The ensuing days were bland and soft, and the Faurie family life
gravitated insensibly to the wide verandas of the Great Oaks mansion,
where much time was spent in futile chat, and where one could take the
air without the exertion of exercise and be out-of-doors without the
trouble of quitting the house. It was a fine illustration of the best
method of _dolce far niente_. The favorite rendezvous was beneath the
canopy of live-oak boughs on the extension of the veranda just outside
the library windows, and here Desmond often joined the group, saying to
himself that it had an air of churlish avoidance to hold himself aloof
when they were all so near. In these days he heard no little of Mrs.
Faurie’s plaints of the limited capacities of Great Oaks for rational
entertainment.
“Nothing to do,—nothing to say,—nothing to see. ‘Oh, give me to drink of
mandragora, that I may sleep away this gap of time!’” she exclaimed, as
she reclined languidly in her garden chair.
There was something to see in the Great Oaks avenues,—the sward was rich
and fresh, and all the vague, sparse, spring foliage of the trees sent
out a glitter now of gold and now of green. Hyacinths, pink and white
and blue, shook their fairy bells in a parterre near the house, and the
trellises in the old-fashioned garden were delicately sprayed with
green, lace-like leafage. There was much to see in the vast, murky
floods of the Mississippi River; the opposite banks had wholly
disappeared in the encroachments of the water on the swampy Arkansas
shore, and as its limits were beyond the reach of vision, its aspect was
that of some great inland sea. When Desmond remarked on the phenomenon,
Mr. Stanlett stated, with the pride which the dwellers on the banks of
the river take in its arbitrary and monarchical exhibitions of power,
that sometimes here, in high water, it measured sixty miles wide, and
always in the Bend its average depth was not less than one hundred and
eighty feet.
“And just beyond the point the lead-line often marks scant four feet on
the sandbars,” Mrs. Faurie interpolated iconoclastically.
The words suggested a lurking danger to the larger craft visible, the
possibility of getting aground even in such a vast welter of waters. A
great tow of coal was in midstream, bound from Pittsburgh to New
Orleans, the steamboat pushing before her a score of broad, laden
barges, ranged elliptically about her prow, and gliding slowly and
majestically down the current. Seen above the summit of the dense
forests in the distance, against the bland, blue sky, a whorl of black
smoke uncoiling from lofty chimneys announced the approach of the
steamer of the regular packet line rounding the point; and the upward
course of a snag-boat had its own suggestion of yet another of the
jeopardies of the navigation of the great, lawless river.
“Talking about something to drink,” said Mr. Stanlett, a bit uneasily,
“I had a queer experience yesterday. I was out riding, and when that
sudden shower came up, I was pretty far from home and got soaking wet.
And—you know my rheumatism—I stopped at the first house I could reach;
it was Jessop’s shack, and I went in to dry off by his fire.
Well,—Jessop is a friendly fellow, and would have me take a drink to
keep from catching my death of cold. You know he is only an Irish
wood-chopper,—makes a scanty living by furnishing wood from anybody’s
land who will give it to him for the clearing, and selling it to anybody
who will buy it; but I accepted because I don’t like to refuse a
civility from such a person,—and, bless my soul! it was French
brandy,—good sound Cognac. He was mightily surprised when I told him so.
He said he knew that it was a tipple to which he was unaccustomed, but
it cost the same as ‘bust-head whiskey’; he said it was all the same to
him so long as it fired up all right,—‘made drunk come.’ He bought it
from that shanty-boat.”
Desmond looked up significantly at Mr. Stanlett, who resumed: “You are
right, sir,—stolen, no doubt! I fear from the Whippoorwill Landing
stock. I remember that though Ackworth kept a general assortment of
goods, he had a limited class of fine custom. Some rich people live near
Whippoorwill Landing, and they preferred to give him their orders
instead of dealing elsewhere. Ackworth was of the gentry himself,—came
of good people,—broken up by the Civil War. He put what he had left into
this store; he had been in the Confederate army, though one of the
youngest veterans—distinguished himself—was very popular—and as the
planters round about gave him all their custom instead of sending to
Memphis or New Orleans, he kept in stock such choice grades of articles
as they would require. I fear this brandy was stolen and that bicycle
also; I wish that I had taken your view and given notice of our
suspicions to the police authorities.”
“To be quite candid, I did not think it prudent to abide by the theory
of non-action,” said Desmond. “I wrote that evening,—and the mail-boat
took the letter next morning.”
Mrs. Faurie sat up straight in her chair and looked about her with
widening eyes,—that a tutor in her house should take the initiative in
its direction! Mr. Stanlett’s delicate face flushed. Even through his
sparse silver hair one could see the polished scalp, all roseate. He
said nothing, however, looking down at his cigar as he flipped off the
ash.
Desmond noticed their evident attitude of mind both with humiliation and
indignation. Then he roused himself,—for his paltry salary they did not
buy his identity, annul his personality.
“The responsibility was mine,” he said icily, more in self-assertion and
in response to their offended silence, their mien of rebuke of his
presumption, than because of any sense of obligation to give account of
his motives. “It was I who discovered the quality of the article offered
at a mere fraction of its value. Knowing that it must have been stolen,
I did not feel justified, as far as I was concerned, in remaining
silent.”
“There is a grave responsibility in unwarranted interference,” remarked
Mr. Stanlett, dryly.
“And in bringing down suspicion on innocent people, perhaps,” Mrs.
Faurie said, with cold reproach.
“If the proprietor of the trading-boat came honestly by a wheel,
perfectly new and a favorite make, which he is able to offer for sale at
five dollars, he will have no difficulty in making the fact clear. It is
not my prerogative to judge.”
“I should be sorry to provoke the enmity of a rude, lawless man such as
that, by putting upon him an unnecessary affront and hardship,” Mr.
Stanlett coldly urged. He had no longer his genial drawl of leisure and
luxury. His intonation was crisp, clear-cut.
“As I understand it, a heinous and brutal murder was committed only last
fall at Whippoorwill Landing,” Desmond said, his pride pulsing in his
temples, his own restiveness under expressed displeasure showing
haughtily in his flushed face. “To have knowledge—or such grounds of
suspicion as amount to knowledge—of stolen merchandise being vended
through the country at fantastic prices and yet say nothing, in my
opinion comes perilously near conniving at the escape of the
villains,—accessory after the fact.”
Mrs. Faurie turned and surveyed the tutor with wide eyes and a look of
such affronted amazement that even he quailed before them. Desmond was
impressed with the fact, noted by him for the first time, but doubtless
often perceived before by others, that the very rich are fearless of the
ordinary operations of disaster. The ægis of great possessions
overshadows them. The law is their ally, for their protection; the
imputation that by their negligence, or assumptions, or bravado, or
inconsiderateness it could be arrayed against them is in itself a
ridiculous impossibility, a sort of grotesque parody on fact, a
distortion of the powers of established order. All other menace is
likewise abated in their favor. The dangers of travel are minimized for
them; the distresses of sickness are mitigated; every ill that flesh is
heir to is softened and alleviated and embellished till they are
scarcely to be identified with the woes, savage and hideous, that rack
the multitude; and death itself is so bedizened and beautified and
exalted that it ceases to be the great leveler. Mrs. Faurie’s
astonishment that anything that she or hers thought proper to do could
be liable to misconstruction, to question, to disparagement, was beyond
words.
Mr. Stanlett, however, stared at him with a sort of dawning
comprehension in his watery blue eyes. “Upon my word, I never thought of
it in that light!—ridiculous aspersion—impossible, though, as far as we
are concerned; but, I believe,—in respect to the law, the bare facts of
the case,—silence might aid the murderers, shedding the goods of which
they stripped that store among the flatboat-men, woodcutters, ditchers,
and niggers.”
“Then Mr. Desmond was right?” asked Mrs. Faurie, seriously.
“Yes,—yes,—though I deprecate anything that tends to draw upon this
house the enmity of the wretches.”
“The law is its best protection,” declared Desmond. “To make them feel
the power of the law is the real resource. To let them and their fences
and pals get away with impunity is to invite depredations.”
“Yes, yes,—true, true!” said Mr. Stanlett. “But you take a good deal on
yourself, Mr. Desmond.”
“It was imposed upon me by good conscience and good citizenship.”
“Ah, well, now,—I don’t know about good conscience,” said Mr. Stanlett,
drawing hard at his cigar, but with renewed satisfaction. “Batting the
eye is necessary sometimes. It won’t do to see so much, and deduce so
correctly, and act so promptly. Let sleeping dogs lie.”
“Do you call these sleeping dogs?”
“So far as we are concerned they are. Quiet, peace, security,—we have
them all at Great Oaks.”
“And a dullness that has no parallel outside the grave,” declared Mrs.
Faurie, once more falling back in her graceful reclining posture. She
had never seemed to Desmond so beautiful as to-day. She wore the
daintiest of afternoon dresses, of delicate lavender broadcloth, and the
dazzling purity of her complexion was even more radiantly asserted in
the full light. Her gray eyes, with their dense, long black lashes,
seemed more expressive in their petulant, slumberous disaffection. From
her white brow her hair rose in the usual pompadour effect, but its rich
brown tint was heightened by the broad illumination of out-of-doors, and
her lips had all the lustre of wet coral. Into the meshes of the lace of
her high “transparent collar” and chemisette, that showed the gleam of
her snowy white neck and throat, was thrust a set of stick-pins of
amethyst. She held some wands thickly studded with pink almond blooms in
her hand. “Great Oaks leads the field for monotony,” she said
disconsolately. “It might be a gentle distraction to be called upon to
defend the mansion against river pirates.”
She suddenly sat up straight, her eyes dilating and brightening, her
infrequent flush, an incomparable tint, mounting into her cheeks. “Think
how it would sound in the deep midnight,—if the old plantation bell
should boom out on the air, up the river and down the river, and across
the Bend, calling on all who ever stood on the pay-roll of Great Oaks
Plantation, or owed it a good turn, or wished it well, to lend a hand at
its utmost need. I can hear it now! It would sound so far! It would
shake the moss on the cypress trees in the White Deer Swamp, where
ghosts have been seen. It would rouse the gangs at the engineering work
who are trying to raise the river on jackscrews, or sinking a revetment
mat, or building a dyke at the point, or whatever they are up to over
yonder in the chute. It would even start up the loafers from the
card-tables at the old Shin-Plaster Landing, way down on the Arkansas
side, where everybody says they gamble half the night. And the Swamp
Lily would be climbing up the current, and old Captain Cleek—who dropped
me into the Mississippi River once when I was a baby and he was a mud
clerk, and my parents were leaving the steamboat in midstream to make
the landing in a yawl, and who has always declared he owed me indemnity
for a ducking—would signal to head for the shore with every pound of
steam that his engines can carry.”
Mr. Stanlett moved uneasily, and now and again cast a furtive, anxious
glance at her sparkling, girlish face. This badinage was far from
appealing to him. He had sought once or twice to interrupt, but in the
very desperation of idleness and lack of interest she found a sort of
entertainment in the picture that she had conjured up, and persisted:—
“What would you two do? All out here in the grove where it is so
egregiously dark of a moonless night—we shan’t have this function on
till the moon changes—there would appear occasionally a sudden,
funnel-shaped flare of light and a sharp report,”—she put her hands over
her ears for a moment as if to shut out the sound,—“and Mr. Desmond
would be winning his spurs, and Uncle Clarence would be wanting to show
how worthy he is of his, already won, and the babies would be telling
each other, and everybody else, how wrong and wicked and purblind I was
never to let them learn to shoot so that they might now fill the
marauders full of lead; and I—why I—would just open the door a bit ajar,
and—‘Gentlemen,’”—with the most gracious bow and an airy waving of the
hand,—“‘the goods and chattels in this house are somewhat antique, but
with a lot of wear in them yet. They are racy of the soil, and the trail
of the European serpent is over none of them. They are all at your
service. As to the people,—Mr. Stanlett is a man wise in counsel, gentle
in manner, and a genial companion at dinner; Mr. Desmond will teach you
“to speak Greek as naturally as pigs squeak”; and you are welcome to
_both_ of them until I can ransom them, which I will do as soon as I can
save something from my next year’s income!—all for the slight
consideration that you will give me and my squabs a free passage down to
Natchez on the Swamp Lily,—and no questions asked!’” She paused
breathless, triumphant. “Now, Uncle Clarence, don’t you think that would
wake us up?”
He turned to throw his cigar stub over his shoulder into the grass. The
wind was stirring the long, drooping branches of the live oak above
their heads, and little, fluttering ripples ran through the folds of the
skirt of her gown. “I think that we may have yet something to disturb
us, not so sensational, but sufficiently perturbing. There is no
necessity to ‘raise the river on jackscrews.’ Colonel Kentopp thinks we
are going to have an overflow in Deepwater Bend. The river is at flood
height, and in several localities above, the water is standing against
the levee. There have been recent rains all through the upper country.
He says that since the rise, the work of the River Commission on the
other side has had the effect of throwing a water of overwhelming weight
against the levee above his place, and if it breaks at Ring-fence
Plantation, where it was always liable to crevasses, considerable
territory in the Bend must go under too.”
“So poor Colonel Kentopp makes his moan! We never go under on account of
the cross levee. I am mighty sorry for his anxiety; an overflow,
especially if it were not general, would hurt the sale of Dryad-Dene,
and he has been negotiating that place so long with that rich Mr.
Loring. For my part, I believe that man will need only so much land as
he can lie down in,—he will be dead before he makes up his mind to buy,”
Mrs. Faurie prophesied.
She gazed silently out for a time at the tawny sweep of the Mississippi
at flood height, beyond the vivid variant tints of the bourgeoning
spring growths. “I wish the Mississippi River were drained. Such a
torment as it has been. What a queer thing its channel would be, though.
Just think of it! Boats unnumbered, of all sizes and pretensions, from
the first little stern-wheeler to the floating palaces of the days of
the Robert E. Lee and the Great Republic. Then the bones of all the
people that have gone down in the fires and collisions and swampings and
sinkings to their watery graves! The nations, the races, they are all
represented there, and who knows what prehistoric people! And in modern
times the English, the French, the Spaniard,—De Soto, himself, must be
there yet. He could not be swept with the current down to the Gulf, for
he was buried in his armor, encased in a hollow log, and he must be
lying still, oh, very still, the great wanderer! bound to one restricted
spot,—the great explorer! under tons and tons of the ooze and mud of the
Mississippi, that he came so far to find, and that has held him fast so
long! Yes,—the bottom of the Mississippi River must be a strange sight
indeed.”
“Might try a diving-bell; that would put an end to the dullness!”
suggested Reginald, who had come up and was leaning over the high back
of her chair as she talked. Now and again his eyes wandered to the
tennis-court at one side of the house, where Horace and Chubby were
playing a match, running very nimbly, but serving the balls badly enough
from the standpoint of his superior expertness. Mrs. Faurie did not
reply. Her eyes were fixed on a mounted figure approaching through the
grove, presently identified as a groom from Colonel Kentopp’s place.
Dismounting at the foot of the steps, he presented a note with the
request for an answer.
“An answer?” said Reginald, who had run down the flight of steps to
receive it. “Then you had better ride around to the kitchen and wait.”
As the groom rode off and Reginald turned to ascend the steps he
remarked: “From the Kentopps, mamma,” holding up the envelope, showing
the elaborate crest. Then, as she extended her hand, he continued in the
accents of an extreme but half-suppressed surprise: “It is addressed to
Mr. Desmond.”
The tutor looked up in blank amaze, the expression deepening on his face
as, after a request for permission, he read the contents. The note was
from Mrs. Kentopp, in a tone of the suavest urbanity and the most
friendly and informal cordiality, begging that he would give Colonel
Kentopp and herself the pleasure of his company at Dryad-Dene for the
week-end. “We have some very charming young friends staying with us whom
we wish you to meet, and especially we wish to give them the pleasure of
knowing you. I have selected the week-end, thinking that this will not
much conflict with your schoolroom duties with the little Faurie
torments. So I beseech you to let us have you Thursday evening, Friday,
Saturday, and Sunday. We will return you, with no disparagement of your
wisdom, early Monday morning, though we don’t intend to be very serious
and staid at Dryad-Dene either.”
He could not command the muscles of his face in his surprise as he read,
and his disconcerted doubt and dismay were so patent that Mrs. Faurie
cried out gleefully:—
“Have mercy on our curiosity! What are the Kentopps doing to you?”
Without a word he handed her the note. Her brilliant eyes scanned the
lines with a brightening interest over all her face. “Why, how perfectly
delightful! A dance after dinner Thursday evening—Mercy! in Lent?—oh, I
remember,—it is Mi-Carême. Will they have enough?—Yes, with Miss
Allandyce and the Mayberrys and Miss Dennis and Rupert Regnan and those
two young gentlemen who were landed from the Primrose last night, and
Miss Kelvin, and she suggests others whose names she does not
mention,—and a camp hunt on Friday and Saturday,—‘the young ladies are
wild to go!’—Oh, I know they are, and I will bet everything that they do
go, and spoil the fun for the men.—No shooting Sunday,—but only the
sylvan pleasures of the camp; for if the ladies don’t go earlier, they
will then join the hunters for a day in the woods. How delightful! How
perfectly delightful! But,”—a shadow crossed her face, quizzical, but
nevertheless a shadow—“how very strange that she doesn’t invite me!”
“I was thinking of that,” Desmond remarked. “It must be an oversight.”
“How can it be?—‘Cordial remembrances to dear Mrs. Faurie.’”
“I don’t understand it,” he said helplessly.
“I do,” Mrs. Faurie declared; “she is relegating me to my proper place
as an old woman. This entertainment is given for the young people; ‘gay
youth loves gay youth.’”
Desmond flushed. “I think it an extreme impertinence on the part of the
Kentopps.”
“Well,—in a way. I shouldn’t take up much room,—and oh, how I should
have enjoyed it,—the days are so long!”
“If you will excuse me, I will step into the library and answer the
note,” said Desmond, rising slowly from his chair.
“Do; and I am sure that you will have a charming time,—it will be a
delightful break in the monotony for you.”
Desmond stood aghast. “I have not the most remote idea of accepting.” He
had his hand on the back of his chair, and he leaned slightly upon it as
he looked down at her. His expression seemed reflected upon her face.
“But, my dear child, you must accept,” she exclaimed in dismay. “I
wouldn’t have you miss it for any consideration.”
“I don’t think an acceptance is appropriate—with you excluded.”
She laughed lightly. “Can’t you see that it is a party of young people,
and that it is only my incurable frivolity that makes me frenzied to go
to it? You are the only member of the household of the appropriate age
for such volatile amusements. The children are too young for society
such as this, and Uncle Clarence and I are too old. I insist upon it. I
will not have it otherwise. Go write your acceptance, or I will do it
for you.”
Still he leaned on the back of his chair, and still he looked at her
doubtfully. Rarely indeed since his advent at Great Oaks had his face
shown its natural lines of expression. It was frank, gentle, almost
appealing now, without the cool constraint, the aloof dignity, the
critical reserve, it generally wore. “The Kentopps did not particularly
attract me,—and, to be candid, I think that I perceived that I was not
acceptable to Mrs. Kentopp. It would be distasteful to me to go.”
Mrs. Faurie remembered suddenly Mrs. Kentopp’s pointed exclusion of
Desmond in her proposition for a game at cards, her manner of airy,
unseeing indifference.
“But you must perceive from this note that there was nothing
intentional,—it is cordiality and consideration itself. Mrs. Kentopp’s
manners are so affected and she is so self-absorbed that it is easy to
take her amiss. One should not be too exacting; we must take the people
in this world as we find them.”
Obviously, however, he was not placated, and she resumed with a note of
decision: “Now, I make this a personal matter. As a favor to _me_ I hope
that you will accept this invitation. The Kentopps are exceedingly civil
to you,—and you have no excuse. They would think a declination very
strange. And, besides, I want you to have the little bit of
entertainment that you can get from a neighborhood visit, while you are
consigned to this slough of despond yclept Great Oaks Plantation. I only
wish I had an invitation, too,—” She dropped her hands in her lap with a
gesture of mock despair, then she laughed out gayly at herself.
“Couldn’t you go without it,” he suggested. “There seems such an
established friendship between the families, formality might be
dispensed with.”
“If the note had been addressed to me,—perhaps. If I had been charged
with the transmission of the message to you, I might have stretched a
point and interpreted it as inclusive. But no!—I am expressly and of set
purpose excluded. I am out of the game! There is nothing for me but to
sit down in the chimney-corner and just be old.”
She turned her radiant face up toward him, the most apt interpretation
of beauty in its fullest expression he had ever imagined, the bloom of
perfect development upon it, the rare ripe fulfillment of the promise of
first youth. She was apart from the idea of time. There were more lines
about Chubby’s eyes, from much crinkling with laughter; her fair, smooth
lids showed naught but the form of their perfect design. Reginald had a
vertical crease between his brows, from a frown of perplexity he
sometimes wore in moments of cogitation; but his mother’s face was as
free from the trace of care as of age, and morning itself looked out of
her eyes.
The point of exclusion was so preposterous an incident,—it was so
jejune, and lacking in social tact and appropriateness, that Desmond,
try as he might, could not interpret it. He did not give over his
impressions of Mrs. Kentopp, for all her fair words now; he did not
easily forgive or forget, but the ground of offense was untenable. It
was infinitely unpalatable to accept, yet it was not practicable to
decline, and he was as little in a holiday mood as ever in his life
when, two days later, the Kentopps’ phaeton, which had been sent for
him, rolled up to the porte-cochère of the mansion at Dryad-Dene
Plantation.
If Great Oaks were reminiscent of the past, it might seem that
Dryad-Dene was a respecter only of the morrow. It could hardly be said
to be up-to-date,—it was an earnest of the future. Certainly it was the
most modern house in all that portion of Mississippi; and but that the
surrounding woods, with the peculiarity of harboring no shoots nor
underbrush, betokened the locality, one could scarcely have identified
the vicinage. The river was out of sight; the levee, unseemly,
utilitarian, suggestive of jeopardy in its promise of protection, held
its serpentine course far beyond the range of the windows of Dryad-Dene.
There were no forest trees immediately about the house; the grounds were
laid off in the formal Italian style, with conventional walks in the
midst of a fine green turf embellished with cone-shaped evergreens and
other ornamental shrubs, white stone vases, terraces with stone copings
and steps; and pleasing though the effect was to the eye, it was as
foreign to all suggestions of Mississippi as if it had been hundreds of
miles from the dominant old river. Only when its beauty might compensate
for its old-fashioned savor was aught brought into use of merely
domestic suggestions. These walks were covered with tiny, fine white
shells, brought up by steamer in hogsheads from the Gulf coast; and
charming as was their aspect, this entailed not more expense than
ordinary gravel, which must needs have been imported also, for there was
not a pebble to be found in all this stoneless region. A crystalline
glitter from one side betokened the slanting glass sashes of the
conservatory, and great ornamental plants—palms and Japanese
tree-ferns—were ranged on either side of the stone flight of steps of
the main entrance, as well as the porte-cochère. The house was of brick,
with stone facings, the roof of fantastic device, of many peaks and
gables; a tower was at the eastern corner; a deep loggia, an oriel
window, a balcony, embellished the façades elsewhere, breaking up every
suggestion of regularity in the architectural effect.
The large reception hall, into which Desmond was ushered, had a fire
blazing in a deep chimney-place, so huge as to be of mediæval
suggestion, and a grand staircase in massive oak, descending in devious
turns, with here a landing below a great, stained glass window, and here
a niche in which was a marble bust on a tall pedestal; on the lowest
step was lolling a young lady, a cup of tea in her hand and a
riding-crop across her knee. There were several other figures turning at
gaze as he entered; in fact, the apartment seemed full of people to
Desmond, coming into an unaccustomed entourage from the brighter light
without. It was a moment or two before his dazed sight disintegrated the
group. Most of the party were sipping tea, as they stood about, their
whips under their arms, for they were in riding costume. Two ladies sat
chatting in the high-backed antique chairs on either side of the fire. A
little beyond, in a deep bay-window, was a tea-table, a rich gleam of
color with its choice ware and lustre of silver, where Mrs. Kentopp, in
a blue-and-white striped silk tea-gown, long and flowing, was handling
the sugar-tongs, while a tall, blond youth was holding out his cup
toward her, apparently facetiously dickering for an extra lump. She
suddenly caught sight of Desmond, and sent the sugar-bowl falling to the
tray and scattering its treasures as she rose precipitately.
“There, now!” she exclaimed, “I said I heard horses’ hoofs, and this
greedy thing said I didn’t,”—for the young man had possessed himself of
the tongs and was sweetening his tea to his own taste. “I can’t hear the
phaeton’s wheels for the rubber tires.”
She swept toward Desmond, the skirt of her gown trailing behind her, and
the white lace which veiled its front from yoke to hem all shimmering
above the broad blue-and-white stripes of the silk foundation. “Mr.
Desmond,” she cried, “how good of you to come!” She pressed his hand
cordially, and turned about to the group with her most coquettish air,
her fluffy flaxen curls above her forehead somewhat more deeply tinted
in the glow of the fire and the light through the ruby “jewels” of the
stained glass window. “This is the Mr. Desmond with whom we all fell in
love over at Great Oaks,” she exclaimed joyously.
“Is it the regulation thing to fall in love with Mr. Desmond?” one of
the young ladies asked, as Mrs. Kentopp, having concluded her flaring
collective introduction, began to mention the names of the guests
nearest at hand.
Miss Allandyce was standing beside the tall newel-post, and he noted in
surprise that she wore the dark cloth “cross-saddle riding-breeches”
affected by progressive horsewomen, with boots to the knee and a
riding-coat, in lieu of the habit in which he was accustomed to see fair
equestrians. The costume was not utterly unknown to his observation, but
never should he have expected to see it here, and affected by a lady
with the unmistakable southern accent. She was tall and thin, though of
a large frame, and wore her masculine gear as successfully as a big,
bony boy might have done. She was not without charm; her gauntleted
hands were small, her boots were shapely and slender and displayed a
high instep. She had a Derby hat in one hand, while she held her crop
under her arm, and nibbled at a sandwich from the other. She had a fair,
frank, freckled face; her auburn hair was packed high on her head to be
well out of the way of the Derby, and amidst the mass two or three
fleecy short curls escaped from a richly tinted tortoise-shell comb. She
seemed much at ease, and moved about with great freedom among the
petticoats, though there was no other costume similar to her attire. The
delusive draperies of a divided skirt, which one of the party wore, came
to the floor, and were even fuller and much less graceful than the
familiar riding-habit of the girl who sat upon the step, and who was of
the type so usual in that country,—the woman who looks like a white
rose, with dark eyes and hair and very fair, delicate skin; who spends
the summer-time resting indoors, with a novel, taking care of her
complexion; who would as soon consign herself and her complexion to
Tophet as bathe in the sea, or climb a mountain, or walk out without a
veil or a mask of chamois after April. She had an oval face, her lips
were red, and her high silk hat had all the chic which the contrast with
exceeding femininity is expected to afford.
“Can I bow upward?” she asked, with a ripple of lazy laughter. “Is it
polite to bow when you are sitting on the floor?”
“You are perfectly horrid, Gertie,—the idea of pretending to be so worn
out as all that by a little horseback exercise!” Mrs. Kentopp declared,
with an assumed air of pettish displeasure. “Please don’t speak to Miss
Kelvin, I beg of you, Mr. Desmond. Remember that I haven’t introduced
you.”
“I am saving up for the dance this evening, Mr. Desmond,” the young lady
declared. “You ought to be glad that you did not get here in time for
the drag-hunt. We have had a run after an old bag, that we made believe
was a fox,—and I never knew before how many bones I had to ache.”
“Would you ache any less if you had had a fox instead of an anise-seed
bag?” Mrs. Kentopp reproached her. “Let me give you some tea, Mr.
Desmond”; and with all her silken train a-flutter she whisked back to
the tea-table.
“Yes, indeed,—glory would have sustained me,” Gertrude Kelvin declared.
“I was ahead of the hounds, Mr. Desmond,” she protested, still in her
soft collapse on the lowest step of the stairs. “The field was nowhere.
I can’t say that I was in at the death, for there was nothing to die;
but if I could have had the brush, I should have been forever happy.
Nobody could call me lazy any more! I can’t say that I captured the
bag—Is that sportsmanlike, Mr. Desmond?”
“Did the hounds run well?” asked Desmond, seeking to seem interested,
now equipped with a cup of tea and a sandwich, and free to stand about
at a distance from Mrs. Kentopp.
“Oh,—they did that!” exclaimed Miss Gertrude Kelvin, wagging her head
and widening her eyes to express great speed; “and I was in—with the bag
to hold!”
“Oh, the hounds make me mad,—they are so easily deceived! I hate a
fool!” Miss Allandyce came up in a gentlemanly fashion near Desmond and
Miss Kelvin, looking down at that young lady, who was secretly a bit out
of countenance at her proximity in this novel attire. She said no more,
and Miss Allandyce went on presently, moving one of her handsome feet
with a heel and toe alternation, to which she was accustomed with her
skirts, but which now had a style of brazen indifference in the mind of
the young lady clumped up in her habit at the foot of the stairs. “It is
a pretty good pack, though.”
“Colonel Kentopp’s kennels, or do they belong to a neighborhood hunt?”
asked Desmond.
Both girls opened wide eyes to horrify and impress him.
“Neither!” replied Miss Kelvin, significantly.
“Isn’t that ridiculous?” exclaimed the strong-minded Allandyce, whirling
half around on her heel. “The pack belongs to an old wood-chopper named
Sloper,—and ‘the quality’ _borrow_ his dogs.”
“Isn’t that low?” Miss Kelvin cast up her dark eyes from her humble
posture. “_He_ is all right—for a wood-chopper! Is he Irish,—or Scotch?
He has a queer accent.”
“Plain Mississippi,—without any foreign frills,” replied Miss Allandyce.
“He lives all alone,—got no relatives,—and keeps such a lot of dogs for
company, he says. They are just friends of his,—guests, a permanent
house-party, and oh!—think of it!—when they all ask together to be
helped first at breakfast.”
“And the neighborhood planters object to it, for he won’t take a cent,
and they don’t want him in the run; but if they borrow his dogs, they
have to invite him and treat him as a guest for the time being. So about
a year ago they thought they would make up a good pack—” explained Miss
Allandyce.
“Went at it in great style—” interpolated Miss Kelvin.
“Imported dogs,—English—”
“Colonel Kentopp bought some beauties—”
“Great price—”
“Oh,—oo—oo—!” said Miss Kelvin, but beyond that enigmatic syllable she
could not express her sentiments.
“Oh,—oo—oo!” echoed Miss Allandyce.
Their eyes filled with tears of laughter, as one looked down and the
other looked up.
“Well, how did they run?” asked Desmond.
Miss Kelvin in her lowly posture took refuge in the safety of silence.
She began to manifest renewed interest in her sandwich, and proceeded to
eat it up on both sides of its bit of encircling ribbon.
Perhaps even the assumption of manly attire imparts a degree of courage.
Miss Allandyce chose a bolder course. She walked first to the tea-table
and put down her cup,—Desmond realizing too late that the influence of
her boyish aspect had prevented him from offering that service. As she
came back, her Derby in her hand and flecking her boots with her
riding-whip, she looked over her shoulder once or twice to make sure of
Mrs. Kentopp’s distance. Then she said: “I’ll tell you, but you must
never mention it to her, and above all things never to the colonel,—he
is a sweet dear and I love him! His English hounds ran like fun; they
gave tongue like a bell,—the most mellow, searching, thrilling, musical
sound you ever heard,—and the first staked-and-ridered rail fence they
came to—”
“They could as easily have climbed a tree, the poor foreigners!” giggled
Miss Kelvin, sly in her corner.
“Such a fence as our swamp dogs would just scramble over,” explained
Miss Allandyce; “but the imported English hounds ran hither and thither,
squeaking and wheezing, and Colonel Kentopp—”
“They say his language was awful!”—Miss Kelvin had crumpled herself up
very small.
“I never see him so decorous in church without thinking of it,” said
Miss Allandyce, and the two exchanged a glance of extreme relish.
“The hounds climbed the fence at last?” asked Desmond, impatient for the
sequel.
There was a moment of silent and speechless mirth. Then Miss Allandyce
said, in a husky voice and with eyes full of tears, “Colonel Kentopp and
the huntsman dismounted and _lifted_ the imported English hounds over
the fence,—and by that time the fox had run to Issaquena County!”
“Why, what a gay time you are having over there! What’s the fun? Don’t
keep the joke to yourselves,” called out Mrs. Kentopp, in the midst of
their laughter. But she did not approach the group, and presently the
two recovered their composure.
“I wonder,—I have often wondered what did ever become of those imported
hounds,” speculated Miss Allandyce.
“Perfect dears, too.”
“So handsome! But they were seen here no more, and whenever ‘the
quality’ have a run, they borrow old man Sloper’s house-party, and put
the old wood-chopper up on as good a horse as there is in the county.”
“They don’t indulge in riding to hounds about Great Oaks, do they, Mr.
Desmond?” asked Miss Kelvin, still resting her bones.
“Not since I have been there,” replied Desmond.
“How long will you be at Great Oaks?” asked Miss Allandyce.
“Why, I hardly know,” replied Desmond, slightly embarrassed.
“Oh, they make it so delightful to guests, I don’t wonder you can’t say
when you will get your visit out,” Miss Kelvin remarked.
A sudden illumination broke in upon Desmond’s mind. Mrs. Kentopp had not
acquainted her house-party with their fellow guest’s vocation.
“But I am not a guest at Great Oaks,” said Desmond, quickly. “I am the
tutor.”
An appalled astonishment was on the face of both young girls for an
instant. Miss Kelvin remained silent, but Miss Allandyce rejoined in a
tone which obviously sought to keep the key of the previous chat, “Oh,
yes,—Mrs. Faurie has three children,—what a charming household it is
there!” Then she drew a tiny watch from her fob and said in a low tone
to Miss Kelvin: “I wonder that Mrs. Kentopp doesn’t let us go and dress.
I shall be a fright if I don’t have at least an hour.”
“We have to dance, too, in our dinner-gowns,” Miss Kelvin murmured a
trifle absently.
Desmond silently upbraided his folly in yielding to the insistence that
had brought him here. Despite his gentle breeding, the position of his
family, the opportunities of wealth that he had hitherto enjoyed, his
culture, he felt that he was at a disadvantage in general society. His
poverty, his station as a private tutor,—to small boys, mere
children,—rendered his presence an incongruity among frivolous people
who could not know and could not appreciate him fairly. He had no
opportunity to make his value and quality felt. It was only in some
cultured coterie capable of going deeper than the shallow appraisement
of fashion that he could ever hope to find again his level. He could not
forgive himself that he had laid himself liable to this misapprehension,
and for his life he could not imagine why Mrs. Kentopp had given her
guests no intimation of his position, to avoid such a contretemps as he
had encountered. For their own sake, and for hers, they would have been
civil in any event. Had she intended to pass him off as a man of their
world, of wealth and leisure and luxury? And why, indeed? For his own
part he had no desire to pose in a guise that must coerce their respect.
But the malapropos incident had made him feel out of place, as if he
were a presuming aspirant, patronized by the Kentopps, and foisted upon
their guests’ society without warrant. Neither of the young ladies had
spoken again, both apparently absorbed in their eagerness to be off to
dress, and the negligence of Mrs. Kentopp, still flirting at the
tea-table, to give them the opportunity.
Suddenly Colonel Kentopp entered and rushed forward with an enthusiastic
extended hand. “Why, my dear sir,” he exclaimed heartily, “I didn’t know
that you had yet arrived. Glad to see you! How well you are looking! The
sight of you is good for sore eyes.” His left hand had crept up to
Desmond’s shoulder, which he patted affectionately as he spoke. “Wish
you could have been with us on the run to-day,—great time!—But what are
you all dawdling around here for? It is time to dress for dinner. The
Mayberrys and Timlocks will be here long before you are ready. Joyce,
keep those sweet nothings that you are whispering into my spouse’s ear
for a season of more leisure.” And he advanced upon the tea-table, where
Mrs. Kentopp was mildly carousing, so to speak, in a flirtation with a
man almost young enough to have been her own son. She broke out into a
peal of her affected, coquettish laughter, and Desmond in their midst
looked on with as unresponsive a pulse, with as alien and unrelated a
mien, as if among some mystic crew of Comus.