The countryside adjacent to Silverwood was eminently and self-consciously respectable. The fat, substantial estates still belonged to families whose forefathers had first taken title to them. There were, of course, a number of "colonial" houses, also a "colonial" inn, The Desboro Arms, built to look as genuine as possible, although only two years old, steam heated, and electric lighted.

But things "colonial" were the traditional capital of Silverwood, and its thrifty and respectable inhabitants meant to maintain the "atmosphere." To that end they had solemnly subscribed a very small sum for an inn sign to swing in front of The Desboro Arms; the wheelwright painted it; somebody fired a shotgunful of antiquity into it, and American weather was rapidly doing the rest, with a gratifying result which no degenerate European weather could have accomplished in half a century of rain and sunshine.

The majority of the mansions in Silverwood township were as inoffensively commonplace as the Desboro house. Few pre-Revolutionary structures survived; the British had burned the countryside from Major Lockwood's mansion at Pound Ridge all the way to Bedford Village and across to the Connecticut line. With few exceptions, Silverwood houses had shared the common fate when Tarleton and DeLancy galloped amuck among the Westchester hills; but here and there some sad old mansion still remained and was reverently cherished, as was also the graveyard, straggling up the hill, set with odd old headstones, upon which most remarkable cherubim smirked under a gladly permitted accumulation of lichen.

Age, thrift, substance, respectability—these were the ideals of Silverwood; and Desboro and his doings would never have been tolerated there had it not been that a forbear of his, a certain dissolute half-pay captain, had founded the community in 1680. This sacred colonial fact had been Desboro's social salvation, for which, however, he did not seem to care very much. Good women continued to be acidly civil to him on this account, and also because Silverwood House and its estates could no more be dropped from the revered galaxy of the county than could a star be cast out of their country's flag for frivolous behavior.

So worthy men endured him, and irreproachable women grieved for him, although it was rumoured that he gave parties now and then which real actresses had actually attended. Also, though he always maintained the Desboro pew in church, he never decorated it with his person. Nor could the countryside count on him socially, except at eccentric intervals when his careless, graceful presence made the Westchester gaiety seem rather stiff and pallid, and gave the thin, sour claret an unwonted edge. And another and radical incompatibility; the Desboros were the only family of Cavalier descent in the township. And deep in the hearts of Silverwood folk the Desboros had ever seemed a godless race.

Now, there had been already some gossip among the Westchester hills concerning recent doings at Silverwood House. Even when it became known that the pretty girl who sped to and fro in Desboro's limousine, between house and station, was a celebrated art expert, and was engaged in cataloguing the famous Desboro collection, God-fearing people asked each other why Desboro should find it necessary to meet her at the station in the morning, and escort her back in the evening; and whether it were actually obligatory for him to be present while the cataloguing was in progress.

Westchester womanhood was beginning to look wan and worried; substantial gentlemen gazed inquiringly at each other over the evening chess-board; several flippant young men almost winked at each other. But these latter had been accustomed to New York, and were always under suspicion in their own families.

Therefore, it was with relief and surprise that Silverwood began to observe Desboro in furs, driving a rakish runabout, and careering about Westchester with Vail, his head farmer, seated beside him, evidently intent on committing future agriculture—palpably planning for two grass-blades where only one, or a mullein, had hitherto flourished within the memory of living man.

Fertiliser in large loads was driven into the fallow fields of the Desboros; brush and hedges and fences were being put in order. People beheld these radical preliminaries during afternoon drives in their automobiles; local tradesmen reported purchases of chemicals for soil enriching, and the sale of all sorts of farm utensils to Desboro's agent.

At the Country Club all this was gravely discussed; patriarchs mentioned it over their checkers; maidens at bowls or squash or billiards listened to the exciting tale, wide-eyed; hockey, ski, or skating parties gossiped recklessly about it. The conclusion was that Desboro had already sowed his wilder oats; and the worthy community stood watching for the prodigal's return, intending to meet him while yet he was far off.

He dropped in at the Country Club one day, causing a little less flutter than a hawk in a hen-yard. Within a week he had drifted casually into the drawing-rooms of almost all his father's old friends for a cup of tea or an informal chat—or for nothing in particular except to saunter into his proper place among them with all of the Desboro grace and amiable insouciance which they had learned to tolerate but never entirely to approve or understand.

It was not quite so casually that he stopped at the Hammerton's. And he was given tea and buns by Mrs. Hammerton, perfectly unsuspicious of his motives. Her husband came rambling in from the hothouses, presently, where he spent most of his serious life in pinching back roses and chrysanthemums; and he extended to Desboro a large, flat and placid hand.

"Aunt Hannah and Daisy are out—somewhere—" he explained vaguely. "You must have passed them on the way."

"Yes, I saw Daisy in the distance, exercising an old lady," said Desboro carelessly. He did not add that the sight of Aunt Hannah marching across the Westchester horizon had inspired him with an idea.

From her lair in town, she had come hither, for no love of her nephew and his family, nor yet for Westchester, but solely for economy's bitter sake. She made such pilgrimages at intervals every year, upsetting the Hammerton household with her sarcasms, her harsh, high-keyed laughter, her hardened ways of defining the word "spade"—for Aunt Hannah was a terror that Westchester dreaded but never dreamed of ignoring, she being a wayward daughter of the sacred soil, strangely and weirdly warped from long transplanting among the gay and godless of Gotham town. And though her means, after her husband's scared soul had taken flight, were painfully attenuated, the high priests and captains among the gay and godless feared her, and she bullied them; and she and they continued to foregather from sheer tradition, but with mutual and sincere dislike. For Aunt Hannah's name would always figure among the names of certain metropolitan dowagers, dragons, gorgons, and holy harridans; always be connected with certain traditional social events as long as the old lady lived. And she meant to survive indefinitely, if she had anything to say about it.

She came in presently with Daisy Hammerton. The latter gave her hand frankly to her childhood's comrade; the former said:

"Hah! James Desboro!" very disagreeably, and started to nourish herself at once with tea and muffins.

"James Desboro," she repeated scornfully, darting a wicked glance at him where he stood smiling at her, "James Desboro, turning plow-boy in Westchester! What's the real motive? That's what interests me. I'm a bad old woman—I know it! All over paint and powder, and with too small a foot and too trim a figger to be anything except wicked. Lindley knows it; it makes his fingers tremble when he pinches crysanthemums; Susan knows it; so does Daisy. And I admit it. And that's why I'm suspicious of you, James; I'm so wicked myself. Come, now; why play the honest yokel? Eh? You good-looking good-for-nothing!"

"My motive," he said amiably, "is to make a living and learn what it feels like."

"Been stock-gambling again?"

"Yes, dear lady."

"Lose much?" she sniffed.

"Not a very great deal."

"Hah! And now you've got to raise the wind, somehow?"

He repeated, good-humouredly: "I want to make a living."

The trim little old lady darted another glance at him.

"Ha—ha!" she laughed, without giving any reason for the disagreeable burst of mirth; and started in on another muffin.

"I think," said Mr. Hammerton, vaguely, "that James will make an excellent agriculturist——"

"Excellent fiddlesticks!" observed Aunt Hannah. "He'd make a good three-card man."

Daisy Hammerton said aside to Desboro:

"Isn't she a terror!"

"Oh, she likes me!" he said, amused.

"I know she does, immensely. She makes me take her for an hour's walk every day—and I'm so tired of exercising her and listening to her—unconventional stories—about you."

"She's a bad old thing," said Desboro affectionately, and, in his natural voice: "Aren't you, Aunt Hannah? But there isn't a smarter foot, or a prettier hand, or a trimmer waist in all Gotham, is there?"

"Philanderer!" she retorted, in a high-pitched voice. "What about that Van Alstyne supper at the Santa Regina?"

"Which one?" he asked coolly. "Stuyve is always giving 'em."

"Read the Tattler!" said the old lady, seizing more muffins.

Mrs. Hammerton closed her tight lips and glanced uneasily at her daughter. Daisy sipped her tea demurely. She had read all about it, and burned the paper in her bedroom grate.

Desboro gracefully ignored the subject; the old lady laughed shrilly once or twice, and the conversation drifted toward the more decorous themes of pinching back roses and mixing plant-food, and preparing nourishment for various precocious horticultural prodigies now developing in Lindley Hammerton's hothouses.

Daisy Hammerton, a dark young girl, with superb eyes and figure, chatted unconcernedly with Desboro, making a charming winter picture in her scarlet felt hat and jacket, from which the black furs had fallen back. She went in for things violent and vigorous, and no nonsense; rode as hard as she could in such a country, played every game that demanded quick eye and flexible muscle—and, in secret, alas, wrote verses and short stories unanimously rejected by even the stodgier periodicals. But nobody suspected her of such weakness—not even her own mother.

Desboro swallowed his tea and took leave of his rose-pinching host and hostess, and their sole and lovely progeny, also, perhaps, the result of scientific concentration. Aunt Hannah retained his hand:

"Where are you going now, James?"

"Nowhere—home," he said, pretending embarrassment, which was enough to interest Aunt Hannah in the trap.

"Oh! Nowhere—home!" she mimicked him. "Where is 'nowhere home'? Somewhere out? I've a mind to go with you. What do you say to that, young man?"

"Come along," he said, a shade too promptly; and the little, bright, mink-like eyes sparkled with malice. The trap was sprung, and Aunt Hannah was in it. But she didn't yet suspect it.

"Slip on my fur coat for me," she said. "I'll take a spin with you in your runabout."

"You overwhelm me," he protested, holding up the fur coat.

"I may do that yet, my clever friend! Come on! No shilly-shallying! Susan! Tell your maid to lay out that Paquin gown which broke my financial backbone last month! I'll bring James back to dinner—or know the reason why!"

"I'll tell you why not, now," said Desboro. "I'm going to town early this evening."

"Home, nowhere, and then to town," commented Aunt Hannah loudly. "A multi-nefarious destination. James, if you run into the Ewigkeit by way of a wire fence or a tree, I'll come every night and haunt you! But don't poke along as Lindley pokes, or I'll take the wheel myself."

The deaf head-farmer, Vail, who had kept the engine going for fear of freezing, left the wheel and crawled resignedly into the tonneau.

Aunt Hannah and Desboro stowed themselves aboard; the swift car went off like a firecracker, then sped away into the darkness at such a pace that presently Aunt Hannah put her marmot-like face close to Desboro's ear and swore at him.

"Didn't you want speed?" he asked, slowing down.

"Where are you going, James—home, or nowhere?"

"Nowhere."

"Well, we arrived there long ago. Now, go home—your home."

"Sure, but I've got to catch that train——"

"Oh, you'll catch it—or something else. James?"

"Madame?"

"Some day I want to take a look at that young woman who is cataloguing your collection."

"That's just what I want you to do now," he said cheerfully. "I'm taking her to New York this evening."

Aunt Hannah, astonished and out of countenance, remained mute, her sharp nose buried in her furs. She had been trapped, and she knew it. Then her eyes glittered:

"You're being talked about," she said with satisfaction. "So is she! Ha!"

"Much?" he asked coolly.

"No. The good folk are only asking each other why you meet her at the station with your car. They think she carries antique gems in her satchel. Later they'll suspect who the real jewel is. Ha!"

"I like her; that's why I meet her," he said coolly.

"You like her?"

"I sure do. She is some girl, dear lady."

"Do you think your pretense of guileless candour is disarming me, young man?"

"I haven't the slightest hope of disarming you or of concealing anything from you."

"Follows," she rejoined ironically, "that there's nothing to conceal. Bah!"

"Quite right; there is nothing to conceal."

"What do you want with her, then?"

"Initially, I want her to catalogue my collection; subsequently, I wish to remain friends with her. The latter wish is becoming a problem. I've an idea that you might solve it."

"Friends with her," repeated Aunt Hannah. "Oh, my!

"'And angels whisper
Lo! the pretty pair!'

"I suppose! Is that the hymn-tune, James?"

"Precisely."

"What does she resemble—Venus, or Rosa Bonheur?"

"Look at her and make up your mind."

"Is she very pretty?"

"I think so. She's thin."

"Then what do you see unusual about her?"

"Everything, I think."

"Everything—he thinks! Oh, my sense of humour!"

"That," said Desboro, "is partly what I count on."

"Have you any remote and asinine notions of educating her and marrying her, and foisting her on your friends? There are a few fools still alive on earth, you know."

"So I've heard. I haven't the remotest idea of marrying her; she is better fitted to educate me than I am her. Not guilty on these two counts. But I had thought of foisting some of my friends on her. You, for example."

Aunt Hannah glared at him—that is, her tiny eyes became almost luminous, like the eyes of small animals at night, surprised by a sudden light.

"I know what you're meditating!" she snapped.

"I suppose you do, by this time."

"You're very impudent. Do you know it?"

"Lord, Aunt Hannah, so are you!" he drawled. "But it takes genius to get away with it."

The old lady was highly delighted, but she concealed it and began such a rapid-fire tirade against him that he was almost afraid it might bewilder him enough to affect his steering.

"Talk to me of disinterested friendship between you and a girl of that sort!" she ended. "Not that I'd care, if I found material in her to amuse me, and a monthly insult drawn to my order against a solvent bank balance! What is she, James; a pretty blue-stocking whom nobody 'understands' except you?"

"Make up your own mind," he repeated, as he brought around the car and stopped before his own doorstep. "I'm not trying to tell you anything. She is here. Look at her. If you like her, be her friend—and mine."

Jacqueline had waited tea for him; the table was in the library, kettle simmering over the silver lamp; and the girl was standing before the fire, one foot on the fender, her hands loosely linked behind her back.

She glanced up with unfeigned pleasure as his step sounded outside along the stone hallway; and the smile still remained, curving her lips, but died out in her eyes, as Mrs. Hammerton marched in, halted, and stared at her unwinkingly.

Desboro presented them; Jacqueline came forward, offering a shy hand to Aunt Hannah, and, bending her superb young head, looked down into the beady eyes which were now fairly electric with intelligence.

Desboro began, easily:

"I asked Mrs. Hammerton to have tea with——"

"I asked myself," remarked Aunt Hannah, laying her other hand over Jacqueline's—she did not know just why—perhaps because she was vain of her hands, as well as of her feet and "figger."

She seated herself on the sofa and drew Jacqueline down beside her.

"This young man tells me that you are cataloguing his grandfather's accumulation of ancient tin-ware."

"Yes," said Jacqueline, already afraid of her. And the old lady divined it, too, with not quite as much pleasure as it usually gave her to inspire trepidation in others.

Her shrill voice was a little modified when she said:

"Where did you learn to do such things? It's not usual, you know."

"You have heard of Jean Louis Nevers," suggested Desboro.

"Yes—" Mrs. Hammerton turned and looked at the girl again. "Oh!" she said. "I've heard Cary Clydesdale speak of you, haven't I?"

Jacqueline made a slight, very slight, but instinctive movement away from the old lady, on whom nothing that happened was lost.

"Mr. Clydesdale," said Mrs. Hammerton, "told several people where I was present that you knew more about antiquities in art than anybody else in New York since your father died. That's what he said about you."

Jacqueline said: "Mr. Clydesdale has been very kind to me."

"Kindness to people is also a Clydesdale tradition—isn't it, James?" said the old lady. "How kind Elena has always been to you!"

The covert impudence of Aunt Hannah, and her innocent countenance, had no significance for Jacqueline—would have had no meaning at all except for the dark flush of anger that mounted so suddenly to Desboro's forehead.

He said steadily: "The Clydesdales are very old friends, and are naturally kind. Why you don't like them I never understood."

"Perhaps you can understand why one of them doesn't like me, James."

"Oh! I can understand why many people are not crazy about you, Aunt Hannah," he said, composedly.

"Which is going some," said the old lady, with a brisk and unabashed employment of the vernacular. Then, turning to Jacqueline: "Are you going to give this young man some tea, my child? He requires a tonic."

Jacqueline rose and seated herself at the table, thankful to escape. Tea was soon ready; Aunt Hannah, whose capacity for browsing was infinite, began on jam and biscuits without apology. And Jacqueline and Desboro exchanged their first furtive glances—dismayed and questioning on the girl's part, smilingly reassuring on Desboro's. Aunt Hannah, looking intently into her teacup, missed nothing.

"Come to see me!" she said so abruptly that even Desboro started.

[Pg 181]
[Pg 182]
[Pg 183]

"I—I beg your pardon," said Jacqueline, not understanding.

"Come to see me in town. I've a rotten little place in a fashionable apartment house—one of the Park Avenue kind, which they number instead of calling it the 'Buena Vista' or the 'Hiawatha.' Will you come?"

"Thank you."

The old lady looked at her grimly:

"What does 'thank you' mean? Yes or no? Because I really want you. Don't you wish to come?"

"I would be very glad to come—only, you know, I am in business—and go out very little——"

"Except on business," added Desboro, looking Aunt Hannah unblushingly in the eye until she wanted to pinch him. Instead, she seized another biscuit, which Farris presented on a tray, smoking hot, and applied jam to it vigorously. After she had consumed it, she rose and marched around the room, passing the portraits and book shelves in review. Half turning toward Jacqueline:

"I haven't been in the musty old mansion for years; that young man never asks me. But I used to know the house. It was this sort of house that drove me out of Westchester, and I vowed I'd marry a New York man or nobody. Do you know, child, that there is a sort of simpering smugness about a house like this that makes me inclined to kick dents in the furniture?"

Jacqueline ventured to smile; Desboro's smile responded in sympathy.

"I'm going home," announced Aunt Hannah. "Good-bye, Miss Nevers. I don't want you to drive me, James; I'd rather have your man take me back. Besides, you've a train to catch, I understand——" She turned and looked at Jacqueline, who had risen, and they stood silently inspecting each other. Then, with a grim nod, as though partly of comprehension, partly in adieu, Aunt Hannah sailed out. Desboro tucked her in beside Vail. The latter being quite deaf, they talked freely under his very nose.

"James!"

"Yes, dear lady."

"You gave yourself away about Elena Clydesdale. Haven't you any control over your countenance?"

"Sometimes. But don't do that again before her! The story is a lie, anyway."

"So I've heard—from you. Tell me, James, do you think this little Nevers girl dislikes me?"

"Do you want her to?"

"No. You're a very clever young one, aren't you? Really quite an expert! Do you know, I don't think that girl would care for what I might have to offer her. There's more to her than to most people."

"How do you know? She scarcely spoke a word."

The old lady laughed scornfully:

"I know people by what they don't say. That's why I know you so much better than you think I do—you and Elena Clydesdale. And I don't think you're much good, James—or some of your married friends, either."

She settled down among the robes, with a bright, impertinent glance at him. He shrugged, standing bareheaded by the mud-guard, a lithe, handsome young fellow. "—A Desboro all over," she thought, with a mental sniff of admiration.

"Are you going to speak to Miss Nevers?" she asked, abruptly.

"About what!"

"About employing me, you idiot!"

"Yes, if you like. If she comes up here as my guest, she'll need a gorgon."

"I'll gorgon you," she retorted, wrathfully.

"Thanks. So you'll accept the—er—job?"

"Of course, if she wishes. I need the money. It's purely mercenary on my part."

"That's understood."

"Are you going to tell her I'm mercenary?"

"Naturally."

"Well, then—don't—if you don't mind. Do you think I want every living creature to detest me?"

"I don't detest you. And you have an unterrified tabby-cat at home, haven't you?"

She could have boxed his ears as he leaned over and deliberately kissed her cheek.

"I love you because you're so bad," he whispered; and, stepping lightly aside, nodded to Vail to go ahead.

The limousine, acetylenes shining, rolled up as the other car departed. He went back to the library and found Jacqueline pinning on her hat.

"Well?" he inquired gaily.

"Why did you bring her, Mr. Desboro?"

"Didn't you like her?"

"Who is she?"

"A Mrs. Hannah Hammerton. She knows everybody. Most people are afraid of her. She's poor as a guinea-pig."

"She was beautifully gowned."

"She always is. Poor Aunt Hannah!"

"Is she your aunt?"

"No, she's Lindley Hammerton's aunt—a neighbour of mine. I call her that; it made her very mad in the beginning, but she rather likes it now. You'll go to call on her, won't you?"

Jacqueline turned to him, drawing on her gloves:

"Mr. Desboro, I don't wish to be rude; and, anyway, she will forget that she asked me in another half-hour. Why should I go to see her?"

"Because she's one species of gorgon. Now, do you understand?"

"What!"

"Of course. It isn't a case of pin-money with her; it's a case of clothing, rent, and nourishment. A microscopic income, supplemented by gifts, commissions, and odd social jobs, keeps her going. What you and I want of her is for her to be seen at various times with you. She'll do the rest in talking about you—'my unusually talented young friend, Miss Nevers,' and that sort of thing. It will deceive nobody; but you'll eventually meet some people—she knows all kinds. The main point is that when I ask you here she'll bring you. People will understand that you are another of her social enterprises, for which she's paid. But it won't count against you. It will depend on yourself entirely how you are received. And not a soul will be able to say a word—" he laughed, "—except that I am very devoted to the beautiful Miss Nevers—as everybody else will be."

Jacqueline remained motionless for a few moments, an incomprehensible expression on her face; then she went over to him and took one of his hands in her gloved ones, and stood looking down at it in silence.

"Well," he asked, smiling.

She said, still looking down at his hand lying between her own:

"You have behaved in the sweetest way to me—" Her voice grew unsteady, and she turned her head sharply away.

"Jacqueline!" he exclaimed under his breath. "It's a broken reed you're trusting. Don't, dear. I'm like all the others."

She shook her head slightly, still looking away from him. After a short silence, her voice returned to her control again.

"You are very kind to me, Mr. Desboro. When a man sees that a girl likes him—and is kind to her—it is wonderful to her."

He tried to take a lighter tone.

"It's the case of the beast born in captivity, Jacqueline. I'm only going through the tricks convention has taught me. But every instinct remains unaltered."

"That is civilisation, isn't it?"

"Oh, I don't know what it is—you wonderful little thing!"

He caught her hand, then encircled her waist, drawing her close. After a moment, she dropped her big, fluffy muff on his shoulder and hid her flushed face in the fur.

"Don't trust me, will you?" he said, bluntly.

"No."

"Because I—I'm an unaccountable beast."

"We—both have to account—sometime—to somebody. Don't we?" she said in a muffled voice.

"That would never check me."

"It would—me."

"Spiritual responsibility?"

"Yes."

"Is that all?"

"What else is there to remember—when a girl—cares for a man."

"Do you really care very much?"

Perhaps she considered the question superfluous, for she remained silent until his nerveless arm released her. Then she lifted her face from the muff. It was pale but smiling when he met her eyes.

"I'll go to see Mrs. Hammerton, some day," she said, "because it would hurt too much not to be able to come here when you ask me—and other people—like the—the Clydesdales. You were thinking of me when you thought of this, weren't you?"

"In a way. A girl has got to reckon with what people say."

She nodded, pale and expressionless, slowly brushing up the violets fastened to her muff.

Farris appeared, announced the time, and held Desboro's coat. They had just margin enough to make their train.