"That doesn"t lessen his regard for brunettes."
Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene shrugged her majestic shoulders and gazed again into the street. She always regretted that Madame could not be induced to make private visits.
A white poodle, recently shampooed, dashed through the rooms. There is always a watery-eyed, red-lidded poodle in an establishment of this order. The masculine contempt for the pug has died. It took twenty years to accomplish these obsequies. But the poodle, the poor poodle!
Call a man a thief, a wretch, a villain, and he will defend himself; but call him a poodle, and he slinks out of sight. It is impossible to explain definitely the cause of this supreme contempt for the poodle, nor why it should be considered the epitome of opprobrium to be called one.
"Maime?"
"Yes, Madame!" replied the girl in the hall.
"Take Beauty into the kitchen and close the door. He"s just been washed, and I don"t want him all speckled up with hair-dye."
The girl drove the poodle out of the reception-room and caught him in the hall. Presently the kitchen door slammed and the odor of onions in soup no longer fought against the perfumes and soaps for supremacy.
"There," said Madame behind the screen, "you have no rival in town now for beauty."
"I"ll be here again next Tuesday."
"Same time?"
"Yes, in the morning."
A woman emerged from behind the screen. She possessed a bold beauty, the sort that appeals to men without intellect. She was dressed extravagantly: too many furbelows, too many jewels, too many flowers.
Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene recognized her instantly and turned her head toward the window. She heard the woman pa.s.s by her, enter the hall and leave the house. She saw her walk quickly away, stop suddenly as if she had forgotten something, open her large purse, turn its contents inside out, replace them, and proceed. But a letter lay on the sidewalk unnoticed. Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene secretly hoped that it would remain there till she made her departure.
"Handsome woman, isn"t she?" said Madame. "I don"t know what it is, but they are always good-looking."
"Who is she?" asked Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene, who knew very well who the woman was.
"She is one of Mr. McQuade"s lady friends."
"Indeed?"
"Yes." Madame was shrewd. She saw that it wouldn"t do to tell Mrs.
Franklyn-Haldene anything about a woman who could in no way be of use to her. "Have you heard of the Sybil?"
"The Sybil?" repeated Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene.
"Yes. A new fortune-teller, and everybody says she"s a wonder. I haven"t been to her yet, but I"m goin" just as soon as I get time."
"Do you believe they know what they are talking about?" incredulously.
"Know! I should say I did. Old Mother Danforth has told me lots of things that have come true. She was the one who predicted the Spanish war and the president"s a.s.sa.s.sination. It is marvelous, but she done it."
Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene shuddered. With all her faults, she loved the English language.
"How do you want your hair fixed?" Madame inquired, seeing that her patron"s interest in mediums was not strong.
"The same as usual. Last week you left a streak, and I am sure everybody noticed it at the Gordon tea. Be careful to-day."
Thereupon Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene const.i.tuted herself a martyr to the cause. She was nervous and fidgety in the chair, for the picture of that letter on the sidewalk kept recurring. In the meantime Madame told her all that had happened and all that hadn"t, which is equally valuable. The toilet lasted an hour; and when Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene rose from the chair, Madame was as dry as a brook in August. Her patron hurried to the street. The letter was still on the sidewalk.
Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene picked it up and quickly sought her carriage.
Pah! how the thing smelt of sachet-powder. Her aristocratic nose wrinkled in disdain. But her curiosity surmounted her natural repugnance. The address was written in a coa.r.s.e masculine hand. The carriage had gone two blocks before she found the necessary courage to open the letter. The envelope had already been opened, so in reading it her conscience suggested nothing criminal.
Gossip began on the day Eve entered the Garden of Eden. To be sure, there was little to gossip about, but that little Eve managed without difficulty to collect. It is but human to take a harmless interest in what our next-door neighbor is doing, has done, or may do. Primarily gossip was harmless; to-day it is still harmless in some quarters. The gossip of the present time is like the prude, always looking for the worst and finding it. The real trouble with the gossip lies in the fact that she has little else to do; her own affairs are so uninteresting that she is perforce obliged to look into the affairs of her neighbors. Then, to prove that she is well informed, she feels compelled to repeat what she has seen or heard, more or less accurately. From gossiping to meddling is but a trifling step. To back up a bit of gossip, one often meddles. Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene was naturally a daughter of Eve; she was more than a gossip, she was a prophetess. She foretold scandal. She would move Heaven and earth, so the saying goes, to prove her gossip infallible. And when some prophecy of hers went wrong, she did everything in her power to right it. To have acquired the reputation of prophesying is one thing, always to fulfil these prophecies is another. It never occurred to her that she was destroying other people"s peace of mind, that she was const.i.tuting herself a Fate, that she was meddling with lives which in no wise crossed or interfered with her own. She had no real enmity either for Warrington or Mrs. Jack; simply, she had prophesied that Warrington had taken up his residence in Herculaneum in order to be near Katherine Challoner, John Bennington"s wife. Here was a year nearly gone, and the smoke of the prophecy had evaporated, showing that there had been no fire below.
Neither Warrington nor Mrs. Jack was in her thoughts when she opened the letter, which was signed by McQuade"s familiar appellation.
Dear Girl--I"ve got them all this trip. I"ll put Bennington on the rack and wring Warrington"s political neck, the sn.o.b, swelling it around among decent people! What do you think? Why, Warrington used to run after the Challoner woman before she was married; and I have proof that she went to Warrington"s room one night and never left till morning. How"s that sound? They stick up their noses at you, do they?
Wait! They won"t look so swell when I"m through with them. If Warrington"s name is even mentioned at the Republican convention, I"ve missed my guess. I got your bills this morning. You"d better go light till I"ve settled with these meddlers. Then we"ll pack up our duds and take that trip to Paris I promised you.
Mac.
Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene shivered. How horribly vulgar! She felt polluted for a moment, and half wished she had let the missive lie where it had fallen. But this sense of disgust wore off directly. She had been right, then; there was something wrong; it was her duty, her duty to society, to see that this thing went no further. And that flirtation between Patty and the dramatist must be brought to a sudden halt. How?
Ah, she would now find the means. He was merely hoodwinking Patty; it was a trick to be near Mrs. Jack. She had ignored her, had she? She had always scorned to listen to the truth about people, had she? And well she might! Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene"s lips tightened. Those friends of hers who had doubted would presently doubt no more. She hadn"t the slightest idea how McQuade would use his information; she didn"t even care, so long as he used it. She grew indignant. The idea of that woman"s posing as she did! The idea of her dreaming to hold permanently the footing she had gained in society! It was nothing short of monstrous. The ever-small voice of conscience spoke, but she refused to listen. She did not ask herself if what McQuade had in his possession was absolute truth. Humanity believes most what it most desires to believe. And aside from all this, it was a triumph, a vindication of her foresight.
"To the Western Union," she called to the groom. When the carriage drew up before the telegraph office, she gave the letter to the groom.
"I found this on the sidewalk. Have them return it to the owner by messenger." This was done. "Now, home," she ordered.
That afternoon she attended a large reception. Her bland smile was as bland as ever, but her eyes shone with suppressed excitement. The Benningtons were there, but there was only a frigid nod when she encountered Mrs. Jack and Patty. She wondered that she nodded at all.
She took her friend, Mrs. Fairchilds, into a corner. She simply had to tell some one of her discovery, or at least a hint of it.
"Do you recollect what I told you?"
"About--?" Mrs. Fairchilds glanced quickly at Mrs. Jack.
"Yes. Every word was true, and there will be a great upheaval shortly.
But not a word to a soul. I never gossip, but in this instance I feel it my duty to warn you. How and where I learned the truth is immaterial. I have learned it, and that is sufficient. It is frightful; it makes my blood boil when I think of it. And she goes everywhere, as if she had a perfect right."
"What have you found?" Mrs. Fairchilds could scarcely breathe, so great was her curiosity.
"You will learn soon enough without my telling you." And that was all Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene would say.
But it was enough, enough for her purpose. Within an hour"s time all the old doubt had been stirred into life again, and the meddlers gathered about for the feast. It is all so simple and easy.
Mrs. Jack moved here and there, serenely beautiful, serenely happy, serenely unconscious of the blow that was soon to strike at the very heart of her life. Once in a while her brows would draw together abstractedly. She was thinking of John, and of the heartaches he was having over the action of the men at the shops.
Patty was not gay. She seemed to be impatient to leave. Three or four times she asked Mrs. Jack if she were ready to go; she was tired, the people bored her, she wanted to go home. Finally Mrs. Jack surrendered.
That night at dinner John was very quiet and absent-minded. The shops, the shops, he was thinking of them continuously. In his heart of hearts he had no faith in the reporter"s influence. The strike mania had seized the men, and nothing now could hold them back. He knew they would doubt his threat to tear down the buildings. Not till he sent the builder"s wrecking crew would they understand. Not a hair"s breadth, not the fraction of an inch; if they struck, it would be the end. He gazed at his wife, the melting lights of love in his handsome eyes. Hey-dey! She would always be with him, and together they would go about the great world and forget the injustice and ingrat.i.tude of men. But it was going to be hard. Strong men must have something to lay their hands to. He knew that he could not remain idle very long; he must be doing something. But out of the shops he felt that he would be like a ship without steering apparatus--lost, aimless, purposeless.
"John?"
He woke from his dream, and forced a smile to his lips.
"You haven"t eaten anything."
"I"m not hungry, dear."