The Business of Life

"Yes."

A moment later Farris announced luncheon. A swarm of cats greeted them at the door, purring and waiving multi-coloured tails, and escorted them to the table, from whence they knew came the delectable things calculated to satisfy the inner cat.

CHAPTER VIII

The countryside adjacent to Silverwood was eminently and self-consciously respectable. The fat, substantial estates still belonged to families whose forefathers had first taken title to them. There were, of course, a number of "colonial" houses, also a "colonial" inn, The Desboro Arms, built to look as genuine as possible, although only two years old, steam heated, and electric lighted.

But things "colonial" were the traditional capital of Silverwood, and its thrifty and respectable inhabitants meant to maintain the "atmosphere." To that end they had solemnly subscribed a very small sum for an inn sign to swing in front of The Desboro Arms; the wheelwright painted it; somebody fired a shotgunful of antiquity into it, and American weather was rapidly doing the rest, with a gratifying result which no degenerate European weather could have accomplished in half a century of rain and sunshine.

The majority of the mansions in Silverwood township were as inoffensively commonplace as the Desboro house. Few pre-Revolutionary structures survived; the British had burned the countryside from Major Lockwood's mansion at Pound Ridge all the way to Bedford Village and across to the Connecticut line. With few exceptions, Silverwood houses had shared the common fate when Tarleton and DeLancy galloped amuck among the Westchester hills; but here and there some sad old mansion still remained and was reverently cherished, as was also the graveyard, straggling up the hill, set with odd old headstones, upon which most remarkable cherubim smirked under a gladly permitted accumulation of lichen.

Age, thrift, substance, respectability – these were the ideals of Silverwood; and Desboro and his doings would never have been tolerated there had it not been that a forbear of his, a certain dissolute half-pay captain, had founded the community in 1680. This sacred colonial fact had been Desboro's social salvation, for which, however, he did not seem to care very much. Good women continued to be acidly civil to him on this account, and also because Silverwood House and its estates could no more be dropped from the revered galaxy of the county than could a star be cast out of their country's flag for frivolous behavior.

So worthy men endured him, and irreproachable women grieved for him, although it was rumoured that he gave parties now and then which real actresses had actually attended. Also, though he always maintained the Desboro pew in church, he never decorated it with his person. Nor could the countryside count on him socially, except at eccentric intervals when his careless, graceful presence made the Westchester gaiety seem rather stiff and pallid, and gave the thin, sour claret an unwonted edge. And another and radical incompatibility; the Desboros were the only family of Cavalier descent in the township. And deep in the hearts of Silverwood folk the Desboros had ever seemed a godless race.

Now, there had been already some gossip among the Westchester hills concerning recent doings at Silverwood House. Even when it became known that the pretty girl who sped to and fro in Desboro's limousine, between house and station, was a celebrated art expert, and was engaged in cataloguing the famous Desboro collection, God-fearing people asked each other why Desboro should find it necessary to meet her at the station in the morning, and escort her back in the evening; and whether it were actually obligatory for him to be present while the cataloguing was in progress.

Westchester womanhood was beginning to look wan and worried; substantial gentlemen gazed inquiringly at each other over the evening chess-board; several flippant young men almost winked at each other. But these latter had been accustomed to New York, and were always under suspicion in their own families.

Therefore, it was with relief and surprise that Silverwood began to observe Desboro in furs, driving a rakish runabout, and careering about Westchester with Vail, his head farmer, seated beside him, evidently intent on committing future agriculture – palpably planning for two grass-blades where only one, or a mullein, had hitherto flourished within the memory of living man.

Fertiliser in large loads was driven into the fallow fields of the Desboros; brush and hedges and fences were being put in order. People beheld these radical preliminaries during afternoon drives in their automobiles; local tradesmen reported purchases of chemicals for soil enriching, and the sale of all sorts of farm utensils to Desboro's agent.

At the Country Club all this was gravely discussed; patriarchs mentioned it over their checkers; maidens at bowls or squash or billiards listened to the exciting tale, wide-eyed; hockey, ski, or skating parties gossiped recklessly about it. The conclusion was that Desboro had already sowed his wilder oats; and the worthy community stood watching for the prodigal's return, intending to meet him while yet he was far off.

He dropped in at the Country Club one day, causing a little less flutter than a hawk in a hen-yard. Within a week he had drifted casually into the drawing-rooms of almost all his father's old friends for a cup of tea or an informal chat – or for nothing in particular except to saunter into his proper place among them with all of the Desboro grace and amiable insouciance which they had learned to tolerate but never entirely to approve or understand.

It was not quite so casually that he stopped at the Hammerton's. And he was given tea and buns by Mrs. Hammerton, perfectly unsuspicious of his motives. Her husband came rambling in from the hothouses, presently, where he spent most of his serious life in pinching back roses and chrysanthemums; and he extended to Desboro a large, flat and placid hand.

"Aunt Hannah and Daisy are out – somewhere – " he explained vaguely. "You must have passed them on the way."

"Yes, I saw Daisy in the distance, exercising an old lady," said Desboro carelessly. He did not add that the sight of Aunt Hannah marching across the Westchester horizon had inspired him with an idea.

From her lair in town, she had come hither, for no love of her nephew and his family, nor yet for Westchester, but solely for economy's bitter sake. She made such pilgrimages at intervals every year, upsetting the Hammerton household with her sarcasms, her harsh, high-keyed laughter, her hardened ways of defining the word "spade" – for Aunt Hannah was a terror that Westchester dreaded but never dreamed of ignoring, she being a wayward daughter of the sacred soil, strangely and weirdly warped from long transplanting among the gay and godless of Gotham town. And though her means, after her husband's scared soul had taken flight, were painfully attenuated, the high priests and captains among the gay and godless feared her, and she bullied them; and she and they continued to foregather from sheer tradition, but with mutual and sincere dislike. For Aunt Hannah's name would always figure among the names of certain metropolitan dowagers, dragons, gorgons, and holy harridans; always be connected with certain traditional social events as long as the old lady lived. And she meant to survive indefinitely, if she had anything to say about it.

She came in presently with Daisy Hammerton. The latter gave her hand frankly to her childhood's comrade; the former said:

"Hah! James Desboro!" very disagreeably, and started to nourish herself at once with tea and muffins.

"James Desboro," she repeated scornfully, darting a wicked glance at him where he stood smiling at her, "James Desboro, turning plow-boy in Westchester! What's the real motive? That's what interests me. I'm a bad old woman – I know it! All over paint and powder, and with too small a foot and too trim a figger to be anything except wicked. Lindley knows it; it makes his fingers tremble when he pinches crysanthemums; Susan knows it; so does Daisy. And I admit it. And that's why I'm suspicious of you, James; I'm so wicked myself. Come, now; why play the honest yokel? Eh? You good-looking good-for-nothing!"

"My motive," he said amiably, "is to make a living and learn what it feels like."

"Been stock-gambling again?"

"Yes, dear lady."

"Lose much?" she sniffed.

"Not a very great deal."

"Hah! And now you've got to raise the wind, somehow?"

He repeated, good-humouredly: "I want to make a living."

The trim little old lady darted another glance at him.

"Ha – ha!" she laughed, without giving any reason for the disagreeable burst of mirth; and started in on another muffin.

"I think," said Mr. Hammerton, vaguely, "that James will make an excellent agriculturist – "

"Excellent fiddlesticks!" observed Aunt Hannah. "He'd make a good three-card man."

Daisy Hammerton said aside to Desboro:

"Isn't she a terror!"

"Oh, she likes me!" he said, amused.

"I know she does, immensely. She makes me take her for an hour's walk every day – and I'm so tired of exercising her and listening to her – unconventional stories – about you."

"She's a bad old thing," said Desboro affectionately, and, in his natural voice: "Aren't you, Aunt Hannah? But there isn't a smarter foot, or a prettier hand, or a trimmer waist in all Gotham, is there?"

"Philanderer!" she retorted, in a high-pitched voice. "What about that Van Alstyne supper at the Santa Regina?"

"Which one?" he asked coolly. "Stuyve is always giving 'em."

"Read the Tattler!" said the old lady, seizing more muffins.

Mrs. Hammerton closed her tight lips and glanced uneasily at her daughter. Daisy sipped her tea demurely. She had read all about it, and burned the paper in her bedroom grate.

Desboro gracefully ignored the subject; the old lady laughed shrilly once or twice, and the conversation drifted toward the more decorous themes of pinching back roses and mixing plant-food, and preparing nourishment for various precocious horticultural prodigies now developing in Lindley Hammerton's hothouses.

Daisy Hammerton, a dark young girl, with superb eyes and figure, chatted unconcernedly with Desboro, making a charming winter picture in her scarlet felt hat and jacket, from which the black furs had fallen back. She went in for things violent and vigorous, and no nonsense; rode as hard as she could in such a country, played every game that demanded quick eye and flexible muscle – and, in secret, alas, wrote verses and short stories unanimously rejected by even the stodgier periodicals. But nobody suspected her of such weakness – not even her own mother.

Desboro swallowed his tea and took leave of his rose-pinching host and hostess, and their sole and lovely progeny, also, perhaps, the result of scientific concentration. Aunt Hannah retained his hand:

"Where are you going now, James?"

"Nowhere – home," he said, pretending embarrassment, which was enough to interest Aunt Hannah in the trap.

"Oh! Nowhere – home!" she mimicked him. "Where is 'nowhere home'? Somewhere out? I've a mind to go with you. What do you say to that, young man?"

"Come along," he said, a shade too promptly; and the little, bright, mink-like eyes sparkled with malice. The trap was sprung, and Aunt Hannah was in it. But she didn't yet suspect it.

"Slip on my fur coat for me," she said. "I'll take a spin with you in your runabout."

"You overwhelm me," he protested, holding up the fur coat.