The Younger Set Part 32

_Voila_!

"By the way, I saw Mrs. Gerard's pretty ward at the theatre last night--Miss Erroll. She certainly is stunning--"

Selwyn flattened out the letter and deliberately tore out the last paragraph. Then he set it afire with a match.

"At least," he said with an ugly look, "I can keep _her_ out of this"; and he dropped the brittle blackened paper and set his heel on it. Then he resumed his perusal of the mutilated letter, reread it, and finally destroyed it.

"Alixe," he wrote in reply, "we had better stop this letter-writing before somebody stops us. Anybody desiring to make mischief might very easily misinterpret what we are doing. I, of course, could not close the correspondence, so I ask you to do so without any fear that you will fail to understand why I ask it. Will you?"

To which she replied:

"Yes, Phil. Good-bye.

"ALIXE."

A box of roses left her his debtor; she was too intelligent to acknowledge them. Besides, matters were going better with her.

And that was all for a while.

Meanwhile Lent had gone, and with it the last soiled snow of winter. It was an unusually early spring; tulips in Union Square appeared coincident with crocus and snow-drop; high above the city's haze wavering wedges of wild-fowl drifted toward the Canadas; a golden perfumed bloom clotted the naked branches of the park shrubs; j.a.panese quince burst into crimson splendour; tender chestnut leaves unfolded; the willows along the Fifty-ninth Street wall waved banners of gilded green; and through the suns.h.i.+ne battered b.u.t.terflies floated, and the wild bees reappeared, scrambling frantically, powdered to the thighs in the pollen of a million dandelions.

"Spring, with that nameless fragrance in the air Which breathes of all things fair,"

sang a young girl riding in the Park. And she smiled to herself as she guided her mare through the flowering labyrinths. Other notes of the Southern poet's haunting song stole soundless from her lips; for it was only her heart that was singing there in the sun, while her silent, smiling mouth mocked the rus.h.i.+ng melody of the birds.

Behind her, powerfully mounted, ambled the belted groom; she was riding alone in the golden weather because her good friend Selwyn was very busy in his office downtown, and Gerald, who now rode with her occasionally, was downtown also, and there remained n.o.body else to ride with. Also the horses were to be sent to Silverside soon, and she wanted to use them as much as possible while the Park was at its loveliest.

She, therefore, galloped conscientiously every morning, sometimes with Nina, but usually alone. And every afternoon she and Nina drove there, drinking the freshness of the young year--the most beautiful year of her life, she told herself, in all the exquisite maturity of her adolescence.

So she rode on, straight before her, head high, the sun striking face and firm, white throat; and in her heart laughed spring eternal, whose voiceless melody parted her lips.

Breezes blowing from beds of iris quickened her breath with their perfume; she saw the tufted lilacs sway in the wind, and the streamers of mauve-tinted wistaria swinging, all a-glisten with golden bees; she saw a crimson cardinal winging through the foliage, and amorous tanagers flas.h.i.+ng like scarlet flames athwart the pines.

From rock and bridge and mouldy archway tender tendrils of living green fluttered, brus.h.i.+ng her cheeks. Beneath the thickets the under-wood world was very busy, where squirrels squatted or prowled and cunning fox-sparrows avoided the starlings and blackbirds; and the big cinnamon-tinted, speckle-breasted thrashers scuffled among last year's leaves or, balanced on some leafy spray, carolled ecstatically of this earthly paradise.

It was near Eighty-sixth Street that a girl, splendidly mounted, saluted her, and wheeling, joined her--a blond, cool-skinned, rosy-tinted, smoothly groomed girl, almost too perfectly seated, almost too flawless and supple in the perfect symmetry of face and figure.

"Upon my word," she said gaily, "you are certainly spring incarnate, Miss Erroll--the living embodiment of all this!" She swung her riding-crop in a circle and laughed, showing her perfect teeth. "But where is that faithful attendant cavalier of yours this morning? Is he so grossly material that he prefers Wall Street, as does my good lord and master?"

"Do you mean Gerald?" asked Eileen innocently, "or Captain Selwyn?"

"Oh, either," returned Rosamund airily; "a girl should have something masculine to talk to on a morning like this. Failing that she should have some pleasant memories of indiscretions past and others to come, D.V.; at least one little souvenir to repent--smilingly. Oh, la! Oh, me!

All these wretched birds a-courting and I b.u.mping along on Dobbin, lacking even my own Gilpin! Shall we gallop?"

Eileen nodded.

When at length they pulled up along the reservoir, Eileen's hair had rebelled as usual and one bright strand eurled like a circle of ruddy light across her cheek; but Rosamund drew bridle as immaculate as ever and coolly inspected her companion.

"What gorgeous hair," she said, staring. "It's worth a coronet, you know--if you ever desire one."

"I don't," said the girl, laughing and attempting to bring the insurgent curl under discipline.

"I dare say you're right; coronets are out of vogue among us now. It's the fas.h.i.+on to marry our own good people. By the way, you are continuing to astonish the town, I hear."

"What do you mean, Mrs. Fane?"

"Why, first it was Sudbury, then Draymore, and how everybody says that Boots--"

"Boots!" repeated Miss Erroll blankly, then laughed deliciously.

"Poor, poor Boots! Did they say _that_ about him? Oh, it really is too bad, Mrs. Fane; it is certainly horridly impertinent of people to say such things. My only consolation is that Boots won't care; and if he doesn't, why should I?"

Rosamund nodded, crossing her crop.

"At first, though, I did care," continued the girl. "I was so ashamed that people should gossip whenever a man was trying to be nice to me--"

"Pooh! It's always the men's own faults. Don't you suppose the martyr's silence is noisier than a shriek of pain from the house-tops? I know--a little about men," added Rosamund modestly, "and they invariably say to themselves after a final rebuff: 'Now, I'll be patient and brave and I'll bear with n.o.ble dignity this cataclysm which has knocked the world galley-west for me and loosened the moon in its socket and spoiled the symmetry of the sun.' And they go about being so conspicuously brave that any debutante can tell what hurts them."

Eileen was still laughing, but not quite at her ease--the theme being too personal to suit her. In fact, there usually seemed to be too much personality in Rosamund's conversation--a certain artificial indifference to convention, which she, Eileen, did not feel any desire to disregard. For the elements of reticence and of delicacy were inherent in her; the training of a young girl had formalised them into rules. But since her debut she had witnessed and heard so many violations of convention that now she philosophically accepted such, when they came from her elders, merely reserving her own convictions in matters of personal taste and conduct.

For a while, as they rode, Rosamund was characteristically amusing, sailing blandly over the shoals of scandal, though Eileen never suspected it--wittily gay at her own expense, as well as at others, flitting airily from topic to topic on the wings of a self-a.s.surance that becomes some women if they know when to stop. But presently the mischievous perversity in her bubbled up again; she was tired of being good; she had often meant to try the effect of a gentle shock on Miss Erroll; and, besides, she wondered just how much truth there might be in the unpleasantly persistent rumour of the girl's unannounced engagement to Selwyn.

"It _would_ be amusing, wouldn't it?" she asked with guileless frankness; "but, of course, it is not true--this report of their reconciliation."

"Whose reconciliation?" asked Miss Erroll innocently.

"Why, Alixe Ruthven and Captain Selwyn. Everybody is discussing it, you know."

"Reconciled? I don't understand," said Eileen, astonished. "They can't be; how can--"

"But it _would_ be amusing, wouldn't it? and she could very easily get rid of Jack Ruthven--any woman could. So if they really mean to remarry--"

The girl stared, breathless, astounded, bolt upright in her saddle.

"Oh!" she protested, while the hot blood mantled throat and cheek, "it is wickedly untrue. How could such a thing be true, Mrs. Fane! It is--is so senseless--"

"That is what I say," nodded Rosamund; "it's so perfectly senseless that it's amusing--even if they have become such amazingly good friends again. _I_ never believed there was anything seriously sentimental in the situation; and their renewed interest in each other is quite the most frankly sensible way out of any awkwardness," she added cordially.

Miserably uncomfortable, utterly unable to comprehend, the girl rode on in silence, her ears ringing with Rosamund's words. And Rosamund, riding beside her, cool, blond, and cynically amused, continued the theme with admirable pretence of indifference:

"It's a pity that ill-natured people are for ever discussing them; and it makes me indignant, because I've always been very fond of Alixe Ruthven, and I am positive that she does _not_ correspond with Captain Selwyn. A girl in her position would be crazy to invite suspicion by doing the things they say she is doing--"

"Don't, Mrs. Fane, please, don't!" stammered Eileen; "I--I really can't listen. I simply will not!" Then bewildered, hurt, and blindly confused as she was, the instinct to defend flashed up--though from what she was defending him she did not realise: "It is utterly untrue!" she exclaimed hotly--"all that yo--all that _they_ say!--whoever they are--whatever they mean. I cannot understand it--I don't understand, and I will not!

Nor will _he_!" she added with a scornful conviction that disconcerted Rosamund; "for if you knew him as I do, Mrs. Fane, you would never, never have spoken as you have."

Mrs. Fane relished neither the nave rebuke nor the intimation that her own acquaintance with Selwyn was so limited; and least of all did she relish the implied intimacy between this red-haired young girl and Captain Selwyn.

"Dear Miss Erroll," she said blandly, "I spoke as I did only to a.s.sure you that I, also, disregard such malicious gossip--"