never felt anything like her little hands, Burt. It's like touching a
bird."
"Yes, I know," said Crane. "I mean, they look so. I want just a word
with you, Cora," he continued, rather rapidly. "I'm afraid I haven't
done you much good except that your mother is angrier with me than she
is with you, and that's something."
"Oh, I don't care, now it's over," she answered. "And you'll tell Len
this evening all that's happened, and where to write to me, and we
shall both be grateful to you as long as we live."
At this moment, Mrs. Falkener in hat, veil, and wrap swept out of her
room, followed by Smithfield, Tucker and the old man, carrying the last
of her possessions. The moment of departure had come.
X
AFTER the departure of the ladies, Tucker and Crane stood an instant in
silence on the piazza. Solon, who had been waked from his customary
afternoon nap by the frantic summons of Mrs. Falkener, was still a
little confused as to all that had happened, and had gathered nothing
clearly except that Burton was in some way very much to be blamed.
"It's too bad," he observed, "to have them go off like that. We shall
miss them, I fear."
Crane was standing with his hands in his pockets, watching the
tail-light as it disappeared down the drive.
"Let us avoid that, Tuck, by going away ourselves."
"You mean to leave here?"
"Why not? The experiment has not struck me as a very happy one. Our
servants have gone, our guests have left us, and for my part, I am eager
to be off as well."
The time had come, then, when Jane-Ellen was to be friendless and out of
a job; the third act was here.
"Anything that suits you pleases me, Burton," said Tucker.
"In that case," answered Crane, "I will telephone Reed to come over at
once and make arrangements for giving up the house. We can't, I suppose,
catch that night train, but with luck we may get away to-morrow
morning."
"You seem in a great hurry."
"I'd like never to see the place again," returned Burton.
In the moment of silence that followed this heartfelt exclamation, a
figure came briskly around the corner of the piazza, a figure
discernible in the light shed by the front door.
"Oh, come here," said Crane.
The figure betrayed no sign of having heard, unless a slight
accentuation in its limp might be so interpreted.
"What's your name?" shouted Burton.
The old man looked up.
"Yes, yes," he said, in a high shaking voice, "I'm lame; you're right
there, sir. I've been lame these twenty years, and carrying down all
them trunks has put sich a crick in my back as never was."
"I asked you your name," repeated his employer.
"When I came? Why, this afternoon, sir. It was your butler engaged me. I
worked at the hotel here once, and Mr. Smithfield he come to my wife and
says, 'Susan,' he says, he knowing her since he was a little boy--"
"Let me look at you," said Crane sternly.
But the elderly man, still talking to himself, retreated into the
shadow.
And then Tucker was surprised to hear his host exclaim with violence:
"By Jove, the young devil," and to see him hurl himself off the piazza
at its highest point. He would have landed actually on top of his
decrepit servitor, had not the old man developed an activity utterly
unsuspected by Tucker, which enabled him to get away down the avenue
with a speed that Crane could not surpass.
"Well, well, what are we coming to?" Tucker murmured as he watched them
dodge and double around trees and bushes. Presently they passed out of
the light from the house, and only the sound of their feet beating on
the hard avenue indicated that the fugitive had taken to the open.
Solon was still peering nervously into the dark when at last his host
returned. Crane was breathing hard, and held in his hand a small furry
object that Tucker made out gradually to be a neat gray wig.
"Oh," said Burton, still panting and slapping his side, "I haven't run
so hard since I was in college. But I should have got him if it hadn't
been for his superior knowledge of the ground."
"My dear Burton," said Tucker crossly, "what in the world have you been
doing?"
"What have I been doing? I've been trying to catch that wretched boy,
Brindlebury, but it's as well I didn't, I dare say. I thought his limp a
little spectacular this afternoon when the trunks were being carried
down. But his deafness--the young fool!--that deafness, never found
anywhere but on the comic stage, was too much for me. He runs fast, I'll
say that for him. He led me through a bramble hedge; backed through,
himself. That's when I got his wig."
"I should not be surprised if we all were murdered in our beds," said
Tucker.
"That's right, Tuck," said Crane, "look on the cheerful side. Come with
me now, while I speak to Smithfield. I want to know what he has to say
for himself."
Smithfield, looking particularly elegant in his shirt sleeves, a costume
which shows off a slim figure to great advantage, was rather languidly
setting the dinner-table for two; that is to say, he was rubbing a
wine-glass, shaped like a miniature New England elm-tree, to remove the
faint imprint of his own fingers.
"Smithfield," said Crane briskly, "I'm afraid your new useful man isn't
going to be very useful. He seems to me too old."
Smithfield placed the glass deliberately upon the table.
"He's not so old as he appears, sir," he answered. "Only sixty-six his
next birthday."
"A married man?"
"No, sir, a widower of many years. His wife died when her first baby was
born--that's Mr. Crosslett-Billington's present chauffeur. That's how I
happened to get the old fellow. And when the rheumatism--"
"Smithfield," said Crane, "that's about enough. Put down that glass, put
on your coat and hat, and get out. You're lying to me, and you've been
lying to me from the beginning. Don't stay to pack your things; you can
settle all that with Mr. Reed to-morrow. Get out of my house, and don't
let me see you again. And," he added, throwing the gray wig into his
hands, "there's a souvenir for you."
Smithfield, without the least change of expression, caught the wig,
bowed, and withdrew.
"And now, Tuck," Crane added, turning to his lawyer, "I wish you would
go and telephone Reed to come here at once and clear this whole thing
up. Tell him I'll send the motor for him as soon as it comes back."
"It's dinner-time now," observed Tucker.
"Ask him to dinner then," said Crane. "I must go and see that Smithfield
really gets out of this house."
[Illustration: _Scene from the Play_ THE DINNER. OLIVIA, LEFFERTS,
TUCKER, WEEKS AND CRANE. _Act III_]
Both tasks had been accomplished when at about eight o'clock Tucker and
Crane again met in the hall. Smithfield had been actually seen off the
place, Tucker had telephoned Reed and despatched the motor for him,
and now the sound of an approaching car was heard.
"That can't be Reed, yet," said Tucker, "there hasn't been time."
Crane shook his head.
"It isn't the sound of my engine, either," he answered.
Headlights came sweeping up the drive, and a few minutes later,
Lefferts, in full evening dress, entered the house.
"I'm afraid I'm a little bit late," he said, "but I missed a turn."
For an instant Crane regarded him blankly. Then he remembered that once,
ages before, or perhaps no earlier than that very afternoon, he had
invited Lefferts to dinner. And at the same time he realized what had
not heretofore occurred to him, that there was no one in the house to
serve dinner, except Jane-Ellen, who had, in all probability, cooked
dinner for only two. Reed might be there at any minute. It was really
necessary, in so acute a domestic crisis, to put pride in his pocket and
go downstairs and speak to his cook.
He put his hand on Lefferts' shoulder.
"Awfully sorry, my dear fellow," he said, "that things are not quite as
anticipated. Tucker will tell you we have had rather a stormy afternoon.
Give him a cigarette and a cocktail, Tuck, and I'll be back in a
minute." He disappeared down the kitchen stairs.
With what different feelings, he said to himself, did he now descend
those stairs; but, when he was actually in the kitchen, when Willoughby
was once again bounding forward to greet him, and Jane-Ellen was
allowing herself that slow curved smile of hers, he was surprised and
disappointed to find that his feelings were, after all, much the same as
before. Over his manner, however, he was still master, and that was cold
and formal in the extreme.
"I wanted to speak to you, Jane-Ellen," he began, but she interrupted.
"This time," she said gaily, "I know what it is that you are going to
scold about."
"I am not going to scold."
She laughed.
"Well, that's a wonder," and glancing at him she was astonished to find
no answering smile. "Are you really angry at me," she asked, "on account
of this afternoon?"
"This afternoon?"
"On account of that silly plan about Brindlebury? I did not know they
were going to do it, and when it was done, I couldn't betray them, could
I?"
Crane made a gesture that seemed to indicate that he really had no means
of judging what his cook might or might not do.
"You believe me, don't you?"
"Believe you?" said Crane. "I haven't considered the question one way or
the other."
"Why, Mr. Crane," said Jane-Ellen, "whatever has come over you that you
should speak like that?"
"This has come over me," answered Crane, "that I came down here in a
hurry to give some orders and not to discuss the question of veracity."
The figure of Jane-Ellen stiffened, she clasped her hands behind her
back.
"And what are your orders?" she said, in a tone of direful monotony.
Crane, as has been stated, was no coward, and even if he had been, anger
would have lent him courage.
"There are two gentlemen coming to dine--four in all," and as he saw
Jane-Ellen slightly beck her head at this, he added recklessly, "as
Smithfield is gone, you will have to serve dinner as well as cook it."
"No," replied the cook. "No, indeed. Certainly not. I was engaged to
cook, and I will cook to the very best of my abilities, but I was not
engaged to be a maid of all work."
"You were engaged to do as you're told."
"There you are mistaken."
"Jane-Ellen, you will serve dinner."
"Mr. Crane, I will not."
The problem of the irresistible force and the immovable body seemed
about to be demonstrated. They looked each other steadily and hostilely
in the eyes.
"We seem," said Crane, "to be dealing with the eternal problem between
employer and employee. You're not lazy, the work before you is nothing,
but you deliberately choose to stand on your rights, on a purely
technical point--"
"I do nothing of the kind."
"What are you doing then?"
"I'm making myself just as disagreeable as I can," answered Jane-Ellen.
"Of course, I should have been delighted to do anything for any one who
asked me politely. But when a man comes into my kitchen and talks about
giving orders, and my doing as I'm told, and serving dinner, why, my
answer is, he ought to have thought of his extra guests before he
dismissed my brothers--"
"Your brothers!" cried Crane. "Do you mean to say that Smithfield is
your brother too?"
"Well, I didn't mean to tell you," said the cook crossly, "but it
happens to be true."
From the point of view of the irresistible force, the problem was now
completely resolved.
"O Jane-Ellen!" he cried, "why in the world didn't you tell me so
before?"
"I can't see what it has to do with things."
"It has everything," he answered. "It makes me see how wrong I have
been, how rude. It makes me want to apologize for everything I have
said since I came into the kitchen. It makes me ask you most humbly if
you won't help me out in the ridiculous situation in which I find
myself."
"But I don't see why Smithfield's being--"
"It would take a long time to explain," answered Burton, "although, I
assure you, it can and shall be done. Perhaps this evening, after these
tiresome men have gone, you will give me a few minutes. In the meantime,
just let me say that I was angry at you, however wrongly, when I came
down--"
"I'm not sure but that I'm still angry at _you_," said the cook, but she
smiled as she said it.
"You have every right to be, and no reason," he returned. "And you are
going to be an angel and serve dinner, aren't you?"
"I said I would if asked politely."
"Though how in the world I shall sit still and let you wait on me, I
don't see."
"Oh," said Jane-Ellen, "if you never have anything harder to do than
that, you are very different from most of your sex. And now," she added,
"I'd better run upstairs and put two more places at the table, for it's
dinner-time already."
"If I come back later in the evening, you won't turn me out of the
kitchen?"
She was already on her way upstairs, but she turned with a smile.
"It's your kitchen, sir," she said.
Crane followed her slowly. It occurred to him that he must have a talk
with Lefferts. He found him and Tucker making rather heavy weather of
conversation in the drawing-room. Tucker had naturally enough determined
to adopt Mrs. Falkener's views of Lefferts. He had conformed with
Crane's request and given the poet a cigarette and a cocktail, but he
had attempted no explanation beyond an unsatisfactory statement that the
ladies had been called away unexpectedly.
"Nothing serious, I hope," Lefferts had said.
"I hope not," Tucker had returned, and not another word would he utter
on the subject.
Lefferts was, therefore, glad to respond to Crane's invitation to come
into the office for a few minutes and leave Tucker to the contemplation
of his own loyalty.
Left alone, Tucker's eager ears soon detected the sound of dishes in the
dining-room, and he knew that this could be produced by the hand of no
other than Jane-Ellen. The moment seemed to have been especially
designed for his purpose, and he decided to take advantage of it.
Jane-Ellen was setting the table with far more energy than Smithfield
had displayed; in fact her task was almost finished when Tucker entered,
and, advancing to the mantelpiece, leaned his elbow on the shelf and
smiled down upon her benevolently.
"The time has come sooner than we anticipated when I can be of
assistance to you, Jane-Ellen," he said.
"Yes, indeed, sir," she returned with a promptness that fifteen years
before would have made his heart beat faster.
"Thank you for giving me the opportunity."
"The finger-bowls, sir," she interrupted, flicking a napkin in their
direction, "they ought to be filled; not too full, sir; that's quite
enough, it isn't a tub, you know. And now, if you've a match about you,
and gentlemen always have matches, I believe, would you light the
candles, and then, yes, I do think we're about ready now."
Tucker, who could not very well refuse such trivial services when he
was offering one much more momentous, poured a little water from the ice
pitcher into the glass finger-bowls, but he did it with such dignity and
from such a height that he spilled much of it over the doilies. The cook
did not reprove him directly, but she changed the doily with a manner
that seemed to suggest that another time she would do the job herself.
And when Tucker took a neat gold match-box from his pocket and prepared
to light the candles, she coolly took the whole thing out of his hands,
remarking that he might set the shades on fire and then they'd be in
what she described as "a nice way."
Observing that she was about to leave the room, he put himself before
the door.
"I want just a word, Jane-Ellen."
"No time now, sir. Perhaps to-morrow morning."
"To-morrow will be too late. You must know this evening. I don't want to
say a word against Mr. Crane; young men who have always had everything
they want are naturally thoughtless. But I can't bear to see you turned
out at a moment's notice--"
"Turned out?"
"Yes, Mr. Crane is going either to-night or to-morrow morning. Didn't he
tell you?"
He had her attention now. She looked at him intently.
"Mr. Crane going? I thought he had the house for six weeks."
"So he had, but he's bored with it. Miss Falkener has gone, and he sees
no reason for staying on. He'll be off either at midnight or in the
morning. You're about to lose your place, Jane-Ellen."
She stood staring before her so blankly that it grieved him to see her
so deeply concerned about the loss of her position, and he pressed on.
"I can't bear to think of your comfort being dependent on the caprices
of Crane, or any one. Come to me, Jane-Ellen. This is no life for you,
with your youth and beauty and charm. I could offer you a position that
you need never leave, never, unless you wanted to--"
"Please move from the door, sir."
"Not until you've heard me," and he moved toward her as if to take her
in his arms.
At some previous period of time, the Revellys, presided over by a less
elegant functionary than Smithfield, must have been in the habit of
summoning the family to meals by means of a large Japanese gong that now
stood neglected in a corner. To this, Jane-Ellen sprang, and beat it
with a vigor that made the house resound.
The next instant Crane burst into the room.
"What's the matter?" he exclaimed, and added, fixing his eyes on his
lawyer,
"What the deuce are you doing here, Tuck?"
"I," said Tucker, "was giving Jane-Ellen what help I could in setting
the table."
"Like hell you were."
"Do you mean you doubt what I say?"
"You bet I do."
"And may I ask what you do think I was doing?" asked Tucker.
"I think you were making love to the cook."
"Gentlemen, gentlemen," murmured the cook, "won't you please let me go
down and attend to the dinner. The chicken will be terribly overdone."
Nobody paid any attention to the request.
"Well," said Tucker, "I certainly wouldn't turn a poor girl out at a few
hours' notice, as you mean to do."
"Who says I mean to?"
"You told me yourself you meant to leave to-morrow."
"And what kind of a job were you offering her?"
"I tell you I was trying to help her."
"And is that why she rang the gong?"
"She rang presumably because dinner was ready."
"There's another presumption that seems to me more probable."
"Burton, I shall not spend another night under your roof."
"I had reached the same conclusion."
Tucker turned with great dignity.
"The trouble is," he said, "that you have not the faintest idea of the
conduct of a gentleman," and with this he walked slowly from the room.
The cook did not now seem so eager to get back to the kitchen. She stood
twisting a napkin in her hands and looking at the floor, not unaware,
however, that her employer was looking at her.
"The trouble really is, Jane-Ellen," he said gently, "that you are too
intolerably lovely."
"Oh, sir."
"'Oh, sir, oh, sir!' You say that as if every man you knew had not been
saying the same thing to you for the last five years."
Jane-Ellen had another of her attacks of dangerous candor.
"Well, a good many have said it, sir," she whispered, "but it never
sounded to me as it did when you said it." And after this she had the
grace to dart through the door and downstairs, so fast that he could
hear her little heels clatter on each step as she went.
In the hall he found Tucker, standing under a lamp, studying a
time-table, with glasses set very far down his nose. Opposite, Lefferts
was leaning against the wall, his arms folded and the expression on his
face of one who has happened unexpectedly upon a very good moving
picture show.
Seeing Crane, Tucker folded up his time-table and removed his glasses.
"Your other guest has just arrived," he observed.
"Oh, is Reed here?"
"Yes," said Lefferts, "he's in your office taking off his coat."
"And you may be interested to know," added Tucker, with a biting
simplicity that had impressed many juries in its time, "you may be
interested to know that he is the man I found kissing Jane-Ellen last
week."
"What, Reed!" cried Crane, with a gesture that might have been
interpreted as ferocious.
Hearing his name called, Reed came hurrying out.
"Yes," he said, advancing with outstretched hand, "here I am. Sorry to
be late, but I was ready before--"
"We'll go in to dinner," said Crane shortly. Tucker and Reed moved first
toward the dining-room. Lefferts drew his host aside.
"Just one moment," he said. "You went off so quickly when that gong rang
that I did not have any chance to tell you how I feel about your
generosity. It makes--"
Crane grasped his hand.
"You have an opportunity this very moment," he replied, "to repay me for
anything I ever have done or may do for you. Talk, my dear fellow, talk
at dinner. Do nothing but talk. Otherwise, I shall knock those two men's
heads together."
Lefferts smiled.
"I doubt if you'd get much sense into them even if you did," he
murmured.
"No," answered Burton, "but I should have a great deal of enjoyment in
doing it."
XI
THEY sat down at table, and, as Crane looked at his guests, he had
little hope that even Lefferts' cheerful facility could save the
situation. Circumstances would be too much against him. Even the poet
himself could hardly be at his best, having just arrived in the hope of
dining with his lady-love to find she had been spirited away by an irate
mother. This in itself was enough to put a pall on most men; yet, of the
three guests, Lefferts seemed by far the most hopeful. Tucker was
already sullen and getting more sullen every moment. Crane knew the
signs of his lawyer's bearing--the irritable eye that would meet no
one's directly, the tapping fingers, the lips compressed but moving.
Tucker was one of those people cursed by anger after the event. His
nature, slow moving or overcontrolled, bore him past the real moment of
offense without explosion; but with the crisis over, his resentment
began to gain in strength and to grow more bitter as the opportunity for
action receded more and more into the past. Crane knew now that Tucker
was reviewing every phrase that had passed between them; every injury,
real or fancied, that he had ever received at Crane's hands; these he
was summoning like a sort of phantom army to fight on his side. No,
Tucker was not a guest from whom any host could expect much genial
interchange that evening.
Reed, on the other hand, was too unconscious. Placid, good-natured,
confident in his own powers to arrange any little domestic difficulties
that might have arisen, he sat down, unfolded his napkin, and turned to
Lefferts in answer to the inquiry about real estate which Lefferts had
just tactfully addressed to him.
"The great charm of this section of the country," he was saying, "is
that from the time of its earliest settlement it has been in the hands
of a small group of--" At this instant Jane-Ellen entered with the soup.
Reed, who had expected to see Smithfield, stopped short, and stared at
her with an astonishment he did not even attempt to disguise. Lefferts,
following the direction of his eyes and seeing Jane-Ellen for the first
time, mistook the subject of Reed's surprise.
"Oh," he said, as the girl left the room, "is this 'the face that
launched a thousand ships'?"
Tucker, who was perhaps not as familiar with the Elizabethan dramatists
as he should have been, replied shortly that this was the cook.
"A very beautiful little person," said Lefferts, imagining, poor fellow,
that he was now on safe ground.
"I own," said Tucker, "that I have never been able to take much interest
in the personal appearance of servants."
"You sometimes behave as if you did, Tuck," remarked his host.
"If you are interested in beauty," observed Lefferts, "I don't see how
you can eliminate any of its manifestations, particularly according to
social classes."
"Such a preoccupation with beauty strikes me as decadent," answered
Tucker crossly.
"Indeed, how delightful," Lefferts replied. "What, exactly, is your
definition of 'decadent'?"
Now in Tucker's vocabulary the word "decadent" was a hate word. It
signified nothing definite, except that he disliked the person to whose
opinions he applied it. He had several others of the same
sort--hysterical, half-baked and subversive-of-the-Constitution being
those most often in use. This being so, he really couldn't define the
word, and so he pretended not to hear and occupied himself flicking an
imaginary crumb from the satin lapel of his coat.
Lefferts, who had no wish to be disagreeable, did not repeat the
question, but contented himself by observing that he had never tasted
such delicious soup. Reed shook his head in an ecstasy that seemed to
transcend words. Only Tucker scowled.