One morning when a warm May wind was whirling the dust up the street,
Mrs. Forrester came smiling into Judge Pommeroy's office, wearing a new
spring bonnet, and a short black velvet cape, fastened at the neck with
a bunch of violets. "Please be nice enough to notice my new clothes,
Niel," she said coaxingly. "They are the first I've had in years and
years."
He told her they were very pretty.
"And aren't you glad I have some at last?" she smiled enquiringly
through her veil. "I feel as if you weren't going to be cross with me
to-day, and would do what I ask you. It's nothing very troublesome. I
want you to come to dinner Friday night. If you come, there will be
eight of us, counting Annie Peters. They are all boys you know, and if
you don't like them, you ought to! Yes, you ought to!" she nodded at him
severely. "Since you mind what people say, Niel, aren't you afraid
they'll be saying you're a snob, just because you've been to Boston and
seen a little of the world? You mustn't be so stiff, so--so superior! It
isn't becoming, at your age." She drew her brows down into a level frown
so like his own that he laughed. He had almost forgotten her old talent
for mimicry.
"What do you want me for? You used always to say it was no good asking
people who didn't mix."
"You can mix well enough, if you take the trouble. And this time you
will, for me. Won't you?"
When she was gone, Niel was angry with himself for having been
persuaded.
On Friday evening he was the last guest to arrive. It was a warm night,
after a hot day. The windows were open, and the perfume of the lilacs
came into the dusky parlour where the boys were sitting about in chairs
that seemed too big for them. A lamp was burning in the dining-room, and
there Ivy Peters stood at the sideboard, mixing cocktails. His sister
Annie was in the kitchen, helping the hostess. Mrs. Forrester came in
for a moment to greet Niel, then excused herself and hurried back to
Annie Peters. Through the open door he saw that the silver dishes had
reappeared on the dinner table, and the candlesticks and flowers. The
young men who sat about in the twilight would not know the difference,
he thought, if she had furnished her table that morning, from the stock
in Wernz's queensware store. Their conception of a really fine dinner
service was one "hand painted" by a sister or sweetheart. Each boy sat
with his legs crossed, one tan shoe swinging in the air and displaying a
tan silk sock. They were talking about clothes; Joe Simpson, who had
just inherited his father's clothing business, was eager to tell them
what the summer styles would be.
Ivy Peters came in, shaking his drinks. "You fellows are like a bunch of
girls,--always talking about what you are going to wear and how you can
spend your money. Simpson wouldn't get rich very fast if you all wore
your clothes as long as I do. When did I get this suit, Joe?"
"Oh, about the year I graduated from High School, I guess!"
They all laughed at Ivy. No matter what he did or said, they
laughed,--in recognition of his general success.
Mrs. Forrester came back, fanning herself with a little sandalwood fan,
and when she appeared the boys rose,--in alarm, one might have thought,
from the suddenness of it. That much, at any rate, she had succeeded in
teaching them.
"Are your cocktails ready, Ivy? You will have to wait for me a moment,
while I put some powder on my nose. If I'd known how hot it would be
tonight, I'm afraid I wouldn't have had a roast for you. I'm browner
than the ducks. You can pour them though. I won't be long."
She disappeared into her own room, and the boys sat down with the same
surprising promptness. Ivy Peters carried the tray about, and they held
their glasses before them, waiting for Mrs. Forrester. When she came,
she took Niel's arm and led him into the dining-room. "Did you notice,"
she whispered to him, "how they hold their glasses? What is it they do
to a little glass to make it look so vulgar? Nobody could ever teach
them to pick one up and drink out of it, not if there were tea in it!"
Aloud she said, "Niel, will you light the candles for me? And then take
the head of the table, please. You can carve ducks?"
"Not so well as--as my uncle does," he murmured, carefully putting back
a candle-shade.
"Nor as Mr. Forrester did? I don't ask that. Nobody can carve now as men
used to. But you can get them apart, I suppose? The place at your right
is for Annie Peters. She is bringing in the dinner for me. Be seated,
gentlemen!" with a little mocking bow and a swinging of earrings.
While Niel was carving the ducks, Annie slipped into the chair beside
him, her naturally red face glowing from the heat of the stove. She was
several years younger than her brother, whom she obeyed unquestioningly
in everything. She had an extremely bad complexion and pale yellow hair
with white lights in it, exactly the colour of molasses taffy that has
been pulled until it glistens. During the dinner she did not once speak,
except to say, "Thank you," or "No, thank you." Nobody but Mrs.
Forrester talked much until the first helping of duck was consumed. The
boys had not yet learned to do two things at once. They paused only to
ask their hostess if she "would care for the jelly," or to answer her
questions.
Niel studied Mrs. Forrester between the candles, as she nodded
encouragingly to one and another, trying to "draw them out," laughing at
Roy Jones' heavy jokes, or congratulating Joe Simpson upon his new
dignity as a business man with a business of his own. The long earrings
swung beside the thin cheeks that were none the better, he thought, for
the rouge she had put on them when she went to her room just before
dinner. It improved some women, but not her,--at least, not tonight,
when her eyes were hollow with fatigue, and she looked pinched and worn
as he had never seen her. He sighed as he thought how much work it meant
to cook a dinner like this for eight people,--and a beefsteak with
potatoes would have pleased them better! They didn't really like this
kind of food at all. Why did she do it? How would she feel about it
tonight, when she sank dead weary into bed, after these stupid boys had
said good-night, and their yellow shoes had carried them down the hill?
She was not eating anything, she was using up all her vitality to
electrify these heavy lads into speech. Niel felt that he must help her,
or at least try to. He addressed them one after another with energy and
determination; he tried baseball, politics, scandal, the corn crop. They
answered him with monosyllables or exclamations. He soon realized that
they didn't want his polite remarks; they wanted more duck, and to be
let alone with it.
Dinner was soon over, at any rate. The hostess' attempts to prolong it
were unavailing. The salad and frozen pudding were dispatched as
promptly as the roast had been. The guests went into the parlour and lit
cigars.
Mrs. Forrester had the old-fashioned notion that men should be alone
after dinner. She did not join them for half an hour. Perhaps she had
lain down upstairs, for she looked a little rested. The boys were
talking now, discussing a camping trip Ed Elliot was going to take in
the mountains. They were giving him advice about camp outfits, trout
flies, mixtures to keep off mosquitoes.
"I'll tell you, boys," said Mrs. Forrester, when she had listened to
them for a moment, "when I go back to California, I intend to have a
summer cabin up in the Sierras, and I invite you, one and all, to visit
me. You'll have to work for your keep, you understand; cut the firewood
and bring the water and wash the pots and pans, and go out and catch
fish for breakfast. Ivy can bring his gun and shoot game for us, and
I'll bake bread in an iron pot, the old trappers' way, if I haven't
forgotten how. Will you come?"
"You bet we will! You know those mountains by heart, I expect?" said Ed
Elliot.
She smiled and shook her head. "It would take a life-time to do that,
Ed, more than a life-time. The Sierras,--there's no end to them, and
they're magnificent."
Niel turned to her. "Have you ever told the boys how it was you first
met Captain Forrester in the mountains out there? If they haven't heard
the story, I think they would like it."
"Really, would you? Well, once upon a time, when I was a very young
girl, I was spending the summer at a camp in the mountains, with friends
of my father's."
She began there, but that was not the beginning of the story; long ago
Niel had heard from his uncle that the beginning was a scandal and a
murder. When Marian Ormsby was nineteen, she was engaged to Ned
Montgomery, a gaudy young millionaire of the Gold Coast. A few weeks
before the date set for their marriage, Montgomery was shot and killed
in the lobby of a San Francisco hotel by the husband of another woman.
The subsequent trial involved a great deal of publicity, and Marian was
hurried away from curious eyes and sent up into the mountains until the
affair should blow over.
Tonight Mrs. Forrester began with "Once upon a time." Sitting at one end
of the big sofa, her slippers on a foot-stool and her head in shadow,
she stirred the air before her face with the sandalwood fan as she
talked, the rings glittering on her white fingers. She told them how
Captain Forrester, then a widower, had come up to the camp to visit her
father's partner. She had noticed him very little,--she was off every
day with the young men. One afternoon she had persuaded young Fred
Harney, an intrepid mountain climber, to take her down the face of Eagle
Cliff. They were almost down, and were creeping over a projecting ledge,
when the rope broke, and they dropped to the bottom. Harney fell on the
rocks and was killed instantly. The girl was caught in a pine tree,
which arrested her fall. Both her legs were broken, and she lay in the
canyon all night in the bitter cold, swept by the icy canyon draught.
Nobody at the camp knew where to look for the two missing members of the
party,--they had stolen off alone for their foolhardy adventure. Nobody
worried, because Harney knew all the trails and could not get lost. In
the morning, however, when they were still missing, search parties went
out. It was Captain Forrester's party that found Marian, and got her out
by the lower trail. The trail was so steep and narrow, the turns round
the jutting ledges so sharp, that it was impossible to take her out on a
litter. The men took turns carrying her, hugging the canyon walls with
their shoulders as they crept along. With her broken legs hanging, she
suffered terribly,--fainted again and again. But she noticed that she
suffered less when Captain Forrester carried her, and that he took all
the most dangerous places on the trail himself. "I could feel his heart
pump and his muscles strain," she said, "when he balanced himself and me
on the rocks. I knew that if we fell, we'd go together; he would never
drop me."
They got back to camp, and everything possible was done for her, but by
the time a surgeon could be got up from San Francisco, her fractures had
begun to knit and had to be broken over again.
"It was Captain Forrester I wanted to hold my hand when the surgeon had
to do things to me. You remember, Niel, he always boasted that I never
screamed when they were carrying me up the trail. He stayed at the camp
until I could begin to walk, holding to his arm. When he asked me to
marry him, he didn't have to ask twice. Do you wonder?" She looked with
a smile about the circle, and drew her finger-tips absently across her
forehead as if to brush away something,--the past, or the present, who
could tell?
The boys were genuinely moved. While she was answering their questions,
Niel thought about the first time he ever heard her tell that story: Mr.
Dalzell had stopped off with a party of friends from Chicago; Marshall
Field and the president of the Union Pacific were among them, he
remembered, and they were going through in Mr. Dalzell's private car to
hunt in the Black Hills. She had, after all, not changed so much since
then. Niel felt tonight that the right man could save her, even now. She
was still her indomitable self, going through her old part,--but only
the stage-hands were left to listen to her. All those who had shared in
fine undertakings and bright occasions were gone.