THE CHANGE IN THE RECTOR’S EYES
The grand privilege of Mrs. Jim Sargent’s happy life was to worry all
she liked. She began with the rise of the sun, and worried about the
silver chest; whether it had been locked over night. Usually she slipped
downstairs, in the grey of the morning, to see, and, thus happily
started on the day, she worried about breakfast and luncheon and dinner;
and Jim and her sister and her niece, Lucile; and the servants and the
horses and the flowers; and at nights she lay awake and heard burglars.
Just now, as she sat on the seven chairs and the four benches of the
mahogany panelled library, amid a wealth of serious-minded sculpture and
painting and rare old prints, she was bathed in a new ecstasy of painful
enjoyment. She was worried about Gail! It was six-thirty now, and Gail
had not yet returned from Lucile’s.
At irregular intervals, say first two minutes and then three and a half,
and then one, she walked into the Louis XIV reception parlour, and made
up her mind to have a new jeweller try his hand at the sun-ray clock,
and looked out of the windows to see if Lucile’s car was arriving.
Between times she pursued her favourite literary diversion; reading the
automobile accidents in the evening papers. She had spent all her later
years in looking for Jim’s name among the list of the maimed!
Mrs. Helen Davies, dressed for dinner with as much care as if she had
been about to attend one of the unattainable Mrs. Waverly-Gaites’
annuals, came sweeping down the marble stairs with the calm aplomb of
one whom nothing can disturb, and, lorgnette in hand, turned into the
library without even a glance into the floor-length mirror in the hall.
Her amber beaded gown was set perfectly on her fine shoulders, and her
black hair, fashionably streaked with grey, was properly done, as she
was perfectly aware.
“I’m so glad you came down, Helen!” breathed Mrs. Sargent, with a sigh
of relief. “I’m so worried!”
“Naturally, Grace,” returned her sister Helen, who was reputed to be
gifted in repartee. “One would be, under the circumstances. What are
they?” and she tapped her chin delicately with the tip of her lorgnette,
as a warning to an insipient yawn. It was no longer good form to be
bored.
“Gail!” replied Mrs. Sargent, who was inclined to dumpiness and a
decided contrast to her stately widowed sister. “She hasn’t come home
from Lucile’s!”
Mrs. Helen Davies sat beneath the statue of Minerva presenting wisdom to
the world, and arranged the folds of her gown to the most graceful
advantage.
“You shouldn’t expect her on time, coming from Lucile’s,” she observed,
with a smile of proper pride. She was immensely fond of her daughter
Lucile; but she preferred to live with her sister. “I have a brilliant
idea, Grace. I’ll telephone,” and without seeming to exert herself in
the least, she glided from her picturesque high-backed flemish chair,
and sat at the library table, and drew the phone to her, and secured her
daughter’s number.
“Hello, Lucile,” she called, in the most friendly of tones. “You’d
better send Gail home, before your Aunt Grace develops wrinkles.”
“Gail isn’t here,” reported Lucile triumphantly. “She dropped in, two
hours ago, and dropped right out, without waiting for her tea. You’d
never guess with whom she’s driving! Edward E. Allison! He’s the richest
bachelor in New York!”
Mrs. Helen Davies turned to her anxious sister with a sparkle in her
black eyes.
“It’s all right, Grace,” and then she turned eagerly to the phone. “Did
he come in?”
“They were in too big a rush,” jabbered Lucile excitedly. “He doesn’t
look old at all. Arly and I watched them drive away. They seemed to be
great chums. Gail got him at Uncle Jim’s vestry. Doesn’t she look
stunning in red!”
“Where is she?” interrupted Mrs. Sargent, holding her thumb.
“Out driving,” reported sister Helen. “Have you sent your invitations
for the house-party, Lucile?” and she discussed that important subject
until Mrs. Sargent’s thumb ached.
“With whom is Gail driving, and where?” asked sister Grace, anxious for
detail.
Mrs. Helen Davies touched all of her fingertips together in front of her
on the library table, and beamed on Grace.
“Don’t worry about Gail,” she smilingly advised. “She is driving with
Edward E. Allison. He is the richest bachelor in New York, though not
socially prominent. No one has ever been able to interest him. I predict
for Gail a brilliant future,” and she moved over contentedly to her
favourite contrast with Minerva.
“Gail would attract any one,” returned Mrs. Sargent complacently, and
then a little crease came in her brow. “I wonder where she met him.”
“At the vestry meeting, Lucile said.”
“Oh,” and Mrs. Sargent’s brow cleared instantly. “Jim introduced them. I
wonder where Jim is!”
“I am glad Gail is not definitely engaged,” mused Mrs. Davies. “I am
pleased with her. Young Mr. Clemmens may seem to be a very brilliant
match, back home, but, with her exceptional advantages, she has every
right to expect to do better.”
Again the creases came in Mrs. Sargent’s brow.
“I don’t know,” she worried. “Gail has had four letters in four days
from Mr. Clemmens. Of course, if she genuinely cares for him—”
“But she doesn’t,” Helen comforted herself, figuring it all out
carefully. “A young man who would write a letter a day, would exert
every possible pressure to secure a promise, before he would let a
beautiful creature like Gail come to New York for the winter; and the
fact that he did not succeed proves, conclusively, that she has not made
up her mind about him.”
The door opened, and Jim Sargent came in, wiping the snow from his
stubby moustache before he distributed his customary hearty greetings to
the family.
“Where’s Gail?” he wanted to know.
“Out driving with Edward E. Allison,” answered both ladies.
“Still?” inquired Jim Sargent, and then he laughed. “She’s a clever
girl. Smart as a whip! She nearly started a riot in the vestry.”
“Was Willis Cunningham there?” inquired Mrs. Davies interestedly.
“Took me in a corner after the meeting and told me that Gail bore a
remarkable resemblance to the Fratelli Madonna, and might he call.”
“Mr. Cunningham is one of the men I was anxious for her to meet,” and
Mrs. Davies touched her second finger, as if she were checking off a
list.
“What did Gail do?” wondered Mrs. Sargent.
Jim, crossing to the door, chuckled, and removed his watch chain from
his vest.
“Told Boyd that Market Square Church was a good business proposition.”
The ladies did not share his amusement.
“To the Reverend Boyd!” breathed Mrs. Sargent, shocked. She considered
the Reverend Smith Boyd the most wonderful young man of his age.
“How undiplomatic,” worried Mrs. Davies. “I must have a little talk with
her about cleverness. It’s dangerous in a girl.”
“Not these days,” declared Jim Sargent, who stood ready to defend Gail,
right or wrong, at every angle. “Allison and Manning enjoyed it
immensely.”
“Oh,” remarked Helen Davies, somewhat mollified. “And Mr. Cunningham?”
“And what did the Reverend Boyd say?” inquired Mrs. Sargent, much
concerned.
“I don’t think he liked it very well,” speculated Gail’s Uncle Jim.
“He’s coming over to-night to discuss church matters. I’ll have to dress
in a hurry,” and he looked at the watch which he held, with its chain,
in his hand.
The telephone bell rang, and Sargent, who could not train himself to
wait for a servant to sift the messages, answered it immediately, with
his characteristic explosive-first-syllabled:
“Hello!”
“Oh, it’s you, Uncle Jim,” called a buoyant voice. “Mr. Allison and I
have found the most enchanting roadhouse in the world, and we’re going
to take dinner here. It’s all right, isn’t it?”
“Certainly,” he replied, equally buoyant. “Enjoy yourself, Chubsy,” and
he hung up the receiver.
“What is it?” asked Mrs. Davies, in a tone distinctly chill. She had a
premonition that Jim Sargent had done something foolish. He seemed so
pleased.
“Gail won’t be home,” he announced carelessly, starting for the stairs.
“She’s dining with Allison at some roadhouse.”
“Unchaperoned!” gasped Mrs. Davies.
“She’s all right, Helen,” remarked Jim, starting upstairs. “Allison’s a
fine fellow.”
“But what will he think of Gail!” protested Helen. “That sort of
unconventionality has gone clear out. Jim, you’ll have to get back that
number!”
“Sorry,” regretted Jim. “Can’t do it. Against the telephone rules,” and
he went on upstairs, positively humming!
The two ladies looked at each other, and sat down in the valley of the
shadows of gloom. There was nothing to be done! Mrs. Davies, however,
was different from her sister. Grace Sargent was an accomplished
worrier, who could remain numb in the exercise of her art, but Helen
Davies was a woman of action. She presently called her daughter.
“Have you started your dinner, Lucile?” she demanded.
“No, Ted just came home,” reported Lucile. “What’s the matter?”
“Don’t let him take time to dress,” urged her mother. “You must go right
out and chaperon Gail.”
“Where is she?” Lucile delayed to inquire.
“At some roadhouse, dining with Mr. Allison!”
“Well, what do you think of Gail!” exulted Lucile. “Oh, Arly!” and Mrs.
Davies heard the receiver drop to the end of its line. She heard
laughter, and then the voice of Lucile again. “Mother, she’s with Edward
E. Allison, and they’ll do better without a chaperon. Besides, mother
dear, there’s a million roadhouses. We’ll come down after dinner. I want
to see her when she returns.”
“I don’t suppose she could be found, except by accident,” granted her
mother, and gave up the enterprise. “Times are constantly changing,” she
complained to her sister. “The management of a girl becomes more
difficult every year. So much freedom makes them disregardful of the aid
of their elders in making a selection.”
It was not until nine o’clock that the ladies expressed their worry
again. At that hour, Ted and Lucile Teasdale and Arly Fosland came in
with the exuberance of a New Year’s Eve celebration.
“It’s great sleighing to-night,” stated Lucile’s husband, who was a
thin-waisted young man, with a splendid natural gift for dancing.
“All that’s missing is the bells,” chattered the black-haired Arly,
breaking straight for her favourite big couch in the library. “The only
way to have any speed in an auto is to go sidewise.”
“We’re to get up a skidding match, so I can bet on our chauffeur,”
laughed Lucile, fluffing her blonde ringlets before the big mirror in
the hall. “We slid a complete circle coming down through the Park, and
never lost a revolution!”
“I’ve been thinking it must be bad driving,” fretted Mrs. Sargent. “Gail
should be home by now!”
“Allison’s a safe driver,” comforted Ted, who liked to see everybody
happy.
Jim Sargent came to the door of the study, in which he was closeted with
the Reverend Smith Boyd. Jim was practically the young rector’s business
guardian.
“Hello, folks,” he nodded. “Gail home?”
“Not yet,” responded Mrs. Sargent, in whose brow the creases were
becoming fixed.
“It’s hardly time,” estimated Jim, and went back in the study.
“Ted has a new divinity,” boasted the wife of that agreeable young man.
“Had, you mean,” corrected Ted. “She’s deserted me for a single man.”
“Is it the Piccadilly widow?” inquired Arly, punching another pillow
under her elbow.
“Certainly,” corroborated Ted. “You don’t suppose I have a new one every
day.”
“You’re losing your power of fascination then,” retorted Arly. “Lucile’s
still in the running with two a day.”
“She should have her kind by the dozen,” responded Ted, complacently
stroking his glossy moustache.
“The young set takes up some peculiar fads,” mused Mrs. Davies, with a
trace of concern. “I can’t quite accustom myself to the sanction of
flirting.”
“Neither can I,” agreed Ted. “It takes the fun out of it.”
“The only joy is in boasting about it at home,” complained Arly Fosland.
“I can’t even get Gerald interested in my affairs, so I’ve dropped
them.”
“Gerald wouldn’t understand a flirtation of his own,” criticised Ted. “I
never saw a man who made such hard work of belonging to twelve clubs.
Arly, how did you manage to make him see your fatal lure?”
“Mother did it,” returned Arly, drowsily absorbing the grateful warmth
of the room.
“I don’t think anything is half so dangerous to a bachelor as a mother,”
stated Lucile, with a friendly smile at Mrs. Davies.
“I’m going to start a new fad,” announced Arly, sitting up and
considering the matter; “prudery. There’s nothing more effective.”
“It’s too wicked,” objected Lucile’s mother, and scored another point
for herself. It was a wearing task to keep up a reputation for repartee.
“I’m terribly vexed,” confided Lucile, stopping behind Ted’s chair, and
idly tickling the back of his neck. “I thought it would be such a
brilliant scheme to give a winter week-end party, but Mrs. Acton is
going to give one at her country place.”
“Before or after?” demanded Mrs. Davies, with whom this was a point of
the utmost importance.
“A week after,” answered Lucile, “but her invitations are out. I wish I
hadn’t mailed mine. What can we do to make ours notable?”
That being a matter worth considering, the entire party, with the
exception of Aunt Grace, who was listening for the doorbell, set their
wits and their tongues to work. Mrs. Helen Davies took a keener interest
in it than any of them. The invitation list was the most important of
all, for it was a long and arduous way to the heaven of the socially
elect, and it took generations to accomplish the journey. The Murdock
girls, Grace and herself, had no great-grandfather. Murdock Senior had
made his money after Murdock Junior was married, but in time to give the
girls a thorough polishing in an exclusive academy. Thus launched, Helen
had married a man with a great-great-grandfather, but Grace had married
Jim Sargent. Jim was a dear, and had plenty of money, and was as good a
railroader as Grace’s father, with whom he had been great chums; but
still he was Jim Sargent. Gail’s mother, who had married Jim’s brother,
had seven ancestors, but a mother’s family name is so often overlooked.
Nevertheless, when Gail came to marry, the maternal ancestry, all other
things being favourable, might even secure her an invitation to Mrs.
Waverly-Gaites’ annual! Reaching this point in her circle of
speculation, Mrs. Helen Davies came back to her starting place, and
looked at the library clock with a shock. Ten; and the girl was not yet
home!
The Reverend Smith Boyd came out of the study with his most active
vestryman, and joined the circle of waiting ones. He was a pleasant
addition to the party, for, in spite of belonging to the clergy, he was
able to conduct himself, in Rome, in a quite acceptable Roman fashion.
Pleasant as he was, they wished he would go home, because it was not
convenient to worry in his company; and by this time Lucile herself was
beginning to watch the clock with some anxiety. Only Mrs. Sargent felt
no restraint. An automobile honked at the door as if it were stopping,
and she half arose; then the same honk sounded half way down the block,
and she sat down again.
“I’m so worried about Gail!” she stated, holding her thumb.
“We all are,” supplemented Mrs. Davies quickly. “She has been dining
with a party of friends, and the streets are so slippery.”
“I should judge Mr. Allison to be a very capable driver,” said the
Reverend Smith Boyd; and the ladies glared at Jim. “I envy them their
drive on a night like this. I wonder if there will be good coasting.”
“Fine,” judged Jim Sargent, looking out of the window toward the
adjoining rectory. “That first snow was wet and it froze. Now there’s a
good inch on top of it, and, at this rate, there should be three by
morning. A little thaw, and another freeze, and a little more snow
to-morrow, and I’ll be tempted to make a bob-sled.”
“I’ll help you,” offered the Reverend Smith Boyd, with a glow of
pleasure in his particularly fine eyes. “I used to have a twelve seated
bob-sled, which never started down the hill with less than fifteen.”
“I never rode on one,” complained Arly. “I think I’m due for a bob-sled
party.”
“You’re invited,” Lucile promptly told her. “Uncle Jim, you and Dr. Boyd
will have to hunt up your hammer and saw.”
“I’ll start right to work,” offered the young rector, with the alacrity
which had made him a favourite.
“If the snow holds, we’ll go over into the Jersey hills, and slide,”
promised Sargent with enthusiasm. “I’ll give the party.”
“I seem to anticipate a pleasant evening,” considered Ted Teasdale,
whose athletics were confined entirely to dancing. “We’ll ride down hill
on the sleds, and up hill in the machines.”
“That’s barred,” immediately protested Jim. “The boys have to pull the
girls up hill. Isn’t that right, Boyd?”
“It was correct form when I was a boy,” returned the rector, with a
laugh. He held his muscular hands out before him as if he could still
feel the cut of the rope in his palms. He squared his big shoulders, and
breathed deeply, in memory of those health-giving days. There was a
flush in his cheeks, and his eyes, which were sometimes green, glowed
with a decided blue. Arlene Fosland, looking lazily across at him, from
the comfortable nest which she had not quitted all evening, decided that
it was a shame that he had been cramped into the ministry.
“There’s Gail!” cried Mrs. Sargent, jumping to her feet and running into
the hall, before the butler could come in answer to the bell. She opened
the door, and was immediately kissed, then Gail came back into the
library without stopping to remove her furs. She was followed by
Allison, and she carried something inside her coat. Her cheeks were
rosy, from the crisp air, and the snow sparkled on her brown hair like
tiny diamonds.
“We’ve been buying a dog!” she breathlessly explained, and, opening her
coat, she produced an animated teddy bear, with two black eyes and one
black pointed nose protruding from a puff ball of pure white. She set it
on the floor, where it waddled uncertainly in three directions, and
finally curled between the Reverend Smith Boyd’s feet.
“A collie!” and the Reverend Smith Boyd picked up the warm infant for an
admiring inspection. “It’s a beautiful puppy.”
“Isn’t it a dear!” exclaimed Gail, taking it away from him, and
favouring him with a smile. She whisked the fluffy little ball over to
her Aunt Grace, and left it in that lady’s lap, while she threw off her
furs.
“Where could you buy a dog at this hour?” inquired Mrs. Davies, glancing
at the clock, which stood now at the accusing hour of a quarter of
eleven.
“We woke up the kennel man,” laughed Gail, turning, with a sparkling
glance, to Allison, who was being introduced ceremoniously to the ladies
by Uncle Jim. “We had a perfectly glorious evening! We dined at Roseleaf
Inn, entirely surrounded by hectic lights, then we drove five miles into
the country and bought Flakes. We came home so fast that Mr. Allison
almost had to hold me in.” She turned, laughing, to find the eyes of the
Reverend Smith Boyd fixed on her in cold disapproval. They were no
longer blue!