“He certainly has an extremely attractive face, Harriet,” remarked
Gertrude Van Vleck, looking at Mrs. Percy-Bartlett amusedly; “but isn’t
he very young?”
“Perhaps he is in one sense,” assented the elder woman, striking a few
chords on the piano impatiently. “But he’s exactly my age--and I’m very
old.”
Gertrude laughed and settled herself comfortably in an easy-chair for a
confidential chat with her bosom friend. It was early in the afternoon
of a brilliant winter day, and the music-room of the Percy-Bartletts’
house was a very cosey little confessional at the moment.
“I wish I could like men somewhere near my own age,” mused Gertrude,
her eyes still resting thoughtfully on her companion’s rather disturbed
face. “But I can’t; there really seems to be something fatally wrong in
my inclinations and disinclinations. There is something authoritative
about a man of forty that pleases me. But in our set the men at forty
are either married impossibilities or confirmed bachelors.”
Mrs. Percy-Bartlett laughed merrily.
“How we do crave contrasts,” she exclaimed. “You are suffering from too
much attention from boys just out of college, and I--well, I’m married
to a man nearly forty.”
“After all, Harriet, I don’t believe that age has so much to do with
it as we seem to imply.” Gertrude clasped her hands around her knee as
she sat leaning forward, and looked up at her friend earnestly. “There
is one thing that the new movement among the women of our class has
done. It has tended to weary us of men who are all cut on one pattern.
Take any given subject of any importance and ask one of the men of our
set what he thinks about it. Dear little parrot, he will repeat to you
the general verdict of his club on the question at issue, without the
slightest suspicion that he is a mental marionette.”
“That is very true,” assented Mrs. Percy-Bartlett. “Perhaps that fact
may explain to you why I enjoy talking to Richard Stoughton.”
“Oh,” cried Gertrude, her face displaying an animation that it seldom
exhibited in public. “Then he is not yet spoiled by the churning
process? He certainly carries himself like other society men of his
age. His face is brighter than the average youngster’s, but another
season will change all that.”
Mrs. Percy-Bartlett swung around on the music-stool and looked
earnestly into Gertrude’s face.
“He’s not a society man, my dear girl. He _could_ have the _entrée_ if
he wanted it. His people are very prominent in Connecticut, and he was
in the best set at Yale. But, do you know, although he has plenty of
money, he is quite ambitious in a very queer line.”
“Yes?” questioned Gertrude, curious regarding her friend’s feelings
toward Richard.
“Yes. He is a newspaper man. He’s on the _Trumpet_, you know, and has
been wonderfully successful in some way or other. He writes awfully
bright things for the editorial page. Percy-Bartlett says that it is a
most unusual thing for a man as young as Richard Stoughton to jump at a
bound into such a prominent position.”
“A newspaper man. Isn’t that amusing! I never met one before.”
“Well,” commented the musician, turning around and drumming softly on
the piano, “there is one thing to be said about them; they have to be
bright, or they couldn’t be newspaper men.”
“That is a very sweeping assertion,” remarked Gertrude, smiling in
amusement. “I wonder if it applies to newspaper women.”
“I don’t know; I never met one,” answered Mrs. Percy-Bartlett coldly.
“But tell me,” persisted Gertrude, her blue eyes dark with mischief;
“what are you going to do with him?”
Almost unconsciously Mrs. Percy-Bartlett began to play the air she had
composed to Heine’s poem on the pine-tree that dreamed of the palm.
Suddenly she ceased playing, and gazed earnestly at Gertrude.
“I don’t know,” she said at length, and the roguish light died out of
Gertrude’s eyes.
“I don’t understand you, Harriet,” she said very seriously. “You don’t
mean that--that”--
“I mean nothing,” cried Mrs. Percy-Bartlett rather feverishly, turning
to the piano and playing a few bars of the latest waltz music.
Presently she turned around and said,--
“You are unkind, Gertrude. You are unmarried, unengaged, and you
can take as much interest as you may care to in any man, married or
otherwise, and the world doesn’t stop to gossip about you--that is,
of course, if you don’t go on in a scandalous way. But let a married
woman show the slightest attention to a man who is not her husband,
and everybody begins to whisper and nod and smile, and you are lucky
if _Town Tattle_ doesn’t begin to hint at another divorce in the inner
circle. I don’t care how many people sing my songs and admire my music,
but I wish they _would_ stop talking about _me_. Can you tell me,
Gertrude, why I shouldn’t have the privilege of talking to--to Richard
Stoughton, for instance, without being gossiped about?”
“The trouble is, you know, Harriet,” answered Gertrude, the mischievous
gleam returning to her eye, “that whatever may be the case with
marriage, it was long ago decided that Platonic friendship is a
failure.”
“Perhaps so,” returned Mrs. Percy-Bartlett rather wearily. “But people
will follow it, _ignis fatuus_ though it may be, to the end of time.”
Gertrude arose to go. “Well, Harriet,” she said softly, bending
over and kissing her friend on the forehead, “don’t be annoyed at
anything I’ve said. I certainly have the warmest sympathy with your
disinclination to let life bore you.”
Mrs. Percy-Bartlett arose and took Gertrude’s hand. “And you will come
to my musicale on Tuesday night, my dear?”
“Indeed I shall. I want to get better acquainted with Mr. Richard
Stoughton, you know.”
At that moment a servant entered the room and handed a note to her
mistress.
“Excuse me, Gertrude,” she said, and opening the envelope read the
following words from Richard:--
“MY DEAR MRS. PERCY-BARTLETT,--The miracle has been performed.
Mr. John Fenton will accompany me to your musicale on Tuesday
evening. Your invitation will reach him if addressed to the Press
Club.”
The reader smiled, and handed the epistle to Gertrude Van Vleck.
“And who is John Fenton?” asked Gertrude, after perusing the note.
“Oh, John Fenton,” said Mrs. Percy-Bartlett gayly, “John Fenton is an
experiment.”