Lady Baltimore Part 38

"Because he was not there long enough, my dear. He learned bridge quickly, and of course he had seen champagne before, and n.o.body had time to notice him. But he'll be married now and they will notice him, and they won't want him. To think of your dropping out!" Kitty became very earnest. "To think of not seeing you among us! You'll be in none of the small things; you'll never be asked to stay at the smart houses--why, not even your name will be in the paper! Not a foreigner you entertain, not a dinner you give, not a thing you wear, will ever be described next morning. And Charley's so set on you, and you're so just exactly made for each other, and it would all be so splendid, and cosey, and jolly!

And to throw all this away for that crude boy!" Kitty's disdain was high at the thought of John.

Hortense took a little time over it "Once," she then stated, "he told me he could drown in my hair as joyfully as the Duke of Clarence did in his b.u.t.t of Malmsey wine!"

Kitty gave a little scream. "Did you let him?"

"One has to guard one's value at times."

Kitty's disdain for John increased. "How crude!"

Hortense did not make any answer.

"How crude!" Kitty, after some silence, repeated. She seemed to have found the right word.

Steps sounded upon the bridge, and the voice of Gazza cried out that the stupid key was at the imbecile club-house, whither he was now going for it, and not to be alarmed. Their voices answered rea.s.suringly, and Gazza was heard growing distant, singing some little song.

Kitty was apparently unable to get away from John's crudity. "He actually said that?"

"Yes."

"Where was it? Tell me about it, Hortense."

"We were walking in the country on that occasion."

Kitty still lingered with it. "Did he look--I've never had any man--I wonder if--how did you feel?"

"Not disagreeably." And Hortense permitted herself to laugh musically.

Kitty's voice at once returned to the censorious tone. "Well, I call such language as that very--very--"

Hortense helped her. "Operatic?"

"He could never be taught in those ways either," declared Kitty. "You would find his ardor always untrained--provincial."

Once more Hortense abstained from making any answer.

Kitty grew superior. "Well, if that's to your taste, Hortense Rieppe!"

"It was none of it like Charley," murmured Hortense.

"I should think not! Charley's not crude. What do you see in that man?"

"I like the way his hair curls above his ears."

For this Kitty found nothing but an impatient exclamation.

And now the voice of Hortense sank still deeper in dreaminess,--down to where the truth lay; and from those depths came the truth, flashing upward through the drowsy words she spoke: "I think I want him for his innocence."

What light these words may have brought to Kitty, I had no chance to learn; for the voice of Gazza returning with the key put an end to this conversation. But I doubted if Kitty had it in her to fathom the nature of Hortense. Kitty was like a trim little clock that could tick tidily on an ornate shelf; she could go, she could keep up with time, with the rapid epoch to which she belonged, but she didn't really have many works. I think she would have scoffed at that last languorous speech as a piece of Hortense's nonsense, and that is why Hortense uttered it aloud: she was safe from being understood. But in my ears it sounded the note of revelation, the simple central secret of Hortense's fire, a flame fed overmuch with experience, with sophistication, grown cold under the ministrations of adroitness, and lighted now by the "crudity"

of John's love-making. And when, after an interval, I had rowed my boat back, and got into the carriage, and started on my long drive from Udolpho to Kings Port, I found that there was almost nothing about all this which I did not know now. Hortense, like most riddles when you are told the answer, was clear:--

"I think I want him for his innocence."

Yes; she was tired of love-making whose down had been rubbed off; she hungered for love-making with the down still on, even if she must pay for it with marriage. Who shall say if her enlightened and modern eye could not look beyond such marriage (when it should grow monotonous) to divorce?

XXI: Hortense's Cigarette Goes Out

John was the riddle that I could not read. Among my last actions of this day was one that had been almost my earliest, and bedtime found me staring at his letter, as I stood, half undressed, by my table. The calm moon brought back Udolpho and what had been said there, as it now shone down upon the garden where Hortense had danced. I stared at John's letter as if its words were new to me, instead of being words that I could have fluently repeated from beginning to end without an error; it was as if, by virtue of mere gazing at the doc.u.ment, I hoped to wring more meaning from it, to divine what had been in the mind which had composed it; but instead of this, I seemed to get less from it, instead of more. Had the boy's purpose been to mystify me, he could scarce have done better. I think that he had no such intention, for it would have been wholly unlike him; but I saw no sign in it that I had really helped him, had really shaken his old quixotic resolve, nor did I see any of his having found a new way of his own out of the trap. I could not believe that the dark road of escape had taken any lodgement in his thought, but had only pa.s.sed over it, like a cloud with a heavy shadow.

But these are surmises at the best: if John had formed any plan, I can never know it, and Juno's remarks at breakfast on Sunday morning sounded strange, like something a thousand miles away. For she spoke of the wedding, and of the fact that it would certainly be a small one. She went over the names of the people who would have to be invited, and doubted if she were one of these. But if she should be, then she would go--for the sake of Miss Josephine St. Michael, she declared. In short, it was perfectly plain that Juno was much afraid of being left out, and that wild horses could not drag her away from it, if an invitation came to her. But, as I say, this side of the wedding seemed to have nothing to do with it, when I thought of all that lay beneath; my one interest to-day was to see John Mayrant, to get from him, if not by some word, then by some look or intonation, a knowledge of what he meant to do.

Therefore, disappointment and some anxiety met me when I stepped from the Hermana's gangway upon her deck, and Charley asked me if he was coming. But the launch, sent back to wait, finally brought John, apologizing for his lateness.

Meanwhile, I was pleased to find among the otherwise complete party General Rieppe. What I had seen of him from a distance held promise, and the hero's nearer self fulfilled it. We fell to each other's lot for the most natural of reasons: n.o.body else desired the company of either of us. Charley was making himself the devoted servant of Hortense, while Kitty drew Beverly, Bohm, and Gazza in her sprightly wake. To her, indeed, I made a few compliments during the first few minutes after my coming aboard, while every sort of drink and cigar was being circulated among us by the cabin boy. Kitty's costume was the most markedly maritime thing that I have ever beheld in any waters, and her white shoes looked (I must confess) supremely well on her pretty little feet.

I am no advocate of sumptuary laws; but there should be one prohibiting big-footed women from wearing white shoes. Did these women know what a spatulated effect their feet so shod produce, no law would be needed.

Yes, Kitty was superlatively, stridently maritime; you could have known from a great distance that she belonged to the very latest steam yacht cla.s.s, and that she was perfectly ignorant of the whole subject. On her left arm, for instance, was worked a red propeller with one blade down, and two chevrons. It was the rating mark for a chief engineer, but this, had she known it, would not have disturbed her.

"I chose it," she told me in reply to my admiration of it, "because it's so pretty. Oh, won't we enjoy ourselves while those stupid old blue-bloods in Kings Port are going to church!" And with this she gave a skip, and ordered the cabin boy to bring her a Remsen cooler. Beverly Rodgers called for dwarf's blood, and I chose a horse's neck, and soon found myself in the society of the General.

He was sipping whiskey and plain water. "I am a rough soldiers sir," he explained to me, "and I keep to the simple beverage of the camp. Had we not 'rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of'?" And he waved a stately hand at my horse's neck. "You are acquainted with the works of Shakespeare?"

I replied that I had a moderate knowledge of them, and a.s.sured him that a horse's neck was very simple.

"Doubtless, sir; but a veteran is ever old-fashioned."

"Papa," said Hortense, "don't let the sun shine upon your head."

"Thank you, daughter mine." They said no more; but I presently felt that for some reason she watched him.

He moved farther beneath the awning, and I followed him. "Are you a father, sir? No? Then you cannot appreciate what it is to confide such a jewel as yon girl to another's keeping." He summoned the cabin boy, who brought him some more of the simple beverage of the camp, and I, feeling myself scarce at liberty to speak on matters so near to him and so far from me as his daughter's marriage, called his attention to the beautiful aspect of Kings Port, spread out before us in a long white line against the blue water.

The General immediately seized his opportunity. "'Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain!' You are acquainted with the works of Goldsmith, sir?"

I professed some knowledge of this author also, and the General's talk flowed ornately onward. Though I had little to say to him about his daughter's marriage, he had much to say to me. Miss Josephine St.

Michael would have been gratified to hear that her family was considered suitable for Hortense to contract an alliance with. "My girl is not stepping down, sir," the father a.s.sured me; and he commended the St.

Michaels and the whole connection. He next alluded tragically but vaguely to misfortunes which had totally deprived him of income. I could not precisely fix what his inheritance had been; sometimes he spoke of cotton, but next it would be rice, and he touched upon sugar more than once; but, whatever it was, it had been vast and was gone. He told me that I could not imagine the feelings of a father who possessed a jewel and no dowry to give her. "A queen's estate should have been hers," he said. "But what! 'Who steals my purse steals trash.'" And he sat up, n.o.bly braced by the philosophic thought. But he soon was shaking his head over his enfeebled health. Was I aware that he had been the cause of postponing the young people's joy twice? Twice had the doctors forbidden him to risk the emotions that would attend his giving his jewel away. He dwelt upon his shattered system to me, and, indeed, it required some dwelling on, for he was the picture of admirable preservation. "But I know what it is myself," he declared, "to be a lover and have bliss delayed. They shall be united now. A soldier must face all arrows. What!"

I had hoped he might quote something here, but was disappointed.

His conversation would soon cease to interest me, should I lose the excitement of watching for the next cla.s.sic; and my eye wandered from the General to the water, where, happily, I saw John Mayrant coming in the launch. I briskly called the General's attention to him, and was delighted with the unexpected result.

"'Oh, young Lochinvar has come out of the West,'" said the General, lifting his gla.s.s.

I touched it ceremoniously with mine. "The day will be hot," I said; "'The boy stood on the burning deck.'"

On this I made my escape from him, and, leaving him to his whiskey and his contemplating, I became aware that the eyes of the rest of the party were eager to watch the greeting between Hortense and John. But there was nothing to see. Hortense waited until her lover had made his apologies to Charley for being late, and, from the way they met, she might have been no more to him than Kitty was. Whatever might be thought, whatever might be known, by these onlookers, Hortense set the pace of how the open secret was to be taken. She made it, for all of us, as smooth and smiling as the waters of Kings Port were this fine day.

How much did they each know? I asked myself how much they had shared in common. To these Replacers Kings Port had opened no doors; they and their automobile had skirted around the outside of all things. And if Charley knew about the wedding, he also knew that it had been already twice postponed. He, too, could have said, as Miss Eliza had once said to me, "The cake is not baked yet." The General's talk to me (I felt as I took in how his health had been the centred point) was probably the result of previous arrangements with Hortense herself; and she quite as certainly inspired whatever she allowed him to say to Charley.