THE SCHOOL OF THE RECRUIT
When Portlaw arrived home late that evening there existed within his
somewhat ordinary intellect a sense of triumph. The weak usually
experience it at the beginning and through every step of their own
subjugation.
Malcourt, having decided to take an express which stopped on signal at
six in the morning, was reading as usual before the empty fireplace; and
at the first glance he suspected what had begun to happen to Portlaw.
The latter bustled about the room with an air of more or less
importance, sorted his letters, fussed with a newspaper; and every now
and then Malcourt, glancing up, caught Portlaw's eyes peeping
triumphantly around corners at him.
"You've been riding?" he said, much amused. "Are you stiff?"
"A trifle," replied the other carelessly. "I must keep it up. Really,
you know, I've rather neglected the horses lately."
"Rather. So you're taking up riding again?"
Portlaw nodded: "I've come to the conclusion that I need exercise."
Malcourt, who had been urging him for years to exercise, nodded approval
as though the suggestion were a brand-new one.
"Yes," said Portlaw, "I shall ride, I think, every day. I intend to do
a good bit of tramping, too. It's excellent for the liver, Louis."
At this piece of inspired information Malcourt assumed an expression of
deepest interest, but hoped Portlaw might not overdo it.
"I'm going to diet, too," observed Portlaw, watching the effect of this
astounding statement on his superintendent. "My theory is that we all
eat too much."
"Don't do anything Spartan," said Malcourt warningly; "a man at your
time of life--"
"My--what! Confound it, Louis, I'm well this side of forty!"
"Yes, perhaps; but when a man reaches your age there is not much left
for him but the happiness of overeating--"
"What d'y' mean?"
"Nothing; only as he's out of the race with younger men as far as a
pretty woman is concerned--"
"Who's out!" demanded Portlaw, red in the face. "What sort of men do you
suppose interest women? Broilers? I always thought your knowledge of
women was superficial; now I know it. And you don't know everything
about everything else, either--about summonses and lawsuits, for
example." And he cast an exultant look at his superintendent.
But Malcourt let him tell the news in his own way; and he did, imparting
it in bits with naive enjoyment, apparently utterly unconscious that he
was doing exactly what his superintendent had told him to do.
"You _are_ a diplomat, aren't you?" said Malcourt with a weary smile.
"A little, a little," admitted Portlaw modestly. "I merely mentioned
these things--" He waved his hand to check any possible eulogy of
himself from Malcourt. "I'll merely say this: that when I make up my
mind to settle anything--" He waved his hand again, condescendingly.
"That man," thought Malcourt, "will be done for in a year. Any woman
could have had him; the deuce of it was to find one who'd take him. I
think she's found."
And looking up blandly:
"Porty, old fellow, you're really rather past the marrying age--"
"I'll do what I please!" shouted Portlaw, exasperated.
Malcourt had two ways of making Portlaw do a thing; one was to tell him
not to, the other the reverse. He always ended by doing it anyway; but
the quicker result was obtained by the first method.
So Malcourt went to New York next morning convinced that Portlaw's
bachelor days were numbered; aware, also, that as soon as Mrs. Ascott
took the helm his own tenure of office would promptly expire. He wished
it to expire, easily, agreeably, naturally; and that is why he had
chosen to shove Portlaw in the general direction of the hymeneal altar.
He did not care very much for Portlaw--scarcely enough to avoid hurting
his feelings by abandoning him. But now he had arranged it so that to
all appearances the abandoning would be done by Portlaw, inspired by the
stronger mind of Mrs. Ascott. It had been easy and rather amusing to
arrange; it saved wordy and endless disputes with Portlaw; it would give
him a longed-for release from an occupation he had come to hate.
Malcourt was tired. He wanted a year of freedom from dependence,
surcease of responsibility--a year to roam where he wished, foregather
with whom he pleased, haunt the places congenial to him, come and go
unhampered; a year of it--only one year. What remained for him to do
after the year had expired he thought he understood; yes, he was
practically certain--had always been.
But first must come that wonderful year he had planned--or, if he tired
of the pleasure sooner, then, as the caprice stirred him, he would do
what he had planned to do ever since his father died. The details only
remained to be settled.
For Malcourt, with all the contradictions in his character, all his
cynicism, effrontery, ruthlessness, preferred to do things in a manner
calculated to spare the prejudices of others; and if there was a way to
accomplish a thing without hurting people, he usually took the trouble
to do it in that way. If not, he did it anyway.
And now, at last, he saw before him the beginning of that curious year
for which he had so long waited; and, concerning the closing details of
which, he had pondered so often with his dark, handsome head lowered and
slightly turned, listening, always listening.
But nothing of this had he spoken of to his wife. It was not necessary.
He had a year in which to live in a certain manner and do a certain
thing; and it was going to amuse him to do it in a way which would harm
nobody.
The year promised to be an interesting one, to judge from all signs. For
one item his sister, Lady Tressilvain, was impending from Paris--also
his brother-in-law--complicating the humour of the visitation.
Malcourt's marriage to an heiress was the perfectly obvious incentive
of the visit. And when they wrote that they were coming to New York, it
amused Malcourt exceedingly to invite them to Luckless Lake. But he said
nothing about it to Portlaw or his wife.
Then, for another thing, the regeneration and development, ethically and
artistically, of Dolly Wilming amused him. He wanted to be near enough
to watch it--without, however, any real faith in its continuation.
And, also, there was Miss Suydam. Her development would not be quite as
agreeable to witness; process of disillusioning her, little by little,
until he had undermined himself sufficiently to make the final break
with her very easy--for her. Of course it interested him; all intrigue
did where skill was required with women.
And, last of all, yet of supreme importance, he desired leisure,
undisturbed, to study his own cumulative development, to humorously
thwart it, or misunderstand it, or slyly aid it now and then--always
aware of and attentive to that extraneous something which held him so
motionless, at moments, listening attentively as though to a command.
For, from that morning four years ago when, crushed with fatigue, he
strove to keep his vigil beside his father who, toward daybreak, had
been feigning sleep--from that dreadful dawn when, waking with the crash
of the shot in his ears, his blinded gaze beheld the passing of a
soul--he understood that he was no longer his own master.
Not that the occult triad, Chance, Fate, and Destiny ruled; they only
modified his orbit. But from the centre of things Something that ruled
them was pulling him toward it, slowly, steadily, inexorably drawing him
nearer, lessening the circumference of his path, attenuating it,
circumscribing, limiting, controlling. And long since he had learned to
name this thing, undismayed--this one thing remaining in the world in
which his father's son might take a sporting interest.
* * * * *
He had been in New York two weeks, enjoying existence in his own
fashion, untroubled by any demands, questions, or scruples concerning
responsibility, when a passionate letter from Portlaw disturbed the
placid interlude:
"Confound it, Louis, haven't you the common decency to come back
when you know I've had a bunch of people here to be entertained?
"Nobody's heard a peep from you. What on earth do you mean by
this?
"Miss Palliser, Mrs. Ascott, Miss Cardross are here, also
Wayward, and Gray Cardross--which with you and Mrs. Malcourt and
myself solves the Bridge proposition--or would have solved it.
But without warning, yesterday, your sister and brother-in-law
arrived, bag and baggage, and Mrs. Malcourt has given them the
west wing of your house. I believe she was as astonished as I,
but she will not admit it.
"I don't know whether this is some sorry jest of yours--not that
Lady Tressilvain and her noble spouse are unwelcome--but for
Heaven's sake consider Wayward's feelings--cooped up in camp with
his ex-wife! It wasn't a very funny thing to do, Louis; but now
that it's done you can come back and take care of the mess you've
made.
"As for Mrs. Malcourt, she is not merely a trump, she is a
hundred aces and a grand slam in a redoubled Without!--if that's
possible. But Mrs. Ascott is my pillar of support in what might
easily become a fool of a situation.
"And you, you amateur idiot!--are down there in town, humorously
awaiting the shriek of anguish from me. Well, you've heard me.
But it's not a senseless shriek; it's a dignified protest. I tell
you I've learned to depend on myself, recently--at Mrs. Ascott's
suggestion. And I'm doing it now by wiring Virginia Suydam to
come and fill in the third table.
"Now I want you to come back at once. If you don't I'm going to
have a serious talk with you, Louis. I've taken Mrs. Ascott into
my confidence more or less and she agrees with me that I ought to
lay down a strong, rigid policy and that it is your duty to
execute it. In fact she also took me into her confidence and gave
me, at my request, a very clear idea of how she would run this
place; and to my surprise and gratification I find that her ideas
of discipline, taste, and economy are exactly mine, although I
thought of them first and perhaps have influenced her in this
matter as I have in others. That is, of course, natural, she
being a woman.
"I think I ought to be frank with you, Louis. It isn't good form
for you to leave Mrs. Malcourt the way you do every week or two
and disappear in New York and give no explanation. You haven't
been married long enough to do that. It isn't square to me,
either.
"And while I'm about it I want to add that, at Mrs. Ascott's
suggestion--which really is my own idea--I have decided not to
build all those Rhine castles, which useless notion, if I am not
mistaken, originated with you. I don't want to disfigure my
beautiful wilderness. Mrs. Ascott and I had a very plain talk
with Hamil and we forced him to agree with us that the less he
did to improve my place the better for the place. He seemed to
take it good-humouredly. He left yesterday to look over Mrs.
Ascott's place and plan for her a formal garden and Trianon at
Pride's Hall. So he being out I wired also to Virginia and to
Philip Gatewood, which will make it right--four at a table. Your
brother-in-law plays a stiff game and your sister is a
wonder!--five grand slams last night! But I played like a
dub--I'd been riding and walking and canoeing all day with Mrs.
Ascott and I was terribly sleepy.
"So come on up, Louis. I'll forgive you--but don't mind if I
growl at you before Mrs. Ascott as she thinks I ought to
discipline you. And, confound it, I ought to, and I will, too, if
you don't look out. But I'll be devilish glad to see you.
"Yours,
"W. VAN BEUREN PORTLAW."
Malcourt, in his arm-chair by the open window, lay back full length,
every fibre of him vibrating with laughter.
Dolly Wilming at the piano continued running over the pretty firework
melodies of last season's metropolitan success--a success built entirely
on a Viennese waltz, the air of which might have been taken from almost
any popular Yankee hymn-book.
He folded Portlaw's letter and pocketed it; and lay for a while under
the open window, enjoying his own noiseless mirth, gaily accompanied by
Dolly Winning's fresh, clear singing or her capricious improvising.
Begonias bloomed in a riotous row on the sill, nodding gently in the
river-wind which also fluttered the flags and sails on yacht, schooner,
and sloop under the wall of the Palisades.
That day the North River was more green than blue--like the eyes of a
girl he knew; summer, crowned and trimmed with green, brooded on the
long rock rampart across the stream. Turquoise patches of sky and big
clouds, leafy parapets, ships passing to the sea; and in mid-stream an
anchored island of steel painted white and buff, bristling with long
thin guns, the flower-like flag rippling astern; another battle-ship
farther north; another, another; and farther still the white
tomb--unlovely mansion of the dead--on outpost duty above the river,
guarding with the warning of its dead glories the unlovely mansions of
the living ranged along the most noble terrace in the world.
And everywhere to north, south, and east, the endless waste of city,
stark, clean-cut, naked alike of tree and of art, unsoftened even by the
haze of its own exudations--everywhere the window-riddled blocks of
oblongs and cubes gridironed with steel rails--New York in all the
painted squalor of its Pueblo splendour.
* * * * *
"You say you are doing well in everything except French and Italian?"
Dolly, still humming to her own accompaniment, looked over her shoulder
and nodded.
"Well, how the dickens are you ever going to sing at either Opera or on
the road or anywhere if you don't learn French and Italian?"
"I'm trying, Louis."
"Go ahead; let's hear something, then."
And she sang very intelligently and in excellent taste:
"Pendant que, plein d'amour, j'expire à votre porte,
Vous dormez d'un paisible sommeil--"
and turned questioningly to him.
"That's all right; try another."
So, serenely obedient, she sang:
"Chantons Margot, nos amours,
Margot leste et bien tournée--"
"Well, I don't see anything the matter with your French," he muttered.
The girl coloured with pleasure, resting pensively above the key-board;
but he had no further requests to make and presently she swung around on
the piano-stool, looking at him.
"You sing all right; you are doing your part--as far as I can discover."
"There is nothing for you to discover that I have not told you," she
said gravely. In her manner there was a subdued dignity which he had
noticed recently--something of the self-confidence of the very young and
unspoiled--which, considering all things, he could not exactly account
for.
"Does that doddering old dancing-master of yours behave himself?"
"Yes--since you spoke to him. Mr. Bulder came to the school again."
"What did you say to him?"
"I told him that you wouldn't let me sing in 'The Inca.'"
"And what did Bulder say?"
"He was persistent but perfectly respectful; asked if he might confer
with you. He wrote to you I think, didn't he?"
Malcourt nodded and lighted a cigarette.
"Dolly," he said, "do you want to sing _Chaské_ in 'The Inca' next
winter?"
"Yes, I do--if you think it is all right." She added in a low voice: "I
want to do what will please you, Louis."
"I don't know whether it's the best thing to do, but--you may have to."
He laid his cigarette in a saucer, watched the smoke curling
ceilingward, and said as though to himself:
"I should like to be certain that you can support yourself--within a
reasonable time from now--say a year. That is all, Dolly."
"I can do it now if you wish it--" The expression of his face checked
her.
"I don't mean a variety career devoted to 'mother' songs," he said with
a sneer. "There's a middle course between diamonds and 'sinkers.' You'll
get there if you don't kick over the traces.... Have you made any more
friends?"
"Yes."
"Are they respectable?"
"Yes," she said, colouring.
"Has anybody been impertinent?"
"Mr. Williams."
"I'll attend to him--the little squirt!... Who are your new friends?"
"There's a perfectly sweet girl in the French class, Marguerite Barret.
I think she likes me.... Louis, I don't believe you understand how very
happy I am beginning to be--"
"Do people come here?"
"Yes, on Sunday afternoons; I know nearly a dozen nice girls now, and
those men I told you about--Mr. Snyder, Mr. Jim Anthony and his brother
the artist, and Mr. Cass and Mr. Renwick."
"You can cut out Renwick," he said briefly.
She seemed surprised. "He has always been perfectly nice to me,
Louis--"
"Cut him out, Dolly. I know the breed."
"Of course, if you wish."
He looked at her, convinced in spite of himself. "Always ask me about
people. If I don't know I can find out."
"I always do," she said.
"Yes, I believe you do.... You're all right, Dolly--so far.... There,
don't look at me in that distressed-dove fashion; I _know_ you are all
right and mean to be for your own sake--"
"For yours also," she said.
"Oh--that's all right, too--story-book fidelity; my preserver
ever!--What?--Sure--and a slow curtain.... There, there, Dolly--where's
your sense of humour! Good Lord, what's changing you into a
bread-and-butter boarding-school sentimentalist!--to feel hurt at
nothing! Hello! look at that kitten of yours climbing your silk
curtains! Spank the rascal!"
But the girl caught up the kitten and tucked it up under her chin,
smiling across at Malcourt, who had picked up his hat, gloves, and
stick.
"Will you come to-morrow?" she asked.
"I'm going away for a while."
Her face fell; she rose, placed the kitten on the lounge, and walked up
to him, both hands clasped loosely behind her back, wistfully
acquiescent.
"It's going to be lonely again for me," she said.
"Nonsense! You've just read me your visiting list--"
"I had rather have you here than anybody."
"Dolly, you'll get over that absurd sense of obligatory regard for
me--"
"I had _rather_ have you, Louis."
"I know. That's very sweet of you--and very proper.... You are all
right.... I'll be back in a week or ten days, and," smilingly, "mind you
have your report ready! If you've been a good girl we'll talk over 'The
Inca' again and--perhaps--we'll have Mr. Bulder up to luncheon....
Good-bye."
She gave him her hand, looking up into his face.
"Smile!" he insisted.
She smiled.
So he went away, rather satiated with the pleasures of self-denial; but
the lightly latent mockery soon broke out again in a smile as he reached
the street.
"What a mess!" he grinned to himself. "The Tressilvains at Portlaw's!
And Wayward! and Shiela and Virginia and that awful Louis Malcourt! It
only wants Hamil to make the jolliest little hell of it. O my, O my,
what an amusing mess!"
However, he knew what Portlaw didn't know, that Virginia would never
accept that invitation, and that neither Wayward nor Constance Palliser
would remain one day under the roof that harboured the sister of Louis
Malcourt.