The room to which Desmond was assigned was never intended for an
unimportant guest. As he looked about him, he could not understand the
incongruity. The Kentopps were neither of them such people as value a
man for his own sake, regardless of wealth or station; they had no fine
perceptions that could discriminate the higher attributes; they were
devoid of that gift of generosity which belittles self to make the more
of greater worth; they could not even understand a lofty poise of mind,
and it amazed him that they should seem to strain after it,—to ignore
the trivial incident of the vital fact.
It was a spacious, airy apartment at one of the corners of the building,
and the sharp angle was decorated with a dainty oriel window, though
large enough to hold a fauteuil, a writing-desk, and a shelf of books;
from this outlook one might see down a deep bosky dell artificially
beautified, with a tangle of vines and interlacing shrubs, amongst which
was visible here and there an elusive face, with the pointed ears of the
fauns and elves of garden statuary. There were no trees of tall growth,
and hence he caught a repeated glimpse of jets of leaping water among
the leafage, and in the stillness he could hear the splashing of a
fountain. At the end of a pleached alley was a rustic pavilion,
evidenced by its conical roof, and in the opposite direction a life-size
figure in marble on a pedestal had suggestions befitting the classic
ideal of sylvan nymphs. The new fad of an old dial was illustrated in a
shadowy nook where the sun might make scant register of time. This,
Desmond was sure, was the “dene” which gave the place its name. The
preciousness of its design affronted him, despite its prettiness. In his
unconsciousness he did no homage to the ingenuity of Kentopp, who, after
the burning of his simple farmhouse, inherited from his father, at the
other end of the place, had utilized this desirable building-site
despite the proximity of an old “bear wallow,”—the swampy depression
thus drained, civilized, and made ornamental and even poetic. Any
declivity or acclivity was rare in this level region, and the “dene” was
greatly admired; its original status was wholly forgotten in the success
of the landscape gardener’s achievement, save when some blunt yeoman
neighbor sought a rift in the armor of the Kentopps’ satisfaction and
the relish of a crude joke by directing a note or other paper-writing to
“Kentopp Bear Wallow” instead of “Dryad-Dene.”
As Desmond turned from the window and again surveyed the room, he was
struck anew by the elaborate aspect of its appointments. A
reclining-chair invited to lounging, with foot-rest and book-holder.
There was the daintiest of toilet tables draped with lace, instead of
the heavy old mahogany bureau such as the gentry of Deepwater Bend were
accustomed to use; and in place of the immemorial mahogany four-poster
was a brass bedstead, also canopied and covered with lace, and furnished
with a duvet of delicate, embroidered blue silk. The polished floor had
rugs in which this azure hue predominated; an open door gave on a
bath-room tiled in blue and white, and the cut-glass candlesticks among
the other crystal accessories of the toilet table held faint blue wax
tapers,—never intended for use, however, for a flood of gas-light
illumined the room, and made his preparations an easy matter, in
contrast with the usual labors of dressing in the country for a festive
occasion by the light of a kerosene lamp, however decorated.
Desmond had earlier experienced a natural youthful gratulation that his
evening clothes, relic of his London visit the previous June, seeming a
thousand years ago and in a different state of existence, were so fresh
and unworn, and a specially handsome garb. He could at least appear to
personal advantage and be no discredit to his entertainers. Now he did
not care! He fretfully adjusted the diamond studs, a gift that he had
not parted with in all the exigencies of the financial stress he had
known, and the choice and fine sleeve-links, also mementos of happier
days. He would as soon wear jeans, he said to himself, as he stood, tall
and conspicuously imposing, before the long mirror, tying his cravat
with a touch that grudged its practiced deftness, for in his
undergraduate days he had been something of a dude, despite the
roughening influences of the “Gridiron.” He called out in a peremptory
tone when a tap fell upon the door, and as it opened admitting a young
gentleman, one of the guests of the house, the leisurely drawl with
which he entered upon his mission received an impetus from the imperious
gravity and challenge of the eyes fixed upon him.
“Mrs. Kentopp requested that as I was going by—Great Scott! they do you
immensely proud.” He was young, and blond, and of slight figure, and had
already a tendency to baldness. He was not tall, but very erect,
deported himself with conscious chic, and spoke with a superficial,
negligent enunciation. It was with an air of surprised amusement that he
paused to look about the room. “They haven’t put me up half so fine. I
feel slighted,” with an airy laugh. “Well,—Mrs. Kentopp asked that as I
was going by I would stop for you, to—to”—he was beginning to feel the
influence of Desmond’s eyes—“to show you where the drawing-rooms are
located.”
“Lest I should lose my way without chart or compass,” Desmond commented.
“Well,—they seemed actually to try to twist things when this house was
planned,—nothing is where you would expect to find it,” said Mr.
Herndon.
“I am beholden to you, then, for towing me to a safe harbor,” said
Desmond.
Young Herndon had recovered his equanimity. “Kentopp is such an
incorrigible dawdle that she dare not trust him. But I have a special
virtue of promptness,—among my many other virtues. My friends say that I
will die some day twenty minutes before my time comes.”
Notwithstanding this vaunted promptitude, there were several gentlemen
already in the large drawinging-rooms when the two entered. The glitter
of gas and crystal from the chandeliers, the gloss of the floors, the
richness of the oriental rugs, the gilded chairs and sofas, upholstered
in cream and terra-cotta satin brocade, the glow, deep yet delicate, of
costly pictures, the scattered ornaments, vases of Venetian glass and
choice porcelain, tall urns of Persian ware, Chinese curios in carved
ivory,—there was not a suggestion of home but the great fire blazing
behind a brass fender and andirons, and this was so bedizened by a
modern “high-art” mantel, that the leaping hickory flames had much ado
to make the domestic note heard in the bizarre medley; and indeed the
fire itself was a mere matter of ornament, for the house was heated by a
furnace fed by Pittsburgh coal, even more convenient in this riparian
locality than wood which must be hewn, and incredibly cheap by reason of
the low rates of water-carriage as compared with railway freightage.
Neither of the Kentopps had yet appeared, and as Desmond entered the
room, though maintaining his manner of proud composure, he was grateful
for the fact. Their overwhelming cordiality daunted him in the
realization of its superficiality. He fumbled vainly for his identity in
the midst of their soft deceits and unimagined intention, beyond his
ken, but unmistakable. He could meet their guests, to whom he was not
even conventionally beholden, on a level as man to man, and he would
make no concessions. He would maintain his sense of his own dignity.
In the sensitiveness and self-consciousness incident to an unaccustomed
and in a degree a false position, he did not reflect that beyond his
name he was wholly unknown to the party, and that the momentary interval
after his appearance was instinct only with uncertainty and a
preliminary effort to “place him” in evolving some suitable phrase
introductory to conversation with a stranger. He interpreted the silence
as cool, critical, not to say supercilious, and he had no mind humbly to
await his adjustment to such place in the coterie as the sense of the
meeting, so to speak, might consign him. He walked to one side of the
hearth, and stood for a moment as if in contemplation of the group. Then
singling out one, a man of mature years, conventional of aspect, with a
long, thin face and a most unenthusiastic expression, he remarked, “I
think I have not met you earlier.”
“And what of that?” was in the countenance of all the amazed group, as
Desmond held the centre of the stage,—even in the impassive, wooden
countenance of the gentleman whom he had addressed.
“Mr. Loring, Mr. Desmond.” The youthful Herndon was no reluctant
scholar; as he often remarked, when he had had a thing demonstrated to
him forty thousand times, he had learned it. He had now mastered the
fact that the tutor, for whatever reason placed in the position of
Colonel Kentopp’s guest, was by no means disposed to interpret this as
patronage, nor to capitulate to good-fellowship on anything short of the
full honors of war. “Mr. Loring has just arrived,” Herndon further
explained.
As they shook hands Desmond’s next remark brought a sudden gleam of
expression into the wooden grooves of Mr. Loring’s immobile face. “I
have heard you mentioned at Great Oaks Plantation,” he said, recalling
vaguely Mrs. Faurie’s account of the dilatory methods of the prospective
purchaser of Dryad-Dene.
“Great Oaks? Are you visiting at Great Oaks? Charming old place.”
“I am living there. I am the tutor of the Faurie boys.”
Mr. Loring could not control the surprise in his face, for this princely
presence was not to his mind the way the tutor of unlicked cubs should
look. It was no intentional discourtesy, for he said with more animation
than an article so apparently manufactured might be expected to show:
“Do you intend to make teaching your regular profession?” He could but
think that there must be something unexplained. This was some friend of
the Fauries, perhaps taking a pose for a freak; there was some lure that
had induced a pretended lodging in a humble position at Great Oaks.
“My present intention,—certainly.”
Nevertheless, Mr. Loring did not for one moment relegate this imposing
personage to the situation of a mere pedagogic drudge for small boys,
because, if it were true, what did he here? The Fauries, with their
ancient traditions and high standards, might annul and obliterate all
worldly differences in their intercourse with a poor gentleman, refined
and intellectual, but never the recent and purse-proud Kentopps.
And here suddenly they both were, overflowing with cordial greetings and
exclamatory apologies and with elaborate rustlings and bows. Colonel
Kentopp showed such a glittering expanse of white shirt front over his
broad bosom that the sight of so much linen suggested undress; and his
wife showed so much collar-bone and sternum independent of fabric and
almost of flesh that she suggested no dress at all. She wore, however, a
ruby-tinted brocade, and a fine pendant of rubies and diamonds swung
from a delicate chain about her throat. Her hair had a deeper hue of
blondine than usual, and she wore in it a cluster of ruby-tinted ostrich
tips, at the base of which a very large diamond scintillated.
But diamonds were all at a discount in comparison with those that
glimmered like dewdrops in the dark masses of Gertrude Kelvin’s hair.
They were not many nor of great size, but they were set artfully to
quiver and glitter at every movement of her head, and the midnight of
her hair gave them a stellular brilliancy. She was attired in a gown of
delicate green tissue over silk of the same shade, and the exquisite
whiteness of her shoulders and arms and face, heightened by the dainty
tint of the dress, seemed worth some deprivation of the garish light of
the summer sun and outdoor joys.
“Come, Mr. Desmond, you will take out Miss Kelvin,” said Mrs. Kentopp,
busied in arranging her party. Then in an aside to Mr. Loring behind her
fan of ruby-tinted ostrich plumes: “He was just dying with suspense!”
She played her blue eyes at him significantly, and Mr. Loring was thus
given to understand that Mr. Desmond’s lure in Deepwater Bend was Miss
Kelvin.
“But how old man Kelvin will cut up if there is really no money,” he
thought sagely.
In slow and stately wise they filed out in couples to the dining-room;
and even if the predilections of Mr. Loring were already engaged by the
traditions of the _ancien régime_, he must needs have admitted to
himself that the entourage at Dryad-Dene was most attractive,
embellished by this glittering company, which set off the house in its
gala aspect to the greatest advantage.
The dining-room was large, and its appointments betokened that its
owners gave serious heed to the problems and the pleasures of the table.
“My house was built around my refrigerator,” Mrs. Kentopp was fond of
saying; and Colonel Kentopp might have added, with a significance not
altogether literal, that his house was built over his cellar. For the
Kentopps, though not sages of wisdom, were quite indisposed to depend
largely upon the attractions of their personality and the feast of
reason and the flow of soul to commend their entertainments. The wines
were choice and had been long in bottle, and distance and
inaccessibility worked no impairment upon the menu. All the delicacies
of the season, and many out of season, graced the successive courses,
and the decorations of rare exotics—the spring flowers were left to
bloom in their thousands out-of-doors—had indeed scant affinity with the
backwoods.
“These are from our own hothouses,” Mrs. Kentopp was saying, in reply to
a comment. “Yes,—we have the world at command at Dryad-Dene. This is the
newly discovered site of the Garden of Eden, between the waters of the
Mississippi and Bogue Humma-Echeto; they used to be called the Pishon
and the Gihon rivers, you know.” She held her head down and looked up
under the rims of her eyelids to emphasize the felicity of her remark.
“If there is any little item that we haven’t got, the Mississippi River
on one side and the railroad on the other will bring it to us.”
Mr. Loring sat at her right hand and was subject to all her
beguilements. Opposite at a little distance was Desmond, between Miss
Kelvin and Miss Allandyce, with Herndon on the farther side. Desmond had
been presented to the Mayberry and Timlock contingent, but he had taken
only a vague impression of pink and blue draperies and blonde hair and
roseate smiles, with the usual complement of attendant cavaliers; for in
the place to which he had been assigned he was absorbed in an effort,
more or less successful, to explain to Miss Allandyce a reason for not
recognizing her that should be something less blunt than the statement
that her riding-costume had quite disguised her at their earlier meeting
in the afternoon.
“I have heard that the cultivation of the powers of memory is considered
important in modern education,” she twitted him. “I should think your
pedagogical laurels would wilt after this. How can you urge upon Chub
Faurie the value of such discipline of the faculty of—of—”
“Observation,” suggested Miss Kelvin, on his other hand.
“Yes,—observation and—and tabulation of traits as to enable you to
recognize an object—”
“In the landscape—” prompted Miss Kelvin.
“Yes—in the landscape—an object with a red head, after the lapse of an
interval of time,—an hour, say—”
“Arithmetically, sixty minutes, to be exact,” Miss Kelvin urged her on.
Desmond had no sense of amusement as he realized that he had tabulated
her equestrian garb in his mind and would never forget it. The
predicament he was in was far too critical for that. He made a gallant
struggle for a diversion of interest. “I saw no object with a red head,”
he stipulated. “I should never tabulate it as red, but auburn.”
“Then you would be most discourteous; for red heads are very
fashionable, and mine is treated with chemicals at stated intervals to
make it seem redder than it is,” she said gravely, assuming an air of
staid and offended decorum.
He wondered in his desperation whether it would be permissible to tell
her frankly that she was not half so gentlemanly in her gown of white
silk. A necklace of seed pearls of fantastic device hung about her
delicate white neck. Her short sleeves had a fall of lace that met the
tops of her long white kid gloves, which she had slipped off her hands
without disturbing the upper section, tucking the fingers beneath her
bracelets. She wore a comb of seed pearls in her auburn hair, and she
looked very handsome. He had an idea, curious enough to him, that she
did not in the least grasp the reason of his failure to recognize her,
his apparent lapse of memory, but that Miss Kelvin had divined it in an
instant, and had a mischievous delight in his plight. Although Miss
Kelvin would not have alluded to the riding-costume her friend
affected,—for she thought it a horrifying, strong-minded notion, worthy
of the woman who wants to vote, who engages in business, who preaches,
who practices medicine and law, and its adoption by a southerner an
apostasy, abominably uncharacteristic,—her eyes dwelt upon him with a
luminous mirth, and now and then, as she caught his glance, she burst
into a ripple of involuntary laughter.
Her recurrent observation of him, her smiles in response to his glance
as oysters and soup, and fish and entrée, successively filed past him,
almost untouched, were remarked by Mr. Loring, and these apparently
tender passages between the two were interpreted to further Mrs.
Kentopp’s plan even more than she had anticipated. She had expected to
artfully give Mr. Loring such an idea of mutual interest as their
propinquity might suggest, aided by some crafty phrases of her own. But
she had not dared to hope for these bright glances from Gertrude, for
her half-suppressed delighted laughter, for the attitude of the girl,
leaning half across Desmond to whisper and prompt Miss Allandyce to
further jocose upbraidings of the mischance. Gertrude seemed, indeed,
throwing herself at his head; and to her demonstration he ardently
responded, now and again turning to take her counsel in a low voice how
he might best plead his excuses, often misadvised to his detriment and
setting Selina Allandyce off on a new score of rebukes and reproaches.
For they found the tutor great fun. After the first shock of
disappointment, they resigned themselves with a good grace to his
impecunious state and ineligibility. He was too handsome a man to view
with indifference, and too interesting, for his manner attracted no less
than his presence. There was something, too, below the surface of his
talk, and while they did not discriminate its quality, they were aware
of its submergence there.
As the gay chat grew in interest and animation, Mrs. Kentopp in her
elation could not leave the aspect of the trio to produce its own
impression; she must needs give it a nudge.
“Love’s young dream,” she murmured sentimentally to Mr. Loring, her head
held down, the iris of her eyes under the upper lids. “‘There’s nothing
half so sweet in life.’”
Mr. Loring for some time had seemed quite attentive to the champagne and
the roast, but he was not altogether absorbed.
“Not so young, I take it, as far as the gentleman is concerned,” he
replied discerningly.
“Oh,—oh,”—Mrs. Kentopp could hardly contradict this conclusion fast
enough. “Why, _he_ is just a boy,—a collegian,—graduated last June,—just
twenty-four.”
“Rather old for a collegian,” commented Mr. Loring, dryly.
“Took a very elaborate course, all sorts of elective extras as well as
the regular curriculum. Has a degree from _two_ great universities.”
“One is more than enough,” sneered Mr. Loring, who had matriculated with
much brilliancy on ’Change.
“Oh, yes,—he is a mere boy!” Mrs. Kentopp emphasized her insistence.
“He looks fully thirty,” said Mr. Loring, wondering why olives were not
always “pitted,”—otherwise it seemed more decent to swallow the pits, if
the possibilities of appendicitis did not hinder.
“Oh, he has had so much sorrow,”—and Mrs. Kentopp conjured an appealing
sadness into her eyes and shook her flaxen head as she bent it to look
down in token of sympathetic woe.
“Hasn’t turned his hair gray,” said Mr. Loring. “He is the
finest-looking man I ever saw.”
“Oh, do you think so?” asked Mrs. Kentopp, with a surprised and negative
tendency.
“Certainly; he has a noble head, and a very fine and impressive face.
They must be long on looks at Great Oaks. I always thought Mrs. Faurie
the most beautiful woman in the world.”
“‘The most beautiful woman in the world!’”—one of the Mayberry group
caught the words and tossed them back. “I know just whom you are talking
about.”
The attention became concentrated. Mrs. Kentopp sought to divert it. “I
want you to observe the mould of the sorbet,” she interrupted,
bespeaking notice for the red ices. “Somebody said that this looks like
a melon and ought not to be striped this deep red. Do you think it is a
melon?”
“Why, no,” said Desmond. “It is a pomegranate.”
“There,—what did I tell you?” She clapped her hands in juvenile glee, as
she spoke across the length of the table to her husband.
“The first time I ever tasted a real pomegranate was down at Great
Oaks,” said Miss Mayberry. “They have them in their old-fashioned garden
yet. You have got the flavor, too,” she added, as she daintily tasted
the ice.
“And who do you say is the most beautiful woman in the world?” queried
Mr. Loring, his inelastic countenance reluctantly crinkling in his
smile, sure of her answer.
“Mrs. Faurie, of course! I have always heard her called that, and
everywhere as well as at home. I remember when we were at Vevey we met
some Italians,—high-class people who knew the Berkeleys,—oh, they were
very agreeable,—and one day we were talking at random of pictures and
pose and elements of beauty, and one of the gentlemen, who was quite an
art connoisseur, said that he believed he knew the most beautiful woman
in all the world. He had met her in Chamouni, doing Mont Blanc, and that
sort of thing; and when he said that she lived in Paris, Madame Honoria
Faurie, we all screamed! He didn’t even know that she was an American.”
“But she has gone off a good deal in her looks of late,” Mrs. Kentopp
suggested.
“I hoped that I would meet her here to-night,” said Mr. Loring, without
even ordinary tact; everything connected with Great Oaks, the embodiment
of his ideal, for which his soul sighed, was interesting to him. “Is
Mrs. Faurie not well?” He fixed his eyes on Desmond and asked the
question directly across the table.
“Oh, yes,—quite well,” Desmond replied, a trifle embarrassed.
There was a pause. The general attention was apparently required by the
game course, which was just being served. The inference was too plain.
Mrs. Faurie, it seemed, had not cared to honor the diversion at
Dryad-Dene with the distinction of her presence. For who could imagine
Mrs. Kentopp’s purblind folly in failing to invite her!
The tact of all the party seemed to have suffered a collapse. “I suppose
that Mrs. Faurie has gone so much, and seen so much, and had so much,
that she does not care for our neighborhood gatherings,” said Gertrude
Kelvin at length.
“She finds Great Oaks as dull as the grave,” snapped Mrs. Kentopp, the
pendulous tendency of her cheeks reasserted without the dimpling breadth
of laughter. “Doesn’t she, Mr. Desmond?”
He was a little at a loss. “She complains of its monotony,” he said.
“The idea!” exclaimed Mr. Loring, indignantly; “one of the finest places
in the whole Mississippi River country. From Memphis to the Balize you
couldn’t find its superior. To my mind it is the loveliest place I ever
saw. I wish it was mine! Monotony! I’d like to own that kind of
monotony.”
From the foot of the table Colonel Kentopp, in all his pose of
geniality, with his glass of Chambertin in his hand, lowered upon Mrs.
Kentopp.
The woman rallied first from the contretemps. “The land I know is fine
and there is a deal of it, and the outbuildings are good and stanch, but
the old mansion is a rattle-trap,—so out of repair, and built on any
kind of an old plan. It has no style about it, no modern improvements
and embellishments and—”
“It simply crystallizes the past,” Mr. Loring declared solemnly. “It is
an epitome of the old South,—its comfort, its space, its disregard of
ostentation; its broad acres about it can keep the tally of its values;
it takes you back a hundred years; it has yesterday in every line. I
wish it was mine!”
He talked on and on, the taciturn man, over the salad and the sweets,
the theme unvaried, throughout the service of the dessert with the
notable ancient Madeira, till at last his voice was lost in a silken
rustle. Mrs. Kentopp had given the signal for rising, and the young
girls were presently flitting along the big square hall, still visible
from the dining-room, making a picture that enhanced the charming
setting which should have appealed to any man with an eye for beauty,
who did not cultivate a distorted squint backward toward the exploded
past instead of the sophisticated present.
The ballroom was in the third story,—another intimation of the intensely
modern spirit of Dryad-Dene. There was all out-of-doors to build on, and
surely there was scant reason to economize space when the value of land
was contemplated by the quarter section instead of the running foot. The
destined use and cost of building materials alone might limit the size
of any structure in Deepwater Bend. But though there was no need to
climb stairs, there was much that was picturesque in this airy ballroom,
and it was indeed a great contrast to the long, low wing devoted to the
same purpose at Great Oaks, with its green shutters closed, the spiders
weaving in the corners, and the wide, smooth spaces of its polished
flooring devoted to the humble purposes of miscellaneous storage; for
there was not a dance at Great Oaks mansion in all the quiet years while
Mrs. Faurie had been the admired cynosure in palatial assemblages in
many foreign capitals.
Here the decorated ceiling had a fine pitch, and all the architectural
embellishments of the house below culminated on this level; the cupola
of the tower gave a circular alcove to the ballroom, and on the opposite
side the French windows issued upon a long, flat roof that, furnished
with a balustrade, offered a charming promenade between the waltzes for
the young people under the white, palpitating stars and in close
familiarity with the gentle night wind. It offered also every
opportunity to the overheated dancers for pneumonia and influenza; but
as they gave this fact no heed, it might scarcely be considered one of
the choice advantages of the ballroom. The hothouses had sent hither
their offering of palms and banana trees and ferns for a tasteful scheme
of decoration, and an Italian band, brought up from New Orleans for the
occasion, tossed lilting melodies from behind a leafy screen. The
stringed vibrations found in Desmond’s heart a thrilling response of
poignant memory, reviving in contrast with the present all the happy
past, the cherished prospects, the vanished faces, the hallowed home.
But he was young, and his pulses were astir with vitality and vigor. The
rhythm, the motion, the sweet, swinging melody, imparted their own
jubilant effects, and he could but enjoy with his muscles all the
buoyancy of his stalwart young frame, while with a curious duality his
heart’s sorrows were unassuaged and his mental indifference and
aloofness were no self-deceit. It was perhaps the mental attitude of
many a reveler in joyous scenes that awoke no sense of mirth, but it had
no parallel among the dancers at Dryad-Dene. The young ladies were all
a-weary of the dull season spent at the abominated plantations; it was
too late for New Orleans, being mid-Lent, indeed, and yet too early for
the White Sulphur Springs or the Gulf coast.
“How delicious!” Gertrude Kelvin exclaimed. “I should have thought I had
forgotten how to ‘two-step,’—I have scarcely stood on my feet since
Mardi-Gras.” For it was with the charming white rose that Desmond found
himself chiefly awhirl. He danced specially well, and more than once, as
the music recommenced, she looked from a chatting group toward him, with
so bright and expectant a smile that he was fain to ask the pleasure
once more. And indeed it was no great constraint. She was as light, as
airy, as poetic of movement, swinging as rhythmically as a blossom on a
bough, with as little suggestion of effort. Her delicate green tissue
draperies floated diaphanous in the breeze of their motion; her white
arms and neck were fairer still in the moony gleams of the shades of the
gas-jets; her ethereal pallor took on no unbecoming flush with the
exertion; her movement was as devoid of the idea of fatigue as the
flitting of a butterfly or the noiseless winging here and there of one
of the white moths that, allured by the lights, came in, now and then,
from out of the night. The sparkle of the diamonds in her hair flashed
into his eyes occasionally as her head was poised so close to his
shoulder, for she was tall despite her small and feminine ways, and they
made a pretty couple to look at, as Mrs. Kentopp did not omit to point
out to Mr. Loring when at length he came into the apartment.
He had been loitering at the table over Kentopp’s good wine and fine
cigars with his martyrized host, although the younger men had earlier
joined the ladies, who had had coffee in the drawing-rooms, and together
they had trooped up to the ballroom at the first long-drawn, plangent
cadence of the violins. Mrs. Kentopp had a freshened, elated mien as she
surveyed the scene, standing in the ballroom door beneath the vines of
an elaborate hanging-basket, with the most feathery of trailing ferns,
and plying her fan of ruby ostrich plumes, though she felt the cool
breeze from the widely opened windows.
“A handsome couple; that will be a match,” she commented, smiling
sentimentally.
“No doubt,—no doubt,” replied Mr. Loring. He smelled very strong of
tobacco: when the cigars were mild, he smoked a good many of them. He
was a self-made man, the architect of his own fortune,—a massive
structure on which little ornament had been bestowed. He was apt to
consider market prices, potential bargains, possible rebates, and
equivalent values, even in social affairs, although his interest in
social affairs scarcely seemed actively concerned with an adequate
return for the outlay at present. He was bent upon enjoying his money,
but he wanted the best article of pleasure that the market could afford.
He saw an opportunity of richly rewarding himself at a very great
bargain in buying one of the fine old estates in Deepwater Bend far
below its value in the shrunken estimates of post-bellum ratings, where
he might retire to enjoy the pose of magnate and millionaire within a
few miles of where he had been born of poor but eminently respectable
parents. His father, who had been one of the subordinate clerks, “mud
clerk” it was called in those days, on a steamboat, had secured for him
by favor a place in the office of a broker in New Orleans, and stood
amazed by the portentous growth of his scion in that hotbed of
speculation. Loring felt always much at his ease, assumed to be as “good
as anybody,” yet he was very definitely aware that his consequence would
be much enhanced in the neighborhood that he desired to dominate by the
possession of one of the fine old places, at whose seigneurial splendor
he had once gazed as at fairyland, without a thought of entrance. He had
little sympathy with poverty,—it was never romantic, or picturesque, or
appealing to him. Wealth had been his ambition, and wealth was now his
admiration. His study was how to seem not less magnificently endowed
than he really was with this world’s goods. He was a bachelor, and could
not express his riches in the splendor of a wife’s equipment. He could
not afford to marry when he would, and since he had been able to consult
his wishes, he had lost the impulse toward domesticity. His eyes roamed
over the charming scene of the decorated room, the whirling dancers, the
dark blue night looking in with a myriad stars from the windows of
balcony and long, railed promenade, with no fixity of interest and no
undercurrent of sentiment.
“Yes,” he reiterated, “no doubt it will be a match. Naturally, Mr.
Desmond will recoup his disasters by marrying money.”
For Mrs. Kentopp had effaced the dullness of his propinquity at table by
talking much of Desmond. The matter just now nearest her heart was her
scheme to divert Loring from the theory that Mrs. Faurie might become
interested in the tutor, and she was sure that the peculiar quality of
Desmond’s personality would soon set such a rumor afloat, were it not
forestalled by one more credible. Mrs. Kentopp was one of those women
whose shallow minds are reflected in their talk. She could no more have
kept a secret without a word to play about it than she could have
emulated the Spartan boy and without a sign held the gnawing fox beneath
her cloak. She would never give such an intimation of her plan that
Loring might discover and rush in upon it; but she needs must chat of
Desmond, his recent history, his father’s death, the ensuing financial
disasters, his relinquished career, the incongruity of his collegiate
record with his humble position.
“Oh,—I didn’t give you the idea that Mr. Desmond is a fortune-hunter,
did I? Why, I wouldn’t have you think that for the world!”
Mrs. Kentopp had a peculiar aversion to the character of a
fortune-hunter. As a girl she had been rich in her own right, and
Colonel Kentopp had not escaped the suspicion of a lively perception of
the side on which his bread was buttered.
“Why not? Are we not all fortune-hunters?” demanded Mr. Loring, dryly.
“What else do we hunt?”
“But not in that sense—a mercenary marriage! Oh, no!”
Mr. Loring had a touch of perversity, or perhaps Mrs. Kentopp, with her
_arrière pensée_ concerning the disinterestedness of her own marriage,
had been heavy-handed enough to permit him to feel rebuked. “I can’t
look on Miss Gertrude Kelvin as such a hardship,—even if she would tack
a tidy little fortune on to a wedding-ring,” he retorted, his wooden
countenance smiling satirically.
“Gertie? why, she is adorable!” cried Mrs. Kentopp, seeking in a frenzy
to find her feet in this slough of misapprehension. “Any man would be
too lucky to talk about to win her, even if she would not have a cent!”
“Just _my_ opinion,” said Mr. Loring, as if he had enforced its
adoption. “But if Miss Kelvin has not enough money for our gentleman,
perhaps his good looks, and his great learning,” his lip curled
cynically, for Mr. Loring was very short on the classics, “and his
collegiate honors, and his interesting dumps and douleur over the fling
that Fate has given him, might appeal to Mrs. Faurie,—she will give up
that nice income some day for a life-interest in a third of the estate
and a husband,—and the third will be a deal more money than our tutor
will ever see otherwise.”
Mrs. Kentopp suddenly felt a cold chill stealing up and down her spine,
to which her dress, cut low and loose in the neck, left her liable. But
it was not the inclemency of the wind! Her heart sank at this deliberate
wording of the fear which her husband had evolved and she had adopted.
If this idea were seriously entertained, the sale of Dryad-Dene was
indeed a distant and doubtful prospect, for there were few investors
able to compass a purchase of such magnitude, and fewer still with a
disposition toward property of this character. And Dryad-Dene was not
always gay like this. With half the rooms shut up, and the gilt and
brocade furniture in hollands, and the visitors few and far between and
always the same, and no excitement, and naught to do, and her eyes
forever fixed on a house in New Orleans in the winter and a cottage on
the coast in summer,—oh, Dryad-Dene was but a dreary imprisonment indeed
in the depths of the backwoods! The crisis was so acute that it imparted
to Mrs. Kentopp a touch of dignity.
“You forget, Mr. Loring, how very distasteful such a suggestion would be
to Mrs. Faurie were she to hear of it. This man occupies a very humble
position in her household,—a paid retainer,—not exactly like a courier—”
“Why no, indeed,—I should say not!” cried Mr. Loring, as indignant with
this perversion of his suggestion as with its affront to the dignity of
the tutor. “He is a gentleman, of fine family, and a learned man.”
“So _I_ said; but he _is_ a paid and humble attaché of her household,
and the idea that she could unbend to consider such a person, ten years
her junior,—”
“_That_ makes no difference,” interrupted Mr. Loring, who took this
schooling rather aversely.
“—And sacrifice her great income for a man so egregiously beneath
her,—why, the suggestion is belittling, Mr. Loring.”
“It is belittling to get rid of money, sure!—and she _may_ hang on to
her money yet,” Mr. Loring conceded.
“Except that we are all so deadly dull down here and value any new
face,” she began once more.
“Especially such a handsome one,” Mr. Loring stipulated, with a knowing
grin.
“Yes,—and a dancing man, too.”
Mr. Loring did not dance. At the period when he might have had the
opportunity to learn the latest Terpsichorean quirks and kicks, he was
absorbed in the saltatory vagaries of the stock market and the
fandangoes of cotton futures.
“And there is always such a dearth of cavaliers that we have admitted
him among us as one of ourselves. Otherwise and elsewhere, as you know,
the tutor would be in his place in the schoolroom.”
“_Though_ a gentleman and a learned man!” sneered Loring.
“Yes,—and I hope that he may marry Gertie Kelvin, and get a chair in
some good college, and one day be the president of it.” Mrs. Kentopp
benevolently smiled.
“And what will old John Kelvin be doing all that time?” asked Mr.
Loring, with a sidewise twist of his mouth, of which his wooden face
seemed incapable.
“Oh, Mr. Loring, in an argument you always vanquish me—Why, certainly,
Mr. Herndon,—I am _dying_ to waltz.”
And thus, perhaps because she had the only blondined coiffure in the
room, was considerably rouged, and floridly attired in her rich,
ruby-tinted brocade, Fate maliciously decreed that she should dance with
Mr. Herndon, the slightest of spindling young gentlemen, wan of face,
thin of flaxen hair, of incipient involuntary tonsure, altogether pallid
and fragile of effect by contrast with the artificially heightened
charms of his partner, and together they furnished the aptest
illustration of “before and after.”
Mr. Loring still stood in the doorway, apparently casting the eye of
appraisement over the festive scene. He was of so monetary a
personality, of so speculative a reputation, that it was impossible to
disassociate his presence with a deal. It had a certain incongruity and
incompatibility with the remainder of the company, and even Mrs.
Kentopp, who had not the most delicate perceptions of tact, was vaguely
aware of this with an irritating subconsciousness as she whirled and
whirled. She had hoped that, being a single man, Mr. Loring would be at
once assimilated in the merry party as one of the beaux, and while she
could count with security upon his conventional acceptance, on the
footing at which she proposed him, by the well-bred young people, she
had not reckoned upon the lack of malleability of Mr. Loring’s own
predilections in the matter. He was not one of them, he had no pulse in
common, no affinity with their tastes, no social ambitions to which
their warmth of reception might minister. He made no pretense of being a
young man; he claimed naught of the courtesy that thus reckons one
scarcely yet of middle age. He was not sensitive on the point; his
record on ’Change kept the tally of the years, and he was proud of the
events as they totted up. His age was known to people of more importance
in his mind than these inexperienced girls just liberated from the
schoolroom, and their cavaliers still with a lingering dependence on the
paternal purse-strings. He had no response for the graceful coquetry of
the young ladies, nor for the jejune opinions of the youths, financially
mere cumberers of the ground, for he had no method of rating other than
financial. He was too rich a man, too dominant, too self-centred and
consciously important, to submit himself unnecessarily to boredom, and
he had not that altruistic impulse of high social culture that would
constrain him to sacrifice his preference for the sake of his hostess.
Hence it pleased him to stand in isolation in the doorway, under the
feathery fronds of the drooping ferns, and stare moodily, absently,
silently, at the revolving dance, taking no part.
He was never intentionally frank, but the unavowed reason of his
presence became very definitely outlined as the evening wore on, and Mr.
Loring associated with every appearance of satisfaction with himself.
Mrs. Kentopp, now and again, fluttered up to him and made a great show
of talk, aided by a waving fan and upturned eyes, and he had then the
grace to respond; but to Colonel Kentopp, who must needs sometimes take
her place, he had not a word to throw. Being of a festive temperament
and relishing the joyous occasion, the host was obviously a martyr, in
the long intervals when he felt constrained to stand beside the wooden
figure and ply him with artful talk, so constructed as to need no
response other than the absent grunt or nod which Loring vouchsafed in
recognition of his character as quasi-guest.
“‘How doth the little busy bee improve each shining hour,’” quoted
Gertrude Kelvin, as she and Desmond, breathless from the final whirls of
the waltz, issued into the tower alcove to find already standing there,
enjoying the breezes of the open space, Selina Allandyce and Rupert
Regnan. He was a tall fellow, with an outdoor complexion suffused with a
constant red flush, brightly glancing gray eyes, and dark hair. He had
served in the Spanish War, and had acquired, besides the title of
lieutenant, a military carriage which would be his proud possession for
all time, and which added a certain stiff stateliness to his appearance
in evening dress. His father, a veteran of another war, one of the
Unreconstructed Rebels, was wont to look askance at him, tabooed his
title at home, and had informed him that he could not set foot on the
plantation while he wore a blue uniform. But the son cheerfully
responded that he had shed the uniform when he had quitted the service,
and that the title of lieutenant was too tight a fit for him,—he was out
for bigger game! He had developed a sense of his own importance, and he
now felt it jeopardized in some sort.
“What is that man here for, do you suppose?” he said to Miss Allandyce.
The coterie was quite confidential in the restricted space, which, with
the windows all open between the pilasters on three sides, seemed to
poise them in the midst of the cool, dark night, the airy roof of the
cupola above.
“For the same reason that you are here, I fancy,—for the pleasure and
honor of your company,” she responded, looking in the dim light very
sweetly feminine in her white silk gown and her pearl-crowned auburn
hair.
“But there isn’t any pleasure in _his_ company, I should judge from
Colonel Kentopp’s countenance, and I should judge from his own that he
isn’t disposed to confer any honor. I imagine that he has come to look
at the house,—people say that he is going to buy it.”
“You seem to object; are you a prospective purchaser, too?” Miss Kelvin
twitted him with this incongruity in view of his youth and financial
inexperience.
“I do object. I may be exacting, but it strikes me that this party was
made up to give him an opportunity to see Dryad-Dene to the best
advantage. I can’t imagine what else he is doing here. He scarcely makes
a feint toward the manner of a guest.”
“And you object to dancing for a purpose,—how wrong! You know that the
reproach of dancing is that it is at best but an idle amusement. You
ought to be glad to convert it to some use.”
“I object to being made use of without reference to my feelings,” he
protested, as he wagged a somewhat round and close-cropped head with an
emphatic, not to say affronted air.
“And are you not willing to skip and leap like a young lamb to make Mr.
Loring think this is a pretty house?”
“I am not! The pleasure of my company was requested, and I came to
compliment my hosts, and to enjoy myself, and to see you all,”—he
included the whole group with a bow,—“and to contribute my little
possible to the general entertainment.”
“And you are frustrated!” Gertrude Kelvin averred. “Now, if I were you,
I’d take it all back; I’d cancel my services. I’d make the whole thing
ridiculous. You ought to go right out there in the middle of the
ballroom floor and throw a somersault! Then you would undo all that you
have done.”
“Oh, do it, Mr. Regnan,—or rather undo it!” cried Selina Allandyce.
He laughed, but did not stir.
“He’s afraid!” Gertrude exclaimed. “You know that he must have been a
coward in the Spanish War,—for see now, he’s afraid.”
“I’m sure that he ran at the battles,—I’d be willing to take my
affidavit to it,” Selina goaded him.
“It’s a mere pretense that he got a presentation sword after the war—for
he’s _afraid_!” said Gertrude.
“He couldn’t have got it for gallant conduct, for he’s afraid!”
Regnan looked from one to the other, but only laughed.
“He is deceitful, too,” Gertrude recommenced, “and he encourages deceit
in others. He lets Mr. Loring accredit Dryad-Dene with all the chic and
style of his presence—”
“And all the grace and agility of his waltzing,” Selina interrupted.
“And all the bonhomie and sparkle of his conversation,” Gertrude added.
“Oh, let up on me; I’ll be good! I’ll be good!” Regnan pleaded; but he
made no saltatory intimations toward the required somersault.
“And all the distinction of his military record,” persisted Gertrude.
“And all the prestige of his hereditary position,” Selina supported her
contention.
“And when Mr. Loring buys this house, the title-deeds will call for more
than they cover,—oh, poor defrauded Mr. Loring!”
“But now, seriously,—” Regnan began.
“Seriously,” Gertrude interrupted, “in fair dealing you ought to throw a
somersault in the middle of the ballroom floor, in order that its lack
of style and its grotesquerie and awkwardness, if _you_ can make it
awkward, may condone for your unwitting alacrity in palming off a house,
entitled to none of your signal attractions, on Mr. Loring, who will pay
a bonus for the grace your presence lends to it!”
“But now, seriously,— doesn’t it seem to you that this is not an
appropriate time to show off the house to a buyer?” Regnan appealed to
Desmond. “I may be exacting, but yet—”
Desmond, who was aware that he himself was here for a purpose he could
not fathom, had a monition of caution.
“Don’t ask me; I am a stranger here, and—”
“Hesitate to express an opinion, of course. Well,—we are all old
friends, and but that it might seem a disrespect to Mrs. Kentopp’s
feelings, and in so far uncivil, I should be willing to tax her with it
myself.”
The soft rustling of the treetops below in the bosky, benighted “dene”
impinged upon the talk; the freshening breeze coursed through the tower,
at this height inclosed only by the slight pilasters which upheld the
conical roof. The sense of altitude, the vision of the lonely, starlit
sky, and the dark, far-stretching wilderness on every side beyond the
plantation clearings, were incongruous with the ballroom scene close at
hand, the graceful figures promenading the glossy hard-wood floor with
its mirror-like reflections. More akin was the romantic, languorous
theme of the waltz, with a sort of melancholy yearning in its
sentimental iteration, and presently a high-heeled white satin slipper
was beginning to move unconsciously in rhythm as the quartette still
stood in the tower together.
“If your scruples against adorning the premises of Mr. Loring’s
prospective purchase are not too great a restriction on this waltz,”
Desmond suggested to Miss Allandyce, with whom he had not danced
hitherto.
“Oh, I repudiate the responsibility,” she exclaimed. “I am neither the
bargainer nor the bargainee, and Mr. Loring is popularly supposed to be
able to take care of himself financially.”
She had lifted her hand to Desmond’s arm before they issued from the
tower alcove, and as they came waltzing out of its seclusion together,
Mr. Loring noted the change of partners. “He is making himself generally
agreeable, and probably has no special idea of Miss Kelvin,” he
commented within himself. “There is no money in his line of business. If
he marries it, of course he will marry all he can. He would be mighty
well pleased with the Faurie third,—which maybe Madame Honoria’s dukes
and princes wouldn’t look at after they had seen her flourishing around
on the income of so much more.”
Mrs. Kentopp’s spirits were wilting; the lassitude of brain-fag was
evident. She looked her thirty-eight years. Her cheeks were pendulous,
so seldom did the distention incident to the redeeming smile visit them.
She realized she had taken great pains to a doubtful end. She began to
think that she might have better commended Dryad-Dene without the
house-party. She could have managed Mr. Loring to greater advantage
without its distractions. It had not made the excuse and occasion to get
him here incidentally without obviously putting the house on parade. He
assumed none of the pose and port of a guest. He seemed to consider that
he was invited for business reasons only, and this doubtless suited his
easy interpretations of the obligations imposed by hospitality as well.
And why else should he have been invited? He was no friend of the
Kentopps, and he had no desire to be friend of their friends. Why should
they ask him here, save to show him the house to advantage? and
to-morrow, on the camphunt, he would have every opportunity to see the
land. The house certainly did appear to great advantage, but Mr. Loring
was a discreet and discerning operator,—he could easily divest it of
such attractions as were added to it by the fascinations of Mr. Regnan’s
two-step and Miss Kelvin’s sylphine charms. He was appraising the
woodwork, the quality of the plate-glass, the hand-carving on the
newel-posts, with their long shafts holding up lily-like sprays of
gas-jets. He condemned what he had learned to phrase as precious or
Brummagem, and he regretted that it was all so new, so glossy, so like a
fine hotel. He was ambitious of the pose of grand seigneur. He had now
as much money as any one of the Mississippi princelings in the palmy
days of the old plantation times. He coveted their entourage; it
represented taste to him; wealth, family, culture, all the majesty of
the magnate, as he rated the great in the world. A few modern
conveniences kept as carefully as might be out of sight, a touch of
modern frugality,—“I’d never throw away money with both hands like those
old ducks,”—and this would comprise all the improvements that he thought
would befit the domicile of eld. Still it was not to be had, and he
addressed himself to contemplating the tower balcony, with the
white-draped figures hanging on the balustrade, now gazing down into the
dark shrubbery of the “dene,” where the fountain splashed rhythmically,
and now chatting with the cavaliers while the group discussed the
delectable ices. Mr. Loring partook of his selection with a meditative
mien. It was of a mint flavor and was stiffly laced with old Bourbon,
and a long, fragrant sprig of the newly budded herb stood in the midst
of the delicate glass. Very perfect were the beautifully served
refreshments, with accessories of daintiest device; but he knew full
well that he would not have command of Mrs. Kentopp’s deft arrangements
here if the house were his, for money itself could not buy good-will to
equal her efforts in the interests of getting Dryad-Dene off on him.
“Not even here will the larks fall all roasted into one’s mouth.” He
remembered the old French proverb with a sardonic smile. He took no part
in the outcry of protest with which, after one more entrancing waltz,
the dancers greeted the strains of “Sleep well, Sweet Angel,” wafted out
from the leafy screen embowering the Italian orchestra, with which the
dinner dance was obviously brought to a close.
Regnan followed Mrs. Kentopp here and there, insisting that she should
look at his watch, which he had drawn from an inner pocket, and which
marked but ten o’clock. She was doubtful for one moment; so little
agreeable had she found the evening that she would not have been
surprised to know that it had dragged as slowly as this witness
maintained. Then she recognized the artifice.
“It is a gay deceiver,—just like you!” she cried. “But if you did but
know at what unearthly time you will have to rise, you would have been
off to bed long ago. I expect to hear that old swamper’s halloo under
the windows any moment, and the baying of his pack.”
And so presently, reflected in the polished flooring, the procession
wended its way through the ballroom and down the many turns of the
elaborate staircase, pausing only once, at the first _entresol_, when
Mrs. Kentopp called the attention of Mr. Loring to the electric button
in the wall by means of which the gas-jets in the upper story were
instantaneously extinguished, and the ballroom and the Mi-Carême dance
were in a moment in the darkness of the past.