THE CONCEALING OF SECRETS
Where a number of persons are in the same place, all interested in the same matter, yet convinced that affairs must be arranged not by open discussion but by adroit management, the result is inevitable. Each will be seeking to speak to some other alone; there will be a constant shifting and rearranging of groups as characters are moved on and off the stage in the theatre. Life for the time being, indeed, takes on an artificial air not unlike that which results from the studied devices of the playwright. The most simple and accurate account of what takes place must read like the arbitrary conventions of the boards; and the reader is likely to receive an impression of unreality from the very closeness with which the truth has been followed.
At the County Club that April afternoon there were so many who were in one way or another interested in the fate of the letter which in a moment of wild fun Mrs. Neligage had handed over to the Count, that it was natural that the movements of the company should have much the appearance of a contrived comedy. No sooner, for instance, had Barnstable hastened away with a new bee in his bonnet, than Mrs. Harbinger was joined by Fairfield. He had come on in advance of the girls, and now at once took advantage of the situation to speak about the matter of which the air was full.
"I beg your pardon," he said, "but I left the young ladies chatting with Mrs. Staggchase, and they'll be here in a minute. I wanted to speak to you."
She bestowed the letter which she had received from Barnstable in some mysterious recess of her gown, some hiding-place which had been devised as an attempted evasion of the immutable law that in a woman's frock shall be no real pocket.
"Go on," she said. "I am prepared for anything now. After Mr. Barnstable anything will be tame, though; I warn you of that."
"Mr. Barnstable? I didn't know you knew him till his circus last night."
"I didn't. He came to me here, and I thought he was going to apologize; but he ended with a performance crazier than the other."
"What did he do?" asked Fairfield, dropping into the chair which Barnstable had recently occupied. "He must be ingenious to have thought of anything madder than that. He might at least have apologized first."
"I wasn't fair to him," Mrs. Harbinger said. "He really did apologize; but now he's rushing off after Jack Neligage to accuse him of having written that diabolical book that's made all the trouble."
"Jack Neligage? Why in the world should he pitch upon him?"
"Apparently because I mentioned Jack as the least likely person I could think of to have written it. That was all that was needed to convince Mr. Barnstable."
"The man must be mad."
"We none of us seem to be very sane," Mrs. Harbinger returned, laughing. "I wonder what this particular madman will do."
"I'm sure I can't tell," answered Fairfield absently. Then he added quickly: "I wanted to ask you about that letter. Of course it isn't you that's been writing to me, but you must know who it is."
She stared at him in evident amazement, and then burst into a peal of laughter.
"Well," she said, "we have been mad, and no mistake. Why, we ought to have known in the first place that you were Christopher Calumus. How in the world could we miss it? It just shows how we are likely to overlook the most obvious things."
Fairfield smiled, and beat his fist on the arm of his chair.
"There," he laughed, "I've let it out! I didn't mean to tell it."
"What nonsense!" she said, as if not heeding. "To think that it was you that May wrote to after all!"
"May!" cried Fairfield. "Do you mean that Miss Calthorpe wrote those letters?"
The face of Mrs. Harbinger changed color, and a look of dismay came over it.
"Oh, you didn't know it, of course!" she said. "I forgot that, and now I've told you. She will never forgive me."
He leaned back in his chair, laughing gayly.
"A Roland for an Oliver!" he cried. "Good! It is only secret for secret."
"But what will she say to me?"
"Say? Why should she say anything? You needn't tell her till she's told me. She would have told me sometime."
"She did tell you in that wretched letter; or rather she gave you a sign to know her by. How did you dare to write to any young girl like that?"
The red flushed into his cheeks and his laughter died.
"You don't mean that she showed you my letters?"
"Oh, no; she didn't show them to me. But I know well enough what they were like. You are a pair of young dunces."
Fairfield cast down his eyes and studied his finger-nails in silence a moment. When he looked up again he spoke gravely and with a new firmness.
"Mrs. Harbinger," he said, "I hope you don't think that I meant anything wrong in answering her letters. I didn't know who wrote them."
"You must have known that they were written by a girl that was young and foolish."
"I'm afraid I didn't think much about that. I had a letter, and it interested me, and I answered it. It never occurred to me that—"
"It never occurs to a man that he is bound to protect a girl against herself," Mrs. Harbinger responded quickly. "At least now that you do know, I hope that there'll be no more of this nonsense."
Fairfield did not reply for a moment. Then he looked out over the landscape instead of meeting her eyes.
"What do you expect me to say to that?" he asked.
"I don't know that I expect anything," she returned dryly. "Hush! They are coming."
He leaned forward, and spoke in a hurried whisper.
"Does she know?" he demanded.
"Of course not. She thinks it's the Count, for all I can tell."
The arrival of Alice and May put an end to any further confidential discourse. Fairfield rose hastily, looking dreadfully conscious, but as the two girls had some interesting information or other to impart to Mrs. Harbinger, he had an opportunity to recover himself, and in a few moments the party was on its way to the polo-field.
With the game this story has nothing in particular to do. It was not unlike polo games in general. The playing was neither especially good nor especially bad. Jack Neligage easily carried off the honors, and the men pronounced his playing to be in remarkable form for so early in the season. Fairfield sat next to Miss Calthorpe, but he was inclined to be quiet, and to glance at Mrs. Harbinger when he spoke, as if he expected her to be listening to his conversation. Now and then he fixed his attention on the field, but when the game was over, and the clever plays were discussed, he showed no signs of knowing anything about them. To him the game had evidently been only an accident, and in no way a vital part of the real business of the day.
There was afternoon tea at the club-house,—groups chatted and laughed on the piazza and the lawn; red coats became more abundant on the golf links despite the lateness of the hour; carriages were brought round, one by one took their freights of pleasure-seekers, and departed. Fairfield still kept in the neighborhood of Miss Calthorpe, and although he said little he looked a great deal. Mrs. Harbinger did not interfere, although for the most part she was within ear-shot. Fairfield was of good old family, well spoken of as a rising literary man, and May had money enough for two, so that there were no good grounds upon which a chaperone could have made herself disagreeable, and Mrs. Harbinger was not in the least of the interfering sort.
Before leaving the County Club Mrs. Harbinger had a brief talk with Mrs. Neligage.
"I wish you'd tell me something about the Count's past," she said. "You knew him in Europe, didn't you?"
"Yes, I met him in Rome one winter; and after that I saw a good deal of him for a couple of seasons."
"Was he received?"
"Oh, bless you, yes. He's real. His family tree goes back to the tree in the Garden of Eden."
"Perhaps his ancestor then was the third person there."
Mrs. Neligage laughed, and shook her head.
"Come, Letty," she said, "that is taking an unfair advantage. But really, the Count is all right. He's as poor as a church mouse, and I've no doubt he came over here expressly to marry money. That is a foreign nobleman's idea of being driven to honest toil,—to come to America and hunt up an heiress."
Mrs. Harbinger produced the letter which she had received from Barnstable earlier in the afternoon.
"That crazy Mr. Barnstable that made an exhibition of himself at my house yesterday has given me a letter about the Count. I haven't read much of it; but it's evidently an attack on the man's morals."
"Oh, his morals," Mrs. Neligage returned with a pretty shrug; "nobody can find fault with the Count's morals, my dear, for he hasn't any."
"Is he so bad then?" inquired Mrs. Harbinger with a sort of dispassionate interest.
"Bad, bless you, no. He's neither good nor bad. He's what all his kind are; squeamishly particular on a point of honor, and with not a moral scruple to his name."
Mrs. Harbinger held the letter by the corner, regarding it with little favor.
"I'm sure I don't want his old letter," she observed. "I'm not a purveyor of gossip."
"Why did he give it to you?"
"He wanted me to read it, and then to show it to my friends. He telegraphed to New York last night, Tom said, to find out about the Count, and the letter must have come on the midnight."
"Characters by telegraph," laughed Mrs. Neligage. "The times are getting hard for adventurers and impostors. But really the Count isn't an impostor. He'd say frankly that he brought over his title to sell."
"That doesn't decide what I am to do with this letter," Mrs. Harbinger remarked. "You'd better take it."
"I'm sure I don't see what I should do with it," Mrs. Neligage returned; but at the same time she took the epistle. "Perhaps I may be able to make as much mischief with this as I did with that letter yesterday."
The other looked at her with serious disfavor expressed in her face.
"For heaven's sake," she said, "don't try that. You made mischief enough there to last for some time."