The Magpies Nest (12 page)

The half-hour following amused all three very much; Emily had all the
jeune
fille's
pleasure in being almost shocked; Cora and Tony all the amusement of talking their own language over the head of an unconscious third party. And Tony told himself that after all Emily hardly deserved to be called a "nursery chit." Some day she would be a thorough woman of the world, and the reading of her unfulfilled promise was in its way as interesting as would be the contemplation of her final perfection. Bread and butter she might be as yet, but it was "the best butter." Besides, Tony had rather a liking for bread and butter, not unusual in a man who has sampled other and at times too pungent fare. It sharpens the palate, for one thing. Yes, Emily—Miss Edgerton, of course, in his audible address of her—had all the points, physical and mental. He found himself surveying with pleasure the fine, almost imperceptible curve in the line from under her arm to her slender hip; a rare beauty, which only the connoisseur observes. She had a well-turned wrist and ankle, too.

She was quite aware of his scrutiny, but did not change colour; only surprise had brought that first blush. Quite naturally her truly innocent, girlishly immature mind set it down to honest admiration, perhaps dawning love. There is a stage of awakening consciousness, still clean of passion and therefore un-shamed in the wildest flights of imagination, when youth perceives in every new acquaintance of the opposite sex a probable lover. The earthy substance in which love must root is ignored; Emily was saved the embarrassment of reading anything grosser into Tony's gaze. In fact, it was not there; he could take an almost impersonal pleasure in the sight of a pretty woman, as a work of art. And he was now preoccupied with Hope.

"I'll take you to the Falls next time," he told Emily, laughing. "It's only fifty miles."

"Sir, you go too far," answered Emily. "But—I rather should like to see them. Are they pretty? I believe I'll ask daddy to take us up in the car. That's where he's going to build the power plant, isn't it?"

"Very pretty," assented Tony, exchanging a glance with Cora Shane. "So he is going to, is he?"

"Why, I suppose so," said Emily carelessly. "He's always doing something; I'm sure I heard him speak of it. Shall we consider it settled—going there, I mean?"

"Both, if you like," said Tony. "You evidently have a good deal of influence with your father, young lady."

"He spoils me horribly," agreed Emily. "I always tell him he has no right to ruin my character just to gratify his own selfish pleasure in giving me things— and he does it just the same. He'll be waiting for me now; he
will
dine at six o'clock. Good-bye, Mrs. Shane." She gave her hand to Tony, and her eyes therewith.

They watched her graceful progress to the front gate, where Allen Kirby waited with the motor. She sprang into it, smiled and spoke to Allen, turned and waved her hand, and was borne out of sight, a little princess of democracy.

CHAPTER XI

A GINN fizz, quick, Tony," said Mrs. Shane, yawning and stretching out a trim pair of ankles. "She's a darling child—but ten minutes more and I'd have expired, a perfect lady to the last.
Dio mio,
to think that ten years ago I was just like her!"

"The grace of God has stretched a long way in ten years," said Tony cryptically, going to the sideboard.

She smiled vaguely, losing the allusion. When she smiled, Cora Shane was singularly sweet. The ten years seemed to melt into the dimple at the corner of her red mouth; the curve of her cheek was flawless; even her bulk—for she was a large woman—only gave her an infantile softness. And her lovely, lucent sapphire eyes seemed to gather a tender light. Cora forgot that she had an ugly nose and no waist-line.

"Oh, yes," she assented, musing. "Really, really, I was the
nicest
child. By the way, any progress?"

"Nothing new," said Tony. "Didn't friend husband report?"

"Yes, but you saw Edgerton afterwards. Pull hard, Tony. It means Europe for me. I don't want to wait three years, as I must if this falls through. Besides, I'd like to see you win."

"It's good to have a friend," said Tony, and, as she took the foaming glass, kissed her wrist.

It was only his way; she knew it—but she liked it.

"How I'll hate to give you up, Tony," she sighed.

"Well! Is Lent approaching?"

"Oh, don't be stupid. I was just thinking ahead. This will cut your rope; you'll go away too, or marry. High time you did, and stop philandering. Seen Miss Fielding lately?"

She prided herself on her bluntness. And she did not miss the quick, calculating look he flashed at her.

"Oh, twice a day or so," he assured her jestingly. "Rather
à propos des bottes,
aren't you? You do get the weirdest hunches, Cora."

"I thought you might have, with the Edgertons," pursued Mrs. Shane coolly. "What do you make of that, anyway!"

"Of what?"

She shrugged.

"Oh, you know what people are saying. A man in his position, too! Men are all fools." Cora Shane even thought in
clichés,
which was why her set accounted her clever. To them cleverness was a formula.

"Guilty in general," said Tony. He was gazing at a pattern of the wall-paper. "But do be more explicit. Who's been doing what?"

"Really, how should I know? Eleanor Travers was here yesterday, and was absolutely up a tree about the invitations for their dance next week—you're going, of course. Someone had said something. Wanted to know if she should ask Miss Fielding. She has to ask the Edgertons, and Mary Dark, and Lisbeth Patten. Either way, she's afraid of committing a
bêtise.
I told her I'd ask the devil if I wanted. But I only shocked her." She laughed.

"But what did she hear?" said Tony gravely.

"I tell you
I
don't know. Jim Sanderson has some story; says he used to know her..."

"Jim?" said Tony, darkening. "Did he tell you so?"

"No. I had it all second, third, fourth hand. You ask him. And she goes out in Edgerton's car."

"What a rotten little hole this is," said Tony savagely. Because she did go out in Edgerton's car, Had he not seen her once? "She goes out with Miss Dark sometimes. In the motor, I mean. And she's known him for years. There's a clever girl, that Miss Dark. I believe she could almost swing this deal for us. The women here are all cats—saving your presence, ma'am." He wanted to turn it off lightly. And he wanted to hear more, if more there was.

"Oh, well, I have nothing against her," conceded Mrs. Shane handsomely. "She seems a queer little waif; I've never heard her say a word but yes and no. Ned Angell led us to expect an intellectual prodigy And of course you know the—ah—cats have hung your scalp at her belt. Does she say yes
or
no?"

"Both, as you observed," returned Tony promptly, his surface unruffled. "Damn the cats!" So he sold her, with that kiss on Mrs. Shane's wrist ten minutes before. "She
is
clever, really; sketches the quaintest things."

"Why couldn't she turn the trick for you," asked Mrs. Shane amiably, "if Mary Dark won't? And then there's still another chance."

"Show it to me," said Tony.

"I said it was time you married. There's Emily. What more could you ask?" She studied him covertly.

"Cora, you will absolutely drive me to a blush," said Tony equably. He was inwardly conscious of a slight exasperation, a feeling that Cora was capable of forgetting good taste. "I could ask no more, and should get a great deal less. Why are you so set on springing the fatal trap on me? What have I done to
you?"

"Stolen my young heart," said Cora, with a ringing laugh. "Never mind; at my age it isn't serious. But if you had sat out three dances with me the first time I saw you, Heaven knows..."

He reddened.

She said no more. But, after he had gone, she was distinctly irritable, pondered over her dinner, and snubbed her husband until he look himself off to the club. And her own idle suggestion took root in her mind. Emily Edgerton—why not? Could he be such a fool as to be thinking seriously of Hope Fielding? A little outsider. That was her grievance, crystallised. Those who credited the report that she had a deeper right than mere friendship over Tony forgot how exquisitely selfish she was. Sometimes that will safeguard a woman's virtue quite single-handed. And if Tony feared her a trifle, as he undoubtedly did—why else had he lied so valorously and subtly but now?— it was half because he never cared to antagonise the —to him—really amusing set she represented, and half because she was stronger than he, in will. Besides, every man is afraid of every woman. He considers her either sub- or super- or else merely extrahuman; she is a superstition with him.

As for Mrs. Shane. Tony belonged to her set—to her. That extraordinary jealousy of the unplaced women, of the gay little unconsidered privateers flying no flag but their own, so often felt by their secure sisters, had her. It has deep roots, that jealousy. The very security of such as Cora Shane, their livelihood, is menaced by those others. Have they not given up the right to their own flag for an assurance of their own menkind, and all that rests on their menkind, the whole foundation of their lives? To have him marry Emily Edgerton would not hurt. It would, on the whole, be an acquisition to their set. But Hope— that would be treachery. In short, he should not.

There was an end to it. Well, she had done what she could.

It was something, also. Going the idle rounds of hotel and club that evening, Tony woke with a start of disgust to the knowledge that he had been looking for Jim Sanderson. Revulsion carried him forthwith to Hope, but there was a little devil of curiosity pricking his brain. For a long time now it had been quieted, drugged by the sweetness of her lips at first, again by the cold fact of Edgerton taking Hope out with his daughter for the world to note. But he was harassed by the knowledge that both Edgerton and Hope were greater individualists than he; he knew, instinctively, that their actions would not square with what impulses would move him to like actions. Muddled, of course, but he could get no nearer a definition of his perplexity. Ned Angell, in like case, being a sentimentalist, would never have perceived the fundamental discrepancy, and so would have been satisfied. But Tony did; and his bewilderment annoyed as much as it hurt him. He fell back, with unconscious irony, on Cora Shane's word: they were outsiders. Hehad let Hope into his very heart, and she was an outsider still! A horrible miscalculation, somewhere. The changing order of things has laid many traps for such as Tony Yorke; they were better off, selfishly considered, in the days when there were just two kinds of women, their own kind and the others.

So, depressed and tormented, with the images of Edgerton and Ned Angell inimically before his mind's eye, he came to Hope's door. She answered his ring herself. She wore a big white linen apron; she had a smudge of charcoal on her nose and her hair in a braid; and she walked through the mist of his brooding reflections straight to him. They vanished; there remained only a little girl with a smudged nose and trustful eyes; and he kissed her and gave himself up to the moment. It was impossible to detect the flavour of anything
intrigante
about her; her sweet stupidity — the obverse of a directness which was itself as much a defect as a virtue—her very plainness, made the idea ridiculous. For, on analysis, she was plain; one cannot defend a title to beauty on the strength of a pair of pretty ears, a lovely throat, the sea mist colour of her round sleepy eyes, and a braid of hay-tinted hair, from which two short feathery curls escaped at the nape of her neck.

A tiny dent in her upper lip, a delicate depression at the apex of her collar bone, delighted him; he kissed them, and cuddled her like a pet kitten. She was always grave with him, undemonstrative, like a too thoughtful child. Mostly he loved that reserve, but to-day it exasperated him. It was typical of the thing that troubled him. What was beneath it all? What was she thinking? More, what was she?

"I don't believe you care for me at all," he said at last, half teasingly, half in too much earnest. "You're the coldest creature. You just love being loved."

"No, no—I don't—I'm not..." She struggled visibly for words. The best she could offer was, "I'd— love you just as much, if I could never touch you. If you didn't care for me. If I could just see you sometimes. You don't understand."

To his horrified surprise, he perceived two tears forcing themselves between her lashes. He comforted her, almost alarmed, ready for once to admit to a woman, with no reservation of a smile, that he certainly did not understand. She made no more effort to explain, and he muttered again, half resentful of her admission that his caresses were not essential:

"But you are cold!" and owned to himself that he had tried in vain to melt her. To turn the subject, he inquired for Mary Dark.

"She's at the office yet," said Hope. "Edgerton is going away to-morrow, I believe, and they are tremendously busy with—with some new scheme or something."

"The Kenatchee Falls business?" asked Tony, eager for news.

"Maybe," said Hope, dissembling badly.

It was clear to him that she knew something of the matter. But it might be from Mary.

"If he'll only take it up," said Tony, and walked about the room nervously. "You know, lady-bird, it means a lot to me—to us. If it goes—we needn't wait any longer. I'll carry you off in a minute." The faint red ran into her face; she nodded. "Have you any idea how he stands? You're pretty good friends, aren't you?" His tone was elaborately casual.

"Yes, in a way," she assented. "But I don't really know anything about his affairs." That was not true, and it distressed her to have to lie to Tony, but she could not betray confidences.

She thought it not quite fair of him to try to pump her, and was still more astounded when she caught his actual intent. He wanted her to help sway Edgerton in his favour! He did not say that exactly; his words were covered with an "if" and other indirections. But that was the meaning. At first she did not know why it hurt, but two reasons crystallised out of the inward refusal that surged up. First, she really know nothing of the project, so far as its intrinsic merits went. It would be absurd of her to recommend it. Besides, Edgerton certainly knew both his own mind and his own business. She could not imagine him as moved by her pleading. And then, Tony should not ask help of that kind from her; it was not a man's part, He ought to stand on his own feet. In truth, she was dangerously unsophisticated; no one had ever told her just how much more than kissing went by favour.