The Magpies Nest (6 page)

The enormous absurdity of it smote on her sense of humour, but still left her bewildered. She had been wont to assume life in its social aspects to be essentially simple. One met people; one liked or did not like them. So it was settled, and one chose one's friends. Of the arbitrary and rigid nature of formal social connections she had no conception. The claims of family, of money, of prestige, meant nothing to her. She had no feeling for the clan; not even a realisation of it. All her distinctions were personal; she had morally the eye of the artist, to whom clothes and appanages are drapery and ornament, not insignia.

For instance, the Round Up Club. It was
the
club. As yet there was no country club; this was a purely masculine affair. A group of the men who had made money had organised, bought a little house, and were wont to sprawl on the veranda of it, smoking ostentatious cigars and imbued with a terrific air of superiority. One could not doubt that they felt superior Because they sat on that particular veranda. The veranda, also, was sacrosanct because they sat on it. This led nowhere; it was funny, but perplexing. Also, the Round Up Club! The name alone.—They were mostly fat and tubby gentlemen, who would have been more than ill at ease on the hurricane deck of a bronco.

One she had seen the day before on the sacred veranda, though, was rather good to look at. Dark eyes, with a smile in them, and a lean, graceful figure She did not know who he was.

She wished she could feel serious about Eleanor Travers's projected call. Lately she had been reading
Vanity Fair.
Would Becky Sharp have spent so much diplomacy and duplicity to attain, say, to Mrs. Lockwood's teas? Mrs. Lockwood, plump and placid, whose husband had made the most money, and who therefore "led society"?

Of course there was no real difference in being a Knight of the Garter and the Golden Fleece, and a master-butcher, so long as one was "first in the village in Gaul," but, since her part was to be all concerned with outward show and made no pretence of examining inward worth, Hope felt she ought at least to have the show. The game might not be worth the candle, but by every right there should be a candle, if there was to be a game. So far there was a difference between a Duchess and a butcher's wife, and Hope could understand Becky Sharp.

Becky's candle glittered very brightly, anyway.

But perhaps Eleanor Travers and the remoter Mrs. Lockwood might have something to offer of themselves. One ought to try it out. There wasn't anything else, as Mary Dark had said.

But there was; there was one's personal liberty. Yes, the mere right to talk to a chauffeur instead of a narrow-chested bank clerk, if one chose. Without some
quid pro quo,
Hope knew very well she would calmly keep her liberty. She hoped she might keep Mrs. Patten and Mary Dark also. Mrs. Patten taught French, German and music in the schools, where Hope instructed in English and drawing. Mary did multitudinous things in a newspaper office, and was taking a new and better paid place shortly as advertising manager for a big new firm of land promoters.

Neither had any more than she earned. For that reason, she would probably be able to keep them. It was their mutual poverty that constituted the desert island whereon their friendship flourished. If a ship with golden sails came for one of them, she must disappear over the cloudy horizon. These matters Hope meditated, and had the more leisure for that exercise since Allen Kirby failed to reappear. There had been no definite appointment; Hope assumed he had failed of finding her. She spent her evenings at home, reading omnivorously as was her wont, or at Mrs. Patten's, where she sat meekly under the veiled admonitions of her social mentor, and was therefore accounted a good girl. Eleanor Travers had a cold, and the call was postponed. The Tennis dance was a month off. Existence continued as a succession of impatient yawns.

Deep down she was in a turmoil of wild yearnings for things impossible and nebulous, for the edge of the skyline, and space, and action. Sometimes her heart grew big in her with longing, even to the verge of pain. She fed it with French irregular verbs, to please Mrs. Patten; and to please herself was no longer visible to her weedy collection of half-baked admirers. It came to her like a revelation that they had always bored her. She felt growing pains.

Then, on an evening of drifty, drizzling dusk, she galloped down the river road and came upon Allen Kirby, or, more properly, Allen Kirby's feet projecting from beneath the huge black and brassy-bright automobile, while a large man in a sheep-lined duck coat held a headlight for his convenience. The man in the duck coat looked up at the sound of hoofbeats; her half-broken horse shied and danced at the alarming spectacle.

It was no kind of weather to be riding, which was one reason why Hope had gone. It suited her to ride in the dark, in the rain, in any kind of weather or at any time of day—if it suited her. She wore a divided skirt and a hideous red peaked cap, and her mount stood sixteen hands and weighed fourteen hundred and fifty. When he promptly stood on his hind legs she leaned forward until she could have kissed him between the ears, but she did not. She merely jerked on the Spanish bit, downward, until he grunted, looked around under his neck, and asked impertinently:

"Want a tow?"

"No, thanks, not yet," said the big man, his teeth dashing in his plump pink face.

And Hope said:

"Good heavens!" for no apparent reason, and stared blankly as he lifted his cap. And then, "How do you do, Mr. Edgerton?"

He stepped forward, with a mechanical "Good evening," and turned the light on her face. It was hardly necessary, being not yet the hour when all cats are grey, but it helped, for when she blinked, by a sudden shift of memory he saw her again, nodding sleepily over a small table on a veranda that looked out to a dusty square set round with sudden pin points of lighted windows.

"You!" he remarked redundantly. "Well, I'll be damned! Tell me about it. Why didn't you answer my letter?"

CHAPTER
VI

"BUT where is Mr. Edgerton?" asked Hope, stepping lightly to the seat beside Allen Kirby.

"We'll pick him up at the Club corner," said Allen, and without a change of expression added, "You'd better get in the tonneau; I'm only chuffing this trip."

"Oh, splash!" said Hope, and scrambled over the back of the seat. "But I want to ask you things.
"

She stood up and leaned over his shoulder and proceeded to do so. It had not been possible to hold an extended conversation with Edgerton on that rain-driven road, and as for Allen, he had merely given her one impenetrable glance out of the corners of his Murillo-cherub eyes which had constrained her insensibly to a brief nod of recognition. Edgerton might or might not have noticed it; Hope would have greeted the chauffeur heartily but for his own curious reserve. But Edgerton had insisted he must see her again, hear something of how the world went with her. When she told him very cheerfully that she had nowhere to receive anyone—the tedious sprigs who squired her were obliged to find an excuse of skating rink or ice cream orgy for the pleasure of her company—he had suggested the motor and the first fine evening. And Allen had grinned on one side of his face only, the side presented to Hope, when Edgerton told him to remember her address.

It was fine now, after the cold spring rain; the earth gave out vernal odours, grown green over night; the West wind was gentle and bland. Coral banded the sunset edge of the world and a low star shone like a jewel, although the crystalline air still seemed to hold the light of day in magical solution.

Hope asked fifteen or twenty questions while they drove eight blocks, and received, for lack of time, less than half as many replies. Edgerton had lately acquired large interests, in land and mining properties, in Alberta; he meant to spend some considerable intervals of time there in the near future. He had organised the Golden West Development Company; Hope cried out at that, for it was with them Mary was engaged. Allen had been Edgerton's second chauffeur in Chicago, and Edgerton had sent him up, two weeks before, with the car. He did not know how long he might stay. Edgerton had four cars, and would not be without one.

"His wife uses the other three," said Allen drily.

"What's she like?" questioned Hope with the liveliest and most impersonal curiosity.

"A hell-cat," Allen informed her briefly.

Hope merely said "Oh," and did not like to press the query. It seemed unfriendly to pry thus into the intimate unhappiness of one who had tried to be kind to her. Hope had strange reserves and delicacies, inherited from a prouder generation than this, an age when private laundries were used for family linen and broken hearts were not served up bleeding at a penny apiece on the front pages of the dailies.

"But he has a daughter," mused Hope. "Isn't she pretty?"

"I guess so," said Allen; "any millionaire's daughter is " He was not without worldly wisdom. But he added in honesty, "She's not so bad; a good deal like the old man. Not much side; she talks to me friendly enough."

"Are you going to elope with her? It's being done," Hope teased him.

He answered, half seriously:

"I wouldn't marry any rich girl; they can't help it, but they're too used to thinking the world was made especially for 'em to walk on." His slow, soft, drawling voice, without an inflection, lent a certain humour to most of his utterances; Hope found herself laughing at him constantly, and he told her once: "I like you because you seem so happy. You're always laughing." But now he went on, "Young fellows brought up to spend money are the same. They don't see things like we do; they don't know what's real."

"I suppose not," said Hope thoughtfully.

She reflected that there was a certain pleasure in that knowledge of reality, however hard one found it. The soil was good underfoot, even though the motor was soft and swift. A little of both would be agreeable—if one could have both. Even while she thought, she had Allen explaining that he had not come to take her for the promised ride because Edgerton had arrived a day or two earlier than the programme called for.

"You won't want to go with me now," he drawled.

"Oh, won't I?" remarked Hope. "Don't be an idjit. I will if you'll ask me—unless you'd be fired for taking me."

"He'll never know," said Allen.

Leaning against his shoulder, she felt him shake with suppressed mirth. She could see no real occasion for it. Why should she not go, if she chose? The ethics of "railroading" the car she left Allen to settle with his own conscience; as for her going or not going, she had tentatively decided that she was under no obligation to refrain. Why not?

"You're a funny girl," drawled Allen.

He stopped for Edgerton, who stood on the pavement lighting a cigarette from a gold-mounted case. Everything about his appearance was in keeping with that costly trinket; his linen, his shoes, his spotless light grey suit and fawn overcoat, his too youthful hat, shouted of money, almost drowning out the feebler piping of good taste. His diamonds were more numerous than ever; his rather ruddy face shaved to a nicety. And he looked positively super-clean. As he climbed in beside her, smiling and shaking her small hand vigorously in his own grey
suède
gloved one, Hope smelt fine soap and toilet waters and heard the silk lining of his overcoat rustle. It gave her a wish to pat him on the back, smooth his white
piqué
waistcoat approvingly, and tell him that he looked very nice indeed. The thought crinkled the corners of her mouth and brought out a dimple, and they beamed at each other, each quite unaware of the other's motive for mirth. As the car started a tallish young man, just turning the corner to go to the club, started slightly and raised his hat, but neither saw him. He was quite a personable young man, and appeared to be interested in what he saw. The big car purred away.

"Take the best road and go ahead. I suppose you've learned your way about," said Edgerton, addressing Allen's inexpressive back, with a note of good-natured banter. Allen nodded without turning. "They all railroad the cars out," he added resignedly to Hope, who bit her tongue on a too hasty word of confirmation. She had a positively fatal gift of candour, which served her ill, for when she had told the worst and the most, less ingenuous minds invariably drew the conclusion that it was merely a prelude and concealment for further misdoings. "And now," said Edgerton, "I want to know."

"But this is all there is to know," said Hope, and threw out her hands. "May we go fast?"

"That's you!" He spoke to the chauffeur.

The purring deepened; the river sped by like a ribbon of quicksilver. A light came into Hope's eyes, but her body relaxed in a sort of ecstasy.

And Edgerton's heart melted in him again, and he knew himself once more a fool. That gay, unconscious courage of hers. It was plain she thought of life as a glorified "joy-ride," and he knew it for a treadmill, where the gayest might weary quickest, stumble, lose heart and go down. No, she would not go down, but she would lose heart none the less, and that spark in her eyes would die out.

"What do you want to do with yourself?" he asked abruptly.

"Everything," she answered, smiling radiantly out of the fulness of the moment.

"If I make it possible," he forestalled her immediate objection, "would you like to go abroad and study art, or go to college?"

"Why should you?"

Somehow he had not anticipated that.

"Because I'd like to," he answered very simply, drawing the rug up over her knees.

"Oh." She pondered, turned to him, and her eyes accepted his word. "But I must think." She thought, visibly, puckering her fair wide brows. "Not abroad; not art," she said at last. "I'd be a fraud. I have no genius. Only a trifling talent, a trick. I teach—the A B C's. Anyone could, if she couldn't draw a crooked line. Read it out of a book. It would be a waste of money, of time, of effort. But you're awfully good. I wish I was a genius; it would be so nice to say yes, and be a wonderful credit to you. Oh, I've often thought of it. But it isn't there. Genius must simplify things for the possessor of it." He could not catch all she was saying, now that she mused to herself. "They know what they've to live for, and they can take hold. Now me, I've only life to live for, just like everyone else. And it's wonderful, but I can't seem to take hold of it. It gets away from me. Lots of people—most people—never do capture it. Their whole lives escape them. I wonder, does it always escape them? Or is there somewhere, after all this weedy barrenness is ended, where they—oh, excuse me; I'm such a scatter-brained animal."