ALLESTREE lived alone with his widowed mother in a roomy, old-fashioned
mansion in one of the older residential sections, which stand now like
decadent environs of the more brilliant quarters where the millionaire
and the multi-millionaire erect their palaces. But these changes, in
matters of fashion and display, did not trouble the serene bosom of
old Mrs. Allestree, who felt that she held her place in the world by
the inalienable rights of birth, blood, and long established family
position, for, happily, she had as yet no notion of the shadowy
nature of such claims in the event of financial disaster, which is
as impersonal as the deluge. She was contentedly aware that her
old-fashioned drawing-rooms had been the scene of many a brilliant
gathering even before her nephew, William Fox, became such a figure
in the public eye that his frequent presence in her house was enough
to draw there the most distinguished and representative men at the
capital. But the old lady herself was clever, shrewdly conversant with
the world and its affairs, and not averse to giving ear to the current
gossip; she was, indeed, often amused at her son’s aloofness from
these worldly concerns which pleased and interested her the most. For,
though a detached spectator, because of her age and her comparatively
delicate health, she was yet keenly aware of the drift of events both
social and political, and possessed the advantages of age in being able
to make comparisons between the past and the present, with a touch of
eclecticism amusing in one who had been so devotedly attached to the
frivolities of fashion. She could draw more accurate deductions than
many who were more intimately concerned in the whirling conflict of
social and political ambitions which was raging around her. When the
President quarrelled with the party leaders, when Congress administered
a rebuke by withholding a vote of confidence, she was able to recall
this or that parallel case, this or that precedent for an action which
to many seemed unprecedented, and when the entertainments at the White
House began to evolve a new system of exclusions she could point out
an incident when some former President’s wife had tried to introduce a
similar measure and had met with disaster on leaving her stronghold,
lost at once in the current of a social millrace which whirls to
oblivion the queen of yesterday and the leader of to-day, engulfing all
past glories in a maelstrom of forgetfulness; the inevitable condition
in a republican society where there can be no hereditary distinction
and those of class are constantly fluctuating with the rise and fall
of fortunes, the manipulations of the Stock Exchange, while birth and
breeding have no consideration at all in comparison with the purchase
power of gold.
Fully aware of these things, and rejoicing in the rich memories of a
varied past, when she had known all the great men of her day, old Mrs.
Allestree delighted in observing the world of fashion from her retired
corner and, though devoted to her son and admiring and believing in his
talent, she sometimes suffered a keen pang of regret that her sister
and not she had borne William Fox. But she was jealously afraid of this
secret thought, scarcely admitting it even to herself, because of her
intuitive feeling that Allestree had already suffered and might suffer
more at the hands of his brilliant and careless cousin, and that he was
supremely gifted in the refinements of self-torture.
It was twilight, and Mrs. Allestree sat alone by her drawing-room
window watching for her son’s return from his workshop. She had been
a very handsome woman, and even in age retained much of her beauty
and dignity, and her figure and face were finely outlined as she sat
against the folds of heavy velvet curtains, looking down into the
street where the lamps had just been lighted and shone with the vivid
whiteness of electricity on the smooth pavements, while the carriages
and motor-cars were beginning to wheel by on their return from
afternoon receptions, teas, and matinées. Below, at the circle, she saw
the gayly lighted electric cars sweeping around the curve and receding
to a final vanishing point of light at the top of a distant hill, while
above it the sky was still bright with the afterglow and one star shone
like the tip of a naked sword. The city in this retired quarter showed
its most kind and friendly aspect, suggesting nothing of the struggle
and rush of modern life, but only the whirl of winter gayety, the
ceaseless rounds of society.
Within was an atmosphere of repose and comfort; the tea-table was
set by the open fire, and the rose-patterned, silver tea kettle was
emitting a little cloud of steam when Allestree finally opened the door.
“Well, mother, you here alone in the dark?” he remarked, as he
turned on some light and revealed the warm homeliness of the large
old-fashioned room, with its mahogany furniture, its soft rugs and
velvet hangings, and its long, oval mirrors framed in gold and
surmounted by cupids and lovers’ knots.
“Never less alone than when alone,” she replied brightly, and then
glancing shrewdly at his slightly perturbed expression, she added:
“you’ll take some tea, you look tired.”
“No,” he replied, throwing himself into an easy chair by the fire;
“Rose made some tea in the studio, and it’s a bit too late now for
another cup.”
“So Rose kept her appointment? I hope you got on with the portrait.”
Allestree shrugged his shoulders. “Impossible, Fox came and then
Lily Osborne. The gods don’t mean that I shall finish that picture.
And Reynolds painted several of his best in eight hours!” he added
despairingly.
But his mother ignored the latter part of his speech. “Fox?” she
glanced at him keenly, “then the House adjourned?”
“Yes, and he knew Rose was to be there,” Allestree laughed a little
bitterly; “it was the merest chance in the world, he was with me when
I met her the other day. Of course he came in as handsome, as gay as
ever--and as careless!”
Mrs. Allestree had left her seat by the window and was mechanically
pouring out a cup of tea, her fine old hands under their falls of
lace as firm and deft as a girl’s. “I wish he was less careless,” she
observed quietly; “I’ve just heard some more gossip about him; Martha
O’Neal was here to lunch. It appears that he was really selected for
the Navy, could have had the portfolio for the lifting of his finger
and, at the last moment, when there was no apposite reason for a
change, there was a deal and White got it.”
“Well, we can’t blame him for that, can we?” said her son smiling, “you
know the saying is that the Administration will not ‘stand hitched.’”
She shook her head. “That’s not it--he made the deal himself; he
deliberately favored White, and you can imagine what is said; every one
believes that silly story that he’s desperately in love with Margaret
still, and, of course, it looks like it. He could have saved Wingfield,
and he didn’t, and you know Mrs. Wingfield hates Margaret!”
“I don’t believe a word of it,” said Allestree calmly; “Fox is too
much of an egoist. Probably he didn’t want to go into the Cabinet; in
fact I’ve heard him say it was a safe receiving-vault for the defunct
candidates. Can’t the women ever forget that he was in love with
Margaret?”
“Possibly they could,” his mother replied shrewdly, “if Margaret wasn’t
in love with him.”
“Good Lord, how you all flatter Fox!” her son exclaimed, with
exasperation, “for my part, I can’t fancy that Margaret ever loved him;
she treated him abominably to marry White, and now she has everything
she wants, money, luxury and power; she’s a perfect little sybarite.”
The old woman looked at him with an expression of affectionate
tolerance. “My dear boy,” she said quietly, “Margaret is wildly
unhappy; money never yet purchased happiness; that’s the reason she
behaves so outrageously. Have you heard of her latest? She danced a
kind of highland fling or a jig after her dinner the other night. White
was furious, and they’re telling a story of an open quarrel after the
musicale when he swore at her and she laughed in his face.”
“White is a brute, but Margaret chose him with her eyes open,” he
replied, “and I think Fox feels it. At any rate there’s nothing in
that gossip about Wingfield; he had quarrelled with the President. You
know the story is that he was found walking up and down his hall, the
Wednesday after Congress met, shaking his fist and shouting about the
message. ‘That damned message!’ he said, ‘it will ruin the party--if
I’d only been here!’ He was away at the time it was written and, of
course, that paragraph did virtually condemn his administration of the
department. He had to resign; that goes without saying!”
“I suppose so, and Mrs. Wingfield talked; we all know what a tongue she
has!”
Allestree laughed, leaning back in his chair with his hands clasped
behind his head. “Well, she’s going, anyway.”
“But she isn’t,” sighed Mrs. Allestree; “she’s to stay over two months,
heaven knows why!”
“The Lord deliver Margaret then!” exclaimed her son, still laughing.
Mrs. Allestree nodded sagely. “Margaret can hold her own though,
Robert, and everybody knows how she has insulted Mrs. Wingfield.
Margaret’s _bon mots_ have convulsed the town time and again. You know,
as well as I do, that it was Margaret who set half the stories going
about her. Margaret can do and say the most shocking and heartless
things at one moment and be the most charming creature at the next. She
often seems to me to be a perfect Undine, to have no soul! Really,
sometimes her treatment of White is impossible. Even Lily Osborne
professes to be shocked at the dance the other night; she told Martha
O’Neal that it was as suggestive as Salome.”
“Mrs. Osborne is a hypocrite,” retorted Allestree scornfully; “by the
way, I’m to paint her portrait. I put it at a figure which, I thought,
was prohibitive and precluded all possibility of an order, but she
closed it at once, without turning an eyelash.”
Mrs. Allestree gave him a long, comprehending look. “White pays for it
then,” she remarked dryly.
“Of course,” he replied, “and White pretends to quarrel with his wife’s
wild ways!”
The old woman set down her teacup and looked mournfully into the fire.
“It’s a terrible business from beginning to end,” she said finally;
“when I think of those two poor babies! Little Estelle is just
beginning to notice things too, and Margaret seems utterly indifferent
to them. What is the world coming to?”
Allestree laughed and patted his mother’s hand. “You can’t regulate it,
mother,” he said cheerfully.
“Heaven forbid! There are too many divorces; one can’t go out now
without meeting men with two wives and women with a plurality of
husbands; yet we are objecting to seating the Mormons in Congress!”
“After all, is a divorce worse than such a marriage as Margaret’s?” her
son rejoined, indolently enjoying the controversy.
“There should have been no marriage,” she retorted firmly, pushing back
her chair and rising with a rustle of silks, “White could never have
loved her, he hasn’t been true to her for a moment. Her beauty pleased
him, or that charm which is more subtle than beauty and which makes her
what she is. Now he’s lost his head over the gorgeous coloring, the
flesh and blood of Lily Osborne; she would have pleased Rubens, Robert.
By the way, Martha O’Neal told me of a curious rumor about her; it is
said that she is in the secret employ of the Russian Government; you
know she has no conscience.”
“A spy?” Allestree laughed, “but why here? We’ve done Russia a good
turn, it’s Japan that is chewing the rag.”
“Robert! what a disgusting expression. But of course you know the tales
of the Black Cabinet and that our embassy dispatches were tampered
with.”
“Now you’re in your element, mother; you love a mystery!”
The old woman put her hand on his head, stroking back his hair with a
fond gesture. “Tell me about Rose,” she said, watching him narrowly,
with all her maternal intuition alive; “did she sit patiently--and will
your portrait please you? That’s really the only question; every one
else is sure to be pleased.”
He shook his head. “I can’t get it to please me,” he replied quietly;
“after all, Rose’s beauty is less a question of feature than I thought.
I might interpret a soul if I were a Raphael or a Fra Angelico--as it
is, it will never look like her.”
“Nonsense! Rose is very human; don’t put her on too high a pedestal,
my dear,” his mother counselled wisely; “you are too sensitive, too
imaginative. Fox would never make the mistake of treating a woman like
a saint on a pillar!”
Allestree made an inarticulate sound and rose also. “Fox--no!” he said
a little bitterly; “Fox could make love to Saint Catherine without
offending her; he’s one of the men whom women love!”
His mother smiled but made no reply; at heart she was fully aware that
there was much truth in the saying. Old as she was, she felt the
indescribable spell of Fox’s genius, and knowing her son’s heart as she
did, she foresaw difficulties in the way of his happiness if his cousin
should forget his old love and find a new one. Much as she had desired
and endeavored to break up the unfortunate intimacy between Fox and the
Whites, she had not foreseen that her own son’s happiness might be, in
a way, dependent on Margaret’s power to hold her place in the regard of
her early lover. As she stood looking at the fire in silence the shrewd
old woman reflected that the ways of Providence are inscrutably hard to
divine and that, after all, it is sometimes fatal to thrust one’s hand
into the fire to save a brand from the burning.
V
THAT Mrs. Allestree’s divinations were not very far short of the truth,
or unlikely of fulfilment, would have been apparent to her could she
have looked in, a few weeks later, on Rose and Fox together in Judge
Temple’s fine old library. In the judge’s estimation the library
was the one spot of the house, the sanctum sanctorum, and its noble
book-lined walls imparted a warmth of color and an erudite dignity to
a room of fine proportions lighted by an immense southern bow-window
which overlooked the walled garden, where Rose had cultivated every
flower which blooms in summer and every evergreen vine and ilex which
lives in winter.
Over the high wide mantel was one fine old painting which testified
both to the extravagance and distinctive taste of the judge’s
grandfather, and on the book littered table stood a slender vase
filled with roses. There was an exquisite delicacy, a refinement, an
atmosphere of culture, even in such minutiæ as these, which gave a
detailed charm to the perspective of the entire house.
Rose herself sat in a high-backed chair by the open fire, her bright
head and slender figure outlined against the dark background, while
she listened, with all the freshness and enthusiasm of girlhood, to
Fox’s gay, easy talk, his dog, Sandy, lying stretched on the hearthrug
between them in the blissful content of physical comfort and the
instinctive assurance of safety and friendship which Rose’s presence
seemed to increase.
To Fox, half the girl’s charm lay in a certain rigid mental
uprightness, a clear ethical point of view, which was entirely
different from the careless tolerance of the smart set in which he
had hitherto almost exclusively moved. Fox had no religion; Rose was
devout, and swift in her denunciation of wrong, for she had all the
terrible unrelenting standards of youth and the religion of youth which
is wont to be the religion of extremes. Her character was indeed just
emerging from that raw period of girlhood which is full of passionate
beliefs and renunciations as well as a shy pride which can inflict
keen mental suffering for a little hurt; a season when the mind is
wonderfully receptive and the young, untried spirit full of beautiful
inspirations, hopes, and beliefs which are too frequently destined to
woeful annihilation in later years.
Fox had recently made a great speech, a speech which had filled both
the floor and the galleries of the House to suffocation, and even
thronged the corridors with spectators who could gain no admittance,
yet, while it had thrilled Rose’s pulses with excitement and enthralled
her with the spell of its eloquence, her rigid sense of the proprieties
had been shocked; she had felt its flowing periods its scornful
references to mysteries which seemed to Fox as rotten as they were
immaterial, and the fact that she had taken umbrage at phrases of his,
which seemed to him sufficiently innocuous to escape all criticism,
amused and pleased him. It was a new point of view; he liked to tease
her into expressing a shy opinion, or into a sudden outburst of
righteous disapproval which brought the color to her cheek and the
sparkle to her eye. It delighted him to feel that even disapproving
of him she could not hate him, for in their dawning intimacy he found
ample assurance of her liking, and the unguarded friendliness of her
feeling showed in her eagerness to win him to her side on any mooted
question.
He leaned back in his chair, watching her with a keen appreciation
of her loveliness and her unconscious betrayal of her own emotions.
“So! after all you didn’t approve of me the other day?” he said, with
perfect good humor; “you were really condemning my ethics while you
applauded--you know you did applaud, you told me you congratulated me
on my ‘great speech.’”
Rose returned his teasing look seriously. “I did congratulate you; it
was a great speech, but I didn’t like it,” she said in a low voice and
with an evident effort.
“And why?” he asked, his brilliant gaze bent more fully on her.
She turned away, her cheek red, and resting her chin on her hand she
fell to studying the fire though she was still courageous. “I didn’t
like the tone of it; you belittle your own great gifts,” she said
softly, hesitating slightly and choosing her words with care; “you make
them of your own creation when they are really given you, given you as
the five talents were given to the man in the Scriptures. You haven’t
laid them away in a napkin; why then are you ashamed to give the glory
where it is justly due? You can’t deny that there is glory in it all!”
He smiled. “You make me feel like a thief. To be entirely honest, I’m
not religious, but I read the Bible and Shakespeare as dictionaries of
eloquence. Do you think me a dreadful sinner--worse than those on whom
the tower of Siloam fell?”
Rose bit her lip. “I’ve no doubt you think me a hypocrite!” she replied.
“I should like to tell you what I think of you,” he said softly,
leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, looking across at her, “but
I’m afraid--afraid of you!”
She laughed a little with a charming diffidence, for she had met the
sweetness of his glance which was full of gentle admiration.
“I sometimes wonder,” he continued, “how you would meet a great moral
question which involved your happiness and, perhaps, that of another
whom you loved.”
She shivered a little, stretching out one slender hand to the fire.
“Ah,” she said, with a faint smile, “I hope I may never meet such a
question! I see you make me a Pharisee.”
“God forbid!” he replied quickly, “you belong rather to the Christian
martyrs; I’m either a Barbarian or a Scythian!”
They both laughed softly at this, and Rose forgot her momentary
embarrassment. “I should try to be just!” she said.
He shook his head with that rare smile of his which seemed half
mocking, half caressing. “You couldn’t be!” he retorted provokingly,
“you are a little Puritan, narrow, firm, righteous; I begin to be more
and more afraid of you!”
She lifted her chin. “You think me too narrow to be just? Isn’t that
the charge that you worldlings always bring against--against--”
“The righteous?” he supplied quickly.
They laughed again. “You convict me out of my own mouth; I shall dare
no more arguments!”
“Ah, now you know how I feel under your criticisms!” he flashed back at
her.
His manner wore its happiest aspect, it was delightful to be with her;
through all contradictions he began to feel the temperamental sympathy,
and she, too young to understand these subtleties, was aware of the
glow and warmth of his presence, the sweetness of his manner which
could be, when he was neither stern nor angry nor self-absorbed, one of
a delicacy and sentiment uncommon in a man; with all his egotism, his
spoiled acceptance of the world’s homage, he retained qualities that
were inherently noble and lovable.
“But I have more reason,” she declared with warmth, “it’s unworthy of
you to espouse any cause for the mere sake of party, ‘to stand pat’
when your heart is against the issue; I don’t believe in it!”
“You have been reading revolutionary documents; you are full of this
new heresy,” he retorted, still laughing softly; “you are like some of
the new politicians; they pull down the pillars of the temple on their
own heads.”
She leaned forward eagerly, her eyes sparkling. “Do you know what this
party worship reminds me of?” she said, “this devotion in a man to
his party? The tomb of Rosicrucius and the statue which crushed the
worshipper who entered there! So your party’s graven image crushes out
a man’s originality.”
“Little heretic!” he mocked, “little revolutionist! A party is a great
machine; we can’t do without it!”
She shook her head vehemently. “The children of Israel thought they
couldn’t do without the golden calf! You were not so strong a party man
five years ago, do you remember?”
He looked at her quickly. “Do you?”
“I read your speeches,” she confessed with charming ingenuousness,
her eyes kindling with emotion; “I read the first speech they ever
printed in the newspapers here. I’ve wanted to tell you how beautiful
I thought it, how eloquent!”
He regarded her a moment in silence; he felt suddenly that there had
always been a link between them, that across space and time he had
spoken not to the public but to her, and even been understood by
her; that the virgin whiteness of her young soul had received the
inscription of his mind. Then he was as suddenly and vividly conscious
of his folly, his egotism, his unworthiness! She was too lovely and too
innocent to have received the impression of his spirit; and he--the
thought of his careless life, his worship at Margaret’s shrine, the
strength of the old fetters which bound him, made him suddenly humble.
And then, the beauty of her smile, the warm sympathy of her temperament
created an angry impatience of such restrictions; with characteristic
scorn of conventionalities he thrust them aside. The perfect innocence
and spontaneity of her praise and appreciation was the most subtle of
all flattery, and he possessed the temperament of genius which is, at
one moment, above the consideration of either praise or blame and the
next quivers with sensibility at the breath of either. He returned her
shy but glowing look with one of unusual humility. “I feel as if I
didn’t deserve it,” he said gently; “it is an exquisite happiness to
be praised by you!”
She smiled. “And I feel ashamed to have set myself up as a judge,” she
replied quickly, “but it was because--because I didn’t want you to fall
below your own standard! You see what it is to have a record of great
achievements.”
“Hereafter I shall only seek to deserve your praise,” he rejoined, “but
I feel myself a sublime egoist; I’ve sat here talking of myself, of my
work, and meanwhile I remember that my aunt told me of your voice. Why
do you never sing for me?”
“Because you have never asked me,” she replied simply, with an
involuntary smile.
Fox leaned toward her with an eloquent gesture of appeal. “Did I
deserve that? Am I such a miserable egoist?” he exclaimed, and then: “I
ask you now.”
Rose was entirely unaffected, and she went at once to the piano in
the room beyond, and seating herself began to play the first soft
notes of a prelude. Fox had followed her and took his place near the
instrument, again observing her with keen appreciation; her sweetness,
her whiteness of soul had taken possession of his imagination with
a force which he had supposed, until this moment, impossible. For,
after one bitter and humiliating experience in the drama of love and
passion, he had withdrawn with seared sensibilities, and assuming a
new attitude had regarded women as a detached spectator, fancying that
he possessed a high degree of eclecticism in comparing the emotional
phases of their existence which should be henceforth quite apart from
his; love and marriage were mere episodes in a man’s life, and feeling
no need of assuming either the duties or the responsibilities of the
latter state he had not seriously contemplated the former as anything
but a remote possibility. Besides, in a curious way, his life seemed
to be linked with Margaret White’s; she continued to make claims upon
him, to tacitly presuppose his devotion, and he had been too uncertain
of himself, too indolent, too easily drifting with the tide to make any
effort to free himself from the shackles of that old love affair. But
all these things slipped out of mind as he sat listening to Rose’s song.
It was a simple Italian love-song, soft, caressing, gently plaintive,
and peculiarly suited to her voice, but the air and the words were
nothing compared with that voice. When Mrs. Allestree spoke of it,
Fox had thought of it as the usual vocal accomplishment of a raw
schoolgirl, something young and sweet, no doubt, but full of crudity
and weakness. Instead, he was suddenly aware that he was listening to a
voice which had a scope and richness beyond any that he had ever heard
except in opera, and there were but few of the great singers who had
such a gift as this. The thrill and exquisite freshness of its tones
touched his very soul. He found himself listening with a keen feeling
of depression; this gift of hers lifted her at once into another sphere
than his, and he reflected that her beautiful body was an exquisite
envelope for the spirit, her voice its divine interpretation.
His mind drifted back to the sweeter and more sacred relations of life,
to those simple emotions which approach more nearly the divine. The
complex affairs of the world, of politics, passion, intrigue, slipped
away from him, and the holier aspects of a pure and devoted life took
visible shape to his imagination in this young and beautiful girl. He
had never fully appreciated his own susceptibility to the uplifting
power of music, and the charm of her voice seemed more poignant because
so unexpected; he lost himself in a delightful revery, the poet in him
awoke with a thrill of pleasure,--the joy we feel in discovering a new
power, a larger grasp; he was no longer conscious of his surroundings,
but only of the supreme delight of her presence.
As she finished singing, her hands slipped from the keys into her lap
and she turned and looked at him, smiling, expecting some applause,
unconscious of the depth of his emotion. For a moment he said nothing,
then he rose and held out his hand, his eyes eloquent of feeling.
“Exquisite!” he said, and she blushed with pleasure, knowing that he
could not express his appreciation in words.
She laid her hand in his, rising too. “Thank you,” she exclaimed, “I’m
so glad!”
As she spoke and while he still held her hand, intending to tell her
how profoundly she had moved him, they were both suddenly aware of some
one’s entrance, and turned to see Mrs. White standing just inside the
drawing-room door. She had entered unannounced, and stopped abruptly as
she came upon the little scene. She was elaborately dressed in black
velvet with ermine furs, and an immense bizarre hat of violet velvet
and chiffon with masses of violets on the wide brim. Under her arm was
a toy Pomeranian as black as her gown and as glossy as silk, its little
black head just appearing over her immense ermine muff. She had evaded
the servant’s intention of announcing her, she had thought only of
surprising Rose at her music and had come upon this! She stood still,
a sudden spiritual perception sweeping over her and thrusting a blade
of agony into her heart. Every vestige of color ran out of her cheeks,
her gray eyes dilated. When they turned they surprised a look on her
face which distorted its usual gayety and defiance. Then she thrust it
aside with a great effort of will, with the force of a new and vivid
determination, and greeted their amazement with her light little laugh.
“Caught!” she said, “next time I shall send a footman--or ring a bell!”
Rose came forward with a blushing but eager welcome, but Fox stood in a
moment of awkwardness which both vexed and amused the woman. Men have
no resources, she thought bitterly.
As for him he experienced a shock of dismay; he was trying to shake
off a vague feeling which possessed him that he had no right to be
there, that he owed allegiance still to Margaret, that her look, her
manner, her very presence demanded it while, in fact, she had long ago
forfeited all claims upon him.
Meanwhile she had led the way back to the library, driven Sandy away
from her Pomeranian, and was seated in Rose’s chair, an elegant and
conspicuously important figure, at once the centre of the stage; she
had one of those personalities which are immediately predominant in
society. “So,” she said lightly, “this is why William deserted my
Sunday afternoons; I should have looked for him in vain!”
“It seems you are yourself a deserter,” Fox retorted, “this is your day
at home.”
“You thought me safely anchored?” she laughed, with a little mocking
intonation, caressing the Pomeranian’s ears; “I should be, but I had
to make a call of condolence. Wicklow insisted; you know he’s so
conventional and so determined upon being the popular public man! Mrs.
Wingfield lost her grandmother two weeks ago so, of course, I must call
and make my condolences!”
Fox laughed softly; her manner brought back the normal tone of affairs
and he knew her moods to perfection. “Of course you condoled?” he said.
She shrugged her shoulder, looking at Rose. “My dear,” she said, “you
will be interested; no mere man could understand. I’ve always been
uncertain in my mind about the correct mourning for a grandmother; now
I know,--it’s settled beyond appeal.”
“By Mrs. Wingfield?” Rose smiled her incredulity.
“By Mrs. Wingfield--it’s shrimp pink!” Margaret said, “she had on a
tea-gown with lace ruffles; it was a violent, vivid shrimp pink, and
her nose was red. Of course I said all manner of appropriate things.
Everybody stared, then I made a grand finale and departed. She was
furious. And Wicklow sends me out to make his way for him!” and she
threw out her hands with a little gesture of mock despair.
“Why do you tease that poor soul so?” Rose protested laughing, “she
falls an easy prey, too. I heard they were going abroad soon.”
“In three months,” Margaret said, “to the Riviera; they tried
Switzerland, she told me, a year ago, but she found ‘it wasn’t really
fashionable.’”
“Margaret!” Rose shook an admonishing finger, “you make her say such
things, you know you do!”
Mrs. White raised her eyebrows, her eyes haggard. “One would suppose me
a Sapphira. She truly said it and I kept on asking her what she said;
she repeated it twice,--they were all listening of course, and M. de
Caillou tried to look plaintive.”
“He’s solemn enough anyway, Margaret,” Fox said, amused; “he might well
be shocked at your levity.”
“Oh, I always want to make him sit up and beg for a lump of sugar,” she
retorted scornfully.
As she spoke she rose and went to the window, looking out with an
abruptness of manner which seemed to take no account of their presence.
She was struggling with an overwhelming dread; with the keen intuition
of unhappiness she read Fox’s mood, and her very soul cried out
against it. But she was an actress, an actress of long training and
accomplishment. She turned carelessly, lifting her Pomeranian to her
shoulder and resting her cheek against its long black fur. “There’s my
motor back,” she said, catching a glimpse of it through the long window
in the drawing-room. “I’m going home to receive Wicklow’s public. Can I
borrow Fox, Rose?”
Rose turned easily, mistress of herself and aware of his annoyance,
keenly alive to the possibility that his old love for Margaret might
still be a factor in his life. “I’m afraid I haven’t asked Mr. Fox to
take a cup of tea,” she said laughing; “father is late and you know we
dine early on Sundays; we’re very unconventional and old-fashioned.”
Margaret was trailing slowly to the door, her velvet draperies and her
long ermine stole seeming heavy and burdensome on her slender figure.
“Oh, I know,” she retorted, “you’re Old Testament Christians; I’m
always expecting to see the scapegoat caught in your fence-railing!
In spite of my shortcomings though, you are going to sing for me some
Sunday, Rose, and make my sinners think they’ve found the gate of
Paradise.”
But Rose shook her head, laughing. “Ask father,” she said; “he declares
that I shall not exhibit!”