The Adventures of a Widow Part 6

They are not 'select;' I don't claim that grace for them. And yet they are very interesting, very typical. Some shabby people meet there--shabby, I mean, in mental ways no less than in character and costume. But the prevailing element is of a higher order than they.

Anyone whom Mrs. Dares believes to be an earnest worker in the field of letters will have no difficulty about gaining her favor. I think she would rather greet in her rooms some threadbare young poet who had published at his own expense a slim little volume of poems possessing distinct merit and having received the snubs of both critics and public, than welcome some rich and successful writer whose real claim upon recognition she honestly doubted. And for this reason she makes mistakes. I have no doubt she is aware of making them. When we search the highways and hedges for cases of deserving charity, we cannot but light upon at least an occasional impostor--to put the matter as optimistically as possible. And now let me tell you that if my mighty explanatory outburst has roused your desire to meet Mrs. Dares, the opportunity to do so lies well within your reach."

"How?" said Pauline. And then, as if abashed by the brusque abruptness of her own question, she added, with a little penitent nod: "Oh, yes; you mean that she has kindly consented to let you bring her here."

"Not at all," said Kindelon. "It is true that she goes about a good deal. Her position as a journalist gives her, of course, the _entree_ to many theatres, and as she is pa.s.sionately fond of the drama, her face is seldom missed on a _premiere_ at any reputable house--Daly's, the Union Square, the Madison Square, or Wallack's. She takes delight, too, in appearing at the entertainments of her various friends, and she always does so clad elegantly, richly, but without a shadow of ostentatious display. On these occasions her society is eagerly sought. I have sometimes wondered why; for her conversation, though invariably full of sound sense and pithy ac.u.men, lacks the cheerful play of humor which is so widely demanded to generate anything like popularity wherever men and women are socially met. But she is very popular, and I suppose it is her striking simplicity, her gift of always being sincerely and unaffectedly _herself_, which has made her so. Still, for all this gregarious impulse, if I may thus name it, I do not believe she would take the first step, where you are concerned, to establish an acquaintance."

"And for what reason?" asked Pauline. Her tones, while she put this query, were full of a hurt bewilderment. Kindelon seemed to muse for a brief s.p.a.ce; and any such unconversational mood was rare, as we know, with his mercurial lightsomeness of manner. "She would be sensitive," he presently said, "about making an advance of this sort."

"Of this sort?" repeated Pauline, with a somewhat irritated inflection.

"Of what sort?"

Her companion watched her with fixity for a moment. Then he raised his large forefinger, and slowly shook it, with admonitory comedy of gesture. "You must not tell me that you don't understand," he said.

"Put yourself in this lady's place. Suppose that you, in spite of fine brains and n.o.ble character, lacked the social standing"--

Pauline broke in quite hotly at this. Her eyes had taken a quick sparkle, and the color was flying rosy and pure into her fair face.

"Pshaw!" she exclaimed. "It is not any question of social standing. I want to know these people"--She suddenly paused, as though her tongue had betrayed her into some regrettable and unseemly phrase. "I want to pa.s.s," she continued more slowly, "from an aimless world into one of thought and sense. Mrs. Dares is prominent in this other world. From what you say I should judge that she is a very representative and influential spirit there. Why should she not be benign and gracious enough to seek me here? Why should she require that I shall emphatically pay her my court? Your description makes me glad and happy to know her.

If she learned this, would she hold aloof from any absurd scruples about a disparity in social standing?--Well, if she did," declared Pauline, who by this time was quite excitedly flushed and fluttered, "then I should say that you had over-painted her virtues and too flatteringly concealed her faults!"

Kindelon threw back his head, as she finished, and laughed with such heartiness that more of his strong white teeth were transiently visible than would have pleased a strict judge of decorum.

"Oh, how amusing you are!" he cried. "You are really superb and don't perceive it!--Well," he proceeded, growing graver, "I suppose you would be far less so if you had the vaguest inkling of it. Now, pray listen.

Does it enter your conscience at all that you are disguising a kind of royal patronage and condescension behind a gentle and saint-like humility? No--of course it doesn't. But, my dear lady, this is unequivocally true. You scoff at social standing, and yet you complacently base yourself upon it. You want to desert all your old tenets, and yet you keep a kind of surrept.i.tious clasp about them. You would not for the world be considered a person who cared for the aristocratic purple, and yet you wrap it round you in the most illogical fashion. Mrs. Dares has her evenings; to-night is one of them. You, as yet, have no evenings; your _salon_ is still in embryo. You want to affiliate with her, to be one of her set, her surroundings, her _monde_.

And yet you quietly bid her to your house, as though she were proposing your co-operation, your support, your intimacy, and not you hers!"

Pauline, with perhaps a deepened tinge of color in her cheeks, was staring at the floor when Kindelon ended. And from beneath her gown came the impatient little tap of a nervous foot. After an interval of silence, during which her friend's gaze watched her with a merry vivacity of expression, she slowly lifted her shapely blond head, and answered in grave, even saddened tones,--

"Then my _salon_ is to be a failure?--an unrealizable castle in Spain?"

"Oh, no," promptly said Kindelon, with one of those sympathetic laughs which belonged among his elusive fascinations. "By no means--unless you so will it."

"But I don't will it," said Pauline.

"Very well. Then it will be a castle in--in New York. That sounds tangible enough, surely. It is the first step that counts, and you have only to take your first step. It will certainly look much better to know some of your courtiers before you ascend your throne. And meanwhile it would be far more discreet to cultivate an acquaintance with your probable prime minister."

"All of which means--?" she said.

"That you had best let me accompany you to Mrs. Dares's house this evening."

"But I am not invited!" exclaimed Pauline.

"Oh yes, you are," said Kindelon, with easy security in the jocund contradiction. "Miss Cora, the youngest daughter of Mrs. Dares, told me last night that she and her mother would both be very glad to have you come."

There was a momentary intonation in Kindelon's voice that struck his listener as oddly unexpected. "So you have already spoken of me?" she said lingeringly, and looking at him with more intentness than she herself knew of.

"Yes," he replied, with a certain speed, and with tones that were not just set in an unembarra.s.sed key. "I go there now and then."

"And you have mentioned me to Mrs. Dares?"

"Yes--more than once, I think. She knows that you may be induced to come this evening."

His glance, usually so direct, had managed to avoid Pauline's, which was then very direct indeed.

"Tell me," Pauline said, after another silence had somehow made itself felt between them. "Are you a very good friend of this girl--Miss Cora?"

He returned her look then, but with an unwonted vacillation of his own--or so she chose to think.

"Yes," he responded, fluently frank, as it seemed. "We are very good friends--excellent friends, I may say. You will find her quite as charming, in a different way, as her mother. I mean, of course, if you will go with me this evening--or any future evening."

Pauline put forth her hand, and laid it for an instant on his full-moulded arm.

"I will go with you this evening," she said.

V.

Kindelon found Pauline in a very lightsome and animated state of mind when he called at her house that evening. She had a touch of positive excitement in her way of referring to the proposed visit. He thought he had never seen her look more attractive than when she received him, already wrapped in a fleecy white over-garment and drawing on her gloves, while a piquant smile played at the corners of her mouth and a vivacious glitter filled her gray eyes.

"You are here before the carriage," she said to him, "though we shan't have to wait long for that.--Hark--there is the bell, now; my men would not presume to be a minute late this evening. The footman must have detected in my manner a great seriousness when I gave him my order; I felt very serious, I can a.s.sure you, as I did so. It meant the first step in a totally new career."

"Upon my word, you look fluttered," said Kindelon, in his mellow, jocose voice.

"Naturally I do!" exclaimed Pauline, as she nodded to the servant who now announced that the carriage was in readiness. "I am going to have a fresh, genuine sensation. I am going to emanc.i.p.ate myself--to break my tether, as it were. I've been a prisoner for life; I don't know how the sunshine looks, or how it feels to take a gulp of good, free air."

He watched her puzzledly until the outer darkness obscured her face, and they entered the carriage together. She mystified him while she talked on, buoyant enough, yet always in the same key. He was not sure whether or no her sparkling manner had a certain sincere trepidation behind it.

Now and then it seemed to him as if her voluble professions of anxiety rang false--as if she were making sport of herself, of him, or of the projected diversion.

"Do you really take the whole matter so much to heart," he presently said, while the vehicle rolled them along the wintry, lamplit streets, "or is this only some bit of dainty and graceful masquerading?"

"Masquerading?" she echoed, with a shocked accent.

"Oh, well, you are accustomed to meeting all sorts of people. You can't think that any human cla.s.ses are so sharply divided that to cross a new threshold means to enter a new world."

She was silent, and he could see her face only vaguely for some little time; but when a pa.s.sing light cast an evanescent gleam upon it he thought that he detected something like a look of delicate mischief there. Her next words, rather promptly spoken, bore with them an explanatory bluntness.

"I am convinced that if everybody else disappoints me Miss Dares will not."

"Miss Dares?" he almost faltered, in the tone of one thrown off his guard.

"Miss Cora Dares," Pauline continued, with a self-correcting precision.

"The younger of the two daughters, the one who paints. Oh, you see," she continued, after a little laugh that was merry, though faint, "I have forgotten nothing. I've a great curiosity to see this young artist. You had not half so much to tell me about her as about her mother, and yet you have somehow contrived to make her quite as interesting."

"Why?" Kindelon asked, with a soft abruptness to which the fact of his almost invisible face lent a greater force. "Is it because you think that I like Cora Dares? I should like to think that was your reason for being interested in her."

Another brief silence on Pauline's part followed his words, and then she suddenly responded, with the most non-committal innocence of tone:

"Why, what other reason could I possibly have? Of course I suppose that you like her. And of course that is why I am anxious to meet her."