Part 7

Crane ascended the stairs slowly, for he was trying to recall the lines that follow Juliet's pathetic question, when he suddenly became aware of Mrs. Falkener's feet planted firmly on the top step, and then of that lady's whole majestic presence. He pulled himself together with an effort.

"Do you suppose that girl could have dropped that lid on purpose?" he asked, as if this were the question he had been so deeply pondering.

"I feel not the least doubt of it," returned Mrs. Falkener.

He shook his head.

"It seems almost incredible," he answered, moving swiftly across the hall toward the sitting-room, where Tucker and Miss Falkener were visible.

"On the contrary," replied the elder lady, "it seems to me perfectly in keeping with the whole conduct of this extraordinary young person." They had now entered the room, and she included Tucker and her daughter in an account of the incident.

"You know, Solon, and you, too, Cora, how easy I am on servants. I must admit, every one will confirm it, that my own servants adore me. They adore me, don't they, Cora? No wonder. I see to their comfort. They have their own bath, and a sitting-room far better than anything I had myself as a young woman. But in return I do demand respect, absolute respect. And when I am looking into an ice-box, examining it, at Burton's special request, to have that young minx slam down the lid, almost catching my nose, Solon, I assure you, almost touching my nose, as she did it!"

Tucker listened attentively, tapping his eye-glasses on his left palm. Then he said:

"And what did you do about it, Burton?"

Crane had gone to the bookcases and taken down a volume of Shakespeare. He was so profoundly immersed that Tucker had to repeat his question. This is what he was reading:

_Juliet_: Think you that we shall ever meet again?

_Romeo_: I doubt it not, and all our woes shall serve For pleasant converse in the days to come.

He looked up, vainly trying to suppress a smile.

"What did I do about what, Tuck?"

"About your cook's insulting Mrs. Falkener."

Crane replaced the volume and walked to the window.

"Oh," he said, "I stayed behind a moment--"

"A moment!" said Mrs. Falkener, with something that would have been a snort in one less self-controlled.

At this instant, Crane's attention was attracted by a figure he saw crossing the grounds, and he decided to create a diversion.

"Oh, look!" he exclaimed. "Do come and see the housemaid going out for a walk. Did you ever see anything smarter than she looks?"

The diversion was of a more exciting nature than he had intended. Mrs. Falkener came to the window and uttering a piercing exclamation, she cried:

"The woman has on Cora's best hat!"

"Not really?" said Crane, but it did seem to him he remembered having seen the hat before.

"It is, it is," Mrs. Falkener went on, in some excitement. "Call her back at once. Solon, do something. Call the woman back."

Tucker, thus appealed to, threw open the window, and with an extremely creditable volume of voice, he roared:

"Lily!"

The girl started and turned. He beckoned imperiously. She approached.

"Come in here at once," he said sternly.

Mrs. Falkener sank into a chair.

"This is really too much," she said, making fluttering gestures with her hands. "Even you, Burton, will admit this is too much. Stand by me, Solon."

"Don't say even I, Mrs. Falkener," returned Crane, "as if I had been indifferent to your comfort."

"Don't be so excited, Mother," said Cora. "You know it probably isn't my hat at all. Lily has probably been copying mine."

Mrs. Falkener shook her head.

"I should know a Diane Duruy model anywhere," she said.

At this moment, Lily entered, and good temper did not beam from her countenance.

"I had permission from Smithfield to go out," she began defiantly. "Smithfield sent me over to look up a boy to replace Brin--"

"The trouble is not over your going out," said Crane.

"What is the trouble, then?"

"The trouble," said Mrs. Falkener, seeing Crane hesitate for a word, "is that you have on my daughter's hat."

"Your daughter's hat!" said Lily contemptuously. "Nothing of the kind."

Mrs. Falkener turned to Tucker.

"This is intolerable. This is insufferable," she cried. "To have that woman standing there in Cora's hat, which I chose myself and paid forty-five dollars for at a sale, and cheap, too, for a Diane Duruy model; to stand there and tell me I don't know the hat when I see it--"

"Cora," said Crane, "is that your hat?"

"Why, yes, I'm afraid it is," answered Cora, rather reluctantly.

"Lily, have you any explanation to make?" he asked.

"None at all," replied the housemaid, looking like white granite.

"Cora," said Crane, "you did not by any chance say anything that could have led Lily to believe you meant to give her the hat?"

Miss Falkener smiled.

"No," she said. "My mother would not encourage such a generous impulse in regard to a French hat."

"Then, Lily," said Burton, "take off the hat, and give it back to Miss Falkener, and go and pack your things and be out of the house in an hour."

"You must have her luggage searched," said Tucker.

"Give the hat back!" cried Mrs. Falkener. "What good will that do? Do you suppose that I would ever let Cora put it on her head again, after that woman has worn it? She may as well keep it now."

"I shall," answered Lily. "It's mine."

The girl's determination impressed Crane more than it did the others, though even he could not see any loop-hole of escape for her. He rang the bell, and when Smithfield appeared, he said:

"Smithfield, I have dismissed Lily. We found her leaving the house in one of Miss Falkener's hats."

"Oh, begging your pardon, no, sir," said Smithfield. "It is really not Miss Falkener's hat. Surely, Lily, you explained it?"

"I don't care to speak to them at all," answered Lily.

"Oh, that's no way to speak to your employers, my girl," said Smithfield. "The explanation is this, sir: I understand those great French houses send out many hats alike, sir, and this one was given to Lily by a friend, by Mrs. Crosslett-Billington, to be exact, sir, she thinking it a trifle youthful for herself after she had bought it, and I can't but say she was right, sir, she being a lady now nearing sixty, though hardly looking forty-five. The first evening the ladies came, sir, when Lily had done unpacking their things, she mentioned in the kitchen that Miss Falkener had a hat similar to her own, and we all advised her, sir, under the circumstances, not to wear it during the ladies' stay, as being more suitable and respectful; and she agreed not to, but young women when they have pretty things, dear me, sir, they do like to wear them, and that I presume is why she put on the hat, in spite of our warnings, and I'm sure she regrets it heartily, sir."

"I don't," said Lily. "I'm right glad I did."

"Tut, tut," said Smithfield, "no way to answer, no way to answer."

"Cora," Crane said, "would you go up and see if your hat is in your room?" Cora agreed and left the room at once.

Complete silence reigned until she returned. She was carrying in her hand a hat, the exact duplicate of that which the housemaid wore. They looked from one to another. Lily's triumph was complete.

"Lily," said Crane, "an apology seems to be due to you, which I have great pleasure in offering you, but I must say that if you had been just a trifle more civil, the whole mistake might have been cleared up sooner and more agreeably."

"I think it outrageous," observed Mrs. Falkener, rising. "I think it perfectly outrageous that any servant should own a hat which anywhere but at a special sale must have cost sixty or seventy dollars."

"And now I'll tell you what I think outrageous," said Lily, her soft Southern drawl taking on a certain vigor, "and that is that women like you, calling themselves ladies, should be free to browbeat and insult servants as much as they please--"

"Shut up, Lily," said Smithfield, but she paid no attention.

"No," she said, "no one knows what I've put up with from this insolent old harridan, and now I am going to say what I think."

"Oh, no, Lily," said Crane, taking her by the arm, "you really are not. We're all sorry for the incident, but really, you know you can't be allowed to talk like that."

"But, Mr. Crane," drawled Lily, "you don't appreciate what a dreadful woman she is--no one could who did not have to hook her up every evening."

Between Smithfield and Crane, she was hustled out of the room.

Alone in the hall, Crane and his butler held a consultation.

"She's got to go, Smithfield. Why in the world wouldn't she hold her tongue? Poor girl, I felt every sympathy with her."

"Oh, sir," exclaimed Smithfield, "what shall we do? Jane-Ellen and I really can't run the house entirely alone, sir."

"Of course not, of course not," Burton answered. "You must get some more servants. Get as many as you please--black, white, or red--but for heaven's sake get the kind that won't be impertinent to Mrs. Falkener."

Smithfield shook his head.

"That's a kind will be hard to find, sir, begging your pardon," he observed.

Crane thought it best to ignore this remark.

"I tell you what to do," he said. "Call up Mr. Eliot and say we should all be glad to accept his invitation to lunch to-day if he can still have us. That will give you a little time to look about you. By to-morrow you ought to be able to find some one."

He waited to get Eliot's answer before he returned to the sitting-room, where he saw that Tucker and Mrs. Falkener had had a long, comfortable talk about their grievances and their own general righteousness. He hated to break into the calm that had succeeded by announcing that they were all going out to lunch.

"Burton," said Mrs. Falkener, directing a stern glance at her daughter, "I explained to you yesterday that was an invitation I did not care to accept."

"I know," said Crane, "but my household is now so short-handed that it seemed a question of lunching out or getting no lunch at all. If you really object to going to Eliot's, I dare say they could give you something cold at home, if you did not mind that. You will come, won't you, Cora?"

"With pleasure," answered Cora.

Crane's manner was unusually decisive, and Mrs. Falkener saw that it was time to make things smooth.

"Oh, no," she said. "No, if you are all going, I shall go, too. Only, home is so delightful, I hate the thought of leaving it."

"It hasn't seemed very delightful to me for the past few minutes," answered Burton, "but I'm glad if you've enjoyed it."

"Ah, Burton, my dear, you take these things too seriously," replied Mrs. Falkener. "A little trouble with the servants--an everyday occurrence in a woman's life. You of the stronger sex must not let it worry you so much. When you've kept house as many years as I have, you'll learn that the great thing is to be firm from the beginning. That's the only criticism I could make of you, Burt, a little weak, a little weak."

Tucker here rose, pressing his hand over his eyes.

"I think, if you don't mind, I won't go," he said. "I've a slight headache. Oh, nothing much, but I'll lunch quietly here, if you'll let me--a slice of cold meat and a glass of sherry is all I shall require."

If Crane were weak, he did not look so at this moment.

"I am sorry, Solon," he answered, "but it would be very much more convenient, if you went with us." He had no intention of leaving Tucker alone in the house with Jane-Ellen, while Smithfield was scouring the countryside for fresh servants.

"I'm not thinking so much of myself," said Tucker, "but of you. I fear I should not be much of an addition to the party."

"But I think of you, Tuck," answered his host. "What in the world would there be for you to do at home, except talk to the cook?"

Tucker said, rather ungraciously, that of course he would go if Crane wished him to, but that--

Crane, however, did not allow him to finish his sentence.

"Thank you," he said briskly. "That will be delightful. We shall be starting at half-past twelve."

IX

ELIOT'S large library, to which Crane and his party were led on their arrival, looked as only a room can look which has been occupied for several hours by a number of idle men. All the sofa cushions were on the floor, all the newspapers were on the sofas, cigarette ashes were everywhere, and the air was heavy with a combination of wood and tobacco smoke, everybody's hair was ruffled, as if they had all been sitting on the back of their heads, and Eliot, himself, now standing commandingly on the hearth-rug, was saying:

"Yes, and he did not have a sound leg when he bought him, and that must have been in 1909, for I remember it was the last year I went to Melton--" He broke off reluctantly to greet his guests.

Lefferts, who looked peculiarly neat and fresh among his companions, approached Burton, who was beside Mrs. Falkener.

"They have been talking for three hours," he observed, "about a splint on the nigh foreleg of a gray horse that doesn't belong to any of them. Sit down, Mrs. Falkener, and let us have a little rational conversation. Doesn't that idea attract you?"

"Not particularly, since you ask me," replied Mrs. Falkener, not deigning even to look at the poet, but sweeping her head about slowly as if scanning vast horizons.

"The rational doesn't attract you," Lefferts went on cheerfully. "Well, then we must try something else. How about the fantastic-sardonical, or the comic-fantastical, or even better, the--"

But Mrs. Falkener, uttering a slight exclamation of impatience, moved away.

Lefferts turned to Crane, with his unruffled smile.

"She doesn't like me," he said.

"Cora," he added, very slightly raising his voice so as to attract the attention of Miss Falkener, who immediately approached them, "Cora, why is it your mother hates me so much?"

"She certainly does," returned Cora frankly. "You know, Leonard, you are really rather stupid with her. You always begin by saying things she doesn't understand, and of course no one likes that."

Lefferts sighed.

"You see, she stimulates me so tremendously. One gets used to just merely boring or depressing one's friends, but to be actively hated is exciting. People who have lived through blood feuds and tong wars tell you that there is no excitement comparable to it. I feel a little like the leader of a tong whenever I meet Mrs. Falkener. Cora, would you belong to my tong, or would you feel loyalty demanded your remaining in your mother's?"

They went in to luncheon before Cora was obliged to answer, and here Lefferts contrived to sit next to her by the comparatively simple expedient of making the man who had already seated himself at her side get up and yield him the place.

Crane, sitting between his host and another man, enjoyed a period of quiet. Without his exactly arranging it, a definite plan for the afternoon was growing up in his mind--a plan which, it must be confessed, had been first suggested by Tucker's idea of staying at home, a plan based on a vision of Jane-Ellen and Willoughby holding the kitchen in solitary state.

Crane knew that luncheons at Eliot's were long ceremonies. Food was served and eaten slowly, you sat a long time over coffee and cigars, and at the smallest encouragement, Eliot would bring out his grandfather's Madeira. And after that you were unusually lucky if you escaped a visit to the stables, and that meant the whole afternoon.

So he awaited a good opportunity after lunch was over, when Tucker, under pretense of reading a newspaper, had sunk into a comfortable doze, and Mrs. Falkener, while carrying on a fairly connected conversation with Eliot, was really concentrated on preventing Lefferts from taking Cora into another room. This was Crane's chance. He slipped into the hall, found his coat and hat, unearthed his chauffeur and motor, and drove quickly home, sending back the car at once to wait for the others.

He did not, as his impulse was, go in the kitchen way. He did not want to do anything that might annoy Jane-Ellen. At the same time, he rebelled at the notion of having always to offer an excuse for seeing her, as if he were so superior a being that he had to explain how he could stoop to the level of her society. He wanted to say frankly that he had come home because he wanted more than anything in the world to see her again.

The first thing he noticed as he went up the steps of the piazza was Willoughby sleeping in the warm afternoon sun. Then he was aware of the sound of a victrola playing dance music. The hall-door stood wide open; he looked in. Smithfield and Jane-Ellen were dancing.

Though no dancer himself, Crane had never been aware of any prejudice on the subject; indeed, he had sometimes thought that those who protested were more dangerously suggestive than the dances themselves. But now he felt a wave of protest sweep over him; the closeness, the identity of intention, seemed to him an intolerable form of intimacy.

The two were quite unconscious of his presence, and he stood there for several minutes, stood there, indeed, until Jane-Ellen's hair fell down and she had to stop to rearrange it. She looked very pretty as she stood panting and putting it up again, but she exerted no attraction upon Crane. Disgust, he thought, was all he now felt. One did not, after all, as he told himself, enter into competition with one's own butler.

He went quietly away, ordered a horse and went for a long ride. A man not very easily moved emotionally, he had never experienced the sensation of jealousy, and he now supposed himself to have reached as calm a judgment as any in his life. Everything he had ever heard to Jane-Ellen's discredit, every intimation of Tucker's, every sneer of Mrs. Falkener's, came back to him now. He would like to have sent for her and in the most scathing terms told her what he thought of her--an interview which he imagined as very different from his former reproof. But he decided it would be simpler and more dignified never to notice her in any way again. On this decision he at last turned his horse's head homeward.

Smithfield let him in, as calm and imperturbable as ever.

"Your afternoon been satisfactory, Smithfield?" inquired his employer.

Smithfield stared.

"I beg pardon, sir?"

"Have you succeeded in finding a boy to replace Brindlebury?"

The butler's face cleared.

"Oh, yes, I believe I have--not a boy, exactly, quite an elderly man, but one who promises to do, sir."

"Good." Crane turned away, but the man followed him.

"Miss Falkener asked me to tell you when you came in, sir, that she would be glad of a word with you. She's in your office."

Crane stood absolutely still for a second or two, and as he stood, his jaw slowly set, as he took a resolution. Then he opened the door of his office and went in.

Two personalities sometimes advance to a meeting with intentions as opposite as those of two trains on a single track. Crane and Cora were both too much absorbed in their own aims to observe the signals of the other.

"Cora," began Crane, with all the solemnity of which the two syllables were capable.

"Oh, Burton," cried the girl, "why did you leave Mr. Eliot's like that? It has worried me so much. Did anything happen to annoy you? What was it?"

"I sent the car right back for you."

"It wasn't the car I wanted."

Crane began at once to feel guilty, the form of egotism hardest to eradicate from the human heart.

"I'm sorry if I seemed rude, my dear Cora. I thought you were settled and content with Lefferts. I did not suppose any one would notice--"

"Your absence? Oh, Burt!"

He became aware of a suppressed excitement, an imminent outburst of some sort. A sudden terror swept over him, terror of the future, of the deed he was about to do, terror even of this strange and utterly unknown woman whom he was about to make a part of his daily life, as long as days existed. For a second he had an illusion that he had never seen, never spoken to her before, and as he struggled against this queer abnormality, he heard that in set, clear and not ill-chosen terms he was asking her to marry him.

She clasped her hands together.

"Oh, it's just what I was trying to prevent."

"To prevent?"

"Burt, I've treated you so badly."

He looked at her without expression.

"Well, let's get the facts before we decide on that."

The facts, Cora intimated, were terrible. She was already engaged.

"To Lefferts?"

She nodded tragically.

Crane felt a strong inclination to laugh. The world took on a new aspect. Reality returned with a rush, and with it a strong, friendly affection for Cora. He hardly heard her long and passionate self-justification. She knew, she said, that she had given him every encouragement. Well, the truth was she had simply made up her mind to marry him; nothing would have pleased her mother more, but she did not intend to shelter herself behind obedience to her mother; she had intended to do it for her own ends.

"That was what I tried to tell you last evening in the garden, Burt. I deliberately schemed to marry you, but you mustn't think I did not like and admire you, in a way--"

"There's only one way, Cora."

This sent her off again into the depths of self-abasement. She had no excuse to offer, she kept protesting, and offered a dozen; the most potent being her uncertainty of Crane's own feelings for her.

"You behaved so strangely for a man in love, Burt," she wailed, "I was never sure."

"In the sense you mean, I was not in love with you, Cora."

"And yet, you want to marry me?"

"In your own words, I liked and admired you, but I was not in love. The humiliating truth is, my dear girl, that I was so fatuous as to believe that you were fond of me."

There was a short silence, and then Cora exclaimed candidly:

"Aren't people queer! Here I have been worrying myself sick over my treatment of you, and now that I find you are not made unhappy by it, do you know what I feel? Disappointed, disappointed somehow, that you don't love me!"

Crane laughed.

"I also," he said, "have been slightly oppressed by the responsibility of your fancied affection, and I, too, am conscious of a certain flatness in facing the truth."

Cora hardly listened.

"It seems so queer you don't love me," she murmured. "Why don't you love me, Burt?"

At this they both laughed, and went on presently to the more detailed consideration of Cora's affairs. She and Lefferts had met the winter before; she had not liked him at first, prejudiced perhaps by the fact that he was a poet, and that he pretended to dislike all the things she cared for, but she had found, almost at once, that he understood more about the things he hated than most men did about their favorite topics.

"He's really wonderful, Burt," she said. "He understands everything, every one. Do you know, he told me yesterday that I needn't worry about you--that you weren't in love with me. Only I did not believe him. He said: 'What confuses you, my dear, is that Crane is undoubtedly in love, one sees that clearly enough, but not with you.'"

"He did not just hit it there, though," answered Crane, in a rather feeble tone. Cora, however, was in a condition of mind in which it was not difficult to distract her, and she continued without paying any further attention to the example of Lefferts' extraordinary insight. She went on to say that she had had no idea that she was in love, until one day when she found herself speaking of it as if it had always been. Crane asked about Lefferts' worldly prospects, which turned out to be extremely dark. Had he a profession? Yes, such a strange one for a poet--he was an expert statistician, but, Cora sighed, there did not seem to be a very large demand for his abilities.