The following morning, Aunt Hannah returned to her tiny apartment on
Park Avenue, financially benefitted by her Westchester sojourn, having
extracted a bolt of Chinese loot-silk for a gown from her nephew's
dismayed wife, and the usual check from her nephew.
Lindley, a slow, pallid, and thrifty soul, had always viewed Aunt
Hannah's event with unfeigned alarm, because, somehow or other, at the
close of every visit he found himself presenting her with a check. And
it almost killed him.
Years ago he had done it for the first time. He had never intended to;
certainly never meant to continue. Every time she appeared he vowed to
himself that he wouldn't. But before her visit ended, the pressure of
custom became too much for him; a deadly sense of obligation toward this
dreadful woman--of personal responsibility for her indigence--possessed
him, became gradually an obsession, until he exorcised it by the present
of a check.
She never spoke of it--never seemed to hint at it--always seemed
surprised and doubtful of accepting; but some devilish spell certainly
permeated the atmosphere in her immediate vicinity, drawing perfectly
good money out of his innermost and tightly buttoned breast-pockets and
leaving it certified and carelessly crumpled in her velvet reticule.
It happened with a sickening regularity which now he had come to view
with the modified internal fury of resignation. It had simply become a
terrible custom, and, with all his respectable inertia and thrifty
caution, adherence to custom ruled Lindley Hammerton. For years he had
pinched roses; for years he had drawn checks for Aunt Hannah. Nothing
but corporeal dissolution could terminate these customs.
As for Aunt Hannah, she banked her check and had her bolt of silk made
into a gown, and trotted briskly about her business with perennial
self-confidence in her own ability to get on.
Once or twice during the following fortnight she remembered Jacqueline,
and mentally tabulated her case as a possible source of future income;
but social duties were many and acridly agreeable, and pecuniary
pickings plenty. Up to her small, thin ears in intrigue, harmless and
not quite so harmless, she made hay busily while the social sun shone;
and it was near the end of February before a stagnation in pleasure and
business brought Jacqueline's existence into her mind again.
She called up Silverwood, and eventually got Desboro on the wire.
"Do you know," she said, "that your golden-headed and rather attenuated
inamorata has never had the civility to call on me!"
"She has been too busy."
"Too busy gadding about Silverwood with you!"
"She hasn't been here since you saw her."
"What!"
"It's quite true. An important collection is to be sold under the hammer
on the premises; she had the contract to engineer that matter before she
undertook to catalogue my stuff."
"Oh! Haven't you seen her since?"
"Yes."
"_Not_ at Silverwood?"
"No, only at her office."
He could hear her sniff and mutter something, then:
"I thought you were going to give some parties at Silverwood, and ask me
to bring your pretty friend," she said.
"I am. She has the jades and crystals to catalogue. What I want, as soon
as she gets rid of Clydesdale, is for her to resume work here--come up
and remain as my guest until the cataloguing is finished. So you see
I'll have to have you, too."
"That's a cordial and disinterested invitation, James!"
"Will you come? I'll ask half a dozen people. You can kill a few at
cards, too."
"When?"
"The first Thursday in March. It's a business proposition, but it's
between you and me, and she is not to suspect it."
"Very well," said Aunt Hannah cheerfully. "I'll arrange my engagements
accordingly. And do try to have a gay party, James; and don't ask the
Clydesdales. You know how Westchester gets on my nerves. And I always
hated her."
"You are very unjust to her and to him----"
"You can't tell me anything about Cary Clydesdale, or about his wife,
either," she interrupted tartly, and rang off in a temper. And Desboro
went back to his interrupted business with Vail.
Since Jacqueline had been compelled to suspend temporarily her inventory
at Silverwood in favor of prior engagements, Desboro had been to the
city only twice, and both times to see her.
He had seen her in her office, remained on both occasions for an hour
only, and had then taken the evening train back to Silverwood. But every
evening he had written her of the day just ended--told her about the
plans for farming, now maturing, of the quiet life at Silverwood, how
gradually he was reëstablishing neighbourly relations with the
countryside, how much of a country squire he was becoming.
"--And the whole thing with malice aforethought," he wrote. "--Every
blessed move only a strategy in order that, to do you honour, I may
stand soberly and well before the community when you are among my
guests.
"In tow of Aunt Hannah; engaged for part of the day in your business
among the jades, crystals, and porcelains of a celebrated collection;
one of a house party; and the guest of a young man who has returned very
seriously to till the soil of his forefathers; all that anybody can
possibly think of it will be that your host is quite as captivated by
your grace, wisdom, and beauty as everybody else will be.
"And what do you think of that, Jacqueline?"
* * * * *
"I think," she wrote, "that no other man has ever been as nice to me. I
do not really care about the other people, but I quite understand that
you and I could not see each other as freely as we have been doing,
without detriment to me. I like you--superfluous admission! And I should
miss seeing you--humble confession! And so I suppose it is best that
everybody should know who and what I am--a business woman well-bred
enough to sit at table with your friends, with sufficient
self-confidence to enter and leave a room properly, to maintain my grasp
on the conversational ball, and to toss it lightly to my vis-à-vis when
the time comes.
"All this is worth doing and enduring for the sake of being your guest.
Without conscientious scruples, apprehensions, perplexities, and fears I
could never again come to Silverwood and be there alone with you as I
have been. Always I have been secretly unhappy and afraid after a day
with you at Silverwood. Sooner or later it would have had to end. It can
not go on--as it has been going. I know it. The plea of business is soon
worn threadbare if carelessly used.
"And so--caring for your friendship as I do--and it having become such a
factor in my life--I find it easy to do what you ask me; and I have
arranged to go with Mrs. Hammerton to Silverwood on the first Thursday
in March, to practice my profession, enjoy the guests at your house
party, and cultivate our friendship with a clear conscience and a
tranquil and happy mind.
"It was just that little element of protection I needed to make me more
happy than I have ever been. Somehow, I _couldn't_ care for you as
frankly and freely as I wanted to. And some things have happened--you
know what I mean. I didn't reproach you, or pretend surprise or anger. I
felt neither--only a confused sense of unhappiness. But--I cared for you
enough to submit.
"Now I go to you with a sense of security that is delightful. You don't
understand how a girl situated as I am feels when she knows that she is
in a position where any woman has the right to regard her with
suspicion. Skating, motoring, with you, I could not bear to pass people
you knew and to whom you bowed--women--even farmers' wives.
"But now it will be different; I feel so warmly confident at heart, so
secure, that I shall perhaps dare to say and do and be much that you
never suspected was in me. The warm sun of approval makes a very
different person of me. A girl, who, in her heart, does not approve of
what she is doing, and who is always expecting to encounter other women
who would not approve, is never at her best--isn't even herself--and
isn't really happy, even with a man she likes exceedingly. You will, I
think, see a somewhat different girl on Thursday."
* * * * *
"If your words are sometimes a little misty," he wrote, "your soul
shines through everything you say, with a directness entirely heavenly.
Life, for us, begins on Thursday, under cover no longer, but in the
open. And the field will be as fair for you as for me. That is as it
should be; that is as far as I care to look. But somehow, after all is
done and said that ever will be said and done between you and me, I am
conscious that when we two emerge from the dream called 'living,' you
will lead and direct us both--even if you never do so here on earth.
"I am not given to this sort of stuff.
"Jacqueline, dear, I'd like to amuse my guests with something unusual.
Could you help me out?"
* * * * *
She answered: "I'll do anything in the world I can to make your house
party pleasant for you and your guests. So I've asked Mr. Sissly to give
a recital. It is quite the oddest thing; you don't _listen_ to a
symphony which he plays on the organ; you _see_ it. He will send the
organ, electrical attachments, lights, portable stage and screen, to
Silverwood; and his men will install everything in the armoury.
"Then, if it would amuse your guests, I could tell them a little about
your jades and crystals, and do it in a rather unusual way. I think
you'd rather like it. Shall I?"
* * * * *
He wrote some days later: "What a darling you are! Anything you do will
be charming. Sissly's men have arrived and are raising a racket in the
armoury with hammer and saw.
"The stage will look quite wonderful between the wide double rank of
equestrian figures in armour.
"Aunt Hannah writes that you called on her and that you and she are
coming up on the train together, which is delightfully sensible, and
exactly as it should be. Heaven alone knows how long you are going to be
able to endure her. It's rather odd, you know, but I like her and always
have, though she's made things disagreeable for me more than once in my
life.
"Your room is ready; Aunt Hannah's adjoins. Quarters for other guests
are ready also. Have you any idea how I look forward to your coming?"
* * * * *
Three days later his guests arrived on the first three morning trains--a
jolly crowd of young people--nineteen of them--who filled his
automobiles and horse-drawn vehicles. Their luggage followed in vans,
from which protruded skis and hockey sticks. There being no porter, the
butler of Silverwood House received them in front of the lodge at the
outer gates, offering the "guest cup," a Desboro custom of many
generations, originating in England, although the lodge had stood empty
and the gates open since his grandfather's time.
[Illustration: "There was, for a moment, an unconscious and unwonted
grace in his manner"]
Desboro welcomed them on his own doorstep; and there was, for a moment,
an unconscious and unwonted grace in his manner and bearing--an
undefined echo in his voice of other and more courtly times, as he gave
his arm to Aunt Hannah and led her inside the hall.
There it exhaled and vanished as Mrs. Quant and the maids smilingly
conducted the guests to their various quarters--vanished with the
smiling formality of his greeting to Jacqueline.
The men returned first, clad in their knickerbockers and skating
jackets. Cocktails awaited them in the billiard-room, and they gathered
there in noisy curiosity over this celebrated house not often opened to
anybody except its owner.
"Who is the dream, Jim?" demanded Reginald Ledyard. "I mean the wonder
with the gold hair, that Mrs. Hammerton has in tow?"
"A friend of Aunt Hannah's--an expert in antique art--and as clever and
charming as she is pretty," said Desboro pleasantly.
"High-brow! Oh, help!" muttered Ledyard. "Where's your library? I want
to read up."
"She can talk like other people," remarked Van Alstyne. "I got next on
the train--old lady Hammerton stood for me. She can flirt some, I'll
tell you those."
Bertie Barkley extracted the olive from a Bronx and considered it
seriously.
"The old lady is on a salary, of course. Nobody ever heard of anybody
named Nevers," he remarked.
"They'll hear of somebody named Nevers now," observed Captain Herrendene
with emphasis, "or," he added in modest self-depreciation, "I am all
kinds of a liar."
"Where did you know her, Jim?" inquired Ledyard curiously.
"Oh, Miss Nevers's firm has charge of cataloguing my armour and jades.
They're at it still. That's how I first met her--in a business way. And
when I found her to be a friend of Aunt Hannah's, I asked them both up
here as my guests."
"You always had an eye for beauty," said Cairns. "What do you suppose
Mrs. Hammerton's game is?"
"Why, to make Miss Nevers known where she really ought to belong,"
replied Desboro frankly.
"How high does she plan to climb?" asked Barkley. "Above the vegetating
line?"
"Probably not as far as the line of perpetual stupidity," said Desboro.
"Miss Nevers appears to be a very busy, and very intelligent, and
self-sufficient young lady, and I imagine she would have neither time
nor inclination to decorate any of the restless, gilt-encrusted sets."
Van Alstyne said: "She's got the goods to deliver almost anywhere Mrs.
Hammerton chooses--F. O. B. what?"
"She's some dream," admitted Ledyard as they all moved toward the
library.
There were a lot of gay young girls there in skating costumes; Ledyard's
sister Marie, with her large figure and pretty but slightly stupid face;
Helsa Steyr, blonde, athletic, and red-haired; Athalie Vannis, with her
handsome, dark face, so often shadowed by discontent; Barkley's animated
little wife, Elizabeth, grey-eyed and freckled and brimming with
mischief of the schoolboy quality; the stately Katharine Frere; Aunt
Hannah; and Jacqueline.
All except the latter two had been doing something to cocktails of
various species; Jacqueline took nothing; Aunt Hannah, Scotch whiskey
with relish.
"It's about the last of the skating," said Desboro, "so we'd better take
what we can get as soon as luncheon is over. Pick your partners and
don't squabble. Me for Mrs. Hammerton!" and he led her out.
At table he noticed that Captain Herrendene had secured Jacqueline, and
that Reggie Ledyard, on the other side, was already neglecting his own
partner in his eager, good-looking and slightly loutish fashion of
paying court to the newest and prettiest girl.
Aunt Hannah's glance continually flickered sideways at Desboro, but when
she discovered that he was aware of her covert scrutiny, she said under
her breath:
"I've been shopping with her; the little thing didn't know how to clothe
herself luxuriously in the more intimate details. I'd like to see
anybody's maid patronise her now! Yours don't know enough--but she'll go
where there are those who do know, sooner or later. What do you think of
her?"
"What I always think," he said coolly. "She is the most interesting girl
I ever met."
"She's too clever to care very much for what I can offer her," said Mrs.
Hammerton drily. "Glitter and tinsel would never dazzle her, James;
pretense, complacency, bluff, bragg, she'd devilish soon see through it
all with those clear, intelligent eyes--see at the bottom what lies
squirming there--anxiety, self-distrust, eternal dread, undying envy,
the secret insecurity of those who imitate the real--which does not
exist in America--and who know in their hopeless hearts that they are
only shams, like that two-year-old antique tavern yonder, made quaint to
order."
He said smilingly: "She'll soon have enough of your particular
familiars. But, little by little, she'll find herself in accord with
people who seek her as frankly as she seeks them. Natural selection, you
know. Your only usefulness is to give her the opportunity, and you've
begun to do it, bless your heart."
She flashed a malicious glance at him; under cover of the gay hubbub she
said:
"I may do more than that, James."
"Really."
"Yes; I may open her eyes to men of your sort."
"Her eyes are open already, I suppose."
"Not very wide. For example--you'd never marry her. Would you?"
"Don't talk that way," he said coldly.
"No, I don't have to talk at all. I _know_. If you ever marry, I know
what deadly species of female it will be. You're probably right; you're
that kind, too--no real substance to you, James. And so I think I'll
have to look after my intellectual protégée, and be very sure that her
pretty eyes are wide open."
He turned toward her; their glances met level and hard:
"Let matters alone," he said. "I have myself in hand."
"You have in hand a horse with a runaway record, James."
Cairns, on her left, spoke to her; she turned and answered, then
presented her well-shaped back to that young gentleman and again crossed
glances with Desboro, who was waiting, cool as steel.
"Come, James," she said in a low voice, "what do you mean to do? A man
always means something or nothing; and the latter is the more
dangerous."
As that was exactly what Desboro told himself he had always meant, he
winced and remained silent.
"Oh, you--the lot of you!" she said with smiling contempt. "I'll equip
that girl to take care of herself before I'm through with her. Watch
me."
"It is part of your business. Equip her to take care of herself as
thoroughly as anybody you know. Then it will be up to her--as it is up
to all women, after all--and to all men."
"Oh, is it? You've all the irresponsibility and moral rottenness of your
Cavalier ancestors in you; do you know it, James? The Puritan, at least,
never doubted that he was his brother's keeper."
Desboro said doggedly: "With the individual alone rests what that
individual will be."
"Is that your mature belief?" she asked ironically.
"It is, dear lady."
"Lord! To think of a world full of loosened creatures like you! A
civilised society swarming with callow and irresponsible opportunists,
amateur Jesuits, idle intelligences reinfected with the toxins of their
own philosophy! But," she shrugged, "I am indicting man himself--nations
and nations of him. Besides, we women have always known this. And
hybrids are hybrids. If there's any claret in the house, tell Farris to
fetch some. Don't be angry, James. Man and woman once were different
species, and the world has teemed with their hybrids since the first
mating."
Mrs. Barkley leaned across the table toward him:
"What's the matter, James? You look dangerous."
His face cleared and he smiled:
"Nobody is really dangerous except to themselves, Betty."
She quoted saucily: "Il n'y a personne qui ne soit dangereux pour
quelqu'un!"
Mrs. Hammerton added: "Il faut tout attendre et tout craindre du temps
et des hommes."
Reggie Ledyard, much flattered, admitted the wholesale indictment
against his sex:
"How can we help it? Man, possessing always dual personality, is
naturally inclined toward a double life."
"Man's chief study has been man for so long," observed Mrs. Hammerton,
"that the world has passed by, leaving him behind, still engrossed in
counting his thumbs. Name your French philosopher who can beat that
reflection," she added to Desboro, who smiled absently.
[Illustration: "All the men there had yielded to the delicate attraction
of her"]
From moment to moment he had been watching Jacqueline and the men always
leaning toward her--Reggie Ledyard persistently bringing to bear on her
the full splendour of his straw-blond and slightly coarse beauty;
Cairns, receptive and débonnaire as usual; Herrendene, with his keen
smile and sallow visage lined with the memory of things that had left
their marks--all the men there had yielded to the delicate attraction of
her.
Desboro said to Mrs. Hammerton: "Now you realise where she really
belongs."
"Better than you do," she retorted drily.
After luncheon there were vehicles to convey them to the pond, a small
sheet of water down in the Desboro woods. And while a declining sun
glittered through the trees, the wooded shores echoed with the clatter
and scrape of skates and the rattle of hockey-sticks crossed in lively
combat.
But inshore the ice had rotted; the end of such sport was already in
sight. Along the gravelly inlet, where water rippled, a dozen fingerling
trout lay half hidden among the pebbles; over a bank of soft, sun-warmed
snow, gnats danced in the sunset light; a few tree-buds had turned
sticky.
Later, Vail came and built a bonfire; Farris arrived with tea baskets
full of old-fashioned things, such as turnovers and flip in stone jugs
of a century ago.
Except for a word or two at intervals, Desboro had found no chance to
talk to Jacqueline. Now and then their glances encountered, lingered,
shifted, with scarcely a ghost of a smile in forced response to
importunities. So he had played an impartial game of hockey, skated with
any girl who seemed to be receptive, cut intricate figures with Mrs.
Hammerton in a cove covered with velvet-smooth black ice, superintended
the bonfire construction, directed Farris with the tea.
Now, absently executing a "grape-vine," he was gliding along the outer
ranks of his guests with the mechanical patrolling instinct of a collie,
when Jacqueline detached herself from a fire-lit group and made him a
gay little sign to halt.
Picking her way through the soft snow on the points of her skates,
she took to the ice and joined him. They linked hands and swung out into
the starlight.
"Are you enjoying it?" he asked.
"That's why I signalled you. I never have had such a good time. I wanted
you to know it."
"You like my friends?"
She looked up: "They are all so charming to me! I didn't expect people
to be cordial."
"You need expect nothing else wherever you go and whomever you
meet--barring the inevitable which no attractive girl can avoid
arousing. Do you get on with Aunt Hannah?"
She laughed: "Isn't it odd? _I_ call her that, too. She asked me to. And
do you know, she has been a perfect dear about everything. We shopped
together; I never had quite ventured to buy certain fascinating things
to wear. And we had such a good time lunching at the Ritz, where I had
never dared go. Such beautiful women! Such gowns! Such jewels!"
They halted and looked back across the ice at the distant fire and the
dark forms moving about it.
"You've bowled over every man here, as a matter of course," he said
lightly. "If you'll tell me how you like the women I'll know whether
they like you."
"Oh, I like them; they are as nice to me as they are to each other!" she
exclaimed, "--except, perhaps, one or two----"
"Marie Ledyard is hopelessly spoiled; Athalie Vannis is usually
discontented," he said philosophically. "Don't expect either of them to
give three cheers for another girl's popularity."
They crossed hands and swept toward the centre of the pond on the "outer
edge." Jacqueline's skating skirt was short enough for her to manage a
"Dutch roll," steadied and guided by Desboro; then they exchanged it for
other figures, not intricate.
"Your friend, Mr. Sissly, is dining with us," he observed.
"He's really very nice," she said. "Just a little too--artistic--for
you, perhaps, and for the men here--except Captain Herrendene----"
"Herrendene is a fine fellow," he said.
"I like him so much," she admitted.
He was silent for a moment, turned toward her as though to speak, but
evidently reconsidered the impulse.
"He is not very young, is he?" she asked.
"Herrendene? No."
"I thought not. Sometimes in repose his face seems sad. But what kind
eyes he has!"
"He's a fine fellow," said Desboro without emphasis.
Before they came within the firelight, he asked her whether she had
really decided to give them a little lecture on jades and crystals; and
she said that she had.
"It won't be too technical or too dry, I hope," she added laughingly. "I
told Captain Herrendene what I was going to say and do, and he liked the
idea."
"Won't you tell me, too, Jacqueline?"
"No, I want _you_ to be surprised. Besides, I haven't time; we've been
together too long already. Doesn't one's host have to be impartially
attentive? And I think that pretty little Miss Steyr is signalling you."
Herrendene came out on the ice toward them:
"The cars are here," he said, "and Mrs. Hammerton is cold."
Dinner was an uproariously lively function, served amid a perfect
eruption of bewildering gowns and jewels and flowers. Desboro had never
before seen Jacqueline in a dinner gown, or even attempted to visualise
her beauty amid such surroundings in contrast with other women.
She fitted exquisitely into the charming mosaic; from crown to toe she
was part of it, an essential factor that, once realised, became
indispensable to the harmony.
Perhaps, he told himself, she did not really dominate with the fresh
delicacy of her beauty; perhaps it was only what he saw in her and what
he knew of her that made the others shadowy and commonplace to him.
[Illustration: "In all the curious eyes turned toward her, he saw
admiration, willing or conceded."]
Yet, in all the curious eyes repeatedly turned toward her, he saw
admiration, willing or conceded, recognised every unspoken tribute of
her own sex as well as the less reserved surrender of his; saw her
suddenly developed into a blossom of unabashed and youthful loveliness
under what she had once called "the warm sun of approval"; and sat in
vague and uneasy wonder, witnessing the transfiguration.
Sissly was there, allotted to Katharine Frere; and that stately girl,
usually credited among her friends with artistic aspirations, apparently
found him interesting.
So all went well enough, whether gaily or seriously, even with Aunt
Hannah, who had discovered under Desboro's smiling composure all kinds
of food for reflection and malicious diversion.
For such a small party it was certainly a gay one--at least people were
beginning to think so half way through dinner--which merely meant that
everybody was being properly appreciated by everybody's neighbours, and
that made everybody feel unusually witty, and irrepressible, and a
little inclined to be silly toward the end.
But then the after-dinner guests began to arrive--calm, perfectly poised
and substantial Westchester propositions who had been bidden to assist
at an unusual programme, and to dance afterward.
The stodgy old house rang with chatter and laughter; hall, stairs,
library, and billiard-room resounded delightfully; you could scare up a
pretty girl from almost any cover--if you were gunning for that variety
of girl.
Reggie Ledyard had managed to corner Jacqueline on the stairs, but
couldn't monopolise her nor protect himself against the shameless
intrusion of Cairns, who spoiled the game until Herrendene raided the
trio and carried her off to the billiard-room on a most flimsy pretext.
Here, very properly, a Westchester youth of sterling worth got her away
and was making toward the library with her when Desboro unhooked a
hunting horn from the wall and filled the house with deafening blasts as
signal that the show was about to begin in the armoury.
The armoury had been strung with incandescent lights, which played over
the huge mounted figures in mail, and glanced in a million reflections
from the weapons on the wall. A curtained and raised stage faced seats
for a hundred people, which filled the long, wide aisle between the
equestrian shapes; and into these the audience was pouring, excited and
mystified by the odd-looking and elaborate electrical attachments
flanking the stage in front of the curtained dressing-rooms.
Jacqueline, passing Desboro, whispered:
"I'm so thrilled and excited. I know people will find Mr. Sissly's
lecture interesting, but do you think they'll like mine?"
"How do I know, you little villain? You've told Herrendene what you are
going to do, but you haven't given me even a hint!"
"I know it; I wanted to--to please you--" Her light hand fell for a
moment on his sleeve, and he saw the blue eyes a little wistful.
"You darling," he whispered.
"Thank you. It isn't the proper thing to say to me--but I've quite
recovered my courage."
"Have you quite recovered all the scattered fragments of your heart? I
am afraid some of these men may carry portions of it away with them."
"I don't think so, monsieur. Really, I must hurry and dress----"
"Dress?"
"Certainly; also make up!"
"But I thought you were to give us a little talk on Chinese jades."
"But I must do it in my own way, Mr. Des----"
"Wait!" They were in the rear of the dressing-room and he took her hand.
"I call you Jacqueline, unreproved. Is my name more difficult for you?"
"Do you wish me to? In cold blood?"
"Not in cold blood."
He took her into his arms; she bent her head gravely, but he felt her
restless fingers worrying his sleeve.
"Jacqueline?"
"Yes--Jim."
The swift fire in his face answered the flush in hers; he drew her
nearer, but she averted her dainty head in silence and stood so, her
hand always restless on his arm.
"You haven't changed toward me in these few weeks, have you,
Jacqueline?"
"Do you think I have?"
He was silent. After a moment she glanced up at him with adorable
shyness. He kissed her, but her lips were cold and unresponsive, and she
bent her head, still picking nervously at the cloth of his sleeve.
"I _must_ go," she said.
"I know it." He released her waist.
She drew a quick, short breath and looked up smiling; then sighed again,
and once more her blue eyes became aloof and thoughtful.
He stood leaning against the side of the dressing-room, watching her.
Finally she said with composure: "I _must_ go. Please like what I shall
do. It will be done to please you--Jim."
He opened the dressing-room door for her; she entered, turned to look
back at him for an instant, then closed the door.
He went back to his place among the audience.
A moment later a temple gong struck three times; the green curtains
parted, revealing a white screen, and Mr. Lionel Sissly advancing with a
skip to the footlights. The audience looked again at its programme cards
and again read:
"No. 1: A Soundless Symphony ... Lionel Sissly."
"Colour," lisped Mr. Sissly, "is not only precious for its own sake,
but also because it is the blessed transmogrification of sound. And
sound is sacred because all vibrations, audible or inaudible, are in
miraculous harmony with that holiest of all phenomena, silence!"
"Help!" whispered Ledyard to Cairns, with resignation.
"Any audible rate of regular air vibrations is a musical note,"
continued Mr. Sissly. "If you double that vibratory speed, you have the
first note of the octave above it. Now, the spectrum band is the colour
counterpart of the musical octave; the ether vibrates with double the
speed at the _violet_ end of the spectrum band that it does at the
opposite extremity, or _red_ end. Let me show you the chromatic scales
in colour and music--the latter the equivalent of the former, revealing
how the intervals correspond when C represents red." And he flashed upon
the screen a series of brilliant colours.
"Remember," he said, "that it is with colour as it is with sound--there
is a long range of vibrations below and above the first and last visible
colour and the first and last audible note--a long, long range beyond
compass of the human eye and ear. Probably the music of the spheres is
composed of such harmonies," he simpered.
"Modern occidental music is evolved in conformity with an arbitrary
scale," he resumed earnestly. "An octave consists of seven whole tones
and five half-tones. Combinations and sequences of notes or tints affect
us emotionally--pleasurably when harmonious, painfully when discordant.
But," and his voice shook with soulful emotion, "the holiest and the
most precious alliance ever dreamed of beyond the Gates of Heaven lies
in the sacred intermingling of harmonious colour and harmonious
silence. Let me play for you, upon my colour organ, my soundless
symphony which I call 'Weather.' Always in the world there will be
weather. We have it constantly; there is so much of it that nobody knows
how much there is; and I do not see very clearly how there ever could be
any less than there is. Weather, then, being the only earthly condition
which is eternal, becomes precious beyond human comprehension; and I
have tried to interpret it as a symphony of silence and of colour
divinely intermingled."
Ledyard whispered to Betty Barkley: "I'll go mad and bite if he says
another word!"
She cautioned him with a light touch of her gloved hand, and strove very
hard to remain serious as Mr. Sissly minced over to his "organ," seated
himself, and gazed upward.
All at once every light in the house went out.
For a while the great screen remained invisible, then a faint sheen
possessed its surface, blotted out at eccentric intervals by a deep and
thunderous tint which finally absorbed it and slowly became a coldly
profound and depthless blue.
The blue was not permanent; almost imperceptible pulsations were
stirring and modifying it toward a warmer and less decisive hue, and
through it throbbed and ebbed elusive sensations of palest turquoise,
primrose and shell-pink. This waned and deepened into a yellow which
threatened to become orange.
Suddenly all was washed out in unaccented grey; the grey gradually
became instinct with rose and gold; the gold was split by a violet
streak; then virile scarlet tumbled through crashing scales of green,
amethyst, crimson, into a chaos of chromatic dissonance, and vanished
engulfed in shimmering darkness.
The lights flashed up, disclosing Mr. Sissly, very pale and damp of
features, facing the footlights again.
"That," he faltered, amid a stillness so profound that it seemed to fill
the ear like a hollow roar,--"that is weather. If you approve it, the
most precious expression of your sympathy will be absolute silence."
Fortunately, not even Reggie Ledyard dropped.
Mr. Sissly passed a lank and lily hand across his large pale eyes.
"Like the Japanese," he lisped, "I bring to you my most precious
thought-treasures one at a time--and never more than two between the
rising of the orb of day and the veiling of it at eventide. I offer you,
on the altar of my colour organ, a transposition of Von Schwiggle's
symphony in A minor; and I can only say that it is replete with a
meaning so exquisitely precious that no human intelligence has yet
penetrated it."
Out went the lights. Presently the screen became visible. Upon it there
seemed to be no colour, no hint of any tint, no quality, no value. It
was merely visible, and remained so for three mortal minutes. Then the
lights broke out, revealing Mr. Sissly half fainting at his organ, and
two young women in Greek robes waving bunches of violets at him. And the
curtain fell.
"There only remains," whispered Ledyard, "the funny-house for me."
"If you make me laugh I'll never forgive you," Mrs. Barkley warned him
under her breath. "But--oh, do look at Mrs. Hammerton!"
Aunt Hannah's visage resembled that of a cornered and enraged mink
surrounded by enemies.
"If that man comes near me," she said to Desboro, "I shall destroy him
with hatpins. You'd better keep him away. I'm morally and nervously
disorganised."
Sissly had come off the stage and now stood in the wide aisle,
surrounded by the earnest and intellectual womanhood of Westchester,
eagerly seeking more light.
But there was little in Mr. Sissly's large and washed-out eyes; even
less, perhaps, than illuminated his intellect. He gazed wanly upon
adoration, edging his way toward Miss Frere, who, at dinner, had rashly
admitted that she understood him.
"Was it satisfying?" he lisped, when he had attained to her vicinity.
"It was most--remarkable," she said, bewildered. "So absolutely new to
me that I can find nothing as yet to say to you, except thank you."
"Why say it? Why not merely look it? Your silence would be very, very
precious to me," he said in a low voice. And the stately Miss Frere
blushed.
The audience, under the stimulus of the lights, recovered very quickly
from its semi-stupor, and everybody was now discussing with animation
the unique experience of the past half-hour. New York chattered;
Westchester discussed; that was the difference. Both had expected a new
kind of cabaret show; neither had found the weird performance
disappointing. Flippant and unintellectual young men felt safe in the
certainty that neither their pretty partners nor the more serious
representatives of the substantial county knew one whit more about
soundless symphonies than did they.
[Illustration: "She lost herself in a dreamy Bavarian folk-song"]
So laughter and noise filled the armoury with a gaily subdued uproar,
silenced only when Katharine Frere's harp was brought in, and the tall,
handsome girl, without any preliminaries, went forward and seated
herself, drew the gilded instrument back against her right shoulder, set
her feet to the pedals, her fingers to the strings, and wandered
capriciously from _Le Donne Curiose_ and the far, brief echoes of its
barcarolle, into _Koenigskinder_, and on through _Versiegelt_, till she
lost herself in a dreamy Bavarian folk-song which died out as sunset
dies on the far alms of the Red Valepp.
Great applause; no cabaret yet. The audience looked at the programme and
read:
"A Thousand Years B.C. ... Miss Nevers."
And Reggie Ledyard was becoming restless, thinking perhaps that a little
ragtime of the spheres might melt the rapidly forming intellectual ice,
and was saying so to anybody who'd listen, when ding-dong-dang!
ding-dong! echoed the oriental gong. Out went the lights, the curtain
split open and was gathered at the wings; a shimmering radiance grew
upon the stage disclosing a huge gold and green dragon of porcelain on
its faïence pedestal. And there, high cradled between the forepaws of
the ancient Mongolian monster, sat a slim figure in silken robes of
turquoise, rose, and scarlet, a Chinese lute across her knees, slim feet
pendant below the rainbow skirt.
Her head-dress was wrought fantastically of open-work gold, inlaid with
a thousand tiny metallic blue feathers, accented by fiery gems; across
the silky folds of her slitted tunic were embroidered in iris tints the
single-winged birds whirling around each other between floating clouds;
little clog-like shoes of silk and gold, embroidered with moss-green
arabesques inset with orange and scarlet, shod the feet.
Ancient Cathay, exquisitely, immortally young, sat in jewelled silks and
flowers under the huge and snarling dragon. And presently, string by
string, her idle lute awoke, picked with the plectrum, note after note
in strange and unfamiliar intervals; and, looking straight in front of
her, she sang at random, to "the sorrows of her lute," verses from "The
Maker of Moons," sung by Chinese lovers a thousand years ago:
"Like to a Dragon in the Sky
The fierce Sun flames from East to West;
The flower of Love within my breast
Blooms only when the Moon is high
And Thou art nigh."
The dropping notes of her lute answered her, rippled on, and were lost
like a little rill trickling into darkness.
"The Day burns like a Dragon's flight
Until Thou comest in the night
With thy cool Moon of gold--
Then I unfold."
A faint stirring of the strings, silence; then she struck with her
plectrum the weird opening chord of that sixth century song called "The
Night Revel"; and sang to the end the ancient verses set to modern music
by an unknown composer:
"Along the River scarlet Lanterns glimmer,
Where gilded Boats and darkling Waters shimmer;
Laughter with Singing blends;
But Love begins and ends
Forever with a sigh--
A whispered sigh.
"In fire-lit pools the crimson Carp are swirling;
The painted peacocks shining plumes are furling;
Now in the torch-light by the Gate
A thousand Lutes begin the Fête
With one triumphant Cry!
Why should Love sigh?"
The curtain slowly closed on the echoes of her lute; there came an
interval of absolute silence, then an uproar of cries and of people
getting to their feet, calling out: "Go on! Go on! Don't stop!" No
applause except this excited clamour for more, and the racket of moving
chairs.
"Good Lord!" muttered Captain Herrendene. "Did you ever see anything as
beautiful as that girl?"
And: "Where did she learn such things?" demanded people excitedly of one
another. "It must be the real business! How does she know?"
The noise became louder and more emphatic; calls for her reappearance
redoubled and persisted until the gong again sounded, the lights went
out, and the curtains twitched once more and parted.
She slid down from her cradled perch between the forelegs of the shadowy
dragon and came to the edge of the footlights.
"I was going to show you one or two jades from the Desboro collection,
and tell you a little about them," she began, "but my lute and I will
say for you another song of ancient China, if you like. It was made by
Kao-Shih about seven hundred years after the birth of Christ. He was one
of the T'ang poets--and not a very cheerful one. This is his song."
And she recited for them: "There was a king of Liang."
After that she stepped back; but they would not have it, to the point of
enthusiastic rudeness.
She recited for them Mêng Hao-Jan's "A Friend Expected," from "The Maker
of Moons," and the quatrains of the lovely, naïve little "Spring Dream,"
written by Ts'en-Ts'an in the eighth century.
But they demanded still more. She laid aside her lute and intoned for
them the noble lines of China's most famous writer:
"Thou that hast seen six kingdoms pass away----"
Then, warming to her audience, and herself thrilled with the spirit of
the ancient splendour, she moved forward in her whispering silks, and,
slightly bending, her finger lifted like one who hushes children with a
magic tale, she spoke to them of Fei-yen, mistress of the Emperor; and
told them how T'ai-Chên became an empress; sang for them the song of Yu
Lao, the "Song of the Moon Moth":
"The great Night Moth that bears her name
Is winged in green,
Pale as the June moon's silver flame
Her silken sheen:
No other flame they know, these twain
Where dark dews rain--
This great Night Moth that bears her name
And my sweet Queen;
So let me light my Lantern flame
And breathe Her name."
She held her audience in the palm of her smooth little hand; she knew
it, and tasted power. She told them of the Blue Mongol's song,
reciting:
"From the Gray Plains I ride,
Where the gray hawks wheel,
In armour of lacquered hide,
Sabre and shield of steel;
The lance in my stirrup rattles,
And the quiver and bow at my back
Clatter! I sing of Battles,
Of Cities put to the sack!
Where is the Lord of the West,
The Golden Emperor's son?
I swung my Mongol sabre;--
He and the Dead are one.
For the tawny Lion of the Iort
And the Sun of the World are One!"
Then she told them the old Chinese tale called "The Never-Ending
Wrong"--the immortal tragedy of that immortal maid, "a reed in motion
and a rose in flame," from where she alights "in the white hibiscus
bower" to where "death is drumming at the door" and "ten thousand
battle-chariots on the wing" come clashing to a halt; and the trapped
King, her lover, sends her forth
"Lily pale,
Between tall avenues of spears, to die."
And so, amid "the sullen soldiery," white as a flower, and all alone in
soul, she "shines through tall avenues of spears, to die."
"The King has sought the darkness of his hands," standing in stricken
grief, then turns and gazes at what lies there at his feet amid its
scattered
"--_Ornaments of gold,_
_One with the dust; and none to gather them;--_
_Hair-pins of jade and many a costly gem,_
_Kingfishers' wings and golden beads scarce cold._"
Lingering a moment in the faint reflection of the low-turned footlights,
she stood looking out over the silent audience; and perhaps her eyes
found what they had been seeking, for she smiled and stepped back as the
curtain closed. And no uproar of applause could lure her forth again
until the lights had been long blazing and the dancers were whirling
over the armoury floor, and she had washed the paint from lid and lip
and cheek, and put off her rustling antique silken splendour to bewitch
another century scarce begun.
Desboro, waiting at her dressing-room door for her, led her forth.
"You have done so much for me," he whispered. "Is there anything in all
the world I can do for you, Jacqueline?"
She was laughing, flushed by the flattery and compliments from every
side, but she heard him; and after a moment her face altered subtly. But
she answered lightly:
"Can I ask for more than a dance or two with you? Is not that honour
enough?" Her voice was gay and mocking, but the smile had faded from eye
and lip; only the curved sweetness of the mouth remained.
They caught the music's beat and swung away together among the other
dancers, he piloting her with great adroitness between the avenues of
armoured figures.
When he had the opportunity, he said: "What may I send you that you
would care for?"
"Send me?" She laughed lightly again. "Let me see! Well, then, perhaps
you may one day send me--send me forth 'between tall avenues of spears,
to die.'"
"What!" he said sharply.
"The song is still ringing in my head--that's all. Send me any
inexpensive thing you wish--a white carnation--I don't really care--"
she looked away from him--"as long as it comes from you."