It was a pleasant Newport to which Honora went early in June, a fair
city shining in the midst of summer seas, a place to light the fires of
imagination. It wore at once an air of age, and of a new and sparkling
unreality. Honora found in the very atmosphere a certain magic which
she did not try to define, but to the enjoyment of which she abandoned
herself; and in those first days after her arrival she took a sheer
delight in driving about the island. Narrow Thames Street, crowded with
gay carriages, with its aspect of the eighteenth and it shops of the
twentieth century; the whiffs of the sea; Bellevue Avenue, with its
glorious serried ranks of trees, its erring perfumes from bright
gardens, its massed flowering shrubs beckoning the eye, its lawns of a
truly enchanted green. Through tree and hedge, as she drove, came ever
changing glimpses of gleaming palace fronts; glimpses that made her turn
and look again; that stimulated but did not satisfy, and left a pleasant
longing for something on the seeming verge of fulfilment.
The very stillness and solitude that seemed to envelop these palaces
suggested the enchanter's wand. To-morrow, perhaps, the perfect lawns
where the robins hopped amidst the shrubbery would become again the
rock-bound, windswept New England pasture above the sea, and screaming
gulls circle where now the swallows hovered about the steep blue roof
of a French chateau. Hundreds of years hence, would these great pleasure
houses still be standing behind their screens and walls and hedges? or
would, indeed, the shattered, vine-covered marble of a balustrade alone
mark the crumbling terraces whence once the fabled owners scanned the
sparkling waters of the ocean? Who could say?
The onward rush of our story between its canon walls compels us
reluctantly to skip the narrative of the winter conquests of the lady
who is our heroine. Popularity had not spoiled her, and the best proof
of this lay in the comments of a world that is nothing if not critical.
No beauty could have received with more modesty the triumph which had
greeted her at Mrs. Grenfell's tableaux, in April, when she had appeared
as Circe, in an architectural frame especially designed by Mr. Farwell
himself. There had been a moment of hushed astonishment, followed by an
acclaim that sent the curtain up twice again.
We must try to imagine, too, the logical continuation of that triumph
in the Baiae of our modern republic and empire, Newport. Open, Sesame!
seems, as ever, to be the countersign of her life. Even the palace gates
swung wide to her: most of them with the more readiness because she
had already passed through other gates--Mrs. Grainger's, for instance.
Baiae, apparently, is a topsy-turvy world in which, if one alights
upside down, it is difficult to become righted. To alight upside down,
is to alight in a palace. The Graingers did not live in one, but in a
garden that existed before the palaces were, and one that the palace
owners could not copy: a garden that three generations of Graingers,
somewhat assisted by a remarkable climate, had made with loving care.
The box was priceless, the spreading trees in the miniature park no less
so, and time, the unbribeable, alone could now have produced the wide,
carefully cherished Victorian mansion. Likewise not purchasable by
California gold was a grandfather whose name had been written large in
the pages of American history. His library was now lined with English
sporting prints; but these, too, were old and mellow and rare.
To reach Honora's cottage, you turned away from the pomp and glitter and
noise of Bellevue Avenue into the inviting tunnel of a leafy lane
that presently stopped of itself. As though to provide against the
contingency of a stray excursionist, a purple-plumed guard of old lilac
trees massed themselves before the house, and seemed to look down with
contempt on the new brick wall across the lane. 'Odi profanum vulgus'.
It was on account of the new brick wall, in fact, that Honora, through
the intervention of Mrs. Grainger and Mrs. Shorter, had been able to
obtain this most desirable of retreats, which belonged to a great-aunt
of Miss Godfrey, Mrs. Forsythe.
Mr. Chamberlin, none other than he of whom we caught a glimpse some
years ago in a castle near Silverdale, owned the wall and the grounds
and the palace it enclosed. This gentleman was of those who arrive
in Newport upside down; and was even now, with the somewhat doubtful
assistance of his wife, making lavish and pathetic attempts to right
himself. Newport had never forgiven him for the razing of a mansion and
the felling of trees which had been landmarks, and for the driving out
of Mrs. Forsythe. The mere sight of the modern wall had been too much
for this lady--the lilacs and the leaves in the lane mercifully hid the
palace--and after five and thirty peaceful summers she had moved out,
and let the cottage. It was furnished with delightful old-fashioned
things that seemed to express, at every turn, the aristocratic and
uncompromising personality of the owner who had lived so long in their
midst.
Mr. Chamberlin, who has nothing whatever to do with this chronicle
except to have been the indirect means of Honora's installation, used to
come through the wall once a week or so to sit for half an hour on her
porch as long as he ever sat anywhere. He had reddish side-whiskers, and
he reminded her of a buzzing toy locomotive wound up tight and suddenly
taken from the floor. She caught glimpses of him sometimes in the
mornings buzzing around his gardeners, his painters, his carpenters, and
his grooms. He would buzz the rest of his life, but nothing short of a
revolution could take his possessions away.
The Graingers and the Grenfells and the Stranges might move mountains,
but not Mr. Chamberlin's house. Whatever heart-burnings he may have had
because certain people refused to come to his balls, he was in Newport
to remain. He would sit under the battlements until the crack of doom;
or rather--and more appropriate in Mr. Chamberlin's case--walk around
them and around, blowing trumpets until they capitulated.
Honora magically found herself within them, and without a siege. Behold
her at last in the setting for which we always felt she was destined.
Why is it, in this world, that realization is so difficult a thing? Now
that she is there, how shall we proceed to give the joys of her Elysium
their full value? Not, certainly, by repeating the word pleasure over
and over again: not by describing the palaces at which she lunched
and danced and dined, or the bright waters in which she bathed, or
the yachts in which she sailed. During the week, indeed, she moved
untrammelled in a world with which she found herself in perfect harmony:
it was new, it was dazzling, it was unexplored. During the week it
possessed still another and more valuable attribute--it was real. And
she, Honora Leffingwell Spence, was part and parcel of its permanence.
The life relationships of the people by whom she was surrounded became
her own. She had little time for thought--during the week.
We are dealing, now, in emotions as delicate as cloud shadows, and these
drew on as Saturday approached. On Saturdays and Sundays the quality
and texture of life seemed to undergo a change. Who does not recall the
Monday mornings of the school days of youth, and the indefinite feeling
betwixt sleep and waking that to-day would not be as yesterday or the
day before? On Saturday mornings, when she went downstairs, she was wont
to find the porch littered with newspapers and her husband lounging in
a wicker chair behind the disapproving lilacs. Although they had long
ceased to bloom, their colour was purple--his was pink.
Honora did not at first analyze or define these emotions, and was
conscious only of a stirring within her, and a change. Reality became
unreality. The house in which she lived, and for which she felt a
passion of ownership, was for two days a rented house. Other women in
Newport had week-end guests in the guise of husbands, and some of them
went so far as to bewail the fact. Some had got rid of them. Honora
kissed hers dutifully, and picked up the newspapers, drove him to
the beach, and took him out to dinner, where he talked oracularly of
finance. On Sunday night he departed, without visible regrets, for New
York.
One Monday morning a storm was raging over Newport. Seized by a sudden
whim, she rang her bell, breakfasted at an unusual hour, and nine
o'clock found her, with her skirts flying, on the road above the cliffs
that leads to the Fort. The wind had increased to a gale, and as she
stood on the rocks the harbour below her was full of tossing white
yachts straining at their anchors. Serene in the midst of all this
hubbub lay a great grey battleship.
Presently, however, her thoughts were distracted by the sight of
something moving rapidly across her line of vision. A sloop yacht, with
a ridiculously shortened sail, was coming in from the Narrows, scudding
before the wind like a frightened bird. She watched its approach in a
sort of fascination, for of late she had been upon the water enough
to realize that the feat of which she was witness was not without its
difficulties. As the sloop drew nearer she made out a bare-headed figure
bent tensely at the wheel, and four others clinging to the yellow deck.
In a flash the boat had rounded to, the mainsail fell, and a veil of
spray hid the actors of her drama. When it cleared the yacht was tugging
like a wild thing at its anchor.
That night was Mrs. Grenfell's ball, and many times in later years has
the scene come back to Honora. It was not a large ball, by no means on
the scale of Mr. Chamberlin's, for instance. The great room reminded one
of the gallery of a royal French chateau, with its dished ceiling, in
the oval of which the colours of a pastoral fresco glowed in the ruby
lights of the heavy chandeliers; its grey panelling, hidden here and
there by tapestries, and its series of deep, arched windows that
gave glimpses of a lantern-hung terrace. Out there, beyond a marble
balustrade, the lights of fishing schooners tossed on a blue-black
ocean. The same ocean on which she had looked that morning, and which
she heard now, in the intervals of talk and laughter, crashing against
the cliffs,--although the wind had gone down. Like a woman stirred to
the depths of her being, its bosom was heaving still at the memory of
the passion of the morning.
This night after the storm was capriciously mild, the velvet gown of
heaven sewn with stars. The music had ceased, and supper was being
served at little tables on the terrace. The conversation was desultory.
“Who is that with Reggie Farwell?” Ethel Wing asked.
“It's the Farrenden girl,” replied Mr. Cuthbert, whose business it was
to know everybody. “Chicago wheat. She looks like Ceres, doesn't she?
Quite becoming to Reggie's dark beauty. She was sixteen, they tell me,
when the old gentleman emerged from the pit, and they packed her off to
a convent by the next steamer. Reggie may have the blissful experience
of living in one of his own houses if he marries her.”
The fourth at the table was Ned Carrington, who had been first secretary
at an Embassy, and he had many stories to tell of ambassadors who spoke
commercial American and asked royalties after their wives. Some one had
said about him that he was the only edition of the Almanach de Gotha
that included the United States. He somewhat resembled a golden seal
emerging from a cold bath, and from time to time screwed an eyeglass
into his eye and made a careful survey of Mrs. Grenfell's guests.
“By George!” he exclaimed. “Isn't that Hugh Chiltern?”
Honora started, and followed the direction of Mr. Carrington's glance.
At sight of him, a vivid memory of the man's personality possessed her.
“Yes,” Cuthbert was saying, “that's Chiltern sure enough. He came in on
Dicky Farnham's yacht this morning from New York.”
“This morning!” said Ethel Wing. “Surely not! No yacht could have come
in this morning.”
“Nobody but Chiltern would have brought one in, you mean,” he corrected
her. “He sailed her. They say Dicky was half dead with fright, and
wanted to put in anywhere. Chiltern sent him below and kept right on.
He has a devil in him, I believe. By the way, that's Dicky Farnham's
ex-wife he's talking to--Adele. She keeps her good looks, doesn't she?
What's happened to Rindge?”
“Left him on the other side, I hear,” said Carrington. “Perhaps she'll
take Chiltern next. She looked as though she were ready to. And they say
it's easier every time.”
“C'est le second mari qui coute,” paraphrased Cuthbert, tossing his
cigar over the balustrade. The strains of a waltz floated out of the
windows, the groups at the tables broke up, and the cotillon began.
As Honora danced, Chiltern remained in the back of her mind, or rather
an indefinite impression was there which in flashes she connected with
him. She wondered, at times, what had become of him, and once or twice
she caught herself scanning the bewildering, shifting sheen of gowns
and jewels for his face. At last she saw him by the windows, holding a
favour in his hand, coming in her direction. She looked away, towards
the red uniforms of the Hungarian band on the raised platform at the end
of the room. He was standing beside her.
“Do you remember me, Mrs. Spence?” he asked.
She glanced up at him and smiled. He was not a person one would be
likely to forget, but she did not say so.
“I met you at Mrs. Granger's,” was what she said.
He handed her the favour. She placed it amongst the collection at the
back of her chair and rose, and they danced. Was it dancing? The music
throbbed; nay, the musicians seemed suddenly to have been carried out
of themselves, and played as they had not played before. Her veins
were filled with pulsing fire as she was swung, guided, carried out of
herself by the extraordinary virility of the man who held her. She had
tasted mastery.
“Thank you,” she faltered, as they came around the second time to her
seat.
He released her.
“I stayed to dance with you,” he said. “I had to await my opportunity.”
“It was kind of you to remember me,” she replied, as she went off with
Mr. Carrington.
A moment later she saw him bidding good night to his hostess. His face,
she thought, had not lost that strange look of determination that she
recalled. And yet--how account for his recklessness?
“Rum chap, Chiltern,” remarked Carrington. “He might be almost anything,
if he only knew it.”
In the morning, when she awoke, her eye fell on the cotillon favours
scattered over the lounge. One amongst them stood out--a silver-mounted
pin-cushion. Honora arose, picked it up contemplatively, stared at it
awhile, and smiled. Then she turned to her window, breathing in the
perfumes, gazing out through the horse-chestnut leaves at the green,
shadow-dappled lawn below.
On her breakfast tray, amidst some invitations, was a letter from her.
uncle. This she opened first.
“Dear Honora,” he wrote, “amongst your father's papers, which have
been in my possession since his death, was a certificate for three
hundred shares in a land company. He bought them for very little,
and I had always thought them worthless. It turns out that these
holdings are in a part of the state of Texas that is now being
developed; on the advice of Mr. Isham and others I have accepted an
offer of thirty dollars a share, and I enclose a draft on New York
for nine thousand dollars. I need not dwell upon the pleasure it is
for me to send you this legacy from your father. And I shall only
add the counsel of an old uncle, to invest this money by your
husband's advice in some safe securities.”...
Honora put down the letter, and sat staring at the cheque in her hand.
Nine thousand dollars--and her own! Her first impulse was to send it
back to her uncle. But that would be, she knew, to hurt his feelings--he
had taken such a pride in handing her this inheritance. She read the
letter again, and resolved that she would not ask Howard to invest the
money. This, at least, should be her very own, and she made up her mind
to take it to a bank in Thames Street that morning.
While she was still under the influence of the excitement aroused by
the unexpected legacy, Mrs. Shorter came in, a lady with whom Honora's
intimacy had been of steady growth. The tie between them might perhaps
have been described as intellectual, for Elsie Shorter professed only
to like people who were “worth while.” She lent Honora French plays,
discussed them with her, and likewise a wider range of literature,
including certain brightly bound books on evolution and sociology.
In the eighteenth century, Mrs. Shorter would have had a title and a
salon in the Faubourg: in the twentieth, she was the wife of a most
fashionable and successful real estate agent in New York, and was aware
of no incongruity. Bourgeoise was the last thing that could be said of
her; she was as ready as a George Sand to discuss the whole range of
human emotions; which she did many times a week with certain gentlemen
of intellectual bent who had the habit of calling on her. She had never,
to the knowledge of her acquaintances, been shocked. But while she
believed that a great love carried, mysteriously concealed in its flame,
its own pardon, she had through some fifteen years of married life
remained faithful to Jerry Shorter: who was not, to say the least, a
Lochinvar or a Roland. Although she had had nervous prostration and was
thirty-four, she was undeniably pretty. She was of the suggestive, and
not the strong-minded type, and the secret of her strength with the
other sex was that she was in the habit of submitting her opinions for
their approval.
“My dear,” she said to Honora, “you may thank heaven that you are still
young enough to look beautiful in negligee. How far have you got? Have
you guessed of which woman Vivarce was the lover? And isn't it the most
exciting play you've ever read? Ned Carrington saw it in Paris, and
declares it frightened him into being good for a whole week!”
“Oh, Elsie,” exclaimed Honora, apologetically, “I haven't read a word of
it.”
Mrs. Shorter glanced at the pile of favours.
“How was the dance?” she asked. “I was too tired to go. Hugh Chiltern
offered to take me.”
“I saw Mr. Chiltern there. I met him last winter at the Graingers'.”
“He's staying with us,” said Mrs. Shorter; “you know he's a sort of
cousin of Jerry's, and devoted to him. He turned up yesterday morning on
Dicky Farnham's yacht, in the midst of all that storm. It appears that
Dicky met him in New York, and Hugh said he was coming up here, and
Dicky offered to sail him up. When the storm broke they were just
outside, and all on board lost their heads, and Hugh took charge and
sailed in. Dicky told me that himself.”
“Then it wasn't--recklessness,” said Honora, involuntarily. But Mrs.
Shorter did not appear to be surprised by the remark.
“That's what everybody thinks, of course,” she answered. “They say that
he had a chance to run in somewhere, and browbeat Dicky into keeping on
for Newport at the risk of their lives. They do Hugh an injustice. He
might have done that some years ago, but he's changed.”
Curiosity got the better of Honora.
“Changed?” she repeated.
“Of course you didn't know him in the old days, Honora,” said Mrs.
Shorter. “You wouldn't recognize him now. I've seen a good deal of men,
but he is the most interesting and astounding transformation I've ever
known.”
“How?” asked Honora. She was sitting before the glass, with her hand
raised to her hair.
Mrs. Shorter appeared puzzled.
“That's what interests me,” she said. “My dear, don't you think life
tremendously interesting? I do. I wish I could write a novel. Between
ourselves, I've tried. I had Mr. Dewing send it to a publisher, who said
it was clever, but had no plot. If I only could get a plot!”
Honora laughed.
“How would I The Transformation of Mr. Chiltern' do, Elsie?”
“If I only knew what's happened to him, and how he's going to end!”
sighed Mrs. Shorter.
“You were saying,” said Honora, for her friend seemed to have relapsed
into a contemplation of this problem, “you were saying that he had
changed.”
“He goes away for seven years, and he suddenly turns up filled with
ambition and a purpose in life, something he had never dreamed of. He's
been at Grenoble, where the Chiltern estate is, making improvements and
preparing to settle down there. And he's actually getting ready to write
a life of his father, the General--that's the most surprising thing!
They never met but to strike fire while the General was alive. It
appears that Jerry and Cecil Grainger and one or two other people have
some of the old gentleman's letters, and that's the reason why Hugh's
come to Newport. And the strangest thing about it, my dear,” added Mrs.
Shorter, inconsequently, “is that I don't think it's a love affair.”
Honora laughed again. It was the first time she had ever heard Mrs.
Shorter attribute unusual human phenomena to any other source. “He wrote
Jerry that he was coming back to live on the estate,--from England. And
he wasn't there a week. I can't think where he's seen any women--that
is,” Mrs. Shorter corrected herself hastily, “of his own class.
He's been in the jungle--India, Africa, Cores. That was after Sally
Harrington broke the engagement. And I'm positive he's not still in
love with Sally. She lunched with me yesterday, and I watched him. Oh,
I should have known it. But Sally hasn't got over it. It wasn't a grand
passion with Hugh. I don't believe he's ever had such a thing. Not that
he isn't capable of it--on the contrary, he's one of the few men I can
think of who is.”
At this point in the conversation Honora thought that her curiosity had
gone far enough.