Chambers Robert William
The Younger Set
The day before he had been at the Hook until almost dark, watching the firing of a big gun, and the results had been so satisfactory that he was venturing to give himself a holiday—unless wanted at Edgewater.
But the morning had brought this letter; Alixe was contented and comfortable. So when Boots, after breakfast, went off to his Air Line office, Selwyn permitted himself the luxury of smoking-jacket and slippers, and settled down before the fire to reread the letter and examine the enclosed bills, and ponder and worry over them at his ease. To have leisure to worry over perplexities was something; to worry in such luxury as this seemed something so very near to happiness that as he refolded the last bill for household expenses he smiled faintly to himself.
Boots's three tabby-cats were disposed comfortably before the blaze, fore paws folded under, purring and blinking lazily at the grate. All around were evidences of Boots's personal taste in pretty wall-paper and hangings, a few handsome Shiraz rugs underfoot, deep, comfortable chairs, low, open bookcases full of promising literature—the more promising because not contemporary.
Selwyn loved such a room as this—where all was comfort, and nothing in the quiet, but cheerful, ensemble disturbed the peaceful homeliness.
Once—and not very long since—he had persuaded himself that there had been a chance for him to have such a home, and live in it—not alone. That chance had gone—had never really existed, he knew now. For sooner or later he must have awakened from the pleasant dreams of self-persuasion to the reality of his relentless responsibility. No, there had never been such a chance; and he thanked God that he had learned before it was too late that for him there could be no earthly paradise, no fireside à deux, no home, no hope of it.
As long as Alixe lived his spiritual responsibility must endure. And they had just told him that she might easily outlive them all.
He turned heavily in his chair and stared at the fire. Perhaps he saw infernal visions in the flames; perhaps the blaze meant nothing more to him than an example of chemical reaction, for his face was set and colourless and vacant, and his hands lay loosely along the padded arms of his easy-chair.
The hardest lesson he had to learn in these days was to avoid thinking. Or, if he must surrender to the throbbing, unbidden memories which came crowding in hordes to carry him by the suddenness of their assault, that he learn to curb and subdue and direct them in pity toward that hopeless, helpless, stricken creature who was so utterly dependent upon him in her dreadful isolation.
And he could not so direct them.
Loyal in act and deed, his thoughts betrayed him. Memories, insurgent, turned on him to stab him; and he shrank from them, cowering among his pillows at midnight. But memory is merciless, and what has been is without pity; and so remembrance rose at midnight from its cerements, like a spectre, floating before his covered eyes, wearing the shape of youth and love, crowned with the splendour of her hair, looking at him out of those clear, sweet eyes whose gaze was purity and truth eternal.
And truth is truth, though he might lie with hands clinched across his brow to shut out the wraith of it that haunted him; though he might set his course by the faith that was in him, and put away the hope of the world—whose hope is love—the truth was there, staring, staring at him out of Eileen Erroll's dark-blue eyes.
He had seen her seldom that winter. When he had seen her their relations appeared to be as happy, as friendly as before; there was no apparent constraint, nothing from her to indicate that she noticed an absence for which his continual business with the Government seemed sufficient excuse.
Besides, her days were full days, consequent upon Nina's goading and indefatigable activity; and Eileen danced and received, and she bridged and lunched, and she heard opera Wednesdays and was good to the poor on Fridays; and there were balls, and theatres, and classes for intellectual improvement, and routine duties incident to obligations born with those inhabitants of Manhattan who are numbered among the thousand caryatides that support upon their jewelled necks and naked shoulders the social structure of the metropolis.
But Selwyn, unable longer to fulfil his social obligations, was being quietly eliminated from the social scheme of things. Passed over here, dropped there, counted out as one more man not to be depended upon, it was not a question of loss of caste; he simply stayed away, and his absence was accepted by people who, in the breathless pleasure chase, have no leisure to inquire why a man has lagged behind.
There were rumours, however, that he had merely temporarily donned overalls for the purpose of making a gigantic fortune; and many an envious young fellow asked his pretty partner in the dance if it was true, and many a young girl frankly hoped it was, and that the fortune would be quick in the making. For Selwyn was well liked in the younger set, and that he was in process of becoming eligible interested everybody except Gladys and the Minster twins, who considered him sufficiently eligible without the material additions required by their cynical seniors, and would rather have had him penniless and present than absent and opulent.
But they were young and foolish, and after a while they forgot to miss him, particularly Gladys, whose mother had asked her not to dance quite so often with Gerald, and to favour him a trifle less frequently in cotillon. Which prevoyance had been coped with successfully by Nina, who, noticing it, at first took merely a perverse pleasure in foiling Mrs. Orchil; but afterward, as the affair became noticeable, animated by the instinct of the truly clever opportunist, she gave Gerald every fighting chance. Whatever came of it—and, no doubt, the Orchils had more ambitious views for Gladys—it was well to have Gerald mentioned in such a fashionable episode, whether anything came of it or not.
Gerald, in the early days of his affair with Gladys, and before even it had assumed the proportions of an affair, had shyly come to Selwyn, not for confession but with the crafty purpose of introducing her name into the conversation so that he might have the luxury of talking about her to somebody who would neither quiz him nor suspect him.
Selwyn, of course, ultimately suspected him; but as he never quizzed him, Gerald continued his elaborate system of subterfuges to make her personality and doings a topic for him to expand upon and Selwyn to listen to.
It had amused Selwyn; he thought of it now—a gay memory like a ray of light flung for a moment across the sombre background of his own sadness. Fortunate or unfortunate, Gerald was still lucky in his freedom to hazard it with chance and fate.
Freedom to love! That alone was blessed, though that love be unreturned. Without that right—the right to love—a man was no man. Lansing had been correct: such a man was a spectre in a living world—the ghost of what he had been. But there was no help for it, and there Lansing had been in the wrong. No hope, no help, nothing for it but to set a true course and hang to it.
And Selwyn's dull eyes rested upon the ashes of the fire, and he saw his dead youth among them; and, in the flames, his maturity burning to embers.
If he outlived Alixe, his life would lie as the ashes lay at his feet. If she outlived him—and they had told him there was every chance of it—at least he would have something to busy himself with in life if he was to leave her provided for when he was no longer there to stand between her and charity.
That meant work—the hard, incessant, blinding, stupefying work which stuns thought and makes such a life endurable.
Not that he had ever desired death as a refuge or as a solution of despair; there was too much of the soldier in him. Besides, it is so impossible for youth to believe in death, to learn to apply the word to themselves. He had not learned to, and he had seen death, and watched it; but for himself he had not learned to believe in it. When one turns forty it is easier to credit it.
Thinking of death, impersonally, he sat watching the flames playing above the heavy log; and as he lay there in his chair, the unlighted pipe drooping in his hands, the telephone on the desk rang, and he rose and unhooked the receiver.
Drina's voice sounded afar, and: "Hello, sweetheart!" he said gaily; "is there anything I can do for your youthful highness?"
"I've been talking over the 'phone to Boots," she said. "You know, whenever I have nothing to do I call up Boots at his office and talk to him."
"That must please him," suggested Selwyn gravely.
"It does. Boots says you are not going to business to-day. So I thought I'd call you up."
"Thank you," said Selwyn.
"You are welcome. What are you doing over there in Boots's house?"
"Looking at the fire, Drina, and listening to the purring of three fat tabby-cats."
"Oh! Mother and Eileen have gone somewhere. I haven't anything to do for an hour. Can't you come around?"
"Why, yes, if you want me."
"Yes, I do. Of course I can't have Boots, and I prefer you next. The children are fox-hunting, and it bores me. Will you come?"
"Yes. When?"
"Now. And would you mind bringing me a box of mint-paste? Mother won't object. Besides, I'll tell her, anyway, after I've eaten them."
"All right!" said Selwyn, laughing and hanging up the receiver.
On his way to the Gerards' he bought a box of the confection dear to Drina. But as he dropped the packet into his overcoat-pocket, the memory of the past rose up suddenly, halting him. He could not bear to go to the house without some little gift for Eileen, and it was violets now as it was in the days that could never dawn again—a great, fragrant bunch of them, which he would leave for her after his brief play-hour with Drina was ended.
The child was glad to see him, and expressed herself so, coming across to the chair where he sat and leaning against him, one arm on his shoulder.
"Do you know," she said, "that I miss you ever so much? Do you know, also, that I am nearly fourteen, and that there is nobody in this house near enough my age to be very companionable? I have asked them to send me to school, and mother is considering it."
She leaned against his shoulder, curly head bent, thoughtfully studying the turquoise ring on her slim finger. It was her first ring. Nina had let Boots give it to her.
"What a tall girl you are growing into!" he said, encircling her waist with one arm. "Your mother was like you at fourteen. . . . Did she ever tell you how she first met your father? Well, I'll tell you then. Your father was a schoolboy of fifteen, and one day he saw the most wonderful little girl riding a polo pony out of the Park. Her mother was riding with her. And he lost his head, and ran after her until she rode into the Academy stables. And in he went, headlong, after her, and found her dismounted and standing with her mother; and he took off his hat, and he said to her mother: 'I've run quite a long way to tell you who I am: I am Colonel Gerard's son, Austin. Would you care to know me?'
"And he looked at the little girl, who had curls precisely like yours, and the same little nose and mouth. And that little girl, who is now your mother, said very simply: 'Won't you come home to luncheon with us? May he, mother? He has run a very long way to be polite to us.'
"And your mother's mother looked at the boy for a moment, smiling, for he was the image of his father, who had been at school with her. Then she said: 'Come to luncheon and tell me about your father. Your father once came a thousand miles to see me, but I had started the day before on my wedding-trip.'
"And that is how your father first met your mother, when she was a little girl."
Drina laughed: "What a funny boy father was to run after a strange girl on a polo pony! . . . Suppose—suppose he had not seen her, and had not run after her. . . . Where would I be now, Uncle Philip? . . . Could you please tell me?"
"Still aloft among the cherubim, sweetheart."
"But—whose uncle would you be? And who would Boots have found for a comrade like me? . . . It's a good thing that father ran after that polo pony. . . . Probably God arranged it. Do you think so?"
"There is no harm in thinking it," he said, smiling.
"No; no harm. I've known for a long while that He was taking care of Boots for me until I grow up. Meanwhile, I know some very nice Harvard freshmen and two boys from St. Paul and five from Groton. That helps, you know."
"Helps what?" asked Selwyn, vastly amused.
"To pass the time until I am eighteen," said the child serenely, helping herself to another soft, pale-green chunk of the aromatic paste. "Uncle Philip, mother has forbidden me—and I'll tell her and take my punishment—but would you mind telling me how you first met my Aunt Alixe?"
Selwyn's arm around her relaxed, then tightened.
"Why do you ask, dear?" he said very quietly.
"Because I was just wondering whether God arranged that, too."
Selwyn looked at her a moment. "Yes," he said grimly; "nothing happens by chance."
"Then, when God arranges such things, He does not always consider our happiness."
"He gives us our chance, Drina."
"Oh! Did you have a chance? I heard mother say to Eileen that you had never had a chance for happiness. I thought it was very sad. I had gone into the clothes-press to play with my dolls—you know I still do play with them—that is, I go into some secret place and look at them at times when the children are not around. So I was in there, sitting on the cedar-chest, and I couldn't help hearing what they said."
She extracted another bonbon, bit into it, and shook her head:
"And mother said to Eileen: 'Dearest, can't you learn to care for him?' And Eileen—"
"Drina!" he interrupted sharply, "you must not repeat things you overhear."
"Oh, I didn't hear anything more," said the child, "because I remembered that I shouldn't listen, and I came out of the closet. Mother was standing by the bed, and Eileen was lying on the bed with her hands over her eyes; and I didn't know she had been crying until I said: 'Please excuse me for listening,' and she sat up very quickly, and I saw her face was flushed and her eyes wet. . . . Isn't it possible for you to marry anybody, Uncle Philip?"
"No, Drina."
"Not even if Eileen would marry you?"
"No."
"Why?"
"You could not understand, dear. Even your mother cannot quite understand. So we won't ever speak of it again, Drina."
The child balanced a bonbon between thumb and forefinger, considering it very gravely.
"I know something that mother does not," she said. And as he betrayed no curiosity:
"Eileen is in love. I heard her say so."
He straightened up sharply, turning to look at her.
"I was sleeping with her. I was still awake, and I heard her say: 'I do love you—I do love you.' She said it very softly, and I cuddled up, supposing she meant me. But she was asleep."
"She certainly meant you," said Selwyn, forcing his stiffened lips into a smile.
The child shook her head, looking down at the ring which she was turning on her finger:
"No; she did not mean me."
"H-how do you know?"
"Because she said a man's name."
The silence lengthened; he sat, tilted a little forward, blank gaze focussed on the snowy window; Drina, standing, leaned back into the hollow of his arm, absently studying her ring.
A few moments later her music-teacher arrived, and Drina was obliged to leave him.
"If you don't wait until I have finished my music," she said, "you won't see mother and Eileen. They are coming to take me to the riding-school at four o'clock."
He said that he couldn't stay that day; and when she had gone away to the schoolroom he walked slowly to the window and looked out across the snowy Park, where hundreds of children were floundering about with gaily painted sleds. It was a pretty scene in the sunshine; crimson sweaters and toboggan caps made vivid spots of colour on the white expanse. Beyond, through the naked trees, he could see the drive, and the sleighs with their brilliant scarlet plumes and running-gear flashing in the sun. Overhead was the splendid winter blue of the New York sky, in which, at a vast height, sea-birds circled.
Meaning to go—for the house and its associations made him restless—he picked up the box of violets and turned to ring for a maid to take charge of them—and found himself confronting Eileen, who, in her furs and gloves, was just entering the room.
"I came up," she said; "they told me you were here, calling very formally upon Drina, if you please. What with her monopoly of you and Boots, there seems to be no chance for Nina and me."
They shook hands pleasantly; he offered her the box of violets, and she thanked him and opened it, and, lifting the heavy, perfumed bunch, bent her fresh young face to it. For a moment she stood inhaling the scent, then stretched out her arm, offering their fragrance to him.
"The first night I ever knew you, you sent me about a wagon-load of violets," she said carelessly.
He nodded pleasantly; she tossed her muff on to the library table, stripped off her gloves, and began to unhook her fur coat, declining his aid with a quick shake of her head.
"It is easy—you see!"—as the sleeves slid from her arms and the soft mass of fur fell into a chair. "And, by the way, Drina said that you couldn't wait to see Nina," she continued, turning to face a mirror and beginning to withdraw the jewelled pins from her hat, "so you won't for a moment consider it necessary to remain just because I wandered in—will you?"
He made no reply; she was still busy with her veil and hat and her bright, glossy hair, the ends of which curled up at the temples—a burnished frame for her cheeks which the cold had delicately flushed to a wild-rost tint. Then, brushing back the upcurled tendrils of her hair, she turned to confront him, faintly smiling, brows lifted in silent repetition of her question.
"I will stay until Nina comes, if I may," he said slowly.
She seated herself. "You may," she said mockingly; "we don't allow you in the house very often, so when you do come you may remain until the entire family can congregate to inspect you." She leaned back, looking at him; then look and manner changed, and she bent impulsively forward:
"You don't look very well, Captain Selwyn; are you?"
"Perfectly. I"—he laughed—"I am growing old; that is all."
"Do you say that to annoy me?" she asked, with a disdainful shrug, "or to further impress me?"
He shook his head and touched the hair at his temples significantly.
"Pooh!" she retorted. "It is becoming—is that what you mean?"
"I hope it is. There's no reason why a man should not grow old gracefully—"
"Captain Selwyn! But of course you only say it to bring out that latent temper of mine. It's about the only thing that does it, too. . . . And please don't plague me—if you've only a few moments to stay. . . . It may amuse you to know that I, too, am exhibiting signs of increasing infirmity; my temper, if you please, is not what it once was."
"Worse than ever?" he asked in pretended astonishment.
"Far worse. It is vicious. Kit-Ki took a nap on a new dinner-gown of mine, and I slapped her. And the other day Drina hid in a clothes-press while Nina was discussing my private affairs, and when the little imp emerged I could have shaken her. Oh, I am certainly becoming infirm; so if you are, too, comfort yourself with the knowledge that I am keeping pace with you through the winter of our discontent."
At the mention of the incident of which Drina had already spoken to him, Selwyn raised his head and looked at the girl curiously. Then he laughed.
"I am wondering," he said in a bantering voice, "what secrets Drina heard. I think I'd better ask her—"
"You had better not! Besides, I said nothing at all."
"But Nina did."
She nodded, lying there, arms raised, hands clasping the upholstered wings of the big chair, and gazing at him out of indolent, amused eyes.
"Would you like to know what Nina was saying to me?" she asked.
"I'd rather hear what you said to her."
"I told you that I said nothing."
"Not a word?" he insisted.
"Not a word."
"Not even a sound?"
"N—well—I won't answer that."
"Oho!" he laughed. "So you did make some sort of inarticulate reply! Were you laughing or weeping?"
"Perhaps I was yawning. How do you know?" she smiled.
After a moment he said, still curious: "Why were you crying, Eileen?"
"Crying! I didn't say I was crying."
"I assume it."
"To prove or disprove that assumption," she said coolly, amused, "let us hunt up a motive for a possible display of tears. What, Captain Selwyn, have I to cry about? Is there anything in the world that I lack? Anything that I desire and cannot have?"
"Is there?" he repeated.
"I asked you, Captain Selwyn."
"And, unable to reply," he said, "I ask you."
"And I," she retorted, "refuse to answer."
"Oho! So there is, then, something you lack? There is a motive for possible tears?"
"You have not proven it," she said.
"You have not denied it."
She tipped back her head, linked her fingers under her chin, and looked at him across the smooth curve of her cheeks.
"Well—yes," she admitted, "I was crying—if you insist on knowing. Now that you have so cleverly driven me to admit that, can you also force me to tell you why I was so tearful?"
"Certainly," he said promptly; "it was something Nina said that made you cry."
They both laughed.
"Oh, what a come-down!" she said teasingly. "You knew that before. But can you force me to confess to you what Nina was saying? If you can you are the cleverest cross-examiner in the world, for I'd rather perish than tell you—"
"Oh," he said instantly, "then it was something about love!"
He had not meant to say it; he had spoken too quickly, and the flush of surprise on the girl's face was matched by the colour rising to his own temples. And, to retrieve the situation, he spoke too quickly again—and too lightly.
"A girl would rather perish than admit that she is in love?" he said, forcing a laugh. "That is rather a clever deduction, I think. Unfortunately, however, I happen to know to the contrary, so all my cleverness comes to nothing."
The surprise had faded from her face, but the colour remained; and with it something else—something in the blue eyes which he had never before encountered there—the faintest trace of recoil, of shrinking away from him.
And she herself did not know it was there—did not quite realise that she had been hurt. Surprise that he had chanced so abruptly, so unerringly upon the truth had startled and confused her; but that he had made free of the truth so lightly, so carelessly, laughingly amused, left her without an answering smile.
That it had been an accident—a chance surmise which perhaps he himself did not credit—which he could not believe—made it no easier for her. For the first time in his life he had said something which left her unresponsive, with a sense of bruised delicacy and of privacy invaded. A tinge of fear of him crept in, too. She did not misconstrue what he had said under privilege of a jest, but after what had once passed between them she had not considered that love, even in the abstract, might serve as a mocking text for any humour or jesting sermon from a man who had asked her what he once asked—the man she had loved enough to weep for when she had refused him only because she lacked what he asked for. Knowing that she loved him in her own innocent fashion, scarcely credulous that he ever could be dearer to her, yet shyly wistful for whatever more the years might add to her knowledge of a love so far immune from stress or doubt or the mounting thrill of a deeper emotion, she had remained confidently passive, warmly loyal, reverencing the mystery of the love he offered, though she could not understand it or respond.
And now—now a chance turn; of a word—a trend to an idle train of thought, jestingly followed!—and, without warning, they had stumbled on a treasured memory, too frail, too delicately fragile, to endure the shock.
And now fear crept in—fear that he had forgotten, had changed. Else how could he have spoken so? . . . And the tempered restraint of her quivered at the thought—all the serenity, the confidence in life and in him began to waver. And her first doubt crept in upon her.
She turned her expressionless face from him and, resting her cheek against the velvet back of the chair, looked out into the late afternoon sunshine.
All the long autumn without him, all her long, lonely, leisure hours in the golden weather, his silence, his withdrawal into himself, and his work, hitherto she had not misconstrued, though often she confused herself in explaining it. Impatience of his absence, too, had stimulated her to understand the temporary state of things—to know that time away from him meant for her only existence in suspense.
Very, very slowly, by degrees imperceptible, alone with memories of him and of their summer's happiness already behind her, she had learned that time added things to what she had once considered her full capacity for affection.
Alone with her memories of him, at odd moments during the day—often in the gay clamour and crush of the social routine—or driving with Nina, or lying, wide-eyed, on her pillow at night, she became conscious that time, little by little, very gradually but very surely, was adding to her regard for him frail, new, elusive elements that stole in to awake an unquiet pulse or stir her heart into a sudden thrill, leaving it fluttering, and a faint glow gradually spreading through her every vein.
She was beginning to love him no longer in her own sweet fashion, but in his; and she was vaguely aware of it, yet curiously passive and content to put no question to herself whether it was true or false. And how it might be with him she evaded asking herself, too; only the quickening of breath and pulse questioned the pure thoughts unvoiced; only the increasing impatience of her suspense confirmed the answer which now, perhaps, she might give him one day while the blessed world was young.
At the thought she moved uneasily, shifting her position in the chair. Sunset, and the swift winter twilight, had tinted, then dimmed, the light in the room. On the oak-beamed ceiling, across the ivory rosettes, a single bar of red sunlight lay, broken by rafter and plaster foliation. She watched it turn to rose, to ashes. And, closing her eyes, she lay very still and motionless in the gray shadows closing over all.
He had not yet spoken when again she lifted her eyes and saw him sitting in the dusk, one arm resting across his knee, his body bent slightly forward, his gaze vacant.
Into himself again!—silently companioned by the shadows of old thoughts; far from her—farther than he had ever been. For a while she lay there, watching him, scarcely breathing; then a faint shiver of utter loneliness came over her—of desire for his attention, his voice, his friendship, and the expression of it. But he never moved; his eyes seemed dull and unseeing; his face strangely gaunt to her, unfamiliar, hard. In the dim light he seemed but the ghost of what she had known, of what she had thought him—a phantom, growing vaguer, more unreal, slipping away from her through the fading light. And the impulse to arouse herself and him from the dim danger—to arrest the spell, to break it, and seize what was their own in life overwhelmed her; and she sat up, grasping the great arms of her chair, slender, straight, white-faced in the gloom.
But he did not stir. Then unreasoning, instinctive fear confused her, and she heard her own voice, sounding strangely in the twilight:
"What has come between us, Captain Selwyn? What has happened to us? Something is all wrong, and I—I ask you what it is, because I don't know. Tell me."
He had lifted his head at her first word, hesitatingly, as though dazed.
"Could you tell me?" she asked faintly.
"Tell you what, child?"
"Why you are so silent with me; what has crept in between us? I"—the innocent courage sustaining her—"I have not changed—except a little in—in the way you wished. Have you?"
"No," he said in an altered voice.
"Then—what is it? I have been—you have left me so much alone this winter—and I supposed I understood—"
"My work," he said; but she scarcely knew the voice for his.
"I know; you have had no time. I know that; I ought to know it by this time, for I have told myself often enough. And yet—when we are together, it is—it has been—different. Can you tell me why? Do you think me changed?"
"You must not change," he said.
"No," she breathed, wondering, "I could not—except—a little, as I told you."
"You must not change—not even that way!" he repeated in a voice so low she could scarcely hear him—and believed she had misunderstood him.
"I did not hear you," she said faintly. "What did you say to me?"
"I cannot say it again."
She slowly shook her head, not comprehending, and for a while sat silent, struggling with her own thoughts. Then, suddenly instinct with the subtle fear which had driven her into speech:
"When I said—said that to you—last summer; when I cried in the swinging seat there—because I could not answer you—as I wished to—did that change you, Captain Selwyn?"
"No."
"Then y-you are unchanged?"
"Yes, Eileen."
The first thrill of deep emotion struck through and through her.
"Then—then that is not it," she faltered. "I was afraid—I have sometimes wondered if it was. . . . I am very glad, Captain Selwyn. . . . Will you wait a—a little longer—for me to—to change?"
He stood up suddenly in the darkness, and she sprang to her feet, breathless; for she had caught the low exclamation, and the strange sound that stifled it in his throat.
"Tell me," she stammered, "w-what has happened. D-don't turn away to the window; don't leave me all alone to endure this—this something I have known was drawing you away—I don't know where! What is it? Could you not tell me, Captain Selwyn? I—I have been very frank with you; I have been truthful—and loyal. I gave you, from the moment I knew you, all of me there was to give. And—and if there is more to give—now—it was yours when it came to me.
