then, if it would amuse your guests, I could tell them a little about your jades and crystals, and do it in a rather unusual way. I think you’d rather like it. Shall I?”
He wrote some days later: “What a darling you are! Anything you do will be charming. Sissly’s men have arrived and are raising a racket in the armoury with hammer and saw.
“The stage will look quite wonderful between the wide double rank of equestrian figures in armour.
“Aunt Hannah writes that you called on her and that you and she are coming up on the train together, which is delightfully sensible, and exactly as it should be. Heaven alone knows how long you are going to be able to endure her. It’s rather odd, you know, but I like her and always have, though she’s made things disagreeable for me more than once in my life.
“Your room is ready; Aunt Hannah’s adjoins. Quarters for other guests are ready also. Have you any idea how I look forward to your coming?”
Three days later his guests arrived on the first three morning trains — a jolly crowd of young people — nineteen of them — who filled his automobiles and horse-drawn vehicles. Their luggage followed in vans, from which protruded skis and hockey sticks. There being no porter, the butler of Silverwood House received them in front of the lodge at the outer gates, offering the “guest cup,” a Desboro custom of many generations, originating in England, although the lodge had stood empty and the gates open since his grandfather’s time.
“There was, for a moment, an unconscious and unwonted grace in his manner”
Desboro welcomed them on his own doorstep; and there was, for a moment, an unconscious and unwonted grace in his manner and bearing — an undefined echo in his voice of other and more courtly times, as he gave his arm to Aunt Hannah and led her inside the hall.
There it exhaled and vanished as Mrs. Quant and the maids smilingly conducted the guests to their variou
s quarters — vanished with the smiling formality of his greeting to Jacqueline.
The men returned first, clad in their knickerbockers and skating jackets. Cocktails awaited them in the billiard-room, and they gathered there in noisy curiosity over this celebrated house not often opened to anybody except its owner.
“Who is the dream, Jim?” demanded Reginald Ledyard. “I mean the wonder with the gold hair, that Mrs. Hammerton has in tow?”
“A friend of Aunt Hannah’s — an expert in antique art — and as clever and charming as she is pretty,” said Desboro pleasantly.
“High-brow! Oh, help!” muttered Ledyard. “Where’s your library? I want to read up.”
“She can talk like other people,” remarked Van Alstyne. “I got next on the train — old lady Hammerton stood for me. She can flirt some, I’ll tell you those.”
Bertie Barkley extracted the olive from a Bronx and considered it seriously.
“The old lady is on a salary, of course. Nobody ever heard of anybody named Neve
rs,” he remarked.
“They’ll hear of somebody named Nevers now,” observed Captain Herrendene with emphasis, “or,” he added in modest self-depreciation, “I am all kinds of a liar.”
“Where did you know her, Jim?” inquired Ledyard curiously.
“Oh, Miss Nevers’s firm has charge of cataloguing my armour and jades. They’re at it still. That’s how I first met her — in a business way. And when I found her to be a friend of Aunt Hannah’s, I asked them both up here as my guests.”
“You always had an eye for beauty,” said Cairns. “What do you suppose Mrs. Hammerton’s game is?”
“Why, to make Miss Nevers known where she really ought to belong,” replied Desboro frankly.
“How high does she plan to climb?” asked Barkley. “Above the vegetating line?”
“Probably not as far as the line of perpetual stupidity,” said Desboro. “Miss Nevers appears to be a very busy, and very intelligent, and self-sufficient young lady, and I imagine she would have neither time nor inclination to decorate any of the restless, gilt-encrusted sets.”
Van Alstyne said: “She’s got the goods to deliver almost anywhere Mrs. Hammerton chooses — F. O. B. what?”
“She’s some dream,” admitted Ledyard as they all moved toward the library.
There were a lot of gay young girls there in skating costumes; Ledyard’s sister Marie, with her large figure and pretty but slightly stupid face; Helsa Steyr, blonde, athletic, and red-haired; Athalie Vannis, with her handsome, dark face, so often shadowed by discontent; Barkley’s animated little wife, Elizabeth, grey-eyed and freckled and brimming with mischief of the schoolboy quality; the stately Katharine Frere; Aunt Hannah; and Jacqueline.
All except the latter two had been doing something to cocktails of various species; Jacqueline took nothing; Aunt Hannah, Scotch whiskey with relish.
“It’s about the last of the skating,” said Desboro, “so we’d better take what we can get as soon as luncheon is over. Pick your partners and don’t squabble. Me for Mrs. Hammerton!” and he led her out.
At table he noticed that Captain Herrendene had secured Jacqueline, and that Reggie Ledyard, on the other side, was already neglecting his own partner in his eager, good-looking and slightly loutish fashion of paying court to the newest and prettiest girl.
Aunt Hannah’s glance continually flickered sideways at Desboro, but when she discovered that he was aware of her covert scrutiny, she said under her breath:
“I’ve been shopping with her; the little thing didn’t know how to clothe herself luxuriously in the more intimate details. I’d like to see anybody’s maid patronise her now! Yours don’t know enough — but she’ll go where there are those who do know, sooner or later. What do you think of her?”
“What I always think,” he said coolly. “She is the most interesting girl I ever met.”
“She’s too clever to care very much for what I can offer her,” said Mrs. Hammerton drily. “Glitter and tinsel would never dazzle her, James; pretense, complacency, bluff, bragg, she’d devilish soon see through it all with those clear, intelligent eyes — see at the bottom what lies squirming there — anxiety, self-distrust, eternal dread, undying envy, the secret insecurity of those who imitate the real — which does not exist in America — and who know in their hopeless hearts that they are only shams, like that two-year-old antique tavern yonder, made quaint to order.”
He said smilingly: “She’ll soon have enough of your particular familiars. But, little by little, she’ll find herself in accord with people who seek her as frankly as she seeks them. Natural selection, you know. Your only usefulness is to give her the opportunity, and you’ve begun to do it, bless your heart.”
She flashed a malicious glance at him; under cover of the gay hubbub she said:
“I may do more than that, James.”
“Really.”
“Yes; I may open her eyes to men of your sort.”
“Her eyes are open already, I suppose.”
“Not very wide. For example — you’d never marry her. Would you?”
“Don’t talk that way,” he said coldly.
“No, I don’t have to talk at all. I know. If you ever marry, I know what deadly species of female it will be. You’re probably right; you’re that kind, too — no real substance to you, James. And so I think I’ll have to look after my intellectual protégée, and be very sure that her pretty eyes are wide open.”
He turned toward her; their glances met level and hard:
“Let matters alone,” he said. “I have myself in hand.”
“You have in hand a horse with a runaway record, James.”
Cairns, on her left, spoke to her; she turned and answered, then presented her well-shaped back to that young gentleman and again crossed glances with Desboro, who was waiting, cool as steel.
“Come, James,” she said in a low voice, “what do you mean to do? A man always means something or nothing; and the latter is the more dangerous.”
As that was exactly what Desboro told himself he had always meant, he winced and remained silent.
“Oh, you — the lot of you!” she said with smiling contempt. “I’ll equip that girl to take care of herself before I’m through with her. Watch me.”
“It is part of your business. Equip her to take care of herself as thoroughly as anybody you know. Then it will be up to her — as it is up to all women, after all — and to all men.”
“Oh, is it? You’ve all the irresponsibility and moral rottenness of your Cavalier ancestors in you; do you know it, James? The Puritan, at least, never doubted that he was his brother’s keeper.”
Desboro said doggedly: “With the individual alone rests what that individual will be.”
“Is that your mature belief?” she asked ironically.
“It is, dear lady.”
“Lord! To think of a world full of loosened creatures like you! A civilised society swarming with callow and irresponsible opportunists, amateur Jesuits, idle intelligences reinfected with the toxins of their own philosophy! But,” she shrugged, “I am indicting man himself — nations and nations of him. Besides, we women have always known this. And hybrids are hybrids. If there’s any claret in the house, tell Farris to fetch some. Don’t be angry, James. Man and woman once were different species, and the world has teemed with their hybrids since the first mating.”
Mrs. Barkley leaned across the table toward him:
“What’s the matter, James? You look dangerous.”
His face cleared and he smiled:
“Nobody is really dangerous except to themselves, Betty.”
She quoted saucily: “Il n’y a personne qui ne soit dangereux pour quelqu’un!”
Mrs. Hammerton added: “Il faut tout attendre et tout craindre du temps et des hommes.”
Reggie Ledyard, much flattered, admitted the wholesale indictment against his sex:
“How can we help it? Man, possessing always dual persona
lity, is naturally inclined toward a double life.”
“Man’s chief study has been man for so long,” observed Mrs. Hammerton, “that the world has passed by, leaving him behind, still engrossed in counting his thumbs. Name your French philosopher who can beat that reflection,” she added to Desboro, who smiled absently.
“All the men there had yielded to the delicate attraction of her”
From moment to moment he had been watching Jacqueline and the men always leaning toward her — Reggie Ledyard persistently bringing to bear on her the full splendour of his straw-blond and slightly coarse beauty; Cairns, receptive and débonnaire as usual; Herrendene, with his keen smile and sallow visage lined with the memory of things that had left their marks — all the men there had yielded to the delicate attraction of her.
Desboro said to Mrs. Hammerton: “Now you realise where she really belongs.”
“Better than you do,” she retorted drily.
After luncheon there were vehicles to convey them to the pond, a small sheet of water down in the Desboro woods. And while a declining sun glittered through the trees, the wooded shores echoed with the clatter and scrape of skates and the rattle of hockey-sticks crossed in lively combat.
But inshore the ice had rotted; the end of such sport was already in sight. Along the gravelly inlet, where water rippled, a dozen fingerling trout lay half hidden among the pebbles; over a bank of soft, sun-warmed snow, gnats danced in the sunset light; a few tree-buds had turned sticky.
Later, Vail came and built a bonfire; Farris arrived with tea baskets full of old-fashioned things, such as turnovers and flip in stone jugs of a century ago.
Except for a word or two at intervals, Desboro had found no chance to talk to Jacqueline. Now and then their glances encountered, lingered, shifted, with scarcely a ghost of a smile in forced response to importunities. So he had played an impartial game of hockey, skated with any girl who seemed to be receptive, cut intricate figures with Mrs. Hammerton in a cove covered with velvet-smooth black ice, superintended the bonfire construction, directed Farris with the tea.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 647
