Grace Nevil had quite recovered her equanimity when the indispensable
Mr. Somers, handsome, well-bred, and self-restrained, approached her
later in the crowded drawing-room. Blended with his subdued personal
admiration was a certain ostentation of respect--as of a tribute to
a distinguished guest--that struck her. “I am to have the pleasure of
taking you in, Miss Nevil,” he said. “It's my one compensation for the
dreadful responsibility just thrust upon me. Our host has been suddenly
called away, and I am left to take his place.”
Miss Nevil was slightly startled. Nevertheless, she smiled graciously.
“From what I hear this is no new function of yours; that is, if there
really IS a Mr. Rushbrook. I am inclined to think him a myth.”
“You make me wish he were,” retorted Somers, gallantly; “but as I
couldn't reign at all, except in his stead, I shall look to you to lend
your rightful grace to my borrowed dignity.”
The more general announcement to the company was received with a few
perfidious regrets from the more polite, but with only amused surprise
by the majority. Indeed, many considered it “characteristic”--“so like
Bob Rushbrook,” and a few enthusiastic friends looked upon it as a
crowning and intentional stroke of humor. It remained, however, for the
gentleman from Siskyou to give the incident a subtlety that struck Miss
Nevil's fancy. “It reminds me,” he said in her hearing, “of ole Kernel
Frisbee, of Robertson County, one of the purlitest men I ever struck.
When he knew a feller was very dry, he'd jest set the decanter afore
him, and managed to be called outer the room on bus'ness. Now, Bob
Rushbrook's about as white a man as that. He's jest the feller, who,
knowing you and me might feel kinder restrained about indulging our
appetites afore him, kinder drops out easy, and leaves us alone.”
And she was impressed by an instinct that the speaker really felt the
delicacy he spoke of, and that it left no sense of inferiority behind.
The dinner, served in a large, brilliantly-lit saloon, that in floral
decoration and gilded columns suggested an ingenious blending of a
steamboat table d'hote and “harvest home,” was perfect in its cuisine,
even if somewhat extravagant in its proportions.
“I should be glad to receive the salary that Rushbrook pays his chef,
and still happier to know how to earn it as fairly,” said Somers to his
fair companion.
“But is his skill entirely appreciated here?” she asked.
“Perfectly,” responded Somers. “Our friend from Siskyou over there
appreciates that 'pate' which he cannot name as well as I do. Rushbrook
himself is the only exception, yet I fancy that even HIS simplicity and
regularity in feeding is as much a matter of business with him as
any defect in his earlier education. In his eyes, his chef's greatest
qualification is his promptness and fertility. Have you noticed that
ornament before you?” pointing to an elaborate confection. “It bears
your initials, you see. It was conceived and executed since you
arrived--rather, I should say, since it was known that you would honor
us with your company. The greatest difficulty encountered was to find
out what your initials were.”
“And I suppose,” mischievously added the young girl to her
acknowledgments, “that the same fertile mind which conceived the design
eventually provided the initials?”
“That is our secret,” responded Somers, with affected gravity.
The wines were of characteristic expensiveness, and provoked the same
general comment. Rushbrook seldom drank wine; Somers had selected
it. But the barbaric opulence of the entertainment culminated in the
Californian fruits, piled in pyramids on silver dishes, gorgeous and
unreal in their size and painted beauty, and the two Divas smiled over
a basket of grapes and peaches as outrageous in dimensions and glaring
color as any pasteboard banquet at which they had professionally
assisted. As the courses succeeded each other, under the exaltation of
wine, conversation became more general as regarded participation, but
more local and private as regarded the subject, until Miss Nevil could
no longer follow it. The interests of that one, the hopes of another,
the claims of a third, in affairs that were otherwise uninteresting,
were all discussed with singular youthfulness of trust that to her
alone seemed remarkable. Not that she lacked entertainment from the
conversation of her clever companion, whose confidences and criticisms
were very pleasant to her; but she had a gentlewoman's instinct that he
talked to her too much, and more than was consistent with his duties
as the general host. She looked around the table for her singular
acquaintance of an hour before, but she had not seen him since. She
would have spoken about him to Somers, but she had an instinctive
idea that the latter would be antipathetic, in spite of the stranger's
flattering commendation. So she found herself again following Somers's
cynical but good-humored description of the various guests, and, I
fear, seeing with his eyes, listening with his ears, and occasionally
participating in his superior attitude. The “fearful joy” she had found
in the novelty of the situation and the originality of the actors seemed
now quite right from this critical point of view. So she learned how the
guest with the long hair was an unknown painter, to whom Rushbrook had
given a commission for three hundred yards of painted canvas, to be cut
up and framed as occasion and space required, in Rushbrook's new
hotel in San Francisco; how the gray-bearded foreigner near him was an
accomplished bibliophile who was furnishing Mr. Rushbrook's library from
spoils of foreign collections, and had suffered unheard-of agonies from
the millionaire's insisting upon a handsome uniform binding that should
deprive certain precious but musty tomes of their crumbling, worm-eaten
coverings; how the very gentle, clerical-looking stranger, mildest of a
noisy, disputing crowd at the other table, was a notorious duelist and
dead shot; how the only gentleman at the table who retained a flannel
shirt and high boots was not a late-coming mountaineer, but a well-known
English baronet on his travels; how the man who told a somewhat florid
and emphatic anecdote was a popular Eastern clergyman; how the one
querulous, discontented face in a laughing group was the famous humorist
who had just convulsed it; and how a pale, handsome young fellow, who
ate and drank sparingly and disregarded the coquettish advances of the
prettiest Diva with the cold abstraction of a student, was a notorious
roue and gambler. But there was a sudden and unlooked-for change of
criticism and critic.
The festivity had reached that stage when the guests were more or less
accessible to emotion, and more or less touched by the astounding fact
that every one was enjoying himself. This phenomenon, which is apt to
burst into song or dance among other races, is constrained to voice
itself in an Anglo-Saxon gathering by some explanation, apology, or
moral--known as an after-dinner speech. Thus it was that the gentleman
from Siskyou, who had been from time to time casting glances at Somers
and his fair companion at the head of the table, now rose to his feet,
albeit unsteadily, pushed back his chair, and began:--
“'Pears to me, ladies and gentlemen, and feller pardners, that on
an occasion like this, suthin' oughter be said of the man who got it
up--whose money paid for it, and who ain't here to speak for himself,
except by deputy. Yet you all know that's Bob Rushbrook's style--he
ain't here, because he's full of some other plan or improvements--and
it's like him to start suthin' of this kind, give it its aim and
purpose, and then stand aside to let somebody else run it for him. There
ain't no man livin' ez hez, so to speak, more fast horses ready saddled
for riding, and more fast men ready spurred to ride 'em,--whether to win
his races or run his errands. There ain't no man livin' ez knows better
how to make other men's games his, or his game seem to be other men's.
And from Jack Somers smilin' over there, ez knows where to get the best
wine that Bob pays for, and knows how to run this yer show for Bob,
at Bob's expense--we're all contented. Ladies and gentlemen, we're all
contented. We stand, so to speak, on the cards he's dealt us. What may
be his little game, it ain't for us to say; but whatever it is, WE'RE IN
IT. Gentlemen and ladies, we'll drink Bob's health!”
There was a somewhat sensational pause, followed by good-natured
laughter and applause, in which Somers joined; yet not without a certain
constraint that did not escape the quick sympathy of the shocked and
unsmiling Miss Nevil. It was with a feeling of relief that she caught
the chaperoning eye of Mrs. Leyton, who was entreating her in the usual
mysterious signal to the other ladies to rise and follow her. When she
reached the drawing-room, a little behind the others, she was somewhat
surprised to observe that the stranger whom she had missed during the
evening was approaching her with Mrs. Leyton.
“Mr. Rushbrook returned sooner than he expected, but unfortunately,
as he always retires early, he has only time to say 'goodnight' to you
before he goes.”
For an instant Grace Nevil was more angry than disconcerted. Then came
the conviction that she was stupid not to have suspected the truth
before. Who else would that brusque stranger develop into but this rude
host? She bowed formally.
Mr. Rushbrook looked at her with the faintest smile on his handsome
mouth. “Well, Miss Nevil, I hope Jack Somers satisfied your curiosity?”
With a sudden recollection of the Siskyou gentleman's speech, and a
swift suspicion that in some way she had been made use of with the
others by this forceful-looking man before her, she answered pertly:--
“Yes; but there was a speech by a gentleman from Siskyou that struck me
as being nearer to the purpose.”
“That's so,--I heard it as I came in,” said Mr. Rushbrook, calmly. “I
don't know but you're right.”