She stopped. For Conny was not one to whom to confide a longing for the stars and the winds in the pines and the scent of the earth. Such vaporing would be merely another symptom!
"What would you go mooning off by yourself for? You"d be crazy, for a fact.
Better come down to Palm Beach with me next month."
The great Potts had the unfortunate habit of gossiping about his patients with one another. He had said to Conny: "Your friend Isabelle interests me.
I should say that she had a case of festering conscience." He crossed his legs and gazed wisely up at the ceiling. "A rudimentary organ left over from her hard-working ancestors. She is inhibited, tied, thinks she can"t do this and that. What she needs"--Potts had found the answer to his riddle and brought his eyes from the ceiling--"is a lover! Can"t you find her one?"
"Women usually prefer to select _that_ for themselves."
"Oh, no,--one is as good as another. What she needs is a counter-irritant.
That husband of hers, what is he like?"
"Just husband, very successful, good-natured, gives her what she wants,--I should say they pull well together."
"That"s it! He"s one of the smooth, get-everything-the-dear-woman-wants kind, eh? And then busies himself about his old railroad? Well, it is the worst sort for her. She needs a man who will beat her."
"Is that what the lover would do?"
"Bless you, no! He would make her stop thinking she had an ache." When Conny went, the doctor came to the door with her and as he held her hand cried breezily: "Remember what I said about your friend. Look up some nice young man, who will hang around and make her think she"s got a soul." He pressed Conny"s hand and smiled.
CHAPTER XXVIII
When the Lanes went to Sunday luncheon at the Woodyards", the impression on Isabelle was exactly what Conny wished it to be. The little house had a distinct "atmosphere," Conny herself had an "atmosphere," and the people, who seemed much at home there and very gay, were what is termed "interesting." That is, each person had his ticket of "distinction," as Isabelle quickly found out. One was a lawyer whose name often appeared in the newspapers as counsel for powerful interests; another was a woman novelist, whose last book was then running serially in a magazine and causing discussion; a third--a small man with a boyish open face--Isabelle discovered with a thrill of delight was the Ned Silver whose clever little articles on the current drama she had read in a fashionable weekly paper.
Isabelle found her hostess leaning against the mantelpiece with the air of having just come in and discovered her guests.
"How are you, dearie?" she drawled in greeting. "This is Mr. Thomas Randall Cairy, Margaret"s cousin,--do you remember? He says he has met you before, but Thomas usually believes he has met ladies whom he wants to know!" Then Conny turned away, and thereafter paid little attention to the Lanes, as though she wished them to understand that the luncheon was not given for them.
"In this case," Cairy remarked, "Mrs. Woodyard"s gibe happens to miss. I haven"t forgotten the Virginian hills, and I hope you haven"t."
It was Cairy who explained the people to Isabelle:--
"There is Gossom, the little moth-eaten, fat man at the door. He is the mouthpiece of the _People"s_, but he doesn"t dislike to feast with the cla.s.ses. He is probably telling Woodyard at this moment what the President said to him last week about Princhard"s articles on the distillery trust!"
Among the Colonel"s friends the magazine reporter Princhard had been considered an ignorant and malicious liar. Isabelle looked eagerly as Cairy pointed him out,--a short, bespectacled man with a thin beard, who was talking to Silver.
"There is the only representative of the fashionable world present, Mrs.
George Bertram, just coming in the door. We do not go in for the purely fashionable--yet," he remarked mockingly. "Mrs. Bertram is interested in music,--she has a history, too."...
By the time the company were ready to lunch, Isabelle"s pulse had risen with excitement. She had known, hitherto, but two methods of a.s.similating friends and acquaintances,--pure friendship, a good-natured acceptance of those likable or endurable people fate threw in one"s way; and fashion,--the desire to know people who were generally supposed to be the people best worth knowing. But here she perceived quickly there was a third principle of selection--"interest." And as she glanced about the appointments of Conny"s smart little house, her admiration for her old schoolmate rose. Conny evidently had a definite purpose in life, and had the power and intelligence to pursue it. To the purposeless person, such as Isabelle had been, the evidences of this power were almost mysterious.
At first the talk at the table went quite over Isabelle"s head. It consisted of light gibe and allusion to persons and things she had never heard of,--a new actress whom the serious Percy was supposed to be in love with, Princhard"s adventure with a political notability, a new very "American" play. Isabelle glanced apprehensively at her husband, who was at Conny"s end of the table. Lane was listening appreciatively, now and then exchanging a remark with the lawyer across the table. John Lane had that solid acquaintance with life which made him at home in almost all circ.u.mstances. If he felt as she did, hopelessly countrified, he would never betray it. Presently the conversation got to politics, the President, the situation at Albany. Conny, with her negligent manner and her childish treble voice, gave the talk a poke here and there and steered it skilfully, never allowing it to get into serious pools or become mere noise. In one of the shifts Cairy asked Isabelle, "Have you seen Margaret since her return?"
"Yes; tell me why they came back!"
Cairy raised his eyebrows. "Too much husband, I should say,--shouldn"t you?"
"I don"t know him. Margaret seemed older, not strong,--what is the matter with us all!"
"You"ll understand what is the matter with Margaret when you see Larry! And then she has three children,--an indecent excess, with her health and that husband."...
The company broke up after the prolonged luncheon almost at once, to Isabelle"s regret; for she wished to see more of these people. As they strolled upstairs to the library Cairy followed her and said:--
"Are you going to Mrs. Bertram"s with us? She has some music and people Sundays--I"ll tell Mrs. Woodyard," and before she could reply he had slipped over to Conny. That lady glanced at Isabelle, smiled on Cairy, and nodded. What she said to Cairy was: "So you"ve got a new interest. Take care, Tommy,--you"ll complicate your life!" But apparently she did not regard Isabelle seriously; for presently she was saying to her, "Mrs.
Bertram wants me to bring you around with us this afternoon,--you"ll like it."
Lane begged off and walked back to the hotel in company with the lawyer.
After a time which was filled with the flutter of amiable little speeches, appointments, and good-bys, Isabelle found herself in company with the Silvers and Gossom, Cornelia and Cairy on her way to Mrs. Bertram"s, which was "just around the corner,"--that is, half a dozen blocks farther up town on Madison Avenue. Mrs. Silver was a pretty, girlish woman with a troubled face, who seemed to be making great efforts to be gay. She and Cornelia called each other by first names, and when Isabelle asked about her later, Conny replied with a preoccupied drawl:--
"Yes, Annie Silver is a nice little thing,--an awful drag on him, you know.
They haven"t a dollar, and she is going to have a baby; she is in fits about it."
As a matter of fact Silver managed to earn by his swiftly flowing pen over four thousand dollars a year, without any more application than the average clerk.
"But in New York, you know!" as Conny explained. "They have lived in a little apartment, very comfortably, and know nice people. Their friends are good to them. But if they take to having children!" It meant, according to Conny"s expressive gesture, suburban life, or something "way up town," "no friends." Small wonder that Annie Silver"s face was drawn, and that she was making nervous efforts to keep up to the last. Isabelle felt that it must be a tragedy, and as Conny said, "Such a clever man, too!"
Mrs. Bertram"s deep rooms were well filled, and Cairy, who still served as her monitor, told Isabelle that most of the women were merely fashionable.
The men--and there was a good sprinkling of them--counted; they all had tickets of one sort or another, and he told them off with a keen phrase for each. When the music began, Isabelle found herself in a recess of the farther room with several people whom she did not know. Cairy had disappeared, and Isabelle settled back to enjoy the music and study the company. In the kaleidoscope of the day, however, another change was to come,--one that at the time made no special impression on her, but one that she was to remember years afterward.
A young man had been singing some songs. When he rose from the piano, the people near Isabelle began to chatter:--
"Isn"t he good looking! ... That was his own music,--the Granite City ...
Can"t you see the tall buildings, hear the wind sweeping from the sea and rushing through the streets!" etc. Presently there was a piece of music for a quartette. At its conclusion a voice said to Isabelle from behind her chair:--
"Pardon me, but do you know what that was?"
She looked over her shoulder expecting to see an acquaintance. The man who had spoken was leaning forwards, resting one elbow on her chair, his hand carelessly plucking his gray hair. He had deep piercing black eyes, and an odd bony face. In spite of his gray hair and lined face she saw that he was not old.
"Something Russian, I heard some one say," Isabelle replied.
"I don"t like to sit through music and not know anything about it," the stranger continued with a delicate, deliberate enunciation. "I don"t believe that I should be any wiser if I heard the name of the piece; but it flatters your vanity, I suppose, to know it. There is Carova standing beside Mrs. Bertram; he"s going to sing."
"Who is Carova?" Isabelle demanded eagerly.
"The new tenor at the Manhattan,--you haven"t heard him?"
"No," Isabelle faltered and felt ashamed as she added, "You see I am almost a stranger in New York."
"Mrs. Bertram knows a lot of these musical chaps."
Then the tenor sang, and after the applause had given way to another rustle of talk, the gray-haired man continued as if there had been no interruption:--