the few things a gentleman may offer a girl in my position and she
accept with a clear conscience."
For the first time Crane looked at her with suspicion. Her tone and look
were demure in the extreme. He decided to go on.
"Well, then," he said, "if I were you I would not have a gentleman,
especially such an impulsive one, hanging about, unless you are engaged
to him with the consent of your family."
She raised her chin, without lifting her eyes.
"It's not the consent of our families that's lacking," she remarked.
"Oh, he's asked you to marry him?"
"Almost every day, sir, until to-day."
"And to-day he didn't?"
"To-day he said he wouldn't marry me, if I were the last woman in the
world."
"And what did you think about that?"
"I thought it wasn't true, sir."
Crane laughed aloud at this direct answer.
"And it sounds to me as if you were right, Jane-Ellen," he said. "But,
at the same time, I can't see for the life of me why, if you don't mean
to marry him, you let him kiss you."
"If you please, sir, it's not always possible to prevent. You see I'm
not very large."
Crane looked at her, and had to admit that the feat would be extremely
easy. She hardly came to one's shoulder; almost any man--Hastily putting
aside this train of thought, he said in a more judicial tone:
"You know your own affairs best. Is the young man able to support you?"
"Yes, sir, very comfortably."
"And yet you don't consider marrying him?"
"No, sir. I don't love him."
Matters had suddenly become rather serious.
"You would rather work for your living than marry a man you don't love?"
Crane asked, almost in spite of himself.
For the first time the cook looked up, straight at him, as she answered:
"I think I would rather die, sir."
This time it was Crane's eyes that dropped. Fortunately, he reflected,
she could not have any idea how sharply her remark had touched his own
inner state. How clearly she saw that it was wrong to do just what he
was contemplating doing--to marry for prudence, rather than for love.
He found himself speculating on the genesis of the moral sense, how it
developed in difficulties rather than in ease. That was why he could
learn something on the subject from his cook. Here was a girl working
for her living, working hard and long, for wages which though he had
once, he remembered, told Reed they seemed excessive, now appeared to
him the merest pittance; certainly it seemed as if all the hardships of
such a life would be smoothed away by this suggested marriage, and yet
she could assert clearly that she would rather die than make it; whereas
he, with nothing very much at stake, had actually been contemplating for
several months the making of just such a marriage--He was interrupted by
her respectful tones:
"Will that be all, sir?"
"Yes," he answered in a voice that lacked finality. "I suppose that's
all, except if that fellow comes bothering you any more, let me know,
and I'll tell him what I think of him."
Jane-Ellen lifted the corner of her mouth in a terrible smile.
"Oh," she said, "I don't think he'll come bothering any more."
"You're very optimistic, Jane-Ellen."
"I beg your pardon, sir, those long words--"
"Very hopeful, I meant. He'll be back to-morrow."
"Not after what I said to him."
"Well, Jane-Ellen, if you have really found the potent thing to say
under such circumstances, you're a true benefactor to your sex."
She looked at him with mild confusion.
"I'm afraid I don't rightly understand, sir."
He smiled.
"It was my way of asking you what you had said to him that you imagined
would keep him from coming back."
"I told him I had only pretended to like him, all these years. People,
particularly gentlemen, don't like to think you have to pretend to like
them."
Crane laughed aloud, wondering if the girl had any idea how amusing she
was. In the pause that followed, the sound of a deep masculine voice
could be heard suddenly under their feet. The office was immediately
above the servants' sitting-room, and it was but too evident that a
visitor had just entered.
Crane looked at the cook questioningly, and she had the grace to color.
"Why, did you ever, sir," she said. "There he is, this very moment!"
"Shall I go down and forbid him the house?" asked Burton, and though he
spoke in fun, he would have been delighted to act in earnest.
"Oh, no, sir, thank you," she answered. "I am not going back to the
kitchen."
This reminded her employer of the extreme difficulty he had experienced
in seeing his cook at all.
"Why did you try and get out of seeing me, Jane-Ellen?" he said. "You
knew about what I had to say, I suppose?"
"I had a notion, sir."
"And were you afraid?"
At this question, the cook bent her head until a shadow fell upon it,
but Crane had a clear impression that she was laughing, so clear that he
said:
"And may I ask why it is a comic idea that a servant should be afraid of
her employer?"
The cook now raised a mask-like face and said most respectfully:
"No, sir, I was not exactly afraid," and, having said this, without the
slightest warning she burst into an unmistakable giggle.
Nobody probably enjoys finding that the idea of his inspiring terror is
merely ludicrous. Crane regarded his cook with a sternness that was not
entirely false. She, still struggling to regain complete gravity at the
corners of her mouth, said civilly:
"Oh, I do hope you'll excuse my laughing, sir. The fact is that it was
not I who tried to avoid seeing you. It was Smithfield's idea."
"Smithfield!" cried Crane.
"Yes, sir. He had the notion, I think, that you might be very severe
with me, sir, and Smithfield is peculiar, he has a very sensitive
nature--"
"Well, upon my word," cried Crane, springing to his feet, "that is
exactly what Smithfield says about you. It seems to me I have a damned
queer houseful of servants."
The cook edged to the door.
"Perhaps it seems so, sir," she said. "Will that be all for to-night?"
"Yes. No," he added hastily, "I have one more thing to say to you,
Jane-Ellen, and it's this. Don't make the mistake of fancying that I
have taken this whole incident lightly. I don't. It really must not
happen again. Understand that clearly."
"You mean if that gentleman came back, you would dismiss me, sir?"
"I think I would," he answered.
"Even if it weren't my fault?"
"Was the fault entirely his, Jane-Ellen?"
"Ask him, sir."
"You know much more about it than he does. Was the fault entirely his?"
The cook wriggled her shoulders, crumpled her apron and seemed unwilling
to answer a direct question directly. At last an idea occurred to her.
She looked up brightly.
"It was the ice-cream, sir," she said. "I was trying to teach him how to
freeze ice-cream slowly. It ought to be done like this." And bending
over an imaginary freezer, she imitated with her absurdly small hand the
suave, gentle, rotary motion essential to the great American luxury.
As he stood looking down on her, it seemed to Crane extraordinarily
clear how it had all happened, so clear indeed that for a second it
almost seemed as if he himself were in the place of the culprit whose
conduct he had just been condemning.
He stepped back hastily.
"No, Jane-Ellen," he said, "it was not all his fault. Of that you have
convinced me."
She stretched out her hand to the door.
"Will that be all, sir? The cook, you know, has to get up so very early
in the morning."
He tried to counteract the feeling of pity and shame that swept over him
at the realization that this young and delicate creature had to get up
at dawn to work for him and his guests. The effort made his tone rather
severe as he said:
"Yes, that's all. Goodnight."
"Good night, sir," she answered, with her unruffled sweetness, and was
gone.
He stood still a moment, conscious of an unusual alertness both of mind
and emotion. And that very alertness made him aware that at that moment
there was a man in his kitchen against whom he felt the keenest
personal animosity. Crane would have dearly liked to go down and turn
him out, but he resisted the impulse, which somehow savored of Tucker in
his mind. And what, by the way, had Tucker been doing in the kitchen?
And Smithfield, why had Smithfield tried to interfere with his seeing
the cook? He found plenty of food for reflection.
Among other things he had to consider his return to the drawing-room.
Looking at his watch he observed that a longer time had elapsed since he
left it than he had supposed. There would be comments, there would be
attempted jokes from Tucker. Well, that would be easily met by a
question as to Tucker's own interest in the culinary art. Mrs.
Falkener's methods of attack were not subtle, either. But Cora--he
wished Cora would not just look at him as if he had done something
cruel.
But, as is so often the way when we prepare ourselves for one situation,
quite another one turns up. The three were not sitting, awaiting his
return. The drawing-room was empty except for Mrs. Falkener, who was
reading when he entered, and instead of betraying a conviction that he
had been too long away, she looked up and said chattily:
"Well, did you reduce the young woman to order?"
"That is a good deal to expect from an unaided male, isn't it?" said
Burton, very much relieved.
"Ah, it depends on the male, my dear Burton. You, I imagine, could be
very terrifying if you wished to be. What did the young woman do? Weep,
protest, declare that it had all taken place quite without her consent?"
Burton smiled. He had no intention whatsoever of sharing his recent
experiences with Mrs. Falkener.
"Ah," he said, "I see you know your own sex thoroughly. Where are Tuck
and your daughter?"
"Solon is taking a turn on the piazza; he hopes it will make him sleep
better; and Cora was tired and has gone to bed." Mrs. Falkener sighed.
"Cora doesn't seem very well to me."
"I'm sorry to hear that," returned Crane. "I thought she was looking
very fit this evening." He spoke more lightly than he felt, however, for
something portentous in Mrs. Falkener's tone struck him with alarm.
"Sit down, Burton," said she, sweeping her hand toward a cushioned stool
at her side. "I want to say something to you."
Crane found himself obeying, with his hands between his knees, and his
toes turned in, like a school boy who has forgotten his lesson; then,
becoming aware of this pose, he suddenly changed it--crossed one leg
over the other, as he had done in the office a few minutes before.
In the meantime, Mrs. Falkener was saying:
"The truth is, I'm afraid that we must cut our visit short, delightful
as it promises to be."
"Oh, Mrs. Falkener, we're not making you comfortable. What is it?"
"No, Burton, no." Mrs. Falkener held up her hand. "You are making us
perfectly comfortable--at least, in all essentials. And who minds
roughing it now and then for a week or so? It's good for us," she added
playfully. "The housemaid is not--but no matter."
"What has the housemaid done?" asked Crane with what semblance of
interest he could summon, but as he spoke his heart went out in sympathy
to every hotel and boarding-house keeper in the world. "Good heavens,"
he thought, "suppose my living depended on my pleasing them, what a
state I should be in!" Aloud he said: "What has Lily been doing?"
"Nothing, nothing. Lily means well, I'm sure, in spite of her
lackadaisical ways. It is quite a privilege, I assure you, to be waited
on by such an elegant young lady. She hooked me up wrong twice this
evening, and when I not unnaturally objected, she stuck a pin in me. Oh,
by accident, I'm sure. No, I have no fault to find with Lily,
whatsoever."
"I'm glad to hear that," said Crane, punctuating his sentence to allow
himself to indulge in a half-suppressed yawn. "Who is it, then? Not
Smithfield? Or the boy?"
"Oh, I should never have anything to do with that boy," said Mrs.
Falkener, bridling. "Oh, never in the world. I think he's half-witted. I
saw him stick out his tongue at Solon this evening."
Crane laughed, though he knew he ought not to.
"Did Solon see?"
"No. The boy contrived it so that Solon had just looked away."
"Well, then, perhaps he's not half-witted, after all," said Burton. "It
occurs to me that perhaps that is the only reply to a good deal that
Solon says."
"I'm devoted to Solon," replied Mrs. Falkener, drawing herself up, "and
I must say you ought to--"
"I am, I am," said Crane, hastily, "but I am at the same time able to
understand why Brindlebury possibly isn't. But come, Mrs. Falkener, if
it isn't these servants that are driving you away, what is it?"
"I don't know how to explain it," said Mrs. Falkener. "It's not really
clear to me, myself. I'm sure I don't want to be unkind, or to hurt any
one's feelings, least of all yours, my dear Burt." And she leaned over
and laid her hand on his. Crane gave it a good brisk squeeze and
returned it to her lap as if it were too dear for his possessing; and
she went on: "I own I am anxious about Cora. She is very deep, very
reserved; she tells me nothing, but she is not happy, Burton."
"I'm sorry for that," said Crane, in a very matter-of-fact tone. He got
up and went to a table where the cigarettes were. The profound male
instinct of self-preservation was now thoroughly awake, and he knew
exactly what he was in for. Only, he noted, that if he had had this
interview with Mrs. Falkener before he had seen the cook, he might quite
easily have been persuaded that, in the absence of any more definite
vocation, he had been created to make Cora Falkener's life tolerable to
her. As it was, he saw perfectly that altruism was no sound basis for
matrimony.
"You don't understand what it is to be a mother, Burt."
Crane admitted with a shake of his head that he didn't.
"But I have an instinct that this is not the best place for Cora."
"Well, if you were a man, Mrs. Falkener," said Crane, "I should say that
that instinct was the result of being poorly valeted. It must be a bore
for women to have a wretched maid like Lily. Don't you think that if I
found some one a little more competent that you and Cora would feel you
could put in at least a week or so with us? The hunting is really going
to be good, and Cora does enjoy hunting."
Mrs. Falkener refused to lighten the tone of the conversation. She shook
her head.
"No," she said, "no. I'm afraid even a good maid would not help. In
fact, to speak plainly, my dear Burton--"
But at this moment the door opened and Tucker came in. His hair was
somewhat rumpled by the wind, his hands were still in his pockets as he
had had them during his constitutional on the front porch, and his eyes,
contracted by the sudden light, looked almost white.
"Well," he said, "are you enjoying this musical party downstairs?"
All three listened in silence, and could hear the strains of "Home,
Sweet Home" coming from below.
"They have a phonograph and they are singing in parts," said Tucker, as
if this somehow made it worse.
"If we got Miss Falkener down, we might do something ourselves," said
Crane, but there was nothing frivolous in his manner when he rang and
told Smithfield there was too much noise downstairs.
Smithfield begged pardon and had not a notion it could be heard
upstairs. Crane said the boy's, Brindlebury's, tenor carried some
distance, and, Mrs. Falkener and Tucker having gone, he added that the
house could be shut for the night.
Then he went to the table, and his eye fell again upon the miniature in
the pearl frame. He took it up. There was no doubt about it, there was
an extraordinary likeness to Jane-Ellen. He smiled to himself. How very
charming she would look, he thought, in a mauve ball dress.
Raising his eyes, he found Smithfield looking at him with an expression
he did not thoroughly like.
VI
ON the stroke of seven o'clock the next morning, Burton came downstairs
with that exactness which even the most careless man can display in
regard to his favorite sport. The rigors of the cub-hunting season being
over, the meet did not take place until eight.
Cora was not yet ready for breakfast, and Crane went to fill his
cigarette case before starting.
The drawing-room was still dark and in disorder. Crane lit a match to
find his way to the table where the tobacco was kept. It was the same
table on which had lain the miniature of the lady in the mauve ball
dress; and as he held up his lighted match, his eyes sought once more
that enchanting pearl circle. The flame died down and burned his fingers
before his eyes had encountered what they were looking for. He lit a
second match, and then a candle, before he could assure himself that the
miniature was really gone.
He sprang into the hall and called: "Smithfield!" with a violence that
had little respect for late sleepers.
Smithfield came hurrying out of the dining-room.
"Where's the miniature that used to be on this table?"
"The what is it, sir?"
"The miniature, a picture in a pearl frame."
Smithfield looked thoughtful.
"And what was it a picture of, sir?"
"Of a lady."
"In a black lace cap, and she with white hair, sir?"
"No," said Crane, "she was young and lovely, in a ball dress and a
wreath. You must remember it. It was here yesterday."
Smithfield shook his head blankly.
"No, sir," he said, "I can't rightly say that I remember it, but I'll
inquire for it."
Crane swore with an uncontrollable irritation--irritation at Smithfield
for being so stupid, irritation that he himself had been so careless as
to leave the picture about among a houseful of unknown servants.
He was not distracted even by the sight of Cora coming downstairs,
looking very workmanlike in her habit with her hat well down over her
brows, and her boots, over which Brindlebury had evidently expended
himself, showing off her slender feet.
They breakfasted alone; but Burton's mind ran on the loss of the
miniature, and he did not really recover his temper until he had mounted
Cora, found all the straps of her skirt, adjusted her stirrup, loosened
the curb for her, and finally swung himself up on his own hunter, a big
ugly chestnut.
The meet was near-by and they were going to jog quietly over to it. They
took a short cut across the lawn, and at the sight of the turf, at the
smell of the fresh clear morning, the horses began to dance as
spontaneously as children will at the sound of a street organ. Crane and
Cora glanced at each other and laughed at this exhibition of high
spirits on the part of their darlings.
No horseman is proof against the pleasure of seeing one of his treasured
animals well shown by its rider; and the Irish mare had never looked as
well as she now did under Cora's skilful management. He told her so,
praising her hands, her appearance, her understanding of the horse's
mind; and she, very fittingly, replied with flattery of the mare and of
Crane's own remarkable powers of selection.
They were getting on so well that Burton found himself saying earnestly:
"You really must stay on as long as I do, Cora. Don't let your mother
take you away, as she wants to."
The girl's surprise actually checked the mare in her stride.
"My mother is thinking of going away?" she cried.
Well, of course, he wanted her to stay, wanted her, even, to want to
stay, but somehow he did not want her to be so much terrified at the
thought of departure, did not want her black eyes to open upon him with
such manifest horror at the bare idea of departure.
He suggested sending the horses along a little, and they cantered side
by side on the grass at the roadside. Crane kept casting the glances of
a lover, not at Cora, but at the black mare, as she arched her neck to a
light touch on the curb, so that the sunlight ran in iridescent colors
along her crest.
Presently they saw two horsemen ahead of them, one of them in that
weather-stained pink that, to hunting eyes, makes the most beautiful
piece of color imaginable against the autumn fields.
"That's Eliot, the Master," cried Crane. "The hounds must be just ahead.
He's a nice old fellow; let's join him. I can't make out who the other
one is--no one who was out the last time we hunted."
The canter had given Cora a color. She looked straight before her for a
moment, and then she said:
"I think I recognize that other man."
"Who is it?"
"Some one I should like you to know, Burt. His name is Lefferts."
The lane was now too narrow for four to ride abreast. Crane drew Eliot
to his side. He wanted to ask him about the Crosslett-Billingtons, for
since the disappearance of the miniature, he had made up his mind to
investigate the references of his staff. But strange to say, Eliot had
never heard of the Billingtons, of their collection of tapestry, or
their villa at Capri. He wished to talk of the Revellys.
"A great loss they are to the county, Crane, though, of course, we gain
you. I wonder where they are. Gone North, I heard, though I thought I
saw one of the boys out the morning of the day you came. The Revellys
will hunt anything, from a plow-horse to a thoroughbred. Hard up, you
know. Glad they consented to rent their house. Didn't suppose they ever
would. Too proud, you know. They have things in it of immense value.
Portrait of the grandfather, Marshall Revelly. Second in command to
Stonewall Jackson at one time. I'd like to have you know them. Paul, the
elder brother, is a man of some ability; may make his mark. And the
younger daughter, Miss Claudia Revelly--" Do what he would, Eliot's
voice changed slightly in pronouncing the name. "--Miss Claudia is one
of our great beauties, the recipient of a great deal of attention. Why,
sir, last summer, when Daniel W. Williams, the Governor-elect of this
State, saw Miss Claudia at--"
But the story, in which, to be candid, Crane did not take a great deal
of interest, was interrupted by Cora who pushed her mare forward in
order to attract Crane's attention and to introduce him to her
companion.
The young man was extraordinarily good-looking. His eyes were a strange
greenish-brown color, like the water in the dock of a city ferry; his
skin was ivory in hue and as smooth as a woman's, but his hands and a
certain decisiveness of gesture were virile in the extreme.
"We ought to have a good run," said Crane, in order to say something.
"If any run can be good," answered the young man.
"You don't like hunting?"
"I hate anything to do with horses," answered Lefferts, plaintively.
"You must admit they are particularly unintelligent animals. If they
weren't, of course they wouldn't let us bully them and ride them about,
when they could do anything they wanted with us. No, I only do it
because she," he nodded toward Miss Falkener, "makes me."
Cora, looking very handsome, laughed.
"He's a poet," she said.
"Is that why he has to hunt?" asked Crane, and he wondered if poetry had
anything to do with the excellence of the young man's coat and boots.
"Yes, poets have to be athletic nowadays. It's the fashion, and a very
good one, too."
"There are other forms of athletics I don't hate nearly as much,"
Lefferts went on to Crane, "swimming, for instance, and sailing, and
even walking isn't so bad. It doesn't need so much preparation, and
getting up early in the morning, and all that sort of thing."
"Fortunately, I know what's best for him," said Cora.
"She makes me think she does," said the poet, still plaintively.
Crane wanted to ask Cora where and how she had acquired this rather
agreeable responsibility, but he had no opportunity before they were
off.
He and Cora started together, less, perhaps, from chivalry on Burton's
part than because of his desire to watch the performance of the mare,
but in the course of the run they became separated, and he finally
jogged home alone.
He dismounted in the stable-yard and stood watching one of the grooms
loosening the saddle-girths, while he and the head man discussed the
excellent conduct of his own horses as compared with the really pitiable
showing of other people's, and debated whether the wretched
deterioration in a certain Canadian bay horse ridden that day by the
Master of Hounds was owing to naturally poor conformation on the part of
the horse, or deplorable lack of judgment on the part of the rider.
In the midst of these absorbing topics, Crane suddenly became aware that
Smithfield was waiting for him at the gateway. He stopped short in what
he was saying.
"You wanted to speak to me, Smithfield?"
"When you've finished, sir."
Crane had finished, he said, and turned in the direction of the house
with the butler at his side.
"There's been a terrible disturbance at the house, sir, since you went
out this morning."