The Cheat (Holman)/Chapter 12
Carmelita had made few acquaintances among the people in the section of Long Island in which she lived who did not belong to Lucy Hodge's set. She had passed estates while motoring that fairly caught her breath with their well-kept beauty. The grounds around many of the castle-like houses were half a mile or more square in extent. Except for gardeners she had noticed few signs of life around them and she had often speculated as to what sort of people lived in these paradises which resembled in many respects her own father's establishment in the Argentine.
She had ventured to ask Lucy about this upon more than one occasion. Usually the latter passed her inquiry off with a sniff and a frivolous answer that meant nothing.
But once Lucy really took the trouble to explain, "Well, our crowd is fairly new to this section and I guess nobody can compare with us when good times are concerned. But there is an older society crowd here—stuffy old frumps for the most part who rather turn up their noses at us, I fancy, and think we're driving Hedgewood to rack and ruin. Jackie's people were anxious to have us get in with the old crowd and we did attend two or three of their parties. But they were insufferable and I put my foot down.
"Mrs. Willis Peabody, wife of the president of the Traders' Trust, and Mrs. John Hurd, whose husband is the big soap man, are the social leaders at present, so I'm told. They are respectable as Methodist bishops—no end of money and no way to spend it. You've seen their homes—a mile or so back in the country on the Huntington road." Lucy took a deep inhale of her cigarette and flicked the butt into the rim of flowers just below the level of Carmelita's piazza. "Why do you ask, my dear? Thinking of forcing into the gates of respectability?"
Carmelita smiled a disclaimer. Despite the derogatory way in which her friend spoke of the Peabodys and Hurds, there was still a little note of envy and respect in her voice. Lucy Hodge was not unaware of the value of social prominence and well-established family connections.
Carmelita recalled this conversation with Lucy with interest one afternoon about a week later when, following her daily swim with Rao-Singh, she was spending the time until dinner writing a cheerful letter to Dudley. She looked up as a dark blue limousine swung into the drive and up the path and stopped in front of the piazza quite near her. A smart chauffeur alighted and held open the door and assisted a rather distinguished looking woman of about forty-five to alight. The new-comer looked around with lively interest and, seeing Carmelita upon the piazza, asked, "Does Mrs. Drake live here?"
When she was assured that she was in the presence of Mrs. Drake she turned and spoke to some one in the tonneau of the machine. Presently a slightly older and more fragile lady alighted, with the chauffeur's arm assisting her, with considerable dignity from the automobile. Both then came up the short path leading to the piazza with the assurance of people who are used to being welcomed everywhere. Carmelita was puzzled. She could not recall ever having met either of them before.
"I am Mrs. Peabody—Mrs. Willis Peabody," announced the taller of the two ladies. "And this is Mrs. John Hurd."
Carmelita, all a-flutter, recalled Lucy's words at the sound of their names and pushed her best porch chairs toward her guests. "Please sit down."
"You will pardon us for calling upon you so informally," said Mrs. Peabody pleasantly, "but there is a little matter in which I think you can help us and at the same time do a very valuable aid to a very worthy cause."
Carmelita was all interest.
"Kvery year since the war we people of Hedgewood have been giving a lawn fête for the benefit of the disabled and wounded veterans of the late war. It has grown in the past few years to be quite an elaborate and complicated affair, though, of course, the increased receipts realized make it worth quite all the trouble it entails. This year we want to exceed all records if possible. Our first problem was to secure the proper location upon which to hold the Fête. We felt that it should be upon some site adjoining the Sound so that we might utilize the water for the decorated floats and other features. That precludes using the homes of either Mrs. Hurd or myself. Besides it is so much cooler by the water. Last year we used the grounds of Mrs. Thomas Hillary and found them quite ideal. Mr. Hillary's estate, as you probably know, is now occupied for the summer by Prince Rao-Singh."
Mrs. Peabody cleared her throat. Although her words were couched in as friendly a tone as one could imagine, yet she did not seem to be regarding her present task as an altogether pleasant one. Calling upon ladies to whom she had not been introduced and of whose credentials she was not quite certain was far from her usual social usage. But she regarded the cause which she represented more important than any personal inconvenience and the friendly reception given her by Carmelita and the whole-hearted interest she was showing were reassuring Carmelita, at the mention of Rao-Singh, began to catch a glimmer of what was coming. He had sent them to her.
"We have called upon Prince Rao-Singh," continued Mrs. Peabody, "with a view to securing the grounds for the Fête again this year and he has not only consented to our use of them but has agreed to coöperate with us in every way possible and to attend to the matter of decoration himself. He made only one condition. And that was that we persuade you, Mrs. Drake, to serve upon the committee in charge of the affair, which now consists of Mr. Howard Church, of the Traders' Trust Company, Mrs. Hurd and myself. We agreed to this at once and we are here to ask you to donate your services."
The proposition, aside from the distinguished source from which it came, appealed to Carmelita at once. For the first time since their acquaintance she felt unreservedly kindly toward Rao-Singh for having introduced her name into the matter. It would be great sport. Color and costumes and crowds and excitement appealed to her instinctively. She would enlist all of her and Lucy's friends in the cause. She could induce Lucy to bring theatrical stars of her Broadway set down and make use of their talents. It would offer her bored and novelty-seeking coterie something new to do and she was sure they would coöperate for that reason.
She was keenly sympathetic for the cause for which the Fête was to be given also. She had spent the years of the war rather secluded in her father's house at Buenos Aires where the gigantic struggle loomed up merely as headlines in the newspapers. Carmelita's real interest had started when America went into the fray, and she had caused some uneasiness among the small coterie of Spanish aristocrats in which she moved socially because of her intense enthusiasm for the Allies. The families of most of her friends in Buenos Aires were Germanophiles. Carmelita, with her American education and Allied sympathies, was looked at rather askance and one more item was given to Don Caesar de Cordoba to worry about.
Carmelita's first-hand acquaintance with the war had come when she met Dudley. He had fought with the French Air Service before his country declared war and then became an American ace. In his left shoulder he carried a souvenir of one of his air combats. Carmelita was proud of his war record. In the American colony in Paris he still enjoyed, five years after war, a reputation, and this had helped to pique her interest in him when they first met.
Two or three times Dudley had brought to the apartment friends who served with him as aviators—once, she recalled, a slight Frenchman named Major Potel, with one arm, a man who had brought down twelve German planes in the course of his air career and who was yet so bashful that he could not look her in the eye without blushing. Carmelita had never been so gracious as to these guests and she had hung upon their conversations with Dudley as if she were listening to the gods on Olympus.
Carmelita's attitude toward war was the contradictory one that most people have. She thought war romantic and yet she shuddered at the fruits of war—the dead and wounded.
For several reasons therefore the chance to assist in the Benefit Fête appealed to her instantly. Even before she spoke her answer to Mrs. Peabody she was busy with swift-forming plans.
"I should be delighted to serve," she said.
"That's fine, my dear," said the older woman with an inward sigh of relief that that was over. "Do you mind if Mrs. Hurd and I drive around again to-morrow afternoon at this time and talk our plans over with you?"
"Do by all means. But won't you stay and have a cup of tea now?" Carmelita tried not to make her invitation too eager. Mrs. Peabody had risen and Carmelita made a move to detain her by pressing the bell for the butler. "No, thank you, Mrs. Drake," Mrs. Peabody smiled. "We must really be hurrying along now. To-morrow perhaps."
So Carmelita rose reluctantly with them. Both shook hands warmly with her and she stood, a graceful, cool picture, leaning lightly against a pillar of the porch, watching the chauffeur touch the starter and slowly roll her famous guests away. She was a little disappointed because they had not invited her to one of their homes for the conference the next afternoon. What were those homes like, she fell to wondering—safe, protected, like her childhood home in Buenos Aires but without its coldness? Could she be happy in such a serene, unruffled environment, growing old according to a fixed, polite routine? She feared not.
Since he was evidently to take such a prominent part in the coming events, Carmelita
_3.png)
invited Rao-Singh to be present at the conference the next afternoon. She hoped, however, that he would not come earlier than the others. She preferred to have her meetings with himnow when other people were present. As things turned out, he made his appearance at about the same time as Mrs. Peabody's limousine. He was a tall, straight, striking looking figure attired in a white riding suit and mounted upon his favorite black horse. He dismounted and bowed with extravagant politeness to Carmelita and her visitors and was content for the rest to occupy a wicker chair in the background and say little. His dark eyes rested constantly upon Carmelita, though, absorbed in the business at hand, she hardly seemed to notice him.
The date of the Fête was set for three weeks hence and Carmelita plunged into the preparations with all the energy she possessed. She seemed to be hoping to find in this excessive activity an opportunity to forget her financial troubles and her husband's discontent.
Carmelita was making use of the refreshing subterfuge of temporarily ridding her mind of unpleasant worry, by replacing it by pleasant worry. In the same way a business executive forgets the cares of business by burdening his mind instead with anxiety as to whether his golf game is improving or not. There is also a way of drugging the mind by driving the body at such an energy-consuming rate that the mind is too tired to think. Carmelita did this also. It seemed to her that she was always riding at tremendous speeds in either Lucy's or Rao-Singh's motor cars or getting in or out of them. She solicited subscriptions to the Fête all around the surrounding country and among the tradespeople of Hedgewood and neighboring towns. There were innumerable errands to do.
It soon developed that the other members of the committee on arrangements for the Annual Hedgewood Fair and Fête for the Benefit of the Wounded Veterans of the World War were quite willing to allow Carmelita's pretty shoulders to assume the major part of the preparations for the affair if she wished them to. The local post of the American Legion had been enlisted in the cause and contributed a little money from their slender treasury and promised brawny arms and willing hands when the time came for their use. There were also contributions from Mrs. Peabody and Mrs. Hurd and their set, and Carmelita, by polite bulldozing and her popularity, was able to extract a respectable amount from her own crowd.
Rao-Singh's idea for the grounds was decorations with an Oriental motif since he could himself supply a great number of pieces from his own possessions and serve as authority for the rest. During the ensuing weeks Carmelita, now virtually director-in-chief of the enterprise, discovered that one of the requisites of such a position when the purpose behind the affair is charity, is an unlimited personal purse. She early found that the expense money allowed her was not going to be nearly sufficient, considering the elaborate scale upon which Rao-Singh and she had planned the Fête. There were innumerable yards of awning canvas to hire, wood and carpenters to be secured at prohibitive prices to erect platforms, a famous jazz band to be lured from Broadway at a tremendous bribe and all sorts of other expenditures which Carmelita's slender reserve, already extended to the limit to take care of her household bills, would not endure. Rao-Singh's shrewd eyes soon detected the embarrassment which she was laboring under.
"I hope you will let me take care of incidental expenses which the funds handed over to you won't meet," he suggested. "I am really the one responsible for expanding our friends' original idea into something worthwhile and I really should pay for it."
Her protests were weak and easily over-ridden. The Hindu really had little interest in the affair in its charity aspects. He had taken no part in the war himself, having, like most of the native royalists whose titles came down from the old Indian dynasties, no sympathy with the British Empire and its wars. Indeed Carmelita recalled rumors which she had heard in Europe that Rao-Singh's presence in Paris was due to difficulties with the British administration in India on account of his supposed alliance with the movement for Hindu independence. Certainly he had the Oriental's viewpoint in most matters, including sex, and his Oxford education had influenced his mind and external veneer without affecting his spirit.
Rao-Singh had donated the use of his wide and beautiful stretch of lawn leading from his house to the Sound for the Charity Fête for the sole reason that it would bring him closer to Carmelita Drake. That was the real explanation, and matters were working out excellently for him.
Perhaps because she was a little uneasy at the predominant rôle Rao-Singh was now playing in her present activities, Carmelita made an effort to enlist Dudley's aid in the Fête also. She explained it all to him when he came out to Hedgewood the week-end after the visit of Mrs. Peabody and Mrs. Hurd. She had been away on an emergency errand in connection with the fair in Rao-Singh's runabout that Saturday afternoon and had missed Dudley's train and was not in the house when he arrived. It annoyed him further to see her drive up with the Indian, though the latter, observing Dudley's presence, made a graceful adieu at once.
Carmelita kissed her husband and fell at once to explaining the reason for her delay and the whole charity project. Dudley was won to it fairly easily.
"I knew you would help," she cried delightedly. "I was very proud to tell Mrs. Peabody that my husband was a veteran of the Air Service himself and would lend every assistance."
Dudley was sincerely glad that she was at last occupying herself with something worth while. He willingly consented to discharge the multitude of commissions with which Carmelita flooded him upon his departure the next Monday morning, and left feeling more cheerful than he had for some time.