Hare and Tortoise (Davison)/Part 2/Chapter 2

by Frank Cyril Shaw Davison

Chapter II

AFTER a hurried knock Louise burst into Miriam's room. Miriam was seated before the mirror brushing her reddish-brown hair. "Who do you suppose has turned up to the feast?" cried Louise, reaching for a chair and impatiently rescuing the filmy pink draperies of her frock from the handle of a drawer. "Aunt Denise, straight from Quebec! After all these months of dilly-dallying she stalks in when we're having a reunion of the men her husband spent half his editorial and political career in insulting!"

"Why didn't she telegraph?"

"Too stingy,—heaven forgive me for saying it,—and too old-fashioned. She arrived with Papa and the Bootses and Pearl and Amy Sweet. They were stuffed into the car like flowers in a vase, her trunk lashed on behind. Papa tried to telephone, but Aunt Denise said if her own niece couldn't take her in without being warned, she wouldn't come at all. That's her spirit. What am I to do?"

"Have you explained the situation to her?"

"Does one try to explain red to a bull?"

"Then tip the others off. We'll have to engage her on safe subjects."

"If you would Miriam. In French,—for she hates English. She behaves as though French were the official language of Canada. . . I've been waiting for something to go wrong, and now it will. 'Claudia dear' was difficult enough. There's no keeping that woman off a scent."

"What scent?"

Louise was vexed at her slip. "Oh, scents in general. Yours in particular is most refreshing. Is that the Coty?"

Without waiting for an answer she plunged on. "Now I'll have to rearrange the seating. If I put Aunt Denise near Grandfather she may scalp him. His triumphant progress across the continent must have rubbed her the wrong way . . . I'll have enough on my hands without that. If Papa drinks one glass too many he'll tease Aunt Denise about the Pope. And the Bootses are fanatical teetotallers, and I wouldn't put it past them to dash the glass from old Papa Windrom's lips!"

"Make me the spare woman," Miriam offered. "That will leave me free to shush Pearl and prompt Mrs. Brown. I'll watch you for cues."

Louise gave herself a final glance in the cheval glass, pulled Miriam's skirt straight, and left a grateful kiss on her forehead to dispel any questioning trend that might have lingered as a consequence of the inadvertent "scent". Then she made her way downstairs to readjust the place cards which Dare had decorated with appropriate caricatures.

This done she stepped out on the terrace. Dare was there, leaning against the parapet. He offered her a cigarette and lit it in silence.

"There's a dreadful ordeal ahead of you," said Louise, sending a little cloud of smoke skyward.

"I'm getting used to ordeals," he replied.

"This is a new kind. You have to take the pastor's wife in to dinner."

"I shall ask her to rescue my soul from the devil."

"She will be glad of the occasion."

In his eyes there was a shadow of the glance that had proved epoch-making the day before. "On second thoughts," he added, "I shall do no such thing. The devil is welcome to it." He looked away, and Louise for once could find nothing to say. "Except," Dare finally resumed, "that he won't have it at any price. Neither will God. That leaves me on my own."

"Isn't that——" Louise began, in a low voice, then was conscious of a step. Turning, she saw Mrs. Windrom, in purple satin, advancing from the front terrace, pinning to her corsage a pink rose which drew attention to the utterly unflowerlike character of her face. The last rays of the setting sun fell full upon the lenses of the pince-nez which Louise was once "too damn polite" to smash.

"What have you two got your heads together about?" she inquired with an archness that suited her as little as the rose.

"A plot," Louise replied, holding out a hand to Mrs. Windrom, and noting with a little pang the half cynical smile which Dare allowed himself on seeing the ease of her transition. As if good acting were necessarily a sin of insincerity!

"We're terrifically mixed to-night, and owing to the unforeseen arrival of my aunt I've had to throw everybody up in a blanket and pair them as they came down. I've done what your clever son calls playing fast and loose with the social alphabet: natives paired with dudes, atheists with Methodist ministers, teetotallers with bibbers, socialists with diehards. And all my tried and true friends have a duty to perform,—namely to keep the talk on safe ground. Poor Aunt Denise, you know, is the widow of that old man who was fined a dollar for libeling the king."

During the last few weeks Mrs. Windrom had acquired a smattering of Canadian political history. Louise felt her stiffen.

"Aunt Denise has always lived under a cloud of illusions. First of all in convents, then with her husband whom she transformed from a village lawyer into a national enfant terrible. She wouldn't believe a word against him, and I think it showed rather a fine spirit. We all idolize our husbands in some degree, though some of us take more pains not to show it." Louise let this remark sink in, and felt Mrs. Windrom's shining lenses turn towards Dare, whose gaze was negligently resting on the opposite shore of the lake. "Consequently, if Aunt Denise should let her illusions get the better of her tact, I do hope you two will help change the subject."

Mrs. Windrom enjoyed conspiracies. "You may count on me, my dear," she replied. "Now I must run up and see if my husband has lost his collar buttons as usual."

Mrs. Windrom looked at the clock on the drawing-room mantle, crossed to a window to watch the retreating figures of Louise and Dare, then went towards the great square hall with its rough rafters and balcony, its shining floor, fur rugs and trophies of Keble's marksmanship. For no ulterior reason, but simply because she could not resist an open door, she peeked into the dining-room, then walked upstairs.

She had timed her visit to a nicety. Her husband's tie was being made into a lopsided bow.

"Sore?" he asked, when she had straightened it.

"A little. But I'm used to western saddles. Madame Mornay-Mareuil has suddenly turned up. Louise is in a panic. For heaven's sake don't talk politics. I can't see why you leave the cuff buttons till after you've got your shirt on. It's so simple to put them in beforehand."

"Simple, old girl; I just forget, that's all."

"What I can't make out . . . now I've bent my nail! . . . is Louise's treatment of Keble."

"What treatment?"

"I mean she ignores him."

"Have you seen my other pump?"

"Do stand still. In favor of the handsome architect."

"Steady on, Claudia dear. You've already dug up one scandal here. Isn't that enough?"

"Scandal?"

"Didn't you tell me the good-looking secretary was making eyes at Keble?"

Mrs. Windrom was indignant. "Most certainly not!"

"Well, those may not be the words you used. But the idea never came into my head all on its own."

This was highly plausible. Tremendous ideas regarding revenues and tariffs found their way unaided into Mr. Windrom's head, but not ideas having to do with illicit oeillades.

"If you deliberately choose to distort my words!" said Mrs. Windrom.

"I don't choose to distort anything; I was only looking—Here I am like 'my son John' and it's going on for eight."

Mrs. Windrom tranquilly fished a pump from under a discarded garment which had been allowed to fall to the floor.

"Have you your handkerchief?"

Mr. Windrom nodded and followed his wife out to the balcony, which overlooked the hall. He was rubbing his hands together in anticipation of a cocktail when his wife seized his arm.

A tall, elderly woman in a trailing gown of rusty black crossed the balcony with a slow stride and descended the stairs. She had large black eyes, a high nose, and tightly drawn white hair streaked with black.

"Lady Macbeth!" whispered Mr. Windrom, tapping his wife's arm and making a face like some sixty-year-old schoolboy. "Mum's the word, eh? De mortuis——"

Mrs. Windrom was nettled. "What I can't make out," she said, "is how a squat little doctor could have a sister like that!"

"You're always running on to things you can't make out Claudia. It's scarcely for want of trying."

"I have to keep my eyes open for two, for you never see anything, and Girlie's blind to things she should see. If she'd had a little of Louise's vim four years ago——"

Mr. Windrom came to a halt and made a queer grimace.

"What's the matter?"

"I forgot my handkerchief."

"Really, Charles! If I reminded you once I reminded you a dozen times."

Mr. Windrom sneezed, loud and long, and turned back towards his room. "Come now, Claudie," he protested, "make it six."

2

Miriam, on the heels of the Windroms, paused to look over the railing of the balcony. All her coaching had been leading up to this event, and there was Louise acquitting herself with a virtuosity that effaced Miriam from this setting as completely as Fate had effaced her from her own.

The grey-blue twilight which came through open doors and windows dimmed the orange of the lamps. An incredibly regal personage dominated the assembly, and above a discreet hum Miriam heard a penetrating, dark-toned voice saying, "Vous allez me pardonner, ma chère Louise, d'être descendue un peu en retard. J'ai du défaire une malle. Voilà six jours que je voyage sans changer de robe. Vous jugerez si je suis contente d'être installée—et dans quel petit palais! Maintenant vous allez me présenter ces dames."

Slim and brown, nimble and compact, Louise brought her guests in turn to Madame Mornay-Mareuil. Miriam was annoyed that Louise should have failed to recognize in her trying aunt a grande dame of unchallenged authority. With instinctive deference, the company had grouped itself about her, and Miriam smiled with a trace of vindictive satisfaction, for she had been as quick as Louise to resent the unconscious patronage in Girlie Windrom's way of beginning a remark with, "Of course, out here——"

She went to Dare, who was standing aloof, near a window. "Have you kissed the queen's hand?" she inquired.

"Not yet . . . The little doctor seems to have put one over on the Eveleys!" Dare's lips went down with a cynical humor which Miriam noted as new. There was also something new in his eyes. "I for one," he said, "am glad."

"Why?"

"Simply in the name of poetic justice. It's time Mrs. Eveley got a bit of her own back,—and Boadicea there will get it for her with a vengeance."

Miriam gave him a smiling nod and went to obey Louise's summons.

Dismayed by the astonished hush which had fallen over the hall when Aunt Denise had appeared on the staircase and come slowly towards her, Louise had quickly appreciated the dramatic value of the intrusion, and when she had manoeuvred every one safely to the table she acknowledged that the preliminary touch of solemnity had given her dinner party a tone which, instead of diminishing, would incalculably augment the triumph she had, for months now, determined that it should be. She had known Aunt Denise only as a formidable quantity in her background, an aunt she had seen during a single summer, after her mother's death, but with whom she had corresponded in a sentimental desire to maintain contact with the only relative she could claim, except for some half mythical cousins in Dublin. That her letters to Aunt Denise and her gifts of needlework had been seeds sown on fertile ground was now abundantly manifest; for Aunt Denise had assumed a protective kinship and had made that mysterious kind of "impression" of which she herself, for all her success, would never learn the secret.

Of the whole company only Girlie, with her defective focusing apparatus, had failed to pay immediate homage. In a pretty white dress, she had perfunctorily acknowledged Aunt Denise's graciousness and begun to turn away, when the old lady transfixed her with relentless black eyes. "I suppose it is the fashion to walk with a bend nowadays," Aunt Denise had said. "It doesn't give the lungs a chance."

Girlie had blushed and straightened, but Aunt Denise had withdrawn her eyes and turned them more charitably on little Mrs. Brown.

A stock soup had been simmering on the back of the stove for two weeks. By the time she had tasted it, and found it perfect, Louise's spirits were at their highest voltage, and her eyes flashed down the table till they encountered Miriam's, which gave back a signal of felicitation. Miriam, between Dare and Jack Wallace, was beating time to an argument sustained by Lord Eveley and Pearl Beatty against Mr. Windrom and Amy Sweet, the latter lending her aid in the form of giggles, for which three sips of wine,—the first in her life, and drunk in open contempt of the pledge Mrs. Boots had once persuaded her to sign,—were responsible.

Aunt Denise was getting acquainted with Keble, treating him with a respect that struck Louise as being inherently French. She wondered whether French women had a somewhat more professional attitude towards males than women of other races. Keble looked happy, but his French was buckling under the strain, and Aunt Denise did him the honor of continuing the conversation in English, an important concession.

Of all the scraps of talk Louise could overhear, the scrap which most gratified her,—and she wondered why it should,—was a homely exchange in which her father and Lady Eveley were engrossed. "It's the pure mountain air," Dr. Bruneau was explaining. "He couldn't have a better climate to commence life in."

"That's what my husband was saying. You know, when Keble was ten months old we took him to Switzerland——"

"Isn't it, Mrs. Eveley?" broke in a voice at Louise's right.

"Isn't what, Mr. Boots? Mr. Cutty was pounding with his fork and I didn't hear."

"Had to pound," Mr. Cutty defended himself, "to drown Ernest. He's telling Mrs. Brown I stole plums from her garden."

"Well, didn't you?"

"But justice is justice, and the point is, so did Ernest,—and his were riper!"

Louise leaned towards Mrs. Brown, "Do spray arsenic on the rest of the plums dear, and abolish Mr. Cutty. Wasn't what what, Mr. Boots?"

Mrs. Windrom forestalled him. "Mr. Boots tells me that the settlers are all turning socialists because farming doesn't pay. Do you mean to say you make no effort to combat such a state of affairs?"

"I dare say we ought to take more interest in politics."

Mrs. Boots, who was beyond Mr. Cutty, left Dare long enough to interpose, "Why not persuade Mr. Eveley to be a candidate in the coming elections?"

Dare had seized his reprieve to whisper to Miriam, "Does all this, to-night, make you feel fearfully alone?"

Miriam looked up as though he had startled into flight some bird of ill-omen, but made no reply.

Dare leaned a little closer. "I fancy we're lonely for rather similar reasons."

Miriam hesitated. "First of all I'm not sure what you mean. Second, if you mean what I dare say you do,—aren't you rather bold?"

"Oh yes," he replied. "Very likely."

He returned to his glass, then added, "Your acknowledgment that I was bold satisfies me of the accuracy of my guess. As we were in the same boat I couldn't resist the temptation of bidding for a crumb of commiseration. It would have been reciprocal. So my boldness wasn't more rude than it was humane."

"You're excused," said Miriam, "under the First Offenders Act."

Girlie Windrom, in a commendable spirit, took an opportunity to express the hope that Madame Mornay-Mareuil, her vis-à-vis, had not found the long train journey too fatiguing.

Madame recounted her impressions of the trip and found that Lord Eveley was in agreement with her regarding the exorbitant prices charged in western hotels. Accustomed as he was to express his opinions in public platform style, he soon had Keble's half of the table as audience, while Louise gathered in loose threads of talk at her end. The back of her dinner was now broken and she was standing with one foot triumphantly resting on its prostrate form. When the ices arrived she couldn't resist announcing that the accompanying cakes had been made by herself. The exclamations were silenced by Aunt Denise who lifted her voice to complain of Louise's cheer.

"Your table groans with luxuries, my child. You have forgotten the lessons in thrift I taught you when you were a girl."

For the first time the little doctor turned from Lady Eveley. "I am to blame for that," he said. "You see, sister, after you had left us, Nana and Louise tried to make me eat wooden cakes made without eggs, according to your instructions. I can't digest wood, so I extracted from Louise's curly head, one by one, all the notions you had put into it, and we lived extravagantly ever after,—it's a sinful world, va."

To soften for his sister the laughter that greeted his defense of Louise, Dr. Bruneau added, "With you it was different, since those who have rich spiritual lives don't need rich food. Louise and I, poor heathens, had nothing to indulge but our appetites."

"You are free to do so," returned Aunt Denise, in no wise discomfited. "My lessons were only the principles of economy and sacrifice our mother had taught me, the principles which, if you remember, mon frère, made it possible for you and me to have an education."

The company seemed relieved to find that royalty could, on occasion, be "answered back", and Lord Eveley's hearty laugh at the mischievous but not unkind sally had been followed by a scrutinizing glance which hinted that the statesman had found a mind worth exploring.

By the time the fruit had appeared, duly perspiring, Louise had only two worries left. First, the quiescence of the Windroms smote her conscience: she felt that she had been gratuitous in warning Mrs. Windrom, while leaving Aunt Denise a license to talk which Aunt Denise had been well-bred enough not to abuse. Second, she was not entirely easy in her mind regarding Dare's silence. He had done his duty by the pastor's wife, yet there was some boding unhappiness in his manner. Before the house was opened Dare had always set the key. Under the old conditions he would have taken the whole company into his hands and played with them. And while his moodiness was, in one sense, a deeply stirring tribute, at the same time there was in it something which made her feel remorseful, and afraid,—not for herself. It was as though her conscience were pointing out to her the consequences of extravagance in her moral kitchen. In the intellectual cakes she had baked for herself and Dare there had perhaps been too many emotional ingredients. They were rich and many had been eaten. Dare was conceivably experiencing this evening the ill effects.

In the midst of her reflections Lord Eveley surprised her by rising and delivering a little speech which was at the same time a dedication of the house and a tribute to its mistress. Anything in the nature of orthodox ceremony intimidated her. There were toasts,—and Miriam had never told her what one was supposed to do in such a contingency. Moreover she hadn't meant to drink her last glass of wine, and rather dazedly wished she hadn't.

After dinner the company divided for bridge and dancing, and Louise seized a moment to lay a sympathetic hand on Dare's coat-sleeve.

"Are you so bored?" she whispered.

"It's not your fault," he replied, and the unsmiling negligence of his manner bore witness to the ease with which he and Louise could fit into each other's mood.

"It won't last much longer," she said. "It" referred to the house party, but Dare chose to misinterpret.

"No," he replied, "I'm going to Japan."

Her eyes fell. When she raised them again she noticed, with a chill, that Mrs. Windrom, from the opposite corner, had been watching their tête-à-tête with hawklike vigilance.

"Come and dance," she said, drawing him toward the hall.

There another little shock was in store for her. Alice Eveley, flushed and flattered after a dance with Jack Wallace, was proceeding across the room, when suddenly she stopped short and chose a new direction.

On looking towards Alice's abandoned goal to see what had caused her to change her mind, Louise observed that Keble and Miriam were absorbed in an unsmiling tête-à-tête of the kind that had made Mrs. Windrom feign a sudden interest in Mrs. Brown's cameo brooch.

She raised her arms for her partner's embrace, and was swept into the dance.