"I"m not at home; don"t go!" said Nina, laying one hand on his arm to detain him as a card was brought up. "Oh, it"s only Rosamund Fane! I _did_ promise to go to the Craigs" with her... . Do you mind if she comes up?"
"Not if you don"t," said Boots blandly. He could not endure Rosamund and she detested him; and Nina, who was perfectly aware of this, had just enough of perversity in her to enjoy their meeting.
Rosamund came in breezily, sables powdered with tiny flecks of snow, cheeks like damask roses, eyes of turquoise.
"How d"ye do!" she nodded, greeting Boots askance as she closed with Nina. "I came, you see, but _do_ you want to be jammed and mauled and trodden on at the Craigs"? No? That"s perfect!--neither do I. Where is the adorable Eileen? n.o.body sees her any more."
"She was at the Delmour-Carnes"s yesterday."
"Was she? Curious I didn"t see her. Tea? With grat.i.tude, dear, if it"s Scotch."
She sat erect, the furs sliding to the back of the chair, revealing the rather accented details of her perfectly turned figure; and rolling up her gloves she laid her pretty head on one side and considered Boots with very bright and malicious eyes.
"They say," she said, smiling, "that some very heavy play goes on in that cunning little new house of yours, Mr. Lansing."
"Really?" he asked blandly.
"Yes; and I"m wondering if it is true."
"I shouldn"t think you"d care, Mrs. Fane, as long as it makes a good story."
Rosamund flushed. Then, always alive to humour, laughed frankly.
"What a nasty thing to say to a woman!" she observed; "it fairly reeks impertinence. Mr. Lansing, you don"t like me very well, do you?"
"I dare not," he said, "because you are married. If you were only free _a vinculo matrimonii_--"
Rosamund laughed again, and sat stroking her m.u.f.f and smiling. "Curious, isn"t it?" she said to Nina--"the inborn antipathy of two agreeable human bipeds for one another. _Similis simili gaudet_--as my learned friend will admit. But with us it"s the old, old case of that eminent pract.i.tioner, the late Dr. Fell. _Esto perpetua!_ Oh, well! We can"t help it, can we, Mr. Lansing?" And again to Nina: "Dear, _have_ you heard anything about Alixe Ruthven? I think it is the strangest thing that n.o.body seems to know where she is. And all anybody can get out of Jack is that she"s in a nerve factory--or some such retreat--and a perfect wreck. She might as well be dead, you know."
"In that case," observed Lansing, "it might be best to shift the centre of gossip. _De mortuis nil nisi bonum_--which is simple enough for anybody to comprehend."
"That is rude, Mr. Lansing," flashed out Rosamund; and to his astonishment he saw the tears start to her eyes.
"I beg your pardon," he said sulkily.
"You do well to. I care more for Alixe Ruthven than--than you give me credit for caring about anybody. People are never wholly worthless, Mr.
Lansing--only the very young think that. Give me credit for one wholly genuine affection, and you will not be too credulous; and perhaps in future you and I may better be able to endure one another when Fate lands us at the same tea-table."
Boots said respectfully: "I am sorry for what I said, Mrs. Pane. I hope that your friend Mrs. Ruthven will soon recover."
Rosamund looked at Nina, the tears still r.i.m.m.i.n.g her lids. "I miss her frightfully," she said. "If somebody would only tell me where she is--I--I know it could do no harm for me to see her. I _can_ be as gentle and loyal as anybody--when I really care for a person... . Do _you_ know where she might be, Nina?"
"I? No, I do not. I"d tell you if I did, Rosamund."
"_Don"t_ you know?"
"Why, no," said Nina, surprised at her persistence.
"Because," continued Rosamund, "your brother does."
Nina straightened up, flushed and astonished.
"Why do you say that?" she asked.
"Because he does know. He sent her to Clifton. The maid who accompanied her is in my service now. It"s a low way of finding out things, but we all do it."
"He--sent Alixe to--to Clifton!" repeated Nina incredulously. "Your maid told you that?"
Rosamund finished the contents of her slim gla.s.s and rose. "Yes; and it was a brave and generous and loyal thing for him to do. I supposed you knew it. Jack has been too beastly to her; she was on the verge of breaking down when I saw her on the _Niobrara_, and she told me then that her husband had practically repudiated her... . Then she suddenly disappeared; and her maid, later, came to me seeking a place. That"s how I knew, and that"s all I know. And I care for Alixe; and I honour your brother for what he did."
She stood with pretty golden head bent, absently arranging the sables around her neck and shoulders.
"I have been very horrid to Captain Selwyn," she said quietly. "Tell him I am sorry; that he has my respect... . And--if he cares to tell me where Alixe is I shall be grateful and do no harm."
She turned toward the door, stopped short, came back, and made her adieux, then started again toward the door, not noticing Lansing.
"With your permission," said Boots at her shoulder in a very low voice.
She looked up, surprised, her eyes still wet. Then comprehending the compliment of his attendance, acknowledged it with a faint smile.
"Good-night," he said to Nina. Then he took Rosamund down to her brougham with a silent formality that touched her present sentimental mood.
She leaned from her carriage-window, looking at him where he stood, hat in hand, in the thickly falling snow.
"Please--without ceremony, Mr. Lansing." And, as he covered himself, "May I not drop you at your destination?"
"Thank you"--in refusal.
"I thank you for being nice to me... . Please believe there is often less malice than perversity in me. I--I have a heart, Mr. Lansing--such as it is. And often those I torment most I care for most. It was so with Alixe. Good-bye."
Boots"s salute was admirably formal; then he went on through the thickening snow, swung vigorously across the Avenue to the Park-wall, and, turning south, continued on parallel to it under the naked trees.
It must have been thick weather on the river and along the docks, for the deep fog-horns sounded persistently over the city, and the haunted warning of the sirens filled the leaden sky lowering through the white veil descending in flakes that melted where they fell.
And, as Lansing strode on, hands deep in his overcoat, more than one mystery was unravelling before his keen eyes that blinked and winked as the clinging snow blotted his vision.
Now he began to understand something of the strange effacement of his friend Selwyn; he began to comprehend the curious economies practised, the continued absence from club and coterie, the choice of the sordid lodging whither Boots, one night, seeing him on the street by chance, had shamelessly tracked him--with no excuse for the intrusion save his affection for this man and his secret doubts of the man"s ability to take care of himself and his occult affairs.
Now he was going there, exactly what to do he did not yet know, but with the vague determination to do something.
On the wet pavements and reeking iron overhead structure along Sixth Avenue the street lights glimmered, lending to the filthy avenue under its rusty tunnel a mystery almost picturesque.
Into it he turned, swung aboard a car as it shot groaning and clanking around the curve from Fifty-ninth Street, and settled down to brood and ponder and consider until it was time for him to swing off the car into the slimy street once more.
Silvery pools of light inlaid the dim expanse of Washington Square. He turned east, then south, then east again, and doubled into a dim street, where old-time houses with toppling dormers crowded huddling together as though in the cowering contact there was safety from the destroyer who must one day come, bringing steel girders and cement to mark their graves with sky-sc.r.a.ping monuments of stone.
Into the doorway of one of these houses Lansing turned. When the town was young a Lansing had lived there in pomp and circ.u.mstance--his own great-grandfather--and he smiled grimly, amused at the irony of things terrestrial.