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Title: The unpretenders

Author: Ruth Cranston

Release date: November 4, 2023 [eBook #72022]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: John Lane Company

Credits: Aaron Adrignola, Gísli Valgeirsson, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE UNPRETENDERS ***





                           THE UNPRETENDERS

                          BY THE SAME AUTHOR


            THE CHALK LINE.              12mo.   $1.25 net.

            VICTORY LAW.                 12mo.   $1.30 net.

            COMPENSATION.                12mo.   $1.30 net.

            THE UNKNOWN WOMAN.           12mo.   $1.30 net.

            THE MECCAS OF THE WORLD.      8vo.   $2.00 net.


                      JOHN LANE COMPANY, NEW YORK




                                  THE
                             UNPRETENDERS

                                  BY
                             ANNE WARWICK

                               AUTHOR OF
         “VICTORY LAW,” “THE CHALK LINE,” “COMPENSATION,” ETC.

                               NEW YORK
                           JOHN LANE COMPANY
                                MCMXVI


                          COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY
                           JOHN LANE COMPANY


                               Press of
                      J. J. Little & Ives Company
                           New York U. S. A.




CONTENTS


                                                                    PAGE

I. ANNE--JUST A PLAIN WOMAN                                            9

II. TIMOTHY--ONLY A WRITER                                            33

III. GLADYS-MARIE--MERELY A MAID                                      59

IV. SHEILA--SIMPLY A SOCIETY PERSON                                   80

V. WARNER--WHAT ELSE BUT A WAG                                       104

VI. CHALMERS--CLEARLY A CLUBMAN                                      126

VII. PIX--PURELY A PHILANTHROPIST                                    147

VIII. RICHARD--NO MORE THAN KING                                     178

IX. LUCIA--A MERE WIFE                                               205

X. ROGER--PLAINLY AN IDLER                                           227




THE UNPRETENDERS




I

ANNE--JUST A PLAIN WOMAN


“Perhaps Anne----” suggested Michael.

“Why, yes--certainly, Anne,” seconded Doromea, eagerly. “Of course
Timothy’s our friend, but Anne knows that we have just this last chapter
and--all we need do is to ask her.”

“Um-m. What is she doing?”

“She was trimming a hat on the west porch a few minutes ago.”

“_Trimming a hat?_ Why, she never has one on her head!” Anne’s husband
looked at his unfinished manuscript aggrieved.

“I think it was Gladys-Marie’s hat.” Doromea struggled back of plot to
remember. “It had a look of Gladys-Marie--an incoherent sort of cloche,
you know, that was meant to have been a sunbonnet.”

Michael laughed. “If you weren’t my sister I should be afraid of you,”
he said, looking at her admiringly. “You see too deep--even in hats.”

“But I cannot trim them,” answered Doromea, seriously. “Anne can--she
can make the most delicious hat out of an old square of lace or
something. I can’t even tack a plume in place and have it look like
anything but a curled poker.”

“You can only help write books,” smiled Michael, “and this one”--he
smoothed the thick pile of closely written paper--“is the best you’ve
ever helped to write. Er--suppose we just go and speak to Anne.”

The two figures, ludicrously alike in spite of the tall stoop of one and
the trim roundness of the other, hurried around the house to the west
porch.

“Is the book finished?” asked Anne, posing buttercups with an upward
glance of amazement.

“No--that is, not quite--just that one more chapter, you know; but----”

“It must be finished to-day,” concluded Doromea, firmly, “and--the post
came a few minutes ago and there was a letter from Timothy.”

“Yes?” Anne’s voice warmed. She had never seen Timothy, but Michael and
Doromea had made him sound very nice.

“Timothy,” said Doromea, mildly indignant, “with all his excellences,
has an abominable habit of not arriving psychologically at all.”
(Michael beamed--there was not a phrase of Doromea’s turning whose
cleverness he ever lost.) “He is coming this afternoon on the
four-thirty,” plumped Doromea, with no cleverness at all.

“I had better meet him with the cart when I go to Aunt Hester’s,” Anne
reflected, “unless--perhaps you had planned to meet him yourself,
Dorry?”

“No”--Doromea magnanimously overlooked the abbreviation of her cherished
name--“no, I hadn’t. Of course you’ve never seen him, but----”

“There’s no one else to get off,” Anne answered, simply.

“Oh, I didn’t mean that. I meant you have never met him, or anything.”
Doromea always floundered in her explanations to Anne--perhaps because
she found it necessary to make so many.

“Well, that needn’t worry her any,” put in Michael. “Timothy will make
her feel at ease right away.” And he smiled at Anne with an affection
back of which lurked an impatience to be off and at work, now that
incidental disturbances were disposed of.

“Then you’ll meet the four-thirty,” reminded Doromea, impressively.

“But you’re coming in to lunch?” called Anne, seeing them about to start
off. “It’s almost time.”

“I don’t know if we’ll bother with lunch to-day,” returned Michael,
absently. “You can ring, but don’t wait for us if we don’t come.”

“Gladys-Marie wants to go to the city,” commenced Anne, but the sharp
corner of the porch cut off her audience; “and I must read to Aunt
Hester and shell the peas,” she finished. “Gladys-Marie!”

“Yes’m--yes, my lady.” There was but one woman in the world to whom
Gladys-Marie would acknowledge such subservience, but one woman before
whom she would appear instantly--and awesomely.

“Here’s the hat, Gladys-Marie. Run along with it and have a good time,
only come back so that you can get dinner; and, Gladys-Marie, perhaps
you had better leave a little lunch on the buffet. I don’t believe the
others will be quite ready to eat with me.”

“Never are,” muttered Gladys-Marie, handling the hat as though it were
Venetian glass. “Sit with their noses glued over an old pad o’ paper all
day long, ’n’ the house ’n’ the meals ’n’ Lady Elinore ’n’ me c’n go
to--c’n go hang, ’s what I mean,” she apologized to Anne. “Oh, I know
you think I’m the pert one with me nerve carried round in me side
pocket, but I c’n see, I can; ’n’ if ever I see perruls cast before
swine--Gee! it’s plainer ’n any Sunday-school chromo ever tried to be.”

She looked back at the pearl in question with a kind of wrathful
tenderness. But the Lady Elinore, apparently, had not heard a word; only
the soft part in her warm gold hair was visible above the sewing in her
hands.

“She’s awful sweet,” sighed the worldling, pityingly, “’n’ twice as
smart with hands as I am. But--my word! she ain’t clever! The way she
lets herself get done an’ don’t even squirm about it pickles me!”

       *       *       *       *       *

The fussy little train steamed off with an important backward lunge, as
though to say, “There! I did the very best I could for you!” And Anne,
who alone with the station-master saw what it had deposited, could
understand how it lingered on the siding and switched back and forth
several times after it had given every pretence of departing. For the
spare, shortish person it had set down at the small station made of the
station a suddenly very wonderful place indeed.

“You are Timothy,” said Anne, gravely, going forward. “I came to meet
you--I am Anne, you know.”

“I am very glad to know.” When the spare person smiled like that the
station-master straightened his tie and began to whistle. “For you to
come to meet me is the most cordial introduction we could possibly have
had. Is that your cart?”

“Yes.” Since Timothy mentioned it, Anne thought it was not such a bad
cart, after all. “If you will put your bag inside I will get the
milk-can.”

“Oh, _I’ll_ get the milk-can, miss,” offered the station-master,
hastily, as though he were not in the habit of lounging over his pipe
while he watched Anne carry it night and morning. “There you are!” He
swung it up with a flourish.

“Thank you,” said Anne, and her eyes were bluer than before. “Did you
hear him call me miss?” she asked Timothy almost before they rattled
off. “He thinks I’m a girl.”

“I should say he was of a sound psychology,” pronounced Timothy. “I
suppose he hasn’t seen Michael following you about, then?”

“No.” Anne drew the reins a shade tighter. “You see, Michael has been
finishing his book--he and Doromea, I mean; and that keeps them very
busy. I come down for the milk by myself--unless sometimes Gladys-Marie
comes along.”

“And Gladys-Marie is----”

“My maid. She is very fond of dime novels and chews gum. I think you
will like her.”

“I am sure of it.” Timothy’s gray eyes had bent a little closer upon
Anne’s serene naturalness. “Do Michael and Doromea like her?”

“They have no time for her. They are too busy making up characters for
the book.”

“I suppose you help at that, too----”

“I?” Anne’s blue gaze marvelled at him. “Oh, no--I am not clever enough
to help Michael. Doromea is the only one who does that. Isn’t she
pretty--Doromea?”

“Yes,” said Timothy, so fulsomely that any woman would have known at
once. “But I wish she would stop being clever,” he added, after a
minute.

“Men always want wives who are not clever, don’t they?” Anne meditated.
“So many people said that when Michael married me. Are the women in
your stories clever, Mr.--Timothy?”

“Never,” asserted Mr. Timothy, solemnly--and traitorously to Doromea.

“They--they are just plain women?”

“Just plain women. That is why women never buy the magazines they’re
in.”

“But men do?”

“Oh, yes--men who have married the clever ones like to remember that
there are the other kind. And men who have married the other kind--your
kind” (this time it was Anne who straightened the little frill at her
throat)--“like to be reminded how sensibly they have done for
themselves.”

“Michael does not read your stories,” said Anne, turning a sharp corner
carefully. “He says he does not understand them in you.”

Timothy’s quaint twisty mouth grew twistier for a moment. Then he said,
“That is because he does not understand me in them--or you, or anybody
else one sees day after day--and never sees at all.”

“One doesn’t see you day after day,” objected Anne. “If one never saw
you at all, though, one would always be sure that one had--that one had
wanted to.” She looked up at his glasses without coquetry. “Doromea and
Michael have talked a great deal about you.”

Timothy groaned. “And said clever things about me, I suppose--epigrams?”
He waited, as for the worst.

“I think so. Yes, Doromea said you were a literary Roycrofter--that is
an epigram, isn’t it?”

“I’m afraid so--or a Mission-made metaphor. I wish”--Timothy’s voice
grew wistful--“she had said she hated me.”

“Said she hated you? Oh! I see”--Anne remembered--“you want her to be in
love with you.”

“She is in love with me,” admitted Timothy, modestly. “Only she thinks
it’s beneath her--being in love at all, I mean. She thinks it isn’t
subtle.”

“I suppose it isn’t,” Anne meditated, allowing the horse to walk in
zigzag laziness across the road and back. “That must be why I don’t mind
it,” she decided, as they came in sight of the house. “I’ve been in
love ever since Michael asked me to try to be--and a long time before
that.”

Timothy looked at her again more closely. “Michael should write better
books,” he murmured, getting down to open the gate.

“So you really didn’t mind our not meeting you?” Doromea’s anxiety was
most appealingly clothed in a rose-sprigged frock. “You see, Anne
offered, so we thought----”

“You thought you couldn’t be more gracious to me,” finished Timothy,
glad that Doromea’s hair curled over the ears as unsubtly as ever. “By
the way, where is Anne?” He looked about the wide homely porch, where a
work-bag and a tennis racquet spoke of some one, evidently just a plain
woman.

“She is getting dinner.” Doromea shifted uncomfortably to another chair.
“I wish I could help her, but I can’t even boil an egg--and not have it
crack! Anne is so practical.”

“And so impractical,” appended Michael. “Fancy letting Gladys-Marie go
to the city when Timothy was coming! And of course there was no one by
whom to send the manuscript, once we had finished it. Anne had gone over
to read to Aunt Hester, and Doromea hadn’t the least idea how to hitch
up.”

“Neither had you,” added Doromea, a little warmly.

“Naturally not--having been brought up in the city with you.”

“Poor people!” Timothy’s gray eyes commiserated them. “But now that the
book is done, you can begin to learn something?”

“I mean to find myself,” said Doromea, loftily. “And I shall have to go
off alone for the whole day in order to do it.”

“That would be very rude--and no help at all to you. Why not take
Gladys-Marie along?” Timothy meant it--though he had never seen
Gladys-Marie.

“I would, if she were not so typical.” Doromea was quite serious.
“Nowadays one must insist upon the unusual, or grow usual oneself. Even
one’s maid is an influence.”

Michael looked triumphantly at Timothy--they were used to holding some
argument together as to Doromea’s cleverness.

“I see--then how important we usual ones are, aren’t we?--for if it
wasn’t for us, all of you’d be usual, too!” Timothy’s smile included
Anne, who came out just at that moment, completely covered with a
checked blue apron.

“_Anne_--Timothy!” Doromea’s voice showed what she thought of aprons.

“Yes, I know--I met him.” Anne sat down, innocently, and began to fan
her flushed face. “Dinner’s ready,” she added, as an incident.

Both Doromea and Michael jumped up at once. “We didn’t have a bite of
lunch,” cried Michael, plumping down into his chair and attacking the
olives rather crudely. “By the time we had finished the book, you had
gone to Aunt Hester’s----” he turned to Anne.

“Yes,” said Anne, setting down the water-pitcher. “There was lunch on
the buffet, you know.”

“I told you!” Doromea triumphed at Michael. “I said Anne wouldn’t
forget--but you wouldn’t even go and look.”

“Oh, well----” Michael’s voice was a shade less agreeable than usual. “I
knew she was busy in the garden all morning, and trimming Gladys-Marie’s
hat--I didn’t suppose she’d think. Anyway, what does it matter? The
dinner’s tremendously good. Come, Timmie, tell us what you’ve been
doing--more Plain Stories?”

“Not so many more.” Timothy wondered inadvertently if Michael had put
Anne’s elbows in the book--they were exceedingly nice elbows. “You see,
there aren’t so many Plain People left to write about. Every one’s going
in for being extraordinary, these days--psychic or something.” He looked
at Doromea inquiringly.

“I go to New Thought lectures,” defended Doromea, promptly.

“Do you?” Timothy asked Anne.

“I don’t have time--besides, I’m afraid I wouldn’t understand. I never
went to college or anything.”

“Oh!” said Timothy, approvingly.

“You see, Anne”--Doromea interposed with a quick kindliness--“Anne
always lived in the country before she came to New York to keep house
for her grandfather--that winter we met her--so she isn’t as interested
in the new mental trend. You must take it up when we go back, though,
dear; after all, it’s the thing that counts--one’s psychic education.”

“I should say that depended on what one counts with.” But Timothy said
it so low that nobody heard him.

“Psychic education----” Michael crumpled his roll thoughtfully. “In the
book there’s a woman (Faero’s her name) who is absolutely the most
perfect psychic completion you ever encountered. Simply a _ripping_
creation, isn’t she, Doromea?”

“Wonderful!” Doromea sighed admiration; then she smiled, and all her
dimples came out, which was to Timothy much more important. “You see,
this woman, this Faero, has a way of seeing things--the most subtle,
evanescent sort of things that nobody could possibly see----”

“Eh?” Timothy bolted, involuntarily.

“And it’s she who gathers up all the threads of the plot--there really
isn’t so much plot, Michael--”

“No, not so much plot----” Michael paused vaguely over a stalk of
asparagus. “People are sick of plot nowadays. They want something less
apparent, less----”

“So this Faero is a sort of psychic gleaner,” went on Doromea, eagerly.
“All the subtleties other people let fall unnoticed she picks up and
treasures, until the mental of her, the infinitely fine sensitive
perception that’s stretched to the vibration of a thin, thin silken
string----”

“Gee whiz! Now ain’t I the late one! Me walkin’-papers ’n’ the cashless
mitt’s all I deserve, I guess--but honest, Lady Elinore, if y’ could uv
seen that Theatorium show! My word! it had Sothern ’n’ Marlowe lookin’
like two ice-cream freezers--yes’m! Why, when that girl, Phylo-Floretta,
jumped out of a forty-six story buildin’, into her waitin’ lover’s arms,
with Popper hangin’ out the winder threatenin’ air-ships--my eye! I says
to Mamie, I says, this may be riskay, but it’s life, I says! ’N’ y’ c’n
take it from me it was, too--oh!” From the window Gladys-Marie became
suddenly aware of new audience, and hunted for her vanity-bag to see if
her hat was on straight.

“A quaint person,” commented Doromea, when the buttercup hat had passed
on, to the tune of _The Rosary_, “though a trifle hectic in her
descriptive parts.”

Michael glanced again triumphantly at Timothy.

“I must go and see her about breakfast,” said Anne, rising.

“I thought you would play to us.” Michael’s voice was wistful as a
child’s. “Anne always plays to us after dinner,” he explained to
Timothy.

“I don’t play,” disclaimed Anne; “I only hum a little. There--tuck
yourself up--I’ll play for a while.” She brought his pipe over to the
hammock, and arranged two chairs undemonstratively tangent, before she
went in to the piano.

Timothy, who had wandered into the yard, gazed at Michael; he was
puffing peacefully as the simple little Irish ballad came to emphasize
his comfort.

“Does the Lady Elinore always sing like that?” Timothy asked
Gladys-Marie, who appeared (quite without reason) on the side porch.

Gladys-Marie listened. “I guess it’s you,” she said, finally, fumbling
with her pompadour. “Sometimes she sounds kind a sad, but--I guess
nobody could help pinchin’ their gladness a little when you’re
around----” Her eyes under the pompadour went from Timothy to the two
chairs Anne had left. One of them was occupied. “Her hair curls real
pretty, don’t it?” she added, generously--for Doromea and Gladys-Marie
had a vegetable understanding only. “An’ that rose-color is awful
becomin’----”

Timothy threw away his light and turned toward the rose-sprigged chair.
“It is a pretty dress, isn’t it?”

“Lady Elinore made it,” returned Gladys-Marie, proudly. “Sure it’s a
pretty dress!”

Doromea and Michael and Timothy sat on the porch. “I can’t think it has
been really two weeks since you’ve been here.” From the steps Doromea
looked at Timothy a bit dolefully. “But it must be--since it was two
weeks ago we--we sent the book off. Must you actually go to-morrow,
Timothy?”

“It seems a breach of sense to admit it,” Timothy agreed, looking at her
through the gloaming, “but my editors imagine that the summer has
created some new Plain People--at least they want me to come and see.”

“I suppose so,” Doromea sighed. “I wish some one wanted me to come and
do something,” she added, vehemently, under her breath. “Goodness knows
there’s been nothing to do here, since the book’s been finished. Anne
seems to be busy every minute,” she observed, aloud, “but I don’t sew or
cook or row, or anything--I don’t even play the piano!” This with a gust
of indignation, as some very good playing came through the window.

“It’s the book’s fault.” Michael’s voice sounded rather weary. “If I
hadn’t held you to the book every minute, you might have learned these
other things. But I never imagined for a moment that the publishers
would reject it--it seemed so much better than the first one, so much
subtler----”

“What did they say about it?” Timothy moved to where he could not see
the quiver of Doromea’s lips.

“They said”--Michael repeated with the monotony of one who has gone over
the lesson many times--“that they were much surprised and not a little
disappointed over the decided inferiority of this book compared with the
other; that I seemed to have striven for an effect rather than for a
truthful portrayal of actual life. Oh, they tore it up sharply enough!”
he concluded, breaking off as though the recital choked him.

“They did say,” Doromea comforted, wiping her eyes back of Michael’s
cushions--“they did say there was some clever dialogue in it--you
remember, Michael, where Faero talks with the rector? They mentioned
that especially.”

“Yes--yes”--Michael caught at the consolation--“where she says, ‘One can
be so many worse things than bad,’ and--Why, Anne said that, Doromea;
funny, isn’t it? Don’t you know, when we were talking about that
stable-boy who stole--the one who had been in the Reformatory? You said
you thought he was the baddest boy in the world, and Anne--why, yes, of
course!”

“What else did they say was especially good?” Timothy’s voice suggested,
with suspicious impersonality.

“Why, farther on, the scene between the kitchenmaid and the
policeman--that was a story of Gladys-Marie’s, Anne told us--awfully
natural, you know, and--er--local-colorish. They like that.”

“Yes, and the bit about the ladies’ clubs.” Doromea would not allow
Michael to omit anything.

“Surely, that--that was funny, you know----” Michael laughed heartily
for the first time since yesterday, when the book had come back. “That
was a conversation Anne had with--Doromea!” He sat all at once bolt
upright in his hammock. “Every one of those things was Anne’s! Every
single one of them--do you know that, Doromea?--and the publishers said
they were the only clever things in the book!”

“_Anne_--clever?” Doromea stumbled, dazed with the dawning of it.
“Why--why, Michael!”

“Yes”--Michael was standing up now, and almost excited--“yes, those were
Anne’s things--the clever ones--and all the rest was rot. We sat in
there racking our brains over subtle things to say, and all the time, if
we’d just listened to Anne, we could have written a perfectly
extraordinary book--the cleverest book in the world! It’s
maddening--it’s----”

“Do you know why it would have been the cleverest book in the world?”
asked Timothy, quietly--for Anne’s singing stopped just then. “Because
it would have been the story of just a plain, ordinary woman--and that’s
the rarest woman one can find to write about--women like Anne, and that
little Patsy sister of mine, and a host of others. Why don’t you go
in,” he said to Michael, gently, “and ask her to help you find her?”

As Michael slipped through the long window, Timothy moved to the step
below Doromea. “Aren’t you convinced that she’s the subtlest woman,
too--this plain, ordinary woman?” he asked. Doromea’s curly head was
bent very low. “Don’t you think you might like to cook, and sew, and
trim hats sometimes?”

His voice was so wistful that Doromea wiped her eyes quite frankly this
time. “I--I am perfectly wild to trim hats,” she burst out, laughing
between her sobs. “Oh, Timothy, I am so sick--sick--_sick_ of trying to
be clever and think up things! I am really the dullest, plainest woman
in the world.”

“I hope so,” said Timothy, gravely, taking the unskilful little hands.
“I need a heroine most awfully. You see”--turning her about to face the
library windows--“Michael has found his.” For Michael was standing by,
while Anne lit the lamp and undid a heavy pile of manuscript.

“Anne--just a plain woman----” Doromea’s voice caught--but with a
yearning desire. “Even Gladys-Marie had the sense to tell me that she
had the Duchess heroines beat by a lope! Do you suppose, Timothy”--her
hands crept to his shoulders pleadingly--“do you suppose that I can ever
learn to be as clever as Anne?”




II

TIMOTHY--ONLY A WRITER


Patsy thumped Timothy’s fattest yellow cushion viciously. “It’s all very
well for you to sit there and smile,” she scolded her pretty stepmother.
“Dad was always perfect to you, and Timmie--if he is my brother--is a
joy to keep house for. You’ve never known what it is to live with a man
from Boston!--oh, how I hate him, how I’d like to make him fairly eat
slang! The idea--my own husband saying I was r-rowdy, and--and tomboy,”
Patsy’s head went down into the yellow cushion, “and before my own
mother-in-law, too, just because I slid down the banisters! Ugh!”

The stepmother looked at Patsy’s lovely rebellious little head. Then she
looked at the ridiculous scrap of a frock she was making. “I suppose he
thought of the Angel,” she murmured.

“And why?” Instantly Patsy sat bolt upright. “The Angel’s my child, of
course--every bit as much as he is Warren’s--but why I shouldn’t slide
down the banisters when I want to, just because I happen to have a
baby--one might think it was my grandchild!” The disgust that tilted the
small impudent nose made the stepmother bite her under lip hard.
“Anyway, it’s all over now. I’ve left Warren for good, and when he gets
back from Washington and finds nobody in the house he’ll realize that
I’m sufficiently capable of action, though I can’t talk like a Macaulay
essay. When he finds not only me but the Angel gone----” she listened
suddenly--a faint cry came down from some place upstairs.

“I expect the house will seem still and--and strange.” The stepmother’s
soft voice had a little ache in it as she listened too.

Patsy got up and walked to the window of the bright morning-room with a
defiant shrug that was meant also to be quite indifferent. “He deserves
it,” she defended. “Every bit of it. He behaved like a brute--a
perfectly gentlemanly good-form Prince Albert brute; and when he has to
go to Congress and give dinners and things without any wife, he’ll be
sorry he was so abominable. He’ll remember that I could be grown-up and
dignified when I want to. As for me, I can toddle on my own----”

“H’m?” The stepmother looked up inquiringly.

“Get along by myself, I mean, and take care of the Angel quite--quite as
well as though I had a husband. I dare say Timothy won’t mind my staying
here for a bit?” Patsy’s hauteur melted into an appealing wistfulness.

“Of course he won’t mind,” returned the stepmother, warmly. “He has some
news----”

“And then,” went on Patsy, unheeding, “I can take--steps.” The vague
importance of the decision seemed to reassure her; for she came back to
her old place on the sofa and plumped down into the cushions almost
cheerfully.

“I--before you take--er--steps,” suggested the stepmother, tentatively,
“why not consult Timothy?”

“Consult _Timothy_?” Timothy’s sister faced about amazed. “W-what on
earth could Timothy know about it--about leaving one’s husband? He’s the
dearest boy in the world--a ripping good sport and all that--but, after
all, Claire, he’s only a writer. He doesn’t know anything about things
that _happen_.”

The stepmother sewed for a few minutes in silence. Then, “Nobody else
knows that--that it’s happened yet, do they?” she asked, rather
anxiously.

“No,” said Patsy, shortly. “I told the maids I was coming over to stay a
few days with my brother, that’s all. Of course, Laura Hastings was
spending the week-end with me when we had the scene--when Warren and his
mother came in from Boston, I mean, and found me--_Patricia_---- Oh,
yes,” with a wry face, “she calls me that, Warren’s mother! As I was
saying, Laura was there, sliding down too, as it happened, and you know,
Claire, Laura’s the worst gossip in New York. She has told it all over,
I suppose, that Warren simply _ordered_ me to get down--anybody might
know such a good-looking man would be a tyrant!--but she can’t say a
word about me, for I was the sweetest thing possible all the time she
was there. I wouldn’t condescend to quarrel, you may be sure, even
afterward, when only Warren and his mother were there.”

“They went on to Washington that same night, you said----” the
stepmother creased a tuck thoughtfully.

“Yes--Warren had some business. His mother”--Patsy’s scorn pelted her
words out--“went to a convention of the Women Militant, if you know what
that is. Warren’s coming back to-day. Well”--she straightened her collar
belligerently--“he’ll find a note on the pincushion that will explain a
few things.”

“Ahem!” The stepmother coughed deprecatingly. “He’s been taking some
rather tiresome trips lately, Warren, hasn’t he?”

“Oh, of course he has--but what difference does that make?” Patsy’s
guilty compassion stirred itself to impatience. “Nobody wanted him to go
to Congress except his mother--though of course I was glad he got the
election,” she admitted, grudgingly. “But it’s meant running back and
forth from New York to Boston and from Boston to Washington all the
fall. This last Sunday simply capped the climax of everybody’s
endurance. Why the goodness his mother had to come down with him, just
that time when he was going to find me on the banisters----” She shook
her pretty head despairingly.

“Hello!” whistled somebody. “So the Plain Little Sister
has come to congratulate me--what? Didn’t I see
a--er--perambulator-rocking-chair-crib, folded compactly as in the
advertisement, out there in the hall?”

“Yes.” Patsy kissed her brother with characteristic vehemence. “It is
the Angel’s. We’ve come to stay.”

“Oh,” said Timothy, curling his spare shortness into a huge chair, “how
disappointing! I mean, that is, I thought you had come to congratulate
me, you know.”

“Congratulate you?” Patsy flew at him. “On what?”

“Why, on Doromea, of course. I’ve got her to marry me.”

Patsy regarded the stepmother reproachfully. “And you never told me a
word,” she said, with an air of deep injury. “I’ve been here two hours!”

“There was a good deal to talk about,” demurred the stepmother, soberly.
“You were telling me, you know.”

“Yes--yes, of course.” Patsy’s injury transferred its object to the
primary interest. “Timothy, I’ve left Warren.”

“That was nice of you,” commented Timothy. “Stay as long as you can.” He
looked at his sister’s pretty hair contentedly; it curled over the ears
like Doromea’s.

“But you don’t understand----” Patsy was seldom impatient with Timothy;
she tried to remember that he was a writer. Then, too, they had been
chums together always. “You don’t understand. I’ve left him forever. I’m
not going to Washington with him. He--he insulted me; he called me
a----”

Timothy uncurled himself in his interest. “Yes,” he encouraged. “What
did he call you?”

“A--a t-tomboy!” Patsy’s lips quivered past control. “And his mother was
there and Laura Hastings, a girl who was staying with me--and a
perfectly horrid gossip, Timothy! Oh, he was a beast, that’s all. I’m
sure,” tearfully, “I can’t think what you all ever let me marry him
for!”

Timothy glanced over the auburn head at the stepmother. The stepmother
glanced at Timothy. But neither of them smiled.

“I have never had anything against marriage,” said Timothy, mildly. “I
have even persuaded one person to get over her prejudice against it.
Perhaps I am wrong--if so, you can win the eternal credit of convincing
me. And meanwhile, why not come with me to select an engagement present?
We can argue as we go along, you know.”

It was not an unattractive proposition. Patsy brightened. “You must wait
for me to change,” she warned, jumping up. “This frock’s a wreck. But I
brought five trunks. I thought,” doubtfully, “that as long as I was
leaving for good, I had better take everything with me.”

“A sound precaution,” commended Timothy, going over to the window.

“And you’ll look after the Angel?” Patsy stopped by the stepmother’s
chair. “It may divert me to go out for a bit,” she added, plaintively.
“Of course the poor boy--Timmie--can’t understand all I’m going through.
He’s a regular brick, but in love, poor thing; and then how could he
understand? He’s only a writer.”

“Only a writer,” repeated the stepmother, with an odd little smile. “A
writer about Plain People and their Problems. Yes, dear, run along. As
you say, it may divert you. If the Angel cries I’ll--I’ll give it
smelling-salts. I dare say I sha’n’t kill it.”

“Oh, no,” Patsy called back, pleasantly. “You couldn’t. It has Warren’s
obstinacy. But it’s a darling, just the same.” She flew up-stairs as a
lusty squall blew down to them.

“She hasn’t congratulated you yet,” murmured the stepmother, gazing at
Timothy with quite an unstepmotherly gaze.

“No--but she will to-morrow,” prophesied Timothy, with only a writer’s
intuition.

       *       *       *       *       *

The two short, blue-coated figures moved off briskly down the street
toward the Avenue. From the window, the stepmother smiled at the
identical cut of their shoulders, the boyish, easy swing of their same
stride; it seemed such a very little while since she had watched them
start off every day to school together--the blue coats had lengthened
such a little bit--and now---- Timothy engaged, and Patsy
married--married and half divorced; the stepmother’s nose wrinkled in a
funny smile. Ah, well! There are poignant foolish heartaches for
stepmothers as well as other people, but--just then the Angel cried. The
stepmother caught up the frilly frock and hurried upstairs; where there
is an angel----!

“For the Angel’s sake, I mean to have only a separation,” Patsy was
explaining to Timothy. “Besides, it--it will serve Warren Adams only
right not to be able to--t-to marry again. A Congressman without a wife!
Imagine it!”

“There have been instances”--Timothy was knocking leaves with his
stick--“isolated instances, I grant you,” he added, hastily, catching
his sister’s eye. “I think myself such Congressmen are to be felt for. I
suppose”--reflectively--“when Warren is sworn in, there will be nobody
there except his mother.”

“I suppose not,” returned Patsy, shortly; and ramming her stout-gloved
little hands into her mannish pockets, she began to whistle.

Timothy poked more leaves. They were scarcely at the corner of Madison
Avenue. “When one can whistle like that,” he observed to a silent
sparrow on the curb, “there is some point in letting the world know
about it.”

Patsy stopped whistling at once. “I always want to whistle when Warren’s
mother is about--even when it’s only in conversation. See here, Timmie,”
the small hand clutched her brother’s arm confidentially, “don’t
you--haven’t you always thought Warren’s mother was a bit of a muff?”

Timothy paused, over his glasses. “Muff?” he repeated--stupidly, Patsy
thought. “Muff--that was a pretty one she sent the Angel, wasn’t it? All
white and soft and fuzzy. She----”

“Oh, never mind, then,” Patsy cut him off impatiently. “If you’re not
going to agree with me, where’s the use of arguing? _I_ couldn’t help it
if she did send the Angel a muff--anyway, he sha’n’t carry it!” she
added, vindictively, under her breath. “Convention, tradition, what
people will say--booh! How sick I am of it all--wish I could make every
one of those words waltz themselves out of the big dic. forever!”

“Ah--about this present for Doromea----” When Timothy said that name,
Patsy looked up quickly; there was no earthly reason why a lump should
rise in her throat, but--“Doromea,” Timothy repeated, as though for very
spite. “It must be a very nice present, you know.”

“Then we’ll go to ----,” said Patsy, swallowing emphatically. “Everybody
goes there; my--my ring came from there, and Claire’s, and all our
family have always bought things there. It’s a sort of----”

“Habit?” supplied Timothy, kindly.

“Yes, habit.” Patsy gave a sigh of relief. If Timothy should have
guessed that she had _almost_ said tradition! “Certainly, habit--and,
well, we’re right there now, Timothy. It must be a ring, I suppose?”

Timothy’s gray eyes darkened to absorption. “I should say a ring might
do,” he deliberated.

“Sure thing!” Patsy was standing near a person who looked like Warren’s
mother, so she repeated, “Sure thing!” loudly and cheerfully. The person
started. “Diamonds--eh, Timmie? But”--to the clerk--“not a solitaire.
Solitaires”--feeling her own, under the heavy glove--“are so ordinary!”

“I rather fancy a solitaire,” protested Timothy, mildly. “Let’s see
yours, Pats!”

With a sublime indifference Patsy took off her glove. “It _is_ rather a
good solitaire,” she admitted, negligently.

“Would you take it off a minute, madam? I should like to compare----”

“Oh, no--that is, I mean”--Patsy blushed furiously--“I have never taken
that ring off--I--but I suppose I might just as well, now,” she
concluded, defiantly.

“Why not?” agreed Timothy--who was only a writer.

“I prefer not to take that ring off here,” said Patsy, with a colossal
dignity. “I--we will look at what you have in circlets.”

“Certainly, madam.” The clerk’s sandy head sank into a blue plush
show-drawer.

“There’s Laura Hastings!” cried Patsy, suddenly, “with a man--looking at
rings. And she never even hinted----! Do wait, Timothy. I must speak to
her a minute. Just like a gossipy person--never to tell one thing about
themselves!”

“Yes,” coming back breathlessly. “It’s true. They’re engaged. Laura
said”--Patsy’s breezy voice grew somewhat dry--“it was seeing me so
happy in my lovely home that really decided her--of course on top of
that I could hardly tell her--umm!” as the clerk reappeared. “Perhaps,
after all, a solitaire would be better--Laura’s getting one, and people
might say----” the minute the words were out, Patsy glanced fearfully at
Timothy; but Timothy was deep in settings. “Her friends might think,”
amended Patsy, “that you ought to have given Doromea one. Is Doromea as
pretty as she used to be?” she added, irrelevantly.

“She may sometime have been as pretty as she is now,” Timothy meditated,
“but it seems hardly probable. As a Plain Person--she wants you to show
her about things next winter,” he branched off. “The house and that, you
know. Anne and Michael are going to stay on in the country, so----”

“But I shall be in Washington,” blurted Patsy. “Oh, no--of course, I
forgot.” The blue shoulders sagged a bit forlornly as they turned again
to solitaires. “I shall be very glad to help Dorry all I can,” finished
Patsy, stiffly. “What do you think of this platinum one, Timothy?”

Timothy straightened his glasses to a critical focus. “Very nice--the
claws are so thin and fine--like those in the pin Warren gave you when
the Angel was born. I was always fond of that pin.” Timothy was talking
mostly to himself as he squinted closer at the solitaire. “I remember
Warren’s face when he went in to give it to you--‘’Tisn’t half good
enough,’ he said. And it didn’t seem to me then that it was, either.”

Patsy was staring at a case of watches--staring hard and with her back
to Timothy. Surreptitiously she got out her handkerchief.

“Then you’ll lay that one aside,” she suggested, lightly, though still
with her back turned. “And the flat one--Doromea might like that, it’s
so--so awfully subtle, you know. And Dorry always----”

“But not now,” corrected Timothy, gently. “She has advanced to the
infinite subtlety of forgetting that there is such a thing. I think we
won’t consider the flat one. What are you looking at over there, Pats?”

“Rattles,” replied Patsy, in a strangled voice. “Warren promised to come
in and get one with me for the Angel’s seventh birthday--seventh-month
birthday, you know. We bought his six-months one--that’s next
Sunday--three weeks ago!” The handkerchief went up to Patsy’s impudent
little nose, and blew it hard. “If it only wasn’t for Warren’s mother--”
she scolded, _sotto voce_, so that the clerk should not hear--“you know,
Timothy, I--but there, what’s the use in telling you? You wouldn’t
understand.”

“I might--though I do write things,” encouraged Timothy. “Why not try
me? We can pretend to be comparing rings over by the window.”

“All right.” Patsy gave a deep sigh. “You see, this is the way it is.
When--when I married Warren I was in love with him--I really was,
Timothy.”

“I remember you were,” said Timothy, gravely.

“Yes. And of course I was awfully young--_awfully_ young; though, to be
sure, I’m twenty-one now; I didn’t want to get married, you know----”

“No?” Timothy’s tone held only inquiry. He had the most tractable memory
in the world.

“Certainly not. I was talked into it. Warren and Warren’s mother kept
saying there was no sense in delaying the thing, and I supposed there
wasn’t, as we’d have to get married some time, wouldn’t we, being in
love and all?”

“Sometimes people don’t,” began Timothy. “In stories----”

“Oh, bother stories!” interrupted Patsy, rudely. “You promised to try to
forget you were a writer. Quick, look at these silly rings--that woman’s
listening. Well, so I married Warren, and for a while, you know, we
didn’t get along so badly--the first year we were married we hadn’t but
seven _serious_ quarrels; of course there were little things, but you
know yourself, Timmie, we managed very nicely.”

“It always seemed so to me,” Timothy came in promptly on his cue.

“That,” Patsy triumphed, “was because Warren was in love with me. He
didn’t care then how much slang I used or if I wore boys’ boots; I could
climb trees all day long when we were up at camp, and ride bareback all
over the place. But now,” the piquant little face grew tragic, “it’s
that same old thing--the glamour’s wearing off, and”--Patsy’s voice
sounded unpleasantly older than twenty-one--“my husband’s tired of me,
the real me. Now he wants me made to his order, to his mother’s order;
now”--a big tear splashed on her engagement ring--“I’m just the mother
of his child. I’m expected to be old and dull and mouse about in corners
with a book or some sewing. Sewing! When I can sail a boat better than
any one on Barnegat, and play hockey, and ride even the Blue Devil, that
all the Club’s afraid of! _Sewing!_”

“Claire sews,” Timothy reflected.

“Of course she does,” snapped Patsy. “Claire was born amiable and
womanly and all the sweet normal things a woman ought to be. I wasn’t.
I’ve never been anything but a harum-scarum r-r-rowdy, just as Warren
called me, I----”

“You’ve been the mother of the Angel.” Timothy spoke softly, almost
reverently. “Claire has only been allowed to be a stepmother.”

“That makes it just so much worse,” choked Patsy, flashing diamonds as
though for her life. “I--can’t you see, I don’t deserve to--to be the
Angel’s mother! Tha--that’s what Warren thinks.”

Timothy looked down at the trembling softened mouth, at the brimming
tawny eyes of his Plain Little Sister. “Warren is going to Congress,” he
said, letting Doromea’s ring slip on to his smallest finger. “I have
heard that at such times--just before they go--they hardly know what
they think. Everybody expects them to think something different, you
see. I should not be surprised if they did not even know what they
said--sometimes. There are stories----”

Patsy looked at him reproachfully. “You promised to leave out stories,”
she murmured. “You were just beginning to be comforting.”

“Um-m! So I did--so I was, I mean. The fact is, I almost believe they
forget what they have said, what they have thought, almost the minute
they have said or thought it. They--they get tired, you see. They have
to go off and make speeches, and their constituents keep dinning their
importance at them, the importance of maintaining the dignity of their
position, and that, you know; then they come home, a bit low and worn
out with it, and--they’re just plain ordinary people, Congressmen--they
lose their grip once in a while. They need----”

“Claire told you!” accused Patsy, though into her eyes had crept that
same look as when she was singing the Angel to sleep. “You knew it was
the day he came home from Boston, and went right away again.”

Timothy peered suddenly through his glasses at some one who was coming
into the store. “I did have an idea it was that day,” he
confessed--“one of those days, that is.”

“And of course,” Patsy’s voice gathered injury, “of all days his mother
had to choose that one to come along. And you know, Timmie, when
Warren’s mother comes along, it isn’t any suit-case party. There are
trunks to be checked and a maid to be hustled into the baggage-car, or
wherever it is they put ’em; and there’s a dog to be fought
about--Warren’s mother simply shrieks if they suggest putting _Toto_ in
the baggage-car--and half a dozen smaller parcels to be lost and found a
few times. Oh, I know!”--grimly. “I’ve had to play leading understudy in
the scream; and there was Warren, tired to a frazzle--you know he _was_
tired, Timothy----”

“I dare say he was,” Timothy was now the party of admission, “probably
very tired.”

“Coming into his own house---- Oh, well,” Patsy straightened her sturdy
shoulders and dabbed at one eye after the other. “It’s all over now.
I’ve left him, and where’s the good of talking about what might have
been? It’s only in stories that what might have been ever _is_. In a
story, now”--she arraigned the writer--“you’d have the hero
and the hero’s mother appear out of nowhere and fall on
the--er--pseudo-heroine’s neck, and offer a diamond necklace, while
pseudo-heroine exchanged apologies; and the whole family would trip
happily home on one another’s arms. Isn’t that so? Isn’t that just the
sort of impossible thing you have happen in those Plain stories of
yours?”

Timothy smiled, that same smile that had overcome Doromea’s prejudice
against marriage. “If you were writing a Plain story, wouldn’t you have
it end that way?” he asked, regarding diamonds unseeingly from behind
his glasses.

“I--I never wrote a story,” began Patsy, fumbling with her veil.

Timothy looked at her. “You couldn’t help writing one,” he said, and his
eyes were full of something that blinded Patsy’s. “At first, when there
was just Claire and you and me, it was a story of adventure--of wild and
thrilling dashes into the preserve-closet, and raids upon the
neighbors’ cherry trees; then”--his voice softened--“it was a
fairy-story, the story of a wonderful new world, all dazzling and
radiant with tender possibilities. Wasn’t it?” he insisted, gently.
“Wasn’t it for a while a fairy-story, Little Sister?”

“For--for a while, yes,” acknowledged Patsy, very low, “but----”

“But the castles had to fall,” went on Timothy, gazing wistfully at
Doromea’s gleaming ring, “the castles had to fall, and the Fairy Prince
had to become just a Plain Husband, or he would never have fitted this
Plain, Plain World; and the story had to become a _real_ story--ten
times more wonderful than a fairy-story, if one reads it with an eye to
life’s permanent values. Do you know”--Timothy took off his glasses and
looked at them meditatively--“we people who write things--that is, you
and I and all the world--are simply pestered to death by false climaxes?
Silly midget episodes jump up and insist that _they_--one after one--are
the great Turning Point of all our Plot. Pats, my dear”--he regarded
her seriously--“I make it a point not to believe ’em. I do really; I say
to myself: here, if you, the Big You, can’t recognize your own theme and
its outworking as you’ve planned it, as you want it, then you aren’t
much of a writer, that’s all. If you want your story to end a certain
way, and can’t make it end that way, just on account of the interference
of some puny bit of an incident, I say, well, after all, Tim, you ought
never to have been allowed to write. And so”--the gray eyes smiled
deeper--“just out of self-respect I have to make the end right, you
see.”

Patsy glanced at him suspiciously. “_That’s_ a story with a moral,” she
asserted, though her voice was rather unsteady; “the most impossible
kind of all.”

“It is,” confessed the writer, unabashed, “a story with a moral. But I
refuse to admit it’s impossible. And if you will go back again to those
rattles, I think you’ll refuse to admit it too. The----”

“Why”--Patsy had turned and walked a few steps back into the
store--“why, it’s Warren! Warren, Timothy--and----”

“His mother is over looking at necklaces,” nodded Timothy, modestly.
“Not diamond ones, but still----”

“She heard me say I wanted some pearls for my birthday,” Patsy murmured,
guiltily. “She--she’s got her bag with her. They can’t have gone up to
the house yet---- Timmie, Timmie dear--do you--do you suppose I might
speak to Warren, just to tell him not to mind the pincushion note, you
know--as long as he’s looking at rattles, Timmie----?”

“As long as he’s looking at rattles,” agreed Timothy, judiciously, “I
should say you might speak to him--yes.”

And as Patsy flew across the aisle, he deliberately turned his back and
bent his glasses once more on engagement rings. “So foolish to let
oneself fear that a Plain Story won’t end well,” he mused to the ring
with the fine platinum claws; after all, he was only a writer.




III

GLADYS-MARIE--MERELY A MAID


“So, ’s I was tellin’ you this mornin’, Marmaduke,” Gladys-Marie flipped
her dish-towel at the yellow kitchen cat, “I ain’t so thrilled over the
i-dea. As Adalbert said to Evelyn Hortense, in _The Madness of a
Handsome Hero_, when the grewsomeness o’ this black scheme was sprung
upon me, I--well, Marmaduke, though ’twas me own missus, Lady Elinore,
put it up to me, I says, ‘Oh, pshaw!’ I did, fer a fact. Course I knew
all along Lady Elinore and Mr. Michael was goin’ away, ’n’ leave me here
to head off th’ burglars, but w’en she--bless her heart!--come in here
yesterday mornin’ ’n’ broke it to me that that Mrs. Verplanck was goin’
to be here while they was away----! Marmaduke, me boy, y’ could ’a’ had
me fer this dish-rag, I was that limp ’n’ speechless. ‘Mrs. Verplanck
’n’ her husband need a change,’ says Lady Elinore, in that kind o’
pitiful sweet way o’ hers. ’Y’ see, they live in a hotel, ’n’ they don’t
know nothin’ about a home, or the country,’ she says. ‘I’m dependin’ on
you, Gladys-Marie, to mak’ ’em see how nice it is. Yes,’ she says,
drawin’ on her sixteen-button gloves thoughtful--like the heroine when
she’s plannin’ the day-nooment--‘you c’n teach Ellen ’n’ Knollys a lot,’
she says.

“Oh, I know it’s funny, Marmaduke! Y’ needn’t squint yer old wall-eye at
me! I know just ’s well ’s you that fer me, Lady Elinore’s gen’ral
housemaid, to teach Mrs. Knollys Verplanck ’n’ husband anything is such
a Hippodrome-size joke, y’ couldn’t get anybody t’ laugh at it. ’N’ my
eye! W’en the station-master drove ’em over last night, I says t’
meself, it’s you that has the nerve, I says, t’ imagine Lady Elinore was
drivin’ at anything but a joke, herself. Anyway,” Gladys-Marie patted
her pompadour reassuringly, “she don’t even wear a transformation, ’n’
she’d be real plain, Mrs. Verplanck, if ’twasn’t fer her eyes. My, but
she has the lamps, Marmaduke--all big ’n’ black ’n’ soft--’n’ the
clothes! Gee! makes a _Bon Ton_ colored plate look like a suffragette!
Now git out o’ my way, yer Grace, ’n’ pertly too--I gotta get a hike on
an’ lift in the dinner. Livin’ ’n hotels don’t give ye no correspondence
course in th’ gentle art o’ waitin’.” And Gladys-Marie shoved Marmaduke
affectionately under the table as she pinned on her scrap of a cap and
took up her tray.

“Really quite a quaint place, don’t you think, Knollys?” Mrs. Verplanck
was saying, as Gladys-Marie came in with the soup. She sat languidly
back in her chair, so that the gracious candle-light touched her
shimmery gown to even more wonderful glory than a _Bon Ton_ colored
plate. “It was most awfully sweet of Anne and Michael to turn it over to
us for this week, though I dare say they grow bored enough with the
quiet. I can’t think why they don’t come in to town for at least the
winter.”

“Lady Elinore says th’ country in winter’s the most gorgeous place in
the world,” plumped Gladys-Marie, twirling her tray resentfully. “‘N’
last winter we had taffy-pulls ’n’ sleigh-rides, ’n’ corn-roasts, ’n’
toboggans, ’n’ Miss Dorry ’n’ Mister Timothy says people was just
fightin’ over bids t’ come out here. I used t’ think th’ city was th’
lobby o’ heaven meself, but my word! ’tain’t nothin’ to the
country--Lady Elinore’s country!” She looked at Mrs. Verplanck
earnestly.

Mrs. Verplanck looked at her--as though Gladys-Marie had never been
heard to say a word.

“Er--rather an interesting person, my dear.” Knollys Verplanck put up
his eye-glasses after the little maid’s retreating figure. “A
bit--er--chatty, certainly, but--er----”

“Anne has spoiled her scandalously,” returned Mrs. Verplanck. “Fancy her
putting in like that, in the midst of serving! No waiter at the hotel
would dare think of such a thing. And then calling Anne ‘Lady Elinore,’
as though she were a personage--it’s absurd. Yet Anne seems entirely
satisfied with her.”

“Um-m!” Mr. Verplanck looked about the charming, well-ordered
dining-room. “She does seem a good servant, doesn’t she? This soup is
excellent.” And, behind the big bowl of daffodils, he tipped his plate
for the last spoonful--a thing he would never have dared to do in the
hotel, before a waiter.

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Verplanck admitted, indifferently, “I suppose she can
cook and sweep and things, this--er--Marie (I can’t really be expected
to call her whole name), but she gives no tone, no prestige to the
place, does she? And that’s so important nowadays, when one’s
friends--really, Knollys, I think we should move to the St. Midas this
spring. Where we are now, it hasn’t the name it used to have, you know.”

“No?” Knollys looked mildly undisturbed. “Then why not take a house some
place? Really, Ellen, this--this strikes me as very pleasant, this house
of Michael’s; all the room, you know, and no liveries forever
underfoot. Even this--er--Marie person’s a relief. I’ve been Sir-ed now
for over ten years. Do you know it is ten years since we went to live at
Marble Court, Ellen?”

“We were married ten years ago next Sunday,” Ellen’s great black eyes
were softer than usual, “and we went to live at the hotel directly we
came back from our honeymoon. Yes, it is almost ten years, Knollys. But
I’m quite contented; aren’t you? We should never be as comfortable in a
house as we have been at Marble Court, I am sure. A house is such a
care.”

“I suppose it is.” Knollys smothered his sigh--it was ten years since he
had remembered to sigh for a house. “Too much trouble, and all that.”

“Yes,” said Ellen, firmly. “And with all I have to do--and next year I’m
up for the Four-in-Hand Club--oh, it’s not to be thought of, of course.
No doubt you were only joking, Nollsie----” yet she looked at him a
little anxiously; for in spite of the ten years, she was more than very
fond of him.

“Joking?” When he let his gaze fall, in that absent-minded way, it
suddenly occurred to her that he was almost forty. That slight silvering
of the hair about his temples (which secretly pleased her, as an
aristocratic touch) took on a hint of new significance. “Joking? Yes, I
suppose I was, my dear. I suppose I was. Yet”--his voice grew unwontedly
wistful--“it would have been nice if I hadn’t been, wouldn’t it? If our
house hadn’t been just a joke. Anne and Michael----”

“Anne and Michael are the two most erratic people one knows,” put in
Ellen, somewhat shortly. “As a criterion, they aren’t to be taken
seriously. They hide themselves here in the woods in order that Michael
may write books---- Oh, they’re good books, I admit that (as Knollys
started to interrupt)--but what Anne does with herself while he’s
writing them I can’t imagine. A week here is very nice; but a lifetime!”
Mrs. Verplanck’s slender hands went up in expressive wonderment.

“That--er--Marie girl said the winters were all right,” reminded
Knollys, tentatively; “she said----”

“My dear----” Mrs. Verplanck regarded her husband with the nearest
disapproval she could turn upon him. “And what if she did? Do you think
_she_ knows--what would be all right for you and me? After all, you are
Knollys Verplanck, of Wall Street and Marble Court. This girl--this
Marie may be perfectly conscientious, perfectly respectable; but she is
nothing but a plain person, my dear Knollys, merely a maid, is she not?”
And with reassured composure Mrs. Verplanck rang for her.

       *       *       *       *       *

“What are you doing?”

Two days later, and Mr. Verplanck was squinting his glasses for a nearer
view of Gladys-Marie’s trim stooping figure. The stoop was over a bed of
strawberries, near which Marmaduke sniffed about for catnip, guileless
and very, very yellow in the morning sun.

“I’m weedin’ this strawb’ry-patch,” puffed Gladys-Marie, looking up very
flushed in the face. “What’re _you_ doing?”

“I am--ah--I am doing just nothing,” admitted Mr. Verplanck, suddenly
aware that it was a trivial occupation. “But I should like to weed very
much if I----”

“You’d spoil yer clothes,” said Gladys-Marie, briefly; “‘n’ besides,
what’d she say t’ you?”

Mr. Verplanck stopped regarding his spotless white flannels and regarded
Gladys-Marie somewhat sharply; then--“She can’t say anything,” he
returned. “She shut me out of the kitchen because she was making
angel-food; and whatever I may do in revenge---- I say, Gladys-Marie, if
I were to change my clothes, you know?”

“There’s a pair o’ Mister Michael’s overalls in the closet under the
stairs,” Gladys-Marie relented. “But you’re s’ much taller---- Ain’t he
the handsome figger of a man, though?” she murmured to Marmaduke as
Knollys disappeared within the house. “An’ t’ think o’ him cramped up in
a hotel! My eye! he’d ought a have the whole world t’ run around in!”

And Marmaduke blinked assent as he swept his yellow tail majestically
among the tall grasses.

“Y’ see,” said Gladys-Marie, when she had turned over her trowel to
Knollys, “this is Lady Elinore’s strawb’ry-patch, ’n’ while she’s away I
gotta keep it goin’ fer her. D’ye ever notice, Mister Verplanck, how
much more ye feel like doin’ fer other folks w’en y’re in the country?
In the city it’s ev’ry kid fer ’imself, ’n’ a rush t’ get the main graft
first. But in th’ country, seems like there’s time fer other people, s’
much time that yerself kind a fergits its kickin’.”

Again Mr. Verplanck glanced penetratingly at her, the plain
conscientious person; but the curve of a pink ear was all that he could
see. The rest of Gladys-Marie seemed to have been absorbed by the
strawberry-bed.

“I guess I never told you about George--the swell middy I’m engaged to?”
From the green leaves the friendly voice went on unself-consciously.
“He’s gotta serve another year yet, an’ honest, Mister Verplanck, before
I come to th’ country I took on worse ’n any Deserted at th’ Altar, over
the dee-lay. I was thinkin’ all th’ time about me clothes, ’n’ how we
c’d board for a year er two, George ’n’ me, so’s t’ put on a little more
style, y’ know. But now--well, I tell y’ on the straight, since I got
this country habit, style kinda strikes me like movin’ picters at a
vaudyville. I’m s’ keen on the main show, I ain’t no time t’ waste on
it. So George ’n’ I’re goin’ t’ be married next June, out here; ’n’
we’re goin’ to have a House!”

When she said that, Gladys-Marie looked up with a smile that did things
to Knollys’s throat. A House!

“Nollsie! Nollsie!” Before he could answer the little maid, some one
called from the kitchen porch. “I’m going to make the icing now--you can
come and help, if you like.” Looking up from the strawberry-patch, one
could see Ellen, pink-cheeked and swayingly girlish in her blue cotton
frock. “Why, Nollsie Verplanck!” As she caught sight of the overalls her
laugh rang out as Knollys had almost forgotten it used to ring.
“Whatever are you doing?”

“There--run along, quick!” Gladys-Marie took the trowel from him with
an impetuous hurry. “Don’t che see? She wants ye t’ help her!---- ’N’
what I was ever s’ cross-eyed ’s to call her plain for, it ’ud take a
couple o’ Con-an Doyles t’ tell me! Don’t it beat Paree how some people
c’n get all their best points brought out by chambray at ’leven cents
th’ yard?” And Gladys-Marie looked up wistfully at the two just
disappearing into the kitchen. She would have liked to go in and make
icing with them, as she often did with Lady Elinore; but something back
of her pompadour reminded that she was merely a maid. So she sighed, and
went on weeding Lady Elinore’s strawberry-patch.

In the kitchen, Mr. and Mrs. Knollys Verplanck (of Wall Street and
Marble Court) sat opposite each other, with a big yellow bowl between
them. The blue of Mr. Verplanck’s overalls exactly matched the blue of
Mrs. Verplanck’s cotton frock.

“Great eye for color, Anne and Michael, ain’t they?” reflected Mr.
Verplanck, mildly, as he sifted sugar into white of egg, with some
absorption. “But a blessed good thing they left some of their clothes
around. Ours are rather--er--too exotic for this atmosphere.”

“Well, one could hardly bake a cake in white broadcloth, could one?”
defended Mrs. Verplanck, as though an excuse demanded itself.

“I never knew one could bake a cake at all,” returned her husband,
watching the clever white hands admiringly.

“Mother taught me before I was married; but of course at the hotel----”

“Exactly.” There was something so suggestive in Knollys’s complete
understanding that Mrs. Knollys glanced at him suspiciously from under
her thick black lashes.

“Anyway, we go back on Monday,” she reassured herself, aloud. “I--it
will seem natural to have some one to order about once more, won’t it?
With this Gladys-Marie I find myself falling quite into Anne’s lax
indulgence--why, do you know, Nollsie, this morning I even dusted the
hall for her, and sewed a fresh frill on her cap. Fancy!”

“I suppose that’s what Anne does while Michael’s writing books,”
fancied Knollys, dropping vanilla with fascinated attention. “Rather
fun, isn’t it?”

“Oh, for a while, perhaps,” acknowledged Ellen, carelessly. “Of course
we’re having great larks playing at it, this week, and the house is
sweet, but--after all, I’d rather have a little bit more tone, wouldn’t
you, Knollys?”

“Gladys-Marie wouldn’t,” said Knollys, gazing out toward the
strawberry-patch. “She says she’s so keen on the main show that she has
no time to think about style and things.”

“The main show?” Ellen looked up, puzzled.

“Getting married, you know, and--a House. A House in the country.”

“Oh!” For some minutes Ellen stirred in silence. Then suddenly she set
the bowl down on the table and untied her apron. “I think”--she took
Knollys firmly by the hand--“we will go up and put on our own clothes.
Gladys-Marie can finish the icing.”

“Certainly she can,” agreed Knollys, bewildered, “but why? Weren’t we
doing it perfectly well?”

“Too well,” returned his wife, succinctly, pushing him before her out of
the kitchen.

But as she saw him safely started up the stairs, she slipped back
guiltily for just one look at her cake.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mrs. Verplanck stood regarding a ragged wreath of daisies. Across the
centre ran “10 Yeres” in straggling brown-eyed-susan capitals. It was
Sunday morning.

“10 Yeres”! Something brighter than the dew upon the daisies brimmed
Mrs. Verplanck’s eyes and fell upon the awkward little wreath.

“Why, you silly goose, Ellen!” Her friend, Mrs. Deverence (out from town
for the anniversary), took her by the shoulders with an amused little
laugh. “Getting sentimental over a bunch of wild flowers!--it was merely
a maid who fixed them, wasn’t it?”

Mrs. Verplanck turned sharply to answer. Then she remembered the words
had a quoted ring. “Merely a maid,” she assented, mechanically, but in
spite of her, two more big drops of sentiment fell upon the daisies.

“It’s a good thing for you you’re going back to town to-morrow,”
declared Mrs. Deverence, briskly. “Another week of this morbid country
atmosphere----”

“It isn’t a morbid atmosphere,” contradicted Ellen, impolitely.

“With nobody in the house except a servant and your husband,” went on
the friend calmly. “Tell me, Ellen, hasn’t it seemed awfully odd, having
Knollys about, all the time?”

“About, all the time?” Ellen’s amazement was too frank to be mistrusted.
“Why, my dear Sheila, I’ve scarcely seen him. You see, he weeds the
strawberry-patch every morning, while I’m dusting and doing the flowers,
and then after lunch I have my sewing and practising--yes, actually I’ve
managed two hours a day!--and Knollys always gets through his mail and
goes to the village to wire for stock quotations--why, we’ve never been
as busy in our lives.”

“Um-m! And to-morrow it all ends----” Mrs. Deverence sat down very
practically to breakfast.

“To-morrow--yes, I suppose so.” Ellen sat down too--as though one chair
had been pushed from under her. “We go back--to the hotel to-morrow.”

“And I see you’re up for the Four-in-Hand.” Mrs. Deverence’s manner
added to itself blitheness as the men came in. The change in attitude
had never before struck Ellen as artificial.

“Yes--a regular club-gourmand she’s getting to be, eh, Knollys?” Hawley
Deverence’s weighty laugh took heavy possession of the charming sunny
dining-room as he slumped into his chair. “The women are usurping us,
Nolly, my boy--they’re usurping us!”

“And Ellen’s such a complex person,” amended Mrs. Deverence. “A whirl of
committees and things just suits her. Of course”--she looked brightly at
Knollys--“this is all very well for a week, but for a lifetime----!”

“I think it might do quite well for a lifetime,” said Ellen, sitting
very straight as she poured the coffee. “Two lumps, Hawley?”

“Er--thanks, three.” Hawley was staring at the graceful uplifted hands.
“Ah--you really do that very well, you know, Ellen,” he allowed,
graciously. “Don’t think I ever saw you pourin’ things before. You’ve
always been at the hotel, haven’t you?”

“Yes”--Ellen looked at Knollys with a smile that had a twist to
it--“always at the hotel.”

When Knollys looked back at her there was something in his eyes that
seemed to sweep away ten years.

“Well,” Mrs. Deverence announced, cheerfully, “a house is very
nice--we’ve had ours ever since we were married; but it’s a great
care--oh, a shocking care, really!--and for you, Ellen----” she shrugged
her pretty shoulders with a soft laugh. “I simply can’t imagine it. A
house for you would be a joke!”

“Why?” Knollys turned to her very quietly. “Why do you think so?”

“Oh, dear me, now I do hope I haven’t said something ultra,” fluttered
Sheila. “All I meant was the clubs and things, you know--dear Ellen has
so many, and so much to do.”

“I dare say you are right,” said Ellen, slowly. “A house for me would be
a joke. Yet--did I tell you, Knollys, what Gladys-Marie said yesterday?
‘Always seems t’ me,’ she said, ‘like a woman’s house is a sort of frame
for her, only some poor things don’t care enough about it t’ more’n
passepartout ’emselves.’”

“Ha! ha! Smart little baggage, isn’t she?” roared Hawley.

“But, my dear Ellen”--Mrs. Deverence raised her eyebrows a
trifle--“surely you don’t encourage a person like that to talk so freely
with you? Why, no servant at the hotel would dare----”

“No,” said Ellen, this time avoiding Knollys’s eyes. “No servant at the
hotel; but Anne’s and Michael’s servant----”

“Still, one can’t take them as an example, can one, dear? Delightful
people, of course, but a bit--er--eccentric. Her frocks--you know----”

“This is one of them.” Ellen smoothed it with a sudden tenderness.
“I--it has been a very nice frock.”

“Ahem! A very decent chap he is--the husband, I mean,” put in Hawley,
evidently feeling things a bit strained. “Writes A-1 books, doesn’t he?”

“It was really too dear of them to lend you this place, wasn’t it?”
Sheila came in conscientiously on her husband’s initiative. “Simply a
wonderful house!”

“Yes,” agreed Ellen and Knollys simultaneously, “a wonderful house!”

       *       *       *       *       *

The Deverences were gone. Knollys and Ellen sat on the porch alone.
Beside them lay Gladys-Marie’s wreath.

“Ten years,” said Knollys, meditatively. “Ten years--in the hotel. And
to-morrow we go back. To clubs and Wall Street!” There was no cynicism
in his brief laugh--just an ache, a sort of emptiness.

“Knollys Verplanck”--his wife laid her hands impressively upon his
shoulders, and even through the darkness he could feel the warmth in
her great dark eyes--“we’re not going back! That’s the only joke--I--oh,
those silly city people! Knollys!--Knollys dear, we’re going to have a
House. Say we are! I--I don’t want to be just passepartouted.
Knollys--couldn’t we--don’t you think we might pretend it’s ten years
ago? Don’t you think we might start over and be just plain married
people?”

And Gladys-Marie, coming round the corner of the porch just in time to
see Knollys’s answer, stole noiselessly back into the house with
Marmaduke. A conscientious person, Gladys-Marie, though, after all,
merely a maid.




IV

SHEILA--SIMPLY A SOCIETY PERSON


“She’s the sweetest thing in the world”--Doromea looked up extenuatingly
from a large hole in Timothy’s best socks that she was darning--“and
ever so lovable, Sheila, but----”

“Just a born butterfly, that’s all,” continued Ellen, for the moment
abstracted from dish-towels piled up before her to be hemmed, “a
captivating will-o’-the-wisp creature, made to have things done for
her--even thought for her; a----”

“Simply a society person!” Patsy sat triumphantly upright, with the air
of having nutshelled the whole argument. “Can you imagine Sheila,
sitting here on Ellen’s porch, with anything but a bridge score or a cup
of tea in her hand? Fancy her making baby-clothes!” There was a pitying
smile for the defrauded Sheila as Patsy bent again over the filmy
microscopic thing that she was stitching.

“She did do that clever little sketch for us to act at Anne’s last
Christmas,” suggested Ellen, doubtfully. It was partly through Sheila
that Ellen had come into possession of her own; through Sheila’s very
superficiality that Ellen’s desire for a house had crystallized. She
looked about the cool shaded porch and into the wide, charming rooms of
which she was chatelaine, and sighed contentedly. “If only one could
make her a bit more self-realizing----”

“Make her see that she is just a Plain Person.” Doromea was biting
thread. “Timothy says that’s where society people disparage
themselves--they’re always imagining themselves something extraordinary.
But the bewildering part about Sheila is that she doesn’t imagine
herself at all; she simply pays no attention to herself.”

“Hasn’t time,” Patsy explained, succinctly. “She’s always at the
Suffrage Club or at the theatre--you know, Dorry, she told Anne she
fairly lived in the theatre--or off with Hawley somewhere. Of course I’m
terribly fond of Hawley--he’s an excellent person, really, and makes one
the most delicious things to drink; but as a husband--well, of course he
isn’t like Warren.”

“Or Knollys.”

“Or Timothy!”

The three wives nodded at one another emphatically.

“He puffs so,” complained Patsy, returning to her mutton. “And all he
ever says when Sheila asks him something is, ‘Yes, m’ dear,’ or, ‘Do
jus’ ’s you like, darlin’.’ He does seem fond of her--but then, so many
men have been fond of one. It would have been so easy for Sheila to have
taken somebody a little less--er--_husky_. She’s such a midget, they
make each other ridiculous.”

“Didn’t she say they were going somewhere together this afternoon,
Ellen? Wasn’t that the reason she couldn’t come out from town to lunch
with us?” The socks were finished and folded, and Doromea turned her
attention entirely to the matter of conversation.

“Yes--that is, they were going to motor out to the Claremont, to try
Hawley’s new machine--how is it that society people _always_ have a new
machine?--and then to look at some ponies for the twins. Sheila said
she’d get Hawley to drop her here before he went back to town, if there
was time; she must be at the Elbert Lewises’ for tea, she said, and get
home to dine early. It seems there’s a first night of something. Did you
ever hear such a programme! How she keeps that pink and white look is
what I can’t fathom--bridge until all hours, and then day after day of
mad rushing about--all for what? I’m sure _I_ never knew, when I was
doing it! Why, when I contrast that ten years of slavery with this last
one----” Ellen’s great dark eyes softened happily. “And Knollys was just
as miserable as I; he confesses it, now that we’ve emancipated ourselves
from hotels and clubs and things. Poor Sheila! If she’d only
realize--for I suppose even butterflies must get tired of flying.”

“They’re always wanting to fly just a little higher.” Patsy wagged her
auburn head sagaciously. “And then they’re determined that the children
shall simply _soar_--Sheila says quite naïvely that her ambition for the
twins is too enormous to be taken seriously by any one else than
herself. I dare say she wants Margretta to marry a duke, and Maurice to
distinguish himself in polo, or something of the sort. Now all I ask for
the Angel is that he sha’n’t be President; I just won’t have him bully
me.”

Doromea and Ellen looked at each other; and--quickly--looked away again.
They had no children.

But Doromea smoothed Timothy’s socks upon her lap with very much the
same tenderness that Patsy smoothed the tiny frock. “The Angel’s a
dear,” said Doromea. “So are Maurice and Margretta, even though they are
society children. I shouldn’t wonder if they do other things besides
dukes and polo later on. Sheila herself may get to want them to.”

Ellen shook her head. “Not as long as she remains simply a society
person. It’s like running round and round in a chariot-race, always
pushing desperately to get ahead, but never able to make a wide-enough
swing outside the circle that’s been laid out. Poor Sheila!”

“Absolutely conventional!” In her conviction Patsy broke her needle.
“Must be deadly for her. Just suppose _she’d_ slid down the
banisters----!”

“It would have been a fad with the younger married set for a whole
week,” supplemented Ellen. “Sheila leads them all about by the nose, her
society. Well,” with a sigh, “I wish she’d come. Even her affectations
are charming; it’s only to herself that she doesn’t do justice. To other
people she’s delightful.”

“I wish she’d come, too,” joined in Doromea. “Somehow I never have time
to go to see her--it’s such an undertaking to go in to town.”

“And it used to be such an undertaking to come out,” Ellen laughed. “I
think it’s rather sweet of Sheila to bother. Ah”--as a cloud of dust
came round the corner of the road--“there she is now--at least I
suppose she will emerge shortly.”

And in another minute she had emerged; a tiny, wild-rose sort of
creature, all fluffy chiffons and flying yellow curls--a baby, you would
have said, until you saw her reach up and kiss her husband.

“Wasn’t he a darling to bring me?” she asked the other women, when he
and the machine had vanished down the drive. “He had two men to see by
three o’clock, and a simply terrifically important race to follow; but
he brought me out just the same. And he’s coming back for me--those
wretched Elbert Lewises!--but I promised Peter Butler I’d go to
something of theirs; they took care of Peter when he broke his knee that
time, and as long as he’s my cousin--well, what I meant to say in the
very first place was, how are you all? Patsy, where’s the Angel?”

“Up-stairs on Ellen’s bed, asleep,” returned Patsy, promptly. “Want to
go look at him?”

“Rather!” Sheila was tugging at the strings of her frilly blue
motor-bonnet. “There!--and I’ll just shed this coat, too; then I can’t
get him the least bit dusty.” She was out of the coat in a second, and
more childish than ever in her simple rose-colored frock.

“Fancy Sheila thinking about getting dust on the baby!” Doromea turned
to Ellen, as the two ridiculously young mothers disappeared inside the
house.

“A society person with ideas on hygiene!” echoed Ellen.

       *       *       *       *       *

“He does look so well and rosy.” Sheila peered wistfully at Patsy’s
Angel from under her long curling eyelashes. “And in Washington, too,
you can keep him always out-of-doors--there are so many squares and
flowery places.”

“Oh, yes,” said Patsy, cheerfully. “There are dozens of parks for him in
Washington; though I always look forward to this real country when we
come to visit Timothy and Dorry.”

“The twins have only our back yard,” reflected Sheila, her wide blue
eyes very serious. “Hawley got them swings and a sand-pile, but--it’s
always city for them; and they’re four years old now.”

“Why don’t you send them to the Park--Central Park, I mean?” Patsy’s
impulsive sympathy darted at once to the most obvious idea.

“I couldn’t go with them,” said Sheila, simply. “They would have to play
with their governess, and they wouldn’t like that. You see, when we come
home, either Hawley or I, we can always run down to the yard with them
right away. But it’s rather grim and stiff for them, poor dears, with
only trees in tubs and a fence all round. Some day perhaps we can afford
to live in the country.”

“Oh!” Patsy’s glance was rather blank. If she had not known Sheila to be
simply a society person, she would have suspected her of trying to make
an epigram. But, as Ellen said, Sheila paid no attention to herself--it
would never have occurred to her to attempt being clever.

“How was the new machine?” asked Patsy, steering away from what she did
not understand.

Sheila’s lovely little face beamed. “Hawley was _so_ pleased over it!
He says it’s a rip-snorter--the bulliest engine he’s had yet!” Hawley’s
large enthusiasm came quaintly from the small, almost infantile mouth.
“I’m so delighted; though it--it does go rather fast. I had to hold on
to the rail all the way out.”

“I’m crazy over them when they go fast,” protested Patsy, relapsing into
her old sportsman vernacular. “At the Vanderbilt Cup race----”

“Ah! You saw the play, then? You remember----” and the babyish features
lit up with a something that made downright Patsy blink with surprise,
as Sheila went on to enumerate certain scenes in the play, certain
thrilling passages--quoting, explaining, mimicking--so eagerly that one
had not the heart or any longer the interest to explain that one had
meant the actual race itself.

Patsy listened absorbedly. “And I never had thought she could talk,” she
told Doromea afterward. “But then she really didn’t talk; something just
talked through her.”

The something kept on talking, until Ellen came and “shooed” them
downstairs to the porch and Doromea. “Here I’ve been waiting for days to
see Sheila, and now you two go off and look at a year-old baby the whole
while! Tell me, Sheila, when are you going to free yourself of clubs and
bridge and suffrage leagues and theatres and things?”

“When Hawley makes me,” answered Sheila, serenely. She was fumbling for
something in her exquisite little gold bag--a half-finished lace collar
it rolled out to be. “I’m just crocheting this bit of fluff for
Margretta,” she explained, laughing a delicious, gurgling sort of laugh.
“Isn’t it a joke? I carry it about with me, and work on it between
acts--I did two rows in bed this morning--Fanchon was late with my
breakfast--and then lots more during the lectures at the Mechanics’
Association.”

“The Mechanics’ Association?” bolted Doromea.

“Yes--every Thursday at noon, you know.” Sheila was counting stitches
busily. “Air-ships it was to-day--the most _thrilling_ subject.”

“Oh!” Doromea sat back again. Air-ships; one could understand. Society
was engrossed with air-ships just at present.

“I do hope Maurice will take to air-ships,” murmured Sheila, dreamily.
“He’s so given over to fireworks now--some part of him’s always
exploded. If he keeps it up, he’ll look a guy by the time he’s old
enough to lead cotillons.” Behind Sheila’s back, Ellen and Patsy and
Doromea exchanged a triumvirate “I told you so”; if it was not polo, it
was less than polo; cotillons!

“And Margretta,” suggested Ellen, wondering if Sheila would have looked
as absolutely charming had she been hemming dish-towels instead of
crocheting Irish lace, “what is Margretta’s _raison de vivre_?”

“Margretta is going to be an actress,” said Margretta’s mother, slowly.
“She is absorbed with playing Little Red Riding-hood to Peter Butler’s
wolf at the moment. But later she will be playing--other things in Peter
Butler’s theatres. It saves so much management, having a cousin who owns
things one wants to enter.”

“And when your two offspring are at their separate vocations,” Doromea
smiled above the childish curly head, “while the one is whirring
furiously through the air, and the other acknowledging a triumphant
series of curtain-calls, what will you be doing? Where will you and
Hawley be?”

“Oh, I----!” Sheila shook her hair all into her eyes, as she laughed,
gayly insouciant. “I shall be still in society, of course--simply a
society butterfly! Hawley and I shall be still giving dinners and going
to Elbert Lewises’ and living within call of Wall Street and our clubs.
And perhaps--when we feel specially bored--we shall sneak down and play
in the sand-pile. But we shall always be doing the conventional, Hawley
and I--just Plain People, like the ones in Timothy’s stories” (she
turned to Doromea with a little nod of homage); “it is the children who
must accomplish the extraordinary. As Hawley says, we shall just be
going round the same old track, taking the same old hurdles--and happy
as larks at it!”

The careless, rippling voice stopped; for some reason Ellen and Doromea
had caught up their sewing again, and were stitching away at a hectic
pace. Patsy decided with great suddenness that she must go up and wake
the baby. Dumbness seemed to have seized everybody--except Sheila. But
then a society person is expected to keep on talking.

“That reminds me--I meant to speak of it when I first came--can’t you
come with me one night to see this play, _The Rut_, that Peter’s putting
on? He’s given me a box for all next week, knowing how I’ve always
remained the matinée girl!”--Sheila’s face looked up for a moment from
Margretta’s collar with an appealing ingenuousness--“and it would be
jolly if we could all go; you two and Knollys and Timothy. Patsy, too,
if she could be persuaded while Warren is away, and if she’ll leave the
Angel. I don’t know much about the play’s merits,” added Sheila,
indifferently. “But--they say it’s being talked about a good deal.”

“Timothy says it’s the most subtle satire of our generation,” put in
Doromea, eagerly. “He’s been trying to get seats for us all week, but it
was quite impossible. You see, a critic took him the first night, but
they had to stand the whole time--it _is_ good of you to ask us,
Sheila!”

“That play is absolutely the only thing that could get me to town on a
June night,” chimed in Ellen. “But that--why, it’s been running only ten
days, and already it is a classic; what a pity the author can’t be here
to receive his ovation! Mr. Butler gave it out that the man who wrote it
is abroad, and won’t even allow his identity to be divulged. So
extraordinary, in this day of the fame-greedy!”

“Perhaps he didn’t write the play for fame,” suggested Sheila, always
continuing to count stitches. “Perhaps he wrote it just because he
couldn’t help it; and now he wants to stay a Plain Person, with his home
and children and all.”

“He has children, then? But, yes--of course; it said in the papers that
that had been the most phenomenal part of his creation--introducing two
perfectly natural children in a satire of society! And then they say he
has the most remarkable range--that he handles theories of electricity
and deepest economical problems with the same piercing ease that he
does feminine psychology. _The Rut!_--you can’t know what a treat you’ll
be giving us, Sheila.”

“Then we’ll say Monday night, shall we?” Sheila had a trick of
reflecting other people’s eagerness--a quick little turn of the head,
that was compelling of still more enthusiasm. “Hawley will be able to go
Monday night, and we will motor you out in the new machine afterward.”

“Heavenly!” Doromea forgot that she had ever
felt--vaguely--uncomfortable, and dropped her work again.

“You are such satisfactory society people,” sighed Ellen. “Except when
you have to go away,” she added, as a siren blew its warning up the
drive.

Sheila jumped up. “It’s the bondage of our rut,” she said, lightly, once
more tying on the frilly bonnet; “you see, it is us this new playwright
has satirized--and idealized a bit as well, perhaps? Doesn’t he show
that we never go or stay, just as we please--that we’re forever doing
the things we don’t want to do; just because we fit our groove so
exactly? I think that’s it--awfully serious, isn’t it?” Her laugh rang
softly amused as she went out to meet her husband. “Till Monday,
then--you’ll meet us at the theatre at half past eight, and, oh--do
bring Patsy--where is she?”

“Coming!” Patsy’s pretty auburn head appeared at the door--over the
Angel whom she was holding. “Where am I to be brought, Sheila?”

“To see two perfectly natural children!” The blue eyes under the
motor-hood sought her husband’s. “But society children, I suppose,
Hawley--in _The Rut_, you know?”

“Yes, m’ dear, certainly; jus’ ’s you say.” He looked down at her with
the benignity of a large Newfoundland.

“To the Elbert Lewises’, then--good-by, good-by!” And Sheila’s fluffy
curls swirled round, hiding her face, as she was carried smoothly away.

“In the groove,” Ellen reminded Patsy and Doromea. “The man who wrote
_The Rut_ was right when he called it bondage, because the people fit
it so exactly. Poor little Sheila!--there’s something very pathetic
about her at times.”

“It’s because of her blind satisfaction with surface things,” said
Doromea.

“Because she’s simply a society person,” said Patsy.

       *       *       *       *       *

Monday night, and, at Peter Butler’s Theatre, _The Rut_ was nearing its
big scene. Doromea and Timothy, Ellen and Knollys, sat well toward the
front of the box--breathless with anticipations realized; Sheila and her
big, immovable husband were farther back--out of sight almost, against
the box door.

Timothy looked back at them anxiously. “I don’t suppose they’re thinking
much about it,” he sighed; “they look a good deal more taken up with
each other. And it’s the greatest play of our age--such a shame Patsy
didn’t come--nobody will ever do anything that can touch it; unless, of
course, the same author----”

“Sheila says the author doesn’t care to write any more,” said Doromea,
as the curtain went down on the first act. “Mr. Butler told Sheila that
if only the man would keep on, he could make a fortune and anything else
he liked out of plays. But he seems a strange creature, the author; he
prefers to remain just a Plain Person. No one even knows his name,
except Peter Butler.”

“Then how do they know he’s a man?” asked Timothy, suddenly. “Very
probably, you know, he isn’t---- I say, Dorry, Mr. Butler’s coming into
the box. After this next act I’m going to ask him.”

“Are you enjoying it?” Sheila called, her smile including Ellen and
Knollys. She was a veritable bit of froth to-night, Sheila, a Dresden
shepherdess in a cloud of chiffons.

“It’s splendid!” Ellen answered for them all. “But we want to know about
the author, Sheila--Timothy thinks it may be a woman, and----”

“I want to ask Mr. Butler,” said Timothy, looking at the manager, who
was absorbed in conversation with Hawley. “You see,” he smiled at
Sheila, “I’ve gone quite foolish over this play; it has stirred me so
enormously that----”

“Wait until after this second act.” Sheila’s small, frivolous head was
bent over an unruly glove-button. “Peter has an announcement to make
then, something or other about this author creature, and it might throw
some light on what you want to know. I think I’ll go outside for a bit,”
she added, as the curtain went up. “One gets so warm--and I’ve seen the
play before.”

Ellen and Doromea looked after her. Then they looked at each other. “If
only she could be brought to realize herself,” was in their eyes.
“Overlooking the big scene in the biggest play of her time because one
gets warm--and she has seen it before! Poor Sheila!”

Then the scene was on, and they forgot all about Sheila. Doromea sat
close to the box rail, and when once in a while she came to, stole a
second to look at Timothy, whose eyes were round and sending out little
sparks behind his glasses. Knollys and Ellen sat on the edge of their
chairs, oblivious even of each other. But in the back of the box was a
man who paid the deepest attention of them all; who watched the stage
with only less interest than he ordinarily watched Sheila. His big
thumbs held a book, which he followed closely as he followed the play; a
conscientious creature, Hawley, though perhaps not like Warren, or
Knollys, or Timothy.

When the curtain went down, he sat back and wiped his forehead
exhaustedly; though he had come every night, it was always the same. The
others were sitting back too, limp with the wonder of the playwright’s
conception.

“And now for the announcement.” Timothy drew a long breath.

Peter Butler had come out before the footlights: his clever, shrewd face
was very keen. “Playgoers,” he began, slowly, “have certain rights that
are all their own; one right is to adore the star, another to hear the
author make a speech. This play has been running two weeks now, and
still the author has not satisfied the theatregoer’s curiosity
about--herself.” He paused a moment to let the revelation sink
in--“herself.” “To-night, however, she has decided to break her silence.
I will let her tell you why.”

He stepped back into the wings; there was an excited buzz--which grew
into an uproar, and cries of “Author!” “Author!” followed each other
with an enthusiasm headed by the group in Sheila’s box. They were on the
_qui vive_, impatient, insistent; all except Hawley, who simply sat
quietly stolid, like an excellent husband-person.

“I could shake him!” declared Ellen to Doromea, her eyes always on the
stage. “This dazzling play--and now the author, and--oh!” She stopped
with a quick gasp, as once more the curtains parted and out in front
stepped--Sheila! “Why, what--what----” Sheila’s two friends fell back
speechless. It was the small butterfly creature who spoke
now--deliberately, and with a faintly smiling friendliness. She stood
scarcely five feet in her tiny, frivolous French slippers, a wide-eyed
rose-leaf doll, in a halo of golden curls and gossamer rose fluff,
before the dark dignity of the velvet curtain.

“Yes, I wrote it,” she confessed, looking out over the crowd without an
atom of self-consciousness. “I didn’t want to tell, because I’ve always
wanted the twins to do the extraordinary. I wanted to stay just their
mother. But Mr. Butler says it will help the play if people know who
wrote it; and I want to help the play. It’s a good play?” Like Peter
Pan, she searched their faces eagerly. “You think it’s a good play,
don’t you?”

“Yes!”

“Well, rather!”

“You betcherlife!”

Sheila dimpled. “Then it’s all right. I don’t mind your knowing; and I
can stay on in ‘The Rut’--it’s not such a bad rut,” she pleaded. “I’ve
dug it to pieces for you, but for myself I have had to put it together
again, since the groove of it is my life. After all, you see, the author
is just a plain, ordinary person!” With a gay little nod she slipped
back behind the scenes, and so to Hawley.

“That _is_ all I am, isn’t it, Hawley?” she asked, hiding herself behind
his bigness, as the applause rose more and more enthusiastic. “Simply a
society person and your wife--the mother of the twins.”

“Yes, darlin’--certainly; jus’ ’s you say.” But this time Hawley’s
expression was quite satisfactory to Ellen and Doromea.

“And we said she didn’t realize herself”--Doromea turned to Ellen--“we
said she could never swing wide enough to get outside the circle!
Ellen!”

“Just shows we have a rut all our own, doesn’t it?” Ellen was wiping her
eyes joyously. “We hadn’t the sense to see that she was staying in hers
voluntarily--that she was creating an ideal society person!”

“And they’re the most rarely plain people of all,” added Timothy--not
without reverence.




V

WARNER--WHAT ELSE BUT A WAG?


“ ... Just as I was telling Timmie the other night, when a man’s
serious--and only then--his trouble begins! Well, I must be tripping
along; promised to help Sheila give Lady Trotworthy tea--the dear old
soul’s mind isn’t so light on its feet any more, you know. Bye-bye,
Hawley. Bye, Plunkett.” Warner threw his coat over his shoulder and
departed.

Hawley moved his feet still an inch higher on one of the Club’s red
leather chairs. “Awful’ good fellow, Warner,” he vouchsafed, as
intelligibly as his cigar would let him.

“Fine,” agreed Plunkett (respectfully speaking, Mr. Knollys Verplanck)
from the depths of another red leather chair.

“Er--awfully _funny_, and all that, you know. Keeps things goin’. I
don’t know what Sheila’d do if it wasn’t for Warner, since she has that
old English Someone to stop. Nice old lady, y’know, but--well, her mind
_is_ a bit heavy on its feet, just as Warner said. Don’t know what he’d
say if he knew there was another coming to-morrow--another Englishwoman
I mean, but nothing like Lady Trot; Sheila says this one’s young and
tremendously good-looking. Well, I’m glad--for Warner. He deserves some
kind of reward after a week of Lady Trot. Deuced good of him to help
Sheila; he’s so--so funny, don’ che know.”

“Very funny,” agreed Verplanck again.

“But--but I say, Plunkett”--uneasily the substantial tan boots drew
themselves down from comfort, and Hawley’s big, solid body bent
confidentially toward his friend--“I wouldn’t have any of these other
chaps hear me, you know, not for worlds; but I’ve often wondered--d’ye
think Warner’s anything _besides_ funny, Plunkett? D’ye think--well,
what else but a wag is he, eh? _I_ dunno.”

“Well, I don’t,” said Verplanck, frankly; and he stared out across the
crowded Avenue, with an expression that paid Warner no little
compliment--by its regret. “I tell you candidly, Deverence, I’ve known
Jim Warner now for nearly twelve years, and I’ve never yet heard him say
anything but a joke. By George, the other night at Treadham’s, when that
girl’s dress was on fire, I could have _killed_ Warner! There the girl
was, in flames, and Warner, _with his eyes right on her_, sitting still
on the other side of the room, _telling a funny story_! Why half the
people in the room didn’t know she was on fire, even. I tell you, it
made me mad--so mad, I’ve scarcely been civil to Jim since.”

“D’you say anything to him about it?” Hawley’s cigar had gone out. His
big, good-humored face looked almost earnest.

“I told him--I couldn’t help telling him--I thought he might have made
some pretence at least, at aiding the girl, as long as he saw----”

“And what d’ he say?”

“He said ‘my dear boy, there were five of you aiding her already. I
never deliberately make myself inconspicuous!’ Yes, sir, that was just
exactly what he said!”

Hawley swore; plentifully. “And d’ye know,” he added, plaintive through
his disgust, “Sheila told me that was the funniest story she ever heard
in her life; told me about it after we got home, and by Gad, it _was_
funny! Began with----”

“Oh, of course!” Knollys shook his shoulders impatiently. “His stories
always are funny. He’s always funny. He can’t help being funny. But
great Heavens, Hawley, he _can_ help being nothing else! It does seem to
me that a fellow ought to have something come to him besides a laugh.
He’s got an almighty fine face.”

“Right!” Genuine affection beamed from Hawley’s dog-eyes. “I--don’t you
suppose it’s rather because he--there’s never been any woman, I mean?”
The big “society man” lapsed into sudden shyness. “I think all
that--that sort of thing, y’know, makes a tremendous difference, old
chap.”

The other man met his eyes squarely. “So do I,” he said; and it was as
though their hands had gripped for the moment. “Yes, I daresay you’re
right: Warner’s never had much to do with women--now I think of it, I’ve
never seen him with one, except Ellen and Sheila, and then only at
parties, or when there’s some guest to help entertain, like now at your
house. Odd, too, for Warner’s just the sort that ought to succeed with a
woman----”

“Yes”--Hawley nodded--“devilish good-lookin’, plenty of money, and
er--what d’ye call it? Debonair, y’know; um-m, that’s it, debonair.
Asked Sheila what it meant, and she said the sort of person who could
tell you his own tragedy as though it were some one’s else. Poor little
Sheila! I’ll bet she’s having her own troubles this afternoon--a
tea-party and Lady Trot all together--whew! S’pose I’d better run along
and help ’em out, what?” He drained his glass regretfully. “Come up for
a bit, Plunkett?”

“Thanks”--Knollys too was reaching for his hat--“I’ve to do ‘notions’
for Ellen: beeswax and binding-tape, and er--ah, yes! Elastic, you
know! Pale blue, a yard and--and how much, Hawley?” Mr. Verplanck’s
aristocratic nose wrinkled thoughtfully. “Blessed if I know.”

Hawley roared. “Come on up, when you’ve found out,” he called, as they
left each other at the foot of the Club steps. “Warner’s sure to have
some ripping story for us; so--er--so deuced funny, y’know, Warner!”

       *       *       *       *       *

In Sheila’s charming octagon room, an impatient little group of people
crowded about some one seated cross-legged on a quaint Chinese stool.
“Come, Sheila, do make him! He’s such a lazy beggar----”

“And he’s had his eternal three cups of tea; there’s not a particle of
excuse----”

“Warner, you Sphinx, unravel! We’re waiting, these fifteen minutes; why
are you invited, d’ye suppose, if not to tell stories? You’re no good at
all _en tête-à-tête_, you know.”

“My _dear_ Mr. Warner (it was a delightfully ugly old lady in a
marvelous tea-gown, who spoke to him), I’m afraid you really _must_
gratify them. Such noise--and my poor neuralgia--_really_!”

The person on the tabouret raised his careless attractive face to her,
smiling. “You win, Lady Trot! What shall it be, Sheila? Broad farce, or
screaming tragedy? Nothing so appallingly funny, you know, as a really
tremendous tragedy.”

“Then tell us one,” commanded Sheila--a veritable bit of her own Dresden
china, as she glanced at him over the tea-cups. She was genuinely fond
of Warner, the little society lady; his sense of the dramatic, something
told her, made them subtly kin. “Tell us the most awful--and the
funniest--tragedy you can think of, Jim, an original one, you know.” And
Sheila pushed her chair back from the teatable, and curled down into it,
in a luxury of anticipation.

“All right”--Warner’s drawl came a bit slower than usual; he was sitting
forward, gazing steadily at the fire--“I’ll tell you one. It--I’m quite
sure it’s original, that it’s never been told before. Because,” he
laughed contagiously, looking around at all of them, “it was my tragedy,
you see!”

“_Yours_--ha! ha!” Every one was laughing with him, as they drew their
chairs into a closer circle. “A tragedy that happened to Jim! That’s a
good one. Go on, Jim; it starts rippingly!”

Warner balanced a plate of frivolous pink cakes on one of his crossed
knees; his eyes, as he regarded them, were full of negligent amusement.
“She--that’s the way all tragedies begin, of course--was a bachelor
girl, and lived in a flat. Nothing very original about that, but then
she was the sort of girl who made the commonplace very nice. She even
made me very nice--for a time: at least so people told me. And out of
sheer gratitude, I suppose, I--silly ass!--fell in love with her.”

“Haw! Haw!” It was Hawley’s large roar that interrupted. He had just
come in, and was standing near the door. “Warner in love!--that’s the
best yet! Nothing that chap won’t tell, for the sake of a story. Funny
old Warner!”

“Fact.” Warner grinned back at him. “Well, naturally, when I realized
the shocking state I was in, I set about to pry into the lady’s
emotions. But _malheureusement_, I found she hadn’t any. That is, not
for me. There were other men--oh, a disgusting lot of other men!--with
whom she was shy, coquette, difficult--all the encouraging things, you
know; but with me she remained always that frightful neutrality, one’s
Platonic friend. So, things went; I mean, stood still. I went to the
flat, and she came out to dine; and, ah, yes; a pretty touch I had
almost forgotten--she always wore a tiny carved jade elephant hung on a
fine gold chain about her neck. Lends a neat flavor of the artistic,
that elephant, what?” He smiled at the little group whimsically. “Um-m;
one night at the Savoy----”

“Ah! It was in London then?” The ugly old lady’s beautiful bright eyes
betrayed what she thought of London. “You didn’t tell us that.”

“Of course--in London, five years ago last November. As I said, we were
having supper at the Savoy, and she told me she called the elephant Jim.
I thought it a crude joke, myself; but I let it pass.... I let it pass.
He did me no end of good turns after all, that elephant: every time I
was on the verge of insanity--blurting the thing, I mean, of course, and
so losing her for a pal or anything--I seemed to catch that old beast’s
green eye fixed on me--with the leeriest grin you ever saw. And I swore
I’d never be as clumsy as he, no matter if our names were the same.

“Well, to get on to the tragedy”--Warner’s laugh rang out so
delightfully clear that every one had to join in it; even Sheila, whose
adorable butterfly face had been rather serious in its attention. “One
dull afternoon I had dropped in to tea, as I did a shocking lot of rainy
evenings, and found her in a blue frock--um-m--a delicious frock
really--but blue and in a mood to match. After she’d made us each three
very bad cups of tea--and she generally made very creditable tea, too,
for a girl--I said: ‘Come, let’s have it! which of them is it--who’s
bothering you?’

“For a minute she looked as though she’d like to box my ears--you know
the kind of look, when you’ve just displayed a little perspicacity in
some one’s else affairs; then ‘it’s the one who isn’t bothering me,’ she
said, toying with the little elephant and looking at it in a peculiar
sort of fashion. ‘The one who hasn’t the perception to bother me--or
doesn’t want to,’ she added, in a rather lower voice.

“‘But who----?’ I began.

“‘Never mind’---- you know how girls are, the minute one begins to be
useful; nothing women hate so much as usefulness. A practical man has
absolutely no chance with ’em. ‘I’m absurd even to mention it to you. I
hate rainy days--they always make one so absurd. Come, let’s try those
new songs----’

“‘Not until you’ve told me----’

“‘What? I don’t intend to tell you anything,’ she declared--so firmly
that I knew she would end by telling me everything.

“‘Oh, yes, you do,’ I said--with that disgusting urbanity which has made
all my friends abhor me, more or less--‘yes, you do. First of all,
what’s his name?’

“‘J--Jack,’ she stammered. The reason people hate that urbanity is
because it’s a sort of subtle hypnotic.

“‘And he--ah, doesn’t bother you enough? Isn’t sufficiently courageous
in his attitude of approach, I mean?’

“‘Oh!’ she threw up her hands with a little gesture of abandon. ‘He’s
sufficiently courageous, I suppose; but he doesn’t _see_. Oh, I don’t
know why I tell you all this, but it’s gone on so long now--our being
just such good pals and all that--it--it’s getting on my nerves
frightfully. And then this beastly wet afternoon’---- she laughed a bit
hysterically. ‘Yes, yes; I’ll tell you. You see (she was twisting the
jade elephant almost off its chain) this man I’ve known for ages--a year
at least--and we’ve done everything together; I’ve always kept my best
jokes for him, and my craziest hopes and plans, and--yes, I’m afraid my
worst moods, too. He’s never seemed to mind somehow, no matter how
disagreeable I’ve been, and--well, just lately I’ve found that--that I
can’t go on being pals, that’s all. I daren’t even hint to him--I might
lose everything, you see; and yet--oh, don’t you see, if he _did_
care--and was perhaps in exactly my position--I’ve worn the mask so
faithfully. If he did care----! Oh, Jim (but she was looking at the
clumsy little elephant), isn’t it funny? Isn’t it funny, funny, funny!’

“And _’twas_ funny, now, wasn’t it? Nothing so frightfully funny as a
real tragedy. Now I--I was just clown enough to snatch at one little
ravelled end of her story, and try to match it up with a ragged corner
of mine--that, you see, was where the delicious joke of it came in. Of
course, I couldn’t be sure, but--something said slyly, ‘Why it’s you she
means, can’t you see? It’s you, you blessed idiot, and everything’s
coming out all shipshape.’

“Just the same, one can’t believe oneself just offhand like that--it
seems so reckless; so I suggested, carelessly, you know, that she bring
this tongue-tied impossibility to tea with me next day. In that way, I
told her, I could see exactly how things stood (and I meant it more
literally than she knew, by a good deal!); we’d tea at some
Galleries--good place, I pointed out, for me to watch this Jack person,
without his knowing it, and then (by this time my ridiculous tongue was
fairly tripping itself up with expectation) she and I would have another
talk, and decide her next move.

“‘Capital!’ she pronounced--a bit nervously, I thought at the time. ‘If
only I can get hold of Jack for to-morrow----’

“‘Oh, well, if to-morrow turns out impossible, any day next week will be
all right,’ I said cheerfully--the burning question being, of course,
whether she would find it possible, any day, to produce this
‘Jack’--whom by the way I was beginning to care for quite foolishly--as
one cares for oneself, don’t you know! ‘Say you meet him at the New, at
four; have an hour for the pictures--which means anything you want to
say to him, while I stroll quietly about after you--unobserved. Then we
go to tea _à trois_, and--the game’s complete. At tea----’ I
endeavored to look at her quite impersonally--‘I shall try to make you
understand just what I think. It’s understood?’

“‘Yes.’ She drew a long breath. ‘Yes, I suppose it might as well be
to-morrow as any other day. We can’t go on as we’ve been doing, that’s
certain.’

“‘No,’ I said--my voice as leading man was quite good in this part,
really! ‘No,’ I said, ‘we can’t. We must er--come to some new
arrangement to-morrow.’

“But will you believe me, when I said good-bye to her, that detestable
elephant actually leered at me; and for some unaccountable reason I was
suddenly furious at his being named Jim. A senseless liberty, I thought
it. However, when I was outdoors again, and walking home through
Regent’s Park, I began to think less and less about the elephant; more
and more about _her_ peculiar nervousness and agitation. The way she’d
answered me at first--‘it’s the one who isn’t bothering me--who hasn’t
the perception to bother me, or doesn’t want to’--and all the time
looking at that little jade elephant, _whose name was Jim_! Not such a
bad elephant after all, I decided.

“Then the way she hesitated when I asked his name: ‘J-Jack’ why of
course! She was always the frankest, most absurdly truthful creature;
and she had started to say--ah! It was almost too exquisite, even the
hint of it. And--‘it’s gone on so long now--our being just good pals’
came back to me on leaping little bounds of recollection; and then ‘oh,
don’t you see, if he _did_ care--and was perhaps in exactly my
position’--Hm! There was certainly no one else of whom she could
possibly have thought that; no one else who had been shown her ‘worst
moods’ as well as her ‘craziest hopes and plans!’ My children (Warner
passed his plate of pink cakes to each one of them, with an elaborate
bow, while his wonderful smiling eyes mocked their gravity), I assure
you, that was one of the most remarkable twenty-four hours I have ever
spent--from the time I left her, till the time I saw her again next
afternoon. Those of you who have known the emotion will remember its
alternative phases--of leaving one entirely strangled, and again
curiously hollow. I underwent them both, with breathless rapidity, all
night and the next day; and they left me rather weak-kneed and stuttery,
when I arrived at the Galleries at precisely half past four.

“I strolled about, and watched the Americans, at the same time keeping a
weather eye out for her--and Jack! Awfully amusing, you know, waiting
round for one’s fate to make up its mind! I never spent such a funny
half hour in my life!

“Then I saw her. And she was alone. And, you know, to this day, for the
life of me, I can’t remember what I thought--much less what I said or
did, when I saw her--alone--at five o’clock! I do remember she had on
another blue gown, some sort of tailored thing, with little lines in it;
and those lines danced themselves up and down and round that room, till
somehow they caught up those tiresome weighted feet of mine, and drew me
over to her.

“‘Jack not here?’ I asked--oh, with an enormous carelessness. My voice,
once out, sounded so odd, I just asked again to make sure.

“‘Jack not here?’ ‘No--no; that is, not yet. I can’t understand,’ she
went on hurriedly, ‘I wrote him a line--rather an absurd line, I’m
afraid--and told him if for any reason he couldn’t be here, to send me a
wire. And he didn’t send the wire, and I haven’t seen anything of
him--up till now.’

“Up till now! I was grinning like a fool, trying to remember all I had
planned to say, and failing utterly to say anything--until she took the
reins and suggested rather faintly that we might as well have tea.

“So we had it; and I gulped mine, and said quite the most brilliant
things I’ve ever said in my life--naturally, since I hadn’t an idea what
I was talking about; and watched her eat her muffin (which she did with
the most frantic deliberation), wishing to goodness she’d finish, so
that--well, one certainly could not propose, with _the person_ eating a
muffin!

“At last she did finish, and--I was cold from my head to my feet--I knew
it was The Time! She had given me undivided attention all during tea,
gave it me still. Her eyes had never once wandered after some one who
might be expected.

“‘Dear old girl’--I had leaned forward to where I could watch her eyes a
bit better; when suddenly I saw in them something--something I had never
seen before, something I have never seen since, in a woman’s eyes. It
knocked the breath all out of me--you see (Warner’s laugh was the
lightest thing in the world) I thought it was for me, that look. Great
joke!--for in another second she’d jumped up, run round the other side
of the table behind me, and held out both hands to--Jack! Some wretched
duffer I’d never heard of, he turned out to be; knew her in Paris or
somewhere, where she’d spent a lot of time. Seems that since he’d come
to England people had rather scared him off, by tales of _me_! Perf’ly
ridiculous, I told him; she told him, too. Absolutely extraordinary! Why
I--I was just old Jim, you know--like the elephant; good old friend--er
pal’s the word rather; good old pal, and all that, but--well, so that’s
the end (Warner stood up and faced them all, more debonair than ever),
for they lived happily ever after.”

“Yes, but--but how did this er--eccentric young person who preferred
some one else to you, effect the er--the explanation, I mean to say?”
came from Lady Trot’s dim corner of the room. “Such extremely quick
adjustment, you make it, dear Mr. Warner!”

“‘Twas,” said Warner blithely. “When I saw him, and he saw her, and she
waited to see what he’d say when he saw her, why I just said it for him,
d’ye see? ‘You’ve come to get congratulated, now haven’t you?’ I accused
him. And he half murdered my hand, and said that that was about it.”

“And then----?” It was Sheila, the little society lady, who questioned
very softly. But she did not look at Warner.

“Oh, then, having said my piece, I went away and left him to say his.
And do you know”--Warner’s drawl was one of exceeding gentleness--“I’ve
always cared for--Jack; like one cares for oneself, you know, the person
who should have been oneself. And I’m sure _she_ likes him; better than
the elephant. Such a clumsy, conceited beast, an elephant.”

He turned to have a laugh with Hawley, who--with singular interest--was
still standing by the door; when just then, in came Knollys Verplanck,
laden with parcels, and a little air of excitement as well. “I’ve
brought you your guest, Sheila,” he announced, over the heads of some
superfluous people. “Her husband deserted her at the door, to attend to
some luggage, so I offered myself as escort. Their boat got in a bit
ahead of time, you see.”

With a little rush, Sheila had come forward. “Joan, you _angel_, you
wretch, for not sending me a wireless--oh, where _are_ these lights!
Turn them on, do, Jim--and then I want you to meet Mrs. Herrington.
She’s--oh!” And every one else in the room drew in their breath
involuntarily also; for the lady with whom Warner was shaking hands, was
dressed in a blue tailored gown. And on a fine gold chain about her neck
she wore a tiny carved jade elephant.

“And is its name still Jim?” asked Warner, gently.

“Awfully funny, Warner,” said Knollys to Hawley, mechanically.

“Awfully funny,” agreed Hawley--a bit uncertainly.




VI

CHALMERS--CLEARLY A CLUBMAN


“But I can tell you _one_ thing, Claire”--Patsy looked at her stepmother
across a sea of chiffon, surging round seven fat red-lettered
trunks--“never do I go abroad for six months again! And if the Angel’s
education perishes (grimly) it’ll have to perish, that’s all; as long as
his father--as long as Warren remains what he is. Of course, I’ve always
known Warren was weak, but----”

“I’ve always thought you were rather glad he was weak,” ventured the
stepmother, her dainty silvered head half lost in the vastness of the
biggest trunk. “You have always said----”

“I’ve said I was glad he wasn’t infallible, certainly,” Patsy cut in a
bit shortly. “So I am. I wouldn’t have Warren goody-good--like so many
handsome men!--for anything. At the same time, you must admit there’s a
difference between--well, ordinary flirtation, and the sort of thing
Warren’s just confessed to; it must be a _very_ deep interest in a
woman, that would allow one to accept her influence in obtaining a
Cabinet appointment! I daresay (carelessly) you’ve seen the woman?”

“Yes.” The stepmother’s head was altogether lost to view, this time.
“Yes; I’ve seen her.”

“Warren didn’t tell me her name,” Patsy gazed hard at the lace she was
folding. “He started to, but I wouldn’t let him. I told him”--she
laughed lightly--“I really took no interest. He knew of course I could
find out from you, as you’d been staying here in Washington ever since I
went away.”

The stepmother opened her lips, but shut them again--rather tightly.
Then, “He lost no time in making a clean breast of it,” she said--as
though something forced her to say it. “And really, Patsy, the whole
affair--well, Warren certainly did not take the initiative; you know a
popular young Congressman----”

“Cannot afford to get himself talked about,” finished Patsy, rising to
the full dignity of her five feet five. “There is not the slightest use
in your pleading for Warren, Claire,” she said coldly. “Of course he
knew I should hear all about this Mrs.--Whatever-her-name-is, the first
tea-party I’d go to: his telling me, the first morning I got home, is
only a part of his other cowardice--he couldn’t bear to have me hear
from some one else. One can always tell one’s story more agreeably than
the onlooker, you know. However”--and Patsy’s smile made the little
stepmother wince--“we’re not twenty-one this time, are we, dear? And
it’s not such a serious case as when Warren caught _me_ sliding down the
bannisters!”

“I suppose we all like to slide down the bannisters, once in a while?”
The stepmother regarded Patsy rather wistfully. No, she was no longer
twenty-one, this beautiful, tawny-eyed little person. The ten years
since then--well, was not Patsy unpacking her trunks?--and quite
calmly? The stepmother wished--as with unreasonable ardor--that they
were back again at that day when she had packed them up and left Warren.
One can do so much more with the age that takes things tragically, she
reflected.

But, as Patsy said, it was not so serious now. Though the bannisters--in
the present case--were more slippery. “I suppose we all like to slide
down them?” persisted the stepmother. “When our playfellows are
gone--and there’s nothing else to do?”

Patsy kissed her. “You’re a dear, Claire,” she said softly. “It’s very
evident _you_’ve never lived in Washington ten years, and been--Warren’s
wife,” she ended suddenly. “Oh, I know well enough they never let him
alone,” she added, half under her breath; “women _can’t_, somehow, if a
man’s good-looking--and has influence. But there’s Kent Chalmers--one
never hears of Kent like that; and he’s quite as attractive as
Warren--well, _almost_--and if he liked he could have twice Warren’s
influence. But somehow Kent just saunters along--nothing in particular
happens to him, nothing in particular’s said about him. He’s just an
agreeable person--clearly, a clubman pure and simple.” Patsy laughed.
“That’s funny, isn’t it, dear? A clubman pure and simple! But” (the
lovely tawny eyes grew serious again) “Kent is; and he’s miles too good
for his wife--you know that, Claire”--Patsy’s voice came from the depths
of a huge cupboard, where she was storing away very small
boots--“Farleigh Chalmers is nowhere _near_ good enough for Kent.”

The stepmother gazed at the back of Patsy’s head--a little strangely.
“No--I don’t believe she is,” she said. “Patsy, I see the Angel--I see
Junior coming up the drive--and--_no_, my dear! He has _not_ got his
rubbers on! That child----!”

Patsy threw an arm around her. “Never mind, grannie dear. What’s it
matter, rubbers or not, when one’s ten, and owns a velocipede! Nothing
happens then, somehow, does it?” She was peering through the twilight at
a sturdy figure trudging up the drive. A very tall figure followed
it--rather slowly. “It’s Warren with him,” said Patsy, stiffening; “no
it isn’t--why it’s Kent! He’s come to say hello--but how odd of him,
when all the men are at the Club--and Kent’s such a _very_ clubman,
isn’t he? I think that’s rather sweet of Kent, Claire--I’ll run down
right away; he must have wanted to see me especially!”

“Yes,” said the stepmother, smoothing Patsy’s lovely hair, “he must.
I--I’ll just wait up here for Junior, dear. His feet, you know----”

Patsy laughed. “Of course. I’ll send him straight to you. I shan’t be
long down myself, probably; Kent will want to get on to the Club, you
know. It’s his business, Farleigh says--the Club!”

       *       *       *       *       *

“Well, Patsy?”

“Well, Kent?”

“You’re home?”

“Yes, I’m home. Oh, yes!”--Patsy’s eyes were following two absurd autumn
leaves, chasing each other across the wind-swept lawn. “I’m home,” she
said again--very quietly; as her eyes came back to the comfort of the
fire-lit sitting-room.

“Aren’t you glad, then?” asked Chalmers gently. He had sat down opposite
her, by the fire. Patsy admitted again that he was _almost_ as handsome
as Warren. Too bad he never _did_ anything, she reflected; he was too
good for just the Club. In fact, Patsy decided suddenly, he was good
enough to help her.

“Am I glad?” she repeated slowly, while her eyes still measured him.
“Well, Kent--you know all about it, of course--would you be? Oh, I
suppose I’m a little cad to answer you like that,” she went on swiftly,
“even though you are Timothy’s friend--my brother’s friend, and--my
husband’s. _Because_ you are, perhaps I should say. But Kent”--she faced
him squarely, with that little boyish movement of the shoulders that
Patsy would never lose, no matter how many tens of years went
by--“you’re my friend too--have been ever since I came to Washington;
and that’s a very long time. You know how I’ve worked for Warren, how
I’ve hated the work I had to do for him--because of the wires to be
pulled and the finesse to be made use of, all the sort of thing a
Congressman’s wife has to do, you know, and that was like driving nails
into the frankness Timothy and I had always been used to. But you know I
_did_ do that work, Kent--for Warren’s sake; nothing else in the world!
And (Patsy turned her head away abruptly) my reward was always, that I
was _everything_ to Warren.”

“Yes----?” Chalmers’ voice came to her like the strong grip of an
understanding hand.

“Well,--that’s all. You know--Warren says every one in Washington
knows--I’ve not been everything to him. It was only necessary for me to
go away for a very little time and--Warren found some one who was
_really_ everything to him.” Patsy looked across at Warren’s friend, but
he was shading his eyes, so that she could not see them. “Just put
yourself in my place, Kent; suppose Farleigh----”

“That is what I’m trying to do, put myself in your place,” Chalmers
interrupted very quietly; “and I admit it’s not a pleasant place, Patsy.
Still--Warren told you all this? He came straight to you, and told you
everything?”

“Yes. But----”

“He might very easily not have told you,” meditated Chalmers.
“People--in such cases, people don’t often tell, you know.”

“He knew, of course, I’d find out,” returned Patsy a bit scornfully. “In
this place every one knows everything.”

“Or invents it,” retorted Chalmers. “Tell me truthfully, Patsy, if you
had heard that Warren was er--interested in some other woman, that she
was using her influence” (Chalmers hesitated), “her husband’s influence
to get him a Cabinet appointment--Warren told you that?” he added
quickly.

“Yes,” said Patsy, very low.

“Then--_truthfully_--if any one in Washington had told you this thing
about Warren, tell me--would you have believed it? _Would you_, Patsy?”

There was a moment of rather tense silence; then “Warren sent you here
to plead for him,” Patsy broke out, tying her handkerchief in hard
little knots; “and you’re doing it--oh, cleverly! But it’s no good,
Kent. Of course, I wouldn’t have believed it; you know that. But it’s no
good, Kent, Warren----”

“And you don’t credit Warren with the wit to know it too?” Chalmers
interrupted, impatiently. “I daresay there have been stories, plenty of
them, about Warren, as there are about every politician, that have made
your blood boil, Patsy; and yet, with all the experience he’s had with
you, and knowing how much importance you’d attach to _this_ story if it
were to come to you in the usual way, you think that Warren told you the
truth himself because he was _afraid_? My dear Patsy, you don’t know
strength when it’s shown you!”

“My dear Kent,” Patsy’s voice was as cold as the fall wind that whistled
to them through the chimney, “I know weakness when I’ve lived with it
for ten years. Oh, you don’t need to remind me”--she went on
restlessly--“I know I’ve _liked_ Warren’s weakness, I’ve encouraged it,
I suppose, by begging him _not_ to be a saint and all that, like his
mother and all those Boston aunts had tried to make him. And, secretly,
I suppose too, I’ve rather gloried in being the stronger nature: I was
willing Warren should have the cleverness, the brains, if I could direct
them. I liked feeling myself always the power behind the throne, and all
that sort of thing, and--well, you can’t blame me if I resent having the
throne usurped in my absence!”

“Is that what you said to Warren, when he told you?” Chalmers had risen
and walked over to the window. It was very cold and bleak outside.

“I said to Warren”--Patsy’s friend had never heard quite _that_ note in
her voice--oddly hollow it was, and colorless--“that as he had made the
decision, he must abide by it. That we were both of us too sensitive to
make a scandal, and besides there was the Angel--Junior, I mean; I told
Warren we should have to go on living here, of course; but that--as he
had already chosen to go his way, I certainly should not interfere. I
had no idea of subjecting myself to more confessions like this
morning’s.”

“Yes!” Chalmers wheeled round suddenly and came over to her. “And I
suppose that while you were saying it, you felt very eloquent and
injured and pleased with yourself--that you were able to put it to him
so clearly, and convincingly. And you congratulated yourself for not
flying into a rage and making a scene, as so many women would have done.
The very fact that you were talking _down_ to him gave you a pleasant
thrill of self-approbation!--oh, I know you strong people,” he added
bitterly. “You’re the weakest people in the world!”

“Kent!” She was too astonished to be furious, even.

“Yes; I mean it. Lord knows I’ve been strong long enough to know,
haven’t I? But by Heavens, I’m beginning to fairly long to be weak! Here
you have a man (he still stood over her, sternly) whom you have,
confessedly, encouraged in his weakness, nay, _taught_ his weakness. You
teach him, too, to depend on you utterly, you give him all the
complement of sense and practical judgment that his own brains and
imagination need; then suddenly, and for the first time, you withdraw
all this--not heartlessly, for you had Junior’s welfare to consider; but
unrealizingly. You withdraw all this that Warren has depended on for
years, and he finds himself all at once alone. A hand is stretched
out--and you know as well as I do, Patsy, in Washington it is not _a_
hand, but many hands. He takes one of them--a little doubtfully, yet
somehow trustingly, too; and--it’s a very experienced hand, this that
he’s caught hold of--he lets it drag him deeper and deeper, till he very
nearly drowns. Then, all of a sudden, he comes to the top--with a little
gasp of realization. He shakes himself loose--oh, yes, he did, weeks
ago!--he puts in a month of the most ghastly shipwreck a man can know.
And at the end of that time he has the sublime courage to tell you! And
you--what do you do for him?”

“How do you know all this about Warren?” demanded Patsy, irrelevantly.
This time it was she who had risen and gone over to the window. “He told
me, when I asked about you, that he had scarcely seen you, since I’d
been away. How do you know what he’s been through?”

“I know, Patsy--because--I’ve been through shipwreck myself, though of a
different sort. Thank God!--a different sort! For I never had to screw
my shrinking soul up to the point of baring it to a strong person’s
knife!” Chalmers came over to her, and laid both hands on her shoulders.
“Patsy, dear little girl, just remember, will you, that I _am_ Timothy’s
friend, and your friend, and--Warren’s friend; remember it, will you?
For I’ve said some rather harsh things to you. But--don’t you see? Maybe
it’s because I envy you--yes” (as Patsy’s eyes opened wide at him),
“that may be it. You see, little pal”--Chalmers’ voice was not quite
steady--“in spite of everything, Warren hasn’t failed you! Or if he has,
it’s been to show himself to you, nearer perfect than he’s ever been
before. He was weak, yes; even cheap, perhaps--which is much worse than
weak--but through that very weakness somehow he gained strength to climb
up and stand beside you--on your level, for the first time in his life.
And you--oh, Patsy! you pushed him over the precipice! It’s a way strong
natures have--the way of the fittest, I suppose; you didn’t see that for
the first time in his life _he_ was strong, worthy of you, worthy of all
you had given him before. You saw--isn’t it so, Patsy?--_only the
woman_?”

“Yes,” said Patsy, faintly, “it is so.” She was staring amazedly at the
handsome, passionately earnest face of the clubman. “But, Kent--I don’t
understand--why do _you_ feel so keenly about all this? You”--she
laughed a little nervously--“it’s almost as though you were pleading
your own case. But I’m sure such a thing has never happened to you,
Kent--it couldn’t somehow: you’re er--too remote, too much of a--what
shall I say?--not dreamer, exactly----”

“Yes,”--the lines about the clubman’s mouth hardened--“I think you have
hit it exactly, Patsy: I’ve been too much of a dreamer! But”--he slumped
down into his chair again--“let all that go; it’s of no consequence
anyway, my part. Just say you’ll let Warren see that it’s not going to
make any difference, will you?--the--the woman, I mean? You _will_ say
that much, Patsy?”

Patsy looked away from him, for a long moment. Then her hand met his
with the old impulsive frankness. “Yes, I will, Kent. If you care enough
for Warren to come here and plead for him, I surely care enough to
forgive him! Though, of course”--she weakened a little--“you’re an
outsider in the affair: you can’t really see what it means to----”

“To forgive? Perhaps not,--then again, perhaps I do. You see----”

“Somebody had to forgive the woman, I suppose,” it occurred to Patsy who
was intent on her own train of thought; “or not to forgive her. Oh, do
you know if I were that woman’s husband, Kent, I just _couldn’t_ forgive
her--that’s all! I couldn’t. Why, _think_----” she broke off suddenly,
looking up at him with a little laugh. “Do you know what just came into
my mind, Kent?--something perfectly absurd!--that what _I_ ought to do
now, is to _go beg the woman’s husband to forgive her_! Then I’d have
conquered my weakness as well as Warren did his, eh?” Patsy stopped
abruptly; for there in the door stood Warren.

He still wore his overcoat, and his splendidly built body seemed to have
hunched down into it--apathetically. “Well----?” he said, coming over
and dropping into a third chair by the fire, “I suppose you’ve talked it
all over?”

The big clubman, his friend, got up and began slowly to draw on one
glove. “Ye-es,” he said,--and it was with the characteristic Club
drawl--“we’ve talked it all over, Warren, and--it’s all right!” His
ungloved hand went out to the other man; who stared at it--then up into
the face above it--and finally, with a long breath, wrung it nearly off.

“Well, I must be toddling along to the Club,” added Chalmers lightly;
“the boys will be missing me, you know; yes, the boys will be missing
me. Good-night, Patsy, my dear” (she had gone over to the door with him,
and he spoke in an undertone) “and--and don’t worry too much about
that--that other person, you know. I daresay her hus--I daresay it’s
all right with her, too. Good-night, Warren.”

       *       *       *       *       *

“It _is_ all right?” Warren asked his wife. In his tired face a little
glimmer of vitality showed.

“All right!” echoed Patsy, her eyes meeting his with a something he had
never seen in them before. Then, “Take this wet coat off at once, Warren
Adams,” she scolded, “and those boots--you’re to go straight upstairs
and change them. I declare, it’s certainly a good thing I’ve come
home!--you’re worse than Junior, about your rubbers!” She was tugging at
his heavy coat, but he caught her hands and drew her about, to face him.

“Yes,” he said--reverently--“it’s a very good thing you’ve come home!”

And for some reason, Patsy had to snatch her hands away and go flying up
the stairs ahead of him.

“But do you know, Claire,” she told the little stepmother, after she had
finished the story of Chalmers’ visit and his strange zeal on Warren’s
behalf, “it’s just as I told Kent: I can’t see how that woman’s husband
_can_ forgive her! Why, she----”

“You told Kent that?” asked the stepmother, oddly.

“Why, yes--why not?”

“Nothing. Except that--that woman’s husband is Kent. The woman, you see,
was Farleigh.”

“_Farleigh!_” Patsy covered her face with her hands. “Oh, no--no! Not
Farleigh, Claire!--why it couldn’t have touched Kent, a thing like that;
it couldn’t, you know--and then you see he came here to plead for
Warren. Oh, no, no, Claire--it couldn’t have been Farleigh!”

“The woman was Farleigh,” insisted the little stepmother, with gentle
obstinacy.

“And I told him he couldn’t judge--that he was too much of an outsider,
too remote----!” Patsy drew her hands down from her face, with a little
sob. “I said ‘you’re too much of a dreamer’; and--oh, Claire!--Kent said
‘yes, you’ve hit it exactly! I’ve been too much of a dreamer!’” Patsy
had dropped down on one of the big trunks, and was crying bitterly.
There is no personal grief in the world as poignant as the pain one
feels for a creature who bears his silently.

“But, Patsy--don’t cry so, dear”--into the older woman’s face had come a
wonderful understanding sweetness--“don’t you see why Kent came here and
talked to you that way? Don’t you see that it’s futile to be sorry for a
man who loves as Kent can love?”

“You mean----?” Patsy sat up and dried her eyes.

“I mean--why do you suppose that Kent came here to-day to plead for
Warren, Patsy?--to plead for his friend? Never in the world! He came to
plead for the injury wrought his friend!--for the person who wrought the
injury. Ah, my dear!--to be loved as Kent loves Farleigh----!” The
silver-haired woman’s voice had sunk almost to a whisper. “It--it’s
worth being wicked, just to find it out. It’s sublime!”

“And he went off to the Club!”--Patsy was talking more to herself than
audibly--“he said the boys would be missing him--_the boys_, that’s
all!”

Somewhere a bell rang musically. A child’s voice called “Mumsie!” And a
man came and stood in the door, waiting--his eyes fixed yearningly on
the tear-stained face within.

Patsy looked at him--looked at the little stepmother; but as she slipped
a hand through the arm of each of them, it was not of them she was
thinking, but of Chalmers--clearly a clubman, _pure and simple_.




VII

PIX--PURELY A PHILANTHROPIST


“Don’t be so lazy,” said Kent, “get something to do.”

“I have something to do,” said Pix; “I’m a philanthropist.”

“That’s what I mean;--get an occupation.”

“My dear boy,” reproachfully Pix looked at him, “don’t say unnecessary
things. You know I was educated for the position of an English
gentleman; though my brains in the first place weren’t half bad.
Besides, I make a very good philanthropist.”

“So does anybody.”

“Who’s rich enough,” added Pix, lighting another pipe. “One can make
quite exhaustive use of being rich, d’ye know, Chalmers? You and I, for
instance, shouldn’t have to be sitting here on a Park bench unless we
were rich; I shouldn’t dare to be smoking a pipe, you wouldn’t dare to
be puffing Pall Malls at a shilling the box--you’d be opening and
re-opening a case of monogrammed Egyptians you couldn’t afford, for the
sake of showing any one who happened to pass that you could afford
them.”

“I thought you said I wouldn’t dare to be sitting on this bench--who’d
pass, then? where?”

“I’m never logical,” Pix returned, without pride; “what philanthropist
is? D’ye know, Chalmers, I believe some day I’m going to do something
extraordinary at philanthropy.”

“It isn’t likely,” Chalmers discouraged. His eyes were fixed absently on
the White House across the Park.

“I know it isn’t. That’s why I may do it. In fact I’m almost sure----”

“I wish I could lend hope to the idea, but an unlikely
philanthropist--_really_, Pix! Credulity must have its limits.”

“---- Almost sure I shall do something spectacular at it,” finished Pix,
meditative, between puffs. “Perhaps I’ll even do a philanthropic turn
for you, Kentie, old boy,” benevolently.

“Wish I thought it,” muttered Kent, over a fresh Pall Mall, “but that
would be almost too much to expect, eh? That a philanthropist should
help some one who needed it?” He stared still more fixedly at the gleam
of white beyond the trees.

And Pix suddenly remembered something he had heard--something about
Chalmers’ wife--he forgot just what it was, but---- He screwed
uncomfortably on the end of the bench. “Shall we be toddling?” he said
finally. “Think we’ve aired our riches quite flagrantly enough, don’t
you? Then there’s to dine----”

“Where do you do it?” Chalmers rose, with as much alacrity as could be
expected--of a clubman. “Boys’ Boxing Club, Home for Blond Babies,
Ladies’ select Slumming Society--or----”

“With you,” interposed Pix, sauntering the more aimlessly for his
injury; “being the first time--at your house, that is--I had hoped you
might remember it.”

“My dear fellow, I’m delighted!” Chalmers didn’t look it (he had
forgotten how, perhaps) but he looked less absent. For a moment he gazed
at Pix as though he saw him. “I remember now. Farleigh did say she’d
asked you for to-night.”

“Yes--said in the note she’d make it a _parti à trois_, too. Thought it
was no end good of her. A fellow gets so rotten sick of these drove
dinners, what? Slum society or high society, it’s all the same. But I
say, old boy, I--you’ll think it’s beastly cheek, I suppose, but do you
mind telling me why she invited me? I’ve seen her only once, you know,
at the de Tregers’ and I’ve known you only at the Club--I--I just
wondered what my cue was, y’know,” he dropped his monocle, rather
uneasily.

“I’m sure I can’t tell you.” Kent Chalmers gazed straight ahead of him,
though he spoke lightly. “Farleigh--my wife--has no set code of
move--that I know of,” he added. “Just come and be yourself--that’ll
do.”

“Thanks,” replied Pix soberly. Yes, it ought to do; even for Farleigh
Chalmers. Pix was, unabbreviated, Charles Clarence Hope de Crecy
Pixenthorpe, younger son of Somebody or Other in Middleshire. That he
was a younger son is not extraordinary; that he was a rich younger son
is almost an epigram. But on the contrary, it’s the truth. He had gone
to Africa, and come back that way; and after a girl (who had enough of
her own) had added further to his good fortune by saying no to him, he
had turned to philanthropy and America. “They go together,” he had said
placidly. “One can’t be a philanthropist on a big scale--one can’t be
anything abnormal on a big scale, except in America.”

So he had gone. And terminated in Washington. Only four months now since
his first donation to the Needy Boys’ guild; yet Farleigh Chalmers was
inviting him to dinner. Farleigh Chalmers’ husband wondered what there
was important about Pix, besides his being rich. He knew there was
something; Farleigh knew any number of rich men in the Capital. Yes,
there was something--and he liked Pix; almost, comparatively, as he
loved Farleigh. He knew, moreover, that Pix in spite of his trip to
Africa, knew nothing about the world--of Washington, Washington, as he
wished Farleigh did not know it.

His heel crunched round in the gravel, as they left the Mall. “By the
way, Pix, I’ll be late to-night--I’ve to see a man at the Club about
something at seven, so--don’t hurry, old boy. Eight o’clock’s plenty of
time. Farleigh never minds one’s being late.”

“Right!” Pix clapped his shoulder. “Going to the Club now, eh? Well, au
revoir. I’m for the Men’s Friendly--they have sandwich and beer at six.
Gad, but a philanthropist does have to feed!--er beg pardon, Kent,
really! Sure I’ll enjoy my dinner, you know, but--yes, ’bye, old chap.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Having agreed to come at eight o’clock, Pix presented himself at
Chalmers’ residence, twenty to eight sharp. Strain enough keeping one’s
word, as a philanthropist, he reflected inaudibly to the butler who was
removing his coat; besides, he wanted to see----“Is Mrs. Chalmers down?”
he asked the man.

“Yes, sir, Mrs. Chalmers is down, sir. Marster’s just come in ’arf a
minute ago, sir, but Mrs. Chalmers is hin the library. I’ll just
hannounce you, sir.”

“Awfully good of you,” as a (now) Brother of Humanity, Pix felt called
upon to show fraternity with the butler classes. In fact he followed
Binks so affectionately, he almost trod on his own name.

“Yes, that’s what I met with as a first disaster, Mrs. Chalmers,” he
came into the soft-lit library with a gentle melancholy in his appeal;
“you’ll let my--er--fellow man be the only one to call it, though, won’t
you? To Chalmers and the chaps at the Club, I’m just Pix.”

“I shall be delighted, Mr.--Pix,” Farleigh gave him her hand with that
smile of hers that meant--well, there were those who could have told
him. “Won’t you sit down? Kent is dressing yet, I’m afraid--he came in
late, an appointment, I believe, with some man.” Farleigh herself sat
down with one of her quick, lithe movements--Pix remembered now, he had
noticed that night at the de Tregers’. She was slim, svelte, and with
slender tapering hands and feet. Her hair and eyebrows were dense black;
blue black. And she wore red. Pix liked her; she reminded him of a cat.
And he reflected there were excellent points about a cat; people didn’t
appreciate ’em.

“I suppose of course you know the British minister?” she began, watching
him out of her restless eyes, as he sat down beside her. It was spring
and the open windows let in a little breeze to ruffle her dark hair.
“Sir Maxon-Goring? he must be quite an intimate of yours, no?”

“No,” said Pix, watching her in return. “He goes in for politics--very
bad form on the part of an ambassador. I’ve nothing to do with him.”

Farleigh laughed, and looked at Pix with more interest. “You don’t go in
for politics, then? Why not?”

“I’m too rich; can’t afford ’em.” The philanthropist smiled at her--that
smile of his that meant--well, no one needed to tell her. It meant that
Pix was _there_, behind the monocle. It meant--a discouraging outlook
for Farleigh. “Only poor men should risk their lives for the
nation--er--their idea of the nation: rich men must be left in
safety--to give away their money. I suspect that’s Kent’s idea, too?”

“Oh, Kent!” exclaimed Farleigh, and then, catching herself hastily,
“Kent isn’t interested in politics, no,” she added quietly--but her long
pointed fingers tapped her armchair at Pix’s side. “He says--there’s too
much intrigue in them; and he hates intrigue.”

“And you don’t?” from behind the monocle, the mild eyes gazed at her yet
more kindly. Yes, he remembered now what he had heard; he knew what it
was, about Chalmers’ wife. And that odd note in Kent’s voice, the absent
stare, the long silences in the clubman’s jolly talk--“you like
politics?” he turned his question to Farleigh over, like one showing
the reverse side of the same piece of goods.

“I like anything that is complex,” replied Farleigh slowly. “And I want
Kent--Mr. Pix,” she leaned toward him with a feline swiftness, “will
you----”

“If that is so,”--as a philanthropist, Pix had learned, he modestly
confessed it, to avoid a request of something he knew he wasn’t going to
do--“if you like anything that is complex, I wish to goodness you’d come
down to my--hum--which is it? ah, yes! the Young Men’s gymnasium--and
untangle a case I’ve got down there. Janitor’s wife, nice lazy little
woman,” he watched Farleigh’s slender foot swinging impatiently while
her face turned, all interest, toward him. A philanthropist, though Kent
had forgotten it, necessarily sees a great deal of women--“nice lazy
little woman, married to a husband who’s so keen for committees and
being third vice presidents of things, he forgets to come home on
Sundays. Fact. Shuts up the--what did I say? gymnasium--I always forget
if it’s the gymnasium or the Babies’ Home--and goes off to lobby the
boys; ’stead of taking the tram to Alexandria and his waiting wife. She
belongs to a Browning Society, but it doesn’t keep her busy, because she
can’t read--farther than Poor Richard’s almanac. There are no children,
and she complains there’s no husband either. Now what’s to be done? She
comes to me--I’m the root of all evil, gymnasium and otherwise--she
upbraids me. She’s upbraided me twice this last week, once before my
valet. It can’t go on. But the man, her husband, ’s a good janitor; and
good janitors are scarce as honest philanthropists. I ask you what’s to
be done? I _must_ cure this maniac of his politics. But how?”

“Make him a clubman,” suggested Farleigh with a slow illuminating smile.

“He is one. That’s what’s the matter with him. He belongs to the Men’s
Literary and the Byron Brigade and the Reformed Republicans--downtown
branch--and the Kindling Wood Karpet Knights (that’s in winter), and the
Sons of Adam and--well, she’ll tell you. Anyway he’s a regular
attendant and officer in all of ’em. Now--Mrs. Chalmers, how am I to
unite this alienated couple? Don’t you see, as a philanthropist, I’ve
got to unite them? Come, now, you said you liked complexity, unravel for
me. How am I to make them see that each of them is part wrong?”

“Always the first step in reconciliation?” queried Farleigh, slipping
deeper into her chair. “I should make her a suffragette and him an
indigent tailor--they live at home, don’t they?”

“On the principle that a swapping of wrongs makes right? It would be
good humor, but not good philanthropy. Because--you see, Mrs.
Chalmers”--Pix dropped the monocle and looked quite steadily into
Chalmers’ wife’s eyes--“underneath their--ah--differences, they care for
each other.”

“How original!” Farleigh’s laugh was light like the little breeze. “But
you said, didn’t you, they were in the middle class? Of course. But Mr.
Pix--this is all tremendously interesting--but I wanted to ask you, I
started to ask you before, you know” (her eyes under their blue black
screen kept shifting toward the door); “there’s a post open in London
now--first Secretary of the Embassy--and I understand Sir Maxon-Goring
is being asked by the Administration to suggest some one. Some one from
here, who has had training in Washington. Of course your being such an
intimate of Sir Maxon-Goring’s--for I know you are, spite of your
epigram--and such a friend of Kent’s as well--well, Mr. Pix, I know the
man whose lot you want for your new Children’s Library. He’s told you he
won’t sell, but----”

“Ah, so here you are, old man--at last!” Pix got up leisurely and held
his host three fingers as Kent entered. “Three fingers is correct, not?
for a philanthropist? Four for a hard drinker? Well, you _have_ done
yourself well!” He looked at his watch--not at Mrs. Chalmers. “Ten after
eight--a primp worthy of a guardsman, what?”

Kent, standing by his wife’s chair, smiled. More absently than ever, “It
was that miserable man who wanted to see me at such length”--the big
clubman’s eyes wandered; from Pix to Farleigh, from Farleigh to Pix,
and back again--“Shall we go out, Farleigh?” he asked, after a little
pause.

“Yes, Binks announced some time ago.” In Farleigh’s voice was a hint of
rumble; like the purr of a cat that has been disturbed. “You will lead
me?” She laughed at Pix, slipping her hand through his arm.

“With pleasure,” he said gravely, “I will lead you both.” And slipping
his other arm through Kent’s, he took them in to dinner.

       *       *       *       *       *

“Mrs. Chalmers has promised to come down and help me with the tangle at
the ah--gymnasium, Kentie,” Pix remarked with some satisfaction, as they
sat in the library again later, over their coffee. “I say,” he leaned
forward almost eagerly--for a philanthropist--“there’s going to be an
exhibition--er--Field Day or something or other on Thursday, and Mrs.
Budd is sure to come in--um-m, that’s their name, Budd,” he turned to
Farleigh, “why not drop down for a moment, late, and you can see her and
Budd too. There’s sure to be some row on--anyway you’d have a splendid
chance to diagnose and suggest a medicine. You will?”

“Why--yes,” Farleigh had no further chance to speak with Pix alone.
“Yes, I’ll come. Thursday, you say, at----?”

“Five.” Pix beamed.

“At five. Yes; it will be amusing, I’m sure.”

“Think so too. Suppose I may come also, Pix?” Kent was looking at
Farleigh’s profile with a look that made Pix swallow the rest of his
coffee with a gulp.

“Why, of course, old man--delighted. Only it’s hardly in your line, you
know--a political, I mean to say, a lobby-maniac; a maniac for office,
whose wife----”

“A maniac for office?” Kent laughed shortly. “Well, no. That’s rather at
the other end of my line. However, I’ll come. What, going?” as Pix rose.

“Sorry--but you can’t expect manners in a doer of good. I’m to deliver
an address at the Rough Rider Lustitude at nine-thirty--‘Is marriage a
failure?’ oh, my dears!” Pix cast a wild eye at them, an eye that was
something else too, could they have seen. “An address from me--and it’s
their ladies’ evening. Good-night--good-night,” he shook Farleigh’s hand
with a despairing gratitude, “you don’t know what this dinner has done
for me though, as preparation--ah--I mean to say--ahem! you understand.”
He dropped the slender hand and fled. Dash it! he always did make some
silly ass of himself, just when things were at their most delicate--oh,
hang! (this to Binks, under his breath) he supposed all philanthropists
were bunglers.

“Farleigh”--left alone, Kent came over and put his hands on the slim
shoulders--“Farleigh”--his whole attitude asked a question.

Farleigh screened her eyes with the blue black lashes, and laughed. “I’m
going to a dance--the McCleans are stopping for me--where are you off
to, Kent, the Club?”

“Yes,” Kent’s hands fell to his sides. “The Club.” He strode away from
her, out of the room.

At the gymnasium on Thursday, Pix walked up and down between trapezes,
with a little woman whose short steps--from under a remarkable plaid
silk gown--doubled on themselves valiantly to keep pace.

“And indeed, Mister Pix,” she said plaintively--to all his
_philanthropées_ Pix was just Pix--“indeed, I don’t know what I’m to do
if Theophilus don’t stop being so active. Forty-six he is, forty-seven
come July, and no holdin’ him; off again all last Sunday with the Sons
of Adam--gettin’ himself put in as chancellor ’f the order--and I made
up my mind then, I was goin’ to do somethin’ desprit. But what t’
do”--she flung out ten cotton-gloved fingers, in an abandon of
despondency.

“Perhaps this lady can tell you,” Pix said in a low voice, nodding
toward some one slim and swift, who was coming up the stairs opposite,
into the great hall. “I have an idea she can, for--she’s a very clever
lady indeed. You put the case to her frankly, tell her the whole
trouble, and see if she doesn’t suggest something. Ah, Mrs. Chalmers!
this is most awfully good of you”--he met the slim lady in black half
way across the gymnasium. “The er--exhibition’s over, but--Kent isn’t
with you?” he broke off.

“No. Kent’s coming later. That is, he said he’d meet me here at five. I
was early, because--Mr. Pix, I want to talk to you----”

“Yes, yes--excuse me just a moment--I see Budd beckoning me with a
dumb-bell. You won’t mind waiting just a second while I see just what he
wants? Er--Mrs. Chalmers, Mrs. Budd--you’ll find that vaulting-horse
very comfortable, Mrs. Chalmers--ah, back in just one minute, you know!”
And Pix hurried away.

The little woman in the plaid dress and tan cotton gloves regarded the
slender woman in black cloth and a Virot turban. “Shan’t we sit down?”
she suggested. “Myself, I don’t think much o’ that vaultin’ horse, but
this movin’ swing’s right cosy.”

So Mrs. Kent Chalmers and Mrs. Theophilus Budd sat down together in the
moving swing.

“Your husband’s the Mister Chalmers who was at one of them foreign
courts, isn’t he?” Mrs. Budd began, a little curiously. “My friend, Mrs.
Silas Holt--we belong to the same Browning Society in Alexandria--she’s
read me pieces out o’ the paper about him. And once there was his
picture--he _is_ the handsome figger of a man now! What’s his job
now--he’s left that foreign place, hasn’t he?”

“Yes,” Farleigh could not be annoyed with the little person--she was too
simple, somehow--but she kept watching the stairs where Pix had
disappeared. Why didn’t he come back? Surely he didn’t imagine she had
taken him seriously about untangling this funny little Mrs. Budd’s
affairs--“yes, he left Budapest a year ago,” telling it even to funny
little Mrs. Budd made Farleigh’s red lips come close together, “he--he
has no place now. He’s just a clubman.”

“Just a _clubman_?” almost shrieked Mrs. Budd. “Oh, my dear, how I feel
for you! I do indeed--oh. Mr. Pix was right when he said we might help
each other. Ain’t he the knowin’ one, Mr. Pix? And to think, your
husband belongs to Clubs, too! Oh, isn’t it _awful_?”

“Yes,” said Farleigh fervently--she was biting her lips--“it is.”

“An’ stayin’ out eight days out o’ seven, an’ runnin’ for office in ten
different things at once, an’ wire-pullin’ an’ toadyin’ an’--yes, though
I could sink in my grave with shame for sayin’ it--bribin’ men as he can
make useful--oh, Mrs. Chalmers, what a life! That’s what I say to
Theophilus, on the ice-olated occasions when I happen to see him. What a
life!”

Farleigh was silent.

“An’ how do you spend your time?” went on the little woman with tan
cotton gloves, more cheerfully. “Makin’ the home more attractive, I
s’pose, an’ doin’ everything you can, same as I do, to keep him with you
and in some kind o’ sane, contented life? D’ye keep a girl, Mrs.
Chalmers?”

“Oh, yes,” though her voice was rather sharp, Farleigh smiled, “I
have--yes, I have a maid.”

“You must excuse me if I was impertinent,” apologised Mrs. Budd softly;
she had a very nice soft voice, Farleigh couldn’t help noticing, “but I
thought maybe since your husband lost his job, you couldn’t afford----”

“Oh, yes!” was it bitterly that Farleigh said it? Bitterly to little
Mrs. Budd? “He has money, you see, my husband. He--he doesn’t have to
have a job.”

“Now that’s too bad!” commiserated the other woman, gently rocking the
“movin’ swing” with her foot. “I mean it’s too bad when _anybody_
doesn’t have a job, man or woman. I always say my job’s makin’ a home
for Theophilus--though he doesn’t stay in it,” she sighed. “What’s your
job, Mrs. Chalmers?”

Farleigh stirred restlessly in her corner of the swing. “Why--trying to
make my husband a success, I suppose,” she said unwillingly--after all,
what danger in telling the truth to this simple little thing? Why didn’t
Mr. Pix come back, anyway (impatiently); there would be no time before
Kent came for her to ask him----

“Men are queer creatures,” reflected Mrs. Budd, looking at her with a
certain thoughtfulness; “Mr. Pix, he thought you might help me out with
Theophilus, but I guess you can’t. I guess you’ve got just as hard a job
as me, and no better off t’ cope with it. Men’re queer creatures, Mrs.
Chalmers--they’ve got to go their own way, ’n’ all we can do, I guess,
is to sit by an’ keep lovin’ ’em. Isn’t that what you say?”

“Er--yes,” Farleigh rose out of the swing altogether this time. “Yes, I
suppose it is. Shall we walk a little, Mrs. Budd? I feel rather--rather
cramped.”

“You don’t look as though you’d ever felt a pain in your life,” said
Mrs. Budd admiringly, as they started down the big hall hung with
apparatus, “but then I s’pose you keep outdoors a lot, and don’t let
yourself be ruined by this s’ciety life. Mis’ Holt was readin’ me out of
last Sunday’s fashion supplement how a preacher had said the word for
Washington s’ciety was ‘hectic,’ and we looked it up, at the Tuesday
readin’ of the Browning class, an’ I guess he’s right, Mrs. Chalmers.
Washington s’ciety’s hectic.”

“They call it so many things,” murmured Farleigh; busy in avoiding a
punching-ball, she spoke again truthfully, to the little woman--almost
friendly, in her nonchalance, to the janitor’s wife.

“But I don’t take no stock in it, do you?” pursued Mrs. Budd. “Seems as
though it’s just like this room full o’ climbin’ machines--an’ somebody
liable to fall off the trapeze an’ bust his head open, any time--half
way up or at the top; y’ can’t tell nothin’ about it. I’m glad you let
it alone, Mrs. Chalmers. This paper said one woman--it didn’t give her
name--one woman had gone so far’s to--look out for that movin’
staircase, Mis’ Chalmers--they’re awful treacherous: they pretend to be
takin’ you up all the time an’ then before you know it, they throw
you--had gone so far as to make a name for herself, in the line o’
intrigue,” continued Mrs. Budd, her soft voice hushed with excitement;
“she didn’t need nothin’ as far as climb goes, it said, she just liked
pullin’ the ropes because she done it so well. It said they call
her----”

“Mrs. Budd, do you see anything of Mr. Pix?” asked Farleigh, two red
spots glowing in her cheeks.

“No--but he’ll be along presently. Don’t fret, he ’n’ your husband’s
probably met and ’re having a shindy with Budd down below. Men ’re
gossipy creatures. I was goin’ to tell you, they call that woman the
Spanish Cat--’cause she slides in an’ out o’ things so easy, and looks
that Spanish kind. You’re real dark too, aren’t you, Mrs. Chalmers? My,
but your husband must be proud of you!” the little woman in the plaid
dress looked up wistfully.--“Why, Mis’ Chalmers, what’s the matter?”

For Mrs. Chalmers looked as though she was going to cry. She also looked
furiously angry, and--Mrs. Budd gasped--very beautiful. “Mrs. Chalmers,
I--I do hope I haven’t said nothin’ to hurt your feelings,” faltered the
little janitor’s wife.

“No”--with a ringing laugh Farleigh dashed her hand to her eyes--“oh,
no, Mrs. Budd. I--shan’t we sit down on this _un_moving staircase and
wait?--So you don’t think much of the Spanish Cat?” she questioned, as
Mrs. Budd sat down. “You think she’s--er--rather a fool?”

“I think they’ll come a day when she’ll get caught, in one o’ these
slides,” said Mrs. Budd, delighted to settle to a cosy chat, “an’ then
that’ll be the end of _her_. Just the same, she must be a real clever
woman, Mrs. Chalmers, and then, my dear--as I told Mis’ Holt--there must
be _somethin’_ the matter with her husband. No woman would take to
pullin’ wires for a job, if her husband was the man he should be.
Prob’ly he’s some lazy, no account s’ciety man, this----”

“No, Mrs. Budd,” Farleigh sat very erect, “I--I’m sure you’re mistaken,”
she added less hastily, “he--her husband isn’t no account, or--you see,
such a clever woman wouldn’t have married him!” Yes, watching that smile
of hers, Mrs. Budd declared she was beautiful.

“My dear, you can’t tell,” said Theophilus’ wife sombrely, “women, the
cleverest of ’em, do marry the strangest men!--yes I just bet you
anything, this intreegant’s husband is some s’ciety loafer, who’s made
his wife so tired with his foolishness, she just had----”

“No, not a loafer,” Mrs. Chalmers shook her head decidedly, “certainly
he is not a loafer, though----”

“Ah, you do know him then?” Mrs. Budd fairly trembled with anxiety. No
wonder Mrs. Chalmers had looked angry. “He ’n’ she’s friends of yours?”

“She’s not a friend of mine, no,” said Farleigh slowly. She seemed to
have forgotten Mrs. Budd as a “funny little person,” Farleigh. “I should
rather say she’s my worst enemy. He--well, I don’t know,” she ended
rather abruptly.

“Do you know, my dear,” the other woman--the woman with the tan cotton
gloves leaned forward earnestly, “I sh’d think _there_ would be a chance
for some real mission’ry work for you--and if I called ’em names, I’m
sorry indeed----”

“It’s all right,” said Farleigh hastily, “one’s quite apt to tell the
truth about people, before one knows who they are.”

“But being such friends of yours, or at least knowin’ ’em as you do, if
you could bring them together, my dear,” went on the simple little woman
looking earnestly into the beautiful face, “if you could make that woman
see how she’s wastin’ herself on the trapeze business, when she might be
walkin’ along safe an’ happy on the ground with him; an’ if you could
make him see that--but men’s queer creatures!--if you could make him see
that if he’ll only stir his stumps a bit ’n’ make _himself_ more
interestin’ for her, she--don’t you see, my dear? Why, if you did that,
if you could make ’em see that each is part wrong, why--it’d be the
biggest job you ever did in your life!”

“Yes,” Farleigh drew a deep breath, “it would. The biggest job I ever
did in my life! And--isn’t it funny, Mrs. Budd? that’s just what Mr. Pix
said too: that to make each see that each is part wrong, is the first
step toward reconciliation.”

“Ah, but he’s a smart man, Mr. Pix,” said Mrs. Budd ingenuously. “But
you’ll try, my dear? You’ll do what you can to bring these two together
again?--don’t know why I take s’ much interest in ’em,” she laughed a
little abashed, “but readin’ that woman’s story in the paper seemed so
kind o’ pitiful--you see, I thought o’ Theophilus always playin’ around
with these climbin’ machines--and then I knew, ’s I say, there must be
something wrong about the husband.--You’ll try, my dear?”

“Yes,” promised Farleigh simply, “I’ll try. And--I’m glad you happened
to read the story in the paper, Mrs. Budd.”

“Funny now, wasn’t it?” The little woman smiled happily. “And that I
should just happen to tell it to you, and you knew those people? Well,”
she sighed, “even if we ain’t come to no conclusion about Theophilus,
maybe we’ve helped somebody. And here’s Mr. Pix”--then, as another man
appeared beside Pix on the stairs--“_my dear!_ is that your husband?”
she asked wonderingly.

“Yes,” Farleigh rose to meet them, “why?”

“Because he--my dear, I wouldn’t worry one mite,” the little woman with
the tan gloves patted the black sleeve cut by Paquin, reassuringly,
“don’t you fret, my dear, one minute. That man could be a member of the
Sons of Adam an’ the Kindlin’ Wood Knights an’ any other forty-seven
’leven Clubs he was a mind to. He’s a _man_, my dear. And (as she saw
him smile at Farleigh, coming toward her) he loves you. You’re a very
lucky woman.”

“Mrs. Budd, this is my husband, Mr. Chalmers,” Farleigh made the
introduction rather unsteadily. “I want you to know each other.”

“Indeed, and I’m proud to, Mr. Chalmers,” the little woman beamed; while
Farleigh turned to Pix, but not exclusively. “Mrs. Chalmers an’ I have
just been having the most interestin’ time, talkin’ about the Spanish
Cat--oh I--I beg your pardon”--she grew frantically pink--“I forgot
again, they was friends of yours, and besides I don’t know her real
name. I----”

“Mrs. Budd has been telling me how to manage the Spanish Cat, Kent,”
said Farleigh very quietly. Pix stared at the window as though he meant
to jump out of it. “She says that to--to manage her would be the biggest
job of my life, and----”

“Oh, not exactly to manage her, Mrs. Chalmers,” put in the little woman
uneasily, “to bring her ’n’ her husband together’s what I mean. You
see,” she turned to Chalmers, “I think her husband must be part wrong,
too.”

“I think he must,” said Kent, looking into Farleigh’s eyes; “I’m sure he
is.”

“But what about the case of Budd?” broke in Pix, renouncing the window.

“Oh, we didn’t get ’s far ’s him,” said Mrs. Budd resignedly; “we’ll
take up Theophilus at the next meetin’, won’t we, Mrs. Chalmers?”

“We will, indeed,” said the very clever lady. And I must tell you that
as she said good-bye to her, she kissed Mrs. Budd!

Kent turned to Pix--Farleigh had gone on ahead of them, rather swiftly,
down the stairs. “Pix, I--you--it’s all your affair,” he stammered
unevenly, “I----”

“Tut, my dear boy!” Pix waved aside the words, though he gripped the
proffered hand and wrung it. “I’m twice as pleased as you are. I never
do things unselfishly, you know--I’m purely a philanthropist.

“By the way,” added Pix carelessly, watching Chalmers from behind his
monocle as they came out into the street, “who’s this man who’s been
detaining you all the time at the Club?”

“That,” said Kent, stepping into the car beside Farleigh, “is a
gentleman who has been trying to get my opinion on a Secretaryship in
London. I just told him, this afternoon: yes.”




VIII

RICHARD--NO MORE THAN A KING


Into the mysterious shadows of the grey-cloistered chapel, the Court in
all its ceremony was disappearing--all except the newest Maid of Honor,
who, after one glance back at the sunset, shook her curls rebelliously,
and deliberately stayed behind in the rose-garden!

“I just _won’t_ go to vespers,” declared the Maid of Honor wilfully;
“and what’s more”--darting after two other stragglers in the
procession--“you sha’n’t go either.” She laid a compelling hand on a
little old person in rose and silver, and a very magnificent person in
black velvet and pumps. “It’s a perfect sacrilege to pray any more
to-day. Besides, don’t you know we’ve got to _talk_? To talk about
_him_?” And she shook her small fist threateningly after the departing
monarch.

“It is a fine evening,” conceded the little old person weakly; already
she had arranged her brocade and laces against the quaint primness of an
ancient stone settle.

“And--er--no sense, really, in making Sunday _too_ shocking a
misfortune,” abetted the magnificent person, enjoying the effect of
himself under the glowing luxuriance of a canopy of Maréchal Niels.
“Fact is, the King----”

“That’s just it!” The Maid of Honor pounced upon the words, as she
pounced upon her favorite garden seat. “The King! Oh”--she clicked her
fan vehemently--“I am so glad to get you two alone for once, so that we
can talk and talk and talk about him!”

“My dear!” The little old person’s hands went up. “I’m sure no one ever
found that much to say about a king. There’s really nothing much to say,
is there?” She glanced half fearfully toward the beautiful old chapel
door.

“Exactly what I mean!” announced the Maid of Honor triumphantly. “Mind
you, I don’t agree to it for all kings--perhaps the less important ones
aren’t so bad--but this one! Why, he’s a mere bundle of robes, a
mannequin to hang things on: satins, epigrams, anything. A sort of peg
for the traditions of our ancestors. Oh!” In the small restless face
showed the exasperation of all youth. “What difference does it make how
many millions of subjects he has? He’s always the same. He always will
be the same, I suppose: just a monarch, a handsome effigy, no more than
a king!”

“Nor less,” appended his Fool impartially. (Nowadays, they call them the
“king’s best friend”: it amounts to the same thing.) “He does the best
he can with the predicament, you know. Rather beastly situation to find
oneself in, too, now isn’t it? Fancy, just fancy for yourself”--he
looked toward the Maid of Honor’s profile propitiatingly--“being
suddenly obliged to become king--or, queen, that is, of Dumdedum;
Emperor of Ladada, Lord High Protector of Thingumbob, and all the rest
of it. You wouldn’t like it, you know. Nobody would.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” For some reason the Maid of Honor was blushing.

“Nobody would, unless it were one’s butler. It’s being such a temptation
to anarchists; and no well-brought-up person likes to be a
temptation--or admits that he likes it.”

“And you confess he is marvelously handsome,” urged the little old
Lady-in-Waiting slyly, “you acknowledge yourself, Ermyntrude, that he
fills his position with distinction; never looks scared, I mean, and
that’s _so_ hard for a king. You said just now, you know--you called
him----”

“I called him a handsome effigy!” The Maid of Honor rose to her feet
sharply. “And that’s quite all he is. Oh, I don’t ask that he shall do
anything so wonderful,” she defended, catching up his pet spaniel, and
pulling its ears with a mixture of affection and intense impatience, “I
don’t ask that he shall ride to wars, or build huge palaces, or squander
fortunes over pageantry. I ask simply that he show some signs of
humanness, that he be a _man_, any sort of a man, anything rather than
a dummy! Why, if Ja--if the Prince were to grow like him ...!”

“But”--the Fool began to look worried. He rubbed his pumps together till
they creaked.

“Other kings manage it,” went on the Maid of Honor accusingly; “they
have their personalities, their special diets, their favorite spa; they
invent a cravat or a new kind of soup, and it’s all very well. But
he--he doesn’t do one thing that’s _different_. It’s the Queen who
reigns, you know. It’s she” (was it a note of bitterness in the little
Maid’s voice?) “who has been straining every nerve to promote this
marriage of the Crown Prince with that Franconia girl. But he--he’s such
a piece of passivity, he won’t even say yes or no to the idea. All he
has energy to do, this whole month since I came to court, is to avoid
quarrelling. Any lazy person can do that.”

“But, _my dear_----”

“Oh”--the Maid of Honor heeded nothing but her own rising
indignation--“if he’d only get some spite in him, and quarrel like
the--like everything--why, it would be splendid! He’d be sublime! And if
he’d be wicked--you know what I mean, real, antique, Francis the First,
Henry the Eighth _wicked_--oh, then he’d immortalize himself. When one’s
genuinely wicked, one’s never forgotten, eh?” She turned confidently to
the Fool.

“Um-m. Not if one has a clever press-agent: biographer, that is to say.
However,” and, for a Fool, his voice grew quite gentle, “I am afraid
that Richard will never be so very wicked. You know he--he has loved a
woman.”

The Maid of Honor laughed.

“He has _loved_ a woman,” emphasized the Fool, “and for a man,
especially for a king, that is a very rare experience.”

“It was before Ermyntrude was born,” reminded the little old
Lady-in-Waiting, softly; and her pretty, faded eyes lost themselves in
the sunset. “Before even your mother came to be Mistress of the Robes to
his mother, my dear,” she drew the girl down beside her on the ancient
settle, “when I myself was a slip of a girl in the Palace at Camelot,
and the young Prince Richard barely through with his examinations. He
used to talk to me--ah, yes” (she sighed a little sadly) “then he was
not so quiet; he used to talk. And one day--it was in the summer, and
yes, in this very rose-garden--we had come up from Camelot for some
tournament--one day he told me he was in love. ‘Her name’s Rosemary,
Guarda,’ he said, ‘and her father is just a professor at the University’
(the little Maid winced). ‘Oh, Guarda, I _am_ glad I don’t have to
succeed--think, Guarda! I couldn’t marry Rosemary!’ And” (the sun or
something had got into the little old lady’s eyes, so that she had to
put up her hand to shield them) “just six months after that--one month
before he was going to marry Rosemary--the Crown Prince died, and then
his father, the old King; and now”--the fragile old hand fell back into
the Lady Guarda’s lap, with a limp little gesture of finality--“Richard
is married to a Princess. Perhaps that is why he is no more than a
King!”

“Yes”--the Maid of Honor’s voice sounded strangely subdued--“perhaps
that is why. See, they are coming out from vespers--shall we walk as far
as the gates, Lady Guarda?”

And as the two swept their soft trains down the fragrant allée, out of
the dim grey cloisters came a monarch and his court--a splendid panoply
of vivid color, mellowed by the dying sun, which cast its tenderness
over all the vast old garden, but lingered on the handsome impassive
features of the Man Who Came First--a handsome effigy.

“A mere bundle of robes----?” wondered his Fool--who knew him best.

       *       *       *       *       *

“I know all that you say.” The King rose a trifle wearily, regarding his
councillors with that mixture of gentleness and pity which seemed to
shut him from them, from every one, like a beautiful stiff hedge. “Our
relation with Franconia is, truly, very delicate: the two most prominent
world powers ... and then the peculiar situation in the Colonies ...
yes, for the best interests of the State, I grant you, even, His Royal
Highness should make this alliance. But, milords,” his smile upon them
was grave though very sweet, “there are things greater than the State.”

“That is a terrible thing for your Majesty to say,” pronounced his
minister severely.

“All true things are terrible--especially beautiful true things.
Milords, I will announce my decision at the State banquet to-morrow
night. It is, as you know, His Royal Highness’ birthday to-morrow--his
eighteenth birthday. Yes, yes, you all are right, he is getting to be a
man. A man!--or rather a king. Between the two words, milords, a
tremendous gulf is fixed. But I will detain you no longer, gentlemen; I
desire an hour or two alone before retiring. Sir Estes, pray send my
Fool into the garden--er, not now, you understand, but in half an hour.
Yes, thank you, that will be quite soon enough.” And the royal mannequin
watched his courtiers disappear into the Palace, always with that
gentle, commiserating smile upon his lips.

Then, with a brief sigh that might have meant almost anything, or
nothing, he sank down on to the old garden seat, and lit his strange
long pipe. The garden was very still, in the pale mystery of the
moonlight, very still, and very empty. The King from his shadowy corner
gazed past its loveliness at the great palace unbelievingly: it was not
a real Palace, there was no real Court inside. Only the exquisite soft
arches of the cloister were real, and the long sweep of the old steps,
down which he had stolen to meet--he drew in his breath sharply. Yes,
the steps, and the grand towering oaks, and the beckoning green vistas,
luring one into their ever-vanishing embrace, promising one at the end
surely some sweet, half-forgotten memory of childhood. Why, one’s first
kite had flirted away down that leafy winding lane; and, yes! at the end
of this, that wretched pony had tumbled one’s enraged manhood off its
seat--at the resentful age of four. Then that other: it was there as far
as the bend in the trees that one’s mother had walked with one, that day
of departure for the University. A Queen she was, to be sure,
but--marvelously!--one’s wonderful mother as well. And “I’m so glad you
don’t have to succeed, Dick,” she had whispered against his cheek,
starting guiltily at her own words: “I--I want you to be just a man, you
know. A man, with all a man’s pleasures, and burdens, and hobbies,
and--and loves, dear. You don’t have to be superb, thank God! you can be
just a commonplace man. Ah, Dick, that’s the greatest privilege in the
world!”

The King flung his pipe away abruptly. She was dead now. And he----“She
was right,” he muttered harshly, beginning to stride up and down,
“that’s the greatest privilege in the world. But I----”

“You are alone out here, my dear?” The voice that came to him from a
balcony above was as coldly sweet as the moon’s own rays.

“I am alone,” he answered mechanically.

A stately figure trailed down the winding stair and joined him,
directing his steps to that corner of the garden that was farthest from
the Palace. “Some one has told me that our son--that John will soon come
to you with a most unreasonable request. I beg of you, Richard, do not
grant it. It has to do with the announcement to be made to-morrow
night.”

“The announcement? Why I----”

“You understand me, I am sure.” The cold voice lowered cautiously. “It
is imperative that nothing shall be done to mar my plan for adjusting
our relations with Franconia; I am only more and more regretful that you
have kept the matter of John’s alliance with the Princess Royal pending
for so long a time.”

“I have not yet consented----”

“You have not consented to discuss the question formally with the
Franconian ambassador”--in the smooth voice an element of irritation was
rising--“nor to have him present at the banquet to-morrow night; when,
very firmly, you will announce your desire, your _earnest_ desire that
the alliance should take place. And listen to me, Richard--you remember
that this is the last resort: you have admitted everything else has been
tried, and to no purpose, in this situation with Franconia. Now it lies
with you. Hitherto, you have refused to discuss the subject of John’s
betrothal, even with the family, or your ministers. In this I do not say
you have been wrong. It has doubtless been as well to keep the matter
quiet until we could learn that the suggestion would be welcomed by
Franconia. Now that we are assured of that, however--well, you will make
the informal announcement to-morrow night. You know, Richard, where John
is concerned, you are apt to be over-lenient. And some one told me----”

“I understand you, Alix.” He understood, too, that when she said
over-lenient, she meant weak; no one appreciated the fact that the Queen
reigned, more intelligently than did the King. “I could wish, however,
that ‘some one’ was not always telling you things about John. It
looks--you will pardon me--unpleasantly like spying.”

“One cannot sacrifice the State to looks,” returned the Queen coolly.
“If you will insist on forgetting your duty to your people, Richard,
somebody must remember it for you. You are not just a plain, ordinary
person, you know.” And she swept back up the stair again, and into the
Palace.

“Oh, God, if I only were!” groaned the King, turning on his heel with a
sudden fierceness very foreign to a mere mannequin. Then he saw his Fool
standing there.

“A fine night,” observed the King formally.

“It would be if it were raining, your Majesty,” replied the Fool.

“If it were _raining_?”

“Yes, your Majesty. When it rains, so many things can happen. One slips,
one slides, one tumbles into a puddle: there are all sorts of
possibilities. While a fine night--is just a fine night, that’s all.
Most distressingly ordinary. Before I was a fool----”

“What were you?” interrupted the King.

“A very wise man, my liege. You see, I have changed but little; except
that when I was a wise man, I did not enjoy knowing myself to be a fool;
whereas now it gives me the subtlest sort of pleasure, knowing how very
wise I really am. All a matter of placing oneself, Sire; a matter of
light and shade; and if one has the true artistic eye----”

“Do you think that one is then competent to place others?” asked the
King abruptly.

The Fool stopped twirling his bauble (his boutonnière, I mean, of
course). “One is never competent,” he said slowly, “one is only less
stupid than before. One’s sense of values is in better equilibrium. With
your Majesty, for instance----”

“Yes?” The King bent toward him eagerly.

“The King can do no wrong,” began his Fool pompously. “Which is only
another way of saying that the King is left no chance to do anything but
right. He is not an ordinary person.”

“He is,” contradicted the King calmly. “At least he is going to be. Your
next King, my dear Fool, is to be just an ordinary person!”

Limply the Fool leaned against a balustrade. “Your Majesty is _too_
exotic in his fancies--quite too exotic,” he protested feebly. “I beg
your Majesty to allow me to retire: I am so truly a fool that a joke
quite unnerves me. Besides, His Royal Highness is coming--see, yonder
he is--an idea, smiling at a makeshift! I beg leave to take the
makeshift within the Palace, Sire.”

“So then, Father!”--one felt with a thrill the onslaught of Youth--“you
have been railing at the world, with the help of that soberest man at
Court. Fie upon you! And you, sir, off with you! I will not have my
father’s Fool turn him into an old sobersides!” The young Prince ran
lightly down the steps from the terrace and came laughing to the King’s
side.

“I suppose I should have said ‘your Majesty’ before him,” he apologized,
locking arms with his father, as the Fool vanished within; “Mother told
me only this morning that I did not sufficiently realize the respect due
you as a monarch. But how can I? Why, we’ve always been such pals, eh,
Father? And if ever I’m a king and have children--well, I’ll try to make
them forget I’m a king, that’s all.”

“Have I made you forget it?” asked the King wistfully. “Do I seem to you
just--just your father, Jack--you know what I mean, just an ordinary
man?”

“You seem”--his son regarded him half puzzled--“an ordinary man? Well,
no, Father. Of course, you’re keen for sport, as keen as I am; and then
in your heart you’ve that passion for the flute--ah, yes, you have! You
needn’t shake your head: you know you’d pawn the Palace if only you
could play the flute. But something’s always hindering you. I suppose
something always hinders a king, Father?” The King’s own wistfulness had
crept into the young voice.

The King cleared his throat. “I’m afraid it does,” he acknowledged,
looking away from the boy, and up at the balcony--so cold and white in
the moon’s radiance. “I--but come, let’s walk. You were saying----”

“There’s something I’ve got to ask you.” The Prince walked a little
faster. “You must know what it is, Father--they’ve all talked so much
about it. And last night at the Masque Ermyntrude whispered to me that
it was no use at all, asking you--that Mother had arranged everything,
and you would never go against Mother. But, somehow, because you
_aren’t_ just an ordinary man, because you’ve always been different to
me from the rest of the world, I made up my mind to ask you. You see,
it’s--it’s about this marriage.” For the moment the young Prince looked
a good deal more than eighteen. “I haven’t said anything up till
now--I’ve always known, of course, that being a king made a difference,
that it meant one could never do as one liked, you know; so when Mother
and all of them first talked about the Princess--all along, in fact--I
didn’t say anything. Oh, I understood”--and for the first time in his
life the King saw bitterness in his son’s face--“an alliance with
Franconia is essential; my tutor’s told me of it many times: he’s
prepared me very cleverly. But, Father, I don’t want to make an
alliance. I want to marry a woman.”

The King stopped walking. They were just at the foot of the steps where
he had used to meet--“I see,” he said gently.

“I’ve tried to go through with it”--the boy’s voice grew more and more
unsteady--“since Mother told me how much it would mean to all the
millions of our people I’ve nerved myself up to it; and I told myself
again and again that, as Ermyntrude says, a man who’s got to be a king
has no right to any feelings. That he must be just a dummy, to support
the prestige and ambitions of his subjects. His subjects!” The Prince’s
laugh was not a pleasant thing to hear. “Oh, I wonder that you don’t see
the screaming satire of it, Father--even though you are a king.”

The King looked at him strangely. “I was not always a king,” he said;
and again his glance strayed down the dim green vistas with their
whimsical shadows. At the end of each vista it was black now. “When I
was your age, Jack, I had no idea that I ever would be King. But--but I
want to ask _you_ something: if the country were to go to war, and a
good man was needed to lead the troops, would you go? Understand me:
even though there was every probability of your being killed, though you
had one chance in a thousand, or say no chance at all--and--you were
also just about to marry--a woman. Would you go?”

“I”--the boy drew a long breath. “But of course I’d go. You know that,
Father.”

“Then--the country _is_ at war; for a great nation, the subtlest,
deadliest kind of war, John: with international opinion. It does need a
leader. The King, you see”--the even voice never wavered--“is just a
dummy--no more than the King. And I’m very much afraid that the leader
will have to be killed, at least all but the mere blood and bones and
breath of him: and those amount to so little, don’t they? Yes, yes; they
amount to so little. Well! so this some one must sacrifice himself.
We’ve tried everything, we’ve come dangerously near showing ourselves
abject, in this adjustment with Franconia: at least, so the queen tells
me. There is left just this way out, the alliance, I mean, and ... some
one must sacrifice himself. Who do you think will do it, John?” Under
the cold stone balcony, the King stretched his hand toward the Crown
Prince. Did he congratulate himself that for once he was not being
over-lenient?

“Very well, your Majesty.” There was no doubt as to its being the Crown
Prince who spoke. At the same time his hand as it met the King’s was the
hand of a subject. “I will do it. You will, I suppose, make the formal
announcement to the Court to-morrow night? I will be prepared, sir.
Good-night.”

“Good-night.” An infinite sadness was in the King’s eyes as once more he
turned about to pace up and down, alone.

The alliance, then, was assured. The Queen and all her ministers--far
more than his--would be satisfied. He supposed it was a very
satisfactory piece of business. But--he wondered suddenly--would the
next King be just an ordinary person?

“Jack.” Some one was calling softly. “Jack, are you there?” The moon had
gone down; it was very dark in the vast old garden. But through the
blackness one could see a dainty figure, like an adorable phantom image,
poised uncertainly, just _at the top of the steps_. “It’s so dark, I
can’t see you, Jack”--the little laugh held a note of the piteous. “And
I daresay it’s the last time I shall see you, isn’t it? For of course he
wouldn’t listen to you. He--he’s such a _real_ king, isn’t he?” For a
moment longer she stood there, the beseeching, fairy thing; then with a
quick sob of disappointment, she fled.

But the half-concealed impatience of her last speech had told the King
that it was the little Maid of Honor, Ermyntrude. Ah--he remembered: she
had come to Court not so long ago, just a month--after her father died.
Her father was--why should it seem suddenly so significant?--a professor
at the University; a very learned man. Her mother, a Princess, had
broken rank to marry him. Women did those things.

A professor at the University! And “It’s the last time I shall see you,
isn’t it?” Who was it standing there at the top of the steps? Standing
there for the last time, piteously brave, with that heartbreaking little
laugh in her voice. The King dashed his hand across his eyes.
“Rosemary!” he called yearningly; and fled after her up the steps.

       *       *       *       *       *

The great banquet hall was hushed. The minstrels had put away their
songs, and the Court sat quiet. Only the Fool played with his gardenia:
he whispered to some one that nothing gave him confidence like appearing
trivial.

“Milords, Ladies of the Court, and our distinguished guests”--as the
King raised his handsome face to the colonial Princes, one saw that it
was very pale--as pale as that of the Crown Prince, who sat at his
right.

“The King is but just beginning to be alive to the privileges of his
position. You know how in olden times, and in these modern reckless days
as well, monarchs have sacrificed thousands--lives, ducats,
principalities even, for the sake of some passing fancy--some hobby,
perhaps, that wanted gratifying. And no one has dared to say them nay.
Milords, I have been up to this time a very lenient sovereign” (the
Queen was tapping her slipper nervously); “I have been content to be
just an ordinary King!” He looked from one to the other of the company
whimsically. “Emperors have given away continents; great lords have sold
their every slave--all for the sake of a whim. And so now, milords, I
intend to gratify a little notion of my own. It has long been the custom
to betroth the Crown Prince on His Highness’ birthday. His Highness
grows to manhood, he attains his majority, and voila! One picks him a
bride! Quite suitable; _quite_ suitable.” (The Queen was breathing more
freely. The Crown Prince sat with his young face half shaded. The whole
Court held its breath with attention; particularly the Fool, who was
watching his master with a new concentration.)

“Very good. The King has taken the fancy--oh, a very flighty fancy no
doubt, milords--to present the Crown Prince and his affections to
er--some one quite unexpected--some one whom the King shall choose on
the ah--spur of the moment, you understand. It lends more excitement to
a game, to cast the die quite on the spur of the moment, eh?” (By this
time the Queen was beside herself; while the Prince had half risen, in
his indignation.)

“So--let me see--I assure you, milords”--and the King’s voice had never
been so lightly gay, his face so gravely sweet--“I assure you this
moment is worth all the monotony of Kingship, yes, though that monotony
had lasted a thousand dreary years!--this moment on which one stakes his
all: his destiny, his country, his lands beyond the seas--for the sake
of one glorious, mad whim! I bestow the hand of Prince John upon which
one? Let us say the littlest--she who sits yonder in the corner--what,
not _crying_? There’ll be plenty of time for that when you’re Queen, my
dear. Come bring her forward, your Highness, and let all men see whom
the King has chosen to carry out his one wild madness. Your name is----?
Ermyntrude! Milords, I pledge you Ermyntrude, your future Queen, the
daughter of a Princess, and” (for the first time the King’s voice
faltered) “of a professor at the University. Ermyntrude!”

“And so he’s no more than a King?” The Fool was asking the Maid of Honor
a moment later--and for a Fool, his voice was beautiful.

The Maid of Honor’s lovely, vivid little face was like a drenched spring
flower--all the more radiant for its tears. “No--no more than a King?
Oh!” she caught the velvet sleeve impetuously. “Oh, Fool, you’re his
best friend--you’re his Fool, so you know him best--could any one, I ask
you could _any one_ be more than the King!”

       *       *       *       *       *

But why, asks the Child (the Child we all are, when it comes to a
story), why was the King so wonderful? Was it because he was one of our
Plain People?

And the story-teller turns back over the pages wistfully--on each of
them, for her, is written a little of the great tragedy and great
sublimity of Life. “It was because he couldn’t be one” (she says
finally), “because he couldn’t be a Plain Person; but had nevertheless
the supreme courage to demand for his son what he could never have for
himself. And I think, in the power to make this subtlest of sacrifices,
every man is King; and every King that divinely privileged creature: a
Plain Man.”




IX

LUCIA--A MERE WIFE


“I’ve come,” said Lucia, “for a very long visit.”

Something in the weary little sigh with which she threw herself down on
the sofa, made her mother look up, arrested.

“You--you don’t mean that you aren’t happy, my dear?” she asked
uncertainly.

Lucia gave a faint smile. “At least I’m not unhappy. I wish” (with
sudden vehemence) “I were. I wish----”

Mrs. Loring took an apprehensive step towards her.

“There, mother, it’s all right. I’m a little tired, and--and unstrung
with seeing you again, that’s all. It’s all right.”

“But my dear, I’m afraid that is just what it isn’t. I----”

“Yes, really! It’s only that I--I’ve always been a little over-balanced,
you know, if such a state were possible. And it is,” tensely, “outside
of mathematics.”

Mrs. Loring--whose intimacy with mathematics was fleeting--looked at her
daughter anxiously. “Just what do you mean, Lucy? There, my dear--throw
your coat off. And your hat--so! Jacqueline will unpack you while we
have our tea. Tell me what you mean--over-balanced?” She inclined her
well-dressed head vaguely.

“I mean,” said Lucia, pressing back against a nest of cushions, “just
that. All my life I’ve seen things evenly, mother: in parallel rows,
that always tallied. When you sent me to finishing-school, I hated it;
but I put up with the two years’ boredom without complaint, because I
realized it was making valuable friends for me. When I took up drawing,
later, I did it because I knew that on the other side of the hard work
and cruel discouragement in getting started, would lie a hobby--and a
profitable one--in which I might bury myself at any time, and with
absorbing interest. And when I married----”

“Yes?” Mrs. Loring sat forward a little.

“You thought I never would marry, didn’t you, mother darling?” with a
brief laugh. “I was afraid of marriage, rather. But when John came, and
I thought I cared enough and--well, it seemed to me that if I went into
the thing with no illusions, I couldn’t lose any. That if I got married,
just because I wanted to,--if I expected nothing, at least I couldn’t
get less.”

“Lucy,” put in her mother uncomfortably, “you think too much. You always
did. Cream, my dear?”

“Please. I said, when I came in, I’d come for a very long visit.”

“Isn’t John Gwynne a good husband?” demanded Mrs. Loring. “Is there
anything----?”

“Oh, nothing--nothing. Our life is as even as the lines in my
account-book. That,” said Lucia in a low voice, “is what I simply can’t
stand; what I had to get away from.”

“But--but, my dear, it doesn’t sound very serious. Really, you know, it
doesn’t!”

“I know it doesn’t--perhaps it isn’t. Only to me”--Lucia’s fingers
closed dangerously over the fragile cup-handle--“it was growing
unbearable! I had to get away.”

“Yes, yes, dear. And you were right to come to me. I was delighted when
your wire arrived--quite delighted,” said Mrs. Loring quickly. “But what
about Tommy?”

“Tommy’s away at school,” said his mother, sipping her tea with a
pretense of tranquillity. “We decided to send him to military school
this year, you know, as he’s nine. He left yesterday. That gave me my
opportunity to come to you. Oh, mother, I snatched at it!”

“Yes, dear--yes,” Mrs. Loring leaned over to pat her hand. She had
certainly not known Lucy was so nervous! “And I’ll let the Granvilles
and Ada Barker and the Temple girls know you’re here, and we’ll have a
gay little visit,” she added cheerfully. “The longer the better, Lucy!”

“Dear mother!” murmured Lucia. “Though I would rather not do a lot of
social things--I really would, mother. I’m--I believe I’m rather tired.
And John said”--she checked herself swiftly.

“Yes? What did John say?”

“A stupid married woman’s habit I’ve fallen into! What he said was ‘do
get rested.’ What he should have said----”

“Lucia,” interrupted her mother, “I was married to your father only four
years, but ‘what he should have said’ never happened. I wouldn’t let it
happen.”

“He should have said ‘I shall miss you,’” murmured Lucia stubbornly.
“That’s one of the things, mother: I’m taken--and let go--so for
granted!”

Mrs. Loring looked at her judiciously. “You’re a very pretty woman,”
said she. “Even excepting your hair, you’d be striking. And” (running
her left hand through its ripples) “it seems to me your hair’s blacker
than ever. Doesn’t John think so?”

“John--is occupied more with Consolidated Iron than he is with my hair.
Nonsense, mother! Why be tragic about it? John is kind, I’m contented.
Why” (lightly) “should I go into heroics because our romance is not so
gossamer but that I can pull it to pieces and put it together again? I’m
thirty-two. Yet”--she added, laying down her cup--“I seem as greedy for
romance as a débutante in the first season. I,” reminiscently, “was
rather a nice débutante, eh, mummy?”

“You were delicious!” said Mrs. Loring with enthusiasm. “Ambrose
Fayerweather was saying only yesterday”----

“Does Mr. Fayerweather still call here?”

Mrs. Loring’s smooth cheeks flushed. “He is a very old friend,” said
she, busy with the cream jug. “And he says the girls these last few
years can’t”----

“Hold a candle to those a dozen years ago,” finished Lucia.

“Why, yes! How did you know?”

“He’s said it to me--and other old _galants_--every time I’ve seen him
in the last decade. Well, mummy! I’m going up to lie down for a little.
I hope,” wistfully, “I haven’t blued you up, dear? I’m afraid I’m
rather”----

“You’re in need of rest!” replied Mrs. Loring briskly. “Run along and
get it, my dear. John said the right thing, after all!”

She smiled brightly at her daughter; but when Lucia had reached the
landing, stood gazing after her. “She thinks too much,” said her mother
with a sigh; “it’s a bad habit for a woman.”

Lucia, upstairs, on a couch luxurious with pillows, was still thinking;
that is, always the same thing. Why would the figures always balance
each other, she wondered wearily? Life was one long sum in algebra--or
subtraction: the signs changed, the quantities cancelled, and--X was
zero. Everything seemed to be _known_; so distinct and matter-of-fact.
When she married John Gwynne, she had loved him--passionately; but also
reasoningly. She had taken into consideration that the passion would
dim, but that a certain comfortable comradeship would take its place.
The passion had dimmed; the comradeship had taken its place. And the
illusions which Lucia had not possessed had remained unattacked. What
was there then to quarrel with? Her house, from which she had
anticipated as much satisfaction as care, had given her the two in equal
proportion. Her child, who she had known would thrill and agonize her
alike, had done both, with impartial intensity. Her art, which she had
been willing to abandon in exchange for certain other delights, had been
indeed compensated for by those delights; it had been a fair exchange
and no more. No more, for that would have been to spoil the law; to dig
unevennesses in the groove--which, for Lucia, seemed eternally straight.

“Oh!” She sat up and flung off the soft blanket that covered her. Was
there any way, was there any trick or painful art, with which to break
the relentlessness of pleasure paid for? Of happiness counter-checked?
Perhaps her mother was right--if she didn’t think so much----. But she
had to think. It was all the expression she had of a nature that had
never been able to escape from itself, for an unconscious minute.
Heavens! Lucia beat the pillows and sank down again. “If this keeps on,
I’ll go quite mad.” She had the wit to know she was half mad,
anyhow--and always had been. It was perhaps the one thing that kept her
sane. Analysts are harassed creatures. John Gwynne, who ate meat and
potatoes three times a day, and loved a good vaudeville show, did not
know of their existence.

John Gwynne was at that moment in a shop, leaving an order for new
decorations for Lucia’s rooms.

“You’ll have to push it through in a hurry,” he said anxiously. “Mrs.
Gwynne said she didn’t know when she’d be back, and that means any time.
I want something in lilac. Lilac’s her color.”

The attentive clerk showed two samples in pale mauve. “We have the
chintz to match these, Mr. Gwynne. If I might suggest, I should think
the unconventional design----”

“Sure, the unconventional’s the thing for Mrs. Gwynne! You’ve served her
for ten years, Eh, Gregg?”

“Yes, sir--” the suave clerk’s face broke into an almost natural
smile--“I was here when you brought her in to select her bridal
furnishings, ten years ago.”

“Sure!” said John Gwynne again, more slowly. “Ten years ago! George, but
time goes by, don’t it, Gregg?” He was staring out the window at the
motors tearing up and down outside.

“Well!” with a start, “the unconventional it is,--paper, hangings, and
the whole business--and look here, Gregg, rush this for me, will you?
Push it right along.”

“We certainly will, Mr. Gwynne,” the clerkly manner was not quite
restored again. Heartiness struggled with it; and--“excuse me, sir,”
said Gregg hurriedly, “but do you know I think this is the very design
Mrs. Gwynne chose when you were married--wistaria, with the pale pink
rosebuds in the border--I’m almost positive it is. It’s a piece we
didn’t carry for a number of years, and then”----

“Why, sure--sure!” said Gwynne, gazing at it. “The very thing! And then
my sister, two years later, went and put on blue--to surprise Mrs.
Gwynne--while we were in Europe. And I think it did surprise her some!”
he remembered grimly.

The clerk gave a feeble smile. “Yes, sir--blue with a silver stripe--I
remember, sir!”

“I should think you would! I told her to come down and have it changed,
but Tommy--our little boy--had the measles just then, and afterward I
got hurt in that hunting accident, and then we went to the country--and
blessed if there’s ever been a time since when she’s had so much as a
chance to think about it! That’s why now--well, see you push it through,
Gregg.”

“Indeed yes, Mr. Gwynne! Good-day, Mr. Gwynne.”

“Good-day.”

“Beats me,” added Gwynne to himself outside, “why these clerk-fellows
can’t say things as they come: ‘indeed yes’--why the Dickens should a
thing be turned hind-side to, when you can say it straight out?”

It was a point he and Lucia had not infrequently discussed--in other
denominations. Gwynne, going home to an empty house, felt he would
willingly have dropped his side, if Lucia had been there to carry hers.

“She looked tired,” he thought, sitting alone by the library fire after
dinner. “I hope her mother makes her rest. She looked regularly fagged.”

He spent the rest of the evening writing her a letter; and Tommy. In the
morning he sent Mrs. Loring a telegram. “How’s Lucia?” it said. Lucia
had been gone twenty-four hours.

“And you say you’re taken for granted!” triumphed her mother. “You think
he’s more interested in Consolidated Iron? Stuff, my dear! John Gwynne’s
forty. For a man of forty to follow his wife up with telegrams, the very
day after----”

“He might have sent it to me,” said Lucia, ungraciously.

“Oh, well!” Mrs. Loring tossed her handsome head. “If you’re determined
to be _difficile_----!”

Lucia, who was pretending to eat a strip of bacon, asked, “Did my
drawing-ink come? I ordered some sent down from town, before I
left--and a lot of Bristol-board.”

“It came,” said Mrs. Loring, looking at her uneasily. “Lucia, whatever
are you----”

“I am going to draw,” said Lucia, with a deep breath. “Ever since I was
married, I’ve never had time: first there was Tommy, and then the trip
abroad, and then Tommy’s measles, and then John’s accident, and then the
new house in the country, and--I’m going to draw, mother! For days and
days, and blissful weeks--I’m going to draw!”

Her cheeks were vivid, her eyes afire.

“Oh!” gasped Mrs. Loring, looking at her. “You--you’re going to draw.
For--weeks!”

“Yes, mother! And you can tell Ada Barker, and the Temple girls, and
whoever else comes, that their fascinations are nothing compared with
black-and-white. And if John sends telegrams asking ‘How’s Lucia?’ tell
him ‘She’s drawing!’ Do you hear? Tell him ‘She’s drawing!’”

And snatching up her precious parcel that a servant had brought, with an
excited little laugh, Lucia fairly flew upstairs. Her mother, left with
John Gwynne’s telegram, shook her head, perplexedly.

At luncheon, Lucia appeared, less gay, though still flushed and ardent
with intention. “It’s wonderful,” she said, “to have one uninterrupted
morning--to know there’s no ordering to be done, and that John won’t
come tearing home for early lunch. I really believe I shall accomplish
something--if I work,” she added, a little pucker coming between her
eyes.

After lunch, she went back to it. Mrs. Loring wished she would lie down
and rest her eyes; but she knew Lucia fairly well: she did not suggest
it. That night when Ambrose Fayerweather came to dinner, he said warmly,
“Well, well! And so the mother tells me you’re at work again, drawing!
What energy you youngsters have, to be sure!”

Lucia, who was genuinely fond of him, did not answer that she was as old
as her own grandmother, but said with a kind of enthusiasm, “Yes, isn’t
it nice! I feel as though I should really get something done.
Though--it’s rather hard, of course, starting in again, after so many
years.”

“Of mere wife-hood, eh?” Mr. Fayerweather looked at her a bit wistfully
from under his iron-grey brows. “By the way, I saw that husband of yours
the other day. They tell me he’s a man to reckon with, now. I tell
them--but you always get cross with me when I tell the truth about
yourself.”

Lucia smiled at him. And he remembered she had always been a
confoundedly pretty girl. “Dear Mr. Fayerweather, I’m never cross with
you. I’m only unconvinced.”

“Oh! very well then” (they were waiting for her mother and dinner),
“I’ll tell you: when people say to me what a splendid fellow Gwynne is,
and how successful, I say yes, but who’s backing him? _Mrs. Gwynne!_”

“Backing him?” repeated Lucia slowly.

“Why, yes. Haven’t you always furnished the brains of the
combination--the spark? My dear Lucia, we all know that delightful head
of yours works in twenty directions a minute!”

Lucia looked at him curiously. “No. It works in only two.” And they kill
each other, she started to add; but changed it to “I’m afraid neither
has ever helped John.”

“Nonsense--non--sense! Why, Gwynne was nowhere until he got married; and
since then--he’s simply soared! There’s no holding him down. Believe me,
Lucia, I hear it from men who----”

“Oh, of course he’s done well. I--I’m tremendously proud of John’s
success. But it’s his own success, Mr. Fayerweather,” Lucia said
passionately. “I haven’t contributed to the length of an idea!” The
suddenness with which it struck her, almost overwhelmed Lucia Gwynne.

“My dear,” said Ambrose, looking at her, “you--none of you--can tell
what you contribute. You’re women, aren’t you?” He glanced through the
door, at the stairs where her mother was coming down. “That’s one thing
you can’t help or evade. And--you don’t know what you contribute.”

Lucia, during dinner, thought about it. It was a new kind of thinking
for her: what she didn’t know; what she could not possibly determine;
what didn’t balance with anything else. In it, she forgot the somewhat
disheartening disclosures of the day’s work--that her technique was
laborious rather than a joy--that it was hard, impossible almost, to get
back at the end of the years; and remembered to write to Tommy. She
wondered if he had put his boots away, and if he was homesick. Funny
little freckle-faced Tommy! Two stubborn tears, like those that had
worked their way out of his brave brown eyes when he parted from her,
rose suddenly to Lucia’s. How weak she was! she told herself, the next
minute, impatiently.

But she wrote to Tommy that night, before she went to bed. And at the
end she said--instead of the caution about colds he hated so--“Mother
wishes she could kiss you good-night--really, truly good-night, little
son!” When she had sent the letter, she was inclined to be scornful of
that last bit. The foolish third person--it was only an advanced
baby-talk, that in her training of Tommy she had rigorously excluded.

Next day she worked harder than ever, and when John’s telegram came, she
did not even know it. She was upstairs, putting her eyes out drawing a
bit of lace on the gown of a gorgeous Wenzell lady. Come right, it would
not. All afternoon she toiled; got a smudge on her nose that stayed
there when Ada Barker came to tea, and a general irritability that
caused that young woman to say later, “Well, I didn’t know Lucia Gwynne
had gone off so! She’s positively untidy, and so sharp!”

That, Lucia’s mother had reason to echo during those twenty-four hours.
But mothers don’t echo, somehow. They exonerate. Mrs. Loring was kept
busy exonerating, while that bit of lace tied itself up in knots, and
haughtily refused unravelling. When in the evening John Gwynne wired
“why doesn’t Lucia write to me?” Lucia’s mother replied, “She’s drawing
a piece of lace.” When, an hour later, he demanded, “What in thunder
ails her?” Mrs. Loring wired back, “Why don’t you come and see for
yourself?”

He came.

Three days after Lucia had arrived, throwing herself down on the little
sofa, her husband followed suit. He looked extraordinarily big there.

“Where’s Lucia?” he asked instantly.

“Drawing lace,” said Mrs. Loring--about whose pretty mouth were little
lines.

“Is she mad?” demanded her husband.

“She has been--very near it.” Mrs. Loring looked intently into Gwynne’s
face. “Lucia thinks too much. You don’t give her enough to do.”

“Thinks too much--not enough to do? Why, isn’t she my wife? What should
she do, except give orders to the servants and enjoy herself? I don’t
want her to do anything!”

“Then you mustn’t be surprised,” said her mother, “if she comes off to
me and draws lace.”

“What? If she--what?”

“If she finds something to do for herself.”

“But she’s always busy--rushing about, with a thousand things to--!
That’s one reason why I was glad to have her get away: the only reason.
She looked fagged to death. And you say she hasn’t anything to do!”

“Nothing with her head. Only her arms and legs--and nerves. For Lucia
that’s not enough. If her head isn’t busied, it gets away from her,
and----”

“You tell her to come down here,” broke in John Gwynne suddenly.
“_Please!_ Tell her to come down here, and----”

Lucia appeared in the door. There were two smudges on her nose. “I
simply can’t get that wretched”--she began: then, with a gasp, “Oh!
_John!_ Why--why----”

“Hello, little girl!” John caught her, smudges and all, half way across
the room. Mrs. Loring vanished. “Are you--glad to see me?”

Lucia’s lips were buried somewhere about his ear. “But--I--I--yes,” she
murmured with difficulty. “I--was trying to draw lace.”

“Well,” said John Gwynne, “you’re going to draw a good deal bigger
things than that.” John Gwynne could act quickly in matters of
importance. “I’ve a million-dollar combine up for dicker this
week--Fayerweather and Lodge and some of the fellows are in it with
me--and it’s to do with an art collection of a regent prince who’s gone
bankrupt and who’s got to sell to pay his debts. We’re thinking of
buying; and I want your--why, Lucia, honey, what’s the matter? Sit down.
Why----”

For Lucia was crying. First, softly, then tempestuously; as though her
heart would break. John drew her down by him on the sofa, and patted her
hand. “It’s all right, honey,” he said steadily, “it’s all right. I
know--I took you by surprise, and you were tired to death, and--well,
maybe you’d better come home, Lucy.”

“Oh, John--John,” she tried to control herself, “you don’t understand.
It’s not that--it’s--John, don’t you see, I’ve tried all along to _keep
tab_ on things! I’ve put down so much on your side, and so much on mine;
and then added them up. What you gave out I gave--and they always
tallied. And at last--oh, don’t you see how dreary it got? How
worthless? But _I couldn’t stop doing it_. I was like a wound-up clock.
And so----”

“And so now you are going to begin a new column called _our_ side,” put
in John Gwynne, covering her hands. “And, Lucia! It’ll be so mixed up,
and in such big figures, you can never count ’em--my dear! And, anyhow,
we’ll be too busy. I’m going to send for Tommy--after you and I----”
with swift tenderness, he kissed her.

While Gwynne, next day, was standing with Lucia in the room hung with
the wistaria and pale rosebuds of ten years ago, Ambrose Fayerweather
was saying to Mrs. Loring, “but I thought she came to make a _long_
visit?”

“Well,” said Mrs. Loring defensively, “she stayed three days!”




X

ROGER--PLAINLY AN IDLER


“Eh bien, Marcel! and how does it go?” I asked.

“Oh, it goes, m’sieu--it goes, always. But----”

“Yes? ‘But’----?”

“Well, m’sieu” (pulling my chair out, uneasily), “it is the season of
the Americans, and--but pardon, m’sieu!”

“Don’t mind me,” I said, pouncing on the carte du jour of the Café aux
Oranges. “In Paris I am equally content as you to forget it--that I am
American. _Alors_, Marcel!--it will be hors d’œuvres variés, and then an
omelette fines herbes, and then, I think, an assiette anglaise with a
bit of salad, eh? and a Camembert, to finish.”

Marcel regarded me solemnly--consideringly--from over the wide block
rims of his glasses. “But yes, m’sieu,” he said at last, grudgingly, “I
suppose that it can go, as a breakfast. And monsieur drinks----?”

“Beer,” I was suddenly occupied with an extraordinarily pretty girl in
the orangier opposite, “demibrune, Marcel.”

“Pardon, m’sieu, demiblonde--er--I--a thousand pardons, m’sieu!”
Confused, the old fellow brought his eyes back from the same direction;
made a violent effort to blush, and hurried off, murmuring, “demibrune,
m’sieu, it is understood!”

I looked again at the girl. Even for the Café aux Oranges, where in
spring, like this, there are as many pretty girls as blossoms on the
chestnut trees above the little tables,--she was extraordinarily pretty.
And she was American. One knew that by the upholstered shoulders of the
young man and the shopping-bag of the lady, who were with her. The lady
was frowning over the menu.

“I will not come here again!” she was heard to say, in a voice with as
many corners as her shopping bag. “The second time this week--no roast
beef! I’ll not come again. It’s a cheap place.”

“But, mamma” (by straining one’s ears, one could just get the low
response of the pretty girl) “it’s a very nice place, really! And don’t
you know it is one of the very few old cafés of the Quarter--the old
French cafés--Roger told us?”

“Roger!” exploded the lady (there was no difficulty in hearing her). “If
Roger knew less about cafés, it would be a great deal better for----”

Marcel returned with the hors d’œuvres. But not before I had seen a thin
smile overtake the features of the heavy-shouldered young man.

“Who are they?” I asked Marcel, carelessly enough.

With a thump he set down the radishes. “They, m’sieu?” Scornfully, “they
are Americans who are come since m’sieu went away. While m’sieu was in
Italy they came to live in the Rue Vavin, near by. They are friends of
Monsieur Roger Elmont--_ce beau garçon!_ But mademoiselle is an
angel--but of a goodness! Only last Sunday she gave me two francs ten,
and always when she takes coffee here in the evening--but she is very
good for me.”

“And the others? The mother and brother?”

“Pah! what would you? _Canaille!_--tourists--but it is not her brother,
m’sieu. It is the _futur_ of mademoiselle, _saints dieux_!”

“Not possible! But are you sure, Marcel? How do you know?”

“Listen, m’sieu”--he lowered his voice--“m’sieu eats his crevettes, and
I shall recount to him: listen. A month ago, before one began to take
the repasts outside at Café aux Oranges, there came one evening these
three and Monsieur Roger. They are gay--but of a gaiety! They order
dinner and--_mais si!_ champagne _and_ champagne--first Monsieur Roger,
then this young man, Stuart, he calls himself, I think. This Monsieur
Stuart, of champagne he himself orders two bottles. But they are
friendly, he and Monsieur Roger; they are like brothers.

“Then--I am serving them, I and Little-John--all of a sudden something
happens. Something is said--I am out, searching their dessert, I do not
hear. But Little-John hears, and he murmurs to me, stupidly in high
voice as he always does, ‘it is the _futur_ of Mademoiselle, that one
with the made shoulders. Madame has come from telling Monsieur Roger.’
This, then, is the cause of the quick silence, and of Monsieur Roger’s
pale face, and mademoiselle’s blushes--ah, but she is beautiful,
mademoiselle; m’sieu finds her brunette! For myself, to me she seems
blonde. Such blue eyes and the skin so white, like camelia, though
certainly her hair----”

“Never mind,” I said, buttering a heel of bread, “I can see her hair.”

“But perfectly, m’sieu. I was saying, Monsieur Roger is all of a
surprise with the news. He has not known mademoiselle is engaged. But
yes, says madame with victory, since two months--since the ship in which
they came from America. This--how you say?--Chames? Chames Stuart was on
that ship. Madame is an intimate of M. Stuart’s mother. To Monsieur
Roger, madame tells with what singular air of _double entendre_, this
Chames Stuart is a man to be trusted. A _good_ man. Monsieur Roger
throws back his head and laughs--very long.

“But, m’sieu, I do not like to hear that laugh. Myself, I am foolish for
Monsieur Roger, like all the rest at Café aux Oranges, more than all the
other _garçons_ I am foolish for him. Do I not know him since he came,
poor obscure student, five years ago? But of a certainty! And that
laugh, it is not the laugh of Monsieur Roger--rich, successful, _grand
artiste_. No! it is a laugh that hides tears, suffering maybe. I do not
know. Surely it makes me regard Monsieur Roger more closely, while he
says, with what _legereté_, ‘but certainly madame! one knows that you
would give Julie to none but a good man--that you would assure yourself
as to his goodness.’

“Then, while mademoiselle and Chames Stuart sip their coffee, madame
speaks to him severely. I understand but meagerly English, m’sieu knows,
I attrap a word here and there--of girls and student balls and the gay
life of the Quartier that has embroiled Monsieur Roger. Truly, m’sieu,
he has always seemed to me a brave young man, _ce beau garçon_, not at
all a mean young man or of _mauvais sang_, like some who come here; but
he has been young, parbleu! The saints be thanked, he has been young.
Yet with that does Madame reproach him, in low tones. Monsieur Roger’s
mother, madame says, has heard of his follies but too often; her heart
is broken. ‘Nor can your success repair it,’ adds madame with harshness.
‘All Baltimore knows of your wild affairs and your mother’s shame.’
M’sieu, I do not know who is this Baltimore, but I think he must be
droll, if he is shocked at Monsieur Roger’s _folies de jeunesse_. _N’est
ce pas?_ But certainly, m’sieu--the omelette!”

When he had brought it, “M’sieu does not ennui himself? M’sieu permits
that I go on?”

“Go on,” I said--looking at the wide blue eyes of the girl in the
orangier opposite.

“That evening passes itself. I do not know why, mademoiselle--the blush
once gone--looks pale and _distraite_. She speaks quite gay and very
fast, yet--why she is sad one can but imagine. This Chames Stuart, he
is scarcely of a beauty, _hein_? A beauty like Monsieur Roger with his
black hair and his gay smile and his figure like--Dame! But I am foolish
for Monsieur Roger, all the Café knows. And he, what does he do? He says
good-night with _empressement_, formally, and hopes he may have the
pleasure of seeing these ladies again very soon. With Chames Stuart he
shakes hands--yet more formally. They separate.

“Second chapter, it is--what do you think, m’sieu? Mademoiselle and
Monsieur Roger _alone_! But of a surety! They come in one warm afternoon
and order tea--but they come inside and far over in one corner, and
mademoiselle glances about, nervously and says, ‘Oh, Roger, it is rash!
It is wrong--I ought not to have come.’ But he soothes her--_Mon Dieu_:
what a voice: what strength--what tenderness divine! The emotion a young
girl must feel for him--one can but imagine--he soothes her and tells
her it was of a necessity for him, this little hour alone with her.

“‘For I was to have married you, Julie, you know,’ he says sadly. ‘Our
mothers planned it when you were a little girl in--how you say, m’sieu?
pinafore? and I a clumsy boy in knickers. Have you forgotten?’

“‘No,’ says mademoiselle with a little sigh; ‘but--they say _you_ did.
They say--mamma and your mother too--that you forgot everything but what
you should have forgotten; that you flung your name and the reputation
of your family to the four winds, and cared for nothing but
pleasure!--and dissipation and mad gaieties. They say!’ mademoiselle
tells him with a break in her lovely voice, ‘that you aren’t fit to
marry a young girl--that you would break her heart.’

“Monsieur Roger cursed--softly, under his breath. But I, m’sieu, heard
him.

“‘Idiots!’ he mutters between his teeth. ‘Fools--prurient-minded
canaille!--to fill a child’s head with such drivel. But it’s dangerous
drivel.’ He turns to mademoiselle.--‘Listen, Julie,’ he says with what
gentleness, ‘Americans have different ideas from ours over here. _They
lead the same lives_,’ says Monsieur Roger bitterly, ‘but they have
different ideas about those lives. They take trouble to conceal. Here in
Paris, one lives as one lives,--openly. One is ashamed of
nothing,--except meanness. I,’ says Monsieur Roger proudly, ‘am ashamed
of nothing. I have been foolish, yes! wild. Did I not come here, a boy
of twenty-one, from my mother and _Baltimore_ (I wonder what is this
Baltimore, m’sieu?), from all the stupid conventions of a society that
is nothing but _afraid_? _Of course_ I was wild; and the people we know,
who came to Paris, would go back with great tales of my escapades.’

“Monsieur Roger folds his arms suddenly. ‘Julie,’ he says with
earnestness, ‘I am ready to tell you anything--answer any question you
may care to put, about my life here in Paris.’

“Mademoiselle looks frightened--confused. Also she reddens,--she is of a
youth, enchanting!

“‘But, Roger,’ she says timidly, ‘I would not know how to ask you
questions. I----’

“‘Then listen,’ he says, leaning forward until his black eyes stare into
her blue ones; ‘I could tell you almost anything, and you would believe
me, Julie?’

“‘Yes,’ says mademoiselle faintly.

“‘I could tell you no, I have not been all these things--I have not
drunk much nor gambled nor lost at cards, as they all say, nor--had
flirtations with women. I could tell you that, couldn’t I, and you would
believe me?’

“‘Ye-es,’ mademoiselle says--yet more faintly.

“‘Well, I tell you nothing of the sort! I tell you, yes, Julie--I have
done all these things; I have been wild and extravagant, and what you
call dissipated, perhaps. I have been all these; but since how long? and
to whose harm--except my own? Can you find me a man in the Quarter who
will tell you that, since a year, I have been anything but what you see
me now--sane and keen for my work? Can you find me a woman who will tell
you that since a year she has seen me anywhere but drinking coffee in
some place like this--or that ever, in all the five years, I was
anything but gentle and courteous to her? You cannot, Julie!’ cries
Monsieur Roger passionately, ‘you cannot!’

“Mademoiselle Julie is trembling--and there are tears in her blue eyes.

“‘With you,’ declares Monsieur Roger, ’as with all the world--Paris,
Baltimore, all!--I am what I am. I seek to be nothing else. But I think
you have never quite understood what I am--is it not so?’

“Mademoiselle shakes her head. She is overcome--_pauv’ petite!_--But
m’sieu is famishing! M’sieu’s _assiette anglaise_--an instant!”

He hurried back with it, and stood anxiously mixing my salad
dressing--though his sharp old eyes strayed sometimes to the trio in the
orangier opposite. “After that,” he went on triumphantly, “Monsieur
Roger is bold--but of a boldness! He takes mademoiselle’s hand--they
have no shame whatever over the tea which is still in the pot!--and says
to her with a simplicity that alarms, ‘tell me--do you love this Chames
Stuart?’

“‘Love him?’ almost screams mademoiselle. ‘Are you out of your mind?’

“‘Then,’ says Monsieur Roger, with the air of a King of France, ‘I’m
going to marry you. It is decided. You have nothing more to say about
it.’

“Mademoiselle blushes divinely--leans a suspicion towards him. They
sigh--ah, youth enchanting! What they feel one can but imagine. He
kisses her hand--of me they are oblivious; until--I cough like one in
the throes of sudden death. They start apart. _Madame_ has entered! And
Chames Stuart!

“I wring my hands and babble Holy Mary’s. In such a case what can one do
that is practical? Nothing. I wait--in terror for Monsieur Roger and
mademoiselle. But Monsieur Roger speaks, with a calm supernal, ‘Will you
not have tea, madame?’ he demands, offering her his place all politely.
But she--madame--sweeps by him. Catches mademoiselle by the arm. ‘I
thought this,’ she cries--‘when I missed you! I suspected it, you
ungrateful girl! Perhaps when you hear that you are to be married next
week at the Consulate, and to Chames Stuart’--then she does look at
Monsieur Roger, and with scorn. Chames Stuart looks at Monsieur Roger
too--and gives a little smile. It is like his shoulders, that smile,
m’sieu--made up and put on. When I see this Chames Stuart, I feel like
Bibi, our café dog, who shows her teeth at him. Madame says he is a good
man--_tant pis!_ For myself, if it is true, I prefer a devil.

“The three go out, mademoiselle looks at Monsieur Roger not at all. She
looks very far away from him. And Monsieur Roger is left with the pot of
tea--that has grown cold. When I ask him shall I renew it, he says ‘to
be married next week! And to Chames Stuart!’ And then he laughs one
laugh--very short--‘Indeed!’ he says--throwing back his head like he
does--‘indeed!’ And he marches out of the café, with two steps--but he
has legs, Monsieur Roger!--forgetting to pay--everything. But I do not
worry, m’sieu. I know, when he comes to-morrow, he will give me the two
francs fifty--and something more. He is very good for me, Monsieur
Roger.

“_Enfin_, that was two weeks ago. And still mademoiselle is not
married. But _hèlas_, it approaches. Yesterday when madame came with her
alone, I heard madame say, ‘Monday--not a day later.’ And I know that it
is because of money difficulties that she is anxious. Chames Stuart has
much money. So has Monsieur Roger, but not so much as Chames Stuart,
and, as madame insists to mademoiselle, Monsieur Roger is not good. One
day--yesterday--mademoiselle cried out, ‘Oh, how do you know what is
good and what is not good? What matters is what is true!’ Madame is
shocked--horrified at this temper. And after an instant mademoiselle
apologizes--with meekness--_Pauv’ petite!_ What she feels, one can but
imagine.”

He gave me my cheese, and stared gloomily at the back of Chames Stuart’s
sandy head. “Monday!” I heard him mutter, belligerently. Then to
me--“But where then is Monsieur Roger? Only now does mademoiselle
whisper to me if he has been here--Monsieur Roger. Since that day when
he comes to pay for the tea, he is not here. I think he tries somewhere
to console himself, but I do not tell mademoiselle. A young girl cannot
understand such things.”

“Then she should,” I declared with a warmth that surprised
myself--forty, and inclined to take young girls and the rest of life
negligently. “It is because young girls don’t understand such things
better, that they let themselves be overruled by James Stuarts and
mammas with empty shopping-bags,” I snapped, to the wonder of old
Marcel.

My eyes just then had met the troubled blue of the girl’s--the three
were leaving. James Stuart took her arm, always with that thin,
satisfied smile. I glared at him. I do not like good young men with
padded shoulders, and a smile for features. I grumbled as much to
Marcel, who shook his head astonished (delighted, too) at my vehemence.
“Madame tells mademoiselle there is nothing in his life which this
Chames Stuart might not tell to her,” he said scornfully. “That no one
has seen him or heard of him doing anything to be condemned. _Eh! la!
la!_” The Frenchman rolled his eyes. “_C’est un drôle d’idéale, hein_
m’sieu? These Americans!--pardon, m’sieu! M’sieu’s hat? _À ce soir_,
alors, m’sieu.”

That evening at dinner he came up to my table, with an air of tremendous
excitement. Indeed the whole Café aux Oranges seemed curiously alert,
almost explosive. Mademoiselle Julie and her mother were there in their
corner, sipping _petits verres_--mademoiselle’s cheeks the color of
jacqueminots, to be sure, and madame’s with more corners than ever--if
possible. But what caught my attention was--heaven of heavens!--Roger
Elmont sitting directly opposite them, _between Margot and Suzette_! the
two madcaps of the Quarter! James Stuart was not in the café.

“But, m’sieu, listen--listen while I tell you,” old Marcel’s words
tumbled over themselves in his eagerness--“M’sieu has dined, _hein_?
M’sieu takes only coffee and his liqueur? Listen, then, m’sieu: these
ladies, they come in alone. They order dinner--which mademoiselle will
scarcely touch. She is miserable, she is without herself. At last she
says with a bitterness that is to break the heart, ‘If it’s only the
money, Roger has plenty; and I am going to tell him to-night that if
it’s true, what he says about his life this last year, and if he can
prove to you that it’s true, I will marry him. Chames Stuart,’ says
mademoiselle--but with a calm--‘can go back to America.’

“Madame is furious. ‘But,’ she repeats, ‘he cannot prove it--Roger can
never prove it, that he has been good this last year.’

“‘_I_ can,’ flashes mademoiselle with a defiance, mon Dieu, divine! ‘We
can prove it. Only wait and----’

“M’sieu, at this heart-rending moment, I ask you does not Monsieur Roger
come in! Monsieur Roger and” (Marcel groaned in anguish) “that mad
Suzette!--arm in arm, singing, laughing--m’sieu, I, the old _garçon de
café_, Marcel, want to perish! And, can you believe me, they do not see
those ladies, no! But--_nom de Dieu!_--another sees them! Margot--the
vixen--who was mad for Monsieur Roger all last year; Margot sees them.
She makes a rush--she leaves her escort--she insults Suzette--tears her
hat off. They scream! they pull each other’s hair--the café is of a
_furore_! And Monsieur Roger, he only laughs--he just laughs, and teases
those girls to wilder and wilder rage.

“Still he does not see mademoiselle--_pauv’ petite_, so white,
suddenly!--who begs to go; but madame will not permit her. Hard as iron
she holds mademoiselle’s arm and _makes_ her see. ‘Now will you prove?’
she demands, with triumph. ‘Now can you prove?--this scandal!’
Mademoiselle answers nothing. She looks very little and very white. Now
the patron has come in, peace is ruled, and Monsieur Roger with good
nature promises to give both those girls dinner. But _ciel!_ m’sieu, at
the instant, he has seen mademoiselle! It is tragedy. What will happen?
It is just at the moment of m’sieu’s entrance that he perceived
this--oh, poor young man! Is he desolated!--what he feels one can but
imagine. I am bringing m’sieu’s liqueur.”

I glanced about. Mademoiselle Julie was indeed abject; nor did madame
and her shopping-bag look too happy in their triumph. As for Roger
Elmont--dark, gloomy-eyed, between the two now chattering girls--he
looked, if anything, the most wretched of the three. All at once he
rose, walked swiftly over to mademoiselle. They were sitting quite near
me, to-night, and I heard him say in a firm voice, “Julie, I want to
explain.”

“Sir!” said madame, indignantly. (One could have sworn she would say,
‘Sir!’)

Roger beautifully disregarded her. “What I told you was true, Julie,” he
concentrated all the conviction of his black eyes on mademoiselle. “I
have been this afternoon to the studio of a friend for whom Suzette
poses. I was sad--God knows I had reason--she suggested we should come
here. Margot--the other girl--came across us. And--you saw the rest. If
you do not believe me, others will tell you--what I told you was true!
And there is nothing else to tell--nothing.”

The girl looked at him--straight in the eyes. Then suddenly she stood
up. “I believe you,” she said--with a smile for which I would give all
the philosophy of forty and a bald head.

“Julie!” cried madame sharply. “You foolish girl, what do you mean?”

“I mean,” said Julie slowly, “that I am going to marry Roger.”

“You shan’t do it!” declared madame. By this time again the café was on
the verge of uproar. “You are to marry James Stuart, who is a man of
moral sense, a good man who----”

Just here, James Stuart came in--in evening dress, very debonair and
with the smile. “Er--how de do?” he said feebly--seeing Roger.

Then some one saw him--and darted forward. “_C’est lui, c’est lui_,”
screamed Suzette, seizing him with an impish laugh--“that one who was
with me at the Olympia last night--with whom I did the tour of
Montmartre. La! la! _ces anglais!_” And the minx kissed Chames Stuart
loudly on both cheeks--before the outraged eyes of madame.

As for Roger Elmont--he looked steadily at madame.

Madame had shrunk back--for an instant crushed. Then she regained
confidence, caught the girl’s hand. “Come,” she said in a voice choking
with emotion, “come, Julie! Let us go, quickly--let us get out of this
mire--this mud of Paris, where nothing seems to be clean or good. Come!”

But the girl--with a new gleam in her blue eyes--turned and gave her
hand to Roger. “I think,” she said to her mother in a clear voice, “it
is not the mud that counts, but the way one comes out of it.”

“And did you perceive, m’sieu,” chuckled Marcel--when later I was
drinking their health in a _fine champagne_--“did you see that Chames
Stuart had, fault of the wet evening, mud on his boots? Chames
Stuart--that ‘good man,’ _eh nom d’un pipe_! These Americans--pardon,
m’sieu!”


THE END




The Chalk Line

By Anne Warwick

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Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

All the subleties=> All the subtleties {pg 24}

man would be a tryant=> man would be a tyrant {pg 37}






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