The Younger Set

Sanxon Orchil was widely quoted as suavely and urbanely deploring the premature consummation of an alliance long since decided upon by both families involved; Mrs. Orchil snapped her electric-blue eyes and held her peace—between her very white teeth; Austin Gerard, secretly astounded with admiration for Gerald, received the reporters with a countenance expressive of patient pain, but downtown he made public pretence of busy indifference, as though not fully alive to the material benefit connected with the unexpected alliance. Nina wept—happily at moments—at moments she laughed—because she had heard all about the famous British invasion planned by the Orchils and abetted by Anglo-American aristocracy. She did not laugh too maliciously; she simply couldn't help it. Her set was not the Orchils' set, their ways were not her ways; their orbits merely intersected occasionally; and, left to herself and the choice hers, she would not have troubled herself to engineer any such alliance, even to stir up Mrs. Sanxon Orchil. Besides, deep in her complacent little New York soul she had the faintest germ of contempt for the Cordova ancestors of the house of Orchil.

But the young and silly pair had now relieved her as well as Mrs. Orchil of any further trouble concerning themselves, the American duchess, the campaign, and the Horse Guards: they had married each other rather shamelessly one evening while supposed to be dancing at the Sandon Craigs', and had departed expensively for Palm Beach, whither Austin, grim, reticent, but inwardly immensely contented, despatched the accumulated exclamatory letters of the family with an intimation of his own that two weeks was long enough to cut business even with a honeymoon as excuse.

Meanwhile the disorganisation in the nursery was tremendous; the children, vaguely aware of the household demoralisation and excitement, took the opportunity to break loose on every occasion; and Kit-Ki, to her infinite boredom and disgust, was hunted from garret to cellar; and Drina, taking advantage, contrived to over-eat herself and sit up late, and was put to bed sick; and Eileen, loyal, but sorrowfully amazed at her brother's exclusion of her in such a crisis, became slowly overwhelmed with the realisation of her loneliness, and took to the seclusion of her own room, feeling tearful and abandoned, and very much like a very little girl whose heart was becoming far too full of all sorts of sorrows.

Nina misunderstood her, finding her lying on her bed, her pale face pillowed in her hair.

"Only horridly ordinary people will believe that Gerald wanted her money," said Nina; "as though an Erroll considered such matters at all—or needed to. Clear, clean English you are, back to the cavaliers whose flung purses were their thanks when the Cordovans held their horses' heads. . . . What are you crying for?"

"I don't know," said Eileen; "not for anything that you speak of. Neither Gerald nor I ever wasted any emotion over money, or what others think about it. . . . Is Drina ill?"

"No; only sick. Calomel will fix her, but she believes she's close to dissolution and she's sent for Boots to take leave of him—the little monkey! I'm so indignant. She's taken advantage of the general demoralisation to eat up everything in the house. . . . Billy fell downstairs, fox-hunting, and his nose bled all over that pink Kirman rug. . . . Boots is a dear; do you know what he's done?"

"What?" asked Eileen listlessly, raising the back of her slender hand from her eyes to peer at Nina through the glimmer of tears.

"Well, he and Phil have moved out of Boots's house, and Boots has wired Gerald and Gladys that the house is ready for them until they can find a place of their own. Of course they'll both come here—in fact, their luggage is upstairs now—Boots takes the blue room and Phil his old quarters, . . . But don't you think it is perfectly sweet of Boots? And isn't it good to have Philip back again?"

"Y-es," said Eileen faintly. Lying there, the deep azure of her eyes starred with tears, a new tremor altered her mouth, and the tight-curled upper lip quivered. Her heart, too, had begun its heavy, unsteady response in recognition of her lover's name; she turned partly away from Nina, burying her face in her brilliant hair; and beside her slim length, straight and tense, her arms lay, the small hands contracting till they had closed as tightly as her teeth.

It was no child, now, who lay there, fighting down the welling desolation; no visionary adolescent grieving over the colourless ashes of her first romance; not even the woman, socially achieved, intelligently and intellectually in love. It was a girl, old enough to realise that the adoration she had given was not wholly spiritual, that her delight in her lover and her response to him was not wholly of the mind, not so purely of the intellect; that there was still more, something sweeter, more painful, more bewildering that she could give him, desired to give—nay, that she could not withhold even with sealed eyes and arms outstretched in the darkness of wakeful hours, with her young heart straining in her breast and her set lips crushing back the unuttered cry.

Love! So that was it!—the need, the pain, the bewilderment, the hot sleeplessness, the mad audacity of a blessed dream, the flushed awakening, stunned rapture—and then the gray truth, bleaching the rose tints from the fading tapestries of slumberland, leaving her flung across her pillows, staring at daybreak.

Nina had laid a cool smooth hand across her forehead, pushing back the hair—a light caress, sensitive as an unasked question.

But there was no response, and presently the elder woman rose and went out along the landing, and Eileen heard her laughingly greeting Boots, who had arrived post-haste on news of Drina's plight.

"Don't be frightened; the little wretch carried tons of indigestible stuff to her room and sat up half the night eating it. Where's Philip?"

"I don't know. Here's a special delivery for him. I signed for it and brought it from the house. He'll be here from the Hook directly, I fancy. Where is Drina?"

"In bed. I'll take you up. Mind you, there'll be a scene, so nerve yourself."

They went upstairs together. Nina knocked, peeped in, then summoned Mr. Lansing.

"Oh, Boots, Boots!" groaned Drina, lifting her arms and encircling his neck, "I don't think I am ever going to get well—I don't believe it, no matter what they say. I am glad you have come; I wanted you—and I'm very, very sick. . . . Are you happy to be with me?"

Boots sat on the bedside, the feverish little head in his arms, and Nina was a trifle surprised to see how seriously he took it.

"Boots," she said, "you look as though your last hour had come. Are you letting that very bad child frighten you? Drina, dear, mother doesn't mean to be horrid, but you're too old to whine. . . . It's time for the medicine, too—"

"Oh, mother! the nasty kind?"

"Certainly. Boots, if you'll move aside—"

"Let Boots give it to me!" exclaimed the child tragically. "It will do no good; I'm not getting better; but if I must take it, let Boots hold me—and the spoon!"

She sat straight up in bed with a superb gesture which would have done credit to that classical gentleman who heroically swallowed the hemlock cocktail. Some of the dose bespattered Boots, and when the deed was done the child fell back and buried her head on his breast, incidentally leaving medicinal traces on his collar.

Half an hour later she was asleep, holding fast to Boots's sleeve, and that young gentleman sat in a chair beside her, discussing with her pretty mother the plans made for Gladys and Gerald on their expected arrival.

Eileen, pale and heavy-lidded, looked in on her way to some afternoon affair, nodding unsmiling at Boots.

"Have you been rifling the pantry, too?" he whispered. "You lack your usual chromatic symphony."

"No, Boots; I'm just tired. If I wasn't physically afraid of Drina, I'd get you to run off with me—anywhere. . . . What is that letter, Nina? For me?"

"It's for Phil. Boots brought it around. Leave it on the library table, dear, when you go down."

Eileen took the letter and turned away. A few moments later as she laid it on the library table, her eyes involuntarily noted the superscription written in the long, angular, fashionable writing of a woman.

And slowly the inevitable question took shape within her.

How long she stood there she did not know, but the points of her gloved fingers were still resting on the table and her gaze was still concentrated on the envelope when she felt Selwyn's presence in the room, near, close; and looked up into his steady eyes. And knew he loved her.

And suddenly she broke down—for with his deep gaze in hers the overwrought spectre had fled!—broke down, no longer doubting, bowing her head in her slim gloved hands, thrilled to the soul with the certitude of their unhappiness eternal, and the dreadful pleasure of her share.

"What is it?" he made out to say, managing also to keep his hands off her where she sat, bowed and quivering by the table.

"N-nothing. A—a little crisis—over now—nearly over. It was that letter^other women writing you. . . . And I—outlawed—tongue-tied. . . . Don't look at me, don't wait. I—I am going out."

He went to the window, stood a moment, came back to the table, took his letter, and walked slowly again to the window.

After a while he heard the rustle of her gown as she left the room, and a little later he straightened up, passed his hand across his tired eyes, and, looking down at the letter in his hand, broke the seal.

It was from one of the nurses, Miss Casson, and shorter than usual:

"Mrs. Ruthven is physically in perfect health, but yesterday we noted a rather startling change in her mental condition. There were, during the day, intervals that seemed perfectly lucid. Once she spoke of Miss Bond as 'the other nurse,' as though she realised something of the conditions surrounding her. Once, too, she seemed astonished when I brought her a doll, and asked me:' Is there a child here? Or is it for a charity bazaar?'

"Later I found her writing a letter at my desk. She left it unfinished when she went to drive—a mere scrap. I thought it best to enclose it, which I do, herewith."

The enclosure he opened:

"Phil, dear, though I have been very ill I know you are my own husband. All the rest was only a child's dream of terror—"

And that was all—only this scrap, firmly written in the easy flowing hand he knew so well. He studied it for a moment or two, then resumed Miss Casson's letter:

"A man stopped our sleigh yesterday, asking if he was not speaking to Mrs. Ruthven. I was a trifle worried, and replied that any communication for Mrs. Ruthven could be sent to me.

"That evening two men—gentlemen apparently—came to the house and asked for me. I went down to receive them. One was a Dr. Mallison, the other said his name was Thomas B. Hallam, but gave no business address.

"When I found that they had come without your knowledge and authority, I refused to discuss Mrs. Ruthven's condition, and the one who said his name was Hallam spoke rather peremptorily and in a way that made me think he might be a lawyer.

"They got nothing out of me, and they left when I made it plain that I had nothing to tell them.

"I thought it best to let you know about this, though I, personally, cannot guess what it might mean."

Selwyn turned the page: