The Lieutenant-Governor/Chapter II
Chapter II. The Odds Against Young Nisbet
[edit]Young Nisbet leaned forward in his chair.
“And I’ve been thinking,” he added, “that perhaps — that perhaps” —
“That perhaps what?” asked the junior Miss Rathbawne, leaning forward in hers.
“If I don’t have tea instantly,” said her mother, with profound conviction, as she came ponderously through the portières, tugging at her gloves, “I shall expire! How de do, Mr. Nisbet. Do sit up straight, Dorothy, my dear.”
She sank heavily into a low chair, which brought her within the radius of lamp-light at the tea-table, and was thus revealed as a lady of generous proportions, with a conspicuous absence of features, and no observable lap. In speaking, she displayed a marked partiality for undue emphasis. Sublimely unconscious of the depression induced by her advent, she continued to talk, as she pulled off her gloves, which were a size too small, and came away with reluctance, leaving imprints of the stitching on her pudgy pink hands.
Young Nisbet surveyed her with a kind of mute despair. He was a very average young American, very conventionally in love, and the trifling remnant of self-assertiveness which had triumphed over the crescent humility natural to his condition inevitably evaporated into thin air at the approach of Mrs. Rathbawne; and always, as he was doing now, he turned in his toes excessively when she was present, hitched at his right trouser-leg, where the crease passed over his knee, and looked first at her, and then at the floor, and then at her again, with the purposeless regularity of a mechanical toy.
There was a tremendous and highly significant rattling of cups, saucers, and silver spoons, as Dorothy Rathbawne prepared her mother’s tea. All things considered, one found something very admirable about Dorothy at such a time as this. It was not complete submission, still less was it open revolt, but savored of both, and was incomparable as an attitude toward Mrs. Rathbawne. On some occasions it was almost as impossible to get on with Mrs. Rathbawne as it would have been, on others, to get on without her. The which, nowadays, is more or less true of all parents. And children.
“Natalie and your Aunt Helen got out at the florist’s,” went on the good lady, “but I came straight on, and sent the carriage back for them. I felt that I couldn’t exist an instant longer without my tea. I’m sure I don’t see how Natalie stands it. She was out all morning in the brougham, too. You had best make enough for three cups, Dorothy — and do sit up straight, my dear! — and order Thomas to bring in some more tartines. They are sure to be hungry, and they are apt to come in at any moment.”
“That is a family failing,” said Dorothy venomously, from behind the kettle.
“Well, I’m sure, my dear,” said Mrs. Rathbawne innocently, as she straightened her rings, and picked an imaginary speck out of one of her round, flat nails, “there is no disgrace at all in a healthy appetite. I’m thankful we all have it — though as for your Aunt Helen, hers is about like that of a fly.”
“Flies have very good appetites — judging from all I’ve seen, that is,” said Dorothy, “so I don’t think she is to be commiserated on that account.”
“That was only a figure of speech, my dear,” replied Mrs. Rathbawne, with engaging placidity. “Mercy! but I’m glad to get home. We’ve had a positively exhausting day with Natalie’s shopping, and the worst of it is to think what a lot more there is to do. A wedding certainly is an undertaking, Mr. Nisbet.”
“Is it?” answered young Nisbet, perceptibly startled at being thus abruptly included in the conversation.
“Decidedly!” asseverated Mrs. Rathbawne. “Of course, in the case of an ordinary man” —
“Two lumps, mother?”
“Always two lumps, Dorothy, my dear. Surely you must know that, by this time! As I was saying, Mr. Nisbet, the fact that my elder daughter is to marry Mr. Barclay” —
Dorothy’s eyebrows went up resignedly as she bent with affected solicitude over the alcohol lamp, than which none ever burned more blamelessly. There was no stopping Mrs. Rathbawne now!
“One has to keep his position in mind,” she was saying. “It isn’t like the usual marriage, which interests only the families and friends of the persons concerned, you know. It isn’t even as if only Kenton City were looking on. All Alleghenia will be on the qui vive,[1] Mr. Nisbet, all the state of Alleghenia. I shouldn’t wonder if some notice were taken of the event, even at Washington. Marrying a statesman, you see, a Lieutenant-Governor! Oh, it’s quite different — quite! Do sit up straight, Dorothy, my dear!”
She continued to prattle of the momentous marriage impending, until her complacent chatter was interrupted by the entrance of her half-sister, Mrs. Wynyard, and the elder Miss Rathbawne.
The two newcomers were both beautiful, in widely dissimilar ways. Helen Wynyard, Mrs. Rathbawne’s junior by nearly a score of years, retained at thirty the transparent brilliancy of complexion which, at eighteen, had made her the most admired débutante of her season in San Francisco. Her marriage with Ellery Wynyard had caused a great to-do among the gossips, and, later, had defrauded them pitilessly of their self-promised “I told you so’s,” by reason of the death of the handsome young rake, before the rose-color of the honeymoon had begun to fade. Beauty, wit, and infallible tact she inherited from her mother, shrewd business ability and a keen insight into men and things from her father, and wealth and a certain attractive audacity of speech from her husband; and five years of widowhood only served to develop and emphasize the promise of her first season. There were numerous feet which aspired to be shod with Ellery Wynyard’s discarded shoes, but no one pair, said the world, so much as an inch in advance of the rest.
Mrs. Wynyard was spending the winter with her half-sister, and the Rathbawnes, whom the circumstance of widely distant residence had always kept from coming into close touch with her, were equally at a loss when they wondered how they had formerly contrived to exist without her, and in what manner they should resign themselves to giving her up. She was a woman who came amazingly near to being indispensable.
For the moment, Natalie Rathbawne, in reality the beauty which Dorothy by a fraction fell short of being, suffered by comparison with her sister. She was desperately tired — that was in her smile. But there was something else: a singular preoccupation which was nearly akin to listlessness. That was in the droop of her eyelids, in the eloquently inattentive gesture with which she touched a bowl of Gloire de Dijon roses as she passed, and in her conventionally courteous acknowledgment of young Nisbet’s greeting. And, too, as she seated herself beside her sister on the divan, there was perceptible purpose in her avoidance of the lamp-light, her withdrawal into the dark, deep corner. To the conversation which followed she contributed only such brief remarks as were made necessary by those occasionally addressed to her.
The two women brought with them a delicious, indefinite atmosphere of out-of-doors: that commingled smell of cold flowers, and cold flesh, and cold fur, which is to a drawing-room in winter what a whiff of salt air is in summer to a sun-baked hillside; and this proved almost too much for the self-possession, already tottering, of young Nisbet. He had always been accustomed to have the things he desired, had young Nisbet, but these, until now, had been either creature comforts, readily obtainable when one’s father is a multi-millionaire, or athletic honors, equally easy of attainment when one measures forty-two around the chest, and can do one’s quarter in something under fifty. Again, the Nisbets lived on a ranch, and when one does not know people in New York one spends the Sundays in New Haven, so that neither the terms nor the vacations incidental to his four years at Yale had equipped him, in the sense in which they equipped his fellows, for dealing with society.
Now that he was in Kenton City, representing his father’s interests, young Nisbet was painfully self-conscious of multitudinous shortcomings, totally unsuspected hitherto. His speech was apparently hopelessly incrusted with slang, his legs were too long, his ears protruded abominably, his hair was desperately unruly, his freckles and his capacity for blushing were inexhaustible. He was as much at ease in such surroundings as these in which he now found himself as a trout in a sand-pile. The great room, with its costly furnishings, the tea-table crowded with silver and fragile porcelain, the kettle purring contentedly above the iridescent flame of the alcohol lamp, — above all, the subtle, indefinable suggestion of femininity which unknowably pervaded his surroundings, — all these enthralled young Nisbet beyond expression, and awed him immeasurably, into the bargain. He was, as usual, very clear in his own mind as to what he wanted, and that was the younger Miss Rathbawne, but, for the first time in his experience, the means at his command did not seem to be sufficient unto the end. For the younger Miss Rathbawne was, very evidently, not the sort of triumph which is achieved by recourse to an imposingly ample bank-account, nor yet by two months’ loyalty to the exigencies of the training-table. And this was February, and he had known her since July, and, altogether, it was highly discouraging. Unwittingly, young Nisbet heaved a sigh so profound and so pitiable that Mrs. Wynyard immediately proffered her sympathy.
“Poor, dear Mr. Nisbet! I never heard a more pathetic sigh. Whatever is the matter?”
“He’s sleepy,” put in Dorothy. “He always is, after talking with me for a whole hour.”
“I was just thinking,” protested young Nisbet helplessly.
“Oh!” exclaimed Dorothy, “that’s it, is it? Then pray don’t discourage him, Aunt Helen. He’s really getting into some very good habits, of late.”
“Why, Dorothy!” said Mrs. Rathbawne, digging her chin reproachfully into her black velvet collar, “how can you say such things? Mr. Nisbet will think you have had no bringing up at all. And do sit up straight, my dear!”
“And if you don’t stop nagging, O most conscientious of parents,” retorted Dorothy, with her nose in the air, “Mr. Nisbet will think you bring people up by throwing them down!”
“And slang! Dorothy!”
“I always think,” said Mrs. Wynyard, “that Dorothy should have had a fairy godmother, to promise that every time she uttered a word of slang a pearl should pop out of her mouth. We should have all been wearing triple strings down to our knees within a week after she learned to talk.”
“That settles it!” exclaimed Dorothy. “If you are going to side with the enemy, Aunt Helen, there is nothing left for me to do but to beat a retreat. Come on, Mr. Nisbet, there is rest for the weary in the conservatory — that is, unless you want another cup of tea?”
In the conservatory the air was heavy with the moist, sweet smell of earth and moss, and faintly vibrant with the tiny plash of water, dripping from a pile of rocks into the circular central pool, wherein fat goldfish went idly to and fro, nuzzling floating specks upon the surface. Through the polished green of the surrounding palms and rubber-plants stared gardenias and camelias; below, between maidenhair and sword-ferns, winked the little waxen blossoms of fuchsias and begonias: at intervals poinsettia flared audaciously among its more quietly dressed neighbors; and, in the far corners the golden spheres were swelling to fairly respectable proportions on the branches of dwarf orange-trees.
Dorothy installed herself on a bench, and young Nisbet perched upon the rim of the pool, and stared at vacancy.
“It’s corking, in here,” he said, after a moment.
“Isn’t it, though?” agreed Dorothy, with a nod of approval. “It’s my favorite part of the house. You can’t imagine how many hours I spend here, sewing, or reading, or fiddling with the fish and all those funny little plants under the palms.”
“You bet!” said young Nisbet, with enthusiasm, if not much relevancy. “I’ve just got a picture of that, you know. Besides, we’ve spent a good many of those hours together in here, these past few months.”
“Oh, not a tenth of them!” exclaimed Dorothy, “and then only the very shortest.”
“Oh!” said young Nisbet gloomily. His fertile imagination was immediately peopled with the forms and faces of those who had shared the other hours, a score of eligible and attractive young men, his moral, mental, and physical superiors in every conceivable particular, faultlessly arrayed, scintillating with wit, and surpassingly skilled in the way to win a woman. The conservatory was full of them. He saw them in every imaginable posture: feeding the goldfish, watering the begonias, looking up into Dorothy’s eyes as they sat at her feet, looking down at her slender fingers, as she pinned gardenias to their lapels. And these had been granted the long hours, he only the short. Inwardly, young Nisbet groaned; aloud, as was his wont, he said the wrong thing.
“They seemed long enough to me.”
“Well!” said Dorothy.
“Oh, hang it all! I didn’t mean that. What an oaf I am!”
“Never mind,” said Dorothy consolingly. “I know you well enough to understand you, by this time.” She smoothed her skirt reflectively. “Let me see,” she added, “what were we talking about when we were swamped by the family?”
“I think,” answered young Nisbet, with one of his illogical blushes, “that I had just asked you what sort of a man you thought you would like to marry. I remember I was on the point of saying that I thought perhaps you had ideas like — er — like your mother’s.”
Dorothy raised her eyebrows.
“Like the Mater’s?”
“About a man being big and prominent, and all that, you know,” floundered young Nisbet. “She always makes such a point of Barclay’s being Lieutenant-Governor — I thought you might be for the same kind of thing.”
Dorothy looked him over, with a whimsical smile, as he was speaking. There was a deep bronze light in his close-cropped, ruddy hair, and his skin was very smooth and clean. His eyes were appealing, with that unspeakable eloquence of simple honesty which is almost pathetic. Under his blue cloth coat, the great muscles of his shoulders and chest stood out magnificently, rippling the fabric as he stirred, as if eager to throw off their trammels, and be given free play. About him there was a distinct suggestion of sane living and regular exercise. For all his freckles, and his nose that was too little, and his mouth that was too large, “the ugliest of the Nisbet boys” — he had often been called that! — was very emphatically good to look upon.
“A big man?” answered Dorothy. “Yes, I think I should like to marry a big man. I want him very clean, too — very clean! — morally, as well as otherwise. And honest as the day is long. And not too bright! I don’t want to be continually trying to live up to his brain, and continually failing. It is fatal to one’s self-respect, that sort of thing. Then, he must be heels over head in love with me — for keeps! And then — oh, he must be a man, a man through and through, who wouldn’t think anything he didn’t dare to say, nor say anything he didn’t dare to do! That’s what I want, and if I can get it, all the prominence in the world may go hang!”
“That’s just about John Barclay, though,” said young Nisbet, “with the prominence thrown in.”
“Well, I’m not saying I wouldn’t have married John Barclay, if I’d had the chance. He comes pretty close to being all I would ask for, in the way of a man. But, unfortunately, there’s only one John Barclay, and, like the rest of the world, he looked directly over poor little Me’s shoulders, and saw only Natalie. Good gracious! Who could blame him? She’s the loveliest little thing in the world! But, at all events, she nabbed him, so all that is left for me to do is to grin and bear the disappointment as best I may. He’s very much of a man, John Barclay is!”
“Yes,” assented young Nisbet, somewhat mournfully. “I can see that would be the kind of a chap that the dames would stand for everlastingly.”
“But, as I said before,” continued Dorothy, “it’s not because he’s Lieutenant-Governor, whatever the Mater may think about it, that I admire him. It’s just because he’s so big, and earnest, and loyal, and — and” —
“White,” said young Nisbet.
“Yes, isn’t he? That’s it — white!”
“I can understand a man like that getting spliced,” observed young Nisbet very earnestly. “He has so much to offer a girl. But as for the rest of us” —
“Oh, as to that,” broke in Dorothy airily, “John Barclay isn’t the only man in the world, by any manner of means! Besides, Natalie having already bagged him, it is plain I shall have to look elsewhere.”
There was a long pause, broken only by the plash of the water, which seemed, as the seconds slipped by, to grow amazingly loud. Then young Nisbet raised his eyes, and looked at her, blushing deplorably.
“I wish” he said, — “I wish” —
“Dorothy! Do excuse me, Mr. Nisbet, but really — dinner at seven, you know, and this child must be thinking about dressing. She takes ages!”
Mrs. Rathbawne folded her fat hands, and stood waiting, at the conservatory door. Young Nisbet rose.
“Of course!” he said. “I’m always so stupid about these things. Good-by, Miss Rathbawne. I’m off to New York to-morrow on some confounded business, so I probably won’t see you for a week or so. Good-by.”
“Would you mind going out by the hall, Mr. Nisbet?” suggested Mrs. Rathbawne. “Mr. Barclay is in the drawing-room with my elder daughter, and he is so greatly occupied with affairs of state that they have very little time together. I hate to have them interrupted. One can do so much harm sometimes, you know, by thoughtlessly interrupting people who are in love with each other. Thank you so much; good-by. Do try to stand a little straighter, Dorothy, my dear.”
- ↑ Alert, watchful