The Adventures of a Widow Part 18

retorted Kindelon. "It makes me wish that I had reported him as grunting instead of growling. In that case the simile would be perfect."

Mrs. Dares shook her head remonstratingly. "Don't try to misrepresent your own good heart by sarcasm," she replied. She spoke with her unchangeable gravity; she had no lightsome moments, and the perpetually serious views which she took of everything made you sometimes wonder how and why it was that she managed to make her smileless repose miss the austere note and sound the winsome one.

"I am certain of not losing your esteem," exclaimed Kindelon, with all his most characteristic warmth. "Your own heart is so large and kind that everybody who has got to know it can feel secure in drawing recklessly upon its charity."

Mrs. Dares made him no answer, for just then a gentleman who had approached claimed her attention. And Pauline, now feeling that she and Kindelon were virtually alone together, said with abrupt speed,--

"You told me that this Mr. Barrowe had a kind heart, in spite of his gruff, unreasonable manners. You admitted as much, and so, remembering how clever his writings are, I decided to retain him on the list. But please tell me just what he has been saying."

"Oh, he's tempestuous on the subject of your having done any weeding at all. He thinks it arrogant and patronizing of you. He thinks that I am at the bottom of it; he always delights in blaming me for something. He positively revels, I suppose, in his present opportunity."

"But if he is indignant and condemnatory," said Pauline, "why does he not remain away? He has the right of discountenancing my conduct by his absence."

"Ah, you don't know him! He never neglects a chance for being turbulent.

I heard him a.s.sert, just now, that Miss Cragge had received a most cruel insult from you."

"Miss Cragge!" exclaimed Pauline, with a flash of her gray eyes. "I would not have such a creature as that in my drawing-rooms for a very great deal! Upon my word," she went on, with a sudden laugh that had considerable cold bitterness, "this irascible personage needs a piece of my mind. I don't say that I intend giving it to him, for I am at home, and the requirements of the hostess mark imperative limits. But I have ways left me of showing distinct disfavor, for all that. Are there any other acts of mine which Mr. Barrowe does me the honor to disapprove?"

"Oh, yes. I hear that he considers you have acted most unfairly toward the triad of poets, Leander Prawle, Arthur Trevor, and Rufus Corson."

Pauline gave a smile that was really but a curl of the lip. "Indeed!"

she murmured. "I was rather amused by Mr. Prawle's poetic prophecy of a divine future race; it may be bad poetry, as he puts it, but I thought it rather good evolution. Then the _Quartier Latin_ floridity of Mr.

Trevor amused me as well: I have always liked fervor of expression in verse, and I am not prepared to say that Mr. Trevor has always written ludicrous exaggeration--especially since he reveres Theophile Gautier, who is an enchanting singer. But when it comes to treating with that morbid _poseur_, Mr. Corson, who affects to see beauty in decay and corruption, and who makes a silly attempt to deify indecency, I draw my line, and shut my doors."

"Of course you do," said Kindelon. "No doubt if you had opened them to Mr. Corson, Barrowe would have been scandalized at your doing so. As it is, he chooses to championize Mr. Corson and Miss Cragge. He is a natural grumbler, a const.i.tutional fighter. By the way, he is coming in our direction. Do you see him approaching?"

"Oh, yes, I see him," said Pauline resolutely, "and I am quite prepared for him."

Mr. Barrowe presented himself at her side in another minute or two. His tall frame accomplished a very awkward bow, while his little eyes twinkled above his beak-like nose, with a suggestion of restrained belligerence.

"Your entertainment is very successful, Mrs. Varick," he began, ignoring Kindelon, who had already receded a step or two.

"Have you found it so?" returned Pauline coolly. "I had fancied otherwise."

Mr. Barrowe shrugged his frail shoulders. "Your rooms are beautiful," he said, "and of course you must know that I like the a.s.semblage; it contains so many of my good friends."

"I hope you miss n.o.body," said Pauline, after a slight pause.

Mr. Barrowe gave a thin, acid cough. "Yes," he declared, "I miss more than one. I miss them, and I hear that you have not invited them. I am very sorry that you have not. It is going to cause ill-feeling.

Everybody knows that you took Mrs. Dares's list--my dear, worthy friend's list. It is too bad, Mrs. Varick; I a.s.sure you that it is too bad."

"I do not think that it is too bad," said Pauline freezingly, with the edges of her lips. "I do not think that it is bad at all. I have invited those whom I wished to invite."

"Precisely!" cried Mr. Barrowe, with a shrill, snapping sound in the utterance of the word. "You have been wrongly advised, however--horribly advised. I don't pretend to state _who_ has advised you, but if you had consulted me--well, handicapped as I am by a hundred other duties, bored to death as I am by people applying for all sorts of favors, I would nevertheless, in so good a cause, have willingly spared you some of my valuable time. I would have told you by no means to exclude so excellent a person as poor, hard-working Miss Cragge. To slight her like that was a very unkind cut. You must excuse my speaking plainly."

"I must either excuse it or resent it," said Pauline, meeting the glitter of Mr. Barrowe's small eyes with the very calm and direct gaze of her own. "But suppose I do the latter? It has usually been my custom, thus far through life, to resent interference of any sort."

"Interference!" echoed Mr. Barrowe, with querulous asperity. "Ah, madam, I think I recognize just who _has_ been advising you, now; you make my suspicion a certainty." He glanced irately enough toward Kindelon as he spoke the last words.

Kindelon took a step or two forward, reaching Pauline's side and pausing there. His manner, as he began to speak, showed no anger, but rather that blending of decision and carelessness roused by an adversary from whom we have slight fear of defeat.

"Come, Barrowe," he said, "if you mean me you had better state so plainly. As it happens, Mrs. Varick was advised, in the matter of not sending Miss Cragge an invitation, solely by herself. But if she had asked my counsel it would entirely have agreed with her present course."

"No doubt," almost snarled Mr. Barrowe. "The ill turn comes to the same thing. We need not split hairs. I made no personal reference to you, Kindelon; but if the cap fits you can wear it."

"I should like to hand it back to you with a bunch of bells on it," said Kindelon.

"Is that what you call Irish wit?" replied Mr. Barrowe, while his lips grew pale. "If so, you should save it for the columns of the 'Asteroid,'

which sadly needs a little."

"The 'Asteroid' never prints personalities," returned Kindelon, with nonchalant mockery. "It leaves that kind of journalism to your friend Miss Cragge."

"Miss Cragge, sir," muttered Barrowe, "is a lady."

"I did not say she was a gentleman," retorted Kindelon, "though her general deportment has more than once cast a doubt upon her s.e.x."

Mr. Barrowe gave a faint shiver. "I'm glad I haven't it on my conscience," he declared, "that I injured an honest girl to gratify a mere spite." He at once turned to Pauline, now. "Madam," he pursued, "I must warn you that your project will prove a dire failure if you attempt to develop it on a system of despotic preferences. We were all glad to come to you, in a liberal, democratic, intellectual spirit. But the very moment you undertake the establishment of a society formed on a basis of capricious likes and dislikes, I a.s.sure you that you are building on sand and that your structure will fall."

"In that case, Mr. Barrowe," said Pauline, stung by his unwarranted officiousness into the employment of biting irony, "you can have no excuse if you allow yourself to be buried in my ruins."

She pa.s.sed rapidly away, while Kindelon accompanied her. "You were quite right," came his speedy encouragement, as they moved onward together.

"You showed that insufferable egotist the door in the politest and firmest manner possible."

"I was in my own house, though," said Pauline, with an intonation that betokened the dawn of repentance. "He was very exasperating, truly, but--I was in my own house, you know."

"Of course you were," exclaimed Kindelon, "and he treated you as if it belonged to somebody else. We are all apt to a.s.sert a proprietary right when a fellow-citizen ventures to relieve us of our purse, and I think a similar claim holds good with regard to our self-respect."

Pauline presently came to a standstill. She looked troubled, and her gaze remained downcast for a little while. But soon she lifted it and met Kindelon's eyes steadily watching her.

"You don't think I was unjustifiably rude?" she asked.

"No; indeed I do not. I don't think you were rude at all."

She was silent for a brief interval. Then she said, without taking her eyes in the least from her companion's face,--

"Do you believe that most women would have acted the same?"

"No," he said, with a quick, slight laugh, "because most women have neither your brains nor your independence."

"And you like both in a woman?"

"I like both in you," he said, lowering his handsome head a little as he uttered the words.

"Do you think Cora Dares would have acted as I have done?" Pauline asked.

He made an impatient gesture; he appeared for a moment distressed and embarra.s.sed.

"You and Cora Dares are--are not the same," he said, almost stammeringly.