CHAPTER VII.
“He certainly has an extremely attractive face, Harriet,” remarked Gertrude Van Vleck, looking at Mrs. Percy-Bartlett amusedly; “but isn’t he very young?”
“Perhaps he is in one sense,” assented the elder woman, striking a few chords on the piano impatiently. “But he’s exactly my age—and I’m very old.”
Gertrude laughed and settled herself comfortably in an easy-chair for a confidential chat with her bosom friend. It was early in the afternoon of a brilliant winter day, and the music-room of the Percy-Bartletts’ house was a very cosey little confessional at the moment.
“I wish I could like men somewhere near my own age,” mused Gertrude, her eyes still resting thoughtfully on her companion’s rather disturbed face. “But I can’t; there really seems to be something fatally wrong in my inclinations and disinclinations. There is something authoritative about a man of forty that pleases me. But in our set the men at forty are either married impossibilities or confirmed bachelors.”
Mrs. Percy-Bartlett laughed merrily.
“How we do crave contrasts,” she exclaimed. “You are suffering from too much attention from boys just out of college, and I—well, I’m married to a man nearly forty.”
“After all, Harriet, I don’t believe that age has so much to do with it as we seem to imply.” Gertrude clasped her hands around her knee as she sat leaning forward, and looked up at her friend earnestly. “There is one thing that the new movement among the women of our class has done. It has tended to weary us of men who are all cut on one pattern. Take any given subject of any importance and ask one of the men of our set what he thinks about it. Dear little parrot, he will repeat to you the general verdict of his club on the question at issue, without the slightest suspicion that he is a mental marionette.”
“That is very true,” assented Mrs. Percy-Bartlett. “Perhaps that fact may explain to you why I enjoy talking to Richard Stoughton.”
“Oh,” cried Gertrude, her face displaying an animation that it seldom exhibited in public. “Then he is not yet spoiled by the churning process? He certainly carries himself like other society men of his age. His face is brighter than the average youngster’s, but another season will change all that.”
Mrs. Percy-Bartlett swung around on the music-stool and looked earnestly into Gertrude’s face.
“He’s not a society man, my dear girl. He could have the entrée if he wanted it. His people are very prominent in Connecticut, and he was in the best set at Yale. But, do you know, although he has plenty of money, he is quite ambitious in a very queer line.”
“Yes?” questioned Gertrude, curious regarding her friend’s feelings toward Richard.
“Yes. He is a newspaper man. He’s on the Trumpet, you know, and has been wonderfully successful in some way or other. He writes awfully bright things for the editorial page. Percy-Bartlett says that it is a most unusual thing for a man as young as Richard Stoughton to jump at a bound into such a prominent position.”
“A newspaper man. Isn’t that amusing! I never met one before.”
“Well,” commented the musician, turning around and drumming softly on the piano, “there is one thing to be said about them; they have to be bright, or they couldn’t be newspaper men.”
“That is a very sweeping assertion,” remarked Gertrude, smiling in amusement. “I wonder if it applies to newspaper women.”
“I don’t know; I never met one,” answered Mrs. Percy-Bartlett coldly.
“But tell me,” persisted Gertrude, her blue eyes dark with mischief; “what are you going to do with him?”
Almost unconsciously Mrs. Percy-Bartlett began to play the air she had composed to Heine’s poem on the pine-tree that dreamed of the palm. Suddenly she ceased playing, and gazed earnestly at Gertrude.
“I don’t know,” she said at length, and the roguish light died out of Gertrude’s eyes.
“I don’t understand you, Harriet,” she said very seriously. “You don’t mean that—that”—
“I mean nothing,” cried Mrs. Percy-Bartlett rather feverishly, turning to the piano and playing a few bars of the latest waltz music. Presently she turned around and said,—
“You are unkind, Gertrude. You are unmarried, unengaged, and you can take as much interest as you may care to in any man, married or otherwise, and the world doesn’t stop to gossip about you—that is, of course, if you don’t go on in a scandalous way. But let a married woman show the slightest attention to a man who is not her husband, and everybody begins to whisper and nod and smile, and you are lucky if Town Tattle doesn’t begin to hint at another divorce in the inner circle. I don’t care how many people sing my songs and admire my music, but I wish they would stop talking about me. Can you tell me, Gertrude, why I shouldn’t have the privilege of talking to—to Richard Stoughton, for instance, without being gossiped about?”
“The trouble is, you know, Harriet,” answered Gertrude, the mischievous gleam returning to her eye, “that whatever may be the case with marriage, it was long ago decided that Platonic friendship is a failure.”
“Perhaps so,” returned Mrs. Percy-Bartlett rather wearily. “But people will follow it, ignis fatuus though it may be, to the end of time.”
Gertrude arose to go. “Well, Harriet,” she said softly, bending over and kissing her friend on the forehead, “don’t be annoyed at anything I’ve said. I certainly have the warmest sympathy with your disinclination to let life bore you.”
Mrs. Percy-Bartlett arose and took Gertrude’s hand. “And you will come to my musicale on Tuesday night, my dear?”
“Indeed I shall. I want to get better acquainted with Mr. Richard Stoughton, you know.”
At that moment a servant entered the room and handed a note to her mistress.
“Excuse me, Gertrude,” she said, and opening the envelope read the following words from Richard:—
“My dear Mrs. Percy-Bartlett,—The miracle has been performed. Mr. John Fenton will accompany me to your musicale on Tuesday evening. Your invitation will reach him if addressed to the Press Club.”
The reader smiled, and handed the epistle to Gertrude Van Vleck.
“And who is John Fenton?” asked Gertrude, after perusing the note.
“Oh, John Fenton,” said Mrs. Percy-Bartlett gayly, “John Fenton is an experiment.”