*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 53711 ***

THE ORCHID

BY
ROBERT GRANT

ILLUSTRATED BY
ALONZO KIMBALL

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
NEW YORK      1905


Copyright, 1905, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

_Published, April, 1905_


TROW DIRECTORY
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
NEW YORK


[Illustration: "I ask you to drink to the happiness of the loveliest
woman in creation."]




ILLUSTRATIONS


"_I ask you to drink to the happiness of the
    loveliest woman in creation_"      Frontispiece

                                             Facing
                                               page
_The smile of incredulity which curved her
    lips betrayed entertainment also_           108

_"I should not permit it!" he thundered.
    "I should go to law; I should appeal
    to the courts"_                             156

_A huge machine of bridal white ... tore
    around the corner_                          222




THE ORCHID




I


It was generally recognized that Lydia Arnold's perceptions were quicker
than those of most other people. She was alert in grasping the
significance of what was said to her; her face clearly revealed this.
She had the habit of deliberating just an instant before responding,
which marked her thought; and when she spoke, her words had a succinct
definiteness of their own. The quality of her voice arrested attention.
The intonation was finished yet dry: finished in that it was well
modulated; dry in that it was void of enthusiasm.

Yet Lydia was far from a grave person. She laughed readily and freely,
but in a minor key, which was only in keeping with her other attributes
of fastidiousness. Her mental acuteness and conversational poise were
accounted for at Westfield--the town within the limits of which dwelt
the colony of which she was a member--by the tradition that she had read
everything, or, more accurately, that she had been permitted to read
everything while still a school-girl.

Her mother, a beautiful, nervous invalid--one of those mysterious
persons whose peculiarities are pigeon-holed in the memories of their
immediate families--had died in Lydia's infancy. Her amiable but
self-indulgent father had been too easy-going or too obtuse to follow
the details of her home-training. He had taken refuge from qualms or
perplexities by providing a governess, a well-equipped, matronly
foreigner, from whom she acquired a correct French accent and composed
deportment, both of which were now marks of distinction. Mlle. Demorest
would have been the last woman to permit a _jeune fille_ to browse
unreservedly in a collection of miscellaneous French novels. But Lydia
saw no reason why she should inform her preceptress that, having entered
her father's library in search of "Ivanhoe" and the "Dutch Republic,"
she had gone there later to peruse the works of Flaubert, Octave
Feuillet, and Guy de Maupassant. Why, indeed? For, to begin with, was
she not an American girl, and free to do as she chose? And then again
the evolution was gradual; she had reached this stage of culture by
degrees. She read everything which the library contained--poetry,
history, philosophy, fiction--and having exhausted these resources, she
turned her attention outside, and became an omnivorous devourer of
current literature.

Before her "coming-out" party she was familiar with all the "up-to-date"
books, and had opinions on many problems, sexual and otherwise, though
be it said she was an eminently proper young person in her language and
behavior, and her knowingness, so far as appeared, was merely
intellectual. Early in the day her father's scrutiny was forever dazzled
by the assuring discovery that she was immersed in Scott. Mr. Arnold had
been told by some of his contemporaries that the rising generation did
not read Sir Walter, a heresy so damnable that when he found his
daughter pale with interest over the sorrows of the "Bride of
Lammermoor," he jumped to the conclusion that her literary taste was
conservative, and gave no more thought to this feature of her education.
Presently he did what he considered the essentially paternal
thing--introduced her to the social world through the medium of a
magnificent ball, which taxed his income though he had been preparing
for it for a year or two. As one of a bevy of pretty, innocent-looking
maidens in white tulle, Lydia attracted favorable comment from the
outset by her piquant expression and stylish figure. But shortly after
the close of her first season she was driven into retirement by her
father's death, and when next she appeared on the horizon, sixteen
months later, it was as a spirited follower of the hounds belonging to
the Westfield Hunt Club.

On the crisp autumn day when this story opens, the members of that
energetic body were eagerly discussing the interesting proposition
whether or not Miss Lydia Arnold was going to accept Herbert Maxwell as
a husband. This was the universal query, and the point had been agitated
for the past six weeks with increasing curiosity. The hunting season was
now nearing its close, and the lover was still setting a tremendous
pace, but none of the closest feminine friends of the young woman in
question appeared to have inside information. Even her bosom friend,
Mrs. Walter Cole, as she joined the meet that morning, could only say in
answer to inquiries that Lydia was mum as an oyster.

"I suppose the reflection that the offspring might resemble Grandma
Maxwell tends to counteract the glamour of the four millions," remarked
one of the group, Gerald Marcy, a middle-aged bachelor with a partiality
for cynical sallies--also an ex-master of the hounds and one of the
veterans of the colony. He was mounted on a solid roan hunter slightly
but becomingly grizzled like himself. Thereupon he gave a twist to his
mustache, as he was apt to do after uttering what he thought was a good
thing. Most of the Westfield Hunt Club were clean-shaven young men who
regarded a mustache as a hirsute superfluity. The nucleus of the club
had been formed twenty years previous--in the late seventies--at which
time it was the fashion to wear hair on the face, but of the small band
of original members some had grown too stout or too shaky to hunt, most
had families which forbade them to run the risk of breaking their
necks, and others were dead.

Mrs. Cole's reply was uttered so that only Marcy heard it. Perhaps she
feared to shock the smooth-shaven younger men, for, though she prided
herself on her complete sophistication in regard to the world and its
ways, one evidence of it was that she suited her conversation to the
person with whom she was talking. There are points of view which a young
matron can discuss with a middle-aged bachelor which might embarrass or
be misinterpreted by less experienced males. So she caused her pony to
bound a little apart before she said to Marcy, who followed her:

"I doubt very much if children of her own are included in Lydia's scheme
of life."

Mrs. Cole was a bright-eyed, vivacious woman, who talked fast and
cleverly. She was fond of making paradoxical remarks, and of defending
her theses stoutly. She glanced sideways at her companion to observe the
effect of this animadversion, then, bending, patted the neck of her
palfrey caressingly. She was herself the mother of two chubby infants,
and, out of deference to domestic claims, she no longer followed the
hounds, but simply took a morning spin to the meets on a safe hack.

Marcy smiled appreciatively. As a man of the world he felt bound to do
this, yet as a man of the world he felt shocked at the hypothesis. Race
suicide was in his eyes a cardinal sin compared with which youthful
indiscretions resulting from hot blood appeared trifling and normal.
Besides, it was deliberate rebellion against the vested rights of man.
This latter consideration gave the cue to his slightly dogged answer.

"I rather think that Herbert Maxwell would have something to say about
that."

Mrs. Cole surveyed him archly, meditating a convincing retort, when
suddenly a new group of riders appeared over the crest of an intervening
hill. "Here they are!" she cried with a gusto which proclaimed that the
opportunity for subtle confabulation on the point at issue was at an
end.

The newcomers, all ardent hunting spirits--Mr. and Mrs. Andrew
Cunningham, Miss Peggy Blake, Miss Lydia Arnold, Guy Perry and Herbert
Maxwell--came speeding forward at a brisk gallop. Mrs. Cunningham--May
Cunningham--was a short, dumpy woman, amiable and popular, but hard
featured, as though she had burned the candle in social comings and
goings in her youth, which indeed was the case. But since her marriage
she had by way of settling down fixed her energies on cross-country
riding, and was familiarly known as the mother of the hunt. She had an
excellent seat. She and her husband, a burly sportsman whose ruling
passion was to reduce his weight below two hundred pounds, and whose
predilection for gaudy effects in waistcoats and stocks always pushed
the prevailing fashion hard, were prime movers in the Westfield set.
They had no children, and, as Mrs. Cole once said, it sometimes seemed
as though the hounds took the place of them.

Miss Peggy Blake was a breezy Amazon, comely, long-limbed and
enthusiastic, of many adjectives but simple soul, whose hair was apt to
tumble down at inopportune moments, but who stuck at nothing which
promised fresh physical exhilaration. Guy Perry, a young broker who had
made a fortune in copper stocks, was one of her devoted swains. But
dashingly as she rode, her carriage lacked Lydia Arnold's distinction
and witchery. Indeed, that slight, dainty young person seemed a part of
the animal, so gracefully and jauntily did she follow the movements of
her rangy, spirited thoroughbred. When Gerald Marcy exclaimed fervently,
"By Jove, but she rides well!" no one of the awaiting group was doubtful
as to whom he meant.

Keeping as close to his Dulcinea as he could, but not quite abreast,
came Herbert Maxwell, a rather lumbering equestrian. Fashion had led
him, the previous season, as a young man with great possessions, to
follow the hounds, but sedately, as became a somewhat sober novice. Love
now spurred him to take the highest stone walls, and for the purpose he
had bought a couple of famous hunters. He had long ago dismissed both
fear and caution, and had eyes only for the nape of Miss Arnold's neck
as they sped over hill and dale. Twice in the last six weeks he had come
a cropper, as the phrase is, and been cut up a bit, but he still rode
valiantly, bent on running the risk of a final tumble which would break
not his ribs but his heart. In every-day life he appeared large and
above the average height, with reddish-brown hair and eyebrows and a
somewhat grave countenance--rather a nondescript young man, but entirely
unobjectionable; the sort of personality which, as Lydia's friends were
saying, a clever woman could mould into a solid if not ornamental social
pillar.

For Herbert Maxwell was a new man. That is, the parents of the members
of the Westfield Hunt Club remembered his father as a dealer in
furniture, selling goods in his own store, a red-visaged round-faced,
stubby looking citizen with a huge standing collar gaping at the front.
Though he had grown rich in the process, settled in the fashionable
quarter of the city and sent his boy to college in order to make
desirable friends and get a good education, it could not be denied that
he smelt of varnish metaphorically if not actually, and that Herbert
was, so to speak, on the defensive from a social point of view.
Everybody's eye was on him to see that he did not make some "break," and
inasmuch as he was commonly, if patronizingly, spoken of as "a very
decent sort of chap," it may be taken for granted that he had managed to
escape serious criticism. His sober manner was partly to be accounted
for by his determination to keep himself well in hand, which had been
formed ten years previous, during his Freshman year, when one of his
classmates, to the manner born, informed him in a moment of frankness
that he was too loud-mouthed for success.

This had been the turning-point in his career; he had been toning down
ever since; he had been cultivating reserve, checking all temptations
toward extravagance of speech, deportment or dress, and, in short, had
become convincingly repressed--that is, up to the hour of his
infatuation for Lydia Arnold. Since then he had let himself go, yet not
indecorously, and with due regard to the proprieties. All the world
loves a lover, and to the Westfield Hunt Club Herbert Maxwell's kicking
over the bars of colorless conventionality appeared both pardonable and
refreshing, especially as it was recognized that the manifestations of
his ardor, though unmistakable, had not been lacking in taste. The
sternest censors of society had not the heart to sneer at the possessor
of four millions because the entertainments which he gave in his lady
love's honor were more sumptuous than the occasion demanded, and that in
his solicitude to keep up with her on the hunting field he was an easy
victim to the horse-dealers. Before the bar of nice judgment it was
tacitly admitted that he appeared to better advantage than if he had
ambled after his goddess with the lacklustre indifference which some of
his betters were apt to affect. It takes one to the manner born to be
listless in love and yet prevail; and so it was that Maxwell's reversion
to breakneck manners had given a pleasant thrill to this fastidious
colony.

Gay greetings and felicitations on the beauty of the day for hunting
purposes were exchanged between the new-comers and their friends. The
men in their red coats had a word of gallantry or chaff for every woman.
New equestrians appeared approaching from diverse directions, while
suddenly from the kennels a few rods distant issued a barking, snuffing
pack of eager hounds, conducted by Kenneth Post, the master, whose
expansive high white stock and shining black leather boots proclaimed
that he took his functions seriously. This was a red-letter day for him,
as he had invited the hunt to breakfast with him at the club-house
after the run.

Lydia, on her arrival, had guided her thoroughbred to the other side of
Mrs. Cole so deftly that her admirer was shut out from immediate
pursuit. At a glance from her the two women's heads bent close together
in scrutiny of some disarrangement in her riding-habit.

"Fanny," she whispered, "I've done it."

"Lydia! When did it happen?"

"Last evening. I've given him permission to announce it at the
breakfast."

"My dear, I'm just thrilled. You've kept us all guessing."

"I've heard that the betting was even," answered Lydia with dry
complacency. The intimation that she had kept the world in the dark was
evidently agreeable. "I wished you to know first of all."

"That was lovely of you. And how clever to escape the bore of writing
all those hateful notes! That was just like you, Lydia."

"I know a girl who wrote two hundred, and the day they were ready to be
sent out changed her mind. I don't wish to run the risk. Here comes Mr.
Marcy."

Fannie Cole gave her hand an ecstatic squeeze and they lifted their
heads to meet the common enemy, man. It was time to start, and he was
solicitous lest something were wrong with Miss Arnold's saddle girths.

"Beauty in distress?" he murmured with a tug at his mustache. Marcy had
his commonplace saws, like most of us.

Mrs. Cole was opening her mouth to reassure him on that score when she
was forestalled by Lydia.

"That's a question, Mr. Marcy, which can be more easily answered a year
or two hence."

Marcy bowed low in his saddle. "At your pleasure, of course. I did not
come to pry." At his best Marcy had quick perceptions and could put two
and two together. He was assisted to the divination that something was
in the wind by catching sight at the moment of Herbert Maxwell's
countenance. That worthy had been blocked in his progress by pretty Mrs.
Baxter, who, having resented his attempt to squeeze past her by the
following remark, had barred his way with her horse's flank.

"We all know where you are heading, Mr. Maxwell, but as a punishment for
endeavoring to shove me aside you must pay toll by talking to me for a
little."

The culprit had started and stared like one awakened in his sleep, and
stammered his apologies to his laughing tormentor. But while she kept
him at bay, his eyes could not help straying beyond her toward the woman
of his heart, and it was their peculiar expression which drew from Marcy
the remark which he referred to later as an inspiration.

"It's not exactly pertinent to the subject, Miss Arnold, but Herbert
Maxwell has the look this morning of having seen the Holy Grail."

Lydia calmly turned her graceful head in the direction indicated, then
facing her interrogator, said oracularly after a pause: "The wisest men
are liable to see false visions. But provided they are happy, does it
really matter, Mr. Marcy?"

Whereupon, without waiting for a response to this Delphic utterance,
she tapped her thoroughbred with her hunting crop and cantered forward
to take her place in the van of those about to follow the hounds.




II


Mrs. Walter Cole was glad to find herself alone after the hounds were
off. Without waiting to be joined by any women, who, like herself, had
come to see the start and intended to jog on the flank, cut corners and
so be in at the finish, she put her hack at a brisk canter in the
direction of a neighboring copse, seeking a bridle-path through the
woods which would bring her out not far from the club-house after a
pleasant circuit. She was indeed thrilled, and, inasmuch as she must
remain tongue-tied, she could not bear the society of her sex, and
sought solitude and reverie. And so Lydia had done it. Intimate as they
were, she had been kept guessing like the rest, and up to the moment of
the disclosure of the absorbing confidence she had never been able to
feel sure whether Lydia would or not. Lydia married! And if so? She
would have been sure to marry some day; and to marry an entirely
reputable and presentable man with four millions was, after all, an
eminently normal proceeding.

Yet somehow it was one thing to think of her as liable to marry, another
to recognize that she was actually engaged. It was the concrete reality
of Lydia Arnold married and settled which set Mrs. Cole's nimble brain
spinning with speculative, sympathetic interest as the dry autumn leaves
cracked under the hoofs of her walking horse, to which she had given a
loose rein. Lydia had such highly evolved ideas of her own; and how
would they accord with the connubial relation? Not that she knew these
ideas in specific detail, for Lydia had never hinted at a system; but
from time to time in the relaxations of spirit intimacy there had been
droppings--flashes--innuendoes, which had set the world in a new light,
blazed the path as it were for a new feminine philosophy, and which to a
clever woman like herself, fastened securely by domestic ties to the
existing order of things, were alike entertaining and suggestive. Mrs.
Cole drew a deep breath, as once more recurred to her sundry remarks
which had provided her already that morning with material for causing no
less experienced a person than Mr. Gerald Marcy to prick up his ears.
She and her husband had set up housekeeping on a humble scale--almost
poverty from the Westfield point of view--and she remembered the
contemplative silence more eloquent than words when, three years
previous, hungry for enthusiasm, she had taken Lydia into the nursery to
admire her first-born. All her other unmarried friends had gone into
ecstasies over baby, as became true daughters of Eve. Lydia, after long
scrutiny, had simply said:

"Well, dear, I suppose you think it's worth while."

Thus wondering how Lydia would deal with the problems of matrimony, and
almost bursting with her secret, Mrs. Cole walked her horse until the
novelty of the revelation had worn off a little. When she left the
covert at a point suggested by the baying of the dogs, she caught a
glimpse of the hunt on the opposite side of the horizon to that where it
had disappeared from view. Assuming that the finish was likely to occur
in the meadow lands in the rear of the club-house, she proceeded to
gallop briskly across the intervening valley in the hope of anticipating
the hounds. Time, however, had slipped away faster than she supposed. At
all events, when she was still some little distance from the field which
was her destination she beheld the hounds scampering down the slope from
the woodlands beyond. A moment later the air resounded with their
yelpings as they attacked the raw meat provided as a reward for the
deceit imposed on them by the anise-seed scent. Close on their heels
came the Master and the leading spirits of the chase, and by the time
Mrs. Cole arrived the entire hunt had put in an appearance or been
accounted for, and was proceeding leisurely toward the club, gayly
comparing notes on the incidents of the run. There had been amusing
casualties. Douglas Hale's horse, having failed to clear a ditch, had
tossed its ponderous rider over its head--happily without serious
consequences--and in the act of floundering out had planted a shower of
mud on the person of Guy Perry, so that the ordinarily spruce young
broker was a sight to behold.

The Westfield Hunt Club was one of a number of social colonies in the
eastern section of the country which in the course of the last
twenty-five years have come into being and flourished. Three principal
causes have contributed to their evolution: the increase in wealth and
in the number of people with comfortable means, the growing partiality
for outdoor athletic sports, and the tendency on the part of those who
could afford two homes to escape the stuffy air of the cities during as
many months as possible, and on the part of young couples with only one
home to set up their household gods in the country. Our ancestors of
consideration were apt to hug the cities and towns. Their summer
excursions to the seaside rarely began before July, and fathers of
families preferred to be safe at home before the brewing of the
equinoxial storm. But the towering bricks and mortar and increasing
pressure of urban life have little by little prolonged the season of
emancipation in the fresh air, and spacious modern villas, with many
bath-rooms and all the modern improvements, have supplanted the
primitive cottages of the former generation, just as the rank fields of
gay butter-cups and daisies have given place to velvety lawns, extensive
stables, and terraced Italian gardens.

The Westfield Hunt Club was primarily a sporting colony--that is,
outdoor sport was its ruling passion. Cross-country riding had been its
first love, at a time when the free-born farmers of the neighborhood
looked askance at the introduction of what they considered dudish
British innovations. Yet it promptly offered hospitality to the rising
interest in sports of every kind, and the devotees of tennis, polo and
golf found there ample accommodation for the pursuit of their favorite
pastimes.

At the date of our narrative the interest in tennis was at a minimum;
polo, always a sport in which none but the prosperous few can afford to
shine, had only a small following; but golf was at the height of its
fashionable ascendency. Everybody was playing golf, not only the young
and supple, the middle-aged and persevering, but every man however
clumsy and every woman however feeble or gawky who felt constrained to
follow the latest social fad as a law of his or her being. Every links
in the country was crowded with agitated followers of the royal and
ancient game, who bought clubs galore in the constant hope of acquiring
distance and escaping bunkers, and who were alternately pitied and
bullied by the attendant army of caddies, sons of the small farmers
whose views regarding British innovations had been substantially
modified by the accompanying shower of American quarters and dimes.

Indeed, it may be said that the attitude of the country-side regarding
all the doings of the colony had undergone a gradual but complete
change. This was due to the largess and social tact of the new-comers.
To begin with, they were eager to pay roundly for the privilege of
trampling down crops and riding through fences. Having thus put matters
on a liberal pecuniary basis, they endeavored to translate grim
forbearance for business reasons into a more genial frame of mind by
horse shows with popular features, and country fairs where fat prizes
for large vegetables and free dinners bore testimony to the good-will of
the promoters. A ball at which the pink-coated male members of the club
danced with the farmers' wives and daughters, and Mrs. Andrew
Cunningham, with a corps of fair assistants, stood up with the country
swains while they cut pigeon-wings in utter gravity, was an annual sop
to local sensibilities and a bid for popular regard. Little by little
the neighborhood had thawed. Surely the new-comers must be good
fellows, if Westfield's tax receipts were growing in volume without
demur, and there was constantly increasing employment for the people not
only on the public roads, but in carpentry, plumbing, and all sorts of
jobs on the new places, besides a splendid market for their sheep and
chickens and garden produce. From Westfield's standpoint the ways of
some of these individuals with "money to burn" were puzzling, but if
grown-up folk could find amusement in chasing a little white ball across
country, the common sense of Westfield could afford to be indulgent
under existing circumstances.

The quarters to which the hunting party now repaired in gay spirits was,
as its appearance indicated, a farm-house of ancient aspect, which had
been altered over to begin with, and been amplified later to suit the
greater requirements of the club. The rambling effect of the low-studded
rooms had been enhanced by sundry wings and annexes, the result of which
was far from convincing architecturally, but which suggested a quaint
cosiness very satisfying and precious to the original members. Progress,
reform, innovation--call it what you will--was already rife in the
colony itself, a case, it would seem, of refining gold or painting the
lily. One had only to observe the more elaborate character of the new
houses to be convinced of this. The pioneers had been content to leave
the original structures standing, and to do them over with new plumbing
and new wall-papers. Then it occurred to some one richer than his
fellows, or whose wife remembered the scriptural admonition against
putting new wine into old bottles, to pull down an ancient farm-house
and replace it with a comely modern villa. The villa was simple and an
ornament to the landscape, and though the wiseacres shook their heads
and described it as an entering wedge, the general consensus of the
colony declared it an improvement. Others followed suit, and within two
years there was a dozen of these pleasant-looking homes in the vicinity.

But latterly a new tendency had manifested itself. Three sportsmen of
large possessions, who had decided to spend most of the year in the
country, had erected establishments on an imposing scale, very spacious,
very stately, with extensive stables and all the appurtenances befitting
a magnificent country-seat. As the owners were building simultaneously,
there had naturally been some rivalry to produce the most imposing
result. The effect of these splendors was already perceptible. Others
with large possessions were talking of invading Westfield, land was
rising in value, and it cost the colony more to entertain. Most terrible
of all to the pioneers, there was unconcealed whispering that the
club-house must come down and be replaced by a convenient modern
structure; that more commodious stables were needed; that the golf links
should be materially lengthened, and that both the annual dues and the
membership must be increased to help provide for these improvements. As
a consequence most of the old members were irate on the subject, and
Gerald Marcy was quoted as having said that to do away with the original
quarters would be an act of sacrilege.

"Are not the rafters sacred from time-honored association?" he had
inquired in a voice trembling with emotion.

"Principally with champagne," had been Guy Perry's comment on this
fervent apostrophe. Youth is fickle and partial to change. Guy voiced
the sentiment of the younger element in craving modern comfort and
conveniences, which could be obtained by demolishing the old
rattle-trap, as the less conservative styled it, and putting up a clean,
commodious, attractive-looking club-house. Guy himself had given out
that his firm was ready to underwrite the bonds necessary to finance all
the proposed changes. Thus it will be seen that at this period social
conditions at Westfield were in a condition of ferment and change,
although the colony was still youthful. Yet differences of opinion were
merged on this particular morning in the enjoyment of sport and the
crisp autumn weather. The returning members of the hunt found at the
club-house some of the golf players of both sexes, who had been invited
by the master of the hounds to join them at breakfast, and it was not
long before the company was seated at table.

Everyone was hungry, and everyone seemed in good spirits. Conversation
flowed spontaneously, or, in other words, everyone seemed to be talking
at once. The host, Kenneth Post, finding himself free for a moment from
all responsibilities save to see that the waiters did their duty,
inasmuch as the woman on either side of him was exchanging voluble
pleasantries with someone else, cast a contented glance around the
mahogany. Personal badinage, as he well knew, was the current coin of
his set. The occasion on which it was absent or flagged was regarded as
dull. Subjects, ideas, theories bored his companions--especially the
women--as a social pastime. What they liked was to talk about people, to
gossip of one another's affairs or failings when separated, to discharge
at one another keen but good-humored chaff when they met. Naturally the
host was gratified by the universal chatter, for obviously his friends
were enjoying themselves. Nevertheless there seemed to be something in
the air not to be explained by the exhilaration resulting from the run
or by cocktails before luncheon. As he mused, his eyes fell on Herbert
Maxwell and he wondered. That faithful but solid equestrian was commonly
reticent and rather inert in speech, but now, with face aglow, he was
bandying words with Miss Peggy Blake and another young woman at the
same time. Post remembered that he had seen him take three drinks at the
bar, which for him was an innovation. The Master felt knowing, and
instinctively his eyes sought the countenance of Miss Arnold. It was
demure and furnished no clue to her admirer's mood, unless a faint smile
which suggested momentary content was to be regarded as an indication.

While Kenneth Post was thus observing his guests he was recalled to more
active duties by Mrs. Andrew Cunningham, who, in her capacity of mother
of the hunt, had been placed at his right hand. Having finished her
soft-shell crab and emptied her quiver of timely shafts upon the young
man at her other elbow, she had turned to her host for a familiar chat
on the topic at that time nearest her heart.

"I hope you're on our side, Mr. Post--that you are opposed to the new
order of things which would drive every one except millionaires out of
Westfield? Tell me that you intend to vote against pulling down this
dear old sanctuary. It's a rookery, if you like, but that's its charm.
Will anything they build take the place of it in our affections?"

"We've had lots of good times here, of course, and I'm as fond of the
old place as anyone, but--the fact is, Mrs. Cunningham, I'm in a
difficult position. The younger men count on me in a way; it was they
who chose me master, and in a sense I'm their representative; so----"

He paused, and allowed the ellipsis to convey an intimation of what he
might be driven to by the rising generation, to which he was more nearly
allied by age than to the older faction.

Mrs. Cunningham looked up in his face in doughty expostulation. Her
round cheeks reminded him of ruddy but slightly withered crab-apples.
"The time has come for Andrew and me to pull up stakes, I fear. The life
here'll be spoiled. Everything is going up in price--land, servants,
marketing, horses, assessments."

"That's the case everywhere, isn't it?" Kenneth was an easy-going
fellow, and preferred smiling acquiescence, but when taken squarely to
task he had the courage of his convictions. "The fellows wish more
comforts and facilities. There are next to no bathing accommodations at
present, and everything is cramped, and--and really it's so, if one
looks dispassionately--fusty."

"I adore the fustiness."

"Wait until you see the improvements. Mark my words, six months after
they are finished nothing would induce you to return to the old order
of things. We're sure of the money; the loan has been underwritten by a
syndicate."

Mrs. Cunningham groaned. "Exactly. So has everything in Westfield, to
judge by appearances. The palaces erected by the Douglas Hales, the
Marburys, and Mr. Gordon Wallace have given the death-blow to simple
ways, and we shall soon be in the grip of a plutocracy. The original
band of gentlemen farmers who came here to get close to nature and to
one another are undone, have become back numbers, and"--she lowered her
voice to suit the exigencies--"in case Lydia Arnold accepts Herbert
Maxwell, she will not rest until she has something more imposing and
gorgeous than anything yet."

Kenneth eagerly took advantage of the opportunity to divert the
emphasis to that ever-interesting speculation.

"Have you any light to throw on the burning problem?" he asked.

The mother of the hunt shook her head. "Mrs. Cole said to me only
yesterday, 'I've tried to make up my mind for her by putting myself in
her place and endeavoring to decide what conclusion I, with her
characteristics, would come to, and I find myself still wobbling,
because she's Lydia, and he's what he is, which would be eminently
desirable for some women, but----'"

A sudden hush around the table prevented the conclusion of this
philosophic utterance. The sportsman of whom she was speaking had risen
with a brimming glass of champagne in one hand and was accosting the
master of the hounds. A general thrill of expectancy succeeded the
hush. What was he going to say? Speeches were not altogether unknown at
Westfield hunt breakfasts, but they were not apt to be so impromptu, nor
the contribution of such a negative soul as Herbert Maxwell. Gerald
Marcy, sitting next to Mrs. Cole, was prompted to repeat his observation
of the morning. "I was right," he whispered. "He has seen the Holy
Grail."

"Wait--just wait," she answered tensely. _She_ knew what was going to
happen, and as her dark eyes vibrated deftly from Herbert's face to
Lydia's and back again, she longed for two pairs that she might not for
an instant lose the expression on either. Meanwhile the host had rapped
on the table and was saying encouragingly:

"Our friend Mr. Herbert Maxwell desires to make a few remarks."

"Hear--hear!" cried Douglas Hale raucously. His fall had obviously
dulled the nicety of his instincts, for everyone else was too curious to
utter a word--too rapt to invade the interesting silence.

Maxwell had worn the air of a demi-god when he rose. A wave of
self-consciousness doubtless obliterated the introductory phrases which
he had learned by heart, for after a moment's painful silence he
suddenly blurted out:

"I'm the happiest man in the world, and I want you all to know it."

Here was the kernel of the whole matter. What better could he have said?
What more was there left to say? The riddle was solved, and the suspense
which had hung over Westfield like a cloud for many months was
dissolved in a rainbow of romance. There was no need of names; everybody
understood, and a shout of delight followed. Every woman in the room
shrieked her congratulations to the bride-to-be, and those nearest her
got possession of her person. Miss Peggy Blake was the nearest and hence
the first.

"You dear thing! It's just splendid; the most intensely exciting thing
which ever happened!" she cried, throwing her arms around Lydia's neck.
In the embrace her hair, which had become loose during the run, fell
about her ears, and Guy Perry had to get down on his knees to find the
gilt hair-pins. There was a babel of superlatives, and delirious
feminine laughter; the men wrung the happy lover's hands or patted him
on the back.

When the turmoil subsided Maxwell was still standing. Like St. Michael
over the prostrate dragon, he had planted his feet securely for once in
his life on the necks of the serpents Diffidence and Repression. He put
out his hand to invite silence.

"I ask you to drink to the happiness of the loveliest woman in creation.
When a man worships a woman as I do her, and she has done him the honor
to plight him her troth, why shouldn't he bear witness to his love and
blazon her charms and virtues to the stars? God knows I'm going to make
her happy, if I can! To the happiness of my future wife, Miss Lydia
Arnold!"

"All up!" cried the master, and as the company rose under the spell of
love's fervid invocation, he added authoritatively, "No heel taps!"

As they drained their glasses and were in the act of sitting down, Guy
Perry conveyed the cordial sentiment of all present toward the proposer
of the toast and lover-elect by beginning to troll,


     For he's a jolly good fellow--
     For he's a jolly good fellow.


Under cover of the swelling song Mrs. Walter Cole, fluttering in her
seat, and with her eyes fastened on Lydia's countenance, felt the need
of taking Gerald Marcy into her confidence.

"I just wonder what she thinks of it. His letting himself go like that
is rather nice; but it isn't at all in her style. If she is truly in
love with him, it doesn't matter. But there she sits with that
inscrutable smile, perfectly serene, but not in the least worked up,
apparently. Our embraces didn't even ruffle her hair."

"He has been repressing himself--been on his good behavior for years,
poor fellow," murmured Marcy.

"I tell you I like his calling her the loveliest woman in creation and
thinking it. Such guileless fervor is much too rare nowadays. But what
effect will it have on Lydia, who knows she isn't? That is what is
troubling me. Unless she is deeply smitten, won't it bore her?"

The question was but the echo of her spirit's wonder; she did not expect
a categorical response. Whatever good thing Gerald Marcy was meditating
in reply was nipped in the bud by an appeal to him for "Aunt Dinah's
Quilting Party" as a continuation of the outburst of song. He felt
obliged to comply, and yet was nothing loth, as it was one of the most
popular in his repertory, and was adapted to his sweet if somewhat
spavined tenor voice.


       In the skies the bright stars glittered,
         On the bank the pale moon shone,
     And 'twas from Aunt Dinah's quilting party
         I was seeing Nellie home.


So he sang with melodious precision, accompanying his performance with
that slight exaggeration of chivalric manner which distinguished the
rendering of his ditties. The words just suited the sensibilities of the
company, combining feeling with banter, and in full-voiced unison they
caught up the refrain:


       I was seeing Nellie ho-o-me--
       I was seeing Nellie ho-o-me,
     And 'twas from Aunt Dinah's quilting party
       I was seeing Nellie home.


Laughing feminine eyes shot merry glances in the direction of Lydia,
and the red-coated sportsmen lifted their glasses in grandiloquent
apostrophe of the affianced pair. Andrew Cunningham, resplendent in a
canary-colored waistcoat with fine red bars, was heard to remark
confidentially, after ordering another whiskey and soda, that the
festivities which were certain to follow in the wake of this engagement
would add five pounds to his weight, which it had taken him two months
of Spartan abstemiousness to reduce three.

Erect and sportsmanlike, Gerald continued, after an impressive sweep of
his hand to promote silence:


       On my arm her light hand rested,
         Rested light as o-o-cean's foam,
     And 'twas from Aunt Dinah's quilting party
         I was seeing Nellie home.


It was a red-letter day not only for the master of the hounds but for
Westfield's entire colony. Conjecture was at an end; the love-god had
triumphed; the announcement was a fitting wind-up to the exhilarating
hunting season. Yet amid the general congratulation and optimism some
philosophic souls like Mrs. Walter Cole did not forbear to wonder what
was to be the sequel.




III


Precise consideration by Lydia of her feelings for her betrothed--and
presently her husband, as they were married in the following
January--were rendered superfluous for the time being by the worship
which he lavished upon her. There were so many other things to think of:
first her engagement ring, which called forth ejaculations of envious
admiration from her contemporaries; then her trousseau, the costumes of
her bridesmaids, the details of the ceremony and the wedding breakfast,
and the important question whether the honeymoon was to be spent in
Europe. There was never any doubt as to this in Lydia's mind. After
deliberation she had decided on a winter passage by the Mediterranean
route to Nice and Cannes, followed by a summer in the Tyrol and
Switzerland, with a fortnight in Paris to repair the ravages in her
wardrobe made by changing fashion. It must not be understood that
Maxwell demurred to this attractive programme. He merely intimated that
if he remained at home and demonstrated what he called his serious side,
he would probably receive a nomination for the Legislature in the
autumn; that the party managers had predicted as much; and that the
favorable introduction into politics thus obtained might lead to
Congress or a foreign mission, as he had the means to live up to either
position worthily.

Lydia listened alertly. "I should like you to go as ambassador to Paris
or London some day, of course, but to serve in the Legislature now
would scarcely conduce to that, Herbert. I've set my heart on going
abroad--I've never been but once, you know--and it's just the time to go
when we are building our two houses. Where should we live if we stayed
at home? The sensible plan is to store our presents, buy some tapestries
and old furniture on the other side, and come back in time to get the
autumn hunting at Westfield and inaugurate our two establishments."

This settled the matter. The only real uncertainty had been whether she
did not prefer a trip around the world instead. But that would take too
long. She was eager to figure as the mistress of the most stately modern
mansion and the most consummate country house which money and
architectural genius could erect. These two houses were perhaps the most
engrossing of all among the many concerns which led her to postpone
precise analysis of her feelings to a period of greater leisure. That is
the exact quality of her love--whether it were eighteen carat or not, to
adopt a simile suggested to her by her wedding-ring. That she loved
Herbert sufficiently well to marry him was the essential point; and it
seemed futile to play hide-and-seek with her own consciousness over the
abstract proposition whether she could have loved someone else better,
especially as there were so many immediately pressing matters to
consider that both her physician and Herbert had warned her she was
liable, if not prudent, to fall a victim to that lurking ailment,
nervous prostration.

It was certainly no slight responsibility to select the lot in town
which seemed to combine most advantages as the site for a residence. The
matter of the country house was much simpler, for who could doubt that
the ideal location was an expanse of undulating country, higher than the
rest of the neighborhood, known as Norrey's Farm? These fifty acres,
with woods appurtenant, were reputed to be out of the market unless to a
single purchaser. Many a pioneer had picked out Norrey's Knoll as his
choice, only to be thwarted by the owner with the assertion that he must
buy the whole farm or could have none. Later would-be purchasers had
recoiled before the price, which had kept not merely abreast but had
galloped ahead of current valuations, until it had become a by-word in
the colony that Farmer Norrey would bite his own nose off if he were
not careful. But the shrewd rustic was more than vindicated by the
upshot. Lydia, from the moment when she first seriously thought of
Herbert Maxwell as a husband, had cast sheeps' eyes at this stately
property, and within a short period after the engagement was announced
the title deeds passed. Rumor declared that the canny grantor had
divined that the opportunity of his life was at hand and had held out
successfully for still higher figures. But, as everybody cheerfully
remarked, ten thousand dollars more or less was but a flea-bite to
Herbert Maxwell.

Then came the selection of the architects and divers inspections of
plans for the two establishments, which, to the joy of the bridegroom,
were interrupted by the wedding ceremony. They sailed, and their
honeymoon was somewhat of a social parade. Special quarters--the most
expensive and exclusive to be had--were engaged for them in advance on
steamships and in railroad trains, in hotels and wherever they appeared.
Maxwell's manifest tender purpose was to gratify his bride's slightest
whim, and in regard to the choice of the objects on which his ready
money was to be lavished he avoided taking the initiative except when an
occasional mania seized him to buy her costly gems on the sly. Otherwise
he danced attendance on her taste, which was discriminating and
perspicuous. Lydia yearned for distinction, not extravagance; for
superlative effects, not garishness. Her eye was on the lookout in
regard to all the affairs of life, from food to the manifestations of
art, for the note which accurately expressed elegant and fastidious
comfort and gave the rebuff to every-day results or the antics of
vulgarity.

Consequently the wedding trip after the first surprises was but a change
of scene. There were still too many absorptions for retrospective
thought and nice balancing of soul accounts. At Nice and Cannes they
found themselves in a vortex of small gayeties. While travelling, Lydia
was on the alert to pick up old tapestries, porcelain, and other works
of art; in Paris, shopping and the dressmakers left no time for anything
but a daily lesson to put the finishing touch to her French. She had
said to herself that she would draw a trial balance of her precise
emotions when she was at rest on the steamer--for Lydia by instinct was
a methodical person; but a batch of letters reciting complications in
regard to the last details on the new houses was a fresh distraction,
and the society of several engaging men on the ship another.
Nevertheless the thought that she was nearing home struck her fancy
favorably, and on the evening before they landed she eluded everybody
else to seize her husband's arm for a promenade on deck. There was
elasticity in her step as she said, "Won't it be fun to be at Westfield
again, Herbert? I long for a good run with the hounds, and I'm beginning
to pine for the autumn colors and smells."

"Yes, indeed. And we shall be settled at our own fireside at last," he
answered with a lover's animation.

The remark recalled bothersome considerations to Lydia's mind. She felt
sure from the contents of the last packet of correspondence that the
architect had failed to carry out her instructions in several
instances.

"Settled?" she echoed. "If we are settled a year from now we may
consider ourselves very fortunate."

Lydia's immediate plans met with interruption from an unexpected source.
Before the hunting season had fairly begun it was privately whispered in
Westfield circles that a stork would presently visit the new
establishment on Norrey's Farm. Open inquiries from tactless
interrogators, why the Maxwells did not follow the hounds, were answered
by the explanation that the young people had so many matters to attend
to in connection with their two houses that they had decided to postpone
hunting to another year. Later it was known that they would pass the
winter in the country, and not furnish the town house until spring.
When the baby was actually born, in February, everyone knew that it was
expected; but the advent of the infant in the flesh caused a flutter
among Lydia's immediate feminine acquaintances. As soon as the mother
was able to receive visitors, Mrs. Walter Cole came down from town to
offer her warm felicitations and incidentally to satisfy the curiosity
of those who took an interest. She had arranged to lunch after the
interview with the Andrew Cunninghams, who lived all the year round at
Westfield, and thither at the close of the visit to her intimate friend
she repaired, replete with information. It happened to be Saturday, and
the master of the house had brought down Gerald Marcy by an early train
for a winter's afternoon tramp across country, so that the two women had
only a few minutes of unreserved conversation.

"Well, she was just as one would have expected--Lydia all over," Mrs.
Cole began with the intensity of a pent-up stream which has regained its
freedom. "She looked sweet, and everything in her room and in the
nursery was bewitching, as though she had been preparing for the event
for years and doted on it. That's just like her, of course. She bemoaned
her fate at losing the hunting season, and she has decided not to nurse
the baby. As an experienced mother," continued Mrs. Cole
contemplatively, "I felt bound to remind her that there are two sides to
that question, and that I had nursed Toto and Jim not only because
Walter insisted on it, but to give the children the benefit of the doubt
as to any possible effect on character from being suckled by a stranger.
But she had thought it all out, and had her arguments at her fingers'
ends. She declared it a case of Anglo-Saxon prejudice, and that every
Frenchwoman of position sends her babies to a foster-mother. Of course
it _is_ a bother, and frightfully confining, but my husband wouldn't
hear of it, though half the mamas can't satisfy their babies anyway."

Mrs. Cunningham nodded understandingly. "I daresay it's just as well.
And of course she regards the rest of us as old-fashioned. But tell me
about the baby."

Mrs. Cole laughed. "You ought to have heard Lydia on the subject. She
talks of it in the most impersonal way, as though it belonged to someone
else or were a wedding present. I never cared much for babies before I
was married, but could not endure anyone who wouldn't make flattering
speeches about mine. Lydia's is a dear little thing as they go, and has
a fascinating wardrobe already, and I think she is rather devoted to it
in her secret soul, but one of the first things she said to me--before I
could get in a single compliment--was, 'She's the living image of
Grandma Maxwell, Fannie. She has her mouth and nose.' And the
embarrassing part was that it's true. The moment Lydia called my
attention to it I saw. Her eagle maternal eye had detected what the
ordinary mother would have failed to perceive. But it's Grandma Maxwell
to the life. 'Why evade the truth?' remarked Lydia after one of her
deliberate pauses. 'I shall name her for her, and I can discern in
advance that she will never be a social success.'"

"Poor little thing!" murmured Mrs. Cunningham. Such an anathema so early
in life was certainly heart-rending.

Mrs. Cole put her head on one side like an arch bird by way of
reflective protest. "It sounds dreadful, of course, but remember she's
Lydia. What she will really do will be to metamorphose her, body and
soul, so that by the time she is eighteen there will not be one trace of
Maxwell visible to the naked eye. See if I'm not right," she said with
the gusto of a brilliant inspiration which seemed to her a logical
defence of her friend.

The arrival of the men interrupted the dialogue, but the general topic
was presently resumed from another point of view. Not many minutes had
elapsed after they sat down to luncheon before Gerald Marcy hazarded the
observation that, prophecies and innuendoes to the contrary
notwithstanding, events in the Maxwell household appeared to have
followed the course of nature. Mrs. Cole, to whom this remark was
directly addressed, ignored the sly impeachment of her abilities as a
seer, and, having finished her piece of buttered toast, said blandly:

"I think Lydia is very happy."

"I felt sure she would be tamed," continued Marcy with a tug at his
mustache. "I look to see her become a model of the domestic virtues."

"Don't be too sure that she is tamed, Gerald," said Mrs. Cunningham.
"Lydia is Lydia." Perhaps the knowledge that she had been longing in
vain for years for a child of her own gave the cue to this slightly
brusk comment.

"Lydia will never be exactly like the rest of us; that's her
peculiarity--virtue--what shall I call it?" interposed Mrs. Cole,
looking round the table with a philosophic air. "The rest of us demur
at conventions, but accept them in the end. She follows what she deems
the truth. I don't say that she is always right or that she doesn't do
queer things," she added by way of conservative qualification of her
bubbling encomium.

"And how about Maxwell?" asked Andrew Cunningham, who had seemed
temporarily lost in the contemplation of his lobster salad so long as
any of that lusciously prepared viand remained on his plate. "Infatuated
as ever, I suppose," he added, sitting back in his chair and exposing
benignly his broad expanse of neckcloth and fancy check waistcoat.

"Yes, and he ought to be, surely. But Lydia has a rival in the daughter
of the house," answered Mrs. Cole, reinspired by the inquiry. "He came
in just as I was leaving, and is almost daft on the subject of the
baby. If Lydia's ecstasy is somewhat below the normal, he more than
makes up for the deficiency. There never was such a proud parent. He
just 'chortled in his joy.' He discerns in her already all the graces
and virtues, and would like to do something at once--he doesn't know
exactly what--to bring them to the attention of an unappreciative world.
If it were a boy, he could put his name down on the waiting lists at the
clubs, but as she is only a girl, he must content himself with hanging
over her crib for the present."

"Only a girl!" echoed Marcy. "Born with a golden spoon in her mouth, an
heiress to all the virtues and graces, and predestined doubtless, like
her mother, to rest her dainty foot upon the neck of man. Nevertheless,
as I have already prophesied, I am inclined to think that the yoke--now
a double yoke--will not bear too severely on Maxwell, though it may not
yield him the bliss which we unregenerate bachelors are wont to
associate with the ideal marital relation."

"Hear--hear!" exclaimed Andrew Cunningham. "You need some further liquid
refreshment after that silver-tongued sophistry, Gerald.--Mary," he said
to the maid, "pass the whiskey and soda to Mr. Marcy."

Mrs. Cole put her head on one side. "I have my doubts whether the ideal
marital relation is a modern social possibility--the strictly ideal such
as you bachelors mean," she added, feeling, doubtless, as the wife of a
man to whom she had described herself in heart-to-heart talks with other
women--not many, for she eschewed the subject ordinarily as sacred--as
deeply attached, that this homily on wedlock needed a qualifying tag.

But May Cunningham was not in the mood to become a party to even so
tempered an imputation on connubial happiness. "Speak for yourself,
Fannie," she said sturdily. "Ideals or no ideals, Andrew and I trot in
double harness better than any single animal of my acquaintance."

"Listen to the old woman, God bless her!" exclaimed the master of the
house, raising his tumbler and smiling at his better-half with
chivalrous expansiveness.

Mrs. Cole was a little nettled at Mrs. Cunningham's obtuseness--wilful
obtuseness, it seemed to her. As though the subtle social problem
suggested by her was to be solved by a reference to the homely affection
of this amiable but limited couple! She sighed and murmured, "Everyone
knows, my dear, that you and Andrew are as happy as the day is long. But
I'm afraid that you don't understand exactly what I meant."

Mrs. Cunningham compressed her lips ominously. She felt that she
understood perfectly well, and that it was simply another case of Fannie
Cole's nonsense. But any retort she may have been meditating was averted
by the timely and genial inspiration of her husband.

"One thing is certain," he said: "we all know that our Gerald is the
ideal bachelor."

This assertion called forth cordial acquiescence from both the ladies,
and turned the current of the conversation into a smoother channel. The
subject of the remark bowed decorously.

"In this company I am free to admit that I sometimes sigh in secret for
a happy home. Yet even venerable bachelorhood has its compensations. By
the way," he added, "our colony at Westfield is likely to have an
addition to its stud of bachelors. I hear that Harry Spencer is coming
home."

"Harry Spencer? How interesting," cried the two women in the same
breath.

"The fascinator," continued Mrs. Cole with slow, sardonic articulation.

"To break some other woman's heart, I suppose," said Mrs. Cunningham.

"And yet it is safe to say that he will be received with open arms by
your entire sex, including the present company," remarked Gerald with a
tug at his mustache.

The sally was received with pensive silence as a deduction apparently
not to be gainsaid.

"He is very agreeable," said Mrs. Cunningham flatly.

"And extremely handsome," said Mrs. Cole. "Not the type of manly beauty
which would cause my mature heart to flutter, but dangerous to the
youthful imagination. He used to look like a handsome pirate, and if he
had whispered honeyed words to me instead of to Laura--who knows?"

"Poor Laura!"

"They had neither of them a cent; there was nothing for him to do but
withdraw. And yet there is no doubt he broke her heart, though there is
consumption in her family." Mrs. Cole knit her brows over this attempt
on her part to formulate complete justice.

"He's a woman's man," said Andrew Cunningham. He had stepped to the
mantel-piece to fill his pipe, and having uttered this fell speech, he
lit it and smoked for some moments in silence with his back to the
cheerful wood fire before proceeding. No one had seen fit to contradict
him. The gaps between his assertions and the subsequent explanations
thereof were expected and rarely interrupted. "He does everything
well--rides, shoots, plays rackets, golf, cards--is infernally
good-looking, as you say, has a pat speech and a flattering eye for
every woman he looks at, and yet somehow he has always struck me as a
_poseur_. I wouldn't trust him in a tight place, though he prides
himself on his sporting blood. It may be prejudice on my part. Gerald
likes him, I believe, because he is a keen rider and always has a good
mount. He always has the best of everything going, but what does he live
on anyway?"

"Wild oats, perhaps," suggested Marcy. But he hastened to atone for
this levity by adding, "He had a little money from his mother, while it
lasted, and just after he and Miss Wilford drifted apart, I am told that
he followed a tip from Guy Perry on copper stocks and cleaned up enough
to enable him to travel round the world."

"Poor Laura!" interjected Mrs. Cole. "What a pity he didn't get a tip
earlier!"

"It wasn't enough to marry on," said Marcy, "and it's probably mostly
gone by this time."

"That's the sort of thing I complain of," exclaimed Cunningham. "I'm no
martinet in morals, Heaven knows, but I always feel a little on my guard
with fellows who live by their wits and spend like princes. Confound it,
you know it isn't quite respectable even in a free country." Andrew
spoke with a wag of his head as though he expected to be adjudged an old
fogy for this conservative utterance.

"He's an attractive fellow on the surface anyway," answered Marcy after
a pause, "and will be an addition from the hunting standpoint. And--give
the devil his due, Andrew--if he was looking for money only, there were
several heiresses he might have married. That would have made him
irreproachable at once."

Mrs. Cole drew a long breath. "Perfectly true, Mr. Marcy. I never
thought of it before. Harry Spencer doesn't look at a woman twice unless
he admires her, no matter how rich she is. He could have married
several, of course, if he had tried."

"Dozens. That's the humiliating part of it," assented Mrs. Cunningham.

"When he is ready to settle down that's what he'll do--pick out some
woman with barrels of money," said Andrew. Having once got a proposition
in his head he was wont to stick to it tenaciously, like a puppy to a
root.

"You misjudge him--you misjudge him!" cried Mrs. Cole eagerly. "He won't
do anything of the kind. He will never marry any woman unless she has
money--or he has; that I'm ready to admit. But, on the other hand, he'll
never ask anyone to marry him unless he loves her for herself alone,
and--and," she continued with a gasp born of the thrill which the
definiteness of her insight caused her, "there are very few women in the
world whom he is liable to fall in love with. That's what makes him so
interesting. He is polite to us all, but the majority of women bore him
at heart."

Marcy laughed. "A masterly diagnosis," he said. "And now that he has
seen the world and is returning heart-free, so far as we know, there
will naturally be curiosity as to how he will bear the ordeal of a fresh
contact with native loveliness."

"Exactly," said the two women together, and with an engaging frankness
which quite overshadowed the grunt by which the master of the house
indicated his suspicious dissent from this exposition of character.




IV


Harry Spencer had been travelling nearly three years. Naturally, he
found some changes and some new faces at Westfield. Concerning the
former he was becomingly appreciative. He promptly ranged himself on the
side of progress, admired the new club-house and the new establishments
in the neighborhood, and evinced a willingness to take an active part in
the enlarged energies of the club. During his peregrinations in foreign
lands he had visited the St. Andrew's golf links, and he had views
regarding bunkers and other features of the game which he was prepared
to advocate. When he had left home the bicycle was all the rage, and
some portion of his journeyings had been on an up-to-date machine. But
he found now that the fashionable portion of the community had dropped
this craze, and that to ride a "wheel" was beginning to be considered a
bore except as a means of getting from one place to another. The fever
of golf was rampant instead, and had reached the stage where its
votaries were almost delirious in their devotion, notably the people
most unfitted to play the game, and who had taken it up in order to be
in fashion. During the spring and summer following his return the
improved links at Westfield was crowded with players of every grade
whose proficiency was generally in reverse proportion to the number of
clubs they carried.

Soon after the season had fairly opened and the greens were in good
order the lately returned wanderer found himself one morning engaged in
giving a lesson in the royal and ancient game to Miss Peggy Blake, who
had a severe attack of the disease and promised to be a proficient
pupil, for Dobson, the professional at the Hunt Club, had declared that
she had a free swing and could follow through as well as most men. The
trouble at the moment was that, after taking a free swing, she either
failed to hit the ball altogether or hit it off at some distressing
angle. As she explained volubly to everybody, until within a week she
had been making screaming brassie shots which carried a hundred and
fifty yards, but had suddenly lost her game completely. Harry had kindly
offered himself as a coach, a delightful proposition to the blithe young
woman, especially as Dobson was engaged for the time being in
superintending the primary and elephantine efforts of Miss Ella Marbury,
the stout maiden sister of Wagner Marbury, the Western
multi-millionnaire and proprietor of one of the new neighboring palaces
so obnoxious to Mrs. Cunningham. Miss Peggy was more than pleased to
have for an hour or two the uninterrupted companionship of this
good-looking and redoubtable gallant, whose attentions were to be
regarded as a feather in her cap, and who would doubtless be able to
tell her what she was doing wrong.

Hers was one of the new faces, and Harry had given his following to
understand that he admired her spirited and comely personality. "Miss
West Wind" he had christened her genially, and the epithet had spread
with the rumor that he had noticed her. Yet it was tacitly understood
that he had no intention of interfering with the suit of his friend Guy
Perry, who was supposed to be well in the lead of the other pursuers of
the breezy maiden. Yet, though he sought to give the impression that his
favor in this case was merely an artistic tribute and that he still
walked scatheless in the world of women, he was glad of an opportunity
to stroll over the links in her society. She would entertain him.
Besides, she was a fluent talker, and he could count on her retailing
for his edification more or less of the current history of Westfield
written between the lines, which was only to be picked up gradually by
one who had been prevented by absence from personal observation.

It was a very simple matter to detect the trouble with his companion's
stroke.

"You don't keep your eye on the ball, Miss Blake. That's the whole
trouble with you. Anyone can see that."

Peggy looked incredulous. "If there is one special thing more than
another which I try to bear constantly in mind, it is to keep my eye on
the ball. Do I really take it off, Mr. Spencer? Of course you must know.
There are so many other things to remember, but I did think I was
completely disciplined on that point. Watch me now."

Thereupon she proceeded to execute a dashing stroke, her evident
standard being to carry her club through with such velocity as to bring
the head round her left shoulder and cause her to execute a pirouette
like the pictures of the golfing girls in the magazines. The ball flew
off at a tangent and narrowly missed her own caddy.

"How rotten!" she murmured. "I had both my eyes glued on the ball, and
you see what happened. And only a week ago I was driving like a streak."
Her expletive was merely the popular phrase of the day by which golden
youth of both sexes was apt to express even trivial dissatisfaction.

She was a pathetic figure of distress. Her exertions had heightened her
color so that it suggested the poppy rather than the rose, and was not
unlike the hue of her trig golfing garment. She swept back a stray
ringlet which had escaped from under her hat. "You see I have lost my
game utterly, Mr. Spencer."

Harry laughed. "You were looking at me out of the corners of your eyes
that time. Lower your lids until you exaggerate the modest maiden and
don't move your head." It was a half-deferential, half-sardonic voice
with a caressing touch, indicating temporary devotion to the
subject-matter in hand which was flattering. "Swing more easily," he
added, "and don't try to rival the Gibson girl until you recover
confidence." Then he corrected slightly her stance and the position of
her hands--all with a deft yet bantering grace of manner which soothed
and attracted her. He went through the correct motions of the stroke for
her enlightenment, and as he stood erect and supple Peggy did not
forbear to reflect that he was very handsome. How dark his hair and eyes
were! It was a bold sort of beauty, and, though he wore neither mustache
nor beard, the faintly bluish tinge of his complexion betrayed that, but
for the barber, he would have been what Mrs. Herbert Cole might have
termed an incarnate symphony in black. He appeared harmoniously
muscular. He executed the necessary movements with lithe, nervous
energy, focusing his attention tensely for the brief occasion. The
moment he lowered his club he regained his leisurely and rather indolent
demeanor.

His pupil essayed to follow his instructions. At the third attempt the
ball sailed straight as an arrow to a moderate distance, which comforted
the performer, but she felt too nervously excited to exult. It might be
only an accident.

"Try again," he said confidentially. "You've almost got it."

Once more the ball shot correctly from the club. Harry stooped and
placed another on the tee. Peggy swung, then followed through with a
little of her old elasticity. It flew like a rifle bullet low and long
across the distant bunker.

She rose on the tips of her toes as she followed its entrancing flight.
"I've got back my game," she cried jubilantly. "You've saved my life,
Mr. Spencer." She looked as though she would have been glad, had
convention permitted, to throw her arms around her benefactor's neck.
And to the true golfer it would not seem an exaggerated reward. "I've
been in the slough of despond for nearly a week, and playing worse every
day. Now I'm in the seventh heaven, and it's all your doing."

He acknowledged the exuberant gratitude with a graceful mock heroic bow.
"I shall consider my terms. The charge should be considerable."

Just then by the sheerest chance a white carnation which Peggy was
wearing at her throat became detached from her dress and fell to the
ground. He picked it up, and, holding it before him and looking into her
eyes, said with melodious assurance:

"I will keep this, if I may, as my tuition fee."

Peggy looked embarrassed and let fall her eyes, albeit not easily
disconcerted. The carnation was one from a bunch which Guy Perry had
sent her the day before, and to hand it over seemed almost an act of
treason, though they were not yet actually engaged. Yet she was
conscious that she thought this new acquaintance charming. Silence gives
consent where lovely woman is concerned. At any rate, when she looked up
he was in the act of placing it in his buttonhole. But his fingers had
paused in their work as a consequence of his arrested glance. A feminine
figure outlined on the crest of adjacent rising ground had suddenly
caught his eye. She was addressing her ball for a brassie shot, and as
he gazed it was performed with a sweeping grace of which the lack of
effort was the salient charm.

Peggy, whose eyes had promptly followed the direction of his, vouchsafed
the desired information.

"Mrs. Herbert Maxwell."

"Really!" There was a shade of interest in the monosyllable, as though
the identity of some one whom he had been rather curious to meet had
been revealed to him.

"You haven't met her?"

"Not yet."

"Oh, you'd like her immensely."

The words were uttered with such naive confidence that Harry Spencer
turned away his gaze from the new attraction to survey the old.

"How do you know?" he inquired jauntily.

Peggy spluttered a little at this flank attack. "Oh, well, you know,
she's so awfully clever. She's different. She'd pique your curiosity
anyway," she concluded, recovering her aplomb.

"Am I so difficult to please?" he asked sententiously. He answered the
question himself. "Yes, I admit that I am." His look of admiration,
which Peggy divined was constitutional with him on such occasions, was
best to be met by diversion.

"I shall never be able to play golf as Lydia Maxwell does, and I've been
at it twice as long. She has only played this spring, and Dobson says
that she has a better idea of the game than any other woman. It's just
knack with her, for her balls go farther than mine and yet she makes
scarcely an exertion. You couldn't help admire her in all sorts of ways.
It has been a dreadfully quiet season for her, though, for when her baby
was six weeks old and she had sent out cards for two musical parties in
their new town house, her husband's mother, old Mrs. Maxwell, died
suddenly, and she had to go into mourning. So they went to Southern
California for February and March, and moved down here as soon as they
returned. She took lessons in golf at Los Angeles, and she beat me four
up the first time we played, even though I supposed I could give her
half a stroke."

While he listened to this monologue, Spencer followed the progress of
the subject of it. She was playing with pretty Mrs. Baxter, but, though
her opponent was an ordinarily graceful woman, there was a deft harmony
in her movements which made Mrs. Baxter appear an unfinished person by
comparison.

"They say the real secret is that she has an artistic temperament." The
speech was Peggy's by way of reading his thoughts and providing a
condensed and comprehensive key.

"And her husband--what is he like? You know he has come to the surface
during my absence."

"He hasn't it at all--I mean an artistic temperament. But he's an
awfully good sort--awfully; a true sport, and kind as can be." Peggy's
vocabulary of enthusiasm, though fundamentally native, sometimes made
reprisals on the kindred jargon of Great Britain.

"I see. And you infer that I have an artistic temperament?" A tendency
toward challenging unexpectedness was one of Spencer's prime
manifestations with women.

Peggy looked embarrassed. She had not bargained for such an unequivocal
piece of teasing. She put up her hand to her head to secure her escaping
comb. "I don't know you very well, of course, but I had supposed so. Yet
I'm not clever, and I dote on Lydia," she added archly.

Harry Spencer did not have to go out of his way for an opportunity to
satisfy his curiosity by personal acquaintance with Mrs. Herbert
Maxwell. When he and his fair partner had finished the last hole and
approached the piazza of the new club-house, they found her sitting
there--one of a group of both sexes waiting for luncheon. Peggy,
radiant and prodigal of superlatives, proclaimed to one after another
that her game had come back. Wasn't it perfectly glorious?--the
loveliest thing which had ever happened. And Mr. Spencer had detected at
once what was wrong. "Just think of it, I was pressing and took my eye
off the ball," she kept reiterating, "and I never knew it. Wasn't it
dear of him?"

One of the most characteristic features of golf is that it is not an
altruistic pastime. Everyone is feverishly absorbed by the state of his
own game, and does not care at heart a picayune for his neighbor's. At
the moment of Peggy's vociferous advent the assembled company were
talking in pairs, and each member of each pair was endeavoring to excite
the interest of his or her partner in the dialogue by glowing or
dejected narration of why his or her score was lower or higher than the
speaker's average. In some cases both were talking at once and neither
listened. Oftener, perhaps, each had asserted an innings, and the
strongest or most persistent lungs held the mastery. Miss Marbury, who
under the tutelage of Dobson had done the longest hole in 12 and the
eighteen holes in 132--five better than ever before--was bubbling over
with ecstasy and soliciting congratulations. Douglas Hale, who had
failed by one stroke to surpass his previous record of 82, was telling
hoarsely and pathetically to everyone whom he could buttonhole how it
happened.

"At the fourteenth hole I was on the green in two and took seven for the
hole. Seven! Just think of that, seven! Five strokes on the green." As
he uttered the words with excruciating precision, he would hold up the
five fingers of his hand and shake them at his auditor. It was an
experience which would last him all day and as far into the evening as
he could find new listeners, especially if he could endeavor to take the
edge off his disappointment by Scotch and soda.

Consequently, though everybody heard that Miss Peggy Blake had recovered
her game, and her breezy invasion caused a stir, the fact that she had
done so was of interest only because of the means by which this had been
brought to pass. It was Harry Spencer, not she, who became the cynosure
of numerous feminine eyes. If he had put Peggy onto her game, why not
them onto theirs? Peggy, mistaking the reason for the pause in the
general chatter for interest in her improvement, proceeded to rehearse
gleefully the details of her triumph for the benefit of the company.
But Douglas Hale, in no mood to be side-tracked by any such
interruption, stepped forward, and hooking his arm in Harry Spencer's,
led him apart with a mysterious "A word with you, old man."

Having thus enforced an audience, he held forth in the low tone
appropriate to an interesting confidence. "Just now I was 58 at the end
of the thirteenth hole, and was on the green of the fourteenth in two,
and I took seven for the hole. Five puts on the green! Think of that,
five!" he whispered hoarsely, and shook his five fingers in Harry's
face. "Seven for the hole. And I finished in 82. Tied my own record.
Wasn't that the meanest streak of luck a man ever had? Five puts, and
two of them rimmed the cup."

His victim listened indulgently. The firm grip on his arm precluded
escape.

"You must learn to put, my dear fellow."

"That's the most sickening part of it. I made every other put. Let me
tell you--you remember the slope of the fourteenth green? Well, I----"

Realizing what he was in for, Harry took advantage of a momentary pause
on the part of his torturer for the purpose of lighting a cigarette. His
observing eyes had noticed that Mrs. Maxwell was standing apart from the
other women who were within range of Miss Blake's jubilant reiteration.
He wrenched himself free from Douglas's clutch.

"It was a case of downright hard luck, and now, in return for my
heart-felt sympathy and for listening to your tale of woe, introduce me
to Mrs. Herbert Maxwell."

Puffing at his half-lighted cigarette, Douglas Hale reached out to
recover his lost grip. "Wait a minute. You haven't heard half. I will
show you just how it happened."

Spencer intercepted the reaching fingers and grabbed the offender's
wrist, and said, with jocund firmness, "I don't care a tinker's dam how
it happened, Douglas, and I tell you you can't put. Introduce me to Mrs.
Maxwell."

This quip caused the egotist to draw himself up stiffly. He was proof
against hints and ordinary recalcitration, but such an unmistakable
rebuff was not to be ignored; that is, he could not with proper
self-respect continue the harangue on which he was bent.

"Of course if you don't care to hear how it happened, I won't tell
you." So saying, Douglas suffered himself to be conveyed the necessary
few steps, and performed the ceremony of introduction.

Lydia let her eyes rest with keen but interested scrutiny on this
new-comer. He was a boon at the moment, for she had taken the gauge of
everybody at Westfield, and was conscious that neither her heart nor her
brain was satisfied. She craved novelty and true aesthetic appreciation.
Did anyone really understand her? Not even Fannie Cole, who came the
nearest to divining her hatred of the commonplace and her dread of being
bored. But Fannie, though discerning, chose to remain a slave to the
canons of conformity. That morning, in her looking-glass she had asked
herself the question, "Why did I ever marry Herbert Maxwell?" But she
had asked it with no malice aforethought, merely as one who, with
leisure to take account of stock, foots up his assets and puts the
question, "Am I solvent?" The interrogation was simply searching and
contemplative. The answer had been prompt, and in a measure assuring.
"Because it gave me everything I need." Yet, somehow, there remained a
cloud upon her spirit. Was this all? Did life offer nothing further?

"We make a fuss and circumstance about our sports," she said.

"They do creak."

It was agreeable to be comprehended so promptly. "It isn't sport for
sport's sake, but for the sake of the cups and because it's the thing."

"And above all to beat the other fellow. That's the national creed. It's
so in everything--competition. We are brought up from childhood to
consider that winning is the thing which counts. We must win at any cost
at foot-ball or trade, in affairs or in love."

She made one of her little pauses. Decidedly he was a kindred spirit and
to be cultivated. "I am an exotic then."

"How so?"

"Competition--the national creed--does not interest me."

"Because you win so easily. I watched you play this morning. You will
have no rival of your own sex here."

She ignored the tribute; she knew that already; it was the thesis which
interested her.

"It bores me--winning, I mean. Golf, for the time being, is a delight."

He gave her a pirate glance, as though to search her soul, and uttered
one of his bold sallies:

"That is, your doll is stuffed with----"

She checked him, shaking her head. "Oh, no. That is, I think not. I have
never cut her open. I had in mind something quite different." Her dainty
face grew pensive as she sought the exact phrase to interpret her
psychology. "I have never had to struggle for anything. It has always
come to me."

"Exactly." His note of emphasis reminded her that her words were, after
all, merely an indirect echo of his diagnosis. "But your time is sure to
come," he asserted confidently.

The smile of incredulity which curved her lips betrayed entertainment
also. "In what field?" she inquired.

Spencer shrugged his shoulders. "I am a student of character, not a
soothsayer."

"And then?" she queried.

"You will be like the rest of us--only more so. You could not bear to
lose at any cost."

What might have seemed effrontery in some men was but a piquant
challenge in his mouth, so speciously was it uttered. Lydia was not
unaccustomed to men whose current coin was sardonic sallies, as witness
the veteran Gerald Marcy. But this was something different. Her soul had
been suddenly pitchforked by a professor of anatomy and held up under
her nose with the caveat that she was ignorant of the mainsprings of her
own behavior. It was impudence, but novel, and she forgave it with the
reflection that he would live to eat his gratuitous deductions, which
would be the neatest form of vengeance.

[Illustration: The smile of incredulity which curved her lips betrayed
entertainment also.]




V


Before many weeks had elapsed it began to be whispered at Westfield that
Harry Spencer and Mrs. Herbert Maxwell were seeing more or less of each
other. They appeared together not infrequently on the golf links; it was
known that he was giving her lessons at her own house in bridge whist,
the new game of cards; they had been met walking in the lanes; and--most
significant item, which caused the colony to prick up its ears and ask,
"What does this mean?"--two youthful anglers had encountered them
strolling in the lonely woods skirting distant Duck Pond. This last
discovery, which was early in September, led to the conclusion that,
under cover of her mourning, Lydia must have been seeing more of him
than anyone had imagined. Yet, even then, though alert brains indulged
in knowing innuendoes, Mrs. Cole's epigrammatic estimate of the matter
was generally accepted as sound:

"A woman in mourning for her mother-in-law requires diversion."

It seemed probable that Lydia was amusing herself, and that Harry
Spencer was playing the tame cat for their mutual edification. The
possibility that he had been caught at last and that she was luring him
on that she might lead him like a bear with a ring through his nose, and
thus avenge her sex for his past indifference, was regarded as unlikely
but delightful. That Lydia was enamored of her admirer, and that they
both cared, was not seriously entertained until many circumstances
seemed to point to such a deduction. Westfield was not wholly without
experience in intimacies between husbands or wives and a third party.
But only rarely had there been fire as well as smoke in these cases. And
even then there had never been up to this time an open scandal. Matters
had been patched up or the veil of diplomatic convention had been drawn
so skilfully over them that most people were left in the dark as to the
real truth. Almost invariably the intimacies in question reminded one of
the antics of horses with too high action who had all the show but
little of the quality of runaways; and the preferences manifested were
not always inconsistent with conjugal devotion. Consequently, everyone
took for granted that this was only another "fake" instance of family
disarrangement, entered on to pass the time and to provide that
appearance of evil which the American woman seems to find a satisfying
substitute for the real article. As Mrs. Cole once remarked in defending
the propensity to Gerald Marcy, if one's vanity is flattered, why should
one go farther?

The buzz of curiosity was stimulated during the ensuing autumn by a
variety of fresh and compromising rumors. Consequently, when at a
golfing luncheon party given at the club by Mrs. Gordon Wallace in
October, Mrs. Baxter, whose blue eyes always suggested innocence, asked
in her demure way what the latest news was from "The Knoll," every
tongue had something new to impart. The most sensational as well as the
latest piece of information was provided by Mrs. Cunningham, who
repeated it with the air of one whose faith had at last received a
serious shock.

"She sat with him on the piazza at 'The Knoll' until three o'clock
night before last. Her husband came home at eleven and requested her to
go to bed, but there they stayed without him. I call that pretty bad,
even if she is Lydia. I wonder how long Herbert Maxwell will permit this
sort of thing to go on. Even the worm will turn."

There was an eloquent silence, which was broken by a repetition of Mrs.
Cole's whitewashing epigram as to Lydia's need of diversion. Its
cleverness and value as a generalization caused a ripple of amusement,
but it fell flat as a specific. Old Mrs. Maxwell had been dead many
months, yet matters were more disconcerting than ever. Stout Miss
Marbury's question was regarded as much more to the point:

"Who saw them, Mrs. Cunningham?"

May Cunningham would have preferred to remain silent on this score, but
she perceived that the authenticity of her story was dependent on direct
testimony. It was a luncheon of eight. She glanced around the table in
an appealing manner as much as to say, "This really is not to be spoken
of," and said laconically, "There was another couple present." Then, as
though she feared on second thought that the wrong persons might be
fixed on, she continued: "Neither of them were married. They are
supposed to be engaged, and Lydia acted as their chaperone on the piazza
while they took a moonlight ride together."

"Who can they have been?" murmured some one sweetly, and there was a
general giggle.

"You wormed it out of me," said Mrs. Cunningham doggedly. "You demanded
my credentials. But it doesn't matter about those two, of course, for
they're in love."

"How about the others?" ventured Mrs. Baxter.

"Truly, Rachel, you shock me," answered Mrs. Cunningham sternly. "It's
no joking matter. It's a very serious situation for this colony, in my
opinion. People who don't know us do not think any too well of us
already because some of us smoke cigarettes and go in for hunting and an
open-air life instead of trying to reform somebody. But this will give
the gossips a real handle. Besides, it's disreputable."

"But I really wished to know," murmured Mrs. Baxter. "Does either of
them care? And if so, which?"

"My own belief," interjected Mrs. Cole, "as I said just now, is that
there's nothing in it--nothing serious. Lydia is simply catering to her
æsthetic side, and everyone knows Harry Spencer. It seems to me
personally that she has gone too far, but that is a question of taste,
and, provided her husband doesn't complain, why need we?" Thereupon she
popped into her mouth a luscious-looking coffee cream confection and
munched it ruminantly.

"It has become a question of morals," asserted Mrs. Cunningham. "If
their relations are what we don't believe them to be, it's a disgrace to
Westfield. If they are simply amusing themselves, it's heartless, and I
know what I would do if I were Herbert Maxwell."

"So do I," exclaimed Mrs. Reynolds, a spirited young matron with the
breath of life in her nostrils, yet, as someone once remarked of her,
notoriously devoted to her lord and master.

"Just what my husband said," added Mrs. Miller, a bride of a year's
standing, which, considering nothing whatever had been said, provoked a
smile and brought a blush to the countenance of the speaker, which
deepened as Mrs. Baxter with her accustomed innocence asked:

"What would you do?"

"Pick out the most seductive-looking woman I could set my eyes on,
Rachel dear, and"--blurted out Mrs. Reynolds pungently. As she paused an
instant seeking her phrase, Mrs. Cunningham interjected:

"Sh! We understand. That might bring her to her senses."

"But Herbert Maxwell never would," said Mrs. Cole, reaching for another
sweetmeat.

"I'm not so sure about that," retorted Mrs. Cunningham. "He's faithful
as a mastiff, but goad him too far and he may prove to be a slumbering
lion, in my opinion."

"That wouldn't suit Lydia at all," responded Mrs. Cole. The thesis
interested her. "She takes for granted, I presume, his unswerving
fidelity. Besides, he would consider it morally wrong. I shall be very
much surprised, my dear, if you are not mistaken."

"I'm not a married woman," suggested Miss Marbury, "but I think he ought
to put a stop in some way or other to the present condition of things,
and that it is his fault if he doesn't."

A murmur of acquiescence showed that this was the general sentiment, at
which point the discussion of the topic was brought to a close by the
hostess's rising from the table--that is, discussion by the party as a
whole. After they had repaired to the general sitting-room--that neutral
apartment in the club which was appropriated to the use of both
sexes--the subject still claimed the attention of the groups into which
the company subdivided itself. Here Mrs. Baxter found an opportunity to
repeat her inquiry whether either, neither, or both cared, which really
was the most interesting uncertainty of the situation, and one which
elicited a variety of opinion. Some, like Mrs. Cole, were still
incredulous, or chose to be, that either of them was in earnest. But
several of the more knowing women wagged their heads in concert with
Mrs. Cunningham, who, seated where her vision could rest on the
full-length portrait of her husband swathed in pink as the first Master
of the Westfield Hounds--one of the new decorative features--repeated
data to the effect that Herbert Maxwell was looking glum and was
drinking a little--much more than ever before in his life.

"Poor fellow!" sighed Miss Marbury, and she added, as though in
self-congratulatory monologue, that there were some compensations in
being single.

"Nothing of the kind; you know nothing about it," said Mrs. Cunningham
tartly. She did not choose to hear the institution of holy matrimony
traduced by a mere spinster; moreover, her nerves were on edge because
of her solicitude lest the most appalling possibility of all were
true--that Lydia really cared. For, granting the hypothesis, what might
not Lydia do? What would Lydia do? And as yet, though conjecture ran
riot and all Westfield was holding its breath, no one could speak with
authority as to what the truth was. Nevertheless, Mrs. Cunningham, as an
observer, was disposed to take a pessimistic view as to what the future
had in store for the colony, the good repute of which was precious to
her. On the other hand, many of the younger spirits among the women were
inclined to regard the mother of the hunt as a croaker, and as they
chatted apart from her on this occasion they cited her late opposition
to the recent innovations at the club as typical of her mental attitude.

"Yet to-day, if a vote were taken whether we should go back to the old
primitive order of things," added Mrs. Miller, "she would be one of the
most strenuous defenders of the extra space and improved service which
we now enjoy. She can't keep her eyes off that portrait of her husband.
Look at her now."

The stricture, so far as it related to Mrs. Cunningham's change of front
regarding the alterations, was just. Yet her frank acceptance and
enjoyment of the more decorative rooms and ampler creature-comforts,
even though they wore a radiance reflected from her husband's
full-length figure, revealed a broad and accommodating mind. There are
some persons who will continue to glorify the superseded past even in
the face of a manifestly more charming present. These are the real old
fogies, and there is no help for us, or them, but to ignore them. But
Mrs. Cunningham was of the sort which, though conservative, is ready to
be convinced even against its will; and, having been convinced, she was
able to draw her husband after her. A week's occupation of the new
quarters having made clear to her that, though more luxurious, they were
vastly more convenient, she had sighed and given in. Now there were no
two more resolute defenders of the results of the radical policy than
she and Andrew. Nevertheless she drew the line there, and still,
suspicious of what others defined as the march of progress, she was
prepared like a faithful sentinel to challenge developments which
aroused her distrust. Because the new club-house was a success, and the
inroad of multi-millionnaires had not been so subversive of the best
interests of the colony as she had feared, there was no occasion to
relax her vigilance. Thus she argued, and hence her genuine and somewhat
foreboding solicitude as to Lydia's behavior.

But though Harry Spencer continued to dog the footsteps of Mrs.
Maxwell, so that he appeared in her society on all occasions, and people
wondered more and more how the husband could permit this triangular
household to continue without open demur, there were no new developments
during the late autumn and winter. Rumors of every description were
rife, but no one of the three interested parties deigned to provide a
solution of the enigma. Maxwell's demeanor on the surface was so far
unruffled that certain observers continued to maintain that his wife's
state of mind was entirely platonic; in other words, that he trusted
Lydia, and, though he might have preferred more of her society, was
willing she should amuse herself in her own way--which was not apt to be
the conventional way. And if he did not object, why should anyone else,
especially as the Maxwells were now in their town house and local
censorship by Westfield was suspended? But the majority shook their
heads, and repeated that though Maxwell held his peace, he was out of
sorts and still drinking more than his wont. Then, just as the community
was getting a little weary of the whole subject because nothing did
happen, the breaking out of the war with Spain drove it out of
everyone's mind.

For the Westfield Hunt Club was up in arms at the first suggestion of
powder. All the small talk that spring bore on the matter of enlisting,
or on the men who had enlisted. Everyone wished to be a rough rider, and
if a commission in that favorite corps had been the certain prerogative
of an offer of service, all the able-bodied bachelors in the colony
would have enrolled themselves. As it was, there were numerous
applicants for this particular aggregation of fighters, but only Kenneth
Post, the master of the hounds, succeeded in joining it. Half a dozen
obtained billets elsewhere: Guy Perry on one of the war vessels
despatched to Cuban waters, young Joe Marbury in another of the
volunteer regiments, and Dick Weston, pretty Mrs. Baxter's brother, on
one of the yachts converted into a coast guard for the protection of our
Atlantic cities against bombardment by the battle-ships of Spain.

Harry Spencer was also one of the half dozen. When he promptly proffered
his services to the Government, it was somehow taken for granted that he
would get a good post; and presently he justified his reputation by
receiving an invitation to join the staff of a brigade on the eve of
embarking for Cuba. No one at Westfield impugned his courage or
questioned his patriotism, but some of the women in discussing the
matter later agreed that he had to go. Mrs. Cole put it in a nutshell
when she said:

"If by any chance Lydia cares for him, she would never have spoken to
him again had he remained at home."

But there were cases, too, of disappointment. Andrew Cunningham, who, in
spite of conjugal bonds, was eager to go to the front, was rejected on
account of his age and weight, much to his chagrin and to the secret
satisfaction of his better-half. Douglas Hale was discarded on the plea
of color-blindness, though, as he pathetically informed his
acquaintance, the doctor who examined him declared that he had never
seen a finer physical specimen in other respects. Hence it will be
perceived that there was a nucleus left for the maintenance of a steady
fire of conversation at the club-house for the benefit of the
stay-at-homes.

At first, in keeping with the course of events, it centred on the
possibilities of the destruction of New York, Boston, or Portland by the
enemy's fleet; and after that bogy was laid, and the phantom fleet
located, it reverted to that ever-fresh topic for controversy, the cause
of the blowing up of the Maine. Then it turned to Manila, and when the
events of that splendid victory had been threshed threadbare, scented
trouble with Germany. The victory at Santiago set every tongue a-wagging
and raised enthusiasm to fever pitch; but presently the struggles of our
poorly rationed troops prompted an inquiry into the merits of General
Shafter as a commander, and one heard the hum of speculation as to what
would have happened if Cervera had not come out when he did.

Some of the members showed themselves positive arsenals of statistics
and secret information from the scene of action. Instead of dwelling on
his misfortunes at golf, Douglas Hale's shibboleth all summer was the
letter which he carried in his pocket from Guy Perry, who had the good
fortune to be in the van of the battle of Santiago. This he read to
every man or woman of his acquaintance who would let him, and cherished
as an historical document which put him in close touch with the
authorities at Washington. Andrew Cunningham tried to make the best of
his disappointment by showing himself an audible authority on the size
and equipment, identity and immediate location of every battle-ship,
cruiser, and torpedo-boat in the navy, and as to our future needs to fit
us to cope with the naval armaments of the other great powers of the
world. As to the women, they were utterly absorbed in making bandages
and comfort bags.

Such were the diversions of the spring and early summer. By August the
heroes returned from the front and began to reappear on their native
heath. Other sporting garb gave place to regimental attire, and, to be
in fashion, both men and women wore army slouch hats and suits akin to
khaki. One of the first of the Westfield colony to reach home was Guy
Perry, looking brown as an Indian from his long exposure to the sun
outside the harbor at Santiago. On the day after his return his
engagement to Miss Peggy Blake was formally announced, much to the
delight of everybody, but to no one's surprise--a fact which slightly
dismayed the radiant couple, who were apparently under the delusion that
their tryst had been kept a profound secret. They were certainly an
attractive-looking pair as they dashed about the country on Guy's
dog-cart, proclaiming their good fortune to the world. Peggy's rough
rider hat, perched on the back of her head, suited her style of beauty;
and as they bubbled over with health and happiness, more than one camera
fiend took a shot at them as a charming epitome of the strenuous life.

On the other hand, Kenneth Post returned on a litter, almost a skeleton
from fever; and Gerald Marcy, who against his own doctor's advice had
finally succeeded in getting stalled in camp in Florida, was limping
with rheumatism. Nevertheless, he was able to be about, and, though on
ordinary occasions a socially tactful spirit, he did not attempt to
conceal his pride at being the only one of the middle-aged men who had
succeeded in dodging the authorities and serving his country.

But the hero who brought back the stateliest palm of glory from Cuba was
Harry Spencer, for he had his arm in a sling from a flesh wound caused
by a Spanish bullet at San Juan Hill, and had been subsequently in the
hospital, threatened with blood poisoning. He was emaciated and
interesting-looking, so Mrs. Cole, who had a glimpse of him, declared,
and he went straight to the small cottage at Westfield where he had
spent the previous summer.

Two days subsequent to his return the spirit moved Mrs. Cole to call on
Lydia, and on the afternoon of the day she paid this visit it was
noticed that she sat pensive and silent while the other women at the
club were drinking tea. It was Mrs. Barker who called attention to the
circumstance by asking:

"What are you incubating on, Fannie?"

Mrs. Cole hesitated for a moment, then she said tragically, "I am afraid
she cares for him."

No one had to ask who was meant.

"What did I tell you?" exclaimed Mrs. Cunningham.

"What makes you think so?" asked the practical Miss Marbury.

Fannie Cole shook her head. "Not from anything she said. She didn't
mention the subject. It was from what she didn't say. She made me think
of a pent-up volcano."

Proceeding from the intimate source it did, this testimony, though
metaphorical, was felt to be most interesting.

"And if the volcano bursts, what will become of poor Herbert?" murmured
Mrs. Baxter.

"That's it, of course. Yet it isn't the only thing," responded Mrs.
Cole. "What will become of Lydia? What will become of all three of
them?" The sociological vista which opened before her was evidently so
appalling that she leaned back limply in the straw chair on which she
was sitting. But the attitude was productive of philosophy, for she
suddenly said with the air of one rhapsodizing, but who nevertheless
utters an indictment against Providence:

"If the divinity which shapes our ends really intended Lydia to be
happy, why was Harry Spencer allowed to return when he did?" Warming to
the vividness of her imagination, she continued briskly, "The ideal
course of events would have been this: First, the baby should never have
been born; secondly, Herbert Maxwell should have felt an uncontrollable
patriotic call to go to the war; he should have fought with
distinguished valor and brilliancy--sufficient to inscribe his name on
the pages of history--and he should have been shot dead. That would have
satisfied him. Then would have been the time for Harry Spencer to come
home. With him and Herbert's fortune Lydia might have been radiantly
happy. As it is--" Mrs. Cole paused, palsied by the perplexities of
reality, and unwilling to venture on prophecy.

But Mrs. Baxter saw fit to finish the sentence for her by a not
altogether logical utterance: "As it is, it was Mr. Spencer who went to
the war and has come back alive and a hero. If Lydia liked him before,
it is of course all the harder for her not to like him now."

Mrs. Cunningham uttered a sort of groan. Then she said emphatically,
"There can be but one end to it, in my opinion. Sooner or later she will
leave her husband and run away with him."

There was a general nodding of heads--all but Mrs. Cole's.

"And what will they do with that poor baby?" interjected Miss Marbury.

Fannie Cole sat up by way of protest. "My dears," she said with gasping
alertness, "that would be comparatively normal, and it cannot be the
correct solution. Don't you see it's impossible? Neither of them has
any money. If she would, he wouldn't, and neither of them would." She
looked around the circle with a smile of triumph, knowing that her
stricture was unanswerable.

"I never thought of that," said Mrs. Baxter, voicing the general
perplexity.




VI


Late one afternoon, about a month after, Lydia Maxwell was sitting in
her drawing-room at Westfield. An exquisite tea service stood on a table
close at hand. But tea had been served. At least the visitor who had
been spending the afternoon with her had drunk his and had been gone
about ten minutes. Her baby, left by the nurse on the way to her own
evening meal, was cooing on the sofa at her side, fended by pillows from
toppling over on its head, and provided with the latest novelties in
costly toys. The child was now nearly two, and her wardrobe was a credit
to her mother's decorative instincts. Lydia enjoyed the combination of
the infant and herself and spared no pains to produce an effective
picture on all occasions, whether the setting were the drawing-room, a
victoria, or a village cart. She counted on mounting Guendolen at the
earliest possible day on the tiniest of ponies as a picturesque hunting
attendant. Nor had her husband failed to appreciate what an opportunity
was here afforded for the artist. Six months earlier he had
threatened--the phrase was Lydia's--to have her and baby done by Sargent
on his next visit; in fact, Herbert had written to him. The offer had
been tempting from the point of view of immortality, but left alone with
the child, she had shaken her head and said:

"It would be lovely if it were just right, Guen, but he might take it
into his head to form a vicious conception of mamma. And as for you, he
couldn't help making you the speaking image of Grandma Maxwell. Living
pictures are safest for us, dear, for we can control the canvas."

Now she sat pensive and tense, her hands clasped in her lap. "Why do I
love him so?" she murmured under her breath, rebelling against the
consciousness which gripped her. Yet in another moment she asserted with
the abandonment of one defending his faith against all comers, "But how
I do love him!"

A jocund, inarticulate effort at conversation by the child reminded her
of its presence. Reaching out her hand, she felt the silky softness of
the delicate infantile locks, and then the dainty texture of the frilled
dress. Again she said, talking to herself: "The problem is, what will
become of you, cherub? You must go with me, of course--if I go."

Her baby cooed by way of response. There was a noise in the hall as of
someone arriving.

"A visitor for you, Guen," she said. Hurriedly leaning over, she raised
her finger as one would to hold the attention of a dancing dog, and gave
this cue for imitation.

"Say pa-a-pa--pa-a-pa."

The earlier lessons had been fairly learned, for after a brief struggle
the dawning intelligence freed itself in an unequivocal if throaty
reproduction of the pious salutation.

"You little pet! Now again."

"Pa-a-pa."

"At last. A sop to Cerberus," Lydia murmured.

The door opened and the master of the house entered. He had just come
back from an afternoon ride, and in the few minutes which had elapsed
since his return Lydia knew that he had been to the sideboard in the
dining-room--a man's way of alleviating despondency. His glance,
avoiding or ignoring his wife, sought eagerly the object which he
expected to find--his infant daughter. This was the bright spot in his
day. The baby acknowledged his advent by a crow and by shaking a solid
silver rattle. Maxwell, walking across to the other side of the room,
sat down and held out his arms invitingly. But Lydia intervened to defer
the customary toddling journey in order to exhibit her pupil's latest
accomplishment.

"Listen to her now, Herbert," she said, and gave the necessary signal.

"Pa-a-pa." The verisimilitude was undeniable.

Something very like a groan escaped Maxwell, though his countenance
lighted up. Was he thinking how happy he might have been had fate so
willed?

The performance was repeated successfully a second time; then the child
was despatched on her travels across the carpet. When she ran staggering
into her father's arms he folded her to his breast and pressed his lips
against the fair, silky tresses. She was accustomed to be thus cuddled
by him, though to-night there was an added fervor in his endearments,
owing to her efforts at speech. Meanwhile Lydia from her angle of the
sofa observed them in demure silence. She had given him an entrancing
quarter of an hour, for which she was thankful. Besides, it might put
off the evil day--the day of rupture, decision, breaking up of the
present anomalous domestic relations--which was impending. He had been
devoted, forbearing, unselfish, he had lavished on her every luxury, but
he was impassible. He did not divert or interest her; his serious side
lacked originality; his gayer moods were noisy and deficient in
subtlety; the reddish inelegance of his physique repelled her. But what
was to be the end? This was the riddle which for diverse reasons she had
yet failed to solve. Its solution must depend on the future words of
both of them, and she had had no final explanation with either. For the
present she would fain have things remain as they were, until she could
find the key.

The return of the nurse interrupted Maxwell's happiness. Grudgingly he
gave up his treasure. As soon as the child had been carried off, he
rose, and standing with his back to the blaze of the wood-fire, which
the first sharpness of autumn made agreeable, he faced his wife.

"I met Spencer coming from here."

"He stayed to tea."

"And was here all the afternoon?"

"You know he comes every afternoon."

"And nearly every morning?"

"Yes."

"What is to be the end of this, Lydia?"

She was preparing his tea, which he was accustomed to take after the
departure of Guendolen. "How do you wish to have it end?" she asked
presently.

"I would have you promise me never to see him again, and to go abroad
with me for two years. Let us change the scene entirely. You owe it to
me, Lydia, and to our child." This was no new discussion, but he was
making one last determined effort to counteract the influences working
against him.

"But you know I love him."

"So you have informed me. You have informed me also that it has stopped
there."

"It is true. Why, I scarcely know. Perhaps it would have been juster to
you if I had left you and gone to him."

"I do not understand."

"No matter, then."

"But you loved me once," he exclaimed resolutely. "That is, you told me
so."

"Yes, I told you so. And I did love you as I understood loving then. I
liked you, that's what it really was, and I liked the things which a
marriage with you brought me."

"You mean you married me for my money?"

"I did not know it at the time."

"What do you mean, then?"

Lydia clasped her hands behind her head and leaned back in her seat. "I
am trying to be frank with you," she said. "I am trying to make you the
only reparation in my power--to let you see me just as I am, just as I
see myself. We are what we are. I discovered that long ago."

He caught up this appeal to fatalism with a quicker appreciation of her
significance than he was wont to show.

"You need never see this man again unless you choose. You are my wife; I
am your husband. Does that stand for nothing?"

"I should choose to see him," she answered with low precision, ignoring
the rest. "There is the trouble."

He winced as though from a buffet. "Good God, Lydia, what have I done?
Is there anything within my power which you desired which I haven't
given you?"

"You have been very generous."

"Generous!" The word evidently galled him. "Do you realize that to
regain your love I would gladly sacrifice every dollar of the five
million I own?"

For a moment she made no response. The idea of living with a penniless
Maxwell was one which she had never entertained, and it made clearer to
her the hopelessness of her plight.

"I am not worth it, Herbert," she said gently.

He, too, paused, baffled and at a loss how to proceed. "You are so
cold," he asserted with an access of indignation.

"Cold?" The quality of the interrogation expressed the incredulity of
newly discovered self-knowledge.

"To me."

"Yes, to you, Herbert."

He bent his brow upon her. "I suppose if I had devoted myself to some
other woman I might not have lost you. I had hints enough from our kind
friends, which I ignored because I did not choose to soil our wedlock by
such a foul pretense." His conclusion betrayed the loyalty of his
emotions, but there was the sneer of gathering temper in his tone.

Lydia shook her head with a fastidious smile. "With some women that
might have been the remedy. It could have made no difference with me."

"It is not too late yet," he cried with loud-mouthed menace. "You forget
that I am human--that I am a man."

She raised the pages of a book beside her and let them fall gradually.
"You must do as you choose about that."

"Then what is the remedy?" he shouted.

"I used an inappropriate word. There is no remedy in our case."

"Lydia, you are goading me to ruin."

Striding up and down the room, he struck his leather breeches smartly
with his riding-crop--which he had brought from the hall because the
baby liked to play with it--so that they resounded. He halted before his
wife and exclaimed hoarsely:

"What are we to do, then?"

She had been warned by feminine innuendoes before marriage of the
Maxwell vehemence below the surface, and she perceived that their
affairs had reached a crisis.

"Sit down, Herbert, please. I cannot bear noise. If we are to arrange
matters, we must talk quietly in order to decide what is really best
under all the circumstances."

He gave an impatient twist to his head. "I wish you to know that I am
master here after this," he announced. Nevertheless, he walked to the
chair near the fireplace, which he had first occupied, and sitting down,
folded his arms.

"Well, what have you to say?"

"To begin with, Herbert, there is no escape for either of us from this
calamity. And you must not suppose that I do not realize how dreadful it
is for us both. So far as there is fault, it is mine. I ought never to
have married you. But the past is the past; I do not love you now; I can
never love you again."

"One way out of it," he said between his teeth, "would be to kill the
man you do love."

"How would that avail?"

"I have thought more than once of shooting him down like a dog," he
blurted.

Lydia shook her head. "You never could do that when it came to the
point. And in case of a duel, he is more handy than you. Besides, who
fights duels nowadays? And think of the newspapers! You know as well as
I that such a thing is out of the question--on Guen's account if for no
other reason. It would be blazoned all over the country."

"On Guen's account! Why did you not think of her before you sacrificed
us both?"

She looked back at him unruffled. "I am thinking of her now," she
replied with her finished modulation. "I have told you I am what I am."

"Do not repeat that shallow sophistry," he exclaimed fiercely. "You are
what you choose to be." But in the same breath he fell back in his seat
with the air of one confounded. Then, resting his elbow on the arm of
the chair and his cheek on his hand, he gazed at her from under his
reddish, beetling brows as one might gaze at the sphinx. "What, then, do
you suggest?" he asked wearily.

Lydia had shrugged her shoulders at his last stricture. Now raising
again the cover of the book beside her and letting the leaves slip
through her fingers, she replied slowly, "I suppose if you were a
foreign husband you would accept the inevitable and console yourself as
best you could. We should go our respective ways and ask no questions. I
should be discreet and--and things would remain as they are so far as
Guen is concerned."

"I see. But I am an American husband, and, though they have the
reputation of being the most accommodating in the world, they draw the
line at such an arrangement as you suggest."

"I thought very likely that you would. Then we must separate. Sooner or
later, I suppose, you will be entitled to a divorce, if you wish it."

There was a pause. "Where will you go?" he asked in a hollow tone.

"I have not thought," she answered.

It was the truth. Clever and discerning as she was, she had put off the
inevitable from day to day, basking in the glamour of the present. What
would her lover say? Would he be ready to venture all for her sake? to
throw convention to the winds and glory in their passion? She did not
know; she had never asked him. They had never discussed the future. She
needed time--time to think and time to ascertain. Then a sudden thought
seized her, and she spoke:

"I shall take Guen."

"Guen?" There were agony and revolting consternation in his exclamation.

"I am her mother. She is a mere baby. Am I not her natural guardian?"

He sprang to his feet. "I should not permit it!" he thundered. "I should
go to law; I should appeal to the courts."

[Illustration: "I should not permit it!" he thundered. "I should go to
law; I should appeal to the courts."]

Her wits showed themselves her allies. "But if you drive me from this
house, the courts will give her to me," she said triumphantly. "What,
after all, have I done? You are jealous, and you dismiss me. They will
let me have my baby."

The horror inspired by her cool, confident declaration choked his
utterance. He raised his riding crop in his clenched fist as though he
were impelled to strike her. "You--you--" he articulated, but no
suitable stigma was evolved by his seething brain. His arm fell, but he
stood with set teeth and bristling mien, like a wild boar at bay.

His fury had the effect of enhancing Lydia's appearance of calm. "There
is no use in getting excited. I'm only telling you what is likely to
happen if we have recourse to desperate measures. She's a girl, and I
brought her into the world--had all the stress of doing so. Why
shouldn't I have her? I've heard lawyers say that when parents separate
the courts consider what is for the best good of the children. Surely it
is for the best good of a baby girl of two that she should go with her
mother. That's the modern social view, Herbert, and a man has to make
the best of it."

As she proceeded Lydia had warmed to the plausible justice of her
argument. Recognizing that she had put herself in the best possible
position for the time being, she rose to go. Maxwell, gnawing at his
lips, stood pondering her dire words. The appalling intimation that he
might lose his precious child had numbed his senses with dread. He knew
his wife's cleverness, and that there must be some truth in her
statement. Might she not even at the moment be premeditating an attempt
to carry her away? Every other thought became at once subordinate to his
resolve to safeguard his treasure. As though he suspected that his wife
had risen under a crafty impulse to get the start of him, he blocked
her pathway by stepping between her and the door.

"I forbid you to touch her," he said frowningly. "She shall never leave
this house. I am going to give my orders now and they will be obeyed."

Maxwell stood for a moment as though waiting to see what response this
challenge would elicit, then, with a forbidding nod, he strode from the
room and shut the door after him.

His departure was a relief to Lydia. All she had desired was to be
alone. She dropped again upon the sofa and sat looking into space. There
was only one course: she must have an understanding with Harry Spencer.
What would he say? What was he prepared to do for her sake? She thought
to herself, "He said once that my time would come. It has come, and, as
he prophesied, I am just like the others--only more so. More so because
they might be ready to give him up; they might not have the courage to
persevere and sacrifice everything else for the one thing which is worth
while--love. And I thought it would never come--that I was cold, as
Herbert says, and likely to be bored all my life. Now, against my creed,
against my will it has come, and I cannot do without him." For a moment
she sat in reverie, then murmuring, "I must know--and the sooner the
better," she stepped to the desk with an impulsive movement and wrote.




VII


Lydia's note was a summons to Spencer to go to drive with her on the
following morning. When he arrived she was ready with her village cart
and a fast cob. Regardless of appearances, her project was to seek some
distant spot where they would not be interrupted. The woods near Duck
Pond--in which they had passed pleasant hours together twice
already--commended themselves to her, and thither she directed their
course under the mellow October sunshine. She spoke of their jaunt as a
picnic, the edible manifestations of which she disclosed to him stowed
in neat packages behind. But she vouchsafed no immediate explanation of
the true purpose of this impromptu expedition. She was biding her time
until they should walk together in the sylvan paths, free from all
danger of interference. Since matters were approaching a climax, she was
glad also to give herself up for the moment to the glamour of sitting at
his side and realizing their affinity. Of all the men of her
acquaintance he was the only one who had never bored her; who seemed to
divine and cater to her moods; who amused her when she craved
entertainment, and was alive to the precious value of opportune silence.
He seemed to her possessed of infinite tact--and Lydia experienced an
increasing repugnance when her social sensibilities were jarred. That
had been one great trouble with Maxwell; he was forever doing the right
thing in the wrong way. His very endearments were awkward, whereas her
present companion's slightest gallantry gave a pleasant fillip to her
blood.

Spencer, on his part, was quite content to ask no questions. He was with
the woman who exercised a subtler and more permanent fascination over
him than anyone he had hitherto met, not excepting Miss Wilford, and
this drive was only cumulative proof of favor on her part, one more sign
that their relations were approaching a crisis. What the precise and
ultimate result of their growing intimacy was to be he had not felt the
need to consider. For the moment it sufficed to know that, though both
her partiality for him and his influence over her were unmistakable, she
had up to this point kept him at bay--eluded him when she seemed on the
point of throwing herself into his arms. This skilful restraint on her
part had served to heighten the interest of his pursuit, and also to
deepen the ardor of his attachment.

Before they had gone beyond the limits of Westfield several of their
mutual acquaintance were encountered, all of whom were too well-bred to
betray the vivid interest which the meeting aroused. Mrs. Cole, on her
way to play golf at the club, nodded to them blithely from her phaeton,
as though it were the most natural thing in the world they should be
together, and so concealed from them her dire suspicions which were thus
afforded fresh material to batten on. Gerald Marcy, sportsman-like and
dignified on his grizzled hunter, saluted them with the off-hand decorum
of a man of the world.

"Glorious weather for man and beast," he asserted, as much as to say
that he knew how to mind his own business. When they had passed him,
however, he tugged nervously at his mustache and wagged his head like a
soothsayer.

The newly engaged couple, sitting side by side in a village cart of
similar pattern to theirs, managed to conceal that they did not know
which way to look, and sustained the ordeal creditably, though the girl
was conscious that her cheeks were flushing. As they left the culprits
behind, Peggy clutched her lover's arm and whispered hoarsely, "Did you
see that?"

"It's too bad," said Guy, who, being neither blind nor imbecile, had not
failed to take in the full import of the situation. "I for one am all in
the dark as to how this thing is going to end."

"I knew they would be great friends, but I never supposed for a minute
that it would come to anything like this," mused the maiden sadly. "Even
when she chaperoned us that night I took for granted it was nothing
really serious."

Mrs. Gordon Wallace, who, being a new-comer from the West, was less of
an adept, perhaps, in disguising her real feelings, put up her eye-glass
a little feverishly as she bowed. Whereupon it pleased Lydia to whisk
her head round a moment later.

"She was staring after us with all her eyes!" she exclaimed. "I knew she
would; she couldn't resist the temptation. She will report that I have a
guilty conscience, whereas I was merely studying human nature in
violation of my own social instincts."

"What did she see, after all?" queried Spencer, supposing that his
companion stood in need of a little soothing.

"Everyone is talking about us, as you know," Lydia answered, ignoring
the query. "We have been for months the burning topic at Westfield, and
the fame of our misdeeds has spread abroad. Everything considered,
people have been wonderfully forbearing to our faces--perfect moles, in
fact--but behind our backs they are chattering like magpies. Fannie Cole
intimated as much, though I had guessed it."

"Why need we care what they say?" he asked sedulously. What better
opportunity would he have than this for feeling his way? "We know that
there have been no misdeeds."

She touched the horse with the tip of her whip, and he bounded forward.
"Is it not the prince of misdeeds that we love one another?" she said
after a moment.

"We cannot help that."

"But since it is true, what are we going to do about it, my friend?"

"Do? Lydia," he whispered eagerly and bent his cheek toward hers, "it is
for you to say."

She recoiled chastely from his endearment, though she thrilled at the
proximity. "Is it? I am not sure. I asked you to come with me this
morning in order to find out. It appears that we have reached the
parting of the ways."

"The parting?" he queried apprehensively.

"Not for us, unless we choose."

"Ah." It was the sigh of an ardent lover.

"Wait. I will tell you by and by when we can talk it out freely." She
turned and smiled on him with an effulgent grace such as she had never
in her life lavished on Maxwell. Therein she threw wide open for a
moment the casement of her soul and let him perceive the completeness of
the havoc he had wrought.

"You angel!" he answered, breathing softly, and he pressed her hand. He
divined that her dainty spirit was in the mood when all it asked of him
was his presence, and that speech would be a discord.

They were passing now beyond the confines of Westfield and the influence
of its colony into a more distinctly rural country--stretches of wilder
uplands, now pastures, now woods, alternating with small farm buildings
around which the fields lay stubbly with the party-colored remains of
the harvest, and redolent of autumn odors. Presently they reached a
village with a shady main street and old-fashioned white-faced houses,
most of the treasures of which, quaint andirons and other picturesque
relics of a simpler past, had been sent to market owing to the lure of
fancy prices. Then more fields, and at length they branched off from the
main road along a winding lane, on either side of which the view was
partially shut off by clusters of bushes gay with the colors of the
changing season. The perfume of the wild flowers was in the air, and
everywhere the blazon of the golden-rod was visible.

They had exchanged an occasional word of comment on the sights and
sounds of the varying landscape, yet wholly impersonal. Now once more
she turned toward him with the same lustrous smile, and said, like one
exalted:

"Love and the world are mine to-day."

Thrilled by this confession of faith, he looked into her eyes ardently,
and encircling her waist sought to draw her toward him.

"And they will be mine when you are mine. You must be mine; you shall be
mine."

She freed herself from his grasp. "Patience, my friend." Her voice had
the tantalizing exultation of an elusive fay. "What should I gain by
that? Would you love me any more than you do now?"

"Yes, yes indeed," he answered, disregarding logic.

"I doubt it much," she asserted archly. "But wait."

On they went, and finally the bushes along the winding lane became trees
and the sky above their heads was obscured by patches of foliage. They
were in an expanse of woods which, in spite of the proximity of
civilization, still smacked of luxuriant and elfish nature. The road,
though yet wide enough for a vehicle, wound gracefully between oaks and
pines stately with age. Some reverent hand had protected them. Their
trunks were scarred with weird growths, and on the carpet of the soil
big fungi flourished unmolested. It was a wild region to the imaginative
and uninitiated, yet there were evidences now and again of the nearness
of man and his devices, such as an occasional sign-post or rustic seat.
After half a mile of travel over a soft brown carpet sprinkled with
fragrant pine needles they brought up at their destination, a sort of
sylvan camp--a picnic-ground in reality, a favorite resort of the
masses in midsummer. Now it was deserted for the season.


     Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang,


though the simile was applicable to the dismantled wooden buildings
rather than to the face of nature. The band-stand and eating pavilion
stood like starving ghosts amid the forest mysteries. But there was a
hitching-post at hand. Lydia knew her locality, and after the willing
cob had been secured and blanketed, she led the way down a short vista
to an arbor or summer house, to which clustering vines still imparted
some semblance of vernal cosiness. The view from it commanded through a
narrow clearing a picturesque outlook on the glistening waters of Duck
Pond, while the crackling underbrush furnished a cordon of alert
sentinels. On the rustic bench, where many inelegant predecessors had
carved their initials, there was ample room for two. Nor was it the
first time this pair had made use of it. Settling herself in her corner
with folded arms so as to face her companion, Lydia broke the silence.

"Herbert says we cannot go on as we are."

"He has intimated as much several times before."

"But this time he is in earnest. He has put down his foot. He introduced
the subject yesterday after you had gone. I told him again the
truth--the truth he already knew--that I love you, and not him, and that
I can never love him." She paused. Was it to pique his curiosity, or was
she feeling her way while she revelled for the moment in her
declaration?

He accepted her avowal complacently as a twice-told tale, but he was
interested obviously in what was to follow.

"Well?"

"He declines absolutely to be accommodating and resign himself to the
situation. The customary foreign point of view in such a case does not
appeal to him. When it came to the point I never supposed it would."

"We were getting along so nicely, too. What brought this on?" Spencer
remarked parenthetically. The triangular footing had been submitted to
by Maxwell for so many months without an outbreak that the logic of
events seemed to him to demand some special incident as a justification
for this sudden revolt.

"One can never tell when a volcano will assert itself. He simply
exploded, that's all," she answered. "The wonder is that he has put up
with it so long."

"And what is it that he requires?"

"He implored me never to see you again and to go abroad with him for two
years. When I declined, he said that he and I must separate."

"A divorce?"

"We did not discuss precise terms. The idea uppermost in his mind was
much less complex than that. He invited me to leave the house."

Spencer made an ejaculation of astonishment. "At once?"

"That was his meaning."

"And what did you reply?" Under the spur of her disclosure he had risen.
Resting his arm on one of the spiky knobs of the rustic pillar in front
of him, he looked down at her inquiringly. Yet his long, athletic,
indolent figure still shrank from the conclusion that the status of
their affairs had been permanently disturbed.

"I managed not to commit myself at the moment." She paused briefly. "I
desired to talk with you first, Harry. I felt that I must know what you
would like me to do."

He straightened himself as from surprise. "I could not like you to do
that--leave the house."

"It would only be possible provided I went to you."

For a moment he seemed dumfounded. "From his house to me? But,
Lydia"--the boldness of the proposition was so staggering to Spencer, he
felt that he must have misunderstood her, and was groping for her
meaning. His consternation was evidently not unexpected, nor did it
elicit reproach. "No one would call on me, of course," she said dryly.
Then she added with cumulating tenseness, as one pleading a cause which
she suspects to be hopeless, "It would mean the end of everything else
in the world which I care for except one--my love for you. We could
leave this place forever, Harry, go to Australia, the world's end,
wherever you will, and be happy."

A scampering squirrel with a nut in its mouth hopped into view on the
path, scanned them for an instant, then bounded into the underbrush. But
only just in time. It seemed to Spencer that the little animal was
grinning at him, and he had reached for a missile as an outlet for his
doubly harassed feelings.

"My dear girl, you are crazy."

"Very likely, Harry."

"I love you to distraction, God knows, but that sort of thing is out of
date. Why, Lydia, you would be the first to tire of it. Happy? We should
neither of us be happy, for what would we have to live on?" The final
inflection of his voice was veritable triumph, so irrefutable appeared
his logic.

Lydia gave a profound sigh. "I knew you would say that," she answered
quickly. "But it was our only chance. Suppose I get my divorce and we
marry here, what have we to live on? I have three thousand a year of my
own. And you?"

"Not quite so much--assured."

"Exactly. And there you are!--as Henry James's characters are so fond of
saying."

They gazed at each other mutely.

"We should be beggars with our tastes," she resumed. "It would never
do, would it, dear? You see, I have considered the subject."

"I perceive that you have." The pensiveness of his tone was a virtual
admission that he had failed to recognize how subtle she had been.

"The other was our only chance," she repeated. "I would have gone with
you, probably, if you had consented."

"But I do consent, if you wish it," he asserted eagerly; and falling on
his knee he reached for her hand and pressed it to his lips. For the
first time in his life he had yielded to the intoxication of love
against his reason. The charm of this elusive, chameleon-like being had
got the better for the moment both of his discretion and his inherent
selfishness.

Though the capitulation entranced Lydia, it had come too slowly and too
late. She shook her head. "It is you who have convinced _me_. You are
perfectly right. I should tire without things--of living on next to
nothing. It would be impossible. You knew me better than I did myself."
She freed her hand gently from his blandishments and smiled in his face.

He rose and looked down at her again from the rustic pillar. "We might
manage somehow. I should be ready to try." He was nerved for the
sacrifice.

"On six thousand? Oh, no, you wouldn't. At any rate, I should not."

It was futile to pretend that it would be adequate. "We might live
abroad. Things are cheaper there," he suggested.

"But I don't wish to live abroad. I wish to remain here, and I could not
hold up my head on much less than I have now, for, under the
circumstances, no one would call on us if we were poor."

He showed that he saw the point, but it suited her to enlarge upon it.
"If one has millions and good manners one can do anything in America;
everything else is forgiven. But I would never put myself in the
position where I might be snubbed or pitied. That's why I must be rich.
And as for you, Harry," she continued, "unless you had a stable, steam
yacht, and at least two establishments, you would feel, after you had
cooled off, that you had thrown yourself away, and, consequently, we
should both be miserable."

He laughed a little sceptically, but he did not deny the impeachment.
"What a clever woman you are, Lydia! That's one reason I love you so.
The thing to do," he said in his caressing voice, "is to prevent
matters from reaching the desperate stage. You must patch it up somehow
with Maxwell, and--and we shall find ways to see each other," he added
meaningly.

She appeared not to hear his suggestion. "One million is the very least
that you and I could marry on--and be perfectly happy. And, if we had
it, we might be very happy."

Her sigh of regret encouraged his alert warmth. He leaned toward her and
whispered, "Let us, then, be happy in the only way which is possible."

She raised a warning hand. It was clear that she had understood his
previous innuendo. "To be happy under the rose is respectable abroad,
but here it may mean social ostracism," she replied demurely. "I tell
you that Herbert is dreadfully in earnest. Besides," she added after one
of her deliberate pauses, "Do you not love me? That is what I crave.
That is the essential thing for me."

"You are mocking me," he said with choler.

"No; only showing myself conservative and sensible like yourself.
Neither of us can afford to sacrifice everything, yet it would be
infinitely preferable to live together. You must find our million."

Spencer shrugged his shoulders. "Where? In the stock-market? One plunge,
and drink wormwood if I lost? I will make you listen to me yet," he said
with the rising energy of one who feels himself at bay. His eyes gleamed
ardently, and the lines of his dark countenance, little accustomed to
brook opposition, grew rigid as they did in the moments when he
concentrated all his nerves on accomplishment.

The charm of his mastering mood was not lost on Lydia, but its effect
was to fix her wits still more closely on the problem of their future.
Where was the necessary escape or remedy to be found? She lifted her
eyes to meet her lover's gaze, but they stared beyond him into the realm
of speculation. Suddenly she started as one who sees a
spectre--something weird and forbidden. Yet her stricken vision seemed
to gather fascination from a longer look, and she moved her lips as
though she were bandying words with doubts which fell like nine-pins
before her intelligence. Then, with a transport which revealed that she
had taken the intruder, however terrible, to her breast as the bringer
of a dispensation, she exclaimed:

"Harry, I have found a way."

"A way?" he ejaculated, for to him there now seemed only one course open
consistent with their necessities, and he feared some radical proposal
as the outcome of her trance.

"For us to marry. We shall have enough."

"Where is the gold mine?" he asked indulgently.

She looked at him musingly with bright, searching eyes. In that moment
she concluded not to reveal her secret. "Yes, a gold mine," she
answered. "We shall have our million--perhaps two. Why not two?" She
asked the question of herself, and it was plain that she saw no stable
obstacle to her now widening ambition.

Meanwhile Spencer surveyed her with scrutinizing wonder. Evidently her
transport was genuine. He knew her too well to doubt that there was
some basis for her specific statement as to the money.

"Two would be better than one, Lydia. Let it be two, by all means," he
said jauntily.

"It shall be two," she replied with the assurance of a necromancer
confident of compelling respect for his magic wand by the performance of
the marvels he has foretold. "You may kiss me, Harry--once."




VIII


The nuptials between Guy Perry and Miss Peggy Blake took place the
following summer--midway in June, the month of brides. They were married
in the little Episcopal church at Westfield, which since the advent of
the colony and of millionnaires had thriven like the traditional bay
tree, for most of the sporting element belonged, nominally at least, to
that fashionable persuasion. Hence the rector, the Rev. Percy Ward, who
had assumed this cure of souls with modest expectations regarding
numbers and revenues, had been pleasantly astonished by the rapid
increase in both. This had not made him proud, but appropriately
ambitious. It had allowed him to keep the appearance and properties of
the church up to the mark, æsthetically speaking, by vines, flowers and
fresh paint, and at the proper moment it had encouraged him to ask for a
new house of worship adapted to the needs of his growing congregation.
Success had crowned his efforts. Plans were being drawn for an artistic
and sufficiently spacious building to take the place of the rustic
quarters in use. But the bride had expressed herself as devoutly
thankful that she could be married in the original building, for she had
pious associations with it, and its smaller proportions seemed to her
more in keeping with a country wedding. For Peggy desired that the
ceremony should be an out-of-door affair. She had even thought at first
of being married under a bell of roses on her father's lawn. Yet, when
it came to the point she adhered to a ceremony in church. She wished to
be wedded to her true love as securely as possible, consequently she
invoked for the purpose full religious rites at the altar, but her
energies respecting the other features of the occasion were bent on the
production of open-air effects. They were to be simple and rurally
picturesque.

The guests of the happy pair endeavored to comply with the wishes of the
bride consistently with regard for their own personal appearance. That
is, the women came in light summer attire, but with frocks of
fascinating shades, and straw hats of the latest dainty design with gay
feathers. The little church was packed to the doors, and on the green
fronting the vestibule stood those of the men for whom there was no room
inside. The leading members of the hunt were in pink, at Peggy's
suggestion; among them Andrew Cunningham with an immaculate stock and a
new waistcoat of festal pattern. It was a radiant, rare June day; not a
cloud was in the sky. The ceremony went off without a hitch save the
momentary hesitation occasioned by the bridegroom's diving into the
wrong pocket for the ring. All Peggy's family had expressed fears lest
her veil should fall off in keeping with her tendencies, so it had been
more than securely pinned to forestall such a calamity. She walked, on
her father's arm, modestly yet firmly up the aisle as became a strenuous
spirit; her responses were agreeably audible; and on her way down,
though she obeyed the instructions given her to keep her eyes straight
ahead--on the ball, as one of her friends had cautioned her--it was
clear from her blissful, confident expression that she found difficulty
in not nodding to her friends right and left by way of letting them know
how happy she was. She was dressed as nearly like a village maiden as
prevailing fashions in wedding garments would allow, and the simplicity
of her garb set off her fine physique and hue of health, which not even
the conventional pallor of brides was able wholly to dispel. Four
bridesmaids tripped behind her, the picture of dainty shepherdesses.

On reaching the portal, however, Mrs. Peggy was unable to repress her
exuberance; and, before jumping into the carriage which was to carry
them to the breakfast at "Valley Farm," her father's residence, she
grasped and shook ecstatically a half dozen of the nearest hands. Then
as the vehicle containing the happy pair rolled away, while the bride
threw a kiss to the group of friends at the door, the swell of a horn
rose melodiously above other sounds, and along the meadow flanking one
side of the foreground the pack of hounds belonging to the Westfield
Hunt came into view headed by the Master, and every hound wore a wedding
favor. This feature had been devised as a surprise to the couple and a
tribute to their devotion to equestrian sport. Besides, it had a special
touch of interest for the women in that everyone knew that Kenneth Post,
the Master, would fain have been in the shoes of the fortunate
bridegroom. Yet he played his part with so much dignity and spirit, as
he led the way toward their destination, that the contagion of his
demeanor spread to the entire retinue of guests which followed in their
various equipages and the omnibuses or so-called "barges" provided, and
the procession swept along on the wings of gayety.

In the midst of the confusion of getting away, the pole of pretty Mrs.
Baxter's village cart was broken through collision with the champing
steeds bearing the phaeton containing Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Wallace. Among
the many proffers of succor the first and most acceptable emanated from
Mrs. Walter Cole, who had obviously a spare seat in her neat oak station
wagon. The fact was that Mrs. Cole's husband, having been detained in
town by pressing business, had telephoned his wife at the last moment to
go without him to the ceremony, and that he would follow by the next
train. Consequently she had arrived only barely in time to get a seat,
and that by dint of crowding the pew a little.

She had sat there as in a trance, unable to fasten her attention on the
charming spectacle as fixedly as it deserved. Her mind kept wandering
elsewhere; reverting to certain amazing news of which she had become
possessed only the afternoon before, and which she had had no
opportunity to impart to the many who would be thrilled by it. She was
revelling in the thought of the sensation it would produce, and her own
intelligence was agreeably busy with the clever novelty of the procedure
and with trying to decide whether, in spite of the heartlessness
displayed, the solution devised was not perhaps the best under the
peculiar circumstances. She had felt that she should burst if she could
not tell some kindred soul soon; but such an astounding piece of
information was not to be wasted on people whose faculties were already
fully occupied; it merited a single mind. Therefore the moment she
became aware of Mrs. Baxter's mishap, she exclaimed with almost
hysterical eagerness:

"Rachel, there's a seat for you here. Do come with me; I'm all alone."

When the invitation was accepted, Mrs. Cole pressed her hand and leaned
back with a happy mien. There was no use in speaking until they were
free from the concourse and were sweeping along the road toward "Valley
Farm." That auspicious moment having arrived, she turned to her friend
and said:

"Well, dear, the mystery is solved."

"About Lydia?" asked Mrs. Baxter with breathless animation.

"Yes. She sent for me as soon as she returned. I went to town to see her
yesterday."

"Where has she been all this time?"

"Nominally, as we were told, travelling in Mexico for two months with
her cousins; in reality coming to terms with Maxwell in regard to a
divorce."

"Then they are really to be divorced? How pitiful! But I suppose it was
the only solution. Do go on, dear," she added, fearing lest this crude
philosophic digression might be the reason for the pause on Mrs. Cole's
part.

But the narrator, though she regarded the comment as superficial, was
merely arranging her material with a view to dramatic effect.

"We had a heart-to-heart talk. She told me everything. She wishes people
to know--and to try to understand her point of view. Yes, Rachel, they
are to be divorced. The papers are already filed. The lawyers say that
it is simple enough, if both the parties are agreed, and it seems they
are--all three of the parties rather. The court proceedings will be as
secret as possible. Herbert is to let her obtain it from him--for cruel
and abusive treatment or gross and confirmed habits of intoxication--to
save Lydia's reputation on the child's account. Then Lydia is to marry
Harry Spencer and live happily ever after--if she can."

"She never would have been happy with Maxwell," remarked Mrs. Baxter
pensively. "Poor fellow! When one reflects that he probably was never
cruel or abused her in his life, and that his confirmed habits, if he
has them, are due to her neglect! What is to become of him?"

Mrs. Cole had been waiting for some such question. "The law is queer,
you know," she said, by way of disposing of the rest of the plaint. Then
she added, with significant emphasis, "He is to have Guen."

"Altogether?"

"Altogether. That is the way Lydia got him to consent to a divorce."

Not being so clever as some women, Mrs. Baxter looked puzzled. "I don't
think I quite understand."

Mrs. Cole, who was enjoying thoroughly the gradual climax, sat upright,
and facing her companion laid her hand on Mrs. Baxter's arm.

"Rachel," she said, "Lydia has sold Guendolen to her husband for two
million dollars!"

Mrs. Baxter gave a gasp and a smothered shriek. "Two million dollars!
The poor, dear child!"

The two ejaculations were not entirely consistent, for they revealed a
divided interest. Mrs. Cole proceeded to face the second first.

"I've thought it all over and over,--I did not sleep until four, I was
so excited--and there can't be any doubt that, under the circumstances,
it's the best thing for the child. Her father dotes on her, and Lydia
never has been able to forget that she is the living image of his
mother. It was probably a struggle--she intimated as much--for it sounds
so revolting, and a woman is supposed to be a lioness where her own
flesh and blood are concerned. But when it came to a choice between Guen
and Harry Spencer, she chose the one she cared for most."

"And she really gets two millions? Why, she will be as rich as before."

"Exactly. That's one of the interesting phases of the case. You see,
they couldn't afford to marry, for neither of them had any money to
speak of, though they were dead in love with each other. On the other
hand, they had never done anything--so Lydia swears, and I believe
her--which would entitle Herbert Maxwell to a divorce; so when Herbert
invited her to leave the house, she replied that she would, and that she
would take Guendolen with her. It just happened to occur to her, but the
effect was marvellous. It enabled her to hold over Herbert's head the
menace that, when parents who can't get on agree to separate, the courts
are likely to give a baby girl to the mother, and oblige the father to
be content with occasional reasonable visits. That frightened Herbert
nearly to death. It seems he raged like a bull--poor man!--and
threatened to shoot anyone who laid a finger on the child. Now comes
the really clever part," continued Mrs. Cole, with an appreciative sigh.
"Lydia had threatened to take Guen merely to gain time to think, but
when she realized that she and Harry Spencer could never be happy unless
she were willing to lead what the newspapers call a double life, she was
at her wits' end. Then the idea suddenly occurred to her, and--horrible
as it was at the first glance--it seemed the solution of everything. So
she engaged a lawyer to open negotiations with her husband, and she went
away to Mexico to give Herbert a chance to think over the proposal. She
lived in terror of centipedes while she was gone, but there were lots of
interesting old relics there, and one day she got a telegram from her
lawyer announcing that the whole thing was settled. The necessary papers
have been drawn, and as soon as the divorce is granted she will get the
money. What do you think of that? Isn't it original and revolting, and
yet, seeing that she is Lydia, comprehensible? And the most
extraordinary thing of all is that, when one considers the matter
dispassionately, it is not clear that it isn't the most sensible
arrangement all round."

Rachel Baxter, being of a less philosophical turn of mind, was still
aghast.

"What will people say?" she added naively, as one in monologue. "Of
course, they have their money."

"They have their money, and Lydia proposes to come back here as soon as
she has--er--changed husbands. That's just like her, too. She intends
that Westfield shall treat her precisely as though nothing had
happened."

"Really!" Mrs. Baxter's surprise showed a touch of consternation. "It
will be very awkward, won't it? Though, after all," she murmured, "it
isn't anything criminal, like--" She found difficulty in hitting on an
appropriate simile. Meanwhile Mrs. Cole added, dispassionately:

"She would have come to-day, but she felt that she might be thought
indelicate, considering that it is a wedding, and that her own affairs
are still at sixes and sevens so far as appearances go. But she sent her
love to Peggy."

At the moment they were dashing up the driveway of "Valley Farm." Mrs.
Baxter, who had been nursing her emotions as one whose ethical
sensibilities had received a blow in the solar plexus, made this attempt
at a summary:

"It is diabolical, but interesting. I wonder what people will say."

No time was lost by either of them in spreading the abnormal news. But
it suited pretty Mrs. Baxter's temperament better to follow in her
companion's wake, supplementing the narrative by ingenuous cooing
speeches rather than by an independent excursion. They joined at first
the procession of guests making snail-like progress toward the bride and
groom, who were holding court in the drawing-room of the decorative
modern mansion built for occupation from May to December. As chance
would have it, they found themselves next in line behind Mrs. Andrew
Cunningham, into whose ear Fannie Cole, bending forward, whispered
simply the fell words:

"Lydia has sold Guendolen to her husband for two million dollars, and
is to marry Harry Spencer on the proceeds as soon as the divorce is
granted."

The mother of the hunt made no sign for a moment, like one stunned.
Then, as comprehension of the facts dawned upon her, the blood mounted
to her face so that the crab-apples in her cheeks were very much in
evidence, and she bounced completely round.

"That caps the climax! That is the most up-to-date, highly evolved
performance yet. Who told you?" The sardonic ire in her voice was
formidable.

"Lydia--yesterday."

Incredulity snatching at the chance of exaggeration was thus baffled.
"It's monstrous! I shall never speak to her again."

Appalled by the bluntness of the threat, Mrs. Baxter interposed naively,
"But she is going to live here after she is married."

"So much the better." Whereupon Mrs. Cunningham turned her back upon
them, in search of her husband, to whom she felt the urgent need of
imparting the information.

Mrs. Cole nodded her head, as much as to say that she understood the
point of view, but her perspicuous philosophy prompted her to take a
much broader view of the situation.

"It's dreadful, May, of course, and disconcerting to maternal notions,"
she began; "but--" Then realizing that for the moment the indignant
censor was otherwise occupied, she decided to reserve her ameliorating
comments for a more favorable opportunity than the promiscuous line
afforded. After all, the episode was not meat for babes, and undeniably
deserved more than flippant treatment.

The news thus unbosomed spread like wildfire. After kissing the bride,
Mrs. Cole, during her progress to the piazza and lawn, where many of the
guests were beginning to partake of refreshments appropriate to the
occasion, had the satisfaction of throwing it like a bombshell into
successive groups; while the Cunninghams lost no time in revealing what
they had heard. Wherever it was uttered it took the place of every other
topic, so that presently all the adults and many of the minors of the
company were feverishly discussing the social drama presented.

The course of the wedding breakfast, thus enlivened, proceeded according
to programme. It was a felicitous scene, what with the balmy, brilliant
day, the brightly dressed assembly, and the picturesque addition of the
pack of hounds, which danced attendance at a respectful distance within
proper limits previously prepared for them. After everybody had
congratulated the happy pair, they showed themselves at an angle of the
piazza to cut the wedding-cake which stood festal and massive on an
adjacent table.

Then at the proper moment the bride's health was proposed by Gerald
Marcy with dignity and grace, in pledge of which everybody's glass of
champagne was lifted and drained. The bridegroom, goaded into speech,
made a few halting remarks expressive of his own happiness and good
fortune, ending in a serious tag of chivalrous, if slightly involved,
sentiment, which evoked fresh enthusiasm.

Toasts were drunk to the bridesmaids, the parents of the bride, and the
Hunt Club. In response to the last of these Mrs. Baxter's brother, Dick
Weston, who possessed a deep-toned voice, started the club-song, the
words of which had been composed by Andrew Cunningham in his salad days
under the inspiration of five Scotches and soda, and been adopted on the
occasion of its first delivery as the property of the colony:


     Across the uplands brown we ride,
     And our pulses bound with life's ruddy tide,
     As we follow the hounds o'er the country-side
       In the brisk October morning.


So he sang, and everybody joined in the refrain with genial gusto, not
excepting the bride--"Miss West Wind" still, in spite of her veil and
satin attire--who waved her glass and carolled with the rest, until even
the hounds seemed to catch the infection and added their notes to the
general jubilation. Then it transpired that stout Miss Marbury had found
the ring in her piece of wedding-cake. This was the source of some
merriment, amid which the bride slipped away to change her dress, and
the guests, left to their own devices, returned to their discussion of
the half-digested news.

Gerald Marcy, who had heard it, like everybody else, with mingled revolt
and bewilderment, passed from his functions as toast-master to what
might be called the storm-centre of the animadversion, a small
summer-house or arbor on the trellis of which June roses were blowing,
and where the Andrew Cunninghams, Mrs. Cole, the Rev. Percy Ward, and
several others were congregated. He arrived just as the rector was
exclaiming, with pained fervor:

"We have here the logical fruits of the present-day degenerate
readiness to put off one husband or wife in order to marry another. If
every clergyman in the land were to bind himself never to perform the
marriage service in the case of any recently divorced person, some
headway might be made against this social pest--the canker-worm of
modern family life."

The symbolic allusion to canker-worms caused nimble-minded Mrs. Cole to
glance up involuntarily at the vines to meet some impending danger to
her summer finery at the same moment that she replied:

"I don't think it would make much difference, if you'll pardon my saying
so, Mr. Ward--with Lydia, I mean. She would be content with a justice of
the peace if a clergyman were not forthcoming. But," she continued, with
increasing volubility, "what, of course, you wish to know is whether
there is anything which will keep people of our sort--not the wives of
the toiling masses whose husbands beat them and who feel that they ought
to be allowed to solace themselves with a second, but the four hundred,
so to speak, and their friends--from trifling with the marriage
relation. There's only one remedy, in my opinion, though I don't wish to
be understood as advocating it in Lydia's case, for I'm her closest
friend, and she isn't here to defend herself. But if, as appearances
indicate, she has overstepped the limit--though you all admit that the
situation was a tremendous one--the only thing which would cut her to
the quick would be if the people whose friendship she values were to
turn the cold shoulder on her. That's the only criticism she would
really care for, Mr. Ward," she concluded alertly, with her head poised
on one side. Mrs. Cole's interest in philosophical discussion was not to
be repressed even by her loyalty.

"Ah!" exclaimed the clergyman approvingly. "The force of public opinion!
The Church is merely trying to lead public opinion. If public opinion
will act of its own accord, so much the better." Mr. Ward, though
faithful to his principles, was not averse to let this section of his
flock perceive that he welcomed righteousness from whatever source it
proceeded, as became a liberal-minded Christian.

"What constitutes public opinion in this country?" asked Gerald Marcy.
"One of the evils of universal liberty is that there are no recognized
standards of behavior. It is all go-as-you-please."

"Amen," ejaculated the rector.

"Consequently," continued Gerald, pursuing the thread of his
contemplation, "a social boycott, such as Mrs. Cole suggests, becomes
effective only when the particular set to which an offender belongs
chooses to take the initiative--which is awkward, for where exactly is
one to draw the line?"

"I, for one, feel as though I never wished to speak to her again," said
Mrs. Cunningham.

"She certainly deserves to be cut," said her husband, doughtily. Yet he
added, "It would be precious hard to manage, though--not to mention
inconvenient--if she comes to live at Norrey's Knoll and everything is
patched up according to law."

"There you are, you see!" exclaimed Gerald. "I tell you," he said, with
a tug at his mustache, "that it's very difficult to cut people whom one
has known all one's life, unless they've committed murder or
embezzled."

"It isn't as though she were a bigamist or living in--in violation of
the seventh commandment," remarked Mrs. Baxter dreamily, remembering
just in time to round out her sentence with decorum for the benefit of
Mr. Ward.

The rector jumped at the opportunity offered. "Isn't that just what she
is doing? It is precisely that from the Church's point of view."

"If the Church would only pass a canon forbidding us to call on women
who get divorced in order to marry someone else, it would be easier to
take such a stand," remarked Mrs. Cole.

"But it isn't the divorce I mind so much. It's her selling Guendolen,"
exclaimed Mrs. Cunningham, with the honesty of her temperament. "We
couldn't ostracize her simply because she has got a divorce and married
again, for there are so many others." Her tone showed that she realized
the impracticability of a social crusade based solely on the existence
in the flesh of a previous wife or husband. Yet she yearned for action
in this particular case. But what could one woman do alone?

"On the contrary, it seems to me a grand opportunity, ladies," said the
clergyman stoutly. "The conduct of the offending parties in this
instance represents individual selfishness and license carried to the
culminating point. Because you may have neglected to do your duty in
respect to the others is no justification for flinching now. It's the
whole degraded system, root and branch, which I am fulminating against;
but here we have a concrete, monstrous instance which invites action.
Is ostracism never to be invoked, as Mr. Marcy intimates, except in the
case of the taking of life or where the pocket is affected?"

There was a painful silence. For a wedding reception the discussion was
becoming decidedly forensic.

"We must think it over," said Mrs. Cunningham. "If none of us women were
to invite her to our houses or go to hers--" She paused without
completing her sentence, evidently appalled by the vista of social
complications which it opened up.

"There's nothing else in the wide world which Lydia would mind," said
Mrs. Cole ruminantly. "But it would break her heart."

"Even a stone can break," Gerald could not refrain from whispering in
the speaker's shell-like ear.

"That's not fair. You do not understand her, my friend. She sold Guen
to make sure of Harry Spencer." Mrs. Cole answered in the same
undertone, "When he is concerned she is a perfect volcano."

"Theoretically," continued the grizzled satirist aloud, with a bow of
deference in the direction of the clergyman, "I should like, as a censor
of modern social degeneracy, to see it tried, but--but practically it
seems to me to be out of the question."

"One woman alone couldn't do it, anyway," blurted out Mrs. Cunningham,
in the accents of dogged distress.

Just then the murmurs of a small commotion broke in upon their dialogue,
and all eyes were turned in the direction of the front door.

"The bride is going to start, and she has dropped a comb. If she isn't
careful, her hair will come down after all!" exclaimed Mrs. Baxter by
way of elucidation.

       *       *       *       *       *       *

One forenoon in the month of July, a year later, the lawn-tennis courts
of the Westfield Hunt Club were all occupied. The reason was clear;
tennis had become the fashionable sport. Some of the younger spirits,
who found golf too gentle a form of exercise, had rebelled successfully
against the predominance of that pastime. Consequently all the people of
every age who try to do what the rest of the world is doing had
consigned their golf clubs to the recesses of their hall closets and
bought rackets. Until the present year two courts, both of dirt, had
amply supplied the needs of the members; indeed, they had often remained
vacant for days at a time. Now even four additional courts failed to
meet current demands, and everybody wished to play on those made of
grass, of which there were but two.

On this particular morning these were in the possession of two pairs of
women players, who might be said to represent the antipodes of feminine
skill at the game. A couple of the younger matrons, Mrs. Reynolds and
Mrs. Miller, both adepts, were engaged in a close, fast contest. Their
balls flew low and swiftly, and their long rallies called forth frequent
applause from the spectators, chiefly women, sitting on benches along
the side lines or on the piazza, as one or the other of the lithe young
women, whose restricted, dainty, diaphanous white skirts seemed almost
glued to their figures, would pick up the ball when it appeared to be
out of reach by dint of a brilliant dash. The other pair of opponents
were Miss Marbury, looking stouter than ever in flannels, and Mrs.
Gordon Wallace. They were tossing slow, high lobs and getting very warm
in the process. They puffed and panted audibly, although the ball struck
the net or flew out of bounds much of the time. Yet they had the
satisfaction of knowing that they were in fashion; moreover, they had
the sanction of their physicians, who advised the exercise as an
antidote against corpulency and rheumatism.

Most of the men had gone to the city. Douglas Hale and Gerald Marcy were
on one of the dirt courts, and Walter Cole, who was taking his vacation,
was playing golf with Kenneth Post. One solitary woman, Mrs. Cunningham,
was on the links with her husband. She had demurred stoutly at the
contagion of the new fever, and still remained faithful to the
fascination of the royal and ancient game. The centre of club life was
undeniably the tennis courts, and thither all those who arrived directed
their footsteps.

Mrs. Reynolds and Mrs. Miller having finished three sets, repaired to an
isolated bench to enjoy a soda-lemonade and to cool off under the
influences of a friendly chat. Mrs. Reynolds, who, as has been
intimated, wore the breath of life in her nostrils, had got slightly the
better of her adversary, and was inclined therefore to be on the alert,
if not perky. Her ears were the first to detect the whir of an
automobile, and she pricked them up. Then the toot of a horn fixed
everyone's attention on the approaching monster, for automobiles were
still more or less of a novelty, and engendered curiosity. In another
instant a huge machine, of bridal white, as Mrs. Baxter subsequently
described it, tore around the corner of the road, and, dashing past the
occupants of the tennis courts, swept up to the ladies' entrance of the
club-house, where it paused, snorting like a huge dragon. It was the
largest and most imposing "bubble" which Westfield had gazed upon. Many
of the spectators left their places to examine it, and everyone's head
was turned in that direction.

[Illustration: A huge machine of bridal white ... tore around the
corner.]

"It is they!" said Mrs. Reynolds with emphasis; then, after a pause, she
asked: "Are you going to-morrow afternoon?"

"I suppose so. As it was a 'request the pleasure,' I had to answer, and
we didn't have an engagement. Besides, she has brought home some lovely
new tapestries, and we are asked to meet an Eastern soothsayer, who is
said to be a marvel at mind-reading. Mrs. Charles Haviland and half a
dozen women, who are supposed to be fastidious, are coming from town, so
my husband seemed to think we had better go."

"It's because she's artistic that she is forgiven, so my husband says,
and of course if everyone else is going to 'Norrey's Knoll' there is no
sense in our turning up our noses at the new master and mistress."

"Is Mrs. Cunningham going?" asked Mrs. Miller.

"I hear that Dick Weston has bet Mr. Douglas Hale fifty dollars to
twenty-five that she does."

"I suppose Lydia and her husband have come to lunch and play bridge,"
said Mrs. Miller musingly. "They say she plays wonderfully--almost as
well as he does. My husband objects to my playing for money."

"So does mine. He says it is bad form--vulgar for women--and that it is
bringing American society down to the level of the four Georges. But how
about men? I obey him, because I am of the dutiful kind. But how about
men?" she reiterated trenchantly.

Mrs. Miller dodged the question. "I should fall in a fit if I lost
seventy-five dollars in an afternoon, as some of them do."

"They say one gets used to it. I have made Alfred promise to give me an
automobile as an indemnity for refusing to play. I must be in fashion to
that extent anyway."

Mrs. Miller laughed. They were now practically alone. The occupants of
the tennis courts, both women and men, had drifted toward the club
entrance, where they stood admiring the new machine and exchanging
greetings with the newly married owners. The Spencers had been in
possession of "Norrey's Knoll"--which Herbert Maxwell had sold to
Lydia--about three weeks, and on the morrow were to hold an afternoon
reception for the latest social novelty, an Eastern sorceress. From
where they sat the two young women were able to perceive what was going
on, and presumably it was the sight of the grizzled Gerald Marcy
bandying persiflage with Mrs. Spencer which furnished the cue to Mrs.
Miller's next remark:

"Mr. Marcy says that 'bridge' is essentially a gambling game," she
responded a little mournfully, "and that to play it properly one should
play for money, if at all."

"Mr. Marcy says also, my dears, that there are no recognized standards
of behavior in this country. It is all go-as-you-please," said a
sardonic voice close behind them. They turned in surprise. So absorbed
had they been in their dialogue and in watching the arrival of the
Spencers that they had failed to notice the approach of Mrs. Andrew
Cunningham.

"And he is right," continued that lady, tossing her golf clubs on the
grass with a somewhat dejected air. "I am going to surrender."

Thereupon she accepted the space which the others made for her on the
bench, and folding her arms turned her gaze in the direction of the
white monster and its satellites. The elder matron vouchsafed no
immediate key to the riddle she had just enunciated. Mrs. Reynolds
stooped, and picking up the bag of golf clubs examined them with an air
of one who scans ancient, fusty relics.

"I can't imagine," she said, "how you can keep on playing golf now that
everyone is crazy about tennis."

Mrs. Cunningham smiled wanly. "That's what I meant," she answered. "I'm
going to begin tennis to-morrow--and I'm also going to Lydia Spencer's
reception. My spirit of opposition is broken."

"Yes," continued the mother of the hunt, in an apostrophizing tone, as
though she still felt herself on the defensive, "every one is going, and
most of the nice people are coming from town. So why should I be stuffy
and bite my own nose off? Which goes far to prove, my dears," she added,
sententiously, "that the only unpardonable social sin in this country
is to lose one's money. Nothing else really counts."

"Oh!" exclaimed the two young women together with animation, as each
reflected that Dick Weston had won his bet.




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