CHAPTER III SHOTOVER
The first person he encountered in the gun-room was Quarrier, who favoured him with an expressionless stare, then with a bow, quite perfunctory and non-committal. It was plain enough that he had not expected to meet Siward at Shotover House.
Kemp Ferrall, a dark, stocky, active man of forty, was in the act of draining a glass, when, though the bottom he caught sight of Siward. He finished in a gulp, and advanced, one muscular hand outstretched: “Hello, Stephen! Heard you’d arrived, tried the Scotch, and bolted with Sylvia Landis! That’s all right, too, but you should have come for the opening day. Lots of native woodcock—eh, Blinky?” turning to Lord Alderdene; and again to Siward: “You know all these fellows—Mortimer yonder—” There was the slightest ring in his voice; and Leroy Mortimer, red-necked, bulky, and heavy eyed, emptied his glass and came over, followed by Lord Alderdene blinking madly though his shooting-goggles and showing all his teeth like a pointer with a “tic.” Captain Voucher, a gentleman with the vivid colouring of a healthy groom on a cold day, came up, followed by the Page boys, Willis and Gordon, who shook hands shyly, enchanted to be on easy terms with the notorious Mr. Siward. And last of all Tom O’Hara arrived, reeking of the saddle and clinking a pair of trooper’s spurs over the floor—relics of his bloodless Porto Rico campaign with Squadron A.
It was patent to every man present that the Kemp Ferralls had determined to ignore Siward’s recent foolishness, which indicated that he might reasonably expect the continued good-will of several sets, the orbits of which intersected in the social system of his native city. Indeed, the few qualified to snub him cared nothing about the matter, and it was not likely that anybody else would take the initiative in being disagreeable to a young man, the fortunes and misfortunes of whose race were part of the history of Manhattan Island. Siwards, good or bad, were a matter of course in New York.
So everybody in the gun-room was civil enough, and he chose Scotch and found a seat beside Alderdene, who sat biting at a smoky pipe and fingering a tumbler of smokier Scotch, blinking away like mad through his shooting-goggles at everybody.
“These little brown snipe you call woodcock,” he began; “we bagged nine brace, d’you see? But of all the damnable bogs and covers—”
“Rotten,” said Mortimer thickly; “Ferrall, you’re all calf and biceps, and it’s well enough for you to go floundering into bogs—”
“Where do you expect to find native woodcock?” demanded Ferrall, laughing.
“On the table hereafter,” growled Mortimer.
“Oh, go and pot Beverly Plank’s tame pheasants,” retorted Ferrall amiably; “Captain Voucher had a blank day, but he isn’t kicking.”
“Not I,” said Voucher; “the sport is capital—if one can manage to hit the beggars—”
“Oh, everybody misses in snap-shooting,” observed Ferrall; “that is, everybody except Stephen Siward with his unholy left barrel. Crack! and,” turning to Alderdene, “it’s like taking money from you, Blinky—which reminds me that we’ve time for a little Preference before dressing.”
His squinting lordship declined and took an easier position in his chair, extending a pair of little bandy legs draped in baggy tweed knickerbockers and heather-spats. Mortimer, industriously distending his skin with whiskey, reached for the decanter. The aromatic perfume of the spirits aroused Siward, and he instinctively nodded his desire to a servant.
“This salt air keeps one thirsty,” he observed to Ferrall; then something in his host’s expression arrested the glass at his lips. He had already been using the decanter a good deal; except Mortimer, nobody was doing that sort of thing as freely as he.
He set his glass on the table thoughtfully; a tinge of colour had crept into his lean checks.
Ferrall, too, suddenly uncomfortable, stood up saying something about dressing; several men arose a trifle stiffly, feeling in every joint the result of the first day’s shooting after all those idle months. Mortimer got up with an unfeigned groan; Siward followed, leaving his glass untouched.
One or two other men came in from the billiard-room. All greeted Siward amiably—all excepting one who may not have seen him—an elderly, pink, soft gentleman with white downy chop-whiskers and the profile of a benevolent buck rabbit.
“How do you do, Major Belwether?” said Siward in a low voice without offering his hand.
Then Major Belwether saw him, bless you! yes indeed! And though Siward continued not to offer his hand, Major Belwether meant to have it, bless your heart! And he fussed and fussed and beamed cordiality until he secured it in his plump white fingers and pressed it effusively.
There was something about his soft, warm hands which had always reminded Siward of the temperature and texture of a newly hatched bird. It had been some time since he had shaken hands with Major Belwether; it was apparent that the bird had not aged any.
“And now for the shooting!” said the Major with an arch smile. “Now for the stag at bay and the winding horn—
‘Where sleeps the moon On Mona’s rill—’
Eh, Siward?
‘And here’s to the hound With his nose upon the ground—’
Eh, my boy? That reminds me of a story—” He chuckled and chuckled, his lambent eyes suffused with mirth; and slipping his arm through the pivot-sleeve of Lord Alderdene’s shooting-jacket, hooking the other in Siward’s reluctant elbow, and driving Mortimer ahead of him, he went garrulously away up the stairs, his lordship’s bandy little legs trotting beside him, the soaking gaiters and shoes slopping at every step.
Mortimer, his mottled skin now sufficiently distended, greeted the story with a yawn from ear to ear; his lordship, blinking madly, burst into that remarkable laugh which seemed to reveal the absence of certain vocal cords requisite to perfect harmony; and Siward smiled in his listless, pleasant way, and turned off down his corridor, unaware that the Sagamore pup was following close at his heels until he heard Quarrier’s even, colourless voice: “Ferrall, would you be good enough to send Sagamore to your kennels?”
“Oh—he’s your dog! I forgot,” said Siward turning around.
Quarrier looked at him, pausing a moment.
“Yes,” he said coldly, “he’s my dog.”
For a fraction of a second the two men’s eyes encountered; then Siward glanced at the dog, and turned on his heel with the slightest shrug. And that is all there was to the incident—an anxious, perplexed puppy lugged off by a servant, turning, jerking, twisting, resisting, looking piteously back as his unwilling feet slid over the polished floor.
So Siward walked on alone through the long eastern wing to his room overlooking the sea. He sat down on the edge of his bed, glancing at the clothing laid out for him. He felt tired and disinclined for the exertion of undressing. The shades were up; night quicksilvered the window-panes so that they were like a dark mirror reflecting his face. He inspected his darkened features curiously; the blurred and sombre-tinted visage returned the stare.
“Not a man at all—the shadow of a man,” he said aloud—“with no will, no courage—always putting off the battle, always avoiding conclusions, always skulking. What chance is there for a man like that?”
As one who raises a glass to drink wine and unexpectedly finds water, he shrugged his shoulders disgustedly and got up. A bath followed; he dressed leisurely, and was pacing the room, fussing with his collar, when Ferrall knocked and entered, finding a seat on the bed.
“Stephen,” he said bluntly, “I haven’t seen you since that break of yours at the club.”
“Rotten, wasn’t it?” commented Siward, tying his tie.
“Perfectly. Of course it doesn’t make any difference to Grace or to me, but I fancy you’ve already heard from it.”
“Oh, yes. All I care about is how my mother took it.”
“Of course; she was cut up I suppose?”
“Yes, you know how she would look at a thing of that sort; not that any of the nine and seventy jarring sets would care, but those few thousands invading the edges, butting in—half or three-quarters inside—are the people who can’t afford to overlook the victim of a fashionable club’s displeasure—those, and a woman like my mother, and several other decent-minded people who happen to count in town.”
Ferrall, his legs swinging busily, thought again; then: “Who was the girl, Stephen?”
“I don’t think the papers mentioned her name,” said Siward gravely.
“Oh—I beg your pardon; I thought she was some notorious actress—everybody said so.... Who were those callow fools who put you up to it?… Never mind if you don’t care to tell. But it strikes me they are candidates for club discipline as well as you. It was up to them to face the governors I think—”
“No, I think not.”
Ferrall, legs swinging busily, considered him.
“Too bad,” he mused; “they need not have dropped you—”
“Oh, they had to. But as long as the Lenox takes no action I can live that down.”
Ferrall nodded: “I came in to say something—a message from Grace—confound it! what was it? Oh—could you—before dinner—now—just sit down and with that infernal facility of yours make a sketch of a man chasing a gun-shy dog?”
“Why yes—if Mrs. Ferrall wishes—”
He walked over to the desk in his shirt-sleeves, sat down, drew a blank sheet of paper toward him, and, dipping his pen, drew carelessly a gun-shy setter dog rushing frantically across the stubble, and after him, bare-headed, gun in hand, the maddest of men.
“Put a Vandyke beard on him,” grinned Ferrall over his shoulder. “There! O Lord! but you have hit it! Put a ticked saddle on the cur—there!”
“Who is this supposed to be?” began Siward, looking up. But “Wait!” chuckled his host, seizing the still wet sketch, and made for the door.
Siward strolled into the bath-room, washed a spot or two of ink from his fingers, returned and buttoned his waistcoat, then, completing an unhurried toilet, went out and down the stairway to the big living-room. There were two or three people there—Mrs. Leroy Mortimer, very fetching with her Japanese-like colouring, black hair and eyes that slanted just enough; Rena Bonnesdel, smooth, violet-eyed, blonde, and rather stunning in a peculiarly innocent way; Miss Caithness, very pale and slimly attractive; and the Page boys, Willis and Gordon, delightfully shy and interested, and having a splendid time with any woman who could afford the intellectual leisure.
Siward spoke pleasantly to them all. Other people drifted down—Marion Page who looked like a school-marm and rode like a demon; Eileen Shannon, pink and white as a thorn blossom, with the deuce to pay lurking in her grey eyes; Kathryn Tassel and Mrs. Vendenning whom he did not know, and finally his hostess Grace Ferrall with her piquant, almost boyish, freckled face and sweet frank eyes and the figure of an adolescent.
She gave Siward one pretty sun-browned hand and laid the other above his, holding it a moment in her light clasp.
“Stephen! Stephen!” she said under her breath, “it’s because I’ve a few things to scold you about that I’ve asked you to Shotover.”
“I suppose I know,” he said.
“I should hope you do. I’ve a letter to-night from your mother.”
“From my mother?”
“I want you to go over it—with me—if we can find a minute after dinner.” She released his hand, turning partly around: “Kemp, dinner’s been announced, so cut that dog story in two! Will you give me your arm Major Belwether? Howard!”—to her cousin, Mr. Quarrier, who turned from Miss Landis to listen—“will you please try to recollect whom you are to take in—and do it?” And, as she passed Siward, in a low voice, mischievous and slangy: “Sylvia Landis for yours—as she says she didn’t have enough of you on the cliffs.”
The others appeared to know how to pair according to some previous notice. Siward turned to Sylvia Landis with the pleasure of his good fortune so plainly visible in his face, that her own brightened in response.
“You see,” she said gaily, “you cannot escape me. There is no use in looking wildly at Agatha Caithness”—he wasn’t—“or pretending you’re pleased,” slipping her rounded, bare arm through the arm he offered. “You can’t guess what I’ve done to-night—nobody can guess except Grace Ferrall and one other person. And if you try to look happy beside me, I may tell you—somewhere between sherry and cognac—Oh, yes; I’ve done two things: I have your dog for you!”
“Not Sagamore?” he said incredulously as he was seating her.
“Certainly Sagamore. I said to Mr. Quarrier, ‘I want Sagamore,’ and when he tried to give him to me, I made him take my cheque. Now you may draw another for me at your leisure, Mr. Siward. Tell me, are you pleased?”—for she was looking for the troubled hesitation in his face and she saw it dawning.
“Mr. Quarrier doesn’t like me, you know—”
“But I do,” she said coolly. “I told him how much pleasure it would give me. That is sufficient—is it not?—for everybody concerned.”
“He knew that you meant to—”
“No, that concerns only you and me. Are you trying to spoil my pleasure in what I have done?”
“I can’t take the dog, Miss Landis—”
“Oh,” she said, vexed; “I had no idea you were vindictive—”
There was a silence; he bent forward a trifle, gravely scrutinising a “hand-painted” name card, though it might not have astonished him to learn that somebody’s foot had held the brush. Somewhere in the vicinity Grace Ferrall had discovered a woman who supported dozens of relatives by painting that sort of thing for the summer residents at Vermillion Point down the coast. So being charitable she left an order, and being thrifty, insisted on using the cards, spite of her husband’s gibes.
People were now inspecting them with more or less curiosity; Siward found his “hand-painting” so unattractive that he had just tipped it over to avoid seeing it, when a burst of laughter from Lord Alderdene made everybody turn. Mrs. Vendenning was laughing; so was Rena Bonnesdel looking over Quarrier’s shoulder at a card he was holding—not one of the “hand-decorated,” but a sheet of note-paper containing a drawing of a man rushing after a gun-shy dog.
The extraordinary cackling laughter of his lordship obliterated other sounds for a while; Rena Bonnesdel possessed herself of the drawing and held it up amid a shout of laughter. And, to his excessive annoyance, Siward saw that, unconsciously, he had caricatured Quarrier—Ferrall’s malicious request for a Vandyke beard making the caricature dreadfully apparent.
Quarrier had at first flushed up; then he forced a smile; but his symmetrical features were never cordial when he smiled.
“Who on earth did that?” whispered Sylvia Landis apprehensively. “Mr. Quarrier dislikes that sort of thing—but of course he’ll take it well.”
“Did he ever chase his own dog?” asked Siward, biting his lip.
“Yes—so Blinky says—in the Carolinas last season. It’s Blinky!—that’s his notion of humour. Did you ever hear such a laugh? No wonder Mr. Quarrier is annoyed.”
The gay uproar had partly subsided, renewed here and there as the sketch was passed along, and finally, making the circle, returned like a bad penny to Quarrier. He smiled again, symmetrically, as he received it, nodding his compliments to Alderdene.
“Oh, no,” cackled his lordship; “I didn’t draw it, old chap!”
“Nor I! I only wish I could,” added Captain Voucher.
“Nor I—nor I—who did it?” ran the chorus along the table.
“I didn’t do it!” said Sylvia gravely, looking across at Quarrier. And suddenly Quarrier’s large, handsome eyes met Siward’s for the briefest fraction of a second, then were averted. But into his face there crept an expressionless pallor that did not escape Siward—no, nor Sylvia Landis.
Presently under cover of a rapid fire of chatter she said: “Did you draw that?”
“Yes; I had no idea it was meant for him. You may imagine how likely I’d be to take any liberty with a man who already dislikes me.”
“But it resembles him—in a very dreadful way.”
“I know it. You must take my word for what I have told you.”
She looked up at him: “I do.” Then: “It’s a pity; Mr. Quarrier does not consider such things humourous. He—he is very sensitive.... Oh, I wish that fool Englishman had been in Ballyhoo!”
“But he didn’t do it!”
“No, but he put you up to it—or Grace Ferrall did. I wish Grace would let Mr. Quarrier alone; she has always been perfectly possessed to plague him; she seems unable to take him seriously and he simply hates it. I don’t think he’d tolerate her if she were not his cousin.
“I’m awfully sorry,” was all Siward said; and for a while he gloomily busied himself with whatever was brought to him.
“Don’t look that way,” came a low voice beside him.
“Do I show everything as plainly as that?” he asked, curiously.
“I seem to read you—sometimes.”
“It’s very nice of you,” he said.
“Nice?”
“To look at me—now and then.”
“Oh,” she cried resentfully, “don’t be grateful.”
“I—really am not you know,” he said laughing.
“That,” she rejoined slowly, “is the truth. You say conventional things in a manner—in an agreeably personal manner that interests women. But you are not grateful to anybody for anything; you are indifferent, and you can’t help being nice to people, so—some day—some girl will think you are grateful, and will have a miserable time of it.”
“Miserable time?”
“Waiting for you to say what never will enter your head to say.”
“You mean I—I—”
“Flirt? No, I mean that you don’t flirt; that you are always dreamily occupied with your own affairs, from which listlessly congenial occupation, when drawn, you are so unexpectedly nice that a girl immediately desires to see how nice you can be.”
“What a charming indictment you draw!” he said, amused.
“It’s a grave one I assure you. I’ve been talking about you to Grace Ferrall; I asked to be placed beside you at dinner; I told her I hadn’t had half enough of you on the cliff. Now what do you think of yourself for being too nice to a susceptible girl? I think it’s immoral.”
They both were laughing now; several people glanced at them, smiling in sympathy. Alderdene took that opportunity to revert to the sketch, furnishing a specimen of his own inimitable laughter as a running accompaniment to the story of Quarrier and his dog in North Carolina, until he had everybody, as usual, laughing, not at the story but at him. All of which demonstration was bitterly offensive to Quarrier. He turned his eyes once on Miss Landis and on Siward, then dropped them.
The hostess arose; a rustle and flurry of silk and lace and the scraping of chairs, a lingering word or laugh, and the colour vanished from the room leaving a circle of men in black standing around the table.
Here and there a man, lighting a cigarette, bolted his coffee and cognac and strolled out to the gun-room. Ferrall, gesticulating vigorously, resumed his preprandial dog story to Captain Voucher; Belwether buttonholed Alderdene and bored him with an interminably facetious tale until that nobleman, threatened with maxillary dislocation, fairly wrenched himself loose and came over to Siward, squinting furiously.
“Old ass!” he muttered; “his chop whiskers look like the chops of a Southdown ram—and he’s got the wits of one. Look here, Stephen, I hear you fell into no end of a scrape in town—”
“Tu quoque, Blinky? Oh, read the newspapers and let it go at that!”
“Just as you like old chap!” returned his lordship unabashed. “All I meant was—anything Voucher and I can do—of course—”
“You’re very good. I’m not dead you know.”
“‘Not dead, you know’,” repeated Major Belwether coming up behind them with his sprightly step; “that reminds me of a good one—” He sat down and lighted a cigar, then, vainly attempting to control his countenance as though roguishly anticipating the treat awaiting them, he began another endless story.
Tradition had hallowed the popular notion that Major Belwether was a wit. The sycophant of the outer world seldom even awaited his first word before bursting into premature mirth. Besides he was very wealthy.
Siward watched him with mixed emotions; the lambent-eyed, sheepy expression had given place to the buck rabbit; his smooth baby-pink skin and downy white side whiskers quivered in premature sympathy with his listener’s overwhelming hilarity.
The Page boys, very callow, very much delighted, and a little in awe of such a celebrated personage, laughed heartily. And altogether there was sufficient attention and sufficient laughter to make a very respectable noise. This, being the major’s cue for an exit, he rose, one sleek hand raised in sprightly protest as though to shield the invisible ladies, to whose bournes he was bound, from an uproar too masculine and mighty for the ears of such a sex.
“Ass!” muttered Alderdene, getting up and pattering about the room in his big, shiny pumps. “Give me a peg—somebody!”
Mortimer swallowed his brandy, lingered, lifted the decanter, mechanically considering its remaining contents and his own capacity; then:
“Bridge, Captain?”
“Certainly,” said Captain Voucher briskly.
“I’ll go and shoo the major into the gun-room,” observed Ferrall—“unless—” looking questioningly at Siward.
“I’ve a date with your wife,” observed that young man, strolling toward the hall.
The Page boys, Rena Bonnesdel, and Eileen Shannon were seated at a card table together, very much engaged with one another, the sealed pack lying neglected on the green cloth, a vast pink box of bon-bons beside it, not neglected.
O’Hara and Quarrier with Marion Page and Mrs. Mortimer were immersed in the game, already stony faced and oblivious to outer sounds.
About the rooms were distributed girls en tête-à -tête, girls eating bon-bons and watching the cards—among them Sylvia Landis, hands loosely clasped behind her, standing at Quarrier’s elbow to observe and profit by an expert performance.
As Siward strolled in she raised her dainty head for an instant, smiled in silence, and resumed a study of her fiancé’s game.
A moment later, when Quarrier had emerged brilliantly from the mêlée, she looked up again, triumphantly, supposing Siward was lingering somewhere waiting to join her. And she was just a trifle surprised and disappointed to find him nowhere in sight. She had wished him to observe the brilliancy of Mr. Quarrier’s game.
But Siward, outside on the veranda, was saying at that moment to his hostess: “I shall be very glad to read my mother’s letter at any time you choose.”
“It must be later, Stephen. I’m to cut in when Kemp sends for me. He has a lot of letters to attend to.... Tell me, what do you think of Sylvia Landis?”
“I like her, of course,” he replied pleasantly.
Grace Ferrall stood thinking a moment: “That sketch you made proved a great success, didn’t it?” And she laughed under her breath.
“Did it? I thought Mr. Quarrier seemed annoyed—”
“Really? What a muff that cousin of mine is. He’s such a muff, you know, that the very sight of his pointed beard and pompadour hair and his complacency sets me in fidgets to stir him up.”
“I don’t think you’d best use me for the stick next time,” said Siward. “He’s not my cousin you know.”
Mrs. Ferrall shrugged her boyish shoulders: “By the way”—she said curiously—“who was that girl?”
“What girl,” he asked coolly, looking at his hostess, now the very incarnation of delicate mockery with her pretty laughing mouth, her boyish sunburn and freckles.
“You won’t tell me I suppose?”
“I’m sorry—”
“Was she pretty, Stephen?”
“Yes,” he said sulkily; “I wish you wouldn’t—”
“Nonsense! Do you think I’m going to let you off without some sort of confession? If I had time now—but I haven’t. Kemp has business letters: he’ll be furious; so I’ve got to take his cards or we won’t have any pennies to buy gasoline for our adored and shrieking Mercedes.”
She retreated backward with a gay nod of malice, turned to enter the house, and met Sylvia Landis face to face in the hallway.
“You minx!” she whispered; “aren’t you ashamed?”
“Very much, dear. What for?” And catching sight of Siward outside in the starlight, divined perhaps something of her hostess’ meaning, for she laughed uneasily, like a child who winces under a stern eye.
“You don’t suppose for a moment,” she began, “that I have—”
“Yes I do. You always do.”
“Not with that sort of man,” she returned naïvely; “he won’t.”
Mrs. Ferrall regarded her suspiciously: “You always pick out exactly the wrong man to play with—”
They had moved back side by side into the hall, the hostess’ arm linked in the arm of the younger girl.
“The wrong man?” repeated Sylvia, instinctively freeing her arm, her straight brows beginning to bend inward.
“I didn’t mean that—exactly. You know how much I care for his mother—and for him.” The obstinate downward trend of the brows, the narrowing blue gaze signalled mutiny to the woman who knew her so well.
“What is so wrong with Mr. Siward?” she asked.
“Nothing. There was an affair—”
“This spring in town. I know it. Is that all?”
“Yes—for the present,” replied Grace Ferrall uncomfortably; then: “For goodness’ sake, Sylvia, don’t cross examine me that way! I care a great deal for that boy—”
“So do I. I’ve made him take my dog.”
There was an abrupt pause, and presently Mrs. Ferrall began to laugh.
“I mean it—really,” said Sylvia quietly; “I like him immensely.”
“Dearest, you mean it generously—with your usual exaggeration. You have heard that he has been foolish, and because he’s so young, so likable, every instinct, every impulse in you is aroused to—to be nice to him—”
“And if that were—”
“There is no harm, dear—” Mrs. Ferrall hesitated, her grey eyes softening to a graver revery. Then looking up: “It’s rather pathetic,” she said in a low voice. “Kemp thinks he’s foredoomed—like all the Siwards. It’s an hereditary failing with him,—no, it’s hereditary damnation. Siward after Siward, generation after generation you know—” She bit her lip, thinking a moment. “His grandfather was a friend of my grand-parents, brilliant, handsome, generous, and—doomed! His own father was found dying in a dreadful resort in London where he had wandered when stupefied—a Siward! Think of it! So you see what that outbreak of Stephen’s means to those whose families have been New Yorkers since New York was. It is ominous, it is more than ominous—it means that the master-vice has seized on one more Siward. But I shall never, never admit it to his mother.”
The younger girl sat wide-eyed, silent; the elder’s gaze was upon her, but her thoughts, remote, centred on the hapless mother of such a son.
“Such indulgence was once fashionable; moderation is the present fashion. Perhaps he will fall into line,” said Mrs. Ferrall thoughtfully. “The main thing is to keep him among people, not to drop him. The gregarious may be shamed, but if anything, any incident, happens to drive him outside by himself, if he should become solitary, there’s not a chance in the world for him.... It’s a pity. I know he meant to make himself the exception to the rule—and look! Already one carouse of his has landed him in the daily papers!”
Sylvia flushed and looked up: “Grace, may I ask you a plain question?”
“Yes, child,” she answered absently.
“Has it occurred to you that what you have said about this boy touches me very closely?”
Mrs. Ferrall’s wits returned nimbly from woolgathering, and she shot a startled, inquiring glance at the girl beside her.
“You—you mean the matter of heredity, Sylvia?”
“Yes. I think my uncle Major Belwether chose you as his august mouthpiece for that little sermon on the dangers of heredity—the danger of being ignorant concerning what women of my race had done—before I came into the world they found so amusing.”
“I told you several things,” returned Mrs. Ferrall composedly. “Your uncle thought it best for you to know.”
“Yes. The marriage vows sat lightly upon some of my ancestors, I gather. In fact,” she added coolly, “where the women of my race loved they usually found the way—rather unconventionally. There was, if I understood you, enough of divorce, of general indiscretion and irregularity to seriously complicate any family tree and coat of arms I might care to claim—”
“Sylvia!”
The girl lifted her pretty bare shoulders. “I’m sorry, but could I help it? Very well; all I can do is to prove a decent exception. Very well; I’m doing it, am I not?—practically scared into the first solidly suitable marriage offered—seizing the unfortunate Howard with both hands for fear he’d get away and leave me alone with only a queer family record for company! Very well! Now then, I want to ask you why everybody, in my case, didn’t go about with sanctimonious faces and dolorous mien repeating: ‘Her grand-mother eloped! Her mother ran away. Poor child, she’s doomed! doomed!’”
“Sylvia, I—”
“Yes—why didn’t they? That’s the way they talk about that boy out there!” She swept a rounded arm toward the veranda.
“Yes, but he has already broken loose, while you—”
“So did I—nearly! Had it not been for you, you know well enough I might have run away with that dreadful Englishman at Newport! For I adored him—I did! I did! and you know it. And look at my endless escapes from compromising myself! Can you count them?—all those indiscretions when mere living seemed to intoxicate me that first winter—and only my uncle and you to break me in!”
“In other words,” said Mrs. Ferrall slowly, “you don’t think Mr. Siward is getting what is known as a square deal?”
“No, I don’t. Major Belwether has already hinted—no, not even that—but has somehow managed to dampen my pleasure in Mr. Siward.”
Mrs. Ferrall considered the girl beside her—now very lovely and flushed in her suppressed excitement.
“After all,” she said, “you are going to marry somebody else. So why become quite so animated about a man you may never again see?”
“I shall see him if I desire to!”
“Oh!”
“I am not taking the black veil, am I?” asked the girl hotly.
“Only the wedding veil, dear. But after all your husband ought to have something to suggest concerning a common visiting list—”
“He may suggest—certainly. In the meantime I shall be loyal to my own friends—and afterward, too,” she murmured to herself, as her hostess rose, calmly dropping care like a mantle from her shoulders.