His voice was low and not without a nasal drawl, but the baffling
thing about it was the entire absence of any added suggestion of
tone or emphasis. There were the bare words themselves and nothing
more--no hint as to whether he himself wished or didn't wish to discuss
it--approved or didn't approve of her intention.
"Yes, I do," she replied.
"Better sit down then."
The princess did sit down, folding her hands in her lap, drawing her
elbows to her side, and sitting very erect. She did not say to herself,
like Cleopatra: "Hath he seen majesty?" but some such thought was not
far from her.
For twenty years she had been acknowledged to be an important person,
and this had left its trace upon her manner. She knew it had.
"Are you very angry at this silly boy of mine?" she said.
Haines shook his head--that is to say, he wagged it twice from side to
side.
"Not at Charlotte, I hope?"
Another shake of the head.
The princess felt a little annoyed. "Then what in heaven's name do you
feel, if anything?" she said.
"I feel kinda bored," he answered; and as Lisa gave an exclamation that
expressed irritation and lack of comprehension he added, again without
any added color in his voice: "How did you expect me to feel?"
"Oh, either more or less," answered Lisa. "Either you should be furious
and shake Charlotte until her teeth rattled, and fling my boy into the
street, or else you should be wise enough to see it doesn't make the
least difference--and be human--and sensible--and--and--"
"--and give your son a job," said Haines quietly.
The princess was startled. She drew herself up still more. "I have not
asked you to give my son a job," she said.
He took his cigar out of his mouth, and she noticed that his strange
long pale hands were rather handsome.
"Look here," he said, "answer this honestly: Didn't you have some such
idea in your head when you decided to come here? Look at me."
She did look at him, at first rather expecting to look him down, and
then so much interested in what she saw--something intense and real and
fearless--that she forgot everything else--forgot everything except
that she was thirty-nine years old, and had lived a great deal in the
world and yet had not met very many real people, and now-- Then she
remembered that she must answer him.
"Oh, yes," she said; "I had it in mind."
"Well," said Haines, "that's what bores me." He began to walk up
and down the room, somewhat, Lisa thought, as if he were dictating
a letter. "Poor Charlotte! She's always making these wonderful
discoveries--and they always turn out the same way--they always
want something. You--why she's been talking about you--and writing
about you. You were the most noble, the most disinterested, the most
aristocratic-- She would hardly speak to me because I asked her why you
were making this long journey. For love of her society, she thought.
She thinks I'm a perfect bear, but, my God, how can a man sit round and
see his wife exploited by everyone she comes in contact with--from the
dealer who sells her fake antiques to the grandee who offers her fake
friendship?"
"I can't let you say that," said the princess, too much interested to
be as angry as she felt she ought to be. "I have never offered anyone
fake friendship."
"I didn't say you had."
"Pooh!" said she. "That's beneath you. You should at least be as
honest, as you ask other people to be."
This speech seemed to please him--to please him as a child might please
him. He came and sat down opposite to her, looked at her for a moment
and then smiled at her. His smile was sweet and intimate as a caress.
"Come," he said, "I believe you're all right."
"I am," she answered. "Even a little bit more than that."
He sat there smoking and frankly studying her. "And yet," he said after
a moment, "they're mostly not--you know--Charlotte's discoveries.
They're mostly about as wrong as they can be."
"And they kinda bore you?" said the princess, to whom the phrase seemed
amusing. He nodded, and she went on: "A good many things do, I imagine."
"Almost everything but my business. You don't," he added after a
second; and there was something so simple and imperial in his manner
that she did not think him insolent; in fact, to tell the truth, she
was flattered. "You might tell me something about yourself," he added.
The princess was too human not to be delighted to obey this suggestion,
and too well-bred to take an unfair advantage of it. She talked a long
time about herself, and then about the Haines Heating Corporations.
And then they talked about him. In fact they talked all the rest of the
night--as continuously as schoolgirls, as honestly as old friends, as
ecstatically as lovers; and yet, of course, they were not schoolgirls
or old friends, and even less lovers. They were two middle-aged people,
so real and so fastidious in their different ways that they had not
found many people whom they liked; and they had suddenly and utterly
unexpectedly found each other.
They were interrupted by the entrance of a housemaid with a broom and a
duster. She gave a smothered exclamation and withdrew. Haines looked at
his watch. It was half past seven.
He got up and pulled the curtains back. A pale clear pink-and-green
winter morning was just beginning to shine upon the park, glittering in
snow and ice.
"At home," said Lisa, "I should consider what we have just done as
rather irregular."
"In this country," he answered, "you can do anything if you have
sufficient integrity to do it."
"How can I tell whether I have or not?" she asked.
He smiled again. "I have enough for both," he answered. "Luckily or
unluckily"--and he sighed as he repeated it--"luckily or unluckily."
"Oh, luckily; luckily, of course," said Lisa, though there was just a
trace of annoyance in her voice that this was so clear. She held out
her hand.
"Good-by," she said.
He took her hand, and then from his great height he did something that
no one had ever done to the princess before--he patted her on the head.
"You're all right," he said, and sighed and turned away--as it were,
dismissing her.
She went upstairs to her own room--which seemed altered, as backgrounds
do alter with changes in ourselves. It was no longer a room in
Charlotte's house but in Haines'; and she was leaving it, leaving
it in a few hours. She did not debate that at all. She was going
with her son, but there was something that must be done before she
went--something that she must do for this new friend of hers whom she
would never, probably, see again.
She did not have much time to think it over, for when her breakfast
tray came in, as usual, at nine, Charlotte came with it--striking just
the note the princess hoped she wouldn't strike--apology.
"I suppose your son told you what happened last night. So silly. I'm so
ashamed."
"Ashamed?" said the princess, and she noted that her tone had something
of the neutrality of Haines' own. She had copied him.
"Ashamed of Dan," answered Charlotte. "That's so like him--not to
understand--just to take the crude view of it. I haven't seen him
since, but I know so well how he would take a thing like that. As
a matter of fact, I must tell you, Lisa--though I promised that I
wouldn't--Raimundo was asking my help. He wants to marry the little
Haines girl; he wants me to bring you round. He knows you hate
everything American--"
"I don't hate everything American," said the princess, and again her
voice sounded in her ears like Haines'.
"This girl, you know, is Dan's niece, and exactly like him. And now I'm
afraid that will do for her, as far as you're concerned. Of course you
must hate Dan--the idea of him--and if you saw him--well, you will see
him at dinner tonight."
The moment had come. The princess shook her head.
"No," she said, "I shan't be at dinner tonight."
Charlotte looked at her and then broke out into protest: "No, no, you
mustn't go. Let Raimundo go, if he must, but not you. Don't desert me,
Lisa, because I have the misfortune to be married to a man who does not
understand. Oh, to think that anything should have happened in my house
that has hurt your feelings! I shall never forgive Dan--never! But
don't go--for my sake, Lisa."
"It's for your sake I'm going, my dear."
"I don't understand."
"I know you don't, and it is going to be so difficult to explain."
The princess rose and, going to the looking-glass, stared at herself,
pushed back her hair from her forehead, and then turned suddenly
back to her friend. "I suppose I seem to you a terribly worn-out old
creature."
"My dear!" cried Charlotte. "You seem to me the most elegant, the most
mysterious, the most charming person I ever knew."
Lisa could not help smiling at this spontaneous outburst. "Then," she
said, "let me tell you that the most charming person you ever knew has
fallen in love with your husband." Charlotte's jaw literally dropped,
and the princess went on: "Yes, last night when Raimundo came and told
me what had happened, I went downstairs. I wanted to do what I could
to protect you from his thoughtlessness. I went down expecting to see
the kind of man you have painted your husband. Oh, Charlotte, what a
terrible goose you are!"
Even then Charlotte did not immediately understand. She continued to
stare. At last she said, "You mean you liked Dan?"
"I did much more than that. I thought him the most vital, the most
exciting, the most romantic figure I had ever seen."
"Dan?"
The princess nodded. "The power of the world in his hands--and so
alone. I said just now I had fallen in love with him. Well, I suppose
at my age one doesn't fall in love, even if one talks to a man all
night--"
"You and he talked all night?"
"All night long--all night long."
Charlotte looked quickly at her friend, blinked her eyes, looked away
and looked back again. It was not for nothing that her black eyebrows
almost met--a sign, the physiognomists tell us, of a jealous nature.
The whole process of her thought was on her face. She had never been
jealous of her husband in all her life before--but then, she had never
before brought him face to face with perfection. She summed it up in
her first sentence.
"Dan is no fool," she said. "He felt as you did?"
The princess smiled. "Ah, Charlotte!" she said. "An Italian woman would
not have asked that. You must find that out for yourself."
There was a short silence, and then Charlotte got up and walked toward
the door.
It was evident that she was going to find out at once. But the princess
had one more salutary blow for her. She was standing now with her elbow
on the mantelpiece and her eyes fixed on the little spare-room picture,
and just as Charlotte reached the door Lisa spoke.
"Oh!" she said. "One other thing. Don't despise this little picture
that your husband bought. It's the best thing you have."
This was a little too much. "Not better than my Guardis," Charlotte
wailed, for she would never think of disputing the princess' judgment.
"The Guardis are like you, Charlotte," said the princess; "they
are excellent copies. But this little picture is original--it's
American--it's the real thing."