In a city in transition, where yesterday is as dead as a dead century,
where those who prepare the old year for burial are already taking the
ante-mortem statement of the new, the future fulfils the functions
of the present. Time itself is considered merely as a by-product of
horse-power, discounted with flippancy as the unavoidable friction
clogging the fly-wheel of progress.
Memory, once a fine art, is becoming a lost art in Manhattan.
His world and his city had almost ceased to think of Siward.
For a few weeks men spoke of him in the several clubs of which he had
lately been a member--spoke of him always in the past tense; and after a
little while spoke of him no more.
In that section of the social system which he had inhabited, his absence
on account of his mother's death being taken for granted, people laid
him away in their minds almost as ceremoniously as they had laid away
the memory of his mother. Nothing halted because he was not present;
nothing was delayed, rearranged, or abandoned because his familiar
presence chanced to be missing. There remained only one more place to
fill at a cotillion, dinner, or bridge party; only another man for opera
box or week's end; one man the more to be counted on, one more man to
be counted out--transferred to the credit of profit and loss, and the
ledger closed for the season.
They who remembered him, among those who had not yet lost that
old-fashioned art, were very few--a young girl here and there, over
whom he had been absent-mindedly sentimental; a débutante or two who had
adored him from a distance as a friend of elder sister or brother; here
and there an old, old lady to whom he had been considerate, and who
perhaps remembered something of the winning charm of the Siwards when
the town was young--his father, perhaps, perhaps his grandfather--these
thought of him at intervals; the remainder had no leisure to remember
even if they had not forgotten how to do it. Several cabmen missed him
for a while; now and then a privileged café waiter inquired about him
from gay, noisy parties entering some old haunt of his. Mr. Desmond, of
art gallery and roulette notoriety, whose business is not to forget, was
politely regretful at his absence from certain occult ceremonies which
he had at irregular intervals graced with votive offerings. And the list
ended there--almost, not quite; for there were two people who had not
forgotten Siward: Howard Quarrier and Beverly Plank; and one other, a
third, who could not yet forget him if she would--but, as yet, she had
not tried very desperately.
The day that Siward left New York to visit everybody's friend, Mr.
Mulqueen, in the country, Plank called on him for the second time in his
life, and was presently received in the south drawing-room, the library
being limited to an informality and intimacy not for Mr. Plank.
Siward, still lame, and using unskilfully two shiny new crutches, came
down the stairs and stumped into the drawing-room, which, in spite of
the sombre, clustering curtains, was brightly illuminated by the winter
sunshine reflected from the snow in the street. Plank was shocked at the
change in him--at the ghost of a voice, listlessly formal; at the thin,
nerveless hand offered; startled, so that he forgot his shyness, and
retained the bony hand tightly in his, and instinctively laid his other
great cushion-like paw over it, holding it imprisoned, unable to speak,
unconscious, in the impulse of the moment, of the liberty he permitted
himself, and which he had never dreamed of taking with such a man as
Siward.
The effect on Siward was composite; his tired voice ceased; surprise,
inability to understand tinged with instinctive displeasure, were
succeeded by humourous curiosity; and, very slowly it became plain to
him that this beefy young man liked him, was naively concerned about
him, felt friendly toward him, and was showing it as spontaneously as a
child. Because he now understood something of how it is with a man who
is in the process of being forgotten, his perceptions were perhaps the
finer in these days, and the direct unconsciousness of Plank touched him
more heavily than the pair of heavy hands enclosing his.
“I thought I'd come,” began Plank, growing redder and redder as he began
to realise the enormity of familiarity committed only on the warrant of
impulse. “You don't look well.”
“It was good of you to think of me,” said Siward. “Come up to the
library, if you've a few minutes to spare an invalid. Please go first;
I'm a trifle lame yet.”
“I--I am sorry,” muttered Plank, “very, very sorry.”
At first, in the library, Plank was awkward and silent, finding nothing
to say, and nowhere to dispose of his hands, until Siward gave him
a cigar to occupy his fingers. Even then he continued to sit
uncomfortably, his bulk balanced on a rickety, spindle-legged chair,
which he stubbornly refused to exchange for another, at Siward's
suggestion, out of sheer embarrassment, and with a confused idea that
his refusal would somehow ultimately put him at his ease with his
surroundings.
Siward, secretly amused, rang for tea, although the hour was early.
After a little while, either the toast or the tea appeared to act on
Plank as a lingual laxative, for he began suddenly to talk, which is
characteristic of bashful men; and Siward gravely helped him on when he
floundered and turned shy. After a little, matters went very well with
them, and Plank, much more at ease than he had ever dared to hope he
could be with Siward, talked and talked; and Siward, his crutches
across his knees, lay back in his arm-chair, chatting with that winning
informality so becoming to men who are unconscious of their charm.
Watching Plank, it occurred to him gradually that this great, cumbersome
creature was not a shrewd, thrifty, self-made and self-finished adult at
all; only a big, wistful, lonely boy, without comrades and with nowhere
to play. On Plank's round face there remained no trace of shrewdness, of
stubbornness, nothing even of the heavy, saturnine placidity of a dogged
man who waits his turn.
Plank spoke of himself after a while, sounding the personal note with
tentative timidity. Siward gravely encouraged him, and in a little
while the outlines of his crude autobiography appeared, embodying his
eventless boyhood in a Pennsylvania town; his career at the high school;
the dawning desire for college equipment, satisfied by his father, who
owned shares in the promising Deepvale Steel Plank Company; the unhappy
years at Harvard--hard years, for he learned with difficulty; solitary
years, for he was not sought by those whom he desired to know. Then he
ventured to speak of his father's growing interest in steel; the merging
and absorbing of independent plants; his own entry upon the scene on
the death of his father; and--the rest--material fortune and prosperity,
which, perhaps, might stand substitute as a social sponsor for him;
stand, perhaps, for something of what he lacked in himself, which only
long residence amid the best, long-formed habits for the best, or a long
inheritance of the best could give. Did Siward think so? Was the best
beyond his reach? Was it hopeless for such a man as he to try? And why?
The innocent snobbery, the abashed but absolute simplicity of this
ponderous pilgrim from the smelting pits clambering upward through the
high school of the smoky town, groping laboriously through the chilly
halls of Harvard toward the outer breastworks of Manhattan, interested
Siward; and he said so in his pleasant way, without offence, and with a
smiling question at the end.
“Worth while?” repeated Plank, flushing heavily, “it is worth while to
me. I have always desired to be a part of the best that there is in my
own country; and the best is here, isn't it?”
“Not necessarily,” said Siward, still smiling. “The noisiest is here,
and some of the best.”
“Which is the best?” inquired Plank naively.
“Why, all plain people, whose education, breeding, and fortune permit
them the luxury of thinking, and whose tastes, intelligence, and sanity
enable them to express their thoughts. There are such people here, and
some of them form a portion of the gaudier and noisier galaxy we call
society.”
“That is what I wish to be part of,” said Plank. “Could you tell me what
are the requirements?”
“I don't believe I could, exactly,” said Siward, amused. “With us, the
social system, as an established and finished system, has too recently
been evolved from outer chaos to be characteristic of anything except
the crudity and energy of the chaos from which it emerged. The
balance between wealth, intelligence, and breeding has not yet been
established--not from lack of wealth or intelligence. The formula has
not been announced, that is all.”
“What is the formula?” insisted Plank.
“The formula is the receipt for a real society,” replied Siward,
laughing. “At present we have its uncombined ingredients in the
raw--noisy wealth and flippant fashion, arrogant intelligence and
dowdy breeding--all excellent materials, when filtered and fused in the
retort; and many of our test tubes have already precipitated pure metal
besides, and our national laboratory is turning out fine alloys. Some
day we'll understand the formula, and we'll weld the entire mass; and
that will be society, Mr. Plank.”
“In the meanwhile,” repeated Plank, unsmiling, “I want to be part of
the best we have. I want to be part of the brightness of things. I mean,
that I cannot be contented with an imitation.”
“An imitation?”
“Of the best--of what you say is not yet society. I ask no more than
your footing among the people of this city. I wish to be able to go
where such men as you go; be permitted, asked, desired to be part of
what you always have been part of. Is it a great deal I ask? Tell me,
Mr. Siward--for I don't know--is it too much to expect?”
“I don't think it is a very high ambition,” said Siward, smiling. “What
you ask is not very much to ask of life, Mr. Plank.”
“But is there any reason why I may not hope to go where I wish to go?”
“I think it depends upon yourself,” said Siward, “upon your capacity for
being, or for making people believe you to be exactly what they require.
You ask me whether you may be able to go where you desire; and I answer
you that there is no limit to any journey except the sprinting ability
of the pilgrim.”
Plank laughed a little, and his squared jaws relaxed; then, after a few
moments' thought:
“It is curious that what you cast away from you so easily, I am waiting
for with all the patience I have in me. And yet it is always yours to
pick up again whenever you wish; and I may never live to possess it.”
He was so perfectly right that Siward said nothing; in fact, he could
have no particular interest or sympathy for a man's quest of what
he himself did not understand the lack of. Those born without a tag
unmistakably ticketing them and their positions in the world were
perforce ticketed. Siward took it for granted that a man belonged where
he was to be met; and all he cared about was to find him civil, whether
he happened to be a policeman or a master of fox-hounds.
He was, now that he knew Plank, contented to accept him anywhere he met
him; but Plank's upward evolutions upon the social ladder were of no
interest to him, and his naïve snobbery was becoming something of a
bore.
So Siward directed the conversation into other channels, and Plank,
accepting another cup of tea, became very communicative about his
stables and his dogs, and the preservation of game; and after a while,
looking up confidently at Siward, he said:
“Do you think it beastly to drive pheasants the way I did at Black
Fells? I have heard that you were disgusted.”
“It isn't my idea of a square deal,” said Siward frankly.
“That settles it, then.”
“But you should not let me interfere with--”
“I'll take your opinion, and thank you for it. It didn't seem to me to
be the thing; only it's done over here, you know. The De Coursay's and
the--”
“Yes, I know. … Glad you feel that way about it, Plank. It's pretty
rotten sportsmanship. Don't you think so?”
“I do. I--would you--I should like to ask you to try some square
shooting at the Fells,” stammered Plank, “next season, if you would care
to.”
“You're very good. I should like to, if I were going to shoot at all;
but I fancy my shooting days are over, for a while.”
“Over!”
“Business,” nodded Siward, absently grave again. “I see no prospect of
my idling for the next year or two.”
“You are in--in Amalgamated Electric, I think,” ventured Plank.
“Very much in,” replied the other frankly. “You've read the papers and
heard rumours, I suppose?”
“Some. I don't suppose anybody quite understands the attacks on
Amalgamated.”
“I don't--not yet. Do you?”
Plank sat silent, then his shrewd under lip began to protrude.
“I'm wondering,” he began cautiously, “how much the Algonquin crowd
understands about the matter?”
Siward's troubled eyes were on him as he spoke, watching closely,
narrowly.
“I've heard that rumour before,” he said.
“So have I,” said Plank, “and it seems incredible.” He looked warily
at Siward. “Suppose it is true that the Algonquin Trust Company is
godfather to Inter-County. That doesn't explain why a man should kick
his own door down when there's a bell to ring and servants to let him
in--and out again, too.”
“I have wondered,” said Siward, “whether the door he might be inclined
to kick down is really his own door any longer.”
“I, too,” said Plank simply. “It may belong to a personal enemy--if he
has any. He could afford to have an enemy, I suppose.”
Siward nodded.
“Then, hadn't you better--I beg your pardon! You have not asked me to
advise you.”
“No. I may ask your advice some day. Will you give it when I do?”
“With pleasure,” said Plank, so warmly disinterested, so plainly proud
and eager to do a service that Siward, surprised and touched, found no
word to utter.
Plank rose. Siward attempted to stand up, but had trouble with his
crutches.
“Please don't try,” said Plank, coming over and offering his hand. “May
I stop in again soon? Oh, you are off to the country for a month or two?
I see. … You don't look very well. I hope it will benefit you. Awfully
glad to have seen you. I--I hope you won't forget me--entirely.”
“I am the man people are forgetting,” returned Siward, “not you. It was
very nice of you to come. You are one of very few who remember me at
all.”
“I have very few people to remember,” said Plank; “and if I had as many
as I could desire I should remember you first.”
Here he became very much embarrassed. Siward offered his hand again.
Plank shook it awkwardly, and went away on tiptoe down the stairs which
creaked decorously under his weight.
And that ended the first interview between Plank and Siward in the first
days of the latter's decline.
The months that passed during Siward's absence from the city began to
prove rather eventful for Plank. He was finally elected a member of the
Patroons Club, without serious opposition; he had dined twice with
the Kemp Ferralls; he and Major Belwether were seen together at
the Caithness dance, and in the Caithness box at the opera. Once a
respectable newspaper reported him at Tuxedo for the week's end; his
name, linked with the clergy, frequently occupied such space under the
column headed “Ecclesiastical News” as was devoted to the progress of
the new chapel, and many old ladies began to become familiar with his
name.
At the right moment the Mortimers featured him between two fashionable
bishops at a dinner. Mrs. Vendenning, who adored bishops, immediately
remembered him among those asked to her famous annual bal poudré; a
celebrated yacht club admitted him to membership; a whole shoal of
excellent minor clubs which really needed new members followed suit, and
even the rock-ribbed Lenox, wearied of its own time-honoured immobility,
displayed the preliminary fidgets which boded well for the stolid
candidate. The Mountain was preparing to take the first stiff step
toward Mohammed. It was the prophet's cue to sit tight and yawn
occasionally.
Meanwhile he didn't want to; he was becoming anxious to do things for
himself, which Leila Mortimer, of course, would not permit. It was
difficult for him to understand that any effort of his own would
probably be disastrous; that progress could come only through his
own receptive passivity; that nothing was demanded, nothing required,
nothing permitted from him as yet, save a capacity for assimilating such
opportunities as sections of the social system condescended to offer.
For instance, he wanted to open his art gallery to the public; he said
it was good strategy; and Mrs. Mortimer sat upon the suggestion with
a shrug of her pretty shoulders. Well, then, couldn't he possibly do
something with his great, gilded ball-room? No, he couldn't; and the
less in evidence his galleries and his ball-rooms were at present the
better his chances with people who, perfectly aware that he possessed
them, were very slowly learning to overlook the insolence of the
accident that permitted him to possess what they had never known the
want of. First of all people must tire of repeating to each other that
he was nobody, and that would happen when they wearied of explaining to
one another why he was ever asked anywhere. There was time enough for
him to offer amusement to people after they had ceased to find amusement
in snubbing him; plenty of time in the future for them to lash him to
a gallop for their pleasure. In the meanwhile he was doing very well,
because he began to appear regularly in the Caithness-Bonnesdel box, and
old Peter Caithness was already boring him at the Patroons; which meant
that the thrifty old gentleman considered Plank's millions as a possible
underpinning for the sagging house of Caithness, of which his pallid
daughter Agatha was the sole sustaining caryatid in perspective.
Yes, he was doing well; for that despotic beauty, Sylvia Landis, whose
capricious perversity had recently astonished those who remembered her
in her first season as a sweet, reasonable, and unspoiled girl, was
always friendly with him. That must be looked upon as important,
considering Sylvia's unassailable position, and her kinship to the
autocratic old lady whose kindly ukase had for generations remained the
undisputed law in the social system of Manhattan.
“There is another matter,” said Leila Mortimer innocently, as Plank,
lingering after a disastrous rubber of bridge with her, her husband, and
Agatha Caithness, had followed her into her own apartments to write his
cheque for what he owed. “You've driven with me so much and you come
here so often and we are seen together so frequently that the clans are
sharpening up their dirks for us. And that helps some.”
“What!” exclaimed Plank, reddening, and twisting around in his chair.
“Certainly. You didn't suppose I could escape, did you?”
“Escape! What?” demanded Plank, getting redder.
“Escape being talked about, savagely, mercilessly. Can't you see how it
helps? Oh dear, are you stupid, Beverly?
“I don't know,” replied Plank, staring, “just how stupid I am. If you
mean that I'm compromising you--”
“Oh, please! Why do you use back-stairs words? Nobody talks about
compromising now; all that went out with New Year's calls and
brown-stone stoops.”
“What do they call it, then?” asked Plank seriously.
“Call what? you great boy!”
“What you say I'm doing?”
“I don't say it.”
“Who does?”
Leila laughed, leaned back in her big, padded chair, dropping one knee
over the other. Her dark eyes with the Japanese slant to them rested
mockingly on Plank, who had now turned completely around in his chair,
leaving his half-written cheque on her escritoire behind him.
“You're simply credited with an affair with a pretty woman,” she said,
watching the dull colour mounting to his temples, “and that is certain
to be useful to you, and it doesn't affect me. What on earth are you
blushing about?” And as he said nothing, she added, with a daring little
laugh: “You are credited with being very agreeable, you see.”
“If--if that's the way you take it--” he began.
“Of course! What do you expect me to do--call for help before I'm hurt?”
“You mean that this talk--gossip--doesn't hurt?”
“How silly!” She looked at him, smiling. “You know how likely I am to
require protection from your importunities.” She dropped her pretty
head, and began plaiting with her fingers the silken gown over her knee.
“Or how likely I would be to shriek for it even if”--she looked up with
childlike directness--“even if I needed it.”
“Of course you can take care of yourself,” said Plank, wincing.
“I could, if I wanted to.”
“Everybody knows that. I know it, Leroy knows it; only I don't care to
figure as that kind of man.”
Already he had lost sight of her position in the matter; and she drew a
long, quiet breath, almost like a sigh.
“Time enough after you marry,” she said deliberately, and lighted a
cigarette from a candle, recreating her knees the other way.
He considered her, started to speak, checked himself, and swung around
to the desk again. His pen hovered over the space to be filled in. He
tried to recollect the amount, hesitated, dated the cheque and affixed
his signature, still trying to remember; then he looked at her over his
shoulder.
“I forget the exact amount.”
She surveyed him through the haze of her cigarette, but made no answer.
“I forget the amount,” he repeated.
“So do I,” she nodded indolently.
“But I--”
“Let it go. Besides, I shall not accept it.”
He flushed up, astonished. “You can't refuse to take a gambling debt.”
“I do,” she retorted coolly. “I'm tired of taking your money.”
“But you won it.”
“I'm tired of winning it. It is all I ever do win … from you.”
Her pretty head was wreathed in smoke. She tipped the ashes from the
cigarette's end, watching them fall to powder on the rug.
“I don't know what you mean,” he persisted doggedly.
“Don't you? I don't believe I do, either. There are intervals in my
career which might prove eloquent if I opened my lips. But I don't,
except to make floating rings and cabalistic signs out of cigarette
smoke. Can you read their meaning? Look! There goes one, and there's
another, and another--all twisting and uncurling into hieroglyphics.
They are very significant; they might tell you a lot of things, if you
would only translate them. But you haven't the key--have you?”
There was a heavy, jarring step in the main living-room, and Mortimer's
bulk darkened the doorway.
“Entrez, mon ami,” nodded Leila, glancing up. “Where is Agatha?”
“I'm going to Desmond's,” he grunted, ignoring his wife's question; “do
you want to try it again, Beverly?”
“I can't make Leila take her own winnings,” said Plank, holding out the
signed but unfilled cheque to Mortimer, who took it and scrutinised it
for a moment, rubbing his heavy, inflamed eyes; then, gesticulating, the
cheque fluttering in his puffy fingers:
“Come on,” he insisted. “I've a notion that I can give Desmond a whirl
that he won't forget in a hurry. Agatha's asleep; she's going to that
ball--where is it?” he demanded, turning on his wife. “Yes, yes; the
Page blow-out. You're going, I suppose?”
Leila nodded, and lighted another cigarette.
“All right,” continued Mortimer impatiently; “you and Agatha won't start
before one. And if you think Plank had better go, why, we'll be back
here in time.”
“That means you won't be back at all,” observed his wife coolly; “and
it's good policy for Beverly to go where he's asked. Can't you turn in
and sleep, now, and amuse your friend Desmond to-morrow night?”
“No, I can't. What a fool I'd be to let a chance slip when I feel like a
winner!”
“You never feel otherwise when you gamble,” said Leila.
“Yes, I do,” he retorted peevishly. “I can tell almost every time what
the cards are going to do to me. Leila, go to sleep. We'll be back here
for you by one, or half past.”
“Look here, Leroy,” began Plank, “there's one thing I can't stand for,
and that's this continual loss of sleep. If I go with you I'll not be
fit to go to the Pages.”
“What a farmer you are!” sneered Mortimer. “I believe you roost on the
foot-board of your bed, like a confounded turkey. Come on! You'd better
begin training, you know. People in this town are not going to stand for
the merry ploughboy game, you see!”
But Plank was shrewdly covering his principal reason for declining;
he had too often “temporarily” assisted Mortimer at Desmond's and
Burbank's, when Mortimer, cleaned out and unable to draw against a
balance non-existent, had plucked him by the sleeve from the faro table
with the breathless request for a loan.
“I tell you I can wring Desmond dry to-night,” repeated Mortimer
sullenly. “It isn't a case of 'want to,' either; it's a case of 'got
to.' That old pink-and-white rabbit, Belwether, got me into a game this
afternoon, and between him and Voucher and Alderdine I'm stripped clean
as a kennel bone.”
But Plank shook his head, pretending to yawn; and Mortimer, glowering
and lingering, presently went off, his swollen hands thrust into his
trousers' pockets, his gross features dark with disgust; and presently
they heard the front door slam, and a rattling tattoo of horses' feet
on the asphalt; and Leila sprang up impatiently, and, passing Plank,
traversed the passage to the windows of the front room.
“He's taken the horses--the beast!” she said calmly, as Plank joined
her at the great windows and looked out into the night, where the round,
drooping, flower-like globes of the electric lamps spread a lake of
silver before the house.
It was rather rough on Leila. The Mortimers maintained one pair of
horses only; and the use given them at all hours resulted in endless
scenes, and an utter impossibility for Leila to retain the same coachman
and footman for more than a few weeks at a time.
“He won't come back; he'll keep Martin and the horses standing in front
of Delmonico's all night. You'd better call up the stables, Beverly.”
So Plank called up a livery and arranged for transportation at one;
and Leila seated herself at a card-table and began to deal herself cold
decks, thoughtfully.
“That bit in 'Carmen,'” she said, “it always brings the shudder; it
never palls on me, never grows stale.” She whipped the ominous spade
from the pack and held it out. “La Mort!” she exclaimed in mock tragedy,
yet there was another undertone ringing through it, sounding, too, in
her following laugh. “Draw!” she commanded, holding out the pack; and
Plank drew a diamond.
“Naturally,” she nodded, shuffling the pack with her smooth, savant
fingers and laying them out as she repeated the formula: “Qui frappe?
Qui entre? Qui prend chaise? Qui parle? Oh, the deuce! it's always the
same! Tiens! je m'ennui!” There was a flash of her bare arm, a flutter,
and the cards fell in a shower over them both.
Plank flipped a card from his knee, laughing uncertainly, aware of
symptoms in his pretty vis-à-vis which always made him uncomfortable.
For months, now, at certain intervals, these recurrent symptoms had made
him wary; but what they might portend he did not know, only that, alone
with her, moments occurred when he was heavily aware of a tension
which, after a while, affected even his few thick nerves. One of those
intervals was threatening now: her flushed cheeks, her feverish activity
with her hands, the unconscious reflex movement of her silken knees
and restless slippers, all foreboded it. Next would come the nervous
laughter, the swift epigram which bored and puzzled him, the veiled
badinage he was unequal to; and then the hint of weariness, the curious
pathos of long silences, the burnt-out beauty of her eyes from which the
fire had gone as though quenched by invisible tears within.
He ascribed it--desired to ascribe it--to her relations with her
husband. He had naturally learned and divined how matters stood with
them; he had learned considerable in the last month or two--something
of Mortimer's record as a burly brother to the rich; something of his
position among those who made no question of his presence anywhere.
Something of Leila, too, he had heard, or rather deduced from hinted
word or shrug or smiling silence, not meant for him, but indifferent to
what he might hear and what he might think of what he heard.
He did listen; he did patiently add two and two in the long solitudes of
his Louis XV chamber; and if the results were not always four, at least
they came within a fraction of the proper answer. And this did not alter
his policy or weaken his faith in his mentors; nor did it impair his
real gratitude to them, and his real and simple friendship for them
both. He was faithful in friendship once formed, obstinately so, for
better or for worse; but he was shrewd enough to ignore opportunities
for friendships which he foresaw could do him no good on his plodding
pilgrimage toward the temple of his inexorable desire.
Lifting, now, his Delft-coloured eyes furtively, he studied the
silk-and-lace swathed figure of the young matron opposite, flung back
into the depths of her great chair, profile turned from him, her chin
imprisoned in her ringed fingers. The brooding abandon of the attitude
contrasted sharply with the grooming of the woman, making both the more
effective.
“Turn in, if you want to,” she said, her voice indistinct, smothered by
her pink palm. “You're to dress in Leroy's quarters.”
“I don't want to turn in just yet.”
“You said you needed sleep.”
“I do. But it's not eleven yet.”
She slipped into another posture, reaching for a cigarette, and, setting
it afire from the match he offered, exhaled a cloud of smoke and looked
dreamily through it at him.
“Who is she?” she asked in a colourless voice. “Tell me, for I don't
know. Agatha? Marion Page? Mrs. Vendenning? or the Tassel girl?”
“Nobody--yet,” he admitted cheerfully.
“Nobody--yet,” she repeated, musing over her cigarette. “That's good
politics, if it's true.”
“Am I untruthful?” he asked simply.
“I don't know. Are you? You're a man.”
“Don't talk that way, Leila.”
“No, I won't. What is it that you and Sylvia Landis have to talk about
so continuously every time you meet?”
“She's merely civil to me,” he explained.
“That's more than she is to a lot of people. What do you talk about?”
“I don't know--nothing in particular; mostly about Shotover, and the
people there last summer.”
“Doesn't she ever mention Stephen Siward?”
“Usually. She knows I like him.”
“She likes him, too,” said Leila, looking at him steadily.
“I know it. Everybody likes him--or did. I do, yet.”
“I do, too,” observed Mrs. Mortimer coolly. “I was in love with him. He
was only a boy then.”
Plank nodded in silence.
“Where is he now--do, you know?” she asked. “Everybody says he's gone to
the devil.”
“He's in the country somewhere,” replied Plank cautiously. “I stopped
in to see him the other day, but nobody seemed to know when he would
return.”
Mrs. Mortimer tossed her cigarette onto the hearth. For a long interval
of silence she lay there in her chair, changing her position restlessly
from moment to moment; and at length she lay quite still, so long that
Plank began to think she had fallen asleep in her chair.
He rose. She did not stir, and, passing her, he instinctively glanced
down. Her cheeks, half buried against the back of the chair, were
overflushed; under the closed lids the lashes glistened wet in the
lamplight.
Surprised, embarrassed, he halted, as though afraid to move; and she sat
up with a nervous shake of her shoulders.
“What a life!” she said, under her breath; “what a life for a woman to
lead!”
“Wh-whose?” he blurted out.
“Mine!”
He stared at her uneasily, finding nothing to say. He had never before
heard anything like this from her.
“Can't anybody help me out of it?” she said quietly.
“Who? How? … Do you mean--”
“Yes, I mean it! I mean it! I--”
And suddenly she broke down, in a strange, stammering, tearless
way, opening the dry flood-gates over which rattled an avalanche of
words--bitter, breathless phrases rushing brokenly from lips that shrank
as they formed them.
Plank sat inert, the corroding echo of the words clattering in his ears.
And after a while he heard his own altered voice sounding persistently
in repetition:
“Don't say those things, Leila; don't tell me such things.”
“Why? Don't you care?”
“Yes, yes, I care; but I can't do anything! I have no business to
hear--to see you this way.”
“To whom can I speak, then, if I can not speak to you? To whom can I
turn? Where am I to turn, in all the world?”
“I don't know,” he said fearfully; “the only way is to go on.”
“What else have I done? What else am I doing?” she cried. “Go on? Am I
not trudging on and on through life, dragging the horror of it behind
me through the mud, except when the horror drags me? To whom am I to
turn--to other beasts like him?--sitting patiently around, grinning and
slavering, awaiting their turn when the horror of it crushes me to the
mud?”
She stretched out a rounded, quivering arm, and laid the small fingers
of the left hand on its flawless contour. “Look!” she said, exasperated,
“I am young yet; the horror has not yet corrupted the youth in me. I am
fashioned for some reason, am I not?--for some purpose, some happiness.
I am not bad; I am human. What poison has soaked into me can be
eliminated. I tell you, no woman is capable of being so thoroughly
poisoned that the antidote proves useless.
“But I tell you men, also, that unless she find that antidote she will
surely reinfect herself. A man can not do what that man has done to me
and expect me to recover unaided. People talk of me, and I have given
them subjects enough! But--look at me! Straight between the eyes! Every
law have I broken except that! Do you understand? That one, which you
men consider yourselves exempt from, I have not broken--yet! Shall I
speak plainer? It is the fashion to be crude. But--I can't be; I am
unfashionable, you see.”
She laughed, her haunted eyes fixed on his.
“Is there no chance for me? Because I drag his bedraggled name about
with me is there no decent chance, no decent hope? Is there only
indecency in prospect, if a man comes to care for a married woman? Can't
a decent man love her at all? I--I think--”
Her hands, outstretched, trembled, then flew to her face; and she stood
there swaying, until Plank perforce stepped to her side and steadied her
against him.
So they remained for a while, until she looked up dazed, weary,
ashamed, expecting nothing of him; and when it came, leaving her still
incredulous, his arms around her, his tense, flushed face recoiling from
their first kiss, she did not seem to comprehend.
“I can't turn on him,” he stammered, “I--we are friends, you see. How
can I love you, if that is so?”
“Could you love me?” she asked calmly.
“I--I don't know. I did love--I do care for--another woman. I can't
marry her, though I am given to understand there is a chance. Perhaps
it is partly ambition,” he said honestly, “for I am quite sure she has
never cared for me, never thought of me in that way. I think a man can't
stand that long.”
“No; only women can. Who is she?”
“You won't ask me, will you?”
“No. Are you sorry that I am in love with you?”
His arms unclasped her body, and he stepped back, facing her.
“Are you?” she asked violently.
“No.”
“You speak like a man,” she said tremulously. “Am I to be permitted to
adore you in peace, then--decently, and in peace?”
“Don't speak that way, Leila. I--there is no woman, no friend, I care
for as much as I do you. It is easy, I think, for a woman, like you, to
make a man care for her. You will not do it, will you?”
“I will,” she said softly.
“It's no use; I can't turn on him. I can't! He is my friend, you see.”
“Let him remain so. I shall do what I can. Let him remain a monument
to his fellow-beasts. What do I care? Do you think I desire to turn you
into his image? Do you think I hope for your degradation and mine? Are
you afraid I should not recognise love unaccompanied by the attendant
beast? I--I don't know; you had better teach me, if I prove blind. If
you can love me, do so in charity before I go blind forever.”
She laid one hand on his arm, looked at him, then turned and passed
slowly through the doorway.
“If you are going to sleep before we start you had better be about it!”
she said, looking back at him from the stairs.
But he had no further need of sleep; and for a long while he stood at
the windows watching the lamps of cabs and carriages sparkling through
the leafless thickets of the park like winter fire-flies.
At one o'clock, hearing Agatha Caithness speak to Leila's maid, he left
the window, and sitting down at the desk, telephoned to Desmond's; and
he was informed that Mortimer, hard hit, had signified his intention of
recouping at Burbank's. Then he managed to get Burbank's on the wire,
and finally Mortimer himself, but was only cursed for his pains and cut
off in the middle of his pleading.
So he wandered up-stairs into Mortimer's apartments, where he tubbed and
dressed, and finally descended, to find Agatha Caithness alone in
the library, spinning a roulette wheel and whistling an air from “La
Bacchante.”
“That's pretty,” he said; “sing it.”
“No; it's better off without the words; and so are you,” added Agatha
candidly, relinquishing the wheel and strolling with languid grace about
the room, hands on her hips, timing her vagrant steps to the indolent,
wicked air. And,
“'Je rougirais de men ivresse Si tu conservais ta raison!'”
she hummed deliberately, pivoting on her heels and advancing again
toward Plank, her pretty, pale face delicate as an enamelled cameo under
the flood of light from the crystal chandeliers.
“I understand that Mr. Mortimer is not coming with us,” she said
carelessly. “Are you going to dance with me, if I find nobody better?”
He expressed himself flattered, cautiously. He was one of many who never
understood this tall, white, low-voiced girl, with eyes too pale for
beauty, yet strangely alluring, too. Few men denied the indefinable
enchantment of her; few men could meet her deep-lidded, transparent
gaze unmoved. In the sensitive curve of her mouth there was a kind of
sensuousness; in her low voice, in her pallor, in the slim grace of her
a vague provocation that made men restless and women silently curious
for something more definite on which to base their curiosity.
She was wearing, over the smooth, dead-white skin of her neck, a collar
of superb diamonds and aquamarines--almost an effrontery, as the latter
were even darker than her eyes; yet the strange and effective harmony
was evident, and Plank spoke of the splendour of the gems.
She nodded indifferently, saying they were new, and that she had picked
them up at Tiffany's; and he mentally sketched out the value of the
diamonds, a trifle surprised, because Leila Mortimer had carefully
informed him about the condition of the Caithness exchequer.
That youthful matron herself appeared in a few moments, very lustrous,
very lovely in her fragrant, exotic brightness, and Plank for the first
time thought that she was handsome--the vigorous, youthful incarnation
of Life itself, in contrast to Agatha's almost deathly beauty. She
greeted him not only without a trace of embarrassment, but with such a
friendly, fresh, gay confidence that he scarcely recognised in her the
dry-eyed, feverish woman of an hour ago, whose very lips shrank back,
scorched by the torrent of her own invective.
And so they drove the three short blocks to the Page's in their hired
livery; the street was inadequate for the crush of vehicles; and the
glittering pressure within the house was outrageous; all of which
confused Plank, who became easily confused by such things.
How they got in--how they managed to present themselves--who took Leila
and Agatha from him--where they went--where he himself might be--he
did not understand very clearly. The house was large, strange, full
of strangers. He attempted to obtain his bearings by wandering about
looking for a small rococo reception-room where he remembered he had
once talked kennel talk with Marion Page, and had on another occasion
perspired freely under the arrogant and strabismic glare of her mother.
That good lady had really rather liked him; he never suspected it.
But he couldn't find the rococo room--or perhaps he didn't recognise it.
So many people--so many, many people whom he did not know, whom he had
never before laid eyes on--high-bred faces hard as diamonds; young, gay,
laughing faces; brilliant eyes encountering his without a softening
of recognition; clean-cut, attractive men in swarms, all animated, all
amused, all at home among themselves and among the silken visions of
loveliness passing and repassing, with here an extended gloved arm and
the cordial greeting of camaraderie, there a quick smile, a swift turn
in passing, a capricious bending forward for a whisper, a compliment,
a jest--all this swept by him, around him, enveloping him with its
brightness, its gaiety, its fragrance, and left him more absolutely
alone than he had ever been in all his life.
He tried to find Leila, and gave it up. He saw Quarrier talking to
Agatha, but the former saluted him so coldly that he turned away.
After a while he found Marion, but she hadn't a dance left for him;
neither had Rena Bonnesdel, whom he encountered while she was adroitly
avoiding one of the ever-faithful twins. The twin caught up with her in
consequence, and she snubbed Plank for his share in the disaster, which
depressed him, and he started for the smoking-room, wherever that haven
might be found. He got into the ball-room, however, by mistake,
and adorned the wall, during the cotillon, as closely as his girth
permitted, until an old lady sent for him; and he went and talked about
bishops for nearly an hour to her, until his condition bordered on
frenzy, the old lady being deaf and peevish.
Later, Alderdene used him to get rid of an angular, old harridan who
seemed to be one solid diamond-mine, and who drove him into a corner
and talked indelicacies until Plank's broad face flamed like the setting
sun. Then Captain Voucher unloaded a frightened débutante on him who
tried to talk about horses and couldn't; and they hated each other for
a while, until, looking around her in desperation, she found he had
vanished--which was quick work for a man of his size.
Kathryn Tassel employed him for supper, and kept him busy while she
herself was immersed in a dawning affair with Fleetwood. She did
everything to him except to tip him; and her insolence was the last
straw.
Then, unexpectedly in the throng, two wonderful sea-blue eyes
encountered his, deepening to violet with pleasure, and the trailing
sweetness of a voice he knew was repeating his name, and a slim,
white-gloved hand lay in his own.
Her escort, Ferrall, nodded to him pleasantly. She leaned forward from
Ferrall's arm, saying, under her breath, “I have saved a dance for you.
Please ask me at once. Quick! do you want me?”
“I--I do,” stammered Plank.
Ferrall, suspicious, stepped forward to exchange civilities, then
turning to the girl beside him: “See here, Sylvia, you've dragged me all
over this house on one pretext or another. Do you want any supper, or
don't you? If you don't, it's our dance.”
“No, I don't. No, it isn't. Kemp, you annoy me!”
“That's a nice thing to say! Is it your delicately inimitable way of
giving me my congé?”
“Yes, thank you,” nodded Miss Landis coolly; “you may go now.”
“You're spoiled, that's what's the matter,” retorted Ferrall wrathfully.
“I thought I was to have this dance. You said--”
“I said 'perhaps,' because I didn't see Mr. Plank coming to claim it.
Thank you, Kemp, for finding him.”
Her nod and smile took the edge from her malice. Ferrall, who really
adored dancing, glared about for anybody, and presently cornered the
frightened and neglected debutante who had hated Plank.
Sylvia, standing beside Plank, looked up at him with her confident and
friendly smile.
“You don't care to dance, do you? Would you mind if we sat out this
dance?”
“If you'd rather,” he said, so wistfully that she hesitated; then with
a little shrug laid one hand on his arm, and they swung out across the
floor together, into the scented whirl.
Plank, like many heavy men, danced beautifully; and Sylvia, who still
loved dancing with all the ardour of a schoolgirl, permitted a moment
or two of keen delight to sweep her dreamily from her purpose. But that
purpose must have been a strong one, for she returned to it in a few
minutes, and, looking up at Plank, said very gently that she cared to
dance no more.
Her hand resting lightly on his arm, it did not seem possible that any
pressure of hers was directing them to the conservatory; yet he did not
know where he was going, and she was familiar with the house, and they
soon entered the conservatory, where, in the shadow of various palms
various youths looked up impatiently as they passed, and various maidens
sat up very straight in their chairs.
Threading their dim way into the farther recesses they found seats among
thickets of forced lilacs over-hung by early wistaria. A spring-like
odour hung in the air; somewhere a tiny fountain grew musical in the
semi-darkness.
“Marion told me you had been asked,” she said. “We have been so
friendly; you've always asked me to dance whenever we have met; so I
thought I'd save you one. Are you flattered, Mr. Plank?”
He said he was, very pleasantly, perfectly undeceived, and convinced of
her purpose--a purpose never even tacitly admitted between them; and the
old loneliness came over him again--not resentment, for he was willing
that she should use him. Why not? Others used him; everybody used
him; and if they found no use for him they let him alone. Mortimer,
Fleetwood, Belwether--all, all had something to exact from him. It was
for that he was tolerated--he knew it; he had slowly and unwillingly
learned it. His intrusion among these people, of whom he was not one,
would be endured only while he might be turned to some account. The
hospital used him, the clergy found plenty for him to do for them, the
museum had room for other pictures of his. Who among them all had ever
sought him without a motive? Who among them all had ever found unselfish
pleasure in him? Not one.
Something in the dull sadness of his face, as he sat there, checked
the first elaborately careless question her lips were already framing.
Leaning a little nearer in the dim light she looked at him inquiringly
and he returned her gaze in silence.
“What is it, Mr. Plank,” she said; “is anything wrong?”
He knew that she did not mean to ask if anything was amiss with him. She
did not care. Nobody cared. So, recognising his cue, he answered: “No,
nothing is wrong that I have heard of.”
“You wear a very solemn countenance.”
“Gaiety affects me solemnly, sometimes. It is a reaction from frivolity.
I suppose that I am over-enjoying life; that is all.”
She laughed, using her fan, although the place was cool enough and they
had not danced long. To and fro flitted the silken vanes of her fan, now
closing impatiently, now opening again like the wings of a nervous moth
in the moonlight.
He wished she would come to her point, but he dared not lead her to it
too brusquely, because her purpose and her point were supposed to be
absolutely hidden from his thick and credulous understanding. It
had taken him some time to make this clear to himself; passing from
suspicion, through chagrin and overwounded feeling, to dull certainty
that she, too, was using him, harmlessly enough from her standpoint, but
how bitterly from his, he alone could know.
The quickened flutter of her fan meant impatience to learn from him what
she had come to him to learn, and then, satisfied, to leave him alone
again amid the peopled solitude of clustered lights.
He wished she would speak; he was tired of the sadness of it all.
Whenever in his isolation, in his utter destitution of friendship, he
turned guilelessly to meet a new advance, always, sooner or later, the
friendly mask was lifted enough for him to divine the cool, fixed gaze
of self-interest inspecting him through the damask slits.
Sylvia was speaking now, and the plumy fan was under savant control,
waving graceful accompaniment to her soft voice, punctuating her
sentences at times, at times making an emphasis or outlining a gesture.
It was the familiar sequence; topics that led to themes which adroitly
skirted the salient point; returned capriciously, just avoiding it--a
subtly charming pattern of words which required so little in reply
that his smile and nod were almost enough to keep her aria and his
accompaniment afloat.
It began to fascinate him to watch the delicacy of her strategy, the
coquetting with her purpose; her naive advance to the very edges of
it, the airy retreat, the innocent detour, the elaborate and circuitous
return. And at last she drifted into it so naturally that it seemed
impossible that fatuous man could have the most primitive suspicion of
her premeditation.
And Plank, now recognising his cue, answered her: “No, I have not heard
that he is in town. I stopped to see him the other day, but nobody there
knew how soon he intended to return from the country.”
“I didn't know he had gone to the country,” she said without apparent
interest.
And Plank was either too kind to terminate the subject, or too anxious
to serve his turn and release her; for he went on: “I thought I told you
at Mrs. Ferrall's that Mr. Siward had gone to the country.”
“Perhaps you did. No doubt I've forgotten.”
“I'm quite sure I did, because I remember saying that he looked very
ill, and you said, rather sharply, that he had no business to be ill. Do
you remember?”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “Is he better?”
“I hope so.”
“You hope so?”--with the controlled emphasis of impatience.
“Yes. Don't you, Miss Landis? When I saw him at his home, he was
lame--on crutches--and he looked rather ghastly; and all he said was
that he expected to leave for the country. I asked him to shoot next
year at Black Fells, and he seemed bothered about business, and said it
might keep him from taking any vacation.”
“He spoke about his business?”
“Yes, he--”
“What is the trouble with his business? Is it anything about Amalgamated
and Inter-County?”
“I think so.”
“Is he worried?”
Plank said deliberately: “I should be, if my interests were locked up in
Amalgamated Electric.”
“Could you tell me why that would worry you?” she asked, smiling
persuasively across at him.
“No,” he said, “I can't tell you.”
“Because I wouldn't understand?”
“Because I myself don't understand.”
She thought awhile, brushing the rose velvet of her mouth with the fan's
edge, then, looking up confidently:
“Mr. Siward is such a boy. I'm so glad he has you to advise him in such
matters.”
“What matters?” asked Plank bluntly.
“Why, in--in financial matters.”
“But I don't advise him.”
“Why not?”
“Because he hasn't asked me to, Miss Landis.”
“He ought to ask you. … He must ask you. … Don't wait for him, Mr.
Plank. He is only a boy in such things.”
And, as Plank was silent:
“You will, won't you?”
“Do what--make his business my business, without an invitation?” asked
Plank, so quietly that she flushed with annoyance.
“If you pretend to be his friend is it not your duty to advise him?” she
asked impatiently.
“No; that is for his business associates to do. Friendship comes to
grief when it crosses the frontiers of business.”
“That is a narrow view to take, Mr. Plank.”
“Yes, straight and narrow. The boundaries of friendship are straight and
narrow. It is best to keep to the trodden path; best not to walk on the
grass or trample the flowers.”
“I think you are sacrificing friendship for an epigram,” she said,
careless of the undertone of contempt in her voice.
“I have never sacrificed friendship.” He turned, and looked at her
pleasantly. “I never made an epigram consciously, and I have never
required of a friend more than I had to offer in return. Have you?”
The flush of hot displeasure stained her cheeks.
“Are you really questioning me, Mr. Plank?”
“Yes. You have been questioning me rather seriously--have you not?”
“I did not comprehend your definition of friendship. I did not agree
with it. I questioned it, not you! That is all.”
Plank rested his head on one big hand and stared at the clusters of
dim blossoms behind her; and after a while he said, as though thinking
aloud:
“Many have taken my friendship for granted, and have never offered their
own in return. I do not know about Mr. Siward. There is nothing I can do
for him, nothing he can do for me. If there is to be friendship between
us it will be disinterested; and I would rather have that than anything
in the world, I think.”
There was a pause; but when Sylvia would have broken it his gesture
committed her to silence with the dignity one might use in checking a
persistent child.
“You question my definition of friendship, Miss Landis. I should have
let your question pass, however keenly it touched me, had it not also
touched him. Now I am going to say some things which lie within the
straight and narrow bounds I spoke of. I never knew a man I cared for as
much as I care for Mr. Siward. I know why, too. He is disinterested. I
do not believe he wastes very many thoughts on me. Perhaps he will. I
want him to like me, if it's possible. But one thing you and I may be
sure of: if he does not care to return the friendship I offer him he
will never accept anything else from me, though he might give at my
request; and that is the sort of a man he is; and that is why he is
every inch a man; and so I like him, Miss Landis. Do you wonder?”
She did not reply.
“Do you wonder?” he repeated sharply.
“No,” she said.
“Then--” He straightened up, and the silent significance of his waiting
attitude was plain enough to her.
But she shook her head impatiently, saying: “I don't know whose dance
it is, and I don't care. Please go on. It is--is pleasant. I like Mr.
Siward; I like to hear men speak of him as you do. I like you for doing
it. If you should ever come to care for my friendship that is the best
passport to it--your loyalty to Mr. Siward.”
“No man can truthfully speak otherwise than I have spoken,” he said
gravely.
“No, not of these things. But--you know w-what is--is usually said when
his name comes up among men.”
“Do you mean about his habits?” he asked simply.
“Yes. Is it not an outrage to drag in that sort of thing? It angers me
intensely, Mr. Plank. Why do they do it? Is there a single one among
them qualified to criticise Mr. Siward? And besides, it is not true any
more! … is it?--what was once said of him with--with some truth? Is it?”
The dull red blood mantled Plank's heavy visage. The silence grew
grim as he did his slow, laborious thinking, the while his eyes,
expressionless and almost opaque in the dim light, never left her's,
until, under the unchanging, merciless inspection, the mask dropped for
an instant from her anxious face, and he saw what he saw.
He was no fool. What he had come to believe she at last had only
confirmed; and now the question became simple: was she worth
enlightening? And by what title did she demand his confidence?
“You ask me if it is true any more. You mean about his habits. If I
answer you it is because I cannot be indifferent to what concerns him.
But before I answer I ask you this: Would your interest in his fortunes
matter to him?”
She waited, head bent; then:
“I don't know, Mr. Plank,” very low.
“Did your interest in his fortunes ever concern him?”
“Yes, once.”
He looked at her sternly, his jaw squaring until his heavy under lip
projected. “Within my definition of friendship, is he your friend?”
“You mean he--”
“No, I mean you! I can answer for him. How is it with you? Do you return
what he gives--if there is really friendship between you? Or do you take
what he offers, offering nothing in return?”
She had turned rather white under the direct impact of the questions.
The jarring repetition of his voice itself was like the dull echo
of distant blows. Yet it never occurred to her to resent it, nor his
attitude, nor his self-assumed privilege. She did not care; she no
longer cared what he said to her or thought about her; nor did she care
that her mask had fallen at last. It was not what he was saying, but
what her own heart repeated so heavily that drove the colour from her
face. Not he, but she herself had become the pitiless attorney for the
prosecution; not his voice, but the clamouring conscience within her
demanded by what right she used the name of friendship to characterise
the late relations between her and the man to whom she had denied
herself.
Then a bitter impatience swept her, and a dawning fear, too; for she had
set her foot on the fallen mask, and the impulse rendered her reckless.
“Why don't you speak?” she said. “Yes, I have a right to know. I care
for him as much as you do. Why don't you answer me? I tell you I care
for him!”
“Do you?” he said in a dull voice. “Then help me out, if you can, for
I don't know what to do; and if I did, I haven't the authority of
friendship as my warrant. He is in New York. He did go to the country;
and, at his home, the servants suppose he is still away. But he isn't;
he is here, alone, and sick--sick of his old sickness. I saw him,
and”--Plank rested his head on his hand, dropping his eyes--“and he
didn't know me. I--I do not think he will remember that he met me, or
that I spoke. And--I could do nothing, absolutely nothing. And I don't
know where he is. He will go home after a while. I call--every day--to
see--see what can be done. But if he were there I would not know what to
do. When he does go home I won't know what to say--what to try to do. …
And that is an answer to your question, Miss Landis. I give it, because
you say you care for him as I do. Will you advise me what to do?--you,
who are more entitled than I am to know the truth, because he has given
you the friendship which he has as yet not accorded to me.”
But Sylvia, dry-eyed, dry-lipped, could find no voice to answer; and
after a little while they rose and moved through the fragrant gloom
toward the sparkling lights beyond.
Her voice came back as they entered the brilliant rooms: “I should
like to find Grace Ferrall,” she said very distinctly. “Please keep the
others off, Mr. Plank.”
Her small hand on his arm lay with a weight out of all proportion to its
size. Fair head averted, she no longer guided him with that impalpable
control; it was he who had become the pilot now, and he steered his own
way through the billowy ocean of silk and lace, master of the course he
had set, heavily bland to the interrupter and the importunate from whom
she turned a deaf ear and dumb lips, and lowered eyes that saw nothing.
Fleetwood had missed his dance with her, but she scarcely heard his
eager complaints. Quarrier, coldly inquiring, confronted them; was
passed almost without recognition, and left behind, motionless, looking
after them out of his narrowing, black-fringed eyes of a woman.
Then Ferrall came, and hearing his voice, she raised her colourless
face.
“Will you take me home with you, Kemp, when you take Grace?” she asked.
“Of course. I don't know where Grace is. Are you in a hurry to go? It's
only four o'clock.”
They were at the entrance to the supper-room. Plank drew up a chair
for her, and she sank down, dropping her elbows on the small table, and
resting her face between her fingers.
“Pegged out, Sylvia?” exclaimed Ferrall incredulously. “You? What's the
younger set coming to?” and he motioned a servant to fill her glass. But
she pushed it aside with a shiver, and gave Plank a strange look which
he scarcely understood at the moment.
“More caprices; all sorts of 'em on the programme,” muttered Ferrall,
looking down at her from where he stood beside Plank. “O tempora! O
Sylvia! … Plank, would you mind hunting up my wife? I'll stay and see
that this infant doesn't fall asleep.”
But Sylvia shook her head, saying: “Please go, Kemp. I'm a little
tired, that's all. When Grace is ready, I'll leave with her.” And at
her gesture Plank seated himself, while Ferrall, shrugging his square
shoulders, sauntered off in quest of his wife, stopping a moment at
a neighbouring table to speak to Agatha Caithness, who sat there with
Captain Voucher, the gemmed collar on her slender throat a pale blaze of
splendour.
Plank was hungry, and he said so in his direct fashion. Sylvia nodded,
and exchanged a smile with Agatha, who turned at the sound of Plank's
voice. For a while, as he ate and drank largely, she made the effort to
keep up a desultory conversation, particularly when anybody to whom she
owed an explanation hove darkly in sight on the horizon. But Plank's
appetite was in proportion to the generous lines on which nature had
fashioned him, and she paid less and less attention to convention and a
trifle more to the beauty of Agatha's jewels, until the silence at the
small table in the corner remained unbroken except by the faint tinkle
of silver and crystal and the bubbling hiss of a glass refilled.
Major Belwether, his white, fluffy, chop-whiskers brushed rabbit
fashion, peeped in at the door, started to tiptoe out again, caught
sight of them, and came trotting back, beaming rosy effusion. He leaned
roguishly over the table, his moist eyes a-twinkle with suppressed
mirth; then, bestowing a sprightly glance on Plank, which said very
plainly, “I'm up to one of my irrepressible jokes again!” he held up a
smooth, white, and over-manicured forefinger:
“I was in Tiffany's yesterday,” he said, “and I saw a young man in there
who didn't see me, and I peeped over his shoulder, and what do you think
he was doing?”
She lifted her eyes a little wearily:
“I don't know,” she said.
“I do,” he chuckled. “He was choosing a collar of blue diamonds and aqua
marines!--Te-he!--probably to wear himself!--Te-he! Or perhaps he
was going to be married!--He-he-he!--next winter--ahem!--next
November--Ha-ha! I don't know, I'm sure, what he meant to do with that
collar. I only--”
Something in Sylvia's eyes stopped him, and, following their direction,
he turned around to find Quarrier standing at his elbow, icy and
expressionless.
“Oh,” said the aged jester, a little disconcerted, “I'm caught talking
out in church, I see! It was only a harmless little fun, Howard.”
“Do you mean you saw me?” asked Quarrier, pale as a sheet. “You are in
error. I have not been in Tiffany's in months.”
Belwether, crestfallen under the white menace of Quarrier's face,
nodded, and essayed a chuckle without success.
Sylvia, at first listless and uninterested, looked inquiringly from the
major to Quarrier, surprised at the suppressed feeling exhibited over so
trivial a gaucherie. If Quarrier had chosen a collar like Agatha's for
her, what of it? But as he had not, on his own statement, what did
it matter? Why should he look that way at the foolish major, to whose
garrulous gossip he was accustomed, and whose inability to refrain from
prying was notorious enough.
Turning disdainfully, she caught a glimpse of Plank's shocked and
altered face. It relapsed instantly into the usual inert expression; and
a queer, uncomfortable perplexity began to invade her. What had happened
to stir up these three men? Of what importance was an indiscretion of an
old gentleman whose fatuous vanity and consequent blunders everybody
was familiar with? And, after all, Howard had not bought anything at
Tiffany's; he said so himself. … But it was evident that Agatha had
chanced on the collar that Belwether thought he saw somebody else
examining.
She turned, and looked at the dead-white neck of the girl. The collar
was wonderful--a miracle of pale fire. And Sylvia, musing, let her
thoughts run on, dreamy eyes brooding. She was glad that Agatha's means
permitted her now to have such things. It had been understood, for some
years, that the Caithness fortune was in rather an alarming condition.
Howard had been able recently to do a favour or two for old Peter
Caithness. She had heard the major bragging about it. Evidently Mr.
Caithness must have improved the chance, if he was able to present such
gems to his daughter. And now somebody would marry her; perhaps Captain
Voucher; perhaps even Alderdene; perhaps, as rumour had it now and then,
Plank might venture into the arena. … Poor Plank! More of a man than
people understood. She understood. She--
And her thoughts swung back like the returning tide to Siward, and her
heart began heavily again, and the slightly faint sensation returned.
She passed her ungloved, unsteady fingers across her eyelids and
forehead, looking up and around. The major and Howard had disappeared;
Plank, beside her, sat staring stupidly into his empty wine-glass.
“Isn't Mrs. Ferrall coming?” she said wearily.
Plank gathered his cumbersome bulk and stood up, trying to see through
the entrance into the ball-room. After a moment he said: “They're in
there, talking to Marion. It's a good chance to make our adieux.”
As they passed out of the supper-room Sylvia paused behind Agatha's
chair and bent over her. “The collar is beautiful,” she said, “and so
are you, Agatha”; and with a little impulsive caress for the jewels she
passed on, unconscious of the delicate flush that spread from Agatha's
shoulders to her hair. And Agatha, turning, encountered only the stupid
gaze of Plank, moving ponderously past on Sylvia's heels.
“If you'll find Leila, I'm ready at any time,” she said carelessly, and
resumed her tête-à-tête with Voucher, who had plainly been annoyed at
the interruption.
Plank went on, a new trouble dawning on his thickening mental horizon.
He had completely forgotten Leila. Even with all the demands made upon
him; even with all the time he had given to those whose use of him
he understood, how could he have forgotten Leila and the recent scene
between them, and the new attitude and new relations with her that he
must so carefully consider and ponder over before he presented himself
at the house of Mortimer again!
Ferrall and his wife and Sylvia were making their adieux to Marion and
her mother when he came up; and he, too, took that opportunity.
Later, on his quest for Leila, Sylvia, passing through the great hall,
shrouded in silk and ermine, turned to offer him her hand, saying in a
low voice: “I am at home to you; do you understand? Always,” she added
nervously.
He looked after her with an unconscious sigh, unaware that anything
in himself had claimed her respect. And after a moment he swung on his
broad heels to continue his search for Mrs. Mortimer.