CHAPTER X.
It was the last Tuesday in November, and Mrs. Hardenburgh was giving the first of her usual series of at-homes. An inveterate lion hunter was this clever woman of sixty-odd summers, whose hair was as thick and golden as a débutante’s, and whose complexion as pink and white. This afternoon she was in a particularly complacent mood, for she had arranged a piquant double attraction for her guests. When, however, by six o’clock, both attractions had failed to materialize, the faintest suggestion of a frown appeared on her remarkably smooth brow. Five minutes later the appearance of a newcomer had dispelled it, and the hostess was her humorous, smiling self.
The newcomer was Jane—Jane in a gown every line of which spoke Paris, in a dream of a hat that sat on her proud little head like a coronet; Jane, in short, in a perfect get-up and in radiant health and spirits. Personally, we’d prefer to set it down that she looked pale, distrait; that “concealment, like a worm i’ the bud,” etc.; but it would not be true. Whatever the suffering within—and there was a rather deep, intent look about the eyes—Mrs. De Mille presented an unconquered, nay, a self-satisfied, front to this little New York world, and was looking her very best.
As she made her way slowly down the long room to where her hostess stood, it occurred to her that she was causing something of a sensation. At first she modestly ascribed it to the fact that she had been away for six months, and that this was her first public appearance since her return. It dawned upon her presently, however, that the rooms were filled with strangers, principally, and as the interest deepened rather than lessened with her slow advance, she was forced to acknowledge to herself that something beside her lengthened absence was responsible for the attention she was receiving. The more puzzled she grew, the more confidently she carried herself, and when a very young bud in a very high treble agitatedly remarked to a blasé youth: “She’s not a bit disappointing, is she?” it expressed in words the verdict of the rooms.
After greeting Mrs. Hardenburgh, the first familiar face Jane encountered was Mr. Scott’s.
“So you’ve gone and gotten yourself engaged, faithless one?” she observed, reproachfully, after they had shaken hands.
“Oh, I say, Jane——” he began, in exactly the same tone with which he was wont, in the past, to preface one of his numerous proposals.
Jane regarded him with mock horror. “Billie, Billie, don’t tell me you are going to propose!” she exclaimed, disapprovingly. “One rather expects proposals from the married men nowadays, but from newly engaged ones, fie! fie!”
Mr. Scott colored high. “You can’t think how the sight of you makes my heart beat,” he said, agitatedly.
“Nonsense!” retorted Jane, snubbingly. “Point out your girl instantly.”
Pulling himself together with a palpable effort, Mr. Scott indicated a sparkling brunette, one of a group of débutantes who were watching Jane with intense interest.
“Why, she’s adorable!” exclaimed Mrs. De Mille. “Present me.” And Mr. Scott, looking suddenly very proud, offered his arm.
“I’ve read the book,” murmured the little brunette, ecstatically, after Jane had offered her felicitations. “It must be beautiful to be written about like that.”
Mrs. De Mille stared and then grew pale. “The book!” she echoed. “I—I don’t know what you mean!”
“Why, I thought——” began Mr. Scott’s pretty fiancée, looking as though she regretted her own impulsiveness. But before she had a chance to explain, a tall and extremely well-dressed young matron bore down upon Jane and triumphantly carried her off.
“How well you’re looking, Betty,” observed Jane, surveying her friend rather wistfully, when they were seated in a quiet corner.
“That’s because I’m so happy,” answered that lady, promptly. “Maurice is such a dear! And now, Jane, tell me, when is the engagement to be announced?”
Mrs. De Mille opened her eyes very wide. “Engagement!” she cried. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Whose engagement?”
“Why, yours and Mr. Ormsby’s,” retorted her friend. “Every line of the book shows he’s desperately in love with you. Did you refuse him?”
Jane clutched Mrs. McClurg’s hand. “Is that awful book out, and does everybody think it’s me?” she demanded, in a voice that trembled in spite of her effort to control it.
Mrs. McClurg looked at her in astonishment. “Awful book!” she exclaimed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Mr. Ormsby’s novel is the success of the year, and the heroine is an extremely flattering picture of you. All your friends have recognized it, and they all agree with me.”
Jane rose. “If my friends think I’m the heartless and idiotic creature that book pictures, then I have no friends,” she said, coldly. “Good-by, Betty.” She turned to go, but Mrs. McClurg caught her hand.
“I don’t believe you’ve read the book, Jane de Mille,” she said. “The heroine is not heartless. She’s a perfectly adorable creature, and everybody—all the women envy you.”
“I haven’t seen the book,” admitted Jane, “but I read the manuscript, and my recollection is that the author placed me a good deal lower than the angels, to state it mildly. I never want to see it.”
“I can’t understand; there must be some mistake!” exclaimed Mrs. McClurg. “Just wait here a minute.” She glided out from behind the screen of palms, and, after a brief absence, came back to the nook with a small, quietly bound little book in her hand. “Read that!” she commanded, triumphantly, opening it and pointing to the title-page.
Reluctantly Jane raised her eyes and took in the brief contents. “The Woman, by John Ormsby,” she read, and then, underneath, a single line, “To her who inspired it,” and underneath that again this fragment of verse:
Lean penury within that pen doth dwell
That to his subject lends not some small glory;
But he that writes of you, if he can tell
That you are you, so dignifies his story;
Let him but copy what in you is writ,
Not making worse what nature made so clear,
And such a counterpart shall fame his wit,
Making his style admired everywhere.
“Betty.” Jane lifted her head and looked at her friend with sudden inspiration.
“Well,” retorted Mrs. McClurg, not too enthusiastically, for it had just occurred to her that Mrs. De Mille had concealed a great deal.
“I want to sneak, and I want to take this book with me,” explained the latter, shamelessly. “I don’t believe I have read it. Can you—will you cover my retreat?”
Mrs. McClurg looked only half appeased and dubious. “Mr. Ormsby is coming here this afternoon,” she said, severely. “I happen to know that Mrs. Hardenburgh has been rejoicing at the thought that you were to meet here in her drawing room.”
“Neat little arrangement,” observed Jane, ironically. Then she became suddenly frightened. “I must go at once,” she said. “Oh, Betty, don’t you see that I can’t see him here? Help me, there’s a good girl, and come to me to-morrow—I have the same apartment, you know—and I’ll tell you everything.”
And Mrs. McClurg, who was by no means hard-hearted, relented. When the big doors finally closed upon Jane, she gave a sigh of relief, but it ended with a gasp, for she found herself face to face with John Ormsby, who, immaculately attired, was ascending the brownstone steps.
“How d’ye do?” said Mrs. De Mille, airily, extending her hand and hoping fervently at the same time that the book which she had tucked away underneath her arm was invisible.
He took her hand, but did not respond to her salutation, only gazed hungrily into her face.
“Where in the world have you been hiding yourself?” he demanded, finally, when Jane, with an effort, had removed her hand.
“Sounds as though I were a criminal,” commented Jane. “Did you miss any spoons at the bungalow?”
He did not answer, only continued to stare at her, and so she went on, nervously: “I’ve been in Paris chiefly. Some people don’t like Paris in the summer time, but I adore it. But you’re Mrs. Hardenburgh’s lion. I mustn’t detain you. Au revoir!” She started down the steps, but he followed her determinedly. “If you think I’m going to lose sight of you after my long search, you’re mistaken,” he said, quietly.
“Mrs. Hardenburgh will be furious, and you will be very impolite, if you don’t go in at once,” said Jane, tucking the little book further out of sight.
“I loathe those things,” he answered, disrespectfully. “I only consented to come because I was told you might be there. But if Paradise was just inside, and——”
“Hades,” interrupted Jane, demurely.
“And you were outside, nothing would induce me to go in.”
“The inference is so odious I refuse to be flattered,” she said, “but you never were good at making pretty speeches. If you’re coming with me”—briskly—“you’ll have to walk. I’m economizing. Uncle Jacob is giving me an allowance, and I’m living on it.”
“But you’re rich, or almost rich, in your own right,” said Mr. Ormsby, as they walked along. “The book promises to be preposterously successful, and half the royalties are yours, you know.”
Jane grew suddenly frigid. “I beg that you will not refer to that wretched affair,” she said, haughtily. “I have not read your book, and I am not interested in it.”
Mr. Ormsby’s face became very downcast. “I was in hopes that you had read it, and that it would explain——”
“There is really nothing to explain,” interrupted Jane. “I acted on a reckless impulse, and was bored for my pains. I have no wish to read your book, though”—civilly—“I’m glad for your sake it promises to be a success.”
Mrs. De Mille’s fall followed fast on the heels of her little exhibition of pride. A boy hurrying by with a bundle jostled her arm, and the book she had been endeavoring to conceal fell to the pavement. In stooping to recover it, Mr. Ormsby recognized it, but he returned it to her without comment, and Jane perversely chose to feel affronted at his silence.
“I met a friend at Mrs. Hardenburgh’s who was quite enthusiastic about the book, and to please her I consented to take it home to read,” she exclaimed, coldly.
“I would not bother myself about it, if I were you; it’s a poor thing,” he returned, just as coldly. They walked for a square in silence, a silence that, strange to relate, was not broken first by Jane but by her companion.
“I have an explanation to make, and, in spite of the risk I run of further offending you, I must make it,” he said, distantly. “When I wrote that first absurd sketch I did not understand you. I thought that you were as frivolous and as heartless as you appeared on the surface.”
“Indeed!” commented Jane, tilting her chin scornfully.
“And then something happened——” he paused.
“What was it?” she asked, eagerly, and bit her lip in vexation at herself for displaying curiosity.
“I’m not going to tell you that,” he responded, coolly, “but it helped me to an understanding of you. And then I was called to New York, and I found when I got back that you had been at the bungalow—you left your handkerchief there, you know—and that you had read the sketch, for the papers were scattered about the floor, and I realized that——” he hesitated.
“You realized what?” said Jane, defiantly.
“That I loved you,” he concluded, quietly.
The acknowledgment was so unexpected that it disconcerted Mrs. De Mille, and she had nothing to say.
“I suppose that bores you, too?” he said, half ironically.
“This is where I live,” was her only response. They had reached the entrance to a smart uptown apartment house, and Jane paused. Her tone was not exactly a dismissal one, and, as she faced him, Ormsby stared at her anxiously.
“Is there—can there be any hope for me——” he began.
“While there’s life there’s hope, you know,” retorted Jane, frivolously. “But I was just about to suggest that if you’re quite certain you don’t want to go back to Mrs. Hardenburgh’s, I’ll give you a cup of tea.”
Her tone was noncommittal, but as she led the way to the elevator, she looked back at him over her shoulder and laughed softly, and a great joy transfigured John Ormsby’s face.
TO A ROADSIDE CEDAR
’TIS not for thee in ancient walks to throw
Thy pointed shadows o’er the sculptured stone,
Where marble fixes some immortal moan
Of art; nor, gathering gloom where waters flow
Past groves Lethean, crypts of human woe,
To lift thy cheering spires. Thy lot is strown
In newer, happier climes and lands unknown
To classic realms of storied pomps and show.
For thou, dear gnomon of the passing hour,
Green sentinel of sunny lanes and fields,
Whose sturdy watch defies harsh winter’s knell,
Art guardian of the humblest homes, where dwell
The simple folk, the yeomanry that wields
In peopled might all that men crave of power!
Harvey Maitland Watts.
The Deluge
A STORY of MODERN FINANCE By DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS
