Teddie’s head was much clearer by the time she had motored out to
Tuxedo. Her head was clearer, but the contradictory tides of feeling
that eddied about her troubled young heart seemed as muddled-up as ever.
Even her Uncle Chandler was not entirely oblivious of the fact that some
newer ferment was working in the depths of that bottled-up young soul.
But he asked no questions. There were two things which he knew too well
for that: one was life in general, and the other was Theodora Lydia
Lorillard Hayden in particular.
As for Teddie herself, she was tyrannical and melting and snappy and
chummy all at the same time. She promptly ordered the servants back at
their posts, and just as promptly proceeded to bully them in a manner
which plainly betokened that she intended to be master of her fate in at
least one quarter of an otherwise unconquered world. She ordered silver
unpacked and moth-bags banished and the striped ticking off the
furniture and the cars overhauled and the drapes restored and the
drive-borders retrimmed and an absurd amount of cut flowers for every
room in the house. But she prowled moodily about that house, resenting
its quietness at the same time that she gave orders she was at home to
nobody. She tried riding before breakfast, and found her old mount gone
soft and her new groom grown sulky. She tried reading, and discovered
how unbelievably dull all modern books could be. She tried motoring, and
found no interest in maneuvering the old hair-pin curves on two wheels
and no thrill in defying the old speed-traps at sixty miles an hour.
Even the greenhouses, when she invaded them, seemed to suggest funeral
set-pieces and the vanity of all earthly ways. The very walls about that
lordly Hayden demense grew still again remarkably suggestive of jail
walls. And that particular wall which intervened between her own and the
adjacent West estate seemed to take on a particularly objectionable
coloring.
As for her Uncle Chandler, he punctiliously dressed for dinner, and
punctiliously sat at one end of the big dining-room table while Teddie
just as solemnly sat at the other—though she did once emerge
sufficiently from her self-absorption to remark that they looked exactly
like two palm-trees on the edge of the Sahara. She also once ventured to
ask if Watkins really oughtn’t to have a passport when he carried the
joint all the way from her end of the table down to the old Major’s end
of the table. And her Uncle Chandler brightened up sufficiently to
inquire if he hadn’t better order a taxi to run them out to the terrace
for coffee, so abysmally vast seemed the distances in that dolorous and
empty house.
If the old Major remained suspiciously meek and long-suffering during
these days of trial, it must be acknowledged that he made divers and
undivulged trips in to the City, whence he returned oddly fortified in
spirit and beguilingly abstracted in manner. The only excursion which
brought him obvious displeasure was that when he brought back to Teddie
a motor-truck loaded down with her studio possessions—which the lady in
question solemnly committed to a bonfire on the rear end of the East
Drive. And that afternoon as they sat taking tea and cinnamon-toast on
the Terrace, he finally found the courage to confront the morose-eyed
young lady who sat in the high-backed willow-chair so moodily tearing an
Ophelia rose to pieces.
“Say, Teddie, isn’t it about time you were loosening up?” the old Major
quietly inquired.
“About what?” demanded Teddie, taking her third slice of cinnamon-toast.
“About that mix-up down in the Village.”
“It wasn’t a mix-up,” corrected Teddie.
“Then what was it?”
“It was a revelation!”
“A revelation of what?” asked Uncle Chandler as he put his teacup down.
“Of what men are!” asserted the abstracted-eyed Teddie.
“Of course,” said the old Major as he took out a chased gold case and
meditatively extracted a cigarette. “So let’s have it, Teddikins, hook,
line and sinker!”
But Teddie shook her head.
“I telegraphed to father,” she inappositely remarked.
“Where _is_ Trummie this summer?” her uncle inquired.
“He’s still at the Arizona Camp Observatory,” explained Teddie.
“Trummie moves so slowly,” complained the old Major. “The poor man can’t
help it, I suppose, trailing that chain of D. S.’s, and F. R. S.’s and
F. R. G. S.’s around after him all the time. But I suppose you felt he
was the proper person to talk such things over with?”
Teddie nodded a slightly abstracted assent.
“Yes, I felt that way. But I had a wire from father this morning. He
says he’ll be through with his spectographic analysis of the Milky Way
nebulæ before the end of October and that as soon as he feels sure he
can synthesize an isotope of hydrogen approximating to nebulum he’ll
come east and have a talk with me!”
The old Major smiled pensively.
“Yes, I remember what he said when the Rubber Trust swallowed up my
little Congolo Company and squeezed me out after I’d squeezed out the
original Amsterdammers: ‘The oysters eat the diatoms, and we eat the
oysters!’ It makes me wish, Teddie, that I could be a philosopher now
and then.”
“I wish women could be,” remarked Teddie.
“Then why not make a stab at it,” ventured the old gentleman who had
been so intently studying her averted face, “by telling me what the
trouble is?”
“There’s really nothing to tell, Uncle Chandler,” solemnly asserted the
young lady with the moody eyes, drawing the striped ticking of reticence
over the brocaded injustices of youth.
The old Major tossed away his cigarette. He sat staring at the poor
little rich girl in the willow lawn-chair. He stared at her so long and
so intently that she finally turned about and looked none too
fraternally into his face.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked.
“It’s queer I never noticed it before,” remarked the old Major,
apparently more to himself than to the girl confronting him.
“Noticed what?” asked Teddie.
“How you’re getting a bit like your mater,” replied the placid-eyed old
gentleman in the armchair, “a bit tamed and trimmed off and ironed out!”
“_I won’t be!_” proclaimed Teddie, with quite unlooked-for passion, as
she got up from her chair.
“But how, my dear, are you going to stop it?” asked the still equable
old Major.
“I won’t get like that!” reiterated Teddie, looking for all the world
like a second Artemisia confronting an army of embattled males. She
stood there, as though expecting some retort from him. But he said
nothing. He merely took out another cigarette, lighted it, and recovered
his morning _Herald_ from the grass at his feet. This he proceeded to
peruse with studied unconcern, quite ignoring the young Artemisia still
glowering at him over the edge of it. Then he looked up, with the ghost
of a yawn.
“By the way, I saw the Commodore in town yesterday,” observed Teddie’s
uncle as he leisurely turned a page. “He was telling me a queer thing
about young West.”
“Indeed!” said Teddie, without moving.
“The Commodore was saying that Gerry’s going to marry that Rivers girl,”
offhandedly announced the maculated old scoundrel in immaculate
cricketer’s flannel.
He waited behind his paper, for several seconds. Then he heard a
mirthless little laugh. Then he heard the contemptuous ejaculation of
“_That frump!_” And then he heard quick steps along the marble walk that
bisected the Terrace.
“Where are you going?” he demanded as he looked up to see Teddie making
off with the stride of a Diana.
But Teddie entirely ignored that question. Instead of answering that not
unnatural interrogation she was calling sharply out to Watkins: “Tell
Parrish I want my car. I want it _at once_!” And two minutes later, as
the old Major folded up his paper and watched Teddie vanish down the
West Drive leaving a scurry of gravel and a residuary cloud of dust
above the shrubbery, he sighed audibly, and took out another cigarette,
and sat deep in thought.