If I had not had that thought, that newly married men cannot be very severe—at any rate I don't think they can, judging by Edgar—while I was coming home, to sustain me, I do not think I could have endured that terrible hour.
XII.
It was about the time of Helen's shopping expedition that Braine began to present certain select gentlemen of his acquaintance to Helen in their private parlor. Their visits were promptly followed by attentions that surprised her not a little. Their wives, sisters, and daughters journeyed from Newport, Richfield and Long Branch to call upon her, and, as Gladys Van Duyn said, when she called with her fiancé—young Grayson—"to snatch her as a brand from the burning of a scorching July." By this, Gladys merely meant that she had come for the purpose of taking possession of Helen, and carrying her bodily out of town "to where you can get your breath, dear, and see civilized people again."
Gladys had come reluctantly, and only because old Van Duyn had given her orders to that effect by telegraph. He had told her that Helen was beautiful, accomplished and fascinating, by way of softening the command to his daughter, though he wrote and sent the telegram half an hour before he was presented to the woman whom he thus confidently commended.
Gladys was not much given to trusting her father's judgment of women, or his accuracy of statement, where he had an object in view, and so that part of the dispatch she counted as so many superfluous words, paid for without occasion; but she understood clearly enough that her papa, for some reason connected with business—all his reasons centred in business—meant her to make as much as possible of Helen Braine, and so she arrived in the city fully prepared to pretend a great liking for the wild Westerner with big feet, whom she expected to find there.
Perhaps the agreeable surprise helped, but, whatever the cause, Gladys Van Duyn fell in love with Helen at first sight, and went rejoicingly back to Dorp House, the family place on the Sound, where the Van Duyns were accustomed to entertain their friends by platoons, and make a revel of the summer.
Gladys was a prudent young women, whose twenty summers had not been misspent; so, when she saw Helen and arranged to have her for a guest during an indefinite period, she decided that Grayson should put his yacht out of commission immediately, and rest himself with a little stay in Switzerland. Grayson accepted the arrangement, under the impression that he had been eagerly contemplating something of the sort for months, and his departure was made so promptly that the only thought he had time to give to Helen was that she was a "dooced fine woman, don't you know."
Braine remained in the city during the day, but joined Helen in the evening at the sumptuous Van Duyn summer place.
Helen was puzzled to understand it all, and in her bewilderment she questioned Edgar a little as to the cause of her sudden finding of favor in the eyes of people who had known nothing of her till then, and that, too, in a society which is not much given to looking beyond its own borders for people to "take up."