The Course of True Love at a House Party
Among sundry maxims and observations of King Solomon, collated by the
discerning men of Hezekiah, it will be recalled that the way of a man
with a maid is held up to wonder. "There be," says the wise king, who
composed a little in the crisp manner of Mr. Kipling, "three things
which are too wonderful for me; yea, four which I know not: the way of
an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a
ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid." Why he
neglected to include the way of a maid with a man is not at once
apparent. His unusual facilities for observation must seemingly have
inspired him to wonder at the maid's way even more than at the man's;
and wise men later than he have not hesitated to confess their entire
lack of understanding in the matter. But if Solomon included this item
in his summary, the men of Hezekiah omitted to report the fact, and by
their chronicles we learn only that the woman "eateth and wipeth her
mouth and saith 'I have done no wickedness.'" Perhaps it was Solomon's
mischance to observe phenomena of this character too much in the mass.
Miss Milbrey's way, at any rate, with the man she had decided to marry,
would undoubtedly have made more work for the unnamed Boswells of the
king, could it have been brought to his notice.
For, as she journeyed to the meeting-place on a bright October
afternoon, she confessed to herself that it was of a depth beyond her
own fathoming. Lolling easily back in the wicker chair of the car that
bore her, and gazing idly out over the brown fields and yellow forests
of Long Island as they swirled by her, she found herself wishing once
that her eyes were made like those of a doll. She had lately discovered
of one that when it appeared to fall asleep, it merely turned its eyes
around to look into its own head. With any lesser opportunity for
introspection she felt that certain doubts as to her own motives and
processes would remain for ever unresolved. It was not that she could
not say "I have done no wickedness;" let us place this heroine in no
false light. She was little concerned with the morality of her course
as others might appraise it. The fault, if fault it be, is neither ours
nor hers, and Mr. Darwin wrote a big book chiefly to prove that it
isn't. From the force of her environment and heredity Miss Milbrey had
debated almost exclusively her own chances of happiness under given
conditions; and if she had, for a time, questioned the wisdom of the
obvious course, entirely from her own selfish standpoint, it is all
that, and perhaps more than, we were justified in expecting from her.
Let her, then, cheat the reader of no sympathy that might flow to a
heroine struggling for a high moral ideal. Merely is she clear-headed
enough to have discovered that selfishness is not the thing of easy
bonds it is reputed to be; that its delights are not certain; that one
does not unerringly achieve happiness by the bare circumstance of being
uniformly selfish. Yet even this is a discovery not often made, nor one
to be lightly esteemed; for have not the wise ones of Church and State
ever implied that the way of selfishness is a way of sure delight, to
be shunned only because its joys endure not? So it may be, after all,
no small merit we claim for this girl in that, trained to selfishness
and a certain course, she yet had the wit to suspect that its joys have
been overvalued even by its professional enemies. It is no small merit,
perhaps, even though, after due and selfish reflection, she determined
upon the obvious course.
If sometimes her heart was sick with the hunger to love and be loved by
the one she loved, so that there were times when she would have
bartered the world for its plenary feeding, it is all that, we insist,
and more, than could be expected of this sort of heroine.
And so she had resolved upon surrender--upon an outward surrender.
Inwardly she knew it to be not more than a capitulation under duress,
whose terms would remain for ever secret except to those clever at
induction. And now, as the train took her swiftly to her fate, she made
the best of it.
There would be a town-house fit for her; a country-house at Tuxedo or
Lenox or Westbury, a thousand good acres with greeneries, a game
preserve, trout pond, and race-course; a cottage at Newport; a place in
Scotland; a house in London, perhaps. Then there would be jewels such
as she had longed for, a portrait by Chartran, she thought. And there
was the dazzling thought of going to Felix or Doucet with credit
unlimited.
And he--would the thought of him as it had always come to her keep on
hurting with a hurt she could neither explain nor appease? Would he
annoy her, enrage her perhaps, or even worse, tire her? He would be
very much in earnest, of course, and so few men could be in earnest
gracefully. But would he be stupid enough to stay so? And if not, would
he become brutal? She suspected he might have capacities for that.
Would she be able to hide all but her pleasant emotions from him,--hide
that want, the great want, to which she would once have done sacrifice?
Well, it was easier to try than not to try, and the sacrifice--one
could always sacrifice if the need became imperative.
"And I'm making much of nothing," she concluded. "No other girl I know
would do it. And papa shall 'give me away.' What a pretty euphemism
that is, to be sure!"
But her troubled musings ended with her time alone. From a whirl over
the crisp, firm macadam, tucked into one of Phimister Gwilt-Athelstan's
automobiles with four other guests, with no less a person than her
genial host for chauffeur, she was presently ushered into the great
hall where a huge log-fire crackled welcome, and where blew a lively
little gale of tea-chatter from a dozen people.
Tea Miss Milbrey justly reckoned among the little sanities of life. Her
wrap doffed and her veil pushed up, she was in a moment restored to her
normal ease, a part of the group, and making her part of the talk that
touched the latest news from town, the flower show, automobile show,
Irving and Terry, the morning's meet, the weekly musicale and
dinner-dance at the club; and at length upon certain matters of
marriage and divorce.
"Ladies, ladies--this is degenerating into a mere hammer-fest." Thus
spoke a male wit who had listened. "Give over, and be nice to the
absent."
"The end of the fairy story was," continued the previous speaker,
unheeding, "and so they were divorced and lived happily ever after."
"I think she took the Chicago motto, 'Marry early and often,'" said
another, "but here she comes."
And as blond and fluffy little Mrs. Akemit, a late divorcee, joined the
group the talk ranged back to the flourishing new hunt at Goshen, the
driving over of Tuxedo people for the meet, the nasty accident to
Warner Ridgeway when his blue-ribbon winner Musette fell upon him in
taking a double-jump.
Miss Milbrey had taken stock of her fellow guests. Especially was she
interested to note the presence of Mrs. Drelmer and her protege,
Mauburn. It meant, she was sure, that her brother's wooing of Miss
Bines would not be uncontested.
Another load of guests from a later train bustled in, the Bineses among
them, and there was more tea and fresher gossip, while the butler
circulated again with his tray for the trunk-keys.
The breezy hostess now took pains to impress upon all that only by
doing exactly as they pleased, as to going and coming, could they hope
to please her. Had she not, by this policy, conquered the cold,
Scottish exclusiveness of Inverness-shire, so that the right sort of
people fought to be at her house-parties during the shooting, even
though she would persist in travelling back and forth to London in
gowns that would be conspicuously elaborate at an afternoon reception,
and even though, in any condition of dress, she never left quite enough
of her jewels in their strong-box?
During the hour of dressing-sacque and slippers, while maids fluttered
through the long corridors on hair-tending and dress-hooking
expeditions, Mrs. Drelmer favoured her hostess with a confidential chat
in that lady's boudoir, and, over Scotch and soda and a cigarette,
suggested that Mr. Mauburn, in a house where he could really do as he
pleased, would assuredly take Miss Bines out to dinner.
Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan was instantly sympathetic.
"Only I can't take sides, you know, my dear, and young Milbrey will
think me shabby if he doesn't have first go; but I'll be impartial;
Milbrey shall take her in, and Mauburn shall be at her other side, and
may God have mercy on her soul! These people have so much money, I
hear, it amounts to financial embarrassment, but with those two chaps
for the girl, and Avice Milbrey for that decent young chap, I fancy
they'll be disembarrassed, in a measure. But I mustn't 'play
favourites,' as those slangy nephews of mine put it."
And so it befell at dinner in the tapestried dining-room that Psyche
Bines received assiduous attention from two gentlemen whom she
considered equally and superlatively fascinating. While she looked at
one, she listened to the other, and her neck grew tired with turning.
Of anything, save the talk, her mind was afterward a blank; but why is
not that the ideal dinner for any but mere feeders?
Nor was the dazzled girl conscious of others at the table,--of Florence
Akemit, the babyish blond, listening with feverish attention to the
German savant, Doctor von Herzlich, who had translated Goethe's
"Iphigenie in Tauris" into Greek merely as recreation, and who was now
justifying his choice of certain words and phrases by citing passages
from various Greek authors; a choice which the sympathetic listener,
after discreet intervals for reflection, invariably commended.
"Oh, you wonderful, wonderful man, you!" she exclaimed, resolving to
sit by some one less wonderful another time.
Or there was Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan, like a motherly Venus rising from a
sea of pink velvet and white silk lace, asserting that some one or
other would never get within sniffing-distance of the Sandringham set.
Or her husband, whose face, when he settled it in his collar, made the
lines of a perfect lyre, and of whom it would presently become
inaccurate to say that he was getting bald. He was insisting that "too
many houses spoil the home," and that, with six establishments, he was
without a place to lay his head, that is, with any satisfaction.
Or there was pale, thin, ascetic Winnie Wilberforce, who, as a
theosophist, is understood to believe that, in a former incarnation, he
came near to having an affair with a danseuse; he was expounding the
esoterics of his cult to a high-coloured brunette with many turquoises,
who, in turn, was rather inclined to the horse-talk of one of the
nephews.
Or there were Miss Milbrey and Percival Bines, of whom the former had
noted with some surprise that the latter was studying her with the eyes
of rather cold calculation, something she had never before detected in
him.
After dinner there were bridge and music from the big pipe-organ in the
music-room, and billiards and some dancing.
The rival cavaliers of Miss Bines, perceiving simultaneously that
neither would have the delicacy to withdraw from the field, cunningly
inveigled each other into the billiard-room, where they watchfully
consumed whiskey and soda together with the design of making each other
drunk. This resulted in the two nephews, who invariably hunted as a
pair, capturing Miss Bines to see if she could talk horse as ably as
her mother, and, when they found that she could, planning a coaching
trip for the morrow.
It also resulted in Miss Bines seeing no more of either cavalier that
night, since they abandoned their contest only after every one but a
sleepy butler had retired, and at a time when it became necessary for
the Englishman to assist the American up the stairs, though the latter
was moved to protest, as a matter of cheerful generality, that he was
"aw ri'--entirely cap'le." At parting he repeatedly urged Mauburn, with
tears in his eyes, to point out one single instance in which he had
ever proved false to a friend.
To herself, when the pink rose came out of her hair that night, Miss
Milbrey admitted that it wasn't going to be so bad, after all.
She had feared he might rush his proposal through that night; he had
been so much in earnest. But he had not done so, and she was glad he
could be restrained and deliberate in that "breedy" sort of way. It
promised well, that he could wait until the morrow.