The Younger Set

His pretty wife laughed and dropped one knee over the other, leaning back to watch him finish his good-night cigarette. After a moment her face grew grave, and she bent forward.

"Speaking of Rosamund a moment ago reminds me of something else she wrote—it's about Alixe. Have you heard anything?"

"Not a word," said Austin, with a frank scowl, "and don't want to."

"It's only this—that Alixe is ill. Nobody seems to know what the matter is; nobody has seen her. But she's at Clifton, with a couple of nurses, and Rosamund heard rumours that she is very ill indeed. . . . People go to Clifton for shattered nerves, you know."

"Yes; for bridge-fidgets, neurosis, pip, and the various jumps that originate in the simpler social circles. What's the particular matter with her? Too many cocktails? Or a dearth of grand slams?"

"You are brutal, Austin. Besides, I don't know. She's had a perfectly dreary life with her husband. . . . I—I can't forget how fond I was of her in spite of what she did to Phil. . . . Besides, I'm beginning to be certain that it was not entirely her fault."

"What? Do you think Phil—"

"No, no, no! Don't be an utter idiot. All I mean to say is that Alixe was always nervous and high-strung; odd at times; eccentric—more than merely eccentric—"

"You mean dippy?"

"Oh, Austin, you're horrid. I mean that there is mental trouble in that family. You have heard of it as well as I; you know her father died of it—"

"The usual defence in criminal cases," observed Austin, flicking his cigarette-end into the grate. "I'm sorry, dear, that Alixe has the jumps; hope she'll get over 'em. But as for pretending I've any use for her, I can't and don't and won't. She spoiled life for the best man I know; she kicked his reputation into a cocked hat, and he, with his chivalrous Selwyn conscience, let her do it. I did like her once; I don't like her now, and that's natural and it winds up the matter. Dear friend, shall we, perhaps, to bed presently our way wend—yess?"

"Yes, dear; but you are not very charitable about Alixe. And I tell you I've my own ideas about her illness—especially as she is at Clifton. . . . I wonder where her little beast of a husband is?"

But Austin only yawned and looked at the toes of his slippers, and then longingly at the pillows.

Had Nina known it, the husband of Mrs. Ruthven, whom she had characterised so vividly, was at that very moment seated in a private card-room at the Stuyvesant Club with Sanxon Orchil, George Fane, and Bradley Harmon; and the game had been bridge, as usual, and had gone very heavily against him.

Several things had gone against Mr. Ruthven recently; for one thing, he was beginning to realise that he had made a vast mistake in mixing himself up in any transactions with Neergard.

When he, at Neergard's cynical suggestion, had consented to exploit his own club—the Siowitha—and had consented to resign from it to do so, he had every reason to believe that Neergard meant to either mulct them heavily or buy them out. In either case, having been useful to Neergard, his profits from the transaction would have been considerable.

But, even while he was absorbed in figuring them up—and he needed the money, as usual—Neergard coolly informed him of his election to the club, and Ruthven, thunder-struck, began to perceive the depth of the underground mole tunnels which Neergard had dug to undermine and capture the stronghold which had now surrendered to him.

Rage made him ill for a week; but there was nothing to do about it. He had been treacherous to his club and to his own caste, and Neergard knew it—and knew perfectly well that Ruthven dared not protest—dared not even whimper.

Then Neergard began to use Ruthven when he needed him; and he began to permit himself to win at cards in Ruthven's house—a thing he had not dared to do before. He also permitted himself more ease and freedom in that house—a sort of intimacy sans façon—even a certain jocularity. He also gave himself the privilege of inviting the Ruthvens on board the Niobrara; and Ruthven went, furious at being forced to stamp with his open approval an episode which made Neergard a social probability.

How it happened that Rosamund divined something of the situation is not quite clear; but she always had a delicate nose for anything not intended for her, and the thing amused her immensely, particularly because what viciousness had been so long suppressed in Neergard was now tentatively making itself apparent in his leering ease among women he so recently feared.

This, also, was gall and wormwood to Ruthven, so long the official lap-dog of the very small set he kennelled with; and the women of that set were perverse enough to find Neergard amusing, and his fertility in contriving new extravagances for them interested these people, whose only interest had always been centred in themselves.

Meanwhile, Neergard had almost finished with Gerald—he had only one further use for him; and as his social success became more pronounced with the people he had crowded in among, he became bolder and more insolent, no longer at pains to mole-tunnel toward the object desired, no longer overcareful about his mask. And one day he asked the boy very plainly why he had never invited him to meet his sister. And he got an answer that he never forgot.

And all the while Ruthven squirmed under the light but steadily inflexible pressure of the curb which Neergard had slipped on him so deftly; he had viewed with indifference Gerald's boyish devotion to his wife, which was even too open and naïve to be of interest to those who witnessed it. But he had not counted on Neergard's sudden hatred of Gerald; and the first token of that hatred fell upon the boy like a thunderbolt when Neergard whispered to Ruthven, one night at the Stuyvesant Club, and Ruthven, exasperated, had gone straight home, to find his wife in tears, and the boy clumsily attempting to comfort her, both her hands in his.

"Perhaps," said Ruthven coldly, "you have some plausible explanation for this sort of thing. If you haven't, you'd better trump up one together, and I'll send you my attorney to hear it. In that event," he added, "you'd better leave your joint address when you find a more convenient house than mine."

As a matter of fact, he had really meant nothing more than the threat and the insult, the situation permitting him a heavier hold upon his wife and a new grip on Gerald in case he ever needed him; but threat and insult were very real to the boy, and he knocked Mr. Ruthven flat on his back—the one thing required to change that gentleman's pretence to deadly earnest.

Ruthven scrambled to his feet; Gerald did it again; and, after that, Mr. Ruthven prudently remained prone during the delivery of a terse but concise opinion of him expressed by Gerald.

After Gerald had gone, Ruthven opened first one eye, then the other, then his mouth, and finally sat up; and his wife, who had been curiously observing him, smiled.

"It is strange," she said serenely, "that I never thought of that method. I wonder why I never thought of it," lazily stretching her firm young arms and glancing casually at their symmetry and smooth-skinned strength. "Go into your own quarters," she added, as he rose, shaking with fury: "I've endured the last brutality I shall ever suffer from you."

She dropped her folded hands into her lap, gazing coolly at him; but there was a glitter in her eyes which arrested his first step toward her.

"I think," she said, "that you mean my ruin. Well, we began it long ago, and I doubt if I have anything of infamy to learn, thanks to my thorough schooling as your wife. . . . But knowledge is not necessarily practice, and it happens that I have not cared to commit the particular indiscretion so fashionable among the friends you have surrounded me with. I merely mention this for your information, not because I am particularly proud of it. It is not anything to be proud of, in my case—it merely happened so; a matter, perhaps of personal taste, perhaps because of lack of opportunity; and there is a remote possibility that belated loyalty to a friend I once betrayed may have kept me personally chaste in this rotting circus circle you have driven me around in, harnessed to your vicious caprice, dragging the weight of your corruption—"

She laughed. "I had no idea that I could be so eloquent, Jack. But my mind has become curiously clear during the last year—strangely and unusually limpid and precise. Why, my poor friend, every plot of yours and of your friends—every underhand attempt to discredit and injure me has been perfectly apparent to me. You supposed that my headaches, my outbursts of anger, my wretched nights, passed in tears—and the long, long days spent kneeling in the ashes of dead memories—all these you supposed had weakened—perhaps unsettled—my mind. . . . You lie if you deny it, for you have had doctors watching me for months. . . . You didn't know I was aware of it, did you? But I was, and I am. . . . And you told them that my father died of—of brain trouble, you coward!"

Still he stood there, jaw loose, gazing at her as though fascinated; and she smiled and settled deeper in her chair, framing the gilded foliations of the back with her beautiful arms.

"We might as well understand one another now," she said languidly. "If you mean to get rid of me, there is no use in attempting to couple my name with that of any man; first, because it is untrue, and you not only know it, but you know you can't prove it. There remains the cowardly method you have been nerving yourself to attempt, never dreaming that I was aware of your purpose."

A soft, triumphant little laugh escaped her. There was something almost childish in her delight at outwitting him, and, very slowly, into his worn and faded eyes a new expression began to dawn—the flickering stare of suspicion. And in it the purely personal impression of rage and necessity of vengeance subsided; he eyed her intently, curiously, and with a cool persistence which finally began to irritate her.

"What a credulous fool you are," she said, "to build your hopes of a separation on any possible mental disability of mine."

He stood a moment without answering, then quietly seated himself. The suspicious glimmer in his faded eyes had become the concentration of a curiosity almost apprehensive.

"Go on," he said; "what else?"

"What do you mean?"

"You have been saying several things—about doctors whom I have set to watch you—for a year or more."

"Do you deny it?" she retorted angrily.

"No—no, I do not deny anything. But—who are these doctors—whom you have noticed?"

"I don't know who they are," she replied impatiently. "I've seen them often enough—following me on the street, or in public places—watching me. They are everywhere—you have them well paid, evidently; I suppose you can afford it. But you are wasting your time."

"You think so?"

"Yes!" she cried in a sudden violence that startled him, "you are wasting your time! And so am I—talking to you—enduring your personal affronts and brutal sneers. Sufficient for you that I know my enemies, and that I am saner, thank God, than any of them!" She flashed a look of sudden fury at him, and rose from her chair. He also rose with a promptness that bordered on precipitation.

"For the remainder of the spring and summer," she said, "I shall make my plans regardless of you. I shall not go to Newport; you are at liberty to use the house there as you choose. And as for this incident with Gerald, you had better not pursue it any further. Do you understand?"

He nodded, dropping his hands into his coat-pockets.

"Now you may go," she said coolly.

He went—not, however, to his room, but straight to the house of the fashionable physician who ministered to wealth with an unction and success that had permitted him, in summer time, to occupy his own villa at Newport and dispense further ministrations when requested.

On the night of the conjugal conference between Nina Gerard and her husband—and almost at the same hour—Jack Ruthven, hard hit in the card-room of the Stuyvesant Club, sat huddled over the table, figuring up what sort of checks he was to draw to the credit of George Fane and Sanxon Orchil.

Matters had been going steadily against him for some time—almost everything, in fact, except the opinions of several physicians in a matter concerning his wife. For, in that scene between them in early spring, his wife had put that into his head which had never before been there—suspicion of her mental soundness.