DUSK
The Masked Dance was to begin at ten that evening; for that reason
dinner had been served early at scores of small tables on the terrace, a
hilarious and topsy-turvy, but somewhat rapid affair, because everybody
required time for dressing, and already throughout the house maids and
valets were scurrying around, unpacking masks and wigs and dainty
costumes for the adorning of the guests at Roya-Neh.
Toward nine o'clock the bustle and confusion became distracting;
corridors were haunted by graceful flitting figures in various stages of
deshabille, in quest of paraphernalia feminine and maids to adjust the
same. A continual chatter filled the halls, punctuated by smothered
laughter and subdued but insistent appeals for aid in the devious
complications of intimate attire.
On the men's side of the house there was less hubbub and some quiet
swearing; much splashing in tubs, much cigarette smoke. Men entered each
other's rooms, half-clad in satin breeches, silk stockings, and ruffled
shirts, asking a helping hand in tying queue ribbons or adjusting
stocks, and lingered to smoke and jest and gossip, and jeer at one
another's finery, or to listen to the town news from those week-enders
recently arrived from the city.
The talk was money, summer shows, and club gossip, but financial rumours
ruled.
Young Ellis, in pale blue silk and wig, perched airily, on a table,
became gloomily prophetic concerning the steady retirement of capital
from philanthropic enterprises hatched in Wall Street; Peter Tappan saw
in the endlessly sagging market dire disaster for the future digestions
of wealthy owners of undistributed securities.
"Marble columns and gold ceilings don't make a trust company," he
sneered. "There are a few billionaire gamblers from the West who seem to
think Wall Street is Coney Island. There'll be a shindy, don't make any
mistake; we're going to have one hell of a time; but when it's over the
corpses will all be shipped--ahem!--west."
Several men laughed uneasily; one or two old line trust companies were
mentioned; then somebody spoke of the Minnisink, lately taken over by
the Algonquin.
Duane lighted a cigarette and, watching the match still burning, said:
"Dysart is a director. You can't ask for any more conservative citizen
than Dysart, can you?"
Several men looked around for Dysart, but he had stepped out of the
room.
Ellis said, after a silence:
"That gambling outfit from the West has bedevilled one or two good
citizens in Gotham town."
Dr. Bailey shrugged his big, fat shoulders.
"It's no secret, I suppose, that the Minnisink crowd is being talked
about," he grunted.
Ellis said in a low but perfectly distinct voice:
"Neither is it any secret that Jack Dysart has been hit hard in National
Ice."
Peter Tappan slipped from his seat on the table and threw away his
cigarette:
"One thing is sure as soubrettes," he observed; "the Clearing House
means to get rid of certain false prophets. The game law is off
prophets--in the fall. There'll be some good gunning--under the laws of
New Jersey."
"I hope they'll be careful not to injure any marble columns or ruin the
gold-leaf on the ceilings," sneered Ellis. "Come on, some of you
fellows, and fix the buckle in this cursed stock of mine."
"I thought fixing stocks was rather in your own line," said Duane to the
foxy-visaged and celebrated manipulator, who joined very heartily in the
general and unscrupulous laugh.
A moment later, Dysart, who had heard every word from the doorway,
walked silently back to his own room and sat down, resting his temples
between his closed fists.
The well-cut head was already silvery gray at the temples; one month had
done it. When animated, his features still appeared firm and of good
colour; relaxed, they were loose and pallid, and around the mouth fine
lines appeared. Often a man's hands indicate his age, and his betrayed
him, giving the lie to his lithe, straight, graceful figure. The man had
aged amazingly in a month or two.
Matters were not going very well with him. For one thing, the Half-Moon
Trust Company had finally terminated all dealings with the gorgeous
marble-pillared temple of high finance of which he was a director. For
another, he had met the men of the West, and for them he had done things
which he did not always care to think about. For another, money was
becoming disturbingly scarce, and the time was already past for selling
securities.
During the last year he had been vaguely aware of some occult hostility
to himself and his enterprises--not the normal hostility of business
aggression--but something indefinable--merely negative at first, then
more disturbing, sinister, foreboding; something in the very air to
which he was growing more sensitive every day.
By all laws of finance, by all signs and omens, a serious reaction from
the saturnalia of the last few years was already over-due. He had felt
it, without alarm at first, for the men of the West laughed him to scorn
and refused to shorten sail. They still refused. Perhaps they could not.
One thing was certain: he could scarcely manage to take in a single reef
on his own account. He was beginning to realise that the men with whom
rumour was busy were men marked down by their letters; and they either
would not or could not aid him in shortening sail.
For a month, now, under his bland and graceful learning among the
intimates of his set, Dysart had been slowly but steadily going to
pieces. At such moments as this it showed on the surface. It showed now
in his loose jaw and flaccid cheeks; in the stare of the quenched eyes.
He was going to pieces, and he was aware of it. For one thing, he
recognised the physical change setting in; for another, his cool,
selfish, self-centred equanimity was being broken down; the rigorous
bodily régime from which he had never heretofore swerved and which alone
enabled him to perform the exacting social duties expected of him, he
had recently neglected. He felt the impending bodily demoralisation,
the threatened mental disintegration; he suspected its symptoms in a
new nervous irritability, in lapses of self-command, in unaccountable
excesses utterly foreign to his habitual self-control.
Dissolute heretofore only in the negative form, whatever it was that
impended threatening him, seemed also to be driving him into an utter
and monstrous lack of caution, and--God alone knew how--he had at last
done the one thing that he never dreamed of doing. And the knowledge of
it, and the fear of it, bit deeper into his shallow soul every hour of
the day and night. And over all, vague, indefinite, hung something that
menaced all that he cared for most on earth, held most sacred--his
social position in the Borough of Manhattan and his father's pride in
him and it.
* * * * *
After a while he stood up in his pale blue silken costume of that
mincing, smirking century which valued a straight back and a well-turned
leg, and very slowly, as though tired, he walked to the door separating
his wife's dressing-room from his own.
"May I come in?" he asked.
A maid opened the door, saying that Mrs. Dysart had gone to Miss Quest's
room to have her hair powdered. He seated himself; the maid retired.
For a while he sat there, absently playing with his gilt-hilted sword,
sombre-eyed, preoccupied, listening to the distant joyous tumult in the
house, until quick, light steps and a breezy flurry of satin at the door
announced his wife's return.
"Oh," she said coolly; "you?"
That was her greeting; his was a briefer nod.
She went to her mirror and studied her face, trying a patch here, a
hint of vermilion there, touching up brow and lashes and the sweet,
curling corners of her mouth.
"Well?" she inquired, over her shoulder, insolently.
He got up out of the chair, shut the door, and returned to his seat
again.
"Have you made up your mind about the _D_ and _P_ securities?" he asked.
"I told you I'd let you know when I came to any conclusion," she replied
drily.
"Yes, I know what you said, Rosalie. But the time is shortening. I've
got to meet certain awkward obligations----"
"So you intimated before."
He nodded and went on amiably: "All I ask of you is to deposit those
securities with us for a few months. They are as safe with us as they
are with the Half-Moon. Do you think I'd let you do it if I were not
certain?"
She turned and scrutinised him insultingly:
"I don't know," she said, "how many kinds of treachery you are capable
of."
"What do you mean?"
"What I say. Frankly, I don't know what you are capable of doing with my
money. If I can judge by what you've done with my married life, I
scarcely feel inclined to confide in you financially."
"There is no use in going over that again," he said patiently. "We
differ little from ordinary people, I fancy. I think our house is as
united as the usual New York domicile. The main thing is to keep it so.
And in a time of some slight apprehension and financial
uneasiness--perhaps even of possible future stress--you and I, for our
own sakes, should stand firmly together to weather any possible gale."
"I think I am able to weather whatever I am responsible for," she said.
"If you do the same, we can get on as well as we ever have."
"I don't believe you understand," he persisted, forcing a patient smile.
"All business in the world is conducted upon borrowed capital. I
merely----"
"Do you need more capital?" she inquired, so bluntly that he winced.
"Yes, for a few months. I may require a little additional
collateral----"
"Why don't you borrow it, then?"
"There is no necessity if you will temporarily transfer----"
"_Can_ you borrow it? Or is the ice in your trust company too rotten to
stand the strain?"
He flushed darkly and the temper began to escape in his voice:
"Has anybody hinted that I couldn't? Have you been discussing my
personal business affairs with any of the pups whom you drag about at
your heels? No matter what your personal attitude toward me may be, only
a fool would undermine the very house that----"
"I don't believe you understand, Jack," she said quietly; "I care
absolutely nothing about your house."
"Well, you care about your own social status, I suppose!" he retorted
sharply.
"Not very much."
"That's an imbecile thing to say!"
"Is it?" She turned to the mirror and touched her powdered hair lightly
with both hands, and continued speaking with her back turned toward him:
"I married you for love. Remember that. There was even something of it
alive in the roots, I think, until within a few days--in spite of what
you are, what you have done to me. Now the thing is dead. I can tell you
when it died, if you like."
And as he said nothing:
"It died when I came in late one evening, and, passing my corridor and a
certain locked door, I heard a young girl sobbing. Then it died."
She turned on him, contemptuously indifferent, and surveyed him at her
leisure:
"Your conduct to me has been such as to deliberately incite me to evil.
Your attitude has been a constant occult force, driving me toward it. By
the life you have led, and compelled me to lead, you have virtually set
a premium upon my infidelity. What you may have done, I don't know; what
you have done, even recently, I am not sure of. But I know this: you
took my life and made a parody of it. I never lived; I have been tempted
to. If the opportunity comes, I will."
Dysart rose, his face red and distorted:
"I thought young Mallett had taught you to live pretty rapidly!" he
said.
"No," she replied, "you only thought other people thought so. That is
why you resented it. Your jealousy is of that sort--you don't care what
I am, but you do care what the world thinks I am. And that is all there
ever was to you--all there ever will be: desperate devotion to your
wretched little social status, which includes sufficient money and a
chaste wife to make it secure."
She laughed; fastened a gardenia in her hair:
"I don't know about your money, and I don't care. As for your wife, she
will remain chaste as long as it suits her, and not one fraction of a
second longer."
"Are you crazy?" he demanded.
"Why, it does seem crazy to you, I suppose--that a woman should have no
regard for the sacredness of your social status. I have no regard for
it. As for your honour"--she laughed unpleasantly--"I've never had it to
guard, Jack. And I'll be responsible for my own, and the tarnishing of
it. I think that is all I have to say."
She walked leisurely toward the door, passing him with a civil nod of
dismissal, and left him standing there in his flower-embroidered
court-dress, the electric light shining full on the thin gray hair at
his temples.
In the corridor she met Naïda, charming in her blossom-embroidered
panniers; and she took both her hands and kissed her, saying:
"Perhaps you won't care to have me caress you some day, so I'll take
this opportunity, dear. Where is your brother?"
"Duane is dressing," she said. "What did you mean by my not wishing to
kiss you some day?"
"Nothing, silly." And she passed on, turned to the right, and met Sylvia
Quest, looking very frail and delicate in her bath-robe and powdered
hair. The girl passed her with the same timid, almost embarrassed little
inclination with which she now invariably greeted her, and Rosalie
turned and caught her, turning her around with a laugh. "What is the
matter, dear?"
"M-matter?" stammered Sylvia, trembling under the reaction.
"Yes. You are not very friendly, and I've always liked you. Have I
offended you, Sylvia?"
She was looking smilingly straight into the blue eyes.
"No--oh, no!" said the girl hastily. "How can you think that, Mrs.
Dysart?"
"Then I don't think it," replied Rosalie, laughing. "You are a trifle
pale, dear. Touch up your lips a bit. It's very Louis XVI. See mine?...
Will you kiss me, Sylvia?"
Again a strange look flickered in the girl's eyes; Rosalie kissed her
gently; she had turned very white.
"What is your costume?" asked Mrs. Dysart.
"Flame colour and gold."
"Hell's own combination, dear," laughed Rosalie. "You will make an
exquisite little demon shepherdess."
And she went on, smiling back at the girl in friendly fashion, then
turned and lightly descended the stairway, snapping on her loup-mask
before the jolly crowd below could identify her.
Masked figures here and there detained her, addressing her in disguised
voices, but she eluded them, slipped through the throngs on terrace and
lawn, ran down the western slope and entered the rose-garden. A man in
mask and violet-gray court costume rose from a marble seat under the
pergola and advanced toward her, the palm of his left hand carelessly
balanced on his gilded hilt.
"So you did get my note, Duane?" she said, laying her pretty hand on his
arm.
"I certainly did. What can I do for you, Rosalie?"
"I don't know. Shall we sit here a moment?"
He laughed, but continued standing after she was seated.
The air was heavy with the scent of rockets and phlox and ragged pinks
and candy-tuft. Through the sweet-scented dusky silence some small and
very wakeful bird was trilling. Great misty-winged moths came whirring
and hovering among the blossoms, pale blurs in the darkness, and
everywhere the drifting lamps of fireflies lighted and died out against
the foliage.
The woman beside him sat with masked head bent and slightly turned from
him; her restless hands worried her fan; her satin-shod feet were
crossed and recrossed.
"What is the matter?" he asked.
"Life. It's all so very wrong."
"Oh," he said, smiling, "so it's life that is amiss, not we!"
"I suppose we are.... I suppose I am. But, Duane"--she turned and looked
at him--"I haven't had much of a chance yet--to go very right or very
wrong."
"You've had chances enough for the latter," he said with an unpleasant
laugh. "In this sweet coterie we inhabit, there's always that chance."
"There are good women in it, good wives. Your sister is in it."
"Yes, and I mean to take her out," said Duane grimly. "Do you think I
want Naïda to marry some money-fattened pup in this set?"
"Where can you take her?"
"Where I'm going in future myself--among people whose brains are not as
obsolete as my appendix; where there still exist standards and
old-fashioned things like principles and religion, and a healthy terror
of the Decalogue!"
"Is anybody really still afraid of the Decalogue?" she asked curiously.
"Even we are, but some of us are more afraid of ennui. Fire and fear are
the greatest purifiers in the world; it's fear of some sort or other,
and only fear, that keeps the world as decent as it is."
"I'm not afraid," she said, playing with her fan. "I'm only afraid of
dying before I have lived at all."
"What do you call living?"
"Being loved," she said, and looked up at him.
"You poor little thing!" he said, only partly in earnest.
"Yes, I'm sorry for the girl I was.... I was rather a nice girl, Duane.
You remember me before I married."
"Yes, I do. You were a corker. You are still."
She nodded: "Yes, outwardly. Within is--nothing. I am very, very old;
very tired."
He said no more. She sat listlessly watching the dusk-moths hovering
among the pinks. Far away in the darkness rockets were rising, spraying
the sky with fire; faint strains of music came from the forest.
"Their Fête Galante has begun," she said. "Am I detaining you too long,
Duane?"
"No."
She smiled: "It is rather amusing," she observed, "my coming to you for
my morals--to you, Duane, who were once supposed to possess so few."
"Never mind what I possess," he said, irritated. "What sort of advice do
you expect?"
"Why, moral advice, of course."
"Oh! Are you on the verge of demoralisation?"
"I don't know. Am I?... There is a man----"
"Of course," he said, coming as near a sneer as he was capable. "I know
what you've done. You've nearly twisted poor Grandcourt's head off his
honest neck. If you want to know what I think of it, it's an abominable
thing to do. Why, anybody can see that the man is in love with you, and
desperately unhappy already, I told you to let him alone. You promised,
too."
He spoke rapidly, sharply; she bent her fair head in silence until he
ended.
"May I defend myself?" she asked.
"Of course."
"Then--I did not mean to make him care for me."
"You all say that."
"Yes; we are not always as innocent as I happen to be this time. I
really did not try, did not think, that he was taking a little
unaccustomed kindness on my part so seriously ... I overdid it; I'd been
beastly to him--most women are rude to Delancy Grandcourt, somehow or
other. I always was. And one day--that day in the forest--somehow
something he said opened my eyes--hurt me.... And women are fools to
believe him one. Why, Duane, he's every inch a man--high-minded,
sensitive, proud, generous, forbearing."
Duane turned and stared at her; and to her annoyance the blood mounted
to her cheeks, but she went on:
"Of course he has affected me. I don't know how it might have been with
me if I were not so--so utterly starved."
"You mean to say you are beginning to care for Delancy Grandcourt?"
"Care? Yes--in a perfectly nice way----"
"And otherwise?"
"I--don't know. I am honest with you, Duane; I don't know. A--a little
devotion of that kind"--she tried to laugh--"goes to my head, perhaps.
I've been so long without it.... I don't know. And I came here to tell
you. I came here to ask you what I ought to do."
"Good Lord!" said Duane, "do you already care enough for him to worry
about your effect on him?"
"I--do not wish him to be unhappy."
"Oh. But you are willing to be unhappy in order to save him any
uneasiness. See here, Rosalie, you'd better pull up sharp."
"Had I?"
"Certainly," he said brutally. "Not many days ago you were adrift. Don't
cut your cable again."
A vivid colour mounted to her temples:
"That is all over," she said. "Have I not come to you again in spite of
the folly that sent me drifting to you before? And can I pay you a truer
compliment, Duane, than to ask the hospitality of your forbearance and
the shelter of your friendship?"
"You _are_ a trump, Rosalie," he said, after a moment's scowling.
"You're all right.... I don't know what to say.... If it's going to give
you a little happiness to care for this man----"
"But what will it do to him, Duane?"
"It ought to do him good if such a girl as you gives him all of herself
that she decently can. I don't know whether I'm right or wrong!" he
added almost angrily. "Confound it! there seems no end to conjugal
infelicity around us these days. I don't know where the line is--how
close to the danger mark an unhappy woman may drift and do no harm to
anybody. All I know is that I'm sorry--terribly sorry for you. You're a
corker."
"Thanks," she said with a faint smile. "Do you think Delancy may safely
agree with you without danger to his peace of mind?"
"Why not? After all, you're entitled to lawful happiness. So is he....
Only----"
"Only--what?"
"I've never seen it succeed."
"Seen what succeed?"
"What is popularly known as the platonic."
"Oh, this isn't _that_," she said naïvely. "He's rather in love already,
and I'm quite sure I could be if I--I let myself."
Duane groaned.
"Don't come to me asking what to do, then," he said impatiently,
"because I know what you ought to do and I don't know what I'd do under
the circumstances. You know as well as I do where the danger mark is.
Don't you?"
"I--suspect."
"Well, then----"
"Oh, we haven't reached it yet," she said innocently.
Her honesty appalled him, and he got up and began to pace the gravel
walk.
"Do you intend to cross it?" he asked, halting abruptly.
"No, I don't.... I don't want to.... Do you think there is any fear of
it?"
"My Lord!" he said in despair, "you talk like a child. I'm trying to
realise that you women--some of you who appear so primed with doubtful,
worldly wisdom--are practically as innocent as the day you married."
"I don't know very much about some things, Duane."
"I notice that," he said grimly.
She said very gravely: "This is the first time I have ever come very
near caring for a man.... I mean since I married." And she rose and
glanced toward the forest.
They stood together for a moment, listening to the distant music, then,
without speaking, turned and walked toward the distant flare of light
which threw great trees into tangled and grotesque silhouette.
"Tales of the Geneii," she murmured, fastening her loup; "Fate is the
Sultan. Pray God nobody cuts my head off."
"You are much too amusing," he said as, side by side, they moved
silently on through the pale starlight, like errant phantoms of a
vanished age, and no further word was said between them, nor did they
look at each other again until, ahead, the road turned silvery under the
rays of the Lodge acetylenes, and beyond, the first cluster of brilliant
lanterns gleamed among the trees.
"And here we separate," she said. "Good-bye," holding out her hand. "It
is my first rendezvous. Wish me a little happiness, please."
"Happiness and--good sense," he said, smiling. He retained her hand for
a second, let it go and, stepping back, saluted her gaily as she passed
before him into the blaze of light.