Tredennis dined with them the next day, and many days afterward. On
meeting him Richard Amory had taken one of his rather numerous
enthusiastic fancies to him, and in pursuit and indulgence of this fancy
could not see enough of him. These fanciful friendships were the
delights of his life, and he never denied himself one, though
occasionally they wore themselves out in time to give place to others.
Tredennis found him as the professor had described him, "a bright
fellow, and a handsome fellow." He had thought that when he came forward
to introduce himself, as he had done at the Gardners' reception, he had
never seen a brighter or more attractive human being. He had a dark,
delicate, eager face, soft, waving hair, tossed lightly back from a
forehead whose beauty was almost feminine; a slight, lithe figure, and
an air of youth and alertness which would have been attraction enough in
itself. He was interested in everything: each subject touched upon
seeming to awaken him to enthusiasm,--the Indians, the settlers, the
agencies, the fort life,--equally interested in each, and equally ready
to confront, in the most delightfully sanguine mood, the problems each
suggested.
"It is worth a great deal to have an opportunity to judge of these
things from the inside," he said. "There are a thousand questions I want
to ask; but we shall see you often, of course. We must see you often. It
will be the greatest pleasure to us."
His first entrance into their house, the following evening, was
something which always set itself apart in Tredennis' memory.
A gay burst of laughter greeted him as the parlor door was thrown
open,--laughter so gay that the first announcement of his name was
drowned by it, and, as he paused for a moment, he had the opportunity to
take in fully the picture before him. The room was a pretty and
luxurious one, its prettiness and luxury wearing the air of being the
result of natural growth, and suggesting no oppressiveness of
upholstery. Its comforts were evidently the outcome of the fancies and
desires of those who lounged, or read, or talked in it, and its
knick-knacks and follies were all indicative of some charming whim
carried out with a delightful freedom from reason, which was their own
excuse.
In the open fireplace a bright wood-fire burned, and upon the white
wolf-skin before it Richard Amory lay at unconventional full length,
with his hands clasped lightly under his head, evidently enjoying to the
utmost the ease of his position, the glow of the fire, and the jest of
the moment, while near him, in an easy-chair, sat Arbuthnot. Both of
them looked at Bertha, who stood with one hand resting on the low
mantel.
"I have been waiting for a long time," Tredennis heard her say, and
then, as the servant announced his name again, she stopped speaking, and
came forward to meet him, while Richard sprang lightly to his feet.
"I will tell you at the outset," she said, "that it is not one of the
time-honored customs of Washington for people to receive their guests
with this ingenuous and untrammelled freedom, but"--
"But she has been telling us a story," put in Richard, shaking hands
with him; "and she told it so well that we forgot the time. And she must
tell it again."
"It is not worth telling again," she said, as they returned to the fire;
"and, besides, I told it to you in the strictest confidence. And if that
is not reason enough, I don't mind confessing that it is a story which
doesn't exhibit me in an amiable light. It shows a temper and
viciousness that you count among your home comforts, and don't feel it
decent to display for the benefit of any one but your immediate
relatives."
Tredennis looked down at her curiously. His first glance at her had
shown him that to-night she was even farther removed from his past than
she had seemed before. Her rich dress showed flashes of bright color,
her eyes were alight with some touch of excitement, and her little
wrists were covered with pretty barbarities of bangles and charms which
jingled as she moved.
"I should like to hear the story," he said.
"It is a very good story," commented Arbuthnot, laughing; "I think I
would tell it over again."
"Oh, yes," said Richard; "Colonel Tredennis must hear it."
Bertha looked across at Tredennis, and as she did so he saw in her eyes
what he had seen the night before and had not understood, but which
dawned upon him now,--a slight smiling defiance of his thoughts,
whatsoever they might be.
"You won't like it," she said; "but you shall hear it, if you wish. It
is about a great lady"--
"That will add to the interest," said Tredennis. "You have great ladies
in Washington?"
"It is infinitely to our credit that they are only occasional
incidents," she answered, "and that they don't often last long. When one
considers the number of quiet, domesticated women who find themselves
launched suddenly, by some wave of chance, into the whirl of public
life, one naturally wonders that we are not afflicted with some very
great ladies indeed; but it must be confessed we have far less to
complain of in that respect than might be expected."
"But this particular great lady?" said Tredennis.
"Is one of the occasional incidents. Some one said that our society was
led by bewildered Europeans and astonished Americans,--Americans
astonished to find themselves suddenly bearing the responsibility of the
highest positions, and Europeans bewildered by being called upon to
adjust themselves to startling novelties in manners and customs. This
great lady is one of the astonished Americans, and, privately, she is
very much astonished, indeed."
Arbuthnot laughed.
"You will observe," he commented, "that Mrs. Amory's remarks are
entirely unbiassed by any feminine prejudices."
"You will observe," said Bertha, "that Mr. Arbuthnot's remarks are
entirely unbiassed by any prejudice in favor of my reliability of
statement. But," she added, with a delusive air of amiable candor, "I am
sure you cannot deny that I was very civil to her."
"I have not a doubt of it," responded Arbuthnot. "And I don't mind
adding that I should like to have been there to see."
"Colonel Tredennis shall judge," she said, "whether it would have been
really worth while. I will make the story brief. Last season the great
lady gave me cause to remember her. We had not met, and, to please a
friend, I called upon her. We found her in her drawing-room, engaged in
entertaining two new newly arrived _attachés_. They seemed to interest
her. I regret to say that we did not. She did not hear our names when
the servant announced them, and the insignificance of our general
bearing was against us. I think it must have been that, for we were
comparatively well dressed--at least, Miss Jessup's description of our
costumes in the 'Wabash Times' gave that impression the following week.
Perhaps we looked timid and unaccustomed to 'the luxurious trophies from
many climes' (Miss Jessup again) surrounding us. The ingenuous modesty
of extreme youth which you may have observed"--
"Repeatedly," replied Arbuthnot.
"Thank you. But I suppose it told against me on this occasion. Our
respectable attire and air of general worthiness availed nothing. The
great lady rose, stared at us, gave us her finger-ends, called us by
names which did not belong to us, and sat down again, turning her back
upon us with much frankness, and resuming her conversation with the
_attachés_, not interrupting it to address six words to us during the
three minutes we remained. That is the first half of the story."
"It promises well for the second half," said Tredennis.
"The second is _my_ half," said Bertha. "Later, she discovered our real
names, and the fact that--shall I say that Miss Jessup knew them, and
thought them worthy of mention in the 'Wabash Times'? That would,
perhaps, be a good way of putting it. Then she called, but did not see
me, as I was out. We did not meet again until this afternoon. I was
making the Cabinet calls, and had the pleasure of encountering her at
the house of the Secretary of War. Perhaps Miss Jessup had sent her a
copy of the 'Wabash Times' yesterday, with the society column marked--I
don't know. But she was pleased to approach me. I received her advances
with the mild consideration of one who sees a mistake made, but is
prevented by an amiable delicacy from correcting it, and observing this,
she was led into the indiscretion of saying, with graceful leniency,
that she feared I did not know her. I think it is really there that my
half begins. I smiled with flattering incredulity, and said, 'That would
be very strange in a Washingtonian.'
"'When you called'--she began.
"I looked at her with a blush, as of slight embarrassment, which seemed
to disturb her.
"'You have not forgotten that you called?' she remarked, chillingly.
"'It would have been impossible for me to forget anything so agreeable,'
I said, as though in delicately eager apology. 'I am most unlucky. It
was some more fortunate person.'
"'But,' she said, 'I returned the visit.'
"'I received your card,' I replied, smiling ingenuously into her eyes,
'and it reminded me of my delinquency. Of course I knew it was a
mistake.'
"And after I had smiled into her eyes for a second or so longer, she
began to understand, and I think by this time it is quite clear to her."
"There must be a moral to that," commented Tredennis.
"There is," she responded, with serene readiness. "A useful one. It is
this: It is always safe--in Washington--to be civil to the respectably
clad. If the exigencies of public position demand that you receive, not
the people you wish to see, or the people who wish to see you, but the
respectably clad, it is well to deal in glittering generalities of good
manners, and even--if you choose to go so far--good feeling. There are
numbers of socially besieged women in Washington who actually put the
good feeling first; but the Government cannot insist on that, you know,
so it remains a matter of taste."
"If you could draw the line"--began Richard.
"There is no line," said Bertha, "so you can't draw it. And it was not
myself I avenged this afternoon, but--the respectably clad."
"And before she became an astonished American," put in Arbuthnot, "this
mistaken person was possibly"--
Bertha interposed, with a pretty gesture which set all the bangles
jingling.
"Ah," she said, "but we have so little to do with that, that I have not
even the pleasure of using it in my arguments against her. The only
thing to be reasonably required of her now is that she should be
sufficiently well-mannered during her career. She might assume her
deportment with her position, and dispose of it at a sacrifice
afterward. Imagine what a field in the way of advertisement, for
instance: 'For sale. A neatly fitting suit of good manners. Used through
one Administration. Somewhat worn through active service, but still
equal to much wear and tear.'"
That which struck Tredennis more forcibly than all else was her habit
of treating everything lightly, and he observed that it was a habit
Arbuthnot shared with her. The intimacy existing between the two seemed
an unusual one, and appeared to have established itself through slow and
gradual growth. It had no ephemeral air, and bore somehow the impress of
their having shared their experiences in common for some time. Beneath
the very derision which marked their treatment of each other was a
suggestion of unmistakable good fellowship and quick appreciation of
each other's moods. When Bertha made a fanciful speech, Arbuthnot's
laugh rang out even before Richard's, which certainly was ready enough
in response; and when Arbuthnot vouchsafed a semi-serious remark, Bertha
gave him an undivided attention which expressed her belief that what he
said would be worth listening to. Amory's province it seemed to be to
delight in both of them,--to admire their readiness, to applaud their
jests, and to encourage them to display their powers. That he admired
Arbuthnot immensely was no less evident than that no gift or grace of
Bertha's was lost upon him.
His light-hearted, inconsequent enjoyment of the pleasure of the moment
impressed Tredennis singularly. He was so ready to be moved by any
passing zephyr of sentiment or emotion, and so entirely and
sweet-temperedly free from any fatiguing effect when the breeze had once
swept over him.
"All that I have to complain of in you two people," he said, gayly, in
the course of the evening, "is that you have no sentiment--none
whatever."
"We are full of it," said Arbuthnot, "both of us,--but we conceal it,
and we feel that it makes us interesting. Nothing is more interesting
than repressed emotion. The appearance of sardonic coldness and stoicism
which has deceived you is but a hollow mockery; beneath it I secrete a
maelstrom of impassioned feeling and a mausoleum of blighted hopes."
"There is a fashion in emotions as in everything else," said Bertha.
"And sentiment is 'out.' So is stateliness. Who would submit to
stateliness in these days? It was the highest aim of our
great-grandmothers to be stately; but stateliness went out with ruffles
and the minuet, and a certain kind of Roman nose you find in all
portraits taken in the reigns of the Georges. Now we are sprightly. It
is imperative that we should be sprightly. I hope you are prepared to be
sprightly, Colonel Tredennis."
He was very conscious of not looking so. In fact, the idea was growing
upon him that upon the whole his grave face and large figure were rather
out of place among all this airy _badinage_. His predominant feeling was
that his unfortunate tendency to seriousness and silence was not a
Washingtonian quality, and augured poorly for his future. Here were
people who could treat lightly, not only their subjects, but themselves
and each other. The fire-lit room, with its trifles and knick-knacks and
oddities; the graceful, easy figure of Richard Amory lounging idly in
his chair; Bertha, with her bright dress and fantastic little ornaments
flashing and jingling; Arbuthnot smiling faintly, and touching his
mustache with a long, fair hand,--each and all suggested to him in some
whimsical, vague fashion that he was too large and not pliable enough
for his surroundings, and that if he moved he might upset something, or
tread upon some sparkling, not too substantial theory.
"I am afraid I am not as well prepared as I might be," he answered. "Do
you always find it easy?"
"I!" she returned. "Oh, perfectly! it is only Mr. Arbuthnot who finds it
difficult--being a prey to his feelings. In his moments of deep mental
anguish the sprightliness which society demands of him is a thing from
which his soul recoils."
Shortly after dinner Arbuthnot went away. He had a final call to make
upon some friends who were going away, after having taken an active
part in the inaugural ceremonies and ball. It appeared that they had
come from the West, with the laudable intention of making the most of
these festivities, and that he had felt it his duty to do his utmost for
their entertainment.
"I hope they enjoyed themselves," said Bertha, as he stood making his
adieus.
"Well," was his reply, "it strikes me they did. I took them to the
Treasury, and the Patent Office, and the Army and Navy Department, and
up into the dome of the Capitol, and into the Senate and the House, and
they heard the inaugural address, and danced at the ball, and saw the
ex-President and bought photographs of the new one, and tired themselves
out, and are going home a party of total wrecks, but without a thing on
their consciences; so I think they must have enjoyed themselves. I hope
so. I didn't. I don't grudge them anything; but it is the ninetieth time
I have been through the Treasury, and the twentieth time I have climbed
to the dome, and the exercise has lost its freshness."
After he had left the room he returned, drawing from the pocket of his
rather dandyfied light overcoat three small packages, which he laid on a
side-table.
"This is for Janey, and this for Jack, and this for Marjorie," he said.
"I told them they would find them there in the morning."
"Thank you," answered Bertha, as if the proceeding was one to which she
was well accustomed.
When he was fairly gone Richard Amory broke into a half laugh.
"What a queer fellow he is!" he said.
Bertha returned to her place by the fire, taking from the mantel a
little screen of peacock feathers and shading her face with it.
"Do you know," she said, "that he rarely leaves the house without one of
us making that remark, and yet it always has an illusive air of being
entirely new."
"Well," remarked Richard, "he is a queer fellow, and there's no denying
it. Imagine a fellow like that coolly rambling about with neat packages
of bonbons in his fastidious overcoat pocket, to be bestowed on children
without any particular claim on him. Why does he do it?"
"It doesn't exactly arise from enthusiasm awakened by their infant
charms," said Bertha, "and he never professed that it did."
"But he must care for them a little," returned Richard.
"The fact is that you don't know what he cares for," said Bertha, "and
it is rather one of his fascinations. I suppose that is really what we
mean by saying he is a queer fellow."
"At all events," said Richard, amiably, "he is a nice fellow, and one
can manage to subsist on that. All I complain of is that he hasn't any
object. A man ought to have an object--two or three, if he likes."
"He doesn't like," said Bertha, "for he certainly hasn't an
object--though, after all, that belongs to his mode of life."
"I should like," said Tredennis, "to know something of the mode of life
of a man who hasn't an object."
"You will gain a good deal of information on the subject if you remain
long in Washington," answered Bertha. "We generally have either too many
objects or none at all. If it is not your object to get into the White
House, or the Cabinet, or somewhere else, it is probably your fate to be
installed in a 'department;' and, as you cannot hope to retain your
position through any particular circumspectness or fitness for it, you
have not any object left you."
"The fact is," said Richard, "it would have been a great deal better for
Larry if he had stayed where he was and fought it out."
"The fact is," said Bertha, "it would be a great deal better for nine
out of ten of the rest if they stayed where they were. And when Larry
came he did not come under specially exhilarating circumstances, and
just then I suppose it seemed to him that the rest of his life was not
worth much to him."
"It has struck me," said Richard, reflectively, "that he had a blow of
some sort about that time,--something apart from the loss of his
fortune. I am not sure but that I once heard some wandering rumor of
there being a young woman somewhere"--
"Oh!" said Bertha, in a low, rather hurried voice, "he had a blow. There
is no mistake about that,--he had a blow, and there was a good deal in
him that did not survive it."
"And yet he doesn't strike you as being that sort of fellow," said
Richard, still in reflection. "You wouldn't think of him as being a
fellow with a grief."
Bertha broke into delighted laughter.
"A grief!" she exclaimed. "That is very good. I wish he had heard it. A
grief! I wonder what he would do with it in his moments of
recreation,--at receptions, for instance, and _musicales_, and germans.
He might conceal it in his opera hat, but I am afraid it would be in the
way. Poor Larry! Griefs are as much out of fashion as stateliness, and
he not only couldn't indulge in one if he would, but he wouldn't if he
could."
"Well, how would you put it," said Richard, "if you did not call it a
grief?"
Bertha laughed again.
"If I put it at all," she answered, "I would say that he had once been
very uncomfortable, but had discreetly devoted himself to getting over
it, and had succeeded decently well; and last, but not least, I would
add that it would be decidedly difficult to make him uncomfortable
again."
Tredennis found it impossible to avoid watching her with grave interest
each time she spoke or moved. He was watching her now with a sort of
aside sensibility to her bright drapery, her flashing, tinkling wrists,
and her screen of peacock feathers.
"She is very light," he was saying inwardly.
She turned to him with a smile.
"Would he strike _you_ as 'a fellow with a grief'?" she inquired.
"No," he answered; "I cannot say he would."
"No," she said, "that is certain enough. If you went away and never saw
him again, you would remember just this of him--if you remembered him at
all: that his clothes fitted him well, that he had an agreeable laugh,
that he had a civil air of giving you his attention when you spoke,
and--nothing else."
"And that is not all there is of him?" Tredennis asked.
She looked down at her feather screen, still smiling slightly.
"No," she answered, rather slowly, "not quite all; but even I don't
quite know how much more there is, and Richard, who has known him at
intervals all his life, lapses into speaking of him as 'a fellow with a
grief.'"
Richard rose from his chair.
"Oh," he said, with much cheerfulness, "there is no denying that you two
are the outgrowth of an effete civilization. You are always arriving at
logical deductions concerning each other, and you have a tendency to the
derision of all the softer emotions. You are a couple of world-worn
creatures, and it is left to me to represent the youth and ardor of the
family."
"That is true," said Bertha, in her soft, mocking voice. "We are
battered and worldly wise--and we have no object."
"But I have," said Richard, "and if Colonel Tredennis will come upstairs
with me, I will show him what a few of them are, if he takes an interest
in such things."
"What," said Bertha,--"the laboratory, or the library, or"--
"All of them," he answered, "including the new collection." And he
turned upon Tredennis the brightest imaginable smile.
Tredennis left his chair in response to it.
"I am interested in all collections, more or less," he said.
"So am I," said Bertha--"more or less." And they went out of the room
with this little gibe in their ears.
Before the conclusion of his visit to the domains upstairs Tredennis had
learned a great deal of Richard Amory. He had found that he had a taste
for mechanics, a taste for science, a taste for literature. He had a
geological cabinet, an entomological collection, a collection of coins,
of old books, of old engravings, all in different stages of
incompleteness. He had, even, in his small workroom, the unfinished
models of an invention or two, each of which he was ready to explain
with an enthusiasm which flamed up as the demands of the moment
required, in the most delightful and inspiring manner.
"I shall finish them all, one of these days," he said, blithely. "I am
always interested in one or the other, and they give me an object. And,
as I said downstairs, what a man wants is an object. That is what Larry
stands in need of. Give him an object, and he would not indulge in that
cold-blooded introspection and retrospection. Bertha has told him so
herself."
"They are very good friends," said Tredennis.
"Oh, yes! They are fond of each other, in their way. It is their way to
jeer a good deal, but they would stand by each other, I fancy, if the
time came when it was needful."
He referred, in the course of the conversation, to his profession, and
his reference to it caused Tredennis to class it in his mind, in some
way or other, with the unfinished models and incomplete collections.
"I can't say I like the law," he said, "but it was a sort of final
resource. I tried medicine for a while,--took a course of lectures; but
it didn't suit me. And then two or three other things turned up, but I
didn't seem to suit them. And so it ended in my choosing law, or letting
it choose me. I don't know that I am exactly a success at it. It's well
we don't depend on it. Bertha"--He broke off rather suddenly, and began
again at once. "I have plans which, if they are as successful as they
promise to be, will change the aspect of affairs." And he laughed
exultantly.
On their way downstairs they came upon an open door, which had been
closed as they went up. It opened into a large, cheerful room, with gay
pictures on the walls, and a high brass fender guarding the glowing
fire, before which a figure sat in a low rocking-chair, holding a child
in its arms.
"That is the nursery," said Richard. "Bertha, what is the matter with
Janey?"
It was Bertha who sat in the rocking-chair, and as she turned her face
quietly toward them Tredennis felt himself betrayed into a slight start.
Neither her eyes nor her color were as bright as they had been
downstairs. She had taken off her ornaments, and they lay in a small
glittering heap upon the stand at her side. The child's head rested upon
her breast, and her bare arm and hand held its body in an easy position
with a light, close, accustomed touch. She spoke in a soft, lowered
voice.
"Janey is nervous to-night," she answered. "She cannot go to sleep, and
I am trying to quiet her. Will you excuse me if I do not come down? She
really needs me."