ARTHUR GOES HOME.
The days were growing unnumbered by this time, measure of time being
only necessary when one has daily petty duties, and existence is not
a continuous, untroubled joy. Arthur positively bloomed; even Derwent
seemed a shade less anxious for the souls of men, and Mr. Wemyss a
point less analytic. And the morning was one to bring a bit of fresh
color to the cheek of a very Tannhäuser who had been long years jaded
with Venus’s joys, his dull eyes rested with the lights of earth
again, his ear soothed by notes of spring and human love. The land was
beautiful with bud-promise, the air steeped with joyous light of life.
And the girls came down to breakfast, looking each and all a Hebe.
For the will of the world comes out in this--that all that has to do
with life, new life, charms and attracts us; that all that speaks of
over-thought, of over-soul, if you will, is wan and weird--either
positively uncanny, or laughable, like the chorus of old men in Faust!
Instinctively, we all turn to the flower, to the fresh looks of the
young girl, to the rosy lips, full of the promise of future life. No
wrinkled wisdom, no sorrowful lines of character, can make up for
this. The first thoughtless girl we meet shows her _beauté du diable_
more than a match for all the crow’s-feet of the intellect. And this is
the magnetism of vitality; it is your full-blooded man that the masses
of the world delight to follow. The unthinking are repelled by too much
consciousness, as by disease.
We all have known such sunny mornings, when we that are living live,
and the dead lie dead in their churchyards. Gayly the party mounted;
and the strong horses galloped over the roads. They were still in the
broad valley of the Hudson; far behind them lay the river, unseen, but
farther still was visible yet the blue film of the Catskills. They
crossed a broad intervale, and ahead of them was a gap in the hills,
over which the road wound in a sort of pass. And now as they galloped
up it in the shadow of the elms it was as if they had gone through a
narrow door into a different country; the scene changed, the hills grew
small, rugged, and broken; the vegetation was less rich; they were in
New England. So marked was it that Wemyss pointed out the change; even
the color of the houses was not the same, nor the look of the barns.
They were small and neat, and painted sternly white; the very gates
were better hung, and the sidewalks more neatly trimmed; the squalid,
unkempt look was gone, and with it the greater luxuriance. One no
longer felt the vastness of the Continent, but seemed to be in an older
corner of it, the bars not yet let down, where elbow-room was less, and
ideas and conventions artificially preserved. The hills were smaller,
and the trees looked stunted; human habitations had a look like an
old dress which the wearer in her penury still struggled to keep neat.
Arthur was reminded at once of the look of the land about the hill-town
to which he had driven on that day with Gracie. They had crossed the
line into Connecticut, and the boundary was more marked than is usual
in political divisions. Even in New York there had been a suggestion
of the Western prairies; here was none. But there was a greater vigor
in the air, which had a sort of moorland sparkle in it; and the talk
was livelier than ever. They had a long and breezy drive of it, and the
cock-horse was used many times in pulling up the grassy old road, which
led uncompromisingly up the barren, ferny hills. For lunch they stopped
at a little place called Lakeville, nestling in the hills between two
clear blue ponds; and here John Haviland (having performed his errand)
had to leave them to take his train back to the city.
In the afternoon Arthur was allowed to try his hand at driving; he
sat on the box-seat with Miss Farnum, who was very silent, and Mrs.
Gower and Wemyss had the rear seat to themselves. Kill Van Kull was
allowed to get into the “cabin” and go to sleep, a refreshment which
he averred the country air made most needful to him. Behind him on
the middle seat the party were very noisy, and Arthur had much ado to
keep his attention on the horses, who seemed also to feel the tang
of the keen soft air. As they were going down a crooked hill, longer
than he had expected, so that no shoe had been put on, the horses got
almost beyond his control. He gathered the four reins together and
pulled his best, and just managed to keep them in the road. The people
behind were laughing and talking, unconscious of what was going on;
and Arthur had already begun to congratulate himself upon his escape,
when, as they were nearing the bottom, he got too far on the outer
curve, and the heavy wheels sank deep in the gravel, still wet with
the spring rains. One awful moment of suspense, and then the ponderous
vehicle swayed heavily, rolled majestically over on its side. A shrill
scream resounded behind him--it is not the custom for American girls to
scream--and Mrs. Hay threw her arms wildly around Lord Birmingham, with
the feminine instinct to embrace something in emergencies. But it was
of no avail; and they all sailed gracefully off into the long grass,
Arthur still devotedly hanging to the reins.
No one was hurt; and after a bare pause for reflection, everybody burst
forth in a roar of laughter. Loudly and long they laughed, holding
their sides; they were laughing too much to get up; one horse was down,
and the others rearing and plunging. Van Kull put his head ruefully
out of the window of the coach that was uppermost and contemplated
the scene. His hat was crushed, he was nigh smothered with shawls and
veils, and his hair hanging down over his eyes; and his head protruded
slowly, like a disabled jack-in-the-box, amid the merriment of the
company.
“Perhaps, when some of you damned fools get through laughing,” said he,
without undue emphasis, “you’ll find time to attend to those leaders.”
Van Kull’s remark, though over-forcible, was undeniably just; and
Derwent was already at their heads. The groom was also there; and in a
few moments the horses were taken out, the coach set upright again, and
all damage repaired. Everyone agreed that the accident was in nowise
due to Arthur’s driving, but entirely to the soft bit in the road.
“These things will happen, you know,” said Birmingham, good-naturedly.
“It’s half the fun, I think,” said Pussie Duval.
“I thought you’d ’a dumped ’em, sir,” said the groom, “when I see
that ere soft bit in the road.” And as a mark of special confidence,
Arthur was allowed to drive the coach the rest of the way into Great
Barrington, where they were to stop for the night.
The merriment consequent on their disaster did not cease during the
afternoon, and Arthur was many times maliciously thanked for the
diversion he had afforded the party. But Miss Farnum, who was still his
companion on the box, seemed fortunately as much inclined to silence as
he was himself. Indeed, she had been strangely silent all the day.
The country roads gradually drew themselves together and made
themselves into the broad, straight avenue that is Great Barrington’s
main street; and up this they swept gayly, about an hour before sunset.
They did not pass the Judge’s old place; but as Arthur heard Mrs.
Gower’s light laughter behind him the old scene in the garden recurred
to him at once. It was not yet a year ago: and he remembered now that
the man she had been driving with was Wemyss.
They drew up merrily before the village hotel--it seemed so odd to
Arthur to be there in his own town; he had never associated it with so
gay a party--and after a few minutes of preparation they started out
to see the place. Miss Farnum made pretext of a headache and did not
go; but the others sauntered along beneath the overarching elms. To
the left the setting sun lay across the intervale in broad gold bars.
Arthur was walking with Lord Birmingham and Mrs. Hay.
Coming back, they met Mrs. Gower at the dinner-table. “I am sorry,”
said she, “Miss Farnum has to go home.”
“Dear me, I’m so sorry,” said Mrs. Hay, politely.
“What, you don’t mean she’s going to leave us?” said Lord Birmingham,
blankly. He looked from one to the other of the party, as if asking an
explanation. “She said nothing to me about it,” he added, naïvely.
“I have telegraphed to Mrs. Malgam to ask her to join us,” said Mrs.
Flossie, hurriedly checking the general inclination to laugh that had
succeeded his lordship’s last speech. “You need not look so blank, you
men--no Jack shall be left without a Jill.”
“_A_ Jill,” said Wemyss, maliciously, accentuating the indefinite
article, and looking at Mrs. Hay.
“’Pon my word, I think you’re very insulting,” broke in Mrs. Hay,
savagely. No one could exactly see why; whereupon Van Kull, with much
social dexterity, looked upon Mrs. Hay and sighed. Further comment was
checked by the arrival of Miss Farnum herself, who bore her fine face
quite as unconsciously, a shade more coldly, than usual. And then the
finer emotions gave place to food.
Arthur was honored by a seat on Mrs. Gower’s left; but he was silent
through the meal, a fact which was maliciously attributed to the events
of the afternoon. “Don’t look upset, Mr. Holyoke, please!” cried Miss
Duval. “We have quite regained our composure.” Arthur had not been
thinking of the accident at all; but he did color again, to be reminded
of it. “It was a soft spot in the road, you know,” said he.
“A soft spot in your heart, I much suspect,” laughed Mrs. Gower. “Miss
Farnum, you should not have sat with him.”
“Who?” said the beauty, bringing her gaze to a focus. “Oh,” she added,
indifferently. “I?”
“’Pon my word,” screamed Mrs. Wilton Hay. “You two are too delicious!
But you’re positively too absent-minded to be trusted together. Aren’t
they Mrs. Gower? They might not have presence of mind enough not to
elope, you know.”
Soon after this Miss Farnum left the table; and when Arthur followed,
he found her out upon the doorstep, talking with Lionel Derwent. The
sun had gone down now, and its last radiance came down upon them from
some scarlet clouds. Miss Farnum went in almost immediately, leaving
him with Derwent alone.
“A lovely evening,” said he. “Will you take a tramp?”
Arthur hesitated. Then he spoke with decision. “Yes. I have a call
to make--won’t you come with me? Miss Livingstone, you know, and my
cousin, Miss Holyoke, are here--do you know them?”
“No,” said the other; “but I shall like to.”
“Come along, then,” said Arthur. And they went up the long village
street until the road began to twist among the apple-orchards and they
got into the dusk that was already at the base of the wooded hills.
Derwent pulled out a brierwood pipe and smoked it, and they walked in
silence.
At last they came in front of the dignified old house, wearing, like a
wig, its high-pitched roof and white balustrade, with its terrace for
silk stockings and its dressed front of quaint old flowers as a ruffle
of old lace. The gate creaked in its wonted way; and they walked up the
familiar gravel-walk. “The ladies were at home;” and the two went into
the large living-room, and found Gracie and Mamie Livingstone together.
Arthur shook hands with Mamie, and then, after introducing Mr. Derwent,
sat down by his cousin, leaving Mamie to his friend, a proceeding which
the latter noticed. Derwent talked nearly all the time to Mamie, whose
little self he read at once, but his eyes wandered more than once
to Gracie and her cousin. Now, Gracie Mamie thought a character far
simpler than herself. They all sat so near that when either pair was
silent the other’s conversation could be heard. Their call had lasted
nearly an hour, when Miss Brevier came in, who was there, matronizing
the young people, for a few days only. Then the conversation became
more general, save that Derwent talked some half an hour, at the end,
with Miss Holyoke. It was after ten before they rose to go.
“So you are going to Lenox to-morrow,” said Gracie. “And after that?”
“After that, I don’t know; perhaps I shall come here?”
“I don’t think you could bear being at the Barrington Hotel,” said
Gracie, with a laugh. Arthur bit his lip.
“Well, I suppose a fellow can go somewhere,” said he. “I may have to go
back to the shop. Where do you go, Derwent?”
“I am going out among the Rockies of British Columbia, hunting,” said
he. “I wish you’d come,” he added, turning to Arthur suddenly, as if
the thought had then first struck him.
“Thanks,” said Arthur, ill-naturedly. “Unfortunately, I’m nothing but
a broker’s clerk.” But his _amour-propre_ was soothed by the evident
increased consideration that Miss Livingstone had shown him; and even
to the last moment she pressed him with questions, and hung admiringly
upon his history of the trip.
“Who did you say was with you on the box when you upset?” she said, as
they lingered at the doorway. The moon was up by this time, bleaching
all the colored roses of the terrace in its yellow light.
“Miss Farnum,” said Arthur. “But I believe Mrs. Malgam takes her place
to-morrow,” he added, carelessly.
“Oh!” said Mamie. “I’m fearing you’ll be quite too grand to speak
to me when I’m a bud.” And she gave him a look--one of her practised
looks--out of her very pretty eyes, a look that Gracie never could have
compassed. Arthur returned it, with the skill of a year’s experience;
meantime, Derwent was taking leave of the others, and they soon were
walking home together--that is, to the Great Barrington Hotel.
“A charming girl,” said Derwent.
“Who?” said Arthur, curtly.
“Miss Livingstone,” said the other, after a pause. “Your young New York
girls are such delicate flowers--and yet so hardy, too. And they can be
trained to almost anything.”
Arthur did not sleep well that night; but the morning was a lovely one
again. They had to wait until the New York train arrived, which was
not until the afternoon, for Mrs. Malgam. Kitty Farnum had started off
quietly, early in the morning, and Derwent had gone with her, meaning
to see her safely to New Haven, where her maid would meet her, and
then take the return train back with Mrs. Malgam. Lord Birmingham had
been too dull to think of this proceeding, and was in a vicious humor
all the day in consequence. Arthur was in two minds about going to see
Gracie in the morning. But as Birmingham sulked all day, there were not
men enough without him; so he went to walk with Mrs. Hay instead. Mrs.
Hay was one of those women whose flirting was less intellectual than
the American type; she delighted chiefly in appealing to men’s senses;
and her company was not ennobling.
But in the afternoon appeared Mrs. Malgam, clothed in the loveliest
of smiles and spring dresses. If she had any grudge against Flossie,
she did not show it; but spoke to her caressingly, and with a certain
deference, as from a giddy young girl to her chaperone. And then, as
if her conscience were safely in Flossie’s charge, she inaugurated a
most audacious and ostentatious love-affair with the peer; that is, she
caused him to inaugurate it. Baby Malgam never inaugurated anything;
she only looked as if she understood it. A pan of cream, indeed; not
milk and water; opaque, unfathomable to the eye, and yet, perhaps, not
deep. Wemyss talked with Arthur about it. “You are the only fellow left
whom one can talk to,” said he. “Birmingham’s too dull, and Derwent’s
not a man of the world.” Arthur’s heart warmed to him at once. “Baby
Malgam,” said he, “means to beat Mrs. Gower on her own ground.”
This was said on the way to Lenox. At five the horses were brought up
to the door; the brilliant party were again in their familiar seats,
and bowling briskly over the well-made roads. And our hero was himself
again; and the exhilaration of the motion, and the bright eyes and
pretty dresses, and the trained flattery of their most desirable
owners, and the admiration of the populace--to him as to them, was the
breath of his nostrils.
“A woman’s looks
Are barbèd hooks,
That catch by art
The strongest heart,”
says the old Elizabethan poet; but they swallowed the hooks in those
days.
So they came to Lenox; Lenox of the sleepy hills, and sweet wild roads,
and shady green seclusion. Here were the first good roads they had seen
since they left Mrs. Gower’s home; and Van Kull “let out” the horses,
and they galloped like a summer storm. And the gayety seemed redoubled
since Mrs. Malgam’s arrival. Lord Birmingham was evidently drinking her
in like some new sort of wine; Derwent alone was silent and abstracted.
So they were none of them sorry when he told them that he, too, must
leave at Lenox. In the evening, he got a long walk with Arthur, and
spoke most bitterly about them all. “As for Mrs. Hay,” he said, “she’s
hardly worth considering; she only injures men, and men who are her
mates. But Mrs. Gower is a woman who has successively sought and
successively attained, or appeared to attain, every height, every good
thing, and every great place in turn, in order that she might vulgarize
it. She has mounted every summit but to make it hers. Do you see how
Mrs. Malgam, and Miss Duval, and all the others ape her?”
Arthur thought him very ill-bred and rude to this most charming
hostess, and almost dared to say so. Derwent pulled out his brierwood
pipe, and they walked on in silence.
“Now,” the other went on, “take another sort of girl--a girl like your
friend Miss Holyoke, for instance----”
“I don’t see what Miss Holyoke has to do with the case,” said Arthur,
goading himself into a passion. And the walk ended--purposely, so far
as Arthur was concerned--in a sort of quarrel. Coming back, he found
Mrs. Malgam walking in the lawn of Mrs. Gower’s cottage, and joined
her, and found solace after the Englishman’s asperity.
Mrs. Malgam was dressed in a faultless summer gown, and wore the famous
pearls that she had bought with the estate of her first husband. Arthur
revenged himself by repeating to her all Derwent’s conversation.
“I am glad he’s going,” said she. “He’s the most cynical person I ever
met; and I hate cynicism.”
“Who’s that you’re talking of?” said Wemyss, coming up.
“Derwent,” said Arthur. “We’re both glad he’s going.”
“Oh, Derwent is quite impossible,” said Wemyss. “He’s well enough at
a dinner where they feed the lions, but quite out of his place in
society. The fellow’s a crank, too; just the sort of a man who ends by
marrying a woman of the demi-monde.”
“By way of reformation, I suppose,” laughed Mrs. Malgam. Arthur walked
with her some time, as Wemyss left upon this last _bon mot_; and the
next day, when they came together after breakfast, there was no trace
of Derwent.
“Do you know he’s a friend of Chinese Gordon?” said Lord Birmingham.
“I should think, quite possible,” said Wemyss. “I hope we’ll get a
better fellow in his place--a gentleman, at least,” he added, _sotto
voce_.
“They say he belongs to one of the oldest families in Northumberland,
do you know,” said Mrs. Hay.
“All rot,” said Wemyss; “I believe him to be a mere adventurer--nothing
more.”
“Well,” said Flossie, “I’ve written to Tony Duval in his place.”
“Oh, dear!” cried Pussie. “I hate to go about with Tony; or, rather, he
says he hates to go about with me. He says he can’t have any fun while
I’m around.”
“He hates to flirt before his little sister,” laughed Mrs. Gower.
“Never mind, dear--I think you’ll soon be even with him.” And when Tony
Duval arrived, all his simple soul went out to Mrs. Hay. “She is the
finest woman I ever saw,” he would say to Arthur, almost with a sigh.
And he sent to Long Island for his two best blooded horses; and the
first day they rode out he spilled Mrs. Hay over a four-barred fence,
just as they were returning, and brought the fair burden home in his
brawny arms. Her eyes unclosed soon after she was in the house; and she
was not seriously injured. And Arthur, who had indited a telegram to
Wilton Hay at Washington, sensibly put the despatch in his pocket.
So the days went by delightfully. Arthur had fears that he was
sometimes the odd man; but after all, they seemed to like him pretty
well; and if even Pussie Duval failed him, there were other fair in
Lenox with no cavaliers imported, like the fruit in the hampers, from
the city. So June waned toward July, and everyone almost cheered at
Flossie Gower’s proposal that they should have one more drive--to Lake
George--before they parted. This new excursion was duly chronicled
in all the newspapers, where Mamie Livingstone, eager, and perhaps
a little envious, saw it. Arthur wrote and got his leave of absence
extended at the office. They were easy-going people at the office.
Meantime, Derwent was “hunting big game” out in the Rockies, and
Charlie Townley was sweltering in the city--“working like a dog, by
Jove,” he would say--at the affairs of Messrs. Townley & Tamms. And
Gracie Holyoke was in great Barrington, alone.