The Business of Life
She nestled into her fire-warmed bath-robe and sat pensively fitting and refitting her bare feet into her slippers.
Men were odd; alike and unalike. Since her father's death, she had had to be careful. Wealthy gentlemen, old and young, amateurs of armour, ivories, porcelains, jewels, all clients of her father, had sometimes sent for her too many times on too many pretexts; and sometimes their paternal manner toward her had made her uncomfortable. Desboro was of that same caste. Perhaps he was not like them otherwise.
When she had bathed and dressed, she dined alone, not having any invitation for the evening. After dinner she talked on the telephone to her little friend, Cynthia Lessler, whose late father's business had been to set jewels and repair antique watches and clocks. Incidentally, he drank and chased his daughter about with a hatchet until she fled for good one evening, which afforded him an opportunity to drink himself very comfortably to death in six months.
"Hello, Cynthia!" called Jacqueline, softly.
"Hello! Is it you, Jacqueline, dear?"
"Yes. Don't you want to come over and eat chocolates and gossip?"
"Can't do it. I'm just starting for the hall."
"I thought you'd finished rehearsing."
"I've got to be on hand all the same. How are you, sweetness, anyway?"
"Blooming, my dear. I'm crazy to tell you about my good luck. I have a splendid commission with which to begin the new year."
"Good for you! What is it?"
"I can't tell you yet" – laughingly – "it's confidential business – "
"Oh, I know. Some old, fat man wants you to catalogue his collection."
"No! He isn't fat, either. You are the limit, Cynthia!"
"All the same, look out for him," retorted Cynthia. "I know man and his kind. Office experience is a liberal education; the theatre a post-graduate course. Are you coming to the dance to-morrow night?"
"Yes. I suppose the usual people will be there?"
"Some new ones. There's an awfully good-looking newspaper man from Yonkers. He has a car in town, too."
Something – some new and unaccustomed impatience – she did not understand exactly what – prompted Jacqueline to say scornfully:
"His name is Eddie, isn't it?"
"No. Why do you ask?"
A sudden vision of Desboro, laughing at her under every word of an unsmiling and commonplace conversation, annoyed her.
"Oh, Cynthia, dear, every good-looking man we meet is usually named Ed and comes from places like Yonkers."
Cynthia, slightly perplexed, said slangily that she didn't "get" her; and Jacqueline admitted that she herself didn't know what she had meant.
They gossiped for a while, then Cynthia ended:
"I'll see you to-morrow night, won't I? And listen, you little white mouse, I get what you mean by 'Eddie'."
"Do you?"
"Yes. Shall I see you at the dance?"
"Yes, and 'Eddie,' too. Good-bye."
Jacqueline laughed again, then shivered slightly and hung up the receiver.
Back before her bedroom fire once more, Grenville's volume on ancient armour across her knees, she turned the illuminated pages absently, and gazed into the flames. What she saw among them apparently did not amuse her, for after a while she frowned, shrugged her shoulders, and resumed her reading.
But the XV century knights, in their gilded or silvered harness, had Desboro's lithe figure, and the lifted vizors of their helmets always disclosed his face. Shields emblazoned with quarterings, plumed armets, the golden morions, banner, pennon, embroidered surtout, and the brilliant trappings of battle horse and palfry, became only a confused blur of colour under her eyes, framing a face that looked back at her out of youthful eyes, marred by the shadow of a wisdom she knew about – alas – but did not know.
The man of whom she was thinking had walked back to the club through a driving rain, still under the fascination of the interview, still excited by its novelty and by her unusual beauty. He could not quite account for his exhilaration either, because, in New York, beauty is anything but unusual among the hundreds of thousands of young women who work for a living – for that is one of the seven wonders of the city – and it is the rule rather than the exception that, in this new race which is evolving itself out of an unknown amalgam, there is scarcely a young face in which some trace of it is not apparent at a glance.
Which is why, perhaps, he regarded his present exhilaration humorously, or meant to; perhaps why he chose to think of her as "Stray Lock," instead of Miss Nevers, and why he repeated confidently to himself: "She's thin as a Virgin by the 'Master of the Death of Mary'." And yet that haunting expression of her face – the sweetness of the lips upcurled at the corners – the surprising and lovely revelation of her laughter – these impressions persisted as he swung on through the rain, through the hurrying throngs just released from shops and great department stores, and onward up the wet and glimmering avenue to his destination, which was the Olympian Club.
In the cloak room there were men he knew, being divested of wet hats and coats; in reading room, card room, lounge, billiard hall, squash court, and gymnasium, men greeted him with that friendly punctiliousness which indicates popularity; from the splashed edge of the great swimming pool men hailed him; clerks and club servants saluted him smilingly as he sauntered about through the place, still driven into motion by an inexplicable and unaccustomed restlessness. Cairns discovered him coming out of the billiard room:
"Have a snifter?" he suggested affably. "I'll find Ledyard and play you 'nigger' or 'rabbit' afterward, if you like."
Desboro laid a hand on his friend's shoulder:
"Jack, I've a business engagement at Silverwood to-morrow, and I believe I'd better go home to-night."
"Heavens! You've just been there! And what about the shooting trip?"
"I can join you day after to-morrow."
"Oh, come, Jim, are you going to spoil our card quartette on the train? Reggie Ledyard will kill you."
"He might, at that," said Desboro pleasantly. "But I've got to be at Silverwood to-morrow. It's a matter of business, Jack."
"You and business! Lord! The amazing alliance! What are you going to do – sell a few superannuated Westchester hens at auction? By heck! You're a fake farmer and a pitiable piker, that's what you are. And Stuyve Van Alstyne had a wire to-night that the ducks and geese are coming in to the guns by millions – "
"Go ahead and shoot 'em, then! I'll probably be along in time to pick up the game for you."
"You won't go with us?"
"Not to-morrow. A man can't neglect his own business every day in the year."
"Then you won't be in Baltimore for the Assembly, and you won't go to Georgia, and you won't do a thing that you expected to. Oh, you're the gay, quick-change artist! And don't tell me it's business, either," he added suspiciously.
"I do tell you exactly that."
"You mean to say that nothing except sheer, dry business keeps you here?"
The colour slowly settled under Desboro's cheek bones:
"It's a matter with enough serious business in it to keep me busy to-morrow – "
"Selecting pearls? In which show and which row does she cavort, dear friend – speaking in an exquisitely colloquial metaphor!"
Desboro shrugged: "I'll play you a dozen games of rabbit before we dress for dinner. Come on, you suspicious sport!"
"Which show?" repeated Cairns obstinately. He did not mean it literally, footlight affairs being unfashionable. But Desboro's easy popularity with women originated continual gossip, friendly and otherwise; and his name was often connected harmlessly with that of some attractive woman in his own class – like Mrs. Clydesdale, for instance – and sometimes with some pretty unknown in some class not specified. But the surmise was idle, and the gossip vague, and neither the one nor the other disturbed Desboro, who continued to saunter through life keeping his personal affairs pleasantly to himself.
He linked his arm in Cairns's and guided him toward the billiard room. But there were no tables vacant for rabbit, which absurd game, being hard on the cloth, was limited to two decrepit pool tables.
So Cairns again suggested his celebrated "snifter," and then the young men separated, Desboro to go across the street to his elaborate rooms and dress, already a little less interested in his business trip to Silverwood, already regretting the gay party bound South for two weeks of pleasure.
And when he had emerged from a cold shower which, with the exception of sleep, is the wisest counsellor in the world, now that he stood in fresh linen and evening dress on the threshold of another night, he began to wonder at his late exhilaration.
To him the approach of every night was always fraught with mysterious possibilities, and with a belief in Chance forever new. Adventure dawned with the electric lights; opportunity awoke with the evening whistles warning all labourers to rest. Opportunity for what? He did not know; he had not even surmised; but perhaps it was that something, that subtle, evanescent, volatile something for which the world itself waits instinctively, and has been waiting since the first day dawned. Maybe it is happiness for which the world has waited with patient instinct uneradicated; maybe it is death; and after all, the two may be inseparable.
Desboro, looking into the coals of a dying fire, heard the clock striking the hour. The night was before him – those strange hours in which anything could happen before another sun gilded the sky pinnacles of the earth.
Another hour sounded and found him listless, absent-eyed, still gazing into a dying fire.
CHAPTER III
At eleven o'clock the next morning Miss Nevers had not arrived at Silverwood.
It was still raining hard, the brown Westchester fields, the leafless trees, hedges, paths, roads, were soaked; pools stood in hollows with the dead grass awash; ditches brimmed, river and brook ran amber riot, and alder swamps widened into lakes.
The chances were now that she would not come at all. Desboro had met both morning trains, but she was not visible, and all the passengers had departed leaving him wandering alone along the dripping platform.
For a while he stood moodily on the village bridge beyond, listening to the noisy racket of the swollen brook; and after a little it occurred to him that there was laughter in the noises of the water, like the mirth of the gods mocking him.
"Laugh on, high ones!" he said. "I begin to believe myself the ass that I appear to you."
Presently he wandered back to the station platform, where he idled about, playing with a stray and nondescript dog or two, and caressing the station-master's cat; then, when he had about decided to get into his car and go home, it suddenly occurred to him that he might telephone to New York for information. And he did so, and learned that Miss Nevers had departed that morning on business, for a destination unknown, and would not return before evening.
Also, the station-master informed him that the morning express now deposited passengers at Silverwood Station, on request – an innovation of which he had not before heard; and this put him into excellent spirits.
"Aha!" he said to himself, considerably elated. "Perhaps I'm not such an ass as I appear. Let the high gods laugh!"
So he lighted a cigarette, played with the wastrel dogs some more, flattered the cat till she nearly rubbed her head off against his legs, took a small and solemn child onto his knee and presented it with a silver dollar, while its overburdened German mother publicly nourished another.
"You are really a remarkable child," he gravely assured the infant on his knee. "You possess a most extraordinary mind!" – the child not having uttered a word or betrayed a vestige of human expression upon its slightly soiled features.
Presently the near whistle of the Connecticut Express brought him to his feet. He lifted the astonishingly gifted infant and walked out; and when the express rolled past and stopped, he set it on the day-coach platform beside its stolid parent, and waved to it an impressive adieu.
At the same moment, descending from the train, a tall young girl, in waterproofs, witnessed the proceedings, recognised Desboro, and smiled at the little ceremony taking place.
"Yours?" she inquired, as, hat off, hand extended, he came forward to welcome her – and the next moment blushed at her impulsive informality.
"Oh, all kids seem to be mine, somehow or other," he said. "I'm awfully glad you came. I was afraid you wouldn't."
"Why?"
"Because I didn't believe you really existed, for one thing. And then the weather – "
"Do you suppose mere weather could keep me from the Desboro collection? You have much to learn about me."
"I'll begin lessons at once," he said gaily, "if you don't mind giving them. Do you?"
She smiled non-committally, and looked around her at the departing vehicles.
"We have a limousine waiting for us behind the station," he said. "It's five muddy miles."
"I had been wondering all the way up in the train just how I was to get to Silverwood – "
"You didn't suppose I'd leave you to find your way, did you?"
"Business people don't expect limousines," she said, with an unmistakable accent that sounded priggish even to herself – so prim, indeed, that he laughed outright; and she finally laughed, too.
"This is very jolly, isn't it?" he remarked, as they sped away through the rain.
She conceded that it was.
"It's going to be a most delightful day," he predicted.
She thought it was likely to be a busy day.
"And delightful, too," he insisted politely.
"Why particularly delightful, Mr. Desboro?"
"I thought you were looking forward with keen pleasure to your work in the Desboro collection!"
She caught a latent glimmer of mischief in his eye, and remained silent, not yet quite certain that she liked this constant running fire of words that always seemed to conceal a hint of laughter at her expense.
Had they been longer acquainted, and on a different footing, she knew that whatever he said would have provoked a response in kind from her. But friendship is not usually born from a single business interview; nor is it born perfect, like a fairy ring, over night. And it was only last night, she made herself remember, that she first laid eyes on Desboro. Yet it seemed curious that whatever he said seemed to awaken in her its echo; and, though she knew it was an absurd idea, the idea persisted that she already began to understand this young man better than she had ever understood any other of his sex.
He was talking now at random, idly but agreeably, about nothing in particular. She, muffled in the fur robe, looked out through the limousine windows into the rain, and saw brown fields set with pools in every furrow, and squares of winter wheat, intensely green.
And now the silver birch woods, which had given the house its name, began to appear as outlying clumps across the hills; and in a few moments the car swung into a gateway under groves of solemnly-dripping Norway spruces, then up a wide avenue, lined with ranks of leafless, hardwood trees and thickets of laurel and rhododendron, and finally stopped before a house made of grayish-brown stone, in the rather inoffensive architecture of early eighteen hundred.
Mrs. Quant, in best bib and tucker, received them in the hallway, having been instructed by Desboro concerning her attitude toward the expected guest. But when she became aware of the slender youth of the girl, she forgot her sniffs and misgivings, and she waddled, and bobbed, and curtsied, overflowing with a desire to fondle, and cherish, and instruct, which only fear of Desboro choked off.
But as soon as Jacqueline had followed her to the room assigned, and had been divested of wet outer-clothing, and served with hot tea, Mrs. Quant became loquacious and confidential concerning her own personal ailments and sorrows, and the history and misfortunes of the Desboro family.
Jacqueline wished to decline the cup of tea, but Mrs. Quant insisted; and the girl yielded.
"Air you sure you feel well, Miss Nevers?" she asked anxiously.
"Why, of course."
"Don't be too sure," said Mrs. Quant ominously. "Sometimes them that feels bestest is sickest. I've seen a sight of sickness in my day, dearie – typod, mostly. You ain't never had typod, now, hev you?"
"Typhoid?"
"Yes'm, typod!"
"No, I never did."
"Then you take an old woman's advice, Miss Nevers, and don't you go and git it!"
Jacqueline promised gravely; but Mrs. Quant was now fairly launched on her favourite topic.
"I've been forty-two years in this place – and Quant – my man – he was head farmer here when he was took. Typod, it was, dearie – and you won't never git it if you'll listen to me – and Quant, a man that never quarreled with his vittles, but he was for going off without 'em that morning. Sez he, 'Cassie, I don't feel good this mornin'!' – and a piece of pie and a pork chop layin' there onto his plate. 'My vittles don't set right,' sez he; 'I ain't a mite peckish.' Sez I, 'Quant, you lay right down, and don't you stir a inch! You've gone and got a mild form of typod,' sez I, knowing about sickness as I allus had a gift, my father bein' a natural bone-setter. And those was my very words, dearie, 'a mild form of typod.' And I was right and he was took. And when folks ain't well, it's mostly that they've got a mild form of typod which some call malairy – "
There was no stopping her; Jacqueline tasted her hot tea and listened sympathetically to that woman of many sorrows. And, sipping her tea, she was obliged to assist at the obsequies of Quant, the nativity of young Desboro, the dissolution of his grandparents and parents, and many, many minor details, such as the freezing of water-pipes in 1907, the menace of the chestnut blight, mysterious maladies which had affected cattle and chickens on the farm – every variety of death, destruction, dissolution, and despondency that had been Mrs. Quant's portion to witness.
And how she gloried in detailing her dismal career; and presently pessimistic prophecies for the future became plainer as her undammed eloquence flowed on:
"And Mr. James, he ain't well, neither," she said in a hoarse whisper. "He don't know it, and he won't listen to me, dearie, but I know he's got a mild form of typod – he's that unwell the mornings when he's been out late in the city. Say what you're a mind to, typod is typod! And if you h'ain't got it you're likely to git it most any minute; but he won't swaller the teas and broths and suffusions I bring him, and he'll be took like everybody else one of these days, dearie – which he wouldn't if he'd listen to me – "
"Mrs. Quant," came Desboro's voice from the landing.
"Y – yes, sir," stammered that guilty and agitated Cassandra.
Jacqueline set aside her teacup and came to the stairs; their glances met in the suppressed amusement of mutual comprehension, and he conducted her to the hallway below, where a big log fire was blazing.
"What was it – death, destruction, and general woe, as usual?" he asked.
"And typod," she whispered. "It appears that you have it!"
"Poor old soul! She means all right; but imagine me here with her all day, dodging infusions and broths and red flannel! Warm your hands at the blaze, Miss Nevers, and I'll find the armoury keys. It will be a little colder in there."
She spread her hands to the flames, conscious of his subtle change of manner toward her, now that she was actually under his roof – and liked him for it – not in the least surprised that she was comprehending still another phase of this young man's most interesting personality.
For, without reasoning, her slight misgivings concerning him were vanishing; instinct told her she might even permit herself a friendlier manner, and she looked up smilingly when he came back swinging a bunch of keys.
"These belong to the Quant," he explained, " – honest old soul! Every gem and ivory and lump of jade in the collection is at her mercy, for here are the keys to every case. Now, Miss Nevers, what do you require? Pencil and pad?"
"I have my note-book, thanks – a new one in your honour."
He said he was flattered and led the way through a wide corridor to the eastern wing; unlocked a pair of massive doors, and swung them wide. And, beside him, she walked into the armoury of the famous Desboro collection.
Straight ahead of her, paved with black marble, lay a lane through a double rank of armed and mounted men in complete armour; and she could scarcely suppress a little cry of surprise and admiration.
"This is magnificent!" she exclaimed; and he saw her cheeks brighten, and her breath coming faster.
"It is fine," he said soberly.
"It is, indeed, Mr. Desboro! That is a noble array of armour. I feel like some legendary princess of long ago, passing her chivalry in review as I move between these double ranks. What a wonderful collection! All Spanish and Milanese mail, isn't it? Your grandfather specialised?"
"I believe he did. I don't know very much about the collection, technically."
"Don't you care for it?"
"Why, yes – more, perhaps, than I realised – now that you are actually here to take it away."
"But I'm not going to put it into a magic pocket and flee to New York with it!"
She spoke gaily, and his face, which had become a little grave, relaxed into its habitual expression of careless good humour.
They had slowly traversed the long lane, and now, turning, came back through groups of men-at-arms, pikemen, billmen, arquebussiers, crossbowmen, archers, halbardiers, slingers – all the multitudinous arms of a polyglot service, each apparently equipped with his proper weapon and properly accoutred for trouble.
Once or twice she glanced at the trophies aloft on the walls, every group bunched behind its shield and radiating from it under the drooping remnants of banners emblazoned with arms, crests, insignia, devices, and quarterings long since forgotten, except by such people as herself.
She moved gracefully, leisurely, pausing now and then before some panoplied manikin, Desboro sauntering beside her. Now and then she stopped to inspect an ancient piece of ordnance, wonderfully wrought and chased, now and then halted on tip-toe to lift some slitted visor and peer into the dusky cavern of the helmet, where a painted face stared back at her out of painted eyes.
"Who scours all this mail?" she asked.
"Our old armourer. My grandfather trained him. But he's very old and rheumatic now, and I don't let him exert himself. I think he sleeps all winter, like a woodchuck, and fishes all summer."
"You ought to have another armourer."
"I can't turn Michael out to starve, can I?"
She swung around swiftly: "I didn't mean that!" and saw he was laughing at her.
"I know you didn't," he said. "But I can't afford two armourers. That's the reason I'm disposing of these tin-clothed tenants of mine – to economise and cut expenses."
She moved on, evidently desiring to obtain a general impression of the task before her, now and then examining the glass-encased labels at the feet of the figures, and occasionally shaking her head. Already the errant lock curled across her cheek.
"What's the trouble?" he inquired. "Aren't these gentlemen correctly ticketed?"
"Some are not. That suit of gilded mail is not Spanish; it's German. It is not very difficult to make such a mistake sometimes."
Steam heat had been put in, but the vast hall was chilly except close to the long ranks of oxidised pipes lining the walls. They stood a moment, leaning against them and looking out across the place, all glittering with the mail-clad figures.
"I've easily three weeks' work before me among these mounted figures alone, to say nothing of the men on foot and the trophies and artillery," she said. "Do you know it is going to be rather expensive for you, Mr. Desboro?"
This did not appear to disturb him.
"Because," she went on, "a great many mistakes have been made in labelling, and some mistakes in assembling the complete suits of mail and in assigning weapons. For example, that mounted man in front of you is wearing tilting armour and a helmet that doesn't belong to it. That's a childish mistake."
