you suppose that I would ever let Cora put it on her head again, after
that woman has worn it? She may as well keep it now."
"I shall," answered Lily. "It's mine."
The girl's determination impressed Crane more than it did the others,
though even he could not see any loop-hole of escape for her. He rang
the bell, and when Smithfield appeared, he said:
"Smithfield, I have dismissed Lily. We found her leaving the house in
one of Miss Falkener's hats."
"Oh, begging your pardon, no, sir," said Smithfield. "It is really not
Miss Falkener's hat. Surely, Lily, you explained it?"
"I don't care to speak to them at all," answered Lily.
"Oh, that's no way to speak to your employers, my girl," said
Smithfield. "The explanation is this, sir: I understand those great
French houses send out many hats alike, sir, and this one was given to
Lily by a friend, by Mrs. Crosslett-Billington, to be exact, sir, she
thinking it a trifle youthful for herself after she had bought it, and I
can't but say she was right, sir, she being a lady now nearing sixty,
though hardly looking forty-five. The first evening the ladies came,
sir, when Lily had done unpacking their things, she mentioned in the
kitchen that Miss Falkener had a hat similar to her own, and we all
advised her, sir, under the circumstances, not to wear it during the
ladies' stay, as being more suitable and respectful; and she agreed not
to, but young women when they have pretty things, dear me, sir, they do
like to wear them, and that I presume is why she put on the hat, in
spite of our warnings, and I'm sure she regrets it heartily, sir."
"I don't," said Lily. "I'm right glad I did."
"Tut, tut," said Smithfield, "no way to answer, no way to answer."
"Cora," Crane said, "would you go up and see if your hat is in your
room?" Cora agreed and left the room at once.
Complete silence reigned until she returned. She was carrying in her
hand a hat, the exact duplicate of that which the housemaid wore. They
looked from one to another. Lily's triumph was complete.
"Lily," said Crane, "an apology seems to be due to you, which I have
great pleasure in offering you, but I must say that if you had been just
a trifle more civil, the whole mistake might have been cleared up sooner
and more agreeably."
"I think it outrageous," observed Mrs. Falkener, rising. "I think it
perfectly outrageous that any servant should own a hat which anywhere
but at a special sale must have cost sixty or seventy dollars."
"And now I'll tell you what I think outrageous," said Lily, her soft
Southern drawl taking on a certain vigor, "and that is that women like
you, calling themselves ladies, should be free to browbeat and insult
servants as much as they please--"
"Shut up, Lily," said Smithfield, but she paid no attention.
"No," she said, "no one knows what I've put up with from this insolent
old harridan, and now I am going to say what I think."
"Oh, no, Lily," said Crane, taking her by the arm, "you really are not.
We're all sorry for the incident, but really, you know you can't be
allowed to talk like that."
"But, Mr. Crane," drawled Lily, "you don't appreciate what a dreadful
woman she is--no one could who did not have to hook her up every
evening."
Between Smithfield and Crane, she was hustled out of the room.
Alone in the hall, Crane and his butler held a consultation.
"She's got to go, Smithfield. Why in the world wouldn't she hold her
tongue? Poor girl, I felt every sympathy with her."
"Oh, sir," exclaimed Smithfield, "what shall we do? Jane-Ellen and I
really can't run the house entirely alone, sir."
"Of course not, of course not," Burton answered. "You must get some more
servants. Get as many as you please--black, white, or red--but for
heaven's sake get the kind that won't be impertinent to Mrs. Falkener."
Smithfield shook his head.
"That's a kind will be hard to find, sir, begging your pardon," he
observed.
Crane thought it best to ignore this remark.
"I tell you what to do," he said. "Call up Mr. Eliot and say we should
all be glad to accept his invitation to lunch to-day if he can still
have us. That will give you a little time to look about you. By
to-morrow you ought to be able to find some one."
He waited to get Eliot's answer before he returned to the sitting-room,
where he saw that Tucker and Mrs. Falkener had had a long, comfortable
talk about their grievances and their own general righteousness. He
hated to break into the calm that had succeeded by announcing that they
were all going out to lunch.
"Burton," said Mrs. Falkener, directing a stern glance at her daughter,
"I explained to you yesterday that was an invitation I did not care to
accept."
"I know," said Crane, "but my household is now so short-handed that it
seemed a question of lunching out or getting no lunch at all. If you
really object to going to Eliot's, I dare say they could give you
something cold at home, if you did not mind that. You will come, won't
you, Cora?"
"With pleasure," answered Cora.
Crane's manner was unusually decisive, and Mrs. Falkener saw that it was
time to make things smooth.
"Oh, no," she said. "No, if you are all going, I shall go, too. Only,
home is so delightful, I hate the thought of leaving it."
"It hasn't seemed very delightful to me for the past few minutes,"
answered Burton, "but I'm glad if you've enjoyed it."
"Ah, Burton, my dear, you take these things too seriously," replied Mrs.
Falkener. "A little trouble with the servants--an everyday occurrence in
a woman's life. You of the stronger sex must not let it worry you so
much. When you've kept house as many years as I have, you'll learn that
the great thing is to be firm from the beginning. That's the only
criticism I could make of you, Burt, a little weak, a little weak."
Tucker here rose, pressing his hand over his eyes.
"I think, if you don't mind, I won't go," he said. "I've a slight
headache. Oh, nothing much, but I'll lunch quietly here, if you'll let
me--a slice of cold meat and a glass of sherry is all I shall require."
If Crane were weak, he did not look so at this moment.
"I am sorry, Solon," he answered, "but it would be very much more
convenient, if you went with us." He had no intention of leaving Tucker
alone in the house with Jane-Ellen, while Smithfield was scouring the
countryside for fresh servants.
"I'm not thinking so much of myself," said Tucker, "but of you. I fear I
should not be much of an addition to the party."
"But I think of you, Tuck," answered his host. "What in the world
would there be for you to do at home, except talk to the cook?"
Tucker said, rather ungraciously, that of course he would go if Crane
wished him to, but that--
Crane, however, did not allow him to finish his sentence.
"Thank you," he said briskly. "That will be delightful. We shall be
starting at half-past twelve."
IX
ELIOT'S large library, to which Crane and his party were led on their
arrival, looked as only a room can look which has been occupied for
several hours by a number of idle men. All the sofa cushions were on the
floor, all the newspapers were on the sofas, cigarette ashes were
everywhere, and the air was heavy with a combination of wood and tobacco
smoke, everybody's hair was ruffled, as if they had all been sitting on
the back of their heads, and Eliot, himself, now standing commandingly
on the hearth-rug, was saying:
"Yes, and he did not have a sound leg when he bought him, and that must
have been in 1909, for I remember it was the last year I went to
Melton--" He broke off reluctantly to greet his guests.
Lefferts, who looked peculiarly neat and fresh among his companions,
approached Burton, who was beside Mrs. Falkener.
"They have been talking for three hours," he observed, "about a splint
on the nigh foreleg of a gray horse that doesn't belong to any of them.
Sit down, Mrs. Falkener, and let us have a little rational conversation.
Doesn't that idea attract you?"
"Not particularly, since you ask me," replied Mrs. Falkener, not
deigning even to look at the poet, but sweeping her head about slowly as
if scanning vast horizons.
"The rational doesn't attract you," Lefferts went on cheerfully. "Well,
then we must try something else. How about the fantastic-sardonical, or
the comic-fantastical, or even better, the--"
But Mrs. Falkener, uttering a slight exclamation of impatience, moved
away.
Lefferts turned to Crane, with his unruffled smile.
"She doesn't like me," he said.
"Cora," he added, very slightly raising his voice so as to attract the
attention of Miss Falkener, who immediately approached them, "Cora, why
is it your mother hates me so much?"
"She certainly does," returned Cora frankly. "You know, Leonard, you are
really rather stupid with her. You always begin by saying things she
doesn't understand, and of course no one likes that."
Lefferts sighed.
"You see, she stimulates me so tremendously. One gets used to just
merely boring or depressing one's friends, but to be actively hated is
exciting. People who have lived through blood feuds and tong wars tell
you that there is no excitement comparable to it. I feel a little like
the leader of a tong whenever I meet Mrs. Falkener. Cora, would you
belong to my tong, or would you feel loyalty demanded your remaining in
your mother's?"
They went in to luncheon before Cora was obliged to answer, and here
Lefferts contrived to sit next to her by the comparatively simple
expedient of making the man who had already seated himself at her side
get up and yield him the place.
Crane, sitting between his host and another man, enjoyed a period of
quiet. Without his exactly arranging it, a definite plan for the
afternoon was growing up in his mind--a plan which, it must be
confessed, had been first suggested by Tucker's idea of staying at home,
a plan based on a vision of Jane-Ellen and Willoughby holding the
kitchen in solitary state.
Crane knew that luncheons at Eliot's were long ceremonies. Food was
served and eaten slowly, you sat a long time over coffee and cigars, and
at the smallest encouragement, Eliot would bring out his grandfather's
Madeira. And after that you were unusually lucky if you escaped a visit
to the stables, and that meant the whole afternoon.
So he awaited a good opportunity after lunch was over, when Tucker,
under pretense of reading a newspaper, had sunk into a comfortable doze,
and Mrs. Falkener, while carrying on a fairly connected conversation
with Eliot, was really concentrated on preventing Lefferts from taking
Cora into another room. This was Crane's chance. He slipped into the
hall, found his coat and hat, unearthed his chauffeur and motor, and
drove quickly home, sending back the car at once to wait for the others.
He did not, as his impulse was, go in the kitchen way. He did not want
to do anything that might annoy Jane-Ellen. At the same time, he
rebelled at the notion of having always to offer an excuse for seeing
her, as if he were so superior a being that he had to explain how he
could stoop to the level of her society. He wanted to say frankly that
he had come home because he wanted more than anything in the world to
see her again.
The first thing he noticed as he went up the steps of the piazza was
Willoughby sleeping in the warm afternoon sun. Then he was aware of the
sound of a victrola playing dance music. The hall-door stood wide open;
he looked in. Smithfield and Jane-Ellen were dancing.
Though no dancer himself, Crane had never been aware of any prejudice on
the subject; indeed, he had sometimes thought that those who protested
were more dangerously suggestive than the dances themselves. But now he
felt a wave of protest sweep over him; the closeness, the identity of
intention, seemed to him an intolerable form of intimacy.
The two were quite unconscious of his presence, and he stood there for
several minutes, stood there, indeed, until Jane-Ellen's hair fell down
and she had to stop to rearrange it. She looked very pretty as she stood
panting and putting it up again, but she exerted no attraction upon
Crane. Disgust, he thought, was all he now felt. One did not, after all,
as he told himself, enter into competition with one's own butler.
He went quietly away, ordered a horse and went for a long ride. A man
not very easily moved emotionally, he had never experienced the
sensation of jealousy, and he now supposed himself to have reached as
calm a judgment as any in his life. Everything he had ever heard to
Jane-Ellen's discredit, every intimation of Tucker's, every sneer of
Mrs. Falkener's, came back to him now. He would like to have sent for
her and in the most scathing terms told her what he thought of her--an
interview which he imagined as very different from his former reproof.
But he decided it would be simpler and more dignified never to notice
her in any way again. On this decision he at last turned his horse's
head homeward.
Smithfield let him in, as calm and imperturbable as ever.
"Your afternoon been satisfactory, Smithfield?" inquired his employer.
Smithfield stared.
"I beg pardon, sir?"
"Have you succeeded in finding a boy to replace Brindlebury?"
The butler's face cleared.
"Oh, yes, I believe I have--not a boy, exactly, quite an elderly man,
but one who promises to do, sir."
"Good." Crane turned away, but the man followed him.
"Miss Falkener asked me to tell you when you came in, sir, that she
would be glad of a word with you. She's in your office."
Crane stood absolutely still for a second or two, and as he stood, his
jaw slowly set, as he took a resolution. Then he opened the door of his
office and went in.
Two personalities sometimes advance to a meeting with intentions as
opposite as those of two trains on a single track. Crane and Cora were
both too much absorbed in their own aims to observe the signals of the
other.
"Cora," began Crane, with all the solemnity of which the two syllables
were capable.
"Oh, Burton," cried the girl, "why did you leave Mr. Eliot's like that?
It has worried me so much. Did anything happen to annoy you? What was
it?"
"I sent the car right back for you."
"It wasn't the car I wanted."
Crane began at once to feel guilty, the form of egotism hardest to
eradicate from the human heart.
"I'm sorry if I seemed rude, my dear Cora. I thought you were settled
and content with Lefferts. I did not suppose any one would notice--"
"Your absence? Oh, Burt!"
He became aware of a suppressed excitement, an imminent outburst of some
sort. A sudden terror swept over him, terror of the future, of the deed
he was about to do, terror even of this strange and utterly unknown
woman whom he was about to make a part of his daily life, as long as
days existed. For a second he had an illusion that he had never seen,
never spoken to her before, and as he struggled against this queer
abnormality, he heard that in set, clear and not ill-chosen terms he was
asking her to marry him.
She clasped her hands together.
"Oh, it's just what I was trying to prevent."
"To prevent?"
"Burt, I've treated you so badly."
He looked at her without expression.
"Well, let's get the facts before we decide on that."
The facts, Cora intimated, were terrible. She was already engaged.
"To Lefferts?"
She nodded tragically.
Crane felt a strong inclination to laugh. The world took on a new
aspect. Reality returned with a rush, and with it a strong, friendly
affection for Cora. He hardly heard her long and passionate
self-justification. She knew, she said, that she had given him every
encouragement. Well, the truth was she had simply made up her mind to
marry him; nothing would have pleased her mother more, but she did not
intend to shelter herself behind obedience to her mother; she had
intended to do it for her own ends.
"That was what I tried to tell you last evening in the garden, Burt. I
deliberately schemed to marry you, but you mustn't think I did not like
and admire you, in a way--"
"There's only one way, Cora."
This sent her off again into the depths of self-abasement. She had no
excuse to offer, she kept protesting, and offered a dozen; the most
potent being her uncertainty of Crane's own feelings for her.
"You behaved so strangely for a man in love, Burt," she wailed, "I was
never sure."
"In the sense you mean, I was not in love with you, Cora."
"And yet, you want to marry me?"
"In your own words, I liked and admired you, but I was not in love. The
humiliating truth is, my dear girl, that I was so fatuous as to believe
that you were fond of me."
There was a short silence, and then Cora exclaimed candidly:
"Aren't people queer! Here I have been worrying myself sick over my
treatment of you, and now that I find you are not made unhappy by it, do
you know what I feel? Disappointed, disappointed somehow, that you don't
love me!"
Crane laughed.
"I also," he said, "have been slightly oppressed by the responsibility
of your fancied affection, and I, too, am conscious of a certain
flatness in facing the truth."
Cora hardly listened.
"It seems so queer you don't love me," she murmured. "Why don't you love
me, Burt?"
At this they both laughed, and went on presently to the more detailed
consideration of Cora's affairs. She and Lefferts had met the winter
before; she had not liked him at first, prejudiced perhaps by the fact
that he was a poet, and that he pretended to dislike all the things she
cared for, but she had found, almost at once, that he understood more
about the things he hated than most men did about their favorite topics.
"He's really wonderful, Burt," she said. "He understands everything,
every one. Do you know, he told me yesterday that I needn't worry about
you--that you weren't in love with me. Only I did not believe him. He
said: 'What confuses you, my dear, is that Crane is undoubtedly in
love, one sees that clearly enough, but not with you.'"
"He did not just hit it there, though," answered Crane, in a rather
feeble tone. Cora, however, was in a condition of mind in which it was
not difficult to distract her, and she continued without paying any
further attention to the example of Lefferts' extraordinary insight. She
went on to say that she had had no idea that she was in love, until one
day when she found herself speaking of it as if it had always been.
Crane asked about Lefferts' worldly prospects, which turned out to be
extremely dark. Had he a profession? Yes, such a strange one for a
poet--he was an expert statistician, but, Cora sighed, there did not
seem to be a very large demand for his abilities.
Among the many minor responsibilities inherited from his father, Crane
remembered a statistical publication. He immediately offered its
editorship to Lefferts. Cora's answer was to fling her arms about his
neck.
"Oh, Burt," she said, "you really are an angel!"
It was Crane's idea of what would have happened if Mrs. Falkener had
entered at this moment, which she did not, that made him ask how matters
stood in regard to her.
"She doesn't know," answered Cora, "and I don't think she even suspects,
and I'm such a coward I can't make up my mind to tell her. Every time I
see Leonard he asks me if I have, and now he is threatening to do it
himself, and that you know, Burt, would be fatal."
"Cora," said Crane, "I am about to prove that I am no fair weather
friend. With your permission, I will tell your mother."
No permission was ever more easily secured.
It was now five o'clock, an hour when the elder lady became restless if
not served with a little tea and attention. Crane rang and ordered tea
for two served in the office, and then sent Smithfield to ask Mrs.
Falkener if he might have a word with her. She and her daughter passed
each other on the threshold.
"How cozy this is," she began as she seated herself by the fire.
"Smithfield keeps the silver bright, but I'm afraid he has no judgment.
Have you seen the man he has engaged instead of that dreadful boy?--why,
he's so old and lame he can hardly get up and down stairs. He'll never
do, Burton, take my word for that."
"I have something more serious to say to you than the discussion of
domestic matters, Mrs. Falkener," said Crane; and for one of the few
times in her life, Mrs. Falkener forgot that the house contained such a
thing as servants. A more important idea took possession of her
attention.
Burton began to speak about romance. He said he did not know exactly how
an older generation than his looked at such questions; for his own part,
he regarded himself in many ways as a practical and hard-headed man, and
yet more and more he found himself gravitating to the belief that
romance, love, the drawing together for mutual strength and happiness of
two individuals, was the only basis for individual life. People talked
of the modern taste for luxury; to his mind there was no luxury like a
congenial companion, no hardship like having to go through life without
it. Love--did Mrs. Falkener believe in love?
"Do I believe in love, my dear Burt?" she cried. "What else is there to
believe in? No girl, no nice girl, ever marries for any other reason.
Oh, they try sometimes to be mercenary, but they don't succeed. I could
never forgive a woman for considering anything else."
"I thought you would feel like that," said Crane. "I thought Cora was
wrong in thinking you would oppose her. For, prudent or not from a
worldly point of view, there is no doubt that she and Lefferts are in
love."
The blow was a cruel one, and perhaps cruelly administered. Mrs.
Falkener, even in the first instant of disaster, saw and took the only
way out. Love, yes. But this was not love, this was a mere infatuation
on one side, and a dark and wicked plot on the other. She would never
forgive Burton, never, for being a party to this scheme to throw her
daughter, her dear Cora, into the arms of this adventurer. Burton, who
had always professed such friendship for her! She would not stay another
moment in his house. There was a six-thirty train to the North, and she
and her misguided daughter would take it.
Crane began to see why Cora, for all her physical courage, dreaded a
disagreement with her mother. He himself felt as if an avalanche had
passed over him, leaving him alive but dazed.
Mrs. Falkener sat with her handkerchief pressed to her eyes, not so much
to wipe away her tears, for she was not crying, but to shut out the
sight of her perfidious young host.
"Be so kind," she directed from behind this veil, "as to give orders for
the packing of my trunks, and let Cora know that we are leaving
immediately."
Burton hesitated.
"I am afraid, since the housemaid has left, there isn't any one to pack
for you, Mrs. Falkener," he said. "Won't you delay your going until
to-morrow? I can't bear to have you leave me like this."
Mrs. Falkener shook her head.
"Call Solon," she said. "No, don't ask me to stay. And why, pray, can't
the cook make herself useful, for once?"
Mrs. Falkener was not, of course, in a position to know that Crane would
not at the moment stoop to ask any favor of Jane-Ellen. He was glad of
an excuse to escape, however, and summon Solon to take his place. He
found Smithfield in the hall and explained to him that the ladies were
called suddenly away, and then he himself walked down to the garage to
arrange for their departure.
When he came back he found the house in the sort of turmoil that only a
thoroughly executive woman in a bad temper can create. Smithfield, Cora
and Jane-Ellen seemed to be all together engaged in packing. Solon and
the new man were running up and down stairs with forgotten books and
coats and umbrellas, while Mrs. Falkener was exercising a general and
unflattering supervision of every one's activities. To say the new man
was running is inaccurate. Even Tucker's dignified celerity hardly
deserves such a word. But the new man, crippled and bent as he was,
attained only such velocity as was consistent with a perfectly stiff
left leg. Crane really felt he ought to interfere on his behalf, when he
saw him laboring downstairs with heavy bags and bundles. He probably
would have done so, had not his mind been distracted by coming
unexpectedly upon a little scene in the upper hall. Cora was trying to
press a fee into the hand of Jane-Ellen, and Jane-Ellen was refusing it.
Both were flushed and embarrassed.
"I wanted to give you this because--"
"Oh, I couldn't, really; I've not done any--"
"Oh, you've been such a--"
"Oh, no, miss, I've not done--"
The approach of Crane enabled the cook to escape. Cora turned to Burton.