Part 20

He lighted his pipe and started downstairs toward the gunroom, where the guests were recounting the adventures of the morning over tobacco and high-balls. Nellie Pennington, who had an instinct for the psychological moment, met him and led him to a lounge at the end of the hall.

“Well,” she said, “are you prepared to give a full account of yourself?”

“An empty account, dear Mother Confessor. I’m neither sinful nor virtuous.”

“I’m not so sure about that.”

“About which?”

“About either. You’re unpleasantly self-righteous and criminally unamiable.”

“Oh, Nellie, to whom?”

“To me. Also, you’re stupid!”

“Thanks. That’s my misfortune. What else?”

“That’s enough to begin on. I could pull your ears in chagrin. You’ve treated my advice with the scantest ceremony, made ducks and drakes of the opportunities I’ve provided, and lastly you’ve gone and gotten Nina Jaffray talked about----”

“Nellie! Please! I can’t permit----”

“Oh, fudge, Phil. Nina is well able to look after herself. It isn’t of Nina I’m thinking.”

“Who then?”

“You! You silly goose. There isn’t any spectacle in the world half so ludicrous as a chivalrous man defending the fame of a woman who doesn’t care whether she’s defended or not.”

“I don’t see----”

“I know you don’t. That’s why I’m telling you.”

“But Nina, does care.”

“Yes, but not precisely in the way that you suppose. Fortune gave her some excellent cards--and she played them.”

“Please be more explicit.”

“Very well, then. Girls of Nina’s type would rather have their name coupled unpleasantly with that of the man they care for than not coupled with it at all.”

“Nonsense, Nina doesn’t care----”

“Oh, yes, she does. She wants to marry you. She has told you so, hasn’t she?”

Phil Gallatin looked at her quickly with eyes agog. Such powers of divination were uncanny.

“She has proposed to you once--twice--how many times, Phil?”

“None--not at all,” he stammered, while she smiled and shrugged her incredulity.

“If I didn’t know already, I need only a glance at your face to be convinced of it.”

“How did you know?”

“How does a woman know anything? By virtue, my friend, of those invisible spiritual fibers which she thrusts in all directions and upon which she receives impressions. That’s how she knows.”

“You guessed?”

“Call it that, if you like. I guessed. I guessed this, also: that Nina wanted Jane to believe this story to be true. It didn’t need much to convince her. That little Nina was willing to provide.”

“What?”

“Nina admitted that the story was true,” she repeated.

Gallatin rose to his feet and stared at his companion like one possessed.

“Nina admitted it! You’re dreaming.”

“No. I’m very wide awake. I wish you were.”

“It’s preposterous. Whatever put such an idea into your head?”

“My antennæ.”

“Nonsense!”

“Listen. Nina called on Jane a while ago. They had a long talk. Something happened--something that has interrupted friendly relations. They don’t speak now. What do you suppose that talk was about? The weather? Or a plan for the amelioration of the condition of homeless cats? Oh, you know a lot about women, Phil Gallatin!” she finished scornfully.

“I know enough,” he muttered.

“You think you do,” she put in quickly. “The Lord give me patience to talk to you! For unbiased ignorance, next to the callous youth who thinks he knows it all, commend me to the modern Galahad! The one only _thinks_ he knows, but the other doesn’t want to know. He’s content to believe every woman irreproachable by the mere virtue of being a woman. Nina Jaffray has played her cards with remarkable cleverness, but she has been quite unscrupulous. It’s time you knew it, and it’s time that Jane did. I would tell her if I thought she would believe me, but I fancy I’ve meddled enough.”

Gallatin took two or three paces up and down and then sat down beside her.

“It isn’t meddling, Nellie,” he said quietly. “You’ve done your best and I’m grateful to you. Unfortunately, you can’t help me any longer. It’s too late. I did what I could. No girl who had ever loved a man could let him go so easily, could doubt him so willingly. It was all a mistake. It’s better to find it out now than too late.”

Nellie Pennington didn’t reply. She only looked down at her muddy boots with the cryptic smile that women wear when they wish to conceal either their ignorance or their wisdom.

“Did you know that Jane was dining here to-night?” she asked.

“Yes,” he replied. “Nina told me. I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter in the least. The world is big enough for everybody. Jane evidently thinks so, too. Otherwise she wouldn’t be coming.”

“Does she know I’m here?”

“Oh, yes, she knows that Nina is, too.”

Gallatin looked out of the window.

“You don’t understand women, do you, Phil? Admit that and I’ll tell you why she’s coming.”

He smiled. “I do admit it. You’re all in league with the devil.”

“She’s coming here because she wants to show you how little she cares, because she has a morbid curiosity to see you and Nina together, and lastly,” at this she leaned toward him with her lips very close to his ear, “and lastly--because she loves you more madly than ever!”

He had hardly recovered from the shock of surprise at this announcement when he realized that Nellie Pennington had suddenly risen and fled.

This preliminary step taken, Nellie Pennington retreated upstairs in the most amiable of moods, to dress for luncheon. If Nina was going to play the game with marked cards, it was quite proper that Phil be permitted the use of the code. She had at least provided him with food for reflection, which, while not quite pleasant to take, would serve as nutrition for his failing optimism. And somewhere in the back of her head a plan was being born, unpalpable as yet and formless, but which persisted in growing in spite of her.

XXV

DEEP WATER

The afternoon was passed in leisurely fashion. The modern way of entertaining guests is to let them entertain themselves. They loafed, smoked, played bottle-pool and later on there was a court tennis match between young Dorsey-Martin and the marker, which drew a gallery and applause. Nina Jaffray tried it next with Bibby Worthington and though she had played but once, got the knack of the “railroad” service and succeeded in beating him handily, amid derisive remarks for Bibby from the nets. A plunge in the pool followed; after which the ladies went up for a rest before dressing for dinner. Gallatin saw little of Nellie Pennington during the afternoon, and though he wanted to question her to satisfy the alarming curiosity which she had aroused, she avoided speaking to him alone, and when he insisted on following her about, fled to her room. She knew the effect of her revelations upon his mind and she didn’t propose that it should be spoiled by an anti-climax.

The dinner hour arrived and with it the Ledyards and their house-guests, Angela Wetherill, Millicent Reeves, the Perrines, Jane Loring, Percy Endicott, Coleman Van Duyn and some of the Warrenton folk. Dinner tables, each with six chairs, had been laid in the dining-room and hall, but so perfect was the machinery of the great establishment that the influx of guests made no apparent difference in its orderly procedure. There were good-natured comments on Bibby Worthington’s defeat in the afternoon, congratulations for Nina Jaffray on her dual achievement, uncomplimentary remarks about Virginia clay, flattering ones about Virginia hospitality and the usual discussion about breeds of hounds and horses, back of which was to be discovered the ancient rivalry between the Cedarcroft and Apawomeck hunt clubs.

Nellie Pennington directed the destinies of the table at which Gallatin sat. Nina Jaffray was on his right, Larry Kane beyond her, Coleman Van Duyn on Mrs. Pennington’s left and Jane Loring opposite. Nothing could possibly have been arranged which could conspire more thoroughly to lacerate the feelings of those assembled. Gallatin saw Jane halt when she was directed to her seat, he heard Nina’s titter of delight beside him, caught Larry Kane’s glare and Coley Van Duyn’s flush, but the stab of Jane’s eyes hardened him into an immediate gayety in which Nina was not slow to follow. Mrs. Pennington having devised the situation, calmly sat and proceeded to enjoy it. Good breeding, she knew, made a fair amalgam of the most heterogeneous elements, but she gave a short sigh when they were all seated and each began talking rapidly to his neighbor, Jane to Larry Kane, Nina to Phil and herself to Coley. Pangs in every heart except her own! It was the perfection of social cruelty, and she enjoyed it hugely, aware that two, perhaps three, of the persons at the table might never care to speak to her again, but stimulated by the reflection, whether for bad or good, something must come out of her crucible. The first shock of dismay over, it was apparent that her dinner partners had decided to make the best of the situation. The table was small, and general conversation inevitable, but she chose for the present to let matters take their course, trusting to Nina to provide that element of uncertainty which was to make the plot of her comedy fruitful.

Indeed, Nina seemed in her element, and, when a sudden silence fell, broke the ice with a carelessness which showed her quite oblivious of its existence.

“So nice of you, Nellie, to have us all together! I was just saying to Phil that dinners at small tables can be _such_ a bore, if the people are not all congenial.”

“Jolly, isn’t it?” laughed Nellie. “Jane, why weren’t you hunting this morning?”

“Oh, Coley didn’t want to,” she said quickly, her rapier flashing in two directions.

Nellie Pennington understood.

“You _are_ getting heavy, aren’t you, Coley?” she asked sweetly. “Didn’t Honora have anything up to your weight?”

“I didn’t ask,” returned Van Duyn peevishly. “Dreadful bore, huntin’----”

“Hear the man!” exclaimed Nellie. “You’re spoiling him, Jane.”

“There’s no hope for any creature who doesn’t like hunting,” put in Nina in disgust.

“Except the fox,” said Gallatin.

“And there’s not much for him when Nina rides,” laughed Larry Kane. “Lord, Nina, but you did take some chances to-day.”

“I believe in taking chances,” put in Miss Jaffray calmly. “The element of uncertainty is all that makes life worth while. Nothing in the world is so deadly as the obvious.”

“You’ll be kept busy avoiding it,” sighed Nellie. “I’ve been.”

“Oh, I simply ignore it,” she returned, with a quick gesture. “Jane won’t approve, of course; but the unusual, the daring, the unconventional are the only things that interest me at all.”

“They interest others when you do them, Nina,” Jane replied smiling calmly.

“Of course, they do. And you ought to be grateful.”

“We are. I’m sure we’d be very dull without you. Personally I’m a bromide.”

“Heaven forbid! The things that are easiest are not worth trying for. Whether your game is fish, fowl or beast (and that includes man), try the most difficult. The thrill of delight when you bag your game is worth all the pains of the effort. Isn’t it, Nellie?”

“I don’t know,” the other replied, between oysters. “I bagged Dick, but then I didn’t have to try very hard. I suppose I would have bagged him just the same. A woman can have any man she wants, you know.”

“The trouble is,” laughed Larry Kane, “that she doesn’t know what she wants.”

“And, if she does, Larry,” said Gallatin slowly, “he’s usually the wrong one.”

Nina laughed.

“His sex must be blamed for that. The right men are all wrong and the wrong men are all right. That’s my experience. ‘Young saint, old devil; young devil, old saint.’ You couldn’t provide me with a better recommendation for a good husband than a bad reputation as a bachelor. And think of the calm delights of regeneration!”

“You’ll have no difficulty in finding him, Nina,” said Jane.

“I’m afraid there’s no hope for me,” laughed Kane. “I, for one, am too good for any use.”

“Too good to be true,” sniffed Nina.

“Or too true to be interesting,” he added, below his breath.

Nellie Pennington, having led her companions into deep water, now turned and guided them into the shoals of the commonplace. Jane Loring’s eyes and Phil Gallatin’s had met across the table. The act was unavoidable for they sat directly opposite each other and, though each looked away at once, the current established, brief as it was, was burdened with meaning. Gallatin read a hundred things, but love was not one of them. Jane read a hundred things any one of which might have been love, but, as far as she knew, was not. Gallatin caught the end of a gaze she had given him while he was talking to Nina, and he fancied it to be a kind of indignant curiosity, not in the slightest degree related to the scorn of her surprise at being detected in the midst of her inspection. Gallatin found her face thinner, which made her eyes seem larger and the shadows under them deeper. He had seen fresh young beauty such as hers break and fade during one season in New York, but it shocked him a little to find these marks so evident in so short a time. It was as though a year, two years even, had been crowded into the few weeks since he had seen her last, as though she had lived at high tension, letting nothing escape her that could add to the sum of experience. Her eyes sparkled, and on her cheeks was a patch of red clearly defined, like rouge, but not rouge, for it came and went with her humor. She had grown older, more intense, more fragile, her features more clearly carved, more refined and--except for the hard little shadows at the corners of her lips--more spiritual.

He glanced at the heavy, bovine face of Coley Van Duyn beside her and wondered. Coley had been drinking freely and his face was flushed, his laugh open-mouthed and louder than Nellie Pennington’s humor seemed to warrant. How could she? God! How could she do it?

A blind rage came upon Gallatin, a sudden wave of intolerance and rebellion, and he clenched his fists beneath the table. This man drank as much as he liked and when he pleased. He was the club glutton. He ate immoderately and drank immoderately, because he liked to do it, and because that was his notion of comfort. Not, as had been the case with Gallatin, because he had not been able to live without it. Van Duyn could stop drinking when he liked, when he had had enough, when he didn’t want any more. He drank for the mere pleasure of drinking. Gallatin bit his lip and stared at his untouched wine glasses. Pleasure? With Gallatin it had been no pleasure. It had been a medicine, a desperate remedy for a desperate pain, a poisonous medicine which cured and killed at the same time.

“Phil!” Nina’s voice sounded suddenly at his ear. “Are you ill?”

“Not in the least.”

“You haven’t listened to a word I’ve been saying, and it was so interesting.”

He laughed.

“What were you thinking of?”

“My sins.”

“Then I don’t wonder that you looked so badly.”

But it was clear that she understood him, for after a short silence she spoke of other things.

The dinner having progressed to the salad course, visiting was in order, and the guests sauntered from table to table, exchanging chairs and partners. Jane Loring was one of the first to take advantage of this opportunity to escape, and found a seat at Honora Ledyard’s table between Bibby Worthington and Percy Endicott.

Nellie Pennington watched her departure calmly, for she had learned what she had set out to learn. All women, no matter how youthful, are clever at dissimulation, but the art being common to all women, deceives none. And Jane, skillful though she had been in hiding her thoughts from Gallatin, deceived neither Nellie Pennington nor Nina Jaffray.

Dinner over, Nellie Pennington followed the crowd to the gunroom. The married set were already at their auction and somebody beckoned to her to make a four, but she refused. On this night she had a mission. She wandered from group to group, keeping one eye on Jane and the other on Phil, until the music began, when with one accord, all but the most devoted of the bridge-players returned to the hall, from which the furniture had been cleared, and where the polished wax surface shone invitingly. Mrs. Pennington waited until the waltz was well under way and saw Jane Loring circling the room safely with Larry Kane, when she went into the library alone. Her thought had crystallized into a definite plan.

It was at the end of the third dance when Jane, on the arm of Percy Endicott was on her way to the terrace for a breath of air, that Bibby Worthington slipped a note into her fingers. She excused herself and took it to the nearest electric bulb. She knew the handwriting at once. It was in Nina Jaffray’s picturesque scrawl.

“Jane, dear,” it ran. “I _must_ see you for a moment about something which concerns you intimately. Meet me at twelve by the fountain in the loggia of the tennis court.

“NINA.”

Jane turned the note over and re-read it; then with quick scorn, tore it into tiny pieces and scattered them into the bushes. The impudence of her! She had given Nina credit for better taste. What right had she to intrude again in Jane’s private affairs when she must know how little her offices were appreciated? And yet, what was this she had to say? Something that concerned Jane intimately? What could that be unless----

Coleman Van Duyn appeared and claimed the next dance, which he begged that she would sit out. Jane agreed because it would give her a chance to think. There was little real exertion required in talking to Coley.

What could Nina want to tell her? And where--did she say? In the loggia of the tennis court--at twelve. It must be almost that now.

At five minutes of twelve Nellie Pennington handed Gallatin a note.

“From Nina,” she whispered. “It’s really outrageous, Phil, the way you’re flirting with that trusting child. I’m sure you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

The tennis court was at the far end of the long house. It was reached by passing first a succession of rooms which made up the main building, into the conservatory, by the swimming-pool and loggia. The loggia was a red-tiled portico, enclosed in glass during the winter, in the center of which was a fountain surrounded by a circular marble bench, all filched from an old Etruscan villa. To-night it was unlighted except by the glow from the bronze Japanese lamps in the conservatory; an ideal spot for a tryst, so far removed from the main body of the house and so cool in winter that it was seldom used except as a promenade or as a haven by those purposely belated. Gallatin, the scrap of paper in his fingers, strolled through the deserted halls, smoking thoughtfully. Nina Jaffray was beginning to grate just a little on his nerves. He had no idea what she wanted of him and he didn’t much care.

He only knew that it was almost time for him to make his meaning clear to her in terms which might not be misunderstood. As he entered the obscurity of the loggia, he saw the head and shoulders of a figure in white above the back of the stone bench.

“You wanted to see me?” he said.

At the sound of his voice, the figure rose, stood poised breathless, and he saw that it was not Nina.

“I?” Jane’s voice answered.

He stopped and the cigarette slipped from his fingers.

“I--I beg pardon. I was told that----”

“That _I_ wanted to see you?” she broke in scornfully.

“No. Not you--” he replied, still puzzled.

“There has been a mistake, Mr. Gallatin. I do not want to see you. If you’ll excuse me----”

She made a movement to go, but Gallatin stood in the aperture, the only avenue of escape, and did not move. His hands were at his sides, his head bent forward, his eyes gazing into the pool.

“Wait--” he muttered, as though to himself. “Don’t go yet. I’ve something to say--just a word--it will not take a moment. Will you listen?”

“I suppose I--I must,” she stammered.

“I hear--” he began painfully, “that it’s true that you’re going to marry Mr. Van Duyn.”

“And what if it is?” she flashed at him.

“Nothing--except that I hope you’ll be happy. I wish you----”

“Thanks,” dryly. “When I’m ready for the good wishes--of--of anybody, I’ll ask for them. At present--will you let me pass, please?”

“Yes--in a moment. I thought perhaps you might be willing to tell me whether it’s true, the report of your engagement?”

“I can’t see how that can be any interest of yours.”

“Only the interest of one you once cared for and who----”

“Mr. Gallatin, I forbid it,” she said hurriedly. “Would you be so unmanly as to take advantage of your position here? Isn’t it enough that I no longer care to know you, that I prefer to choose my own friends?”

“Will you answer my question?” he repeated doggedly.

“No. You have no right to question me.”

“I’m assuming the right. Your memory of the past----”

“There is no past. It was the dream of a silly child in another world where men were honest and women clean. I’ve grown older, Mr. Gallatin.”

“Yes, but not in mercy, not in compassion, not in charity.”

“Speak of virtue before you speak of mercy, of pride before compassion, of decency before charity--if you can,” she added contemptuously.

“You’re cruel,” he muttered, “horribly so.”

“I’m wiser than I was. The world has done me that service. And if cruelty is the price of wisdom, I’ll pay it. Baseness, meanness, improbity in business or in morals no longer surprise me. They’re woven into the tissue of life. I can abominate the conditions that cause them, but they are the world. And, until I choose to live alone, I must accept them even if I despise the men and women who practice them, Mr. Gallatin.”

“And you call this wisdom? This disbelief in everything--in everybody, this threadbare creed of the jaded women of the world?”

“Call it what you like. Neither your opinions nor your principles (or the lack of them) mean anything to me. If I had known you were here I should not have come to-night. I pray that we may never meet again.”

He stood silent a long moment, searching her face with his eyes. She was so cold, so white and wraithlike, and her voice was so strange, so impersonal, that he was almost ready to believe that she was some one else. It was the voice of a woman without a soul--a calm, ruthless voice which sought to wound, to injure or destroy. It had been on his lips to speak of the past, to translate into the words the pain at his heart. He had been ready to take one step forward, to seize her in his arms and compel her by the might of his tenderness to return the love that he bore her. If he had done so then, perhaps fortune would have favored him--have favored them both; for in the hour of their greatest intolerance women are sometimes most vulnerable. But he could not. Her words chilled him to insensibility, scourged his pride and made him dumb and unyielding.

“If that is your wish,” he said quietly, “I will do my best to respect it. I’d like you to remember one thing, though, and that is that this meeting was not of my seeking. If I’ve detained you, it was with the hope that perhaps you might be willing to listen to the truth, to learn what a dreadful mistake you have made, of the horrible wrong you have done----”

“To you?”

“No,” sternly. “To Nina Jaffray. Think what you like of me,” he went on with sudden passion. “It doesn’t matter. You can’t make a new pain sharper than the old one. But you’ve got to do justice to her.”

“What is the use, Mr. Gallatin?”

“It’s a lie that they’ve told, a cruel lie, as you’ll learn some day when it will be too late to repair the wrong you’ve done.”

“I don’t believe that it was a lie, Mr. Gallatin. A lie will not persist against odds. This does. You’ve done your duty. Now please let me go.”

“Not yet. You needn’t be afraid of me.”

“Let me pass.”

“In a moment--when you listen. You must. Nina Jaffray is blameless. She would not deny such a story. It would demean her to deny it as it demeans me.”