“I fear,” remarked Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, looking at Richard Stoughton with a pleased expression in her brown eyes, “that you studied the art of flattery at college and have not yet learned its worthlessness.” She had been singing a little love-song that she had recently composed, and the thrilling melody had brought a flush of pleasure to the young man’s face. Without knowing much about the science of music, he was keenly sensitive to its influence.
As he stood by the piano, looking down into the smiling face of the most beautiful woman he had ever met, Richard inwardly blessed the unexpected telegram that had called Percy-Bartlett away to his club before the coffee had been served at dinner. At the time of which we write, the financial affairs of the nation were in a disturbed state; and Percy-Bartlett, like other millionnaires, felt that a great opportunity had presented itself to him for combining patriotism and prudence, by giving aid to an improvident nation at a high rate of interest. His father had followed such a course during the Civil War. Percy-Bartlett’s financial patriotism was, as it were, hereditary, and he had left the house that evening with the firm determination of offering a tithe of his fortune to his afflicted government, on gilt-edged security, to be redeemed by posterity.
“You do me an injustice, Mrs. Percy-Bartlett,” answered Richard, returning her smile. “I know that my opinion regarding your song is of no great value from a technical standpoint, but I can readily understand how glad the publishers are to get your work.”
Richard had learned much about the Percy-Bartletts that afternoon from John Fenton. He had heard of the husband’s prominence in society and business circles and in club life, and of the wife’s devotion to music, of her talent as a song-writer. But Fenton had not told him that Mrs. Percy-Bartlett had brown eyes that had a beseeching, almost caressing expression at times, that her mouth was rather large, but wonderfully symmetrical, and especially attractive when she smiled and showed her white, even teeth. Fenton had been silent also regarding her brown hair—hair that curled and shimmered and waved with a coquettish life of its own, and gave to Richard Stoughton an almost irresistible desire to stroke it with his hand. That she had a white, firm neck, and rounded, dimpled arms, and long, tapering hands that were worthy a sculptor’s art, his friend had not informed him. Perhaps Fenton did not know all this.
“At all events,” thought Richard to himself, “I’m inclined to think that if Fenton could see her beauty, although he might admire it, he would find some reason for saying that she had no right to it—that so much of it as she derived from her handsome ancestors was ill-gotten gain.” Which thought, the reader will observe, proved that Richard had been skimming the books Fenton had given to him, and had come, as he fondly believed, upon certain arguments that seemed to him to be founded on fallacy. Stoughton never went very deeply into any subject presented to his attention. He had that faculty of mind which enabled him to cover a good deal of ground at a glance, and to condense into showy half-truths the results of his rapid mental processes. It was this gift—a dangerous one to a man who wishes to make a solid rather than a glittering success of life—that had suddenly given him a prominent place on the Trumpet as the spiciest paragrapher the editorial page had had for years. And it was this faculty applied to the airy nothings of unimportant conversation that had given him the reputation of being a wit—a reputation much more to be dreaded than that of a rake. No woman fears a rake, but she has a deep-seated dread of a wit.
“But come, Mr. Stoughton,” said Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, standing up and looking at him with mock commiseration, “I have been very cruel to inflict my music on you, when I know that you are dying for a cigar. Come into the library and let me repair my lack of hospitality. Mr. Percy-Bartlett would feel that he had committed sacrilege if he failed to smoke a cigar after dinner.”
“It would be something worse than sacrilege in such companionship,” remarked Stoughton, lighting a “perfecto” and seating himself opposite his hostess; “it would be folly.”
“There can be no folly, Mr. Stoughton, after marriage, you know. I mean in our set, of course. A thing is either good form or bad form. What is good form may seem foolish to the world at large, and what is bad form may, in reality, be wise. But our motto of noblesse oblige has absolutely nothing to do with folly or wisdom in the abstract. It simply presupposes an obligation on our part to observe certain canons of taste and habits of life that have no relation to wisdom or folly, virtue or vice, progress or retrogression. You know all this, though, as well as I do.”
“Only in a general way,” answered Richard, somewhat surprised at her earnestness. He felt that, somehow, she was tempted to treat him in a more confidential way than the duration of their acquaintanceship strictly warranted. “I have had little opportunity, as yet, to study the different phases of New York society.”
“But,” she persisted, her face slightly flushed with eagerness, “there is no difference in the social cult of the most exclusive set in New York and that which dominates the inner circle of other cities in what we might call the eastern belt of civilization. That awful Frankenstein called ‘Bad Form,’ a monster created by society, and dogging our steps at all times, is not confined to New York. Haven’t you endured his threatening glances in your New England cities?”