MRS. BERKELEY HAMMOND ENTERTAINS
The heritage of the world comes at last to the pachyderms. Fate is
never so unkind as to those who blindly resist her and into the lap of
stoic and unimpressionable she pours the horn of plenty.
Trevelyan Morehouse had gone through life on the low gear. In fact he
had no change of gears and needed none. He never "hit it up" on the
smooth places or burned out his tires on the rough ones, and was
therefore always to be found in perfect repair. He was a good hill
climber and had a way of arriving at his destination no matter how
difficult the going. When others passed him he let them go, and
plodded on after them with solemn assurance, his gait so leisurely that
rapid travelers had the habit of regarding his conservatism with
undisguised contempt. And yet his perseverance, though inconspicuous,
was singularly effective. He had won his way into the sanctorum of a
big corporation and his advice, though never brilliant, was always sane
and peculiarly reliable. He did not mind rebuffs and was so
indifferent to indignities that people had ceased to offer them.
Socially he could always be trusted to do the usual thing in the usual
way and was therefore always much in demand by hostesses who required
conventional limitations. In a word he was "the excellent Trevelyan."
and the adjective fitted him as snugly as it did the well-known
comestible with which it had come to be so comfortably and freely
associated. His excellence lay largely in the fact that he did not
excel. He was content with his subordinate capacity, wise in his
confidence that all things would come to him in the end, if he only
waited long enough.
The same rules which he found so successful in business he now applied
to his affair of the heart, and plodded off in the wake of the fast
flying Hermia, imperturbable and undismayed. His flowers had been sent
to her with the regularity of the clock, his visits carefully timed,
and his proposals renewed with a well-bred ardor. He had waited
patiently through Hermia's short and sportive attachment for "Reggie"
Armistead, and when their "trial" engagement reached its tempestuous
conclusion, had stepped softly into the breach, rosy with hope and a
definite sense that his time had come. Hermia liked him--had liked him
for years. She had gotten used to him as one does to a familiar chair
or an article of diet. He was a habit with her like her bedroom
slippers or her afternoon tea. He was comfortable, always safe and
quite sane, which she was not, and she accepted him in the guise of
counselor and friend with the same cheerful tolerance that she gave to
her Aunt Harriet Westfield or to Mr. Winthrop of the Pilgrim Trust
Company.
When Hermia departed suddenly for Europe, her sportive idyl so suddenly
shattered, Mr. Morehouse followed her in the next steamer. She had
given him no definite encouragement, it was true, and yet he found
reasons to hope that the time was at hand when she must make some
definite decision. In Europe her brief disappearance from the scene of
her usual activities had mystified him and her return to her hotel,
shabby and uncommunicative, had aroused a chagrin and an anxiety quite
unusual to him; but he had sat and waited her pleasure, survived her
turbulent moods and had found his patience at last rewarded by her
silent acquiescence in his presence, and by an invitation to accompany
her to Switzerland, where she was to join her Aunt Julia and the
children.
From the vantage point of his office window down town, where he now sat
and viewed the bleak perspective of the city, his memories of the
summer with Hermia seemed a strange compound of brief blisses and more
enduring pangs. They had been much seen together and the announcement
of their engagement which had appeared in the newspapers had not been
surprising. Aunt Julia had favored his suit and Mrs. Westfield had
given him to understand that it was time Hermia married. But the fact
remained that Hermia had not accepted him. His insistence had always
provoked and still provoked one of two moods--either resentment or
mockery. She either dismissed him in a dudgeon or cajoled him with
elusive banter. Why was he so impatient? There was plenty of time?
Was he sure that he wanted to marry her? What did her really know
about her heart of hearts? Perhaps, if he knew her better he might not
want to marry her. He pleaded in patient calm. The world, it seemed,
thought them engaged. Why shouldn't _he_ be permitted to think so.
She only laughed at him and her heart of hearts had come to be the most
profound enigma that it had ever been his fortune to study. So the
prize, which he had thought most surely his own, still hung reluctantly
upon the lip of the horn of plenty. It would not fall, and all the
traditions of his experience forbade that he should jostle it. And so
he only watched with patient eyes and a physical restraint which could
only be described as "excellent."
What did she mean by saying that if he knew her better he might not
want to marry her? Vague doubts assailed him. Did he, after all, know
her? What was this chapter of her life of which he knew nothing and to
which she had so frequently alluded? Was it something which had
happened to her in America? Or had it something to do with her
disappearance last summer from Paris, after which she had returned
sober and intolerant? He gave it up. He was always giving her up and
then putting his doubts of her in his pocket with his neat
handkerchief, plodding sedulously as before. He must wait. Everything
that he had got in life had come from waiting and Hermia, his
philosophy told him, must be no exception to the rule.
The winter drew on toward spring. Lent arrived, and society, quite
bored and thoroughly exhausted, halted in the mad round of the
"one-step" and turned to calmer delights. Country places in adjacent
counties were opened and guests flitted from one house to the other in
a continuous round of visits.
Mrs. Berkeley Hammond's invitations, whether to the big house near the
Park or to Rood's Knoll, her place in the country, were much in demand.
The Hammonds had unlimited means, the social instinct, worthy family
traditions, and a talent for entertainment, a combination of qualities
and circumstances which explained the importance of this family in the
social life of the city. The mantle of an older leader who had passed
had fallen comfortably on Mrs. Hammond's capacious shoulders and she
wore it with a familiar grace which gave the impression that it had
always been there. Conservative, the more radical called her, and
radical, the conservative; but her taste and her _chef_ were both above
reproach, and her dinners, whether large or small, had the distinction
which only comes of a rare order of tact and discrimination. Nor were
her hospitalities confined to the entertainment of the indigenous.
Visitors to New York, foreign celebrities, literary, artistic or
political, found within her doors a welcome and a company exactly
suited to their social requirements. She liked young people, too, and
contrived to let them know it, to the end that her dances, while
formal, were gay rather than "stodgy," juvenescent rather than
patriarchal.
The house at Rood's Knoll was a huge affair, of brick and timbered
plaster, set in the midst of its thousand acres of woodland in the
heart of the hills. Lent found it full of people and its gayety was
reflected in other houses of the neighborhood whose owners, like the
Hammonds, kept open house. There was much to do. March went out like
a lion and the snow which kept the more timid indoors at the cards made
wonderful coasting and sledding, of which latter these wearied children
of fortune were not slow to take advantage. The ponds were frozen,
too, and skating was added to the sum of their rural delights.
Hermia Challoner, who was visiting Caroline Anstell, joined feverishly
in these pursuits, glad of the opportunity they afforded her of relief
from her personal problems. There were some of her intimates here in
the neighborhood, but she found greater security in the society of an
older set of whom she had seen little in town and in the pleasure of
picking up the loose ends of these acquaintanceships she managed to
forget, at least temporarily, her sword of Damocles. Olga Tcherny was
one of Mrs. Berkeley Hammond's house guests, but she had not been in
evidence on either of the occasions when Hermia had called. There was
some excitement over an evening which Mrs. Hammond was planning to take
place in the country during the latter days of Lent. The invitations
were noncommittal and merely mentioned the date and hour, but it was
understood that "everyone" was to be there, and that an entertainment a
little out of the ordinary was to be provided.
It was, therefore, with a pleasurable anticipation that Hermia got down
from the Anstell's machine on the appointed evening, and followed her
party into the great house. The rooms were comfortably filled, but not
crowded, and it seemed that the women had done their best to add their
share to the merely decorative requirements of the occasion. The
ball-room lights shimmered softly on the rich tissues of their
costumes, and caught in the facets of the jewels on their bared
shoulders. Society was at its best, upon its good behavior, patiently
eking out the few short days that remained to it of the penitential
season. Hermia managed to elude the watchful Trevelyan and entered the
ball-room with Beatrice Coddington and Caroline Anstell. Just inside
she found herself face to face with the Countess Tcherny. She would
have passed on, but Olga was not to be denied.
"So glad to see you, Hermia, dear," she purred, her eyes lighting.
"It's really dreadfully unlucky how seldom we've met this winter.
You're a little thinner, aren't you? But it becomes you awfully."
"Thanks," said Hermia. "I'm quite well."
"I hope you'll like the play, you know I--" and she whispered. "Nobody
knows--_I_ wrote it."
"Oh, really," Hermia smiled coolly. "I hope it's quite moral."
"Oh, you must judge for yourself," said Olga, and disappeared.
The men, having searched the premises vainly for the bridge tables,
resigned themselves to the inevitable and drifted by twos and threes
into the ball-room, where they melted into the gay company which was
not seated, or stood along the back and side walls, making a somber
background for the splendid plumage of their dinner-partners.
"_Tableaux-vivants_, for a dollar!" said Archie Westcott in bored
desperation.
"Oh, rot!" blurted out Crosby Downs in contempt. "What's the use?
They'll be havin' Mrs. Jarley's waxworks next--"
"Or the 'Dream of Fair Women'--"
"Or charades. Not a card in sight--or a cigar! Rotten taste--_I'd_
call it."
The music of the orchestra silenced these protests and a ripple of
expectation passed over the audience as the curtain rose, disclosing a
sylvan glade and a startled nymph in meager draperies hiding from a
faun. The music trembled for a moment and then, as the nymph was
discovered, broke into wild concords through which the violins sang
tunefully as the chase began. It was not for some moments that the
audience awoke to the fact that these must be the Austrian dancers
whose visit to New York had been so widely heralded. Captured at last,
the nymph was submissive, and the dance which followed revealed
artistry of an order with which most of the spectators were unfamiliar.
Even Crosby Downs ceased to grumble and wedged himself down the side
wall where he could have a better view. The dance ended amid applause
and the audience now really aroused from its lethargy eagerly awaited
the next rise of the curtain.
The first part of the program, it seemed, was to be a vaudeville. A
famous tenor sang folk songs of sunny Italy; two French pantomimists
did a graceful and amusing _Pierrot_ and _Pierrette_; a comedian did a
black-face monologue; and the first part of the program concluded with
the performances of a young violinist, the son of a Russian tobacconist
down town, whom Mrs. Berkeley Hammond had "discovered" and was now
sending to Europe to complete his musical education. A budding genius,
was the verdict, almost ready to blossom. The brief period of disquiet
which had followed Hermia's meeting with Olga, had been forgotten in
her enjoyment of the performance and in the gay chatter of her
companions and of her neighbors back and front. When the curtain had
fallen upon the violinist, there was a rustle of programs.
"'The Lady Orchestra,' some on back of her read aloud. 'Comedy with a
Sting--' What's coming now? What's a 'Lady Orchestra'? Does anyone
know?"
"A 'Lady Orchestra,' my dear Phyllis," said Reggie Armistead, "is an
orchestra lady."
"An orchestra lady! I wonder what she plays--"
"The devil probably--he's your most familiar instrument."
"Reggie! I'm surprised at you. You know--"
The remainder of Miss Van Vorst's speech was lost to Hermia, who sat
staring speechless at the stage curtain, her body suddenly ice-cold,
all its blood throbbing in her temples. "The Lady Orchestra!" The
words had fallen so lightly that their significance had dawned upon her
slowly. This play--this "comedy with a sting" was about
_her_--Hermia--and John Markham. Olga had written it, and was even now
watching her face for some sign of weakness. Olga, De Folligny--and
how many others? Terror gripped her--blind terror, every instinct
urging flight. But this, she knew, was impossible. She stared hard at
the red curtain, and swallowed nervously, sure now that, whatever the
play revealed, she must sit until its end, giving no sign of the tumult
that raged within her. The eyes of the audience burned into the back
of her head, and she seemed to read a knowledge of her secret in every
careless glance thrown in her direction. This was a vengeance worth of
Olga--the refinement of cruelty.
"What is it, Hermia," she heard Caroline Anstell whispering. "Are you
ill, dear?"
"Oh, no, not at all. Why do you ask?" coolly.
"I thought you looked a little tired."
"I--I think it's the heat," said Hermia. "Sh--Carrie, there goes the
curtain."
If Hermia had been startled a moment ago, she now learned that she
would have need of all her courage. The curtain revealed the
market-place of a French town on a fête day. To the left a row
of penny shows, a "man hedgehog," an "_homme sauvage_" and an Albino
lady who told fortunes; to the right a platform backed by a canvas
wall, surmounted by a sign in huge letters "Théâtre Tony
Ricardo" flanked by rudely painted representations of the acts which
were to be seen within. The setting was admirable and brought forth
immediate applause form the audience, under which Hermia hid her gasp
of dismay. There were even pictures like those which Philidor had
painted, of Cleofonte breaking chains and of the child Stella flying
in mid-air, and at one side the legend "Artistide Bruant, painter of
portraits at two francs fifty--soldiers ten sous." Sure now of the
scene which was to follow, but outwardly quite composed, Hermia
listened carelessly to the dialogue, saw the acrobat appear, and the
"Lady Orchestra," who was the guilty heroine of the piece, take her
place upon the platform beside him. Here the resemblance to reality
ceased, for the heroine was dark and _Aristide_ blonde and beardless,
and yet this very discrimination on Olga's part seemed to point more
definitely to Hermia even than if the characterization had been
truthfully followed. The actors were professionals who had been well
drilled in their parts and the plot developed quickly in the dialogue
between _Madeleine_, the erring wife, and _Aristide_, the recreant
husband, who had fled from fashionable Paris, met upon the road and
joined this troupe of Caravaners that they might taste life together
in rural simplicity and security. The dialogue was clever, if
_décadent_, the situations amusing, the action rapid, the first
act ending with the appearance of the irate wife of _Aristide_, and
the disappearance of the guilty couple, just in time to avoid
discovery.
During the _entr'acte_, though the restless guests moved about, Hermia
sat rooted to her chair, fascinated with horror. Her body seemed
nerveless and she feared that if she rose her limbs would not support
her, or, if they did support her, she must fly like a mad thing from
the house. And so she sat, a fixed smile frozen on her lips, greeting
those who approached her. Beatrice Coddington left her seat, and
Trevvy Morehouse made haste to fill it. He had never seemed so welcome
to Hermia as at the present moment, and his patient mien and quiet
commonplaces did much to restore her composure; so that when the bell
rang for the curtain of the second act, she was laughing with a brave
show of enjoyment at Reggie and Phyllis, who seemed at the point of
severing their amatory relations. Hermia was prepared for anything
now. If her breach of conventions had found her out, there was no one,
not even Olga, who would look at her and say that she was showing the
white feather.
She could see the play to its end now, for from Reggie's program she
had learned that the setting for the second act was the interior of a
shooting lodge in the forest, and when the curtain rose she was not
surprised at the setting of the stage, which represented, as accurately
as possible, the house of the Comte de Cahors, in the forest of
Écouves. The approach of the injured wife, discovered in time by the
refugees through the half-opened shutter, gives _Aristide_ time to help
the fictitious orchestra lady up a stair to the garret, where she is in
concealment during the dramatic interview between husband and wife,
which ends in the woman seizing a loaded rifle with the intention of
killing both herself and her husband. In the struggle which ensues for
the possession of the weapon, the gun is discharged, there is a cry
overhead and the figure of _Madeleine_ is seen to rise, opening the
trap-door, and then to fall the length of the stairs, at the feet of
the woman who has been wronged.
The scene was admirably done and carried the audience to its conclusion
in breathless silence. The lights of the ball-room, fortunately
lowered, had hidden the pallor of Hermia's face but she realized, when
they suddenly blazed, that Trevvy Morehouse was looking at her
curiously, that her fingers were ice-cold and that, when she spoke a
word or two in reply to his anxious query, her voice was strangely
unfamiliar. As the applause ceased, there was a general movement
toward the supper-room. Hermia rose stiffly and moved as in a dream.
Was it her own conscience that told her that Carol Gouverneur was
looking at her strangely? Or that there was meaning in the glance and
laughter of Mrs. Renshaw and Archie Westcott as she passed them? She
tried to smile carelessly, but her muscles would not obey her. Would
she never reach the door? People stopped and spoke but she only nodded
and passed on, intent upon the shadows of the hallway, where the lights
glowed dimly and the gaze of these people would no longer burn past her
barriers, searching out the innermost recesses of her heart, which they
read according to the hideous lie which Olga had told. A comedy with a
sting, she had called it, and the sting meant for Hermia, had poisoned
the air with its venom. She leaned heavily on Trevvy's arm but she did
not hear what he was saying; and, as they passed the door into the
hall, two men, neither of whom she knew, followed her pale face with
their glances. Was it her tortured imagination that made her hear one
of them say to the other after she had passed, "That's the girl--?"
What girl? Not herself? She gasped a question to Trevvy. He smiled
gaily.
"Yes--they were pointing you out. Do you wonder that I'm so proud?"
Hermia stopped and faced him. She learned in that moment that the
thing he had dreamed was impossible.
"Please order Mrs. Anstell's machine for me," she said quickly. "I'm
going at once."
"Are you ill? Shall I go with you?"
"No--I want to go alone--alone--" she gasped.
Vaguely troubled, he followed her anxiously to the door of the
dressing-room, but did her bidding.