"Oh! oh!" she cried; "what a perfectly atrocious complication!
Perhaps--perhaps you haven't money enough to--to go somewhere else for a
while. Have you?"
"Well, I'll fix it somehow."
"Mr. Edgerton!" she said excitedly, "Silvette and I have _got_ to go!"
"No," he said laughing, "you've only got to go on with your story, Miss
Tennant. I am a very interested and sympathetic listener."
"Yes," she said desperately, "I must go on with that, too. Listen, Mr.
Edgerton; we thought a long while and discussed _everything_, and we
concluded to stake everything on an idea that came to Silvette. So we
drew out all the money we had and we paid all our just debts, and we
parted with our chaperone--who was a perfect d-darling--I'll tell you
about her sometime--and we took Argent, our cat, and came straight to
New York, and we hunted and hunted for an apartment until we found this!
And then--do you know what we did?" she demanded excitedly.
"I couldn't guess!" said Edgerton, smiling.
"We bought clothes--beautiful clothes! And everything luxurious that we
didn't have we bought--almost frightened to death while we were doing
it--and _then_ we advertised!"
[Illustration: "We _had_ to spend all our money on clothes."]
"Advertised!"
"From _here_! Can you _ever_ forgive us?"
"Of course," he said, mystified; "but what did you advertise?"
"Ourselves!"
"_What!_"
"Certainly; and we've had replies, but we haven't liked the people so
far. Indeed, we advertised in the most respectable daily, weekly and
monthly papers--" She sprang to her feet, trotted over to the sofa,
picked up an illustrated periodical devoted to country life, and
searching hastily through the advertising pages, found and read aloud to
him, still standing there, the following advertisement:
"_Two ladies of gentle birth and breeding, cultivated linguists,
musicians, thoroughly conversant with contemporary events, efficient at
auction bridge, competent to arrange dinners and superintend
decorations, desire employment in helping to entertain house parties,
week-ends, or unwelcome but financially important relatives and other
visitations, at country houses, camps, bungalows, or shooting boxes_.
"_For terms write to or call at Apartment Five----_"
She turned her flushed face toward him.
"_Your_ address in full follows," she said. "Can you ever bring yourself
to forgive us?"
His astonished gaze met hers. "That doesn't worry me," he said.
"It is generous and--splendid of you to say so," she faltered. "You
understand now, don't you? We _had_ to spend all our money on clothes;
and we thought ourselves so fortunate in this beautiful apartment
because it was certain to impress people, and nobody could possibly
suspect us of poverty with that great picture by Goya over the mantel
and priceless tapestries and rugs and porcelains in every direction--and
our cat to make it look as though we really belonged here." Her voice
trembled a moment on the verge of breaking and her eyes grew brilliant
as freshly washed stars, but she lifted her resolute little head and
caught the tremulous lower lip in her teeth. Then, the crisis over, she
dropped the illustrated paper, came slowly back to her chair and sank
down, extending her arms along the velvet upholstery in silence.
Between them, on the floor, a sapphire rug stretched its ancient Persian
folds. He looked at it gravely, thinking that its hue matched her eyes.
Then he considered more important matters, plunging blindly into
profound abstraction; and found nothing in the depths except that he had
no money to go anywhere, but that he must go nevertheless.
He looked up after a moment.
"Would you and your sister think it inhospitable of me if I ask when
you--I mean--if I----"
"I know what you mean, Mr. Edgerton. Silvette and I are going at once.
"You can't. Do you think I'd permit it? Please remember, too, that
you've advertised from here, and you've simply got to remain here. All
I meant to ask was whether you think it might be for a week or two yet,
but, of course, you can't tell--and forgive me for asking--but I was
merely trying to adjust several matters in my mind to conditions----"
"Mr. Edgerton, we cannot remain. There is not in my mind the slightest
doubt concerning your financial condition. If you _could_ let us stay
until we secured employment, I'd ask it of you--because you are James
Edgerton; but you can't"--she rose with decision--"and I'm going up to
the roof to tell Silvette."
"If you stir I'll take those suit cases and depart for good."
"You are very generous--the Edgertons always were, I have heard, but we
cannot accept----"
He interrupted, smiling: "I think the Tennants never needed instruction
concerning the finer points of obligation." ... He stood a moment
thoughtfully, turning over and over the two dollars in his pocket; then
with a laugh he walked across the studio and picked up his suit cases.
"Don't do that!" she said in a grave voice.
"There is nothing else to do, Miss Tennant."
"There's another bedroom."
They stood, not regarding one another, considering there in the
sunshine.
"Will you wait until I return?" she asked, looking up. "I want to talk
to Silvette.... I'd like to have Silvette see you. Will you wait?
Because I've come to one of my quick conclusions--I'm celebrated for
them, Mr. Edgerton. Will you wait?"
"Yes," he said, smiling.
So she trotted away in her little straw sandals and flowery vestments
and butterfly sash; and he began to pace the studio, hands clasped
behind him, trying to think out matters and ways and means--trying to
see a way clear which offered an exit from this complication without
forcing him to do that one thing of which he had a steadfast
horror--borrow money from a friend.
Mingled, too, with his worried cogitations was the thought of Henry
Tennant's nieces--these young California girls of whom he had vaguely
heard without any particular interest. New Yorkers are never interested
in relatives they never saw; seldom in any relatives at all. And, long
ago, there had been marriage between Tennant and Edgerton--in colonial
days, if he remembered correctly; and, to his own slight surprise, he
felt it now as an added obligation. It was not enough that he efface
himself until they found employment; more than that was due them from an
Edgerton. And, as he had nothing to do it with, he wondered how he was
to do anything at all for these distant cousins.
Standing there in the sunshine he cast an ironical glance around him at
the Beauvais tapestries, the old masters, the carved furniture of
Charles II's time, rugs dyed with the ancient splendor of the East, made
during the great epoch when carpets of Ispahan, Damascus--and those
matchless hues woven with gold and silver which are called
Polish--decorated the palaces of Emperor and Sultan.
Not one thing could he sell under the will of Peter Edgerton to save his
body from starvation or his soul from anything else; and he jingled the
two dollars in his pocket and thought of his talents, and wondered what
market there might be for any of them in a city where bricklayers were
paid higher wages than school teachers, and where the wealthy employed
others to furnish their new and gorgeous houses with everything from
pictures and books to the ancient plate from which they ate.
And, thinking of these things, his ears caught a slight rustle of silk;
and he lifted his head as Diana Tennant and her sister Silvette came
toward him through the farther room.
*CHAPTER III*
*SUB JUDICE*
"Isn't this a mess!" said Silvette in a clear, unembarrassed voice,
giving him her hand. "Imagine my excitement up on the roof, Mr.
Edgerton, when Diana appeared and told me what a perfectly delightful
man had come to evict us!"
"I didn't say it that way," observed Diana, her ears as pink as the
powder-puff peonies above them. "My sister," she explained, "is one of
those girls whose apparent frankness is usually nonsense. I'm merely
warning you, Mr. Edgerton."
Silvette--a tall, free-limbed, healthy, and plumper edition of her
sister--laughed. "In the first place," she said, "suppose we have
luncheon. There is a fruit salad which I prepared after breakfast. Our
maid is out, but we know how to do such things, having been made to when
schoolgirls."
"You'll stay, won't you?" asked Diana.
"Poor Mr. Edgerton--where else is he to go?" said Silvette calmly.
"Diana, if you'll set places for three at that very beautiful and
expensive antique table, I'll bring some agreeable things from the
refrigerator."
"Could I be of any use?" inquired Edgerton, smiling.
"Indeed, you can be. Talk to Diana and explain to her how respectable
we are and you are, and how everything is certain to be properly
arranged to everybody's satisfaction. Diana has a very wonderful idea,
and she's come to one of her celebrated snap-shot conclusions--a
conclusion, Mr. Edgerton, most flattering to you. Ask her." And she
went away toward the kitchenette not at all embarrassed by her pretty
morning attire nor by the thick braid of golden hair which hung to her
girdle.
Diana cast a swift glance at Edgerton, and, seeing him smile, smiled,
too, and set about laying places for three with snowy linen, crystal,
silver, and the lovely old Spode porcelain which had not its match in
all the city.
"It's like a play or a novel," she said; "the hazard of our coming here
the way we did, and of you coming back to America; but, of course, the
same cause operated in both cases, so perhaps it isn't so remarkable
after all! And"--she repressed a laugh--"to think that I should mistake
you for a malefactor! Did it seem to you that I behaved in a silly
manner?"
"On the contrary, you exhibited great dignity and courage and
self-restraint."
"Do you really mean it? I was nearly scared blue, and I was perfectly
certain you'd stuffed your suit cases full of our toilet silver.
_Wasn't_ it funny, Mr. Edgerton! And _what_ did you think when you
looked into your studio and saw a woman?"
"I was--somewhat prepared."
"Of course--after a glimpse into our bedroom! But that must have
astonished you, didn't it?"
"Slightly. The first thing I saw was a white cat staring at me from the
top of a trunk."
She laughed, arranging the covers with deft touch.
"And what next did you see?"
"Garments," he explained briefly.
"Oh! Yes, of course."
"Also a silk-flowered slipper with a very high heel on the threshold."
"Mine," she said. "You see, in the days of our affluence, I used to
have a maid. I forget, and throw things about sometimes."
"You've a maid now, haven't you?"
"Oh, just a combination cook and waitress until we can find employment.
She's horridly expensive, too, but it can't be helped, because it would
create an unfavorable impression if Silvie or I answered the door bell."
"You're quite right," he said; "people have a curious aversion to
employing those who really need it. Prosperity never lacks employment.
It's odd, isn't it?"
"It's rather cruel," she said under her breath.
Silvette came in bringing a chilled fruit salad, bread and butter, cold
chicken, and tea. "We'll have to put it all on at once. You don't mind,
do you, Mr. Edgerton?"
He said smilingly but distinctly: "One's own family can do no wrong.
That is my creed."
Diana looked up at him.
"I wondered whether you knew we were relations," she said, flushing
deliriously.
"You see," added Silvette, "it was not for us to remind you."
"Of our kinship? Why not?"
"Because you might have considered it an added obligation toward us,"
said Diana, blushing.
"I do--a delightful one; and it is very gracious of you to acknowledge
it."
"But we don't mean to presume on it," interrupted Silvette hastily.
"Some day we really do mean to regulate our financial obligations toward
you."
"There are no such obligations. Please remember what roof covers
you----"
"Mr. Edgerton!"
"And whose salt----"
"It's our salt, anyway," said Diana; "I bought it myself!"
They seated themselves, laughing; then suddenly Edgerton remembered, and
he went away with a hasty excuse, only to return again with a brace of
decanters.
"My uncle's port and sherry," he said.
[Illustration: "'My uncle's port and sherry,' he said."]
Silvette jumped up and found half-a-dozen old-time glasses; and the
luncheon continued.
"Isn't it ridiculous!" observed the young fellow, glancing around the
studio; "here am I surrounded by a fortune in idiotic antiquities,
lunching from a table that the Metropolitan Museum inherits after my
death, sipping a sherry which came from the cellars of a British
monarch--with two dollars and several cents in my pockets, and not the
slightest idea where to get more. _Isn't_ it funny!"
Silvette forced a smile, then glanced significantly at her sister.
Diana said, gravely:
"We have several hundred dollars. Would you be kind enough to let us
offer you what you require for immediate use until----"
"Why, you blessed child!" he said, laughing, "that isn't what worries me
now!"
"Then--what is it?" inquired Silvette.
"You and your sister."
"What do you mean, Mr. Edgerton?"
"I mean that I'm worried over your prospects!"
"Why, they are perfectly bright!" exclaimed Diana; "In a few days
somebody will employ us to help entertain a number of stupid and wealthy
people. We'll make a great deal of money, I expect; don't you, Silvie?"
"Certainly; but I'm wondering what Mr. Edgerton is going to do with two
dollars in his pocket and us in his apartment."
"So am I," said Diana.
"It's perfectly charming of you to care."
"What an odd thing to say to us! Is it not very natural to care?
Besides your being related, you have also been so considerate and so
nice to us that we'd care anyway, I think. Don't you, Silvie?"
Silvette nodded her golden-crowned head.
"The thing to do for the present," she said, "is for you to take that
farther room. It was Diane's idea, and I entirely agree with her--after
seeing you."
"That was the sudden conclusion of which I spoke to you," explained
Diana. "Such things come to me instinctively. I thought to myself, 'If
he mentions the kinship between us, then we'll ask him to remain.' And
you did. And we do ask you; don't we, Silvie?"
"Certainly. If two old maids wish to entertain their masculine cousin
for a week or two, whose affair is it? Let Mrs. Grundy shriek; I don't
care. Do you, Diane?"
"No, I don't. Besides," she added naively, "she's out of town."
They all laughed. The germ of a delightful understanding was beginning
to take shape; it had already become nascent and was developing in every
frank smile, every candid glance, every unembarrassed question and
reply.
"We have no parents," said Diana gravely. "You have none, have you?"
"No," he said.
"Then it seems natural to me, our being here together; but"--and Diana
glanced sideways at him--"in the East, I believe, people consider
relationship of little or no importance."
He sipped his sherry, reflecting.
"As a rule," he said; "but"--and he laughed--"if any Easterner even
suspected he had two such California cousins, he'd start for the Pacific
coast without his breakfast!"
"Did you ever hear anything half as amiable?" asked Silvette, laughing.
"I never did," replied Diana; "especially as we're probably his
twenty-second cousins."
"That distance may lend an enchantment to the obligations of kinship!"
he said gayly.
Diana looked up, grave as a youthful Japanese goddess.
"You don't mean that, do you?"
"No, I don't," he said, reddening. "If I did, the janitor ought to
throw me out."
Silvette nodded seriously.
"We know you said it in joke; but the only straw to float Diane's idea
is our kinship, Mr. Edgerton. And we grasped at it--for your sake."
"Please cling to it for your own sakes," too, he said, also very serious
now; "it may become a plank to float us all.... I realize the point you
are straining out of kindness to me. If I accept shelter here for a day
or two, I shall know very well what it costs you to offer it."
"It doesn't cost us anything," interrupted Diana hastily. "Silvette
meant only that you should understand why our consciences and common
sense sanction your remaining if we remain."
"_You_ must remain anyway!" he said.
"So must you, cousin," said Silvette, laughing. "Anyway, you've
probably sent your trunks here--haven't you?"
"By jinks! I forgot that!" he exclaimed. "I believe that racket on the
stairs means that my trunks are arriving!"
It did mean exactly that. And when Edgerton went out to the landing he
encountered two expressmen staggering under the luggage, and, behind
them, the terrified janitor who had returned, and who, on the advent of
the baggage, had hurried upstairs to summarily evict the illegal lodgers
before Edgerton's arrival.
Now, at sight of Edgerton himself, the Irishman turned white with horror
and clung to the banisters for support; but Edgerton only said
pleasantly: "Hello, Mike! I hope you've made my cousins comfortable.
I'll be here for a day or two. Bring up any mail there may be for me,
and see that the landing is properly dusted after this."
He came back to the studio intensely amused.
"I thought that guilty Irishman would faint on the stairs when he saw
me," he said. "I merely said that I hoped he'd looked out for my
cousins' comfort.... You know," he added laughingly, "I'm anything
except angry at him."
Silvette rose from the table and strolled over toward him.
"Are you really glad to know us?" she asked curiously. "We've heard
that New Yorkers are not celebrated for their enthusiasm over poor
relatives from the outer darkness."
"New Yorkers," he said, "are not different from any other creatures
segregated in a self-imposed and comfortable captivity. People who have
too much of anything are spoiled to that extent--ignorant to that
degree--selfish and prejudiced according to the term of their
imprisonment. All over the world it is the same; the placidity of
self-approval and self-absorption is the result of local isolation.
We're not stupid; we merely have so much to look at that we don't care
what may take place outside our front gate. But if anybody opens our
gate and comes in, he'll have no trouble, because he'll be as much of a
New Yorker as anybody really is."
Silvette laid her head on one side and, drawing the heavy burnished
braid of hair over her left shoulder, rebraided the end absently.
"Is it," she inquired, "because we are merely attractive that you
mentioned the relationship?"
[Illustration: "'Is it because we are merely attractive that you
mentioned the relationship?'"]
"I'm afraid it's--partly that," he admitted, reddening and glancing
askance at Diana.
"Stop tormenting him!" said Diana. "He's candid, anyhow. It's very
fortunate all around, anyway," she added naively; though exactly why she
considered it fortunate to meet a man with two dollars in his pocket and
the legal right to evict her, she did not explain to herself.
Silvette, caressing her braid with deft fingers, mused aloud: "It's very
noble of him to claim relationship with two poverty-stricken old maids
from the Pacific coast. Don't you think so, Diane?" And she glanced up
with a bewitching smile that had in it a glint of malice.
"_Stop_ tormenting him!" repeated Diana. "We're pretty and young, and he
knows it and we know it. What's the use in speculating about what he
might have done if we were not attractive? He's perfectly satisfied
with his western cousins--aren't you?" glancing up.
"Perfectly," he said.
Diana nodded emphatically.
"Do you hear, Silvie? He says he is perfectly satisfied with us, and he
is a typical New Yorker. Therefore, we need not be at all disturbed
about our capacity for entertaining anybody, if somebody will only offer
us employment."
Silvette looked around at him. "I'd like to have you see us in our
afternoon gowns; I believe you'd really be rather proud of the
relationship."
"Good Lord!" he exclaimed, half laughing, half annoyed; "I'm proud of it
anyway. What on earth do you think a New Yorker is?"
"We've seen _some_," said Diana meaningly. "Several came here in answer
to our advertisement. But we knew, of course, that your type existed,
too."
"Have you been--annoyed?"
Silvette laughed. "One man, of very red complexion, inquired if Diana
would act as his housekeeper. He had several country places, he said."
"There was a woman came; we didn't care for her," added Diana
thoughtfully. Then, lifting her head, she looked at Edgerton with a
gaze so pure and sweet, so exquisitely candid, that he felt his heart
stop for a moment. Then the blood mounted to his face--to the roots of
his hair.
"Take me into your partnership," he said impulsively; "will you?"
"What!"
"Can you? Is it all right?"
"I don't know what you mean!" said Diana.
"Why couldn't I help entertain week-ends with you?"
The proposition seemed to astound them all, even the young fellow who
had made it.
For a moment they all stood silent; then, pursuing his own impulsive
idea toward a plausible conclusion, he said: "Why not, after all? It
would make a better combination than two young girls alone. I've
clothes--two trunks in there, two more at the customs--London made and
duty paid! Why not? It's a good combination. The more I think of it
the better I like it!"
He began to pace to and fro nervously.
"I know a lot of people--the right kind. I'm not ashamed to ask them to
employ me. There is no reason why a Tennant or an Edgerton should not be
in their houses----"
"But," said Silvette quietly, "the _right_ sort of people, as you call
them, have no need of asking anybody to aid them in entertaining. It is
very generous of you, Mr. Edgerton, but don't you see that services of
our kind will be accepted only by--by newcomers, newly wealthy
people--those whose circle is small and not very select."
"Yes, that is so," he said so forlornly that Diana watched him
curiously, and a delicate color came into her cheeks as he looked up
again, eager, radiant.
"That's true," he repeated; "but if I can't do anything in that way for
us among the right sort, at least the other kind will have a man to
reckon with"--he glanced at Diana grimly now--"when they inquire about
housekeepers, and when women whom you do not care for reply to your
advertisements."
"That is rather a nice thing to say," observed Silvette, looking at him
out of her dark eyes. "But we know--a number of things. We are not a
bit afraid, and--you would not care to--endure the kind of people likely
to employ us."
"I can endure what you can. I'd like to do it.... Would you rather not
have me?"
"Why, I--it would be delightful--charming--but we had not even dreamed
of such a thing."