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MRS. ESSINGTON
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[Illustration: Frontispiece]
MRS. ESSINGTON
The Romance of a House-party
BY
ESTHER AND LUCIA
CHAMBERLAIN
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY HENRY HUTT
[Illustration: Publisher’s Logo]
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1905
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Copyright, 1905, by
THE CENTURY CO.
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Published May, 1905
THE DE VINNE PRESS
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE HOUSE-PARTY EXPLAINS ITSELF, AND GETS INTO A 3
FOG
II JULIA STEPS OUT OF IT, AND ANSWERS A QUESTION 24
III MRS. ESSINGTON RUNS AWAY FROM HERSELF 44
IV LONGACRE RUNS AFTER 54
V THE PURSUER IS CAPTURED 77
VI THAIR PUTS IN HIS FINGER; CISSY HER FOOT 101
VII THE HOUSE-PARTY IN THE STORM 118
VIII LONGACRE TRAPS HIMSELF 139
IX MRS. ESSINGTON SAYS “NO” 162
X THE MAD RIDING 171
XI THE WHITE DARKNESS 190
XII MRS. ESSINGTON SAYS “YES” 205
XIII THAIR CONGRATULATES 229
XIV THE QUEEN’S COURTESY 236
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Mrs. Essington Frontispiece
PAGE
“‘Oh, it’s been wretched!’” 92
“Her skirts held high above her pretty, 116
preposterous shoes”
“‘For God’s sake—don’t cry!’” 154
“‘Are you ready?’” 174
“Such a strange Julia!” 232
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MRS. ESSINGTON
CHAPTER I
THE HOUSE-PARTY EXPLAINS ITSELF, AND GETS INTO A FOG
“STILL I don’t reconcile you with that lot,” the young man broke out,
after a silence that had lasted long enough to be intimate. He leaned
toward her across the space between the two chairs, lifting his voice a
little to be heard above the racket of the car-wheels.
The woman did not directly reply, unless there was an answer in the
small profile smile she gave him. She had sat for the past ten minutes
admirably still, her face turned from him, her eyes on the flat
blue-green of onion-fields interminably wheeling past the window.
“I mean,” he presently went on in his easy fashion, “they’re hardly your
sort. Oh, good people, but—dullish, you know; the kind you never put up
with unless you have to.”
She gave him again the flitting, profile smile, with an added twinkle,
from which his face seemed to catch illumination; and, for a moment,
they smiled together with the hint of some common reminiscence.
“At all events,” he came back again, “I can’t see why you, of all
people, would be going to the Budds!”
She moved at last, turning a full look upon him. The supple bend of her
long throat, and the cool gray light of her eyes in the warm shadow of
their lashes, touched him like a harmony in music. The beauty and
eloquence of her movements had always appealed to him as her special
charm. His eyes followed the flowing lines of her attitude more
attentively than his ears followed the first part of her reply.
“No, they’re not our sort,”—she spoke with slight emphasis on the
pronoun,—“and”—the subtle modelings around her mouth shadowed a
smile—“we’ll probably bore them horribly. But I’m going—for the same
reason that you are. You know I have never met Julia Budd.”
“But I have,” said Fox Longacre, flushing a little, his blue eyes
steadily meeting her bright gaze.
“Which comes, doesn’t it, to the same thing? Aren’t we both going to
‘Miramar’ to see Miss Budd?”
“She’s lovely—to look at,” he admitted.
“And not in other ways?”
He seemed to ponder this, his clever young face puckered with an
exaggeration of gravity. He gave it up with a puzzled laugh.
“’Pon my word, I don’t know! That’s what I’m going for.”
“To find out—?”
“Oh, whether she is perfectly charming, or—just the other thing.”
It struck her that his manner was more offhand than the occasion
required—that the alternative he had just so gaily admitted troubled him
more than he wished her to know.
But Florence Essington knew, in spite of him, more than she looked, and
much more than she said. She felt that she at least foresaw so much that
to spare herself the train of thought she answered him in quite another
vein.
“You know, Tony,” she said, with that little, settling movement women
use to begin a gossip, “what really amuses me is that we haven’t—at
least I haven’t—the slightest idea, not a glimmer, what people Mrs. Budd
will be asking down. She hardly knows me, hasn’t seen me since I left
school for Paris—don’t you dare to mention how long ago! And yet she
fairly threatened me into it, eyes popping and every hair a-quiver. I
quite got the feeling that she wants something of me.”
“Of course,” he grinned cheerfully, “they always do.”
“But something special.”
“Letters of introduction?” he hazarded. “It’s quite on the cards.
They’ll be going to London next season, if she doesn’t—but, of course,
you know what she’s after.”
“Not, at any rate, _you_,” she quizzed.
At this he laughed out, “Oh, Lord, no!”
Their common amusement was made up of their common knowledge of his
shabby income, his opera still on probation, and his purely potential
career.
The speed of the train was notably slackening. The porter had made the
round with his whisk-broom, and was carrying bags and golf-kits to the
outer platform. The greater number of travelers had risen, and were
rushing or rustling into their coats. Most of these people seemed to
know one another, were all bound for a common goal—the little city of
country houses. In the next three days they would all meet half a dozen
times. They exhaled the heady atmosphere of their small, smart
community.
The stucco front of the San Mateo station slid slowly past the window.
When the train finally came to a stop the chair-car was at the far end
of the long platform, its windows commanding the full curve of the drive
where it swept out of the encroaching trees.
The two, who remained seated in the midst of the general departure, now
realized that the exodus would leave them solitary.
“Good!” said Longacre, contentedly, settling more comfortably into his
chair.
His companion leaned forward to look down the long wooden platform
where, already, the newly alighted travelers were segregating themselves
and their parties, one from another, and were being driven away in a
light whirl of dust. The travel seemed all arrival. One or two callow,
negligent college boys swung aboard the smoker. The porter took up the
stool.
“I really believe—” Mrs. Essington began. The sight of a victoria
lurching around the turn of the drive stopped her sentence.
The vehicle, so indisseverably connected with state and dignity of
progression, bounded at the heels of galloping horses, its occupant
leaning forward with the air of one who would accelerate top speed. The
rigs, driving away from the station, parted for its onward rush. Heads
craned toward it. There was a chorus of laughing recognitions. A man
swung his hat. The train gave a preliminary pulse and quiver as the
victoria came to a violent halt, and the lady sprang out in a puff of
light silk, and ran fluttering and flapping along the platform. The
conductor and porter, all agrin, with an arm under each of her elbows
hoisted her to the step of the now moving train. The footman threw up
the last of half a dozen bags.
Mrs. Essington leaned back and laughed silently across to her companion.
“A victoria! Wouldn’t you know she would!” he observed half quizzically,
half ruefully.
“She’s so, pretty!”
“Oh, pretty,” he conceded generously enough, as the lady’s full-throated
laugh preceded her into the car.
She fairly burst upon them, laughing, blooming, glittering.
“Of all people! You dear things!” She squeezed a hand of each
affectionately. “Don’t tell me there is nothing in premonition! I had
one when I told James the horses must gallop. ‘James,’ I said, ‘it is
absolutely _necessary_ that I catch that train, if I get out and run for
it.’ James adores me, though of course he _knew_ we looked ridiculous.
But it doesn’t matter, now that I have _you_—and just as I was expecting
to be alone _all_ the way to Monterey!”
She sighed, and sank into the seat Longacre had swung round for her;
rose again to be helped out of her coat; removed her hat; caressed her
coiffure; resettled in her chair and shifted the fluttering folds of her
skirts, with a regret or two for her own helplessness and a hope that
the forbearance of her friends was not merely forbearance. Her almond
eyes, blue shot with green, implored Longacre’s to refute the
self-accusation. But he chose to do so in a neat sentence.
Watching her, he had a sense that by her vivacity she staved off the
reproach of superabundant flesh. It was marvelous, the way the
avoirdupois seemed to lessen under her animation. The wide cheeks
flaring away from the dwindling chin; the tight, rosy little mouth drawn
up at the corners in a faint, perpetual smile; the tortoise-shell combs
that pressed her glossy hair close above her pointed ears, all reminded
Longacre irresistibly of a tortoise-shell—but he stopped the simile to
answer Cissy Fitz Hugh’s appeal concerning the fate of his opera.
He answered automatically this question, that had of late begun to weary
him, acceding good-naturedly to Mrs. Fitz Hugh’s sweeping declaration of
her passion for music in general; but he was unhappily aware that
Florence Essington had teasingly assumed the remote but interested air
of a spectator at what threatened to be a tête-à-tête. Nay, more: her
eyes laughed at his attempts to draw her back. He had the aggrieved
feeling of a child whose game has been spoiled. Well, if Florence
wouldn’t play, neither would he. But he was pleasant about it. He slid
easily from good-humored flattery to genial silence, from genial silence
to the smoking-car.
Cissy watched his departure with a pettish mouth. But when the sharp
snapping of the vestibule door had shut the two women in together she
extended her small, plump feet with a luxurious stretch, and turned to
Mrs. Essington with a “Well, my dear!” that implied, “At last!” She
created the impression that she had lived only for this moment. Florence
seemed to see herself exhibited as Cissy’s sole confidante.
“You know,” Cissy began, “it was so sweet of Emma Budd to ask me for the
week’s end, though of course I don’t hunt—but with poor Freddy on his
back since the pony-races, and all the horrid fuss with the plumbing—and
the lawsuit, I’ve been really too anxious for pleasure.” She passed a
plump hand over an unlined brow.
“But when Emma rang up yesterday to beg, and happened to let drop _your_
name, I said, ‘If Mrs. Essington is going I really will make _one_
effort.’” She beamed with candor.
Florence’s smile surmised that the name for which the effort had been
made was more probably Fox Longacre’s. But Cissy’s complacence was
impervious.
“It was a delightful surprise to hear you _were_ going! You come to us
so little!” she lamented.
“Who could resist the country in September?” Florence felt unable to add
amenities to the already overcharged atmosphere.
“Oh, of course! I just _crave_ the country!” Cissy agreed.
“Then the hunting—” Florence continued, aware that quite different
reasons were expected of her—“Mrs. Budd makes her parties interesting
with their variety.”
“Oh, yes—variety,” Cissy cut in. “Emma just craves it! Did you know
she’s asked D. O. Holden—and he’s going?”
At Cissy’s round-eyed pause, Florence felt an inclination to laugh.
Variety seemed to her the last word reminiscent of Holden. Looking back
over the past six months, he appeared to her the one strong, unvarying,
dominant, reiterated note in her resumed American experiences.
“Really!” she managed with gravity.
“Really!” Cissy echoed impressively. “But why _such_ a man, who doesn’t
care for anything but railroads, should be going to Emma, who doesn’t
care for anything but marrying Julia—Of course”—her shallow eyes
endeavored to plumb Mrs. Essington’s—“he’s going for something in
particular.” She topped it off with her laugh, that seemed to fill her
thick throat.
“Perhaps,” Florence helped her out, “he’s going for the same reason that
you are?”
Cissy looked both blank and disconcerted.
“Poor man, he’s usually too anxious for pleasure!” Florence explained.
Cissy took it in seriously. “Really the fact is, a woman is _never_ free
from her cares! But a man, when he rests, rests so completely!”
She sighed, with her eyes on the door through which Fox Longacre had
departed.
She added inconsequently, “You know Emma has asked my cousin Charlie
Thair. Of course it’s perfectly plain why Emma asked _him_. The wonder
is that he dares to go!” Florence could only guess at the situation, but
she thought the wonder would have been if Thair had dodged it. “Though
it’s perfectly indecent of him, I’m sure, with his money, not to marry,”
Cissy ran on; “and of course Julia is a magnificent creature. But the
idea of expecting to really ‘land’ Charlie! It’s too funny! So like dear
Emma.”
Upon this point Florence was, silently, in accord with Mrs. Fitz Hugh.
She could see—from Mrs. Budd’s point of view that every eligible man not
only should, but sooner or later would, marry some suitable girl—how the
proposition was a reasonable one. But she felt there was as slight a
possibility of Charlie Thair’s being unseated from his bachelor state as
from his hunting-saddle.
“Was there”—it was the following thought—“such a scant possibility of
Fox Longacre?”
She turned from her vis-à-vis to the window, as the train, with a roar
and a swing, rushed into the cañon, and fixed her eyes on the dizzy
fascination of the whirling river below.
The stream of events of the last five years was more rapid and intricate
to the vision of her mind. The first light ripple on this stream was her
clear memory of the charming, inconsequent American boy whom she had met
in Vienna five years before. It had been on one of her trips, that were
always solitary, since Captain Essington was too busy spending her neat
little fortune in various very private and proper gambling-clubs to care
how his wife amused herself.
How this boy, Fox Longacre, with his facile Gallic Americanism, had
stood out among the miscellaneous lot of students of the Vienna
Conservatory! She remembered his passionate enthusiasm for the music
that he whimsically called his “trade,” his spasmodic application.
They had got on famously in their short, merry acquaintance.
She had felt it the greatest pity in the world that he should be an
orphan, a waif, with just enough money to let him be comfortably idle,
and such potentialities of power running riot.
She had regretted the end of that gay little friendship when she
returned to her sad-colored London.
Between this first encounter and the next intervened her catastrophe.
Something done in those private and particular gambling-houses—something
that never clearly came out of them—swallowed the half of the money
remaining, and directed the shot that ended Captain Essington’s life. A
grim, a bitter wrench it had been! The mere memory of it brought back
the ghost of the old ache. She had realized then what depths of
suffering might be, in which love and bereavement bore no part. Even the
relief of freedom had been overwhelmed in the shock of violent death, of
disorganized existence.
How vividly it had set before her the instability of present
circumstances, the danger of depending on what had been! She had been
frightened to drawing into herself, away from the interests of the world
around her that had meant so much to her.
In her vague retrospection it seemed to her it had been more the
kindness of her friends than any effort on her own part that had not
only kept, but lifted her place among them in the difficult years that
followed; such a place that, when the brilliant boy of her Vienna memory
turned up in London, older, less confident, more moody by three years,
and desperately “out” of everything he should have been “in,” she had
almost bewildered him by the number of doors she could open to him. All
her social threads so casually picked up, at once had significance, were
manipulated to a purpose. What a zest, what a spirit her life had had!
How self-distrustful he had been! How she had, at moments, pulled him
after her! It had been desperate at times to keep him up to it, but
every minute had been worth living. And now that her long hope was
almost realized, now that he seemed on the very verge of his
success,—now—
She shifted her eyes to the two bright glints on the toes of Cissy Fitz
Hugh’s patent leathers. The car was one dusky tone in the deepening
twilight, and these two hypnotic points of light helped to fix her
memory more clearly on the past.
Well, she had been the one woman to him. He had glorified her as a boy
will. What a joy it had been, that adoring loyalty of his, even while
she knew she cheated him! The memory of his old impetuosity, his
insistence, his unhesitating confidence over the inevitable question
that had risen between them, came back to her, a warm, pleasurable
emotion. And then the sadder sequence! For it had come to her then that
a woman seasoned, sophisticated, settled, who would marry a boy ten
years her junior—and such a boy—would be either a knave or a fool.
And yet to get on without her? She knew he couldn’t afford it then.
Could she, on the other hand, get on without him? She had made her peace
with herself, through the next three years, with what she had given—the
balance to his chaotic impulse, the spur to his ambition. She had so
lived into his interests, so made herself identified with them, that she
had lost sight of her old dread of changing circumstance.
Six months ago, when she had left London, she had been so secure in his
allegiance—an allegiance so settled, so taken for granted, that its
first significance was almost lost sight of—that the separation had not
given her a passing anxiety. Now she asked herself if his mad dash with
the Gretrys across an ocean and a continent was to have brought him to
her again merely to shake her faith in that allegiance.
The slamming of the car door brought her back shrewdly to her
surroundings. She looked up. In the pictures of her memory Longacre had
figured always as a boy, a Viennese student as she had seen him first.
Now the sight of him as he was, coming down the aisle upon her, struck
her as freshly as the impression of a stranger. He was no longer youth,
painted in full curves and raw colors, but young maturity grayed over,
sharp-lined, strenuous with the vital endeavor he had put into living.
He seemed to be catching up the years between them. She had a quick
revulsion. She asked herself, if, after all—
Cissy Fitz Hugh was yawning prettily, stretching herself awake.
“We’ll be in in five minutes,” Longacre said, his hand on the back of
Florence Essington’s chair. “Will you have your cloak?”
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