OUR LOVING FRIENDS
AS it chanced the Hepworths were not particularly fortunate in their
choice of an evening for the dinner so gloomily anticipated by their
guests. The weather was unpropitious. All day rain had threatened, and
the air had been almost sultry, a parting word flung over her shoulder
to autumn by a mischievous July who should long ago have vanished. As
the evening wore on clouds banked more densely upon the horizon,
occasionally muttering thunder, and this electric hint of storm in the
air had in some way communicated itself to the mental atmosphere. A
sense of foreboding, a consciousness of discord, seemed to swell
ominously now and again beneath the smooth and colorful surface of the
dinner. Even the dullest of the guests felt that, and to the intuitive,
the stately progress of the meal was nerve-racking.
When the hostess rose, every individual sigh of relief involuntarily
exhaled became a chorus, shocking in volume.
They winced nervously, but in spite of it, each guest stood by his guns.
They had, apparently with one mind, and certainly with one voice,
decided against bridge. The ordeal of dinner bravely borne, licensed
them, they felt, even bestowed the accolade of privilege on them, to
escape the prevalent atmosphere of unrest as quickly as possible.
In the brief time they had allotted themselves to remain, barely
skirting the limits of conventional decency, Alice Wilstead, Isabel and
Willoughby Hewston and Wallace Martin had elected to take their coffee
and cigarettes on a small balcony opening from the drawing-room by long
French windows and giving upon a garden, quite half of a city block,
with thick, close-cropped lawn, and black masses of dense shrubbery
permeating the damp and sultry air with the mingled fragrance of earth
and leaves and some late-blooming flowers. Maud Carmine, good-natured as
usual, had seated herself at the piano, across the length of the room
from the balcony, to play a ballad of Chaminade's at her host's
request.
Hepworth, who alone appeared to be oblivious of the sinister atmospheric
influences, leaned his elbows on the piano and listened, occasionally
unhesitatingly breaking the flow of the music with conversation.
With their friend and host thus comfortably within sight, yet out of
earshot, the group on the balcony felt at liberty to speak with freedom;
no danger of sudden appearances, consequent jumps and hot wonder at what
might have been overheard.
"Gad!" said Mr. Hewston, more gray and pink, puffy and heavily financial
than ever, "when will people learn to eat and drink without flowers on
the table?"
"No flowers!" repeated Alice Wilstead. "It would look dull, would it
not?" From her tone it was evident that she had paid little heed to his
words.
"What difference does that make?" he argued irritably. "You don't go to
dinner to look at the table decorations. But if they must have 'em, why
can't they have the artificial kind or those paper things. Anything but
the beastly, smelly, live ones."
"Don't you really care for them?" she asked, laughing. "I thought every
one loved flowers. To tell the truth, they were about all that made that
unending dinner bearable to me. They were so exquisitely arranged."
"Oh, that," in grudging admission, "goes without saying in this house,
but," fretfully, "they were all the loud smelling kind."
"She always arranges them herself," said Mrs. Wilstead, "she has
wonderful taste, wonderful. Her house, her clothes, even down to the
smallest detail of the table. Marvelous!"
"Humph! she doesn't show the same taste in men," grunted Hewston. "No
brains at all."
Mrs. Wilstead leaned forward to tap his arm with her fan.
"Do not make any mistake on that score," her voice was emphatic, "she
has plenty of brains."
"Humph!" more scornfully than before. "Then I wish they'd keep her from
making the fool of herself that she is doing now."
"Hs-s-sh," Alice looked as if she would like to thrust a handkerchief
into his mouth. "Ah!" glancing up with relief as Isabel and Wallace
Martin turned from their contemplation of the garden over the balcony
railing. "Sit down here," she motioned to two chairs beside her.
"Dear me, Alice," said Martin, "isn't your face tired with the effort of
keeping the corners of your mouth turned up and the sparkle in your
eyes? The only person who seems calm and serene this evening is dear old
Hepworth. What do you think it is on his part, the quintessence of pose
or simple, uncomprehending, fatuous ignorance?"
"My God!" growled Hewston explosively. His wife started nervously.
"Oh Willoughby dear, not so loud! Wallace," in what was as near a tone
of reproof as she could achieve, "I do wish you wouldn't say those
reckless things before Willoughby. You know how emotional he is."
Alice also shook her head impatiently. "Don't you think we are a lot of
old gossips magnifying matters enormously? You may expect so beautiful a
young woman as Dita Hepworth to be more or less talked about; but there
is probably a perfect understanding between herself and Cress. Lord
help her if there isn't," she added almost under her breath, "I've known
him many a year."
"'When an old bachelor marries a young wife, what is he to expect?'"
quoted Martin impressively. As a would-be playwright he had the
dramatists at his finger-tips.
"Wallace, you are too bad," expostulated Mrs. Wilstead. "No wonder you
quote from _The School for Scandal_. Here we are a lot of old wreckers
doing our best to shatter a reputation. Why Dita Hepworth and Eugene
Gresham have known each other ever since they were children. Naturally,
she shows her pleasure in his society."
"Oh pish!" scoffed Wallace Martin, "those unconcealed glances she
bestowed on him at dinner spoke not of sisterly affection, and how we
all squirmed under them and wondered miserably if Hepworth was seeing
them too."
"He always did see everything without appearing to," murmured Mrs.
Wilstead gloomily.
"Now merely as a sporting chance, which would you bet on," said Martin,
drawing his chair a bit nearer, "the rich, middle-aged husband, or the
fascinating artist, the painter of beautiful women, in the zenith of his
fame? It is the same old plot you know, and the oft-told tale may have
just two endings. First, she goes off with the artist, lives a squalid
and miserable life abroad, falls ill, and dies, holding the hand and
imploring the forgiveness of her husband, who conveniently and
miraculously appears. In the second ending, she makes all preparations
to flee and then something occurs which causes her to see the
sculpturesque nobility of her husband's character and the curtain
descends to slow sweet music while they stand heart to heart in the
calcium light of a grand reconciliation scene."
"Oh, Wallace, do forget for once that you are trying to be a playwright.
Forget the shop." Mrs. Wilstead was irritable. "I do wish she would join
us," looking about her nervously, "I want to go home. Is she utterly
careless?"
"Only absorbed," returned Martin calmly. "Didn't you hear her ask him
before they left the room, to come and look at the picture gallery where
he is to paint her portrait? She wanted him to judge of the lighting--a
night like this. I thought I saw the flutter of her white gown in the
garden yonder a bit ago."
"Oh do, for goodness sake, change the subject," said Alice Wilstead
hurriedly. "I am sure Cresswell must think it queer the way we are all
sitting out here with our heads together, in the teeth of that
approaching storm."
"Not at all," Martin reassured her. "Don't you see that Maud is doing
her duty heroically? Maud isn't the wife's confidante and dearest friend
for nothing."
"Isn't it perfectly wonderful about Maud?" commented Mrs. Hewston. "You
all know what a plain, angular creature she was, nothing really to
recommend her but her music and she always spoiled that by playing with
her shoulder blades."
"She's an extremely stunning woman," said Wallace Martin shortly.
"And all due to Dita Hepworth," announced Mrs. Wilstead. "Wonderful! I
never saw a woman with such a genius for dress and decoration. If her
beauty wasn't such an obvious quality, I should think it was due to her
almost uncanny knowledge of what is becoming and--Ah, thank Heaven, here
she is!"