Chapter 21
Jack’s Joy
About the first of July many agreeable things happened.
One was that Mr. Stebbins found it advisable to address a discreet letter to John Watkins, Jr., Denham, conveying the information that although he must not count unduly upon the future, still, if he behaved himself, he might with safety allow his expenditures to mount upward monthly to a certain limit. This was the way in which Aunt Mary salved her conscience and saved her pride all at once.
“I don’t want him to think that I don’t mean things when I say ’em,” she had carefully explained to Mr. Stebbins, “but I can’t bear to think that there’s anybody in New York without money enough to have a good time there.”
Mr. Stebbins had made a note of the sum which the allowance was to compass and had promised to write the letter at once.
“What did you do the last time you were in the city?” Aunt Mary asked.
“I was much occupied with business,” said the lawyer, “but I found time to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art and—”
“Good gracious!” exclaimed Aunt Mary, “who was takin’ you ’round! I never had a second for any museums or arts;—you ought to have seen a vaudeville, or that gondola place! I was ferried around four times and the music lasted all through.” She stopped and reflected. “I guess you can make that money a hundred a month more,” she said slowly. “I don’t want the boy to ever feel stinted or have to run in debt.”
Mr. Stebbins smiled, and the result was that Jack began to pay up the bills for his aunt’s entertainment very much more rapidly than he had anticipated doing.
Another pleasant thing was that a week or so later—very soon after Mrs. Rosscott had given up her town house and returned to the protection of the parental slate-tiles—Burnett’s father, a peppery but jovial old gentleman (we all know the kind), suddenly asked why Bob never came home any more. This action on the part of the head of the house being tantamount to the completest possible forgiveness and obliviousness of the past, Burnett’s mother, of whom the inquiry had been made, wept tears of sincerest joy and wrote to the youngest of her flock to return to the ancestral fold just as soon as he possibly could. He came, and as a result, a fortnight later Jack came, and Mitchell came, and Clover came. Mrs. Rosscott, as we have previously stated, was already there, and so were Maude Lorne and a great many others. Some of the others were pretty girls and Burnett and two of his friends found plenty to amuse them, but Burnett’s dearest friend, his bosom friend, his Fidus Achates, found no one to amuse him, because he was in earnest, and had eyes for no feminine prettiness, his sight being dazzled by the radiance of one surpassing loveliness. He had worked tremendously hard the first month of daily laboring, and felt he deserved a reward. Be it said for Jack that the reward of which Aunt Mary had the bestowing counted for very little with him except in its relation to the far future. The real goal which he was striving toward, the real laurels that he craved—Ah! they lay in another direction.
Middle July is a lovely time to get off among the trees and grass, and lie around in white flannels or white muslins, just as the case may be. It was too warm to do much else than that, and Heaven knows that Jack desired nothing better, as long as his goddess smiled upon him.
It was curious about his goddess. She seemed to grow more beautiful every time that he saw her. Perhaps it was her native air that gave her that charming flush; perhaps it was the joy of being at home again; perhaps it was—no, he didn’t dare to hope that. Not yet. Not even with all that she had done for him fresh in his memory. The humility of true love was so heavy on his heart that his very dreams were dulled with hopelessness, the majority of them seeming too vividly dyed in Paradise hues for their fulfillment in daily life to ever appear possible. But still he was very, very happy to be there with her—beside her—and to hear her voice and look into her eyes whenever the trouble some “other people” would leave them alone together. And she did seem happy, too. And so rejoiced that the tide of Aunt Mary’s wrath had been successfully turned. And so rejoiced that he was at work, even in the face of her hopes as to his college career. And also so rejoiced to take up the gay, careless thread of their mutual pleasure again.
The morning after the gathering of the party was Saturday and an ideal day—that sort of ideal day when house parties naturally sift into pairs and then fade away altogether. The country surrounding our particular party was densely wooded and not at all settled, the woods were laid out in a fascinating system of walks and benches which in no case commanded views of one another, and the shade overhead was the shade of July and as propitious to rest as it was to motion. Mitchell took a girl in gray and two sets of golf clubs and started out in the opposite direction from the links, Clover took a girl in green and a camera and went another way, Burnett took a girl in a riding habit and two saddle horses and followed the horses’ noses whither they led, and Jack—Jack smoked cigarettes on the piazza and waited—waited.
Mrs. Rosscott came out after a while and asked him why he didn’t go to walk also.
“Just what I was thinking as to yourself,” he said, very boldly as to voice, and very beseechingly as to eyes.
“Oh, I’m so busy,” she said, laughing up into his eyes and then laughing down at the ground—“you see I’m the only married daughter to help mamma.”
“But you’ve been helping all the morning,” he complained, “and besides how can you help? One would think that your mother was beating eggs or turning mattresses.”
“I have to work harder than that,” said Mrs. Rosscott; “I have to make people know one another and like one another and not all want to make love to the same girl.”
“You can’t help their all wanting to make love to the same girl,” said Jack; “the more you try to convince them of their folly the deeper in love they are bound to fall. I’m an illustration of that myself.”
Mrs. Rosscott looked at him then and curved her mouth sweetly.
“You do say such pretty things,” she said. “I don’t see how you’ve learned so much in so little time. Why, General Jiggs in there is three times your age and he tangles himself awfully when he tries to be sweet.”
“Perhaps his physician has recommended gymnastics,” said Jack.
“Perhaps,” said Mrs. Rosscott laughing, and then she turned as if to go in.
“Oh, don’t,” said her lover, barring the way with great suddenness; “you really mustn’t, you know. I’ve been patient for so long and been good for so long and I must be rewarded—I really must. Do come out with me somewhere—anywhere—for only a half-hour,—please.”
She looked at him.
“Won’t Maude do?” she asked.
“No, she won’t,” he said beneath his breath; “whatever do you suggest such a thing for? You make me ready to tell you to your face that you want to go as bad as I want you to go, but I shan’t say so because I know too much.”
“You do know a lot, don’t you?” said she, with an expression of great respect; “why, if you were to dare to hint to me that I wanted to go out with you instead of staying in and talking Rembrandt with Mr. Morley, I’d never forgive you the longest day I live.”
“I know you wouldn’t,” said he, “and you may be quite sure that I shall not say it. On the contrary I shall merely implore you to forget your own pleasure in consideration of mine.”
“I really ought to devote the morning to Mr. Morley,” she said meditatively; “it’s such an honor his coming here, you know.”
“A little bit of a whiskered monkey,” said Jack in great disgust; “an honor, indeed!”
“He’s a very great man,” said Mrs. Rosscott; “every sort of institution has given him a few letters to put after his name, and some have given him whole syllables.”
“You must get a straw hat, you know, or a sun-shade; it will be hot in half an hour.”
“Oh, I couldn’t stay out half an hour; fifteen minutes would be the longest.”
“All right, fifteen minutes, then, but do hurry.”
“I didn’t say that I would go,” she said, opening her eyes; “and yet I feel myself gone.” She laughed lightly.
“Do hurry,” he pleaded freshly; “oh, I am so hungry to—”
She disappeared within doors and five minutes later came back with one of those charming floppy English garden hats, tied with a muslin bow beneath her dimpled chin.
“This is so good of me,” she said, as they went down the steps.
“Very good, heavenly good,” said Jack; and then neither spoke again until they had crossed the Italian garden and entered the American wood. She looked into his eyes then and smiled half-shyly and half-provokingly.
“You are such a baby,” she said; “such a baby! Do ask me why and I’ll tell you half a dozen whys. I’d love to.”
The path was the smoothest and shadiest of forest paths, the hour was the sweetest and sunniest of summer hours, the moment was the brightest and happiest of all the moments which they had known together—up to now.
“Do tell me,” he said; “I’m wild to know.”
He took her hand and laid it on his arm. For that little while she was certainly his and his alone, and no man had a better claim to her. “Go on and tell me,” he repeated.
“There is one big reason and there are lots of little ones. Which will you have first?”
“The little ones, please.”
“Then, listen; you are like a baby because you are impatient, because you are spoilt, because when you want anything you think that you must have it, and because you like to be walked with.”
“Are those the little reasons,” he said when she paused; “and what’s the big one?”
“The big one,” she said slowly; “Oh, I’m afraid that you won’t like the big one!”
“Perhaps it will be all the better for me if I don’t,” he laughed; “at any rate I beg and pray and plead to know it.”
“What a dear boy!” she laughed. “If you want to know as badly as that, I’d have to tell you anyhow, whether I wanted to or not. It’s because I’m so much the oldest.”
“Oh!” said Jack, much disappointed. “Is that why?”
“And then too,” she continued, “you seem even younger because of your being so unsophisticated.”
“So I am unsophisticated, am I?” he asked grimly.
“Yes,” she said nodding; “at least you impress me so.”
“I’m glad of that,” he said after a little pause.
She looked up quickly.
“Truly?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“Oh,” she laughed, “if you say that, then I shall know that you are less unsophisticated than I thought you were.”
“Why so?” he asked surprised.
“Don’t you know that meek, mild men always try to insinuate that they are regular fire-eaters, and vice versa? Well, it’s so—and it’s so every time. There was once a man who was kissing me, and he drew my hands up around his neck in such a clever, gentle way that I was absolutely positive that he had had no end of practice drawing arms up in that way and I just couldn’t help saying: ‘Oh, how many women you must have kissed!’ What do you think he answered?—merely smiled and said: ‘Not so many as you might imagine.’ He showed how much he knew by the way he answered, for oh! he had. I found that out afterwards.”
“What did you do then?” he asked, frowning. “Cut him?”
“No; I married him. Why, of course I was going to marry him when he kissed me, or I wouldn’t have let him kiss me. Do you suppose I let men kiss me as a general thing? What are you thinking of?”
“I was thinking of you,” he said. “It’s a horrible habit I’ve fallen into lately. But, never mind; keep on talking.”
“I don’t remember what I was saying,” she said. “Oh, yes, I do too. About men, about good and bad men. Now, even if I didn’t know how much trouble you’d made in the world, I’d divine it all the instant that you were willing to admit being unsophisticated. People always crave to be the opposite of what they are; the drug shops couldn’t sell any peroxide of hydrogen if that wasn’t so.”
He laughed and forgot his previous vexation.
“Now, look at me,” she continued. “Oh, I didn’t mean really—I mean figuratively; but never mind. Now, I’m nothing but a bubble and a toy, and I ache to be considered a philosopher. Don’t you remember my telling you what a philosopher I was, the very first conversation that we ever had together? I do try so hard to delude myself into thinking I am one, that some days I’m almost sure that I really am one. Last night, for instance, I was thinking how nice it would be for my Cousin Maude to marry you.”
“Ye gods!” cried Jack.
“She’s so very rich,” Mrs. Rosscott pursued calmly; “and you know the law of heredity is an established scientific fact now, so you could feel quite safe as to her nose skipping the next generation.”
Jack was audibly amused.
“It’s not anything to laugh over,” his companion continued gravely. “It’s something to ponder and pray over. If I were Maude I should be on my knees about it most of the time.”
“Nothing can help her now,” said Jack. “Her parents have been and gone and done it, as far as she’s concerned, forever. Prayer won’t change her nose, although age may broaden it still more.”
“Don’t you believe that nothing can help her now. A good-looking husband could help her lots. I’ve seen homelier girls than she go just everywhere—on account of their husbands, you know. That was where my philosophy came in.”
“I’d quite forgotten your philosophy.” He laughed again as he spoke. “I must apologize. Please tell me more about it.”
She laughed, too.
“I’m going to. You see, I was lying there, looking out at the moon, and thinking how nice it would be for Maude to marry you.”
“Did you consider me at all?” he interposed.
“How you interrupt!” she declared, in exasperation. “You never let me finish.”
“I am dumb.”
“Well, I thought how nice it would be for Maude to marry you. You’d have a baron for a papa-in-law, and an heiress to balance Aunt Mary with. If you went into consumption and had to retreat to Arizona for a term of years, the climate could not ruin her complexion as it would m—most people’s. And she’s so ready to have you that it’s almost pathetic. I can’t imagine anything more awful than to be as ready to marry a man who is’nt at all desirous of so doing, as Maude is of marrying you. But if you would only think about it. I thought and thought about it last night and the longer I thought the more it seemed like such a nice arrangement all around; and then—all of a sudden—do you know I began to wonder if I was philosopher enough to enjoy being matron-of-honor to Maude and really—”
“At the wedding I could have kissed you!” he exclaimed, and suddenly subsided at the look with which she withered his boldness.
“And really I wasn’t altogether sure; and then, it occurred to me that nothing on the face of the earth would ever persuade you to marry Maude. And I saw my card castle go smashing down, and then I saw that I really am a philosopher, after all, for—for I didn’t mind a bit!”
Jack threw his head back and roared.
“Oh,” he said after a minute, “you are so refreshing. You ruffle me up just to give me the joy of smoothing me down, don’t you?”
“I do what I can to amuse you,” she said, demurely. “You are my father’s guest and my brother’s friend, and so I ought to—oughtn’t I?”
“Yes,” he said, “I have a two-fold claim on you if you look at it that way and some day I mean to go to work and unfold still another.”
They had come to a delightful little nook where the trees sighed gently, “Sit down,” and there seemed to be no adequate reason for refusing the invitation.
“Let’s rest, I know you’re tired,” the young man said gently, and the next minute found his companion down upon the soft grass, her back against a twisted tree-root and her hands about her knees.
He threw himself down beside her and the hush and the song of mid-summer were all about them, filling the air, and their ears, and their hearts all at once.
Presently he took her hand up out of the grass where its fingers had wandered to hide themselves, and kissed it. She looked at him reprovingly when it was too late, and shook her head.
“Such a little one!” he said.
“I call it a pretty big one,” she answered.
“I mean the hand—not the kiss,” he said smiling.
“You really are sophisticated,” she told him. “Only fancy if you had reversed those nouns!”
“I know,” he said; “but I’ve kissed hands before. You see, I’m more talented than you think.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said smiling. “I really am beginning to think very well of you. You don’t want me to cease to, do you?”
“Why do women always say ‘Don’t be silly’?” he queried. “I wish I could find one who wanted to be very original, and so said, ‘Do be silly’, just for a change.”
“Dear me, if women were to beg men to be silly what would happen?” Mrs. Rosscott exclaimed. “The majority are so very foolish without any special egging on.”
“But it is so dreadfully time-worn—that one phrase.”
“Oh, if it comes to originality,” she answered, “men are not original, either. Whenever they lie down in the shade, they always begin to talk nonsense. You reflect a bit and see if that isn’t invariably so.”
“But nonsense is such fun to talk in the shade,” he said, spreading her fingers out upon his own broad palm. “So many things are so next to heavenly in the shade.”
“You ought not to hold my hand.”
“I know it.”
“I am astonished that you do not remember your Aunt Mary’s teaching you better.”
“She never forbade my holding your hand.”
“Suppose anyone should come suddenly down the path?”
“They would see us and turn and go back.”
“To tell everyone—”
“What?”
“A lie.”
Jack laughed, folded her hand hard in his, and drew himself into a sitting posture beside her knee.
“Now, don’t be silly,” she said with earnest anxiety. “I won’t have it. It’s putting false ideas in your head, because I’m really only playing, you know.”
“The shadow of love,” he suggested.
“Quite so.”
“And if—” He leaned quite near.
“Not by any means,” she exclaimed, springing quickly to her feet. “Come—come! It’s quite time that we were going back to the house.”
“Why must we?” he remonstrated.
“You know why,” she said. “It’s time we were being sensible. When a man gets as near as you are, I prefer to be _en promenade_. And don’t let us be foolish any longer, either. Let us be cool and worldly. How much money has your aunt, anyhow?”
Jack had risen, too.
“What impertinence!” he ejaculated.
“Not at all,” she said. “Maude has so much money of her own that I ask in a wholly disinterested spirit.”
“She’s very rich,” said Jack. “But if your spirit is so disinterested, what do you want to know for?”
“This is a world of chance, and the main chance in a woman’s case is alimony; so it’s always nice to know how to figure it.”
“It’s a slim chance for your cousin,” said Jack. “Do tell her that I said so.”
“No, I shan’t,” said she perversely. “I won’t be a go-between for you and her. Besides, as to that alimony, there are more heiresses than Maude in our family.”
“Yes,” said he; “I know that. But I know, too, that there is one among them who need never figure on getting any alimony out of me. If I ever get the iron grasp of the law on that heiress, I can assure you that only her death or mine will ever loosen its fangs.”
“How fierce you are!” said Mrs. Rosscott. “Why do you get so worked up?”
“Oh,” he exclaimed, with something approaching a groan, “I don’t mean to be—but I do care so much! And sometimes—” he caught her quickly in his arms, drew her within their strong embrace, and kissed her passionately upon the lips that had been tantalizing him for five interminable months.
He was almost frightened the next second by her stillness.
“Don’t be angry,” he pleaded.
“I’m not,” she murmured, resting very quietly with her cheek against his heart. “But you’ll have to marry me now. My other husband did, you know.”
“Marry you!” he exclaimed. “Next week? To-morrow? This afternoon? You need only say when—”
“Oh, not for years and years,” she said, interrupting him. “You mustn’t dream of such a thing for years and years!”
“For years and years!” he cried in astonishment.
“That’s what I said,” she told him.
He released her in his surprise and stared hard at her. And then he seized her again and kissed her soundly.
“You don’t mean it!” he declared.
“I do mean it!” she declared.
And then she shook her head in a very sweet but painfully resolute manner.
“I won’t be called a cradle-robber,” she said, firmly; and at that her companion swore mildly but fervently.
“You’re so young,” she said further; “and not a bit settled,” she added.
“But you’re young, too,” he reminded her.
“I’m older than you are,” she said.
“I suppose that you aren’t any more settled than I am, and that’s why you hesitate,” he said grimly.
“Now that’s unworthy of you,” she cried; “and I have a good mind—”
But the direful words were never spoken, for she was in his arms again—close in his arms; and, as he kissed her with a delicious sensation that it was all too good to be true, he whispered, laughing:
“I always meant to lord it over my wife, so I’ll begin by saying: ‘Have it your own way, as long as I have you.’”
Mrs. Rosscott laid her cheek back against his coat lapel, and looked up into his eyes with the sweetest smile that even he had ever seen upon even her face.
“It’s a bargain,” she murmured.