(From _The Pictorial Review_)
When she had reached that point of detachment where she could regard the
matter more or less objectively, Mrs. Ennis, recalling memories of an
interrupted but lifelong friendship, realized that Burnaby's behavior,
outrageous or justifiable or whatever you choose to call it, at all
events aberrational, was exactly what might have been expected of him,
given an occasion when his instincts for liking or disliking had been
sufficiently aroused. Moreover, there was about him always, she
remembered, this additional exceptional quality: the rare and fortunate
knowledge that socially he was independent; was not, that is, subject to
retaliation. He led too roving a life to be moved by the threat of
unpopularity; a grandfather had bequeathed him a small but unshakable
inheritance.
As much, therefore, as any one can be in this world he was a free agent;
and the assurance of this makes a man very brave for either kindness or
unkindness, and, of course, extremely dangerous for either good or evil.
You will see, after a while, what I am driving at. Meanwhile, without
further comment, we can come directly to Mrs. Ennis, where she sat in
her drawing room, and to the night on which the incident occurred.
Mrs. Ennis, small and blond, and in a white evening gown of satin and
silver sequins that made her look like a lovely and fashionable mermaid,
sat in her drawing room and stretched her feet out to the flames of a
gentle woodfire. It was seven o'clock of a late April night, and
through an open window to her left came, from the little park beyond the
house, a faint breeze that stirred lazily the curtains and brought to
the jonquils, scattered about in numerous metal and crystal bowls, word
of their brothers in the dusk without. The room was quiet, save for the
hissing of the logs; remote, delicately lighted, filled with the subtle
odor of books and flowers; reminiscent of the suave personalities of
those who frequented it. On the diminutive piano in one corner, a large
silver frame, holding the photograph of a man in French uniform, caught
here and there on its surface high lights from the shaded wall-lamp
above. In the shelter of white bookcases, the backs of volumes in red
and tawny and brown gave the effect of tapestry cunningly woven. Mrs.
Ennis stared at the logs and smiled.
It was an odd smile, reflective, yet anticipatory; amused,
absent-minded, barely disturbing the lines of her beautifully modeled
red lips. Had any of Mrs. Ennis's enemies, and they were not few in
number, seen it, they would have surmised mischief afoot; had any of her
friends, and there were even more of these than enemies, been present,
they would have been on the alert for events of interest. It all
depended, you see, upon whether you considered a taste for amateur
psychology, indulged in, a wickedness or not. Mrs. Ennis herself would
not have given her favorite amusement so stately a name; she was aware
merely that she found herself possessed of a great curiosity concerning
people, particularly those of forcible and widely different
characteristics, and that she liked, whenever possible, to gather them
together, and then see what would happen. Usually something did--happen,
that is.
With the innocence of a child playing with fire-crackers (and it wasn't
altogether innocent, either), in her rôle of the god in the machine she
had been responsible for many things; several comedies, perhaps a
tragedy or two. Ordinarily her parties were dull enough; complacent
Washington parties; diplomats, long-haired Senators from the West,
short-bearded Senators from the East, sleek young men and women, all of
whom sat about discussing grave nonsense concerning a country with which
they had utterly lost touch, if ever they had had any; but every now and
then, out of the incalculable shufflings of fate, appeared a combination
that seemed to offer more excitement. Tonight such a combination was at
hand. Mrs. Ennis was contented, in the manner of a blithe and beautiful
spider.
Burnaby, undoubtedly, was the principal source of this contentment, for
he was a young man--he wasn't really young, but you always thought of
him as young--of infinite potentialities; Burnaby, just back from some
esoteric work in Roumania, whither he had gone after the War, and in
Washington for the night and greatly pleased to accept an invitation for
dinner; but essential as he was, Burnaby was only part of the tableau
arranged. To meet him, Mrs. Ennis had asked her best, for the time
being, friend, Mimi de Rochefort--Mary was her right name--and Mimi de
Rochefort's best, for the time being, friend, Robert Pollen. Nowadays
Pollen came when Madame de Rochefort came; one expected his presence. He
had been a habit in this respect for over six months; in fact, almost
from the time Madame de Rochefort (she was so young that to call her
Madame seemed absurdly quaint), married these five years to a Frenchman,
had set foot once more upon her native land.
In the meeting of Pollen and Burnaby and Mary Rochefort, Mrs. Ennis
foresaw contingencies; just what these contingencies were likely to be
she did not know, but that an excellent chance for them existed she had
no doubt, even if in the end they proved to be no more than the humor to
be extracted from the reflection that a supposedly rational divinity had
spent his time creating three people so utterly unalike.
The gilt clock on the mantelpiece chimed half-past seven. The jonquils
on the piano shone in the polished mahogany like yellow water-lilies in
a pool. Into the silence of the room penetrated, on noiseless feet, a
fresh-colored man servant. Despite such days as the present, Mrs. Ennis
had a way, irritating to her acquaintances, of obtaining faithful
attendance. Even servants seemed to be glad to wait upon her. Her
husband, dead these six years, had been unfailingly precise in all
matters save the one of drink.
"Mr. Burnaby!" announced the man servant.
Burnaby strode close on his heels. Mrs. Ennis had arisen and was
standing with her back to the fireplace. She had the impression that a
current of air followed the entrance of the two men. She remembered now
that she had always felt that way with Burnaby; she had always felt as
if he were bringing news of pine forests and big empty countries she had
never seen but could dimly imagine. It was very exciting.
Burnaby paused and looked about the room doubtfully, then he chuckled
and came forward. "I haven't seen anything like this for three years,"
he said. "Roumanian palaces are furnished in the very latest bad taste."
He took Mrs. Ennis's outstretched hand and peered down at her with
narrowed eyelids. She received the further impression, an impression she
had almost forgotten in the intervening years, of height and leanness,
of dark eyes, and dark, crisp hair; a vibrant impression; something like
a chord of music struck sharply. Unconsciously she let her hand rest in
his for a moment, then she drew it away hastily. He was smiling and
talking to her.
"Rhoda! You ought to begin to look a bit older! You're thirty-six, if
you're a day! How do you do it? You look like a wise and rather naughty
little girl."
"Hush!" said Mrs. Ennis. "I wear my hair parted on one side like a
debutante to give me a head-start on all the knowing and subtle and
wicked people I have to put up with. While they are trying to break the
ice with an ingenue, I'm sizing them up."
Burnaby laughed. "Well, I'm not subtle," he said. He sank down into a
big chair across the fireplace from her. "I'm only awfully glad to be
back; and I'm good and simple and amenable, and willing to do nearly
anything any good American tells me to do. I love Americans."
"You won't for very long," Mrs. Ennis assured him dryly. "Particularly
if you stay in Washington more than a day." She was wondering how even
for a moment she had been able to forget Burnaby's vividness.
"No," laughed Burnaby, "I suppose not. But while the mood is on me,
don't disillusion me."
Mrs. Ennis looked across at him with a smile. "You'll meet two very
attractive people tonight, anyway," she said.
"Oh, yes!" He leaned forward. "I had forgotten--who are they?"
Mrs. Ennis spread her arms out along the chair. "There's Mary
Rochefort," she answered, "and there's Robert Pollen, who's supposed to
be the most alluring man alive."
"Is it doing him any good?"
"Well--" Mrs. Ennis looked up with a laugh.
"You don't like him? Or perhaps you do?"
Mrs. Ennis knit her brows in thought, her blue eyes dark with
conjecture. "I don't know," she said at length. "Sometimes I think I do,
and sometimes I think I don't. He's very good-looking in a tall, blond,
pliable way, and he can be very amusing when he wants to be. I don't
know."
"Why not?"
Mrs. Ennis wrinkled her nose in the manner of one who is being pushed to
explanation.
"I am not so sure," she confided, "that I admire professional
philanderers as much as I did. Although, so long as they leave me
alone--"
"Oh, he's that, is he?"
Mrs. Ennis corrected herself hastily. "Oh, no," she protested. "I
shouldn't talk that way, should I? Now you'll have an initial prejudice,
and that isn't fair--only--" she hesitated "I rather wish he would
confine his talents to his own equals and not conjure young married
women at their most vulnerable period."
"Which is?"
"Just when," said Mrs. Ennis, "they're not sure whether they want to
fall in love again with their own husbands or not." Then she stopped
abruptly. She was surprised that she had told Burnaby these things;
even more surprised at the growing incisiveness of her voice. She was
not accustomed to taking the amatory excursions of her friends too much
to heart; she had a theory that it was none of her business, that
perhaps some day she might want charity herself. But now she found
herself perceptibly indignant. She wondered if it wasn't Burnaby's
presence that was making her so. Sitting across from her, he made her
think of directness and dependability and other traits she was
accustomed to refer to as "primitive virtues." She liked his black,
heavily ribbed evening stockings. Somehow they were like him. It made
her angry with herself and with Burnaby that she should feel this way;
be so moved by "primitive virtues." She detested puritanism greatly, and
righteously, but so much so that she frequently mistook the most
innocent fastidiousness for an unforgivable rigidity. "If they once do,"
she concluded, "once do fall in love with their husbands again, they're
safe, you know, for all time."
She looked up and drew in her breath sharply. Burnaby was sitting
forward in his chair, staring at her with the curious, far-sighted stare
she remembered was characteristic of him when his interest was suddenly
and thoroughly aroused. It was as if he were looking through the person
to whom he was talking to some horizon beyond. It was a trifle uncanny,
unless you were accustomed to the trick.
"What's the matter?" she asked. She had the feeling that back of her
some one she could not see was standing.
Burnaby smiled. "Nothing," he said. He sank back into his chair. "That's
an odd name--the name of this alluring fellow of yours, isn't it? What
did you say it was--Pollen?"
"Yes. Robert Pollen. Why, do you know him?"
"No." Burnaby shook his head. He leaned over and lit a cigarette. "You
don't mind, do you?" he asked. He raised his eyes. "So he's conjuring
this Madame de Rochefort, is he?" he concluded.
Mrs. Ennis flushed. "I never said anything of the kind!" she protested.
"It's none of our business, anyway."
Burnaby smiled calmly. "I quite agree with you," he said. "I imagine
that a Frenchwoman, married for a while, is much better able to conduct
her life in this respect than even the most experienced of us."
"She isn't French," said Mrs. Ennis; "she's American. And she's only
been married five years. She's just a child--twenty-six."
"Oh!" ejaculated Burnaby. "One of those hard-faced children! I
understand--Newport, Palm Beach, cocktails--"
His voice was cut across by Mrs. Ennis's indignant retort. "You don't in
the least!" she said. "She's not one of those hard-faced children; she's
lovely--and I've come to the conclusion that she's pathetic. I'm
beginning to rather hate this man Pollen. Back of it all are subtleties
of personality difficult to fathom. You should know Blais Rochefort. I
imagine a woman going about things the wrong way could break her heart
on him like waves on a crystal rock. I think it has been a question of
fire meeting crystal, and, when it finds that the crystal is difficult
to warm, turning back upon itself. I said waves, didn't I? Well, I don't
care if my metaphors are mixed. It's tragic, anyhow. And the principal
tragedy is that Blais Rochefort isn't really cold--at least, I don't
think he would be if properly approached--he is merely beautifully lucid
and intelligent and exacting in a way no American understands, least of
all a petted girl who has no family and who is very rich. He expects,
you see, an equal lucidity from his wife. He's not to be won over by the
fumbling and rather selfish and pretty little tricks that are all most
of us know. But Mary, I think, would have learned if she had only held
on. Now, I'm afraid, she's losing heart. Hard-faced child!" Mrs. Ennis
grew indignant again. "Be careful my friend; even you might find her
dangerously pathetic."
Burnaby's eyes were placidly amused. "Thanks," he observed. "You've told
me all I wanted to know."
Mrs. Ennis waved toward the piano. "There's Blais Rochefort's
photograph," she retorted in tones of good-humored exasperation. "Go
over and look at it."
"I will."
Burnaby's black shoulders, bent above the photograph, were for a moment
the object of a pensive regard. Mrs. Ennis sighed. "Your presence makes
me puritanical," she observed. "I have always felt that the best way for
any one to get over Pollens was to go through with them and forget
them."
Burnaby spoke without turning his head.
"He's good-looking."
"Very."
"A real man."
"Decidedly! Very brave and very cultivated."
"He waxes his mustache."
"Yes, even brave men do that occasionally."
"I should think," said Burnaby thoughtfully, putting the photograph
down, "that he might be worth a woman's hanging on to."
Mrs. Ennis got up, crossed over to the piano, and leaned an elbow upon
it, resting her cheek in the palm of her upturned hand and smiling at
Burnaby.
"Don't let's be so serious," she said. "What business is it of ours?"
She turned her head away and began to play with the petals of a near-by
jonquil. "Spring is a restless time, isn't it?"
It seemed to her that the most curious little silence followed this
speech of hers, and yet she knew that in actual time it was nothing, and
felt that it existed probably only in her own heart. She heard the clock
on the mantelpiece across the room ticking; far off, the rattle of a
taxicab. The air coming through the open window bore the damp, stirring
smell of early grass.
"Madame De Rochefort and Mr. Pollen!" announced a voice.
Mrs. Ennis had once said that her young friend, Mimi de Rochefort,
responded to night more brilliantly than almost any other woman she
knew. The description was apt. Possibly by day there was a pallor too
lifeless, a nose a trifle too short and arrogant, lips, possibly, too
full; but by night these discrepancies blended into something very near
perfection, and back of them as well was a delicate illumination as of
lanterns hung in trees beneath stars; an illumination due to youth, and
to very large dark eyes, and to dark, soft hair and red lips. Nor with
this beauty went any of the coolness or abrupt languor with which the
modern young hide their eagerness.
Mary Rochefort was quite simple beneath her habitual reserve; frank and
appealing and even humorous at times, as if startled out of her usual
mood of reflective quiet by some bit of wit, slowly apprehended, too
good to be overlooked. Mrs. Ennis watched with a sidelong glance the
effect of her entrance upon Burnaby. Madame de Rochefort! How absurd! To
call this white, tall, slim child madame! She admired rather enviously
the gown of shimmering dark blue, the impeccability of adolescence. Over
the girl's white shoulder, too much displayed, Pollen peered at Burnaby
with the vague, hostile smile of the guest not yet introduced to a guest
of similar sex.
"Late as usual!" he announced. "Mimi kept me!" His manner was subtly
domestic.
"You're really on the stroke of the clock," said Mrs. Ennis. "Madame de
Rochefort--Mr. Burnaby--Mr. Pollen." She laughed abruptly, as if a
thought had just occurred to her. "Mr. Burnaby," she explained to the
girl, "is the last surviving specimen of the American male--he has all
the ancient national virtues. Preserved, I suppose, because he spends
most of his time in Alaska, or wherever it is. I particularly wanted you
to meet him."
Burnaby flushed and laughed uncertainly. "I object--" he began.
The fresh-colored man servant entered with a tray of cocktails. Madame
de Rochefort exclaimed delightedly. "I'm so glad," she said. "Nowadays
one fatigues oneself before dinner by wondering whether there will be
anything to drink or not. How absurd!" The careful choice of words, the
precision of the young, worldly voice were in amusing contrast to the
youthfulness of appearance. Standing before the fireplace in her blue
gown, she resembled a tapering lily growing from the indigo shadows of a
noon orchard.
"Rhoda'll have cocktails when there aren't any more left in the
country," said Pollen. "Trust Rhoda!"
Mary Rochefort laughed. "I always do," she said, "with reservations."
She turned to Burnaby. "Where are you just back from?" she asked. "I
understand you are always just back from some place, or on the verge of
going."
"Usually on the verge," answered Burnaby. He looked at her deliberately,
a smile in his dark eyes; then he looked at Pollen.
"Where were you--the War?"
"Yes--by way of Roumania in the end."
"The War!" Mary Rochefort's lips became petulant. One noticed for the
first time the possibility of considerable petulance back of the shining
self-control. "How sick of it I grew--all of us living over there! I'd
like to sleep for a thousand years in a field filled with daffodils."
"They've plenty scattered about this room," observed Pollen. "Why don't
you start now?"
The fresh-colored man servant announced dinner. "Shall we go down?"
said Mrs. Ennis.
They left the little drawing-room, with its jonquils and warm shadows,
and went along a short hall, and then down three steps and across a
landing to the dining-room beyond. It, like the drawing-room, was small,
white-paneled to the ceiling, with a few rich prints of Constable
landscapes on the walls, and velvet-dark sideboards and tables that
caught the light of the candles. In the center was a table of snowy
drapery and silver and red roses.
Mrs. Ennis sank into her chair and looked about her with content. She
loved small dinners beautifully thought out, and even more she loved
them when, as on this night, they were composed of people who interested
her. She stole a glance at Burnaby. How clean and brown and alert he
was! The white table-cloth accentuated his look of fitness and muscular
control. What an amusing contrast he presented to the rather languid,
gesturing Pollen, who sat opposite him! And yet Pollen was considerable
of a man in his own way; very conquering in the affairs of life;
immensely clever in his profession of architecture. Famous, Mrs. Ennis
had heard.
But Mrs. Ennis, despite her feminine approval of success, couldn't
imagine herself being as much interested in him--dangerously
interested--as she knew her friend Mary Rochefort to be. How odd! From
all the world to pick out a tall, blond, willowy man like Pollen! On the
verge of middle age, too! Perhaps it was this very willowiness, this
apparent placidity that made him attractive. This child, Mary Rochefort,
quite alone in the world, largely untrained, adrift, imperiously
demanding from an imperious husband something to which she had not as
yet found the key, might very naturally gravitate toward any one
presenting Pollen's appearance of security; his attitude of complacence
in the face of feminine authority. But was he complacent? Mrs. Ennis had
her doubts. He was very vain; underneath his urbanity there might be an
elastic hardness.
There were, moreover, at times indications of a rather contemptuous
attitude toward a world less highly trained than himself. She turned to
Pollen, trying to recollect what for the last few moments he had been
saying to her. He perceived her more scrutinizing attention and faced
toward her. From under lowered eyelids he had been watching, with a
moody furtiveness, Mary Rochefort and Burnaby, who were oblivious to the
other two in the manner of people who are glad they have met.
Mrs. Ennis found herself annoyed, her sense of good manners shocked. She
had not suspected that Pollen could be guilty of such clumsiness; she
questioned if matters had reached a point where such an attitude on his
part would be justifiable under any circumstances. At all events, her
doubts concerning his complacency had been answered. It occurred to Mrs.
Ennis that her dinner-party was composed of more inflammable material,
presented more dramatic possibilities, than even she had divined. She
embraced Pollen with her smile.
"What have you been doing with yourself?" she asked.
He lifted long eyebrows and smiled faintly.
"Working very hard," he said.
"Building behemoths for billionaires?"
"Yes."
"And the rest of the time?"
"Rather drearily going about."
She surveyed him with wicked innocence.
"Why don't you fall in love?" she suggested.
His expression remained unmoved. "It is so difficult," he retorted, "to
find the proper subject. A man of my experience frightens the
inexperienced: the experienced frighten me."
"You mean--?"
"That I have reached the age where the innocence no longer possible to
me seems the only thing worth while."
Mrs. Ennis wrinkled her nose daintily. "Nonsense!" she observed, and
helped herself to the dish the servant was holding out to her. "What you
have said," she resumed, "is the last word of the sentimentalist. If I
thought you really meant it, I would know at once that you were very
cold and very cruel and rather silly."
"Thanks!"
"Oh, I'm talking more or less abstractly."
"Well, possibly I am all of those things."
"But you want me to be personal?"
Pollen laughed. "Of course! Doesn't everybody want _you_ to be
personal?"
For an instant Mrs. Ennis looked again at Burnaby and Mary Rochefort,
and a slightly rueful smile stirred in her eyes. It was amusing that
she, who detested large dinners and adored general conversation, should
at the moment be so engrossed in preventing the very type of
conversation she preferred. She returned to Pollen. What a horrid man he
really was! Unangled and amorphous, and underneath, cold! He had a way
of framing the woman to whom he was talking and then stepping back out
of the picture. One felt like a model in all manner of dress and
undress. She laughed softly. "Don't," she begged, "be so mysterious
about yourself! Tell me--" she held him with eyes of ingratiating
sapphire--"I've always been interested in finding out just what you
are, anyway."
Far back in Pollen's own eyes of golden brown a little spark slowly
burst into flame. It was exactly as if a gnome had lighted a lantern at
the back of an unknown cave. Mrs. Ennis inwardly shuddered, but
outwardly was gay.
How interminably men talked when once they were launched upon that
favorite topic, themselves! Pollen showed every indication of reaching a
point of intellectual intoxication where his voice would become
antiphonal. His objective self was taking turns in standing off and
admiring his subjective self. Mrs. Ennis wondered at her own kindness of
heart. Why did she permit herself to suffer so for her friends; in the
present instance, a friend who would probably--rather the contrary--by
no means thank her for her pains? She wanted to talk to Burnaby. She was
missing most of his visit. She wanted to talk to Burnaby so greatly that
the thought made her cheeks burn faintly. She began to hate Pollen. Mary
Rochefort's cool, young voice broke the spell.
"You told me," she said accusingly, "that this man--this Mr. Burnaby,
has all the primitive virtues; he is the wickedest man I have ever met."
"Good gracious!" said Mrs. Ennis.
"The very wickedest!"
Pollen's mouth twisted under his mustache. "I wouldn't have suspected
it," he observed, surveying Burnaby with ironic amusement. There was
just a hint of hidden condescension in his voice.
Burnaby's eyes drifted past him with a look of quiet speculation in
their depths, before he smiled at Mrs. Ennis.
"Roumania has changed you," she exclaimed.
He chuckled. "Not in the least! I was simply trying to prove to Madame
de Rochefort that hot-bloodedness, coolly conceived, is the only
possible road to success. Like most innately moral people, she believes
just the opposite--in cool-bloodedness, hotly conceived."
"I moral?" said Mary Rochefort, as if the thought had not occurred to
her before.
"Why, of course," said Burnaby. "It's a question of attitude, not of
actual performance. The most moral man I ever knew was a habitual
drunkard. His life was spent between debauch and disgust. Not, of
course, that I am implying that with you--"
"Tell us what you meant in the first place," commanded Mrs. Ennis.
"Something," said Burnaby slowly, "totally un-American--in short,
whole-heartedness." He clasped his sinewy, brown hands on the
table-cloth. "I mean," he continued, "if, after due thought--never
forget the due thought--you believe it to be the best thing to do to
elope with another man's wife, elope; only don't look back. In the same
way, if you decide to become, after much question, an ironmonger, be an
ironmonger. Love passionately what you've chosen. In other words, life's
like fox-hunting; choose your line, choose it slowly and carefully, then
follow it 'hell-for-leather.'
"You see, the trouble with Americans is that they are the greatest
wanters of cake after they've eaten it the world has ever seen. Our
blood isn't half as mixed as our point of view. We want to be good and
we want to be bad; we want to be a dozen utterly incompatible things all
at the same time. Of course, all human beings are that way, but other
human beings make their choices and then try to eradicate the
incompatibilities. The only whole-hearted people we possess are our
business men, and even they, once they succeed, usually spoil the
picture by astounding open scandals with chorus-girls."
Mrs. Ennis shook her head with amused bewilderment. "Do you mean," she
asked, "that a man or woman can have only one thing in his or her life?"
"Only one very outwardly important thing--publicly," retorted Burnaby.
"You may be a very great banker with a very great background as a
husband, but you can't be a very great banker and at the same time what
is known as a 'very great lover.' In Europe, where they arrange their
lives better, one chooses either banking or 'loving'." He smiled with
frank good humor at Pollen; the first time, Mrs. Ennis reflected, he had
done so that night. A suspicion that Burnaby was not altogether
ingenuous crossed her mind. But why wasn't he?
"You're a man, Pollen," he said; "tell them it's true."
Pollen, absorbed apparently in thoughts of his own stammered slightly.
"Why--why, yes," he agreed hastily.
Mrs. Ennis sighed ruefully and looked at Burnaby with large, humorously
reproachful eyes. "You have changed," she observed, "or else you're not
saying but half of what you really think--and part of it you don't think
at all."
"Oh, yes," laughed Burnaby, "you misunderstand me." He picked up a fork
and tapped the table-cloth with it thoughtfully; then he raised his
head. "I was thinking of a story I might tell you," he said, "but on
second thoughts I don't think I will."
"Don't be foolish!" admonished Mrs. Ennis. "Your stories are always
interesting. First finish your dessert."
Pollen smiled languidly. "Yes," he commented, "go on. It's interesting,
decidedly. I thought people had given up this sort of conversation long
ago."
For the third time Burnaby turned slowly toward him, only now his eyes,
instead of resting upon the bland countenance for a fraction of a
second, surveyed it lingeringly with the detached, absent-minded stare
Mrs. Ennis remembered so well. "Perhaps I will tell it, after all," he
said, in the manner of a man who has definitely changed his mind. "Would
you like to hear it?" he asked, turning to Mary Rochefort.
"Certainly!" she laughed. "Is it very immoral?"
"Extremely," vouchsafed Burnaby, "from the accepted point of view."
"Tell it in the other room," suggested Mrs. Ennis. "We'll sit before the
fire and tell ghost stories."
There was a trace of grimness in Burnaby's answering smile. "Curiously
enough, it is a ghost story," he said.
They had arisen to their feet; above the candles their heads and
shoulders were indistinct. For a moment Mrs. Ennis hesitated and looked
at Burnaby with a new bewilderment in her eyes.
"If it's very immoral," interposed Pollen, "I'm certain to like it."
Burnaby bowed to him with a curious old-fashioned courtesy. "I am sure,"
he observed, "it will interest you immensely."
Mrs. Ennis suddenly stared through the soft obscurity. "Good gracious,"
she said to herself, "what is he up to?"
In the little drawing room to which they returned, the jonquils seemed
to have received fresh vigor from their hour of loneliness; their
shining gold possessed the shadows. Mary Rochefort paused by the open
window and peered into the perfumed night. "How ridiculously young the
world gets every spring!" she said.
Mrs. Ennis arranged herself before the fire. "Now," she said to Burnaby,
"you sit directly opposite. And you"--she indicated Pollen--"sit here.
And Mimi, you there. So!" She nodded to Burnaby. "Begin!"
He laughed deprecatingly. "You make it portentous," he objected. "It
isn't much of a story; it's--it's really only a parable."
"It's going to be a moral story, after all," interjected Mrs. Ennis
triumphantly.
Burnaby chuckled and puffed at his cigarette. "Well," he said finally,
"it's about a fellow named Mackintosh."
Pollen, drowsily smoking a cigar, suddenly stirred uneasily.
"Who?" he asked, leaning forward.
"Mackintosh--James Mackintosh! What are you looking for? An ash-tray?
Here's one." Burnaby passed it over.
"Thanks!" said Pollen, relaxing. "Yes--go on!"
Burnaby resumed his narrative calmly. "I knew him--Mackintosh, that
is--fifteen, no, it was fourteen years ago in Arizona, when I was
ranching there, and for the next three years I saw him constantly. He
had a place ten miles down the river from me. He was about four years
older than I was--a tall, slim, sandy-haired, freckled fellow,
preternaturally quiet; a trusty, if there ever was one. Unlike most
preternaturally quiet people, however, it wasn't dulness that made him
that way; he wasn't dull a bit. Stir him up on anything and you found
that he had thought about it a lot. But he never told me anything about
himself until I had known him almost two years, and then it came out
quite accidentally one night--we were on a spring round-up--when the two
of us were sitting up by the fire, smoking and staring at the desert
stars. All the rest were asleep." Burnaby paused. "Is this boring you?"
he asked.
"Oh, no!" said Mrs. Ennis; she was watching intently Pollen's
half-averted face.
Burnaby threw away his cigarette. "At first," he said, "it seemed to me
like the most ordinary of stories--the usual fixed idea that the
rejected lover carries around with him for a year or so until he forgets
it; the idea that the girl will regret her choice and one day kick over
the traces and hunt him up.
"But it wasn't the ordinary story--not by a long shot. You'll see. It
seems he had fallen in love with a girl--had been in love with her for
years--before he had left the East; a very young girl, nineteen, and of
an aspiring family. The family, naturally, didn't look upon him with any
favor whatsoever; he was poor and he didn't show the slightest
inclination to engage in any of the pursuits they considered proper to
the ambitions of a worthy young man. Rather a dreamer, I imagine, until
he had found the thing he wanted to do. Not a very impressive figure in
the eyes of whitespatted fatherhood. Moreover, he himself was shy about
trying to marry a rich girl while she was still so young.
"'She was brought up all wrong,' he said. 'What could you expect? Life
will have to teach her. She will have to get over her idea, as one gets
over the measles, that money and houses and possessions are the main
things.' But he knew she would get over it; he was sure that at the
bottom of her heart was a well of honesty and directness. 'Some day,' he
said, 'she'll be out here.'
"Apparently the upshot of the matter was that he went to the girl and
told her--all these ideas of his; quit, came West; left the road open to
the other man. Oh, yes, there was another man, of course; one
thoroughly approved of by the family. Quaint, wasn't it? Perhaps a
little overly judicial. But then that was his way. Slow-moving and sure.
He saw the girl at dusk in the garden of her family's country place;
near a sun-dial, or some other appropriately romantic spot. She kissed
him nobly on the forehead, I suppose--the young girl gesture; and told
him she wasn't worthy of him and to forget her.
"'Oh, no, I won't,' he said. 'Not for a minute! And in five years--or
ten--you'll come to me. You'll find out.' And then he added something
else: 'Whenever things have reached their limit,' he said, 'think of me
with all your might. Think hard! There's something in that sort of
stuff, you know, where two people love each other. Think hard!' Then he
went away."
A log snapped and fell with a soft thud to the ashes beneath. Burnaby
was silent for a moment, staring at the fire.
When he spoke again, it was with a slow precision as if he were trying
with extreme care to find the right words.
"You see," he said, "he had as an added foundation for his
faith--perhaps as the main foundation for it--his knowledge of the other
man's character; the character of the man the girl married. It was"--he
spoke more hastily and, suddenly raising his head, looked at Mary
Rochefort, who, sunk back in her chair, was gazing straight ahead of
her--"an especial kind of character. I must dwell on it for a moment,
and you must mark well what I say, for on it my parable largely depends.
It was a character of the sort that to any but an odalisk means eventual
shame; to any woman of pride, you understand, eventually of necessity a
broken heart. It was a queer character, but not uncommon. Outwardly very
attractive. Mackintosh described it succinctly, shortly, as we sat there
by the fire. He spoke between his teeth--the faint wind stirring the
desert sand sounded rather like his voice." Burnaby paused again and
reached over for a cigarette and lit it deliberately.
"He was a man," he continued, "who apparently had the faculty of making
most women love him and, in the end, the faculty of making all women
hate him. I imagine to have known him very well would have been to leave
one with a mental shudder such as follows the touching of anguilliform
material; snake-like texture. It would leave one ashamed and broken, for
fundamentally he was contemptuous of the dignity of personality,
particularly of the personalities of women. He was a collector, you
understand, a collector of beauty, and women, and incidents--amorous
incidents. He carried into his personal relationships the cold
objectiveness of the artist. But he wasn't a very great artist, or he
wouldn't have done so; he would have had the discrimination to control
the artist's greatest peril. It's a flame, this cold objectiveness, but
a flame so powerful that it must be properly shaded for intimate use.
Otherwise it kills like violet rays. Women wore out their hearts on him,
not like waves breaking on a crystal rock, but like rain breaking into a
gutter."
"Good Lord!" murmured Mrs. Ennis involuntarily.
Burnaby caught her exclamation. "Bad, wasn't it?" he smiled. "But
remember I am only repeating what Mackintosh told me. Well, there he was
then--Mackintosh--hard at work all day trying to build himself up a
ranch, and he was succeeding, too, and, at night, sitting on his porch,
smoking and listening to the river, and apparently expecting every
moment the girl to appear. It was rather eerie. He had such a convincing
way; he was himself so convinced. You half expected yourself to see her
come around the corner of the log house in the moonlight. There was
about it all the impression that here was something that had a touch of
the inevitability of the Greek idea of fate; something more arranged
than the usual course of human events. Meanwhile, back in the East, was
the girl, learning something about life."
He interrupted himself. "Want a cigarette?" he said to Pollen. "Here
they are." He handed over the box. "What is it? A match? Wait a moment;
I'll strike it for you. Keep the end of the thing steady, will you? All
right." He resumed the thread of his narrative.
"In four years she had learned a lot," he said; "she had become
apparently almost a woman. On a certain hot evening in July--about seven
o'clock, I imagine--she became one entirely; at least, for the moment,
and, at least, her sort of woman. I am not defending what she did,
remember; I am simply saying that she did it.
"It was very hot; even now when dusk was approaching. The girl had been
feeling rather ill all day; feverish. She had not been able to get away
to her country place as yet. Into the semidarkness of the room where she
was came her husband. That night she had determined, as women will, upon
a final test. She knew where he expected to dine; she asked him if he
would dine with her.
"'I can't,' he said. 'I'm sorry--'
"Possibly nothing immediate would have happened had he not added an
unspeakable flourish to his portrait. He reached out his arms and drew
the girl to him and tried to kiss her condescendingly; but I suppose his
hands found her, in her clinging gown, soft to their touch. At all
events, they tightened upon her in an unmistakable way. She pulled
herself away. 'Let me pass!' she said. 'You--you--!'--she could think of
no words to suit him. You see, she understood him completely, now. He
was a collector, but a collector so despicable that he was even
unwilling to trade one article for another. He wanted to keep on his
shelves, as it were, all the accumulation of his life, and take down
from time to time whatever part of it suited his sudden fancy.
"The girl went up to her own room, and very carefully, not knowing
precisely what she did, changed into a black street dress and removed
all marks of identification. Her eyes swam with feverishness. While she
was dressing, she bathed in hot water her arms where her husband's hands
had been. She concluded that it was not what he had done--had constantly
done--but what he was that made life unbearable. When she was through
she went downstairs, and out of the front door, and walked slowly toward
the center of the town and the railway station."
"And is that all?" asked Mary Rochefort, after a while.
"Oh, no," said Burnaby; "it's only the beginning. Mackintosh was in the
hills beyond his ranch, hunting horses. He was camped in a little valley
by himself. On this particular day he had been out since sun-up and did
not get back until just about dusk. He picketed the horse he had been
riding, and built a small fire, and began to cook his supper. All around
him, brooding and unreal, was the light you get in high mountain places.
The fire shone like a tiny ruby set in topaz. Mackintosh raised his head
and saw a woman coming out of the spur of aspen trees across the creek
from him. He wasn't surprised; he knew right away who it was; he knew it
was the girl. He watched her for a moment, and then he went over to her,
and took her hand, and led her to the fire. They didn't speak at all."
"And you mean," asked Mrs. Ennis, "that she did that? That she came all
the way out to him, like that?"
"No," retorted Burnaby, "of course not. How could she? She wasn't even
sure where he was living. At the moment she was in a hospital out of her
head. You see, I didn't know whether to believe Mackintosh or not when
he said he saw her that night, although I am sure he believed he
did--such things are beyond human proof--but what I do know is that he
came straight down from the hills, and boarded a train, and went East,
and found the girl, and, after a while, came back with her." He looked
at the fire. "They were the most completely happy people I have ever
seen," he continued. "They were so calm and determined about themselves.
Everything immaterial had been burned away. They knew they were playing
on the side of fate. And so," he concluded, "that's the end of my
parable. What do you make of it?"
The curtains, stirred by the breeze, tip-tapped softly; in the silence
the fire hissed gently. Pollen spoke first, but with some difficulty, as
if in the long period of listening on his part his throat had become
dry. "It's very interesting," he said; "very! But what's it all about?
And you certainly don't believe it, do you?"
"Of course I do," answered Burnaby calmly. "You should, too; it's true."
Mary Rochefort looked up with an exclamation. "Gracious!" she said. "I
had no idea it was so late! My motor must be waiting." She got to her
feet. She looked very white and her eyes were tired; the translucent
quality of the earlier hours was gone. "I'm worn out," she explained.
"I've been going about too much. I must rest." She held her hand out to
Mrs. Ennis; over her shoulder she spoke to Pollen. "No," she said.
"Don't bother. I'll take myself home, thanks."
"I'll see you to your car," he stammered.
She turned to Burnaby. "Good night!" she said. Her voice was lifeless,
disinterested; her eyes met his for an instant and were withdrawn.
"Good night," he said.
Mrs. Ennis stood by the door for a moment before she walked slowly back
to the fireplace. From the street outside came the whirring of a motor
and the sound of Mary Rochefort's voice saying good-by to Pollen.
Mrs. Ennis rested an arm on the mantelpiece and kicked a log
thoughtfully with a white-slippered foot; then she faced about on
Burnaby.
"I suppose," she said, "you realize that you have spoiled my party?"
"I?" said Burnaby.
"Yes, you!" Her small, charming face was a study in ruefulness, and
indecision whether to be angry or not, and, one might almost have
imagined, a certain amused tenderness as well. "Don't you suppose those
people knew of whom you were talking?"
Burnaby, peering down at her, narrowed his eyes and then opened them
very wide. "They couldn't very well have helped it," he said, "could
they? For, you see"--he paused--"the girl who came West was Mrs.
Pollen."
Mrs. Ennis gasped in the manner of a person who is hearing too much.
"Mrs. Pollen?"
"Yes. You knew he had been divorced, didn't you? Years ago."
"I'd heard it, but forgotten." Mrs. Ennis clasped her jeweled hand. "And
you dared," she demanded, "to tell his story before him in that way?"
"Why not? It was rather a complete revenge upon him of fate, wasn't it?
You see, he couldn't very well give himself away, could he? His one
chance was to keep quiet." Burnaby paused and smiled doubtfully at Mrs.
Ennis. "I hope I made his character clear enough," he said. "That, after
all, was the point of the story."
"How did you know it was this Pollen?" she asked, "and how, anyway,
would Mary Rochefort know of whom you were talking?"
Burnaby grinned. "I took a chance," he said. "And as to the second, I
told Madame de Rochefort at dinner--merely as a coincidence; at least, I
let her think so--that I had once known in the West a Mrs. Pollen with a
curious history. Perhaps I wouldn't have told it if Pollen hadn't been
so witty." He picked up a silver dish from the mantelpiece and examined
it carefully.
"One oughtn't to have such a curious name if one is going to lead a
curious life, ought one?" he asked. He sighed. "You're right," he
concluded; "your friend Mary Rochefort is a child."
Mrs. Ennis looked up at him with searching eyes.
"Why don't you stay longer in Washington?" she asked softly. "Just now,
of course, Mary Rochefort hates you; but she won't for long--I think she
was beginning to have doubts about Pollen, anyway."
Burnaby suddenly looked grave and disconcerted. "Oh, no!" he said,
hastily. "Oh, no! I must be off tomorrow." He laughed. "My dear Rhoda,"
he said, "you have the quaintest ideas. I don't like philandering; I'm
afraid I have a crude habit of really falling in love."
Mrs. Ennis's own eyes were veiled. "If you're going away so soon, sit
down," she said, "and stay. You needn't go--oh, for hours!"
"I must," he answered. "I'm off so early."