CHAPTER XIII
As proved by developments of the next day, Dolores need not have feared that Mrs. Cabot would blame her for the interest of the uniquely attractive young osteopath. Evidently she was of too sweet a nature for that. During the after-luncheon respite, when the girl sat reading in her room to avoid a possible repetition of yesterday’s telepathic tête-à-tête, madame sought her in an exceptionally gracious mood. She was followed by her maid, who bore a long black-and-white striped box.
“Lay it on the bed, Annette.”
Having dismissed the reluctant Frenchwoman, she turned to Dolores with a manner of affectionate anticipation.
“I saw it yesterday at Yungman’s revue,” she announced. “As it stayed on my imagination over night, I sent Annette this morning to buy it.”
“It?” Dolores tried to feel on faith something of Mrs. Cabot’s pleasurable excitement.
“It’s from Angèle, the colors copied from an overcast sunset, mostly gray, with just a suggestion through the mists of lavender and rose. And it’s built of the clingingest stuff. I hope you’ll like it.”
“I am sure I shall. All your things are beautiful.”
Dolores hovered over the tissue wrappings with the true girl’s interest.
“Oh!” she exclaimed in a voice soft as the fabric.
“Oh!”—again, as Catherine lifted an evening gown on its satin-padded hanger and suspended it from the electrolier. The most stupid cynic could not have doubted the governess’ worshipful gaze, and madame, while in many respects a cynic, was far from stupid.
“The lines of the manikin who wore it,” Catherine added, “didn’t compare with yours.”
And what had her “lines” to do with such a gown? Dolores looked the question.
“You are built for décolleté, my dear. The Marquis d’Elie remarked it only yesterday, after you’d sailed so gracefully from my rooms. Oh, you needn’t scorn a compliment from him! He’s a bit shy on discretion according to American standards, but he has studied women as a fine art. What he said about your possibilities made me remember this model. Of course I shouldn’t have considered it for myself.”
“The dress, Mrs. Cabot, is for——”
“For you, silly. You can see at a glance that my coloring kills it.” Catherine reassured herself of the fact in the mirror. “With your duo-tones—ebony hair and alabaster hide—— The dress is a little token of appreciation from Papa-John and Mamma-me over your success with our son. It is just a fine Angèle feather for our household angel.”
“Dear Mrs. Cabot!”
Dolores’ exclamation was the more emotional for the doubts which she had felt over her benefactress’ sincerity toward herself. Lest she reveal by word or look the self-recriminations that filled her mind, she returned to the gift; touched its lax, silken folds; pressed to one cheek a wisp of its subtly tinted tulle.
“My first evening dress,” she murmured with a fervor which showed that admiration was fast deepening into possessive love. “Even though I haven’t any present need of it——”
“But you have. You’ll need it to-night.” Catherine spoke positively. “Mr. Cabot has telephoned Bradish that an old friend of the family is to dine with us and I want you to make a fourth at table. Rufus Holt is a university pal of John’s and said to be the ablest divorce lawyer in New York. He never loses a case, perhaps because he can’t be bribed to take the side of the person in the wrong. What’s more, my dear, he’s a bachelor.”
“I’d enjoy meeting him, I’m sure, and you’re very kind to ask me down, but you see——”
“No, I don’t.” Catherine subtracted the half of her attention from the mirror and gave the whole to Dolores. “I don’t see—and won’t—any reason in the world why you shouldn’t be more a member of this family. We are all very fond of you and we know that you are superior to the position you occupy. Life has been against you, that’s all. But I am for you. Haven’t you realized that fact yet?”
“I do appreciate your kindness—all the kindness which has been shown me in your house, Mrs. Cabot.”
“Then show your appreciation my way. Don’t spoil my pleasure by looking suspiciously on every decent deed I try to do. You act, positively, as if you thought I was jealous of your looks. Why, you make a wonderful foil for me! Several have spoken of it. Even Dr. Shayle who, being redheaded himself, has a natural preference for brunettes, agreed with me yesterday that you and I are as different as two women could be. Do you know——”
Catherine hesitated, as if from modesty. When she continued it was with that air of saying something especially thoughtful and original with which she now and then substantiated her claim to “brains.”
“Of course everybody has some favorite type of feminine beauty. This man admires a woman in whom his best friend can’t see any charm. A third appreciates another whose good looks neither of the first two will admit. And so on. But about myself—— It is a strange thing that when I was a young girl, every artist who came to my father’s house to examine those alleged ‘old masters’ I was telling you about used to beg to paint me. I remember one of them explaining it by the theory that a golden blond is humanized sunshine—and that sunshine is something craved by everyone. Perhaps it sounds vain for me to repeat, but they were agreed that my type was the only one universally admired.”
Far from thinking her vain, Dolores almost envied her the pleasure she could take in her own looks. People generally spoke of “the beautiful Mrs. Cabot,” perhaps for just that reason—that people generally enjoyed sunshine.
“And now that I am trying to shed some few beams your way, you spoil the spirit of the thing right at the start. You might think of others than yourself.”
That the reproach had effect on Dolores showed in the startled question of the purple-black eyes. Catherine proceeded to reply:
“We’re not so happy in this shell of a home but that we might be happier. I am not speaking of myself so much as—as my husband. He needs cheering up and I, somehow, have lost the power to cheer him. I’ve thought that perhaps you could help. Despite his taciturnity, he likes you for what you have done for Jack. If you wouldn’t be so shy with him, would just talk to him naturally, study him and try to please him, you know, you would be accomplishing—well, more than you possibly can realize. I’d be in your debt, not you in mine. You’ve never received anything approaching an order since you came to us, have you? And, Heaven knows, I don’t wish you to consider anything I suggest in that light. Only I should like you to join us at dinner to-night.”
Rufus Holt was dapper in stature, but of an expansive personality. Although crinkled around the eyes and slightly bald, he had the spontaneity of eternal youth. From first glance, he directed toward Dolores a sort of friendly homage.
“I like the way you acknowledge an introduction,” he confided during their first five minutes. “The exaggerated delight with which most everybody takes most everybody else for granted is absurd, isn’t it? Without a word, Miss Trent, you’ve done a rather remarkable thing—given a lawyer a brand-new thought.”
Dolores was pleased that he so quickly found something about her to like. She expanded under his persiflage.
“I never learned ‘manners’ in any school,” she deprecated, “but I’ve tried to teach myself by behaving like the people I admire.”
“Well, give up! I don’t think you could act the least bit like anybody else if you tried, any more than——” The mirth lines around Holt’s eyes uncrinkled as, silently, he appreciated her in the mist-gray gown. “A dove just couldn’t waddle like a goose,” he finished. “Don’t let anybody change your first bow. It is perfect—no undue cordiality about it, any more than undue hauteur. You do it gravely, simply, hopefully. Just now you gave me one quick, enquiring glance to see whether you were glad to meet me, before you committed yourself by saying so. I’ll take a bet you don’t know my name.”
Dolores looked embarrassed. “That wouldn’t be a fair bet. You see, Mrs. Cabot told me beforehand.”
“Honest, too! What are your faults?” He laughed.
Catherine returned to them from an aside with Bradish. If the governess looked a mauve-and-rose-breasted dove to the facile-tongued attorney, madame was a bird of Paradise in her topaz velvet and high-massed, glinting, silver-gold hair. And her evening manner matched the brilliancy of her attire.
“Latest reports from the front are that John will be down—well, when John is down,” she announced. “Things never happen in this house, even food, until John is down.”
“It is gossip on the Street that some bricks of his Wall have caved in,” Holt offered. “He never in his life kept a woman waiting unless obliged to. You see, Miss Trent, we men who know John Cabot like to brag about him. We consider him the best example extant of the fairness of the unfair sex.”
“Oh, John’s a hero, no doubt of that!” Catherine’s out-flung glittering hands illustrated her somewhat contemptuous attitude toward most things which others approved, her husband included. “Heroes are all right when one is young and unsophisticated, but they do seem stereotyped to a grown-up. Don’t you think so? You always know exactly what they are going to do. The villains, now, are more interesting. There’s some excitement in learning the worst about them—always a chance for something unexpected. They may even reform. You ought to agree with me, Rufus.”
“I might,” Holt returned, “but for certain suspicions as to which class you are consigning me. In all my comradeship with John I never felt sure of anything connected with what he was going to do except that it would be the square thing when done.”
The small controversy was closed by the appearance of its subject. As he stood looking in on them from the doorway—the master of the house—he was photographed on Dolores’ memory. Clean-cut against the vista of the dim-lit foyer in his evening black and white, his hands depending stiffly, his head side-set, he suggested controlled power.
From his first surprised glance at herself, she appreciated that he had been unprepared for the presence of the governess. But his wife’s expectant eyes also were upon her.
Licensed by the fact that she had not seen him in a couple of days, Dolores offered him her hand in greeting and looked up into his face when he stooped to touch for the briefest of moments her finger-tips. Yesterday she would have veiled her admiration. To-night she had a prescribed part to play. She could not help regretting the overture, however, when she saw his smile recede; realized that he had turned, without a word, away from her. A pressure hurt her throat. But she cheered at Catherine’s encouraging nod. Remembering those in-caving bricks of his down-town “Wall,” she forgave the forbidding attitude of one said to be so just.
When dinner was announced, she obeyed Catherine’s signal that she take the arm of the host. On their stroll through the great hall toward the dining-room, she found occasion to thank him for the latest Cabot gift.
“The dress—that I gave you?” His tone was mildly exclamatory.
“You and Mrs. Cabot.”
“So I gave you that dress?” he asked more easily. “Of course we are getting on toward Christmas. Then I am prepared for little surprises like this—have to go around, you know, asking everybody what I gave them. I wonder why—the dress?”
She tried not to show how disconcerted she felt. “Mrs. Cabot said it was because I get along so well with Jack, although that’s nothing to reward me so beautifully for. Getting on with Jack is its own reward.”
“To be sure,” he murmured, as though his memory had been jogged. “To be sure,” he repeated, his eyes upon the velvet V of his wife’s back.
“No matter why you made the gift, Mr. Cabot, it is an event in my life. To-night is the first time I’ve ever been in evening dress.”
At last he looked down at her and interestedly.
Dolores felt both pleased and abashed. Never, she realized, had she worn anything so becoming as this gown. Its delicate gray increased, rather than shamed the pallor and texture of her skin. Its rose seemed dimly to reflect the red of her lips, its mauve the deep purple of her eyes. Her hair, done low on her neck to hide as much as possible of the gleaming flesh which had not before been exposed to the eyes of man, made an oval, ebony frame for her face.
“Never having been a girl myself, I don’t suppose I realize just what the first one means: Really, I didn’t suppose I had such good taste.” With which ambiguous comment he withdrew both eyes and interest. Evidently the subject of herself was dismissed.
Despite the lessons of her past, Dolores felt disappointed. The Rev. Alexander Willard had looked at her often and long. Seff had looked at her and looked again. As she went about the city, strangers filled her with uneasiness by their stares. She supposed she should be glad that one man was superior to the attraction of looks which she had been forced to conclude were unusual. She should be glad, yes. And yet, she caught herself wishing that this man, on this occasion——
Through that never-to-be-forgotten dinner—the first formal one of her life—she made effort to adapt herself as a unit of the quartette and to attend Mrs. Cabot’s converse with something the responsiveness of Rufus Holt. Her awe of Bradish and the second butler she conquered enough to sample the dishes passed. She became sufficiently accustomed to the candle-light to appreciate this and that detail—the drawn-work dinner cloth, the Sheffield service, the gleam of a fountain playing Nature’s music in the conservatory beyond. She commented on the match of the fulvid, velvety orchids that formed the centerpiece with their hostess’ gown. With the rest she sipped of a vintage recommended by their host as from the fore-stocked Cabot cellar.
“You’ll go far these dry days and drink—well, perhaps too much, to find better Burgundy than this,” he said. “It is neither too thick nor too thin; neither sweet nor sour; smooth and gentle, yet not heady. And the color—— Hasn’t it the rich red of dreams come true?”
“Speaking of color, John,” the attorney suggested, “are you noticing the rare contrast between two ladies fair to-night?”
John Cabot nodded and glanced abstractedly into his wife’s pleased, expectant face, but omitted altogether to look the governess’ way.
“Thank Heaven, I’m single. I can enjoy such things.” Holt laughed.
“You mean,” John corrected, “you can enjoy them out loud.”
“And why can’t you, John?” Catherine protested. “Naturally and connubially, you find it rather dull paying compliments to me, but certainly Miss Trent deserves a few. Why in the world don’t you warm up?”
“I am warming up,” he replied, his dry smile all for the wet wine in his glass.
She showed increased dissatisfaction over his impersonalities. “You sound and look distrait to-night. Are you worried, dear? Rufus told us something about bricks falling on the Street. Is it true that you were hit?”
“Hard hit.”
“You mean that you lost money?”
“Lost?” He spoke with vague surprise. “Can I ever lose? Alas, no. While the rumor-mongers were spreading the report which Rufus heard about my losses, I made—made—made.”
“You funny, clever John! Tell me”—a gleam lit the wife’s eyes—“was it much that you made?”
“Too much. It is disconcerting to gather in upward of a million unintentionally.”
“A million? John! Won’t you tell us how you did it? I never tire of your coups.”
Dolores felt relieved and extremely glad to see her interest and pride in her husband. Surely not even the exacting Catherine could fail to care for such a man! In that moment between demand and response, she decided definitely to forget as unworthy of herself, of the mother of Jack and of John Cabot the presumptions of the Marquis d’Elie. Undoubtedly they were—well, just d’Elie’s presumptions.
“And you never will tire, eh, so long as I win?” John’s somewhat cynical glance transferred from his wife’s Heaven-blue eyes to those of his longtime friend. “I’ve spoken to you before, Rufus, of having been nagged for the past year by an idea that Europe has been suffering less from the effects of war than from the effects of peace. Some time ago I underwrote a loan to help the Poles against the Bolsheviki. With the ‘Red’ army threatening Warsaw from the north and east, it looked for a while as if my investment in real peace was to be wiped out.”
“And to-day the cables brought the news——” inserted Holt.
“Exactly.” John shrugged as if at catastrophe. “After Weygand broke the Russian center and retired the right, none of the host that swept down on the Polish capital survived but a handful of fugitives.”
To this laconic recital of the high-finance of war, the feminine contingent listened with diverse interest. To Dolores it was evident that, for their benefit, he had stripped of technicalities some gigantic map-changing feat to which he had played financial generalissimo. She, too, was stirred by his success, even though her casual perusal of newspaper headlines scarcely fitted her to grasp its entirety. From watching the grown-up of Jack’s whimsical smile, she turned again to enjoy the reflex of triumph on Catherine’s alert face.
“It would seem that your guardian angel is working overtime when you can’t lose even to the grasping Soviet. Isn’t it just too pathetic!” The unwonted gleam still lit her eyes, as she turned them upon the governess. “Can’t you, my dear, say something to cheer this victim of good luck?”
At the direct appeal, Dolores straightened. She must not fail Mrs. Cabot who was trying so kindly to bring her out, she adjured herself. To be dull when so much had been done to brighten her was rank ingratitude. She must be gay.
“Would that I were witty, like you good folks!” she wished, with a shy, admiring glance among them.
“And aren’t you?” Holt asked.
“I used to try hard to be. I never was quite comfortable until I gave it up. It was like release from bondage when I decided one day to be just sincere. I do sincerely congratulate Mr. Cabot——”
“Don’t you ever change your mind,” the enthusiastic lawyer interrupted. “Scarce were we properly introduced, Miss Trent and I, when by this sincerity which she depreciates she thrilled me with a beautiful perception.”
“How nice, Rufus, that you still thrill,” Catherine commented with a particularly guileless smile.
“Over anything that is good of its kind,” he amplified. “Such success as I have had at the bar, I owe to that capacity. To me nothing can be more thrilling than the sudden sight of human character. This perception that I have had—this beautiful sight that I have seen—— Perhaps, John, you will let me toast it with your wonderful wine?”
At his host’s encouraging nod, Holt arose and fixed his eyes on the frieze with the twitching smile of inspiration. After a pause, he began:
“I do not give you Wine, Woman and Song. No, nothing so new as that! But it is a song I give—a song of woman and wine. In varying vintages we drink inspiration from the sweetness or tartness, the smoothness, gentleness and headiness of women—we men. From the Cocktail Girl, of whom a little is enough, to good old Mother Cordial, who calms us with her seasoned satisfactions, we have much to enjoy. Here is Champagne.”
Lifting from beside his plate the tall-stemmed glass half-full of bubbling amber, he bowed toward the yellow velvet vision.
“How it sparkles, infects our moods, dares us into animation! If only it would never let us down to normal again—would never cease to sparkle—Champagne!”
As if by chance, his boyish smile left Catherine’s pleased face and strayed Dolores’ way. With a kiss of the rim, he replaced the tall glass upon the cloth. His fingers loosed its slender stem; found a smaller glass; raised it.
“Once in a lifetime you meet a woman who is like this deep red Burgundy. Does it need to speak—the wine—to boast its color, its fragrance, its power? See, it is too rich for the eye to penetrate; there is not a bubble in it to suggest its life; it is topped by no froth. All too quietly, it offers us sensation. And we sip of it—delight. And we drink deep—intoxication.
“The woman who is like the deep, red wine—once in a lifetime we meet her. No need for her to laugh with us, to coquette, even to speak. Her personality is an alluring hue. She gives off a fragrance of soul that drowns gross thought. Without words she promises all emotions—life. She, like the wine, needs only to be.
“I do not give you Wine, Woman and Song; nothing so new as that. I sing, friends, an older song—the woman, man’s wine!”
Silence held the little group as Holt ceased to speak. With his left hand he patted the bald spot upon his head, as if doubtful of the wisdom of having broached his “beautiful perception.” Then, slowly, his smile reappeared, as though from frank pleasure over a creditable performance. With lifted glass he turned to their host.
Dolores also turned.
But John Cabot did not meet their gaze—either her own or that of his friend. And he did not speak. He was, however, the first to drain his Burgundy.
The girl wondered at the gleam in his eyes. Never had she seen him look that way before. It seemed soon for even so excellent a potion to have had effect.