The Forbidden Way

"We timed it nicely," said Haviland, looking at his watch. "Forty-seven from the ferry. We passed your wagons a moment ago. Gretchen, who's the red-haired girl with the Rumsens?"

"Et tu, Brute? That's Mrs. Wray. None of us has a chance when she's around. Here they are now."

The two station wagons drew up at the terrace, and the guests dismounted. Mr. and Mrs. Rumsen with the Wrays in the station wagon, and the Baroness Charny, the Warringtons, Jack Perot, and Lawrence Berkely in the 'bus.

"Well, Worthy! Got here after all! Caroline, Mrs. Wray, would you like to go right up or will you wait for tea? Wray, there's something stronger just inside. Show him, won't you, Billy?"

Wray entered the big hall with a renewed appreciation of the utility of wealth. The houses in New York which he had seen were, of course, built upon a more moderate scale. He had still to discover that the men of wealth were learning to make their week-ends out of town longer, and that the real home-life of many of them had been transferred to the country, where broad acres and limitless means enabled them to gratify their tastes in developing great estates which would hand down their names in the architectural history of the country when their city houses should be overwhelmed and lost in the march of commerce. Curtis Janney, for all his great responsibilities, was an open-air man, and he took a real delight in his great Tudor house and stables. The wide entrance hall which so impressed Jeff was designed in the ripe Palladian manner which distinguished the later work of the great Inigo Jones. This lofty room was the keynote of the building – a double cube in shape, the staircase which led from the centre opposite the door ornate in a character purely classic – the doorways to the other rooms on the same floor masterful in structural arrangement and elegant in their grace and simplicity. It almost seemed as though the room had been designed as a framework for the two wonderful Van Dykes which were placed at each side of the stairway.

Jeff smiled as he walked into the smoking room – the smile of possession. He realized, as never before, that taste, elegance, style, were things which could be bought with money, as one would buy stock or a piece of real estate. The only difference between Curtis Janney and himself was that his host had an ancestor or two – while Jeff had none.

Miss Janney had quietly and cleverly appropriated Lawrence Berkely and was already on her way to the conservatory. Jack Perot, who painted the portraits of fashionable ladies, had taken the Baroness to the Long Room, where the English pictures were hung. Camilla, after a few polite comments on the dignity of the house, sat a little aside in silence. Cortland Bent, after a glance toward the door through which Miss Janney had vanished, dropped into the vacant chair beside her.

"I'm so glad to see you," she said genuinely. "You know the magnificence is rather bewildering." She paused and lowered her voice. "It seems as if I hadn't seen you for ages."

"Yes," he murmured. "I'm expecting wings any day now. I'm almost too good to be true."

"You're an angel," she smiled. "I want you to be good, and I'm sure I want you to be true. And yet" – she paused – "this seems the only case in the world where to be true is to be bad."

"You can't make the sun stop shining."

"I don't think I want it to stop shining altogether. You see, I'm selfish. I want it under a cloud, that's all."

There was a pause – significant to them both.

"I am trying, Camilla. I am doing my best. You appreciate that?"

"Yes, but it shouldn't be so hard. I don't think it would be hard for me in your place!"

His eyes questioned.

"Miss Janney – she is adorable." She looked over the rim of her cup at him as she finished her tea. "My dear Cort," she laughed, as she handed it to him, "the best I can say for you is that you have the worst taste in the world. I'm really in love with her myself. I can't see what you could have been thinking of – "

"Any more than I can see what you were thinking of."

There was a refuge from the danger toward which she felt herself drifting, and she took it, addressing her nearest neighbor.

"Mrs. Cheyne, don't you think men have abominable taste?"

"Oh, yes, abominable," laughed the lady. "Ugh! I hate mustaches, too, don't you?"

Camilla turned a shade rosier, but her discomfiture was lost in the laughter of those who remembered that Cheyne had worn a beard.

"You know I didn't mean just that," explained Camilla. "I meant their appreciation of women – their sense of the esthetic – "

"Anesthetic, Mrs. Wray. That's the only word for a man's perceptions. A French frock, a smart hat, a little deft color, and the plainest of us is a match for the gayest Lothario. They're only bipeds, instincts on legs – "

"Oh, I say now, Rita," laughed Bent.

"We can't stand for that, Mrs. Cheyne," put in their host. "I suppose you'd think me ungallant if I asked you what kind of instincts women were."

"Instincts with wings," she purred, "angels by intuition, rhapsodists by occupation, and sirens by inheritance. We're not in the least afraid of you, Mr. Janney."

"I should think not. For my part, if I knew that one of you was camping on my trail, I'd give in at once."

"I'm so glad. It's a pet theory of mine that when a woman really sets her cap for a man he had better give up at once, for she will win him – fortune favoring – in the end. Don't you agree, Mrs. Wray?"

"I've never thought about it, Mrs. Cheyne," said Camilla slowly. "By fortune you mean propinquity?"

"Oh, yes – and other things – " laughingly. "For instance, if I had fallen in love with a man I shouldn't stop to consider. If he was another woman's husband – say your husband, Mrs. Wray – that would only add a new element of interest. The more difficult an undertaking, the greater satisfaction in the achievement."

Camilla looked at her steadily for a moment. "I've never thought that any man ought to be dignified by such extraordinary effort. A husband so easily won away is not worth keeping."

The two women had only met once before. They both smiled, sweetly tolerant, their weapons politely sheathed. Only Cortland Bent, who knew the hearts of both, sensed the difference between them.

"You're very flattering, Rita," he broke in, "especially to the bipeds. You've carefully deprived us of every attribute but legs. But we still have those – and can run."

"But you don't," laughed Mrs. Cheyne. "That's just the point. You like the game – all of you. Even your legs aren't proof against flattery."

"Stop, Rita," put in Betty Haviland. "You're letting out all the secrets of the craft."

"Come, Camilla," said Cortland, rising, "wouldn't you like to see the horses and dogs? It's not nearly dark yet."

"Oh, yes," she cried gladly. And then to her host, "What am I to expect, Mr. Janney, silver feed troughs and sterilized water?"

"Oh, no," said their host, "not yet. But they're worth it."

The pair made their way through the library and a small corridor which led to the south portico.

"How do you like my cousin Rita?" Bent asked when they were alone outside.

"Is she your cousin?"

"Through my mother – the Davidges. Quite wonderful, eh?"

"I don't like her. You don't mind my saying so, do you?"

"Not in the least. She's not your sort, Camilla. But then nobody ever takes Rita seriously. She doesn't want them to. She's a spoiled darling. Everybody pets her. That bored kind of cleverness is effective – but everybody knows she doesn't mean half she says."

"I'd be sorry to think she meant anything she says," severely.

Bent laughed. "I'm afraid you're too sincere for my crowd, Camilla."

"Who is Mr. Cheyne?" she asked suddenly.

"A perfectly amiable person with a bald head and a passion for domesticity and music, both of which Rita affects to despise."

"Why did she marry him then?"