Mrs. Essington : the romance of a house-party

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

i THE HOUSE-PARTY EXPLAINS ITSELF, AND GETS

INTO A FOG 3

Chapter I The House-party Explains Itself, And Gets Into A Fog

SPILL, I don't reconcile you with that lot," the young man broke out, after a silence that had lasted long enough to be intimate. He leaned toward her across the space between the two chairs, lifting his voice a little to be heard above the racket of the car-wheels.

The woman did not directly reply, unless there was an answer in the small profile smile she gave him. She had sat for the past ten minutes admirably still, her face turned from

• him, her eyes on the flat blue-green of onion-fields interminably wheeling past the window.

" I mean," he presently went on in his easy fashion, "they 're hardly your sort. Oh, good people, but — dullish, you know ; the kind you never put up with unless you have to."

She gave him again the flitting, profile smile, with an added twinkle, from which his face seemed to catch illumination ; and, for a moment, they smiled together with the hint of some common reminiscence.

" At all events," he came back again, " I can't see why you, of all people, would be going to the Budds ! "

She moved at last, turning a full look upon him. The supple bend of her long throat, and the cool gray light of her eyes in the warm shadow of their lashes, touched him like a harmony in music. The beauty and eloquence of her movements had always appealed to him as her special charm. His eyes followed the flowing lines of her attitude more attentively than his ears followed the first part of her reply.

"No, they 're not our sort," — she spoke with slight emphasis on the pronoun, — " and " — the subtle modelings around her mouth shadowed a smile — " we '11 probably bore them horribly. But I 'm going — for the same reason that you are. You know I have never met Julia Budd."

" But I have," said Fox Longacre, flushing a little, his blue eyes steadily meeting her bright gaze.

" Which comes, does n't it, to the same thing? Are n't we both going to 'Miramar ' to see Miss Budd ? "

" She 's lovely — to look at," he admitted.

" And not in other ways *? "

He seemed to ponder this, his clever young face puckered with an exaggeration of gravity. He gave it up with a puzzled laugh.

" Ton my word, I don't know ! That 's what I 'm going for."

" To find out — ? "

"Oh, whether she is perfectly charming, or — just the other thing."

It struck her that his manner was more offhand than the occasion required — that the alternative he had just so gaily admitted troubled him more than he wished her to know.

But Florence Essington knew, in spite of him, more than she looked, and much more than she said. She felt that she at least foresaw so much that to spare herself the train of thought she answered him in quite another vein.

" You know, Tony," she said, with that little, settling movement women use to begin a gossip, " what really amuses me is that we have n't — at least I have n't — the slightest idea, not a glimmer, what people Mrs. Budd will be asking down. She hardly knows me, 6 has n't seen me since I left school for Paris — don't you dare to mention how long ago! And yet she fairly threatened me into it, eyes popping and every hair a-quiver. I quite got the feeling that she wants something of me."

"Of course," he grinned cheerfully, "they always do."

" But something special."

" Letters of introduction *? " he hazarded. " It 's quite on the cards. They '11 be going to London next season, if she does n't — but, of course, you know what she 's after/'

"Not, at any rate,jy<?#," she quizzed.

At this he laughed out, " Oh, Lord, no ! "

Their common amusement was made up of their common knowledge of his shabby income, his opera still on probation, and his purely potential career.

The speed of the train was notably slackening. The porter had made the round with his whisk-broom, and was carrying bags and golf-kits to the outer platform. The greater number of travelers had risen, and were rushing or rustling into their coats. Most of these people seemed to know one another, were all bound for a common goal — the little city of country houses. In the next three days they would all meet half a dozen times. They exhaled the heady atmosphere of their small, smart community.

The stucco front of the San Mateo station slid slowly past the window. When the train finally came to a stop the chair-car was at the far end of the long platform, its windows commanding the full curve of the drive where it swept out of the encroaching trees.

The two, who remained seated in the midst of the general departure, now realized that the exodus would leave them solitary.

" Good ! " said Longacre, contentedly, settling more comfortably into his chair.

His companion leaned forward to look down the long wooden platform where, al- 8 ready, the newly alighted travelers were segregating themselves and their parties, one from another, and were being driven away in a light whirl of dust. The travel seemed all arrival. One or two callow, negligent college boys swung aboard the smoker. The porter took up the stool.

" I really believe — " Mrs. Essington began. The sight of a victoria lurching around the turn of the drive stopped her sentence.

The vehicle, so indisseverably connected with state and dignity of progression, bounded at the heels of galloping horses, its occupant leaning forward with the air of one who would accelerate top speed. The rigs, driving away from the station, parted for its onward rush. Heads craned toward it. There was a chorus of laughing recognitions. A man swung his hat. The train gave a preliminary pulse and quiver as the victoria came to a violent halt, and the lady sprang out in a puff of light silk, and ran fluttering and flapping along the platform. The conductor and porter, all agrin, with an arm under each of her elbows hoisted her to the step of the now moving train. The footman threw up the last of half a dozen bags.

Mrs. Essington leaned back and laughed silently across to her companion.

" A victoria ! Would n't you know she would!" he observed half quizzically, half ruefully.

" She 's so< pretty ! "

"Oh, pretty," he conceded generously enough, as the lady's full-throated laugh preceded her into the car.

She fairly burst upon them, laughing, blooming, glittering.

" Of all people ! You dear things ! " She squeezed a hand of each affectionately. " Don't tell me there is nothing in premonition ! I had one when I told James the horses must gallop. 'James,' I said, 'it is absolutely necessary that I catch that train, if 10

I get out and run for it.' James adores me, though of course he knew we looked ridiculous. But it does n't matter, now that I have you — and just as I was expecting to be alone all the way to Monterey ! "

She sighed, and sank into the seat Longacre had swung round for her ; rose again to be helped out of her coat ; removed her hat ; caressed her coiffure; resettled in her chair and shifted the fluttering folds of her skirts, with a regret or two for her own helplessness and a hope that the forbearance of her friends was not merely forbearance. Her almond eyes, blue shot with green, implored Longacre's to refute the self-accusation. But he chose to do so in a neat sentence.

Watching her, he had a sense that by her vivacity she staved off the reproach of superabundant flesh. It was marvelous, the way the avoirdupois seemed to lessen under her animation. The wide cheeks flaring away from the dwindling chin ; the tight, rosy little ll mouth drawn up at the corners in a faint, perpetual smile ; the tortoise-shell combs that pressed her glossy hair close above her pointed ears, all reminded Longacre irresistibly of a tortoise-shell — but he stopped the simile to answer Cissy Fitz Hugh's appeal concerning the fate of his opera.

He answered automatically this question, that had of late begun to weary him, acceding good-naturedly to Mrs. Fitz Hugh's sweeping declaration of her passion for music in general; but he was unhappily aware that Florence Essington had teasingly assumed the remote but interested air of a spectator at what threatened to be a tete-a-tete. Nay, more : her eyes laughed at his attempts to draw her back. He had the aggrieved feeling of a child whose game has been spoiled. Well, if Florence would n't play, neither would he. But he was pleasant about it. He slid easily from good-humored flattery to genial silence, from genial silence to the smoking-car. 12

Cissy watched his departure with a pettish mouth. But when the sharp snapping of the vestibule door had shut the two women in together she extended her small, plump feet with a luxurious stretch, and turned to Mrs. Essington with a " Well, my dear ! " that implied, " At last ! " She created the impression that she had lived only for this moment. Florence seemed to see herself exhibited as Cissy's sole confidante.

"You know," Cissy began, "it was so sweet of Emma Budd to ask me for the week's end, though of course I don't hunt — but with poor Freddy on his back since the pony-races, and all the horrid fuss with the plumbing — and the lawsuit, I 've been really too anxious for pleasure." She passed a plump hand over an unlined brow.

"But when Emma rang up yesterday to beg, and happened to let drop your name, I said, 4 If Mrs. Essington is going I really will make one effort.' " She beamed with candor.

Florence's smile surmised that the name for which the effort had been made was more probably Fox Longacre's. But Cissy's complacence was impervious.

" It was a delightful surprise to hear you were going ! You come to us so little ! " she lamented.

"Who could resist the country in September1?" Florence felt unable to add amenities to the already overcharged atmosphere.

" Oh, of course ! I just crave the country ! " Cissy agreed.

"Then the hunting — " Florence continued, aware that quite different reasons were expected of her — " Mrs. Budd makes her parties interesting with their variety."

" Oh, yes — variety," Cissy cut in. "Emma just craves it ! Did you know she 's asked D. O. Holden — and he 's going?"

At Cissy's round-eyed pause, Florence felt an inclination to laugh. Variety seemed to her

H the last word reminiscent of Holden. Looking back over the past six months, he appeared to her the one strong, unvarying, dominant, reiterated note in her resumed American experiences.

" Really ! " she managed with gravity.

" Really ! " Cissy echoed impressively. " But why such a man, who does n't care for anything but railroads, should be going to Emma, who does n't care for anything but marrying Julia — Of course " — her shallow eyes endeavored to plumb Mrs. Essington's — " he 's going for something in particular." She topped it off with her laugh, that seemed to fill her thick throat.

" Perhaps," Florence helped her out, "he 's going for the same reason that you are ? "

Cissy looked both blank and disconcerted.

" Poor man, he 's usually too anxious for pleasure ! " Florence explained.

Cissy took it in seriously. " Really the fact is, a woman is never free from her cares !

•5

But a man, when he rests, rests so completely!"

She sighed, with her eyes on the door through which Fox Longacre had departed.

She added inconsequently, "You know Emma has asked my cousin Charlie Thair. Of course it 's perfectly plain why Emma asked him. The wonder is that he dares to go ! " Florence could only guess at the situation, but she thought the wonder would have been if Thair had dodged it. " Though it 's perfectly indecent of him, I 'm sure, with his money, not to marry," Cissy ran on ; " and of course Julia is a magnificent creature. But the idea of expecting to really ' land ' Charlie ! It 's too funny ! So like dear Emma."

Upon this point Florence was, silently, in accord with Mrs. Fitz Hugh. She could see — from Mrs. Budd's point of view that every eligible man not only should, but sooner or later would, marry some suitable girl — how the proposition was a reasonable 16 one. But she felt there was as slight a possibility of Charlie Thair's being unseated from his bachelor state as from his hunting-saddle.

" Was there " — it was the following thought — " such a scant possibility of Fox Longacre ? "'

She turned from her vis-a-vis to the window, as the train, with a roar and a swing, rushed into the canon, and fixed her eyes on the dizzy fascination of the whirling river below.

The stream of events of the last five years was more rapid and intricate to the vision of her mind. The first light ripple on this stream was her clear memory of the charming, inconsequent American boy whom she had met in Vienna five years before. It had been on one of her trips, that were always solitary, since Captain Essington was too busy spending her neat little fortune in various very private and proper gambling-clubs to care how his wife amused herself. 17

How this boy, Fox Longacre, with his facile Gallic Americanism, had stood out among the miscellaneous lot of students of the Vienna Conservatory ! She remembered his passionate enthusiasm for the music that he whimsically called his " trade," his spasmodic application.

They had got on famously in their short, merry acquaintance.

She had felt it the greatest pity in the world that he should be an orphan, a waif, with just enough money to let him be comfortably idle, and such potentialities of power running riot.

She had regretted the end of that gay little friendship when she returned to her sad-colored London.

Between this first encounter and the next intervened her catastrophe. Something done in those private and particular gamblinghouses — something that never clearly came out of them — swallowed the half of the 18 money remaining, and directed the shot that ended Captain Essington's life. A grim, a bitter wrench it had been ! The mere memory of it brought back the ghost of the old ache. She had realized then what depths of suffering might be, in which love and bereavement bore no part. Even the relief of freedom had been overwhelmed in the shock of violent death, of disorganized existence.

How vividly it had set before her the instability of present circumstances, the danger of depending on what had been ! She had been frightened to drawing into herself, away from the interests of the world around her that had meant so much to her.

In her vague retrospection it seemed to her it had been more the kindness of her friends than any effort on her own part that had not only kept, but lifted her place among them in the difficult years that followed; such a place that, when the brilliant boy of her Vienna memory turned up in London, older, less confident, more moody by three years, and desperately " out " of everything he should have been " in," she had almost bewildered him by the number of doors she could open to him. All her social threads so casually picked up, at once had significance, were manipulated to a purpose. What a zest, what a spirit her life had had ! How self-distrustful he had been ! How she had, at moments, pulled him after her ! It had been desperate at times to keep him up to it, but every minute had been worth living. And now that her long hope was almost realized, now that he seemed on the very verge of his success, — now —

She shifted her eyes to the two bright glints on the toes of Cissy Fitz Hugh's patent leathers. The car was one dusky tone in the deepening twilight, and these two hypnotic points of light helped to fix her memory more clearly on the past.

Well, she had been the one woman to him.

He had glorified her as a boy will. What a joy it had been, that adoring loyalty of his, even while she knew she cheated him ! The memory of his old impetuosity, his insistence, his unhesitating confidence over the inevitable question that had risen between them, came back to her, a warm, pleasurable emotion. And then the sadder sequence ! For it had come to her then that a woman seasoned, sophisticated, settled, who would marry a boy ten years her junior — and such a boy — would be either a knave or a fool.

And yet to get on without her? She knew he could n't afford it then. Could she, on the other hand, get on without him ? She had made her peace with herself, through the next three years, with what she had given — the balance to his chaotic impulse, the spur to his ambition. She had so lived into his interests, so made herself identified with them, that she had lost sight of her old dread of changing circumstance.

Six months ago, when she had left London, she had been so secure in his allegiance — an allegiance so settled, so taken for granted, that its first significance was almost lost sight of — that the separation had not given her a passing anxiety. Now she asked herself if his mad dash with the Gretrys across an ocean and a continent was to have brought him to her again merely to shake her faith in that allegiance.

The slamming of the car door brought her back shrewdly to her surroundings. She looked up. In the pictures of her memory Longacre had figured always as a boy, a Viennese student as she had seen him first. Now the sight of him as he was, coming down the aisle upon her, struck her as freshly as the impression of a stranger. He was no longer youth, painted in full curves and raw colors, but young maturity grayed over, sharp-lined, strenuous with the vital endeavor he had put into living.

He seemed to be catching up the years between them. She had a quick revulsion. She asked herself, if, after all —

Cissy Fitz Hugh was yawning prettily, stretching herself awake.

" We '11 be in in five minutes," Longacre said, his hand on the back of Florence Essington's chair. " Will you have your cloak? "

Chapter II Julia Steps Out Of It, And Answers A Question

NIGHT had come down in a smother of fog made infinitely dreary by the interminable sound of the sea. The two light rigs that had sped on the sand road, through the thick oak shadows, now spun sharply over the crisp gravel of the ascending drive toward the "Miramar" lights, trembling in misty penumbra. The house loomed immediately above, huge, undefined, confused in its lesser masses of trees. It seemed so shut up against this dreary outside that it made not even a sign of welcome to the arrivals under the porte-cochere.

Florence, as Longacre lifted her from the cart, felt the damp of his greatcoat chill through her glove. She saw him, mounting the wide wooden steps in the band of light from the veranda windows, haloed with silvery moisture. The veranda presented the appearance of a deck cleared for action. All the graces of hammocks and cushions, removed, left a sentinel row of reversed cane chairs against the wall. Somewhere out in the dark a tree dripped steadily.

She felt her hair cling to her cheek.

Cissy Fitz Hugh in her frills was limp as a wet doll, and prettily cross.

"They must have heard us, with all that row on the gravel !" she fretted. "There — at last ! "

The door had opened, presenting them precipitately with the heart of the house — the big wainscoted living-hall, rugged, divaned, firelit, and full of people. They were not really more than a dozen, the women in, golf-shirts, the men in shooting-coats and leggings — the flotsam and jetsam of a day's sport made sociable with tea.

Their high, cheery babble just paused and caught its note again as Mrs. Budd, hard upon the heels of the maid who had opened the door, fairly pounced upon her- belated guests, and sucked them in to a pleasant snapping of talk and wood fires. Her tall, robust figure in its red golf-waistcoat bristled with welcomes.

"Now I know you 're drenched! The fog 's a perfect rain! I 'm so glad."

She kissed Cissy warmly, her eyes snapping meanwhile from Florence to Longacre.

" Come straight to the fire. Do come to the fire, Mrs. Essington, and Agnes shall take your wet things."

Alert for impending introductions, she half

turned to Florence with the name of a guest

at her lips, but Florence had already been cut

off from the rest of the party by a large man with his hands in the sagging pockets of an old shooting-coat. He had at the same time, in an incredibly short space, furnished her with tea, and now stood above her while she drank it, rocking softly to and fro on his feet, and talking steadily. Occasionally he gesticulated with a large, open hand.

Cissy Fitz Hugh had gone her own way some distance into a number of conversations. It devolved upon Longacre to be led about the circle with a name here and a name there, and a blur of presences that vexed his continental habit, and left him, at the finish, still face to face with his hostess.

She promptly cast upon the shore of conversation the first drift of her own interest.

" And what in the world has become of Julia!" she exclaimed. She almost challenged him with it. " You would think two hours would be enough to ride round * Tres Pinos,' especially with her friends coming — and all this fog ! "

Her smile stayed with him while her eyes roved to the windows. She was notably expectant, but not, as Longacre seemed to sense it, so anxious as would be natural to a mother whose daughter has chosen the coast road on a thick night. While he said something amiable about the safeness of sand roads and the instinct of a horse, he felt that he was looking hardly less expectant than she.

"And where 's dear Julia*?" Cissy Fitz Hugh's voice preceded her into the group.

"Oh, Julia — "

The name, tossed back and forth, arrested Florence Essington's attention.

"Julia is a very naughty child," Mrs. Budd happily proclaimed. "She said she would be home by five, and then she made me promise not to wait tea for her." Her eloquent hands deprecated those of the clock, which pointed to half after six. " And now she 's hardly time to dress for dinner! "

"Julia,* said Holden, turning his large 28 head on his shoulder, " may come to dinner in her riding-boots, so long as she comes."

" Just what / 've always said, Mr. Holden," Cissy seconded. "Dear Julia — "

" Well, there they are ! " cried Mrs. Budd, her eyes flying to the door. Holden opened it on the white darkness.

Two voices, basso and falsetto, were calling through the fog. Two horses were backing and sidling at the steps. Then a tall young woman came laughing and stamping through the open doorway.

The magnetism of her bounding vitality touched Florence Essington before she looked ; for her first look was to Longacre. He was suddenly brightened, more interested in what he was saying to Cissy Fitz Hugh ; and Florence, seeing, had a sensation of loneliness, of desertion, that amounted to antagonism as she turned her eyes to the girl. The feeling ached through her pure pleasure in the other's extraordinary beauty. 29

Julia was hatless. Her hair, crystalled with mist, stood off her forehead in a glistening bush. That dark, back-brushed nimbus gave the suggestion of some great, fine lady of another day. The magnificent sweep of her black brows seemed to dress her forehead. The blood of her vigorous body burned in her crimson cheeks and lips. She moved in an atmosphere of vital energy. She dominated the room.

Her mother seemed scarcely able to keep her hands off her.

" Why, darling^ what is the matter ? IVky are you so late ? "

"Awfully sorry, mama. We could n't help it. Mr. Thair could n't see the face of his watch. — How d' y' do, Mrs. Fitz Hugh. — Besides, the ocean was too splendid ! "

"But where is your hat, pet? " Mrs. Budd still hovered, tender and voluble.

"Blew off," said Julia, blithely. "Mr. Thair tried to find it, and nearly lost himself

3° in the fog. Bless you, mother, we could n't see our saddle-pommels ! "

"Here 's Mr. Longacre," murmured her mother, remindingly.

The girl gave him a full hand-clasp. Her spirits seemed to take another leap.

" Why did n't you come down earlier, Mr. Longacre ? We should have given you a run for your money."

" Oh, there '11 be another night like this for me," said Longacre, with confidence.

Mrs. Budd looked at him with dim dismay, but the entrance of Charlie Thair diverted her. Lean, keen, and smiling, his unusually animated, not to say joyous, bearing gave her reassurance. Her eyes traveled to Julia for confirmation, but Julia was disconcertingly oblivious of Thair's presence. Her vivid gestures and high animation were all for Longacre. Mrs. Budd's forehead showed a cleft of anxiety not to be erased by her most scrupulous smiles. Among the groups, dispersing to dress for dinner, she tried to reach her daughter ; but the girl had been swept up-stairs, the center of a knot of women. The slow-moving Holden detained Mrs. Budd until she had left hardly that allotted time in which the most expeditious woman can be groomed and gowned.

But Mrs. Budd was superior to time in point of determination. She hurried her maid to the woman's distraction, and half an hour before the first of her guests could be expected she knocked at her daughter's door.

Julia was in a white and crimson combing-gown, with her hair streaming; but she had not yet removed her wet riding-boots, and there was, to Mrs. Budd's eye, something distressingly indiscreet in such footgear appearing from the folds of a peignoir.

" Oh, Julia dear ! " she remonstrated.

Julia laughed, and offered a spurred heel to the maid. "I can't bear to take them off," she said.

"You did have a nice time, did n't you, pettie, in spite of the dripping fog and the dreadful wind ! But I should have been anxious if you had been with any one but Charlie Thair. You did have a nice time, did n't you ? "

" Magnificent ! Uproarious ! "

" Oh, not uproarious ! " her mother protested.

" Yes, really. I should think you would have heard us ! We sang, ' The Hounds of Maynell,' from the landing to the lighthouse as hard as we could shout. We got the triple echo to saying all sorts of things. And then — " she paused, fitting her feet into white satin shoes, while Mrs. Budd agonized in suspense — " well, then, when we got out to ' Tres Pinos ' there was such a surf we simply had to yell to make each other hear. And there," concluded Julia, with a flourish of animation, quite as though she had reached the climax of her tale — " there my hat blew off."

Mrs. Budd threw her hands in her lap with a gesture of resignation not lost upon her daughter.

" And Charlie was such a dear ! " Julia smiled tenderly at the toe of her shoe, and Mrs. Budd gathered a faint hope.

" He piled off his horse and fell around in trie fog for half an hour, and nearly drowned himself, till I said, 'Oh, let it go,' and he said, ' All right, young madam,' and off we went."

Mrs. Budd's expression of acute disappointment arrested her daughter's attention. " Why, what did you expect he did, mama ? Surely not something horrid ? "

" Indeed, no. I 'm quite certain, Julia, if Charlie Thair ever did anything at all, it could not be horrid."

Julia stared a minute at this ambiguous paradox. Then she chuckled.

" I never liked him so much, mama. I got him all waked up. He did n't have any time to be witty or tiresome. And on the way home what do you think he said *? "

Mrs. Budd hung upon the revelation.

" He said," Julia continued, with a touch of pride, " that I was awfully good sorts, if I was a beauty. Now was n't that nice of him, mama ? "