What Will People Say? Part 30

"Good Lord!" said Winifred, reaching out her hand. "Let me see the cat.

A whip, eh? You could drive a coach and four through her reputation now."

Mrs. Neff took the paper from her hand. "Her husband got the kiddies.

Pretty little tikes, too."

"She sold 'em for the Newport villa," said Alice, looking over her mother's shoulder. Mrs. Neff turned on her with a glare of amazement.

"Where do you children pick up such things?"

"I'm not children," said Alice, "and the papers were full of it."

"Mrs. d.i.c.ky was up here last spring for a week-end with her husband,"

said Willie. "And so was the other man. What's his name? Later I heard that people had been talking a lot even then, but I never suspected anything till later."

"You never would, Willie," said Mrs. Neff. She stared at the picture.

"She's really very good-looking, and she wasn't a bad sort altogether. I wonder which one of us will be gone next winter?"

"You, probably," Willie snickered, and the others laughed lazily. But Mrs. Neff bristled.

"I don't see why you have to laugh. Am I too old to misbehave?"

"Far from it, darling!" said Willie. "You're just at the dangerous age.

I--er--I don't mean exactly that, either."

Mrs. Neff turned a page hastily. "Here's a picture of Deborah Reeve in her coming-out gown."

"She came out so far and so fast she went right back," said Ten Eyck, and explained to Forbes: "Hesitated between her riding-master and her mother's chauffeur, and finally ran off with the first officer of her father's yacht. She was a born democrat."

"Here's a snapshot of Mrs. Tom Corliss at the Meadowbrook Steeplechase.

Look, that's 'Pup' Mowat standing with her. Good Lord, he was hanging round her a year ago, and people are just beginning to notice. Haven't they been clever? A whole year under the rose and right under the public's nose."

"Tom Corliss will be finding it out before long," said Winifred.

"Oh no," said Willie, "I've discovered that the husband is always the last to find out." And he tossed his head in careless pride at the novelty of his p.r.o.nouncement.

"Isn't Willie the observing little thing?" said Winifred. The others exchanged glances of contemptuous amus.e.m.e.nt while their host looked wise.

Persis strolled round to the divan, took Murray by the ear, and hoisted him from his place.

"No, thanks, Murray," she said. "I couldn't think of taking your seat."

And dropped into it.

"What are we going to do for amus.e.m.e.nt to-night?" said Willie. "Who wants to play auction?"

"Hus.h.!.+" said Mrs. Neff.

"Shall we have some music, then?" A general declination. "Some singing?

A dance?"

They refused even that, and he grew desperate.

"Charades?"

"Shut up!" came from the crowd.

"I don't want to be entertained," said Persis. "I'm never so miserable as when I'm being entertained."

Everybody approved. Just to be let alone was a luxury.

Willie ventured a last retort: "Anybody want a drink?"

Everybody wanted a drink. Willie went to a side-wall and groped for a b.u.t.ton, pushed it and held it, then resumed his place before the fire.

After a time he pushed it again.

"Where is everybody?" he snapped. Then the truth dawned on him again.

"Good Lord, we're marooned!"

Winifred chuckled at the situation. "You'll have to be your own barkeep, Willie. Go rustle us what you can find."

"But everything would be in the cellar," he answered. "If there's anything here at all, which I doubt. And the key is in town. Couldn't trust Prout with it. Fine old gardener--give his life to save a peony--but he's death on liquor. I couldn't trust him to order in drinkables--besides, I forgot."

There were groans of horror.

"'Water, water, everywhere,'" said Ten Eyck, "'and not a drop to drink.'"

"It's bad enough having no servants to wait on us," Mrs. Neff pondered, "but who's to do our thinking for us? Which'll we die of first? thirst or starvation?"

"We'll get in a supply from the village to-morrow," said Willie, handsomely.

"To-morrow never comes," said Winifred.

For lack of artificial stimulus the momentary enthusiasm lapsed again.

n.o.body cared even to read. The fireplace was books enough.

Forbes and Ten Eyck stood at either end of the mantel, mere supporting statuary, their heads in shadow. Willie teetered at the center of the hearth, toasting his coat-tails.

The four women occupied the divan, sketched out brilliantly against the dark like a group portrait of Sargent's. The light worked over their images as a painter works, making and illuminating shadows, touching a strand of hair or a cheek-bone with a high light, modeling with a streak of red some lifted muscle, then brus.h.i.+ng it off again.

The poses of the women were as various as their bodies and souls. At one corner Mrs. Neff sat erect among the cus.h.i.+ons in a sleepy stateliness.

Winifred filled the other corner like another heap of cus.h.i.+ons, hardly moving except to flick her cigarette ashes on the floor to the acute distress of Willie's neat soul. Alice drooped with arched spine in a young girl's slump, and clung to a hand of Persis', doubtless wis.h.i.+ng it were Stowe Webb's. Persis sat cross-legged, a smoking Sultana, her chin on the back of one hand, one elbow on one knee.

From his coign of shadow Forbes watched them. Vague reverie held them all. The very shadows seemed to breathe unevenly in restless meditation.

The fire-logs alone conversed aloud in mysterious whispers, with crackling epigrams.

Forbes wondered at the group, so real and so unreal. He wondered what they were thinking of, each in her castle of self, each with her yearnings backward and forward. Winifred was wis.h.i.+ng her lover there, perhaps, and that her slim and gracile soul were not mislodged in so determinedly fat a body; Mrs. Neff was wis.h.i.+ng, perhaps, that her gray hair and her calendar of years did not so thwart the young, romantic girl that housed in her body, and must sleep alone, perhaps, forever.

Suddenly Forbes wished that he had not smiled so ruthlessly at the thought of her expecting to be courted. Her longings were pitiful, perhaps, but not ridiculous.

It was easy to guess at Alice's thoughts. She was wis.h.i.+ng to be not so young and curbed by authority. She was years older than Juliet had been when she went to the church with Romeo and threw him the ladder and preceded him to the tomb; yet Alice's well-matured desires were smiled away and patronized as childish.