The Blue Window/Chapter 26
LOUIS CAREW, watching Winslow ride off with his daughter, had a humorous sense of his own inadequacy to meet the situation. Why hadn't he told Neale if he had anything to talk over to do it here? Why such secrecy about his affairs with Sally? And why bring Hildegarde into it?
But Neale was Neale. When he wanted his way, he got it. Carew, shrugging his shoulders, rose and walked down to the garden. He sat for a long time on the stone bench, the smoke from his cigar mingling with the scent of the few late roses. It was an enchanting night. He remembered another night under a hunter's moon. Elizabeth had sat beside him on the stone bench and he had spoken of the effect of this strange and spectral light. "There's no other moon like it. I've followed a fox under it, with a feeling that all the time the scene wasn't real. It is almost uncanny, the sense it gives of doing things in a dream."
She had asked about the fox-hunt, and he had described it. "All that seems a bit cruel, doesn't it?" she had said.
"There's the sport."
"Not for the poor little fox."
He had kissed her and had loved her for her tender-heartedness. Women should be like that. Yes, she had been the dearest. . . . And Hildegarde was like her. . . . He wasn't good enough for either of them. . . . The Carew blood . . . galloping . . . rackety . . . wild for adventure!
He was waked from his meditation by the sound -of hoof-beats. Hildegarde and Winslow were coming up the drive. Carew called, and they turned towards him. As Hildegarde reached him, she spoke with an effect of breathlessness, "Neale has something to say to you, Daddy. That's why we're back so soon." She jumped from her horse and stood beside him.
Winslow also dismounted. "There's no reason to get excited, Hildegarde. That's the trouble with women. They go off half-cocked."
Carew did not like his tone. But then Neale was Neale. And not a gentleman.
He tried to take the situation lightly. "Have you two been quarrelling?"
"No," Winslow wasted no time. "Sally's married. Ran away with Merry. This afternoon. I want Hildegarde to marry me in Sally's place."
Carew gave a short laugh. "Are you out of your mind, Neale?"
"No. But I've been put in an intolerable position. Everybody will be laughing at me. Saying I'm jilted. If I marry Hildegarde the world can't laugh. It can guess at things, but it won't know."
"You'll have to face it. When you come to your senses, you'll realize the utter absurdity of trying to substitute Hildegarde. Things like that simply aren't done, my dear fellow."
His arm went round his daughter. "Daddy, dar- ling," she whispered, and laid her cheek against his sleeve.
"Aren't you being," Winslow's cold voice questioned, "a bit up-stage?"
"If you choose to call it that. . . ."
"If you'll come down to earth you'll realize that I can make or break you, Louis."
"What do you mean?"
"Not a share of the stock I bought for you is in your name. And my money bought it. If I don't choose to turn it over to you, who can force me? And what could you tell the court? That you pulled wires—for pay?"
Carew's arm dropped from his daughter's shoulder. "Are you threatening me?"
"It depends upon what you call it. But without the stock there's nothing left. Round Hill will have to go, and all the rest of it. Hildegarde said you'd think my proposition to her an insult. I told her you'd have too much sense to quarrel with me. So we rode back to see which of us—knows you best." His hesitation gave to his last words a touch of insolence.
Carew spoke to his daughter. "Go up to the house, Hildegarde. I want to have this out alone with Neale."
"No. What is there to discuss with him, Daddy? Let him do his worst. Why should we mind? We shall have each other."
Neale's laugh was disagreeable. "Will you? What about Ethel Hulburt?"
As he saw Hildegarde shrink from him, her hand up as if to ward off a blow, Carew had a feeling that had more than once assailed him under the hunter's moon—that the scene was not real. That he was a shadow, facing shadows.
And the shadow called Winslow was saying: "If Louis marries Ethel, what will you do, Hildegarde?"
And the shadow which was Hildegarde was saying: "Oh, I'm done with both of you. I didn't know there were such men in the world!"
And the shadow which was himself was saying: "I am not going to marry Ethel, Hildegarde. I loved your mother."
The spell of his memories was still upon him. Ethel Hulburt had, for the moment, no meaning in his life. He was exalted, careless of consequences. "Do your worst," he told Winslow. "Hildegarde and I will stick it out together."
She came to him then, and they stood confronting Winslow triumphantly. "Oh, have it your way," he said with violence, "but I have a feeling that you'll see it differently in the morning. Shall we say at nine? In the library? You can—dream over it."
He mounted and rode off, taking Hildegarde's horse with him. When he was gone, Hildegarde cried in her father's arms and Louis swore that nothing else mattered if only they might be together. His mood was, he realized later, the madness of the hunter's moon. Subconsciously he knew, even while he made his earnest asseverations to his daughter, that the matter would have to be settled in some less emotional way with Winslow.
They sat on the stone bench, and he told her of the things he had been thinking of her mother. The moon waned, and the bronze turtle, afloat on the gilded pool, became at last a shadow among the shadows.
"It has been wonderful to talk like this," Hildegarde said, as she and her father went finally up the hill. She bade him "good-night" at the library door, and turned as she ascended the stairs to wave a hand to him. He waved back, blew a kiss from the tips of his fingers. He had doffed his great cloak but still carried it over his arm. Dark and debonair, he gave her a glance from his laughing eyes which seemed to light her world. Always afterwards she was to carry in her heart the picture of her father as he stood laughing up at her.
She slept well that night. She was not afraid of poverty, and she had no doubts as to the outcome of the interview with Neale Winslow. She and Daddy would stand together. And now that Ethel was out of it. . . ! She pictured a future in which she and her father surmounted every obstacle. A sort of fairy-tale existence. Material things did not matter. One's happiness came from something higher. Half-awake, she saw a little house . . . a loveseat . . . a footstool . . . they must buy one more chair . . . for Daddy!
Carew, sitting late before the library fire, was less sanguine than his daughter. As the reaction set in against those earlier high moments, he weighed the difficulties ahead. One could not easily defy Winslow, and the results of defiance would be—the Deluge! There was, of course, Anne. What she had might help. But he was not going to drag her down in the wreck of his fortunes. He rose, got out his account books, studied them, and flung them from him. Everything was in a hopeless muddle. He stirred the dying fire and stared into it. If Neale took the house he would claim all there was in it—he had always wanted the crystal cat, and the lacquered cabinet, the silver pheasants which had for three generations trailed their shining feathers down the dining tables of convivial Carews. Neale was an insatiable collector. Next to his ambition for social prominence was his passion for rare and beautiful objects. One need hope for little with such a man. He was capable of setting Hildegarde and her father with their few remaining effects out on the front lawn, as poor tenants were set out in the streets in the old melodramas.
With his imagination now actively at work, Louis saw pictures in the fire of himself and Hildegarde squeezed into a squalid apartment. Of Hildegarde washing dishes, of himself going forth to seek a job. No Carew had ever lived in an apartment! No Carew had ever washed dishes! No Carew had ever sought a job! There was, of course, a chance for super-economies in Paris! But even Paris might prove too much for their pocket-books.
Paris! Another picture in the fire. Of Hildegarde in Bobby Gresham's big car, with her arms full of violets, purple ribbons in her hair, gay, laughing, lovely.
By Jove, that was the solution! Bobby! Louis laughed with relief. Why hadn't it come to him before? Bobby's millions matched Winslow's. He was young, good-looking, and Hildegarde liked him. If she could only be brought to see the advantages. Gresham would be glad to retrieve the family fortunes. With Hildegarde married—well, Ethel and he might make a go of it. One couldn't live on the heights forever!
He went to the writing table and dashed off a note to his daughter. He would see that she got it the first thing in the morning. With Bobby up her sleeve, she could face Neale with serenity. It would be like a scene in a comedy. The villain foiled . . . ! He leaned back in his chair and laughed. Old Neale wasn't so bad. They had been great friends. But nobody could put it over like that on Hildegarde.
It was characteristic of Carew that with his change of mood he should find himself forgiving his enemy. Poor old chap . . . the blow to his pride had been shattering. Neale was thin-skinned—and Sally had flouted him! And the world would laugh!
So, when on his way to his room a little later, he passed Neale's door, he knocked. Neale, opening it, showed himself wrapped in a gorgeous Eastern gown. "Well?" he asked.
"Look here," Louis said, "What about that engagement we have for tomorrow morning—to shoot on Flat Island?"
"It's off, of course."
"But why? Why not call a truce temporarily? There are always women to marry, Neale. But there aren't always birds to shoot."
Winslow stared at him. "Do you mean you'll go out with me?"
"Why not? We'll have from five-thirty to nine. Breakfast at Christopher's before sunrise and the reporters at bay until you've talked to Hildegarde. What do you say?"
"I'll say this—that you ought to be blowing a reed pipe among the rushes. You've got no more sense of responsibility than a—goat."
"So Ethel tells me," there was a glint of laughter in Carew's eyes, "only she puts it more poetically as—Pan."
Winslow meditated a moment, then agreed, "I'll go. As you say it will be one way to avoid the newspaper men. I don't see why I didn't insist on settling the thing tonight. Then I'd have had a story ready."
Louis shrugged his shoulders. "You'll probably have a better one by waiting until morning. But I suggest we don't talk about it. Hildegarde will make the final decision. And until we have it out with her, we won't discuss it. It would be a pity to spoil a perfectly good morning's shooting with an argument."
It was typical of the sporting attitude of the two men that they started off before daylight with what seemed on the surface the utmost friendliness. They had a hearty breakfast at the Inn, with a great fire on the hearth, with Christopher serving ham and eggs and hot cakes, and with other hunters coming in to eat other hearty breakfasts at other tables.
Through it all, the light-heartedness of Louis was a matter of amazement to Winslow. He had, apparently, not a care in the world. He cracked jokes with Christopher, and with the men at the surrounding tables laughed a great deal, and when at last he stood for a moment with his back to the blaze he gave an effect of youth which was astounding.
It was, Winslow decided, as they rode away, the reaction from the high emotionalism of the night before. The chances were that since their talk in the moonlight, Louis had come to see the advantages of having a rich son-in-law. "He knows what I can do for him," Neale told himself, and began to breathe more freely than at any time since the news had come to him of Sally's flight.
Louis kept, however, strictly to his resolution not to talk about his daughter. He talked of everything else as they drove in Winslow's car to the Flat Island pier. It was a long, low pier used only by the hunters at this season, and by the fishermen all the year round. Reeds and rushes grew high on each side of it, and at the far end a small motor boat was tied. It was this boat which they took, leaving Winslow's car by the side of the road.
It was a wonderful morning. Even in the midst of his mental disturbance Winslow was aware of the beauty of the dawn—faint pearl at first like one of his Japanese prints, then with the light stealing in and washing the world with silver. The teal, at rest upon the waves, dotted the shore-line with black. Other birds flew up from the sedge. The boat slipped through water so still that their progress scarcely rocked the rushes. They left behind them a thin triangular wake, as sharp as an etching on steel.
They found great numbers of birds on the Island—yellow-legs, rail and reed-birds—lovely piping things, all of them, flitting like shadows over the sand. Even Winslow had to admit that it was a pity to spoil the charm of the scene by killing—but it was birds they had come for and they took full toll.
On their way back, Louis steered the boat, standing up, and singing under his breath an inconsequential tune. Neale watching him, asked, "Aren't you ever serious?"
"Why should I be?"
"But—with all there is ahead of you . . . Hildegarde's future. . . ."
"I thought we weren't going to talk about Hildegarde."
"But, why not? Sensibly?"
"Because—I'm not sensible."
Winslow flushed with irritation. "Oh, well, if you want to act like a—fool—"
"My dear fellow—why not act like a fool, when acting like a wise man brings worries?"
"But we all have worries—"
"Not—this morning. Neale, did you ever see anything more enchanting than that steamer rising up like Venus above the water—white as milk?"
Thus he shelved further discussion, and it was only at the last, quite surprisingly, as they tied up at the pier that he introduced Hildegarde's name.
He got out his flask and proposed a toast.
"I drink," he said, with cup upraised, "to my adorable daughter."
"To our marriage?"
Louis laughed. "As you please," he said, "the first part of the toast is the only one for which I am responsible."
"You may find yourself responsible for all of it," Winslow flung back, his face darkened by a frown. "I wish you'd stop being mysterious. You know what I want, and you've got to give it to me!"
"I know what you want," Louis said, "but I'm not going to talk about it." He leaped out of the boat, gathered up his traps and went on ahead whistling, while Winslow, his lips in a thin line, followed him.