Dedham was sitting on the edge of one of the reception-room chairs,
locking and unlocking his fingers until his hands were as red as those
of a son of toil. He was nervous, happy, terrified, annoyed.
“That beastly porter to keep me waiting so long for my portmanteau!” he
almost cried aloud. “What must she think of me?”
“You wicked boy!” said a voice of gentle reproach. “What made you so
late? I was just about to send and inquire if anything had happened to
you. But sit down. How tired you must be! Would you like a glass of
sherry and a biscuit?”
“Nothing! Nothing! You know, it’s not my fault that I’m late. My
portmanteau got mislaid and my travelling clothes were so dusty. And you
really are glad to see me?”
“What a question! It makes me feel young again to see you.”
“Young again! You!”
“I am twenty-four, Teddy, and a widow,” and she shook her head sadly. “I
feel fearfully old—like your mother. I have had so much care and
responsibility in my life, and you are so careless and debonair.”
“You’ll make me cry in a minute,” said Teddy; “and I wish you wouldn’t
talk like that. You seem to put a whole Adirondack between us.”
“I can’t help it. Perhaps I’ll get over it after a time. It’s so sad
being mewed up six whole months!”
“Then marry me right off. That’s just the point. We’ll go and travel and
have a jolly good time. That’ll brace you up and make you feel as young
as you look.”
“I can’t, Teddy. I must wait a year in common decency. Think how people
would talk.”
“Let ’em. They’ll soon find something else and forget us. Marry me next
month.”
“Next month—well—”
“It would be rather fun to be the hero and heroine of a sensation,
anyhow. That’s what everybody’s after. You’re just a nonentity until
you’ve been black-guarded in the papers. Whose ring is that?”
“One of Edith’s. I put it on to remember something by.”
“Well, take it off and wear this instead. It’ll help your memory just as
well.”
“What, a solitaire!”
“I knew you would prefer it. I know all your tastes by instinct.”
“You do, Teddy. Coloured stones are so tiresome.”
“By the way, I think your old admirer, Severance, must be about to put
himself in silken fetters, as Boswell would say. I caught him buying an
unusually fine sapphire in Tiffany’s yesterday. Said it was for his
sister. H’m—h’m.”
“Ah! I wonder who it can be?”
“Don’t know. Hasn’t looked at a woman since you left. But I have a
strong suspicion that it is some one here in Newport.”
“Here! I wonder if it can be Edith?”
“Miss Decker? Sure enough. Never seemed to pay her much attention,
though. She’s not my style; too much like sixteen dozen other New York
girls.”
He buttoned up his coat, braced himself against it, and gave his
moustache a frantic twist.
“Mrs.—Jessica!” he ejaculated desperately, “you are engaged to
me—won’t you—won’t you—”
She drew herself up and glanced down upon him from her higher chair with
a look of sad disapproval.
“I did not think it of you, Teddy,” she said. “And it is one of the
things of which I have never approved.”
“But why not?” asked Teddy, feebly.
“I thought you knew me better than to ask such a question.”
“I know you are an angel—oh, hang it! You do make me feel as if you
_were_ my mother.”
“Now, don’t be unreasonable, or I shall believe that you are a tyrant.”
“A tyrant? I? Horri—no, I wish I was. What a model of propriety you
are! I never should have thought it—I mean—darling! you were always
such a coquette, you know. Not that I ever thought so. You know I never
did—oh, hang it all—but if I let you have your own way in this
unreasonable—I mean this perfectly natural whim—you might at least
promise to marry me in a month. And, indeed, I think that if you are an
angel, I am a saint.”
“Well, on one condition.”
“Any! Any!”
“It must be an absolute secret until the wedding is over. I hate
congratulations, and if we are going to have a sensation we might as
well have a good concentrated one.”
“I agree with you, and I’ll never find fault with you again. You—”
Miss Decker almost ran into the room.
“Jessica!” she cried. “Oh, dear Mr. Dedham, how are you? Jessica, mother
has one of her terrible attacks, and I must ask you to stay with her
while I go for the doctor myself. I cannot trust servants.”
“Let me go! let me go!” cried Teddy. “I’ll bring him back in a quarter
of an hour. Who shall—”
“Coleman. He lives—”
“I know. Au revoir!” And the girls were alone.
“There!” exclaimed Miss Decker, “we have got rid of him. Now for the
others. You slip upstairs, and I’ll dispose of them one by one. You are
taken suddenly ill. Teddy will not be back for an hour. Dr. Coleman has
moved.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
V
A lamp burned in the sea-room, and the two girls were sitting in their
evening gowns before a bright log fire. Miss Decker was in white this
time—an elaborate French concoction of embroidered muslin which made
her look like an expensive fashion plate. Jessica wore a low-cut black
crêpe, above which she rose like carved ivory and brass. The snakes
to-night were held in place by diamond hair-pins that glittered like
baleful eyes. In her lap sparkled four rings.
“What shall I do?” she exclaimed. “If my life depended upon it, I could
not remember who gave me which.”
“Let us think. What sort of a stone would a politician be most likely to
choose?”
Mrs. Pendleton laughed. “A good idea. If couleur de rose be synonymous
with conceit, then I think the ruby must have come from Mr. Trent.”
“I am sure of it. And as your author is always in the dumps, I am
certain he takes naturally to the sapphire.”
“But the emerald—”
“Is emblematic of your deluded Teddy. The solitaire therefore falls
naturally to Mr. Severance. Well, now that you have got through the
first interviews in safety, what are you going to do next?”
“Edith, I do not know. They are all so dreadfully in earnest that I
believe I shall finally take to my heels in down-right terror. But no, I
won’t. I’ll come out of it with the upper hand and save my reputation as
an actress. I will keep it up for two or three days more, but after that
it will be impossible. They are bound to meet here sooner or later.
Thank Heaven, we are rid of them for to-night, at least!”
The manservant threw back the portière.
“Mr. Trent!”
“Heavens!” cried Edith, under her breath; “I forgot to give orders that
we were not receiv—how do you do, Mr. Trent?”
“And which is his ring?” Jessica made a frenzied dab at the jewels in
her lap. She slipped the sapphire on her finger and hid the others under
a cushion. Trent, who had been detained a moment by Miss Decker,
advanced to her.
“It is very soon to come again,” he said, “but I simply had to call and
inquire if you felt better. I am delighted to see that you apparently
do.”
“I am better, thank you.” Her voice was weak. “It was good of you to
come again.”
“Whose ring is that?”
“Why—a—to—sure—”
“Jessica!” cried Miss Decker, “have you gone off with my ring again? You
are so absent-minded! I hunted for that ring high and low!”
“You should not be so good-natured, and my memory would turn over a new
leaf. Here, take it.” She tossed the ring to Miss Decker and raised her
eyes guiltily to Trent’s. “Shall I go up and get the other?”
“No. But I thought you promised never to take it off.”
“I forgot that water ruins stones.”
“Well, it is a consolation to know that water does not ruin a certain
plain gold circlet.”
“Mr. Boswell!”
Jessica gasped and looked at the flames. A crisis had come. Would she be
clever enough? Then the situation stimulated her. She held out her hand
to Boswell.
“You have come to see me?” she cried delightedly. “Mr. Trent has just
been telling us that you came down with him, and I hoped you would call
soon.”
“Yes, to be sure—to be sure. You might have known I would call soon.”
He bowed stiffly to Trent, and, seating himself close beside Jessica,
murmured in her ear: “Cannot you get rid of that fellow? How did he find
you out so soon?”
“Why, he came to see Edith, of course. Do you not remember how devoted
he always was to her?”
“I do not—”
“May I ask what you are whispering about, Mr. Boswell?” demanded Trent,
breaking from Miss Decker. “Is he confiding to you the astounding
success of his last novel, Mrs. Pendleton? Or was it a history of the
United States? I really forget.”
“Not the last, certainly. I leave it to you to make history—an abridged
edition. My ambition is a more humble one.”
“Oh, you will both need biographers,” said Mrs. Pendleton, who was
beginning to enjoy herself. “I will give you an idea. Join the
Theosophists. Arrange for reincarnation. Come back in the next
generation and write your own biographies. Then your friends and
families cannot complain you have not had justice done you.”
“Ha! ha!” said Trent.
“You are as cruel as ever,” said Boswell, with a sigh. “Where is my
ring?” he whispered.
“It was so large that I could not keep it on. I must have a guard made.”
“Dear little fingers—”
“You may never have been taught when you were a small boy, Mr. Boswell,”
interrupted Trent, “that it is rude to whisper in company. Therefore, to
save your manners in Mrs. Pendleton’s eyes, I will do you the kindness
to prevent further lapse.” And he seated himself on the other side of
Jessica and glared defiantly at Boswell.
“Mr. Severance and Mr. Dedham!”
Severance entered hurriedly. “I am so glad to hear—ah, Boswell! Trent!”
“How odd that you should all find your way here the very first evening
of your arrival!” And Jessica held out her hand with a placid smile.
Miss Decker was more nervous, but five seasons were behind her. “Ah!”
continued Mrs. Pendleton, “and Mr. Dedham, too! This is a most charming
reunion!”
“Charming beyond expression!” said Severance.
Trent and Boswell being obliged to rise when Miss Decker went forward to
meet the newcomers, Severance took the former’s chair, Dedham that of
the future statesman.
“You are better?” whispered Severance. “I have been anxious.”
“Oh, I have been worried to death!” murmured Teddy in her other ear.
“That wretched doctor had not only moved but gone out of town; and when
I came back at last and found—”
“Mr. Severance,” exclaimed Trent, “you have my chair.”
“Is this your chair? You have good taste. A remarkably comfortable
chair.”
“You would oblige me—”
“By keeping it? Certainly. You were ever generous, but that I believe is
a characteristic of genius.”
“Mrs. Pendleton,” said Boswell, plaintively, “as Mr. Dedham has taken my
chair, I will take this stool at your feet.”
Trent was obliged to lean his elbow on the mantelpiece, for want of a
better view of Mrs. Pendleton, and Miss Decker sat on the other side of
Dedham.
“How are you, Teddy?” she said.
“Young and happy. You must let me congratulate you.”
“For what?”
“I see you wear Severance’s ring. Ah, Sev, did the ring suit your
sister?”
“To a T. Said it was her favourite stone.” He stopped abruptly. “What
the deuce—” below his breath; and Jessica whispered hurriedly:—
“Edith was looking at it when Mr. Trent came in, and forgot to return
it.”
“Ah! Boswell, I am sure you are sitting on Mrs. Pendleton’s foot. By the
way, how is your aunt?”
“Dead—better.”
“I wonder you could tear yourself away so soon,” said Trent, viciously.
“You’d better be careful. She might make a new will.”
“Don’t worry. I spent the happiest fifteen minutes of my life with her
this afternoon. She promised me all.” He turned to Severance. “You have
been breaking hearts on the beach, I suppose.”
“Which is better, at all events, than breaking one’s head against a
stone wall.”
“Politics brought you here, I suppose, Mr. Trent,” interrupted Miss
Decker. “I hear you made a stirring speech the other night.”
“I did. It was on the question of Radicalism in the Press _versus_ Civil
Service Reform. Something must be done to revolutionise this hotbed of
iniquity, American politics. Such principles need courage, but when the
hour comes the man must not be wanting—”
“That was all in the paper next morning,” drawled Boswell. “Mrs.
Pendleton, did you receive the copy of my new book I sent a fortnight
ago? Unlike many of my others, I had no difficulty in disposing of it.
It was lighter, brighter, less philosophy, less—brains. The critics
understood it, therefore they were kind. They even said—”
“Don’t quote the critics, for Heaven’s sake,” said Severance. “It is
enough to have read them.”
“Oh, Mrs. Pendleton,” exclaimed Teddy, “if you could have been at the
yacht race! Such excitement, such—”
“To change the subject,” said Trent, with determination in his eye,
“Mrs. Pendleton, did you receive all the marked papers I sent you
containing my speeches, especially the one on Jesuitism in Politics?”
“Don’t bother Mrs. Pendleton with politics!” exclaimed Boswell, whose
own egotism was kicking against its bars. “You did not think my book too
long, did you? One purblind critic said—”
“Good night, Mrs. Pendleton,” said Severance, rising abruptly. “Good
evening,” and he bowed to Miss Decker and to the men. Jessica rose
suddenly and went with him to the door.
“I am going to walk on the cliffs—‘Forty Steps’—at eleven to-morrow,”
she said, as she gave him her hand. “This may be unconventional, but _I_
choose to do it.”
He bowed over her hand. “Mrs. Pendleton will only have set one more
fashion,” he said. “I shall be there.”
As he left the room by one door, Jessica crossed the room and opened
another.
“Good night,” she said to the astounded company, and withdrew.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
VI
Severance sauntered up and down the “Forty Steps,” the repose of his
bearing belying the agitation within.
“Why on earth doesn’t she come?” he thought uneasily. “Can she be ill
again? She is ten minutes behind time now. What did it mean—all those
fellows there last night? She looked like an amused spectator at a play,
and Miss Decker was nervous, actually nervous. Damn it! Here they all
come. What do they mean by keeping under my heels like this?”
Dedham, Trent, and Boswell strolled up from various directions, and,
although each had expectation in his eye, none looked overjoyed to see
the other men. There were four cold nods, a dead pause, and then Teddy
gave a little cough.
“Beautiful after—I mean morning.”
“It is indeed,” said Severance. “I wonder you are not taking your
salt-water constitutional.”
“I always take a walk in the morning;” and Teddy glanced nervously over
his shoulder.
Boswell and Trent, each with a little missive burning his pocket, turned
red, fidgeted, glared at the ocean, and made no remark. Severance darted
a glance at each of the three in succession, and then looked at the
ground with a contemplative stare. At this moment Mrs. Pendleton
appeared.
Three of the men advanced to meet her with an awkward attempt at
surprise, but she waved them back.
“I have something to say to you,” she said.
The cold languor of her face had given place to an expression of haughty
triumph. A gleam of conscious power lay deep in her scornful eyes. The
final act in the drama had come, and the dénouement should be worthy of
her talents. She looked like a judge who had smiled encouragement to a
guilty defendant only to confer the sentence of capital punishment at
last.
“Gentlemen,” she said, and even her voice was judicatorial, “I have
asked you all to meet me here this morning”—(three angry starts, but
she went on unmoved)—“because I came to the conclusion last night that
it is quite time this farce should end. I am somewhat bored myself, and
I have no doubt you are so, as well. Your joke was a clever one, worthy
of the idle days of autumn. When I received your four proposals by the
same mail, I appreciated your wit—I will say more, your genius—and
felt glad to do anything I could to contribute to your amusement,
especially as all the world is away and I knew how dull you must be. So
I accepted each of you, as you know, had four charming interviews and
one memorable one of a more composite nature; and now that we have all
agreed that the spicy and original little drama has run its length I
take pleasure in restoring your rings.”
She took from her handkerchief a beautiful little casket of blue onyx,
upon which reposed the Pendleton crest in diamonds, touched a spring,
and revealed four rings sparkling about as many velvet cushions. The
four men stood speechless; not one dared protest his sincerity and see
ridicule in the eyes of his neighbour.
Mrs. Pendleton dropped her judicial air, and taking the ruby between her
fingers, smiled like a teacher bestowing a prize.
“Mr. Boswell,” she said, “I believe this belongs to you;” and she handed
the ring to the stupefied author. He put it in his pocket with never a
word.
She raised the emerald. “Mr. Trent, this is yours?—or is it the
sapphire?”
[Illustration: “‘WELL, WHY DON’T YOU GO?’”]
“The emerald,” snorted Trent.
She dropped it in his nerveless palm with a gracious bend of the head,
and turned to Teddy.
“You gave me a solitaire, I remember,” she said sweetly. “A most
appropriate gift, for it is the ideal life.”
Teddy looked as if about to burst into tears, gave her one beseeching
glance, then took his ring and strode feebly over the cliffs. Trent and
Boswell hesitated a moment, then hurried after.
Jessica held the casket to Severance, with a little outward sweep of her
wrist. He took it and, folding his arms, looked at her steadily. A tide
of angry colour rose to her hair, then she turned her back upon him and
looking out over the water tapped her foot on the rocks.
“Why do you not go?” she asked. “I hate you more than any one on earth.”
“No. You love me.”
“I hate you! You are a brute! The coolest, the rudest, the most
exasperating man on—on earth.”
“That is the reason you love me. My dear Mrs. Pendleton,” he continued,
taking the ring from the casket and laying the latter on a rock, “a
woman of brains and headstrong will—but unegoistic—likes a brutal and
masterful man. An egoistical woman, whether she be fool or brilliant,
likes a slave. The reason is that egoism, not being a feminine quality
primarily, but borrowed from man, places its fair possessor outside of
her sex’s limitations and supplies her with the satisfying simulacrum of
those stronger characteristics which she would otherwise look for in
man. You are not an egoist.”
He took her hand and removed her glove in spite of her resistance.
“Don’t struggle. You would only look ridiculous if any one should pass.
Besides, it is useless. I am so much stronger. I do not know or care
what really possessed you to indulge in such a freak as to engage
yourself to four men at once,” he continued, slipping the ring on her
finger. “You had your joke, and I hope you enjoyed it. The dénouement
was highly dramatic. As I said, I desire no explanation, for I am never
concerned with anything but results. And now—you are going to marry
me.”
“I am not!” sobbed Jessica.
“You are.” He glanced about. No one was in sight. He put his arm about
her shoulders, forcing her own to her sides, then bent back her head and
kissed her on the mouth.
“Checkmate!” he said.
[Illustration]
GERTRUDE ATHERTON was born in San Francisco and received her
early education in California and Kentucky, but her best
training was in her grandfather’s library, a collection, it is
said, of English masterpieces only, containing no American
fiction whatever. Yet Mrs. Atherton is as thorough an American
as a niece, in the third generation, of Benjamin Franklin should
be.
It seems to have been the English critics who first recognised
her originality, power, intensity, vividness, and vitality, but
from her first book, “What Dreams May Come,” published in 1888,
her writings have revealed the unusual combination of brains and
feeling. This gives her work both keen, clever strength and
brilliancy of colour, developed through years of hard work, many
of which were spent abroad, and reaching their best
manifestation in her latest fiction, the one quality in “The
Conqueror” and the other in “The Splendid Idle Forties.” Both of
these books go to prove the foresight of Mr. Harold Frederic,
who, shortly before his death, declared her to be “the only
woman in contemporary literature who knew how to write a novel,”
and that her future work would be her best. Another eminent
English critic, Dr. Robertson Nicholl, spoke for some of the
best students of modern literature in saying:—
“Gertrude Atherton is the ablest woman writer of fiction
now living.”
In her most notable novel, “The Conqueror,” Gertrude Atherton
has chosen in “the true and romantic story of Alexander
Hamilton” a subject which would have attracted few woman
writers, and has handled those parts of it with which many men
have busied their brains in such a way that _The New York Times
Saturday Review_ remarked that it
“Holds more romance than nine-tenths of the imaginative
fiction of the day and more veracity than ninety-nine
hundredths of the history. She is master of her
material.”
“Certainly this country has produced no writer who approaches
Mrs. Atherton,” says one critic, while another adds that to have
so “re-created a great man as Mrs. Atherton has done in this
novel is to have written one’s own title to greatness.” All
alike regard it as “a thing apart” (_The Critic_); “a remarkable
production, full of force, vigour, brains, and insight” (_Boston
Herald_); “an entrancing book . . . brilliantly written”
(_Glasgow Herald_). “It is hardly too much to say that she has
invented a new kind of historical novel” is the comment of the
_Athenæum_ (London), with the addition that “the experiment is a
remarkable success.”
Equally strong in fascination and vigour is “The Splendid Idle
Forties,” but as far removed from “The Conqueror” as were the
Eastern and Western seaboards of this country in the times of
which the stories treat, “the long, drowsy, shimmering days
before the Gringo came,” to the California of which she writes.
“Pointed, spirited, and Spanish” are these “rich and impressive”
stories; “such as could hardly have been told in any other
country since the Bagdad of the ‘Thousand and One Nights.’ The
book is full of weird fascination, and will add to Mrs.
Atherton’s deservedly high reputation,” says _The Athenæum_.
“In this book even more than in her others is shown that
imaginative brilliancy so striking as to set one
wondering what is the secret of the effect. . . . For
the rest, her charm lies in temperament, magnetic,
restless, assertive, vivid.”—_Washington Times._
In close relation to “The Conqueror” stands Mrs. Atherton’s
still more recent selection of “A Few of Hamilton’s Letters,”
chosen from the great bulk of his state papers and other letters
in such a way as to bring to the average reader the means of
estimating the personality of this remarkable man from his own
words. Incidentally it is the surest refutation of some of the
hasty criticisms upon the picture of him in “The Conqueror,”
where, as Mr. Le Gallienne justly observes, “it was reserved for
Mrs. Atherton to make him really alive to the present
generation.”
The Macmillan Little Novels
BY FAVOURITE AUTHORS
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* * * * *
PHILOSOPHY FOUR
A STORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY
By Owen Wister
Author of “The Virginian,” etc.
MAN OVERBOARD
By F. Marion Crawford
Author of “Cecilia,” “Marietta,” etc.
MR. KEEGAN’S ELOPEMENT
By Winston Churchill
Author of “The Crisis,” “Richard Carvel,” etc.
MRS. PENDLETON’S FOUR-IN-HAND
By Gertrude Atherton
Author of “The Conqueror,” “The Splendid
Idle Forties,” etc.
* * * * *
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
66 Fifth Avenue, New York
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
Spelling and hyphenation have been retained as in the original
publication. Punctuation errors have been corrected without note.
End of Project Gutenberg's Mrs. Pendleton's Four-in-hand, by Gertrude Atherton