“You don’t mind if I go out to tea on Wednesday, do you?” Frances asked
Miss Eppendorfer the next morning.
“Not a bit!” said she, cheerfully. “I like to see you enjoy yourself
like a human being. Is it your English friend?”
“Yes. The only trouble is, I haven’t a thing fit to wear, and it’s at a
hotel,” she said. “Couldn’t you come down town with me and help me pick
out something?”
Miss Eppendorfer was only too pleased; it was one of her good days and
she was cheerful and energetic. She led Frances from shop to shop,
imperiously rejecting every suggestion.
“I know what suits you,” she insisted, “I’m a wonderful judge of value,
too. You leave it all to me.”
At last she was pleased by a grey broadcloth suit.
“Oh, yes!” cried Frankie, ironically. “A hundred and fifty dollars is
just what I always pay!”
“I’m going to get it for you.”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t!” she protested, shocked.
“You must. To make up for all I said that night,” whispered the
authoress. “Be generous, Frances! Don’t be petty!”
She allowed herself to be persuaded, accepted the suit and with it a new
hat and blouse. She felt guilty and ashamed and yet delighted. She was
so very anxious to make a favourable impression on this brother Horace.
She started off, very nervous and still more ashamed. The whole exploit
seemed wrong, meeting the man without his wife, and wearing clothes she
could never have bought for herself.... It was common.
“Cheap,” she reflected.
But Horace would have made a supper-club respectable. They were waiting
in the corridor; she saw _her_ Mr. Naylor at once though he didn’t see
her; slender and drooping, quietly conscious of his impeccable British
elegance, he was watching the wrong door. Near him was a heavy,
bull-necked, red-faced man with a black moustache and melancholy,
bilious eyes, who smoked a big cigar and stared nowhere. This was
Horace.
He surprised Frances by his lack of everything that pleased her in his
brother. He was altogether the merchant, not a hint of the
man-of-the-world. He shook hands with her and smiled, but it was a sad,
dull smile. He was distrait, and couldn’t conceal it.
“Well,” he said, with a sigh, “Lead the way, Lionel, my boy!”
They entered an engaging little tea-room with shaded lamps and sofas.
Lionel took charge of everything, chose a table, and ordered the
cocktails, but the management of the conversation was evidently beyond
him. There was a long and awkward silence, while the drinks were coming.
No one looked at either of the others.
It was Horace who first revived, after two cocktails.
“Well,” he observed again, “He’s a handful. You’ll have to keep an eye
on him, _I_ can tell you.”
Frances was startled; was he talking to her?... She looked up and caught
his gaze, melancholy and kindly, fixed on her.
“You’ll have all you can manage, with _him_,” he continued.
She was alarmed and confused. It wasn’t possible that he thought.... And
yet, very evidently, he did think so, for he went on, with a sort of
gloomy archness:
“I hope he won’t be too much for you.”
She was anxious to refute the suggestion of any responsibility for
Lionel, to tell this brother, subtly and politely, but unmistakably,
that he misread the situation. But she could not, on the spur of the
moment, think of anything that would do.
“I don’t really know Mr. Naylor very well,” she attempted.
Horace smiled.
“Plenty of time!” he said.
And this time his glance wandered to his brother, and was curiously
altered, rested upon that futile young face with limitless fidelity and
affection----
“Yes,” he said again, fatuously, “You’ll have your hands full.”
Frances had a horrible feeling of being caught in a net.
“I’m afraid I can’t undertake such a responsibility,” she said, with a
sickly smile.
Horace smiled indulgently at her. After a third cocktail, he was
becoming a little garrulous on the subject of his brother; partly
because he thought it would interest Frankie and partly because it was
his great topic anyway. His pride in his brother was rather surprising
to Frankie; she couldn’t know, of course, from what a stodgy, obscure
family this charming irresponsibility had sprung, couldn’t imagine how
audacious his extravagances appeared, how remarkable his social
progress; in fine, she couldn’t see him as a Naylor.
It was not until much later that she divined something of the relations
between these two. Sons of a well-to-do manufacturer, they had both
“received advantages” in the way of education and so forth, but while
Horace remained immutably the son of a wealthy manufacturer who had had
“advantages,” Lionel in some mysterious way, not unusual in this world,
had turned out to be aristocratic, elegant, fashionable. His brother
took a naïve pride in this; he admired Lionel as he did royalty, not
very useful, but immensely valuable in his place. He never urged him to
go into business; he was quite satisfied that he should go his own
dazzling way. For Horace was not the classic business man of stage and
story, who despises and berates the idler; he was something much newer,
the money-maker who is apologetic and secretly bewildered; who feels
called upon to justify his activity. Lionel was what he would have liked
to be, only that he knew it to be impossible. He acknowledged that they
were of different clay.
He told Frankie how Lionel had no idea of time, and was always late.
How he kept the most exclusive people waiting for him and never had a
proper excuse.
How he spent preposterous sums on handkerchiefs, his hobby.
How altogether idle and rude and popular he had been “at home.”
In spite of her common-sense, Frankie began to feel that the attentions
of such a man were something to boast of, to treasure. He wasn’t rude to
her, ever.
After a fourth cocktail and a minute sardine sandwich, Horace said he
was obliged to go.
“Au revoir!” he said to Frankie, with a very bad accent. “If this boy
gives you any trouble, you let me know, eh?”
He clasped her hand in his warm, moist one with genuine good-will,
slapped Lionel on the shoulder, and went out, edging his way clumsily
among the little low tables.
Lionel gave a sigh of comfort, and leaned across the table.
“May I have another cup?” he asked.
Frances was looking at him sternly.
“Mr. Naylor!” she said, “You have given your brother a false
impression.”
He was startled.
“I ... so it seems,” he said, weakly, “I ... he _does_ seem....”
“It isn’t fair,” she went on, “I’m surprised at you! What could _I_ do?
Or say? Mr. Naylor, really, it was _not_ right of you!”
“I know it.... But I give you my word I never exactly said--anything. I
dare say I was--oh, enthusiastic.... I suppose he drew his own
conclusions.”
He went on, after a pause:
“I did talk a lot about you.... You see----”
He tapped his cigarette nervously on his plate.
“I say!” he said. “Couldn’t it be true, you know?”
She understood him well enough, and a bright colour surged into her
face.
“What?” she asked, disingenuously.
“I mean--what Horace thinks.... I mean--do you think you _could_----”
She faltered.
“I don’t know.... It’s been such a short time----”
“You know that doesn’t matter. Time! Why, the first minute I saw you,
there in that beastly school, I knew I was done for. You looked so
lovely and so dignified. Such a lady. Just the sort of girl I’d always
thought about. My lovely girl! My dear, beautiful girl!”
For some reason her eyes filled with tears. His voice touched her so,
moved her so profoundly. She couldn’t pretend, couldn’t hesitate.
Because _she_ knew, too, perfectly well. She looked up at him with a
trembling smile.
“It’s silly!” she said. “We don’t know each other.”
“I know _you_, darling, as well as if I’d seen you every day for a
year.”
“But, really, we must be sensible,” she said, seriously. “We’ll have to
wait--not commit ourselves to anything definite. We’ll be friends----”
“Not I! I _want_ to commit myself as much as possible. Won’t you commit
yourself just a little bit, darling girl? Just go so far as to say you
_like_ me?”
“You know I like you,” she said, smiling.
He could laugh now, tease her; he knew she was won.
They left the tea-room and began to stroll down Fifth Avenue. And at
every crossing he took her arm and their eyes met, and a ridiculous and
passionate happiness filled them both.
“_My_ girl!” he whispered.
Frances was almost ashamed of being so happy; she was anxious to appear
practical and reasonable. She said she had shopping to do, and that
Lionel might come with her, if he liked. He insisted upon augmenting her
little purchases, choosing very expensive things, and things he had
realised she wanted. In spite of her independence, all this was
delightful to her; she hesitated, refused, accepted....
A shop girl looked after them, was amused at their long, long glances
and their unwarranted smiles: she thought them a well-matched couple,
both so tall and so nice-looking and so well-bred. And she was very
right; they were well-matched, by God Himself, Who had filled Lionel’s
need of a strong and sober and honest lover, who had given to Frankie
the gay and careless companion her heart required, the clinging and
exigent affection she could so well support. Lionel had the power to
soften the touch of austerity latent in her, the hint of priggishness;
she had the nobility and the resoluteness which he needed as an example,
a stimulus to his plastic soul. They had, in each other’s company, a
sense of absolute completeness and satisfaction; they knew that this
love was altogether _right_.
Frances inspected the new pocketbook he had bought her, so unnecessarily
and unsuitably costly, and then again at Lionel’s happy face. And she
would have liked to cry out what she and all women know enough to
conceal:
“Oh, my love, I want to protect you, to care for you, to shield your raw
pride, forever and ever to stand between you and the world!”
And that mustn’t be said. She knew she must call his weakness strength,
or she would destroy him. No man must ever see his true self mirrored in
a woman’s eyes. He could not endure it.