At Home with the Jardines
L >> Lilian Bell >> At Home with the JardinesSometimes I think I am quite clever. Again I think I am a perfect
fool. And the agains come oftener than the sometimes.
I would enjoy making a continuous narrative of this story, as I could
if I were writing a book, but this is a record of real life, and real
life does not happen in finished chapters. If you try to make it, you
either have to leave out a bit, or go back and repeat something.
Thus, in telling this story of Flora, if I told the perfect faith I had
in her at first and of how utterly I came to know and despise her
afterward, I should show to everybody the fool I made of myself, and
that exhibition I prefer to keep as much to myself as possible. The
Angel knows it, and that is bad enough. So that is why I must make a
hodge-podge of it, telling a bit here and a bit there, just as things
happened, and pretending that I saw through her from the first--which,
however, I didn't.
But, in order to give some idea of her methods, which are of interest
as a human document, I must set down faithfully how I came to be drawn
into this love-story, and how the Angel and Cary pulled me out.
This is the very beginning of it.
If you knew our best man, you probably would not be surprised to make
the discovery that I made--to wit: that two girls were in love with him
at the same time, for the most ordinary of men have sometimes a
powerful attraction for the most superior of girls, and Arthur Beguelin
was much above the ordinary, in looks, manners, breeding, and wealth.
He was, as I have said, almost rich, which would of itself, to the
cynic, preclude his being at all nice. But he was nice. I liked him,
the Angel liked him, and these two girls loved him.
I will admit, however, that I was surprised,--just a little,--at first,
but after I thought about it, I said to Aubrey, "Well, why not?" He
said, "Why not what?"
"Why _shouldn't_ two girls be in love with him?"
"They should," said the Angel, pleasantly. "There is no doubt in the
world that they should. But who are the girls and who is the man?"
I thought of course that he knew what I was talking about, or I
shouldn't have begun in the middle like that, but after all, if you
_do_ begin in the middle, you can often skip the whole beginning, and
hurry along to the end.
"Why, Artie Beg, to be sure! Who else? And as to the girls--well, as
I discovered it for myself, I shall not be betraying their confidence
to say that the girls are--will you _promise_ not to tell nor to
interfere in anyway?"
"Of course," said the Angel.
"Well, the girls are Flora Forsyth and Cary Farquhar."
"Flora Forsyth!" exclaimed the Angel, with a wry face.
"Now, Aubrey, what _have_ you against that poor girl? To me she is one
of the most fascinating creatures I ever saw. If I were a man, I
should be crazy about her."
"Then if you had been Samson, Delilah would have made a fool of you
just as easily as she did of him."
"But Flora is no Delilah, Aubrey."
"She's worse!" said the Angel, shortly.
Aubrey leaned back in his Morris chair and puffed at his pipe.
Presently he spoke:
"Those two girls are both clever,--as clever as they make 'em,--but
Cary's cleverness is full of ozone, while Flora's is permeated with a
narcotic. Cary's tricks make one laugh, but the other girl's give one
the shivers."
"Oh, is it as bad as that?" I said, in affright. "Don't you like her?"
"Like her!" reflected the Angel, slowly. "I hate her."
I gasped. Never, never had my husband expressed even a settled dislike
of any one before, while as to the word "hate"--
"Oh, Aubrey!" I cried, tearfully. "I _wish_ you had said it before.
The fact is, I've--well, I've invited her to visit me and she says
she'll come."
If I expected an explosion, I was mistaken. Aubrey bit into his
pipe-stem and sat looking at me for a moment without speaking, a kind,
wistful look which completely undid me, and made me resolved never,
_never_ again to do a single thing without consulting him first. Then
he leaned forward and slowly began to empty and clean his pipe.
"You like her very much?" he said, tentatively.
"I do, indeed!" I exclaimed, enthusiastically. "And she is _so_ fond
of you. She fairly adores you. If you would only _try_ to like her,
Aubrey--she likes you so much--don't smile that way. You don't do her
justice. Indeed you don't. Why, she is the dearest, most confiding,
innocent little thing, just out of college last month--a baby couldn't
have more clinging, dependent ways."
"I'm glad she is coming to visit you, if that's the way you feel about
her," he said.
I drew a sigh of relief. _Some_ husbands would have made such a fuss
that their wives would have felt obliged to cancel the invitation.
Aubrey was different.
"How did you come to invite her?" he asked, presently.
I smiled in pleased anticipation of a good long talk with my husband,
in which I could explain everything.
"Why, you know at the wedding I saw that Artie was very much taken with
her,--and--"
"First, tell me how she came to sit with the family, inside the white
ribbon?"
"Why, she wrote and asked if she couldn't. She said she loved me so
she felt as if she were losing a sister, and that she wanted to sit
with mother and mourn with the family."
Aubrey grinned and I felt foolish.
"And you believed her, you silly little cat!"
"It does sound idiotic to repeat it, but it read as if she meant it," I
said, blushing.
"Never mind, dear," said the Angel. "You are all right."
Now, when Aubrey says I am "all right," it means that I am all wrong,
but that he loves me in spite of it.
"Bee says," I said between laughing and crying, "that I am just like a
stray dog. A pat on the head and a few kind words, and I'd follow
anybody off."
"It would take something more substantial than that to make Bee follow
anybody off," observed Bee's brother-in-law.
"Well, and so she and he were together all that evening, and afterward
they corresponded. But Cary, being my bridesmaid, had, of course, the
first claim on Artie's attention, but he was so taken with Flora that
he sort of neglected Cary. Then, Cary being so spoiled by being rich
and courted and flattered, was piqued into trying to make him notice
her, which old stupid Artie refused to do, but tagged around after
Flora as if she had hypnotized him. Then Cary must have been quite
roused, for the first thing I knew she was showing unmistakable signs
of its being the real thing with her, though, of course, she would deny
it with oaths if I taxed her, while Flora--"
I stopped in sudden confusion.
"I forget," I faltered. "I said that neither had confided in me,
but--"
Aubrey grinned.
"But Flora has," he supplemented. "She has confessed her love, not
blushingly, but tumultuously, brazenly, tempestuously, and has begged
you to help her!"
I paused aghast. Aubrey had exactly stated the case.
"Well, she told Cary, too," I said, in self-extenuation, "so she can't
care very much that I've told you."
"Oh, no," said Aubrey, cheerfully. "She'll tell me herself the first
chance she gets."
"She told Cary that she had told me, so we felt at liberty to talk it
over," I added.
"She did?"
"And Cary was perfectly disgusted with her, and asked what I was going
to do. I said I didn't know. Then what do you think she did? Cary
asked me to ask Flora to visit me! What do you think of that for a
bluff?"
Again Aubrey grinned. He shook his head.
"That was no bluff, Faith dear. That was a move in a game of chess.
Cary Farquhar is the choicest--_unmarried_--girl I know! By Jove,
she's a corker!"
"She just did it to throw me off--to show me that _she_ didn't want
him!" I persisted.
The Angel shook his head and smiled inscrutably.
"When does she come?" he asked.
"Next week."
Aubrey pulled at his pipe.
"There will be something doing here next week, I'm thinking."
There was something doing.
First, I told old Mary that I was going to have company.
One ordinarily does not ask permission of one's cook, but Mary was such
a mother to me that I felt the announcement to be no more than her due.
"Who is it, Missus, dear?"
"Miss Flora Forsyth. Have you ever heard me speak of her?"
"Do you mean that blonde on the mantelpiece?" she asked, in the
conversational tone of one who but passed the time o' day.
"Mary!" I said.
She walked up to Flora's picture, took it down, looked at it, and put
it back.
"Well," I said, tentatively, "what do you think of her?"
"What do I think of her?" demanded Mary, wheeling on me so suddenly
that I dodged. "I think she is a little blister--that's what I think
of her. And you'll rue the day you ever asked her into your house."
Ordinarily one would reprove one's cook for such freedom of speech, but
I had brought it on myself. Therefore I saved my breath, put on my
hat, and went out, ruminating and somewhat shaken in my mind to have
the two household authorities against me.
However, true to my determination to make her visit as attractive as
possible, I purchased at least a dozen sorts of fine French marmalades,
jellies, sweets, and fancy pickles, such as schoolgirls love.
She had told me so many times how she had always wanted her breakfast
in her room, but had never been able to have it, that I decided to give
her that privilege in my house. I told Mary with some misgivings, and
showed her the things I had bought. To my surprise, Mary assented
joyfully. I never knew why until after Flora left. Then Mary told me.
I even selected the china she was to use on the breakfast-tray. It was
blue and gold. Flora loved blue. Then I took a final look at
everything, gave a few last orders, and dismissed all worry from my
mind.
Her room, _the guest chamber_ of the Jardines, was fresh for her. No
one had ever slept in that bed, fluttered those curtains, nor written
at that desk. Flora would be its first occupant.
And how her blond beauty matched its pale blue and gold loveliness! It
gave me thrills of delight to think of her in the midst of it all.
But of course it was Cary I loved. Flora simply fascinated me. She
possessed the attractions of a Circe, but Cary was worth a million of
her, and I knew it and I wanted her to have Artie Beg, or anybody else
on earth she fancied. The whole proposition was as plain as day when I
came to think about it. I was Cary's champion, Cary's friend, and
intended Cary to win. Why, therefore, had I permitted myself to be
inveigled into asking Flora to visit me, under the supposition that I
was going to help her? It was not because Cary had begged me to. Not
at all. It was Flora herself who had managed it, I reflected, and it
gave me a bitter, uncomfortable twinge to realize that whatever Flora
had wanted me to do, in our brief friendship, I had done, no matter
whose judgment it went against.
Had the girl hypnotic power, or was I a weak fool to be flattered into
doing her bidding?
I don't like to think of myself as a weak fool, even for the sake of
argument.
The two girls had hated each other at sight, as was natural. Cary
admitted the reason with glorious frankness.
"Of course I hate her," she said, with a lift of her sleek brown head,
"didn't she usurp my prerogatives at the wedding? The best man
belongs, for that evening alone, to the maid of honour--he can't escape
it--it is his fate. Common civility should have chained him to my
chariot wheels, but with that white-headed Lilith at work on him, with
her half-shut eyes, she had him queered before he even saw me. But
wait. My turn will come."
Flora said to me:
"Of course I hate her, because _you_ love her. You love her better
than you love me. You have known her longer--that's the only reason!
She doesn't care _that_ for you. It's because you are married, and can
give her a good time that she pretends to care for you. _I_ know. Oh,
you may laugh and think I am jealous or insane or anything you like.
Well, then, I _am_ jealous, for I love you better than anybody in the
world, and I want you to love me in the same way. I love you better
than I love my mother--or my father--or even Artie Beg! And I am
jealous of every one you speak to. I am jealous most of all of Aubrey,
for you have eyes for no one on earth but him. I could hate him when I
think of it."
At that I _did_ laugh, but she was a good actress, and said it as if
she meant it.
Flora always acted as if she knew of my repressed childhood, and of
how, all my life, I had thirsted for praise. No matter if it had been
put on with a trowel, as hers undoubtedly was, I would have wrapped
myself in its tropical warmth and luxuriance, and never paused to
quarrel with its effulgence. While dear old Cary let her actions
speak, and seldom put her affection for me into words. But she had
been on the eve of sailing for a winter in Egypt when my hurried
wedding preparations and frantic telegram arrested her. The party
sailed without her, and she did not try to follow. And that was only
one of the many sacrifices she had made for me, and made without a
word, too.
She was a girl of thought and of ideas, but unfortunately she was a
great heiress, and fortune-hunters had made her suspicious and cynical.
Only Aubrey and I knew how glorious she could be when she let herself
out and expressed her real self.
The first thing Flora did to make me uncomfortable was to pump the
Angel about Artie's law-suit.
It was so intricate, so long drawn out, and so enormous in its
proportions, that it bade fair to resemble the famous Jarndyce and
Jarndyce. We had never mentioned it to Artie, but Flora, after a few
reluctant words from Aubrey, persuaded Artie, in the easiest way
imaginable, to tell her everything about it, from its inception. She
told me she had even read half a dozen of her uncle's law-books, which
bore upon the knotty points Artie had described to her. Instead of
arousing his suspicions of mercenary motives, her innocent manner and
flowerlike face deceived him into believing that her interest was very
commendable. She explained that she had always wanted to study law,
but that her father wouldn't let her, so that she always coaxed her
friends to describe their law-suits to her, and then she read up on
them by herself. Artie thought this was wonderful. So it was.
Cary would never listen to a word about it, nor read about it in the
papers; nor could she be inveigled into expressing an opinion about it
one way or the other. Her pride revolted from appearing even to know
that he had such prospects, faint and distant though they were.
When Flora came, Mary put on her spectacles before she opened the door.
I noticed the look she gave all three of us. It did not speak well for
Flora.
But, at first, her shyness and modesty left nothing to be desired. Her
clothes were simple even to plainness, her voice soft and deprecating,
and her manner deferential in the extreme. She was always asking
advice, and where that advice was given, she always followed it.
Flattery could go no further.
Artie came to see her, morning, noon, and night. I was horrified to
discover how far things seemed to have progressed, for, after all, it
was Cary who _must_ have Artie if she wanted him.
Cary called on Flora once, and we returned it, but she did not come
again. So I resolved on a dinner, and Cary promised to come. The
others were to be the Jimmies, Bee, and three more persons so
insignificant, so vapid, so entirely not worth describing that, in a
race, they would not even be mentioned as "also rans." In short, they
were the typical dinner-guests the hostess always fills in with.
I worked hard on that dinner. Flora offered to help, but Mary, without
actually refusing her assistance, managed to do without it, and I did
not realize until afterward how quickly Flora accepted her fate, and
curled herself up luxuriously on Aubrey's couch in Aubrey's particular
corner to read, while I bleached the almonds which she had offered to
do.
Flora kept me well informed of the progress of Artie's passion for her,
and I could do nothing. I was surprised at her confiding such details
to any one, dismayed for Cary's sake, and worried as to how it would
turn out.
Finally the evening of the dinner came. I dressed and ran out to the
kitchen to see if everything was all right, for Mary was so jealous she
refused to let me engage an assistant, but doggedly persisted in
preparing and serving the dinner entirely by herself.
To my surprise, I found the dining-room and kitchen shades pulled up to
the tops of the windows, while every handsome dish Mary intended to
use, and all the extra silver, were carefully placed on top of the
laundry-tubs. Mary, apparently unconscious of observation, was flying
around with pink cheeks, and the eyes behind the spectacles snapping
with excitement.
"Don't say a word, Missus," she said, sitting on her heels before the
oven door. "I did it for the benefit of the rubber factory opposite.
They think I don't notice, but look at them windows. Not a light in
any of 'em, but all the curtains moving just a little. Do they think I
don't know there's a rubber behind every damn one of 'em? Don't laugh,
Missus dear, and don't look over there, whatever you do. If they want
a look at the things we eat, why let 'em! They know what they cost,
but I'll bet they never do more than ask the price of 'em, and then buy
soup-bones and canned vegetables for their own stomachs."
Mary didn't say stomachs, but much of Mary's conversation does not look
well in print.
"And just wait till I take in the 'peche flambee'!" she chuckled.
"I'll bet they'll order out the fire department!"
I said nothing, for the very excellent reason that there was really
nothing to say. Mary has a way of being rather conclusive. There was
no use in remonstrating or telling her not to, for she simply would not
have obeyed me, so I forbore to give the order.
Flora heard Mary let Artie Beg in, and ran down the corridor to meet
him. She was a vision in white--her graduation dress--with her snowy
shoulders rising modestly from a tulle bertha. I paused in order to
let her greet him first, and, to my consternation, before I could make
known my presence, I heard her say, plaintively:
"Aren't you going to kiss me?"
Then with a stifled groan Artie flung his arms around her, pressing her
to him as if he would never let her go. Then he pushed her away from
him almost roughly, and Flora laughed a low, tantalizing laugh, and
crept back to him to lean her head on his shoulder, and lay her arms
around his neck.
I turned and fled. I fairly stampeded down the hall, running full tilt
against Aubrey, and nearly folding him up.
"Oh! Oh!" I gasped, dancing up and down before him excitedly.
He seized both my hands.
"Hold still, Faith! What's the matter? Tell me!"
"They're engaged!" I wailed. "I'm too late! Cary has lost him!"
"Who?"
"Artie and Flora."
"What makes you think so?"
"He's kissing her! And she asked him to, just as if she had a right.
I would not think so much of it, if he had just grabbed her and kissed
her without a word, for she looks too witching, and any man might lose
his head, but for her to ask for it--oh, what shall I do!"
"Hold on! You say she asked him to--tell me just how."
I told him.
The Angel put both hands in his pockets and whistled.
"Don't worry," he said. "They're not engaged."
I felt relieved at once, for the Angel does not write books from
guesswork. He _knows_ things.
But I was greatly confused at going back. Of course they did not know
that I had seen and heard, and equally, of course, I could not tell
them. But I had my confusion all to myself. Artie seemed about as
usual (which he wouldn't have done if he had known that there was
powder on his coat), and Flora was as cool as an iceberg.
It seems to me, as I look back, that that was the first time I
suspected anything. It was almost uncanny to see her sitting there
looking so shy and demure, when two minutes before she had begged a man
to kiss her, and laughed that cool, tantalizing laugh, as of one who
knew her power and revelled in the sight of her victim's struggles to
escape.
I turned to Cary, my well-bred girl, my friend, with a feeling of
relief, as if I had found a refuge. Cary flushed a little as she
greeted Artie, and Flora's lip curled perceptibly.
I glanced at the Angel, and saw that he, too, had noticed it. But
then, Aubrey sees everything. That is why he writes as he does. His
manner as he greeted Cary was so cordial that it caused Artie to look
up, and then, to my surprise, Artie got up from his chair, and came and
stood by Cary and took her fan.
I wish you could have seen Flora's blue eyes turn green.
Then Bee and the Jimmies came, and, as usual, I straightway forgot
everything else, and bent my energies toward playing the part of
hostess so that Bee would not feel disgraced.
I followed her eye as it travelled over our gowns and around the
apartment. Bee does not realize that she has silently appointed
herself Superior General to the universe, so she was somewhat
disconcerted, when, as she finally leaned back with a sigh which seemed
to say, "This is really as well as anybody could do who didn't have me
to consult with," to hear Aubrey say, slyly:
"Well, Bee, does it suit?"
Bee assumed her most Park Lane air, and replied:
"I don't know what you mean, Aubrey."
Then to avoid further pleasantries, Mary standing in the doorway, I
marshalled them all out to the table.
Flora was between Aubrey and Artie, but I put Cary on the other side of
Artie, while I took Jimmie by me, and mercilessly handed Mrs. Jimmie
over to the "also rans."
Flora, who pretended jealousy of the Angel to veil her instinctive
dislike of one who read her through and through, frankly turned her
back on him, and tried all her wiles on Artie, which would not have
disconcerted him, had not the Also Ran commenced to smile and attract
Mrs. Jimmie's attention to it.
This brought Artie from his trance sufficiently to cause him to turn
his attention to Cary, but it was so palpably forced that Cary devoted
herself with ardour to Jimmie, and left Artie speechless.
Then something spurred Flora to do a foolish thing. She deliberately
began to bait Cary--to say things to annoy her--to try to mortify her.
At first Cary refused to see what was evident to the rest of us. (Oh,
my dinner-party was proving such a success!)
At this critical juncture, Mary appeared bearing the chafing-dish full
of blazing, flaming peaches, and in watching me ladle the fiery liquid,
hostilities were for the moment discontinued. Involuntarily, as Mary's
satisfied countenance betokened her complete happiness at the
successful culmination of the dinner, my eyes wandered to the
dining-room windows. I had drawn the shades with my own hand, but some
mysterious agent had been at work, for they were let fly to the very
window-tops.
I glanced at Mary. She pressed her lips together with a whimsical
twist, and surreptitiously raised a finger in sly warning.
"Them rubbers are having a fit!" she murmured in my ear, as she
deferentially took a blazing peach from me, and placed it before Flora
with a look so black it seemed to say:
"If you get your deserts, you little blister, it would set fire to you!"
They were talking about love when I began listening again,--and Cary
made some remark inaudible to me, which gave Flora the opportunity to
say:
"Is it true, then, what I have heard? Were you ever disappointed in
love?"
"Always!" said Cary, evenly.
Jimmie grinned and jogged my elbow.
"Isn't she a dandy?" he whispered. "Never turned a hair."
Flora flushed angrily because Artie laughed and looked appreciatively
at Cary, as if really seeing her for the first time.
Every woman knows when that supreme moment comes--at least, every woman
has who has liked a man before he has liked her. She feels it without
looking at him. She knows it from the innermost consciousness of her
being. "He is looking at me," says her heart, "for the first time,
with the eyes which a man has for a woman."
Many a man has been selected first, as Cary selected Artie, and been
wooed by her as modestly and legitimately as she did, without
suspecting that he did not take the initiative every time.
So a little modest courage and restrained self-reliance crept into
Cary's manner, which had never been there before, and I, believing
implicitly in the Angel's _ipse dixit_ that Flora and the best man were
not engaged, had visions of the first bridesmaid's winning her lost
place with him, and, oh, making him pay for his neglect.
If man only knew how heavily a flouted woman, after she has safely won
him, does make him pay for his bad taste, he would be more careful.
But Artie never knew. He sat there, listening to the biting words
which passed back and forth between Flora and Cary, without his modesty
permitting him to realize that he was the stake these two clever girls
were throwing mental dice for.
But Jimmie knew, for his blue eyes turned black, and his cigarettes
burned out in two puffs, and his nervous hands clenched and unclenched
in his wicked wish to say something to aggravate the affair. Finally,
meeting my derisive grin, he wrenched my little finger under the table,
under pretence of picking up my handkerchief, and whispered: