CHAPTER IV
LADIES OF FASHION
The little bedroom which Alma and Nancy shared together wore a gaily topsy-turvy appearance on that memorable night—quite as if it had succumbed to the mood of flighty joy which was in the air. The dresser, usually a very model of good order—except when Alma had been rummaging about it unchecked—was strewn with hairpins, manicuring implements, snips of ribbon and the stems of fresh flowers; all the drawers were partly open, projecting at unequal distances, and giving glimpses of the girls' simple underwear, which had been ruthlessly overturned in frantic scramblings for such finery as they possessed. A fresh, slightly scented haze of powder drifted up as Nancy briskly dusted her arms and shoulders, and then earnestly performed the same attentions for Alma. Mrs. Prescott sat on the edge of the bed, alive with interest in the primping, and taking as keen a delight in her daughters' ball-going as she had done in her own preparations for conquest twenty years before. As critical as a Parisian modiste, she cocked her pretty head on one side and surveyed the girls with an expression of alertness mingled with satisfaction—such as you might see on the face of a clever business man who watches the promising development of a smart plan, with elation, though not without an eye ready to detect the slightest hitch.
Unquestionably she was justified in pinning the highest hopes on Alma's eventual success in life—if sheer exquisite prettiness can be a safe guarantee for such. Alma, who had plainly fallen in love with herself, minced this way and that before the glass, blissfully conscious of her mother's and sister's unveiled delight in her beauty. Her yellow hair, bright as gold itself spun into an aura of hazy filaments, was piled up on top of her head, so that curls escaped against the white, baby-like nape of her neck. Her dress was truly a masterpiece, and if there had been a tinge of envy in Nancy's nature she might have regretted the skill with which she herself had succeeded in setting off Alma's prettiness, until her own good looks were pale, almost insignificant, beside it. But Nancy was almost singularly devoid of envy and could look with the bright, impersonal eyes of a beauty-lover at Alma's distracting pink and white cheeks, at her blue eyes, which looked black in the gas-light, and at her round white neck and arms—the dress left arms and shoulders bare except for the impudent, short puffed sleeves which dropped low on the shoulder like those of an early Victorian beauty; anything but Victorian, however, was the brief, bouffant skirt, which showed the slim ankles and the little, arched feet, in their handsome slippers.
"You're perfectly—gorgeous, Alma. You've a legitimate right to be charmed with yourself," said Nancy, sitting down on the bed beside her mother to enjoy Alma's frank struttings and posings.
"I am nice," agreed Alma naïvely, trying to suppress a smile of self-approval which, nevertheless, quirked the corners of her lips. "You did it, though, Nancy darling. I don't forget that, even if I do seem to be a conceited little thing." She danced over and kissed Nancy's cheek lightly, her frock enchanting her with its crisp rustlings as she did so. "Nancy, you will get something nice, too,—the next time?"
"You should have made up a new dress for to-night, anyhow, Nancy," said Mrs. Prescott, turning to inspect Nancy's appearance from the top of her head to the toes of her freshly ribboned slippers. Nancy colored slightly. It had not been a very easy task to overcome the temptation to "blow herself," as Alma would have debonairly expressed a foolish extravagance; and it was not particularly soothing to have that feat of economy found fault with.
"If—if you think I look too dowdy, I—I'll stay at home, Mother," she said, in a quiet tone that betrayed a touch of hurt pride. "You know it was out of the question for me to get another dress, and if you feel sensitive about my going to people like the Porterbridges in what I've got, why, it's absurd to attempt it at all."
Mrs. Prescott was abashed; then in her quick, sweet, impulsive way—so like that of a thoughtless, lovable little girl—she put her arms around Nancy's straight young shoulders.
"Don't be cross with me, darling. I only said that because it hurts me to think that you have to deny yourself anything in the world. You are so sweet, and so strong, and—and I love you so, my dear, that I cannot bear to think of your having to deny yourself the pretty things that are given to the daughters of so many other women."
Instantly Nancy unbent, and, turning her head so that she could kiss her mother's soft hair, she whispered, with a tender little laugh:
"Before you begin pitying us, dearest, you can—can just remember that other women's daughters haven't been given—a mother like you." And then, because, just like a boy, she felt embarrassed at her own emotion, and the tears that had gathered in her eyes, she said briskly:
"If anyone should ask me my candid opinion, I'd say that I'm rather pleased with myself—only some inner voice tells me that I'm not completely hooked. Here, Mother——" By means of an excruciating contortion she managed to indicate a small gap in the back of her dress just between the shoulder blades.
"You do look awfully nice, Nancy," commented Alma; she paused reflectively a moment, and then added, "You know, I suppose that at first glance most people would say I was—was the prettier, you know—because I'm sort of doll-baby-looking, and pink and white, like a French bonbon; but an artist would think that you were really beautiful—I hit people in the eye, like a magazine cover, but you grow on them slowly like a—a Rembrandt or something."
"Whew! We've certainly been throwing each other bouquets broadcast to-night," laughed Nancy, who was tremendously pleased, nevertheless. "You'd better put your cloak on, Alma, and stop turning my head around backwards with your unblushing flattery. Isn't that our coach now?"
The sound of wheels on the wet gravel and the shambling cloppity-clop of horses' hoofs, had indeed announced the arrival of the "coach."
"Darn it, that idiotic Peterson has sent us the most decrepit old nag in his stable," remarked Alma, looking out of the window as she slid her bare arms into the satin-lined sleeves of her wrap. "I think he calls her 'Dorothea,' which means the 'Gift of God.'"
"She looks like an X-ray picture of a baby dinosaur. I hope to heaven she won't fall to pieces before we get within walking distance of the Porterbridges'," said Nancy. "I think that so-called carriage she has attached to her must be the original chariot Pharaoh used when he drove after the Israelites."
In a gay mood, the two sisters climbed into the ancient coupé, which smelt strongly of damp hay, and jounced away behind the erratic Dorothea, who started off at a mad gallop and then settled abruptly into her characteristic amble.
A light, gentle, steady rain pattered against the windows, which chattered like the teeth of an old beggar on a wintry day. The two girls, deliciously nervous, would burst into irrepressible giggles each time when, as they passed a street lamp, the ridiculously elongated shadow of Dorothea and the chariot scurried noiselessly ahead of them and was swallowed up in a stretch of darkness.
"My dear, I'm scared pink!" breathed Alma, pinching Nancy's arm in a nervous spasm. "My tummy feels just as if I were going down in an awfully quick elevator."
"I don't see what you are scared about," replied Nancy. "I almost wish this regal conveyance of ours would break down."
"It feels as if one of the wheels were coming off."
"I guess they are all coming off; but it's been like that since the dark ages already, and I dare say it will last another century or so."
"Look! There's Uncle Thomas' house, now. Doesn't it look exactly like something that Poe would write about? That one light burning in the tower window, with all the rest of the house just a huge black shape, is positively gruesome."
The two girls peered through the dirty little mica oval behind them at the strange old mansion, the bizarre turrets of which were silhouetted against the sky, where the edges of the dark clouds had parted, and the horizon shone with a paler, sickly light.
"It is eerie looking. I suppose old Uncle T. is up in that room poring away over his books, and the last thing he'd be thinking of is his two charming nieces bouncing off to an evening of giddy pleasure in this antique mail-cart, or whatever it is."
"Oh, my dear!" Alma squealed faintly. "We're getting there! Oh, look at all the automobiles. We can't go in in this dreadful looking thing."
"All right. You can get out and walk. I say, do your hands feel like damp putty?"
"Do they! I feel as if I were getting the measles. Oh, here we are, Nancy!" Alma's tone would have suggested that they had reached the steps of the guillotine. Dorothea, alone, was unmoved, and almost unmoving. With her poor old head dangling between her knees, she crawled slowly along the broad, well-lighted driveway of a very new and very imposing house, beset fore and aft by a train of honking and rumbling motors. Nancy burst into a little breathy quaver of hysterical laughter.
"We must try to be more like Dorothea," she giggled. "Her beautiful composure is due either to an aristocratic pedigree or to her knowledge that she is going to die soon, and all this is the vanity of a world which passes."
In spite of their inner agony of shyness, however, the two girls descended from the absurd old carriage at the broad steps, and reached the door, under the footmen's umbrellas, with every outward appearance of well-bred sang-froid.
"I'm so glad you could come, Nancy. Alma, how lovely you look. Don't you want to go upstairs and take off your wraps?" Elise Porterbridge, a tall, fat girl, dressed in vivid green, greeted them; and, with all the dexterity of a matronly hostess, passed them on into the chattering mob of youths and girls which crowded the wide, brightly lighted hail. Alma clutched Nancy's arm frantically as they squeezed their way through to the stairs.
"Did you see a living soul that you knew besides Elise?" whispered Alma as they slipped off their wraps into the hands of the little maid. "Oh, it would be too awful to be a wall-flower after I've gone and gotten these lovely slippers and everything."
"Don't be a goose. This is a good time—don't you know one when you see it? Here, pinch your cheeks a little, and stop looking as if you were going to have a chill. You're the prettiest girl here, and that ought to give you some courage."
While Nancy poked her dress and tucked in a stray wisp of hair, Alma stood eyeing the modish, self-assured young ladies who primped and chattered before the long mirrors around them, with the round solemn gaze of a hostile baby. How could they be so cool, so absolutely self-contained?
"Come on,—you look all right," said Nancy aloud, and Alma marvelled at the skill with which her sister imitated that very coolness and indifference. If she had known it, Nancy was inwardly quaking with the nervous dread that attacks every young girl at her first big party like a violent stage fright.
They made their way slowly down the broad stairs, passing still more pretty, chattering debonair girls who were calling laughing, friendly greeting to the young men below.
From one of the other rooms a small orchestra throbbed beneath the hum of voices; the scent of half a dozen French perfumes mingled and rose on the hot air; and the brilliant colors of girls' dresses stirred and wove in and out like the changing bits of glass in a kaleidoscope.
"Er—I say—good-evening, Miss Prescott. I got to you first, so I've a right to the first dance." It was Frank Barrows, the hero of Alma's potato adventure, who claimed Alma before her little silver foot had reached the last step. A lean young man, with sleek, blond hair, a weak chin, and the free-and-easy, all-conquering manner of a youth who has been spoiled by girls ever since he put on long trousers and learned to run his own car, he looked at Alma with that look of startled admiration which to a young girl is a sweeter flattery than any that words can frame. She looked up at Nancy with a glance of joyous, innocent triumph, and then, putting her plump little hand on her partner's arm, and instantly meeting his gallantry with the pretty, utterly unconscious coquetry of a born flirt, she moved off.
Nancy, still standing at the foot of the stairs, watched the yellow head as it passed among the heads of the other dancers. That quick, happy glance of Alma's had said, "Forgive me for being so pretty. You are better, and finer, and more beautiful—but they haven't found it out yet."
She stood alone, terribly shy, her smooth cheeks flushing scarlet, and her bright eyes searching timidly for some friendly corner where she could run and hide herself away for the rest of the evening. Without Alma beside her to be petted and protected, she looked almost pathetically just what she was—a modest young girl, who was peculiarly lovely and appealing, as she stood waiting with a beating heart to catch a friendly eye in all that terrible, gay, selfish throng of pleasure-seekers.
CHAPTER V
A RETICENT GENTLEMAN—AND MISS BANCROFT
With only the one aim of getting to harbor by hook or crook, Nancy, her cheeks burning with shyness, edged her way along the wall. She would not have felt half so much alone if she had been dropped into the middle of the Sahara desert, and, while her little feet tingled with the rhythm of the music, she surrendered herself to the unhappy conviction that she was doomed to be a wall-flower.
She did not know these people; she felt as if she could never know them. Everything in their manner, their speech and their dress suggested a foreignness to her own nature that could never be bridged, unless she herself changed and became another being. It was something that she could not define, this difference; it was simply something that grew out of a different way of thinking and feeling about life. All these people seemed to make pleasure their business, the most important purpose of their existence, and this attitude, expressed in the very way that the girls carried themselves, in the tones of their voices, in their light scraps of inconsequential and not very clever talk, made her feel strange beyond description.
She stood near a group of palms under the arch of the staircase, watching the faces all about her, longing one minute to be at home, curled up with a book on her shabby, comfortable window-seat, and the next, that she might be drawn into the centre of all that bubbling, companionable enjoyment. Now she caught a glimpse of Alma, who was standing near the door of the dancing-room, bantering and coquetting with a little cluster of youths who had gathered about her, heaven knows where from or how, like flies about a jar of new honey; it was plainly Alma's natural environment, in which she revelled like a joyous young fish in a sunny pool.
"So that pretty little creature is George Prescott's daughter?" The question, spoken in a rather deep and penetrating voice, carried clearly to Nancy's ears, and she turned. At a little distance from her, seated on a small couch, sat Mrs. Porterbridge, a lean woman with a tight-lipped, aquiline face, and painfully thin neck and arms, and the old lady who had put the question. A quite remarkable-looking old lady, Nancy thought, enormously fat, dressed in purple velvet, her huge, dimpled arms and shoulders billowing, out of it, like the whipped cream on top of some titanic confection. Two small, plump, tapering hands clasped a handsome feather fan against her almost perpendicular lap. Two generous chins completely obliterated any outward evidences of neck, so that her head seemed to have been set upon her shoulders with the naïve simplicity of a dough-man's; yet for all this, one glance at her keen, intelligent face, with its sleepy, twinkling eyes and humorous, witty mouth, was enough to assure one that, whoever she might be, she was not an ordinary old lady by any means. One guessed at once that she had seen much of the world in her sixty-five or seventy years, that she had enjoyed every moment of the entertainment, and that while she probably required everyone else to respect public opinion, she felt comfortably privileged to disregard it herself whenever she pleased. She had been busily discussing everyone who attracted her attention, disdaining to lower her sonorous voice or to conceal in any way the fact that she was gossiping briskly. Young and old alike hastened up to her to pay their respects, and it was evident from their manner of eager deference that she was a rather important old person, whose keen and fearless tongue made her good opinion worth gaining.
At present she had centred her lively interest upon Alma, and Nancy could not resist the temptation of listening to her remarks, especially since the old lady was obviously perfectly willing to let anyone and everyone hear her who might have reason to listen.
"That is little Alma Prescott," Mrs. Porterbridge was replying. "She is charmingly pretty, isn't she?"
"The image of her mother. Tell me something about them. It's ridiculous, isn't it, how we can live for years within a stone's throw of our neighbors without ever knowing whether their Sunday clothes are made of silk or calico. George Prescott used to be my particular favorite, when he was a youngster. I remember when he married that empty-pated little beauty—I gave him tons of my choicest advice—was absolutely prodigal of my finest gems of wisdom; but when I saw her—well, I knew very well that there would be ups and downs—she should have married an Indian nabob—but, thought I, I might as well shout to the north wind to be placid as to tell him to give her up and find himself some sensible, excellent creature, who could mend his socks and turn his old suits for him. He would rather have lived on burnt potatoes and bacon, with that charming little spendthrift, than have enjoyed all the blessings of good housekeeping at the hands of the most estimable creature we could have found for him. I do like that spirit in a young man, however much my excellent common sense may disapprove of it.
"I saw nothing of George after his marriage. I was too fond of him to stand around offering advice, when he couldn't possibly make any use of it. I should probably have lost my temper just as Tom Prescott did—and I cannot endure to be in such a ridiculous position. I had a notion that Lallie Prescott didn't live here any more."
"I believe that the family suffers rather keen financial difficulties," said Mrs. Porterbridge. "The girls go out very little—are quite isolated, in fact."
"You mean that they are hard up—don't use those genteel euphemisms, my dear,—I can't understand 'em.
"I'm sorry. It was inevitable, of course, but I'm one of the few beings that sincerely regret seeing other people reaping what they've sown. I've always avoided my own deserts so successfully." Her big, jolly laugh rang out at this. "There are two girls, I remember. Both pretty?"
"Yes, indeed," replied Mrs. Porterbridge, in the unenthusiastic tone with which the mother of a rather plain daughter will praise the beauty of another woman's daughter.
"Hum. Well, that's distinctly something. I really couldn't work up any heartfelt interest in them if they were ugly—though, of course, I understand that beauty is only skin deep, and handsome is as handsome does, and all that—whoever invented those saws must have been unbearably ugly—I've always suspected that it was some plain, jealous old wife of King Solomon who got very philosophical in her old age. Now, I'd really like to know what little Lallie Prescott is going to do with them."
Mrs. Porterbridge gave a dry, affected little laugh, looking at Alma, who was waltzing again with the obviously infatuated Frank Barrows.
"Well, I imagine that she is going to do all that she can to marry them off as advantageously as possible, and I dare say that both of them——"
"Now, don't say anything cattish, my dear," interrupted the old lady, quite sharply, a sudden coldness routing the twinkle in her merry eyes. "I always know when you are going to say something that will annoy me, and nothing annoys me more than to hear an older woman say anything unkind about a young girl. I tell you this because I'm sure that you don't want to make me angry. If you are trying to tell me that Lallie Prescott is a schemer in regard to the future of her two daughters, why, I should be very much surprised to learn anything else. We are all schemers for our children—and just as in love and war, we consider everything fair so long as it works for their advantage. But——"
Nancy, her cheeks burning, heard no more. In a last desperate effort at escape, she turned and fled unseen through the nearest doorway.
At first she did not realize where she was; then she discovered that she had chanced upon a veritable haven of refuge, a large, quiet room, cosily lighted by a reading-lamp, furnished with huge, paternal-looking armchairs and divans, and lined on three of its walls from floor to ceiling with whole regiments of books. The fourth wall was monopolized by a great stone fireplace, where three or four tree-trunks smouldered softly, popping every now and then into small explosions of ruddy sparks. The smell of leather, of wood smoke, and even the delicate musty smell of the rich, yellowed paper of old books mingled with the hazy fragrance of a Turkish cigarette. Nancy was too much concerned with her own thoughts to wonder where the source of that comfortable aroma o£ tobacco lay—it was to her just a part of the atmosphere of books and quiet and leather chairs which she always associated with her memories of her father. Revelling in the sensation of being alone, as she blissfully fancied herself to be, she wandered about looking at the titles of the books, now and again taking down a volume and turning the leaves. Here she chanced upon a delightful old edition of "Pickwick Papers," bound in worn leather, there a copy of the "Vicar of Wakefield," with yellowed pages, and quaint, old-fashioned print, and the sight of these old friends, associated as they were with the happiest and most tranquil hours of her life, soothed to a certain extent her feelings which had been cruelly wounded by the conversation she had overheard.
But she was still sore and angry. Still holding the "Vicar of Wakefield" in her hand, she stood, staring absently into the fire.
"So that's what people will be saying about us—that we are pushing and scheming, and—and trying to make friends just to use them for our advantage," she thought bitterly, recalling Mrs. Porterbridge's unfriendly little insinuation.
Sensitive and proud as she was, that unfinished remark, made in the cold, hard tone of a woman who, judging the whole world by herself, credited everyone alike with self-interested and worldly motives, had inflicted a wound that would be long in healing. It was not indeed on her own account that she resented it so bitterly, but because of her mother and Alma, whose actions, she knew, could be so misinterpreted and ascribed to quite false motives. She knew, too, less by experience than by instinct, that beneath all the pleasures and gaiety which Alma craved so eagerly, would flow that bitter undercurrent of cynical comment made by people who had so long been self-seeking that they could not believe in the artlessness of a young girl's simple thirst for enjoyment.
Busy with these thoughts, a little strange and mature perhaps for her age, she was quite unconscious of two interesting facts. First, that from an armchair just beyond the radius of the lamplight, the source of the cigarette smoke was regarding her with mingled astonishment and approval, and, second, that she herself was making a very charming picture as she stood in the deep, mellow glow of the firelight.
A small man, with a kind, whimsical, clever face, was looking at her with a pair of singularly bright brown eyes—eyes which had the direct, unwavering, gentle gaze of a person who has the gift of reading the meaning of faces and expressions to which others are blind. Indeed, so clearly had he guessed the trend of the thoughts which underlay the seriousness of Nancy's sensitive face, that he felt almost like an eavesdropper. Suddenly she jerked her head and saw him. He stood up.
"I—I beg your pardon," he apologized, still with the sensation of having heard something that had not been meant for his ears. "You didn't know I was here, and I was rather at a loss as to how I should break it to you."
Nancy had flushed to the edge of her hair.
"That—that's all right," she stammered. "I—I mean, I should apologize to you. You were reading." She began to move away toward the door again, but he stopped her hastily.
"You mustn't go, and you mustn't for a moment think you've disturbed me. I haven't any business to be in here anyway, because I think I was invited to entertain and be entertained like any respectable guest. I don't know what they do to unmannerly, unsociable creatures who sneak off for a book and a smoke from the scenes of revelry, but I'm guilty, and deserve to die the death, or whatever it is."
Nancy laughed. When he talked he had a droll way of wrinkling up his forehead, and then suddenly breaking into a beaming, mischievous grin, like a schoolboy.
"I'm guilty, too."
"Yes,—and really ever so much more so than I am; because you're deliberately robbing at least ninety-nine per cent. of the guests of a part of their evening's pleasure, whereas, my absence is of so little importance one way or the other that, although I've been in here the better part of an hour already, there hasn't been even a whimper of protest. It's been decidedly injurious to my amour-propre. I had hoped, when you came in, that you had been sent by the unanimous vote of all present to request my immediate return to the regions of festivity. I was prepared to be coy—but not adamantine. Imagine my chagrin and dismay when it gradually dawned on me not only that you hadn't come for any such flattering purpose, but even that you hadn't the smallest notion I was here. As far as you were concerned I was of less significance than a cockroach."
"But that's not bad—a cockroach would be of awful significance to me," said Nancy, with a laugh.
"We have caught each other red-handed in an overwhelming breach of manners," continued he, severely. "But then, look at it this way—here we are, each having a good time in our own way. Now it seems to me that a hostess could ask no more of a guest than that he find his own entertainment—if he seeks it by ambling out into the garden to weed up wild onions, why, well and good——"
"You are only trying to dazzle me with a false argument in self-defense," said Nancy.
"You should be grateful to me for furnishing such a good one, since you've need of one yourself, ma'am. But if you don't like it, why then I shall change my mind. As a matter of fact, the idea of dancing has suddenly appealed to me very strongly—since Providence has at last provided me with a—well, with a more delightful partner than I should have dared to hope for. And they are playing a very charming waltz. Will you dance with me?"
He made a graceful little old-fashioned bow, and offered her his arm. Then he smiled.
"I—I haven't introduced myself yet. Do you mind? I should have done it in the beginning, but I couldn't think of any graceful way of hinting at my name, and it's so horribly clumsy just to say pointblank, 'My name's George Arnold. What's yours?'"
"But there isn't any other way," answered Nancy, a little shyly, but laughing, too, "unless we both go to Mrs. Porterbridge and ask her to introduce us. My name is Nancy—Anne Prescott."
"There now—it's perfectly simple, isn't it? I never could understand why there should be any formal to-do about telling two people each other's names. Do you know, the very minute you came in—perhaps it was from the way you looked at those dear old books—I felt as if—well, as if we ought to be friends. You are fond of them, aren't you—of books—really fond of them?"
"I love those old, shabby ones. They—they looked so very friendly."
He stole a keen glance at her face, and smiled gently at what it told him. Then, as she clung to his arm, he guided her dexterously through the crowd to the dancing floor.
After that first dance the whole evening changed for Nancy. She had half doubted that her companion would be a good dancer, but in two moments that doubt was routed. Gliding smoothly, weightlessly as if to the gentle rhythm of a wave, they circled through the moving swarm of dancers; Nancy's cheeks flushing like two poppies and her eyes glistening with the exhilaration of the music. Her timidity had left her; she felt warm, vivacious and attractive, and it seemed perfectly natural that after that first waltz she had partners for every dance.
Mr. Arnold danced with no one else. When other partners claimed her, he retired to the doorway, and stood with his arms folded, surveying the scene with his whimsical, absent-minded smile; but evidently he regarded it as his right to have each waltz with her.
"My aunt has ordered me to present you to her," he said, when he had at length led her into a corner for an ice, and a moment's chat. "For some reason she has evidently taken a great fancy to you at sight, and she is giving me no peace. She is a very peremptory and badly spoiled old lady, but it's impossible to resist her. I told her that she might frighten you to death, and that then you'd blame me."
"You didn't!" cried Nancy, horrified.
"Indeed I did. I've had the experience before—and I told her that I'd be hanged if I assumed the responsibility of surrendering any unsuspecting person into her clutches without giving them fair warning. But, seriously, she is a very dear lady,—though an eccentric one—and she has been saying extremely nice things about you. Besides—she asked me to tell you that she knew your father, and that she loved him long before you were born."
Something in his softened, gentle tone went to Nancy's heart. She put down her ice.
"Will you take me now? I think I know—I mean I've seen your aunt already."
"She is a very remarkable person. She can be more terrifying—and more tender, than any woman in the world. Utterly fearless, something of a tyrant—possibly because she has never been denied anything she wanted in her life. She simply doesn't accept denials. If she had been a man she might have been a Pitt, or a Napoleon. As she is, she is a mixture of Queen Elizabeth—and Queen Victoria."
The amazing individual, described by this brief biographical preface, who was still enthroned on the coquettish little French couch, and who was now consuming a pink ice with naïve relish, was indeed the old lady in purple—otherwise, Miss Elizabeth Bancroft, of Lowry House (for some reason she had always been given this somewhat English style of designation; possibly because she was the last of her name to be identified with the magnificent collections for which Lowry House, the American roof-tree of aristocratic English colonists, had been famous for more than a hundred years).
As Nancy stood before her, she looked up at the girl keenly, her little blue eyes diminished in size by the thick lenses of her pince-nez. Then she handed her ice to Mr. Arnold without even glancing at him, and held out both her plump white hands to Nancy. Her whole face softened, with the dimpling, comfortable smile of a motherly old nurse.
"Oh, my dear child—if you were only a boy I could believe you were George again—my George, your father—not this young rascal. Come, sit down beside me. I shan't keep you long. Have you been having a good time, my dear?"
She was not a terrible old lady at all. On the contrary, with wonderful skill, with cosy, affectionate little ways, with her jolly laugh, and her droll stories, she had succeeded in less time than it takes to tell in completely winning Nancy to her. And somehow, although she appeared to be doing all the talking herself, although she touched so lightly and so adroitly that she hardly seemed to touch at all on any topic that was delicately personal to the girl, she had managed within a brief five minutes to glean a hundred little facts, which, by piecing together in her keen old mind, gave her more knowledge concerning the Prescotts than another person could have come by in a week's diligent pumping.
"George, my dear——"
"Yes, Aunt Eliza."
"Oh, nothing. I wish to goodness you were a woman. It just occurred to me that you can't possibly understand what I was going to say to you, so never mind about listening to me. Smoke, if you want to, and let me think in peace."
"Very well." From Mr. Arnold's docile submissiveness it might be surmised that he, too, wanted to think in peace. Miss Bancroft's lumbering, impressive coupé rumbled along over the wet roads toward Lowry House; its two occupants buried in that mood of silence which only two very sympathetic beings know how to respect. Presently Miss Bancroft burst out:
"The child is quite charming. I shall give Tom a good sound piece of my mind. To-morrow."
George Arnold grunted.
"It's only fair sportsmanship to give him twelve hours' warning."
"Poor Lallie Prescott. Like most silly women, she's going to try to beat Providence by pushing them forward into premature rivalry with girls who have every financial advantage over them, ruin their contentment, so that they will be ready to fling away their happiness on the first little whippersnapper who looks as if he could give them a trip to Paris and a season in Cannes every year. I admire her fighting spirit, but it's hopelessly misdirected."
"Am I meant to understand you, Aunt Eliza?"
"No. Don't even listen to me. Nancy has too much sense for a girl of her age, and that exquisite little Alma has none. Tut-tut. I find that I must interfere."
CHAPTER VI
MISS BANCROFT BEARDS THE OGRE
Miss Bancroft had not made her solemn declaration lightly. She never made any announcements of her intentions without weighty consideration; consequently she was a woman who meant what she said, and meant it thoroughly. Moreover, she never procrastinated; she thought in a straight line, and she acted in a straight line.
Like most women, she took a healthy human delight in "interfering"; but, unlike the majority of her sex, she indulged very rarely. When, however, she had made up her mind on the point of allowing herself to concern herself in other people's business, she experienced the exquisite relish of a strictly self-controlled gamester, who allows himself to play only rarely so that he may enjoy his sport with that peculiar zest which only long abstinence can whet.
On a sunny, warm September day, mellow with the promise of an Indian summer, Miss Bancroft, smart, though rotund, in lavender linen, set out on her pilgrimage to the house of Thomas Prescott.
"I see that you aren't above the traditional wiles of your sex, Aunt," commented George Arnold, looking up from his book, and surveying her with twinkling eyes, from the long wicker porch chair, where he had been dozing in the sun. "You've rigged yourself out in full panoply. That's a jaunty little parasol you have."
Miss Bancroft, standing on the broad steps, put up her parasol at this, to shade the fine texture of her gaily beflowered straw hat from the sun, and then glanced around at her nephew with a demure smile.
"I make a point of looking my best always when I'm going to see Tom Prescott. Of course he thinks me a sensible woman, a remarkably reasonable woman, and all that nonsense; but I like to leave him with at least a half-formed notion that I'm surprisingly well preserved, even if I have rather lost my waist-line. There was a time, you know——" the demure smile quirked the corners of her big, mobile mouth, and sparkled impishly in her eyes; then with a little wag of her head, she ran down the steps like a fat, jolly schoolgirl.
George Arnold, leaning back against a chintz cushion, watched the portly, festive figure that moved away under the trees of the long drive. Miss Bancroft usually seemed to roll slowly, but efficiently, along on wheels as ponderous and impressive as an old-fashioned stage-coach. He caught a last glimpse of lavender and white through the shrubs that bordered the end of the lawn. He felt a good deal of interest in this pilgrimage of his aunt's, although he had no very clear idea of the purpose of it. It had something to do with two very pretty young girls whom he had seen at an otherwise stupid dance the night before. One of the girls looked like a Dresden doll, the other had dark eyes, and a direct, shy, almost boyish smile. Her name was Anne—Nancy. Nancy suited her much better. He had thought about her several times. For no particular reason—she was hardly eighteen, and he was, well, he was thirty-three, though that was neither here nor there. It was simply that he liked her rather better than one likes most girls of that age. She had a way of listening to a man without that stupid, flustered expression, as though she was only wondering what in the world she should say when it should be her turn to talk. She liked books. He wondered if she knew that he wrote them. Of course he wasn't world-famous, but it might interest her to know that he was the George Arnold whose collections of exquisitely delicate children's stories had already been translated into six foreign languages, "including the Scandinavian."
He smiled to himself at the naïve vanity which had prompted this thought; and chastised it by telling himself that it was only too likely that her ignorance or knowledge of what he did or was were matters of like indifference to her.
Meantime, Miss Bancroft, puffing a little under the combined difficulties of avoirdupois and a beaming September sun, was looking with an almost pathetic anticipation at the rich cool shadows beneath which slept the rambling mansion of Thomas Prescott.
"I shall order some tea. A man is always so much more amenable to reason over a tea-table—and for my part, I'll not survive half an hour without a little light refreshment. I suppose I'll have to listen to a long discourse on the origin of the Slavic races or the religious customs of the Aztecs, until I can get him down to argue with me on his duty toward his fellow creatures. I hope to Heaven that his principles are drowsy to-day. I can't bear it if I have to combat a lot of principles. It's absolutely heathenish to have principles in warm weather anyway. Of course they are the proper things to have, but, dear me, they are such nuisances. It's all right to have them about yourself, I suppose, but to have them about other people is priggish, and quite useless, so far as I can see. My observation has taught me that if you like a person it makes no difference whether their principles coincide with your own or not, or even if they have none at all; and if you don't like a person, it's downright irritating to have to approve of them." Miss Bancroft's mental grammar, like much of her spoken grammar, was inaccurate, of course; as in other matters, she held rule to scorn, when the rule interfered with her personal conception of what she was trying to make clear to other people or to herself.
Under the vigorous thrust of her plump, direct forefinger, the door-bell pealed clearly in the cool remote regions of the house. Standing under the arch of the Norman doorway, she surveyed the broad, shade-flecked lawns with interest and a sort of irritable appreciation. Somewhere under the trees a gardener was raking the drive and burning neat piles of warm, brown leaves, from which the pungent smoke ascended in sinuous blue spirals, like languorously dancing phantoms of the dead leaves; and the pleasant, rhythmic sound of the rake on the gravel intensified the sober peaceful silence peculiar to that bachelor's domain.
The door was opened.
"Tell Mr. Prescott that it's Miss Bancroft. Nonsense, I shan't sit down in the drawing-room at all—it makes me feel like a member of the Ladies' Aid come to petition a subscription for a new church carpet or something. Tell Mr. Prescott that I'll be out on the porch."
"Will you come through this way, then, madam?" suggested the old butler, meekly.
Miss Bancroft followed him, sighing a little with relief as the coolness of the great hall, with its smell of old, polished wood and waxed floors, closed about her.
"And, William," she called pathetically after the retreating butler, "do put the kettle on!"
On her way through the house she passed a stately succession of large rooms. A handsome drawing-room, with a polished parquetry floor, fit for the dainty crimson heels of a laced and furbelowed French coquette; its great glass chandelier shrouded in white tarlatan; the dining-room, with high-wainscoted walls, on which hung three or four astonishingly valuable and even beautiful pictures by masters of the eighteenth century English school. For all its impressive grandeur, the long table, covered with a rare piece of Italian brocade, was, with the single carved chair set at the distant end, a barren table, indeed, for a man whom Miss Bancroft knew to be possessed of one of the warmest, tenderest and most affection-craving hearts in the whole world.
"Principles—fiddlesticks!" she observed aloud. "Tst!"
A living-room, in which no one ever lived, a writing-room, in which no one ever wrote, and long halls, wainscoted in dark oak and quiet as those of a college library, whose silence was never broken by the light staccato footsteps of gay feet, or the murmur of roguish voices. But the air of pathos which all these things wore seemed to rise from the fact that they had been planned and secured not for the enjoyment of a lonely old man, but for some happy purpose that had never been realized. They seemed to wear an expression of disappointment, even of apology for existing so uselessly.
"Tut! How can anyone be patient with a man of principles," again commented Miss Bancroft; but her face had grown a little sad.
She was rocking gently back and forth in the shade of the cool stone porch, when the sound of footsteps at last reached her ears, and she looked up with the warm smile of a guest who knows she is always welcome.
"Elizabeth! This is a very great pleasure. I thought you had forgotten me!"
"You deserve to be forgotten, my dear friend. Ah, now you've disarmed me, though. I've just conscience enough to have to tell you that I've come this time with ulterior motives."
"I can find fault with no motives of yours, so long as they prompt you to visit me. I look forward to my little chats with you as a child looks forward to his Saturday treats."
"My dear Tom, your gift of saying delightful things is one of the wonders of the age. Here you never see a woman from one year's end to the other, and yet you can turn a compliment as charmingly as though you practised on the fairest in the land every evening of your life."
"'In my youth, said the Father——'" quoted the old gentleman with a twinkle. "However, let's hear your ulterior motives first, my dear Elizabeth, so that afterwards we can chat with unburdened minds."
"No—no, I refuse to beard you until we have some tea. Thank goodness, here's William bringing it now. I took the liberty of ordering it, Tom."
"You took no liberties at all—you merely assumed your privileges. Tut-tut! Tea. You women, with all your notions and your injurious habits—how very delightful it is to be near you!"
"To hear you talk, Tom, how could anyone suspect that you were a man of principles!" cried Miss Bancroft. "How could anyone dream that you were hard, and austere and—and unimaginative!" He looked at her in mild astonishment.
He was a small old man, rather delicate in build, with the blunt broad hands of a worker, and a high, smooth, massive forehead, from which his perfectly white hair fell back, long and almost childishly soft and fine. His eyes, set deep under the sharply defined bone of his projecting brow, wore the gentle, far-away expression noticeable in many near-sighted people; but his chin contradicted their softness, and there was a hint of obstinacy in his close-set mouth and rather long upper lip. He was dressed negligently, and indeed almost shabbily, and he made no apologies for his appearance; since he never gave a thought to it himself, he could not consider what other people might think of it. His greatest hobby, lingering with him from earlier years, was chemistry, and he spent virtually all his time in the laboratory which he had fitted up in one of the odd towers that decorated his house. His coat and trousers would have given a far less observant person than Sherlock Holmes a clue to this favorite occupation of his, stained and burned as they were with acids.
"Do you eat your dinner in those clothes?" demanded Miss Bancroft.
"Why? What's the matter with them? Why not eat dinner in 'em? My dear Elizabeth, surely at this late date you haven't taken it into your head to reform my habits?"
"I don't know but that I have," replied Miss Bancroft with a touch of grimness.
"Is that your ulterior motive? I suspected it. Tell me what you meant when you accused me just now of being hard and austere and unimaginative. Why unimaginative?"
"No really intelligent woman would ever try to explain anything so subtle to a man. I mean that you are unimaginative because you allow yourself to be rigid——"
"Rigid? Rigid about what?"
"About your principles. I like you, Tom—you know how much. I admire you more than any man I have ever known, and I have known a good many remarkable men. But one thing I cannot forgive you is your principles."
"My principles? When did I ever offend you with principles?"
Miss Bancroft poured herself another cup of tea, and laid a second piece of bread-and-butter neatly on the side of her saucer.
"Come," said Mr. Prescott, with a keen glance at her. "Come, it's not like you, Elizabeth, to beat about the bush. What can this matter be which you find so difficult to broach in plain English?"
Miss Bancroft hesitated a moment. It touched her vanity to be accused of beating about the bush, since she took an especial pride in her reputation of being a woman who never minced matters, and who always made a direct and fearless attack.
Then she said, simply:
"I came to talk to you about—George's daughters, Tom."
There was a short silence.
"It's not like you, Elizabeth, to—to touch upon a matter so very delicate," remarked Mr. Prescott, quietly, his lips tightening slightly. "Of course I can understand how my attitude in regard to them must appear to you, but I fancied that there existed between you and me a silent agreement that this was one subject which was never to be mentioned."
"My dear Tom, you know that under ordinary circumstances I am not an interfering woman; therefore you must realize that I should never have spoken of this to you without the best of reasons for doing so. But I feel that you are allowing certain principles, excellent no doubt in themselves, but wrong in your particular application to them, to thwart your own happiness; to say nothing of depriving others of the advantages which it is in your power to bestow." Miss Bancroft was very serious now. As she spoke she leaned over and laid her fat little hand earnestly on the old man's shabby sleeve. He said nothing, and she continued:
"There are two young girls, charming—beautiful, indeed—the daughters of a man you loved far more even than most fathers love their first-born sons——"
"Don't!" exclaimed Mr. Prescott, sharply, almost fiercely. "Don't speak to me of that, Elizabeth. Can't you realize that just to mention my—George recalls all my old rancor against that little, heartless spendthrift who ruined him—killed him——" his voice rose hoarsely, then making an effort to control himself, he went on in a quieter tone:
"It's very difficult for me to discuss this with you, Elizabeth."
"I'm sorry, Tom. But you have no right to—it's a matter of your own happiness as much as theirs—and I would be no friend of yours if I were not willing and anxious to risk your anger for the sake of righting this mistake you are making."
"My nieces are not in want. And familiarity with a certain degree of poverty is the source of a wisdom that safeguards men and women from follies that lead to many of the greatest miseries on earth."
"Want, my dear Tom, is a purely relative condition," said Miss Bancroft. "There are needs, which to certain natures are more intolerable than physical hunger. To deprive a young girl of simple, innocent delights—companionship of her own kind, dainty clothes, harmless enjoyments—is like robbing a plant of sun and rain."
"Do you mean to tell me that poverty need deprive any girl of such things? Nonsense, Elizabeth! I have seen girls who had but two dresses to their name, who worked and struggled and economized, and who nevertheless had as much pleasure—indeed more, I'll wager—than the most petted heiress in the land. And what's more, they made better wives and better mothers and better citizens. They knew how many cents make a dollar, and how many dollars their men could make in a week by the sweat of their brow, working not eight hours a day, but ten and twelve. One never heard this sickly whine from them—this talk that women must be coddled and pampered, and that men can eat their hearts out to provide the 'sun' in which they bask like pet lizards! They didn't ask for 'sunlight'—they asked only that they might work and save with their husbands—that they could be fit partners, and they found their joy, not in 'dainty clothes' and 'harmless enjoyments' but in giving their strength and their courage for their husbands and their children!" Mr. Prescott had risen to his feet in the vehemence of his feeling, and was walking back and forth, his hands locked behind his back, and his head lowered and thrust forward between his hunched-up shoulders.
"Good heavens, I've got him roused for fair," thought Miss Bancroft, with a mixture of amusement and dismay. "And of course, theoretically he's dead right. Now why is it that so many things which, theoretically, are dead right, practically, are all wrong? That's what I've got to prove to him—and I don't know whether I shall succeed after all. I must take care not to be sentimental—that rouses him dreadfully."
Aloud she said, in a quiet voice:
"Listen, Tom—under ordinary circumstances I should agree with you absolutely. But a short time ago I spoke of want being relative. You said that your nieces are not in want. You meant, of course, that they had food and clothes and shelter. If they were girls who lived in an absolutely different plane of life that would be sufficient for their happiness. They could have pleasure with their two dresses and their one best bonnet, because everyone else of their class would have no more. But take one of them out of that class; put her where her only companions would have to be sought for among men and women who lived on a scale of comparative wealth, where, to make friends, she would have to appear well, and so on—then, what in the first case was at least a sufficiency, now becomes tragically inadequate. There is no cure but for that girl to recede from the class to which by birth, breeding and instinct she belongs.
"You have built up a great fortune. You yourself are what you boast of being—a self-made man—a man originally of the people. But you made your nephew a gentleman—understand that I am using the word in the commonest sense. Consequently his children belong to a class in which needs must be measured by a different scale from that used for working women. They live—as you do, and most likely because you do—in a very rich community. They suffer from wants that girls of a different class would never know. They are deprived of things which your working girl would not be deprived of. They are poorer on their two thousand a year, or whatever it is, than a peasant woman would be on two hundred, because their particular needs are more expensive."
"They will be very rich—after I die," said Mr. Prescott in a low voice, after a short pause. "But I won't let them even suspect it. That little wife of George's—I never want to see her again—she is a great little gambler. If she felt sure that in a few years her daughters were coming into a fortune of several millions, Heaven only knows but that she'd have the last cent of it spent in advance. You seem to have gleaned an immense amount of information concerning my nieces—perhaps you know what her plans for them are."
"You know, Tom, that I was as much opposed—indeed more opposed, perhaps, than you were to George's marrying Lallie. But that is neither here nor there now. I am afraid that she is—well, attempting things for her girls that lie beyond her income. You must not blame her. She isn't a wise woman, but I am sure that she is one who suffers more for her mistakes than she causes others to suffer. Of course I am no judge of that.
"She is a little gambler, no doubt, as you said—but a gallant one. She is playing against rather desperate odds—and she cannot be blamed if she plays foolishly. As I understand it, I believe that her object is to give her girls, by hook or crook, advantages that lie beyond her means, the goal being that one of them or both will marry—well. If she wins—well and good——"
"Well and good—fiddlesticks! Nonsense! Good Heavens!" shouted Mr. Prescott. "Whatever are you driving at, Elizabeth? I can't make head or tail of all this talking. You come to me, telling me that my nieces are in want of some kind or other, that that mother of theirs is living beyond her means in her attempt to put them on a footing with the daughters of millionaires, so that they can marry some mother's son whom they fancy can stand their extravagance, and as far as I can make out, you want me to defray their expenses, so that the business of ruining some other man's boy as mine was ruined will be less difficult for them. Have you gone clean daft?"
"I see I haven't made myself perfectly clear," said Miss Bancroft, patiently. "I should have told you that I saw both of your nieces last night. It was because of the older one that I came here to-day—Nancy. She looks enough like George to make your heart ache. And she is facing poor George's problem. She is a very remarkable young girl—I don't cotton to the average young miss very readily, as you know, but there was something in that bright, eager young face that went to my heart. She was at the Porterbridges'. They came in an old hack that they were ashamed of. Do you like to think of George's daughters doing that?
"She is a girl who deserves a fair chance, and she's not getting it. But she isn't the sort that whimpers. She struck me as being full of a fine courage—and an independence of spirit that made one member of the family the very troublesome person he is. She is a girl who has her teeth set against circumstance, and her own cool, sober views of life. But she is very young—too young to have to cope with the difficulties that face her, and far too proud to accept any help with strings tied to it. Remember that. And in my opinion, it is a sin and a shame that you, who could give her the help she needs, and who could get a great deal of happiness in return—you won't even see her. I'm not asking anything but that you see and talk to Nancy sometime." Miss Bancroft rose, and shook out her skirt.
Mr. Prescott stood, looking straight ahead of him, with his under lip thrust forward, a characteristic trick of that same grand-niece Nancy, if he but knew it.
Presently he turned, and held out his hand with a queer, almost shy smile.
"Do forgive me, Elizabeth, for bellowing at you as I have. You know, my dear girl—and you have often agreed with me—that, while at my death my nieces will become very rich, it has been my purpose to allow them to know poverty, with all its sorrows and harassments, so that they can use my fortune wisely for their own happiness and for the happiness of the families that they will have in time. My theory is right—but circumstances alter cases. I shall think over what you have said—but I shall promise nothing."
Miss Bancroft accepted his hand and pressed it affectionately.
"Well, then, good-bye. No, don't bother to open the door for me; I'll go this way."
He smiled at her again as she went down the steps.
"I always feel lonely when you have gone, even when we have been quarrelling," he remarked, with a wistful look.
"Of course you feel lonely. You roll around in that huge house of yours like a hazelnut in a shoe," returned Miss Bancroft, quickly. He caught her meaning, and as quickly replied:
"Nonsense—I like plenty of room. Never could bear to have a lot of people hanging around. No man can accomplish anything with an army of women and things hanging to his coat-tails!"
"Tst!" observed Miss Bancroft, and because there was no answer to that, she could retire with the satisfaction of having had the last word.