And Mrs. Sarah Joy Snyder, whose sense of humour deserted her when she was being praised and fed, and who had already eaten bonbons innumerable, and three ices with accompanying cake, took the chocolate lily gratefully. Von Rosen ate his chicken sandwich and marvelled at the ways of women.
After Von Rosen had finished his sandwiches and tea, he made his way to Mrs. Snyder, and complimented her upon her lecture. He had a constitutional dislike for falsehoods, which was perhaps not so much a virtue as an idiosyncrasy. Now he told Mrs. Snyder that he had never heard a lecture which seemed to amuse an audience more than hers had done, and that he quite envied her because of her power of holding attention. Mrs. Snyder, with the last petal of her chocolate lily sweet upon her tongue, listened with such a naïveté of acquiescence that she was really charming, and Von Rosen had spoken the truth. He had wondered, when he saw the eagerly tilted faces of the women, and heard their bursts of shrill laughter and clapping of hands, why he could not hold them with his sermons which, he might assume without vanity, contained considerable subject for thought, as this woman, with her face like a mask of mirth, held them with her compilation of platitudes.
He thought that he had never seen so many women listen with such intensity, and lack of self-consciousness. He had seen only two pat their hair, only one glance at her glittering rings, only three arrange the skirts of their gowns while the lecture was in progress. Sometimes during his sermons, he felt as if he were holding forth to a bewildering sea of motion with steadily recurrent waves, which fascinated him, of feathers, and flowers, swinging fur tails, and kid-gloved hands, fluttering ribbons, and folds of drapery. Karl von Rosen would not have acknowledged himself as a woman-hater, that savoured too much of absurd male egotism, but he had an under conviction that women were, on the whole, admitting of course exceptions, self-centered in the pursuit of petty ends to the extent of absolute viciousness. He disliked women, although he had never owned it to himself.
In spite of his dislike of women, Von Rosen had a house-keeper. He had made an ineffectual trial of an ex-hotel chef, but had finally been obliged to resort to Mrs. Jane Riggs. She was tall and strong, wider-shouldered than hipped. She went about her work with long strides. She never fussed. She never asked questions. In fact, she seldom spoke.
When Von Rosen entered his house that night, after the club meeting, he had a comfortable sense of returning to an embodied silence. The coal fire in his study grate was red and clear. Everything was in order without misplacement. That was one of Jane Riggs' chief talents. She could tidy things without misplacing them. Von Rosen loved order, and was absolutely incapable of keeping it. Therefore Jane Riggs' orderliness was as balm. He sat down in his Morris chair before his fire, stretched out his legs to the warmth, which was grateful after the icy outdoor air, rested his eyes upon a plaster cast over the chimney place, which had been tinted a beautiful hue by his own pipe, and sighed with content. His own handsome face was rosy with the reflection of the fire, his soul rose-coloured with complete satisfaction. He was so glad to be quit of that crowded assemblage of eager femininity, so glad that it was almost worth while to have encountered it just for that sense of blessed relief.
Mrs. Edes had offered to take him home in her carriage, and he had declined almost brusquely. To have exchanged that homeward walk over the glistening earth, and under the clear rose and violet lights of the winter sunset, with that sudden rapturous discovery of the slender crescent of the new moon, for a ride with Mrs. Edes in her closed carriage with her silvery voice in his ear instead of the keen silence of the winter air, would have been torture. Von Rosen wondered at himself for disliking Mrs. Edes in particular, whereas he disliked most women in general. There was something about her feline motions instinct with swiftness, and concealed claws, and the half keen, half sleepy glances of her green-blue eyes, which irritated him beyond measure, and he was ashamed of being irritated. It implied a power over him, and yet it was certainly not a physical power. It was subtle and pertained to spirit. He realised, as did many in Fairbridge, a strange influence, defying reason and will, which this small woman with her hidden swiftness had over nearly everybody with whom she came in contact. It had nothing whatever to do with sex. She would have produced it in the same degree, had she not been in the least attractive. It was compelling, and at the same time irritating.
Von Rosen in his Morris chair after the tea welcomed the intrusion of Jane Riggs, which dispelled his thought of Mrs. Wilbur Edes. Jane stood beside the chair, a rigid straight length of woman with a white apron starched like a board, covering two thirds of her, and waited for interrogation.
“What is it, Jane?” asked Von Rosen.
Jane Riggs replied briefly. “Outlandish young woman out in the kitchen,” she said with distinct disapproval, yet with evident helplessness before the situation.
Von Rosen started. “Where is the dog?”