CHAPTER IV

A SLIGHT PREDICAMENT

For several moments after Jack had withdrawn, Mrs. De Peyster stood in majestic silence beside the mantelpiece.

"We will forget this incident, Judge Harvey," she said at length. "Be seated, if you please."

Judge Harvey took a chair, as ordered. Out in the world, Judge Harvey was a disconcerting personality, though a respected one; a judge who had resigned his judgeship, with the bold announcement that law-courts were in the main theaters for farces; a thinker who rejected all labels, who was daring enough to perceive and applaud what was good even in the conventional.

"But, Caroline," he began hesitantly, "weren't you perhaps a little too stern with Jack?"

"As I said, Judge Harvey, I do not care to explain the situation."

"I understood it—a little—anyhow. See here, you don't want Jack to grow up to be a member of that geranium-cheeked, leather-chair brigade that stare out of Fifth Avenue Club windows, their heaviest labor lifting a whiskey-and-soda all the way up to their mouths?"

"I certainly do not propose to accept the alternative he proposed!" she retorted. "I assure you, such severity as I used was necessary. Nothing will bring a young man to his senses so quickly and so surely as having his resources cut off." Her composure, her confidence in her judgment, were now fully returned. "Jack will come around all right. What I did was imperative to save myself; and certainly it was best for him."

"I trust so. But I hope you don't mind if I'm a bit sorry for the boy, for, you know,"—in a lower voice, and with a stealthy look at her,—"Jack's the nearest thing to a son I've ever had."

She did not answer. In the silence that ensued an uneasiness crept into his manner.

"Caroline," bracing himself, "there is something—something you were perhaps not expecting to hear—that I must tell you."

"I trust, Judge Harvey,"—somewhat stiffly,—"that you are not about to propose to me again."

"I am not." His face flushed; then set grimly. "But I'm going to again, sometime, and I'd do it now if I thought it would do any good."

"It will not."

"Oh, I know I wouldn't fit into your present scheme of life." Bitterness and contempt had risen like a tide in the Judge's voice. "I know I'm no social figure; at least, not up to your dimensions. I know it would be a come-down to change from Mrs. De Peyster to Mrs. Harvey. Not that I'm so infernally humble, Caroline, that I don't consider myself a damned lot better than most of the men you might possibly think about marrying."

He rose abruptly, and with a groaning burst of impatience that had a tinge of anger: "Oh, for God's sake, Caroline, why don't you throw overboard all this fashionable business, this striving to keep an empty position, and be—and be—"

"And be what?" put in Mrs. De Peyster with glittering eye.

"And be just yourself!" he cried defiantly, squarely facing her. "There, at last I've said it! And I'm going to say the rest of it. This Mrs. De Peyster that heads everything isn't at all the simple, natural gracious Carrie De Peyster that John De Peyster and I made love to! You're not the real Mrs. De Peyster; you only think you are. This Mrs. De Peyster the world knows is something that's been built by and out of the obligation which you accepted to maintain the De Peyster dignity. She's only a surface, a shell, a mask! If your mother hadn't died, and then your mother-in-law, and thrown upon you this whole infernal family business and this infernal social leadership, why, you'd have been an entirely different person—"

"Judge Harvey!"

"You'd then have been the real Mrs. De Peyster!" he rushed hotly on. "Oh, all this show, this struggle for place, this keeping up a front, I know it's only a part of the universal comedy of our pretending to be what we're not,—every one of us is doing the same, in a big way, or a little way,—but it makes me sick! For God's sake, Caroline, chuck it—chuck it all and be just the fine human woman that there is in you!"

She was trembling with suppressed wrath. Never before—not to her face, at least—had such criticism been directed at her.

"And ultimately be Mrs. Harvey—no, thank you!" she replied, in a choking, caustic voice. "But while you are at it, have you any further suggestions for my conduct?"

"Yes," said he determinedly. "You have been spending too much money, and spending it on utterly worthless purposes. This social duel—that's just what it is—between you and Mrs. Allistair, besides being nonsense, will be absolutely ruinous if you keep it up. Mrs. Allistair is as unprincipled in a social way as her husband has been in a business way; her ambition will hesitate to use no means, you know that—and, don't forget this, she can spend fifty dollars to your one!"

"I believe," with blazing hauteur, yet still controlled, "that I possess something superior to Mrs. Allistair's dollars."

"Yes," groaned the Judge, "your confounded old-family business!"

"And speaking of money," continued Mrs. De Peyster in her cuttingest, most withering, most annihilatory grand manner, "perhaps I should have spent my money worthily, like Judge Harvey, upon a gift of Thomas Jefferson letters to the American Historical Society."

The shaft of sarcasm quivered into the center of Judge Harvey's sorest spot. Those recently discovered letters of Thomas Jefferson which Judge Harvey had presented to the Historical Society, and which had been so widely discussed as throwing new light upon the beginnings of the United States Republic, had a month before been pronounced and proved to be clever but arrant forgeries. The newspaper sensation and the praise that had attended the discovery and gift—warming and exalting Judge Harvey's very human pride—had been followed by an anti-climax of gibes and jeers at his gullibility. Whenever the hoax was spoken of, Judge Harvey writhed with personal humiliation, and with anger against the person who had recalled his discomfiture, and with a desire for vengeance against the perpetrator of the swindle.

"Remember this, that the first experts pronounced those letters genuine," he retorted in a hot, trembling voice. "And I'm going to get that scoundrel—you see! Only to-day I had word from the Police Commissioner that his department at last had clues to that fellow Preston. And, besides," he ended cuttingly, "though I was deceived, I at least made an effort to spend my money upon a worthy object."

They glared into one another's eyes; old friends now thoroughly aroused against each other. They might be sarcastic or out-spoken; but their self-respect, their good-breeding, would not permit them to become vituperative, to lose themselves in outbursts of wrath—though such might have been the healthier course. They knew how to plug the volcano. So for a space, though they quivered, they were silent.

Mrs. De Peyster it was who first spoke. Her voice had recovered its most formal, frigid tone.

"Please recall, Judge Harvey, that you are here at the present moment not as a friend but as my man of affairs."

"All right," he said grimly. "But at least I've told you what I thought as a friend."

"As my man of affairs," she continued with her magnificent iciness, "you may now tell me what you have been able to do for me about a cottage in Newport."

"Very well, here goes as your man of affairs: You said you wished to be in Newport from the middle of July to early in September."

"Yes."

"The house, of those available, which I thought would come nearest suiting you is 'The Heron's Nest.'"

"You mean the cottage Mrs. Van der Grift had last season?"

"The same."

"You need not describe it then. I know it perfectly. It is exactly what I desire; elegant, but not showy. And the terms?"

"Ten thousand for the season."

"Quite satisfactory. I hope you have taken a lease."

"I have an option till to-morrow."

"Then close it. I suppose you have brought my letters of credit?"

"That," said he in formal lawyer tone, "brings me back to the news which, as your man of affairs, I was trying to break to you when you thought, as a friend, I was trying to propose."

"What news?"

"You will recall that the money with which I was to buy your letters of credit was money which I was to draw for you, to-day, as dividends on the stock you hold in the New York and New England Railroad."

"Certainly—though I do not see the drift of your remarks."

"And I hardly need remind you that the bulk of your fortune is invested in this railroad."

"A perfectly good stock, I believe," Mrs. De Peyster commented.

"Perfectly good—perfectly sound," Judge Harvey agreed. "But there has existed a certain possibility in the company's affairs for some time of which I hesitated to inform you. I did not wish to give you any unnecessary concern, which would have been the case if I had spoken to you and if the situation had terminated happily."

"And what is the situation to which you refer?"

"You are doubtless aware that all the railroads have been complaining about bad business, owing to increased wages on the one side and governmental regulation of rates on the other. That's the way the officers explain it; but the truth is, the roads have been abominably mismanaged."

"Yes, I have vaguely heard something about bad business," said Mrs. De Peyster with a bored air. "But what does all this lead to?"

"I am trying to lead you gently, Mrs. De Peyster, to realize the possibility that, in view of its alleged bad business, the New York and New England might decide to pass dividends for this quarter."

Mrs. De Peyster started forward. "Do you mean to say, Judge Harvey, that such a possibility exists?"

"It's rather more than a possibility."

"More than a possibility?"

"Yes. In fact, it's a—a fact."

"A fact?"

"I have just come from the meeting of the directors. They have voted to pay no dividends."

"No dividends!" Mrs. De Peyster gazed stupefied into the face of Judge Harvey. "No dividends! Then—then—my income?"

"I am very sorry," said Judge Harvey.

Mrs. De Peyster sank back in her chair and laid one hand across her eyes. For a moment she was dazed by this undreamed-of disaster; so overwhelmed that she did not even hear Judge Harvey, whose anger had ere this begun to relax, try to reassure her with remarks about the company being perfectly solvent. But it was not befitting the De Peyster dignity to exhibit consternation. Instinct, habit, ruled. So, after a moment, she removed her hand, and, though all her senses were floundering, she remarked with an excellent imitation of calm:—

"Thank you very much, Judge Harvey, for your information."

Judge Harvey, though still resentful, was by now feeling contrite for his share of their quarrel and looked unusually handsome in his contrition. And in his concern he could not help pointing the way out.

"I trust you have enough in your bank for your present plans. And if not, your bank will readily advance you what you need."

"Of course," said she with her mechanical composure.

"Or if there is any difficulty," he continued, desirous of making peace, "I shall be glad to arrange a loan for you."

She was too blinded by disaster to think, to realize her needs. And dazed though she was by this reverse, her anger against Judge Harvey for daring to criticize burned as high as before. And then, too, she remembered the haughtiness with which she had just refused his advice and put him in his place. At that moment, the person of all persons in the world from whom it would have been most humiliating to her to accept even a finger's turn of assistance was Judge Harvey.

"Thank you. I shall manage very well."

"And the Newport house?"

"I shall send you my instructions concerning it later."

He hesitated, waiting for her to speak. But she did not.

"Then that is all?" he queried.

"Quite all," she replied.

He still lingered. He was not to see her again for three months. And he didn't like to part like this; even if—

"After all, Caroline," he said impulsively, holding out his hand, "let's forget what we said and be friends. At any rate, I certainly hope you have a most enjoyable time in Europe."

"Thank you. I am sure I shall have."

Her words were cool, calm; the hand she gave him was without pressure. Stiffening again, he made her the briefest of bows and angrily walked out.

At the sound of the closing door, announcing that Judge Harvey's eyes were outside the room, Mrs. De Peyster unloosed the mantle of dignity, which with so great an effort she had kept folded about her person, let her face fall forward into her hands, and slumped down into her chair, a loose, inert bundle. Several lifeless minutes dragged by.

A little before, during a silence between Judge Harvey and Mrs. De Peyster, the study door had slowly opened and there had appeared the reconnoitering face of the entrapped Mr. Bradford. Though their attention had apparently been too centered on each other for them to be observant of what happened beyond their very contracted horizon, that had seemed to him no promising moment to try for an escape. With high curiosity, eyes amused and alight with delectable danger, he had studied Judge Harvey a moment, and then the duchess-like Mrs. De Peyster in her most magnificent towering attitude of wrathful hauteur. Then quickly and soundlessly the heavy door had closed.

Now again the heavy, sound-proof door of the study began to open—noiselessly, inch by inch. Again the light, humorous, but shrewd, very shrewd, face of Mr. Bradford appeared in the crack. This time the face did not withdraw. He watched the bowed figure of the solitary Mrs. De Peyster for several moments; considered; measured the distance to the door of escape; evaluated the silencing quality of the deep library rug; then slipped through the door, closed it, and with tread as soft as a bird's wing against the air started across the room.

At Mrs. De Peyster's back curiosity checked him and he turned his whimsical face down upon the motionless figure. The great Mrs. De Peyster! He wondered what had thus changed her from the all-commanding presence of a few moments since; for within that perfection of a study he had overheard nothing. An instant he stood thus at her back, alert to disappear upon the warning of a changing breath—the two but an arm's reach apart, and apparently about to go their separate ways forever—she unconscious of him, and he equally unconscious of the seed of a common drama which their own acts had already sown—with never a thought that ships that pass in the night may possibly alter their courses and meet again in the morning.

He slipped on out of the room, closing the door without a sound. In the hallway he paused. He wished to see Miss Gardner again, ignorant of the sudden fate that had befallen her. But he decided little would be gained by trying for another meeting. Certainly she must have relented sufficiently to have picked up the card he had given her; and perhaps she would change her mind and send him a message in care of the Reverend Mr. Pyecroft. Anyhow, that was his best hope.

Lightly, and with a light heart—for the presence of danger was to him a stimulant—he went down the stairs, eyes and ears on guard against unfortunate rencontres, and eyes also instinctively noting doors and passages and articles worth a gentleman's while. At the front door he waited a moment until the sidewalk was empty; then he let himself out, and went down Mrs. De Peyster's noble stone steps, his face pleasant and frank-gazing, and with the easy self-possession of departing from a call to wish a friend bon-voyage .