"Wisdom may be where you are, dear and lost one." So wrote Robert
Osterhout, seated in Mona Fentriss's sun-impregnated room, which
seemed still to be fragrant of her personality. "Certainly it is not
here. All of us had the sorriest misgivings over Dee's marriage, and
behold, it has turned out better than most matrimonial arrangements of
this ill-assorted world. They have been married for nearly six months
and all goes as smooth as machinery. One could not say that Dee is
rapturous; but she is not a rapturous person. She seems to run evenly
in double harness with James and makes an admirable mistress for his
establishment. I wish I could really like James. If he makes Dee happy
I shall have to like him. But he is so infernally self-content. And
equally content with Dee, evidently considering her a part and portion
of himself. Absorptive--that is what Jameson James is.
"I should have been equally skeptical of Pat's management of Holiday
Knoll. Another instance of the fallibility of human judgments, for she
runs the place excellently, as even Ralph, who prophesied a hurrah's
nest from which he would have to take refuge at the club, now admits. I
dare say the bills are something to shudder at.
"Connie also has a new occupation: another baby coming. At first
she was querulous; now she is quite taken up with the idea. And the
extraordinary Pat has seized upon this to bring Connie and Fred
together again. Fred is cutting down on the bottle and showing interest
in business. Connie has quit her nonsense with Emslie Selfridge; it
was only a make-shift, stop-gap sort of flirtation, anyway; the
marriage may yet be a success. If it is, credit to Pat. But imagine
the Bambina becoming the managing director of the family, the schemer
for happiness, the adjuster of difficulties. She bosses Ralph within
an inch of his life. All of this does not seem to interfere with her
raids upon the male portion of the community, who clutter up the place
largely.
"Cary Scott has quit us. Why, I do not know. Can it be that he was
seriously interested in Dee? There is no doubt of her strong liking for
him, but I would have sworn that it was quite unsentimental. Possibly
his feeling was deeper; the abrupt cure of his infatuation for Connie
has never been clear to me. In any case, I miss him. He has brains and
charm and, I think, character. Atmosphere, too, which the men of our
lot lack. I've had a letter or two from him from California. Through
a friend who lives in Paris I have heard about his marriage, too. His
wife is of the leech type, a handsome, heartless, useless, shrewd
beast who hates him because he revolted against her taking everything
and giving nothing, and who will never, out of sheer spite, give him
his divorce. They say he has amused himself widely; yet he retains a
reputation for decency even in the more rigid circles of the foreign
community there.
"That queer little mystery of Pat's mind-reading of which I wrote
you, remains unsolved. I have tried to catch her napping on it; made
careless mention of having talked with her before about marrying a
man of thirty. But she is not to be trapped; maintains an obstinate
reserve. It is too much for me. She is developing fast, but into what
I cannot say. Conscious, conquering womanhood, I should say; yet
she is still so much the simple, willful child with it all. What I
fear for her is the difficulty of adjustment to life when she meets
with the severer problems. She is so uneven. Too much background and
no foreground; the background of tradition, habit, breeding, _les
convenances_ (which she recklessly overrides yet always with a sense of
what they imply), the divine right of being what she is, a Fentriss,
and the lack of what should fill in, training, achievement, discipline,
purpose, any real underlying interest in life. Cary Scott was, I
believe, giving her something along that line; the more reason for
regretting his defection.... Pat declares that she will keep a vacant
place for him at the family dinner party which she is projecting for
next week."
The dinner party was designed by Pat, to convince the Fentrisses,
one and all, of her competence to run the house. "Mid-Victorian
stuff," Fred Browning called it, but he announced himself as for it,
as did also Dee James, while her husband was graciously acquiescent.
Ralph Fentriss was humorously obedient to any whim of his youngest
daughter's, while Connie was delighted with the idea. Osterhout was of
course included, as was Linda Fentriss, bird of passage between winter
sports in the Adirondacks and a yachting trip in Florida waters.
The gastronomic part of the dinner was a marked success, aided by
a contribution of three bottles of champagne from the private and
dwindling cellar of the head of the family. He summed up the verdict
after his second glass in a toast proposed and responded to by himself:
"We Fentrisses! We're a damned sight better company for ourselves than
most of the people we associate with."
To which satisfying sentiment there was emphatic response, participated
in by Robert Osterhout. It struck him, however, that if there were any
exception on this occasion, it was the second daughter, who alternated
between long silences and fits of febrile gaiety quite unlike her usual
insouciant good humour. He thought that he caught a look of relief on
her face when the men retired to the loggia with their cigars, since
the new household tyrant had ruled against anything but cigarettes in
the other parts of the house. The women took possession of the library
and Pat established herself beside Dee, who sat on the lounge near the
half-open door leading into the loggia.
"Who's the angel-faced athlete I saw you skating with last Saturday,
Mary Delia Fentriss James?" was Pat's opening remark.
"Saturday? Where were you?"
"On the bank in my runabout. You were some conspicuous pair! He's as
good as you are, almost."
"Were we so good?" said Dee, coolly.
"Meaning that you don't choose to tell."
"Wrong guess. His name is Wollaston."
"Not in my Social Register."
"A few people manage to exist without being."
"Don't be catty, pettah!"
"Don't be an imbecile, baba!"
"All right. I'm off'n him as a subject for airy persiflage. But I will
say that he's a wonderful looking bird--for a skating instructor."
Dee laughed. "You didn't expect to get a rise out of me that way,
did you?" But there was a harsh quality in her mirth which made Pat
thoughtful.
"When are you going South?" she asked.
"I don't want to go till the first. T. Jameson wants to go next week.
We'll probably go next week."
"Like that!" commented Pat. "But why be bitter about a jaunt to the
Sunny? I wish it was me.... Give ear: what's old Bobs growling about?"
The heavy voice of Dr. Osterhout penetrated to them. "All very well for
the club. But I wouldn't have the swine in my house."
To which Ralph Fentriss's musical and tolerant tones replied: "Oh, you
can't judge a man solely on the basis of his business, can you, now?"
"If his business is that of a panderer, I can."
"Rough talk," murmured Pat to Dee. "Who's the accused?"
"Because Peter Waddington's newspaper," put in Browning, "has violated
some technical rule of the medical profession----"
"Technical nothing! It isn't technicality. It's ordinary law and order
and decency. Look at that column. Abortionists, every one of 'em."
"Oh, myo-my!" whispered Pat, vastly enjoying this. "They're waxing
wroth."
"A very useful contribution to the social system," said Jameson James
in his precise enunciation, with a lift obviously intended to be
humorous.
"I always understood that those fellows didn't deliver the goods,"
remarked Fred Browning carelessly.
"Whether they do or not," retorted Osterhout, "has nothing to do with
the question. That thing"--he snapped his finger against the offending
print--"is an invitation to commit murder. But aside from that feature,
if you men think that sort of stuff is decent to have lying around a
house where there is a young girl----"
"Oh, Pat would never think of looking at it," said her father easily.
"If she did she wouldn't know what it meant. It's veiled."
"I wouldn't be too sure of that," remarked Browning. "Pat's a wise
kid. Not much gets past her, nor any of the girls of her age for that
matter."
"You make me sick, all of you," vociferated Osterhout. "You wouldn't
talk about these things before young girls, yet you'd admit the stuff
in this form. I'll see that this specimen doesn't befoul anyone's
eyes." There was the rustle of a newspaper being violently crumpled.
"Where's the damned waste-basket?"
"Chuck it in the wood-box and forget it. Have a drink," advised
Browning.
Her quick and prurient curiosity stimulated, Pat made instant
resolution to retrieve that newspaper and see for herself later how
they did these things. Presently the men came in and joined the group
in the library. Pat sang for them to her father's accompaniment, also
to his delighted surprise, for, with his natural taste he appreciated
the genuine quality of the voice. Then there was poker, family limit,
meaning fifty cents. At midnight Dee called for a round of roodles,
declaring that she was tired out. She had previously announced her
intention of spending the night at the Knoll, as James was taking an
early morning train to attend a sale at which he expected to pick up
some polo ponies.
Pat, going upstairs last, as befitted the châtelaine, heard Dee moving
about in the bathroom, and went to her own room to wait. When all was
quiet she slipped on a dressing gown and tiptoed downstairs to rifle
the wood-box of its denounced print. There was a single light on in the
loggia. Astonished, Pat crept to a viewpoint and peeped in.
Dee, with an intent and haunted face, was smoothing out the newspaper
upon her knee.