They were not unpardonably late, yet were tardy enough to render their
coming conspicuous to what seemed to Jean an ultramodish company which
peopled not only Mrs. Van Ostade's drawing-room, but the connecting
music-room and library as well.
Julie, her dark good looks set off by yellow, met them with observant
eyes, nodded "Yes, Craig; I know" to Atwood's great news, murmured a
conventional word of regret to Jean that both their calls should have
been fruitless, made two or three introductions to those who chanced
nearest, and with the lift of an eyelid set in motion the mechanism of
a statuesque butler; whereupon Jean found herself hazily translated
to her place at table between a blond giant, who took her in, and
a shadowy-eyed person with a pointed beard, who languidly quoted
something resembling poetry about what he called the tinted symphony of
Mrs. Van Ostade's candle-light.
"How clever!" said Jean, at a venture, and welcomed the voice of her
less ethereal neighbor.
"Corking race," remarked the giant, beaming at her over the rim of his
cocktail.
This was concrete, if indefinite.
"You mean--"
"Yesterday--France. Wonderful! Gummiest kind of course--two days' hard
rainfall, you know. I've been saying 'I told you so' all day. Didn't
surprise me in the least. I knew her, d'ye see, I knew her."
Jean looked as intelligent as she could, and hoped for a clew. The big
man checked his elliptical remarks altogether, however, and, still
beaming, awaited her profound response.
"Is she French?" she hazarded, jumping at an inference.
"But it was a man won. The sporting duchess, you mean, drew out."
"I'm speaking of the horse," Jean struggled.
"Horse! What horse?" ejaculated the giant. "I'm talking automobiles."
She judged frankness best.
"There is nothing for it but to confess," she said. "I know nothing
about automobiles. I never set foot in one in my life."
Her companion wagged a large reproachful finger.
"Don't string me," he begged. "Didn't Julie Van Ostade put you up to
this? I know I'm auto-mad and an easy mark, but--Jove! I believe you're
serious. Why, it's--it's incredible! Just think a bit. You must have
been in one of those piffling little runabouts?"
"Never."
"Well, then, a cab--an electric cab?"
"Not even a 'bus."
He shook his head solemnly and besought the attention of the petite
guest in mauve on his left.
"What do you think?" Jean heard him begin. "Miss Fanshaw here--"
Then the shadowy-eyed seized his chance.
"I hail a kindred spirit," he confided softly. "To me the automobile
is the most hideous, blatant fact of a prosaic age. Its coarsening
pleasures are for the few; its brutal sins against life's meager poetry
touch the unprivileged millions."
"Rot!" cut in the giant, whose hearing was excellent. "The motor
is everybody's servant. As for poetry, man alive! you would never
talk such drool again if you could see a road-race as the man in
the car sees it. Poetry! It's an epic!" Wherewith he launched into
terse description, jerky like the voice of his machine and bestrewn
with weird technicalities, but stirring and roughly eloquent of a
full-blooded joy in life.
While the battle raged over her--for the man with the pointed beard
showed unexpected mettle--Jean evolved a working theory as to the
uses of unfamiliar forks and crystal, and took stock of her other
fellow-guests. It was now, with a start of pleasure, that she first
met the eye of MacGregor, whom she had overlooked in the hurry of
their late arrival. His smile was encouraging, as if he divined her
difficulties, and she took a comfort in his presence, which Atwood's,
for once, failed to inspire.
Craig seemed vastly remote. He was in high spirits and talking eagerly
to an odd-looking girl with a remarkable pallor that brought out the
vivid scarlet of her little mouth and the no less striking luster of
her raven hair, which she wore low over the ears after a fashion Jean
associated with something literary or theatrical. She caught a word or
two of their conversation, and it overshot her head, though the talk at
MacGregor's Oasis had acquainted her with certain labels for uncertain
quantities known as Nietzsche and George Bernard Shaw. She perceived
a sophisticated corner of Atwood's mind, hitherto unsuspected, so
deceptive was his boyish manner; and the anæmic girl, juggling the
Superman with offhand ease, became clothed with piquant interest. She
wondered who she was, what Atwood saw in her, and whether they knew
each other well.
Of his own accord her neighbor with the beard enlightened her.
"Pictorial, isn't she?" he said. "Pre-Raphaelite, almost, as to
features; hair Cleo de Merode. I hope Mrs. Van Ostade pulls the match
off. They're so well suited; clever, both of them, and in different
ways. Then, her money. That is a consideration."
"Is it?" groped Jean.
"Rather! Wealthy in her own name, you know, and virtually sure of
her uncle's fortune. They're very soundly invested, the Hepworth
millions. But it's the psychological phase of it that interests me. I'm
curious to see what effect she'll have upon his work. For the artistic
temperament marriage is twice a lottery. I've never dared risk it
myself."
His tone offered confidences, but Jean found his celibacy of slight
interest beside Miss Hepworth's. She was conscious that he was
permitting her glimpses into the lone sanctities of what he termed
his priesthood, as she was aware of a whir and rush of motor-maniacal
anecdote on her other side, and of a ceaseless coming and going of
courses amidst the generally pervasive fog of conversation. She made
the automatic responses which seemed all her immediate fellow-guests
required of her, and masked her face with a smile, into which she threw
more spontaneity after the bearded one said it suggested Mona Lisa's
and belied her glorious youth.
"For she is 'older than the rocks among which she sits,'" he quoted.
"You remember Pater's famous interpretation?"
Jean knew neither quotation nor writer, but she was familiar with
Leonardo's picture and turned the personality with a neutral question,
which served the man as a spring-board for fresh verbal acrobatics,
amusing to him and restful for her. He was shrewder than she had
thought. In truth, she felt both young and old; young, if this dismal
futility could be the flower of much living; old, if by chance it
should be, as she questioned, merely puerile.
She sighed for the dinner's end, but when it came and the women,
following a custom she had read about without dreaming she should yet
encounter it, left the men behind, she sighed to be back with her
loquacious seat-mates, talk what jargon they would. Her sex imposed no
conversational burden upon any one here. She fitted naturally into none
of the little clusters into which the rustling file dissolved; and,
after some aimless coasting among these groups where women to whom she
had been presented smiled upon her vaguely and chattered of intimacies
and happenings peculiarly their own, she cut adrift altogether and
grounded with feigned absorption by a cabinet of Chinese lacquer. If
Julie meant her kindness, she told a remarkable golden dragon, this
was the time to show it, but her hostess remained invisible, and the
dragon's gaze, though sympathetic, seemed presently to suggest that the
social possibilities of lacquer had their limits. In this crisis, she
made a lucky find of a portfolio of Craig's sketches, none of which she
had ever seen.
While turning these drawings, she was approached by some one, and,
looking up with the expectation of seeing Mrs. Van Ostade, met instead
the gaze of a very old and excessively wrinkled lady, who, without
tedious formalities, calmly possessed herself of the sketch Jean had in
hand.
"They're amazingly deft," she said, after a moment. "Even the academic
things have their charm. Take this charcoal, for instance," she went
on, selecting another drawing. "It's not the stereotyped Julien study
in the least. They couldn't extinguish the boy's individuality.
Somewhere here there is another still better."
"You mean this, don't you?" Jean asked, delving into the portfolio for
a bold rendering of a human back.
"Ha!" said the old lady, staring. "Of course I do. But what made you
think so?"
"It was the only one of the Julien studies you could mean," returned
Jean, promptly. "He did not draw like this till the year he exhibited."
The explosive "Ha!" was repeated, and the girl felt herself thoroughly
assayed by the shrewd old eyes.
"You are a close student of Mr. Atwood, my dear," came dryly. "Perhaps
you are a critic of contemporary art?"
Jean reddened, but, surprising the twinkle behind the sarcasm, laughed.
"Is it probable?" she asked.
"It's possible. Half the celebrities I meet seem young enough to be my
grandchildren. But you are telling me nothing. Are you one of Julie Van
Ostade's discoveries? She collects geniuses, you know. What is your
name?"
Jean told her.
"It means nothing, you see," she smiled. "I am only a student."
"Of painting?"
"No; sculpture."
"Are you! But you look original. Where are you at work? I hope you
don't mind my questions? I'm an inquisitive old person."
Jean named her school and mentioned Richter.
"But I have accomplished nothing yet," she added.
"Ha!" said the old lady. "Then it's time you did. I shall ask Richter
about it. If I forget your name, I'll describe your eyes. There is
something singularly familiar about your eyes."
The men and Mrs. Van Ostade made a simultaneous entrance, and the
latter at once bore down on Jean's catechist.
"Peroni will sing," she announced with a note of triumph. "He
volunteered as a mark of respect to you."
"Really!" The octogenarian's smile was extraordinarily expressive. "Yet
they call him mercenary."
The opening bar of an accompaniment issued from the music-room, and
Jean joined the drift toward the piano. She wondered who this sprightly
personage might be for whom the spoiled tenor volunteered, and then, in
the magic of his voice, forgot to wonder.
In the babel following the hush, MacGregor leaned over her chair.
"So the irrepressible conflict is on?" he greeted her.
Jean's welcome was whole-hearted.
"Craig has told you?" she said softly.
"Yesterday. I wish you both all the usual things. I ought to have
seen it from the first, I suppose, but as a matter of fact I did not.
Certainly I never figured you in the lists when I spoke of the battle
royal. Any war news?"
"We have exchanged calls without meeting."
"Preliminary skirmishes."
"Next came the dinner-invitation. Not exactly a war measure, should you
say?"
"Knowing Julie, yes. I should call it the first engagement."
Jean perceived his military metaphor was but a thin disguise for a
serious opinion.
"And the victor?" she said.
"Apparently yourself."
"I don't feel especially victorious," she said, a little wistfully.
"What makes you think the battle is on? Oh, but we must not talk this
way here," she immediately added. "We've eaten her salt."
"What if the salt is an ambush?" queried MacGregor. "Besides, I never
pretended to be a gentleman. Look over this menagerie carefully,
guileless child! Do you suppose Julie usually selects her dinner-guests
after this grab-bag fashion? Not to my knowledge. She loathes big
dinners, so she has told me. It's her study and pride to bring together
people of like tastes. The seating of a dinner-party is to her like
a nice problem at chess. Do you think it a mere chance shuffle that
settled your destiny at table? Do you know one automobile from another?"
"No."
"Of course not. And half the time you hadn't a glimmer of a notion what
the decadent poet with the Vandyck beard was driving at?"
"More than half."
"Neither should I. A steady diet of the hash he serves up to women's
clubs would land me in a padded cell. But perhaps the general talk
amused you?"
"I could not make much of it," she admitted.
"Sensible girl! Neither could most of the talkers. But--here was where
you scored a point--you looked as if you did. The minor poet and the
motor-maniac couldn't wait their turns to bore you. Then, point number
two, your gown. Logically, it's point number one, and a big point, too.
I happened to be watching Julie when you arrived. Yes; you scored."
Jean caught gratefully at the tribute. She remembered that Craig had
been too preoccupied with the Joyce-Reeves commission to notice her
dress, and wondered whether the pictorial girl's æsthetic draperies had
drawn his praise. She was shy of mentioning Miss Hepworth to MacGregor;
he might think her jealous. Nor did he speak her name, though Craig
and his dinner-partner, again in animated converse, were in plain view
from their own station. Jean guessed that he trusted her instinct to
light readily on the significance of this factor in Mrs. Van Ostade's
strategy.
"Lastly," he enumerated, "you bagged Mrs. Joyce-Reeves."
"What! The woman who talked to me about Craig?"
"You're surprised to find her here? So was Julie. She invited herself.
Julie met her somewhere this afternoon and mentioned that she was
giving a dinner. Mrs. Joyce-Reeves asked questions--you discovered
that trait of hers, probably--and said she'd be punctual. Quite royal,
isn't she? She is strong enough to be as eccentric as she pleases. So
Craig was your topic? Then she had your secret out of you, mark my
word. How did you fall in with her?"
"She came to me while I was turning over some of Craig's sketches."
"Pretending to enjoy yourself, but really feeling as lonesome as
Robinson Crusoe?"
"Almost."
"That is very likely why she spoke to you. She does that sort of
thing, they say. It's one of her curious eccentricities. I think your
motor-maniac is edging this way," he added. "Yes, and your poet, too.
Can it be that you are going to score again!"
With the three men grouped about her chair, Jean had an intoxicating
suspicion that she was scoring, provided MacGregor's embattled theory
held; and when Mrs. Van Ostade herself entered the scene just as the
blond giant, under fire from the Vandyck beard, was begging her to
set a day for her initiation into the joys of motoring, a certain
rigidity in Julie's smile convinced her that MacGregor was right.
Atwood's opportune arrival in his sister's wake charged the situation,
she felt, with the last requisite of drama. But Mrs. Van Ostade's
eye was restless, however staccato her smile, and Jean, conscious,
though no longer unhappy under its regard, reflected that even without
its terrible lorgnon it had its power. Then, even as she framed the
thought, she beheld its sudden concentration, tracked its cause,
and caught its glittering rebound from the nether edge of her too
tempestuous petticoat. For an instant the brown eyes braved the black,
then struck their colors, conquered.
[Illustration: She was scoring.]
Without a word Julie Van Ostade had shouted, "Cast-off clothes!" louder
than the raucous dealers of the curb.
Luckily, the ghastly business was not prolonged. The leave-takings
began at once, and Jean passed out among the first. Some hitch in the
carriage arrangements delayed her a moment in the vestibule, however,
and MacGregor came by.
"Did something happen back there?" he asked bluntly. "I don't think the
others noticed anything; I didn't grasp anything tangible myself; but
still--are the honors doubtful, after all?"
Jean shook her head.
"No," she answered grimly; "not doubtful in the least. She won."
Then Craig put her in the coupé, and asked if it had not been a jolly
evening.
"It was a mixed crowd for Julie," he said, "but it seems she wanted to
show you all sorts. You see how absurd it was to dread coming. Every
time I laid eyes on you, you were holding your own. Virginia Hepworth
asked who you were. Did you notice her? I want you to know her. You
mightn't think it at first blush, but she's very stimulating; at least
I always find her so. We had a famous powwow. I should like to paint
her sometime against a sumptuous background. What did you think of her
hair?"
Jean's response was incoherent. Then an illuminated turning brought her
face sharply from the shadows.
"Jean!" he cried. "What is it? What's wrong?"
"Myself. We had best face it--face it now; better now than later. I
am only a drag upon you, a handicap--not the kind of woman you should
marry. You must marry a stim--stim--stimulus."
Atwood drew her into his arms.
"And so I shall," he answered, "so I shall the first minute she'll let
me. To-night even! Do you understand me, Jean? Why shouldn't it be
to-night? What do you say?"
Jean said nothing. What folly she had uttered! Give him up! His mere
touch exorcised that madness. All the primitive woman in her revolted
from the sacrifice. He was hers--_hers_! Could that pale creature love
him as she loved him? Could Julie love him as she loved him? Julie! A
gust of passion shook her; part anger with herself for the weakness to
which she had stooped, part hot resentment against this superior being
who set traps for her inexperience. For it was a trap, that dinner!
MacGregor was wholly right. There was war between them; the night had
witnessed a battle. What was it all but a manœuvre to humble her before
her lover, prove her unfitness, alienate his love?
Then Craig's words took on a meaning.
"I'm in earnest," he was saying. "It isn't a spur-of-the-moment idea.
These three days I've had it in mind to ask you to slip off with me
quietly and without fuss. We've never been conventional, you and I. Why
should we begin now? Nothing could be simpler. It is early yet--little
more than ten o'clock. I'll drop you in Irving Place long enough for
you to change your dress and pack a bag. Meanwhile I can pick up my
own and make sure of the clergyman. That part is easy, too. I'll ask a
friend of mine who lives not five blocks off. His wife and sister will
be our witnesses. Then the midnight train for Boston and a honeymoon in
some coast village."
"But the portrait?" she wavered.
"The best of reasons. The sensible thing is to marry before I begin
work. Don't hunt for reasons against it, dear. None of them count.
It's our wedding, not Mrs. Grundy's. We'll let her know by one of the
morning papers, if there's time to give notice on our way to the train.
Julie I'll wire."
A blithe vision of Julie digesting her telegram flitted across Jean's
imagination with an irresistible appeal.
"I'll need half an hour, Craig," she said, as the carriage halted.