The Younger Set

"Old fellow, you can't fool me with your talk about needing nothing better because you're out of town all the time. You know what you and I used to talk about in the old days--our longing for a home and an open fire and a brace of cats and bedroom slippers. Now I've got 'em, and I make Ardois signals at you. If your shelter-tent got afire or blew away, wouldn't you crawl into mine? And are you going to turn down an old tent-mate because his shack happens to be built of bricks?"

"Do you put it that way?"

"Yes, I do. Why, in Heaven's name, do you want to stay in a vile hole like this--unless you're smitten with Mrs. Glodden? Phil, I _want_ you to come. Will you?"

"Then--I'll accept a corner of your blanket--for a day or two," said Selwyn wearily.... "You'll let me go when I want to?"

"I'll do more; I'll make you go when _I_ want you to. Come on; pay Mrs.

Glodden and have your trunk sent."

Selwyn forced a laugh, then sat up on the bed's edge and looked around at the unpapered walls.

"Boots--you won't say to--to anybody what sort of a place I've been living in--"

"No; but I will if you try to come back here."

So Selwyn stood up and began to remove his dressing-gown, and Lansing dragged out the little flat trunk and began to pack it.

An hour later they went away together through the falling snow.

For a week Boots let him alone. He had a big, comfortable room, dressing-closet, and bath adjoining the suite occupied by his host; he was absolutely free to go and come, and for a week or ten days Boots scarcely laid eyes on him, except at breakfast, for Selwyn's visits to Sandy Hook became a daily routine except when a telegram arrived from Edgewater calling him there.

But matters at Edgewater were beginning to be easier in one way for him.

Alixe appeared to forget him for days at a time; she was less irritable, less restless and exacting. A sweet-tempered and childish docility made the care of her a simpler matter for the nurses and for him; her discontent had disappeared; she made fewer demands. She did ask for a sleigh to replace the phaeton, and Selwyn managed to get one for her; and Miss Ca.s.son, one of the nurses, wrote him how delighted Alixe had been, and how much good the sleighing was doing her.

"Yesterday," continued the nurse in her letter, "there was a consultation here between Drs. Vail, Wesson, and Morrison--as you requested. They have not changed their opinions--indeed, they are convinced that there is no possible chance of the recovery you hoped for when you talked with Dr. Morrison. They all agree that Mrs. Ruthven is in excellent physical condition--young, strong, vigorous--and may live for years; may outlive us all. But there is nothing else to expect."

The letter ran on:

"I am enclosing the bills you desired to have sent you. Fuel is very expensive, as you will see. The items for fruits, too, seems unreasonably large, but grapes are two dollars a pound and fresh vegetables dreadfully expensive.

"Mrs. Ruthven is comfortable and happy in the luxury provided. She is very sweet and docile with us all--and we are careful not to irritate her or to have anything intrude which might excite or cause the slightest shock to her.

"Yesterday, standing at the window, she caught sight of a pa.s.sing negro, and she turned to me like a flash and said:

"'The Tenth Cavalry were there!'

"She seemed rather excited for a moment--not unpleasantly--but when I ventured to ask her a question, she had quite forgotten it all.

"I meant to thank you for sending me the revolver and cartridges. It seemed a silly request, but we are in a rather lonely place, and I think Miss Bond and I feel a little safer knowing that, in case of necessity, we have _something_ to frighten away any roaming intruder who might take it into his head to visit us.

"One thing we must be careful about: yesterday Mrs. Ruthven had a doll on my bed, and I sat sewing by the window, not noticing what she was doing until I heard her pretty, pathetic little laugh.

"And _what_ do you think she had done? She had discovered your revolver

"I got it away with a little persuasion, but at times she still asks for her 'army' doll--saying that a boy she knew, named Philip, had sent it to her from Manila, where he was living.

"This, Captain Selwyn, is all the news. I do not think she will begin to fret for you again for some time. At first, you remember, it was every other day, then every three or four days. It has now been a week since she asked for you. When she does I will, as usual, telegraph you.

"With many thanks for your kindness to us all, "Very respectfully yours,

"Mary Ca.s.son."

Selwyn read this letter sitting before the fire in the living-room, feet on the fender, pipe between his teeth. It was the first day of absolute rest he had had in a long while.

The day before he had been at the Hook until almost dark, watching the firing of a big gun, and the results had been so satisfactory that he was venturing to give himself a holiday--unless wanted at Edgewater.

But the morning had brought this letter; Alixe was contented and comfortable. So when Boots, after breakfast, went off to his Air Line office, Selwyn permitted himself the luxury of smoking-jacket and slippers, and settled down before the fire to reread the letter and examine the enclosed bills, and ponder and worry over them at his ease.

To have leisure to worry over perplexities was something; to worry in such luxury as this seemed something so very near to happiness that as he refolded the last bill for household expenses he smiled faintly to himself.

Boots's three tabby-cats were disposed comfortably before the blaze, fore paws folded under, purring and blinking lazily at the grate. All around were evidences of Boots's personal taste in pretty wall-paper and hangings, a few handsome s.h.i.+raz rugs underfoot, deep, comfortable chairs, low, open bookcases full of promising literature--the more promising because not contemporary.

Selwyn loved such a room as this--where all was comfort, and nothing in the quiet, but cheerful, ensemble disturbed the peaceful homeliness.

Once--and not very long since--he had persuaded himself that there had been a chance for him to have such a home, and live in it--_not_ alone.

That chance had gone--had never really existed, he knew now. For sooner or later he must have awakened from the pleasant dreams of self-persuasion to the reality of his relentless responsibility. No, there had never been such a chance; and he thanked G.o.d that he had learned before it was too late that for him there could be no earthly paradise, no fireside _a deux_, no home, no hope of it.

As long as Alixe lived his spiritual responsibility must endure. And they had just told him that she might easily outlive them all.

He turned heavily in his chair and stared at the fire. Perhaps he saw infernal visions in the flames; perhaps the blaze meant nothing more to him than an example of chemical reaction, for his face was set and colourless and vacant, and his hands lay loosely along the padded arms of his easy-chair.

The hardest lesson he had to learn in these days was to avoid thinking.

Or, if he must surrender to the throbbing, unbidden memories which came crowding in hordes to carry him by the suddenness of their a.s.sault, that he learn to curb and subdue and direct them in pity toward that hopeless, helpless, stricken creature who was so utterly dependent upon him in her dreadful isolation.

And he could not so direct them.

Loyal in act and deed, his thoughts betrayed him. Memories, insurgent, turned on him to stab him; and he shrank from them, cowering among his pillows at midnight. But memory is merciless, and what has been is without pity; and so remembrance rose at midnight from its cerements, like a spectre, floating before his covered eyes, wearing the shape of youth and love, crowned with the splendour of _her_ hair, looking at him out of those clear, sweet eyes whose gaze was purity and truth eternal.

And truth is truth, though he might lie with hands clinched across his brow to shut out the wraith of it that haunted him; though he might set his course by the faith that was in him, and put away the hope of the world--whose hope is love--the truth was there, staring, staring at him out of Eileen Erroll's dark-blue eyes.

He had seen her seldom that winter. When he had seen her their relations appeared to be as happy, as friendly as before; there was no apparent constraint, nothing from her to indicate that she noticed an absence for which his continual business with the Government seemed sufficient excuse.

Besides, her days were full days, consequent upon Nina's goading and indefatigable activity; and Eileen danced and received, and she bridged and lunched, and she heard opera Wednesdays and was good to the poor on Fridays; and there were b.a.l.l.s, and theatres, and cla.s.ses for intellectual improvement, and routine duties incident to obligations born with those inhabitants of Manhattan who are numbered among the thousand caryatides that support upon their jewelled necks and naked shoulders the social structure of the metropolis.

But Selwyn, unable longer to fulfil his social obligations, was being quietly eliminated from the social scheme of things. Pa.s.sed over here, dropped there, counted out as one more man not to be depended upon, it was not a question of loss of caste; he simply stayed away, and his absence was accepted by people who, in the breathless pleasure chase, have no leisure to inquire why a man has lagged behind.

There were rumours, however, that he had merely temporarily donned overalls for the purpose of making a gigantic fortune; and many an envious young fellow asked his pretty partner in the dance if it was true, and many a young girl frankly hoped it was, and that the fortune would be quick in the making. For Selwyn was well liked in the younger set, and that he was in process of becoming eligible interested everybody except Gladys and the Minster twins, who considered him sufficiently eligible without the material additions required by their cynical seniors, and would rather have had him penniless and present than absent and opulent.

But they were young and foolish, and after a while they forgot to miss him, particularly Gladys, whose mother had asked her not to dance quite so often with Gerald, and to favour him a trifle less frequently in cotillon. Which prevoyance had been coped with successfully by Nina, who, noticing it, at first took merely a perverse pleasure in foiling Mrs. Orchil; but afterward, as the affair became noticeable, animated by the instinct of the truly clever opportunist, she gave Gerald every fighting chance. Whatever came of it--and, no doubt, the Orchils had more ambitious views for Gladys--it was well to have Gerald mentioned in such a fas.h.i.+onable episode, whether anything came of it or not.

Gerald, in the early days of his affair with Gladys, and before even it had a.s.sumed the proportions of an affair, had shyly come to Selwyn, not for confession but with the crafty purpose of introducing her name into the conversation so that he might have the luxury of talking about her to somebody who would neither quiz him nor suspect him.

Selwyn, of course, ultimately suspected him; but as he never quizzed him, Gerald continued his elaborate system of subterfuges to make her personality and doings a topic for him to expand upon and Selwyn to listen to.