The Firing Line

"And while I'm about it I want to add that, at Mrs. Ascott's suggestion—which really is my own idea—I have decided not to build all those Rhine castles, which useless notion, if I am not mistaken, originated with you. I don't want to disfigure my beautiful wilderness. Mrs. Ascott and I had a very plain talk with Hamil and we forced him to agree with us that the less he did to improve my place the better for the place. He seemed to take it good-humouredly. He left yesterday to look over Mrs. Ascott's place and plan for her a formal garden and Trianon at Pride's Hall. So he being out I wired also to Virginia and to Philip Gatewood, which will make it right—four at a table. Your brother-in-law plays a stiff game and your sister is a wonder!—five grand slams last night! But I played like a dub—I'd been riding and walking and canoeing all day with Mrs. Ascott and I was terribly sleepy.

"So come on up, Louis. I'll forgive you—but don't mind if I growl at you before Mrs. Ascott as she thinks I ought to discipline you. And, confound it, I ought to, and I will, too, if you don't look out. But I'll be devilish glad to see you.

    "Yours,
    "W. VAN BEUREN PORTLAW."

Malcourt, in his arm-chair by the open window, lay back full length, every fibre of him vibrating with laughter.

Dolly Wilming at the piano continued running over the pretty firework melodies of last season's metropolitan success—a success built entirely on a Viennese waltz, the air of which might have been taken from almost any popular Yankee hymn-book.

He folded Portlaw's letter and pocketed it; and lay for a while under the open window, enjoying his own noiseless mirth, gaily accompanied by Dolly Winning's fresh, clear singing or her capricious improvising.

Begonias bloomed in a riotous row on the sill, nodding gently in the river-wind which also fluttered the flags and sails on yacht, schooner, and sloop under the wall of the Palisades.

That day the North River was more green than blue—like the eyes of a girl he knew; summer, crowned and trimmed with green, brooded on the long rock rampart across the stream. Turquoise patches of sky and big clouds, leafy parapets, ships passing to the sea; and in mid-stream an anchored island of steel painted white and buff, bristling with long thin guns, the flower-like flag rippling astern; another battle-ship farther north; another, another; and farther still the white tomb—unlovely mansion of the dead—on outpost duty above the river, guarding with the warning of its dead glories the unlovely mansions of the living ranged along the most noble terrace in the world.

And everywhere to north, south, and east, the endless waste of city, stark, clean-cut, naked alike of tree and of art, unsoftened even by the haze of its own exudations—everywhere the window-riddled blocks of oblongs and cubes gridironed with steel rails—New York in all the painted squalor of its Pueblo splendour.

"You say you are doing well in everything except French and Italian?"

Dolly, still humming to her own accompaniment, looked over her shoulder and nodded.

"Well, how the dickens are you ever going to sing at either Opera or on the road or anywhere if you don't learn French and Italian?"

"I'm trying, Louis."

"Go ahead; let's hear something, then."

And she sang very intelligently and in excellent taste:

"Pendant que, plein d'amour, j'expire à votre porte,
Vous dormez d'un paisible sommeil—"

and turned questioningly to him.

"That's all right; try another."

So, serenely obedient, she sang:

"Chantons Margot, nos amours,
Margot leste et bien tournée—"

"Well, I don't see anything the matter with your French," he muttered.

The girl coloured with pleasure, resting pensively above the key-board; but he had no further requests to make and presently she swung around on the piano-stool, looking at him.

"You sing all right; you are doing your part—as far as I can discover."

"There is nothing for you to discover that I have not told you," she said gravely. In her manner there was a subdued dignity which he had noticed recently—something of the self-confidence of the very young and unspoiled—which, considering all things, he could not exactly account for.

"Does that doddering old dancing-master of yours behave himself?"

"Yes—since you spoke to him. Mr. Bulder came to the school again."

"What did you say to him?"

"I told him that you wouldn't let me sing in 'The Inca.'"

"And what did Bulder say?"

"He was persistent but perfectly respectful; asked if he might confer with you. He wrote to you I think, didn't he?"

Malcourt nodded and lighted a cigarette.

"Dolly," he said, "do you want to sing Chaské in 'The Inca' next winter?"

"Yes, I do—if you think it is all right." She added in a low voice: "I want to do what will please you, Louis."

"I don't know whether it's the best thing to do, but—you may have to." He laid his cigarette in a saucer, watched the smoke curling ceilingward, and said as though to himself:

"I should like to be certain that you can support yourself—within a reasonable time from now—say a year. That is all, Dolly."

"I can do it now if you wish it—" The expression of his face checked her.

"I don't mean a variety career devoted to 'mother' songs," he said with a sneer. "There's a middle course between diamonds and 'sinkers.' You'll get there if you don't kick over the traces.... Have you made any more friends?"

"Yes."

"Are they respectable?"

"Yes," she said, colouring.

"Has anybody been impertinent?"

"Mr. Williams."

"I'll attend to him—the little squirt!… Who are your new friends?"

"There's a perfectly sweet girl in the French class, Marguerite Barret. I think she likes me.... Louis, I don't believe you understand how very happy I am beginning to be—"

"Do people come here?"

"Yes, on Sunday afternoons; I know nearly a dozen nice girls now, and those men I told you about—Mr. Snyder, Mr. Jim Anthony and his brother the artist, and Mr. Cass and Mr. Renwick."

"You can cut out Renwick," he said briefly.

She seemed surprised. "He has always been perfectly nice to me, Louis—"