II.
“I don’t understand women at all,” I rather rashly confessed to Felicia.
“That’s all the better for us—I mean for me,” she threw back at me.
“But I do understand you’re all a matchmaking lot,” I continued, severely.
“Oh, we’re a matchmaking lot, are we?” Felicia’s tone was one of flattering interest. She was arranging a bit of vine that had somehow gotten torn down. She now turned toward me, the picture of innocent surprise.
“You like matchmaking for the fun of the thing—just as a man likes shooting,” I went on. “You’d marry any person to any other person, regardless of age, position or——”
“Sex?” suggested Felicia, politely.
“Suitability,” I amended; “just for the sake of having a wedding.”
“You’re talking now in the manner and tone of a husband,” Felicia accusingly told me. “Anyone who heard your voice afar off would know you were one.” I paid no attention to Felicia’s interruption.
“If I’m not right, kindly tell me if Lydia Massingbyrd wasn’t matchmaking when she got you to ask Almington and little Cecilia Bennett down here; and if you weren’t matchmaking when you consented to ask them.”
“Undoubtedly it’s because Lydia is anxious to arrange a marriage between them she wanted them here.” Felicia’s tone was so guilelessly axiomatic that it made me uncomfortable.
“Has she told you?”
“She’s told me nothing,” Felicia assured me. “If she’d told me her reasons I couldn’t, as she very well knows, have asked them.”
“And that’s why I say,” I concluded, “that I don’t understand women. First Lydia Massingbyrd told me she couldn’t bear Almington. Then she did her little Venus-rising-from-the-sea act for his benefit. And then, I tell you, Felicia, if ever a mortal woman flirted, it was your little golden-locked friend. And, Jove, she was pretty!”
“What Lydia Massingbyrd needs is a husband,” Felicia declared, “who would keep her from tampering with other people’s! You’ve been utterly ruined ever since you went around that day carrying Lydia all over the place. You talk about her hair in your sleep.”
Again I ignored Felicia and her unjust accusations. “Poor little Cecilia Bennett! Between admiration and fear she was almost frightened to death.”
“Cecilia is a nice, upstanding, decent little girl,” Felicia asserted, aggressively.
“So she is, so she is,” I hastened to agree. “And that is why—she being only two months out of Farmington—you want to marry her to a man like Almington!”
“What’s wrong with Almington?” asked Felicia, still in her most guileless manner, which I have learned to know is the most finished form of impertinence.
“What’s the matter with Almington?” I exclaimed. “Oh, nothing at all! He’s the stuff perfect husbands are made of. He’s ripe, is Almington, for a little, innocent flower of a girl like Cecilia.”
“Almington’s lots of money,” said Felicia, reflectively; “and Cecilia’s mother’s keen for it. You know there’s no end to the Bennett girls, and they’re poor as anything.”
I maintained a disgusted silence, for I had an inkling that Felicia would have been charmed with an outbreak from me about the iniquity of sacrificing young girls on the altar of Mammon. I therefore resolved to commit myself no further.
It was at this moment that Mrs. Massingbyrd arrived.
The two ladies embraced. Then Felicia held her friend at arms’ length.
“Remember,” she warned, “no Croquemitaine! I’ve done two things for you—what you wanted me to—and I’ve asked no questions. So go ahead, but no Lady Godiva here under my roof-tree. No, nor any coming out shrieking burglars at two with your hair down, Lydia Massingbyrd!” And Felicia gave her friend an affectionate shake.
I had the sense that there had passed between the two women intelligences far beyond what appeared on the surface; a feeling that there were in the air all kinds of things—and that these things had passed over my head. In fact, I felt hopelessly at a disadvantage, as a man so often does in the presence of his wife and his wife’s intimate friend; in a word, I suppose I felt like a husband, and I was glad enough to join young Drake, who had come up in the same train with little Cecilia Bennett.
As we strolled off together—
“There’s something awfully nice about a really fresh young girl, when one’s been knocking around with older women a bit,” he confided to me.
“There’s nothing as charming as an unspoiled girl,” I agreed. “And Cecilia is that.”
“I don’t know but the French way is the best. I hate a young girl who’s too darned knowing.”
Now, I knew that Ellery Drake had made calf love to Felicia when Felicia herself had been a young girl of the kind he so eloquently described as “too darned knowing”; and that he had in vain followed the fascinating wake of Mrs. Massingbyrd. So it was not without malice I replied:
“Oh, the less a little, young girl knows the better; give me a tabula rara any time.”
Ellery Drake looked at me sharply. “I shouldn’t go as far as that,” he said. “But I like them like Cecilia—so awfully interested in things you know, and a little bit shy, and all that. Gee! Did you see her stare when you toted Mrs. Massingbyrd into the boat the other day?”
“No wonder,” I said. “You don’t see things like that every day.”
“She’s a wonder, Mrs. Massingbyrd”—Drake was full of enthusiasm—“but almost too spectacular for a quiet man. I think Cecilia was really a little shocked.”
I had noted poor little Cecilia’s what-have-we-here-and-whatever-is-the-world-coming-to expression.
There’s nothing quite as conventional as your properly-brought-up young person; and Cecilia was as perfectly turned out a specimen as a wise mother and a good school could accomplish. She was, in fact, the beau ideal of the young person for whom we keep our magazines spotlessly pure, and in whose behalf we cry aloud when a play is not better than it should be.
“She said afterward,” Drake told me, “that she felt as if she’d been reading one of those society papers that haven’t the best reputation in the world.”
“I didn’t know she was up to that,” I remarked.
“Oh, you don’t know Cecilia. She’s really very funny when you get her alone,” Drake protested. “I’ve known her ever since I was knee-high, so, you see, she’s not a bit shy with me. When she was a little kid, I’d no idea she’d turn out so pretty. The trouble is, they get spoiled so soon,” Drake gloomily went on—“spoiled and knowing and worldly.”
“You can’t expect a flower to keep in bud forever.”
“But you can train it to be a nice, sweet, modest, homekeeping plant, or an exotic thing trained for the flower show.”
He puffed at his cigarette. I saw he thought he’d gotten off a good thing. When I’m with Drake I understand only too well the kind of amusement I so frequently afford Felicia. He enhanced the resemblance by now saying:
“I don’t understand women at all!”
“No?” I encouraged him.
“What the devil is a sweet little thing like Cecilia Bennett doing messing around with a fellow like Almington?”
“He’ll soon take off the bloom,” I said.
If the women were going to match-make, it occurred to me I could do a little work of the kind off my own bat, and I was pleased with my dexterity when Drake enthusiastically snatched at the bait.
“You bet he will,” he said. “He’s not the man for a young girl like Cecilia; nothing more than a baby, you know, who doesn’t know how to take care of herself. Though I’ve nothing against Almington. He’s all right for married women.”
“A perfect companion for Felicia and Mrs. Massingbyrd,” I sarcastically threw in, but my sarcasm didn’t touch Ellery Drake, for he said, simply:
“Oh, he’s all right for them!”
“So,” I said, magnanimously, “let them take care of him. He’s coming down to-night, and you keep Cecilia out of his clutches.”
Roars of mirth, in which I distinguished the voices of my wife, Mrs. Massingbyrd and Cecilia, now interrupted us, and they all came running across the lawn like a troop of charming, grown-up children.
Indeed, Felicia and Mrs. Massingbyrd seemed younger than their little companion. I’ve told you that Lydia Massingbyrd has the youngest, most candid eyes I’ve ever seen; and she and Felicia ran down the lawn with the abandon of those who know their world.
Spontaneity is one of civilization’s most perfect flowers, and Cecilia wasn’t as yet civilized enough to have acquired it. She followed the others with a certain dry rigidity that I found perfectly charming for her age and the time she had been in the world.
“No, no; you can’t come,” said Mrs. Massingbyrd, waving us back. “You’ll know soon enough. Don’t tell, Cecilia;” and she caught the child by the arm and carried her along, as they made for the stable.
There was something preposterous in the air. I have known Felicia long enough to recognize a certain irresponsible little laugh as a danger signal. Presently the children came back, Mrs. Massingbyrd with Cecilia still tucked under her wing.
“Yes, it’s the strangest thing,” she was chattering, “the impression I produce on strangers! First they always call me Miss Massingbyrd, then, later, they always ask where Massingbyrd is! Not one person in a thousand will believe I’m a real, bona-fide, dyed-in-the-wool widow!”
Cecilia’s eyes were open wide. I could see in her attitude that she didn’t think it good taste to joke about being taken for a divorcée. Nor did I, and I wondered what my friend was up to, for generally Mrs. Massingbyrd adapts herself to her company with all the flexibility in the world.
I followed them into the house, and I was in time to see as pretty a little tableau as ever was presented on the stage.
Discovered on the piazza was Almington, and at sight of him my little ingénue, Cecilia, hesitated, and was lost in a sea of blushes.
Mrs. Massingbyrd ran forward and greeted him gayly and gladly. Mamma’s training came to Cecilia’s aid; she gathered herself together and, in spite of burning cheeks and very bright eyes, advanced to meet Almington in good order.
He greeted her pleasantly but indifferently, and turned eagerly to Mrs. Massingbyrd.
“You’re none the worse for your shipwreck, I hope,” he asked.
“I never had a pleasanter day,” Mrs. Massingbyrd assured him. “It’s not often I get a chance to display my only beauty free and unrebuked.”
“Your pictures came out well,” said Almington. “I couldn’t wait for the film to be through. I had it developed at once;” and he felt in his pocket.
Mrs. Massingbyrd held out her rosy palm, then drew it back.
“No, not here,” she decided. “Come down to the rose garden and show them to me there. After all, they’re just for you and me.” And it was with a self-satisfied air, the air of a conqueror, that Almington unfolded his long legs and followed Mrs. Massingbyrd.
I looked at my companions. Cecilia’s cheeks were still hot. I saw she was a little bewildered, but she acted like a little thoroughbred, and made pretty, perfunctory, young-girl talk with Felicia, whose face told me nothing; and with Drake, who looked profoundly pleased.
Mrs. Massingbyrd and her cavalier were strolling up and down in the rose garden at the foot of the terrace. Coquetry was in every movement of her little blond head. Conquest was written large on Almington.
In pursuance of my own little policy, “There goes a lost man,” I remarked.
“He’s been lost so often and won so often that it doesn’t matter much, does it?” said Felicia, lightly. “So if it’s only he that’s lost, we won’t have far to look for him.”
“I thought Mrs. Mass. had turned him down,” remarked Ellery Drake.
“It hasn’t apparently prevented his turning up again,” Felicia replied, pertly.
I looked at Cecilia. Mamma’s training held good; there was a visible strain about her attitude, but she did her best to seem natural. It was Cecilia’s first time under fire, and she did her superior officers credit. But there was that about the still babyish lines of her mouth which showed me that she longed to be away by herself and have a good cry. Drake couldn’t stand it any longer.
“Come on, Cecilia, let us go for a walk, too,” he suggested. And while I blessed him for his kindness I thought the “too” unfortunate.
When they were out of earshot I turned severely to Felicia.
“I don’t consider the Torture of the Innocents a pretty game,” I told her.
“Tell that to Lydia,” was all I got out of my wife.
“I thought Cecilia’s sister was a great friend of Lydia’s,” I asked.
“Exactly,” Felicia assented, dryly.