THE UNEXPECTED
Differences of opinion between himself and Neergard concerning the
ethics of good taste involved in forcing the Siowitha Club matter,
Gerald's decreasing attention to business and increasing intimacy with
the Fane-Ruthven coterie, began to make Selwyn very uncomfortable. The
boy's close relations with Neergard worried him most of all; and though
Neergard finally agreed to drop the Siowitha matter as a fixed policy in
which Selwyn had been expected to participate at some indefinite date,
the arrangement seemed only to cement the man's confidential
companionship with Gerald.
This added to Selwyn's restlessness; and one day in early spring he had
a long conference with Gerald--a most unsatisfactory one. Gerald, for
the first time, remained reticent; and when Selwyn, presuming on the
cordial understanding between them, pressed him a little, the boy turned
sullen; and Selwyn let the matter drop very quickly.
But neither tact nor caution seemed to serve now; Gerald, more and more
engrossed in occult social affairs of which he made no mention to
Selwyn, was still amiable and friendly, even at times cordial and
lovable; but he was no longer frank or even communicative; and Selwyn,
fearing to arouse him again to sullenness or perhaps even to suspicious
defiance, forbore to press him beyond the most tentative advances
toward the regaining of his confidence.
This, very naturally, grieved and mortified the elder man; but what
troubled him still more was that Gerald and Neergard were becoming so
amazingly companionable; for it was easy to see that they had in common
a number of personal interests which he did not share, and that their
silence concerning these interests amounted to a secrecy almost
offensive.
Again and again, coming unexpectedly upon them, he noticed that their
confab ceased with his appearance. Often, too, glances of warning
intelligence passed between them in his presence, which, no doubt, they
supposed were unnoticed by him.
They left the office together frequently, now; they often lunched
uptown. Whether they were in each other's company evenings, Selwyn did
not know, for Gerald no longer volunteered information as to his
whereabouts or doings. And all this hurt Selwyn, and alarmed him, too,
for he was slowly coming to the conclusion that he did not like
Neergard, that he would never sign articles of partnership with him, and
that even his formal associateship with the company was too close a
relation for his own peace of mind. But on Gerald's account he stayed
on; he did not like to leave the boy alone for his sister's sake as well
as for his own.
Matters drifted that way through early spring. He actually grew to
dislike both Neergard and the business of Neergard & Co.--for no one
particular reason, perhaps, but in general; though he did not yet care
to ask himself to be more precise in his unuttered criticisms.
However, detail and routine, the simpler alphabet of the business,
continued to occupy him. He consulted both Neergard and Gerald as usual;
they often consulted him or pretended to do so. Land was bought and
sold and resold, new projects discussed, new properties appraised, new
mortgage loans negotiated; and solely because of his desire to remain
near Gerald, this sort of thing might have continued indefinitely. But
Neergard broke his word to him.
And one morning, before he left his rooms at Mrs. Greeve's lodgings to
go downtown, Percy Draymore called him up on the telephone; and as that
overfed young man's usual rising hour was notoriously nearer noon than
eight o'clock, it surprised Selwyn to be asked to remain in his rooms
for a little while until Draymore and one or two friends could call on
him personally concerning a matter of importance.
He therefore breakfasted leisurely; and he was still scanning the real
estate columns of a morning paper when Mrs. Greeve came panting to his
door and ushered in a file of rather sleepy but important looking
gentlemen, evidently unaccustomed to being abroad so early, and bored to
death with their experience.
They were men he knew only formally, or, at best, merely as fellow club
members; men whom he met when a dance or dinner took him out of the less
pretentious sets he personally affected; men whom the newspapers and the
public knew too well to speak of as "well known."
First there was Percy Draymore, overgroomed for a gentleman, fat,
good-humoured, and fashionable--one of the famous Draymore family noted
solely for their money and their tight grip on it; then came Sanxon
Orchil, the famous banker and promoter, small, urbane, dark, with that
rich almost oriental coloring which he may have inherited from his
Cordova ancestors who found it necessary to dehumanise their names when
Rome offered them the choice with immediate eternity as alternative.
Then came a fox-faced young man, Phoenix Mottly, elegant arbiter of all
pertaining to polo and the hunt--slim-legged, hatchet-faced--and more
presentable in the saddle than out of it. He was followed by Bradley
Harmon, with his washed-out colouring of a consumptive Swede and his
corn-coloured beard; and, looming in the rear like an amiable
brontasaurus, George Fane, whose swaying neck carried his head as a
camel carries his, nodding as he walks.
"Well!" said Selwyn, perplexed but cordial as he exchanged amenities
with each gentleman who entered, "this is a killing combination of
pleasure and mortification--because I haven't any more breakfast to
offer you unless you'll wait until I ring for the Sultana--"
"Breakfast! Oh, damn! I've breakfasted on a pill and a glass of vichy
for ten years," protested Draymore, "and the others either have
swallowed their cocktails, or won't do it until luncheon. I say, Selwyn,
you must think this a devilishly unusual proceeding."
"Pleasantly unusual, Draymore. Is this a delegation to tend me the
nomination for the down-and-out club, perhaps?"
Fane spoke up languidly: "It rather looks as though we were the
down-and-out delegation at present; doesn't it, Orchil?"
"I don't know," said Orchil; "it seems a trifle more promising to me
since I've had the pleasure of seeing Captain Selwyn face to face. Go
on, Percy; let the horrid facts be known."
"Well--er--oh, hang it all!" blurted out Draymore, "we heard last night
how that fellow--how Neergard has been tampering with our farmers--what
underhand tricks he has been playing us; and I frankly admit to you
that we're a worried lot of near-sports. That's what this dismal matinee
signifies; and we've come to ask you what it all really means."
"We lost no time, you see," added Orchil, caressing the long pomaded
ends of his kinky moustache and trying to catch a glimpse of them out of
his languid oriental eyes. He had been trying to catch this glimpse for
thirty years; he was a persistent man with plenty of leisure.
"We lost no time," repeated Draymore, "because it's a devilish unsavoury
situation for us. The Siowitha Club fully realises it, Captain Selwyn,
and its members--some of 'em--thought that perhaps--er--you--ah--being
the sort of man who can--ah--understand the sort of language we
understand, it might not be amiss to--to--"
"Why did you not call on Mr. Neergard?" asked Selwyn coolly. Yet he was
taken completely by surprise, for he did not know that Neergard had gone
ahead and secured options on his own responsibility--which practically
amounted to a violation of the truce between them.
Draymore hesitated, then with the brutality characteristic of the
overfed: "I don't give a damn, Captain Selwyn, what Neergard thinks; but
I do want to know what a gentleman like yourself, accidentally
associated with that man, thinks of this questionable proceeding."
"Do you mean by 'questionable proceeding' your coming here?--or do you
refer to the firm's position in this matter?" asked Selwyn sharply.
"Because, Draymore, I am not very widely experienced in the customs and
usages of commercial life, and I do not know whether it is usual for an
associate member of a firm to express, unauthorised, his views on
matters concerning the firm to any Tom, Dick, and Harry who questions
him."
"But you know what is the policy of your own firm," suggested Harmon,
wincing, and displaying his teeth under his bright red lips; "and all we
wish to know is, what Neergard expects us to pay for this rascally
lesson in the a-b-c of Long Island realty."
"I don't know," replied Selwyn, bitterly annoyed, "what Mr. Neergard
proposes to do. And if I did I should refer you to him."
"May I ask," began Orchil, "whether the land will be ultimately for
sale?"
"Oh, everything's always for sale," broke in Mottly impatiently; "what's
the use of asking that? What you meant to inquire was the price we're
expected to pay for this masterly squeeze in realty."
"And to that," replied Selwyn more sharply still, "I must answer again
that I don't know. I know nothing about it; I did not know that Mr.
Neergard had acquired control of the property; I don't know what he
means to do with it. And, gentlemen, may I ask why you feel at liberty
to come to me instead of to Mr. Neergard?"
"A desire to deal with one of our own kind, I suppose," returned
Draymore bluntly. "And, for that matter," he said, turning to the
others, "we might have known that Captain Selwyn could have had no hand
in and no knowledge of such an underbred and dirty--"
Harmon plucked him by the sleeve, but Draymore shook him off, his little
piggish eyes sparkling.
"What do I care!" he sneered, losing his temper; "we're in the clutches
of a vulgar, skinflint Dutchman, and he'll wring _us_ dry whether or
not we curse _him_ out. Didn't I tell you that Philip Selwyn had nothing
to do with it? If he had, and I was wrong, our journey here might as
well have been made to Neergard's office. For any man who will do such a
filthy thing--"
"One moment, Draymore," cut in Selwyn; and his voice rang unpleasantly;
"if you are simply complaining because you have been outwitted, go
ahead; but if you think there has been any really dirty business in this
matter, go to Mr. Neergard. Otherwise, being his associate, I shall not
only decline to listen but also ask you to leave my apartments."
"Captain Selwyn is perfectly right," observed Orchil coolly. "Do you
think, Draymore, that it is very good taste in you to come into a man's
place and begin slanging and cursing a member of his firm for crooked
work?"
"Besides," added Mottly, "it's not crooked; it's only contemptible.
Anyway, we know with whom we have to deal, now; but some of you fellows
must do the dealing--I'd rather pay and keep away than ask Neergard to
go easy--and have him do it."
"I don't know," said Fane, grinning his saurian grin, "why you all
assume that Neergard is such a social outcast. I played cards with him
last week and he lost like a gentleman."
"I didn't say he was a social outcast," retorted Mottly--"because he's
never been inside of anything to be cast out, you know."
"He seems to be inside this deal," ventured Orchil with his suave smile.
And to Selwyn, who had been restlessly facing first one, then another:
"We came--it was the idea of several among us--to put the matter up to
you. Which was rather foolish, because you couldn't have engineered the
thing and remained what we know you to be. So--"
"Wait!" said Selwyn brusquely; "I do not admit for one moment that there
is anything dishonourable in this deal!--nor do I accept your right to
question it from that standpoint. As far as I can see, it is one of
those operations which is considered clever among business folk, and
which is admired and laughed over in reputable business circles. And I
have no doubt that hundreds of well-meaning business men do that sort of
thing daily--yes, thousands!" He shrugged his broad shoulders.
"Because I personally have not chosen to engage in matters of
this--ah--description, is no reason for condemning the deal or its
method--"
"Every reason!" said Orchil, laughing cordially--"_every_ reason,
Captain Selwyn. Thank you; we know now exactly where we stand. It was
very good of you to let us come, and I'm sorry some of us had the bad
taste to show any temper--"
"He means me," added Draymore, offering his hand; "good-bye, Captain
Selwyn; I dare say we are up against it hard."
"Because we've got to buy in that property or close up the Siowitha,"
added Mottly, coming over to make his adieux. "By the way, Selwyn, you
ought to be one of us in the Siowitha--"
"Thank you, but isn't this rather an awkward time to suggest it?" said
Selwyn good-humouredly.
Fane burst into a sonorous laugh and wagged his neck, saying: "Not at
all! Not at all! Your reward for having the decency to stay out of the
deal is an invitation from us to come in and be squeezed into a jelly by
Mr. Neergard. Haw! Haw!"
And so, one by one, with formal or informal but evidently friendly
leave-taking, they went away. And Selwyn followed them presently,
walking until he took the Subway at Forty-second Street for his office.
As he entered the elaborate suite of rooms he noticed some bright new
placards dangling from the walls of the general office, and halted to
read them:
"WHY PAY RENT!
What would you say if we built a house for you in Beautiful Siowitha
Park and gave you ten years to pay for it!
If anybody says
YOU ARE A FOOL!
to expect this, refer him to us and we will answer him according to his
folly.
TO PAY RENT
when you might own a home in Beautiful Siowitha Park, is not wise. We
expect to furnish plans, or build after your own plans.
All City Improvements
Are Contemplated!
Map and Plans of
Beautiful Siowitha Park
Will probably be ready
In the Near Future.
Julius Neergard & Co.
Long Island Real Estate."
Selwyn reddened with anger and beckoned to a clerk:
"Is Mr. Neergard in his office?"
"Yes, sir, with Mr. Erroll."
"Please say that I wish to see him."
He went into his own office, pocketed his mail, and still wearing hat
and gloves came out again just as Gerald was leaving Neergard's office.
"Hello, Gerald!" he said pleasantly; "have you anything on for
to-night?"
"Y-es," said the hoy, embarrassed--"but if there is anything I can do
for you--"
"Not unless you are free for the evening," returned the other; "are
you?"
"I'm awfully sorry--"
"Oh, all right. Let me know when you expect to be free--telephone me at
my rooms--"
"I'll let you know when I see you here to-morrow," said the boy; but
Selwyn shook his head: "I'm not coming here to-morrow, Gerald"; and he
walked leisurely into Neergard's office and seated himself.
"So you have committed the firm to the Siowitha deal?" he inquired
coolly.
Neergard looked up--and then past him: "No, not the firm. You did not
seem to be interested in the scheme, so I went on without you. I'm
swinging it for my personal account."
"Is Mr. Erroll in it?"
"I said that it was a private matter," replied Neergard, but his manner
was affable.
"I thought so; it appears to me like a matter quite personal to you and
characteristic of you, Mr. Neergard. And that being established, I am
now ready to dissolve whatever very loose ties have ever bound me in any
association with this company and yourself."
Neergard's close-set black eyes shifted a point nearer to Selwyn's; the
sweat on his nose glistened.
"Why do you do this?" he asked slowly. "Has anybody offended you?"
"Do you _really_ wish to know?"
"Yes, I certainly do, Captain Selwyn."
"Very well; it's because I don't like your business methods, I don't
like--several other things that are happening in this office. It's
purely a difference of views; and that is enough explanation, Mr.
Neergard."
"I think our views may very easily coincide--"
"You are wrong; they could not. I ought to have known that when I came
back here. And now I have only to thank you for receiving me, at my own
request, for a six months' trial, and to admit that I am not qualified
to co-operate with this kind of a firm."
"That," said Neergard angrily, "amounts to an indictment of the firm. If
you express yourself in that manner outside, the firm will certainly
resent it!"
"My personal taste will continue to govern my expressions, Mr. Neergard;
and I believe will prevent any further business relations between us.
And, as we never had any other kind of relations, I have merely to
arrange the details through an attorney."
Neergard looked after him in silence; the tiny beads of sweat on his
nose united and rolled down in a big shining drop, and the sneer etched
on his broad and brightly mottled features deepened to a snarl when
Selwyn had disappeared.
For the social prestige which Selwyn's name had brought the firm, he had
patiently endured his personal dislike and contempt for the man after he
found he could do nothing with him in any way.
He had accepted Selwyn purely in the hope of social advantage, and with
the knowledge that Selwyn could have done much for him after business
hours; if not from friendship, at least from interest, or a lively sense
of benefits to come. For that reason he had invited him to participate
in the valuable Siowitha deal, supposing a man as comparatively poor as
Selwyn would not only jump at the opportunity, but also prove
sufficiently grateful later. And he had been amazed and disgusted at
Selwyn's attitude. But he had not supposed the man would sever his
connection with the firm if he, Neergard, went ahead on his own
responsibility. It astonished and irritated him; it meant, instead of
selfish or snobbish indifference to his own social ambitions, an enemy
to block his entrance into what he desired--the society of those made
notorious in the columns of the daily press.
For Neergard cared only for the notorious in the social scheme; nothing
else appealed to him. He had, all his life, read with avidity of the
extravagances, the ostentation, the luxurious effrontery, the thinly
veiled viciousness of what he believed to be society, and he craved it
from the first, working his thick hands to the bone in dogged
determination to one day participate in and satiate himself with the
easy morality of what he read about in his penny morning paper--in the
days when even a penny was to be carefully considered.
That was what he wanted from society--the best to be had in vice. That
was why he had denied himself in better days. It was for that he hoarded
every cent while actual want sharpened his wits and his thin nose; it
was in that hope that he received Selwyn so cordially as a possible
means of entrance into regions he could not attain unaided; it was for
that reason he was now binding Gerald to him through remission of
penalties for slackness, through loans and advances, through a
companionship which had already landed him in the Ruthven's card-room,
and promised even more from Mr. Fane, who had won his money very easily.
For Neergard did not care how he got in, front door or back door,
through kitchen or card-room, as long as he got in somehow. All he
desired was the chance to use opportunity in his own fashion, and wring
from the forbidden circle all and more than they had unconsciously wrung
from him in the squalid days of a poverty for which no equality he might
now enjoy, no liberty of license, no fraternity in dissipation, could
wholly compensate.
He was fairly on the outer boundary now, though still very far outside.
But a needy gentleman inside was already compromised and practically
pledged to support him; for his meeting with Jack Ruthven through Gerald
had proven of greatest importance. He had lost gracefully to Ruthven;
and in doing it had taken that gentleman's measure. And though Ruthven
himself was a member of the Siowitha, Neergard had made no error in
taking him secretly into the deal where together they were now in a
position to exploit the club, from which Ruthven, of course, would
resign in time to escape any assessment himself.
Neergard's progress had now reached this stage; his programme was
simple--to wallow among the wealthy until satiated, then to marry into
that agreeable community and found the house of Neergard. And to that
end he had already bought a building site on Fifth Avenue, but held it
in the name of the firm as though it had been acquired for purposes
purely speculative.
* * * * *
About that time Boots Lansing very quietly bought a house on Manhattan
Island. It was a small, narrow, three-storied house of brick, rather
shabby on the outside, and situated on a modest block between Lexington
and Park avenues, where the newly married of the younger set were
arriving in increasing numbers, prepared to pay the penalty for all love
matches.
It was an unexpected move to Selwyn; he had not been aware of Lansing's
contemplated desertion; and that morning, returning from his final
interview with Neergard, he was astonished to find his comrade's room
bare of furniture, and a hasty and exclamatory note on his own table:
"Phil! I've bought a house! Come and see it! You'll find me in it!
Carpetless floors and unpapered walls! It's the happiest day of my life!
"Boots!!!! House-owner!!!"
And Selwyn, horribly depressed, went down after a solitary luncheon and
found Lansing sitting on a pile of dusty rugs, ecstatically inspecting
the cracked ceiling.
"So this is the House that Boots built!" he said.
"Phil! It's a dream!"
"Yes--a bad one. What the devil do you mean by clearing out? What do you
want with a house, anyhow?--you infernal idiot!"
"A house? Man, I've always wanted one! I've dreamed of a dinky little
house like this--dreamed and ached for it there in Manila--on blistering
hikes, on wibbly-wabbly gunboats--knee-deep in sprouting rice--I've
dreamed of a house in New York like this! slopping through the steaming
paddy-fields, sweating up the heights, floundering through smelly hemp,
squatting by green fires at night! always, always I've longed for a
home of my own. Now I've got it, and I'm the happiest man on Manhattan
Island!"
"O Lord!" said Selwyn, staring, "if you feel that way! You never said
anything about it--"
"Neither did you, Phil; but I bet you want one, too. Come now; don't
you?"
"Yes, I do," nodded Selwyn; "but I can't afford one yet"--his face
darkened--"not for a while; but," and his features cleared, "I'm
delighted, old fellow, that _you_ have one. This certainly is a jolly
little kennel--you can fix it up in splendid shape--rugs and mahogany
and what-nots and ding-dongs--and a couple of tabby cats and a good
dog--"
"Isn't it fascinating!" cried Boots. "Phil, all this real estate is
mine! And the idea makes me silly-headed. I've been sitting on this pile
of rugs pretending that I'm in the midst of vast and expensive
improvements and alterations; and estimating the cost of them has
frightened me half to death. I tell you I never had such fun, Phil. Come
on; we'll start at the cellar--there is some coal and wood and some
wonderful cobwebs down there--and then we'll take in the back yard; I
mean to have no end of a garden out there, and real clothes-dryers and
some wistaria and sparrows--just like real back yards. I want to hear
cats make harrowing music on my own back fence; I want to see a tidy
laundress pinning up intimate and indescribable garments on my own
clothes-lines; I want to have maddening trouble with plumbers and
roofers; I want to--"
"Come on, then, for Heaven's sake!" said Selwyn, laughing; and the two
men, arm in arm, began a minute tour of the house.
"Isn't it a corker! Isn't it fine!" repeated Lansing every few minutes.
"I wouldn't exchange it for any mansion on Fifth Avenue!"
"You'd be a fool to," agreed Selwyn gravely.
"Certainly I would. Anyway, prices are going up like rockets in this
section--not that I'd think of selling out at any price--but it's
comfortable to know it. Why, a real-estate man told me--Hello! What was
that? Something fell somewhere!"
"A section of the bath-room ceiling, I think," said Selwyn; "we mustn't
step too heavily on the floors at first, you know."
"Oh, I'm going to have the entire thing done over--room by room--when I
can afford it. Meanwhile _j'y suis, j'y reste_. . . . Look there, Phil!
That's to be your room."
"Thanks, old fellow--not now."
"Why, yes! I expected you'd have your room here, Phil--"
"It's very good of you, Boots, but I can't do it."
Lansing faced him: "_Won't_ you?"
Selwyn, smiling, shook his head; and the other knew it was final.
"Well, the room will be there--furnished the way you and I like it. When
you want it, make smoke signals or wig-wag."
"I will; thank you, Boots."
Lansing said unaffectedly, "How soon do you think you can afford a house
like this?"
"I don't know; you see, I've only my income now--"
"Plus what you make at the office--"
"I've left Neergard."
"What!"
"This morning; for good."
"The deuce!" he murmured, looking at Selwyn; but the latter volunteered
no further information, and Lansing, having given him the chance,
cheerfully switched to the other track:
"Shall I see whether the Air Line has anything in _your_ line, Phil? No?
Well, what are you going to do?"
"I don't exactly know what I shall do. . . . If I had capital--enough--I
think I'd start in making bulk and dense powders--all sorts; gun-cotton,
nitro-powders--"
"You mean you'd like to go on with your own invention--Chaosite?"
"I'd like to keep on experimenting with it if I could afford to. Perhaps
I will. But it's not yet a commercial possibility--if it ever is to be.
I wish I could control it; the ignition is simultaneous and absolutely
complete, and there is not a trace of ash, not an unburned or partly
burned particle. But it's not to be trusted, and I don't know what
happens to it after a year's storage."
For a while they discussed the commercial possibilities of Chaosite, and
how capital might be raised for a stock company; but Selwyn was not
sanguine, and something of his mental depression returned as he sat
there by the curtainless window, his head on his closed hand, looking
out into the sunny street.
"Anyway," said Lansing, "you've nothing to worry over."
"No, nothing," assented Selwyn listlessly.
After a silence Lansing added: "But you do a lot of worrying all the
same, Phil."
Selwyn flushed up and denied it.
"Yes, you do! I don't believe you realise how much of the time you are
out of spirits."
"Does it impress you that way?" asked Selwyn, mortified; "because I'm
really all right."
"Of course you are, Phil; I know it, but you don't seem to realise it.
You're morbid, I'm afraid."
"You've been talking to my sister!"
"What of it? Besides, I knew there was something the matter--"
"You know what it is, too. And isn't it enough to subdue a man's spirits
occasionally?"
"No," said Lansing--"if you mean your--mistake--two years ago. That
isn't enough to spoil life for a man. I've wanted to tell you so for a
long time."
And, as Selwyn said nothing: "For Heaven's sake make up your mind to
enjoy your life! You are fitted to enjoy it. Get that absurd notion out
of your head that you're done for--that you've no home life in prospect,
no family life, no children--"
Selwyn turned sharply, but the other went on: "You can swear at me if
you like, but you've no business to go through the world cuddling your
own troubles closer and closer and squinting at everybody out of
disenchanted eyes. It's selfish, for one thing; you're thinking
altogether too much about yourself."
Selwyn, too annoyed to answer, glared at his friend.
"Oh, I know you don't like it, Phil, but what I'm saying may do you
good. It's fine physic, to learn what others think about you; as for me,
you can't mistake my friendship--or your sister's--or Miss Erroll's, or
Mr. Gerard's. And one and all are of one opinion, that you have
everything before you, including domestic happiness, which you care for
more than anything. And there is no reason why you should not have
it--no reason why you should not feel perfectly free to marry, and have
a bunch of corking kids. It's not only your right, it's your business;
and you're selfish if you don't!"
"Boots! I--I--"
"Go on!"
"I'm not going to swear; I'm only hurt, Boots--"
"Sure you are! Medicine's working, that's all. We strive to please, we
kill to cure. Of course it hurts, man! But you know it will do you good;
you know what I say is true. You've no right to club the natural and
healthy inclinations out of yourself. The day for fanatics and dippy,
dotty flagellants is past. Fox's martyrs are out of date. The man who
grabs life in both fists and twists the essence out of it, counts. He is
living as he ought to, he is doing the square thing by his country and
his community--by every man, woman, and child in it! He's giving
everybody, including himself, a square deal. But the man who has been
upper-cut and floored, and who takes the count, and then goes and squats
in a corner to brood over the fancy licks that Fate handed him--_he_
isn't dealing fairly and squarely by his principles or by a decent and
generous world that stands to back him for the next round. Is he, Phil?"
"Do you mean to say, Boots, that you think a man who has made the
ghastly mess of his life that I have, ought to feel free to marry?"
"Think it! Man, I know it. Certainly you ought to marry if you
wish--but, above all, you ought to feel free to marry. That is the
essential equipment of a man; he isn't a man if he feels that he isn't
free to marry. He may not want to do it, he may not be in love. That's
neither here nor there; the main thing is that he is as free as a man
should be to take any good opportunity--and marriage is included in the
list of good opportunities. If you become a slave to morbid notions, no
wonder you are depressed. Slaves usually are. Do you want to slink
through life? Then shake yourself, I tell you; learn to understand that
you're free to do what any decent man may do. That will take the
morbidness out of you. That will colour life for you. I don't say go
hunting for some one to love; I do say, don't avoid her when you meet
her."
"You preach a very gay sermon, Boots," he said, folding his arms. "I've
heard something similar from my sister. As a matter of fact I think you
are partly right, too; but if the inclination for the freedom you insist
I take is wanting, then what? I don't wish to marry, Boots; I am not in
love, therefore the prospect of home and kids is premature and vague,
isn't it?"
"As long as it's a prospect or a possibility I don't care how vague it
is," said the other cordially. "Will you admit it's a possibility?
That's all I ask."
"If it will please you, yes, I will admit it. I have altered certain
ideas, Boots; I cannot, just now, conceive of any circumstances under
which I should feel justified in marrying, but such circumstances might
arise; I'll say that much."
Yet until that moment he had not dreamed of admitting as much to
anybody, even to himself; but Lansing's logic, his own loneliness, his
disappointment in Gerald, had combined to make him doubt his own
methods of procedure. Too, the interview with Alixe Ruthven had not only
knocked all complacency and conceit out of him, but had made him so
self-distrustful that he was in a mood to listen respectfully to his
peers on any question.
He was wondering now whether Boots had recognised Alixe when he had
blundered into the room that night. He had never asked the question; he
was very much inclined to, now. However, Boots's reply could be only the
negative answer that any decent man must give.
Sitting there in the carpetless room piled high with dusty,
linen-shrouded furniture, he looked around, an involuntary smile
twitching his mouth. Somehow he had not felt so light-hearted for a
long, long while--and whether it came from his comrade's sermon, or his
own unexpected acknowledgment of its truth, or whether it was pure
amusement at Boots in the rôle of householder and taxpayer, he could not
decide. But he was curiously happy of a sudden; and he smiled broadly
upon Mr. Lansing:
"What about _your_ marrying," he said--"after all this talk about mine!
What about it, Boots? Is this new house the first modest step toward the
matrimony you laud so loudly?"
"Sure," said that gentleman airily; "that's what I'm here for."
"Really?"
"Well, of course, idiot. I've always been in love."
"You mean you actually have somebody in view--?"
"No, son. I've always been in love with--love. I'm a sentimental sentry
on the ramparts of reason. I'm properly armed for trouble, now, so if
I'm challenged I won't let my chance slip by me. Do you see? There are
two kinds of sentimental warriors in this amorous world: the man and the
nincompoop. The one brings in his prisoner, the other merely howls for
her. So I'm all ready for the only girl in the world; and if she ever
gets away from me I'll give you my house, cellar, and back yard,
including the wistaria and both cats--"
"You have neither wistaria nor cats--yet."
"Neither am I specifically in love--yet. So that's all right--Philip.
Come on; let's take another look at that fascinating cellar of mine!"
But Selwyn laughingly declined, and after a little while he went away,
first to look up a book which he was having bound for Eileen, then to
call on his sister who, with Eileen, had just returned from a week at
Silverside with the children, preliminary to moving the entire
establishment there for the coming summer; for the horses and dogs had
already gone; also Kit-Ki, a pessimistic parrot, and the children's two
Norwegian ponies.
"Silverside is too lovely for words!" exclaimed Nina as Selwyn entered
the library. "The children almost went mad. You should have seen the
dogs, too--tearing round and round the lawn in circles--poor things!
They were crazy for the fresh, new turf. And Kit-Ki! she lay in the sun
and rolled and rolled until her fur was perfectly filthy. Nobody wanted
to come away; Eileen made straight for the surf; but it was an arctic
sea, and as soon as I found out what she was doing I made her come out."
"I should think you would," he said; "nobody can do that and thrive."
"She seems to," said Nina; "she was simply glorious after the swim, and
I hated to put a stop to it. And you should see her drying her hair and
helping Plunket to roll the tennis-courts--that hair of hers blowing
like gold flames, and her sleeves rolled to her arm-pits!--and you
should see her down in the dirt playing marbles with Billy and
Drina--shooting away excitedly and exclaiming 'fen-dubs!' and
'knuckle-down, Billy!'--like any gamin you ever heard of. Totally
unspoiled, Phil!--in spite of all the success of her first winter!--and
do you know that she had no end of men seriously entangled? I don't mind
your knowing--but Sudbury Gray came to me, and I told him he'd better
wait, but in he blundered and--he's done for, now; and so are my plans.
He's an imbecile! And then, who on earth do you think came waddling into
the arena? Percy Draymore! Phil, it was an anxious problem for me--and
although I didn't really want Eileen to marry into that set--still--with
the Draymores' position and tremendous influence--But she merely stared
at him in cold astonishment. And there were others, too, callow for the
most part. . . . Phil?"
"What?" he said, laughing.
His sister regarded him smilingly, then partly turned around and perched
herself on the padded arm of a great chair.
"Phil, _am_ I garrulous?"
"No, dear; you are far too reticent."
"Pooh! Suppose I do talk a great deal. I like to. Besides, I always have
something interesting to say, don't I?"
"Always!"
"Well, then, why do you look at me so humorously out of those nice gray
eyes? . . . Phil, you are growing handsome! Do you know it?"
"For Heaven's sake!" he protested, red and uncomfortable, "what utter
nonsense you--"
"Of course it bores you to be told so; and you look so delightfully
ashamed--like a reproved setter-puppy! Well, then, don't laugh at my
loquacity again!--because I'm going to say something else. . . . Come
over here, Phil; no--close to me. I wish to put my hands on your
shoulders; like that. Now look at me! Do you really love me?"
"Sure thing, Ninette."
"And you know I adore you; don't you?"
"Madly, dear, but I forgive you."
"No; I want you to be serious. Because I'm pretty serious. See, I'm not
smiling now; I don't feel like it. Because it is a very, very important
matter, Phil--this thing that has--has--almost happened. . . . It's
about Eileen. . . . And it really has happened."
"What has she done?" he asked curiously.
His sister's eyes were searching his very diligently, as though in quest
of something elusive; and he gazed serenely back, the most unsuspicious
of smiles touching his mouth.
"Phil, dear, a young girl--a very young girl--is a vapid and
uninteresting proposition to a man of thirty-five; isn't she?"
"Rather--in some ways."
"In what way is she not?"
"Well--to me, for example--she is acceptable as children are
acceptable--a blessed, sweet, clean relief from the women of the Fanes'
set, for example?"
"Like Rosamund?"
"Yes. And, Ninette, you and Austin seem to be drifting out of the old
circles--the sort that you and I were accustomed to. You don't mind my
saying it, do you?--but there were so many people in this town who had
something besides millions--amusing, well-bred, jolly people who had no
end of good times, but who didn't gamble and guzzle and stuff themselves
and their friends--who were not eternally hanging around other people's
wives. Where are they, dear?"
"If you are indicting all of my friends, Phil--"
"I don't mean all of your friends--only a small proportion--which,
however, connects your circle with that deadly, idle, brainless
bunch--the insolent chatterers at the opera, the gorged dowagers, the
worn-out, passionless men, the enervated matrons of the summer capital,
the chlorotic squatters on huge yachts, the speed-mad fugitives from the
furies of ennui, the neurotic victims of mental cirrhosis, the jewelled
animals whose moral code is the code of the barnyard--!"
"Philip!"
"Oh, I don't mean that they are any more vicious than the idle and
mentally incompetent in any walk of life. East Side, West Side, Harlem,
Hell's Kitchen, Fifth Avenue, Avenue A, and Abingdon Square--the
denizens are only locally different, not specifically--the species
remains unchanged. But everywhere, in every quarter and class and set
and circle there is always the depraved; and the logical links that
connect them are unbroken from Fifth Avenue to Chinatown, from the
half-crazed extravagances of the Orchils' Louis XIV ball to a New Year's
reception at the Haymarket where Troy Lil's diamonds outshine the phony
pearls of Hoboken Fanny, and Hatpin Molly leads the spiel with Clarence
the Pig."
"Phil, you are too disgusting!"
"I'm sorry--it isn't very nice of me, I suppose. But, dear, I'm dead
tired of moral squalor. I do like the brightness of things, too, but I
don't care for the phosphorescence of social decay."
"What in the world is the matter?" she exclaimed in dismay. "You are
talking like the wildest socialist."
He laughed. "We have become a nation of what you call
'socialists'--though there are other names for us which mean more. I am
not discontented, if that is what you mean; I am only impatient; and
there is a difference. . . . And you have just asked me whether a young
girl is interesting to me. I answer, yes, thank God!--for the cleaner,
saner, happier hours I have spent this winter among my own kind have
been spent where the younger set dominated.
"They are good for us, Nina; they are the hope of our own
kind--well-taught, well-drilled, wholesome even when negative in mind;
and they come into our world so diffident yet so charmingly eager, so
finished yet so unspoiled, that--how can they fail to touch a man and
key him to his best? How can they fail to arouse in us the best of
sympathy, of chivalry, of anxious solicitude lest they become some day
as we are and stare at life out of the faded eyes of knowledge!"
He laid his hands in hers, smiling a little at his own earnestness.
"Alarmist? No! The younger set are better than those who bred them; and
if, in time, they, too, fall short, they will not fall as far as their
parents. And, in their turn, when they look around them at the younger
set whom they have taught in the light and wisdom of their own
shortcomings, they will see fresher, sweeter, lovelier young people than
we see now. And it will continue so, dear, through the jolly
generations. Life is all right, only, like art, it is very, very long
sometimes."
"Good out of evil, Phil?" asked his sister, smiling; "innocence from the
hotbeds of profligacy? purity out of vulgarity? sanity from hideous
ostentation? Is that what you come preaching?"
"Yes; and isn't it curious! Look at that old harridan, Mrs. Sanxon
Orchil! There are no more innocent and charming girls in Manhattan than
her daughters. She _knew_ enough to make them different; so does the
majority of that sort. Look at the Cardwell girl and the Innis girl and
the Craig girl! Look at Mrs. Delmour-Carnes's children! And, Nina--even
Molly Hatpin's wastrel waif shall never learn what her mother knows if
Destiny will help Madame Molly ever so little. And I think that Destiny
is often very kind--even to the Hatpin offspring."
Nina sat silent on the padded arm of her chair, looking up at her
brother.
"Mad preacher! Mad Mullah!--dear, dear fellow!" she said tenderly; "all
ills of the world canst thou discount, but not thine own."
"Those, too," he insisted, laughing; "I had a talk with Boots--but,
anyway, I'd already arrived at my own conclusion that--that--I'm rather
overdoing this blighted business--"
"Phil!"--in quick delight.
"Yes," he said, reddening nicely; "between you and Boots and myself I've
decided that I'm going in for--for whatever any man is going in
for--life! Ninette, life to the full and up to the hilt for mine!--not
side-stepping anything. . . . Because I--because, Nina, it's shameful
for a man to admit to himself that he cannot make good, no matter how
thoroughly he's been hammered to the ropes. And so I'm starting out
again--not hunting trouble like him of La Mancha--but, like him in this,
that I shall not avoid it. . . . Is _that_ plain to you, little sister?"
"Yes, oh, yes, it is!" she murmured; "I am so happy, so proud--but I
knew it was in your blood, Phil; I knew that you were merely hurt and
stunned--badly hurt, but not fatally!--you could not be; no weaklings
come from our race."
"But still our race has always been law-abiding--observant of civil and
religious law. If I make myself free again, I take some laws into my own
hands.".
"How do you mean?" she asked.
"Well," he said grimly, "for example, I am forbidden, in some States, to
marry again--"
"But you _know_ there was no reason for _that_!"
"Yes, I do happen to know; but still I am taking the liberty of
disregarding the law if I do. Then, what clergyman, of our faith, would
marry me to anybody?"
"That, too, you know is not just, Phil. You were innocent of
wrong-doing; you were chivalrous enough to make no defence--"
"Wrong-doing? Nina, I was such a fool that I was innocent of sense
enough to do either good or evil. Yet I did do harm; there never was
such a thing as a harmless fool. But all I can do is to go and sin no
more; yet there is little merit in good conduct if one hides in a hole
too small to admit temptation. No; there are laws civil and laws
ecclesiastical; and sometimes I think a man is justified in repealing
the form and retaining the substance of them, and remoulding it for
purposes of self-government; as I do, now. . . . Once, oppressed by form
and theory, I told you that to remarry after divorce was a slap at
civilisation. . . . Which is true sometimes and sometimes not. Common
sense, not laws, must govern a man in that matter. But if any motive
except desire to be a decent citizen sways a self-punished man toward
self-leniency, then is he unpardonable if he breaks those laws which
truly were fashioned for such as he!"
"Saint Simon! Saint Simon! Will you please arise, stretch your limbs,
and descend from your pillar?" said Nina; "because I am going to say
something that is very, very serious; and very near my heart."
"I remember," he said; "it's about Eileen, isn't it?"
"Yes, it is about Eileen."
He waited; and again his sister's eyes began restlessly searching his
for something that she seemed unable to find.
"You make it a little difficult, Phil; I don't believe I had better
speak of it."
"Why not?"
"Why, just because you ask me 'why not?' for example."
"Is it anything that worries you about Eileen?"
"N-no; not exactly. It is--it may be a phase; and yet I know that if it
is anything at all it is not a passing phase. She is different from the
majority, you see--very intelligent, very direct. She never
forgets--for example. Her loyalty is quite remarkable, Phil. She is very
intense in her--her beliefs--the more so because she is unusually free
from impulse--even quite ignorant of the deeper emotions; or so I
believed until--until--"
"Is she in _love_?" he asked.
"A little, Phil."
"Does she admit it?" he demanded, unpleasantly astonished.
"She admits it in a dozen innocent ways to me who can understand her;
but to herself she has not admitted it, I think--could not admit it yet;
because--because--"
"Who is it?" asked Selwyn; and there was in his voice the slightest
undertone of a growl.
"Dear, shall I tell you?"
"Why not?"
"Because--because--Phil, I think that our pretty Eileen is a little in
love with--you."
He straightened out to his full height, scarlet to the temples; she
dropped her linked fingers in her lap, gazing at him almost sadly.
"Dear, all the things you are preparing to shout at me are quite
useless; I _know_; I don't imagine, I don't forestall, I don't predict.
I am not discounting any hopes of mine, because, Phil, I had not
thought--had not planned such a thing--between you and Eileen--I don't
know why. But I had not; there was Suddy Gray--a nice boy, perfectly
qualified; and there were alternates more worldly, perhaps. But I did
not think of you; and that is what now amazes and humiliates me; because
it was the obvious that I overlooked--the most perfectly natural--"
"Nina! you are madder than a March heiress!"
"Air your theories, Phil, then come back to realities. The conditions
remain; Eileen is certainly a little in love with you; and a little with
her means something. And you, evidently, have never harboured any
serious intentions toward the child; I can see that, because you are the
most transparent man I ever knew. Now, the question is, what is to be
done?"
"Done? Good heavens! Nothing, of course! There's nothing to do anything
about! Nina, you are the most credulous little matchmaker that ever--"
"Oh, Phil, _must_ I listen to all those fulminations before you come
down to the plain fact? And it's plain to me as the nose on your
countenance; and I don't know what to do about it! I certainly was a
perfect fool to confide in you, for you are exhibiting the coolness and
sagacity of a stampeded chicken."
He laughed in spite of himself; then, realising a little what her
confidence had meant, he turned a richer red and slowly lifted his
fingers to his moustache, while his perplexed gray eyes began to narrow
as though sun-dazzled.
"I am, of course, obliged to believe that you are mistaken," he said; "a
man cannot choose but believe in that manner. . . . There is no very
young girl--nobody, old or young, whom I like as thoroughly as I do
Eileen Erroll. She knows it; so do you, Nina. It is open and
above-board. . . . I should be very unhappy if anything marred or
distorted our friendship. . . . I am quite confident that nothing will."
"In that frame of mind," said his sister, smiling, "you are the
healthiest companion in the world for her, for you will either cure her,
or she you; and it is all right either way."
"Certainly it will be all right," he said confidently.
For a few moments he paced the room, reflective, quickening his pace all
the while; and his sister watched him, silent in her indecision.
"I'm going up to see the kids," he said abruptly.
The children, one and all, were in the Park; but Eileen was sewing in
the nursery, and his sister did not call him back as he swung out of the
room and up the stairs. But when he had disappeared, Nina dropped into
her chair, aware that she had played her best card prematurely; forced
by Rosamund, who had just told her that rumour continued to be very busy
coupling her brother's name with the name of the woman who once had been
his wife.
Nina was now thoroughly convinced of Alixe's unusual capacity for making
mischief.
She had known Alixe always--and she had seen her develop from a
talented, restless, erratic, emotional girl, easily moved to generosity,
into an impulsive woman, reckless to the point of ruthlessness when
ennui and unhappiness stampeded her; a woman not deliberately selfish,
not wittingly immoral, for she lacked the passion which her emotion was
sometimes mistaken for; and she was kind by instinct.
Sufficiently intelligent to suffer from the lack of it in others,
cultured to the point of recognising culture, her dangerous unsoundness
lay in her utter lack of mental stamina when conditions became
unpleasant beyond her will, not her ability to endure them.
The consequences of her own errors she refused to be burdened with; to
escape somehow, was her paramount impulse, and she always tried to--had
always attempted it even in school-days--and farther back when Nina
first remembered her as a thin, eager, restless little girl scampering
from one scrape into another at full speed. Even in those days there
were moments when Nina believed her to be actually irrational, but there
was every reason not to say so to the heedless scatterbrain whose
father, in the prime of life, sat all day in his room, his faded eyes
fixed wistfully on the childish toys which his attendant brought to him
from his daughter's nursery.
All this Nina was remembering; and again she wondered bitterly at
Alixe's treatment of her brother, and what explanation there could ever
be for it--except one.
Lately, too, Alixe had scarcely been at pains to conceal her contempt
for her husband, if what Rosamund related was true. It was only one more
headlong scrape, this second marriage, and Nina knew Alixe well enough
to expect the usual stampede toward that gay phantom which was always
beckoning onward to promised happiness--that goal of heart's desire
already lying so far behind her--and farther still for every step her
little flying feet were taking in the oldest, the vainest, the most
hopeless chase in the world--the headlong hunt for happiness.
And if that blind hunt should lead once more toward Selwyn? Suppose,
freed from Ruthven, she turned in her tracks and threw herself and her
youthful unhappiness straight at the man who had not yet destroyed the
picture that Nina found when she visited her brother's rooms with the
desire to be good to him with rocking-chairs!
Not that she really believed or feared that Philip would consider such
an impossible reconciliation; pride, and a sense of the absurd, must
always check any such weird caprice of her brother's conscience; and
yet--and yet other amazing and mismated couples had done it--had been
reunited.
And Nina was mightily troubled, for Alixe's capacity for mischief was
boundless; and that she, in some manner, had already succeeded in
stirring up Philip, was a rumour that persisted and would not be
annihilated.
To inform a man frankly that a young girl is a little in love with him
is one of the oldest, simplest, and easiest methods of interesting that
man--unless he happen to be in love with somebody else. And Nina had
taken her chances that the picture of Alixe was already too unimportant
for the ceremony of incineration. Besides, what she had ventured to say
to him was her belief; the child appeared to be utterly absorbed in her
increasing intimacy with Selwyn. She talked of little else; her theme
was Selwyn--his influence on Gerald, and her delight in his
companionship. They had, at his suggestion, taken up together the study
of Cretan antiquities--a sort of tender pilgrimage for her, because,
with the aid of her father's and mother's letters, note-books, and
papers, she and Selwyn were following on the map the journeys and
discoveries of her father.
But this was not all; Nina's watchful eyes opened wider and wider as she
witnessed in Eileen the naissance of an unconscious and delicate
coquetry, quite unabashed, yet the more significant for that; and Nina,
intent on the new phenomena, began to divine more about Eileen in a
single second, than the girl could have suspected of herself in a month
of introspection and of prayer.
Love was not there; Nina understood that; but its germ was--still
dormant, but bedded deliciously in congenial soil--the living germ in
all its latent promise, ready to swell with the first sudden heart-beat,
quicken with the first quickening of the pulse, unfold into perfect
symmetry if ever the warm, even current in the veins grew swift and hot
under the first scorching whisper of Truth.
* * * * *
Eileen, sewing by the nursery window, looked up; her little Alsatian
maid, cross-legged on the floor at her feet, sewing away diligently,
also looked up, then scrambled to her feet as Selwyn halted on the
threshold of the room.
"Why, how odd you look!" said Eileen, laughing: "come in, please;
Susanne and I are only mending some of my summer things. Were you in
search of the children?--don't say so if you were, because I'm quite
happy in believing that you knew I was here. Did you?"
"Where are the children?" he asked.
"In the Park, my very rude friend. You will find them on the Mall if you
start at once."
He hesitated, but finally seated himself, omitting the little formal
hand-shake with which they always met, even after an hour's separation.
Of course she noticed this, and, bending low above her sewing, wondered
why.
It seemed to him, for a moment, as though he were looking at a woman he
had heard about and had just met for the first time. His observation of
her now was leisurely, calm, and thorough--not so calm, however, when,
impatient of his reticence, bending there over her work, she raised her
dark-blue eyes to his, her head remaining lowered. The sweet, silent
inspection lasted but a moment, then she resumed her stitches, aware
that something in him had changed since she last had seen him; but she
merely smiled quietly to herself, confident of his unaltered devotion in
spite of the strangely hard and unresponsive gaze that had uneasily
evaded hers.
As her white fingers flew with the glimmering needle she reflected on
conditions as she had left them a week ago. A week ago, between him and
her the most perfect of understandings existed; and the consciousness of
it she had carried with her every moment in the country--amid the icy
tumble of the surf, on long vigorous walks over the greening hills where
wild moorland winds whipped like a million fairy switches till the young
blood fairly sang, pouring through her veins.
Since that--some time within the week, _something_ evidently had
happened to him, here in the city while she had been away. What?
As she bent above the fine linen garment on her knee, needle flying, a
sudden memory stirred coldly--the recollection of her ride with
Rosamund; and instinctively her clear eyes flew open and she raised her
head, turning directly toward him a disturbed gaze he did not this time
evade.
In silence their regard lingered; then, satisfied, she smiled again,
saying: "Have I been away so long that we must begin all over, Captain
Selwyn?"
"Begin what, Eileen?"
"To remember that the silence of selfish preoccupation is a privilege I
have not accorded you?"
"I didn't mean to be preoccupied--"
"Oh, worse and worse!" She shook her head and began to thread the
needle. "I see that my week's absence has not been very good
for you. I knew it the moment you came in with all that guilty
absent-minded effrontery which I have forbidden. Now, I suppose I
shall have to recommence your subjection. Ring for tea, please. And,
Susanne"--speaking in French and gathering up a fluffy heap of mended
summer waists--"these might as well be sent to the laundress--thank you,
little one; your sewing is always beautiful."
The small maid, blushing with pleasure, left the room, both arms full of
feminine apparel; Selwyn rang for tea, then strolled back to the window,
where he stood with both hands thrust into his coat-pockets, staring out
at the sunset.
A primrose light bathed the city. Below, through the new foliage of the
Park, the little lake reflected it in tints of deeper gold and amber
where children clustered together, sailing toy ships. But there was no
wind; the tiny sails and flags hung motionless, and out and in, among
the craft becalmed, steered a family of wild ducks, the downy yellow
fledglings darting hither and thither in chase of gnats, the mother bird
following in leisurely solicitude.
And, as he stood there, absently intent on sky and roof and foliage, her
soft bantering voice aroused him; and turning he found her beside him,
her humorous eyes fixed on his face.
"Suppose," she said, "that we go back to first principles and resume
life properly by shaking hands. Shall we?"
He coloured up as he took her hand in his; then they both laughed at the
very vigorous shake.
"What a horribly unfriendly creature you _can_ be," she said. "Never a
greeting, never even a formal expression of pleasure at my return--"
"You have not _returned_!" he said, smiling; "you have been with me
every moment, Eileen."
"What a pretty tribute!" she exclaimed; "I am beginning to recognise
traces of my training after all. And it is high time, Captain Selwyn,
because I was half convinced that you had escaped to the woods again.
What, if you please, have you been doing in town since I paroled you?
Nothing? Oh, it's very likely. You're probably too ashamed to tell me.
Now note the difference between us; _I_ have been madly tearing over
turf and dune, up hills, down hillocks, along headlands, shores, and
shingle; and I had the happiness of being half-frozen in the surf before
Nina learned of it and stopped me. . . . Come; sit over here; because
I'm quite crazy to tell you everything as usual--about how I played
marbles with the children--yes, indeed!--down on my knees and shooting
hard! Oh, it is divine, that sea-girdled, wind-drenched waste of moor
and thicket!--the strange little stunted forests in the hollows of the
miniature hills--do you remember? The trees, you know, grow only to the
wind-level, then spread out like those grotesque trees in fairy-haunted
forests--so old, so fantastic are these curious patches of woods that I
am for ever watching to see something magic moving far in the twilight
of the trees! . . . And one night I went out on the moors; oh, heavenly!
celestial!--under the stretch of stars! Elf-land in silence, save for
the bewitched wind. And the fairy forests drew me toward their edges,
down, down into the hollow, with delicious shivers.
"Once I trembled indeed, for the starlight on the swamp was suddenly
splintered into millions of flashes; and my heart leaped in pure fright!
. . . It was only a wild duck whirring headlong into the woodland
waters--but oh, if you had been there to see the weird beauty of its
coming--and the star-splashed blackness! You _must_ see that with me,
some time. . . . When are you coming to Silverside? We go back very
soon, now. . . . And I don't feel at all like permitting you to run wild
in town when I'm away and playing hopscotch on the lawn with Drina!"
She lay back in her chair, laughing, her hands linked together behind
her head.
"Really, Captain Selwyn, I confess I missed you. It's much better fun
when two can see all those things that I saw--the wild roses just a
tangle of slender green-mossed stems, the new grass so intensely green,
with a touch of metallic iridescence; the cat's-paws chasing each other
across the purple inland ponds--and that cheeky red fox that came
trotting out of the briers near Wonder Head, and, when he saw me, coolly
attempted to stare me out of countenance! Oh, it's all very well to tell
you about it, but there is a little something lacking in unshared
pleasures. . . . Yes, a great deal lacking. . . . And here is our
tea-tray at last."
Nina came up to join them. Her brother winced as she smiled triumphantly
at him, and the colour continued vivid in his face while she remained in
the room. Then the children charged upstairs, fresh from the Park,
clamouring for food; and they fell upon Selwyn's neck, and disarranged
his scarf-pin, and begged for buttered toast and crumpets, and got what
they demanded before Nina's authority could prevent.
"I saw a rabbit at Silverside!" said Billy, "but do you know, Uncle
Philip, that hunting pack of ours is no good! Not one dog paid any
attention to the rabbit though Drina and I did our best--didn't we,
Drina?"
"You should have seen them," murmured Eileen, leaning close to whisper
to Selwyn; "the children had fits when the rabbit came hopping across
the road out of the Hither Woods. But the dogs all ran madly the other
way, and I thought Billy would die of mortification."
Nina stood up, waving a crumpet which she had just rescued from
Winthrop. "Hark!" she said, "there's the nursery curfew!--and not one
wretched infant bathed! Billy! March bathward, my son! Drina,
sweetheart, take command. Prune soufflé for the obedient, dry bread for
rebels! Come, children!--don't let mother speak to you twice."
"Let's go down to the library," said Eileen to Selwyn--"you are dining
with us, of course. . . . What? Yes, indeed, you are. The idea of your
attempting to escape to some dreadful club and talk man-talk all the
evening when I have not begun to tell you what I did at Silverside!"
They left the nursery together and descended the stairs to the library.
Austin had just come in, and he looked up from his solitary cup of tea
as they entered:
"Hello, youngsters! What conspiracy are you up to now? I suppose you
sniffed the tea and have come to deprive me. By the way, Phil, I hear
that you've sprung the trap on those Siowitha people."
"Neergard has, I believe."
"Well, isn't it all one?"
"No, it is not!" retorted Selwyn so bluntly that Eileen turned from the
window at a sound in his voice which she had never before heard.
"Oh!" Austin stared over his suspended teacup, then drained it. "Trouble
with our friend Julius?" he inquired.
"No trouble. I merely severed my connection with him."
"Ah! When?"
"This morning."
"In that case," said Austin, laughing, "I've a job for you--"
"No, old fellow; and thank you with all my heart. I've half made up my
mind to live on my income for a while and take up that Chaosite matter
again--"
"And blow yourself to smithereens! Why spatter Nature thus?"
"No fear," said Selwyn, laughing. "And, if it promises anything, I may
come to you for advice on how to start it commercially."
"If it doesn't start you heavenward you shall have my advice from a safe
distance. I'll telegraph it," said Austin. "But, if it's not personal,
why on earth have you shaken Neergard?"
And Selwyn answered simply: "I don't like him. That is the reason,
Austin."
The children from the head of the stairs were now shouting demands for
their father; and Austin rose, pretending to grumble:
"Those confounded kids! A man is never permitted a moment to himself. Is
Nina up there, Eileen! Oh, all right. Excuses et cetera; I'll be back
pretty soon. You'll stay to dine, Phil?"
"I don't think so--"
"Yes, he will stay," said Eileen calmly.
And, when Austin had gone, she walked swiftly over to where Selwyn was
standing, and looked him directly in the eyes.
"Is all well with Gerald?"
"Y-yes, I suppose so."
"Is he still with Neergard & Co.?"
"Yes, Eileen."
"And _you_ don't like Mr. Neergard?"
"N-no."
"Then Gerald must not remain."
He said very quietly: "Eileen, Gerald no longer takes me into his
confidence. I am afraid--I know, in fact--that I have little influence
with him now. I am sorry; it hurts; but your brother is his own master,
and he is at liberty to choose his own friends and his own business
policy. I cannot influence him; I have learned that thoroughly. Better
that I retain what real friendship he has left for me than destroy it by
any attempt, however gentle, to interfere in his affairs."
She stood before him, straight, slender, her face grave and troubled.
"I cannot understand," she said, "how he could refuse to listen to a man
like you."
"A man like me, Eileen? Well, if I were worth listening to, no doubt
he'd listen. But the fact remains that I have not been able to hold his
interest--"
"Don't give him up," she said, still looking straight into his eyes. "If
you care for me, don't give him up."
"Care for you, Eileen! You know I do."
"Yes, I know it. So you will not give up Gerald, will you? He is--is
only a boy--you know that; you know he has been--perhaps--indiscreet.
But Gerald is only a boy. Stand by him, Captain Selwyn; because Austin
does not know how to manage him--really he doesn't. . . . There has been
another unpleasant scene between them; Gerald told me."
"Did he tell you why, Eileen?"
"Yes. He told me that he had played cards for money, and he was in debt.
I know that sounds--almost disgraceful; but is not his need of help all
the greater?"
Selwyn's eyes suddenly narrowed: "Did _you_ help him out, this time?"
"I--I--how do you mean, Captain Selwyn?" But the splendid colour in her
face confirmed his certainty that she had used her own resources to help
her brother pay the gambling debt; and he turned away his eyes, angry
and silent.
"Yes," she said under her breath, "I did aid him. What of it? Could I
refuse?"
"I know. Don't aid him again--_that_ way."
She stared: "You mean--"
"Send him to me, child. I understand such matters; I--that is--" and in
sudden exasperation inexplicable, for the moment, to them both: "Don't
touch such matters again! They soil, I tell you. I will not have Gerald
go to you about such things!"
"My own brother! What do you mean?"
"I mean that, brother or not, he shall not bring such matters near you!"
"Am I to count for nothing, then, when Gerald is in trouble?" she
demanded, flushing up.
"Count! Count!" he repeated impatiently; "of course you count! Good
heavens! it's women like you who count--and no others--not one single
other sort is of the slightest consequence in the world or to it.
Count? Child, you control us all; everything of human goodness, of human
hope hinges and hangs on you--is made possible, inevitable, because of
you! And you ask me whether you count! You, who control us all, and
always will--as long as you are you!"
She had turned a little pale under his vehemence, watching him out of
wide and beautiful eyes.
What she understood--how much of his incoherence she was able to
translate, is a question; but in his eyes and voice there was something
simpler to divine; and she stood very still while his roused emotions
swept her till her heart leaped up and every vein in her ran fiery
pride.
"I am--overwhelmed . . . I did not consider that I counted--so
vitally--in the scheme of things. But I must try to--if you believe all
this of me--only you must teach me how to count for something in the
world. Will you?"
"Teach you, Eileen. What winning mockery! _I_ teach _you_? Well, then--I
teach you this--that a man's blunder is best healed by a man's sympathy;
. . . I will stand by Gerald as long as he will let me do so--not alone
for your sake, nor only for his, but for my own. I promise you that. Are
you contented?"
"Yes."
She slowly raised one hand, laying it fearlessly in both of his.
"He is all I have left," she said. "You know that."
"I know, child."
"Then--thank you, Captain Selwyn."
"No; I thank you for giving me this charge. It means that a man must
raise his own standard of living before he can accept such
responsibility. . . . You endow me with all that a man ought to be; and
my task is doubled; for it is not only Gerald but I myself who require
surveillance."
He looked up, smilingly serious: "Such women as you alone can fit your
brother and me for an endless guard duty over the white standard you
have planted on the outer walls of the world."
"You say things to me--sometimes--" she faltered, "that almost hurt with
the pleasure they give."
"Did that give you pleasure?"
"Y-yes; the surprise of it was almost too--too keen. I wish you would
not--but I am glad you did. . . . You see"--dropping into a great velvet
chair--"having been of no serious consequence to anybody for so many
years--to be told, suddenly, that I--that I count so vitally with men--a
man like you--"
She sank back, drew one small hand across her eyes, and rested a moment;
then leaning forward, she set her elbow on one knee and bracketed her
chin between forefinger and thumb.
"_You_ don't know," she said, smiling faintly, "but, oh, the exalted
dreams young girls indulge in! And one and all centre around some
power-inspired attitude of our own when a great crisis comes. And most
of all we dream of counting heavily; and more than all we clothe
ourselves in the celestial authority which dares to forgive. . . . Is it
not pathetically amusing--the mental process of a young girl?--and the
paramount theme of her dream is power!--such power as will permit the
renunciation of vengeance; such power as will justify the happiness of
forgiving? . . . And every dream of hers is a dream of power; and,
often, the happiness of forbearing to wield it. All dreams lead to it,
all mean it; for instance, half-awake, then faintly conscious in
slumber, I lie dreaming of power--always power; the triumph of
attainment, of desire for wisdom and knowledge satisfied. I dream of
friendships--wonderful intimacies exquisitely satisfying; I dream of
troubles, and my moral power to sweep them out of existence; I dream of
self-sacrifice, and of the spiritual power to endure it; I dream--I
dream--sometimes--of more material power--of splendours and imposing
estates, of a paradise all my own. And when I have been selfishly happy
long enough, I dream of a vast material power fitting me to wipe poverty
from the world; I plan it out in splendid generalities, sometimes in
minute detail. . . . Of men, we naturally dream; but vaguely, in a
curious and confused way. . . . Once, when I was fourteen, I saw a
volunteer regiment passing; and it halted for a while in front of our
house; and a brilliant being on a black horse turned lazily in his
saddle and glanced up at our window. . . . Captain Selwyn, it is quite
useless for you to imagine what fairy scenes, what wondrous perils, what
happy adventures that gilt-corded adjutant and I went through in my
dreams. Marry him? Indeed I did, scores of times. Rescue him? Regularly.
He was wounded, he was attacked by fevers unnumbered, he fled in peril
of his life, he vegetated in countless prisons, he was misunderstood, he
was a martyr to suspicion, he was falsely accused, falsely condemned.
And then, just before the worst occurred, _I_ appear!--the inevitable
I."
She dropped back into the chair, laughing. Her colour was high, her eyes
brilliant; she laid her arms along the velvet arms of the chair and
looked at him.
"I've not had you to talk to for a whole week," she said; "and you'll
let me; won't you? I can't help it, anyway, because as soon as I see
you--crack! a million thoughts wake up in me and clipper-clapper goes my
tongue. . . . You are very good for me. You are so thoroughly
satisfactory--except when your eyes narrow in that dreadful far-away
gaze--which I've forbidden, you understand. . . . _What_ have you done
to your moustache?"
"Clipped it."
"Oh, I don't like it too short. Can you get hold of it to pull it? It's
the only thing that helps you in perplexity to solve problems. You'd be
utterly helpless, mentally, without your moustache. . . . When are we to
take up our Etruscan symbols again?--or was it Evans's monograph we were
laboriously dissecting? Certainly it was; don't you remember the Hittite
hieroglyph of Jerabis?--and how you and I fought over those wretched
floral symbols? You don't? And it was only a week ago? . . . And listen!
Down at Silverside I've been reading the most delicious thing--the Mimes
of Herodas!--oh, so charmingly quaint, so perfectly human, that it seems
impossible that they were written two thousand years ago. There's a
maid, in one scene, Threissa, who is precisely like anybody's maid--and
an old lady, Gyllis--perfectly human, and not Greek, but Yankee of
to-day! Shall we reread it together?--when you come down to stay with us
at Silverside?"
"Indeed we shall," he said, smiling; "which also reminds me--"
He drew from his breast-pocket a thin, flat box, turned it round and
round, glanced at her, balancing it teasingly in the palm of his hand.
"Is it for me? Really? Oh, please don't be provoking! Is it _really_ for
me? Then give it to me this instant!"
[Illustration: "Turning, looked straight at Selwyn."]
He dropped the box into the pink hollow of her supplicating palms. For a
moment she was very busy with the tissue-paper; then:
"Oh! it is perfectly sweet of you!" turning the small book bound in
heavy Etruscan gold; "whatever can it be?" and, rising, she opened it,
stepping to the window so that she could see.
Within, the pages were closely covered with the minute, careful
handwriting of her father; it was the first note-book he ever kept; and
Selwyn had had it bound for her in gold.
For an instant she gazed, breathless, lips parted; then slowly she
placed the yellowed pages against her lips and, turning, looked straight
at Selwyn, the splendour of her young eyes starred with tears.