very one she remembered, upon which Mr. Gallatin three weeks ago had
sat and told her of his misfortunes. Chicot came and sat in front of
her, his muzzle on her knees, and looked up rapturously into her eyes.
“You’re such a sinful little dorglums, Chicot,” she said to him. “Don’t
you know that? To go running off and bringing back disagreeable and
impudent vagabonds for me to send away? You’re quite silly. And your
moustache is precisely like Colonel Broadhurst’s, except that it’s
painted black. Are you really as wise as you look? I don’t believe
you are, because you’re dressed like a harlequin, and harlequins are
never wise, or they shouldn’t be harlequins. Wise people don’t wear
topknots on their heads and rings upon their tails, Chicot. Oh, it’s
all very well for you to be so devoted now, but you’d run away at once
if another vagabond came along--a tall vagabond with dark eyes and a
deep voice that appealed to your own little vagabond heart. You’re
faithless, Chicot, and I don’t care for you at all.”
She rubbed his glossy ears between her fingers, and he put one dusty
paw upon her lap. “No, I can’t forgive you,” she went on. “Never! All
is over between us. You’re a dissipated little vagabond, that’s what
you are, with no sense of responsibility whatever. I’m going to put you
in a deep dark dungeon, on a diet of dust and dungaree, where you shall
stay and meditate on your sins. Not another _maron_--not one. You’re
absolutely worthless, Chicot, that’s what you are--worthless!”
The knot on the end of the dog’s tail whisked approval; for, though
he understood exactly what she said, it was the correct thing for
dog-people to act only by tones of voice, but when his mistress got
up he frisked homeward joyfully, with a gratified sense of his own
important share in the conclusion of the business of the morning.
Jane Loring entered upon the daily round thoughtfully, but with a
new sense of her responsibilities. For the first time in her life
she had had a sense of the careless cruelty of the world for those
thrown unprotected upon its good will. There was a note of plethoric
contrition in her mail from Coleman Van Duyn. She read it very
carefully twice as though committing it to memory, and then tearing
it into small pieces committed it to the waste basket, a hard little
glitter in her eyes which Mr. Van Duyn might not have cared to see. She
made a resolve that from this hour she would live according to another
code. She was no longer the little school-girl from the convent in
Paris. She was full-fledged now and would take life as she found it,
her eyes widely opened, not with the wonder of adolescence, but keen
for the excitements as well as the illusions that awaited her.
She got down from her limousine at the Pennington’s house in Stuyvesant
Square that night alone. Mr. Van Duyn, in his note, had pleaded to be
allowed to stop for her in his machine and bring her home, but she had
not called him on the ’phone as he had requested. It was a dinner for
some of the members of the Cedarcroft set, as formal as any function to
which this gay company was invited, could ever be. Jane was a moment
late and hurried upstairs not a little excited, for though she had
known Nellie Pennington in Pau, the guests were probably strangers to
her. In the dressing-room, where she found Miss Jaffray and another
girl she had not met, a maid helped her off with her cloak and carriage
boots and, when she was ready to go down, handed her a silver tray
bearing a number of small envelopes. She selected the one which bore
her name, carelessly, wondering whether her fortunes for the evening
were to be entrusted to Mr. Worthington or to Mr. Van Duyn, to find on
the enclosed card the name of Philip Gallatin.
She paled a little, hesitated and lingered in the darkness by the door
under the mental plea of rearranging her roses, her mind in a tumult.
She had hardly expected to find him here, for Mr. Gallatin, she had
heard, hunted no more and Nellie Pennington had never even mentioned
his name. What should she do? To say that she did not wish to go in
with a man high in the favor of her host and hostess as well as every
one else, without giving a reason for her refusal would be gratuitously
insulting to her hostess as well as to Mr. Gallatin. She glanced
helplessly at Nina Jaffray, who was leaning toward the pier glass, a
stick of lip-salve in her fingers, and realized at once that there was
to be no rescue from her predicament. Besides, changing cards with Miss
Jaffray would not help matters, for over in the men’s dressing room Mr.
Gallatin by this time had read the card which told him that Miss Loring
was to be his dinner partner.
She could not understand how such a thing had happened. Had Nellie
Pennington heard? That was impossible. There were but three people in
New York who knew about Mr. Gallatin and herself, and the third one
was Coley Van Duyn, who had guessed at their relations. Could Philip
Gallatin have dared--dared to ask this favor of their hostess after
Jane’s repudiation of him in the Park? She couldn’t believe that
either. Fate alone could have conspired to produce a situation so
full of exquisite possibilities. She waited a moment, gathering her
shattered resources; and with that skill at dissimulation which men
sometimes ape, but never actually attain, she thrust her arm through
Miss Jaffray’s and the two of them went down the wide stairway, a very
pretty picture of youth and unconcern.
Jane’s eyes swept the room with obtrusive carelessness, and took in
every one in it, including the person for whom the glance was intended,
who saw it from a distant corner, and marveled at the smile with which
she entered and greeted her hostess.
“Hello, Nina! Jane, dear, _so_ glad you could come!” said Nellie
Pennington. “Oh, what a perfectly darling dress! You went to Doucet
after all--for your debutante _trousseau_. Perhaps, I’d better call it
your _layette_--you absurd child! Oh, for the roses of yesterday! You
know Betty Tremaine, don’t you? And Mr. Savage? Coley do stop glaring
and tell Phil Gallatin to come here at once. My dear, you’re going in
with the nicest man--a very great friend of mine, and I want you to be
particularly sweet to him. Hear? Mr. Gallatin--you haven’t met--I know.
Here he is now. Miss Loring--Mr. Gallatin.”
Jane nodded and coolly extended her hand. “How do you do,” she said,
tepidly polite, and then quickly to her hostess. “It was very nice of
you to think of me, Nellie. It seems ages since Pau, doesn’t it?”
“Ages! You unpleasant person. When you get as old as I am, you’ll never
mention the flight of time. Ugh!”
Her shudder was very effective. Nellie Pennington was thirty-five,
looked twenty, and knew it.
“What difference does it make,” laughed Jane, “when Time forgets one?”
“Very prettily said, my dear. Time may amble, but he’s too nimble to
let you get him by the forelock.” And turning she greeted the late
comers.
Jane turned to Mr. Gallatin, who was saying something at her ear.
“I beg your pardon,” she said.
“I hope you don’t think that I--I am responsible for this situation,”
he repeated.
“What situation, Mr. Gallatin?”
“I hope you don’t think that I knew I was to go in to dinner with you.”
She laughed. “I hadn’t really thought very much about it.”
“I didn’t--I didn’t even know you were to be here. It’s an accident--a
cruel one. I wouldn’t have had it happen for anything in the world.”
“Do you think that’s very polite?” she asked lightly.
“I mean--” he stammered, “that you’ll have to acquit me of any
intention----”
“You mean,” she interrupted quickly, with widely opened eyes, “that
you don’t _want_ to go in to dinner with me? I think that can easily
be arranged,” and she turned away from him toward her hostess. But he
quickly interposed.
“Don’t, Miss Loring. Don’t do that. It isn’t necessary. I didn’t want
your evening spoiled.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” she said, and the curl of her lip
did not escape him. “_That_ could hardly happen. But, if you have any
doubts about it, perhaps----”
“It was of you I was thinking----”
“That’s very kind, I’m sure. I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t
get on admirably. I’m not so difficult as you seem to suppose. Why
_should_ you spoil my evening, Mr. Gallatin?”
She turned and looked him full in the eyes; and he knew then what he
had suspected at first, that she meant to deny that they had ever met
before.
He gazed at her calmly, a slow smile twisting his lips, acknowledging
her rebuke, and acquiescing silently in her position.
“I’m sure I don’t wish to spoil it. I’m only too happy--to--to be so
much honored.”
“There!” she laughed easily. “You _can_ be polite, can’t you? Do you
hunt, Mr. Gallatin?” quickly changing the topic to one less personal.
“I thought nobody ever dined here unless he was at least first cousin
to a Centaur.”
“Oh, no,” he laughed. “Mrs. Pennington isn’t so exclusive as that. But
I’m sure she’d have her own hunters in to table if she could. This
is quite the liveliest house! Mrs. Pennington is the most wonderful
woman in the world, and the reason is that she absolutely refuses to be
bored. She likes Centaurs because they’re mostly natural creatures like
herself, but she hasn’t any use for Dinosaurs!”
A general movement toward the table, and Jane took Phil Gallatin’s arm
and followed. A huge horse-shoe of Beauties formed the centerpiece,
from which emerged the Cedarhurst Steeplechase Cup, won three years in
succession by Dick Pennington. The decorations of the room were in red
and gold, and a miniature steeplechase course was laid around the table
with small fences, brush and water jumps, over which tiny equestrians
in pink coats gayly cavorted. Miss Loring found to her delight that
the neighbor on her other side was Mr. Worthington. At least she was
not to be without resource if the situation grew beyond her. But Mr.
Gallatin having made token of his acquiescence, gave no sign of further
intrusion. His talk was of the people about them, of their ambitions
and their lack of them, of motoring, of country houses and the latest
news in Vanity Fair, to which she listened with interest, casually
questioning or venturing an opinion. The only rôle possible for her
was one of candor, and she played it with cool deliberation, carefully
guiding his remarks into the well-buoyed channels of the commonplace.
And while he talked amusedly, gayly even, in the glances that she
stole at his profile, she found that he had grown thinner, and that
the dark shadows under his eyes, which she remembered, were still to
be found there. The fingers of his right hand slowly revolved the stem
of a flower. All of his wine glasses she discovered he had turned bowl
downward. His cocktail he had slowly pushed aside until it was now
hidden in the garland of roses which circled the table. She felt quite
sorry for him, as she had felt last summer, and now, better attuned
to detraction than to praise, her mind and instinct both proclaimed
him, in spite of herself--a gentleman. Coleman Van Duyn had lied to
her. She was conscious of Coley surveying her from his seat across the
table with a jaundiced eye, and this surveillance, while it made her
uncomfortable, served to feed the flame of her ire. Coley Van Duyn had
lied to her, and the lot of liars was oblivion.
A pause in the conversation when Nina Jaffray’s voice broke in on Mr.
Gallatin’s right.
“It isn’t true, is it, Phil?”
He questioned.
“What they’re saying about you,” she went on.
He laughed uneasily. “Yes, of course, if it’s something dreadful
enough.”
“Oh, it isn’t dreadful, Phil, only so enchantingly sinful that it
doesn’t sound like you in the least.”
“No, Nina. It isn’t true. Enchanting sin and I are strangers.
Miss Loring and I have just been talking about original sin in
saddle-horses. I contend----”
“Phil, I _won’t_ be diverted in this way. I believe it’s true.”
“Then what’s the use of questioning me?”
“I’m foolish enough to want you to deny it.”
“Even if it is an enchanting sin? You might at least let me flatter
myself that much.”
Miss Jaffray’s long eyes closed the fraction of an inch, as she
surveyed him aslant through her lashes, then her lips broke into a
smile which showed her small and perfectly even teeth.
“You shan’t evade me any longer. I’m insanely jealous, Phil. _Who_ was
the girl you got lost with in the woods?”
Gallatin passed a miserable moment. He had sensed the question and
had tried to prevent it, cold with dismay that Miss Loring should be
in earshot. He flushed painfully and for his life’s sake could make no
reply.
“It’s true--you’re blushing. I could forgive you for the sin, but for
blushing for it--never!”
Gallatin had hoped that Miss Loring might have turned to her other
neighbor, but he had not dared to look. Now he felt rather than saw
that she was a listener to the dialogue, and he heard her voice--cool,
clear, and insistent, just at his ear:
“How very interesting, Nina! Mr. Gallatin’s sins are finding him out?”
“No, _I_ am,” said the girl. “I’ve known Phil Gallatin since we were
children, and he has always been the most unsusceptible of persons. He
has never had any time for girls. And now! Now by his guilty aspect
he tacitly acknowledges a love affair in the Canadian wilderness with
a----”
“Oh, do stop, Nina,” he said in suppressed tones. “Miss Loring can
hardly be interested in----”
“But I _am_,” put in Miss Loring coolly. “Do tell me something more,
Nina. Was she young and pretty?”
[Illustration: “‘Do tell me something more, Nina. Was she young and
pretty?’”]
“Ask this guilty wretch----”
“Don’t you know who she was? What was her name?”
“That’s just what I want to find out. And nobody seems to know, except
Phil.”
“Do tell us, Mr. Gallatin.”
“She had no name,” said Mr. Gallatin very quietly. “There was no girl
in the woods.”
“A woman, then?” queried Miss Jaffray.
“Neither girl--nor woman--only a Dryad. The woods are full of them. My
Indian guide insisted that----”
“Oh, no, you sha’n’t get out of it so easily, Phil, and I insist
upon your sticking to facts. A Dryad, indeed, with the latest thing in
fishing rods and creels!”
Miss Jaffray had not for a moment taken her gaze from Gallatin’s
face, but now she changed her tone to one of impudent raillery. “You
know, Phil, you’ve always held women in such high regard that I’ve
always thought you positively tiresome. And now, just when I find you
developing the most unusual and interesting qualities, you deny their
very existence! I was just getting ready to fall madly in love with
you. How disappointing you are! Isn’t he, Jane?”
“Dreadfully so,” said Miss Loring. “Tell it all, Mr. Gallatin, by all
means, since we already know the half. I’m sure the reality can’t be
nearly as dreadful as we already think it is.”
Her effrontery astounded him, but he met her fairly.
“There’s nothing to tell. If an enchantingly sinful man met an
enchantingly helpless Dryad--what would be likely to happen? Can _you_
tell us, Miss Loring?”
Jane’s weapons went flying for a moment, but she recovered them
adroitly.
“The situation has possibilities of which you are in every way worthy,
I don’t doubt, Mr. Gallatin. The name of your Dryad will, of course, be
revealed in time. I’m sure if Miss Jaffray pleads with you long enough
you’ll gladly tell her.”
Nina Jaffray laughed.
“Come, Phil, there’s a dear. Do tell a fellow. I’ve really got to
know, if only for the fun of scratching her eyes out. I’m sure I ought
to--oughtn’t I, Jane?”
But Miss Loring had already turned and was deep in conversation with
Mr. Worthington, who for twenty minutes at least, had been trying to
attract her attention.
XII
NELLIE PENNINGTON CUTS IN
It was the custom at Richard Pennington’s dinners for the men to follow
the ladies at once to the library or drawing-room if they cared to,
for Nellie Pennington liked smoking and made no bones about it. People
who dined with her were expected to do exactly as they pleased, and
this included the use of tobacco in all parts of the house. She was not
running a kindergarten, she insisted, and the mothers of timorous buds
were amply warned that they must look to the habits of their tender
offspring. And so after the ices were served, when the women departed,
some of their dinner partners followed them into the other rooms,
finding more pleasure in the cigarette _à deux_ than in the stable talk
at the dismantled dining-table.
Phil Gallatin rose and followed the ladies to the door and then
returned, sank into a vacant chair and began smoking, thinking deeply
of the new difficulty into which Nina Jaffray had plunged him. A small
group of men remained, Larry Kane, William Worthington, Ogden Spencer,
and Egerton Savage, who gathered at the end of the table around their
host.
“Selected your 1913 model yet, Bibby?” Pennington asked with a laugh.
“What is she to be this time? Inside control, of course, maximum
flexibility, minimum friction----”
“Oh, forget it, Dick,” said Worthington, sulkily.
“No offense, you know. Down on your luck? Cheer up, old chap, you’ll be
in love again presently. There are as many good fish in the sea----”
“I’m not fishing,” put in Bibby with some dignity.
“By George!” whispered Larry Kane, in awed tones, “I believe he’s got
it again. Oh, Bibby, when you marry, Venus will go into sackcloth and
ashes!”
“So will Bibby,” said Spencer. “Marriage isn’t his line at all. You
know better than that, don’t you, Bibby. No demnition bow-wows on
_your_ Venusberg--what? You’ve got the secret. Love often and you’ll
love longer. Aren’t I right, Bibby?”
“Oh, let Bibby alone,” sighed Savage. “He’s got the secret. I take my
hat off to him. Every year he bathes in the Fountain of Youth, and
like the chap in the book--what’s his name?--gazes at his rejuvenated
reflection in the limpid pool of virgin eyes. Look at him! Forty-five,
if he’s a day, and looks like a stage juvenile.”
Gallatin listened to the chatter with dull ears, smiling perfunctorily,
not because he enjoyed this particular kind of humor, but because he
did not choose to let his silence become conspicuous. And when the
sounds from a piano were heard and the men rose to join the ladies, he
had made a resolve to see Jane Loring alone before the evening was gone.
In the drawing-room Betty Tremaine was playing airs from the latest
Broadway musical success, which Dirwell De Lancey was singing with a
throaty baritone. Jane Loring sat on a sofa next to her hostess, both
of them laughing at young Perrine, who began showing the company a new
version of the turkey-trot.
“Do a ‘Dance Apache,’ Freddy,” cried Nina Jaffray, springing to her
feet. “You know,” and before he knew what she was about, he was seized
by the arms, and while Miss Tremaine caught the spirit of the thing
in a gay cadence of the Boulevards, the two of them flew like mad
things around the room, to the imminent hazard of furniture and its
occupants. There was something barbaric in their wild rush as they
whirled apart and came together again and the dance ended only when
Freddy Perrine catapulted into a corner, breathless and exhausted. Miss
Jaffray remained upright, her slender breast heaving, her eyes dark
with excitement, glancing from one to another with the bold challenge
of a Bacchante fresh from the groves of Naxos. There was uproarious
applause and a demand for repetition, but as no one volunteered to take
the place of the exhausted Perrine, the music ceased and Miss Jaffray,
after rearranging her disordered hair, threw herself into a vacant
chair.
“You’re wonderful, Nina!” said Nellie Pennington, languidly, “but how
_can_ you do it? It’s more like wrestling than dancing?”
“I like wrestling,” said Miss Jaffray, unperturbedly.
Auction tables were formed in the library and the company divided
itself into parties of three or four, each with its own interests.
Gallatin soon learned that it might prove difficult to carry his
resolution into effect, for Miss Loring was the center of a group which
seemed to defy disruption, and Coleman Van Duyn immediately pre-empted
the nearest chair, from which nothing less than dynamite would have
availed to dislodge him. Gallatin had heard that Van Duyn had been
with the Lorings in Canada, and had wondered vaguely whether this fact
could have anything to do with that gentleman’s sudden change of manner
toward himself. The two men had gone to the same school, and the same
university; and while they had never been by temper or inclination in
the slightest degree suited to each other, circumstances threw them
often together and as fellow club-mates they had owed and paid each
other a tolerable civility. But this winter Van Duyn’s nods had been
stiff and his manner taciturn. Personally, Phil Gallatin did not care
whether Coleman Van Duyn was civil or not, and only thought of the
matter in its possible reference to Jane Loring. Gallatin leaned over
the back of the sofa in conversation with Nellie Pennington, listening
with one ear to Coley’s rather heavy attempts at amiability.
After a while his hostess moved to a couch in the corner and motioned
for him to take the place beside her.
“You know, Phil,” she began, reproving him in her softest tones, “I’ve
been thinking about you a lot lately. Aren’t you flattered? You ought
to be. I’ve made up my mind to speak to you with all the seriousness of
my advanced years.”
“Yes, Mother, dear,” laughed Phil. “What is it now? Have I been
breaking window-panes or pulling the cat’s tail?”
“Neither--and both,” she returned calmly. “But it’s your sins of
omission that bother me most. You’re incorrigibly lazy!”
“Thanks,” he said, settling himself comfortably. “I know it.”
“And aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”
“Awfully.”
“I’m told that you’re never in your office, that you’ve let your
practice go to smash, that your partners are on the point of casting
you into the outer darkness.”
“Oh, that’s true,” he said wearily. “I’ve practically withdrawn from
the firm, Nellie. I didn’t bring any business in. It’s even possible
that I kept some of it out. I’m a moral and physical incubus. In fact,
John Kenyon has almost told me so.”
“Well, what are you going to do about it?”
“Do?
A Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse--and thou.
If you’ll come with me, Nellie.”
There was no response of humor in Nellie Pennington’s expression.
“No,” she said quietly. “Not I. I want you to be serious, Phil.” She
paused a moment, looking down, and when her eyes sought his again he
saw in them the spark of a very genuine interest. “I don’t know whether
you know it or not, Phil, but I’m really very fond of you. And if I
didn’t understand you as well as I do, of course, I wouldn’t dare to be
so frank.”
Philip Gallatin inclined his head slightly.
“Go on, please,” he said.
She hesitated a moment and then clutched his arm with her strong
fingers.
“I want you to wake up, Phil,” she said with sudden insistence. “I want
you to wake up, to open your eyes wide--wide, do you hear, to stretch
your intellectual fibers and learn something of your own strength.
You’re asleep, Boy! You’ve been asleep for years! I want you to wake
up--and prove the stuff that’s in you. You’re the last of your line,
Phil, the very last; but whatever the faults your fathers left you,
you’ve got their genius, too.”
Gallatin was slowly shaking his head.
“Not that--only----”
“I _know_ it,” she said proudly. “You can’t hide from everybody,
Phil. I still remember those cases you won when you were just out of
law-school--that political one and the other of the drunkard indicted
on circumstantial evidence----”
“I was interested in that,” he muttered.
“You’ll be interested again. You _must_ be. Do you hear? You’ve come
to the parting of the ways, Phil, and you’ve got to make a choice.
You’re drifting with the tide, and I don’t like it, waiting for Time
to provide your Destiny when you’ve got the making of it in your own
hands. You’ve got to put to sea, hoist what sail you’ve got and brave
the elements.”
“I’m a derelict, Nellie,” he said painfully.