The beautiful Mrs. Gregory made her first appearance in society, after

the birth of her second son, on the occasion of Miss Leila Buckney's

marriage to Mr. Parker Hoyt. The continual postponement of this event

had been a standing joke among their friends for two or three years; it

took place in early December, at the most fashionable of all the

churches, with a reception and supper to follow at the most fashionable

of all the hotels. Leila naturally looked tired and excited; she had

made a gallant fight for her lover, for long years, and she had won,

but as yet the returning tide of comfort and satisfaction had not begun

in her life. Parker had been a trying fiance; he was a cool-blooded,

fishlike little man; there had been other complications: her father's

heavy financial losses, her mother's discontent in the lingering

engagement, her sister's persisting state of unmarriedness.

However, the old aunt was at last dead. Parker had dutifully gone to

her side toward the end, and had returned again, duly, bringing the

casket, and escorting Miss Clay. And now Mamma was dressed, and Edith

was in a hideously unbecoming green and silver gown, and the five

bridesmaids were duly hatted and frocked in green and silver, and she

was dressed, too, realizing that her new corsets were a trifle small,

and her lace veil too heavy.

And the disgusting caterer had come to some last-moment agreement with

Papa whereby they were to have the supper without protest, and the

florist's insolent man had consented to send the bouquets at last. The

fifteen hundred dreadful envelopes were all addressed, the

back-breaking trying-on of gowns was over, the three hundred and

seventy-one gifts were arranged in two big rooms at the hotel, duly

ticketed, and the three hundred and seventy-one dreadful personal notes

of thanks had been somehow scribbled off and dispatched. Leila was

absolutely exhausted, and felt as pale and pasty as she looked. People

were all so stupid and tiresome and inconsiderate, she said wearily to

herself, and the awful breakfast would be so long and dull, with

everybody saying the same thing to her, and Parker trying to be funny

and simply making himself ridiculous! The barbarity of the modern

wedding impressed itself vaguely upon the bride as she laughed and

talked in a strained and mechanical manner, and whatever they said to

her and to her parents, the guests were afterward unanimous in deciding

that poor Leila had been an absolute fright.

But Mrs. Gregory, in her dark blue suit and her new sables, won

everybody's eyes as she came down the church aisle with her husband

beside her. Her son was not quite a month old, and if she had not

recovered her usual wholesome bloom, there was a refined, almost a

spiritual, element in her beauty now that more than made up for the

loss. She wore a fragrant great bunch of violets at her breast, and

under the sweeping brim of her hat her beautiful eyes were as deeply

blue as the flowers. She seemed full of a new wifely and matronly charm

to-day, and it was quite in key with the pose that old Mrs. Gregory and

young Charles should be constantly in her neighborhood. Her relatives

with her, her babies safe at home, young Mrs. Gregory was the

personification of domestic dignity and decorum.

At the hotel, after the wedding, she was the centre of an admiring

group, and conscious of her husband's approving eyes, full of her old

brilliant charm. All the old friends rallied about her--they had not

seen much of her since her marriage--and found her more magnetic than

ever. The circumstances of her marriage were blotted out by more recent

events now: there was the Chase divorce to discuss; the Villalonga

motor-car accident; Elinor Vanderwall had astonished everybody a few

weeks before by her sudden marriage to millions in the person of old

Peter Pomeroy; now people were beginning to say that Jeanette

Vanderwall might soon be expected to follow suit with Peter's nephew

George. The big, beautifully decorated reception-room hummed with gay

gossip, with the tinkling laughter of women and the deeper tones of men.

Caterers' men began to work their way through the crush, bearing

indiscriminately trays of bouillon, sandwiches, salads, and ices. The

bride, with her surrounding bridesmaids, was still standing at the far

end of the room mechanically shaking hands, and smilingly saying

something dazed and inappropriate to her friends as they filed by; but

now various groups, scattered about the room, began to interest

themselves in the food. Elderly persons, after looking vaguely about

for seats, disposed of their coffee and salad while standing, and soon

there was a general breaking-up; the Buckney-Hoyt wedding was almost a

thing of the past.

Rachael, thinking of the impending dinner-hour of little Gerald Fairfax

Gregory, began to watch the swirling groups for Warren. They could slip

away now, surely; several persons had already gone. Her heart was in

her nursery, where Jim was toddling back and forth tirelessly in the

firelight, and where, between the white bars of the new crib, was the

tiny roll of snowy blankets that enclosed the new baby.

"That's a pretty girl," she found herself saying involuntarily as her

absent eyes were suddenly arrested by the face and figure of one of the

guests. "I wonder who that is?"

The brown eyes she was watching met hers at the same second, and

smiling a little question, their owner came toward her.

"Hello, Rachael," the girl said. "How are you after all these years?"

"Magsie Clay!" Rachael exclaimed, the look of uncertainty on her face

changing to one of pleasure and welcome. "Well, you dear child, you!

How are you? I knew you were here, and yet I couldn't place you. You've

changed--you're thinner."

"Oh, much thinner, but then I was an absolute butterball!" Miss Clay

said. "Tell me about yourself. I hear that you're having a baby every

ten minutes!"

"Not quite!" Rachael said, laughing, but a little discomposed by the

girl's coolness. "But I have two mighty nice boys, as I'll prove to you

if you'll come see me!"

"Don't expect me to rave over babies, because I don't know anything

about them," said Magsie Clay, with a slow, drawling manner that was,

Rachael decided, effective. "Do they like toys?"

"Jimmy does, the baby is rather young for tastes of any description,"

Rachael answered with an odd, new sense of being somehow sedate and

old-fashioned beside this composed young woman. Miss Clay was not

listening. Her brown eyes were moving idly over the room, and now she

suddenly bowed and smiled.

"There's Greg!" she said. "What a comfort it is to see a man dress as

that man dresses!"

"I've been looking for you," Warren Gregory said, coming up to his

wife, and, noticing the other woman, he added enthusiastically: "Well,

Margaret! I didn't know you! Bless my life and heart, how you children

grow up!"

"Children! I'm twenty-two!" Miss Clay said, pouting, with her round

brown eyes fixed in childish reproach upon his face. They had been

great friends when Warren was with his mother in Paris, nearly four

years ago, and now they fell into an animated recollection of some of

their experiences there with the two old ladies. While they talked

Rachael watched Magsie Clay with admiration and surprise.

She knew all the girl's history, as indeed everybody in the room knew

it, but to-day it was a little hard to identify the poised and

beautiful young woman who was looking so demurely up from under her

dark lashes at Warren with the "little Clay girl" of a few years ago.

Parker Hoyt's aunt, the magnificent old Lady Frothingham, had been just

enough of an invalid for the twenty years preceding her death to need a

nurse or a companion, or a social secretary, or someone who was a

little of all three. The great problem was to find the right person,

and for a period that actually extended itself over years the right

person was not to be found, and the old lady was consequently miserable

and unmanageable.

Then came the advent of Mrs. Clay, a dark, silent, dignified widow, who

more than met all requirements, and who became a companion figure to

the little, fussing, over-dressed old lady. From the day she first

arrived at the Frothingham mansion Mrs. Clay never failed her old

employer for so much as a single hour. For fifteen years she managed

the house, the maids, and, if the truth were known, the old lady

herself, with a quiet, irresistible efficiency. But it was early

remarked that she did not manage her small daughter with her usual

success. Magsie was a fascinating baby, and a beautiful child, quicker

of speech than thought, with a lovely little heart-shaped face framed

in flying locks of tawny hair. But she was unmanageable and

strong-willed, and possessed of a winning and insolent charm hard to

refuse.

Her mother in her silent, repressed way realized that Magsie was not

having the proper upbringing, but her own youth had been hard and dark,

and it was perhaps the closest approach to joy that she ever knew when

Magsie glowing under her wide summer hats, or radiant in new furs,

rushed up to demand something preposterous and extravagant of her

mother, and was not denied.

She was a stout, conceited sixteen-year-old when her mother died, so

spoiled and so self-centred that old Lady Frothingham had been heard

more than once to mutter that the young lady could get down from her

high horse and make herself useful, or she could march. But that was

six years ago. And now--this! Magsie had evidently decided to make

herself useful, but she had managed to make herself beautiful and

fascinating as well. She was in mourning now for the good-hearted old

benefactress who had left her a nest-egg of some fifteen thousand

dollars, and Rachael noticed with approval that it was correct

mourning: simple, severe, Parisian. Nothing could have been more

becoming to the exquisite bloom of the young face than the soft, clear

folds of filmy veiling; under the small, close-set hat there showed a

ripple of rich golden hair. The watching woman thought that she had

never seen such self-possession; at twenty-two it was almost uncanny.

The modulated, bored young voice, the lazily lifted, indifferent young

eyes, the general air of requesting an appreciative world to be amusing

and interesting, or to expect nothing of Miss Magsie Clay, these things

caused Rachael a deep, hidden chuckle of amusement. Little Magsie had

turned out to be something of a personality! Why, she was even

employing a distinct and youthfully insolent air of keeping Warren by

her side merely on sufferance--Warren, the cleverest and finest man in

the room, who was more than twice her age!

"To think that she is younger than Charlotte!" Rachael ejaculated to

herself, catching a glimpse of Charlotte, towed by her mother,

uncomfortable, ignored, blinking through her glasses. And when she and

Warren were in the car homeward bound, she spoke admiringly of Magsie.

"Did you ever see any one so improved, Warren? Really, she's quite

extraordinary!"

Warren smiled absently.

"She's a terribly spoiled little thing," he remarked. "She's out for a

rich man, and she'll get him!"

"I suppose so," Rachael agreed, casting about among the men she knew

for an appropriate partner for Miss Clay.

"Suppose so!" he echoed in good-humored scorn. "Don't you fool

yourself, she'll get what she's after! There isn't a man alive that

wouldn't fall for that particular type!"

"Warren, do you suppose so?" his wife asked in surprise.

"Well, watch and see!"

"Perhaps--" Rachael's interest wandered. "What time have you?" she

asked.

He glanced at his watch. "Six-ten."

"Six-TEN! Oh, my poor abused baby--and I should have been here at

quarter before six!" She was all mother as she ran upstairs. Had he

been crying? Oh, he had been crying! Poor little old duck of a hungry

boy, did he have a bad, wicked mother that never remembered him! He was

in her arms in an instant, and the laughing maid carried away her hat

and wrap without disturbing his meal. Rachael leaned back in the big

chair, panting comfortably, as much relieved over his relief as he was.

The wedding was forgotten. She was at home again; she could presently

put this baby down and have a little interval of hugging and 'tories

with Jimmy.

"You'll get your lovely dress all mussed," said old Mary in high

approval.

"Never mind, Mary!" her mistress said in luxurious ease before the

fire, "there are plenty of dresses!"

A week later Warren came in, in the late afternoon, to say that he had

met Miss Clay downtown, and they had had tea together. She suggested

tea, and he couldn't well get out of it. He would have telephoned

Rachael had he fancied she would care to come. She had been out? That

was what he thought. But how about a little dinner for Magsie? Did she

think it would be awfully stupid?

"No, she's not stupid," Rachael said cordially. "Let's do it!"

"Oh, I don't mean stupid for us," Warren hastened to explain. "I mean

stupid for her!"

"Why should it be stupid for her?" Rachael looked at him in surprise.

"Well, she's awfully young, and she's getting a lot of attention, and

perhaps she'd think it a bore!"

"I don't imagine Magsie Clay would find a dinner here in her honor a

bore," Rachael said in delicate scorn. "Why, think who she is,

Warren--a nurse's daughter! Her father was--I don't know what--an

enlisted man, who rose to be a sergeant!"

"I don't believe it!" he said flatly.

"It's true, Warren. I've known that for years--everybody knows it!"

"Well," Warren Gregory said stubbornly, "she's making a great hit just

the same. She's going up to the Royces' next week for the Bowditch

theatricals, and she's asked to the Pinckard dinner dance. She may not

go on account of her mourning."

"Her mourning is rather absurd under the circumstances," Rachael said

vaguely, antagonized against anyone he chose to defend. "And if people

choose to treat her as if she were Mrs. Frothingham's daughter instead

of what she really is, it's nice for Magsie! But I don't see why we

should."

"We might because she is such a nice, simple girl," Warren suggested,

"and because we like her! I'm not trying to keep in the current; I've

no social axe to grind; I merely suggested it, and if you don't want

to--"

"Oh, of course, if you put it that way!" Rachael said with a faint

shrug.. "I'll get hold of some eligibles--we'll have Charlie, and have

rather a youthful dinner!"

Warren, who was shaving, was silent for a few minutes, then he said

thoughtfully:

"I don't imagine that Charlie is the sort of person who will interest

her. She may be only twenty-two, but she is older than most girls in

things like that. She's had more offers now than you could shake a

stick at--"

"She told you about them?"

"Well, in a general way, yes--that is, she doesn't want to marry, and

she hates the usual attitude, that a lot of college kids have to be

trotted out for her benefit!"

This having been her own exact attitude a few seconds before, Rachael

flushed a little resentfully.

"What DOES she want to do?"

Warren shaved on for a moment in silence, then with a rather important

air he said impulsively:

"Well, I'll tell you, although she told me in confidence, and of course

nothing may come of it. You won't say anything about it, of course? She

wants to go on the stage."

"Really!" said Rachael, who, for some reason she could not at this

moment define, was finding the conversation extraordinarily distasteful.

"Yes, she's had it in mind for years," Warren pursued with simplicity.

"And she's had some good offers, too. You can see that she's the kind

of girl that would make an immediate hit, that would get across the

footlights, as it were. Of course, it all depends upon how hard she's

willing to work, but I believe she's got a big future before her!"

There was a short silence while he finished the operation of shaving,

and Rachael, who was busy with the defective clasp of a string of

pearls, bent absorbedly over the microscopic ring and swivel.

"Let's think about the dinner," she said presently. She found that he

had already planned almost all the details.

When it took place, about ten days later, she resolutely steeled

herself for an experience that promised to hold no special enjoyment

for her. Her love for her husband made her find in his enthusiasm for

Magsie something a little pitiful and absurd. Magsie was only a girl, a

rather shallow and stupid girl at that, yet Warren was as excited over

the arrangements for the dinner as if she had been the most important

of personages. If it had been some other dinner--the affair for the

English ambassador, or the great London novelist, or the fascinating

Frenchman who had painted Jimmy--she told herself, it would have been

comprehensible! But Warren, like all great men, had his simple, almost

childish, phases, and this was one of them!

She watched her guest of honor, when the evening came, with a puzzled

intensity. Magsie was in her glory, sparkling, chattering, almost

noisy. Her exquisite little white silk gown was so low in the waist,

and so short in the skirt, that it was almost no gown at all, yet it

was amazingly smart. She had touched her lips with red, and her eyelids

were cunningly given just a hint of elongation with a black pencil. Her

bright hair was pushed severely from her face, and so trimly massed and

netted as not to show its beautiful quantity, and yet, somehow, one

knew the quantity was there in all its gold glory.

Rachael, magnificent in black-and-white, was ashamed of herself for the

instinctive antagonism that she began to feel toward this young

creature. It was not the fact of Magsie's undeniable youth and beauty

that she resented, but it was her affectations, her full, pouting lips,

her dimples, her reproachful upward glances. Even these, perhaps, in

themselves, she did not resent, she mused; it was their instant effect

upon Warren and, to a greater or lesser degree, upon all the other men

present, that filled her with a sort of patient scorn. Rachael wondered

what Warren's feeling would have been had his wife suddenly picked out

some callow youth still in college for her admiring laughter and

earnest consideration.

It was sacrilege to think it. It was always absurd, an older man's

kindly interest in, and affection for, a pretty young girl, but what

harm? He thought her beautiful, and charming, and talented--well, she

was those things. It was January now, in March they were going to

California, then would come dear Home Dunes, and before the summer was

over Magsie would be safely launched, or married, and the whole thing

but an episode! Warren was her husband and the father of her two

splendid boys; there was tremendous reassurance in the thought.

But that evening, and throughout the weeks that followed, Rachael mused

somewhat sadly upon the extraordinary susceptibility of the human male.

Magsie's methods were those of a high-school belle. She pouted, she

dimpled, she dispensed babyish slaps, she lapsed into rather poorly

imitated baby talk. She was sometimes mysterious and tragic, according

to her own lights, her voice deep, her eyes sombre; at other times she

was all girl, wild for dancing and gossip and matinees. She would widen

her eyes demurely at some older woman, plaintively demanding a

chaperon, all these bad men were worrying her to death; she had

nicknames for all the men, and liked to ask their wives if there was

any harm in that? Like Billy, and like Charlotte, she never spoke of

anyone but herself, but Billy was a mere beginner beside Magsie, and

poor Charlotte like a denizen of another world.

Magsie always scored. There was an air of refinement and propriety

about the little gypsy that saved her most daring venture, and in a

society bored to death with its own sameness she became an instant

favorite. Everyone said that "there was no harm in Magsie," she was the

eagerly heralded and loudly welcomed cap-and-bells wherever she went.

Early in March there was an entertainment given in one of the big

hotels for some charity, and Miss Clay, who appeared in a dainty little

French comedy, the last number on the program, captured all the honors.

Her companion player, Dr. Warren Gregory, who in the play had taken the

part of her guardian, and, with his temples touched with gray, his

peruke, and his satin coat and breeches, had been a handsome foil for

her beauty, was declared excellent, but the captivating, piquant,

enchanting Magsie was the favorite of the hour. Before the hot,

exciting, memorable evening was over the rumor flew about that she had

signed a contract to appear with Bowman, the great manager, in the fall.

The whole experience was difficult for Rachael, but no one suspected

it, and she would have given her life cheerfully to keep her world from

suspecting. Long before the rehearsals for the little play were over

she knew the name of that new passion that was tearing and gnawing at

her heart. No use to tell herself that if Magsie WAS deeply admired by

Warren, if Magsie WAS beautiful, if Magsie WAS constantly in his

thoughts, way, she, Rachael, was still his wife; his home, his sons,

his name were hers! She was jealous--jealous--jealous of Magsie Clay.

She could not bear even the smothering thought of a divided kingdom.

Professionally, socially, the world might claim him; but no one but

herself should ever claim even one one-hundredth of that innermost

heart of his that had been all her own! The thought pierced her

vitally, and she felt in sick discouragement that she could not fight,

she could not meet his cruelty with new cruelty. Her very beauty grew

dimmed, and the old flashing wit and radiant self-confidence were

clouded for a time. When she was alone with her husband she felt

constrained and serious, her heart a smouldering furnace of resentment

and pain.

"What do you think of this, dearie?" he asked eagerly one afternoon.

"We got talking about California at the Princes' last night, and it

seems that Peter and Elinor plan to go; only not before the first week

in April. Now, that would suit me as well as next week, if it wouldn't

put you out. Could you manage it? The Pomeroys take their car, and an

awfully nice crowd; just you and I--if we'll go--Peter and Elinor, and

perhaps the Oliphants, and a beau for Magsie!"

Rachael had been waiting for Magsie's name. But there seemed to be

nothing to say. She rose to the situation gallantly. She put the boys

in the care of their grandmother and the faithful Mary, with Doctor

Valentine's telephone number pasted prominently on the nursery wall.

She bought herself charming gowns and hats, she made herself the most

delightful travelling companion that ever seven hot and spoiled men and

women were fortunate enough to find. When everyone, even Magsie, was

bored and cross, upset by close air, by late hours, by unlimited candy

and cocktails, Mrs. Gregory would appear from her stateroom, dainty,

interested, ready for bridge or gossip, full of enthusiasm for the

scenery and for the company in which she found herself. When she and

Warren were alone she often tried to fancy herself merely an

acquaintance again, with an acquaintance's anxiety to meet his mood and

interest him. She made no claims, she resented nothing, and she

schooled herself to praise Magsie, to quote her, and to discuss her.

The result was all that she could have hoped. After the five weeks'

trip Warren was heard to make the astonishing comment that Magsie was a

shallow little thing, and Rachael, hungrily kissing her boys' sweet,

bewildered faces, and laughing and crying together as Mary gave her an

account of every hour of her absence, felt more than rewarded for the

somewhat sordid scheme and the humiliating effort. Little Gerald was in

short clothes now, a rose of a baby, and Jimmy at the irresistible age

when every stammered word and every changing expression had new charm.




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024