Complete weird tales of.., p.695
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 695
Desboro began, easily:
“I asked Mrs. Hammerton to have tea with — —”
“I asked myself,” remarked Aunt Hannah, laying her other hand over Jacqueline’s — she did not know just why — perhaps because she was vain of her hands, as well as of her feet and “figger.”
She seated herself on the sofa and drew Jacqueline down beside her.
“This young man tells me that you are cataloguing his grandfather’s accumulation of ancient tin-ware.”
“Yes,” said Jacqueline, already afraid of her. And the old lady divined it, too, with not quite as much pleasure as it usually gave her to inspire trepidation in others.
Her shrill voice was a little modified when she said:
“Where did you learn to do such things? It’s not usual, you know.”
“You have heard of Jean Louis Nevers,” suggested Desboro.
“Yes—” Mrs. Hammerton turned and looked at the girl again. “Oh!” she said. “I’ve heard Cary Clydesdale speak of you, haven’t I?”
Jacqueline made a slight, very slight, but instinctive movement away from the old lady, on whom nothing that happened was lost.
“Mr. Clydesdale,” said Mrs. Hammerton, “told several people where I was present that you knew more about antiquities in art than anybody else in New York since your father died. That’s what he said about you.”
Jacqueline said: “Mr. Clydesdale has been very kind to me.”
“Kindness to people is also a Clydesdale tradition — isn’t it, James?” said the old lady. “How kind Elena has always been to you!”
The covert impudence of Aunt Hannah, and her innocent countenance, had no significance for Jacqueline — would have had no meaning at all except for the dark flush of anger that mounted so suddenly to Desboro’s forehead.
He said steadily: “The Clydesdales are very old friends, and are naturally kind. Why you don’t like them I never understood.”
“Perhaps you can understand why one of them doesn’t like me, James.”
“Oh! I can understand why many people are not crazy about you, Aunt Hannah,” he said, composedly.
“Which is going some,” said the old lady, with a brisk and unabashed employment of the vernacular. Then, turning to Jacqueline: “Are you going to give this young man some tea, my child? He requires a tonic.”
Jacqueline rose and seated herself at the table, thankful to escape. Tea was soon ready; Aunt Hannah, whose capacity for browsing was infinite, began on jam and biscuits without apology. And Jacqueline and Desboro exchanged their first furtive glances — dismayed and questioning on the girl’s part, smilingly reassuring on Desboro’s. Aunt Hannah, looking intently into her teacup, missed nothing.
“Come to see me!” she said so abruptly that even Desboro started.
“‘I — I beg your pardon,’ said Jacqueline”
“I — I beg your pardon,” said Jacqueline, not understanding.
“Come to see me in town. I’ve a rotten little place in a fashionable apartment house — one of the Park Avenue kind, which they number instead of calling it the ‘Buena Vista’ or the ‘Hiawatha.’ Will you come?”
“Thank you.”
The old lady looked at her grimly:
“What does ‘thank you’ mean? Yes or no? Because I really want you. Don’t you wish to come?”
“I would be very glad to come — only, you know, I am in business — and go out very little — —”
“Except on business,” added Desboro, looking Aunt Hannah unblushingly in the eye until she wanted to pinch him. Instead, she seized another biscuit, which Farris presented on a tray, smoking hot, and applied jam to it vigorously. After she had consumed it, she rose and marched around the room, passing the portraits and book shelves in review. Half turning toward Jacqueline:
“I haven’t been in the musty old mansion for years; that young man never asks me. But I used to know the house. It was this sort of house that drove me out of Westchester, and I vowed I’d marry a New York man or nobody. Do you know, child, that there is a sort of simpering smugness about a house like this that makes me inclined to kick dents in the furniture?”
Jacqueline ventured to smile; Desboro’s smile responded in sympathy.
“I’m going home,” announced Aunt Hannah. “Good-bye, Miss Nevers. I don’t want you to drive me, James; I’d rather have your man take me back. Besides, you’ve a train to catch, I understand — —” She turned and looked at Jacqueline, who had risen, and they stood silently inspecting each other. Then, with a grim nod, as though partly of comprehension, partly in adieu, Aunt Hannah sailed out. Desboro tucked her in beside Vail. The latter being quite deaf, they talked freely under his very nose.
“James!”
“Yes, dear lady.”
“You gave yourself away about Elena Clydesdale. Haven’t you any control over your countenance?”
“Sometimes. But don’t do that again before her! The story is a lie, anyway.”
“So I’ve heard — from you. Tell me, James, do you think this little Nevers girl dislikes me?”
“Do you want her to?”
“No. You’re a very clever young one, aren’t you? Really quite an expert! Do you know, I don’t think that girl would care for what I might have to offer her. There’s more to her than to most people.”
“How do you know? She scarcely spoke a word.”
The old lady laughed scornfully:
“I know people by what they don’t say. That’s why I know you so much better than you think I do — you and Elena Clydesdale. And I don’t think you’re much good, James — or some of your married friends, either.”
She settled down among the robes, with a bright, impertinent glance at him. He shrugged, standing bareheaded by the mud-guard, a lithe, handsome young fellow. “ — A Desboro all over,” she thought, with a mental sniff of admiration.
“Are you going to speak to Miss Nevers?” she asked, abruptly.
“About what!”
“About employing me, you idiot!”
“Yes, if you like. If she comes up here as my guest, she’ll need a gorgon.”
“I’ll gorgon you,” she retorted, wrathfully.
“Thanks. So you’ll accept the — er — job?”
“Of course, if she wishes. I need the money. It’s purely mercenary on my part.”
“That’s understood.”
“Are you going to tell her I’m mercenary?”
“Naturally.”
“Well, then — don’t — if you don’t mind. Do you think I want every living creature to detest me?”
“I don’t detest you. And you have an unterrified tabby-cat at home, haven’t you?”
She could have boxed his ears as he leaned over and deliberately kissed her cheek.
“I love you because you’re so bad,” he whispered; and, stepping lightly aside, nodded to Vail to go ahead.
The limousine, acetylenes shining, rolled up as the other car departed. He went back to the library and found Jacqueline pinning on her hat.
“Well?” he inquired gaily.
“Why did you bring her, Mr. Desboro?”
“Didn’t you like her?”
“Who is she?”
“A Mrs. Hannah Hammerton. She knows everybody. Most people are afraid of her. She’s poor as a guinea-pig.”
“She was beautifully gowned.”
“She always is. Poor Aunt Hannah!”
“Is she your aunt?”
“No, she’s Lindley Hammerton’s aunt — a neighbour of mine. I call her that; it made her very mad in the beginning, but she rather likes it now. You’ll go to call on her, won’t you?”
Jacqueline turned to him, drawing on her gloves:
“Mr. Desboro, I don’t wish to be rude; and, anyway, she will forget that she asked me in another half-hour. Why should I go to see her?”
“Because she’s one species of gorgon. Now, do you understand?”
“What!”
“Of course. It isn’t a case of pin-money with her; it’s a case of clothing, rent, and nourishment. A microscopic income, supplemented by gifts, commissions, and odd social jobs, keeps her going. What you and I want of her is for her to be seen at various times with you. She’ll do the rest in talking about you— ‘my unusually talented young friend, Miss Nevers,’ and that sort of thing. It will deceive nobody; but you’ll eventually meet some people — she knows all kinds. The main point is that when I ask you here she’ll bring you. People will understand that you are another of her social enterprises, for which she’s paid. But it won’t count against you. It will depend on yourself entirely how you are received. And not a soul will be able to say a word—” he laughed, “ — except that I am very devoted to the beautiful Miss Nevers — as everybody else will be.”
Jacqueline remained motionless for a few moments, an incomprehensible expression on her face; then she went over to him and took one of his hands in her gloved ones, and stood looking down at it in silence.
“Well,” he asked, smiling.
She said, still looking down at his hand lying between her own:
“You have behaved in the sweetest way to me—” Her voice grew unsteady, and she turned her head sharply away.
“Jacqueline!” he exclaimed under his breath. “It’s a broken reed you’re trusting. Don’t, dear. I’m like all the others.”
She shook her head slightly, still looking away from him. After a short silence, her voice returned to her control again.
“You are very kind to me, Mr. Desboro. When a man sees that a girl likes him — and is kind to her — it is wonderful to her.”
He tried to take a lighter tone.
“It’s the case of the beast born in captivity, Jacqueline. I’m only going through the tricks convention has taught me. But every instinct remains unaltered.”
“That is civilisation, isn’t it?”
“Oh, I don’t know what it is — you wonderful little thing!”
He caught her hand, then encircled her waist, drawing her close. After a moment, she dropped her big, fluffy muff on his shoulder and hid her flushed face in the fur.
“Don’t trust me, will you?” he said, bluntly.
“No.”
“Because I — I’m an unaccountable beast.”
“We — both have to account — sometime — to somebody. Don’t we?” she said in a muffled voice.
“That would never check me.”
“It would — me.”
“Spiritual responsibility?”
“Yes.”
“Is that all?”
“What else is there to remember — when a girl — cares for a man.”
“Do you really care very much?”
Perhaps she considered the question superfluous, for she remained silent until his nerveless arm released her. Then she lifted her face from the muff. It was pale but smiling when he met her eyes.
“I’ll go to see Mrs. Hammerton, some day,” she said, “because it would hurt too much not to be able to come here when you ask me — and other people — like the — the Clydesdales. You were thinking of me when you thought of this, weren’t you?”
“In a way. A girl has got to reckon with what people say.”
She nodded, pale and expressionless, slowly brushing up the violets fastened to her muff.
Farris appeared, announced the time, and held Desboro’s coat. They had just margin enough to make their train.
* * *
CHAPTER IX
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Aunt Hannah returned to her tiny apartment on Park Avenue, financially benefitted by her Westchester sojourn, having extracted a bolt of Chinese loot-silk for a gown from her nephew’s dismayed wife, and the usual check from her nephew.
Lindley, a slow, pallid, and thrifty soul, had always viewed Aunt Hannah’s event with unfeigned alarm, because, somehow or other, at the close of every visit he found himself presenting her with a check. And it almost killed him.
Years ago he had done it for the first time. He had never intended to; certainly never meant to continue. Every time she appeared he vowed to himself that he wouldn’t. But before her visit ended, the pressure of custom became too much for him; a deadly sense of obligation toward this dreadful woman — of personal responsibility for her indigence — possessed him, became gradually an obsession, until he exorcised it by the present of a check.
She never spoke of it — never seemed to hint at it — always seemed surprised and doubtful of accepting; but some devilish spell certainly permeated the atmosphere in her immediate vicinity, drawing perfectly good money out of his innermost and tightly buttoned breast-pockets and leaving it certified and carelessly crumpled in her velvet reticule.
It happened with a sickening regularity which now he had come to view with the modified internal fury of resignation. It had simply become a terrible custom, and, with all his respectable inertia and thrifty caution, adherence to custom ruled Lindley Hammerton. For years he had pinched roses; for years he had drawn checks for Aunt Hannah. Nothing but corporeal dissolution could terminate these customs.
As for Aunt Hannah, she banked her check and had her bolt of silk made into a gown, and trotted briskly about her business with perennial self-confidence in her own ability to get on.
Once or twice during the following fortnight she remembered Jacqueline, and mentally tabulated her case as a possible source of future income; but social duties were many and acridly agreeable, and pecuniary pickings plenty. Up to her small, thin ears in intrigue, harmless and not quite so harmless, she made hay busily while the social sun shone; and it was near the end of February before a stagnation in pleasure and business brought Jacqueline’s existence into her mind again.
She called up Silverwood, and eventually got Desboro on the wire.
“Do you know,” she said, “that your golden-headed and rather attenuated inamorata has never had the civility to call on me!”
“She has been too busy.”
“Too busy gadding about Silverwood with you!”
“She hasn’t been here since you saw her.”
“What!”
“It’s quite true. An important collection is to be sold under the hammer on the premises; she had the contract to engineer that matter before she undertook to catalogue my stuff.”
“Oh! Haven’t you seen her since?”
“Yes.”
“Not at Silverwood?”
“No, only at her office.”
He could hear her sniff and mutter something, then:
“I thought you were going to give some parties at Silverwood, and ask me to bring your pretty friend,” she said.
“I am. She has the jades and crystals to catalogue. What I want, as soon as she gets rid of Clydesdale, is for her to resume work here — come up and remain as my guest until the cataloguing is finished. So you see I’ll have to have you, too.”
“That’s a cordial and disinterested invitation, James!”
“Will you come? I’ll ask half a dozen people. You can kill a few at cards, too.”
“When?”
“The first Thursday in March. It’s a business proposition, but it’s between you and me, and she is not to suspect it.”
“Very well,” said Aunt Hannah cheerfully. “I’ll arrange my engagements accordingly. And do try to have a gay party, James; and don’t ask the Clydesdales. You know how Westchester gets on my nerves. And I always hated her.”
“You are very unjust to her and to him — —”
“You can’t tell me anything about Cary Clydesdale, or about his wife, either,” she interrupted tartly, and rang off in a temper. And Desboro went back to his interrupted business with Vail.
Since Jacqueline had been compelled to suspend temporarily her inventory at Silverwood in favor of prior engagements, Desboro had been to the city only twice, and both times to see her.
He had seen her in her office, remained on both occasions for an hour only, and had then taken the evening train back to Silverwood. But every evening he had written her of the day just ended — told her about the plans for farming, now maturing, of the quiet life at Silverwood, how gradually he was reëstablishing neighbourly relations with the countryside, how much of a country squire he was becoming.
“ — And the whole thing with malice aforethought,” he wrote. “ — Every blessed move only a strategy in order that, to do you honour, I may stand soberly and well before the community when you are among my guests.
“In tow of Aunt Hannah; engaged for part of the day in your business among the jades, crystals, and porcelains of a celebrated collection; one of a house party; and the guest of a young man who has returned very seriously to till the soil of his forefathers; all that anybody can possibly think of it will be that your host is quite as captivated by your grace, wisdom, and beauty as everybody else will be.
“And what do you think of that, Jacqueline?”
* * *
“I think,” she wrote, “that no other man has ever been as nice to me. I do not really care about the other people, but I quite understand that you and I could not see each other as freely as we have been doing, without detriment to me. I like you — superfluous admission! And I should miss seeing you — humble confession! And so I suppose it is best that everybody should know who and what I am — a business woman well-bred enough to sit at table with your friends, with sufficient self-confidence to enter and leave a room properly, to maintain my grasp on the conversational ball, and to toss it lightly to my vis-à-vis when the time comes.
“All this is worth doing and enduring for the sake of being your guest. Without conscientious scruples, apprehensions, perplexities, and fears I could never again come to Silverwood and be there alone with you as I have been. Always I have been secretly unhappy and afraid after a day with you at Silverwood. Sooner or later it would have had to end. It can not go on — as it has been going. I know it. The plea of business is soon worn threadbare if carelessly used.
“And so — caring for your friendship as I do — and it having become such a factor in my life — I find it easy to do what you ask me; and I have arranged to go with Mrs. Hammerton to Silverwood on the first Thursday in March, to practice my profession, enjoy the guests at your house party, and cultivate our friendship with a clear conscience and a tranquil and happy mind.
